Watchman Nee
Nee was a Chinese Christian in Communist China who taught a radical form of evangelical Christianity. The last 20 years of his life was in a Communist prison. He died in prison about fifty years ago. He was definitely a martyr for Christ. There over a hundred books written by him. Millions of Christians follow his teachings today. I myself went through a phase where I was an avid follower of Watchman Nee’s teachings, reading just about a book I can find by him. This lasted for about three years. Then I went into my Martin Luther and the Reformation phase, which totally destroyed my view of Nee. Nee’s view of Christianity was very different than the Reformation. I think one cannot be a true follower of the Protestant Reformation and also be a follower of Watchman Nee. But I made a big mistake as a Protestant when I gave up on Nee. I would say my best days as a Protestant was when I followed this man’s teaching. My spiritual life as a Protestant was best back then. I lost something valuable when I gave up on Nee for Luther.
Nee is a lightning rod of controversy among evangelical Christians today. Some says that he started a cult. See http://www.apologeticsindex.org/n01.html . Others would defend him and his movement. See http://www.oldoldstory.org/misc/needefense.html . I tend to side with the latter. I think Watchman Nee has contributed positively to the Protestant landscape. I feel that my Christian life went downhill after abandoned his teachings, only to be revived again when I turned to the Catholic faith.
Watchman Nee was an evangelical Christian. He believed in everything that is taught by evangelical Christian preachers today. We are only saved my grace, only by Christ, only by faith. We must personally receive Christ, who is fully God, into our lives to be saved. The Bible is the inerrant Word of God and is our only source of belief and conduct. But there were some additional teachings that really helped me in my Christian life but were controversial to other Christians.
Watchman Nee’s Mysticism
Mysticism has a bad rap among evangelical Christians. They think of Eastern mysticism and Transcendental Meditation as mysticism. But the word “mysticism” actually comes from the word “mystery”. So being a mystic means to believe in mystery. This can be the mysteries of the Eastern religions or it can be the mysteries of Christianity. So anyone who is not an atheist would have some sense of mystery about world. There is mystery in the world because there is something supernatural in the world. But some Christians see more mystery in the world than others. The Catholic Church sees more mystery that Protestantism, so the Catholic Church is more mystical. The Church sees the mystery of the Eucharist, the ongoing miracles done by the saints throughout the ages, and the appearances of Mary even in modern times. The Church teaches that it is a mystery that God is all powerful but man has a free will to resist God’s will, that Christ is fully God and yet Christ is fully man, that God is one and yet is in another sense three, that Christ’s sacrifice is once for all and yet the Mass is re-offering that sacrifice, that Christ is the only mediator between God and man and yet we are all called to intercede for others even in heaven.
These are all mysteries. Protestantism, although it sees some elements of mystery in the world, tends to see things black and white. If we are saved only by the grace of God then that means we do not have to work out our salvation. If Christ is everywhere then it is meaningless to say that His real presence is in the Eucharist. If Christ is the only mediator between God and man, then there is no need for Mary and the other saints. Protestantism is built on the logic that if A is true then B must be false.
Watchman Nee turned over the applecart. Even though A can be true, B can also be mysteriously true. That is why he is a mystic. And that is why some evangelical Christians love him and some hate him. Many Christians yearn more for the mystical in their lives. I know I did. I needed to know that God is alive now, not just He was there 2,000 years. I needed God to be with me now. This yearning was filled by Nee’s teachings. But many Christians feel uncomfortable with this message. They use the logic that if A is true then B must be false. If God is real to us now, then this diminishes what He did for us 2,000 years ago on the cross. If God can speak to us directly today then this diminishes what God spoke 2,000 years ago in the Bible.
Watchman Nee’s main message can be found in his book, The Normal Christian Life (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nee/normal.toc.html). This book is basically a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans. Watchman Nee said that Christ death gave us two benefits in His death – it gave us forgiveness of sins (The Blood of Christ) and power from sin (The Cross of Christ). Martin Luther and the Reformers emphasized the former but they ignored the latter. But Nee saw that the normal Christian should experience both the forgiveness of sins and the power not to sin. This went against Luther’s teaching who saw that we Christians are still enslaved to sin. But Nee correctly pointed out that Paul taught that in some mystical way we Christians died with Christ in the cross. In some mystical way, we being in Christ died with Him to our sinful nature. The reason we Christians still live us if sin has power over us is because we must each experientially know that we have died to sin. Once we realize this, we can then start to live the normal Christian life that God intended for us.
This teaching makes Protestants feel very uncomfortable. Ever since the Reformation, traditional Protestants have argued with Catholics that we cannot be saved by faith and works because it is impossible for us ever to do works that can please God. They would argue that our acts of righteousness are as filthy rags, so there is nothing we can do. We can only be saved by our works. But then there have been Christians teachers such as John Wesley, Andrew Murray, and Watchman Nee who argued that, although it is impossible for us to please God in our flesh, we can do works to please God as long as we rest on God’s power. This is dangerously close to Catholicism to some Protestants.
Watchman Nee, in another book called Sit, Walk and Stand , a commentary on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, said that the Christian life starts with God placing us in Christ. In some mystical way, we are “in Christ”. In you take a piece of paper and place it in a book, whatever happens to that book would also happen to that paper. That is what it means to be “in Christ”. So when Christ died, we also died to sin. When Christ rose, we rose with Him. When Christ ascended in heaven and seated at the right of the father, we are also seated with Him(Eph 1:3, 20, 21). But how is this possible? Christ died 2,000 years ago. How could God have placed us in Christ so that we died with Him on the cross, when we did not even exist yet? To Nee, this is a mystery. God is not within time, God is outside of time. He is in the eternal now. Since God is outside of time, He can in some mystical way take us spiritually out of the present and place us in the past in Christ, so that His experiences become our experiences. So when Christ died, we died; when Christ rose, we rose; and when Christ was seated in heaven, we are also seated in heaven.
Again, this makes traditional Protestants nervous. If God, being outside of time, can takes us and place us in Christ 2,000 years ago in the past, then what argument could Protestants have against the sacrificial aspect of the Catholic Mass? We Catholics argue that Christ is not re-sacrificed over and over again, but that in some mystical way God has placed us spiritually at the foot of the cross 2,000 years ago. It is not that Christ is being re-sacrificed. It is that we are being united to that once-for-all sacrificed in the past. Nee says that God placed us in Christ when He died on the cross. We Catholics say that God places us in Christ when He died on the cross whenever we partake of the Mass. There is not much difference.
What is more, if we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, then this would also mean that we can converse with anybody who is in the heavenly places, such as angels and saints. It is no wonder that the Bible says that our conversation is in heaven (Phil 3:30 KJV and Douay).
Another way that Nee was mystical is his view of the Bible. In His book, The Ministry of God’s Word, Nee teaches that God’s Word should be treated entirely different than any other book. It is written by God, and so to understand the book we must rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This is shown in many places where Nee has interpreted scripture. Although he does not deny the literal interpretation of scripture, he preferred the allegorical interpretation over that. This again makes some Protestants very nervous. If we can read the Bible allegorically, and just say that the Holy Spirit lead to that interpretation, then this opens the door to any crackpot idea. But this is not a problem for a Catholic. We have a living, infallible magisterium. The Church is the final authority of what we should believe.
Watchman Nee’s view of the Church
In the Normal Christian Church Life, Nee lamented the current Protestant scene where we have thousands of different denomination. If goes totally against the Bible. Paul severely criticized the Christians in Corinth who said “I am of Paul”, “I am of Apollos”, and “I am of Christ” (1 Cor 3:3, 4). Jesus prayed that we all should be one. But instead, Lutherans say “I am of Luther” and Wesleyans say “I am of Wesley”.
Nee came up with a radical solution to the denominationalism plaguing Christianity today. He said that we should all go to the churches that were geographical closest to us. It does not matter what the church was. If it was a liberal church, you should join it and change it. Even if it was a Catholic Church, you should join it. When I was home from college, I tried this out. For three months I went to a fundamentalist Baptist church that was only a block away from me. But after three months, I gave up on this. I realized that this was unworkable. Imagine what fights we would have within churches if Christians just went to the church nearest to them! Paul wrote that we must have the same mind and the same purpose. As long as we see things differently, we cannot achieve unity.
But Nee was correct to see a problem her. Before Nee, I did not think twice about all the different denominations in Christianity. Nee showed me that this was against God’s will; it was actually sinful for us to have these divisions. However, Nee did not give a workable solution.
Nee followers took Nee’s ideas against denominations and started the “local church movement”. But I do not see how this is anything different than just starting another denomination.
But I did find a solution. Instead of going to the church that is the closet one to me, I went to the church that is closest to the time of Christ and the apostles. Only one church can say that it goes back that far, and that is the Catholic Church.
Another thing I learned from Nee is the importance of the church. In his book What Shall This Man Do? He talked about how we Christian are all mystically connected to each other. It is not just Jesus and me. It is Jesus and us. When one rejoices, all rejoices. When one suffers, all suffer. I learned from Watchman Nee that no sin is private. My sin not only affects me, but it affects the Christians around me. In the Old Testament God would punish collectively for individual sins. We all suffer because of the sins of Adam and Eve. Because of Jonah’s disobedience God almost cause the whole boat to be destroyed by a storm until they put Jonah on his own boat. God punished all of Israel for the sins of its kings. But on the positive side, God rewards collectively for individual acts of obedience. God gives us eternal life because of His Son obedience to the cross. God was willing to spare Sodom and Gomorah if there was only ten righteous people in those cities.
This helped to understand the Catholic teaching on confession. If my sins can adversely affect other around me then I should not only confess my sins to God but also to others, no matter how private that sin may be. But this is not really workable. Imagine a man confessing to the church that he has problems with pornography while wife and children were sitting next to him! This is why the Holy Spt has led to Church to have private confessions with a priest. The priest would not only represent Christ but the Church. On behalf the Church, he would listen to the sins and on behalf of Christ he would forgive those sins. Nee laid the foundation for my understanding that no sin is private. My sins are not just against God but against His Church so I must confess my sins to the priest who represents the Church.
Nee also helped me to understand the Catholic teaching of the Treasury of Merit. If I can benefit spiritually by some other Christian’s obedience, then why could I not receive the benefits of the saint’s obedience?
Another thing is the Catholic idea of offering up one’s sufferings so that others will benefit. Nee argued that suffering makes me grow spiritually. And the more I grow spiritually, the more others will grow spiritually around me. A summary is this can said thus:
Let the Cross operate in the normal course of your walk with the Lord, and Life must manifest itself in others.
http://www.indwelt.com/display/0875084885/Watchman-Nee/What-Shall-This-Man-Do?/
Watchman Nee’s View on Authority
This is another area that Nee has been accused of being cultic. In his book Spiritual Authority, he argued that we must take the Bible very seriously when it says that we should submit to our elders. The elders in the church have been ordained by God. To disobey these authorities is to disobey God. Nee showed how throughout the Bible there were dire consequences if people did not obey God’s ordained authorities. Miriam was turned into a leper by God because Aaron and Miriam questioned the authority of Moses (Num 12). David refused to kill King Saul because he was God’s anointed, even though he was trying to kill David (1Sam 24). Lying to the apostle Peter brought immediate death by God (Acts 5).
Again, this made Protestants nervous. If we are supposed to submit to our pastors without question, then what if our pastor tells us to drink Kool-Aid laced with poison (ala Jim Jones)? Is this not what cults are all about? Do they not give unquestioned obedience to their leaders?
Again, Nee has a good idea here but he misses the mark. The Bible clearly teaches that we should obey the authority established by God. Disobedience to that authority means disobedience to God. But Nee is wrong to determine what is legitimate authority. He said that this authority is the pastor. But who determined the pastor to the pastor of that church? Was it not the church members? So how could the church member submit to the pastor if the church members were the ones who hired him, and possibly fire him? And besides, every denomination is a split from some other denomination. So a pastor from a Watchman-Nee type of church is demanding submission from his members even though he himself was rebellious and split from a different denomination! How can God’s legitimately established authority be rebellious to a previously established authority by God? The only legitimate authority can be the Catholic Church. Only the Catholic Church is not product of a previous schism.
Some Protestants are still nervous of giving all this authority to the pope. Could not the pope one day order all Catholics to drink Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, such as Jim Jones did? Not really. There are three reasons.
1. For 2,000 years that has not happened. We have never had a pope that commanded us to drink poison (as did Jim Jones), or that he himself must arrange all marriages (as Rev. Sun Yung Moon has done), or that we must barricade ourselves in a compound and fight the government because the government is out to get us (as David Koresh did), or that a man can multiple wives (as Joseph Smith did). So the Catholic Church has a much better record than Protestantism in its pastors leading Christians into some very weird and dangerous ideas.
2. The doctrine of papal infallibility does not apply just to the current pope, but to all the previous popes before him. This means that our pope could never, ever tells us anything that contradicts what has been previously laid down in matters of faith and morality. After 2,000 years, that does not give much leeway for our current pope to come with any novel doctrines or new morals even if he wanted to. He can only redefine what has already been taught, and apply it anew in our modern times. For instance, our current pope could never tell us Catholics to drink Kool-Aid laced with poison. The Church has already defined suicide as a mortal sin. Our current pope could never tell us to commit suicide. True, church discipline has changed throughout the years, but that is not a matter of faith or morality.
3. Christ himself promised that the gates of death and hell will never prevail against His Church, which He built on Peter. If Peter’s successor would ever tell us to drink poison, that would mean that Christ had broken His promise to us.
So Watchman Nee had something here about the need to submit to the church authorities. But since his idea of a church is only a local church without any apostolic succession back to Christ and the apostles, I can see how this can lead to the cultic mentality of blindly obeying a self-proclaimed charismatic leader.
Conclusion
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that Watchman Nee was in any way sympathetic to the Catholic Church. This is definitely not the case. If fact, there were times that Watchman Nee was anti-Catholic. So I doubt that Watchman Nee intended to bring his fellow Protestants back into the Catholic Church. But Nee was a Christian who sincerely loved God even to the point of martyrdom. The Holy Spirit could to some extent reveal His truths to a Christian such as him.
God is greater than our sacraments. He is fully of mercy, and He is willing to pour out His grace even to someone who is anti-Catholic such as Watchman Nee, because he saw that this man had a sincere love for God. To this man God revealed mysteries that have been long taught by the Catholic Church . He revealed to him the mystery and the power of us being in Christ and Christ in us. He revealed the mysteries of the church and the importance of church authority. All these things from Nee stayed with me, and eventually brought me back to His Church.
