Definition
Mingling (Nee/Lee: mingling) is the organic union of the Holy Spirit with the human spirit of the believer, based on 1Cor. 6:17: “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” Mingling goes beyond indwelling (the Spirit dwells in man) and describes a positive commingling of the divine and human spirit into one functioning unity — without the human spirit losing its distinctness or becoming the Holy Spirit. The concept is idiosyncratic to Nee/Lee and has no direct parallel in the other four authors. Possible tension with Chalcedonian distinction of natures warrants attention at the point of evaluation.
Usage in the Corpus
Watchman Nee & Witness Lee
Mingling is for Nee/Lee the pneumatological culmination of the economy of God: God as Spirit enters the human spirit as the transmission of all that God is and has. “In the believer the Holy Spirit and the human spirit are mingled together as one spirit! ‘He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him’ (1Cor. 6:17). We are one spirit with the Lord, but one that is clearly mingled with the Holy Spirit. Such a mingled spirit makes it difficult for someone to say whether this is the Holy Spirit or the human spirit. The two are mingled as one.”
Nee/Lee use the juice analogy to clarify the nature of this mingling: “Sometimes we make a drink by mingling two kinds of juice — pineapple and grapefruit. After the mingling it is difficult to say what kind of juice it is. Is it pineapple or grapefruit? We have to call it pineapple-grapefruit. In the New Testament it is wonderful to see that the two spirits — the Holy Spirit mingled with our spirit — are one spirit.” The emphasis is expressly not on identification: the human being does not become the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit does not become the human being. Both components remain recognizable, but are so united that they are difficult to distinguish separately.
This concept is closely connected to the temple analogy: the human spirit as the Holy of Holies is the actual place where the mingling occurs. It is also the basis for Nee/Lee’s synergistic pneumatological model: the human spirit that actively contacts the Holy Spirit experiences the mingling and receives life, liberation, and transformation (2Cor. 3:18). [Nee/Lee, The Economy of God, Chs. 3-4]