The Latent Power of the Soul

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 1 JOHN 4:1

We come now to the most contested thing Watchman Nee ever taught, and it would be dishonest to present his ministry without it. In 1933 he published a short book whose English title is The Latent Power of the Soul. It is brief, strange, and has caused more argument than anything else he wrote.

The argument

Nee began from the dominion given to Adam.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth. GENESIS 1:26

Adam, he reasoned, possessed capacities far beyond anything we now know — faculties of knowledge and mastery suited to the government of a whole creation. When he fell, God did not annihilate these powers. Instead they were shut up, buried, rendered dormant. The flesh became, in Nee’s phrase, a prison to the soul’s abilities. The powers remain, latent, in every descendant of Adam. And here is the point of the book: Satan works to release them. Occult phenomena — telepathy, second sight, hypnotic influence, the transmission of thought, powers displayed in heathen religion — are, on this reading, not necessarily the direct action of demons in every case, but the awakening of buried human soul-power under satanic direction. Nee’s warning was twofold. First, that a believer might unwittingly develop and use this soul-force in Christian work, mistaking it for the power of the Holy Spirit. Second, that in the last days such power would be released on a great scale to support the deception of Antichrist.

Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders. 2 THESSALONIANS 2:9

His conclusion was that the believer’s soul-power must be kept under the cross — not developed, not cultivated, not released, but held in death, so that only the Holy Spirit operates through him.

What is genuinely valuable here

Strip away the speculative framework and a real pastoral concern remains, and it is one the New Testament shares. There is such a thing as spiritual power that is not from God. Scripture says so plainly. Pharaoh’s magicians duplicated some of Moses’ signs. Simon of Samaria had bewitched a city. The girl at Philippi brought her masters much gain by soothsaying, and what she said about Paul was perfectly accurate. The Lord Himself warned that many would come to Him having prophesied, cast out devils and done many wonderful works in His name, and would hear I never knew you (Matthew 7:22–23). Nee’s insistence that results do not validate a ministry is therefore thoroughly biblical, and badly needed in every generation. Crowds, healings, manifestations, influence over people, the ability to move an audience — none of these is self-authenticating. A man may be powerful and not be sent.

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 2 CORINTHIANS 11:13–14

Equally sound is his warning about the preacher who has learned to work upon a congregation — who knows how to build the emotional pressure, when to drop the voice, how to produce a response. That is a real danger, and it is not less dangerous for being unconscious.

Where it must be questioned

Now the other side, and it must be said plainly, because a book that presented this teaching without qualification would be doing the reader harm. The theory of latent Adamic soul-power is not taught in Scripture. It is a construction, built by inference upon Genesis 1:26 and a handful of texts that do not naturally bear it, and it owes a good deal to nineteenth-century writers who were preoccupied with the occult — G. H. Pember and Jessie Penn-Lewis among them — whose works Nee absorbed through Margaret Barber’s library. The Bible nowhere describes Adam as possessing psychic faculties, nowhere says those faculties were made dormant, and nowhere identifies occult phenomena as their release. The practical dangers of the theory are considerable, and church history has demonstrated them. It supplies a mechanism for attributing to human soul-power any spiritual phenomenon one dislikes, which makes it an instrument for dismissing the genuine work of God without examining it. It can foster a chronic suspicion of one’s own faculties, so that a believer becomes afraid of his mind, his emotions and his imagination — all of which God made and intends to sanctify, not suppress. And it can breed a fearful, inward-looking spirituality that is preoccupied with hidden dangers rather than occupied with Christ. The apostolic method of testing is not a theory of soul-power. It is simpler and more reliable:

Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God. 1 JOHN 4:2

Ye shall know them by their fruits. MATTHEW 7:16

Doctrine about Christ, and fruit in the life. Those are the tests Scripture gives, and they are sufficient.

How then should this chapter be used? Take the warning and leave the theory. Refuse to be impressed by power as such. Test everything by the Word and by fruit. Be honest about the manipulative techniques available to anyone who speaks in public. But do not adopt a speculative anthropology that Scripture does not teach, and do not let fear of your own soul make you a timid, suspicious Christian. Nee himself would have said — has said, repeatedly, elsewhere — that the safest believer is the one whose attention is on the Lord.

What Scripture does say

Having questioned the theory, it would be a mistake to leave the reader with the impression that the New Testament is unconcerned about spiritual danger. It is very concerned, and it speaks about it clearly. The point is that what it actually says is both more sober and more encouraging than the framework built upon it. Scripture affirms that the conflict is real and that its adversaries are not merely human.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. EPHESIANS 6:12

It affirms that deception is the enemy’s principal method, and that believers should be alert to it — lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices (2 Corinthians 2:11). And it affirms, with equal clarity, that the outcome is not in question, that the believer is not helpless, and that the indwelling Christ is greater than anything ranged against him.

Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. 1 JOHN 4:4

What Scripture does not do is invite us into detailed speculation about mechanisms. It gives no anatomy of how occult power operates. It supplies no taxonomy of spiritual forces for our study. The information it withholds is information we do not need, and the New Testament’s reticence on the subject is itself instructive. The apostolic pattern is therefore: be aware, be armed, be unimpressed by displays of power, and be occupied with Christ. Believers who follow that pattern are safe. Believers who become specialists in the workings of darkness frequently are not — they grow fearful, suspicious of other Christians, and strangely fascinated by the very thing they claim to oppose.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure …think on these things. PHILIPPIANS 4:8

That is Paul’s instruction about what to fill the mind with, given in a letter written from prison by a man who knew perfectly well that the powers of darkness were real.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Adopt the two apostolic tests as your settled practice: what does this teach about Christ, and what fruit does it produce over time? 2. Examine your own public ministry, if you have one, for techniques that work on people rather than serve them. Name one and abandon it. 3. Refuse to be moved by results alone — whether other people’s or your own. 4. Where you have been suspicious of a genuine work of God because it was unfamiliar, repent of it. 5. Do not become a hunter of counterfeits. Give more attention to knowing Christ than to identifying the false.

A PRAYER

Lord, I want to be discerning without becoming suspicious, and open without becoming gullible. I cannot manage either balance on my own.

Keep me from every power that is not Yours, including the power of my own personality over other people. Where I have learned to manipulate, forgive me and unteach me.

And keep me from fear. You did not give me a spirit of fear. Fix my attention on Christ, and let me test all things by Your Word. Amen.