<The Journal of Theological Studies>(옥스퍼드대학 출판사)에 소개된 위트니스 리의 삼위일체론

 

The Journal of Theological Studies, 2025, XX, 1–32

https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flaf017

Advance access publication 28 February 2025

Article

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Essence and Economy: An Introduction to

Witness Lee’s Doctrine of the Trinity

 

Michael M. C.Reardon¹, and Brian Siu KitChiu²,

¹Canada Christian College, Whitby, Ontario, Canada

²Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, La Mirada, CA, USA

mreardon@canadachristiancollege.com

 

 

ABSTRACT

 

Witness Lee (1905–97), a prominent figure among Chinese and Chinese-American Christians, exerts a profound influence upon theological and ecclesiological currents in the Global South. He is less familiar to Western theologians—and in several instances, grossly misunderstood by them— due to a lack of peer-reviewed scholarship directly examining his corpus. This article addresses this lacuna in respect to Lee’s doctrine of the Trinity. We begin by discussing his overarching trinitarian framework, in relation to his portrayal both of the essential and economic aspects of the Trinity. We then turn to Lee’s doctrines of the eternal coexistence and coinherence of the divine hypostases in dialogue with both patristic and contemporary thinkers. Thereafter, we analyse Lee’s portrayal of the economic Trinity through six interrelated lenses that pervade his corpus: (1) the divine oikono-mia; (2) the ‘processed and consummated Triune God’; (3) the ‘compound Spirit’; (4) the ‘sev-enfold intensified Spirit’; (5) the ‘full ministry of Christ’; and (6) the Latin axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt. We conclude by synthesizing Lee’s trinitarian commitments, discussing his unique contributions to modern trinitarian reflection, and offering a final assessment of how his intellectual topography squares with orthodox Nicene trinitarianism.

 

Witness Lee (1905–97), a prominent figure among Chinese and Chinese-American Christians, exerts a profound influence upon theological and ecclesiological currents in the Global South. He is less familiar to Western theologians, however, for three reasons: (1) his ministry emphasizes discipling lay Christians as opposed to directly engaging with academic scholarship; (2) perhaps relatedly, there is a paucity of scholarly engagement with his theology and influence; and (3) he has no oficial biography published in English.¹ Notwithstanding this lack of awareness within the Western academy, Lee’s theology was strongly criticized by lay apol-ogists during the height of the countercult frenzy that swept the USA in the 1960s and 1970s.²

 

These apologists grossly misrepresented Lee’s teachings, particularly in relation to his doc-trine of the Trinity.³ In recent decades, some have disavowed their past evaluations of Lee. The Christian Research Institute (CRI), for example, a leading ‘anti-Lee’ voice under the direction of Walter Martin in the 1970s,⁴ conducted a six-year study of Lee’s teachings in the mid-2000s. The outcome of their study was a series of publications endorsing his theological orthodoxy including a special 2009 edition of the Christian Research Journal entitled ‘We Were Wrong: A Reassessment of the “Local Church” Movement’.⁵ Fuller Theological Seminary also examined Lee’s teachings, and published the findings of their 18-month investigation in 2006. Three of their conclusions are especially significant, in stating that Lee’s theology is (1) ‘unequivocally orthodox’; (2) represents ‘the genuine, historical, biblical Christian faith’; and (3) has ‘been grossly misrepresented and therefore most frequently misunderstood in the general Christian community, especially among those who classify themselves as evangelicals’.⁶

 

However, these statements aimed at evangelical audiences have not translated into mean-ingful research within the academy. Although Lee’s outsized impact on theology in the Global South has long been recognized—including in a two-page statement entered into the US Congressional Record in 2014—peer-reviewed research on it has only recently begun.⁷ Moreover, there is a bewildering dearth of investigations directly examining his corpus.⁸ This state of affairs has allowed half-century-old claims from countercult apologists to continue to circulate both digitally and in print.⁹ Religious scholar J. Gordon Melton commented upon this issue in response to one of the most pointed attacks against Lee—a now out-of-print volume by Neil Duddy entitled The God-Men:¹⁰

 

In light of the manner in which this book treated Lee, I can only suggest that The God-Men, and the other attacks upon the Local Church derived from it, be discarded, and that some other more capable and responsible Christian scholars set themselves the task of reviewing and examining Lee’s teachings.¹¹

 

Melton went on to conclude, ‘[m]eanwhile I suggest, that we accept the confession of faith of the Local Church, a confession which is perfectly orthodox on essentials’. The present article takes up Melton’s charge to carefully examine Lee’s theology—at least in respect to his doctrine of the Trinity. We do so both through direct engagement with his writings and in dialogue with the ‘orthodox Nicene tradition’.¹²

 

 

1. METHODOLOGY AND AIMS

 

CRI’s 2009 report critiques previous investigations of Lee’s trinitarian theology: ‘in a different sense that same rebuke [concerning the understanding of “economy”] might well be addressed to those of us who missed a distinction frequently between the essential Trinity and the econom-ical Trinity’.¹³ This statement is especially germane to our present investigation. For Lee, the ‘most important truth’ for Christians to apprehend is ‘concerning the Triune God’,¹⁴ and the ‘most important, key words in the study of the Triune God’ are ‘essence and economy’.¹⁵ We thus follow Lee’s explicit approach in this article by utilizing an essential–economic framework to analyse his corpus.

 

Three questions about Lee’s trinitarianism have been raised by past researchers. (1) Does his outlook cohere with the orthodox Nicene tradition, or does it venture into modalistic or tritheistic territory? (2) Do his statements, especially those ones that have been misunderstood by countercult ministries, find support in the Nicene tradition—that is, in either patristic writ-ings and/or contemporary ones? (3) Does Lee’s articulation of the Trinity provide any insights, correctives, or contributions to modern trinitarian discourse?

 

To answer these questions, the article proceeds as follows. First, we survey Lee’s use of the essential/economic dichotomy and place it in dialogue with the Nicene tradition, broadly construed. Next, we examine Lee’s understanding of the doctrines of coexistence and coinher-ence—which form and inform his portrayal of the essential Trinity—in dialogue with patristic and contemporary thinkers.¹⁶ Thereafter, we analyse Lee’s portrayal of the economic Trinity through the lens of his concept of the divine oikonomia and five further interrelated concepts that pervade his corpus. Lastly, we synthesize Lee’s doctrinal commitments and discuss one of Lee’s potential contributions to modern trinitarian discourse—that is, that the study of the Divine Trinity would not be delimited only to intellectual apprehension, but would impact the subjective experience of believers and become a vehicle for believers to, in Lee’s terminology, experience, enjoy, and participate in the Triune God. But before doing so, we turn to a brief biography of Lee for readers who are unfamiliar with him.

 

 

2. WITNESS LEE

 

Lee was born in northern China in 1905 and raised in a Christian household. His mother was a third-generation Southern Baptist. Lee attended a Southern Baptist Chinese elementary school and the Presbyterian English Mission College in Chefoo.¹⁷ At the age of 19, Lee had a dynamic conversion experience after attending a gospel meeting led by female evangelist Peace Wang.¹⁸ He met in Brethren Assemblies (Benjamin Newton branch) for seven and a half years before moving to Shanghai in 1934 to work with Watchman Nee.¹⁹ Lee then served as the editor of one of Nee’s periodicals, The Christian, for six years (1934–40) while travelling to establish local churches.²⁰ By 1949, Nee and Lee had established more than 400 congregations in 30 provinces across China.

 

Due to the changing political landscape, Nee implored Lee to leave China and settle in Taiwan. This proved to be a prescient proposal, as the newly formed Chinese Communist regime impris-oned Nee only three years later and subsequently arrested many other church leaders.²¹ From 1949 to 1962, Lee established hundreds of local churches in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, and Korea.²² He settled in California in 1962, where he established a publishing house that became Living Stream Ministry,²³ established over 2,300 churches (by 1996) on six continents, completed a commentary series of the 66 books of Scripture entitled Life-study of the Bible (LS), and published a series of messages outlining his theological outlook, organized along topical lines, entitled The Conclusion of the New Testament (CNT).²⁴ He passed away in 1997 aged 91. Today, an estimated 1.5–2 million Christians meet in churches directly established by the ministry of Nee and Lee, and tens of millions of Christian believers in under-ground Chinese churches continue to be formatively shaped by their writings.²⁵

 

A significant result of Lee’s six decades of ministry is a voluminous corpus. Apart from his commentaries and CNT, the recently completed The Collected Works of Witness Lee (CWWL) comprises 138 volumes containing over 78,000 pages.²⁶ Now that the entirety of Lee’s ministry is published and digitally catalogued, a comprehensive and thorough re-examination of Lee’s understanding of the Trinity is possible.

 

 

3. THE ESSENTIAL/ECONOMIC DICHOTOMY

 

The distinction between the essential and economic aspects of the Trinity is a core feature of the Nicene tradition.²⁷ The essential Trinity, otherwise known as the immanent or ontological Trinity, refers to God’s being ad intra or God in se—that is, God in Himself apart from His relationship to humans, creation, space, and time.²⁸ The economic Trinity, on the other hand, refers to God’s being ad extra or God pro nobis—that is, God’s revelation of Himself in time and space to human beings with respect to and for the accomplishment of his eternal, salvific oikonomia.²⁹ While both aspects are acknowledged by theologians spanning time periods, soci-olinguistic backgrounds, and theological traditions, the relationship between them is contested. Given the scope of this article, we need not trace every twist and turn in scholarship that probes the relationship between these two.³⁰ It sufices, rather, to list three of the foremost possibilities:

 

(1) a historically ‘classic model’ whereby ‘the economic Trinity is the ground of cognition for the ontological Trinity, and the ontological Trinity is the ground of being for the economic Trinity’;³¹

 

(2) a ‘theology of the cross’, as advanced by Jürgen Moltmann, Eberhard Jüngel, and others which builds upon Karl Rahner’s famed axiom ‘the economic Trinity is the ontological Trinity, and vice versa’;³²

 

(3) a purely economic model of the Trinity, perhaps best exemplified by Hendrikus Berkhof who conceives of ‘the Trinity only as an economic Trinity’.³³

 

A note of caution: this tripartite schematic is quite broad, and fails to capture important nuances between thinkers. Moreover, one must be discerning when aiming to catalogue thinkers accord-ing to these categories. Many scholars who afirm Rahner’s rule, for example—including Rahner himself—are more closely aligned with a historically ‘classic model’ of the Trinity. Still, it is a helpful guide for our delimited purposes—that is, to discern how Lee’s essential/economic dichotomy informs his doctrine of the Trinity.

 

Lee contends that ‘the essential Trinity refers to the essence of the Triune God for His exist-ence; the economical Trinity refers to His plan for His move’,³⁴ the economy of salvation for His action or activity involved in the world of creation, particularly humanity—a statement reminis-cent of the historically ‘classic model’ above. Regarding the essential Trinity, he avers that God is one essence manifested as three hypostases³⁵ (Father, Son, and Spirit) who eternally coexist and coinhere, are immutable, and have no sense of succession among them. Ron Kangas, an able interpreter of Lee, summarizes this portrayal of the essential Trinity:

 

In Himself, that is, in His essence, God is uniquely one, self-existing, ever-existing, immuta-ble, triune, and characterized by life, light, love, righteousness, and holiness. … The God who is uniquely one, self-existing, ever-existing, and immutable is essentially triune; He is three-one—three yet one, one yet three. From eternity to eternity the unique God, the Triune God, is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.³⁶

 

When discussing the economic Trinity, Lee argues that the Triune God underwent scrip-turally enumerated ‘processes’ for the fulfilment of his oikonomia and insists that the outward actions of the three hypostases individually involve all of the Three of the Divine Trinity corpo-rately. While each of these commitments is expanded upon in the remainder of this article, the following two passages provide a snapshot of Lee’s understanding of the essential/economic dichotomy:

 

In the essential Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist and coinhere at the same time and in the same way with no succession. There is no first, second, or third. However, in God’s plan, in God’s administrative arrangement, in God’s economy, the Father takes the first step, the Son takes the second step, and the Spirit takes the third step. The Father planned, the Son accom-plished, and the Spirit applies what the Son accomplished according to the Father’s plan.³⁷

 

Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction but no separation. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, and the Spirit is distinct from the Son and the Father. The three of the Godhead coexist in Their coinherence, so They are distinct but not separate. In the Triune God there is no separation, only distinction.³⁸

 

With this broad overview in hand, we now turn to examine the details of Lee’s portrayal of the essential Trinity.

 

 

4. THE ESSENTIAL TRINITY

 

In the early church, both tritheism and modalism emerged as two of the most challenging trin-itarian heresies. While modalism overemphasized God’s unity to the detriment of his trinity, tritheism overstated separation amongst the Trinity to the detriment of ontological unity. In response to both extremes, patristic trinitarian reflection incorporated the interrelated concepts of coexistence and coinherence³⁹ (i.e. perichoresis [Gk.], circumincessio [Lt.], interpenetration) among the divine hypostases. A brief survey of the historic development of these doctrines is warranted in order to situate our ensuing analysis of Lee’s outlook.

 

Patristic development of the doctrines of coexistence and coinherence

 

Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cappadocian Fathers—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa—were perhaps the most significant exponents of Nicene trinitarianism during the fourth century. Prior to their writings, the Trinity was often described as one God with three simultaneous modes of being. While such language can be employed within the bounds of trinitarian orthodoxy (and indeed, continues to be used by modern theo-logians such as Barth),⁴⁰ greater linguistic and conceptual precision was needed to differentiate Nicene trinitarianism from modalism, Sabellianism, and Patripassianism. The Cappadocians thus proposed a new trinitarian language schema between hypostases and ousia. According to Gregory of Nyssa, hypostasis is ‘that which is spoken of distinctively’, rather than the indefinite notion of the ousia.⁴¹ The distinctiveness of the hypostases, Basil suggests, is based upon the tropos tes hyparxeos(mode of origin) of the divine hypostases: the Son is eternally begotten from the Father, the Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father, and the Father is neither begotten nor proceeds from any source.⁴² The eternality of these modes of origin is significant, since it entails that divine hypostases are in a state of eternal coexistence—they exist simultaneously and have always existed simultaneously; elsewise stated, there was never a point in which any of the hypostases did not exist in the past nor a point where any of them ceases to exist in the future.

 

While this clarification concerning the eternal coexistence of the divine hypostases served as a bulwark against modalistic portrayals of the Divine Trinity, it still allowed for tritheism. Aware of this possibility, the Cappadocians consistently incorporated the notion of eternal coinher-ence of the hypostases in their trinitarian statements.⁴³ For example, Gregory of Nyssa states that

 

Everything that the Father is, is seen in the Son, and everything that the Son is, belongs to the Father. The Son in His entirety abides in the Father, and in return possesses the Father in entirety in Himself. Thus the hypostasis of the Son is, so to speak, the form and presentation by which the Father is known, and the Father’s hypostasis is recognized in the form of the Son.⁴⁴

 

Gregory articulated an even more stringent response to tritheism. He averred that even three human beings, due to possessing the same nature, should not be spoken of as ‘three humans’, but rather as one human.⁴⁵ Extending this analogy to God, he argues that the foundation of divine unity lies in the shared and unified engagement in the acts of the three hypostases.⁴⁶ Based upon these convictions, the Cappadocians insisted that when speaking of God, the number three is indicative only of the quantity of ‘things,’ as opposed to possessing any explanatory power in relation toGod’s nature. While each of the divine Persons can be designated as one, they cannot be added together. This sentiment was held so strongly by them that Basil ultimately proclaimed that numbers should not even be used when referring to deity.⁴⁷

 

The concept of perichoresis is not only present within the Cappadocian corpus; it contin-ued to be employed in trinitarian reflection in later centuries by Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and especially by John of Damascus.⁴⁸ For John, the logical consequence of the homoousion (lit., same essence) of the divine hypostases afirmed at Nicaea (the Son is homoou-sios with the Father) and Constantinople (the Spirit is homoousios with the Father and the Son) was perichoresis, and thus, like the Cappadocians, he contends that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit mutually indwell one another.⁴⁹ InAn Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (OF),⁵⁰ John uses various and significant verbs⁵¹ to describe the relations between the hypostases, emphasiz-ing that perichoresis entails that divine Persons are both ‘with’ and ‘in’ one another.⁵² He insists, however, that this understanding of Divine relations results in no confusion, coalescence, or mixture of the divine Persons.⁵³

 

Lee’s portrayal of the essential trinity

 

With the above survey serving as a backdrop, we now turn to examine statements from Lee’s corpus. In general, Lee’s trinitarianism aligns more closely with patristic outlooks than contem-porary formulations. This is unsurprising, as he cites historic Christian thinkers far more often than modern scholars. Standing in line with the Latin tradition, he uses ‘persons’ (personae) at least 296 times in his corpus when discussing the Trinity. However, in contradistinction to some contemporary scholars who view the term ‘person’ as a measure of trinitarian orthodoxy, he prefers hypostasis/hypostases⁵⁴ in his trinitarian reflections due to the modern connotation of ‘persons’ referring to independent, divisible, autonomous entities. Lee discusses this pref-erence, along with other formative elements of his conception of the essential Trinity, in the following three passages:

 

Concerning the aspect of the Divine Trinity’s being three, another Greek word that is used is prosopa, which is equivalent to the Latin word, personae, from which the English word person is derived. However, most people today are not clear about the meanings of these terms. This is why Philip Schaff, a church historian, was in favor of using the Greek word hupostases, sup-porting substances, instead of the other terms. … The Triune God has three hupostases but only one ousia.⁵⁵

 

In the historical study of the Divine Trinity, the word hypostasis was first used and then the word substance … In the study of the Divine Trinity the following crucial statement was made—the Triune God has three substances but only one essence … This is the essential Trinity. In essence the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one, but in substance (person) They are three. Actually, we do not appreciate the word persons that much. Rather, we appreciate the word hypostases.⁵⁶

 

In [John 14] verse 10 the Lord continued, ‘Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?’ Over the past eighteen hundred years this truth [coinherence] has been gradually neglected. However, the theologians in the early centuries considered this matter to be quite important. They even coined the theological term coinherence, meaning that you are in me, I am in you, and we are in one another mutually. In Christianity’s theology today, many teach the doctrine of the Trinity, and some advocate the use of the term coexistence, but not many have the boldness to use the term coinherence. Nonetheless, in early Christian theology both coexistence and coinherence were used.⁵⁷

 

Three crucial aspects of Lee’s theological outlook may be gleaned from these passages: (1) he is aware of and aligns his view with patristic trinitarian reflection; (2) he afirms the funda-mental Niceno-Constantipolitan claim, that God is ‘one ousia’ with ‘three hypostases’; and (3) he believes that the doctrines of coexistence and coinherence are necessary components that undergird a proper portrayal of the essential Trinity.

 

For Lee, the ecumenical creeds are useful insofar as they serve as ‘a rule of faith’ for founda-tional tenets of orthodox trinitarianism:⁵⁸

 

By the time of the Council of Nicaea, which was held in A.D. 325 under Constantine the Great, the orthodox doctrine concerning the Triune God had been established. The ortho-dox creed formulated at the Council of Nicaea was a repudiation of both modalism, which was exemplified by Sabellius, and tritheism, which was represented by Arius. Sabellius did not believe in the simultaneous existence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. According to Sabellius’s view, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were designations of three phases of the one God who manifests Himself in different ways according to circumstances. Sabellius went to the extreme of emphasizing the oneness of the Trinity to the extent of neglecting Their threeness.⁵⁹

 

Lee contends, however, that the creeds are not suficient to articulate a comprehensive and scriptural portrayal of the Divine Trinity⁶⁰ since they lack the toolset to engage with texts that do not align with terse pronouncements. Concerning this, Lee often cites: (1) statements that identify the Lord as the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17); (2) passages which identify the Son with and/or in the Father (Isa. 9:6; John 14:10, 20; 10:38; 17:21, 23); and(3) John’s identifica-tion of the Spirit as seven Spirits (Rev. 1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6).⁶¹ Hence, Lee suggests that biblically faithful trinitarian reflection must go beyond the creeds, inclusive of incorporating robust con-ceptions of the eternal coexistence and coinherence of the divine hypostases. His writings thus, repeatedly and emphatically, reject what he deems an error of modern apologetic and evangeli-cal enterprises—an inordinate reliance upon the creeds as the sole standard of orthodoxy in lieu of both Scripture and patristic trinitarian reflection.

 

Lee’s doctrine of coexistence

 

Lee’s trinitarian reflection does not follow a standard Eastern Greek or Western Latin approach: he does not begin with the monarchy of the Father as the basis of the Godhead and move out-ward to the Son and Spirit (Eastern), nor with the divine ousia (Western). His approach, rather, is grounded in the New Testament model of monotheism—one personal God comprising three distinct Persons (hypostases).⁶² It is likely that Lee chose this approach due to what he believed was an implicit tritheism within broad swathes of American Christianity (particularly evangel-icalism) during the period from the 1960s to the 1990s. Moving from biblical monotheism, his theological process advances to first articulating the distinctiveness of the divine hypostases through the lens of coexistence and, thereafter, the Trinity’s ontological unity through the lens of coinherence.

 

The most basic understanding of eternal coexistence, per Lee, is that the three hypostases ‘exist together at the same time’.⁶³ Lee’s doctrine, however, moves beyond this basic premiss in three directions. First, he ties the coexistence of the divine hypostases to their full divinity, indicating the real sharing or communion of the same divine ousia among the three:⁶⁴

 

We must be clear that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist simultaneously from eternity to eternity. Undoubtedly, the Father is God (1 Pet. 1:2; Eph. 1:17), the Son is God (Heb. 1:8; John 1:1; Rom. 9:5), and the Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4).⁶⁵

 

Second, Lee contends that each of the divine hypostases is eternal: the Father exists eternally, the Son exists eternally, and the Spirit exists eternally, which logically entails that they also exist simultaneously. In brief, when discussing the essential Trinity, Lee rejects any possibility of the divine Persons being temporary and/or successive modes of God’s activity:

 

He is the Triune God. The Father is eternal (Isa. 9:6), the Son is eternal (Heb. 1:12; 7:3), the Spirit is eternal (9:14), and They coexist simultaneously.⁶⁶

 

The three of the Divine Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—exist at the same time; and Their coexistence is from eternity to eternity, being equally without beginning and with-out ending.⁶⁷

 

The result of these first two elements is the third component of Lee’s doctrine of coexistence: he rejects modalism as a heretical distortion of the essential Trinity.⁶⁸ According to Fred Sanders, modalism refers to ‘any reduction of the three persons to mere modes, phases, or manifestations of the one God’.⁶⁹ Per F. F. Bruce and Henry Chadwick, modalism is tantamount to denying that God is triune in His inner being and instead insists that God’s revelation of Godself as Father, Son, and Spirit does not correspond to the nature of the Godhead.⁷⁰ Lee, concurring with Bruce and Chadwick, and aligning with the Cappadocians, believes that coexistence is a safeguard against heresy:

 

Modalism in the second and third centuries passed through several changes and then reached its clearest expression with Sabellius. Modalism teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not all eternal and do not all exist at the same time but are merely three temporary mani-festations of the one God. Modalism claims that the Father ended with the Son’s coming and that the Son ceased with the Spirit’s coming. The modalists say that the three of the Godhead exist respectively in three consecutive stages. They do not believe in the coexistence and coin-herence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. This, of course, is a great heresy. Unlike the modalists, we believe in the eternal coexistence and coinherence of the three of the Godhead; that is, we believe that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit all exist essentially at the same time and under the same conditions. … [E]ven in Their economical works and manifestations, the three still remain essentially in Their coexistence and coinherence.⁷¹

 

Notably, the passage is illustrative, not exhaustive, of Lee’s rejection of modalism.⁷²

 

Thus far, our analysis of statements from Lee’s corpus illuminates four key issues pertaining to his understanding of the essential Trinity: (1) at its core, Lee’s doctrine of the Trinity is pred-icated upon trinitarian axioms advanced by the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed; (2) Lee’s doctrine of coexistence aligns with patristic predecessors such as the Cappadocian Fathers and John of Damascus; (3) Lee aims to use coexistence as a means to demonstrate scriptural truths, such as the divinity and simultaneous eternality of the divine hypostases; and (4) Lee rejects modalism as a heretical distortion of orthodox trinitarianism. Still, one final piece of his under-standing of the essential Trinity remains to be discussed: the doctrine of coinherence.

 

Lee’s doctrine of coinherence

 

In a monograph entitled God in Three Persons, Millard J. Erickson employs a social analogy to describe the Trinity and utilizes perichoresis as a means of signifying ‘that each of the three per-sons shares the lives of the others [and] that each lives in the others’.⁷³ Though Lee never speaks of the ‘lives’ of the divine hypostases in an equivalent ‘social’ sense, his employment of pericho-resis as it relates to sharing between the hypostases and the mutual indwelling of the hypostases aligns with Erickson’s portrayal.⁷⁴ Lee avers that three related terms are crucial to apprehend when ‘studying the deep truths concerning the Trinity: the verb “coinhere,” the noun “coin-herence,” and the adjective “coinherent.”’⁷⁵ Most basically, to ‘coinhere’ means ‘to exist in one another, to dwell in one another’.⁷⁶ What is interesting about Lee’s perspective, however, is that the coinherence of the hypostases is not an isolated doctrine, but is inextricably linked to their eternal coexistence. Similar to what we observed with John of Damascus, Lee posits that the coinherence of the Father, Son, and Spirit is the logical result of their coexistence:⁷⁷ ‘without coexisting, the three cannot inhere in one another’⁷⁸ and ‘They coexist by the way of coinher-ing’.⁷⁹ Also in line with John’s notion of perichoresis, Lee repeatedly contends that the coinher-ence does not, and indeed cannot, imply a merging or confusion among the divine hypostases.⁸⁰ Rather, it simultaneously afirms both their distinctiveness and their perfect, essential unity, as shown in the following three sample passages:

 

According to the truth of the Bible, the three of the Godhead are distinct, but They are never separate. They are three because They coexist (Matt. 3:16-17; John 14:16-17; Eph. 3:14-17), and They are one because They also coinhere; that is, They mutually dwell in each other (John 10:38; 14:10; 17:21).⁸¹

 

In John 14:11 the Lord Jesus, the Son, said, ‘Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me’. The Lord’s word in this verse shows the coinherence, the mutual indwelling, of the Father and the Son; moreover, it shows that although there is a distinction between the Father and the Son, there is no separation.⁸²

 

This [Eph. 2:18] also indicates that the Three coexist and coinhere simultaneously, even after all the processes of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection.⁸³

 

This final passage is especially important, as it demonstrates that for Lee, the doctrines of coex-istence and coinherence are related not only to the essential Trinity, but also to the economic Trinity—an issue discussed in the second half of this article.

 

Since the medieval era, the so-called ‘shield of the Trinity’ has been utilized as a visual rep-resentation of the Trinity for laypersons to conceptualize the language of the Athanasian Creed. While useful in helping believers disavow modalism, the image was devoid of any reference to the coinherence of the divine hypostases, which allowed for the possibility that individuals might unwittingly inherit a tritheistic trinitarian outlook.⁸⁴ In recent years, however, theologians such as Justin Taylor have introduced a refined shield to incorporate the idea of coinherence (Fig. 1).⁸⁵

 

Though any visual depiction of coinherence falls short of capturing every nuance of the doc-trine, Taylor’s desire to do so is highly significant within the context of this article. Earlier, we noted that Lee’s trinitarianism was strongly criticized by various countercult ministries (most often ‘evangelical’ in orientation) during the 1970s. Lee’s notion of coinherence was one of the main targets of these criticisms. Taylor’s addition of ‘is in’ to the ‘is not’ line of this diagram demonstrates that, at least in some corners of the evangelical tradition, this historically ortho-dox perspective is garnering modern acceptance.⁸⁶ We thus suggest that what this revised dia-gram represents in the evangelical imagination, along with other expressions of contemporary interest in the doctrine of perichoresis/coinherence, opens a possible avenue for reappraising Lee’s conception of the essential Trinity at the lay level.⁸⁷

 

Much of the aforementioned controversy pertaining to Lee’s notion of coinherence was cen-tred upon a misunderstanding of his exegetical engagement with verses such as Isa. 9:6, 2 Cor. 3:17, and 1 Cor. 15:45b.⁸⁸ According to J. Scott Horrell, the doctrine of coinherence allows

 

Fig. 1 Taylor’s Revised ‘Shield of the Trinity’ Diagram.

 

for the Holy Spirit to be identified in Scripture as ‘the Spirit of Christ’ and ‘the Spirit of the Father’.⁸⁹ John Feinberg similarly notes that the New Testament demonstrates an ‘ontological unity’ where ‘the Father, Son, and Spirit are considered as one’:⁹⁰

 

There are also passages that teach that the Son and the Spirit are one. In Rom 8:9–10 Paul speaks of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but he says that anyone who does not have the Holy Spirit does not belong to Christ. Thus, in having Christ, one also has the Holy Spirit and vice versa. All of this suggests their unity. Moreover, consider 2 Cor 3:17. As we have already seen, this verse says that the Lord is the Spirit, and the word for Lord is kyrios, the Greek for the Hebrew yhwh. Many see kyrios here as a reference to Jesus who, of course, is often called by this name. In that case, the verse asserts unity between the Son and the Spirit.⁹¹

 

Similarly, Lee interprets these and other verses identifying the three divine Persons through the lens of coinherence. He contends that the Son comes with the Father (John 5:43; 14:10–11, 23; 16:32; 17:21; 1 John 2:23, etc.), is one with the Father (John 10:30; 17:22), and is even referred to as the eternal Father (Isa. 9:6); the Son is also referred to as the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17) and a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b).⁹² Per Lee,

 

Second Corinthians 3:17 says that the Lord is the Spirit, and 1 Corinthians 15:45 says that Christ as the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. These verses reveal that the Son is the Spirit (John 14:16–20). Some Bible commentators have asserted that in the believers’ experience of the Triune God, Christ is identified with the Spirit; that is, Christ is one with the Spirit. The pure revelation of the Triune God according to the Scriptures recognizes the coexistence and coinherence of the three of the Godhead. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist; this implies that They are distinctly three. The three of the Trinity also coinhere; this implies that They are inseparably one.⁹³

 

When the Spirit comes to us, He does not leave the Father in heaven. Instead, He [the Spirit] comes with the Father and with the Son, because the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coinhere. In Romans 8 the indwelling Spirit is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and the Spirit of the resurrecting One.⁹⁴

 

Lee’s controlling hermeneutic with these and other dificult texts is to exegete them accord-ing to the plain sense of the text as opposed to reinterpreting the text as if it fails to align with contemporary trinitarian thought (e.g. with Isa. 9:6, many scholars contend that the Son cannot be identified as the Father, and thus, the title must speak of the Son as Father of eternity in a metaphorical sense).⁹⁵ That Lee adopts this approach is unsurprising, as his theological method prioritizes scriptural language over credal language. While Lee demonstrates adherence to the latter (i.e. his insistence upon three hypostases in one ousia), he exhibits a greater degree of com-fort than some of his contemporaries with simply repeating scriptural ‘is’ statements (the Lord is the Spirit, the Son is the eternal Father, etc.). Given the recognition of both the coexistence and coinherence of the divine hypostases, Lee contends that such verses can be articulated plainly with no threat to the coexistence of the hypostases, since it is always true that ‘they are distinctly Three’.⁹⁶ Ultimately, he proclaims thats

 

When we say that the Son is the Father (Isa. 9:6) and the Lord is the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), we are simply quoting the Bible. … we believe all the verses in the Bible, which reveal the eternal coexistence and coinherence of the three of the Godhead. We condemn both modalism and tritheism as heresies.⁹⁷

 

Regardless of whether one agrees with various particularities embedded within Lee’s notion of coinherence, two issues are noteworthy. First, Lee’s interpretation of the verses above links the doctrine of coinherence to the Son’s identification as the Father and the Son’s identification as the Spirit, which parallel to the contentions of certain prominent evangelical contemporaries, is an exegetical move with firm grounding in orthodox trinitarian thought.

 

Second, as Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen aptly notes, the grammar of Christian theology defines the word ‘is’ in the sentences ‘Father is God’, ‘Son is God’, or ‘Spirit is God’ as not speaking of iden-tity or inclusion, but of predication or attribution.⁹⁸ Thus, for Kärkkäinen, the meaning of these statements is not to comment upon identity per se, but rather, to articulate that the Father, Son, and Spirit each possess full divinity. In a similar vein, Lee’s recitation of biblical statements such as ‘a Son is called Eternal Father’ (cf. Isa. 9:6) or ‘the Lord is the Spirit’ (2 Cor. 3:17) does not entail that the Son is the Father or the Son is the Spirit in the sense of annulling their distinct identities. Rather, these statements and others like them entail that the divine hypostases possess a supra-natural unity based upon their eternal coinherence, so that the Father shares all that he is and has with the Son, and the Son shares all that he is and has with the Spirit.

 

 

5. THE ECONOMIC TRINITY

 

Broadly speaking, the proper articulation of issues related to the essential Trinity is of greater import in modern analyses of what constitutes orthodox trinitarianism. Given the backdrop of why a study of Lee’s trinitarian outlook is needed—i.e. gross misrepresentations by lay apol-ogists—we began by discussing the essential Trinity. However, this assumed priority within modern apologetics is a historical anomaly. Patristic trinitarian reflection overwhelmingly began with and prioritized the economic Trinity. This should be unsurprising given that Scripture speaks far more about the Trinity as revealed in relation to creation, human beings, salvation, and the church as opposed to discussion of the inner workings of God in Godself. While there was a shift in the medieval era from prioritizing the economic Trinity to, per Fred Sanders, a ‘dangerous tendency’ of relying upon ‘speculative or metaphysical arguments’ in conceptual-izing the essential Trinity, recent scholarship is slowly returning to the impulses of the Church Fathers.⁹⁹ David Coffey, for example, suggests that ‘the proper study of the Trinity is the study of the economic Trinity’.¹⁰⁰ Because of Lee’s overriding concern to emphasize that the carrying out of the divine oikonomiais the subject of the Bible, his corpus devotes exponentially more space to discussion of the economic, as opposed to the essential, Trinity.

 

Before delving into Lee’s writings, it is important to note that portrayals of the economic Trinity exhibit far more differentiation in both form and content than conceptions of the essen-tial Trinity. One key reason is that all portrayals of the economic Trinity depend upon how thinkers conceive of the contours and content of the divine oikonomia. A model of the divine oikonomia which emphasizes supernatural gifts (e.g. glossolalia, healing), for example, will por-tray the missions of the economic Trinity (specifically, of the Spirit, but also the Son) in a fun-damentally different manner than a cessationist model. Various models of the atonement (e.g. penal substitution, Christus Victor, satisfaction) will similarly yield variations in how the eco-nomic Trinity is understood. Different conceptions of how predestination functions within the purview of the Father’s election also exert influence upon the economic Trinity.

 

As Sanders astutely notes, interpreters must ‘recognize the economy as a revelation of who God is’.¹⁰¹ This suggests that a proper apprehension of a specific thinker’s portrayal of the eco-nomic Trinity must begin by first understanding their conception of the divine economy. We thus begin by placing Lee’s portrayal of the economic Trinity in dialogue with his conception of the divine oikonomia. Thereafter, we discuss five additional concepts that pervade his corpus: (1) the phrase ‘processed and consummated Triune God’; (2) the concept of the ‘compound Spirit’; (3) the notion of the ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’; (4) the ‘full ministry of Christ’; and (5) the Latin axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt.

 

The divine oikonomia

 

It is hard to overemphasize the central role of the divine oikonomia in Lee’s theological outlook. At least 44 of his publications contain some iteration of ‘God’s economy’ or ‘divine economy’ in their titles, and the word ‘economy’ occurs several thousand times in his corpus. Lee provides the following working definition of oikonomia:

 

This Greek word is composed of two words—oikos, meaning house or household, and nomos, meaning law … In using the word oikonomia, a word that denotes a household administration, Paul was implying that God … has the intention to have a house, a household, a family. In eternity past God was alone. He was triune—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—yet He, the one God, was alone. However, … He intended to have a household, for without a household, He cannot have an administration … This is the reason Ephesians 1:5 reveals that, before the foundation of the world, God the Father predestined us unto sonship. This predestination was with the intention of having sons. Therefore, God’s original intention was to have sons. The book of Romans tells us that, in Christ’s redemption, God has made many sinners into sons of God. These sons are the many brothers of Christ, God’s unique, only-begotten Son. From this we can see that God intends to have many sons to form His household through which He can carry out His eternal oikonomia.¹⁰²

 

It is important to note that Lee, contrary to some modern commentators, does not conceive of God’s economic begetting of believers as sons metaphorically, nor does he restrict the notion of the believers’ divine sonship only to juridical or forensic aspects. Rather, he contends that ‘in addition to the legal status of sonship, we have the life of sonship, that is, the divine life, the life of God, which is in the Spirit of God’s Son ([Gal.] 4:6; Rom. 8:2; 1 John 5:11–12). Hence, we have the standing of sonship outwardly and the life of sonship inwardly’.¹⁰³ Though Lee never uses the term ‘ontological’ in his corpus, his understanding of the believers’ newfound organic identity and ongoing organic transformation by virtue of being begotten by God as genuine sons likely warrants such description:

 

[A]ccording to the Scriptures, we, the believers in Christ, were all born of God to be His sons. As the sons of God, surely we are God-men. We are the same as the One of whom we were born. It would be impossible to be born of God and not be the sons of God. Since we are the sons of God, we are God-men. As sons of God and as God-men, we have the divine life … As those who are born of God, the God-men have not only the divine life but also the divine nature.¹⁰⁴

 

From the above two passages, we may glean six items that are central to Lee’s understanding of the divine oikonomia:

 

(1) the divine oikonomia is best understood as God’s administration over His household;

 

(2) God’s household is comprised of Himself, His only-begotten Son (Christ), and His

many-begotten sons, the believers;

 

(3) the believers as the many-begotten sons of God possess divine sonship both in a judicial sense and an organic sense. That is, believers will obtain full sonship one day, but from the moment of regeneration have already obtained the life of sonship;

 

(4) the notion of sonship must therefore be disentangled from the modern notion of adop-tion. Sonship entails being truly begotten of God, possessing God’s life, and being indwelt by God;

 

(5) the trajectory of divine sonship includes both the possession of God’s life and God’s nature;

 

(6) being sons of God entails becoming the ‘same as the One of whom we were born’, that is, becoming God-men.

 

The aggregate of these points undergirds Lee’s posited goal of the divine oikonomia—the deifi-cation of believers:

 

Among the many truths there are three great mysteries which were discovered by the church fathers in the second century: the mystery of the Divine Trinity, the mystery of Christ’s per-son, and the mystery of man’s deification—that God became a man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead … the Catholic Church[’s the Catechism of the Catholic Church] teaches that believers in Christ can become God … In order to be perfectly fundamental, we need to be clear concerning this great truth—the truth that God became a man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.¹⁰⁵

 

This passage helpfully illuminates three notable aspects of Lee’s theological outlook, which in turn inform his portrayal of the economic Trinity. First, Lee draws from patristic (Irenaeus and Athanasius) and Roman Catholic (Thomas Aquinas) sources in support of his understanding of deification. Though his writings make clear that these are not sources by which he articulates his doctrine, they are proffered as support for his view. This appeal by Lee is notable given the backdrop of his critics, who often accused him of being adversarial towards Christians outside of his ministry.¹⁰⁶

 

Second, Lee defines deification as becoming the same as God ‘in life and nature but not in the Godhead’.¹⁰⁷ This terminology is important, as it disallows any notion of deification whereby believers participate in the incommunicable attributes of God, cause any change to or within the essential Trinity, or become objects of worship.

 

Third, Lee ranks the ‘three great mysteries’ articulated by the early church as especially cru-cial to the Christian faith: the Trinity, the person of Christ, and humankind’s deification.¹⁰⁸ Of importance to our present investigation, all three of these truths, for Lee, are inextricably tied to the economic Trinity.

 

The ‘processed and consummated Triune God’

 

The divine oikonomia has two vantage points from which it may be discussed. The first pertains to God: that is, the acts or steps carried out by the Divine Trinity for the accomplishment of the divine economy. The second pertains to humankind or what is taking place salvifically to describe the result of these divine acts in relation to human beings participating in the divine economy. Athanasius’ famed maxim, ‘for He was made man that we might be made God’, links these two vistas.¹⁰⁹ The latter clause, ‘that we might be made God’, is a statement from the sec-ond vantage point. The former clause, ‘for He was made man’, describes the first step—the incar-nation of the second Person of the Divine Trinity—God undertook for the accomplishment of his salvific economy. In Scripture, this act is most clearly articulated in the Gospel of John: ‘[a]nd the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and reality’ (1:14).¹¹⁰ This divine act, without exception, is afirmed by all Nicene Christians.

 

According to Lee, this initial step, along with several successive ones, can collectively be described as a ‘process’. His use of the word ‘process’ should not be misconstrued as referring to ‘process theology’, nor should it be conflated with or read back into his portrayal of the essen-tial Trinity. It is only in relation to the divine economy, Lee contends, that the Trinity has been ‘processed’:

 

Change with God can only be economical; it can never be essential. Essentially, our God can-not change. From eternity to eternity He remains the same in His essence. But in His economy the Triune God has changed in the sense of being processed. First, He who was merely God became a God-man. When He was merely God, He did not have humanity. But when He changed by becoming a God-man, humanity was added to His divinity. This does not mean, however, that God was changed in His essence. On the contrary, He was changed only in His economy, in His dispensation. God has changed in His economy, but He was never changed in His essence.¹¹¹

 

The subsequent steps Lee posits as being part of this ‘process’ form the backbone of nearly all early credal confessions: (1) Christ’s human living, (2) Christ’s crucifixion, (3) Christ’s resur-rection, and (4) Christ’s ascension. The aggregate of these acts, most basically, is what Lee aims to capture when employing the term, ‘processed Triune God’.

 

A sticking point for some of Lee’s critics is what he posits to be the result of this process—that is, the ‘consummated Triune God’. According to Lee, Christ, by virtue of His resurrection, was both somatically glorified andas ‘the last Adam becamea life-giving Spirit’.¹¹² In other words, he contends that Christ simultaneously exists both in the heavens as the resurrected and ascended God-man with a glorified body and as the pneumatic Christ indwelling regenerated believers as the life-giving Spirit:

 

In resurrection Christ’s body was uplifted from a lower form to a higher form … that is, a body saturated with God’s glory (Phil. 3:21). Christ’s resurrected body is a glorified body of flesh and bones. At His return, our natural body, the body of our humiliation, also will be trans-figured, conformed to the body of Christ’s glory. Second Corinthians 13:5 tells us that Jesus Christ is in us, and Luke 24 reveals that Christ has a resurrected body of flesh and bones. How can Christ with His body of flesh and bones be in us? We need to realize that the resurrected Christ is the life-giving Spirit. It is as the Spirit that Christ can be in us (Rom. 8:9–11). As a man in the glory, Christ is in the heavens; as the life-giving Spirit, He is in us (vv. 10, 34; Col. 3:1; 1:27). This is a mystery. The resurrected Christ is mysterious, and He is far beyond our full comprehension.¹¹³

 

The Spirit was breathed into the believers by the Son in resurrection. ‘He breathed into them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:22). The Holy Spirit here is actually the resurrected Christ Himself because this Spirit is His breath … On the day of His resurrec-tion the Lord Jesus breathed Himself into His disciples as the holy breath. The Christ who breathed Himself into the disciples is the life-giving Spirit. The resurrected Christ as the life-giving Spirit is the breath. Some theologians use the term ‘the pneumatic Christ’ to refer to the Christ who is the Spirit, the breath. After the Lord Jesus accomplished all of His pro-cesses, He became the life-giving Spirit, and the life-giving Spirit is the pneumatic Christ.¹¹⁴

 

The economic identification of Christ as the Spirit is well-attested in the Christian tradition. Patristic thinkers such as Ignatius, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Cyprian, and Athanasius all afirm the identification of the Son as the Spirit.¹¹⁵ Biblical scholars such as Hermann Gunkel,¹¹⁶ Ernst Käsemann,¹¹⁷ and James Dunn¹¹⁸ similarly recognize a scriptural basis for economically iden-tifying the Son as the Spirit. Reformed thinkers of the past century such as Charles Hodge and Lewis Smeades go as far as stating that Christ and the Holy Spirit are ‘one and the same’ and ‘inseparable’.¹¹⁹ And many other interpreters from centuries previous, ranging from Adolf Deissmann¹²⁰ to W. H. Grifith Thomas,¹²¹ A. B. Simpson¹²² to Andrew Murray,¹²³ contend that Christ is economically identified with and as the Spirit. Mehrdad Fatehi offers a particularly lucid synopsis of the Pauline identification of the Son and the Spirit:

 

Nevertheless, the dynamic identification between Christ and the Spirit includes, most prob-ably, also an ontic or ontological aspect, to use present day theological language and concep-tual distinctions, which goes beyond a merely functional identification. In other words, one should not speak merely of the Spirit playing the role of Christ, or of the Spirit only repre-senting Christ. Rather, there is a sense in which the risen Lord himself is actually present and active through the Spirit which is hardly imaginable without there being some ontic or onto-logical connection between the two. Thus it seems appropriate to speak also of an ontological, though dynamic, identification between the Spirit and Christ in Paul.¹²⁴

 

Given the unfamiliar language and concepts employed by Lee, it is important to reiterate that he was not a systematic theologian, but a synthetic thinker engaging lay audiences. Though he embeds his economic Christological pneumatology within an uncommon phrase, ‘processed and consummated Triune God’,¹²⁵ he always does so in implicit dialogue both with his under-standing of the essential Trinity (inclusive of his doctrines of coexistence and coinherence) and of the Latin axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (the external works of the Trinity are indi-visible). Hence, while his vocabulary may not match language commonly employed by modern (largely Western) theologians, his alignment with the above Christian interpreters pertaining to the actual doctrinal claims he embeds in the phrase ‘processed and consummated Triune God’ demonstrates that his outlook falls within the bounds of orthodox Nicene trinitarianism.

 

The compound Spirit

 

A second framework Lee employs to discuss the ‘processes’ undertaken by the economic Trinity is that of the ‘compound Spirit’. This concept, like others introduced in this article, pervades Lee’s corpus, and space constraints disallow a comprehensive presentation of nuances related to it. For our purposes, we delimit our discussion only to Lee’s posited exegetical basis for the com-pound Spirit and the theological claims he proposes based upon his scriptural engagement.¹²⁶

 

Lee takes the word compound from Exod. 30:25: ‘And you shall make it a holy anointing oil, a fragrant ointment compounded according to the work of a compounder; it shall be a holy anointing oil’. Following Plymouth Brethren writers such as C. A. Coates and C. H. Mackintosh, Lee typologically interprets the anointing oil as referring to the Spirit.¹²⁷ Lee further develops this typology, however, to argue that each of the ointment’s ingredients refers not, as Mackintosh suggests, to the Spirit’s varied graces in a general sense, but actually represents specific divine actions (or characteristics of those actions) that are ‘compounded’ into the Spirit. The following passage concisely captures several of Lee’s key claims:

 

In making the holy anointing oil, four spices were added to a hin of olive oil—five hundred shekels of myrrh, two hundred fifty shekels of cinnamon, two hundred fifty shekels of cala-mus, and five hundred shekels of cassia (vv. 23–24). The significances of the ingredients of this compound anointing oil are as follows: (1) flowing myrrh, a spice used in burial (John 19:39), signifies the precious death of Christ (Rom. 6:3); (2) fragrant cinnamon signifies the sweetness and effectiveness of Christ’s death (8:13); (3) fragrant calamus, from a reed that grew upward in a marsh or muddy place, signifies the precious resurrection of Christ (Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:1; 1 Pet. 1:3); (4) cassia, used in ancient times to repel insects and snakes, signifies the power of Christ’s resurrection (Phil. 3:10); and (5) the olive oil as the base of the com-pound ointment signifies the Spirit of God as the base of the Spirit.¹²⁸

 

As noted, Lee conceives of the Spirit being ‘compounded’ with divine acts and characteristics of those acts: it is not only Christ’s death (myrrh) that has been compounded into the Spirit, but also its ‘sweetness and effectiveness’ (cinnamon); not only Christ’s resurrection (calamus), but also its ‘power’ (cassia).

 

Lee extends this principle of ‘compounding’ to all (economic) divine acts and all salvific ben-efits afforded by those acts to suggest that their inclusion provides the rationale for why the Divine Trinity chose to be processed and consummated. The following three passages, though lengthy, help to illuminate the central role of this outlook in Lee’s intellectual topography:

 

This all-inclusive Spirit is the compound of all that the Father is and has and all that the Father can do, is doing, and will do, plus the Son in His person and with His work, His accomplish-ments, His attainments, His obtainments, and all that He has gone through. The Spirit is the compound of all the divine things. It is much, much more than a power, a means, or an instru-ment. This all-inclusive Spirit is the blessing of the New Testament, and this is the blessing of the gospel, which God promised to Abraham (Gal. 3:14).¹²⁹

 

The Spirit is the consummation of the processed Triune God given to us as the blessing of the gospel. When presenting the real blessing of the gospel, Paul does not list many items such as peace, joy, and forgiveness of sins; rather, Paul speaks only of one person—the Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God … The Triune God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit—has passed through processes to be consummated in the Spirit … In this compound, all-inclusive Spirit are all of Christ’s person and process, including His divinity, humanity, crucifixion for Him to accomplish redemption, resurrection for Him to give life to us, and ascension for Him to be Lord of all (Rom. 8:11; 2 Cor. 3:18). If we have the Spirit, we have everything and we are short of nothing … If we have the Spirit we have God, man, redemption, and forgiveness of sins. The Spirit is our God, our Father, our Lord, our Redeemer, our Savior, and our Shepherd; the Spirit is our life, our life supply, our righteous-ness, our sanctification, our transformation, and our redemption. The all-inclusive Spirit is the processed and consummated Triune God given to us as the blessing.¹³⁰

 

As such a compound Spirit, Christ became the bountiful supply of the Divine Trinity for His dispensing. Philippians 1:19 uses the term the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ … In Greek the word for bountiful supply denotes the supplying of all the needs of a musical group by the leader of the group. Whatever the group needed, whether it was musical instru-ments, clothing, uniform, food, or medicine, was supplied by the leader. Today Christ is such a Leader. As the life-giving Spirit, who is the compound Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, He has the bountiful supply to meet all our needs … This bountiful supply comes from the source of the consummation of the processed Triune God. This consummation is the compound Spirit, and this compound Spirit is Jesus Christ.¹³¹

 

Based upon these statements, we see that Lee incorporates the entirety of the divine oikonomia into the ‘consummation’ of the economic Trinity. This in turn affords believers participatory access to all past divine economic acts, present divine activities, and future benefits of those acts and activities.

 

Since many moving parts have been introduced in the preceding three sections, it would be helpful to summarize this constellation of Lee’s proposals about the economic Trinity in the following schematic:

 

(1) the economic Trinity is inextricably related to the accomplishment of the divine oikonomia;

 

(2) the aggregate of divine acts undertaken by the economic Trinity is a ‘process’—a term that should not be conflated with ‘process theology’ nor with the essential Trinity;

 

(3) the phrase ‘processed Triune God’ refers to the divine acts of Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension;

 

(4) this economic ‘process’ has an end result, a ‘consummation’: Christ has both been somat-ically glorified and has become a life-giving Spirit;

 

(5) Lee employs another framework to discuss the economic Trinity: the ‘compound Spirit’;

 

(6) though he understands these terms interchangeably (the life-giving Spirit is the com-pound Spirit and vice versa), closer analysis of the compound Spirit clarifies that for Lee, it is not only the divine economic acts that are incorporated into the Spirit. Rather, characteristics of each act are also compounded into the Spirit (e.g. not only Christ’s resurrection, but also its power);

 

(7) Lee contends that all the divine acts of the Father and Son, along with their salvific ben-efits, are economically compounded into the Spirit, inclusive of righteousness, sanctifi-cation, transformation, and redemption;

 

(8) the Spirit, for Lee, is the ultimate blessing of the New Testament, the blessing of the gospel, the blessing promised to Abraham, and the unique blessing of the Christian life.

 

With the above points in hand, we now turn to three final concepts which inform Lee’s under-standing of the economic Trinity: (1) the ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’; (2) the ‘full ministry of Christ’; and (3) the Latin axiom of opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt.

 

The ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’

 

We have thus far outlined Lee’s understanding of the processed economic Trinity, which results in a consummation—the life-giving Spirit, the compound Spirit, or simply, ‘the Spirit’. Based upon Lee’s interpretation of the book of Revelation, however, the economic Trinity undergoes one additional process: the consummated Triune God as the life-giving, compound Spirit became the seven Spirits, which Lee renders as the ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’.

 

A spectrum of interpretations of the ‘seven Spirits’ in Rev. 1:4, 3:1, 4:5, and 5:6 exists among biblical specialists and theologians, ranging from the title having no relation to God (i.e. refer-encing chief angels or other semi-divine intermediaries) to being explicitly related to the Holy Spirit, whether in terms of representing pneumatic fruits, gifts, powers, etc.¹³² Delineating each of these possibilities lies outside the scope of this essay. It sufices for our purposes to note that Lee believes that the ‘seven Spirits’ explicitly refer to the Spirit of God. Yet, unlike the possi-bilities above, he suggests that the title refers to ‘intensifying’ of the economic Trinity for the accomplishment of the divine oikonomia:

 

Today the Lord is working not only as the life-giving Spirit but also as the sevenfold intensified Spirit. This Spirit may be compared to the shining of the sun spoken of in Isaiah 30:26, which says that in the millennium ‘the light of the sun will be sevenfold’.¹³³

 

In the book of Revelation the Spirit is called the seven Spirits (1:4; 4:5; 5:6), the sevenfold intensified Spirit to counteract the degradation of the church. The seven Spirits in Revelation 1:4 undoubtedly are the Spirit of God because They are ranked among the Triune God. As seven is the number for completion in God’s operation, so the seven Spirits must be for God’s move on earth. In substance and existence God’s Spirit is one. In the intensified function and work of God’s operation His Spirit is sevenfold. It is like the lampstand in Zechariah 4:2. In existence it is one lampstand, but in function it is seven lamps. At the time the book of Revelation was written, the church had become degraded, and the age was dark. Therefore, the sevenfold intensified Spirit of God was needed for God’s move on earth. In Matthew 28:19 the sequence of the Triune God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But in Revelation 1:4 and 5 the sequence is changed. The seven Spirits are listed in the second place instead of the third. This reveals the importance of the intensified function of the sevenfold Spirit of God … The title ‘the seven Spirits’ indicates that the Spirit has been intensified sevenfold. This Spirit intensifies all the elements of the Spirit: divinity, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, reality, life, and grace.¹³⁴

 

Three issues raised in these passages warrant brief discussion. First, Lee believes that the Spirit’s intensification was necessary due to the degradation of the church at the time that John wrote Revelation chapters 2 and 3. This notion of the church’s degradation, in fact, permeates much of his corpus.¹³⁵ Second, Lee believes that the change in the ordering of the divine hypostases in Revelation 1 points to the increased importance of the ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’, a point which is further examined below. Third, the result of this intensification is that all of the ele-ments that have been compounded into the Spirit are themselves intensified for the benefit of believers, inclusive of ‘divinity, incarnation, crucifixion, reality, life, and grace’. Thus, the rami-fication of Lee’s outlook is that the sevenfold intensification of the Spirit benefits the believers and was necessary (as were the other economic processes) for the accomplishment of God’s oikonomia.

 

The idea that the ‘seven Spirits’ in Revelation refer to the Spirit of God finds support in numerous interpreters (e.g. Albert Barnes, Robert Mounce, Henry Barclay Swete, Henry Alford, Richard Trench).¹³⁶ Richard Bauckham, for instance, suggests that the number ‘seven’ refers both to the Spirit’s perfection and the Spirit’s omnipresent work among the seven churches.¹³⁷ Among medieval thinkers, Richard of Saint Victor argues that the ‘sevenfold grace of the Spirit’ relates to the seven churches in a prophetic sense; that is, the sevenfold Spirit ministers to ‘the present and future state of the holy catholic church’, in which each of the seven churches fore-tells a particular condition of the universal church.¹³⁸ The sixth-century Spanish patristic com-mentator Apringius of Beja argues that the title reveals that the Spirit ‘is one in name, sevenfold in power, invisible and incorporeal, and whose form is impossible to comprehend’.¹³⁹ Lastly, R. Kendall Soulen suggests that the unusual ordering of the Divine Trinity in Rev. 1:4–5 mirrors later trinitarian confessions that ‘the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son’.¹⁴⁰ Though this brief sampling of thinkers masks nuanced differences between interpretations, they all in substance and content closely align with core issues inherent to Lee’s notion of the seven-fold intensified Spirit.

 

However, Lee’s proposal is not only that the seven Spirits relate to the Spirit of God, nor only that this title indicates a sevenfold intensification of the Spirit. He claims that this intensifica-tion was needed for the accomplishment of the divine economy.¹⁴¹ As with other elements of his trinitarian outlook (e.g. his emphasis upon the coexistence and coinherence of the divine hypostases), this proposal follows the logic of the Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory conceives of the Spirit as the hypostasis responsible for completing the economic work of the Father and the Son in a causal sequence.¹⁴² Per Brandon Smith, conceiving of the Spirit as ‘the perfection of God’s work … comports with the idea of the perfect, complete sevenfold Spirit exercising divine power along with the Father and the Son to bring all of creation to its perfected culmination’.¹⁴³ While Lee and Gregory diverge on the exact specifications of howthe sevenfold Spirit accomplishes the divine economy (or otherwise stated, how creation arrives at its perfected culmination), it is striking that they both articulate the same vision of what this accomplishment/culmination entails—the corporate deification of believers. The first passage below is from Gregory’s In illud: Tunc ipse Filius subjicitur (on 1 Cor. 15:28), the second from Lee’sCNT series:

 

Since by participation we are joined to the one body of Christ, we all become one body, His own. When we shall have all become perfect, then His whole body will be subject to the life-giving power [of God]. The submission of this body is called the submission of the Son Himself, since He is united [lit., ‘mingled’] with His body, which is the Church.¹⁴⁴

 

God’s New Testament economy is to make the believers God-men for the constitution of the Body of Christ so that the New Jerusalem may be consummated as the eternal enlargement and expression of the processed and consummated Triune God (Gal. 3:26; 4:7, 26, 31) … For us to be deified means that we are being constituted with the processed and consummated Triune God so that we may be made God in life and in nature to be His corporate expres-sion for eternity (Rev. 21:11). The New Jerusalem is built by God’s constituting Himself into man to make man the same as God in life, nature, and constitution so that God and man may become a corporate entity.¹⁴⁵

 

While much more could be said about Lee’s notion of the sevenfold intensified Spirit—a con-cept discussed in over 200 instances throughout his corpus—it sufices to note that his three proposals—(1) the seven Spirits refer to the Spirit of God, (2) the title ‘seven Spirits’ refers to an intensification of the Spirit in his operation, and (3) the sevenfold intensified Spirit is inextri-cably linked to the accomplishment of the divine oikonomia—are well-situated within orthodox Nicene trinitarianism.

 

The full ministry of Christ

 

In the final years of his ministry, Lee employed still another framework—the full ministry of Christ—to describe the process, consummation, and intensification of the economic Trinity from the vantage point of the Son’s economic activities. Since the explicit theological issues at stake in this schema are already addressed in preceding sections, a cursory overview of this model sufices for now.

 

According to Lee, Christ’s ‘ministry’ was not delimited to the chronology and events detailed in the four Gospels. Christ’s earthly ministry, beginning with his incarnation and concluding with his crucifixion, was only the first of three stages of his ‘full ministry’. The second stage, which Lee calls the stage of inclusion, describes Christ’s ministry as the life-giving Spirit from the book of Acts to the book of Jude. The final stage, that of intensification, refers to Christ’s ministry in the book of Revelation as the sevenfold intensified Spirit. In an introduction to a message spoken in 1996, Lee provides the following summary:

 

(1) The full ministry of Christ is carried out in three stages for the fulfilment of God’s eternal economy.

 

(2) In the first stage of incarnation to bring God into man, to express God in humanity, and to accomplish His judicial redemption.

 

(3) In the second stage of inclusion to be begotten as God’s firstborn Son, to become the life-giving Spirit, and to regenerate the believers for His Body.

 

(4) In the third stage of intensification to intensify His organic salvation, to produce over-comers, and to consummate the New Jerusalem.¹⁴⁶

 

Of particular interest to our investigation, Lee links these stages to Christ’s three ‘becomings’: (1) in the stage of incarnation, the Word became flesh; (2) in the stage of inclusion, Christ became a life-giving Spirit; and (3) in the stage of intensification, the pneumatic Christ as the life-giving Spirit became the sevenfold intensified Spirit (see Fig. 2 below).¹⁴⁷ Though it has been previously stated, it bears repeating that the Word becoming flesh, the Son becoming a life-giving Spirit, and the life-giving Spirit becoming the sevenfold intensified Spirit are all economic processes for Lee. They do not impact nor endanger the immutability of the essential Trinity. It is impor-tant to note, however, that while changes occurring in relation to the divine oikonomia stay in the oikonomia, the reverse is not always true: core aspects in the essential Trinity continue to be necessary elements for discussing the economical Trinity. Pertinent to our present concerns (as we shall now see), Lee posits that the doctrines of eternal coexistence and coinherence—which as we saw earlier, together function as twin pillars in his portrayal of the essential Trinity—are constitutive elements of the economic Trinity.

 

The Latin axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt

 

The Latin axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa suntrefers to the notion that ‘economic divine agency belongs to the Trinity as a whole, with particular actions such as creation, redemption, incarnation, etc., being appropriated to one of the divine persons’.¹⁴⁸ In other words, while spe-cific economic acts are appropriated to individual hypostases (e.g. it is the Son that was cruci-fied, not the Father),¹⁴⁹ all acts undertaken by the economic Trinity are externally collective in terms of divine agency, will, presence, and involvement. While this understanding of the economic Trinity is at odds with the increasingly popular notion of social trinitarianism,¹⁵⁰ it is well-established in orthodox Nicene trinitarianism. Even the Cappadocians,¹⁵¹ despite their common association with social trinitarianism, were unequivocal in their afirmation of the uni-fied action of the Divine hypostases.¹⁵²

 

Beyond Gregory and Basil, consensus pertaining to the indivisibility of trinitarian economic acts is afirmed by thinkers ranging from Augustine to Corenulius Van Til, John Owen to T. F. Torrance, and many others.¹⁵³ In light of this expansive witness within the Christian tradition, Kyle Claunch notes the following summary:

 

Understood as a consequence of this account of divine unity, the doctrine of the insepa-rable operations of the Trinity ad extra contends that all of the works of the Triune God with respect to the creation are works of all three persons of the Godhead. This doctrine, often expressed by the Latin axiom, opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa has been a staple of orthodox Trinitarian theology for centuries. Statements and defense of the doctrine can be found among the Church fathers of the East (e.g. Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa) and the West (e.g. Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine) as they engaged in anti-Arian polemical dis-course. The doctrine is later expressed and defended by the medieval giant Thomas Aquinas and is fully embraced by the seventeenth-century Reformed Orthodox in their polemical engagement with the Socinians. The nineteenth-century heirs and defenders of Reformed Orthodoxy (e.g. Herman Bavinck and Charles Hodge) also held to this doctrine without wavering.¹⁵⁴

 

Now a question remains: how does the principle opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt within the Christian tradition compare to Lee’s conception of the unified acts of the divine hypostases in God’s oikonomia? To answer this, we must pay attention to three exact phrases Lee utilizes in his corpus: (1) the Father acts in the Son and with the Spirit, (2) the Son acts with the Father and by the Spirit, and (3) the Spirit acts as the Son and with the Father. Each of them is articulated in the summary of his economic trinitarianism below:

 

According to the economical aspect of the Trinity, the Father planned, the Son accom-plished, and the Spirit applies to us what the Son has accomplished according to the Father’s plan. The Father accomplished the first step of His plan, His economy, by working to choose and predestinate us, but He did in Christ the Son and with the Spirit (Eph. 1:3–5). After this plan was made, the Son came to accomplish this plan, but He did this with the Father (John 8:29; 16:32) and by the Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20; 12:28). After the Son accomplished all that the Father had planned, the Spirit comes in the third step to apply all that the Son accomplished, but He does this as the Son and with the Father (John 14:26; 15:26; 1 Cor. 15:45b; 2 Cor. 3:17). In this way, while the divine economy of the Divine Trinity is being carried out, the divine existence of the Divine Trinity, His eternal coexist-ence and coinherence, remains intact and is not jeopardized. In the divine economy the three work and are manifested respectively in three consecutive stages. Yet even in Their economical works and manifestations, the three still remain essentially in Their coexistence and coinherence.¹⁵⁵

 

In Life-study of Mark, Lee includes a chart that captures his understanding of the divine oikono-mia, the full ministry of Christ, and the indivisibility of the external works of the Trinity (Fig. 2).

 

The above statement from Lee alongside this chart brings our analysis of his trinitarian out-look full circle, as both illumine that Lee employs both coexistence and eternal coinherence to simultaneously argue for differentiated, but inseparable economic acts of the divine hypostases: the Father chooses and predestinates in the Son and with the Spirit, the Son accomplishes acts with the Father and by the Spirit, and the Spirit applies Christ’s accomplishments as the Son and with the Father. Analysis of this final element of Lee’s portrayal of the economic Trinity demon-strates further coherence between his theological outlook and orthodox Nicene trinitarianism; and, in some ways, perhaps even greater alignment to patristic trinitarian reflection than some popularized trinitarian outlooks in modern Christian discourse.

 

Fig. 2 Lee’s Portrayal of God’s New Testament Economy.¹⁵⁶

 

 

6. SYNTHESIS OF LEE’S TRINITARIAN COMMITMENTS

 

At the outset of this article, we noted that Witness Lee, despite being relatively unknown in the Western academy, was the target of criticism from countercult apologists during the 1970s. Though some past critics have reassessed his theology in the past two decades, a paucity of credible peer-reviewed scholarship about Lee has allowed half-century-old critiques to exert a distorting influence upon present-day portrayals of his theology. This is especially the case in relation to his understanding of the Trinity. Our analysis addressed this lacuna in scholarship by evaluating Lee’s intellectual topography through the lens of orthodox Nicene trinitarianism. Since we covered significant ground in the preceding pages, we need not rehash every detail; rather, we recapitulate only the most significant features of Lee’s understanding of the Trinity and offer a final assessment of its place within the tradition.

 

As noted, the overarching framework Lee employs when discussing the Trinity is the essen-tial/economic dichotomy. In God’s essence, that is, in His essential Trinity, Lee asserts that God is immutable, ever-existing, self-existing, eternally triune, and per his explicit channelling of Nicene language, best understood as one ousia in three hypostases. Additionally, Lee draws upon two patristic doctrines—eternal coexistence and coinherence—to articulate a portrayal of the Trinity that disallows heterodox trinitarian outlooks such as modalism and tritheism.

 

The doctrine of coinherence, in particular, is somewhat of a flashpoint in past critiques of Lee, as it is the primary hermeneutical vehicle by which he engages ‘dificult’ trinitarian texts such as Isa. 9:6, John 14:9–10, 2 Cor. 3:17, and 1 Cor. 15:45b. We found, however, that past critiques of Lee’s understanding of coinherence lack a legitimate basis, insofar as Lee’s doctrinal outlook aligns with the patristic tradition, and even more interestingly, with some thinkers within the recent emergence of evangelical interest in the doctrine. Further, we saw that Lee’s ostensibly modalistic language (per his critics) is, in fact, his repetition of biblical language that he inter-prets in dialogue with the doctrines of coexistence and coinherence.

 

A final element of our analysis of Lee’s understanding of the essential Trinity was largely comparative. We placed his claims in dialogue with positions advanced by figures who were central to the development of orthodox trinitarian reflection upon the essential Trinity, the Cappadocians, Augustine, and John of Damascus being among them. While Lee articulates his understanding of the essential Trinity in different terminology, it is evident that even a cursory reading of his understanding of the essential Trinity finds agreement and alignment with the Nicene tradition on all essential aspects of trinitarian thought.

 

The second half of this article focused upon six core concepts in Lee’s corpus, which taken together, form and inform his portrayal of the economic Trinity: (1) the divine oikonomia, (2) the ‘processed and consummated Triune God’, (3) the ‘compound Spirit’, (4) the ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’, (5) the ‘full ministry of Christ’, and (6) the Latin axiom opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt. Key findings from these investigations include:

 

(1) in line with the testimony of the ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and an increasing number of Evangelicals, Lee con-ceives of the divine oikonomiaas being inextricably linked to the deification of believers;

 

(2) for Lee, change never occurs within the context of the essential Trinity; any change that takes place with God only occurs in relation to the divine economy;

 

(3) God took multiple steps for the accomplishment of the divine economy, most notably Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Lee refers to these steps as a ‘process’, a term that should not be misconstrued as referring to ‘process theology’ or the essential Trinity;

 

(4) the result of this ‘process’ was a ‘consummation’ of the economic Trinity: that through the resurrection, Christ was both somatically glorified and became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b) to indwell believers;

 

(5) all of God’s process (e.g. incarnation through ascension) and all of the benefits related to steps of God’s process have been compounded into the Spirit for the benefit of believers;

 

(6) the final step of God’s economic ‘process’ was that Christ as the life-giving Spirit was intensified sevenfold. This ‘sevenfold intensified Spirit’ was necessary for the accom-plishment of the divine economy. Linking the seven Spirits in Revelation to the hyposta-sis of the Holy Spirit is well-attested in the Christian tradition; tying the seven Spirits to the accomplishment of the divine economy finds support in the Cappadocians;

 

(7) another framework that Lee uses to describe the process, consummation, and intensifi-cation of the economic Trinity is from the vantage point of the Son’s economic mission. He refers to this as the full ministry of Christ, which occurs in three stages: incarnation, inclusion, and intensification. Each stage is marked by one of Christ’s three ‘becomings’: the Word became flesh; Christ became a life-giving Spirit; and the pneumatic Christ became the sevenfold intensified Spirit;

 

(8) the doctrines of coexistence and coinherence, apart from undergirding Lee’s under-standing of the essential Trinity, also shape his view of the economical Trinity. The result is that Lee functionally afirms the Latin axiom Opera trinitatis ad extra indivisia sunt (the external acts of the Trinity are indivisible). While specific economic acts are appropri-ated to individual hypostases (e.g. only the Son was crucified), they are collectively under-taken by the entirety of the economic Trinity in terms of divine agency, will, presence, and involvement. Per Lee, this can be described from the vantage point of each of the divine hypostases in the following manner: the Father acts in the Son and with the Spirit, the Son acts with the Father and by the Spirit, and the Spirit acts as the Son and with the Father. As with the preceding points, this understanding of the economic Trinity finds ample support in the Christian tradition, inclusive of thinkers such as Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, John Owen, T. F. Torrance, and others.

 

Having synthesized Lee’s various trinitarian commitments, we turn to highlight a final aspect of his theological outlook, which we suggest is one of Lee’s potential contributions to modern trinitarian discourse—namely the link he posits between proper apprehension of the Trinity and the subjective experience of the Triune God by believers.

 

 

7. APPROACHING THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY AS A VEHICLE

FOR SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE

 

According to Lee, the goal of studying the Trinity should not be limited to an objective intellec-tual apprehension of the doctrine. While this is necessary, it is not suficient. The primary func-tion of the doctrine, for Lee, is that it serves as a vehicle for believers to subjectively experience, enjoy, and participate in the life of the Triune God, and in doing so, fulfil the divine purpose of the divine oikonomia. Lee argues that the primary purpose of the revelation of the divine title— the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19)—is for believers’ experience, enabling them tolive a life ‘in and with the Divine Trinity’.¹⁵⁷ His commentary on 2 Cor. 13:14 demonstrates this impulse:

 

To speak of the love of God, the grace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is actu-ally to say that the love is God, that the grace is Christ, and that the fellowship is the Holy Spirit. Thus, we have God the Father as love, we have God the Son as grace, and we have God the Spirit as fellowship. This means that we have the Triune God in a direct way as our enjoy-ment. What we have is not merely a blessing from Him or by Him. In the New Testament the real blessing is the Triune God Himself … With love as the source, grace as the course, and fellowship as the transmission, the Triune God reaches us to be our life, our life supply, and our enjoyment … Second Corinthians 13:14 is a strong proof that the trinity of the Godhead is not for the doctrinal understanding of systematic theology, but for the dispensing of God Himself in His trinity into His chosen and redeemed people. In the Bible the Trinity is never revealed merely as a doctrine. It is always revealed or mentioned in regard to the relationship of God with His creatures, especially with men created by Him, and even more with His cho-sen and redeemed people.¹⁵⁸

 

A key concept in this passage, ‘the dispensing of God’, is important to our analysis, as it serves as shorthand for Lee’s posited relationship between the doctrine of the Trinity and believers’ participation in the life of the Triune God.

 

While Lee conceives of the divine oikonomia as inextricably tied to the deification of believ-ers, he differs from many patristic thinkers when conceptualizing the mechanics of deifica-tion—i.e. how believers are deified. Early interpreters often argued that deification took place through participation in the sacraments and/or association with visible institutional structures such as the Roman Pontiff or Eastern Patriarchates.¹⁵⁹ Lee, however, proposes that deification is not tied to the visible symbols of baptism or the Lord’s Table, but only to the spiritual realities that they signify. The bread, for Lee, represents both Christ’s individual body broken for believ-ers and Christ’s corporate mystical Body comprised of all believers.¹⁶⁰ Simultaneously, he posits that it also signifies an experiential spiritual reality: that the Triune God presents himself as food for believers to eat and enjoy in a daily, even moment-by-moment, manner. The cup, on the other hand, signifies Christ’s blood shed on the cross for the redemption of sins, a reality which Lee argues makes it possible for believers to ‘eat the Lord’; and the reality of redemption is experienceable by believers every time they confess their sins in prayer.¹⁶¹ In sum, both symbols point to spiritual realities that believers may participate in on a daily basis—inclusive of during congregational meetings of a local ekklesia, but also, and for Lee more importantly, outside of meetings whenever believers contact and enjoy the Triune God.

 

These spiritual realities—eating and drinking the Triune God in a daily and even moment-by-moment manner—are the means by which deification occurs in Lee’s theological outlook.¹⁶² Based upon the common phrase ‘you are what you eat’, he proposes that transformation— defined as ‘an inward metabolic process in which a new and living element gradually discharges and replaces our old element’ (Rom. 12:2)—primarily ‘takes place by eating, not by teaching’.¹⁶³ Thus, to become God in life and nature one must, per Lee, ‘simply eat God, and all that He is and has will be dispensed into you’.¹⁶⁴ Several questions remain, however: how does someone ‘eat’ God? What mechanism or element actuates the salvific transformation of believers? How can the Triune God be dispensed into believers?

 

For Lee, the singular answer to all these questions is what he argues was the rationale for the process(es) undergone by the economical Trinity to be consummated as the compound, life-giving, sevenfold intensified Spirit. The economic Trinity, he suggests, needed to be pro-cessed and consummated in order to become ‘edible’, transmittable, and dispensable. Thus, when Lee employs the phrase ‘dispensing of God’—or as is also common in his corpus, ‘the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity’—he is employing shorthand for what he believes is the central work of Triune God and the foremost message of Scripture:

 

The accomplishment of the divine economy is by the divine dispensing of the Divine Trinity. God is divine, and He is also triune. He is triune in order to complete the steps for the dis-pensing of Himself into us. To dispense Himself into us, He has taken three steps: the Father’s choosing and predestinating, the Son’s redeeming, and the Spirit’s sealing. These three steps are for God’s divine dispensing.¹⁶⁵

 

God’s economy is God’s plan. For this plan God made an administrative arrangement, which is His administrative management for dispensing Himself through the processed and consum-mated all-inclusive Spirit into His chosen, regenerated, sanctified, and transformed tripartite men so that they can become God in life and nature yet with no share in His Godhead. Thus they are being constituted to be the Body of Christ and will ultimately be enlarged and built up to be the New Jerusalem as God’s eternal and corporate expression.¹⁶⁶

 

While much more could be said about this element of Lee’s theology, the key issue is this: strin-gent fidelity to both Scripture and orthodox Nicene trinitarianism is necessary for Lee, but simultaneously insuficient for believers to mature in their spiritual lives. Only the subjective experience of and participation in the life of the Triune God can accomplish the divine oikono-mia, that is, the corporate expression of the Triune God by believers who presently constitute the Body of Christ and eschatologically are the New Jerusalem. This outlook, we suggest, is perhaps Lee’s most significant contribution to present-day trinitarian reflection, as it transforms a commonly over-intellectualized dogma into a practical part of the Christian life and faith for both lay believers and theologians.

 

In closing, there are, perhaps, multiple reasons why Lee was misunderstood by lay apologists in the 1970s: (1) his lack of direct engagement with the academy; (2) his inclusion of patristic doctrines that were not emphasized by the evangelical tradition of the 1960s to 1990s; (3) his use of new theological vocabulary; (4) dificulties related to Chinese–English translation; (5) racially motivated animus, or at the very least, unease among established countercult ministries towards an immigrant without a traditional background in western Christianity. We need not press such issues, and in fact, such speculation lies outside the scope of this article. What we may say with a high degree of certainty, however, is that Lee’s doctrine of the Trinity, in both its essential and economic aspects, is: (1) attentive to Scripture; (2) situated squarely within orthodox Nicene trinitarianism; (3) consonant with new avenues of trinitarian reflection taking place in some corners of modern Christian discourse; and (4) a potentially valuable contribu-tion to the academy, insofar as Lee handles trinitarian reflection not only as a doctrine worthy of intellectual apprehension but a vehicle for subjective, spiritual experience.

 

 

 

 

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1     Living Stream Ministry (LSM), a publishing house devoted to disseminating the works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, published a 37-page booklet after Lee’s death for distribution during and after his funeral. This booklet, A Bondslave of Christ to Carry out the Divine Revelation in the Present Age: A Brief Description of the Life of Witness Lee (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1997), guides much of our overview of Lee’s life.

 

2     While proponents of the Christian countercult movement trace their roots to the first generations of apologists (e.g. Irenaeus, Tertullian), the modern incarnation of the movement was formatively shaped in the twentieth century by individuals such as Walter R. Martin (1928–89) whose The Kingdom of the Cults: An Analysis of Major Cult Systems in the Present Christian Era (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1965) remains popular as a normative blueprint in these circles. The emergence of movements such as the Unification Church and Hare Krishna, a rising concern about satanic abuse and influence in popular music, and especially the mass suicide of over 900 members of the People’s Temple in Jonestown all contributed to an atmosphere of extreme mistrust towards new and/or foreign-originated religious groups.

 

3     Lee’s response to some of these criticisms can be found in The History and Revelation of the Lord’s Recovery (CWWL, 1981, vol. 2, pp. 73–84) (for CWWL see below, n. 26).

 

4     Martin (see above, n. 2) spearheaded countercult efforts in the 1960s and 1970s, including a series of attacks against Lee’s ministry. Lee publicly spoke of his efforts to meet with him to resolve misunderstandings related to his ministry (CWWL, 1977, vol. 1, pp. 152–66). The results of these efforts were not, however, what Lee hoped for; Martin went on to include an appendix researched by his junior associates on Lee and the local churches in his book The New Cults (Santa Ana: Vision House, 1980).

 

5     ‘We Were Wrong: A Reassessment of the “Local Church” Movement’, Christian Research Journal 32 (2009) (https://www.equip.org/christian-research-journal/we-were-wrong-2/).

 

6     ‘A Statement from Fuller Theological Seminary’ released in 2006 after two years’ dialogue between Fuller and the represent-atives of local churches and Living Stream Ministry (https://www.lctestimony.org/FullerStatement.pdf).

 

7     See Representative Pitts (PA), ‘Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’, Congressional Record 160 (29 April 2014), pp. E621–2. Two recent publications on Lee are Liu Yi, ‘Globalization of Chinese Christianity: A Study of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’s Ministry’, Asia Journal of Theology 30 (2016), pp. 96–114; and Jonathan Seitz, ‘Surveying Taiwanese Christianity: The Taiwan Christianity Surveys in Conversation with World Christianity’, The Journal of World Christianity 11 (2021), pp. 262–80.

 

8     Living Stream Ministry, a publishing house solely devoted to publishing the collected works of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, has digitized Lee’s collected works at www.ministrybooks.org. Users can perform simple word searches for free or obtain a paid subscription to access all of Lee’s (and Nee’s) works.

 

9     E.g. Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, ‘Open letter to the leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the “local churches”’ signed by over 70 evangelical theologians and pastors in 2007 (http://www.open-letter.org/).

 

10     Neil T. Duddy and the Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP), The God-Men: An Inquiry Into Witness Lee & the Local Church (InterVarsity Press, 1981). The book’s first edition, The God-Men: Witness Lee and the Local Church, was self-published by SCP in 1977. Ultimately, the book was legally found to be defamatory against Lee and the local churches and was taken out of print. See ‘“The God-Men” by Neil T. Duddy and SCP – History’ (https://contendingforthefaith.org/en/the-god-men-by-neil-t-dud-dy-and-scp-history/) and ‘Judge’s Comments at the Conclusion of The God-Men Trial’ (https://contendingforthefaith.org/en/judges-comments-at-the-conclusion-of-the-god-men-trial/), accessed 14 May 2024.

 

11     Gordon Melton, An Open Letter Concerning the Local Church, Witness Lee and the God-Men Controversy (Santa Barbara, CA: The Institute for the Study of American Religion, 1985) (underlining in the original).

 

12     Craig Carter’s definition of the ‘orthodox Nicene tradition’ is instructive: ‘[t]he orthodox Nicene tradition generated a doc-trine of God in which the three persons (hypostases) share one being (ousia) and constitute one God’ (Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021], p. 6).

 

13     ‘We Were Wrong’, p. 16. As a note, Lee prefers to use the term ‘economical’ Trinity instead of the more commonly used ‘economic’ Trinity. The two terms are synonymous.

 

14     CWWL, 1986, vol. 3, p. 327. Lee’s prioritization of Trinity dovetails with the ascendancy of the doctrine within the academy during the past century. Karl Barth, for example, responded to post-Reformation apathy towards the doctrine of the Trinity in his writings, proclaiming that ‘the doctrine of the Trinity [is] at the head of the whole of dogmatics’ (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics [CD], ed. and trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, 5 vols. [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2010], I/1, p. 345).

 

15     CWWL, 1984, vol. 1, pp. 353–4.

 

16     For an overview of Lee’s doctrines of coexistence and coinherence, see Ed Marks, ‘A Biblical Overview of the Triune God’, Afirmation & Critique 1 (1996), pp. 23–31.

 

17     See https://www.witnesslee.org/life-ministry.html.

 

18     A Bondslave of Christ (see above, n. 1), pp. 2–3.

 

19     Watchman Nee (1903–72) has been the subject of several investigations, e.g. Angus Kinnear, Against the Tide: The Story of Watchman Nee (Eastbourne: Victory Press, 1973); Witness Lee, Watchman Nee: A Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1991); Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, ‘Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China’, Church History 74 (2005), pp. 68–96; Dongsheng John Wu, Understanding Watchman Nee: Spirituality Knowledge, and Formation (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2012); David Woodbridge, ‘Watchman Nee, Chinese Christianity and the Global Search for the Primitive Church’, Studies in World Christianity 22 (2016), pp. 125–47.

 

20     A Bondslave of Christ, p. 6.

 

21     Ibid., p. 8.

 

22     See https://an-open-letter.org/en/history/.

 

23     A Bondslave of Christ, p. 12.

 

24     Ibid., p. 34. Lee’s Life-studies is a compilation of transcribed (and edited) spoken messages delivered between 1974 and 1995, totalling 1,984 messages and spanning 25,000 pages. The commentary series differs from modern commentaries in both purpose and style. Lee’s emphasis in these volumes is to assist with believers’ participatory experience and enjoyment of Christ, the building up of the Body of Christ, and to interpret each book of Scripture through the lens of the divine oikonomia. The first edition of these volumes can be freely accessed online at https://www.lifestudy.com. The Conclusion of the New Testament draws on the Life-study messages delivered from 1985 to 1986, presenting Lee’s teachings organized around topics including (1) God’s New Testament economy, (2) the person of God, (3) Christ, (4) the Spirit, (5) believers, (6) the church, (7) the kingdom, (8) the New Jerusalem, and (9) experiencing, enjoying, and expressing Christ. The entirety of LS, CNT, and a sampling of Lee’s other publications (e.g. Truth Lessons, Life Lessons) are not included in the CWWL.

 

25     See A Bondslave of Christ; Representative Pitts (PA), ‘Watchman Nee and Witness Lee’ (seeabove, n. 7); Representative Smith (NJ), ‘In Recognition of Watchman Nee’, Congressional Record 155 (31 July 2009), p. E2110.

 

26     The CWWL (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry), which contains the entirety of Lee’s ministry (excluding certain pub-lications: see n. 24) from 1932 to 1997 was completed in 2020. An important aspect of Lee’s corpus to acknowledge is that the majority of his works originated as spoken messages delivered to non-academic audiences that were later transcribed and edited. As a result, his volumes retain multiple features common in oral presentations, such as: (1) contextual elements inherent to his speaking style; (2) comments tailored to his specific audience or time period; and (3) analogies aimed at making complex theological propositions apprehensible to lay audiences. This third point is especially noteworthy, as the explicit focus of Lee’s ministry was not the academy. Consequently, it is a mistake for scholars to analyse Lee’s individual works in the same manner as written, systematic treatises directed towards an academic audience. An accurate portrayal of his theological outlook (or individ-ual doctrinal positions) cannot rely upon isolated quotes, but requires an analysis of his entire corpus.

 

27     Despite the fact that early patristic trinitarian reflection primarily focused upon the economic aspect of the Trinity, an inchoate articulation of the essential/economic distinction is evident in the pre-Nicene apologist Irenaeus of Lyons (Jackson Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity [Leiden: Brill Academic, 2014], pp. 222–7). Additionally, both Tertullian (Against Praxeas 2, 12, 25) and Origen (Commentary on the Gospel of John 2.6; First Principles 1.2.8) rely upon the essential/economic distinction in their refutations of modalistic monarchianism. Trinitarian reflection accelerated during the first four ecumenical councils, with the Cappadocians also distinguishing between the economic and essential aspects of the Trinity (Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993], p. 151). Augustine’s De Trinitate represents another significant step in trinitarian theology. For Augustine, there is much to be said beyond a simple distinction between God’s being ad extra and ad intra. Each aspect has a proper ordering: God in se, he suggests, is best under-stood by examining the relations among the divine hypostases, whereas God pro nobis is best understood in relation to scripturally enumerated economic missions particular to each hypostasis. Even when speaking of the economic Trinity, however, Augustine insists that the three hypostases are unified in substance and act: ‘I will say however with absolute confidence that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God the creator, of one and the same substance, the almighty three, act inseparably’ (Trin. IV. 30).

 

A careful study of the history of trinitarian reflection also yields nuanced differences between thinkers. Basil the Great, con-tra Augustine, proposed that God’s being ad extra results in differentiated economic acts (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 16.37, 38). Aquinas develops his understanding of the essential Trinity in light of his posited ‘distinction between God’s immanent and tran-seunt acts’ (Summa Theologiae, 1 q. 27 a. 1, 3, 5; quoted in Markus Mühling, ‘Immanent/Economic Trinity’, in Religion Past and Present: Encyclopedia of Theology and Religion [Leiden: Brill, 2011], http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1877-5888_rpp_SIM_10307). John Calvin draws a distinction between God’s essence and nature; the former is unknowable (Inst. I.5.1), the latter, as the source of every good thing, is knowable (Inst. I.2.2), and both His essence and nature are immutable (Paul Helm, ‘God in Se and quoad Nos’, John Calvin’s Ideas [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], pp. 13–14).

 

28     Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 346.

 

29     Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, p. 13.

 

30     Two examples of alternative schemas pertaining to the relationship between the essential and economic aspects of the Trinity are advanced by Chung-Hyun Baik and Fred Sanders. Baik contends that seven possibilities exist: (1) mutual corre-spondence (Karl Barth), (2) one of identity (Karl Rahner), (3) eschatological unity (Jürgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Robert Jenson), (4) the immanent Trinity being ‘much more’ than the economic Trinity (Leonardo Boff, W. Norman Pittenger), (5) combining the Trinity with process theology (Joseph Bracken), (6) a model of absorption (Marjorie Suchocki, Catherine LaCugna), and (7) mutual inclusiveness (Jung Young Lee) (Chung-Hyun Baik, The Holy Trinity—God for God and God for Us: Seven Positions on the Immanent–Economic Trinity Relation in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology [Eugene: Pickwick, 2011]). Sanders outlines three possibilities: (1) a ‘minimalist’ position resulting in ‘monarchian modalism in which one God does three things’; (2) a ‘maximalist’ position resulting in dynamic modalism where ‘one God becomes three persons by actualizing along with creation’; and (3) a historically ‘classic position’, where ‘the missions in the economy of salvation are revelatory of eternal relations of origin’ (Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation: Trinity & Soteriology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021]).

 

31     Seung Goo Lee, ‘The Relationship between the Ontological Trinity and the Economic Trinity’, Journal of Reformed Theology 3 (2009), p. 92.

 

32     Ibid., pp. 96–7. Originally from Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Herder, 1970; Crossroad, 1999), p. 22.

 

33     Lee, ‘The Relationship between the Ontological Trinity and the Economic Trinity’, p. 101. Italics original.

 

34     CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, p. 291. In other words, he conceives of the essential Trinity as the ground of being for the economic Trinity, and the economic Trinity as being revealed in relation to God’s oikonomia and acts.

 

35     In De Trinitate, Augustine notes that the Greek terms ousia and hypostasis should be understood as equivalent to the Latin termsessentia and substantia (Trin. V.2.10). Due to the common equivalence of essentia and substantia in Latin writers of his time, however, he suggests that the term personae (person) is more appropriate. Though it is common in English-speaking theology to organize trinitarian theology around Augustine’s proposal (one essence/substance in three persons), this investigation more often utilizes Lee’s chosen terminology, hypostasis. Throughout his corpus, Lee expresses concern that the common (modern) understanding of ‘person’ (i.e. as an individual autonomous agent) might unknowingly press Christians to afirm an implicit form of tritheism (CWWL, 1979, vol. 1, pp. 395–7). Lee commonly cites William Henry Grifith Thomas (1861–1924), a co-founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, when discussing what he perceives as the tritheistic danger of utilizing the term persons in rela-tion to the Trinity (William Henry Grifith Thomas, The Principles of Theology [New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1930], p. 31; quoted [partially or fully] by Lee in Life-study of Genesis, p. 400; Life-study of Philippians, p. 44; Life-study of First John, p. 197; CWWL, 1973–4, vol. 1, p. 456; CWWL, 1975–6, vol. 3, p. 382; CWWL, 1983, vol. 1, p. 324). In these instances, Lee quotes Thomas to state that the term ‘persons’ must not be pressed ‘too far, or it will lead to tritheism’ (CWWL, 1970, vol. 3, p. 292). There are times, however, when Lee employs the conventional term ‘persons’ in respect to the Triune God (CWWL, 1970, vol. 3, pp. 289–90).

 

36     Ron Kangas, ‘The Economy of God: The Triune God in His Operation’, Afirmation & Critique 13 (2008), pp. 4–5.

 

37     Witness Lee, Elders’ Training, Book 3 (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 1985), p. 68.

 

38     CWWL, 1991–2, vol. 4, p. 24.

 

39     Fred Sanders defines ‘coinherence’ as ‘a more English sounding word for perichoresis, the teaching that the three persons of the Trinity have their existence within one another, mutually’ (The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything [2nd edn., Wheaton: Crossway, 2017], p. 284). Gerald Bray explains the term ‘coinherence’ as ‘to see God is to see all three at once, not one after the other in an ascending order of succession’ (The Doctrine of God [Downers Grove: IVP, 1993], p. 158). Millard J. Erickson further expounds the meaning of the term: it means ‘not only do the three members of the Godhead interpenetrate each other and supply their life to one another, but that all three are involved in all of the works of God’ (Making Sense of the Trinity: Three Crucial Questions [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000], p. 64).

 

40     Barth, CD 1.1, pp. 359–60.

 

41     Basil (but probably by Gregory of Nyssa), Epistle 38.3, quoted and translated by Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. 220.

 

42     Basil, On the Holy Spirit 18.46; Against Eunomius 4.1, cited by Millard J. Erickson, God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), p. 92.

 

43     J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (5th revised edn., San Francisco: HarperOne, 1978), p. 264.

 

44     Basil (Gregory), Epistle 38.8, quoted from Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 264.

 

45     See Gregory of Nyssa, On Not Three Gods, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 5 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1892; 1979), pp. 331–6, esp. pp. 331–2.

 

46     Ibid., pp. 334–5; cf. Basil, Epistle 189.6–7: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cooperate in sanctifying, quickening, consoling, and so on.

 

47     Basil, On the Holy Spirit 18.44, cited by Erickson, God in Three Persons, pp. 92–3.

 

48     Scott Ables, ‘The Purpose of Perichōrēsis in the Polemical Works of John of Damascus’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Oxford, 2016).

 

49     Slobodan Stamatović, ‘The Meaning of Perichoresis’, Open Theology2 (2016), pp. 303–23. http://doi:10.1515/opth-2016-0026; Angus Stewart, ‘John of Damascus and the Perichoresis’, Covenant Protestant Reformed Church. https://cprc.co.uk/arti-cles/covenant4/, accessed 16 June 2023.

 

50     John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, trans. S. D. F. Salmond (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1898; Oklahoma: The Great Sacred Monastery of Saint Iakovos ‘New Studion’, 2022) (also in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 9).

 

51     John of Damascus, OF 1.8, 14 (cleaving), 1.8 (abiding), 1.8 (dwelling), 4.18 (indwelling).

 

52     Ibid. 1.7, 1.8, 1.13, 3.1, 3.7, 3.12, 4.18.

 

53     Ibid. 1.8, 14.

 

54     Lee employs the Greek term ‘hypostases’ and the English term ‘substance’ interchangeably in his corpus to refer to the divine Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as the ‘underlying supports or substances of the Godhead’ (CWWL, 1986, vol. 3, pp. 325–6).

 

55     CWWL, 1986, vol. 3, p. 325.

 

56     CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, pp. 298–9.

 

57     CWWL, 1986, vol. 2, pp. 370–1.

 

58     Lee considers five creeds to be especially important in combatting early heresies: the Nicene Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Apostles Creed, and the Chalcedonian Confession of Faith (CWWL, 1986, vol. 2, pp. 347–58).

 

59     CWWL, 1980, vol. 2, p. 418.

 

60     Lee’s concern is shared by a host of theologians. A clear example is G. W. Bromiley who argues that the creeds, if improperly handled, can enforce artificial formality, complexify theological discourse, incorporate abstract principles, and in a real sense, become superimpositions upon Scripture (‘Creeds’ in Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell [eds.], Evangelical Dictionary of Theology [3rd edn., Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017], p. 223).

 

61     CWWL, 1986, vol. 3, p. 347. Lee’s interpretation of these texts will be illustrated below in relation to both the essential and the economic Trinity.

 

62     CWWL, 1981, vol. 2, p. 227.

 

63     CWWL, 1982, vol. 1, p. 51. The first appearance of Lee’s teaching of eternal coexistence in a formal publication was in 1949 (CWWL, 1932–49, vol. 4, p. 14).

 

64     That is, each hypostasis possesses the full divine essence (theia ousia).

 

65     CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 54. See also CWWL, 1932–49, vol. 4, pp. 13–14; CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 3, pp. 163, 166.

 

66     CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 54. See also CWWL, 1932–49, vol. 4, p. 14; CWWL, 1984, vol. 4, p. 315.

 

67     CWWL, 1986, vol. 3, p. 335.

 

68     SeeCWWL, 1975–6, vol. 3, pp. 233, 378; CWWL, 1980, vol. 2, pp. 33–4; CWWL, 1981, vol. 1, pp. 94–5; CWWL, 1981, vol. 2, p. 280; CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, p. 292; CWWL, 1985, vol. 5, p. 135.

 

69     Fred Sanders, ‘Trinity, the Holy’, in Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell (eds.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (3rd edn., Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), p. 1636.

 

70     F. F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame: The Rise and Progress of Christianity from Its First Beginnings to the Conversion of the English (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), p. 256; Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (revised edn., London: Penguin, 1993), p. 87.

 

71     CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, pp. 58–9.

 

72     Other examples of Lee’s rejections of modalism include CWWL, 1979, vol. 2, p. 470; CWWL, 1975–6, vol. 3, p. 229; and CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 55.

 

73     Erickson, God in Three Persons, p. 229.

 

74     The first appearance of Lee’s teaching of eternal coinherence in a formal publication was in 1959: CWWL, 1959, vol. 1, p. 343.

 

75     See CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 1, p. 240; CNT: Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ, vol. 1, p. 2922.

 

76     CWWL, 1982, vol. 1, p. 51; see also CWWL, 1982, vol. 1, p. 329; CWWL, 1984, vol. 3, p. 102.

 

77     Life-study of First John, 1983, msg. 32, 281. See also CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 1, p. 241.

 

78     CWWL, 1981, vol. 1, p. 95.

 

79     CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 117.

 

80     Lee states that ‘[t]he Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist; this implies that They are distinctly three. The three of the Trinity also coinhere; this implies that They are inseparably one’ (CWWL, 1980, vol. 2, p. 420). Also see CWWL, 1975–6, vol. 3, p. 400.

 

81     CWWL, 1972, vol. 3, p. 212.

 

82     CWWL, 1982, vol. 1, p. 354.

 

83     CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 1, p. 25.

 

84     Fred Sanders also comments that the diagram of the medieval ‘shield of the Trinity’, though it has long been a helpful visual support in teaching, is subject to limitations and tends to eclipse the relations of origin of the three divine Persons (Fred Sanders, The Triune God [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016], p. 175, n. 49).

 

85     Justin Taylor, ‘Using a Diagram to Illustrate Trinitarian Relationships’, The Gospel Coalition, 2 June 2023, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/using-a-diagram-to-illustrate-trinitarian-relationships/.

 

86     This diagram was cited in Timothy Yeung, ‘Introduction to Witness Lee’s Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity’ (unpublished Th.M. paper, Dallas Theological Seminary, 10 May 2023).

 

87     E.g. John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2006), p. 466.

 

88     1 Cor. 15:45b is one verse that conveys an ostensible collapse of identity between Christ and the Spirit. Biblical scholars generally employ two approaches when exegeting this verse: (1) thinkers such as Gordon Fee argue that Paul’s thrust in 1 Cor 15:45 is soteriological rather than christological and pneumatological (Gordon Fee, First Epistle to the Corinthians [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], p. 790); (2) others such as Richard Gafin, Jr. and James Dunn argue that Paul is in fact making a trinitarian claim (Richard Gafin, ‘“Life-Giving Spirit”: Probing the Center of Paul’s Pneumatology’, Journal of the Evangelical TheologicalSociety 41 [1998], pp. 573–89, esp. pp. 580–81; James D. G. Dunn, ‘1 Corinthians 15:45—Last Adam, Life-Giving Spirit’, in Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley [eds.], Christ and Spirit in the New Testament: Studies in Honour of Charles Francis Digby Moule [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], pp. 127–41, at pp. 129–41). A third approach has recently been offered by Benjamin Gladd who employs an ‘Old Testament’ hermeneutic approach. While creative, his conclusion—sim-ilar to how Adam passes his image on to Seth, Christ imparts his image to believers in their resurrection—is unsatisfactory since the tension of Christ/Spirit identity and how Christ imparts his image to believers at the resurrection remains unanswered (Benjamin L. Gladd, ‘The Last Adam as the “Life-giving Spirit” Revisited: A Possible Old Testament Background of One of Paul’s Most Perplexing Phrases’, WTJ 71 [2009], pp. 297–309).

 

89     J. Scott Horrell, ‘The Self-Giving Triune God, the Imago Dei and the Nature of the Local Church: An Ontology of Mission’, Global Missiology 1, 6 (October 2008), p. 6. http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/31.

 

90     Feinberg, No One Like Him, p. 466.

 

91     Ibid., p. 467.

 

92     See CWWL, 1970, vol. 2, p. 172; CWWL, 1980, vol. 1, p. 447; CWWL, 1990, vol. 1, p. 342; CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 4, p. 76.

 

93     CWWL, 1980, vol. 2, p. 420.

 

94     CWWL, 1982, vol. 1, p. 330.

 

95     The interpretation of Isa. 9.6 can go in various directions due to different translations: ‘Father of Eternity’ as the Logos, Father of Israel as its protector or provider, as the Messiah, etc.

 

96     CWWL, 1980, vol. 2, p. 420.

 

97     CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 59.

 

98     Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Trinity: Global Perspectives (Louisville and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), p. 221.

 

99     Sanders, Fountain of Salvation, p. 39.

 

100     David Coffey, Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 16. Catherine LaCugna is another excellent example of this modern outlook. She states, ‘the fundamental issue in trinitarian theology is not the inner works of the “immanent” Trinity but the question of how the trinitarian pattern of salvation history is to be correlated with the eternal being of God’ (Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life [New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993], p. 6).

 

101     Sanders, Fountain of Salvation, p. 17.

 

102     CNT: The Church, the Kingdom, and the New Jerusalem, p. 2046.

 

103     CWWL, 1964, vol. 4, pp. 20–1.

 

104     CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 2, pp. 437–8. Lee refers to 2 Peter 1:4, ‘partakers of the divine nature’.

 

105     Life-study of First and Second Chronicles, pp. 47–8. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edn., Part 1. Sec. 2. Ch. 2, Article 3, Para. 1.

 

106     Though Lee is adamant throughout his corpus that the sole authority of doctrinal or experiential truth is Scripture—as opposed to the theological tradition—he is cognizant that the interpretation of Scripture and apprehension of its theological truths are, in large part, dependent upon past theologians and interpreters. While this aspect of his self-understanding lies outside of the bounds of the present investigation, it is important to note his positive consideration of past interpreters (CWWL, 1969, vol. 3, pp. 249–50; CWWL, 1981, vol. 1, p. 166).

 

107     CWWL, 1981, vol. 1, p. 263; CWWL, 1982, vol. 1, p. 309.

 

108     Lee’s understanding of the divine oikonomia does not prioritize individualistic deification. The deification of individual believers is not the goal of the divine oikonomia, but rather the means by which the goal is achieved (see CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 1, p. 359). Though more could be said about the corporate aspect of Lee’s conception of deification, it sufices to note three points: (1) he envisions the consummation of God’s economy being a deified, ‘corporate entity’ comprised of both ‘God and man’; (2) this corporate entity has a present manifestation (the Body of Christ), a role in bringing about the eschaton (its manifestation is intrinsically tied to Christ’s return), and an eternal, eschatological identity (the New Jerusalem); (3) this corporate entity is ‘the eternal enlargement of the processed and consummated Triune God’. See further Michael M. C. Reardon, ‘“So also is the Christ”: Ecclesial Deification in Pauline Soteriology’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2023), pp. 227–36.

 

109     Athanasius, De Incarnatione 54.3.

 

110     John 1:14, Holy Bible Recovery Version (RcV) (Anaheim: Living Stream Ministry, 2003). Lee worked with a team of transla-tors in the late years of his ministry to publish a fresh translation of the 26th edition of the Nestle-Aland text along with over 9,000 footnotes. These notes convey many of his core teachings. Because some of the chosen terminology and emphases in his corpus are aligned with his translation decisions, we utilize the Recovery Version for the remainder of this article.

 

111     CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 2, pp. 914–15.

 

112     1 Cor. 15:45b (RcV).

 

113     CWWL, 1971, vol. 3, pp. 195–6.

 

114     CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 2, pp. 915–16.

 

115     Joseph Cook, The Boston Monday Lectures, vol. 1 (London: Richard D. Dickinson, 1881), p. 78; Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, I.4.11 (quoting 2 Cor. 3:17).

 

116     Hermann Gunkel, The Influence of the Holy Spirit: The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), p. 113.

 

117     Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1980), p. 241.

 

118     James Dunn, The Christ and the Spirit, Vol. 2: Pneumatology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 16.

 

119     Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1859; repr. 1980), p. 73; Lewis B. Smedes, Union with Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970; repr. 1983), pp. 26–7.

 

120     Adolf Deissmann, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, trans. William E. Wilson (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1972; first edn. 1912), p. 138.

 

121     W. H. Grifith Thomas, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1986), p. 144.

 

122     A. B. Simpson, When the Comforter Comes: Thirty-One Daily Devotionals on the Holy Spirit (New York: The Alliance Press, 1911/Camp Hill: Christian Publications, 1991), p. 7.

 

123     Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1963; repr. 1978), p. 167.

 

124     Mehrdad Fatehi, The Spirit’s Relation to the Risen Lord in Paul: An Examination of Its Christological Implications (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), p. 305.

 

125     See below, at nn. 130 and 145, for further contexts in which this phrase is used.

 

126     For further reading on Lee’s understanding of the compound Spirit, see Ed Marks, ‘The Compound Spirit’, Afirmation & Critique 2 (1997), pp. 15–27. Also see Life-study of Exodus, pp. 1699–1702.

 

127     CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 3, pp. 183–5. See C. A. Coates, An Outline of the Book of Exodus (Kingston-on-Thames: Stow Hill Bible and Tract Depot, n.d.) and C. H. Mackintosh, Genesis to Deuteronomy—Notes on the Pentateuch (Neptune: Loizaux Brothers, 1972), pp. 260–61.

 

128     CWWL, 1969, vol. 2, p. 16.

 

129     CWWL, 1984, vol. 3, p. 75.

 

130     CNT: Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ, vol. 2, pp. 3292–4.

 

131     CWWL, 1990, vol. 3, p. 121.

 

132     For an overview of historic interpretations of the seven Spirits in dialogue with Lee’s understanding, see Ron Kangas, ‘The Seven Spirits of God’, Afirmation & Critique 1 (1996), pp. 28–44.

 

133     CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 4, p. 285.

 

134     CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 2, p. 867.

 

135     Per Lee, ‘the truths as revealed in the Scriptures have been lost, missed, misunderstood, misinterpreted, and wrongly taught throughout the ages. Hence, there is the need of the Lord’s recovery’ (CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 10). Note that the idea of ‘the Lord’s recovery’, for Lee, does not referexclusively to specific individuals or groupsbut is understood in an inclusive sense, encompass-ing those whom God used throughout church history since the church's degradation.As he explains immediately, 'In the age of the early apostles, in the age of the church fathers, in the age of the church councils, in the age of Catholicism with the papal system, and in the age of the Protestant practice, the Lord has always recovered some of the lost, missed, misunderstood, misin-terpreted, and wrongly taught truths through some of His saints who loved Him and His holy Word' (ibid.).

 

136     Albert Barnes, Notes on the New Testament: Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980); Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 31; Henry Barclay Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 273; Henry Alford, The New Testament for English Readers, vol. 2 (Chicago: Moody, 1955; orig. publ. 1866), p. 1783; Richard Chenevix Trench, Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia. Revelation II.III (London: Macmillan, 1883), p. 413.

 

137     Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 109–10.

 

138     David Burr (trans. and ed.), The Book of Revelation (The Bible in Medieval Tradition; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), p.

76.

 

139     Apringius of Beja, Tractate on the Apocalypse 1.4, in Revelation, ed. William C. Weinrich (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament, XII; Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2005), p. 4.

 

140     R. Kendall Soulen, The Divine Name(s) and the Holy Trinity, 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), vol. 1, p. 180.

 

141     See above, at n. 134.

 

142     Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 216; quoted in Brandon D. Smith, The Trinity in the Book of Revelation: Seeing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in John’s Apocalypse (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022), p. 144.

 

143     Smith, The Trinity in the Book of Revelation, p. 165.

 

144     Gregory of Nyssa, In illud: Tunc ipse Filius subjicitur (PG 44, col. 1317A–B); quoted in Emile Mersch, The Whole Christ: The Historical Development of the Doctrine of the Mystical Body in Scripture and Tradition (Ex Fontibus Company, 2018), p. 318.

 

145     CNT: Experiencing, Enjoying, and Expressing Christ, vol. 3, p. 4362.

 

146     CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 5, p. 217.

 

147     Ibid., pp. 303–4.

 

148     Adonis Vidu, ‘Opera Trinitatis Ad Extra and Collective Agency’, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (2015), pp. 27–47, at p. 27.

 

149     Per Lee, ‘we cannot say that the Father became flesh and that the Father lived on this earth in the flesh. Furthermore, we cannot say that the Father went to the cross and died for our redemption, and we cannot say the blood shed on the cross is the blood of Jesus the Father … We can neither say that the Father died on the cross nor can we say that the Father resurrected from the dead’ (CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, p. 293).

 

150     Social trinitarians both distinguish and divide the economic missions of the divine hypostases.

 

151     Cf. Vidu: ‘[t]hat the Cappadocian fathers afirm the principle of unity of external operations is noncontroversial’ (‘Opera Trinitatis Ad Extra and Collective Agency’, p. 31).

 

152     See e.g. Gregory of Nyssa, On Not Three Gods (see above, n. 45), p. 334; Basil, On the Holy Spirit 16.37.

 

153     Augustine, Sermon 52.4–14, trans. Edmund Hill, Sermons III (The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, III/3; Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), pp. 52–6 (also in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 6, pp. 260–62); Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1961), p. 228; John Owen, Pneumatologia 1.5.4; Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992), p. 113.

 

154     Kyle Claunch, ‘What God Hath Done Together: Defending the Historical Doctrine of the Inseparable Operations of the Trinity’, Journal of the Evangelical and Theological Society 56 (2013), pp. 781–800, at p. 781.

 

155     CWWL, 1993, vol. 2, p. 118.

 

156     Life-study of Mark, p. 586.

 

157     CWWL, 1984, vol. 2, p. 44.

 

158     Life-study of 2 Corinthians, pp. 524–6.

 

159     The remainder of this paragraph and the entirety of the next paragraph are based upon Reardon, ‘“So also is the Christ”: Ecclesial Deification in Pauline Soteriology’, pp. 235–46.

 

160     For Lee, these are two separate realities signified by the bread—the historical act of Christ’s individual body being broken on the cross is not conflated in any way with the corporate Body of Christ comprised of all believers.

 

161     CWWL, 1963, vol. 4, pp. 309–14.

 

162     Lee’s notion of eating and drinking the Lord references exercising the human spirit to engage in Christian practices such as praying the words of Scripture, reading and memorizing Scripture, and singing hymns.

 

163     CWWL, 1972, vol. 3, pp. 401–3.

 

164     CNT: God, Christ, and the Spirit, vol. 1, p. 125.

 

165     CWWL, 1990, vol. 3, p. 223.

 

166     CWWL, 1994–7, vol. 2, p. 237.

 

 

 

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