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philologos
Member



Joined: 2003/7/18
Posts: 6566
Reading, UK

 Re:

Quote:
Do we receive two spirits when we are being born again? One human spirit and the Holy Spirit?

I suspect Watchman Nee has Ezekiel in mind;
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. (Eze 36:26 ASV)There's the 'new spirit'.

And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep mine ordinances, and do them. (Eze 36:27 ASV)There's the Holy Spirit.

As I mentioned in a previous posting...Nee was said to have commented that the Spiritual Man was 'too complete' and should never be reprinted. He explained by saying that it was not that he had altered his opinions but that the academic study of these things left little room for God to lead his saints personally. There is a difference between on-the-spot discernment and biblical exposition. Nee has a hypothesis, which may well have developed in on-the-spot discernment, which the scriptures do not contradict. The question is how 'bible-based' should bible teaching be? I value Nee but share some of your reservations.


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Ron Bailey

 2004/10/29 6:30Profile
philologos
Member



Joined: 2003/7/18
Posts: 6566
Reading, UK

 Re: substantiation of Nee's views on The Spiritual Man

Hi Todd

Quote:
Thanks Ron, for shedding some light on this issue. I would really appreciate it if anyone knows more about Watchman not wanting to republish "The Spiritual Man." If that claim can be substantiated somehow that would be very interestng.



I couldn't think where I might have read this but it suddenly surfaced...

Angus Kinnear's (T Austin Spark's son-in-law) Wrote the biography 'Against the Tide'. In Chap 9 'Fragile Clay' Kinnear writes;

"In June 1928, the month in which Chiang Kai-shek's armies occupied Peking, the remaining six sections of Watchman Nee's The Spiritual Man were ready for press. He had completed the book under the same sense of compulsion with which he began it. It was the first and last book he ever sat down and wrote, the rest of his publications all being transcriptions of his preaching and teaching. Its third volume contained a chapter on 'Sickness', and though like the rest this came out of experience, yet as so often happens to God's servants he soon found himself plunged into fresh testing of what he had written. For this reason in later years he often stated that he felt The Spiritual Man was too 'perfect'. It gave the illusion of providing all the answers. "It will not be reprinted." he said in 1941 "it is not that what I wrote was wrong, for as I read it now I can endorse it all. It was a very complete setting forth of the truth; but just there lies its weakness. When a man has read it he ought not to have any questions left. But God, I have discovered, does not do things that way, and much less does He allow us to do them. For the danger of systematizing divine facts is that a man can understand without the help of the Holy Spirit. It is only the immature Christian who demands always to have intellectually satisfying conclusions. The Word of God itself has this fundamental character, that it speaks always and essentially to our spirit and to our life".

Kinnear adds, "It must be clear from this that The Spiritual Man is to be read today not as a textbook but as a staging post in the author's pilgrimage. He was, after all, not yet twenty-five when he wrote it."

(In the endnotes Kinnear adds: "This appears to have been Nee's fixed view during the forties, reaffirmed several times to his co-workers. The 1968 publisher may be right in believing that he would by then have changed his mind, but 'doubtless' is too strong an adverb in the circumstances.")


Kinnear also remarks on The Latent Power of the Soul. "This book was first published in 1933 as a postscript to The Spiritual Man and owed something to Jessie Penn-Lewis's Soul and Spirit"


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Ron Bailey

 2004/10/29 7:11Profile
todd
Member



Joined: 2003/5/12
Posts: 573
California

 Re:

Ron,
Thanks so much. This is very helpful.

 2004/10/29 20:13Profile
philologos
Member



Joined: 2003/7/18
Posts: 6566
Reading, UK

 Re: Watchman Nee Biography

This has probably been said before, but I would strongly recommend the biography of Angus Kinnear; Against the Tide Kinnear was son-in-law to Austin Sparkes and personally blessed by his fellowship with Watchman Nee. However, Kinnear biography is both affectionate and honest, and it is very helpful to understand Nee's ministry in the light of the different influences; Penn-Lewis, J N Darby, T Austin Sparkes.

This is not undermine Nee's usefulness, but to underline that like all of us he ...knew in part.


_________________
Ron Bailey

 2004/10/30 14:44Profile





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