Of all the works I have read, both from conservative and liberal, inspired and uninspired, you are the only one I have seen to say that Jesus was immoral in any way. You are unique, AFAIK.

Unless you can find some quote in the Bible or SOP that say Jesus was immoral, I must conclude that you have strayed from His teaching in our past.

Amen! Here are a few more pointed quotes:

In your letter in regard to the temptations of Christ, you say: "If He was One with God He could not fall." . . . The point you inquire of me is, In our Lord's great scene of conflict in the wilderness, apparently under the power of Satan and his angels, was He capable, in His human nature, of yielding to these temptations? {3SM 129.2}

I will try to answer this important question: As God He could not be tempted: but as a man He could be tempted, and that strongly, and could yield to the temptations. His human nature must pass through the same test and trial Adam and Eve passed through. His human nature was created; it did not even possess the angelic powers. It was human, identical with our own. He was passing over the ground where Adam fell. He was now where, if He endured the test and trial in behalf of the fallen race, He would redeem Adam's disgraceful failure and fall, in our own humanity. {3SM 129.3}

Christ's perfect humanity is the same that man may have through connection with Christ. As God, Christ could not be tempted any more than He was not tempted from His allegiance in heaven. But as Christ humbled Himself to the nature of man, He could be tempted. He had not taken on Him even the nature of the angels, but humanity, perfectly identical with our own nature, except without the taint of sin. A human body, a human mind, with all the peculiar properties, He was bone, brain, and muscle. A man of our flesh, He was compassed with the weakness of humanity. The circumstances of His life were of that character that He was exposed to all the inconveniences that belong to men, not in wealth, not in ease, but in poverty and want and humiliation. He breathed the very air man must breathe. He trod our earth as man. He had reason, conscience, memory, will, and affections of the human soul which was united with His divine nature. {16MR 181.4}

Our Lord was tempted as man is tempted. He was capable of yielding to temptations, as are human beings. His finite nature was pure and spotless, but the divine nature that led Him to say to Philip, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" also, was not humanized; neither was humanity deified by the blending or union of the two natures; each retained its essential character and properties. {16MR 182.1}

But here we must not become in our ideas common and earthly, and in our perverted ideas we must not think that the liability of Christ to yield to Satan's temptations degraded His humanity and He possessed the same sinful, corrupt propensities as man. {16MR 182.2}

The divine nature, combined with the human, made Him capable of yielding to Satan's temptations. Here the test to Christ was far greater than that of Adam and Eve, for Christ took our nature, fallen but not corrupted, and would not be corrupted unless He received the words of Satan in the place of the words of God. To suppose He was not capable of yielding to temptation places Him where He cannot be a perfect example for man, and the force and the power of this part of Christ's humiliation, which is the most eventful, is no instruction or help to human beings. {16MR 182.3}

PS - What did Ellen mean when she wrote (quoted above) - ". . . we must not think that the liability of Christ to yield to Satan's temptations degraded His humanity and He possessed the same sinful, corrupt propensities as man."

You've ignored my last post: Jesus' flesh was inclined to sin, therefore sinful, so basically immoral, except he never accepted it...so save your exasperation and deal with that SOP quote.

The following quote explains just how "identical" Jesus was like us and how we are like Him. Jesus became like us to prove it is possible for us to be like Him.

We are ever to be thankful that Jesus has proved to us by actual facts that man can keep the commandments of God, giving contradiction to Satan's falsehood that man cannot keep them. The Great Teacher came to our world to stand at the head of humanity, to thus elevate and sanctify humanity by His holy obedience to all of God's requirements showing it is possible to obey all the commandments of God. He has demonstrated that a lifelong obedience is possible. Thus He gives chosen, representative men to the world, as the Father gave the Son, to exemplify in their life the life of Jesus Christ. {3SM 139.2}

We need not place the obedience of Christ by itself as something for which He was particularly adapted, by His particular divine nature, for He stood before God as man's representative and tempted as man's substitute and surety. If Christ had a special power which it is not the privilege of man to have, Satan would have made capital of this matter. The work of Christ was to take from the claims of Satan his control of man, and He could do this only in the way that He came--a man, tempted as a man, rendering the obedience of a man. . . . {3SM 139.3}

Bear in mind that Christ's overcoming and obedience is that of a true human being. In our conclusions, we make many mistakes because of our erroneous views of the human nature of our Lord. When we give to His human nature a power that it is not possible for man to have in his conflicts with Satan, we destroy the completeness of His humanity. His imputed grace and power He gives to all who receive Him by faith. The obedience of Christ to His Father was the same obedience that is required of man. {3SM 139.4}

Man cannot overcome Satan's temptations without divine power to combine with His instrumentality. So with Jesus Christ, He could lay hold of divine power. He came not to our world to give the obedience of a lesser God to a greater, but as a man to obey God's Holy Law, and in this way He is our example. {3SM 140.1}

I never said Jesus' humanity was amoral. I would say it was moral. Colin, in saying Christ's humanity was immoral was clearly referring to Christ's assumed sinful nature, which is using the term "humanity" differently that Ellen White did, but Colin's intent is easy to discern.

Colin did not say Jesus was immoral. The human nature which Christ assumed is called our "sinful nature." It's also called human nature, "degraded and defiled by sin." Obviously this is what Colin is talking about. For Christ to be immoral, He would have had to do something immoral, and Colin has not in the least suggested this.

Colin mentioned Zurcher's book a couple of times. It's an excellent book. Have you read it?

Tom,

Colin said, "Jesus' flesh was inclined to sin, therefore sinful, so basically immoral..." I think I'll take his word over yours. I assume he knows better what he's thinking.

No, I haven't read Zurcher's book. I haven't been able to find it. But I hear it is detailed account of what SDAs believed. But since I'm neither a conservative nor an apologist, I have lost interest in it. Rather than discovering or defending what we used to believe, I prefer discovering and disseminating what we should believe. And I search for that in authoritative sources.

Arnold, you may take Tom's word for what I wrote, as I approve of it.

Also, your search in authoritative sources for what we should believe is doomed to frustration. Zurcher is/was (I fear he has passed away) as official as Arnold Wallenkampf - both members of the GC BRI, Zurcher at the Euro-Africa Division in Bern. That he could document a change in our theology, confirmed by Kenneth Wood - who wrote the foreword of the English translation of the French, which change altered our soteriology, renders our authoritative sources subject to comparison with what went before 1980, 1950...

Or do you look at authoritative going back to 1846?...Is EGW authoritative? - that quote?...

How about simply being interested in investigating the truth? The truth has nothing to fear from investigation.

Why should one need to be a conservative or an apologist to be interested in what SDAs believed? Ellen White was an SDA! It's just not intellectually viable to ignore the testimony of history when investigating truth.

Ellen White, for example, endorsed a post-lapsarian sermon as "truth separated from error." This is part of the historical record.

One can't simply cherry pick one's favorite quotes. Both sides of any disagreement tend to be guilty of this. Investigating the historical context in which debated statements were made can resolve the controversy. Everyone agrees Ellen White did not contradict herself. How do we explain, if not by considering the historical context, the seeming contradictions in such sources as the Baker letter and quotes like the one Colin has been asking you about:



Or this well-known one:



What are the results shown in the history of Christ's earthly ancestors? Adultery, prostitution, murder; every sort of vice and sin. This was the heredity which Christ accepted, like all the rest of us. Ellen White's reasoning here is nearly identical to Waggoner's in the 1901 GCB where he argued against the teaching of the Holy Flesh.

Ellen White's strongest statements regarding the human nature of Christ were in the context of arguing against the Holy Flesh movement. For example, she wrote, in this context, that Christ's human nature was "degraded and defiled by sin."

An interesting thing to note in regards to the Holy Flesh heresy is how the SDA's of the time chose to meet it. As S. N. Haskell characterized the teaching:



Now if someone like you, for example, were to meet this error, you would simply point out that it was wrong because we keep our sinful natures until Christ's return. You wouldn't argue that the Holy Flesh people were wrong because Christ took the nature of Adam after the fall. But this is how the SDA's of the time argued, including Ellen White!

That Ellen White was a part of this is very significant. Ellen White stated the following:



Her integrity would be zilch if she believed the argument of S. N. Haskell's and the others meeting the Holy Flesh ideas were unsound, which is exactly what the position you are taking in regards to her teachings regarding Christ's human nature would require.