Forming the “Spiritual Man”: Anthropology, Sanctification, and Spiritual Authority in Watchman Nee’s Writings

Abstract This article argues that personal and ecclesial formation were mutually dependent in Watchman Nee’s account of Christian maturity. Reading The Spiritual Man and The Normal Christian Life alongside his lesser-known instructions for converts and workers and his writings on church life, it traces how Nee’s anthropology connected the reordering of the believer’s faculties with participation in the body of Christ. The anthropological framework of spirit and soul, and the account of sanctification flowing from it supplied criteria for judging the speech and conduct of less mature believers with the goal of individual growth realisable only within the corporate body. Spiritual judgement thus emerges as a practice through which Nee’s anthropology was intended to shape congregational life. The article also considers a possible difficulty within this practice. Despite Nee’s considerable restraints upon delegated authority in his teachings, if resistance to a judgement of spiritual immaturity could itself be treated as evidence of further soulish independence in the same person, this could short-circuit the potential to examine whether or not the initial judgement itself arose from greater spiritual light.