De Haan's position became a mark of orthodoxy among a considerable number of Baptists, even among sovereign grace landmark Baptists. There is a wide spectrum of Baptists today who hold to De Haan's theory. When a preacher makes the statement that the blood comes only from the father or that sin is in the blood, he will be sure to get many hearty "Amens." This theory was accepted without question among the Arminian Baptist churches (the American Baptist Association) with which my folks were associated when I was a child. No one in those churches, so far as I know, ever questioned the idea that sin was in the blood! I first heard this theory at the knees of my father, who listened to M. R. De Haan on the radio and who read his book on this subject. When I first read The Chemistry of the Blood, I knew nothing of biology and very little about the Scriptures. Of course, the book is very convincing when one considers the quotes De Haan makes from medical text books, and that he was himself a surgeon.

Let me emphasize at the outset that I have nothing against M. R. De Haan. His name was held quite high by my father and others with whom I was associated in my early years. I believe I learned from him as I listened to him on the radio and read several of his books. He held to the veracity of Scripture, the deity of Christ and other great fundamentals. I do not question him or his motives. My only concern with his teaching in The Chemistry of the Blood is, "What saith the Scriptures?"

I thought it improper to write upon this subject without contacting Radio Bible Class Ministries (RBCM) to ask them their present position on this subject. I received a nice letter from Kurt E. De Haan, the Managing Editor of RBCM and a grandson of M. R. De Haan. He informed me that RBCM would not now "give unqualified support to the book as originally published." They have, in fact, revised the book as to this idea of sin being in the blood, and that blood comes only from the father.

My contention is that this theory, that sin is in the blood, is neither taught nor implied in the Scriptures. Because of this one error, many others are introduced and, consequently, this original error is compounded. Some of the more glaring mistakes De Haan made I will now list, with the pages where the reader may find the references. Only the quotes are actually De Haan's words.

The blood of a child comes from his father alone, and "the male sperm is the source of the blood"; "...Every drop of blood in an infant's body is the contribution of the male parent," p. 32, 35,42.

The body of an embryo comes from his mother alone, p. 36. She contributes no blood at all to the embryo, p. 33, 42.

The blood of Adam came directly from God, p. 36; the blood was put into his body when God breathed into him the breath of life; De Haan calls it "a separate gift of God," p. 14; p. 41.

The only cause of corruption [of a dead body] is sinful blood, p. 27.

The blood of Adam was changed in some way when he sinned and thus became sinful blood, p. 14. "Sin is a disease of the blood," p. 25. "Sinful and polluted blood," p. 14, " . . . Adam's blood, which was completely impregnated with sin."

Sin is transmitted only through the blood, p. 13, 24; sinful heredity is transmitted through the blood, p. 31; cf. p. 36.

Sin is in the blood and not in the flesh. Flesh can only be called sinful flesh because it is nourished and fed and sustained by sinful blood, p. 14, 24. On p. 15 the author says "He [Christ] had not a drop of Adam's sin in His veins."

Physical death is the result of death in the blood, p.13.

The Holy Spirit contributed the blood of Jesus, Mary, His body. This blood was divine blood, p. 36; on p. 42 he says "The virgin-born Son of God, with a human body, but sinless supernatural blood, inseminated by the Holy Ghost." "His blood was of the Holy Ghost."

Christ did not partake of the same flesh and blood as His people did. "ONLY Jesus is called the Seed of the woman, because He was born of a woman and was without one drop of human blood in His veins"; p. 25. On p. 36 the writer says: "The children [referring to Heb. 2] take both flesh and blood of Adam but Christ took only part, that is, the flesh part, whereas the blood was the result of supernatural conception." p. 42.

It is my position that every one of these ten propositions is false or contains false elements.

The idea that the father alone is the source of a child's blood is completely false. My wife has O+ blood and mine is A+. My son has O+ blood. This is genetically predictable when one considers the blood is derived from both parents but it is impossible with De Haan's theory.

It is a fact that is clearly and easily demonstrated that the things male and female children share, are contributed by both parents. The parents together contribute the blood, the mental capacity, the resistance or susceptibility to disease, the appearance, the color of hair, eyes, skin, and every other inheritable trait common to both male and female. The traits that are not common to both male and female are sexual. "The 46 chromosomes of human somatic cells actually consist of two 23-chromosome sets (22 autosomes and 1 sex chromosome per set), with one set derived from the individual's father and one from the individual's mother." The male chromosome (XY) does not contribute the blood to the child, for only male children receive this chromosome. Therefore every non-sexual organ, every muscle, every bone, every gland, every nerve, and all the other parts, and extracellular materials, including the blood, are derived from both parents.

If the blood comes only from the father, then where do female clones get their blood? "Cloning is the production of a group of genetically identical cells or organisms, but all descended from a single individual." The cloning of a viable human is not yet done to my knowledge, but they have just this past year (1997) cloned sheep in Scotland and if the Lord does not intervene, I believe they will clone humans. As these cloned sheep were yews, one can only wonder where their blood came from, according to De Haan's theory.

The quotes he gives in his book are irrelevant to the purpose for which he quotes them. He quotes from William's Practice of Obstetrics, third ed., p. 133, as follows: "The foetal blood in the vessels of the chorionic villae AT NO TIME GAINS ACCESS TO THE MATERNAL BLOOD in the intervillous spaces, BEING SEPARATED FROM ONE ANOTHER by the double layer of chorionic epithelium."

And again he quotes from the Nurse's Handbook of Obstetrics by Zabriskie, R.N., fifth edition, p 75:

"When the circulation of the blood begins in the embryo, it remains separate and distinct from that of the mother. All food and waste material which are interchanged between the embryo and the mother must pass through the blood vessel walls from one circulation to the other."

And from the same book he quotes p. 82: The foetus receives its nourishment and oxygen from the mother's blood into its own through the medium of the placenta. The foetal heart pumps blood through the arteries of the umbilical cord into the placental vessels, which looping in and out of the uterine tissue and lying in close contact with the uterine vessels, permit a diffusion, through their walls, of waste products from child to mother and of nourishment and oxygen from mother to child. As has been said, this interchange is effected by the process of osmosis, and there is no direct mingling of the two blood currents. In other words, no maternal blood actually flows to the foetus, nor is there any direct foetal blood flow to the mother." Ibid., p. 34.

The problem with these quotes is that they say not one word about the point to be proved! The point he is attempting to prove is that the source of an embryo's blood is from its father alone. What he quotes only teaches what no one denies—that the blood of an embryo does not ordinarily mingle with that of its mother. In fact the blood of the mother and that of the embryo may be two entirely different and incompatible types. But this has not one thing to do with the source of that infant's blood.

De Haan does not produce a single quote, from either Scripture or Biology, which supports his proposition that the blood of a baby comes from the father alone and its body comes from its mother alone and if he knew of such authority surely he would have produced it.

De Haan would have us believe that sin was lurking in the blood of Mary, separated from Christ only by the villae of the placenta. And if one drop of her blood passed through the placenta into the body of the Lord Jesus He would have been a sinner! "Jesus could have a human body, but one drop of Adam's blood would have made him a sinner like you and me." While it is not normal for a mother to send her blood to her fetus, it does happen. Can anyone believe our Lord came so close to being a depraved sinner? This is a theory totally foreign to the teaching of Scripture.

Similar faulty thinking developed the immaculate conception of Mary and a host of other fanciful, bazar, and false teachings. We have higher ground for the foundation of Christ's impeccability.

De Haan writes "The breath of God put something in man that made him ALIVE. That something was blood. It must have been. It could be nothing else . . . "

Now this is how errors get started! It could have been a thousand other things, so far as we know, for with God all things are possible. But we are not left in doubt about this. The Scripture says: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Ge 2:7). Notice the text does not say that God put something into man, but God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul!" Adam was perfectly created. He was all there. He had a brain, he had a heart, he had lungs and he had blood. He had every essential except life. And for De Haan to say Adam lacked blood is not exegesis but imagination! If there had been a Scripture that taught this doctrine, it would have been given instead of a mere assertion.

What is wrong with this position?

The first thing wrong with De Haan's statement is, he gives no Scripture for it. It is merely an assertion! If sinful blood is the only cause for a dead body's corruption, then one wonders why dead animals stink! Do they have sinful blood?

This reminds me that Augustine claimed that peacock meat would not rot! He said he tried it himself and found that it was indeed true. And some people will believe such claims simply because they wish to believe them. It has nothing to do with evidence for there is none and I beg to be excused.

De Haan also claims that something happened to Adam's blood when he sinned. "Since life is in the blood, when man died [spiritually], something happened to the blood. Sin affected the blood of man, not his body, except indirectly, because it is supplied by the blood. For this very reason sin is not in the flesh but in the blood."

Now where is this found in the Scripture? He gives no Scripture to prove it. He expects the reader to accept his word on this. I maintain that Adam's blood (and Eve's too) was exactly the same the day before they sinned as it was the day after, as far as sin is concerned. Whatever difference there may have been was the effect not the cause. Their blood was the same type, same color, the same as to sin and there was no corruption in the red fluid that did not result from the effects of their depraved hearts. Just as we say "He has wicked hands," "he has a vile mouth" or "his brains are perverted." Yet no one, I suppose, really believes that the hands, the tongues, or the brains of such individuals, are actually sinful. These are but the instruments of sin. And when someone receives a heart transplant from a wicked man, surely no one would think that the organ could impart character to the recipient. And neither will blood impart character to an individual, either good or evil.

There can be a moral and spiritual disorder in the soul without a perversion of the substance or essence of the soul or the body. This is the real nature of a depraved soul. It is a matter of the heart and it has nothing to do with the body and it has nothing to do with the blood. B. H. Carroll said: "The members of the body are merely instrumental, and Paul says that all sin is apart from the body. The body cannot sin. The body is used as an instrument of sin, but the sin comes from the inner man; it comes out of the heart of the man." Total depravity is a spiritual and moral defect, not a physical thing.

Sin is a matter of the heart, and is found in the so-called psychological core of man. It is the inner personality of a human being that is corrupted with sin. Sin is in the spiritual recesses of man and not in his capillaries. There is no physical part of man that compels him to sin. Man sins because his nature is sinful. When man sins it is not because there is some poison in his blood, in his flesh, or in his brain. There is nothing in the substance of a man that makes him sinful. It is his spiritual nature that is corrupted. The Scripture calls this depraved nature by such terms as, an evil heart, a carnal mind, the law of sin, the old man, the flesh, and filthiness of flesh and spirit.

This position is further supported by the terms that the Scriptures use to speak of the regenerate: They are said to have a spiritual mind, to be the new man, to be a new creature and to have a new heart. But where is the Scripture that speaks of bad blood, good blood or new blood? De Haan himself gives no Scripture to prove his proposition and I do not believe any can be given.

T. P. Simmons says: "The basis of depravity and spiritual inability lies in the heart. It is deceitful and incurably wicked (Jer. 17:9). Out of the heart are the issues of life (Prov. 4:23). No one can bring a clean thing out of an unclean one (Job 14:4). Hence neither holiness nor faith can proceed from the natural heart. Good things proceed from a good heart and evil things proceed from an evil heart (Mt 7: 17,18; Lk 6:45). Notice here that Simmons does not teach that evil things proceed from bad blood.

Nor, because the lineage of man, in Scripture, is traced through the male generally, are we to think this means sin is transmitted through the blood of the male. For as we have already seen the blood comes from both parents. It takes one illogical (not to mention unscriptural) leap after another for De Haan to come up with this fallacious position. The blood of the race came equally from Adam and Eve not from Adam alone. Eve is the mother of all living, (Gen.3:20). Both Adam and Eve have the common name of Adam, "Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created," (Ge 5:2). Where is the Scripture which teaches that sin is transmitted through the blood?

Now it is a secret that God has not seen fit to reveal how depravity is transmitted from the parents to the children. We do know that when a child is conceived in the normal way he is depraved. We know that Christ had the same flesh and blood that we have yet He was not depraved. This means that neither sin nor depravity is transmitted via blood.

De Haan denies this. He says " . . . But Christ took only part, that is, the flesh part, whereas the blood was the result of supernatural conception." He tries to substantiate his position by referring to the margin of his Bible and from the Greek of Hebrews 2:14.

He quotes his Bible margin thusly: "In the margin of my Bible, I read that the word translated 'took part' implies 'taking part in something outside one's self.'" I assume De Haan was using a Scofield Bible which has this note on He. 2:14: "The word trans. took part is not the same as that trans. partakers, but implies taking part in something outside one's self."

De Haan then gives the meaning of koinoneo as "to share fully," and for the meaning of metecho "to take part but not all. The children take both flesh and blood of Adam but Christ took only part . . . " He tries to draw a distinction between koinoneo and metecho yet they are clearly synonyms as Spicq states: "The nuance of intimate sharing, of assimilation, already suggested by the use of the verb metecho for eating or instruction, is revealed by its interchangeability with koinoneo: 'so, since children have flesh and blood in common (kekoinoneken), he also shares (meteschen) in these same things.' "

Let the reader mark well De Haan gives no source for this definition of metecho.

Why not?

This word means: "to be or become partaker; to partake . . . ";—Thayer's. "Share, have a share, participate w. gen. of the thing in or of something . . . ":—A& G. "To partake of, enjoy a share of, share in, take part in . . . " —Liddell & Scott's. "To be partaker of, to share in..."—Berry's Lexicon. "...To share or participate . . . "—DNTT. "Metechein always means 'to have a share in'":—TDNT, Vol. II, p. 830. I might give other references, but these will suffice to prove his definition is not supported by the lexicons.

In Heb. 2:14, De Haan meets a passage which flatly opposes his doctrine. This text teaches that Christ likewise took part of the same flesh and blood as we did. T. P. Simmons, in reference to this passage, said: "Christ's body and human nature were in all respects like our own, except that there was no taint of sin in Him. He was the flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood." His participation in our flesh and blood was absolutely essential because only a near kinsman could redeem. Therefore, Christ was related to his people. He became their Kinsman Redeemer. This Scripture declares this truth in express terms: Christ participated in, He shared in, He took part of, the same flesh and blood we did and there is no exegetical reason to exclude the blood any more than there is to exclude the flesh. If you exclude either flesh or blood, there can be no relationship and no Redeemer. De Haan's theory says Christ did not take part of our blood! And while this is without doubt unintentional, it is yet an attack on the humanity of our Redeemer. The text says He took part of both our flesh and our blood.

There is no question that this clause, He hath purchased with His own blood means the church was purchased with the blood of God. The antecedent of the pronoun is not God the Father in vs. 27 but God in the clause church of God.

This text does not support the idea that the blood of Christ came directly from God the Father, but it teaches the deity of the person of Christ! It is Christ's blood of which Paul here speaks because God the Father has no blood, no body parts and no similitude of any kind, being a pure Spirit. All the references to God having body parts are anthropomorphic. God's right hand is His mighty power. His feet is a term that signifies that He moves, and His eye that He sees. Yet there is no body, no bone, no blood in God.

When the elders of Israel saw God they saw a Christophany for God is invisible. When Christ's body was prepared, we are to understand that his body and all its organs, His physical appearance, His blood, and every other part of his physical nature came from His mother, but without sin. De Haan says: "The children take both flesh and blood of Adam but Christ took only part, that is, the flesh part, whereas the blood was the result of supernatural conception."

But this is false!

He was the seed of the woman. His conception was supernatural for both his body and his blood! His divine nature came from Heaven. In great humility He disrobed himself of His Deity and was made in the womb of his mother and by this means the pre-existent One came into union with real human nature, both flesh and blood. This union of the divine with sinless human nature is what gave His blood that powerful efficacy so that He could redeem us. It was not the other way around as De Haan and so many others believe. If both His body and blood were not human, then how could His sacrifice be effective to redeem fallen men who were human?

But why then does the text say "the blood of God"?

Because anything true of His Divine nature is true, and can be said, of the whole person. Just as we say of a man who is strong and healthy, but depressed in mind, John is very low. Now we speak of his mind only, but it is true of his person. On the other hand we say of one at the point of death, he is very well, because he is full of faith and anticipating glory, while his body is wasting away. Thus, we say of the person of Christ, that His blood, his head, his hands are Divine. Not because the organs of His body are Divine, but because He is a divine person. This is the way the Scripture speaks of the two natures, referring what is true only of the human or the Divine to His person.

Thus whatever is true of Christ as a man can be said of Christ as a person. We read of Him being weary. Was deity tired? We read of Him being hungry. Was deity hungry? We read of him being acquainted with grief, shedding tears, being angry, weary and being ignorant of certain things. Who would claim that these things pertain to God? But they were true of the person of Christ because they were true of His human nature. He said while on earth that He was in Heaven, that He was before Abraham, which things were not meant of His human nature that had its beginning when He was conceived in the virgin Mary. But these things were true of His person. This is, I believe, the correct interpretation of Acts 20:28.

This is the teaching of Scripture in other passages pertaining to the Incarnation. "In Romans 1:2-5, the Apostle says that the gospel concerns the Son of God, who is our Lord Jesus Christ, who, as to his human nature, kata sarka, is the Son of David, but as to his divine nature, kata pneuma, is the Son of God. Here also the two natures and one person of the Redeemer are clearly asserted."

The blood of Christ was divine in the same way his hands and feet were Divine—because He was a divine person. His body and his blood came from the same source. He was as human as we are, on the one hand, and as much God as His Father was on the other. Yet these two natures were not mingled. His blood was the blood of God because His person was divine, not because His blood came from Heaven.

Because there is no biblical support for the idea that sin is in the blood, nor for the errors that orbit around it, there should be a public rejection of all of these errors in the churches. It is not enough to merely stop teaching these doctrines, where they have been taught. We must not only proclaim the Word of God, but we must also disclaim these errors as we proclaim the truth. Where these thorns are embedded in the sheep, we must first extract them. Then, and only then, can the healing begin.

We must learn to reject such theories, as these put forth by De Haan, because they do not have a "Thus saith the Lord." They do give definitions of words but they are not right definitions. They do quote authorities but they misapply the quotes. They do refer to doctrines but not according to the analogy of faith. They do quote Scripture but the Scriptures quoted do not support the propositions. Therefore such false teaching, even though it may have the hash marks of centuries on its sleeves, and on its shoulder the laureates of a thousand campaigns, and on its chest medals from many a battle, such teaching, I repeat, must be rejected for the imposter it is. We must prove all things by the Word of God. Cunningly devised fables may sound convincing, they may use scriptural terms, they may come in orthodox garb and they may be paraded as the truth of God, but they are false none-the-less because they are not founded upon the proper exegesis of Holy Scripture.

Remember, these kind of errors, and this one concerning the blood in particular, run in the minds of a thousand men who never read De Haan's book, who never spent five minutes time to see if the Scripture does indeed teach his propositions, who will never check out the novel meanings assigned to words without the support or usage of authorities. They heard some one declare these theories and they took them on human faith. Investigation and research were excluded.