Living by Faith - Galatians

Anthropomorphic Religion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Living by Faith

Lesson: 14-19

Genre: Talk

Track: 14

Dictation Name: Tape 07B

Location/Venue:

Year: ?

Let us worship God. Thus saith the Lord, ye shall seek me and find me when ye shall search for me with all your heart. Jesus said blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou art on the throne, that all things move in terms of Thy perfect will. We thank Thee that Thou hast ordained the seasons, the night and the day, and all the times of men; and that in Thy perfection all things shall accomplish Thy purpose, and we shall praise Thee for Thy wisdom. Give us grace now to walk in Thy faith, and to rejoice in Thee and in Thy so great salvation. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.

Our scripture is from Galatians 4:27-31, our subject: Anthropomorphic Religion. Anthropomorphic Religion, Galatians 4:27-31.

“27 For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.

28 Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise.

29 But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now.

30 Nevertheless what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.

31 So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.”

The religions of Paul’s day were anthropomorphic; they remade god or the gods in man’s image. The result was, what was predicated of man had to be predicated of the gods, and the whole view of reality therefore was upside down.

The church fathers regularly called attention to the absurdities and immoralities of paganism. Thus Firmicus Maternus, one of the church fathers wrote and I quote: “It is difficult to make the tally of all their adulteries, and to say who corrupted Amymone, who Alope, who Melanippe, who Chione and Hippothoe. Your god, forsooth, is said to have done these deeds. That very god who, as they maintain, corrects with stern oracles the sins of erring mankind, loves Sterope, kidnaps Aethyssa, ravishes Zeuxippe, woos Prothoe, and fondles Arsinoe in adulterous desire. But of that throng of corrupted women one girl vanished and thus vanquished the amatory god: Daphne was one whom the god who divines and foretells the future could not find nor ravish. Another person lets himself be used as a woman, and then seeks consolation for his womanized body: well, let him consider Liber and how he repaid his lover even after death the libidinous reward he had promised, by an imitation of shameful coitus. If anyone in the heat of preternatural passion arms himself to encompass the murder of his father, let him take Jupiter as exemplar. Whoever thirst for his brother’s blood may follow the pattern of the Corybantes. Those who crave incest should look to the examples set by Jupiter: he lay with his mother, wedded his sister, and, to round to the full crime of incest, approached his daughter also with the intent to corrupt her.”

Such accounts are very, very common in the writings of the church fathers. Some called attention to the fact that all these sexual perversions were credited to the gods, who were said to have originated and invented them. Jupiter was called the father of pederasty, or boy-love. He planned the murder of his father and failed. And so on and on, the list of the crimes of the gods is legion.

Why did the philosophically sophisticated Greeks and Romans and other pagans as well accept such gods and actually delight in what they did? The key to that comes from a figure of the last century, Dostoyevsky, who said: “If God does not exist, then everything is possible.” For Dostoyevsky this was a horrible, a frightening prospect; for the pagans, it was freedom. Their anthropomorphic religions had gods act as fallen man would act if there were no law and no god over them. This was the very appeal of these stories about the gods; and since the gods were divinized men, it meant ultimately that all these things were possible to man if he gained power. This is why as soon as men who sometimes were reasonably good became powerful, became emperors, they immediately embarked on this same type of activity.

Some years ago, back in the twenties I believe, on historian of some note but not as much sense, wrote a book about the greatness of Nero. He spoke of the high ideals with which Nero took office ostensibly, high ideals; and then of course ascribed most of what happened to slander by his enemies and corruption of high place. But he had it all wrong. This was the goal of power, because then you were a divinized god, or one in process of becoming a god, and therefore all things were possible to you, and you exercised this kind of total a-moral freedom, as though it were the goal of life. They readily explored every possibility, believing there could be no pay-off. If there is no God that is over the gods, and the gods are divinized men, what gods exist; there is no pay-off, no judgement. Therefore, Greek and Roman religions, and most pagan religions have had this kind of total license on the part of their gods. It is their way of saying: ‘This is the human potentiality.” Thus their gods were credible to them, where they are repulsive to us.

There is another fact about pagan religions. The pagans believed in ghosts and spirits and immortality of the soul; for them the problem with the Christians was the belief in the resurrection of the body, a very different matter. Moreover they found the doctrine of regeneration incredible. That a man could be totally changed, that he could be governed by different motives, that where he had been evil he was now good, was to them incomprehensible.

Similarly, and closely linked to this, was the forgiveness of sins; for them sins could only be overlooked, and this is what Julius Caesar did. His idea was: “Let’s have a new beginning by clemency.” That was the slogan with which he came to power. “Let’s burn the records of everybody’s offenses. We have had generations of civil war, and it is true, there have been all kinds of crimes committed by the nobles. Let’s burn the records and make a fresh start by forgetting all that.” Of course, the very men he forgave assassinated him. This only served to make the Roman world all the more cynical of forgiveness of sins.

One of the church fathers, Rufinius, wrote and I quote: “Pagans habitually make fun of us, saying that we deceive ourselves if we imagine that mere words can wipe out offences which have actually been committed. “Is it possible,” they say, “for one who has committed murder to be no murderer, or for the perpetrator of adultery to be represented as no adulterer? How then is someone who is guilty of misdeeds like these going to be suddenly made holy? Faith, as I have pointed out, supplies a better answer to such charges than reason. He who has promised forgiveness is King of all things: He who assures us of it is Lord of heaven and earth. Are you reluctant for me to believe that He who made me a man out of mere clay can transform my guilt into innocence? Will He who caused me to see when I was blind and to hear when I was deaf, and who restored my powers of walking when I was lame, prove incapable of recovering my lost innocence for me?”

Since paganism, then as now, has no regeneration and no true forgiveness of sins, it cheapens sin as well as forgiveness. Sin becomes an ineradicable part of the human scene, and men accept it with complacence. Forgiveness then becomes a casual unconcern with sin and its consequences.

Paul faced just such a world. Phariseeism was a part of it; it was an anthropomorphic religion also, even though it was dramatically superior, very dramatically superior to the pagans, but it was still anthropomorphic religion. In the world of man, payment is a necessity. We are human beings, we move in terms of reward and punishment. But God does not; God does not have to be rewarded, God does not have to be paid off. But Phariseeism, anthropomorphically, projected this kind of world onto God. ‘You do something for God, and God pays you off.’ This was the works religion, salvation by law, which Phariseeism developed.

Just as for services rendered payment is due is basic to the human scene, a necessary part of it, so in anthropomorphic religion, man, the Pharisee specifically, gave God a mentality like unto their own. ‘God must be bought off with works of law.’ As a result, the Pharisees took the revelation given by God, His law word, and put it to work to serve man’s anthropomorphic religion and theology.

Paul meets this head on in verse 27: “For it is written, Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth and cry, thou that travailest not: for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband.”

Now this is a total reversal of the natural order. He is saying that the gentiles who have born no fruit, who have not served God, are going to be more serviceable to God and have more children to the Lord than Israel. More children that she that hath an husband.

Paul thus is making clear that scripture has all along spoken of this, and therefore the time of change has come. The church is seen as barren by the Pharisees as Christ made it, and they are going to turn it into a Pharisaic church, in order to save the church for its own good; but God is going to use the church, which seems barren to the Pharisees, and weak and worthless; and if you look at the churches, Galatia with its problems, Corinth with its problems, you have to say, indeed the Pharisees humanly speaking had a point; but Paul said Phariseeism is going to be barren; but Christ’s church can rejoice, it shall cover the earth.

Isaiah here was speaking of the contrast between Sarah and Hagar. Looking down the road to the inclusion of the Gentiles of which he speaks, and compares them to Sarah, the children of promise, not the natural seed as Ishmael, but the child of promise, Christ, like Isaac; the child of promise, we in Christ. God overrules all human plans throughout history, and the church is the proof of God’s power, not human effort.

We should remember that this verse which Paul here quotes from Isaiah 54:1 follows Isaiah 53:1-12 which speaks of the atonement, of justification; of Christ who seems to be a root out of dry ground is He who shall bear mightily and be the tree of life to the world. The barren gentiles will be blessed, the married wife, physical Israel, will be set apart for a time.

What must we then do? Even as he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born of the spirit, even so it is now. So, “what saith the scripture? Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” ‘Cast out the Pharisees.’ Paul is saying this to those in the church who are both in their background Jew or Gentile, ‘cast out the Pharisees.”

And in verse 31: “So then, brethren, we are not children of the bondwoman, but of the free.” All Jews, all Gentiles in Christ are reckoned as from the Jerusalem which is from above, as children as Paul says in verse 28, “Who are of the promise.” Who are born, verse 29 tells us, “after the Spirit.” The differences, he says, are irreconcilable.

What Paul says here is very important to our day. Anthropomorphic religion is very much with us. Modernism is anthropomorphic religion; it insists on a naturalistic God, if there is a God, and God if he exists for the modernists is someone who acts like a scientist, or acts within the boundaries that science believes are tenable.

This sort of thing is nothing new. In this country it began with the Transcendentalists and the Unitarians. Theodore Parker for example, said: “The Orthodox place the Bible above the soul; we the soul above the Bible.” Again, Parker said: “In the soul let redemption be sought.” Man for him was his own savior. In fact, Parker carried Descartes: “Cogito Ergo Sum,” ‘I think therefore I am,’ to its logical end. He said: “I am, therefore God is.”

The humanists today of course don’t feel it necessary to say that God is; but they do project their own emptiness on the universe, ‘it is an empty creation, empty of meaning, empty of God.’ This is anthropomorphic religion. Empty men read emptiness into all of creation.

But the Psalmist declares: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”

This Psalm, the 19th, is a celebration of the law of the Lord. It tells us that all of creation speaks of God and His law word. The humanist however suppresses the truth, as Paul says in Romans 1:18, “In his unrighteousness,” in his injustice. Instead of hearing the heavenly word which resounds through all creation, he reads his emptiness into the heavens and the earth.

The end or conclusion of anthropomorphic religion is empty men, and an empty faith. This, says Paul, is Phariseeism, and he summons us to Christ. Let us pray.

Lord, Thy word is truth and Thy word is joy, and a light to us on our way. Deliver us from anthropomorphic religion, and make us faithful ever to Thy word, that after Thy Spirit we may be children of the promise, and heirs of all things in Christ. In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now, about our lesson? Yes?

[Otto Scott] Well, it’s a hard lesson, I think Calvin said, somehow, I am paraphrasing: “Do not question because the question presupposes the possibility of the judgement.”

[Rushdoony] Very good point, excellent. Yes. “Who art Thou, oh man, to question God? Can the potter be questioned by the clay?” This is why Paul is not popular with non-Christians, or too often with church people. Are there any other questions and comments?

We must remember that one of the problems of our day is that things are defined by the opposition, and anthropomorphic religion is defined narrowly to include only what people in the past did; but their definition says because they gave the gods shapes and appetites common to men, they were therefore anthropomorphic. But anthropomorphic religion includes intellectual aspects also, assuming that things move in all of creation in terms of man’s categories of thought. As God says: “Your ways are not my ways, nor your thoughts my thoughts.” So even in thinking men today are very anthropomorphic. Yes?

[Otto Scott] I finished a book called (the Lichten song?) and the title is a take off on (Malays the Executioners song?) which praised the murderer; and this was written by the mother of 21 year old man who was killed in the subways of New York by two fellows who wanted some money to get drugs; and she accuses the… she describes the court system in New York city which is in shambles, and the injustice of the event, and takes off against people like (nailer?) who romanticize murderers and criminals. And up until that point it is a very good book. Then at the very end of the book she goes into a diatribe against God for allowing this, for allowing her son to be murdered, and many other terrible things to occur in the world; and I think that is a pretty common attitude.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, what it says to God is: “Give us a good world without any responsibility on our part.” One of the things that has always been ironic to me about New York is that lawyers there can write as they have, books defending all their game-playing with legal process, and never face up to the fact of sin. That, for example, lawyers do not wear hats in the worst weather, to court; because they are going to be stolen if they are put down, and in many of the court rooms there if you wear a court in the winter, you sit on it because that is the only way to keep it from being stolen. But they will never face up to the fact that it is a very evil world, and with what they are doing to law they are making it impossible to cope with the evil all around them.

Any other questions or comments? Well, if not let us bow our heads in prayer.

Oh Lord our God, great and marvelous are Thy ways, and we thank Thee that Thou dost not spare men the consequences of their sin; and yet in Thy mercy, all who truly repent and humble themselves Thou dost cleanse and make a new creation. We thank Thee that it is the new creation which was begun in Jesus Christ which shall conquer the world, and we thank Thee that in Thy grace and mercy, Thou hast made us children of that promise. Bless us ever in Thy service.

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you… [tape ends]