Watchman Nee & Witness Lee — Creation
b2 — The Economy of God
Purpose of Creation — Man as God’s Container
In Chapter 5 (“The Persons of God and the Parts of Man”), Nee/Lee formulate the central thesis of their creation doctrine: God created man solely for the purpose of indwelling him.
“For what purpose did God create man? Only that man might be His container. I like to use this word ‘container’ because it is clearer than the word ‘vessel.’ It is clearly seen in Romans 9:21, 23 and 2 Corinthians 4:7, that God created us to be His containers in order to contain Himself. We are only empty containers, and God intends to be our only content.”
(Chapter 5; cf. Rom. 9:21, 23; 2Cor. 4:7)
“Man was made purposely to contain God. If we do not contain God and know God as our content, we are a senseless contradiction.”
(Chapter 5)
“Regardless of how much education we may obtain, what kind of position we may have, or how much wealth we may possess, we are still meaningless, since we were purposely made as a container to contain God as our sole content.”
(Chapter 5)
Interpretation: The container concept does not replace the classical imago Dei as a functional category but makes its teleology concrete: the purpose of man’s creation is the indwelling of God himself.
Chapter 6 reaffirms the same thesis:
“In the previous chapter we have seen that we were created purposely to be His containers, having God Himself as our content.”
(Chapter 6)
Imago Dei — Trinitarian Grammar of Gen. 1:26-27
In the same passage (Chapter 5), Nee/Lee treat the text of Gen. 1:26-27 as evidence for the plural unity of God:
“But in the first chapter of Genesis the pronoun used for God is not the singular ‘I,’ but the plural ‘we.’ Let us read Genesis 1:26 and 27. ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…God created man in his own image.’ In verse 26 it says, ‘in our image,’ while in the following verse it says ‘in his image.’ Please tell me, is God singular or plural?”
(Chapter 5; Gen. 1:26-27)
“Everyone who is familiar with Hebrew can tell us that the word ‘God’ in Genesis 1 is in the plural number. The Hebrew word for God in the first verse, ‘In the beginning God created,’ is Elohim, which is in plural number. However, the word ‘created’ in Hebrew is a predicate in the singular number. This is very strange. The grammatical composition of this verse is a subject in the plural number, but a verb in the singular number.”
(Chapter 5; Gen. 1:1)
Interpretation: The imago Dei is not developed here as an ethical or relational category, but as a grammatical-Trinitarian argument: the plural of Elohim with a singular verb form reveals the plural-unity of God, which also finds expression in the formulation “in our image” (plural) and “in his image” (singular).
Christ as the Image of God
In Chapter 1 (“The Economy of the Triune God”), Nee/Lee present Christ as the definitive revelation of the invisible God:
“The incomprehensible God is now expressed in Christ, the Word of God (John 1:1); the invisible God is revealed in Christ, the Image of God (Col. 1:15).”
(Chapter 1; Col. 1:15)
Interpretation: The image concept is here christologically loaded: Christ is the definitive imago Dei, and the original creation of man in the image of God points to this christological destiny.
The Fall and Creation
In Chapter 1, the fall of Adam is briefly mentioned as a rupture in the created order:
“The fall of Adam brought many evil elements into us. The effective death of Christ is the killing power within us to slay all the elements of Adam’s nature.”
(Chapter 1)
Interpretation: The fall is not analyzed protologically but functioned soteriologically: it is the backdrop for the economy of salvation, not a standalone creation theme.
Not Found in Extracted Chapters
The following creation sub-topics were not found in extracted chapters 1-6:
- Creatio ex nihilo (not explicitly treated)
- Six days of creation / chronology of creation days
- Dominion mandate
- Stewardship / ecology
- Providence of creation
- Theodicy
- New creation
Note: Chapter 12 (“Man and the Two Trees”) — potentially relevant to creation and eschatology — was not available in the PDF extraction.