Recent study of Ellen White's use of literary sources has increased our understanding of both revelation and inspiration. It has also provided us a new perspective on her interests as a reader and writer. A survey of her books reveals that she had a wide spectrum of theological speculation at her disposal; yet the consistency of the thought in her writings gives evidence that she was selective in her borrowing.
A notable example of her selective use of sources sheds some light on a topic that has occasioned considerable discussion through the years. The question concerns the nature of Christ's humanity: Did Christ take the sinless humanity of Adam before the Fall, or a nature identical to ours this side of the Fall? Or did He have a unique nature unlike either Adam's or ours? The various interpretations of Ellen White's comments on this subject have principally centered on her use of the terms propensity and tendency.
In the past, attempts to understand what Ellen White meant by these terms have focused on the way she used them in other settings throughout her writings. But discussions of this question among authors Ellen White read and used cast significant illumination on the apparently contradictory statements she made. A student of Paul's writings can grasp his message from a careful reading of his Epistles; yet a knowledge of rabbinic Judaism, for example, enhances our understanding of particular words or concepts that he borrowed from that vocabulary. Likewise, a study of the sources that lie behind Ellen White's writings, while not a prerequisite for understanding her message, does provide a tool for appreciating her theological context and concerns as a writer.
One of Ellen White's favorite authors—or at least one from whom she borrowed frequently—was the Anglican preacher Henry Melvill (1798-1871). Considered for many years the most popular preacher in London, Melvils sermons were published in several different volumes, with many editions. The White Estate has Ellen White's personal copy of one of these collections, Melvill's Sermons, published in 1844. A sermon in that collection, "The Humiliation of the Man Christ Jesus," provides a context that is particularly valuable for reconciling the apparent conflict in Ellen White's statements on Christ's humanity. In writing her article "Christ Man's Example" for the Review and Herald of July 5, 1887, she drew extensively from this sermon.
In a digression in this sermon, Melvill considers the question of Christ's humanity. Although we have not found that Ellen White directly borrowed any material from this digression, a number of her statements that have become familiar seem to reflect the arguments that digression contains.
For Melvill, the Fall brought two primary consequences: (1) "innocent infirmities," and (2) "sinful propensities." "From both was Adam's humanity free before, and with both was it endowed after, transgression." 1
By "innocent infirmities" Melvill means such things as hunger, pain, weakness, sorrow, and death. "There are consequences [of] guilt which are perfectly guiltless. Sin introduced pain, but pain itself is not sin." 2 By "sinful propensities," on the other hand, Melvill refers to the proneness or "tendency" to sin.
In his summary of the discussion, Melvill argues that before the Fall Adam had neither "innocent infirmities" nor "sinful propensities," that we are born with both, and that Christ took the first but not the second: "But whilst He took humanity with the innocent infirmities, He did not take it with the sinful propensities. Here Deity interposed. The Holy Ghost overshadowed the virgin, and, allowing weakness to be derived from her, forbade wickedness; and so caused that there should be generated a sorrowing and a suffering humanity, but nevertheless an undefiled and a spotless; a humanity with tears, but not with stains; accessible to anguish, but not prone to offend; allied most closely with the produced misery, but infinitely removed from the producing cause.
"So that we hold—and we give it you as what we believe the orthodox doctrine—that Christ's humanity was not the Adamic humanity, that is, the humanity of Adam before the Fall; nor fallen humanity, that is, in every respect the humanity of Adam after the Fall. It was not the Adamic, because it had the innocent infirmities of the fallen. It was not the fallen, because it had never descended into moral impurity. It was, therefore, most literally our humanity, but without sin."3
Octavius Winslow, whose book The Glory of the Redeemer 4 Ellen White had in her library, also wrote on the nature of Christ's humanity. The box accompanying this article gives, in parallel columns, Winslow's comments on this subject and the Ellen White statements that seem to reflect his wording. Ellen White's usage of Winslow's language suggests that she understood the terms propensity, liability, and tendency in the same way he did, which also accords with Melvill.
Another Ellen White statement that almost incidentally touches on this point stands in apparent harmony with this perspective. In discussing the prophecy of Genesis 3:15 in The Great Controversy, Ellen White makes the following comment concerning the promised "enmity" between the serpent and the woman: "This enmity is not naturally entertained. When man transgressed the divine law, his nature became evil, and he was in harmony, and not at variance, with Satan. There exists naturally no enmity between sinful man and the originator of sin." 5
Interestingly, in a different passage, Ellen White adds this observation concerning Christ: "The enmity put between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman was supernatural. With Christ the enmity was in one sense natural; in another sense it was supernatural, as humanity and divinity were combined. And never was the enmity developed to such a marked degree as when Christ became an inhabit ant of this earth." 6
This statement, made without elaboration, was borrowed from a Melvill sermon entitled "The First Prophecy." Note his explanation: "Now the enmity was never put in such overpowering measure, as when the man Christ Jesus was its residence. It was in Christ Jesus in one sense naturally, and in another sense supernaturally. He was born pure, and with a native hatred of sin; but then He had been miraculously generated, in order that His nature might be thus hostile to evil." 7
While Ellen White's Christology embraces a far broader perspective than can be derived from either of these two authors, any interpretation of the terminology she employed must not ignore her literary sources.
As research moves beyond the question of the extent of Ellen White's literary borrowing to discover her usage of such sources, we can better understand and more deeply appreciate the processes by which God communicates to man.
1 C. P. Mcllvaine, ed., Sermons by Henry
Melvill, B. D. (New York: Stanford and Swords,
1844), p. 47.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 London: John Farquhar Shaw, 1855.
5 Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press, 1911,p.
505.
6 Selected Messages (Washington, D.C.: Review
and Herald, 1958), book 1, p. 254. (Italics
supplied.)
7 Mcllvaine, p. 13. (Italics supplied.)
