Systematic Theology – The State

The State, Sin, and Justice

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 07

Dictation Name: 07 The State, Sin, and Justice

Year: 1970’s

Our subject in this third and final session this evening is The State, Sin, and Justice. We saw in our previous session that Harold Rugg, the American philosopher of education said that Uncle Sam should work to be Uncle Savior. This salvationist character of the state was very definitely prevalent very early in this century in Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt continued it. All over the world in the various social orders, we have seen in the 20th century the salvationist character of the modern state increasingly in evidence. The church has become more and more peripheral and irrelevant to modern man. Carroll Quigley, in his book published not too long ago, The Anglo American Establishment, calls attention to the fact that the elite of the modern Anglo American establishment have seen Athens as their pattern. Plato’s Republic, and not the Bible. They have looked neither to Manchester or the principle of free trade, or capitalism, nor to scripture. In fact, he calls attention to their very emphatic hatred of theocratic law. The modern state has become increasingly messianic. We fail to realize how the modern state is a predestinarian state, in its own humanistic way, Calvinistic. For the predestination of God, it substitutes statist planning and control, so the state is going to be the agency of predestination, cradle-to-grave, or womb-to-tomb, all of man’s life to be circumscribed and planned by the sovereign state.

Welfare is not a state concern, and not a matter of Christian charity. We recently had a conference on the West Coast, an ecumenical conference it was called. Ecumenical not because it was Christian, but because it was inclusive of all religions, deny that charity, or help to the poor, was a concern of religious groups. It was, they said emphatically, a concern of the state.

The state moreover, has come to replace providence. It is significant that providence, as we saw when we had our series on the doctrine, was once a very common subject to preaching. A belief in providence governed most Americans in the Colonial and Early American period. Now, it is extremely rare to hear of anyone who has preached on the doctrine of providence. Providence now is a characteristic of the modern state.

In the Bible, the state is a ministry of justice, and it has a very limited role. The state in scripture is called to be a servant of the Messiah, not itself the messiah. The modern state refuses to be a servant of the Messiah and seeks to be the Messiah. It has revived the essentials of ancient paganism. Rome saw itself, as we saw, as the eternal order, the ultimate order, the cosmic order. The city, according to the philosophers thereof, embraced gods and men, and the whole universe. It was a cosmic order. It was called by Cicero The Light of the World, The Guardian of All Nations, and Cicero said concerning Octavian, “In him we place our hope of liberty. From him we have already received salvation,” but even as Rome stepped up its claims to be savior of man, it became progressively man’s oppressor.

We are told by some historians that, very early in the development of the Empire, citizens began to wonder which was worse, the tax collector or the Barbarian, and finally, the Barbarians looked better, and so Rome fell because no one felt Rome was worth defending. The millions of Romans refused to defend themselves against the tens of thousands of Barbarians. As a matter of fact, the sack of Rome in 410 by the Visigoths did not damage the buildings. Rome was simply abandoned because everything about Rome had become repulsive to the men of that day, and so Rome decayed not because Barbarians sacked it, but because people abandoned it to collapse. It finally became, in due time, a village of five hundred people.

While these things were yet in the distance in the days of Paul, Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in his second Epistle, and he said in verse 3-10, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”

Now, these words written by Paul, perhaps in the year 52-53 A.D., in the year 40 A.D., slightly more than a decade before, Caligula had given orders that the temple in Jerusalem was to have his image in it, in the holy place, if not the Holy of Holies. The whole Jewish world reeled with shock at the thought of that blasphemy. Before the order could be carried out, Caligula died, but the memory of that lingered on. It said something to every Jew and to every Christian as well. Now, what I am about to say with regard to the interpretation of these words of Paul to the Thessalonians is nothing new. In fact, it is very old. It is gaining interest once again as the collected works of Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield are again being published, because Warfield summarized this position very ably in his study of Biblical Doctrines. The original sin of man was to be as God, and this is the sin that besets all of us. To be as God. It is original sin. My will be done. To be as God, the tempter said means knowing, determining for one’s self what constitutes good and evil. What we need to recognize is that this is not only the basic and original sin of man. It is also the sin man institutionalizes in his institutions, that as man comes together with other men to create institutions, he does not exempt those institutions from the faults, and fallacies, and evils of his own nature, and so the state has, in institutional form, set forth this original sin of man. To be as God.

Now, God is that being who is sovereign over all things, and all things are overarched by his being, and he is the umbrella as it were, under whom and in whom all things exist and subsist. The modern state seeks to be precisely that sovereign, to be that umbrella under which all things must reside so the modern state says to every area of life, “It is our duty, our jurisdiction, our sovereign right to govern you and to control you.”

Now, Warfield says, as he deals with these verses, the fact that we must always bear in mind, that prophesy is always moral in content. There is no prophesy in scripture given to satisfy our curiosity. There is nothing said in scripture to satisfy our curiosity with regard to heaven or hell, or the world to come, or the future. We are only given that which we need to know in terms of our moral stand in the Lord, so that prophesy is always moral in content. Hence, as we approach this prediction by Paul, we have to see that it is moral in content. Paul writes, telling these people in Thessalonica that these things are going to happen. “I told you about them and I’m writing to you further about that which I’ve already spoken about. You have seen what it means for the man of sin to set himself up, to be as God. These words very clearly hark back to Caligula. Caligula, who sought to enthrone himself in the very temple of God as god, and Paul saw in Caligula’s madness the insanity of the ungodly state. The man of sin, Warfield held, and he was not alone for many other scholars have so held, was representative of a whoel line of emperor, and we could add to that the whole line of all statist men who make themselves to be as God and the state to be God walking on earth. So, we would say it’s not only Caligula and the emperors which followed him, but Hegel and all Hegelians who say the state is God walking on earth.

The restraining power was the Jewish state, an ironic fact, but Paul said this restraining power that hinders will soon be taken away. As long as the Jewish state existed, Rome treated the Christians as another Jewish sect, entitled to all the religious liberty that the Jewish sects had as an exclusive privilege of the Jews. Rome did not want to start a revolution by revoking that with any Jewish group knowing they’re intransigents, but once the Jewish/Roman war began, then the militant persecution of the Christians began because they were now simply one of the hated enemy, a part of that cursed Jewish race, as the Romans saw it, that only fomented evil, and rebellion, and trouble. So that while the Jews were hostile to the early church, that is, the unconverted Jews, because most of the Christians then, virtually all were Jews. The fact is, when the Jewish state was removed, then the mystery of iniquity moved against the church.

Then what does verse 8 mean? “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.” Christ’s coming in judgment occurs as we are seeing, in our studies of eschatology on Sundays, not only and end time manifestation, but an end point manifestation. The day of the Lord has occurred again and again in history. The day of the Lord came in judgment upon the world before the flood. It came again on the builders of the Tower of Babel. It came in judgment upon Egypt, judgment upon Assyria, upon Babylon, upon Judea, upon Rome, and it is coming in our time in judgment upon the nations of our day. So that the day of the Lord came to Rome.

Paul here shows us the close connection between the Tempter, between Satan, and his plan, original sin, and every civil government outside of Christ. We cannot believe that that which is outside of Christ is going to be immune from Satan, or is not going to be a part of his Empire, and so we have to say that the state, when it is not Christian, is going to be demonic. It is going to be anti-Christian. It is going to work to further the essence of sin, man’s desire to be his own god, and so, whereas in God, in Christ, the state fulfills righteousness or justice, outside of Christ, the state is Satan’s instrument for his plan. We should be as god, every man his own god, knowing, determining for yourself what constitutes good and evil. This is why we cannot be indifferent to the theology of the state. We have to see the necessity for requiring that the state, like the church, and like the individual, like the school, and like all things else recognize Jesus Christ as Lord.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] What do you think would be the {?} answer to the argument {?} brought up today, the so-called clueless argument which, of course, that was the {?} before all these {?} the large tide of immigration before the end of the 19th century?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The question is what is the answer to the pluralist’s argument. I have no quarrel with the pluralists. We do not believe in something forced on people from top down. We believe that every Christian must work to bring every area of life and thought into captivity to Christ. So, our method is not gaining control, dictatorially, of the state, and saying to everybody, “Get in line. Go to church. Say your prayers,” but rather, conversion and the exercise of dominion. By this means to bring every area of life and thought into captivity to Christ. So, evangelism is basic to this, and then the exercise of dominion. Yes?

[Audience] When you speak of exercising dominion, can you draw a distinction between that and being dictatorial?

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is a distinction between the exercise of dominion and being dictatorial. Our Lord called attention to the distinction. He said the Gentiles love to lord it over people, but it shall not be so among you. He who is greatest among you let him be servant of all. So that we are ministers of Christ. We serve. We try to meet human needs in the Lord, and we try in every way to be faithful to God, by fulfilling his law-word, and love is the fulfilling of the law. It is putting the love of God into force, and the love of man is manifested by being faithful to God. That is something very different from using an army and a police force to tell people, “This is the way you should act.” The distinction, you see, is very ably set forth in the quarrel between two religions. Paul said, when he was speaking of the chosen people, “He is a Jew who is one inwardly,” and then he went on to say that the true Israelite, or Jew, is one who is, by faith, a son of Abraham. Now, Mohammed took those very words of Paul to oppose Christianity. He said, “He is a Muslim who is one outwardly.” Only outward compliance, keeping a few rituals, and then a coercive order, that’s all. Islam doesn’t care what’s in your heart, as long as you maintain a few simple forms, whereas, our faith doesn’t operate that way. God requires that it begin with regeneration and the gift of the Spirit, and then the extension of that into every area of life. The dominion the Lord has over us we are to manifest in our lives over every area where he has called us, and that does not mean acting like Mohammedans, and saying eternals will satisfy God. We work from inside out.

Are there any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] Well, could you give me a practical examine of what the Christian’s responsibility would be in the area, say of civil government, like politics? What would be his responsibility for exercising dominion as a citizen in the state, in the area of politics?

[Rushdoony] Yes. We have a responsibility in politics to exercise dominion by our vote, by holding office, getting godly men into office, by limiting the powers of the state, and making the state the servant of the Messiah, rather than a messiah, by seeing to it that the state, in a very limited sphere, exists to provide justice, or righteousness. That in every other sphere, we take over the responsibility as individuals. We cannot complain about welfarism if we, as Christians, do nothing to remedy it. We cannot complain about state power when we have not exercised Christian power.

Any other questions? Well, if not, let us bow our heads in prayer as we conclude.

Our Lord and our God, it has been good for us to be here. We thank thee that thou art the light of the world, and we pray that thy light may be shed abroad through us unto the far corners of this country and the world. We pray that thou wouldst bring us again under the dominion of Christ, and make us a people called to be the light of the world, a city set on a hill whose light cannot be hid. Give unto all traveling mercies as they journey homeward, a blessed night’s rest, and joy in their labors day by day. In Jesus name. Amen.

End of tape