Introduction

Ellen White was the leading personality in the early Seventh-day
Adventist Church, and her writings continue to be the authoritative source
of what Seventh-day Adventism means today. Although she never held an
official position in the church, she argued powerfully for her vision of
the destiny of Seventh-day Adventism, and wrote extensively on many subjects
ranging over church doctrine, Christian behaviour, health and the Bible.

Ellen Gould Harmon was a sickly, introverted adolescent ecstatic
from Portland, Maine, who, along with other Millerites in Portland, had
numerous trances, messages and mystical experiences, indeed they became
infamous for their 'continual introduction of visionary nonsense'. However
she was discovered by James White, a young Adventist preacher and teacher,
who became her protector and, in 1846, her husband. They were both central
figures in Seventh-day Adventist church, as the group of believers became
known in 1860, and in 1863 James White was asked to be their first president
(an offer he temporarily declined). For years Ellen White lived in the
shadow of her husband, providing visionary endorsement for the opinions of
the early church, however after James's death in 1881 she assumed a more
assertive role, directing the younger church leaders from behind the
scenes and by the time of her death in 1915 had become the real authority
for Adventists.

It was the message of William Miller that first aroused in Ellen
White a dissatisfaction with existing Christianity. Miller preached that
the Bible could be 'de-ciphered' to reveal the date of the Second Coming
of Christ, and that this date was very soon. Ellen White was convinced of
Miller's message and shocked at the dismissive and even hostile attitude
of other Christian's towards Miller's teaching. The group of 'Adventists'
(so called because they emphasised Christ's second Advent) were to be
disappointed and humiliated when two dates set for the Second Coming in
1844 failed, and they splintered into various factions, some rejecting
Miller's 'de-ciphering', others setting new dates, others uncertain what
to do. The 'Adventists' would soon have faded into history were it not for
the vision of Ellen White that this small core of Adventists would form
the basis for a new church, fulfilling the promise of the reformation to
return to a faith based wholly on the Bible, with a mission to preach this
original, true Christianity to the whole world, warning them to return to
God before he did return a second time. Her zeal and energy provided the
spark that founded the Seventh-day Adventist church.

Obviously Ellen White lived and thought within the pietistic
tradition of Christianity, yet she developed elements within this
tradition as well as providing interesting original ideas. Her thought
can be traced through four stages: her experiences within the Millerite
movement up to 1844, the post-1844 revaluation which resulted in the
foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, her attempt to initiate
a renewal of the Church around 1888, and her development of a 'Health
Message' from around 1900. Ellen White died in 1915. It must be emphasised
that her thought developed in relation to the experiences and debates of
the church and any understanding of her ideas must take this into account.

This book will begin by providing an 'overview' of Ellen White's
life, showing the development of her ideas within the concrete historical
situation. It will then focus on some essential features of her thought
showing how her ideas fit together into a systematic whole, providing the
theoretical framework for Seventh-day Adventist theology, paying special
attention to her 'Magnum Opus', 'The Great Controversy between Christ and
Satan'.

The Life of Ellen White

1. The Millerites

Before dealing with the Millerites it might be useful to briefly
note the pietistic ideas that Ellen White grew up with and which were the
foundation from which all her later beliefs were derived from. Two themes,
closely related, characterise Pietistic belief: the individual's battle with
Satan and the individual's relationship with God. The individual cannot
by himself defeat Satan, but my constant devotion to God he may obtain
strength to resist temptation. This relationship with God is centred
around the Bible and prayer, and the purpose of the Church is to reinforce
the study of the Bible and prayer to God, rather than containing any
authority itself.

Pietism understands every human activity and belief in terms of
the great divide between the World and the believer: Satan constantly
attempts to ensnare the Christian either by force or deception, and it is
for this reason that the believer must always be on his/her guard. Not only
are the more obvious sins (such as lying, stealing, murder and blasphemy) to
be shunned, but also the sins of the flesh (lust, alcohol, gluttony etc.),
and also the 'frivolities' of music, theatre, dancing and 'worldly' enjoyment.
Ellen White was brought up to believe that the Devil was always trying to
trap the believer, and therefore constant vigilance was essential.

Any part of the world is seen as a possible deception of Satan, as
he is 'Lord of this World', hence all human reasoning and judgement is itself
suspect. The only objective certainty for the believer was the Bible, and
hence all true belief could only come from a study of the Bible. Ellen
White continued this suspicion of human creation, showing no interest in
philosophy or theology, for her, all true ideas must come directly from
the Bible.

One could speculate as to why it was that Ellen White was so
attracted to these ideas, for children do not always accept their parents
beliefs. Possibly it was due to the fact that she was frequently at home
due to illness or injury (at 17 a stone hit her in the face, which she took
a long while to recover from), and therefore became indifferent to peer pressure
and continued to look to her parents as her example. Thus the normal
process where the child's main influences pass from parents to peers and
finally the development of an individual personality was halted early on,
and this may explain the emphasis she puts on the parent/child relationship
in her later writings.

Ellen White's devotion to God was given a new emphasis when she heard
the message of William Miller. Miller used a method developed by Jewish
Theologians in the Twelfth century to 'de-code' Daniel and Revelation,
the Apocalyptic books of the Bible. Using this method the various symbols
and images were said to correspond with historical entities such as empires,
kings, governments etc., and the time spans mentioned, 2300 days, 1300 days
etc. represented years. Thus such events as the fall of the Roman Empire,
the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the French Revolution and so on were thought
to have been predicted in prophecy. Perhaps more importantly, according to
Miller one of the time periods, the 2300 days, had not yet finished, and
the event predicted, the 'cleansing of the sanctuary' was thus in the future.

Miller understood the phrase 'cleansing of the sanctuary' to refer
to the Second Coming of Christ, and hence the end of the world. The phrase
itself refers to the Jewish Day of Atonement, which occurs once a year, and
during which all the sins repented of during the year are removed from the
sanctuary and 'transferred' to a goat (the 'scapegoat') which is then left
to roam the desert. Thus already Ellen White was studying the Old Testament
symbolism of the sanctuary from where her ideas about the Eternal Law would
be derived.

2. The Revaluation

The failure of Christ to come as expected in 1844 caused Ellen
White's group of Adventists to re-examine the meaning of the phrase 'the
cleansing of the sanctuary'. Through Bible study and, apparently, a vision
from God, it was discovered that the sanctuary did not refer to the earth,
but that the sanctuary was in heaven, and marked the beginning of the End
of Time, after 1844 Christ could come at any moment. Thus the Great
Disappointment of 1844 did not discourage belief in the imminent return
of Christ, but their new understanding of prophecy only made the event
more certain.

The new interpretation of the 'cleansing of the sanctuary' was provided
by a New York farmer called Hiram Edson, who claimed that the event, not the
date had been wrong:
"that instead of our High Priest coming out of the Most Holy of the heavenly
sanctuary to come to this earth on the tenth day of the seventh month, at
the end of the 2,300 days, he for the first time entered on that day the
second apartment of that sanctuary and that he had a work to perform in
the Most Holy before coming to this earth."

During this period of revaluation two other important doctrines
were introduced: the state of the dead and the Sabbath. The state of the
dead doctrine stated that the soul is not immortal, and does not ascend
to Heaven at death, rather only at the Second Coming of Christ are the
dead Resurrected, only then do they go to Heaven. This doctrine was
logically consistent with the prominence of the Second Coming, for if
the dead are already with God at death, it is possible to re-interpret the
Parousa symbolically. However if the dead only go to Heaven at the Parousa
and the Parousa is only allegorical, there is no life after death.

The second new doctrine was the Sabbath. This doctrine continued the
interest Ellen White already had in the Jewish law, and provided the key
to a complete systemisation of Adventist belief. Joseph Bates, another early
Adventist, argued the case for a seventh-day (i.e. Saturday) Sabbath, but was
treated with indifference, for Ellen White, however, it tied together a lot
of loose ends. Ellen White argued that the whole point at issue in Satan's
rebellion against God was his charge that God's law was unjust, unnecessary,
and impossible to keep, and that it was exactly Satan's wish that the Sabbath
be treated with indifference, for if one part of God's law was ignored, other
parts would soon follow. This established for Ellen White the 'reason d’être'
for the church, to preach the whole gospel, including the full obligation of
the Christian to keep God's whole law. Study of prophecy convinced the
Adventists that the obligation to 'keep the commandments' was to constitute
God's final warning to the world before he returned, and they even identified
the establishment of their church as being foretold in the Bible.

Thus the Seventh-day Adventist church was established by arguing the
case for their specific doctrines (prophecy, the Sabbath, the state of the
dead and the second coming) with other Christians of a similar background.
Provided someone would acknowledge that the Bible was God's word and that
Christian's were obliged to keep the Ten Commandments, or that generally they
held from a fundamentalist or religious conservative views, Adventists
then believed they could then convince them of the truth of their own
doctrines.

Visiting the various Seventh-day Adventist churches at the time, Ellen
White realised that emphasis on their distinctive doctrines was having
undesired side-effects. Adventists were becoming almost obsessed with debate
and argument, to the detriment of any other practises. In 1888 her frustration
came to a head, sending massive shockwaves through the young church.

3. 1888

At the 1888 General Conference a turmoil was created at the preaching
of two ministers, Jones and Waggoner, on the subject of Justification by
Faith. Many leading Adventists openly opposed their message which they saw
as contradicting their teaching on the law. Practically isolated, Jones and
Waggoner were surprised when Ellen White announced her support for their
message. In the debate that followed, it became clear that while Adventists
tacitly supported traditional Protestant views on justification and
sanctification, their actual knowledge of the doctrines was either minimal
or just wrong. Ellen White saw two errors compounded: not only was a church
based on dry debate not going to sweep the world with the power of God, the
members ignorance of the basic truths of salvation meant they were lacking
power in their own devotional lives.

After the conference the bulk of Adventist leaders had set themselves
to defend the 'Old Foundation', seeing the emphasis on Justification by Faith
as watering down their teaching on the law. For Ellen White, however, the
question was never one of shirking Christian responsibilities, but of the
motivation to obey the law. She saw in the Justification by Faith issue a
means by which the church members would become full of the Holy Spirit,
working non-stop to spread the message of Adventism with enthusiasm and
confidence. She described the church as 'Laodocian', luke-warm, apathetic, but
told of a time in which the church would be like the early Christians, full of
the power of God, preaching everywhere and converting thousands, she described
this event as the 'Latter Rain' of the Holy Spirit.

Despite Ellen White's continued warnings that the church must change,
she continued to receive opposition. Jones and Waggoner's isolation and the
hostility of the church towards them and pushed them into a pantheistic
heresy and they left the church discredited. Ellen White attempted to
reinforce the importance of her message by claiming that it was God's
instructions to the church, not simply her own viewpoint. Such was her
energy that she wrote endlessly on the need for the church to obey her message.
She completed a massive five volume account of the history of the world, called
The Conflict of the Ages, in which, beginning from Satan's rebellion and ending
with the restoration of God's rule on earth she argued that God's plans were
constantly being thwarted by the disobedience of his people, yet still the
longed for revival did not occur.

Finally, Ellen White announced that the church had missed the
opportunity, and that by their disobedience the church had delayed God's
coming, yet it would not be delayed indefinitely. She began on a new stage
in her writings, attempting revive the church by giving in detail instruction
and guidance for a complete Christian life.

4. The Last Stage

Ellen White's final stage of writings are her attempt to leave
guidelines on Christian living. She believed that God's coming had been
delayed in 1888 because the church was not ready. Now she determined to
leave the church a library of instruction and inspiration; it was a long
term solution, she hoped that eventually the instructions in her writings
would be the living reality of the church, she wanted to give them the means
whereby they could grow spiritually day by day until finally they would be
ready to receive the 'Latter Rain'.

From their early study of the law the Adventists had acted upon the
dietary instructions in Leviticus 11, refraining from eating 'unclean' meat.
Now Ellen White wanted to construct a complete 'Health Message'. She argued
that for Christians to be most effective, mentally as well as physically,
they must be healthy. From her temperance upbringing she knew such texts as
'thy body is the temple of the Holy Spirit', and argued that it was a
Christian’s obligation to keep healthy. She produced guidelines for a healthy
diet and lifestyle, advocating vegetarianism and regular exercise. The
church provided funds for sanatoriums and manufacture of health foods.

She produced devotional books on the life and teachings of Christ,
encouraging the church members to draw their strength from Christ, and to
develop a personal relationship with him. She gave suggestions on prayer and
Bible study, promoting a contemplative, personal side to Adventism, not
present in the debate and discussion characteristic of the early 'doctrinal'
Adventism.

Ellen White wrote on the necessity of supporting the church with
generous funding, arguing for the Jewish 'tithing' topped up with additional
offerings and gifts. She was a keep supporter of missionary work, and
favoured the setting up of missionary hospitals and schools, which were to
become an important feature in the spreading of Seventh-day Adventism across
the world.

Ellen White died in 1915, but her influence lives on in the Adventist
church, where her writings are treated as God's special instruction to his
people in the last days, inspired, but without the universality of the Bible.
We shall now attempt an construction of her ideas and arguments.

The Teachings

1. In the background

Ellen White lived all her life within the 'fundamentalist' tradition
of Christianity. She made assumptions that may seem strange to us, and often
her implicit ideas need to be made explicit to see clearly what she is saying.

The most obvious feature of her beliefs that distinguishes her from
modern thought is her literalism. Not only did she believe in a literal
seven day creation, a literal flood, a literal tower of Babel, that Jonah was
literally swallowed by a whale, but also that Heaven literally and physically
exists (she said it was beyond the belt of Orion), that Angels are actual
beings, as is the Devil and his angels, and that there are other created
creatures in the universe, apart from humans on Earth. She describes an
Angel in Heaven recording in a book all the deeds done by every person who
has ever existed, and regarded the beginning of the Judgement in 1844 as
necessarily before the Second Coming so that the lives of everyone who has
lived may be evaluated and their punishment determined. Such a degree of
literalism is very rare in Christianity, and startling to read, yet she
often claimed that a loss of literalism was a victory for the Devil (for
example, her argument that Evolution was essentially an attack on the Sabbath,
since it attempted to render merely allegorical the santification of the
seventh day).

A second feature requiring to be made explicit is her vision of the
activity of the Devil. Ellen White sees human freedom as prerequisite upon
an individuals response to God. If someone rejects God, they become more and
more subject to the Devil's deceptions. Thus she sees no problem in frequently
claiming that the Devil was behind an idea or an event, without meaning that
any individuals involved were consciously serving him. When a person is tempted
it is literally the Devil or one of his Angels who is speaking, any resistance
to temptation only comes through the intervention of God or His Angels, not
from the individual.

A third possible source of confusion is to forget that Mrs White always
wrote to make a particular point, not to investigate the truth about an object.
A good example of this is her book "The Great Controversy between Christ and
Satan", which appears to be a history of the Christian church: after an early
digression about the rebellion of Satan, we read of the persecution of the
Early Church, a little later we come to the middle ages, then there is
Luther, Wesley, and so on. However, reading through the record of the Early
Church, we have no mention of any of the Church Fathers - no Justin Martyr,
no Tertullian, no mention of any of the great debates about the nature of
Christ or the Trinity, no mention of Arianism or Gnosticism, no mention of
any of the creeds; in the Middle Ages there is nothing about Augustine or
Thomas Aquinas, no Duns Scotus or Anselm, no Francis of Assisi; we hear of
the reformation, but not the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent, no
Ignatius Iolia, there is no St John of the Cross, no St Julian of Norwich,
no Cloud of Unknowing, no Thomas a Kempis, even the references to the Spanish
Inquisition do not include one of the most notorious persecutions, the
Parfect of Southern France. What exactly is the book about ? The explanation
lies on two levels: firstly Mrs White is following the prophetic outline
of time, not the historical outline, secondly she is trying to trace the
unconscious suppression of the Law by the Christian church. We shall deal later
with "The Great Controversy", but the point to keep in mind is not to be
surprised if she misses the main character out of an episode, or deals with
minor instances instead of general trends, or quotes apparently out of
context, she is attempting to trace the unconscious forces within the
shifting layers of time, to drag out the evil where it had not been perceived.

The last item it will be useful to explain is the Adventist method
of 'de-coding' prophecy. This method is such an important feature of Adventist
thought that it essentially constitutes a 'proof' of the correctness of
Seventh-day Adventism.

The Apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation contain accounts of
strange visions of grotesque creatures, mysterious speeches, symbols, warnings,
allegories and messages. There have been various methods employed to explain
what the authors were trying to say, but traditionally two explanations have
been favoured. The first is to see the visions as having a spiritual meaning,
portraying in a colourful and picturesque way the battle between good and
evil, with the promise of the eventual triumph of God and the establishment
of his rule on earth. The second is to see the symbols as representing
powerful figures at the time the books were written, and in order to
prevent the books being destroyed due to their subversive content the
messages in them were written in a sort of code that would be discernible
to the people of God, but not to her enemies, for example the Beast in
Revelation represents Nero, but rather than actually naming him they give
the numerological representation of his name, 666. There are two other, less
orthodox methods, however, the Adventist and the Dispensationalist. Basically
the Dispensationalist method sees all the symbolism as referring to the
very final events on Earth, (with the Beast referring to some Anti-Christ
who will appear at the end of time, for example), while the Adventist method
regards the symbols as referring to historical figures covering the whole
time between Christ's first and second Advents, including the events of
the last days.

2. A Special Church

Whilst various Adventists may be credited with the dissemination of
the Sabbath and the state of the dead, even with the sanctuary and prophecy,
and others may have given better pastoral ministries, and still others may
have put their unique gifts in building up the various missionary fields,
Ellen White must be credited with her unique vision of the role of the church.
It may sometimes seem difficult to single out what Ellen White made a unique
contribution to, for a lot of what she writes is reiterating and re-emphasising
previous writers, and while she made important contributions in the
discussions on how the church should be organised, on decisions on building
publishing houses for example, we are going to concentrate on her unique
message: the role of the 'Remnant Church' and the tasks of the members of
that church.

Ellen White had high standards, and high expectations. It seems
startling the language she used in describing the Christian church, both
Protestant and catholic, but she was expressing her horror at the tragedy
of the history of the church in failing to live up to the values of its
founder, and it was this nausea at the hypocrisy of the established church,
perhaps similar to Kierkegaard's, that caused her uncompromising condemnation.
She didn't attempt to balance the good and the bad in church history, that
there was any bad at all was unacceptable. Her experience of the Love of
God was one of an absolute obligation to obedience, she could not understand
how anyone with a knowledge of that love could not then desire that they
live in absolute obedience, and any failing from that high standard she
viewed with suspicion.

After all the compromises the church had made with the world, Ellen
White wanted to see established a church that would not fear to be obedient,
no matter what the cost.

We can divide Ellen White's theory of the church into three
catagories: the organisation of the presently existing church, the tasks
of the presently existing church, and the radical break from the present
church into the Remnant Church. For Ellen White, the presently existing
Seventh-day Adventist church was only potentially the Remnant Church, there
was a vast difference between how the Remnant Church would be and how the
SDA church presently was. The Remnant Church was to be created by God, it
would contain all true Christians, would suffer persecution from the state,
and above all would be filled with the spirit of God. The SDA church had
(approximately) the correct doctrine, what it needed was the Holy Spirit, the
massive burst of power and authority that would flood the church known as
the Latter Rain. The present practise of the church must be in preparation
for that event.

The practise of the church is both its organisational social praxis
realised in the form of hospitals, missionary work, publications, schools etc.
and the collective individual practises of its members. The organisational
structure of the church must have its own codes of practise, various
development strategies, PR, funding etc. and this necessitates the establishment
of a bureaucracy with its own vested interests. Ellen White wrote about the
need to develop the organisational structure to allow for progressive
expansion in all areas. It was her goal to create a massive superstructure
to disseminate SDA ideas to people indirectly as consumers of health foods,
books and magazines, as well as directly to students via schools, colleges
and universities; to the sick via hospitals, sanatoriums and missionary
doctors; to foreign countries via missionaries and evangelism in foreign
churches; in addition to the regular church activities such as religious
meetings or health education, for example classes to help people give up
smoking.

This organisational development is clearly a major change from the
small group of Adventists who thought the world was about to end. Now the
church must become involved in the outside world as much as possible,
creating meeting-points between the secular and the religious and using
every opportunity afforded by these conjunctures to expose people to SDA
ideas.

With regard to the spiritual state of the SDA members, Ellen White
clearly saw that by themselves (i.e. without the Latter Rain) what could be
done was limited. What she argued was that the members much reach a state
of spiritual maturity in their own lives in order to be ready to receive
the Holy Spirit, it wasn't that God didn't want to give the church the
Holy Spirit, but that the members had not surrendered themselves completely
to God, thus it was only when the members had absolutely emptied themselves
of worldly attachments that they could be given the spirit by God. The
actual work of complete surrender could not be done by a massive act of the
will, or any 'work' by the individual, only the steady, daily communion
with God would slowly teach obedience, and this slow learning process was
to be aided by Ellen White's pastoral writings. One interesting feature of
these writings in the preparation of the self for surrender to God is her
absolute rejection of introspection as of any spiritual benefit.

Most religious teachers adhere to the proverb 'know thyself', but
Ellen White specifically instructed the believer not to know themselves,
but in every difficulty to practise surrender to Christ, to repent of the
sin and meditate on the goodness of God. This did not mean that the actions
of the individual were not to be noticed, otherwise sins would go unrecognised,
but that the psychological reasons for those sins was of no interest or
benefit, the only reaction to sinning was repentance and prayer, not self-
analysis.

All forms of Christianity would, of course, accept that a Christian
should be obedient to God. What distinguishes Ellen White's thinking in this
area is how much of what it means to be obedient is known. One type of
Christian ethics would maintain that certain principles such as love your
enemies, humility, non-resistance to evil etc. are known and it is up to the
believer to decide how those principles are to be put into practise. More
conservative forms of Christianity would have a set of 'right' actions,
such as maintaining social respectability, loyalty to one's country and
family, a strict sexual morality, going to church on Sunday, not swearing,
not getting drunk etc. Nevertheless there are areas where the individual
can make up their own mind. For Mrs White the whole issue of what obedience
to God means is never in doubt. From what to wear, what to eat, sex, the
family, obligations to one's country, keeping the Sabbath, violence etc.
everything is known, the only issue is whether the individual is obedient
or not. The contents of many of her books and letters are instructions on
how the Christian must behave, not to achieve salvation, but to be obedient
to God. Obedience to God is not performed to earn salvation, but is a
measure of the individual's faith. Lack of 'good works' indicates a lack
of faith in God. Needless to say this is a complete denial of the reformation
'faith alone' doctrine as it effectively ignores Original Sin, I won't
comment on this any further until the conclusion, but suffice it to say
that, as Bonhoeffer has shown, this might not necessarily be a bad thing.

Conclusion

We have shown Ellen White's thought to have been systematic enough
to provide the doctrinal structure for the SDA church, dynamic enough to
have initiated a world wide Adventist movement, and visionary enough to
give the movement the impetus to last well over 100 years. Her thought is
not always profound, but complex and unique enough to merit study. How
are we to evaluate her achievement ? It has to be admitted that certain
areas of her thought have dated badly, but her basic insight remains good.

Her vision of the SDA church as disciplined, organised, 'militant'
in the sense of having a fully active membership, and completely dedicated
to their task remains good. The church would then present itself as able
to provide for the needs of the Christian who wants to submit to the
rigor and discipline necessary to attain the highest ideals. Obviously
this should not encourage pride in Adventists as feeling they are 'better'
than other Christians, but a simple recognition that some Christians
temperament is not suitable for such an austere existence.

The emphasis on eschatology follows on logically from this view
of a 'Vanguard' group of Christians. If a movement can be created of
dedicated, single-minded, self-sacrificing Christians, praying earnestly
for the Lord's blessing, who can say that his Spirit will not be poured
out as a 'Latter Rain' and with this vitalising power will not sweep the
world ? Such a group would obviously meet opposition, perhaps even persecution,
but if successful then the hope for the Parousa would not be in vain.

The emphasis on the Sabbath is an absolutely vital symbol after
centuries of anti-Semitic theology. The tie between the Jewish and
Christian religion should not be broken by the Greek and Gnostic elements
introduced early in church history, and a fresh study of the God of the
Old Testament would shatter the misconceived abstractions in medieval
theology of a God outside of human life, and replace them with the True
God who partakes of all human activity.

A reconsideration of the Jewishness of Christianity is also in
line with current historical researches into the historical Christ and
the early battle between the Jewish Christians and the Pauline groups.
The Ebonite tradition should be re-evaluated and given its proper place
in the early history of the church.

In the civil law there are values such as Justice, Equality before
the Law, protecting the weak etc. that aim to be embodied within the specific
objective laws. A legal system that had no laws but only basic principles
would be impossible, precedents would be established and traditions created
that would effectively become laws anyway. Similarly the church has to attempt
to 'cash in' the Christian values in terms of what that actually means in
practise. The civil law changes when a new law is thought to be an improvement
on the old, and this does not bring the status of the law itself into
disrepute, similarly the church does not have to live forever with judgements
it has made, they may be re-evaluated in the light of experience. Adventism
has attempted to say what Christianity means in practise, sometimes it
was successful, sometimes not, but at least there are a set of guidelines
that can be worked on, improved, innovated. It is only by having a go at
doing this, risking failure, that success becomes possible and genuine
advances made. If it approaches this task in an compassionate and reasonable way
it should not be open to criticisms of 'legalism'.

The idea that there is a basic sinfulness within the west that is
culturally based (i.e. she identifies it within certain institutions such as
Catholicism rather than giving it an anthropological source) can be seen as
related to the deconstructive tradition of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida.
Due to her lack of theological learning, the language she uses to express
herself was contradictory and confusing, but this is something initiators of
new ideas often experience. Christianity does not see good and evil as a
dualism, the binary pair are deconstructed by the passion of Christ, Ellen
White's attempts to grapple with the problem of evil exhibit this same paradox
of defining the error in terms of the error. Her descriptions of evil portray
reality as a swirling sea of confusion, there is no Real, objects never achieve
an identity, they are only defined in terms of difference. Everything is
scarred, all thought contains within it seeds of error, the Devil's hand is
everywhere. Derrida, of course, defines the problem in philosophical terms
as the Metaphysics of Presence, Ellen White introduces the figure of Satan
to show a force of deception, people only believe they have a true conception
of reality, in fact this belief is a deception, reality is confusion. Unlike
Derrida, Ellen White does have a conception of truth, but perhaps she is
using the term in an unfamiliar way, for she says it is only present in this
world by a specific 'reading' (in the Althussarian sense) of the Bible. It
would need a book to develop this theme sufficiently, but hopefully the start
of the path can be seen.

Having said that the essentials of Ellen White's thought remains good,
we have to admit certain criticisms. When she describes Angels writing down
the deeds of men in books or the exact sequence of events in the last day
she, like Swedenbourg, is using her imagination to express spiritual
realities. Our second criticism is her limiting of human freedom and
responsibility. Given her temperament such as attitude is understandable,
but it is not correct doctrine. If someone criticises her work they are
not slaves of the Devil, Roman Catholicism, for all the criticisms one might
have of it, is not an instrument of the Devil (it is too diverse to have
an essence anyway), if an Adventist joins another church, they are not
being trapped by the Devil, if someone is not a Christian, this does not
mean they are unconsciously controlled by Satan. The third criticism is
more complex, it is her views on prophecy.

Ellen White pointed the way to a new understanding of prophecy when
she said that righteousness by faith was the third angel's message in verity.
By this she pointed to the re-spiritualisation of the Apocalyptic message.
Clearly apocalyptic language was used in many books, not just those that
appear in the Bible, and by studying them all we can see that they were
not preceding history like Nostradamus. One could take a Desmond Ford line
and argue that the apocalyptic is whatever you want it to be, (a sort of
Death of the Author!) and if you want to give it a historical meaning then
that's the meaning it has for you. I believe it should be treated like the
monarchy in British politics: not actually put to hard labour, but not
killed off either, treated with veneration and respect.

Finally Ellen White's disdain for theology is being fought against
by the church, in an attempt to create a rigorous and exact language
to express itself in. The farcical ignorance of leading Adventist scholars
on basic Christian doctrines in the past must not be repeated, the church
should not only become completely cognisant of Christian theology, but
be able to make important contributions to its development.

In conclusion, Ellen White's thought is still resonating
inside the SDA church, despite 'reformers' attempting to remove it of
all its distinguishing features. It is essentially remarkably relevant
to many issues and still capable of guiding the church until the Parousa.

© John Mann 1981