Systematic Theology – The State

The Inquisition

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 28

Dictation Name: 28 The Inquisition

Year: 1970’s

Our subject in this third session is The Inquisition. Now, at first glance, the Inquisition does not seem to be related to the church and state question, but there is, in fact, a very close relationship.

The Inquisition has long been synonymous with torture, with organized evil, and with the misuse of organized religion. The works of a particularly brilliant American scholar, Henry Charles Lea, have had a very powerful influence in this country in setting the picture people have of the Inquisition. However, in recent years, this earlier picture of the Inquisition has begun to fade a bit. First, because the mass slave labor camps in the Marxist countries have confronted us with evil in such a power and massive form that what the Inquisition did at its worst seems small by comparison.

And then second, the works of scholars like Jeffrey Burton Russell have shown us that the men of the Inquisition faced very real evils. The cults they were dealing with were given to human sacrifice, to cannibalism, and to other such practices. Now, we may not agree with the way they dealt with those groups, but there was a massive and organized evil, a reviving paganism that they were faced with.

The formal beginnings of the Inquisition were in 1233 under Pope Gregory IX. However, we cannot read back into its origins what the Inquisition, much later, became. The fact is that the Inquisition only tried heretics and excommunicated them. It never executed them. The state executed them. Now, that may seem like a subtle distinction, but there’s a very real point here that we shall come to subsequently.

There are modern parallels to the mistake that the Inquisition represented. For example, to give an extreme instance, under Marxism, capitalism is seen as evil. Therefore, all capitalists, without exception, are persecuted. In this country, all communists are seen as evil, and some believe that steps should be taken against all communists. There are some people who say we should go after all anti-Semites, all members of the KKK, all Nazis, Fascists, Moonies, and so on. In other words, the same temper prevails of dealing with dissidents in society.

Now, we condemn, in the medieval Inquisition, what is very common to society in all eras. The Inquisition was first applied to the Albigensians. They were Manicheans. They were dualists. That is, they were not Christians but they believed that the world is divided into a good god and a bad god. One, the god of spirit and the other, the god of matter. They were a very serious problem to society, and this is why France wanted them dealt with, and France was the key in the persecution of the Albigensians. The Manicheans, or Albigensians, despised the whole material world. Anything to do with the material world was on an equal level. As a result, marriage for them was catering to the flesh and was evil. It was no different in their eyes than adultery, or incest, or bestiality, or anything else, and they felt that all these things being on a level, if they practiced the one, it didn’t make any difference if they practiced the other. They were thus, an extremely dangerous and disintegrating force in society, and France wanted them dealt with.

Again, because they despised the flesh, they had no use for cleanliness. There are many other things that one could say about them. They were a socially-disintegrating force. They were a threat, France felt, to society. The Inquisition was mounted by the French government against an element they felt was very bad.

Now, when we go to God’s law, we find that God’s law, where it applies and is to be applied by men, condemns acts, not beliefs, not thoughts. The law condemns acts, and the temptation of men throughout history has been to condemn thoughts as well. If you’re a Moonie, we ought to do something about you. If you’re KKK, or Nazi, or Fascist, or Communist, or a capitalist, we ought to do something to eliminate you. This is the condemnation of beliefs, not of acts. God alone can condemn the heart. Therefore, God says that adulterous thoughts are equal to adultery in his sight, but he never allows us to judge adulterous thoughts or any thoughts. Adulterous acts, evils acts of any kind, God’s law says man must deal with, but he does not allow us to judge where he alone can judge. But the state, as it grows in power, demands uniformity and conformity.

As a result, you find that the state imposes conformity with regard to opinions. Let me give you an example from our own country. At one time, we had legalized segregation. Now we have legalized integration. What business is it of the state to legalize either one? To punish either one? At one time, in many states including California, interracial marriages were forbidden. What business is it of the state to govern marriage between a man and a woman, when it is between races? You see, the state regularly demands uniformity and conformity. It only changes as to what it decides is conformity. Once it was segregation; now it’s integration. Once the state legalized housing discrimination; now it makes it illegal. So much so that in San Francisco, an apartment building which was reserved for elderly and retired Scandinavians was declared to be discriminatory. Non-Scandinavians were not allowed. As the state grows in power, it demands more conformity and more uniformity, and it says what can be permitted and what cannot be. We see, for example, permissiveness today with regard to a wide variety of sexual acts, but no permissiveness where Christianity is concerned, and a persecution across the country of Christians.

Now, to return to the Inquisition. We’ve taken this byway to understand the mentality that leads to this demand, that leads to inquisitions then and now. At the time of the Council of Constance, John Hus, before he went to Constance, went to the Inquisition and got a clean bill of health. Interesting fact. You don’t read about that in the history books, but their attitude was, “Well, John Hus, we don’t agree with everything you say, but you’re a good Christian. You’re orthodox in your beliefs. Here, we’ll give you a certificate that you can take to the Council of Constance, and if they challenge your faith, you can say you have the approval of the pope’s inquisition.” The Council of Constance paid no attention to it. Why? Because they wanted uniformity in Bohemia, and Hus’s followers were threatening that uniformity, and so it was that threat that the Hussites presented to the imperial power that led to the execution of John Hus. All the rest was a facade.

It was not the Inquisition that burned John Hus. It was not the church. It was the Emperor Sigismund. As a matter of fact, very quickly, John Hus, who saw that the very man who had given him a safe conduct and invited him there was his great enemy, and Sigismund, when he thought some of the Czechs had left the Council session, declared, “You have heard of many and heavy crimes which are not only proved against Hus by reliable witnesses, but also confessed by him. I deem that each one of them is worthy of death. If he does not retract, I am of the opinion that he should be burnt, but even if he does what he is told to do, even if he retracts, do not believe him. I should not believe him. I advise that he be not allowed to teach or preach in the Kingdom of Bohemia.” This was Sigismund, the emperor.

At the same time, John Hus stood up and said, “You’re ready to condemn me, but you’d just gotten through deposing Pope John XXIII. You have seventy-two counts against him.” What were these counts? The Council held they were proven, that he had proven Pope Alexander V, that he had bought his cardinal’s office previously, that he was a murderer, a poisoner, that he was a heretic who denied the resurrection of the body and immortality, that he had sold for 6,000 Gulden and appointed a five-year-old as preceptor of the Order of St. John, that he had sold extreme unction, and absolution, and indulgences, that he was guilty of a variety of sexual acts, seventy-two count of the Council of Constance filed against him, and deposed him, and Hus said, “Why do you condemn me, and all you do is give John XXIII a slap on the wrist?” In fact, he was briefly imprisoned a little later, only because he sought to resume office. Later returned to high office in the church, in the Vatican. You see, out of office, John XXIII was no problem to the empire. John Hus, alive, and it proved even dead, was a problem to the empire. That was the issue. The Inquisition gave a clean bill of health to John Hus, although the history books don’t tell you. It was the empire, the state, that burned Hus.

Now, it’s important for us to know this fact. There is really no difference in principle between the condemnation of Hus by the Council of Constance and the seizure of the English monasteries by Henry VIII. The sad fact is that many Protestants view the burning of Hus with horror, but not the vicious seizure and the punishment of the monks by Henry VIII, and Catholics view what happened to the monasteries with horror, but Hus, that’s a different question. But it’s the same issue in both cases. The power of the state to seize wealth from the state, or to eliminate the church or churchmen when they are a threat to statist power. The state, you see, is never interested in a dissenting power, or in a reforming power. Both are a threat, and the state regards both a dissenting and a reforming power as an evil to the state in its drive for sovereign power. The state has been, throughout history, the major inquisitor. In fact, in the Spanish inquisition, it was totally the state. The states of history, thus, have been the major persecuting force, and they have used the church at times, and too often the church has been compliant, but we have to recognize Marsilius, the Council of Constance, the Inquisition, they’re related. They’re all part of the drive for conformity within the state, and the church has to free itself from the state always, in order to be free to make purely biblical judgments and biblical decisions.

In 1839, a French Marquis, the Marquis du Custine, in his travels in Russia, noted the great piety of the people, but also the captivity and the low estate of the church which was in the service of the state, and he observed, “National churches make citizens, the universal church makes men.”

The triumph of the state means the end of biblical law, because there is now a new sovereign, a new power, a new god walking on earth. In any system of thought, it is the god of that system that is the source of law, and when God is Lord or sovereign for men, then they look to God and his word for law, but when the state becomes sovereign, the state becomes the source of law. There was a time once when the word “sovereignty” was reserved, because it is the same word for lordship, for the Triune God, for Jesus Christ. Now, it’s a doctrine of state.

Acts 15:18 tells us that the Council of Jerusalem said, “Known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world.” Because God is the creator, the predestinator, who knows all things because he has made all things for his purpose, God never has to step into history to coerce anyone. God never has to say, “Now look there, John Jones, you’re doing things wrong. You’re going the wrong way. That’s not the way I want you to go. Now, you get in line, and I’m going to step here and I’m going to make you get in line.” No. All things serve him, even the wrath of man praises him. Because God made all things, he doesn’t need to step in and coerce him, but the state, when it plays god, what can it do? Why, it has to step in and say, “You, Everett Sullivan, you’re not doing what we want you to do. Go to jail.” The last time, they didn’t even have a charge when they picked him up. They were trying to intimidate him. “You, Lester Oloff, we’ll take you to jail, too,” and one man after another has been jailed in the past five or six years, because the state is coercing them, and the state legislations, and the state bureaucratic acts today that are trying to tell the churches and the Christian schools that they must do these things, these are inquisitorial acts. They are a part of the new inquisition. They are coercion because the state is playing God, and the state says, “You’re all going to walk the line we require because we’re going to govern, we’re planning, we’re predestination the future, and you can’t be out of line.”

God, as true sovereign, does not coerce because he does not need to. He has made all things to accomplish his will. “By him were all things made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” But when the state plays God, it has no alternative other than coercion to effect its will. That’s why, when the medieval emperors broke the power of the Vatican, and we don’t have to agree with what Rome represented to recognize they were in the right as against the state, the emperor then proceeded, and the various states then proceeded to burn and to kill everyone who was out of line. They wanted everyone in a narrow line. Were they zealous of the Catholic faith, or were they zealous of the Protestant faith, Lutheran or Episcopal when they killed and burned? Not at all. The rulers who did these things were themselves often dissolute men. They wanted no man to stray from the lines they had marked out.

Henry VIII executed men for holding things which, a few years later, he himself held. Did he feel he’d made a mistake? No. They had no rights to disagree with his will. He was the sovereign, and that’s the premise of statism. When the state plays God, it has no alternative other than coercion to affect its will. The results are history. The great question for us now is, will we again establish the crown rights of Christ the king and free Christ’s kingdom from the inquisition of civil rulers? That question will be answered in terms of who is really Lord for us. Who is the sovereign, Christ or the state?

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Romans 6:14 says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace,” and it seem like some today would rephrase that to say, “God shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under state.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, very well put, Dan. Excellent. John, did you have something to say?

[Audience] Yes, you know, you talk about Marsilius and John of Paris, and everything, it, you know, it sounds like, though the emphasis may be slightly different, it sounds like you’re also talking about Thomas Aquinas in terms of the method that was employed, because it almost sounds like we’re separating grace and nature, in terms of Marsilius’s thought, in the sense that reason dominates the whole world, and you people who are involved in church, why, you go ahead and take care of your church, but that shouldn’t have any concrete manifestation. There’s a separation there between the internal and external man, like, similar to the separation of grace and nature.

[Rushdoony] Yes, reason was given a function in Marsilius that was independent of God, so that the world of reason was separated radically from God, and a man could in effect, wear two hats. During most of his life, he would be wearing the hat of reason and would be walking his own way, being his own Bible as it were, because his reason would be adequate to determine all things, and then, on occasions, he would indulge in pietistic acts in reference to God. Put on another hat in order to get fire insurance with regard to the world to come. So, there was a radical separation there, and the damage it has worked in the history of the church has been devastating. The influence of Marsilius is tremendous, but it has been such an insidious one, because what he said is taken for granted. It seems so obvious that people have not bothered to take it seriously. It’s like someone in the smog belt moving into a mountain area and feeling there’s something wrong with the air. He’s gotten accustomed to the wrong thing, and we’ve gotten accustomed so to Marsilius’s world that we don’t recognize the world of scripture when we see it.

[Audience] I’m interested, to a certain extent, in a tactical method for dealing with the phenomenon, and you know, working in film and television. I mean, I can take the basic premise that we have here and I can easily transit that into film in which I force the person who thinks like this to deal with the logical, real consequence of these ideas, but how do I utilize a tactical method in dealing with Christians who hold to this kind of concept? I mean, it’s not a matter of, of just, it seems to me like there’s a, they’ve thrown up a lot of blocks in the sense that you can quote scripture to them all day long, and they continue to reinterpret that scripture in terms of these presuppositions they have, which are essentially Marsilian. Now, can you recommend any kind of a tactical method for dealing with this?

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is a very real problem, and as a matter of fact, you missed out on a very important discussion of it, because yesterday, walking on the campus at Berkeley, and also at the table, Bill Kellogg and I were discussing this. Bill said that out of all the thousands of students there, there were very few who could think logically, Christian or non-Christian, very, very few. Not a lack of intelligence, but an inability to think logically, and what’s the reason for it? Well, if the world for you is basically the world of brute factuality, and nothing is related to anything else, it all happened by accident, and if your god is a god who only deals with the spiritual realm, you’re not going to make logical connections with anything else. In our thinking today, we’ve abandoned any concept of causality. We went to the probability concept, and the probably concept they felt was too theological, so they’ve dropped that. So, what do we have? A generation of young men and women who cannot think logically, because logic has no place in a world of brute factuality, where everything is unrelated to everything else. Now, who alone can think logically in the context that they’re talking about? Well, someone who is a faithful, Reformed thinker, and believer, who is going to believe that God is sovereign and therefore, all facts are interrelated, because there is one God, one purpose, one universe, one world of law that sustains all things. Then only are you going to be able to make connections. So, what do you have with these people who are pietists and who are not thinking logically? You have to shake them out of that by challenging them in terms of a faith in the sovereign God. This is why Van Til’s work is so important, and this is why Van Til is so anathema to many. He wants them to wake up out of their sleep and to think God’s thoughts after him.

[Audience] Then in the upcoming projects we have in terms of film, the shock element is an important and valid tool to use self-consciously.

[Rushdoony] Yes. You have to jolt them out of their slumber, out of their pipe dreams. They’re not living in the real world, which is God’s world. They’re living in the enemy’s world, a world without meaning in which every man is his own god, doing what he wants. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] I was wondering, how would you deal with somebody, let us say like Paul Feynman, in the Philosophy of Science, against method, basically said that in area of rationality, there is no methodology by which we arrive at the truth. It’s basically {?} you will dominate, which is the one by which we can produce the most propaganda, in the sense that, he gives the historical illustration of Galileo. Galileo’s views were accepted by people, not as a rational viewpoint, but more as, by reason of propaganda, in a sense, isn’t it, I’m thinking of, like in the modern world, nobody believes anymore in the idea that a rationality in a sense that logic arrives at, of values, ethics, morality, or anything like that. It’s more in the area of what {?} called efficiency.

[Rushdoony] Yes. The modern view is that there is only a thin edge of rationality in the universe and it’s in the mind of man. Well, this leads to irrationalism, because if the totality of creation is irrational and meaningless, and rationality is only in the mind of man, that rationality can do nothing with the ocean of irrationality. Now, an illustration I’ve used more than once, in 1973 when the scientists involved in the moon shot met at Princeton, one of the questions raised was, “How did we do it? It’s really impossible.” Because we applied the logic of the human mind which is mathematics, and we’re able to pinpoint a spot on the moon and put a man there, but you can’t do that, because how can the logic of the human mind have any relationship to physical reality? To say that there is a connection between the logic in the mind and in the world out there, requires, one of them said, positing a God, but they all agreed that was a cop-out. Now, that’s the perspective of the modern mind. So, they have no answer. So, they’re going to come up with that kind of garbage, that reason has a very limited function, and that you have a paradigm whereby you explain things, until the paradigm wears out and then you pick up a new paradigm, or a new myth, to comprehend reality. The modern mind is bankrupt. What we need are more Christians to say, the emperor has no clothes. Yes?

[Audience] How would Existentialism relate to the sentimental church today? Do you believe that the sentimentalists are Existentialists, do some degree?

[Rushdoony] Existentialism says there is no reality, no meaning, and there is nothing that should bind man except the feelings of the moment, the Existential moment alone is to govern us. No teachings from the outside, no teachings from the past, no word from our conscience, and so on. Incidentally, I read today about someone who did not listen to the voice of his conscience because it was a total stranger to him. At any rate, now, there are pietists within fundamentalism who are really Existentialists, because they are not governed by the law-word of God, but by their emotional feeling of the moment, how they feel about something, and that’s a practical Existentialism. Yes?

[Audience] Wouldn’t you say that this is one of the bigger problems today within the church?

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is, because men are governed, not by the word, but by their feelings. “I don’t have a good feeling about the minister, and I don’t have a good feeling about the elders, or the deacons, or such and such a person.” You hear that all over the country. Their feeling is what governs them, not what scripture says. Yes, John?

[Audience] Which also accounts for the breakdown in marriage. “I don’t feel right today so let’s get a divorce tomorrow.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, it’s personal feeling, not the word of God.

[Audience] It’s perfectly valid even for Christians to make that statement.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes.

[Audience] Insofar as they’re {?}

[Rushdoony] If they’re Existentialists, why not? Yes?

[Audience] In your statement, the world is the Lord’s, this is God’s world, brought back to my memory my contact with different Christian groups who believe that the world is Satan’s. Is there a problem with sovereignty?

[Rushdoony] Yes, and they are really Manichean to an extent, because Satan is a creature, like us, and as a creature, his power can in no way be compared to God’s, but for some people, Satan’s power seems to be greater than God’s power, and they become, to all practical intent, Satan worshipers, although they would be horrified if you said so. They ascribe so much power to Satan and so little to the Lord. Yes?

[Audience] And that’s the connection between so many of the pre-millennialists in the sense that, that is how they justify their lack of concrete progress in the world, is because this world doesn’t belong to Christ. It belongs to Satan.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, very definitely. Any other comments or questions? Well, if not, let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

Our Lord and our God, we thank thee that thou art on the throne, that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. We thank thee that thou hast called us to be thy soldiers in this battle. Arm us by thy word and by thy Spirit, and make us more than conquerors in Christ our Lord. Dismiss us now with thy blessing. Give us traveling mercies on our homeward way, a blessed night’s rest, and joy in our labors on the morrow. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

End of tape