Systematic Theology – Covenant

Systematic Theology – The Land

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 1-19

Genre: Speech

Track: 01 of 19

Dictation Name: 01 Atonement For the Land

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let is begin with prayer. We praise Thee oh God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, and we rejoice our Father that Thou art on the throne. That is Thy will that shall be done and not the will of Washington or the Supreme Court for Thou art the court above all courts and the government above all governments and so we come to Thee to be armed by Thee for the battle that awaits us to be strengthened by Thy joy, to be more than conquerors in Christ Jesus our Lord. Strengthen us by Thy word and by Thy spirit and make us strong in Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Our scripture is from Numbers 35:30-34 and our subject: Atonement for the Land. We begin now another series in systematic theology, for several years we have been considering one aspect after another of systematics and these studies which will be published in due time will cover all aspects of systematic theology. Our subject in this new series is The Land, something not normally considered by systematic theology and for this first study the subject is: Atonement for the Land. Numbers 35:30-34.

“Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses: but one witness shall not testify against any person to cause him to die.

31 Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death.

32 And ye shall take no satisfaction for him that is fled to the city of his refuge, that he should come again to dwell in the land, until the death of the priest.

33 So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.

34 Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.”

Because of the influence of Greek philosophy the history of theology shows too great a neglect of the land and of things physical. In Greek philosophy it is not God that is sovereign but abstract ideas, abstract universals. In Christian thought we have the trinity as the concrete universal. Because abstract ideas prevail in Greek thought these abstractions are seen as the truth and the ultimate governing factor rather than God. Hence Christian thought has tended to be too spiritual, it has tended to deal with things that are essentially intellectual or spiritual because the physical has been depreciated by such thinking. Now one might say well we have a corrective to that in the present environmental and decology movement. As a matter of fact these movements are very much in the tradition of Greek philosophy. What we have is a concept of the earth which is an abstract one, an idea of a pristine original purity governs the thinking of the environmentalists and in terms of that concept man is sacrificed; the present natural order is sacrificed, to reestablish this abstract idea of what nature should be like. Nature is seen by these people as an abstraction but nature is rather a physical reality which man must utilize and develop. Anti-Christianity sacrifices man to nature, we have such movements as zero population growth and the no economic growth policies. These are anti-dominion in their orientation. But the bible gives us a theology of the earth. We are told the earth is the Lords and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.

It is God’s because He made it. The six days of creation give us five that are devoted to the natural world around us, this testifies to the importance of the non-human world in the sight of God. The appearance of man witnesses to his importance as the culmination of creation, and Genesis 1:31 tells us that as God saw His handiwork, the whole of creation, He declared it to be very good. Thus we cannot despise the physical creation without despising God. We must view creation as God views it, this is a moral and religious necessity. But at the same time we must remember that this creation and man are fallen. The sin of man has a geophysical affect; the curse and death have come upon the earth because they came upon man. There is a necessary connection between man’s moral and religious condition and the world around him. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 in particular testify to this necessary relationship. Man does not live in a morally neutral environment, the universe is not morally neutral. The total man is totally related to the universe. We are told in Judges 5:20 in Deborah’s song that the stars in their course fought against Sisera, the whole of creation is governed by the will of God and it is hostile to the sin of man and brings judgment upon him and upon his world. In Romans 1:17-24 we are told that all of God’s truth is known by man but suppressed by him. In Psalm 32:3 we are told even our bones witness against us. When sin prevails the whole of the natural order to our very bones witnesses to God and cries out against our sin. Man the sinner needs atonement. Jesus Christ makes atonement for the sin of man.

He as our vicarious substitute accepts for us the death penalty and we are freed from the power of guilt and the penalty of sin which is death. We become heirs of life, eternal life. If a man seeks any other atonement than the atonement of Jesus Christ he aggravates his sin. Apart from Christ’s atonement man’s destiny is death and hell. But the land also needs atonement, the bible tells us. To quote F.F. Bruce:

“In the song of Moses God makes atonement for His people’s land by avenging the blood of His servants at the hand of his and their enemies.” Unquote.

Of course the clearest text on that is the one which I read earlier, Deuteronomy 35:30-34. What these verses tell us first of all is that the land is not only God’s creation, God’s possession, but also His dwelling place.

“…for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.” We are told. Now we cannot rule that out as Old Testament and therefore not applicable because Jesus Christ when He sends His church out and sends go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations declares also ‘lo I am with you always’. So that we are told Christ dwells in all the earth, He claims all of the earth and we are to conquer all the earth and bring it under His dominion. Then second, twice in verses thirty one and thirty two we read the word satisfaction. Now this word is a translation of ‘kaphar’ the Hebrew word which we have also translated as atonement. It’s the same word. Atonement is rendering satisfaction for an offense, satisfaction for sin. All crime, all sin requires satisfaction. The atonement for man’s sin against God can only be atoned by Jesus Christ.

This is God word atonement. But there is a man word satisfaction also required and this is what God’s law is about. Restitution is called for. In Exodus 32 we are told the details of that restitution, it must be at least double and depending on the offense it can be up to five fold so that if a man steals a hundred dollars he must repay two hundred and for certain types of offense fivefold. Moreover, this text tells us there can be no variation from God’s law. We cannot change the kind of restitution that is required. For example, for a murder no restitution of money can be made. There has to be restitution of money, some compensation but there must be the penalty of death. No one can render satisfaction, we are told, for murder. Even with regard to accidental killings, and ye shall take no satisfaction for him that has fled to the city of his refuge that he shall come again to dwell again in the land till the death of the priest. For us today this means that if someone is guilty of accidental killing he must leave the community. He pays a price. He doesn’t go to jail for what is a purely accidental death but he leaves the community. Then third we are told that the land has no atonement apart from the enforcement of God’s law. The land is polluted, we are told, with respect to Cain God says the voice of thy brother’s blood, Abel’s blood, cries out to me from the ground. And our text says the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. So the land is polluted in the sight of God and when man does not make restitution manward, atonement manward or satisfaction is not rendered, God brings His judgment upon that land. Fourth, this means that to believe in Christ’s atonement means that we uphold God’s law.

The life of atonement is the life of law. Christ having made satisfaction to the Father, we make it in relationship to man and the land by rendering satisfaction, remember, God said because the land had not been given its Sabbaths, its rest, he was going to bring an enforced rest and for seventy years to make up for the seventy Sabbaths skipped, the land would have its rest and so the captivity in Babylon lasted seventy years. The life of sin is life outside of the blood of Christ and under blood guilt. It calls for judgment. When man fails to render that judgment, the judgment of God will be upon that land. Therefore we can predict very safely that the judgment of God will be upon the Soviet Union, upon Europe, upon Asia, upon Africa and certainly upon the United States. We either make restitution or we pay the price because there is blood guiltiness. In a marvelous sentence in [unknown], the guilty [unknown] as he awaits death sees in his eye the blood guiltiness and yet the despised blood of Christ which alone can cleanse it and cries out ‘see, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament’. Then fifth we must say that theologically lawyers and judges are atonement men. The law of God is atonement law, satisfaction law, it says that the wages of sin are always death. It tells us that when a man sins there is a penalty to follow as God has specified. So the purpose of the courts is to render satisfaction, atonement. Judges are atonement men. Lawyers are atonement men. Their purpose is to render satisfaction in terms of God’s law between man and man and man and the earth.

Law is thus a religious vocation and the secularization of this calling is in our time a very deadly evil. Judges today increase the blood guiltiness of a land, we certainly see this in our courts and courts the world over. There is no justice, no righteousness, in the courts of men in our time, only blood guiltiness being incurred because of their contempt for God’s law. We must recognize this fact because every time our courts render an evil decision they are increasing the blood guiltiness of this land. The result is an evil dissatisfied and guilt ridden society around us. Men in affluence feeling none the less somehow burdened as indeed all men today should be as they see the blood guiltiness of the land being increased by these men who rule us and by the failure of the people at large to protest against this. Then sixth, we must say the failure to effect satisfaction not only pollutes and defiles the land but the men who live in it. Hence the call of the bible again and again is to separate ourselves from evil men and evil societies. We do this by witnessing against them, we do this by doing everything possible to alter the situation, to call them out of their blood guiltiness. We do this by trying to change the evil laws, replace the evil men, by trying to alter the society that has become evil and corrupt. This is what the atonement for the land is all about. This is a very important doctrine, it is referred to over and over again in the prophets. This is what the prophetic cry is about and it takes up a good deal of the bible as the prophets cry out against the rulers because they have brought blood guilt against the land. And we’ve neglected this doctrine of the need for atonement for the land, atonement by the enforcement of God’s law, by rendering satisfaction.

It is any wonder that the church has become impotent? It has become so spiritual that it has no awareness of what the bible is about. Much of the bible is the law and the prophets. This is what they’re talking about, atonement for the land and they tell us there is an alternative to atonement for the land, it is God’s judgment. Atonement means judgment has been rendered. We either render it upon the guilty person or we incur it ourselves. The absence of atonement brings on the judgment of God upon the land and upon the people thereof. We cannot therefore separate natural disasters from God’s judgment. The people at war with God must expect God’s creation to be against them. When we examine the western history we see this again and again. We see what happened in legal history when the state took upon itself to be the plaintiff in crime, when it said we will prefer the charges rather than the offended party so the state began to play the role of the plaintiff, the prosecutor and the judge. It was a legal revolution affected by Fredrick the Second, and within the century the Black Death struck Europe. And why not? It’s courts had been corrupted and tyranny had come, and it proceeded on with the tyranny and the whole of that order collapsed in terms of it. And all we did was to embody again that same evil and perpetuate it, and it’s on the march again. The state as the law, not God. A people at war with God must expect God and His creation to be at war with them. Satisfaction in God’s universe will be made by Christ as our Savior or by Christ as our judge.

Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we thank Thee that Thy will shall be done. Thy justice, Thy righteousness, shall prevail and the judges of this earth shall be judged. Oh Lord our God we thank Thee for Thy justice. Give us grace to accept it, to rejoice in it and to be a part of it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions now first of all with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. The avenger of blood represented someone who took upon himself to avenge the death of a kinsman. Now of course the avenger of blood normally was to be the courts and God’s law and this was to protect people from the avenger of blood. In other words it declared the avenger of blood not to be legitimate. He existed but he was not legitimate and the cities of refuge protected someone who was guilty of manslaughter from him. But it meant also that in spite of that he paid a penalty. The family of the person whom he killed didn’t have to look at him and see him living when their relative no matter how accidentally had been killed. He had to be isolated from that community or a number of years. So the inference is very obvious. Even if a man is innocent of murder and it’s an accidental death he should leave the community.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Not in our society, unless it would be someone in the family trying to get even, you still have that occasionally. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No we have no idea from scripture how long God’s patience will last, all we know is that the greater the privilege is the greater the culpability. And having been privileged our culpability is therefore greater. Thus the world of our day can expect more in the way of judgment. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes I believe there are some fifteen to seventeen hundred men on death row across the United States and judges are postponing the executions one way or the other, some have been in death row for a good many years. In other instances men who have been condemned to death have gotten off because the courts have overturned the sentence on some technicality or other. Any other questions or comments? Well we shall continue next week with the subject of the land in theology and as you can see it’s a very important subject and a very much neglected one. Let us bow our heads now in prayer.

For the glory of Thy word our Father, the majesty of Thy government and the certainty of Thy justice, our Father we thank Thee. Make us joyful therein and more than conquerors through Christ who loved us. In His name we pray, Amen.