Putting to Test the Recovery Version

[OBW]

Aron commented on a segment of Lee posted by testallthings, but Quote is suddently not working again, so here goes:

Originally Posted by Lee

V. NOT SACRIFICING ANY PORTION OF THE WORD
In determining a truth, sometimes many related verses indicate a certain meaning, but two or three among them cannot be explained in that kind of way. One cannot say that because there were only one or two verses that could not be explained that way, one can therefore sacrifice them and base the exposition on the majority of the verses. If one does that, he is sacrificing a small number of verses. We cannot do this. As long as one or two verses do not allow a certain interpretation, we have to give up that interpretation. We have to respect every portion of the Bible. Only when an interpretation harmonizes with the whole Bible can this interpretation be considered reliable. Any verse that forbids a certain interpretation of the truth must not be sacrificed. Instead, that certain interpretation must be abandoned, and we must wait for God's further revelation. If we study the Bible this way, we will not fall easily into error. (W.L., On Knowing the Bible, Chapter 4, Section 3)

Originally Posted by aron

Suppose you had a Bible study, and someone in that study came under the influence of an evil spirit. That spirit would still (at least initially) acknowledge Jesus, and study the Bible to find God's Christ, but soon would begin to promote "truths" which supposedly the whole Bible looked toward. These "truths" would loom increasingly large in the conversation as time passed.

Eventually the study would not be about the Bible or Jesus, but about the "truths", or doctrines or teaching, of this special teacher and Bible expositor.

Neither is entirely right nor entirely wrong as I see it. And that is one of the problems I have with Lee so often. Because something is true in one place, it is assumed that it must be true in the same way in all places no matter how different things are.

Lee makes reference to not allowing one or two verses to mean something that does not harmonize with the whole Bible. That is a noble and even correct-sounding idea. But it is not entirely true. And the way he went about dealing with errant verses (contrary to his own statements) by forcing some over-arching theme that he claims is in the Bible is both consistent with, but also contradictory with this little passage.

I know. Really? Both consistent and contradictory?

It is consistent in that he insists that the major Biblical themes must prevail no matter what the verse seems to say. He doesn't say the meaning of the verse should be ignored, instead he claims that we just don't understand what it means. It really means something different than what it says.

But it is contradictory because in the little snippet testallthings provided, Lee claims that you can't ignore what the verses actually say and just sweep them aside. Yet that is often exactly what he does. He comes in and claims that "God's economy" means that it can't be that way. There was a thread many years ago in which someone started trying to state certain teachings by Lee that he still believed to be true. When asked how certain parts squared with what was actually in the verses, it was discovered that Lee declared in the Life Study messages for that passage that because of "God's economy" it really meant something else. And it meant that James was a book of death that was only left in to stand as a warning against being legalistic. Or as aron so often tells us concerning the major portions of the Psalms that Lee virtually wrote out of the Bible.

What aron wrote (and I quoted above) is often exactly what Lee did.

But at the same time, a serious flaw in Lee's holistic view of the Bible is that he controlled how it was holistic. He declared that the use of any word essentially had one meaning. Like leaven could only be bad (despite the Kingdom of God being likened to leaven). And everything about "doing" was dismissed as being according to the law which was abolished (really?).

And while not entirely incorrect, Lee's version of God's economy was generally so different from what the evidence shows should be included that when he used it as the means to dispute the otherwise clear meaning of scripture, he did exactly what he claimed you should not do — write off scripture because it does not fit you preconceived notion. "God's economy" (the real one, not Lee's version) was just such a preconceived notion.