Profound Questions and Answers

Should Christians Apologize (Regarding Barth, Tillich, etc.)

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 16-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 16

Dictation Name: RR209K19

Location/Venue:

Year:

Yes?

[Audience Member] Do you feel that there are still martyrs to the cause of Christianity?

[Rushdoony] Yes, we know there are martyrs today, that there are people who have died for the faith behind the Iron Curtain, from central Europe through China. Countless numbers, and in Africa as well. They are being martyred for the faith. And of course the word ‘martyr’ we must remember means ‘witness’ literally. So that in the strict original sense of the word, whenever we suffer for the faith to any degree, we are martyrs. The martyrs of the early church, many of them died for the faith, and there are those who are dying for it today; but all who witness for the faith and suffer for the faith in any degree are martyrs, and the (Judean?) says ‘the noble army of martyrs praise Thee.’

Yes?

[Audience Member] Did John Knox ever meet Calvin?

[Rushdoony] Yes, he was in Geneva for a time and sat under Calvin’s ministry. He went to Geneva and there absorbed the faith first hand before he went to Scotland. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well he is far from original, this story about Paul supposedly being an epileptic is over a hundred years old, and it was invented by a number of scholars who were out to prove that there was no truth to the Bible, that Jesus was totally a myth, and Paul was an epileptic who had wild dreams and therefore created Christianity, and so on. A lot of nonsense. I think anyone who repeats these is self condemned, they are making a fool of themselves and revealing that only one thing motivates them: hatred.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience Member] After this ‘you can’t win’ statement, well, are there times when they think they can win? I mean they are trying to create life in a test tube …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very good question. Why do the scientists today dream that they can create life, eliminate death, and so on; are they breaking with this philosophy of ‘you can’t win’. Well, of course in the Roman empire they also believed that they were going to create a heaven on earth. The answer to that is that humanistic man is basically schizophrenic. He on the one hand professes that this is the great and brave new world he is going to create; on the other hand he moves suicidally in all that he does, so that the more he dreams about destroying everything that makes for death and for defeat, the more he courts everything that does.

Now we are talking today as in no generation in recent times, about defeating all the problems that confront man. But have we ever worked more zealously to create problems that are destined to defeat man? This is the insanity of humanism. We are doing deliberately those things that are going to ensure the destruction of our hopes.

[Audience Member] …?... find a way to do away with the common house fly, because they can’t seem to find one single thing that it does good, so why have them? So what I was wondering, does the Bible speak about this, if we could eliminate a certain animal or a snake or an insect or something, perhaps these things work together, all of them, every single one of them in a plan…

[Rushdoony] Right. Well, there was an article on the common housefly in the Scientific American in the past year, and the authors admitted that they hadn’t found any convincing evidence yet that the housefly is guilty of all the things charged to it. They were sure it must be, but so far they haven’t turned it up. So they were unwilling to acquit him, but they couldn’t indict him. So the poor housefly apart from being a nuisance doesn’t have to serious an indictment against it, (?). Yes?

[Audience Member] Well the eggs turn into maggots, if you have nothing around a wound and you put maggots in a wound they will sterilize it, aren’t they good? (laughter)

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience Member] I noticed that in some of the new versions of the Bible that the word ‘charity’ is now changed to ‘love’. Now from my (?) I would feel that charity would have much more meaning than love …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that raises a very difficult question of translation; in a sense it is a justifiable translation, but it is a confusing one. Now the word charity is from the vulgate translation, because the original King James version as well as the Douay both had charity rather than love, because they were influenced by the vulgate which gave it as ‘charitas’. Now, the vulgate however was a translation of the Greek testament. Now the Greek Testament where it reads charitas, actually has ‘agape’ and sometimes ‘phileo’. Two different words. Now, the word actually is love in the Greek, but there are three Greek words for love, two of them are used in the Bible or in the New Testament which is the Greek portion. One is ‘eros’ from whence we get the word ‘erotic’ and ‘eroticism’. This is not used in the Bible. The second is ‘phileo’ from whence we get the word Philadelphia. Phil = love, adelphos = brother, city of brotherly love. Now this is often used in the Bible, and it means the human kind of love which we have for our family, our children, for one another. The third word which is used was a word which is a strange word, it was in the Greek but had practically no usage, it is almost, some scholars have said, as though the word were prepared and waiting for the Bible to come along when it had its first real usage, and that means ‘agape,’ divine love, divine grace, which reaches out to undeserving man. Now it could be rendered as charity, but charity has the connotation of something human, charity is something that we exercise one towards another. But that is the problem with the word ‘love’ too, so while it is originally ‘love’ in the original, again love in the English there is only one word for three words in the Greek; so love as it is in the Bible can absorb the wrong kind of meaning, of eros and phileo.

It could be rendered also in a sense as ‘grace’. This perhaps might be the best. It isn’t literally the same word as grace, but it is closer in meaning to grace than it is to love and to charity. This is a problem in Biblical translation that is a tremendous one. In most cases English has been remolded and remade so that it has become an excellent language for conveying the Biblical words and ideas, except at this crucial point. This is the one, almost the one problem case. There are a few others, but this is the basic one. But you can see what a problem it makes in translating the Bible into many languages today where the people have no background of Christianity, where the language very often doesn’t even have a word for God, let alone grace and charity for example; a host of words for which there is absolutely nothing in these languages. It has been a problem for example even in such cultures- well, especially in China. China is such a relativistic culture it has been very difficult to translate many of the Biblical words into Chinese. This is true also of Japanese, and sometimes it leads to very great difficulties as they translate and find that the word has connotations they never understood.

A little humorous sideline on that, not with translation of the Bible but speaking; a missionary went to Japan and began to preach at a service, and he was anxious to show off his command of Japanese, he had studied very extensively, and he was distressed that the women who were very quiet normally were beginning to titter and giggle, and the men were vastly delighted and amused! And when he ended, he found out that- he was speaking of Christ as their savior from sin- but actually he was saying because the two words, sin and wife were so similar, sumi and suma, he was saying Christ was saving them from their wives!

But translation is a problem, and it is hard to know what to do in this particular case; what the proper answer would be. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... recently I ran into a surprising translation of the life of Luther, one of my Mormon friends declared to me that Luther was a little insane, and I had never run across this before, and I stated to her that I thought probably it was …?... Is there are a current belief about Luther?

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, you see, all of the great men of the church as well as the great figures of the Bible have been subjected to this, there has been quite an extensive body of literature and one considerable book as well from the Freudian perspective, written to prove that Luther was characterized by ‘anal fixation’ and that everything in Luther’s life and theology is to be interpreted in terms of ‘anal fixation’. Now, it is the weirdest kid of literature imaginable, and all you can say is that there is fixation in the minds of the writers. But it is fantasy.

But this kind of literature, there is a vast body of it, and there have been books written to demonstrate from the psychiatric point of view that Jesus was insane, and Schweitzer wrote a defense of the mental health of Jesus, Albert Schweitzer, which leaves Him I think in a sorrier state than the critics did. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and so much of the material is so thoroughly manufactured today, out of whole cloth. If you stand in terms of Christian Orthodoxy and Conservatism today, you can be sure you are going to be abused and slandered if you acquire any position of prominence in such a stand, or if you aggravate anyone around you for such a stand. This is a certainty.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. But they were good and godly men, and the faults that were ascribed to them definitely were not there. Luther was a marvelous and lovable man, he certainly was not guilty of these weird things that were ascribed to him, and the same is true of Calvin, the same is true of Athanasius, the same is true of Augustine, of a host of great men of the church. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, the Dunkard’s are one of the Anabaptist groups from 2-3 centuries ago, there still are Dunkards in I believe in the middle west, but it is not normal for them to become Unitarians. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Except as you go to the original sources. Now, the problem of course of our time is that humanism is busy rewriting all of history, and as a result, history is and has been for a century at least, very markedly for a century, and much longer than that but on a gradual rate been subjected to a rewriting. We do have the original documents of men such as for example, the counsels, the church fathers; we have their records of the events, the minutes of the meetings, so we can get to an accurate writing of history, but this is not what men are interested in.

[Audience] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, exactly.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, what you’ve had increasingly in the past few generations is a deliberate suppression of evidence. Previously there often would be bitter factionalism, but now there is the deliberate suppression of evidence. So in many respects it is harder to know, far harder to know what is going on today than to know what happened a thousand, two thousand years ago.

I would like to read something now to you in the remaining minutes, this week I was in Bakersfield speaking at a luncheon at the Americanism center, and before that I was for an hour and forty minutes on the call in radio program Oakland Line, and I found that vastly interesting and delightful, the announcer was conducting a program, (Don G?), he is a good man, and it was quite entertaining, we were talking about education. And he took a little time to describe one of his experiences; he said his oldest child is a girl of five years old, in kindergarten. The child was disappointed on going to school because she expected to learn how to read, so he sat down and taught her, so she reads; and he has been given all kinds of static by the school administration, supposedly he has done something terrible, a child at that age he is told cannot learn how to read, it warps the child and stunts it and so on and so forth.

And he said: “Now this is a curious thing.” He said: “You know I was a commercial pilot until two years ago and I may go back into it, I got weary of being away from home so much and that’s why I stepped out for a time.” But he said: “I have my own plane and I fly regularly, and from the time my little girl could walk I took her up, and now at the age of five she can take that plane up, fly it around and land it herself, but they tell me she’s too young to learn how to read.”

Now, one of the women there brought me the teachers edition of I believe it’s the first grade reader, Our Town, and she said take it and read it, and you’ll see what is being done to the morality of our children.

Now here is one story that I think is short enough and yet revealing enough to give you the idea; The Funny Little Man.

“One morning the funny little man was hurrying down the road, he was dressed all in yellow from his hat to his shoes. He sang and sang and sang I am a little man, I am I am I am, but I can do anything, I can I can I can. The little man met a hen. “Why are you singing asked the hen? You cannot do what I can do.” The hen made a nest of grass, she sat down on the nest and soon there was an egg in it. The little man sat on the nest and when the hen was not looking he took a ball out of his pocket, he let the ball drop into the nest. “Look at that egg he said, it is five times as big as yours!” Next the little man met a cat, the cat was playing with a ball, first she hit it this way, then she hit it that way, once she hit it too far, she had to go and look for it. “Why look?” Said the little man, “Why not make the ball find you? Sit down and I will show you how.” And while the cat was not looking he took an orange from his pocket. “Here is your ball” he said, “see I made it find me.” The little man came to a house. “I hear a happy sound” he said, “I hear the sound of someone fixing dinner.” Then he looked in the window and saw a girl at work, he saw her put an orange, an egg, and some milk on the table. “Why don't you have some cookies for dinner too?” Asked our friend. “If you will let me come in and sit down I will make them for you.” The girl let the little man come in and sit down, he put his hat on the table and he said

“Bring me five eggs, bring me five oranges, bring me five peanuts and we will make the cookies in my hat, I can make them faster that way.” The little man put the oranges eggs and peanuts into his hat then he put on the hat. “They will be ready soon,” he said, and when the girl was not looking he took two cookies from his pocket. “The cookies are ready,” he said, “why don't you eat one today and one tomorrow.” “I saw you take those cookies out of your pocket,” said the girl, “give me back all of those eggs and oranges and peanuts, if you don't I will hit you with one of my shoes.” But the little man did not hear, he was much too far away by that time, much too far, and he sang as he ran with his dinner in his hat: “I can do anything, I can I can I can.””

Now this little man who is called our friend of course is a good con man. Then in the guided reading suggestions for discussion, the children are to say what made the little man funny, and so on and so forth. “Why did he sing as he ran?” “Which trick was the funniest?” “Which person or animal was the silliest?” In other words, this little man, our friend, is to give them a standard and they are to judge these other people in terms of the conduct of our friend, the little man. Now for little children this is a very plain indoctrination into something that we cannot call Biblical morality. This is from the reader Our Town.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I think it is Allen and Bacon yes, from the Sheldon basic reading series.

[Audience Member] What year?

[Rushdoony] 1957.

[Audience Member] No, I mean what year at school?

[Rushdoony] 1st grade and still in use. The 1st Reader program.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What is that?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, and I pointed out exactly what is taking place today, namely that Max Rafferty is threatening the Pasadena school board that if they will not adopt it he is going to sue them, and I think it is significant that a liberal (Herb Cain?) in San Francisco when he reported it, concluded with this observation: “The land of the free?”

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, Max Rafferty is one of the few genuine honest civil rights champions in the state of California, he has criticized the Civil Rights movement for its excesses, more plainly than others but he has approved of it more than others as well. This is an honest conviction on his part, and the book of course is written from the Civil Rights revolution perspective, it was written to order at the request of the state board of education to fulfill that function, it does it beautifully. He is therefor for it. Now you may think he is wrong here but I do believe he believes this as other politicians do not, I think also he is very wrong at this point.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, their record is clear cut.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] And a humanistic perspective. It is a very beautifully written book, as I said before, and it will be deadly in its effect. A number of school districts are hostile to it, the Bakersfield district I understand is against the book, but they are going to be compelled to use it, and it does not look as though the present administration is going to do anything to prevent it from adoption.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh, but we don't have any civil rights.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No I don't know anything about that.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t know that, but I think we can rejoice in this, what this book is doing is to settle more clearly the destiny of the public schools. There is going to be a major exodus because this book is a little too raw for many, many, parents; and in every area there is an increasing interest in private education, in Christian education, in Parochial schools, in rebellion against the implications of this book, because it is such open indoctrination.

[Audience Member] The indictment that I found against this book was even more serious was the fact that there was no... The authors admit that they spent a tremendous amount of time on the early history of the country, but they have no description of our form of government, in fact they even left out a phrase of the Declaration of Independence which shows that our government is based on the concept of endowed rights, and there is nothing of that in the book, there is nothing about limitation on the government. There's actually no exhibition of our form of government at all.

[Rushdoony] No, you're absolutely right, what they do is to take the Civil Rights revolution and to go back to the pilgrims and read everything from that time to the present in terms of the civil rights revolution. So naturally there's no place for the Christianity of early colonial and constitutional America, there is nothing for the limited powers concept of government, no room, it's all in terms of statism; the great friend of man is the all powerful state. This shows from beginning to end. It would be possible to write ten volumes correcting the errors of the book, because its perspective is so warped, but it is the textbook of the state now for eighth graders, there's no getting around that, I see no possibility of it being withdrawn.

[Audience Member] …?... (Laughter)

[Rushdoony] That's very true, it’s getting more and more absurd, and it will continue until it breaks down. Because as long as people are finding that this feeds them and make them rich they'll go along with it, that's the sad fact. And it’s going to have to fall apart before they wake up, and it will, and they'll find then that they have been fed not the bread of life, but stones. There's a good verse in the scriptures that to a sinner the bread of deceit is sweet in the mouth, but afterwards it shall be as gravel under ones feet. And that's the way it shall be.

[Audience Member] …?... Speaking of education (?) that we rearrange our standards because there are too many students dropping out because they couldn't actually get enough of the new morality.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well I think it is significant that the state in the union which has the least problem of discipline in the schools is New Mexico. Now it isn’t that they have a superior population but it is this: unless they changed it in the last year or two, New Mexico has a very low compulsory education age, I believe they can drop out at twelve. This means that any child in the upper grades who misbehaves can be kicked out of school, so that if they are going to stay they have to behave, otherwise they are bounced. Well of course they stay and behave, but in our state and elsewhere where they know they cannot be kicked out they misbehave and they disrupt the whole educational process so that they frustrate the very purpose of compulsory education, and this is the way it always has been, if you’re going to have compulsory education supposedly for the education of children, what you're doing is to destroy the education of children. You have put it on the wrong basis.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes, it is a religious sect, although it claims not to be; it is humanism compounded, it is a form of humanism which like others claims that man becomes a God. It is on top of that an esoteric cult, it believes that there is a hidden way to this power, which only the initiates know. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There is no religion that wants the Triune God except Orthodox Christianity, and this business of saying that the god of Mohammedanism, the god of Judaism and of these other religions is the same as the God of scripture is nonsense. Basically it crept into Christian thought in the middle ages through a Jewish scholar Maimonides who was an Aristotelian. Now the basic premise is that there is truth in all religions and that all religions are basically one, and that they are man’s way to God, so that some men take one way and other men take another way, but they are all headed to the same place. Of course this assumes that man makes his way, and man’s way is valid. Now if you grant that premise, then they are right; but if the Bible is true it is God who makes the way and the way of Jesus Christ, and there is none other way. So that they are all false if they deny that God appointed way.

This of course is so prevalent today that you have increasingly the drive toward the one world religion, because if this premise is true then the one world religion is the logical conclusion; it will bring all of man’s ways together. So that man can then pick and choose the way that is most fitting for him. And there are those who believe that the ideal cathedral of the future will be one which will have many chapels in it, so that if you want this week to try the so-called Christian way you can, and next week you can try the Buddhist way, and then the Shinto way, and then the Muslim way and the Hindu way, and perhaps they’ll even have a chapel for the cannibal way in the cathedral of man. But this is the basic drive, and it is a question: is it man who makes the way or God who does? If God is the one who makes the way to Him, then that way is Jesus Christ, and the bible is right, there is none other name under heaven by which men may be saved.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, the point is there are very few good theologians around. First: they do not get much Bible or real theology, that’s an important point. They get very little, they get training in churchmanship, how to organize a parish, how to keep people in line. Second: they busy themselves so much with building up the parish that they never sit down and study, so that each year as they get away from seminary they are a little rustier on that which they should preach. In fact, there are some clergymen who move every few years because when they left seminary they worked out a set of sermons and they would have to work out another set, and to avoid repeating themselves they go to another church. So it is nothing more nor less than abysmal ignorance. The work of the councils for example which is so basic, is unknown; the Bible is unknown.

[Audience Member] Does the congregation have something to do with this too though, because I have gotten into arguments (?) very regularly “We want to be very kind to the other religions. We don’t want them to feel like they are going to be left out.” …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are so thoroughly saturated with humanism that to be unkind to anybody including the Chinese Reds today is considered a sin, but to be unkind to God is nothing, you can despise his word and despise His God-given order and that’s nothing. It’s man who must be obeyed, man who must be loved and served and worshipped. It is this total saturation by humanism that colors most churchmen. I would say that ninety-nine out of a hundred people in church today are humanists rather than Christians; because it is humanism they are exposed to week in and week out. Yes?

[Audience Member] How much of humanism can you absorb and still be a Christian?

[Rushdoony] Well, that isn’t a question that can be readily answered, but the minute you begin to absorb humanism you are beginning to depart from Christianity. It is God or man, which do we worship?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are saturated with it today, and this is why coexistence is so appealing a doctrine today, you can tell them and they know what Communism has done, but humanism calls for coexistence because you have got to have peace with your fellow men. Now currently there is a tremendous drive on by various scholars as well as by politicians in Washington, Toynbee has recently written a very, very major study calling for an end to the Cold War, and immediate union between the Soviet Union and the United States to establish world peace. Now he says of course this will bring about tyranny in the United States we are going to lose a great deal that we have here, but think of the incalculable benefit: humanity will be united. And when you consider that throughout history there have been centuries when people have been under tyranny, it won’t hurt the people of the United states to live under tyranny for a few generations, until this one world order can work itself out to this perfect society that is its goal, and after all, over there as well as here we are united in wanting that perfect world for man. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Of course, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, but of course now it is a matter of national policy, it has been so stated by the president. So it is not merely a matter of the philosophers talking, it has been declared by President Johnson that the cold war belongs to a past generation. Yes?

[Audience Member] Rush, when the Pharisees attempted to lay their hands on Jesus, did He; how was His escape effected, was it disappearance or what?

[Rushdoony] We are not told, there isn’t given any indication that it was a disappearance but that somehow miraculously he slipped through the crowd and lost himself in it, because His time had not yet come we are told. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well the human elements in the sacrament are divinized. Yes. They become elements of God’s body; this was the statement that was made by the heretics. Yes.

[Audience Member] When you were describing the attempt of humanism to infiltrate the church, it sounded as the neo-orthodox do, this is the movement apparently that is really taking over. Is that correct?

[Rushdoony] Right, we are seeing the same thing today; in fact you might say they have taken over virtually every segment of the church today. Yes.

[Audience Member] How is it that Christians have been so compromised that they constantly apologize for obedience to Christ, and I don’t understand if you really believe in Christ Jesus, if you are really a Christian, then you cannot apologize for …?...

[Rushdoony] I would say their education is behind us, they had been reared in a humanistic form of education, in state schools. As a result, everything in them has been converted to humanism and they maintain the façade of Christianity. So they try to reinterpret Christianity in terms of humanism. Now they are doing it naively, whereas these theologians then and theologians now, Karl Barth, (Tyllic?) and others, are trying to do it with sophistication, but it’s the same thing. It is humanism, and they don’t realize it.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well of course they have not been taught; how much real teaching is there now in the bible and in the Christian doctrine? There is virtually none, virtually none. So, if the people are not fed how are they going to know?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There’s a great deal of truth to that, that came about at a time when you had several things occurring at one and the same time, you had the transition in this country from Calvinism and Augustinianism to Arminianism. You had the transition from Christian schools to state schools, you had the transition from family covenant teaching within the home of the faith to Sunday school teaching so that the family ceased to concern itself and put the burden on the Sunday school and on the public school for the moral and religious training of the child. The family abdicated, the church abdicated. Humanism triumphed.

There are some questions here in written form that I would like to deal with now briefly; the first: “Does a spiritual compact form the basis of all societies worthy of being called a society?” The answer to that of course is definitely yes, because every society and every state has a system of laws. And every law presupposes a morality, a law says something is forbidden, and something therefore is required. In other words, it deals with basic principles of conduct, and morality rests on religion, so that there is a theological premise to societies, and the premise is either Christianity or it is humanism or it is some other form of religious principle, so that a spiritual compact, the word that is used here, is in a sense the basis of all societies; it would be better to say there is a theological premise, a theological faith which undergirds every society.

The second: “If so, what was the spiritual compact of the United States and when did it die out?” The answer to that again is that in its origins the United States began on a theological foundation, thoroughly Christian, and when the United States came into existence, it presupposed and accepted this theological foundation. There was no religious statement in the constitution because the constitution was not the basic government, the states and the counties were, and every state had a theological premise, in every state you had a clearly Christian principle. For example we assume very often that the New England states, ‘yes they were very Puritanical but this was not true with Virginia where you had the cavalier tradition.’ Well the reality is that when the Constitution was adopted and for some time thereafter in Virginia you could not be a citizen nor a voter if you denied the infallibility of scripture and the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact if you denied these things, you could even have your children taken from you for their welfare. You could not testify in any court as a witness for someone else if you did not believe in Christianity. The laws with regard this testimony have only been struck down within the last two or three years in some states.

Now this premise gave way to humanism, so that whereas the established religion of the United States was Christianity, even though no church was established, the established religion of the United States in terms of Supreme Court decisions for a good many years now has been humanism. This began after the civil war, and it has been moving very steadily since.

I deal with one aspect of this, the transition from common law which was Christian law, to statute law, in one of my broadcasts which will be given in two weeks from tonight. The real legal revolution began when that transition was made, and it was made very rapidly after the civil war in this country when the late chief Parker said we have witnessed a legal revolution. What he was speaking about was the tale end mopping up action of that legal revolution.

Third, “Since it has died out and authority recognized by society at large along with it, leaving only sheer power as authority, is not the Christians role to be that of a prophet rather than a conservative? For what or who can he appeal to for a tradition of authority or moral standard in an age when society has no common spiritual basis?”

That is a long question and there are a number of parts to it, but briefly: society today has a common spiritual basis, it is humanism. Humanism is the established religion of the United States and of the several states, of the Supreme Court and of the public schools and of the churches. Certainly the Christians role is that of a prophet in the face of this, but also that of a conservative, because the legal background is still there to a degree, for example the constitution. Now a liberal like Edward S. Corwin, in his book the Higher Law Background of the U.S. Constitution admitted that the constitution presupposed the higher law of God and God as the ultimate appeal. This was the background. This was the presupposition. We still have a background of common law, it has not been entirely abolished, so that we can be conservative, in other words we have enough there legally that we can hark back to, attempt to reestablish and strengthen. We need to be prophetic however in speaking for God against the humanistic establishments which are crowding out the Christian.

Now, we have sheer power as an authority because sheer power is the product of our new establishment, humanism. When humanism says that man is god, man is ultimate, then there can be no law above and over man and the will of man is the only law, man is over law rather than under law, and sheer power is therefore the product of humanism. As a result, we do have a major task. Statism is again reestablishing itself because wherever you do not have orthodox Christianity, you have the revival of statism, the state as man’s savior versus Christ as savior. Our role in this situation therefore is to both conservative and prophetic. Yes?

[Audience Member] Well you couldn’t possibly be a conservative, a true conservative if you didn’t have a Christian- if you weren’t Christian.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Audience Member] Now a lot of these people say they are conservative but they don’t have any real philosophical basis.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, a true conservative must be a Christian, because if he is trying to conserve anything here, it has to be the Christian background. Now many who call themselves conservatives are basically humanists, but they are conservative humanists; that is they prefer the humanism of a generation ago to the extreme form of our day. Now more than a century ago Stirner wrote a book on humanism: The Ego and His Own I believe, and he ridiculed the halfway humanists. And he said: “You are for abolishing God, and you are for abolishing the church and all moral teaching, but you are not ready to take the logical step and confirm there is no law. You are not ready to say that marriage must be abolished, that any kind of sexuality including the perversions and incest are thereby legitimate. You are cowardly humanists. You simply want to abolish God but to maintain some of the forms that God has established.” And he said: “You won’t be allowed to.” And he was right. What these conservatives are doing, these so called conservatives, is to affirm humanism but they want it to retain the Christian virtues without Christ. And this is ridiculous. Of all the people on the current scene, these non-Christian humanists are the most ridiculous.

[Audience Member] You spoke of this premise of our forefathers that our government was based on the Christian faith, there is a residual effect in the constitution in the preamble, it speaks of blessings on mankind, and the word blessings are gifts of God, so it would have to be, and then in the conclusion of the constitution it speaks of being signed “In the year of our Lord.” So at the very beginning and at the very end you see that premise, while how there isn’t any direct relationship, it’s still observable in the Constitution.

[Rushdoony] One of the points which for generations revealed the intensely Christian country most was the presidential oath of office. Now the oath of office is still taken on the bible, but we have forgotten what an oath means and what it involved in taking it. I think it is tonight or next Sunday night I will be dealing with this subject, not directly with oaths but what an oath involves. It involves invoking either the blessing of God for obedience, or the curse of God for disobedience; now this is the meaning of an oath, so that when an oath of office was taken it was on an open bible, usually opened to Deuteronomy 28, open that and read it and you’ll see what it involves, and I believe it is tonight I am dealing with that. You invoke the blessing of God if you obey him: “Blessed be thy going in and thy coming forth, the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy field” and so on, and if you disobey you invoke the curse of God upon yourself, your going in and your coming out, upon the fruit of your cattle and the fruit of your field and the fruit of your body. This is the meaning of an oath of office, so the oath of office was an intensely religious affirmation, an oath simply meant that. It was a covenant act with God and nothing else, so that the word itself has lost its meaning- and its meaning in the last two or three generations, since the civil war in particular, but prior to that they knew what an oath meant. Yes?

[Audience Member] Council of Ephesus …?... Transubstantiation …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes it did not come into the church until the thirteenth century.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well he also said: “I am the door” you see. Now if you take the one as meaning literally physically, this is flesh and meat, then you have to say it is literal in the other statement which He made you see, at the same time. Now this is a point at which of course the church has extensively debated and been divided, and both Lutheranism and Catholicism and some of the Eastern churches very definitely hold to some form of transubstantiation. But, this was a doctrine that came in much much later; it was not a part of the original orthodox belief. Yes?

[Audience Member] I noticed at the very beginning you said the third Ecumenical council, whereas (?) or did I misunderstand you, you said the one in 431 A.D.?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the one- The Ephesus council? Yes, it was the third Ecumenical council.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t know unless they began numbering from the Vatican as the councils of the reorganized- reorganization after the promulgation of the doctrine of people and infallibility. This was a Vatican council, and the first Vatican council was in 1870 this is the second Vatican council in terms of that. But the ecumenical councils of the church which alone have authority over every church are these early councils.

[Audience Member] I knew that and yet at the same time I wondered why it is being called the second, knowing (?)?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it’s in terms of the numbering from the Vatican council. You see—

[Audience Member] They did call it the Ecumenical council; I think they did call it the second ecumenical council.

[Rushdoony] Well, the council you see, is now summoned by the pope, and it is summoned at his call, it was previously but not to the same degree. It is no longer under the charge of the bishops who elect a presiding officer and meet, but it is at the call of the pope, so there is a new numbering in terms of that.

[Audience Member] There is also a new meaning, it is true the ecumenical …?...

[Rushdoony] I would possibly agree yes. And certainly the ecumenical movement is closely watching the effects of the Vatican council; they are very closely connected with it in their deliberations. Any other question, we have time for one more.

[Audience Member] I’m a little bit confused about when we should know the same the things we are learning in our class, now for instance in the ideal situation, would this information (?) come out in a sermon or would we learn it as high school students, or in church, what would be the ideal way?

[Rushdoony] To learn this?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Ideally if we had a Christian order, you would be taught these things in school as a part of your history because this is basic. I would say you should get this first in grade school in very simple form, you should get in again in High School, in University, you should have it in adult classes in church and go into some of its meanings more thoroughly, because the implications are far reaching, we’ve just touched the surface of these councils, and it is tragic that that which should have been taught to the grade school children is not only not taught but it is unknown even to clergy today. When you realize the vast amount of money that is spent by various foundations today, in translating all kinds of documents, soviet documents, red Chinese documents, all kinds of literature from contemporary Europe that is trash, and you realize that the vast part of the minutes of some of the councils has not been translated, some of the great church fathers have not been translated, there’s so much that just has not been touched, that is essential. We are in ignorance about our history, and of course this is not unintentional. We have a great deal to do to recover our heritage.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] Did the Divine Right of Kings come in …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the Divine Right of Kings came directly out of Greek humanism. When Aristotelianism was revived and introduced into Christian Europe, the same concept was reintroduced, and the monarchs in Europe very quickly picked it up and as a result you had the divine right of kings, and it is simply this old pagan statism, the state as man’s savior.

In England for example one of the things that was a regular ritual was to bring the sick and the blind and others to the king of England for the King’s touch, because since he represented the power of God on earth, almost an incarnation of God, then he had the power to heal, so that these people would be lined up for the kings touch. And this continued in England well past the time when the United States was first settled. You can understand therefore what it was that the Puritans who fled from England were escaping. It was this kind of total statism and substitute for Christianity. Yes?

[Audience Member] Now I noticed that LBJ wants to reach out and try and touch people, and I guess that was kind of infected with that idea, do you?

[Rushdoony] As that I don’t know, but certainly in his speeches he does plan to save to the world, and he is going to deliver he says, from all problems sickness, hunger, poverty, ignorance and so on, so his speeches outline a plan for total salvation, and this is the meaning of the great society, is the saving society, it’s going to be God incarnate as it were. Yes?

[Audience Member] Well the humanists are working for salvation by the state, I mean it all has to do with this world, and if they control our life, it’s all the here and now, it’s salvation of works.

[Rushdoony] Yes, exactly right, and of course prolonging it indefinitely so that they can have eternal life here now. Yes.

[Audience Member] I mean it is limited.

[Rushdoony] Very limited, I have been amused lately to read some of the scientific comments of some scientists on this freezing plan, on the total ridiculousness and absurdity of it, and yet the two or three scientists who pointed out the absurdity are overwhelmed by the great majority who say “Of course it isn’t possible, but what’s wrong with experimenting?” In other words, they are going to move ahead in the faith that because man is God he is going to do the impossible. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, the power of positive thinking in its modern form of course you might say did start here, but it’s very ancient. If man is God, then his thought is creative. We are told that God spake and his word was created, He created the heavens and the earth by His word. Now if man is God just by saying so, he can make things come true. There is a periodical, Humanity is the name of it, in fact it is the periodical issued by the… well some kind of national council of seminaries and by college and university chaplains, and this includes not only the protestant and I believe the Jewish but also the Newman house chaplains, and the leading article in the current issue is a very interesting one; the article of course is very much the left in its views on Vietnam, on communism, on all things else. And we are to think in terms of peace, absolute peace, absolute brotherhood. Why? Because our thinking is going to create the world, because man is the only God there is, and if all men make up their mind or enough of them that this is going to be, it will be. And the power of positive thinking you see, rests on the concept that since man is God for these humanists, man’s thought will be created. Yes?

[Audience Member] Now where do you put the Libertarians, those who are not Christian…

[Rushdoony] The Libertarians are humanists to the core.

[Audience Member] But they are not looking to the state for salvation because they don’t want any government?

[Rushdoony] That’s true, but they are looking to man. In other words, each man is capable, he doesn’t need the state. But the answer, Marx said, is either this kind of total anarchism, or total statism. And he said, total statism makes more sense. So Marx was ready to agree with these libertarians, only he said it’s not as workable, it leads to all kinds of problems, so why not total statism? And instead of a lot of little gods running around have one big collective god and you’re better off.

[Audience Member] How the (Blarney stone?) and you have nothing to worry about? As far reaching as the touch of the kings hand …?... The fact of Chalcedon …?...

[Rushdoony] The councils, the first six ecumenical councils were usually called by the emperor, the eastern emperor. Now this was a technicality, what usually happened was that some prominent father of the day, a theologian, would get the emperors ear and ask him to call the council. Now the emperors were not always happy with the result, in fact they were almost always very unhappy, and that’s why the councils didn’t meet more often. But, the pressure of the theologians in the church led to the calling of the council. The councils usually tried to meet fairly briefly, a matter of a few months at the most. Very careful minutes were taken of the meetings and you can find these in Migne's Patrologia. MIGNE. They are quite full and you also have of course the decisions on every point recorded.

[Audience Member] So all that material would be available to people …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, and yet it’s unknown, totally unknown even among churchmen. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Chardinis definitely in the Hegelian tradition, very very definitely. It’s just a variation and you might as well get it straight from Hegel. Chardin’s influence is frightening when you realize that ten-fifteen years ago he was barely in the church and any day might have been kicked out and only by keepings his writings silent did he survive; today he is one of the most influential of all figures. But his works are very definitely far out. He denies the infallibility of scripture, in favor of the infallibility of this evolutionary process, and he does use the term infallibility once with reference to it, so it’s a shocking system, he belongs in the Unholy Trinity. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Chalcedon was a fairly small community within the boundaries of Byzantium in what we now call Asia Minor, so that it was not too distant from Constantinople.

[Audience Member] Is it known by that name yet?

[Rushdoony] No, no. but this time the great theologians were all in the east and this is the one council that is dominated by someone from the west, Saint Leo. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes it is a program of salvation, and you see to him politics means salvation. They no longer think of the state as the ministry of justice. Justice has nothing to do with it, you are going to save man. But here is a program of salvation that doesn’t change man. Christ changes man, He makes them new creatures, He gives them a new heart. But the state takes men in their sins and says: “You are now saved because we are going to save you.” So that it gives them all kinds of privileges which only confirm them in their sin and depravity. So the salvation of the state only leads to greater crisis and catastrophe.