Did Watchman Nee Commit Plagiarism?

Few years ago I came across Harry Ironside notes on the New Testament, which really helped me to understand that all the truths I enjoyed in the LR have actually been taken from the "degraded Christianity."

While reading H. Ironside I bumped into the paragraph about the drowning man, which reminded me Wachman Nee's famous example in his book. Two paragraphs are below: 1st from H. Ironside, another from Watchman Nee. Please note H. Ironside have written it earlier than Watchman Nee - in 1942.
Sorry for the lengthy paragraphs, I think the context is important too.

H Ironside excerpt from Notes of the Gospel of John:
"See what it says in verse 6: “When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?” Jesus “knew that he had been now a long time in that case.” Yes, eight years longer than Christ Himself had been on earth that man had been in this illness. Why did He wait so long? That the man might come to the end of himself. You and I would not have come to Christ if we had not been brought to see our insufficiency. You have heard of the poor man who fell into the water. Unable to swim, he went down once and came up again, and went down again. A strong swimmer stood on the pier, looking on, and the people cried, “Why don’t you leap in and save that man?” He said nothing, but let the man go down again, and then he threw off his coat and plunged in and brought him safely to shore. They said, “Why did you wait so long before you went in to save him?” He answered, “He was too strong before. I had to wait until his strength was gone. I had to wait until he could do nothing himself, until he was helpless.”

I think Jesus was waiting for that. When the man was brought to the pool first he had high hopes. “It won’t be long until I can get in,” he thinks, and then someone else got in before him. Over and over again he had gone through this disappointing experience, and now he is ready to give up in despair. It is the despairing soul that Jesus loves to meet in grace. He saves the one who admits, “I cannot do anything to deliver myself.”

See how the Lord dealt with this man. “When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he said unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?” A very simple question. He puts it to everyone. Is my reader unsaved? The blessed Lord is saying, “Would you be made whole?” Do you want to find God’s salvation? “Wilt thou be made whole?” Do you want to know the delivering grace of God? What is your answer? Do you want to be made whole?

And now the excerpt from Watchman Nee:
"One summer I was preaching the gospel in the villages with over twenty brothers. The weather was hot, and we could not take our bath indoors. Therefore, we all went to the river to take our bath. While a few brothers were swimming, one brother had a cramp and began to drown. He kicked his limbs frantically and shouted for help. One of the brothers among us was Wei-san Wang, who was very good at swimming. He had served in the navy. I urged him to quickly jump into the water to save the drowning brother. Yet he stood in the same place and would not move. I was quite desperate and somewhat angry at him for loving his own life so much. When the drowning brother was nearly exhausted and sinking, Brother Wang jumped into the water and swam toward him. With one arm around the drowning one's waist and swimming with the other arm, Brother Wang brought him safely to shore. Later I asked Brother Wang, "Why did you not save him earlier? You could have saved him some suffering, and he would not have taken in so much water." He said, "If I had tried to save him earlier, he would have been struggling for his life and would have grabbed on to anything he could have gotten hold of, and both of us would have drowned. There is a secret to saving a drowning man: Do not save anyone who is living and do not save anyone who is dead; only save those who are half dead. Do not save the dead because it is hopeless to save them. Do not save the living, because they are still kicking with their strength. When you approach them, they will hold on to you and neither they nor you will be able to swim, and both will drown. This is why you should save only those who are half dead, those whom you can grab hold of, but who cannot grab hold of you. In this way, you will be safe, and they will be saved."

We are like the man who was drowning. God will only save us after we have exhausted all of our strength. But the problem is that men often try to make it when they know very well that they cannot make it. We pray, make resolutions, and struggle. This makes it impossible for God to save us. We must be like the drowning man who had exhausted all of his strength in struggling and striving; then God will save us. If we are still kicking with our arms and legs and still making up our minds and struggling, we are still trying to make it and are not yet depleted of our strength. God will wait and not do anything. He will wait until we give up trying to save ourselves, and then He will step forward to save us. Therefore, we must not only be clear that we cannot make it, but must also give up trying to make it. Satan loves to see us stepping forward to fight with him. Once we step forward, he wins the victory. His trick is to induce us to move. As soon as we move, he wins. God has to wait until we drop both of our hands and have completely surrendered. Only then will we overcome. This is the meaning of letting go. Letting go is dropping all of our ability and setting aside our own life completely. By acknowledging that we cannot make it and by saying that we have no intention to try to make it, we will overcome."
***ADMIN NOTE: The above quote appears to have come from The Collected Works of Watchman Nee Set 2 Middle Period (1934-1942) LSM 1993

The brother from Watchman Nee's story is from navy so quite possibly he learned this while serving there. But still I find the similarities quite striking.
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[HERn]

Well, preachers have been known to appropriate others’ stories and examples without attribution; so probably no foul in this example. I didn’t see any word-for-word lifting from Ironside into Nee’s paragraph. And it may not be fair to expect authors to cite and acknowledge every minor idea or example they borrow from other authors.

But the claim that Nee lifted most of his material for “The Spiritual Man” from a scholarly sister’s book is probably not ethical behavior on Nee’s part and should be judged so that other leaders learn not to sin in the same way.

Anybody who thinks that one cannot make statements like the above about a spiritual leader plays into the hand of the devil that seeks to lift up and magnify man. The end result of continuous exhalation of man led to a system of error known as The Lord’s Recovery, I think.

[gr8ful]

Watchman Nee was not an academic scholar or a journalist. He was a Christian worker who used publications to get his message out. The standard of plagiarism doesn't apply as strictly to such uses, one could argue -- there is a lot of "borrowing" among Christian teachers.

Some of us helped LSM with the Collected Works of Watchman Nee back in the early 1990s. One way we helped was comparing Watchman Nee's translations of English works into Chinese, which were then translated back to English (why not just include the original English work? Well, there's a nuance in translating that is relevant, so capturing those choices can be of historical interest). There were many such articles that were openly translated from English to Chinese, and it is not a surprise that the practice of applying English sources to one's teaching would happen at other times as well.

More interesting to me is the similarity between C.S Lewis' WWII radio series "Mere Christianity" and W Nee's messages written as "Normal Christian Faith." Both have very similar ideas that seem uniquely constructed -- like C.S. Lewis' "Lord, Liar, Lunatic" construct for describing the Lord Jesus (i.e., he can't be "just a good man").

Anyway, I don't think there's a scandal that W Nee used sources from others in his ministry ("Spiritual Man," aside). Instead, I think it's helpful to acknowledge the heritage that W Nee built his ministry upon openly so that people who currently think there's a unique source to all truths in W Nee and W Lee can see beyond this inaccurate perception and perhaps be freed to receive ministry from others, just as Nee and Lee did.

[Ohio]

H Ironside excerpt from Notes of the Gospel of John:
You have heard of the poor man who fell into the water.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

And now the excerpt from Watchman Nee: "One summer I was preaching the gospel in the villages with over twenty brothers. The weather was hot, and we could not take our bath indoors. Therefore, we all went to the river to take our bath. While a few brothers were swimming, one brother had a cramp and began to drown. He kicked his limbs frantically and shouted for help. One of the brothers among us was Wei-san Wang, who was very good at swimming. He had served in the navy. I urged him to quickly jump into the water to save the drowning brother. Yet he stood in the same place and would not move. I was quite desperate and somewhat angry at him for loving his own life so much.
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Originally Posted by HERn

Well, preachers have been known to appropriate others’ stories and examples without attribution; so probably no foul in this example.

Originally Posted by gr8ful

The standard of plagiarism doesn't apply as strictly to such uses, one could argue -- there is a lot of "borrowing" among Christian teachers... Anyway, I don't think there's a scandal that W Nee used sources from others in his ministry

From the quotes above, we can see that G. H. Lang properly appropriated the story to an unnamed source, in order to make a point about the gospel.

WN, however, made the story all about him, apparently fabricating it into a "real life" story about 20 brothers swimming in a river. I'm not buying the story. It sounds bogus. It doesn't pass the smell test. Think this story through, folks. Reminds me of so many politicians and reporters who are prone to embellishing their stories of "battlefield danger."

Who cannot take baths because it's too hot inside? Take a cool shower -- that's what guys do! Who drowns taking a bath in a river? Surrounded by 19 brothers? All shampooing while Navy Bro watches? Balderdash! How many other stories from WN and WL are like this one?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

And now the excerpt from Watchman Nee:
...Do not save anyone who is living and do not save anyone who is dead; only save those who are half dead. Do not save the dead because it is hopeless to save them. Do not save the living, because they are still kicking with their strength. When you approach them, they will hold on to you and neither they nor you will be able to swim, and both will drown. This is why you should save only those who are half dead, those whom you can grab hold of, but who cannot grab hold of you. In this way, you will be safe, and they will be saved."

We are like the man who was drowning. God will only save us after we have exhausted all of our strength..."

This is just imagination. What did the angel say - "Cornelius - you have exhausted all your strength, now God will save you."?

No, the angel said, "Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial offering before God." Yes God does save the John Newtons of the world, the drunken sea-captains, but God also saves those who try to do good. In fact, the angel said that God would save Cornelius because he was trying to do good. Yes it was vain, but God didn't wait until Cornelius gave up and went and got drunk! No, the Holy Spirit came alongside Cornelius' pathetic and vain efforts to be good, and saved him! Nee takes one instance, spins a tale, perhaps copied, and then makes a generalization: "God will only save us after..." Completely untrue.

And look at what the townspeople said of the Centurion: "He loves our nation and has built us a synagogue." Did Jesus say, "Nope, too much natural strength there"?

Or the story in Galatians 2 about the Jerusalem Pillars telling Paul, "Only, remember the poor"... should Paul have said, "No! Brothers! That's dead works! That's the natural man, doing good!"? No, he said that he was eager to do the very thing. Or later, at the end of Acts, Paul telling Felix, that he'd returned after several years away, bringing alms for his people and to remember the poor. (ESV)

Originally Posted by gr8ful

I don't think there's a scandal that W Nee used sources from others in his ministry ("Spiritual Man," aside). Instead, I think it's helpful to acknowledge the heritage that W Nee built his ministry upon openly....

Even if this hopeful statement were true (and I doubt it is), it would be something like, "Mr Smith was an upstanding citizen of the town... except that day that he went down and robbed the Savings and Loan at gunpoint. Other than that, he was a pretty good neighbour to all." And I daresay that the truth is more likely that Nee and Lee were serial plagiarizers. There wasn't enough room in their imaginations, so they borrowed from others' imaginings.

And Spiritual Man alone showed that Nee was a plagiarizer of the first order.

Nigel Tomes in Toronto once wrote an essay on Lee's extensive appropriations. And I doubt WL fell far from his tree. Rather, he imitated well his master.

Originally Posted by NTomes

LSM’s PLAGIARISM—
An Initial Inquiry

Example 3: The Prodigal Son ate “carob pods,” Luke 15:161
The third example is the “carob pods” the Prodigal ate in the parable. The Recovery Version says,
The carob is an evergreen tree. Its pod…was used…to feed animals and destitute persons. An interesting rabbinical saying is that “when the Israelites are reduced to carob pods, then they repent.” A tradition says that John the Baptist fed on carob pods in the wilderness; hence they are called “St. John’s bread.” [RcV., Luke 15:16,1 emphasis added. Also in Life-study of Luke, Message #34, p. 293]
The corresponding section of Vincent’s Word Studies says,
Carob pods…It is also called Saint John’s bread, from a tradition that the Baptist fed upon its fruit in the wilderness. Edersheim quotes a Jewish saying, “When Israel is reduced to the carob-tree, they become repentant.” [Vincent, Word Studies in the N.T., vol. 1, pp. 386-7, emphasis added]
The two sources present the same three pieces of information about carob pods. [1] Tradition says John the Baptist ate carob pods in the wilderness, [2] hence it’s called Saint John’s bread, and [3] a Jewish rabbinical says, “when the Israelites are reduced to carob pods, then they repent.” The sequence of the three points differs, yet their content is essentially the same. If LSM’s note was the product of primary research, independent of Vincent, the vocabulary and syntax would be significantly different. It is not. This suggests LSM has paraphrased Vincent’s Word Studies; yet they don’t cite him. They could have quoted Vincent verbatim, referencing him as the author, or indicated they had paraphrased his work.

That was precisely my point Ohio. Thank you for explaining it so well.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

That was precisely my point Ohio. Thank you for explaining it so well.

Thanks for pointing it out.

I have said before that my biggest failure when I was in the Recovery was trusting the brothers too much. Trust should be earned and not just given over because someone demanded it.

"Test all things, hold on to what is good." I Thess 5.21

[aron]

Originally Posted by aron

This is just imagination. What did the angel say - "Cornelius - you have exhausted all your strength, now God will save you."?

No, the he said, "Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial offering before God."

It is probably not insignificant that the first gentile called in the NT to believe into Jesus wasn't a drunken sea captain but one of Paul's prototypical "God-fearers" who received the gospel in the back rows of the synagogue meetings.

Acts 13:26 “Fellow children of Abraham and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this message of salvation has been sent."

Here is Acts 10:At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God. About the ninth hour of the day he saw clearly in a vision an angel of God come in and say to him, “Cornelius.” And he stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter."

Here's someone praying, not by the indwelling mingled seven-fold intensified spirit of the Processed Triune God, but praying nonetheless. Doing his best, praying to God. Now, once he was converted to the faith, and received the truth, do you think that he stopped praying, and giving alms, rejecting that "natural effort"? Or that he now rather prayed "intensified indwelling mingling" prayers, deeming his previous efforts useless? If his previous efforts were useless, why did the angel tell him that his prayers had ascended as a memorial?

The stories by Ironside, Lang and Pember are okay - the Bible does have a cripple lying by the pool, helpless, for years. The gospel narrative does have a woman with an uncured flow of blood, all her money gone by doctors who couldn't save her. There's a lesson to learn. But to draw out some one-size-fits-all generalization like Nee and Lee, and from personal anecdote (whether real or 'borrowed') is wrong: "We must see that we all are 'x' ". Even worse, for everyone who's helped by N & L there are four or five more who are damaged, marred. "The oracle of God has spoken, this is now the spiritual reality." Today you see the devoted 'ministry' acolytes in this state of perpetual spiritual infancy, never maturing, going to meeting after training after conference, years becoming decades, always testifying, "Oh, I never saw this point". And they chalk up their years of fruitlessness to not seeing some phrase in a footnote! They've been to 2,000 meetings but they never quite got it!

The rest simply give up. What happens, after trying the Nee & Lee programme, the latest New Way, the person eventually thinks, "Why should I bother? All my self-efforts are vain". So they sink into addiction or worldliness, resigned to a thousand years in darkness. Because, why try? They end up in passivity, ennui, feeling that everything doesn't work, and God never shows up any more. Going to a meeting and shouting slogans in the face of an empty and untransformed condition is a sad joke. It didn't work before, why should it work now? God hasn't shown up. So they quit trying.

But that's my point. Cornelius didn't quit. The blind beggar didn't quit. "Jesus! Son of David! Have mercy!" These people in the gospels and Acts didn't function by the mingled and mystical inner life of Spiritual Man. But they functioned anyway. Nee and Lee are clearly over-reaching.

Can you see what happens? What if the Samaritan had paused, looked over at the poor beat-up fool, and thought, "If I go over there to try to help, am I in my natural man?" It breeds introspection, passivity, hesitation, eventual resignation. God asks you to love. Don't worry if your love is natural or spiritual. Maybe it's feeble... just love. Do your best, and God will honour that as a memorial. Even if your [self] efforts are vain, God's response will not be vain. The Paraclete will come alongside, and you'll know real love.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by aron

It is probably not insignificant that the first gentile called in the NT to believe into Jesus wasn't a drunken sea captain but one of Paul's prototypical "God-fearers" who received the gospel in the back rows of the synagogue meetings.

Nice catch, aron. Great points.

Reading Nee's story, it seemed as if alcoholic anonymous' saying "must hit rock bottom first" had infected the gospel of grace.

Please take a moment and look at this thread from the big picture.

Watchman Nee, arguably a martyr, is well-respected interdenominationally.

But on this forum he is a plagiarist, based upon the flimsiest of evidence.

Who among us has not appropriated a story and retold it with embellishments, perhaps even narrating it in the first person?

What purpose does this thread serve? What is the expected response from a visitor to this forum?

[UntoHim]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Please take a moment and look at this thread from the big picture.

My friend, many of us here in the West have been taking great pains to "look at the big picture" of the life and times and ministry of Watchman Nee for decades. This endeavor has been greatly hampered because of all the obfuscations and outright hiding the true facts of history related to Nee. Much of the obfuscation and hiding has been done by Mr. Witness Lee. And to be sure, the more closer the "picture" comes into focus, the worse it looks for Nee T'o-sheng ( 倪柝聲 )

Watchman Nee, arguably a martyr, is well-respected interdenominationally.

So was Ravi Zacharias.

But on this forum he is a plagiarist, based upon the flimsiest of evidence.

So say you. I would hardly call the 370+ pages of My Unforgettable Memories: Watchman Nee and Shanghai Local Church by Dr. Lily Hsu "the flimsiest of evidence". And she is not alone in testifying to the gross and despicable sins of Watchman Nee. God willing, many more will come forward before it's too late.

Who among us has not appropriated a story and retold it with embellishments, perhaps even narrating it in the first person?

Dr. Hsu did not simply "appropriate" a story, she lived it. I have absolutely no doubts that there are some embellishments, exaggerations and even some inaccuracies in Hsu's presentation, but there is far too much collaborating evidence that Watchman Nee was at some level a fraud. Trust me, this is a very hard thing for someone like me who was a devout follower of of Nee and Lee for decades to admit. Sometimes the truth hurts.

What purpose does this thread serve? What is the expected response from a visitor to this forum?

Well, the opening post was concerning Nee's plagiarism. Unfortunately, plagiarism was just "the tip of the iceberg". As far as the expected responses, well, as expected, they have been varied. No surprise there, right?

***Please take a moment and register for the forum by sending an email to Reg4LCD@Gmail.Com and be sure to include your desired UserName.

[Ohio]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Please take a moment and look at this thread from the big picture.

Watchman Nee, arguably a martyr, is well-respected interdenominationally.

But on this forum he is a plagiarist, based upon the flimsiest of evidence.

Who among us has not appropriated a story and retold it with embellishments, perhaps even narrating it in the first person?

What purpose does this thread serve? What is the expected response from a visitor to this forum?

Witness Lee canonized WN in the Recovery. No one else, besides him, has elevated WN to such a lofty position. Because WL has been caught lying on so many other occasions, should we not rightfully examine his hagiography of WN?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Watchman Nee, arguably a martyr, is well-respected interdenominationally.

As far as being a martyr, he spent 20 years in prison, after confessing in court to producing and holding pornography. But a lot of people went into Chinese Communist Jails in the 1950s.

Question: if Nee didn't produce and have pornographic home movies, why did he confess in court to doing so?

Either he lied to save his skin, and get a lesser punishment (life in prison versus death), or he told the truth. Either way he doesn't come off too well. The documentation of what happened to the church after they heard him confess is known. If he spoke something irrelevant at an irrelevant show trial, why did this speaking shipwreck the faith of so many who'd followed him?

And this after his hand-picked elders expelled him for the same thing! Either he did a very bad job of picking elders, or they knew something. And as UntoHim points out, Ravi Zacharias was well-respected internationally, until the truth came out.

Watchman Nee looks great until you start to look closely. And the more closely you look, the worse it gets.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

But on this forum he is a plagiarist, based upon the flimsiest of evidence.

If you read the Second Edition of the Spiritual Man book, his publisher's Foreword acknowledges that Nee took extensive portions of Jessie Penn-Lewis and passed it off as his own. Did he realize what he was doing? I don't know, but in the preface Nee repeatedly calls it "my work", so I wonder what the possessive pronoun translated "my" means in Chinese. Maybe his conscience really was untrammeled. But maybe Witness Lee's conscience was also unbothered when he hit up his captive churches for hundreds of thousands of dollars for his son's Motor Home business.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Who among us has not appropriated a story and retold it with embellishments, perhaps even narrating it in the first person?

See quote below

Originally Posted by Friedel

When it suited Witness Lee, he liked using only those parts of any situation he truly liked, preferring to leave out the pieces he didn’t like, thereby creating a super clean image of himself. He was the great master builder of his own deception.

Appropriating stories, embellishments thereof, insinuating oneself into the center, doesn't seem like Christian Witness to me.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

What purpose does this thread serve? What is the expected response from a visitor to this forum?

The more of Watchman Nee is seen, the worse he looks. If you read the accounts of the witnesses like Don Hardy, Friedel Hansen, Bill Mallon, John Ingalls and Don Rutledge you get a broader picture. And this thread is consistent with that.

[tentmaker]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Please take a moment and look at this thread from the big picture.

Watchman Nee, arguably a martyr, is well-respected interdenominationally.

But on this forum he is a plagiarist, based upon the flimsiest of evidence.

Who among us has not appropriated a story and retold it with embellishments, perhaps even narrating it in the first person?

What purpose does this thread serve? What is the expected response from a visitor to this forum?

I too endeavor to see things from, as you say, the big picture. I have been following this thread for the past few weeks in the matter of potential plagiarism in the writing of the book “The Spiritual Man”. The following is a quotation taken from the preface of that book, pgs. 11-12.

“I am not the first to advocate the teaching of the dividing of spirit and soul. Andrew Murray once said that what the church and individuals have to dread is the inordinate activity of the soul with its power of mind and will. F.B. Meyer declared that had he not known about the dividing of spirit and soul, he could not have imagined what his spiritual life would have been. Many others, such as Otto Stockmayer, Jessie Penn-Lewis, Evan Roberts, Madam Guyon, have given the same testimony. I have used their writings freely since we all have received the same commission from the Lord, therefore I have decided to forego notating their many references.” “Shanghai, Watchman Nee, June 4, 1927”.

According to Wikipedia, Watchman Nee was born November 3, 1903, and according to the date given in the preface of TSM he would be just 23 years old at the point of writing. If you read through the entire preface, he seems to indicate and consider himself to be a teacher and leader at this juncture of his life. The following 231 pages of the three volume book (my copy) seem to be written with that same general attitude and disposition, in my opinion. He mentions above, five different authors to whom he used their “many references” to include in the TSM. It is impossible to know “who said what”, and what WN “had on his own”, throughout the book. Was WN a plagiarist? Well, he did come right out and credit a few people, along with saying “many others” in the writing of. Can you imagine taking this charge to a court in 1927 China for plagiarism? WN seemed okay with it. Things have changed significantly near 100 years later haven’t they? But today, if you have this attitude (highlighted in the above WN quote) with many publishing house books and materials you may or will get yourself spanked, or sued, if you know what I mean.

I had not thought of this matter in this way, in the big picture, until this OP. I thought it important to provide the quote.