Human Nature in Its Third Estate

Hope

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Christian Reconstruction

Lesson: 13 - 20

Genre: Lecture

Track: 31

Dictation Name: RR131S34

Location/Venue: Parkview Baptist Church

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Our Scripture is Romans 5:1-5. And our subject, hope. From St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, the fifth chapter. Verses 1-5. Hope.

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.

Every culture, every civilization represents a hope or a loss of hope. Man in society organizes himself in an expectation concerning life and the future. Every civilization represents certain hopes and expectations that men have. And as long as that hope survives, the culture is alive and growing. But when men lose hope, civilization begins to crumble. Scholars have called attention to the fact that Asia was far in advance of Europe, some centuries ago. That Asia had a civilization when Europe was still crude and backward. And yet Asia stood still, and Europe advanced. The difference of course was, that throughout Asia, civilization reached a certain point and philosophically and religiously, men lost hope. Their religions and their philosophies became ones of what have been called world and life negation. They saw no meaning to anything. They declared that what was ultimate was not God, a person, but nothingness. That life had no meaning.

And as a result those civilizations stood still and began to crumble. When people speak about the stagnation of Asia before the westerner went there, they have reference to this fact. The only reason those cultures were not toppled and destroyed was that everywhere throughout Asia the same stagnation had set in. Men had lost hope. In the modern world, when men lose hope their civilization cannot stagnate. In the modern world, the challenges to a culture are to great. If it loses hope it perishes. There are too many ready to destroy it. Hope therefore is a very important thing. Socially, sociologically, politically, and religiously. And hope ultimately is a religious matter. The word hope, in New Testament Greek is elpis. And it means, basically, a favorable and confident expectation. As it is used in the Greek New Testament, there are several variations in its meaning. It can mean, thus, first, the happy anticipation of good, as in Titus the first chapter, verses 1 and 2, Paul, servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness. In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. St. Paul here says that his hope concerning eternal life is a favorable, a confident expectation. Because before all creation God’s purpose included our eternal life. So that our hope, our confident expectation, rests on the eternal purpose of God. It is therefore a happy anticipation, a confidence, a sure one.

Second, hope can mean the ground upon which our hope is based. As in Colossians 1, verse 27, Christ in you. The hope of glory. Christ in us means the new man, a new life with in us. It means the sovereign Christ ruling in heaven, who is the ground of our hope. And our hope is as sure as Jesus Christ.

Third, hope can mean the object upon which the hope is fixed, as in First Timothy 1:1. Jesus Christ, which is our hope. Our hope thus is fixed on Christ and upon his person. When St. Paul spoke about the three central graces of the Christian, he declared they are, faith, hope and love. He said moreover, that these are not human virtues but gifts of God. The Old Testament speaks extensively of hope, but the Old Testament word is usually translated as confidence or trust, in our King James version. In the New Testament, hope is also spoken of as confidence or trust. Hebrews 6:19 says that hope is an anchor of the soul, giving stability in a changing world. And the blessings it seeks are not limited to the future life, although they are that emphatically, but they include all that is promised to faith in the present life.

I said earlier that civilizations begin to crumble when men lose hope. Rudyard Kipling in his old age, in 1919, described tellingly the coming collapse of humanism, its lose of hope and its devastation by its own folly, and by God’s judgment. And he declared in a poem, as it will be in the future, it was at the birth of man. There are only four things certain, since social progress began. That the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to her mire, and the burnt fools bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the fire, and that after this is accomplished and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, as surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of the copybook headings would tear and slaughter return. Humanism has been built on a false hope, and because it is built on a false hope, it is doomed to disaster and to a lose of hope.

Hope is not only man in the present today, looking into the future, and forming a conviction about the future, it is also the future acting on the present. We always think of past and present coming together and creating the future. But the future also acts in the present to create the future. What does that mean? It means that what man believes about the future, governs the past and the future. Thus, when Christians, about a century and half, and two centuries, ago, depending on which part of the world we’re speaking about, in this country about a century and a half ago, began to lose their postmillennial faith, their confidence that God had destined his saints for victory, they began to lose control in this country, as they had early abroad. At the same time, as socialism began to develop a hope concerning the future, it began to dominate the present and the future. In other words, when men have a hope, they are then shapers of the present and of the future. But if their hope be false, they lead men as they create today and tomorrow, and to all the more a disastrous conclusion. Just as man’s hope can be determine the present and the future, so God’s plan for the future, even more than man’s, is the cause of past, present, and future. Because potentiality and actuality are one in God. That is, what God determines, comes to past, absolutely. What we determine shall come to pass, sometimes comes to pass, to a degree. But with God, all things are known, the end and the beginning, He is the Alpha and the Omega of all things. And therefore, when God declares in His Word that which shall come to pass, it infallibly comes to pass. And therefore, ours is a lively, a living hope.

Now Scripture has a great deal to say about hope, and it climaxes one of the critical passages of Romans with a declaration that hope, in a very real sense, is the conclusion of the Christian graces. St. Paul says that we are justified by faith, and therefore have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Justification wipes away our guilt before God and gives us peace. It opens up the world of grace and hope to us. And it gives us access, by faith, to this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, it teaches us to glory in tribulations, because we know their effect, their results. We know that Romans 8:28 is true. That all things work together for good to them that love God. To them who are the called according to His purpose. So that, while we do not feel tribulation to be something happy, we can glory in it, knowing that God is going to make it work together for good. Moreover, St. Paul says, we know also the tribulation works patience in us, that is, the habit of endurance and submission to the will of God. And patience, experience. The word experience is a very interesting one, because it has a different meaning today then it has in the Greek and originally had. Experience in the Greek meant the process of testing or proving. And Greek scholars tell us that here it meant to proof. In other words, our patience works proof. It proves the truth of God. The truth of His promises, and experience or proof, hope. Thus hope, a hope that maketh not ashamed, is the net result of justification, of peace with God, of tribulation, of experience or testing, of patience, the conclusion is hope.

Now the English word that we have for hope is a very interesting one. And those who translated the Bible very wisely took this word. It comes from the old English, hopian, and the old Norse, hop. In fact, it’s the same word we have to this day in English as hop. To hop forward. Hope is the same word. Hope means a leaping, or to leap, with expectation. When you hop, you jump forward. When you hope, by faith, you go forward. So that the English word conveys exactly what the biblical word is intended to convey. Hope is to make a leap of faith with respect to the future. Only the Christian can make a valid leap of faith under God and His Word. His, therefore, St. Paul says, is a hope that maketh not ashamed. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. To be without God, on the other hand, St. Paul declares, is to make a false leap concerning the future. And then, finally to be robbed of any faith. St. Paul reminds the Ephesians in Ephesians 2:12, that before their conversion, ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise. Having no hope and without God in the world. To be without God is ultimately to be without hope. Civilizations crumble when men lose hope. Even though, as now, they have marked material advantages. Never in the history of the world have men enjoyed more material advantages than they do now in the western world. And never have they been more without hope. Because hope is essentially religious.

Our hopeless college generation of youth certainly have not lacked material advantages. In fact they come from the most advantaged group in all history. And yet they are a generation without hope. Because they are without God, therefore without hope in this world. Our Lord said when he was tempted by Satan to place man’s hope in economic satisfaction, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. But by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. Give man all the bread, all the economic and material advantages you want, he cannot live by these things alone. He is then without hope. And man must have hope to live. Man needs bread, but even more he needs the every word of God. For it is alone the word of certainty and the word of hope. Therefore in this day of hopelessness, only as we proclaim the every word of God, and in terms of the every word of God make a hop into the future, make a leap of confidence, and move {?} filled in terms of that every word, can we again restore hope to ourselves, and to our civilization. A hope that maketh not ashamed. Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto us. The love of God sustains us, the love of God works through us, and the love of God realizes that hope in and through us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. And has made us strong in his service and strong in hope.

Let us pray. Almighty God our Heavenly Father, who by Thy grace hast called us to be Thy people, and has justified us through the blood of Jesus Christ, and has given us access unto Thy throne, and enabled us to glory in tribulation, to gain patience, defined in our lives the truth of Thy power, and hast given us a hope that maketh not ashamed. Make us builders of all things in terms of our glorious hope, unto the end that Thy name may be magnified, Thy saving power proclaimed unto all men and nations. Church, state and school. Home, vocation, science, all things conformed to Thy Word. And Thy Name made glorious amongst men. Bless us O Lord to this purpose 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. The end justifies the means is a phrase that is very popular, a somewhat Machiavellian phrase, and it fails to take into consideration that the end is implicit in the means. In other words, you cannot have a good end that is separate from good means. So that the idea that somehow you can do evil and good can abound, or let us sin that grace may abound, is radically fallacious. And unbiblical.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] We are choosing a particular future inspite of what we claim we are, if we pick a particular means. In other words, tyranny and the loss of hope is written into the kind of hope the Marxists have. Because their means inevitably create an end conclusion which is the destruction of their hope.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Unitarianism as opposed to Trinitarianism. Unitarianism is really not Christianity, it has been a faith that has again and again revived throughout the centuries. We first meet with it in the early Church in a variety of cults and heresies, most prominent of which was Arianism. With which I have dealt in ‘The Foundations of Social Order’. Then, at the time of the Reformation it was known as {?}. And later the term, Unitarian. Now ostensibly, Unitarianism believes, not in three persons in the Godhead, it denies that Christ is divine, but in one God. But in reality it does not believe in one god. Because when it eliminates Christ of course, it eliminates the Scriptures. And it eliminates the Holy Spirit. It then goes on to say that of course God does not have an infallible word, because God cannot have an infallible word, He’s just a vague spirit or power working in the universe. And the highest consciousness of God is the consciousness of man. It’s whatever power manifests itself in the universe. So it ends up with man as the expression of the mind or spirit or purpose or meaning of the universe. It is humanism. And this is why Unitarianism has always been linked with far leftist, humanistic, activity. It has been the leader of it. From the time Unitarianism began in this country, the Unitarian churches has been the strongholds and centers of every kind of conspiracy and subversion that exists. It is not a Christian church. It does not really believe in God in any sense that you and I can speak of God as a person. Thus it is basically an anti-Christian religion.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. They do not. At one time they did claim to be Christian. This was so that they could work among the Christians to try to win them over. Long ago they dropped the pretence of being Christian and they associate themselves with almost any religion rather than Christianity.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The Unitarians were almost solidly behind the abolitionist movement, in fact, you could almost say they created it. The secret 6 that financed John Brown was made up of wealthy Unitarians. So that the abolitionist move, which also spoke of the Constitution as a rag of paper, was bitterly hostile to both our Constitutional tradition as well as Christianity.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] They are not mono-theistic, they are sometimes pantheistic, but basically humanistic. This is the primary essence. Humanism. They’re not interested enough, you see, in the universe as such to say we are pantheistic. Some of them will, but their primary concern is man. The pantheist is concerned about the totality. The humanist may be a latent pantheist, but he is indifferent to that issue. He’s concerned about man.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Simplicity has its place in life, but what we have to recognize is that as we try to reduce the basic issues of politics or economics to simplicity, we go astray. Now, the basic fallacy of socialism is it wants to simplify. It says all we need is to have a handful of men at the top to take care of all this complexity. But the more complex the world becomes, as it becomes more and more advanced, the more you cannot simplify the issue. You have to say it has to be more and more decentralized. It’s less and less possible for one man to master all these things. Just as there was a time when men could be experts in all the arts and sciences. Because there wasn’t that much, say, to all the sciences. But now no one can command every area of knowledge. Just as no one now can govern every area of life. Life is too complex. In the old days, because of simplicity, a family could make its own clothing, do everything. But there wasn’t the time then, you see, to concentrate on many things because you were tied up with to many things. Life has been made more simple for the individual because it has become more complex and he has become complex in his work, he has become an expert in a particular field.

He’s no longer a jack of all trades. He can no longer do any number of things. It used to be that a man who was a head of a household could make utensils, he could build a house, he could do almost anything that needed to be done. He could shear the sheep, his wife could do everything from ordinary housework to making yarn out of wool and making material out of it, and so on, you see. But life then, because it was too simple, too simplified, did not permit the development that is possible now. And if you were to restore that you’d eliminate a great deal of our civilization. Now the attempt of socialists is, we’ve got to simplify. Well, the minute they say simplify, they destroy the complexity of our civilization. They reduce it to a primitive level. And that’s why progress ceases the more close you come to socialism. And it begins to go backwards.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No, they simplify, really. Because when they set up a big bureaucracy, however big that bureaucracy is, it is taking over economic planning, let us say, from two hundred million Americans. So, let’s say it’s a bureaucracy of a hundred thousand, they are now making decisions for two hundred million. They simplified the situation, and thereby they’ve destroyed it.

But as you have a complex society, you have to have a decentralized and every man makes his own decisions. Then everything doesn’t fall apart. In other words, you can make economic decisions for your family. But if you were to make economic decision for everyone in your lot, things would break down because it would be more than you could handle. You would simplify things, ostensibly, by running things through the whole block. But actually it would break down. It has to be the complex situation of every man making his own economic decisions.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Very good. What they are aiming at is a simplistic solution. Very well put. Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] No. Basically, what we must work for is a, well, the word specialization, I think, is better than any other. It’s not the best word, but. Life becomes more specialized continually. Now this does not mean that we abdicate concern over other areas. This is the fallacy in the modern academic community. For example, what we would call political science department today at the University of California and more and more universities is made up into about five or six departments. They’ve divided the subject to the point where there’s no unity of thought. Now the Christian can provide unity of thought for a particular discipline, without this senseless division. Atomization. Now that’s different from simplifying it, you see. In a simplistic way {?} calling for central authority. So the Christian has, under God, a principle whereby he can interrelate things without taking over all things.

Our time is almost over. I’d like to share a few things with you from recent newspapers. Jim {?} column of a couple of days ago on marriage myths I thought was a very amusing takeoff on the statistical fallacies. What statistics supposedly prove. He writes, after a nosy survey of twenty-eight thousand households, the census bureau has concluded, chances for a happy marriage are greatly enhanced if the male is at least 22 years old, earns eight thousand plus and fathers no children in the first two years. That’s an interesting bit of information that will change nothing. If the bureau really wants to help out hold wedlock, it should statistically expose the three popular myths upon which far too many women base their hopes for successful union.

Mainly, myth A: the marriage has an excellent chance if the man has sown his wild oats during bachelorhood. Fact: this folktale is founded on the belief that men are allotted a relatively small quota of wild oats and when these are exhausted only the tamed domesticated oats remain.

Myth B: marriage changes men for the better. Fact: then Henry the 8th would have been canonized instead of excommunicated. Religion, psychiatry and elevator shoes may change men for the better. Marriage merely provides a man’s short comings with a captive audience. The {?} at that point was more feminine than at the other points.

Myth C: choose a man who is loved by both dogs and children. Fact: both are easily fooled.

Then I thought this was interesting. Moneysworth{?} had a commentary on Bible’s. In discussing what are good Bibles to buy at Christmas time. And this coming from a very leftist source, there’s a very interesting point. “When it comes to which is the most accurate, they’re way off base, but they comment in part. There is no question about which translation is best. The King James version. As H.L Menkin{?} of all people once wrote, it is the most beautiful of all the translations of the Bible. Indeed it is probably the most beautiful piece of writing in all the literature of the world.

Many attempts have been made to purge it, many learned but misguided men have sought to produce translations that should be mathematically accurate and in the plain speech of every day. But the authorized version has never yielded to any of them. For it is palpably and overwhelmingly better than they are. Its English is extraordinarily simple, pure, eloquent and lovely. It is a mine of lordly and incomparable poetry. At once the most stirring and the most touching ever heard.” Unquote. The fact is that the diction of the King James version is stamped in our souls. And translators tamper with these words at their peril. We cannot abide such monstrosities as, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I should not worry.’ Or, ‘a prophet is respected everywhere except in his hometown’. Or ‘sustain me with dainties, or feed me with raisin cakes’. Nor will we tolerate the use of skip over for Passover. Or barge for that ark of Noah’s. Or for Jesus to say to his disciples, lads, have you got anything? So, their recommendation is get the King James version.

Then, there was a passage from a book by Sidney J. {?}, entitled ‘The American Nightmare: An Expert’s warning, Beware of Experts’ that is, people who are going to run everything in the country, and he says he was one of these for awhile in Washington. And he decided that they were people who knew nothing, and were trying to run everything. And he says, one night, a man dreamt that a monster was on his chest choking him, trying to kill him. The man woke in terror and saw the monster above him. What is going to happen to me? The man cried. Don’t ask me, replied the monster, it’s your dream.

Take your society, your law’s integrity and your country, back from the experts. I have been an expert and I can tell you that experts gone wild, and they have, are like cancer. They know only one thing, more, more, more of the same.

Nothing is more expert than cancer. Nothing a better example of power without purpose. Cancer is ignorant, but oh it works. It grows. I have been an expert, have lived among them in their anti-communities, could have rested among them. I hope I have left them well behind me. An expert sees his small piece of reality and little else. He confuses understanding with control, and makes the ladder his single virtue. One of our leading social scientists has said that the chief accomplishment of this age is to have changed so many political problems into technical ones. We see in Vietnam as at {?} the result of technical solutions to political problems.

Which I think is very well put. The expert is the one who wants to simplify everything in terms of saying we have an answer that will govern every area of life, and their answer to everything is power. More and more power. And like a cancer, which is, he says, an example of power without purpose, it leads to destruction.

I’d like to remind you, finally, that the {?} Seminar is this Saturday, at {?} Farm in the Garden Room. And there’s still an opportunity to register. We have a large number of registrations, 128 as of this morning, and if you are planning to come please get your registration in before it’s too late.

And then a reminder of the Christmas festival on Saturday, December the 4th. 6 pm, in Glendale.

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.