Human Nature in its First Estate

The Paradise Motive

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Psychology

Genre: Lecture

Track: 09

Dictation Name: RR131E9

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Revelations 21:1-7

“21 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.

2 And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

6 And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

7 He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”

The urge to paradise is to be found in every part of the world. Men dreams inescapably asleep and awake, of paradise. He recalls it as his homeland. There is not a corner of the world where there is not a legend which incorporates the story of the garden of Eden however much man has over the centuries altered and confused the story, added all kinds of legends to it, they do recall the truth of scripture. Man once lived in paradise. Man dreams of paradise. Everything in him calls out, hungers and cries out for a world of perfection. A world in which there is neither death nor dying nor sorrow nor fear. The legends of the world echo the reality that paradise once existed, and they speak with longing of mans quest for paradise.

For centuries this was a motive in much of man’s exploration. He dreamed that somewhere paradise still existed. That man had been driven out of it, that it had not somehow been destroyed by the flood, that it was still there to be found. And so, men went to the far corners of Asia, explored Africa, and dreamed when they a land that surely it was here. The dream of paradise, the urge of paradise is deeply imbedded in the heart of man. Man was created by God in his image and created to be God’s life [?], his king over creation, and set in the Garden of Eden. In other words he was hand tooled for paradise. And as a result, everything in him is geared for that world, he feels out of place apart from that paradise. It is inescapably this is basic to man’s psychology, the urge to find paradise again.

An old hymn that has been forgotten in our generation, although I believe it is still in the epistle hymnal: “O Paradise, O Paradise” It speaks of our homeland for which we yearn.

The evolutionist tries to tell us that of course all of this is not important, that man is an animal who has ascended  us out of the apes. Robert Ardrey, one of the better evolutionary writers in that he’s more interesting and readable than most, has written and I quote, “Man is a bad weather animal designed for storms and change.” Superficially there is some truth in that troubles very often do shake people out of their slothfulness and out of their indifference. If bad weather and trouble were the whole truth of the matter, then Africa, China, and India, should have the most progress and advancement of any areas of the world today. Certainly those areas have had the most troubles!

But the work of progress is not troubles but grace. And so the evolutionists do not have the answers, and they cannot account for this urge in man, this hunger and thirst for paradise. But man having been created by God for the kingdom of God, for the perfect society under God and his law was created and tooled for the Garden of Eden. The urge to Paradise remains in his nature but now that urge is governed by the reality of the fall and of sin.

Man deliberately destroys paradise, because he dreamed that he could have a better paradise by means of sin. He dreams that by declaring independence from God, by becoming his own GOd we would have a greater paradise. {?} Augustin in describing this motive traces the history of it’s perversion and his quote the City of God and describes it’s disastrous consequences. And he says because man now seeks paradise, as his own God as the maker of paradise, rather than as the citizen of it under God he lusts for sovereignty for the attributes of God. He makes this his personal goal and the goal of the  nations he creates. And the result he said, and I quote “This lust of sovereignty disturbs and consumes the human race with frightful ills.” Unquote.

Then Augustine goes on to point out that the pagan thinkers ascertain that man was a social animal, and without agreeing with their definition of man, he is ready to grasp that man lives in society. Or how could the city of God either take a beginning or be developed or attain it’s proper destiny if the lives of the saints were not a social life. But then Augustine said, this is a tragedy of man. Because of this sin he cannot live alone, it’s not his nature, and if he lives in society his sin prevents him from having true communion with his fellow man. And every attempt by man to establish paradise means that he destroys it!

But, he said, man yearns for that peace for that joy for that communion and fellowship that marriage offers. But the pagan writers instead speak of marriage as hell. and inescapably so!  They are sinners and therefore because of their sin when they come together their sin is {?}. And as a result having no peace with themselves because of sin they now no longer have peace either with themselves or in their fellowship one with another in marriage.

The urge to marry is not merely to find sexual relift otherwise men would not bother with marrying. It is an urge to establish order and community, it is an aspect of paradise. And therefore although sinful men from the beginning of time have married and found marriage to be hell of earth they continue to marry dreaming somehow that by finding the right man or the right woman that all their problems are going to be solved and they’ll have paradise. Not by changing themselves... similarly men dream of establishing true politics, paradise on earth, that their political failures from the beginning of time to the present have not ended their political hopes of paradise. The urge remains. but all these attempts invade the privacy and the sovereignty of God, and they evade the fact that it is in man this problem, not in marriage or in politics.

Politics is an area of order, not a means to order. Marriage is a means to order, similarly, not a means to order and peace. The man lacks peace, his marriage will only increase the scope of his own inner unrest and disorder. And if men are sinners and have no peace within them then the political society they create will have no peace and no order and no law, because it is not in them. Man dreams then of using his own disorder as the grounds of new order. He dreams of sinning and bringing in perfection by means of his sin. And this dream becomes the pallbearer the further it is carried.

Recently I read the great old Finnish epic that goes back to the pre-Christian days of Finland, and it gives a pagan expression of this dream of paradise...  of Lemone Canine, drifting around, looking for that wonderful place, where everything is just wonderful. And in this myth he supposedly finds it. It’s a very interesting account, not a very nice one, but it does express very clearly this dream of sinful man. The kabbalah “The virgins of the island speak, the maidens of the headland ponder: We have houses to come to, spacious farmsteads to live in, to take your songs to from out of the cold, to bring your words in from outdoors. Then, as soon as Lemon Canine came into the house he sang the {?} from afar off toward his end of the long field fable, stoops full of beer, beautiful pots full of mead, dishes spilling over, bowls brimful, stoops of beer, pots of meat or beef broth, butter which would in readiness and quartz were there in readiness for Lemone to eat for the man with a far roving man to enjoy. The man with a far roving mind is very grand nor does he start to eat without a silver gilded knife, a gold sheet knife, and sang up a gold sheet knife. Then he eats his fill, drank beer to his contentment.

Then Lemone’s came and strolled about the community enjoying the virgins of the island, and the lovely bevy of those who felt surely in care. Wherever he turned his head, then his mouth was quickly kissed. Wherever he reached out his hand then he hand was gently pressed. Evening he went out for some fun in the pitch dark, there was not a community in which there were not ten farms nor was there a farm man to which there were not ten daughters. Not that daughter, not that mothers child by whose side he did not stretch down a press out the arm. He knew a thousand brides, he was with a hundred widows, there were not two in ten three in a whole hundred maids who were not passed. And so on it goes... and what the conclusion of this dream, of paradise, it only ends up in another hell. As sin always does.

And this is the way man begins as the sinner to dream of grand and lofty things, but what does the dream boil down to? Lots of beer, lots of butter, lots of foods served up with a gold sheet knife, and all kinds of women. Socrates, in Plato's Republic, begins very loftily by talking about justice. A perfect social order in which justice is perfect and so there are pages and chapters of justice on a high philosophical level about justice. To each his own. Unto each that which he needs. And so it ends up in communism! And then when they sit back and describe this all the working men, the swabs, are going to be put in barracks and given their jobs and the food they need and so on, and ah, what are we going to do? Said Socrates to Plato and his audience. Since we are the elite it would be better for children to be born of us, since you want a perfect society and we represent that perfection. True justice, everything that’s wonderful... we will have a communism of all the women, so that we might breed more in our own image.

He begins by talking about justice, but because he is the center he ends up by giving back to his sin, and EVERY dream by sinful man of paradise, of justice, give it whatever name you will, ends up the same way. Because man began by the great sin compared to which all these sins of Lemone Canine, and Socrates and Plato, are simply small facets. To say that he is God, Yea is God’s word binding? No, it is my word, my way, I will create a paradise. And the result is not a paradise but hell, not peace but conflict and war. And this lust for paradise is all the more dangerous in men who profess peace and humility in a democratic mythology.

We talked about ‘power in people’ when they really ‘power in me’. Just recently I read an article on humanism by a Polish marxist scholar, Doc. Quotargisky. He said that humanist was the socialist and a socialist humanist was the true man. And then he said, I quote, the attitude of humanism is soon by one who strives toward a given objectivity because he believes that it is for the good of the people.” Unquote. So by definition you see it is by the humanist who is a marxist and a socialist. It is the one who’s interesting in the good of the people. He’s obviously a very good man is he not? He wants the good of everybody! But how is he going to define the people? He then states and I quote, “The term for the people for the individual must be used in the universal sense if they are to characterize the attitude of humanism.” But what do we mean by the word universal extent? We mean that we are not referring to separate and distinct individuals, or to certain, specific groups of people, but to people in general and to man in general. Unquote.

They want justice. The good of the people. But when he’s talking about people and man he’s not talking about you, he’s not talking about you, he’s not talking about the blacks or the whites, or any particular group, America or India or anything else, he is talking about man in general! And what is man in general, it’s what he defines him to be, and if you don’t meet his standards of what is human you can be dispensed with! If men will not accept God as their Lord and Creator they will then play god and creator. Nobody is a man unless he says they are a man. That’s exactly what Quotargisky is talking about. So if you’re not people you’re only manure for the future. And they use that expression! You can be dispensed with, destroyed so that the ground can be cleared for the true man.

This is what our churchmen are talking about... Doctor Lewis Beiceneeze who was over here for theological seminary and is an ordained minister for the Christian Reformed church. In a recent article in the Reformed Journal in the last issue... or one of the most recent, February issue, excuse me.  “Summoned men to (and I quote) preach Christ as the reclaimer of man’s lost humanity.” Unquote.

But did Adam and Eve lose their humanity in the fall, did they cease to be human? Are the fallen men who walk the streets of our city subhuman, are they no longer men because they are sinners? He goes on to say, and I quote, The world does not need a message about a Savior who will do no more than turn us all into up-right, all-white, middle class comfortable champions of the law of order and proper religion! What the world needs is the Gospel of one who can restore men to total and authentic humanity, no more, no less, no other. Unquote.

Authentic humanity. We’re not really human in other words, now. Oh it sounds suspiciously clear when you analyze what he has to see that authentic humanity is God free humanity. It’s the kind of humanity that the tempter was talking about when he said, ”Yea, hath God said--are you gonna listen to Him and obey His law?! Do you think this is paradise? Why, it’ll be paradise when you become your own GOD. When you decide what is good and evil for yourself, then you’re authentically human, then you are your own God!”

This is what they’re talking about. They have made Christ over into a mythical being who looks suspiciously like Satan. So when he summons you to preach Christ as the reclaimer of man’s lost humanity, the Christ he is talking about is not the Jesus Christ of Scripture, it is the tempter of the Garden Of Eden. The urge to paradise thus in the sinner anti-nomian it is anti-law. Just as Adam and Eve in paradise decided that the Garden was a prison because God restricted them- his law was a bar that had to be broken, and paradise was going to begin with their autonomy, their declaration of independence from God.

So the urge to paradise is every age in the hands of sinful men will be anti God anti law, antinomian, and it will lead to hell on earth. Hell is simply the fulfillment of the urge to paradise. The urge to paradise in the Saints of God leads to the new creation, beginning now to reconstruct all things to break all things under the captivity of Jesus Christ. The messianic character of American education is precisely it’s urge to paradise, to create a paradise on earth without God.

Our Lord as he laid down this commision he who was the first fruits of the new Creation, declared “Lo I come in the body as in the book it was written of me to do Thy will O God.” He is the new Ada, expressed the principle whereby he would lead men to their Sabbath Rest, to the true Paradise of God. And Bishop Wesketch, a couple of generations ago in commenting on this passage Hebrews 10:7 declares, and I quote, the king of knowledge is the definite standard of the will of God. Before he undertakes to aim at fulfilling it the law, which foreshadowed the duties of the kings which is the rule of a king’s life. The work of restoration, of reconstruction, began with Christ’s atonement, with salvation by His sovereign grace, and the work of reconstruction is furthered by obedience to God’s law. Both the fall and the redemption are progressive.

One leads to hell as man speaks of paradise, without GOD. The other leads to the new creation where there is no death nor dying where GOD will dwell with men, and His tabernacle is with them. The tabernacle of God, his tent, that is the meaning. So it is that Hebrews and Revelations as they speak of the new creation which began with our Lord’s resurrection which is culminated when the new creation and it’s fulness is ushered in with the resurrection of the dead.

Speak not of the temple of God, but of his tabernacle, his tent. A tent is not a permanent dwelling, it’s taken down and pitched again and again as you move. And so God says not that, here am I and you come to me, but whithersoever Thou goest I will  be with you. If I make my bed in hell in the most difficult circumstances of life, behold Thou art there. If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea behold Thou art there.

And so wherever we go, wherever we are in this life God tabernacles with us. And wipes away all tears from our eyes. And he destroys the power of deaths in our lives, and the power of sin. Until finally in the new creation He tabernacles with us permanently and deafens all the crying are gone forever more. And even now in and through us, in our lives and through us in our activities, in the schools we establish, in the work we do unto God, he makes all things new, who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and End. Who gives unto us a thirst for the water of life, who makes us as we overcome in Jesus Christ inheritors of all things because he is our god and in Jesus Christ we are his sons, his people.

The urge to paradise in the unGodly leads to coercion that the slave labor canst to the whores the politicians dream of paradise, of the sinners way of salvation. But the urge to paradise in the hands of God is made a different thing, by his grace we are saved. A resurrection from the death of sin. And it is a continual rebirth as we bring all things into to captivity to him, and it culminates in the resurrection in the body and totality of the new creation, under him who was Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father who in Thy sovereign grace hast made us in a sense of the new creation, make us ever joyful in our calling that we may serve Thee ever with gladness of heart and thanksgiving, that we might ever labor to bring every thought, every labor of life, every institution every nation into captivity to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Bless and prosper us to this calling we beseech Thee 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]

Well, we accomplish it first in our homes, by making our homes an area of the new creation. We further it in our work by doing our work unto the Lord, in joy and in Thanksgiving that he has given us an aptitude whereby we can serve him. For example I think something of the joy of that new creation appears in you! You showed me some of the work you’d done once, with real pride and joy, and it was a pride and joy I shared to think that I knew someone who could do work like that. That’s unto the glory of God. We do it as we work to establish Christian schools, and to further the Christian schools that are existing.

Everything that we do in our work, and our home, in our churches, and our communities, to further the knowledge of God, the glory of God, the service of God that recreation of all things. Many people do it by finding people to pass tapes on to for example, I’ve been amazed lately at the kind of thing that’s happened. Or mailing their newsletters, in the last week the number of reactions and responses we’ve had from the reports that have been mailed out by people who receive them, in fact our school seminar several of the people who came from the greatest distance- from other states- came because somebody had passed on a report to them and they didn’t even know of our existence.

One of them not until Tuesday night of this week! So we never know how much we accomplish by little things, but everything we do when we are believers we it unto the glory of God and he makes all things work together for good for them that love Him, you are the called according to His purpose. Therefore there is nothing we do that doesn’t add up to good for us and to the Lord.

Yes, another question?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Yes, God is not a mocker. God is never a mocker. And so when he gives us these urges, we desire then which are Godly and holy urges. Then the question is, how to get there. You see? Then it’s the work, the method of getting there. We need to explore it under God and move then towards that goal. Sometimes there are a lot of detours on roads, it’s the detours that get us they’re the bumpy things. But they are necessary sometimes. Any other questions?

Yes?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Yes, sometimes our fears have too much power in our lives. we become too little mindful of the power of God and too fearful of the power of the enemy and of the problems around us. This does not mean we should be reckless or foolish! We should be prudent! This doesn’t mean we should be charging ahead without any common sense about things. But we are to proceed in the trust that God is God, but then counting the costs, analyzing things, doing things in terms of a full knowledge of all the factors involved and seeking God’s blessing to proceed in terms of service.

Our time is rather limited and there are a couple of things I’d like to share with you, one for in the April 22’nd, 1971 Valley State Sundial -Valley State college paper- some courses are listed that are being taught in their school there, and this is one good example of why the modern college and university is dying. It’s doomed.

These are the names of some of the course, the new courses. Fascinating Womanhood. Wilderness Survival (which I think is an interesting one). Lycanthropy and Vampirism (Lycanthropy is werewolf -ism. Maybe they’re going to give them instructions in how to be werewolves and vampires?! Some of them are pretty close to this already.) Organic gardening (well that’s a good subject but you can learn that yourself you don’t need to go to college for that.) Occult Sciences. The New Music(it’s bad enough to have a new music without studying about it!). Then this from the May 7, 1971, “Christianity Today” an editorial. A current Atlantic monthly has an article, two articles, one on Pests to Daisy’s, and the other of Clonal Man (laboratory created humans).

And the editorial reads, and I’m reading it in full: “Our mothers of vanishing breed. Aldu Hutzley prophesied this in brave new world, but at that time no one really believed that test tube babies were possible! Now we are in the midst of a biological revolution with experimentation and artificial insemination, embryo implants, and artificial wounds. Recently published articles and books tell of a future motherless society, experiments with sheep and artificial wounds have so far proved successful, and experimentation with human fetuses and tube like wounds continues. Some scientists are predicting the time when human reproduction will be asexual. The old negro spirituals “sometimes I feel like a motherless child” may become true physically as well as spiritually. Perhaps the child physically may have two mothers or be his mothers genetic twin! The biological revolution raises a fundamental question of the meaning of motherhood, a question that science cannot answer. Motherhood at least as we now think of it, may be on the way out!” Unquote.

In other words, a supposedly Christian magazine is actually saying that Satan is God and a Satanic concept is going to be made the world order. And they call themselves Christians?! God is sovereign, not man, nor state. And God’s plan will endure to the end of time and man neither can destroy the world nor can he alter God’s creation and make it his own creation. And to believe otherwise is to worship Satan. It is wicked. This is the magazine that presents the Billy Graham perspective, and I wonder if he’s subscribed to it! Certainly it is not an expression of Christian faith but a radical lack of it.

Yes?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Ah, the question is would I care to comment of the money crisis in Europe? What has developed in Europe is that we have been issuing too much paper money, and paper money is checkbook money, it’s a promise to pay. We have since thirty-two or thirty-three renaid that are promised to pay off our citizens in gold. And a couple of years ago we renaid on the promise to pay in silver, on the silver certificate. So now we have bad checks and by law we compel our citizens to accept them, but foreigners don’t have to them. They have to be paid off with gold. A while back, just a couple of years ago we said we would no longer pay off any foreigner but just the foreign central banks!

Now we are reneging on paying off the foreign central banks! And as a result since they couldn’t collect on their paper money and we have perhaps nineteen to twenty billion in paper money that these central banks are holding and can’t get any collection on, and we have ten billion in gold, in other words about fifty cents on the dollar’s all we can pay off and we’re not even going to pay off that!

As of Tuesday a crisis began to build and there was a run on the banks with people who were trying to get rid of paper dollars, they’re worthless. And as of Thursday morning the exchanges stopped receiving these paper dollars they said we won’t take them, and they shut down until Tuesday as far as any exchange on paper money. If we persist in this course the paper dollar will be like the Russian ruble. It’ll be good in Russia, and our dollar will be good here, but outside the borders of the country it won’t have much value. The only value it’ll have is if someone buys it to come and spend it in this country or to order goods from this country. It’ll be worthless in exchange.

Now this is what we’re headed for, I think it’ll be stalled, and we will postpone the crisis by agreeing to something, so probably tomorrow or Tuesday or Wednesday there will be an announcement of some kind of settlement. It’ll be like the paper/gold settlement was a while back, it’ll be a postponing of the crisis. But what we are doing really is to steal, the law is “Thou shalt not steal” and if you pass it a bad check you’re stealing! This is why they are upset. They’re being robbed! And they don’t like it. SO we have a crisis. Is it likely to go away?... it may postponed for a time but it’s there. As a result when American’s, on Wednesday and Thursday to offer to try to buy gold coins for example, the reaction was, and what’ll you give us for them? Paper? In other words, the paper dollar was not wanted! Why should they get rid of a gold coin for some paper dollars!

Now as I say, there may be some kind of settlement behind the scenes, a promise to pay and a start on paying... but I suspect the solution will be temporary. What they are asking is that we pay, we devalue our dollar and admits it isn’t worth as much as we claim it is. And we raise the price of gold. If not, probably what they will do is have a floating rate of exchange and say the dollar is worth whatever you wanna pay for it. So if a citizen in Germany or someone in France wants to buy some paper dollars because he’s going to order something from America he goes onto the market and pays whatever people are ready to pay for it, not what we say they have to pay for it.

And the sad part of the situation is that the papers having been talking as if it were a crisis in Europe for the European currency, and they haven’t told us that it is the sad fact that the once great American dollar today is coming perilously close to becoming like the Russian ruble. That’s a comedown for this country. The idea was once abroad in the world that the dollar, the paper dollar, was as good as gold because we always paid off on our obligations. Today, they won’t take it. Some of the people who are stuck in Europe right now, who didn’t exchange their money when they land there earlier for marcs or francs or what not, are really in trouble.

Yes?

[audience member speaks] [audience member is unintelligible]

Somewhat, they have inflation so they are headed in the same direction. But for the citizen who is knowledgeable he can still go to a bank in those countries and buy gold for his paper. So they have still some protection. Now, most of them have become socialistically minded so they aren’t doing this but there is no such possibility for us. We have get the gold only as coins for numismatic purposes, you see. So actually they do have an advantage there. The two countries in the world, although there are three really, with the severest restrictions on their citizens as far as money is concerned are the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. This is why all three of them are in trouble, serious trouble. All the others have inflationary problems but they’re not as badly off as far as their monetary policies are concerned.

[audio ends abruptly]