Systematic Theology – Creation and Providence

The Unity of Our Faith

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 10 of 17

Track: #10

Year:

Dictation Name: 10 The Unity of Our Faith

[Rushdoony] We shall deal now with the unity of our faith. Throughout all of scripture we find affirmed unity of God’s being and His revelation. The doctrines of our faith are necessary aspects of one another so that we cannot assert that anyone doctrine takes priority over any other. Theologians speak of the simplicity of God’s being, or God’s unity of simplicity; this means that no aspect of God is prior to any other aspect. We cannot speak of God’s sovereignty as more important than His work as a creator or that redemption takes priority over anything else. All of God’s being and all of God’s work have a unity to them.

Moreover the doctrines of our faith are necessary aspects of each other. Some people for example, as they approach the doctrine of infallibility will act as though only a few passages, such as II Timothy 3:16 &17, which declares that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, are the only the passages that deal with infallibility or inspiration. But all of scripture does. For example take Isaiah 45. In Isaiah 45 God speaks as the Lord, as the creator, as the redeemer, as the one whose word is infallible, and so on down the line. God makes clear that every aspect of His being is in unity. God begins that chapter by saying that He is calling Cyrus, someone not yet born, generations away, and declares that He will give him victory; He will go before him to open the gates. And then God declares why this is as nothing for Him to do “I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside me. I girded Thee, though thou hast not known me.” God declares that: “I am the Lord, I created all things and therefore I govern all things” and so He says “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, what makest thou? Or thy work, He hath no hands? 10 Woe unto him that saith unto his father, what begettest thou? Or to the woman, what hast thou brought forth?”

Now of course you recognize that Paul in Romans 9 quotes from this chapter in ordered to demonstrate the validity of the doctrine of predestination. He sets forth Isaiah’s declaration that as the potter makes the clay and molds it, so God all things. And here God speaking through Isaiah declares that He is the Lord, He is the Creator, He is the absolute predestinator, and He declares all things from the beginning. Before Cyrus is yet {?} born, He names him and brings him forth. His word is the created word, a God who is sovereign; a God who is the absolute creator of all things can only speak an infallible word. It’s not possible for God to speak any other kind of word.

Scripture tells us that with God all things are possible, in Matthew 19:26. But in four other passages it tells us there is one thing that is not possible for God. Titus 1:2 and Hebrews 6:8 and Luke 21:31 and Malachi 3:6 we are told God cannot lie, God cannot lie. Truth is what God says and what God does. Our Lord declares to the Father “Thy word is truth.” The Psalmist declares “Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and Thy law is truth. Thou art near oh Lord, and all Thy commandments are truth.” You see it is a very wooden and stiff and dead approach to scripture to treat infallibility as though it were possible to hold it, or not to hold it, apart from the rest of the Bible. The unity of our faith is that God of whom the Bible speaks is the creator and therefore the absolute governor of all things; and therefore the one who can only speak the infallible and the true word. Such a God can only exercise a total providence, because He is totally God. Every fact, every atom in the universe is His creation. It is impossible for anything to exist for even an instant apart from, or outside of, God.

The text therefore for infallibility cannot be limited to a few, the text for predestination cannot be limited to a few, the text for creation cannot be limited to a few. You see the point of all this? That the God we meet on every page of the Bible is a unity of simplicity, that all these aspects are totally involved at every point so that you can never describe the God of scripture in isolation from any of these things and if you strip Him of one of these you’ve stripped Him of all. You cannot shun the doctrine of infallibility without having another God; a god who is not absolute Lord. You cannot doubt providence or make it an abstraction without again destroying the God of scripture and having a creature who is not really God.

Our faith clearly asserts a unity. The Belgic confession says, and I’d like to read its statement on the providence of God, which is an excellent one. It’s titled, it’s article 13 The Providence of God and His Government of All Things and I quote: “We believe that the same good God, after he created all things, did not forsake or give them up to fortune or chance but that He rules and governs them according to His holy will, so that nothing happens in this world without His appointment.

Nevertheless God neither is the author of, nor can he be charged with, the sin that are committed. For His power and goodness are so great and incomprehensible that He orders, executes, His work in a most excellent and just manner even then when devils and wicked men act unjustly.

And as to what he does that surpassing human understanding we will not curiously inquire further then our capacity will admit us {?}. But with the greatest humility and reverence, adore the righteous judgments of God, which are hid from us, contenting ourselves that we are pupils of Christ to learn only those things which He has revealed to us in His Word, without transgressing these limits.

This doctrine affords us unspeakable consolation as we are taught thereby that nothing can befall us by chance but by the direction of our most gracious and heavenly Father. Who watches over us with a paternal care, keeping all creatures so under His power, that not a hair of our head (for they are all numbered) nor even a sparrow can fall to the ground without the will of our Father; In whom we do entirely trust. Being persuaded that He so retrains the devil and all our enemies, that without His will and permission they cannot hurt us.

Therefore we reject that damnable error of the Epicureans, who say that God regards nothing and leaves all things to chance”

That’s an excellent statement and a beautiful one. The point is you see, if we weaken any doctrine we weaken all the doctrines. It is a seamless garment and we are called to accept it, and to believe it, and to affirm it in totality. We see today many who calls themselves New Testament Christians or who are antinomian, or who have in one way or another reduced the word of God and limited it and the results are disastrous. One of the sad things is as I travel across country is to see the very extensive moral decline in the churches. Just this week I had a long telephone conversation with the deacon of one of the biggest and best known churches in this country which professes to be Bible believer; but which is antinomian to the core. They have come to believe in decisional regeneration. I sent him a copy of {?} [Author’s name]The Lordship of Christ to use there. Decisional regeneration, it’s their term, all you have to do is to say “yes” to an alter call or on a decision card, and Jesus Christ is bound to save you no matter what you do or become thereafter. What are the consequences? Well he is called a legalist for being against homosexuality, and because in the church parking lot they had at least a thousand or two young people he insists, as an officer of the church, in breaking up the non-marital sexual acts that are regularly carried on there by some of the young people. He’s accused of harassing Christ’s flock and mistreating them.

Now what has happened? Do they have a Christian faith, albeit a defective one? No. The God they worship, and the Christ they affirm has no relationship to the one on scripture. You tamper with any of this word, you tamper with all. You cannot take one portion and hold it in truth while denying others, because it is one God. The ancient doctrine of the unity of simplicity in God’s being affirms that all these things are inseparable one from the other. You can cut off my hand and I’m still a man, and I’m still R.J. Rushdoony; I can lose my right leg or my left leg, or be a basket case, and it’s because I do not have the unity of simplicity which God alone has. But God has a unity of simplicity, He is total and absolute in all His being. Every aspect of His being is equally essential, none can be tampered with.

Are there any questions? Yes?

[Audience member] There’s a magazine, used to be called Present Truth and now is called Verdict {?} by a man named {?} I want to know if you’re familiar with it

[Rushdoony] Yes, I get it.

[Audience member] He takes this doctrine of justification by faith and makes this a central doctrine. And he says we must take that doctrine and test all the other doctrines against it. What is your view there?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Present Truth represents the work of two men essentially, one with an Adventist background, the other Church of England. Their purpose is a worthy one, to set forth the Reformation doctrine of justification as by imputation rather than infusion. At this point we must say that is the most worthy cause, because today what we have is a departure from the reformation doctrine. Most fundamentalist preachers are more medieval then reformation in their perspective because they emphasize experience. Now, the experience is not our salvation. Our experiences, is our reaction to our salvation. I’m giving a series on justification right now at Westwood every other week, and I used this illustration. If a man were to take a hundred thousand dollars and deposit it in my account it would be there in my account, whether I knew it or not. When I would be told of that hundred thousand, which could be the same day or two or three weeks later, I would have a glorious experience.

Now my experience would not create the hundred thousand dollars, it would be my reaction to knowing of the hundred thousand dollars. Similarly our justification is a legal act by Jesus Christ in the court of almighty God. My knowledge of that is by experience. It’s that act of Christ that saves me, not my experience. My experience is my knowledge of and reaction to the fact of my salvation.

Well today you see it’s been reversed. Salvation is seen in the experience; decisional regeneration, the revivalistic emphasis on the experience, not on justification. That’s not reformation theology. They’re sound therefore in seeking that emphasis, but they’re undermining what they’re doing because at other points they’re hostile to the full orb faith. In one of their recent issues they attack the doctrine of predestination. Now if there is no predestination what has happened to the doctrine of justification? Well it means that we are probably justified, because if Christ’s justification is not an absolute thing from all eternity, from a God who cannot change, then what will happen to me five hundred years from now when I’m sitting back on a cloud and rejoicing in my status as one of the redeemed and the Lord says “Oops, I slipped, I didn’t have absolute control of things and now you’ve lost your salvation”? which is possible and necessary if the Lord is not absolutely sovereign Lord. So to affirm a doctrine in abstract from the totality of scripture is to lose it very quickly because you’ve no foundation for it, you don’t have the full body.

And this is their weakness, they act as though one thing can predominate over others, but it is the essence of Biblical theology that you begin to falsify the doctrine of God and the doctrines of scripture if you get priority in any one thing. Then God is not fully God at some point. Now things can have a priority with me. I can be better at writing then I can be at plumbing. I’m terrible at plumbing, and I can’t cut a board square very well. Why? Because in my being there are variations in my aptitudes from being fair to terrible. But there is no such variation in God’s being. So that God at every point in His being is total, absolute, perfect, so if you take one aspect (His sovereignty) or another aspect (His justification of us) and say “This is the testing point, and here we get to the heart of God” you are then putting {?} and He is not totally God. It’s the same thing as subordinationism to say that the Father is greater than the Son and the Holy Spirit. But we must hold that all three persons are very God of very God; that in the economics of the trinity one may at one point do something economically, practically, in which He functions in a subordinate position, but in their being there is no subordination.

Does that help explain the matter?

Yes?

[Audience member] I think it was {?} whether or not he believes in eternal damnation, and he has always evaded it.

[Rushdoony] Yes, which means that his doctrine of justification becomes meaningless then; you cannot hold a partial truth. I was amused some years ago, as well as indignant, to hear someone say that with the new math you could have answers that were wrong, but you could still be correct.

Yes?

[Audience member] Do you think that there are people, or did Calvin’s doctrine say that some people are {?} to be damned.

[Rushdoony] Yes. What Calvin is saying is that God is the absolute lord and Sovereign, He has made all things, known unto God are all His works from the foundation of the world. God is a perfect architect, knows exactly what he is doing and has designed the building from beginning to end and has no left over pieces. All of us have no claim on heaven, but in His sovereign grace He chooses some. All serve a function in terms of His eternal purpose. And so speaks His word and we have no right to question. You see his word says that some are reprobate. Roman’s 9 is the clearest statement of that. It also tells us that we are responsible, we are accountable, and that we are guilty if we reject Him. Now we can’t choose and say “I want to affirm my accountability rather than God’s sovereignty” we have to accept both. The fact that we cannot reconcile the two does not mean that the two are not true, you see. We both have to say “I am responsible, and I cannot blame it on God if I go to hell.” But I must also affirm God has predestined all things, and I have to accept both. If I don’t, if I take one and not the other I am saying that my mind must govern God, and must judge God’s works.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Because God tells us to pray, and that if we pray He hears us. You see none of us, and I’ve used this illustration many times, really know what electricity is. It’s like so many things in this world scientist can describe them and control them but they can’t really explain what they are. That doesn’t keep us from using electricity. Now there is no man who can fathom the mystery of God’s predestination, plus God’s summons to us that we should pray without ceasing. God says both, I’ve got to accept both, I’ve got to say all things have been decreed by God and yet God requires me to pray, to pray believing He will answer. So you see if we wait until we can understand the mystery of these things then we will never believe. WE would have to have the mind of God to understand God, so we can’t pick and choose what portion of scripture we are to believe, you have to accept it all.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] The question is if a man is justified before God, but he believes in something like decisional regeneration, is he still a Christian? I would say if he really understands what decisional regeneration is he is not justified before God. Because he is believing that it’s his affirmation which binds God, rather than God’s sovereign grace which binds man. He’s completely reversed the relationship of God and man, so he’s not saved.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Then he has come to a knowledge of grace by the grace of God, yes.

Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience member] Is there such a thing as, for someone who is {?} to plead ignorance of understanding

[Rushdoony] Oh yes many, many people who are truly regenerate are ignorant in many aspects of faith, they’ve not been taught, but they do approach the Lord by faith, with a trust, with a surrender, and sometimes there wisdom is really remarkable with very little knowledge and with very little reading of scriptures they very quickly come to the truth, and they hunger for it, they turn to it, they find their way. TO be alive is to grow.

Yes?

[Audience member] You would conclude then that people like {?} are unregenerate then?

[Rushdoony] I don’t know {?} but every time I’ve been {?} and horrified by the stories told about {?}

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] He gives every evidence of it. He emphatically affirms there’s no relationship between regeneration and holiness, and I don’t see how that’s possible.

[Audience member] He does have a understanding of a lot of scriptural doctrine.

[Rushdoony] If you read and study and you know your Greek you can come up with a great deal. One man who was a rank modernist and contemptuous of every doctrine we believe I found very learned in the Greek manuscripts and a very remarkable teacher up to a point, and totally blind beyond that.

Well if there are no further questions we will meet on the second Friday of January, which I believe is the twelfth, and we’ll be very, very happy to see the newlyweds.