The controversy over Ellen White’s use of the term “amalgamation” in an early book of hers called “Spiritual Gifts” is now over 150 years old, yet it is an “evergreen” topic; a story about it is currently in our Fulcrum7 article feed. Below are the results of my research on this topic.
A Debate in San Francisco
It was the morning of September 8, 1947. The setting was a conference room not far from San Francisco, California. Fifteen men were seated behind a long conference table, facing a podium that was flanked by two chairs. The men seated at the table were officials of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, including its highest officer, James Lamar McElhany, President of the General Conference. They were there to hear a debate. The two men seated in front of the table on either side of the podium were two Adventist scientists, Harold W. Clark and Frank Lewis Marsh. Each man was there to argue for his interpretation of a very unclear passage from the writings of Ellen White.
Shortly after 9 a.m., Milton E. Kern rose to introduce the issue. As Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Ellen G. White Estate, Kern was the right man for the job, because the issue concerned some of Ellen White’s most puzzling written statements. In the four-volume work, Spiritual Gifts, Important Facts of Faith in Connection with the History of Holy Men of Old, White had written of a concept she called “amalgamation:”
“But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere.”[1]
“Every species of animal which God had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood.”[2]
Most Adventists were familiar with these passages, yet no one was quite certain what the term “amalgamation” meant, or which species were the “confused species.” The passages had remained mysterious. The statements had been a source of controversy, noted Kern, ever since their first publication in 1864.
Over the years, most commentators had gravitated toward one of two interpretations. One group held that the passages referred to crossbreeding between humans and animals; the other group argued that amalgamation was merely the intermarriage of the godly line of Seth with the ungodly line of Cain (something we discussed in Chapter 18). That day in 1947 would see each of those interpretations presented and argued. The men who would argue were the two most prominent Seventh-day Adventist naturalists of their generation. Each published several books over the course of long careers in science, teaching, and creationist apologetics.[i]
Kern first called upon Harold Willard Clark (1891-1986), an Adventist from New England who had taught school and then attended Pacific Union College, an Adventist college in northern California. After graduating from PUC, Clark taught at PUC and took graduate classes part-time at the University of California at Berkeley, eventually earning a master’s degree in biology.[ii]
Clark had begun to grapple with the meaning of the “amalgamation” passages during the 1920s, because his biology students at PUC kept asking about them. Ellen White died in 1915, but Clark inquired as to the meaning of these passages of several people who had been close to the prophet while she was alive. The consensus was that “amalgamation” referred to hybridization among animals and between animals and humans. In 1940, Clark had completed the book Genes and Genesis, in which he supported this interpretation and suggested examples of possible crosses in the animal kingdom. He was at a loss to suggest an example of a cross between man and beast.
That morning, Clark began his presentation by complimenting Marsh on his scientific and apologetical work furthering a biblical understanding of origins. The two men were friends who strongly agreed on the need to rebut the theory of evolution, and, Clark noted, they even agreed on some aspects of the amalgamation statements. With this gracious beginning, Clark helped eased the tension in the room. He then moved on to the substance of his argument.
Clark noted that the first amalgamation statement (“But if there was one sin above another . . .”) comes at the end of a chapter dealing with the sins of the antediluvians (the people who lived before the Genesis Flood). One of the issues White had already discussed, earlier in the chapter, was intermarriage between the godly line of Seth and the rebellious line of Cain:
The descendants of Seth were called the sons of God—the descendants of Cain, the sons of men. As the sons of God mingled with the sons of men, they became corrupt, and by intermarriage with them, lost, through the influence of their wives, their peculiar, holy character, and united with the sons of Cain in their idolatry. Many cast aside the fear of God, and trampled upon his commandments.[iii]
It seems very unlikely, Clark argued, that the amalgamation passage would refer to an issue she had explicitly and clearly addressed just four pages earlier.
Second, Ellen White’s contemporaries were not in doubt about the meaning of the term “amalgamation.” William C. “Willie” White, Ellen’s son, and Dores E. Robinson, her secretary, both believed that the amalgamation statements referred to the crossing of man and beast. Some had asserted in print that amalgamation referred to the crossing of humans and animals, and White had never attempted to correct those statements.
Third, the passage clearly refers to a sin—the one sin above another that called for the destruction of the race by a flood. History showed, argued Clark, that human cohabitation with animals—bestiality—was one of the greatest sins of antiquity. Clark admitted that there was no evidence that modern humans can mate with non-humans and produce any offspring, but this did not mean that such crosses could not have occurred in the antediluvian past. To say that amalgamation between men and animals had never occurred because it does not occur today, Clark argued, is to fall into the same uniformitarian error that led geologists to the conclusion that the world is many millions of years old.[iv] Ellen White must therefore have intended for her readers to interpret the “base crime” as the sexual crossing of man and beast.
At about 9:45, Clark concluded his argument, and Kern called upon Marsh. Frank Lewis Marsh (1899-1992) had aspired to become a physician, but lack of funds steered him into nursing, and later teaching. While teaching school near Chicago, Marsh earned a master’s degree in zoology from Northwestern University and later completed a Ph.D. in botany at the University of Nebraska.[v] Some 10 years after the 1947 meeting, Marsh was to become the first director of the Geoscience Research Institute, an institute founded and funded by the Seventh-day Adventist denomination to address questions regarding origins and the age of the earth.
Upon publishing a book entitled, Evolution, Creation, and Science, Marsh sent copies to Harvard’s Ernst Mayr and Columbia’s Russian-born geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky. Mayr declined to comment on the book, but Dobzhansky carried on an extensive correspondence with Marsh regarding it.[vi] Dobzhansky had written that, “among the present generation, no informed person entertains any doubt of the validity of the evolution theory in the sense that evolution has occurred.” After reading Marsh’s book, Dobzhansky admitted that Marsh had written a sensibly argued defense of special creation. Several years later, in the sixth edition of his Genetics and the Origin of Species, Dobzhansky cited Marsh as the exception to the rule that an informed person cannot doubt evolution.
Marsh began as Clark had, by praising his adversary of the moment and noting that he and Clark were good friends who agreed on most things. He began the substance of his argument by reading an 1859 dictionary definition of “amalgamation” that defined it as the mixing of the African and Caucasian races. In Ellen White’s time, the “amalgamation of man” would have evoked interbreeding between two races. In the context of this passage, Marsh argued, the “two races” would have been the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Seth.
Marsh then turned around to the shelf of Ellen White books that lined the wall of the conference room. He selected a copy of Fundamentals of Christian Education and read a statement from page 499: “The enemy rejoiced in his success in effacing the divine image from the minds of the people . . . through intermarriage with idolaters and constant association with them . . .” Ellen White had written that intermarriage with idolaters “effaced the divine image,” and that amalgamation “defaced the image of God,” basically the same thing. The literary evidence, Marsh argued, weigned on the side of interpreting amalgamation to mean the mixing of the godly line of Seth with the ungodly line of Cain.
But the gravamen of Marsh’s argument was that modern science did not support Clark’s interpretation of the passage. One of the most clearly demonstrated principles of biology, Marsh noted, was that fundamentally different kinds of animals cannot interbreed. Marsh also pointed out that humans cannot breed with animals today, and there was no reason to believe that humans have ever been able to breed with animals. We do not find in the fossil record, he asserted, the fossils of human-animal hybrids.[vii]
The Bible itself, argued Marsh, explains why different kinds of animals cannot interbreed, and why humans cannot breed with animals. The Bible states that God created each type of animal “after its kind.” Based upon this passage, Marsh had coined the word “baramin” from the Hebrew words bara, meaning “created,” and min, meaning “kind.”[viii] The Bible implied, Marsh argued, that an animal from one baramin, or created kind, cannot breed with an animal from another baramin. Humanity is a separate created kind, created in the image of God. (Gen. 1:27; 5:1-2) Because mankind was a separate baramin, there was never a time when humans could have bred with animals. And the many different animal baramins could never have interbred. Thus, it appeared to Marsh that modern science was merely confirming what Scripture taught.
Clark’s view was closer to the opinion held in Ellen White’s time, but Marsh’s position was more in line with modern scientific findings, and was more palatable for reasons we will discuss later.
No vote or official action was taken on that day in 1947, but, for a variety of reasons, the generally sanctioned opinion in the church swung toward the Marsh position, where it has remained. Adventist interpreters such as Francis D. Nichol (1897-1966), the long-time editor of Adventist Review, have argued that “amalgamation” refers to the intermarriage of the godly line of Seth with the ungodly and rebellious descendants of Cain.[ix]
Clark and Marsh were both correct on their main points. Clark was correct that the passage does not refer to intermarriage between the godly and ungodly peoples. First, Ellen White had adequately treated the intermarriage issue just four pages earlier. She would not have revisited, in a vague and inscrutable fashion, an issue that she had previously treated so clearly and explicitly. Second, the second amalgamation passage makes clear that “amalgamation” was something that happened primarily to animals:
Every species of animal which God had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which God did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood.
The Seth-ites could marry the Cain-ites throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity and never produce any “confused species of animal which God did not create.”
Clark was also correct that the early interpreters assumed that sexual reproduction was implied in the amalgamation passages. This is not surprising, because in 1864 selective breeding was the only method by which mankind could influence the form and characteristics of living creatures. Perhaps White’s early interpreters thought, just as did Charles Darwin, that there were no limits on the extent to which a species could be modified by selective breeding.[x]
Marsh, also, was correct on his main point. While different species of the same basic kind of animal can mate and produce fertile offspring (wolves with coyotes, for example) and others can hybridize to the extent of producing an infertile offspring (horses with donkeys, for example), fundamentally dissimilar types of animals cannot inter-breed. It is a scientific impossibility. It cannot happen today, and there is no reason to believe that it was ever possible. And although Scripture does not explicitly state that a creature from one “kind” cannot breed with an animal from another created kind, Marsh’s view is a good inference from the science and from texts saying that each animal was created “after its kind.” Gen. 1:21-25. Marsh was probably correct in arguing that there was never a time when humans were inter-fertile with the animals.[xi]
In summary, Clark was correct that amalgamation means the mixing of very different kinds of creatures, and Marsh was correct that this cannot be done by means of sexual reproduction. How then could it have been accomplished?
This was an insoluble problem in Ellen White’s time, and it appeared to be even farther from a solution in 1947. But advances in genetics have suggested a solution. Clark and Marsh both made one assumption that, in retrospect, was unwarranted. They both assumed that “amalgamation” was accomplished by means of sexual reproduction. Most other commentators have also read this assumption into the passages. But Ellen White never said that “amalgamation” was accomplished by sexual reproduction.
“Then God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind’; and it was so." Gen. 1:24
[1] Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. III, p. 64. (The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. I, p. 69).
[2] Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. III, p. 75. (The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. I, p. 78).
[i] Clark’s books include: Back to Creationism (1929), Genes and Genesis (1940), The New Diluvialism (1946), Creation Speaks (1947), Nature Nuggets (1955), Skylines and Detours (1959), Wonders of Creation (1964), Crusader for Creation (a biography of George McCready Price) (1966), Genesis and Science (1967), Fossils, Flood, and Fire (1968), Battle Over Genesis, and New Creationism (1980). Marsh’s books include: Fundamental Biology (1941), Evolution, Creation, and Science (1944), Studies in Creationism (?), Evolution or Special Creation? (?), Life, Man, and Time (1967), and Variation and Fixity in Nature (1976).
[ii] As an undergraduate at PUC, Harold Clark had studied with George McCready Price, a very prolific Seventh-day Adventist creationist who published some twenty books in his long career. Price was a stalwart soldier in the trenches of early creationism who, virtually alone for over 30 years, pioneered Flood geology. His writing style was acerbic and occasionally sarcastic, and is out of fashion today, although it was similar in tone to the writings of H.L. Mencken and other literary stylists of Price’s day. George McCready Price, through his own books and through his influence on Byron C. Nelson, Alfred Rehwinkel, John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, was probably the most influential creationist since Moses.
Interestingly, at the time of the debate with Marsh, Clark had just broken ranks with his old mentor Price over the issue of order in the sedimentary strata. Based upon many instances of out-of-order strata in mountainous regions, Price argued that the geologic column was an illusion, a theory contradicted by the empirical facts. Clark had come to accept the reality of the order of the strata, based upon the testimony of oil field geologists and the data from thousands of well cores. He came to accept the evidence that out-of-order strata were a result of tectonic activity and orogeny (mountain building). Clark had just published, in 1946, The New Diluvialism, in which he explained the order in the fossil record on the basis of ecological zonation.
[iii] White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. III, p. 60.
[iv] Harold Coffin echoed this argument in his book Origin by Design, (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1983), p. 20. (“Since Genesis One does not declare that animals of diverse kinds cannot interbreed or cross, we ought to keep our eyes and minds open to the possibility that in the pre-Flood world crossing between more diverse kinds may have occurred on a greater scale than today. To deny emphatically that it could have happened in the past because it does not take place now is to stand dogmatically on the principle of uniformity.”)
[v] Marsh had something in common with Clark besides being an Adventist science teacher: both had studied under George McCready Price. Marsh had taken geology from Price at Emmanuel Missionary College (now Andrews University) and idolized the man he once called the “old warhorse.”
[vi] Numbers, Ronald L. ed. Creationism in Twentieth-Century America, (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1995), p. xviii (Numbers characterizes the exchange as “more than two months of nearly weekly exchanges”).
[vii] The story of the 1947 meeting is from Gordon Shigley, “Amalgamation of Man and Beast: What did Ellen White Mean?” Spectrum (the journal of the Association of Adventist Forums) 12(4):10-19 (1982). The biographical details of the lives of Harold W. Clark and Frank Lewis Marsh are from Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists, (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992 (paperback: University of California Press, 1993)), pp. 105, 123-133. Marsh set out his views on the “amalgamation” issue in his 1941 book, Fundamental Biology. “In the first place stands the fact that in nature today, although often attempted in both directions, man and beast cannot cross and produce offspring. Scientific records state that no such cross ever occurred. . . . In the second place, plants or animals which are sufficiently different to constitute two Genesis kinds are also incapable of crossing. At least, it is very clear that they cannot produce fertile offspring. . . . Recent dictionaries agree that the meaning of amalgamation in the field of biology is the ‘the coalescence or blending of races’, and the crossing of the white and black races of man is given as an illustration.” Marsh devoted most of Fundamental Biology to elucidating his interpretation of the amalgamation statements. Frank Lewis Marsh, Fundamental Biology, (self published, 1941) in Creationism in Twentieth-Century America, Vol. 8: The Early Writings of Harold W. Clark and Frank Lewis Marsh, ed. Ronald L. Numbers, (New York and London: Garland Pub. Inc., 1995), pp. 399-527.
[viii] Creationists are exploring methods for determining which modern species are members of a single created “baramin,” and the study of the created kinds has come to be called “baraminology.” See, e.g., Wise, Kurt P. (1990) “Baraminology: a young-earth creation biosystematic method,” In R. E. Walsh, editor, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism. Volume II, Technical Symposium, pp. 345–360. Creation Science Fellowship, PO Box 99303, Pittsburgh, PA 15233-4303; Frair, Wayne, “Baraminology: Classification of Created Organisms,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, 37:2, p. 82-91 (September, 2000) http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/37/37_2/baraminology.htm. ; Wood, Todd Charles, and David P. Cavanaugh, “A Baraminological analysis of subtribe Flaveriinae (Asteraceae: Helenieae) and the Origin of Biological Complexity,” Origins, No. 52, p. 7 (2001) http://www.grisda.org/origins/52007.htm. ;
[ix] See, e.g., Francis D. Nichol “Amalgamation: Ellen G. White Statements Regarding Conditions at the Time of the Flood,” (adapted from his book Ellen G. White and Her Critics, pp. 306-322) on the web at http://www.WhiteEstate.org/issues/amalg.html.
[x] Subsequent advances in genetics have shown that selective breeding cannot achieve unlimited modification. Nossal, G. J. V. and Ross L. Coppel, Reshaping Life, (Cambridge, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1985-1989), p. 105 (“there are inherent limits within a breed beyond which it is not possible to go.”)
[xi] As I understand the Baramin concept, animals that are members of the same created kind may be, and frequently are, no longer inter-fertile. Despite the fact that two species are not currently inter-fertile, other factors may indicate that they descended from a common ancestor, and must have been inter-fertile in the past. Taking this fact in isolation, one could argue that humans and apes, although no longer inter-fertile, may have been in the distant past, and thus that Clark’s argument is not so far fetched (if applied only to humans and apes). The apes are definitely animals, however, and we know from Scripture that animals were created separately from humans, and only humans were created in the image of God. Gen. 1:24-26; 2:7. Thus, apes and humans were never part of the same created kind, and it is a fundamental tenet of Baraminology that species from different baramins are not inter-fertile. Hence, apes and humans were never inter-fertile.