Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The New Self-delusion Explanation

Some present-day critics, after they have echoed the old charge of epilepsy, hysteria, and perhaps schizophrenia, add for good measure an amendment, as though to make sure that they cover enough ground to explain Mrs. White’s case. Say they: The history of the Christian Era reveals that certain pious people have had ecstatic or trancelike experiences in which they declared that they saw heavenly sights and communed with heavenly beings. Yet they did not have genuine visions such as Bible prophets had. Mrs. White’s singular experiences were simply like those of these pious people. She was sincere, but self-deceived, in thinking she had real visions. EGWC 83.2

It is easy to see why this amendment to the charge has been made. Anyone who looks into a medical book today can see immediately that the charges of epilepsy, hysteria, or schizophrenia will not stand. And anyhow, it sounds more plausible to speak of Mrs. White as simply a self-deceived, pious soul. In fact Canright himself thus spoke of her once in a condescendingly indulgent moment. EGWC 83.3

However, present-day critics can consistently speak thus only by renouncing all that former critics have said about her cunning deceitfulness and scheming that darkly expressed itself in suppressions of certain writings, for example, and in other ways. But that is renouncing much, for the hulking structure of indictment against Mrs. White is largely built of charges that she, far from being a piously self-deluded person like certain medieval saints, was instead a cool, calculating individual who set out to deceive others and to make money out of the evil adventure. Let this point be clear to all before we proceed further. EGWC 83.4

Are the present-day critics who bring forth this theory of pious self-delusion in explanation of her visions really prepared to square all the rest of their thinking about Mrs. White with this theory? If so, then they ought, for safety’s sake, to hasten out of the edifice of charges where they have long dwelt with Mrs. White’s older critics, lest the logical arms of their new self-delusion theory bring down the house upon their heads. We plead only for consistency in this matter. We ought not to be asked at one and the same time to defend Mrs. White against the charge of cunning and crafty deceiving, befitting the most unsaintly of characters, and against the charge of being self-deceived, though undoubtedly saintly, and thus obviously free of guile! EGWC 84.1