Systematic Theology – Eschatology

Eschatology and Causality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 13 of 32

Track: #13

Year:

Dictation Name: 13 Eschatology and Causality

[Rushdoony] Our scripture is from Isaiah 58, Isaiah 58 and our subject is Eschatology and Causality. Isaiah 58, eschatology and causality.

“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.

2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.

3 Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labors.

4 Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high.

5 Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? When thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.

9 Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;

10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day:

11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

12 And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.

13 If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words:

14 Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

The subject of causality has concerned philosophers and scientists over the centuries. Rightly they have seen it as essential to knowledge and to understanding. However, the problem with the scientific answers that have been given to the question of causality, for untold centuries until relatively recent times have been seriously defective for two reasons; first they have been simplistic, and second they have been materialistic. To illustrate this, the classic illustration of causality for some centuries has been the analogy of the billiard ball. When a billiard ball is struck by a player, and it hits another ball, it sets that ball in motion. And the attitude of scientists for untold centuries was that “this is what causality is about.” Like a billiard ball ones cause hits another ball and creates an effect. That ball then as a cause hits another ball, and creates another effect. Moreover, there is a running down of energy from ball to ball, so you have the diminution of energy from the original stroke to the last ball that moves.

Now, this was the materialistic, the atomic illustration of energy for some centuries. The picture was very gratifying to the enlightenment because it dealt with causality very ably, in a material sense. Also, what it did say was once the first ball was struck by the billiard player, then the rest of the motion was purely mechanical. Now deism arose out of such thinking; in other words God created the universe a material, mechanical structure. He set it in motion, and there is a constant decline of energy over the centuries; and finally the universe will run down. However this model is seriously defective from the theological perspective. First of all we have to say there is no simple cause and effect pattern. A multiplicity of causes converge on every effect so that when something happens you can find a hundred and one strands that lead to it.

To transfer this to the genetic realm we have to say “Yes, here we are as individuals a single effect, so to speak.” But, there’s a long genetic history behind us, and we’re not the product of a single gene but a whole history of genes stretching back over the centuries, have come together, converged, to create us. So there are a multiplicity of causes for every effect. Now modern science has appreciated this fact, it has used this as an excuse to say “we must drop the causality question, it is to complex.”

Moreover there is always more than a single effect from this multiplicity of causes; there can be a multiplicity of effects. But there is another defect, a much more serious one. This doctrine of causality says that the first cause, God, does one thing, He starts the whole things and then He’s an absentee Landlord. Science needed God as a limiting concept, as a first cause. In Aristotle for example, God is the first cause, but He has not function after that; He doesn’t count, He is irrelevant, he just sets the thing in motion. But the Bible does not give us such a picture, God is not merely the first cause; and causality is not merely material. In fact what the Bible tells us is, that God is present in every event of history from the beginning of time to the end, and totally present. So that we have to say that God is not merely the first cause, He is the total cause, He is always present. In other words, we cannot have a mechanical or a materialistic concept of causality.

The Bible tells us that God has a purpose in His creation, and He is always totally active. Moreover the Bible does not tell us that the universe is inevitably declining. Leviticus 26, Deuteronomy 28, tell us that when there is a moral decline there is a material decline, when there is a theological decline, an apostasy, there is a physical decline. But when there is a re-awakening, then there is a change. The world around us, the ground beneath our feet, the weather above us, all of them improve when people return to the Lord. Moreover Isaiah 65 tells us that as the earth is filled with righteousness as the waters cover the sea, then too man’s lifespan will be dramatically lengthened. So that we cannot see the universe in terms of materialistic science as inevitably declining; it has a decline in terms of sin, and a rise in terms of grace. Renewal is a moral and a theological fact.

But we have to say something further, if you have the billiard analogy of causality, which has saturated the minds of modern thinkers in men, what happens? Then you have a rigid and a mechanical view of man, then you have to say two things, both of which reduce you to impossibilities. You have a blind mechanical determinism on the one hand, and freewill, which is nothing but chance, on the other hand; and both are untenable conceptions, impossible conceptions. But if you say that causality is first of all theological and personal, not mechanical, that it is total, always present, always interacting between God and man, then you can affirm both predestination and human responsibility, because it is not a mechanical thing; it is a vital, a living fact.

Moreover, consider this fact, the most neglected doctrine in the history of the church has been the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Why? If you have a mechanistic doctrine of causality there’s no room for the Holy Spirit. You can say “yes, God in the beginning did these things.” And “Yes, Christ in history did these things that apply to me now.” But to have God present today and active, in the form of the Holy Spirit, to have the third person a living factor, that’s impossible. And so the doctrine of the Spirit has been a dead doctrine in the history of the church because of this agent, pagan, materialistic, and mechanical doctrine of causality. SO the doctrine of causality is very important to us, because in the scriptures it tells us that the living God. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, right now are active as the absolute and basic cause, and that causality is first of all personal. In fact first and last personal, because it comes from the living God; and that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are present here and now, interacting with all of creation.

Thus for the Bible, causality is theological, and it is covenantal, and as a result we have to view ourselves and the world around us in terms of this.

Now Isaiah 58 gives us an example of this moral and theological causality by God. In the first two verse we have a description of religion as ritual, as the observance of forms, not the observance of the law and the righteousness, or justice of God. And Isaiah gives us a picture of the people enjoying their church life, or their temple life, and they outwardly are very interested in everything that goes on, but are inwardly dead. Now this is a picture that should be familiar to us. We know people who go to church week in and week out and enjoy the services, and their life is centered around the church, but they’ve been going 30, and 40, and 50 years, and they don’t know what God teaches in His word. They have been caught up in something that they identified with Godliness, but has no real relationship to it. They delight themselves in the life of the church, and feel that they are delighting themselves in the Lord, but they do not know Him. They think they are approaching God, and so when they are indicted because when God says to Isaiah “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up Thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” He is saying to him “let your voice resound like a trumpet, let it be an indictment of these people, for they are in sin; even though they seek me daily, even though they believe they are full of delight in my house, and in my ways.

Well the reaction of the people to this we have at the beginning of verses 3-7, the first two sentences of verse three the people say in shock to Isaiah “’wherefore have we fasted,’ say they ‘and Thou seest not? Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and Thou takest no knowledge?’” “Why how dare you God, You’re blind! You’re blind to all that we’re doing for you. You’re blind to the fact that we attend services. Why even daily we seek you.” And God’s answer is “behold in the day of your fast ye find pleasure and exact all your labors, And the day of atonement when you should be, knowing that your salvation is not your work, but Mine, that your atonement is not by works, but by grace, what do you do? You fast, but you spend the day enjoying yourself.” No thought of the meaning of the day, in other words. “It becomes for you a holiday for your own enjoyment, and all the while you are making your hired hands work the harder, there is no day of atonement for them. And you fast, yes you take the day of atonement off; but to quarrel, and to get into arguments, and to sometimes even get to blows. That’s the kind of holy day you observe.”

“Is this the fast,” God says, “that I have chosen?” “Is it to go through the ritual of bowing your head down and spreading sackcloth and ashes, and act as though you’re in grief for your sins and grateful to God for His atonement?” “Will you call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord? Is this not the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to lest the oppressed go free, that ye break every yoke. That you overthrow injustice, you break every yoke that sinfully binds man; to work to create a free society under God. And is it not the kind of fast I require on the Day of Atonement, to come before me as men who have given bread to the hungry? And the poor that are homeless, you’ve been ready to house them in your house, and when you see the naked, you cover them. And that thou hide not thyself from Thine own flesh.” The term “thine own flesh” here means your own relatives. God is saying here through Isaiah what Paul says later; he that doth not care for his own hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.

Then in verses 8-14 God goes on to say “8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.” Doctor E.J. Young in his commentary speaks of the significance of these words, in particular the introductory word “then”. It’s important to the doctrine of causality, he says, and I quote: “the introductory ‘then’ is of tremendous significance, for it points to the time when the glorious change will have occurred, and God’s people will do those things just described. In these first two clauses the emphasis falls upon speed. Elsewhere Isaiah uses a verb “break forth of the hatching of eggs, and a water gushing forth.” The word seems to suggest suddenness, swiftness, and novelty.” So we have here a declaration of religious and moral causality. All things are governed by God, and healing and restoration follow upon faithfulness. Our cry for help is then heard when we call, the Lord says ‘here I am’, He hears us.

Compassion with action is what God says constitutes the true fast. Then when we do these things we are like a spring of living water because our causality is of the Lord. Then too we are a watered garden, God says “thou shalt be like a watered garden.” Now that is an interesting figure of speech, very important one in the Bible, why? Well think for a moment, in an area where there is no irrigation the ground depends upon rain, a very unstable source of water. In an area of irrigation you have water coming in irrigation ditches, as in the San Joaquin Valley for example, to take care of the trees, the vines, the vegetables. But the area that receives the best care is the garden. In your garden you are mindful of everything, your shrubs, your flowers, your plants, your vegetables, you look at them everyday with a far greater care then you do, say, what’s out in the field. So the garden gets an especial care, so God says that when we are faithful to Him, when we are grounded in His word, and when by His spirit we produce the fruits of righteousness, what happens is we get the same care that a well watered garden gets. And so He says we are His watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.

E.J. Young comments on this, citing Calvin “thus ever abounding continuous grace comes to man from the God of all bounty. ‘It is only man’s sin’ says Calvin ‘that can stop its course.’” The purpose of this restoration is to establish Godly men in the covenant life. WE become the restorer of paths to dwell in. Covenant man is God’s appointed Lord over all the earth, to build to the old waste places. “Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.” This is what we are to be, we are to build on the foundations of past generations, to create the structures that God appoints, and to restore the paths of righteousness for men to walk in, to make of this world and all therein, the kingdom of the Lord. We become restorers.

And so we have very clearly hear a declaration of God’s causality, and God’s eschatology. God’s eschatology must be our eschatology, not just deliverance from tribulation constitutes eschatology, but the kingdom of God and His justice. If we deny this doctrine of causality we are left with an empty Bible because God is no longer the cause of things around us, and in us. Then God is remote, He did something at the beginning, and Christ did something at Calvary, but for the present God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, are remote and irrelevant, and dead to our time. And all we have is the Bible to mine for some spiritual nuggets, because it’s turned into a wasteland if God, as the totally and living God and the cause of all things, is denied. But if we affirm a Biblical causality and eschatology, then we have at every point to do with a God who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. We then too have His governing word that gives us the key, the power and the plan for victory in all things. Having so great a wealth to beggar ourselves by abandoning it is really an amazing thing. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God great and marvelous is Thy word, and we thank Thee our Father that Thou art not a God afar off, but closer to us than we are to ourselves, that Thou oh Father art ever near; that when we call Thou dost answer “here I am.” And that Thou oh God the Son art He who dost tell us Thou wilt never leaves us, nor forsake us, so that we may boldly say “the Lord is my helper, I shall not fear what man may do unto me” and that Thou oh God the Spirit, art He who dost indwell to enlighten, to guide, to bless, and to direct our every way. We praise Thee oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and we rejoice in the fact that Thou art Lord of all, and the cause of all things. In Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] I was thinking about what you said to begin with, about making a secure causation in relation to evolution and the discussion of that, and when you refute mechanistic causation then you are also refuting theistic evolution, so-called.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, the mechanistic causation led to evolution, but as its implications came home people realized it really means devolution, a disintegration. And so the optimism of early Darwinians, has given way to a radical pessimism, because the concept of causality implicit in it requires that universe to rundown.

Now lest consider something else, if you have that concept of causality which is basic to modern thinking, even though science has abandoned it, but it’s abandoned it by abandoning the idea of causality and God as well. It leads to premillennialism and amillennialism, the universe is running down so there’s no hope of victory. So you’re going to be hostile to anything that says that there can be a revival, that the earth can be renewed, and that man can be renewed because all three persons of the Godhead are remote, and they’re not causes here and now present.

[Audience member] {?} was against evolution was the second law of thermodynamics, which is, I have no examples, but that is the…

[Rushdoony] Yes, the second law of thermodynamics militates against evolution, and it is very used by some thinkers, Christian thinkers. I think wrongly so, because the second law of thermodynamics posits a mechanistic view of the universe. So they are in effect saying “ok we have an argument here from your own arsenal that militates against your position.” But they have a position which then, which militates against their own Christian presuppositions. So it’s a very dangerous argument to use.

Now the way the evolutionists have been able to say “well there was evolution up to a point” is the big bang theory. That the original explosion created a tremendous impetuous you see. So there was development, and there’s a decline. We can compare it to a rocket, when at the fourth of July you shoot a rocket up it goes for a while upward, but then disintegration takes over and it showers light downward, and proceeds downward. So the evolutionist would compare what has happened to the rocket.

Any other questions or comments?

Well if there are none let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou art very near, that we both wake and sleep in Thee that we are ever surrounded by Thee, and blessed by the presence and indwelling of Thy Spirit. Make us mindful Lord that we are thus never alone, that the causes which govern this world come of Thee, and all shall accomplish Thy most holy purpose, so that we must ever know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. Confirm us oh Lord, in this Thy requirement of us, and by Thy Spirit make us ever alive to Thy workings. In Jesus name, amen.