Profound Questions and Answers

Before Christ were there Trinitarians

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 22-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 22

Dictation Name: RR209K20

Location/Venue:

Year:

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] And that has nothing to do with Nigeria or anything like that. No, there is no connection, they don’t pretend to be Biblical; they will just read something in order to say they have read the Bible.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, as a matter of fact the early church was segregated; first of all in New Testament times it was segregated between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers, and there was a good reason for that. The Jewish believers were so far superior that to integrate the two would have meant moral confusion, and when you realize that say in the Corinthian church they didn’t even know that fornication or adultery was a sin, because in the Greek world there was nothing wrong with that, after all the chambers of commerce in Greece, in Corinth and elsewhere, in Corinth the chambers of commerce maintained regularly around 2,000 prostitutes for all visiting business men, it was a manufacturing town and so on, and no one thought there was anything immoral about that; or about men having relations with prostitutes, this was all taken for granted.

So in the Gentile churches the moral standard was pretty low, it was a lot of hard work for a couple of generations and more to bring them up to any kind of standard. Well, the Jewish congregations represented a far higher moral standard, and Paul saw nothing wrong with that, nor did any other apostle. So the principle of segregation was present there from the beginning.

There are a couple of things I would like to share with you from recent newspaper issues, one is a United Press International (bar?) release, the Doctor Louis Leakey, the Anthropologist, whose recent discovery of kenyapithecus africanus is considered to be one of the most marvelous scientific finds, has been again talking quite loudly and vocally; he found a few pieces of skeletal remains, and of course he knows all about when man originated, and what man was like then, and a great deal else.

Now, if you and I attempted to speak as loudly on such fragmentary data, we would be considered insane; but the scientists can do it. And he is telling us that we survived some twenty million years ago, because we weren’t tasty enough; in short there were more delicious morsels around, and that is why the saber tooth tigers and others didn’t wipe out the primitive men.

Now this is called science nowadays, and you find something every week in the papers about Dr. Leakey, who having discovered a few bones is talking all over the world now, and cashing in very, very heavily indeed on those few dry bones. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, this is called science; anyone who believes they have discovered anything, or that they know anything about the origins of man is a bigger fool than they are, because a man who is made a fool of by fools is the bigger fool.

Then there was an interesting article recently in the Wanderer on the myth of overpopulation, which I hope you noticed. I would like to read a few passages from it. The writer Murray (Norris?) of Ventura County says: “If we gathered up all the 3 3/10ths billion people of the world and stood them shoulder to shoulder, we could easily get them all to into Ventura County here in California, in fact if we gave each of them 6 square feet to stand in we could fit every last one of them into the national forest portion of Ventura County, and probably still have room for some of them to lie down. This would leave us just as we are today in the rest of the county; so what is all this noise about?” Then he goes on to say that there are a large number of economists, agronomists and others, who tell us that many parts of the earth are under populated, and we could easily support 35 Billion people, more than 10 times the number of people alive on earth today.

“But what about India? At last count the United Nations in mid ’64 figured that India had roughly 374 people per square mile, and if you eliminate the almost unpopulated national park you would find we have more people per square mile in the rest of Ventura County than there are in India. And if you really want to see a place where they pack people in, why not try the Netherlands where they have 767 people per square mile? That is more than double the population packing propensities of India.

But let’s take a closer look at the food situation. First off, at least 3/4ths of the tillable land on this old earth of ours has not been touched with a plow, and of the rest only a small portion is intensively farmed.”

Then he goes on to say that it’s true that India has a food crisis, but there are a number of reasons, and he said one of them is that many areas of India have good food supplies, but the lack of transport is hampering the proper distribution; that they are concentrating on trying to build steel mills and the like and they aren’t getting transportation around in the country.

Then he goes on to say that there are some problems with under population. Japan is due for some real problems if it doesn’t increase its production of children, right now the net production rate in Japan is only 89% for the nation as a whole, and only 80% in Tokyo. This means that Japan is not producing enough children to replace its population, it is short about 13% a year. And then he says this is true in much of the world, in the United States our population is declining in the countryside and increasing in the cities, so that the deer and the antelope as well as the bear and the beaver are rapidly returning to areas where they were recently extinct.

Then he goes on to say that recent U.S. Bureau census figures indicate a very definitely downward trend in the United States, he says: “Here in Oxnard California it appears that the birth rate has dropped nearly 40% in the past 5 years, and there are indications that it might drop even further this year. In Vienna Austria today, deaths are exceeding births at the rate of 2-1. Two thirds of the nations of Europe are failing to produce enough children to replace the adult population. Dr. George Carter, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geographical Society says that suppression of these facts on population downtrends amounts to scandalous treatment of the data on population.”

And so on. Now, of course there is a reason we are not told the facts about population, or told that this population explosion is from start to finish a myth. The idea is to frighten us to believing that there is not, as some have said, going to be standing room on this earth by the year 2012, in other words, less than 50 years away; unless the U.N. or some other world agency has absolute power over the right of birth, over men and all things else. There is not the slightest bit of truth to the myth of the population explosion. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well of course I don’t accept their theory of these ages where these animals increased and then decreased.

[Audience Member] You don’ accept it?

[Rushdoony] No I think that again is to a large extent mythical. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the answer to that is first of all, this is the wildest kind of slander, it is hardly worthy bothering with, Christianity was not responsible for the fall, the Christians represented the most stable, the most conscientious element in the empire. When Constantine recognized Christianity it was because he realized the empire was committing suicide by persecuting and murdering the people in the empire who were the honest element, the best soldiers, the most stable citizens, the most faithful tax payers, the most responsible people; and he felt that it was suicide. And so he recognized Christianity, although he himself did not accept baptism until he was dying.

Now it proved to be too late in spite of what Constantine did. The second part, as for it being the greatest empire of all history, this is hyperbole, because Byzantium certainly was a much greater empire, it lasted a thousand years which no other empire has ever lasted, and it was of course from its beginning Christian. Another question?

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, now that phrase is used two ways in scripture and in theology. In the creeds it is used to mean that he is truly very man of very man, born of humanity; son of man by his birth of the Virgin Mary. Now in the Bible it has another usage also, it has that usage, but it also has the usage in Daniel and in the gospels of the one from heaven who comes, who is very God and becomes incarnate. So it very clearly refers in Daniel and in the gospels to the Messiah, to God incarnate. Yes?

[Audience Member] In the Lord’s prayer where it says: “Thy kingdom come” is that thinking of the kingdom coming on earth or the kingdom in the next world, or what is your comment on that?

[Rushdoony] The Lord’s prayer makes it specific: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” So that it is very, very wrong to equate the kingdom purely with a heavenly order, the prayer then becomes nonsense, and we don’t have to be raptured to get to the kingdom. God’s kingdom is to ushered into this world, its fullness will be in eternity. But it is definitely and specifically for this world, and it is too bad that so many have so spiritualized the faith at this point. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, yes, no the concept of division of powers of course derives from the Trinitarian doctrine, and you have the balancing of the powers of the state as against the powers of the people, so that both are to be equal in power. Here you have the equal ultimacy you see, or importance, because ultimacy belongs to God alone; the equal importance of the group as well as the individuals of the group. So that our form of government was set up to be thoroughly Christian, in fact they felt so strongly about the Christian aspect that they didn’t use the word ‘sovereignty,’ not even- well, no state constitution nor the federal constitution used the word sovereignty, because sovereignty belonged to God alone, to the Trinity.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, it was introduced into the state constitutions, and it is now introduced into our Federal constitutional thinking by Supreme Court decisions. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, the answer to that is there is no reference to Christ or to God in the Constitution, because as the first amendment made it clear, this was a matter of states rights exclusively. Every state had its own legislation, every state required certain things of citizens; in every state, you had to for example believe the Bible was the word of God, and accept the doctrine of the Trinity, or you could not vote. For example in the state of Virginia- and we think of Virginia as perhaps being not as strict as some of the other states, but at the time of the constitution, at the time of the war of Independence, if you denied the doctrine of the Trinity your children could be taken away from you for their own welfare.

Now, you see, they therefore said: “Since we as separate states have the jurisdiction for the religious life of our state, we don’t want the Federal government interfering with our religious establishments.” So it was the clergy of the United States that demanded the 1st Amendment.

Now the 1st Amendment, and someone asked me this recently at a meeting: “Well, what about the 1st Amendment and its statement that there must be separation of church and state?” and the answer is: “There isn’t a single word in the Constitution of church and state.” Not a word. The 1st Amendment simply says: “The Federal government” Congress “can make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In other words, the Federal government is to stay out of the area of religion, because this is the jurisdiction of the states and of the counties. So this is the reason, it was because they did not want a religious establishment, or the prohibition of one, enforced from above. What the Supreme Court has now done is to say that the states and counties have no right to set up religious requirements of their own, the Federal government can prohibit or require as it wishes.

So tomorrow, the Federal government, in terms of what the Supreme Court has done, could require us all to become Humanists or Buddhists, or what they will, because they have usurped this prerogative.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, they have redefined many words like sovereignty and others, to a very great extent.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I couldn’t say, I’ve never given it any thought. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The old Unitarians when they referred to God, referred vaguely to the first cause in the universe, it didn’t have to be a person or anything. Modern Unitarians, if they refer to God, refer to humanity. They are not talking about the God we are, nor are any other religions.

In the remaining time I want to read something to you, because in talking this past week with some of the group, I found that- and this is typical of our world today- most people today are ignorant of what is probably the greatest poem in the English language, it is a rather long poem, but it is a very great poem and a thoroughly Christian poem: The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson. Now how many here do know the poem?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. And I know how you knew it. When I was a guest at Bob’s home I made sure they came to know it. The Hound of Heaven was written at the end of the last century by Francis Thompson, and Francis Thompson, a young Catholic poet, wrote this poem which reflects the experience not only of himself, but the language and experience of Saint Augustine as stated in his confessions, and what he is here describing is his attempt to escape from God and to have life on his terms. So he portrays himself as running away from God continually, trying to find life in terms of nature, friends, work, and so on. But wherever he goes he feels he is being chased by a God, and he portrays Him as the ‘hound of heaven,’ as someone who like a bloodhound is on his trail and will not give him rest.

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN

Francis Thompson

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated,

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat—and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet—

'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'.

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,

By many a hearted casement, curtained red,

Trellised with intertwining charities;

(For, though I knew His love Who followed,

Yet was I sore adread

Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)

But, if one little casement parted wide,

The gust of His approach would clash it to:

Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.

Across the margent of the world I fled,

And troubled the gold gateway of the stars,

Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars;

Fretted to dulcet jars

And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.

I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;

With thy young skiey blossom heap me over

From this tremendous Lover—

Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!

I tempted all His servitors, but to find

My own betrayal in their constancy,

In faith to Him their fickleness to me,

Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.

To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;

Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.

But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,

The long savannahs of the blue;

Or, whether, Thunder-driven,

They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,

Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:—

Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.

Still with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

Came on the following Feet,

And a Voice above their beat—

'Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.'

I sought no more after that which I strayed

In face of man or maid;

But still within the little children's eyes

Seems something, something that replies,

They at least are for me, surely for me!

I turned me to them very wistfully;

But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair

With dawning answers there,

Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.

Come then, ye other children, Nature's—share

With me’ (said I) 'your delicate fellowship;

Let me greet you lip to lip,

Let me twine with you caresses,

Wantoning

With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,

Banqueting

With her in her wind-walled palace,

Underneath her azured dais,

Quaffing, as your taintless way is,

From a chalice

Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.’

So it was done:

I in their delicate fellowship was one—

Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.

I knew all the swift importings

On the wilful face of skies;

I knew how the clouds arise

Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;

All that's born or dies

Rose and drooped with; made them shapers

Of mine own moods, or wailful divine;

With them joyed and was bereaven.

I was heavy with the even,

When she lit her glimmering tapers

Round the day's dead sanctities.

I laughed in the morning's eyes.

I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,

Heaven and I wept together,

And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine:

Against the red throb of its sunset-heart

I laid my own to beat,

And share commingling heat;

But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.

In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.

For ah! we know not what each other says,

These things and I; in sound I speak—

Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.

Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;

Let her, if she would owe me,

Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me

The breasts o’ her tenderness:

Never did any milk of hers once bless

My thirsting mouth.

Nigh and nigh draws the chase,

With unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;

And past those noisèd Feet

A voice comes yet more fleet—

'Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me.'

Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!

My harness piece by piece Thou has hewn from me,

And smitten me to my knee;

I am defenceless utterly.

I slept, methinks, and woke,

And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.

In the rash lustihead of my young powers,

I shook the pillaring hours

And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,

I stand amidst the dust o' the mounded years—

My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.

My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,

Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.

Yea, faileth now even dream

The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;

Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist

I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,

Are yielding; cords of all too weak account

For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.

Ah! is Thy love indeed

A weed, albeit an amarinthine weed,

Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?

Ah! must—

Designer infinite!—

Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?

My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;

And now my heart is as a broken fount,

Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever

From the dank thoughts that shiver

Upon the sighful branches of my mind.

Such is; what is to be?

The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?

I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;

Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds

From the hid battlements of Eternity;

Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then

Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.

But not ere him who summoneth

I first have seen, enwound

With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;

His name I know and what his trumpet saith.

Whether man's heart or life it be which yields

Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields

Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit

Comes on at hand the bruit;

That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:

'And is thy earth so marred,

Shattered in shard on shard?

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

'Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught' (He said),

'And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited—

Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,

Save Me, save only Me?

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms,

But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.

All which thy child's mistake

Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!'

Halts by me that footfall:

Is my gloom, after all,

Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?

'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,

I am He Whom thou seekest!

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.'

Now that is the Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson, which is Augustinian to the core. We have time possibly for one more question? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, the Nicene Creed which reflects the work of the Nicene, of Constantinopolitan, and Chalcedonian Councils, is an expansion of the Apostles Creed; it is perhaps twice as long as the Apostles Creed, and not nearly as detailed and specific as the Athanasian, which concentrates exclusively on one point, the doctrine of the Trinity. Well, one more question?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It is hypocrisy to use the Creed without believing it, and of course most of the people today in the churches are hypocrites. In so many of the churches the apostles creed is repeated week in and week out, and in scarcely any of the churches today is it believed, and they shall incur all the greater damnation for their hypocrisy. All right, one more…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right now we are very definitely in the totalitarian swing, but we do have the anarchists pronouncedly with us. The Beatniks and some of the Libertarians are definitely anarchistic, and their concept is that life can only be lived in terms of a total absence of any law that is above and over man, any state, or any institution that has any authority over man. This is very pronounced in some circles, but the tide is moving towards totalitarianism. However I do believe that the future belongs to us as Christians. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very significant, and you see, this is why they are going to be more and more intolerant of Christianity, they will seek to destroy it, because it is a religion, and it is an intensely intolerant religion: “There is no truth but this, and everything else must be smashed.” Very… yes?

[New Question and Answer Period]

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Theodore of Mopsuestia. Yes, in the Middle East, it was a very important center at the time, but I don’t know if it is even in existence any longer. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] How does epistemological self consciousness effect economics. Very definitely, and I think perhaps the most telling way it does is this: recently we’ve seen several cases of conservative economists who a few years ago was describing exactly what was going to happen. Now, when everything they have described is beginning to come to pass they are denying it; instead of stepping forth and taking bows and saying: “I was a prophet, I called the tune” they are withdrawing from their conclusions, because they are coming to a self consciousness of what man is, and what man is bringing upon himself, and they are withdrawing from it.

Now this is one reason why conservative economics is on the wane. It isn’t that these men don’t recognize that the old economic laws are valid, it is that they want to destroy them and replace them with man-made laws, because they recognize that it is either God or man, and if you don’t believe in God, and you believe that these laws are going to be fulfilled, then how are they going to be fulfilled? By wiping you out. So you withdraw from the conclusions of your own economics. Today the conservative economists are on the run, they are not standing out. We have half as many as we did ten years ago. Milton Friedman is not the conservative he was previously, and of course he has now a plan for a guaranteed annual income, so that this is not the best kind of conservatism to my notion. The new issue of National Review has his justification of this, I haven’t read it yet so I will reserve judgement, but basically you can see what is happening to these conservatives; and it is simply because their epistemological self consciousness is driving them to the realization that it is either God or man, and if it is man, and they are humanists, they are going to have to choose ultimately in favor of man made laws, and that’s Liberalism.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What does it do to money? It means that you are going to try to have your own kind of money, you are going to make money even as you make everything else, you are going to be your God there. I hope sometime soon to have a talk ready on- another one on money, because I was reading this weekend in Lenin and in his second volume of his collected works I ran into his thesis on money and banking, which is quite remarkable, and he says the best preparation for socialism is exactly what we are doing today, it makes it inevitable. And so he says it is the kind of monetary policy, the paper money policy, central banking policies, that is exactly the necessary ingredient that makes socialism inevitable.

I am going to work on that for a talk up north next month.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, it does effect it, first of all because money no longer has value you break down capitalization. I won’t go into this because the first part of this will be a part of my talk next time, and second a great deal of this is going to be Dorothy’s talk on the basis of some thinking she has done on her own at the next women’s group. So we will pass that up.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, ‘epistemological self consciousness’ comes from the word ‘epistemology’ which means ‘the theory of knowledge.’ Now, epistemological self consciousness is that self knowledge whereby you know what your roots and your foundations are, so that if you are a Christian you are a root and branch Christian; if you are a humanist you are a root and branch humanist. Now we are all familiar with people who don’t have epistemological self consciousness, they will talk like a humanist and a socialist one moment, and the next minute they will talk like a Christian and a conservative; because they don’t have epistemological self consciousness, they don’t have the consistency coming from a self knowledge of where they stand, what their roots are, and developing everything out of those roots.

Now, the unbeliever fights against epistemological self consciousness, because if he were to be consistent to his humanistic principles he would have to admit that he can know nothing, and that he has no hope. So the unbeliever fights against epistemological self consciousness, self knowledge of what he is, a sinner under the judgement of God. But the Christian works forward to epistemological self consciousness. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Because they are sinners. And as sinners- yes, alright-

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Because they are a bigger sinner. (laughter)

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but you see they talk about complexity in order to say: “This is why we must simplify, and we must control because it is too complex for you.” And of course, they have far less capacity to control than we do. As far as the farmer is concerned, his work is far more complex now than it was fifty years ago. Today he has to be an expert mechanic, because he cannot afford to take his tractor and truck into the garage every time something goes wrong with it; he does all that work himself. He has to be an expert in a number of areas, because it is so highly competitive, and unless he has mastered a number of things he is out of business. And in every area this is true, there is less and less unskilled labor in any area, so there is a progressive need for specialization.

There are very few people you can think of today that you know, whose work is a simple one that almost anyone can do. It has to call for a specialized type of skill, an aptitude, and special knowledge. Even in your own field, law, there is no over-all lawyer who handles any type of case, it is a very specialized type of law that every lawyer today practices. And there will be specialties within specialties, just in a single field.

[New Question and Answer Period]

Yes?

[Audience Member] You know Rush, in this self consciousness, (?) presented his argument so well, and rationally and intelligently, that it became very popular; but the way that seems right unto man …?...

[Rushdoony] Exactly, because once you accept their premises, everything is logical. If you accept the humanistic, the man-centered premise, then you have to accept their conclusions. The only way you can fight them, is as you said, is in terms of the basic Christian faith, otherwise you surrender. Yes?

[Audience Member] You spoke of humanism in- what was the term you used- faith? Well, Christianity is intolerant in many areas, but we are not allowed to withdraw …?... we are taught to offer our religion, but the humanist has (?).

[Rushdoony] Yes, he cannot convey.

[Audience Member] Now, is there any verse that you can think of that gives us a basis for the purpose of man, in Ecclesiastes we have in the 12th chapter and 13th verse, this verse: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Is there anything comparable in the New Testament? Can you think of…

[Rushdoony] No, there is no single verse, however the Westminster Catechism gives a lot of different verses when it gives the statement which sums up the verses: “What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” And it lists the verses in the proof text section which bear this out, but there isn’t one verse that sums it up like Ecclesiastes does. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is a point well taken. Simplicity can be used in this double sense, and there is a difference between what is the straightest line between two points, and an attempt to- which means efficiency- so that there is a kind of simplicity which is efficiency, eliminating frills, eliminating nonsense and so on, and that of course we must be for, but this fallacy of simplicity is trying to make complex things simple when they cannot be. In other words, your work is not simple work, it is a highly complex, skilled kind of work, it is not a job that any one of us here in this room could step into, and the idea that every kind of work and every kind of idea is something that should be on the level of everyone else, you see, simplified to the lowest common denominator, is this fallacy of simplicity that I am dealing with. But there is a difference between that and specialization which is efficient.

Now what you are talking about is efficient specialization that cuts through these things. Now who makes the mistakes that you are talking about, where they get in unnecessary steps and unnecessary procedures? It is the person who doesn’t know as much as you do. And because he doesn’t know as much he takes a great many extra steps. But because you are a master in your field, you eliminate these extra steps, and you can reduce it to the essentials. But this in itself, you see, is the product of specialization, and a high degree of knowledge. So this is a simplicity that comes from skill.

[New Question and Answer Period]

I brought with me something today that delighted me no end, and I thought you might enjoy it, because so often we are treated to what the world is going to be like in twenty years and fifty years, and it is interesting to see what somebody said along the same lines some time ago; and this is from the Saturday Evening Post, for December 29, 1900. A very interesting set of issues at that time to go through to look at the ads and the prices in it; one of the ads that tickled me, you could ride in and get a year’s supply of toilet tissue for a dollar.

Now this article is titled The Dwelling House of the Twentieth Century by Otis T. Mason, and it is about the architecture of the average home in 1950, and of course they are sure it is going to be a marvelous world, and it says that: “A house is a suit of clothes for a number of (?), shielding them from observation and protecting them against extremes of temperature.” And then it goes on to say that in terms of this, houses are going to be styled for people by 1950. The old (track houses?) and subdivision houses that are going to be all alike is going to be a thing of past, they will no longer exist. Also, wood or frame houses would be gone, all houses will be made of composition rock, and they will be in other words quite lovely. “Dwellings will no longer” (writing as though this was 1950) “Put up in solid blocks all exactly alike outside and inside, a style most popular in the latter part of the 19th century, each house stands alone, mainly because in the year 1950 people have come to realize that the lumping together of buildings renders them less attractive to the eye, and deprives them in large degree of their power to express the individuality of their owners.” So your house will express your individuality in 1950.

Then of course such old fashioned things such as stairs will be gone; they will be completely replaced by automatic elevators, because in the simplest private home, with electricity so cheap, everything will be all electrical. And the house will be heated by electricity, there will be no such ridiculous things as visible lights overhead or switches on the wall, there will be a register that you will set for a particular degree of light, and it will maintain that light at all times during the day until you change the register; so that if it gets a little cloudy outside or if it begins to darken, the invisible lighting will come on in proportion to that, and you will have this controlled and perfect lighting without the necessity of turning on a switch and looking at ugly lighting fixtures too.

Houses will be cooled by liquid air, and cellars and pantry’s will be a thing of the past, because who will put up with such nonsense when you can have all your food from the stores, just to order precisely ready to go into the oven, and so on. And then, well, it will be totally electrical, (?) electricity has been substituted for the alcohol lamp, and making tea, and dishes on the table are kept hot by a current conveyed through the cloth into copper plates beneath. Not a battery is to be found in the twentieth century dwelling here described, the electricity used in the establishment comes in a single current through a heavy wire from a distributing station, and on the premises is split up as required for heating, for lighting, for cooking, for running the elevators and so on. The dumb waiter runs by electricity.” Of course you’ll have a dumb waiter and so on, because you are going to live in luxury. “As well as the housewives sewing machine and the same fluid both runs and regulates all the clocks in the house. It works the automatic piano, and might be made to agitate the babies cradle, only the people in 1950 have learned to know that infants are apt to be rendered stupid or even idiotic by rocking them. If the daughter of the house wants her crimp repaired, she fastens her curling iron with a little plug to a convenient wire and enjoys the certainty that the instrument will not scorch her curls”

Also it goes on to describe how all the furnishings will be radically different, “they won’t go in for the old fashioned things, and how clear the ancient four post bedstead, mass of wardrobes and chest of drawers look now (?); it must have been very uncomfortable to live with them.” And so on, they are going to have these beautiful streamlined, all metal and other sort of things- well, modernistic furnishings. Then of course, one of the things that will be certain in 1950 is that there will be no polluted air.

“In the twentieth century we regard smoke or waste air churned out above our premises as an infringement and a cause of action for trespass.” It goes on along this vein, of course brick and wallpapers are out of date, they are germ catchers, no one will put up with any such thing, there will be all kind of modern plastic and other composition inventions that will totally replace them.

So the article concludes: “A judicious person writing in 1900 must hesitate to attempt any serious prediction, as to modifications in the building and equipment of dwellings which will be accomplished by the middle of the next century. There are ventured here only a few guesses as to what changes will come to pass. It will remain for a future generation to discover how far these surmises are accurate, though of course a good many people who have already arrived at adult age will survive long enough to live in and enjoy the luxuries and the improvements of the houses of A.D. 1950.”

So when you read about the marvels of the future that are planned for us, remember what they are talking about as far as the marvels of today are concerned. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. ‘plenary’ means full, total, a free hand to do as you please with all the power given to you, so that if you give plenary power to any man, what you are in effect saying is: “I will be bound by what you do for me, and in my name.’’ Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Towards Mecca. I have it, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There has been that opinion in some quarters, but it isn’t regarded as anything that has any great significance. But many churches are so built so that they face the east.

Now, partly this began because so many of the Romans who were converted were sun worshippers, the sun represented the emperor and the one world order, so that one way of worshipping the power and might and majesty of Rome was to do obeisance to the sun. And Pop Gregory the Great condemned so many of the people in his day who came to church because before they walked into the church they bowed to the sun; they were going to play safe with both as it were. And this has crept in unfortunately, so that we feel that we must observe some of these things. Of course now it is just a harmless relic, but really there is no significance to it, if the church faces north or if it faces south or west or east, it is all the same as long as the word of God is faithfully preached. But I don’t think a church facing east is going to preserve you if you have a foul ball in the pulpit. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Arminianism is a form of Pelagianism. Very definitely. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It was Trinitarian. Now this is the strange thing that very few people realize, the Old Testament religion was Trinitarian, just as ours is. They had God the Father, they had God the Word or Wisdom as they called Him, and they had God the Holy Spirit, and when you go through the Old Testament, you have for example over and over again, the Holy Spirit speaking through the prophets, and the prophets speaking of the Holy Spirit as God, another person of the Godhead. Then you had references to the Angel of the Lord, and also the Angel of the Lord is called God, and He is a person who manifested Himself in bodily form over and over again on earth, and is also called the Wisdom of God, and speaks as Wisdom, so that Solomon quote Wisdom as saying so and so. So you have the three persons of the Godhead there.

Now, what happened after the fall of Jerusalem was this: because the Old Testament was so eloquent against the Jews, and because the apostles in their preaching, and all you have to do is to read through the New Testament, the text in every sermon preached by the apostles is from the Old Testament, and they tell their Jewish listeners: “This is what you’ve been taught. Now, here is the fulfillment.” Therefore, the whole interpretation of the Old Testament was changed by the rabbis after the fall of Jerusalem, and they denied the Trinitarianism, they denied the meaning of the prophecies, they denied for example the 53rd chapter of Isaiah that it referred to the Messiah who was to come, and then gave it a radical new interpretation in terms of Phariseeism, and this was in essence humanism. So very rapidly Judaism as we know it developed, humanism and…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very rapidly after 70 A.D. it developed. Now Phariseeism was a good example of this before, but it completely obliterated everything else and dominated Judaism, and became Judaism. And the Talmud of course as I said is the great humanistic document, and it is no wonder that humanists like Earl Warren regard it very highly, because it is one of the landmarks of humanism. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, on British Israel he was very accurate.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, he is a very able man. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Judaism, and in the Old Testament- or it isn’t Judaism then, Judaism is the term for what you have now, humanism- but the Hebraic faith was really no different than ours. To be saved you had to believe in the atoning work of the sacrificial one of God, the one who was to come to give His life as a ransom for many. You went to the temple or tabernacle with your offering, and you took that lamb or whatever the offering was and you laid it upon the altar, and you confessed your sins, and you said in brief this: that you deserved to die because you were a sinner, but you accepted the sacrifice God had provided for you, the substitute, and by his death you gained not only forgiveness of sins but life, new life. And so the animal, the lamb was slain upon the altar, and you went away forgiven. Now this of course is simply the essence of what the New Testament sets forth, so that the doctrine of salvation is one in the Old and the New Testaments, it is simply fulfilled and brought out in its fullness in the New.

[Audience Member] Do the Jews now view the Old Testament as part of their …?...

[Rushdoony] They nominally use the Old Testament, but they use it as reinterpreted, because they made it clear long before this that the interpretation is more basic than the text. For example they no longer recognize that salvation is by God, it is by your own efforts. This is pure Pelagianism. The sacrificial system has no meaning. All you go to the synagogue for is a little inspiration and moral self-help teaching. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, now Logos in the Greek is translated as ‘word’ in English, and Saint John begins: “In the beginning was the word, and the word was God.” Now the ‘word’ in that sense, and the ‘word of God’ in the sense of scripture, are two different things. So that we have the enscriptured word of God, here in the Bible; when they say: “I believe in the word of God, Jesus Christ” or ‘Christ’, the answer is: “How can you believe in a word you do not know, if this word is not trustworthy?” because of course, if the written word is not trustworthy, then the living word, Christ, is exactly what they want to make of Him; and having abolished this word, then their Christ is exactly the one they want Him to be, He is in favor of Marches to Selma, He is favor now of boycotting the Eastman Kodak company, He is of course marvelously represented today in the figure of Saul Alinsky who gets more money out of the churches than any other single man, and who is going to establish his headquarters in California, a school of revolution probably in San Francisco, supported by the California churches; this is what they will make of the word of God if they deny the enscriptured word.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, exactly, he is one of the most powerful men in the poverty program, and his purpose is to organize every one of the poor for social revolution, and he has made it clear that it is his purpose to organize the have-nots to take it from the haves. So the poverty program is planned revolution.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I read something you remember a few weeks ago on the myth of the population explosion, since then the statistics that have been revealed indicate that our birth rate in 66 was the lowest since 36, and it is dropping rapidly every year all over the world; and we are likely in a very short time, in a very few years, to have empty school rooms up and down the state of California, because we have been overbuilding steadily, and are still overbuilding, and as a result we are going to face a vast surplus of school room space. Now, such a statement has been made by a member of the committee on school construction in the state of California, but there is no heading off the drive to build, because it is a way of spending our money.

I ran across a couple of things that I thought were rather interesting, this is from the February 20 U.S. News and World Report, February 20 1967 page 17, and it discusses the Washington National Crime commission studies: “Are police reaching a breaking point?” and it goes on to say the police men are harassed almost to the breaking point regularly by large angry crowds that suddenly gather at the scenes of arrest and shout brutality and curses almost before the police get out of the car, and as a result their life is a very difficult one, tremendously subjected to pressure, to harassment, and so on. But, this is what the crime commission has to say: “All five observers contacted said they found surprisingly widespread bigotry, quote: Nearly every white policeman reveals strong prejudices against Negro’s in private conversations, one of the observers said.”

Now, isn’t this amazing. These poor policemen are kicked, they have bottles thrown at them, they are sworn at, they are abused, they find nothing but depravity day after day, and the crime commission of Washington D.C., the National Crime Commission is shocked that they don’t regard the Negro’s more highly. This is insanity.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It doesn’t say, just someone appointed apparently by Congress or Commissioners of Washington D.C., or the President.

Then this, an indication of what we may be facing in more than one place across the country, from the Wall Street Journal, Wednesday March 1st 1967, page 22. And I will just read a couple of items from it in the headlines: “Ohio could issue bonds without calling a vote if proposal is adopted. An Ohio capital financing plan that would erase the need for public approval on bond issues is nearing passage in the general assembly, but the proposed constitutional amendment may be headed for trouble at the special election tentatively for May. Democratic leaders are putting together plans to fight the Republican backed constitutional proposal sponsored by Governor Rose.”

Now, what kind of a country will it be when bonds can be issued without any vote? And of course we have created already in this state an agency that can do the same, the water authority that is to bring water South, which will be a more powerful government than the one in Sacramento. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It would be a good check: “Buy no bonds.” Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] This of course is Pelegianism in politics with a vengeance. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right. A very great deal of danger. Well, our time is up and we stand dismissed.