What About Ellen White’s Denials?

We have seen in this book many examples of the human element in God’s communication system, both in the Bible and in the writings of Ellen White. We have also seen a few instances that are not readily explained.MOL 462.8

Some have pointed to certain Ellen White denials regarding her use of contemporary sources as examples of duplicity. Others look at these examples in context and find Mrs. White void of deceit. ^{41“Ellen White sought to deceive no one. Thoughts, facts, and truths written by one person may be used by another without plagiarism. She made original applications of older material, while furnishing herself with thoughts and words of other books. She can hardly be reproached as a plagiarist, any more than the architect or sculptor can be censured as a copier of Christopher Wren or Michelangelo because he digs his marble from the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same order. The freedom to adopt and adapt form the common property of scholars the world over. To use the arguments and follow the truths of other writers is by no means incompatible with originality. In fact, absolute originality is almost impossible. “No valid objection can be brought against Ellen White when she enlarges and clarifies her own ideas in the light of other men’s works. To establish the charge of plagiarism, one must prove a deliberate attempt to use another’s work to exalt oneself rather than the glory of God. Her whole purpose was the communication of truth, believing that whatever the source, the truth must be exalted and God glorified.” Edward Heppenstall, “The Inspired Witness of Ellen White,” Adventist Review, May 7, 1987. “Ellen White’s statements about her sources taken as a whole clearly affirm a divine source and sometimes sound as if they would not allow for any literary borrowing.... This situation, I think, arises from the fact that the view of inspiration held by Mrs. White and her contemporaries presented her with a stark and over-simplified choice.... The choice was this: either her writings were all from God or all from Satan, and, given these two options, Mrs White honestly and justifiably chose to affirm that her writings were all from God. However, while it is true that her writings taken as a whole are all from God, there are elements found in those writings which came to her through human sources under the guidance of God’s Spirit, a situation very similar to that observed in Scripture. And, thus Mrs. White’s statements about her writings were not dishonest or deceptive, but they were incomplete in that respect. She simply didn’t get into the mechanics of inspiration.” Ron Graybill, an unpublished manuscript, “Literary Work,” November, 1981, pp. 22, 23.}MOL 462.9

Robert W. Olson, for twelve years director of the Ellen G. White Estate, summed up the focus on these denials by joining Fred Veltman’s ^{42See pp. 456, 457 for comments on Fred Veltman’s Full Report of the Life of Christ Research Project, 1988.} conclusion: “It seems clear to me that Ellen White was worried over the danger of emptying the messages of their power through her dependence upon the writing abilities of others.... In my judgment it is basically this same burden of Ellen White’s over the reception of her writings as messages from the Lord that led her not to fully disclose her dependence on literary sources.” ^{43Robert W. Olson, “Ellen White’s Denials,” Ministry, Feb., 1991.}MOL 462.10

Olson listed ten alleged denials, or nonadmissions, made by either James or Ellen White—most of which presented no problem when seen in context. ^44Ibid. He concluded his article: “In my opinion, she did not want her readers to be distracted from her message because of concentrating on her method. Undue attention to how she wrote might raise unnecessary doubts in some minds as to the authority of what she wrote. “If this is the correct explanation ... let us not allow questions about methodology and inspiration to pull our focus away from the inspired communications God has sent us.” ^45Ibid.MOL 462.11