All Posts Tagged "standards of scholarship"

How dialogue changed Elliot Miller’s view of the local churches.

The importance of dialogue and how dialogue led Elliot Miller to reassess the local churches.

The countercult community’s error in rejecting Dr. J. Gordon Melton’s Open Letter.

The importance of context in understanding others’ teachings.

Doing discernment ministry properly and the consequences of statements made in error.

In a single paragraph in which Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes errantly accused Witness Lee and the local churches of teaching the heresy of patripassianism, they misattributed and misrepresented three quotes.

Hank Hanegraaff, President of Christian Research Institute, and Elliot Miller, Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal discuss the importance of proper research and apologetics methods, the serious consequences of careless scholarship, and how dialogue changed their perceptions of the local churches.

The full text of Dr. J. Gordon Melton’s booklet An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee, and The God-Men Controversy, written and published by Dr. Melton after the conclusion of Lee v. Duddy. After giving a general background of the local churches based on Dr. Melton’s research as the leading authority on contemporary American religious groups, this booklet shows The God-Men‘s twisting of Witness Lee’s words in four key areas—propositional revelation, morality, rationality and use of the mind, and personal versus biblical authority. Based on SCP’s blatant misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s teaching, Dr. Melton recommends that The God-Men and any writing based on it be discarded.

After the end of The God-Men case (Lee v. Duddy) in 1985, Dr. J. Gordon Melton, one of the expert witnesses in the case, wrote and published An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee and The God-Men Controversy. Dr. Melton demonstrated conclusively that The God-Men had misrepresented Witness Lee teaching and recommended that it, and any other writing based on it, be discarded.

Witness Lee used the expression “four-in-one” to express the marvelous reality that the Triune God and the believers in Christ mutually indwell one another (John 14:20; 17:21, 23). However, some have misrepresented this “four-in-one” mutual indwelling to falsely claim that Witness Lee makes the church part of the Godhead.