Chapter 2 Watchman Nee’s Theology and Interpretation of Scripture
3. Three Things of the Spirit: Hermeneutical Goals of Scriptural Reading
concerning the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself”), Nee argues that obedience is a condition for knowing God’s word.
First there is a right attitude, and then there is revelation. If we respond to the revelation with obedience, we will have more of the right attitude and will receive more
revelation…. One experience of obedience will lead to another experience and then to even more obedience. One experience of light will lead to another experience and then to even more light. God’s will is behind every arrangement He has made.115
The interpretive process works like a hermeneutical spiral that brings the reader deeper and deeper into the light of scriptural revelation—provided that the reader continues in active obedience. This arrangement, Nee argues, is orchestrated by divine will. Thus, while Nee emphasizes our spiritual responsibility to receive and perceive God’s revelatory light, he still maintains the divine prerogative in the process. As he puts it, “God is never short of light, but whenever He sees any unwillingness on our part, He will hold back His speaking…. If there is any unwillingness on our part, the Holy Spirit will shy away; He will retreat and not release Himself in a cheap way.”116 In this way, Nee strives to struck a balance between divine and human agency in the spiritual process of scriptural interpretation.
Nee construes the goal of reading Scripture in terms of “entering into three things related to the Holy Spirit.”117 They are facts that were recorded by the Spirit, the thoughts of the Spirit, and the spirit behind the Scripture. These three things correspond to Nee’s tripartite understanding of Scripture: “On the surface there are the words. Underneath the words there are thoughts, and behind the thoughts is the spirit.”118 This trichotomy of Scripture, in turn,
parallels his anthropological trichotomy, i.e., a view that man consists of three different entities or elements: body, soul/mind, and spirit. Nee believes this is God’s providential design for humanity, as well as for Scripture. Thus, our approach to Scripture must conform to the divine trichotomic arrangement of the world and reality.
When one reads Scripture properly, Nee argues, one wishes (1) to get the correct “facts”
from the text, (2) to discern “the Spirit’s thoughts” of the text,119 and (3) to “touch the spirit behind the text.” These are all loaded terms in Nee’s theological-spiritual vision, yet for my purpose I will deal only with the third one here. The ultimate goal of reading Scripture, according to Nee, is to encounter the spirit of the text.120 But what exactly does Nee mean by
117 See Ibid., 35–73.
118 Ibid., 59.
119 “The thought of the Spirit” is defined by Nee as the intention or “purpose of the Holy Spirit’s writing of the [biblical] book at the time He wrote it.” Nee further writes, “The first question we should ask when we read a portion of the Scripture is what is the Spirit’s intention in writing this portion.” Thus, Nee equates “the thought”
and “the intention” of the Spirit in the text. Indeed, Nee even uses the term “the original meaning of the Holy Spirit.” At the same time, Nee seems comfortable with equating this with the intention of the human writers of the Bible: “Putting it in another way, we should sense the thoughts of Paul, Peter, John, and the others when the Holy Spirit spoke through them.” However, although Nee sometimes uses the language of (human) authorial intention and the Holy Spirit’s intention interchangeably, I would argue that it is the intention of the Spirit that really matters for him. In other words, the human authors are important only insofar as their thoughts are practically identical with the thoughts of the Holy Spirit who inspired them. It should also be noted that Nee is confident that the reader can get the text’s (human) authorial intention right. This is so, however, not so much through a thorough
examination of the literary and historical context of the text, but by the illumination of the Spirit. As he puts it,
“The thoughts of the writers of the Scripture should be the thoughts of the readers of the Scripture today. The writers of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit to think a certain way. The readers of the Bible should also be inspired by the Holy Spirit to think the same way.” See Ibid., 36–38.
120 Using the metaphor of food, Nee explains the spiritual import of encountering “the spirit of Scripture”
over simply knowing “the facts/impression” of the text and the “thoughts/teaching” of the text: “When we study the Bible, our purpose is to receive the ministry of the word. As such… we have to touch the spirit behind the word. If we do not touch that spirit, our understanding of the Bible will be very shallow indeed. At most we will have some doctrines and facts; we will not find spiritual nourishment. If God’s word is only impressions and
“the spirit of/behind Scripture”? Is it the Holy Spirit? Is it Jesus Christ? Is it the “spirit of the biblical authors” (whatever that mean)? Or is it something else?
Here Nee’s thoughts become muddier as he seems to refer to one thing in one place and to other things in another place. In The Ministry of God’s Word, for instance, Nee appears to say that the substance of the Bible is Jesus Christ himself. As he puts it, “The Bible is not merely a book; it is not merely pages of writings from which men receive doctrines and teachings. If the book, the Bible, is separated from the person, Christ, the book is a dead thing.
In one realm the Bible is a book; in another realm it is Christ Himself.”121 Nee argues that, just as it requires the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see Jesus as the Son of God, it also takes the Spirit’s revelation to enable us to see Scripture as the living Word of God.122 Scripture is not merely a book in the same way that Jesus Christ was not merely a man. It is noteworthy that here Nee does not only assert Christ as the subject matter of Scripture but also, and more importantly for Nee, Christ as the substance (or “the spirit,” as Nee fonds to say) of Scripture.
Put it differently, Scripture is not just about Christ; rather, it is Christ himself in another form—
namely, in the form of scriptural words. Nee could not be clearer than this: “The Bible is living;
it is a person. In fact, it is the Son of God Himself. If we do not touch this living word when we read the Bible, whatever we know will not yield any fruit.”123
thoughts to us, it cannot become our food. God’s word must become spirit before it can become our food. Our food can only come as we touch the spirit behind the word. The essence of the Bible is spirit.” Ibid., 60.
121 Nee, The Ministry of God’s Word, 53:113.
122 See Ibid., 53:115. He argues further, “God’s Word is a person, and God’s word is also a book. God’s Word is Jesus of Nazareth, and His word is also the Bible. We need God to open our eyes before we can recognize Jesus of Nazareth as being the Word of God and the Son of God. In the same way, God has to open our eyes before we will recognize the Bible as being the word of God and a revelation of His Son. Those who were acquainted with the Lord Jesus and who lived with Him for many years did not know Him. In the same way, those who are acquainted with the Bible and who have read and studied it for many years do not necessarily know the Bible.
There is the need of God’s revelation. Only that which God reveals to us through revelation is living” (Ibid., 53:116–117.).
123 Nee, The Ministry of God’s Word, 53:121.
On the other hand, and particularly in How to Study the Bible, Nee seems to portray “the spirit of Scripture” in a less ontological and less Christological manner, and instead leans more toward a psychological understanding. Nee writes, for instance, that “[e]very portion of the Bible has its own unique spirit behind the word,” and that “certain feelings and conditions of the Spirit are impregnated within each portion of the Word…. Behind every passage there is the feeling of the Spirit.”124 From several exegetical examples that he provides, it may be concluded that what he refers to as the “inner feeling” of the text is the underlying motivation or spiritual disposition behind the character’s action or words in the passage under consideration. Whatever passage Nee examines, the pattern is usually similar: we see one thing on the surface-text level, but there is another (more crucial) meaning hidden on the depth-psychological level. The natural reader perceives only what the text says, but the spiritual person sees more: the inner feeling behind the author or the character’s action or sayings.125
Ultimately, Nee’s main concern lies not in defining the content of “the spirit of the Bible,” but rather on prescribing how to “enter into” or “touch” this spirit. He argues that Scripture is providentially arranged into three “things” (words/facts, thoughts/doctrines, and spirit) and that each of these parts can only be accessed with one of the corresponding three
“parts” of the regenerated human being (body, soul, and spirit), with the spirit realm serving as the pinnacle of the communion. This realm is where the Holy Spirit is ultimately and fully present, both in the Scripture and on the reader. This is why a proper reader ought to undergo
124 Nee, How to Study the Bible: Practical Advice for Receiving Light from God’s Word, 59. Emphasis are mine.
125 Nee notes, “When our spirit is tempered to a proper condition, the words will be transparent and clear to us, even though the thoughts governing the words have not changed at all. When we speak about them, what comes out may be the same words, and the thoughts behind the words may will be the same, yet we will begin to know and be clear about the things we are speaking of. This is not a result of clarity in thoughts or words but of clarity in the spirit. This is something deeper than word and thoughts. It is so deep that the only thing we can say is that we are clear, that everything has become transparent to us. This is what happens when God’s Spirit matches our spirit with the spirit of His Word.” Ibid., 62–63.
“the discipline of the Holy Spirit”126 in order to be a “spiritual person” fit for the task of reading Scripture.127 Underlying Nee’s whole hermeneutical prescription is a (platonic?) belief that only things that are similar in nature can communicate to each other.128 As he puts it, “The Lord has to guide us to the point that our spirit becomes one with the spirit behind the Word.”129
Whatever this union of the spirits means,130 it seems clear that the ultimate goal of reading Scripture, for Nee, is not a matter of understanding the text. As the terms that he often uses (such as “entering into,” “touching,” “matching with,” and “mingling”) suggest, Nee’s vision of reading Scripture is perhaps best described as communion—a spiritual union between the spirit of the reader and the spirit of the text in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit.