Oh, yes, she does:

“Because of sin, his [Adam’s] posterity was born with inherent propensities of disobedience. BUT Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. He took upon Himself human nature, ... but not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity.”

The contrast is perfectly visible here. And, after saying, “Not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity,” she continues:

“He was assailed with temptations in the wilderness, as Adam was assailed with temptations in Eden.”

Notice, not as his posterity is assailed, but as Adam was assailed.


No, the emphasis is on Christ’s being without a taint of sin, which means not having (either by inheritance or by choice) inclinations to sin:

“Never, in any way, leave the slightest impression upon human minds, that a taint of, or inclination to corruption rested upon Christ, or that He in any way yielded to corruption.”

She is speaking of two distinct things here:
1) a taint of corruption or inclination to corruption. Note the parallel expression in reference to Adam as having been created “without a taint of sin.”
2) the act itself of yielding to corruption.


As I pointed out previously, your claim that Baker was teaching that Christ sinned does not fit Adoptionism at all. From your link:

“Adoptionism, also called dynamic monarchianism, was a minority Christian belief that Jesus was born merely human and that he became divine later in his life. By these accounts, Jesus earned the title Christ through his sinless devotion to the will of God, thereby becoming the perfect sacrifice to redeem humanity.”

Adoptionism taught that Christ was sinless, and that He was adopted as the Son of God exactly because of His sinlessness.


You and your faulty representations of my logic.
A is the human nature with the spiritual aspect (mind, will, character) free from any taint of sin.
B is the human nature with the spiritual aspect (mind, will, character) tainted by sin.
Anyone can see that A is different from B, since there is a fundamental aspect in both of them which is different. And they are different because the divine nature is precisely the divine character.

"He [Christ] began life, passed through its experiences, and ended its record, with a sanctified human will." {ST, October 29, 1894 par. 7}

Do we begin life with a sanctified human will?

"God made Adam after His own character, pure and upright. There were no corrupt principles in the first Adam, no corrupt propensities of tendencies to evil." {16MR 86.2}

Adam was made after God’s own character. Are we born after God’s own character? Was Christ?

We are born with “propensities of disobedience,” that is, with the propensity to disobey God and His law. We aren’t born naturally delighting in doing God’s will. We are born with a carnal mind that “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Was Christ born with such a mind? “I delight to do thy will, O my God; thy law is within my heart."

Where? (on the list above)

Regarding your interpretation, you're splitting up the paragraph, and trying to make it say something it's not saying. Every time you try to make this distinction you commit this same error. Why not consider the whole paragraph? And the ones which follow?



Of course as Adam was assailed, because Adam was without sin.

If her point were what you think it was, she would have somewhere summarized your idea. But she didn't. She summarized my ideas. Again and again.



No she's not. She's clarifying her thought by saying the same thing again, something she did all the time. I can provide many, many examples of this, if you'd like.

Regarding "Adoptionism" in wiki, the "sinless devotion" is referring to his passing this test, not the idea that Christ never sinned as a child.

Here's some more information:



Another example:



Another example:



One more:



Adoptionism explains the comments to Baker (see the list above). Your idea doesn't explain the statements which followed (see list above). It also requires ignoring the historical reality.



In the earlier example you wrote:



The fact that she uses two words in a negative sense does not imply the words are synonyms. It only means she was using them synonymously in the example of the comparison. This is correct, isn't it?



So you're saying that the sinful nature that Christ took was sinless? He took a sinless sinful nature? Is that it? Whereas our sinful natures our sinful, so their different than His? So when EGW says He took our sinful nature upon His own sinless nature, what she really meant was He took upon His own sinless nature not our sinful nature, but a sinless sinful nature which was unlike ours?

It would be so easy to see that this couldn't possibly be the case by simply considering what was actually happening in Adventism at the time she wrote these things. She didn't live in a vacuum, but had relationships with people who had certain ideas and understood her to have certain ideas.

Rosangela, Thank you for clarifying this important distinction. I'm studying this and still have a lot's more. But this is what comes to me from Scriptures.

Can we sum it up like so :

We were born descendent of sinful Adam while Jesus was born Son of God.
So Christ was the second and Last Adam which was different from the first in this manner:


Also Adam was made "in the likeness of God"

While God sent His son "in the likeness of sinful flesh". It doesn't mean he had a sinful flesh.

But who said I had to restrict myself to your list? I referred to things that were contained in the main paragraph of the letter.


No, I’m not splitting the paragraph, but emphasizing, within the paragraph, the contrast which does exist and which was perceived by other people besides me, like Arnold and Teresa.


What she says in the paragraph in question about Adam is that he “was created a pure, sinless being, without a taint of sin upon him,” not that he hadn't yet sinned when he was tempted. Although this is also true, it was not her emphasis.


You are equalling inclination to sin with yielding to sin. Is this correct?


I see none of your sources said that Christ sinned. Sure the fact that He passed the test was the factor which made it possible for Him to be adopted, but, as I’ve said, I’ve never seen a single heretic say that Christ sinned. Of course this would be a flagrant contradiction of the Bible, and the heretic would be shooting himself in his own foot. Besides, who would want a Saviour that sins?


The words under question are always synonymous if used in the negative sense, that is, a sinful tendency = a sinful propensity.


I’m saying that his nature was sinful in the physical/intellectual aspect, but not in the moral/spiritual aspect. Christ had a spiritual nature, like all of us. Do you think His spiritual nature was sinful? Or do you think that we are born with a spiritual nature free from every taint of sin?

Elle, I liked your summary.
I would like to add that the word likeness (homoioma) means “resemblance,” “likeness,” but this likeness does not necessarily mean perfect equality or identity.
For instance, in Rom. 1:23, an image resembles a man, a bird, an animal or a reptile, but it doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t think, it doesn’t move.
In Rev. 9:7, in appearance the locusts were like horses arrayed for battle, but the resemblance ends there.
Phil. 2:7 says Christ was born in the likeness of men, and He indeed partook of our flesh and blood, but He was more than a mere man.
In the same way, Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh - He came in the form of man affected by sin; this doesn’t mean His mind and His character were affected by sin, like ours.

I did. The point I made was in regards to the list I prepared.



This is the paragraph that's being contested. She didn't limit her thoughts to that one paragraph, or, to what you actually use, a couple of sentences in that paragraph.

She continued her train of thought, and re-emphasized what she had said previously in the list I provided. If your idea were correct, she should have mentioned it when she reemphasized what she had been saying.



If you split the paragraph, you break her train of thought, and get an idea which wasn't intending to communicate, which is evidenced by:

a.Considering the rest of the letter.
b.Considering what she herself wrote elsewhere.
c.Considering what her contemporaries understood to be her view.
d.Consider what was happening within Adventism at the time.



That is was her emphasis is made clear by points 2, 4, 7, 8, and 9 on the list, where she reemphasized what she said.



She said to not leave the slightest impression "that a taint of, or inclination to corruption rested upon Christ, or that He in any way yielded to corruption." Since she said elsewhere many times that Christ took our sinful, or fallen nature (or an equivalent expression), she could not have had that in reference, without contradicting herself. For an inclination of corruption to have rested upon Christ would have implied His yielding to corruption.



If Christ was born as a human being only, it's not surprising that He would have been considered to have sinned.



Probably Baker didn't either. He, based on Ellen White's comments, was probably using phrases that implied that, which Ellen White counseled him not to do.



It looks like Baker was implying that Christ had sinned without out and out saying it, based on Ellen White's remarks.



This is correct, but what you said previously was that tendencies was synonymous with propensities. I pointed out that this is not true in Ellen White's writings, and that the way to disprove this would be to find a counterexample. Instead of this, which would have been a valid way of contesting my point, you preferred the above argument, which is invalid, because it doesn't prove what you had asserted, which is that the words were synonyms.

It makes no sense for you to be asserting that the words meant the same when used negatively, because that wasn't our point of contention.



This is wrong. His nature was not sinful in any way; it was sinless.



I think Christ took upon His own sinless nature our sinful nature. I think He followed the law of heredity. I think Haskell was correct in asserting that the DA passage he cited referred to "fallen humanity, with all its tendencies."

In order for Christ to have accepted the working of the law of heredity, like every child of Adam, He had to receive those things from heredity which every child of Adam receives, or else what Ellen White said is meaningless.

A. T. Jones, Waggoner, Ellen White, Prescott; in short, everyone I know who spoke and wrote on the subject separated the aspects you are talking about. For example, Jones said, "Don't bring his mind into it." Ellen White wrote that Christ took our sinful nature *upon His own sinless nature*.

Regarding "in the likeness of sinful flesh," in Phil. 2:6 we read



So if we're going to conclude that Christ did not have sinful flesh because of the word "likeness," we should likewise conclude that Christ was not a man.

Here's another way of seeing that Christ had sinful flesh. In the sermon "The Word Became Flesh," Prescott wrote:



Also this:



He said similar things throughout the sermon, not surprising, since that's what the sermon was about.

Ellen White endorsed this specific sermon.

Tom, I didn't read this whole thread, but are you saying that everything this man says because Ellen has suppose to have endorsed. Anyway what did she endorsed; all that he said? So now everything he says is authority? To me this is not a safe stand. I heard this very same logic and line from someone else here.

I challenge you to make our Bible the authority. Let's look what the Bible has to say about Christ's nature. I bet if I go down this thread and I do a count, I'll have a hard time finding anyone bringing Biblical support in this topic.

No, I said she endorsed a specific sermon, the theme of which was that Christ had sinful flesh. The man repeated this some 3 dozen times.



It's hard to imagine that the endorsement ("truth separated from error") would not, at a minimum, include the theme of the sermon!



She endorsed Prescott very strongly for a period of time. She endorsed, in particular, a specific sermon. From this it would be a bit much to conclude that "everything he says is authority," don't you think? On the other hand, given how she says the Holy Spirit was using him during this time, it should make one curious, I would think, as to what he was saying.

For example:



At any rate, I was referring to a specific endorsement of a specific message.



Not from me you haven't! I'd suggest you reread carefully what I said. It looks like you may not have been careful.



People in this forum tend to be rely very strongly on the SOP. If you'd like to start a thread dealing with the humanity of Christ, using only Scripture, I'd be happy to participate.

I think it's also valuable to consider what the position on this subject has been within the Seventh-day Adventist church historically. That's something that's also been given short shrift.

Since she said Christ was born without a taint of sin, she can’t be equating taint of sin with yielding to sin. Besides, in that letter she uses the word “propensity,” a synonym of “inclination” (since “inclination” is here used in the negative sense), to express something inherited – again, which can’t imply yielding to sin. Therefore, the two first items evidently express the same thought, while the third item adds a new thought.


The discussion had advanced, so I was replying to your most recent argument. This is what I said in view of what you had said:



I’ll let this subject rest.


I’m evidently referring to His human nature (physical/intellectual aspect). Is it a sinless nature?

By the way, you didn’t answer my questions: