IBL07: Seventh Commandment

The Architecture of Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 19-20

Genre: Talk

Track: 72

Dictation Name: RR130AM72

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

1 Peter 3:1-8, The Architecture of Life. 1 Peter 3:1-8.

“3 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;

2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:

6 Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

8 Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:”

As we have seen in the past year and a half in our studies of Biblical Law, it is basic to any understanding of Scripture to realize that all of creation has a law structure. It is impossible to understand this world apart from the law structure of God, which undergirds everything. To attempt to understand anything apart from the law scripture is to attempt to understand man apart from his skeletal structure. Apart from it, man cannot live.

When we recognize that law structure, then we can turn to any passage of scripture, and see that law structure behind many declarations that do not deal directly with law. An excellent example of this is our scripture, 1 Peter 3:1-8. A relationship or structure is here described. It presupposes at every point the 7th commandment, the Biblical law concerning marriage, also laws concerning authority, and it speaks of life itself as a grace from God to the faithful.

But how is this verse interpreted normally? The usual interpretations are sometimes pathetic. For example, a very, very large body of people who take this verse seriously, believe that it condemns the plaiting of hair and the wearing of gold. And so there actually are churches, sad to relate, that forbid braided hair and forbid gold jewels. Now this of course is to pervert scripture. Because there is nothing here that forbids these things, in fact; if you are to read this as forbidding the plaiting of hair and the wearing of gold, you have to go on and logically be, as some of these fundamentalistic churches are not very definitely, a nudist. Because it goes on to say: “Or a putting on of apparel.”

And none of these groups take the logical step, and go on to say: “You are not only forbidden to braid your hair and wear gold jewelry, you are also forbidden to put on any clothes and any apparel.” But this would be the logic of their interpretation.

Well of course what Saint Peter was here talking about was, the adorning, that is the trust of the individual should not be in the ornamentation of outward things, whether of hair dress or jewelry or clothing, but a meek and a quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price. In other words, although very frequently Scripture speaks of the loveliness of beautiful clothing, of styles of hair, of jewelry, and speaks of these as good, it also insists that everything be put into perspective. That there is a structure in the Universe. A structure which says that everything has its place. That it is only when certain things are taken out of place and out of context that they become wrong.

“To the pure,” Saint Paul declares: “All things are pure.” Everything has its place in God’s creation, so that it is not the thing which is of itself evil, but man’s moral will, man’s nature which puts things to an ungodly use. So that to the pure all things are pure. But to the wicked nothing is pure. Everything is perverted, everything is used.

This passage therefore rests on a law structure, on a hierarchy, if I may use that word, of value. What Saint Peter is talking about appears in the 2nd chapter, the 9th verse, that “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people;” (That is a unique people) “that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;”

And then in the 13th verse he says: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king… Or unto governors” Or anyone. Every authority therefore is to be respected, not for its own sake but for Gods sake. Faithfulness requires of each that we meet our responsibilities in our appointed place, that your prayers be not hindered. The prayers of a man, or the prayers of a woman are hindered if they do not meet their God-given responsibility. If they are not of one mind, having compassion one of another, loving one another, pitiful, courteous, not rendering evil for evil or railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing. Only so, the 9th verse of the third chapter says, can you inherit a blessing from God.

There is a structure, and all things have their focus in God. Every area of life must be God-centered, for to live life on terms other than Gods law allows is to deny Him.

We have however today, a humanistic re-ordering of life. So that instead of all things being to the glory of God, and mans chief end being the glory of God and to enjoy Him forever; we see today that its Gods chief purpose to glorify man and to enjoy man! And as a result, life is out of focus, and everything is perverted.

The humanistic reordering of life is very vividly described in a recently published book, a very superb biography of Louis the 14th by Doctor John D. Wolf. And in the course of his analysis of Louis the 14th, he calls attention to the destruction of Versailles, one of the greatest buildings ever put up by man; a building that not only influenced the construction of every other palace that was subsequently built, but also government centers. In fact, Versailles had a profound influence on Washington D.C. right down to the construction of the Pentagon, and Dr. Wolf traces this influence.

Then he says, by way of summing up the meaning of Versailles, and I quote: “We cannot leave Versailles without reiterating that it had a purpose beyond being the residence for the king and his government. This great palace was a keystone of a new cult of royalty. In the preceding eras, the great constructions were usually to the glory of God, even Philip the 2nd when he built his great palace, made it a monastery with a chapel as the center of interest. At Versailles, the bedroom of the king is the center, identifying the king as the highest power on earth, while the chapel was to one side.” We might add that the chapel was built last.

“The imposing grandeur of the chateau was evidence of the wealth of the kingdom, and its construction without walls or moats was proof of the power of the kings government. Versailles was a challenge, a defiance flung out at all Europe; as impressive a display of the wealth, power, and authority of the French king as were his armies and his warships. Europe did not miss this. The century after the construction of Versailles, chateaus at Vienna, at (?), at Dresden, at (Unik?), and at Saint Petersburg, and the very plans for the city of Washington D.C. reflect the influence of the grandeur of Versailles.”

Versailles was significant, says Dr. Wolf, because now in the very construction of buildings humanism came into full force. Man was central. And this was carried out into every aspect of Louis the 14th’s regime. It was humanistic to the core.

Now ironically Louis the 14th himself was, in many respects a devout man. And in his later days, after what really was the first world war of Europe, and his regime was financially in very sad plight and he was increasingly unpopular, it was a time of long sadness for Louis the 14th whose reign was one of the longest in European history. And in his later years he spent much time in grief and in long prayers, and in the belief that God was judging him for his crimes. But his prayers were useless, because the essential humanism of his regime continued. The bedroom, rather than the chapel was a fitting symbol; life now had a new architecture, the architecture of humanism. This new architecture for life had been first established by the renaissance, but it had given way to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and now the Enlightenment was again the order of the day.

Earlier in the Renaissance (Vocachio?) had stated the new premise of this new structure, this new architecture of life, when he wrote and I quote: “We have nothing in this world but what we enjoy.”

This new architecture of life that humanism gave became even more basic to the modern age with Hegel and Darwin. It took on a firmer, a harder shape, with an ostensible foundation in science in the doctrine of evolution. The new doctrine of man and society and of the state was what we analyzed last week as conversion downward, to use Kenneth Berks phrase. A conversion downward of every aspect of life.

At the beginning of this century, a Princeton professor, Henry Jones Ford, a very distinguished scholar, stated in a very important work in a most influential study: The Natural History of the State, an Introduction to Political Science. What the implications of the new science of the doctrine of Evolution are for politics. And after his rather lengthy analysis, he in his concluding chapter sums up his thesis. The thesis as he correctly saw it, of all contemporary political science, and I quote:

“Proposition. Man is the product of social evolution. Corollaries of this proposition effect the whole group of scientists pertaining to anthropology in the large sense of the world. They may be exhibited in several aspects as follows: Biological. The state is the permanent and universal frame of human existence. Man can no more get out of the state than a bird can fly out of the air. The undivided commune is the primordial frame of the state, and it antedates the differentiation of the man from antecedent animal stock…

The individual is a distinct entity in the unit life of the state. The individual is not an original, but is a derivative.

Political: Man did not make the State, the State made Man. Man is born a political being, His nature was formed by government, requires government and seeks government. The State is the unit of which all forms of Government and Society are the differentiation. Society in general is the State viewed in its distributive aspect. The State is absolute and unconditioned in relation to its unit life. Government is conditioned by dependence of its structure and hence it is subject to inherent limitations. There is no absolute norm of Government but every species of the state tends to produce a type proper to its characteristics in its particular environment. Profound changes of environment produce profound changes of Government. State species unable to effect readjustments of structure to meet new conditions tend to disappear, so that from age to age there is a succession in state species analogous to that which takes place in biological species… Sovereignty is the supremacy of the State over all its parts.

Ethical: Rights are not innate but are derivative. They exist in the State but not apart from the State. Hence rights are correlated with duties… The object of the State is the perfecting of Man, but the attainment of that object depends upon the perfecting of the State. The test of value in any institution is primarily not the advantage of the individual but the advantage of Society. Individual life enlarges by participation in a larger life, ascends by incorporation in a higher life.”

The implications of this of course are far reaching. Man is a creature, not of God but of the state. The state is therefore sovereign, it is in effect mans God. “The state,” He says, “Makes man.” There is no morality beyond the state, that which the state decrees is, in and of itself, right. And the purpose of the state is to protect man, by controlling man.

This means therefore as man have logically stated, that freedom is now obsolete. When I was in a forum in San Hosea about a year ago, presided over by a state senator with a Stanford professor and another scholar and myself as speakers, one of the strongest objections to my position was made afterwards by a schoolteacher who felt that I was totally incapable of understanding this modern age, because I did not realize and these were her words: “Freedom is obsolete.”

Why? Because we are now in an era of science, and science cannot work if you do not have control. And the state, to be a scientifically valid experiment requires total control over all factors.

Thus, rights are derivative, they exist in the state but not apart from the state. But, as Dr. Ford stated: “Changes of environment produce changes of government.” But man’s world, man’s environment is constantly changing and what does this mean? Exactly what is said. Perpetual changes of government. In other words, as the new left has logically stated, perpetual revolution.

So that today, the student rebellion represents a logical inference from the doctrine of revolution and the present political science. Perpetual revolution is a necessity. If the architecture of life is determined by evolution; if the present scientific perspective is correct, these students are intellectually honest. They are taking what they have been taught, and drawing the logical conclusions there from; and they are refusing to put up with half way measures.

If we in terms of scripture accept the fact that God is God, creator of heaven and earth, then we must draw the logical conclusions from our basic premise. For it (ceases to sound?) and the students have done justice to it.

The architecture of life is either governed from below, by the primeval forces which govern man’s progress, or it is governed from above. If we accept the Bible, that the architecture of life is structured with the enduring seal of Gods law and must grow in terms of that structure.

Of course the most recent development of scientific perspective is that of Michel Foucault, a very brilliant French scholar, who has declared that the logical conclusion of our thinking is not only the death of God, but the death of man. But Sartre is right in declaring that man is a futile passion; and therefore the most logical step for that futile passion man to take is suicide. And therefore his philosophy is called the death of man philosophy, and it is extremely powerful today in France; it has not yet had its influence in this country.

But Foucault in an earlier work of considerable brilliance entitled Madness and Civilization, began his study with these words: “We must renounce the convenience of terminal truth.” There are no absolutes. There is then nothing to bind man to man, nor anything to bind man to life. There is no longer this structure of Gods truth, and man cannot live apart from truth. And so the only conclusion as Foucault logically draws from it is suicide.

But Saint Peter in our text gives a different picture of life. It deals with the relationship of man and woman, husband and wife; but behind it is the seal of Gods law structure. Obedience to God is primary, then to all authority under God, in order to serve God acceptably, and to enjoy life, and to have life as a grace.

Unless we see the totality of the structure, and fulfill our relationship to God, and to one another in God, to be of one mind, to have compassion one of another, to love, to be pitiful, to be courteous, not rendering evil for evil; then our prayers are not hindered, and we inherit not judgement, but a blessing.

But today to much of Christianity itself is humanistic. Anything which makes man or the things of man, or man’s goals the end of life, is humanist. To be God centered means to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Today on the one hand we see among our Roman Catholic brethren that the church is equated to the kingdom, so that the church is made the be-all and the end-all of the believers life. This is humanism. It makes an institution basic rather than the kingdom of God.

On the other hand, Protestantism, being mostly aumillennial or premillennial, despairs of the world. And so it says to people: ‘Come into the church for your refuge from the tribulation and all the evils that are to come.’ And so again, it limits the kingdom to the church, and it does not see Gods purpose of reconstruction, Gods power to be manifested in every realm of life. So that in either case, the structure of life is reduced to the church, and this is humanism. It is a reduction of the whole council of God.

Saint Peter did not, as we saw, condemn clothing or gold and silver or lovely hair dress. They have their place, and so to do church, state, school and all things else have their place. So too, do our feelings have their place. But we can never say that ‘How I feel about something is more important than my duty under God.’ To do so is to be guilty of humanism. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, to magnify God in every area of life.

God’s law along suffices as the structure and architecture of life. Apart from that our prayers are hindered. Louis the 14th is a tragic figure. Few monarchs of more intellectual power. Few monarchs who achieved more in their lifetime; and yet, his latter years spent in tears and in prayer. But it altered nothing. His prayers were hindered. Because the basic structure of his life remained to the last even as the architecture of Versailles, humanistic. The architecture of our life must come from the steel of Gods law word.

Let us pray. Almighty God, we give thanks unto Thee that of Thy grace and Thy mercy Thou hast called us to be Thy people, and has given unto us Thy law word. Make us ever mindful our father, of Thy sovereignty. So that we never may put an institution, ourselves, our feelings, above that which Thou hast required of us. Give us grace to serve Thee as we ought, to rejoice in Thy blessing; in everything to give thanks, knowing that this is Thy will for us. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] I can’t hear you?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No…

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] No, because, first and last the grace of God must be operative. But, Gods sovereignty does not destroy human responsibility, we have an obligation, an urgent obligation to teach; because apart from that we are guilty, and we have this requirement from our Lord Himself, who said: “Go ye unto all nations.” And he said: “Teaching them all things that I have commanded you.” So the responsibility is ours to teach. We cannot convert, God does that. “Go ye forth and teach all nations.” So the requirement to educate is given us by God. We are then innocent of any man’s blood as Ezekiel said. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course most of them are going in terms of what they are taught. The overwhelming majority I think definitely subscribe to this, the more intellectually vigorous carry it to its logical conclusion.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] They are being educated, but ultimately their own responsibility must be final. Another question? Yes.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Very definitely. Very definitely. Christians should set up Christian schools. Because the public schools are socialistic schools, they are humanistic schools, they are very successful in teaching statism, this is their purpose. There is no such thing as neutrality or objectivity. The great contribution of the Marxists has been that they have very effectively challenged, and shattered the idea that there is any such thing as an objectivity. We don’t hold to the fact that it is class conditioned, but we must agree with them that everyone’s perspective governs that which they teach.

Now, this does not mean that truth is impossible for any man to attain. But it does mean that every person’s perspective is governed by their presuppositions. So there is no such thing as an objective education which everyone can get. Education is definitely in terms of a perspective. Therefore, unless we want our children alienated, we need to have schools which will teach out perspective.

I would like to read something I have here in my brief case, which I think is quite an interesting quote, it is from the December 1963 Réalités, a French periodical of considerable interest. And it is an article titled: Turning the Tables on Arithmetic by a French scholar, Danielle (Kunavell?)

And this is a very interesting program, as he describes a Belgian scholar, and his work in mathematics, and of course, this is the new math he is talking about, a particular version of it developed by this man, (Pappi?). What is (Pappi?) doing? He is trying to create elementary mathematics in harmony with modern mathematics, based on sex. For example, he tells beginners: “You are going to create a set.” Then the child will create some kind of odd set, a teacher, a pickle and a pinch of salt. “Now look how important my decision is,” (Pappi?) told me. “I call this set S. It now exists because I have created it. In old mathematics you contemplated a pre-established world. Today it is I, it is the child, who creates this world, who takes decisions and is aware of that fact that he is deciding.

Do you get the point, of course? The old mathematics deals with a God-created, pr-established world. But in this new math, this was written in 1963, we create our own world as we go along.

Now, there it is, very honestly stated. If the Bible represents our faith, then we cannot agree with that, but if not, this is logical. It takes a presupposition, and marches honestly to its conclusion. So you either have to have a school in terms of that premise, or in terms of our premise. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, someone who comes to this meeting and is not here today told me a while back, just a few months ago of a statement made almost repeatedly every week, and sometimes every day, by a particular professor of education, and the statement was this: “We cannot speak about the content of education, because in a continually changing world, how do we know whether the content of today is valid when the child grows up? Therefore we cannot educate in terms of specific ideas or concepts or subjects, we must educate in terms of change, perpetual change.” Perpetual revolution. And when he was asked if that were a logical inference after some reflection by the particular person, he said: “Oh yes. No question about it.”

So you see, if you do believe that there is no absolute, that there is no God and no absolute truth, then to be honest you have to insist on perpetual revolution, perpetual change as Doctor Ford did at the beginning of this century in the quotation I cited. Yes?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] What is that?

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Well, without God there could be nothing. Without God there could be nothing, not even a revolution.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes…

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] It is always a miracle, wherever they are converted. But of course, as so many people I know who are Christian, their feeling is: “I have had to outgrow my education.” And of course that was the case with me. I spent about 6-7 years at Berkeley, and I had one professor from whom I learned a great deal, and two others from whom I learned a little bit. The rest I endured, and I had finally to outgrow, because what I got was so off-base.

[Audience Member] ...?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the question is with respect to the International Monetary Fund, and its announcements with respect to paper gold, is that the case? The paper gold of course, has been widely announced and what it amounts to is a bookkeeping entry. What is the need for paper gold? It is precisely this. Originally we had the gold standard; we still do but not as directly. The gold standard meant that nations and businesses as they settled up accounts at the end of the year or a stated period, if there was any balance it was settled in gold, the one paying the other their indebtedness in gold. Then in 1922, (?) the gold exchange standard was set up. International trade was still tied to gold, but it was agreed that a currency which was based on the gold standard could be acceptable. It could be cashed in, but they agreed that there would be no pressure. Thus, instead of settling up at the end of the year in actual gold they could settle in pounds or in dollars that were tied to gold.

Now, the temptation here was this, and of course it was fully abused. These paper currencies, pounds and dollars, are checks, as all paper currencies are. And originally they said: “Payable to the bearer on demand” so much in gold and so much in silver, primarily in gold. However both countries began to issue several times as much checks overseas as they had reserves. We had, we claim we have, still, 10 Billion in gold. We have a minimum of 39 Billion in paper dollars outstanding in the hands of foreign governments, some put it as high as 50 Billion. It is the same as if you wrote checks for 40-50 thousand, when you had 5-10 thousand in the bank. You would be in trouble. Britain is in even worse trouble, they have checks to the tune of about 12 for every 1 in reserves.

Now, this means the two dead beat countries in international trade are Britain and the United States, in particular Britain. All of them are to some degree in trouble. So they don’t want the checks cashed, and they are begging that they don’t cash in too many of them. So they want a third substitute, you see, from the gold standard to the gold exchange standard, now they are setting up the Special Drawing Rights or SDR’s, against which every country has to deposit so much with the IMF so much in gold. Then, against this gold that is put up by various countries, the countries that cannot get a loan from everybody else, in other words the bad-risk countries can then get a loan. Which will be an entry in the books, there won’t be anything printed again. But they will be given so much credit in foreign trade.

Now, this really amounts to nothing, because the total amount of SDR’s for the next three years is 9.5 Billion dollars. This means, that spread out to all the countries it adds up to very little per year; it is little over 3 Billion a year. Divide that 3 Billion by the various countries who want a share of it, and it adds up to very little, say, for Britain and the United States, even though we have over 1250 votes in the IMF, we stacked it pretty well for ourselves in the beginning. So we have got a lot more votes in other countries, more than we are entitled to right now, the votes are based on the amount of gold.

Well, what value is that? Our deficit, domestically and our deficit in foreign trade runs into the Billions every year. And what would a few hundred million add up to in the face of that? Nothing. And who, when they are holding what amounts to a bad check, will be satisfied with another check that you can’t cash?

Now, the papers have had a lot to say about this paper gold, and the main purpose of this paper gold is to fool the public, to assure them that everything is being taken care of, and in the past week there have been two significant acts. One, Germany. Germany has been begged by the IMF to allow them to revalue the Mark upward. The exchange rates internationally are all set by the IMF, by agreement, and virtually every country except the Soviet Union is in the IMF.

Germany allowed the Mark to take its free place on the market. So, it began to go upward, but not the way the IMF wanted, which was to value it very high, which would make the Volkswagen for example sell at a very high price in the United States, and price itself out of competing with our sports cars. So, by allowing it to float freely on the market, what they did actually was not to revalue the Mark, but to value the Dollar and Pound in relationship to the Mark, in other words, the Dollar and the Pound dropped.

In other words, the IMF was not obeyed, it was bypassed. They said: “When we find the new rate, we will set it, we are working with the IMF.” But that was face saving nonsense. Then the Wall Street Journal revealed a couple of days ago that the various countries had purchased 100 million dollars in gold, in defiance of the IMF. Now, this means that the IMF, which since WW2 has controlled international trade, international monetary exchange and so on, is in about the same place as the league of nations was when Italy defied it and marched into Ethiopia. It continued to exist for some time after that, the IMF is still important. But in a week it has twice been defied in a very serious way, so it looks as though increasingly the IMF will be important as a public relations media whereby the public will be given the idea that international finances are being brought under control, and there is no problem. But the nations have already indicated they are, when the chips are down, do pretty much as they please.

So the prospect is not at all good for any country at present, and fragmentation increasingly take place. It will be, to quote the words of one very, very brilliant economist: “Every dog to his own kennel.”

Well, our time is up.