Salvation and Godly Rule

Evil

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Evil

Genre: Speech

Track: 25

Dictation Name: RR136N25

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

{?} silence before him. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy hill, for the Lord our God is holy. Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary. Praise Him for His mighty acts. Praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we come into thy presence mindful of how rich thou hast made us in Jesus Christ, and mindful how often we fail to thank thee for all thy blessings. We thank thee, our Father when, behind the Iron Curtain countless Christians live persecuted and in chains. We are free to worship thee and are surrounded by the abundance of thy material and spiritual care. O Lord, our God, make us truly thankful, and make us joyful in thy service, confident in thy grace, assured in thy victory, that in all things we may be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray. Amen.

Our scripture is from the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, the sixth chapter, verses 20-23. Romans 6:20-23, and our subject: Evil. “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

To understand what scripture means when it speaks about our salvation from sin, from evil. It is important for us to understand what those terms mean. We cannot fully comprehend the nature of our salvation, until we are aware of what it is that our salvation involved, what it saves us from. We all, in a sense know what evil is, but when it comes to defining it precisely, at this point we generally become fuzzy.

Let us begin therefore, with a good dictionary definition of evil, and for this, let us turn back to the original 1828 edition of Noah Webster’s dictionary, the first one. In that dictionary, Noah Webster gave us an excellent summary statement. “Evil is natural, or moral.” In other words, there are usually two kinds of evil that are distinguished. Natural evil is anything which produces pain, distress, loss, or calamity, or which in any way disturbs the peace, impairs the happiness, or destroys the perfection of natural things. Moral evil is any deviation of a moral agent from the rules of conduct prescribed either by God or by legitimate human authority, or it is any violation of the plain principles of justice, or rectitude.

Now, this is an excellent statement. It gives us, very clearly, the basic aspects of the problem. There is moral evil. Moral evil is the kind of thing that the Ten Commandments is talking about, sins against God and man. Physical evil takes us into the realm of things like hurricanes and floods, earthquakes, diseases, and death itself. These are all physical evils. How shall be understand them and how does salvation affect either or both of them?

Now it is at this point that modern man has conspicuously failed to cope with the problem. When we study the attempts of the modern world to define evil, we begin to realize why we have some of the problems that we do. The Dictionary of Philosophy, for example, just falls apart at this point. It gives us a grab bag of several ideas about what evil might be without really knowing which it is, so that the definition it gives is full of contradictions.

Perhaps, however, the main definition that modern man has given can be found in a Unitarian who wrote on the subject in 1928, John H. Dietrich. For Dietrich, as for most people of his day, because Dietrich was simply a good echo chamber for humanism, evil is a product of the evolution of man, and man as he evolved and became aware of problems in the universe, personalized them and projected his failure into the universe. If a thing were not good, such as sickness or death, he said then it’s evil, because I don’t like it, and if someone takes something I have, then I call it evil. So that, he held, evil is purely a product of man’s failure to cope with the universe and by his childish explanations of it.

Then, he went on to say, “How then are we explain the existence of evil? A word in regard to this is necessary to round out my discussion. Evil, of course, is simply those natural processes and social activities in individual behavior, which are horrible, unpleasant, and undesirable to men. This does not mean that there is any such thing as evil in the universe. It only means that there are certain things which, from the standpoint of man’s welfare, we call evil. So, modern knowledge denies not only the existence of a devil, but any necessity for him. It denies the real existence of evil. That is, it denies that evil is a real entity, a substance either in the world about us, or as sin in man. To put the whole thing in one word, what we call evil is nothing more nor less than maladjustment, and in the time left, I can only suggest what I mean by that. I have treated this subject of evil before, so I need not go into detail. At the outset of this explanation, notice the meaning of life. Life means simply this: a human organism, man or woman, in the midst of, surrounded by, related to the real facts of the universe. When he is rightly related or properly adjusted to these facts, then the man finds security, health, happiness. When wrongly related, or maladjusted, he finds calamity, sickness, disturbance. This one principle explains evil, both physical and moral.”

Now, Dietrich went on to say that evil was going to receded and disappear as our knowledge increased. He held that evil is failure to relate, it is maladjustment. Now, he was simply, as I said, an echo chamber for the kind of thinking that was so common at that time, and still is common. We still hear talks about the maladjusted child, or “you’re not relating.” These terms have passed into our language. Failure to adjust and failure to relate is the only evil.

Dietrich went on to say, because he so very clearly represents the myths of modern humanism, “All physical evil is maladjustment between man and his conditions. Increasing knowledge is slowly disarming these evils. In other words, we enjoy security and happiness in proportion to our knowledge of natural law and our adjustment to it. The same is true in regard to what we call moral evil. The unfolding history of humanity reveals nothing more plainly than that there are great and universal conditions on which alone man can attain social welfare and happiness, and these conditions can be understood and formulated into laws of justice and equity, and fair dealing, which we speak of as moral laws. When we live within these conditions of law, it is what we call goodness because it contributes to man’s welfare. Breaking these laws we call evil because it results in man’s injury and destruction, and so, without going into detail, I lay down the principle that moral evil is only moral or social maladjustment. The man’s getting out of right relationship with his fellow man or with himself. Our knowledge of the best modes of behavior for the good of mankind is as yet very meager, but man’s interest has recently been enlisted in this direction, and I believe that we shall rapidly gain life through the new sciences of psychology and sociology, and all those social sciences which devote themselves to the study of human nature and human relationships. Knowledge then, is the devil killer and the exterminator of evil. The Devil, then, is not the author of evil. It is only human maladjustment to the physical and social conditions in which man is compelled to live. The Devil is a dream of the night and darkness of the past. Let him be relegated to the museum of theological curiosities, mummies, and skeletons, that the coming ages will study to find out what men were thinking about long ago.”

Well, of course, the increase of knowledge since 1928 has been tremendous, but it has not brought happiness. The idea that evil is maladjustment and that good is adjustment has only meant that man has become group oriented. He has become a part of a mob, and that has only aggravated the evils in man’s world.

After all, how do you adjust to a thief or to a murderer? You give in to him? That’s what adjustment would mean, and how do you adjust to a tornado, or a hurricane, or an earthquake, or to disease? Do you give in to it? That’s the implication. Adjustment, thus, is scarcely a sound principle. The result of such thinking is that we live in terms of conformity.

Now, of course, the idea supposedly has been overthrown, and we have a generation after having had a good many years of education in our schools and through our psychology, psychiatry, and the like, that maladjustment was evil and adjustment, or relating to people and to things was good, an emphasis now on non-conformity, instead of adjusting to the establishment now, you say you adjust to revolution, so it’s still an adjustment of a kind, only the locale of adjustment, that which you relate to, has changed from an establishment to revolution.

As a result, there has been basically no change in this principle. There’s been basically a shift in the word used. Instead of adjustment and maladjustment which, up until about ten years ago, were the popular terms, now it’s “relating,” the need to relate. It’s the same idea, and it is as empty and barren of any real knowledge of what constitutes good and evil as one could imagine. The humanist, by denying the reality of evil has also denied the reality of good. What is good? Simply, adjustment. Adjustment to a thief, adjustment to revolution, adjustment to an establishment. That’s good? You see, unless evil is real, good is not real, and if you have a valid principle, an absolute principle of good, you also have a firm principle of that which constitutes evil.

The modern mind of humanism assumes that good and evil are, as Dietrich and many, many others have said, relative to “man’s security, health, and happiness.” Now, that’s ridicules as all relative definitions are. What may be conducive to my health may not be conducive to my happiness. I may prefer a coconut cream pie to a lettuce salad. The one is conducive to my happiness and the other is conducive to my health, and you can’t make me believe that both health and happiness are necessarily exactly what I’m going to get out of either one, and you may tell a person that swearing off cigarettes is conducive to his health, security, and happiness, and you’re not going to persuade him if he finds happiness in smoking. IN other words, if things are relative to man, there’s no agreement between what constitutes security, health, and happiness, only when they conform to an absolute standard.

Moreover, to make man the ultimate standard in the universe is exactly what you do when you make good and evil relative to man, and when you have a relative idea of good and evil, you’ve destroyed salvation. Without a valid idea of good and evil, no salvation is really possible. It becomes purely a relative thing. For one man, salvation becomes suicide. For another, it becomes a new girlfriend. For another, it becomes a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars. The idea then is bankrupt{?}. Westminster Confession tells us that sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of any law of God given as a rule to the reasonable creature, and this is the definition we must go by, an absolute one, a God-given one, and we must hold that these other definitions are invalid because they destroy the meaning of good and evil, and they destroy the meaning of salvation and ultimately, they destroy the meaning of life. Nothing has any meaning.

We cited a week or two ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the senior Holmes. Let’s cite him again today. He defined sin as comparable to disease and said that it is, “an occurrence absolutely necessary, inevitable, and as one may say normal under certain given conditions of constitution and circumstance.” And he was confident that sin, “like disease is a vital process.” In other words, as man evolves, he goes through various unpleasant experiences which are necessary to his evolution, but are entirely normal and therefore, they should not be called evil, and these are theological terms which have no place in a scientific analysis of reality. They are mythical terms. But Holmes, by his definition, a good evolutionary one like that of Dietrich, abolished progress from the liberal vocabulary. After all, if what Christians call sin, is to an evolutionist like Holmes, a normal condition and a vital process of life, why object to it? Why object to moral evil and to physical evil? They’re entirely normal, an entirely necessary. Man, therefore, cannot legitimately war against that which is a normal condition.

This is why the twentieth century has been the kind of century thus far that it has been. Sin has been domesticated and made man’s normal condition. When you domesticate sin and say that it’s a normal part of life, why fight it? Why be against it? It’s supposedly a part of life.

Thus, the modern mind has failed completely in trying to cope with evil, in explaining moral evil, and in explaining physical evil. It has not known how to define either without destroying the idea that there is anything wrong, and it’s wound up making both normal aspects of the evolutionary process. Yet the answer is given to us by scripture, and St. Paul summed it up clearly, succinctly, and powerfully in our midst. He tells us that man is fallen, that man are the servants, the slaves of sin, or moral evil, and as long as they are slaves of moral evil, they are free from righteousness. There is a freedom of sorts. It’s a freedom from godliness, a freedom from righteousness, but it is slavery to sin.

What was the result of their slavery to moral evil? “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now (that you are converted, or) ashamed? for the end of those things is death.” So, St. Paul says, “Here is the connection. Moral evils leads to physical evil. In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth and things therein, and all things that He made were holy and good, and God warned man that when he sinner, dying thou shalt die, that sin, moral evil, would lead to physical evil, so man’s sin has put the whole of reality out of joint, has made it abnormal, so that there is physical evil because there is moral evil, and that there is a connection between the two. The one follows after the other.

And that’s what the Bible is talking about to the {?}. Over and over again, the prophets tell us, the law tells us in Deuteronomy 28, that when men are guilty of sin, of moral evil, the consequences are the judgments of God in the form of all kinds of physical evils, but {?}, plague, famine, earthquakes, disasters of one sort or another follow after moral evil. It’s very plainly stated in scripture. In the second chapter on through the latter parts of the Bible, over and over again, the connection is asserted. Sin, moral evil leads to physical evil. It’s again and again been note4d that periods of moral decline and degeneracy are also periods of great physical disasters; droughts, plagues, and what-non. IN the Biblical Philosophy of History, I’ve listed the number of major disasters listed by the almanacs in the fifty years before World War 2 and in the fifteen years after World War 2, and they were double in the short span after the war as against before. There is a connection. Scripture asserts it, and St. Paul goes on to say “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting light. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

St. Paul then goes on to say that when men are redeemed, when instead of moral evil, sin, their lives are governed by moral righteousness. The fruit of moral righteousness is life, and it culminates in eternal life. This is why, in Isaiah, we are told that as the righteousness of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea, when the whole world is filled with the praise of God and with a righteous people, the whole earth will be materially different. Physical evil will diminish. The lifespan of men will be greatly increased, and we will live in a different kind of world.

Arthur S. Wade, in his version of these verses of St. Paul, brings out this emphasis, I think, very tellingly. To read these same verses in his version, “When ye were thus throngs{?} to sin, ye were, in relation to righteousness, free men. It had no control over your life. I ask you then, what harvest did you reap in those days from actions at the memory of which you now blush? None, for the goal to which those things lead was death. But now, you have been emancipated from sin. You’ve become {?} to God. You are reaping the harvest, your own. Its ingathering shall be holiness. The goal shall be life, eternal life. Ah, the pittance waged that sin doled out to you is death, but the lavish bounty of God is life eternal, involved in your union with the Messiah, with Jesus Christ our Lord, ours.” This is the issue then. There is a necessary and a firm relationship between moral and physical people, between moral and physical blessing, that the wages of sin have been and always will be death, but the wages of righteousness have been and always will be life, culminating in eternal life. God has given man the key, but through Jesus Christ, we can be freed from sin into righteousness, and thereby overcome evil in our lives, and as men and nations are converted to Christ, overcome it in our world until finally, when the end of the world comes, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death, and in the new creation, there is death no more, nor dying, but God himself, we are told, shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. Both moral and physical evil are abolished by the saving work of Jesus Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy when we were yet sinners, gave us Jesus Christ to be our redeemer. We thank thee that, by his atoning work, we have been freed from sin, from moral evil, and that we are being progressively freed from the bounds of physical evil in Christ, and that we shall have fullness of life, eternal life, in the world to come. We thank thee, our God, for thy so-great salvation, and make us joyful therein, and confident unto thy service, unto victory in thee. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s a very good point and I’ll have to look up that editorial, because, of course, if you have no godly concept of evil, and no absolute standard of righteousness, why not? What’s the point in fighting evil? You accept it, and you live with it, and this is precisely what the twentieth century is doing. It is seeing evils that have never existed before, more people murdered, mass murders, mass torture, enslavement of men, and isn’t particularly worked up about it, only a minority are, precisely because evil now has been made normal, and the attitude of so many with regard to Stalin’s murders and his abuses was summed up in a statement, “Well, you can’t make an omelet without cracking eggs,” so if he murders twelve million and one {?}, well, he was making an omelet, and this is the problem today. Evil has been normalized, and it isn’t going to change. It’s only going to become more and more an acceptance of evil, precisely because there is no standard for righteousness. I think this morning’s L.A. Times, in the calendar section, the interview with Lenny Bruce’s mother was a very good example of this precisely this kind of acceptance of anything now. There’s nothing that is too foul for them to publish as though it were highly commendable. She’s presented as a very remarkable and fine mother. Such a fine, upstanding citizen. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. It is existentialism. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. In biblical law there is the right of self-defense. It’s in the Old Testament, yes, and of course, it has always been a part of our law because our law has been biblical in its basis, but it is gradually eroding, and that right is being more and more restrictive. I think a good example of that is this case in Florida where this colored woman shot and killed someone who, apparently is going to die, someone who was attacking her and I believe her niece, or daughter, or someone, and they arrested her on a murder charge. Now, there’s been a great deal of protest against that. It was a hardened criminal who was doing the assaulting. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] How can we apply this to the Christian Science principle? Well, the Christian Scientist does not believe that there is a material world, or that there is an individual, and he does not have an idea of sin. It’s only illusion’s errors to believe in these things, and when you believe in these illusions of evil and illusions of matter, you suffer because you’re believing in illusions. In other words, you’re having a nightmare and you’re taking the nightmare seriously, and so you should live above belief in these illusions. You allow the illusions to govern you. Of course, we do not believe that moral and physical evil are illusions, as the Christian Scientist say. They are realities.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They very often are being punished. We can’t say it’s always a one-to-one relationship, but certainly there is a connection between moral and physical evil. It’s even been demonstrated that guilty men are more accident prone. Any other questions? Well, if not, let us bow for the benediction.

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