12.20.2016 THE BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY (1969) by Rousas J. Rushdoony

Rousas J. Rushdoony, editor of Philosophical and Historical Studies of the International Library of Philosophy and Theology and of the University Series (Historical Studies) is an american writer and scholar. an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, he has been a missionary among Paiute and Shoshone Indians as well as a pastor. ...a contributor to many theological and philosophical journals,
he is the author of
by what standard?
freud and van til (modern thinker series)(
intellectual schizophrenia
the messianic character of amerian education
this independent republic
the nature of the american system
 the myth over population
bread upon the waters
the mythology of science
foundations of the social order

Chapter 1 - The Biblical Philosophy of History

1  the question, 'what is history?', confronts the christian scholar and student today with a great urgency. accustomed as he is to believing that history is the story of what has happened in time, in terms of its major events and movements, the average man is little prepared to cope in the many new concepts of history which undergird modern historiography. in particular, Biblical scholars have indulged in the 'search for the historical Jesus' with startling results, giving a report on a 'demythologized' Jesus which bears no resemblance to the Jesus of the Bible. church historians and secular historians likewise give a version of history as totally the product of impersonal natural forces, so that God and Christ become not only abstracted from past history but very remote to the present.

what is history? out of the millions of events and persons of the past, how are certain events selected as significant? is the Battle of Stanligrad in 1942-3 as important as or more important that the Battle of Avarair in 451? on what ground do we stress the one and neglect the other?  and when is an event 'history'?

the problem can best be recognized by analyzing some remarks of an important contemporary theologian, and Episcopalian layman who, since 1961, has been Associate Professor of Bible and Religion at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. Thomas J. Altizer holds that the 'first requirement' of any intellectual inquiry which will break the
2  impasse of modern thought 'is a forthright confession of the death of the God of Christendom, a full acknowledgement that the era of Christian civilization has come to an end, with the result that all cognitive meaning and all moral values that were once historically associated with the Christian God have collapse'. this death of god means not only that we recognize that the historic faith was mythical but that we also recognize it to be dead as an historical influence; 'God has died in OUR time, in OUR history, in OUR  existence'.  this means that history has a totally new meaning because God is dead. 'this meaning of 'historical' is intimately related to the modern idea of 'historicity': for, in this perspective, 'historicity' means a total immersion in historical time, an immersion that is totally isolated from any meaning or reality that might lie beyond it'.  modern man's life is existential;  this means 'an absolute autonomy which finally encloses him within the concrete moment itself'. in terms of this faith, history can have no transcendental meaning. the life of Jesus must be read in exclusively naturalistic terms; nothing can be 'historical' if it represents a supernatural power, act or influence. Jesus is accordingly 'demythologized', and the 'Jesus of history' bears no resemblance to the Jesus of Scripture , who is God incarnate and the Messiah of prophecy. 'total immersion in historical time' means that any and every event 'i9s totally isolated from any meaning or reality that might lie beyond it'. such a faith clearly excludes the Biblical God from ALL history, which must be read in terms of the purely naturalistic and immanent forces of the resent. this means also that the basic drives of history are natural and hence primarily impersonal, since the vast

3  reservoir of being is basically an impersonal and totally natural ocean  of blind movement and energy. history therefore is both 'demythologized' of the sacred and also de-personalized.

the Biblical philosophy of history is clearly and irrevocably at odds with the modern faith. basic to the biblical philosophy is the doctrine of creation.this doctrine has far reaching implications for history.
FIRST, the doctrine of creation asserts that the universe, time, history, man, and all things are the handiwork of a sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient, and triune God.
SECOND, this means that the meaning of history is to be understood primarily and essentially in terms of that god. time and history are created by God and therefore are determined and governed by god. the ground of history, therefore, is not in time, not in a total immersion in the moment, but in eternity.
THIRD,  creation is described by all of scripture as a creative ACT of god, in 6 days, and thus it must be understood as ACT, NOT PROCESS. every attempt to read process into the creation account, to turn the days into ages and make room for 'scientific' interpretations, is a surrender to process philosophies and an abandonment of the sovereignty of god. it ascribes powers to a natural process and weakens the determinative power  of the creative act. the Biblical account is explicit in its description: we are told of a se4ries of perfect and final acts. we are not given a report on processes. the creative acts are not only perfect and final: they are totally supernatural. this is their offense. to give man an 'historical doctrine of creation, in the modern sense of that term, it is necessary to supplant the creative act with a creative process, so that the initiative is at the very least placed within history if not made totally a product of history. such theologians are philosophical immersionists; the only God they can tolerate is on who is immersed in history, one who is Himself a product of natural process
4  and is working together with man to conquer time and history. God and man are thus partners and co-workers in the war against brute factuality. according to Justin Wroe Nixon, 'to those, whose sentiments  are voiced by Walter Rauschenbusch, God is the dynamic of progress, the central reality of a forward-moving life'. in this perspective God is not the Creator;  instead, He is another creature, although a greater one, who is leading man in the battle against the forces of chaos. he has not created time and history but rather appears  in time and history to give meaning to it by conquering it and reshaping it to His hopes. as a result, god is the spearhead of a revolution in time and history against  the chaos and meaninglessness of time and history.
there is little question that the changes which seem imminent in our conception of the functions of god will be disturbing. but they are not lacking in promise. under their influence we shall think of God as the atmosphere and the assumption of the highest life. he furnishes its setting. He is to be found in the realm of appreciation rather than of manipulation. because he is an Order he is the vision of unrealized achievement  in every realm and because he is a Person. He is yet our unfailing resource in defeat. He meets every man on the level of his own need and yet he draws us all into the corporate spiritual union of all mankind. the experience of god will probably always come to us as a medicine, a remedy  for emergencies, but it will seem more and more like the glow of health and joy and the unforgettable vision which one brings back from a walk over the hills. god is the end of life, an end which is beyond life by which alone brings us to the fullest realization of ourselves in life. because he is the lure and the imperative in the Best that we know He is indeed 'the substance of all revolutions.'

5  the God of the Bible is the Creator of all things; man is in rebellion against God and His law , and the basic problem of man is sin. history is the battle of Christ versus antichrist, and man's basic need is redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ  and then life in Christ and under god's law, now no longer a bill of indictment against man but a charter for life. for this perspective presented by nixon, man's basic problem is not sin against god but the need to realize his potentialities in history by conquering nature and giving it meaning, by a war against chaos. but his faith is itself an assertion of chaos, in that revolution is essential to it, and God is 'the substance of all revolutions. '  there is no need for reconciliation to this God; instead, he is our head revolutionist in uniting all mankind in gaining their goal, revolution. not a new man in Jesus Christ, but a new order, a grand revolution against a hostile universe, led by the First Revolutionist, God, is the hope of this faith. the universe is not the creation of this god but his enemy, territory to be conquered with man's help.  god Himself is finite, a creature of the universe who is spearheading revolution against it, striving together with man to attain his ideals. God is thus the great process of revolution. the Jesus of this faith is an unreservedly human being like ourselves. it can be said, however, that 'God was in Christ' in that the vision of 'the Best' and all God's hopes for His great revolution found expression in Jesus. the potentialities of man and of history come into focus in Jesus.  this is the BEST God and Christ that process philosophy can give us  and this is clearly a Christ who cannot save by can only lead and inspire man.
FOURTH, the Biblical doctrine of creation not only asserts that creation is the creative act of god but, because it is totally His creative act, creation is totally under His government. another word for this total government is predestination
6  because our age is so thoroughly humanistic, it is in rebellion against predestination, which is simply the assertion of god's sovereignty, government and control. humanism insists  that man must be in control and socialism and communism, as well as scientific planning, psychological controls and other attempts of man to control man and nature, are simply assertions of predestination by man. the only alternative to the doctrine of predestination by man. the only alternative to the doctrine of predestination is the assertion of the reign of total chance, of meaninglessness and brute factuality. the real issue is what kind of predestination we shall have, predestination by God or predestination by man? shall we accept God's eternal decree, his total planning or will we submit to man's total planning, man's dream of playing God and planner over all creation? according to the Biblical faith, God alone is god, god alone is the first cause. this means that God alone has absolute freedom and power. man's freedom is the liberty of a second cause; it is genuine liberty, but it is limited because man is a creature and it is subordinate to the total creation and determination of all things by the triune God.  WHENEVER AND WHEREVER THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION IS DENIED OR WEAKENED, TO THAT EXTENT THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD AND HIS ETERNAL DECREE ARE DENIED OR WEAKENED AND SOVEREIGNTY AND PREDESTINATION POWER ARE TRANSFERRED INTO THE HANDS OF MAN.  man, as the high point of process and evolution, becomes also the high point of history and of the power of prediction and predestination.
when men began to depart from Biblical faith, they turned to ancient classical thought with its pagan faith in natural law. the doctrine of natural law asserts the presence in nature of inherent laws which govern reality, so that law is transferred from God to nature. law is no longer OVER  creation but WITHIN process. the concept of natural law, confused by christians with God's providence in nature and the total subservience of all nature to God's

7  decree and law, made great inroads into christian thinking and became the mainspring of Enlightenment faith in its rejection of the God of scripture. classical liberalism is based on this Enlightenment faith, as is modern libertarianism and conservatism. nature has, inherent within itself, its own processes and laws which govern reality. hence, man's attitude is one of laissez-faire; there must be no interference with nature's laws and controls. planning was thus transferred from God to nature. darwinism destroyed this faith in nature. the process of nature was not portrayed not as a perfect working of law, but as a blind, unconscious energy working profligately to express itself. in the struggle for survival, the fittest survive by virtue of their own adaptations, not because of natural law. nature produces many 'mistakes' which fail to survive and become extinct species and fossils. the destiny of the universe is extinction as its energy runs down.
all of this served to shatter the older faith in nature. nature as the agency of predestination was gone. it became increasingly evident to naturalistic thinkers that man must control his own evolution and also control the evolution of plant and animal life. moreover, man must create and control his own social order, so that total statism, total socialism, is 'scientific  socialism', that is, socialism which recognizes that man cannot exist without predestination and therefore provides for the control of process, for total planning and predestination, by the elite men. centuries ago, Plato came to a similar conclusion and charted the course for total tyranny in his infamous Republic. the same planning and control by man, predestination by man, is again a major force in history. socialism, statist deduction,mental health programs, social security, and a variety of other statist programs provide the frameword for man's growing attempt to claim the power of predestination for himself. man seeks, in short, to become
8  his own savior and god.
FIFTH, the source of energy and power is radically different in the Biblical faith than in the humanistic creed. for the orthodox christian, who grounds his philosophy of history on the doctrine of creation, the mainspring of history is god. time rests on the foundation of eternity, on the eternal decree of god. time and history therefore have meaning because they were created in terms of God's perfect and totally comprehensive plan. every blade of grass, every sparrow's fall, the very hairs of our head, all are comprehended and governed by God's eternal decree, and all have meaning in terms of it. the humanist faces a meaningless world in which he must strive to create and establish meaning. the christian accepts a world which is totally meaningful and in which EVERY event moves in terms of God's perfect and totally comprehensive plan. every blade of grass, every sparrow's fall, the very hairs of our head, all are comprehended and governed  by God's eternal decree and all have meaning in terms of it. the humanist faces a meaningless world in which he must strive to create and establish meaning. the christian accepts a worlds which is totally meaningful and in which EVERY event moves in terms of God's predestined purpose and when man accepts god as his Lord and Christ as his Savior, EVERY event works together for good to him because he is now in harmony with that meaning and destiny. romans 8.28 man therefore does not create meaning; instead, having revelled against God's meaning, having striven to be as god and himself the source of meaning and definition (genesis 3.5), man now submits to God's meaning and finds his life therein. for the humanist, the dynamics of history are in titanic man, as he imposes his will and idea on the world. for the orthodox christian , the dynamics of history are in God the Creator and man accepts those dynamics and rejoices in the blessings thereof when man accepts Christ as Savior and then follows the leadings of the sanctifying Holy Spirit. for him, the Bible is the authoritative, inspired and infallible word of the triune God.
SIXTH, the Biblical philosophy of history is grounded not only on the doctrine of creation but on the doctrine of the infallible scripture. a God who is struggling together with man against the darkness of a universe of brute factuality,
9  is of God who is struggling to realize Himself. he cannot therefore speak predictively but only hopefully, because He is not in total control. again, because He has not fully realized Himself, He is not fully self-conscious, so that His word lacks perspicuity and lucidity; it cannot be infallible, because He is neither perfect, omnipotent, nor sovereign. it can merely be an inspiring exhortation from another and leading 'freedom fighter'. but the orthodox doctrine holds to the infallible word because it recognizes that God created all things, governs all things and knows all things, and 'known unto God are all His works, from the beginning of the world'. Acts 15.18 a perfect, omnipotent and totally self-conscious God can ONLY  speak infallibly: His word is INESCAPABLY an infallible word. a limited God can no more speak infallibly than he can predestine. he is not in full control of either the universe or himself.
the hostility of modernists and atheists  to the doctrine of infalliblity as applied to Scripture rests on the same foundation as their hostility to predestination. man claims increasingly the right to total planning and man claims increasingly, as he refines his scientific method, the power to speak authoritatively in a creative sense....
10....SEVENTH, the Biblical philosophy of history means that time does not come out of a primeval past but from eternity. the origin of time is not in chaos but in eternity. evolutionary time emerges out of the past, gropes its way blindly into the present and moves sightlessly into an unknown

11  future. the movement of time is thus from the past to the present into the future. the movement of time, according to the Bible, is from eternity, since it is created by God and moves out of and in terms of His eternal decree. because time moves in terms of the eternal decree, when its function is finished there shall be time no more. Revelation 10.6 because time is predestined and because its  beginning and end are already established, time does not develop in evolutionary fashion from past to present to future. instead, it unfolds from future to present to past. in Wood's words, 'the future is the source, it is the reservoir of time which some day will be present and then past. better stated, eternity is the source; time is predestined and therefore it moves from the future to the present to the past.  'the future is logically first, but not chronologically'.
the Past issues, it proceeds, from the Future, through the Present.
'the Present therefore comes out from the invisible future. the Present  therefore comes out from the invisible Future. the Present perpetually and ever-newly embodies the Future in visible, audible, livable form; and returns again into invisible Time in the Past.
the Past acts invisibly. it continually influences us with regard to the Present. it casts light upon the Present. that is its great function. it helps us to live in the Present which we know and with reference to the Future which we expect to see.
for evolutionary time, the past is determinative. the source of time and of being is in primeval chaos, and it is primeval chaos, the great and creative Past, which has been hence determinative heretofore and it is this time and being born of chaos that man now seeks to control and determine. the

12  source of Biblical time is eternity; flowing from an eternal decree and a determined end to a determined past, it is experienced by man chronologically from past to present to future.  in faith, man recognizes that God 'hath determined the times before appointed' (Acts 17.26), and he can declare in faith, 'my times are in Thy hand. psalm 31.15 the evolutionists seek to determine the future as a predestinating god, but he is also inescapably bound to a primeval chaos as less than man, he understands himself, to use ..Ban Til's phrase, in terms of a psychology of primitivism which is 'integration into the void'. his psychology wipes out 'the borderline that separated man from the beast and the beast from the inorganic world, thus reducing man to a focus of action and interaction in the sea of an ultimate irrationalism'.  this concept takes away responsibility from man, for 'Man cannot be responsible to the void'. man'frees' himself from God's predestination only by positing instead an 'ultimate irrationalism' and man becomes as a result free for irresponsibility.

an EIGHTH implication of the doctrine of creation for the Biblical philosophy of history has reference to the nature of man .  if nature generated man, then man is wholly passive in relationship to nature but active in relationship to any God that exists. but if God created man, man is wholly passive in relationship to God ,  but he is active in relationship to nature as God's image-bearer. if man is the creature of nature, then, however much he may hope to dominate and control nature, he is still basically its creature, conditioned by nature and subordinate to it. it is significant that, despite the dreams of total control.
13  the psychologies formulated by non-christian man are PASSIVE psychologies. man is made a product of his heredity and environment. his mind is passive and malleable. the mind of man has been compared to a blank sheet of whit paper and his nature seen as neutral. this neutral, bland man receives sense impressions from the world and responds to them and is conditioned by them. the explicit faith of non-christian psychology in the power of conditioned reflexes is grounded in this passive psychology; the concept of the predestination of man and his society by the elite rests on this passivist psychology of man. CONDITIONING RATHER THAN EDUCATION  becomes the function of the statist school.  there is a grim irony in this situation: the more the scientific state develops as a god, the more it rests on the premise that man is passive and can be subjected to total conditioning. man, in brief, is made more and more subject to nature, more and more passive in relationship to nature, while, in the 'person' of the corporate state, he wages unremitting and active warfare against God and claims the prerogatives of God.

the orthodox christian must assert, however, that, because God created man, this statist dream is a myth:  it cannot be realized. man is created in the image of god and man is either a covenant-keeper or a covenant-breaker. as a covenant-breaker, man is in bondage to sin and to death; having no peace with God because of his sin, man has no peace with his fellow men and no peace with himself. he is in slavery to the state, not because he is by nature passive in relationship to his environment, but because he is in sin and is reaping the wages of sin. the destiny of covenant-keeping man is to be God's vicegErent (def -an officer appointed as deputy by and to a sovereign or supreme chief.) in Christ, to be God's priest, prophet and king over creation, to rule, interpret, understand and dedicate the world in Christ unto God the Father. man is not passive in his relationship to nature; rather, nature is passive in relationship to man's fall, and nature is passive today as man's sin lays nature waste. nature will be passive again in receiving her sabbath rests from man's hands, and it will finally share passively in man's glorification.  romans 8.19-22 man is passive in relationship to God and man's sin and ruin are due to his attempts to free himself from this passivity and to become independent and autonomously active and creative. the non-christian doctrine places man UNDER NATURE  and seeks to place him OVER  GOD; the Biblical doctrine places man UNDER GOD and OVER NATURE in Him...
a NINTH implication of the doctrine of creation and of the ontological trinity for the philosophy of history is that all factuality is, as Van Til has repeatedly pointed out, made personal, because it is the handiwork of the personal and triune God and it derives its meaning from His personal, creative act and eternal decree. the factuality of non-christian philosophy is impersonal factuality at best and basically meaningless brute factuality. thus, the best interpretation of reality which evolutionary philosophies of history can give man reduces history to sub-personal and sub-human forces. for the Darwinist, history is the product of impersonal biological forces; for the marxist, the forces are economic, for the Freudian, psychological and unconscious. not only is the meaning of history de-personalized , but man is de-personalized as well. man begins by asserting the supremacy of his autonomous mind and reason and ends in total irrationalism. as Van Til has often stated, the fate of rationalism is total irrationalism and irrationalism rests.

15  on rationalsim. when man makes himself and his reason god over creation, he thereupon destroys all meaning in creation and leaves himself a chained and gibbering baboon, sitting in terror on a wired electric chair in the midst of a vast universe of nothingness.

every non-biblical philosophy of history ends by destroying both man and history. it begins by striving to give a better meaning to history than the one eternity provides, and it ends by robbing history of any human meaning and man of his manhood. in taking counsel against God and His decree, man effectually hurts only himself, not God...

16  ...the Enlightenment, by its savage and long-standing attack on Biblical faith, has brought about a long retreat of christianity from a full-orbed faith to a kind of last-ditch battle centering around the doctrines of salvation and of the infallible Scripture. the time has come for a full-scale offensive and it has indeed begun, to bring every area of thought into captivity to Christ, to establish the whole counsel of God and every implication of His infallible word.

for the orthodox christian, history is determined by eternity and 'the eternal does not exist for us as a principal but as a person and that as an absolute person.' moreover, 'for us God's being is ultimate, while created
17  being is, in the nature of the case, derivative.  the very meaning and glory of history is its derivative. the very meaning and glory of history is its derivative nature. humanistic history is a shaking and frail ladder, resting on no foundation and reaching out into nothingness, whereas history under God rests in total meaning and purpose and gives man a glorious inheritance and destiny, for

'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 creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.'
note - this last comes from the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter III, 1  ...but i have not referenced this author's many footnotes...and probably will not in other sharing of his writing.