R.J. Rushdoony. The Biblical Philosophy of History. Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 2000.
A very brief summary by John Teevan, 2004
1. The existence of a sovereign creator, God, is crucial to understanding history. The universe, time, man, and history are the handiwork of a sovereign God, and the meaning of history must be understood in terms of God. Creation is an act rather than a process, and all of it is under God’s government and destiny.
Man’s task is not to realize his own potential, but to relate to God in terms of his sin. Man’s freedom is limited and subordinate to God. God and not man is the mainspring of history. Eternity rather than chaos is the source of time so that there is a destiny towards which time in history moves. The Trinity suggests a personal universe with real relationships. Chaos suggests impersonal forces that produce alienation and loneliness.
The Enlightenment favored natural law that put God within the process and required man to yield to nature and to nature’s God. This allowed man to create social order for the first time since Plato. Two hundred years later, Darwin destroyed nature and made man and his will the dominant force with science as his tool. God was reduced to struggling against a dark universe in order to realize himself; he cannot control, only hope. Man’s soul is even worse off as he does not know if he is human or beast.
If nature made man, then man is passive toward nature (accepts) and is active toward any god. Man is under nature but over God. Man dominates in the areas of reason and religion. But his passive; he is conditioned by nature and nurture; a blank paper waiting for others to write on it. Man is to be conditioned or trained by social engineers of the state which is the new god.
However, if God made man, then man is passive (yields) towards God and is active in nature under God. He is under God and over nature, and having a God, he does not believe the myth that the state can be God.
Man asserts himself in his reason and ends in irrationalism; “a chained gibbering baboon sitting in terror on a wired electric chair in a vast universe if nothingness.” (15). But as man has been winning the battle for 500 years, most Christians have been reduced to hanging on to salvation and the Bible instead of boldly proclaiming the entire Kingdom of God.
2. The Dimensions of Victory:
Man not only lacks victory, but he also lacks meaning as he “creeps in this petty pace from day-to-day.” (Macbeth Vv). His “chosen instrument for meaning is science”(replacing God in theology) and has expanded science to the social sciences. It is now the scientific elite rather than theological elite who set the agenda. Life becomes cyclical; meaning in destiny gradually disappears. Our author discusses monism (no particulars or individuals) and dualism (tension between the two hostile forces). But if history is the handiwork of God and if there is a resurrection, then man can transcend the material and gain victory.
3. The Dimension of Time:
If man came from chaos, then time merely passes, and since time is what determines reality, it is a great burden. Man seeks value from time that only eternity can bring. Temporal choices cannot give meaning without eternity and God’s sovereignty. That is why the Wesleyan and Arminian tradition’s emphasis on time and human choice (man is safe because he chooses Jesus) is inadequate. Magic (using nature to control the supernatural) is another inadequate consequence of time rather than eternity. Plato saw the world of time (and material) as a world of shadows (unreal and unsatisfying); monastics agreed
The Reformation restored time as God’s creation and opened the door to eternity. The cross of Jesus changed everything. Man enters the king of God and works to further it confident of victory rather than contemplating a vague vision of God like the monastics and the Byzantines. In colonial America, time began in the arena of work. Ben Franklin, prince of thrift and practicality, said it was not to be wasted. Theological minds wrestled with reality rather than abstracting it.
The Puritans focused on this worldly supernaturalism; Technology came from this sense of time and destiny. Jefferson may have followed the French ideal of abstractions (University of Virginia). If you want to be idle, go to Europe. When secularism dominated the Americans, it became politically and scientifically messianic, retaining for a while its fading sense of destiny. When we sank back into mere time, we were led by the vultures that fed on the carcasses of civilization. For the Christian, time culminates in the Kingdom of God. For others time is just a reminder of the “gross blemish of mortality.” Staying Alive: “I’m going nowhere somebody help me.” Bee Gees. All flesh is grass… the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our Lord stands forever. Isaiah 40: 6-8.
Time: Chaos or Eternity?
Think through these ideas. We typically imagine that we understand time, but when we ponder it, we become easily confused. Is there only an eternal ‘now’? Is the past real, or is it subject to our narratives? How do cultures shape and try to make time coherent? Does time just pass or is it going somewhere?
Idea 1: There is either a sovereign creator God or there is no creator God at all. If there is no creator, then the world is led or determined by chaos. If there is a God, then the world is led or determined by Eternity.
Idea 2: If there is a God, then both man and nature are under God. Man is also over nature. If there is no God, then nature is over man, and both man and nature are under God.
Idea 3: If we are under God, we can organize society under God; without a god we must form a state.
Idea 4: Without a god, meaning comes from wisdom or, since 1700, science, including the social sciences, and serving the state. With God, meaning comes from God’s word and serving God.
Idea 5: If man came from chaos, time merely passes and is a great burden, as there is no meaning. If man came from Eternity, time is God’s creation that leads us to Eternity. Rather than a burden, there is a goal to serve God by serving his kingdom. Time culminates in the kingdom of God.
Idea 6: Mankind is active in the world if God made it.
Idea 7: “The great mystery of the religion is not the punishment of sin, but the forgiveness of sin.” Karma is fully just, but a fatalism that leads to nothingness of Nirvana, an escape from chaos. Forgiveness allows for a clean start like being born again without reincarnation.
Idea 8: The earth and life move in terms of God’s eternal norms, purposes, and patterns. These give us meaning and help us to build institutions that fit God’s norms.
Idea 9: Without God’s norms, purposes, and patterns, mankind is on its own and invents these norms: First, Marxism, which sees economic man led by the state, or the softer, Fabian, view of the happiness that comes from common ownership. Second, American pragmatism that just makes us busy and happy. Finally, Kantian neo-orthodoxy that pretends to have a basis for stability but is just existentialism, meaning that we start with ourselves and seek to invent a meaning in numerous ways, including law and political liberalism.
Idea 10: Men resent eternity because it is beyond them, and they resent time because it is not eternity. We invent social systems.