Witness Lee
However, critics have accused Witness Lee and the local churches of teaching modalism, due to his identification of Christ with the Spirit based on 1 Corinthians 15:45 and 2 Corinthians 3:17. According to modalism (a heresy condemned by the early church) the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not eternally co-existent, but are three successive manifestations of God. Similarly, because of his reading of Isaiah 9:6, which says that the Son given to mankind will be called the eternal Father, Witness Lee has been accused of teaching patripassianism (a subcategory of modalism).