Rousas John Rushdoony and His Systematic Theology

The American, Reformed theologian, Rousas John Rushdoony, born in 1916, has at last published his Systematic Theology (1994). Though it was written approximately ten years ago (1984), it is finally available to the public, after having been tested and refined little by little through use among various study groups and prepared for individuals and groups of all levels. This momentous work in two volumes (1227 pages not counting the very detailed table of contents, index of Scriptural texts cited and / or analyzed, and the index of authors and subjects treated) is indispensable for our confused and disoriented era. All who read in English (or rather American!) and are not lazy should acquire it, reading and meditating on it with Bible in hand. In addition, something which in no way spoils the work is that it is absolutely passionate reading from beginning to end.

I have kept in regular contact with R. J. Rushdoony's work (though I have never met him) since 1958, the year in which I read in the review. Torch and Trumpet (to which I had subscribed at the time) three articles by him on the inspiration and authority of the Holy Scripture. Afterwards, I believe that I read practically all the works of R. J. Rushdoony, beginning with By What Standard? (1958 and reissued in 1995); The Foundations of Social Order (1968), a study on the confessions of faith and the church councils during the early centuries of the church; Thy Kingdom Come (1971), a study on the books of Daniel and Revelation; The One and the Many (1971); The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973); The Biblical Philosophy of History (1979); and Law and Society (1982).

In addition to his books, R. J. Rushdoony has founded and directs the monthly journal, Chalcedon Report. Chalcedon refers to both an internationally Reformed movement of Christian reconstruction, in full development, as well as to the very important Council of Chalcedon (431), which confessed, on the infallible basis of the written Word of God, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of the Father, is at the same time both truly God and truly man. This confession, in rejecting all pretensions to divinity either by man or society (state, church, etc.), affirms that Christ alone is the only mediator between heaven and earth, the One to whom all power belongs, on high and here below (Mt. 28:18). By this declaration, furthermore, the limits and dependence of all legitimate human authority, whether individual or societal, were definitively recognized and emphasized: Jesus Christ alone being the source and guarantor of all true liberty (Gal. 5:1).

Since 320 A.D. (16 centuries!), there has always been a “priest” or “pastor” in each generation of the Armenian family of Rushdoony. Primarily a writer, R. J. Rushdoony, in obedience to his calling as a pastor, exercised his first ministry as a missionary on an Indian reserve. Afterwards, he became a theologian (non-academic!) and independent leader of the Christian reconstruction movement, often being poorly viewed by the “establishment,” little or not at all understood, and attacked, while at the same time being occasionally plagiarized by his critics. However, since the 1960s and particularly today, he is listened to and followed by a constantly increasing number of Christians in the U. S. and throughout the world.

In the face of humanism (worship of man) and anthropocentrism (man as god, the measure of all things; civilization separated from God under the pretext of neutrality), R. J. Rushdoony calls us to recognize and to live according to the royal law of Jesus Christ in every aspect and area of human existence, here on earth. He calls us to work humbly but determinedly, each one in his own sphere, according to the particular gifts he has received, for the reconstruction of the Lord's Kingdom and of Christendom, first in our hearts (“from which flows the well springs of life”), then in our marriages and families, churches, cities, vocations, and in the fields of philosophy and science as well as in the arts, knowing that God the Creator and Lord is omnipotent, and that “history has never been dominated by majorities but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally committed to their faith.”

With the Christian reconstruction movement, Chalcedon we have witnessed a doctrinal renewal as well as the development of a diversity of Christian ministries throughout the world, from America to the Philippines and Japan, from Spain to Romania, and from Great Britain to South Africa. There is teaching at all levels, medical and surgical works, orphanages and retirement homes, cinematographic productions and media communications of all kinds.

According to Rushdoony, at the end of the twentieth century, just as it was for Calvin during the sixteenth century, the universal kingship of Christ must be extended into every area of thought and life, until that day when it shall cover the entire universe. In order for that to happen, the Holy Scripture (Law of God and Law of Christ), must once again find its sovereign authority in every domain, since it reveals not only that which pertains to the “spiritual life” of the church and the Christian but also communicates the marching orders of the Lord concerning our “temporal life”—here and now.

The Systematic Theology of R. J. Rushdoony, which has 19 chapters, belongs less in the line (academic) of the classic Reformed dogmatics (from seventeenth to twentieth centuries) and more in the line of The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin or Christian Instruction by Pierre Viret (sixteenth century). Put in another way, it treats seriously and thoroughly, in a language readily accessible to modern man, those questions which surface or are presented today, not only those concerning Creation and Providence (ch. 3.), Holy Trinity (chs. 4 - 6), Covenant (ch. 7), Sin (ch. 8), Salvation (chs. 9, 10, and 11), Church (ch. 12)), Eschatology (ch. 13), and Prayer (ch. 19), but also those concerning the Land (ch. 15), Work (ch.16), Time (ch. 17) and Authority (ch. 18).

This magisterial work of R. J. Rushdoony aims in effect, let us repeat, in the spirit of the Reformation, at the Christian reconstruction, not only of the church, but of every area of life, to which the Lord of the Covenant calls all his people, from which comes the concrete and contemporary approach of this theology, regardless of the subject being treated, because a true, a good theology, for R. J. Rushdoony, as well as for the best current Reformed theologians, is nothing more and nothing less than the application today of the Word of God to man in our time and of course, in allowing ourselves to be aided and guided by our brothers and the fathers of the faith, and in taking into account, with careful attention, the progressive history of the church and of theology, inasmuch as they have been faithful to the Holy Scripture, the Word of God. The Systematic Theology of R. J. Rushdoony, like Calvin's Institutes, refers back to the best in the teachings of the Church Fathers, to the great Doctors of the Middle Ages and to the Reformers of the sixteenth century (this latter tradition of men existed not only in the past, but also is to be found today in our so-called modern times).

II

Chapters 1 and 2 of the Systematic Theology constitute an indispensable introduction for which one must take all the necessary time, and to which one must give the greatest attention: understanding this work of Rushdoony depends entirely on it. Chapter 1 is entitled “Infallibility” and Chapter 2 “The Necessity for Systematic Theology.”

I was so tremendously struck, in 1978, while reading Infallibility, published in the form of a brochure containing 69 pages (published also by Ross House Books), that I have preserved it very carefully since that time. (I would like to note in passing that the brochure of 1978, has as title for paragraph nine of this chapter “The Infallible Moment,” while the work of 1994, reads twice by error, “The Infallible Movement,” 1, 23.)

In the line of the Reformed philosophers of the twentieth century, Herman Dooyeweerd (1891-1977) and above all Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987), R. J. Rushdoony emphasizes that every thinking man, has as reference, whether he is self-consciously aware, a concept of infallibility which is attached to his fundamental presupposition. Man does not turn from the sovereignty of God and the infallibility of His Word but to “infalliblize” something else. Put in another way, infallibility is a concept from which no one can escape. When infallibility of the Word of God is denied and/or rejected, infallibility is without fail attributed to some “other”:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), very much “a la mode” after the World War II, did not hesitate to speak of the infallibility of Evolution in Le phénomène humain.

For a long time now, the idol of Democracy, mother of modern Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism (which does not mean to say all who are democrats!), has exalted the motto, vox populi, vox del.

The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) has “infallibilized” the esthetic experience in his Bréviaire d'esthétique.

Infallibility is at the basis of Marxist doctrine whether it concerns the class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the teachings of the Party or the goal of History.

The Roman Catholic Church, since Vatican I (1870), has accepted as dogma, the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra.

The existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre, in L’être et le néant teaches that to be human is to desire to be God infallibly.

Sinful individuals and societies on earth cannot help but to “infallibilize” fallible realities and thus, sooner or later, end in a state of doubt, despair and death (God has so declared it: “But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; all those who hate me love death,” Prov. 8:36).

Conversely, true faith in God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), who reveals Himself in His infallible Word, provides assurance, peace and joy for the Christian. The Holy Scripture guarantees the believer the nearness of God who speaks to his own people. The Word of God, only, is an independent Word, being both sovereign and infallible. Alone, the Word of that God, who is both One and Many (Trinity), sustains the universe, also one and many, which is His creation, never abandoned to its own autonomy. Because the Word of God is Law, it has sovereign authority to bind together all things and all beings, thus, joining them together in Covenant. To the Tempter, the Adversary and the Divider, Jesus replied one day by that Word of God, Word of the Torah, Law of the Holy Scripture: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Dt. 8:3; Mt. 4:4). And to every word of God, every word of the Holy Scriptures, all men are obligated to listen, believe and obey!

As far as the fundamental question of the ultimacy and necessity of the Word: How do we know? What is the source of authority? Who speaks the infallible word which ties everything together? There can only be three responses: 1) Man only can give the response; 2) God and man together can speak the creative and final word; 3) God alone speaks creatively, infallibly with absolute authority.

Concerning the first response, the man-god, in his insane pretense to speak the infallible word (in spite of his ignorance about the origin of all things), has nothing to say; such infallible human knowledge, which should be exhaustive, is impossible. He is like an island in a sea without a shore; he hears no other voice but his own.

Concerning the second response, the Word of God, the Holy Scripture, is nothing more than a subjective word, by which, in the name and in the place of God, man constructs his own word and finds himself abandoned in a void.

It is with the third response, God speaking with absolute authority and creativity, and man speaking analogically in obedience, that the Word of God infallibly establishes the validity and meaning of human words.

The Word expresses the lordship of God and is the ultimate point of reference, which determines and regulates the interpretation of facts and the moral character of all things, in the face of all our illusions, utopias and idols.

In the final analysis, it is necessary to know which will have priority for us: the Word of God or the word of man? Who is infallible?

Just as capital as chapter 1 on “Infallibility” in Systematic Theology is chapter 2 on “The Necessity for Systematic Theology.” Chapter 1 underlines as the foundation and norm of theology, the infallible Word of the Creator and Savior God, the Holy Scripture: Sola Scriptura. Chapter 2 emphasizes that theology can only be developed when based on the whole (system = whole), the entirety of the Holy Scripture: Tota Scriptura.

Just as God, who is one and many (Trinity = one and triune), has created and sustains all things by His law-word and the created world is a universe (unity and diversity, one and many), so is the Book which He has inspired and of which He is the sovereign Author, a whole, a system of unity and diversity, one and many.

Certainly there are difficulties—a number of which are presently insurmountable—that we encounter when reading the Bible and by which we remain blocked (just as there are difficulties—many of which are insurmountable—even for the greatest intellectuals and before which they remain blocked, in reading the universe). But God's Holy Scripture (as God's universe) shows forth a coherence which comes from God, and which we must discover, step by step, generation after generation: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings to search out a matter” (Prov. 25:2).

If theology, in submission to the coherent God, who has created the universe and inspired the Scripture with their coherency, should seek to be coherent, that coherence (systematic character) can be sought only by a recognition of the limits to be maintained.

Therefore, theology must never, if it wishes to be faithful, become Gnostic and/or speculative in sorting the Biblical data. The Lord has declared once and for all: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways” (Is. 55:8).

Rushdoony gives, as an example of going beyond the limit, the quasi-blasphemous positions of theologians, who speculating about divine election, disputed over supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism, as if it was permitted and possible to read the very mind of God by projecting onto it the processes of human thought. Still another example is the dispute with regard to the soul, between those who believe in the preexistence of the soul in relationship to the body and those who believe in the creation of the soul at the same time as the body. The practice of theology requires careful attention to reading and meditating, and then to applying the Word of God, while at the same time refusing to be Gnostic and speculative by going beyond what is revealed in the Word.

We must recognize faithfully, in conformity with the Holy Scripture, God's divine sovereignty and predestination of all things, while refusing to give in to Gnosticism and speculation by crossing the limits established by God in His Revelation. In following this pattern, we will reject every abstraction, which leads to excluding from the sphere and authority of the Scripture, any domain whatever it might be, and thereby the justification of the pretended autonomy or neutrality of that domain. If this process is not followed then it would lead to an abandoning to the Adversary a part or an aspect of God's creation, whether nature, history, science, politics, philosophy, arts, etc. The Lord has said, “You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Ex.34:14). “Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?” (1 Cor. 10:22).

Certain theologians have not hesitated to propose a world of possibilities outside the divine Revelation and to pose questions about what would have happened if.... All of these hypothetical questions are blasphemous since they question the validity of the sovereign decree of divine predestination which extends, according to our Lord Jesus Christ, as far as the number of hairs on our head (Mt. 10:30). Nothing is to be left to “divine” chance. To affirm any possibility whatsoever outside the divine decree, is to pretend to place oneself in the middle of facts and events which no longer have any meaning; it is to submerge oneself in a senseless world of incoherent abstractions in which freedom would no longer have significance. To affirm in any way whatsoever autonomy in relationship to God (e.g., the alleged free-will affirmed by Erasmus against Luther), is to reject the true freedom-responsibility which has place, meaning and existence only in a universe, and for men submitted to the Lord, who has created all His creatures and reigns sovereignly over them. In order to have a real existence, our freedom-responsibility can be ordained and established only by the Lord Almighty, on whom all the creatures depend in their proper setting, in the entirety of coordinated causality, influences, conditions and forces, of which we ourselves know very little in relation to that founding, creative and exhaustive knowledge of Him who, alone, establishes the reality of our relative and secondary knowledge.

There is no real and effective freedom outside the sovereign decree of God. There is no true freedom except in (and by) this decree. A freedom outside the decree of God (free-will a la Erasmus!) is nothing other than an imaginary freedom of which fallen man boasts, though his boast is only a blasphemous pretension of self-suicide: “But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; all those who hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36).“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse....” (read Rom. 1: 18 - 32).

The idolaters of “modernity,” who substitute anthropocentrism for theocentrism, the decrees and the rights of men for the Decree and the Right of God, have not ceased for three centuries, if not for six, to seek to save man through political action, by applying to society the most suicidal plans. These men who turn away from God and His law-word, have the absurd intention of remaking the world according to their own autonomous free-will. Their god, their idea, is the modern state with its claim of predestination, decree and infallibility. The Systematic Theology of Rushdoony aims at delivering man today—beginning with Christians—from this idol, this modern Babylon.

It is in returning to the Law, the Judicial Order, revealed and inscribed in the Bible, and in discovering once again the worshipful respect (fear in the Biblical sense) of the Lord and His Word, that man will know true freedom.

The Holy Scripture alone and in entirety—presents itself as the Word of God. It must be correctly interpreted and applied; however, the correct interpretation and application does not depend on the critical analysis (= judgment) made by the supposedly autonomous reason of man—since this would be to substitute reason as the infallible authority in the place of the infallible authority of God—but the interpretation (divine!) which is derived from the whole of Scripture in relation to each of its parts. In other words, the Scripture principally interprets itself, just as it interprets all things in order that in Christ everything be made new for us in every area of life. Given the unavoidable fact that it is the Word of the Creator of all things, the Scripture does not cease to call us to faith and obedience, us, meaning all men from the most intellectual to the most simple.

Therefore, theology, when it is systematic—in the sense defined by R. J. Rushdoony—contributes to guiding us in the concrete ethical situations of our lives in terms of knowledge, obedience and fear (= worshipful respect) of God. Since He is our Lord and Savior, we remain by grace, under the government of His law-word which envelops all areas of our lives in every sphere of creation. As long as he remains unconverted (= unrepentant, unreoriented), man will remain dominated by sin. which means fundamentally, separation from and rebellion against God, and he will have no other vision of the world and of his existence (which he intends to continue as the sovereign interpreter and planner) except that which is man-centered. God, even If He exists, will have only a possible subsidiary importance by means of religion, i.e., magic.

Only a systematic religion faithful to the entirety of Scripture which is established and living in the heart (the center of man) will restore to man a religion (re-ligare = bind together), a relationship with God which is in the proper perspective: God-centered; God alone is God. “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl. 12: 13-14). “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: / will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put shame to the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence” (1 Cor. 1: 18- 20 and 27-29).

III

After having summarized the splendid introduction, comprising the first two chapters of Systematic Theology by Rushdoony, it would be impossible for me, of course, to take the 17 chapters (one by one) which follow and which confront, with singular force, the reader with the Word of truth and life, which is the Holy Scripture of Jesus Christ and the Holy Scripture of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In concluding, I would only like to say that this work of R. J. Rushdoony demonstrates that theology is not the limited domain, the reserved and guarded pursuit, of specialists (too often very poor theologians, alas!), but the immense field of knowledge and communication, meditation and application of the Word of God, alone and in its entirety. This field, open to all, covers (governing them completely), all aspects, all parts of our human existence in the context of the created universe which is maintained and guided by the Lord.

You will indeed see, if you read this magnificent work, that its concern, in conformity with the Holy Scripture, is not only with the subjects of faith, prayer, piety, church, worship, sacraments, evangelization and mission, but also with the subjects of man and woman, land, nations, politics, state, work, rest, leisure, time and history, present and future, philosophy, art and science, justice and punishment, and angels and demons. There you will find also, above all and always, a concern for God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and for their works of creation, providence, salvation, and covenant, from the beginning of all things to the final general resurrection and the universal renewal of the universe. “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy!... For God is the great King of all the earth; sing to Him a psalm of praise. God reigns over the nations!..” (Ps. 47). Amen! Alleluia!