Haldane, Atonement, and the Watchtower

James Haldane wrote the following in his 1845 book, The Doctrine of the Atonement. He sees, as if by prescience, the tomfoolery of the Watchtower concerning the atonement, and destroys their vain imaginings with the glory of our Creator Redeemer.

No creature could have made an atonement for sin, or have magnified the law either by obedience or suffering. Had a body been prepared for the highest angel, his incarnation must have been an act of obedience to his Creator; and after all his humiliation, and all his sufferings, he would have been an unprofitable servant; he could have done no more than his duty. His righteousness, therefore, could not have extended to another; he could have had no superfluous merit, neither could he have offered himself a voluntary sacrifice; he could not have laid down his life, for no creature has power over his own life. No created being could have endured the curse of the broken law, or have stood as the substitute and surety of another; for every creature must bear his own burden. But the Creator, in whom was life, of whose sovereign will the law is but the expression, appeared in the form of a servant; by his obedience unto death, he magnified and made honorable the law which his people had broken; thus restoring what he took not away. In obedience to his Father's commandment, he laid down his life, that he might take it again, and rose to the power of an endless life, as the first-born of many brethren, to whom he was in all things conformed.



Such is the foundation which God has laid in Sion for the hope of the guilty. Such is the everlasting righteousness in which Christ's people shall stand unrebukable. It "differs entirely from the righteousness of men and angels in its AUTHOR; for it is the righteousness not of a creature, but of the Creator. I the Lord have created it. It is a divine and infinitely perfect righteousness, wrought out by Jehovah himself, which, in the salvation of man, preserves all his attributed inviolate. The Father created it through the Son, in the same was as by the Son he created the world."

J.A. Haldane; The Doctrine of the Atonement; pp 44-45