Watchman Nee / Witness Lee — Anthropology
b3 — Basic Elements of Christian Life, Volume 1
Imago Dei: Man as a Vessel for God
Lee describes the purpose of creation in terms of God’s desire to express Himself through man:
“God desires to express Himself through man (Rom. 8:29). For this purpose, He created man in His own image (Gen. 1:26). Just as a glove is made in the image of a hand to contain a hand, so also man is made in the image of God to contain God. By receiving God as his content, man can express God (2 Cor. 4:7).”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 1, p. 7
The threefold nature of man follows directly from this vessel-principle:
“To fulfill His plan, God made man as a vessel (Rom. 9:21-24). This vessel has three parts: body, soul, and spirit (1 Thes. 5:23). The body contacts and receives the things of the physical realm. The soul, the mental faculty, contacts and receives the things of the psychological realm. And the human spirit, the innermost part of man, was made to contact and receive God Himself (John 4:24). Man was created not merely to contain food in his stomach, or to contain knowledge in his mind, but to contain God in his spirit (Eph. 5:18).”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 1, p. 7-8
Interpretation: The imago Dei is given a functional-purposive meaning: the image of God is the form of a vessel shaped to God’s measure. The trichotomy of man is an organic consequence of this.
Trichotomy: Spirit, Soul, and Body
Lee grounds the tripartite nature of man firmly in 1 Thes. 5:23:
“A very important verse in the New Testament is 1 Thessalonians 5:23: ‘And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Man is of three parts: the spirit, the soul, and the body. These are three distinct and separate parts of one human being.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 37
Heb. 4:12 proves the separability of soul and spirit:
“The soul and the spirit are not one, for this verse indicates they can be divided asunder. The soul is the soul and the spirit is the spirit, and these two must be separated.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 37-38
Three Worlds and Three Human Parts
Lee develops a systematic correspondence between three levels of existence and three human organs:
“In the universe there are three different worlds: the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual; and because man is of three different parts, he is able to contact these three different realms.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 38
“Man has been created in three parts—the spirit (Zech. 12:1), the soul (Jer. 38:16), and the body (Gen. 2:7)—in order that he might contact three different worlds—the spiritual, the psychological, and the physical.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 38
The Threefold Soul: Emotion, Mind, and Will
“The soul is also in three parts. One of these parts is the emotion (Deut. 14:26; S. S. 1:7; Matt. 26:38); it is in the emotion that we love, desire, hate, and have joy or sorrow. Another part of the soul is the mind (Josh. 23:14; Psa. 139:14; Prov. 19:2). In the mind we have thoughts, considerations, ideas, and concepts. The third part of the soul is the will (Job 7:15; 6:7; 1 Chron. 22:19), through which we make decisions. By the mind we think, by the will we choose, and by the emotions we like or dislike, love or hate.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 38-39
The Fall: All Three Parts of Man Damaged
Lee connects the fall directly to damage across all three human layers:
“But before man could receive God as life into his spirit, sin entered into him (Rom. 5:12). Sin deadened his spirit (Eph. 2:1), made him an enemy of God in his mind (Col. 1:21), and transmuted his body into sinful flesh (Gen. 6:3; Rom. 6:12). Thus, sin damaged all three parts of man, alienating him from God. In this condition, man could not receive God.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 1, p. 8
Interpretation: The fall is not a juridical-moralistic concept in Lee’s framework, but an anthropological-organic fact: every layer of man was damaged. Redemption must therefore also reach all three layers.
The Unbeliever as Exclusively Soulish Man
Lee draws out the consequence of the dead spirit for human life before regeneration:
“Unbelievers have only physical life in the body and human or psychological life in the soul. They do not have the eternal life of God in their spirit because they have not received Christ as the eternal life into their spirit. Therefore, unbelievers can only live by the soul or the body. Before we were saved, all of us lived, walked, and had our being in the soul.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 40
“Before salvation we were one hundred percent fallen. We lived in and by this fallen, soulish life, which was absolutely opposed to God. We must learn never to do anything out from this fallen life again, but live entirely by the divine life which is in our spirit.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 42
Interpretation: The functional trichotomy applies only to the believer. In the unbeliever the spirit is dead (Eph. 2:1) and functionally absent as an organ of contact. Natural human life is exclusively soul-and-body life.
The Human Spirit as the Organ for Contacting God
Lee systematically develops the function of the human spirit as the exclusive organ for receiving God:
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit (John 4:24). The first Spirit is capitalized, referring to the divine Spirit, God Himself. The second spirit is not capitalized because it refers to our human spirit. God is Spirit, and we must worship Him in our spirit. We cannot worship or contact Him with the body or with the soul.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 39
John 3:6 describes regeneration as regeneration of the human spirit:
“That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. It simply means that our spirit has been regenerated by the Spirit of God. This verse tells us where we are born again. We are not born again in the body or in the soul, but in the spirit. When we believed in the Lord Jesus as our Savior, the Spirit of God came into our spirit. The Holy Spirit quickened and imparted life to regenerate our spirit.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 39-40
The Mingled Spirit: Human Spirit United with the Holy Spirit
“This life-giving Spirit has come into us and is mingled with our spirit, thereby joining us to Him as one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). Praise Him, we are one with the Lord in our spirit. If we know how to turn to our spirit, we can contact Christ. This is the secret! This is the key!”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 40
Interpretation: The concept of the “mingled spirit” appears identically in b2 (The Economy of God). BXL1 states it concisely: after regeneration, the human spirit and the Holy Spirit are inseparably joined as one spirit.
Restoration of Man: Transformation and Glorification
Lee describes God’s full salvation as threefold restoration of all human layers:
“Then God begins the lifelong process of gradually spreading Himself as life from the believer’s spirit into his soul (Eph. 3:17). This process, called transformation (Rom. 12:2), requires human cooperation (Phil. 2:12). The believer cooperates by allowing the Lord to spread into his soul until all his desires, thoughts, and decisions become one with those of Christ. Finally, at Christ’s return, God will fully saturate the believer’s body with His life. This is called glorification (Phil. 3:21).”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 1, p. 9
“Instead of being empty and damaged in each part, this man is filled and saturated with the life of God. This is God’s full salvation! Such a man now expresses God, fulfilling God’s plan!”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 1, p. 9
Surrendering the Soul-Life (Soul vs. Spirit)
Lee distinguishes between renewing the soul’s faculties and surrendering the soul as one’s source of life:
“It is not the mind, emotion, and will that must be rejected and destroyed; rather, it is the life of the soul that we must give up. We need to realize that this natural, soulish life has already been put to the cross (Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:6) and that we must now take Christ as our life. But the faculties of our soul still remain as instruments to be used by the Spirit to express the Lord Himself.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 42
“In all four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the Lord Jesus repeatedly tells us to deny the self and lose the soul with its soulish life (Matt. 16:24-26; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:23-25; John 12:25). Then in the Epistles, we are told again and again to walk, live, pray, and do everything in the spirit (Acts 17:16; Rom. 1:9; 12:11; 1 Cor. 16:18; 1 Pet. 3:4; Eph. 6:18; Rev. 1:10).”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 5, p. 44
Conscience: Cleansed by the Blood of Christ
In chapter 3, Lee addresses the conscience as the seat of guilt and the work of Christ’s blood:
“Guilt is the stain of sins on your conscience. When you are young, your conscience is only stained a little. But as you grow older, these stains accumulate. Like a window which is never washed, the conscience grows darker and darker until eventually little light can penetrate.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 3, p. 23
“Hebrews 9:14 says, ‘How much more will the blood of Christ…purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’ The blood of Christ is powerful enough to purge, or cleanse, your conscience from every guilty stain.”
— Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 1, ch. 3, p. 24