Human Nature In Its Second Estate

Environmentalism

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 4-11

Genre: Speech

Track: 13

Dictation Name: RR131G13

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] From the epistle of St. James. James 4:1-8. And our subject is environmentalism. James 4:1-8.

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.

Very often familiarity makes us unaware of the importance and the impact of something in Scripture. These words of James in his epistle could not have been more alien to the world of antiquity. They were revolutionary. They overturned, overthrew, every idea that was basic to pagan thought. A central dividing line between biblical faith and paganism was and is the concept of responsibility. Paganism placed responsibility not in man, but in man’s environment, using environment in its total sense. Inclusive of the world around us, the stars, our parents and our heredity, everything in our background, in our past. The word fate comes from paganism. It was basic to the pagan outlook. The concept of luck, of chance, these are the essence of paganism.

Thus, when St. James declared, from whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members? He was saying something that went against everything that every pagan believed. It is just as radical in our day. Everything that modern education and the modern university represents militates against this statement. The idea that David expressed when he prayed to God Psalm 51:3-4, I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. This statement was an impossible thing for a pagan. When a pagan prayed, in effect he blamed God and fate for his sin. Thus a completely new view of man and of man’s responsibility, and therefore of history, was introduced by biblical faith into the world of antiquity. Charles Norris Cochrane, who was a classical scholar and not a Christian, nevertheless, in his very, very important book on Christianity and classical culture, has commented on the fact that this was something radically new. Something very alien and hostile to everything that antiquity represented. And he writes, and I quote, “Concerning this new view of history, introduced by the concept of the individual as responsible, as sinner. But if this be history, it is history in a sense wholly without parallel in secular literature. For it is neither economic nor cultural not political, local and particularistic, or general and cosmopolitan. It deals neither with problems of war and peace, nor with those of competition and cooperation. And it does not concern itself in the least with the search for causes. What it offers is an account of human freedom.

Its original loss through the first Adam and its ultimate recovery through the second Adam. Thus it presents in the form of a cosmic drama, but the drama is not promethean. It tells no story of virtue and conflict with chance or necessity. For with the disappearance from Christian thought of the classical antithesis between man and the environment, there disappears also the possibility of such a conflict. The destiny of man is indeed determined, but neither by a soulless mechanism, nor by the fiat of an arbitrary or capricious power external to himself. For the laws which govern physical life, those which govern human nature, are equally the laws of God.” Unquote. Civilization moved into a new world of thought. No longer were the ideas of man versus environment, man versus heredity, man versus fate, relevant. All of these suddenly became irrelevant, meaningless. As they should be to us. But unfortunately pagan thought persisted and re-entered the Church. It triumphed with the Renaissance and with the modern age, and is again in the saddle. With the Renaissance, environmentalism again became very powerful in men’s thinking. Shakespeare’s a good example of how the biblical began to be submerged by the humanistic thought. You see both strands in him very plainly. Romeo and Juliet, for example, is a classic of paganism. From start to finish Romeo and Juliet is pagan in spirit. Shakespeare begins in the prologue with these words. After referring to these two rival families, he says, “from forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.” Could the decks be stacked more than that? The fateful loins, heredity. It was hopeless. Everything in their heredity was against them. Star-crossed. The environment around them and in the skies above had them doomed. It was hopeless.

And the whole story of Romeo and Juliet, which is very appealing to the modern mind, is that you don’t have a chance. Whatever you do, everything is against you. And in the story of Romeo and Juliet, everything works out that way. There is a strong element of a kind of a perverse predestination in it. Because no matter what happens, something is there to frustrate everything that is done.

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, through the mouth of Cassius, gives us a modified Christian view. When Cassius declares, men, at some time, are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings. There’s still the framework of faith here. But at least in Julius Caesar, responsibility is asserted as against the stars. I think you can understand now why the Bible came into the world of paganism, as a very foreign book. A shockingly foreign book. Alien. Everything it said sounded so peculiar and strange. And yet, with all of that, a very joyful book. It was accepted by one king in Britain, precisely because in spite of the fact that it all seemed so strange, it offered hope, it offered joy. Why? James asserted something that was an indictment of every pagan belief concerning responsibility. The cause of wars and fightings among you, he said, comes not from an ultimate perversity. It doesn’t come from a fate or a universe or a heredity that has stacked the deck so life is hopeless. It comes from you.

Even of your lusts which war in your members. From the moral failure of man. Now, if the moral failure is in man, then man’s moral conduct can overcome that failure. This is good news. If I am responsible, then I can do something about it. The cards, the deck, is not stacked against me. Moreover, James shows where strength is to be found, in verses 6 and 7. But he giveth more grace, wherefore he saith God resisteth the proud but giveth grace unto the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God.

Now this was the paradox of the Gospel as it entered the Roman world. As it addressed paganism. As against fate and chance and luck, fortune. Fortune was a goddess in the pagan world. It asserted both freedom and moral responsibility and predestination. How can you reconcile these things? It told the pagan it is your fault, it’s not fate. It’s not the stars, it’s not your parents or heredity, you are responsible for what you are and for what your condition is. And you can do something about it. But at one and the same time it asserted the absolute predestination of God. How? How do you bring predestination and responsibility together? Grace and accountability? The pagan belief was in an indifferent universe. Man, if he tried to say I am a responsible creature, was saying something that was meaningless. Responsible to whom? If the world is without meaning, if it is absolutely nothing but meaninglessness and chance, how can you be responsible?

And how can you say you’re free, because what is freedom? If meaninglessness is ultimate, as it was for paganism, freedom is meaningless. Everything is meaningless. As a result, for paganism there was neither meaning nor freedom nor accountability in the universe. Purpose and reward had no place. Man’s only hope was chance or luck. This is why, wherever paganism has existed in the ancient or modern world, gambling is the grand passion of men. When I was among the American Indians, the most prominent activity on their part was gambling. When I was previously among the Chinese, gambling was like a religion to them. For them, luck was everything. Work didn’t add up to anything, the universe was perverse. If you expected to do it on work you might or you might not get somewhere. But luck, that was the thing, and so you gambled. And so it was in the ancient world. Everybody was a gambler, who was a gambler. This was their life, this was their hope. Luck was the only thing. Purpose and reward had no place in a perverse universe. Remember Romeo and Juliet, two star-crossed lovers. Everything is against the individual. Luck is your only hope in paganism. And as a result, in paganism, according to Cochran, the minds of men were dominated by a haunting fear of the unknown. Those were his words, a haunting fear of the unknown. Everything in the universe was perverse. And he goes on to say, and I quote, “In this fear we may see an explanation of many of the characteristic phenomenon of classical and post-classical times. To begin with, it serves to account for the steady and persistent growth in the belief in luck. Throughout the whole world, declares {?}, every place, at all times, fortune alone is named and invoked by the voices of all. She alone is accused and put in the dock. She is the sole object of our thoughts, our phrase and our abuse. (Here’s a pagan speaking.)

This belief, {?} another pagan, was to single out as one of the most significant aspects of contemporary vice, and he denounced it in various satires, notably ’The Fifteenth’. The evil of this superstition was of course, that it utterly denied the reality of human freedom and responsibility, reducing men to the status of mere automaton.” This is true. If chance is ultimate, then it governs on the present level. If the gods themselves, as paganism said, are governed by chance, men are also governed by chance. But if the God of Scripture governs absolutely on the ultimate level, then man on the level of time, created in the image of God, governs as a responsible person and an agent of God. What God does is an expression of His being. And what man does is an expression of his being. The self-determination of God as the first and absolute cause, means the self-determination of man as a secondary cause. Man therefore has the freedom of a secondary cause, only because God has the freedom and sovereignty of the first cause. Remember what Cochran had to say, and very true. He said, unlike paganism, Christianity did not concern itself in the least with the search for causes. It didn’t probe into environment and heredity. It looked to the man. Why? The pagan search for causes was a denial of the person and of responsibility. The individual, in paganism, as in modern thought, was reduced to a reflex action.

He was a product, the cause was located outside of man. Man was made into an effect, the environment or the heredity was the cause, and all man was, was reflex. Now this is the basis of all your Pavlovian psychology in the Soviet Union. Of all your behavioristic psychology. Of all the psychology of Thorndike, Dewey and others who have influenced modern education. The person is only a reflex. A product. But in the biblical view, God and man are causes, more than that, they are responsible, moral persons. As a result, all the talk about heredity versus environment or heredity and environment, obscures the basic issue. It deals with dangerous half truths. It ignores the basic fact that man is not a product but a producer. That man is not a reflex but a person. Surely heredity and environment have their affect on us. But that is insignificant in terms of Scripture. In terms of what we do. We are not a product, we are the producer. From whence comes wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence even of your lusts that war in your members. Don’t look for an economic cause of wars, or an economic cause for psychological problems. Or don’t look to heredity, or your parents, or the school or church to blame. Your problems come from you. The whole pagan perspective of environment and heredity depersonalize the individual. They make him passive. But Scripture declares, wars and fightings are a product of man.

Whatever the world around us may contribute to us, the root cause of problems is in man. And in this fact too rests our hope. It is not a world we must cope with, but ourselves. And God is ready, said James, to give grace to the humble. This is why the Gospel was good news. It located the problem in the individual, and it is said there was hope. He could overcome. He could become more than a conqueror through Jesus Christ. And as a result, in a dying world of paganism, it brought victory.

Today again we are in the dying world of paganism, the new paganism, humanism. All around us we see it in its death throes. There is no answer to its problem, there is no hope in the face of that world, except in the Gospel. And so it is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To declare to men that it’s not heredity nor environment, but sin in the heart of man. And that there is a Savior for sin, that God gives grace to the humble through Jesus Christ. And that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast made us in Thine image. And created us for dominion. And through Jesus Christ hast given us dominion over ourselves. And charged us with the responsibility of exercising dominion over the earth. Give us grace our Father to prosper in this calling, to summon the world out of its darkness into the light of Jesus Christ. And to challenge men in their evasion of Thy Word, by the power of Thy Word and Thy Spirit. Bless us in this calling we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, Amen.

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

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Well put. God had made known His truth to all men and witnessed in their hearts. But they had held down, suppressed the truth of God, Paul tells us, in unrighteousness. As a result, they refuse to know it and we are told that they had their conscience seared with a hot iron. Now this, that was pressed down, concealed, was brought out into the open by the Gospel. They could not evade it, they could not put it away in a closet of their mind and forget about it.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] He cannot resist the grace of God, but he does resist the truth of God.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. Grace is irresistible but the truth of God is denied and resisted.

Another question. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, it is, because what it did was to take a truth and over exploit it. In other words, the point in that book was that diet has an important effect on your health. Which is true. But to say you are what you eat is really ridiculous. Because if you take that literally, it’s so obviously ridiculous, and if you take it even symbolically, you’re carrying it to the point where it’s a joke, it cannot be taken seriously.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Very good point. In case you didn’t hear it, the concept comes from {?}, and materialism. It is a part of the modern European materialistic concept of man. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. First we have to say that God’s freedom is an absolute freedom, because He is absolute. Your freedom and mine is the freedom of a second cause. We are not capable of absolute freedom. We cannot, for example, choose the time of our birth, the type of face we will have, I like and I’ve cited before, William Blake’s sentence, oh why was I born with another face? In other words, it wasn’t the one he had imagined for himself, that he should have had. We don’t choose our family or anything. Or the time in history we’d like to be born, or the time of anything.

Now we don’t say that makes us slaves, do we? In other words, our freedom as a secondary cause is to be free to be ourselves, what God has made us. We don’t feel any coercion. But we are what God made us, and we are morally accountable and morally responsible, and because we are in the image of God, though ours is a secondary freedom and we are a secondary cause, we are, in that respect, free. But we cannot dream of having the absolute freedom of God.

[Audience] …{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, but you see, in that question what the person is saying is, that I will not consider myself free unless I am on the same level as God and can strike out at Him. That to me is freedom. You can, however, hurt yourself. You can hurt the ones whom you love around you. You can make them joyful, you can contribute to them, you can improve yourself and the world round about you. In other words, you cannot, God-ward , contribute anything or subtract anything. But on the human scene you can.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] True. True. In other words, you do not have a primary freedom or a primary causality. You have a secondary causality and a secondary freedom. But it’s still freedom. It’s freedom precisely because God is free, and we in His image share on a secondary level the same characteristics. We are not automaton. We are not merely reflex actions. If they were logical, you see, and they insist on confusing predestination with fate, with mechanism, they take a modern mechanistic view and try to confuse it with predestination. You would not even be conscious.

Because consciousness is itself a freedom. In your mind you turn these things over, or you choose to put them out of your mind. So you do have, as a creature, the kind of reflective ability that characterizes God. And on a secondary level you function with that.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Surely.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Right. Now, when we speak of the freedom of man, we have to qualify it in certain terms. Not only is it a secondary freedom, but in the state of innocence in Eden, man had the freedom to do good or evil equally. In the state of sin, the Fall, he is free to do evil. He has now a corrupted nature. In the state of grace he is free to do good, although he still can sin. In the state of glory he will be free only to do that which is righteous, because the fallen nature will totally purged from him, totally mortified. But he’s still free. A secondary freedom, it’s not an absolute freedom. In other words, we have become so accustomed, by humanism, to thinking of man as a god, that we feel if we aren’t like God in our absolute freedom, we’re not free.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. First of all, the Holy Spirit never gives us any answer contrary to His Word, the Scripture.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Alright, we have first of all the statement of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in Scripture. From beginning to end. Here He shows us the way. So that someone, first of all, who is praying for guidance to do something that is not altogether honest, he’s never going to get any guidance from the Holy Spirit telling him to do it. He’ll get some guidance from his spirit or Satan’s, to tell him to do so. So you know first of all, the Holy Spirit will never contradict the Word. Never. So at all times, God will only honor and confirm His Word. So what you do is you pray for guidance so that you might better understand His Word by His Spirit, as it applies to the problems of our day. Then, what you have to recognize is that, there’re many areas where there is no moral choice between two things, they’re both good. So that it could be one will work out better for you than the other, but there’s no way of saying that, here, Scripture tells me this is what I should do. What do you do then? Well, you pray that God will prosper you what ever you do, and you go ahead in the confidence and the certainty that Romans 8:28 is true. That all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose. Now beyond that we cannot have guidance. You see, this is an area that has led to a great many heresies. Because people want an every moment telephone path to heaven, so they won’t make mistakes. They want a guidance so that they can say look, I got a pipeline and I’m guaranteed against ever going wrong, because all I’m going to do is pray and this pipeline is going to tell me, moment by moment, this is it. That’s absurd. Nowhere does God promise us that we’re going to be kept from making fool mistakes. Everyone of us have made them.

The test of the Christian is, who is being led by the Holy Spirit, is that he does see even in these things, the hand of God and can profit by them and learn from them. And then God makes them work together for all the greater good for him. So beware of those who claim they have a pipeline so that every little thing is from God. I recall, a good many years ago, this was in the 30’s when I was a young man. And this woman was going on and on, as she often did, about how the Lord guided her in every little thing she did. So that even if she missed a street car, it was because it was an answer to prayer, she had prayed and this was the answer. So that she was very, by her own account, so very cozy with the Lord. There wasn’t the least thing she ever did that she didn’t have a definite pipeline from God. Well I thought it was thoroughly phony at the time. And as I came to know, some years later, a little more about the woman, I realized how phony the whole thing was. Not only scripturally but from her own life. Such people are claiming a kind of a higher life than other Christians, which they don’t have. And it’s a false front.

Yes.

[Audience] …{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The question is, this scientist has said we will be able to predict the weather a year ahead. Day by day. I would say it may be possible, because we live in a world of law. God has created it according to law. However, I would say it isn’t likely that it will be the kind of thing they are planning on, this overall predictions so they can tell you very clearly and pointedly that on next year April 14th, if you’re planning to have a garden party, you can count on such and such weather. Because while technically this might be possible, it is assuming that man is capable of such total knowledge that he will be able to predict that totally.

And I don’t think man is anywhere near having such total knowledge. Of any area of our world. So, while I would say technically it’s possible, practically I don’t think it’s likely. I think it involves an over ambitious concept of man’s abilities.

[Audience]…{?}….

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The more we know Scripture, the more ably we will be able to chart our course. Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light upon my way. And if you have a lamp and a light in darkness, you can find your way. So the real course is a thorough knowledge of Scripture and prayer, that we be led in our knowledge of Scripture so that we can find our way. Well this is the answer, and of course this is the great lack today. There isn’t that knowledge of Scripture, and some of these people who talk most about being guided about everything, don’t know the Bible apart from a few passages they’ve memorized.

Yes

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Right. I’m very familiar with the fact that many people who do believe in opening the Bible and putting their finger on something and feeling that this is the Lord’s leading for the day. There’s a story told about that, about the man who thought he’d try this, and he flipped the pages of the Bible and put his finger on a verse, and looked at it and it said, and Judas went out and hanged himself. So he thought that didn’t work to well, so he flipped the pages a little more and put his finger down and opened his eyes and looked, and it said, go thou and do likewise.

Well, our time is up, I’d like to make a couple announcements. First of all, the Chalcedon prayer meeting will be held at 7:30 pm Saturday evening, June the 19th, at the home of Gloria and Jack Bizaard{?}, 1339 Romulas{?} Dr. in Glendale. Let Jack and Gloria know that you are coming and they will give you directions to their home. And any prayer requests may be given to Jack and Gloria or to Dick and Sucora{?} Gutaris{?}, all of whom are here. Then second, to the women, to save Monday afternoon, June 28, for the Chalcedon Guild interpretation and installation tea. It is at 1 pm, at the Tuesday Afternoon club, 400 North Central, in Glendale. And I shall be speaking on the goals and purposes of Chalcedon. The names and addresses of guests you want to invite should be given to Gloria Bizaard{?} or to Helen Thurston, not later than next Sunday.

Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.