Life or Death in the Schools

Philosophy of Christian Education as a World and Life View

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Education

Genre:

Lesson: 1

Track: 01

Dictation Name: RR193A1

Date:

Chalcedon, Chalcedon, or Chalcedon, all three are entirely legitimate and whichever you use sometimes depends on which university you went to. The name comes from a small town in Asia Minor, not too far from Constantinople, where a council of the Christian Church was held in A.D. 451. The great work of that council, which should be in every history book but which is not, because the history textbooks are written by anti-Christians, was to set forth the biblical doctrine as Christ as very God of very God and very man of very man: truly God and truly man; two natures in perfect union without confusion.

Now, what Chalcedon Council did was to set forth that Jesus Christ is the lone Lord and Savior, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that any other claim to be the link between heaven and earth, even by a church, or by a state, is invalid; because at that time, you’ll remember the Roman emperors were claiming to be gods and later the Church claimed to be the voice of God on earth, and the continuation of the incarnation. Chalcedon stood up against that very clearly and said that Christ alone is the link between God and man. There’s no other way under heaven by which men can be saved than Jesus Christ.

So today, when we have the state again claiming to be god, not saying it in so many words, but claiming total power over man, we thought, first, we’ve got to withstand the totalitarian claims of the State and set for the total claims of Jesus Christ, and we have to work out the principles, the fundamentals of Christian reconstruction in every area of life and thought. This is what we’re trying to do. This is why, for example, we have men working in various fields here and there across country in philosophy, in economics, in the area of music, mathematics, that’s one thing we’re very proud of. If you’re interested in math and our first issue of the journal, Dr. Vernon {?} who took his PhD in math at Harvard, has written on God and Mathematics or What Does God Have to do With Numbers? Then in the Foundation for Christian Fellowship, he has dealt with mathematics, pointing out that unless you believe in the God of scripture, or the Doctrine of the Trinity, no mathematics is possible. It is advanced math that he’s dealing with there. It’s so important in that day, that graduate students who had heard about it and seen little snatches of some of the advanced proofs of it were writing to us anxiously wanting to know when the book would be out. It’s a tremendous study! Very important.

Well, that’s the kind of thing we want to do, so that if any serious Christian in math will have that, the fundamental principles of the biblical approach to mathematics. We want to do that for every field.

Next month I shall be speaking for two days, October 14 and 15, to the teachers and administrators of about 75 schools, Christian schools, in Ohio. How many of you are familiar with the school situation in Ohio? Any of you? Good. As you know, some of you, the Christian schools in Ohio in the past few years have grown rather dramatically. As a result, the State Department of Education in Ohio began to lose heavily in funds from the average daily attendance of students. It became very much concerned that it decided to throw at the schools, their minimum standards for Ohio Elementary Schools as well as the Junior High and the Senior High standards. In essence what this meant was that they were requiring the Christian schools of the State of Ohio to teach Humanism. At first they went after the schools and refused to accredit them if they failed to comply. In terms of this, they took one pastor to court. That conviction was recently overturned by the State Supreme Court. They cited however, that this method was too slow. They therefore went after the parents of the school teachers. This matter is still pending.

[Audience] What school teachers?

[Rushdoony] Parents of the school children. Yes. They went after the parents and said you are under arrest for contributing to the delinquency of your children by having them in these unaccredited Christian schools.

They told the parents to come to court with their children’s clothing packed because after the court session, their children would be taken permanently from them and they would not be permitted to see them again. As you can imagine, there were a great many parents who lost a great deal of sleep and shed a great many tears. They stood fast. Two Christian lawyers, one Catholic, and one Evangelical went to the defense of these citizens. Both of these men, incidentally, are on the Chalcedon mailing list. One is mister Burle of Harrisonburg, Pennsylvania; the other, Mr. Gibbs of Cleveland, Ohio. The case against the parents is still not settled, but the mission schools have taken the offensive. They are now suing the State of Ohio.

Now this case is a most revealing one because the chips are down, the battle’s done. A few years ago, a man in Washington, D.C. whose abilities I value most highly, made an off-the-record statement, that in the next ten years the main political battle in the United States would be between Christianity and anti-Christianity. And that everything would be done to disguise the fact that this was the real issue. The politicians would do everything to avoid this confrontation. Now of course, some candidates this year have been going around as ostensibly Christian candidates (C{?} of Arizona and Carter of Georgia). Although in their thinking, there is often evidence that there is a brand of Humanism and Christianity. The issue is a critical one, however, and it will not go away. The battle is being joined in Ohio.

What is involved? The issue is simply this: who is Lord? Christ or Caesar? We do not understand the New Testament unless we grasp this fundamental fact that the great proclamation of the New Testament is this, and it’s the culminating sentence of St. Peter’s speech on the Day of Pentecost: this same Jesus whom ye crucified is both Lord and Christ. St. Peter is followed in this by St. Paul who over and over again takes us to the great proclamation of Pentecost: Jesus is Lord.

Now that was a dangerous statement to make, because what does Lord mean? ‘Kurios’ in the Greek—God, the triumphant, world-conquering ruler, the {?} king, the one who has everything under His jurisdiction. The Lord is the one under whom all things exist. He provides the umbrella under whom creation, the arts, the sciences, politics, education, the family, everything exists. Now, as we look at the Roman Empire, we find going back to the days of our Lord’s birth, the sentimental fable of the Roman Empire was this: there is no other name under heaven by which men can be saved than the name of Augustus Caesar. Now do you understand what it meant when St. Peter declared on the Day of Pentecost Jesus is Lord? There is no name under heaven by which men can be saved than the name of Jesus Christ. Why, that was a declaration of war.

This was not all. We do know as a result of very painstaking and dry-as-dust study of all the ancient documents about the Early Church, that whatever else was required of someone who presented himself for baptism, that adult had to make this statement: Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord. This was mandatory--no baptism apart from that confession.

Now, what Rome was requiring of the Christians as they approached, when they were arrested for this saying, was this simple thing: look be reasonable, we’re not{?} against Christianity; we’re ready to allow you freedom to worship if you just apply for license as a licensed, legal religion and pay a small tax. But go by that altar of Caesar and say, “Caesar is lord” and you go free. Now that was it. Were they going to say “Jesus is Lord” or “Caesar is lord”? Do you know one of the Roman emperors actually in his private chapel set up a statue of Jesus? He was trying to indicate, look folks, what’s all this fighting about? I don’t enjoy having you kill. I readily give Jesus His due. I’m ready to recognize Him as one of the greatest men in history. I’ll give you the license to say whatever you want about Him but Caesar is lord. That’s what the persecution of the Early Church was about.

Isn’t it a sad and a disastrous fact that there are actually Christians now who consider it wrong to say that Jesus is Lord? If you deny that Jesus is Lord, what you are then saying is that Jesus is my insurance agent. I’m buying fire insurance from Him. If you were a Roman citizen in St. Peter’s day and St. Paul’s day, you would say that Caesar is lord. But what of the {?} Roman gods? Oh, they were your insurance agents. If you were taking a sea voyage, you’d go to the temple of Castor and Pollux. If you are in a {?} you’d go to the temple of Venus and you’d buy insurance. You’d make a gift of so much and you’d say; now I expect so much in return. If you don’t deliver, I’ll patronize somebody else! They actually did! They didn’t worship those gods; they went to them for insurance. To deny Jesus is Lord, Jesus then only provides you fire insurance. And that’s not Christianity.

Now what did it mean when beginning in Germany and then coming into this country under Horace Mann, James G. Carter, Charles Sumner and others all {?}, that the state controls the port of education was the hoax. They made no bones about it. The idea was that the generations to come should confess that the State is lord; the State is man’s savior. There is an established religion today in the Unites States and in the schools of these United States, and it is Humanism, the worship of man. Man is lord. Man, in the form of the organized State is lord.

Now, a Christian school to be truly a Christian school must say therefore, not Caesar, not the State, not man, but Jesus is Lord. Therefore, every subject we teach must match with a Christian world and life view; that there is no area of life in fact that is not to be governed by the Word of God.

I mentioned earlier the minimum standards for the Ohio Elementary Schools. Well, some people will say, now what in the world would be different about science teaching in a Christian school and of a public school? Why, the instruction in a public school is about our physical universe and the instruction in a Christian school is about our physical universe, so what are you talking about? Well, of course, there’s a very obvious fact, Evolution vs. Creation. But this is not all. When you come to their philosophy for the sciences here, they never once mention knowledge of a real world out there. Never once. Now that doesn’t seem possible to you. When you read your science textbooks in college, or read them in school, you thought the real world out there, an orderly world, a {?} world. No. They say we are teaching knowledges of the sciences and scientific data facts. Not about the physical universe. Why? Why, if their statement never mentioned the physical universe?

Oh, let me tell you about a very interesting symposium two or three years ago. I deal with it either in The Word of Flux or a forthcoming book; I’m not sure which one. In that symposium, held at Princeton, the physicists and astrophysicists and mathematicians who were involve in the moon shot, were discussing how it was done. They couldn’t understand it. They said it was an impossibility. The whole idea of pinpointing a man on the moon (they had done it) was impossible. Why? Because the way they did it was by mathematical computations which are a product of human logic, though they’d been able to figure out exactly how that space vehicle was going to arrive at the moon at a particular point and land there, but you see, that presupposes an orderly universe which is God’s creation. This, they deny. And they were most insistent that mathematics and all sciences are simply the logic of the human mind, had no relationship to brute factuality than to the outside universe which is a meaningless, blind chance product. Now how in the world could they then through their logical computation pinpoint a man on the moon? It couldn’t be done, they said, was not understandable. One man said, well, some people solve the problem by positing God, but he went on to infer that this was a cop-out.

Now what can you learn from such science? Everything it does, it denies. And Gunther Stent who is a molecular biologist at the University of Californian at Berkeley says frankly in his book that science is going to disappear before too many generations because if everything is meaningless, what’ the point of studying? He had no answer. He never once mentioned {?}, thus the answer he won’t look at.

Now can you see the difference between science in a Christian school and science at a secular school? There’s a world of difference. Or history. There is no history teaching in the state schools, they’re social sciences. There’s a world of difference. When a Christian school teaches history, its basic textbook has to be the Bible, by the way. In fact you cannot (although very few historians will tell you this) reconstruct any of the ancient history in its chronology apart from the Bible. The Bible is the basic book for dating everything before Christ. Moreover, it gives you the basic premises of history, that God created the earth, the whole universe, in terms of His sovereign purpose. He created man to have dominion and to make this God’s realm, God’s kingdom. Man fell from that purpose and tried to establish the kingdom of man independent of God. Christ redeemed man and re {?} in terms of the promised land, which is the whole earth. That’s why it’s called the Great Commission as against the commission to Joshua. Thus, history has a beginning; God created it. It has an end in the Second Coming.

For the social sciences, history has no meaning. A major university in California, a professor of history who was teaching the basic required introductory course in history got up a few years ago and told the entire class, there is no such thing as history; history is a myth. There is no meaning, purpose, nor direction to life in what we call history. Therefore, the study of history is pointless, but the regents of the State of California pay me a passively good salary to teach history, therefore we will proceed with its study.

Now, we cannot teach history from the same perspective. And we must at all times bear in mind that we believe history has a purpose—God’s purpose. Now what is the point of social sciences then, which has replaced history? The social sciences have as their purpose the predestination of man by men, up against God’s predestination as God of the universe, they are saying we must have government and therefore it will be man’s government and man’s predestination of the universe. It’s the science of human control. This is why the social sciences teach Socialism, Totalitarianism, Statism—the control of man by the State.

Several years ago, I was in a symposium in Northern California, I believe it was in San Jose or somewhere like that, or Palo Alto, any rate, Dr. Brachovich of the, {?} Institution of –no, {?} Bradley, from {?} Society, Dr. Brachovich was one of the speakers and I forget the third speaker. And I spoke about Christian schools as the necessary mandate for all Christians and as the greatest bulwark for freedom. And I appealed to all those who were there, who had any element of Conservatism in them that you’re not going to defend freedom in this country without the Christian schools. Well, it was very quiet in the auditorium, and naturally everybody who was there had strong feelings one way or another and not all of them could get their questions asked, or make their statements. When it was over this one woman, I found out she was a teacher, I think fourth grade, about 30 or so came charging up to me with blood in her eye. And she accused me of being a quack and misleading the people and so on by talking about freedom. Why? These were her exact words: “In the modern world, freedom is obsolete.”

Why? Well, she was a very intelligent and a very logical woman and granted her presuppositions, she was right. The only way you can have any government in the universe is from man, because there’s no god to give it presence. Therefore, the only way man can govern is through scientific control of man’s society. You cannot have a planned, scientific experiment in society unless you control all factors. Therefore, in the modern world, freedom is obsolete.

You see, you cannot parse between two opinions. If God be God, and Christ is Lord, then you must separate yourself from everything that constitutes secular education. You must already have a Christian school, but you must have a Christian philosophy for every subject. And we’re not going to see any future for Christianity apart from the Christian school that is systematic in its application of Christian principles to every subject.

You’re all familiar of course with the fact that nowadays, spelling and grammar are despised in many of the avant-garde public schools, and they tell us that such things are purely arbitrary. Are they? You know there are theological foundations to grammar? Someday I hope we can get somebody who will do some good writing on that subject. What are the theological foundations to grammar? Do you know that there are many languages that have no past and future tense? They’re {?} languages, have only the present. You got through an involved circumlocution to state that something happened yesterday or something could happen tomorrow. There’s no clear-cut past tense and future tense. Now some of these languages are in cultures that were once great. They’ve left the future because they’ve become relativistic.

China, for example, was a world figure long before Europe was even remotely civilized, while they were allowing human sacrifices as a routine thing all over Europe. But China drifted into a relativistic, existential philosophy. And it became stagnant.

Logic and theology are basic to grammar. Your faith works itself out in your language. It creates a structure in terms of that language. We have a language that is theological; it’s been shaped by 15, 16, 18-centuries of Christianity, been molded by it and it’s become a superb instrument for Christian thinking. It has to be preserved.

Incidentally, let me put in a plug here for the King James Version. It’s a very important aspect of education. Why? Because the King James Version, which I believe is a translation of the best texts of the Bible (and if you’re interested in this subject, I can recommend an excellent book), also chose a language that was as old-fashioned when the King James was originally published as it is now, perhaps more so then. But it is a basic English with a fundamental structure that would give character to the language. Now, what do modern translations do? Well, there are hints that some of the Socialist and Marxist countries may favor modern translations, up to a limited point. They certainly don’t favor the old one. The minute you (for example, in the United States) destroy the reading of the King James, you destroy the ability of a child to read Milton, Shakespeare, or any of the great literature in the English language. Now we’re doing that stupidly and unconsciously. In the Soviet Union, they’re doing it deliberately! They’re separating people from their Russian or their Armenian Bible, or whatever translation, the Hungarian Bible and so on, because those old basic-type translations which aimed for a fundamental language and which ex{?} the language through the years are also the key to the heritage of the past—to the great writings of the past, to the theology of the past, so when you destroy the- Luther’s Bible, and the King James Version, and replace them with others, you close the door to yesterday and you create a rootless, existential man. Beautiful—very simple, isn’t it? All the teaching of literature.

I was speaking at a Christian school not too long ago where they were having a great deal of trouble with the minister’s daughter who was teaching literature and she was trying to bring into the school some Humanistic classes. Very lovely girl, very impressive; but {?} to education. What is a classic? Well the definition of a classic changes in terms of one’s faith. Men through the centuries have changed their ideas of what constitutes a classic. Good works have been revived, and very important works have died, because the classic represents something that epitomizes a faith, a way of life, a view of life.

Recently I read what was one of the great classics of the world according to many scholars, Tale of Kieu, a Vietnamese classic, a poem, an epic poem, very, very moving—in its own way moving, in its own way beautiful; but very dangerous because the fundamental thesis of that work is that God was cruel and heartless, the world is an ugly place, man is a victim, the deck is stacked, the dice are loaded, and what it encourages in someone, because it’s a very moving work, is a tremendous self-pity—a tremendous self-pity! You can see how a book like that which is known to everyone in Vietnam would mold the national character. And it’s still an unmatched defeatism. Perhaps it’s good that Marxism has taken over and the {?} are gone—to smash the philosophy that’s so basic to the Vietnamese. They’re not an inferior people—they’re a remarkable people. But the philosophy that is there is one that is destructive.

Now, through classics we can instill a dangerous philosophy. We have to choose them. We have to be careful. For example, a writer that I like, although I disagree with radically is Jack London. Jack London’s books are very often used in public schools and in Christian schools. He’s a very interesting writer, a tremendously exciting man. I like his life story. Incidentally, he was also beginning to lose his Socialism in his old age and that’s why (Oh, he never really got old. He died before he was really old) the Socialists burned down his new home when he started to quit financing everything they did and he may have been poisoned by them. Jack London, however, in all his writings—and they’re exciting books—Call of the Wild and the others, has a fundamental philosophy: Stalinism; a conflict of interests, a dog-eat-dog universe, every man and every dog for himself! Once in a while there’s somebody who’ll be friendly out there and give you a pat, but you stand alone. It instills a dangerous philosophy.

Robert Louis Stevenson was not Christian in any evangelical sense, but he was brought up in terms of old-fashioned Calvinism. So that the thing he could never get away from as he writes his novels is we have a Doctrine of Predestination woven through it. Everything’s destinated; everything works out. You don’t feel bitter at the end if someone gets away from, with something. You have read Treasure Island no doubt. You feel upset that Long John Silver escapes with some of the gold at the end? No, because he leaves you with the feeling that there is a judgment and everybody’s going to get his from God sooner or later. Now. Stevenson did that in spite of himself. He couldn’t get over his basic training. He was brought up in a very strictly Christian atmosphere, Christian schooling and so on. So he could never get away from it.

You see what I mean? You’re teaching a faith through the books you assign to children. Be careful that that faith is not destructive. The book may never take a stand against the Lord, but Call of the Wild teaches a totally different philosophy. I’m sorry Jack London isn’t on our side. I personally like him better than a great many, like Robert Louis Stevenson. But he isn’t on our side! And his books read to our youth will instill the wrong philosophy.

Let’s continue. Our faith says that every area of life and thought is the Lord’s. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein,” so that we can never think politically or economically or in any field apart from the Word of God. Now this means, of course, that we have to develop textbooks in all these areas from a Christian point of view, and we don’t have that. The Christian school is handicapped at this point. This is one thing we hope to encourage and get done as the Lord provides the means. I for one hope, if my son can help me in it, because history is his field, to write the history of the United States from a Christian point of view because the Christian vs. anti-Christian impulse is very clear in American History.

In the very beginning there were two kinds of people who came here—those who said we will here establish God’s dominion, God’s kingdom, and use it as the base for conversion of the whole world, and we have been a great missionary nation of all history, haven’t we? Those others, who said this is the new world where we will find none unspoiled (the Indians) by sin, {?} meaning by Christian teaching and this could be the basis for a new Garden of Eden without God and without Christ, a naturalistic paradise. Both motives are very prominent in American history. They’ve been at war. They can be easily traced, but this is a part of our history that is ignored.

It’s interesting somebody wrote me, and I just answered the letter today, about the Christian aspect of the War of Independence and I recommended Allan Heimert’s The American Mind. This is for advanced reading. He asked, is there any book written other than Carl Bridenbaugh’s Mitre and Sceptre about the Christian background? Bridenbaugh isn’t the best writer in the world, he does state very baldly that the religious aspect is basic to an understanding of the War of Independence, and one of the real reasons we went to war was to resist the idea of bishops being imposed on them from England. And he wanted to know why Bridenbaugh hadn’t written more on the subject and I said, well, Bridenbaugh didn’t write more because he spent his life turning out the kind of thing the academic community wanted. Well, another professor who’s been on a faculty or two with Bridenbaugh, I had learned a few years back, that Bridenbaugh hoped that his alma mater, Harvard, would invite him, and only when he gave up hope and he was near retirement virtually, that he finally produced a book that told the truth about a little aspect of our history, and how important the Christian motivation was. Most historians won’t touch it. They won’t deal with it at all.

It had to be dealt with, but, {?} the beginning that basic to the confession that Jesus is Lord, is this principle, it means that every aspect of life is under the Lord. He is the umbrella that covers everything, so that you cannot think in any sphere of life or thought or any of the arts or sciences apart from biblical principles, but you have to apply them systematically. On the other hand, Humanism says in every area, we must affirm he lordship of scientific man, the scientific socialist planner. He works about a plan for every area.

This is why ultimately it will be a battle for survival for the Christian school. It either teaches Christ is Lord, Jesus is Lord, or else Caesar will say finally no one has any right, no one, to teach any children except the State. This April, there was a symposium on this matter of legal aspect of education and the freedom of Christian education in the United States at the Law School of the University of Notre Dame. I was one of the, I think three speakers there. The audience was the law faculty, the students and a number of professors and lawyers from here and there who came to the meeting. The evening address was to have been given, summing up the conference, by a Supreme Court Justice. He declined, and every other judge they asked declined and all had a common reason. They said in the next decade, we expect that this will be the major kind of case we will be trying, cases with regard to will the Christian school be allowed to exist or not. And therefore for us to take part in this meeting and to make an address would be to disqualify ourselves at a later date.

Now, you had better realize where the battle line is. Far more important than the Church to the future of our faith is the Christian school—it’s the critical point. This Ohio case is being followed all over the country. Not by the press, but by educators. I learned about a month and half ago, that in one state, as State Senator made the statement that in every state, the Department of Education was following the Ohio situation, and if the Ohio Department of Education won, states across the country would move against the Christian schools. The sad fact is, in Ohio, only about 70-75 of the schools are making a stand. The others are ready to compromise. ‘Oh, we can still teach Bible!’ What they’re saying is, ‘We’ll teach two religions, Humanism and Christianity.’ They’ve already denied Christ.

Jesus is Lord. Not Caesar. The Early Church died for that faith. And this is why we have the freedom that we do. William Carroll Bark in his book on The Origins of the Medieval World says that the frontier thinkers of Western Civilization were some of those early Church fathers, now {?} because of this faith, Jesus is Lord. Now, the question is, will we extend in terms of that. Will we say with our whole heart mind and being, without {?}ing in our schools in every area of life, Jesus is Lord.

Are there any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience] Could you speak to the point of {?} Christ made {?} the Christian community. Do you know what I mean? It seems among the Christian people there’s more of a, of a wall against Christian school problems than there are the people enrolled.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. And the reason for it is that they have a form of godliness but not the power thereof, so these Christians are against Christian schools. They do not want to be involved because, ‘don’t make us make a stand. It’s nice just to sit in church and play at being a Christian, but if you make us feel guilty that our children are not in Christian schools or if we’re not supporting Christian schools, then we’ll have to take a stand and we may find ourselves outside the faith.’

You see today church people are compromising in every area. They’re compromising with regard to Christian school. They’re compromising with regard to abortions. They’re compromising with regard to the sexual revolution. And let me say that’s one of the most fearful things. The number of letters I get regularly from people because the sexual revolution is being taught in Evangelical churches. It’s all right as long as it’s between Christians who love each other. Or homosexuality. That’s another issue they’re not taking a stand on. On politics. On economics. You name it! They’re ready to compromise on everything and still claim to be Christ’s.

In fact, I’ve encountered quite a {?}ment of people across country who say that if you say what you believe in Jesus Christ, that makes you a Christian. It doesn’t. Our Lord said, “By their fruits shall ye know them. A good tree brings forth good fruit.”

We’re supposed to judge those who don’t make the stand and say you’re not of the Lord! And if they say, oh, you have no right to judge! Our Lord said, “With what measure ye mete out, it shall be measured unto you.” Don’t use your own standards. Now, our Lord also said, and I’ve never have heard this quoted by anybody, “Judge righteous judgment.” You see.

So these Christians, so-called, who oppose Christian schools, are really saying don’t make me stand in terms of the faith because I won’t.

Yes.

[Audience] Would you explain from Genesis 1 the cultural mandate, because I don’t think a lot of people grew {?} that’s kind of a, one of the things that, you, you covered it in a way that, you covered it from Creation and then {?} The Fall and then talked about redemption.

[Rushdoony] Genesis 1:26-28 deals with the creation of man. And God said, Let us make man in our own image, and then man’s calling to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. And man fell from that calling. When he fell from that calling, what he said was, this was the temptation of Satan, “Ye shall be as God, knowing…” and the word ‘knowing’ you can, {?}, you can render it determining for yourself what constitutes good and evil; in other words, every man his own god, determining good and evil for himself.

Therefore, what man tried to do in the Fall was to say I am going to exercise dominion and create a kingdom across the face of the earth in terms of myself, not in terms of God. My word, not God’s Word. Now God created the entire world, we are told in Genesis 1, and said, “Behold, it is very good.” But Eden was {?} out, you see. Why? God planted it, made it a model. Man was to live there; he was to till it and to keep it. Now, Adam, Eve, this is the way the whole world is to be. Here’s the pattern for you to learn. The garden is to be kept, it is to be developed, and this is the way the whole world then shall be made.

But when man sinned he was driven out of that. Now, Cain, when he created the first city, he was trying to make it as the new Garden of Eden, a walled area, fenced in it was, basically, not walled, but fenced. Remember, it was just his family at first, but he crossed in there when he said, here I’m going to create a Garden of Eden that in the Song of Lamech, of the line of Cain, you have the face of that, the kingdom of man. It was every man for himself and death to anybody who stands in my way. My will be done. He conquered for Christ, including the Church, by the way, which needs reconquering.

We have to make politics godly. We have to make economics, the family life, the arts, the sciences; every area must be brought under the kingship of Christ. One of the verses often quoted from scripture is that verse from Isaiah which says that at the name of the Lord, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that He is Lord. The New Testament cites this and says it is Jesus Christ of whom Isaiah spoke.

This is our calling. Why else, then you see, does Paul tell the Corinthians that they shouldn’t go to the ungodly, “What, know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?” Now the word judge there is the same as in the Book of Judges. Means ‘govern.’ You’re going to govern the world! That’s your calling. Start right now and govern your family. Govern your work. Establish your dominion as God’s man wherever you are. Paul wasn’t talking to the Corinthians about something that’s going to happen at the Second Coming. He told them, right now, settle it yourself, right in your own midst. Learn how to govern yourselves, because you’re going to govern the world and this is a good training ground, your problems between yourselves.

So, the creation mandate means that the Christian, in our Lord’s words, is to “occupy til I come,” to go out and occupy every area of life and thought form, and in our time, the critical place is the Christian schools.

Yes.

[Audience] My question, getting back to {?}, I watched… {?} I know myself, I’ve been, have gone from elementary school all the way through graduate school being permeated by Humanistic philosophy and {?} it can be teaching methods in school, the pragmatic part of, okay, the biblical presuppositions are there, but I take my field {?}. How do I craft {?} if, that I can divorce myself from the Humanistic training I’ve received and I go back to the Bible and I, there aren’t any textbooks {?} where do you begin?

[Rushdoony] Alright. I have a book, The Biblical Philosophy of History. That’ll help you to see some of these things in perspective. Then, second, begin by reading Genesis 1. That’ll upset them a bit. Even in a Christian school, they’re going to have American History or whatever it may be, and say, ‘History begins here, that God created all things in the beginning. He has a purpose.’ “Known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world,” scripture says. Alright. He had a purpose then, before the foundation of the world in decreeing that America was going to come into existence. He has a calling for this country. He has a calling for us. As we go through American History, we’re going to see that men began with that purpose, they’ve lost it. And periodically, take them back to that fact. God had a purpose in all of this. Where have we gone wrong and what have we done right? If you begin with that, and then remind yourself, you can type out a little memo of some of these verses. “Known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world.” From the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, as well as “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And so on. So that it’ll be a reminder to you to bring these points into the mind of the children and it’s not only American History that God created in terms of His sovereign purpose, but them! Each one of them! They have to find themselves in terms of that.

Yes.

[Audience] Many of the small {?} or secular {?} school kids or {?} has said to the kids that the world is safe {?} and further that we should also so often pull out these {?} by {?} popular speaker {?} aide. Be aware of {?} in philosophy {?}, and used as fact to admonish or {?} … the philosophy itself was obligatory, was something that was of the world along with all the other… {?} and that I was wondering if you could comment, you brought up the current philosophy quite a bit so apparently you think that there could be, that there is to be a Christian philosophy, that philosophy in itself is not wrong, it’s that you must have Christian people {?} probably, you begin to design a philosophy as a combination for {?}. Is there a sort of a grand philosophy of Christian education {?} Could you perhaps comment on that and also if you could {?}…

[Rushdoony] Alright, first of all, Paul warns against vain thoughts. Not against philosophy itself. And we have too much careless reading of scripture by ministers. In fact, one of the things that has always irritated me is that you actually find churches that warn against the wearing of gold ornaments and they cite Peter, “forbidding such things, the plaiting of hair, the wearing of gold ornaments…” (My wife has the gold ornament there that I gave her!) [Laughter] Now, that’s a silly reading of the text because the text also goes on to speak of dress. What’s the answer—go nudist? [Laughter] That isn’t what Peter was talking about. What he said was that a woman should not put her trust in the hairstyle or in her gold ornaments or in her clothing. He didn’t say strip yourself of all these things and go around naked and then you’re a properly humble Christian woman. You see what—this kind of silly exegesis, or eisegesis it is, turns the scripture into nonsense.

Now, philosophy has a very central place. What is philosophy? It is simply taking the premises of scripture and working out their implications for every realm. There are two kinds of philosophy that you can have. The great names here, from the Middle Ages are Anselm and Abelard. Abelard, the rationalist, he said my autonomous mind is {?}. I must understand before I believe, so that all things must be judged by me—my mind. He made himself god. Now all modern philosophy stems right out of Abelard. Abelard took that principle out of Greek and Roman philosophy. What did St. Anselm say? He said, I believe in order that I may understand. So he said, first I come to philosophy with a total presupposition of the Word of God, as the Word of the infallible God. Believing that, then I can understand everything. If I don’t believe that, then I can understand nothing.

Now my Word of Flux, which is a philosophical study of epistemology, which is the theory of knowledge, I deal precisely with this point. What I do is to begin with Descartes and come to the present through a whole stream of modern philosophy and show how by beginning with Abelard, in effect, they end up saying they can know nothing. When you deny God ultimately, if you’re honest, you cannot know anything. You’re just locked up in your own mind and the world out there isn’t even real any more. Jean Paul Sartre is the logical conclusion of such a philosophy. Existentialism; the only thing that is real is my existence and I don’t even have a nature. There is not law except my will, my life. So Sartre has to say between two Existentialists, one prime minister of a country, and the other a wino, the wino was the better Existentialist, because he doesn’t care about anything outside of himself. Sartre condemned himself, really, he said, for me, my neighbor is the devil. If I’m god, my neighbor has to be the devil; you can’t have two gods. And in one of his plays, he titled it, No Exit, Existentialist man is in a world all by himself. There’s no exit. He is in Hell. He can’t get out. He doesn’t know whether the door is locked or unlocked, there are several of them there, and they’re all talking to each other. That’s a perfect picture of hell—no community, total Existentialism.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Right, that’s very commonplace, and I’ll tell you what it is. It’s Medievalism. A Catholic political scientist, Count Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn said that the best examples of Medievalism today are Protestants, Bible-believing Protestants. Why? They turned the Church into a convent and monastery; the only difference between the medieval nuns and monks is that they’re married. But they withdraw from the world, into the Church and say don’t bother us with anything like Christians schools or with any problems, or with politics or with economics, or with the sexual revolution. Everything’s all right as long as we’re here inside the monastery or the convent. That is not Christianity.

I don’t believe the medieval nuns and monks by and large were Christians. In fact, most of them were put there because their families didn’t want to provide money for the girls to have a dowry to get married, and the boys were put there because they didn’t want them to have a portion of the inheritance. They wanted just the one son to have the inheritance undivided and they put the younger sons into a monastery or make priests out of them. So believe me, they didn’t have much faith.

Yes.

[Audience] {?} the State {?} and then they were telling that Christian education in, um, like if you take also, Fine Arts, like art and music and drama and, in a Christian context, {?} a practical outlook in that you’ve got two {?} and the world says, oh, you’re just copping out, {?}

[Rushdoony] It is indeed {?} because you’re pioneers, you see. But you mentioned art for example. The artist in the modern world is the substitute for the prophets of the Bible. He’s a lawless man, because law means nothing. He’s above the law. He has the new, infallible word. In the Middle Ages, the Christian artist was not an artist. He was an artisan. He was a Christian whose business or calling happened to be sculpture or painting or something else. There was nothing flighty about him. He was a Christian doing business.

Now as we teach art, for example, we have to stress the fact that if you’re artisan, it’s a business, it’s a calling. We’re not here trying to inspire men or anything; we’re here to do our work as God wants us in this particular field.

Yes.

[Audience] As you look at Christian reconstruction, do you see a Puritan attempt to reform in favor of the {?} or do you see perhaps a pilgrim that {?} separate {?}, I’d say in terms of {?} the idea, are we going to go back and reform or are we going to move out and declare ourselves separate {?}

[Rushdoony] Ah, in what sphere? Are you talking about the Church or the-

[Audience] Not really the church, just want to {?}. The school’s a foregone conclusion.

[Rushdoony] The school, you’ve already separated.

[Audience] Correct.

[Rushdoony] Yes. In essence, that’s what you have to do. The public school you can’t reform. Its presuppositions are Statist and they are Humanistic.

Now, with the church, by and large the churches of today are Humanistic. In some cases, it’ll depend on the local church. You can possibly reform it. In the majority of cases, I’m afraid it’s going to mean rebuilding. I’m not happy about saying that. I know some churches that were better than average and some very fine young men who went in there and tried to do something were kicked out. In fact, we know very well one closely associated with us, who speaks for us occasionally, and he was teaching the college-age class in this particular church. A problem in the class was, the problems in the class were some of the church officers who were untaught. And he plainly told the church officers and the pastor that their sons needed converting. And he was told he didn’t understand. They were converted as far as the parents were concerned and it was none of his business to question. He was being Pharisaic and S{?}. And he said, well I cannot reconcile a profession of faith with boasting about being on pot and being a problem in a Sunday School class! So he got kicked out.

Now, he wasn’t trying to separate himself, but he had to. The ironic fact is he is now an assistant pastor in an ultra-modern church. Two churches that {?}, to the assistant pastor, on was a fundamentalist Baptist church, and the other an ultra-modernist Methodist churches, both big churches, and he said there’s going to be an explosion at either place. But he said at least when I speak in the Methodist church, they’ll know—and the first meeting he went there, they had a picnic and the youth were singing dirty songs and the pastor and the others didn’t see anything wrong with it—he said, at least they’ll know when I open my mouth the first time, they’re not Christians. And that’ll be a big step forward! [Laughter]

I’m afraid very often we will have to separate ourselves. But no always!

Yes.

[Audience] I think {?} question, I, you’re kind of coming out with tradition that {?} Calvinism, now you’re kind of telling us in essence that {?} and some of us are Calvinists and really know very little about it, so not to run back to {?}, you have to have a reason for starting a Christian school, more than just, we’ll start a Christian school because the world’s not {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. I had to separate myself from a Calvinist church, and most of them are scared to death of me. And Dorothy and I knew we would ultimately have to leave, but we said, let them do the pushing. Let them do the pushing.

Well, it was really funny, the excuse they found to try to kick me out. Its grounds were that I was teaching the Word of God outside of the church on the Lord’s Day. Can you imagine a more fearful offense? Well at first they couldn’t make it stick, and they looked so silly in the process to have to acquit me and then I walked out, which made them very angry because they wanted to find something to condemn me, then they could say I was a condemned man, you see, and a bad character. They’re still saying it, but they don’t- [Laughter] have a good conscience in doing it I suspect. So, I didn’t make the break in that case; they did. So I had to break with my background and tradition. They were Pharisaic, they were self-righteous, they thought they had a corner on the truth and nobody else did, they were ready to mouth the right doctrines but never to apply them, they were hearers, not doers.

Yes.

[Audience] Two questions; well, three questions. First let me ask you {?} Christian education is more critical than, is a more critical area, {?} even more critical than {?} church, and {?} could you put that in perspective?

And then, a second part of my questions, is, what did the Early Church do, in other words, about being an example to us, their goals, how did they offer –

[Rushdoony] Those are excellent questions. Let’s see, what was the first part of it now?

[Audience] {?} School is mentioned and you said Christian educations was –

[Rushdoony] Alright, let me answer that and then we’ll take the second about the Early Church, in case I forget the second part, be sure to remind me, because they’re both important.

First of all, in terms of scripture, the basic institution is the family—not church, it was the family. And I’d like to go into what scripture teaches about the family, because it’s never taught normally, but I’ll do that on another occasion if you’d like to come up again. So we’ll plan to go into it. The basics of Biblical Law is to protect the family and society.

Now, in our day, however, it isn’t that school has become more important than the family, but in terms of the battle, it’s the school that is the critical point. It is the school which is going to help save the family and the church, and Christian society as a whole. It is the cutting edge. It’s the battalion, it’s the army. So in terms of the battle of our day, of this turning point of history, this is as important or more important (our era) than the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of the Middle Ages. We are in on the biggest and most important era of all history, and the Christian school in terms of that battle is the key institution.

Yes.

[Audience] Okay, so granted that, then, I’ve got in mind another question {?} can take, okay, so the Early Church, then, I mean the school is the cutting edge of it, uh, how does this, how is this consistent with the Early Church? In other words, do you see a {?} a day? I’m not trying to be…. Catholic, but related to the schools, and the second part of that is, that, as {?} mentioned, you have a very, battle-like, a {?} put the Bible in quotes, sort of a very life-and-death matter. Is it hopeless, or what is it, what do you see? Is there basically {?}?

[Rushdoony] I think in the short-run, say in the next 10, 15 years, it’s bleak. But beyond that, I think we’re going to win. I believe the modern era, the age of the Humanistic state, is collapsing. It’s dying all around us.

Now, we can go into a dark age if we as Christians don’t stand up and make a fight. But the modern era, Humanism is so bankrupt if we do anything, people are going to come to us. Why in the world should a college professor who is an important public figure as well, involved in politics in Scotland, want to come all the way over here at his own expense? And why is a member of Parliament writing to me every so often and very important people all over the world? Because we have something to say about the world collapsing and what God’s solutions to it are. And they’re hungry. I found it easier to talk to congressmen (I don’t get a big crowd out, 40 or 50 of them but they’re the best audience of all) because they see how desperate it is. And they’re badly frightened; they’re upset by what they’re seeing.

Everything is so insane. And one of the congressmen at the last meeting was standing- was sitting across (he’s going to be a senator soon) the table from me and he kept telling a lot of stories and said, did you know, I’m always hunting for good jokes and what-not, because he said if I didn’t have something to laugh, I’d go crazy, ah, something to laugh over, I’d go crazy! The situation is so bad, it’s so sickening. People like that are ready to hear.

Now, the Early Church; we don’t appreciate how deep the roots of the Early Church in the Old Testament are. First of all, the Early Church was mainly a, for the first century, most of the members were Jews. So they carried over the Old Testament Law and practices into the Church. The elder, the elder in the Old Testament was a ruler in terms of the law. The elders were named. Now, they were strong for tithing. They were strong for taking care of strangers—hospitality. You read about that in the New Testament. We know that Rome finally legislated against the Christians because one of the ways they were growing was to rescue babies that were abandoned. If they couldn’t abort them soon enough, they couldn’t get rid of them, and they would after they were born, take and deposit them under the bridges of Rome or in other cities elsewhere, to die. And the Christians would go rescue them and rear them. It’s a good way of having a church grow by leaps and bounds, so that it became an embarrassment to the Romans. You know, the Christians are doing something we don’t do. So they finally forbad it because it was so embarrassing, but they couldn’t make it stick. They were taking care of their own and sometimes were helpful to outsiders as well, so they were acquiring a reputation as the only people who could do anything. They were also, they didn’t have, we don’t know much about their education, so we don’t have sufficient information, but they did have some method or other of seeing to it that their children were brought up in the faith and were given a basic education. Now, the evidence there is very fragmentary, but they did apparently take care of it.

It would be possible to go on and cite one area after another where they were very, very important. First of all, by the sheer fact of their character, they made themselves useful, even to those who were persecuting them. Now Tertullian, when he wrote to the emperor, telling him how wrong it was to persecute the Christians said, we are the most honest taxpayers, the best soldiers, the best public servants you have. St. Paul writes in Romans and sends his greetings to them are of Caesar’s household, you remember that? You can translate households better as ‘cabinet’

[Recording abruptly ends]