Systematic Theology – Work

The Clean Society.

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 16 of 19

Track: #16

Year:

Dictation Name: 16 The Clean Society.

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

All glory be to Thee oh God our Father who hast surrounded us daily with Thy mercies and blessings, whose made us heirs of the grace of life, of the joy of salvation, and heirs of all creation. Give us therefore a faithful and obedient heart that we might render Thee Thy due service, that we might praise and serve Thee with all our heart, mind, and being. That we might move forward as more than conquerors to bring all things into captivity to Jesus Christ our Lord, in His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture today is from the gospel of Luke, the 11th chapter verses 37-44. Luke 11:37-44 and our subject “The Clean Society”; continuing our study in the theology of work.

“37 And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.

38 And when the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed before dinner.

39 And the Lord said unto him, now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.

40 Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?

41 But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.

42 But woe unto you, Pharisees! For ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

43 Woe unto you, Pharisees! For ye love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets.

44 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.”

One of the beautiful devotional manuals of the Medieval Era dating at about 1440 is the Book of Hours made for Catherine of Cleves, the Duchess of Guelders. It has eight parts, one for each liturgical hour of the day. Since our concern is work we’re going to consider some aspects of the Book of Hours briefly because it has some important things to tell us about the perspective on work in the medieval era.

The book is a series of miniature paintings of great beauty, with a great deal of silver and gold in the coloring. The subjects are often very down to earth and plebian, but they are beautiful and they show an obvious delight in luxury. Everyday things in fact are made into luxuries by the way they are painted, and the ordinary is transformed into the precious. But our concern is with the practical piety, the perspective on work and life. In plate 57 Catherine is shown giving to three beggars, and the text for the plate is Luke 11:41, which we read “give alms of such things as ye have, and behold all things are clean unto you” Now here’s a sentence from our Lord’s teaching which rarely hear anything about today, frankly I don’t recall ever having hear anyone preach on it. The first half of the sentence stresses giving from the heart. As Geldenhoy {?} said “Give alms for those things which are within” that is; most of all give of yourself as you give a gift. When Geldenhoy’s added “When a man’s inner life is so purified that he acts in this manner, he will be clean together with everything he posses; he will stand in the right relationship to God without all kinds of ceremonial purification.” The same plate to make the point all the clearer shows a woman giving food to a prisoner in jail, and the prisoner, someone in prison for their faith, is made to resemble Christ.

In plate 70 we have Solomon distributing bread to the needy. This plate is based on Proverbs 9:5 in which wisdom invites all to share her bread and wine. On the border is printed Genesis 47:13, “and there was no bread in all the land”; another text is John 6:9 with regard to the multiplication of loaves and fishes, and then I Corinthians 10:16 about bread representing the body of Christ. In other words the artist knew his Bible, he also recognized that faith must have its works, and the work of faith is to minister to others in Christ name. The Lord blesses such charity, and the point of the plate is even as the fish and loaves are multiplied when we give even a cup of cold water in Christ’s name, Christ multiplies our works of faith.

Moreover the point of the plate is also to give to others in their need, is to share with them the communion which is ours in Jesus Christ. Now I site these two plates among many in order to make clear that at that time there was a very clear knowledge of scripture and its implications. In fact one can say these plates show clearer knowledge than prevails in the church today. Now how generally this was known we cannot say, nor how faithful Catherine of Cleves and others were. What we do know is that in the Book of Hours and other such things a very high standard of Christian responsibility was taught.

Now, this brings us to a point that we have been dealing with for some weeks. As long as there’s a concept of hierarchy, that is of sacred rule, rule in terms of God’s law, there is a strong adherence to a Godly work ethic and to Godly charity. Whenever faith has declined, whether in the medieval era or in the modern era, then too man’s responsibility towards his fellow men in Christ also wanes; elitism undermines responsibility, authority, and community. When you have the rise of elitism, people who are going to govern society because they are a superior element, charity ends and welfarism begins. Welfarism has a long history in mankind’s story, it has been very common when men have been elitist.

Now this sentence of our Lord’s, that “give rather alms of such things as ye have, and behold all things are clean unto you” is set in the context of an exchange with a certain Pharisee. The Pharisees should have been an hierarchy, but they were an elite group. There’s was not a sacred, that is a Godly rule, in terms of the every word of God, but a rule in terms of their word because they put their interpretation of scripture above the word of God. Their goal was supremacy, not service. Our Lord ridicules this when he speak of their love of the chief seats, of their pretentiousness of being faithful to God; straining at gnats but swallowing camels.

Then second our Lord makes clear that an elite is worse than useless, an elite is made up of the living dead. It is like the unseen tombs of men long dead and forgotten; you walk over their graves and do not know that they are there. An elite, our Lord is saying, belongs to the past, it is dead. It is the living who are clean. It is the living who give alms, who work unto the Lord and share their bounty. Our Lord tells us “freely ye have received, freely give.” God’s grace has been given to you in abundance. Paul makes it clear “what are we that we have not received?” We are in every fiber of our being God’s creation, having received everything that we are we should recognize we have a responsibility to give.

Then third our Lord makes a contrast between the living and the dead; the living and the clean on one hand and the dead and the corrupt on the other. Charity goes out from the living, but from the dead only death, and when they seek to do good works, such as welfarism, it produces corruption and death, it is destructive to a society. There’s much talk today about social responsibility, perhaps because there is so little of it. There is a growing lack of family and personal responsibility, and this should not surprise us. Our Lord as He deals with the Pharisees and their elitism makes clear that they are not a responsible people, that they are motivated by egoism and self promotion; and our Lord thereby equates Phariseeism, elitism, with death. “All they that hate me love death”, “He that sinneth against Me wrongeth his own soul.” The culture of death is hostile to God, to work, and to law; it prefers, as we have seen, theft and debt. Whenever you have Humanism theft and debt increase. Theft and debt today are not social byproducts but central aspects of humanistic policy; when you have humanism you create a society of anxiety, a society which is evil and disorderly, it is anti-work and anti-community, everybody is interested in doing their own thing.

Humanism is very much interested in the concept of community as an idea, and since World War II we have had, I suspect, more books written about community than ever before in all of history, and we have less community than we have ever had. In cities before World War II people knew everybody on their block up and down the street. Since then people have not welcomed their neighbors becoming too friendly in perhaps the majority of cases. So there is much talk about the need for community today, but very little of it, and this should not surprise us because elitism is coercive, it seeks to impose its order from above, and this is the antithesis of community.

Today we have increasingly the rise of statism, the imposition of supposedly good things from top-down, whether it be welfarism or whether it be community, anything and everything that the state deems to be good, it seeks to impose from the top down, and of course this is a violation of the concept of sacred rule, because sacred rule means to rule of God beginning in the hearts of man, beginning at the grass-roots and so it is men who are summoned to be born again, men who are summoned to become new in Christ. And when you have this then out of them goes forth the premises that God requires of a society. You have sacred rule, then you have authority, this is an ironic fact. Elitism opposes things from top-down, and is hostile to hierarchy because it says “this is an imposition from above.” But what is above in an hierarchical society is the word of God, this is the cannon; and men who rule in terms of that, and then everyone on the grass-roots level applying that in their daily life, and thereby creating the Godly society. Coercion by the state is hostile to community. It replaces work and charity with theft and debt which are divisive and destructive to society.

In one of our studies on work I called attention to Proverbs and why it is not popular today as it once was. There was a time when most Christians in this country knew hundreds of Proverbs from the book of Proverbs by heart. Separate additions of the songs and Proverbs were published, and men carried them in their coat-pocket and studied them continuously and memorized portions. We were then a Godly and a work-oriented society because of course work and charity are stressed in Proverbs. Proverbs 14:23 says “In all labor there is prophet, but the talk of the lips tendeth to penury (or to want)” Proverbs 13:11 says “wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished, but he that gathereth by labor shall increase.” Proverbs 16:26 in the Berkley version reads “a workers appetite works for him, for his mouth urges him on.” This is reality.

The difference between a hierarchical and an elitist view are seen in all of life including architecture. It is interesting that architecture is no longer seen as expressive of the life and the faith of a people. Beginning with Frank Lloyd Wright the idea has been publicized that by altering our architecture we can alter the whole character and outlook of a society. This is of course environmentalism, alter the architecture, have some clearance, control the education, control the environment of man and you will make him a new creation. Instead of Godly dominion the elitist desires to play God.

But our Lord tells us the way, Godly work followed by charity, and behold all things are clean unto you. The word clean in the Greek text of the New Testament is katharós, we have it in the English as catharsis, it means “free from impurities, spotless, and without blemish” we are told thus that all things are clean when we obey God, when by faith we work, by faith we give to others, we thereby become an agency of catharsis in society. We cleanse ourselves and we heal others. A clean society cannot be built on theft and debt, it requires faith and the works of faith, the charity of faith, the clean heart. Where there is the clean heart with its works of charity and faith, there is a cleansing of man and society, there is a healing of the divisions of men. The clean society is the work of God, through a man’s life, his faith, his work, and his charity. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God create in us a clean heart, give us grace day by day in terms of Thy so great salvation to become not stagnant pools but channels of living waters unto all people; having received freely to give freely and to become Thine instruments of cleansing among the nations. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes John?

[John] One of the things that you mentioned, you didn’t really dwell on, but it struck me maybe again being stuck in Washington D.C. for year and a half, and that is this concept in an elite society, things are not what they seem, or they’re the opposite of what they appear to be. And a few thoughts came into my mind, one is that Richard Nixon said “I am not a crook” and that’s exactly what he was. Jimmy Carter said “I will never lie to you” and he did repeatedly, almost pathologically, and that seems to be representative of what happens in the society, that lying becomes the basis of society and then I think there’s a book that’s come out recently about the Soviet Union and they say that the lying that goes on there makes the society, which is totally distrustful of itself and everything, every element within it.

[Rushdoony] What you’ve said is an illustration of what our Lord said “ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter, but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness” in other words, Washington insists on a clean surface, but not a clean interior.

[John] They just don’t care about the truth.

[Rushdoony] No.

John?

[A different John] Well there’s that tape, I can’t remember where I got it from, we got it from {?} about the officer who analyzed the Korean POW’s?

[Rushdoony] Oh yes.

[Same John as above] And he developed a psychological profile of the prison camps in one interview?

[Rushdoony] Yes, that was Colonel or Major Meyers, {?} an M.D. psychiatrist

[Same John] Talks about how the lying and the division between people came about, and that influence and debilitated people. It’s almost like that study of the POW’s in microcosm is a study of what’s happening in the nation at large in {?} a lot of parallels there.

[Rushdoony] Yes. What they found, those of you who are not familiar with that study made of Korean war POW’s was that about 15% could not be brainwashed. Brainwashing is really nonsense, the idea that anybody can be brainwashed, all it means is that some people believe in nothing and therefore they are easily used. 85% of our prisoners of war in Korea, because they lacked any strong faith in anything, in God or in their country, or in the free market, were easily manipulate, they were incapable of coming together even to built latrines, the North Koreans had to come in and do it because the place became so foul. They were incapable of organizing an escape.

15% they found very quickly had a strong faith either in God or, very often it was in the free market, or in their country. Those they knew they couldn’t do with; they put them behind barbed wire and didn’t bother with them. The rest had no unity among themselves, and could not organize an escape, and could be taught anything because they were a vacuum. Our Lord said “if a man be cleansed of one devil, seven devil’s will come and occupy him.” It was a devastating study, I was with the foundation that helped with some of the research on it, this was back at the beginning of the 60’s.

Yes, little John?

[“Little” John] {?} To education because what I’m hearing is that you’ve got empty headedness, and then the bad guys, the elitists fill up that empty head with their own propaganda and then it struck me that it was interesting. I think the thing that the left has hated the most during the late forties and fifties and early sixties to a lesser degree, was the concept of communist stooges; and they just didn’t want to think of themselves as being easily led or being dupes and so they did everything to vilify and destroy anything and everybody, whether it was Jo McCarthy or the House on American Activities Committee, or the senate committee that was involved in the same work, they destroyed all those so the mirror couldn’t be held up to them. They just don’t want to be thought of as what they are, which is dupes, and what we have in Washington is the dupes are running the {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Our Lord and our God Thy word is truth and Thy word must be a guide to our everyday life, that we might indeed become a clean people, that this nation be a place where righteousness dwells, justice dwells. Deliver us oh Lord from ourselves, and make us great and strong in Thee. 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.