Watchman Nee?

[Maddalena]

My cousin has recently gotten into the teachings of Watchman Nee. Obviously, he's not Catholic. My Mama was looking up stuff about it and got worried. Should she be? o_o He sounds like a loon. :3 Edited January 4, 2005 by Maddalena

[StColette]

From what I've just read about him online I would be a little bit worried. He seemed to be an extremist and his views and ideas are really umm yeah

[Maddalena]

XD;; I like your reaction to his views. My Uncle doesn't seem to be worried about it, but as long as my cousin's anyhting but Catholic, Uncle Bill's fine with that. -_- Edited January 4, 2005 by Maddalena

[phatcatholic]

yea, he doesn't look good. from [url="http://www.bcbsr.com/topics/wnee.html"][b]this article[/b][/url] we read the following about him:

* Nee outlines no method of Bible study and interpretation and appears to deny evangelical hermeneutics. In his book Spiritual Authority, he sets himself and his elders up as the unquestionable authorities. By all appearances, Nee saw himself not as a servant but as a guru.

One gets the impression from Nee that the Bible was not nearly as important as Christians generally consider it. In his book The Ministry of God's Word, Nee says, "Words alone cannot be considered God's Word." In this book, Nee becomes very philosophical, mystical and incoherent. He says that only as we deliver the Word in terms of the "reality behind it," using what he calls "Holy Spirit memory" and "presenting the pictures as well as speaking the words" will the words be correct; otherwise they are not real.

* Nee overemphasizes emotions. In The Ministry of God's Word, he claims that the effectiveness of a preacher's delivery is a product of his emotions. If a preacher does not feel emotionally charged in delivery, "The Spirit is stuck" and the "Spirit is inevitably arrested," Nee says. He continued, "The Spirit flows through the channel of emotion." Then he arrives at a strange conclusion: "Nose in the Scripture stands for feeling. Smelling is a most delicate act, man's feeling is most delicate." Therefore, Nee says, a preacher in speaking needs to "mix feelings with the words spoken, else his words are dead. If our feeling lags behind, or words are stripped of the spirit." To say as Nee does, on page 210, that the Holy Spirit only rides on feeling is dangerous.

* Nee uses terms imprecisely. One example is his writing about a minister's receiving "revelations" in his "Holy Spirit memory" and those revelations being remembered in us by the Holy Spirit. This sort of metaphysical mumbo jumbo is impossible to understand, since there is no direct scriptural reference to a "Holy Spirit memory."