Blind Faith
A common view in many churches is that the Christian gospel is comprehended by being born again. This, however, is the beginning, not the end, of faith. When it becomes the totality of the Faith, it is a departure from Christ. Its goal is then self-centered and wrong.
- R. J. Rushdoony,
I was in the eighth grade when I read Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. I read it at first receptively and then with shock. It was difficult reading because it demonstrated nothing, but was written as an act of faith, a colossal and blind faith. It was widely accepted when first published in 1859 and the first printing sold out in two days. As George Bernard Shaw, who accepted Darwin, observed, the book was seen as man's liberation from the God of Christianity.
Today, this false liberation continues to dominate civilization. Men want freedom from Christ, not truth. They will not consider alternatives to their blind faith in Darwinism. We live therefore in a culture based on this. Many civilizations have done this before us, and their end has been death. Since roughly 1660, humanism has dominated the Western world, and now most other areas. Since the rise of public education, it has been extended to all classes and is now dominant in virtually all major churches.
Despite high hopes for the twenty-first century, its prospects are very bad unless it returns to Christ. The twentieth century has been called by able scholars the bloodiest and most evil of all centuries. Without a return to the Faith, the twenty-first will be worse.
A common view in many churches is that the Christian gospel is comprehended by being born again. This, however, is the beginning, not the end, of faith. When it becomes the totality of the Faith, it is a departure from Christ. Its goal is then self-centered and wrong.
The Triune God redeems us to fulfill Adam's calling to exercise dominion, and if we fail to do so, we leave all things under the dominion of the Fall. Our faith becomes a man-centered one, and we sin against our Lord.
What direction will the church take in this century?
- R. J. Rushdoony
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001), was a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical law to society. He started the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. His Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) began the contemporary theonomy movement which posits the validity of Biblical law as God’s standard of obedience for all. He therefore saw God’s law as the basis of the modern Christian response to the cultural decline, one he attributed to the church’s false view of God’s law being opposed to His grace. This broad Christian response he described as “Christian Reconstruction.” He is credited with igniting the modern Christian school and homeschooling movements in the mid to late 20th century. He also traveled extensively lecturing and serving as an expert witness in numerous court cases regarding religious liberty. Many ministry and educational efforts that continue today, took their philosophical and Biblical roots from his lectures and books.