by Ron Graybill
The dietary distinction between clean and unclean meats,
based on Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, is generally understood and accepted
among Adventists today. Unlike the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament, which
pointed to Christ, or the civil laws, which governed the theocracy, these
health laws were based on natural law and thus not merely applicable to one age
and time.
Thus even among Adventists who eat meat, these unclean meats
are avoided. Nineteenth-century Adventists, however, did not generally accept
this distinction between clean and unclean meats based on Levitical law, even
though they clearly condemned pork.1
The prohibition on pork was the first to be established, but
even that took time. Before the health message came to Ellen White in 1863, she
and James White both discouraged believers who attempted to enforce a
prohibition on pork. "We do not, by any means, believe that the Bible teaches
that its [pork] proper use, in the gospel dispensation, is sinful," James White
wrote in 1850.2
In 1858, a brother in New England, doubtless S. N. Haskell,
was again trying to discourage the use of pork, and would make its use a test
of loyalty to God's Word. Mrs. White wrote him saying that, "If it is the duty
of the church to abstain from swine's flesh, God will discover it to more than
two or three."3
After the health reform vision, of course, Mrs. White did
come out against the use of pork, arguing that it produced "scrofula, leprosy
and cancerous humors."4 It is significant that she and other Adventists
who wrote against the use of pork up until 1866, argued strictly from a health
standpoint. In other words, just because some Biblical arguments were used to
reinforce the ban on pork, we cannot conclude that at that point Adventists
were well on their way to a full-blown teaching on the distinction between
clean and unclean meats.
D. M. Canright, in 1866, does allude to Deuteronomy 14:8,
"And the swine, because it divideth the hoof, yet cheweth not the cud, it is
unclean unto you: ye shall not eat of their flesh, nor touch their dead
carcass." But Canright makes no mention of other unclean meats, and makes no
use of the further material in Deuteronomy 14 on the subject.5 When he does mention
oysters in an article in the following year, he mentions their alleged powers
to excite "certain kinds of feelings," and introduces no Biblical argument.6
In 1870, W. C. Gage undertakes to refute a rival Advent
periodical which took exception to the "scriptural assertion that the swine is
unclean." But Gage does not cite either Deuteronomy 14 or Leviticus 11.
In fact, Gage remarks, "If the Scriptures fail to settle the question, let
reason have her sway. Examine the animal, and see its filthy habits."7 He does discuss some of
the Bible's testimony on pork, but his article is far from being a contribution
to a broad understanding of the Bible's teaching on clean and unclean meats,
being, as it is, heavy with naturalistic arguments and exclusively interested
in the pork question.
James White, in an 1872 article on "Swine's Flesh," does
show the beginnings of a wider application of Levitical law. He does mention
Deuteronomy 14:8 again, and he does seek to refute the argument that the
prohibition on swine was a merely Jewish one and therefore not binding on
Christians. He reminds his readers that the distinction between clean and
unclean was recognized in the Bible long before the "existence of a single
Jew." Still, the whole thrust of his argument is to discredit the pig,
not to establish general categories of clean and unclean meats. He does
not discuss the Biblical criteria for the distinction at all.8
The general distinction between clean and unclean meats in
Adventist circles remained undeveloped throughout the nineteenth century. While
Adventists argued vigorously against pork, the weight of their argument
continued to be carried by physiological criteria. Uriah Smith explicitly
rejected the applicability of the Mosaic distinction: "We believe there is
better ground on which to rest [the prohibition on pork] than the ceremonial
law of the former dispensation, for if we take the position that that law is
still binding, we must accept it all, and then we shall have more on our hands
than we can easily dispose of."9
For Adventists in the nineteenth century then, all
meat-eating was discouraged, while the eating of pork was virtually banned.
Other meats which we would consider unclean were not seen, apparently, in the
same light as pork.
Once when Ellen White was ill, her son, W. C. White, reports
that she was encouraged to drink a little oyster broth to settle her stomach.
She is said to have tried a spoonful or two, but then refused the rest.10
There is however, evidence that at one point in her life
Mrs. White most likely ate some oysters. In 1882, when she was living at
Healdsburg, California, she wrote a letter to her daughter-in-law, Mary Kelsey
White, in Oakland, in which she made the following request: "Mary, if you can
get me a good box of herrings, fresh ones, please do so. These last ones that
Willie got are bitter and old. If you can buy cans, say, half a dozen cans, of
good tomatoes, please do so. We shall need them. If you can get a few cans of
good oysters, get them."11
Ellen White kept it no secret that under difficult
circumstances, as when she traveled or when she was entertained in her travels,
she ate some meat. The book Counsels on Diet and Foods, published in
1938, carries her account of her relation to the use of meat after the health
reform vision was given to her as follows: "I at once cut meat out of my bill
of fare. After that I was at times placed where I was compelled to eat a little
meat."12
This is in harmony with her earlier published statements
which appeared in 1890 in the book, Christian Temperance and Bible
Hygiene, reading, "When I could not obtain the food I needed, I have
sometimes eaten a little meat; but I am becoming more and more afraid of it."13
But beyond this there is evidence of some laxness in the
1870's and 1880's which allowed a little meat to appear on her table when it
may not have been essential. Given the difficulties of refrigerating and
transporting food in the nineteenth century, it was a much greater problem then
to gain an adequate diet without using flesh foods.
In the early 1890's Mrs. White expressed her distaste for
meat while enroute to Australia. She wrote, "They have an abundance of food in
the meat line, prepared in different ways; but as I do not enjoy a meat diet,
it leaves me rather meager fare."14
While in Australia in early 1894 Ellen White took her stand
to eat no more meat, a position from which there was no retreat through the
rest of her life. She wrote of it thus:
"Since the camp meeting at Brighton [January, 1894] I have
absolutely banished meat from my table. It is an understanding that whether I
am at home or abroad, nothing of this kind is to be used in my family, or come
upon my table. I have had much representation before my mind in the night
season on this subject."15
Ellen White's own understanding of the clean-unclean
distinction seems to have grown stronger over time. In 1864 she did note in
passing that Noah was allowed to eat "clean" beasts after the Flood.16 And in 1890, when
Patriarchs and Prophets was published, she noted that Samson's parents
had been instructed to withhold from him "every unclean thing."
This distinction "between articles of food as clean and
unclean" was not, she said, "a merely ceremonial and arbitrary regulation, but
was based upon sanitary principles." Furthermore, the "marvelous vitality" of
the Jewish people for thousands of years could be traced to this distinction.17 Significantly, she
had not noted this aspect of Samson's life in 1881 when she wrote the articles
on which most of the material on Samson in Patriarchs and Prophets is
based.18
In 1905 she again expounded favorably on the distinction as
given to the Jews, this time mentioning, in addition to pork, "other animals
and birds whose flesh was pronounced unclean."19
The passage goes on to enumerate other aspects of Jewish
health laws which Seventh-day Adventists have never sought to enforce, so that
in summary it can be said that Mrs. White never explicitly declared that the
general distinction between clean and unclean meats was one which Seventh-day
Adventists were still bound to observe. Her statements commending the Jewish
practice certainly encourage that position, but never make it explicit.
Adventists of today, with their understanding of the
distinction between clean and unclean meat, need to give due weight to the
general lack of such teaching in the Adventist church of her time. In 1883 W.
H. Littlejohn, in a question and answer column in the Review, said he
was not sure whether oysters would properly come under the prohibition on
unclean meats found in Leviticus 11. If they did, he said, it would be because
there was some natural reason.20 It was also just at this time that Uriah Smith
expressed his strong disavowal of the application of the Mosaic law in this
matter, as mentioned above.
The early health reformers sometimes mentioned oysters as
they explained why flesh foods were harmful. Russell Trall, in his 1857
Hydropathic Cookbook, said all mollusca, including oysters, were "bad
ailments."21
Probably more familiar to Adventists were James C. Jackson's
comments on oysters, included along with his other criticisms of flesh foods in
an article James and Ellen White reprinted in Health: or How to Live.
Jackson objected to the oysters because they were scavengers.22 J. N. Loughborough
said all shellfish, including oysters, were objectionable as they contained
very little nutrition and were difficult to digest.23
Finally, in 1891, Kellogg, reacting energetically to some
favorable comments on oysters by scientists, condemned the creature as
difficult to digest, the "lowest of scavengers," and apt to contain a deadly
poison, tyrotoxicon.24
Compared with the amount of material in the literature
against pork, however, the objections to oysters and other "unclean" meats is
so minuscule as to hardly be noticed.
Whatever may have been the practices or understandings of
our pioneers on this question, we should never base our own decisions
concerning healthful living on the example of other human beings. Mrs. White
made this point clearly enough herself in 1901 during an extemporaneous talk in
Battle Creek:
[Ellen G. White speaking:] "Sister White has not had meat in
her house or cooked it in any line, or any dead flesh, for years and years. And
here is the [basis of some people's] health reform: `Now I have told you Sister
White did not eat meat. Now I want you not to eat meat, because Sister White
does not eat it.'
"Well, I would not give--I would not care a farthing for
anything like that. If you have not got any better conviction--you won't eat
meat because Sister White does not eat any--if I am the authority, I would not
give a farthing for your health reform.
"What I want is that every one of you should stand in your
individual dignity before God, in your individual consecration to God, that the
soul-temple shall be dedicated to God. `Whosoever defileth the temple of God,
him will God destroy.' Now I want you to think of these things, and do not make
any human being your criterion."25
Not surprisingly, it appears that S. N. Haskell, who was
among the first to urge the church to abandon the use of pork, was also the
first to argue a clear Biblical prohibition on all unclean meats, making full
use of the prohibitions of Leviticus 11. In May, 1903, he wrote:
"In many things the Bible lays down principles and we are
left to exercise our own judgment in the matter, while in many other matters a
plain command is given. . . . In His infinite plan [God] appointed a part of
the animal kingdom to act as scavengers. . . . In order that we might know
those which feed upon clean food, He placed a mark or brand upon them."26 Haskell then quoted
Leviticus 11:1-8: "The eating of these things which God has forbidden," Haskell
concluded, "is very grievous in His sight."
Notes
1. New Testament scholar John
Brunt has recently questioned the validity of using Levitical law to establish
the clean/unclean distinction. His assertion that Ellen White's interpretation
of Leviticus explains the church's current position is not warranted, as this
paper will attempt to show. See John Brunt, "Unclean or Unhealthful, An
Adventist Perspective," Spectrum, vol. 11 (Feb. 1981), pp. 17-23.
2. James White, "Swine's
Flesh," Present Truth, vol. 1 (Nov. 1850), p. 87. At least two previous
studies have discussed the topic before us. One was written by Richard Hammill
in 1945 during his student days at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary, the
other by David Giles, another Seminary student, in 1977. Giles adds little to
what Hammill had written earlier. I am indebted to Hammill for directing me to
a number of relevant sources, but I think his paper neglects some important
distinctions.
3. Ellen G. White,
Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1 (Mountain View, CA, 1948), p. 207.
4. Ellen G. White,
Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4 (Battle Creek, MI, 1864), p. 146.
5. D. M. Canright, "The Bible
on Meat," Health Reformer, vol. 1 (Dec. 1866), p. 66.
6. D. M. Canright, "Why I Do
Not Eat Swine," Health Reformer, vol. 1 (April, 1867), p. 135.
7. W. C. Gage, "Pork Unclean,"
Health Reformer, vol. 4 (Feb. 1870), p. 150.
8. James White, "Swine's
Flesh, Forbidden in the Word of God," Health Reformer, vol. 7 (Jan.
1872), p. 18.
9. Uriah Smith, "Meats Clean
and Unclean," Review and Herald, vol. 60 (July 3, 1883), p. 424.
10. Arthur L. White,
"Dietary Witness of the Ellen G. White Household," (Unpublished paper,
Washington, D. C., 1978), p. 15.
11. Ellen G. White to Mary
Kelsey White, May 31, 1882. Letter 16, 1882, p. 1, (Ellen G. White Estate,
Washington, D. C.)
12. Letter 83, 1901: Ellen
G. White, Counsels on Diet and Foods (Washington, D. C., 1938), p. 487.
13. Ellen G. White,
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene (Battle Creek, MI, 1890), p. 118;
in Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 394.)
14. Letter 32a, 1891.
15. Letter 76, 1895; in
Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 488. (See also Critique of Prophetess
of Health, pp. 78-81.)
16. Ellen G. White,
Spiritual Gifts, vol. 3 (Battle Creek, MI, 1860), p. 76.
17. Ellen G. White,
Patriarchs and Prophets (Washington, D. C., 1958), p. 562.
18. See Signs of the
Times, vol. 7, Sept. 15, 22, 29, Oct. 6, 13, 1881.
19. Ellen G. White,
Ministry of Healing (Mountain View, CA 1905), pp. 311, 312.
20. W. H. Littlejohn,
"Oysters," Review and Herald, vol. 60 (Aug. 14, 1883), p. 522.
21. Russell Trall, The
New Hydropathic Cook Book (New York, 1857), p. 104.
22. James C. Jackson, "Flesh
as Food," in James White, ed. Health: or How to Live (Battle Creek, MI,
1865), p. 19.
23. John Loughborough,
The Hand Book of Health (Battle Creek, MI, 1868), pp. 191, 192.
24. J. H. Kellogg,
Household Monitor of Health (Battle Creek, 1891), pp. 131-136.
25. Ellen G. White, "Talk by
Mrs. E. G. White Before Representative Brethren, in the [Battle Creek] College
Library, April 1, 1901," Ms 43a, 1901, p. 13. (Ellen G. White Estate,
Washington, D. C.)
26. S. N. Haskell, The
Bible Training School, vol. 1 (May, 1903), p. 186.
Ellen G. White Estate
Washington, D. C.
April 27,
1981. Retyped March, 1989.