Human Nature in its First Estate
The Nature of Man
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Psychology
Genre: Lecture
Track: 02
Dictation Name: RR131A2
Location/Venue: ________
Year: 1960’s-1970’s.
Our scripture is again as last week, Genesis 1:27-31. The Nature of Man, we began last week our studies in What is Man? a Biblical psychology of man, in order that we might understand what man is and what the implications of his nature are for the doctrine of salvation.
Genesis 1:27-31 ”27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
29 Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food. And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.”
The doctrine of man’s nature is especially important for us to understand. Errors concerning the nature of man undergird our modern politics, modernism in the churches, as well as escapism in the churches. It is very important therefore that we have a clear cut understanding of the nature of man. The central error of humanism and modernism of course, is the belief in the natural goodness of man as he is today. These philosophies and religion take no account of the fall, as a result because they accept man as he is to be naturally good, they are unable to deal with the problem of sin. Their failure to deal with this problem as to man’s predicament. Evil is prescribed to the environment, not to the heart of man.
There can be no knowledge of man’s psychology with this belief. It leads to every kind of errors. This morning I was reading the statement of a psychologist who regarded it as the ultimate of evil that teachers actually corrected their children and told them “no you are wrong” and telling them to follow an established mode, because this psychologist believed in the natural goodness of man, the essence of education and creativity was to do nothing to frustrate the child or to make the child feel that there was a standard our here to which he had to conform! The standard was entirely within and therefore the child should be encouraged in self expression, so that even in a problem of arithmetic to correct the child he felt was an evil. And he concluded by saying, “no one could imagine what a wonderful world it would be if we once allowed children to be themselves.”
Of course this concept leads only to anarchy, and yet this concept is basic to much not only in modern education but in modern law, in modern politics, and of course to the thinking of our former attorney general of the United States- Ramsey Clark. There was an interesting commentary on the implications of Ramsey Clark’s thinking if he were to gain full power in the United States an outcast column this morning... the consequence again would be anarchy.
We cannot therefore subscribe to the humanistic belief and the natural goodness of man without disaster. On the other hand, we must avoid the other extreme: some who call themselves Christians and evangelicals have assumed the natural depravity of man. Now depravity and in fact, total depravity is a real and an ugly fact. The evil in the heart of man cannot be underrated. Genesis 6:5 gives us a vivid picture of how totally depraved man is. Moreover the penalty for man’s sin, his depravity, is death according to Genesis 3:3. Man is dead in the sight of God judicially, man is also dead psychologically in the sight of God. Man cannot of himself receive God’s life salvation. In other words he is incapable of self salvation. We are dead in trespasses and sin, Saint Paul says in Ephesians 2:1.
In Colossians 2:13 he says “And you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh have eaten you quicken together with him having forgiven you all trespasses. In other words”, saint Paul says “we are judicially dead and psychologically dead so that we cannot respond to the Son any more than a rose bush that is dead can respond to the sun and the rain and give buds and blossoms. Unless God himself quicken us, that is make us alive by His grace, we are dead to the Son of his countenance, his Grace.
Calvin says concerning Colossians 2:13 and I quote “However they may seem to themselves being in high degree lively and flourishing are never the less spiritually dead. Unquote. Only God’s regenerating grace can save the fallen man, only God can restore him to that relationship to himself which is life. But, having said these things which need to be understood emphatically in this day and age, we still cannot say that sin is the natural state of man. Our text says “and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good.” Man’s natural state as God created him is wholly and entirely good. Sin is not man’s natural condition. It is as we pointed out in passing last week, a deformation, a cancer, a sickness unto death.. The basic nature of man is good because God made it. We are made in the image of God. Man is therefore naturally good in origin and presently fallen and sinful and totally depraved. But that sin, that total depravity is a cancer, a sickness unto death.
When we look at a man in the hospital we cannot say again that his cancer, or his heart condition, represents his natural, normal condition! No more can we say that sin, even though it be the present condition of man is his normal, natural condition. Man was created entirely good by man. And this is why history is in a perpetual crisis, because man as a sinner has a sickness unto death.
Therefore, every order he creates: social order, institutional, personal... is doomed! It cannot stand because he has this sickness unto death. Precisely because sin is unnatural and alien, because it is destruction unto man. It constitutes therefore a deforming hardship unto man. Now health is easier to live with than a fatal sickness. No one would in his right mind choose sickness in preference to health. Similarly, a covenantal faith and obedience is easier and a happier way of life then sin. Sin and grief is no fun! And those who think it is are out of their minds. Sin is an oppressive, chilling fact. It is a serious mistake to think of sin as something that is appealing. It is not sin, particular sins that are enticing, it is the principal of sin. To be as God.
And this is what lures man. TO BE AS GOD, knowing good and evil. Determining good and evil for themselves. Sins, articular sins, are outward expressions of an inward condition. They are ways in which man tries to assert this principal. By this principle he hopes to find life, even though it is killing him. Because he wants life apart from God. Man will more readily forsake particular sins than the principal of sin. Man will recognize that particular sins -gambling, drunkenness, adultery- any of these and others, lead to problems. They will more readily abandon particular sins, than the principal of sin. To be as God.
What Adam and Eve principally desired when they took of the tree was not the fruit of the tree, but autonomy from God. Yeah, has God said, is it necessary to obey God? Is God the principle of life or is it not true that God by barring you from that tree is saying, you have to be subordinate when you have the right to be your own God. I do not believe that Eve was so hungry she had to have that fruit or die. When they submitted to that temptation is was because they were already ascertaining principle of independence from God in their minds. A feeling that they had a right to be their own God. The particular sin was therefore an expression of the inner sin. The desire for independence from God. Recently a book was written about adultery. The author was all for it, he was a champion of the new morality. And yet there was one act about adultery that he mentioned several times in passing and then promptly dropped it.
It was a curious fact that so often in adultery the man or the woman will seek a partner who is inferior in every respect to their husband or wife! Neither as attractive, nor as sexually pleasing, nor as pleasant a personality, so that they are markedly inferior. What they are choosing therefore is not a better partner but sin. The idea of being able to do as they please. Of defying God, and of defying their partner. And buying for themselves a great deal of trouble. This too is brought out in this book. The fact that adultery was so much more difficult than chastity. The author was witnessing against himself and his own beliefs so that in the process of demanding freedom he was saying that freedom was what he called freedom, adultery, was a very difficult thing, a very painful thing, a very commonly stepped downward. And so the conclusion of the book went contrary to it’s facts. Because what the author refused to admit was that he was asserting in his new morality a principle of autonomy from God. And he was ready to pay a price of considerable unhappiness and grief, or considerable expense and displeasure for that gain. For that gain. To be able to say I am my own God. Thus it is what scripture declares in Psalm 104:16 and many other places “the trees of the Lord are full of fat.” What does that mean? The trees of the Lord, God’s people who are obedient to him and who are rooted by the rivers of water in God’s life giving stream, it is they who are fat, they who are alive and vital, they who prosper.
Man being created good can never depart from that goodness, that righteousness God requires of him without the penalty of death, without the penalty of suffering. Then we must state moreover in terms of God’s word that man was created very good. That those who see sin as a perpetually powerful and inescapable factor in redeemed men are guilty of misunderstanding scripture. From time to time I hear some radio preacher as he deals with Romans 7 declaring that this condition of tension, between the natural man and the redeemed man perpetual conflict and one went on to say that on your dying day you’re going to have this tremendous force of the fallen man in you, fighting you, so it’s a tremendous battle with a tremendous and powerful enemy. Now this is nonsense. And it does a serious injustice to scripture. Why?
Well first of all, the fallen man in me is no match for the new man who is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the strong man in us. And second, very clearly, as we grow in grace as we grow in our sanctification and our obedience to the Law of God, we mortify the old man that is in us! The fallen man. So that he progressively becomes weaker. It is radically fallen, to portray the redeemed man who is growing in grace and growing in obedience to the Lord as one who is always fighting with himself to keep from murdering and committing adultery and stealing and bearing false witness and coveting. On the contrary he is continually growing in his desire to obey God, to further life and to respect his neighbors right to life, home, property, and resuscitation in word thought and deed.
And he is troubled progressively by failures rather than by his loss. All this is what it is to be a Christian, you’re growing continually in obedience. Just as a restoration to health means a decline of sickness or infection within us, so man’s regeneration and sanctification in Jesus Christ means the progressive decline of sin in his heart. Our sanctification is not complete in this life but it is progressive. The condition of man as we have seen was original righteousness.
Sin is a deformation and a destruction, a death. Man has been created by God for his sovereign purpose and is only truly alive and free when he is obedient to God. When he is separated from God he is dead in his trespasses and sin. Very briefly life is righteousness and sin is death. Because it is righteousness that is basic to man’s nature. And when man departs from righteousness he is an unnatural condition, in a dying condition.
Thus there is no understanding of man’s psychology apart from the fact that man was created to serve and magnify God by means of knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. It is basic to man, therefore to exercise knowledge, righteousness, dominion. This is why in a Christian school there is better learning than in a non-Christian, because in the Christian school there is some respect for the nature of the child. He was created in God’s image to know and therefore the eagerness to learn is progressively restored as the child is subjected in home church and school to a Christian order! The eagerness to learn is furthered.
We all know the eagerness with which a child goes to kindergarten. Expectant and desirous of learning! We know the delight a child feels in being praised for being helpful and Godly. We know the delight a child feels in being able to master something, to exercise dominion in a particular area. The child, to use this expression, flowered under these things. It grows! Because although man is fallen and totally depraved, man’s nature as God created it was wholly good and was in the image of God in terms of knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion.
Inescapably, therefore, when these things are denied in man he withers. When they are encouraged he flourished. And only in Christ can these things be truly encouraged and flourish. For only in Christ is man restored into the image of God which is knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. Therefore, whenever man forsakes God and his calling under God he forsakes also life itself. He denies every fiber of his being and every talent of his nature. For as our Lord declared speaking as wisdom, “He that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All those that hate me love death. Sin, therefore, inescapably leads to death because it is a violation of man’s nature which however much fallen, however truly and totally depraved he is created wholly good and cannot live when the cancer of sin is upon him”.
God said that in the day ye eat thereof, dying ye shall die... The hebrew expression there means the principal dead begins to work. You’ve incurred a sickness unto death from which there is no escape except through Christ. And so all around us, men having a sickness unto death, are without hope. And no belief in their natural goodness in terms of humanism and remedy their situation. But neither can there be any real hope for us if we assume that depravity, total depravity, is more than a historical fact. The reality of man God’s creation in his image wholly good, is that reality which in Christ is to be restored. Let us pray.
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou who hast made us good hast restored us that image in Jesus Christ. And day by day rooting out the principal of sin the cancer in our being, we thank Thee for the health which is ours in our Lord. And we thank Thee that in terms of this health we grow in righteousness holiness and dominion. Cause us ever to flourish in our Lord that we might bring all things into subjection to Him. Life subdued, principalities and powers. The things of this world under his dominion and rejoice in the liberty that is ours as Thy Son’s. Bless us under liberty which is ours as thyselves. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, Amen.
Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson.
[pause]
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes, right. And as a result the redeemed man no longer has anomia in him, he cannot sin, but he can sin. This distinction is very important. We can commit particular sins, but the principal of lawlessness, being anti-God is crucified in Christ.
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Right, regeneration is a creative act. Just as God’s creation in the beginning was an act “And God said and it was done” so regeneration is an act. Sanctification is a process. In sanctification we deal with sin. In regeneration, in our conversion, God deals with sin which is crucified.
[pause]
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes, very good question. To be a humanist is to assert the principle of sin that if man is his own God and that is far worse than a particular sin. But there are many humanist who can say “well, I never killed or stole or committed adultery or robbed...” But they have committed the basic of sin, the principal of sin. They have declared “I am my own God.”
[pause]
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Very interesting title, “Is it Right Always to be Right?”. Most revealing because that really sums up the essence of the modern move. Yes, that is the perfect expression of the modern mentality.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes, humanism leads to total relativism and then it leads to a problem as I’ve mentioned before with _____, of any kind of relationship between people. “If every man is his own God”, ___ said “then my neighbor is but a devil for me because there can’t be two Gods.
This is why the same psychologist that I quoted earlier with regard to the sin of correcting a child, bemoans the fact that there is no such thing as any authentic experience of another person in our world. Well of course not! How can you have any authentic experience of another person in our world if you’re God and you cannot recognize that he is one because that’s a threat to you! And so communication ends and his whole point is, we cannot talk to each other anymore. We are all strangers moving in the night. He gets quite worked up over that.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Predestination is by God and it is asserted very firmly in scripture. Now, if we see predestination as something that is against or a force exerted over us, we are setting ourselves up you see as primary cause, as Gods also. And we are not a primary cause we are a secondary cause. Now a primary cause and a secondary cause are not incompatible. In fact, they are compatible. The incompatibility comes if they both say we are primary causes. In other words, in humanism there is no reconciliation of the freedom of man and God’s predestination because both are primary causes. But in scripture man is a secondary cause. I am what God has made me. And I am free to be myself, I am responsible... but I am still a creature totally responsible to God. And I am free to be what I am under God so my freedom is a secondary freedom just as my causality is a secondary causality.
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes, Adam’s fall was predestined, all things are predestined. This is primary. Our freedom is secondary, we are free to be ourselves, but we are not coerced when we are saved. We are not coerced when we come here, we are not coerced when we come here, we are doing this of our free will. But, that free will is a part of God’s sovereign predestination it is God who leads us to believe in Him, it is God who leads us to desire to hear His word and so on. So there is no force exerted on us and yet we are precisely what we are because God so decreed it.
It’s a difficult concept, but you see we have become so conditioned to thinking of ourselves in terms of an absolute freedom, an absolute determination of ourselves that we can no longer think of ourselves as secondary causes.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Well, epistemological self consciousness means realizing more and more clearly what it is that you believe and the ground on which you stand. For the Christian it is to realize that he is totally God’s creature, that God totally governs and protects him and that he can commit his ways unto the Lord and move in terms of God’s word and the certainty of God’s government. And it is to realize totally, fully, himself as God’s creature. Just as epistemologically self consciousness to the unbeliever is to assert totally I am my own God and refuse to recognize not only God, but another person. It ultimately is insanity.
The fullness of insanity.
Now in history of course what you have is the progressive development of the cherished and the weak. Of the self consciousness on both sides. But there is also because we are sinners, hope, the believers is the saved sinner and the unregenerate is a lost sinner, we fight against that self consciousness. Because if we as christians were to accept fully the implications of that we would have to say “I am so sinful in refusing to trust entirely in God in refusing to walk wholly in terms of his government.” And the sinner would have to say, “look, I cannot affirm anything. My positions requires ultimately to say suicide, death is the only way out for me because even by life I affirm God.” In other words, self consciousness is the destiny of all of us, in heaven or in hell.
That in the process we don’t like to face up to the radical implications of epistemological self consciousness, so there’s a fighting {?} on both sides, but our broken sanctification leads us progressively to that. So we fight {?} less than the unbeliever.
[pauses]
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Right. It was all Saint Paul’s doing, whatever he did it was his responsibility, and yet obviously it was God’s predestination that he did so.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]|
Devils[?] predestination means that God predestined both to salvation and to reprobation. Our time is just about up, but I’d like to call your attention to something that ties into what we’ve been saying. Of course the humanist will not willingly say “I am a sinner” because he is in his own eyes God.. therefore the environment is the problem.
Now in terms of this it’s not surprising that in dealing with the problem of marriage in this country and divorce, some people come up with the idea that the problem is not that men are sinners, but in the marriage terms. And so two Maryland state legislatures have introduced a law which under which proposal marriage will simply be a three year contract with renewal dependant upon the consent of both parties. In other words, every three years the marriage contract would expire, and you would either be free to re-marry someone else, or you’d go down and pay another three dollars or five dollars and renew the contract.
This they felt would solve all the problems. You see, it’s not that men are sinners (or women), it’s just that somehow we’ve worked out the wrong arrangement with marriage contracts. Now this is the kind of legislation that we’re getting more and more of. This is the kind of bill that’s being {?} in one area or another in almost every state legislation. Manipulate the environment and man will be happy. NOT change man.
And at this point we have to say that here some of the student revolutionists are right. They are very wicked in many ways, but, their protest is against the technological answer. You remember in 1962 John F. Kennedy the President at the Yale commencement exercises. And this was the speech for which all the liberals praised him. One man, Daniel Fell, wrote a book entitled “The End of Ideology” and what he said there was that our problem is no longer conflicting ideas of faith, religion, and principles, our problem is the application of technology. We now have the scientific and the political technology which, if we apply, will solve all the problems in the world. It’s just a problem of application!
And Mac Nemaro wrote a book just two or three years ago in which he developed this idea. Well it’s an interesting thing that the student revolutionists have made Kennedy’s speech and Mac Nemaro book they’re pet hatreds! And when they began by saying “Do not hold, spindle, or mutilate” it was a focus against the idea that technology is the answer. This is why there were {?} the beards and all the funny garbs they’re playing at being prophets! They’re childish, they’re ridiculous, they’re wicked. But they’re playing at being prophets, modern prophets. They want a new religion. And at the {?} in France during the revolution there, the two leaders issued a proclamation that has since been put out in book form, and they said “it is not enough to have a political revolution, what is needed is a change in man.” Now they’re asking for the change through Zen Buddhism, through Hinduism, through narcotics, through everything except Christ. But at least they are recognizing that it is not technology it’s not a manipulation of the environment.
So they’re very wrong, but rest at least on a religious premise that it’s no longer a technology environment. It has to be a change in man’s nature. They are clearly wicked as I’ve said in seeking the wrong answer and pretending to be prophets of some new religion the name of which they don’t even know yet... this is why they are roaring the long hair, because they’re imitating sunday school pictures which are wrong and they’re portrayal of Christ and the prophets. They are the prophets of the new era, they are right in saying that the old answer is wrong and this is why the people fail to recognize this Kennedy, is becoming John F Kennedy something of a villain to the University radicals together with man America.
Our time is up, I’d like to call your attention to one announcement, a rather good one. On April the 8’th, Thursday, at 9:30 in the morning Doctor Truman Davis of Arizona will be speaking at the Pacific Christian college in Long beach on the crucifiction of Christ from a medical perspective. It is a very very interesting and revealing talk, and it is given from a standpoint of an Orthodox Christian, so if you can make it I think you’ll find it very much worth while.
Then on May 7-8 we will have our Chalcedon Guild School seminare with Reverend Robert L. Sovereign, and those of you who are interested let me know and I’ll send you a {?}, there will be some information in the mail for some of you very soon. And there will be a notice of it in the next Chalcedon report. Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.
Now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.
[end of lecture]