Salvation and Godly Rule

Predestination

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Works

Lesson: Predestination

Genre: Speech

Track: 47

Dictation Name: RR136Z47

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Our scripture lesson is from the epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, the first chapter, verses 1-12, and our subject: Predestination. “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. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: that we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.”

In this epistle, St. Paul is dealing with various questions with regard to the doctrine of grace, or of salvation. It is significant that he begins with the groundwork of predestination. His opening words repeatedly stress that fact. He describes himself as an apostle “by the will of God,” by God’s sovereign predestinating act. In the fourth verse, he says, “he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” {?} predestination prior to the creation of heaven and earth. In the fifth verse, he speaks of “being predestinated,” “according to the good pleasure of his will.” In the ninth verse, again, “according to the good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself.” He is making clear that predestination is without respect to foreknowledge, that it is according to his good pleasure. In the tenth verse, he describes the purpose, that “he might gather together in one all things,” and the eleventh verse, again “being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.”

Now, in an epistle dealing with the doctrine of grace and salvation, does Paul begin by bearing down so heavily on the doctrine of predestination. Let us examine the doctrine of predestination so that we can see why this emphasis here in Ephesians. Few things are more often deliberately misunderstood than the doctrine of predestination. It is, of course, difficult enough to understand in itself, and when it is deliberately twisted, deliberately distorted, it makes it all the more difficult to understand. The reason, of course, for the distortion is that so much is at stake, and as a result, it is done in order to obscure the basic issue.

In other to understand the basic issue, certain things need to be brought into focus. First of all, predestination is an inescapable concept. The only alternative to it is to believe that all things are the product of total absolute chance. Those are your alternatives. No one logically believes in chance. The idea is tossed out by some people in order to confuse Christians, but to believe in chance is to say there is no rationality in the universe, no science is possible, no order is possible. Nothing exists, except total randomness, total chance. Now, no one really believes that. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” All things reveal an order, a design, and a masterly one. Predestination is the doctrine that there is an ultimate power and law controlling all things.

Now, even the ancient polytheists, those who believed in many gods, who believed that one god ruled one country and another god ruled another country, an idea we are getting again in a sophisticated form. The hippy intellectuals are reviving it. Even they held that behind the {?} was karma, or faith, or some other predestinating force. On all sides, at all times, throughout the history of human thought, predestination has been affirmed, with or without God.

Then second, we must say the doctrine is only truly theistic. That is, God-oriented in its biblical form. Predestination can be karma, as in Hindu thought, or fate, as in ancient Greco/Roman thought. It can be dialectical materialism, or determinism as in Marxist thought. It can be pantheism as in Spinovas{?} thought, and there are endless other varieties.

Now, metaphysically, all such ideas of predestination without God are impossible. They are illogical. They require everything that is the product of a mind, a supreme mind, without acknowledging that supreme mind, but of course, men want the substance of God without God himself.

Third, we must say that when the doctrine of predestination is formally denied, it does not disappear. When men refuse to believe the doctrine of predestination as it is taught in scripture, the doctrine does not go away, since it is an inevitable concept. It then approves to some agency other than God. The doctrine cannot be denied. It can only be transferred to some other agency, and that agency has normally been something within the created order, most usually the state. The state as the agency of total plan.

Thus, when men say that the doctrine of predestination is a horrible doctrine, what they mean is it is horrible if God is doing it, not horrible if a group of human planners, scientific socialist elite are doing it. {?} next we must state that the issue at stake is really this: Who is truly God? The God of scripture or man? If man is his own god, then it logically follows that man will do the total planning of all things. Predestination by man is the modern goal. The existentialist doctrine has said, “Freedom is nothing other than a choice which creates for itself its own possibilities.” Now let’s translate that into everyday language. If I have the freedom of choice, not as a creature, but as a god, and this is what Sartre says, and he comes out and says subsequently, this is the goal of man, to be God. It means that it’s not that I have the freedom to choose between alternatives open to me, but to create the alternatives. I can choose to fit it on a concrete level, while the next year I want to be 29, or 16, or 50, or 56, or 60. I choose the possibilities, as well as making a choice between the possibilities.

Now, if that sounds absurd, let us remember that this is exactly what they are aiming at, the ability to control life absolutely, to play with the life processes, to reverse them, to break with the genetic code, and to create out of a baby that is to be born, exactly what we choose. This is exactly what they are talking about in their literature today. This is ultimate, not secondary, freedom.

Next, we must say that salvation means predestination. This is why St. Paul, in beginning this epistle about the doctrine of salvation, talks first about predestination. It is impossible to save a man and for that man to be saved if he is not protected from all contingencies. The savior, in any system of thought, is also the predestinator. The modern state seeks to save man and also to predestinate. The two go hand-in-hand.

Now, the predestination of God is transcendental. That is, it is beyond the world, beyond the universe, and therefore, there is no conflict between the freedom of God and absolute freedom, the freedom of a creator and the freedom of a creature, which is a secondary freedom, and God as the creator creates all things in perfect harmony, but a clockmaker makes a clock. The hour hand and the minute hand are not in conflict with each other, or each runs in terms of a different concept. So God creates all things with harmony. Man is not frustrated, you see, with God’s control. He feels no constraint, no frustration thereby. He only feels constraint when man seeks to predestine, for man’s control is imminent predestination. It gets into our works, and it tries to redirect all things from within the world, to compete with man on his own ground, for a second cause to claim to be God, means to war with other second causes and seek to rule over them. It denies man his only freedom, that of a secondary cause.

Thus, when men deny God’s predestination, they then assert, in some form, man’s predestination, and predestination by man is the fountainhead of all tyranny.

Now, we begin to see, I think, why St. Paul, whenever he discusses the doctrine of salvation, and the great discussions of scripture are those of St. Paul on this subject, prefaces it with an assertion of God’s predestination. The two are inseparable. You cannot truly believe in salvation as scripture teaches it, salvation by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, without believing in the doctrine of predestination. When we examine the history of theology, we find that whenever this connection is broken, what happens? There have been times in the Medieval Era as well as in the Modern Era, when men have bypassed the doctrine of predestination. When there is {?} said as many people say today, “Well, the simple gospel is enough for me. I believe that I am saved by Jesus Christ, and that is enough.” Every time, in the history of thought, when this kind of simplistic thinking has occurred, two things have ensued. First, another agency takes over control, claims the control of man from God. It has been the church on occasions. It has more often been the state.

The second thing that happens is the doctrine of salvation also disappears, and the state, or the church, claims to be man’s savior. It is not at all surprising that the churches which began in this country, for example, by denying God’s predestinating power ended up also denying God’s saving power, and are now preaching total planning by the state and salvation by the state. Now is it surprising that those so-called evangelical churches which deny the doctrine of predestination and still talk about being saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, are beginning at the same time to preach total planning by the state? And are weakening every year at a very rapid rate, the doctrine of salvation through Jesus Christ. The one follows from the other, and this is why St. Paul makes the emphasis that he does, and this is why we, too, must make it. Our salvation and our freedom depends on the predestination of God. They always have, and this is why Dr. Butner{?} in his very wonderful book on the reformed doctrine of predestination, over and over again makes the point that those who have upheld this doctrine and revived it have been the great champions, not only of scripture, but of man’s freedom from tyranny. The connection is a necessary one. In brief, the doctrine of salvation must be grounded in predestination, or it is not salvation and another savior predestinator quickly appears on the human scene to command man.

The doctrine thus, is of central importance. The scripture, for the doctrine of salvation and to the freedom of man. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of thy grace and mercy, choose us before the foundation of the world, and predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. We rejoice that thou art our God, our predestinator, and we rejoice, O God, that thou hast given us the world whereby we shall conquer, whereby we shall overthrow all of the false gods, the false saviors, the false predestinators of our time. Establish us, O Lord, firmly in this thy word, that we might be a generation dedicated to victory{?}, confident in thy power, and overthrowing the forces of darkness. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions, first of all, on our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Constraint is an outward force, whereas God’s predestination is an inward force, you see. So, we are neither constrained nor feel constrained because predestination is totally one with our being in nature, and so there is no outward constraint upon us.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. The word imminent can mean that which is very close to us, imminent disaster, disaster that is almost present. That’s imminent with an “i”. The other immanent, with an “a,” means that which is within us, or in our context, around us, and the doctrine of imminence basically, theologically means that which is in the world just as man is in the world.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Not quite.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] You see, we can speak of God’s imminence, that God is both immanent, in the world, and also transcendent, beyond the world.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] {?} question {?}. First of all, {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is a question that has come up before, but it is important and it is worth going into again and again. Why is the text used to translate the King James better than the others, and why is it a better translation. First of all, from the time of the Old Testament writers, the scriptures we know from all the records of Israel, well as our knowledge of everything in the early church and through the Middle Ages, tells us this: that every manuscript of the scriptures was very carefully gathered. The Hebrew scribes as well as the early church scribes would copy the manuscripts since there was no typesetting in those days, word for word, and then check it. There would be at least two people at all times involved. They would first read it word for word, the one to the other to make sure the wording was exact. They would then check it, letter for letter, dot for dot, again to make sure it was identical. Then, they would count all the letters, again to make sure it was identical. As a result, the received texts, text receptus{?}, was a text that was carefully guarded, carefully handed down from generation to generation, and therefore, the accuracy of scripture was retained. Now, what happened if they, after making a check, found out there was an error. All you who have typed or copied anything know that sometimes your eye skips a line, you find the identical word at the end of the beginning of two lines, and you skip a line, and sometimes it’s difficult to catch because there still is some kind of meaning. When we sent in the last proofs from my forthcoming book on biblical law, it was only at the very last reading that we caught such an error, because it still made sense somehow, but as I read it, there was just a little bit of an awkwardness and a peculiarity there, and I thought, “Something is missing here.” I went back to the original and sure enough, a line had been dropped out. Now, those defective manuscripts that had a line left out, or a word left out, were not burned. They were parchment, or they were very costly materials, papyrus and what not, so they would be put into barrels and then, with a very slow, difficult process, this very indelible type of ink would be washed and scraped and gradually removed so the material could be reused. It was left there for such a time as they could do it.

Now, naturally, through the centuries, not all these defective manuscripts were used up. The modern era, as scholars went around and located these, they chose to say, “Aha, we have a superior reading here.” Now, here is a text where the words of our Lord, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” are missing. Therefore, it was a later edition, and so they’d gone through and used these defective manuscripts in the last about 80 or 90 years, very gleefully. The scholars who have done so have been uniformly hostile to the faith in scripture as the inspired and infallible word of God, and so they have continually reached out for more and more of these defective manuscripts. Now, it is significant that the Dead Sea Scrolls give us a manuscript identical to what we have. Those were good manuscripts, you see, those which were first discovered which were complete, and therefore, valid manuscripts, We have the complete text of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the original discovery, and it’s exactly what we have, and here it goes back to the time well before Christ.

Now, the problem with modern translations, therefore, is that virtually all scholars except a small handful, of which Dr. Hills{?}, whose believing Bible study we had at the Christmas festival, is one, all these scholars follow the modernist method, even though many of them are evangelicals. They still, for intellectual respectability and because this is the only thing you learn in the schools today, go for the {?} method. The result is they begin with defective manuscripts. The result is no matter how brilliant they are as linguists, they are going to have a translation that is not altogether trustworthy. The King James translators first began with the received text. Second, they believed that the word of God is the word of God, infallible and inerrant. Third, they translate it very, very carefully and literally, word for word, so that where there was a word understood, they put it in italics so no one would get the idea that they had added something.

For example, when I say word understood, if I say “shut the door,” grammatically, “you shut the door,” is what I am saying, but “you” is understood in a command. Well, in various languages, many words are understood or a part of the declension or conjugation. These are put into italics. Most modern translations are paraphrases. That is, instead of translating literally, they take and give the meaning, generally. A paraphrase is helpful sometimes. For example, I’ve cited this before and I think it’s a very good example of a helpful paraphrase. In the Smith-Goodsby{?} translation which was very popular in the 20’s and 30’s, but which was very bad in some respects, because Goodsby, in the New Testament, being thoroughly modernist, avoid all such theological words as covenant, which is there in the Greek, atonement, and so on, and gave vague American/English renderance. So, he tried to remove the theology of the original from his translation. Nonetheless, he paraphrases the Beatitudes thus: Blessed are the poor in spirit, he renders Blessed are they who feel their spiritual need. Now, that’s not what the original says, but it’s what the original means, you see. He gives the meaning of the idiom, in English. So, it’s helpful. It brings out the meaning, but it’s still a paraphrase. So a paraphrase has its place, but an accurate translation should be a basic concern, and that’s why I believe the King James is the Bible to use. If you have a good paraphrase, it’s very helpful sometimes to turn to it.

[Audience] {?} King James {?} and

[Rushdoony] To men of goodwill, yes. Well, the King James is accurate. At Christmas, I went into the meaning of that, but you were away at the time. So, the King James is still the accurate reading there.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, it’s not always in deletions. It’s sometimes in a word that gets in there. Let’s try to explain. Yesterday, when I was doing some writing, I was typing a quotation. It was a paragraph long. A long, long paragraph. The writer’s way of wording things was very different from mine, and I found that I would be adding a word here and there because it didn’t seem quite logical the way he worded things, and I would have to go back and correct it, and Dorothy was typing something else that I forget, oh, that Dr. Van Til had written, and so he came to me and said, “Did he really state it in these words? Didn’t you omit a word in quoting him?”

And I said, “No, I don’t believe so. I think I recall that it seems a peculiar wording to me and I had to stop myself to avoid inserting a word there.” We checked the original and that was exactly it, where I normally would have put in a word, an article, he did not. Now, when you’re copying, you do this, you see, so there are additions at times, as the copyist inserted a word because it seemed natural to him. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Now that’s a good point. There are some cases of deliberate mistranslation. The word almah, in Hebrew, technically can mean “young maiden,” but it is always and only used, as scholars have pointed out, for a virgin, but since the various modern translators like the Revised Standard Version do not agree with the doctrine of the virgin birth, they simply have rendered it, “A young maiden shall conceive,” instead of “A virgin shall conceive.” Dr. E.J. Young has written at very great lengths to demonstrate that almah means virgin and there’s no mistaking it. In fact, the whole point of Isaiah’s prophesy would be ridicules if he had prophesied that a young girl was going to have a baby. What’s remarkable about that? He was saying that something miraculous and great was going to take place, that a young virgin would conceive. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] He is far from the worst. He was one of the better men in the committee. Yes?

[Audience] What do you think of the efforts by James {?} some of the really bad {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the purpose of King James II is to revise the language by bringing it up to date. Now, this was done once about a hundred years ago to the King James Version, and this is why, in some translations, for example, of 1 Corinthians 13, it will read instead of “Faith, hope, and charity,” “Faith, hope, and love,” because that’s exactly what it should read in terms of our usage of language today. This one happens to be charity. I don’t think the King James II succeeds in its purpose. I think it is a good idea to bring some of these words up to date, because the English has changed. I know during World War 2, there was, I’ve always enjoyed this little incident, a great deal of indignation at one Army base when New Testaments were passed out to all the service men with a little leaflet, “Quit Ye Like Men,” and the General blew his stack. He didn’t want any quitting recommended to his men by chaplains. Well, of course, the quotation from scripture, “Quit ye like men,” means “quit yourselves,” but quit has changed its meaning. The “quick and the dead,” another expression from the King James, “the living and the dead.” Well, I don’t think there is any difficulty in understanding either so I don’t think there is really any great need to change those. Sometimes we do need to be told the meaning of some of these words, and next Sunday, we shall be dealing with one passage where the English in the passage has faded in its meaning, and when you get back to the original, and we have the original Greek word now in English, and see what it means, the meaning is startling. Perhaps I’ll give you just a hint of what it is because there is so much more to the whole passage, but when St. Paul says, “The Lord loveth a cheerful giver,” what he is actually saying, and which cheerful once meant, but it has become weaker and weaker in meaning, is what the Greek original says, and which we have in English today. We’ve taken over the word, “The Lord loveth an hilarious giver.” Now what does it mean when scripture says, “The Lord loveth and hilarious giver?” Well, that’s a very interesting, a very exciting point, and once you examine that in terms of what that word means and in the context, it’s a very startling thing that it opens up, and we will go into that next week, because it’s an extremely important point. Well, that’s just a teaser for next week’s study. Our time is up, 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