Adventists and Inspiration-2

by Alden Thompson

"The acceptance of that view by the students in the Battle Creek College and many others, including Elder Haskell, has resulted in bringing into our work questions and perplexities without end, and always increasing."

[W. C. White letter to L. E. Froom, January 8, 1928, cited in Selected Messages, book 3, p. 454 (Appendix C)]

In 1928 Ellen White’s son Willie wrote these words to Elder LeRoy Froom, describing the impact of a particular view of inspiration presented some 35 years earlier by the president of Battle Creek College, W. W. Prescott. [Prescott served as president of Battle Creek College from 1885 to 1894.]

"That view" must have been remarkable indeed to cause such mischief. According to Willie White’s letter, Prescott had presented the views of Swiss apologist Louis Gaussen (1790-1863), a passionate defender of verbal inspiration. His book, Theopneustia, first appeared in an English translation in 1841, and remains popular among conservative Christians as a defense of the inspiration of Scripture.

[Louis Gaussen, Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, translated from French (London: Samual Bagster, 1841). Under the title Divine Inspiration of the Bible, Kregel Publications reprinted another edition of the same book in 1971 and again in 1979.]

But why did Willie White feel justified in criticizing Prescott? Is there an Adventist view of inspiration? We generally identify with other conservative Christians who cherish the Bible as the Word of God. Some Adventists would even describe themselves as "Fundamentalists." Often we cite the Introduction to The Great Controversy, pp. v-xii, and Selected Messages, book 1, pp. 15-58, as the classic Adventist statements on inspiration.

In this article and the next we shall explore the history of Adventist thinking on inspiration. A knowledge of our past can show us where we have been, but not necessarily where we should be. From the first, while clearly cherishing the Scriptures, Adventists resolutely have avoided binding themselves to dogmatic creedal claims about the Bible. We have no creed but Scripture. Even the so-called Adventist "landmarks" do not concern the authority or inspiration of Scripture, but rather those doctrines especially connected with the early Adventist experience: Sabbath, sanctuary, judgment, and the nonimmortality of the soul.

As for the canon of Scripture, early Adventists did not always hold tightly to the traditional Protestant position, but occasionally cited the Apocrypha as Scripture. James White, for example, when annotating one of Ellen White’s visions in the pamphlet "A Word to the Little Flock," published in 1847, included references from the apocryphal books 2 Esdras and Wisdom.

Although most early Christian Bibles contained the apocryphal books as part of the Old Testament, from time to time leading Christian scholars, including the venerable Jerome, questioned their authority. The Reformers, however, marked a turning point in acceptance of the Apocrypha, by arguing against canonical status for these books. They pointed out that perversions of Bible teaching, such as prayer for the dead, were based on passages in the Apocrypha. This led them to adopt an Old Testament without Apocrypha (in harmony with the official Jewish canon), and generally to relegate the apocryphal books to a separate section between the Testaments.

At the Council of Trent (1545-1563), Roman Catholics responded to the Protestant challenge by granting full Scriptural authority to the Apocrypha. The break between Protestant and Catholic handling of the Apocrypha became complete in 1827, when the British and Foreign Bible Society voted to omit the Apocrypha from Bibles they would publish.

Although James White used a Bible containing the Apocrypha when he annotated Ellen White’s vision in 1847, since then Adventists tacitly seem to have adopted the Protestant canon. Yet acceptance of this canon did not commit our Adventist forefathers to adhere rigorously to Protestant orthodoxy, for the Disappointment already had confirmed their independence. While seeking to rescue the Biblical doctrine of the Second Advent, they broke with orthodoxy by setting dates. Similarly, several key figures in early Adventism, including James White and Uriah Smith, rejected the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, viewing Christ as a created being. Several decades passed before Adventists accepted an orthodox Christology.

Given this history of independent thinking, we may trace Adventist attitudes toward inspiration without confirming or denying any relationships to orthodoxy. But current trends do have an impact. And undoubtedly Adventists were caught up in the tumultuous discussions of Biblical authority that took place in the late nineteenth century. Believers struggled against the rising tide of Biblical criticism that seemed to threaten the very foundations of Christianity.

Writing in 1903, Ellen White shared this concern: "The work of ‘higher criticism,’ in dissecting, conjecturing, reconstructing, is destroying faith in the Bible as a divine revelation; it is robbing God’s word of power to control, uplift and inspire human lives." [Education, p. 227]

The increasing vigor of these attacks against the Bible forced many Christians into extreme positions as they fought to maintain both their faith and their credibility. But in the midst of it all, Adventists produced, indirectly, a remarkably balanced statement on inspiration.

A need to revise the Testimonies produced the occasion. The 1883 General Conference called for republication of the Testimonies with certain "verbal changes" to remove "imperfections." The official motion noted: "Many of these testimonies were written under the most unfavorable circumstances, the writer being too heavily pressed with anxiety and labor to devote critical thought to the grammatical perfection of the writings, and they were printed in such haste as to allow these imperfections to pass uncorrected."

[Review and Herald, Nov. 27, 1883, cited in Selected Messages, book 3, p. 96n.]

The General Conference appointed an editing committee of five chaired by Uriah Smith. The motion included an important definition of inspiration in justifying this decision to edit inspired writings: "We believe the light given by God to His servants is by the enlightenment of the mind, thus imparting the thoughts, and not (except in rare cases) the very words in which the ideas should be expressed."

The motion was passed and was published in the Review and Herald, November 27, 1883. But what seemed clear to the brethren at the General Conference startled some of the saints in the pew: Uriah Smith ran into a hailstorm of opposition from believers in Battle Creek. Nobody was going to touch their Testimonies!

By February of 1884, Ellen White became aware of Smith’s dilemma: commanded to move ahead by the church but forbidden by the saints. Her letter to him reveals a thoroughly practical view of inspiration.

[Letter 11, 1884, written from Healdsburg, Calif., Feb. 19, 1884, cited in Selected Messages, book 3, pp. 96-98.]

Admitting her own inadequacies with language, she explained that the Lord had instructed her to get the light out "in the best manner possible." As she used her talents she would "have increased ability" for writing and speaking. She "was to improve everything, as far as possible bringing it to perfection, that it might be accepted by intelligent minds."

Yes, an inspired writer’s message was not perfect by virtue of his inspiration: It could be improved. Underscoring the practical importance of getting out a message quickly, Ellen White lamented the delay of J. N. Andrews’ History of the Sabbath: "Other erroneous works were taking the field and blocking the way, so that minds would be prejudiced by the opposing elements." What was Andrews’ problem? "He was seeking too hard to arrive at perfection." Not that Ellen White was opposed to perfection; she had said that "every care should be exercised to perfect the works published." But in this instance, striving for perfection had led to unnecessary delay. "This delay is not as God would have it."

As for revision of the Testimonies, Ellen White not only took issue with her friends but willingly risked what the church’s enemies might do with a revision. "I cannot see the matter as my brethren see it. I think the changes will improve the book. If our enemies handle it, let them do so." Anything Adventists did would be "criticized, twisted, turned, and boggled." But the work must go forward, leaving the results to God.

A note of urgency marked her conclusion: "Now, my brethren, what do you propose to do? I do not want this work dragging on any longer. I want something done, and done now."

And it was done. The revised Testimonies, volumes 1-4 or the present edition, came out in 1885.

And Ellen White was right: Enemies, most notably, D. M. Canright, did "handle it." A talented but volatile man who went in and out of the Adventist ministry at least four times, Canright finally became a Baptist minister in 1887, publishing in 1889 a stinging attack against his former church, Seventh-day Adventism Renounced. For many years the mainstay of anti-Adventist literature, his book includes a comment on the revision of the Testimonies.

The concept of inspiration that underlies his attack clearly runs counter to the view of those who voted to revise the Testimonies. Note how he puts his objection: "Opening haphazard to four different pages in Vol. 1, I read and compared them with the original publication which I have. I found on an average twenty-four changes of the words on each page! Her words were thrown out and other words put in and other changes made, in some cases so many that it was difficult to read the two together. At the same rate in the four volumes, there would be 63,720 changes.

"Taking, then, the words which were put in by her husband, by her copyist, by her son, by her editors, and those copied from other authors, probably they comprise from one tenth to one quarter of all her books. Fine inspiration that is! The common reader knows nothing about these damaging facts, but I could not avoid knowing them, for I have been where I saw it myself."

[D. M. Canright, Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p. 141. See sketch of Canright’s experience in Richard Schwartz, Light Bearers to the Remnant, pp. 464-470.

Canright expected his readers to be properly horrified by such a procedure. And no doubt many were–if they believed in verbal inspiration. Any "common reader" of the Review and Herald however, would not have been ignorant of these so-called "damaging facts." Some obviously had known enough to slow the work of the revision committee.

Some Adventist leaders of that era held a verbal dictation view of inspiration similar to the one assumed by Canright. Willie White’s letter to Froom (cited at the beginning of this article) mentions Prescott and Haskell by name, but "many others" as well. Milton Wilcox, editor of Signs of the Times (1891-1913), was most likely among them, a conclusion suggested by his item in the question-and-answer column of the Signs:

"Where is the inspiration? Which is inspired, the original Greek of the New Testament, or the English translation, or both?

"The original words, of course; the words by which prophet and apostle spoke. It was not the person who was inspired, it was the God-breathed Word. ‘All Scripture is [literally] God-breathed’ (2 Tim. 3:16)."

[Reprinted in Milton C. Wilcox, Questions and Answers, vol. 1, p. 12.]

This quotation is particularly striking for two reasons. First, it closely parallels the primary argument of Louis Gaussen, the author behind Prescott’s forceful presentation at Battle Creek. Wilcox emphasizes God-breathed by adding in brackets literally. The title of Gaussen’s work, Theopneustia, is simply a Greek word for "God-breathed" from 2 Timothy 3:16. Gaussen chides those who find inspiration merely "in the man"; "it is in the book only that they should look for it." [Gaussen, op. cit., p. 55] What the writers pen is "dictated from on high–it is always God who speaks." [Ibid., p. 25.]

Second, Wilcox’s statement contrasts sharply with one written by Ellen White in 1886. While he declared the word to be inspired, not the person, Ellen White wrote: "It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions, but on the man himself, who under the influence of the Holy Ghost is imbued with thoughts." [Manuscript 24, 1886, cited in Selected Messages, book 1, p. 21.]

But before we come down too harshly on Wilcox and Prescott, we must recognize that these words of Ellen White, while written in 1886, were not published until 1958, in Selected Messages, book 1. Why the delay? That story we will take up next.

–Alden Thompson, Adventist Review, September 12, 1985.