Soul
In Nee/Lee’s anthropology, the soul is not sin or evil in itself, but the middling element of the person—personality, ego, the seat from which mind, emotion, and will arise. The soul becomes problematic when it dominates God’s working through the spirit rather than serving it.
Soul as personality and ego
Nee/Lee define soul as the core of personality:
The soul is our personality, our ego; therefore the soul is our self. What is included in the soul, analytically speaking, is the mind, the emotion, and the will—these three parts.
This is neutral description. The soul contains all human faculties: thought, feeling, volition. These are not evil—they are naturally human. But:
The mind is the organ of man’s thinking. The emotion is the organ of man’s feelings. The will is the organ of man’s decisions.
Each part has legitimate function. Problems arise when one of these three dominates a person and distracts them from God’s Spirit.
The three types of soulish person
Nee/Lee recognize that different temperaments live through different soul-parts:
Whether a person lives through the mind, emotion, or will, he is a soulish person. Whether a person lives by the mind, emotion, or will, he lives in the soul.
- Mind-dominated — intellectuals, analyzers
- Emotion-dominated — feeling people, artists
- Will-dominated — strong personalities, leaders
No type is sinful, but each type lives in the soul and not in the spirit.
Soulish person versus spiritual person
This distinction is theologically crucial—not moral but pneumatological:
A soulish person is often what is called a “good person.” He is frequently blameless in people’s eyes.
Someone can be excellently moral, very careful, very loving—wholly from soul-exercise—but have no spiritual insight:
When a person is spiritual, he can distinguish and receive the things of God’s Spirit; when he is soulish, however, he cannot receive such things, and cannot even know them.
God’s things are to the soulish person “incongruous and unsuitable.” This is critical diagnosis: morality guarantees no spiritual receptivity.
Salvation from the soul
Nee/Lee distinguish God’s salvation as more radical than moral improvement:
The Lord’s salvation not only frees us from sin and flesh, but also from the soul. The goal of the Lord’s salvation is not only that we be not in sin and in the flesh, but also that we be not in the soul, but in the spirit.
Transformation aims not at moral-humanity but at spiritual-humanity. Soul receives her true place: serving spirit rather than ruling.
Soul in service to spirit
Once the spirit is regenerated, soul becomes channel of spiritual operation:
A spiritual person still has mind, emotion, and will—but they are subordinate to the spirit; they serve the spirit rather than dominate.
This is true maturity in Nee/Lee spirituality: soul retains all her faculties, but they operate in harmony with spirit and not against God.
Source: Watchman Nee & Witness Lee, The Knowledge of Life (Living Stream Ministry, 1973), chapters 8–9.