Human Nature In Its Third Estate

What Is Man (Part II)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 1-20

Genre: Speech

Track: 21

Dictation Name: RR131L22

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is Psalm 8. What is man? We begin this week an introduction into the third section of our study into biblical psychology, the biblical doctrine of man. That which deals with man in the state of grace. Psalm 8, what is man.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

This psalm is of particular interest because it both raises the question, what is man, and answers it. Moreover, this psalm has an extensive history in Scripture. It is quoted again and again. And the quotations of it help us to understand the meaning. Because from the time it was written, it obviously had a messianic reference. A reference to Christ. The song begins and ends with a declaration of the greatness of God’s name. As against that, the Psalmist is mindful of the fact that man is a sinner, that man’s condition is a very low one. In fact, the Psalmist is amazed that God is mindful of him. Not only mindful of him, but has established so great a destiny for man. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands.

Thou hast put all things under his feet. In view of this, the Psalmist therefore surveys all creation and find therein not only the glory of God revealed, but God’s purposes accomplished. So that man’s destiny is certain. Even out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, the wisdom and the purpose of God shall be fulfilled. Not because babes and sucklings, little children, have any power or ability of themselves, but because God has ordained strength because of His enemies. In order to still the enemy and the avenger. The psalm is messianic. The scriptures themselves attest to this. From the beginning in ancient Israel, it was recognized to have reference to the Messiah. Our Lord quoted this psalm, the second verse, in Matthew 21:16. The children in the temple cried out when He entered, Hosanna to the Son of David. Hosanna meaning save, I pray. Heralding Him as the Savior. And when the priests and scribes were displeased with the cry of the children and demanded that He rebuke them. And they said unto Him, hearest thou what these say? And Jesus saith unto them, yea hath thee never read, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise. The psalm in other words, is fulfilled at this point. In that you who refuse to recognize me as the Messiah, must witness even babes and sucklings crying out and hailing me as the Savior. Then the sixth verse is cited by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:25-17. In the 24th verse St. Paul tells us that Christ will put down all rule and all authority and power. And then he goes on to say, for He must reign till he hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, for He hath put all things under His feet.

But when He saith all things are put under Him it is manifest that He is excepted which did put all things under Him. In other words, St. Paul says this tremendous destiny of man is focused on the person of Christ and all who are members of Him. So that all things are put under the feet of Christ and those who are Christ’s people. {?} all things is all rule and all authority and all power. Not only hostile power and government, but all power. Christ is manifested as the universal king, and every power must bow down to him and submit to Him. But this is not all. We have a further citation of this same song in Ephesians 1:19-23. St. Paul in this passage prays that the believers might truly know the richness of God toward them, and he goes on to say. And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

In other words, St. Paul says, God is rich to us through the Resurrection, because the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was indeed the physical resurrection of the crucified body of Jesus Christ, and a pledge of our own bodily resurrection. But it was even more. It was a spiritual act, the raising of Christ’s humanity and of our own humanity. When we are members of Jesus Christ, from the infirmity of sin to the glory of Christ’s victory, from the curse to triumph.

St. Paul then continues this theme in Hebrews 2:5-9, where he again cites this psalm. And here we come to the culmination of the Bible’s own interpretation of the psalm. St. Paul declares, For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.

This is an extremely important passage. It tells of the victory that is Christ’s, and ours in Christ, in the world to come. Now by that phrase St. Paul has reference, both to the world after our regeneration, and the world to come after the return of Christ. So it is both progressive, it is an event and it is the world beyond the event. A century ago, Dean Alfred, one of the great commentators of England, in speaking of Hebrews 2:5-9, and Psalm 8, declared, and I quote, “The general import of the 8th psalm maybe described as being to praise Jehovah for His glory and majesty, and His merciful dealings with an exaltation of mankind. All exposition which loses sight of this general import, and attempts to force the psalm into a direct and exclusive prophecy of the personal Messiah, goes to conceal its true prophetic sense. And to obscure the force and beauty of its reference to Him.”

To stop for a moment, what Dean Alfred said was, that if this psalm is made exclusive to refer to Christ, we lose the meaning. It refers to Christ indeed, but to us in Christ. Dean Alfred goes on to say, “It is man who in the psalm is spoken of. In the common and most general sense. The care taken by God of him, the lordship given to him. The subjection of God’s works to him. This high dignity he lost, but this high dignity he has regained and possesses, potentially, in all its fullness and glory. Restored and forever secured to him. How and by whom? By one of his own race, the man Christ Jesus. Whatever high and glorious things can be said of man, belong of proper right to Him only and proper person to Him only, but derivatively to us, His brethren and members. And this is the great key to the interpretation of all such sayings as these. Whatever belongs to man by the constitution of his nature, belongs superlatively to that man, who is the constituted head of man’s nature, the second Adam. Who has more than recovered all that the first Adam lost. To those who clearly apprehend and firmly hold this fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the interpretation of ancient prophecy in the New Testament application of Old Testament sayings to Christ, become a far simpler matter than they ever can be to others. And so here it is to man, not to angels, that the world to come is subjected. This is the argument, and as far as the end of verse 8, it is carried on with reference to man, properly so called. There is here as yet, no personal reference to our Lord, who is first introduced, and that in His lower personal human nature, at verse 9. This has been missed, and thus confusion introduced into the argument by the majority of commentators.” Unquote.

This is a very important analysis by Dean Alfred. He makes it clear that all that the first Adam lost, the second Adam has more than recovered. This is the meaning of the psalm. And when we understand that, the implications are tremendous. This psalm declares, therefore, that no glory that the Garden of Eden had, will suffice to describe that which man shall realize, through Jesus Christ, in time and in eternity. Man is now led progressively by the sanctifying power of Jesus Christ into dominion, righteousness, holiness and knowledge. All things are being put under man’s feet, when man is in Christ. And the culmination of that subjection shall come when, as St. Paul says, death, the last enemy, shall itself be destroyed. Notice that St. Paul spoke of it as the last enemy, implying that before that second coming, the other enemies shall have been progressively brought under the subjection of man in Christ. Therefore the Psalmist concludes, oh Lord our God, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth. It is being glorified everywhere by the grace of God to man which leads to man’s dominion. This psalm therefore gives us an answer to the question, what is man. Man is defined, not in terms of himself, but in terms of Christ, through whom all things are put under man’s feet. Now every definition is a fence, a boundary. When you define something, you fence it off. This is literally what a definition or a boundary is. It is a fence. To define man in terms of Jesus Christ means that every ungodly man is a deformed man.

The fence has been broken. That which should be strictly fenced is no longer proper fenced. And therefore, it is deformed. The ungodly are at war with the proper and true definition of themselves. They seek to define themselves existentially. That is, in terms of themselves exclusively. If man is his own god, his own maker, than man is his own principle of definition. But if man is a creature of God, than man can only be defined by God and in terms of God’s purpose. Therefore in Psalm 8 God raises the question, and as the Creator and Redeemer, Himself defines man. Now God’s definition is not an abstraction. That which God defines, He created, and He recreates. The process of history is God’s progress in definition. Age after age, as history develops, we see more and more clearly the nature of sin, as man works out his sin and reveals himself all the more, to be a contradiction when he denies God. All they that hate Me love death. He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul. And we see also, as the grace of God is manifested unto His people, the definition of man in terms of Jesus Christ, more and more clearly and fully made. Moreover, as history progresses, epistemological self-consciousness sets in. That is, the tares become more clearly tares, and the wheat more clearly wheat. Each define themselves as they develop in terms of their presuppositions. The ungodly in terms of their faith, and the godly in terms of Christ. It is important to recognize that ultimately, as Dr. Warfield{?} said a couple of generations ago, there are only two religions. The religion of man or of humanity, and the religion of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is a very religious age. It is not Christian. It is humanistic. But it is intensely religious.

And it does believe, in its own way, in the necessity of regeneration. For example. One of the thinkers, if you can call him that, who has been most influential in the past twenty years, is Henry Miller. Author of ‘Tropic of Cancer’, ‘Tropic of Capricorn’ and many other such books. More than once he says, in an offhanded way, which few people catch, that I suppose you can consider me a very religious person. He is that. As a matter of fact, very early in his career, over twenty, over thirty years ago, in one of his earliest books, he mapped out the program of salvation. He began by declaring, in the words of Scripture, in the beginning was the word. That was the first point in Henry Miller’s religious statement. In the beginning was the word. But for him, the word is man. Unmistakably, clearly, it is man. Now, when he makes that statement, he goes on to say emphatically, that man denies his own word, when he bows down to good and evil. The only evil is the fear of doing wrong. Moreover, he has a vision of salvation. He calls it that. And he goes on to say, and I quote, “It is our dream life which offers the key to the possibilities in store for us. In dream it is the {?} man, one with the earth, one with the stars, who comes to life. Who roams through past, present and future with equal freedom. For him there are no taboos, no laws, no conventions. Pursuing his way he is unimpeded by time, space, physical obstacles or moral considerations. He sleeps with his mother as naturally as with another. If it be with an animal of the field, he satisfies his desire, he feels no revolt. He can take his own daughter with equal enjoyment and satisfaction. In the waking world, shackled, crippled, paralyzed by every kind of fear, threatened at every step by real or imaginary punishments. Almost every desire we seek to express is made to appear wrong or evil.” Unquote.

Miller says, when we are asleep and we dream, we’re not troubled by conscience. He’s not accurate there. But we’re not troubled by being bound by time or space. We can live in the future and we can live in the past. We can do as we please. Now that’s the kind of world we must create. In the beginning was the word, and the word was, he says, man. And man must therefore destroy God’s definition of man, and as man, remake himself. First he must die. Miller says that man as he is must be destroyed, to make way for man’s own recreation of man. And he goes on to say, and I quote, (this was written before World War 2) “It is no longer history which is being made. The present conflagration will rage until the old order of man is liquidated. It matters little if the current war, (it was just beginning in Europe, the very earliest stages, we were not in it) hot or cold, ends tomorrow or fifty years hence. There will be more wars to come. Each more terrible than the last. Until the whole rotting edifice is completely demolished. Until we, homo sapiens, are no more. All man’s evils,” Miller goes on to say, “are due to the idea of God and an absolute good and evil. And man will continue to destroy himself until he dies to everything that he is, and is born again in terms of his own saving word. And somehow, with the help of science, can live as he lives in dreams. Without morality, without time or space or anything else, inhibiting him.” This sounds like insanity and certainly it is. But it is a plan of salvation, and it is the plan of salvation and a man’s regeneration that is governing our age.

That is governing our student revolutionaries. That is having an impact on our politics. The ungodly, from Karl Marx on to the present, dream of ending history. Ending good and evil. Ending all the ties of time and space that bind men. In a famous passage, Karl Marx declared, that in the utopia of Communism, a man would be able, in the morning, to get up, and if he decides to play the violin like the greatest virtuoso, he would do so. If he felt like painting, he would paint great pictures, if he felt like going out and being a shepherd he would do so. Having been freed from God, supposedly now man could do anything he pleased, just when he decided to do so. It would take no practice to be a great musician, man would now be freed from all those things that bound him. This is the dream of the ungodly. It is a dream of salvation, of death and regeneration.

We have thus, two religions. Two plans of salvation, two ways that man can be saved. For the one, man needs saving from God. For us, man needs saving from sin, by the grace of God through Jesus Christ. Both say that a death and a rebirth are necessary. But the one says by man, and the other by God. We are thus in an age where the conflict is essentially religious. Where we are moving towards a religious warfare, between two rival faiths. One which seeks to end history by making man his own god. And the other to give direction and meaning to history through the saving power of Jesus Christ. And the question that confronts the world today is indeed, man needs to be born again. But by whom? By man, by an elite group of planners who will kill and remake man? Or by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

The future will be determined by the answer men give to that question. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father, who of Thy grace and mercy hast redeemed us through Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that Thou hast set before us so glorious a destiny in Him. We thank Thee that all things shall be put under our feet in Jesus Christ. That all rule, power and authority, shall be subjected to Him, and to us in Him. Make us therefore our Father, zealous in Thy service, confident in our Savior, and in all things grateful unto Thee, who hast summoned us to so great a destiny. Bless us in Thy service, in Jesus name, Amen.

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

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Can be related to what?

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, we can. Now, let’s go back to the time of the New Testament. You had a small group of believers. A handful. Beginning with eleven men in an upper room. You had a great power in the Roman empire that was evil. Now how was the small group going to tackle the big group? Well there were some people who had ideas as to how it should be done. Their answer was, we’ve got to expose these terrible powers of the Roman empire. We’ve got to expose their satanic plans and conspiracies.

And there were some Christians who spent a great deal of time, they got absorbed in that. And our Lord spoke very, very plainly concerning that. In the last book of Scripture, the book of Revelation. And there in the letters to the seven churches he makes a statement, and I’m looking for it just now, it’s in the second or third chapter. Yes. Revelation 2:24. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.

What does that mean? there were people there who spent their time trying to analyze the satanic conspiracies of the day. The deep things of Satan, or the hidden conspiracies of Satan. You can render the phrase the depths of Satan. And so it is that our Lord says it’s those who refuse to have anything to do with that, which are His people, and who will be blessed. In other words, evil is never fought by concentration of evil and a study of endlessly. So, who was it who overthrew the power of Rome and the conspiracies of the day? Those who went forth to preach the saving power of Jesus Christ. And those who spent hteir time studying the deep things, the conspiracies of Satan, were cast aside by our Lord.

Now this past week, the Reverend Mr. Thoburn{?} was here and we had a Christian School seminar at Nottsberry{?} Farm. It was very interesting because there was someone there right off the bat who urged Mr. Thoburn{?} to go to another meeting, more than important than what we were doing.

What was that other meeting about? Six hours were spent on that one day, just analyzing the crux of the conspiracy. And when it was over, and it was supposedly led by a Christian and they were supposedly Christians who were there, they came out of there sick with fear. They couldn’t even eat their dinner, some of them were so upset. And Mr. Thoburn{?} laughed. He said that’s the biggest joke. A Christian enterprise where they’re scaring people to death? What were they doing? They were teaching the power of Satan, not the power of God unto salvation. And it was not Christian. It was satanic. Whereas at our meeting, someone who represented the public schools was present, and he was thrilled with it. He said, I haven’t seen in any teachers meeting I’ve ever been to, the excitement and the enthusiasm that I’ve seen here in these meetings. And he said be sure to let me know of the next one. Well what was the difference? In the one meeting the power of God was being presented. And in every person present there virtually, the power of God was being revealed, inspite of all problems and difficulties, in that young men and women were being given a Christian education. In the other what was happening? Christians were being told how omnipotent Satan was. Now this is the key to the matter. And it is not true conservatism to spend endless time, nor is it true Christianity, trying to prove how omnipotent evil is. The eleven disciples, twelve after someone was named to replace Judas, went out and they toppled the Roman empire. Now there was a lot of martyrdom before it was accomplished, but they did it. But those in Thyatira who were studying the hidden depths of Satan or the hidden conspiracies of Satan, our Lord had no use for them. And I don’t think He’s changed His mind since those days.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The second Coming of Christ and the last Judgment coincide. They take place at the end of history.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. no. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No, definitely not. We must say that, what is called creative work, or more properly, art, the word creative I don’t think is a good one to use in this context. Works of art are actually religious callings. Religious productions. They manifest a use of God given talents and a development of things, of forms, of structures, that are God given. This is does not mean that humanists very often do not, themselves, create such works. It often shows their humanism. But none the less, if they were consistently humanistic, they could not create anything. Because it would be a total denial of everything their position stands for. Thus, the essence of humanism is that man is his own god. And that whatever he does is ipso facto, good. Now the very concept of art means a refinement of something, an improvement. You would have to say then that any scribble a man makes is as good as anything that, say, {?} or of Rembrandt did. And of course this is what modern art is trying to say now. Everything that is an expression of man is equally good.

This has gone over a little further in painting than in some others. It has gone over in musical composition, you have some composers which are applying it. It has not gone over in some areas where the public finds it painful, for example, to be inflicted upon by such productions. In other words, we still don’t say that anybody who gets up and croaks is equal, say, to Marilyn Horn{?}. That’s an impossibility. The public hasn’t deteriorated that far yet. But this is the logic. The humanist must ultimately say that everything is of an equal production. As {?}, in one volume said, he was producing anti poems. The idea of poem representing a work of art, something man has hammered out and developed, he negated by stringing words, just to say this is equal to anything that anyone else has done, because anything man produces when he frees himself, of course, from the idea of God and law, is equally valuable. So you cannot have art if you have a total humanism. The humanist who does produce works of art is schizophrenic. He is implicitly denying that he is beyond improvement or anything he does is beyond refinement.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Right. And this is why some of your early behaviorists insisted there was no difference in I.Q. As a matter of fact, Watson, the found of behaviorism, went so far as to say, if you gave him a baby at the moment of birth, he could make it into the greatest musician, artist, scientist, anything. Any baby, at birth. Now of course they’ve flinched from that radical position since, but it is still implicit in the position of many of them. They have to deny these things.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, there are many humanists who are ready to believe in a life after death, but not in God. Not in God. Yes. Turtalian{?} in one of his writings has a very amusing passage, in which he cites all the ridiculous things the Romans believed in. And some of them are hardly repeatable. And then he says, there is no absurdity that the humanist has not believed in. And yet he will insist on looking down on the Christian, as though there were something unintelligent about believing in God. Because by definition, if you deny God you are intelligent.

Well, we have time possibly for one question, if there’s one more. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, but life is so short, and time is so limited, what we need to do is to do that which God requires of us. And we have hardly time enough for anything else, really. And we grow stronger and happier as we concentrate on those things which are of God. I think the contrast this last week between the people who came out of the one seminar sick to their stomach, and those who were at our seminar and were thrilled, is very revealing. The one leads nowhere. And we want our lives to count. When Nehemiah was on the walls, the men who came there wanted him to negotiate, to bicker with them, and to talk with them, and he said I have a great work to do and I cannot come down from the wall. And I think that’s the best position for us to {?}. We have a great work to do, let’s get on with it. God will take care of the evil doers in His own good time if we do our duty with respect to the Lord. We have more than we can do in a lifetime, and it’s a glorious work and fun to do. So let us be doing it.

Well our time is up, let’s bow our heads for the benediction. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you. This day and always, Amen.