Pocket College - SoundSage

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 19 of 19

Track: #19

Year:

Dictation Name: 19 Authority and Life

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we come into Thy presence hungering and thirsting after righteousness, after Thy justice. Oh lord the heathen rage and take council together against Thee, and they seek to destroy Thy kingdom and Thy saints. We come to Thee oh Lord beseeching Thee to work in our time, in our midst, in and through us, to accomplish Thy purpose, to bring forth Thy justice, and to make known Thy so great salvation. Bless us this day by Thy word and by Thy Spirit, that day by day we may move in Thee and to Thy purpose, to do Thy will oh Lord. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the Psalms, the first Psalm. Our subject authority and life, authority and life, Psalm one.

“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

6 For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.”

Psalm one is to little appreciated in our antinomian age. It gives the temper to all the Psalms, and it sets forth a fundamental fact, namely that submission to God’s authority means life, while rejection of God and His law means death. Its promises are very clear, that anyone whose delight is in the law of the Lord who meditates in the law day and night is going to be like a tree planted in rivers of water that bringeth forth His fruit in a season. We are promised that if this fits us whatsoever we do shall prosper. Well people don’t like things that plain. Today to many things are programmed for defeat, they go through the scriptures to find all the texts that deal with defeat, and it’s true that there is warfare with this world, that the world is at war against God and therefore will be at war against all who are Godly. But the fact is, it is an uneven war. The forces of ungodliness, of rebellion, are not going to triumph. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. But people prefer to turn the moral universe upside down and are unwilling to say that God has said “whatsoever he (the Godly man) who delights in the law of the Lord shall do, shall prosper.

Well this Psalm makes known how serious our predicament is today. Some commentaries which profess to believe the Bible from cover to cover have actually held that this Psalm gives, and I quote “a distorted statement of the nature of true happiness.” Now that’s rebellion against God, to despise His word. Because the law is praised in this Psalm, hence many commentators insist this Psalm is alien to the Spirit of the New Testament. One writer however says it’s a good Psalm, but doesn’t apply today. It looks ahead to the millennium, and it’s a picture of the ideal man in the millennium. Dewey Morgan, a British writer, writes quite elegantly about Psalm 1 as one, and quote, “in which the distant poles of God and man merge into a splendid orb and man becomes one with his creator.” But never once does he refer to the law, or to the fact that these blessings are promised to those who obey God’s law and who are faithful to the authority of God. After you read page after page of Dewey Morgan you wonder what Bible he is using because it is not recognizably the Psalm one that we encounter in our Bible.

Now this not to say that all the commentators have done this. Spurgeon and Joseph Addison, Alexander and others have seen the meaning very clearly. It is interesting that unlike many another Psalm no author is listed for this. So we don’t know whether it was Asaph’s or David’s or whose Psalm. In a sense however it is the very word of God, as are all the Psalms, because we encounter these words elsewhere. We encounter them in Jeremiah 17:5-8 in essence the same thing where this Psalm is referred to, and we are told,

“5 Thus saith the Lord; cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.

6 For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.

8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”

What does God tell us through Jeremiah? Simple that the ungodly man has put his roots into a desert where there is no water, where there is only salt which will kill any growing thing, where he is cursed because he has departed from the Lord. But the man who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by waters, who does not feel the heat of oppression, has no need to be careful in the year of draught because the waters there will flow continually and shall not cease from yielding fruit. I submit that the scripture from beginning to end tells us in a hundred and one ways what Psalm one summarizes, why are we afraid to claim the promises of this Psalm? Why do men run it down, see it as Old Testament? As though God could only be good to primitive people you know, the Hebrews, but now we’re too sophisticated in the age of grace to have blessings. That’s in effect what they are saying, and I believe it is blasphemous.

When we compare Psalm one and Ezekiel [I think he meant Jeremiah] 17:5-8 what we are told is very clear. To trust in the Lord is to obey His covenant law. Belief in God’s law is the way of life, of blessedness. And second, to delight in the law of God is to delight in life, and to reject God’s law is to choose death. The beginning of this century one commentator, an English scholar Kilpatrick, made the statement and I quote “divine knowledge cannot be abstract, nor ineffectual.” We cannot know God and hold abstract knowledge. Our God is a living fire, and there’s nothing abstract about fire. Our God is the supreme and ultimate person, and there is nothing abstract about a person.

Our Lord makes very clear the essential unity of faith, obedience, and doctrine. In John 7 verses 16 & 17 our Lord says “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. 17 If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” In other words the way to know the blessings of Psalm one is to move in terms of them, to delight in God’s law, to obey God’s law, to put ourselves under God’s authority, then we can have the blessings, because the knowledge of God cannot be abstract, it is a living thing. We can no more separate faith, works, and knowledge, then we can separate a man’s head from his body and from his feet and expect all three to be alive, it’s sure death. And so those that talk about a head knowledge and a heart knowledge of the Lord and who want to separate love and justice, faith and works, grace and law, are trying to dissect what cannot be dissected.

Man we are told by this Psalm, the Godly man, is like a tree planted by rivers of water. Note the Psalm does not say planted by a river, by rivers of water. The imagery is purposefully in the plural. There are waters without end, sustenance without end, for those who believe and obey the Lord. Moreover notice it is a planted tree, or very literally the connotation here is a transplanted tree, and the word is very often used to indicate something transplanted. So we who believe in the Lord, we who are saved, are transplanted out of the dry and dessert place into a place of rivers of water, and we are there protected. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. This Psalm is giving us an equation. Equations are something we have in mathematics. Now what this Psalm is telling us; if we believe and obey God, if we submit to His authority, this equal life; if we do not believe in God, if we despise His word, this equals death. And I submit when God makes and equation like that it has all the weight and authority of 2+2= 4 and then some.

God means what He says, this is the way that it is. He doesn’t say there aren’t problems in this world, He doesn’t say that the ungodly rage against us, and that isn’t true, He says “yes these things happen, but here, this is the fundamental equation. All these things happen, the world is full of storms, the world is full of the wrath of the ungodly, but basically this is the fact. Here and now, not just in the world to come, the Godly are blessed in the face of all their trials and all their persecution. They have productivity, they endure in the time of judgment, and they come forth in victory. Godliness equals life, Godliness is obedience and a delight in the law of the Lord.

On the other hand the ungodly are scornful, an interesting word, scornful. They despise everything. As one Rabbi long ago commenting on this verse said “to the man whose soul is rotted with scorn nothing is sacred.” To the man whose soul is rotted with scorn, nothing is sacred. The man who is scornful has a soul rotted with scorn. Now this Psalm militates against a very powerful tradition and force in the modern era. This is one might say a very strongly anti-modern Psalm. In the modern world, of course this is a part of sin but it has been developed, it has been refined with the Romantic Movement and has become a part of modern culture. Creativity, power, and freedom, and all things desirable are equated with revolt against God. Some years ago a scholar, Mario Praz, wrote an exceptionally good study The Romantic Agony. In The Romantic Agony what he did was to document the fact that the Romantic Movement which began with the idolatry of the good, the true, and the beautiful, ended up seeking out and idolizing every kind of perversion and depravity. And it was a logical development because they sought the good, the true, and the beautiful apart from God, and their rebellion against God led them ultimately to drop everything that in any way smacked of God.

As Albert Camus, the French existentialist said “because God is good I must choose evil.” And the course of the ungodly becomes deliberately evil, and so you have the romantic agony, the culmination of rebellion in the adoption of every kind of perversion, every kind of degeneracy, of every form of suicide. “All they that hate me love death” God says, for such people to be alive means to sin and to defy God. Early in the 1970’s near one university a student stood outside a church shouting and railing at the people as they came out of the church, accusing them of being the living dead. He was on drugs, so he was the living dead. But what was he saying? He was saying that because they had never experimented sexually with total permissiveness, and he was very graphic and specific, as he would ask a woman “have you ever tried this or that” and so on. Total permissiveness, with every kind of depravity, they were the living dead. Of course this kind of thing very early was set forth in the Romantic Movement.

One of the most brilliant, if undisciplined, of the Romantics William Blake in 1793 expressed his opinion about the virtue of rebellion against God’s law, declaring in his book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and I quote “Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained, and the restrainer or reason usurpers its place and governs the unwilling, and being restrained by it by degrees become passive till it is only the shadow of desire.” For Blake therefore any kind of moral restraint, any kind of self-discipline, was the prelude to fading away, to dying; so that the ungodly have made an equation. That to rebel against God and His moral law means creativity, power, and freedom; it means for them life. They see things as an equation. Of course they’ve turned things upside down, and what they are talking about equates with death. But Christians are afraid to trust God’s word and to say there is a correlation between authority and life, between faithfulness and life, between the way of the Lord walking in the council of the Lord, delighting in His law, and life. Blake said man’s desire must take priority over the law of God. Blake held that mans will is not fallen but good, and must be realized. It has authority and therefore for Blake and for others of the Romantic Movement, and the whole world of the ungodly to our day, to deny man his will is slavery, it is slavery.

A while back when there was a question of closing the bath houses where the homosexuals have been holding forth there were debates about it in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, as well as elsewhere, and it was interesting that one who argued, a homosexual, against closing the bathhouses insisted the problem was not the bath houses, it was simply matter of education. Education as to what, that homosexuality was bad? Oh no, no, not that. Somehow education is going to eliminate AIDS, it’s going to eliminate gonorrhea and syphilis, and it’s going to eliminate crime, that’s the mythology; that somehow education, data, will equate with life. That’s not what Psalm 1 tells us. The modern equation turns Psalm one upside down. Ungodliness and rebellion against God are seen as the life nourishing force, and the Biblical faith is held to be the way of death. After all this is what both humanist manifesto’s set forth. This is what liberationism in all its form, men’s, women’s, child’s, sets forth; the denial of God’s authority, and of God’s law, this is the way of life. And what Christians ought to be saying to all of this is “look at Psalm one, thus saith the Lord.”

Thus the central question with regard to authority cannot be on the secondary level. We finish today our series on authority, and we have dealt with it from a theological perspective. We haven’t gone into all the secondary matters, the authority of rulers, of husbands, of parents and so on. That’s all real enough, but none of that stands apart from the essential authority of God. And today authority is breaking down in every sphere because men do not take scripture seriously. Because what Psalm one tells us is not seen as God’s truth, it applies to the millennium, or it doesn’t express New Testament religion, it was for the primitive Hebrews. The issue in authority is between God and man, who is the Lord? In Genesis 3:1-5 and again in Matthew 4:1-11 the tempter says “my principle, that every man is his own God, this is the authoritative and governing principle.” And our Lord in return says “It is written, it is written, it is written.” God here spells out the word of authority, man shall not live, man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

Men have pursued the tempters concept of authority. Of every man as his own God, they have pursued it to disaster and death. “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul; all that hate me love death.” In Psalm one the alternative God provides is plainly set forth, the equation is there for us to read. Only under God’s total authority is there life for man both now and in the world to come. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thy word is truth. Thou alone are the way, the truth, and the life. Give us grace to believe and to obey, to know that Thy word gives us the way of prosperity, of success, of triumph in Christ. Make us ever mindful that our Lord has summoned to believe him and to keep His commandments, to go forth making disciples of all nations, teaching them all things that Thou hast commanded. Make us joyful and faithful in this task, that whatsoever we do shall prosper. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus name amen.

I’d like to make a brief report on the trip to Washington.

Now are there any questions about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] I’ve been reading and studying the books of {?} write a review of a book by somebody named Dallas Willard, but I think there are some who we would kind of put obedience to God’s over against obedience to God.

[Rushdoony] Well putting obedience to God’s law over against obedience to God is

[Audience member] They like to use the word “we have a personal relationship to God, and if it’s one of obeying His laws, you’re just a tyrant, you’re being Muslim instead of Christian.” Or something like that.

[Rushdoony] Well that creates an artificial distinction between God and his word, and it in effect says “I will be faithful to God as long as He keeps His mouth shut. I will like you Lord, I’ll love You, but don’t ask anything of me.” I don’t think that can be done, that is setting up a standard that is not scriptural. Where does God say “you can be obedient to me without being obedient to my word”? That’s the kind of sophistication that dispensationalism indulges in, and I think it’s very, very sinful.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Oh Lord our God unto whom the ends of the earth shall come. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us and commissioned us to serve Thee and to obey Thee, and to delight in Thy word and in Thee. Make us ever joyful in our calling, triumphant in Thy service, and ever mindful that Thy kingdom is the kingdom of righteousness, joy, peace, and truth. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 18 of 19

Track: #18

Year:

Dictation Name: 18 The Power to Kill

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before His presence with singing, enter into His gates with Thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all honor and glory belongeth we come into Thy presence rejoicing in Thy mercies past, present, and future. We thank Thee that we live and move and have our being in Thee and that Thou art our God, and Thou who hast given Thine only begotten Son to die for us will do yet more and care for us. Give us grace therefore so to walk day by day that in confidence in Thy mercies we may ever be faithful, ever zealous in Thy service, ever joyful in Thy care. Bless us to this end, in Jesus name amen.

Our scripture is in Deuteronomy the thirty-second chapter, the twenty-ninth verse; our subject The Power to Kill. Deuteronomy 32:39.

“39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”

This statement is one which we encounter in several forms in scripture. In Isaiah 45:18 God declares there is no God with me, I am the Lord and there is none else. Again in the 21st verse of the same chapter “there is no God else beside me, a just God and a Savior. There is none beside me.” God declares emphatically that He only is God; that the issues of life and death are ultimately and essentially in His hands. Now this is a necessary emphasis because original sin is mans desire to be His own God, to say “my will be done, not God’s.” Humanism of course is the logical development of this presupposition. The pagan as well as the modern state represent the institutionalization of mans desire to be His own God. Man cannot create life, he has dreamed about this more than once and today of course we have regularly announcements of the scientists have taken a major step towards the creation of life. And all these claims are exaggerations and are fallacious.

Man has not been able to create life. He dreams of it because it is his way of playing God. But what he can do is the other half of the equation, to kill, and so he plays God by killing. The more humanistic a state the more murderous it is. From the French Revolution on the state has become an agency of mass murder. What George Orwell in 1984 described was the reality of the nature of the modern state, he simply carried it to its logical world-wide implications. In 1984 the vision is ultimately of a boot stamping on a human face forever. Man playing God in the only way he can do it, murderously. We are told by more than a few people who have escaped from the Soviet Union of the very great delight of torturers in torturing, in playing God. In one account after another we have horrifying illustrations of this exercise of power.

As the Earl of Gloucester says in King Lear “as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport” now this is fallen man’s common idea of divine power. God uses power to enjoy its exercise over helpless creatures. Isabella in Measure for Measure said of man’s dream of power “could great men thunder as Jove himself does, Jove would never be quiet. For every pelting petty officer would use his heaven for thunder. Nothing but thunder, merciful heaven, thou rather with thy sharp and sulfurous bolts splittest the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence like an angry ape plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.” Fallen man thus dreams of playing God, and he sees God-like power as meaning torturing people, killing them finally.

Moreover when men cannot play God by killing others, they do everything that falls short of killing. Defaming, degrading, polluting. One consequence is the popularity among such people of scatology. Scatology is the use of filthy language that has reference to urine and feces. And in scatology people pour out as it were, verbally urine and feces upon people, and will uses language that so indicates it. Our society is increasingly scatological and murderous in its entertainment. T.V. and film plots seek to dirty up and to kill, to defame, to degrade, Biblical standards unless delivered by God. The goal of all such is to have total power over us and to claim “neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”

It is interesting that at least, at least two of our recent presidents have been so addicted to scatology that it has been painful for people to be with them even for a few minutes. Since to play God is evil, it is original sin; the course of humanism has only one direction. Humanism begins by exalting man and saying man is the ultimate value. But every man is his own God, and the logic of this is what led Sartre to say that prim {?} God was not a problem, he was not interested in God, his passion was to be god. Therefore what was his problem? His neighbor, because if I am god and my neighbor claims to be god, then for me he must be the devil; and so existentialism led to the total warfare of man against man. Community became a problem as it is for modern society. In a society of gods there is no community because all are at war one with the other. Then in every sphere of life the goal is to exercise power over others, to degrade them, to play God by degrading them and ultimately to kill them.

Thus sex is used for aggressive use. The popular words for the sex act all have the connotation of degrading, of doing in somebody. Sex has become for humanism disguised aggression. Politics is supposed to promote the public welfare and every politician gets up and affects a zeal for the public welfare, but politics becomes in the process more and more a power game with all but a few. As humanists their logical is to be God, to play at being God by exercising power over others.

Levrentiy Beria, the head of the secret police under Stalin was a man who understood this very clearly. He was under no illusions about man, about man the sinner. He knew that the goal of everybody was power over others, and he gained power by self-consciously licking Stalin’s boots. By doing everything to make himself Stalin’s creature. He despised Stalin, privately he would speak about him as stupid, as a rude bore, and he would speak to his close associates about the fact the minute you walked into the room where Stalin was you could smell him, he was so unwashed, and his feet in particular were particularly bad. And yet when he walked in he was the most obsequies and humble character imaginable. He knew what He wanted and required of all those under him, and so Beria gave the same to Stalin; and he please Stalin as no one else.

Beria’s personal delight was arresting and raping in the most savage way possible very, very, young girls. His joy was to smash and to destroy them and to see their grief, their horror. Some would leave when they were released and commit suicide, jump into the river, and this did not hurt him it gave him an additional delight. Stalin in turn knew this about Beria and he would ask for reports on how many girls Beria had raped and what he had done with them and what had happened to the girl, and he took a delight because he knew this was what he himself liked to do. This is humanism come to fruition, and hence murderous, hence given to a desire to pollute, to degrade, and to kill.

In the history of Israel, the meaning of Deuteronomy 32:39 was fully appreciated. Men apart from the Lord are dangerous. And men expect to play God. We have an echo, by the way, of this verse in 2 Kings 5:7, when Naaman of Syria came to the King of Israel to be healed of his leprosy, the king said: “Am I God, to kill and to make alive?” quoting Deuteronomy 32:39. It was then that the prophet came forward, and with the power of God healed Naaman.

Healing is a religious discipline, and health is akin to salvation. But the reverse side, to kill, the power to make alive is the power to create, to regenerate, to save. And the power to kill is the power to reprobate, to send to hell.

And this is why the modern state increasingly consigns its people to hell. It creates a hell on earth, the more logically humanistic, the more logical its development of society into a hell on earth. Behind the iron curtain we see this.

The authority to kill in a Godly state is in terms of Gods law, for a healing purpose in a society. But men want to kill on autonomous grounds, they want to create a paradise on earth for themselves, by the elimination of their enemies. The early church saw the seriousness of murder; they put it high up in the category of sins, at the top. Cyprian said that murder, adultery, and fraud were the gravest offenses. Murder, because it destroys human life; Adultery because it destroys the basic institution, the family; and Fraud because it treats people as things to be used.

(Passianus?) and Augustine said Murder, Fornication and Idolatry were the three most serious, for like reasons. Killing a man is serious, because man is made in Gods image. Man is created as Ephesians 4:24, Colossians 3:10, and Genesis 1:26 tell us, in the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and with dominion.

But men, fallen men, in their hatred of God, strike out at Gods image bearer, man. This is their way of trying to kill God.

Thus, to kill give to the ungodly a double advantage. First it enables fallen man to play God, to determine the issues of death, to have people screaming and begging for mercy, and not to give it. It is their idea of what playing God means. And second it allows them to strike against God by destroying his image bearer.

But there is a third factor. Power is equated with authority. There is such an identification, as we have seen, of power and authority in God. Only in God are the two one and the same, and hence the word that is used is ‘exusia’, which means both power and authority. But as men deny God, they seek to replace the loss of moral force, the loss of Godly authority, with brute power. And so, the humanistic state becomes increasingly brutal and murderous, as does also humanistic man in the streets.

When you have a godly community, because the great gift of God is life, men seek to further life in the community. They develop community. They develop ties that bind them one to another, that are life giving, life furthering. They seek to help one another.

I read a couple of days ago of a group in the plain states, a Catholic group, but a lay group; and anyone is welcome to join, that has one purpose: to meet needs in the community in the spirit of Christ. As a result they have been very effective in helping those who are in critical need, helping with truckloads of food, helping with personal services, in any way possible. And what is the net result of it? They have been attacked in the press and by public officials as probably some kind of wild cult. And what are they doing messing in with what is the Federal and the States function? The alleviation of human need.

This should not surprise us. We are beginning to see this kind of attack on the life giving function of Christian organizations, all over the country. Because humanism knows only the power to kill, the power to degrade, the power to make people dependent; which is a way of saying: “I am god over you.” And as a result, it increasingly is hostile to the life-giving forces in any community. It works to undermine them, to destroy them, and to defame them.

As a result, we see increasingly the growth of a murderous power. In the streets, and in civil government. It is the logic of humanism. It is the logic of any departure from God the Lord. The only rightful power and authority in all creation is that of the Triune God. The departure of men from God is their departure from life itself. “But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.” Thus saith the Lord.

Let us pray. Thy word oh Lord is truth, and Thou alone art the life giving power and force in all creation. Make us oh Lord Thy servants, that we might be a means of life and light to our generation. That we might be a force against the powers of darkness as they work death through Civil Government, and in the streets of our country. Oh Lord our God Thou hast called Thy people to be Thy servants, Thine instruments. Have mercy upon us for falling short of our calling, and revive Thy church, and make it great and effectual in these troubled days. In Jesus name, amen.

Our announcements: Next Sunday, the twelfth we shall have a potluck; before school begins… [tape skips]

Are there any questions now about out lesson? Yes?

[Otto Scott] Is it possible that the groups that are against capital punishment, but not against the crimes that capital punishment subdues are actually favoring mass slaughter?

[Rushdoony] A very good question. Why are not these groups against killing unborn babies? Why do they not make a like protest against what has been happening in Red China, and Red Russia? The answer is, they are very silent on those issues. They have a sympathy for criminals, but not for innocent unborn babies, or for the victims of communism.

Humanism seems to like the power to take life, and to declare that: “We will establish our moral standards, and make our judgments in terms of them.” As a result, they ask us to bleed for baby seals, but not for unborn babies. There is a monstrous perversion of values in the attitude of humanists. Yes?

[Audience Member] Are they self-consciously aware of that dichotomy?

[Rushdoony] Are they self consciously aware of what?

[Audience Member] Are they self consciously aware of the dichotomy, of the contradiction?

[Rushdoony] It is pointed out to them regularly, whenever there is a debate. But what their answer usually is, is that: “Well, we have a critical problem of over-population, so we are trying to improve the quality of life for those who live.” We are funding, after all are we not, the aborting of all beyond the first baby in Red China. U.S. funds are going towards that. Which means that we favor it, ultimately, here.

All this involves playing God. This is the most important thing. It is the number one goal of humanistic man. Sartre was right, “Man is a being whose passion is to be God.” Fallen man, that is.

[Audience Member] In China, you are speaking of forced abortion after the first baby, correct?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] Wasn’t Otto speaking not so much of abortion as the criminal and the victim?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but it is a part and a parcel of the same thing. They have no concern for the innocent, or the victims of murder, but for the murderer. At every point, their sympathy is with the criminal. This is why only a few states have been able to get any kind of legislation providing restitution for victims; but it is very easy to arouse people in favor of criminals.

It is becoming, I am glad to say, a little less easy. Can any of you remember the hue and cry in the 50’s about Caryl Chessman here in California? Incredible! That sort of thing has been around for some time, since World War 2, and it has only been changing the last year or two.

Any other questions or comments? Yes.

[Audience Member] I don’t know if this is appropriate now, but we really need to continue to pray for Ken, he may need to have another surgery; and if the healing in his hip doesn’t do what it is supposed to do, they will know on Monday night when they X-ray; but we pray that this calcium glue will form so that the pin doesn’t slip any more. That is a real urgent prayer.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We should all be in prayer, continue in prayer because we have been praying I know, for Ken Thurston, that the healing set in.

Are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that Thou are the Lord. That all things are in Thy hands, and Thy wisdom is beyond searching out. We come to Thee to thank you for Thy grace and mercy. We commit again into Thy hands Ken Thurston, praying that Thy healing hand may be upon him, and that he may speedily be restored to our midst. We thank Thee our father that Thou art very near, that Thou art closer to us than we are to ourselves. We thank Thee for Thine indwelling spirit, and for his prayers in and with us. And now Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing. Give us rest in Thee today and always, and joy in Thy so-great salvation.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 18 of 19

Track: #18

Year:

Dictation Name: 18 The Power to Kill

Our scripture is in Deuteronomy the thirty-second chapter, the twenty-ninth verse; our subject The Power to Kill. Deuteronomy 32:39.

“39 See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”

But men, fallen men, in their hatred of God, strike out at Gods image bearer, man. This is their way of trying to kill God.

Our announcements: Next Sunday, the twelfth we shall have a potluck; before school begins… [tape skips]

Are there any questions now about out lesson? Yes?

[Otto Scott] Is it possible that the groups that are against capital punishment, but not against the crimes that capital punishment subdues are actually favoring mass slaughter?

[Audience Member] Are they self-consciously aware of that dichotomy?

[Rushdoony] Are they self consciously aware of what?

[Audience Member] Are they self consciously aware of the dichotomy, of the contradiction?

All this involves playing God. This is the most important thing. It is the number one goal of humanistic man. Sartre was right, “Man is a being whose passion is to be God.” Fallen man, that is.

[Audience Member] In China, you are speaking of forced abortion after the first baby, correct?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] Wasn’t Otto speaking not so much of abortion as the criminal and the victim?

Any other questions or comments? Yes.

[Rushdoony] Yes. We should all be in prayer, continue in prayer because we have been praying I know, for Ken Thurston, that the healing set in.

Are there any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 17 of 19

Track: #17

Year:

Dictation Name: 17 Authority, Justice, and Men

[Rushdoony] Thus saith the Lord “Ye shall seek Me and find Me when Ye shall search for me with all your hearts.” Jesus said “blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God whose grace and mercy we’ve all been made rich. We give thanks unto Thee for the joy and happiness of our lives, for the blessings with which Thou dost daily surround us. For the land of our birth, for the homes in which we live, and for our fellowship one with another. Make us ever mindful how rich we are in Thee. Give us grateful hearts that we might praise Thee with all our heart, mind, and being and serve Thee with gladness and thanksgiving. Make us ever mindful of all that Thou hast given to us, chiefly Jesus Christ Thy Son our Savior, who came to be made sin for us, destroyed the power of sin and death, and now sitteth at Thy right hand ever to intercede for us. Therefore we praise Thee, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Deuteronomy 17 verses 8-13, and our subject Authority, Justice, and men, Deuteronomy 17 beginning with the eighth verse.

“8 If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; 9 And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and enquire; and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment: 10 And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the Lord shall choose shall shew thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee: 11 According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left. 12 And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. 13 And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.”

God in His law stresses repeatedly the untrustworthiness of men. As a result in the courts of law according to scripture, which has set a pattern for many nations, corroboration of evidence was necessary for conviction. According to Deuteronomy 17:6-7 there had to be two or more witnesses, this law is very strongly stressed, more than once, as witness in Numbers 34:30 and in Deuteronomy 19:5 it is made clear that it applies in any case for any crime. The New Testament also stresses this requirement of corroboration. In cases Ecclesiastical as well as civil and criminal, as witness Matthew 18:16, John 8:17, II Corinthians 13:1, I Timothy 5:19, and Hebrews 10:28. In other words the Bible makes clear that no man, however important, however great his position and authority in the realm, can convict anyone by his testimony alone.

This distrust of authority goes through the law. In our text the law deals with appeals in courts. First these appeals were up to Moses, later to the governing judge, and then to the king. In Exodus 18:21-23, Numbers 11:16 & 17, and Deuteronomy 1:12-17 are some of the texts that deal with this matter. But there was more to this, beside the system of appellate courts the Supreme Court, final court of appeal, had to have sitting on the bench at least three men of three classes. One, a priest who knew the law and ruled in terms of it; another a Levite, also one who was the educator of Israel, and knowledgeable in the law, and the third the civil judge. Moreover the priest and the Levite dealt with the problem cases and the application of God’s law to the particular case. For example verse eight cites cases between blood and blood, in other words was it man slaughter, or was it murder? Between plea and plea and stroke and stroke Exodus 22:1-15 for example gives us illustrations of these: theft, embezzlement, and other cases involving restitution, what kind of restitution. Moreover the decision of the Supreme Court was always final, and failure to obey was punishable by death. This was a Supreme Court as God provided for it in Israel.

The court as we have seen had to include three classes, priest, Levite, and judge.

Now in modern terms we would call this checks and balances, and of course it was clearly the influence of Old Testament law that led to our system of checks and balances, however we have a more radical kind of check and balance then the constitution provides. In the constitution it is between three separate branches of government, but here within the judiciary as elsewhere, (but that’s not our concern now) there were checks and balances. Three types of judges had to sit on the court. The judges also were covenant men, as were the priests and the Levites. Now it is true this law was often disobeyed in the history of Israel. In fact it was later ruled that disobedience to the words of the scribes was more serious then disobedience to the words of the Torah. In other words, the lawyer had greater weight than God. This was the development of Phariseeism. As George Horowitz in the Spirit of Jewish Law points out, in fact Horowitz says that Psalm 119 verse 126 which reads “it is time for Thee Lord to work, for they have made void Thy law” was totally reinterpreted and turned upside down to mean “it is time to do something for the Lord, so make void the Torah.” In other words, the plain meaning was set aside pragmatically by the Sanhedrin, and yet the Torah was formally held to be beyond tampering with. Now it was this development that gained the wrath of our Lord, it was the heart of Phariseeism. Of course we have had like developments in this country with regard to our constitution.

Thus when God gives us the provision of Deuteronomy 17 verse 8 – 13 he does not give us an infallible means of preventing injustice. What we do get is a dilution of human authority to protect the judicial process. Now in terms of these things we must make certain observations. First, as we have already seen even a God provided law cannot prevent injustice. On the human level there is no infallible justice, man is a sinner and he perverts the best possible law structure as Phariseeism did. The Sanhedrin turned the law upside down and gave man’s word priority, the rational was “well God’s in heaven and we’re here, and we see the situation better than God does.” But a yardstick which is a rubber yardstick is no yardstick at all.

Second, having said that we must observe that the history of Israel is without equal in antiquity; in fact is compared to a great deal that has followed since, it is without equal. Despite periodic dereliction it had a remarkably long history of justice. God’s law was a break on the sin of man. The Sanhedrin which condemned Jesus met illegally; pragmatism had by then become the order of the day. All the same, even given that the high point of injustice in all history, there was still a residue of sound thinking and justice in the Sanhedrin because when the apostles shortly after Pentecost were brought before the authorities, Gamaliel spoke judiciously and gained the release of the apostles as Acts 5:33-40 tells us. The tyranny of the pagan states was constant because they did not have God’s law, and that respect in Israel, having this law it was always possible and it happened. But man stood up to the authority and said as our Lord supremely did that they were wrong, that there was a higher law than their word.

Then third we have called attention to the fact that this law provided a form of checks and balances. The three kinds of justices made sure that the perspective of God’s law was maximized. But this was not all, the work of the prophets was as a spokesmen for the covenant law, as the defenders of the covenant people in terms of the word of God. And so the word of the prophets was “Thus saith the Lord” to kings and to people, to judges and to priests. To this day where the church exercises its prophetic task there is a check on injustice, and we have to say that our condition is largely due to the failure of the church to be prophetic. The Bible tells us that where priest and prophet go astray, there too will the people go astray. We read for example in Isaiah 28:7&8 concerning false priests and prophets, that they also have erred through wine and through strong drink are out of the way. The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment, for all tables are full of vomit and filthiness so that there is no place clean. The very people who should lead the nation in righteousness or in justice are filthy pigs Isaiah says. The tables which should be places to eat and to keep strong in God’s service are tables of filth. Jeremiah makes a like indictment. He says that instead of justice the priests and prophets manifest sin, according to Jeremiah 23:11 that the false leaders give the people what they want to hear.

The prophet Micah also makes the same statement. For example in Micah 2:11 “11 If a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink; he shall even be the prophet of this people.” Again in Micah 3:11 Micah says “The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.” The leaders Micah said are mercenary, and they put their advancement above God’s justice. At the same time they invoke God’s name and the covenant as their security from evil. They say that because of our historic faith and position God will be for us.

However such evil authorities flourish because the people want them. God told Isaiah 39 and 10 that “this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord which say to the sears ‘see not’ and to the prophets ‘prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits.’” In other words what scripture tells us is that people will get the kind of leaders (in church, and state, and education, in every sphere) that they want. God says that men want leaders to speak smooth things and to prophesy lies. We saw in Micah 2:11 what God says of a false and traitorous people. That if a man who walks in the spirit of falsehood lies and says “I’m going to prophesy that the best solution for all problems is wine and strong drink, he shall be the favored prophet of the people.” The lower the message the greater the appeal Micah says. People get the leaders they want. People want leadership in terms of their character, and the same is true everywhere and in all generations. A people will be ruled by an authority which confirms to their faith and character. The attempts to resolve the matter by legislative and judicial reform, however good those reforms, without a like reform in the faith of the people will always be futile. In other words God’s appellate court was not designed to eliminate justice, rather it offers justice to a people who want justice.

The world today is plagued as it has so often been by injustice. People talk about wanting justice, but they only want it when it suites them, when it’s for them. They find it much easier to live in an unjust world. Their attitude is one of hypocrisy. Men agree that justice is good, but they are more comfortable without it. We have the kind of leadership we deserve. In fact one may say as I often have, we have better leadership most of the time then we deserve. All over the world our leadership is weak, some of it is outright evil, but the tyranny of evil is not strength, and all over the world we have weak leaders because we have weak peoples; they prefer people of a like character to theirs. They prefer people who give forth the kind of message, of strong drink as salvation. Now that’s a caricature, but it’s the truth also. Anyone who heard some of the campaign oratory at the convention knows that anyone with any common sense knew the fallacious nature of what was said. But people loved it, the media loved it, and they will demand more because people want leadership in terms of their character.

If the people truly wanted justice, we would have it. If the people want a strong president we would get one. Men least of all desire a just social order, because it would require them first of all to be just.

Thus in the world today we have the prevalence of exactly what people want. S

C.S. Lewis once said heaven is the habitation of those who say to God “Thy will be done” and hell is the habitation of those to whom God says “thy will be done.” A beautiful statement of the case which I love to repeat because it is so true; and God is saying to men today “thy will be done. You want the kind of leadership that you are creating? Very well, I shall give it to you, and you will have injustice and tyranny with it.” In brief God’s law provides justice and authority for those peoples who want it. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thy word is truth and Thy word makes provision for those who seek Thy face; who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who love Thy kingdom and are ready to say “Thy will be done.” Oh Lord our God give us grace day by day so to move that Thy will may be done in our lives and through us in our communities and nations. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name amen.

Our announcements this morning, work on our monthly mailing will begin tomorrow morning here at 9 a.m. and continue until 5 p.m. and resume at 7 to continue until 10 p.m.

Please remember Ken Thurston in your prayers he is better, the blood clot is healing but he may be in the hospital for some time yet.

I’d like to call your attention again to the situation in Nebraska. We have in the past so often spoken about what has happened to Silabin {?} that we tend to neglect that there are others in that state who have been in trouble with the law.

Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] You have two concepts here, that of the Supreme Court as defined by God’s law and also the idea of God giving a reprobate people and their leaders what they want. There seemed to be an interesting case of this in 1 Kings, Ahab had 400 prophets that God pout a lying spirit in, and gave him what he wanted to hear, the good news go against {?} and then there was one man, Micah, who said “No, you’re not going to make it.”

[Rushdoony] Elijah.

[Audience member] No, I think it was Micah was it not?

[Rushdoony] No, oh in Micaiah, yes in one instance.

[Audience member] Micaiah, that’s right, I didn’t pronounce it right. In any event point to the supreme court structure, he had only one witness not to go and four hundred provided by God deliberately to deceive him into going, so God used apparently the supreme court structure of the concept of more than one witness as a tool against the evil king, did he not?

[Rushdoony] Yes. And God brought judgment upon them because they didn’t want to hear God’s word, they were hostile to it, they despised it. So the net result was judgment.

[Audience member] What do we do in a situation where we have one witness, or one prophet who speaks apparently “thus saith the Lord” and a multitude who contradict him, contravening his testimony. Do we go by the standard of God’s law, or do we possibly entertain the idea that this one man in fact is speaking the will of God, like it was true for Micaiah? What do we do in this situation, how can we measure, or do we just sit and wait for God’s judgment on the king?

[Rushdoony] Well of course we have the word of God as the test. Who is speaking the word of God? And we go in terms of the word because the one true prophet is going in terms of that. And today of course we can rejoice that there are more and more who are raising the standard of God’s law word, and we can rest assured that it is going to apply, that there will be judgment on men and nations for their departure from it; and that we are in fact in the midst of a time of judgment very emphatically.

[Audience member] When was the last time Israel actually held the Deuteronomy style supreme court historically?

[Rushdoony] It maintained this through the entire Old Testament, but it was often perverted. And of course in the time of our Lord it had reached the kind of situation that Horowitz described where what the lawyer said was more important than God’s law, because the lawyer was on the scene and he supposedly knew more than God.

[Audience member] I’ve heard it said that the greatest victory of Christian self-government in our country was to {?} of a jury of peers, but according to Deuteronomy that would not necessarily be the right way in which to deal with the situation.

[Rushdoony] No and we forget that in the early years of the republic the jury decided cases out of the Bible. So this was the standard and the judge moved in terms of this standard and occasionally Erelic {?} calls attention to one case, reminded the jury of a verse they had forgotten about.

Yes?

[Audience member] Rush this work by Horowitz does it, does he go into the guidelines for distinguishing between supreme and appellate court functions, in so far as the Old Testament’s concerned?

[Rushdoony] No, doesn’t particular stress it, it just refers to it. Horowitz’s book by the way has often been used by our courts, and particularly at the points where it’s, we would say, the weakest.

[Audience member] Was there some works of recommendation that you could recommend which deal with the legal structure, primarily establishing the Biblical basis for a legal structure?

[Rushdoony] H.B. Clarke’s Biblical Law is an old work by a lawyer who deals with the Biblical law in American history and cites the cases in terms of the particulars of Biblical law. Unfortunately it’s not in print and difficult to locate.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?} There’s a death penalty in verse 13 for not abiding by the decision of this court, and the court deals with blood against blood. Is this why there was a necessity for the cities of refuge to be established? In so far as someone might not agree with the decision of the council that it was a manslaughter and seek after vengeance. Is this the motivation behind the cities of refuge?

[Rushdoony] No, the cities of refuge were pending a decision of a court.

[Audience member] A waiting vestibule for the accused?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thy word is truth, that Thy judgments are righteous altogether and shall prevail. Give us grace to wait on Thee day by day knowing that Thou wilt bring all things to pass. Give us strength to work patiently and zealously all the days of our life; to the end that Thy kingdom may be established upon earth. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 16 of 19

Track: #16

Year:

Dictation Name: 16 Satanic Authority

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with singing, enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name, for the Lord is good, His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endureth to all generations. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all things shall render praise in due time. Life up our hearts now unto Thee in love and adoration, give us grace to justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Thee all the days of our life. We thank thee for the glory of this creation, and for the greater glory of Thy promises unto us in Jesus Christ. Give us grace so to walk day by day that we might show forth unto all men that we are heirs of salvation, and children of Thy kingdom. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from the twenty-second chapter of Luke, Luke 22 verses 50-53. Our subject is satanic authority, satanic authority. Luke 22:50-53

“50 And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.

51 And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him.

52 Then Jesus said unto the chief priests, and captains of the temple, and the elders, which were come to him, be ye come out, as against a thief, with swords and staves?

53 When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hands against me: but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”

The word translated in the last sentence as power is the word we’ve considered again and again in the past few months, exousia, which means power and authority. What our Lord here says is that Satan has legitimate authority for his action against Jesus Christ, and he tells those who came to arrest Him “this is your hour, and the hour of the power, of the authority, of the realm, the kingdom, of darkness.” Repeatedly this expression is used, the expression concerning the exousia, the authority of darkness, of Satan.

For example Paul in Colossians 1:13 & 14 gives thanks to God the Father who delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son; in whom we have redemption, through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Again we have that same word and we have it repeatedly and yet our Lord says before His ascension, all power all authority in heaven and earth is given unto me so that Christ with His resurrection was King of kings and Lord of lords, and yet under Him by His permission Satan has legitimate authority.

On the other hand we are told by Paul, in these words in Colossians 1:13 & 14 that we who are believers have been delivered from the authority of darkness, the realm, the rule, the kingdom of darkness. We have been translated by God into kingdom of His dear son. The word translated is a word in the Greek which means changed or removed from one standing to another, from one legal status to another, so that now we have a new citizenship and we are under another king. No longer citizens of the kingdom of Satan but members and citizens of the kingdom of Christ. Christ by His atonement has translated, has changed us, to a new standing before God.

Now we have here a fact of very great importance. First we have the clearly legitimate authority of Satan and his kingdom. We live in it, it is all around us and we need to understand its authority. Any authority that denies Jesus Christ is a part of the kingdom of darkness, of the kingdom of Satan; so you know what you’re looking at when you look at the politics of our day, of party after party around the world. Some are more bold and brazen about their membership in that kingdom, but they are a part of it. Yet we are told by Peter and the apostles in Acts 5:29 we ought to obey God rather than men. Yet at the critical points they were also respectful of evil authorities, while standing firmly on their God-given ground. Thus we live in two realms, not an easy thing to do. We’re in the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of Satan, and I submit in every county and in every state in this country and the world over, whatever their particular governmental divisions are, you will see an organized, and vicious murderous form. This evil kingdom with legitimate authority; I know that I have not lived anywhere were I did not see it.

The premise of that realm, Satan’s realm, is Genesis 3:5 – ye shall be as God, every man his own God, knowing, determining for yourself, what constitutes good and evil; every man his own source of law, every unit its own lawmaker with full contempt for God’s law. The essence of sin is that it is anti-God, and John tells us in 1 John 3:4 that sin is the transgression of the law, God’s law, that’s what sin is about. If you deny God’s law you’ve denied ultimately sin, and then you begin to substitute wishy-washy sentimental clichés for the law of God and for the doctrine of sin, and you begin to soft-pedal the significance of sin, and you detach it (by the way) from the sinner; that you should hate the sin and love the sinner. Well sin isn’t something in the abstract, it’s what a person is and does, so how can you take and detach the sin from the sinner and say “well there was stealing, but there was no thief?” Now of course Islam does that, they do not say that “I lost my watch” that is a doctrine of responsibility they do not adhere to, “the watch of Mohammed Ali has lost itself” and that’s the kind of thinking we get all around us now. Love the sinner and hate the sin, as though there’s a difference, there is none. Sin is the transgression of the law, God’s law, by an individual who is a sinner, who wants to move against God’s law. That’s the appeal of the sin; it is the defiance of God’s law. The appeal of illicit sexuality is its sinfulness, the prevalence of homosexuality and of incense and the growing emphasis, as in San Francisco in some circles, on bestiality indicates how far men are ready to go in their defiance of God.

On the other hand the premise of the kingdom of Christ is our change and our removal to that realm by Christ redeeming blood atonement, by the forgiveness of sins. To be in that realm is to be a member of Jesus Christ and even as in the first temptation we have the premise of the kingdom of darkness. “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.” So in the great temptation of Christ in the wilderness, from the paradise now the world has been turned into wilderness, and Satan says “justify me, agree that I was right” and our Lord gives three answers, one to each of the temptations, each premised with the authority of the Bible, the word of God; it is written, it is written, it is written. And what He tells him is “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” And second “thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God.” You shall not put God to the test; you will not demand that God prove something to you. God can put you to the test; you cannot put God to the test. And thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.

Now here we have the three premises of the kingdom of Christ. Just as in Genesis 3:5 we have the great humanist manifesto out of which all other humanist manifesto’s proceeded. So we have here the two great realms, and our Lord said in the third premise of His kingdom “thou shalt worship the Lord Thy God, and Him only shalt Thou serve. It’s important to understand what worship means. The word that is used here for worship is literally “to kiss towards, to do homage, to submit, to obey.” We have an example what that means in the last three verses of Psalm 2 verse 10-12 when the rebellious nations are told “kiss the Son lest He be angry and ye perish in your way. This was to kiss, to do homage, to submit in the fashion that was then common place. You stretched yourself out prostrate before the figure of the king or emperor and kissed his feet; and he could, if you were a rebel or a conquered person, do what was commonly done, take and put his foot on your head to indicate that you were now under him. Now worship is that precisely that, it means total submission, not to any man, this is why we are forbidden to worship anything that is human, or to yield that kind of obedience to anything that is human.

This is why the Christians were offensive wherever they went, this is why even a few centuries ago people like the Quakers, without approving of the Quakers, were offensive because they recognized what doing homage to the king meant, and they refused to take their hat off in his presence, or in the presence of judge or anyone else. It is interesting that I’ve known of courts where judges have threatened anyone in the courtroom who did not take off his hat. By the way in New York the attorneys with the judge’s permission, in all their municipal courts, leave their hat on because if they put it down given the character of the defendants and most of the people in the courtroom, they’ll never see their hat again.

But this is the meaning of worship, and we are only to worship God, this is the premise. Thou shalt worship the Lord Thy God, and Him only shalt Thou serve.

These two realms are in history, the fallen humanity and the redeemed humanity of Jesus Christ. God gives authority to the realm of Satan. We must obey God, but we must not at the same time be revolutionary. We are warned by this in scripture, especially by Paul, when I Corinthians, the seventh chapter in the 20th the 23 and the 24th verse, and again in Colossians 1:13 & 14, makes it clear that we are called, not to be revolutionaries, but we have been regenerated and regeneration is the way the world is to be changed, and then by the obedience, the worship we give to God. You don’t worship God if you do not serve Him, Him only shalt Thou serve. We must not be the servants of men, this Paul tells us specifically.

Well we have a problem do we not? We are members of a kingdom, but live also in another which has legitimate authority from God. Why did God do it that way? Well there is an interesting sentence that sums up a great deal in scripture in a rather unorthodox source, the poet William Blake. William Blake was a repository of every idea that ever went around, he never discarded anything. He had a grape arbor near his house and he refused ever to prune anything in it, he didn’t believe in pruning, either his grapes or his mind. But in this one sentence he summed up something very, very, important; he said “I saw the finger of God go forth giving a body to falsehood, that it might be cast-off forever. Now that’s what Hebrews 12 is talking about when in verses 18 following Hebrews 12 tells us that God in the Old Testament era put the nations through a great shaking, and now with the coming of Christ and the world-wide expansion off His realm, His kingdom, the things which are, are being shaken all over again. Why? So that only those things which are unshakable might remain, so we live in a world of great shaking; and God has a purpose in it. He lets men have the freedom, He allows falsehood to have a body as it were, so that all the evil imaginations of man’s heart can take form and haunt him, and destroy him so that he is driven to the recognition that his way is the way of death. And men again and again and nations again and again have worked with all their heart, mind, and being to give a body to the falsehood they worship, and then in horror work to cast it off.

James tells us in his letter, first chapter verses 13-15 “13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: 14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. 15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Men go their own way, they want to blame God or, like Flip Wilson used to say, “the devil made me do it.” Well John Donne in one of his poems was more honest, he spoke of tempting Satan to tempt us, so that we can say “the devil made me do it.” Men insist on seeing sin as a great and glorious human possibility, a part of their possibility thinking. And God says “fine, I’ll give you authority to work it out, you work out your humanistic United States or Great Britain, or Soviet Union, or whatever the case may be. You work towards the great society or the world socialist state.” And men are allowed by God to see the conclusion of their marvelous dreams of replacing God with something better, and the end thereof is death.

So men are allowed to see the conclusion of their faith and its end results. The premise of Genesis 3:5, every man his own God, every man his own moral arbiter and law maker, is given authority by God so that God says “it’s the kingdom of darkness, but if that’s what you want I declare that it has legitimate authority under my son.” Legitimate authority, it isn’t going to be called an illegal thing, it is the product of rebellion, of revolution against God, “but I’m going to give you legitimate authority, let’s see how you like it.”

So the authority of the power of darkness is allowed to have its sway in history. It does have a widespread scope. Look at our economics, our politics, our education, our law and our law enforcement, our churches, our arts, our sciences, and more. In all these realms men are exercising exousia, power and authority as ordained by God, by God’s permission; and they’re going to be responsible for the results. And as God tells the nations through Isaiah, when He speaks of the great shaking He will bring on all nations, when the consequences of their own lives and faiths works out its implications “they shall know that I am the Lord.”

Paul tells us in Romans 13 the powers that be are ordained of God. He also tells us that they must be a terror to evil-doers. If they become a terror instead to the Godly they are moving towards death. Psalm 1 draws the parallel between the counsel of the ungodly and the way of the Lord and His law. Those who delight in the law of the Lord, of all such we are told that whatsoever they do shall prosper, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. And Psalm 2 applies the same premise to all the nations who say “let us break the bands, the cords, the restraints, of God’s law asunder.” And they take counsel (or it can be translated they conspire) together against the Lord and His anointed. And God just sits back and laughs. In due time, judgment falls upon them. Satanic authority therefore is real, it is legitimate, but its end is death. The authorities of our time therefore insofar as they depart from God’s law have adopted a course whose end is death, and we can say of men and of political parties, and political platforms and of individuals “except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Let us pray.

Thy word is truth oh Lord and Thy word has power and authority. Give us grace oh Lord to walk every day as members of no mean city, as citizens of Thy kingdom commission to power and authority over the nations; to go forth and to conquer in Thy name and to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ. Thy word is truth oh Lord, and the nations are crumbling the world over as they pursue the way of the powers and authorities of darkness. And we see indeed in our time the flood waters rising high, and the earthquake shaking the mountains, but we can rejoice for the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge, our God we thank Thee in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Audience member] Rush what was that passage in the Old Testament that you said that you discussed here a while back, it’s the inverse of the golden rule “as you’ve done so shall be made unto you” or something.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s in Obadiah, yes Obadiah tells the ungodly “as you have done so shall it be done unto you.” So that verse doesn’t have the popularity of the golden rule, but it’s the other side of it.

[Audience member] Well that and the golden rule and that rule set in contrast is something like a summary of everything you said today.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] It’s like the Christian uses the golden rule internally and fights that other rule externally.

[Rushdoony] Yes. No, Obadiah is a marvelous little book, great deal in it that’s very, very telling. In the fifteenth of Obadiah, which has only one chapter “for the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen, as Thou hast done it shall be done unto thee. Thy reward shall return upon thy own head.” There’s a like verse in Jeremiah, it’s a good Old Testament, as well as New Testament premise. Yes, Jeremiah 50:29 “Call together the archers against Babylon, all ye that bend the bow camp about it round about, let none thereof escape, recompense her according to her work, according to all that she hath done do unto her, for she hath been proud against the Lord, against the holy One of Israel.”

Yes?

[Audience member] What this amounts to is a portrayal of power as a trap.

[Rushdoony] Very good observation, tremendous, because that’s exactly what power apart from God is. God is saying “You want to die? Go ahead, I’m giving you the power to do so.” So he’s given the power to the Soviet Union, the United States, and every nation and every individual in the world to kill himself.

[Audience member] I would think our foreign policy then ought to be to live Godly, if you live Godly then you would help that {?} you would hasten that process to conclusion.

[Rushdoony] Well I don’t think Satan is pleased with our state department.

Yes?

[Audience member] The saying “give a man enough rope and he’ll hang himself” is that along the line of what you’re saying too?

[Rushdoony] Exactly, that is a thoroughly Biblical observation. Give a man rope enough and he will hang himself, and God gives us the rope.

[Audience member] Of course some would try to hang us [Laughter]

[Audience member] You know those verse you read from Obadiah and Jeremiah also seem to knock in the head the idea of “you should hate the sin and love the sinner.” Because if you hate the sin and love the sinners, says to do good to those who do evil and the Bible just in those two verses said the opposite

[Rushdoony] Exactly.

[Audience member] Thus destroying the idea that to hate the sin and love the sinner is a Christian ideal, or a Biblical concept.

[Rushdoony] Yes. They cannot find anything in the Bible to substantiate that, they get it out of their humanism.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Glory be to Thee oh God who dost rule all things in Thy wisdom and majesty. We thank Thee our Father that Thou art on the throne, and that Thy ways are above and beyond all men, all nations, and we praise Thee. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 15 of 19

Track: #15

Year:

Dictation Name: 15 The Seraphim

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the message which we heard from Him and declare unto you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. Let us pray.

We come to Thee our Father according to Thy word and confident in prayer, for Thou hast commanded that we should come to Thee to cast our every care upon Thee and to make all our wants and wishes known to Thee through Jesus Christ, and so we come. We pray our Father for our country, deliver us from the hands of ungodly men, cleanse us and make us again a godly and a free people. We pray for Thy suffering saints the world over that Thou wouldst deliver them and confound the power of humanistic statism. Bless us in faithfulness to Thee, and grant now that by Thy word and by Thy word we may behold wondrous things out of Thy law. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture lesson is from Isaiah the sixth chapter, Isaiah six our subject The Seraphim.

“In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

5 Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:

7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not.

10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,

12 And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”

Our subject this morning is the seraphim. I wish my voice were up to the subject, but we’ll do the best we can in spite of this very bad chest cold. The seraphim appear only once in the entire Bible, in this chapter. The word here translated as “I saw the Lord also sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and his train filled the temple.” That word temple can also be translated as palace, and by some scholars such as E.J. Young and J.A. Alexander it was in fact so translated. This is a vision of the throne, the palace of the universe, and the King the Lord of Host high and lifted up.

The remarkable fact is above it stood the seraphim. They are human in appearance but each one had six wings. We meet with the seraphim no-where else, but very obviously the seraphim are of paramount importance because they are throne attendants and their position is above the throne, above God, above it stood the seraphim. Now throne attendants first of all do not have very much significance in the world today because the throne in monarchies that exist is by and large meaningless. Monarchs are for the most part ornamental, symbolic, and hence a courtier no longer someone next to the throne to whom is delegated a vast amount of power. But this chapter is not talking about throne attendants or courtiers in any modern sense. Here is the throne of the government of the universe, and anyone next to the throne obviously has power.

Then second, a very critical point is this, we will raise it now and then return to it later. In any court throughout history the throne attendants or courtiers were always on a lower level. The king looked down upon them. As a matter of fact an item of considerable protocol in Japan over the decades has been the fact that the emperor is short, and we have had a bad habit of sending particularly tall men to Japan as our ambassadors, especially just prior to World War II, it was a way of insulting the Japanese. It created problems when the ambassador was presented at court, because he was so tall. Thus over the generations, over the centuries, it has been important that the throne be above the courtiers, and certainly all others who come to the throne of government. But here we encounter the seraphim and we are plainly told above the throne stood the seraphim. So the seraphim clearly stood above God.

R.K. Harrison has said of the seraphim that they were an order of angelic beings responsible for guardianship and worship. Also that they exercised an atoning ministry as in verse 5-7 when he is purged of his sins and his iniquity is taken away by the action of one of the seraphims. The seraphim thus are clearly ministers of state for the government of the whole universe. The cherubim whom we studied last week are under God, and He is depicted as riding upon the cherubim. In Psalm 18:10 God is portrayed as enthroned upon the cherubim, and also in I Samuel 4:4 and in many another verses. He is seated on the mercy seat in the holy of holies between the cherubim, but the seraphim are above God. They thus have a higher function then the cherubim. Even the ungodly king of Tyre could be compared to the cherubim because he exercised authority and government, and all who do so are compared to the cherubim by scripture. But no human being is compared to the seraphim, neither in their function nor in their station.

The seraphim in Isaiah six are portrayed giving an antiphonal praise and worship of God. One cried unto another and said “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” E.J. Young, among others, has translated the second part of their antiphonal cry “the fullness of the earth is His glory.” Young calls attention to the fact that there is in theology a distinction made betweens God’s essential glory, and His glory as revealed in creation. And then Young noted “what is God’s glory? It is the revelation of His attributes by regarding the universe which He has created we behold His glory, His perfection, and his attributes. The revelation of God in the creative universe His declarative glory, is sufficient to convince men of God’s holiness, righteousness and justice as well as of his almighty power, so that man is without excuse.”

With respect to the same phrase the fullness of the earth, the whole earth, Calvin commented and I quote “literally it is the fullness of the whole earth, which might be understood to refer to the fruits and animals and manifold riches with which God has enriched the earth; and might convey this meaning. That in the ornaments and great variety of furniture of the world the glory of God shines because they are so many proofs of a Fathers love; but the more simple and natural interpretation is that the glory of God fills the whole earth, or is spread through every region of the earth. There is also I think an implied contrast by which he put down the foolish boasting of the Jews who thought that the glory of God was no-where to be seen but among themselves and wished to have it shut up within their own temple. But Isaiah shows that it is so far from being confined to so narrow limits that it fills the whole earth; and to this agrees the prophesy which immediately follows in verse ten about the blinding of the peoples, which opened up for the Gentiles admission unto the church of God; for they occupied that place which the Jews had forsaken and left empty.” One could say that Calvin’s statement could be applied today to the nations and to churches which seem to feel that the glory of God and the fullness of his revelation is limited to their church, or to their people or their race, and so we have the same sin repeated.

This praise of God by the seraphim calls attention to the transcendent and total power and authority of God the creator king. The purification and atonement exercised by the seraphim is not an independent function. They are attendants of the throne, they govern who approaches the throne, and God’s terms require atonement before man approaches God. The commission to Isaiah in verse 9-13 is judgment, captivity, and then the restoration of a remnant is to be proclaimed. The preparation is purging and atonement, for Isaiah and for the people. Now the role of the cherubim which we studied last week is oriented to history and to man. The cherubim guarded the gates of paradise after mans fall. Under their power and authority man is to move to paradise regained, to a new a world under God. Every man who exercise authority, whether it be in his home or on the job or wherever everyone of us are, men and women alike, were we exercise authority we are functioning as the cherubim of God. Thus the authority of the cherubim is history and time oriented. It summons us to develop the meaning of God’s covenant with man. The cherubim are providential powers and men who exercise God ordained authority are compared to the cherubim so that we are called to work wherever we have authority as the cherubim of God.

But the seraphim are shown standing above the throne, and the focus thus is God centered, theocratic and eternal. The king of Tyre and men without faith are compared to cherubim because of their office and their opportunities, but no man is compared to the seraphim, and even Isaiah God’s prophet must be purged when He stands before the throne. This the seraphim do, all men let me repeat, who have authority great or small must work as God’s cherubim to exercise authority, dominion, and judgment, to be a blessing in God’s kingdom and creation. The seraphim symbolize and represent God’s authority in its essence, which is total in its holiness and visible in the fullness of the whole earth. God’s throne represents his absolute rule over all creation and the fact that the seraphim tell us that the focus of all authority is above all creation and above every creature, including the cherubim.

Isaiah seeing the throne, seeing God upon it, seeing the Seraphim and hearing them, cries out “I am undone” which means “I am reduced to silence” or it can also mean “I am reduced to death”. “For I have seen God, I who am a sinner” and the fact of man’s sin, his membership in a fallen humanity means a death sentence in the presence of God. But Isaiah’s cleansed, he is purged, he finds atonement and then his calling. The regenerative power of God comes out of the nature and the being and the authority of God. The regenerating power of God which along gives men the power to exercise valid and faithful authority comes from the highest point in the being of God, in the government of God, from above the throne, from the level as it were of the head of God. From out of the throne we are told the judgment proceeds in Revelation 4:5, but from above the throne, from absolute and eternal headship, from the highest rank of authority, from the highest point of power atonement and regeneration proceed.

Atonement thus, and regeneration, manifest God’s grace, authority, and power; and it tells us how when we are in God’s covenant what is the high point of the manifestation of God toward us. It is His grace and His atoning power, His regenerating mercy unto man; so that this for us who are in the covenant of God is the essence of God’s relationship to us. Therefore we can say with Paul “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee for Thy word, we thank Thee that the seraphim set forth for us Thy relationship to us as atonement and regeneration, as mercy. Give us grace ever to walk in Thy covenant so that we may know Thy regenerating power, that we might manifest it to the ends of the earth, that we as Thy people might be a people of the atonement, of blessing and of mercy. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

We have a couple things I’d like to announce. This from Howard Phillips he calls attention to the fact that it is time to separate church and state in this country because right now left wing churches are getting federal funds. I’ll read just one paragraph of this documentation. “The World Council of Churches, fervent supporter of third world pro-Moscow terrorist movements and communist regimes, has been both the direct and indirect beneficiary of the U.S. government. The Church World Services program of the National Council of Churches which is associated with the world council, received at least 12,917,375 dollars in federal funds from the department of state and the agency for International development during 1979-81. During the fiscal year 1981 the Department of State gave 3,890,555 dollars directly to the world council. AID granted an additional 10,105,528 to Church World Service between 1982 and ’83; the National Council of Churches itself received 1,388,775 dollars from various US government agencies during 1978-81 and so on and on.” So at the same time they are interfering with our freedom, they are financing left-wing churches.

Then this statement by the negro pastor, the Reverend E.B. Hill of Watt’s {?} Los Angeles, I quote “there is an antagonism on the part of governmental agencies toward the church. The department of redevelopment of downtown L.A. redeveloped Los Angeles to accommodate 50,000 more citizens, but they made sure no more churches.” They’re zoned out of existence.

One good thing, the democrats to gain support passed the church audit act about a week or so ago, or matter of days ago, so that the IRS cannot walk in and seize the books and assets of any church without having good evidence that there is some wrong doing there which is acceptable to a judge. Then we need immediate action because this new civil acts right which will give total control over everything any church, any business, any individual, does or can do has passed the house and is before the senate. So do call the capitol, request your Senators office. The number is 202-224-3121, and ask him to vote no on the civil rights of 1984.

Now to give you an idea of the power this means they can have, you remember Lester Maddox some years ago had a restaurant and he discriminated. Whether we agree with discrimination or not is beside the point, the federal government closed the restaurant on the grounds it had jurisdiction in terms of the interstate commerce act because he had salt on the table which had come by interstate commerce, therefore they could control everything in the restaurant. Now the thing pretext will be used on every individual on every little business and on every church. This is a dictatorship act. If you do not have the number give Joanna a call tomorrow and get it, and do call the senate.

Are there any questions now on our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] I had two questions. One related to verse 13 in chapter 6, what is it meant by “and shall return and shall be eaten”?

[Rushdoony] Yes, shall return, when it has returned and hath been bruised is a better translation there. That is, it’s going to go into captivity, it’s going to be devoured as it were, it’s going to be punished, but it is going to survive. So it can mean eaten, but it means they’re going to be consumed by suffering, but they’re going to be delivered, a tenth of them.

[Audience member] And my other question is related to the angles. Where do the angles falls within the scheme of order, within created beings other than man?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the angels are definitely not on the level of the seraphim or cherubim. They are declared to be ministering spirits unto man, so that they are below men. Now one psalm speaks of man as a little lower than the angles, that’s a mistranslation. So angles are ministering spirits to men.

Yes?

[Audience member] When you say lower is that not necessary in terms of their created abilities, but in terms of their authority?

[Rushdoony] In terms of status, yes.

Yes?

[Audience member] When Calvin says God hated Jesus Christ at the same time loved him, did he mean that He hated the sins that Jesus Christ took on?

[Rushdoony] Yes because we are told that in the atonement, the literal words of scripture are “He was made sin for us.” In other words He in His own person took upon himself the sin of all the elect from the beginning to the end of time, and became as it were, sin in His person while still being God the son. So in Himself as the epitome of all the sin, summing it up, He faced the wrath, the judgment, and the death penalty of God.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Thy word oh Lord is truth, and Thy word is strength and peace to our hearts, mind and being. Empower us by Thy Spirit that we may go forth to serve Thee faithfully. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 14 of 19

Track: #14

Year:

Dictation Name: 14 The Cherubim

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth, thus saith the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit; to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. If thou shalt seek the Lord Thy God Thou shalt find Him, If thou seek Him with all thy heart and with all thy soul. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God who art the author of all things and in terms of whose will and purpose all things move. We thank Thee that by Thy sovereign grace Thou hast made us a part of Thine eternal purpose. Give us grace therefore so to walk day by day that our eyes may ever be fixed where Thy true purpose is to be found, in Christ our Lord. Bless us this day and always and grant that our hearts and minds be open to Thy word, and that by Thy Spirit we may be made strong in Thee. In Jesus name, Amen

Our scripture the morning is from Ezekiel 28:11-19, and our subject as we continue our studies in the doctrine of authority is The Cherubim. Ezekiel 28:11-19

“11 Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,

12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.

13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.

14 Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

15 Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

16 By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.

17 Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.

18 Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.

19 All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.

In the hands of fallen man things depreciate, not only things but words also. This is certainly true of the key word in our text, cherubim and cherub, cherubim is the plural of Cherub. The idea we have now days of cherubs or cherubim is of little baby-like angelic things flitting around on picture post cards and Christmas cards, totally without meaning; just beautiful little objects. Nothing could be further from the truth. Popular art as with angles and many other things has seriously distorted scripture. We meet with the Cherubim first of all in Genesis 3:24 where the Cherubim with flaming swords keep the fallen man out of the Garden of Eden. In I Samuel 4:14 we meet them again and God is said to be enthroned upon the Cherubim, an image we meet with again and again.

We are not told much about the real cherubim except that they are next to God, they are creatures beyond our ability to imagine, but we do know something from scripture about their significance for us. Moreover the interesting thing is that pagan antiquity was well aware of cherubim, and the cherubim were recognized as symbols of authority; so that the insignia, as well of the thrones of pagan kings had some kind of depiction of cherubim. From one country to another the depiction varied, but one thing was clear, although pagan antiquity did not know what cherubim looked like, they knew the Cherubim somehow represented authority, were symbols of authority and were next to God so that if there were authority on earth the Cherubim were used to symbolize them. Not only so, but when we have depictions of Canaanite gods seated upon their thrones they are flanked by cherubim. Thus cherubs or cherubim were always associated with the gods and with kings as a symbol of power and of authority. The scripture tells us they are real beings next to God, representing Him, symbolizing for us authority.

Cherubim were carved at either end of the mercy seat in the holy of holies; they represented the throne of God and the power of God, his government. We encounter references to them in Exodus 25:18-22 and Hebrews 9:5, in Ezekiel the tenth chapter. We find they were, according to Ezekiel 26 verse 31 and II Chronicles 3 verse 7, embroidered on the curtains and the veils of the tabernacle and on the walls of the temple.

The symbolic use of cherubim in antiquity tells us how pagans understood their meaning. They symbolize authority. Ezekiel’s words concerning the king of Tyre were thus understandable to the king of Tyre and to others, because at this point the pagans clearly understood what the Bible meant by Cherubim, what they set forth, what they symbolized. So that when this prophesy is made to the king of Tyre he knew what it meant, whether he believed it or not. We know that some of the profits did include the pagan nations in their prophesies and sent their prophesies to them saying “Thus saith the Lord” and “this is the judgment of God upon you.” Over the generation this prophesy concerning the king of Tyre has had very fanciful interpretations. Some have insisted it has reference to Satan; there is no authority for that. We do know what has been understood concerning this & what I have to say is nothing unusual or new, the meaning has been well understood over the generations. Patrick Fairbairn more than a century ago, great Scottish expositor, gave a careful and specific interpretation of it.

Just in passing the stones that are described that are not familiar to us, the sardius was probably the Ruby, it could have been the sard or carnelian, the Carbuncle was either modern jasper or green jade, and the stones of fire represented power, the God-like authority and our God is spoken of in Hebrews as a consuming fire. But now to the meaning of this, the key of Tyre is compared to Adam in the Garden of Eden. More than Adam he had great power in a developed, in a civilized context, surrounded by wealth. Tyre was Phoenicia, the Phoenicians were remarkable traders, their trading enterprises carried them all over the Mediterranean world and far afield. We do know that Phoenicians regularly traded in Ireland and also in Britain. As a result Tyre was a center of very great wealth and prosperity, so in a sense he had perfection, everything men in that day could dream of. His life we are told sealed up the sum of available wisdom, beauty, power and wealth. It represented the finest in the human ideal and in the human scene of his day. He sat, we are told, upon the Holy mountain of God; that is upon the pinnacle of power, a power from God by the providence of God. Moreover to have power, to have a rich and favored place in life is to inhabit God’s sanctuary according to scripture, it is to be like the Cherubim, near to God in His power and authority.

Now we’re not used to thinking this way. We have so long separated things material from things spiritual because of a false spirituality, we fail to see that in the Bible God presents this picture of wealth, of power, of prosperity and a general ease of living, as being greatly favored, as being close to the cherubim, or like unto the cherubim. So God says that wherever there is an authority that prospers, an authority that lives with ease and without problems, it is comparable to being near the cherubim, or with the king of Tyre, like unto the cherubim. The importance of this prophesy should now be obvious. Wherever great power is to be found we must see it as due to God’s providence. It can come as a blessing or as judgment on an era, but a concentration of wealth, of authority, and of a general prosperity in a civilization is to be seen as making it into a potential new Garden of Eden.

It is interesting that in the first half of the last century people sometimes spoke of America in the early years of this republic as a new Eden. Because they saw in terms of scripture, in terms of the kind of prophesy given in Ezekiel that God was bringing a combination of blessings to focus here in this country. So man was, as it were, in a Garden of Eden; or another term used, in the happy republic. Now Ezekiel’s language tells us a great deal about God’s intentions concerning Eden. God’s goal for history, it is a glorious, a prosperous world paradise under God and His word. The purpose of Godly authority is to develop such an order. Even before Patrick Fairbairn, Carl Friedrich Keil the German commentator said of this text, and I quote “the king of Tyre is called a cherub because as an anointed king he covered, or overshadowed, a sanctuary like a cherubim upon the Ark of the Covenant. What this sanctuary was is evident from the remark already made at verse two concerning the divine seat if the king. If the seat of God upon which the king of Tyre sits is to be understood as signifying the state of Tyre, then the sanctuary which he covered or overshadowed as a Cherub will also be the Tyrian state.” We’re not used to thinking this way because our thinking has not been Biblical. It has been overly spiritualized and it has been pietistic. The cherubim as we have seen symbolize God’s power and authority, and wherever in history prosperity and authority come into focus we have God’s cherubim, as it were, covering and providing power to that people. For those who use that power and prosperity apart from God judgment follows. Then there is the downfall of the people and of the rulers of the state as of Tyre. This should tell us something about what God intends for countries such as Britain and the United States and others who have been blessed, but have not seen themselves as having been covered by the Cherubim for God’s purposes, to establish His purpose upon earth. The meaning of cherub and cherubim is thus very important.

Now for a long time many scholars have held that the derivation of the word Cherub is uncertain. In recent years however one scholar at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem, Shalom Paul, has traced it apparently to the Acadian {?} word which means to pray and to bless, to pray and to bless, very interesting meaning. Our Lord declares as we saw a few weeks ago, that authority and power must be used as a ministry of service, he that would be greatest among you let him be servant of all. And now the very meaning of the Cherubim is that they not only symbolize power, but it is power which is to be like a prayer and a blessing. Paul in Hebrews 9:5 speaks of the Cherubim as overshadowing the mercy seat. They are thus closely tied to the throne of God, to His authority, and to His mercy. God is repeatedly described as “He who dwells between the Cherubim.” This sets for the majesty, the power, and the glory of God. As for example in Psalm 91 verse 1 where we are told “The Lord reigneth, let the people tremble, He sitteth between the Cherubim, let the earth be moved.” In Psalm 80 we have a Psalm which refers to the captivity of the Northern kingdom Israel, in the Exodus the three tribes Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh led in the march and in this Psalm the Lord is now summoned to lead Israel again as its good Shepherd. And He is described as the one who dwells between the cherubim both in majesty and in mercy. And the first three verses of that Psalm tell us “Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock; thou that dwellest between the cherubim, shine forth.2 Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh stir up thy strength, and come and save us. 3 Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved.”

God regards a wealthy and a prosperous country therefore as a partial fulfillment of the Garden of Eden; and therefore to be governed by His authority and fulfill His purposes. The rulers are compared both to Adam, covenant man, and to cherubim. Now prayers involve in their essence intercession. The purpose of authority is Godly rule and the intercession of mercy. Authority must bring judgment as did the Cherubim in Eden, and Ezekiel tells us also in Jerusalem. However authority must be also a blessing. The king of Tyre is told that he was brought forth to be a Cherub, one of the Cherubim. But he has become a false Cherubim, and he and his people will be destroyed.

Now there’s an interesting aspect to this prophesy, the king of Tyre was never a believer, never. And yet God addresses him and says “by my providence you have become great and prosperous, you and your people now are at a pinnacle of power. Your ships go to the far corners of the earth and bring the riches thereof, and you are a center of world commerce. I have made you a cherub, one of the cherubim; I have made you an Adam in the Garden of Eden. But you have not chose to use these things for my purposes, to further my mandate, my dominion mandate. You’ve interposed your own, you’ve developed your own program for yourself and the world, therefore you shall be judged. Now if God speaks so to the king of Tyre, a pagan, how much more so to the Western countries that were once Christian?

All authorities of course in every sphere have the same duty and calling; wherever we have authority we have the overshadowing of the cherubim, an endowment and a calling to exercise authority, and mercy, and power in the name of God. Ezekiel makes the comparison at one point in Ezekiel 31:18 between the trees of Eden, the Garden of Eden, and Pharaoh and Egypt. So that we see wherever there is power, wherever there is authority, God says “here, there’s an opportunity. You have been given the authority like unto cherubim to create. To exercise dominion under me, but you will not turn unto me.” All authorities in every sphere are accountable. All authorities in every sphere are created to be cherubim, like unto cherubim. This is amazing imagery. It is imagery that tells us a great deal about God’s purpose in creating Eden, God’s purpose for all of history, and God’s purpose for men and nations today. And those who simply pull in to create their little refuges as though they had no calling under the cherubim will be judged of God. If the king of Tyre was, how much the rulers of the Western nations, governs of states, county commissioners, and others? And each of us in our appointed place. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God make us ever mindful that the cherubim overshadow this world, that we have been called to exercise authority under Thee. That we have been set in a world that is to be a garden of Eden, that we are to develop its potentialities and exercise dominion and subdue the earth and bring all things, including first of all ourselves, into captivity to Jesus Christ. Oh Lord our God make us mindful of our calling and before our day of judgment comes give us repentant hearts and grace and power to mend our ways. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now?

[Audience member] There’s almost a suggestion of kind of a parallel there with the book of Job with some of the things that, I don’t know I can’t quite make the connection, but there’s a suggestion there that God is given and I don’t quite know how the connection is made but it just suggested itself very strongly to me.

[Rushdoony] Well in Job of course very clearly God makes clear that He blesses people and expects things of them. And when Satan says “alright it’s easy for Job to do it” He says “no, there is more to Him than that, he exercises the blessings I give Him in faithfulness to me.” So there is that analogy. There’s another analogy John, if you win the election you will be called to be a Cherub there in the state capitol. [Laughter]

[John] I guess I’ll use that on my stationary [More laugher]

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] Is that why you brought out the point that Cherubs aren’t really these beautiful creatures? [Lots of laughter]

[Rushdoony] Cherubs are supposed scare you. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience member] Well it is interesting that the artistic renderings do not convey any sense of awe or force and I think that’s very important and I think that is an interesting point.

[Rushdoony] Yes I think a great deal could be done to trace the history of that fact in Christian art. We can see how the emphasis came to be on things not only beautiful but within the human dimension, so that they would not be terrifying. So that Christian art became increasingly beautiful rather than awe inspiring. Then when there was something of a reaction to this about the time of the Renaissance, the only way to evoke a sense of what had happened was through an emphasis on horror. For example Grunewald’s paintings of Christ on the cross, which emphasize horror to the nth degree so that they convey, not so much the significance of the event, but the horror of crucifixion; and then in Baroque art to overall by opening up the vault of the church, as it were, to heaven by painting clouds and blue skies and angles; as the content left the emphasis on something that would be impressive and at the same time beautiful. And in our day of course religious art has become quite vulgar it’s become so prettified and utterly human. The theological dimension is left out. Chris is made to look appealing, the apostles are similarly made to look as those they were the kind of man you’d enjoy having in the pulpit and looking up to and respecting, so that the theological dimension has progressively disappeared from paintings.

[Audience member] But the films and popular fiction attribute all the power to the dark side, to the devil.

[Rushdoony] A good point yes, power today is seen as demonic. But not even Satan has power apart from God.

Any other questions or comments?

[Audience member] I wonder if that, you know in early America there was a very, very health mistrust of government power and if the point that Otto’s just raised now about power being demonic, have a demonic source, if the connection could be established between that and modern government you might have the key to again a health rebirth of…

[Rushdoony] Well there was a distrust of civil government, not of government per se. Yes, people took government in a Biblical sense then. But power today is seen as demonic and I think it is in part a Manichean strain in our culture because in Manichaeism you see reality as divided into two things, the good God and the bad God, or the good being and bad being. One is light and love and sweetness and the other is evil and it is power. So that for the Manichean temperament disarmament is a virtue, to be prepared to deal with your enemy militarily is seen as a sin. So the Manichean temper is going to treat any display of power as evil and it means then the evil appropriate power by default.

Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Audience member] {?} in a couple of weeks concerning my job and future employment with them and I’ve been tempted to bring in some scripture verses and I was wondering if that would be at all appropriate or if I should keep the hearing strictly personal performance and…

[Rushdoony] I think if you maintain a Biblical perspective but don’t use the Bible verse you’ll be better off because they will tend to discount you. But if you hit them with hard facts governed by a Biblical sense of justice you’ll do better I think.

Well lets bow our heads now in prayer as we conclude our service.

Oh Lord our God how great and marvelous is Thy word and Thy calling unto us. We thank Thee that Thou hast overshadowed this land with Thine Cherubim. Grant oh Lord that we exercise authority and power only from Thee, and in terms of Thy law word; that we may again be a strong and free people in Thee, a happy republic, a developing Garden of Eden. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 13 of 19

Track: #13

Year:

Dictation Name: 13 Authority – Primary and Secondary

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Oh come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our maker; for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee, for the freedom with which Thou hast blessed us in the years past. Give us grace and mercy and strength that we might pass on to those to come a like heritage. That we might cleanse this land of ungodliness, that we might again be a free people in Jesus Christ. Bless us through Thy word and by Thy Spirit. Make us strong in Thee to the destroying of the things that are against Thee and the establishing of Thy kingdom from pole to pole. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from the gospel according to Matthew, the fifteenth chapter verse one through nine. Our subject, authority primary and secondary, authority primary and secondary Matthew 15: 1- 9

“1Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,

2 Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread.

3 But he answered and said unto them, why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?

4 For God commanded, saying, honor thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

5 But ye say, whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;

6 And honor not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.

7 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,

8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.

9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

The word authority has been in disrepute for many, many generations. This should not surprise us. Man having rebelled against God’s authority is certainly going to rebel authority in any human sphere. He will not be inclined to respect man’s, having rejected God’s authority. A couple of centuries the liberal Anglican Bishop Hoadly said, and I quote “Authority is the greatest and the most irreconcilable enemy to truth and argument that this world ever furnished. All the sophistry, all the color of plausibility, all the artifice and cunning of the subtlest disputer of the world may be laid open and turned to the advantage of that very truth which they are designed to hide. But against authority there is no defense.” What we must say is that Hoadly had reference not to true authority but to man’s authoritarianism. Men have authoritarian pretensions that is a part of man’s sin to be as God.

Now in the history of the church the question of authority has never been a simple one. Two extremes have plagued the church, and we have touched on these before. First, there has been the insistence on the authentication of God’s word and authority by the church. The church says “we are the authenticating institution.” The danger in this is the tendency to exalt the church into a central position. Our Lord refers to the problem of humanistic authoritarianism in the Sermon on the Mount when He speaks concerning false swearing and says that they are not to swear by heaven or earth, the temple, or anything else. This he says is false swearing “Thou shalt not foreswear thyself” you shall not swear falsely. But he does not condemn legitimate oaths; he says “perform unto the Lord thine oaths.” What He is saying is when men swear by the temple or by anything other than God they are placing a man evaluated authority above God; so that if we swear by any other thing than God, we have given something on the human scene greater authority. But God is greater than Jerusalem, the temple, and heaven and earth. Nothing can be above God to validate His self-authenticating word.

Then second as we have also seen we have had an instance on authentication by religious experience. This is similar to authentication by the church in that there is an implicit humanism in both. But authentication is not in man, nor in an institution but from God himself. We can say that both these positions have a measure of truth, but not as authentication or verification but as acts of submission. Paul in Romans 1 verses 18-23 speaks about God’s authority when he says that the things of God visible and invisible are known to all men, they don’t need any authentication. But what is the problem? Men hold the truth, or literally hold back, hold down, suppress the truth in unrighteousness, in injustice. The truth is inescapable and man the sinner spends all his time, according to Paul in Romans 1:18-23, trying to sit on the truth and keep it from welling up in his being and witnessing to God.

Now secondary authorities are very real, they are God ordained and they are important. But when secondary authorities whether it be in the form of the church, the state, the family, or anything else, gain too much authority then you have a false center in society which begins to warp man in society. Then too authority begins to break down because the ultimate source is not given priority. There is no lack of authoritarianism in our world today of a humanistic sort, whether in this country or in the Soviet Union, but it is destroying true authority.

Now our Lord dealt with this problem very, very realistically. And in our text Matthew 15 verses 1-9 he deals with the traditions of the elders which had become governing and binding. And our Lord calls this transgression, it is a transgression he says of commandment of God, it goes hand in hand with vain worship. It puts man at a distance from God, and its purpose is to nullify God’s law, not to support it. This concept of tradition is a very old one. In Israel you had the rabbi’s declaring that tradition was the oral teaching from Moses given to Israel when he came down from the mount so that you had the written word and the oral word. In the Catholic Church you also have a doctrine of tradition, the oral teachings of Christ and the apostles with the magisterium, the teaching authority of the church as the custodian.

Now Protestants normally do not use the word tradition but they have developed their own concept of it. It is called depending upon the communion Presbyterian law, The Baptist way, Lutheranism, Congregationalism, or what have you. Every doctrine of tradition technically is subordinate to scripture. But in practice it is often the governing day by day power, and the result is that you have throughout the history of the faith a conflict between the primary word of God, the authority of God, and secondary words or authorities of men. This is what Phariseeism was about, and this is why our Lord so thoroughly condemned Phariseeism. We would have to say that the Pharisees really were a superior group of people, intellectually and morally there was probably no one in the world of their day, whether in Judea or outside of Judea on a level with the Pharisees.

As a matter of fact some years ago a definitive study was made by Finkelstein, a prominent Jewish scholar of the Pharisee’s two volume study. It was intended to defend the Pharisee’s against our Lord’s comments about them, and Finkelstein very definitely demonstrates the moral and intellectual superiority of the Pharisees. But he also does say very clearly that the Pharisees held that the oral law, or tradition was, in his own words “equally authoritative with the written word.” Equally authoritative, and when you recognize that with their oral tradition as they developed it they often replace the very word of God; held the word to be comparable to water but their tradition like wine, superior, you realize why our Lord condemned them. Perka Abot {?} the sayings of the Fathers is one of the sixty-three tractates of the Mishnah. There is an edition of it by Rabbi Joseph A. Churritz {?} who was then chief Rabbi of the British Empire. And He says very frankly in commenting on the sayings of the fathers, and I quote “Tradition is the key word in the Jewish religious system.” Now there is no question that the sayings of the fathers often embody very sound insights into the faith; but there is no question also that they very often alter the faith and give you an interpretation which is made more binding than the very word of God. The crippling fact about tradition is that it makes appeal to authority much more difficult. The appeal to God’s is to what is written. The rise and appeal of modernism, Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant has been in part, in part not entirely, due to the revolt against oppressive tradition that stifles a faith.

Now the reliance of secondary authorities on tradition is very serious. This is why our Lord had to attack it. He attacked the tradition of the elders in the name of the very word of God. He said you have made the word of God, the commandments of God, of none effect by your tradition. You have overturned the very intent of the law by your interpretation of the law. So that where the law says honor thy father and thy mother as you interpret it you use it to dishonor your parents and gain religious credit for doing so. So he says Isaiah did prophesy of you saying “this people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is very far from me. In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.”

The essence of a Biblical faith is a continual reformation in terms of God’s word, in terms of Christ’s commission. And so those areas of Christendom that have been most vital are those areas where people have regularly challenged on Biblical grounds the authority of men. The traditions of the church, and have worked to create and ongoing developing faith in terms of God’s authority and word. One of the very interesting aspects of this fact in the history of the church and to the best of my knowledge no-one has ever made a study of it. In fact I don’t think a single study could be made, it would have to be first of all extensive research into primary sources and books written about one period after another until the data is brought it light. But the truth of it I think was well summarized by one historian, Charles T. Wood in his book The Quest for Eternity, Medieval Manners and Moral and this is what he wrote “diverse in there origins as these movement for reform may have been, they displayed striking similarities all of which shed light both on the problems and mentality of the age. Nearly every monastery, note that, nearly every monastery for example owed its foundation or reformation not to the zeal of monks, but rather to the interest and encouragement of some lay patron, such as Duke William the 6th of Aquitaine who granted Cluny’s original charter. “From the universalities of this phenomenon the extent to which the laity have succeeded in seizing control of the church apparent”. Notice his comment, the universality of this phenomenon. No church history speaks of this, either with regard to the medieval church or the church since then. But it is a fact, reform has usually come because people in the pew have gotten fed up with the authoritarianism of the church.

Moreover the interesting thing is that whenever this has taken place the laymen have not sought to retain control. I submit that if this were studied the indications are, this is equally been true, in the history of the university. The reform and the progress whenever it is occurred in the life of the university has come from outside pressures and demands. The same has been true of professional schools so that the reforms there too have usually come from the outside. We could say with little fear of contradiction that the same has been true of civil government. Reforms in civil government have not come from those in power in the bureaucracy but only from pressures as people grow weary and indignant of the status quo. In fact one could say that we are in every area in a worse state now than in the past because the lay element until of late has been quiet. Why? Because of the tyranny of experts, because of the widespread belief that specialists know it all and therefore the thing to do is to leave it to the specialists whether in church or state or school or elsewhere. The arrogance of the specialists has been so great that in recent years we have had educators, for example, saying that no parent should ever attempt to help the child because this would tamper with the educational process. Well since they sold people that bill of goods these experts, these specialists, have produced the highest rate of illiteracy in the history of the United States; and they are doing the same thing elsewhere.

Now this is what our Lord is talking about, the traditions of men, the traditions of an ongoing element which is in control; the specialists who feel that wisdom was born with them, as Job said, and no one else has a pipe-line to God or the truth except themselves. The simple fact is that human authorities tend to make of themselves idols. Pharisees then and now are very prone to an idolatry which makes man his own God. Man is a sinner, and the redeemed are not free from sin and we cannot overweight the human factor. Human authoritarianism is an enemy to God’s authority. God says in the Ten Commandments “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and this very definitely includes us and our institutions. Our age is an age which is very much enamored of man and of his authority.

On television the other evening I heard a snatch of a program on educational T.V. which is an excellent medium for miseducation, and the whole point of this was you were dealing with delinquents. As you were dealing with unwed mothers and unwed fathers the thing you had to do was to build up their self-esteem. And of course I have on other occasions heard that as you deal with criminals you do the same thing, you try to build up their self-esteem. Well the essence of sin is that it has a root in idolatry. My will be done. And so our experts are going to cure delinquents by furthering this idolatry.

Paul says of the ministers of Christ “let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that a man be found faithful.” Wherever there is a human authority there is accountability, and when human authorities forget the fact of accountability to God for every idle word they go astray. I’m not particularly fond of Dante but I think he had a sound insight when he peopled hell with authorities in church and state who had made their words, their will, ultimate. At that point his insight was sound. It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thy word is truth and Thy word speaks to our every condition. Give us grace day by day to be faithful stewards in our calling; recognizing the absoluteness of Thy authority, Thy demands of us, and the necessity that we be found faithful. Bless us in Thy service, in Jesus name amen.

Are there any questions now on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] I don’t understand the connection here, but you say whosoever says to his father and mother it is a gift by whatsoever thou mightest be profited… I don’t understand the meaning what, the connection there…

[Rushdoony] Yes. It is a gift means “I’m dedicating this to the Lord’s work. I’m giving this to God so that you’re being bounced in favor of something more important.” In other words, my parents are nuisance so I’m going to get rid of my responsibility to them and I can give it to the temple and that way I have no problem because nobody’s going to bother me and I don’t have to worry about their illnesses and their needs and so on. And I don’t have to take care of them in their home or worse bring them into my own home. So by dedicating it to God you were supposedly gaining greater merit doing something that was far more worthwhile, and you were riding yourself of a personal burden.

[Audience member] And creating a welfare state.

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. So our Lord was striking hard at this. On another occasion He said if you go to the temple with a gift and you remember that you ought against any man go take care of that, don’t come to God until you’ve taken care of your day by day responsibilities that His word imposes upon you. Don’t feel that you’re going to be acceptable when you’re deliberately evading your responsibilities. That’s the point.

Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience member] Well I think De Tocqueville talked about this in a way when he talked about a governing authority that seeks to assume all decisions for all individuals. A gentle authority he said which nevertheless is firm and which prevents individuals from making decisions for themselves, and in the end prevents men from becoming what they should be. And it seems to me that fits with the growth of authority on the part of the government today and the abandonment of personal responsibility and authority by individuals.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very definitely. There’s going to be authority in the world and if we don’t recognize God’s authority to us and our responsibility to God we’re going to let experts and tyrants take over authority; and I believe this is being done and we seem to be very, very content with it.

[Audience member] Well there’s a lot of misery around really, I don’t think that much contentment, there seems to be a sort of permanent state of poorly suppressed rage. You see it in the way people drive and the alacrity with which they get insulting and angry at the slightest thing.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Any other questions or comments? It is interesting just by the way observation, that the point that the Historian Wood made with regard to lay reform throughout the middle ages is a scarcely known fact; which indicates our historians by and large are not interested in anything which overthrows the experts and the authorities.

[Audience member] Well Historians worship winners. [Laughter]

[Rushdoony] But the fact that he used such strong language was what interested me in the text because as one reads it becomes clear that this kind of thing did exist. But Wood says it was nearly universal, so that throws a totally different light on Western history and on church history.

[Audience member] The establishment couldn’t do it.

[Rushdoony] The establishment has rarely done it. Reform has been pushed on establishments in church, state, education, and elsewhere.

Yes?

[Audience member] Somebody made the comment, I don’t know who, that there was never a single legal reform in the history of England that came from the judges.

[Rushdoony] We can say the same is true in the United States probably. There’s been deterioration rather than reform for the most part. Well if there is no further questions or comments let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God give us grace day by day to submit to Thy full and absolute authority, and to rejoice there-in, and to work under Thy word and government, and to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 12 of 19

Track: #12

Year:

Dictation Name: 12 The Source of Authority

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Seek Ye the Lord while He may be found, call Ye upon Him while He is near, let the wicked forsake His way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord and He will have mercy upon Him, and to our God for He will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all power, glory, and dominion belong. We beseech Thee to make us strong in Thee and effectual so that we may serve Thee with all our heart, mind, and being. Might be instrumental in the tearing down of the things which are so that those things which are of Thee may alone remain; and that we may do our work well and cheerfully bear our burden and the burdens of others. Increase our faith that we may trust in Thy word and in Thy promises, and may ever be faithful to Thine every word. Give us patience to wait on Thee, courage in Thy service, and knowledge that Thy word is truth and Thy word shall never return unto Thee void. Bless us ever in Thy service in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the gospel according to Saint Matthew the Twenty-eighth chapter verse eighteen through twenty, the great commission.

In any society there is an ultimate source of authority. In a general way the source of authority is either supernatural or it is of this world, something within the human order or the natural order. Where we locate our ultimate authority has profound implications for man and society. Over and over again men and nations have gone astray because their source of authority has been a fallacious and an evil one. Very common in the modern world has been the opinion of Rousseau and the social contract. That men project their man-made laws onto the Gods to enhance their own authority. Men invent Gods and ascribe to them the laws, or the orders of society as a means of strengthening their own position. For Rousseau it was not the Gods or God but the general will of mankind which was sovereign law and the source of authority and truth.

In previous generations before Rousseau men had looked first of all to God for authority and law, and then with the enlightenment to Reason spelled with a capital “R” as some kind of inherent semi-pantheistic force inherent in the world of nature. Now with Rousseau men began to look to man’s emotional responses for authority for truth and for law. Man in his innermost being not consciously but unconsciously, for Rousseau, knew the truth. And it was the function of true philosophy to unleash that subliminal and unconscious knowledge. God was eliminated therefore as the source of authority, truth, and law. Not only so but what previously had been considered the higher and civilized aspects of men were set aside in favor of what had, until then, been regarded as the lower and less civilized aspects of mans nature. Thus man created for himself a new authority, the primitive in himself. Not surprisingly this kind of thinking was in line with the doctrine of cultural evolution which was developing. Man was at his best when he was most natural, that is most primitive. One of the quickest responses to this new thinking was in the arts, and the arts are still under this impulse; in fact they are carrying it to its logical limits to their own self destruction.

A very obvious example of this was Paul Gauguin, a savage in spite of all the civilization around him and in spite of his own upbringing and family background. He spoke extensively of his Peruvian blood as somehow giving him a title to being a savage. However while he did spend his formative years in Peru, he was not over Peruvian Incan blood, if there was any in him it was remote. He was reared in an aristocratic Spanish family with servants waiting on him at every turn. As a matter of fact once when he traded as child his rubber ball for some colored glass marbles and went home with them proudly, his mother was horrified and she exclaimed “What, you my son engaging in trade?” Someone in the aristocracy had no business engaging in trade, or doing anything to make money. We can understand why Gauguin hated much later being engaged in the banking business.

In terms of this quest for the savage, for the primitive, Gauguin went to Tahiti and then to the Marquesan Islands. He fell in love with everything that was backward and crude there, in fact he located a couple of older people who had been cannibals and had been convicted by the French for their cannibalism and he rhapsodized over them as saints. In fact he could not get over what he called the infinite gentleness of their smile. Here was the true savage man and therefore the true wise man. Gauguin could exploit readily teenage, early teenage, and pre-teenage child prostitutes in Tahiti and believe that was wonderful, but on visiting Paris expressed great disgust over the presence of the prostitutes. They were the victims of Capitalism, but the child prostitutes in Tahiti were children of nature.

Now, this type of thinking especially since World War two but beginning in the later part of the last century has increasingly gained in power and in scope. It has been a sustained attack on Christianity because Biblical faith leads to civilization, this is the occasion as they see it. The Supreme Court has joined in that attack with the rest of society and the Kinsey Report held that the natural is the normative. So that every kind of perversion and child molestation according to Kinsey and his institute constitute natural acts, and anyone opposing them is the problem. In France towards the last years of the century into 1907 Alfred Hunry{?} Jarry a French literary figure warred against every standard, and he used obscene language to characterize anything that even remotely resembled good taste. But this sort of thing went back to the enlightenment and its roots. Tergo {?} after all had declared the genius, raw untamed genius, was the new logos, the new presence of God in the world. This is what happens with naturalistic authority. If we do not have authority with God in eternity, and we locate it in this world, the direction is always downward whenever we have had a naturalistic authority civilization, culture, education, in favor of the primitive as ostensibly the most natural. This kind of thing means that authority is always located further and further downward.

We see this very clearly developed in Freud. Freud said there were three aspects in the nature of man. One was the Id – the pleasure principle, the other was the Ego – the reality principle, and the third was the super ego – which is the accumulation of our education, religious ideas, family discipline, and so on, and he said the super ego is the weakest; the Id, the pleasure principle is the strongest and the most basic in man, and it constitutes the will to live, whereas the ego – the reality principle, and the super-ego are a will to death. So man to express the will to live had to express his every naked desire without any restraint. The modern world thus has been grounded on a dangerous doctrine of authority. One that is destructive of all civilization, of all culture, of all education. It should not surprise us that Henry Miller said there should be two hundred years of total destruction of all culture, of all religion, of all learning, reading, writing, all knowledge thereof so that man would forget there ever was religion and civilization. And he said then we can have a good life, there must first be he said the time of the assassins. When you locate authority in the natural order this is what happens, it goes downward. It locates itself further and further into the recesses of savagery.

Now when we turn to Matthew 28 verses 18-20 we find something radically different. These words are known as the great commission or the missionary mandate, and indeed it is a missionary mandate. It is also known as the dominion mandate because it reinforces the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, it commands the teaching or literally the discipling of all nations. The word that is used and is translated “all power is given unto me in heaven and earth” is exousia, power or authority. This therefore is first of all a declaration of authority. It is the authority mandate. Our Lord tells us “all power all authority in heaven and on earth is given unto me, and therefore I send you forth under that authority to disciple all nations.” This authority is shared with the trinity and we are to disciple and baptize all nations and people in the name of the Father and of The Son and of the Holy Ghost. Access to all authority is on the human level through Christ who says “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” This is total authority and Christ tells us it is inclusive of all things in heaven and on earth. This state can claim no independent jurisdiction, nor can the arts, the sciences, or anything else. The missionary mandate and the dominion mandate rest on this fact of authority, hence the order “Teach all nations, baptizing them”. Well how do you baptize nations? The mandate is to baptize everyone, individuals and nations. Well the baptism of nations is to bring them under the law word of God. To bring them to acknowledge that there is only one true source of authority.

Authority is an inescapable fact, mans perspective on himself, and on his world, and on everything he does is governed by mans doctrine of authority. Now in ever culture it is held to be essential to be in communion with authority, power, and truth, it is essential to life. Your life is off-base if it is not taped into ultimate authority. The Romantic Movement looked to nature first and then to mans urges for its doctrine of truth, authority, and communion. William Wordsworth wrote a poem about this which he very accurately titled The Tables Turned the table has reference to Communion, the table was now turned. If God wants Communion He’s got to line up with man and seek it through nature. He rejected God and the wisdom that comes from learning; he summoned men in this poem to abandon books for nature. He declared that birds are better preachers and teachers than formal preachers and teachers and that true blessing and spontaneous wisdom come from nature. The last three stanzas of The Tables Turn read “One impulse form a vernal wood may teach you more of men, of moral evil and of good, than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which nature brings, our meddling intellect misshapes the beauteous form of things, we murder to dissect. Enough of science and of art, close up those barren leaves. Come forth and bring with you a heart that watches and receives.” For the Romantics therefore one impulse, one natural impulse in your being gives you more revelation of moral good and moral evil then all that religion and philosophy and previously taught.

The political scientist John H. Hallowell in commenting upon the romantic movement as it affected politics said, and I quote, “communion with nature replaces communion with God as the source of inspiration and true enlightenment”. This is the kind of world that has been given to us by politics since the French Revolution. Men communing with nature and then with their own spirit to tell us what truth is. After communion with nature came communion with man’s own need, with his pleasure principle a la Freud. So authority finally came down to mans own will. The essence of our faith in its morality was summed up in the garden of Gethsemane by our Lord when he said “Nevertheless not My will but Thine be done”. The essence of Romanticism is “My will be done” because my will is truth and authority for me.”

But the Lord tells us that He is the source of all authority in heaven and in earth. He therefore orders us to teach His total word to all nations and to command their obedience in Christ; because He is the Lord, the sovereign, the authority. If and when we do this we know communion with Him. If and when we bring the whole of our lives under the authority of the every word of God we have communion with Him. Then He is with us always, even unto the end of the world. That promise is inseparable from what precedes it; His command and the recognition of His authority. Thus we are summoned to recognize His authority, then to go forth and evangelize the world, and to command the whole world in terms of the law word of God. In that task He is with us, and we are told we have this assurance “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” Therefore we need not fear what man may do unto us. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, other gods have had dominion over us and we have like sheep gone astray. We have sought our will rather than Thy will, but Thou oh Lord in Thy grace and mercy has made us a new creation, has made us Thine and given us Thy law and Thy commission to go forth, not in our power but in Thine; to do our work and to live our days under the authority of the triune God. Great and marvelous are Thy ways oh Lord, and we praise Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

We have one announcement now, this Wednesday we will work on the Chalcedon report stuffing and addressing envelopes from 9 a.m. Wednesday to 5 p.m. and again 7 to 10 pm and will work again Thursday the same hours until the work is done, so if you can make it Wednesday we’d like to get it done as early as possible. Not in the evening on Thursday, alright 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and 7-10 p.m. but Thursday only during the day. Are there any questions now?

[Audience member] Where does that take place?

[Rushdoony] Right here. In the room right next to us here.

Are there any questions now on our lesson, yes?

[Audience member] That last phrase? “Even unto the end of the world” is that the word that gives rise to so much discussion about the end of the world?

[Rushdoony] Well there is discussion in spite of it lets say. It is to the end of the age that is to the end of the era before the new creation is totally in creation; when all things are made new in one great act, so it is His promise that within time and within the struggle, He is with us. Afterwards of course He is ,there’s no question about it.

Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Audience member] Didn’t Wordsworth undergo a change of mind later in his career?

[Rushdoony] Yes, disillusionment with the French Revolution did start Him on the road backward from one who despised the services of the church he wrote a series of Ecclesiastical sonnets about the Church of England so that there was a partial return. His disillusionment of course with the French Revolution was quite dramatic. I’m smiling because one of the most interesting aspects of my university experience was the resentment of professors in the department of English for the later Wordsworth. They took a great deal of delight in calling attention to the fact that when he was in France during the time of the revolution he fathered an illegitimate child. They never forgave Wordsworth for abandoning his faith in the French Revolution.

Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Audience member] The great commission as stated in Mathew 18-20 speaks so plainly of our responsibility in terms of discipling the whole world that I wonder how did the theologians who take exception to a reconstructionist position intelligently handle that?

[Rushdoony] Well you have to realize that those who take that perspective are of fairly origin. The pietistic interpretation arose with pietism and developed in terms of it, and it read the whole of the Bible as a private devotional manual; not as God’s word for the whole world, and for every area of life and thought. So it was seen as a pietistic thing, then it was seen as essentially for woman and children, and then as a good thing for someone to have as a child. SO with the enlightenment there was a progressively downward application of the Bible and an increasing limitation of its scope.

Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God we praise Thee for the abundance of Thy grace and mercy unto us, and we commit unto Thee all our hopes in Jesus Christ. Do Thou undertake for us in all things that we may in Christ be more than conquerors. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you , guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 11 of 19

Track: #11

Year:

Dictation Name: 11 The Purpose of Authority

[Rushdoony] This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will heareth us. Having these promises let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning oh Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all power, glory and dominion belongeth we come unto Thy presence rejoicing that as we face a world of men dedicated to their own ways it is Thy way that shall prevail; Thy kingdom that shall triumph and Thy will that shall be done. Strengthen us then by Thy word and by Thy spirit that we may go forth in Thy name to conquer, to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ our Lord; that we might know that we have been called to victory. Bless us therefore in Thy service, grant us Thy peace and give us always joy in Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is Matthew 23:13; our subject The Purpose of Authority. Matthew 23:13 is the first verse in a long passage going on to the end of the chapter in which woes and maledictions, curses, are pronounced upon religious leaders and all who follow them into a way that is not of God. Matthew 23:13 The Purpose of Authority.

“But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”

This symbolism of keys as representing authority is an ancient one, and quite a natural one. Keys after all do unlock wealth. They do unlock knowledge, property, and a great deal more. Wherever there is something of importance, a treasure, there are keys to protect it. The symbol of the key is used in many, many ways. We speak of a key man – the important one, a keyboard- controlling a type writer or computer, we speak of a keystone in the arch – the last stone that is set that binds all things together. We speak of a key note in music and keynote speaker at political conventions. We have of course the familiar symbol of the Phi Beta Kappa key and much, much more.

Our Lord uses this symbol when he speaks of the keys of the kingdom in Matthew 16 verse 19. In this passage Matthew 23:13 he refers to the keys without using the word. The image here is of an irresponsible key holder who locks people out by misusing authority. The purpose of keys is to unlock doors. But false authorities use their keys, not to lead people into knowledge or wealth or whatever it is they are custodians of, but to bar them. One scholar, Sherman E. Johnson, has said concerning Matthew 23:13 that it tells us that these false authorities have taken away the key of knowledge. They have made the law of God difficult and abstruse, and they have formed exclusive brotherhoods of experts to lock out all except themselves.

Now some time ago we dealt with the distinction between Elitism and hierarchy, and we saw that Elitism means something Humanistic an exclusive group of men who are self-styled leaders, self-appointed experts, self-appointed philosopher kings. The classic document of elitism is Plato’s Republic according to Plato’s Republic most men are to be in a position of slaves, to be manipulated without knowing that they are manipulated while the philosopher kings were exempt from the rules they set for all others. Govern and manipulate the great masses of people. This of course is political reality of the modern world. In varying degrees every modern state because it has departed from Christianity is elitist in principle. hierarchy means, literally, sacred rule. Rule according to God’s law. Now there’s no question that some that have been religious of our Christian hierarchies have abused the office, and there is no question also that the word has fallen into disrepute as a result of a misuse by persons and by enemies of the concept of hierarchy. All the same the distinction is an important and an essential one between elitism and hierarchism.

Our Lord’s comment is that keys which are created to unlock doors, and open up treasures, are being misused. After all if you don’t have keys the thing to do is to bury whatever you have, or to seal it over, to make it permanently impenetrable. The purpose of keys is to protect and to unlock; the purpose of the keys of the kingdom is to unlock the doors of knowledge too, of membership in, and service in and under God, and His kingdom. God’s kingdom is His law and his government. We are emphatically told both in the Old and the New Testaments that the people of God are called to be a royal priesthood. That is, people with authority in the world. Now the kingdom keys are given to the church and are thus keys to the knowledge of God’s law and God’s calling so that all may become a royal priesthood. This is the whole point of the keys of the kingdom. Our calling is to be under authority, but also to exercise authority each in our appointed sphere. And the whole point of having the keys of the kingdom, of being an authority in the church of Christ, of being a teacher, of expounding the word of God, is to enable others to grow in authority, not to lock of knowledge and authority and the ability to govern from people. Our calling, let me repeat, is to be under authority and also to exercise authority and government.

Now more than once we have dealt with the meaning of the word government, and it is important again to review it briefly in this context. It is so important a subject you’re going to hear about it over the years, many more times. In our day the word government has been dangerously misappropriated and wrongly defined. When we say government we think of Sacramento or Washington D.C. or London, or Moscow, or some other Statist center. Such a use of the word government is totalitarian. It absorbs the totality of government into the state. But historically in Christian thought the basic government is the self-government of the Christian man. This is the essential government together with a family. The family is a government, and important, a key government. Then another government is the school, a training place where people can learn, and grow in their self-government. The church is a government, our vocation governs us and is a government, the society in which we live is a government, and finally the state is civil government. Of course the many institutions that are created by Christians and others, tithe agencies for example, also governed. And in a Christian culture most government is outside the state which has only a limited amount of it. Now this is important, Godly, hierarchal authority and government work to bring others into their rightful and God-ordained authority and government. Whereas on the other hand elitism works to exclude people from authority and government, it limits it to a small segment.

One professor recently gave a speech, the gist of which was that they day of the philosopher kings has arrived. It should be government by experts. After all we had this introduced into politics via Daniel Bell when some years ago President John F. Kennedy said that the day of moral questions had ended, we had reached a technological era in which all the questions were simple products for experts to expedite. The implication of that was that really the voting process and the judgment by individuals was obsolete. Experts no should dominate the human scene; the purpose of elitism is to exclude people from their authority, from their self-government. Where-as the true purpose of hierarchism, sacred rule, rule under God in terms of His law word is to enable people to grow in their authority. Our Lord attacked and condemned all who used authority to shut the doors of knowledge and to trivialize God’s law.

For example, as a instance of the trivialization of God’s law, and one could spend several hours just skimming the surface of what existed in our Lord’s day. One of the laws set forth by the Pharisees was that it was unlawful to kill a flea or fleas on the Sabbath because it meant taking life on the Lord’s Day. Now God’s law concerning the Sabbath is very simple, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Was a man more holy getting flea bites all day long on the Sabbath instead of killing the fleas? Another law said it was unlawful to eat eggs laid on the Sabbath unless it was laid not by a laying hen but one that was being fattened for the table. Again what relationship is their between this and “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”?

Now, as I indicated, the Pharisees had a library full of regulations like this concerning the Sabbath, endless regulations. But the church has been very definitely given to the same kind of thing. To give one illustration, during the middle ages and in early Protestantism, in Puritan New England the belief prevailed that a child was born on the same day it was conceived. So if it was conceived on a Monday, it was born on a Monday. Well if it was born on Sunday it meant that the child had been conceived on Sunday and it meant that the couple, the parents, had labored on the Sabbath. They therefore had to do penance. In fact one puritan pastor in New England was quite a bear on the subject and made several couples make public confession of sin, although they kept protesting privately that they had not broken the Sabbath, and then low and behold his wife gave birth to twins on the Sabbath. He had to make a public apology, but I suspect he didn’t change his mind about what constituted Sabbath breaking.

Now this is what our lord had referenced too, it was trivializing the Sabbath. They were not using the keys properly. They were baring people from the true knowledge of God with their trivialization. We have many such forms today, so we don’t have to look back on what prevailed once before. Consider some of the pronouncements on warfare, and on nuclear weapons by protestant and Catholic leaders. Or consider the fact of symbolic and speculative theology that go to the Bible and find things there that no man with any common sense reading the same passage a hundred times could ever see there. What is that but elitism? They have some kind of special knowledge which you and I looking at the word of God cannot see there. And our Lord says concerning all such elitist “ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to go in.” As I said earlier this sentence is the beginning of a long malediction and cursed pronounced concerning all blind guides.

Our Lord describes all Elitists as blind because they do not trust in God’s wisdom; they’ve to important their own into the house of God and proclaim it as the wisdom of God. There’s a tremendous arrogance there. They are blind guides and our Lord says a great deal more about them. They are fools, they are hypocrites, they are thieves who devour widow’s houses and for a pretense make long prayer. Therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Our Lord does not like elitists. He does not like people who feel they have a special pipeline into the truth of God that nobody else can see, which really isn’t there.

Moreover in verses 36-39 of this chapter he pronounces a judgment upon all who follow them. So to follow these blind guides is also to fall under God’s malediction. The purpose of keys is to unlock doors. The keys of God’s kingdom must be used to unlock the doors of knowledge, to unlock the doors of vocation so men can in terms of the words of God understand better their calling and their place in God’s scheme of things. The purpose of the keys is to enable us better to serve God, to make us a royal priesthood, Priests, kings, and prophets unto God our Father in Jesus Christ. The purpose of authority our Lord makes clear is to develop our own authority and ability to govern under God. Thus wherever authority does nothing but exalt itself, maintain a position of power, and bar other people from growing in their ability to govern themselves, and to function in their appointed sphere, you have elitism. It is elitism when it calls itself Christian as well as when it calls itself humanism. It is elitism because it takes away government and knowledge and authority from others; it limits it to a self-appointed group.

Thus our Lord’s point is the question is not merely how do we govern those under our authority? Well that is a legitimate question, how do we govern those under our authority? Do we govern them in terms of Godly, a Biblical standard? But closely aligned to that must always be the question having governed those under our authority, how do they now govern themselves? Have they learned to exercise proper authority and proper government each in their own jurisdiction, each in their own sphere, this is the key. If they are forever cripples, forever dependent, we are blind guides and elitists. Something is very wrong with us, for example, if we have to go on supporting and taking care of our children and telling them how to wipe their noses all the days of their life. It means we have failed as parents, it doesn’t mean there’s a special closeness, only a very wrong and evil closeness.

Mutual assistance between parents and children is one thing. A continuing dependence is something radically different. Parents are exercising an elitist and ungodly authority, whenever and wherever they create a dependence, a continuing dependence. Something is wrong also in a church if church member are kept in such close subjection that they dare not grow on their own. There are churches, in fact there are denominations, where the members never dare express an opinion about doctrine or about scripture for the simple reason that they are afraid to open their mouths, they are not the elite, the experts. You do not have life in a church like that, you have a graveyard situation. It is the death of growth, the death of authority, the death of self-government. Too many churches have been that way over the generations.

One of the very great churchmen of the last century was William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. His vision was a magnificent one; it’s a pity it was never carried out. He set it forth in a number of things but in particular in a book which was a take-off on Stanley’s book when he went to Africa and located Livingston. Stanley’s book was titled In Darkest Africa and Booth titled his book In Darkest England, and the Way Out and it was a plan to take the people who were derelicts, human derelicts on the street; to create strong Christians out of them, to give them job training, and to make them self-governing and competent peoples. Booth in the process of thinking through these things said that the problem of the church was that there were too many mummy Christians around. A mummy is something that’s been mummified, and he said all too many churches believe in getting someone in and mummifying him so that he sits in the pew and he’s good for nothing else. He never functions on his own; he’s incompetent of going out and commanding any area of life where he is involved in the name of Christ. He is a mummy Christian; he has one duty, to be mummified and to sit still. Well that kind of blindness is very much with us, not only in the churches but outside of the churches. Some teachers want mummy students, they want them mummified. Most politicians want a mummified population in capable you know of doing anything on their own, of simply surrendering everything to the political experts who will then function as the elite.

A church with Mummy Christians is a dead church and its leaders are Pharisees who shut up the kingdom of God against men. Our Lord says of them “They neither go in, nor do they allow others to enter in.” They are elitists, not Christians. Let us pray.

Glory be to Thee oh God who through Jesus Christ has opened up unto us the kingdom of heaven. We thank Thee oh Lord that Thou hast called us to enter there-in, to know Thy kingdom, law, and government; to know our place therein and to go forth with authority and power each to govern in our appointed sphere. Strengthen us oh Lord in our self-government under Christ; make us mindful oh Lord that we are a royal priesthood, called to be prophets to proclaim the word of God and to apply it to our appointed sphere. Give us grace therefore to grow, freedom to serve Thee, and joy on Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.

We have one announcement today, our prayer meeting will be held here Tuesday evening at seven p.m.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience member] Well it’s a theological explanation of totalitarianism isn’t it?

[Rushdoony] Very good point Otto, it is indeed a theological explanation of totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is simply Plato’s dream applied to our time. It is elitism; it is a reject of the idea that the common man is capable of anything. It is ironic that our times have been proclaimed to be the century of the common man and he’s never been put down more thoroughly or executed in greater numbers. If this is the century of the common man let’s hope we never see the Millennium of the common man that they’re promising us.

Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Audience member] We know that pure Marxism could never happen because it comes to power but then supposedly in the pure form the power, the government, is supposed to pay the way, is that right? And that man is going to be so good that he’ll earn his {?} the utopia. Now is that just to fool us, do they know better than that?

[Rushdoony] It involves a kind of a half-unconscious self -deception. It is interesting that Dennis Peacock who was in central Europe this year, early this year, was told by some people there that Marxism only existed in the Western democracies and they said the world is either pre-Marxist or post-Marxist. But there is no discussion of Marxism in those Communist countries; it was simply an excuse for totalitarian power over people, elitism. So on the rare occasion for example, from other sources, we know that some young student, and eager beaver reads Marx say at a Moscow University and thinks this is wonderful, he is treated as an idiot. They’re not happy with him, they’re not interested in the subject, they pay lip service to Marxism, they use it as a kind of cover-all term for their urge to total power. So the Marxist dream is nothing.

Yes?

[Audience member] Since the Catholic Church was authoritarian through the centuries and now the authority of the church seems to be falling apart, how does that strike you?

[Rushdoony] The question is since the Catholic Church was authoritarian through the centuries and now that authority is falling apart, how does that strike me. Well first of all there was a drive in the church through the centuries for a kind of totalitarian power. However it was never really realized. During much of its history, for example under the Otto’s the holy Roman Emperor’s, the church was controlled, the Pope’s name by the emperors; then subsequently briefly the church gained some independence, but again control was exerted from the outside. And it reached the point where the College of Cardinals was actually treated like a band of prisoners and compelled to name the Pope that the monarch who was controlling them or the emperor chose. And the church was systematically corrupted because corruption was preferable to a reforming church. This led to the reformation, but the reformation in part has also been controlled by various states. Lutheranism by Prussian absolutism, the Church of England by Henry the IIIV and the Stewart monarchs and so on; and of course we have a similar thing today.

Well within the Catholic Church you have two things that have taken place. The low point in the churches history in the modern age was reached just prior to Napoleon. The papacy was the subject virtually of the Austrian monarchs who are the holy Roman Emperors, and its power receded because various forms of Gallicanism prevailed. The Catholic power outside of the Papal States was in Spain, in France, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in some of the German states. In each of these places the monarch controlled the church. I believe the pope who was in power when Napoleon took over had to be crowned with the papal tiara, he’d become a virtual non-entity.

The destruction of the Holy Roman Empire by Napoleon freed the church and they reverted to the kind of dream exemplified in the Medieval Era by Unam Sanctam, claim to vast powers over both church and state. When unam sanctam was proclaimed it was not an expression of a reality, but of the dream of a particular pope who himself had very little power. So you had a steady progression of a revival of that kind of thinking to Vatican one, and a proclamation of papal infallibility. However the rebellion within the church culminated in Vatican two, and a great deal was unleashed as a result of the controls being dissipated, both good and bad; the most flagrant and rampant modernism, as well of some old-fashioned Catholicism and some evangelicalism.

Now it’s difficult to know what the outcome is going to be. It could be that some of the problems will create a re-awakening of lay catholic faith. It is interesting that very often in the Middle Ages revival of the church came through lay sources. Others, including a very prominent catholic layman and a very dedicated old fashioned one, believe the church is going to split. It’s hard to know what is going to happen, but it is a long, complicated, and tangled history of control from the outside attempting to suppress Christianity, Catholic and Protestantism, from having the freedom to develop the implications of the faith for society.

Yes?

[Audience member] It seems to me like there’s an awful lot of parallels between the Roman Catholic and many of the pietist protestant sects and one of the problems they seem to have is this schizophrenia that you talked about so often, and what that really does I think is it pushes the church whether Roman Catholic, or Protestant, or otherwise, I think it pushes the church into the corner of irrelevancy, and that’s what brings rise to the lay Catholic theologian that you talk about, they law Christian scholar and what have you. Because they recognize the fact that within the mainstream of orthodoxy as it’s currently {?} there aren’t any answers there, and since the seminaries are still dominated by that lay orthodoxy quote unquote, the layman is forced, if he really wants to get some answers, the lay man is forced to do his own study. And I think that the many parallels between some sects of Roman Catholicism and some sects of Protestantism, I think that’s just declining into a state of irrelevancy, like modernism is becoming extremely irrelevant, and that’s not where the growth is, that’s not where the power is. The power is in a real orthodoxy.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well when we see the enlightenment which ended the reformation and counter-reformation era, what we have to recognize is that it was preceded by tendencies that led to pietism. So that men abandoned the problems of the world for devotional exercises. In the puritan circles in England, and they were controlling the country, they went into Neo-Platonism and lost interest in power and authority which they had and could exercise. Then you had other things, for example we know it today as rapture fever. At a key point when Europe was going into revolution, the French Revolution and the era of revolutions one of the greatest of protestant scholars; a Lutheran, Bengel, brilliant Old Testament Scholar, I believe it was Old Testament; became deeply involved in predicting the date of Christ’s return and he set 1828 as the date. Well he neutralized a generation of Christians who were looking forward to 1828 and they wouldn’t have to worry about the French Revolution and Napoleon and a variety of other problems. It was deadly.

Yes?

[Audience member] Well who translated Crebary’s {?} defense of the pope from the Latin to English? Because it was Crevary {?} wasn’t it that went after the whole, he tried to prove that the Pope wasn’t anti-Christ and all those kinds of things, and in so doing gave birth to an early form of the rapture fever idea that the millennium was still yet a long ways off etc.? Who was it that translated that treatise, his tract, or his book or whatever it was into the other languages? I think there’s a connection there somewhere.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I’ve forgotten. It’s years ago since I’ve looked at that. Well our time is just about up and we could go on at length on the subject but the Christian failure has been responsible for the freedom with which Humanism has been able to operate. Now we’re seeing very definitely a turn around, a return to responsibility. Well let us conclude now with prayer.

Bless us our Father in Thy service, make us strong in the authority of Thy word and in self-government that in Christ Jesus we may be more than conquerors. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always. Amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 10 of 19

Track: #10

Year:

Dictation Name: 10 By What Authority

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Thus saith the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy. I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a humble and contrite spirit. To revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite, if thou shalt seek the Lord thy God thou shalt find Him. If thou seek Him will all thy heart and with all thy soul. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all power, rule, and authority belongs we come into Thy presence acknowledging indeed that we have gone astray, that the whole world is in rebellion against Thee and needs Thy grace and Thy mercy and Thy judgment. Use us oh Lord in these troubled times and empower us by Thy word and by Thy spirit. That we may set forth the claims of Thy kingdom, establish the guidelines of Thy justice or righteousness, and make paramount Thy law and Thy word of truth into the hearts of all men. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from Matthew the 21st chapter verses 23-27 and our subject “By What Authority?” we continue our studies in the doctrine of Biblical authority. Matthew 21 verses 23-27.

“ 23 And when he was come into the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? And who gave thee this authority?

24 And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things.

25 The baptism of John, whence was it? From heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, if we shall say, from heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?

26 But if we shall say, of men; we fear the people; for all hold John as a prophet.

27 And they answered Jesus, and said, we cannot tell. And he said unto them, neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.”

The implications of this text for the doctrine of authority is sometimes bypassed by scholars and the reason for doing so is they say that the authority of Jesus is as that of God incarnate, and therefore there is a difference between His authority and that of the rest of us. However this is an invalid statement because our Lord places the issue on the human level by raising the question of John the Baptist’s authority. So that our Lord very definitely makes clear that He was not claiming any authority as He was teaching other than that which scripture provided.

Now the Greek word which is used here for authority is exousia so that we have no particular special problem with the word, it is a word we’ve dealt with previously, exousia, so that authority here is exactly what we would think it to be. The question “By what authority?” is important. It is interesting that the question has been raised most in the Western churches, protestant and catholic. And that it has been a question which has repeatedly created problems and disorders have arisen because of the question of authority. However it is significant that precisely where this question has been raised again and again the greatest vitality in Christendom has been shown, it has been in the Western churches. Obviously therefore it is an important question.

Now let us examine the nature of the problem of authority in terms of this question “by what authority?” historically first of all. A good place to begin is with Saint Francis of Assisi. Before his death in 1226 Francis commissions {?} had reached England, France, Germany, Spain, Morocco, Turkey, and Palestine. Less then 20 years after his death Franciscans had reached the court of the great Mogul in India. The Franciscans had a missionary zeal, a dedication, and the ability of Francis himself was truly remarkable. On the other hand there were many semi-heretical undercurrents present in Francis and his followers. With good reason the Vatican looked on Francis with great misgivings, as did many other churchmen. The strict Franciscans, who came to be known after Francis death as spiritual Franciscans, were strong adherents of the thinking of Abbot Joachim of Fiore. This was third age thinking, very heretical. It has had a long and ugly history in Western thought.

Also Francis was in essence a communist. He believed the ideal state for Christians who really took the faith seriously was communism, to own no property. Armstrong tells us, and I quote “When he found that a house had been built in which to hold a chapter meeting he was so incensed that the brethren should be involved in holding property that he clambered to the roof and began ripping off the tiles, only stopping when it was pointed out to him that the house did not belong to the friars.” Francis here harked back to an element in Greco-Roman culture. The Greco-Roman’s believed in a golden age in the past, a golden age which was property-less, and therefore this was the ideal state. And many of the philosophers and lawyers who came into the faith brought with them this Greco-Roman concept of the golden age and of a property-less ideal. They went to the Bible and misused a few verses here and there to justify their golden-age thinking.

For example one of the most powerful and influential bishops in the early church was in the late third and early fourth century Saint Ambrose. Ambrose was a very prominent person; he was showing interest in the faith and attending a catechumen class. He had not even been baptized, nor set a date, or indicated as of yet that he was ready to be baptized when the bishop died and both church and state moved to make this man, a very prominent Roman, bishop; because he was such a powerful force. And so he was made bishop by acclamation and then baptized and made bishop. Now Saint Ambrose was a very powerful thinker, powerful preacher, who simply assumed in terms of his background that Communism was the ideal Christian state. That vein continued in the church, many of the monastic orders in particular as well as prominent preachers harked back to it. However the popes were beginning to see that this was not scriptural, that there were serious problems with the whole concept when Francis and Peter Waldo of Lyon, founder of the Waldensians, asked for approval of the Vatican. In 1179 Alexander the 3rd gave limited confirmation to the poor men of Lyon who later became the poor Catholics, an order with the church. In 1210 Innocent the 3rd did the same for the Franciscans. Both did this with misgivings. Both recognized however there were elements of faith and dedication here which they could not condemn. Subsequently the papacy did condemn the whole idea of communism and the spiritual Franciscans had to be condemned totally. And the Franciscans who did not share that point of view, and who had really departed from Francis of Assisi went their way developing those approved ideas of Francis of Assisi.

Now I cite this as a problem case, and how it was dealt with. It is easy for us to be wise at a distance, seeing the beginning and the end. But we must remember that there are no perfect movements in history. God alone is perfect, and even when we a part of God’s movement we bring our sin and our fallibility into it. Moreover we bring ourselves, and unfinished product. Very often as we see someone whom we’ve known a long time and see the outcome we’re horrified that we didn’t see it earlier. But no one, including ourselves, is a finished product. We either develop our implications to an epistemological self-consciousness, or at least ones that others can spot, or we develop in terms of our consciousness as a Christian.

Now, we are told by Saint Paul in I Corinthians 4:5 “Judge nothing before the time” we are to suspend our judgment, we are to give things an opportunity, the tares in opportunity to grow, before they are rooted out. Premature judgment can prevent many problems, but it also leads to sterility because nothing is ventured. The churches which are very strict and rigid in preventing anything from starting that might be suspect, are also the sterile churches. Suspended judgment therefore, judging nothing before the time can lead to serious problems, but it also allows for growth in both direction, tares and wheat, and then a time for judgment because our Lord requires judgment. As we are very definitely told in John 7:24 “Judge righteous judgment” and in Matthew 6:22 our Lord says “By their fruits shall ye know them” then you can judge them; and you have to. If you do not then you are sinning. Because God says, look at their fruits, judge them. It’s that simple. Time is thus a factor here, judgment is a necessity.

Now there was enough in the position of Saint Francis of Assisi to give ground for suppressing him and his work before he ever began. There was also enough there to give grounds for great rejoicing in his joyful view of creation and redemption, and for bringing such a light to the faith. We really owe, by the way, a great deal of the joy of the Christmas season to Francis. He was the first one to build a crèche at Christmas time. Now of course we have had efforts to suppress what Francis began. A great deal of trouble could have been eliminated in the church if Francis had been suppressed immediately, but a great deal of good would also have been eliminated and the result would have been deadly.

Now I cite Francis because we have similar things today; the charismatic movement for example. There is much there that we would disagree with, but there has also been such a tremendous vitality and a burst of power, God-given power, that we also must rejoice. It’s a young movement, a growing movement, judge nothing before the time.

Now I cite these examples because they are related to the question “By what authority doest Thou these things? And who gave Thee this authority?” Now very definitely the implication of that question was “authority is transmitted through given channels, and we the Pharisees and Sadducees, the scribes, represent the God ordained channels; and who are you to come from outside the institutional channels and teach with such authority?” Now very definitely authority is transmitted through God given channels, the family and the church to cite but two. Their authority is very clear cut. But while authority is transmitted by God through His ordained channels in history it cannot be limited to these channels. All authority comes from God and the essential test is the triune God and His law word. As Isaiah eight verse twenty declares “To the law, and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them.”

Now one of the things we must remember, and churches must remember, and both church and state and every institution tends to forget that every age is a transit {?} one. And every institution and every church is in transition. We are not the terminal point of history. History did not begin in the Garden of Eden and end with us, or at our church, or our state, or with our particular institution whatever it may be. We are but stepping stones to God’s future. Judge nothing before the time. By their fruits shall ye know them. Judge righteous judgment. We must live, move, and have our being in the Lord, in his future and in terms of it. We are, we are told, strangers and pilgrims on earth, governed by God’s promises concerning the future. We seek that country whose builder and maker is God, his kingdom. We do this in terms of his law-word. The patriarchs did not seek the kingdom of God by abandoning the world but by faithfulness to it, to God’s word, to God’s kingdom; by its application to time and to the processes of time. WE cannot bind God to institutional channels, nor can we despise those channels. It was a great evil on the part of the Pharisees and the leaders of the temple to come to Jesus and challenge His authority when He was teaching in faithfulness to the every word of God. But it is equally very wrong to challenge God ordained authorities. We have to see their authority and the limitations of their authority. They are not the ultimate, the absolute, authority; God and His word alone have that power, that status.

Moreover we cannot bind God to institutional channels nor despise those channels, but we almost must see that different channels, different institutions, have different levels of authority. The institution of the church has very real authority. But we cannot ascribe to say clubs, and lodges, any binding power upon us. Whether that lodge be a Christian one or a Masonic one, it cannot have a binding power on us comparable to that of the church; certainly never comparable to God. But it is so routine for organizations to attempt to bind men as though they were God.

Then you have intermediate institutions. Not on the same level as say family, church, and state. Bar associations, medical and dental associations, unions of various sorts. How great is their authority? Well today they are these intermediates institutions in alliance with a state; they have forsaken their legitimate authority under God for an authority under the state. And as a result they are coercive in a way they have no right to be. And the sad fact is that the church is too often prone to approve of intermediate institutions and their legalized coercion. Godly authority goes out of institutions as they align themselves with the state and seek a coercive authority.

When our Lord asked “by what authority do you do these things?” raised the question of John’s authority came to the heart of the matter. The established authorities had boxed out God’s authority in favor of their exclusive representation of God. Jesus and John both lacked institutional certification and accreditation. They had never gone through the formal training that was required and therefore they were denied validation. The leaders of religion in our Lord’s day said concerning Him “How knoweth this man letters, (meaning learning) having never learned (that is having never been instructed by us)?” Learning was equated with institutional validation. In other words they believed in a closed shop in learning. The limitation of authority to institutional channels is a limitation on God.

Now these institutions cannot be set aside nor their importance denied. Let’s take universities. Universities provide a routine, a discipline. If anything it isn’t sufficiently so. We are in a period of a decline in discipline in every area. University graduate schools are not all that they should be, but also we can recognize their necessity as means to a disciplined education and to specialized training. But we cannot limit learning to a university PhD degree, or to any kind of doctrine. Very often there is more learning and wisdom outside rather than in the academic routine, but this does not eliminate the validity of the academic routine. For all except the occasional and exceptional person it is a necessity.

To give an illustration. I received a letter and enclosures yesterday from someone of very great brilliance, but also calculated stupidity because he is an instant know-it-all. People like that need the disciplined curriculum. On the other hand there are many like that who go through the disciplined curriculum of a university and a graduate school and are no better for it. There is no sure fire cure for such folly, but at least the routine provides for many some kind of training which will knock-off the rough edges; teach them something about the nature of authority and of following a disciplined pattern. Most people lack the ability to master a discipline on their own. Now this is true also in the church; a seminary training or some kind of required training for the clergy is a necessity, but it isn’t the only way God trains and prepares men for His services. And men can go through all the training and come out as foolish as they began. But at least the training helps winnow out some of them. Authority is best gained by being under authority, the authority of God and of man. Thus God can and does train men apart from institutions. He calls and He empowers them.

But whether it be an institutional training that a man has, or one which is separated from the formal routine the basic question is always the same, “by what authority doest thou these things, and who gave Thee this authority?” Is it of God in essence? That’s the key question. Isaiah’s words therefore still stand “to the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them.” Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God give us grace day by day to be under Thine authority and the authority of Thine ordained spheres. That we may by our obedience and our recognition of Thy word and its power and of all that it is created learn how to rule ourselves, and to rule in our appointed place. Grant Lord that we be instrumental in moving Thy people in this world a step further under Thine authority, Thy kingdom. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Our announcements this morning I have two things to call to your attention. You may recall that I dealt sometime back with the fact that in red China families are now limited to one baby per family and any woman having a second child are subjected to penalties and the baby aborted or removed. The startling fact about that situation is that it has been to a large extent financed by the United States and the UN. Just recently Representative Chris Smith, a republican in New Jersey fought to have this kind of thing cut out of the federal budget. They were able to get the amendment through. However the liberals in congress put through a provision which allows the international development agency, AID, to fund organizations who then turn the money over to China as population planners. The United Nations fund for population activities for example, will give 15 million to China’s population program over the next four years. One quarter of that money will come from the US.

Moreover one man, Everstat {?} a visiting fellow at Harvard University Center for Population Studies has said, and I quote “almost a quarter of the UNFPA’s bequest to Chinese population programs is American money. Failure to act against these grave and obvious human rights abuses would expose America to some very serious charges, and those charges would be right.”

Now the rest of the money comes from other UN nations but this is the sad fact. At the same time it is interesting to note that instead of meeting this issue head on intervarsity press, which is the campus ministry which is supposedly evangelical but is today liberation theology oriented, has in a new book by Gareth Jones come out strongly in favor of abortion rights. And Jones finds in his book that humanness is an elusive concept, very difficult to define. So you’re in trouble now since it’s very difficult to define whether any of us, including a fetus, are human.

And this we have a measure in the state senate introduced by republican Ken Maddy {?} of Fresno; which will eliminate prison terms as a necessity and will make it possible for judges to sentence people to confinement in their own home. And Richardson has reported on this, “I can see it all now the courtroom is tense with excitement, the defendant has been found guilty of burglary and assault with a deadly weapon. The judge leans forward and glares down at the defendant and says “Jones you have been found guilty, and it is my duty to impose sentence on you. Jones, go to your room.” [Audience laughter] “’Oh lordy judge no, not that!”’ Jones then collapses in a sobbing heap on the courtroom floor. ‘Judge!’ The defendants lawyer shouts as he explodes from his chair ‘That’s cruel and inhuman! Everyone knows Jones doesn’t make his bed and he rarely empties the ash tray. The floor is covered with candy wrappers and his mommy refuses to tidy up after him. Besides his room is all cluttered with car radios, stereos, and TV sets he’s found over the years. Can you find it within your heart to give him straight probation instead of this awesome burden?’” Now things are becoming ridiculous and so bad that it’s hard to see what is going to happen other than judgment unless we turn this country around quickly, and even then we’re going to go through the ringer.

Any questions now on our lesson, yes?

[Audience member] Our whole question of authority is intriguing because technological developments, like for instance nuclear fission, and many other breakthroughs, physical sciences, have accustomed the average man to accepting things that confound his common sense. And this leads then to a sort of a lack of certainty in individual intelligence, and it’s also reinforced by arguments that subjective judgments are invalid. Your personal opinion is not supposed to count. So what we have is a cognicenties so to speak that uses a language the average person cannot follow. And there’s probably more authoritarianism in the intellectual life of the modern man than there ever has been.

[Rushdoony] Yes I would emphatically agree with that, what we had after World War II was a development, and I believe Daniel Bell at Harvard was a key figure in it, which culminated in a speech by John F. Kennedy. The gist of which was we had reached a point in history when instead of moral problems we had technological problems which experts would take care of. Now that kind of idea was sold very heavily and has spread throughout the length and breadth of the country. Well of course these technological problems so called are really very simple moral questions. But people have succumbed to this authoritarianism on the grounds that the moral question is, as you put it, a subjective matter and has no validity in the marketplace of opinions and ideas. This is what today is the offense of the Fundamentalist movement, raising the moral question again. Now Jerry Fallwell raised it very mildly and all hell broke loose when he did. Because this is the one question they don’t want raised anymore. Authoritarianism does require that we submit to the experts, the philosopher king, and be simply slaves while they run things; because supposedly everything is now a question for the experts, an opinion which goes back to Plato.

Any other questions or comments? If not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thy word is truth and Thy word shall prevail, and Thy word shall conquer the hearts of all men and every tongue shall confess and every knee bow before Jesus Christ our Lord. In this confidence our Father we serve Thee, we rejoice in Thee, and we wait on Thee. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 9 of 19

Track: #09

Year:

Dictation Name: 09 Authority and Ministry

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer. Our help is in the name of Lord who made heaven and earth. Oh come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Oh God our Father whose holiness fills all heaven and earth and whose glory lightens our days. Give us grace so to walk that we might know indeed that heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory. That Thy word is truth and Thy word shall prevail, that every knee shall bow unto Thee and every tongue confess Thee before Thy work on earth is finished. Therefore we praise Thee Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and we come into Thy presence with joy and Thanksgiving knowing that this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Our God we praise Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Our Scripture this morning is from the gospel of Saint Matthew, the twentieth chapter verses twenty-five through twenty-eight. Matthew 20:25-28 and our subject Authority and Ministry.

“25 But Jesus called them unto him, and said, ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

26 But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

27 And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

The occasion of these comments by our Lord was when the mother of James and John, two of the disciples, came to Him to ask for enthroned places for her sons in Christ’s kingdom. Now the mother of James and John whose name was Salome was our Lord’s aunt. As a result she felt that she had a privileged position and therefore could ask for privileges for her sons. Our Lord had denied Salome her request, but when the other disciples heard what she had done they were indignant. Our Lord called the disciples together to speak to them and verses 25-28 give us His words. Now the word that our Lord uses in verse twenty-five when He says “Ye know that the princes of the gentiles exercise dominion over them.” That word dominion is a particular word for a particular type of dominion. It is used in the New Testament only in an evil sense. For example in Acts nineteen verse sixteen it refers to the power of demons over men. In First Peter 5:3 it refers to evil elders, lording it over others, over Christ’s people. And it is a combination of two words; “kyrios” – Lord or dominion, and Kata – which means down, intensively so. So the meaning is “Lording it over someone.” So what our Lord is saying, “Ye know that the princes of the gentiles love to Lord it over them, and that they that are great exercise authority upon them.” Now again the word authority is different from the usual word for authority because here again instead of just ousia there is the prefix kata; so it means the authority to put down. It refers to something other than the Godly exercise of authority; it refers to putting down people. So here we have the usage of two words, not normally used for dominion and authority, which indicate lording it over others and putting them down and this, our Lord says, is what ungodly authority is all about. At the same time our Lord says “it shall not be so among you but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister.” The word minister is diakonos, our word deacon, a servant, one called to minister. However in the next verse he says “whosoever will be chief among you let him be your servant – doulos,” which means slave. You make it your life to minister under God to these people. Then in the twenty-eighth verse when he says the son of man came not to ministered unto but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many he again uses the word diakonos, forms of it.

Thus our Lord differentiates between two kinds of authority; first gentile or ungodly authority and dominion which is a putting down of people. It is a striving for power for one purpose, to Lord it over others. It’s the kind of thing Orwell was talking about in 1984 when he described the goal of the totalitarian state, a boot stamping on a human face forever. Orwell caught the meaning of the words our Lord was here using without knowing about them. No this evil is all around us, authority is equated with the power to put down people. And our Lord is clear, all ungodly authority and dominion means putting down people, not ministering to them. In the triune God authority and power are inseparable. Authority in the Bible is hierarchical but ungodly authority is elitist, grounded in humanist considerations. In fallen man authority and power are not united as they are in God, the more Godly we are the closer we bring them together. But in the ungodly they are often far apart, in fact men can hold Godly authority in ungodly ways and on alien premises.

We had a visitor last week to illustrate this premise; he was a man who was an authority figure in the Benedictine order. He was described by Otto after the meaning as the rudest man he had ever met and without a trace of courtesy. As usual Otto was being very kindly. [Laughter] Very early he, although the meeting was primarily to discuss a forth coming book with David Rose who is working on it, a very excellent thesis, he let us know that he regarded Aquinas as the greatest disaster in the church. Then he let us know a little later that Saint Paul did not know what he was talking about, this he said three times. When I cited Saint John on the definition of sin in his first epistle he waved that aside and said he didn’t know whether there was such a thing as sin, only ignorance. However when I asked him if he were a universalist he denied it and it became apparent that he was ready to put churchmen into hell but no-one else; because he was ready to vindicate the French Revolution as necessary judgment on the church. He was ready to vindicate the Russian revolution and in fact said he felt that Lenin was probably in heaven together with Hitler but not Sir Nicholas the II. He by the way let us know that we, he called us Calvinist Jansenists, were responsible for abortion in this country and much, much more. Now I cite this man because he had institutional but not theological authority. He had not even read the Bible by his own admission.

Now this is the separation of authority that is common place. Just yesterday I finished reading a book by a very prominent Lutheran scholar, and again dealing with a critical issue of our time never once invoked any Godly authority, any Biblical premise. From beginning to end his book was essentially pragmatic. Now this separation of authority from God and its reduction to a purely institutional authority is very common place, and it leads to the kind of gentile lording common to every area of life; to the academic world, the ecclesiastical sphere, the political, the scientific, and so on. Such men hold position and power, but they lack Godly authority. They are pre-eminent only because our culture and our churches see authority in the same terms. Men resent being on the receiving end of such authority, but they want it for themselves. Otto Scott was citing the other night his Irish grandmother’s proverb “put a beggar on horseback and he’ll ride you down.” There are a great many beggar’s on horseback all around us.

Long before Orwell and his description of power as a boot stamping on a human face forever, Genghis Kahn spoke in the same way about what he liked to do. At one time he said for example, concerning his greatest joy, and I quote “the greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you. To rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears. To ride their horses and clasp to you your bosom their wives and daughters.” Now that was the goal for Genghis Kahn and for his men. It’s not surprising that the mongrels made no positive contribution to civilization. They brought economic ruin and disaster wherever they went; because they epitomized the gentile conception of power, lording it over others. And the modern state is increasingly manifesting with a growing nakedness that same ideal. The Soviet Union and Red China most certainly manifest it, and every modern state as it gains in power gains correspondingly in its lust to Lord it over others. The gentile doctrine of power, lording it over others, is thus common to history. The lust for power is present oriented; it is not interested in ministering but in using others.

Then second our Lord says that Christian greatness is in ministering to others, in being members one of another as Saint Paul put it. Such a doctrine is neither self-centered nor present oriented. Our Lord says “seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, or justice.” One seminary scholar, J.J. Davis, has commented with regard to South Korea which is predominately a Christian country. And he says, and I quote “when Kim Kyung Quan {?} Secretary General to South Korea’s President was asked about the reasons for his country’s progress he replied ‘it’s the culture of discipline and postponing immediate satisfaction for the future, even for posterity’ Such character traits have encouraged a national investment rate of twenty-five to thirty-give percent of the gross national product, twice the U.S. rate.’” Did you catch that emphasis? That was once very, very common to this country, postponing immediate satisfaction for the future, even for posterity.

When I was a boy I can still recall older men saying that they had done this and that for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who were not yet born in some instances. That they had established this farm, or built this house, or developed this business, with an eye to the future, building for the future, postponing personal satisfaction. Or consider the fact of John Dag, two years ago Memorial Day a descendant of John Dag was with us, Beth Sutton; a most gracious and very charming young woman. She was the sixth generation descendant of John Dag. What had John Dag done with his life and with his prayers? Thought about the future and prayed that to the end of time, ‘til the second coming of Christ, every descendent of his would be in the faith. And Beth said she was the sixth generation descendant and she did not know of a single one of John Dag’s descendants who was not in the faith. Now that’s a remarkable fact.

This is postponing immediate satisfaction for the future, even for posterity; ad this is what our faith is about. We live not only for today and tomorrow, and immediate satisfaction. We live not only in terms of seeing what we want realized now, but realized after we’re gone. And this is what builds a culture; this is what creates a future. The ungodly seek power here and now, the power to Lord it over others. The Christian uses authority and power to minister to others, to know that all things are in the hands of God and to leave them there in faith knowing that we cannot see one minute or second ahead. But God can; and known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the earth, and so we love and serve in Christ, and we wait in patience for His results. When the Bible speaks about love it sets love in this context of service, of ministry. Love in the Bible is not a substitute plan of salvation but an expression of our life in Christ. Instead of lording it over others, Christians seek to minister in love. As our Lord said “whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant” in other words greatness is in terms of service.

The quest for gentile power is a mark of reprobation. Even if the power structure is built in the name of Christ it is a mark of reprobation when people seek power to be able to Lord it over others. They may seek power in the name of the people, a very common pretext today. Or in the name of freedom, or in the name of economic justice, but it is self glorification they are after. Our Lord says something very plainly and simply “By their fruits shall ye know them”. Now to deny the validity of that is to question Christ. To know what people are is not a difficult thing our Lord says, by their fruits shall ye know them. And if you say “well I don’t know the heart of any man” our Lord says you do. And if you then say “well I’m not going to judge” you’re then saying our Lord didn’t know what He was talking about, He gave us a handy, easy, one sentence criterion “by their fruits shall ye know them” and that we are not to be as the Gentiles who love to exercise dominion, to put down people.

Then third our Lord in this incident declares Himself the example of authority and of power and of ministering to others. He came to give His life a ransom for many, now we are not called to make an atonement, but we are called to exercise a ministry. We are to separate ourselves from false authority and exercise Godly authority. The disciples beginning with Salome the mother of James and John were all excised and greatly concerned with gaining Gentile, or false, authority. This is still all too often true of the church and of churchmen. But such a goal leads to a confusion of God’s kingdom and mans. And again and again in history the two have become all to confused. I recall reading some years ago a medieval document, a history in which the bishop who wrote the history said with no small grief that the kingdom of man, the kingdom of evil, and the kingdom of Christ had become so intermeshed that he said “sometimes I wonder where the one stops and the other begins.” We see this sort of thing all too often, and all too often we have men attempting to further the confusion by acting as though they have no right to judge which means no right to separate good and evil, no right to protest against confusion, no right to draw the line clearly. The issues between good and evil are clear cut, we cannot confuse them. God and Satan cannot be confused; neither can gentile power ploys and Christian authority. There is a difference and our Lord tells us what the difference is. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thy word which is truth speaks to our every condition. Cleanse from us oh Lord all Gentile authority and make us ministers of Thy kingdom, of Thy truth; with a desire not to lord it over others but to minister unto them and to serve them in Jesus Christ our Lord. Make us mindful oh Lord that this is our calling, and that we have the great pattern of our Savior who came not to Lord it over us, but to serve us. How great Thy ways are oh Lord, and how marvelous, and we praise Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now concerning our lessons, yes?

[Audience member] I’ve seen this in the church that we have been normally attending sort of, this sort of tension between a democratic individual power and authority versus clamoring for a king for the power and authority to be vested in the pastor for example. This tension seems to be a real impediment to a postmillennial theocratic Godly dominion-oriented view catching on. Where’s the starting point for educating the Christians in this and dwelling on the Lordship of Christ initially say, or what’s the best foundation that we can use?

[Rushdoony] Well first of all both the democratic authority and a pastoral authority can be Gentile. It can be a lording over people, and all too often today the idea that because something is democratic it is therefore fair, is prevalent. The democratic situation can be as intolerable as a monarchical or a pastoral one. Both are evil if they are separated from the authority of God and from the fact that they are called to a ministry. So the only cure for that is that there must be a recognition of the sovereignty of God and the priority of His word. Take that away and you have every man spouting his own opinion, you have the condition of the book of Judges “in those days there was no King in Israel (that is they did not recognize the Lord as king) and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” We have the same condition today. Every man is an instant authority, and he feels that his word is as good as anybody else’s and where God doesn’t agree with him, so much the worse for God. So this is the problem, who is the lord, they or Christ? And they need to be told that, that they’re putting themselves in Christ’s place.

Yes John?

[Audience member] Do you think also that in part also the problem he just raised over here, is due to the fact that very few modern Christian theologians have really set down and dealt with the form of government in the church, that this tension between pastor and democracy and everything else. Do you think maybe that could also be partly resolved by a re-emphasis again of teaching the church what the proper form of church government should be?

[Rushdoony] No, not what the form of church government should be, but what the authority in the church is, you see. You can have varying forms of church polity or government and still have Godly authority if the priority of God and his word is recognized. And you can have a very, very ungodly church with any kind of polity. In fact one of the problems is that when you look at churches they emphasize even in their names their form of government rather than their faith. They are Episcopal, or Presbyterian, or Congregational, all of these emphasis a form of government and that hasn’t kept any of them from going sadly astray because they key is the Lord, it is theological.

Yes Bob?

[Audience member] Many of our forefathers specifically the father of the constitution makes a very fine definition in the federalist papers {?} on just exactly what he thinks about a democratic type of government. He doesn’t mention God as being the head, but he certainly aims right at that direction and denounces anything else.

[Rushdoony] And the constitution has both worked and failed depending on the character of the people. It’s an abysmal failure today because the people are failures.

Any other questions, yes?

[Audience member] I would like to know where you go in a library to find quotations from Genghis Kahn. [Laughter]

[Rushdoony] Well when you read incessantly things stick in your mind so that when you come to a subject you remember those things.

Yes?

[Audience member] There’s so many places in the King James Bible where apparently the translators who wrote that version used words that are not clear to us, like dominion. Now dominion apparently is used, the same word, as two different meanings.

[Rushdoony] Well different words are used but…

[Same audience member] You say there’s dominion that you were talking tonight, but dominion is also used in a Godly way.

[Rushdoony] Yes it’s another word, and we only have the one word in English. However it’s very clear here, that our Lord distinguishes between a Gentile exercise of dominion. Now the Greek is subtle enough to have a different word there. It is true that every time there is a translation of the Bible into a language there are problems, especially because languages that are totally new to the Bible do not yet have some connotations of meaning that the Bible does. However a Bible translation reshapes the language and gives it a new character and a new meaning. The King James is an excellent translation, not that it’s perfect, but here I think it still comes through when he distinguishes between the Gentile exercise of dominion plus that which is a ministry. So we do have grounds for differentiation.

[Audience member] It’s not as clear as it could be though. You’ve got to look at the context.

[Rushdoony] Yes, some modern translations do render it “the princes of the Gentiles Lord it over them” which does help and is a very literal rendering of the Greek.

Yes?

[Audience member] I just think they {?} their probably isn’t one person in five hundred million who could tell you the difference between one republic, which all countries are republic, they’re not stupid, they’re going to set that constitution up to suit themselves, but there isn’t one that could differentiate between out of five hundred thousand. I have hardly ever met any that could tell you the difference between our republic and another one.

[Rushdoony] Yes but you see it isn’t a question of knowledge, it’s a question of character.

[Audience member] True but then our republic at first puts the existents of God first, individual responsibility second, limited government third, and private property fourth, and no other constitution in this world had that aim. That’s the difference.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but when the character of the people changed there was no constitutional guarantee possible to protect the future against the change of character, that’s the key. A new concept of authority entered in. When you consider that men like John Adam’s, and Thomas Jefferson would go from inauguration to a boarding house to eat and nobody got up for them because a President wasn’t that important, the federal government wasn’t important. And they could walk down the street and nobody turned to look at them because what was important was what was going on in the churches and in the business houses and in the streets, and the lives of the people. Today, because the federal government is everything, they could never function as presidents did then. Then they had their proper place, the important thing was the people and their character, their faith, their work, and that’s what made the country work.

Well our time is up let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee that all things come from Thee, that all things shall fulfill Thy glorious purpose. Give us grace to walk day by day in the confidence that Thou doest all things well. That our times are in Thy hands, and that our labor in Thee is never vain. Great and marvelous are Thy ways and provision oh Lord, and we thank Thee. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 8 of 19

Track: #08

Year:

Dictation Name: 08 Authority and False Responsibility.

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh unto you. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Let our prayer be set forth before Thee as incense, and the lifting up of our hands as the evening sacrifice. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou who dwellest in the heaven of heavens has chosen to dwell with those who long for Thy presence and humbly seek Thy face. We thank Thee that Thou art Thee who are the restorer of all things. Strengthen our faith, amend our lives according to Thy holy will, restore in us the joy of salvation. Bind up that which is broken. Give light to our minds, strength to our wills, and rest to our souls that we may rejoice in Thee and praise Thee as Thou hast summoned us to do. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the thirteenth chapter of the gospel of Saint Luke verses one through five, and our subject authority and false responsibility, authority and false responsibility.

“There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things?

3 I tell you, nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

5 I tell you, nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

When we deal with the question of authority we are dealing with something which is God ordained. But the word authority has been used to cover a multitude of sins. A great deal of what passes for authority in this world is ungodly. Moreover the relationship of authority and responsibility is very important one and a tangled one. Before we go into the subject let us examine briefly some of the errors that impede an understanding of authority and responsibility.

First of all there is a great difference between the authority of God and that of man. Man is God’s creature and subordinate, and no man however God-given the authority he may have in his particular office can identify himself with God and act as though because this is a God given authority I can act like a little God. Man’s authority is derivative and always conditional. Responsibility and authority under God mean accountability to the person or the standard who is greater than ourselves. We must remember that the terms responsible and irresponsible cannot be applied to God. There is no one to whom God is accountable. He is not responsible to some idea or being greater than himself. But all of us who are not God, all of us, are responsible to persons and ultimately to God who is greater than all of us. When men seek to become God they do not live beyond good and evil, as they dream a la Nietzsche and Adam, nor do they live beyond responsibility, they simply live in terms of irresponsibility because as creatures they can only be either responsible or irresponsible. And Adam and Eve who had been created by God, and established in a pilot project for exercising dominion and subduing, developing the earth, chose to play God and immediately became less than good, solid human beings because they denied responsibility which is a part of our creature hood. The woman Thou didst give to me, she did give me and I did eat. “It’s Your fault God you gave me the woman, and it’s her fault”, and Eve had a like excuse; modern man beginning with Adam and Eve and ever since place responsibility for their sin on the environment and ultimately on God.

Second this means that fallen man has because of His sin a bent to environmentalism. Although he claims to be a God he refuses to see himself except as a victim, not as a sinner, and there’s a world of difference. The whole modern world stresses the idea that everybody is a victim but at the same time they’re victimizing themselves. Our children can blame us according to many schools of thought, we provided the bad home. But of course we can blame our parents, or we can blame our heredity, or the community, anything except ourselves. This approach is basic to almost all psychotherapy, and psychotherapy of this sort is dangerous because it confirms people into thinking in the wrong channels and greats a dependency on a psychotherapist who supports them in their sickness, not to develop their health.

Then third Humanism sometimes does exactly the reverse, and this is usually Humanism it’s within the church. It aggravates the problem by exaggerating responsibility. Churchmen who go in for psychotherapy in their pastoral counseling make the individual into a kind of semi-god and ultimate causality, and this is dangerous. As though you’re responsible for everything, you’re responsible for what your husband, or your wife, or your children are doing, and so you’re made to feel guilty. The scriptures says that the soul that sinneth shall die; and it tells Ezekiel that “you’ve made your witness once, then you’re innocent of the blood of any man, and that’s it.” It doesn’t tell us we have a God like responsibility for everyone that’s associated with us. That’s a sin, it’s putting a God-like responsibility on a person that God does not permit.

Moreover it exults the psychotherapist. Of course in all psychotherapy there is a hidden evil and danger, because in effect you go to a person and it’s a one-to-one relationship, “alright, heal me.” You’re the healer. Are they? And how’s it going to be done by talking, by dredging up the past, and by fixing responsibility. It’s the family, it’s your husband, it’s your wife, it’s you, and this is where the Christian psychotherapist is especially bad because he aggravates the guilt. And the hidden assumption in all of this is that man can do the healing; the psychotherapist, or the person.

Now to illustrate this point from some very real situations, a legion of them. Men and woman go to psychotherapists to say that they’re in very, very critical trouble, emotional problems, unable to function. Why? “My spouse is unfaithful and irresponsible,” and so on and on. Now in all these situations the erring spouse is not present. So here’s a problem where there is sin, and how can you deal with a sin when the sinner is not involved in the counseling situation? There’s only one person for the psychotherapist to work on, the innocent part, and believe me they do work on them. And many a pastoral psychologist will start by indicting some way or another the innocent party: “Have you tried to win your spouse back with love? Have you loved enough? Have you gone the extra mile?” and so on. And I’ve known instances where such people have told me that they’ve made the mistake in talking to the psychotherapist after thirty-forty minutes of talking and drudging up feelings they burst out with “Sometimes I wish my spouse would drop dead. I’ve had it I’m so weary” Well this is an excellent opportunity for another guilt trip to be loaded upon someone who’s merely having a human reaction. And the same is true of children, guilt trips are imposed upon them. But none of us are perfect, none of us are without sin, none of us can have a perfect relationship one with the other, with anyone. So that we can all be made very easily to feel guilty if something goes wrong. But we are not God, and our spouse, our children, our co-workers, our associates, and our friends are not our creatures. Each of is responsible to God for what he or she is and we are in the final analysis responsible only for ourselves. We have a real but limited responsibility for others. To blame ourselves beyond a very limited degree for what happens to others is sin and presumption.

Then fourth, humanistic psychotherapy has a double offense. It gives to much authority and power to the person while at the same time assuming that all problems are solvable by man and without reference to anything beyond man – that is God. And so the idea is that by delving into a person’s mind the problem will be solved, and instead of talking out a problem these psychotherapists talk people into worse ones. Why? They are operating within a closed system, nothing exists except man and man; and so they’re going to find the causality within you or within somebody else. But what is our text about? Certain Judeans came up to our Lord and they said “did you hear about the Galileans, whose blood Pilot has mingled with their sacrifices?” Now we don’t know anything about this incident in history it’s one of countless numbers that have disappeared except for this sentence from human perpu {?}. But Galileans had come up to the temple and in some kind of incident the legionnaires had killed a number of them so that in effect their blood was mingled with their sacrifices which they had brought up to the temple. Well why was this question brought up? It’s obvious from the next sentence “suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things?” Now to get the implication, the drift of that, we must realize the Galileans were the northern tribes, what was once the kingdom of Israel. The Judeans were the tribe of Judah, and of Benjamin, and the half-tribe of Simian and various of the ten tribe’s members that had moved southward. And those in Judea regarded the Northerners of the same blood, but religiously lax in the idea of the Judeans because they had no liking for either the Pharisee’s or the Sadducee’s and they took an easy going attitude towards the faith, and so they were regarded as sinners not fit to associate with. So a number of them got killed, of course. What would you expect? The Galileans are no good and therefore they got what they deserved. “Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things? I tell you nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.” And now our Lord throws them a curved ball, they’d been talking about those nasty Galileans. He brings up some Judeans, “or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them. Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you nay: but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” You’re all going to die, either a natural death or by an accident. Now you better make your relationship right with God before that happens. And these people were not particular sinners that these things happened to them. You were assuming two things, first that God was not the ultimate cause and second that this is not a fallen sinful world in which there are many things that happen because this whole world is out of joint.

Now, Job’s comforters were very similar to these who came to Jesus and brought up the matter of these Galileans. Job was being tried by God’s permission and so Job’s friends, Job’s comforters, (God spare us from friends like that) came and they said “of course Job you know why this has happened. God is punishing you for your sin, and so you’ve got to confess your sins.” And Job said “no. I am a man with the frailties of men, but I know that I have sought in all my ways to please God.” And the more he insisted that it could not be a judgment upon his sin the more vehement they became indicting him. As though the only causality in the universe, now these were people who believed in God, was something that man originated. In other words, you sin, well God judges you but all things are precipitated by what man does. All causality is put into motion by human action. In other the center of the universe was man, the center of all activity, the point of origination of all events is what man does. And so God answered Job’s comforters and said “were you there when I created the earth and the morning stars sang together for joy as they beheld creation?” “I cause it to rain” God tells Jobs friends “where no man is.” The rain doesn’t fall because of man, “I rejoice in the hippopotamus, and in the wild ox. But the wild ox you take and tame and put in your stall whether he likes it or not. The universe is not run for the wild ox, nor for you. There are causes; there are reasons above and beyond you.” The point of origin, the determining fact in all causality is not man, but God.

Well the disciples were very much infected by the humanism of their day, and so when another episode took place they reacted like good, modern, psychotherapists’. They wanted to affix responsibility entirely within the human scene, as a closed system. We read in John 9:1-3

“And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

3 Jesus answered, neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.”

Now to see the extent to which the works of God were made manifest in that man read the rest of John nine. Here was a man long before the disciples saw the truth, saw who Christ was, saw the meaning of what he had done and witnessed to the chief authorities concerning it. What had happened? God had used his lifetime of blindness to give him a greater sight than anyone else in his day had. We’re not even told his name, but we know that his name is written in heaven and he has a greater position than countless others. Behind all things stands the absolute cause, God who’s purpose it was that the works of God should be made manifest in the blind man. The blindness was a prelude to greater sight.

Now Christianity is of necessity a personal faith. But it is not exclusively or essentially personal. It is not man centered, it is God centered. And when people make it a kind of closed system on the human level, and either affix responsibility and authority or deny responsibility and authority entirely within this closed system they erode authority. It is God centered, and accountability is to God and God declares we are responsible creatures, but He says up to a certain point only, you are not little gods, or semi-gods. So you can neither deny responsibility nor can you take the whole world upon your shoulders as though you were God, as though you are accountable as a kind of superman for everyone around you.

It has been said of famine victims that as they reach the final stages of starvation they move less and less, their sexual energy disappears and they become more and more self-absorbed. This is true of spiritual starvation. When faith becomes less God and Christ centered people are capable of less and less activity of any Godly sort. They are unable to reproduce their faith, and they have a self-centered religious life. And authority and power in any Biblical sense leaves them. Man needs transcendence; man needs to have the focal point of his life on the triune God, not on himself, not on the human scene. And it is the sad fact that pietism has done much to erode Godly authority and Godly responsibility because it has become so man-centered.

The presupposition of almost all psychotherapy and counseling within the church and outside of the church is that the councilor has the solution; or that together with the person they’re going to work it out. The Bible says “God has the answer, not man.” Man is a responsible creature but he is not self-created, nor self-caused. His strength and power and his authority come from knowing his limitations, knowing the priority of God and His purpose, His causality in our lives and in the universe. What we experience therefore in the way of grief’s and troubles; depressions and crisis are not matter for psychotherapy to say “now this and that you did wrong.” Or “This and that if you do, all will be well.” They are God’s way of moving us forward, of compelling us to grow. If we make central our reactions, our feelings then we close our minds to God’s meaning and purpose in all these things. God wants us to have in our appointed place authority and power. We can only get it in God’s way, and it’s a matter of growth. God never uses anyone without first breaking them up and reshaping them and putting them through all kinds of trials and experiences first of all. SO that at each point in our lives we meet a crisis, something that shakes us up to the foundations of our being, and in terms of that we grow in the Lord. It’s a process of continuing growth.

Remember what Paul says about the whole of history and applies to us, to you and to me, and to the nations, and to the whole historical process. He says “Now the things which are, are being shaken; so that things which cannot be shaken may alone remain.” Paul tells us in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews that history is a gigantic earthquake, like a volcano erupting and it buries those who will not move, who will not grow. Because God has determined that there will be a great shaking in our lives and in the lives of nations until only the unshakable remains. So we have been called, called to be citizens of the kingdom of God, to a glorious destiny in Him. In the process we shall undergo many trials. As our Lord said before He left His disciples “in the world ye shall have much tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world, peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Let us pray.

Glory be to Thee oh God who hast ordained all things in Thy wisdom. For Thou hast ordained the troubles we experience, the blindness we know, and the grief’s for our greater fulfillment in Thee; or our greater joy and eternal gladness in Thy kingdom. Give us grace so to walk day by day that we may have our eyes fixed there were our true joys are to be found, even in Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

We have three announcements this morning. First of all this Tuesday, May the 29th, at 10:00 a.m. we shall have here our mail work for our Chalcedon report mailing. Next Sunday, June the third instead of on the second Sunday we shall have our monthly potluck here. We’re changing it because the second Sunday some of you may be out of town with school over. Then third let us remember Georgia {?} in our prayers, she is going in for surgery of what is apparently cancer, so please do remember her in your prayers.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience member] I don’t whether I should ask this question cause I wrote it all down, down South and I’m afraid I might foul it up a little bit. After reading By Whose Standard and you go into Job so much at the end, I really became confused because he went through all his trials and tribulations, you brought out the fact that God creates all things. Not only human beings, not only the living things on earth, but every fact, every idea He creates them all. What does that do to hope and promise if He, being ultimate in all things, that takes away the hope from the promise. When He promises us, in the scriptures, promises certain things we rely on that. Job relied on it, but it was taken away from him. He obeyed and he was given such a punishment because God saw fit to please Satan to show Him that Job would not break. Well that’s enough to break a man’s faith.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but it didn’t. The later end of Job was greater than the former. On top of that Job has been a blessing to untold generations of people. It is possible, and there are many who believe it to be the case, that the book of Job is the oldest book in the Bible. That it goes back perhaps the days of Abraham. Now there’s some liberal critics who deny that but there are others who with very good reason and internal evidence in the book say it goes back that far. So Job’s been around, the book of Job, for untold centuries and out of Job’s experience the number of people who have been blessed, beginning with himself, is legion. You mention the fact that I have the entire back part of By What Standard devoted to the book of Job. Precisely because the book of Job when I was a junior at the University of California at Berkeley was the decisive book in my life because it brought me face to face with the fact that I cannot have a humanistic yardstick. I can’t say “why Lord did this happen?” in terms of myself or humanity or anybody else. That the only yardstick by which events can be judged is God.

Now, we want our perspective to govern. And Job’s friends had to see that point, and Job though he was a godly man wasn’t seeing that point. So he was blessed as he came to see it, and his latter end was greater than his former. Now the result of Job’s experience has been a blessing to untold people, just as the fact that very often people have survived because somebody went to war to defend the borders of the country. Job’s experience established a fixed line for people to the end of time.

Yes?

[Same audience member] I do not want my perspective, or any other human beings perspective, to be the central control. I want God’s, and God has given us the scripture, and He has promised certain things.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s right and God keeps His promises. But God also tells us where the center is you see. Even as God says “Do this and live.” He’s also telling us “Do this, how?” “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” John Calvin…

[Same audience member]..{?} rely on. And of course with God, but we have to have something livable to rely on, and that black and what book gives us that. That’s the only thing I have also my personal relationship in prayer. So what I’m saying, and I know there’s an answer to this, it takes away hope.

[Rushdoony] Only if our hope is in something here and now you see, totally circumscribed within history. God tells us very definitely there are material blessings here and now, judgments here and now, but He also tells us that there are times in history when the whole of history is like an earthquake and a flood, and in those circumstances things get very ugly. And the innocent very often suffer. Certainly I can testify to that fact in my family history. My father and my mother were virtually the first for a few generations to die in bed, and they themselves were on a death march. But the Psalm 46 says

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.”

That’s talking about a tremendous catastrophe, and in the midst of it God is our very present help, our refuge. So what we have to say is that we cannot choose the way God is going to bless us, sometimes the greatest blessing God can give to us is to clobber us because He has more than today and tomorrow in mind. He brings great grief and disaster because He has our future in mind, and our children’s future. So what we want is to circumscribe the cause and effect within our life.

One of the saddest things I ever experienced was talking with a very wonderful older man, whose name you would all immediately recognize, a man of great wealth, who had spent untold millions in trying to turn this country around politically, and trying to restore education to the kind of thing he knew in a small one room school house in Iowa and the kind of training he had; which made him a success. Starting as a poor farm boy he became a man of very great wealth. And the thing that came home to him was he’d wasted millions. He told me this not long before his death. Why? Because he’d tried to get results before he died, and the result was a waste. We can’t limit it to our purview. Well our time is up so let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Thy word oh Lord is truth; Thy word is a lamp unto our feet and a joy to our hearts. Dismiss us now with Thy blessing. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 7 of 19

Track: #07

Year:

Dictation Name: 07 Undermining Authority

[Rushdoony] Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship the Father and Spirit and in truth. For the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God who art from all eternity, who art greater than all things visible and invisible. We thank Thee that in Thy grace and mercy Thou art mindful of us, Thy creatures. We thank you our Father that there is nothing to small nor to great for Thee. In this confidence we come our Father, to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us and to rejoice in Thy works. To give thanks that all our yesterdays, today’s, and our tomorrows are in Thine omnipotent hand. Bless us ever in Thy service, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from the gospel of Saint Mark, the thirteenth chapter verses thirty-two thru thirty-seven, our subject: undermining authority.

32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.

33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.

34 For the Son of Man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch.

35 Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:

36 Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.

37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.

Over the centuries there has been a continuing war against authority often openly, often as an undercurrent. We’re speaking here of Godly authority, not rebellion against ungodly authority. Man being a sinner and in rebellion against God is therefore in rebellion against authority, Godly authority. However open rebellion against authority is often less damaging then the covert rebellion which hides under the mask of a seeming orthodoxy, a seeming respect for authority but actually undermines it. Very often covert undermining authority comes with an insistence on greater authoritarianism.

Let us begin with some obvious examples. Emanuel Swedenborg whose influence in the English speaking world began about 1788 has been very influential in Western history. His influence on English and American writers of the last century is enormous. Emerson very extensively shows Swedenborg’s influence. One almost needs to know what Swedenborg said in order to decode Melville’s novels with their highly involved symbolism. According to Swedenborg the whole of the Bible was a coded book and He only had the key. And so in order to understand the Bible you had to accept Swedenborg and his theory of correspondences, his decoding, as authoritative. He gave a symbolic meaning to every passage in the Bible, and established himself as the only decoder. Thus he established himself as the only mediator between God and man. This of course has been the mark of cultists over the centuries. Now the sad fact is that all too many Catholic and Protestant scholars over the years have been guilty of a like esoteric approach. In the medieval emphasis for example there were four levels of meaning. Authority was thereby transferred from the Bible to the erudite commentators so that unless you understood them and the original languages somehow you were incapable of understanding the plain words of scripture.

Granted there passages that are difficult to understand, and difficult to translate. But there is no essential doctrine of scripture that is affected by those difficult passages. And what Saint Augustine once said is still true when he said the Bible was profound and deep enough to drown an elephant in and shallow enough for a child to wade into. That was very true. Course we might throw in Mark Twain’s comment when he said it wasn’t the parts of the Bible that he didn’t understand that gave him trouble; it was the parts that he did understand. Now, protestant commentators have been no less guilty of this kind of esoteric approach, as though the Bible could not be understood unless they were read and studied and followed.

And you have today, for example, a school of symbolic theology that rests upon the work of one Orientalist in particular. And if these people are right the real meaning of the Bible was undiscovered until they were born, now that’s quite a bit of arrogance. What it says in effect is that expert authority replaces faith, and the only way to describe that is to call it what it is, blasphemy. Another subversion is pietism, both medieval and modern. The plain doctrine of scripture and the authority of God and His word are decried in favor of what they call “heart religion”, and they will accuse others of having it up here in the head but not in the heart. Well that’s nonsense, man is a unity and to break him up that way is ridiculous. Moreover pietism has led to a radical egocentricity; it makes the center of religion not God but the individual soul, its salvation and its experience.

Now our salvation is the necessary beginning of our life as Christians. But our salvation is not the be all and end all of faith. The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, and our Lord said “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” or, more modern word, His justice. And all these things that the gentiles seek, the people of the world desire, will be added unto you. So that whatever it is we want, whether it be happiness, peace of mind, you name it. All these are by-products according to our Lord to seeking first the kingdom of God and His justice. But pietism winds up always in pious gush as though the be-all and end-all of religion was that you feel good in relationship to God. I don’t think it’s important to God that you feel good, it is important to Him that you obey Him. Our Lord in facing the cross prayed “oh my Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt.” Pietism doesn’t have that spirit. It sets aside the plain, the law word of God in favor of emotional experiences, and it is therefore erosive of authority.

There is a parallel movement in the modern age to pietism in the camp of humanism. It is romanticism. Romanticism is the exaltation of feeling and of experience. And there has always been a close connection between Romanticism and revolution. In fact the scholars have pointed out before you had revolution and the beginning of the age of revolution of the French revolution onto the present; you had the rise of the Romantic Movement. Well now, that seems strange. Romantic poets beginning the Romantic Movement, how could that lead to revolution? What it did was this; with the Romantic poets and the romantic artists generally the whole emphasis of man’s life and the universe was centered on personal feelings. And this kind of emphasis let to the demand which we see around us today, instant gratification. And in an age of instant gratification you have what you see around us today, the drug culture. Young and old going for all kinds of drugs because they want instant gratification. Now that’s romanticism. Well this romantic demand for instant gratification created the age of revolution, the undermining of all authority. Because what did the romantic say when he went into politics? “If we do not get tomorrow the political order we want, no if we do not get it today, we’re going to destroy everything.” And every time they wind up with something hellish, because they’re not ready to work. Instant gratification is anti-work in its outlook, in its mentality and hence is radically destructive.

And so the Romantic Movement with its emphasis on feeling and instant gratification has led to the age of revolution, the age where junior highs today in our cities, and sometimes not even only in the cities, are heavily into drugs. One man who was converted and had been a drug pusher said that there was not a single junior high in any metropolitan area where you could not get drugs from a pusher in a classroom. Every class room had them, beginning in junior high. Instant gratification, our culture promotes it; therefore it is a revolutionary age and it destroys continually. Because “if I I don’t get what I want now, I’m going to smash everything.” That’s romanticism. And of course the Romantic believes that his good will replaces the necessity for work, of course he assumes he has a good will. And he assumes that with his good will he can create, if he’s only allowed to smash everything, paradise on earth tomorrow.

Now this confidence in the will of man is shared by arminian theology within the church. Thomas Boston, one of the great Scottish divines whose dates are 1676-1732 in his Human Nature and its Fourfold State writes sometimes with humor about this belief that men have that they’re going to get from here to paradise just by willing it. That here they are and they’re going to accept Jesus Christ and suddenly they’re going to be as it were, in heaven. And he said, and I quote “and how is it that those who magnify the power of their free will do not confirm their opinion before the world by an ocular demonstration in a practice as far above others in holiness, as the opinion of their natural ability is above that of others? Or is it maintained only for the protection of lust which men may hold fast as long as they please, and when they have no more use for them throw them off in a moment and leap out of Delilah’s lap into Abraham’s bosom.” Well there’s a great deal of thinking in religion and in politics, and in economics that you can, as it were, leap out of Delilah’s lap and to Abraham’s bosom just when you make up your mind to do so.

But it doesn’t work that way. Biblical authority is eroded by false theologies of this sort. And theologies can be false not only in terms of bad doctrine, but in terms of the abuse of good doctrine. To believe in God’s grace is necessary. To believe in God’s regenerating power, sanctification, and in His providential grace, is the foundation of the Christian life. But God’s grace is also energizing. It does not lead to quietism; it does not leave to egocentricity, but to Godly activity. Where there is grace there will be the fruits of grace, and it is this our Lord is talking about in the passage which we read, in particular in verse 31.

In verse 33 the word “watch” appears, again in verse 35 “watch, and pray, watch ye therefore.” Now the word watch in the Greek expresses not merely wakefulness but the watchfulness of those who are intent upon a thing. The watchfulness of an active working person, of someone’s who working on something and has to keep his eye on it because he doesn’t want it to go wrong. Whose working, let us say with a piece of equipment, and he has to keep his eyes on it because that’s his job and if he doesn’t pay attention, something can go astray. It’s a careful work, it’s a technical work, it’s something that requires his undivided attention. So our Lord says watch, concentrate on it. And then He says the son of man is as a man taking a far journey who left his home and gave authority to his servants, and every man his work. Authority is there exousia, the word which we dealt with previously which means authority and power both, and is sometimes translated authority, sometimes power, sometimes freedom, the freedom of a person who has authority and power. And he unites this, he gave authority, he gave every man his work and the two are one thought. When Christ gives us a work to do He gives us authority commensurate with the task so that authority is related essentially to the work. And the word gave applies to authority and to work, so when God gives us something to do, He gives us an authority in relationship to that.

Take a very simple illustration when God makes us parents. It’s a work to do, and it’s an authority that goes with that task. The two are related, we cannot separate them. So that wherever we have a task we have an authority, and the two are essentially related. Authority and power are undermined where a legitimate calling is undermined. If you take away a man’s work from him, you take away his authority; and where you have an interference with a man’s freedom to work you have an interference with that’s man authority. Where you have the federal or state government stepping in to a unwarranted degree to interfere with the man’s work there is an undermining of his authority. The same is true if the union or the employer does it and treats him as though he were an incompetent boob. His authority is undermined, and his work is undermined. Is it any surprise that productivity on the job is decreasing throughout the western world? It’s related to the fact that in every area people are treating one another as though they were children to be controlled and manipulated as though they had no authority. State officials lose authority as their work ceases to be useful and becomes oppressive. They don’t have any real authority; they may have power, but not authority. Pastors whose teaching shows very little faithfulness to the word of God undermine thereby their own authority, no matter how much they may seek to exalt it.

There is a relationship between authority and work, an essential relationship to separate the one from the other is to harm both. The Lord makes this connection in this passage as He speaks of his second coming. We are specifically told we cannot know the specifics of His return, and it is disobedience on our part to pry into this. That’s why rapture fever is dangerous and wrong, because people are thinking about being raptured to heaven when they’ve got a job to do and they should be doing it. And there is a threat implicit in our Lord’s statement, a warning “watch.” If they have not kept their watchfulness, their wakefulness, their concentration upon their task they will find the Lord to condemn them when He returns. Thus our Lord’s point in all this is not to be watchful for his coming in order to be ready with an impressive show, but that we be intent on the exercise of our authority and calling because our Lord and judge will surely return and will demand an accounting of our work.

There’s so much nonsense that is preached and taught today that is really disrespectful of God’s authority and of the dignity of His word. I shall never forget when our Martha came home from Christian school one day and they’d had somebody in chapel who’d gotten the children all worked up about the supposedly any moment return of Christ, and “what will He find you doing?” And this had the children in a dither, what if they were sitting on the potty when He came? Well Dorothy straightened out Martha on that in a hurry. What the Lord expects to find us doing is what we are to do day by day, meeting our responsibilities, and such teaching is nonsense because our Lord does not want us to do anything but to use the authority and the work He has given us to seek first the kingdom of God and His justice. If the church does not do its work it has no authority, if a believer does not do his work he too has no authority. When such is the case the church faces the world, maybe as an important body with a lot of fine buildings and a great deal of money; but not as the bride of Christ, not as the instrument of the King of glory. Formal correctness does not make the man, nor the church. Human authorities are derived from God and are conditional upon faithfulness to an appointed task. Our Lord said “by their fruits shall ye know them” anything which subverts that word undermines authority. Let us pray

Our Lord and our God Thy word is truth, and Thy word speaks to our every condition. Give us grace day by day to know that we have authority from Thee in our appointed task, that our work is the source of our authority. And Thou hast given us work and authority as a single gift, and a glorious gift in Thee. Bless us ever in Thy service, and make us ever joyful in Thy word, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson, yes?

[Audience member] Human authority is a task, where does responsibility come from?

[Rushdoony] Well in the fulfillment of our task. As we deal with our task, and I did go into it slightly, with responsibility we have authority. So responsibility, authority, work, are closely interrelated.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Thy word oh Lord is truth, and Thy word is peace, grace, mercy, and power. Send us forth oh Lord in Thy Spirit to make us more than conquerors in all things. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 6 of 19

Track: #06

Year:

Dictation Name: 06 Authority and Power

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Thus said the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy; “I dwell in the high and holy place with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the Spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite. If thou shalt seek the Lord Thy God thou shalt find Him; if thou seek Him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.” Let us pray.

Glory be to Thee oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We praise Thee on this day and always that Thy hand is every upon us for good. That all the days of our life Thou art mindful of us. Thou hast beset all our goings and our comings with Thy gracious love and care. Give us grace so to walk oh Lord that in all things we may seek to serve Thee, be faithful to Thy word, and rejoice in Thy providence, in Jesus name amen.

Our scripture this morning is two verses of the chapter of Acts, Acts 1:7&8. Our subject is authority and power, authority and power.

“7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

As we have seen the New Testament word for authority in the Greek is exousia. It is translated in several ways in the New Testament. In Luke twenty-three verse seven it is translated as jurisdiction. In first Corinthians eight verse nine as liberty. Many, many times exousia is translated as “right” and when it is used in these various sense what it is trying to convey is that the authority to speak or act and the liberty to do so, and the rightness of such actions are all one and the same. We also have it translated as “strength” in one instance. In other words there is a relationship between power and authority; they are essentially one in God. In man power and authority do not necessarily go together. A tyrant may have a great deal of power but no, or very little, legitimate authority. A usurper or conquering army may have power, but no legitimate authority. A gunman breaking in and holding a family as hostage has power, but he has no authority. Authority means legitimate jurisdiction, a rightness morally; a liberty which comes from this legitimacy. There can be no separation of authority and power in the triune God. This is why kenosis is so evil and destructive a doctrine.

But we have to go a step further; can we legitimately separate Godly authority and power? An ironic fact is that in the modern age a great deal of to-do is made about mothers when their authority is at a low ebb. But in terms of scripture than can be no separation of authority and power; in this sinful world Godliness may have authority, but it attracts hostility, it incites attacks. The aim of the ungodly is to obliterate God’s witness in man’s righteousness. Westminster Confession of faith says, with regard to holiness, that we are quickened and strengthened and given more authority in the practice of holiness. We are told that they who are effectually called and regenerated, have a new heart and a new spirit created in them are further sanctified really and personally through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection by His word and spirit dwelling in them. The dominion of the whole body of sin is destroyed, and the several lusts thereof are more and more weakened and mortified, and they more and more quickened and strengthened in all saving graces, to the practice of true holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. So that the Westminster confession tells us very quickly, very plainly, in the compass of one brief paragraph that there is a relationship in our lives between authority and power. Because when we grow in the authority of faithfulness to God, in the exercise of our calling we grow in power. And this development is not a Saint Vitus dance in no-man’s land. It is in the real world of everyday life, and the growth of holiness must be seen as the growth of power in and through the Holy Spirit.

In the American version of the Presbyterian form of government in 1788 when it was formulated the statement was made that truth is in order to goodness. And the statement goes on to declare very plainly that there is a correlation between virtues. When we develop one virtue we are going to strengthen ourselves in every virtue. We gain power and we gain authority, we gain strength. In brief true virtues do not come singly, and the grace of God comes to us to give us strength, growth, in every area of our lives. The fallen world is in hostility to God, it reacts with hatred and hostility and conflict ensues wherever Christian strength is manifested. But there is victory, and we must never forget it. Truth in order to goodness, it is also in order to authority, holiness, and power.

I believe that one of the greatest statements made in this century was made on June 15 1917 by a very remarkable man, Pope Benedict the 15th. His papacy was brief, 1914 – 1922. He is a virtually forgotten man today, but he had a great deal to say about the scriptures and about Biblical preaching. Consider what he said in these words, now this was when the war was being fought, little before we landed troops into Europe. And I quote, speaking of the reviving paganism of the world in the twentieth century “The causes of these evils are varied and manifold. No-one however will gainsay the deplorable fact, that the ministers of the word do not apply thereto an adequate remedy. Has the word of God then ceased to be what it was described by the apostle, living and effectual and more piercing than any two edged sword? Has long continued use blunted the edge of that sword? If that weapon does not everywhere produce its effect the blame certainly must be laid on those ministers of the gospel who do not handle it as they should. For no-one can maintain that the apostles were living in better times than ours. Or that they found minds more readily disposed toward the gospel, or that they met with less opposition to the law of God.” That’s a tremendous statement. Benedicts point is very clear. The authority and the power of the word of God enabled the apostles and their successors to challenge and overthrow the paganism of their day against incredible odds. It was a grim battle, but very early Rome knew that the Christians represented power.

We have less opposition said Benedict in 1917, and the fault is not that the word of God has lost its power, but that we do not proclaim it as we should. The church today wants to be a democracy, not a monarchy whose king is Christ. Is predestination unpopular with the people? Well then we won’t talk about it. Is the doctrine of responsibility unpopular with the people, we want to blame the environment and everything else? Well we won’t stress it. This is the order of the day, men preach to please people. Congregations object if what is said from the pulpit does not agree with them. Private judgment rules against God’s word.

But we are told in the book of Acts, first chapter verses seven and eight certain things. First the word that is used in verse seven is exousia, power and authority. Then we are told that we shall receive power. God the Father keeps in His own power the knowledge of the timing of history. Men cannot seek after that knowledge; they must know only what He tells us. As Deuteronomy 29 verse 29 says “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” What is the purpose of knowledge? That we may do all the words of this law Moses said.

Now the believer who is faithful to God in this sense receives power and authority. Ye shall receive power. How? In order to do His will, to be His witnesses, to do His work. Now the reference here some would say is to Pentecost, but it is far more. Because the primary emphasis, in fact the exclusive reference here is to the testimony, the witness. Not the gifts of the spirit but the gift of the spirit that we might function day by day in whatever we do, for the Lord and His kingdom. So the emphasis is upon the power that manifests itself, in faithfulness to the word, in the proclamation of the word, in being governed by the word. Ye shall be my witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Our Lord here speaks against curiosity, he recalls men to their duty. What the disciples had been asking about was “you tell us how history is going to develop.” And today a great deal of preaching is about the rapture, and people want charts to know what to expect. When will Russia move against us, or when will the rapture or the tribulation and all that nonsense take place? Morbid curiosity, not “what are God’s marching orders for me now?” What doth the Lord require of me?

These are two different religions. One that seeks knowledge in order to protect oneself and withdraw from reality, the other to go out and conquer, to exercise power in the name of God. Today we honor the forms of power. We honor authority outwardly and we have a Mother’s Day and we have a Father’s Day and we have all kinds of days on the calendar. But in reality the authority that should be represented in what those things symbolize is lacking. Authority and power come from God, and they must be united. The Holy Spirit gives us power to act for the Lord, this gift of the spirit is not for our personal pleasure or satisfaction or contentment.

Very shortly after the end of World War II was published which was an instant best seller; and the title of it sets for the goal of man in the post-war world. I believe the authors name was Lieberman the title was Peace of Mind peace of mind. This has been the great quest of modern man. Virtually all of us want peace of mind, and we forget that peace of mind we are never told in scripture that it is a legitimate goal, it’s only a byproduct. Happiness is not a legitimate goal, it’s a byproduct; Of what? Of doing the will of God, of working in terms of what God has appointed us to do, of being useful to him and to his kingdom. So that if we want peace of mind we must say “Lord what wilt Thou have me to do?” Paul tells us in II Corinthians 3:17 “Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty.” Because there too is power, there too is authority, and there is freedom then to go forward in the name of Christ and His kingdom.

When Paul says “where the Spirit of God is there is liberty, the word liberty is a translation of the Greek word eleftheria. Once in a while you encounter that as a name, it was once a little more popular than it is now, but in the past few years I have met a woman whose name was Eleftheria. Her parents who were obviously well-educated and knew there Greek, or else they probably had a great-grandmother who had that name. Eleftheria as Paul uses it in II Corinthians 3:17 means freedom of access to God, and freedom in Christ for greater movement. Where the Spirit of God is there is liberty, freedom for greater movement and freedom of access to God. Now this matter of access to God of which Paul speaks is something that doesn’t mean much to us today. But we must remember that scripture presents God as the great King, the King of all creation, king of the universe, and access to the king meant that power and authority had been conferred upon you. Tremendous fact, if you could walk into the presence of an emperor, when you walked out people virtually bowed before you because they knew they would never get to see the emperor, but you had power. That access gave you authority and power so that they sought favor from you, sought to please you because you were a person of power. And what are we told? We have that access. We have it when we walk in faithfulness to God. We walk in the Spirit and we have power, we have access. We pray, and we have access, it’s the privilege of being a Christian. It gives us power and authority if we want it.

About oh, 17-18 years ago I devoted an entire issue of the Chalcedon report to one subject, and I titled it Why Pray When You can Worry? Why pray when you can worry, and I think that’s the motto of most people. All of us sometime or other, it’s so much easier to worry. After all when we worry we have control of the situation, or we think we do. When we pray we’re saying “you take it God, it’s too much for me.” There’s a difference in the two attitudes. We have royal access, it gives us power and authority, and we do not choose to use it.

Today the world is, as Otto Scott and I were discussing before the meeting began, very much as it was before the reformation. The church of its day was very much decayed, it was controlled. The papacy had become religiously a dead letter. It was not allowed to be relevant, the monarchs did not permit it, and it had gone off into being a patron of the arts; and into that world came the word of God. It is interesting that at the beginning of this century in 1917 Benedict the 15th made a statement which in effect was a call for new reformation. A reformation not unlike that which Luther and Calvin started, one in terms of laying a hold of the power that had enabled the church at the beginning when it was a mere handful of people to overthrow Rome.

Let me read Benedict the 15th words again, speaking of the paganism of this century in 1917 “The causes of those evils are varied and manifold. No-one however will gainsay the deplorable fact, that the ministers of the word do not apply thereto an adequate remedy. Has the word of God then ceased to be what it was described by the apostle, living and effectual and more piercing than any two edged sword? Has long continued use blunted the edge of that sword? If that weapon does not everywhere produce its effect the blame certainly must be laid on those ministers of the gospel who do not handle it as they should. For no-one can maintain that the apostles were living in better times than ours. Or that they found minds more readily disposed toward the gospel, or that they met with less opposition to the law of God”

Well we must say that no other conclusion than this is possible from scripture. The word of God is the totally authoritative word and therefore the word of power. If Christians in their churches are powerless and sit in their pews week after week wondering why the world is going to hell it is because they have neglected the all conquering weapon which is at hand. We have access to the throne of power, we are given authority and power if we chose to use it. We have been called to be kings, priests, and prophets in Christ. The world is ours to conquer, will we do it? Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thy word is truth and Thy word is the word of power and authority. Make us strong in Thy word, in Thy work, and in prayer; that we might be a generation of victors knowing that this the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee, in Jesus name amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes.

[Audience member] Rush can we say that the power and authority are in a certain sense potential, but the power doesn’t manifest itself in exactly accordance with God’s law?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Same audience member] On any of the law basis is brute power and usurped authority.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Audience member] I was listening to Pastor Sullivan’s tapes, I don’t whether you’ve heard them or not, they belong to Ken Zursten {?} I believe but they’ve been circulating. And I was listening to his message and he was talking about his experience in jail and everything like that, and how he was able to witness there. And he certainly has a onward Christians soldiers message but he mentioned when he was witnessing in the jail one of the books, you know he was giving them liturgy and trying to feed them in jail, one of his books that he gave them was Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. Now how can he be so right in his perspective and still to hold to Hal Lindsey’s documents?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Pastor Sullivan is a very remarkable man. He is greater than his theology at points, and while he does hold to the premillennialism he also has seen, as very few people have, the necessity of standing up to the state and asserting the freedom of Christ’s kingdom. On that point he’s very strong. I’ve mentioned this before and it’s worth mentioning again, I first met him a good many years ago, I think in 78 or 9 when several of us, myself John Whithit {?} and others spoke on the church and state issue. And he came up to me and expressed his appreciation for it and said that he was not a scholar and there was no contribution he could make to the subject but he said “one thing I can do if need be, I can go to jail for Christ.” And he has done that, and he’s shaken up the country with what he’s done.

Yes?

[Audience member] Just before I left home I heard the most gross thing I think I’ve ever heard. There’s a gentleman I think from England, it was a minister preaching on the tube {?} and he said he has just written a book on the homosexuality of Christ and the book will be published and released in Christmas, December, and then the movie will be made next year {?} have you heard anything about?

[Rushdoony] Several books have already been written along those veins which go through the Bible and claim to enlist as homosexuals, or prove they were homosexuals, a number of the great saints of old, and Christ and others as well. This is nonsense. They also say when the Bible condemns homosexuality it’s not really saying they are bad. Now this shouldn’t surprise us, they’ve gone through history and done the same with any number of historical figures. A very prominent historian wrote a book a few years ago which purported to prove in terms of ancient documents that Richard the Lionhearted was a homosexual, and that was accepted for about twenty years or more, as historical fact until one man went back over the records and demonstrated that everything this earlier scholar, who proved to be a homosexual, had said about Richard was false. That he never was. We’re getting a manufactured version of the past by these people and naturally they’re going to strike at the Bible most of all because no-where are they more condemned then in scripture.

So what else do you expect from them? Being what they are they’re going to do these things. That doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the silence of so many Christians in churches on the subject, that’s the evil.

Yes?

[Audience member] Two things; one of the things, a lot of the people don’t connect ideas and consequences in the modern age and I think that’s one of the reasons pastor Sullivan has his problems. The other thing about the movie, I know that for almost a decade now, a little more than a decade, since 1973 or so there has been a number of individuals trying to put together motion pictures based on the homosexuality of Christ, and all of them have failed so far. And the reason why is because distributors are very, very afraid of what may happen in the marketplace if such a film comes out. And without distributors giving you advanced guarantees on play dates and things of that nature it’s very difficult for producer to raise money to produce such a film. I know one film was supposed to start {?} it got right down to the point to where they were about three months before they were getting ready to shoot and they had everything they thought, cast and all that, and they had a guarantor for the loan all lined up for the loan and everything but they couldn’t get any distributions, get enough distributions for it in order to secure their loan agreements. And this battle for a homosexual film on Christ has been going on for well over ten years and it’s not something that’s gonna go away at this point.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] Well the campaign is a little deeper. The argument has been raised that the holocaust has occurred because it was a culmination of Christian thinking and I received a letter the other day somebody said that Billy Graham’s movie was rated PG, parental guidance suggested, according to the motion picture group that makes the ratings because no pre-teenage child should be exposed to Christianity without parental consent. So what we are seeing is an effort, a campaign practically, to outlaw Christianity.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] {?} The greater and the more vigorously they attack the greater strides we’re making.

[Rushdoony] Yes, one reason for the attack today that has in past decade become so venomous is because of the revival of Christian faith, the Christian school movement and much more. Naturally they’re concerned, they had written it off. In 1952 the Supreme Court in one of its decisions in effect said “Christianity is dead and we don’t have to worry about it, and we can begin non-Christian legislation and decisions. But it isn’t dead and this is upsetting to them.

One of the interesting things is that in one or two of the very early decisions on Christian schools the courts were favorable to Christian schools in an indulgent way. Their attitude was in effect “here are some harmless people who are going to be gone within a generation, so we can make a show of being civil libertarians on this issue.” Now some state boards of education took the same attitude, the first Christian school or two they had to deal with they were very indulgent about and said they were happy to indulge such groups. Well when they saw them growing they became furious, and it is because there’s a dramatic change underway today.

Yes?

[Audience member] It appears that the Christian school movement is almost the only area of revival that goes beyond that emphasis on the South Asia people {?} Well I was just going to say are other areas that we could concentrate on, is abortion another one or the creation issue another one?

[Rushdoony] There are a great many areas and we’re going to do some work on that in the double issue of the journal we surveyed some. But we will begin reporting on some other aspects of this. For example the number of agencies now that deal with welfare or, for example, a group of Christian layman headed by a Texas oilman were going across the border into Mexico into some of the very primitive areas where the incidence of disease is very high because they have either only shallow wells, or very polluted muddy little streams. There going there with drills that can put in some very good wells. Just in that respect they’re changing life in one community after another. Now that’s one of thousands of things that nobody hears about, but these things are beginning to have an impact here in this country and abroad, a great deal is taking place, dramatic things. But there is no mention of this.

We’re going to try to let people know about these things and also encourage them to do the like.

[Audience member] That’s one of the problems now Rush is that most Christians when you talk about reconstruction and you talk about the Christian solution to welfare and the Christian solution to poverty and disease and these other kinds of things. Most people have a great deal of difficulty believing you because they see no evidence of it happening anywhere and the principle advantage in publishing the journal in the way we have is the fact that it provides concrete proof to other people that something really is happening. Because now they get 90% of their information from the media and of course the media is going to ignore it. It tells people “hey this is not a new idea, that there are other people that are doing it and it’ working very successfully, it’s more efficient, it’s more caring and loving for people. All of the things that the Christian message is supposed to be is demonstrated in these kinds of projects and this kind of publishing, and getting publicity for these kinds of things is immensely important for the whole Christian body. Cause it shows it can be done.

[Rushdoony] Yes and it is being done.

Well if there are no further comments let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou art at work in our world, in our lives in our time. We thank Thee Lord that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 5 of 19

Track: #05

Year:

Dictation Name: 05 Living Under Authority

[Rushdoony] Let us Worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord Who made heaven and earth, oh come let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thy dominion extends to heaven and earth and all things therein and we Thy people come into Thy presence to give Thee Thy due praise. Give us ever joyful and grateful hearts that we live, move, and have our being in Thee; that Thou art He who didst make heaven and earth and hast ordained all things for Thy glory and for their fulfillment in Thee. Give us grace to walk in terms of Thy holy purpose, to rejoice in Thy grace and to trust in all Thy tomorrow’s, in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from Colossians the first chapter. Beginning with verse twelve and continuing through verse twenty-three. Our subject Living under authority, living under authority Colossians one twelve through twenty-three.

12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

14 In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:

15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

16 For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

18 And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

19 For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell;

20 And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.

21 And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled

22 In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:

23 If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister;

Our subject is living under authority and our particular concern is the thirteenth verse of Colossians one. It is important for us to know the nature of authority. To know what constitutes true authority and false authority. Most people have a preference through a superficial solution which will make life easier. Hence they avoid the essential question of authority. Moreover our age has a penchant for seeing alternatives in terms of ridiculously obvious ones. We are told for example by some, and I hear it regularly, that the federal government is a legitimate God created authority, and therefore we have a duty of obedience. True, but what are the limits of it? That’s the question. Where does it begin and end? Moreover we must say further that neither republicans nor democrats can command obedience as though they were the state. The better question would be, the better alternative is “does the federal government always and in all things have a legitimate authority over us?” And this is the question that our day in particular needs to ask.

To give an idea of the kind of abuse of texts in the Bible that deal with authority there is the favorite text with many husbands, Ephesians 5:22 & 23

22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.

Now I submit from very unhappy experience that many men are in the church and are nominally Christians because they like such verses. It’s a good way of keeping the woman in line. After all she goes to church and takes it seriously, then she feels a duty of obedience. This gives such nominal hypocritical Christian’s security in there waywardness and freedom in what they do. But more than a century ago Charles Hodge in commenting on this text made it clear what it means, and I quote “She is to be subject in everything. That is the subjection is not limited to any one sphere or department of the social life, but extends to all. The wife is not subject as to some things and independent as to others but she is subject as to all. This of course does not mean that the authority of the husband is unlimited. It teaches its extent, not its degree. It extends over all departments but is limited in all; first by the nature of the relation, and secondly by the higher authority of God. No superior whether master, parent, husband, or magistrate can make it obligatory on us either to do what God forbids or not to do what God commands. So long as our allegiance to God is preserved an obedience to man is made a part of our obedience to Him, we retain our liberty and our integrity.” In other words as Hodge said, all authority under God is conditional, and no authority can long exist apart from Him.

Now this raises some obvious questions, what authority does a Godless or pagan state have over us? At times in the past popes dissolved the authority of subjects. The New Testament term for legitimate authority or power, because it means both, is exousia. It is normally reserved, that word exousia, authority, for Godly authority. But we have two uses of the word which depart from this. Satan is declared by scripture to have authority under God and by God’s permission. In Luke 22:52 our Lord says that Satan has been given power, authority, to crucify Christ. Now it is this word which appears in Colossians 1:13, because what Paul says is the Father has delivered us from the power, the legitimate authority, of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. In other words, what we are plainly told here is that we were under legitimate authority when were under Satan. Now we are under the legitimate authority of Jesus Christ because we have been transferred from the one realm to the other by the atonement of Jesus Christ. Our sin bearer Christ has delivered us thus from one authority to another, we are now separated from Satan’s authority.

Well what if the state is godless and a band of robbers, as Augustine said, a Mafia? Because Augustine made it clear that every civil government that is not under God is no more than a mafia. The medieval era in terms of this vindicated at times tyrannicide. However I think historians tend to forget of the medieval scholars who did not agree with tyrannicide. Paul says “let every man abide in the same calling where-in he was called” in first Corinthians 7:20 and again in verse 23 “ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men.” As I’ve said more than once our way according to scripture is regeneration, not revolution.

Now let’s shift our emphasis to the non-civil realm, the church. When does the church’s legitimate authority cease? Can we say that a church which denies the atonement and the incarnation, and the virgin birth, and affirms abortion and homosexuality, and euthanasia, is a true church? In every community we have buildings and groups that call themselves churches that are marked by such evils. Not too long ago a catholic friend told me that on a recent trip to one city he turned to the yellow pages Sunday morning to see where he could go to church, and he found listings. Catholic churches – conservative, and then another listing, Catholic churches – liberal. I do know that in that very same city where he found such listings I had an hour and a half or a two hour debate on a radio talk show with a Catholic doctor who favored abortion and euthanasia.

But let’s carry the argument a step further. There are many churches which claim to believe the Bible from cover to cover but are dead churches. When I say dead I mean dead in the site of God, because they will have very often a large crowd, a beautiful choir, all kinds of activities every day of the week. But in a Christian sense they are dead. I am regularly told by members of these churches that neither the pastor, nor the board of deacons, or the session, nor the consistory our whatever the governing body may be, will not allow any reference to abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, communism, or anything else that they term “controversial.” Sometimes the people who tell me this will add “I happen to know that my pastor is against those things, but he wouldn’t dare open his mouth.” Are such churches alive?

In some churches it’s considered bad taste to refer to sexual sins. In fact I know a pastor who lost his pulpit for bringing up the subject; or to cite the Ten Commandments. Such churches what Christ only as their savior, not as their Lord, and such a separation is false. Let us remember that in the parable of the last judgment our Lord is dealing not with the world at large in that parable, but with church members who presented themselves as belonging to Christ, as members of Him. And no doubt they all believed they were good Christian because they could repeat the creed and went to church regularly, but He says “I never knew you.” Why? Because your faith was without works, it was dead. I was sick, naked, poor, in prison, and you did not visit me. It is interesting that so many churches will stress the love of Jesus, very real. But go through and list in separate columns all the texts in which our Lord speaks about love and all the texts in which He speaks with judgment; the text in which our Lord speaks of the sins of men far outweigh the texts which speak of love. After all man is a sinner, and he does need to have his sins pointed out, and our Lord does it over and over again.

Now Paul declares in the 23rd verse of Colossians one that this gospel of salvation has been preached to every creature which is under heaven, to all creation. Lightfoot said, and I quote “the statement is given in the broadest form. All creation animate and inanimate being included as in Revelation 5:13” It is interesting by the way that Bishop Lightfoot sees this statement all the same as hyperbole, but we cannot limit the Bible to our ability to understand it. Now Paul, in verses 19-32 of this chapter of Colossians goes on to say that this gospel has been preached widely, why? To present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight, God is working to reclaim the whole creation, and we are saved to fulfill God’s purposes. In first Timothy 2:4 Paul says that God’s purpose concerning salvation is that all men in their salvation might attain the knowledge of the truth. The object of God’s purpose is salvation, that we might know the truth. But the word for knowing the truth is epignosis, participating in. It is not nearly abstract knowledge, it is knowledge that you make a part of your life, and you live.

Now this appears in Revelation two and three in our Lord’s letters to the seven churches, because what He tells these churches can be summed up best in what He tells the Laocedian church, he does not say “your doctrine is false.” What he does say is that they are neither hot nor cold and therefore He will spew them out of His mouth. He does not rebuke any of the churches for being anything other than failing to live up to their knowledge. They are sitting back; they’re majoring in evil studying the works of Satan. Or they’re exploring this or that offbeat idea, but none of them are essentially false in the faith, they are false in their day-by-day living; and so unless they change they will be no more a church. Now the Lord speaks in all seven instances as the legitimate source of authority in the church, and there can be no apostolic foundation apart from Him. No church is a true church nor does it have a Godly authority apart from Him. The Lord is the legitimate source of authority in all the churches.

Moreover, and we’re wandering perhaps but we’re bringing in all the considerations of living under authority. The doctrine of the glory of God is essential to the concept of authority. The root meaning of Glory is heaviness, weight. So when the scripture speaks of the glory of God it speaks of it as the center of creation, the ultimate point of gravity or authority. Now in Ezekiel ten we have a vision of the temple, and Ezekiel says the glory of God left the temple and went to Babylon where some of the initial captives were. Moreover Jeremiah tells us that people were trusting in the temple as the source of their authority, because God’s temple was there and it had a surface resemblance to truth. So Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 7:4-11

“4 Trust ye not in lying words, saying, the temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these.

5 For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor;

6 If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt:

7 Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, forever and ever.

8 Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit.

9 Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;

10 And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations?

11 Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord.”

Now they were under a curse because while they were formally correct perhaps they had turned away from God in their practice. We can begin now with these things in mind to draw some conclusions concerning authority. The whole world is always under authority, no man can escape living under authority. The man who claims he is not living under authority is deluding himself. But the question is, whose authority, Satan’s or God’s? Our Lord makes clear that God has given Satan some authority, authority over those who refuse to be under God’s authority. We are delivered from Satan’s authority by the atonement. If we are unfaithful to the Lord, the glory of God leaves God’s ostensible people because they are lukewarm, and they are handed over to Satan. This is not all, even the Godly when erring, when stubborn, proud, or self-willed can be briefly given over to the authority of Satan.

Our Lord obviously loved Simon Peter, yet He tells him “Simon, Simon behold Satan hath desired to have you that he might sift you as wheat. But I prayed for thee, that Thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted strengthen Thy brethren.” Now we cannot say that Peter was not yet converted because the point here, the use of the word converted means that you come back to a true perspective because our Lord says “I’m praying that your faith does not fail.” He was obviously a man of faith, a converted man. But he was given over to Satan’s authority legitimately because he had gotten out of line; he was trusting in his power and the strength of his character and unwilling to see his weaknesses. We cannot escape authority. We are either under the Lord’s or Satan’s authority. The world of our day is very much under authority, but under the wrong kind.

Formal correctness has its place, but not as a substitute for faithfulness. The great statement by Micah in Micah six verses six through eight “Wherefore shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God. Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed me, oh man, what is good. And what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Thy God.” Notice what it is that Micah caricatures, formal correctness. Sacrifices of rams and lambs, and oil, were legitimate. But a desire for formal correctness always overdoes everything so he exaggerates it with thousands of rams or ten thousands of rivers of oil.

Those who have a formal correctness only are very much given to over-doing their formal correctness, their formality, because they have nothing of substance behind it. Then Micah caricatures it further. Since it is their doing, their formality let them sacrifice their children; nothing they do will please God. And he says this formalism is what marks Molech worship, it is an externalism and nothing more. He has showed thee oh man what is good. “And what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”

How do we obey authority? Teilhard has written “he who has the keys has authority.” But all to many, Protestant and Catholic alike, begin with a conclusion and then reason backwards; and this is wrong. Formal correctness is not enough, baptism can be preformed properly. For example, infant baptism; it can be done according to the Trinitarian formula. It can be done in a church that has all the marks of a true church, but what if it is not accompanied in a belief in Christian nurture, in Christian education, where all the things in the baptismal vow are disregarded. What meaning does baptism then have in that church, or communion? Now in the second volume of institutes I dealt with the relationship; one known from Old Testament times between communion and community. How can there be true communion where there is no community?

You see the Christian is not the end of the line for grace, but a generating point for action. To whom much is given of him much is expected, and the life of application is not a life of delegation. So religiosity cannot be substitute for faithfulness. The marks of a true church can mark many a sleeping or dead church. For that matter, what are the marks of a true state? The USA, the USSR, Switzerland, the Vatican, San Marino, Mexico, Libya, Lichtenstein, Canada, Red China, Cuba, and others all call themselves true states, which is a true state? According to the dictionary definition they all are. According to a formal definition, they all are. The dictionary defines a man as a human being or an adult male of the human species, but it doesn’t say that there is a difference between a dead man and a living man. Definitions don’t cover that fact.

The marks of a valid church are good and necessary marks, but does a dead church have any authority? For that matter can a dead and buried husband control a living wife legitimately? Or a dead not-yet married husband, can he control his wife legitimately? Our Lord says “by your fruits shall ye know them.” More is meant by good fruits then being merely alive and breathing. Satan has God given authority, when we are indifferent to God’s authority, when we do not bear fruit under God we pass under Satan’s authority. Our Lord says in John 15 verse 1 and 2, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”

The cast away branch may be formally correct, but it bears no fruit. We cannot define our faith in terms of our neighbor or our church in terms of another church as did the Pharisee praying in the temple “I thank Thee God that I am not like unto these.” We cannot have a humanistic definition; our standard must be the Lord’s. And he requires a living faith and the fruits of faith. Thus our fruits, our works will clearly manifest the authority in which we live and move and have our being. We are always under authority, but whose authority? Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thou hast translated us from the authorities of the powers of darkness to the authority of Thy Son our Savior, Jesus Christ. Make us ever zealous in His service, ever fruitful unto Him, that we may not be transferred as individuals, as churches, and as nations, back to the authority of darkness. In Jesus Name, amen.

Are there any questions about our lesson?

No questions? Well let us bow our heads now in prayer.

And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

View Details

Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 4 of 19

Track: #04

Year:

Dictation Name: 04 The Spirit of Adoption

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to his will he heareth us, having these promises let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning oh Lord. IN the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father in Whom we live and move and have our being. We come to Thee Thy creatures Whom Thou hast made for Thy sovereign purpose, to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. We know that our times are in Thy hands, that Thy purposes and ways are altogether righteous. Give us grace therefore so to walk day by day that we may ever be mindful that because Jesus Christ is our Lord we are more than conquerors in Him. Grant us this we beseech Thee, in Jesus name amen.

Our scripture lesson is from Romans eight verses fourteen through seventeen, and our subject as we continue our studies in the doctrine of authority is the spirit of adoption, the spirit of adoption, Romans eight fourteen through seventeen. “14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. 16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: 17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

As we have seen the Bible grounds authority on God’s law, his grace and his covenant, not on the natural order. We have seen that the authority of parents is not a naturalistic fact but a supernatural one. The natural fact of generations of parents is a creation of God in an area of His law. God created all things as aspects of His law order. The family is one such area where His law order is expressed, but the priority always belongs to God. The authority comes from God, not from the order He created. The Bible gives an abundant evidence of the secondary nature of the natural order. After all the first Adam was supplanted by the last Adam, Jesus Christ. Cain the first born was supplanted by Able and then Seth. Isaac was supplanted by Ishmael, Jacob prevailed over Esau, and Joseph over Rueben, as did Judah also. The logic of the natural order of authority, its succession is regularly overturned by God in scripture and in all of history. His providence brings to pass His purposes, His authority, not the natural humanistic authority. If the humanistic concept of authority prevailed there would be no change in all of history. The fisrt tyranny would be the last tyranny also.

The fact of judgment in history makes very clear that the time developed and time honored authorities are set aside. There are many reasons for this, but first of all we can site that given mans sin, the natural order and any authority derived purely from the natural order, would only further mans depravity. It would only further mans’ rebellion against God. Because all any parent or any civil authority or any religious authority would have to say is “we were the original authority and therefore no-one has a right to overturn us.” Then second, even without the fall the natural order cannot be the source of authority. In a God created world all authority comes from the triune God. Hence in scripture the doctrines of the covenant and of salvation alike rest on the fact of adoption. Adoption is an intrusion into the natural order. We are told that Israel was made the people of God, the children of God by adoption. This is made clear in Exodus four verse twenty, Numbers verse twenty-seven and following, and many, many other verses.

God says “and they shall put My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them.” To put my name upon them means that I take them, I adopt them. And Moses says “Take heed and hearken O Israel, this day thou art become the people of the Lord, thy God.” Paul makes clear in Romans nine that the original adoption was of Israel.

Now in our text Romans eight fourteen through seventeen we have a statement of this great reversal of the natural order. With man adoption is a last resort. When all else fails we turn to adoption. But no so with God, it is His essential means. God’s order gives adoption priority; it gives adoption the sole place in salvation. Now the people of antiquity did use adoption, but they saw bareness as a curse, and more than one woman in the Bible refers to it as such, but not so God. He declares it to be very often the prelude to blessing.

But Even more we have a remarkable prophesy in Isaiah fifty-four verses one through five.

“1Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord.

2 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes;

3 For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

4 Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.

5 For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.”

This is an amazing prophesy. God is here speaking to individuals, as well as to groups. But He makes it very specific, “Sing oh barren.” And he includes also the windowed and the bereaved, the desolate person. And what he says from the Humanistic point “you’ve been stripped of all your hope, you have no children or you’re widowed and every hope you had has been shattered.” But what is the word of God? Sing oh barren. One of the most amazing statements in the Bible, that precisely those who are barren or desolate or widowed are going to be blessed, and more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife.

And then the command to enlarge their dwelling place, to make it bigger and bigger, to encompass the whole world. Why? Because God says I’m preparing you by all that you’ve experienced to be mighty and effectual in terms of my kingdom, and the blessings that shall go forth from you shall in time reach all nations and all peoples. For Thine maker is Thy husband, the Lord of hosts is His name and Thy Redeemer, the holy One of Israel. The God of the whole earth shall He be called. And in terms of that reaching out and bringing the whole world by adoption into the kingdom, the barren, the widowed, the desolate, are going to be used by God and are being prepared by God for His purpose, which is the adoption of the whole world. And so God says “you are a part of this great purpose.” The imagery of the Bible is not accidental. God says to these, the widowed, the Barren, the desolate, that they are in a very different way to be instrumental in taking over the world in inheriting the Gentiles, the children of faith and not of blood. This is a setting aside of the natural order. Sing oh barren is a song that goes against the grain of the natural order.

But in John 8:39 our Lord speaks the same way, He tells the Pharisees’ and scribes that their natural inherited authority is going to be set aside. Now it is true that all such inherited natural authority does has a God derived character. We live a network of authorities, of powers that be. But the real authorities, however real these natural ones are, are the ultimate ones. And if these authorities on the human scene are not faithful they violate the condition of their authority. Peter said we ought to obey God rather than men. Can a church for example which approves of abortion command us? Say what you will about the authority of the church, how can a church which goes clearly against God’s law and God’s order ever command us? Can a church which denies the authority of Jesus Christ command us? A church which denies he is the incarnate Son of God, and that His atonement is our salvation; can we even call it any longer a church?

Paul in Romans 8:14-17 contrasts the spirit of bondage and the Holy Spirit of adoption. We have on the one hand depravity, man’s separation from God, his rebellion against God as against man’s redemption in Christ, and his adoption. The purely naturalistic doctrine of authority to often becomes the spirit of bondage. Where man’s sin leads to a denial of God’s authority no natural authority can lead to anything but bondage. Because where God’s authority is denied there is no supreme court to which man can appeal against man. When the courts say as our Supreme court has made clear that it is ultimate, and that it is the maker of law, and that there is no absolute, no God in effect, then right and wrong are what the courts say they are; and no man has the right to question the absoluteness of man’s courts, or the decrees or fiats of state. There is no right beyond the state.

It is significant that this is precisely what has led to the crisis of modern man, to totalitarianism without Christian faith there is no escape from man. He is trapped in a world in which there is no right and wrong above and beyond man. Man determines it, man as his own God says “this is good and this is evil, and who are you to question it?” We have seen in our day, an extensive attack on Christianity as supposedly repressive authoritarianism because it asserts the authority of God. But in asserting the absolute authority of God we are insuring freedom because we are saying mans word can never be totally binding upon other men, there’s always a law above and beyond Man’s law to which we can appeal; a law which will judge all men. This has been the problem over and over again in history.

In Paris in the thirteenth century at the university many Dominicans were teaching the radical concepts of Aristotle and Averroes. Pope John the 21st asked Steven Tempia {?} the bishop of Paris to investigate it and deal with it, and the Bishop of Paris condemned two hundred and nineteen propositions that these Dominicans at the university who were supposedly defenders of the faith were teaching. The whole of it is an interesting incidents of academic arrogance, but let me site two which are relevant to what we are discussing. All of them are, but these two in particular. Proposition 48 which was condemned by the bishop said, and I quote, “God cannot be the cause of a new creation, nor can he be the cause of anything new.”They had reduced God to an Aristotelian limiting concept. The idea of a first cause, (but only an idea because they had to posit a beginning) not a reality; and therefore he could not create nor could he govern in any sense. Hence in proposition 175 we read, and I quote “the Christian law impedes learning.” The Christian law impedes learning, why? Well if God has a “thou shalt not” as given in the Bible, then where’s man freedom to make His own law and determine for Himself what constitutes good and evil.

Now the interference of the Bishop of Paris with the University of Paris is cited in some textbooks as an example of authoritarianism and repressiveness; but I submit it insured freedom. And the sad fact is that these heretics finally prevailed and destroyed Christendom. Because their ideas said there is no God and there is no law beyond man and the state, it is any wonder that this thinking led to the tyrants of the age of the renaissance? Men whose word was absolute law, men who said “my will be done, and who can question that it is right?” The only one who could question it was the man who killed him and said “it is my will which is right.” And it led to the brought force which prevailed in renaissance tyranny.

And of course this is what happened as the thinkers of the last century step by step undercut the Biblical faith. As they developed a legal positivism and said there was no right or wrong above what the state decrees. John Hallowell in a study written over forty years ago I think entitled The Decline of Liberalism as an Ideology traced the liberal thinkers who wanted independence from God to Hitler. Step by step as they destroyed any authority, any law beyond man and in God the made the state God walking on earth. The result was that when the Nazi’s proclaimed these doctrines publicly they had the universities supports. The liberals, the positivists, and all the universities provided the rational for Hitler. He did not control the universities, they welcomed him because he was their product.

This is why God strikes at the natural order as any source of ultimate authority. It is the spirit of adoption which makes us heirs of God, it is God the Lord, God the King who says “He raises up one and sets aside another by His sovereign decree” Natural order is under God. Thus instead of being the lawless element in society because of are obedience to God’s higher authority, we become the law abiding element. And instead of our faith being authoritarianism it is the only faith that works for freedom, because it takes authority and places it beyond man and in God alone; and all human authorities under God and subject to His will. Today the Spirit of Bondage by its rebellion against God’s authority has undermined all true authority and is creating a totalitarian order. Only as we recognize the Biblical doctrine of authority, and how basic the concept of adoption is, how basic the fact is that authority on the human scene is always derivative and conditioned only so can we have a re-birth of freedom. Let us pray.

Thy word oh Lord is truth, and Thy word is law, and Thou art the authority, and Thine is the power, the glory, and the dominion. Teach us oh Lord day by day to walk in terms of Thine authority and to reconstruct all things in terms of faithfulness to Thy law word. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes, John.

[Audience member] What year was that list of proposals or propositions was published, do you know?

[Rushdoony] In the thirteenth century in Paris; I don’t recall the exact date at the moment.

[Audience member] Just the way the ones that you read there sound to me like they really represent the modernists as well.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. There’s nothing new about heresy. Its premises from the Garden of Eden to the present remain the same. No, it’s surprisingly modern. The entire list of 219 propositions you would think you were listening to, in some instances, the student radicals of the 1960’s or some of our philosophers of today.

[Audience member] Well the parallel that you drew between Hitler and the universities I think we’re seeing a great deal of that today particularly with respect to Stanford’s attitude to {?} Hoover institute because the current president is out of favor with the universities anything that’s associated with him at the university is being purged. And one of the things that we’re trying to do is we’re trying to absolve all connections between the university and the Hoover institute now.

[Rushdoony] Yes, you see this is something people often forget. The university has so flooded us with propaganda to the effect that it is the champion of liberty, that we forget that throughout history the intellectuals have most often been the champions of tyranny and that no sooner did the church create universities then the universities began to assert a radical totalitarianism, and they felt that the Pope and the emperor had a duty to bow down and obey them. Well, this type of proposition has been nothing new in the history of the church. The remarkable thing is that on this occasion a bishop actually spoke out very plainly and courageously and listed these propositions and condemned. Well that was the unique thing. As a matter of fact in one seminary where there’s been a great deal of trouble the board finally stepped in and it has severely limited faculty meetings because they are so productive of tyranny. So our intellectuals are too often in their pride ready to play God. Now this should not be so, they should be leaders of the faith. But too often because they have had alien presuppositions, they’ve been Un-Van Tillian we might say. They’ve been ready to begin with premises that lead them to playing God.

Any other questions or comments?

[Audience member] Prayer meeting.

[Rushdoony] I announced it.

[Audience member] Did you? Oh.

[Rushdoony] No other questions or comments…Yes?

[Audience member] In verse eighteen in Chapter eight of Romans where it says that this present time are not worthy, I do not reckon that the sufferings of this present time are worthy of being compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. What does it mean, the glory that shall be revealed in us?

[Rushdoony] Yes, then Paul goes on to say in verse 19 and following that the whole of creation and all the creatures wait for the manifestation, the full unveiling and revelation of us, the sons of God, and they are going to be delivered together with us into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And in verse twenty-two says that the whole creation, everything in the universe groans and travails in pain together until now, because they feel the effects of the fall; waiting for the second coming and the new creation, when the fullness of the liberty, the total freedom from the limitations of sin and death will be ours and theirs also.

Verse twenty-fourth is also very important verse “For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth why does he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not then do we with patience wait for it.” So Paul is saying that faith involves and requires that we have hope. That God has some greater good for us in time and in eternity. So with patience we wait for it.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

“Our Lord and our God give us patience and hope that we might wait on Thee for those things that Thou hast promised, that we might work in Thee and under Thee to accomplish Thy purpose, that we might know that being called to be more than conquerors in Christ, nothing in heaven above nor earth below can frustrate Thy purpose for us. Bless us to this purpose. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Lecture

Lesson: 3 of 19

Track: #03

Year:

Dictation Name: 03 The Power of His Resurrection

[Rushdoony] Thy Son Jesus Christ from the dead, and has given us the promise of the Resurrection so that we live now as citizens of the new creation. Glory be to Thee oh Christ who for us hast overcome death, broken the power of sin, and opened unto us the gates of everlasting life. Glory be to Thee oh God the Spirit who doeth lead us into all truth in the risen Christ. We praise Thee Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and we pray that now and always we may live in the joy and the resurrection and the certainty of our victory in Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is in Philippians the third chapter verses eight through eleven. Philippians 3:8-11.

8 Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,

9 And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:

10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;

11 If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.

Our subject this morning is the phrase in verse ten, the power of His resurrection. There are several Greek words in the New Testament which are translated as power. The word used very frequently is dunamis, which we have in the word dynamite. It is found 118 times in the New Testament. Other words used unite the concepts of power and authority, and the New Testament associates both power and authority with Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact when we look at the words that are used in the New Testament, applied to Jesus Christ, they bring together power and authority, dominion, Lordship, freedom of action, strength, and rule. And all these terms are associated with what the resurrection does for us.

The scriptures tell us that God declares that “he that sinneth against Me wrongs his own soul.” “All they that hate me love death.” The plain implication is that if we are not in Christ we are born losers. If we are in Christ we are re-born victors. Now Paul uses this word “dynamis” or “dunamis” which we have as dynamite, when he speaks with regard to the resurrection in our text. When he says the power of the resurrection he is talking about the explosive world changing power which the resurrection of Jesus Christ wrought. Moreover the word that is in the Greek and is translated as power here means the power to live and act independently of physical or spiritual strength. It refers to an inherent, not a derived power. That Christ has an inherent power that breaks all boundaries, all powers, destroys all restrictions, and it is this power, the power of the resurrection which is ours in Jesus Christ.

The stoics took that word and equated it with God quite logically. Because they concluded that that word could not be associated with anything other than a supreme being. Paul says this power is the cause of our salvation. This power is the power in all faithful preaching, this power is something the world does not know. The natural man, the fallen man does not have this power, cannot please God and cannot keep God’s law. This power which the resurrection unleashed into the world, the Holy Spirit brings into our lives and makes us in Christ a new creation, a continuing power so that we represent a force, and an authority, and a dominion in this world which is not of this world. To be without this power of God and salvation is, in terms of the words used in the New Testament, to be powerless; but more literally, impotent. Impotent, the person who is not in Christ is an impotent person. Whatever the plans they make for themselves in their future, there is a frustration that overtakes all their thinking, their planning, their hoping, and their dreaming because they bear within themselves the seeds of destruction, sin and death.

But the great manifestation of God’s power, the resurrection, is an authoritative expression of power because it destroys the power of sin and death, and it reveals the true power in all creation is the Creator who is now also our redeemer; the power of His resurrection. This power is a contradiction of all humanism because humanism believes in naturalistic powers, in the power of man, of man’s logic, of man’s planning, man’s thinking. And the whole point of Paul’s gospel is that it is the power of His resurrection which has been unleashed upon the world, and that power alone is efficacious. And so his goal is that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection. And this is his ministry Paul says, and it is the heart of His preaching, and it has to be the ministry of the church. This is why a Christian reconstruction is an inescapable concept. Can you believe in such a power being unleashed on the world without changing men and nations, institutions, everything? Can such an explosive power, a word which we’ve taken over into the English almost letter for letter “dynamite” be unleashed upon the world, come into our lives, without making us motivated with a tremendous force, to go out and bring all things into captivity to Christ? To go out and undo all injustice and to establish God’s justice, God’s righteousness here upon earth? The power of His resurrection is a contradiction to all humanism.

The justification of Christianity is not in its social utility, its social usefulness. It can be argued that our faith is good for people, it makes life better. That it’s good for society, it makes people more law abiding and happier, it is good for the family- it promotes family life and unity, it is good for the society, for the state – it provides better citizens. That it makes for better living in every realm, but we cannot do that because the justification is not because it does something for men. The power of His resurrection is that it serves God’s purpose, establishes His kingdom, and the welfare of man and of society is a byproduct of that. Humanism’s basic test is social utility, and that’s why humanism can justify anything; homosexuality, euthanasia, abortion in terms of social utility. But we say God’s will must be done and the power of His resurrection must be unleashed in history because that transforming power, that social dynamite, must accomplish God’s purpose. In this process of accomplishing it the fallout is better life for us, our families, and society at large. But the primary purpose is the kingdom of God. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things that the Gentiles seek will then be added unto you; the power of His resurrection. No religion outside of our faith knows that power.

The word religion come from a Latin word meaning “to bind” and the purpose of religions, basically, have been to provide social cement, to bring people together because without religion they fall apart. Within the state, within the society, within the family, within marriages, they fall apart. But no religion succeeds at that, except without coercion. But the power of His resurrection brings new life into people so that this binding takes place. It takes place supernaturally.

Paul in this text, in these verses which we read earlier, Philippians 3:8-11 weighs two concerns, the one against the other. On the humanistic side, the humanistic assets include a righteousness, or a justice, of his own. And people all over the world have their own idea of what constitutes justice. And every civil government tries to enforce its idea of justice. But mans justice is injustice in the sight of God. Out of these humanistic ideas of justice or righteousness comes self-righteousness, self-salvation, an attempt also to use the law to be saved. But all this Paul says is dung.

Now the word that is translated as “dung” has two meanings. One is not a very pleasant one and scholars are divided over which usage Paul gave to it. One usage is for human excrement which was fed to dogs, the other was for table garbage fed to dogs also. Paul stresses the repulsiveness of the dung, and he says “this on the one side is the world of humanism, the world of man trying to get happiness or gain wealth or gain prosperity, or gain justice on his own.” The whole realm of humanistic values Paul rejects, and against all this he sets forth God’s righteousness or justice, which is holy and which is known only by faith which is the gift of God unto salvation. At the apex of God’s power, of Christ’s power, is the resurrection. Linked to this by Paul is our resurrection again and again Paul makes that point. Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead we are now the people of the resurrection. We have been resurrected out of the death of sin into the life of righteousness or justice, and we have the promise that at the end the power of death and the grave will be mocked by the power that is in us and that we shall know a life without the limitations of this, and a freedom in our service of God, and a glorious life eternally because of the power of His resurrection.

Because of that we are now, Paul says in II Corinthians 5:17, a new creation, a new creature but more literally a new creation. We are raised with Christ and the living power which is ours from His resurrection makes us alive and powerful and authoritative. At the heart of the doctrine of authority is the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have a power, a authority which is supernatural which is not of this world.

Some generations ago the Anglican bishop Moule spoke of the meaning of the term, or the phrase rather, the power of his resurrection and said it is a phrase difficult to exhaust in exposition because it’s meaning is so far reaching. But he said in part, and I quote, “The Lord’s resurrection is spiritually powerful as A) evidencing the justification of believers and by all means as B.) Assuring them of their own bodily resurrection, and yet more as C) being that which constituted him actually; the life giving second Adam, the giver of the spirit who unites the members to Him, who is the vital head. This later aspect of truth is prominent in the epistles to Ephesus and Colossi, written at nearly the same period as Saint Paul’s apostolic work, and we have here very probably a passing hint of what is unfolded there. The thought of the Lord’s resurrection is suggested here to his mind by the thought not expressed but implied in the previous context of the atoning death on which it followed as the divine result. This passage indicates the great truth that while our acceptance in Christ is always based on His propitiatory work for us, our power for service and endurance in His name is vitally connected with His life as the risen one, and made ours by the Holy Spirit.”

Thus the power of His resurrection is the power that then comes to us in and through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit at work in our lives is the continuation of the power of the resurrection. The last Adam we are told is made a quickening spirit, or life giving spirit. The Holy Spirit is referred to. We are thus a new humanity in Christ. It is significant that in the early church and for several centuries thereafter if you were a Christian you did not say, unless you were rather retrograde Christian, that “I’m a Greek” or “I’m a Roman” or “I’m an Egyptian” you said “I belong to the Christian race, to the Christian race. As a matter of fact for several centuries some of the prayers of the early church actually Sunday by Sunday were prayers for this Christian race, because the believer saw himself separated from the old humanity of Adam, separated from the nationality and the race that he was born into, he was now a member of the Christian race, and it was taken very seriously. [22”27]

Concerning the relationship of the Holy Spirit to Christ’s new human race Calvin said in commenting on I Corinthians 15:45, and I quote “It must be observed however that Christ did also like us become a living soul. But beside the soul the Spirit of the Lord was also poured out upon Him, that by His power He might rise again from the dead and raise up others. This therefore must be observed in order that no-one may imagine that the Spirit was in Christ in place of a soul. And independently of this the interpretation of this passage may be taken from the eighth chapter of Roman, where Paul the apostle declares that the body indeed is dead on account of sin, and we carry in us the element of death. But that the Spirit of Christ who raised Him up from the dead dwelleth also in us, and that He is life to raise us also one day from the dead. From this you see that we have living souls, in as much as we are men but that we have the life giving spirit of Christ now poured out upon us by the grace of regeneration. In short, Christ is greatly superior to the lot of the first man; because a living soul was conferred upon Adam in his own name, and in that of his posterity. But Christ has procured for us the Spirit who is life.”

Therefore the power of the resurrection is the power of the spirit, as indwelling within us, as assuring us that we are children of the resurrection.

The persistent goal of the human race has from the fall of man been power; power over others, power over things, power of the world generally. And the most common ways men have sought to gain that power is through the state and through personal force, but especially though the state. This has been the persistent goal of humanistic man. Men believe in and they fear and are subservient to power. But power for them is humanistic, naturalistic. But our life is now grounded in a non-human power. So that greater is he that is in us then he that is in the world, and in Christ we are more than conquerors. Paul tells us there is nothing in life nor in death, in heaven and in earth that is able to separate us from the love and the care of Christ. And so the power of his resurrection is a power that overcomes the powers of this world.

If you look at history you find that statism and all the attendant evils rise when men’s faith in Christ wanes; and overthrow the powers of statism we have only to revive Christian faith and apply it to every sphere of life and thought. All believers have here and now the power of Christ’s resurrection in their lives through the Spirit. It is an earth shattering, a life shattering power. The Easter hymns have long celebrated that power. For example the hymn of Charles Wesley written in 1739 Christ the Lord is Risen todaydeclares in part “vain the stone, the watch, the seal, alleluia. Christ has burst the gates of hell, alleluia. Death in vain forbids his rise, alleluia. Christ hath opened paradise, alleluia.” Another hymn of John Mason Neale, 1854 Lift Up, Lift Up Your Voices Now reads in four of its verses “lift up, lift up your voices now, the whole wide world rejoices now. The Lord hath triumphed gloriously, the Lord shall rein victoriously. In vain with stone the cave they barred, in vain the watch kept watch and ward. Majestic from the spoiled tomb in pomp of triumph Christ has come. He binds in chains the ancient foe, a countless host he frees from woe. And heavens portals open fly for Christ is risen and man shall rise. And all he did, and all he bared he gives us as our own to share. And hope and joy and peace begin for Christ has won and man shall win.”

The power of His resurrection makes us more than conquers through Him that loved us; and in that power we are sent forth by Him to whom all powers given in heaven and in earth; to bring all the world into and under His salvation, His word, and His dominion. We are sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, but we are sent forth at the same time in the power of the Spirit, so that while there is and will be conflict ours is the earth shattering power; for Christ is risen and the power of His resurrection is our power. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee for the resurrection and for the power of the resurrection. We pray our Father that through our Spirit we may be instruments of that power. So the power may go forth in all the world, bringing men, woman and children, institutions, schools, homes, all things, civil governments within the province of the kingdom and the power of His resurrection. Bless us to this purpose, fill us ever with the joy of the resurrection, make us ever mindful that we are more than conquerors in Christ our Lord; in His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now concerning our lesson? If not let us bow our heads for the benediction.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 2 of 19

Track: #02

Year:

Dictation Name: 02 Man’s relationship to Authority

[Rushdoony] “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God who of Thy grace and mercy dost pardon all those who truly repent of their sins. Who dost rejoice in the thanksgiving of Thy people; who dost delight in their service and has called us to do these things and ever to rejoice of Thee. We come into Thy presence gladly and joyfully, we thank Thee that Thou hast made us Thine own. We thank Thee that the ends of the earth shall serve Thee, and that we are heirs of Thy kingdom; and that greater is He that is in us and with us then he that is in the world. Give us grace therefore to grow in Thee, to serve Thee, to praise Thee, and in all things to give thanks unto Thee. In Jesus name, amen.

We began last week our study of authority and we continue this week with mans relationship to authority and our scripture is Luke seven verses one through ten, Luke seven verses one through ten. Man’s relationship to authority.

Now when he had ended all his sayings in the audience of the people, he entered into Capernaum.

2 And a certain centurion’s servant, who was dear unto him, was sick, and ready to die.

3 And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant.

4 And when they came to Jesus, they besought him instantly, saying, that he was worthy for whom he should do this:

5 For he loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.

6 Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof:

7 Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee: but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.

8 For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.

10 And they that were sent, returning to the house, found the servant whole that had been sick.

The triune God is the source of all authority. But on the human scene authority can be exercised by man under God. God has not restricted authority and its boundaries to eternity, so that we must say that even more than the fact that authority can be exercised under God, it must be exercised under God. There are spheres of legitimate authority under God. Our work, our family, the church, state, a variety of things wherein we have, in varying degrees, authority.

Now to undermine Godly authority in all these and other spheres is to further anarchy and as a means of rebelling against God himself. But on the other hand if we overstress authority on the human scene, and arrogate to man or to institutions power that properly belongs to God, that too is a very great evil. As men do this, as men arrogate undue authority unto themselves they become demonic, they claim in effect to be their own Gods. After all the scriptures that the devil is a believer in his own authority, encounter this in Matthew 4:9 and in Revelation 13:2 for example. Now authority on the human scene is very closely tied to status or position, but it cannot be equated with status or position. Let me illustrate. Parenthood is a natural fact, any idiot can be a parent, and a good many are. But the authority of parents is not derived from this natural fact but from God’s command. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord Thy God giveth thee. This is in the Ten Commandments, it is a law from God and it promises long life as a gift from God for obedience to this commandment. The commandment is to adults to honor, not to Children who as in Ephesians 6:1 are told to obey. This law has no true analogue in the world of nature.

Now this brings us to a critical point. One of the problems of our time is that parents are trying to command children naturally, not religiously. Mothers will take time to speak about the trauma of birth “all that I’ve done for you, how I’ve suffered, and what I went through, and you reward me with this.” And what does the child think? “So what? I didn’t ask to be born.” And fathers will go on at great length about how much money they’ve invested in their children, as though that gave them authority. It doesn’t register; the natural fact does not carry any conviction. It has inherent in it no authority unless we look at the religious fact. And so if the religious commandment, God’s word, is left out there is a radical erosion of parental authority. It does not rest on the status of being a parent in the natural order; it rests only on God’s commandment. As a result we have to recognize that authority is a religious fact. Unless it is grounded Biblically it very soon disappears. This is what we’re seeing in our contemporary world. The authority of parents is disappearing because they were grounding it on the fact that they were capable of begetting a child. But the natural fact doesn’t suffice.

Or civil authorities will insist “we are the law.” But that has no meaning in a world that does not see law as coming from God, and the modern state has undercut that. As a result the modern state has created lawlessness, it has undermined its own authority. We see this in the church, as churchmen put more and more emphasis on position, on status and less and less on the word of God. And they feel they have to emphasis their authority by pomp and circumstance, by parading themselves as it were, and putting on the appurtenances of office, as though this constituted authority. It is ironic that in low church protestant denominations which historically were very hostile to Catholicism, where the church has forsaken its historic, protestant doctrine of Biblical authority they become a very poor imitation of Catholics. They put on robes and where crosses and genuflect as though the forms were going to give authority when they’ve destroyed the foundation of authority. Position and status in other words do not in of themselves in the natural order give authority. It is a religious fact, it is a supernatural fact and unless it is so grounded it disappears. Our understanding of authority depends on our awareness and acceptance of the religious foundations, not only of authority but of all life.

This is why the story of the centurion, our text, is so important. The Centurion saw this clearly and our Lord said unto him “verily I saw unto you I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel.” The centurion had a very sick servant whom he loved dearly, so when he heard of Jesus he sent the elders of Israel beseeching Jesus to heal him, which they did saying that “this man loves our nation, he has built us the synagogue here in Capernaum, not a small synagogue, a considerable thing.” And they said he was worthy for whom he should do this. Now a centurion, until Rome began to decline, was usually a man of the nobility, an aristocrat of some sort. He was often a man of considerable wealth, in fact all the legionnaires originally were important people, it was privilege to be a member of a Roman legion, and to be an officer thereof indicated a man of great importance, and often of very great wealth as was the case with this man. But this man who said “I also (the man under authority) having under me soldiers and I saw unto one “go” and he goeth and to another “come” and he cometh and to my servant “do this” and he doeth it.” Made clear that he recognized the nature of authority; it was only his name that carried weight. Because as a centurion he did not have to go to every man personally, he sent the word and said “this is what the Legionnaires’ centurion ordered.” And it was done. And he recognized that Jesus was at the very least a great prophet, he spoke of Him as Lord, and he recognized that here was supernatural power and authority, his person, his physical presence was therefore not necessary, and he made it clear that he did not feel that he was deserving of the attention of a physical trip to his house. Therefore our Lord spoke of him as He did, a man of faith; and because he was a man of faith he understood authority.

Thus he recognized the supernatural nature of authority, that it was not merely a material fact. No more than the authority of a parent over his child is simply a material fact, a product of begetting. It is a supernatural fact, and here in Christ there was the essence of supernatural authority and therefore speak the word only and my servant shall be healed.

Let us look now at authority in the church. One of the sad facts is that the church very often over governs and in many quarters today where the anarchy in the church has become apparent, and the lawless, some have developed a gospel of excommunication. Now what our Lord declares Matthew 28:19 when he sets forth the great commission is the duty to teach or to disciple all nations. Discipline comes from disciple; it does not mean punishment nor excommunication, but discipling. That’s the meaning of discipline it means leading someone into the life of faith, it requires a reliance on the Holy Spirit, not coercion. Before continuing with this important subject of coercion, excommunication, its relationship to authority let us look briefly at the nature of theocracy. A great many people assume that a theocracy is the rule of man, but it is not. In the Bible there is virtually no state, it is minimal. Government is under God and through His law, and divided into many spheres. In the book of Judges the civil government is minimal and the ups and downs in the book of judges is in terms of apostasy. When men depart from the faith they cannot govern themselves nor can they govern anything. In those days, the author of Judges tells us, there was no king in Israel, God was not the king, and every many did that which was right in his own eyes, there was no authority. When there was authority there was recovery. Where faiths wanes, theocracy wanes. The essential government is the self government of the Christian man.

Now it is a fact that the United States was best governed when it was governed least. Not because less government was the essential ingredient, but because there was then Christian self-government, and when self government waned then the state had to take up the slack and we have the controls that prevail now. So that to remove those controls we have to re-establish government at the seat of government in the lives of men, to take it back from the state. Men have yielded it to the state, they have surrendered it to the state. Now it’s going to take a little fighting to get it back. Statism always follows the decline of self-government. Now this is the issue concerning excommunication. No amount of excommunication can restore strength to a church where sound faith and sound teaching are lacking. The heavy use of excommunication indicates the lack of a sound teaching ministry. There may be interesting preaching in the pulpit, but it is not a teaching ministry. It’s exotic; it is alien to the authoritative word of God, however much it may claim to believe it from cover to cover.

When you have that kind of situation, an absence of sound teaching, coercion replaces teaching and covers up the failure of the ministry. Moreover coercion not only replaces teaching, but also the Holy Spirit. People trust in coercion rather than the spirit of God. Neither permissiveness on the one hand, nor excommunication on the other, can be productive of faith in the life of the church. Moreover in both the Old Testament and the New Excommunication is for serious moral infractions of God’s law, and for heresy. Not in relationship to the humanistic authority of the muckety-mucks who run the church or sit on the consistory, or session, or board, or whatever the case may be. The sad fact is that in churches Catholic and protestant excommunication is more commonly used for the infraction of the rules of the church then for violation of God’s law word. The sad fact is that now it is independent protestant congregations that are becoming most prone to this kind of coercion, the over use of excommunication and partly because there is no review, no repeal against the church and it plays tyrant.

The church has no binding power, no authority apart from Christ and His law word. The binding and loosing power of the church is inseparable from God’s authority and from the word of God, but it must be strictly in terms of Gods canon, or rule, or else it will separate the church from Christ and turn it into a false church. The centurion did not place his trust, nor his hope, in the power of a natural touch by Jesus, but in the supernatural power of Christ. “My mere words” said the centurion “has power to command because I am a man under authority.” Jesus he saw clearly was at least a very great prophet of God, but more likely indeed the Messiah of God. And so he said “you are far more capable than I.” The centurion saw power and authority as essentially related, very closely related. The greater the authority we work under and are strictly faithful to, the greater the power we exercise. So if we want to exercise power, Godly power, we must be under God’s authority.

This, the church and the state and persons, must learn. Moral authority in every sphere is eroded and there is a contemptuous indifference to authority. To all this coercion is not the answer. There is a place for coercion, as a last resort and not always even then. Authority is not gained by clobbering people and putting on holy garb, nor by fiats of a consistory session, presbytery or board, but by putting on Christ, by being under His authority. As Paul told the Galatians in Galatians 3:27 “For as many of you has have been baptized into Christ has put on Christ.” If our baptism is from the heart then we are clothed in Christ and we are a new creation in Him. Then we are under authority and have power in Him by His spirit. Let us pray

Oh Lord our God Thou has called us to be under Thy authority and to exercise power in and of Thee in every sphere of life and thought. Give us grace therefore to forsake all humanistic authority and to place ourselves under Thee; and to be men of power, men of authority, more than conquerors in Christ. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes, John.

[Audience member] Well the limits of authority can be set by the way in which we define the nature and purpose of human institutions. In other words, if we define civil government in a particular way then that definition is going to in practice the nature of that definition is going to tell us how much authority that particular civil government is going to have and if we change our definition we in effect, it goes back to what you said in the institutes about you change the law if you have an expression of large change in religion as well. One of the things I’m struggling with, not just in the context of what you are speaking about today, but we talk about the seven systems of government, family, ecclesiastical, civil, and what have you. And I think one of our major problems in so far as most Christian thought concerned is to say that we need a very precise Biblical definition of each of those seven systems of government that kind of sets the boundaries and limits of each of them so that their continually encroaching on each other’s realm of authority. So the definition of a particular form of government, or anything for that matter, seems to me like it’s intimately related and bound up in establishing the limits of authority.

[Rushdoony] All human areas or spheres of government are interdependent. There are no hard and fast lines between them, although there are very discernible lines. When you define the authority in purely naturalistic terms you create and erosion of authority, I mentioned parents. Well the modern state defines itself in terms of the people, in terms of humanistic premises; and as a result it has eroded its authority. If the people created the state, the people rightfully feel then that they can overthrow the state. That it has no binding power, or if it rests on consent the logic of that doctrine, because that’s the great concept in the modern world, leads men ultimately to say “I do not consent. You cannot coerce me into consenting.” So they can say “well Rousseau says it has to be the general will, the majority vote, or the democratic consensus, however you identify that” but then they can say “Ah, but I didn’t give my consent to it.” And you have logically what you have today, everyman doing that which is right in his own eyes. And this is why of course you have the fact that in the Islamic world which was in rapid process of disintegration you’ve had fundamentalistic Islamic thinking. Very reactionary, insisting on a break with everything that is modern.

Now in the Western world in Christian countries you have a return to Christian orthodoxy, to the proper foundations of authority. And only this can salvage the situation because apart from a foundation in the supernatural, in God, everybody is going to tear at authority to get a piece of it, and this is what’s happening today.

Yes?

[Audience member] Well we have more rules, and less authority, and it goes down as far as I can gather to the individual. I remember talking to a policeman in New York city and I asked him what would happen if he were assaulted on the street, could you do anything about it? He said no, if you tried to do anything about it you’d be arrested. I said “well what should you do?” He said “well you should call a policeman.” So the individual has absolutely no authority whatever under that sort of rule.

[Rushdoony] Yes and your point that the more authority declines, the more rules there are because they try to substitute rules and regulations for Godly authority. God gives us His entire law with a great deal of history in one book. Now we have libraries full of law books and less and less real government because of the disintegration of authority that the modern state has created.

Yes John?

[Audience member] Precisely on that point, should even statues passed by, or public laws which become statutes passed by the US Congress or the California assembly, be considered law? They’re certainly not in the same way as the Ten Commandments, but are the Ten Commandments and the associated tradition that you just spoke of really the law, and really anything else is regulation, it’s not really law, it just has the name of law?

[Rushdoony] No their laws, they’re humanistic laws. You have Islamic Law, you have Buddhist law, you have Humanistic law, you have God’s law. All law has a religious foundation so it isn’t the fact that they aren’t law it’s that they are a false religion and law.

[Audience member] That’s really what I was getting at, that they’re law only in name, in name only; the true law in terms of this other aspect which is our responsibility to obey.

[Rushdoony] Well yes, but I think we can get to technical there. If you’re in a war zone it doesn’t make much difference whether the man shooting at you is regular army or a gorilla, he’s got the gun and he’s shooting at you so it’s a valid gun and a valid bullet. SO it is with law, if the humanistic state is shooting at you with humanistic laws you better believe their laws. We can’t be Christian Scientists about the laws, they’re real, they’re ungodly.

[Audience member] Much of the practical advance in scripture, including Romans 13, pertains to that reality and it says “keep your head down so that you’re still alive to continue with the great commission.”

[Rushdoony] Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] I want to ask a question about natural motherhood.

[Rushdoony] What was that again?

[Audience member] I want to ask a question about natural motherhood, but I don’t know exactly how to phrase it. When we were in court the authority kept saying that the natural mother was the most important person, no matter what she did, and as an adoptive parent for people who were interested in adoption there’s a lot of confusion about how you should feel about the natural parents, especially the natural mother. Like there’s always a lot of sympathy you know “well maybe we really shouldn’t of taken her baby,” or “maybe she should get ten chances.” Would you talk about that a little bit.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a very good point. If you didn’t hear the question it was this “What about the rights of a natural mother as against a foster mother or adopting mother?” Because a great deal is said in the courts now about the authority of the natural mother, no matter what she’s done, how much she has abused the child, how delinquent she has been, and so on.

Well Charles Hodge more than a hundred years ago in dealing with a question of authority, his commentary I believe on first Corinthians made this point emphatically that all power on the human is conditional and never absolute. SO that the authority of mothers, of fathers, of husbands, of civil authorities and church authorities is always condition upon their obedience to God; are they under authority? So that the modern idea that the natural fact prevails over a religious fact is false; no parent who abuses a child can retain their authority under God, they forfeited it. And in every sphere authority can be forfeited when men go astray, when they are seriously derelict an delinquent. Now the limits of this are a little more difficult to determine. In the middle ages theologians developed a doctrine of tyrannicide, the legitimacy of assassinating ungodly princes and kings. Well I would go along with that, but I would have to say that we have neglected to develop the doctrine religiously, not naturalistically, of when authority can be challenged. SO today you have the anarchy of consent, and on one hand the state insisting on the natural fact irrespective of circumstances. So very ungodly and evil woman are allowed to keep their children when it’s very obvious that the children are going to be subjected to ever increasing evil at their hands; but religiously we can’t agree with that. Authority does not come from the natural fact but from God.

Yes, Otto?

[Audience member] I think it seems to be a part of the feminist movement. There’s a swing in the United States from male authority which is now denied, to an exaggeration of female authority. And the rights of woman are discussed as separate from the rights of people and the rights of human beings. Well the rights of parents, the rights of whole classes and for a long time there’s been a lot of mockish nonsense about the nobility of mothers. Not all mothers are noble, but this has not been really examined in any serious way, so you have injustice in the courts regarding male-female relationships and female-parental relationships. I often see in the paper where some fellows gone crazy, has been locked out of his house and the police are called and the newspaper says “Mrs. Brown and her children had Brown taken away.”

[Rushdoony] I would carry this a step further Otto, I’m fed up with talk about the rights of men or women or minorities or so on. Let’s hear more about the right of right, of a right above and beyond any person or group. And that’s what’s missing today.

Yes Chuck?

[Audience member] It seems to me that there may be a close relationship between authority and this whole rights movement and ownership as in the situation with abortion. The argument being that the mother owns her body, and therefore has the right to do whatever she wishes to do with it. And also maybe it’s tied in with the situations that the adoptive parent as opposed to the natural parent. I wonder if you could?

[Rushdoony] Well abortion is an example of the logic of a naturalistic view of authority. If authority is on the human scene, then why not let every person have right over their own body? That’s the logic of democracy, that’s the ultimate expression of it. This is why the only way to counter that is to emphasize the Godly nature of authority. That it is murder, “thus said the Lord.” There’s no other way to deal with it.

Yes?

[Audience member] Going back to our starting point with Luke 7, in the centurion’s faith and the authority that he exercised and then he recognized with Jesus. You’ve been preaching on hierarchy recently and those two thoughts came together when I was down at {?} last weekend and went to a service at the chapel there and picked up a copy of the manual for U.S. forces in it and I looked up the navy hymn and it is entitled interestingly enough Eternal Father Strong to Save. That’s exactly what that centurion was saying. And so I got to thinking, I wanted to ask you about it. I was reading in Acts recently the last couple of days about Paul and the centurion and his trial and so forth, and the Bible seems to speak approvingly of military forces almost all the way through. At least as far as I kind remember, and on the other hand much of the military organization and orientation and values and principles and hierarchy and so forth seems to be based largely on Biblical principles. Could you comment on that?

[Rushdoony] Well of course when the New Testament was written the Roman army was at its greatness, so to speak, and it was essentially an elite force chosen out of the best of Rome with a great deal of pride, and esprite de corps. So it was both a remarkable army and the high development of the Roman premises against the hierarchical one. So the imagery of the army was a favorable one then in the New Testament because there was no question about the caliber of the Roman army. In time it disintegrated and it no longer commanded the cream of Rome, and they were enlisting anybody and everybody. So the Roman army went from an elite group to a mercenary group with barbarians increasingly recruited to become soldiers. Well our time is up now, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God grant that our lives be grounded upon Thy word and Thine authority that in all things we may be faithful and that we may exercise in and of Thee. And now go in peace God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.

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Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Lecture

Lesson: 1 of 19

Track: #01

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[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer. Oh Lord our God unto whom all glory belongs we come into Thy present again looking for the day when the glory that is Thine shall fill the earth and Thy righteousness cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. Make us thine instruments towards this purpose, that we may proclaim Thy word, Thy salvation, Thy justice unto the ends of the earth, and that we might be instrumental in bringing men, woman, children, and nations under the dominion of Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

We have been dealing with a theology of work and today we begin a study of the doctrine of Authority. The doctrine of authority, and our subject this morning is author and authority. Our text is Hebrews twelve, one and two. The first two verses of Hebrews twelve.

“1Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

The words author and authority are of course related words. The word author of course comes from the Latin, almost unchanged, and it means to increase or to produce. Its meaning thus is that an author is a creator, an originator, a producer; and an authority is one with the right to command and to exercise dominion, to have jurisdiction. There is however still another word that is commonly used in the New Testament and is translated as author. This particular word appears in Hebrews 12 verse one and two. Here we have a Greek word, not a Latin one which comes from a root archa, as in archangel and it means a prince or a tribal leader. Its root archa means the beginning, or the cause. So the New Testament uses one word from a Latin derivation and another from a Greek derivation and we use these words in the English today. And these word both point to the Creator.

The basic New Testament word of course is the one used in Hebrews twelve. Thus an author is a creator and an authority is the creator and therefore the one who exercise dominion, makes the law, and has jurisdiction.

Now religious perspective is always determined by our doctrine of authority. In the Greco-Roman world the autonomous reason of man was the source of authority. So that when we look at Greco-Roman thinking authority is ultimately from man. Thinkers such as Galen, Celsus, Porphyry, and others judged the Bible in terms of their rationalism. In the century before Christ the philosopher of acrecia {?} said, and I quote “nothing can ever be created by divine power out of nothing.” For him all forces in the universe were inherent forces, naturalistic forces, there was no power from beyond nature.

Now this did not mean the Greco-Roman man did not believe in marvels; in things that to us would appear to be supernatural. Their interest however was totally different. They were ready to believe all kinds of marvels could take place because nature had divine power inherent in it. Thus Aristotle was interested in every kind of freakish birth, because that freakish birth could represent the next step in evolution. This is why when Paul at Athens spoke about the doctrine of the resurrection the philosophers were immediately interested because here was a man declaring that somebody had risen from the dead. Their interest was premised in the fact that “maybe this was the next stage in the development of nature, in evolution. And as Van Till noted, and I quote “even among the cultured it was in good style to recognize that there was more in heaven and on earth than they had yet dreamed of in their philosophy, they (the Greco-Romans) believed in the mysterious universe. They were perfectly willing therefore to leave open a place for the unknown, but this unknown must be thought of as the utterly unknowable and indeterminate.”

In other words they were ready to accept almost any kind of miraculous event provided it could be naturalistically accounted for. This is why when Paul in talking about the Resurrection spoke of God as the source of the power, and God as the judge of all, they immediately said they wanted to hear no more “we’ll listen to you some other time on that.” For them the subject was closed. Had Paul continued to say “this actually happened and there are witnesses, and this is perhaps the next step in evolution, in the development of nature.” The Greek philosophers would no doubt have been ready to appoint a delegation to go to Jerusalem and talk with the surviving people who had been eye witnesses of the resurrection; but not if God had done it. But God of scripture is beyond mans control, this made the God of scripture inacceptable to the Greeks and the Romans. The only Gods they would allow were deified men. They wanted God’s who could be controlled by man and mans reason and were really no more than deified men. Given this premise, their naturalism, they were amazingly gullible. We’ll come to that in a moment.

But for them the miracles of the Bible were very offensive. One verse in scripture at which the critics regularly fought in anger is Luke 18:27 “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” And also “With God all things are possible.” The philosopher Celsus was very upset and outraged by this verse. To him it was the epitome of the absurdity of Christianity, to believe in a power above and beyond nature was intellectually unrespectable, disreputable, and to be avoided. But at the same time they held that to hold that all things are possible with God was bad thinking, they were ready to affirm that all things are possible for nature.

Let me illustrate what they actually believed in. They believed that men could in time animate the statues of God and effect religious union with them. You all of heard no doubt of the story of Pygmalion, of the statue that was carved by a sculpture and then became animated and a living woman. Now that has deep religious roots. This was believed in; or rather it was a premise of their philosophy. For example Julian the apostate, the Emperor went to study under Maximus of Ephesus, a philosopher. His reason for going there was to study how the powers of nature could be enhanced by the philosopher in order to animate statues and perform all kinds of naturalistic marvels. Well the philosophers did have statues that would have torches in their hands that would burst into flame. They had statues that would talk with hidden mechanisms of course. In fact one such statue at Antioch, the statue of Zeus-Philos or friendly Zeus, issued some very nasty statements about Christians which led to a persecution.

Now these philosophers believed that the trickery they were indulging in was a kind of prompting to nature. They did not see it as fraud. They believed in theurgy. Theurgy believed that the divinity inherent in nature could be invoked and brought into focus by man. Let me quote the thesis of theurgy. “The divine was invisibly diffused throughout the whole cosmos like a primordial electric wave. The action which succeeded in capturing this wave, that is, whatever induced the divine to reveal itself, was a legitimate theurgic activity”. In effect they were saying “Nature’s charged with all kinds of forces or divine powers, and just as when you get a radio you can hear sound waves that are being sent, so if you get the right combination you can capture those powers that are inherent in nature; and any props they used to capture this divine wave were seen as legitimate, not as trickery. Now this is why the pagan philosophers were so gullible, they did not see nature as fixed, created by God with laws binding it that were God ordained. Therefore they believed all things were possible with nature. Of course there view of nature was humanistic. Man could control nature, therefore if the divine power in the universe is inherent in nature, power is placed in mans hands and proof becomes something that man determines. Mans activities will make things happen.

We had a book published a few years ago entitled Man Makes Evolutionnow that idea goes back to theurgy. Similarly when Hegel said “the rational is the real” that is “what the mind of man conceives and develops is alone reality.” He was again in line with ancient Greek thought. Modern science says that what my net doesn’t catch isn’t fish. If it doesn’t meet my standards, it’s not a fact.

Now to long ago we had someone, a forest ranger at Big Trees who said that now it was true, there were mountain lions in the mountains there. Well the people all through there had said that for a hundred years or more, but no naturalist would accept anything that any person locally ever said about mountain lions because they were not scientists. But a forest ranger with some kind of degree in science said there were mountain lions, and therefore finally in the 1970’s mountain lions became a reality. Now that’s humanism, what my net doesn’t catch is not fish. And of course this is why creationism is not possible for these people. It doesn’t meet their standards of proof, the thing that is true is what conforms to the scientists view of reality.

In other words we have hear a doctrine of authority that is humanistic to the core and anti-Christian. How we define reality rests on an act of faith, and Hebrew eleven verse three says “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God; so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” The whole world of reality as we see it humanistically, is created by God. He is the author. Moreover Hebrews goes on to say all life is an act of faith. The only question is faith in what or in whom. Our doctrine of authority is manifested by our faith. And so Paul goes on to say “Wherefore seeing also that we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doeth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.”

A great cloud of witnesses, the saints of the past and the whole world today. Cloud of witnesses, the term cloud is an older term for great masses of people, and here it means past and present; those of the world beyond and this world alike. We are to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. He is the author, the beginning, the foundation, the creator. So here we have an affirmation of the fact that God creates faith in us. It is not of us, it is of God, and also He is the one who brings it to perfection.

Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross despising the shame and has set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Jesus Christ is the beginning or cause of our faith, our prince, our leader in the life of faith, and He is the perfecter the finisher of our faith. In the Bible authority is personal. Moreover it is a person, it is the Lord. WE are to run the race of life before the eyes of the world, the great masses of men. Jesus Christ is our Adam, the head of the new humanity and he proceeds us in that race. He himself ran it with joy we are told, despising the shame of the cross to become our prince at the right hand of the throne of God. And we who run the race to receive the promise of which Hebrews 11 verse thirty-nine and forty speak “The promise of the kingdom, or the city of God.” Christ’s reward is to reign, ours is to reign with Him and in Him forever and ever as revelation twenty-two verse five declares.

Moreover in Hebrews two verse ten Jesus Christ is called the captain of our salvation, again the same word “author” the foundation, the creator of our salvation. And because He is the Creator of us and our salvation He is beyond our control and our salvation is beyond anything we can do.

In the Bible the words author and authority have the implication of being totally beyond mans control. God is our maker, not we His. Even where human authorship exists, where a man writes a book, we may criticize that work but we cannot make it ours and re-write it honestly. On a few occasions it has been tried, but it has only led to opprobrium for those who have attempted it. Nahum Tate, a dramatist of sorts, is remembered only because he decided to re-write Shakespeare. He re-wrote King Lear to give it a happy ending, and he is only remembered for that; and not very kindly or favorably. The Bible says that God is our sole author and authority, our sovereign. We were created for His pleasure and His predestination; and in fact Paul says in Romans 9:17-21

“17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”

In brief Paul says, God is mans author and authority. Both in creating us and in saving us he is the captain, the author of our salvation. And for man to challenge God’s work is insanity. To question authority is suicidal; it is to question the validity of life itself so that when we begin to doubt the authority of God we become suicidal. Life only exists on God’s terms, not in terms of mans imagination. God is God and His word is revelation. His word is there for authoritative for us.

The philosopher Spinoza denied the Bible contains propositional revelation or truth. That is it has no actual statements of fact, it only has an expression of feeling, of a lot of gush; but no factual statements. This kind of thing is very prevalent today, and we see it of course in a Toronto schools that claims to be reformational. What these people do is to see God lacking the intelligence and coherency that they have. They subordinate God to themselves. These men as Van Till says “seek to make Christianity acceptable to its cultured despisers.” We cannot say to the creator “why hast Thou made me thus?” We cannot question His authority nor His law; to do so original sin. All who judge God will be judged by Him. Therefore the authority of God and His word must be binding for us. We must be men under authority. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us to be under authority; the authority of Thy Son, our Savior, the authority of Thy word, the authority of Thy spirit. And so God our Father we come to thank Thee that we have been called to be under authority. Make us faithful, make us strong in Thee and in Thy word, and make us authoritative in Thee as we forth to face the powers of darkness and the evils of this world. That in all things we may be more than conquerors in Christ our Lord, in His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson first of all?

Yes?

[Audience member] Next time I run into a Humanist I’m going to suggest him that he’s a prisoner of Greek thought. Which leads to the serious question, I’ve been wrestling with this problem of alleged free will that Roman Catholicism specifically puts forth and I was wondering how that concept works into what you were saying today, whether that is just a reflecting Greek thought that has infected Roman Catholicism and how that ties in with God’s authority in predestination.

[Rushdoony] Well first of all not all Catholic thought affirms free will, and second the baldest affirmations of it are in Arminian circles and in non-Christian circles. Then second free will is only tenable if applied to God, only God has total free will. Ours is the secondary free will of a creature, the free will to be a creature and to be what God created us to be; so that we cannot define free will absolutely as is regularly done because we are then saying “we are God” and of course that’s original sin; and that’ what Greek thought has developed, the implications of original sin. Every man is his own God knowing or determining good and evil for himself. So every man is going to exercise total freedom; and this is why so many of the discussions on the subject are observed, because they posit for man what only is possible with God. Thus if you want to see arguments for the critiques of this, and of the Biblical position, you can find it in orthodox thought, protestant and catholic, over the centuries. IN our day of course both communions have been very heavily infected by Humanism and by Greek thought. Hence the absolutizing of mans will as though man were God and capable of an absolute freedom. Which man does not have; we are under authority.

Now we have a mystery here ultimately. But without the mystery we are saying that we like gods can understand everything. So we have to say “we are responsible creatures, the Bible makes this clear from beginning to end, and we’re going to be held to account, we’re going to be brought to trial before God. But at the same time God has ordained all things that have come to pass. How do you reconcile the two? Well because God said so, not because we understand it. If we try to say only what we can understand is what is acceptable to us, the we’re saying that we are like God, and that we have a mind equal to God and therefore capable of understanding all the works of God. So it is presuming too much to claim to understand it. The people who try to make this into something humanistically rational will opt either for a predestination which obliterates man, or freewill which obliterates God. And we’re not to obliterate either God or man. We are to give God the sovereignty; we are to recognize that man is a responsible creature under God.

Any other questions and comments?

[Audience member] Just to {?} upon that, then if the scripture, in other words God’s word, that presents this as a mystery, then if you could eliminate that than anyone who wanted to be God would have a little bit more grounds for asserting that. Is that why the attack on scripture, inerrancy especially but also interpretational?

[Rushdoony] Yes, man wants to be able to sit in judgment on God and on His word, exactly. Man wants to bring everything to the bar of His judgment. As a professor at Fuller Seminary supposedly an evangelical, E.J. Carnell said a few years ago “bring on your Revelations, let them answer to the bar of mans reason.” So “come on God let me stand in judgment of You, and if You’re ok I’ll let you by.” Now that’s the implication of what Carnell had to say, now that’s where rationalism leads to.

Any other questions or comments?

[Audience member] The phrase “running with patience” is very interesting, I wonder if you could expand on that.

[Rushdoony] Yes, earlier in the previous chapter he had spoken of the walk of faith, and the men who had walked by faith in the face of all kinds of absurdities, contradictions, persecutions; and yet with faith refusing to recognize that any of these seeming contradictions were anything but a part of God’s absolute plan. And so he concludes that these are all having obtained a good report through faith receive not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us that they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore seeing we also are encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doeth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. So, we have no reason to be impatient we’ve got the finished word of God. We’ve got the example of what these men did. We know what God has accomplished. The sin which so easily besets us is to play God and to say impatiently “look God your timing is way off. Now you do it pronto because I want this and that now.” We all have that tendency. We’re all impatient with God. So with the example of the patience of Abraham and all these people we’re told to run with patience the race that is set before us. And a race is something in which you don’t hold back you see. At the best we want to stroll through life. Don’t push us God with too much responsibility, too much work, too many trials. Don’t call it a race; let it be a stroll through a park.

Yes?

[Audience member] That raises another question related to abortion and contraception. If God is determining say how many children we’re going to have because He is the author of all life, even specifically in each pregnancy, doesn’t that suggest very strongly that contraception is wrong as well as abortion?

[Rushdoony] Well that’s another subject we won’t get into that here now. Any other questions or comments? Well if not let us bow our heads and close our eyes in prayer as we conclude our study.

Blessed art Thou oh Lord God of our Fathers who of Thy grace and mercy has ordained all things that we Thine erring ones Whom Thou hast redeemed might become heirs of Thy kingdom. Bless us in Thy service; give us patience to run the race knowing that Thou art the author and finisher of our faith. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always, amen.

Pocket College: Recent Episodes

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