A Watchman Nee Fallacy I Carried to Youth Camp

I owe my pastor much for the contribution he made to me through his preaching and discipleship. Having grown up in the church he pastored, it is only natural that examples of fallacies I first heard in sermons would come from him. Still, I remember one fallacy that I adopted and even carried with me to youth camp, where I managed to stir up some trouble with the other preachers in attendance. It comes from Matthew 16:26 and particularly the technical meaning of the word ψυχὴν (soul).

Carson on the Fallacy

D.A. Carson explains the false assumption of the technical meaning fallacy this way:

“An interpreter falsely assumes that a word always or nearly always has a certain technical meaning—a meaning usually derived either from a subset of the evidence or from the interpreter’s personal systematic theology.”¹ I shall show that this fallacy is imported into Matthew 16:28 by a technical understanding of the word ψυχὴν and the interpreter’s particular systematic theology.

My Pastor’s Interpretation

In this example, my pastor assumed the trichotomy of a person having body, soul, and spirit. My pastor was influenced by Watchman Nee, the well-known Chinese Christian teacher who was imprisoned for his faith. Nee drew a sharp distinction between soul and spirit, often appealing to 1 Thessalonians 5:23 as evidence.² In his treatment of Hebrews 4:12, Nee taught that Adam and Eve’s spiritual life died in the fall, or became dormant, and that only the Word of God could separate the soul from the spirit.³ He explained regeneration in these terms: “Therefore, when a man believes that the Lord Jesus died for him and receives the Lord Jesus to be his personal Savior, God gives him a new life… This is what the Bible calls regeneration.”⁴

Recent scholarship confirms how deeply Nee’s teaching has shaped Chinese Christianity. In their 2024 study, Ruixiang Li and Paulos Huang estimate that 70% of Chinese churches today are directly or indirectly influenced by Nee’s trichotomous view of humanity.⁵

Adopting Nee’s views, my pastor applied the spirit–soul distinction to verses like Matthew 16:26, arguing that losing one’s ψυχὴν could not refer to damnation but rather to the loss of heavenly rewards. He supported this by noting that in verse 24 Jesus was addressing His disciples—already saved individuals. Therefore, in his reasoning, Jesus could not have meant that believers might forfeit their souls, only their rewards. My pastor further appealed to verse 27, where Christ speaks of the “rewards” He will bring with Him, concluding that the loss of the soul must refer to the loss of these rewards. He reinforced this interpretation by cross-referencing 1 Corinthians 3:14–15, where Paul teaches that Christians may suffer loss of reward. By linking Matthew 16 with Hebrews 4 and 1 Corinthians 3, he argued that “losing one’s soul” is best understood as losing the rewards Christ will distribute at His return.

Further evidence of my pastor’s trichotomy view affecting his interpretation is found in James 1:21. He argued that this verse does not describe being born again through memorizing verses, but rather that the “saving of the soul” refers to the sanctification of one who is already born again.

My Exegesis

The context of Matthew 16 shows that Jesus is not referring to the mere loss of a disciple’s reward, but rather to a person’s salvation or damnation. The contrast of gaining the whole world and losing one’s soul sets temporal gain against the loss of eternal life.

D. A. Carson himself sees this theme running through Matthew into chapter 16:

“Not only Jesus’ example (v. 24; cf. 10:24–25), but the judgment he will exercise is an incentive to take up one’s cross and follow him.”⁶

The incentive Carson refers to is the reality of being damned if one does not love Jesus more than life, more than family, more than things. But if an individual is willing to lose all such things for Christ’s sake, that one will find eternal life when Jesus comes to “reward” every man according to his works.

I believe my pastor also took the word reward to mean only in the positive sense; however, ἀποδώσει (reward) is not restricted to positive blessings only, but also includes repayment for a wicked life.⁷

Conclusion

My pastor’s teaching sprang from a sincere desire to know the God who authored the Scriptures. Yet in his effort to guard believers from the fear of damnation, he passed along to me a fallacy that I carried for many years. Reflecting on this example reminds me how easily theological assumptions can shape our reading of Scripture. It serves as a living illustration of Carson’s warning against forcing a technical meaning onto a word.

References

1. D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Carlisle, U.K.; Grand Rapids, MI: Paternoster; Baker Books, 1996), 45.
2. William P. Brooks, “Watchman Nee’s Understanding of Salvation,” Journal of Asian Evangelical Theology 19, no. 2 (2015): 85.
3. Ibid., 87.
4. Ibid., 89.
5. Ruixiang Li and Paulos Huang, “The Interpretation of Watchman Nee’s Anthropology and Its Corresponding Ecclesiastical Influence in Contemporary Chinese Mainland Churches,” Religions 15, no. 5 (2024): 1. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050570.
6. D. A. Carson, “Matthew,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 379.
7. Albert L. Lukaszewski and Mark Dubis, The Lexham Syntactic Greek New Testament: Expansions and Annotations (Logos Bible Software, 2009), Matt. 16:27.