Chapter 2 Watchman Nee’s Theology and Interpretation of Scripture
2. The Holiness Movement and Keswick Spirituality
In addition to the Brethren and dispensationalism, Nee’s theological development is unmistakably and strongly influenced by pietism.49 The major source of Nee’s pietistic
influence came from and was filtered through two particular streams of pietism: the Holiness50
Kingdom (the second coming to the end of the Kingdom). See Cliff, “The Life and Theology of Watchman Nee, Including a Study of the Little Flock Movement Which He Founded,” 175.
46 Watchman Nee, How to Study the Bible: Practical Advice for Receiving Light from God’s Word (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1993), 141.
47 Ibid., 108.
48 Liao, “Watchman Nee’s Theology of Victory,” 40, 44. The best example of a Christian group who “got it right,” according to Nee, is the Brethren. Thus, in his dispensational reading of Revelation 1-3, Nee refers to the Brethren as the Philadelphian Church, the Church of Brotherly Love. Nee argues that not only has the Brethren Church completely recovered apostolic orthodoxy by maintaining true unity through welcoming all Spirit-ordained ministers of the Word to serve freely, but she has also recovered all Scriptural truth in the areas of ecclesiology, eschatology, and the doctrine of sanctification. Nee remarkably writes: “if we were to enumerate one by one what they recovered, we may well say that in today's pure Protestant churches there is not one truth that they did not recover or recover more.” See Watchman Nee, The Orthodoxy of the Church & Authority and Submission, vol. 47, The Collected Works of Watchman Nee, Set 3 (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1994), 69-70.
49 Pietism was a renewal movement within Lutheranism in the late 17th century. Although originally it was a reaction against the dead orthodoxy of German Lutheran state churches, the movement soon spread all over Europe and North America, influencing different stripes of Protestantism and beyond. In general, pietists stress the practical aspects of the Christian life, reject doctrinal formalism and church institutionalism, while upholding Scripture as the word of God. Ang Lee comments: “Shaking away all man-made externalities, the pietists wish to retain and uphold only the Word of God. As a result of their renewed interest in the Scripture, they always feel commissioned to reform the Church with the ‘light’ God has revealed to them. All these traits are encapsulated in the life of Watchman Nee” (Ang Lee, “Watchman Nee,” 49–50).
50 Scholars note that the Holiness movement began initially in the 1840s and 1850s, when some
Methodists in the United States believed that the way for Christians to renew their spiritual life lay in resurrecting the neglected Wesleyan teaching on Christian perfection. Wesley taught that the road from sin to salvation goes from willful rebellion against divine and human law to perfect love for God and neighbour. Following Wesley, Holiness preachers, who were typically Methodists, emphasized that salvation involves two crises. In the first,
and Keswick revival movements.51 Nee was acquainted with a number of Holiness authors, but his main reference point was arguably Jessie Penn-Lewis.52 Nee was an avid reader of Penn-Lewis’s works and from the mid-1920s he was in regular correspondence with her and was chiefly responsible for translating, interpreting, and disseminating her teachings to Chinese audiences.53
conversion or justification, one is freed from sins committed. In the second, usually called “entire sanctification,”
“full salvation,” or “second conversion,” one is liberated from the flaw that causes sin. This second crisis was taught as an experience of the “deeper work” of divine grace that gave one the ability to resist temptation and to avoid committing any sins knowingly as well as to live a life governed by a perfect intention to love God and neighbour. See R. V. Pierard, “Holiness Movement,” ed. Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 392; Wu, “Revelation, Knowledge, and Formation,” 71–72.
51 The Holiness revival spread to England and gave rise to the Keswick movement, which originated in 1875 at a “Convention for the Promotion of Practical Holiness” in the Lake District town of that name. This convention was held annually and became the mother of similar conventions in various countries around the world.
Rather than merely imparting biblical knowledge, these conventions aimed to be a spiritual clinic for restoring believers’ spiritual health. Speakers at annual Keswick conventions emphasized the “deeper life” instead of
“holiness,” believing that the tendency to sin is not extinguished but is counteracted by victorious living through the Holy Spirit. The predominance of Reformed Anglicans along with like-minded Free Church evangelicals in the movement prevented the Wesleyan-Arminian view of sanctification from establishing a complete foothold. S.
Barabas notes the typical weekly teaching of the Keswick convention as follows: “On the first day the addresses focus on sin and its disabling spiritual effects. On the second day the addresses deal with God’s provision through the cross for dealing with sin, not only its guilt but also its power…. The third day is devoted to teaching on consecration, response to God’s call for complete abandonment to Christ’s rule, involving both crisis and process.
The fourth day is occupied with teaching on the Spirit-filled life. All Christians, it is taught, receive the Holy Spirit at regeneration, but not all are controlled by him. The fullness of the Spirit is made experiential by abandonment to Christ and abiding in that abandonment. On Friday the theme is Christian service, the natural result of Spirit-filled life” (S. Barabas, “Keswick Convention,” ed. Daniel J. Treier and Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017], 464). These “themes” are also Nee’s favourite “themes”
and can be easily found in his writings. It is also remarkable how the present-day ministry legacy of Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, i.e., the Living Stream Ministry, patterns their annual and semi-annual “conferences” and
“trainings” after these Keswick conventions.
52 Jessie Penn-Lewis (1861-1927) was an influential laywoman teacher and writer in the early Keswick movement and the Welsh revival of 1904-1905.
53 Wu, “Revelation, Knowledge, and Formation,” 78. On the back cover of the January 1924 issue of The Overcomer, a Christian magazine that Penn-Lewis edited, she carried the following news:
A letter comes from a Chinese Christian, saying that he has issued in small magazine form some of the
“Overcomer” literature, i.e. “More than Conquerors,” the “Four Planes of the Spiritual Life,” etc., and
“testimonies are streaming in telling how God has owned and used the paper.” But, he says, “Satan is fighting hard, and up to to-day there seems not a bit of hope to publish the next issue.” The hindrance is financial and physical. He adds, “Please say that a free paper called ‘The Reviving’ has been published in Chinese to bear the ‘Overcomer Testimony,’ and ask your Chinese readers to write for a copy, also Missionaries to order some for their Chinese Evangelists. (Address: Watchman Nee, Chong Seng Sang, Foochow, China).
Cited in May, “Watchman Nee and the Breaking of Bread,” 206 (emphasis in original).
The major emphasis of Penn-Lewis’s message was that of the cross.54 She teaches that the way to life in union with God is through death to the self, which is none other than the way of the cross. For her, the true meaning of the cross is “refusing the self’; anything less than this would limit the significance of the cross.55 This emphasis on “surrender” and “service” through the mediation of the cross exerted a profound influence on Nee.56 Grace May says of Nee’s indebtedness to Penn-Lewis:
Nee relied on the same Pauline texts as Penn-Lewis in describing the work of the Cross.
Nee echoed Penn-Lewis' understanding of the crucifixion of the old self, which they both regarded as essential for Christian maturity and effective service. Nee even adopted her tripartite doctrine of humanity, which viewed human beings as a composite of body, soul, and spirit.57 Nee was also drawn to Madame Guyon, the same mystic that Penn-Lewis and Nee's own mentor, Barber, found so compelling.… Nee freely cited from works by Andrew Murray, F. B. Meyer, and Evan Roberts, Holiness authors whom Penn-Lewis often referred to in her own writings. Not surprisingly, the same themes which featured prominently in Keswick circles found their way into Nee's own writing and preaching.58
54 Penn-Lewis felt called by God to be a messenger of the cross, a topic she never seemed to grow weary of teaching. On a trip from Edinburgh to Liverpool, she recalled, "I ask[ed] God to show me the way never to give an address on any theme without ‘preaching the cross,’ and to my astonishment in those days, as I was speaking on many themes concerning the Christian life, I found myself, in the heart of the message, showing the cross as the center of every theme. Then I saw that all aspects of the spiritual life could be shown to have, as their basis, Calvary; and that all spiritual truth radiated from the cross.” J. C. Metcalfe, Molded by the Cross (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1997), 76. Cited in May, “Watchman Nee and the Breaking of Bread,” 205.
55 Ka-Lun Leung, “Cong Fenxing Yundong Dao Shenmi Zhuyi--Binluyi Shimu de Shunling Shenxue Sixiang (From Revivalism to Mysticism--Mrs. Penn-Lewis’s Thought on Spiritual Theology),” in Watchman Nee:
His Early Life and Thought (Hong Kong: Graceful House, 2005), 15–19. Cited in Wu, “Revelation, Knowledge, and Formation,” 79.
56 May notes that in a nutshell, “surrender” and “service” captures the heart of Keswick teaching on spiritual life. See May, “Watchman Nee and the Breaking of Bread,” 198.
57 Especially influential was her book entitled Soul and Spirit and subtitled A Glimpse into Bible Psychology, an exposition of Hebrews 4:12 which provided Nee with the foundation for his own book The Spiritual Man. It is no coincidence that Nee said that his work is basically a book on biblical psychology. See Ang Lee, “Watchman Nee,” 48.
58 May, “Watchman Nee and the Breaking of Bread,” 206–207. May further adds, “Even Nee’s choice of titles and terminology presumed a knowledge of Penn-Lewis’ works. For example, Penn-Lewis wrote a book entitled Word of the Cross (1908). Nee evidently liked the title and borrowed it for his two-part article entitled
‘The Word of the Cross,’ published in the Spiritual Light Journal in the summer of 1925. Nee translated many of Penn-Lewis' articles into Chinese and included some of them as chapters in a volume he edited called The Christian Life and Warfare (1927) and others in his periodicals. In the 1940s, years after Penn-Lewis’ death, Nee named his training series for lay leaders The Overcomers Conference. The Overcomer was the name of Penn-Lewis’ periodical and a favorite theme of the holiness movement” (207-208).
These themes include the emphasis on an intuitive experience of Christ over mere rational knowledge, the insistence on “the higher life” as the “normal Christian life,”59 the expectation that holiness manifests itself in visible changes in lifestyle, the call to surrender all for Christ, and union with Christ as the ultimate goal of the believer.60 Furthermore, Nee follows the Holiness tradition in accentuating the believer’s break from the world and highlighting “the incompatibility of faithful living and worldliness, the cosmic battle between good and evil, the spiritual opposition between God’s forces and Satan’s, and the irreconcilability of living for the now and the hereafter.”61 This, in turn, results in his church’s withdrawal from direct social and political engagements of the day.62