Systematic Theology – The State

Atheism, Morality, Law, and the State

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 11

Dictation Name: 11 Atheism, Morality, Law, and the State

Year: 1970’s

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that as we face the war against statism, against humanism and unbelief, we know that thou art on the throne, and it is thy counsel that shall prevail, and so, our God, make us valiant in the battle, confident in faith, instant in prayers, and victorious to the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. In Jesus name. Amen.

We shall, as briefly as possible, deal with three subjects this evening, because we’re trying to go through the theology of the state as rapidly as possible, and make these tapes and the written manuscript available for publication by early 1983.

Our first subject this evening is Atheism, Morality, Law, and the State. One of the facts that we have seen in the modern age is the rise of the humanistic state, and it comes out of the development of Antinomianism and Christianity, the anti-law attitude.

Law is inescapably moral. All law is simply enacted morality and it represents a particular religion. So that, as we have seen before, whatever country you go to, the law system represents a religious faith. It is Islamic, Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, or, as is increasingly the case, humanistic. If we undermine God’s law, we surrender the relevance of Christianity to the problems of social order, to the problems of law and of the state, and we become polytheist. Polytheists are people who believe in many gods, and then we say if we leave the state to go its own way, “Well, the state has its own god and the church has its own God.” We surrender the crown rights of Christ our Lord.

As a result, today civil government in the United States and all over the world, virtually, reflects a religion, humanism, not Christianity. It reflects an atheistic, humanistic perspective, not a biblical one, and the sad fact is that evangelicals and modernists are agreed today in their antinomianism.

A few years ago, then ambassador Andrew J. Young, in an interview said, “Morality for me is thinking clearly through the alternatives and making a decision that is best for the largest number of people. I learned my foreign policy in theology class, not in the church. I was reading Reinhold Neibor{?}, Paul Tilich, Deitrich Bonhoffer. My understanding of Jesus Christ is that he came to fulfill the law, and you’re trying to talk in terms of a moral law. I don’t believe in it.” In other words, Young justified immorality in foreign affairs, in foreign policy, in the name of grace, and that we are no longer under law.

Humanism, of course, has ancient roots. It’s the second oldest religion in the world. It goes back to Genesis 3:5, “Ye shall be as God,” but humanism’s great heyday began in the 18th, in the 19th centuries, and its first great philosophy was Ludwig Feuerbach, whose dates were 1804-1872. What Feuerbach was that God is the objectification of human experience, of human ideas and ideals. He is a product of man’s life, and man liking certain things, projects it up into the skies and says, “Because I believe in love, therefore, God is love, and because I believe in justice, God is justice, and because I believe this and that, and the other things, therefore, these things must come from some great being whom I will call God.” “Theological statements,” said Feuerbach, “are thus psychological expressions. They express what a society believes to be most important, and therefore, makes greater than man and deifies and calls God.” Karl Marx agreed with Feuerbach, but altered his thesis to say that theological statements are also and essentially the ruling class’s expressions, designed to control the masses. To be the opium of the masses. The 18th century French philosos said that the criticism of religious faith was the starting point of philosophy, because religious faith, representing simply superstitution, the objectification of human ideas, intelligent thinking was impossible until you cleared the ground of all religious faith. Therefore, autonomous man, man independent of God, must eliminate, they said, the God idea.

Of course, basic to this was their hatred of God and their desire to be free of God. Balkunen{?}, the great exponent of anarchism, said, “If there is a God, man is a slave, but man is free, therefore, there is no God,” and for Balkunen{{?}, that settled the matter. He believed he was free and therefore, there could be no God. The premise of the non-existence of God is thus, the starting point, and the reduction of religion to psychology. Freud, therefore, carried this to the logical conclusion. He reduced all of religion to a manifestation of man’s need for some kind of savior from guilt, and therefore, the essential problem for him was to eliminate guilt in the experience of man, or to make man to understand the problem of guilt, and therefore, to feel no need of a savior, no need of a God. Atheism is the logical end of humanism. Humanism views everything in a manmade perspective.

To illustrate, one of the first real humanists in this country, one of the earliest, was Benjamin Franklin. We’re all familiar with his statement, “Honesty is the best policy.” Well, that sounds good, but you see, what you have said there is that, “I am in favor of honesty only because it is the best policy, for me,” and Frederick Nietzsche came along and said, “For me, dishonesty and the lie are the best policy, because I can get further if sometimes I part company with the truth.” So he said, “Any dedication to the truth is not a sound policy.” Now, the only difference between Frederick Nietzsche and Benjamin Franklin was a disagreement on what was the best policy, but both were agreed on one thing. Man should practice what is the best policy, and of course, when you have that approach, you have the triumph of humanistic law replacing God’s law, because for us as Christians, honesty, whether or not it is the best policy, must be our way of life, and every point in the law of God must be practiced as God’s requirement, not because it is the best policy for us.

A good many years ago, in the Stanford Chapel, Dorothy and I heard one of the internationally famous pastors talk about morality in which he affirmed the need sometimes as the best policy of adultery, and indeed, if you affirm man as ultimate, then man can keep or break what we call God’s law in terms of what is the best policy for me, here and now?

Within the area of politics, we have had a like doctrine, the best policy. It is called reasons of state. You may remember, during the Eisenhower years, one member of the Administration strongly affirmed the right of the government in Washington to lie to the people. He was not dealt with for making such a statement, and of course, that premise, that it is the right of the federal government to lie to us for its own welfare, is now a set part of public policy. A modern state assumes there is no God, and the best policy is that which best suits the federal government. So, we have an establishment of religion in the United States. It is humanism, humanistic atheism, and so, it’s premises now rule in church, state, and school.

The Victorian Era had broken with Christianity but it maintained a surface moralism. Now Christianity has no effect on politics, physics, or anything else. It is autonomous man that rules, and so God has become an option. You can take him if you feel he is good for you, or leave him alone, but man can no more live apart from God than man can live without the sun. It would be death if the sun disappeared, and so man’s life is a living death without God. God is not an option. He is the choice between life and death.

Not too long ago, I read a book on the philosophy of Atheism. These were lectures delivered at Columbia University, and the interesting part of those lectures was that the exponent of Atheism, a professor McIntyre, complained that Atheism as an organized movement which was powerful in the last century, was now virtually dead as an organization. Why? Because, he said, we have succeeded to such a great extent that there is no longer any need for us. The churches are doing our job. In fact, he complained at one point, “Theists, those who believe in God, are offering Atheists less and less in which to disbelieve.”

The sovereign man now rules and God has been discarded, and most churchmen see nothing wrong in an Atheistic state and laws that have no regard for God. As a result, Atheism is no longer needed as a movement, because the churches have taken over its work. It has conquered and others are doing its work. And why not? You have magazines declaring that the idea of a Christian state is morally unsound, because Christianity should concern itself only with the soul of man. Our predicament has been three centuries in coming, and as a result, we have a deeply seated battle on our hands.

One of the ideas I’ve touched on from time to time is the Ancient Greek pagan idea of “deus ex machina,” the god out of the machine, and you will recall I cited the classic example of that in Homer when, before the walls of Troy, the Greeks and the Trojans were engaged in battle, Paris appeared likely to meet his end. Paris was the man who started the whole war by running off with the wife, Helen, of the Greek king, and now, it looked as though he was going to pay the price, death, for his sin, but the Goddess snatched him out of the battlefield, and there was his enemy swinging his sword and only thin air, and Paris was taken and plopped right into Helen’s bedroom. Well, that was the Greek idea of salvation. Totally immoral, and if the gods liked you, they picked you up and put you in a very beautiful place and rescued you from the consequences of your own act.

Now, basic to it is that God does not control the universe. It is a universe born of chaos, and too often, Christians want a similar God, not a God of consequences, but the natural and the supernatural are both under God, and his providence rules all things.

As Isaiah says in Isaiah 28:10, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, there a little.” In other words, in God’s universe, walls are built from the foundations up, and to expect otherwise is sin. That’s why, as we face this battle, we’re going to be building walls by laying foundations first, but humanistic man, like the Greeks who believe a la Paris, in a deus ex machina salvation, looks for miracles to happen dramatically. The idea of revolution. That’s a deus ex machine concept. When Lenin and his associates created the Russian Revolution, they took power, they expected paradise to emerge suddenly. They had destroyed the monarchy, Christianity, and capitalism. By definition, everything should be instant utopia, and it was instead, instant famine and starvation, cannibalism. They had never been able to deal with the problem. What keeps them going? Why, they are constantly waging war against the supposed relics of capitalism, of the bourgeois mentality, and supposed capitalistic spies and agents, and when they wipe them out, all will be well, which means they have killed, as one of their own historians has admitted of late, one hundred million people since 1917, and still, with all of this murder, they have no instant utopia. The problems are there.

The sad fact is there are too many churchmen who share this kind of faith. They want to use rebellion, revolution, before using the courts and the ballot box. They want some kind of shortcut to utopia, but we cannot have this philosophy of Atheism. Ours is a faith that begins with the regeneration of man, and then step by step, we build on that, and make them warriors for the faith, to go out and to conquer, and to accomplish what God intends for us. We must build the walls of the New Jerusalem. We must work to recapture the schools, the courts, and every area of life. This is our Christian calling.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] How would you compare this {?} with those of Francis Schaefer with regard to conquering and fighting the system?

[Rushdoony] Well, I don’t think Francis Schaefer has developed it enough, although he has we have to resist. I think he’s just beginning to come to a reconstructionist perspective, yes. Franky Schaefer even more so is coming to a reconstructionist position. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, we’ll take a break for about five to ten minutes, and then start our second session.

End of tape