Foundations of Social Order

The Church

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Sociology

Lesson: The Church

Genre: Speech

Track: 136

Dictation Name: RR126J17

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou art God. We thank thee that we can come to thee in the confidence that thou dost hear and answer prayer, and so , our Father, according to thy word we come, to cast our every care upon thee knowing thou carest for us, to wait on thee concerning thy promises to us in Jesus Christ, to surrender ourselves afresh unto thy word, and to pledge ourselves anew, to obedience unto thee. Increase our faith, O Lord, and make us strong in thee, unto the end that we might become conquerors through Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture is from Matthew 16:13-18, and our subject is The Church. “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

One of the articles of the Apostles Creed calls for a belief in the holy catholic church. In the Nicene Creed, we repeat, “I believe one catholic and apostolic church.” For many people now a days, this is the hardest article in the creed. In view of the extensive apostasies, and in view of the fact that the church is increasingly a blasphemous and even an obscene travesty on that which it is called to be. It takes sometimes a strong stomach today to take the church. Our Lord felt the same way because he declared to the apostle John in Revelation 3:16 concerning the church that refused to take a stand, “I will spew thee out of my mouth.” What is the church?

The creed calls it the catholic, or universal, church. What is the catholic, or universal, church? It is the church invisible which is the whole number of the elect of all kinds, from the beginning of history to the end, so that the catholic, or universal, church includes all people of faith from Adam’s time to the present, all the elect of this generation, and all the elect to the end of time. The visible church is made up of all those who profess the true religion in our day or in any particular age, together with their children.

A church is a true, or catholic, church insofar as it is faithful to that which is its nature, and the Bible defines the church in terms of three things. First, the faithful ministry of the word. Second, the administration of the sacraments according to the word of God, and third, discipline applied according to the word of God, so that the church is truly visible is truly the church when it is faithful with respect to the word, the sacraments, and the discipline. A church may be faithful with regard to the word and the sacraments, but if it refuses to apply godly discipline, to cast out unbelievers and immoral men, then it has lost the mark of the true church. It may administer the sacraments properly, but if there be no discipline and no true preaching of the word, again it is not a true church. The mark of a true church, therefore, are all three things.

Thus, the purest of churches in this world is a mixture of truth and error, never perfect, for our faith is not in a perfect church but in a perfect savior. The church, therefore, is not called to be perfect in this life, but it is required to be faith. A church can be faithful even though not yet perfect. A child can love his parents in absolute faithfulness and yet, without perfection. Even so the church, not having the perfection of sanctification on this side, cannot love with perfection or be faithful in perfection, but it can be faithful.

The Lord Jesus Christ, according to scripture, is the only head of the church, and the means of grace of the church are the word and sacraments. Now the terms “means of grace” is itself revelatory. This means that the sacraments, for example, are not themselves able to confer grace. They are the means of grace, not the source, and therefore, grace goes to those who have faith, but those who partake unworthily, St. Paul declares, incur unto themselves judgment.

Now, basic to the doctrine of the church is the doctrine of visibility. The true church is the visible church, and the church is therefore, visible to the extent that it is faithful, to the extent that it is a true church. As Westminster Confession says, “This catholic church hath been sometimes moral, sometimes less visible.” When the church is truly the visible church, it represents the body of Christ in this world. It is Christ present in our midst. Our Lord has declared, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name there an I in their midst,” so that the true church depends upon the presence of Christ, and apart from it, it is not a true church, and the presence of Christ is there where his word is faithfully preached, his sacraments dully ministered, and discipline applied. This ability, therefore, represents the presence of God in this world through his established order. The more faithful a church, therefore, the greater the visibility.

Now, from the beginning, the state in its apostasy, has also claimed a kind of visibility. The state has seen itself as the visible expression of the true order of man and the true order of God, and has said in effect, Whatever deity is inherent in nature or in the universe comes to its expression in and through us, so that we represent the true order of the ages, and therefore, the humanistic state strives for visibility, declaring that its state is the dominant force in man’s society and is the omnipresent fact on the human scene. It declares itself to be the new order of salvation, and as the true expression of whatever God there is in the universe.

Now, wherever you have this rival church, this false church, this pretended church, you have an attempt to dismantle the true church. St. Augustine said long ago that there are two orders in history which, from the beginning of time, from the days of Cain, have been working one against the other. The one is the City of God and the other, the City of Man. The City, or kingdom, or church of God as against the city, or kingdom, or church of man, and these two orders have been in incessant warfare. The true church of God called upon to bring all things into dominion to Christ, and the City of Man seeking to dismantle and to destroy Christ’s kingdom, Christ’s church.

We see, on all sides of us, the City of Man occupying the City of God, and working to destroy it. Dr. John Dillenburger, Dean of the San Francisco Theological Union said a few days ago, If we sold five out of every church buildings in the country and put all that money to better use in serving the need of the people, the mission of the church would probably be greatly enhanced. Notice where his emphasis is. On serving the needs of the people, not the requirements of God. For the City of Man, there is one test for a true church. To serve the needs of men. The requirement of the true church is that it be faithful to God.

The second strategy whereby the humanistic order seeks to compromise the faith and to destroy the church is to expand the definition of God. Hugh {?} Brown, who is a member of the American Rationalistic Society, has said that the definition of God should be made broad enough to include all religions and also make it possible for atheists to believe in God. In other words, the definition should be so broad that it is totally meaningless, and then the next step, of course, will be to drop the word entirely, and this indeed is now called for by one churchman who has written, “I am on the staff of an Anglican church in Toronto. I claim to be a Christian and an Anglican, yet I can say in all seriousness that there is no God. Jesus as Yahweh, is a great atheist. He took advantage of people’s hospitality, fed upon their food, rode the best vehicles he could achieve, lived it up among drunkards and maybe got drunk,” and then he declares further concerning the services of the church, “It is obvious that our present services are useless.” With this we can agree insofar as he speaks of any service he may conduct, because any service he conducts is not only useless, but blasphemous.

A third strategy whereby the City of Man seeks to dismantle the church of God is by demanding that the domain of the church be limited to the devotional life of man, to the private devotional life. In other words, we are told the church should get out of politics, it should get out of economics, it should get out of every area of life and limit itself to one area: private devotions. This is to ask the church to commit suicide. The church, indeed, must confine itself as far as its administrative and directly governmental functions are concerned to the word, the sacraments, and discipline, but through the word it must assert the sovereignty of God over every domain. It must declare that the kingdoms of this world must become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. It must declare that politics, economics, art, agriculture, everything, education certainly, must be under the dominion of Jesus Christ and his word. It is impossible for Christianity to absolve Christ to the private life of the person without committing suicide.

Today, the City of Man has extensively invaded the City of God, and virtually all the church is today in the hands of the enemy. Only very small segments of the church today exist independently of the enemy, so that various theologians have said that the outward church today is all but gone, and the true church is appearing in little groups here and there, the church of the future. Is the church {?}. Has the church lost? Is the church in retreat? and the answer to that must be no. Our Lord declared, as he spoke to Peter, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

In modern English, the word “prevail” has lost some of the force of the intended meaning. It can better be understood to be translated thus: “The gates of hell shall not hold on against it. The gates of hell cannot withstand the assault of the true church of God.” It is a case of aggressive action, of a forward march by the true church of God, and the attempt of a fallen church to build for itself defenses, an attempt by the gates of hell to find refuge, but being unable to hold out.

Today, the false church is holing up inside the church building that once belonged to Christ, seeking there a refuge against the attack of Jesus Christ, but even this strategy shall fail. They cannot hold out against the true church of Christ. The gates of hell are doomed.

What are the gates of hell? We find, very commonly, in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, the expression “the gates,” and men sitting beside the gates, and in the last chapter of Proverbs, we have a picture of the virtuous woman who is so confident that she can mange not only her affairs, but all her husband’s business affairs, so that he is able to sit in the gates of the city. Now, this does not mean that she freed him from all work to be a loafer, sitting on a park bench near the city gates. Quite the contrary. The expression “the gates of the city” is a very important one in ancient times. The city council always met out in the open near the gates of the city, near the main thoroughfare, the place of public markets and all, so that every hearing was fully a public hearing. Anyone could come with their appeals directly to an open-air hearing and be sure that more than those who accompanied him heard him. It was public, and therefore, when it speaks of the husband of the virtuous woman sitting in the gates of the city, it means he becomes a ruler in the city and his wife manages all their business.

The gates of hell, therefore, means the authorities, the powers, the principalities, the ring leaders of the powers of darkness, and Christ says those who of the counsel against me, those who are the forces of evil in this world shall not be able to hold out against my true church.

Immediately before that, our Lord had asked the question of the disciples, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” “And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter (Petras), and upon this rock I will build my church.” On whom is the church built? Peter? No, the word “Peter” means “belonging to the Rock.” The rock is Christ, and upon the confession of faith that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God, the true church is built. This is the ancient interpretation, not a modern one. The interpretation of the early church and of the ancient Catholic church, and we find it very beautifully stated in the Anglo-Saxon homily of Alfred, as translated into English we read, “Jesus then said, ‘What say ye that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘Thou art Christ, the living God’s son.’ The Lord to him said for answer, ‘Blessed art thou Simon {?}, be the expounder and {?} to us the deepness of this {?}. The Lord said to Peter, ‘Thou art rocken {literally stonen, having the same relation to stone as rocken to rock, golden to gold, earthen to earth} for the strength of his faith and for the firmness of his confession he received that name, because he joined himself with steadfast mind with Christ who is called the rock by the Apostle Paul. “And I will build my church upon this rock, that is, upon the faith which thou confesseth. All God’s convocation is built upon the rock, that is, upon Christ, because he is the ground where all of the structures of his own church. All God’s churches are counted as one convocation, and this is built with chosen men, not with dead stones, and all the building of those lively stones is laid upon Christ because we are, through faith, a kind of {?}, and he our {?}, our ultimate head. Whosoever build of the ground wall his work shall fall to his great love. Jesus said the gates of hell shall not have power against thy church. Sins and erroneous doctrine are held {?} because they lead the sinful man, as it were, through a gate into hell’s torments. Many are those gates, but none of them shall have power against the holy convocation which is built upon the firm rock, Christ.”

This then, is the true doctrine of the church, and the church is given the assurance that it shall never be destroyed. The gates of hell cannot hold out against it. There shall always be a church to worship God, and to carry forth the victory in his name. The true church, therefore, represents victory, and the extent to which we are with Christ, the extent to which we separate ourselves from every false church, from the enemy’s {?}, determines the extent to which we are made partakers in his victory. That is the day {?}, and there is no escaping it. There can only be an escape from defeat, and defeat can only be avoided if we stand with Christ in him as our head, as members of his body, in the blessed assurance then that the gates of hell cannot hold out against us. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast called us unto victory, and we pray, our Father, that thou wouldst arm us unto this end. Make us bold, our Father, and confident that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Make us zealous therefore, to bring every domain into captivity to Jesus Christ, confident that because thou art for us, who can be against us. Teach us, therefore, our Father, to keep our hearts firmly fixed there where our true joy is to be found, even in Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] You spoke {?} the other night, I was listening to a sermon {?} people were confused {?}, I think one of the {?}. So, one of the {?}

[Rushdoony] I can’t understand that statement because the sacraments are baptism and the Lord’s Table, or communion. What church was this man in?

[Audience] This was {?}, maybe I misunderstood him, but I thought I heard {?} say that communion was not {?}

[Rushdoony] I’ve never heard that opinion before. Yes?

[Audience] Now I want to understand this {?} you will have to try and understand what this particular preacher was saying, but I believe I heard my minister say that the host {?} the triune God, {?}. {?} and the Holy Spirit?

[Rushdoony] No, that sounds to me like the Christian church, because they are hostile to the doctrine of the Trinity, by and large.

[Audience] What {?}

[Rushdoony] They don’t accept the doctrine of the trinity, and they do not believe in the personality, most branches of their faith, in the personality, they do not believe in the personality of the Holy Spirit. In other words, they declare that there is a God. God the Father, and then Jesus Christ is somehow related to God the Father and is a person, although they don’t see him as fully one with God, some groups, others do, and then the Holy Spirit, instead of being the third person of the trinity, is for them just the influence of God as it manifests itself on earth and as it goes out from the Father. They’re definitely defective at that point, because you see, although they claim to be New Testament believers and they emphasize that, the New Testament speaks of the Holy Spirit as a person, and says, “Grief not the Holy Spirit of God,” and how can you grieve an influence? You grieve a person, so they are definitely not in the orthodox camp at that point.

[Audience] And then when they try to {?} apostolic succession?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the doctrine of apostolic succession is held by some branches of the Episcopal church, the high church {?}.

[Audience] Today.

[Rushdoony] Today, very definitely. And some branches of the Baptist church have a variation of it in that instead of a kind of apostolic succession through ordination, there is an apostolic succession through baptism.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No. The defect, of course, of the whole concept is this, it sees grace as a deposit that is passed on, either through laying on of hands by the bishops or through water baptism, through an unbroken succession, supposedly. Now, if this were true then, what has happened to Bishop Pike? What right has anyone to break with him because supposedly, he being in the apostolic succession carries this full deposit of grace and to separate yourself from him is to separate yourself from Christ, or this bishop of Monterey in Mexico, a Catholic bishop, who advocated that the church and the Freemasons get together because he says the Freemasons are among the most wonderful Christian people. Now, to separate yourself from him would be to separate yourself from Christ if the doctrine of apostolic succession were true, because it declares emphatically that this infallible deposit is transmitted person by person by a particular method.

[Audience] Is there a {?}

[Rushdoony] No, it’s an entirely different thing, but at any rate, I cannot accept it. In other words, it’s not a deposit that the church has grace, is always from its source: God. That’s why the elements in themselves cannot give grace to anyone who partakes of them, only those who come by faith, because grace is not a deposit in the wine and in the bread, and grace is not a deposit in the bishop, or in the water of baptism. These are means of grace, you see.

[Audience] {?} transubstantiation{?}

[Rushdoony] Well, transubstantiation and consubstantiation, which is the Catholic and the Lutheran concept, say that there is a deposit of grace in the elements once they are consecrated, that they become the very body and the blood of Christ. So that the catechism of the Council of Trent said that the wafer has the very nerves of Christ, because it’s now a part of Christ’s body, even though they are invisible. The very nerves and veins are invisibly present there. Now, this is not to be confused with the ancient doctrine of the real presence. The real presence, all Christians should believe, but the real presence of Christ is received by faith when one partakes of the elements. Transubstantiation came into the church in the 9th century, and it was introduced by an Abbot of Cordy, Radbertus, and it was immediately opposed by another monk of the same monastery, Bertram{?}, who wrote an excellent treatise On the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and it was not until some time later that the contrary view prevailed.

[Audience] What’s the difference between trans and con?

[Rushdoony] Well, basically I don’t think there is too much difference, except transubstantiation is a little stronger statement of the same doctrine. Yes?

[Audience] {?} Freemason?

[Rushdoony] What’s that?

[Audience] Who are the Freemasons?

[Rushdoony] The Freemasons represent a lodge or a fraternity which finds it doctrine best expressed in Morals and Dogma by Alfred Pike who is often spoken of as having been, in his day, the international pope of Freemasonry. Basically, and Freemasonry believes in what the French Revolution propounded: liberty, fraternity, equality. Liberty from God, total equalitarianism, and world brotherhood. It is a radically humanistic faith. It believes that the real gods are men, and men ascend up into godhood by degrees, and the degrees of Masonry represent the steps by which a person, step by step, rises in the degrees until he becomes a god. I do not believe that a Christian can be a Freemason. The Freemasons have been a powerful force in the Western world for a number of revolutionary movements, and one of their strongest means of strength is that most Freemasons join merely for the social angle, and are thereby valuable in that you have hundreds of thousands of people who pay a tidy fund in each year, and never bother to open Morals & Dogma to find out what they have joined, but they feel it’s good for business to be associated with all these other businessmen, and to go and have some fun regularly at the meetings. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, there are all kinds of theories as to its origin. Scholars say it began in the 18th century. Certainly its modern form was, at that time, or reorganized Freemasonry began at that time. You can find evidences of this type of an opinion through the Middle Ages and earlier, and there are those among the Freemasons in their various books who claim that it goes back to the Tower of Babel, that they were the builders of the Tower of Babel, and that when they were scattered, they established these various signs and symbols so that they could recognize themselves wherever they were. Now, I think that’s a fitting place to find their origin. Certainly this much is apparent, their signs and symbols did make them recognizable in various areas. Certainly, the origins of Freemasonry can be traced back into the Muslim world to some of the various cults and sects there, the secret movement, that were like our Sexual Freedom League and like our convents. They were bent on a reorganization of society. During the early years of this country, some American sea captains, who were Masons, stopped by in the Mediterranean without any attack from the Barbary pirates by flying Masonic symbols. They were then let through without attack, and that comes from a secular scholar who has no antipathy to Freemasonry. An interesting fact there. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The Knight Templar apparently brought these ideas into the Western world, and finally the King of France prosecuted the Knights Templar. The church did not. The church gets the blame for it, and the church was slow in seeing the danger there, but the Knights Templar had various requirements such as denying the Trinity, spitting upon the elements, ritual homosexuality and so on, for membership. They were an exceedingly wealthy and extremely powerful order, and some have claimed that the order was suppressed because the King of France was anxious to expropriate their wealth, but all of the confessions of the various Knights Templar of their arrest, and they were not all forced confessions, many were voluntary, indicate a common story. Significantly, the head of the order was Jacques de Molay and modern Masonry has made a great to-do about him and has a separate order for younger Freemasons in his name. So they claim a link to the Knights Templar. Yes?

[Audience] George Washington {?} and yet he {?}

[Rushdoony] George Washington has been made much of by the Freemasons. They’ve claimed him as quite a dedicated member and you often see his picture with his Masonic apron on, and so forth. Now, the reality of that is simply this. Washington, very early, because of his prominence, was made an honorary member of just about every organization in the country, and Washington was made an honorary member, or taken into one lodge. He attended one meeting in his entire lifetime. Some few years later when they were criticized, he admitted he didn’t know anything about them and defended them. Later when he found out more about them, he wrote two letters to the Reverend Jedediah Morris, denouncing them and declaring that they were infiltrated and controlled by the Illuminati, so that this is Washington’s only association with Freemasonry. Earlier this year, I finished reading the collected works of Washington, so his letters are fresh in my mind as a result. Yes?

[Audience] I realize that we’ve been over this before, {?} again the answer to that this was not a Christian nation and {?}

[Rushdoony] The answer to that is that we were established a Christian nation. Every country, because it has a body of law, has behind those laws a moral system. In other words, laws represent a moral perspective. They same some things are legal and other things are illegal. That is, right or wrong, and therefore, we legislate accordingly, and every system of morality reflects a religious perspective, a religion. Our entire legal structure was established as Christian to the core. In fact, the original statutes were simply enactments of biblical law. For a long time in this country, it was not possible to vote without being a Christian, believing in the infallibility of scripture and the doctrine of the trinity. During, for example, the War of Independence in Virginia, you could lose your children if you were an atheist. You would be considered incompetent and dangerous for their welfare.

Now, as late as 1912, at least one state constitution said that citizens had to be Christians. Now we are in process of disestablishing Christianity to establish another kind of religious and moral law: humanistic, and we are trying to work towards that. We are still, to a considerable extent, a Christian nation. For example, we still have capital punishment for certain crimes in terms of the biblical perspective. Now the Bible says for first degree murder, for kidnapping, and for various other crimes, the penalty is death. We still have laws against homosexuality even though we are not enforcing them too well. That again is Christian. No other culture has them. We still have laws against rape, and very few cultures have that. We will have strict laws against abuse and theft of property, and that is very definitely Christian, and so on. You can go down the line, and you find that our laws are Christian. They adhere to the Ten Commandments.

Now we are trying to destroy it. We are trying to abolish capital punishment, to legalize abortion, and abortion was never so regarded as murder until Christianity came. We are trying to substitute mental health programs for punishment, and we are trying in various ways to overturn a Christian system of law. But we have disestablished Christianity as the religion of the United States, but we have not yet disestablished it as the law, as the basic framework of our legal system. We are trying to do that.

[Audience] {?} and {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, but it was.

[Audience] It was, yes, but {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s right. It is not written in the Constitution for the simple reason that the Constitution has no say-so. This was in every state constitution, and the Constitution was asked to stay out of it, it was not a federal matter. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It was a matter of states rights. Each state has the freedom to establish its own religious establishment, and they did, and nine of the states had an established church or churches, all of them had Christian requirements. Yes?

[Audience] As a matter of law, {?} for example {?} federal government {?} declaration {?} unless you swear to God with a hand on the bible {?}, do they still do that in court today?

[Rushdoony] Not in California.

[Audience] They used to do it in every state, and up until very recently.

[Rushdoony] And the presidential oath, as I have said before, is very important, because we don’t realize what an oath of office means unless we realize that the oath is a biblical concept, and it meant swearing, in terms of the Bible, Deuteronomy 28 in particular, that if you obeyed, all these blessings of God would flow to you and to the people, and if you were disobedient, all the curses specified were to overwhelm you. So an oath is the invoking of blessings for truth, and for fulfillment of the oath, and of all the curse of God for disobedience. So you can see what our presidents have been invoking in recent years.

[Audience] {?}

[Audience] Did {?}

[Rushdoony] The Bible does not speak specifically on that, but the only thing the bible says with respect can be construed one way or another on that is that there are various statements whereby God blesses the fruitfulness of the faithful. For example, Leviticus 26:9, “For I will have respect unto you if you walk in my steps, and make you fruitful and multiply you and establish my covenant among you,” and there are many other such passages. For example, Psalm 128:3-4, “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. Behold, that thus shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord.”

On the other hand, the Bible speaks a great deal about the fact that the fertility of the ungodly is no pleasure to him, and we are increasing and multiplying, but he is going to cut them down. For example, in Ezekiel 5:7-8, “Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Because ye multiplied more than the nations that are round about you, and have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you; therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations.” And there are many other passages like that: Isaiah 49:19-20, Jeremiah 15:9, Amos 1:13, Deuteronomy 7:7, Isaiah 9:3, and so on, and Job 27:13-14, all of which indicate that God is not interesting in the fertility of the ungodly, that it is not, as far as he is concerned, a blessing, and he is going to curse them for their fertility as well as for their wickedness.

Thus, we have a double attitude on the part of God towards human fertility. It’s a blessing to the godly, but to the ungodly, it will only increase their judgment. This is all that the scripture says on the subject. So beyond that, we do not have a right to go{?}.

[Audience] {?} therefore, a Christian marriage, which would unite itself to {?} fertility, would be {?} fruitfulness, multiply {?} and therefore {?} against that which {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I think here we get into a matter of individual conscience and Christian liberty. I would say your inference is a good one, but this is a matter for each of us to decide in terms of our own conscience.

[Audience] {?} Well looking at a general perspective, i.e., South Africa and Rhodesia where the white population decreases year by year because the {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, one of the interesting things is that the ages of faith are ages where the fertility of the godly is tremendous, far outstripping that of the ungodly.

Our time is almost over, and I wanted to read just a couple of sentences from Triumph, which is a very interesting new periodical, a Catholic monthly, and this is an article by Dietrich von Hildebrand on Teilhard de Chardin Towards a New Religion. Now de Chardin is a familiar name to some of you because he is the one who is so influential in the church today and has influenced Bishop Sheen{?} so very, very heavily, and Dr. von Hildebrand says, concerning his meeting, in 1961, at a dinner arranged by Dr. Robert Gannon, then president of Fordham University, he was in a discussion with Teilhard de Chardin.

“After a lively discussion in which I ventured a criticism of his ideas, I had an opportunity to speak to Teilhard privately. When our talk touched on St. Augustine, he exclaimed violently: ‘Don’t mention that unfortunate man; he spoiled everything by introducing the supernatural.’”

Now, this is the kind of man who is now exercising so great an influence.

Well, with that we stand adjourned.

End of tape.