corporate man
Definition (house-style)
The corporate man is, in Witness Lee’s ecclesiology, a technical term for the church understood as one composite man-in-Christ. Not a collection of individual believers, but one organic unity ordered under the headship of Christ (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:18). The church in this view is not primarily an institution or an assembly, but a corporate humanity functioning as a body: individual members grow up in life and are together built up into one perfect man according to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13).
The concept has parallels in George Warnock, who speaks of the “corporate relationship” and “PERFECT MAN” in equivalent terms, but from a different hermeneutical angle (Ezek. 34 and Eph. 4 as a church-historical program).
Author variants
Watchman Nee / Witness Lee
Lee formulates the concept of the corporate man in Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 3 (b5) as the core of his ecclesiology. For Lee the church is not merely a functional unity but an ontological one:
“Within this corporate man, God in Christ is the Head and, as sons, we are the Body brought into order under His headship. Then, through this Body, Christ as the Head will head up all things.”
[Lee, Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 3, ch. 2; cf. Eph. 1:10]
“First of all, there is the matter of life; then there is the building. The purpose of the building is to bring us all into the proper order in life under the headship of Christ.”
[Lee, Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 3, ch. 2; cf. Col. 1:18]
Lee connects the corporate man directly to the creation paradigm: the church is ontologically connected to Christ as Eve was ontologically formed from Adam:
“The church is an entity which comes entirely out of Christ, just as Eve came out of Adam. She was a part of Adam and was taken out of Adam. The new man, which is the church, is a part of Christ and is taken out of Him.”
[Lee, Basic Elements of Christian Life, Vol. 3, ch. 2; cf. Eph. 2:15; Gen. 2:21-22]
The purpose of the corporate man is threefold: to express God, to defeat Satan, and to head up all things under the headship of Christ (Eph. 1:10). The building of this corporate man takes place not through the transfer of knowledge or gifts, but exclusively through the inner experience of the indwelling Christ.
George Warnock
Warnock addresses the corporate dimension of the church in Feed My Sheep (b3) as an independent ecclesiological category. Although he does not use the term corporate man explicitly, he speaks of the “corporate relationship” and cites Eph. 4:12-13 as the eschatological goal of the five-fold ministry:
“THE PURPOSE OF MINISTRY IS TO EQUIP THE PEOPLE OF GOD THAT THEY MIGHT ALL BECOME MINISTERING SERVANTS TO THE BODY… ‘TILL we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a PERFECT MAN… UNTO THE MEASURE OF THE STATURE OF THE FULNESS OF CHRIST’ (Eph. 4:12, 13).”
[Warnock, Feed My Sheep, ch. 5]
The “PERFECT MAN” (Eph. 4:13) functions in Warnock as a corporate eschatological endpoint: the church that collectively grows, through the ministry of the five-fold ministry, into the fullness of Christ. This is a parallel — but not identical — concept to Lee’s corporate man: in Warnock the emphasis falls on corporate maturation through ministry; in Lee on the ontological unity of the Body growing from inner Christ-experience.