Salvation and Godly Rule

Adoption

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Adoption

Genre: Speech

Track: 37

Dictation Name: RR136U37

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Ephesians 1:1-6, with the emphasis on the fifth verse, and our subject: Adoption. “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

The doctrine of adoption is a very important aspect of the doctrine of salvation. Both in civil law and in theology, adoption involved, according to Roman law, first an act of law changing the status of a person from one condition to another. The adopted party could be a slave. He could be a commoner. His status was changed according to law. Second, there was a change of family and a change of name, as the adopted person was changed, from one family and one name into another, and third, there was a change of worship. The adopted person had to agree to forsake whatever faith he had previously and accept the faith of his adopted parents.

Now, adoption, as St. Paul and the people at the time of our Lord knew it, was a very important step. We do not know the background of Roman law that lead to it, but perhaps there was an attempt, by law, to discourage adoptions because it was made very difficult. Thus, whereas it was possible for parents to disinherit a child, they could not disinherit an adopted child. Now consider the implications of this. It meant that anyone adopted had an unchanging, irrevocable status. Now perhaps the reason for this, most logically, would be to discourage adoptions. Perhaps there were relatives and friends of wealthy families who had been responsible for passing the law, so that childless couples could not thereby prevent them from getting the estate by adopting a child.

However, it did not discourage adoption. As a matter of fact, it gave it a higher status. What happened was, of course, that the legal act of adoption took place only when the person was an adult, or sufficient years to be obviously a person of caliber. So that when parents were concerned about an heir, and they took in a baby, they waited until that child proved himself before they adopted him, or else, very commonly, they adopted some person of mature years, sometimes even very close to them in age, and made him legally their son and heir. Sometimes, the adoption took place when the children were not of such bad character but were rather irresponsible and the father and the mother wanted a responsible person as the head of the household to keep an eye over the other members of the household who might not be as responsible, and so a very competent and capable manager or business manager was made the heir, and he was entrusted with the management of the estate.

As a result, adoption signified something in the Roman Empire. If you were adopted, this was a strong point in your favor. It meant you were a person of proven character, that a tremendous amount of confidence and responsibility had been placed on you. Now this was the legal background of the New Testament, and of the usage of the word adoption. We are told that we have been predestined unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, that God has made us his adopted children, an irrevocable, legal fact, and yet, unlike the Roman adoption, he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. Apart from anything in us, entirely of grace, chosen us, adopted us, given us the new nature for our new estate so that we might have both the eternal security and the new nature that goes with that eternal security. Our salvation does not require adoption. God’s redemption of us is a full and complete fact. That in itself, our justification, our regeneration, is a marvelous fact, but here comes the surprising, additional aspect of salvation: adoption, and yet, surprisingly, very little is said about adoption.

Evangelicals, by and large, bypass it because they have reduced everything to being saved, just the general term and forgotten the nuances and the meanings, and when you do that you lose important aspects such as effectual calling, adoption, and much, much else. So that today, it is rare that anyone speaks on adoption and the loss to Christians is very, very great.

On the other hand, in liberal church circles, the emphasis is not on adoption, but the fact that we are all supposedly naturally the children of God. There is thus a great deal of talk in liberal circles about the brotherhood of men, that we’re all the children of God, and the fatherhood of God. Now, this is the one instance in the case of the liberals where they have a seeming support in scripture. Usually they can’t cite anything in scripture to support their ideas, but in this case, they do cite a couple of verses. They cite Malachi 2:10, where Malachi says, “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” However, Malachi is specking to the covenant people because he goes on to say, “Why do we deal treacherously, every man against his brother by profaning the covenant of our fathers?” Thus, when seen in its context, not only of the entire verse, but of the entire book of Malachi, it is obvious that what Malachi is talking is not about all men, but the adopted people of God, the covenant people. It never occurred to him to think of anyone outside the covenant as being the adopted sons of God.

Then again, in Acts 17:28-29, St. Paul is cited by the liberals for support. St. Paul declares, speaking to a Greek audience of pagans, of philosophers, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.” The liberals have cited this, “Well, St. Paul spoke of us as all the offspring of God, and he was talking to pagans.” But Paul’s point is not to tell the Greeks about the universal brotherhood of man or what the Greeks believed in, that all men have a spark of divinity in them. Rather, he used the word here to convey the idea of we, being created in the image of God, and this is what he goes on to say. His whole point is that because men are created in the image of God, and are his offspring in this sense, they have an inescapable knowledge of God. Now, this is St. Paul’s point in this passage. Every one of you, Greek or Barbarian, have an inescapable knowledge of God, and therefore, you “ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.”

Plus, there is really no substance in scripture for the idea of the brotherhood of man, the universal fatherhood of God. As a matter of fact, the liberals really do not believe it. They use it against evangelical Christians to try to erode and to destroy the faith of evangelicals. In their own circles, instead of talking about the sonship of all people, they talk rather about alienation. This is their characteristic term. They develop theologies of alienation and psychologies of alienation, and sociologies of alienation. This is their essential position. They feel an alienation from God and man, and so the great problem for them is communication. How do you communicate? When you are so alienated from everyone, communication is a problem.

Moreover, because of their belief that every man is his own God, because of their existentialism, these men feel it necessary to aggravate and to develop their alienation as an act of liberation. For example, one of the leading liberal critics, Susan Sonntag, in reviewing a film, “Flaming Creatures,” which deals with group sex, and all kinds of onscreen perversion as well as homosexuality, wrote in her review, “Flaming Creatures is outrageous, and is intended to be, but it is a beautiful film, a triumphant example of an esthetic vision of the world, and such a vision is perhaps always, at its core, epicene” Epicene means homosexual. What she is saying thus is that an esthetic vision of the world is always, at its core, homosexual.

Now, another critic, an older literary critic, Joseph Wood Crotch, in commenting on Susan Sonntag and other critics, adds, “If Miss Sonntag does not explain why an esthetic vision must be epicene, she does undertake to explain why modern art must be outrageous, ‘Art is always the sphere of freedom. In those difficult works of art we now call avante gard, the artist consciously exercises his freedom.’ This argument is obviously parallel with that favorite of the Sartrian existentialist, namely the contentions that first, the unmotivated act is the only positive assertion of freedom, and too, the best unmotivated act is one of arbitrary cruelty.”

Now, this is a very interesting and very important point, and we cannot understand our world today without understanding existentialism, and Jean Paul Sartre, and the others. This is what all our films and increasingly our television are telling us. To be free you have to have an unmotivated act. You cannot have a motive from anything outside of yourself, because then you’re asserting that the world, God or man, has some responsibility on you, a claim on you, and therefore, the unmotivated act, an act without any purpose in relationship to people around you, is the {?} act, and the best unmotivated act is the one of arbitrary cruelty. Why? Because you thereby prove your independence of anyone around you and of God. If you’re kicking your parents, or your friends in the teeth, if you’re as perverted and outrageous as possible, you’re being offensive to everyone and you are proving then that you are truly an existentialist, that you are free of all external influences. This is why an existentialist world will get more perverted, will get more violent, more socially destructive, why it will emphasize the conflict of interests progressively, as its doctrine of salvation. To be free, the culminating act of unmotivated freedom, is the act of arbitrary, unmotivated cruelty.

This, of course, is not surprising. Their goal is to be as God, but they cannot be as God when it comes to creating. They {?} to prove their freedom by novelty. Let us create. Let us bring forth something new, but every new thing they have brought forth is simply variations on an old theme and rearrangements thereof, and so now, the newest mood in art is anti-art, to proclaim the death of art. Its recognition that man, in any true sense, cannot create. He simply echoes an aspect of God’s creation or develops a theme. However beautifully this is done, the existentialist finds this offensive.

Now Hannah, the mother of Samuel, in her song phrase, said in 1 Samuel 2:6, “The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.” The existentialist has recognized that in any final absolute sense, he is not creative, and certainly in the ultimate test of creating life, he is out of the picture. What can he do then to play God? He can kill. “The Lord killeth and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up,” and so the necessary conclusion of alienation, of existentialism is to destroy that act of arbitrary cruelty, to use their own terminology, and define that the esthetic vision of the world is perhaps always, at its core, epicene. This is their dedicated faith.

Thus, instead of adoption, alienation is their gospel and cruelty, arbitrary cruelty. The world thus, increasingly faces a choice. Either the doctrine of salvation of the existentialist, which is alienation, or the doctrine of salvation of scripture which, in its culminating sense, is adoption. Adoption tells us that God gives us glorious privileges, a new name, the spirit of adoption, access to the throne of grace with boldness so that our prayers are heard. In a couple of weeks we will return to that word boldness, to spend some time on it. Very significant where it is used in scripture, and in what very important sense. It’s a word that needs to be emphasized in connection with Christian faith and adoption. We are made, by adoption, the objects of God’s fatherly compassion, protection, and his providential favors. We are made, to{?} the subject, we are also told, of his correction and chastisement as sons. We are given an eternal security and have an heirship in the kingdom of God and in all the promises of God. The doctrine of justification tells us of our changed, legal relationship to God. The doctrine of regeneration tells us of our changed nature. Sanctification, which we will deal with also in a few weeks briefly, tells us of our progressive growth in that new nature. Adoption presents us with a new creature in his new relations.

We saw, at the beginning, that the Roman doctrine of adoption was a very important one. It was presupposed throughout by St. Paul. Everyone of his readers, his listeners, when he spoke about adoption, knew what the law of adoption was in the Greco/Roman Empire. They knew its background which was similar, in the Old Testament. This is why, whenever St. Paul speaks of adoption as he does in our text, as he does in Romans 8 and elsewhere, almost invariably is linked to God’s grace and predestination. “Not of ourselves lest we should boast.” “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”

God’s grace and salvation is always stressed, wherever scripture talks about salvation, but particularly when scripture speaks of adoption. One word after another is piled on to drive home the point that whereas adoption is this kind of privilege status by law, unlike that of the law of the state, for the legal requirements lead a man to choose someone who was proven, and tested, and worthy. God chose us by his grace from the foundation of the world and apart from anything in us, and by his sovereign calling, made us acceptable in the beloved.

The Christian philosopher, Clark, has given a very telling and a vivid picture of what adoption practically means for us, and he has said, “It is as if we were convicts under a death sentence in prison. The governor suddenly pardoned us,” and he said, “That’s not all. The governor then sends for us and takes us to the mansion and adopts us.” This is how far-reaching the implications of the biblical doctrine of adoption are, and this is why when St. Paul speaks of it, as he does in this passage, six verses, two sentences, he does everything possible to emphasize what an overwhelming act of grace this is, how our justification is, in itself, a great miracle, but when God adds adoption to that, he piles grace upon grace, and miracle upon miracle. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy, has justified us and adopted us. We thank thee that in Jesus Christ, we are thy children, that we have been made heirs of all things, have been given a new name, a spirit of adoption, access to the throne of grace with boldness, and an eternal security in thee. O Lord, our God, how great thou art, how marvelous thy grace, how loving thy ways, and we praise thee. In Jesus name. Amen.

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

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s a good point. You see, grace is unmotivated, God’s grace, and thus, in a sense, their cruelty is a substitute for God’s unmotivated grace. It’s a way of saying, “I am God. I do things whether people deserve them or not.” Now, they cannot bestow grace in God’s sense so they bestow unmotivated cruelty.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Motivation means there is a cause to simulate an action. For example, if someone has done some work for you that’s been outstandingly good, and you give them a bonus for it, there’s a motive. There has been something that has been brought forth, that reward. They deserved it, but an unmotivated act would be one where if someone had done a particularly bad job, and you had, irrespective, given them something.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, in a sense there’s a double sense there. First of all, there is a statement with respect to property. The Lord says Have I not a right to do as I wave{?} my own? And second, it makes clear that God’s sovereign grace is not subject to the whims of men, so that God may give his grace to one and then to another, and it may seem disproportionate that one should be saved who has come in late, and be on an equal footing, but God says it is all of grace whether it’s the first or the last. So, there’s a double sense there. Yes?

[Audience] Is the {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, the salvation is, of course, existentialist freedom. To be totally divorced from everyone. Now that’s the problem as well, because they’re schizophrenic at this point. They talk about the lack of communication, and yet they do everything to destroy it. So they both regret the lack of communication in the world they’re creating and do everything to destroy communication.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and you see, even their hereafter, such as those who believe in it, is existentialist. That is, it is a meaningless one. It’s a world of empty spirit, purposeless, directionless, just drifting around aimless and without any motivation. Now this is what comes through in their communication supposedly, with the world of spirits, the Bishop Pike{?} sort of thing. It’s a totally meaningless, mode{?} world. Yes?

[Audience] How do you compare adoption with reconciliation?

[Rushdoony] How do I compare adoption with reconciliation? Reconciliation, which can also be translated atonement, means that we are, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, reconciled to God the Father. Our sin divided us from him, placed us under the sentence of death. Christ, by paying the penalty for us, reconciles us to the father, but that reconciliation is not as sons. It is as creatures. The adoption is an added grace, so that the doctrine of the atonement, of justification, reconciliation does not requirement adoption. Adoption is the culminating and the supreme act of grace in the situation.

Our time is almost over and there are a couple of things. First, there is a question someone asked at the beginning.

Please discuss the marijuana issue in Tuesday’s election as compared with the capital punishment issue on Tuesday, and as compared with the prohibition, which we once had.

Now, first of all, capital punishment is very, very clearly and plainly required in scripture. “Whoso shedeth man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed.” There is emphatically, therefore, a requirement of capital punishment. We have it in the whole of scripture. There is no ground whatsoever for anyone in terms of scripture, questioning capital punishment. On the other hand, where the 18th Amendment, the prohibition amendment, was concerned, there was a great deal in scripture that went against it. First of all, much in scripture speaks about “wine that maketh the glad the heart of man,” that speaks of it under certain circumstances as an offering to God, that speaks emphatically about the evil of drunkenness, and calls for temperance, but nonetheless, speaks of wines as having their very legitimate place in the diet of the people of God. Now, distilled liquors are not spoken of in scripture. They did not exist at that time, so that it was wines and beers, and in the Holy Land it was primarily wines. Yes?

[Audience] Wines {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. You have those statements, too, but you also have statements, “Take a little wine for the sake of our stomach.”

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but strong drink there does not mean distilled liquor. It did not exist. It was a relatively modern invention.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t know the exact date, but it wasn’t too much before the 18th century, so that you do not have the distilled liquors in the Old Testament era. Moreover, the wines were largely of very mild alcoholic content, so when they talk about strong drink, they’re talking about wines that were 18-20%, which many of our wines are today. Not that they said this was bad in itself, but it was temperance that the Bible emphasized. So, scripture does not permit us to make a blanket condemnation of wines. It has much to say about the evils of intemperance, but also has much to say about the place of wines in the life of man.

Now, of course, it says nothing about marijuana. What is there, since there is nothing explicitly about marijuana, what is there implicitly in scripture that would bear on the subject? Well, we have a great deal in the scripture on diet, a very great deal, and we are told what the prescribed and proscribed foods, whether vegetable or otherwise, are, so that the diet of man is very, very carefully delineated. The purpose, of course, is that scripture has a regard for the total health of man. One meaning of salvation is health. Another meaning is victory, and the resurrection of the body, being a part of the goal of scripture, in the redemption of man, the total health of man, physical and spiritual, is emphatically stressed, and since temperance is stressed with regard to wine, and temperance is stressed with regard to food, as well, we recognize definitely that scripture has something to say about bodily health.

Well, with regard to the various narcotics, we don’t know of anything that is good about them, and some are extremely dangerous for the person. Medical authorities for some time have classified marijuana as a very serious thing to take because of what it can lead to, and what its effects on the body are. Some have claimed that there are genetic effects. Now, the argument about it is that it doesn’t have that bad an effect on many and many can take it with much less harm. This is true. As a matter of fact, Orientals can take a great deal of opium with very little after effect as compared to a Westerner. The kind of use of opium by Orientals over a lifetime would be impossible for a Westerner. He can take it in doses, year in and year out, for an entire lifetime, which would have, very early, have destroyed a Westerner, a white man. What’s the reason for this? Well, the reason is there is a marked difference in say a Chinese Cooley, and the rest of us, in social drive, initiative, and goals. Thus, the higher your goal is set, the more drive there is, the more deadly any of these things will be on their impact on you. So that if you and I were to take a dose of opium that would have very little effect on someone say in China or Indo-China, it would have a very devastating effect on us.

This is simply to say the higher you are, the more you are hurt when you fall, so that people who psychologically and intellectually have more drive are more drastically affected by anything, whether it is marijuana or whether it is opium. This is why marijuana in Asia is a very little effect. You have to refine it into hashish to have a real effect.

This means, therefore, that the lower we fall and the lower our youth decline in drive, in energy, and so on, the less impact marijuana will have on them.

As a result, in a sense, we have a choice. Are we going to say, “Well, we want a society where opium is not going to bother our people very much, and marijuana not at all, or very little,” or are we going to have a society where we are going to continue as a society to advance, where social drive and energy are important. Now there is another angle, the argument that it is not physiologically addictive. I would be quite ready to grant that. For one thing, I don’t think we know entirely what constitutes physiological addiction as against psychological addiction. The main factor in addiction is usually psychological. This is why the same dosage of opium with a Westerner will be very quickly addiction, whereas it will not be for an Oriental, because there is a psychological difference.

Now, the psychological addictiveness is one that western man is very prone to now a days, simply because there is more drive, social energy, more pressure to perform, to get ahead. There is, with the Western man, a greater need if he lacks faith than if he lacks that kind of family support and strength which is a part of strength, there is a greater need psychologically for a crutch to lean on, and this is why, in our culture, whenever there is a loss of faith, there is an immediate psychological addictiveness and a proneness to it, in our society.

Thus, in a sense, what the marijuana initiative is saying is “Give us the right to go back to the kind of world the old China represented, to stagnate, a world without drive and initiative, a world where if we feel that we’re not quite adequate, instead of finding faith and performing better, we can have a crutch. So I would say it’s a choice of which kind of world you want, and as a Christian, I feel very definitely I don’t want the kind of world the old China represented.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the legislation is really the answer. The answer can only come as there is a change of faith. Yes?

[Audience] As Christians, {?} marijuana {?}

[Rushdoony] It is a means of escaping from the world. That’s its purpose, and as such, to a society that has any kind of advancement or progress in it, it spells the end of that, and it’s its purpose.

One more thing, about a year ago, those of you who were present signed a petition to help the mortuary here in a very difficult situation. As you recall at that time, I called it to your attention, there was a move in the neighborhood to shut down the operation of the crematorium here, on the objection that it created a very oppressive situation. Now, the crematorium has been here since, I believe, 1930 or 1931. Only in the last year has there been any objection to it. I went to the hearing at the West Los Angeles City Hall on Monday, and it was quite a startling thing. First of all, the crematorium, up until about two or three years ago, was in this building here and now it’s at the corner there. A new one was installed. The manufacturer’s representative was there to describe it. There are three retorts. Nothing can escape. The Air Pollution Control came, tested it, and found that the total emission from the top was microscopic. That is, all the emission put together could only be seen in a microscope. Now, listening to the testimony against it was startling, and I wondered if maybe I don’t know everything about this, because person after person got up and testified, living as much as four and five blocks away, that night after night they were gasping and strangling because of the nauseous odors, the smell of burning flesh and so on, and how they had to call a doctor, and this and that sort of thing. Well, they pinpointed the times as between 8:00 at night and 3:00 in the morning. When all this testimony was finished, the record book for all the cremations indicated that it was always and only in the morning, and at 1:00, and no one reported smelling anything at those hours, nor any ashes or anything falling at those hours. The very interesting thing, and yet this did not shake any of them in the least, nor did it upset the city attorney who was presiding at the hearing. He was impressed by the large number of people who were agitated.

As a matter of fact, when they were leaving the hearing, and I was walking just in front of them, I could hear the women talking, “Well, now you keep a record in the mornings and in the afternoons.” In other words, the next hearing their testimony was going to be affected by what they had just found out. Then, this presents a very serious problem because the thing that I found out when it was over was the women who had started all this, now mind you, from 1930 or 1931, it’s been in operation and never a single complaint until this one woman began to complain and began to work up every hysterical man and woman for blocks around, and it appears that she wants to sell her property to the mortuary for well over $20,000 more than it is worth at best. Now, I brought this up because since I got involved in it, it’s been a rather terrifying thing to see how people operate, and they were not the least bit shaken or disturbed that all their testimony was false, that they had been imagining this. Not a single person in that crowded hearing room was in the slightest ashamed or embarrassed. They were all the more anxious to put this place out of business.

Now, if any of you were not here at the time and did not have an opportunity to sign anything, I do have some forms here for your signature. I think it looks very difficult for the Pierce Brothers. There’s a slim chance that they may come out, but now a days the majority tends to rule. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, this started before the building here was completed. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] There is nothing in scripture that speaks against it, but the early church tended to be against cremation for the reason that they felt that instead of the fear of the dead and the anxious desire to get rid of the body, or any reminder of death, they felt a respect for the loved ones who had passed on and in terms of their belief in the resurrection of the dead, had made cemeteries a place, in those early centuries and near the churches throughout the Medieval Era and into the last century, a beautiful place, a place where respect was shown. I tend to prefer that, but I don’t feel that I have any right to say scripture says yes and no on this.

Now, if any of you were not here last year, and would like to sign one of these declarations, please do so and I will turn them in afterwards. I’ll put them right up here on {?} , and to me, this whole episode is a very telling indication of the direction our country has been taking, because to imagine that that kind of false testimony could be given and no one was embarrassed, nor anyone rebuked by the public officials present, indicates really how far we have gone. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They’ve done it so often. You see, the fact is that every Sunday we have been meeting here, every Sunday. It has been in operation and not one of us have ever been aware of it. How then could people four and five blocks away be aware of it? Yes, our time really is up, but just one or two quick questions. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. However, the law now states that you cannot have a crematorium unless you have a cemetery, so they could not have it anywhere else, you see, without establishing everything there as well. What is happening is that various kinds of activities are being zoned out progressively; cemeteries, mortuaries, and churches. That’s the truth. People don’t want anything that reminds them that they must face God or that they’re going to die.

Well, let’s 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