Human Nature In Its Second Estate

The Satanic Image of Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 1-11

Genre: Speech

Track: 10

Dictation Name: RR131E10

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is Genesis 3:1-6. The satanic image of man. We shall be studying this particular text this week and next as we analyze the meaning of the Fall. With respect to the biblical doctrine of man.

Genesis 3:1-6. The satanic image of man. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

In the beginning when God made the heaven and the earth, on the sixth day He made man. And He made man in His own image. In knowledge, righteousness and holiness with dominion. Every revolt against God is a revolt against Him as our Creator and against ourselves because we are in the image of God. The argument of Satan in the Garden was, Yea hath God said? Are you foolish enough, he said, to believe God’s word that He made all things? Are you that unthinking to take His word for it that He made heaven and earth and then created you? Ye shall not surely die if you disobey God.

Instead ye shall be as gods yourself, knowing good and evil. Men, said Satan, is not a creature of God but of being in process of becoming god. And God is jealously seeking to prevent man from realizing himself. And I am here as your deliverer, to free you from God. To enable you to issue a declaration of independence from God and to realize yourself. This offer therefore to Eve and to Adam was an opportunity for mankind to recreate itself in a new image divorced from God, based on mans creative will. And we say that we’re talking about modern philosophy, about existentialism, about what is being taught from the universities on down. John Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher said that man is, he has being, but he has no essence. That is, he has not yet been made into something, he has to make himself as his own god. Long ago the theologians of the Church said of Satan that he was the ape of God. By this they meant that there is no creative power in Satan. That he only parodies, he mimics what God has done. And he seeks therefore to be a new creator. Therefore to remake heaven and earth and man in his own imagined image. So that when he approached Eve he in effect said, I will remake man in my own image I will remake him. This is the heart of both temptations, in the Garden and of our Lord in the wilderness. Yea hath God said? Declare your independence from Him. Remake yourself in terms of your own creative will. Are you here Jesus to usher in the Kingdom? The true kingdom is the kingdom of man. And if you are truly a son of God, a potential god, then do as I say. And our Lord’s answer in every case, it is written, it is written, it is written. Not man’s word but God’s word. Not man’s plans but God’s plan.

The very meaning of the word Satan, of the name Satan indicates his nature. It means to obstruct, to oppose. And it is the same word as appears in Hebrew as hatred and hostility. It is hatred and hostility against God that Satan represents. A desire to eliminate God and to replace Him with the creature. A death of God school of theology is a logical outcome of this Satanic dream. It has a new name now, it is called the new theology of hope. And the hope is that now God being supposedly dead man will create his own kingdom and make himself god. Robert Strimple in talking about this new theology which is being used now to unite Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Marxists, has said, and I quote, “What is this newly emerging ecumenical theology? Its background is the secular mood of contemporary man. A mood which Harvey Cocks defines as the turning of man’s attention from other worlds and toward this one. In turning our attention to this world, we are told, we see that it is a world which has come of age. It has reached maturity. It has cut God’s apron strings and it realizes that man himself can and must accomplish anything which is to be accomplished in this world.” Unquote. As a result, this so called new theology of hope which governs virtually every church of our day, gives us a theology of revolution and the real revolution is not so much as it is against our country, it is that, or any other country, it is that, it is first of all a revolution against God.

God is so defined in this new theology that He disappears and man replaces Him. Robert Strimple continues and I quote, “Someone might object, do we not often read in the literature of this new theology of hope, this theology of revolution, that the coming Kingdom is the Kingdom of God? Yes we do. But we must understand what the word god means in the new theology. God is defined by Harvey Cocks as the not yet. He supports the Marxists Earnest Black{?} in affirming that either this full life to came may be called god, or man in achieving his potential in the future may be called god. This is the transcendence which even the Communist Roger Grody{?} can accept. There is something going beyond or transcending nature, history and individual experience. It is the future. Saying that it is the kingdom of God then is simply saying that it is the society which is still future, that it is the job of the Church to make it present. Jesus devoted His life to that task, we are told, and so must the Church. The Kingdom will be brought in as the New Testament teaches us, by fire, by the cleansing flames of revolution, not by peace but by the sword. Thus the churches role in the new theology is to be the vanguard of the revolution and its ministers the revolutionary leaders or elite. Johannes Metz Austrian Roman Catholic theologian calls his a political theology and sees as its task to awaken in the areas of Church and theology a responsible understanding for the significance of revolutionary violence under certain historical conditions. Violence in certain respects can be a disguise, a pseudonym for Christian love. Unquote. We’ll see more a little later how killing people can be a way of showing your love in the new theology.

But what the new theology is simply saying is that God is the not yet, He’s the future. It is man when he frees himself completely from God and becomes his own god. And when he creates the world socialist state. This is the theology of virtually every church today. As a result it is a serious mistake to say of these modernists and pseudo or falsely evangelical pastors that, well, they’re weak on a certain point, or they’re doubting this or that point, that’s not the case. In very few instances is it a question of doubting this or that in Scripture. It is a question of an entirely different religion proclaimed under the façade of Christianity, using some of the biblical language to portray a revolutionary anti-God religion. To proclaim the gospel according to Satan.

And it is an attempt to remake heaven and earth, to remake man and society, in terms of the gospel according to Satan. The satanic plan is the blueprint for these churches. Now this fact has major implications for the psychology of man. It is an ambitious program for remaking all things and to destroying everything that is today. Last week we saw how these new theologians, like Dr. Smedes at Fuller Seminary, talk about authentic humanity. That Jesus Christ came to restore to man his lost humanity. And we saw how ridiculous that language is. Man didn’t lose his humanity in the fall, he became a sinner. Still man but a sinner. Before a man in paradise under grace, now a man in sin. But this language of authentic humanity is basic to the program of Satan. The British psychiatrist R.D. Lang whose writings are very influential in university circles and revolutionary circles today, sees authentic humanity, being human, as independence from God and man. It means cutting all ties, not only with God, but from other men, from the family, from the world around us, in order to remake ourselves as the new god of being. As a result, he says, schizophrenia is the way to sanity. To being a god. Because those whom the world regards as insane have really seen the truth about this world, that it is no longer a world to deal with. It’s the world of the old god, and its laws, its logic, its requirements, we must give up on. And so, he says, madness need not be our breakdown, it may also be breakthrough. And he goes on to say, {?} lead a person from, and I’m quoting, a cosmic {?}, to an existential reaper{?}. Unquote.

In other words, when man, through what others call insanity, says there’s no sense the world that God made, because for me God is dead and I am my own god and I will recognize no law, no order, no person, unless I choose to do so. And I will redefine everything, and what I say is. Then he is reborn as his own maker. One of Dr. Lang’s disciples, David Cooper, has said flatly that the insane are the only sane people, because they’ve given up on the world that we call the real world, the world that belongs to God. And he has written a book called ‘The Death of The Family’ in which he summarizes his position, his call for us all to be sane in the new sense, which is to be insane in terms of the world of God. R.J Coin{?} Junior has summarized in his review, the thesis of Cooper’s ‘The Death of The Family’ and I quote, “Society is sick and to cure it we must first destroy it. The family is the smallest social unit, the microcosm. So we shall destroy the family first. How? Well, we go live in convents, revolutionary centers of consciousness where we all become squirrelly{?}. Where we’ll be each able to masturbate in the full vision of the other. (let me add parenthetically, the purpose of this is to show utter contempt for the world of God and His law, and to say you’re free from that now, you’re on your way to being your own god) Conversion, this is a religious faith, this is why it’s in the churches, and they talk about conversion. Conversion to this, what we call insanity, will be difficult among what we call blue-collar and middle-class types, admits Cooper. That’s us, we’re going to be hard to convert, which is putting it mildly. But like human intellectuals, he has a solution. These are his exact words. This is where bombs and machine guns will have to come in with a guiding compassion. So in other words they’re going to machine gun you and bomb you, with compassion. That’s love in the new theology. The most succinct summary of this book appears at the end in a comment made to Cooper by a little girl. Heidi, age four, reports Cooper, after I had taught her the language of the trees, how to shake hands with them the right way, and then to hear their differential responses, how to hear the trees say hello, and how to overcome the silent withdrawal of certain other trees, said, I think you’re just nuts.

Precisely. The problem is, however, that Cooper takes it as a compliment. And there are a few too many Coopers among us these days.” Unquote.

That is why, because they belong to this new theology of hope, it doesn’t do any good to tell the that he’s dirty, that he stinks, that he’s crazy or anything else, you’re complimenting him. Because he is deliberately saying, everything that you and I are is insanity, and it is important for him to disassociate himself with that, to be everything that we consider insane, because that for him is sanity. And therefore God’s creation, God’s standards, God’s laws, must be denied to clear the ground for man’s new creation. This is the Satanic plan. I will remake man, in my own image I will remake him. Yea hath God said? Your true life {?} is to disobey God. To declare your independence, to be your own god, to determine good and evil for yourself.

Male and female created He them, so the Scripture declares. But this is a problem. When you’re trying to destroy God’s world, there’s a fixity about male and female. Of course they’re trying to disguise this, this is why it’s hard, when they go down the street, sometimes, for you to tell which is the boy and which is the girl. If they’re wearing shoes you look at their feet and you can tell, a girl’s shoes are usually different, but if they’re barefooted it’s a problem sometimes. They want to obliterate the difference. They said so. They talk about unisex.

They have to remake man in their own image, which means to obliterate everything that God has done. This is the reason for perversions. To get around the God ordained sexuality. St. Paul said that homosexuality in particular is a direct consequence of the denial of the truth of God, Romans 1:25. And in verses 26 and 27 he goes on to say, for this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men, working that which unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

Their whole purpose reveals their hatred of God. Therefore they really hate sex, they hate male and female, and they attempt to pervert, to abuse and to destroy what God has made. Their goal is utter chaos in order to remake heaven and earth. As a matter of fact, there’s a Japanese proverb that very well states that which is their goal. And the Japanese saying is, one must create chaos to make a world. One must create chaos to make a world. And this is exactly what they’re trying to do. To create chaos to make a world. And today they have the governments and the schools and the churches working to create that chaos so that they can remake a world in terms of God{?}, if they’re male and female, well, they will abolish it. The May Atlantic monthly, the most important single publication in this country as far as prestige and influence is concerned, perhaps, has two articles which say that child-bearing will soon be abolished, there will be test-tube babies, and that we will have {?} man. The whole thesis of these satanic ones is summed up in the title of a book written by one of their number, which is entitled ‘A Second Genesis: The Coming Control of Life’. The Second Genesis. Let us abolish the first Genesis, so that we can have the second, the satanic genesis when man is made in the image that Satan dreams of.

John Paul Sartre the existentialist philosopher has perhaps influenced more minds than anyone else in this generation, has said that man must be his own make and ultimately his own god. And therefore he must be beyond God and beyond good and evil. For Sartre, and I quote, “Evil is the refusal to choose freely and through constantly renewed choice to choose oneself as a pre-existing. Evil is then the fact that not everybody follows the example of John Genay{?}, that we are not yet immersed together in objective totality.” What he means by that, we are still law abiding and moral, and right and wrong should make no difference to us. His hero, who he calls a saint in his book, St. Genay, was a pervert, a pickpocket, a depraved criminal of the worst sort, who decided suddenly that since there was no god according to the philosophers, then he was not a criminal because there was no law to break. And therefore he was a saint, because he was breaking all the laws established by the God of the Bible, which is no longer true. So the freedom that Sartre wants for us is to beyond good and evil, beyond God, in other words, beyond responsibility.

Thomas Wellner{?} has summarized Sartre’s conclusions about morality and I quote, “There is no true morality. That is, knowledge of good and evil in man’s consciousness. Morality is the invention of those who are afraid of their amorality, their freedom. Those having reason to be afraid of freedom are the possessing classes whose economic interests favor the status-quo. Therefore they invent and impose a set of gimmicks by which not only injustices are committed, but a false consciousness is perpetrated.” Unquote. And this is the new theology of hope. But it‘s a theology of death.

The death of man and the death of society. It offers nothing. As our Savior said, speaking His wisdom centuries ago, he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. All they that hate me love death. And today it is this revolutionary love of death that has captured the churches and schools and civil governments.

But it is not Satan who is on the throne, it is our God, our Lord and Jesus Christ who is King of kings and Lord of lords, who rules and overrules in all things. And therefore the course that is followed by the churches in our time, however they may seem for the moment to prosper, is suicide and destruction. Satan is well named the destroyer, the obstructer. And his end is destruction for himself and those who follow him.

But they who obey the Lord and who by faith follow after Him, they are the blessed meek who shall inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, who in Thy sovereign grace has redeemed us and hast made us Thy people in Jesus Christ. Prosper us in Thy service and make the way straight before us that we may in all things triumph to Thy glory and to our joy in Thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. It is a guilt feeling, and it is hatred. They do feel guilty because they know they are responsible to God and they try to lash out against Him rather than to confess their guilt. I was interest yesterday in reading an account of student riots in a major university on the other end of the country. And the thing that interested me was, this one professor, although not a Christian, insisted, he said, these students are a guilt ridden group. And their reaction is that of hatred and of guilt. Another professor defended them. The professor who defended the students was the one who had his office bombed by the students, and left the university hurriedly. You see, their hatred is such that they lash out even against their friends. There is that savage hatred in them against not only all law and order, but even those who champion them. {?}

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Exactly. And this is the purpose. They know, when they take the drugs, their reactions are comparable to that of the insane. Freak out is the term. It indicates they know what they’re doing. They’re seeking after insanity.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, there are very definitely signs of rebuilding. And last week Saturday night a week ago yesterday, when Mr. Thoburne{?} spoke at our Chalcedon guild{?} dinner I think we had a dramatic example of it. The Christian school movement. This is the biggest single thing. It is getting more and more of the children everyday, it is reaching a point where even the ungodly are saying the public schools must go. They’re a blight on the landscape, you know that the Santa Barbara Center for Democratic studies is now saying the same thing? They’ve been the champions of the public school. So now they’re saying it’s horrible, it’s destroying our children, it’s got to go.

And they hope to mount a major movement across the country to wipe out the public schools. during this coming year they plan to sponsor such a campaign. And they’ve started issuing a letter. In other words, they’re afraid of the schools themselves. And today you are training a new elite. What is happening, for example, at Fairfax Christian school and at St. Thomas Episcopal school in Houston is that they are progressively improving the standards each year to the point where now the last two years of high school are almost on a level with the first two years of college. In a few years their high school will terminate with the tenth grade. And before long it will terminate even lower. Because they are upping the total standard so much in each grade. While we’re on that subject I’ve brought along something with me today, two reprints of primers. this is the new England Primer which began in the early colonial days and continued for almost two centuries in use. This particular one is a reprint of the edition from the days of President Washington. And when you open it, across from the title page there are some bible verses, the first one is Proverbs 22:6, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. And so on. And then when you have the alphabet. It is given in rhyme fashion which begins with a picture of a tree and Adam and Eve, in Adam’s fall we sinned all, and for B a book, my life demands this book attend. Then it goes on down to Z, Zacchaeus he that climbed the tree his Lord to see. And then you have a number of readings and prayers, things for them to memorize, good children must fear God, all they love Christ always, parents obey, in secret pray, no false thing say, mind little play, by no sin stray, make no delay in doing good. And there are good things like this, turning the pages, praying will make us leave sinning, or sinning will make us leave praying. Our {?} weakness and inabilities break not the bond of our duties. What we are afraid to speak before men we should be afraid to think before God. It has the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostle’s Creed for them to learn, this is when they first start school and the whole of the Shorter Catechism and much, much more.

Now this is what this country was brought up on for almost two centuries. Then in 1845 when state control of schools began, you had the American Pictorial Primer. And it’s a little better than Dick and Jane, but not too much better. And after you get your alphabet and your reading, your syllables and so on, the first reading for the Infant School Primer, the cow. I saw a cow. What is it red? No it was not. Our old cow is red but the new one is not. Let us go and see her. We may go. Quite a come down isn’t it from the one to the other? And then when it does have any stories that teach anything, it is humanistic moralism. Good boy. James and John Jinks were good boys. When they were but five years old they could read their books like men. (That’s because they’ve been brought up on the old Primer.) If one got fruit or anything nice, the other was sure to get a share of it. Then this one, because your abolitionists were active in education as well as your Unitarian. A kind Negro. Betsy Bond was very nice and tidy. Her skin was black but her heart was kind. She loved little boys and girls and was always good with them. When she met them in the street she would often give them fruit or cake from her basket and would tell them to be kind to each other, they would be happy. (Don’t go looking for Betsy Bond down any street.) And here’s another story with a little bit of humanistic moralism. This is the utmost this book has. The Meddlesome Girls. Ann and Jane were in the room while their father was shaving. He was called out in haste and left his razor on the table. Ann said, now Jane I will shave you. Jane laughed and said, yes, so do, but very soon she cried for Ann had cut her face sadly. Children should never meddle with anything that does not belong to them. Now, in those days you still had churches that were teaching the Gospel, so the country survived.

But now with what they have in the schools and what they have in the churches it’s no wonder we’re in the situation we are. But more and more of the children are put into Christian schools. You’re training a new elite that’s going to run this country in the years ahead. And they are in the Christian schools today. As we’re going to the universities, they’re the only students who are any good. Of the handful students that Thoburne has sent to George Mason College of the University of Virginia, which is nearby, only two B’s have been received. B+. All their other grades are A’s. Now this is the caliber of work in these students. And also the caliber of the students is so far different that there’s no comparison. We are raising a new generation. This is where the hope lies, and this is why more and more must be done to further the Christian school movement. It’s something that’s worth fighting for. A lot of people are spending time and money trying to save the public schools. They’d be better off working to save our Christian schools, where some of them have problems, to put them on their feet, because the history of tomorrow is going to be written by the Christian schools.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No, I think Bob Thoburne gave a very good answer to that, he said one little girl came up to him one day on the school grounds and said, Mr. Thoburne, why is everybody afraid of you? And he said, well I guess it’s because everybody should have someone to be afraid of. And there is a principle of authority there in the schools, so the kids are afraid of him. I don’t think from one end of the year to the other for some years now he’s had to punish any child physically, it’s because the teachers have an authority and they can use the ruler on any child but even then it’s become very rare in the school, because a principle authority has been established and maintained. It’s a healthy thing for people to be afraid. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And that fear of the Lord should be reflected in God’s given rulers, in Church, State and school. So, children should be afraid of their teacher. They should be afraid of disobeying their parents. It’s a healthy thing. Very healthy. I recall, along these lines, I went to school with someone, now dead which is not surprising, and he was a remarkable pilot. He was a stunt pilot, he was a man without fear. And he would take a plane up and perform all kinds of things that would almost cause you to drop dead of a heart attack seeing him do these things. It didn’t bother him in the least. Well, in 1941, excuse me, 1939, when the draft went into effect, before we entered World War 3, he went into the Air Force. He knew more than any of the other volunteers but they kicked him out. And I was interested, he was baffled by it, thought it was stupid. But he had wrecked two planes and walked away laughing. Didn’t phase him, wasn’t the least bit frightened. And the commanding officer said anyone who isn’t afraid doesn’t belong up in the air with one of our planes, because he’s risking his life and the life of other men and valuable government equipment. Fear in one of our pilots is a healthy thing, the officer said. And he was correct. And this why Buck is now dead.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Christian schools will always function as long as there are parents who believe in a Christian education. The public schools, which are state schools, will have more trouble in a depression. They’re already having trouble in prosperity because they waste their money and people are fed up with giving funds to them. And as far as Swiss Banks, I heard him on briefly on the radio yesterday, Harry Browns advice is sound advice if you’re a multi-millionaire. But you have is best to have where you are close to it and can control it. And you have no control over any money you put in Switzerland. And the Swiss have no place to invest that money, theirs is a small country, there’s not much industry there, so any money you deposit in a Swiss Bank is brought back to Los Angeles by the Swiss bankers and reinvested in things here. A lot of buildings are going up with Swiss money.

Why not put in the bank here? Save yourself that roundabout thing and with exchange controls {?} can be cut off at any time. It’s a sound moral principle to manage your own affairs and have what you have where you can manage it most closely.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Oswald Spengler was a German philosopher whose time was roughly the latter part of the last century to the twenties and thirties, I believe, when he passed away. He was a very brilliant man but a thorough going atheist. And his basic premise was that there is no truth but that various societies have been established and grown up in terms of a particular idea or concept, they mature and then they die and they disappear, they are like organisms. They have a life span and when they reach old age every culture dies. Now basically the document you showed me, {?} Oliver and others are using a pseudo Spengler ideas. Spengler at least was intelligent, they’re not on the level of Spengler. They are more on the level of Hitler and his ideas, so that the NYA today is really a Nazi organization, it uses Nazi material and it has a Nazi philosophy. It is definitely anything for any Christian to be associated with. {?} Oliver himself in the ‘{?} Mercury’ wrote a very vicious anti-Christian article. So that the group is anti- Christian. And a very dangerous group. It is not conservative, it is socialistic to the core.

Well our time is up, so let’s bow our heads 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, Amen.