How "Fact" Becomes Myth in Adventism

C.S. Lewis has described has described "the heart of Christianity" as "a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences."¹

The heart of Ellen White's place in Adventism, it is being discovered, is just the opposite. Much of what for so long has been presented as fact turns out to be myth.

The White Estate itself has sometimes participated in this discovery, this demythologization. A four-day International Prophetic Workshop—hosted in April of 1982 by the White Estate for seventy Adventist scholars and administrators—was such an occasion. The White Estate hosts focused their guests' attention on issues that have emerged because of Ellen White's uncredited source utilization, her denial of such source usage, and contradictions and errors found scattered through her numerous publications. ...

One of the more interesting sessions of the workshop, and one that could have far-reaching effects (if the SDA membership is ever to become generally aware of it), was the discussion chaired by the White Estate secretary Robert Olson and retired secretary and lifetime trustee, Arthur White. In that meeting Olson and White attempted to wrestle with a haunting problem from the past. They endeavored to make sense of articles Ellen White wrote for the Health Reformer.² The difficulty of their task becomes apparent as one reads the kind of things Mrs. White sometimes wrote for the Health Reformer. An example from 1871:

Fashion loads the heads of women with artificial braids and pads, which do not add to their beauty, but give an unnatural shape to the head. The hair is strained and forced into unnatural positions, and it is not possible for the heads of these fashionable ladies to be comfortable. The artificial hair and pads covering the base of the brain, heat and excite the spinal nerves centering in the brain. The head should ever be kept cool. The heat caused by these artificials induces the blood to the brain. The action of the blood upon the lower or animal organs of the brain, causes unnatural activity, tends to recklessness in morals, and the mind and heart is in danger of being corrupted. As the animal organs are excited and strengthened, the moral are enfeebled. The moral and intellectual powers of the mind become servants to the animal.

In consequence of the brain being congested its nerves lose their healthy action, and take on morbid conditions, making it almost impossible to arouse the moral sensibilities. Such lose their power to discern sacred things. The unnatural heat caused by these artificial deformities about the head, induces the blood to the brain, producing congestion, and causing the natural hair to fall off, producing baldness. Thus the natural is sacrificed to the artificial.

Many have lost their reason, and become hopelessly insane, by following this deforming fashion. Yet the slaves to fashion will continue to thus dress their heads, and suffer horrible disease and premature death, rather than be out of fashion.³

Also in 1871 Ellen White had introduced approvingly the words of another author under the heading "The Fatal Effects of Painting."

No one can ride or walk through the fashionable portion of New York city, attend any place of amusement, or go to any evening party, without becoming aware of the horrible fact that many women of whom better things might be expected, have fallen into the pernicious habit of applying to their skins the enamels which, under various attractive names, are advertised and sold in all parts of the land.

This practice is as pernicious as it is disgusting—the seeds of death or paralysis being hidden in every pot and jar of those mixtures, which are supposed to be not only innocent, but also to possess the virtues of the undiscovered fountain of perpetual youth.

Some who use them will suddenly have a severe illness; and receiving a private warning from the family physician, will cease the use of the cause of their disorder, and recovering, go through life with an extremely bad complexion, as a reminder of their folly.

Others will drop suddenly, with their features twisted on one side, and perhaps deprived of the use of their limbs. Others will die outright, no one guessing why. The effect on any particular person cannot be calculated. What one suffers paralysis from, may kill another outright. The only safety is in having nothing to do with any of these baneful preparations. ⁴

What seemed to cause Olson and White the most anguish was an article Mrs. White prepared for the November 1871 Health Reformer. It was the following words to which they directed most of their comments:

By lacing, the internal organs of women are crowded out of their positions. There is scarcely a woman that is thoroughly healthy. The majority of women have numerous ailments. Many are troubled with weaknesses of most distressing nature. These fashionably dressed women cannot transmit good constitutions to their children. Some women have naturally small waists. But rather than regard such forms as beautiful, they should be viewed as defective. These wasp waists may have been transmitted to them from their mothers, as the result of their indulgence in the sinful practice of tight-lacing, and in consequence of imperfect breathing. Poor children born of these miserable slaves of fashion have diminished vitality, and are predisposed to take on disease. The impurities retained in the system in consequence of imperfect breathing are transmitted to their offspring.⁵

It is easy to see why this "wasp waist" theory of acquired characteristics would concern Ellen White's apologists. If this were a revelation from God, why are not Chinese girls, whose mothers' feet had been bound for generations, born with small feet? And, of course, no man child has ever emerged from the womb circumcised.

Olson and White said they had agonized over this problem for many years. Finally, at the 1982 workshop, this is how they attempted to reconcile science, inspiration, and revelation.

Robert Olson:

I have a question about this. Did God tell her this? "These wasp waists may have been transmitted to them from their mothers, as the result of their indulgence in the sinful practice of tight-lacing, and in consequence of imperfect breathing." And I haven't quite been able to see how this acquired characteristic by the mother could be passed on through the genes to the child. But now when we turn on to the next page we see where Ellen White read something like this and even publishes it in this very issue of the Health Reformer—the very next page, the left-hand column, the first indentation: "The following excellent remarks are from The Household, another paper she was quoting from. We'll skip the first paragraph. "'But my waist is naturally slender,' says one woman. She means that she has inherited small lungs."

You see, these are not Mrs. White's words, these are words Mrs. Whit is quoting from this magazine. "She mens that she has inherited small lungs. Her ancestors, more or less of them, compressed their lungs in the same way that we do, and it has become in her case a congenital deformity. This leads us to one of the worst aspects of the whole matter&mdah;the transmitted results of indulgence in this deadly vice."

So when Mrs. White is reading things like this, publishing things like this in her column, in her department, you can understand why she might write a few things like this herself. So brethren and sisters, what I have done just now is something that I have hesitated to do for fear somebody will get the wrong impression, you know. Because here I am stating, in effect, that I question whether some of the writings of Ellen White is inspired in the sense that others of her writings are—in fact, question the inspiration, you see, of some of these things. And it would have to be drawn in, the line between the common and the sacred. I am sort of baring my heart here, telling you how I am looking at some of these things. Now before we call on anybody for questions,... I want the liberty of calling on Elder White to see if he has a comment to make first. Elder White, I don't know how you look at these matters, if you look at them entirely as I do. I know we have talked about them. Do you have anything to add?

Arthur White:

I think it is very clear that during these four years that Ellen White was wearing two hats: that of a prophet, and that of an editor. When James White persuaded her to furnish three or four printed pages for each issue of Health Reformer, published monthly, quite naturally she could bring into it those things which were shown to her in vision, which she set forth in her writings on health. But from the standpoint of volume they were rather limited. So here we find her in a different and unique position that she was never put in before. ... We are faced, of course, with this problem of her counsel regarding [actually against] degrees of inspiration. Now friends, I have got to deal with this in the biography in about another year. I am feeling around for how we should deal with this. As Bob says, we have bared our souls here to you who are trusted counselors. And I see no other way than to take the position that when she took over the department in this Health Reformer, she, in a sense, did it outside her work in the prophetic office.⁶

Predictably, this brave effort did not meet with enthusiasm from all present. And although White Estate officials stand by the position, church-sponsored periodicals have not printed a word about the problem or the suggested solution—that Ellen White was not writing as an inspired prophet when she put together her columns for the Health Reformer.

Whether or not the White Estate solution works, it certainly makes God look better than if it is assumed that the articles were written with His help and/or approval. But like many "solutions," it poses additional problems. For instance, from the Health Reformer articles it would appear that both Ellen and James White knew when to give credit to other authors, as Mrs. White repeatedly introduces various authors and brackets their words with quotations marks. Also, the editor or columnist solution contradicts both Mrs. White and her apologists' dogmatic insistence that her writings were all either inspired or not, of God or of the devil.

By suggesting the uninspired columnist or editor apologetic for Mrs. White's strange Health Reformer statements, Robert Olson and Arthur White risk finding themselves referred to in her writings:

When men in high positions of trust will, when under pressure, say that Sister White is influenced by any human being, they certainly have no more use for messages that come from such a source.⁷

The Ellen White-as-uninspired-columnist theory provides the impetus for further study and thought. Some of the articles from Mrs. White, when writing as an uninspired Health Reformer columnist, were reprinted in the Adventist Review and Herald.⁸ Arthur White recognized this fact at the workshop and expressed the thought that one should not put too much stock in the fact that an article of Ellen white's should be reprinted in the Review; this does not necessarily mean that it was inspired. That may come as a shock to those who thought by paying the one-hundred-twenty-or-do dollars for the six volumes of the Present Truth and Review and Herald Article Reprints, they were purchasing specially illuminated counsel.

The problem does not end with Review article reprintings. Some of Mrs. White's Health Reformer articles that later appeared in the Review also were adapted for some of her books. Some readers may have noticed this statement in the introduction to the Review and Herald Reprints:

Indeed, many of the chapters of the current [Ellen G. White] books are drawn from materials that first appeared in these articles in the Review. ... In some instances entire articles now form book chapters, as in the case of a number of the very early articles that were included in Early Writings and the Testimonies, or in the 1923 compilation Fundamentals of Christian Education... In most cases the articles in the E.G. White books were reproduced ford for word from the article.⁹

Many people do not read introductions and remain unaware that some of the uninspired Health Reformer articles were included in, but not limited to, the Testimonies, where it has been presumed that Mrs. Hie wrote as a prophet. Volume three of the Testimonies provides an example:

The article runs on for several pages in the Testimonies, but unlike its uninspired Health Reformer counterpart, the volume three version includes several "I was shown"'s (pages 67, 68, 69).

Olson and White were very quick to point out that when material published earlier by Mrs. White was later transferred to the Health Reformer (such as Testimonies, vol. 1, into the May 1872 Health Reformer), it did not lose its inspiration, just because it had been placed there by an uninspired editor.

The White Estate qualifier proves, of course, that the issue never really was where the material appeared nor that Ellen White was wearing the hat of an editor or columnist when she placed her writings in the Health Reformer. The real difficulty was that the White Estate secretary and the prophet's grandson did not believe some of what she had written, and preferred the testimony of science and their senses to the testimonies of Ellen G. White.

It is interesting to see where some of the uninspired columnists's material later appeared. An example from Desire of Ages:

The first article from the Health Reformer resembles a sermonette on love and duty to children, while the same material adjusted to Desire of Ages comes across as written by "one who was there."

These are not isolated examples. Child Guidance and other volumes of the Testimonies are smattered with bits and pieces from articles written by James White's commissioned columnist. Even portions of Patriarchs and Prophets are from the pen of uninspiration:

No matter how sincere the 1982 Prophetic Guidance Workshop attendees' resolve to inform church members of some of the problems of Ellen White and her past, the contrast between Ellen the uninspired editor and Ellen the inspired prophet has not reached the laity. The workshop is on tape, but few individuals know about the tapes or the problems they address. Even Arthur White argued that it would be unwise to repeat the failure of the 1919 Bible Conference participants to share the record of their eye-opening deliberations.

As of December 1983, the White Estate secretary was maintaining his believe "that the Health Reformer articles were basically written by a columnist Ellen White. I do not believe that she had on her mantle of prophet when she was preparing these materials month by month for the Health Reformer.¹⁰

Three years have passed since the workshop, and still no church-sponsored periodical has reported these interesting developments to the membership. What harm would come to the church if its members were told that Ellen White was not always wearing the prophetic mantle when she wrote? Myth should now give way to fact.