What were the problems in the experience of Pastor W. L. H. Baker that called forth the letter of counsel from Ellen White?
In regard to the practical professional counsel that occupied the major portion of the letter, we need not speculate, because she wrote to Baker:
You were cast down and feeling discouraged ... You are considering your work as almost a failure ...
But Ellen White's interpreters apparently felt that her two and a half pages of Christological counsel to Baker did not include an adequate statement of the problem, so they ventured to supply one for her. In essence it would be:
You have been mistaken in believing that Christ came to earth in the human nature of fallen man.
I am suggesting that this endeavor, however well meaning, was quite unnecessary. I find Ellen White's own statement of the problem abundantly clear and satisfactory. She wrote:
Let every human be warned away from the ground of making Christ altogether human, such an one as ourselves.
Let us try to fully internalize this statement, taking care that no eisegesis (putting our meaning into the text) is mingled with our exegesis (getting the writer's meaning from the text.) These points would appear to be beyond question:
a. The message is intended as a warning.
b. The warning, although primarily addressed to Baker, is widened to include "every human being."
c. The subject matter of the warning is Christology, the doctrine of Christ.
d. The warning is not limited by its wording to either the human nature of Christ or the divine nature of Christ. The writer is speaking of Christ in His totality, the complete Christ, the entire Christ, the divine-human Saviour who is both God and man. This is made clear by the wording of the sentence itself, and by the context, in which care is urged lest we
... lose or dim the clear perceptions of His humanity as combined with divinity.
e. The specific content of the warning is that we be careful to not present Christ to the people as
1. Altogether human,
2. Such an one as ourselves.
This warning closely follows statements that Christ's birth was a miracle of God, and that the Bible description of Christ as the Son of God cannot be applied to any human being other than Christ.
Need we point out that there is no room for a divine nature in a Christ who is altogether human?
Need we point out that there is no room for a divine nature in a Christ who in His totality is such an one as ourselves?
Why do we have difficulty in recognizing that Ellen White's warning to Baker was to take care lest his strong emphasis on the humanity of Christ cause his hearers to lose sight of the equally important divinity of Christ, and to draw the conclusion that there could have been sin in the life of Christ? (Let us not forget that this warning is accompanied by not less than ten strong affirmations that Christ never sinned, not even once. See previous chapter.)
Is our hesitancy to accept the obvious meaning of the writer's warning because we cannot conceive of any Christian believing that there could have been sin in the life of Christ?
Actually there have been a great many Christians who have believed that there could have been sin in the life of Christ. They have been generally classified into two groups:
A. The so-called Modernists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (This term has largely fallen into disuse and has been replaced by the more general term Liberal.) They taught that scientific advances had made the Biblical record of the miraculous birth of Christ untenable, and saw Christ as simply a great and good man, not the Son of God. They would not hesitate to concede the possibility of sin in the life of Christ (unless they also denied the reality of sin, as some did.) These people were vigorously opposed by the Adventist leaders of their time as well as by other conservative Christians. They were seen as among the worst enemies of Christ and the gospel. It would be difficult to conceive of Baker being continued in the Adventist ministry if he had espoused the doctrines of the Modernists.
B. The Adoptionists of earlier church history. These were a significant body of Christians who believed that Christ began His earthly life as a being who was altogether human, such an one as ourselves, but who was eventually adopted to become the Son of God. They would not have been concerned about sin in the life of Christ during the period before His adoption. Their opinions are found in the writings of the church Fathers, about which Ellen White cautioned Baker.
My analysis of the Baker letter, presented in the next few pages, has led me to the conclusion that Adoptionism was the error against which Ellen White was warning Baker. It appears to me that the construction placed upon this letter by Ellen White's interpreters is entirely artificial and alien, a construction which can only be made by ignoring Ellen White's own clear statement of the problem.
* * *
It is common knowledge that the pioneers of the Adventist church came from a wide variety of religious and theological backgrounds, and that after the great disappointment of 1844 they devoted much time and study to the development of a platform of Bible truth upon which they could unite . In their early Bible conferences they reached a common understanding of the nature of God, the nature of man, the Sabbath, justification by faith, etc. They did not, however, successfully resolve all of their different understandings of the nature of Christ.
Arianism
As late as the turn of the century there were still a few voices among us which were advocating in various ways limited views of the divinity of Christ.[l] These views, generally speaking, fell within the category of what theologians have called Arianism, after a certain Arius who strongly advocated similar opinions in the great Christological controversies of the fourth century.[2]
According to Arius, and those who followed his thinking, Christ had not co-existed with the Father throughout all eternity, but had been created by the Father at some point in time before the history of the world. Christ was seen as the greatest and highest of God's created beings. Thus He was not "Very God of Very God, " but a lower and lesser form of deity.
Ellen White did not use the technical term Arianism, but she did testify to the eternal deity of Christ in her great The Desire of Ages in such a way that the specific Christological errors of Arianism were unmistakably refuted.[3] Thus:
From the days of eternity the Lord Jesus Christ was one with the Father. ... (page 19)
The name of God, given to Moses to express the idea of the eternal presence, had been claimed as His own by this Galilean Rabbi. He had announced Himself to be the self-existent one. ... (page 469)
In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived. (page 530)
In the light of this clear testimony the Arian Christological errors gradually faded away, and it is doubtful that there are any Seventh-day Adventist Bible students who now believe that Christ was a created being.
Adoptionism
In like manner, without identifying the Christological error by its specific technical name, Ellen White found occasion to refute the principles of Adoptionism. This was a view that Christ was not the Son of God at birth, nor during the first phase of His earthly life, but became the Son of God by adoption. This idea was taught in Rome during the years 189-199 by a leather merchant from Byzantium named Theodotus:[4] It was developed and amplified by Paul of Samosata who served as bishop of Antioch from 260 to 269. Because of Paul's strong influence, the opinion became quite popular in the eastern churches and in the Armenian churches, where it was held for centuries.[5] In the eighth century it was advocated among the we stern churches by Elipandus of Spain.[6]
Although there were nuances of difference in the views of individual Adoptionists, there were three basic opinions that were generally shared. Ellen White's response to and refutation of these opinions is found not only in The Desire of Ages but also in a personal testimony to W. L. H. Baker, a pastor who was laboring in the Tasmanian district while Ellen White was living in Australia and working on the manuscript for The Desire of Ages.[7]
In this interesting letter we find (1) a warning to Pastor Baker about spending too much time in reading, (2) a caution against accepting the traditions of the Fathers (a term which when capitalized as in the letter, is understood to refer to the church Fathers) and (3) a warning about teaching speculative theories that would not be of benefit to the church members. She also presents a specific, point-by-point refutation of the errors of Adoptionism.
1 - Adoptionist view: Jesus was not the Son of God at birth. He was born of a woman as all men are. Though He may have been born of a virgin, this fact would have had no theological significance. He was born as a son of man, not as the Son of God.
Ellen White wrote to Baker:
But Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God ... His birth was a miracle of God; for, said the angel, "Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing that shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."
These words do not refer to any human being, except to the Son of the Infinite God. Letter 68, 1895.
2 - Adoptionist view: Jesus was not the Son of God during the first phase of His earthly existence. He was a normal human being with exalted concepts of purity and holiness, toward which He strove heroically, but He was in no sense divine. During this phase of His existence, since He was altogether and exclusively human, He would have had the same propensities of sin, and taints of corruption, that all humans have. He could have even been overcome by temptation and actually sinned. None of these things, in view of His continuing heroic struggle to achieve holiness, would have disqualified Him to become the adopted Son of God at the climax of His spiritual progress. Paul of Samosata expressed it like this:
Mary did not bring forth the Word, for Mary was not before the ages. But she brought forth a man on a level with ourselves.[8]
Ellen White wrote to Baker:
... let every human being be warned from the ground of making Christ altogether human, such an one as ourselves; for it cannot be.
Never, in any way, leave the slightest impression upon human minds that a taint of, or inclination to, corruption rested upon Christ, or that He in any way yielded to corruption.
Do not set Him before the people as a man with the propensities of sin.
He could have sinned, He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity. (Ibid.)
This interesting expression, "not for one moment" would seem to indicate that Ellen White was recoiling in horror from the above stated view of the Adoptionists. Perhaps they could contemplate with equanimity the possibility of evil propensities, corruption, or even sin in Christ's early life, but she could not. This appears to be her chief concern in the letter to Pastor Baker. In it she affirms repeatedly that Christ did not sin, mentioning it a total of ten times, and carefully ruling out the possibility of even a single yielding to temptation on His part.
On not one occasion was there a response to his (Satan's) manifold temptations. (Ibid.)
3 - Adoptionist view: As a result of His heroic struggles to achieve holiness, Jesus was eventually adopted to be the Son of God. There were different opinions as to when this happened. Some saw it as a gradual process, others felt that it happened at the baptism of Jesus, and still others at His resurrection. After His adoption, humanity was blended with divinity.
Ellen White wrote to Baker:
The exact time when humanity blended with divinity, it is not necessary for us to know. (Ibid.)
In addition to this precise and specific rejection of the errors of Adoptionism in her letter to Pastor Baker, Ellen White expanded on the themes of the divinity and pre-existence of Christ as well as His complete sinlessness throughout His entire life in The Desire of Ages.
Some have studied the letter from Ellen White to Pastor Baker, and, perhaps because of a lack of familiarity with the specific Christological errors of Adoptionism that she was so forcefully rejecting, have had difficulty with the expression
... not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity.
Some have seen in this an evidence that she believed that Christ assumed in His incarnation the nature of Adam before his fall. Others, comparing it with her comments on that subject in The Desire of Ages, have drawn the unfortunate conclusion that she talked on both sides of that particular question. Neither conclusion is required by the evidence. Once it is recognized that the Baker letter is a point-by-point refutation of Adoption ism, which Pastor Baker had apparently become involved in through his reading of the church Fathers, her line of reasoning in that letter becomes crystal clear. And we are certainly not required to use a fragment from a personal letter to a Tasmanian pastor to offset her statements about the human nature of Christ as found in The Des ire of Ages, which is clearly her conscious and deliberate Christological position paper addressed to the whole world. To do this would be questionable hermeneutics, to say the least.
As to the human nature of Christ, Ellen White, consciously departing from Reformation Christology, takes the same position that the Swiss theologian Karl Barth does, and for the same reason. Compare:
Karl Barth:
Flesh (which the Word became) is the concrete form of human nature marked by Adam's fall. ...
But there must be no weakening or obscuring of the saving truth that the nature which God assumed in Christ is identical with our nature as we see it in the light of the fall. If it were otherwise, how could Christ be really like us? What concern would we have with Him?
... Jesus did not run away from the state and situation of fallen man, but He took it upon Himself, lived it and bore it Himself as the Eternal Son of God.[9]
Ellen White:
It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin.[10]
And in order to elevate fallen man, Christ must reach him where he was. He took human nature, and bore the infirmities and degeneracy of the race.[11]
In taking upon Himself man's nature in its fallen condition, Christ did not in the least participate in its sin.[12]
It is this writer's conclusion that a careful use of correct hermeneutical principles would make it impossible to use the Baker letter to offset the book The Desire of Ages. A comparison of the human nature of Christ with the nature of Adam before the fall as distinct from the nature of man after the fall simply was not the purpose of the writer. She was apparently responding to the needs of an entirely different problem, Pastor Baker's unfortunate involvement with the Christological errors of Adoptionism.
And the evidence certainly does not require that we accuse Ellen White of talking on both sides of the question about the human nature of Christ. When proper hermeneutical principles are applied, her writings on that subject are clear, consistent, and unequivocal. Any and all attempts to draw a line of demarcation between Christ's human nature and our human nature must be shattered by this simple yet profoundly meaningful statement:
Just that which you may be He was in human nature.[13]
Notes: