Systematic Theology - Sin
Sin and Matter
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Systematic Theology
Lesson: Government
Genre: Speech
Track: 07
Dictation Name: 07 Sin and Matter
Year: 1960’s – 1970’s
…Father, we give thanks unto Thee that day by day, Thy mercies are ever new. We thank Thee our Father, that Thou art raising up men from one end of the country to the other, to stand in the gap and do battle against the enemy. We pray that Thou wouldst strengthen them, bless them and prosper them in Thy service. Guide us all, we beseech Thee, each in our several ways as we serve Thee that in all things we may be faithful and might ever magnify the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In His name we pray. Amen.
Our scripture this evening for both sessions is from I Timothy 4:1-3. We have been studying the doctrine of sin. It is important for us, in order to know what we face in this world and in ourselves, what sin is. I Timothy 4:1-3:
“1Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.”
A very ancient heresy, unhappily all-too widespread in the Church has associated sin with matter and virtue with spirit. As a result, we are told that the spiritual life is the superior and people are encouraged to be above material concerns. Now, the logical conclusion of such a perspective is Monasticism and Asceticism. Most churches, of course, do not go so far. Rather, they give the inference that a Christian should not be too interested in, or enjoy too much, food, clothing, sex, sports, and any and all material concerns. The roots of this view are not biblical. They are actually Greek and Neoplatonic and Manichean. According to ancient pagan thought, there are two kinds of being:
Matter, which is bad
Spirit, which is good
And the world is a mixture of matter and spirit. The way of virtue therefore is to be spiritual, or as the way of sin is to be material. This is not the biblical perspective. After all, Satan is a purely spiritual being and totally evil.
The bible says there are two kinds of being: the uncreated being of God and the whole of the material creation. Spirit, mind, matter, all things are created by God. All were created very good. The problem in creation is not matter, it is sin. So that it is not material things we need to avoid, but sin, which is something very different, so that our concern is not that materialism is bad, but that sin is that which must be avoided.
Sin in man began in his mind, not in his body. As a result, when Paul in I Timothy 4: 1, 3, issues this warning, he was striking out against that kind of false religion that condemned things material. We know from some of the Church fathers that there were groups that wanted to pull the Church off into strange byways of living a totally spiritual life, being above things material, despising the body, forsaking the eating of meats, forsaking marriage, showing a total unconcern for clothing, so that if you dressed well, you were very materialistic. This is the kind of thing that Paul was warning against. Now it is the Holy Spirit that issues this warning. Paul begins by saying, now the Spirit speaketh expressly, plainly, clearly so that this warning comes from the Holy Spirit.
Let’s take a moment to deal with that word: spirit. The Holy Spirit is not to be confused with the spirit of man. Man’s spirit is (the word means breath or life or wind) man’s spirit is derivative. It is created, whereas the Holy Spirit is the uncreated third person of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit calls this doctrine the doctrine of devils and seducing spirits. It declares it to be an apostate faith. It declares that it involves hypocrisy, lies and evil and a seared conscience. As a result, these views we must call more than heretical. They are apostate. They are anti-Christian.
This false faith, Paul says, leads men to forbid marriage or down-grade it, to counsel such things as vegetarianism as a religious principle. If men worship life as such, and if the spirit, or life as such is holy, then we will deplore all taking of life, including the life of animals. This false faith is common both in and out of the Church in our time. Many nonChristians write about the fall and say the Fall of Man, according to the Bible, was a fall into sex. There have actually been Christians who have held that view also. This is clearly nonsense. More than a few churchmen have assumed that sexual desire as such is evil. In the Bible it is only the lawless use of sex which is sinful. In fact, Paul says in Hebrews 13:4, marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled. But whoremongers and adulterers, God will judge. Moreover, according to this view which began in the Early Church, to be beautiful, or to enjoy beautiful things was a sin. We actually know of cases were people would try to mar their faces so it would not be attractive because attractiveness was seen as a sin. This was a Manichean, not a biblical faith. No sin in the enjoyment of beauty, whether it is in mountains, forests, fields or persons of the other sex; it is the lawless use and the lawless desire of things which is evil, coveting or wrongfully seeking to gain and use all such things. It is a serious error therefore to say that sin is in sex or in matter or in things. Sin is rooted in the heart. Not in objects.
Luther put his finger on the matter when he said on one occasion, “Do not suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused. Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit wine and women? The sun, the moon and the stars have been worshiped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky?” Now we come to the heart of this problem. If we have a Neoplatonic or Manichean, a pagan view of sin, our answer to evil becomes controls. If your view of sin is pagan, if it is environmental, if you feel that sin is in things, or in women, or in men, what’s your answer? You’re going to control those things.
Modern politics is thus pagan because it sees the problem of sin as having the answer or controls. All our politics today is very religious, but it’s the religion of Humanism. Its answer to every problem is to control people, whether it’s a problem of bigotry or a problem of the use of certain things, let’s control things—control is the answer in humanistic politics. Moreover, in pagan thinking, there is never a solution to problems. Controls have to be permanent. In paganism, you cannot change things. Matter is eternally evil. Spirit is eternally good. Life is a mixture of the two; therefore eternally you’re going to have to control people.
But for us as Christians, there’s a very different answer: regeneration. Man can, by the power of God through Jesus Christ, be born again. There’s a solution to the problem of evil: being born again.
Now, if you do not believe in regeneration, you’re going to believe in controls. You have no answer but controls. How else can you deal with evil? And our problem today in our generation is that people, having lost faith in the Gospel, are turning to controls as the answer. Let’s have a big and powerful State. Let us deal with this and that problem by legislation. Let’s control people! Then and then only can we deal with the situation. But controls never solve a situation. They only lead to more controls, everlasting controls. We, and the Word of God, have the answer. Regeneration, and then a godly law and order. Instead of the library-full of books, a la Humanism, you have one book. The Word of God, which deals not with controlling people, but dealing specifically with action. You see, if you are a Manichean or a Neo-Platonist, every man needs controlling. Every man is always without any possibility of change, going to be predisposed by the material aspect of his being, to sin, to evil. You’re going to have to control all men. Humanistic politics is therefore the control of all men. Christianity, by putting its faith in regeneration, says all we then control are the law-breakers, actual offences, not all men. As a result, you have a totally different society.
We have controls today because we have Humanism. We’re going to get more controls unless we again go back to a faith in the regenerating power of God through Christ. When the faith of Christians wans, coercion then replaces conversion and the essence of virtuous action becomes coercive legislation. Modern man is ready to criticize the Church, which in other days put its faith in coercion because it didn’t trust the Word of God and the power of God sufficiently. But there is no difference now. We trust in coercion far more than the Medieval Church or the Reformation Church ever did. We’ve simply transferred coercion to the State and amplified it a thousand-fold. Thus, as someone has spoken of perpetual war for perpetual peace, in terms of Humanism, that’s what we have—perpetual controls as the only solution. There’s a deadly consequence and there is no answer.
Whenever men have followed the pagan way of seeing sin in matter rather than in the heart of man, seeing matter as the problem rather than sin, it has led them into all kinds of disastrous actions. One of the saddest episodes in Church history was Origin, a man who was one of the great thinkers in the Early Church, although I’m inclined to doubt whether he was ever a Christian. His thinking was heavily Neo-Platonic. He was plagued by sexual desire and he sought to be holy. But being a Greek in his thinking, he solved the matter, he thought, by submitting to castration. And when it was over, there was no change. He had not paid attention to the scripture which made it clear that sin is in the heart, not in the body.
A false doctrine of sin leads to a defeated life. There is no hope of winning the war against sin if we identify sin wrongly. For all those who hold to the pagan perspective, sin is always there. It is inescapable. It is a part of being. But for us, it is not. It is a moral failure. When we are born again in Jesus Christ, the power of sin and death is broken in our lives, and as we grow in grace, we see it progressively destroyed in our lives and in the new creation, abolished from our lives forever.
Are there any questions now?
[Audience] Can you repeat that last sentence again?
[Rushdoony] When we enter into Heaven, our sanctification is made perfect and complete and the power of sin and death is totally abolished from our lives forever, so that we no longer sin. Our sanctification is perfect.
Yes...
[Audience] Did, did {?} have a beautiful society with law and order based on the Bible, do we still have the need for a police force in {?} or would that be {?}
[Rushdoony] Yes. We would, but a minimum need. We have seen, some of us about my age bracket, what has happened. I’ve often mentioned my hometown here in California. When I was in high school, there was one police officer with a relief man and it was a big thing when they, once in a year, he picked up somebody for being drunk and threw them in jail. Everybody talked about it. It was a big thing. Now, with only 900 more people in that small community, there are 18 men out in patrol cars and an office force. The difference is in the lives of the people. Then, virtually everybody went to church. I only knew of one family that claimed to be Atheist, and we all regarded them as really peculiar. It was a godly community. So the need for a police force was minimal.
Now in a Christian society, that will be the case. Archeologists have told us that in the days of very strict and godly societies in Ancient Israel, the houses did not have doors. They had instead of a door, a curtain. They didn’t feel the need for protection with a barred door. But when times would change, why event he barred door would not be enough.
Any other questions?
Well if not, we’ll take a break for about ten minutes and then resume our session.