The Christadelphian, August and September 1931, C. C. Walker

“The Late Bro Bell and Error” 

The Christadelphian August 1931, C. C. Walker

Theology

Dr. Thomas was good in theology, and his comment on Psa. 51. (which is the occasion of this remark on theology), is greatly to be preferred to some modern utterances thereupon:

“Speaking of the conception and preparation of the Seed, the prophet, as a typical person, says, ‘Behold I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.’ This is nothing more than affirming that he was born of sinful flesh; and not of the pure and incorruptible angelic nature. Sinful flesh, being the hereditary nature of the Lord Jesus, he was a fit and proper sacrifice for sin; especially as he was himself ‘innocent of the great transgression,’ having been obedient in all things.”

Thus Dr. Thomas spoke in Elpis Israel. And the saying is unquestionably true. Paul says of Jesus: “He (God) hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21). In what way did God make Jesus to be sin, other than in making him “of the seed of David according to the flesh,” as Paul otherwise expresses it (Rom. 1:3)? Thus Jesus “took part of the same” flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14). He was “not of the pure and incorruptible angelic nature,” as Dr. Thomas truly says. Brother Wauchope errs in saying that “the Holy Child Jesus, ‘was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners’ in the days of his flesh.” He was then not so. Heb. 7:26 is not speaking of “the days of his flesh,” but of the everlasting priesthood which he entered by resurrection and ascension to heaven—the “unchangeable priesthood” (v. 24)—“consecrated for evermore” (v. 28). In “the days of his flesh,” he was in character “holy, harmless, undefiled,” but in nature “sin,” which he “put away by the sacrifice of himself.”

No Christadelphian says that Jesus was a sinner, like David; but all true Christadelphians admit that being “made of the seed of David” he was “made to be sin.”

The Late Bro Bell and Error

Brother Wauchope errs in saying that we declared that brother Bell “did not hold error.” We declared the contrary. He printed and published the statement that Jesus in the days of his flesh was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners in every sense of the term.” This was and is error.

It was alleged that the deceased changed his mind, and we said that we would print and publish anything that might be produced from his papers to show that such was the case.

In the Shield, for June, 1931, p. 121, we are now referred to the issue for February, 1906, p. 28, whence the following extract from brother Bell’s writings is quoted:—

“We have said that we hold Jesus to have been clean ‘in every sense.’ Much exception has been taken to this by those who are resolved to make us heretic, even at the cost of misunderstanding wilfully or stupidly what we are contending for. Our contention was, and is, that in his [Jesus’s] make-up or constitution God used only clean material, so that he was in structure clean, and that he kept this cleanness undefiled by personal sin right till the end, being thus fitted for a perfect sacrifice. As against this it is held [by others], that an element called “sin in the flesh’ was worked into the make-up of Jesus by inheritance from Adam, into whom God implanted it as a punishment, so that he [Jesus] was involuntarily defiled. We say this is not only false in fact, but violates the requirements of reason . . . But if it be held that Jesus was defiled because of the imputation to him of all the national sins as prophesied in Isaiah 53., and that so he had to be cleansed, let it be clearly understood that we neither object to this, nor have we ever taught contrary to it. All that we ask is that men would discern between such an external imputative defilement and that of an unclean composition. Therefore we should perhaps not have said that we held Jesus undefiled ‘in every sense’ and modify our sayings to that extent.”

This, then (says brother Wauchope), is “chapter and verse,” in one instance, asked for by brother Walker, and we are pleased to be able to produce it to prevent further misrepresentation of our deceased brother Bell.

We have fulfilled our “promise”; but the extent of the late brother’s “modification” of his “sayings” must be left to the judgment of our readers. For ourselves the “modification” is as unsatisfactory as the original “sayings. 

The Christadelphian September 1931, C. C. Walker

The Late Bro Bell and Error

In our last issue, pp. 364–5, we printed an extract from brother Bell’s writings which brother Wauchope had unearthed from the Shield for February, 1906.

But, as brother G. F. Lake has shown (in 1924), brother Bell denounces the teaching of Dr. Thomas and of The Christadelphian most emphatically, long after that year. Thus, in

August, 1921.

“We are quite at one with the purpose to denounce the HORRIBLE TEACHING which has crept insidiously into the theories of our leading magazine.

“They teach that human nature has sin in the flesh by inheritance from Adam.

“Thus it was that the Christ was so defiled by nature that he had to offer for his own sin, which he in common with all mankind was tainted with by generation although he was perfectly sinless.

“We would dearly like to organise a crusade against the fastening of such a slur upon the Bible as to say that it teaches or allows for an unclean or defiled Christ.”

“Rather than accept such a slander upon God we would prefer to join Canon Barnes.”

January, 1922, page 2.

“Unwise words which make Adam a physically defiled man by moral transgression and so passing on to his progeny the imagined uncleanness of his body.”

Jesus was “without any personal physical taint.”

February, 1922, page 23.

Quoting Elpis Israel which reads:—

“Sin I say is a synonym for human nature hence the flesh is invariably regarded as unclean.”

Bell remarks: “YES, BY DR. THOMAS, BUT NOT BY GOD, IN THE BIBLE.”

March, 1922, page 42.

“Seeing that God made Adam ‘very good’ how could sin, which had no existence till it was enacted, enter into Adam’s flesh and make it sinful, for transmission to an unbegotten posterity.”

“The physical phase of the Doctor’s view is unwarranted by fact or Scripture.”

Page 43.

“The grievous mis-statement made by Dr. Thomas that they were endowed with a nature like his WHICH HAD BECOME UNCLEAN as the result of disobedience.”

‘No flesh full of sin could have thus triumphed over trial.”

“Jesus never offered any sacrifice for his human nature.”

April, 1922, page 65.

“This damnable theory of an unclean Christ.”

The contrast between the teaching of Dr. Thomas—which is beyond question the teaching of the Word—and the theory put forward by Bell can be summarised thus:—

Dr. Thomas.

Death came by the offence of Adam.

Bell. 

Adam “Was a mortal body before he sinned, Shield, June, 1905, p. 117.

“What was the condition of Adam before he fell? I say he was mortal.”

Dr Thomas.

Sin “pervades every part of the flesh, the animal nature is styled ‘sinful flesh’—so that sin came to stand for the substance called man.”

Bell.

“How can the mind conceive of a defiled nature?

“Our nature is as God made it.

“Moral defilement is not inherent.”

Dr Thomas.

“Sin could not have been condemned in the body of Jesus if it had not existed there. His body was as unclean as the bodies of those for whom he died.”

Bell.

“This damnable theory of an unclean Christ.”

“This monstrous blasphemy.

“Jesus was without any personal physical taint.”

Dr. Thomas’ “grievous mis-statement.”

Forty years after Elpis Israel was written, and only two years before he died, Dr. Thomas wrote from Nottingham to brother Roberts in Birmingham a letter dealing with current controversy over Prop. 20. of the Declaration (see The Christadelphian, August, 1869, pp. 215–217). The following is an extract:—

“To say that the man Jesus was corporeally pure, holy, spotless and undefiled, is to say that he was not ‘made of woman,’ for scripture teaches that nothing ‘born of a woman’ can possibly be clean; but it is credibly testified that he was ‘born of a woman,’ he must therefore have been corporeally unclean. Hence, it is written of him in Psalm 51:5, ‘I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.’ He therefore prays, ‘Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’ This prayer has been answered, and he has been ‘washed thoroughly from the (corporeal) iniquity, and cleansed from his sin’; so that now he has a clean nature, which is spirit and divine—‘the Lord the Spirit’—once dead as to flesh, and now alive as Spirit for evermore.’” (Rev. 1:8).

It was because of brother Wauchope’s association with brother Bell’s thesis, above defined, that he was not received by the Birmingham Temperance Hall Ecclesia. Whereupon he was immediately received by the Suffolk Street Ecclesia.

What is the use of talking about “one mind” under such conditions, and “the restoration of ecclesial unity”? Let us at least be honest with one another.