Classroom Lectures - Jackson Seminary

Calvinism: World and Life View

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Philosophy

Lesson: 4-4

Genre: Speech

Track: 253

Dictation Name: RR100B4

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that we have inherited, in Christ Jesus, so great a heritage. Strengthen us in our most holy faith, that as we face a world in crisis and in ruins, we may reconstruct all things in terms of Thy word, Thy grace, and Thy truth. Bless us with this purpose, in Jesus name, Amen.

Some of you may have heard a little story that I told yesterday, and if so, bear with me, because I feel it is so important it should be repeated and remembered. Yesterday, in talking to a nurse who works at the Jackson Emergency Hospital, she told me something that distressed me very greatly. She said that for the fair amount that she has been working there, she has seen many, many people brought in from accidents, from very serious and critical injuries, carried to the table, and only once did she hear anyone in that situation mention the name of God or pray. What this means is that to all practical intent, for most people here God is dead. He is not alive to them and a part of their lives. I think this is a very serious fact. I would have expected such a statement, say, from San Francisco, or New York City, or Chicago, but I would have been less likely to expect it from Jackson. There is a higher percentage of church membership here. But what it does indicate is that while many men here profess an evangelical faith, in a real crisis they do not think in terms of it. So that what they lack is a Christian mind. A mind whose responses are first and last in terms of Christ and the sovereign God. In terms of the Word of God.

In other words, for them there is no world and life faith. There is no faith that has the answers across the board for everything. Christianity has become to them, life insurance. Protection against Hell. So that we are indeed in crisis. The Reformed faith made its impact on the world precisely because it did present that. A world and life system. And its uniqueness was that is was virtually alone in so doing. At the time of the Reformation, you had Lutheranism, you had Anglicanism, you had Anabaptism and you had the counter-Reformation. But the very power of the Reformed faith was that it alone presented a world and life view. The other faiths, or churches, had behind them powerful princes. Powerful German princes, the Habsburgs, the English crown, and so on. But the Reformed faith never had a powerful prince behind it, a powerful, national face. Its strength was purely in terms of the fact that it presented an answer so that the Christian mind was possible. Having said that, let’s turn to an entirely different matter.

I have a number of Catholic friends, very devout, very earnest Catholics, some of whom will no longer go to the Church. They feel the Church has abandoned them and the faith. Some of these people will not farm or plant until first a priest, if they can find nowadays a good one, comes out and blesses the field. I know that in San Francisco when I was a student, there were many of the old fishermen there, who would not go out with a new boat or at the beginning of a fishing season, until a priest came out to bless the boat. I know that not to long ago a very devout Catholic friend gave us, for Christmas, a blessed candle. And said we are facing a troubled time, a troubled age, and a particularly saintly old Irish priest, very feeble, very godly man, she said, blessed this candle and I got one for myself, because we need the blessing of the Lord.

Now of course to us, this kind of practice is not Scriptural, it is superstitious. And yet it represents something very important, and the history of it is very important, because you did not have this kind of thing in the early part of the Middle Ages, oh there were relics of it here, survivals out of paganism, the Church made accommodation with it in this locality and that, but basically this was not a serious factor in the life of the Church of Rome, til the high Middle Ages. It was then, that on a massive basis, the use of images and the whole paraphernalia of the popular devotional life came into being. As a matter of fact, the Church fought it. Fought it hard and long, and then finally accepted it, and made it a part of its life because it was so helpful in keeping a hold on the people. Now, why did it rise in the way that it did, and in the manner that it did? The answer is that precisely as scholasticism arose, this also arose. Because scholasticism on the one hand, with its Greek, its Hellenic presupposition, cut the ground out from under the biblical world and life view. But people want an answer to everyday life, from their faith. And so when, in the Church now, they were not getting the Word of God, they were getting a preaching that was based on Aristotelian philosophy as mediated by the scholastic philosophers, that no longer spoke the Word of God to their everyday life, then it was the images, then it was the candles, then it was having the priests come and bless the field, or bless their cattle at calving time, or some such thing. It was the urgent need of having a world and life covering in terms of their faith.

Thus you see, when you deal with these Catholic practices, it doesn’t do any good to lash out at the simple folk for their superstition, that isn’t the answer. They’re trying to supply a lack in the teaching in the Church. And today you have the same thing rising in a far worse fashion. People are again being left without a world and life view. The Catholic Church is no longer providing it in any way. You all know that a few years ago, about two years ago it was, the Catholic Church deposed a number of saints including Saint Christopher, and you’ve all seen the Saint Christopher medallions that used to hang from the rearview mirror of so many cars that Catholics had. It was a crude way of saying, I need a world and life view, I need a faith that goes with me wherever I go. That applies in every situation. And then suddenly the Church said there is no Saint Christopher, that’s a myth. I know from Catholic friends what a hornets nest they stirred up with that. And the kind of scene that was actually created in one or two churches. And the Catholics are not used to having that kind of challenge to authority that they did have, what had they done? In the name of a humanistic faith, they had cut the ground out from under the people, even with respect to their popular substitutes, which gave them a world and life coverage. Not a view, but a coverage. So what has been springing up to take its place, another world and life view, of the demonic sort, occultism. So now it’s spirits, satanic forces, the witchcraft movement, the occultist movement, which says here, every day, as I move around, these spells, these incantations, these spirits, govern and guide. It’s a world and life view that they are providing. Very clearly, very unmistakably, a world and life view.

And we cannot understand it unless we appreciate that fact. So you see, the remedy to these things is not to say right off, well that’s bad, it is. Or that’s superstition. It is. But it makes no difference than if you tell a person who comes to you, assuming you’re a dentist just for a moment, and says, I have a bad toothache, I thinks it’s abscessed, and you look at it and say, indeed it is. Thank you, goodbye, that’ll be ten dollars. You don’t have to identify his toothache, and that doesn’t cure it, you see. And occultism doesn’t go away for being told it’s superstitious, and images and candles don’t disappear because we describe them for what they are, any more than a description of a toothache makes it go away. The answer has to be a world and life view. Now, in this book, John Calvin in his socio-economic impact The Constructive Revolutionary, by Fred W. Graham, which I just picked up and I browsed in it, it looks good, although I don’t think I agree with a great deal in it. I’d like to read a statement he makes. He says, ‘It is true that the great debates within religious bodies have been over such purely theological doctrines as double predestination, the presence or absence of Christ at His table, and correct modes of Church polity. But, partly because we live in a period when such doctrines are not of consuming importance, and partly because Calvin expressed his own mundane interest clearly and urgently, I try to balance the better known theological position of the Reformer with a lucid statement of his social and economic thought. And the application of that great mind to the problems of his tiny Alpine city republic. Indeed his secular though is often seen to be critical of his theological thought. This worldly stress is not at all foreign to Calvin’s thought. On the contrary, the message of what we might call Christian secularity was preached several times each week from the pulpits of Geneva’s three churches. Saint Pierre, the Madeleine, and Saint Gervais. To insist that Calvin’s thought is grasped in the main by a study of total depravity, limited atonement, double predestination, and irresistible grace, is simply to distort his thought, and to study a dead torso rather than a revolutionary thinker.’ Unquote.

Now, there’s a great deal of truth in what Graham says. I preached the message I did in chapel this morning, as a preparation for this class. So, that was preached as an introduction to what we’re going to see now. My point there was that the Pharisees sought sociological justification, not theological justification. In my book, ‘The Politics of Guilt and Pity’ I have a chapter on Calvin in Geneva, the sociology of justification, in which I deal with the fact that justification, sociologically, was a relevant concern of Calvin’s. First, theological justification and then a sociological justification. But all that the people of the Counsel of Geneva wanted was sociological justification, and here was the conflict. Calvin was intensely concerned about society. But he was not primarily concerned about that, he was concerned primarily about God. And because he was concerned about God, he was concerned about society. Now what happened in Geneva was this, very briefly. Geneva was a small city state. But it was important economically. Its life was collapsing. It was a city that commercially had a great deal of importance, but it was losing its ability to function because the moral caliber of life was collapsing. And if you don’t have law and order, moral law and order, law and order in the streets, you cannot function. Now the Council of Geneva was primarily interested in maintaining a functioning city-state. They did not want to be in ruin. The Catholic Bishop had been unable to make the city function. It was collapsing into moral anarchy. And so they were interested in the Reformation from a purely pragmatic point of view.

Calvin was called in to be the social engineer, as it were. ‘Provide us with some kind of social order. But don’t demand too much of us.’ Now the Council ruled the city, the idea of Calvin as a dictator is ridiculous. In fact, they didn’t even allow him to become a citizen or give him a vote until they knew he was dying. And then they thought it was safe to give the old man the vote, make him a citizen. What they were concerned with was order. Help us to function. Europe at that time, as Schmitt has pointed out in his study of Calvin, was honeycombed with secret societies, all aiming at revolution. Many of them championing such things as free love, many of them holding ideas, such as the Adamites, that all men needed to get back into the Garden of Eden was to throw off all clothes, they were nudists, and, before the end of the Middle Ages incidentally, there were many parades of these Adamites, nude down various streets in Europe. Defying the city fathers in the name of an anarchistic faith. Everything, you see, was falling apart. Morally, every kind of perversion was being championed by one secret group or another, every kind of practice was being justified, the witchcraft movement, occultism was all around then, J.B. Russell in his ‘Witchcraft in the Middle Ages’ has pointed out what a fearful thing it was, with their belief in, and practice of, human sacrifice and cannibalism and much else. Here are some councilmen, running a city, who’re businessmen, who say: “Look, we’ve got to have law and order or things are going to fall apart. Calvin, can you provide us law and order, go to it. But don’t step on our toes in the process.” They wanted the order Calvin could provide, but they didn’t like Calvin. First chance they got they got rid of him, and then found they could not do without him. And Calvin had to be threatened by one of his former associates with the judgment of God if he didn’t go back and do his duty, and he did. He did go back.

Why was it they could not do without Calvin? Well, the reason was that Calvin was providing a world and life view. A world and life view. This is why Calvin had conflicts with the Council, in a way that Luther did not have with his prince, in a way that Cranmer did not have with Henry the Eighth. And in a way in which the Catholic Church and the Catholic state did not have conflicts. Why? Because Calvin, with his world and life views said, since God is sovereign, all areas must be godly; every area must be under the jurisdiction of God and His Word. So the Word of God is not a Church word. It is not a Church book. Now this is one of the greatest sins of the modern church, evangelical and reformed, it has reduced the Bible to a church book. The Bible is not a book for the Church alone. And if we reduce it to a Church book, we are denying its essential meaning. The Bible is a book for every man in every area of life, it’s a book for the individual, it’s a book for the family, it’s a book for the State, it is a book for the businessman, it is a book for every area of life. As a result, because God is the sovereign and absolute God, His Word is a total Word. Thus the requirement that Calvin insisted on was that the State must be godly. Every area of civil government has as great a requirement of obeying Scripture as the Church does. Now Calvin was not saying that the Church must rule the State, and he was denying that the State had a right to rule the Church. What he was saying was that the State had a obligation to obey God. And this of course was impertinence in the eyes of the princes. And the eyes of rulers all over Europe. They regarded this as a very, very revolutionary doctrine.

For a minister of God to stand up and instruct princes? Of course, this is what Ambrose and others had done in the early Church. St. John of Chrysostom, so boldly again and again rebuking the Emperor, this was once routine, this was the prophetic word of the Old Testament. And certainly every pulpit in the United States that claim to be reformed and evangelical, should have, when the Supreme Court came out with its decision on capital punishment and on abortion, have preached the Word of God, concerning those things. And said to all the members there, that thus sayeth the Lord, to the Ahab’s in Washington. Now this is the requirement that Scripture makes of the State. This is why the kings of Israel and of Judah in their apostasy were so unhappy about the prophets, because the prophets were saying that civil government must be godly. And again, schools must be godly. The school as much as the Church or the State must be under the Word of God. So the idea of a State school which doesn’t recognize God is not Biblical at all. The Bible is as much a book for the school as it is for the State. As it is for the Church. And as it is for the covenant man. And so the necessity of Christian schools. An urgent necessity. Christian schools that are in every subject governed by the premises of Scripture. Similarly, with regard to vocations, the idea of the Christian calling. Now you probably read, when you were in college, in History, unless they dropped that from History to, they drop so much now a days that it’s hard to keep track of it, how in the seventeenth century in England and America, books like ‘The Christian Cobbler’, ‘The Christian Shepherd’, ‘The Christian Farmer’, ‘The Christian Merchant’, were being published in great numbers, and had a tremendous audience. And how commonplace it was, in those days, for every layman who was a businessman, or a workman, to read and memorize most of the book of Proverbs.

When I was still a small boy there was an element of this yet, in that you used to be able to get little pocketbook editions of the book of Proverbs. But Proverbs were once very widely used that way. The Christian man and his calling to know the Word of God. Then, the family. The family is a covenant sphere. At this point let me digress a moment, there’re many people who feel the idea of spheres and sphere laws originated with Abraham Kuyper, this is not true. Kuyper was a great thinker who did formulate and develop the idea, but in the Colonial era, you had the same idea, only they didn’t call it sphere laws, they called it covenant. The personal covenant and salvation. The civil government covenant, the family covenant, the Church covenant, and so on. So they saw all these areas as covenant areas, you see. And in American colonial literature, there’s so much said about covenants, and man being in a covenantal sphere as he moved from one area of life to the Church to the home, to his work, to school or State. The family therefore under Calvinism, became a tremendous force. So important a force, that Rome felt that it was a major threat. The Reformed family grew to such tremendous dimensions in its influence, it was a protective force, it gave the child, and it gave the husband and the wife a security which was like a fortress. It was like a university that trained its children in the faith, it taught Catechism, it gave them a body of doctrine, a world and life view. One reason why I don’t like the Sunday School. It’s taking over and building what the family ought to do, and so we’ve crippled the family by saying, look, you don’t have to do it, we’ll do it for you, we’ll teach your children. It used to be, at one time, that the pastor or Dominie called on each family once a year, or if the church were to large, the elders called, to see how much Catechism the children had been taught, by the family.

And they were rebuked and disciplined if they had not done so. What did Rome do? They were so shocked by the strength of the Reformed family, that they organized a cult to try to counteract it, and to create a parallel development in their own circles. The cult of the holy family. The Saint Joseph cult. They made of Saint Joseph a figure of some importance, which he had not been previously, and they stressed the holy family in a new way to try to create the same kind of strong family within their own circles. But as the sociologist who just died recently, Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy, pointed out, it did not succeed to any appreciable degree as in the Reformed circles, in Catholic circles. Again, in the scientist, the same feeling that the world and life view of the Reformed faith required they adhere to develop the implications of their faith. Most of the men who were founders of the royal society in England were Puritans. A number of the great scientists of the early centuries, a very large percent, were Reformed men. Dr. {Hep?} of the Netherlands wrote a book on this, some years ago, on how extensively the sciences of the modern era began in Reformed circles. The same was true of the area of the arts and so on. So that the tremendous power of the Reformed faith was precisely because it had a world and life view. It had a total answer in every area in terms of the plain statements of Scripture, the implications of the sovereignty of God. And this was its strength, and its weakness now is that it doesn’t have that, it isn’t using it, it has it there implicit in its standards, but it’s reduced the Bible to a Church book, and the faith to a Church faith. So that the Christian, Reformed or unreformed, can go to the emergency hospital, and never think of God until a minister comes around.

One thing more and then I’ll open the floor for questions. I think I referred to a fact which some of you may have heard me, I think in conversation, I’m forgetting by now what I said and where I said it, I’ve been speaking steadily for two weeks now, but a very delightful Catholic political scientist whom my wife and I have known for some years, and he has read my books and agreed not to comment on them and I’ve agreed not to comment his, he’s a very charming man. But he wrote not to long ago, in modern age, a very remarkable article. He said the future of the world depended on two men, and their influence on the modern age. Two men of Geneva. John Jacque Rousseau, and John Calvin. And he said, on the one hand, you have in John Jacque Rousseau, the faith in the natural goodness of man and in the totalitarian state, totalitarian democracy, the general will, the State as mans savior. He said that this is what is on the march in every country in the world and is destroying the world. He said on the other hand, you have in Calvin a belief that man is a sinner, but that there is a sovereign and total God, who absolutely governs all things and has the answer in every area of life. And he says as a Catholic I am not happy about taking my choice between these two men, but there’s no question in my mind, I have to hope that it is the position of John Calvin that triumphs. And of course, Doctor or Count Von{?} is saying there, implicitly, that here is a world and life view. The world has to have one today, or it will go into a Dark Ages. I think he’s right.

Are there any questions now?

Yes.

[Audience] Talk about going into specific areas a little bit, for instance, in politics. Do you say, as some put forth, the need in the area of politics for a {?}, separate Christian political parties?

[Dr. Rushdoony] That’s a question that is often asked, and I would say that perhaps, sometime in the future, but what we do need now is a specific Christian political philosophy. We can never have a Christian party unless we have first of all a Christian philosophy and that we have not yet developed.

And one of the first things we have to develop as we set forth such a philosophy is that we must attack the idea of the Messianic State. The State is man’s savior, in modern thought. The State is the answer for every problem. So pass another law, appropriate more money, that’s the answer. And of course, that faith we must destroy. There was a time when, in the Middle Ages, the Church made itself the central institution because the Church declared it had the answer to all things, and now the State for a long time has said, the State’s going to solve all problems. And its bankruptcy now is even great than the Church’s was at the time of the Reformation. So you see, if we say the answer’s a political party, we’re just taking the same old tired route. What we must first say is that we must construct the philosophy, in terms of Scripture, before we can think of acting. Otherwise we create another republican or democrat or American independent party, which is no better than anything else we’ve got. The only difference between our political parties is that they’re all driving towards a cliff, and one says I’ll take you there at eighty miles an hour, and the other says I will take you there safely and sanely over the cliff at sixty miles an hour. And another says I will do it in a luxury car at sixty-five. Now that’s the difference between their philosophies. They’re all heading towards the cliff, one offers you speed, one luxury, another safety before you go over the edge.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience] …{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Very important question, the family. Now, there was a very interesting report published about three, four years ago, which was commissioned under President Kennedy, and it was to use modern computers and feed all the information about all the public schools in the country into the computers, and to find out what they came up with.

Now this was called the Coleman report because Dr. Coleman of John Hopkins, I believe, headed the commission. When they got through the report, they were so embarrassed by it that you don’t hear much about it. And about fifteen Harvard professors wrote a symposium on it, and they couldn’t find any faults with it, and they simply underscored what the commission said, so you don’t hear much about the Harvard report on the Coleman report. What did the Coleman report say? Well, among other things, they found to their horror, that there was not too much difference between white and black schools, this was before integration when they started feeding the data in. The difference was actually very slight. This was a shocker. Then they found that the amount of money spent on a school didn’t make any difference in the performance of the children in the schools. That again was a shocker, because the educational fraternity was saying before, and is still saying, the answer is that we don’t have enough money. But the third thing was the worst fact of all. The worst. They found that performance in the schools depended, not on race, or social and economic status, but on the family. On the family. And they found that in the fifty-five percent of black children who came from good stable homes, there was excellent performance, and the eighty-five percent of white children who came from good homes, there was excellent performance, and that this was the key. Where you had a stable Christian home, you had good performance. And that was it. That was the heart of it.

The Coleman report incidentally, said there was never a ghetto school they found that was successful. But the Harvard report corrected them at that point, which I thought was very interesting. They said there has never been a public ghetto school that is successful. Christian schools have been very successful there. So they said some very important things that substantiate our position as Christians. And now let’s go a little further. The whole legal structure of the modern world goes back to a very remarkable woman, a very, very great woman. The Empress Theodora. Wife of Justinian the Great. The Empress Theodora had as rough a life as any woman ever had. Her father was a lion-tamer in the circus, the Roman circus. He died when his children, three daughters, were I think about five, seven, and nine years of age. There was no money for them. So, the girls very quickly became prostitutes, at that early age. I won’t go into the kind of depravity they had to indulge in, what kind of acts they had to perform. Now that was Theodora’s life. From the time when she was just a little girl, so that by the time she was eighteen or twenty, she had many years of experience as a prostitute. She accompanied one man who picked her up, a business man, on a trip to North Africa, she fell sick while she was there and the man abandoned her, left her, she was nursed by some Christians and she became a convert. To make a long story short, she became very friendly with a young government official and officer who was the nephew of the Emperor, and they married. When the Emperor died without any children, Justinian became Emperor and she became Empress. Now you can read more filth about her than almost anyone who’s ever lived, because everybody who had an axe to grind not only revived every story about her, but since she had such a filthy background, they invented everything more they could, and tried to blacken her as though from her earliest years to her death she was one of the most vicious, venomous, hateful people imaginable. She was a very godly woman.

And she instituted a legal reform. She encouraged her husband to revise all law in terms of Scripture. And the code of Justinian was formulated. Now, with respect to the family, and I’m getting to that, what Theodora did was this. She said, the Word of God specifies that there is only kind of sexuality that God allows, within marriage. Within marriage. Therefore, all non-marital sexuality is against the law. It’s forbidden by law and subject to punishment. Now this was entirely new in history, outside of Scripture. Then, only the legitimate child can inherit, now, this in itself was a legal revolution, which incidentally, is being threatened now, by a number of things which are in the courts. Prior to that time, a man could be outwardly a good family man and have a concubine on the side, and children on the side, and decide to leave everything to the concubine and the children, and the wife and his legitimate children were out in the cold. Now according to law, only the legitimate wife and children could inherit. What she did was to say in terms of Scripture, the family and property are linked inseparably. That the family is the custodian of the property. Everything we know in the way of civilization we owe to her. This is what strengthened the family. This is what made possible the development of industry and the arts, because wealth could no longer be alienated from the family. And dissipated, or else some old man got in a hold up, as was so common in those days, by some young floozy, this was routine in the Roman empire, who talked him out of everything, so that a wealthy family would suddenly find they had nothing when he died. Or even a middle-class family finally had nothing. Now, property could not be alienated from the family.

Well, I could on with the details of family law as Theodora saw to it, the law of Justinian incorporated. Everything we have to this day is dependent on her work, with regard to the family and law. And today there is a concerted and venomous attack on everything she attained. And, at the same time we’ve been having in recent years, increasing attacks in history books on Theodora as though she wasn’t such a wonderful person after all, she was a pretty vicious, backbiting sort of person, who had her secret execution chamber and her secret immorality and all that sort of filth. Which is rubbish, it’s garbage. So, it’s well worth knowing about Theodora. Incidentally, there’s a good book on the subject, which is still available. There’re, well, the first volume, and second are not, Carl C. Zimmerman of Harvard, wrote ‘Family and Civilization’. That’s the first volume, if you can pick that up, it’s excellent. Carl C. Zimmerman, ‘Family and Civilization’. Harper published it in the forties, the second volume ‘The Family of Tomorrow’, is not much good, but the third volume ‘The Family’ it is simply titled, by Zimmerman and {?}, Zimmerman and Sir Vantais{?}, published in this case by Regnery. I think it’s still in print. And it is excellent.

[Audience] Published by who?

[Dr. Rushdoony] Henry Regnery, in Chicago.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Let’s see, a book on Theodora, there are several, and I’m trying to think of, I have three or four books on her, and I’m trying to think which one, there was one published about two years ago, and I don’t recall the author of it at the moment, but if you drop a note, I will get the titles from my bookshelf and send them to you. Herald Lamb, wrote a very popular book on, I think, I’ve forgotten the title, I think it’s Theodora, or Justinian and Theodora. It’s been quite criticized by some, but it’s still good reading and enjoyable, it’s worth the reading.

Well, our time is up, thank you.

No, Sir Vantai{?}, Zimmerman and Cirvantai’s{?} will, they will touch in her reforms, and do it exceptionally well, so I would recommend that book for that. I will in my forthcoming ‘Institutes of Biblical Law’ go into the work of Theodora {?}.

[Audience] Thank you.