vooks
Active Member
page 7 of Amalgamation Revisited.The answer to your childish prank is actually in the post that you are not reading...
Let's look at Uriah Smith's defense of amalgamation more clearly
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxrT0F-mwJf1M3ZzU1lEYVZmSUU/edit?usp=docslist_apibased defense of amalgamation theory—poses a great challenge to Adventists today who might wish to minimize the importance of his words. Individuals who are determined to stand for truth though the heavens fall will not shrink, however, from openly and directly wrestling with these historical facts. Minimally, Smith’s article is clear evidence of the influence White’s statements on amalgamation had on the thinking of the other pioneers on questions of race, science, and origins. Smith’s words also remain the most important historical evidence we have as to what White herself believed and meant to convey in 1864.
Apologists for White’s amalgamation passages might nevertheless point to another important fact included in the notice cited above. As far as the prophetess herself was concerned, Smith and the other editors had pursued “no consultation whatever with sister White, nor received any suggestion or explanation from her on any point.” Instead, they had prided themselves, they declared, in applying a common sense, plain reading approach to her writings. This approach was in principle open to all and was the same approach the early Adventists advocated for reading Scripture itself. “We take the visions as they are published, and base our explanation of any apparent discrepancy, on the language as it stands.”11 The fact that a common sense, plain reading of White’s statements on amalgamation could lead early Adventists to views on race, origins, and science that (hopefully) all Adventists today would emphatically reject raises the question: is a common sense, plain reading of Scripture always the best approach to biblical hermeneutics? In any event, the possibility that White remained unaware of Uriah Smith’s interpretation of her words throughout her life, or that she disagreed with them, begs credulity in the light of later historical facts.
IV. “The Elder Said Her Teachings Were Worse than Darwinism”: Holding Fast to the Proclamation of Animal-Human Amalgamations Had Smith’s scientifically spurious and racially disturbing defense of White’s amalgamation passages only appeared in 1866 we might still have hoped that it was an embarrassing mistake by a single individual that was quickly forgotten if not rejected by the larger Adventist community and perhaps even corrected or silenced by White herself (the close reading and ringing endorsement that Smith had received for “Objections Answered” from the General Conference in session notwithstanding). But throughout Ellen White’s life, amalgamation remained a minor yet recurring theme of Adventist creation science, invariably presented in Smith’s racialist terms. White did not offer any known objections, clarifications, or corrections to these declarations, which reappeared several times in the church’s official journal alongside articles she had written. And she maintained her silence despite the fact that the Adventist understanding of amalgamation theory that she had inspired was a source of both ongoing criticism from non-Adventists and ongoing public confidence among church members in her authority even on scientific matters. As tentative as any argument from silence must be, then, her silence was by every indication a form of tacit acceptance if not approval.
In 1868, two full years after his initial apologia for White’s inspiration in her amalgamation declarations first appeared in print, Smith’s defense of amalgamation theory was published yet again in its entirety by the church as part of an evangelistic tract
Amalgamation themes were never opposed by EGW yet they were quite frequent in SDA paraphernalia throughout EGW's life alongside her articles
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