Systematic Theology

Lesson #8

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Speech

Track: 8

Dictation Name: RR10??

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Our subject in this period is predestination. Predestination is a very obvious fact. The necessity for discussing it is a moral fact; man refuses to accept it because it denies the ultimacy of man. In discussing predestination, therefore, certain things need to be pointed out.

First of all, the only real alternatives as we view the world are predestination or chance. Either everything is the product of chance, and chance rules the universe, or we have predestination. We cannot, without being guilty of self contradiction, deny God and then insist that there is a world of order around us. The universe of order presupposes absolute order behind it, an absolute mind with an absolute purpose. So that it becomes a necessity for those who are consistent atheists or evolutionists or humanists to affirm chance, or to refuse to raise the question of order.

When I was a student, a member of the University of California philosophy department admitted in a discussion that it was either chance or predestination. He said, moreover, ‘if you allowed yourself’ - he was talking to students who were pragmatic naturalists like himself - ‘if you allowed yourself to get into a discussion of origins with any Christian, you’d be the loser. So’, he said, ‘the thing to do is to say I refuse to raise the questions of origins, or of order. I simply take the order of the universe as a given. For granted. Just as you refuse to say ‘where did God come from?’ I refuse to say ‘where did order in the universe come from’.’ Now he was asked a second question which he refused to answer.

If we do that, have we not revised the same God of scripture under the name of natural order in the universe? Have we not then transferred everything God is to the universe, so we have God without the name of God. You see, to believe that there is an order in the universe, and it is not from God, is to believe in greater miracles than any Christian believes in. Those who believe in chance, those who deny God, are the ones who truly have the greatest faith; and the most perverse of all faiths, the blindest of all faiths.

Then second, as we saw in our previous period, the doctrine of fiat creation requires predestination. Total creation means total control. At the council of Jerusalem, the apostle James said in Acts 15:18, “Known unto God are all his works, from the foundation of the world.” Creation and history have no surprises for God. He planned it all, he made it all, he governs it all. To affirm predestination means to affirm total fiat creation and vise versa.

Then third, because God is the creator and the predestinator of all things, his predestination of all things is both universal and particular because every detail is his handiwork as well as the overall purpose and plan. Election is thus both particular and general. All who are in covenant with Christ and in Christ are elected by God for redemption, and that redemption is both particular and general. It embraces the covenant people and it embraces the individuals.

In John 10:1-7 we are told that the good Shepherd knows his sheep, He calls them by name and he leads them. Both election and reprobation are a part of God’s total government. Then fourth, because predestination is not only a necessary part of creation but also of government, wherever sovereignty and government are claimed, there also predestination are claimed. If we say God is the Lord, then we believe God is the Creator, Governor, Predestinator, and the Lord of all things. Wherever we say man is the Lord, then we say man must govern absolutely and predestinate absolutely.

Then man says as Henley did, ‘I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul’. And this is what Sartre says also in his philosophy; and of course it leads to exactly what we have today, the modern state, with total planning, with total jurisdiction, with sovereignty. The goal of the modern state is to plan everything totally, absolute planning and control. Nothing is to be outside the government, the planning, the directional guidance of the state; because man becomes the predestinator.

About two weeks ago I had a very interesting experience, which I’ve told to one or two of you, about the difference in this country in the years before World War II and since then, because we still had elements of Christianity, and the state was still to a degree limited - although, the change had been taking place for some time. A man who comes to our Santa Maria meeting went to Virginia City recently, and an old friend and neighbor in his nineties asked him when he was there to see if the house he grew up in was still standing. He said, ‘My grandfather built it, we left it in the early nineties when the mines were beginning to play out. There were lots of houses vacant so we didn’t even bother to put it up for sale. We never bothered to leave out address with the county clerk, so we never got a tax bill, and of course it’s probably been sold long since, if it’s still standing.”

And he said also, ‘Please locate my grandfather’s grave and see that it’s taken care of.’ Well, Ted went there, and he did take care of the grave, and he located the house, and he went to the county courthouse to check out the records. He found that the house had stayed idle from the early 1890’s to 1940, when it was put up for sale for back taxes and cost. There was only one bidder; he refused to pay one penny over the back taxes and cost. So he got the house, an old Victorian type house with a lot of gingerbread, for $6.47. Now that seems like a century or two away, but that was not too many years ago.

What does it tell us, that illustration? The difference in taxation! The difference in the civil governments claim to govern, in it’s claim to jurisdiction. In those days the government did very little beyond dealing with justice. Because there was more of a Christian character there was very little crime. I use the illustration often of my little home town here in California; that in those days, at only twelve hundred people less than now - it has about forty-five hundred now, four thousand five hundred - then it had one policeman and a relief man. They had a little one room jail, which about once a year had some drunk in it. That was a big event; highschool kids would parade by because that was one of the big news’s in town: somebody was in jail! Big event of the year. Now they have an eighteen man police force and a lot of problems. What’s the difference? The moral character.

And what happens as the state takes the place of God and says ‘we will predestinate, we will plan everything’. It undercuts the faith, and therefore it undercuts character, it undercuts morality, and there is a social disintegration and the answer of the state is more controls, more predestination by the state. You see, predestination and providence, and other doctrines of our faith, do not disappear when men deny these things to God. They reappear in political form as aspects of the life of the state. All men believe in predestination, but they disagree as to the source of it. All men believe in providence, but they no longer believe in providence of God. They believe in the providence of the state.

The disagreement with regard to predestination is as to the source of predestination.

Then fifth, predestination is inseparable from grace. To deny predestination to God is to deny his sovereign grace. Grace means that the favor of God was not because of any cause in us, but totally of God’s good pleasure. But to say that there is no predestination is to say that determination comes from us, and therefore, when God does something for us it is not grace, it is our doing. We are the determiners. We are the self-savers.

The Westminster Confession of Faith in speaking of God’s eternal decree says “God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.” God’s predestination does no violence to the will of the creature, whereas the states predestination does violence to us continually. It leads either to finally terror, or to {?} conditioning.

One reason why the state is to interested in education is it wants to control us, condition us to obey when it decrees it will govern us. The state, however, is not God. It cannot create, and it cannot govern as a God without disaster. The states grace is corruption; it means subsidies, it means immorality.

Then sixth, we must say with regard to predestination that ultimacy cannot be given to foreknowledge. There are those who say God predestined what he foresaw. What this does is to make man ultimate, it says that God is the spectator; God sits on the sidelines with a telescopic lense, as it were, looking down the ages to see what John Doe is going to do way down there...and he says, ‘Oh, that’s what’s going to happen. Isn’t that interesting.’ No. The scripture tells us, whom he did foreknow he did predestinate! The two are inseparable. Foreknowledge is a part of God’s predestination.

In fact, Paul condemns this in Romans 9:11-20. He says,

“11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)

12 It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.

13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.

15 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

17 For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

18 Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?”

In other words, God is emphatic as he speaks here through the hand of Paul. It’s not foreknowledge that comes first. God foreknows because he predestined.

Then seventh, we must say when we speak of God as the first cause (as the Westminster Confession) and man as the second cause, we do not do this is an aristotelian or thomistic sense. Van Til has written in his book on scripture and confession concerning that, and I quote: “Thomas constructs his man and his world by means of the Aristotelian formed matter, {steam?}. Man, he says is created by God, but this means that God is created the first cause of man’s existence. Thomas virtually identifies the Biblical teaching on creation with the Aristotelian notion of cause. Having God as his first cause, man participates in the being of God. But it also means that man is not identical to God, but only participates in him and therefore has an existence apart from God. This separate existence is due to his participation in pue matter, pure nonbeing, pure contingency.

Now, man must begin as against the climates in Aristotle with God as creator. There is no necessity in God - in Aristotle’s first cause there is necessity. Out of nothing, creation out of nothing, means not only out of no matter but our of no necessity. No material. Only out of God’s good pleasure.

What does predestination require of us? This is a good question to ask as we deal with the doctrine. Paul when he speaks in Romans 11:33-36,

“33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor?

35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?

In these three verses Paul echoes a number of passes from the Old Testament. Isaiah 40:13, Jeremiah 23:18, Job 11:7 and in 15:8 and 35:7, Psalm 36:6, Psalm 92:5... quite a few passages that he echoes there. What do these passages do? They express the joy and the delight of man, his amazement, the depth of the riches of God. The door is barred to all attempts to probe the mind of God. We are told that he is past, searching out, that because God is God the mind of man can never penetrate him. God can reveal himself to us, we can know him truly, but we can never exhaust the inexhaustible riches of God.

What is required of us, then, as we contemplate the mysteries of God in predestination? Faith. The faithful present themselves as a living sacrifice to God in continual service. They obey him. They have confidence in action, they declare that nothing can separate us from the love of God. When Paul in Romans 8 speaks of God’s absolute predestination, he tells us in Romans 8:28 that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to his purpose. He goes on to say if God is for us, who can be against us? He tells us that it means that nothing in heaven or on earth, neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities can separate us ever from the love of God, because predestination makes it as sure as the Almighty God himself.

Therefore, if God be for us, who can speak against us? This is what predestination means. It is the arming of the Christians. It means that he has absolute certainty, and assurance that God is begun something and he will complete it, that when God declares the kingdom of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and Christ, it will be so, because God is the predestinator and what he says will come to pass. If the tyrants of this world, and the cheap politician, and the shoddy preachers who are like Calvin’s sty of swine preaching a false gospel, and we can know God has declared what your {?} if is you will not repent and believe. And it is not you who shall prevail no matter what the power and money behind you, because that is nothing against the power of God. It is God who shall prevail.

Predestination is our armour. It tells us that our faith is not an empty thing, that it is as strong as the promises of God, so it is a magnificent and a glorious doctrine. Are there are questions now? Yes?