On what scriptural basis? If one bears the stain of original sin, he is not sinless. Why must a perfect Man be rendered imperfect? Is it to satisfy some need to make Him more like us (or the opposite?) What is it, really?
Glad for the thread move...
In a nutshell the Western Christian concept of Original Sin is that all human beings inherit from Adam the fallen, sinful humanity of Adam and with it concupiscence (basically selfish desire). In Lutheran language this is referred to as nature-sin or person-sin, it is the inborn sin and sinfulness which we have on account of our being Adam's progeny. Christ, uniquely, was conceived and born without this, not only did He not commit personal sins but was free from being conceived and born a sinner--but, nevertheless, He bore in His body what we might refer to the scar of Original Sin. Meaning, like us, His flesh was corruptible, His body was passable, He was mortal.
The stain of original sin is its consequences: again, mortality, corruptibility, passability, etc; but He was not born sinful and neither did He commit sin. He was uniquely free of Sin, but nevertheless bore--as St. Paul says--our sinful flesh. He Himself was sinless, but the humanity in which He shares is our humanity, not some kind of foreign or alien humanity; He shares in our humanity in order that He can redeem our humanity. The great Cappadocian Father, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, wrote, "
For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole. Let them not, then, begrudge us our complete salvation, or clothe the Saviour only with bones and nerves and the portraiture of humanity." (
Letters, Division I, Ep. CI)
The Scriptural basis? "
For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh," (Romans 8:3)
Christ is not rendered imperfect on account of sharing in our humanity, He remains true God and true sinless man; nothing is lost in the Incarnation. But He has become one of us in order that we might be saved; otherwise we fall into any number of assorted errors:
The Docetists taught that Christ had no humanity at all, no body, no corporeality; He only appeared or seemed to be human but was in fact a purely divine being, a kind of divine hologram or phantasm. St. John writes against them and the Cerinthians (the followers of Cerinthus, an ancient heretic) in his letters.
The Apollinarians taught that Christ did not have a human mind or soul, but rather the Divine Logos took the place of the mind and soul; this is actually the occasion for the above quote from St. Gregory, it is written against the Apollinarians who said Christ did not have a human mind or a human soul. Problematically, if Christ had no human mind then He was not really human, and if Christ had no human soul then He wasn't really human. Christ, rather, was fully and actually human.
The Apthartodocetae or Julianists, which I've mentioned several times already in this thread, taught that Christ's body only had the appearance of being able to suffer, but was in fact completely incorruptible even before the resurrection.
The Monothelites taught that Christ had but a single will, a divine will, lacking a human will at all. This, again, is a problem for the same reasons given for Apollinarianism.
So the orthodox position is explicit and firm: Jesus Christ was human, truly human, and like us in all ways but without sin. This statement "in all ways" is rather absolute. He had a mortal, corruptible, passable human body, a human soul, a human mind, and a human will. The author of Hebrews even says He was
tempted in all ways like us, but still never sinned (and I believe this deserves to be connected to St. Paul's statements concerning Christ as the second Adam, that by His obedience He has undone what Adam did). Jesus could stub His toe, He could wake up with bed hair, He probably had a pimple or two when going through puberty (which, means, yes He went through puberty which means Jesus had an awkward phase where His voice broke). If it was cold outside He probably caught the sniffles. If He didn't bathe He would probably smell bad. When Mary changed His diapers, well, those didn't smell particularly great either.
He was human. Actually human. Not just with the appearance of being human, but indeed like us in all ways but without sin.
-CryptoLutheran