Systematic Theology – Eschatology

The Necessary Connection

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 14 of 32

Track: #14

Year:

Dictation Name: 14 The Necessary Connection

[Rushdoony] Let us begin with prayer.

Oh Lord our God we come to Thee in these troubled times knowing that Thou art the Lord at that the government is upon Thy shoulders. We cast our every care upon Thee. We rejoice that Thou art He who dost arm us, who hast given us oh Lord power by Thy Spirit to be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ. And so we come to Thee rejoicing in Thy government, in Thy grace and mercy to us, and in the certainty of victory in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the 14th chapter of John verses 15-17 and 23-26, John 14:15-17 & 23-26; and our subject is The Necessary Connection.

“15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever;

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

Now verse 23

“23 Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”

We have been dealing with the subject of eschatology which is normally interpreted to mean the doctrine of the last things. But as we have seen there are two kinds of eschatology. The last things in so far as they refer to time, the end of the world, the resurrection, the world to come; but also the end point is eschatology also. In other words the flood was eschatological. The judgment on Rome was an eschatological event. So that eschatology refers to judgments within history, as well as the end judgment, and in our last session we saw the relationship of the subject to causality.

Now causality can be defined very simply in this way, causality means that there is a necessary connection between events. Let’s examine the doctrine of causality a little further before we turn to the text, so we can better understand what our Lord is saying.

Since David Hume the concept of causality has been largely bypassed by modern thought. The idea has been dropped because it presupposed a necessary order, and a necessary governing power, God. Aristotle when he spoke of causality had to use God as the first cause. God had no other meaning for Aristotle, but God as a first cause was necessary to avoid an idea he found repellent, infinite regress. Moreover for Aristotle something had to initiate movement and change, and the first cause was the one that did it. Thus because there was a first cause that had initiated things, and they had a purposive direction, he could speak about the entelechy of being. Thus God served to give something at the beginning which was to continue to the end. Causality thus dealt with the universe of meaning, and with entelechy of things which could be studied. But by the eighteenth century, with Newtonian science especially, causality was made materialistic, even mechanistic. It also was contiguous, the billiard ball illustration; when you hit one billiard ball it goes and hits another, and so on, and you have a diminishing energy in the entire process.

As a result causality was suddenly popular again because it was made mechanical and non-theological. However there were still inherent theological presuppositions in that the first cause, God, as in Deism, initiated the process. And so little by little the whole idea of both God and causality was the subject of increasing scientific hostility; a belief that the concept had to be avoided, or replaced. So other concepts came in, regularity, the probability concept, sufficient condition, contributory condition, and a whole host of terms to replace the word causality because it was seen as being theological. In fact if you use, around any academician today, scientific or philosophical, the word “causality” it brings a pained expression to their face. I know because I’ve brought that pained expression to more than one face. It is not a concept they want to hear about, because they see its theological character better than many Christians. But, they do use the whole doctrine in sub rosa manner. They cannot escape it because the alternative is a world of chance, a world without meaning.

Moreover the usage of causality, actual or sub rosa, in the history of Western thought has had two serious problems. One that we dealt with in our last meeting, it is materialistic or mechanistic, and the other is it is past oriented. In other words in the Aristotelian world, the first cause at the very beginning of creation initiated things, and it’s all moving in terms of that initial impulse until it runs down. But is this true? This is both materialistic and it is past oriented.

Now once you accept that premise what happens is that you remove God from the world. Or if you bring Him in, as churchmen then tried to do, miracles become an intrusion and an interruption in the natural world. A miracle is something from the outside which suddenly interrupts the natural sequence of things, and so the argument becomes then; “Well, can you have the natural order disrupted?” As though this were something strange and dramatic comparable to driving a car down the road, and suddenly out of the heavens a hand reaches in and does something to your gear shift. Miracles have been seen that way, as an intrusion, an intrusive force. But can we view it that way? Consider what happens to the doctrine of regeneration. Regeneration says that God regenerates us. Then having made us a new creation, which is an immediate cause which takes place in your life and mine, then through the process of sanctification He is continually working in us.

Moreover we have the indwelling Spirit, and our Lord says “My Father will love him if a man love me and keep my word. And we will come unto him and make our abode with him.” Well that means we have at every moment a very present cause in the person of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The whole trinity is right there every moment in our being. Well what happens to your historic doctrine of causality? It blows it out of the window. Instead of a cause that is purely material or mechanical, and it’s way back in the pass that started it, and anything done now is an intrusion, we see God as totally here. We see God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as the necessary connection between all events. So something has been very wrong in the church for a long time. First Aristotle, and then Newton, have given us ideas of causality that are past oriented, and mechanistic or materialistic, only physical causes in other words.

But God is the omnipresent and absolute cause of all things. Not merely their original cause, which He is, but their continuous and sustaining cause. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. He is the present and governing cause in all our being. Now this does not make me absent from my own being, because God is totally present in me. Because God is totally present in me, and governs me totally, does not eliminate my presence in my own being, this is why predestination and human secondary freedom, are not irreconcilable unless we take a mechanical, past oriented, concept of causality. If we take a Biblical concept of causality predestination and my freedom go hand in hand. All things are open and naked to the sight of Him with whom we have to do, scripture tells us. And this means that God does not obliterate me, but that He undergirds me. We live and move and have our being in Him. We are totally determined by Him and because of that we are free in Him, because it is a personal, continual, interaction. And God’s causality undergirds me, I do not live in an empty, meaningless world of chance, nor in the mechanical determinism of Newton’s world.

Think for a moment. Prayer could not become a vital force, or have any meaning, if you had the humanistic concept of causality. Prayer would be impossible, prayer presupposes the sovereign God who is a totally personal God, who is closer to us than we are to ourselves; and who is continually interacting, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, in all our being. The Westminster confession of faith Chapter 5 in section 2 expressed this faith, having stated it Biblically, then philosophically in these words, “although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God the first cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly. Yet by the same providence He ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of secondary causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.” And the confession goes on to say that all things are used by God to raise His people to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself.

If God is not the determiner of all things there is no point of prayer to Him. If God does not hear, if God does not answer prayer there is no point in praying. This is a mystery, God who created all things in the beginning, and determined them, is also the very present determiner, the cause of all things, and we are free with a constant interaction with Him. It is a mystery, but life is full of mysteries, is it not? We do not refuse to eat until we understand digestion, if we did we’d never live out the first day of our life. We do not stop breathing because we don’t understand how air keeps us alive. It is unreasonable to demand full understand of God’s ways and say “until we understand everything God, we will not believe in You.”

We cannot, thus, accept the modern worldview and its causality without an implicit denial of the God of scripture. But this is often done, people refuse to believe in God and refuse to believe what He says in His word until they can understand it all. Well they would have to abdicate from life because they don’t understand it. Abdicate from the universe, because they don’t understand it, abdicate from everything. God made the universe, no-one is less an outsider to every atom, and to every person in all of creation than God Himself, and it is not an occasional intrusion that God makes, but total possession, total control, total interaction. That is why it is important for us to realize at all times there is no place where God is not, and God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, and all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

Our scripture tells us a great deal about the doctrine of the Spirit. It tells us that the doctrine of the Spirit is essential to understanding the Biblical doctrine of causality. Because the Greek and the enlightenment view, Aristotle and Newton and all their cohorts, their doctrine of causality has infected us, we have failed to understand the doctrine of the spirit, the total and continual presence of God. And hence when the doctrine of the Spirit has been held, it has been seen as an intrusive thing, something that hits you now and then, like miracles are supposed to do, just an occasional intrusion when God says “I think I’ll go down there and zap somebody with the Spirit, or I’ll go down there and I’ll hit somebody and zap him with a miracle; then I’ll go back up and retire for a few centuries.” No. When Our Lord speaks about the Spirit in our text He says “to love Him means ot keep His commandments.” He identifies Himself with the Father and He says “my word is not a new word, it is the word from the beginning, it is the word of the Father, and I have come to speak for the Father.” He says second if we keep His commandments He and the Father will send the Spirit to us to be with us always. He is an abiding gift, “we will send Him that He may abide with you forever.” The world cannot receive the Spirit, only those who keep His commandments. The Spirit is not with the disobedient.

And then third our Lord says in these words that the Spirit, the paraclete, the advocate, the comforter, is the Spirit of Truth. My doctrine, He also says in John 7 verse 16-17 “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. 17 If any man will do his will, he shall know the doctrine” do you see what our Lord is saying? There is a relationship, obedience in the Spirit, and then truth, and then a knowledge of the doctrine, so the Spirit is there and is continually leading us to be faithful, to know more, to grow in wisdom and in understanding, a continual interaction. The Spirit teaches us all things.

Moreover we must say fourth that all this is related to eschatology. The Spirit works to fulfill the will of Him that gave Him, Him that sent Him; God’s purposes to make us a new creation. He gives us grace to keep God’s law, to have knowledge and wisdom. It is impossible for a man to be regenerated without consequences for his life, and for his family, and for his community, and for his world. When one man is converted it makes a change all around him, think what happens when a million are converted, and a hundred million, can anyone believe that the world will not be different? It means that the power of God, the working of the Holy Spirit, is there present in the world, remaking the world, reconstructing it. In the creation we are told that the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and the form of creation came forth. And when the Spirit of God moves in the lives of men a new creation comes forth in and through them, and it does not stop. It goes on to work in all the world around us. The Spirit is at work today in recreation, in power.

The world around us may be as it was in the day of Ezekiel, a valley of dry bones. But as God told Ezekiel, He is able to make the dry bones live and serve Him, and “he shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves, oh my people,” God said to Ezekiel, “and brought you out of your graves and put My Spirit in you, and ye shall live.” We live in a graveyard world today, as did Ezekiel. And the dry bones of this world may not know it, but God the spirit is at work, totally at work to bring forth the new creation out of the valley of dry bones which make up our age. God is the necessary cause, and the necessary connection and power between all events. He is a very present reality. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee for the gift of Thy Spirit. We give thanks unto Thee God the Father, and God the Son, that Thou hast not left us alone. But according to Thy word Thou art with us if we keep Thy commandments. If we seek to do Thy will, we shall know the doctrine. Oh Lord our God send forth in This day Thy Spirit of men, that they may order all things in terms of Thy law word, and make of this world, a valley of dry bones, a great and glorious place, an army faithful servants, a new creation to the praise of Thy name. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with regard to our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] Just one observation with respect to materialism, particularly in theoretical physics I find it rather fascinating that the science has decreed down here in the later part of the 19th century -20th century, the whole doctrine of materialism, and then as soon as atomic physics opened up, they all a sudden discovered a whole new world of subatomic particles, that somehow weren’t supposed to be there, and they thought they’d reached the ultimate building block in 19th century with the atomic structure that had been devised, and then as soon as atomic physics had advanced far enough, along comes Heisenberg with the {?} priniciple and he says that simply because the size of the materialism, of a light, when you introduce light into an experiment, we introduce enough energy into the experiment to upset it far enough that we can’t depend upon the data. So it almost seems as if, well one case you can measure the velocity of the particle for example, but you can’t measure it’s position. The reversed experiment you can measure the position, but you can’t measure velocity. Then you have to have both of them in order to be…at the same moment you see… in order to define the subatomic nature of material. Now everyone saying all of a sudden it’s all energy anyway.

[Rushdoony] Yes, energy in motion.

[Same audience member] Energy in {?} so the whole perspective in terms of modern science, based on materialism, exhausts itself, and its virtually destroyed its own argument and now everyone is going back to try and reformulate some kind of pantheistic religious philosophy in order to justify the existents of the now millions, they think that we may have millions, of subatomic clumps of energy, you know they call them {?} and {?} and lots of other kinds of things now. I just figured, it’s just an observation rather.

[Rushdoony] Yes, very good observation because the more they have investigated matter, instead of finding hard atoms, they find something that looks suspiciously like spirit. So they have gone into Eastern Mysticism some of them, very pronouncedly, but that only leads them astray. The one direction they will not look at is in terms of God and His word. But it’s a very frustrating time for materialists.

[Audience Member] It’s one of the things I’ve always found fascinating that a lot of Christians who never really investigate the sciences can sometimes {?} as far as they’re concerned. When a subject like this is brought up they often times say “Well Einstein believed in God.” Yes, but the God that Einstein believed in, by his own admission, was a god of pantheism. And it was interesting that in a letter from Max Planck {?} who was no mean physicists in his own right, Planck wrote a letter to Einstein once and he said in the letter “how is it you Professor Einstein, being a pantheist, could have ever developed the special and general theories of relativity?” Obvious implications being that on the presupposition of pantheism scientific method in a predictable universe etc., those kinds of things are rationally impossible. And Einstein wrote back and, this by the way is in the microfilm series of Einstein’s collected papers, Einstein wrote back and said that at least for one period in his life it was necessary to presuppose the God of Scripture for the salvation of his theories. [Ripples of amusement]

[Rushdoony] Yes. In case some of you don’t John Saunders studied nuclear physics at Cal Tech.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes?

[Audience member] How does the…I suppose the presence of the {?} within every human being is different from His presence in us as Christians who have a saving relationship with him?

[Rushdoony] Well yes. It is a personal presence in us when we are believers who keep his commandments. It is different; it is a part of His general presence in all creation in the unbelievers. So there is a difference.

As you can see from what I’ve said today the 20th century is going to see, as I indicated in my series on the doctrine of the Spirit, a tremendous development precisely in the theology of the Holy Spirit. I believe this is the century where that doctrine will be developed as never before because it has been the neglected doctrine. And it has been neglected because we have been under the burden of an Aristotelian and then an Enlightenment view of causality, and such a view of causality has simply eliminated God from the world, which means above all else, the elimination of the Spirit, and the reduction of Him to invest an intrusive presence or force.

[Audience member] Just one last observation Rush. I think that is the area in which Christians who really become theologians of the Spirit, in every sense of the word, when they become epistemologically self-conscious of exactly what the doctrine of the Holy Spirit means for the whole of reality rather than just their own personal experience of it, when they become aware of that I think that’s going to inform them for the foundation for the new science and for theoretical science. Because right now all of theoretical sciences are {?} and this is what the majority of people simply don’t know. They don’t realize that what they’re interpreting as science is mere technology, merely the formed expression of theoretical premises that were established 150 years ago.

But there’s been no major break throughs in theoretical sciences in over 75 years, none whatsoever; and then all of the so-called major break throughs which occurred in relativistic physics and quantum mechanics, and things of that nature, are now being demonstrated on other grounds to be fundamentally false. And so in effect what has happened is just a bad smoke screen of a theology as a foundation for science has created an impasse, a closed door, a block to the future development of science; and I think the only way out of it is just a {?} to not receive the true nature of the Holy Spirit, I think that what we’re going to see is that Christians who fully develop the implications of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit for the whole of reality, not just for their own personal experience, that what is going to happen out of that is going to come the new science, which will take us into the 21st century. I think it will ultimately, the majority of that truth will come from and be controlled by the Christian field too.

[Rushdoony] Yes. There’s an interesting sidelight on the whole history of doctrine. John Calvin is usually thought of as theologian of predestination, which he emphatically believed in. But at the time of the reformation the man who really developed and formulated the doctrine par excellent was Martin Luther in his debate with, written debate, with Erasmus. His book on the Bondage of the Will is the classic statement. It’s a tremendous book, and yet Warfield, Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, at the beginning of the century call attention to the fact that the heart of Calvin and his emphasis had been bypassed because Calvinism had taken some rather odd directions. But he said Calvin was preeminently a theologian of the Holy Spirit. But because the direction of science cut off any development there, it died stillborn.

[Audience member] Is there not a book that’s just been printed, Rush, entitled Calvin, the Theologian of the Holy Spirit or something of that nature?

[Rushdoony] It may be. If so, I haven’t seen it.

[Audience member] I remember…I don’t know, something, if anyone else has seen the book? I’m very certain I’ve seen it in the Christian discount bookstore in Los Angeles before I moved up here. I’m almost certain there’s a book out which call attention to what you were just talking about.

[Rushdoony] Well if there are no further questions or comments let’s now bow our heads in prayer as we adjourn.

Our Lord and our God it has been good for us to be here, we thank Thee for Thy presence, for Thy grace and for Thy protecting care. Go with each one of us to give us Thy peace, empower us by Thy Spirit, and make us ever joyful in Thee and in Thy word, in Jesus name, amen.