Systematic Theology – Work

Holy Offices

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 12 of 19

Track: #12

Year:

Dictation Name: 12 Holy Offices

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

Oh Lord our God unto all the ends of the earth shall come. We come into Thy presence rejoicing that Thy rule, Thy government shall prevail, that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ. Give us faith so to walk day by day that we may work, pray, and move in terms of Thy victory; knowing that greater is He that is with us and in us than He that is in the world. Empower us by Thy grace to be sufficient unto all the crisis and problems of this world, and make us joyful in Thy grace and love. In Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture is from Romans 12 verses 1-5, our concern is really with one word which gives the focus to this entire passage. Our subject is Holy Offices, Holy Offices Romans 12:1-5.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

4 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office:

5 So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”

We come now to a critical aspect of the meaning of work. It comes to focus in the English word “office.” This word appears in the King James Version and in other versions, but it is not always a translation for the same word in Greek. For example in Romans 11:13 we have the word office and it is a translation of diakonon {?} which is our word deacon, and means service. In I Timothy 3:1 we have the word office as a rendering of the word ergon, {?} work. In Hebrews 7:5 it is a translation of hierateia, priesthood.

Now hierarchy of course is a Biblical premise, it means “sacred rule” it means rule in terms of God’s law, in terms of an ultimate right and wrong. Eltisim means rule by man-made authority; hierarchy refers to God’s word, God’s law. Authority which is in conformity to God’s absolute word.

Now the word office is a word that confirms, seemingly, a common opinion that in hierarchy there are persons who, by their office, stand before others, and the popular notion of hierarchy seems confirmed. But the word hierarchy as we have seen on previous Sundays is very much misunderstood today and caricatured. And so hierarchy has become almost a bad word, and is very commonly used in an unhappy connotation.

Now to understand first what hierarchy refers to, we must examine the word “office”. When we go to the Confraternity Douay, the official catholic version, of Romans 12:4 we read “yet all the members have not the same function” instead of office; Monsignor Knox’s translation is the same, “ not all these parts have the same function” he translates. This is a rather ironic fact in that these two Catholic versions have a rather more protestant rendering than do the protestant versions, and as a matter of fact at this point more accurate. The word translated as “office” or “function” is praxis p-r-a-x-i-s, it means a deed, a doing, a function. This word places a very different meaning on the fact of hierarchy. Our word office has taken on a different connotation. Hierarchy, as we have seen, means that all authority comes from the triune God and from His word.

On the various levels of a hierarchy all the positions, the offices, the functions, are derivative. They are functions ordained by God, and are legitimate only in so far as they are faithful to God. Thus for any ecclesiastical dignity or authority, to use his office to advocate abortion, homosexuality, or unilateral disarmament, means that he has denied his function, he has denied his office, because a office is derivative, it depends entirely upon God. At no point does a man in any office have any authority in and of himself. Thus what we call an office in church or state or any other sphere is not a condition of man, but a function under God. The power is not given to man, but is retained by God and is a function under God. Thus God and His word establish the function. We as human beings, as creatures under God, are the ministers of His word. Our ministering in terms of a function, he has ordained.

Now in the medieval era some theologians held that a tyrannical ruler had forfeited his function and could be slain, and therefore tyrannicide was regarded as theologically legitimate in the medieval era. Without agreeing with that position I would say that the premise is sound. A hierarchy of power is not in terms of man’s birth or election but in terms of God’s word and government, and men forfeit their title when they deny the authority of God. Any submission to the powers that be is premised on the fact that they are ordained to be a terror to evil, not to the good. Calvin dealt with this in discussing the jurisdiction of the church. He saw authority and office as ministerial functions, not as imminent powers which are aspects of the human order, they are functions, he said, under God. He wrote in The Institutes of the Christian Religion and I quote:

“It was necessary that the most unequivocal testimony should be given to their hearers; the hearers of the apostles, that the doctrine of the gospels was not the word of the apostles but of God Himself, not a voice issuing from the earth, but descended from heaven. For these things, the remission of sins, the promise of eternal life, and the message of salvation, can not be in the power of man. Therefore Christ has testified that in the preaching of the gospel nothing belonged to the apostles except the ministration of it. That it was He Himself who spoke and promised everything by the instrumentality of their mouths, and consequently that the remission of sins, which they preached, was the true promise of God; and that the condemnation which they denounced was the certain judgment of God. Now, this testification has been given to all ages and remains unaltered to certify and assure us all that the word of the gospel, by whomsoever it may happen to be preached, is the very sentence of God Himself promulgated from His heavenly tribunal, recorded in the book of life, ratified, confirmed, and fixed in heaven. Thus we see that the power of the keys in these passages is no other than the preach of the gospel, and that considered with regard to men, it is not so much authoritative as administerial. For strictly speaking Christ has not given this power to men, but to His word of which He has appointed men to be the ministers.”

Paul makes this clear too when he uses the word that he does, praxis. It is a function, the authority does not rest in man. Man functions under the authority of God, and the authority any man exercises in any province, whether it is in the family, as an employer, as a churchmen, as a civil official, is always subject to the conditions required by God, and to the word of God.

Paul in I Corinthians 7:20 says “Let every man abide in the same calling where-in he was called.” By this he means that our function is to be where God has placed us, and work our way out of it legitimately, under God’s law, not in terms of revolution. Paul goes on to say if you are a slave work to be a free man, seek to be free rather, but you do not advocate ungodly means to attain a Godly end.

Knox translated this “Everyone has his own vocation in which he was called, let him keep to it.” Our freedom, our growth, our progress is not to come from anarchy and revolution. The Christian recourse, said Paul, is different.

Now this does not mean that there is not a necessary conflict at times with the authorities over us, if they depart from their function. Calvin saw that civil conflict is sometimes necessary as is conflict within in the church, but only on legal grounds, not in terms of a personal decision. At this point historically those who in the Middle Ages and since favored arm resistance to tyrants and those who opposed it have been in agreement. An office is a legal fact, a function by which the law of God, or of man, or of both, has de facto legal existence. However the law in any Biblical sense is not of man nor is its end man, but the Lord. Paul says “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Now God sometimes ordains powers to bless us, and sometimes to curse us, he sends us rulers which fit our moral estate. And this is why it is a serious mistake for men to place all the blame, for example, on the politicians. We get the kind of politicians we deserve, in fact if we got them as we deserved we be a lot worse off; and so we have to see that God tempers the situation to fit our condition and so, instead of blaming those who are above us we need to work for a Christian reconstruction to re-order our lives and then the lives of those around us, and of society wherever we have any influence. In order that step by step we may change all things and bring them into conformity to God.

The law is God’s and the office is God’s. When the office becomes evil there must be a resistance of some sort, this is what the church and state conflict is about, this is why there has been trouble in Nebraska and in other states, and in countries all over the world. All offices are functions, they are hierarchical functions. Our response to a function when it goes bad must be a function, a work, which is good, so that when we see someone whose function has ceased to be as God has appointed it, but is function in terms of humanism, then our response has to be to strengthen Godly function in the society, beginning with ourselves. Only so can we re-order society under God.

Every man has a work, a function. Every man has a number of functions, each of us has a function in the home, we have a function under God; whether it’s in the home or in our work or in our church, or as a citizen; and saint Peter made it clear we ought to obey God rather than men. Failure to do so is a sin, it is an abuse of office. So we have an office, a function under God, we have responsibility therefore whether we deal with our family or our neighbors or our citizenship, or our money, or our time, or our bodies, we have a function, an office under God which we must discharge. If we limit our faith to what in one position {?} paper I called “box theology” as having an application only to a small area of the universe, to our private life in the church, we have then pietism and we have a retreat which is destructive of world order.

The word “office” has ten dictionary meanings. Four of these refer to a building, or a portion of a building; an office building. The fifth to a statist office, like the office of a sheriff or a president. The other five all have a religious meaning, they refer to liturgical facts. This was once the essential and basic meaning of the word office. We still have it in some churches, for example the office of morning prayer, the office of evening prayer, the office of confine, as for example the Anglicans use the word. The synagogue also had its services which were called offices, and many of these continued in the church.

Moreover ecclesiastically the word office had reference to functions in the life of the church. It is interesting as we go back and see the use of the word “office” in the early church that one of the most important offices was doorkeeper. This may seems strange to us, but the doorkeeper was someone who held the life of the congregation in his hands, he had to be alert to what was happening outside the meeting place; he had to be able to recognize a Roman official who came up, either to the door or down the street, possibly dressed incognito, so that he might immediately issue a warning to the congregation and everyone would leave before the house where the meetings were held was surrounded. So the doorkeeper was a man with an important office, a function.

Of course this was in line with the Old Testament, in Ezra 7:24 we see that even the doorkeepers and the porters, or cleaners, in the temple were exempt from taxation and control by the state because they were fulfilling a function under God which separated them from any jurisdiction of the state over them. This is a very important point that has had a long history in church and state struggles, it’s a verse too by the way which I’ve used again and again in court testimonies, because what the Hebrews gained from the Persian monarchy was the premise of the law, it became the premise of their struggle against Greece and later Rome, and then the premise of the early church against Rome, and through the centuries the seventh chapter of Ezra which said that any function under God belongs to God and cannot be governed by anyone else, has been most important.

But the whole point of the Pauline use of the word “office” or “function” or “praxis” is that in every realm sacred rule must prevail. In ever realm everything must be seen as under God and His word, that there is no area of life that is outside of God and therefore no area of life, not an atom in the universe, can be seen apart from God and His word. In terms of the Bible all honest callings are functions or works of God’s people in God’s kingdom, and are an aspect of the holiness of dominion work. Thus when we speak of holy offices we are talking about the functions of God’s people everywhere. It is a modern fact and not a Biblical one that separates the world between the sacred and the secular. When God created all things he pronounced all creation to be good, and the function of the people of God is to recognize that all things, though fallen, must be under God; and that every function they discharge in their lives has to be under God. This includes our bodies which we are told are temples of the Holy Spirit, this includes our every relationship, our every function. Every legitimate function of man is a holy office, and only when we recapture this perspective which was once the Christian perspective will we again dominate the whole of the world in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God Thou hast called us all to holy offices, holy offices in our dealings with ourselves, our families, our time, our money, our work, the church, the state, the school, the arts and the sciences and all things else. Make us mindful oh Lord of how great our privilege to function under Thee, to be instruments of Thy kingdom in this world and of Thy victory; and give us grace day by day to see every task set before us as a holy office in Thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ, in His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now…yes John?

[John] Wasn’t the basic premise that when a man no longer filled his office, wasn’t that basic behind the War for Independence, that the king and the ministers of parliament had violated their office and were therefore unworthy of obedience?

[Rushdoony] Yes, and Paul of course makes that point, that he worked to fulfill his holy office lest he be a cast away, like a cracked cup that’s put up on the shelf you know, you don’t use it any longer but you might throw little bits of miscellaneous items in it, its lost its real function, that’s what it means to be a cast away.

In terms of this of course an illustration that I love and I’ve used it, dozens of times would put it mildly, but I love it. About the woman who had a little typed over her kitchen sink which read “divine services celebrated here three times daily.” [laughter.] Now that’s what holy offices means.

Yes Mike?

[Mike] I thought that was interesting, we limited liturgies to the church today, actually it meant public service, I was wondering, I enjoyed your talk. Could you maybe briefly give us the definition of the gifts that are talked about in the Pauline verses, what the differences between like prophets and teaching, etc. In the context of what you were talking about.

[Rushdoony] Yes, what Paul says is that we have an office, a function, and God gives us particular gifts for that function, for that office, and the gifts that we have constitute a form of grace. In fact we are told that life is a grace, a very important statement of that in Peter when he speaks of man and wife being heirs together of the grace of life. So that what we are, the aptitudes, the abilities we have constitute a gift from God. Now he singles out some gifts in particular in terms of life in the church and I think it would be a mistake to go into this to much now because it would then limit the scope of what he’s saying to the church. But his meaning is broader than that because he goes on to speak of their life generally, of distributing to the necessity of saints, given to hospitality, bless them which persecute you, bless and curse not, recompense no man evil for evil, provides things honest in the sight of all men. Now we’re fulfilling a function you see, an office, in all these things.

Paul goes on to say later “whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” So in everything we’re fulfilling an office, a function, and we cannot see ourselves as the end just as, let us say, a senator or a bishop who sees himself as the end, the source of authority, is wrong, is sinning against God. So if we see everything that comes to us as designed for our purposes then we sin too, whether you eat or drink, even in that, do it all to the glory of God. Use everything to strengthen yourself in your function, in the discharge of your office; and this extends to the simplest of things.

Yes John?

[John] There’s still a place where the office of doorkeeper is very important, it’s in the congress of the United States, the doorkeeper controls hundreds of employees and has a very exalted job second only to the clerk of the house, I think pays upwards of 65,000 dollars which is only 4,000 less than the congressmen.

[Rushdoony] Yes, wasn’t Fishbait Miller the doorkeeper of the house? One of the most important men in Washington in this century, extremely important just because of his control there of so much that happened.

[John] And they have, not exactly the same function as you’re alluding to in the early church of giving a warning to the members to leave because the Romans were coming [laughter] though it might have been true if the president promenaded down Pennsylvania Avenue towards them, but they do have a role which is similar in terms of protection, it’s their, each of the assistant doorkeepers is required to memorize the faces of each of the members of congress and to exclude all but the members from gaining entrance.

[Rushdoony] Mm hm.

Yes Otto?

[Otto] That would fit because the politics is the modern religion.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes very good point. Politics has become the hope of salvation for modern man, and we’re not going to change the political situation until we recognize that it is not man’s hope of salvation. That was the interesting thing about the president’s state of the union address; whether it has been Johnson or any other president, or Reagan; whether we agree with some of their points or not, all have the same temper. They see politics as man’s salvation. There’s an interesting point made by Dr. Ralph, a scholar on the Renaissance, with the Renaissance the belief began to take over that man could attain, you might say heaven on earth or utopia, and this was a belief share by Erasmus, by Machiavelli, and by Sir Thomas Moore, that man could attain the good life and everything that Utopia connatates without any internal change, simply by a re-arrangement of society, so that politics became the key to salvation. When that caught on, and that’s the faith that governs us to this day and we’re not going to change the situation until we disabuse men of that hope, politics as man’s religion and man’s hope of salvation and see Jesus Christ and regeneration as the key in every area.

We have that in education too, salvation by education, by the schools, and we have it also in the arts. There are some who believe culture is going to save us, and the Soviet Union is great for putting an Opera House in every little community. They may live the most abject hounded lives near starvation, but their finding salvation by going to the Opera House periodically.

One sphere after another, the sciences, salvation through science. In other words, modern man is seeking salvation everywhere except in Christ.

Yes?

[Audience member] Doesn’t this go back to the Greek’s and say Plato, his utopian ideas, and that ties into what you’re saying about the separation of the sacred from the secular. That was a Greek idea wasn’t it? Haven’t you written on the neo-Platonism and Platonism as just a wrongly based premise?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it represents very definitely a revival of ancient Greek thinking and that’s why we all grew up with the Greeks represented as the ideal culture in all of history, because it was worshiped blindly; and nothing about how wretched the Greek culture was.

It went to the extreme of Grote G-r-o-t-e, and English scholar, who wrote the most detailed history, I believe, of any people ever written, his history of Greece, of ancient Greece. And Grote’s history which takes up a shelf is so incredibly detailed that it is a work of incredible adulation. It was regarded in its day, in England, about Mid-century I believe in the last century, as one of the greatest accomplishments of scholarship. It’s rarely opened now, it’s to detailed, but it’s a monument. It’s well worth dipping into because every little detail of Greek is treasured as though it represented the revelation of man, and that’s exactly how Grote and his circle saw it.

[Audience member] Wasn’t Satan behind this? In other words the enlightenment, which is based on these kinds of concepts, was actually the disenlightenment. In other words it was 180 degrees out of faith {?} it was direct opposite of the truth, it was the great deceit that we’ve just engaged in self-deceit for 200 years.

[Rushdoony] The premise of the Enlightenment was the autonomy of man from God, the pre-eminence of reason as the solution to all problems. SO the Enlightenment is what we are still living under, it’s shadow clouds our vision to this day.

Well, yes?

[Audience member] {?} I saw just in the paper the other day that in Greece not only has it become a crime under the socialist government to say anything untoward about the top three rulers, and now they have a new rule out which prohibits taxi drivers from talking about anything other than the trip. In other words they’re trying to prohibit taxi drivers talking about politics, and you know anything other than the trip. IT’s really a reflection of insanity, I mean how can you do that? You can’t do it, it’s insane, it’s literally in sane. But this is a reflection of this larger principal.

[Rushdoony] Well if the taxi drivers have a good union they’ll call up the secret police and tell them some taxi drivers are talking politics, and then a lot of secret police will be riding the cabs at the government expense [general laughter in audience.]

[Audience member] Can you see the expense account numbers now? [More laughter]

[Rushdoony] Well, I think we’ve gone the Greek’s one better because in the Roloff case the state of Texas had state agents in the woman’s restrooms in the church to take down the conversation of all who came and went. And one of the high points of my courtroom experience will be when attorney William Bentley Ball handed a copy, a transcript of their records which he had obtained through sources unrevealed, and made the deputy director of the state human resources department read it from the stand to his great embarrassment. [Much laughter]

Well let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Lord it has been good for us to be here, Thy word is truth and we rejoice that every atom and fiber of our being was made by Thee for Thy purpose and to serve Thy holy functions. Bless us day by day in Thy service. 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.