Human Nature In Its Second Estate

In The Image of Adam

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 9-11

Genre: Speech

Track: 18

Dictation Name: RR131K19

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is Genesis 5:3. In the image of Adam. Genesis 5:3. And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image: and called his name Seth.

With this brief statement Scripture tells us that something has happened to man’s nature. Man was created in the image of God. But instead of reproducing now the image of God, he reproduces something else. The image of Adam. Adam having tried to remake himself in terms of the Tempter’s declaration of independence, every man his own god, knowing, determining for himself what constitutes good and evil. Had in effect attempted to deny the image of God. He now passed on a tainted heredity. A tainted heredity can be psychological as well as physical. We inherit not only features but also dispositions. The taint Adam passed on to Seth and to all mankind was this disposition, this desire to be as God. Every man to determine for himself what constitutes good and evil, to be autonomous and so determine{?}. This then is now the image of man. This is man’s nature apart from Christ. But men are unwilling to admit the truth about themselves. As a result philosophy from its very inception, and here we must exempt what is strictly a Christian philosophy, and there’s not much of that. Philosophy has denied the fact of sin. And of the taint of sin in the mind of man.

As a matter of fact philosophy has characteristically ascribed to man’s reasoning powers an independence of sin. The position of the Greeks, for example, which has been transmitted through the centuries was this. The common herd of men are like cattle. They are driven by their appetites. By their feelings, by their lusts. But the philosopher is a man who is governed by reason. And reason rises above man’s sins, man’s frailties, man’s appetites and emotions. And as a result, the philosopher, as the man of reason, should be, Plato said, the king. The ruler. Unfortunately this presupposition of paganism and of Greek philosophy was passed on to the Church in scholasticism. When the scholastics, beginning with {?}, adopted Aristotle as the basic philosophy with which to try to rethink all of Christian faith, they erred and they introduced a pagan principle into the Church. Aquinas said and I quote, “The intellect is always true. We must assert that the intellectual principle which we call the human soul is incorruptible.” Unquote. Now this puts the philosopher in a very wonderful situation, does it not? Outside the school, outside of the university, you have the masses, the herd. Who, because they are governed, supposedly, by their appetites, are no better than cattle. They don’t know what’s good for them. But within the circle of the academy, the university, you have the intellectual. He thinks and therefore he has that principle which Aquinas said after Aristotle, is incorruptible. You could almost add to that infallible as well. Moreover, instead of the mind being affected by sin, Aquinas declared, again after Aristotle, that the intellect is, and I quote, “Like a tablet on which nothing is written.” Unquote.

In other words, the image of Adam which Genesis tells us was transmitted by Adam to all his posterity, did not affect the mind. Now the doctrine of total depravity means, as we saw a few weeks ago, not that man is absolutely sinful, but that his sin is total in its scope. It affects every aspect of his being. Man can improve on his sinfulness, but he cannot say that any aspect of his being is exempt from his sin. His mind, his emotions, every aspect of him is infected by the Fall. But according to philosophy historically, mind is not and the intellect, instead of being affected by sin, is a tablet on which nothing is written. Now this statement, which was first made by Aristotle and restated most emphatically by Aquinas, was picked up by John Locke, the founder of modern philosophy and modern education. If the mind is a blank piece of paper, then the educator is in a position of rare power, by conditioning he can make the child into whatever he chooses, it’s a blank piece of paper for him to write on. Conditioning therefore becomes basic to modern education and psychology. And Pavlov with his dog experiments supposedly proved that conditioning is the essence of education. As a result fallen man, denying that man is created in the image of Adam, that man’s mind is tainted by sin, believes that man can be therefore completely remade by man. This belief therefore governs modern man. It governs modern education and modern politics. The remaking of man, man makes himself, as the title of one by a scientist states. Now in religion this denial that man is remade continually or born continually in the image of Adam, completely tainted in every aspect of his being, we have in what is known as Armenianism. Which is the Protestant form of scholasticism. One of the products of this in Protestantism has been revivalism.

Revivalism from the beginning emphasizes conditioning. Most people are not aware of this, but some of the earliest and most important studies on conditioning were studies of John Wesley and the Wesleyan movement. Wesley and some of his associates, not all, certainly not Whitfield, were emphatic in their belief that conditioning could remake man. They did not believe that the mind of man was fallen. If therefore man, his mind being a blank piece of paper, could be subjected to the right type of pressure, then that mind could be imprinted with precisely what the evangelist wanted imprinted on it. Sometimes when people read about some of the early revivals, they are inclined to wonder why was it so characteristic that when a person supposedly got converted, he fell to the ground and rolled around in what we would call fits. Well this is precisely what the revivalist was working for. It was to strike the sinner down and for the sinner then to be seized, supposedly, by the Holy Spirit. As a result some of the evangelists like Finney, a thorough heretic who denied the doctrine of the Atonement and who refused to use the Bible in his revival meetings because he said it had a dampening, a cold and cooling effect of the people, played on the emotions of people to compel them to go into these fits. The Anglican divine, one of the prominent men in the Church of England, John {?}, who followed Wesley, would shout at the people in the audience when he was conducting such a meeting, fall, won’t you fall? Why don’t you fall? Rather fall here than fall into Hell. They got what they were working for. And supposedly instantaneous sanctification came also by revival conditioning. In other words, man did the saving, not God. And the whole premise of many of these early revivalists was that man can make man independent of God’s rules.

But whenever man seeks to be independent from God, the result is dependence on men. This is why Pavlov’s experiments have an element of truth. This is why some of these revivalists can convert, supposedly, convert people. In Oakland California a while back I talked to one man who was all for revivals, as a matter of fact he’d been saved at least a dozen times at revival meetings. I saw nothing in his faith or life to indicate that he knew what the faith was about. When man is free from God he is then enslaved by men. He is then suggestible, he is easily governed by men. Because man is a creature. Either he is God’s creature or he becomes the creature of his fellow men.

Some years ago I read the account by a very unhappy educator of his travels in Italy. He had first visited Italy just after World War One. When much of Italy had no real education. Many of the people could not read and write. A great deal of education was introduced, adult education and child education and literacy, during the war years and immediately after, so very quickly education became commonplace. The ability to read and write. And he confessed to his dismay, this made Mussolini possible. The people who before were not suggestible now became suggestible, because they were weaned from their faith and made to feel they were now autonomous, independent people and as a result their proneness to suggestibility increased. Mental sickness is the extreme of suggestibility. Some years ago Freud admitted, very early in his work, a tragic mistake he made. Throughout his life he played the idea, never abandoned it, that incest was basic to man’s psychology and a part of his basic drive.

And so he began to investigate the subject and he found that every woman patient he was talking to reported cases involving molestation by their fathers. And it was only after spending a few years documenting this at great length, that he discovered to his horror that he was planting the idea in everyone’s mind. He confessed, unfortunately, privately to one of his colleagues. He did not go into print on it. In other words, every patient who came to him, being mentally unstable, having declared independence from God, and gone to the nth degree of breakdown, was now so impressionable to anything that was not of God, that whatever Freud or any other psychiatrist felt might be the problem, they responded almost instinctively at times. And this fact has been reported several times by a few honest psychologists.

To be born in the image of Adam means to be in the image of a progressively apostate humanity. Bent on freeing itself of God at all costs. It is a revolt against maturity, this is what sin is. And therefore it is all the more prone to everything that is anti-God and immature. Because maturity means conformity to the Word of God. It means development of the implications of the image of God. Today as a result, we find that the age of childhood is continually increasing. The word child has a very interesting history. A couple of years ago I wrote a paper on the subject, which in a year or so I trust will published as part of a book. But there was a time when a child was someone under the age of five. The boy became a man about the age of nine.

He began to assume mature responsibilities. By twelve or thirteen he was capable of entering, if he were a little advanced, into the university, fourteen normally, or of going out into the world and working. You may recall I mentioned the fact that Admiral Farragut, at the age of fifty-nine an admiral, was a fifty year veteran of the U.S Navy at that point. But today a child is very often a high school student. And one of the things that is beginning to appear is that boys cry easily at an increasing advanced age. They used to cry only when they were babies, now they will cry even into Junior High years. And this is a problem, as one teacher here can report. Now we see in many of the fashionable stores, a new element, indicating the advancing age of childhood. Playboy has put out an executive sandbox, a little sandbox twelve inches by twelve inches by five inches, for executives to keep on their desk and to play and to relax from tension. And this is a very popular item. For the children who occupy executive positions in American industry there is now a sandbox for their desk.

Men, when they are in the image of Adam, are in revolt against God and therefore in revolt against maturity. Freedom for them means freedom from responsibility. One of the student revolutionaries, {?}, has written, and I quote, “Destroy all limits is to be truly free. To destroy is to feel free.” Moreover, one of the slogans of the student revolutionaries is, good news. Two and two no longer makes four. What do they mean by that? That they accept nothing from the past. That everything is either remade on their terms or they reject it. One of the students has written an article on the burning of {?}. And he described it as a holy, mystical, and religious experience.

To see the world of the past, the world and the establishment, burn up, to see it as the forerunner of the burning up of everything around us, so that we can remake the world. This is their dream. Earlier we saw that according to Greek philosophy and scholasticism and modern philosophy, the intellect is immune from any of the effects of sin or of the Fall. And therefore the intellect has a godlike ability to sit in judgment. This is the premise that leads to the elitism of the modern left. After all, the common herd, they do not know what is best for themselves. For those who live the life of reason, the life of scientifically governed reason, it remains for them to govern mankind and to do what is best for them. Now George Bernard Shaw put it very simply, with just a touch of humor, and yet with a great deal of seriousness, when he concluded his intelligent woman’s guide to socialism, by saying that those who disagreed with the new order they were going to usher in, would have to be put to death in a kindly manner. And they truly do believe that there’s a kindness to all that they’re doing.

The essence of elitism is this denial of total depravity. Denial of the fact that the image of Adam is precisely what Scripture says it is. A taint, a hereditary taint which is total in its extent. So that depravity infects every area of man’s mind. So that the intellectual no less than the man in the street is depraved. And when he thinks as well as he feels, he shows his depravity.

Philosophy therefore is not exempt from sin, but another example of sin, whenever philosophy denies God and His work. The gospel according the revolutionaries is good news, gospel literally means good news, two and two no longer makes four. The good news that we have is that God reigns. That His judgment is sure and His salvation glorious. And that He offers unto us His only begotten son who died for us that we might live. And that He alone is Lord of history, and that men and nations will either submit to Him and to His saving grace, or they will feel the rod of His judgment. And the sinner is doomed to inescapable self frustration. In God’s world two and two always makes four. There is no escaping God’s judgment.

Let us pray. Almighty God our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast redeemed us through the blood of Jesus Christ and has made us new creatures in Him. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us out of the defeat and death of self frustration, and to the victory of Jesus Christ. Make us strong our Father, in Thee and in Thy Word. That by Thy Spirit we may be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. That we may proclaim His saving grace unto all men and nations, and might recall all men to Thy Word and to Thy truth. In Jesus name, Amen.

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

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] That’s true. You can develop all kinds of systems whereby you can develop non{?} geometry, you can develop any system of numerics. The question is, are these intellectual achievements or do they have a relationship to reality? That’s the key point. And there are some who would argue that Einstein has been very much misunderstood and misinterpreted. I’m not competent to go into that.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Very interesting point. The Egyptian mythology reflects a great deal of the Bible, of the book of Genesis, and a knowledge of these facts. Now, Seth was the son of Adam that became the man of faith. And it is significant that in Egyptian religion his name is given to their concept of the devil. So the Egyptian religion simply takes a totally anti biblical, anti-God stand. It believes that man becomes his own god. If he passes certain tests. And the gods above are former men, deified men. And the pharaoh was a god who was at the apex of the human pyramid, and became a god in the other world after death. So it did reflect a knowledge of Scripture but just turning everything upside down.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. A very good point and then one of the interesting things, if I can locate the…back to the genealogies. Does anyone know what the Egyptians call themselves? They do not say we are Egyptians. What’s their name for Egypt?

Misraines{?}. Misraines. Yes. Misraine{?} or Misraines. And in Genesis 10:6, and the sons of Ham, Cush and Mizraim. So they do show their knowledge of Scripture, the fact that they have continued ever since the time of Ham, the name of Ham’s son, as their name for their land, for their people.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Egypt very early became a Christian country. However, and it produced many of the great Church fathers in the early centuries. However it drifted into unbelief or into Greek philosophy and it became really a pagan cult, a semi-Christian veneer. This is the Coptic church which still survives in Egypt and also Ethiopia. Now the {?} in Egypt are the only are the only real Egyptians. The so called Egyptians in Egypt today are the Arab conquerors. To know who the real Egyptians, the descendants of the ancient Egyptians are, you have to find the {?} in Egypt. And they are a dwindling minority.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] They are nominally Christian, but there is no real knowledge of the Bible in their religion, their liturgy is clearly heretical. I have at home a record of one of their liturgies, it’s very interesting and it sings about the holiness of man, not of God. It simply reverses things, where you expect when they’re singing holy, holy, holy, are just and righteous art Thou, not oh God, but oh man. The religious man, they, it was the epitome of self-righteousness.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, the new liturgy in one church after another today is taking a turn towards some of these eastern practices. For example, both in the Communion service of the Episcopal Church, and in some of the newer liturgies of the Catholic Church, you have a return to the eastern form of the creed of the Coptic and Greek churches. Where instead of saying, I believe in God the Father and so on, they say, we believe. Now the Western form of the creed is always, I believe. It’s my personal faith. In the eastern, you don’t have to believe it, you just say this is the position of the church. So you mouth the word and there’s no hypocrisy because, well, this is the formal position of the church, but you don’t have to believe it. As long as you accept the fact that the church formally gives assent to it. Now to drop the I believe for the we believe was a very deliberate and knowledgeable step that was taken by those communions. It will gradually, or perhaps rapidly, take over most of the churches. Because it has become their formal position. Very few of the churches that repeat the Apostles creed or the Nicene creed on any given Sunday morning actually believe it. So it makes sense for them to take the position, we believe. I heard one prominent Presbyterian once argue that it was a good thing to retain these creeds. Of course we didn’t believe them, but they have a historic meaning. And they had a beautiful sound and liturgically they had a place in the church, because they echoed the heritage the best, without tying us to it. Now when you take that position, we believe makes better sense and the we can be anybody except yourself.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] I couldn’t quite understand what you said.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] I’m not sure I entirely understand what you’re driving at.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Oh. No. Yes. I get your point, yes. This would be true if the I believe represented a personal expression. But when the I believe is that which God has said in His Word, not what you formulate. The I believe there is an assent to an already established, delivered Word of God. The fundamental articles thereof. So you see, you’re not saying, what am I going to believe now? I think I like the idea of eternal youth, therefore I will formulate the idea that there is no death, and you see the point. It is not a creative I believe, but an assenting I believe, which submits to something already established and given. So it involves a submission, the I believe.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. Because there you’re saying that’s the faith of the past, it’s the faith of the Church, it’s not personal.

Our time is almost up and to go from basic psychology to very, very superficial psychology, but interesting all the same, I was reading the other night a delightful book on Mark Twain. And his psychology interested me because it was so obvious he was a natural humorist. He always thought of things, even in the most serious context, with a sense of humor. When it describes his wedding of February 2, 1870, he married into a very fine family and they investigated him thoroughly before they permitted him to court their daughter.

And while they had their doubts at first they finally decided he was a fine man. And so he was permitted to marry Olivia Langdon. At that time he was just a beginning writer, he had one popular story that had created a minor sensation, but he was a rather poor young man. And so the wedding took place, and then after the wedding they boarded a sleigh which was supposed to take them to the boarding house he had asked Langdon’s buffalo agent, that’s his father in law, to find for them. This as well as Olivia’s plain gold engagement which now doubled as her wedding ring, was an index of the modest scale of living he had planned at first. The driver took them on what seemed an endless trip through dark and icy streets before he delivered them at the door of 472 Delaware Avenue. The three story {?} mansion on a fashionable street. Oh this won’t do, Clemens said, people who can afford to live in this sort of style won’t take boarders. At the door Langdon presented to his son in law a box containing the deed to the mansion, which, with the Langdon furnishing it cost about forty-three thousand. In those days forty-three thousand went a long, long ways. And a check to help him keep it going. Inside the house, which was ablaze with gas lights, the wedding party was waiting. And they followed Clemens as he explored the rooms, marveled at the elegance and delicateness of the blue satin drawing room and the warmth of the scarlet upholstery study, met the coachman, the cook and the housemaid Langdon had engaged to wait him. In the stable behind the house were a horse and carriage. This surprise was the work of both of Jarvis Langdon and of ‘Livy, his bride, who had chosen the furnishings, including a canopied and curtained bed all done in pale blue satin. On the threshold of the house, in terms that he elaborated then and later without acknowledging their ambiguity, Clemens declared that he was a victim of a first class swindle, a hoax, a fraud, a practical joke. The deed in the little box was also his paper of indenture to maintain a scale of living inconceivably far above that of a boarding house. Ten days later he was joking about the pale blue livery coat with monogrammed brass buttons that he had go out and buy for Patrick {?} the coachman. And he said, that coat of Patrick’s cost me more than did any that ever I wore. But whatever feeling he may have had of anxiety, dismay and the usurping of his prerogatives were drowned in gratitude. That night there were tears in his eyes.

He had difficulty finding his voice, and finally two or three words at a time he managed to say, with something of his usual spirit, to his father in law, Mr. Langdon, whenever you are in Buffalo, if it’s twice a year, come right up here and bring your bag with you. You may stay overnight if you want to, it shan’t cost you a cent.

Then this also I thought was very revealing of how his mind worked. Because he read a very serious book on the Middle Ages and he jotted down a note. And this was the beginning of what led to ‘Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’. Now mind you, this is a serious book about the early medieval period. And this is the note he made. “Dream of being a knight errant in armor in the Middle Ages. Have the notions and habits of thought of the present day mixed with the necessities of that. No pockets in the armor, no way to manage certain requirements of nature. Can’t scratch, cold in the head, can’t blow, can’t get a handkerchief. Can’t use iron sleeve. Iron gets red hot in the sun, leaks in the rain, gets white with frost, and freezes me solid in winter. Suffer from lice and fleas. Makes disagreeable clatter when I enter church. Can’t dress or undress myself. Always getting struck by lightning. Fall down, can’t get up.” In other words, he saw things in a comic light. And that was his first reaction to everything. So I thought it was a very amusing insight into his psychology, and why he was such a delightful humorist.

Well our time is up now, let’s bow our heads in prayer.

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.