Human Nature in it’s First Estate

The Sexual Nature of Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Psychology

Genre: Lecture

Track: 08

Dictation Name: RR131D8

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Genesis 1:27, Ephesians 5:21-33

Genesis 1:27

“27 So God created mankind in his own image,

   in the image of God he created them;

   male and female he created them.”

Ephesians 5:21-33

“21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;

26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word,

27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church:

30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”

It would be possible to spend several hours on our text, but we are concerned just with one aspect of it. That which relates to the sexual nature of man. We have been studying the Biblical doctrine of man, or a Biblical psychology What is Man? We have been analyzing the significance of the image of God in man. Male and female he created them, we are told. But this is not an aspect of the image of God. Knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion, personality. These are aspects of the image of God in man.

But man’s sexual nature is purely and entirely a creaturely thing. Now the sexual nature of man has been both overrated and underrated. It is impossible to understand the nature and psychology of man apart from sexuality. We cannot subtract our maleness or our femaleness from us, and yet understand ourselves. It is impossible for us to think of ourselves apart from being a man or a woman. So it’s not something that we can subtract from ourselves. On the other hand, we are very definitely told by our Lord in Matthew 22:30 and other passages that in heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. That it is not a world of sexuality and therefore we cannot think in terms of the same categories there as we do here.

No more than a blind man who has been blind from birth can imagine color can we imagine that which the resurrection body, heaven, or the new creation shall be! On the other hand, we must recognize the that since it is our destiny to live in the new creation with a resurrection body and a world beyond sex, and death, and pain, and dying, men cannot be defined apart from that destiny. But man is not an angel, man lives in time. Even though his life transcends time and history.  Therefore man must be understood now in terms of his sexuality.  

When we analyze the image of God, we must recognize as Calvin long ago held, that a woman’s capacity for knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion, are no less than a man’s. Calvin rightfully so, was most emphatic on that point. The woman had as much intelligence, as much capacity for knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, as a man. But dominion is primarily the prerogative of the man.

However, after saying these things, which Calvin stated so very well, we must add that while a woman has the same capacity for knowledge, righteousness, and holiness as a man, and while these capacities are equally great they are not identical. Each are conditioned by his or her sex. My outlook is conditioned by the fact that I am a man, yours is conditioned by your particular sex. As a result, when we grow in any direction in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, we grow in terms of our particular nature, our particular sex.

To illustrate it specifically with regards to knowledge: it was a man who formulated the great thesis of the modern age, formulated several hundred years ago and it is simply this. Knowledge is Power. Now those three words are very obviously a masculine statement, man being interested power or dominion, when he thinks in the area of knowledge, he immediately wants to associate the two because his drive for power makes him want  to put the knowledge he has to use in the drive for power, in that drive for dominion. SO that, when he speaks of knowledge he says knowledge is power.

Now a woman would never make that definition. A womans definition would be knowledge is understanding, which makes more sense. But you see the differences there? Men have for a long time operated on the basis of knowledge is power, and as a result you have the kind heartless, barren, sterile knowledge that has no relationship to life but is related just to the lust for power that is characterized modern dream. An abstract contest of knowledge.

Thus, while men and women have like capacities for righteousness, holiness, and knowledge, their sexulatity conditions their approach. Now as we analyze our text a little further we have to recognize that Genesis 1:27 says emphatically that God created man is his own image, in the image of God created he him. Then it says as a separate statement “Male and female he created he them”. First, God created man in his image -this is a separate factor- and then sexuality as another factor. The priorities thus very clearly belong to the image of God.

In other words man is to be understood not in terms of his sexual instincts or drive or feeling, but in terms of the image of God. Now when we turn to Ephesians 5:21 and following we see that the relationship of Christ to his church his compared to marriage. And some churchmen through the centuries, in fact a great many Catholic churchmen, theologians during the middle ages and a great many in modern era have developed a rather erotic symbolism of the relationship of Christ and his church. And this erotic psychology has been used at great length and it’s some of it really too far out to quote.

Now there is no question that our text does say that marriage is the type of relationship with Christ and His church. But it is not because the relationship of husband and wife is sexual that the psychology refers to marriage, but because marriage reveals both unity and subjection and it is this aspect that typifies the relationship between Christ and the church. Christ is united to his church, and Christ exercises authority over his church! And it is THESE aspects of marriage that provide this psychology not the sexual aspect; when people get into the sexual aspect they get into all kinds of nonsense.

The church has had another problem. One of the things that destroyed the medieval era was pietism. It rose again in the modern era in the 18’th century. Now, piety is a good work, but pietism is something else. Pietism emphasizes religious feelings to the exclusion of religious thought. One of the familiar ways that pietists in our day express their faith is too object to a thoughtful theological position by saying, “yours is a head religion and what is needed is a heart religion”. I know over the years, more than once I have tried to argue with someone, or a minister, who was abusing scripture and didn’t know it and misinterpreting it and when I would prove it to them instead of saying, yes you’re right and I’m wrong, they’re answer always is “well, that’s a head religion, and I believe in a heart religion! It has to be in the heart.”

It has to be in the heart true enough, but it has to be in the head too. And if it isn’t in the head, watch out for what is in the heart.

Now humanism exalts man. It denies that God is the Creator, therefore it denies that man is created in the image of God. And the natural consequence of humanism and it rose with the renaissance was that it began to think in terms of evolution. Evolution is very old, it goes back to the Greeks, it was revived by the renaissance. What is the consequence of such a presupposition? It means that man then is understood not in terms of God, as man made in the image of God, but he is understood as we saw last week in terms of his evolutionary past. He’s had six million years history we are told. About six thousand of those represent recorded history, or that man has come to think and become a rational creature. Therefore, they stated, that man’s reason, man’s mind, is a late comer of the evolutionary scene.... and man is basically a bundle of drive, appetite, lust, and he is basically to be understood in terms of his emotions, his feelings, his appetite, his unconscious.

Now this has ugly repercussions. When I took the required course in psychology at the University of California, the required text was a book that had been in use for about fifteen years then and was used I think for a good fifteen years more, was a text which by design avoided the use of the word mind or reason or even consciousness. All it would talk about was drive. In another book by the same author, a Columbia professor, he stated that mind, reason, consciousness, were just epic phenomenon, just a little bubble at the surface that had no real meaning.

The drive in man which went back to his animal past, this was the reality! And hence the experiment with rats and dogs and the like. That was the way to understand man. Well this is in varying degrees the kind of psychology taught in every school for about four generations and close to that for about five generations before that! Now is it any wonder that this particular generation of youth act the way they do? They’ve been geared to see themselves as mindless creatures who are basically a bundle of lusts, appetites, and drive, which must be satisfied!

Well this type of humanistic psychology began the early eighteen hundreds to infect the church. And the Moravians were the first group to reveal this infection. Count Nicolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf who headed up the Moravians brothers, led them step by step as a very fine scholar into of the fulness of the very humanistic position! One of the first things that happened was that in their sanctuary they began to have images. And these were different from any images you would find in any Catholic church. A whole row on either side of the aisle, of headless images! To signify that theirs was a religion of the heart not of the head. And it was a headless religion.

It was a religion that emphasized feeling to the extent of reason. Now, step by step, having denied the head and having all those images on either side of the aisle to set forth this denial, they began to deny scripture more and more. They began to have the kind of things that today is called charismatic experiences, and they felt wonderful. The overflowing of the spirit in their midst was supposedly manifested day after day and they felt so good they soon concluded that they were perfect! Perfectly sanctified, there was no sin in them. Since there was no sin in them they could do anything, because they couldn’t sin! And step by step they went into free love. And not a free love in their bedrooms, but in the services! This is a hushed up aspect of church history but it’s very true and credible a good deal of it.

In fact if you had a frank account of some of the things that happen, it would rival some of your present day pornography. It was not until some of the orthodox protestant churches began to get wind of what was happening in these Moravian groups in Moravia, in England, and in the colonies -because there were some of them that had migrated over here, and began to criticize it sharply, that little by little they frightened them back their fences. To a degree.

So that what happened then does not characterize the Moravians today. However, they never did become anything but a heart religion. I have to state although, no longer given to the same immoral practices. It was at Moravian prayer meeting that Wesley was according to his statement, converted. Later on to his credit, both John and Charles Wesley, both went to the Moravians and criticized them sharply when they learned of some of the aspects. Whitfield, who never had any part in them, called Zinzendorf a thief and a rogue and with good reason.

Pietism although it has cooled back from these extents, still continues as a headless religion. It could be added that the extents have been in the church again and again ever since and many of the cults themselves have been born out of the pietistic movement. Mormonism, Pentecostalism, and holiness groups and so on. All these are options of pietists. A headless religion leads always to a headless psychology of man. Man interpreted in terms of his instincts and feelings, and a headless psychology leads to an impersonal view of man and sex.

It is no wonder today with humanism allowed outside of the church and pietism with in the church that you have mindless kind of generation you do today! It’s very hard to reason with people today because increasingly we have a mindless generation a product of a headless religion and a headless psychology! This is why the sexual or marital manuals often are worth nothing. Sometimes do more harm than good. Something psychiatrists themselves are beginning to admit although they don’t know the reason why. But the reason is that they give a headless view of sex! A headless psychology leads to the belief that to live is to experience.

But when a man according to nutritionists, eats food that is lacking in nutritional value he may be fooled and he may feel stuffed, but he is still hungry and he can be starved. So he may put on the weight, but he is nutritionally starved, and his appetite only grows and he gains more and more weight because there is nothing that really feeds him.

So it is when man tries to experience in terms of the headless psychology and this is why I found that some kids who are not yet out of their teens feel that there is nothing left for them, they’ve tried every kind of experience -sexual, narcotic, and otherwise- and they’re bored with them all. And have nothing but a lust for some new experience, they don’t know what. And this is what leads them to criminality. Something for new kicks. A headless psychology leads to crimination of man.

{?} Houston ___________?, and I was told by a physical rector that at the general convention at the Pentecostal church there, every effort was made by some of the men in the church to create a riot. And they had some of the {?} Preach characters there trying to create an incident but the police, with a great deal of care, prevented anything from happening.

This is why the current issue of Newsweek has said the savage annunciation[?] of Houston it comes from some top men. Bishops in the church. Now granted that there were several rabble rousers who were professional agitators behind this, why were so many other churchmen interested in this? Why were they ready to throw a bomb with it? Because they felt the only wave that dramatized the needs of the people was to have some kind of demonstration, some kind of incident that would give people religion!

Thus their expression, “Got Religion?” Headless religion in other words. And this is why we are going into more violent experiences all the time because when you have a headless religion that emphasizes the heart and experience it is going to go from one experience to another aggravating in each case that which went before, enhancing the the violence. But we must say that the whole man is the man that God created. A religion of the heart, fine, but a religion of the head also and the head controlling man.

Then as we saw it is the image of God that is primary in man, and man’s sexual being rather be governed by the image of God within him. Man’s sexual nature is related to his calling to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion. And his sexuality is to enable him to find personal community in marriage in terms of that calling. While sex cannot be subtracted from man in this life, yet man can never be reduced to it as headless religion and headless psychology have done.

Man in his every aspect, including his sexuality must always be defined in terms of the image of God. And it is because we have a headless psychology today, and a headless religion, that we have the uncontrolled youth, with uncontrollable desires. Because they lack the discipline of a mature faith and a mature psychology. Saint Paul when he speaks of sexuality, see’s it in terms of unity and authority under God. And he declares as he begins his great passage on the psychology of marriage and it’s relation to Christ and the church.

“Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” This is the point of the whole comment. And then he continues in the next chapter, culminating with his image of putting on the whole armour of God in verses 11 through 15, of chapter 6. “But the fulness of this submission is victory against the enemies of God and the fulfilment of the gospel of peace.”

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee for they so great salvation. We thank Thee that Thou hast made us and Thou hast given us so glorious a calling in Jesus Christ. Enable us Our Father to set forth thy truths and Thy righteousness in this generation, that men women and children might come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior and might see themselves and their nature in the light of Thy works and Thy creation. So the same nature of these can magnify Thy Holy Name and might enjoy life according to Thy purpose. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Jesus name, Amen.

Before we go on---

[audience member interrupts him] Yes?

[audience member speaking] “One thing that I’d like to say--” [recording cut out and came back in with Rushdoony speaking]

So while that is true, the element of authority cannot be eliminated. So it’s important to stress that aspect, but also to indicate that it does indicate authority.

[audience member speaking] “Speaking of the importance of the girl who’s going down to some kind of conflict that men seminar-- [recording was unintelligible] --and thirty-five hundred people showed up and they paid big dollars and went online and in it he was trying to tell us that if a man can--[recording was unintelligible].

[Rushdoony speaking]

I don’t believe that, that’s unGodly! Because the authority of a husband is at all times conditioned by and subject to the authority of God and the word of God! Just as no one can compel us under the name of Godly authority to do wrong or to believe what is wrong.

[audience member speaks] Well how about the children? Now they even went so far as to say that when a child as extends[?] to Christ and wants to go to church, if the parent is adamantly against it and requires the child to stay home or never to go to a church or have anything to do with the church, that the child-- [recording is unintelligible] and that that’s the way it had to be no matter when went on.

[Rushdoony speaks] Mhm. We can never push-- only God’s authority is absolute. That’s the best way to state it. Every other authority is conditional! And it is conditional on that which is right. Now this follows, if the church says they don’t believe the bible and passed a rule requiring you to accept that position, you’re duly bound to go along with it, then that’s ridiculous. To make any authority absolute is to deny God. Yes?

[audience member speaks] “The one connection with that, your situation of obeying under the authority of the state, where the powers has been ordained of God, that you have to obey the followers of government because they are ordained of God. But if they, well let us say, disclaim their ordination which is quite common, then a situation arises where you should as far as possible I assume go through the legal process of changing that leadership to the kind of leadership in which you would be a willing to follow a rule of law.”

[Rushdoony speaks] Right, yes. Yes?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

[Rushdoony speaks] Yes, however she is still under his authority unless he is doing evil, you see? So if he’s an unbeliever--[audience member interrupts] Yes, right, but I’m saying if it’s an unbelieving husband and he provides for her all, she is still under his authority. If it’s the congenial Godly situation even if he may not be a Christian. She may not say because he is not a Christian therefore I am not going to obey him. Yes?

[audience member speaks] “Well I wondered if a man is not standing subject to God’s law then-- [recording is unintelligible] --then it would become a family without a head,  so to speak, and therefore should the wife be subject still through and to him?”

[Rushdoony speaks] A good question. Now that question was faced by a Calvin and the ministers of Geneva a couple of cases, and we had portions of the minutes in which he they discussed that. Their conclusion was that in such a case, in effect of an alcoholic husband, there was no husband in the family and the wife was entitled to a divorce because it was a practical desertion. There was no head in the household. And he was not providing for them, he was not giving them either the care or the authority that God requires of a husband. So that he could be divorced and without a recommendation. Yes?

[audience member speaks] “We were at the case where ____? I remembered what you’d said about the woman put up with her husbands shenanigans until she reached the point where she said that he needed to straighten out or you’re going to jail. Now, what you mention about Calvin in this case there should be at the behest of the injured party in this case, a church in which they can go on which would adopt that responsibility so that it’s taken off the shoulders of the wife and that the husband should be disciplined through the church.”

[Rushdoony] Right. And that doesn’t exist today, the church is one of the worst offenders today in so many cases, as a matter of fact when I was in Houston Friday night there was a meeting at which I spoke with a catholic attorney and a {?] doctor, and a professor, on abortion. And one of the things that came out at me was rather startling, in Austin, Texas, near the University of Texas, the University help service there provides information to girls about where to go for an abortion in New York or New Mexico or in California. Provided them with all the data and contacts by telephone for every girl who came, because while they’re trying to legalize that their bill just in the {?} they don’t have it yet. However they say, and this is just the official paper that they hand out to the students, so that all the girls of campus have it, if you cannot afford to fly to new Mexico or new York or elsewhere to get a legal abortion, and should you desire an illegal abortion and they went on to name one of these ministries in the community!

And it was momentous in this case and then there were people who got up and from Boston and said well that’s not just a Methodist church and they rattled off the names of other churches! So here they’re involved in that! This is what the church has become today!

[audience member speaks] “Interesting, I notice that all these people that are for abortion are already born!” [audience laughs uproariously]

[Rushdoony speaks] [Rushdoony is unintelligible due to uproarious laughter]

[audience member speaks] [audience is unintelligible] “Now, number one, is it possible that this medical analysis could be really accurate? And in the second place, if the child was doomed in that way could there be any possibility that an abortion could be a decent thing to do, or a right thing to do?

[Rushdoony speaks] The answer to that is, first of all, it is quite possible that they can accurately determine that. Second, God’s law does not make any exceptions. Now, we in our human wisdom can see all kinds of exceptions to every law, we can see points where we’d like to commit murder.... a lot of us can. We can see well if I could bend the law there’s some people that could be dealt with! But God’s law doesn’t make those exceptions and therefore we cannot. Yes?

[audience member speaks] In the Catholic church we’re doomed to hate God’s law, as strict as they are they demand some cases you do-- [audience member is unintelligible]

[Rushdoony speaks] Yes, and I’ve never found a doctor who said those cases existed. I spoke last fall to a group of MD’s in Virginia on abortion and I asked them, some of them were Catholic doctors, “Have you ever had a case like that? Or a case where you had to decide between the mother or the childs life and so on?” and they said “Ah, we’ve heard about that all our lives, every time anybody brings up the subject those examples come up. And we’ve never encountered them, we don’t know how we would”. Yes?

[audience member speaks]

I wanted to tell you, do you know my daughter, my second daughter, married to a Catholic a priest at the church that her husband goes to and the boy was being educated there. There was this religious train there was very strict about this saying of the abortion and the {?} the whole house settle. He refused to minister to anyone there unless it was a case of life or death in the last final ride. But he would not put a foot inside that house [recording is unintelligible] for the abortions that they are.

[Rushdoony speaks] Well our time is running out, I’d like to share one little item with you because some time back we -you may have forgotten- were discussing spiritualistic phenomena. Well, I think we were discussing communication with the dead, by mediums. Well in this book I have something that I think is quite startling. It’s a picture of a medium making contact with a spirit world, and the pictures from the smallest one of down show her in progressive stages and I ever saw a case of demon possession this is it! So I’ll just show you these pictures now, or you can just pass them around... that small one at the top is when she’s just beginning, a normal looking young woman. But with each stage it becomes worse until she is demonic in appearance!

And this is why one man I was citing a book at the time who had been a medium for some years, left and became a Christian, he felt very emphatically that this represented something demonic and it was a possession when there were authentic things he said there’s lots of cross, but he said there’s more reality here than people realize and it is demonic.

[audience member speaks] “You believe meetings after they’re dead?”

[Rushdoony speaks] Yes, yes I do.

[audience member speaks] Um, have you ever seen the book on marriage that the United Presbyterian church uses as I understand it from the man called {?} church {?} I don’t know how many use it, I understand that their advice to young couples about to be married, i have been told and I don’t know cause I’ve never seen the book, but they made conversation of the minister is in the head {?} marital relations of why--how there has been a church error dead [recording is unintelligible]....

[Rushdoony speaks] Yes, because they have a headless religion, a headless psychology, in other words the fulfilment of man is to experience. And this is why in one church after another they are fighting for the right to pervert, and fighting for the right to experiment in perversion because experience is man’s hope.

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Well, it’s the integration downward into the void to use Van Til’s phrasing. In other words you have a headless man so it’s feelings that matter only and if he doesn’t experience he’s not alive.

Yes experience is in terms of material things only in terms of the body. Yes?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Well, our time is more than up, we could go all night on this subject! [audio cuts out]