Human Nature In Its Second Estate

Imagination

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 3-11

Genre: Speech

Track: 12

Dictation Name: RR131F12

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our scripture is Genesis 6:5. Imagination. Genesis 6:5. We’ve been studying the second estate of man, depravity, and for a moment we’ll look ahead from the chapters dealing with the Fall to consider a central aspect of the Fall. Imagination. Genesis 6:5. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Repeatedly in Scripture we have this sentence pronounced on the imagination of the fallen man. The same statement is made in Genesis 6:5, Genesis 8:21, 11:6, Deuteronomy 29:19, 31:21, Jeremiah 23:17, and many other passages. In the Magnificat, Mary the mother of our Lord, declares that God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. St. Paul says, with respect to the reprobate, in Romans 2:21, that they became vain in their imaginations. And their foolish heart was darkened. Again in 2 Corinthians 10:5, St. Paul declares that the Christian warfare requires casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God. And bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Quite obviously the Bible has a low opinion of the imagination of fallen men. Quite different from that of so many teachers who’re continually urging their children to use their imagination. Imagination as applied to the fallen man in Scripture, has, Hebrew scholars tell us, always the sense of evil purpose and contrivance. It had reference to men’s thoughts and ideas which are in defiance of God. And which purpose and contrive to establish a order apart from God.

Genesis gives us a prime example of man’s imagination. The Tower of Babel. And we are told that there, men in the imagination of their evil hearts came together and purposed to build a one world order and a central government without God. It was their purpose to make God totally irrelevant to man, to make man and man’s government, ultimate. This we are told is the purpose of man’s imagination. Continually dreaming apart from God. Continually trying to find a way to establish himself apart from God’s law word. The Tower of Babel was singled out in Scripture as a prime example of man’s imagination. Fallen man’s imagination. In that it is totally anti-God and it is totally self-righteous. The builders of Babel, like the builders of our modern Babylon, were convinced that what they had to offer was the most noble thing imaginable. Does anyone reek more of nobility and self-righteousness then our left-wing reformers? Our left-wing educators, our left-wing clergy? They reek with a sense of their nobility. They are convinced that what they have to offer is for the salvation of the world, and our good. So, Scripture makes it clear in the example, the Tower of Babel, that these two things, this totally anti-God character and this total self-righteousness, characterizes the evil imagination of man. Which, as our Scripture says, is only evil continually.

The Wall Street Journal for March 2, 1971, had an excellent example of this. It was a long interview with Hugh Hefner, a playboy. It’s a very interesting article, because the thing that characterized Hefner from beginning to end in this interview, was his conviction of how noble a person he is. What a great thing he is doing for mankind, how much liberation he is offering.

It was a vivid and dramatic example of prime self-righteousness. The imagination of the thought of his heart was only evil continually, God declares concerning fallen man. Again, a book published two, three years ago and now a best-seller on the paperback list, by a psychiatrist, Dr. Alexander Lowen{?}, is devoted in its entirety to exalting the sexual experience, with anyone and however had, as the ultimate in experience. In fact, there is nothing that any preacher said, about salvation and about belief in God and faith in God and religious experience, that is not said by Dr. Lowen{?} with respect to sexual experience. The book, from beginning to end, very self-righteously, very nobly written, written as a pronouncement that is going to lead man to the promised land, presents sexual experience as the salvation of man. The language is religious and mystical.

This leads us to another aspect. Whenever man in his evil imagination takes any realm of life and overvalues it, trying to make it a substitute for God and for religious faith, he produces an over-evaluation and an over-expectation that leads to radical disappointment. Man is inescapably a religious creature. If he does not approach God with that religious feeling, with that religious hunger, he will approach, whether it’s politics or sex or what have you, with the same religious urge. This is what Dr. Lowen{?} and countless millions of people do with sex. And this is why there is a bitterness and a cynicism and a growing disappointment with sex in your new leftist elements.

Over-expectation leads to cynicism and despair. As well as to all kinds of perversion. The evil imagination leads to over-expectation in one realm after another. Because it denies God. And having denied God it expects the world to deliver what only God can deliver. This is true in politics. When men overvalue politics and feel that politics can save man and usher in a wonderful new order, then it is that you get dictators. And whether men approach politics with leftist presupposition or conservative presupposition, if they are unbelievers they will overvalue it and they will get is a dictator, a tyranny. In every era of history where there has been an over-expectation, an overvaluation of politics, the results have been the same. You had a Hitler or a Stalin or a Mussolini. You have had salvation wrapped up in a political program, with the end only slavery. The same is true in economics. You have some economists who feel that the free market is the answer to all man’s problems. And in terms of this, because they will see nothing else, they deny God, they deny the state, the end is anarchists and moral relativists. Similarly, you have people who, because they deny God, approach art with this same overvaluation, over-expectation. And what they demand of art, art can never deliver. And the result is the same. Their evil imaginations, dreaming of a perfect world apart from God, leads to an overvaluation of one thing after another and a consequent despair for man.

It is the duty of the Christian, St Paul declares, to cast down imaginations. Every thought, opinion or conviction, which sets itself up against the truth of God. And to bring all things into the obedience of Christ. The fallen man has a will to disobey. His entire imagination is bent to this end. This will to disobey is religiously motivated. It has a hatred of law, and freedom for the ungodly means freedom from law. The imagination therefore of the fallen man is dedicated to working and planning for a lawless, anti-God world. In which salvation is to come wrapped up in some other package.

The redeemed man’s imagination is different. It works for freedom under law and in grace. And the imagination of the redeemed man is dedicated to fulfilling his covenantal responsibilities.

One of the most interesting poets in the English language was William Blake, an 18th century poet, who was a forerunner of the death of God movement. Not surprisingly, Blake is getting quite a revival these days. In one of his writings, Blake declared, and I quote, “Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so make it so? All poets believe that it does. And in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains. But many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.” Now here is an interesting point, religiously phrased. According to Scripture, faith commits itself to God and trusts that God, in answer to prayer, can do all things, move mountains, as it were. But it not man that does it but God that does it. But reprobate man sees the power in man and in man’s faith. Faith in what? Faith in himself.

Faith in himself as the new god, determining, knowing, good and evil. And when man realizes that he is the new god, then, when he allows no doubt to enter into his imagination, and when his imagination is totally concentrated on that, he can do anything, or so Blake says. Not surprising, Blake went on then to attack God’s law. How could any god dare to have a law over the true god, man? He declared and I quote, “All nations believed the Jews code and worshipped the Jews God. And what greater subjection can be?” He also declared and this line is of course, the banner of the new left and of hippies. “Everything that lives is holy.” Since man is his own god everything that man is, is holy. If man is his own god it follows, as Blake said, “I suffer affliction because I love.” Love then is a burden. Because it binds you to someone and you suffer affliction. You should be cyclical, self sufficient. If you love no one, then as god you experience no suffering. This is very closely related to his demand for universal love, because if you love everything, you really love nothing. You have said everything is on an equality and if you love your wife and children just as much as you do, say, the people in China or in Africa, you don’t love them at all. You have no feeling for those people there, you don’t know them. So universal love is usually the same if not inescapably the same, as universal nothingness, no feeling. In the imagination of fallen man he sees himself as creator and maker of a new world. Whereas the redeem man in his imagination works to bring all things under God’s dominion. The unredeemed, because by their imagination they separate themselves from God, become irrelevant to God and ultimately in Hell, irrelevant to other men and to the universe.

To step aside from God and His sovereign purpose is to make a move into irrelevancy. Out from dominion, God’s created estate for man, into irrelevancy. This is the destiny of the apostate.

The imagination of the ungodly ultimately is the same mentality that in January at the Chalcedon dinner I described as magic and witchcraft. According to the witches handbook, the magic words of witches are these. As my will is, so mote it be. As my will is, so mote it be. More commonly encountered in the summary of it, so mote it be. Mote comes from the Anglo-Saxon and it means, in the Anglo-Saxon, obliged. Our word might comes from it. In other words, as my will is, so must it be. I being god and creator, if I decide something then it must be so. I am the maker of all things, and if I firmly decide it must be so, then it shall be.

Perhaps some of you have encountered this formula of the witches if you’ve ever attended a Masonic funeral. It is part and parcel of it. Instead of saying Amen, so be it to God, let God’s will be done, the Amen in Mason rituals is replaced with so mote it be. Its linkage with witchcraft is a very essential and a deep one. Interesting too, in the witches handbook, you can get it at your local library, it’s very much the in thing these days, there is this statement as it deals with higher supernatural powers in the witches world. And I quote, “As a witch you do not necessarily have to worship any complete and permanent hierarchy of spiritual beings if you don’t want to. These simply exist as powers to be tapped, to do good or evil, both of which are remarkably relative concepts.” Unquote.

The implications of that statement are very interesting. First of all, the individual is above all things. Independent of all things. Whatever other spiritual powers there are in the universe, they are just resources to be tapped. To be used by the man-god. And second, good and evil are relative concepts. They mean what you choose to make them mean. They mean whatever they mean only in relationship to you. Here we have the imagination of man’s heart. God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. That every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. This is God’s verdict on unredeemed man.

This is why we must recognize that every imagination of man’s heart, being pronounced by God to be only evil continually, with the implication in the Hebrew that it is a working, driving force continually imagining, purposing evil. Trying to build its towers of Babel, trying to build its one world order apart from God, trying to overthrow everything that is of God.

That we indeed have a warfare which requires of us casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. But in this warfare we have the assurance that if God be for us, who can be against us? And we are summoned to stand firmly in the grace of God through Jesus Christ. And to walk in His law word, in the confidence that He who has cast down the imagination of men age after age, will do so again.

We are summoned to be more than conquerors through Him that loves us. For this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast, through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, redeemed us from the world of evil imagination. From a world that purposes continually to strike at Thee and Thy dominion. We thank Thee our Father that Thou hast summoned us to labor in Thy vineyard, in the confidence that there is a harvest and that Thy Word shall not return unto Thee void but shall accomplish that which Thou purposed. Prosper us therefore our Father in Thy service and make us strong therein. And make us ever mindful that Thou wilt never leave nor forsake us. So that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man do unto me. Oh Lord our God, how great Thou art and we praise Thee. In Jesus name, Amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] There is a godly use of imagination in the godly man. But the basic drift and drive of the unredeemed in their imagination is anti-God. And this is what we must recognize. The imagination of the believer is going to work towards a good end. But the imagination of the ungodly is going to work to an evil end, even when he is designing something that is useful in function.

There was an interesting study awhile back on the architecture of humanism and the modern age. And it pointed out how some architects had actually tried to devise buildings that seems to float in the air. They want to conceal the fact that there is a foundation that’s rooted on the ground. Because they hate the fact that there is a limitation. And so they experiment continually, can we give an illusion of weightlessness, of floating. Now, this involves a remarkable perversity, does it not? True, in the course of it they do produce sometimes brilliant things, but they’re working against reality, rather than with reality.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. I think we can understand witchcraft in terms of the modern hippie saying, do your own thing. Now one of you gave me a very interesting paperback on witchcraft. And perhaps the most interesting feature of it that no two could agree on what witchcraft is. What one person described as the method was ridiculed by another. But they were all agreed on the fact that they were central, you see. You do your own thing. It’s your own power you develop, you become your own god, you govern reality. And this is it’s appeal. And this is why, if it hadn’t been called witchcraft, it would have been the same thing. But everything in the modern world loves this. The power of man as his own god, to control, to trifle with life. And this is what they do become, triflers. They want to trifle with life. To treat it as nothing.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The question is with regard to exorcism.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. In bygone days you had both Catholic and Protestant exorcists. In fact, one of the most prominent in Europe today is a Protestant in Germany, Curt Cook, who wrote ‘Between God and Satan’. And as an exorcist he has had a long and considerable experience. There’re very few left, perhaps we’ll have to have some more in the days ahead, because I do believe that the demonic will become more and more a reality of our world today. And demon possession. Modern man is asking for it, laying himself wide open to it. And you realize that there are experimentations with this sort of thing, even in seminaries today. You realize how far gone the situation is.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The question is, is the Church necessary to the dispensing of the Holy Spirit. And the answer is no. The promise of the Spirit is definitely given to the Church, but we have it definitely in the Old Testament indicated that it was given to a godly state as well, and to godly rulers. We are told that very definitely it was given to artists in the construction of the things for the Tabernacle. So that the Holy Spirit is not restricted to the Church, it belongs to the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God can include the state, it can include men of science, it can include just about any kind of activity.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. A very good point. The Catholic perspective was that the kingdom of God could be equated with the Church, and therefore it controlled the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost had no channel except through them. Which was really, and then supposedly, the priest controlled the Spirit. So that the Spirit could not be given except through the bishop and the priest. Which reduces it virtually to a magical concept, as though it’s there for man to control.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Papoon is very influential in the Jesus movement of today, however the Church of Christ with whom he was connected as a lay preacher, has disavowed him because he has gone overboard on the speaking in tongues and many other aspects of the Jesus movement. And his basic approach today is definitely not anything which can be called Orthodox Christian. “Let it be” is certainly not the Gospel.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] I don’t deny that that is possible, and I don’t deny that there are some young people who are becoming real Christians as a result of the Jesus movement. On the other hand, we must recognize that there are more than a few who go into it and then are totally disillusioned and you can’t get them near anyone to present the Gospel to them, because they say, I’ve tried it and there’s nothing to it. You see. So it certainly does lead some to Christ, but it also drives many away, who go into it and it’s superficial, there’s nothing to it and then they’re very cynical. They know all about it.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] It’s all about emotions, it’s antinomian, it treats God as Dad, who’s there, who has to do what you tell him, which is magic, not religion. All you have to do it to ask Dad not to send you to Vietnam and you won’t go, and not to have an accident in your car and you won’t have one. Now this is the kind of statement they have made, repeatedly. And I think that’s blasphemous.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well, I know…

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. You can say too that, with justice, that the black panthers are taking people off the drugs, they have, they’ve turned against Leary and his movement. You can say, with justice too, that the Communists are emphatic with the new leftists{?} that they take into their toll{?} and convert to Communism that they are against drugs, emphatically. So they’ve taken them off of drugs. In other words, what do we want? Is it just a moralism so that they’ve stopped using drugs? Or stop living in a commune? Or is it their salvation? This is the issue. And if that’s all they want, what they’re saying, I don’t want my child to be a problem.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. That’s very true. A very good point. Our Lord in the parable of the sower and the seed said that that which was scattered or sown on shallow ground or on stony ground came up quickly and disappeared just as quickly. And as I stated about a month ago, you could go back over some of the movements, the youth movements of the past, thirty years, and the amount of shallow growth that sprang up and disappeared was enormous.

Nothing to show for it today. But people then were saying of those movements, what they are saying about the Jesus movement today.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Plus{?} what is the difference between chastisement and judgment. Judgment refers to, in the sense that it is used in respect to God’s judgment and God’s chastisement, judgment is a sentence passed. Chastisement is a punishing, as of a son, to bring him into line. Chastisement is what we usually what we mean by discipline, but it’s a misuse of the word discipline. Discipline is to teach, to guide, and then chastise if they stray from that guiding, to bring them back into line. In other words, when you’re chastising someone, you’re keeping them on a path, from stumbling and falling. You swat them to keep them back in line on that path. In judgment, you just say, you’re off the path. Period. We’re putting you aside. Does that help?

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The best place to see the distinction between chastisement and punishment is in Hebrews 12. There in God’s own words, through St. Paul, you have it very clearly given. And he speaks of us as being chastised by the Lord because we are sons, not bastards. And then it speaks of the judgment as a consuming fire upon the ungodly.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Very true. They want to, they feel that they can improve on God’s method by compromising the Word of God, watering it down. And God is not going to honor that.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them. A church is not an institution or a building, it is a group of believers. It is the, in the true sense of the word, it is the invisible body of all believers in Jesus Christ everywhere in the world and in heaven. Now the visible church is made up of local groups who gather together in the Lord’s name. They can have a building or they may not. But the word church applied to a building is very new. In fact, the word for a church used to be Kirk house or church house, you see. Because it was not the building that was the church, the building housed the church, so it was called church house. And that is the proper usage, it’s too bad that disappeared, because it has led to a very radical misunderstanding of what the Church is.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. It is the house of the Lord. And it’s the house of His people too, who are members of Him.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Very good point. If you determine what their premise is, then you can determine whether they’re right or wrong. Now, here is one of the fundamental points that is at fault in all these movements. They assume that man does the converting, man decides. But our Lord said, ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you. Now, if it is God through His Holy Spirit that does it, then it is God’s work, we present the whole word of God and people are brought by the Holy Spirit to it. But if you begin with a humanistic presupposition and say, now, this is a human act and therefore it’s going to be a bit of salesmanship, you see. And therefore to sell them I’m going to act just as I do when I’m selling anything else and bring them in by softening the thing down so they don’t see the problems attached to it, and doing a good promoting job.

Meeting them halfway, as it were. What are you doing? You’re treating it as though it were entirely a humanistic faith. That it was something where man, by his spirit, chooses and comes. And so salesmanship is the essence of the matter. All these groups, as one campus crusade person told me, a camp crusade worker, he said, well, ours is the soft sell. Because the soft sell always works. Then you’re assuming it’s just another human product that’s going to be sold by good salesmanship. But if it’s the Holy Spirit of God that does it, then you don’t compromise with what God has to say. You declare it and it’s the Spirit of God that will bring them. Now it’s that clear. You’re either going to say it is of man, therefore we need salesmanship that will try to coax a person, or it is of God and God is going to do it, and what is required is a thorough, sound and faithful presentation of the Word of God.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] That’s blasphemy. Yes. Because…

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Well, but the ungodly are by nature anti-God, so that it’s their nature to be alien from Him. In other words, whether we accept or reject Him, it is ultimately of God’s predestination. Now we’ll be coming to this in two, three weeks, how you can reconcile that with man’s freedom. But it is reconcilable with it. It is only when you have the reality of the first cause(clause?) that you can have the reality of second causes(clauses?). I won’t go more into that because when we deal with environmentalism what Genesis tells us about that, and all of Scripture, that we’ll come to that. Why it is that because God has ordained all things that we are also capable of having freedom. So we must see in the absolute sense, it is God who says the yes and the no. In the secondary sense it is man who says the yes or no. so we must maintain the yes and no on God’s level as the ultimate, and the yes and no on man’s level as the secondary.