This is the first of what I hope will be a number of posts on the writings of Watchman Nee, particularly "The Spiritual Man" (henceforth TSM, to save me typing).
Of the many books published under Nee's name, this is the only one he actually sat down and wrote. The others are all collated from transcripts of talks he gave over the years. It is a fairly systematic treatment of the spiritual journey, based on Nee's reading of the Bible and particularly Paul.
And I am finding it the most important and most rewarding book I have read for years. Along with Meditations on the Tarot (MOTT, if we're doing acronyms), I think it is actually the most rewarding book I have ever read. Although there are vast differences between the two books, it seems to me their intentions are similar in important ways. Both aim to initiate the reader into encountering the living God, and steadily to deepen and strengthen that encounter into an abiding state and a reshaped personality. TSM is a superb exposition of Protestant spirituality, while MOTT does the same from a Hermetic Catholic standpoint.
Nee begins TSM by telling us that the usual view of human beings as consisting of body and soul is inaccurate. "The Word of God does not divide man into the two parts of soul and body. It treats man, rather, as tripartite -- spirit, soul and body." If this sounds like hair splitting, he goes on to say that distinguishing spirit from soul "is an issue of supreme importance for it affects tremendously the spiritual life of a believer."
In other words, if we don't understand this distinction, experience it, and act on it, we'll never get off first base. It was a very similar conviction that led me to call this blog "Trimorphic metanoia" (three-formed repentance) in the first place.
Nee quotes Genesis 2:7: "And God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." This breath is man's spirit; a created spirit, distinct from the uncreated Holy Spirit, but with affinity to it. And it is the mingling of spirit and body that produces soul.
The faculties of the soul are will, emotion and reason; it is very close to what we might more often today call the "mind", and it is the aspect of us with which most of us probably identify. The spirit is more mysterious. Its faculties are intuition, conscience and communion with God. God's original intention was for the spirit to be the directing part of the human person, responsive to God, with the soul following the promptings of the spirit and acting through the body. But what happened in the fall was that the soul took charge, expanded far beyond its intended limits, and stifled the spirit to death. This unfortunate and near-universal restructuring of the human person is what Paul refers to as "the flesh".
When someone comes to faith, not only is the spirit revived, reversing (at least potentially) the effect of the fall, but something much greater happens: the uncreated Spirit of God takes residence within our human spirits and brings us into relationship with God through Christ's sacrifice on the cross. And from that point on, it is a matter of making what is objectively true, or true within the spirit, also a matter of subjective and lived-out experience, as the spirit is strengthened and the soul and body are realigned to operate under the spirit's direction.
This is where our co-operation is required: not to effect the changes ourselves -- that is God's doing -- but to consent to the process by doing our best to let go of our selfishness and "take up our cross"; indeed, to recognize ourselves (our fallen selves) as already crucified with Christ.
There is of course far more that Nee has to say, and I encourage you to read the man himself. But for now, I want to look at a question that I imagine was not uppermost in anyone's mind in Shanghai in 1927-8 when Nee was writing, but is much more to the fore today.
And that is: if Nee is right, what is the role of psychotherapy? If we experience emotional pain, what should we be looking for: for our soul to be healed (that is, after all, the literal meaning of "psychotherapy"), or for our spirits to be made alive and our whole being to be restructured? Should we seek to save our life (soul; often the same word in the original) or lose it? For a long time I experienced a conflict here. Psychotherapy seemed very necessary to me as long as I was stuck with my pain, but from a certain point of view it seemed selfish and self-indulgent, and I always suspected that however much it "worked", it could never lead me into real happiness. Freud, after all, is on record as saying that the goal of psychoanalysis is to change neurotic misery into ordinary human unhappiness. An exchange worth making, certainly, but perhaps not the last word on anything.
I think it's helpful here to be clear on the distinction between the soul as an "organ" of the total person -- created by God, and just as much a part of His intentions as the body and the spirit -- and the fallen state in which the soul is calling the shots. Nee refers to these, respectively, as the "soulical" level of being (parallel to the physical and spiritual) and the "soulish" state (which needs to be restructured into true spirituality).
The very fact that he (or his translators from the Chinese) found it necessary to invent these two terms shows how foreign the distinction is to our usual way of thinking. But if we can grasp it, the answer becomes obvious. If your soul is hurting, you should have no more hesitation in getting treatment for it than you would if you experienced physical pain. But however much emotional (soulical) healing we undergo, we still need to consent to God's restructuring of our lives: the replacement of soulishness by spirituality, losing our lives (souls) in order to find them. The author Guy Claxton summed this up very nicely: "you can't give away a self that's hurting". Or in other words: seek your soul's healing, so that you can give it away.
And having grasped that, we may immediately be faced with a need for discernment: how much is my ongoing sense of dissatisfaction and incompleteness due to emotional wounding (or physical imbalance for that matter) and how much is it because I am being called to, but resisting, something that goes much deeper?
Perhaps we can only pray for God to shed his light on this. A good place to start might be a verse that Watchman Nee makes a lot of, Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart".
It sounds very much like divine surgery, and it will not happen unless we sign the consent form.
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Kim doc 3
5 years ago
4 comments:
You said, "The author Guy Claxton summed this up very nicely: 'you can't give away a self that's hurting'. Or in other words: seek your soul's healing, so that you can give it away." So the only question is, are you willing to do it God's way? Allow God to lose it for you so you can gain it. By trying to find it, by healing any other way than God's way will fall short in eternity. The flesh has only one verdict. Death! It can not be salvaged. Simply trusting God's Word and not trying to psychoanalyze or introspect, for to do so is to reorganize self, but never lose it. The way to lose it is to accept God's provision which is to bring you to death on the cross with Christ (co-death), for salvation is not just forgiveness but also identification in Christ Jesus, God the Son.
Your Tarot book is flawed in that the occult is works based and with false works, diabolically opposite to God's provision for salvation of the spirit, soul and body in forgiveness by spilling His precious blood and the work of the cross the Holy Spirit can apply to your life.
Another point of correction is Watchman Nee actually wrote quite a bit in several of his magazines, and English translations were not from transcripts of spoken messages mostly. He wrote profusely in his magazines and had plentiful notes. Nee himself also published one other book, "Church and the Work: Rethinking the Work" (CFP), proving biblocality. The rule is, only get his writings from CFP (white covers0 and CLC, not LSM, because the latter alters his writings to push their cult of modalism and deification and other false teachings. For example, compare the odd alterations in chapter 2 of Part 1 relating to what comprises man's emotion. You will be shocked.
http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/Spiritual_Man.htm
Lastly, as you read through the TSM, you'll find soulical in Hebraic and Greek as in the "soulical body," and soulish is also in the Hebrew and Greek. Nee goes into a detailed explanation in chapter 2 part 1. Also,
http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/soulicalderived.htm
and here is some more evidence,
http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/Communion#soulical
To define soulical even more accurately than the Explanatory Notes at the beginning of TSM, read as follows,
http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/Christianity.htm
Anyway that is what the Holy Spirit impressed upon my heart to share.
Realize this is the most important teaching of Scripture, the dividing of your spirit, soul and body (Heb. 4.12, 1 Thess. 5.23) after one is born-again, of course. If not born-again, you will surely go to Hell. It is one thing to know it, but another to consecrate yourself to allow God to divide to walk by the spirit! Few have attained this level of abiding in the spirit. Most live in their outerman, even soulish Christians.
To say a soulical man can mean an unsaved man. It can also mean that man who is saved but lives in that part of man. Of course the unsaved are soulish in their way of being, but so can a Christian be also, even though his spirit is regenerated. Soulish pertains to way of being, the soulical pertains to the place in one's being.
Hello Troy,
Thank you for a very interesting and informative comment. I take your corrections on the factual matters to do with Nee and his books and thank you for those, and will only comment on the rest.
I am pleased to report that, purely by chance or providence, my copy of The Spiritual Man does indeed have white covers and is published by CFP, 1968! One of the things I really appreciate about TSM is the way Nee is so clear that the physical body is not evil. What a shame if some are altering that.
You say, "...to psychoanalyze or introspect, for to do so is to reorganize self, but never lose it". I take your point and I think if psychotherapy is aimed at "reorganizing self", which it very often is, then it is indeed doomed to failure. I actually used to work as a counsellor myself and got out of it pretty much for that reason. However there is a difference between self and soul as I'm sure you agree. Perhaps there is a legitimate role for psychotherapy as "soul doctoring" just as there is for "body doctoring". Both soul and body are God's gifts to us and are to be given unreservedly back to God, so is it not our responsibility to keep them both in good shape as far as we can?
You tell me that my Tarot book is flawed. Is your judgement based on having read this remarkable book or are you, as most Christians tend to, simply reacting to the presence of the word "Tarot" in the title? If the latter, I invite you to read this profoundly Christian (not occultist) book prayerfully, at the level of intuition not reason, spirit not soul. Your mind will almost certainly protest at some of what you read, but listen to the promptings of the Spirit. I would not argue with your negative assessment of occultism in general, but "Meditations" is something very, very different. The author is, I believe, writing at a similar depth to Nee and guiding the reader in the same journey, though in rather different language.
Do stay in touch.
Trimorph
http://www.scribd.com/doc/12393125/Anonymous-Classic-Meditations-on-the-Tarot-A-Journey-Into-Christian-Hermetic-Ism
What the writer is trying to do is get you to access the latent power of your soul. This is strictly forbidden and unethical.
For help on the the deception, read Watchman Nee's, Latent Power of the Soul (CFP) which should be read after a careful reading of TSM (CFP).
http://www3.telus.net/trbrooks/latent_power_of_the_soul.htm
Thank you, Troy, I will read that, and do my best to discern whether you are right or not. It is clearly an important question, to say the very least. I had been wondering which of Nee's many books to move on to after The Spiritual Man, and I think you have just given me the answer. I am so glad you have shown up on this blog.
In the mean time, thank you too for pointing me to that on-line copy of "Meditations". I was surprised to see it there, and I suspect the copyright holder Robert Powell may also be "surprised" when I tell him!
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