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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14323
06/25/05 06:49 AM
06/25/05 06:49 AM
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In this discussion you are not addressing what Paul sys in I Corinthians 15:
1Co 15:21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
1Co 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1Co 15:23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming.
1Co 15:24 Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.
1Co 15:25 For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.
1Co 15:26 The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
It seems pretty clear to me that Paul is talking about the second death since he says that ïn Christ shall all be made alive.” This text seems to imply that without Christ we will all suffer the second death because of Adam.
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14324
06/25/05 04:29 PM
06/25/05 04:29 PM
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SDA
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Active Member 2019
20000+ Member
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Posts: 22,256
Southwest USA
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Tom, the quotes shared earlier in this thread make it abundantly clear that unborn babies begin developing character in the womb. What choices do they make? Well, I'm sure whatever choices do they make are instinctive, spontaneous, not unlike many of the choices we make, choices which we immediately regret and repent of.
Is there anyone on this thread who believes children are sinless until around age 12? Go back a few pages and you'll see what, and who, I mean.
Yeah, I know what you mean about using the phrase "sinful nature" - but Paul uses the phrase "sinful flesh". So, if anyone has a problem with it they have a problem with Paul, which isn't too terribly unusual.
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14325
06/26/05 08:30 AM
06/26/05 08:30 AM
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Active Member 2012
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 14,795
Lawrence, Kansas
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quote:
Tom, the quotes shared earlier in this thread make it abundantly clear that unborn babies begin developing character in the womb. What choices do they make? Well, I'm sure whatever choices do they make are instinctive, spontaneous, not unlike many of the choices we make, choices which we immediately regret and repent of.
What quotes? Almost none of what you've said on this thread have I perceived as anything but your opinion. Virtually none of what you've been saying here has any backing from either Scripture (which is usual) or from the Spirit of Prophesy (which is unusual).
You still haven't suggested what a fetus sin might be. What is an example of something a fetus would do which it should repent of? Some choice which is not unlike a choice of ours? Should it repent of sucking its thumb?
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14326
06/26/05 11:25 AM
06/26/05 11:25 AM
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5500+ Member
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 6,154
Brazil
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Tom, As I said in the past, just because Ellen White said that Crosier had the true light on the cleansing of the sanctuary and recommended the article he wrote in The Day-Star Extra, this doesn’t mean I have to accept his shut-door views and other errors he defends in this article. Just because she recommended the book Daniel and Revelation of Uriah Smith, this doesn’t mean I have to accept all that is written there; and the same is true of Waggoner or any other she may have recommended or said they had light on a certain subject. There is a great difference between qualified and full endorsement. So, I don’t have to make reinterpretations of Ellen White’s words to make her views fit those of others. Whatever Ellen White meant by saying that Christ assumed our sinful nature, this of course excludes sinful propensities, and she is very clear about this. She says that while Adam’s posterity was born with inherent propensities of disobedience, not for one moment was there in Christ an evil propensity. (So propensities are something with which human beings are born). Some other texts confirming what she says in the Baker letter: He was born without a taint of sin, but came into the world in like manner as the human family. He did not have a mere semblance of a body, but He took human nature, participating in the life of humanity.--Letter 97, 1898. {7ABC 462.2} In the fullness of time He was to be revealed in human form. He was to take His position at the head of humanity by taking the nature but not the sinfulness of man. -- The Signs of the Times, May 29, 1901. quote:
This statement is absolute nonsense if we consider it to be genetic. Let's try it out and see:
He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there in Him sinful genes.
The statement makes perfect sense. The same could have been said of Adam.
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14327
06/26/05 11:37 AM
06/26/05 11:37 AM
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OP
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 1,664
Plowing
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quote:
Originally posted by Phil N. D'blanc:
The Victorian usage of the word "propensity" is often missaplied today in SDA circles.
Here is Webster's two meaning:
1.a natural inclination or tendency; bent
2.[Obscure] favorable inclination; bias (for)
The first sounds applicable to genetic and/or learned twists in personality.
But the other, being the old usage, I feel the one EGW would have used, appears to be a matter of decision and will, a relish, attraction or enjoyment. This Christ could not have had toward any sin.
I think this should be looked at again.
Roseangels: Apparently you feel that Christ took the nature of Adam before his fall, correct?
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14328
06/26/05 05:59 PM
06/26/05 05:59 PM
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5500+ Member
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Joined: Nov 2004
Posts: 6,154
Brazil
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quote:
The first sounds applicable to genetic and/or learned twists in personality.(emphasis mine)
Ikan,
Ellen White says that Adam’s "posterity was born with inherent propensities of disobedience". So the word propensities here refers to something with which human beings are born.
What I believe is that, whatever Ellen White meant by "sinful nature", this doesn't include sinful (selfish) propensities, inclinations or tendencies. Can't we see that while love is the divine nature, selfishness is the satanic nature? How could Christ be born with something satanic in Himself?
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14329
06/26/05 06:05 PM
06/26/05 06:05 PM
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OP
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 1,664
Plowing
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EGW would hav eused both definitions, apparently, the meaning having to do with the subject.
Thanks for a partial response; how about the full response?:
" Apparently you feel that Christ took the nature of Adam before his fall, correct?"
Will you elaborate please, Roseangela?
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14330
06/27/05 01:23 AM
06/27/05 01:23 AM
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Active Member 2012
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Posts: 14,795
Lawrence, Kansas
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R: As I said in the past, just because Ellen White said that Crosier had the true light on the cleansing of the sanctuary and recommended the article he wrote in The Day-Star Extra, this doesn’t mean I have to accept his shut-door views and other errors he defends in this article. Just because she recommended the book Daniel and Revelation of Uriah Smith, this doesn’t mean I have to accept all that is written there; and the same is true of Waggoner or any other she may have recommended or said they had light on a certain subject. There is a great difference between qualified and full endorsement. T: My point was that she specifically recommended their teaching on the human nature of Christ, and she preached it side by side with them. quote:
Letters have been coming in to me, affirming that Christ could not have had the same nature as man, for if He had, He would have fallen under similar temptations. If He did not have man's nature, He could not be our example. If He was not a partaker of our nature, He could not have been tempted as man has been. If it were not possible for Him to yield to temptation, He could not be our helper. It was a solemn reality that Christ came to fight the battles as man, in man's behalf. His temptation and victory tell us that humanity must copy the Pattern; man must become a partaker of the divine nature. (RH 2/18/90)
Now Ellen White was preaching along side of Jones and Waggoner, and she was being questioned regarding statements that had been being made regarding the nature of Christ. What was Waggoner's position?
quote:
A little thought will be sufficient to show anybody that if Christ took upon Himself the likeness of man in order that He might redeem man, it must have been sinful man that He was made like, for it is sinful man that He came to redeem. Death could have no power over a sinless man, as Adam was in Eden, and it could not have had any power over Christ, if the Lord had not laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Moreover, the fact that Christ took upon Himself the flesh, not of a sinless being, but of a sinful man, that is, that the flesh which He assumed had all the weaknesses and sinful tendencies to which fallen human nature is subject, is shown by the statement that He "was made of the seed of David according to the flesh." David had all the passions of human nature. He says of himself, "Behold I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Ps. 51:5. (Christ and His Rightouesness "God Manifest in the Flesh")
So she was speaking side by side with Waggoner and Jones, and she defended *their* views on the human nature of Christ (their being all three of them). It's inconceivable that she had a different view of Christ's nature than Jones and Waggoner had.
R: So, I don’t have to make reinterpretations of Ellen White’s words to make her views fit those of others.
T: That's true. Her views fit those of Jones, Waggoner, and Prescott who she explicitly endorsed on the subject of Christ's human nature, and of Haskell, who she implicitly endorsed, so there's no need to make reinterpretations of her views. The idea that her views were somehow different than every other SDA who was preaching and writing on the subject contemporaneously is absurd.
R: Whatever Ellen White meant by saying that Christ assumed our sinful nature, this of course excludes sinful propensities, and she is very clear about this.
T: Well of course. Christ never sinned. No SDA has held this position.
R: She says that while Adam’s posterity was born with inherent propensities of disobedience, not for one moment was there in Christ an evil propensity. (So propensities are something with which human beings are born).
T: Apparently Baker was teaching that Christ had sinned. She makes clear that Christ never sinned. Here's the paragraph:
quote:
Be careful, exceedingly careful as to how you dwell upon the human nature of Christ. Do not set Him before the people as a man with the propensities of sin. He is the second Adam. The first Adam was created a pure, sinless being, without a taint of sin upon him; he was in the image of God. He could fall, and he did fall through transgressing. Because of sin, his posterity was born with inherent propensities of disobedience. But Jesus Christ was the only begotten Son of God. He took upon Himself human nature, and was tempted in all points as human nature is tempted. He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity. He was assailed with temptations in the wilderness, as Adam was assailed with temptations in Eden.
I put in bold the comments which clarify the argument that Christ did not sin, unlike Adam, who did. Apparently Baker was teaching that because Christ took our nature, He sinned. But while Christ took our heredity, He never sinned. That's EGW's point. See how she says "He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there in Him an evil propensity." i.e., this is equivalent: "He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but He didn't." To take this as meaning "He could have sinner; He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there a bad gene in Him" is non-sensical both in terms of being a sentence which makes sense, and in context, where she is arguing that Christ never sinned. We simply don't say "Never for one moment was there is so-and-so a bad gene." This would imply that having a bad gene is something dependent on time. Sinning is something which one can do at one time, while not at another. Having a bad gene is not. Either you have it, or you don't. It doesn't make sense to qualify it with the phrase "not for one moment". The statement would simply by: "He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but He didn't inherit any evil propensities." This would be a logical sentence, although it would contradict her use of the phrase "evil propensities" which always has to do with sinning, not heredity.
At any rate, we shouldn't be discussing a private letter of hers anyway if we want to follow her counsel, as well as use common sense. We don't know what Baker was teaching, so we don't know the context of her counsel. The definitive work on her Christology is the Desire of Ages, where she wrote, among other things:
quote:
In our humanity, Christ was to redeem Adam's failure. But when Adam was assailed by the tempter, none of the effects of sin were upon him. He stood in the strength of perfect manhood, possessing the full vigor of mind and body. He was surrounded with the glories of Eden, and was in daily communion with heavenly beings. It was not thus with Jesus when He entered the wilderness to cope with Satan. For four thousand years the race had been decreasing in physical strength, in mental power, and in moral worth; and Christ took upon Him the infirmities of degenerate humanity. Only thus could He rescue man from the lowest depths of his degradation. (DA 117)
This is clearly the post-lapsarian position (note "moral worth") and is in perfect harmony with what Jones, Waggoner, Prescott, Haskell, and every other contermporary SDA who spoke on Christology presented.
R: Some other texts confirming what she says in the Baker letter:
He was born without a taint of sin, but came into the world in like manner as the human family. He did not have a mere semblance of a body, but He took human nature, participating in the life of humanity.--Letter 97, 1898. {7ABC 462.2}
T: The phrase "taint of sin" here is refering to Christ's divine nature, as the following quotes bring out:
quote:
What a sight was this for Heaven to look upon? Christ, who knew not the least taint of sin or defilement, took our nature in its deteriorated condition (1SM 253)
.
quote:
Though He had no taint of sin upon His character, yet He condescended to connect our fallen human nature with His divinity (3SM 134)
R: In the fullness of time He was to be revealed in human form. He was to take His position at the head of humanity by taking the nature but not the sinfulness of man. -- The Signs of the Times, May 29, 1901.
T: She always uses the term "sinfulness" to refer to man's perfomance, not his genetic material.
Old Tom:This statement is absolute nonsense if we consider it to be genetic. Let's try it out and see:
He could have sinned; He could have fallen, but not for one moment was there in Him sinful genes.
R: The statement makes perfect sense. The same could have been said of Adam.
T: No, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Nobody talks like this. Having bad genes is not dependent on time. It's an on/off thing.
You didn't respond to the statements I quoted. For your convenience, I'll requote them:
quote:
It would have been an almost infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam stood in his innocence in Eden. But Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His earthly ancestors. (DA 49)
Note the sentence in bold. Christ accepted the law of heredity, which is shown in the history of His ancestors. Not a very flattering histroy, but He accepted it, just like we must accept our own family histories.
quote:
Adam was tempted by the enemy, and he fell. It was not indwelling sin which caused him to yield; for God made him pure and upright, in His own image. He was as faultless as the angels before the throne. There were in him no corrupt principles, no tendencies to evil. But when Christ came to meet the temptations of Satan, He bore "the likeness of sinful flesh." (BE 9/3/00)
It would difficult to imagine a clearer statement of the post-lapsarian position than this.
There was a crisis referred to as the Holy Flesh movement where the theology was like this:
1) Christ took the nature of Adam before the fall.
2) We must be sinless like Christ was
3) Therefore we must have a sinless human nature like Christ had (They believed this was accomplished by a special Pentecostal type experience).
To meet this heresy, the Adventists argued that 1) was false. Stephen Haskell wrote to Ellen White:
quote:
When we stated that we believed that Christ was born in fallen humanity, they would represent us as believing that Christ sinned, notwithstanding the fact that we would state our position so clearly that it would seem as though no one could misunderstand us.
Ellen White approved of what Haskell was doing. If the Holy Flesh theology was correct as far as 1) was concerned, they wouldn't have attacked it at that point.
Besides Haskell, Waggoner was also employed to counteract this false teaching. He spoke about it at the 1901 General Conference session. He also attacked it at the base, point 1). Ellen White was there and heard him speak. It would have been dishonest of her to allow these statements to remain if they were false.
In 1896 EGW endorsed Prescott as strongly as she had been endorsing Jones and Waggoner. Ellen White heard Prescott preach in Avondale a sermon called "The Word Became Flesh". Here's an excerpt:
quote:
So you see that what the Scripture states very plainly is that Jesus Christ had exactly the same flesh that we bear—flesh of sin, flesh in which we sin, flesh, however, in which He did not sin, but He bore our sins in that flesh of sin. Do not set this point aside.
EGW said of this sermon:
quote:
In the evening Professor Prescott gave a most valuable lesson, precious as gold. The tent was full, and many stood outside. All seemed to be fascinated with the word, as he presented the truth in lines so new to those not of our faith. Truth was separated from error, and made, by the divine Spirit, to shine like precious jewels. (1/7/96)
Prescott's sermon, the entire sermon, was a sermon about Christ's taking the fallen nature of Adam. Ellen White heard the sermon personally, and proclaimed it "truth separated from error." The sermon was about nothing else except the nature of Christ. It's impossible to not see this as endorsing the view on the nature of Christ Prescott was presenting (I just presented a small portion of the sermon, but can present much more if desired).
Not only Prescott, Jones, Waggoner, Haskell and Ellen G. White herself, but every SDA who wrote on the subject of Christology until around 1947 presented the same view. I could quote from dozens of authors presenting the same view, many of which were contemporaries of EGW. She presented the same view, and endorsed those who presented that view. There's simply no way she could have held the pre-lapsarian view. In addition to contradicting what she wrote, it would have been totally dishonest of her to have given the endorsements she did and behaved the way she did if she did not share the views of all those around her who were presenting what they understood to be her view as well. Take a look at the Haskell letter to her: "When we stated that we believed that Christ was born in fallen humanity ..." Haskell understood Ellen White had the same view he did, and indeed, how could he do otherwise when Adventists were united on this.
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14331
06/27/05 09:39 AM
06/27/05 09:39 AM
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OP
Very Dedicated Member
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 1,664
Plowing
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Roseangela This classing of Jones and Waggoner with Crosier or U.Smith is fruitless. I have seen limp attempts at this from Andrews thesis papers for post grads. It's an old game.
She called J&W, "messengers of God", endorses them over 200 times in writing as well as toured and preached in tandem, on the paltform with them for three years!
She mentioned Crosier's booklet twice, as I recall, and the R&H publishing company had to heavily edit U.Smith's "Daniel and Revelation" book because it taught that Christ was not God and was a created being!
I see a vast differnce between these men, read them, own their books in original copies and facsimilies and make my judgments from that.
But the long and short of it is: you stated earlier that you did not own/do not read Jones or Waggoner. Therefore, how can you possible know what they taught?
Hearsay?
Revelation?
Trusting to other scholars' opinions is a risky business, at best.
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Re: Born sinning or born sinners?
#14332
06/28/05 03:25 AM
06/28/05 03:25 AM
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Active Member 2012
14500+ Member
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 14,795
Lawrence, Kansas
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quote:
She called J&W, "messengers of God", endorses them over 200 times in writing as well as toured and preached in tandem, on the paltform with them for three years!
Actually over 1,000 times!
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