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The Golden Chain - Robert J. Wieland

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to her own convictions.<br />

14. Was Christ's sinlessness due to Deity<br />

"forbidding" and "interposing" so as to prevent<br />

defilement, as Melville believed?<br />

We must be careful not to bypass the exercise<br />

of Christ's own power of choice. Can we take the<br />

position that "sinful propensities" are genetically<br />

transmitted through the genes and chromosomes?<br />

If so, we would certainly want "Deity to interpose"<br />

and "forbid" it! But then we would need for Christ<br />

at least a substitute for the Roman Catholic<br />

doctrine of the intervention of an Immaculate<br />

Conception. And if "Deity interposed [and]<br />

forbade" it for Jesus externally, why should He not<br />

be fair and do it for us as well?<br />

Some Seventh-day Adventists feel driven to the<br />

idea of an Immaculate Conception by the<br />

assumption that if Christ "took" our fallen, sinful<br />

nature then He must have "had" a sinning nature.<br />

And there the door is opened at least a crack for the<br />

Roman Catholic idea that Christ would not dare to<br />

104

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