Human Nature in it’s First Estate
Knowledge
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Psychology
Genre: Lecture
Track: 04
Dictation Name: RR131B4
Location/Venue: ________
Year: 1960’s-1970’s.
[0:00:00] (9:50am)
Knowledge, continuing our studies in the biblical doctrine of man, biblical psychology. Knowledge.
Colossians 3:5-10
“5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. 7 You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. 8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”
In this passage saint Paul cites the evil works of man’s fallen nature which have now been put away by believers, who have put on the new man which is renewed after the image of him that created him. The language here is very interesting. The phrase, “new man” can also be rendered and perhaps better be translated into modern English as “the youthful man”, in other words, when we are renewed in Jesus Christ we are a new man, we are a young man. We have a fresh capacity for growth, for absorbing new experiences and assimilating them and as a result we have a renewed vitality. The old man and his works are abolished, and the new man in Jesus Christ is constantly renewed.
There is a contrast here which at first glance is a startling one, and elsewhere he does draw the analogy. But here where he is dealing with the heart of the matter, which is one the one hand to say: ‘here are the evil works of the old man, and here are the wonderful Godly works of the new or youthful man in Jesus Christ.’ He does not contrast bad works and good works. What he does instead is to say ‘Here the old works, the evil works of the old man which we are to mortify, which we are to kill of. And having put on the new man or the youthful man we are renewed in terms of what? Good works? No, in knowledge. After the image of the Him that created him. This is a surprising usage, but knowledge of course is basic to the image of God in man. The image of God in Man is knowledge, righteousness, holiness, with dominion over the creatures. As a result, basic to the image of God in Man is knowledge. When Saint Paul however, uses the word knowledge he uses one of two Greek words which is specifically used in the scripture to apply to the kind of knowledge which the Christian is renewed. The word is epignosis. Now there is another word in Greek for knowledge, which is gnosis. From whence came gnosticism of fearful heresy which for some centuries plagued the early church in which basically is the perspective of modern man. What is the difference?
Gnosis is knowledge in the abstract. If we were interested in gnostic knowledge, in gnosis, we would say if it came to a knowledge of any person that he is male or female. Then we would analyze the significance of maleness and of femaleness, the difference of bodily structures, comparative weight comparative size, and finally say this is exactly what so and so is. Male or Female, in terms of all these classifications we have entered into. It would be purely abstract!
But epignosis is not abstract. It would say ‘yes all this is true, but, this person is also my wife or my husband with these particular characteristics, or this person is an individual whom I know and love or whom I know and dislike, because they are reprobate. In other words, epignosis not only involves knowledge but it relates knowledge to us and supremely to God, so that it is never knowledge in the abstract. Our Lord used epignosis when he said “Ye shall know the truth.” I am the Truth. Therefore to know the truth is not only to know everything about Jesus Christ in terms of scripture, it has all the fullness of gnosis in it, but also to be related to him. To say to him, Thou art my Lord and my Savior. So that epignosis involves indeed the fullness of gnosis but it is always more than that! It involves a relationship to the person. Our knowledge here of one another is epignosis. We do not look at each other abstractedly, we do not divorce one another from God or from our sense. And so as we know each other our knowledge is an intensely personal one and it is always a religious one. We seek to assess one another in terms of God’s word, in terms of scripture.
As we look back over the years we’ve come to the parting of ways with some people over their behavior that caused a parting of ways with some people, over their behavior under god. It has been epignosis which has led us to separate us from them because our knowledge at all times has been a religious one, never abstract. Abstract knowledge, gnosis, is an attempt to interpret everything, all man and all things without reference to God. But what remains of a thing when God is abstracted from it? All things were made by Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. Take God out of the world and there is no world, not because the world is a part of him, that’s false. That would be pantheism. But because the world was created by him and is sustained by him so that it would dissolve into nothingness if God were not.
Therefore, to try to know the truth about yourself or about me, about your husband or wife, apart from God- to say I’m going to have an abstract knowledge, that is a knowledge of something from which God is abstracted... is to have no knowledge at all! because in him we live and move and have our being. This is why Doctor Cornelius Van Til has made the point so powerfully that “The knowledge of anything apart from God is impossible.” The atheist is guilty of schizophrenia.
He says on the one hand there is no God so everything is chance... but if everything is chance then there is no meaning! And nothing can really exist! And no knowledge can exist. Every scientist no matter how atheistic believes in predestination, in absolute law when he works with his field. Because he says that certain things happen, certain scientific laws ensue, certain facts are predictable. All of which presumes not chance but an absolute law! A predestination council of God. But of course this is precisely what Adam and Eve sought, when the tempter came to them and said “Ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil.” he meant that they would know good and evil purely in terms of themselves, that they would be the Gods of creation, the maker of things. So that nothing would exist unless they chose to recognize it and say ‘this is the meaning thereof and this is the reality thereof’.
But that knowledge of which scripture speaks is epignosis, it is personal, it is related first of all to God and then to us in God. The knowledge which is required of man therefore is knowledge after the image of Him that created him. Whenever the Bible talks about knowledge unless it is stealing with the knowledge of the unGodly, it speaks of epignosis. And the word whether in the Hebrew or in the Greek has that same meaning. Of a knowledge which is related first of all to God and his ultimate meaning and then to us. Thus, in Genesis 4:1 we read “And Adam knew Eve his wife--” this clearly refers to the sexual relationship, but the word ‘knew’ is never used of the sexual relationship except between husband and wife. Where it is a loving relationship under God.
It has other words very blunt words, for fornication and adultery. But the marital relationship is always described as ‘and he knew her’. Why knew? because it involves a personal relationship, a knowledge, communion, under God. It is coming to know your helpmeet, our husband or wife under God and in terms of God, so that it is properly spoken of as knowledge. As knowing. It is personal, it is above all else God centered. Knowledge in every area means an understanding of God’s purpose for that area, that thing, or purpose. It is therefore, wisdom. Knowledge in the biblical sense is wisdom.
In Proverbs it is spoken of first as instruction or training of correction or reproof which is hard won by patience and with time. Second it is understanding or insight. Third it is wise dealing, good sense, practical wisdom. Fourth it is shrewdness and discretion, it is wise councils. And fifth it is knowledge or learning especially of God’s truth. Proverbs 2:6 says “For the Lord giveth wisdom out of His mouth cometh knowledge and understanding.” Thus very definitely in scripture knowledge is always under God and in terms of Him and his personal. Never abstract.
Moreover man can never escape the knowledge of God. Though I make my bed in hell behold Thou art there. There is no knowledge that is beyond God or apart from him. When Adam and Eve sought a knowledge from beyond God to escape God and find themselves, the result instead of knowledge was guilt and a flight from self knowledge. They hid themselves from God the author of all knowledge. And they hid themselves so that they might know even know themselves.
This is why opiates are such a chronic problem of the unGodly. They’re running away from self knowledge, and therefore they turn to narcotics or whiskey or liquor, as an escape from knowledge. One of the things when I first went to the Indian reservations which interesting me so very much was the comment of the Christian Indians about the alcoholics -which was most of the Indians- they recognized that it was a religious thing! They were running away from God, seeking oblivion, escape from knowledge by drunkenness from liquor.
The restoration of knowledge means that we must put on the new man after the image of him who created him. Gnosis leads to guilt, and ultimately to suicide. Godly knowledge according to Proverbs 3:18, “is a tree of Life to them that lay hold upon her”.
To Christians ‘ye have an unction from the holy one, and he know all things’. What does this mean? It does not mean gnosis! It does not mean an abstract factual knowledge of everything. No man has that, or can have that. What it does mean is epignosis. It means that until we are converted, until we become Christians and have that unction from the Holy One, we are to all practical intent blind. We have no true knowledge. We are like a person who is so nearsighted they cannot see more than the fingers before their eyes. Everything is hidden from them! They have no knowledge.
But then, having an unction from the Holy One, being remade in Jesus Christ as a youthful man a new man, they put on knowledge, they put on -as it were- glasses. And suddenly everything can be seen! Now what is around the corner I cannot see, but now having the means of seeing it I have only to go out there and I can see around that corner or around any corner because I have now eyes to see with, all things in principal are known to me, I have the ability to comprehend because I can relate them to God. I have the principle whereby all knowledge is possible. But when Adam and Eve sought to know things, to be as gods, to know things apart from GOD, they blinded themselves, and could have no true knowledge.
Thus, epignosis is the heritage of a Christian. This is why the Christian alone ultimately is the stop. This is why when learning has flourished for a time in non-Christian areas of the world it has quickly withered. In the history books you read about the so called era of enlightenment and the era of Renaissance “the great period of learning”. Some centuries ago under the Muslims, the Arabs. What they do not tell you, that what one Oscar-ed scholar in the twenties and thirties after a long after a long period of studying, about twenty to thirty years of study discovered was this: Indeed there was for a time a great deal of learning, a great deal of tremendous growth in science among the Arabs. But it withered away! Why? Because that learning came from the sons of Christian mothers who’d been captured by the Arabs. It represented a Christian background on the part of those sons, and very often a hidden type of faith!
And that kind of science flourished as long as the forces of Islam were marching and absorbing captive women. When the supply of captive women ended, their science ended. And this is why, outside of the non Christian world there has been no progress! And this is why it will recede and disappear if faith wanes. In a few generations it is gone. Because knowledge in the abstract ultimately perishes. It kills itself. And the universities today are gnostic institutions and what they are propagating is gnosticism. And their own children, the sons of the gnostic, are destroying the universities today. Doctor Nisbet[?] perhaps the most brilliant sociologist of our day at the university of California Riverside is now abandoning it to go to Arizona in another school.
As the book will come out very shortly in which he has a chapter on the decline and fall of the Universities, the last the medieval institutions. It is a medieval institution he said, because it’s presuppositions are Christian. We dealt with that some few months ago. The university presupposes one God, one universe, one law, one world under God. But the modern university considers itself not a ‘uni’verisity but a ‘multi’versity. There are any number of truths possible so there is no one God, one Universe, one Law. It’s a multiverse in a multiversity. And therefore it is falling apart and it’s days are numbered.
Nisbet is right. The last of the medieval institutions is destroying itself. And we can add, it cannot be rebuilt unless Christian faith is re-established. The gnosis that Adam and Eve sought, to know all things apart from God as themselves god, leads to death. But we have an unction from the Holy One and we know all things because we have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Such knowledge is the tree of life to them that lay hold upon her. Let us pray.
Almighty God our heavenly Father, Thou hast called us to know Thee and to know all things in Thee. Grant that we may ever grow in knowledge, and that as youthful men in Jesus Christ may flourish and abound unto thee. O Lord Thou knowest that the world around us lies in darkness, and in flight from knowledge. Enable us also Lord so to order all things for thee, that Thy knowledge may shine and thy saving grace abound unto a world that lies in darkness. 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 speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
We are to approach the sinner with the word of God. We are to draw far from them insofar as a personal relationship where we say in effect “it doesn’t matter who you are we still love you”, and make light of unbelief and sin. In other words the more we grow in faith the more we are an offence to the unGodly! Someone who is once in awhile at these meetings but lives elsewhere recently had a very ugly experience. As a very new Christian he thought he could continue his relationship with someone who was a very charming, likeable friend, and not a Christian. But he found it was impossible beyond a certain point, because intimacy is not possible with such people. If you stand in terms of your faith you’re an offense to them! Your principles, your standards, your principles, your standards in your work, your calling,... are an offense! You’re expected to bend the law morally in order to make possible in order to make room for the kind of things they believe in.
It cannot be done. But this does not mean we are to be hateful towards them. We are to try to bring them to the knowledge of Christ as Savior, to present the gospel to them. Now it’s possible for us sometimes to feel very much alienated towards members of our family because of the faith. We both love them and we also hate them at the same time. That is possible. We love them because of their closeness to us, and what we want them to be. But we burn with anger at their sin and their perversity. So we both try to reach them and we separate ourselves from them.
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
I didn’t get that...
Yes, right! There is a great deal of pretense to love today because everybody thinks love is everything, and I’ve seen cases where people talk about love when they’re practically spitting at someone with hatred. This ‘love’ bit is really amazing sometimes, in the hatred that is manifested in the name of love.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes. Epignosis means knowing all things under God, so that we recognize that God’s purpose and God’s meaning is the governing thing. Thus, to illustrate: in a Godly marriage, husband and wife know each other whether sexually or day by day in their communion in terms of epignosis under God. Their relationship is governed by God’s law. But in an adulterous relationship, it is not epignosis but gnosis; trying to use someone in the abstract.
The same way with nature. People are guilty of gnosis when they want to exploit nature for what it can do for them. But in terms of God’s creation, to be used under God in terms of his law. Similarly, in your work. As you try to know your field better, in order to be able to serve God better, to serve man better, to be a better artisan in your particular craft, and bettered able to support your household... this is epignosis, you see. It is always related to a purpose above and beyond the thing itself, and above and beyond yourself.
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Oh yes.
Right! Yes, you’re taking it in faith which means in relationship to God and then you’re seeking and searching in terms of God. That’s epignosis, but in gnosis it’s totally abstract. Totally abstract. It’s like the people I think I mentioned last week, the students I met in Indiana and elsewhere who wanted to discuss abortion without any relationship to any moral or spiritual issues. You see it was totally an abstract problem. Was it possible to have it freely and easily without any danger, so that it was a medically neat bit of surgery with no problems. For them there was no problems, if the individual wanted it they should have it. It was a scientific problem that had been solved some time ago so there was no medical problems attached to it, any danger, therefore it should be done.
Now that kind of thing is gnosis. Trying to have an knowledge and an idea about something in abstraction from god, an abstraction from moral and personal issues. Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Very good question. ‘What is the meaning of esoteric?’ Now esoteric means hidden knowledge, as opposed to exoteric which is open knowledge, public knowledge.
Esoteric does mean hidden from God and man both. It is knowledge whereby the individual as God establishes a world of meaning. Just as God says “let there be light”, so the esotericist says “let there be light” and it’s significant that so much of esoteric knowledge does use that let there be light imagery, but in esoteric terms, it’s the individual playing God. It’s very name has life it is and one of the most important esoteric routes was originally the Lucifer trust. And then it changed it to the Lucis Trust because Lucifer upset some people.
But the same idea is still there. And many of the esoteric groups call themselves ligth bearers, they play on this whole imagery. It’s a private life, they as God’s bring to a situation, they create light out of a darkness, they’re being no God out there -no meaning- they as the source of light establish life. This is why all esotericism is anti God.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes, the question is “is there a good use of esoteric?” and I have never encountered a good use of it. When our Lord says that the meaning is hidden he does not mean it is esoteric. It is hidden from unbelief. It is open to any and everyone who beliefs! So what is an openness that is only obscured by that fact that men are blind by lack of faith, and whenever you had an esoteric interpretation of the parables -and these have been made- it is by {?} who try to claim that Jesus was one of the hidden Tibetan masters who spent his hidden years in Tibet and so on, so that these {?} esoteric interpretations of scripture are very dangerous. They lead to radically anti Christian concepts.
If there are no further questions I’d like to call your attention to something that was in the paper last Monday. Washington DC, the Supreme court upheld five to four today the power of states to limit what an illegitimate child may inherit from his natural parents. Ruling split the court into two sharply divided groups, with the minority blistering the majority for supporting invidious discrimination. Justice Hugo L. Black spoke for the court in a ruling that gives all states the power to make rules to establish, protect, and strengthen family life, as well as to regulate the disposition of property. His old college in the old Liberal wing of the now dispersed Warren court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. said, in an angry descent “Today’s decision cannot even pretend to be a principled decision.” Leveling his attack obviously on Black, Brennan wrote “This is surprising from Justice’s who have heretofore so vigorously decried decision making rested upon personal predilections.” A little later it says “-the case from Louisiana, where a nine year old negro girl has been unable to share in the fifteen thousand dollar estate of her father. He acknowledged being the child’s parent but did not adopt her or name her in a will. In fact he left no will.”
Now about a year and a half ago when we dealt with the biblical laws of the family and inheritance I pointed out that this thread existed, and now there it is! The supreme court came within one vote of overthrowing the last of our Christian inheritance laws. In the pagan world, the family had no real rights before law! In Rome for example, when a man died it could be a tragedy for the family because there might be and very commonly was, illegitimate children on the side or a mistress who could be the sole heir, and the family eliminated entirely. And this kind of thing prevailed extensively. And it meant that the family was totally defenseless.
Moreover, if a widow did inherit it could mean also that almost any man who became her boyfriend could alienate everything from the heirs! The family thus in the ancient world apart from the Bible was totally helpless before the law, it had no legal standard. Now under the empress Theodora -the consort or wife of Justinian- who herself had such a tragic experience because she coming originally from a non-Christian home, her father having died, she and her sister and mother being sold into prostitution, insisted when her husband became Emperor that the law code be totally revised in terms of scripture. And the result was that inheritance was in the family. Disinheritance could be possible in terms of a prodigal or a reprobate, an unbelieving child, BUT it could not be alienated from the family. An illegitimate child had no claim, a mistress could not appear and claim anything. The inheritance was family property.
Now we are within one vote of destroying this. Moreover the state by inheritance taxes has made itself now the first heir! We have also a case of someone who is a member of this group where an inheritance is being challenged because one of the heirs, living across the country has debts and there is an attempt to attach what all the heirs are going to receive in order to claim the entire amount. In other words, the law is steadily being broken down, and this means the destruction of the family.
It will mean as it once meant in the pagan world, that anyone can present themselves and say that they have a relationship to the person who died! That they were a mistress or an illegitimate son, or a boyfriend, and claim rights to the estate. Or say that in presence of witnesses they were promised something. It means that what we are seeing today in the name of equality and equal rights for all... War. Total war is being waged against the family.
Under Biblical law which once prevailed in our country, a man’s house was his castle. The state could not enter into it to tax him, an invader after dark could be shot, at any time a trespasser was violating the law. Moreover that property not only was beyond the taxing power of the state but the right of inheritance was within the family and controlled by the family. It could not be alienated. And today that is being challenged. And this is a very serious fact because it will mean the destruction of the family.
It was a hard battle on the part of Christians to establish that family is a basic unit of society and to protect the family by law. Now those laws are being steadily destroyed. This, therefore does pose a religious crisis as well as a civil one. It is not going to be changed until there is a renewal of faith and of Christian knowledge so the people again see things in their proper perspective. Now, it may sound hard hearted for this nine year old colored girl who doesn’t get her share of the fifteen thousand, but in the long run it’s the best for her, because it means that the family is basic in terms of scripture in civil law. When she has a family she is protected and her children are protected and there is no protection under paganism. None whatsoever.
It meant in the pagan world that when a person was senile or elderly, there was a wild contest to seize their purses. To talk them into in the presence of witnesses to promise them everything, and then going to court to destroy any claim that a wife, husband, or children might have. It meant that the family was the most helpless of all units, because as a routine thing it’s rights... well, it had no rights before the law. Anyone had just as much rights. This is a very very grave legal crisis.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Because today you see you’ve had a great deal of abuse of the word family. Back in the fifties a book was published called “The Family of Man” that is, all people. So that the word family today is progressively being used to include every person, and the idea of the old blood family under God as the basic unit of society is under attack. Remember in The Messianic Character of American Education I cited James Bryant Conant[?] saying that the family was an aristocratic institution and had to go because every parent wants the best for his children and he doesn’t provide for the children in Africa, Asia, or in the slums, as he does for his children and how terrible and wicked a thing that is. And so he said, ‘between the family and democracy conflict is inescapable.”
Well it’s a sad thing when there’s warfare and one party doesn’t know they’re being warred against and it’s warfare unto death. And this is the sad fact today, that nowhere, if you go into churches or into christian schools or into women’s clubs, is anything being said about the fact that there is warfare against the family which is designed to obliterate it. To wipe it out totally!
So the Mancen[?] family was using the word in the modern sense! In a meaningless sense as far as scripture is concerned.
Yes?
[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]
Yes, in the name of human rights they are waging war on property rights, but when they are waging war on property rights, you see, here is gnosis. To extract a thing. NOw property doesn’t exist in the abstract, property is owned by people, it’s personal. So what they’re waging war against when they wage war against property rights is the family. The private familial ownership of property. Because when I own property my wife and my children have certain community rights in that property. No one else does, just they. So property is always family oriented.
The only places where it is not is where some old pagan influences still remain, Texas and Louisiana, since they have certain French and Spanish {?} which are not Christian, have some very ugly things as far as the family especially the wife and property are concerned.
If there are no further questions or comments, one reminder: this Thursday, April the 8’th, Doctor Truman Davis M.D. will speak at Pacific Christian College, 4835 Anaheim, at 9:30am, in the Crucifiction of Christ from a medical perspective.
Let’s bow our heads now for the benediction. And 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.
[Audio ends]