Sunday, April 10, 2022

Continuation of Previous Post About Watchman Nee

Computer won't let me post much in one place so I'm making a separate post out of this.

Later. Well, no, I don't think I'll be listening again to Nee, oh maybe once. the thing is he's powerfully cerebral and that is an entirely different spirit from Tozer's which is of the heart more than the mind. The more I listen to Tozer the deeper is my feeling of love, adoration, worship toward God. That happens to some extent with Nee but much less. I learn a lot from Nee though, but it's an entirelyh different kind of experience.

As an aside I want to mention that I'm always happy to find anyone who tackles the interpretation of the Song of Solomon, speaking of writing that aims at the heart. I don't even give a second thought to the preachers who treat the Song of Songs as a poem to marital love and there are many of those. To my mind that is a carnal level of interpretation. If it's not about the love of God and the love of God toward the believer or the Church it's an empty mental exercise. The theme of adoring love between God and believer is only touched on here and there in scripture but it is enough to pique the interest of anyone for whom that is the main point of the Christian life. It many not be many of us but there are alsways some who are looking for this experience. it is the theme of those called the mystics, or most of them. I think there are some cerebral mystics but most of them seek the Person of God in rapturaous adoration. "As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so pateth my soul after thee, Oh Lord."

Nee is one of those who has written an interpretation of the Song of Songs so I found a copy onkline and listened to some of it with the "reead aloud" function of my computer. As one might expect of him he is more thorough in his approach than others are, takes it verse by verse and makes connections between them at some length and so on. But for me it lacks that passion of love that I e must be the whole reason for the Song or it is mea ningless. In my opinionj. When Nee describes the relationship between the King and the Shulamite as "fellowship" when he brings her into the secret chamber under the banner of love I wonder at his seeming obtuseness. I stopped listening after only a few verses.

I have yet to find anyone who has explored the Song of Songs as I would like it to be explored. What Iv'e found is that those who have tried have a habit of making pronouncements about what its various symbols and figures of speech mean, and I doubt many of them agree with each other on any of them though they all have a habit of making flat pronouncements about what they mean. Nee does that too. Surely those symbols and figures are ambigfuous enough to defy such certainties. Anyway it's frustrating. I'm still hoping to find a commentator who does it justice in my opinion. Someone who illuminate the core of throbbing love in it.

It is that in Tozer's "Pursuit of God' that brings me back to it again and again, always to find some previously unnoticed word or phrase that contributes to the message of adoration of GGod.

But Nee in the video above does bring out meanings concerning salvation and sancitification that Are very useful so I still think it worth listening to.l