Profound Questions and Answers

What are the Exceptional Councils Historically

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels, and Sermons

Lesson: 7-24

Genre: Talk

Track: 7

Dictation Name: RR210L21

Location/Venue:

Year:

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] The councils that are getting together are very, very different, in fact the exact opposite of these early councils we have been considering. These early councils met not to unify the church, but in a sense to divide it in terms of the truth. Their purpose therefore was not unity but the truth, and they never came together without saying to a certain segment of the church: “Because you have departed from the faith you have departed from us, and we no longer have any portion with you.”

The councils today come together to subvert the faith, they are interested in one thing, unity, at the price of truth; creating a humanistic structure so that they are seeking to conform the church not to Christ but to man.

Now in the early councils there was a totally different perspective you see, from the present councils. So the present councils are working in effect to do that which the early councils sought to prevent, the triumph of humanism over Christianity. Yes?

[Audience Member] Rush, where was the papacy in these first councils, their presence, what was their power?

[Rushdoony] Yes, in the early councils there were three patriarchates that were regarded as equal in significance and in rank, and were so treated, and the council declared them to be of equal status. They were the patriarchate of Alexandria, Constantinople, and as the term was then used, Old Rome. So that these three were of equal rank, and there was no question as to the preeminence of any one of them. The equality of the Bishops was accepted, so that while these three had a primacy, it was a primacy not in terms of authority, but in terms of eminence, of honor, and the councils specifically stated in some of their canons, repeatedly, this fact.

Now it was not until after the year 1,000 that Hildebrand when he became pope proclaimed the supremacy of the bishop of Rome. But prior to that time some of the popes actually declared that such a doctrine was anathema to them.

There was a hint of this in Galasius, in his teaching, but it never came to the front till Hildebrand.

Now in the early Councils, the basic theological leadership was in Alexandria, so we have to say that Alexandria showed the primacy theologically, up to Chalcedon. At Chalcedon the theological primacy went to Rome, there the Tome of Leo, Saint Leo, was decisive. Then after that of course you find the Eastern Church and the North African Church going down hill very rapidly as heresy began to infect it, and the theological leadership passed for a time into the hands of the Augustinians. Now Saint Augustine was of course Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, but the area of Augustinian influence was especially Southern Gaul and later on Spain. So we find the Athanasian Creed coming out of the Augustinians, basically of Southern Gaul; we find also that the Doctrine of Grace as it is enunciated in the Council of Orange, whatever its defects nevertheless was Augustinian, again Southern Gaul, and we find Spain in the Councils of Toledo showing theological leadership.

After that, the basic center of the church moved for a couple of centuries, can anyone guess where?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Ireland. Ireland. The Church of Ireland which was an Independent church exercised tremendous power and did the basic evangelism in much of France, the northern and central sections, and in Germany and elsewhere, and its closest relations were with the Syrian church; and in many of the graveyards of the Irish monks, some of the grave stones are in Syria. But the Irish church was a tremendously important church, and Ireland was the center at the time of world culture.

Now the Irish culture, and it has never regained its eminence or a comparable culture, or a comparable prosperity; the Irish culture was destroyed by the politicians of Ireland, they were always conflicting one with another, and there was never anything but turmoil between them, and so they invited the various quarreling Irish factions, the Danes and other of the Scandinavian warriors who were that time as you know rather wild people, in as their allies. Well, these various Scandinavians came in and decided it was a good place, and why leave? So they began to establish their domain there, and loot and kill. And so Ireland very quickly was destroyed.

Now, subsequently the church of Ireland was united, and it was the church of Ireland by the way that carried the gospel into Scotland and into much of England, although it had come into England first during the time of the Roman Empire and Roman possessions there, and then it gradually (?) as the Romans withdrew. But when the churches of England and Ireland were united with Rome, sizeable portions remained there independent, so that into the high and almost late Middle Ages, you had two archbishops in Ireland, the Archbishop in Dublin appointed from Rome, and then the Archbishop… oh does anyone remember the name of the ancient Irish center?

At any rate… what?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, that’s from England.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I know the one you mean, but that isn’t the place, that was one of the important centers of the Bishops of Ireland. At any rate, it is one of the most hallowed names in Irish history, and there was also a great center of the Irish church, the continuing Irish church in Wales. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and it became such a tremendous center of monastic learning, and the number of saints in that century are staggering, people of tremendous scholarship and culture. The Illuminated Manuscripts, the greatest of the Illuminated Manuscripts are from Ireland and Armenia, and a few years ago some of the Irish manuscripts were put under a magnifying glass, and the number of brush strokes in a square inch were close to a thousand. Now how they could take the painstaking time and the sharpness of their eyes, that they could have copied these Bibles with such loving care and such beauty is almost beyond belief.

I’d like to call attention to some things from the newspaper in the last week, not very pleasant, but something we need to recognize is the ugly reality that is taking over in the church. In the Wall Street Journal for Monday, March 13, on the front page a long story: “Tenderloin ministry, a secularized church pursues its mission in unorthodox causes; San Francisco homosexuals helped by Glide Methodists, some members unhappy.” And it goes on to speak about Glide Methodist church, one of the wealthiest churches and most powerful in California, and I am quoting: “Glide’s ministers are especially concerned about homosexuality, it is widespread in San Francisco, police estimate that 80 – 95 thousand San Franciscans or more than 10% of the city’s 790,000 people are homosexuals. Glide permitted the Vanguard, a group of young male prostitutes to have a dance in the church. Glide has also made office space available to the Vanguards, helped them secure a club room and bought them furniture,” and so on. “Glide ministers haven’t tried to reform the homosexuals.” And so on.

And it describes some of their activities that they sponsor, and they have also established an agency called Citizens Alert, a group that maintains a 24 hour answering service to help people arrested by Police, and of course their cry perpetually is police brutality and discrimination against homosexuals, and so on. And it goes on along this line. However, this article is not an unfriendly one, and the concluding paragraph reads: “Glides activities have intrigued many clergy men and religious laymen across the country. Two writers for a Methodist magazine recently spent some time at Glide doing a series of articles: “We have seen the growing edge of Christianity” They jubilantly reported back to their editor.

Now, to get a more candid account of Glide church, this from a far, far leftist periodical, the Berkeley Barb for Friday March the 3rd on a recent billing at Glide church, and the title is: “Hippy Happy Hour makes Glide Glow. The Glide memorial churches like most churches, quiet, respectable, fastidiously neat. It waits primly for its Sunday morning congregation and the inspiration of subdued words and music. But not always. Last Friday night into that stately stone building at the edge of San Francisco’s tenderloin, the (string?) the hip, the beat, the tuned in and the dropped out. The sermon was: “This is it, Dig it Now” and the mass was black. Before the cock crowed the church fathers had lost their cool and order the orgiastic revelers from what they had felt would be a haven of hedonism. Sponsored by the Artists liberation front, the happening had been dubbed the invisible circuit, but fully visible for the peripatetic voyeur were such sights as a naked man moving easily around the main sanctuary, a score of belly dancers, some topless, passion requited within the recesses of a small chapel, and for the straight classics, stag movies. The church leaders had felt it would be a good way to bring together all sectors of the community, from hip to square, to help lay the ground work for the mutual understanding needed as the different camps became more polarized. It was, but what happened to their courage?”

Now, you see this is from the left, this paper, so it is criticizing them. “The scene got underway at 8 P.M. with a rock band in the downstairs fellowship room. About 50 people of the large audience danced to the big notes. In a small room next door some people got ready for bed in a two foot thick carpet of shredded plastic. The church elevator was filled with plastic too, it was quickly commandeered by elated (eloknots?). They ascended and descended and stopped between floors with satanic glee singing ‘Yellow Submarine’. Upstairs in the main sanctuary of the church, some of the older (hate as ashbury?) led in the chanting of Hindu Mantras. In another room there was a discussion on obscenity in the arts, Reverend Stewart of Glide and a police representative were on the panel. A chair was kept open for anyone who wanted to give an opinion. One man said that if there were really such a thing as obscenity, then the Vietnam war was the most obscene thing of all. By 10 p.m. the sanctuary of the church had been transformed into a panorama of waving candles, gliding costumed bodies, birds of paradise flowers, clouds of incense wavered from hundreds of glowing sticks. Notes of flutes, rams and seaweed horns and drums blended with the churches organ and piano; projectors flashed swirling colors on the walls. Behind the altar the long graceful cross bathed in dancing purples and reds as the gigantic face of Christ flashed on and off. A procession started around the banks of pews, each participant holding a candle and moving slowly in the undulating line. Soon there were two lines moving in opposite directions. Processioners exchanged candles as they passed, their faces glowing in the warm, intimate light. The format in the fellowship room had changed by now to a variety and talent show. Admission to the room was via a booth where the (North candle?) was reading fortunes by examining the lines on the bottom of peoples feet.”

“In another downstairs room the communication company mimeographed bulletins about the happening as it evolved, posting copies outside the door. One of them declared: ‘there will be a funeral for the carcasses of the flowers in the hallways. Attendance is mandatory, if you wish. Come now. Destroy the adverse influence of the amateur show, love them with dead flowers or anything else that you love with.’ Photos, line art, rallying cries, and turn on admonitions were also mimeographed and handed out to the crowd by little girls with sad (watering?) eyes. At 11 p.m. the diggers fed several hundred people. The large crowd jammed its way slowly through the halls and in and out of the small rooms. Most were young people, there were a few drag queens and hells angels, and probably some narks and other (buds?) but everyone seemed to belong there, there was a feeling of inclusiveness that embraced all styles. In the fellowship room a film on space satellites and missiles was projected on a paper screen, the accompanying rock music got louder and stronger, then twenty belly dancers broke through the screen and started undulating, drawing spectators on to the floor as partners; some of them went topless as the dance progressed. Other couples joined the dance, and there was a gentle touching among them as if they were cherishing the mutual intimacy of the dancing and the closeness.

In the sanctuary several poets read from their works, among them (Bernard Candle?) and Michael (McClure?)” (Leanore Candle?) got in trouble because of her pornography recently.

Then the scene took over again, and soon the characteristic scent of pot suffused the incense (tables?) several African drums started their pulsing beat in one corner, soon many were dancing to the insistent (drop?) some of the belly dancers among them. Around the altar, loud voices projected selections from holy books, while couples kissed and caressed under the cross of Jesus. A completely naked man moved around the larger room, he belonged like everyone else. In a room downstairs a sex film was shown, in the groovyness of the total happening it was sensible and not pornographic. On the improvised beds in the other room couples were seen sleeping, talking, loving freely. Still other rooms had discussions, recording sessions, improvised folk and rock music. By 4 A.M. the crowd had thinned out somewhat. Earlier during the night some of the Glide officials threatened to stop the event if the church weren’t cleaned up. There was an accumulation of flowers, incense, cigarette butts, candle wax, coke cans, and other debris all over the sanctuary, and after an appeal from the altar the celebrants did a thorough job of clearing away the debris.

The church leaders did call a halt to the proceedings at dawn Saturday, well before the happening hand been scheduled to end, Sunday morning originally. Nobody was sure why. ‘Fire regulations, and candle damage to the carpets’ some conjectured. ‘They lost their cool,’ said others. The scene then shifted to ocean beach. There warm spirits were cooled by the wind. A few hundred people gathered mainly around one roaring fire. Three Negro’s played on one bongo drum and two overturned rusted barrels. The crowd stood, sat and shivered, and jumped to keep warm. At several smaller fires people were collecting sticks to maintain the blaze. Silence rained except for occasional nostalgic comments on the wild time at Glide. The crowd was quiet and vibrations were mixed; some people had hitchhiked from Glide downtown, a stiff proposition at night. A few stood barefoot in the wet sand facing the ocean, and let the cold water wash their feet.”

Now I am told that when officials of Glide were asked about it, and why they had stopped it finally, their only excuse was that: ‘Well, more people came than they expected’ not that they were hostile to what happened. Now, I read this in detail, because this of course while it is happening very openly at Glide, is happening in churches in every city across country, and this is the reality. The church today is taken over by humanism, by and large, and this is the end result of humanism: There can be no law over man because man is his own law. Therefore there must be the deliberate profanation of anything that represents the old faith, Biblical Christianity.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is increasingly the kind of thing that is being sponsored. Now it does occur in many, many communities and churches not far from us, but it is much more discreetly handled, in other words it is not so openly done. Glide Memorial Church is taking the lead like a few other churches, because Glide Memorial has tremendous endowed funds. It was thirty years ago one of the most ultra-conservative churches in the west; but it was infiltrated and taken over, the endowed funds now enable them to thumb their nose at any of the members who don’t like it. The sad part is that there are lots of members still sticking around. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes and no, first the foundations when they were originally established, which goes back to the Medieval period, had one purpose; and originally in this country until the beginning of this century had one purpose; they were to be Christian through and through. They were to further Christian work, missionary work. The idea of foundations that we have today is totally alien to the history of foundations, and it is a subversion of the whole idea of establishing a tax exempt foundation, so that originally they were to do works of charity and missionary work, or Christian education; nothing else.

Now, I agree with you, but I do not believe, basically, in endowed funds; especially in this day and age. Because the weakness of endowment is simply this: the minute you create any kind of endowment a subversion takes place, and it is common place for people to work their way in, keep their silence for a generation, in order to lay the ground work for the takeover of a foundation. So that I believe for any kind of Christian school or college or youth center or foundation that is now established should have as its principle that it is not going to accumulate funds, the money it gets is to be used now for the present cause. If tomorrow money is needed, let those who are on the scene tomorrow raise funds for tomorrows work, because if you accumulate it, you will be taken over.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, as the foundations are today, they should not be tax exempt. But basically, in its origins, the tax exemption of the foundation was the same as that of the church; it did not operate a business, it was maintaining a Christian work, and we do not believe that the church should be taxed because the church is not the domain of the church, it is the domain of Christ, it is a separate kingdom and therefore cannot be taxed because if you subject the church to taxation you are subjecting it to total destruction. And this is why men like Blake and others are calling for the taxation of the church today, they want it to be confiscated ultimately; this is the only purpose of taxing the churches.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well of course basically nothing should be called a church that is not Christian, because there is no such thing as a church really, outside of Christianity. Now, what do you have in other religions? You have a temple, and what is the temple for? Well, the temple is a place where you buy insurance. Now that is what it is, really. In the ancient pagan Roman temples, or in a Buddhist temple, or any such thing what you do is to go in when you are going to go on a trip or your family is facing some problems, someone undergoing surgery, what do you do? You pay a certain amount for protection from the spirits or powers that rule the universe, whoever they are. If you don’t get the protection you go somewhere else with your business. And it is operated as a kind of insurance agency. Now that is what the temple was in antiquity, and that is what it is, and that is what religion is elsewhere; it is not a place of worship, it is a place where you buy insurance. So outside of the Biblical tradition there is no such thing as a house of worship. The idea is alien to all other religions. So a church should be Christian by definition, and nothing else.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Judaism with its synagogue is related to the idea of the church, and we do get the church out of the synagogue. It is descended from the synagogue, rather than the temple. The temple was done away with permanently. Now, there can only be one legal basis for a state, you either have a humanistic foundation or you have a Judaistic foundation, or a Christian foundation, or a Confucian foundation. Every system of law is enacted morality, and every enacted morality represents a moral code, which represents a theology, a religion. You can’t have more than one religious foundation to a state, if you allow more than one you are saying ‘we are allowing subversives.’ It is the same principle as allowing communism full legal rights in a republic. So this is why, basically, a state cannot have either political or religious subversion.

[Audience Member] Going from there to where we are today, how long has it been since we have had one of the ecumenical councils …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, the first six councils are the only ones universally acknowledge by every branch of Christendom. The seventh ecumenical council is acknowledged by the Eastern churches and the Roman Catholic Church, but not by the Protestant churches. But the first six are the ones universally acknowledged.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No. No, we have the basic definition of the faith now, in fact the first four councils really defined it, the fifth and sixth then proceeded to apply this against various heresies. We have the faith very carefully defined, now it is a question of applying it and enforcing it against heresies. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, now first of all, there are two states of the believer after death. First is the period in heaven when our souls go to be with the Lord, when at the point of death our soul is resurrected and we go to heaven. Then at the end of the world there is the general resurrection of the dead when the new creation is ushered in, a physical creation, and as resurrected bodies, soul and body united, we dwell eternally there in a physical existence, in a perfect physical existence.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. That’s right. In the eternal kingdom, neither in heaven nor in the new creation is there marriage or giving in marriage, or generations. This is a part of this life, but it doesn’t mean that the life is not physical, it transcends anything we know, so that as Paul says just as it hard to tell from a seed what the tree is going to be like if you don’t know the tree, so the body is planted as it were a seed, and in the eternal kingdom there it is, but we cannot imagine because it is beyond our imagination; it would be like trying to describe color to a blind man, because it staggers the imagination to try to comprehend a physical life without any of the limitations that our physical life has today. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is in this chapter, the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, most churches today preach immortality of the soul, this has steadily infiltrated the churches, it is nothing but Greek paganism. There is scarcely a church where this is not preached, but this is paganism. It is paganism. Ours is the doctrine of the resurrection. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, right, many of the churches because they are tainted with this asceticism decry healthy normal pleasures. There is no harm in being beautiful, and there is a lot of advantage. There is no farm in being well dressed, and a great deal of advantage. Now, the text that is often used is from Peter, and it is well to look at that, because I have had this thrown at me so many times by people who are shocked that I tell them there is no harm in such things, 1 Peter 3. And many a woman has felt that she’s had an obligation virtually to be plain and decry jewelry because of this passage and the way it has been interpreted to her. 1 Peter 3.

“3 Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;” Now conversation there is in the old sense of general behavior and conduct, including speech.

“2 While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

3 Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel;

4 But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

5 For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:”

And so on. Now, we are told this is against adornment, so that women shouldn’t have jewelry or anything special in the way of hairdos or clothing.

Well, this is totally misreading the text. What Paul is saying is this: “Your confidence, your trust, is not to be in appearance but in a heart that is at peace with God, and the conduct that is in terms of the word of God. This is your truest jewelry and your truest adornment, so that it is a false confidence to feel that you are going to get by in terms of the appearance when your conduct as a wife and your inner disposition are totally false.

Now he is not speaking against attractive clothing or jewelry, what he is condemning is the misuse of them, that these things take the place of a good conscience towards God. There is a world of difference between saying a thing is to be abolished, or a thing is to be used in its place, and over and over again, the Bible speaks of the book things of life, of jewelry, of land, of possessions, of material goods, as a blessing from the Lord. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Who was this? Oh the Communists?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, Communism is dialectical, and it is dialectical materialism, but basically it is hostile to matter and it hates the fact that matter perishes, so it is a system which tries to bring an end to history. Now one of the things for example in the Soviet Union that a great deal of money has been expended on, is to try to do away with death. And Stalin in particular poured vast sums of money into research to destroy aging and death, because he could not accept the fact, and did not want to die of course. And this has not ceased, it is still going on. It is because they basically hate matter, they don’t like the fact of change, of decay; they cannot accept reality.

Now, when you cannot accept something you have two courses of action, first is to say it doesn’t matter by neglecting it, and the other by abusing it; the one is the ascetic way, and the other is the way of total immoralism, and you find both very commonly practiced in radical circles.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, it has been in the papers lately, it is going to be quite a legal battle, so that by the time they are through fighting for it and win there won’t be anything. Yes?

[Audience Member] Um, in answer to the first question you said that we would all go to heaven and remain there, and yet in the Bible there are many people who interpret the …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I was speaking of course of all believers.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, right, unbelievers of course go to hell. But once saved, always saved, so when we go to heaven we aren’t going to lose heaven, ever.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, we do. Because if we are truly believers in Jesus Christ it is His work in us and not our work, and therefore if we know that we love Him, it is the evidence of His grace in our hearts, and this is our confidence. Because increasingly the more we grow in grace the more it becomes evident to us that this is our way of life, and anything that is not conformable to it, we are in rebellion against, even though it may still have dominion over us. So we are progressively moving in terms of one thing, we want to conform ourselves to Christ. And this is a sign that it is His life in us, it is His Spirit in us that is operative, and therefore we are His, and once saved always saved, it cannot be lost.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Ah yes, this business… I’m glad you brought that up. That’s a very, very important point, this business of saying the ten commandments are negative and we should update it and make in its place ten positive commandments, ‘thou shalt do this that and the other thing.’

Now consider the implications of it, that is the most totalitarian kind of proposal ever imagined. Because when God gives you a limited number of ‘thou shalt not’s’ He says, “All right, this area is fenced, the rest of life is yours.” But supposing they come around in this brave new world and new world religion, and say: “Here are ten thou shalts, and the rest of the world is thou shalt not to you.” Where are we going to be you see? It sounds so positive, but the positive aspect of the Christian faith is our liberty in Jesus Christ. So the Thou shalt nots are there, but the whole of the rest of life and all its glory is ours, free; and they are going to reverse that. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, most of your sincere ministers today, because they have had no systematic doctrine, systematic theology of any sort in their training, are totally unprepared to meet this type of subversive thinking, and what you need is a radical reconstruction of education from the ground up, and- well, consider for example the average clergyman today. His education all the way through college is very defective, he hasn’t had much Christianity, and if he has it hasn’t been too good, because first of all in the public schools he doesn’t get anything but subversion, in many of the parochial schools what he is getting is not good doctrine. Then he goes to seminary finally, and there is scarcely an adequate seminary in the country; and in three years’ time he is supposed to learn enough to counteract a lifetime of false teaching, and what he gets never challenges what he has gotten heretofore. So he goes out, a good man often with the best of intentions, and he has no awareness of what he is preaching.

[Audience Member]Umm, they are not geared to apologetics at all, is that right?

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes. Right. Apologetics is the defense and proclamation of the faith as against other systems, in apologetics what you do is to point out why our position holds water and the others do not, so you are both expounding your position and pointing out how the other position has no ground. It seems to be related to the word apology, and it basically is when you trace it back to its origins; but it is totally different. Apologetics is not apologizing for our faith, but pointing out how no other faith holds water or can stand, so what you have been getting is apologetics and some systematic theology as well. It has to be that.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Exactly, exactly. Today the preaching you get from the pulpit is by and large entertainment or little inspirational pep-talks. The pep-talk and psychological self help are 99% of the preaching, whether it is conservative or liberal, and all of this has nothing to do with what the Bible teaches, and so people are unprepared. Now I have seen the kind of study material that communists are given before they are taken into the party here in the United States, I have seen copies of Lenin’s works as they were handed, and Lenin was a very voluminous writer. Now it wasn’t his entire works, but certain of the works of Marx and certain of the works of Lenin that were given to the longshoreman, whose ability to read was not to great; but he had to sit down and puzzle out Marx and Lenin, and Marx is as a difficult a writer as you can find because he is so stupid, and yet uses such involved language as though he were talking about something profound when he really has nothing to say, so he makes very painful reading.

Now this longshoreman had to sit down and master those books, and take an examination before a group of men before he could join the party. What happened when he mastered that? He could come up against college students and because he had been drilled and re-drilled in certain areas, he could floor them because he had a systematic body of ideas, and if you just began with the materialistic premise that he was given, everything else would follow, and all you had to do was run across any of these students who had materialistic premises of environmental premises, and he could start pushing them and pushing them and pushing them, and he had them in a corner. Simply because he had a systematic body of doctrine and he knew that it was a system, and that anyone who started with any of those premises he could make them go to his conclusion.

Now, we don’t even require that of the clergy, is it any wonder that we are in a bad way? We don’t require this kind of training of any person who is a citizen, is it any wonder that we are in a bad way? And until we get back a sense of systematics and of apologetics into education, we are going to continue to be putty in the hands of anyone who wants to move us around. Yes?

[Audience Member] I have a feeling that the passage in the Sermon on the Mount where we are cautioned to love our enemies, is being used by a lot of people, it seems because (?) we should not be yoked with unbelievers, now what kind of answer do you give when somebody says you have got to accept the communists because they are your enemy and you have to love them? You have to pray for them? …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, and the answer to that is that scripture also says that for such a one we are not even to pray, and do I not hate them that hate Thee, yea I hate them with a perfect hatred. In other words, if they are going to quote Bible let them quote the whole of it, not out of context. What they are doing is to take something completely out of context, they are not understanding the context first of all, that statement in the Sermon on the Mount, because that statement simply says in the situation where a person is compelled to go with someone a mile he is to go twain, in a situation of compulsion. Then love of enemies and love of neighbor is defined as fulfilling the second table of the law; not to kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet. That is the fulfilling of the law to love our neighbor and our enemy, to respect their right to life, property, home, reputation, in work, thought and deed. So they cannot take the Bible and misuse it that way, and tell them: “You are misusing scripture, you are just picking and choosing things you like.”

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, if you think positively that you are going to succeed you are going to go ahead if your car is out of gas- you’re not thinking very realistically, and this power of positive thinking is really nonsense, and it simply doesn’t work, it leads people into a dead end. For everyone who says it works there are thousands for whom it does not work. I think one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, or a couple of books, are Norman Vincent Peale's books. The absurdities he goes into there, he actually says that if you think positively you will catch more fish… how in the world is your mind going to affect the fish when you are thinking positively? But he affirms that.

Now this is to believe in magic, that your positive thinking is going to govern reality, and this is nonsense, and it does well at times to think negatively, I wish a lot more parents did a little negative thinking where their children are concerned, because we would have a lot better situation with regard to the younger generation. There’s just a little too much positive thinking in our day and age.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are some people in (unity?) who are interested in the private school movement, there are also Christian Scientists who are conservatives; this is very illogical on the part of both of them. If they were faithful to their premises they would not be involved in such things, let us hope they will become more inconsistent.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, Van Til makes the point that apologetics will show to every other system that they have absolutely no ground to stand on, that if the non-Christian and the non-Biblically minded Christian were consistent with their thinking they would have to admit they cannot think, that they cannot have science, they cannot have knowledge of anything. And so Van Til says, push them to their presupposition. And he says of course they will fight this, because they do not want epistemological self consciousness. Yes?

[Audience Member] As far as fishing goes, I always wondered why the Orientals thought more of fish, and I finally figured it out; they (?)

[Rushdoony] Yes!

[Audience Member] Rush, I copied this paragraph from reading the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers, If you would like to comment on it…

[Rushdoony] From whom in particular?

[Audience Member] Well this is the first (?)

[Rushdoony] You don’t remember who the author of the statement is?

[Audience Member] (Petri?)

[Rushdoony] Oh the editor, it’s an editorial comment.

[Audience Member] “Whosoever therefore of God’s most providential ordering of foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified, -I say not, even although not yet born again, but even although not yet born at all, are already children of God, and absolutely cannot perish… From Him, therefore, is given also perseverance in good even to the end; for it is not given save to those who shall not perish, since they who do not persevere shall perish… I speak thus of those who are predestinated to the kingdom of God, whose number is so certain that one can neither be added to them nor taken from them; not of those who, when He had announced and spoken, were multiplied beyond number. For they may be said to be called but not chosen, because they are not called according to the purpose.”

[Rushdoony] Mhmm. Well, that is a good statement of the doctrine, and it is one that you will find over and over again in the apostolic fathers, and very well substantiated from the scripture, so he is really summarizing what a great many of them has said, and the council of Jerusalem according to the book of Acts said: “Known unto God are all His works, from the foundation of the world.” So that God from all eternity, as a wise master builder, not only foreknew but foreordained all things that should come to pass. Now from the human perspective of course we have the freedom of creatures, in fact there is no freedom possible without predestination, and the matter of perseverance; yes, you know who the true believers are in terms of perseverance, because many people come in and crowd in outwardly because they find it attractive and advantageous to be a Christian. I have known a number of such, and the Bible gives us a classic example in Demas.

Now Demas was an associate of Paul through the years as a fellow missionary, and yet Demas because he was not as conspicuous as Paul was, was never persecuted or harmed; and when the real persecution broke out and there was a possibility of him being touched, he just walked out, and Paul sadly said: “Demas hath forsaken me.” So Demas was one of the apostolic company, and yet obviously not regenerate. I have seen men come into the church who never seemed to have any problem: “Oh yes, I believe the whole Bible from cover to cover, and don’t see why any sensible man doesn’t.” Well, everything was going along well with them, God had blessed them on every side, it looked like a good world, no reason why they shouldn’t believe it. But the minute they are put under test, and every man’s faith shall be tested, then the reality of his faith appears, and when he was tested he couldn’t get out of the church fast enough.

So the matter of perseverance is simply this, the test of faith. Is it real, or is it a matter of appearances? So that many people are in the church simply for advantage. Now, this becomes less and less true as the dividing line appears, as there is a sharp issue between those who are standing for the faith and those who are not, but every faith sooner or later is tested, and that test reveals when the man has the faith within as well as outwardly, because the man may grow up and just accept these things, and say: “Why not, it is a thing that makes sense to me, it is all I have known most of my life.” But the reality is, is he going to live in terms of it under stress, is he going to make a stand in terms of it, does he begin to separate himself from his family and his friends in terms of the faith?

Now he can be weak and frail and sinful, but if this becomes increasingly the governing principle, then you can say indeed he is one of the elect, because this is what governs his life. But for these who fall by the wayside it isn’t what governed their life, it was just convenient for them to be there.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is this business of the astronauts getting younger or staying young if they go out into space and coming back safe 50-100 years now and their children are married and dead and gone, and they are younger than say their grandchildren, is the most theoretical kind of imagination, there is no ground for it; it is based on guesswork. With these people, start thinking along certain lines and they fall so much in love with their thinking that they confuse it with reality. First of all we have no way of knowing that a person can last in a satellite more than a very limited amount of time, because there are certain problems of maintaining life in such a place, not only with regard to air and food, but waste also, so that they aren’t anywhere near solving those problems, and in the foreseeable future they are nowhere near it, so their thinking here is purely imaginary.

To give you an idea of the kind of imagination they indulge in now, and with this I’ll close, there is something in the paper, the Oakland tribune, business and finance page for Monday, March 20 1967 coming up: Farming by Satellite. Detroit, whirling overhead in the year 2,000 will be space satellites applying basic information for agriculture, predicts Secretary of Agriculture, Orville L. Freeman. “While the farmers of tomorrow study reports in their air conditioned offices, relieved at last of the physical drudgery and occupational anxiety so traditionally theirs, and the secretary of agriculture takes unaccustomed ease at his desk in Washington, these shining space satellites equipped with the most sophisticated remote sensing instruments are supplying the information needed to make key decisions.” The secretary said today in a talk prepared for a convention of the national association of science teachers. That is a good place to hear all kinds of rubbish.

“The sensors of the satellites would be able, he predicted, to detect differences in soil.” Now a farmer does that now by walking over the ground, but satellites do it from overhead. “Identify different crops and kinds of forest trees.” Now, are they having trouble identifying their crops? Does a farmer need a space satellite to tell him he has got grapes in his vineyard and peaches on his peach tree? “Determine damage by diseases, insects and drought.” Now isn’t that something. From a space satellite, hundreds of miles overhead, they are going to tell a farmer what kind of disease he has in his field when any good farmer can get up in the morning and look out, and he knows if the place has had an infestation during the night, he can tell. “And asses crop (?) a farmer knows when the buds begin to set what his prospects are. And as it goes through the weather, and bigger in order to predict production. Information gathered from throughout the world will be transmitted to computers.” Of course they have got to have the computers in on this, “For analysis and immediate use. The soils of the world will have been inventoried, and each crop will be grown either on the soil best suited for it, or on soil chemically modified for maximum productivity.” He said. Well, right now they are subsidizing wheat on the wrong kind of soil throughout the country when they ought to put it out of production.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well, the scripture tells us that we are not to receive anyone who brings not the true doctrine, neither to receive him into our house or to bid him Godspeed, and we are also told that for such a one we are not even to pray, so that this business of seeing prayer as the answer for everything is pure humanism, we are not commanded at all times to pray for all people without any restriction, this is to make a mockery of prayer; and in one instance in the Old Testament when Moses came before the Lord, God told him to go back and speak to the people. In other words it was not a time for prayer, he knew what he was supposed to do, the people were in sin; and what point was there in praying to God when he had a responsibility to rebuke the people?

Now if we are going to take the way out of prayer when we know what is wrong with the church, we have a business first to make a stand against what is going on and then to walk out. How is God going to listen to a prayer when we are not doing that which we can do? In other words, when we come to God in prayer, we cannot ask Him to take away a problem that we are doing nothing about. This is not Godly prayer. So this minister was obviously evading the issue of his own responsibility, he was guilty first of receiving men in his own church who taught the wrong doctrine, and John in his second epistle makes it clear that he was not to receive any such or to have fellowship with them, but he was fellowshipping with them, living with them in peace. Thus he had no right to talk.

Second, he himself was guilty of everything these men were doing, because if we make no protest we are guilty of condemnation. This of course, we are an accessory to the fact to use modern terminology, and the Old Testament makes it clear that this is a sin, we are a participant to a crime if we are silent in the face of it, and this man was a participant to a crime against God by his silence, he has done nothing in the church which shamed the situation.

So he had no right to talk, and she had every right to call him a hypocrite. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, those who are our enemies, this is a different thing, this is personal, but the enemies of God are on a different basis. Do I not hate them that hate Thee, Thee. We cannot make our personal frictions and enmities a matter of great moment in the universe. Now we often have fallings out with people who are fellow Christians, and it is our personalities, our frailties, and we don’t get along; in such cases we are governed by the law of God which tells us to love our enemies, even though they use us despitefully. But where it’s the enemy of God it is a different relationship, they are not our enemies, they are God’s enemies, and if we give aid and comfort to God’s enemies we are one with them. It’s a case of treason, and that is the definition of treason, aid and comfort to the enemy. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is true. Stay away from any such, that is the best answer. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is right, He knew as a child what his destiny was, and said: “whist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business?” that was simply the theory of kenosis that you ran into, that supposedly Christ was emptied of all His divinity and knowledge and so on. And when He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane, of course, the point of His prayer was not that the cross be taken from Him, because everything He had said to that point indicated this was to be His victory, His moment of triumph; but if you read over the incidence there very carefully, you find and I think the greatest thing incidentally on the whole of the passion week is a three volume study by Doctor K. Schilder, it is published I believe by either Baker or (Urgman?).

But at any rate, you remember he took the three with Him, and asked them to watch with Him this one hour. He knew that He was to be made sin for us, and it was the utter loneliness, the desolation, that was difficult for Him, and in a sense He was hoping against hope that there might be some understanding among the disciples: “Could you not watch with me this one hour?” So that the cup was this cup of utter isolation and loneliness, and yet He accepted it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?... when He cried out on the cross, ‘my God why hast Thou forsaken me’.

[Rushdoony] Yes, this was His destiny, as the sin bearer, to be isolated from God and in the process also from man, and this was a cry prophetically uttered by David, Psalm 22, centuries before the event. And the cry was forever nailed to the cross, and man no longer can make the statement that David did: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” because in Christ, the evidence indicates that we are not only not forsaken, but we are redeemed, and all that man does now in the face of this, forsake God Himself.

There are a couple of little items that I would like to call to your attention, one is an interesting item from an indictment in Washington D.C. in 1859 in a murder case, it was the infamous General Sickles who was involved he was guilty of shooting and killing someone, at any rate I think the form of the indictment tells us a great deal about the Christian character of the country at that time, I will read a portion of it.

“District of Columbia, county of Washington, to wit: the jurors of the United States for the county aforesaid upon their oath present, that Daniel E. Sickles late of the county of Washington aforesaid, Gentlemen, not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the devil, on the 27th day of February in the year of our Lord 1859, with force and arms at the county aforesaid, in upon the body one Philip Barton P, and the peace of God (?) the said of United States, then and there being, feloniously and willfully, and of his malicious aforethought, did make an assault.” A little different from our legal terminology today, isn’t it?

This little item, I think on public schools a serious social problem, a statement by Ken Hutchinson I think is interesting: “The number one social problem in America is the crisis in our public schools. More and more parents are turning to church and private schools for their children, could it be that the public schools have served their purpose, and are now on the way out? It certainly looks that way. In Chicago, Americas second largest city, 40% of the children are already in private schools, and the number is growing. In Washington D.C. over 90% of the public school students are colored, the white students who live there attend school elsewhere or in private schools. President Johnson’s youngest daughter graduated from a private school. Church and private schools are greatly increasing in the New York City area. Senator Robert Kennedy has his children in the private schools, so does Mayor John Lindsey. In the South, private schools are opening so fast we cannot keep up with them, for example the enrolment in 28 private schools in south Carolina has nearly tripled this summer alone. Not only are students leaving the public schools, but teachers are too; New York has the highest paid rate for public school teachers of any city in America, but the dangers there are so great that 1/3rd of the teachers are full time substitutes, this is so they can quit at a moment’s notice if the dangers become too great. Last year it was reported that serious attacks on teachers in that city averaged 1 a… [tape ends]