Salvation and Godly Rule

Fate

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Fate

Genre: Speech

Track: 28

Dictation Name: RR136P28

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

1 Peter 2:9-10, and our subject: Fate. “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”

In recent weeks, we had been analyzing the doctrine of providence. We have seen that the idea of progress only exists in terms of the doctrine of providence. Where the doctrine of providence has never been believed, no doctrine of progress has been possible. Where the doctrine of providence was once believed and is then denied, the doctrine of progress also fades away.

We saw moreover that there are two ways of viewing the world logically. One is to believe that all things are made by the sovereign, and all things governed by His absolute and undergirding law. Another term for that is predestination. The other is to believe that all things are the product of chance, that there is no law, no order, no design, no structure, no meaning, no purpose in the universe, only chance. The consequence however, of believing in chance is so suicidal, that man have rarely, if ever, logically adopted a belief in chance. They’ve only used the idea of chance to try to club the doctrine of God.

Now, there has been an intermediate idea which is borrowed from one in the other which men have often advanced as an alternate to the logical alternatives of God versus chance, and this is the idea of faith, or determinism, to use the modern scientific term, sometimes called scientific determinism, sometimes dialectic determinism, sometimes naturalistic determinism, and also in some philosophies called necessitarianism. This then has been used as a compromise idea, to avoid the consequences of God or chance.

Before we go any further, let us turn to one of the great scholars of the earlier part of this century, Garner, a philosopher, whose position would in no wise be that of any of us, and yet, who in discussing the concept of faith, does say some things that are very revealing. This is what Garner writes on fate: “The idea of fate is found only in conditions where some attempt has been made to trace all phenomena of human life to an ultimate unity. Fate indeed is precisely this unity apprehended as an inevitable necessity controlling all things. It is absolutely inscrutable power to which all men are subject. It is a conception which prevails wherever the mind of man is unable to frame the idea of rational necessity, or with supreme purposes, will, and it survives so long as either of these, though within the field of consciousness, is imperfectly realized. Further, men tend to fall back on the idea of faith when in a higher level of intellectual development, they begin to doubt of a rational order, or rational end in the universe.”

Now what Garner says, very simply, is this: the idea of fate comes in whenever men begin, in any society, to think in terms of science. You cannot have chance. If you have chance, it is impossible to have science because then, nothing follows from nothing. Two and two can add up to a hundred, or twenty, or to one, because in a world of chance, there is no order, no purpose, no design, no consistency. The only way you can have science is to posit that there is a unity, an order, in all reality. But Garner says, if you want to avoid, at the same time, the idea of saying that there is a purpose, and a person, God in other words to use the dirty word in the eyes of scientists and philosophers, God is behind everything, then you posit fate, because the last thing you want to admit into your universe is God, but you cannot accept the alternative of chance, and so you say that there is an impersonal, an utterly irrational, an utterly meaningless order, necessity and law in the universe.

Now, of course, this obviously involves quite a few contradictions, but you can see why men, facing these alternatives, and being unwilling as sinners to accept God, and as thinking people to accept chance, have to come up with a compromise. Fate, or determinism, as mindless and as meaningless as chance, and yet with all the law, the order, the design that God gives to creation.

Now, Garner then went on to admit, “Christianity repudiates, on principle, all belief in fate. The Christian religion regards the supreme power of the world as a rational will by which all things are made to promote the end of the kingdom. Here, omnipotence is not arbitrary, with is one with the all-wise will. Nor is necessity blind but rational, and likewise, identical with the all-wise will, the will which always acts as a moral stimulus to the freedom of man. Only when freedom and necessity are recognized as being one in the deity, is it possible for destiny to give place to providence. Only when men realize their freedom is that which lays upon them the obligation of self-determination in the sphere of conduct, do men cease to resort to the occult arts, and only as man knows that all things can be utilized to the highest ends, does he finally break with the idea of fate. These beliefs, however, constitute, in essence, the Christian point of view.”

Now, that’s an excellent statement. He says that the Christian religion cannot accept the idea of fate and destiny. In God it reconciles all necessity, predestination, and freedom. They’re one in the same. Instead of purposelessness and meaninglessness, it has the ultimate in meaning, and so it will have nothing to do with the idea of fate and destiny as blind, impersonal, and meaninglessness, anymore than it will have to do with chance. In fact, he virtually admits that the purpose of the idea of fate is to give man God without God. That is, the advantages of God, government, and order, without God himself. When man does this, however, he not only opens the door to a schizophrenic state of mind by adopting the idea of fate, but he also lets in occultism, because then he has said that in all this design, there is no mind, no purpose, only irrationality and darkness, and so the powers of irrationality and darkness, occultism, take over in the mind of man.

Turning once more to Garner, we find that he is aware, very clearly as we have seen, of the implications of fate, and he says, “As a matter of fact, the belief (that is, in fate) can be finally extricated only by this recognition of a rational goodwill determining the natural order with reference to an end.” It amuses me how they go around the barn to avoid saying “God.” When he says a rational goodwill, he means God, but it is a dirty word in the minds of these philosophers. “A rational goodwill determining the natural order with reference to an end and harmonizing therewith the law of necessary physical causality. This brings us, however, face to face with a subjective conditions in which a belief in fate subsists, and which again its elimination is possible, so long as man feels himself simply impotent in relation to nature, and thinks of himself as a mere atom in the universal order, he remains subject to fate, and necessity. So long as he regards his position and lot as something given to which he must adapt himself, he cannot rise above the notion of fate, nor is any deliverance possible in spite of all attempts to improve his position. So long as he is disposed to eudemonism, and consequently depends upon circumstances or upon nature, eudemonism, that is, making pleasure the end of life, strikes at the strings of moral energy. It makes man the thrall of the things which promise enjoyment in which fate is supposed to bestow or deny. The man on the other hand, who regards it as his task to realize the divinely ordained moral ideal, will judge all things in reference to their possible utility with that purpose. For such a one, there exists no blind destiny, no arbitrary will to paralyze his energy.”

Now, as I said earlier, determinism is simply the scientific name for fate, and it became very popular especially in the last century, and in this century, to the thirties. Naturalistic determinism, scientific determinism, dialectical determinism or dialectical materialism, which are still used in many academic circles. However, there began to be among many scientists and philosophers some unhappiness with the term “determinism,” because the term implies determination, a mind, a purpose, a will, a person. The very word “determinist” comes from the Latin “determinist of the end or the goal,” and when you have an end or a goal, you have purpose, you have a mind. The whole idea, however, in determinism is to escape the idea of mind or of God. The world must be drained of purpose, according to these people.

As a result, determinism, by its very name, raises the problem of purpose and of mind, and God, which they’re trying to avoid. As a result, the next step was, beginning in the late 20’s and early 30’s, to develop the probability concept. Now I’ve referred to this before, but it is so important in the modern world. It is necessary to go over it very carefully.

The probability concept is a development of this whole deterministic concept, to avoid determinism and to avoid saying “There is a mind behind the laws of science, behind the order and the design that science deals with.” Now, when I was a student at the University of California at Berkeley, the way that the probability concept was illustrated I thought was very choice. It was not intended to be amusing but I thought it was. The illustration was that we cannot say that it is a law or a certainty, or something that is determined that the sun will always rise in the East and set in the West. It’s impossible for a man to say that this must be so, it is necessarily so. Why? We do not have an exhaustive knowledge of every sunrise and every sunset, from the beginning of time to the end of time. Only when we have observed every sunset from the very first one to the last one can we say it must be so. Until then, we must only say that there is a probability that tomorrow morning, the sun will rise in the east and set in the west.

Now, of course, this rests on the premise, which is a true one, that if you deny God, you can have no real knowledge unless you have exhaustive knowledge, unless you know everything about everything, from the beginning to the end of time. Now, this is impossible for man to know, utterly impossible. So technically, knowledge is impossible. For us as Christians, since we believe that God’s order governs everything, when you know one fact truly, you can depend on that fact being consistent with the rest of reality. So that if you observe a segment of it, you know that the rest is consistent with it. You know, therefore, that the sun is going to rise in the east, and you can say that without hemming and hawing, but in terms of the probability concept, you see, you can still have science because you’re assuming that there is an order and a design, but you’re refusing to admit that there is.

Now, of course, this is really playing games with language. It’s taking an acrobatic position. It is trying to milk all the advantage of having a god, without admitting that you do, and like all acrobatic positions, it cannot be maintained very long. You can stand on your head. That’s possible. But you cannot go on living standing on your head. That’s impossible. You can maintain a position that is illogical, as faith, determinism, and the probability concepts are. But after awhile, it’s like standing on your head. Logic compels you to reverse yourself.

As a result, you are faced still with the alternatives; chance or God. If you take chance, you have no science. You have nothing, and the result is you have destroyed everything you have worked for. Of course, this was the thing that haunted Charles Darwin himself. Darwin was very insistent that there was design, there was purpose, there was meaning in the universe, and sometimes he practically paraphrased Romans 8:28, “For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose,” only instead of God, he substituted the idea of evolution. Evolution making everything work together for good, and yet the recognition would be coming back to him that behind evolution there was nothing but chance.

Thus, when he was asked, how could he escape believing in God, his answer in a letter to Graham, July 3, 1881, was this: “Nevertheless, you have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the universe is not the result of chance.” Let’s stop a moment there. Science would disappear if you said so, if it were the result of chance. So, he says it’s not the result of chance, although the logical thing for him now to have answered was, “It is the work of God,” but this Darwin would not say. So what does he go on to say? Suddenly he affirms chance in a roundabout way. “But then with me the horrid doubt always arises, whether the convictions of man’s mind which has to have been developed from the mind of the lower animals of any value or moral trustworthy, would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind if there are any convictions in such a mind?” That’s trying to eat your cake and have it, too. Obviously there is design, there is purpose. The universe is not the result of chance, it says, but instead of affirming God, he suddenly says, “It’s all chance and the mind of man is no more than the mind of a higher monkey, so how can you trust me when I say the universe is the product of a mind?”

Now, of course, this is childishness, and when you affirm this kind of thing, you make man mindless also. The probability concept gives us a mindless universe. When man faces a mindless universe, he has two choices. He can either play God over it and say, “Well, I am the mind in the universe and I’m going to be God over it,” or he can recoil in horror at the totality of mindlessness and meaninglessness around him. Well, man actually does both. He tries to play God and, at the same time, he becomes sick to the soul at the mindlessness and meaninglessness of all things, and this is existentialism. It is very interesting that an existential psychiatrist, Victor Franco{?} of Vienna, has said that the greatest source of mental illness today is really due to the existential vacuum. That’s his term, the existential vacuum. The fact that the existential man finds the whole universe meaningless and a blank, and so he points out the fact that there is more trouble mentally the more man has leisure and rest, and more heart attacks at night when man is resting than on Sundays and on holidays when people are doing, than when they are working. Why? Because the existential vacuum then envelopes them, and so Victor Franco, an existential psychiatrist says one of the most horrible things happening in our world is that man is demanding more and more leisure time, less and less time to work, and the less he is on the job, the more he kills himself as he faces the existential vacuum, and so he says the response of many is to, when they have a moment of leisure, to try to kill themselves to go out and do something. They cannot sit still. They cannot rest, because then, the existential vacuum hits them.

Now, as we saw in the terminology of fate, destiny is also a part and parcel. It is a mindless inevitable necessity, but when man is faced with a mindless, inevitable necessity, everything he does, whether it’s good or evil, is reduced to nonsense, and man begins to fall apart. On the other hand, providence and predestination undergird man, because they manifest that everything in the universe, every atom, the very hairs of our head which are numbered, our Lord declared, rest not in an impersonal necessity, not in fate, but in a personal purpose of a personal God who governs all things. This government is not in contradiction but in unity with the mind of man when man is working together with God, and everything that man is, is freedom and God’s predestination are a part of the seamless God. This is why, in our scripture, St. Peter could say with full assurance, in terms of this fact, writing to people who had been Greeks and Romans would been subject to fate in their own thinking, but now were a part of God’s glorious purpose. St. Peter could say that, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.”

St. Peter, as he talks of God’s providence and predestination, tells these former Greek and Roman believers in faith that now you are “a royal priesthood.” This means that there is nothing that stands between you and God, either as kings or priests, you have direct access to God. You are His people. There is no mindless faith governing you. The ultimate meaning, the ultimate purpose in the universe is in a next to next relationship to you, as a royal priesthood, called after God, to exercise dominion and to rule the earth. You are now linked, he is saying to them, to the ultimate meaning and purpose in the universe, by God’s calling.

The humanists tell us that they are striving to rehabilitate man and work for the dignity of man, but what dignity does man have when all the world is meaningless, and he is meaningless? Is anything more degrading to man? Rather the scripture that establishes man in his dignity, as the creature made in God’s image, called to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth, and called to a glorious destiny in time and in eternity, equipped with {?}here, which will be fully realized in the new creation. Man has a glorious purpose in God.

Moreover, the word that St. Peter uses is “Ye are chosen generation.” The word “chosen” is related to the word “predestined, {?}. It means “chosen out, selected by grace,” and it carried with it the idea of laws, of eminence, of the fullness of personal care, so that when St. Peter says, “Ye are a chosen generation,” he says that out of the darkness you are called, out of the darkness of fate, of meaningless, blind necessity, into the fullness of light, of a totally personal care, of a totally personal universe. There, with love, with grace, with the utmost and the total kind of personal attention, you are chosen. The word implies total mindfulness, total providential concern for us by the supreme person, God.

Moreover, he declares unto them, “You are a peculiar people.” Now words very often change their meaning. Sometimes the meaning comes back and then other times it disappears. The word “peculiar” has, in the past few generations, lost its original meaning. It means “an obtaining, a purchase, something very much prized, an acquisition, a possession,” and thus, it contains the feeling of something which for personal reasons, you give a great value to. You treasure, which can be therefore, rendered, God’s own possession. God’s own possession.

Now we all have things that we can call our peculiar thing. Something which, for purely personal reasons, may mean nothing to someone else, but to us, it’s very dear. We don’t want anybody to even touch or to tamper with our possession. It’s ours. It has a world of meaning for us. It has associations with the past, with loved ones perhaps. It’s our peculiar possession, and St. Peter is here saying that in Jesus Christ, we are God’s peculiar possession, because of Christ, “that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” We are thus emphatically in a mindful universe, a totally mindful universe. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that we are thou{?} peculiar possession, chosen by thee in Jesus Christ, that the very hairs of our head, according to him, are all numbered and known to thee. O Lord, our God, how great is thou love for us, and how great thy promises to us in Christ Jesus. We thank thee for the glorious life that is ours in him, and for the inheritance in eternity in the new creation. Bless us, our Father, in thy service, and make us ever joyful in thy creation. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Are there any questions now, first of all, with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, intelligence, of course, is one aspect of God’s image in man. Now, the function of intelligence in the modern world, is very much a displaced one. In the modern world, when intelligence functions, as in the academic community, the purpose of intelligence is seen as one of abstraction. In other words, you depersonalize everything. You abstract it in order to understand it, as though the reality of something were the core or the skeleton. Now, the reality of you and the reality of me is not my skeleton. It is the totality of me, and the reality of a peach is not the pit, or of an apple, the core. It’s the whole apple. Well, intelligence, when it becomes non-Christian, works to abstract, because it depersonalizes reality, and therefore, it loses most of reality. Now, under God, the purpose of intelligence is to understand and to enjoy, but to apprehend basically the whole of reality. It is not to work for an abstraction. It is not to try to reduce something to the lowest common denominator. Thus, if we, through the scientific use of intelligence, tried to come to an understanding of the group here, we would try to reduce everyone here, either to certain psychological drives or characteristics, or we would reduce everyone to male or female in the classifications, you see. We wind up knowing no one here. So, the function of intelligence under God can be to depersonalize, but to grasp the totality of reality, and the function of intelligence then becomes an aspect of our calling under God to use everything to His glory. Are there any other questions?

If there are none, we have a couple of announcements. First of all, there are notices on the lectern in the back, of the Moral Advance dinner meeting on September 12, Tuesday, at 7 p.m., in Anaheim, at which time I shall speak on the meaning of life and death, and this will be, as I indicated, a dinner meeting and your registrations must be in by Saturday. Moral Advance is the division of the Christian Freedom Foundation. Then, an advance notice on October 14, Saturday, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Knott’s Berry Farm. The Chalcedon Guild will have a meeting, which will include dinner, a seminar at which time. Dr. Hans Semples{?} will be speaking, so put that date down on your calendar.

Since, we are having a seminar on economics, it might be worth knowing this little economic fact that just came out the other day. If you have a family of four, and your income has risen to 30% since 1966, says the Tides{?} Foundation. You have less money to spend now as you did then, six years ago. That’s how much we have had inflation and inflation is likely to increase rapidly in the next year or two. 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