Human Nature In Its Third Estate

Regeneration

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 2-20

Genre: Speech

Track: 22

Dictation Name: RR131M23

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is John 3:1-13. John 3:1-13. And our subject, regeneration. We shall be studying the meaning of rebirth for a few weeks now, approaching it from different perspectives. Regeneration. John 3:1-13.

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

It will be our purpose to understand this doctrine in terms of its relationship, not only to what God intends, but by contrast, to what unbelief also does with the doctrine of regeneration. Every civilization, every religion, is concerned with rebirth in some form.

All have felt the need to start afresh, to break the bondage of the past, to have a new man in a new world. As a matter of fact, rebirth, regeneration, has very commonly been made a goal of politics. Men have recognized that a problem exists. Now the question that we shall begin to delve into this morning and continue for some time, is, what is the problem? Before we can answer that we have to deal with the very word problem. What does problem mean? The dictionary tells us that a problem is a question proposed for solution, anything that is required to be done, something difficult to solve but having a solution. If there is no solution, it is not a problem, it is a tragedy. Thus, ultimately death comes to all of us. Thus death, ultimate death, is not a problem but an inescapable fact. If I call the fact that man ultimately, sooner or later, has to die, a problem, I am saying I can solve it and eliminate death from the world. Death as a problem was Christ’s problem. He provided the solution for the elect. For a man to say that death is a problem to me and I’m going to solve that problem, is presumption. Thus what a man considers to be a problem is very revealing of man. Our problems are assertions of competence. When we say something is a problem we’re saying we can solve it. Thus, if a man says, or a woman says, that his wife or her husband is a problem, he’s saying I can solve it. I can change them. Which is presumptive. If he or she says I have a burden in my husband or wife, then they’re being realistic. They’re saying I can’t change them.

And of course a great deal of marital friction ensues when husband and wife regard each other as problems that they’re going to solve. And it doesn’t work that way.

Now for humanism the world and the people around us are the problem. And humanism proposes to remake man and the world. Most votes that are cast are cast as a part of problem solving. Voting for a man or a party that promises to remake man and society. The need is seen by both humanists and Christians as rebirth. But the humanist says it’s my problem to solve. And when he says that he begins to play god with the world and with man. The believer says it is God’s problem. And therefore it is the Word of God that needs to be brought to bear on everything. Because God and His Word have the answer and men must surrender to God, so that God, working in their lives, can accomplish His purpose.

Some of you no doubt have read Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, in which there is a section which in itself makes a very powerful little book. The Grand Inquisitor. The Grand Inquisitor was a Spanish inquisitor who suddenly is confronted with the second coming of Christ. He’s very upset. And he says to Christ, we have everything solved. What you are assuming is that man can be changed and man can be free. And in freedom under God advance. But men don’t want freedom, the Grand Inquisitor says. And it’s up to us, an elect and an elite group, to manage mankind and to solve their problems. And the Grand Inquisitor claimed that his merit for himself and for his church, that at last they had vanquished freedom and had done so to make men happy. Dostoyevsky in the Grand Inquisitor was portraying not only something he felt was there in the inquisitors of the Medieval period, but even more coming to life in the modern state and in socialism.

For man to claim to be able to solve man’s problem of rebirth, means denying that God is the problem solver. It means denying God. Thus we saw last week that for Henry Miller, being born again means dying to God, being totally insensitive to God and to good and evil. And being totally sensitive to man, irrespective of good and evil. Dying to good and evil. And of course this is what sensitivity training is all about. You’re supposed to be totally aware of man as he is, without any distinction of good and evil, without any moral judgment, and totally insensitive to God. Now to be born again means a break with the past of some sort. In oriental thought religions have been very conscious of the burden of the past. And being radically humanistic, they have said that man has to work out his karma, the guilt and sins of his past. And that this means endless reincarnations until he has at last made atonement for all these sins, and then he escapes into nirvana, or nothingness. As a result oriental thought is totally egoistic. Selfish. As all humanistic thought ultimately becomes. The only concern is to escape from karma, to work things out and to find annihilation. But western humanism seems to be activistic and concerned with social problems, to be socialistic {?}. Concerned with remaking the environment and society. This however is its hangover from Christianity. Its social concern diminishes the more it becomes clearly humanistic. Gunther Stent has written a book, he is a molecular biologist at the University of California Berkeley, in which he says the end of progress is near. Because as man becomes more and more relativistic, and he is a relativistic himself, more and more humanistic, he will have no criterion for saying this is desirable and this is not desirable. This is right and this is wrong. And so there will be no progress.

Mankind will stagnate, says Gunther Stent, and in a couple of centuries totally disappear. So, humanism, ultimately does destroy itself. It wants to remake man and then it has no standard in terms of which to remake him. Thus when Nicodemus came to see Jesus, because he was a Pharisee, he was also a humanist. And thus as a humanist, but one with still a biblical background, he still was concerned with changing the world although he had no ultimate standard. And the ultimate implications of his position, as came to be later developed in Phariseeism, was a total quietism. But at this point Phariseeism was trying to control man. Phariseeism said that people needed controlling for their own welfare. And therefore an elect group of people like the Pharisees should control society and gradually, by controls, remake man. We would say today, in modern terminology, that what the Pharisees believed in was education, brainwashing, a sensitivity program, and after generations and generations, they would thereby make a new kind of humanity. A new man.

In essence, the temptation of our Lord was precisely the program of the Pharisees and the program of humanists in every age. Turn these stones into bread. Solve the economic problem. Give people cradle to grave security, and thereby you will remake man, but to put them to the test as you want to do, man will collapse under. And instead of asking them to walk by faith, give them miracles. Throw thyself down and have thine angels pick thee up before thy feet are dashed against a stone. And recognize the rightness of my position, bow down and worship me. Recognize that the best way to remake man is not to put him to the test as God has done from the Garden of Eden and insists on doing in every age.

Let’s condition him. To give him cradle to grave security and to remake him by social conditioning. And our Lord’s word at every point was, it is written. The function of man is only ministerial, to apply the word of God, not to legislate as though he were god. So Nicodemus came to our Lord, even as the grand inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s story went to Christ, and the issue was, your program for man is all wrong. And our Lord said in effect, because we have the high points of their conversation, the key points given by St. John, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now our English does not give us the point of offense to Nicodemus. Because Nicodemus and our Lord were both concerned with man being remade. But what our Lord said very literally, was not except a man be born again, but, from above. Man has been born naturally of his parents. But he must be born afresh, from above. Otherwise he cannot see the kingdom of God. Now Nicodemus did not say, can a man be born again? He was not denying that fact. Everything that he as a Pharisee believed was that man could be born again. But by the agency of man, by social control, by social conditioning, by laws. By education.

His question was not can a man be born again. How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mothers womb and be born again? In other words, Nicodemus was saying, you’re asking for a miracle which is impossible. A man is a bundle of habits, of dispositions, which are not going to be changed when he is old. A man can be remade only over a period of time, generation after generation, as you condition them. As you get them when they’re children, very young, and put them into schools where the teacher can shape their mind. Where you gradually break the parental, the hereditary and the inherited family traditions. Then, little by little over a period of time, you will remake men. This is the how. This was Nicodemus premise as a Pharisee. But our Lord was saying a man can be born from above. Any man. And to Nicodemus this was violating everything that was common sense. It was calling for miracles. And the whole point of rebirth, from the humanistic point of view, is that man must do it. That it is something naturalistic. And so both were agreed it is needed. And the answers to this day as they are given by humanists are like those of Nicodemus. Long term control. This will enable us to make a new man. To bring about a rebirth of mankind. Unhappily, the solution of the Pharisees is today also very commonly the solution of the church. Thus one Anglican divine a few years ago wrote, attacking the biblical concept in essence. This scholar, a very readable one, one who at times seems very, very genuinely orthodox, none the less has this to say at the critical point.

D.R. Davies, in his book, ’The Sin of Our Age’. He writes as follows. “Ideas, proverbially, die hard. Indeed in a sense it may be said that like old soldiers, they never die but simply fade away. Ideas seems to bear a charmed life. They apparently are invulnerable against all attack, especially the attack of evidence. One idea in particular which is reluctant even to fade away is the peculiarly capitalist Protestant idea of self contained individualism, that men exist as separate, isolated individuals, that the individual is a micro-cosmos in himself. The idea is the root, or one of the roots, from which has grown the theory of national sovereignty, which implies that a nation is self existent. This same idea which translates itself into politics as national sovereignty, is expressed in religion and theology as a doctrine of individual atonement. Christ died, not for humanity as a unity, but for the world as a sum total of individuals, Christ died for men as separate beings.” Unquote. This is the horrible idea to Davies. That Christ saved individuals instead of all humanity. That salvation, regeneration, is an individual thing. A miracle worked in the life of the individual. And thus it is the church today, believing in social salvation, no longer preaches the regeneration, the rebirth, of the individual. Our Lord answered, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. By water our Lord meant the forgiveness of sins, purification as set forth in baptism. That by the grace of God a man’s sins are forgiven, he is purged of the burden of guilt and of sin. By the Spirit he meant that it is the act of God the Spirit, whereby man is regenerated and recreated in the image of God through Jesus Christ. Marvel not that I said unto thee ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof. But canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.

So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Now this statement is very often misinterpreted, and some people assume that our Lord says that the Holy Spirit is like the wind, which we can neither see nor chart its course except by its effects. Our Lord is not saying that. He is saying so is everyone who is born of the Spirit. Every believe is like the wind. We do not see the wind, so we do not see the unseen, the supernatural force, which moves the believer. His motivation is not naturalistic, it is supernatural. Now not perfectly so, because he is not perfectly sanctified in this world. And there are of the sinful aspects still in his nature. But progressively the believer is governed by the Spirit of God. So that progressively his life is subject to a power, to a guidance, to a determination, which cannot be accounted for naturalistically. It is unseen. It is miraculous. The action of believers is thus beyond the comprehension of the ungodly. It involves another motive force which the ungodly will not recognize. The response of Nicodemus to this was, how can such things be? In other words, Nicodemus, who did believe that a man can be born again by man’s actions, was saying that man’s power is the hope, that he doubting the power of God. How can such things be? Oh great things can be done by men, given enough time. And great things can be done by nature, give it billions of years to evolve out of nothing. But for God by His sovereign Word to make all things and that in the space of six days? And God by His sovereign grace to convert a man and that in the twinkling of an eye? How can such things be.

Thus what Nicodemus questioned was not that a man can be born again, but the how of it. And this is the key question of our time. The politicians are offering us another how. They are going to remake man. They are going abolish, as President Johnson a few years ago said, war, sickness, poverty and some day even death itself. Just give them enough of our money and enough time and they are going to remake man and the world. It was Horace Mann who, I think about 1835, when he began his campaign to start the first state controlled system of education in this country, declared that the day would come, if children were put into state controlled schools, out of the hands of churchmen and Christians, in a century, the only prison houses that would be left would be museums so that people would go to them and marvel at the kind of darkness men lived under in the days of Orthodox Christianity. Well the century has come and gone and Horace Mann’s prophecy has certainly not been fulfilled. We would be happy to have as few criminals in our society as Horace Mann had. But their only answer to that is we need more power, more money, more time and we will accomplish it. The question of course still is, who is the sovereign? God or man? Who, where being born again is concerned, is the problem solver? God or man? Whose problem is it?

And man says today, humanistic man, it is my problem. And I shall solve it. And therefore I must destroy God and his world of law. Because He is a threat to me when I claim to have the power to solve these things. And therefore the battle is joined. But the battle is a hopeless one, because if humanistic man has a thousand or a million years, he will not accomplish his purpose. And yet day by day God, miraculously, in a moment, regenerates His own. Makes them new creatures in Christ. And gives them a motive power that the world can only marvel at and say, how can such things be? But they are. And they are the work of God.

Let us pray. Almighty God who of Thy mercy and grace has made us new creatures in Jesus Christ, we thank Thee that day after day Thou art regenerating men, women and children and creating a new world through new creatures. We thank Thee our Father that in the fullness of time the old world shall be wrapped up and thrown away, as a garment, and all things made new by Thee. And we be given a glorious resurrection body to reign with Thee eternally. How glorious Thou art oh Lord in Thy loving kindness, Thy care, Thy majesty. All Thy works do praise Thee. We thank Thee our Father for Thy mercy. In Jesus name, Amen.

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

[Audience] …{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well it isn’t the election system, but it’s the spirit men have brought to the election system. In other words, once we elected men whose premise was not that they were going to be a messiah, but that they were going to institute a godly law order. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again, it once was the requirement in every state of the union that one had to believe in Scriptures as the Word of God and the doctrine of the trinity to be a voter.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] And those who voted. Yes. The electors and the elected both had to meet that requirement at one time.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] It happened, the change from that, gradually over a period of time. In some states it did not go out until just before World War One. In others it went out earlier.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] It was phased out first as Unitarianism began to prevail, and then secondly as Armenian theology surrendered all problems of society and withdrew into pietistic ways.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] That’s a good question. Did the blue laws have anything to do with this question? First of all, the so called blue laws were an invention by somebody who didn’t like the Puritans and invented a {?} to caricature Puritanism. And they’re assumed to this day to be a reality. Second, they did have some laws of some severity which could be called blue laws. But the purpose of these, yes, was to assure a godly society.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Most churches today are Arminian in theology, Armin, not en. Not connection with the Armenian peoples. Arminian theology is the Protestant version of Taoism or scholasticism. Whereby, ultimately, man is his own savior. This is the logical implication of Arminianism. It’s what you do, it’s what you decide. The Lord gives and assists, but you basically save yourself by your act of faith, by your act of going forward in a revival meeting or whatever. Man is basically his own savior. Virtually every church today is humanistic or Arminian in its presuppositions.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] 1 John 5:1. Yes. Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. And everyone that loveth Him that begat loveth Him also that is begotten of Him. Now the key point is the first part. Whoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Now, this is most certainly true. But, where does that faith come from, is the question. And Scripture says emphatically that it is the gift of God. So that even the faith whereby we go to the Lord is the working of God’s grace in our hearts. And this of course is the point that St. Paul make emphatically in Romans, throughout. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And it is the grace of God that moveth us unto salvation. So that the faith that makes us believe is itself the work of God. If man, at any point, independently, originates anything, then man is at that point god. But God ultimately is the cause of everything in the world. Man is a secondary cause.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Dr. Rushdoony] Oh yes you are. Because the fact that you do so believe is the work of God.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. What our Lord is saying in this passage is that no one has gone up to Heaven to bring word down. You see. A revelation. In other words, he’s saying, I have a witness that is from heaven. No other man has ever gone up to heaven and come down to give a report. In other words it involves both. No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the son of man which is in heaven. So our Lord is saying I bring a revelation from God directly. Moreover, there’s an interesting point, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity is saying He is still in heaven as well as on earth. The son of Man which is in heaven. At more than one point our Lord declares that He is both in heaven at the same time as one of the Trinity and here on earth, incarnated.

Our time is almost up, and I was asked before the class to comment on President Nixon’s last Sunday address, on the new economic policy, which I thought was a rather curious term because the new economic policy was the term used by Lenning{?} for his program in the early twenties. I think that was a rather unfortunate expression. Now, very clearly the president’s address was one of major import and it has far reaching moral implications because economics used to be called moral economy. And the old fashioned conservative economics originally was taught by ministers and in seminaries. As a matter of fact, our hard money, gold policy, and the gold clauses in the Constitution were the work of the Reverend John Witherspoon.

One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence however did not go to the Constitutional Convention because he was to old. But his writings and his pupils, who were there, were determinative in making gold and silver alone legal tender. Now the president’s address did not abandon gold. This is the mistake of many people. If indeed what we did was to say that gold was no longer of any meaning, what we would then have done was to tell nations that have claims against us, to come and take our gold. In reality, what the president was in effect saying is, we are bankrupt, we consider the remaining gold too valuable to pay out. Nine billion in gold with about fifty billion in claims against it. Therefore we could not honor our debts. Every paper dollar is, in effect, a check or an I.O.U. Originally those dollars had written on them that the Federal Government promised to pay to the bearer on demand so much in gold and silver. We finally reneged on that and changed our currency as far as all Americans were concerned. And we required them to take Federal Reserve notes. All foreigners however, still had a claim on our gold. They would not be interested in a check that could not be redeemed. However, two or three years ago, we stopped paying all private parties on demand. And that’s when gold dropped in price because we stopped paying on. And there’d been a run on gold in the expectation that we would revalue the dollar, raise the price of gold, in order to pay off. However foreign governments could still collect and they had some twenty billion in claims against us, private parties over thirty billion. What we did in effect was to say that we were bankrupt. Now that’s exactly the implications of the president’s address. Bankruptcy. International bankruptcy. On the good side, what it did, although it was a costly price, it ended the international monetary fund to all practical intent. It’ll be around for a long time, they’ll try to revive it.

It was created at Gretton{?} Woods just after the war in ‘46. It is now, to all practical intent, dead. It is one of those corpses, it’ll be around, and they’ll try to resurrect it.

Now, all this past week the airline schedules have been disturbed because they’ve been sending as many planes to Europe to ferry home stranded travelers as possible. Because the exchanges have been closed and they’ve been allowing Americans ten to twenty dollars a day to spend only. Which is barely enough for a hotel let alone meals, in many places. So they’ve had to come home. Now what will happen is probably this. The dollar will have a floating exchange rate. It’s still good for what they can buy in the United States. This means, therefore, that what foreign governments and foreign persons will do with their dollars is to come into the United States and buy. This probably accounted for the big spurt upward of the market on Monday. If you have money that you cannot exchange for real money, gold, then you’re going to use it to buy goods. Now this could create a real wave of prosperity as fifteen billion dollars comes home to buy shares, to buy raw materials, to buy foodstuffs, to buy manufactured goods, so you can have a real boom. After that boom ends you could have very serious trouble. The dollar will continue to have a floating exchange rate, that is, the more we inflate, the less and less it will buy, until it will become like the ruble. Worthless. It will for some years to come be worth something. Because they can always buy American goods. But it will mean that it will become progressively worth less and less, in relationship to real money, gold, as we print more and more paper dollars to inflation.

This of course was a major disaster for Japan and it had the worst day on its stock market that it has ever had, it’s a real disaster for Germany, West Germany, because those two countries had the most paper dollars. And now they’re stuck. The attitude of course of the Federal Government was not that we are to blame for inflation, but the people are, and so the answer was wage and price controls. Fortunately they are being resisted. Let us hope they are resisted successfully. However, after the ninety days we probably will not have wage and price controls to any appreciable extent until after the next presidential election. When we will get them in one industry at a time, with great severity. And then it will be progressively more and more a controlled economy. It will be not like the Soviet Union, but it will be like Mussolini’s Italy. In fact, increasingly, you might say the great political figure of the century is Mussolini. Because his was a façade of a free economy, with socialism. State corporations being created to run things while maintaining a façade of private enterprise. Now Amtrak is precisely such a Mussolini type of step. The railroads made over into a government corporation to provide passenger trains. The new postal service is a Mussolini type creation. And you’ll see more and more of these taking over. In fact you’re seeing the influence of Mussolini’s answer in the Soviet Union now also. Someone ought to write a book on Mussolini as the man who’s provided the pattern for today. One of the problems of course is this import tax. What will be the implication of that. Incidentally, gold will probably have a gradual and steady climb upward now, instead of the wild fluctuations up and down, because there will be more freedom of the various governments to buy gold. They were prevented by the old Gretton{?} Woods agreement from going in and buying gold.

And it will not be as much weekend speculators but long range planning and thinking that will go into gold buying, so it will have a steady climb upward. The ten percent duty on all imported goods, of course, you the consumer will pay. Whether it’s a {?} or VW or anything from any country, you will pay the ten percent. It will make some of these things less competitive. Now the net result of that can be that these countries will retaliate. It is true that there are already very, very heavy tariffs on American goods that go abroad. But a country that does put duties on things is the one that ultimately suffers, not the country it penalizes. Because what you do when you put duties, tariffs, is to say that our people are not going to get the benefit of cheaper goods. And we’re going to subsidize a particular industry in order to help them, and we’ll penalize the consumer. Now this is the implication of it. It is a subsidy. Well, when the stock market crashed in 1929, there was a beginning of a recovery in a matter of months, but when to protect American businesses we passed the {?}, the stock market collapsed and unemployment doubled almost immediately. Because we then closed the doors to the goods of other countries and they retaliated and business died. The real depression was due to the {?} Tariff act. And this import duty could lead to something similar. Then there’s another aspect to what was done. The country that may suffer the most from the ten percent import duty is Japan. Japan has been selling heavily in the United States. It has hurt our textile industry and it has hurt our steel industry. And now our automobile industry. But, Japan has also been, by a tremendous margin, the best customer the United States has.

Far and away the best customer. Nobody buys as much as Japan from the United States. Both of manufactured and raw materials. Now, deprive us of that best customer by preventing them from selling to us, when they sell to us, they have dollars to buy from us. And it’s going to hurt America seriously. As a matter of fact, when we hit Japanese steel two, three years ago, wheat dropped to a price that was actually lower than during the Depression. American citrus products, oranges and lemons, are a big seller in Japan. What will happen to the citrus growers? And many other segments of the American economy, when you close that market. But this doesn’t mean the Japanese will stand still. They’ve got to have a source for raw materials and for manufactured goods, so where will they go? We just opened up a big new market at the cost of some sacrifice of principles, Red China. It’s reasonable to assume that Japan will look to Red China now for its market. But there’s a problem with dealing with Red China, in fact, for two centuries the standard way of doing business with China was with gunboats, in order to collect, and finally with extraterritorial rights. So that you went in there and you took over, say, Shanghai, and you did all your banking there and you compelled your Chinese buyers to bank there, so you could collect. You had your own gunboats and troops right there in Shanghai or whatever other cities were used. Will it be necessary to have gunboat collection again? It there any reason to believe that the new China is more responsible than the old? Or is it less responsible? And when Japan got into the act late last time, it had to go in with troops to the areas where it was getting its materials, {?}.