Category: Quotes & Commentary

The Nations As Nations Have Their Place In The Kingdom Of God

http://chalcedon.edu/…/audio/inheritance-and-possession/

Question (Somewhat garbled)

One point of Scripture is it speaking of the unity of God’s people. How does that compare to the Nationalism of today?

Rushdoony Answers

The Bible is not saying it is going to be a one world order governmentally. That is the only way the modern mind can think of a world united — governmentally. It means rather, united in Christ without destroying the integrity of the various national groups because they have their place under God. Thus, there is no reason to believe that in God’s Kingdom on earth there will be no longer any Russians or Chinese. It does mean emphatically that they will be alike governed by the word of God. The principle of unity is Christ. It is not a World state. And this of course is where many groups like Armstrong’s group and others go sadly astray. They are insistent on seeing a one world state to come through either Christ’s premillennial return or through some kind of human agency with the British Israelites or the British Empire. These are all heretical views I believe.

RJR Lecture — Law and Life

http://chalcedon.edu/…/audio/inheritance-and-possession/

Go to the point where there is 3:45 left on the lecture

Dostoyevsky On The Goal Of Egalitarianism

Here is a classic description of the socialist concept of equality as described by Dostoyevsky in his “The Possessed.” It is referred to as “Shigalyovism.”

“The thirst for education is already an aristocratic thirst. As soon as there is family love, there is a desire for property. We shall throttle that desire: we shall unleash drunkenness, scandal, denunciations: we shall unleash unprecedented debauchery; we shall extinguish every genius in his infancy. Everything must be reduced to the common denominator, total equality.

Each belongs to all, and all to each. All are slaves and equal in slavery. In extreme cases it will mean defamation and murder, but the main thing is equality. First there will be a drop in the standard of education, in learning and talent. A high level of learning and talent is accessible only to the very brainy. We must abolish the brainy! The brainy couldn’t be anything other than despots and have always brought more debauchery than good. We will execute or exile them. We will cut out Cicero’s tongue, gouge out Copernicus’s eyes, stone Shakespeare to death — that Shigalyovism! Slaves must be equal: freedom and equality have never yet existed without despotism, but here must be equality in the herd, that Shigalyovism!

If after reading this quote one isn’t alarmed at how much we are seeing this come to fruition in our own communities there isn’t much hope to ever convince. The unleashing of debauchery is seen in the sexual agenda that is everywhere in the State schools. The desire to extinguish genius is seen in the policy that was “No Child Left Behind.” No one needs to be convinced regarding our drop in the standard of education. If we don’t see that, the only reason we can’t see that is because we have become part of the “drop.”

Matthew Henry’s Progressive Postmillennialism

“David rose gradually; he was first anointed king in reversion, then in possession of one tribe only, and at last of all the tribes. Thus the Kingdom of the Messiah, the Son of David, is set up by degrees; he is Lord of all by divine designation, but we see not yet all things put under Him (Hebrews 2:8).”

Matthew Henry
Commentary II Samuel, Chapter 2:1-7

And as a throw in this wonderful gem from Henry

“Divine providence serves its own purposes by the stupidity of men at sometimes.”

The Worldview Machen On The Modern Age — A Rebuff To Hart’s R2K Machen

“The truth is there can be no real progress unless there is something that is fixed. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world.” Well, Christian doctrine provides that place to stand. Unless there be such a place to stand, all progress is an illusion. The very idea of progress implies something fixed. There is no progress in a kaleidoscope

That is the trouble with the boasted progress of our modern age. The Bible at the start was given up. Nothing was to be regarded as fixed. All truth was regarded as relative. What has been the result? I will tell you. An unparalleled decadence—liberty prostrate, slavery stalking almost unchecked through the earth, the achievements of centuries crumbling in the dust, sweetness and decency despised, all meaning regarded as having been taken away from human life. What is the remedy? I will tell you that too. A return to God’s Word! We had science for the sake of science, and got the World War; we had art for art’s sake, and got ugliness gone mad; we had man for the sake of man and got a world of robots—men made into machines. Is it not time for us to come to ourselves, like the prodigal in a far country? Is it not time for us to seek real progress by a return to the living God?

J. Gresham Machen
The Creeds and Doctrinal Advance

1.) Notice how integrated Machen’s worldview here is in this excerpt. He starts with the necessity of the absolute given-ness of the Scriptures and the Historic Christian Doctrine that they convey. From there he segues into the reality that without the Archimedian fixed reference point there can be no progress. And the progress which Machen is referring to is not merely progress in the Church but progress in culture and social order. Machen explicitly says because of the loss of fixity that is provided with and by Scripture and the Christian doctrine that flows from it, “there is decadence, there is liberty prostrate, there is slavery stalking almost unchecked upon the earth, the achievements of centuries crumbling in the dust, with sweetness and decency despised.”

    Now clearly this is worldview thinking at its best.

Machen, writing as a Christian Minister, and a Doctor of the Church, tells the Christian community that unless they return to Scripture not only will all hope of progress is abandoned but also regress into old chaos and dark night is guaranteed.

2.) Notice also, how Machen connects the teaching of Scripture to what some style the “common realm.” Machen, like all good worldview thinkers, explicitly notes that when we embraced Science apart from Christian doctrine, Art apart from Christian doctrine, Man apart from Christian doctrine the consequences were war, ugliness gone mad, and robots. Machen clearly sees a connection here between Scripture, Christian Doctrine and all of life. Machen’s faith is not a privatized faith that is cordoned off from the public square. Machen’s faith is not a faith that appeals to Natural Law to govern science, art, and man. Machen’s faith is not a faith that would keep him from boldly speaking as a Christian minister to the life issues of the time. Machen’s faith was a wholistic integrated faith as this quote clearly reveals.

3.) In his appeal to return to the living God is implied the idea that should man return to the living God then the problems he makes mention off will find themselves receding. Man will no longer be a robot and a machine but instead will discover again his manishness. Art will no longer be ugliness gone mad but will once again find its proper place and role in God’s world. Science will no longer be prone to producing War but will be harnessed for the glory of God.

Machen finds in God’s Word and Christian doctrine not only the resolution to individual men’s hostility to God and God’s hostility to them, but Machen also found in God’s Word and Christian doctrine the resolution to a world gone mad and a civilization undone by sin.

And for that R2K must re-invent the Machen of History so that he is, as one R2K advocate recently put it one who believed that, “fighting these (cultural) battles was not the ministry of the visible church.” Quite to the contrary this piece reveals a man of the visible Church fighting with an eye not only to the Church but also to the cultural issues in the world.

Francis Nigel Lee on Pietism

Speaking to Pietism

“Here he [Satan] makes the Christians so heavenly-minded that they are of no earthly use. They spend all of their time in church or at prayer meetings, they lose all of their zeal for the Creator God and this world of His. In this case the church becomes other-wordly, unearthly and irrelevant to real life. It becomes progressively more and more alienated from the real issues. It becomes foreign to God’s world. Lonely and defeated, this kind of church then surrenders all the other areas of life outside of the church to the forces of anti-Christ. And these forces of anti-Christ ultimately surrounds and destroy this pietism. What pietism therefore produces, above all, is its own gravediggers.”

Francis Nigel Lee
A Christian Manifesto, 17:00