Tom, it might be helpful to keep in mind what Rosangela said about the relationship between sinful flesh and character contamination. Here it is:


She isn't sure about it. If the sinful clamorings within do not contaminate character then she shouldn't have a problem with Jesus experiencing them. Also, becoming aware of them isn't the same thing as being guilty of them. So, again, she shouldn't have a problem with Jesus keeping them under the control of a sanctified will and mind.

2MCP 432
There are thoughts and feelings suggested and aroused by Satan that annoy even the best of men; but if they are not cherished, if they are repulsed as hateful, the soul is not contaminated with guilt, and no other is defiled by their influence. {2MCP 432.2}

I noticed this, MM, and explained my response. I thought she exhibited a Christian response in regards to her comments about repentance. I think an understanding that we need Christ, that repentance is in order, is of more importance than a correct understanding of Christ's human nature (which is certainly not to say the latter is not important).

On the sinful mind and Christ, just as much as he took our sinful flesh but lived a righteous life, so he took the sinful mind of our nature but subjected it to his "mind of Christ" which he pioneered quite successfully (I speak modestly). His solution for us includes condemning the sinful mind, though that part of the "flesh" is seriously lost sight of in view of his "mind of Christ".

Inasmuch as the two covenants are simultaneous, so the sinful and righteous minds are simultaneous: Jesus perfected the better one, we are slower to learn that tactic.

As for condemned human nature, its sinfulness is consumed by God's very presence. Thus it is both mortal and destined with the Devil and his angels for eternal damnation and annihilation at that day. This is the condemnation which is natural for us and for God: it's just according to God's holiness that sinfulness as begun and defined by Satan is subject to eternal death. This is the death which every sinful human is in need of saving from because human nature itself is rotten, even if we come to believe in Jesus: he saves us from our sinful mind, takes away our guilt, and ultimately also takes away the condemned humanity we were born with.

Three of the four elements of RC original are Biblical: sinful, so inclined to sin, morally weak in dealing with our sinfulness and depraved or captive to that sinfulness. This is human nature. The depraved sinfulness constitutes the condemned status of the nature. Jesus took such condemned equipment, equipped it with God's Spirit's power, and lifted us out of the mire by grace for our faith experience. Our sinful humanity is naturally condemned and we are thus redeemed from that fate by Christ, since we are in need of a Saviour but our nature is irredeemable, and thus was crucified by Christ to save us from "this body of death". He thus suffered the condemnation due both our nature and ourselves: both severed his spiritual relationship with his Father, from Gethsemane onwards, for that is the condemnation for the sacrifice for sin of the Lamb of God.

Oh, well, there's the broader context again...it just slipped out.

I agree with this. I think I agreed with what you said, regarding "sinful mind," but I wouldn't touch that phrase with a 10 foot pool. That is far to open to be misunderstood, IMO. I think sticking with "sinful nature" or "sinful flesh" is enough. The problem is that "mind" is not dealing with equipment alone, but how that equipment is used. Christ had a brain like ours, but His mind was unique. It was not sinful, but sinless, because not even by a thought did He consent to temptation. This is how I would put things. However, He took our nature, and, more than that, He bore our sin. Not just on Gesthemane or at the cross, but throughout His life.



If taking sinful flesh could sever one's relationship from God, it would have done so throughout His life, since He had our flesh during His whole life. He also bore our sin His whole life as well. This didn't start at Gethsemane.

She did not comment about whether Haskell’s arguments were sound or not.
As the first link I posted about this showed, all the previous efforts of Haskell and others had been vain, and the “holy flesh” fanaticism was only broken after Ellen White’s testimony in the 1901 General Conference and R. S. Donnell’s confession as a result of it. We have to look at her arguments, for her arguments were sound.


To begin with, this argument is completely flawed. Since when someone does not sin for the reason that he/she inherited no tendencies to sin? Why did Adam and Eve sin? Because they inherited tendencies to sin or because they did not lay hold of the divine power?

This argument says,
Christ inherited no tendencies to sin
This is why He did not sin.

When it should say,
Christ laid hold of the divine power
This is why He did not sin.


This has to do with a second probation, not with salvation.


“Human nature is depraved, and is justly condemned by a holy God.” {RH, September 17, 1895 par. 7}

Why does God condemn it?

“The duty of intelligent souls is to hold to the truth, to practice virtue. We are born with a disinclination to both. It is sad to find in one's own constitution an opposition to virtues that are commendable in the sight of God, as submission, charity, sweetness of spirit, and patience that will not be provoked.”{TDG 34.3}

This means we are born in opposition to God’s law. That's why we are condemned.


Certainly not as meaning that He took the moral sinful nature with which we are born.

“The Lord created man's moral faculties and his physical powers. All was a sinless transcript of Himself.” {3SM 133.1}

Do you think Christ was born with sinful moral faculties, like us?


Look at the arguments Ellen White employs to reply to the thought expressed in the letters:

A. If he did not have man's nature, he could not be our example.
B. If he was not a partaker of our nature, he could not have been tempted as man has been.
C. If it were not possible for him to yield to temptation, he could not be our helper.

You still could apply “fallen nature” to the first argument, but not to the other two. If a man does not have a fallen nature, he can’t be tempted? If a man does not have a fallen nature he can’t sin (yield to temptation)?

A, B & C make perfect sense, however, in case Ellen White’s argument was that, if Christ’s divinity conferred to Him a special power which made his human nature somewhat different from ours and prevented Him from yielding to temptation, He could not have been tempted as we are.

Still another parallel quote:

"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. ... The obedience of Christ to His Father was the same obedience that is required of man. 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. The Lord Jesus came to our world, not to reveal what a God could do, but what a man could do, through faith in God's power to help in every emergency." {6MR 341.1-4, [1892]}

Well, that's the point. If Haskell's arguments were unsound, she would have followed her own advice, and commented on it. She did not comment because his argument was sound.



It doesn't matter that her arguments were sound for my point. My point is that she said that our arguments need to be sound when meeting our opponents, but according to your ideas she didn't care whether they were or not. Supposedly she sat by silent while

a.Haskell made the arguments to her while corresponding to her
b.Haskell made the same arguments in public that he made in private correspondence to her
c.Haskell quoted her writings, gave to them a foreign meaning, and used them to present an unsound argument
d.Waggoner spoke at the General Conference session for the purpose of arguing against the holy flesh.

You also assume that you are better able to interpret her meaning than Haskel was. He worked with her and spoke to her. Waggoner did the same, and preached side by side with her. But in spite of this they supposedly did not understand her view on the nature of Christ. In fact none of the church understood that Ellen White alone believed that Christ did not have inherited tendencies to sin. And she never made that point public in a way that any of her contemporaries could understand it. But almost a century after her death, you are able to correctly understand that her view was in reality different than everyone else's while her contemporaries could not.

In addition, supposedly she used the term "sinful nature" to mean something that nobody else meant by that term, the same thing that those who used the term "sinless nature" meant, and never corrected those who misunderstood the unique meaning she had for that phrase.

I'm sure you're familiar with "Occam's razor," that the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. The simplest explanation is that by saying that Jesus Christ took our sinful nature that she meant what every other person who said this had meant, which is also the same meaning all of our church publications attributed to the phrase.

Also the simplest explanation regarding why she didn't correct Haskell when he quoted the Desire of Ages in the Review and Herald, nor Waggoner when they preached side by side, nor when he preached at the 1901 GC session, is that she agreed with what they said.

As Ellen White and Jones and Waggoner preached together following the 1888 GC session, they had many hours to spend together while traveling from place to place. How likely is it that the subject of Christ's human nature never came up? How likely is that the she never would have given her opinion on the subject to them?

Not likely.

Waggoner's citing the Catholic argument. He's explaining why it's flawed.



You can't be saved if you're not alive. Without Christ as Savior, they would never have been alive to be saved.



Ok, this is better. If babies needed a Savior simply because God condemns human nature, then God could simply stop doing that, and the babies would be fine. But there is an underlying reason why God condemns human nature, which is what we need to get to. So babies need a Savior not because God condemns human nature, but because they have human nature.

I really think this would be better discussed in a separate thread, but to briefly comment, you are concluding that because we are born with a disinclination to hold to the truth and practice virtue that God condemns us. It would not be reasonable for God to do so, because we, when born, have no control over our inclinations. Judgment, in order to be fair, has to take into account how we respond to light.



Since babies have rejected no light, there is "no sin," and no condemnation, no "frown of God."



You're putting together different word combinations that are customarily used, so it's hard to know what you mean, but I believe that Christ assumed our nature after the human race had sunk in moral value after 4,000 years of sin, a sinful nature, one which had been degraded and defiled by sin, one which has all the same liabilities and weaknesses ours has. I believe He accepted the working of the law of heredity like we do, that no exception was made to His humanity to weed out inclinations that come to us through our parents. Indeed, I don't think this is even a possibility (I mean genetically possible).

Here's what happened.

a.Jones and Waggoner preached on the nature of Christ.
b.Those listening had questions.
c.They asked Ellen White.
d.Ellen White responded that Christ did indeed take our fallen nature, as Jones and Waggoner were preaching, and she explained why that was necessary.

Here's why it was necessary.
A. If he did not have man's nature, he could not be our example.
B. If he was not a partaker of our nature, he could not have been tempted as man has been.
C. If it were not possible for him to yield to temptation, he could not be our helper.

If Christ did not take our fallen nature, He could not be our example. If He was not a partaker of our fallen nature, He could not have been tempted as fallen man has been. If it were not possible for Him to yield to temptation, He could not have been our helper.

She is arguing that Christ took our nature (i.e. fallen, our nature is fallen), which enabled Him not only to be tempted, but to be tempted as man (i.e. fallen man, which is to say US! how *we* are tempted, this was Jones and Waggoner's whole point). If He were not tempted *as we are tempted* He could not be *our* helper. He could have been unfallen Adam's helper, but not our helper (This is just what Jones and Waggoner explained).



It doesn't make sense because it does not tie back to what Jones and Waggoner were preaching.

When she says "letters have been coming to me, affirming that Christ could not have taken the nature of man" (from memory), she meant, "letters have been coming to me, affirming that Christ could not have taken the nature of fallen man" because that's what Jones and Waggoner were preaching. If Jones and Waggoner were preaching that Christ's divinity did not confer to His humanity some special power that made it possible for Him not to be tempted, your idea would be possible. But since they weren't preaching that, it's not.

The question that people were asking her is as follow:

a.How could Christ have taken our nature?
b.I don't understand how this can be the case, because had He done so, He would have fallen under the same temptations we do.

She answered, that Christ had to take our nature (i.e. fallen) in order to be tempted as we are, and in order to be our example.

Sorry about repeating myself, but I'm trying to make clear the points that you are addressing, which are that her response has to tie back to questions people were actually asking, and tie back to what Jones and Waggoner were actually preaching.

Regarding the quote you provided, it says that if we give to Christ's human nature a power it is not possible for us to have, we break the completeness of His humanity. The power of not having inherited tendencies to sin is not a power it is possible for our human nature to have. So, according to her statement, if we give Christ's human nature that power, we destroy the completeness of His humanity.

The big weakness I see in your approach to interpreting her writings is that you do not take into account the historical setting. You attempt to interpret words and phrases as if no one in the world existed but Ellen White. But her writings (and no writings) can be understood in this way. One has to take into account the setting in which one lives.

For example, when she used the phrase "sinful nature," that meant something to those listening to her or reading her. It meant that Christ took our inherited inclinations to sin. Now if that's not what she meant, she had an obligation to explain what she really meant, because that's how everybody understood her, and she knew that to be the case.

What point would there be to communicate something which would be misunderstood by 100% of the people receiving that communication?

In the end, God is the causative factor. He causes life to abound in those who commune with Him.

Unfortunately, because of Adam's sin, our natures are depraved. And because selfishness is the essence of depravity, selfishness is the defining characteristic of depraved humanity. Though we were created in the image of God - love - selfishness took the place of love.

But selfishness is incongruent with God's character and incompatible with His presence. IOW, the selfish cannot commune with God. Hence, death are the wages of selfishness. That's why our depraved human natures are justly condemned by our holy God.

Can God just choose to not condemn depravity? Yes. But that would mean He would make selfishness normative. Consider the result: a universe run by a selfish and omnipotent God. I think it's better that He continue to condemn depravity, in all whom it is found.

So, in a very real sense, God's condemnation of depravity is a recognition of a reality that is caused by His own existence.

Can He be accused of causing the death problem? Perhaps. But His provision of eternal life in Christ, to all who would accept it, is more than enough to make up for any concerns.

"Human nature is depraved, and is justly condemned by a holy God."


So, would there be any reason why such a baby would not be in heaven?