Salvation and Godly Rule

Reigning in Life

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Reigning in Life

Genre: Speech

Track: 71

Dictation Name: RR136AM71

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is Romans 5:17-21. Our subject is “Reigning in Life,” and with this study, we conclude our year and a half analysis of the doctrine of salvation and its implications. “For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.). Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Awhile back, a London newspaper had a questionnaire in its Sunday edition, and it asked its readers to fill it out and mail it in. The jist of the questionnaire was their religious faith, what did they believe in. They asked how many went to church, and the answer was that less than one in twenty, even occasionally ever went to church. They asked 1) did they believe in heaven and hell, 2) reincarnation, and 3) do not know. The overwhelming majority voted for number 2: reincarnation. In the United States, there’s a difference as far as church attendance is concerned, eleven in twenty as against less than one in twenty in England, go to church in the United States, but unfortunately, they have no great evidence that their position is very different. The belief in reincarnation again is very strong in the United States. It’s a very popular idea with many.

Moreover, it is very significant how this idea is held in this country, and the implication is that perhaps the English attitude is not too different. One man who was reading a book about reincarnation was asked did he believe there was any truth to it, and his answer, verbatim, was this, “Well, I don’t know. I’d rather believe in it than nothing. Hell, I don’t want just to die. I’d like to have a second chance.” Now, that answer was summed up as very, very indicative of the kind of response and reaction that was gained whenever there was a questionnaire of this sort.

There’s certain very important implications in this man’s statement. First of all, the man said that he did not know the truth of the matter, but he also denied the relevance of truth. He promptly said, “I don’t know what the truth is on the subject,” but he also said what was more important was “What do I want to believe?” In other words, his criterion was pragmatic, and we should not be surprised at this. We have had now, for a good many years, the influence of pragmatism in American life. As a very militant philosophy in John Dewey, it captured, although it was still present, or previously present to Dewey, it captured American education, and so the test of truth was not, “Is it actually so in reality?” but “Does it work for me?” In terms of this, it can actually be held that a lie is the truth for me because it works. This man’s test of truth was pragmatic. He very candidly admitted that he did not want to die to have death end everything, but he didn’t like the idea of hell, and so reincarnation gave him something which avoided hell and avoided death, a very convenient answer.

But second, we must say that this man’s answer was also man-centered, not God-centered, and this points to a very sorry fact, that today, anthropology has replaced soteriology. Soteriology is the doctrine of salvation by the savior. Anthropology is that doctrine which centers on man. When man talks about salvation today, whether he talks about it in the church or outside of the church, he is talking about anthropology, not theology. He is saying, “This is what I need,” not “This is what God does,” and so his interest is in life insurance, as I have said on previous occasions. He wants life insurance, and that’s why he seeks salvation, whether it’s in the doctrine of reincarnation or in the doctrine of certain so-called evangelical churches. He seeks what he has decided he needs. Humanism focuses on man, so that the emphasis on anthropology as it approaches and perverts the doctrine of salvation is on You need Christ, or You need Krishna, not as the Bible declares, you are a condemned man, under a sentence of death, and you must stop and face the fact of utter total condemnation, and then, the offer of grace, which is totally sovereign grace. This is very different. This is not anthropology. It is theology, and there is a world of difference between the two.

Then third, this man said, “I’d like to have a second chance.” I’ve heard this so many times, and it’s a fraud. Every day, every man has a second chance, but he doesn’t want it. I recall some years ago someone telling me that they were going out of town for the funeral for a friend, and I expressed my sorrow, and they laughed, and they said, “He wasn’t worth much alive, and he isn’t worth much dead,” and then they went on to tell me something about the man, and that it was a good thing he was gone and no longer a problem to his wife and family, and they said, “I’ve known this man from the time he was a kid,” and he said, “You know, when he was thirty, he was saying, ‘If I were only twenty I would do things differently,’ and when he was forty, he would say, ‘If I were only thirty I would do things differently,’ and when he was fifty, he was saying the same thing about forty, and he died saying the same thing about ten years or fifteen years previously. He never wanted another chance. Men want only the opportunity to make excuses. This man had died a bumbler, destroying every opportunity he had. When he demanded a second chance, what he was saying was that he preferred a universe with no law or judgment, no causality, no consequence, which means, no universe.

Then finally, we must say about this man who said he wanted a second chance, and he liked the idea of reincarnation for that reason, that he was at least honest. He wanted the {?}. He wanted ultimacy. He wanted to control his chances. It reminds me of an old reprobate I knew in Nevada a good many years ago, who once said that, and he was half kidding but he was more than half serious. He said, “Salvation would make sense if a man could turn it on five minutes before hell.” Now, of course, that’s the idea that sinner has of salvation. Something that is there for him to use when he needs it. It is anthropology, not soteriology, and that kind of mentality is precisely the mentality of hell. It affirms the sovereignty, the ultimacy of man, but the conquest of the biblical doctrine of salvation as we have seen in the past year and a half, is the sovereignty of God and the kingdom of God. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

Now, this is the context that St. Paul places it in. He does not, as he discusses salvation, place it in the context of myself and my needs. He places it in the context of two men, two humanities: the humanity, the race that is of Adam, and the humanity, the race that is born of Jesus Christ. The focus is off of me, and just one of a race, either of Adam or of Christ, and I must see myself in the context of what Adam did or in the context of what Christ has done. It’s not my need. The emphasis is off of me.

Then, as St. Paul goes on to discuss the significance of this contrast, these two humanities. He says that all, without exception, were made sinners by the fall of Adam, and when Adam fell from his calling, which was to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it, instead of Adam reigning the garden, now death reigned over Adam and over all the world. Condemnation, death ensued from his fall, and this is the inheritance of all, all, St. Paul said, who are members of the humanity of Adam. The law, he says, increases offense. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound.

This is a very significant point, because this man confronts God, or is confronted by God in his sin, his attitude is, “Why is God making so much fuss about a little matter? Why is God making so much fuss about taking the fruit off the tree, or about what I have done?” But what the law does is to increase the offense by spelling out the details of the law, so that as man sees what sin is, he sees the depth of his iniquity. He sees at every point where he has transgressed, the law spells out the full extent of sin, the clear totality of every sin, and also the implications of the totality of obedience, so that as man is confronted by the law, he can no longer say, “Why is God making so much fuss about a little matter?” The enormity of sin, as Murray has pointed out, is emphasized when the law in its fullness is given.

On the other hand, St. Paul tells us we have Christ, the second Adam, the fountainhead of a new humanity. By his grace and the free gift of righteousness, man reigns {?}. Where at once man reigned in the Garden of Eden and then death reigned over him, now in this new humanity, it is man who reigns rather than death. Christ gives his redeemed ones the justification which is unto life and issues in life. Men are made righteous. Grace reigns through righteousness, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Now, Dr. Murray has called attention to the very significant parallel and yet the very significant differences in verses 17 and 21, and this is an aspect of this passage which has too often been ignored. The word “reigned” is used four times, twice with respect to the reign of death, and twice with respect to our reign in Christ. But what a significant difference where the humanity of Christ, the new humanity, the new race, the people of God are concerned. With Adam’s sin, death reigned over man, and this reign of death is in time and in eternity. With the grace and the free gift of righteousness in Jesus Christ, man reigned in time and he reigns in eternity. He reigns, we are told in verse 17, in life, and he reigns again we are told unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Salvation in other words, has as its implication, reign. The Fall has, as its implication, the slavery of man and the reign of death over man. Now, St. Paul emphasizes the reigning in life and the reigning unto eternal life to stress the fullness of this reigning. This is a very important implication, a very important statement, because it strikes directly at the Manichean element, which has so extensively infiltrated the church. Manichaeism is an ancient dualistic faith. Manichaeism, we find in ancient times in an earlier form as Zoastrianism, {?} today, and its essential belief was that there were two gods, the god of light or spirit, and the god of darkness or matter. You could take your choice between the two. Some would worship the one and some the other, and we have varieties of both in the history of dualism, but you had to say that the victory of the one was in one area, so that god of darkness, or of matter, alone could triumph in the world of matter, and if you worshipped the god of light and of spirit, you had to forsake the world of matter and of material things for the world of the spirit.

When this entered into the church and began to influence Christians, they began to do precisely that which Paul had predicted and condemned. Forbidding to marry, forbidding the eating of meats, and so on. Why? Because those things belonged to the false world of matter, and you had to give yourself to the world of spirit. You had to abstract yourself from one world and give yourself to the other.

Moreover, one of the things that Manichaeism as it infiltrated and influenced the church did was to affect the idea of Satan so that Satan ceased to be the person that scripture speaks about, and became this other god.

To Illustrate, according to scripture, Satan is a creature. God created him. He is a fallen creature. Now, all creatures have purely local appearances, and God is a Spirit. God is omnipotent and omnipresent, and God is here in our midst. He is now also at every other point in the universe, and also totally beyond, but I can only be here. No place else. So if an angel of God were sent, which is an impossibility because we are no longer in the day of revelations, to appear before us, he would be here. He would be no where else. Now Satan, as a creature, is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, and yet the commonplace idea that is promulgated by so many today, and the idea that is so very thoroughly promoted by a book about Satan being alive and well on planet earth, is that Satan is somehow everywhere, all the time. He’s whispering in my ear, and he’s whispering in {?}’s ear, and in everybody’s ear all around the world, and working on everybody. Well, of course, the plain fact is that you and I don’t need Satan to give us ideas about sinning. We have enough ideas on our own. We are, by nature, fallen.

Once Adam and Eve accepted the premise of Satan in the Garden of Eden, and humanity began to operate on that basis, the work of Satan was done. He has made his local appearances. He appeared to tempt the various saints, and to tempt our Lord in the wilderness, as a person, but he’s nothing more than that, and he’s not omnipresent.

But Manichaeism, you see, has worked to make him into another god, the god of the world of matter. So, you surrender the world of history and of this life to Satan, and you say, “We’ve got to be raptured out of this world where Satan is in order to be truly the Lord’s, but St. Paul says that we “reign in life by one, Jesus Christ,” and we also reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ, our Lord. He emphasizes definitely the reign in time and eternity, the reign in the world of matter and in the world of spirit, the totality of reign.

Just as the Fall was a total Fall, and the whole of man’s being was involved in the Fall, and death reigned over man, totally, so now, man in Christ reigns in time progressively, reigns in eternity in perfection. Salvation is a total concept. It cannot be limited either to one area of life, or to one sphere of creation. Not only is the conquest of all things an aspect of it, so that man truly reigns in life, but a new creation where Christ totally reigns as king of kings and Lord of Lords is basic and essential to an understanding of the doctrine of salvation, and St. Paul said in Romans 8, that we are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. Next, we are also kings. We reign. A conqueror, and Paul was using a familiar image from the Greco/Roman world, of a conqueror who subjugated the enemies and came back to the capitol for a triumphal reign, for a triumphal entry, to receive the approval of the Emperor, and Paul said we are like that, but we are not only the conqueror, but we are kings in Christ, a royal priest who are those who have been called to exercise dominion and subdue the earth, and in Christ, been redeemed to reign in life and in eternal life. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that we, over whom death once reigned, now through the grace and the gift of righteousness in Jesus Christ, reign in life, and have been called to be more the conquerors in Christ Jesus. Our Lord and our God, awaken us to the glory of our inheritance in Jesus Christ, to our calling and our duty in him, that we might go forth, {?} magnifying {?} and bringing every area of life and thought into captivity to Jesus Christ, our Lord, in whose name we pray. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony]Yes, it is. Now, it isn’t something we can press to the point of saying everyone has a guardian angel. That’s an unwarranted conclusion, but that God does provide guardian angels for his elect, and is mindful of them in more ways than we can imagine. I think he’s very clearly talking scripture, so that we are under the protection of God, and the angels are literally messengers and servants. We are above them. We are the focal point of history.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, because they cannot be invoked in that they have no power independently of God. Our prayers are always directly to God through Christ, because all initiative, all power is in him, like trying to command a private without having any reference to the military rank, and that’s a poor illustration, but a private has to obey orders. He is in a chain of command. He doesn’t’ obey you as a civilian if you give him an order. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. You see, that illustrates my point. He goes to invoke, but always as a person with a local appearance. In other words, I can go to and fro over the earth, but I’m always at a particular point, and Satan, every time he is spoken of in scripture, he’s as a particular person in a particular place, so that he does go to and fro, but he is not everywhere at one and the same time. Yes?

[Audience] What about demon possession?

[Rushdoony] Demons possession is very real, but again, it is not Satan, but a particular demon, you see. We cannot say that everyone everywhere is possessed by a particular demon at one and the same time. It’s purely local. Particular. Just as I cannot be in two places, no demon nor Satan can be at two places at one and the same time. This means that Satan’s work is very limited. It means he doesn’t know what is going to come to pass, anymore than you and I do. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The Screwtape Letters were not trying to give a picture of what the reality about demons are, but a psychological analysis of how sin operates in man. I think it’s been some time since I’ve read them. There’s a great deal of very fine insights there, but C.S. Lewis did not mean to imply that junior devils assigned to you or to me to operate in this particular way, but rather to illustrate how sin and temptation work in the mind of man. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] In what particular {?}

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the question is was William Penn in defiance of God in England before he came to this country? Now, Penn was a Quaker, and it’s been awhile since I’ve read particularly of some of Penn’s belief, but I have studied the origins of the Quakers at that time rather extensively, and in that period in particular, and in the fifty years or so preceding it, the Quakers actually could not be called a Christian group. Their idea was that any one of them could have revelation, and they often did claim to have revelation, that there was an inner light in everyone, they still hold this in a modified form, and in every man, whereby every man has direct access to God, indeed is a part of God and therefore, can have revelation. This was their belief.

Now, one of the things that, for a time, {?} are the extremes of this was the fact that, in James Naylor{?}, who was the real leader, he had priorities and {?}, James Naylor{?} went so far as to see himself, in a sense, as another Christ, which every man, he felt, could be, and he went into Bristol and the Quakers there met him, he was their leader, in a triumphal entry, with them waving branches as though they were palm branches, and hailing him as their Christ. Now, he was arrested and sentenced and convicted because of that, and there was such an outcry against the Quakers because of the Naylor{?} incident, that Fox{?} pulled in his horns and the Quakers, by and large, did. So that they became, for a time, very conservative, and especially in this country, they tended to be very, very conservative, vaguely evangelical, their one thing being their peculiar ways of dress and speech, and their pacifism. To this day, there are elements in Quakerism with little more than fundamentalistic pietism, except for their pacifism.

Now, Penn was of the group that was trying to gain respectability for Quakerism as against the earlier fanatic and religious revolutionaries. Now what his personal position was in this respect,, how far he went, I really don’t know, but this was the background of their movement. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is Did they put conscience before scripture? The answer is very clearly that many of them did. Their inner light was the most important thing in the world. It was the voice of God, so that they were ready to go to very great extremes. They were part of the Anabaptist movement, and on the continent, some {?} of the Anabaptist movement felt that, in good conscience, they could practice polygamy, in good conscience they could do a variety of things that both the law of man and the law of God prohibited.

So that in exalting conscience, what they were doing was to exalt themselves to a place of independence from God and man, to make themselves to be God. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Penn sincerely tried to live at peace with the Indians, so in a sense, this was an impossibility for this reason. We have the illusion that the Indians, and well, this was a rich continent teeming with game, and all you had to do was to come in, and you could live marvelously. This was a myth. This was especially a myth in the eastern half of the United States, because unless you came to a lake or a stream, you could walk from the Atlantic across to Illinois and never see the sun. The forests had grown so thick and so tall, that life had become sterile. There were very few deer, very few rabbits, almost no game, and the Indians regularly, as I point out in my Myth of Overpopulation, starved to death. The Western Indians, until they got the horse from the Spaniard, could not hunt the buffalo, which was a very good source of meat. It was impossible. They rarely got along, except on the most meager hand-to-mouth assistance, and they starved to death, regularly.

Now, when the settlers settled, and they took {?}, you had to figure throughout the entire period of Colonialization whether it was in the East or the Middle West, or the West, two years of capital to begin to earn an income, because it took a lot of work, and this is still true today if you’re starting a business. It takes a good two years before you can expect a return. Now, when they cleared the land, the grass began to grow, and the deer and the rabbits, and other game began to increase. There was feed now. There hadn’t been before because the forests prevented game from growing, and some of the national forests today have the least game in the United States, because there is no selective cutting to enable the grass to grow and the game to abound.

As a result, the Indians always moved to the areas where the White Man were, and the result lead to conflict. Now, if William Penn had not had Scotch Irish Presbyterians there in that area, there would not have been any possibility of living peaceably with the Indians. He let the Scotch Irish do the fighting for him. That’s the truth of the matter. Are there any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Definitely. It speaks of him as the prince of this world because, in the humanity of Adam, he rules, in that his premises govern them. They are under the principle “Ye shall be as gods,” everyman doing that which is right in his eyes, determining good and evil for himself, but the rule of Satan is the rule of anarchy, you see. That’s the premise of Satan, but what does it lead to? Anarchy, and what is Paul? {?} the face of anarchy. So, the rule of Satan is the rule of his premise, but it’s always, instead of being a unified rule, is the total collapse into anarchy in which every man follows that same premise. Now, they are one in sin and death reigns over them, but the idea that either hell or Satan can have a unified realm is to ascribe to the world of Satan the attributes of God. It’s an impossibility, because once you think logically on Satan’s premise, every man is his own universe. Every man is their own god, “Ye shall be as God, knowing, determining for yourself what constitutes good and evil.” So, you don’t’ have a unified order. You have a collapse of order, and this is why as people begin to adopt that premise, what do they do? They wage war against the idea of law and order.

Now very few people are aware of it, but one of the two things that Marx hated the most was anarchism. The other, of course, was God. He opposed God and he called Christianity the opium of the masses. His collected works are full of savage, hateful, diatribes against Christianity. Now, Marx as an intelligent man knew that if you eliminate God, then you have to say there is nothing that’s logical except that every man being his own god, and total anarchy in the universe, but he said, this is impossible. Therefore, we have to have communism and the total dictatorship of the proletariat. But Turner, Max Stirner, in the book, Ego and His Own, said this idea was half-Christian so that anyone who {?} to it was saying, “I don’t want God but I’m going to be a Christian without God.” So he said the logic of it is to abolish all law, all order, and to pray{?} that everything, whether it’s murder, or incest, or rape, or anything is permissible. Then we truly have abandoned God.

Well, Marx wrote volume after volume in a savage attack against Stirner, and a just pure hated, because he could not argue with the logic of it, you see, because it is logical. Stirner was right. Now the significant point is that in recent years, the new left has gone back behind Marx to Stirner. Also, the conservatives have gone to Stirner, to a very great extent. Your libertarian style of conservatives, so that today, the ideas of Stirner, total anarchism, govern the new left, they govern the sexual revolution, they govern the writers of pornography, they are a threat to the Soviet regime so that they are very, very hostile as Marx was to this new wave of anarchism, but the liberals and the Marxists really have no answer except pure hatred for this {?} tendency, because they’ve logically taken this Satanic premise and carried it to its end conclusion. This is why you see, evil cannot triumph. It destroys itself. It leads to total fragmentation, atomization, every man doing his own thing. Now, that’s the triumph of Satan, every man his own god, but it also means the total collapse of all things.

It’s interesting that the Marxists in this country say next to nothing, it’s almost unknown, that Marx spent so much time and effort writing against Stirner. They don’t like to call attention to that for the reason that Marx had to admit, in the process, that Stirner was right, that pragmatically, it was deceptive of atheism, which it is. They don’t like to concede to that. Marx did have to concede that.

Well, our time is up. Let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape