Foundations of Social Order

Imagination vs. History (Nicea) Arianism and Gnosticism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Foundations of Social Order

Lesson: 2-19

Genre: Lecture

Track:

Dictation Name: RR126A2

Location/Venue:

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[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer. Almighty God our heavenly father, we thank thee that all weather comes from thee, so that we can face all conditions of life, the storm and the sun, the rain and the drought in the confidence that thou dost make all things work together for good to them that love thee, to them that are the called according to thy purpose. Teach us therefor father to accept all things as from thy hands, and to rejoice knowing that thy purpose is to establish thy saints in thine eternal kingdom, in Jesus name amen. Our scripture is from the twentieth chapter of Acts, verses twenty following. Acts 20: 28 following. And today we shall study the work of the counsel of Nicea, with reference to the Nicene creed. Nicea, N-I-C-E-A, imagination versus history, or history versus imagination. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down, and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him, Sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him unto the ship.

As against Christianity, all other religions seek to impose an idea , a figment of their imagination on history and to make it real, to realize it. The battle therefor between Christianity and all other faiths, religions, philosophies is between history and imagination. Humanism for example believes in man in brotherhood in equality, now to believe in man is to go against history, because man certainly has given no ground for us to believe in him. To believe in brotherhood again is to believe in something that is not real, but that you hope to make real. To believe in equality is to take something which in your imagination you concede to be a wonderful thing, and then to demand that reality be conformed to it. Thus the battle between Christianity and humanism, which is the reigning philosophy of our day is between history and imagination. The same is true of course of Islam, Mohammedanism is primarily a political faith turned into a religion, it has a political philosophy which it seeks to impose upon reality and to make reality conform to it. Buddhism similarly believes in an ultimate relativism, that there is no difference between good and evil, between life and death, that all things are equally meaningless and that meaninglessness is ultimate. Now Buddhism again is seeking to impose its imagination on history because in the real world of history while men have had various ideas, they definitely have believed that there is a difference between good and evil and between life and death. But Buddhism seeks to impose its imagination upon the world, upon history, and to make the world conform to it.

All other religions thus are hostile to history. Christianity alone accepts history because it believes heaven and earth and all things therein including history have been created and ordained by God and move in terms of His sovereign purpose. One of the major examples of the war on history is gnosticism, spelled G-N-O-S-T-I-C-I-S-M, gnosticism very early attempted to take over Christianity by infiltrating it, the agnostics claimed to believe the orthodox doctrines, for example they affirmed the trinity, but as they interpreted the trinity, they said there were three Gods, the absolute, the demiurge (sp?) and the world. The absolute and the demiurge were as it were God and anti God and they canceled out each other so that the real God was emerged was the world or primarily man. The Marcosian sect of the Gnostics for example, claim to be Christian and a baptized people with a short baptismal creed whereby they were declared to be baptized into the name of the unknown father of the universe into truth the mother of us all, and to him who came down upon Jesus into union and redemption and communion in the powers. Now this creed sounds at first glance harmless, and many simple minded people were at first taken in by this sort of thing, but the reality of it is of course that by declaring God to be the unknown and the unknowable and denying Godhood to Jesus Christ, what they did was to affirm that Jesus Christ was not God and there was no God whom you could know, and therefor the one true God was man.

And their believers were baptized into communion in the powers, that is to be gods. The purpose of the Marcosian sect of the Gnostics therefor, was to open up divinity to man. Their belief according to Iranaias (sp?) was in salvation by knowledge, and to them true knowledge was to know yourself to be god. Now usually, the Gnostics and other heretics did not write creeds. Instead they took the Christian creed and reinterpreted it. The apostles creed therefor was subjected to extensive reinterpretation. Thus instead of saying I believe in God the father almighty maker of heaven and earth and declaring this to be a literal statement that God is the creator, they said all this means is that in some vague sense there's a power out there and somehow we came from that power but you mustn’t be too specific because then you are being dogmatic. In other words, there was no God for sure and we vaguely came out of something, and that was the sum of it. Similarly, the doctrine of Christ was made vague and the virgin birth was turned into a kind of symbol rather than a reality so that both God and Jesus Christ the second person of the trinity were made vague, but man was made very clearly God so that what we had in Gnosticism was humanism. The glorification of man, and the reinterpreting of the creed to eliminate its meaning and to make man the real object of worship. It was an undercutting of the ultimacy of God to make man ultimate. It was a deliberate attempt to make the doctrines of God the father, God the son, God the Holy ghost vague, and the doctrine of man as God very clear. Now Gnosticism was succeeded by Arianism, or Arianism (alternate pronunciation) again a developed form of humanism, and Arianism was a deliberate humanistic infiltration of the church, it took its name from its leader Arius, A R I U S.

The Arians as they approached the creed had three points that they emphasized, first Christ is a created being, second Christ is not eternally existent and third Christ is not of the same essence of the father, in other words He is not God, he was just another preacher. Of course the orthodox position emphatically asserted Jesus Christ to be the eternal second person of the trinity and of the same essence with the Father. The Arian faith was very clearly expressed in one of the writings of Arius, Thalia. Thalia was a very calm song written for popular consumption which expressed in popular form the basic Arian creed. Now five things appear very clearly in Arius's Thalia as well as elsewhere in Arian literature, first God is totally unknowable. Now this in effect says there is no God, because if you say there cannot be any knowledge of God, God cannot be known, then you are saying you don't know that there is a God. I might affirm that there are green monsters on Mars but if I say by definition those green monsters on mars are totally unknowable, and can never be known by man, nor can they ever reveal themselves to man, I am simply playing with words, I am saying there is no such thing, so that to speak of God as totally unknowable is to deny that there is a God. Now according to the biblical faith, God cannot be known perfectly and absolutely because to know God exhaustively would be to have the mind of God, a mind equal to God. Thus while we do not have exhaustive knowledge of God we do have reliable and perfect knowledge of God in and through Jesus Christ His only begotten son, because God is true to himself, and what He has declared of Himself in Jesus Christ and the bible is absolutely consistent with all else there is in the Godhead, so that while we do not know Him exhaustively we know Him truly.

But for the Arians, God was unknowable, so for all practical intent, there was no God. Second, for the Arians Christ is only a creature not the second person of the trinity. He was declared by Arius to be the greatest of all creatures but not exclusively so. The greatness that was His was the supreme greatness open to all men, so that all men could become Christs without exception if they strove for such a position. And this indeed should be the goal of religion to make all men equal to Christ. Third, the bible was eliminated by Arianism because if God is unknowable, and if as he said for he is to himself for he is that is unspeakable, God cannot reveal Himself, He is totally incoherent so that whether God exists or not is irrelevant He is is the God totally incapable of expressing himself, of revealing himself therefor the bible cannot be true, and there can be no revelation of God. For Arianism, the biblical answer to the problem of the one and the many was denied. They restored the pagan emphasis on unity. according to the bible, the trinity is three persons, one God. The individuality of each person of the trinity is clear cut and there unity is equally clear cut so that there is both an ultimacy for their individuality and for their unity. Now the practical application is that we cannot say in this world that either unity or individuality is ultimate, we cannot in other words, say that either totalitarianism or anarchism is right. There is a place both for unity and for individuality because both are equally ultimate in the Godhead. But for Arianism, unity was ultimate.

And this unity was in the state and in the emperor. Fifth, as is now quite apparent, Arianism was humanism and statism, therefor it was intensely popular with rulers, and for several centuries, every country in Europe virtually chose because they felt the force of Christianity to declare themselves Christian states but actually to deny and persecute Christianity by adopting Arianism as their established religion, in other words humanism, so that their old paganism whether Anglo Saxon or whether roman was continued in the form of Arianism. It was therefor the doctrine of collectivism, statism, and the Arian bishops were without exception statists, collectivists. For them the real savior was the emperor, the state not Jesus Christ. Now because these Arians were taking the apostles creed and misusing it, reinterpreting it to mean what they said it meant, the counsel of Nicaea was called in 325 AD, the first ecumenical counsel of the church. The counsel was called to deal with Arianism, with the extensive disunity and heresy in the church, but as the counsel met, only a minority of the bishops were orthodox, there was a militant minority that were all out Arians. Then the majority were semi Arian or moderates who didn’t want to take a stand. Only the tenacity and the strong faith of the Arians who stood their ground, refused to compromise won the day. At every point they exposed the implications of what the Arians and semi Arians stood for, so that they left them without excuse in that they pushed them to the point where they either had to admit what they were, or give in to the orthodox. And so it was they expanded the apostles creed into what we know as the Nicene Creed.

Now the Nicene creed as we have it today in church use is an expansion of the apostles creed by the counsel of Nicaea of Constantinople and of Chalcedon as well as other counsels, that is each of the counsels developed this creed in terms of the reigning heresy of the day, adding clauses to develop the implications of the biblical faith and to do away with heresies. The creed as we now have it coming through the several counsels reads: I believe in one God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten son of God begotten of His father before all worlds, God of god light of light, very God of very god, begotten not made. Being of one substance with the father, by whom all things were made who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the holy Ghost of the virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified for us under Pontious Pilate. He suffered and was buried and the third day He rose again according to the scriptures, ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the father, and He shall come again with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead, who's kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost the lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the son and the father, who with the father and the son together is worshiped and glorified. Who spake by the prophets, and I believe one catholic and apostolic church, I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come, Amen. Now in this creed the battleground in particular was the sentence concerning Christ being of one substance with the father. Of one substance in Greek which was the language in use at the counsel, is the word “homo-usia”, one essence, in other words, Jesus Christ was very God, He was of one essence with the father. The Arians attempted and the semi Arians to institute a minor change seemingly, they want the word “homoi-usian”, of like essence, inserted in its stead.

The difference is simply the letter I. Now Everett Gibbon in his book the decline of Roman Empire, makes quite a point of this letter I. Gibbon as an enlightenment figure and a rationalist hated Christianity, and so he ridiculed these orthodox saints because they stood their ground on this letter I, and he said consider all the dissension and quarrels unleashed upon Europe by this quibbling over a single letter. Now Gibbon was an intelligent man and from his own book it is obvious that he as well as the subsequent historians to this day knew about this issue. The issue was simply this: the liberty which Christianity stood for or the statism, the collectivism of Arianism, of humanism, this was at stake in that letter I. The counsel of Nicaea saw the triumph of the orthodox party. The great orthodox saints who battled for the faith there stood their ground. The creed was adopted, but what their enemies could not accomplish in open debate because there they would have been forced to admit what their faith was in, in the state not in Christ. They tried to do after the counsel closed by politics, and so it was by political influence, they very soon succeeded in undoing the work of Nicaea, and the Arian bishops, humanist to the core were advanced to positions of power by the emperor, and Arius the leader was recalled. Arrangements were made for a huge parade to lead him to the great central church in Alexandria, the night before the triumphant parade was to take place, Alexander the primate of Alexandria in tears, prostrated himself in the sanctuary praying, and we have the record of part of this prayer: “If Arius comes tomorrow to the church, take me away, O Lord, and let me not perish with the guilty. But if thou pitiest thy church as thou dost pity it, take Arius away, lest when he enters, heresy enter with him.” This was a prayer, a passionate prayer that God take Arius. The next day the parade began, a triumphal procession, they were in power, and they were going to take the stronghold of the orthodox party from them and drive them out. But halfway to the church, Arius was suddenly seized with a sever gastric pain, he asked that the parade be stopped and he went to a nearby open latrine near a construction job, the parade waited, they waited, waited and waited. Finally they went to investigate. Arius had suddenly had a severe hemorrhage and had fallen headlong covered in his own blood, into the latrine. The parade was over.

the orthodox party of course rejoiced, and they recalled the death of Judas who falling headlong burst asunder in the midst, according to Acts 1:18 and died. And Arius's death was almost exactly the same in the manner in which he died. The incident of course covered the Arians with shame, even as it had covered Arius with dirt. And they were very very badly upset and discomfited, naturally the orthodox rejoiced. From one end of the empire to the other, the orthodox preached this with great joy and thanksgiving. So may all thine enemies perish, O Lord. It was indeed a triumphant vindication. Remember, the champions of the orthodox faith had just a couple of years ago gone to Nicaea, 325 A.D. Fresh from persecutions, some of them had been led in there blinded by their persecutors, others with their hands cut off or a leg cut off, maimed, pathetic sights, and they had gone in there to battle for the faith, and they had won a great intellectual victory at Nicaea, but now Arius had been given the church by the emperor. But God had answered the prayer of Alexander, and Arius had met a most shameful death, one that confounded him in his work, and his followers in their faith. No wonder they rejoiced. It is significant that this incident and there are many many like it in history, has been suppressed from the history books.

Here is a major incident occurring to one of the major figures in history, but you cannot read about it in any history book written in the last couple of hundred years, or certainly the last hundred years. The historians are humanists too, and they don’t like this that befell one of the greatest humanists of all time. But we can rejoice, even as the saints of old did, this was the hand of God and God has a sense of humor, and we can say with the saints of old as we look at the enemies round about us, so may all thine enemies perish, O Lord. Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly father, we thank thee that thou art He who didst deliver thy saints of old, and confounded Arius and brought him to a shameful end. And we thank thee that thine arm is not shortened nor has thy power failed, and we thanks thee our father that as the wicked ones today, raising pious hands against thy throne, and as the humanists of today seek to work their will against thee and against thy true church, against thy word and thy people. Thou O Lord will avenge thyself upon thine enemies. We thank thee our Father that we can move in this confidence, knowing that thou art our sure defender and our exceeding great reward. Our God we thank thee, in Jesus' name, Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes. (Audience unintelligible) Only by going to history books form the eighteenth century earlier can you find it, and by going to the contemporary accounts, for example the writings of the church fathers and the historians of that time, so that by going to the older works you can get the story. As I say there are many such magnificent stories in church history, or in western history, but they have been dropped, they have been dropped. The humanists don’t like then, and with good reason. Yes. (Audience) Is there any similarity between.. (Unintelligible) (Rushdoony) Yes, with the civil war our politics definitely moved from Christianity to humanism. (Audience) And that was the real breaking point. (Rushdoony) That was the turning point, definitely. Yes. In our early American history, you can find numerous similar incidents where God providentially moved to save our people, beginning with the first landing by the pilgrims, I think perhaps some of you know that had they landed there a year or two years before, they would have been killed almost immediately? There were some very fierce and warlike tribes of Indians in New England, but before they landed, epidemics and plagues had struck down virtually all the Indians so the area was more or less uninhabited, and so it was possible to settle in New England. And from that time on, the number of providential circumstances through the war of independence are very very many and very great.

Yes. (Audience unintelligible) No I hadn't. (Audience unintelligible) Well it's in effect saying they aren’t going to be bothered. God will find them however. Yes. (Audience unintelligible) Yes. (Audience Unintelligible) Yes, (?) Curcio of course is humanism, it says as Arianism did that every man can be a Christ. It destroys the doctrine of the trinity to exalt man, it is a secret movement within the church which really is aimed at destroying the catholic church. Well Doctor Detar of Reno, a devout Catholic and a very able man who's done a great deal of work on synod, has written a book on Curcio and it's the best thing on the subject, its available in paperback. And the sad fact is that in spite of what he has written it is still defended by many many churchmen. Yes. (Audience unintelligible) Well Arianism was simply a development of what the Greek philosophers believed. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, because they were humanist to the core, and they were statist, in fact the thirty tyrants of Greece were pupils of Plato. And Aristotle’s great pupil was Alexander the great. They produced totalitarianism, this is what they believed in, the state as God on earth in effect.

So therefor those that say that our western liberty came from the Greeks are talking nonsense deliberately. Our western totalitarianism came from the Greeks. (Audience unintelligible) Well I recall, I’ve mentioned this before, it's worth mentioning again, I first started college studying Plato's republic, this was the great work in ancient philosophy, and an important source of our western culture and western liberty and of course its a boot print for a communistic state. Yes. (Audience unintelligible) Oh yes. (Audience).. that some of the old saints were polygamists. Now were they disobeying God then?.. (Unintelligible) Yes. The question is about the polygamy of the patriarchs in the old testament. Now first of all, lets look at the whole subject from the biblical perspective. From the perspective of the bible, the family is the basic institution of mankind. The family. Therefor, the bible looks at the family as against everything that is hostile to the family, therefore any kind of promiscuity, adultery, anything that is hostile to the family is regarded with total enmity. Now from the beginning, the bible recognizes monogamy as the standard from the garden of Eden. The mosaic law makes it clear that this is the true path. These other forms are regarded as inferior, defective and more or less sinful forms of the family. But, not as bad anything that is anti-family, thus in our culture today for example, we look on polygamy with horror.

But we don’t feel the same horror about adultery and fornication and general sexual license, because our perspective is not familistic. Now, this does not mean that the bible ever gave its approval to polygamy, it did not. But it recognized that as a form of the family, a very markedly inferior form, a sinful form, but still far different from that which is anti- family. Now the horror for adultery in the patriarchal kind to something that is hard for us to understand. But if you look back to the instant of for example both Abraham and Isaac when they denied their wives because they were afraid they would be killed, and someone would take their wives, and they pretended it was just their sisters. Why? What was the reason for that? Well it was simply this: in those days, adultery because it was destructive of the basic institution was regarded as so fearful a thing that murder was not serious by comparison, although murder was a serious offense. So that a man would more readily commit murder than he would adultery, so that Abraham said now someone may kill you-kill me in order to take you as their wife, so just pretend you're my sister and we can get by. Now when you understand this perspective then you begin to realize what the situation was. The polygamy there of course is on the whole rather small, you have it for example in a case of Jacob. But Jacob was in a sense tricked into it. In the case of the kings, the Dueteronomic law for kings forbade it. But it was still done because it was the basic method in those days of diplomacy. Now we think of polygamy primarily in sexual terms which it has been in modern times almost imperative. But in the ancient world, you didn't trust the civil service, well how did you take care of an administration? You had wives, so one many main cases these wives would be older women who would be experience administrators, perhaps their husband had been a judge in a previous marriage, the king would marry them and they would handle the administration, or as in Solomon's case, he was an important monarch, he had treaties with every kingdom around, how were these treaties settled? They would send him a wife or a concubine. What was their function? She would be in charge, usually of trade relations with that country and would be their representative in his court, she would have some ties you see with their home countries.

She would come from an important family. But she would also have some ties to her husband, so it would work for the welfare of both. Now that was better they figured than a civil service, because there was a personal love, so this is the perspective with which we have to view the polygamy of the monarchs. But basically it was a familistic perspective, the family versus anything that was conducive to the breakdown of the family. (Audience) Did the Mormons get their idea from the.. (Rushdoony) No, definitely not. The Mormon idea comes from thoroughly pagan sources, it is closer to Hinduism and Shintoism. In their perspective the man is a god, and women have no real being apart from this god whom they marry. And his purpose is to beget as many other persons, sons primarily his apostles, so that they can worship him in the world to come, because these other people his forbears are God's over him, and he's going to have a lot of gods under him, and he wants a lot through progeny. It is a weird and thoroughly pagan system.

Its totally unlike the biblical and it began out of the sexual desires of the founders who were men of bad reputation, and Joseph Smith was a man in new york, there wasn’t a mother in the community who would trust Joseph around her daughters. He came from a ne'er do well family that was on the lowest of the low in the community. Yes. (Audience) in regards to that, there are people we know that... (unintelligible) (Rushdoony) Well this is just skimming the surface of what there is in Mormonism, there is a great deal more there than we have time to go into, it;s definitely not Christian, it is thoroughly humanistic and it;s a lot more than that. Yes. (Audience unintelligible) Its very hard to imagine, but lets say its just barely possible, I think I’ve known one or two who may have been and they were not very knowledgeable Mormons, they tended to go to a lot of protestant services and listen to a lot of preaching on the radio, and they liked the Mormon church, that’s where their family and friends were, but they didn’t seem to know what Mormonism was about. (Audience unintelligible) Well if they're in Utah they know it. Yes. The deeper you go in Mormonism the more you are taught the inner doctrine. It is an esoteric faith, in other words there are levels of knowledge you are exposed to. Yes. (Audience unintelligible) No, of course their thesis is that the Mormons represent a demonic people, the Negros represent a demonic people. It's their belief of course, the Indians too are a low people, they represent the lost tribes became apostate and so on, so they look down on the Indians and they especially vanish from the hail of hope the negro unless he becomes a white man through some complicated religious processes. There is not much likelihood of them changing very rapidly but of course they can in that the twelve apostles can at any time have new revelations, so that a revelation is possible tomorrow which will say the Negros are angels, however I don’t think it;s very likely. One of the twelve apostles by the way is a Romney.

Yes. (Audience unintelligible) I could not myself vote for a Mormon because I believe it to be an anti-Christian faith. Moreover, Ezotat(sp?) Benson while some of his speeches and statements he has said sound fine, he is a man who was a part of the Eisenhower administration, and a very definitely socialistic program in the department of agriculture. Now we have to judge a man not by what he says but by what he has done, and his administration did not materially differ from that of Brennan who preceded him, so that while he talks conservatively, he did not change matters in the department of agriculture. Then, in the I believe December American Opinion there is a very telling article about these two brothers, farmers in the Dakota's, the Dejevski (sp?) brothers I believe, and now because of their criticism they were persecuted and imprisoned by the department of agriculture, and the imprisonment was fraudulent according to the article, they were totally innocent, and yet at the time this took place Benson was secretary of agriculture. Now the article says he deplored and offered to be a witness for these people, but he was still head of the department. He didn't.. he was not a witness however, he could have moved heaven and earth had he chosen and stopped that whole prosecution, but he did not. He did nothing to punish the people who were persecuting these two farmers.

I cannot believe that he is a real conservative, you have to judge a man by his works, and certainly he has not in his public life given any real evidence that he is a conservative. It's easy to talk conservatism, it's another thing to live it. I know one young man who while.. a very likeable man, I think very highly of his family and I like the young man, who as long as he was employed here in this area was a fine conservative, in fact before I came down here last year he was attending some of the meetings that were held in this area coming from the Pasadena area. He is known to various members of the group. However when he moved into another position in another area where he was surrounded instead of by very strong and powerful conservatives, by very powerful liberals. His conservativism was put on check. Now was he a conservative? He's a compromiser, and we have to judge a man by his works, I cannot see Benson as a candidate for president, and I don’t think a majority of the American people are going to do so. I think this candidacy of Benson is a dream. Strohn Thurmond on the other hand has proven himself, there is a man who has stood up again and again and again for the conservative cause, now as record, I am told by some people is not perfect, but then who's record is? Strohn Thurmond has earned the respect of all conservatives because he has been under fire, and he has come through splendidly.

He has demonstrated all the characteristics of truly Christian statesmanship, we need to respect Strohn Thurmond, we need to say that Benson has not proven himself, he may be a conservative, he sounds like one, but he has not done the work of one. Yes. (audience unintelligible) There are a number of excellent books, I will try to bring three titles with me of current books next time, will you remind me? Yes. (Audience unintelligible) Well the wrong person got the letter obviously! Well our time is up, let us bow our heads in prayer. Our lord and our God, we thank thee for these people who have gathered themselves together this day, out of love for thy word and for thy truth. Give them traveling mercies as they journey home Lord, protect them from mishaps of any kind- (end of recording)