Is truth or error important? Many informed Seventh-day Adventists know we've had a decided polarizing of views for the better part of half a century.
Indeed, the problem goes back as far as a century, for the 1888 messengers, Jones and Waggoner, were emphatic in understanding that Christ took our fallen, sinful nature, yet lived therein a perfectly sinless life, and was totally sinless. Their view was opposed at the time, and still is. Some today say they like the "general emphasis" in their "most precious message" but insist they were in error on this point.
Other conscientious writers struggle to come up with a harmony of the two opposite views. At the Palmdale Conference of early 1976 it became apparent that it was impossible to bridge them, so the General Conference declared both acceptable.
But neither side have been happy to back away. Those who hold that Christ "had" a sinless nature keep wondering if there is some potential blasphemy lurking in the post-Fall idea. Does it disqualify Christ from being our sinless Substitute, so that we must end up not having a Saviour? This is the implied suggestion of several recent Adventist writers:
Could Jesus have had the very same nature that we receive from sinful Adam and still be our Saviour? … Could Jesus save babies born with the "inheritance" of "selfishness … wrought in" their "very being" if He had been born with the same "inheritance" of "selfishness"? … Could Jesus have a nature just like ours and still be our interceding advocate and high priest? … Could Jesus intercede for us if His human nature was also defiled and corrupt? (Woodrow Whidden II, Ellen White on the Humanity of Christ, pp. 71, 72; Review and Herald, 1997).
If He were altogether like us—100%—if He had shared in exactly the same way the inheritance of sin and guilt we all received from Adam, then He would have been crippled as a Saviour. But more than that, He would Himself have stood in need of a Redeemer (Roy Adams, The Nature of Christ, p. 71; Review and Herald, 1994).
How can one say that Christ took human nature after 4,000 years of degeneration and yet remained uninfected by this malady, this cancer, this virus that has certainly infected all of us? (p. 68).
Both of these authors apparently misconstrue the 1888 view which they oppose, but we will not take time here to discuss the distortions. Adams answers his own rhetorical question a few pages later with reasoning that has to closely resemble the Roman Catholic view: Before His birth Christ "bypass[ed] this universal infection of sin" and was "accepted" from our "inherited" legacy (p. 71). It was like a freeway "bypass" that saves you going through town. He believes Ellen White agrees with him when she says that Christ "coming to dwell in humanity, receives no pollution" (DA 266). The question is: what does "receives" mean? Does it "bypass" the exercise of His own human will?
Her statement hardly helps solve the "sinless as a baby" problem, for she is not speaking of a genetically inherited "exception" or "exemption" for Christ that bypassed His own human will and gave Him sinless flesh, but how the Great Physician as an adult touched the lepers and "received no defilement." The meaning seems clear: "coming to dwell in humanity" Christ never sinned. He couldn't come "to dwell in humanity" if He avoided identity with humanity where humanity is.
Those who believe the 1888 view see that to "except" Christ genetically from having to meet the problem of sin in a nature or flesh like ours logically compromises His victory over Satan. Jesus cannot be excused from our battle as we must fight it. The 1888 view sees an antinomianism lurking in the pre-Fall view that is contrary to the gospel. If the Saviour can't "overcome" or "condemn" sin if He "takes" our fallen sinful spiritual nature, how can we ever hope to overcome? The bottom line? We can't. Follow the logic through all the way, and it becomes serious.
Jones and Waggoner both recognized that this view is at least next door to the Roman Catholic view, if not logically identical. They saw Christ as a Baby partaking of the same genetic inheritance that all the sons and daughters of both "David" and "Abraham" have had to take, all the way from Adam (Rom. 1:3; Heb. 2:16, the word "seed" is sperm in Greek).
But that doesn't mean that He had to be a sinner like we are. And the Good News, they said, is that we with our fallen, sinful heredity can overcome by faith in Him, "even as [He] overcame" (Rev. 3:21). They saw it as Good News that makes good sense when you think about getting ready for the second coming of Christ.
When discussions take place (as they inevitably do), the question always comes up: if that's true, how could Christ be sinless as a baby before He reached the age of accountability? His holiness as an infant is a problem. It must have been natural, non-volitional, “exempt” from our genetic inheritance that does program our babies (and all of us!) to selfishness and temper tantrums and all kinds of sin.
Is there an answer that Roman Catholicism and our Protestant friends haven't thought of? If we find it, surely it must be Good News. The 1888 message points toward an answer.