Ellen White’s Trinitarian Statements: What Did She Actually Write?

“Third Person of the Godhead”

For most Adventists, Ellen White’s published statements are conclusive as to her teaching on this question. In The Desire of Ages she writes that “sin could be resisted and overcome only through the mighty agency of the Third Person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power” (p. 671). This is how the text has read since its first publication in 1898. So how do opponents escape its natural interpretation that there are three distinct persons in the Godhead? EGWTS 3.2

First, by suggesting that the expression found its way into The Desire of Ages through the influence of Ellen White’s assistants and/or Herbert Lacey or W. W. Prescott.¹ Second, by pointing out that the words “third person” are not capitalized in the original 1898 printing, signifying to them that the word “person” is used in a more “general sense.”² Third, by suggesting that while there are in reality only two persons in the Godhead, “the net effect for us is that there are three divine beings,” since the Holy Spirit is called “another Comforter.” In this view, the Holy Spirit is “the Spirit (presence) of the Father and/or Christ,” and not in actuality a distinct third divine person.³ EGWTS 3.3

We will not pursue the third interpretation, except to look later at a further Ellen White statement that speaks of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, as “three distinct agencies” working together on behalf of humanity. But the first two observations are aimed at the authenticity of the text—our interest in this presentation. EGWTS 4.1

Can this passage in The Desire of Ages be trusted as representing what Ellen White actually penned? What does the original manuscript say? EGWTS 4.2

The White Estate often receives this type of inquiry from persons who question the reading or teaching of a published statement. Some are surprised when we tell them that Ellen White did not write out her chapters by longhand as they appear in books like Steps to Christ and those in the Conflict of the Ages Series. She was certainly the author of the text, but most of the material comprising the chapters as we have them was compiled from her many earlier works, including her sermons, letters, and articles.⁴ So to find the original manuscript for any given passage in a book like The Desire of Ages, we must determine the source document and whether a handwritten draft of that document is extant. EGWTS 4.3

What, then, is the source for this sentence on page 671 of The Desire of Ages? We find it in a letter Ellen White addressed to “My Brethren in America,” dated February 6, 1896. She wrote, “Evil had been accumulating for centuries, and could only be restrained and resisted by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power.”⁵ This letter was copied and sent from Australia to church leaders in Battle Creek, where the General Conference president, O. A. Olsen, published it the next year in a pamphlet circulated among church leaders EGWTS 4.4

and ministers (Special Testimonies, No. 10, pp. 25-33). This contemporary publication provides another evidence—beyond the obvious copyright date—that this passage in The Desire of Ages reads as it did when first published in 1898. EGWTS 5.1

Exhibit 1 is a scan of the first page of this letter, showing the key sentence in the second paragraph. The skeptic will ask how we know that this letter actually came from Ellen White. What does the handwritten original say? Unfortunately for us who live in 2006, Ellen White rarely preserved original drafts of her letters once they had been transcribed and received her approval. We will see that, in certain other instances, we are fortunate to have her original drafts, but for this letter the handwritten original is not known to be extant. But we do have other evidences of its authenticity. Pages 5, 6, and 7 contain Ellen White’s handwritten interlineations, which she often added after further reading of a document. Exhibit 2 is a scan of page 6, showing these interlineations and providing the evidence that this letter was indeed reviewed by Ellen White herself. So we are on sure ground in concluding that this key sentence in The Desire of Ages was not slipped past Ellen White’s eye into the manuscript of the book either by her assistants or other church leaders. EGWTS 5.2

What should we make of the second argument, that the words “third person” were not capitalized in the earliest printings? As we saw in Exhibit 1, the phrase was also not capitalized in the original letter. Further comparison between Ellen White’s letters and her published articles and books indicates that editorial style, not theological intent, governed such matters as to whether pronouns referring to deity should be capitalized. If the argument is to be made that the use of lower case characters in “third person” shows that Ellen White was not attributing deity-status to the Holy Spirit, then one has to explain why, in the same earliest printings, the personal pronoun “He” (referring to the Holy Spirit) is twice capitalized in the immediately preceding paragraph (671:1), and elsewhere in the same chapter. EGWTS 5.3

Exhibit 1. Letter 8, 1896, p. 1. EGWTS 6.1

Exhibit 2. Letter 8, 1896, p. 6. EGWTS 7.1