Systematic Theology -- Church

Faith and the Church

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Faith and the Church

Genre: Speech

Track: 02

Dictation Name: 02 Faith and the Church

Year: 1960’s – 1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are all things in heaven and on earth. We come to thee rejoicing that the government is upon thy shoulders. We thank thee, our Father, that we can face all our todays and our tomorrows in the certainty that it is not Washington that shall govern us, but thy hand, thy wisdom, thy counsel. Give us grace, our Father, to walk in this confidence with a holy boldness, that we may work, confident of victory in and through thee. Bless us this morning as we give ourselves to the study of thy word, and grant that we behold wondrous things out of thy law. In Jesus name. Amen.

We began, in our last meeting, a study on the doctrine of the church. We continue this morning with Faith and the Church, and our scripture is Genesis 15:1-7. “After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.”

Sometimes the best way to understand a matter is to approach it indirectly in order to throw a better light upon it. Instead of looking directly at the nature of the church, for a minute or two, let us look at the nature of the family. The classic work on the family, written and published in 1946, is C. C. Zimmerman’s Family and Civilization. In this very remarkable work, Zimmerman studies the families of ancient history to the present. He classifies the kinds of family that can exist into three categories.

First, the trustee family. In the trustee family, the family is the basic power in society. The family is the source of law. The family is the economic power. It is the mainspring of civilization.

Then second, you have the domestic family in which the family is still powerful, but the state has begun to take over government in the world at large.

And third, at the point of breakdown, said Dr. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, you have the atomistic family, in which the house is not much more than a bedroom and a dining room. The family goes its own way. The family has very little authority over its members, or in society at large, and civilization is at the point of breakdown.

Now, Zimmerman’s analysis is superb. It’s a landmark study, and yet, such studies, however important they are, and I cannot underestimate the importance of Zimmerman’s work, still have their limitations. Even as the historic marks of a true church, which define the church in terms of certain categories, are important, and I do not want to detract from their importance. Still, their importance is limited. Why? Let us look again at the trustee family.

Very definitely, what we have in the Bible is the trustee family. It is the basic institution of society. It is the law center, the life center, and the basic governing force. However, the biblical family classifies as a trustee family, but so does also the old Germanic family, and also the families of old China, with their ancestor worship. So, we have, under the classification of the trustee family, which is the basic government power in a civilization, very diverse kinds of trustee family, so that we cannot classify the biblical family and the Chinese family as identical. The differences are very great. They are alike trustee families, but they are also very diverse. Why? Because each is informed by a radically different faith, a radically different faith, so that Zimmerman’s classification, while very important, is inclusive of forms without reference to religious and moral content.

Now, the same is true of the church. Too often the church is defined in terms of its polity, in terms of the three types of polity, or government; congregational, Presbyterian, and Episcopal. These are valid classifications. Again, sometimes the church is defined in terms of its confession. So that conformity to a particular confession is the mark of the church. Again, these are important considerations. They cannot be underrated, but neither can they be made central to the church. We have to emphasize primarily the fact of faith.

As a result, it is important for us to look, however briefly, at the meaning of faith and its importance. A very important study here of some years ago was by G. B. Strickler, The Philosophy of Faith. I’d like to quote from Strickler. Strickler says, “Still another reason why so much importance is given to faith in religion is found in the fact that it is the parental, the fontal grace, the source of all other graces, the grace we must have before we can have any other.”

Now, this is of critical importance. Obedience to God and to the law of God, and much more, are all important, but faith is the fontal grace. Faith is the instrument and condition of salvation.

Let me quote Strickler even further. “Faith gives reality to the commandments of God and secures obedience to them. Therefore, by faith, the elders, the saints of former days, obtained a good report from God and men. Faith gives reality to the declarations of God concerning the plan of salvation and secures compliance with its terms. Therefore, by faith, Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts and by it, he being dead, yet speaketh. Faith gives reality to the warnings of God, and prompts of the use of the needful means divinely provided to escape the dangers to which they point. Therefore, by faith, Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Faith gives reality to the promises of God, and induces the soul to rely on them, and to fulfill the conditions on which they are to be fulfilled. Therefore, by faith, Abraham when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for inheritance, obeyed, and he went out not knowing whither he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise and in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise, for he looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. Faith gives reality to the blessings and glories of God’s eternal kingdom, and inspires the soul with courage and strength to do and suffer anything that it may, at last be found amongst those of whom the world is not worthy. Therefore, by faith, many suffered trials of cruel mockings and scourgings. Yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheep skins and goat skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. They wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and in caves of the earth. Such is the power of faith. Such servants of the Lord can it make. Such battles can it fight. Such victories can it win. Such deeds of righteousness can it perform.”

But faith is not something in and of itself, nor is it of man. It is faith in Jesus Christ. It is also God’s gift. As Paul says in Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace as ye saves through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.” The church thus, must stress the centrality of faith, and for the church to stress the centrality of faith means that it is not the institution, nor its forms, which make it a church, but something more than itself, something which is from God, the grace of faith.

Now, without, for a moment, saying that the various distinctions of the churches are unimportant, nor surrendering their significance, we must say whether a church is Baptist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal, the stronger it is in terms of faith, the less it stresses its own distinctives and the more it stresses the distinctives of Christ and the word. The stronger a Baptist, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian is in faith, the greater his fellowship with others who are strong in the faith, because the heart of the true church is faith. The Bible stresses the centrality of faith in the calling of Abraham. For example, in Isaiah 51:1-2, we read, “Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.” In other words, Isaiah says the church is identified not as Presbyterian, or Baptist, or Episcopal, but as of Abraham.

Isaiah makes the same point again in Isaiah 41:8-10. “But thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend. Thou whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called thee from the chief men thereof, and said unto thee, Thou art my servant; I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God.” What does it mean when God identifies the church in terms of Abraham? He is identifying it in terms of faith, and in terms of the person, not the form of the institution. The church begins with Jesus Christ and then, with Peter, with John, with James, with you and with me, and so the church must be defined in terms of Jesus Christ, and then the faith of the individual who comes to unite himself with Christ and with others who have faith.

Again, Paul tells us by way of conclusion, “So then they which be of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham.” Clearly, we have to define the church in terms of Christ and of faith.

Now, having said this, let us look again at verse 6 of chapter 15, in Genesis. “And he (Abraham) believed in the Lord; and he (the Lord) counted it to him for righteousness.” First of all, Abraham is called of God. In Genesis 12:1-2, we have the calling of Abraham. The initiative is entirely of the Lord, who created Abraham, gave him faith, and established a covenant with him.

Then second, the word translated as “believed” is related to our English word “Amen.” In fact, the Hebrew original is very close to our English “Amen.” It means trust. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” Paul says in Romans 10:17. God, in this passage, tells Abraham, “Fear not, Abraham. I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Abraham rests in this fact. He lives in terms of it. He says, “Amen to God,” against all appearances. He believes in God when God tells him, “You, Abraham, however old, however childless to this point, shall have a son, and your seed shall be as the stars; innumerable.”

Then third, we are told God counted it to him as righteousness. God counted it to him as righteousness. His faith, his saying “amen” to God. When the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, comes to the word that is here rendered “amen,” or faith believed, it translates it sometimes with “histos,” faithful, and other times as true, or truth, “alathenos,” as in the name Aletha, but this word “counted,” here, counted to him, his faith, his saying “amen” to God, is the word “imputed.” It has reference to a legal fact. As Gertlestone{?} noted some generations ago, “It would follow that the passage does not teach us that Abraham’s faith was regarded, or estimated, by God as if it were righteousness, the one quality being taken for the other, but owing to the fact that he had faith in the promises, God accepted him, acquitted him from the charge of sin, pronounced him righteous, and conferred on him an inheritance.” In other words, he was declared legally to be righteous before God.

Moreover, as Von Rod{?} declared, this imputation is covenantal. It presupposes an existing communal relationship. God is righteous as long as he abides by this covenant, and God, who cannot change, abides by it. Man is righteous as long as he affirms the regulations of this covenantal relationship established by God. His law, his covenant requirements. Ezekiel 18:5 following speak of this kind of covenantal faithfulness. Man is called into covenant with God by God’s grace, given faith by God’s grace, and sent forth by God to act in obedience to that faith, that grace, and that covenant law.

Then fourth, this imputation, this counting his faith for righteousness, is as Luphold{?} declared, a forensic act, “a purely forensic act,” he said. This has reference to law. Our covenant relationship with God is a legal relationship. Abraham’s faith is within the context of his law. At this point, the modern church is all fouled up. Why? Because it looks at law in terms of the modern mind. What is humanistic law? Humanistic law is the law of an abstract entity, the state. The state is not a person. It is a bureaucracy and various agencies. The law the state issues is an impersonal law. So what do we do when we think of law? We think of law humanistically as something impersonal, but in terms of the word of God, in terms of scripture, law is the personal word of God. Law is therefore, a personal relationship to God, and where we have godly law, we have personal relationships, and when we are outside of the law of God, we are not in a personal relationship, but an impersonal, exploitive relationship. Let me illustrate.

A godly marriage is a legal fact. It involves, especially in terms of scripture, not only the legal act of union, but a dowry, an establishment of a legal relationship that is binding upon both, and godly marriage is the most person kind of relationship you can enter into. Why? Because it is bound by the personal law of a personal law, which heightens the personal relationship, but if you have a relationship outside of God’s law with a man or a woman, then it’s impersonal. It’s exploitive, and such a relationship, the live-in relationships of today, has one purpose. To use one another, to get what you can that’s best for yourself without a tie, and a tie means a law, something binding you. Well, God says, “I am the Lord, the personal God. My law is a personal fact, and my law brings you into a personal relationship with me because my law is my grace to you. I’ve shown you the way of life, the way of a covenant, and a loving relationship with me, and similarly, my law establishes a covenant relationship between husband and wife, parents and children, neighbor and neighbor, believer and believer, and believer and unbeliever.” So that we dare not see law as impersonal when we are dealing with the Lord.

Then finally, we are very clearly told what the nature of Abraham’s faith is. He believed in God, and as commentators over the generations have pointed out, this meant believing in God’s person, his covenantal faithfulness, and also believing in God’s promises. What was the whole point of this passage? God said, “Abraham, don’t be so discouraged. You’re depressed. You have been called to establish something out of which great things are going to happen in the history of the world, and you say you’re childless, but I say to you that in due time, you shall have a son, and your seed shall be as the stars that are visible in the sky, innumerable.” And Abraham believed God, believed that God is truth, that God is Lord, and that God keeps his promises. So what does faith involved? It means believing in God, himself, and his person, saying he is the “amen,” the true one, the truth, the real one, and also believing that when he says something, he keeps his word. So that to have faith is to believe in all the promises of God, to believe that when he says, “The gates of hell shall not prevail,” shall not hold out against his kingdom, that God’s word is true, that the meek shall inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace, that in due time, “every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” “that this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” Faith is believing in God, and believing in his promises.

Now, it is this kind of faith which must mark the church. Too often, the institution seeks conformity to itself rather than to the faith. It’s sad that the history of the church is sometimes marked by such horrors in the name of preserving the faith. Do you know that in France in the 17th and early 18th century, there was actually a Society of the Holy Sacrament, whose purpose was to produce conformity to the faith, and you could be a bounty hunter for the society by going out and seeking those who secretly were hostile to the faith and denouncing them, and you would get a percentage of the fines, or those who were, in their own circles, making fun of the church and of the priests, and you could get a bounty of the fine that was assessed against them. Too often, in the history of the church, this kind of mockery and perversion has prevailed. Now, the alternative to a Society of the Holy Sacrament is not indifference to false doctrine, but the cultivation of growth and of sound teaching.

Thus, the traditional marks of a true church are good, but they are limited. A formally correct church is not necessary a faithful church. Abraham believed in God and acted on his faith. So, too, does a true church. Let us pray.

Our lord and our God, thou hast called us to be thy people and has given us the gift of faith. Grant, O Lord, that we increase in faith, that we act on the promises of thy covenant, that we go forth knowing, our Father, that we have been called to dominion, to conquest, and to victory, that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Bless us to this purpose, we beseech thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] {?} on your {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, you can go onto another subject. Go ahead.

[Audience] Alright. On your, I just heard your tape on Margaret Sanger, and I have two items. One is, I get from listening to that, not hearing you, but listening to the tape, that you are against birth control. Now, I can see it could be both either way, and knowing you, I am, of course, {?} to me.

[Rushdoony] No, Margaret Sanger’s work was not primarily birth control, and I don’t feel that we have a right to take a stand one way or another, since scripture is silent there, as far as I can see, but her primary work was eugenics. She wanted, Nazi fashion, to produce a superior race and eliminate the inferior ones. She was very pro Hitler, and her biographers generally suppressed that aspect of her work. Now, she began before Hitler’s time, but when Hitler’s Germany came, she was very pleased with what they did. We had, in this country, the beginning of the century and up until Hitler, really, a very strong eugenics movement, the purpose of which was to work to eliminate, either by sterilization or by various other means, the inferior peoples of this country, and of the world. Margaret Sanger was very much dedicated to that purpose. She was, you might say, a total snob. She despised anybody who was below her level, really, and she felt there should be, therefore, some means of limiting their population. At that time, a number of laws calling for sterilization were passed across the country, forcible sterilization. Then she felt with those that she could not, through the courts, forcibly sterilize, she would propagate birth control as a measure toward eliminating them step by step. Her entire philosophy was a very ugly one, and she was to boot{?} a very ugly person. She’s very much idolized today by the liberals and the left, but even in the favorable autobiographies, a little bit of this other comes through. They simply touch on it and dismiss it.

[Audience] It’s odd that the liberals who make a lot of noise about civil rights, rights of minorities of all kinds, {?}

[Rushdoony] True, but what we must recognize is that the so-called liberals believe in civil rights for their side. It was sad to see someone like John Roche put out a long syndicated column just the past week against any voice by any Christian in politics, in the name of the separation of church and state. Now Roche has been one of the better civil liberties men in the past generation, the forties and fifties in particular, and yet his whole argument there really says that Christians have no civil liberties, the churches have no right to make a stand for anything in the moral and religious sphere. Of course, that attitude is commonplace today, and there’s scarcely a week in which the papers do not have a sustained attack on the freedom of Christians to speak out as Christians. Only the humanists have civil liberties, in other words. Yes?

[Audience] Isn’t that basically the implications that Barry Goldwater had this past week as well?

[Rushdoony] Yes, Barry Goldwater, Sr. virtually said the same thing, in contradiction to much he has stood for, in the past.

[Audience] One other question is, what do you think are the implications of the solidarity movement, yesterday afternoon?

[Rushdoony] I have not yet heard what happened yesterday afternoon.

[Audience] The {?} had several rallies across the country yesterday, a major one in Washington, which labor union officials and members, and groups of other civil rights organizations, welfare people and such met all across the country, slandering and such, Ronald Reagan and his program thus far, the one he’s purported this last week that he also was going to go through with his destruction with the Department of Education, and Department of Energy.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, during the sixties, we had one of the most explosive events in American history, or series of events, a movement, when youth took to the streets, and created massive disorder. The movement fall apart when Kent State took place. They were not ready to die for their beliefs. Since then, with ever-decreasing effectiveness, these people are repeating the stereotype of the sixties, taking to the streets. What they are finding however, is that the public, by and large, whatever its opinion, is less and less favorable to that kind of tactic.

As a result, it has less and less force. I think taking to the street now, massive demonstrations, are doing more to hinder a cause than to promote it. So, whatever happened yesterday, I don’t think will help the cause of these peoples. It will hamper it.

[Audience] I had a fairly good idea that that’s exactly what would come out of it, especially since so many of the attacks were so vicious, and just unbelievable. They went way overboard as far as I was concerned. I think they did themselves more harm than they really did good.

[Rushdoony] Well, there have been threats of more violence. The ERA people have actually said that they’re through being law-abiding, now that time is running out. Well, that’s a serious mistake on their part. They are going to turn off people thoroughly if they act on that threat.

[Audience] The whole major theme yesterday was the fact that they were losing their government programs, and their supports and this type of thing, and now they were going to have to go out on their own.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, that’s totalitarianism. What they are saying is we do not believe in elections. We are going to compel you to do what we want, no matter what the electorate says. It’s the kind of nonsense we have today on the part of the state legislature. It’s happening all over the country. Because they are afraid the political tide is turning against them, the liberals have gerrymandered the districts for various assemblymen, senators, and congressmen, to an appalling degree. Bill Richardson, whom some of us know personally, his district will come to the other side of the mountains here. It will be 250 miles long. Now, this is the kind of nonsense they are perpetrating. There may be an initiative on the ballot, because people are getting fed up with this gerrymandering, which is, for a century and a half, been with us. Richardson’s district will begin somewhere in the L.A. area, and go up this side of Mono Lake, I believe.

[Audience] What really amazes me out of the whole thing is, you have a movement like yesterday afternoon and was there talking about forcing this on you and forcing that on you, and talking about the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and yet, they attack someone like Falwell, or someone like yourself who wants to rid us of all those things, and they say we’re forcing these things onto them. It’s just, I don’t see why someone with an inkling of intelligence can’t see through those things.

[Rushdoony] Too often, the point of politics is not intelligence, but how much pressure you can muster. Any other comments or questions? If not, let us bow our heads in prayer.

Lord, we thank thee that thou art our Lord, and that we have fellowship one with another in thee. Bless and prosper us in thy service, make us joyful in thee and in one another, and grant us thy peace. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape