Human Nature in it’s Fourth Estate

Works

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Psychology

Genre: Lecture

Track: 41

Dictation Name: RR131W42

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Let us worship God. O give thanks unto the Lord and call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him, talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name, let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Let us pray. Almighty God our Heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy hast called us to be thy people, and confirmed thy love unto us with thy providential care. We thank Thee for blessings of the year past, and we come to thee at the beginning of the new year rejoicing that all things come from thy hands who does all things well. And so, Our Father, thanking thee for all our yesterdays we commit all our tomorrows into thy loving hands praying that by Thy grace thou would use us mightily for thy name’s sake and establish thy words and thy saving power in Jesus name, Amen.

Our scripture reading is Revelations 22:1-3, and our subject, work. Revelations 22: 1-3.

“22 And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

3 And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him:”

We have for a year now been discussing the biblical doctrine of man, his nature and psychology. We have gone through the nature of man in the state of innocence and then in the state of fall and then in the state of grace and now in the fourth state of man, the state of glory. We have however a very limited ability to discuss the state of glory or to imagine it.

We do not have the ability to see beyond the grave. we still live in a fallen world, though partially redeemed. We still feel all around us and in our own lives the effects of sin and death. We are moreover subject to the frustrations that a fallen world brings to everyone. It is therefore very difficult if not virtually impossible for us to imagine a world without frustrations and without sin and death. On the other hand, we do have definite indications in scripture that give us some kind of insight into the state of glory. We cannot go beyond those hints. We cannot read too much into that. On the other hand we dare not bypass them, because they are given to us very clearly as important for us in understanding our nature and destiny. As we face therefore the hints of scripture concerning the state of glory, it is important for us to know not only what those hints are, but what is the key which holds together all those hits concerning the state of glory? What is it that relates the state of glory to the other estates of man?

The answer I think is very clearly work. And it is important for us to understand why. Work is the activity that very definitely in the state of innocence in the garden of Eden. In the fall man had to work! In the state of grace we are a working people. And we are very clearly told in Revelations 22:3 “And his servant shall serve him.” It is therefore important for us to see this as a connecting link. A common factor in the fourfold estate of man. The great theologian Doctor Guilder was thus to the point when he said (and I quote):

“Covenant of work is the name given to the initial relationship between God and man. This relationship was a covenant simply because service to God is possible only in the form of a covenant.

The term covenant of work was applied in retrospect in contrast of the covenant of grace. And the very covenant of grace adds depth and meaning to the concept of the covenant of work. It is evident then that the covenant of work must not be looked upon as merely temporary. It is rather the original, fundamental, and therefore irrevocable covenant. The sequence of events must be explained by their beginning if would see whither they tend. If we proceed from the covenant of Grace as a starting point we go astray. But when we see the covenant of works as basic to all covenant relationship we are on the right track.” Unquote.

In other words, man was called in the beginning to work! To serve God! When he fell into sin the whole purpose of grace was to restore him to that original function. It is important for us therefore to understand the meaning of work. THe words work, in the New Testament Greek is ergon. Now the word ergon is very interesting, we have it in English. But we don’t recognize it. In english it is the word energy, which literally is en ergon which literally means in or at work. Now the dictionary definition of energy is very interesting.

1. The power by which anything acts effectively to move or change other things or accomplish any result.

2. Habitual tendency to and readiness for effective action.

3. Power in active exercise.

4. [In operation.]

En ergon. Energy. Became a religious meaning, although we don’t recognize it. Because the word energy is what work was intended to be! Work with purposes directed to a goal which is effective, which is habitual, which is power in active exercise accomplishing a destined result. And God created man to achieve certain roles, and to magnify and to glorify him in his energy, in work.

Now the image of God in man cannot be reduced to works, but it cannot be separated from work. Man was created in the image of God which is knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. All these things are useless unless put to work, both in time and eternity. Knowledge, for knowledge sake is ridiculous. Righteousness is something which is seen in actions, and the same is true of holiness, and dominion very obviously is the exercise of power. Now God is omnipotent power and he is omniscient mind. And all he does to reveal his power and his mind, in man his mind and power are brought to focus in work. Work is the expression of man’s energy, of man’s mind and power at work.

Therefore work is the key that binds all of scripture, so that we see at the very beginning God creating man and assigning him work in the garden of Eden, and then in the last chapter of Revelation as we are given a vision of the new creation the emphatic statement “and his servant shall serve him”. Thus works at the beginning and the end of scripture, this is the key that ties all things together. That brings together the fourfold state of man. It was man’s calling from the beginning. Man was restored in God’s image that he might fulfill. Put into force that which the image of God means.

But sin of course intervened, and it is important to understand the relationship of sin to work. There are people who very foolishly speak of life as a curse, of work as a curse! But work is not a curse, the curse was rather upon man and his life and work. As if life and work are bad! But simply the sin has put them under a curse. But work is not a curse. The curse was rather upon man and his life and work. This does not mean that life and work are bad, but simply that sin has put them under a curse. Men {?} in sin to realize his life and work and to establish a kingdom without God. But every effort is under the curse and therefore is frustrating, so that his life and his work instead of being his joy, becomes frustrating. In a Godly age men thrive in work. As a matter of fact, one of the easiest ways to trace the degeneration of man in an age, his moral decline and apostasy, is to trace the idea of retirement!

In a Godly age, men never think about retiring. They enjoy working, it’s their life, it’s their calling, and they will continue to their nineties and beyond in many instances. Working is life to them. it’s their joy! But what happens in an unGodly age, we see the effects of the curse on man and on his works. And even for the Godly work becomes difficult because so often the conditions of work are laid down by the unGodly and instead of being a joy they are a frustration to us. Because the Godly impose their inner frustrations, their inner contradictions, their stupidity, upon the conditions of work!

And so you have mankind swinging back and forth depending upon his relationship to God, depending on whether he is under the curse or not, from an attitude whereby work is his joy to an attitude whereby he seeks to escape from work because he feels the effect of the curse in it. It is also very easy to chart the areas of Christianity in terms of the way men worked. And a very interesting statement has been made of this by Doctor Eric Von Ladene. Now Doctor Ladene, whom I know, cannot be accused of being a Calvinist although he has written an article recently in which he had said that the future of the world depends on the outcome of the battle between Calvinists and Marxism! And he says, this is the fundamental issue of our time. {?} disliked Calvin intensely, he’s a Catholic, an Austrian Catholic in account. A monarchist. But he said recently that the world see’s a very varying kind of relationship towards work between the areas that have a puritan heritage or a christian heritage and those that do not.

Thus and I quote “In Uganda farmers toil two to two and a half hours a day. At a hotel in India, the help works forty-five minutes a day.” You cannot have a prosperous economy in India with those kinds of work habits. If Indians would work two states in the country could produce a food surplus for the entire nation! In South and {?} of America the work ethics are just not there. In Russia, most workers won’t stay on the job more than seven hours in a day, and there is rampant stealing, negligence on the job. In a hotel there’s no breakfast until 9:00 am and no stores open until 10:00 am. You don’t get the proper motivation in socialization. And he went on and on to sight the picture with respect to work all over the world!

And of course what is happening in the Western world is that as Christianity is declining, work, and the capacity to work, is declining. And in the United States which for a long time surpassed the world because of it’s Puritan background, there is a decline today in the ability to work! Man in the state of sin dreams endlessly of paradise without work but it is a hopeless dream. He dreams of a world in which there is no God, but at every point he is frustrated because nothing comes without work and man’s life is cursed. Whether is it with work or his play or his rest the curse is there.

But in the state of grace the redemptive work of Christ restores man to his calling, his calling, to his work. And to the extent that a man is sanctified, to that extent his work, his home, his recreation are all sanctified. They are redeemed grounds, in the process of being brought under full captivity to God in Christ. In the extent that the curse is removed, to that extent in work, in energy, man can manifest himself as the image of God and bring to bear the energy of the image of God in him on that which he is doing. He can then capitalize under God. True capitalization is a religious product, a christian product. Johnny and Waver, two sociologists have declared that capitalism is the product of Calvinism, and in particular Puritanism. Now while this is not entirely accurate there is a measure of truth to it because only in that tradition has the work ethic been paramount. Elsewhere men have accumulated wealth but by exploitation, not by capitalization. True work is the religious energy of a society in action remaking all things in terms of God’s calling. The redeemed man is a working man. A man who brings to bear the implications of the image of God--

--for his particular vocation. Thus when Revelations says “And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him” is giving us a glimpse of the meaning of the state of glory and throwing the floodlights back on all the other estates of man. Now is that verse it says “and there shall be no more curse”. Doctor Lensky has explained the meaning of the curse of of a curse in that word. And I quote “to hang upon or {?} wood was to be a curse, so Christ hung on the cross as one accursed of God. This was the mark of the old jerusalem. Christ bore the curse and removed it from us. Nothing of this kind shall be or is this any longer as it once existed in the case of Christ on the cross for our salvation. The foundation of the cross as it came to it’s consummation in the eternal city, to zoollonged[?], a wood of life! For here, in this city behold the throne of God and of the Lamb... in her. In this consummation, in the eternal union of these two God and the Lamb with us.

Thus, the cross has a double meaning. First it is a symbol of the curse. Of God’s unwavering condemnation of sin. It represents the second of death. It is a symbol of the curse! But this is not all... it is also the tree of life, or the word of life for us. Because of it we are reestablished in life and blessed in our work. We are told, there shall be no more curse and his servants shall serve Him. Men because we are now free people blessed in our work and we have access to the throne of God and to the Lamb.

It tells us “and they shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads”. And the fourth verse of Revelations 21 “and God shall wipe away all tears from there eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying. Neither shall there be any more pain for the former are passed away. Thus the cross must always be to the world a hated sign. Because it is a symbol to them of the curse! The curse upon sin, upon man, upon everything that man is and does as long as he is apart from Christ. To those who die with Christ it is the tree of life! And the symbol of life, freedom from the curse and the ability to serve God. Work then, in the new creation is beyond our imagination. We can only dimly guess at it’s meaning.

It is work without frustration. Work with perfection, work in a world without sin and death. It is the unfettered, unfrustrated application by man of his dominion unto God’s creation. It is the unfrustrated untainted energy of man applied to all things. It is man’s joyful expression of himself, of the image of God in him, or his prowess and his God given ability. The new creation therefore is a place of work, a place of work in terms of that which God has called us to be. For this reason, we’ll have to say, there will be very few heartaches in the new creation.

But we shall find ourselves in terms of that which God has given us, and this power, those abilities which we may never perhaps express in this world will find their place unfrustrated unfettered in the new creation. There we shall work, we shall find our calling, our expression in it’s fullest, freest sense. For there shall be no more curse and his servants shall serve him.

Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father who of thy grace and mercy hast freed us from the curse, and hath made the cross unto us a tree of life. We thank thee that day by day as we grow in grace we grow in freedom from the curse, and that it is our glorious destiny in the new creation to serve thee unfettered, unfrustrated, ever rejoicing in in our calling to Thee. Bless us O Lord, unto faithfulness, unto growth, and unto prosperity in Thee. Grant that this be a year in which we serve thee with joy and thanksgiving, and are prospered in our calling. In Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now first of all with respect to our lessons? [short pause]

That verse is very important and in a week or two I’ll be giving the entire morning to an analysis of it. So, I won’t comment on it now, but it is very important for understand our future.

[audience member speaks, but is unintelligible]

Yes? Any other questions or comments? If not, there are a few things I’d like to share with you. I don’t believe I got around last week because our time was short, to reading the item about Doctor Mary Daly the {?} college. Well, this is very interesting. Doctor mary Daly of the Jesuit Boston college department of theology, recently let a rock out of harvard university memorial church after delivering a sermon entitled “After the death of God the Father” to protest what she called “male chauvinism in institutional religion, starting with the male image of God.” Approximately 100 woman with group followers exited from the church with her. She had been invited to speak by the Reverend Charles Steprice on the grounds that she speaks for many women. The female professor outlined in her sermon what she described as the history of sexual repression by institutional religion, and proposed that all women should unite in a emergent sisterhood of women. Mrs. Daly said that the concept of theology developed by males under the patriarchy of males for women into a secondary or derivative status in all religions.

For women whose consciousness is expanding, God is dead. He is not our God nor can he be so long as God’s image is male, she said. When a reporter asked her if she had left the Roman Catholic church doctor daily replied “in a sense I have, and in a sense I have not. The church has left the modern woman! I do not want to abandon the church completely but I do not accept many of it’s teachings. I do not accept belief in dogma’s or rules, but I have not left the people. Boston college has been unable to rid itself of Mrs. Daly because of the ten year clause in her contract.

Very interesting sign of the times, and of course it’s not surprising that many of these women are not only for the death of God but also of man. I don’t know how they propose to live after that! And then this, from the wounds were Daly for December 27, 1971, I thought was a very telling bit of satire on our monetary morality today.

“Hey Dad, what’s this I hear about Nixon raising the price of gold? Is it true?

Yes, Son, he decided to bite the bullet and clean up this money mess. He devalued the dollar in terms of gold from 35 dollars an ounce to 38 dollars an ounce. Since the dollar buys less gold than it used to it’s value is diminished in international market.

Does that mean now I can buy an ounce of gold for 38 dollars?

No, the gold price figures only in international  transactions. It’s illegal in America for Americans to own gold accept for fixing their teeth, or for jewelry, and stuff like that.

Well, could I buy gold for 38 dollars an ounce if I were a frenchman? It seems to me that frenchmen are always buying gold...

No, a frenchman can’t buy gold at 38 dollars an ounce, he’d have to buy it on the open market and pay over 43 dollars an ounce. The 38 dollar price is only for official transactions between central banks.

Well suppose I were central bank, could I buy gold for 38 dollars an ounce from the U.S. central bank?

No, it would have to do with convertibility. Back in August 15 when Nixon went on television to explain how all those international money regulators who were attacking the dollar and how he just wasn’t going to put up with that any more, he suspended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. At that time gold was pegged at 35 dollars an ounce but we just didn’t have enough of it to let any of the central banks cash in their gold at that price.

Well do we have enough gold to cash in those dollars now, at 38 dollars an ounce?

NO way. Those central banks have about 40 billion in American dollars, and we have only about 10 billion in gold down at Fort Knox. By raising the price of gold we’ll eventually go up another 850 million or so but that won’t make much difference when there’s 40 billion waiting to pounce. So, Nixon raised the gold price but he did not raise it to restore the dollar's convertibility. Besides Nixon doesn’t have the power to raise the price of gold.

Only congress can do that and congress has not done it yet.

Hold it Dad, let’s see if I get this straight. Nixon raised the price of gold from 35 dollars an ounce to 38 dollars an ounce?

Right, right.

But I can’t buy it for that price because I’m an American and I’m not allowed, and foreigners can’t buy it at 38 because that’s the official price only for central banks, and central banks can’t buy gold at 38 dollars because Nixon has not restored convertibility on top of everything! And congress has not even passed the law raising price of gold. Right?

Right.

And this is how they settled the whole mess about international monetary systems and restored confidence in the dollar and started to stop markets moving up like crazy?

Right.

Hey Dad... are you sure those guys know what they’re doing?”

Well of course, the whole point is that there isn’t a settlement, there isn’t an iota of morality anywhere in it, it’s a con operation on the public and there’s a great deal of likelihood that it may fall apart before congress is back in session, or before the state of the union message about the 20’th of this month. And if it holds out that long it certainly is likely to last through the spring. And yet it is being hailed as a great step, the greatest step, we are told, in international settlement.

But anytime a settlement avoids elementary honesty and morality it is going to fall apart. We may see some real action this week after the meeting with the Japanese here is Southern California, and there may be something as a result of that. But basically these two things I read are very closely related. The first indicated the radical collapse we have in religion. And if anyone doubts that we have that, just sit down in front of a television (as I did for a half an hour or so this morning) and listen to a couple of televised religious programs! They really are revolting! The amount of sanctimonious hypocrisy and hokum that comes out is appalling!

It’s uh, a facade for really, nothing but humanism. And this is what people want, because there’s no question about the success of these programs, and since the people want anything except the Christ of scripture, they are going to be under the curse! And every kind of settlement they make is only going to manifest the curse more clearly. So we are seeing the effects of it in the continual frustrations that are going to come upon their every effort to settle anything.

Yes? [audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes. The question is, in not the ten year cause against the Christian respective. VERY very definitely. And it’s the attempt to substitute security arrangements for genuine work. Now, this is commonplace for most of our university professors, well all of them nowadays, have ten year. Which means, once they’re full professors then are under ten year they cannot be fired, and no one can compel them to any kind of work schedule. And the average professor at the university of California at Berkley today teaches 3 - 4 hours a week and that’s all. And for that he gets around 20,000 or so a year.

Now, when you realize that that working week is only for 9 months of the year, and then he gets the sabbatical every 7’nth year, you wonder how he can stand up under that workload! [audience chuckles]

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

Yes, of course! he’s very emphatic about protesting the fact that the last budget of the sate of California did not give him another raise! But this is ten year, once he’s in there, what can you do with him? He doesn’t do anything, he’s contemptuous of the students, he’s unwilling to meet with them, he’ll breeze in and out of a course, and his lectures are lectures he developed years ago and he hasn’t bothered to think since he became a full professor. As a matter of fact with many of the classes you don’t even have to bother to go because you can go out and buy copies of the lectures which students ten to fifteen years ago copied down even to the jokes he uses, and that way instead of going to class of a particular day, you have it ALL there including his jokes!

That’s what education has become. Yes?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly]

...what?

[audience member speaks unintelligibly again?]

Oh! No. This a professor in Boston Jesuit’s[?] college. Yes, who spoke at Harvard. Are there any other questions or comments?

Then would you please remain seated after the benediction for a couple of announcements... let’s bow our heads.

And thou 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.

[audio recording ends]