Human Nature in its Fourth Estate
The Reality Principle
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Psychology
Genre: Lecture
Track: 46
Dictation Name: RR131Z47
Location/Venue: ________
Year: 1960’s-1970’s.
Let us pray. Almighty God our Heavenly Father who of thy grace and mercy hast chosen us and caused us to approach unto thee, we thank thee for the goodness of thy house. For the joy of salvation, for the certainty that is our in Jesus Christ. Grant, our Father, that we may ever with gratitude show forth thy mercy in praise, thanksgiving, and in service. Make us strong by thy word and by thy spirit, and grant us thy peace, in Jesus name, Amen.
Our scripture is Psalm 14, Psalm 14 and our subject, the Reality Principle. With this lesson we conclude our studies in the biblical doctrine of man and his psychology, and we shall go next time into the subject of salvation. And we shall begin our studies for the rest of the year on the doctrine of salvation in scripture and its application in our everyday life. Psalm 14.
“14 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
2 The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.
3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
4 Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread, and call not upon the Lord.
5 There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous.
6 Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because the Lord is his refuge.
7 Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! when the Lord bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad.”
The psalmist states his premise in the very first sentence “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.” Then he goes on to declare what this means. These men are corrupt. There works reveal the corruption of their hearts, their degeneracy. And God himself as he looks over mankind finds in them nothing but evil. “These workers of iniquity,” he goes on to declare, “are without any knowledge of reality.” They may be learned, they made have heads crammed full of data.... but they have no real knowledge of reality. They eat up my people as they eat up bread.” They are interesting in exploiting whatever they can and have no thought of God and his judgement. So that when God’s judgement suddenly manifests itself, they are in great fear. In terror. The psalmist concludes by looking forward to that manifestation of God. Again in his day, in judgement. What the psalmist tells us is that when the fool says in his heart there is no God, he is looking just at the moment. He is not looking at the totality of reality. He has no sense of reality he just says “I have done something at the moment, judgement has not overwhelmed me, therefore there is no God.” He has no sense of reality. He has failed to see that history again and again shows forth the judgement of God, that God is always operative in history that men forget that fact even though the may claim to believe in him they become fools and they forsake reality.
It is not only the man outside of the faith who is a fool, but the man who forgets that God even now in the midst of the worst event, in the midst of the most frightening experiences, in the midst of the most fearful manifestations of the power of evil in various governments, GOD IS PRESENT. He is the overwhelming reality, and to forget that fact is to have no sense of reality.
Now, what we have had to say about psychology in the last year has little relationship to what is normally psychology. What men normally call psychology is governed by anti-God principles. The word psychology, psyche, logos, a combination of two Greek words, literally means the doctrine of man’s soul or mind. The word about man’s mind or soul. To see the mind and soul of man apart from God is false. But this is the premise of humanism and of humanistic psychology. A true reality principle is to admit the claim of the sovereign and triune God and his word and to recognize the fourfold nature of man.
Thus, in order to study biblical psychology we have been studying man in the state of innocence, in the state of depravity, in the state of grace, and finally in the state of glory. But all non-Christian psychologists make two very untenable assertions. Two assertions which have no reality to them. They assert the metaphysical independence of man from God. In other words they say that man is not God’s creature. Man is in effect his own maker.
But of course existentialism very definitely says so. Then they assert secondly the ethical or moral independence of man from God. Right and wrong are not determined by God and his law, “Ye shall be as God, knowing, determining good and evil for yourself.” This was the temptation of Satan. Moreover, humanistic psychologies have no doctrine of the fall. They do not see man as a fallen creature, and as a result, refusing to recognize God as man’s creator, God as man’s lawgiver and the fact of the fall, they have forsaken reality.
And thus it is that what they say and what they do will communicate that absence of any reality principle to all with whom they work. Now, modern education is very strongly geared to humanistic psychology. It should not surprise us then that we have the problem with the student generation that we do today. It has been because of the humanism implicit in educational psychology, divorced from the reality principle. “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.
And so education today has bred a generation of fools, of people out of touch with reality. We might very well say as Van Til has said, that the roots of modern psychology are in Eve. In her temptation to listen to Satan and to find an explanation for life, for man, and for man’s mind, without God. Man is seen as the creature who somehow happened out of the void. Who has only being. As {?} the existentialist said “No essence.” That is, he just is. He has not been made, and therefore must make himself.
As a result humanistic psychologies because they begin with the premise of a fool, that there is no God, concentrate on the service of man’s mind and action. And they lead his nature and his being supposedly an open question. But when they say it’s an open question they mean it is one that cannot be determined by scripture, but only by research of humanistic premises. And so, they are closed to any answer that involves God. The evidence is thus called evidence with God removed from the picture. Doctor B. Davinheiser[?] recently reported on a very interesting scientific meeting. An international meeting held recently, and in the course of it to quote his report Doctor Marcel Shutesenburger[?] professor of mathematics at the University of Paris where he reported that when an evolutionary situation is simulated, and a computer is programed to answer the probability of evolutionary advance under these conditions, the computer jams. This is interpreted to mean that the probability is less than one chance in ten to the thousandth power (100010). Calculation shows that if this number of digits were typed, four thousand digits per page, the paper would fill the known universe about five times ten-thousand nine hundred and fifteen times.
Professor Whittington[?] who was acting as chairman at that meeting said --and Professor Whittington is a distinguished British scientist-- we are not interested in your computers. He asked Doctor Shutesenburger[?] whether he was arguing that life came about through creation, and Doctor Shutesenburger[?] replied, “No.”. Other voices in the room echoed his “No.” No matter what the evidence or the result of mathematical computations they consider it very important that no one dare conclude that anything they say might be interpreted to mean that they do not accept evolution.” Unquote.
Now this is very interesting and of course it is precisely revelatory of the fact that they begin presupposition, and nothing can shape their presupposition. If a computer refuses to back them up, then so much for the computer. They are for the computer until it proves them false.
This is thus the premise of the modern mind, and of modern psychology. They eliminate God, and if fact they say only by eliminating him can you really get in touch with reality! That there is no reality until you first dispense with God. In other words they define reality apart from God. It is man and man’s mind. The world around man that is ultimate. And as a result when they look for answers they look not above, to God, but downward to the absolute particular. That is, to the smallest possible point of origin. To the absolute Adam. Or behind the mind of man to primitive man, to the child. To the animal, to the first born of life. What Van Til has called “integration downward into the void.”
Of course the alternative to man before the void, is man before God. And this they will not accept because they are possessed with what Van Til has called “the {?} wish that there be no God.”
As a result if we have a biblical psychology we must say that what passes for psychology today is not psychology but simply an aspect of the ramblings of a fool who has said in his heart, there is no God.
To have a biblical psychology we must begin with the fact that since psychology begins when it is biblical with the fact of God and is then a study of the mind and nature of man, we must begin with the fact that God is the absolute person and we as persons are created in the image of God. And we must therefore understand ourselves first of all in terms of the image of God. This is what we have tried to do. To understand man in his fourfold estate in terms of the image of God in him.
Then next it is important to recognize that God is always the presupposition, the starting point which undergirds not only man and his possibility of knowledge, but every aspect of man. So that man’s being is always to be understood in terms of his relationship to God. Man is always reacting to God in a state of innocence by obedience, in the state of depravity by disobedience, by the state of grace again by faith and obedience, and in the state of glory by the perfection of these things. Then next we must say that a biblical psychology cannot take the schizophrenic Neo-Platonist view of man.
Now, Wednesday evenings we have been studying the effects of Neo-Platonism on western civilization and we have seen how Neo-Platonism sets man’s body against man’s mind. No biblical psychology can have this perspective, it cannot set the body against the mind nor the feeling in opposition to the intellect. God has created man as a harmony.
And man as a unity in his fall as well as in his redemption. The problem is not mind versus body, nor mind versus feelings, but sin as against grace in the life of man. Then we must say that a biblical view of man and his nature will emphasize reason far more than the unbeliever. Unbelieving psychologies began by saying --at the beginning of the modern era- we are the champions of reason. The bible emphasizes faith, and Christianity is basically irrational because it will not make reason central. But they have ended up by denying reason. Why? Because in denying God, they denied creation, which meant that they moved very rapidly back to the old pagan view of evolution.
Now if you affirm evolution, then you must say that man having evolved out of millions of years of animal ancestry and being ultimately an animal of some sort, mind, or reason, is a latecomer. And therefore it is the least important thing in man since it has less roots than any other aspect of man’s being. Moreover, since reason is a latecomer and is set in the framework of a universe of chance, it has no meaning. Some of the latest comments and studies by scientists about reason described it as kind of a mad computer. Why?
Because our mind wants to make things reasonable and logical. But if the universe is chance and chaos this is a form of madness on the part of man’s mind. It tries to bring order and reason into things. And so, modern psychology is anti-reason. It is irrational.
Thus, only a Christian psychology can give due place and importance to the mind of man. Finally, a Christian psychology must emphasize that the truth about man and his nature is in the bible. There can only be one true religion from the God of scripture as our standard. SO that, we cannot have an open mind and say that many truths are possible and many psychologies are possible. One of the reasons a biblical psychology is so basic to freedom is this: the premise of all totalitarianism is that the bible is wrong when it says that man was created in the image of God and therefore has a certain unchanging aspect to his nature.
That in the fourfold estate of man, innocence, depravity, grace, and glory, there still is a constant factor in the nature of man: the image of God. Which, however perverted, however defaced, is still always present. Now why is this particular doctrine anatoma to all the psychologists of humanism?
Very clearly, this: If you dream of a humanistic paradise brought in by a totalitarian scientific socialist state, you have to have a view of man that says he has no fixed nature. He can be malleable. In other words, to use their expression, plastic man. Man can be shaped, all you need to do it to have control of him totally through education by downgrading and destroying the family if necessary and you can remake man to suit yourself. Now it has been the life work of a number of anthropologists like Margaret Mead and psychologists of various schools, to try to prove that there is a plastic nature to man. That he can be precisely what his culture or his society chooses to make him.
This is the first premise of all utopian and totalitarian thinking. It is the premise of all modern psychology, the plastic nature of man. Now of course, they have turned up evidence from time to time that this is not the case... but they will ultimately choose to deny their own evidence rather than face it’s implications. Because, if the bible is true, that man has a fixed nature given by God, that he is created in the image of God then socialism is impossible. No matter how hard it tries, no matter how much force it uses it cannot change man. Man will remain what God made him, he will never be the creature of the state.
Thus, the fool hath said in his heart there is no God. The world is a plastic world, and man is a plastic creature, and man can shape the future absolutely and make man and the world into whatsoever he will. This is why modern psychology has been so deadly in its influence. It has been concerned with trying to obliterate the image of God. It has been trying to make man over, in the image of the totalitarian state and it’s dream of total control, but all it has done is to reveal that man indeed is fallen.
It has underscored that which scripture has taught so that instead of bringing in instant paradise it has demonstrated all the more that the alternative to God’s grace, and to God’s law order, and to God’s purpose, is man’s sin. And it is hell on earth and hell in the world to come. The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God, but first he hath said, I will be as God. This is the main thing spring{?} that follows.
Let us pray.
Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank thee that thou hast removed by thy grace the folly from our hearts, so that instead of saying as sin could make us say, that there is no God, we rejoice and declare that thou art indeed God. That the government is upon thy shoulders, and of the increase of thy government there shall be no end. Strengthen us our Father in this knowledge, that we may view all things around us in terms of thy sovereign power, knowing that thy judgement is sure and they shall be in great fear who deny thee for thy judgement shall be upon them. Confirm us oh Lord in faith and in obedience, and make us ever strong in thee. In Jesus name, Amen.
Are there any questions now first of all on our lesson? Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Where would I place him? He’s quite a remarkable man, and quite remarkable in the things he has done, but to the best of my knowledge he is a humanist. I haven’t done more than read one of his books rather hurriedly so I couldn’t say much more than that. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Good point. Our Lord forbids us to use our cells as the standard. So that when he says that it is a sin to call someone names like “fool” in terms of our personal feelings and spite. I don’t like him and I think he’s a fool because he won’t agree with me, you see. That’s wrong, we’re making ourselves the test. But a person is a fool who says there is no God, or acts as though there is no God. In other words, our criteria should be God, not ourselves.
Judge not lest ye be judged, because if you judge by your standards, God will judge you the same way as someone whose departed from his standards. But judge righteous judgement, our Lord says. In other words, judge in terms of God’s standards we must say that a man who does not believe in God is a fool. That’s not our judgement you see, we’re simply going by God’s judgement. .
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes... that fool, yes
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
No, he is in all these things you see still created in the image of God however perverted. He is a sinner now and he cannot change that. And God’s judgement says he is a sheep now, and he’s going to act out a particular role. So that, while yes he gives himself over to the state and he follows false leaders, all of them together dreaming that they’re going to create instant paradise through the state. They are simply going like sheep to the slaughter. So that you see, it’s not he hasn’t been independent of God in this; he’s still fulfilling that which God says he is apart from God.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Well, life is never an easy way. The question is, the work that we have to do, what is it? For them, it’s playing God. Charting a course in the unknown, as the new God venturing his way into the future. For us, the way is charted by the word of God, although we do not see the future. Now for us the harder part is the faithful service to God in the face of obstacles and in the face of the enemy. It’s hard, but it’s possible. So we both have a hard task, unbeliever and believer, but their task is an impossibility. Ours is a very real possibility and a certainly. Doesn’t make it easier, but it is a certainty. So that’s the issue. There are two difficult ways, but one is an impossibility, it’s certain death. And the other leads through difficulty to death.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Surely.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
No, I don’t recall exactly what I said there, I haven’t read it since I wrote it... but, the law of the Medes and the Persians which changes not had condemned Daniel. The law when the king uttered it, could not be changed. He had no power to revoke or to overrule his own law. So, he loved Daniel but he could do nothing about it. On the other hand, God’s law, God himself, through Christ you see can overcome and through Christ’s atoning sacrifice. Because God through the law also manifests his love. I believe that’s what I said. I’ll have to recheck that but it’s the love of God in Christ which through the cross both fulfills the law, keeps it perfectly, steps it into force, and yet manifests the love of God.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Mhm. Our love and the law do not coincide. You see, God is the source of absolute love and absolute law. But our love will run into conflict very often with the law of the state or with the law of God, so there can’t be the same comparison between our love and the love of God.
Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes. But you see, alright, but just as you love your child when you discipline your child it both coincides with discipline and law.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Well, no, it’s the coincidence of them. It’s because you love the law, and it’s because you love your child, you’re bringing both love and the law to bear on your child by paddling him. You see, it isn’t that one goes so far and to the other goes to far, they’re both one and the same. They’re different sides of the same coin.
Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Mhm. Yes, to go back to a point you made earlier with regard to the way of the unbeliever, “they have it hard”, in a sense, both the believer and the unbeliever believe in predestination. The kind of predestination the existentialist and the atheist want is by the state, it’s by man. Man is going to issue his own eternal decree. But it’s interesting also what scripture says that “all things work together for good to them that love God” to them that are the called according to his purpose. Now, the implication of that is that for those who do not love God everything works together for evil for them, because they do not love God. They are not the called according to his purpose. So that, what works together for good for us must work together for evil for them.
I was very interested in that this sense of total frustration has been formulated by scientist rather humorously. But nonetheless there’s an element of seriousness in it and he called it Murphy’s 6 Laws.
1. In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
2. Left to themselves, things always go from bad to worse.
3. If there is a possibility of several things going wrong the one that will go wrong is the one that will do the most damage.
4. Nature always sides with a hidden flaw.
5. Mother Nature is a shrew.
6. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Now, I think that’s very well put and that’s the way the natural man hast to see it ultimately if he’s honest! That’s humorously stated, but obviously the man who wrote that was giving humorous expression to a great deal of frustration. And this is the fact. Our gen-- Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes. The people had gone astray and they were overrun by foreign conquerors. Now, what he wanted was for salvation to come out of Zion, Zion being Israel, but the name for it as the people of God. That there would be men who would stand up in terms of the word of God, and lead people back religiously, politically, militarily, in every way to life under God. Oh that salvation were to come out of Zion. That God would raise up Godly men to lead his people.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Mhm. Our time is almost up, but I’d like to share something with you. A Canadian scientist, Arthur C. Custin has written a very interesting paper --one of many he’s published-- The Place of Handicaps in Human Development and this in particular I thought was very interesting. He speaks of the Watusi, and you know the Watusi are very tall natives of Africa, who in origin are not an African people but moved from somewhere is the middle east to the north of Africa.
And are almost certainly one of the several varieties of people spoken of in old testament as giants. When do[?] Phillip’s speaks of the native African Watusi who with very little training can high jump to a height of well over 7 feet, but they are barred from national tournaments because they refuse to jump without the aid of rock held in each hand. The principle is that if the initial thrust is given from the ground by the legs, the hands are also thrown upward so that the stones have the effect of increasing the thrust against gravity with the result that a higher jump is possible. This is not considered cricket in Olympic competition.
I might add parenthetically, they trained some several decades ago who went far above that, to sensational heights, but they couldn’t get them over here because they refused to jump without rocks. Yet, curiously enough, in the forerunners of modern Olympic games, this principle of enhanced performance was quite acceptable. Stone weights were used by sixth century BC athletes, and an application of a principle of physics that plays in an important role in jet propulsion.
Greek bar[?] jumpers held a weight or a holtar, as it was called, in each hand behind their backs. When they started their jump they swung their arms forward so that their legs and arms were almost parallel when in midair. Just before landing the weights were swung back again. This caused the jumper’s legs to shoot forward, thereby lengthening the leap. The physical principle, conservation of momentum, as applied to early sports is discussed in the Oct. 1954, American Journal of Physics by Professor E.C. Watson of the California institute of technology. An early sports writer by the name of Aristotle commented on this by writing, “that is why athletes jump further with weights in their hands than without. I believe that this principle has been adopted even in nature. Canadian geese, Canada geese, before they make their long migrations in the spring and fall of the year have been observed to ingest a number of small round pebbles. The purpose of this does not seem to be to assist in the process of digestion, and it is possible therefore that these stones to not find their way into the birds crop, but further along in the digestive tract.
Ornithologists have suggested very reasonably that by increasing their body weight the birds are adding to their inertia and thus improving the action of their wings. A very light bird with a strong thrust in it’s wings would inevitably lose a fair proportion of this thrust if the effect of it was to lift the body each time, rather than to depress the wings. By increasing the inertia of the body, the thrust of the wings is favored and the birds forward position is made more effective.
Thus, in all these instances we have a parable of sorts. We may jump higher or further, or fly better, by carrying an additional load. What must seem superficially to be only a handicap then turns out to be a help. And of course the thesis of his whole essay is that handicaps are like the stones with which the athlete jumps. They look like a handicap, but in the providence of God, our handicaps are often designed to give us a little more forward thrust. I think it’s a very interesting point, and a very good one.
One announcement, I’d like to call your attention to the notices in the back, and that which you also received in the mail with your Chalcedon Report. The Chalcedon Guild meeting on March 18, Saturday, at 6:00pm, to hear Doctor Truman Davis of Mason, Arizona. He’ll speak on the medical aspects of the Crucifixion. I comment this to all of you as a very important subject, by a very competent speaker who has published several articles on the subject in medical journals. Doctor Davis is a brilliant speaker and it is a privilege to have him with us on the 18’th of March.
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.
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