Easy Chair Series

Questions and Answers

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 90-91

Genre:

Track:

Dictation Name: EC398

Year: 1986

This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 398, November the seventh, 1997.

This evening Douglas Murray, Andrew Sandlin and I will try to deal with some of the questions that came in. And let me say, some of the questions that I am not going to bring into the discussion are very good ones. But I don’t feel adequate and I don’t want to waste your time with inadequate answers.

This question is from Frederick and Theresa Foote in Caslet, Michigan and he wants to know what we think of the importance of utilizing corporal punishment in the training of children.

“I understand that it is very much frowned upon these days and wanted to know whether you held a similar view.”

Well, he is right. It is very much frowned upon these days. In fact, there is legislation against it. If you spank your child in public, even if it us just a little slap on the wrist, if you are reported, you will be arrested. One of the problems with flying today is that if there is a baby aboard or a child that starts screaming the mother is helpless to deal with it. And I recall on one flight I was just across from the mother and she looked at me with such a sense of misery and shook her head. She didn’t dare do anything for fear when she landed she would be arrested. And that sort of thing happens.

Now I am sure that there are many parents who have overdone corporal punishment. It is clearly wrong. There is no excuse for being brutal towards a child. In a loving, happy family the child wants the approval of his mother and father and very often all you have to do is to say the word and they are really hurt. They want to please you. And it doesn’t take any harsh treatment. They will start blubbering, crying when they have been rebuked or just slapped on the wrist lightly, not because they are physically hurt, but because they are hurt to realize they have displeased their parents.

I think it is easier to punish your children if you truly love them. The child will know that you love them. The child will feel very distressed if he or she is not pleasing the father or mother.

I know once when I was quite young, about three or four, I recall I didn’t want to do something my mother told me to do and she rebuked me and she wasn’t angry or anything, just let me know she didn’t like it. And she walked out because some visitors were coming, was talking out there with them. And I was crushed, absolutely crushed. And children very often are. They know when they are loved and they know when they hurt someone.

Now having said that, there are times when the child needs to be spanked. It has to be done firmly, but without compromise and promptly. It doesn’t do any good to tell a child, as many mothers do, wait till your father comes home. Well, that his hours and hours after what they did. And they barely remember it and they are getting spanked and reminded of something. They are resentful. But if they are spanked when they do it, they know why and it has a meaning for them so that the punishment in the right time and place is helpful.

Now I very rarely spanked the children. In fact, I can’t remember having done it to any of the children. I know I never did with Mark. He was so obedient and ready to please and three of the girls were. Joanna did get spanked a time or two, because she has an independent and a stormy nature. So occasionally I would have to spank her, but I had a red ping pong paddle on top of the refrigerator and I would have to say to the children, “Now, don’t get out of line or I am going to get the red paddle.”

[Sandlin] Bob will be using that later on.

[Rushdoony] And they would immediately behave, because they did not want to displease me and they knew I was upset when I would say that. So the most important thing is to be firm with your children, but, above all, to be so loving that they don’t want to displease you. It hurts them to realize they have done so.

[Murray] Well, my own kids, I have two boys and my grandmother, my maternal grandmother was the one that counseled me on corporal punishment so when they were quite small, probably in the terrible twos when usually the first signs of outright rebellion takes place, why I would take a newspaper, just a daily paper and fold it three times and they had a big soft diaper on. Those were the days of cloth diapers, pre Pampers.

[Sandlin] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Murray] And then there was a.... there was kind of like plastic or rubber pants on the outside of that. So there is plenty of padding there. So I would slap them on the rear and it would make a big sound and it would scare the daylights out of them, but, you know, no force is ever applied to their skin directly. So it would scare them and they would, you know, immediately you would have to connect the infraction, of course, with the... with the punishment. But bottom line is that by the time they were four years old or five years old, I never had to touch either one of them again. I mean, it was just the sound of the voice. They knew when you were.... when you had reached the limit and the line was drawn in the sand and that was it and that was... that was all it took. I mean, up till the time they left home.

So it... it all depends, you know, nowadays people use this time out thing and send the kid to his room. Well, I was listening to a talk show thing here recently a couple of guys were discussing nowadays to send your kid to his room it is like sending him to Disneyland. He got color television and telephone, his own telephone with a private line and video games and so forth.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] Who wouldn’t want to go to his room. So it is... a lot of that is just a ridiculous. ... it is diversionary, but it is not punish... punishment. It is a temporary diversion, but I don’t think kids really get any real sense of ... of discipline out of it.

[Rushdoony] Well, one of the things I found that was a very, very important aspect of discipline with children was that ... Mark was the youngest. He had four older sisters. And it marked him for life in that he was always standing outside the bathroom door...

[multiple voices]

[Rushdoony] And he is a very kindly gentle person, but Darlene tells me there is one thing he draws the line on. Well, when there are more than two or three children, they tend to discipline each other. They don’t want any of them to get out of line so that a great deal of the discipline with the family, within the family was done by the girls one to another and it was all important.

[Murray] Well, it is... it is a support system.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] And people, of course, the size of families has diminished. You know, the days of that sort of sister, sister, brother, sister support system is not there as much, but it is... it is a valuable asset.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] I was just going to mention that certainly there can be excessive discipline.

[Murray] Oh, absolutely.

[Sandlin] And it really is tragic. On the other hand the book of Proverbs is clear that if we don’t discipline our children...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] ...we don't love them. Also tends to be a liberal or a false view of man that opposes the idea of discipline, that denies original sin, for example, but the notion that people are basically born good and are corrupted by human institutions which, of course, is perversion.

So I ... there is no question that we have to discipline our children and the parent that truly loves his children will discipline his children.

[Rushdoony] Well, I think something that is now forgotten, maybe it happens and I don’t see it, I can recall years ago when I was a child and also when I was a young father when the father came home from work the children run to him, daddy, daddy.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] And they would shout top the mother, “Daddy is home.” They were happy to see him.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Now they are too busy with whatever they are doing and there is none of that sense of joy in seeing a father come home. And I simply don’t understand that. It means there is something wrong in the whole world of our day within the families.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] They are not close. They are not a praying godly unity. They each go their way or they hole up in their room and...

[multiple voices]:

[Rushdoony] Has any father of late been greeted joyfully by a child?

[Murray] Apparently not, unless he is handing the kid the keys to the car. But the... our culture has systematically over the past 30 years taught children that their parents are irrelevant.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] ...to their lives. So kids have chosen other diversions, other role models, whether they are rock stars or pop music stars, whether they join a gang. In other words, they have chosen other social connections....

[Sandlin] Yeah.

[Murray] ...rather than being connected to their parents. Their parents are sort of... they see them as jailers, caretakers or just solely as providers and basically this is all the state wants nowadays.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Murray] The state wants to have absolute control over all facets of raising the child. They want to control whether or not or how you discipline them. They will hold you accountable if you do and they will hold you accountable if you don’t.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] And a lot of parents are terribly frustrated because they don’t know what to do.

[Sandlin] I think a family of some kind is an inescapable concept if they get away from their own what is called today nuclear, we would call biblical family. They will find a family in gangs or somewhere else, because God has... has made man to be family oriented. But if he denies the biblical family he will have to find a family among friends or somewhere else and oppose his... his genuine family.

[Murray] Well, the... the. failure of our society is measured in how many people do we have in prison?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] You know, we are building more and more and more prisons.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] ...and filling them up and everybody is satisfying themselves that this problem is being solved with determinative sentences and so forth, but the real problem is that the family has been destroyed, that the parental ... parental control has been destroyed by the state.

[Sandlin] The statistics are clear. Most of the people in prison in this country are men between the ages of 16 and 24. And the one overwhelming factor, you know what it is, they don’t have a father. If a fellow doesn’t have a father, he is going to likely end up in jail.

[Rushdoony] Yes. My children began their schooling, well, the older ones, in the 50s when there were no Christian schools around anywhere where I lived. And later on in the 60s became Christian school children. But I recall when the older girls were just starting school I went to the PTA. I was already beginning to think along the lines of the necessity for Christian schooling and began writing Messianic Character almost a year or two after that. But I can recall my total sense of irritation and disgust. I believe it was the second to the last PTA, parent teacher association meeting I attended when one of the teachers made the statement that the parents shouldn’t try to teach the children or help them with their schooling. It would interfere with the professional approach their teachers were taking. And that really angered me and I thought, it is better for me not to come back.

[Sandlin] Yes, well, we have ... we have lived to see the ... the corruption of that entire system. I am convinced, Rush, that in 50 years there really won’t be any public school system like we have known it. It is... it is going to go down.

[Rushdoony] I... I feel quite sure that will be the case.

[Murray] Well, the... the money is running out and one of the signs is that just within the past few days the educators are trying to get the state legislature here in California to pass a bill requiring only a simple majority of the voters in order to get a school bond issue passed. Well, as the... our population is maturing. We have more and more people who are, you know, the baby boomer generation now in their... their 50s. They realize or they have begun to realize, at least, what they have been cheated out of by the public school system.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] So they are not going to vote for any more of it.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Well, bond issues have a problem nowadays in passing and it is because of the growing disgust with the public schools.

[Murray] Well, they are trying to, you know, they re trying to ... public school officials, administrators and teachers organizations are trying to say that the simple majority rather than the two thirds majority is necessary because we have an older population that doesn't care, because they don’t have a dog in the fight. They don’t have any kids in school anymore. So they don’t want to pay any more taxes to pay off the bonds.

Well, the ... as I said before, that is not really the reason. The reason is that they are now more mature. They realize what the public school system has cheated them out of and they are not going to pay for a faulty system to perpetuate a faulty system that is causing our society just abject misery.

[Rushdoony] I recall not too many years ago realtors would say about a piece of property, it has this advantage. It is very close to the public school. Now that is...

[Murray] That is a kiss of death.

[multiple voices]

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Murray] Show me the other end of town.

[Sandlin] {?} as far from the public school.

[Murray] Yeah.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And it is because of the extensive vandalism and misconduct, disrespect that is routine.

Well, I think one of the things that we need to recognize here is that the Christian schools are relatively free of discipline problems. They are few and far between. And they are nothing serious. They are very minor.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] And there has to be a reason and I think the reason is an obvious one. It is a Christian school.

[Murray] Well, if... if Mark were here, I know he said this before, so I am not putting words in his mouth, but he said before that if you are going to put a kid in Christian school, start the kid right from the get go...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] ...from... from kindergarten on, because he said that often times people will put a child into public school for kindergarten and maybe the first grade and then realize they have got a problem and then try to put him in a Christian school hoping that that will correct it. And it is almost out of control by that time.

[Rushdoony] Yes, yes.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] So people should be forewarned that if they... they are going to have take the right road right from the beginning.

[Rushdoony] There are areas in cities where discipline in kindergarten is a problem and once on a speaking tour I had a teacher tell me that kindergarten children would swear at her.

[Murray] Oh, yeah. Oh, we hear it on television. I mean it is... they get it all day long on... in television.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have a real problem here in that our ... our world is seeing a very high crime rate now among teenagers and historically instead of teenage being the time of rebellion it was the time when children were most prone to imitating their elders, trying to be mature and grown up, because they were anticipating maturing themselves and were most ready to imitate. They wanted to learn the skills and maturity and girls didn’t have to be told to help out in the kitchen. They wanted to learn. And I can recall them taking over and preparing this or that dish or maybe a whole meal, two girls at a time, because they wanted to learn. And the boys trying to learn the skills of maturing by adult type work or going to help their father.

One of the men in our group recently had his son who has just started college come to work at the car dealership. And it wasn’t that the son was anything but a fine Christian boy, but it revolutionized his outlook. He was obedient. Now he feels a deep respect for his father, because he has seen his father work, seen the ability, seen the skill and has developed an appreciation for it.

Well, I think we have isolated children too much from parents in our time, because we put them in groups and activities as though they need to be with their own kind and I don’t believe in that. I know that when I was growing up I, when very young, somehow got a boy scout handbook and I read it from one cover to another and I could hardly wait to be a scout. But in those days they didn’t have cub scouts where I was. Maybe they didn’t have them at all. I don’t know.

But before long, the one thing I did not want to be was a boy scout, because I could see that there were elements of group psychology that were taking over as against a family orientation. And I recall in high school it was on a trip about, oh, 130 miles away to play another high school football, some of us were talking on the way back and one of them said to me that I was smart not to join the scouts. He said, “You know, I know everyone in the high school who has been a scout.”

It was a small town. They knew everybody. And he said, “All of us learned how to smoke as scouts. All of us began to feel independent of our parents, because we were now grouped and the leader was the one that we were looking to.”

[Murray] It is running with the pack. It is pack mentality.

[Rushdoony] Yes. So we have overrated the importance of children being together or children engaging in this or that.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] When the basic thin that is the most effective in creating a disciplined child is the family.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] Well, it is... you know, the public schools feel that they have to supply everything.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] The... the thing that they talk about is socialization.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Murray] And it is true that there are many dysfunctional families where socialization, either because of drugs or alcohol are impossible. But there is no ... they cannot substitute for the family.

[Rushdoony] Exactly. I spoke at three Christian home school conventions this year and at one of them I spoke on this issue of socialization. I said the best means of socialization every devised is provided by the family.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] There is nothing to equal it. And I don’t mean this modern idea of fathers playing ball with their sons, not that I object to it, but the idea that that father has to be a ... a companion to his son is not what is needed. He needs to be a father to his son.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] Yeah, you ... you... you have to look up. You can’t look sideways.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Murray] This buddy system stuff doesn’t work.

[Rushdoony] Well, do you have anything more to say on this before we go to another question? I am glad that this question was raised. I hope we have been of help to you. And we do appreciate your questions.

We not only enjoy answering the questions we feel we are competent to answer, but sometimes it helps us bring into focus our own thinking.

Well, I got a very welcome letter from a very fine old friend, not old in years, from Joe Logoducci and I will read just a portion of it.

“Greetings. It has been a while since we have communicated so let me say, first off, that Cindy sends her greetings along with this note and love as well. Thank you for your faithfulness and continued labors in the truth. I always look forward to each mailing of the Chalcedon Report and the monthly tapes.

“I have a question for the Easy Chair. My question has to do with hermeneutics. It appears that there is a growing reliance on the historic, redemptive hermeneutic as opposed to the grammatical, historical interpretation in preaching coming out of Westminster. I am hearing more about biblical theology versus systematic theology. I am also hearing more about the Genesis one and two framework hypothesis as against a literal six 24 hour day creation or day age theme.

“At first I was somewhat indifferent to all this, but lately I am starting to have some concerns. The hermeneutic seems to be growing in popularity and, quite frankly, I struggle with the implications and meaning. I am hearing less of Van Til within reformed circles and more of Geerhardus Vos. I have only read Vos once and found it difficult to follow.

“As a side note, there seems to be a somewhat belligerent attitude within this group toward those who differ, especially toward those who hold the theonomic position. I am finding this a little disconcerting. But I am not really sure why or if I should be concerned. I would be interested in your thoughts or if you could guide me toward appropriate reading on the topics.”

Well, thanks, Joe. I think it is a very, very important question, because there is a real problem developing.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ...within the Church, within supposedly good reformed circles precisely in this direction. You put your finger on it.

Let me start by telling of a little episode that happened years and years ago when I was young. I was in the company of an older pastor. He had asked me to stop by. I vaguely gathered that he thought I was a bit naïve in my views of the Bible. And when I made it clear that I did believe that Genesis one through 11 was historic, that it was true history and that God created all things in the space of six days, he said—I can still remember it—“And what is the hermeneutical premise in terms which you come to this conclusion?”

And he went on to use other words that for a young fellow were baffling. I have never liked the word hermeneutics since then. It is a good word, but I have got an automatic mindset at it, because my gut reaction was this so and so is going to try to confuse me and make me feel like a fool by using words I have never encountered. And what came out in the discussion which became a very long one was that he did not believe in the historicity of Genesis one through 11 which was a subject on which we began.

I tried to be respectful. I was young. He was well regarded. So I asked him, “Do you believe in the resurrection?” Because I was beginning to sense that he was what I have since come to know as a Barthian. And his response was, “And what do you mean by the resurrection?”

Answered the question with a question. And I said, “It means simply that Jesus Christ who was crucified and died was buried, rose again from the dead in the self same body in which he was buried.” And I stated it rather emphatically, because I was trying to be as courteous as possible but as emphatic in affirming the faith as possible.

Well, his response was, “There are, of course, you know, and you must realize that you cannot be naïve. There can be a belief in the literal bodily resurrection, in spiritual resurrection or a resurrection in the hope of the disciples, in ... of the teachings they had received...” And he went on and he gave half a dozen theories of the resurrection.

And he also made it clear that I had no awareness of hermeneutics or I would not limit meaning so naively. And all I could say—and I am glad I said it—was, “The Bible states things clearly. The Bible didn’t ever hear, the authors of the Bible the word hermeneutics. Don’t give me that. It has a plain meaning, apparent to all.”

Well, Joe, I was very young, didn’t know a great many things that I do now about theology and Bible, although I knew the Bible backwards and forwards. But I haven’t changed my mind since then. And you can understand why the word hermeneutics after that experience left a bad taste in my mouth, because I saw it as a device to take someone who is young or older people who don’t have a theological training and try to confuse them and make them feel I don’t have the right to ask the question. I don’t know enough to ask the question.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] I should have kept my mouth shut. Maybe there is more to this than I have realized.

[Sandlin] That the Bible is only the province of scholars.

[Rushdoony] Yes, exactly.

[Sandlin] Yeah.

[Rushdoony] It is the denial of the whole premise of the Reformation and that is one of my objections to words like hermeneutics. I know it is a good word. I know it stands for something sound, but the whole premise of the Reformation was that the Bible could be read by the ordinary man and understood. The King James Version is nine tenths Tyndale’s work. Tyndale translated all of it except for a few of the minor prophets. He was executed before he could do it all. And he made it clear his goal that any plow boy in England could read and understand the Bible. That is the whole premise of the Reformation.

So, Joe, my feeling is that this... these people as well as that minister, a highly respected man, whom I had the misfortune of being taken to one side to be destructed by, I... well, I am afraid I will get into some intemperate language to express what I think of such people, but they are anti Reformation, anti reformed. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Any dissent?

[multiple voices]

[Sandlin] Do you mind if I use some intemperate language?

[Rushdoony] By all means.

[Sandlin] It is interesting. This very excellent question, Joe, and insightful one. I want to state flatly I am not a supporter of the so-called historical redemptive method of interpretation which really undermines the authority of the Bible in the name of Christ. Not one of these people, as far as I know, affirms the abiding authority of Old Testament law, for example.

[Rushdoony] yes.

[Sandlin] When they talk about the judicial law or the case laws they will say, “Well, it was only pointing to Christ.” And they will try to have some deeper spiritual meaning. But that is not to honor Christ to deny the authority of his law. That is to dishonor Christ.

A lot of this has occurred, especially of late in the Dutch school and much has come from the Dutch school, but this has been a real problem. And as much as I appreciate Vos’ contributions in many ways, I am also not a fan of the so-called biblical theology method. I think all of the Bible is authoritative. Of course, Rush, they will make fun of us and say, “You are not sensitive to the nuances of progressive revelation and all of that sort of thing,” which really is nonsense. We certainly believe in the new covenant, but we nonetheless, believe that the entire Bible is a new covenant book.

[Rushdoony] Well, if I may interject, Andrew.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] I would say biblical theology is simply setting forth, or should be, what the Word of God teaches us.

[Sandlin] But that is not what they mean by that.

[Rushdoony] No, no. And a truly biblical theology will believe that the whole of the Bible from beginning to end is the Word of God.

[Sandlin] Absolutely.

[Rushdoony] And that God is true to his own nature.

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] He isn’t changeable. “I am the Lord. I change not.”

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Therefore we have systematic theology, because of the whole of Scripture there could be only one theme, one preface...

[Sandlin] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ...one mind behind it. And if we deny that, then biblical theology is not biblical.

[Sandlin] There is another point, Rush, I want to make. This statement will sound very simple, but I think it really has profound consequences. And that is this. The Bible is not a pretty book.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Sandlin] See, they want a Bible that is amenable to so-called literary criticism and the literary shape of the Bible. And the Bible is not really a text book in systematic theology either. The Bible is the infallible and living Word of God, but it is not a pretty book. And it is not designed to be treated as a very pretty book. You have used the word, Rush, many times. The Bible is designed to be a command word.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Thank you for stressing that, Andrew, because years ago on a particular occasion—and I have made the same statement since, but I was offended when someone talked with a lot of pious gush about how inspiring the Bible is. And I said, “It is inspired, but inspiring? It speaks to us. It tells us of our sins. It tells us about our waywardness. All we like sheep have gone astray. It summons us. It is a command word. Whether we like it or not, we are to read it.”

Now I enjoy reading the Bible. It is exciting reading to me, but it can also be a rebuking Word. And if we are not rebuked, then we are Pharisees.

[Sandlin] That is right. Rush, I think a lot of these approaches are designed to evade the clear ... the clear teaching...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] ... of Scripture, because the problem with man, with God is not an intellectual problem, it is a moral problem.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] And a lot of people miss that.... miss that point as you well know. I want to mention this, however. The seminary mentioned in there, there are some students at one of those seminaries that have asked me to come down and address the issue of Theonomy. It is interesting you would ask that question, because I am going to spend part of the time blasting the so-called redemptive historical method.

[Rushdoony] Right.

[Sandlin] ... that tends to do away with biblical law. I am... this is an absolutely essential point and it really is prominent, unfortunately, this error, as he indicated, in reformed circles. And that is one reason there is so much hostility to Chalcedon. They, of course, claim to be Calvinists soteriologically, but when it comes to applying all of the Word of God to all of life, they don’t want to take that step and I think our existence and our beliefs are a rebuke...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] ...to their actions.

[Murray] Well, there is another element. Man has an unequal genius for spawning what I call intellectual predators who take a delight on raining on people’s parade. And I was stunned as a teenager reading the Farmer’s Almanac to learn that in the United States there were 353 recognized denominations. And I said, “How can this be?” There is only one, you know, Bible, as far as I was concerned. How can there be 353 interpretations of the same book? Either we are not very smart or we have got all these people who want to perpetuate their personalities, they want to put their stamp on something that they had nothing to do with writing.

[Sandlin] Yeah.

[Murray] And all of these people who come up, whether it is hermeneutics or whatever you want to call it, they want to drive a wedge into what people believe and they want to use that wedge to upset your sense of what you believe so that they get a chance to try to convince you or reprogram you into what they believe rather than what God wants you to do. And they make a religion out of it and they make a lot of money out of it, a lot of them.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] And it is a hustle. And I ... you tell anybody. Don’t let anybody upset your belief in the Bible.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Murray] ...as the living Word of God.

[Rushdoony] Well, turning back to what Joe had to say about the framework hypothesis as against the liberal six 24 hour day creation. My troubles with the Church began there. Before I had ever written Institutes of Biblical Law and gained the wrath of churchmen for that, I had expressed strong feelings about the growing tendency to dismiss the historicity of Genesis one through 11.

Modernism began precisely at that point.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] I the last century it was there that Modernism began as it said, “Well, Darwin is right and the Bible is here symbolic. It gives us a framework. It gives us this, that and the other thing,” whereby the actual six day Creationism was explained away.

Now some very fine men did... at the time they were reeling under the shock of Darwin because Darwin burst on the world with a great deal of preparation, one might say, historical preparation behind him, because the current of thinking had moved in that direction. Hegelian thinking was actually evolutionary in his philosophy. He saw all things as evolving. Now supposedly Darwin had provided the biological basis. So everyone was prepared to believe it and here was the supposed scientific proof. Here was a dull, poorly written book, not very logical, long winded and the whole edition sold out in two days.

Not many people read it, but they wanted to believe it and it was like having another ... the real Bible to put on the shelf.

[Murray] And I believe one of the Huxley’s admitted that at the time. He said, “We all wanted to believe this and we just found it. We were just all waiting to read this, this ...”

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, what is happening now in fundamentalist circles and reformed circles is that we are going back to repeat that same error. And the framework hypothesis is a ... an intellectual bit of hypocrisy to disguise the fact that this is what they are doing. And it pretends to be the true interpretation.

I have read recently statements by several men who claim to be outstanding reformed leaders and are so regarded. And the gist of it was that, oh, the Church has a problem. We have so many people who profess to be good, reformed men, orthodox in their thinking who naively believe in the historicity of Genesis one through 11.

Now that to me is intellectual hypocrisy of the worst kind.

[Sandlin] It is non Christian.

[Rushdoony] It is non Christian.

[Sandlin] Well...

[Rushdoony] So, Joe, your instincts are all sound and biblical and don’t let anybody ever fool you with a guff or with those languages. Hey are not talking anything that is sound and they are using big words, because they will figure you are an outsider to the world of the seminary and the ministry and you are not capable of dealing with it.

So these words are frauds as they use them.

[Sandlin] And this is not a secondary issue, especially this historicity of Genesis one through 11.

[Rushdoony] Yes

[Sandlin] This is a bedrock issue in the faith.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] Where we need to draw a line in the sand.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] And stand for it.

I want to mention I recently received email from a noted Reconstructionist minister who has joined what some of the people would consider to be perhaps the leading Presbyterian, conservative Presbyterian denomination in the country and yet he was grilled very strongly.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] ...because of his outspoken stand in favor of the historicity of Genesis one through 11.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Sandlin] This same denomination will be very weak when it comes to biblical law, mind you. But when it comes to anybody else who takes a strong stand on the historicity of Genesis one through 11, he just barely got by.

That shows where even the leading so-called conservative denominations, reformed denominations are headed.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And unless the brakes are applied soon, there is very, very great trouble ahead for all such churches.

[Sandlin] That is right.

[Rushdoony] Well, Joe, thanks for your question. It stirs me up. It reminded me of things I had preferred to forget, but I am glad I remembered them and I hope my recollections are help to all of you who are listening.

We are in a battle. The enemy is within our own ranks now. And he hopes to destroy the faith, but it will not be destroyed. Long ago one English laymen, a very fine Christian made the statement that it wasn’t anything like the scholars or the authorities that were the problem, that if we simply allowed the Word of God, turned it loose on the people like a roaring lion he would devour all the enemies. I have never forgotten that. I read that when I was quite young. And I believe it is true.

Well, our time is up. I want to thank all of you who sent in questions whether we used them or not. Some of the questions that I have gotten have made me do a little digging, made me appreciate the things I don’t know and I need to learn. While those we dealt with I have enjoyed dealing with them.

Thank you all and God bless you.