Law and Life

Sacrilege: Sacrilege, Holiness, Community

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 11 of 39

Track: 122

Dictation Name: RR156F11

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Our Scripture is from Zechariah 14:20 and 21, then 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 17, and then 1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20. Our subject, Sacrilege, Holiness, and Community. First of all, Zechariah 14:20 and 21, Zechariah 14:20 and 21. “In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, holiness unto the Lord; and the pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.” Next 1 Corinthians 3, verses 16 and 17, 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 17. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” And then finally 1 Corinthians 6, verses 19 and 20, 1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20. “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” The details of sacrilege can be analyzed at great length, and we have in the past few months dealt with certain aspects of sacrilege. Sacrilege is of things; as of the ark of the Lord, with regard with money given to the Lord; as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, with respect to holy places; as Exodus 3, verse 5 makes clear, and many, many other things. Our concern this morning is with the meaning of sacrilege for community, for society. We are interested, thus, in analyzing now and in successive weeks the relationship of sacrilege to a law structure and to the fact of community.

Now, sacrilege is first of all a very specific fact. It is a violation of a very specific thing. For example, Uzziah, according to 2 Chronicles 26:16 following, although not a priest, rather the king, sought to usurp the priestly office and was smitten with leprosy. But the laws with respect to sacrilege also have a meaning beyond the specific meaning. What the Bible gives us, as we saw when we studied Biblical law, is case law. And the classic example of that, as given to us by Scripture, is thou shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth out the corn, in Deuteronomy 25, verse 4. Now over and over again the New Testament cites this particular law. It means the laborer is worthy of his hire. It means also that they who serve the Lord are worthy of double honor according to Saint Paul. Now, the meaning the New Testament gives it does not eliminate the primary meaning that the ox deserves to be fed for his work. At no point in the law, when we have these case laws, are we permitted to forget the specific meaning. Thus, in Proverbs we are told specifically that the godly care for their animals. The same is true of the laws of sacrilege. We are not permitted to forget the specific examples of sacrilege; they are most serious. They constitute a very, very important and deadly kind of offense. But neither are we allowed to forget that there are other reaches of meaning. In the Scriptures we read these other meanings are clearly set forth. Beginning with the Corinthians passages, the first of these in 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 17, refers to the church; the new temple of God. Saint Paul is dealing with the divisions in the church. Some said I am of Paul, another I am of Apollos. And the church was torn asunder by a variety of divisions. And all of these, Saint Paul says, are defiling the temple of God; the church. It is the holy place now wherein the Spirit of God dwells. And so he cites the law of sacrilege, if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. And then to make it clear that they get the application of this Old Testament law to the situation they are in: for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. The penalty for defiling the temple or tabernacle was at least excommunication according to Numbers 19:20, and it could be, according to Leviticus 15:31, death. Thus the point that Saint Paul makes here, is the law of sacrilege now applies to the church and the community; the fellowship of believers, and it is a sacrilege to defile that.

Hodge observes of this, and I quote, “God is not less jealous of His spiritual temple than He was of the typical temple built of wood and stone by the hands of men. Ministers injure the souls of men and injure the church when they preach false doctrine, and therefore they defile the temple of God, and will certainly be punished.” Now very clearly, as Hodge and others have pointed out, the reference here is to the church, to the community, to the fellowship of believers. And whether it is a member who divides it by false doctrine or ungodly, immoral conduct, or a minister by preaching falsely, it is sacrilege.

Now the second reference in 1 Corinthians 6:19 and 20 is primarily to the believer’s physical body. “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Now in the third chapter Saint Paul is dealing with the quarrels in the church, with the problems they create in defiling the community, the body of believers, now he is coming to physical sins; fornication in this case, which defile the body of the believer, his own physical body, and again his point is this is sacrilege. Again, to turn to Hodge’s commentary, he says, “There are two things characteristic of a temple. First, it is sacred as a dwelling place of God, and therefore cannot be profaned with impurity. Second, the proprietorship of a temple is not in man, but in God. Both these things are true of the believer’s body. It is a temple because the Holy Ghost dwells in it; and because it is not his own. It belongs to God. As it is a temple of the Holy Ghost, it cannot be profaned without incurring great and peculiar guilt. And as it belongs in a peculiar sense to God, it is not at our own disposal. It can only be used for the purpose for which He designed it.” Thus very clearly we see in these passages something of the meaning of sacrilege; that it applies not only to the physical building, but also to the spiritual body of believers, and to the physical body of the believer. Envying and strife, Saint Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 3, had sundered the holy community, and this is sacrilege. The root of this sacrilege is sin. A common factor in both cases is failure to recognize that God is the Lord of the church and of the redeemed man, and therefore these people, both as a body and as individuals have committed sacrilege, and the roots of this are heresy, heresy Saint Paul says, implicit or explicit.

In 1 Corinthians 11:17 through 19, Saint Paul declares, “Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. For there must also be heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” Or to read the same verses in the Berkley version, “I must announce this however, that I do not approve of your coming together, not for your good but to your hurt. For in the first place, I hear that as you meet in church session there are fractions among you and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there had be dissensions among you, so that the tried and true may be recognized among you.” In other words, Saint Paul declares these divisions, wrong as they are, do serve a purpose. They are a part of a purifying and refining process, whereby those that are tested and tried and proven; established in the faith, orthodox, right thinking, right living, rather than heretical or heterodox; wrong thinking, may be established and may prosper in terms of God’s grace. The divisions therefore, Saint Paul says, are to be deplored. They are sacrilegious but they have a purpose; they separate the heretics and the ungodly; the immoral, from tried and true believers.

Now as we saw some time ago when we first began our study of sacrilege, it was once a sin that even the ungodly were fearful of. This is why in ages, 7th century, 6th century and thereafter, when there was a great deal of upheaval and turmoil and wandering bands of tribesmen going through York, while there was at times a pillaging of churches and of monasteries, there was on the whole, surprising little compared with the anarchy that existed at times. Why? Precisely because the very barbarians who were out to pillage had come to believe that it was unlucky and dangerous somehow to tamper with God. Thus it was that the Jewish merchants, who at that time were the only source of business and trade, commerce, in Europe in those times of anarchy for about four centuries, controlling all of it, would take their money and deposit it with an abbey or with a church, because there was safety there even from the ungodly. They were afraid of sacrilege. They knew that there would be consequences sooner or later, and sometimes very dramatically. Why then did this fact of causality, which even the ungodly in those days recognized, disappear? Why is it that no one sees cause and effect here today? That for the past three centuries, causality has suddenly disappeared in this realm of sacrilege; no one sees it. To understand this fact is extremely important for understanding also what has tended to happen among people. The whole view of causality in the late 1600’s and from the beginning of the 1700’s on, began to be mechanical, impersonal.

Now another context I am writing at great length on what this meant to the modern world and to modern man, when at that time his view of causality ceased to be that of the personal God, and became that of impersonal causes. It will be part of a series of lectures that I’ll be giving this summer at Hillsdale College. But the implications of this were deadly; causality became mechanical rather than theistic. And when it became mechanical, any cause that was personal could no longer be seen, in fact causality disappeared as a personal thing, even in the realm of man finally. Today how is man explained, not in terms of personal facts, but in terms of the unconscious, in terms of drives, in terms of everything that is impersonal. As a result we no longer talk about sin, we talk about crime and social forces and unconscious forces that are the cause of crime. We have depersonalized the universe and man. Now sacrilege is totally personal; it is the personal offense of a person against the totally personal God, and since the personal aspect of causality has been removed from the world, sacrilege (which is the ultimate in sin) and sin itself are no longer factors in our thinking. They are no longer seriously regarded. We are concerned with crime, which is interpreted impersonally, rather than sin, which is personal. The result has been a warping of man.

To give an example of this from the 18th century when this began, I read recently a biography of a very prominent woman of the time; we could call her one of the first women’s libbers, and she was so highly regarded for her ideas, her philosophical perspective, that even kings honored her and regarded her as an ornament and tried to talk her into coming to their court to be an ornament to their intellectual community. Her name was Isabella van Tuyll, a Dutch woman, better known by her pen name; Zelide. And one of her biographers, Geoffrey Scott, says of her and I quote, “She appealed at every point, from usage to reason. Her true 18th century mind could not doubt for a moment that logic was the basis of human happiness; that man was an irrational animal for whom logic lays a snare, that custom like the heart has its own reasons, that folly is a human attribute is entitled, if not to veneration at least certain tenderness, she could not concede.” Unquote. Because of her intense rationalism, Zelide idolized Newton and mathematics. Their idea of causality had become totally mechanical and mathematical. And therefore in those days everyone who considered themselves the least bit intelligent was spending their time pouring over the pages of Newton and studying mathematics. And you find them making the absurd kind of statements that Zelide did when she said, “I find an hour or two of mathematics gives me a freer mind and a lighter heart, I eat and sleep better when I have grasped an evident and indisputable truth.”

Now this kind of idolizing of mathematics has prevailed to a degree to our time and the last gasp of it was in a famous sonnet by “Euclid alone saw Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, and lay them prone upon the earth.” However the romantic trend did come in because the idea of laying prone upon the earth in abject worship was a more romantic concept than the old rationalistic one. But in Zelide, because the personal God had disappeared, the idea of sin had disappeared; of sacrilege therefore, everything was mathematical. She was regarded as a highly desirable catch matrimonially, she came from one of the great noble families of the Netherlands, she had a fair sized inheritance, and people came from all Europe, young noblemen, to court her. And she turned them all down. They weren’t rational enough to suit her. And finally when she was thirty-one years old, she married a mathematician. She made both him and herself miserable for the rest of their lives, because although she was unwilling to admit it, there was more than pure reason in her being.

Now, in a person such as Zelide, rationalism, because it was so extreme, had dried up, as it were, other aspects of her being and she was unable to see the obvious facts about herself. The one person in her family that she had any real love for, because she did not like the idea of love, it was too irrational, the one person she had any regard for was her mother. But when her mother died, instead of feeling grief, all her statements deal with the horror of it. Why? Because for her as an unbeliever, it meant death, and it brought home to her that her mind with all its love of mathematics was going to be gone someday, and she could only feel horror, and it didn’t occur to her how egocentric she was, how sinful she was, because sin was not in the picture for her. Life was impersonal. She was unable to form any lasting friendship. She avoided people. She retreated to her husband’s estate and made her two sisters-in-law and her husband miserable for the rest of her life, because people were a problem. You became attached to them or they made demands on you and she preferred to contemplate life from the standpoint of pure reason, mathematics. She was incapable of a spontaneous, generous act.

But when rationalism gave way at the end of the 18th century to romanticism, true community did not return with it, nor did the idea of personal causes, nor the idea of sin. The reign of reason was replaced with the reign of the egoism of emotionalism. Mathematics gave way to biology as the number one science and Darwin replaced Newton. But now it was not community but a kind of denatured biology that prevailed; the pack, a mindless mob, social forces, but not sin. Now it is important for us to realize what all of this means. God being taken out of the thinking of modern man, sin disappeared, the person disappeared, and a false concept of causality prevailed. But because in the Bible, causality is ultimately personal, it is the sovereign God, we cannot think Scripturally unless we think personally in terms of sin, in terms of sacrilege, in terms of holiness, not in terms of atomism or the pack, but in terms of community. The antithesis of sacrilege is holiness, and so the word “holiness” has disappeared also from the modern man’s vocabulary. It belongs to the world of the person, and ultimately God.

Now as Zachariah gives us a vision of the great and fulfilled kingdom of God, he declares “in that day there shall be upon the bells of the horses, ‘Holiness unto the Lord’. and the pots in the Lord’s house shall be like the bowls before the altar. Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the Lord of hosts: and all they that sacrifice shall come and take of them, and seethe therein: and in that day there shall be no more the Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.” The Canaanite, the ungodly, the unbeliever, shall no longer be in the house of the Lord of hosts. The knowledge of the Lord and His righteousness shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. And everything shall be dedicated by godly men to a godly use, so every vessel, every pot and pan shall be like those on the altar of the Lord. The bells upon the horses which were purely ornamental; had no real significant use, even the most trifling thing shall be dedicated to holiness because people who are themselves committed to God will do all things to His glory.

The impersonalism of the modern world is a product of sin and sacrilege; it leads men away from men and away from themselves. It leads men to interpret themselves in terms of drives and instincts; to depersonalize man and to eliminate responsibility. And because modern man has depersonalized himself, he talks of alienation, he talks of communication problems, he talks of the conflict of the mind with the primordial aspects of man’s being and so on. Now community is not possible with robots, nor is it possible with an animal pack, it is a product of holiness. It is a product of the healing of the rift between God and man, and between man and man. It is a product of regeneration by the sovereign grace of God through Christ, and of sanctification through the law of God.

Now Zachariah’s vision does not see the kingdom in institutional terms. Here again is another aspect of the impersonalism of modern life. Impersonalism leads not only to depersonalizing man, but seeing the world in institutional terms; institutionalizing everything. And so, among the modernists as they look at the future and try to visualize the kingdom of God, they see it in statist terms. And the evangelicals and Reformed see it in church terms, ecclesiastical terms, they have institutionalized the future and the present. And this institutionalization is a part of the depersonalization that has come from forsaking the idea of sin and sacrilege, of holiness, of community.

Now in this institutional vision of the kingdom, there is a measure of truth. First of all, both church and state are, in terms of Scripture, necessary institutions, and we can never forget that. Moreover, the Bible makes it clear that God requires His house to be a glorious and a beautiful one in its physical being. But we must next say that both church and state are derivative, not ultimate. And in fact, when the New Testament speaks of the church, it does not speak of a building, of very little organization, and it was almost more of a movement than an institution, although we cannot say it was that. And when Saint Paul speaks in 1 Timothy 3:15 of the church as the pillar and ground of truth, he is not talking about a building or an institution or a denomination, but of the true church, which is in Christ and which is present here on earth, and we can never see it as that which is only imminent, but as that which is primarily transcendent but also imminent. Then we must say also that only as men are in Christ do we truly have a church and state. Only as men find community with God can they find community in Christ; in the church and in the state. Saint Augustine was right; if there be not faith, the state quickly will become not an aspect of the kingdom of God, but a band of robbers, preying on those who are in its path. And if the church be not an aspect of the kingdom of God, it becomes an obscene blasphemy. And the institutions of church and state become then a defamation of that which they professed to be.

Now Zechariah’s vision gives us the triumph of holiness in the people of God, it is not an institutional vision, although we know from other aspects of Scriptures that the institutions have their place in that vision. The culminating sentence is the Canaanites shall be no more in the house of the Lord. The people of God are truly holy, and therefore all are at peace with the Lord and with one another, and the whole of life is made personal, filled with the holiness of God, made an area of obedience to His Word, and the world is then the kingdom of God in truth and in power. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou art our God. We thank Thee that Thou art more mindful of us day by day than our parents were when we were babes in their arms. Teach us therefore to trust in Thee as little children, knowing Thou art ever mindful of us and all Thy dealings with us are for our temporal and eternal glory indeed. Our God, we thank Thee for Thy care, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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

[Audience member] In 1 Corinthians 11 where it talks about the people sleeping because they violated the Lord ’s Table, is than an instance of sacrilege?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Very good point. Yes, emphatically. Because they had been guilty of sacrilege, in that instance they had perished. Now of course we have a dramatic example of sacrilege in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, made dramatic to bring home the point to the people of God.

[Audience member] Was there sacrilege primarily in that they didn’t treat that as the Lord’s body, or that they had {?}?

[Rushdoony] Well, it’s both, and more. You cannot limit the meaning. But, turning to that, in 1 Corinthians 11, verses 27 following. “Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself (Or judgment to himself), not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” Now I think perhaps the best commentary on that passage is in the communion service liturgy, as written by Calvin and by Knox. When I was in the pastorate I would use these regularly; one month I would use Calvin, and the next month Knox. And the whole point of their service was to explain precisely this passage. And therefore both of them asked all to examine themselves, from the little children in a congregation to the oldest, and there would be a recital of the law and of the various offenses, spiritual and physical. And then, they were also invited to come, not because they were guiltless in these things, but because they knew their sin and put their whole trust in Christ and came for His healing power. Came confessing that they were sinners, came judging themselves as unworthy and relying on the grace of God in Christ. They’re very beautiful services, now I’m amazed that the Reformed churches have not continued their use, because there is nothing more beautiful than those two services.

[Audience member] Are they in print?

[Rushdoony] They’re not in print now unfortunately. I think sometime it would be well worthwhile to go to some of these various ancient forms and reprint them, because they are superb. Now, in the early 50’s, these were reprinted, but it quickly went out of print, they didn’t find a market for it, and marked it down to remainders, and it disappeared. Any other questions?

Well if not, let us 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]