Systematic Theology – The State

The Realm of Untruth

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 21

Dictation Name: 21 The Realm of Untruth

Year: 1970’s

Our next subject is The Realm of Untruth. Humanists love to listen to themselves talk. They like to ridicule the idea of sin, and of guilt, of grace and of God, of justice, of good and evil, and more, and yet they speak of themselves passionate as the defenders of the rights of the people. But they destroy everything they claim they champion.

Walter Kaufman has written a book of which I have spoken more than once, Without Guilt and Justice, declaring that guilt and justice are both ideas that have reference to God, and if there is no God, there is no guilt nor innocence, and no justice nor injustice. A prominent criminal attorney, Jack Everoth{?} has said, and the title of the book is What the Hell is Justice? Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who has had more influence on the courts of this century than any other man, and was an associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1902-1932, once said from the bench at the U.S. Supreme Court, “I am not here to do justice. I am here to play the game according to the rules.” Holmes did not believe in justice. The idea of justice was, for him, a myth. There could be, for him, no relationship between law and morality.

Now, the position of Holmes and others like him has had far-reaching implications. If there is neither good nor evil, if there is no moral law above and beyond the state to which man can appeal, then man has no moral ground in terms of which he can criticize the state. Whatever the state does is right, and all power is immanent in the state.

Hellowell{?}, in a study in the 1930’s, traced the history of modern legal thought in Germany, and he pointed out how, in Germany, liberal thought hacked away at the idea of a God over all, having disposed of God, it disposed of good and evil. It therefore meant that whatever the state declared was right, because there could be no law above the state to judge the state, and therefore, no man could criticize the state because whatever the state did was therefore, right.

We’re facing that problem in every country. We’re facing it right here in this country. As some of you know, we are in the process of setting up the Rutherford Foundation to fight these legal cases, and to create a network of lawyers from coast to coast. One of the cases, the first we have now to deal with is a suit against a group of people who picketed an abortion clinic, and what is the grounds of the suit? They were slandered. Why? Because if you say abortion is murder, you are slandering somebody, since abortion is legal and what is legal is moral. This was the argument of Senator John Tunney in 1975, I believe, in Anaheim, when he was confronted by pro-life prople. He told them they could not say abortion was immoral because it was legal, and they asked him, “If theft is legalized, will it be moral,” and he said, “Yes.” So, how can you criticize anything? Free speech disappeared. The moment a thing is legal to criticize, it is slander, and of course, this is how the court ruled in Pennsylvania. So, this is what we face. There is no good nor evil possible beyond the state.

George Orwell, in 1984, portrayed the kind of world that would lead to, and Orwell said political life is par excellance, the realm of untruth. Orwell said we shall get no where unless we start by recognizing that political behavior is largely non-rational, that the world is suffering from some kind of mental disease which must be diagnosed before it can be cured. He went onto say that this mental disease is the desire for pure power, which seems to be more dominant that the desire for wealth.

Well, Orwell was never a Christian. He saw, in essense, that the modern state is a religious entity, which has taken the place of God, and so he said the modern state is the realm of untruth. It is the realm of the modern idolatry, and the modern state is the great idol, or Baal.

Our Lord said, concerning Satan, that he was the father of lies, and Orwell has confirmed that with his study.

Genesis 3:5 tells us that Satan’s temptation was that every man should be his own god, determining good and evil for himself, because he felt there was no good and evil in the universe apart from what man chose. In the modern world, man’s will is to prevail. This is the thesis of democracy. It is not to be standards. It is not to be God. It is not to be God’s law, but man’s will that is to prevail, and man is held to be good. Original sin is replaced by environmental sin, and salvation by political action, education and sociology, and the state is the agency of salvation and man’s savior.

We have the myth of neutrality, that the state is the great neutral agency which, like God, can judge good and evil in every area, and of course, we have humanism as the established religion of this new order. We cannot limit religion to institutions, and we cannot limit it to individuals. Everything in this world is religious. Institutions can be religious. The church is a religious institution. The school is a religious institution, Christian, humanist, or whatever. The church is a religious institution. A temple or a shrine is a religious institution. A family is a religious institution, but in the modern world, these institutions claim to be outside of God, and the more they are outside of him, the more they become the great lie, and the modern state has become the great lie.

We are told in John 1:3 that Jesus Christ the Word, is he “by whom all things are made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” The word that John used is, in the Greek, logos. The Greeks used that word also, but gave it a radically different meaning. For Plato, the logos is the pattern, the idea, the reason in being, which is totally apart in being, and the state, for him, was the locale of reason and the logos. The philosopher kings, therefore, embodied the reason, the logos, the word, and should rule. This meant a rule by the elite, who were the voice of reason, and the rulers were to put to death all who could not see it their way, because they were obviously irrational and totally corrupt. The voice of reason was to triumph in the philosopher kings, the elite planners.

Today, we have the same idea, although the language is changed somewhat. The state, as the humanistic power, is the realm of untruth, the realm of the lie, but a lie is not just a single fact. It is an attitude of existence which determines the whole of life. It is an attitude which resists God, who is the giver of life, and therefore, the lie is allied always to death. As long as the state rejects Christ, it is the realm of untruth. So, whether it be the Soviet Union, France, West Germany, Spain, or the United States, if they reject the lordship or sovereignty of Christ, they are a lie. They are the realm of untruth. They refuse to live by the every word of God. We are told in Revelation 22:13-15 where Christ speaks saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”

All who will not accept Jesus Christ, including states, are outside the gates of the city. We know it means states, because a little before that, we are given a vision of the great feast of vultures, contrasted to the marriage supper of the lamb, and in the feast of vultures, the nations of this world are consumed. God brings a judgment upon Babylon the great, and then the feast of vultures takes over, and then we are told, This is the fact. All who do not recognize Christ, the Alpha and Omega, all who do not keep the commandments of God “are dogs and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”

We have, therefore, a duty to bring every area of life and thought under the dominion of Christ as sovereign, Christ as King, and therefore, we must say to the state, “You cannot be and you are not neutral. Neither are you sovereign. Christ is King, and every tongue must confess him and every knee bow to him, and acknowledge him to be the Lord.”

End of tape