Miscellaneous

Presuppositional Apologetics

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 6-18

Genre: Lecture

Track: 26

Dictation Name: RR107C6

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

What has led to a great deal of misunderstanding with respect to Doctor Van Til’s philosophy is the matter of the proof of God. The rationalistic apologetics and philosophies seek to prove God, and they give us a series of traditional proofs, and outline traditional apologetics, whereby the proof of God and of his revelation and philosophy are to be demonstrated to the unbeliever, as though the natural man were to be converted not by the spirit of God, but by his own reason.

Doctor Van Til has rejected all such apologetics. He has declared on the contrary, that God cannot be proven, because he is the ground of all proof. That no law of contradiction or logic can be applied to God, because all laws of logic and of contradiction can only be derived from God.

This position is of central importance. And unless we understand this point, we do not grasp the heart of the Reformed apologetics. Moses faced the same problem when he met God at the burning bush. At that point, Moses raised the question: ”What is thy name? Whom shall I say has sent me?” Now when Moses asked God to give His name, he asked God to define himself, because names in antiquity were definitions of a man. A man’s name sometimes changed several times during a lifetime as he changed. To bear a name that did not properly describe you, required either tremendous power in order to be able to compel people to accept that name, or else a remarkable amount of gall.

Thus, one of David’s sons, by Abigail, is given a very flattering religious name by his father, but we are told that the name the people gave to him was: “The Dog.” Names were a description. It took faith therefore for Abraham. When God first renamed him, and we do not know his original name, but God called him Abram, father of many. And so when Abraham or Abram introduced himself to people as he went into the promised land, and they said: “What is your name?” “Abram.” “Oh, Father of many. And how many sons do you have?” “I have no children.” You can imagine the difficulty Abram had in wearing that name, it was an act of faith, an act of faith against a hostile world.

Thus when Moses asked God: “What is thy name? Whom shall I say sent me?” Moses of course knew the God of Israel, he knew the God of his fathers. But at this point he was filled with despair, he had tried with great difficulty to present himself as a leader to his people, that he might rally them against the forces of slavery, to engineer as it were a protest movement or a revolution, and it was a failure. He had fled in despair to the wilderness. He was tending sheep at the backside of the desert. So when God confronted him he was saying in effect: “What is thy name? I can’t understand you. You who are the god of my forefathers, the God of Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, you’ve left us all these generations in slavery. You’ve left us condemned as it were not only to servitude, but death; so that my life was spared, and others like myself, only because our parents by some ruse were able to save us alive. I don’t understand you God. What is Thy name? Define yourself to me.” And the answer of God at this point was: “I am that I am. I am he who is. I am beyond definition. It is impossible to define me, it is impossible to prove me, because I am He by whom all things are named, in terms of whom all things are defined. Therefore, I have no name. I am He who is, or I am that I am.”

Thus Jehovah is not a name, properly, but a rejection of a name. An assertion that the triune God is beyond definition. But then God went on to say to Moses: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am the God beyond definition, beyond proof, the ground of all definition and proof; nevertheless I have revealed myself, so I can be known through my revelation.”

Now this is the premise of a truly reformed apologetics. This is the starting point of the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til. God is not proved but presupposed, and is the ground of all proof. God is not named, but the source of all definition. This was the perspective of Christian philosophy in the early church, culminating on in the Middle Ages in Saint Anselm, 1033 to 1109.

There are those who wrongly derive on of the traditional proofs of God from Saint Anselm. Saint Anselm is not interested in proving God, he presupposed him. Then he went on to demonstrate that unless one presupposed God there was no meaning to life, every indication of degree of better and poorer, higher and lower, presupposed God as the absolute. The very possibility of differentiation, of being, existed only because God existed. Remove God and you had no differentiation, no meaning, no definition possible. He summed it up in his famous sentence which echoes that of Tertullian: “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. And this also I believe, that unless I believe, I should not understand.”

But very shortly the whole position of Christian philosophy was reversed. Abelard directly contrary to Anselm and the whole tradition of Orthodox Christian Philosophy declared: “I understand, and seek to understand, in order that I may believe. I bring all things to the bar of my reason, to the laws of my logic, and only when I satisfy my reason and my logic do I believe.” Thus the whole world was turned upside down, theologically and philosophically.

The Sovereignty of God was set aside for the sovereignty of mans reason. And the net result also was that all kinds of strange heresies began to creep in. Once you removed the absoluteness of God and its priority, then history ultimately has no meaning. But immediately changes from an absolute law order under an absolute sovereign to a kind of evolving thing.

So one of the first byproducts in the thought of the day was the philosophy of the Abbot of (Wakim?), a Cistercian Monk of Florence. His thinking is still with us in a 101 disguised fashions. He divided the history of philosophy, of thought, of religion, into three ages: The first was the age of the Father and the age of Law, this was the world before Christ. Second came the age of the Son, and the age of grace. And third, about to dawn very soon was the third age, the third qorld period, familiar is it not, the age of the Holy Spirit, the age of love. And there are some scholars who would say that by this he also meant the age of the death of God. It was to be an age in which the basic religious motive was to be love, universal brotherhood, peace between all philosophies and positions.

We have thus the birth of the third age, third world kind of thinking. Culminating therefore, the history of human thought. Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. This too is involved. The thinking of the Abbot (Wakim?) we will pick up again subsequently when we come to the modern era because it had a great impact. We will touch on it again very shortly, briefly. But a very significant strand thus had been introduced, because the priority and the absoluteness of God had been breached. When Abelard reintroduced the sovereignty of reason in the place of the sovereignty of God, the impact was very noticeable within the life of the Church. Again Predestination was taken from heaven and placed on earth. You recall we saw yesterday that Predestination is an inescapable concept. If God does not have an eternal council, a sovereign decree to govern all reality, then man and the state assert it.

Thus increasingly there was a struggle for power as a consequence of the overturning of Christian philosophy. Church state and school began to claim increasingly a total power. We have such declarations as that of Innocent the 2nd in his sermon of February the 2nd 1198 and I quote: “You see then who is the servant placed by the Lord over his household, he is the vicar of Jesus Christ, the successor of Peter, the anointed of the Lord God of Pharaoh, one set as an intermediary between God and man, under God yet above man, less than God but later than man. He is Peter in the fullness of His power appointed to judge all men but to be judged by none. Since as the apostle said: “He that judgeth me is the Lord.”

He recognized of course the doctrine of papal power, of papal infallibility being born. The roots of it are in the decline of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God, and as this doctrine developed, because now the determination of history, the eternal decree had been transferred from God to man, the popes actually asserted the power to excommunicate Angels from heaven to hell. That if the Pope so chose, Michael and Raphael could be banished from heaven itself and be sentenced to hell. In other words, there was a new source of determination in the universe, and this was on the human scene.

But the church was not alone in claiming this kind of total power, the state did also. Frederick the 2nd of the Holy Roman Empire 1194-1250, called his birthplace the ‘New Bethlehem of History’ and he called his mother ‘The Divine Mother, a new Mary”. Influenced by the thinking and the philosophy of the Abbot (Wakim?), he declared that the third age had arrived in him, and therefore he declared that the Empire was beyond religion, and called for a unity of faith, and he sought to bring together Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Judaism, the 3 religions in his territories, and to fuse them together in one faith. All serving the Empire, and his sovereign power.

Another third age thinker was the poet Dante, hence the champion of the Empire against all things else. The goal of civilization for Dante in his De Monarchia was not faith, but peace in a world Empire. He declared and I quote: “The Human race is most likened to God when it is most one.” In terms of the concept of the one and the many, the doctrine of the trinity being bypassed, the purpose of history therefore is to seek total unity under a human monarch or world emperor who would bring about total predestination over man through this world state. He continued further and I quote: “It is clear then that everything which is good is good in virtue in consisting in unity” In other words, litmus or virtue is oneness. No matter how then, let the emperor bring the whole world under his power, so that we have a one world order. That unity however achieved, no matter who suffers, no matter what law of God is transgressed, is basic, because the one and the many are now imminent, totally of this world, and unity is the truth concerning being.

The goal of the empire according to Dante was the perfection of the human race, and then the withering away of the empire. Does this not remind you of Marx? The whole world to be brought under the rule of the proletariat, and then the withering away of that state form.

Then after the Empire withers away, world communism and anarchism are to come in. This is very clearly stated in the Divine Comedy, in the Purgatorio Chapter 15. Until then the emperor was man’s hope. In his seventh letter, Dante asks the emperor as the emperor Henry came to Italy to visit, and I quote: “Art thou he who should come? Or do we look for another? Yet although long thirst as is its want in its frenzy turneth to doubt, just because they are close at hand, even those things which are certain nevertheless we believe and hope in thee, (araring?) That thou art the minister of God and the son of the church and the promoter of roman glory, and I to who write for myself and for others have seen thee as beseems imperial majesty, most benignant, and hast heard thee most clement, when that my hand handled thy feet and my lips paid their debt, then did my spirit exalt in thee and I spoke silently with myself: “Behold the lamb of God, behold him who has taken away the sins of the world.”

So Dante hailed the emperor. The Divine Comedy is actually a long parable not of our heaven and hell, but a political salvation in terms of a great change of being, an evolution of man from the age of God the Father, and the age of law, through the age of the son and of grace, to the age of love and of spirit, or the death of God. This is why for centuries the church had Dante on the index, and quite rightly so; and it was purely pragmatic that Dante was removed from the index. They just wanted to modernize, and keep up with the times.

The new thinking, the revival of Greek philosophy, culminated of course in its definitive form for the church in the (?) of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who attempted to revive Aristotle for the Christian cause, to use him to defend the Orthodox faith. But in adopting Aristotle, he forsook the doctrine of the Trinity and embraced the nature/grace dialectic. The analogy of being, whereby man interprets himself in terms of himself, and works from himself upwards, so that beginning with man, Aristotle sought to go upward and prove God on the foundation of man. Instead of saying: ”God is the one in terms of whom all things are defined, God is the one who is defined in terms of man.” So that God was now to be remade in terms of man’s image. And this is the end result of all rationalistic apologetics. It remakes God in terms of mans image.

Accordingly, instead of affirming the uncreated being of God, and the created being of all being apart from god, Aristotle affirmed the unity of being and said that all being is good. And what is the fall? It is a fall into non-being, because evil is a lack of being. Therefore insofar as anyone has being including satan, he is good.

And insofar as we are evil, we are in the realm of non-being. The result was a non-Christian and anti Christian concept of noetics. Now the relationship of Noetics and Ethics is important for us. Knowing, Noetics, and ethics, morality. On the one hand you can say that mans autonomous reason is able to discern and know reality without reference to his moral state, whether he is fallen or not fallen. This is the perspective of Greek philosophy, of scholasticism, of Arab thought, of Jewish philosophy, of the enlightenment, and of modern thought. Man can know without limits. It makes no difference whether your philosophy teacher is a reprobate or a Christian, his capacity to know whatever God may exist is equally sound. This is the one perspective of Noetics.

The Christian perspective of course is directly contrary to this, it holds that mans knowledge rests on a common religious premise with his moral concepts and behavior. “As a man thinketh, so is he. And as a man is, so he thinketh.” Therefore, man’s thinking is either governed by his rebellion against God, or by his obedience to God. And the man who is rebellion against God cannot reason religiously in terms of Scripture. His every thought, his every act is an act of apostasy, of rebellion, of warfare against God. And therefore to posit that his mind is going to think Gods thoughts after him or to be faithful to God is altogether wrong.

But Aquinas after Aristotle held to the fact that mans mind, irrespective of his moral condition, is able to discern and to know reality without reference to his moral state. Moreover, after Aristotle, Aquinas held and I quote: “That mans mind is like a tablet on which nothing is written.” Now you were probably told in your philosophy course that it was John Locke who originated this concept, it was old when Locke picked it up and used it. He had borrowed it from Aquinas who had borrowed it from Aristotle. The whole of our modern education is built on this anti Christian perspective. The clean tablet concept of the mind.

“The mind is passive, all you have to do is make sure that the church and other people don’t pollute the mind of the child, and then you condition the child and provide it with the right kind of environment, and you are going to have the perfect modern child. And you can take anyone’s behavior, it is said, following this behavior logically, of any race, of any heredity, and you can make him into a violinist or a physicist, or whatever you will.” John Watson stated so. If you want the details of his statement, read them on my chapter on Watson in my Messianic Character of American Education.

Now all of your modern public schools have been teaching this Aristotelian, Thomistic, Lockean, concept all along, they are based on it. And it is anti Christian to the core, because its first of all that man is a neutral creature, and according to Scripture he is either a covenant keeper or a Covenant breaker, and according to Scripture, his learning, his knowledge is governed by his moral state.

In terms of Aquinas there, mans sin is thus deprivation, since evil is nothing. It is a lack. It isn’t an act of will against God, it is just a lack. So all you have to do is remedy the lack. Again we come to the perspective of the modern environmentalist: “What’s wrong with the criminal? Well, he did have enough love. And if you just love him enough, and give him the right kind of thing, he will be alright.” There is a little frustration that I used in a footnote in Intellectual Schizophrenia, some of you are familiar with it, but it has always tickled me. Some years ago, about 17-18 years ago, when I was still in the pastorate I went to this one church and I had just been there a short time, and I had learned of a boy in the fourth grade who from Kindergarten had been a terror in the Sunday school. He had broken up class every Sunday morning. And my attitude was when I learned of this: “Kick him out.” But no, there was one woman who was going to handle that boys class in the Vacation Bible School, and she was sure that all he needed was love and understanding. And she was going to provide it. Well, she was exactly what that boy was looking for. A real pigeon. He terrorized her all through the first week. But about Friday of the first week he overstepped the bounds, and she lost her cool. She went after him with blood in her eye, and he suddenly realized that he’d gone too far, and that little kid, a fourth grader, seeing no escape, he was boxed into a corner, threw up his hands and said: “Don’t you hit me, don’t you hit me, what I need is love and affection!”

He had absorbed modern psychology. Well of course this is precisely what Aquinas fostered in his philosophy. The end result of scholasticism was its collapse into universalism or nominalism. Universalism holding to the oneness of things and abstract universals apart from God, which led to statism an tyranny, the Renaissance tyrants, and nominalism, which denied that there were any universals, ending in cynicism like Greek philosophy and anarchism, so that the world of the Renaissance and the late Middle Ages was a world torn on the one hand between statism, and anarchism on the other. And you had as I indicated your wandering students going from campus to campus, bearded and long haired with their guitars playing the rebel folk songs of the day, staging protest marches, nude marches were very much the order of the day, we haven’t gone as far today as they did then.

The Renaissance moreover as an aspect of this decline, asserted in its anarchistic fazes the deity of man even as in its totalitarian fazes the absolute and Godlike power of the state. One of the interesting dramas of the period is Chapman’s (Bosse de Bwa?) a very interesting play. (Bosse de Bwa?) is a renaissance hero who sees himself and is seen by men as a God, and in the last act is stabbed and is dying, and this is a cause of amazement for him. And as he sees the blood pouring out of him, and the life ebbing from his body, he says in amazement: “Am I then but mortal flesh? And is my body destined but for the grave?”

Now for anyone to say this today would seem preposterous, but it rings true then, and is faithful to so much of the thinking. The anarchistic element of the day had been so convinced of the godlike powers of the state, of the individual, that men could see themselves as Gods, and find it difficult to believe that they could die. On the other hand, and you can find incidentally more of this kind of thinking in Castiglione’s The Courtier, the Courtier has no law, no God except himself. On the other hand Machiavelli in the Prince declared that the oneness of things is in the state, in the prince, who has no law except the self interest of the state. Thus for Machiavelli not right but power is the reality, for right is a myth. Therefore he says, “Whatever serves the power of the state and enables it to achieve unity is therefore right, because right is what the state does, right is what the prince does. Terror therefore can be useful if it furthers this, or it can be a mistake if it does not. Significantly, Lenin recommended Machiavelli in his book: Left Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder.

Machiavelli said that there are two ideas in conflict, and I quote: “The way men live and the way they ought to live, the reality is the way men live.” There is no beyond. No God, the state is the only God on earth, and therefore the state must be built up. There is no transcendence, therefore put all your emphasis on the present, and if you move in terms of the way things ought to be, in terms of God and His word, you are forsaking reality, and you are going to be a lamb led to the slaughter. Thus you have the crisis that faced civilization at the end of the 14th century. The way things ought to be has ceased to be a factor in men’s thinking. Medical historians have spoken of the physical deterioration. Some have estimated that from 1/3rd to ½ of Europe was venereally diseased. That Europe was facing radical genetic destruction. When the Reformation was born. And so one scholar, a medical historian has spoken of the Reformation as the genetic preservation of Europe. The Reformation and the Counter Reformation that followed.

We forget when we study the Reformation that Luther and Calvin were primarily concerned with society rather than the church. Their main interest was the kingdom of God as a totality, church, state, school, vocation, everything. Calvin was primarily a lawyer. Luther primarily a professor. And one of the troubles of the modern church is that it reduced the Reformation to the realm of the church. If we are going to renew the Reformation, we have got to apply the faith of the Reformation to church, state, school, all of society. Anything short of that is a deformation.

As against the declining world of their day they asserted the primacy of the word of God. They asserted salvation by God. They declared the eternal council of God, that God is prior to man, and the eternal decree rules over history. They declared that man is passive in relationship to God, but active in relationship to the world. Now this is the critically important point. In the modern perspective, man is passive in relationship to the world, but active in relationship to God. He can rule God out, his mind can sit in judgement over God. But he is passive in relationship to the world, acted upon rather than acting, and our modern psychology reduces man to a passive creature.

And finally the Reformation held that not man the philosopher or man the scientist is prior, but God the sovereign over all things. The Reformation therefore put philosophy back on the main track. But very shortly philosophy was to be deflected by the enlightenment, which again challenged the Biblical Doctrine of the trinity and the one and the many, the doctrine derived from the Trinity.

We shall tomorrow go into an analysis of the implications of the enlightenment, and the birth of modern philosophy, so that as Christian soldiers and thinkers we can cope with the problem as it confronts the whole of society today, because the battle line is not the church alone, it is the classroom, it is the street, it is the state, it is every avenue, every facet of the world. Gods claim to sovereignty is total. Christian action must be total. These are the requirements of our faith. Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, very definitely. These are intents introduced into the godhead, and over the godhead, man. So that Mariology, the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation , and a good many other doctrines as well, papal infallibility, are all doctrines of radical humanism. This is why the Catholic church has had to arrest thinking with Aristotle. Because if you follow the implications of Aristotle, you go right down the line through Locke, through Hume and Kant to Kierkegaard and Sartre, into total existentialism, total humanism. This is the logical import of scholasticism. And so they have to say: “Thus far and no further.” But it doesn’t work that way, and so today you are getting in (Gabriel Marcel?) and others in Europe, a Catholic Existentialism.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the question: “How was this doctrine of the sovereignty of God carried through in the American revolution?” Well, there was no American Revolution. It was the War of Independence. That war, and everything that has followed has been radically misinterpreted by our historians because they are anti Christian. It was a war of Independence because each of the Colonies was an Independent State with its own government, with the right to issue its coinage, its only connection with England was that it had the same king. Then Parliament in conjunction with the king decided that these colonies were competing too much with the mother country economically. The Yankee ships were out trading the British merchant men. Our goods were outselling theirs in Europe. And so they began to decide to place the colonies under British rule. And so they tried to appoint the judges from England, from parliament, to take over and to wipe out the governments, and when the colonies resisted saying: “The King has a veto power over us, and he is our king, but parliament has no relationship to us.” Parliament sent over troops. It was an invasion of free and independent countries in the Americas. And they resisted the invasion.

The Declaration of Independence, read it carefully, is not a declaration of independence from England because they were never under the rule of England. It is a declaration of independence from King George the 3rd, for having betrayed them into the hands of another power, Parliament.

Now, some people say: “What was Christian about the Constitutional settlement?” There is no mention of God, no mention of religion, why was it a Christian settlement, and why was it a Christian country in your estimation/” Well the answer is the Federal Union was to be a very limited union, not an overall powerful government. With very limited taxing powers, and very limited jurisdiction. Each of the several states had its own religious establishment. Every one of the 13 colonies had Christianity as the established religion of the state, 9 of the 13 had a particular church established as well.

In all of the colonies, or states, you had to be a Christian to vote. As a matter of fact, you had to subscribe very specifically to the infallibility of Scripture and the doctrine of the Trinity. They singled out the doctrine of the Trinity in particular. If you did not subscribe you were not only not a voter, but you could lose your own children, they could be taken from you for their welfare. Now some people immediately bring up the names of Franklin and Jefferson, they obviously did not believe this. Right. But this was not obvious in their day. The writings of Thomas Jefferson which express his Unitarianism, or Deism, and those of Franklin which express the same, were not published until fairly modern times. Now some people suspected Jefferson, but he maintained an Orthodox façade because he was liable to severe penalties in the state of Virginia if his ideas had been known.

Thus every one of the states was a sovereign state in the sense that it determined its religious establishment. At the request of the clergymen of this country the first amendment of the constitution was written in George Mason a very devout Christian who was a student of John Witherspoon, a Calvinist. One of the signers of the Declaration of the Independence, who also through his influence was instrumental of the writing of the hard money clause into the constitution, that only Gold and Silver can be legal tender.

Mason agreed, and he wrote up the Bill of Rights, and only then on the condition that these would be passed immediately after did most of the states ratify the constitution. And first: “There shall be no establishment of Religion by the Federal government.” Why? Because South Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, and the other states didn’t want the Federal government telling them what kind of church they should establish, when they already had their own religious establishment. In other words, they didn’t want a theology handed down from the Federal government, since this was a matter of state rights.

Not only so, but, and this is an important point: each of the counties had also extensive rights here, so that a particular county would be settled by a particular group, it might be Scotch Irish or it might be English, or it might be German. And they had a particular form of religious establishment that they wanted. This has so far survived today that in 75% of the counties of the United States there is an ethnic and a religious maturity. In other words, I’ve gone across country and been in most of the states in the Union, and I’ve gone in some places and the county is almost predominately Dutch and Christian Reformed. Go into another county and they are German and Lutheran. Into another county, and they are English and Episcopalian, into another and they are Scotch and Presbyterian. It was intended that way, they settled and they established laws in a particular religious establishment, in terms of their particular background and origin.

So that, even after the public schools came in, I have 20 30 years ago I have visited counties where the Lutheran minister ran the public schools. And in another county the Baptists ran the public schools, and all the teachers had to be Baptist to teach. And so on. You had this localism to such a degree, that I have been in counties in the Middle West where I have seen 6th generation English families where they still had old fashioned English ways, and an old country orientation, and 4th and 5th generation Germans who spoke with a German accent. And incidentally if you want proof of that listen to Lawrence Whelk in the evening. Any Saturday evening. Now Lawrence Whelk I think is a 3rd generation American, who grew up in an extremely heavily German Catholic county, where everybody spoke German. Up in the Dakotas. He speaks with a German accent, doesn’t he?

Now this was the American pattern. It was intended to be Christian with local orientation. It had a sense of the one and the many, the Federalism and the local orientation, and this is what has been steadily destroyed since 1860. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Presuppositions are religious ideas, a religious faith that is held before thinking begins, and in terms of which all thinking is oriented. Like the axioms in geometry, Presuppositions are those pre theoretical religious beliefs, the religious faith in terms of which everything else follows. In geometry first you learn some axioms, and then all your thinking is in terms of those.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well of course we believe that Christian presuppositionalism has, that objective validity, but we can’t say this of any other. So that, with humanism their presupposition is in the autonomous absolute power of man and his mind. This is a real leap in the dark.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Because there is no ground for his belief in his autonomy, in his absoluteness, or in himself as a starting point. But the Christians has that ground, so you cannot say of presuppositionalism that it is either an objectively valid thing or that it is a leap in the dark, you have to say: “Which presuppositionalism? Christian or non Christian?”

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is subjective but it is also objective. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it differs from Pascal in the Pascal was expressing what I described yesterday in Jonathan Edwards as scientific experimentalism. In other words as a scientist Pascal was saying: ”I am going to begin with that which is experimentally known, not that which is rationally and inductively known.” So he was reacting as against the rationalistic inductive thinking in favor of experimental emotional. The experiential. He was not beginning with the presupposition of the triune God and of faith in terms of that. Now, he tried to get to that, he affirmed it very intensely, but basically he began with his experience, experiential religion.

We have time perhaps for one brief question, yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I favor the county as the basic government in the American system, it is that historically, and also the government which is closest to home is best controlled and most effective. In terms of the American system, the county is the basic law unit, criminal law and civil law is basically county law. It can best enforce it. Wherever you have a distant government intervening, the net result is that law and order breaks down. Now I am very sure that there are very many lawless counties in the country, I’ve lived in them. When I was in Nevada I lived in one county where much was lacking in the law. It was a county in which Prostitution was legal, and it was a more serious offense to kill a sage hen than to kill a man sometimes, and I can cite that as a matter of record. And gambling of course was legal, it was quite a wide open situation.

But an outside law would not have remedied the situation, because the law there reflected the character of the people, and the only way to have changed that situation would’ve been to have changed the people, and then they could have changed their law locally. Well, our time is up, and we will continue tomorrow with the enlightenment and modern thinking.