I commented on Rosangela's main point, which I was happy to see, because it exhibited a Christian spirit.

The heart in Scripture represents the innermost thoughts, the inner part of a man. It is not the same thing as the flesh, which represents tendencies or traits which are passed to us genetically. That which is passed to us genetically does not contaminate us, because it is not volitional.

As I stated before, the new heart represents the new desire that the Holy Spirit instills in us, wherein we desire to do God's will, to love Him, and to honor the principles of His government. We have a new perspective; old things are passed away, all things are become new.

Nevertheless, we have still made millions of selfish decisions over of lives, and the effects of these don't just go away in a moment. This would be impossible, without destroying us as people. We are not robots, but flesh and blood, who require healing from the devastation of sin.

The healing begins when we are born again.

Christ never sinned, so His heart was pure. However, He took our sins upon Him, in addition to taking our nature, and that combination enabled Him to be tempted in all points as we are, to suffer as we suffer (even more), to experience fully our experiences as human beings. Therefore He is able to uniquely understand us and the strength of our temptations, and to be able to help us in time of need.

Tom, thank you for answering my questions and addressing my comments. I agree with you that heart and flesh are separate aspects of mankind. Flesh is inherited sinfulness whereas heart is cultivated sinfulness. One is the byproduct of the other. Both are strengthened each time we indulge sin. Though related, each is a separate source of internal temptation.

However, you seem to be suggesting that we retain a large part of our old man heart after we experience the miracle of rebirth. This concerns me. Doesn't Jesus say He will take away our stony heart and give us a heart of flesh? Why, then, does He leave most of it in tact?

What is the difference between being tempted from within by our fallen flesh nature and being tempted from within by our old man heart? Isn't our old man heart the byproduct of cherishing and acting out the unholy clamorings of fallen flesh nature? If so, how can we tell the difference between being tempted by one or the other? Is it possible that our old man heart died when we were born again and that it is our fallen flesh nature that remains to tempt us from within?

Of course, Jesus inherited the same sinful flesh nature we inherit. He was continually tempted from within to cherish and act out the same unholy clamorings we have to resist every day. But He resolutely resisted the voice of His fallen flesh nature. He never wavered between resisting and cherishing the unholy thoughts and feelings that bombarded His sinless soul. He loathed them. They disgusted Him.

Jesus never cultivated an old man heart. He never converted the clamorings of His fallen flesh nature into an old man heart. Thus, He never experienced the clamorings of an old man heart. Instead, He resisted the same sins in the form of hereditary sinfulness. In this way, Jesus began life on earth as a born again believer. He did not possess old man heart propensities to sin.

The flesh isn't strengthened by sin, nor weakened by obedience. It is what it is.



No, I didn't say that.



I didn't say this either.



Why would someone care?



Then He wasn't really tempted, was He? If someone tempted you to eat dung, would you be tempted?



This is ignoring the fact that He bore our sins.



Is sinfulness hereditary? If so, then Jesus would have that too, right? (since his hereditary is the same as ours)



Jesus bore our sins. He was never completely like a born again believer.

Christ bore our sins, took our nature, and because of this combination of factors was tempted in all points as we are. But He never yielded to temptation.

When we are born again, not only do we retain our sinful nature, we also suffer the residues of having sinned. Being born again does not destroy the impact of millions of wrong decisions. There is still a great deal of healing to take place, a great deal to learn and to unlearn.

But Tom, her statements in this letter agree with every other statement that SHE made...that is what counts...perhaps they don't agree with all her contemporaries, but her contemporaries were not inspired, she was, so why do you want to force her to agree with them? She never contradicts herself or disagrees with the Bible....so why bring all these quotes from the contemporaries in to try to prove she meant something other than what she clearly says she meant? That is what people do, when something is very clear, and they are trying to "muddy the waters".

TE: The flesh isn't strengthened by sin, nor weakened by obedience. It is what it is.

MM: Each generation contributes to sinful flesh, thus strengthening it. For nearly six thousand years now fallen flesh has been gaining momentum. “Each age, as it passes, bequeaths to the one following its accumulation of contamination.” (RH 2-11-1902)

TE 174
The race is groaning under a weight of accumulated woe, because of the sins of former generations. And yet with scarcely a thought or care, men and women of the present generation indulge intemperance by surfeiting and drunkenness, and thereby leave, as a legacy for the next generation, disease, enfeebled intellects, and polluted morals."--Testimonies, vol. 4, p. 31. {Te 174.3}

CH 609
Parents may have transmitted to their children tendencies to appetite and passion, which will make more difficult the work of educating and training these children to be strictly temperate and to have pure and virtuous habits. If the appetite for unhealthy food and for stimulants and narcotics has been transmitted to them as a legacy from their parents, what a fearfully solemn responsibility rests upon the parents to counteract the evil tendencies which they have given to their children! How earnestly and diligently should the parents work to do their duty, in faith and hope, to their unfortunate offspring! {CH 609.3}

TE 171
The thoughts and feelings of the mother will have a powerful influence upon the legacy she gives her child. If she allows her mind to dwell upon her own feelings, if she indulges in selfishness, if she is peevish and exacting, the disposition of her child will testify to the fact. Thus many have received as a birthright almost unconquerable tendencies to evil. The enemy of souls understands this matter much better than do many parents. He will bring his temptations to bear upon the mother, knowing that if she does not resist him, he can through her affect her child. The mother's only hope is in God. She may flee to Him for strength and grace; and she will not seek in vain.-- Signs of the Times, Sept. 13, 1910. {Te 171.1}

TE: I didn't say this either.

MM: Then what did you mean? Does the new man mind and heart Jesus implants require repentance and reformation? Does the old man heart and new man cohabitate within us vying for first place?

The point is, are these inclinations to being selfish in the body or in the mind?


In the case of the divinity of Christ, she just wrote some statements, and let their content gradually sink in the minds of our ministers. It seems to me she did the same in the case of Christ’s nature, but she didn’t write about it in her published works because the time had not yet come for this. Perhaps Jones, Waggoner, Prescott, and other leading ministers were not yet prepared to accept that content at that moment. But she knew that eventually these writings would be brought to attention and read. As I pointed out in previous discussions, she didn’t mention this subject just to Baker. She had written about it in her private diary in 1890, which is 5 years before the letter to Baker, if memory serves me well.

“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}


I was referring to Haskell (in the second article):

"Some of the strangest doctrines I have heard is the seal of God cannot be placed on any person of gray hairs, or any deformed person, for in the closing work, we would reach such a state of perfection, both physically and spiritually, and then could not die. I said to brother Breed...that I expected the next I would hear we could get a new set of teeth in this life. Well, brother Breed said, that was preached by some."--S. N. Haskell, to E. G. White, October 3, 1899. {14MR 65.2}


Yes, but Ellen White never answered those questions, because if she had done so, probably we wouldn’t be having this discussion.


And in your opinion, why is it that they need a Savior?


The argument was not that. The argument was that God had created a faulty law, impossible to be obeyed. Would God create a faulty law? Obviously not. Yet this was Satan’s argument.


It does, but it wasn’t well stated. What I meant was, the argument that if Christ did not take a selfish nature we are excused for not obeying the law is false. Why? Because it relies on another false argument - that temptations are stronger for those who have a weaker resistance.


Answered by the quote of 16MR, above. A common idea at that time, as today, was that Christ had taken the human nature but was not capable of yielding to temptation, as you can see by the quote, which says,

"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.”

Again, this was the subject of the letters that had been coming to Ellen White. They had nothing to do with what Jones and Waggoner were preaching.

There is more than one way to interpret her writings. You are suggesting a way which doesn't meet with the facts of the situation. Nobody writes in a vacuum. The phrases people used are defined by the context in which they live.

To give an example, Ellen White said that Christ took our "sinful nature." To any person alive, whether SDA or not, at the time EGW wrote this, this meant that Christ took our inherited inclinations, or tendencies, to sin. So how do you explain her using a phrase that would be understood to communicate the exact opposite of the idea you believe is correct?

Here's an example of what I'm talking about:



This is Stephen Haskell quoting from The Desire of Ages! He was working in concert with Ellen White in fighting against the Holy Flesh movement. He quoted her book, which deals with Christology, and explained her meaning: "This is fallen humanity with all its hereditary inclinations."

Thus it is very clear that Ellen White was understood to be saying the same thing her contemporaries were. This is the important point; not simply that her contemporaries were saying a certain thing, but that they understood her to be saying that same thing.

So how likely is it that someone coming along 50 or 100 years after she's dead and no longer able to explain her meaning (which we was able to do, of course, when Haskell quoted her and explained her meaning in the RH article) is going to be correct in a reinterpretation that requires we take the following leaps of faith:

a.Ellen White used a common phrase ("sinful flesh") to mean something that no human had used it to mean before her.
b.The phrase she used ("sinful flesh") actually meant what those who used the phrase "sinless flesh" meant.
c.She never bothered to correct anyone who misunderstood her meaning of this phrase.

Not very.

Given this is what you meant to communicate, I don't think it was phrased very well, but I agree with it.

I meant what I said. Why don't you something I said, and ask a question about it if you wish.