Salvation and Godly Rule

Perfection & Salvation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Perfection & Salvation

Genre: Speech

Track: 11

Dictation Name: RR136F11

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Put on therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, boughs of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, and above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of the great American poets of this century was, in her poetry, very candidly, humanistic. She began her poem, “Moraturus,” with these very telling words. “If I could have two things in one, the peace of the grave and the light of the sun, if I might be insensate matter with sensate me, sitting within, harking and crying, I might begin to dicker with dying.”

Now here in a very few words, we have an important aspect of humanism. Its desire to get the best of all possible world without the responsibilities of any. She expresses the desire to be dead to all that hurts us, and alive to all we can have to enjoy. To have the fullness of all meaning and all value, but not God. To have the peace of the grave, to be dead to anything and everything that hurts us, and the light of the sun, all the sunshine of life. There we have, in a nutshell, the dream of humanism. We see the kind of world they are trying to create, and it is impossible.

In the humanistic sense, perfection is the sum total of everything that man can desire. Together with the absence of all responsibility, accountability, and all problems. To have the heat of the sun, or the light of the sun, and the peace of the grave.

Add to this the fact that humanistic perfectionism sees perfectionism as lawlessness, sinlessness. This is not the biblical meaning of perfection. When we were studying the biblical doctrine of man, we saw that when God says “Be ye perfect even as I am perfect,” a commandment which appears very early, God declaring in Genesis 17:1 to Abraham, “Walk thou before me and be thou perfect,” God was not expecting sinlessness. God does not expect that of man in this world. The word, which in Hebrew and in Greek is perfect, or perfection, means very literally, and the original meaning of the English word was such, maturity, uprightness, and of course, this is why it could be used in the preamble in the Constitution, “a more perfect union.” When we dealt with the doctrine of man, I pointed out that they weren’t using bad grammar there, which it is now, because when we think of perfection as sinlessness, flawlessness, you cannot speak of a more perfect union, but when you use it in the biblical sense of maturity, uprightness, then you can talk about amore perfect union. You can ask man, as God asked Abraham, “Walk thou before me and be thou perfect.”

Now, when you ask for perfection in the humanistic sense of sinless, flawless, behavior, then you’re imposing on humanity a standard that is an impossibility. Then, of course, it leads to cynicism, and of course, this is the expectation humanistic man has of himself and of others. He wants sinless perfection, primarily of others. He feels that he himself in what he is is just about that, and if he isn’t quite there, it’s such a small gap that it’s hardly worth talking about. I recall once a man who was flagrantly and consistently guilty of adultery saying, “Why should I cheat on my wife? Once you find out what women are like, you either cheat on them or become their patsy.” This was his statement. Now, his wife was a very normal woman, a good woman, far from sinless and perfect in the modern, humanistic sense, but far better than he deserved, but what was his attitude? Well, he summed it up in another statement, “If I could find a perfect woman, believe me I wouldn’t act this way.” Now, of course, that’s fine hypocrisy, and of course, perfectionism always lead to disillusion, humanistic perfectionism. It demands things of other people that are impossible, and then it uses it for a justification for the way of life that they lead. How unkind of God, or of my wife, or of my husband, that I haven’t gotten the kind of sinlessness and flawlessness that I deserve,” and of course, marriage becomes impossible under those circumstances, {?} it can become quite congenial and quite happy if we don’t expect that.

I was very much amused Friday night, sitting in a hotel room in Indianapolis, in George Marhegan’s{?} room, to have him remark as he looked at his watch, and it was about twenty minutes past time to go upstairs to the banquet room where he was going to be speaking. For a change, I was doing the listening that week, and he said, “I’ve been married forty-two years to my wife, and I don’t recall that she’s ever been on time once,” and he wasn’t at all worked up about it or irritated. He was very proud of his wife, but he knew that he wasn’t flawless and he knew that she wasn’t, and he was ready to live with her imperfections because he knew she was ready to live with his, and so it’s a very happy relationship, a very workable one. Of course, our tendency is to expect the other to live with our faults rather than we with theirs, and that’s what leads to trouble.

Humanistic perfection, you see, demands the peace of the grave with the light of the sun, and this is why, of course, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s life was so tragic. Perhaps the greatest lyric poet of this century, or even longer, she very quickly became an alcoholic and wound up apparently a suicide. It is an impossibility to have the peace of the grave with the light of the sun, to be dead to everything that hurts and alive to everything that is good. When this attitude is applied to all of life and to politics, it leads to the politics of disintegration as a means to regeneration. It means the politics of self-righteousness, of expecting perfection in the humanistic sense of all others while we ourselves, as our own laws, our own standard can be what we please.

America entered the world of power politics, of cynical worldly wise politics with Woodrow Wilson, at the same time the politics of perfectionism. It was Woodrow Wilson who declared that the world had to be made safe for democracy, who pulled every unethical tactic possible as he got us into the war, and then somehow expected everybody else to behave sinlessly and flawlessly, so that the world could be made safe for democracy, and Franklin Delanor Roosevelt indulged in the same tactics in World War 2, and proclaimed the four freedoms, and somehow the world was to be grateful, and become sinless and flawless, and everything was to be alright. We have, today, an American facade of innocence before the world, and the world is somehow terrible and wicked, and that’s the standard that every other country takes. It’s the stand of humanism. How terrible that everyone else is sinful and has faults, when we are perfect. We are like sheep among wolves. This, today, is the foreign stance of every country in the world, and it’s a product of humanism, or else, if this is denied, then you have the attitude of the student revolutionaries who turn savagely and bitterly against their country because somehow it has some faults.

Stephen Decatur’s stand, My Country, Right or Wrong, But My Country is held up as the epitome as something that is somehow horrible. Now, Decatur was not a blind chauvinist. He was not a man who was saying, “I will do anything immoral that the government commands me to do, and I will whitewash it.” He was simply saying, “I recognize that we have faults, but it’s still my country, and the only way we’re going to improve things is by loyalty to that which we have an improvement of it,” and yet today, this healthy realistic attitude of Decatur’s is held up as the symbol of everything that is horrible. When the attitude is either we affirm total innocence or the total depravity of our country.

This is humanistic perfectionism. It’s inability to face things realistically. It wants the grave and the sun at one and the same time. Its god is man. Therefore, perfection must come from men, that every cross God expects perfection from everything except itself. If I am my own god, I shall expect all other people to meet my standards without feeling that I must conform to them. After all, I am the law-maker. I don’t have to meet the standards that I require of other people, and the result is a breakdown of human relationships. We make influence by humanism impossible expectations of others, but we refuse to accept our own faults and sins. We judge people not by God’s law, but by our own, and we have a double standard in judging people. We find people tactless, whereas, when we are guilty of the same thing, we are honest and forthright. If we keep house poorly, we put it down to being more concerned with important things, but if others do the same thing, we call them sloppy.

We do this all the time. We have two standards; one for the world and another for ourselves, because we are under the influence of humanist, and it crops up in us all the time. I recall once when Dorothy said she loved me and was quite ready to live with her fault, I told her I was ready to meet her halfway. I would live with my own faults also. I said that in humor, but there was more than humor intended, because I am a sinner, like everyone else, and this element of humanistic perfectionism crops up in all of us, and we want the world to give us the peace of the grave and the light of the sun.

One girl expressed herself very cynically regarding all men, what beasts they were. Why? She had had an affair as a young woman and she had been dumped by the man after awhile, and so all men were no good. She would never trust another man, but there was nothing in her remarks about the fact that there were two people involved in that, and both of them began by breaking God’s law, and the only reason he parted with her first was that she didn’t see a better one come along before he did, and of course, her reaction was very interesting. She has become an expert in antiques, wants nothing to do with people. She wants perfection and so she’s going to the past to find the best in the past to become an expert in that, and to forsake the world of reality. The peace of the grave and the light of the sun. Humanism wants the best of all possible worlds, and just as this girl saw nothing in her past that made her guilty, but only the sins of the world, not her own, so the humanist in every age refuses to see that which he has done, but only the sins of others.

But John Greenleaf Whittier, by way of contrast, gives us a vivid but brief account in his poem, Snowbound, of a Calvinistic doctor who, during a storm when everyone was snowbound, went out to make his call, and he expected others to meet his standard because he first met it himself. Listen to the words of Whittier:

“We heard once more the sleigh-bells' sound;

And, following where the teamsters led,

The wise old Doctor went his round,

Just pausing at our door to say,

In the brief autocratic way

Of one who, prompt at Duty's call

Was free to urge her claim on all,

That some poor neighbor sick abed

At night our mother's aid would need.”

Here, we have a different standard. Whittier’s doctor could feel free to call on a neighbor to a sick woman and say, “You’re going to do thus and so for your neighbor, because he first himself had responded to duty’s call.” When God therefore says, “Walk thou before me and be thou perfect,” He’s not using the word in the humanistic sense. He is speaking as the sovereign God, and in Genesis 17:1 when God says, “I am the almighty God, walk thou before me and be thou perfect,” the Hebrew for Almighty God is “El Shaddai,” meaning The God Strong So as to Overpower.

Calvin, in his Commentary, gives us something of the meaning of what God here said, and he declares that “God thereby declared that He had sufficient power for Abram’s protection, because our faith can only stand firmly while we are certainly persuaded that the defense of God is alone sufficient for us, and can sincerely despise everything in the world which is opposed to our salvation. God therefore does not boast of that power which lies concealed within himself, but of that which He manifests towards His children, and he does so in order that Abram might hence derive materials for confidence. Thus, in these words, a promise is included.”

Thus, God, when He declares himself to be the Almighty God is not speaking of His hidden power, but declares that He is{?} God strong so as to overpower, so that when he is to walk with uprightness and with maturity, he is there when we so walk, to overpower those things which stand against us. And Calvin goes on to say concerning the commandment, “Walk before me and be thou perfect,”

“In making the covenant, God stipulates for obedience on the part of His servant, yet He does not in vain prefix the declaration that He is the Almighty God and is furnished with power to help His own people, because it was necessary that Abram should be recalled from all other means of Hell, that he might entirely devote himself to God alone. For no one will ever betake himself to God but he who keeps created things in their proper place and looks up to God alone, Where indeed the power of God has been once acknowledged, is so ought to transport us with admiration, and our minds ought so to be filled with reverence for him, that nothing should hinder us from worshiping Him. Moreover because the eyes of God look for faith and trust in the heart, Abram is commanded to aim at integrity, for the Hebrews call him a man of perfections, who is not of a deceitful or double mind, but sincerely cultivates rectitude. In short, the integrity here mentioned is opposed to hypocrisy, and surely when we have to deal with God, no place for dissimulation remains. Now, from these words, we learn what for what end God gathers together for himself a church, namely, that they whom He has called may be holy. The foundation indeed of the divine calling is a gratuitous promise, but it follows immediately after that they whom he hast chosen as a peculiar people to himself should devote themselves to the righteousness of God, for on this condition, He adopts children as his own, that He may in return obtain the place and the honor of a father, and as He himself cannot lie, so He rightly demands mutual fidelity from His own children. Wherefore, let us know that God manifests himself to the faithful in order that they may live as in his sight, and may make him the arbiter not only of their works, but of their thoughts, whence also we infer that there is no other method of living past the unjustly than that of depending upon God.”

Now, St. Paul speaks about the same matter in our text when he calls upon the elect of God to cloth themselves in vows {?} or a heart of mercy, kindness, humbleness of heart, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye, and above all these things put on charity which is the bond of perfectness. The last sentence can be better translated, “Over all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” Now, this is very important because when we understand the philosophy and the thought of the day, we realize what St. Paul was talking about.

You and I today can catch a reference in someone’s remarks, to say the political scene of our day, because we’re in the context, and sometimes we miss the context of what St. Paul is talking about. So, when he says “over all these things, put on charity which is the bond of perfectness,” he was definitely and openly striking at Gnosticism. The Gnostics, the Greek and Roman philosophers of the day, because they were good Platonists, held that the philosopher king was the one who was over all, and his elite, technical knowledge, his expertise, should be over all things to ensure perfection, just as the person today who is a leftist, or a liberal, or a Marxists believes that the world, to attain perfection in the humanistic sense, should have an elite group of scientific experts running everything, and then society and man can reach its perfection. So also believed the Greek and the Romans of St. Paul’s day. So that if you discussed virtues with them, they would say, “But over all these things must be knowledge,” and by knowledge they meant the expertise of the ruling elite, the planners of society. Then you would have the perfect world.

Then all things would go well between men, but St. Paul says, speaking of God’s concept of perfection, that it requires grace, patience, forgiving one another, growing in grace, and above all, charity, as you deal with one another in your mutual growth, in your mutual striving for growing uprightness, perfection in Christ. Put on charity, which is the bond of perfect behavior, of perfection, of perfectness. It is that which ties together the maturity, the righteousness, the growth that a man has in Christ and without that bond, it isn’t maturity, it isn’t perfection. The Gnostic perfection was sought in knowledge and it was the ground for despising the common herd, but it could not be so in Christ.

The Gnostic perfection led to a radical intolerance for man, a despising of everyone else who was of the common herd, and ultimately, as it has developed in the modern humanistic tradition, for all other men except oneself. I recall some years ago when I was on the Indian reservation, an Indian official who was very popular among the Indians, and once in talking with him, I found out just how he felt. He had a total contempt for the Indians. He said very bluntly they were no better than animals. The only way to life then was as animals. You could have a dog for your pet and like dogs very much, but not if you took them as people, and so he treated them as animals. As animals, he liked them. He could make them as pets. He could be very good to them, but he couldn’t see them as people, and of course, ultimately, this was apparent. He was long popular, but finally it came out, because it cannot lead to a bond between man and man if you have this kind of attitude.

When we expect men to meet the standards of God’s infallible word, whether they are white, or black, or red, we then treat them as creatures made in the image of God, now fallen but capable by grace of exercising knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion under God. We then say they are capable of perfection, of righteousness, and we strive to meet God’s standards and expect others to meet them also, with charity towards one another as the bond of perfectness, but when pagan perfection is transferred into Christianity, it rejects people and it rejects the world as impossible. It seeks a perfect world order in the sense of a flawless, sinless one, and it rejects the law of God because it says you can’t expect God’s kingdom here.

The Dispensationalists are logical. They say the law will have its place in the millennial kingdom. They see the relationship with the law and the kingdom, but they see it as hopeless here and now, because their idea of perfection is sinless, flawless, perfection, not maturity and righteousness, and growth in grace. They reject time and history in favor of a withdrawal to wait for the perfect world. They reject maturity and growth, and they manifest, as a result, a perpetual childishness, but to reject these things is to reject the calling of God. “Walk thou before me, and be thou perfect.” It is to deny salvation and to become irrelevant to the world and to God. God summons us saying, “Walk thou before me, and be thou perfect.” Exercise knowledge. Grow in righteousness and holiness. Develop your dominion, and I will be with thee. I will never leave thee nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me.” Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us to walk before thee, and hast given us grace that we may walk in perfectness, in uprightness with sincerity and maturity. Bless our daily walk, O Lord, and grant that where the soles of our feet may tread, there we may be more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. Grant us this, we beseech thee. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Are there any questions now, first of all, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] The whole of the chapter, of course, is a summons to walk in Christ, to the end that we might become perfect, upright, sincere, mature in Him, and everything in the chapter is, of course, said to that end. Yes?

[Audience] {?} peace {?}

[Rushdoony] Perfect peace. Now, in the humanistic sense, perfect peace would be one in which there is no sin, no flaw, nothing mars the surface. It’s like waters that are without a ripple, total quiet, totally quiet. Now, in terms of scripture, the idea of peace is a developing concept. Peace is not just something that you reach and there it is always. The peace that a child knows is perhaps more untroubled than the peace an adult can know, but the adult’s peace is a far deeper, profounder peace. It’s a peace he can know in the midst of a storm, in the midst of troubles and problems, and the peace that Christ offers is a peace that is not of this world, and it can be in the context of a very troubled world. So, you see, perfect peace is something different in the Christian sense than in the sense of the world, in which it’s an unruffled, unbroken service{?}. The peace of God can be in the context of problems, of trials, of griefs, and it’s a thing that matures, from child to the man to the very mature Christian.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, very well put. In the humanistic sense, peace really is dead. That’s why Edna St. Vincent Millay, very tellingly, without realizing how much she was revealing, spoke of the peace of the grave. You see the association there. The peace of the grave. It’s associated with death, and that’s why the peace symbol is, you’re right, a symbol of death, of surrender. This is what they want, the peace of the grave and the light of the sun. Somehow, they’re going to get both things, only they don’t. They lose both. Yes?

[Audience] Rush, I {?} children, {?} scriptures teach {?} children before they reach the age of {?} who are allowed to take communion

[Rushdoony] That’s a very controversial question, and most people would say, “no.” Now, that’s been a subject that has been major controversy throughout the history of the church. The early church gave communion to children at the earliest age that they were able to speak and have any elementary understanding, so that they were really not much more than babies, because in the Old Testament, the communion service, or Passover, included the entire family and the service began with the smallest boy who was able to speak and have any grasp of anything, he could be only four or five in some cases, asking the question, “What is the meaning of this service?” and then the father explained the meaning of the service to him before they proceeded. So it was felt in the early church that, not only were the children to be a part of the Eucharist, but the service was, in a sense, to be geared to them, to make known to them, that as covenant children what Christ had done for them. Well, this finally passed out of practice. At the time of the Reformation, it became again an open subject. The Council of Trent condemned this, because it had become again an open question in view of the Protestant movement, and so in one of it concluding decrees, the Council of Trent condemned all those who said that children should receive the sacrament. This condemnation of course, was for Catholic circles but it, in a sense, affected the Protestants as well because they figured we’ve got enough issues to fight about these days, so they went along with it and it again became the practice to withhold it. I’m perhaps the only one, in this day and age, who has revived the old position, and feels that it should be once again considered.

[Audience] {?} children {?} except {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, yes. About ten years ago, when I was here speaking, and before small group ministers, there was an informal debate between a Baptist theologian of some prominence and myself on infant baptism, and he made the point that infant baptism was no longer valid, that the Old Testament circumcision of children didn’t mean the baptism of children in the New Testament, and he said if it is still valid, if infant baptism applies, then infant communion should apply also, and he said, “Of course, no one believes that,” and I said, “Well, I do. I take the covenant seriously. The early church believed that infant baptism meant infant communion,” and I said, “I hold to the same position,” and that kind of jarred him because that was his climaxing argument that the covenant position, no one took seriously and literally, and it does require it logically, and the fact is that in the Old Testament, you had it, so if there’s any continuity between the Old and the New, it should follow, and that without exception, the early church practiced it. No one ever dreamed that it didn’t apply. Now, the early church is very strict on communion. When the communion was served, all persons who were not Christians were asked to leave the service so that they could be there for the preaching part of it, the first part of the liturgy, and then there was a stop in the liturgy, and the summons for all those who were not members of Jesus Christ to depart, before they partook of the sacred mysteries. This was the way it was worded, and then it was served to all including the small children, and no one can dispute that fact because you find it so abundantly in the records. Yes?

[Audience] Berkhof, babies had to be Old Testament {?} baptism {?} New Testament {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t recall what Berkhof said there, I’ll have to check on it. It sounds interesting and important. Well, our time is up now. 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