Studies in Political Philosophy

The Love of Death

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: The Love of Death

Genre: Speech

Track: 14

Dictation Name: RR124G14

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

“Now therefore hearken unto me, O ye children: for blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death.”

According to the Gospel of John in the first eighteen verses, Jesus Christ is the word, the wisdom of all creation. By him were all things made and without him was not anything made that was made. Centuries before, King Solomon, in Proverbs, spoke also of the second person of the trinity as wisdom. He declared that wisdom created the worlds, and that man is a part of wisdom’s plan of creation, that wisdom summons fallen and sinful man to righteousness, and wisdom mediates between God and man.

This designation of the second person of the trinity as wisdom was echoed by Jesus Christ, who called himself wisdom, according to Luke 7:35, and Matthew 11:19. He spoke of his preexistence, as John 8:58 reports. He is the word, the Logos, the wisdom of God, and St. Paul also called him the wisdom of God, as did the Apostle John. In 1 Corinthians 1:24 and 30, and Romans 13:27, in Colossians 2:3 and in many and other passage he is spoken of as the wisdom of God. Wisdom bestows herself freely on those who will receive wisdom, and the fear of the Lord is described in this chapter as the beginning of wisdom, and the fear of God means to hate evil, but wisdom is not only an attribute of a believer, and wisdom is not only a necessity for the Christian. Wisdom is an inescapable part of all creation. By him were all things made and without him was not anything made that was made, so that nothing under the sun can exist apart from the wisdom of God, and so in verses 22-31, we have the doctrine of wisdom, of Christ, as basic to all things, but even before this statement, we have the affirmation, “By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.”

The doctrine of the state is inseparable from the doctrine of Christ. Christ is the head, not only of the church, but on the state. He is king of kings and Lord of Lords, and all things exist by his permission. Romans 13, we are told that all authority is ministerial. There is no authority apart from God, and the nature of all authority under heaven is ministerial. This means that the authoirity is not exercised in the name of the person who bears it, or by his right, but in and of God, and only under the word of God. So that, in the church, no man who minsiters the word of God and the sacraments has any right to speak apart from the word of God. He has only a ministerial authority. He has no authority if he, in any degree, speaks apart from or in contradiction to the word of God. Similarly, in the state, all civil authorities are spoken of by Paul as ministers. Ministers of justice, and they cannot claim any authority over man, apart from that which God’s word allows, and apart from this ministry of justice.

By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.

But not only is government ordained by God, but every principle of law, of order, and of justice comes from God. Hence, there is no rule, no authority possible apart from him, and to hate him, we are told, is to love death.

As a result, the most corrupt state in the world has always had to have some element of law and order, some element that is, in a sense, a witness against itself, and that element is a concession to God and its own death warrant, because it is a testimony against itself. Accordingly, even as the Soviet Union rules, by virtue of the elements of law and order to which it pays tribute, even when it seeks to suppress true law and order, it gives witness to God. It must allow a measure of justice, a measure of reward, a measure of law, a measure of order, a measure of family life to exist, or it will commit suicide, and to the extent that it permits anything, it testifies against itself and it rules by wisdom, and it rules, therefore, under God to the extent that it has any of these elements. Thus, every atheist is an unwilling believer to the extent that he has any element of justice and order in his life, to the extent that he is even alive, because life itself is the creation of God, and it cannot be lived apart from God’s terms. “All they that hate me love death.”

When nihilism in the last century, flourished in the old Russia, a vivid description of that nihilism was written by the novelist, Dostoevsky. The book in which he reports on that nihilism is a novel called The Possessed. A better translation is “The Demon Possessed,” and the story that he reports there was simply a novelized form of what was going around him in the student generation. The student revolutionists, the student nihilists or beatniks of the day, and scholars have traced many of the newspaper reports and clippings that document {?} detail the various characters and incidents of Dostoevsky The Possessed. A central figure in The Possessed is the man, Kirilov, a student, and the passion of Kirilov life is to deny God, to eliminate God from the world, but every time he turned around, he found himself affirming God. If he affirmed any kind of order, any kind of law that produced stability, he was resting ultimately on God’s order. If he affirmed life, he was affirming God, and so finally, Kirilov commits suicide, declaring this is the only practical way he knows of denying God.

Again, in Fredrick Nietzsche, one of the great philosophers of the last century, we have a similar thing enacted in real life. Basic to Nietzsche was the proclamation of the death of God, and he is the founder of the Death of God School. God was dead and superman was born, and superman would create a new world order based on the affirmation of life. God was gone, morals were gone, nothing remained but the affirmation of life, but Nietzsche found very quickly that when he was affirming life, he was ultimately affirming God. He could not have life except on certain terms. There were certain things inherent in life that worked for life, and against the man who denied certain aspects of reality, and so ultimately, he had to deny life because in affirming the life force, he was affirming God, and so Nietszche’s ultimate counsel was suicide. Suicide is the ultimate logical course of atheism.

This fact was put vividly in the form of poetry by one of the brilliant young poets of the last century and the beginning of this century, a man whose life in itself was a dramatic struggle; Francis Thompson, The Hound of Heaven, in which he portrays the relentless pursuit of God, as he tries to deny God and tries to affirm nature, and children, and friends, and work, anything except God, but he finds in all of these things God coming face to face with him, and God declaring “All things betray thee when thou betrayest me,” and he feels himself, in every area where he seeks to hide by God, pursued by God, unrelentingly.

By me kings reign and princes decree justice. “All they that hate me, love death.”

Solomon then goes on to speak of the personal implications, in verses 32 following. The will to death and the love of death are inescapable factors, he declares, in the life of the godless man. “He that sinneth against me,” says wisdom, sinneth against or wrongeth his own soul, and this will to death and this love of death, is all the more dangerous because it is unrecognizable, and men are driven when they deny God, by this will to death. Call it by any name you will, masochism, or being accident-prone, or sickness-prone, or trouble-prone, or an injustice collector, whatever you will, is a love of death. “All they that hate me love death.” This is inescapable.

Very often, those who love death mask their blight from God by seeking refuge in the church, but all they can do is to produce a joyless, lifeless, religion which retreats from life. The love of death permeated Israel during much of its history, and it turned the Ten Commandments into a handwriting of ordinances against them, because the law of God was given to the redeemed and to the saints of God as a promise of life, and it was so declared by God in Deuteronomy 6, that those who sin turn the law into a pursuing indictment, and we see the love of death all around us in men today, in their contempt for the means of life, in their contempt for all things that are conducive to life and to health, to food, to sleep, to family, in their constant gambling and flirting with death, and their suicidal use of life, for as our Lord declared, “All they that hate me love death.”

He is the tree of life, Solomon declared, and the sorrowful words of wisdom spoken through the prophets throughout the Old Testament is this: O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, and the word of our Lord to the world is this, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.

This is the issue then, very simply. Life or death, and when men deny God, when they deny Christ, they are denying life. They are choosing death by whatever name they may call their choice, the fact is inescapable. They have chosen death, and because men today all around us have chosen death, we see the implications of it every day as we pick up the newspapers. We see the politics of death, the politics of suicide all around us, that as men having denied Christ and having denied life, bring death upon themselves. They are not stupid men. They are highly intelligent men, in Washington, in London, and elsewhere, and it has taken a high degree of intelligence on their part to chart such a course of national and international action, to make sure that it will lead to death. They have written death into the course of nations, because “all they that hate men love death.” We see all around us men, not for any lack of intelligence, but with all the intelligence they can muster, day after day, charting their own courses with the same love of death. Let us recognize it for what it is, a love of death, of politics of death and of suicide, but we have been called to life, and that more abundantly.

So as wisdom calls us, as God through his word summons us to life, he summons us to the fullness of all things because apart from him, there is nothing. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father, he declared, but by me. Choose ye this day whether ye shall live or die. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. Will this be God’s word concerning us as a people or will we as individuals and as a people choose the way of life? Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast called us to the way of wisdom, to the way of life. We thank thee that thou hast set us apart unto life, and we pray, our Father, that the cause of life may prevail in our midst and around us, and that thou wouldst make of us a beacon light of grace and of life unto this dark world. We thank thee, our God, that in the face of death, we have a certainty of life, and that life everlasting. Our God, we thank thee. Confirm us in this, our life in Christ, and make us strong and bold therein. In Jesus name. Amen.

Do we have any questions at this time? Yes?

[Audience] Sometime, when reading the paper, I came across an article on terrible crime {?} and there was one in the paper last week about a mother of {?} children who had tortured this young girl, when she was 18, involved two of her teenage children, and this {?} demon possessed {?} and I was just wondering, how does one identify a witch?

[Rushdoony] That’s quite a question.

[Audience] The neighbors burned him at the stake {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is a big question and it involves quite a great deal. What are witches and what is involved in it? There were witches burned at the stake, or executed in various ways during the latter part of the Middle Ages, and subsequently, at the beginning of the modern era. Who were they? Now, they definitely were not the Halloween type of character, and this is a lot of nonsense that has been quite extensively promoted, and the idea has been circulated that this was a lot of superstition and the whole thing represented a great deal of bigotry. The reality is very different. There are a number of excellent books on the subject. I would say the best is by Dr. Murray at the University of London, who has written several books, the two most important, The Witchcraft Cult in the Middle Ages, or in Medieval England, I’m not sure of the title, and the other, The God of the Witches, and a third, also very important, The Divine King in England.

Now, the witchcraft movement was a highly organized, religious and political movement. It was a recrudescence of the old paganism of Europe, the fertility cult, the highly sexual worship, and highly political. It was the subversive movement of the day, and it involved many of the activities that are commonplace today in many of these subversive movements of {?} where ritual acts of perversion and other things were necessary for membership. I heard yesterday of one such movement in the high schools of Los Angeles County, a secret society, for which certain public acts, sexual acts were necessary before anyone can join. Now, this was one aspect of the witchcraft movement. They were highly organized into covens, with male and females leaders, they were definitely subversive. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, wizards. They were called wizards.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Or warlocks, more often warlocks.

[Audience] {?} witch {?} fortune teller or palm readers, or one who uses a divining rod and all this. Are they all in the same family?

[Rushdoony] Related but somewhat different. The witchcraft movement was a definitely subversive movement that was aiming at the control and overthrow of the states of Europe. It was exceedingly power, and at times, came within a hairbreadth of open control and had secret control of many of the states. Now, Dr. Murray believes, and there is a fantastic amount written on this, in the way of debate back and forth, that Joan of Arc was one of the leaders of this movement, and that is why she had such a popular following. She refused to wear women’s clothing. She never spoke of God in anything but a veiled term, which was definitely not Christian, and her closest associate, Gilles de Rais, was subsequently caught and involved in human sacrifice. So, although some would say the case against Joan of Arc is not proven, certainly those associated with her, the case against them is definitely proven, but the movement was exceedingly powerful, and there is reason to believe that at times, it gained control within the church quite extensively, and we have one picture of an archbishop of England wearing the liberty cap, the Phrygian liberty cap which is the symbol of this ancient movement, and you find the same tendencies in the same movement clearly behind the French Revolution.

Well, I could go at great length about the history of this movement. Now, these other things you mentioned are occultism, which is related to it but not necessarily always a part of the revolutionary activity but closely linked with this, in that it represents a common religious view. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Shaw wrong {?}?

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s a good question. I don’t know, but Shaw definitely did portray her as quite a heroine. Now, of course, she was made a saint in the early twenties, because of her tremendous popularity among the French for nationalistic reasons, but we must remember that there still is a great deal of suspicion attached to her. I personally find the evidence quite convincing. I have a copy of the file record, and she did maintain a good front to the last, but there were certain areas where she ducked the question, and it was not the English so much who were responsible for her execution as the French, the French church, the French churchmen felt that she was a total threat to the life of the church. Yes?

[Audience] Would you consider Madam {?} and {?} as witches or as occultists, or both?

[Rushdoony] Occultists, primarily, and definitely subversive, very definitely Fabians, very definitely looking forward to a world socialist order ruled by occultist leaders. But the witchcraft movement was definitely a highly organized thing. We have today, of course, a concerted movement to portray the death of them as a kind of genocide, and we are told that millions were executed, which is total nonsense, and at the same times I’ve pointed out previously, we are told that it was a myth about the Christians being thrown to the lions, or being persecuted by the Roman Empire, and there has never been any mass murder to compare to that. There were ten fearful persecutions as well as minor ones.

[Audience] Were the Salem witches then a part of this, {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, a good question. Now, it is possible that in the Salem trials, they became considerably alarmed and did go overboard, but very definitely, this thing was involved in the Salem instance, and there were several people, of very suspicious character, who were very closely connected with some of these things. Now, there was Maypole dancing connected with some of their rites. This seems harmless to us because all we can think about is Kindergarten children, but the Maypole originally was the male phallic symbol, an emblem of it, and the whole of the Maypole dance was a highly sexual, fertility rite, a religious rite, and these people gathered there to celebrate this at Salem and were involved in a number of highly suspicious activities. Now, it does appear that in fear of what had suddenly turned up in their midst, they did go overboard, but definitely there appears to have been something there, and Dr. Murray does believe that the witchcraft movement was present. Now, Dr. Murray is not a Christian. Dr. Murray is not interested in making a case against the movement. Dr. Murray is simply reporting, in these books, one aspect of history that she finds interesting, but you see, we have gone through history and to debunk it, to make the good people fools, or guilty people. Yes?

[Audience] Last night on television, there was this woman who had been speaking with President Kennedy, and she said that he was {?} of Abraham Lincoln, because he was {?} Abraham Lincoln, {?}civil rights, and she said that these spirits tell her these things, and so on, and she went on, she spoke of God, we cannot destroy the works of God, and I was talking about this this morning to my husband, and I was trying to bring out the point that many times we {?} speak of God, but isn’t the dividing point Jesus Christ?

[Rushdoony] Yes. God is simply a word that these people use, and it doesn’t mean a thing, and when you try to find out what their definition of God is, you find that he is, in effect, non-existent, and it is fitting that these people who love death should go to the dead for guidance.

[Audience] Well, there’s a place in the scripture though, isn’t there one where you have some sort of divination like this, and when they {?} Jesus Christ, it brought distress {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, of course we have the incident of the woman who was definitely so possessed, and Paul healed her, and there was quite a bit of to-do and commotion because of that, yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] But I think it is significant that some of your modern psychiatrists like Jung, who together with Freud, is one of the two great influences in the world of psychiatry, while he did not believe in God, believed in demons, and in the reality of demon possession, and he wrote some very interesting things about that.

[Audience] It’s also interesting, along that line, that these people whom I consider capitalists{?} had their wishes now down in Haiti, of before {?} witches there, or voodoo priests, {?}

[Rushdoony] There is a great deal of witchcraft in Haiti and a great deal of cannibalism, too, which reminds me, I referred a while back when one of you asked the question about this experiment at UCLA, and at Chicago, and passing on the memory of earthworms to other worms by grinding up the worms who had memorized certain little drills and feeding them to the other earthworms. When I was in Chicago two weeks ago, there was an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, and they suggested that it would be a good thing to put this to the test in a very real way. Why not grind up some of our left-wing professors and feed them to some of these radical students and see if their knowledge would be passed on that way. Yes?

[Audience] {?} This is not the same as the prophetic {?}. In other words, {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, it is prophetic, yes.

[Audience] Well, the reason I ask is because this Bible I’m {?}

[Rushdoony] Of prophesy, yes.

[Audience] Of prophesy, and this {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, the word “prophesy” in the Bible has a double meaning. In one sense, it is a prediction concerning the future, and this is the sense in which we usually speak of a prophesy. Something that God has predicted about the future, but prophesy has, as its more basic meaning, “to speak for God,” so that a prophet is one who speaks for God. So that the whole of the Bible is prophesy, in that it is a speaking for God by various inspired men, but certain passages alone are prophesies in the sense of predictions. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] I think it was last Sunday {?} about the ministers and what they talked about, and {?} going to heaven and such. I heard another one, and it was a {?} all of them, and there was this one {?} people that are always going to have {?} and then the question {?} well where are these other people going, and he says, “Well, I don’t know and I don’t care,” and this is it. {?} and {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, of course, such movements are anti-Christian, basically. That is, of course, British Israelism, or Anglo Israelism, and it is an anti-Christian movement, basically. Its basic orientation is not religious, but political, and it looks for the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon peoples the world over, and they and they alone are going to be saved, and the others are going to be their slaves in this new world order, and the prophesies concerning Christ are going to be fulfilled in the British Royal Family. This is total nonsense, and what they have to say is total nonsense. We find the same kind of racist thinking present, of course, in Mormonism, because according to Mormonism, the Negro peoples and the Indian peoples are not going to go to heaven, unless they go through a special purgation whereby they cease to be colored, and become white men, and this is, of course, one of the problems that stands in the way of any Mormon candidate for presidency, and this has been discussed in connection with Romney, who is the front-running candidate perhaps right now, but you find this in a number of these movements, which are not to be classified with Christianity. Yes?

[Audience] The word “Israel,” too, isn’t it interesting {?} first in nations {?}

]Rushdoony] Yes. Israel, in the Bible, refers to the Hebrew peoples as a nation, but it is also used in a double sense. There is the outward Israel and the true Israel of God, and in the New Testament, this especially becomes distinct, this difference, so that the outward Israel is cast off and the true Israel of God, those who are true believers by faith, are those who are the saved, the elect of God. Now, Israel literally means, “A prince with God.” In other words, someone who has standing with God by his grace, and the true Israelite, therefore, is the one who is a true believer. Yes?

[Audience] Is this Anglo-Saxon Israelite movement focused on your heritage {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are several speakers on the radio who stand for that. The American Destiny Program, then Shifner{?} in Tacoma, I believe. The Ambassador College group, What is the man’s name, Armstrong, Herbert Armstrong. Then, there is a particularly extreme instance of this in John Wesley Swift. Some of these men are well-meaning men. Some of them are dangerous men. Yes?

[Audience] Aren’t they playing right into the hands of the Civil Rights Movement {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very, very definitely they are exactly made to order for the Civil Rights Movement because they hold this up as a caricature of the conservative {?} Christian, and of course, they have no connection with conservativism, because their basic political perspective is totalitarian, and they have no connection with Christianity because they deny, in most instances, the fundamental aspects of the faith. There are, however, some well-meaning persons, and I would say one or two in this area who do some broadcasting are misguided and well-meaning, but by and large, it’s a movement to beware of.

[Audience] Here again, the Hitler{?} philosophy paralleled this, too, don’t you agree?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but Hitler never went as far as the British Israelites by no means. That’s the ironic thing, and the British Israelite movement has been very, very powerful and very high in the British government, and it’s gone much, much further there than it ever did under the Nationalist Socialists. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is basically the same belief, except the Zionists say that all these things are true about those who are members of Judaism, and of the Jewish race, whatever that is, and the British Israelites say it is true for those who are Anglo-Saxons. Now, you have two groups in the British Israel movement, or Anglo-Israel movement, those who say the Jews are included and those who say they are not included, and the one group is very, very passionately anti-Jewish, and the other is very pro-Jewish, but they’re basically the same movements. It is racism.

[Audience] Have you read the latest on {?}. He gets into this a little bit, specifically about the van Kolberg{?} Albert Kolberg{?}, who is one of the big men in the Institute of Pacific Relations, but who broke with the others in there, because they went pro-communist and he was holding with the Anglo-Saxon {?}, and he became so {?} with these people that he came out completely and fought them and then financed John Birch Society, and another interesting tie is that John Birch himself with his student, Frank Morris{?} who was {?}

[Rushdoony] I haven’t seen the last report, but that part about Birch having studied under someone is true, but he never gave any evidence himself as having ever accepted it or believed it, and of course, Robert Welch{?} did denounce British Israelism when it tried to take over in vast areas of Texas, within the society, so he has very definitely denounced the whole movement, and Birch himself cannot be tied personally to it. If we were held responsible for everyone we studied under, we’d be in a sorry situation. Yes?

[Audience] What is Zionism? I’ve heard Richard {?} talk about it like {?}

[Rushdoony] Zionism is a form of national socialism, whereby the Jewish people believe that they have a destiny to establish a socialist state is Palestine which is to become, in a sense, a world center and a world leader, and that is has a Messianic function, that the real world’s savior is Judaism, and those who are united by race with Judaism. It is primarily political, and whatever religion there is in it is essentially a political faith. Yes?

[Audience] Rushdoony, coming back to my {?} that, required reading in the communist indoctrination program are Nietzsche and the other authors of the nihilist school. However, the leader of the group, and I’m thinking of one in particular, John Howard{?}, indoctrination classes, always points out that you follow their thinking so far, you’ve gone from a state of chaos and destruction {?} Buddhist. The thing {?} state takes over. It’s very interesting that they use the nihilists.

[Rushdoony[] Yes, and to see how the nihilists dressed, you have only to look at your radical students on the college campuses today. It was the same neglect of cleanliness, the same extremist dress. In fact, interestingly enough, they also wore narrow rectangular glasses, and I am told that in some areas this is also being used by these far-out people. Has anyone seen these? I believe tinted blue, also they were.

[Audience] If anybody here is not aware of what’s going on, I’d go to the Sunset Strip Friday or Saturday evening, and you can see every aspect of the complete conspiracy. The young people coming out of the universities, creep out at night, these certain ones, in their costumes with their little glasses, their Bolshevik outfits, their French Revolutionary outfits, the little hats with {?} Phrygian caps, and I saw several of them Saturday night around the strip, and {?}, children, this is a costume that the Bolsheviks and Dr. Zhivago {?}.

[Audience] Are the glasses called the {?}

[Audience] No, these are the {?} glasses {?}

[Audience] {?} rectangular. I thought they were actually {?}

[Audience] They call them dragon glasses now.

[Audience] Rectangle {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, whatever name they call them, the certain people have been using them, and these are a part of the costume of the nihilists in Russia. Yes?

[Audience] {?}something the other day on a radio program, two-way radio, there was something, the God is Dead principle. They had a survey of people talking a few years ago, {?} years, and they had found that there were more Jews who were convinced that God was dead than the previous survey. Whatever that means, I don’t know, but {?} point {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I question that. I would say that certainly a very large number of Jews, the overwhelming majority of them, have no part of any religion and do believe that God is dead. But look at the churches today. I would say about 90% of all Christians are in churches that are definitely of the God is Dead school, because anyone who is in a National Council of Churches is affirming the God is Dead movement, whether he likes it or not, and he has no business of being in such a church, if he is a Christian, and the new National Council Peranial{?} General Assembly Study Book for the World by Colin William, in effect, says that God is dead and the necessity is for world revolution, a new morality, and so on. So that we can’t pin it on one group. We have to say, it’s there, and the reason for it is the sin of man, and man have gone forth because this is what they want and they’re not honest enough to say this is the way they like it. It’s the sin of man that’s responsible, and that sin is in everyone, and of course, they say, “Oh well, we don’t subscribe to it. This is something somebody in New York says,” but they do subscribe to it, or they would not condone it. They would not be a party to it, and in God’s sight, they are accessories after the fact.

Well, our time is exhausted.

End of tape