Systematic Theology – Work

Work and Confusion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 4 of 19

Track: #4

Year:

Dictation Name: 4 Work and Confusion

[Rushdoony] Let’s begin our meeting now.

Oh Lord our God unto whom all authority, power, and dominion appertain; we come into Thy presence joyful that Thou art on the throne and confident in Thy victory. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us to serve Thee, hast given us a commission unto victory. Send us forth oh Lord to bring all things into captivity to Thee, to overthrow the powers of humanistic statism, to bring men, women, and children into the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless us this day and always by Thy word and by Thy spirit, grant us Thy peace, the assurance of Thy presence, and confidence in Thy word. In Jesus name, amen.

Let us turn to Genesis 11 again, verses 1-9. Genesis 11:1-9 and our subject “Work and Confusion.”

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

2 And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”

Judgment upon the tower of Babel was God’s verdict against its builders. This judgment on Babel and its builders should concern us all because it is a continuing judgment upon all the imitators of Babel. The tower, as we saw last week, was designed to be a one world governmental center in defiance of God. Its purpose was to undue God’s law and God’s judgments, and to re-establish, restore paradise by man’s sovereign acts. God’s judgment followed, but God’s judgment was preceded by His commentary on what was taking place. First of all God noted their unity in sin “The people is one, and they have all one language.” They were at work in unity to defy God. In ancient Sumerian the tower was called “The house of the foundation of heaven and earth.” It was to bring all things in the universe under the potential dominion of man. Man hoped to control, in time, all things. It was a governmental center, it was a religious center, it was a scientific center.

In the book I wrote some years ago on the mythology of science I described the statements of very prominent scientists concerning their plans to engineer man, to remake his genetic inheritance. In time, some of them said, they hoped to eliminate death, even the necessity of a physical body; when the sun died some billions of years hence, to create an artificial sun out of sub-atomic materials and to put it in the heavens in order to continue life in the universe. These are not the daydreams of science fiction writers but the attitude of scientists, some of whom are Nobel and other prize winners; prominent professors, academicians in the science. This is tower of Babel thinking, it is very much with us.

The idea therefore is like that of Babel which was to be the house of the foundation of heaven and earth, to bring all things in the universe under the control of man, his government, and his science. And second God says “this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.” Their plan was the control of the world by man. Man as the Lord of a unified world order. Nothing will be restrained from them, God said. They would with this kind of a totalitarian world order rivet slavery on man. This is why the world is an unstable place; it is by the ordination of God from the flood, through Babel, to the present. We are told in Hebrews 12:18-29 that God’s purpose is the shaking of all the nations until only the unshakable remains, We are told moreover in Psalm 24 verses 1 &2 that not only is the earth the Lord’s, but He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods. That language means that the world as we know it now has a very unstable foundation, no security in the things of man. A foundation upon the seas and the floods is no foundation at all. This is why our Lord says in the parable of judgment that only that edifice which is built upon, and it is literally “The Rock, Himself” can endure.

Then third we read “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower.” And we read also God declares “Go to, let us go down.” Now this is imagery, it is an idiom that refers to judicial action. God came down, as judge, to render a decision. We still use that kind of language, we speak of a parent coming down on his child in punishment. God here comes down upon the human race in judgment. Then fourth God’s judgment is confusion, or confounding, and this confusion and confounding is of both their work and their language. Internal dissension was created, they were confounded in all that they were and in all that they did.

Now in Hebrew the world Balal {?}, Babel with a slight difference, means to mix or to mingle, to confuse. Babel in Babylonian meant the gate of God, but in Hebrew it came to mean confusion because God brought confusion upon them. Then finally the purpose of the confounding was to prevent men from attaining success in their defiance of God. It was preventive action to check the power of sin, and to give men freedom to realize their calling. After this confusion we are given a genealogy which leads directly to God’s covenant man, Abraham. After the tower a very decentralized world began to develop, which allowed for freedom, which allowed for man to develop, to develop under God the implications of the image of God. And when you have centralization you have a limitation on freedom

But let us look again at the work of building the tower, it was a major task. Before the flood cities were, we are told, common place. But Babel was different, it was not a normal urban development, it was a planned operation to create a world governmental center, it was in other words unproductive work. The greater the power of the state, the greater the unproductive work in any society, there is an emphatic correlation, and the dream of Babel was anti-productive work. It was work to establish power, work to further ungodly dominion by man over other men. The building of the tower of Babel and the city around it produced no food, no manufactured goods other than that needed to build the tower, nothing that contributed to the ongoing life of man in any productive capacity. Its purpose was to supplant God and to defy His law and judgment, it was destroyed by God’s judgment but the motivation of the builders of the tower of Babel is still with us. We have only to look in Sacramento, Washington, Moscow, London, all the capitals of the world, and in the hearts of men, to see this same motivation.

I said the hearts of men, let me add also the churches. To illustrate, a good many years ago when I went to a particular church I found that they had, as so many churches do, an every member canvas, whereby every year the church trustees prepared a budget, the elders approved it, and men went out two by two to visit every member of the congregation, all the friends of the church, in order to outline the churches programs and to get a signed pledge from them. And by the way, those pledges are legally binding, they’re like a contract. And I felt that the whole method showed a lack of trust in God’s word and in God’s Spirit. God’s word says tithing is the way, God’s Spirit, when there’s a faithful preaching of the word, can lead to Godly action. Without the every member canvas the giving increased very emphatically. But do you think the denomination or some of the elders were happy? They were very profoundly upset. Why? That was not the way to do things, and it was easy to see who the people were who were upset, they were the people who enjoyed going out. Many found it embarrassing to go and nag people for money, but some of them enjoyed it, why? Because they could get a self-righteous glow badgering people, acting very virtuous and saying “This is our Christian responsibility” and to try and get them to sign; and to say “now, how much are you making? How much of that are you giving?” and so on.

The whole thing was and is ungodly. It gave certain kinds of people an opportunity not only to badger people and feel righteous about it, but to lay a guilt trip on people with a glow, and the interesting thing is that in some denominations at that time, checking statistics, I found that the churches that did not use that problem were way ahead in their giving, but this pleased no denomination. The relationship was rather to the kind of faithfulness to the word of God that existed in the congregation, and in the pulpit, not to the method used. The whole system, however, puts a trust in man’s way and man’s work and not in God’s law and God’s Spirit. But this is precisely its popularity; it is precisely the reason why it is so extensively used all over the country, because the spirit of Babel is strong in the hearts of men. It is useless ungodly work, and that is precisely its appeal, because it serves the Babel impulse, the power play.

Of course ungodly work is always useless work and vice versa. You find this kind of power play in organizations and corporations, academic communities and everywhere, it is the tower of Babel syndrome, the work for a top to reach into the heavens for a highly exalted position, one which glorifies man. As one commentator, Davison, on the tower of Babel has written, and I quote: “Man unites in the anthem ‘glory to man in the highest’ and the outcome is division and confusion.” But even as man unites in that chorus of glory to himself, he is fearful of God. And as Davidson comments further “In the fear which prompts this action, or we shall be dispersed all over the earth, verse four, there is symbolized man’s feverish search for security apart from God, a search which is doomed to failure.”

The production which marked the tower of Babel was useless, it had no place in God’s purpose and all work apart from God is similarly judged and similarly doomed. The tower was, as we saw last time, a fiat effort. Man playing God saying “let there be” and assuming there shall be. And of course this is, as we saw, modern politics, economics, religion, science. It represents the spirit of Babel, fiat works. But the work Babel created led only to disaster and the same is true of today’s work, all the work of the modern Babel state has led to worldwide inflation, worldwide political unrest, worldwide problems that threaten civilization.

But the goal was very well set forth by John in Revelations 17:5 when he said “the goal of this power state, of Babylon, is that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” It’s interesting that we don’t hear much of that verse nowadays. I do know that when Roosevelt came into office and instituted the NRA and then the Social Security system a great many devout Christians all over the country said “this is Revelations 17:5 coming into being” nobody hears that nowadays, but we’re seeing the realization of it; and of course we see it in some countries where no man may buy or sell apart from the power of the state, and it’s very nearly here as well.

The goal of course of Babel is predestination by man instead of by God. Under God’s predestination we are told by Paul in I Corinthians 15:58 that our labor is never in vain in the Lord, that God brings everything to work together for good; whereas in Babel all things work together for evil. This is a theme that the Bible repeatedly stresses. We are also given in the Bible three times the reverse of the golden rule, the other side of it, but we rarely hear about it. For example Obadiah in the 15th verse of the whole chapter declares “for the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen. As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee. They reward shall return upon Thine one head.” Laminations 1:22 and Jeremiah 50 verse 29 tell us the same thing, that as we have done when we are apart from the Lord, it shall be done unto us.

Confusion is the destiny of all work outside of God, and everything of value that such work amasses will in due time belong to God and His people, to His kingdom. In Isaiah’s vision as we encounter it in the 60th chapter he declares:

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

4 Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.

Professor:9 Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the Lord thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee.”

The whole world shall serve Christ, His kingdom, and His people because only their work has the foundations which endure. Our Lord in the parable of two foundations spoke of a man who build his house upon a sand, when the storms of judgment sees everything vanish, the flood shall overwhelm him. But the man who builds his house, his edifice, his life and work upon the rock, Jesus Christ, His shall endure. No life, no work can endure apart from Jesus Christ as the foundation. Let us therefore so work that our labors in the Lord may bear fruit unto the future of Christ’s kingdom. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that by Thy ordination nothing done in Thine name is in vain, that even a cup of cold water given in Thy name has, according to Thy word, its reward. Great and marvelous are Thy ways oh Lord, and Thy government is total from the hairs of our head to a cup of cold water. Give us grace therefore to live and work not in vanity, in futility, but in Thee, and in the joy of Thy salvation and Thy victory. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] More of a comment. I think it’s remarkable that in view of this interpretation Babel how seldom you hear that God has interfered with somebody’s plans and decided that they wouldn’t work.

[Rushdoony] Yes, well you know I was thinking the other day the amazing fact, as I was going through a number of books that deal with the present world and deal with the medieval world and so on, that much is said about the Greco-Roman inheritance, and about the influence of barbarian Germanic cultures, and you would think that Christianity and the Bible had nothing to do with the medieval world or the United States today, there are several books put out at present and some of the authors claim to be Christian, which deny the fact that Christianity has had anything to do with the shaping of this country. There is the opinion that the only work that is effective in this world is ungodly work, and that Godly work has no power, no effect, except for heaven and some historians are operating on that premise, very emphatically. So it’s no wonder they have nothing to say about the implications of Babel, they see ungodly work as effective rather than ineffectual, and they see Godly work as only effectual in terms of eternity, and useless in terms of time. A strange perspective.

Any other comments? John?

[John] I was just thinking, I’ve just been drawing up some equations and formulas here on the relationships of power and what have you that’s dealing about a couple things you said earlier, but it seems to me like the minute the person sets out on the course of centralization of power he exposes an epistemological blindness. The minute you take the first step you’ve exposed your whole hand because we know that once you take that step your position has got to be relativistic in most ways, and so a confusion of language has to follow naturally because everyone will have their own interpretation of what particular words mean, what the content of words mean, and it stands to reason that things will then become confused in terms of language. That’s we today, we have all these intellectual disciplines at the university level, in the media, and all everywhere else, and nobody can talk to anybody else, and no two of them mean the same thing by the word they us anymore. So the confusion of language comes about as the logical consequence of the first step you take towards the centralization of power.

[Rushdoony] Very good point. And consider one of the most powerful and influential schools of philosophy today, the school of logical analysis. All they do is to analyze words and basically their conclusion is that nothing has any meaning, they’re just playing games. So Wittgenstein, Carnap, that whole school has brought only confusion into the realm of thought. Precise confusion of course. [Laughter in audience]

Any other comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Thy word oh Lord is truth, a lamp unto our feet and a joy unto our hearts, and we thank Thee that by Thy Spirit and word we are warmed, strengthened, and revivified. Bless us day by day in Thy service and make us more than conquerors in Christ our Lord. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.