Salvation and Godly Rule

Salvation & Sovereignty

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Salvation & Sovereignty

Genre: Speech

Track: 04

Dictation Name: RR136B4

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of them that fear Him. He also will hear their cry and will save them. Oh thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we come to thee according to thy word to commit unto thee our every desire and hope in Jesus Christ. We thank thee, our God, that thou art He who dost rule and overrule in our lives, that thou hast governed us in spite of ourselves, and hast brought us to a goodly place, and so, our God, we thank thee. We commit until thee all our todays and our tomorrows. We thank thee that thou art sovereign, and we beseech thee, our Father, in thy mercy to be mindful of us, and of the suffering saints the world over, and minister unto their every need, to comfort them in their afflictions and to strengthen them in their witness. Bless us now by thy word and by thy spirit, and grant us thy peace. In Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture is Isaiah 45:20-23. Salvation and Sovereignty. “Assemble yourselves and come; draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a god that cannot save. Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the Lord? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.”

Babel declares over and over again that God is eternal, immutable or unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty, free, and absolute. It declares moreover that from all eternity, He ordained all things that come to pass. God is absolute and sovereign.

Now the biblical idea of God militates against the idea of God that other nations have maintained. Thus, the god of Greek philosophy is not sovereign, and the god of other religions similarly lack sovereignty. For example, when Greek philosophy spoke about God, it maintained that God was always bound by the idea of the good, the true, and the beautiful, which were above and beyond God, that there were certain ideas, truths which governed not only man but god as well. In other words, it was not god that was sovereign, but certain ideas, universals, or truths. No, the reverse is true in the Bible. The good, the true, and the beautiful are governed by God and His being. God is sovereign. Nothing exists by which He can be judged, for all things are judged by Him. That is good which God declares to be good, which conforms again to His being, and the same is true of the concept of the beautiful. God is the principle of all judgment.

When we studied the name of God some time ago, we saw that God declared this from the beginning. When Moses asked God to define Himself, God refused, saying, “I am that I am. Thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me.” God’s name, Jehovah is simply I am that I am, or it can be translated, He who is. God cannot be defined because He is the principle of definition. The so-called definitions of God are simply a catalog of His attributes. Thus, we must say that God is the only true existentialist, because He alone is self-existent, and can be understood only in terms of himself. Now, this makes clear what Existentialism is. It is simply the outworking of the original sin of man to be as God, because the existentialist such as Sartre says that man has simply existence, no essence, no nature, no one has made him. He is, and he owes his existence to nothing and to no one, and therefore, he, as his own god, makes his essence or nature, and then turns and makes the world.

This, of course, is attempting to say that man is his own god. Because God is sovereign, He can save man and only He can. This is the point of our text. God declares emphatically to all the peoples of the world that their idolatry, their religions, are false, because they pray unto gods that cannot save. Only a God who absolutely creates, governs, and determines all things can save, and so God begins by declaring, “Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time?” Who has declared in advance that which he will do, and has done it? Not probably. Not fifty percent or ninety percent of the time, but always, infallibly, and so God declares There is no God else beside me, a just God and a savior. There is none beside. God alone determines all things. God alone has created all things. God alone is sovereign, and therefore, God alone can save.

Moreover, what God declares here is that He is a just God and a savior. Now, of course, in humanistic thinking, these two things are contrary. To be both just and also to save is a contradiction, because justice must condemn and a savior must save, and so, humanistically, these two things are not reconcilable. How can one condemn and at the same time, redeem? Only because God is sovereign can He through Jesus Christ, His Son, both at the same time absolutely condemn in the cross, and at the same time, save, and therefore, God says, “Look unto me and be saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else,” none other who is self-existent. God is He who is, not the world of matter, not the world of spiritual being, not the world of men. None of them can save, but they are self-existent. I have sworn by myself the word has gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, but unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear,” and so God declares that in time to come before the end of the world, the oath in every court of law shall be in the name of the triune and sovereign God, and whether men believe or not, they shall bow at the name of God because He shall prevail. His righteousness and truth shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.

Over and over again, scripture emphasizes the sovereignty of God. Proverbs 16:4 declares, “The Lord hath made all things for himself, yea even the wicked for the day of evil.” Zechariah 10:4 declares, “Out of Him came forth the corner, out of him the nail, out of him the battle bow, out of him every oppressor together.” Nothing, therefore, can be understood unless we begin with God as their maker. To begin with anything else is to wind up in contradiction. This has been the destiny of men and of their {?}, their knowledge. They begin with the world and they end up with contradictions. Thus, on the one hand, some thinkers begin with the material universe, or with energy and the nature of energy, and they end up in a blind determinism in which they cannot even allow the existence of mind, nor consciousness, and they speak of mind and of consciousness as an epiphenomena. Others, beginning with historic humanism’s emphasis on the freedom of man, must emphasize absolute freedom and therefore, deny what their fellow humanists are affirming in the way of determinism. Over and over again, this dichotomy has been apparent in human thought.

Thus, at the very beginnings of Greek philosophy, we find this fact. Thus, Heraclitus, writing about 536 to 470 BC, saw the mutability, the passing away, the changing of all things, and he declared, “It is not possible to step twice in the same river. It is impossible to touch the same mortal substance twice through the rapidity of change. They scatter and again combine, and approach and separate.” All things, Heraclitus held, are random and changing. He said, “The fairest universe is but a dust heap, and piled up at random. Those who step into the same river have different waters flowing ever upon them.” Total change, total mutability.

On the other hand, Parmenides, writing about the same time, said that all things are the same, and he held that there was one unchanging substance behind all changes and behind thoughts and matter, and he declared, “For it is the same thing to think and to be. It is all the same thing to me from which point I begin, for I shall return again to this same point.” The more things change, Parmenides held, the more the same they are. Now, both men as philosophers and scientists were looking at the same set of data, from a humanistic perspective. They were beginning with the world and they could not reconcile the paradoxes, the seeming contradiction. This is the fallacy of the humanistic approach, that by beginning with the sovereign God and His infallible word, all these problems disappear. He is, as He declared, a just God and a savior, all those things which man cannot reconcile in their thinking are reconciled in Him. Thus, God both predestined and man has a secondary freedom. In God himself there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. He declares, “I am the Lord, I change not,” but again we are told that God is not a prisoner of his nature. Our God is in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased, so he is also, at one and the same time, absolutely free.

Now, man under God has a secondary freedom and a secondary council or purpose. Man has a secondary therefore, but real part in salvation. Salvation is entirely of God as far as any primary causality is concerned, but because it is not determinism but predestination, man has a secondary role. The Westminster Confession says “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” In other words, God absolutely determines all things, but because we have a secondary causality and a secondary freedom, it is without violence to our will, and there is a reality to our secondary determination.

Thus, the absolute ordination of first causes does not, as the confessions say, take away the contingency of secondary causes. For example, nothing is more contingent than the lot, the casting of dice, as theologians for long have pointed out, but scripture tells us “the lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.”

Existentialism, however, requires an absolute and primary freedom for man, and as a result, it insists that man must be his own god, and that there can be only one kind of causality, one kind of freedom and causality of God. Jean Paul Sartre has said in his book, Existentialism and Human Emotion, “The best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human reality is to say that man is the being whose project is to be God. God, value, and supreme end of transcendence represents the permanent limit in terms of which man makes known to himself what he is. To be man means to reach toward being God, or if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God.” Man is thus alone. He must be his whole universe and, as a result, since man is alone and is his whole universe, Sartre must describe all mean. He wants total existential freedom. He has no principle of definition outside of himself. He begins, therefore, with nothing but being, but then Sartre says that since man cannot live as an anarchist, and Sartre is a socialist, he must surrender his being to society. He must seek his death in the masses, and so, he says, man must nihilate his own being, and he declares, “We can understand after these remarks that the abstract, ontological “desire to be” is unable to represent the fundamental, human structure of the individual. It cannot be an obstacle to his freedom. Freedom, in fact, is strictly identified with nihilation. The only being which can be called free is the being which nihilates its being. Moreover, we know that nihilation is lack of being and cannot be otherwise. Freedom is precisely the being which makes itself a lack of being.” That he is simply saying is, the only way to be existentially free is to commit suicide, in effect, to become so much a part of mass man that you no longer having any being to become, as it were, nothing but a nail or a board in a building. Not surprisingly, another Existentialist, Andre Malraux, who was an associate and a minister of DeGalle in France, said that Existentialism means the death of God, and the death of God means the death of man.

Thus, when man says, “I will not allow an existential God and I will be my own existential god and savior,” he ends up by saying, the final step towards being my own god is to destroy myself, to declare the death of man. This salvation, therefore, as very clearly stated by Sartre, is nihilation, which is simply a sophisticated word for suicide, but the sovereignty of God being real means that salvation is real. The sovereignty of man, because it means man must be his own savior, ends up in this kind of absurdity in which man nihilates his own being. A god who saves must be sovereign, personal, omniscient or all-wise, and omnipotent. He must be, in other words, self-existent; he who is. Man, in society, cannot say that they are existential, self-existent, but existentialism leads them to make this claim.

Now, the God of scripture is beyond this world. He is transcendental, but the gods of existentialism emerge out of this world. They rival man, and therefore, they can only obliterate man. They cannot allow him a secondary freedom. In his popular book among intellectuals this past year was B.F. Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity, which was behaviorist’s call for the suicide of man. What B.F. Skinner says in his book is purpose, aims, and goals are all mythical. Man cannot have these things. This is the myth, the hangover from Christianity. Man, he declares, is totally a product of his environment, totally determined by his environment. B.F. Skinner wants then, to save man from what he believes are his pressing problems, overpopulation and pollution, and the failure of man to govern himself, and so he wants the total control of men, either through chemistry, or electrodes implanted in the brain or some such way, so that all men are controlled by a handful of scientifically elite planners. Incidentally, his research along these lines was financed by the federal government. The tests he has established to produce the kind of person he wants, are now used by industry, so that if you apply for a job with most corporations, the test is to determine if you are this kind of a mindless person that B.F. Skinner feels is a good cog in the social machine.

Thus, how are Skinner and his associates going to escape this same determinism? This same total and absolute mindless control by their environment? Very significantly, another group of humanists of Stanford have criticized Skinner because they have said what he is asking is that we believe, after having presented a world that is mindless in which man in nothing but a product, he suddenly says, “I will be the Deus ex machina, the god out of the machine, who can save man,” so he is at one and the same time one of us, and then he is suddenly a god who is over us, and they are right, but of course, the solution of the Stanford thinkers {?} is precisely the same thing. Their only argument with Skinner is who is going to be the god over the mob? The salvation of Skinner is total control, total slavery. It is to make us give them mindless, purposeless, obedience to the new gods of being.

Salvation by anyone other than the sovereign God of scripture is simply that. These men are right in this respect. They recognize that salvation is inseparable from sovereignty. No one can save unless he absolutely governs and controls. They have a plan of salvation, therefore, they offer us their total control. Thus, while they may talk against the idea of predestination and {?}, their only objection to it is that this total control is in the hands of God. They want it in their own hands. They have seen the link between salvation and sovereignty. The tragedy today is that whereas Skinner and these men see the link, the churches are busy denying it, and they apologize for the doctrine of predestination. They apologize for the predestination that God has to offer, and the people in the pews {?} a dimension of predestination and sovereignty. They cannot negate the fact of sovereignty, but they seek to escape it, they also run from salvation, and if they will not have God to be sovereign, men like Skinner will be sovereign over them. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who with thy sovereign grace and mercy hath redeemed us through Jesus Christ, thine only begotten Son. Make us strong by thy spirit and by word, that we may challenges and shake down all the false gods with their false claims to sovereignty and salvation, that thy saving power may stand forth, that thy truth may be declared unto this generation and the generations to come. We thank thee that thou hast called us to be thy people, that thou hast commissioned us to serve thee. Make us strong and effectual, Oh Lord, in the commission of our {?}. In Jesus name. Amen.

[Are there any questions now] on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The scripture forbids all representation that has a religious purpose that is connected with worship. In the temple, as in the tabernacle, there were various representations of things and figures, and trees, and plants. These had a purpose of beauty, not to be worshipped, and therefore, they were legitimate, but anything that is used in terms of worship is strictly forbidden.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. In such cases, the ark has a purpose in terms of worship, and therefore, it is forbidden. Now, we do know from the scripture that there were actual, realistic representations in the tabernacles, in the temples; the brazen bulls, the laver, the pomegranates, the various flowers and plants that were portrayed in the tapestry and in the various furnishings. None of this, however, could be associated with the altar. The altar could not even have the handiwork of man. It had to be a natural stone, because where worship was concerned, man has nothing to offer. He receives. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What comes first is the absolute predestination of God. God has determined from all eternity all things that come to pass, the very hairs of our head, everything that we do, and yet at one and the same time, we must say that ours is the secondary causality, it is real just as we are real. So the priority belongs, of course, to the first cause{?}. But it does not eliminate the reality of the secondary causes. Now, this is a difficult thing but it’s hard to follow the thinking here, but without it, thinking becomes impossible. You end up in blind determinism, mindlessness, and you have to say man is not real, thinking is not real, nothing is real.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, a secondary cause is a cause that has been put into motion by something else. In other words, you did not make yourself. You were born of your parents, so that you are not your own maker. You parents, in turn, were born of someone else. The first cause is he who at the beginning made all things and he who continually sustains all things.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It is still free because you did without violence to your will. Now, God from all eternity decreed that you were going to be here today, and yet no one forced you to come, unless maybe your wife, but I doubt that she could, you see. You came of your own free will because you chose to come, so it was not violent to your will. It’s because of the reality of these secondary causes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, you do. You have the freedom to be yourself, you see. What you are doing is to confuse secondary freedom with primary freedom. Primary freedom is freedom which is totally without any government from any extraneous source, and God alone has absolute freedom. God alone does all things without reference to anything else, but your freedom is limited by a great many things.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, you see, you are insisting on defining freedom only in terms of primary freedom, and you can’t do that.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Then you would end up in the position, you see, of some Chinese philosophers who said since everything must have been determined by nature somewhere in the beginning, not God, therefore, man has no freedom. Therefore, man is not real, and I’m just a dream dreamed up by nature, a myth, you see. You eliminate yourself if you take away your secondary freedom. You would have to say then I am mindless. I am purposeless since everything was predetermined, but predestination is not determinism. Determinism says there is only one cause. Predestination says there is the primary cause of God, and there are secondary causes which we are.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, you see, the problem is that for so long, our education and our training has been so totally humanistic, and humanism insists that man is God, that we have come to think only in terms of one kind of freedom. Now, of course, earlier, the humanist would not push the limits of that freedom, but now he has to push it to the limits because he is being logical, and therefore, he has to say it has to be a total freedom, like the freedom of God, or I am not free. Yes? Did you want to contribute something to this?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Ultimately it is a question of faith, and as St. Anselm said, “I believe in order that I may understand.”

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s very true, and you see, you have a hand in determining those things which are under you. Now, that’s not an absolute determination but you have a priority over your family, over your job, and so on. So that when you say secondary causes, you also are taking in everything second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on. So, while we are passive towards God and that he determines us, we are active towards the world around us and underneath us. So, under God, we are determining that which is around us by his law word. Any other questions now? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I didn’t quite hear that.

[Audience]

[Rushdoony] {?} Incidentally, we will return to the subject of last Wednesday next week. Next Sunday. Salvation and Dominion will be our subject, so we will be touching on what John Wycliffe had to say because it is extremely important to the doctrine of salvation. Are there any other questions now? Yes?

[Audience]

[Rushdoony] We have choice and we have responsibility. Yes. Accountability. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s not easy to understand, but it does require faith to understand. We understand by accepting that it is so, and then little by little the understanding follows. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] All men.

[Audience] All men.

[Rushdoony] All men. Skinner feels that men are simply a product of their environment, that purpose, mind, goals, ends, all these things that speak of mind and consciousness are irrelevant in any discussion of man. He is a total behaviorist.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No. When men do not escape their environment because they make their environment, you see. So, it’s not a question of escaping but man making his environment.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t escape is a good word. He developed in terms of his own character and his own potentialities, and he used them under God. The term “escaping our environment” has environmentalist connotation to a degree. Washington chose to do certain things and did them. Others who were in the same environment chose not to do them. Very often you can find twins with equal talents and ability, identical twins, and one will choose one course, and the other will choose another, and it isn’t that the one escaped from his environment, but that with godly responsibility, he developed that which he had and the other did not.

Our time really is up now. I’d like to remind you of the Chalcedon Guild dinner meeting with Dr. Truman Davis speaking on the medical aspects of Christ’s crucifixion, and these notices are on the lectern in the back, and I urge your attendance to this. It is an outstanding event. Dr. Davis is a remarkable speaker and he has something to say that I think is very important and will add to the dimension of your Christian life and thinking. So, this is desired and this is first and are here, so that you can hand them your reservation forms after the benediction. 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.

End of tape