This is simply sinful human nature. This is precisely what Christ took!



Christ accepted the results of what? The "great law of heredity." What is this? It's what you call the "constitution" of the xygote. Christ took this "constitution" (our "sinful nature") upon His own sinless nature. It was in that Christ accepted the working of the "great law of heredity" that He was able to "share our sorrows and temptations."



By choice. "I delight to do Thy will, O my God" is the expression of a choice.



This isn't under dispute.



Yes you did. I'll find the post. Hold on a moment. Post 127601





No, you said what I said you said, and I've been asking you to explain this ever since.



Right.



It precludes them from doing anything which requires making a decision, such as loving someone one, or making a selfish decision.

Both.



People use exactly the same argument in regards to Ellen White. Not everything she wrote was inspired, so they feel free to excuse as not inspired anything they disagree with. Similarly, you disagree with Jones and Waggoner no matter what I quote from them, and I've quoted extensively from them, on many different subjects. How can it be that I just so happen to quote things which are outside of the umbrella of what she was endorsing every time I quote them? How can I be so lucky?

On the subject of our discussion, Jones himself said it was the heart of Christianity. Jones and Waggoner both considered the subject to be fundamental to their teachings on righteousness by faith, as it was. The position one takes on this subject has a profound impact on one's approach to righteousness by faith, which is why people react so strongly to it. It impacts the gospel we preach. This is clear.

Now if Jones and Waggoner were wrong regarding the nature of Christ, then they were wrong regarding righteousness by faith and the Gospel. This makes one wonder how EGW could say that Waggoner could teach righteousness by faith better than she, and how she could have endorsed them as messengers of rightesouness by faith the way she did.

So while there could be some unimportant point on some subject that Jones and Waggoner said or wrote which she wasn't endorsing, it's clear she was endorsing their message on righteousness by faith, and anything core to the message of righteousness by faith which they preached would have to be included.



This is completely opposed to what Jones and Waggoner taught. Their message of righteousness by faith could not possibly have been true if this were the case (i.e., if your position were true; That is, it cannot both be the case that your position here is correct, and their message of righteousness by faith was true).



Ok.



Not in essence at all, and that's the problem. You've got this backwards. You have Christ's temptation *only* being a form, and skipping the essence altogether.



But how? What's there to recognize in terms of commonality in regards to what makes the temptation difficult? (i.e., its essence).



I said this is what makes the temptation difficult, not that this is what temptation had to do with, or only had to do with. The thing is, what makes the temptation for a certain thing difficult for us is that this thing is a part of us. It's either a part of us because of heredity, or habit. If we assert it nothing to do with Christ, because then He wouldn't be holy, or would need a Savior (or for whatever reason), then we are disassociating Christ from us on specifically the point, or points, upon which we need help.

In Heb. 4 and 5, it says that Christ was tempted in all points as we are, and because of this, we should come to Him in time of need, because He was compassed with infirmity as we are. In other words, because He knows what it's like to be us. He can help me with my temptation because He knows what it is like to be tempted as I am tempted. He's been through it, by heredity and imputation, involving both sin in its potential and in its commission. You're cutting Christ off from both, and making His being tempted no different than if an angel from heaven were tempted, who assumed a weakened human body. But sinful flesh involves much more than simply becoming tired or hungry.

The DA 49 quote makes this clear:



What were the results in the history of Christ's earthly ancestors? Becoming hungry or tired? No, of course not. They were licentiousness, debauchery, etc.

It seems so. However, the most important aspect of this is its manifestation in the mind. A selfish person is selfish in his/her mind/character/personality. But this didn't happen with Christ, because He was born with the divine mind.


Adam was created by God with a heart/mind in harmony with His law and will. Where is "choice" here? Obviously "choice" came later in his life.


Wait a moment! Let's make a distinction between love as a principle and love as a feeling. In post 127601 I was speaking of love/selfishness as principles. These are innate (and in this sense, love to self is innate). You are either born concerned with your own welfare and interests and having little or no concern for others (selfishness) or you are born not concerned with your own welfare and interests first (love).
But in my last post, when I said, "I've never said they love" I was referring to love as a feeling (not principle), which is something learned (you learn to love your parents, your friends, etc). Look at what I said: "I've never said they love [feeling], but that holy babies would have been controlled by love" [principle].


It precludes them from making conscious selfish/loving decisions, but not from making unconscious selfish/loving decisions.

J & W are not inspired, Ellen White is. So, in doctrinal terms, either you accept everything she said, or nothing. But Ellen White endorsed other people (Crozier, Uriah Smith) without endorsing everything they said, for some of their statements are in direct opposition to what she said. I understand the same happened in J & W's case.


Apart from my personality traits, I don't even know what is a part of me because of heredity. Heredity just means you are more prone to some habits, but heredity without habit is almost nothing. Habit is indeed a problem, but Jesus didn't have any habits of sin, so He couldn't be tempted in terms of habit. What was the temptation which appealed to His sin habits? None, of course. Habit does make a temptation difficult if that habit is an idol. After you've dealt with that idol, that temptation loses much of its strength (like in the case of my past habit of watching soap operas). A combination of factors makes a temptation difficult. Christ was human and internal factors, like His physical needs, were weak points. The appeal to His human passions, like showing who He really was, was also very tempting. Also the appeal to HIs ambition, and so on. Who would endure a temptation like the first one in the desert? Who would endure a temptation like that of the Gethsemane and the cross?


You speak repeatedly about "sinful flesh" as an almost overwhelming factor in temptation. If sinful flesh is something different from carnal nature, either I don't have a sinful flesh or I don't know what it is, because I never recognize it as an important factor in my temptations. Would you please give me an example of a temptation involving the strength of "sinful flesh"? You mention "licentiousness" and "debauchery." I suspect all these arguments about "sinful flesh" have mainly to do with sex. In that case you would consider that men are more tempted than women and have a greater disadvantage than they?

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. We are born with sinful natures, that which they zygote has. Christ assumed this same sinful nature. Before you seemed to be taking issue with this. Now you seem to be agreeing with it.



Of course Adam and Eve were created in harmony with God. They were adults, however, not newborns or fetuses. I'm not seeing the connection here.



You said back in the post I referenced that babies are born loving themselves. I said they don't love at all. You said I was wrong. I defined love using Webster's and reiterated babies didn't love. You gave another definition from Ellen White. I said that applied to newborns even less.

I've been asking since the original post for you to explain how babies love, and then I see a denial that you ever said this.

So are we born loving ourselves or not? If so, how do you define love, and what specifically does a newborn, or 6 month old fetus that has consciousness, do to love itself?



You suggested 6 months as the time when fetuses have consciousness. Do we not care about consciousness anymore?

What's an example of an unconscious selfish/loving decision that a 6 month old fetus makes? (or newborn, or younger than 6 months of consciousness doesn't matter)

1)J & W were, according to EGW, "messengers of God" who bore a message from God. Have you read the 1888 Materials? These were things, letter and sermons and such, that Ellen White either wrote or spoke during the 1888 era. The same issues ur raising were raised then, and she dealt with these in her letters and talks.

2)Given EGW was inspired, her endorsements of J & W were inspired as well. She said Waggoner could teach RbF better than she could. It's hard to fathom why she would say that if basically Waggoner was completely wrong on his whole framework. You have Waggoner being completely different than EGW on the nature of Christ, and he's completely different from her on RbF as well.



Where did she say this? Also, why would this be limited to doctrinal things?



She endorsed J & W over 2,000 times. She said they had a message from God for the purpose of enabling people to stand in the day of Christ. She identified their message as the beginning of the latter rain and the loud cry. She said all sorts of things she didn't say of others. This is hardly a fair or adequate comparison.

Also, you didn't deal with my points. The first one is that their teaching of righteousness by faith depended upon their view of Christ's human nature. The second is, every time I quote them you disagree with them, and I've quoted them dozens of times on many different subjects. It's simply not reasonable to assume that it just so happens they are wrong whenever I quote them. You're making her endorsement of no effect. She might as well have not endorsed them at all, as far as the impact on you is concerned is how it appears to me.



I'll just deal with a portion of this, which I think gets to the nitty-gritty:



This is the whole problem right here! How does one deal with that idol? Is it by virtue of a victory which Christ wrought, or is it by forging ground where Christ did not walk?



I've mentioned two factors: sinful flesh and having committed the sin. That is, sin in its potential and in its commission. Both contribute.



I don't understand how you're thinking here. That sinful flesh is different than carnal nature isn't dependent upon your having sinful flesh or not recognizing it as an important factor in your temptations. Sinful flesh has to do with DNA. Carnal nature has to do with participating in sin.



Anything your DNA steers you toward.



Or drugs.



Regarding specifically sexual temptation? I don't know. I think women are tempted sexually as much as men are, I would guess. Just in a different way (i.e., men more visually).

This is what I believe now: I don't know precisely what happened, but what Ellen White says clearly is that Christ did not possess sinful propensities. Sinful propensities are in the mind/character - they may be transmitted through the body, but they are in the mind. They are wrong thought patterns, and they constitute the carnal mind. It's possible that Mary transmitted sinful tendencies to Christ, but what I believe is that these never manifested themselves in His mind.


If he had not sinned, his children would have been born the same way - naturally good.

God gave our first parents a pure and upright character, in harmony with His law; and had they remained obedient, they would have bequeathed the same character to their posterity. {BEcho, July 29, 1895 par. 2}


We learn to love others, but love for self is innate. Self-love (selfishness), in this sense, would be, as I said in my previous post, a concern with your own welfare and interests, having little or no concern for others. This can be seen in newborns. Fetuses are selfish in their own constitution, but I wouldn't say there are selfish behaviors before birth.


Tom, we adults are perfectly conscious people who have a lot of unconscious decisions/attitudes.


I'm speaking just about newborns, not fetuses. They have no interest in anything outside their own desires. They want to be attended to. Their natural instincts are to survive even if it's at the expense of others. Self-preservation above all else.

Maybe they saw one thing as depending on the other, but this isn't so.


?
I remember disagreeing with them on some details about the covenants and on the nature of Christ. Where I disagreed with them, I saw a disharmony between their view and Ellen White's view.


It's like the Bible. Doctrinally, you can't consider that some things are inspired and some aren't. In other subjects, the author may have expressed some concepts as he saw it in his time (like the statement about the pillars of the earth).
In Ellen White's case, of course shop lists, for instance, are not included among inspired statements. The same is true of historical details, scientific details, etc.


OK, but she didn't say that they were 100% correct in everything they said.


The problem is the strength of the temptation faced, not the kind of temptation faced (idols, or whatever). An external temptation may be stronger than an internal one. Christ faced the strongest temptations it's possible for a human being to face in all the areas human beings are tempted and, thus, acquired power for us to overcome any temptation.


The Bible doesn't say this. It says carnal nature consists in not being subject to the law of God, and Ellen White says this happens in our own constitution.

It absolutely is so. We should start a thread to discuss this.

A couple of points regarding this. First of all, given the messengers God sent to bring us the righteousness by faith message saw this as crucial to their message, who are we to dispute this?

Secondly, here's the argument they made:



Thirdly, their message was dependent upon their view of Christ's human nature. Merely being familiar with their message establishes this fact. For example, consider the book "The Consecreated Way to Perfection" by A. T. Jones. This book builds a theology of righteousness by faith point by point. That Christ took our fallen nature is foundational to that theology, which can be seen by reading the book.

Or consider "Christ And His Righteousness." This book develops in the same way. First Waggoner explains that Christ took our fallen, sinful nature, and then he explains righteousness by faith. The latter builds upon the former.



I've quoted them on many different subjects. The law in Galatians, that Christ's taking our sins impacted His temptation, the Covenants, and Christ's human nature are a few subjects that come immediately to mind. I don't recall your ever agreeing with any quote. I've quoted pages upon pages of their writings. I see no difference in terms to how you respond to their writings as if Ellen White had not endorsed them at all. You have given greater weight to a single endorsement of hers to Luther than the 2,000+ endorsements she gave to Jones and Waggoner.



I asked where she said this.



Where are you getting this idea from?



So that means her endorsements carry no weight, and we are free to disagree with them whenever we like. You give absolutely no weight whatsoever to their writings. They might as well have not existed as far as you are concerned. Do you disagree with this?

This is certainly contrary to Ellen White's wishes in this regard. Have you read what she wrote regarding this? The 1888 Materials?

If we accept her as divinely inspired, she was inspired on this subject as well.

Again, if you read her writings on this subject, you will see that those who opposed them then used the same argument you are using now.



Our most difficult temptations are the ones that involve areas where we are weak. Areas where we are strong are much easier to resist than weak areas, where we have a susceptibility and have fallen in the past.

For example, no one would be tempted to take a bitter tasting medicine. Instead, we're tempted to take good tasting things that aren't good for us. In your view, as I perceive it, Christ's temptations were like taking quinine, and not like eating ice cream (assuming that's a sin, for illustration purposes). For example, the temptation to be given the kingdoms of this world. That would be like quinine to Christ, given your viewpoint, it seems to me. How could the kingdoms of this world have held any attraction to Christ?



But only because He took our fallen nature and carried our sins.



This is an SOP phrase.



No it doesn't.



Because we have sinful flesh, inherited from Adam after the fall, we are subject to internal temptations. If we accede to these temptations, we participate in sin, developing a sin habit. Christ, taking our sinful nature, and bearing our sins, faced the same temptations we face, but did not develop a sin habit.