No they didn't. I went through the time line. Haskell immediately pointed out that flaw in the HF idea regarding Christ's human nature, and Jones continued with the Review articles, and Waggoner continued at the GC session.

If you wish to assert "the opposite is true," you should at least provide some evidence to support your point of view, rather than just asserting it.



If this is clear, you should be able to quote something to this effect from Donnell. Please do so.



Clearly there was opposition. I quoted clear opposition from Haskell. This is right from the beginning.

The emphasis on translation faith and perfection of holiness is fine; Ellen White emphasizes this as well.





This is perfection of character in the flesh. Perfection of the flesh is the problem.



Saying there is not a fabric of truth in the whole fabric has to mean something, Rosangela. You can't make this mean "I agree with the HF people on the point that is being most contested."

Don't you think it's odd that you side with Donnell and Davis and disagree with Prescott, Jones, Waggoner and Haskell? I don't understand how you can think they (the HF people) were right and the others were wrong, nor how you can think Ellen White agreed with the HF people and disagreed with the others, given not only that Ellen White stated that there wasn't a thread of truth in the whole fabric, but actually endorsed the specific theology of the postlapsarians.

Let's take a look again at the argument of the HF people:



Here are the points:
1.Christ took Adam's nature before the fall.
2.We must become holy in the same sense, for then we will have "translation faith."

What's the root of the argument? That Christ had sinless flesh. Now let's compare this to what Prescott taught: Christ bore exactly the same flesh that we bear, flesh of sin, flesh in which we sin, but flesh in which He did not sin.



Sure. I'll just quote from Donnell.







You agree with all this, don't you?

You've made the same argument Donnell made:

1.Christ had no tendencies to sin (even hereditary ones)
2.We must eradicate all our tendencies to sin (including hereditary ones) to be like Christ.

Same ideas, same logic; almost the same words.

On the other hand, here's what Haskell said:



Prescott:





But you don't believe this. Maybe this is part of the confusion.



This is what "sinful flesh" is, flesh with "all the tendencies to sin that in our flesh."

You can't separate tendencies to sin from sinful flesh. If you look at the writings of all the "old guys," they all emphasize this. To deny that sinful flesh includes tendencies to sin and assert agreement that Jesus Christ had sinful flesh is rather disingenuous, as this would be giving a private definition to a term which is widely understood. This is particularly the case in reference to Prescott, who didn't have your idea in mind at all when he asserted that Christ had exactly the same flesh that we bear.



Here's the point of contention, again:







The first quote is Donnell, with whom you agree, and the second is Haskell, and then Waggoner (at the 1901 GC session, where the HF movement was dealt its death blow).

The issue that was disagreed about, in terms of Christology, was whether or not Christ had tendencies, or inclinations, to sin in His flesh. Again, if you wish to postulate some other Christological area of disagreement, please present some evidence; quote something from the "old guys" which discusses your idea of the contention.



This is such an utterly false argument from a logical standpoint, it should be easy to see. All one can conclude from her statement was that she, in this statement, wasn't dealing with the issue of fallen vs. unfallen nature. But she dealt with this issue on many occasions. In the same article(!) she emphasized that Christ did not come with the nature of Adam before the fall, but with the nature of Adam after the fall.

Let's say I say "John and I are from the same country." Your reasoning above would conclude, "It's not important to Tom that he and John are from different states." That's not a warranted conclusion. All you can conclude is that being from different states wasn't something I focused on in my statement.

That having hereditary tendencies to sin was important to Ellen White is easily inferred from the following:



as well as DA 49, which tells us that Christ accepted the law of heredity in order to share in our sorrows and temptations.



This is another one of the "swicheroo" things Arnold spoke of earlier. Let's take a look at what I said:



Pray tell me how you conclude from this that I am contending that there is no difference between her writings and Jones and Waggoner's writings. Clearly if she thought Waggoner could teach righteousness by faith better than she could, there had to be differences.



I don't understand what you're confused about here. Have you read A. T. Jones' 1895 GCB sermons? This is explained in detail there.

None of the SDA's spoke of "Christ" and "carnal" in the same sentence. "Sinful" and "Christ" were spoken of, in terms of Christ's flesh (or assumed human nature), but not "carnal." Have you not noticed this?



The law of heredity transmits to us a nature with tendencies to sin. We need the grace of God, the assistance of the Spirit of God, in order to overcome these tendencies. This is the ordeal that Christ passed through. He was tempted in all points as we are. He took accepted the workings of heredity, assuming our sinful nature, that He might share in our sorrows and temptations.





This construction Ellen White used is extremely common. She repeated the same thing in a slightly different way. So common is this, one can just about stop at any page she wrote at random and find examples of this.

She writes that "condemnation" comes as a result of rejecting light, right? So, as I stated before, the condemnation spoken of here can't possibly come to newborns or 20+ week old fetuses, right?



An example of a sin of ignorance is given in the quote we're discussing:



Ellen White and her group were ignorantly observing the Sabbath from 6:00 PM to 6:00 PM.

Tom, you may be wasting all your research effort here, because cleansed characters by Christ's completed & finished mediation as High Priest is SDA gospel focus orientated by the sanctuary truth as well as our eschatology. Since that focus is there, the HF movement tried a short cut to get there, likely having given up on any notion of character Christlikeness being possible in our sinful nature.

Thus their reasoning, as opposed to their logic, went from the gospel goal backwards, to change the rules on Christology, not from changing gospel history forward to the gospel goal.

??? What does this have to do with their line of reasoning? At the time their points began to be refuted, the theory had already been formulated in its entirety.



OK.

“What I Taught in Indiana,” pp 5-6 “[Quotes DA, 117] ‘From eternal ages it was God's purpose that every created being, from the bright and holy seraph to man, should be a temple for the indwelling of the Creator. Because of sin, humanity ceased to be a temple for God. Darkened and defiled by evil, the heart of man no longer revealed the glory of the Divine One. But by the incarnation of the Son of God, the purpose of Heaven is fulfilled. God dwells in humanity, and through saving grace the heart of man becomes again His temple.’ [Donnell comments] This certainly proves that Christ dwelt in the same kind of flesh as do the brethren, the restored or sanctified ones. How clear it is from this statement that the cause for God's forsaking humanity as His temple must be removed before He can return and again occupy it as was His purpose from eternity. This removal was wrought when Christ becomes incarnate in human flesh, even in yours and mine; for conversion is only incarnation going right on, God being manifest in the flesh. And of this Christ was a perfect sample, an exhibition of what the power of God, or Christ dwelling in us, would do for us.”

Donnell starts with the kind of flesh the sanctified ones have, one in which God dwells, and then goes on to demonstrate that Christ dwelt in the same flesh as they. Also the overstrained ideas on sanctification are apparent: conversion is God’s incarnation in us.

Again:

p. 5: Men can continually do righteous acts only as God is incarnate in them; and it was God’s purpose from the beginning to dwell in every created being, so that good works, or He Himself, might always appear in them. But in sinful men Satan is incarnate, and God and Satan cannot dwell together. The only reason why God does not dwell in man is because sin is them, and in order for God to again dwell in man sin must be eradicated. The body of Christ was a body in which God was incarnate, and as God and Satan cannot dwell together, the body of Christ must have been a body from which even every tendency to sin must have been wholly eradicated.

The key again is the overstrained ideas on sanctification. God must be incarnate in men, but since Satan is incarnate in sinful men, God and Satan can’t dwell together; from this he goes on to his conclusions in relation to Christ’s body.


I’ve never seen either the Bible or Ellen White speak about “translation faith,” neither do I believe there is such a distinct kind of faith. And I didn’t speak about perfection of holiness, but perfection of health as a part of holiness. As Jones puts it: “Therefore, as perfect holiness can not be attained without holiness of body, and as holiness of body is expressed in the word 'health,' so perfect holiness can not be attained without health. And 'without holiness no man shall see the Lord.'”


I would agree with this if the point had been contested by her. But it wasn’t contested and nor even mentioned by her, either by pen or by voice. If you were the prophet, which points would you mention? The less important or the most important?


Obviously both points are wrong.
1. Christ didn’t take Adam’s nature before the fall.
2. Even if He had taken it, we couldn’t become holy in the same sense.


I didn’t make these arguments. Ellen White did.

“Do not set Him before the people as a man with the propensities of sin.” “Not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity.” “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}


As I’ve told you innumerable times, this concept is completely wrong. There are no tendencies to sin in our body (except, perhaps, tendencies to the use of drugs); all our tendencies to sin are in our mind.


The “old girl” doesn’t.


Seeing hereditary tendencies in this quote is a completely unwarranted inference. Besides, Ellen White says, in DA 116, that the same temptations Christ met and we meet were the temptations of Adam and Eve. There is no difference between fallen and unfallen nature in this respect.


I referred to differences in terms of authority. What I understand you are saying in your reply is not only that Ellen White’s writings weren’t more authoritative than Jones and Waggoner’s, but that their writings on righteousness by faith were in fact better than hers.


I want to know about the mind. Are you saying a child is not born with a mind, are you equating mind with nature, or what?


This is true, but it does not necessarily apply in all instances. Anyway, the condemnation which comes when the light is rejected does not mean that there wasn’t any condemnation before. In the case of a sin of ignorance, just the sin is condemned; if light is rejected, the person is condemned. The person is not condemned for sins of ignorance because Christ made provision for them:

In his sufferings and death Jesus has made atonement for all sins of ignorance, but there is no provision made for wilful blindness. ... We shall not be held accountable for the light that has not reached our perception, but for that which we have resisted and refused. A man could not apprehend the truth which had never been presented to him, and therefore could not be condemned for light he had never had. {RH, April 25, 1893 par. 10-12}

Since a baby is born loving what God hates and hating what He loves, the baby is born as a transgressor of God’s law. This is a sin of ignorance.

1.Regarding the "old guys" disagreement with Donnell, Donnell argued:

a.Christ did not have tendencies to sin, including hereditary tendencies.
b.Our hereditary tendencies need to be eradicated, so we, like Christ, do not have tendencies to sin (the "holy flesh" idea).

To counteract this, the "old guys" argued that Donnell was wrong in his assertions regarding Christ's flesh. As Haskell pointed out, by quoting Ellen White, Christ assumed fallen humanity, with its tendencies to sin.

You're saying that you would agree that Ellen White's statement included what the "old guys" were fighting against if she contested this doesn't make sense. The threads of the whole fabric are, of course, not determined by her mentioning them one by one. We can see that Christology paid a part in the "whole fabric" by simply noticing what Donnell and the "old guys" were arguing about.

2.We agree that you see that you are making the same arguments that Donnell made in regards to tendencies to sin. We disagree in regards to Ellen White's making the same arguments as Donnell. I believe that Ellen White agreed with Prescott, not Donnell, which is why she endorsed Prescott's Christology, rather than Donnell's.

Again I note that you put Donnell and Ellen White on the side of truth, and the "old guys" on the side of error, despite the fact that she said of Donnell's teaching that there was not a "thread of truth" to it, but of the old guy's (Prescott's in particular) that it was "truth separated from error." It's a bit surprising that you don't see a problem with this. You seem to have the idea that the Holy Spirit only worked with Ellen White in regards to Christology (and maybe Donnell, I guess).

3.Your assertion that hereditary tendencies should not be inferred from Ellen White's quote on DA 24 doesn't make sense. She says specifically that Christ took our fallen nature for the very purpose of bearing everything that we have to bear.

4.Are you really asserting there's no difference between being tempted in fallen flesh and in unfallen flesh?

5.Regarding Waggoner's writings being "better" than hers, I didn't say this. I repeated Ellen White's comment that Waggoner could teach righteousness by faith better than she could. I agree with her on this point. I also agree with her that the Holy Spirit gave different gifts to her than to Jones and Waggoner. I also agree with her that God gave Jones and Waggoner a special message, and that we should heed that message. To agree with her doesn't denigrate her writings any. I believe, just as she said, that we should, as little children, accept all the light that God has sent our way.

6.Regarding the minds of infants or fetuses, I don't think they are developed to the point to where they can reject light. The mind at this point is very rudimentary. I think newborns are about as smart as cats. Or course, there is vastly more potential in the mind of a newborn human, or 20+ week old fetus, but this potential is yet to be developed.

I don't understand what this has to do with Christology.

7.I think your contention is a baby is born as a transgressor of God's law comes from Original Sin. This isn't something SDA's asserted in the time of Ellen White. I don't think you can find a statement from any SDA asserting this before around 1950.

I also think this is getting off topic.

Again, there are only two differences of opinion I'm aware of in regards to the human nature which Christ assumed. These involve Christ's being tempted from within, and Christ's having hereditary tendencies to sin. One view says that Christ could be tempted without an outside agent being directly involved (such as Satan, or an agent of his), while the other says that Christ wouldn't have been tempted at all if it weren't for Satan and his helpers. One view says Christ had no tendencies to sin at all, even including genetically passed tendencies. The other view says that Christ accepted the workings of the law of heredity, and had the same tendencies common to humanity as far as heredity is concerned (heredity from genetic causes, not pre-natal causes).

I think the positions one takes on this follows from the position one has on Original Sin, or, equivalently, on whether or not one believes that Christ assumed a human nature like ours; "flesh of sin" as Prescott called it.

Under a covenant whose terms were like those of the covenant God made with Adam: Obey and live, disobey and die - without any savior. If Christ had disobeyed, nobody could have saved Him.
These, by the way, were also the terms of the old covenant.


Ours, because Christ wasn't under the covenant of grace.

The only part of the New Covenant that doesn't apply to Christ is being forgiven of sin, since He never sinned. But the other points apply. Christ overcame by faith, receiving the grace of God to overcome sin. Of Christ, better than anyone else, it can be said that the law was written in His heart, which is the fundamental point of the New Covenant vs. the Old -- the law written in the heart as opposed to on tables of stone.

The Old Covenant leads to bondage because of unbelief. This certainly doesn't apply to Christ's experience.

The terms of the old and new covenants are completely different. Under the old covenant, you disobey and die; under the new, you disobey and are forgiven.
Don't you see that the main point of the new covenant is the "savior" part? Without a savior there is no forgiveness. As I said, if Christ had sinned, nobody would have saved Him. Therefore, He couldn't be, and wasn't, under the new covenant.


Ellen White speaks about the grace of God to renew the heart. This doesn't apply to Christ.

It seems to me the main point of the New Covenant is having the law written in the heart as opposed to on tables of stone. Let's look at where the New Covenant is first spoken of:



The difference between the Old and the New Covenant have to do with having the law written in the heart vs. being written on tables of stone. This is why the Old Covenant leads to bondage.

The promise of the new covenant is the law written in the heart as part of the heart renewal, which doesn't apply to Christ. Like Adam, He was already born with the law written in His heart.


The old covenant merely illustrated the covenant under which every human being is in Adam if s/he doesn't accept the new covenant.

Like the angels, the dwellers in Eden had been placed upon probation; their happy estate could be retained only on condition of fidelity to the Creator's law. They could obey and live, or disobey and perish. {PP 53.1}

I take it you don't think the following apply to Christ's experience:

a)Grace.
b)Having the law written in the heart.

Regarding b), I take it you see that Christ statically had the law written in His heart, because of how He was born, but not dynamically, as a part of His experience.

I'm guessing you either don't think Christ overcame by faith, as we do (instead He overcame as unfallen Adam could have), or you don't see any difference in overcoming by faith for unfallen Adam and ourselves.

In short, you seem to see Christ's experience as very different from ours. The only similarities would be that Christ had a physical body somewhat like ours (in that it could become tired, for example) and He could be tempted from some external source, such as Satan or an agent of his (like Adam, before his fall).

I'll be interested in seeing if you disagree with these observations (especially regarding grace).