Science the New Source of Truth
Lecture #1 Q&A
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject:
Genre: Speech
Track: 02
Dictation Name: RR325A2
Location/Venue: ________
Year: _______
[Rushdoony] Are there any questions now? Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes, the wholeness of the sciences is impossible from their presuppositions. First of all, one of the things that marked science before and after Darwin is that before Darwin it was chemistry and mathematics, things of that sort, that had the central emphasis. Since then its been biology and geology and in those fields the theory rather than the facts. As a result if you try to get at the wholeness of any of these sciences all you’re going to get is the evolutionary theory, you’ll get nothing of what constitutes the sciences, or the organization of knowledge in those areas.
For example, in anthropology today physical anthropology is very rarely taught. Mostly what you get is cultural anthropology which is pure theory. Physical anthropology is something very different. There are very very few physical anthropologists and those that we do have aren’t even Christian! The physical anthropologists that we do have are by and large not only rigid atheists, but also tend to be very often racist. They have no truth from God, therefore the only truth is in the physical facts which they’ve had in terms of their presuppositions.
Now there is no way you can go to contemporary science and get a wholeness or unity because it doesn’t exist. What you’re looking for is only possible from God. Does that answer you? Are there any other questions? Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
That’s a good question. I’d like to deal with that on another occasion and take some time with it because that’s an important area and it deserves a long answer. So if you could give me that quote with your question, I’d like to spend a good deal of time at our next Q and A time in answering that. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
I hope so. First I’d say that there is an excellent beginning written by a graduate student and a scientist. And I hope there will be more. I talked with those students and they do plan to do some more work. Any other questions?
I hope before too long to be able to have a number of copies of this book, Professional, the biography of J.D. Saunders by Otto Scott available. It’s a fifteen dollar book, I hope I can have it available for you at six or seven dollars or maybe even cheaper, we shall see. It is an exceptionally good book on the oil industry but even more on American history in this century. You want an American history, political, economic, social, and scientific, the {?} {?} in this century there is nothing better. Anything by Otto Scott, by the way, I strongly recommend. His book on James I and his book on Robespierre and the Voice of Virtue are without equal. He is at present working on a third in a series of four, the third will be on John Brown and the fourth on Wicker Wilson.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
He’s a very brilliant writer. His background is not only writing but extensive work in the oil industry. He has very practical knowledge and his book is a joy to read. I delight in his view of American History and what has happened to us, there isn’t a better history. He’s a thorough Christian too. Yes?
[audience member speaks mostly unintelligibly]
Yes. Piecemeal religion is a very popular thing in our time and it’s a relatively new thing in our civilization. It’s an artificial thing and therefore it is impotent. It’s like interkingdom fusion. But I always encounter people who feel they can take something from Hinduism and something from Buddhism and something from a new modern cult and fuse them with Christianity and oh, it is so beautiful. Well of course, they have nothing but themselves and their foolish finds. You cannot fuse religions.
Piecemeal religion is guilty of this. What piecemeal religion does is to create an inter-kingdom fusion, which is an artificial one, and therefore impotent, sterile, non-productive. Most of the religion in the churches today is piecemeal religion. Piecemeal religion also holds that you can be a Christian in church and not in politics or in your vocation. Piecemeal religion limits the scope of religion and it does not see the width of it nor the totality of life nor the fact that it must govern our life. You see, in piecemeal religion man is sovereign rather than God so that man can pick and choose. Now, I enjoy smorgasbord eating - it’s a delight to me. But smorgasbord religion? That’s a different thing. When I go to a table I’m lord of the table, so to speak, but when I come to religion...God is the Lord and any smorgasbord religion is blasphemy. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes. The great awakening was postmillennialist to the core. All the leading figures in it were postmil. Jonathan Edwards, Bellamy, Hopkins, Isaac {?},... all of them. Really, the war of Independence as Allen Hymers -The American Mind which is the best single book you can get on the mentality of the men who framed this country- says that, very clearly, without the great awakening and the postmil perspective of these men there never would have been a war of independence. The great awakening sent men out in evangelism up and down the country, it led the establishment of schools and colleges, it led to an emphasis on political action, it led to a sense of responsibility in every area. It had far reaching implications.
Allen Hymer’s book is a very good introduction to the subject. He’s not a Christian, you began by feeling skeptical of any religious influence on the period of, say, 1760-1860, well when he finished his research he felt that he could not understand that span in American history apart from the great awakening. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Well... First my book, Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelations will touch on some of those, and second, I’d like to finish this series on the philosophy of Christian education and then possibly we’ll get into systematics. We’ll see, whatever most appeals to you. We might get into systematic theology if that appeals to you, or some related subject.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes. True, but if they want to know they will, and if they don’t want to know, telling them won’t help. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Has evangelized America? Yes. I would say that from the days of Moody to the present it has been the pre-mil pre-trib position that has been basic to evangelism. Moody’s Sundays, Billy Graham, in that tradition the basic evangelism has been done by them. So that it has been a tremendous effort which has carried the faith to every part of America to a great extent. On the other hand, one of the weaknesses of that has been that it has led to a weakening, a watering down of the faith, because every one of them felt strongly the any moment return thing. Therefore to make it as simple and elementary as possible to cut the time short - while in one respect it has been a tremendous achievement, in another there has been a penalty in that we’ve seen. This isn’t the only factor that has contributed for it, but it has been an important one. A weakening of Christians. As a result, if you go back and read some of the popular preaching in, say, 1775 evangelical preaching, and then listen to or read a popular evangelical sermon you wonder what happened in between? And you can see the difference in the pew! The amount of grasp of doctrine has greatly depreciated simply because while the sense of urgency has led to a tremendously extended outreach it has also led to oversimplification. Indeed, contempt! With an over simplification. ‘Get them in quickly with as little as possible.’
This is one of the things that the Christian school movement is correcting and some of the best critics of this trend have been some of the premil Christian school men. They’ve seen that they have to counteract this cheapening of doctrinal content. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Mhm. Yes, well of course there is an improvement there. It isn’t as bad as in the early days of the Salvation Army when they had hymns like There Are No Flies On Jesus and There are No Flies On Me! So music has been one of the sad areas in all the churches, virtually... Lutherans and Episcopalians still maintain a fairly good hymnology, although their weakness is there. Most of the churches have had hymns with very little content, the stress being emotional, and now of course you have a lot of so called Christian rock. Which is pretty horrible.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Rock pictures of Jesus {?}. Well now, that’s a very edifying thing isn’t it.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Well I saw a couple of them recently that I wouldn’t even quote because of the language that’s used. They were trying to be very hip. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
The early Puritans were, the later Puritans were not.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Right. Well there’s enough there for a couple of books, in your question! But...I don’t see the terms Kingdom of Grace and Kingdom of Glory as altogether valid. You see, we are separating what is not necessarily separate in scripture. God speaks of his Kingdom. Period. Now the kingdom on earth is the kingdom that is at war; it is however a victorious army, and while in battle we often have our casualties we are told that when we are faithful to the Lord - and Jericho and (A I ?) give us clear cut illustrations of that - God tells Joshua, ‘This is the way, if you obey me this is what happens. If you disobey, see what happens. Don’t turn on me and blame me! You did it, you were faithless.’
So the kingdom is God’s work in the world through his people as well as his rule in heaven. Now the kingdom is not only of grace, it is of law. Grace and law are different sides of the same coin. So at all times if we have grace we manifest the law of God, we do not kill, steal, commit adultery, bear false witness, and so on. So you cannot separate the three. Moreover, Saint Paul even when he is suffering the most speaks of glorying in Christ and knowing the Glory of Christ, even in his suffering so that we are even in battle a triumphant, although suffering, and a glory filled people.
Now, one of the ideas that has crept into the modern age which began to come in in the last century sometime after the 1860’s and ‘70’s was the idea of kenosis. The classic example of kenotic Christology and kenotic Christian life was old Russia. The idea was that you became more and more grace filled the more and more you were a man in a state of humiliation, suffering, bending before suffering and thereby demonstrating that you were truly a Christian.
So that there are books written in Russia in the old days about this matter of humiliation. There’s a survey book in English about the humiliated Christ in Russian thought. Goes into it very fully and carefully. This idea of kenosis came into England among Anglo Catholics and from there spread into many Evangelical and Reformed circles throughout the English speaking world as well as in Europe. The idea of kenosis after World War I had not been debated much among theologians. However in popular devotional literature the implications of kenosis have crept into modern ideas of spirituality. The sad fact is that in Russia today the people are taxis for the communists because of this century old background of kinetic spirituality. Similarly among all eschatology’s -I don’t except the postmils who are outside the belief in Biblical law from this at all- postmil, aumil, premil, they’ve had this kinetic spirituality saturating their thinking so that being a good Christian is being equated not with one who goes out in obedience to the law of God and exercises dominion and establishes a Christian school for example or extends the work of Christ’s kingdom in some area...but no. He’s one who takes a beating and smiles. Who is clobbered continually and says, I bear it in the Lord.
So what this philosophy has meant as it crept from Russia in the last century and saturated the Western world is that if you’re a continual schnook and sucker you’re really spiritual. Well I don’t buy that and I don’t think it’s Biblical! ...Any other questions?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Very good, I hope you all heard that. You see the Biblical faith is that it was in the Old Testament and it’s stressed in the New: we are priests, prophets, and kings in Christ. As kings we rule over everything and apply God’s word to every area of life. As priests we dedicate everything to the Lord’s service, every area of life and thought we bring to him and give to him as masters and kings thereof now as priests who dedicate it to him. As prophet’s we apply the word of God to every area of life. When do you hear preaching like that today? You see, we’re not formed or reformational today. Neither the Lutherans nor the Reformed people nor anybody else. They’re anti reformation! They want to tune out what’s being said, they’re monastic. They’ve created a monastery out of the church. Yes?
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Oh yes! Right! I’m glad you brought that up. Whether it’s the church or the Christian school: ‘Underpay them, it will keep them more spiritual. They’ll suffer and that’s good for them’. Well, if it’s good for the members, why not for the people in the pew? They ought to have their salaries be cut in half. Then they’ll all be so very spiritual that they’ll just float right up to heaven.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
No, really. I hold, and I have said again and again that boards of Christian schools and church boards will say, ‘The minister or the Christian school teachers should not be paid much. We need people who are spiritually minded, and they won’t be spiritually minded if we give them a halfway decent salary.’ Now that’s wicked.
[audience member speaks unintelligibly]
Yes. Right. Well I’ve encountered something too, some shenanigan, from a seminary about students and their money. They feel the student shouldn’t have more than so much money and they’ve taken steps in that direction. That’s not Biblical religion. [audio ends]