By 1884 E. J. Waggoner was advocating that Galatians 3 dealt with the moral law. Quoting Galatians 3:24 which spoke of the "schoolmaster," Waggoner explained: "Notice that the law does not point to Christ-that office is intrusted [sic.] to something else-but it brings us, yea, drives and forces us to him as our only hope." The Ten Commandments convict of sin, but the law can not save. Hence, the law drives the sinner to Christ.
This was Waggoner's seminal article on the law in Galatians. Its themes would be more fully explored with respect to the two covenants in the future. But for the time being, it provoked no controversy.
It may be thought that E. J. Waggoner picked up his views of the law in Galatians from his father, J. H. Waggoner. However, his view of the relationship of the moral law to the covenants was much different from his father's view.
E. J. Waggoner agreed with his father that the "schoolmaster" in Galatians 3 was the moral law. But that was as far as the similarities went. J. H. Waggoner taught that the old covenant terminated with Christ and the new covenant was instituted by Christ. J. H. Waggoner said: "We know that the New Testament, or covenant, dates from the death of the Testator, the very point where the first covenant ceased." This was the typological dispensationalism with its focus primarily on the time element of the two economies of the Old and the New Testament. E. J. Waggoner recognized the time element of the two economies of the Old Testament and the New Testament. As early as 1881 he referred to the "Christian dispensation." Speaking of the Sabbath he referred to both dispensations, "If the seventh day was observed in Paradise, was kept by the patriarchs, and was the recognized Sabbath under all the Mosaic dispensation, all the time that has been lost must be in the Christian era, the possibility of which will be duly considered." In fact, at least once he referred to the Mosaic dispensation as the old covenant: dispensation as the old covenant:
So it was by virtue of the second or new covenant that pardon was secured to those who offered the sacrifices provided for in the ordinances of divine service connected with the old or first covenant.
Even in this, he viewed the types of the Mosaic dispensation not as a means of pardon, but an expression of faith in Christ, the sin-pardoning Redeemer. To E. J. Waggoner, the necessity of the heart experience of the new covenant was available for people before the cross as well as after the cross.
Thus, when Waggoner taught the biblical exposition of the two covenants as two different experiences in the plan of salvation he later [1893] explained it this way,
. . . the "Christian dispensation" began for man as soon, at least, as the fall. There are indeed, two dispensations, a dispensation of sin and death, and a dispensation of righteousness and life, but these two dispensations have run parallel from the fall. God deals with men as individuals, and not as nations, nor according to the century in which they live. No matter what the period of the world's history, a man can at any time pass from the old dispensation into the new. dispensation into the new.
E. J. Waggoner taught that the two covenants from the gospel perspective, were more appropriately seen as conditions of the individual heart. This biblical perspective needed attention from Adventists. The typological dispensationalism of the old and the new covenants was a biblical perspective, but not the only one. E. J. Waggoner was fully aware of the potential for controversy that the exposition of the heart experience of the law and the covenants might have within the denomination. Elder W. C. White later [1890] wrote of a private conversation which he and E. J. Waggoner had about the matter. Elder White wrote to Dan T. Jones who was the secretary of the General Conference: of the General Conference:
As regards the controversy over the law in Gal. I have never taken the part, or occupied the position in this matter which Eld. Butler supposed, or which it appears you have thought I did from the statements in your letter. In the spring of 1885, while walking in the woods with Eld. [E. J.] Waggoner, he introduced two points over which he was perplexed. First was the apparent necessity of taking positions while pursuing his editorial work that would be in conflict with Eld. Canright's writings; the second was with reference to the point in controversy between Elds. Smith, Canright, and my father [James White] on the one side, and Elds.
[J. H.] Waggoner and [J. N.] Andrews on the other: I expressed my opinion freely that he and the editors of the Signs should teach what they believed to be truth, if it did conflict with some things written by Eld. Canright and others, . . . . In this reported conversation which Elder W. C. White had with E. J. Waggoner in 1885 it is evident that Elders Smith, Canright, and James White held the ceremonial law position in Galatians 3 and Elders J. H. Waggoner and J. N. Andrews held the moral law position in Galatians 3. 3.
There were differing views regarding which law was represented by the "schoolmaster" or "added law" in Galatians 3 within Adventist thinking during the 1880's. This tension had existed since the 1850's remaining unresolved. This decades-old problem was to become a crisis in the later part of the 1880's.