hashem/adonei ro'i lo ech'sar
Bin'ot deshe yar'bitzeni
al mei menuchot yenahaleni
Nafshi yeshovev, yeshovev
yan'cheni bema'aglei tzedek
lema'an sh'mo
Gam ki elech begei tzalmavet
lo ira ra ki Atah imadi
shiv'techa umish'antecha hemah yenachamuni
Ta'aroch lefanai shulchan neged tzorerai
dishanta vashemen roshi kosi revayah.
Ach tov vachesed yir'defuni kol yemei chayay
veshavti beveit adonai le'orech yamim
sábado, 7 de julho de 2012
sexta-feira, 6 de julho de 2012
ABSURDITY IN DISPENSATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP
By Kenneth L. Gentry Jr
I have long made the distinction between scholarly dispensationalists (e.g., Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, and sometimes Dwight Pentecost) and the populist dispensationalists (e.g., Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and anyone else with book sales over 15 billion copies). I did this out of respect for the more thoughtful presentations in the scholars writings. But now I don’t know what possessed me to do this. Let me explain and illustrate the blurring of the lines separating populist dispensationalists from the “scholarly” ones.
Generally the “scholarly” dispensationalists present the more theological and exegetical foundations for the system. Whereas the populists run grinning and skipping full-bore into date-setting, rapture-predicting, Antichrist-portending, Armageddon military-operation-plan describing (OPLANs), newspaper-exegeting, system-contradicting inane, vacuous, absurd, silly, vapid, pointless, fatuous, insubstantial slop. They do this for the mere pleasure of fleecing the sheep of untold millions of dollars of their non-invested, discretionary funds.
However, I have begun to question this distinction between populist and scholar in dispensationalism. And I even wonder why I ever allowed such a distinction. Though it is true that the populists never attempt any scholarly-sounding, exegetically-rigorous, theologically-astute presentations of their system, it is most certainly not true that the “scholars” are not lured into crass money-making publications. Consider the following books by the more reputable dispensationalist “scholars” Ryrie and Walvoord. (I believe that Pentecost also wrote one, but fortunately I have lost it.)
Walvoord published his newspaper-exegesis book Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis: What the Bible Says about the Future of the Middle East and the End of Western Civilization in 1974 and again in 1976. Then when the first Gulf War broke out, he revised and re-released it in 1990 whereupon it became a multi-million bestseller, making him so much money that he had to invest it in long-term real estate ventures.
Walvoord not only provides devotional readings from the newspapers, avoids indexing the book, and resists footnotes (as do populists), but he provides a table of “Prophetic Events in History Beginning with the Babylonian Captivity” (on pp. 107–08). And what are some of these prophecies (none of which should be occurring in the church age while awaiting the signless, imminent rapture)? Here are a few that may surprise you (I know they surprised the aluminum storm door salesman that came by my house yesterday):
• 1945: Rise of Russia and Communism to power.
(Who would have known this would occur in 1945? This is an amazing prophecy. Of course, once you break the number down you will see obvious clues: 1 stands for the first commandment; 9 for number of centuries lived by Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Jared, Methuselah, Noah, Peleg (Gen 5; 9:29; 11:19); 4 for the number of Jacob’s sons whose name starts with the letter “j” [Judah and Joseph] multiplied by 2; 5 is a number often thought of while milking four-uttered cows.)
• 1946: Beginning of world government: United Nations formed.
(Notice prophecy’s strange silence about “cheese.”)
• 1948: Israel established as a nation in the land: third return.
(This date was necessary to get us into the age of television which would give rise to tele-evangelism.)
• 1956: Israel extends territory.
(Carefully notice how this is but eight years after 1948. Need I say more?)
• 1967: Israel regains territory.
(This is not the year of the invention of aluminum foil. Though on January 5 of this year Spain and Romania sign in Paris an agreement establishing full consular and commercial relations, though, sadly, not diplomatic ones.)
• 1975: Egypt reopens the Suez Canal.
(Though apparently there is no clear prophecy discussing the original dredging of the Suez and the actual building of this particular canal)
• 1979: Camp David Accords: peace with Egypt.
(Little did Jimmy Carter know he was the subject of biblical prophecy, though obviously before he occurred in history peanuts had to be invented. This co-ordination of events then becomes a remarkable demonstration of God’s providence. Sadly though, peanut butter was invented before peanuts themselves, then had to await the later arrival of its main ingredient. Consequently, it originally sold very poorly as a jar of brown butter.)
• 1982: Israel attack PLO in Lebanon.
(I wish he had given the Bible verse backing up this one. I know the letters “p,” “l,” and “o” occur in Scripture, but they appear to be randomly placed rather than carefully articulated. Of course, their “gap theory” may account for this for we note that all three of these letters occur in their proper order in Gen 2:9: “And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is Pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of Life also in the midst Of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”This cannot be sheer chance.)
• 1990: Saddam Hussein, in preparation to attack Israel, seizes Kuwait.|
(Hussein’s name is difficult to find in biblical prophecy [though not impossible if you are double-jointed]. However, “Kuwait” is found all over both the Old Testament and the New Testament. I think.)
And what of Charles Ryrie, perhaps the most important, articulate, and prominent of dispensationalism’s “scholars”? In 1976 he presented the waiting world with The Living End, which was described on the cover as: “Enlightening and astonishing disclosures about the coming last days of earth.” In 1982 he released The Bible and Tomorrow’s News. Then during the first Gulf War he re-released it as The Final Countdown and enjoyed reprints in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, and beyond (I quit buying it after the fourth reprint so I don’t know how many more followed. And I am too tired to look it up. I am still tired from getting up at 2 am on March 11 to set my clock for Daylight Savings Time.)
I will provide just one more disappointing evidence of absurdity among these “scholars.” In Walvoord’s Prophecy in the New Millennium (2001) we read the following discussion of the massive New Jerusalem:
“Clearly, the New Jerusalem could not rest on the earth because it is described as such a huge city that it would blot out the whole Promised Land, making impossible the fulfillment of other elements of the millennial kingdom. . . . It would have to be a satellite city, situated in space. . . . It may be that those who have been resurrected or translated will live in this satellite city over the earth.”
Consequently, though I will tip my hat to the likes of Ryrie and Walvoord in their attempts to establish secure foundations for the dispensational system, I will not be as quick to point to them as scholars who are immune from the lures of populism and absurdity. Such temptations are endemic to the whole system which reads like a rejected script from television’s Hee-Haw. Junior Samples refused to lower himself to such far-fetched scenarios. He was afraid it would hurt his used car business.
I have long made the distinction between scholarly dispensationalists (e.g., Charles Ryrie, John Walvoord, and sometimes Dwight Pentecost) and the populist dispensationalists (e.g., Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and anyone else with book sales over 15 billion copies). I did this out of respect for the more thoughtful presentations in the scholars writings. But now I don’t know what possessed me to do this. Let me explain and illustrate the blurring of the lines separating populist dispensationalists from the “scholarly” ones.
Generally the “scholarly” dispensationalists present the more theological and exegetical foundations for the system. Whereas the populists run grinning and skipping full-bore into date-setting, rapture-predicting, Antichrist-portending, Armageddon military-operation-plan describing (OPLANs), newspaper-exegeting, system-contradicting inane, vacuous, absurd, silly, vapid, pointless, fatuous, insubstantial slop. They do this for the mere pleasure of fleecing the sheep of untold millions of dollars of their non-invested, discretionary funds.
However, I have begun to question this distinction between populist and scholar in dispensationalism. And I even wonder why I ever allowed such a distinction. Though it is true that the populists never attempt any scholarly-sounding, exegetically-rigorous, theologically-astute presentations of their system, it is most certainly not true that the “scholars” are not lured into crass money-making publications. Consider the following books by the more reputable dispensationalist “scholars” Ryrie and Walvoord. (I believe that Pentecost also wrote one, but fortunately I have lost it.)
Walvoord published his newspaper-exegesis book Armageddon, Oil and the Middle East Crisis: What the Bible Says about the Future of the Middle East and the End of Western Civilization in 1974 and again in 1976. Then when the first Gulf War broke out, he revised and re-released it in 1990 whereupon it became a multi-million bestseller, making him so much money that he had to invest it in long-term real estate ventures.
Walvoord not only provides devotional readings from the newspapers, avoids indexing the book, and resists footnotes (as do populists), but he provides a table of “Prophetic Events in History Beginning with the Babylonian Captivity” (on pp. 107–08). And what are some of these prophecies (none of which should be occurring in the church age while awaiting the signless, imminent rapture)? Here are a few that may surprise you (I know they surprised the aluminum storm door salesman that came by my house yesterday):
• 1945: Rise of Russia and Communism to power.
(Who would have known this would occur in 1945? This is an amazing prophecy. Of course, once you break the number down you will see obvious clues: 1 stands for the first commandment; 9 for number of centuries lived by Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Jared, Methuselah, Noah, Peleg (Gen 5; 9:29; 11:19); 4 for the number of Jacob’s sons whose name starts with the letter “j” [Judah and Joseph] multiplied by 2; 5 is a number often thought of while milking four-uttered cows.)
• 1946: Beginning of world government: United Nations formed.
(Notice prophecy’s strange silence about “cheese.”)
• 1948: Israel established as a nation in the land: third return.
(This date was necessary to get us into the age of television which would give rise to tele-evangelism.)
• 1956: Israel extends territory.
(Carefully notice how this is but eight years after 1948. Need I say more?)
• 1967: Israel regains territory.
(This is not the year of the invention of aluminum foil. Though on January 5 of this year Spain and Romania sign in Paris an agreement establishing full consular and commercial relations, though, sadly, not diplomatic ones.)
• 1975: Egypt reopens the Suez Canal.
(Though apparently there is no clear prophecy discussing the original dredging of the Suez and the actual building of this particular canal)
• 1979: Camp David Accords: peace with Egypt.
(Little did Jimmy Carter know he was the subject of biblical prophecy, though obviously before he occurred in history peanuts had to be invented. This co-ordination of events then becomes a remarkable demonstration of God’s providence. Sadly though, peanut butter was invented before peanuts themselves, then had to await the later arrival of its main ingredient. Consequently, it originally sold very poorly as a jar of brown butter.)
• 1982: Israel attack PLO in Lebanon.
(I wish he had given the Bible verse backing up this one. I know the letters “p,” “l,” and “o” occur in Scripture, but they appear to be randomly placed rather than carefully articulated. Of course, their “gap theory” may account for this for we note that all three of these letters occur in their proper order in Gen 2:9: “And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is Pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of Life also in the midst Of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”This cannot be sheer chance.)
• 1990: Saddam Hussein, in preparation to attack Israel, seizes Kuwait.|
(Hussein’s name is difficult to find in biblical prophecy [though not impossible if you are double-jointed]. However, “Kuwait” is found all over both the Old Testament and the New Testament. I think.)
And what of Charles Ryrie, perhaps the most important, articulate, and prominent of dispensationalism’s “scholars”? In 1976 he presented the waiting world with The Living End, which was described on the cover as: “Enlightening and astonishing disclosures about the coming last days of earth.” In 1982 he released The Bible and Tomorrow’s News. Then during the first Gulf War he re-released it as The Final Countdown and enjoyed reprints in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, and beyond (I quit buying it after the fourth reprint so I don’t know how many more followed. And I am too tired to look it up. I am still tired from getting up at 2 am on March 11 to set my clock for Daylight Savings Time.)
I will provide just one more disappointing evidence of absurdity among these “scholars.” In Walvoord’s Prophecy in the New Millennium (2001) we read the following discussion of the massive New Jerusalem:
“Clearly, the New Jerusalem could not rest on the earth because it is described as such a huge city that it would blot out the whole Promised Land, making impossible the fulfillment of other elements of the millennial kingdom. . . . It would have to be a satellite city, situated in space. . . . It may be that those who have been resurrected or translated will live in this satellite city over the earth.”
Consequently, though I will tip my hat to the likes of Ryrie and Walvoord in their attempts to establish secure foundations for the dispensational system, I will not be as quick to point to them as scholars who are immune from the lures of populism and absurdity. Such temptations are endemic to the whole system which reads like a rejected script from television’s Hee-Haw. Junior Samples refused to lower himself to such far-fetched scenarios. He was afraid it would hurt his used car business.
quinta-feira, 5 de julho de 2012
A religion on the move 2012 Books Issue | Riding the roller coaster of Christian history: WORLD’s engaging and myth-busting Book of the Year | Marvin Olasky
Rodney Stark (Photo by Nick Layman/Genesis)
This is WORLD's fifth year of honoring a book published during the past 12 months. Our first two times we chose works that directly explained Scripture: Tim Keller's The Reason for God and Crossway's ESV Study Bible. The last two times we praised works that applied biblical thinking to key current debates: Arthur Brooks' The Battle and, last year, two books—Should Christians Embrace Evolution? and God and Evolution—that eviscerated a recently trendy doctrine, theistic evolution.
This year some evangelicals are displaying a pessimistic sense of decline. Internally and externally, Christian denominations are "sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed." Amid despair, Baylor professor Rodney Stark's The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World's Largest Religion (HarperOne) provides long-term perspective. It is WORLD's 2012 Book of the Year.
One reason is that Stark, unusual among academic historians, writes well: He was a reporter for the Oakland Tribune and the Denver Post before gaining a Ph.D. (He then taught at the University of Washington for 32 years before heading to Baylor in 2004.) A second reason for honoring Stark is his lifetime of achievement: In 28 books—one from 15 years ago, The Rise of Christianity, prefigures his new work—Stark has employed both statistics and historical testimony to shoot down stereotypes.
Stark begins Triumph by describing the Asian competitors to indolent Roman paganism that had emerged 2,000 years ago. They had a competitive advantage: "Roman paganism offered very little in the way of community. Most Romans were very irregular and infrequent visitors to the temples ... what most dramatically set the Oriental faiths apart from Roman paganism was their capacity to generate congregations."
Cults of Bacchus, Dionysius, Isis, Cybele, and others, he notes, had regular meetings and strong ties among members, who for moments could transcend their "remarkably filthy existence." Stark notes that "the smell of urine, feces, and decay permeated everything." The Holy Land wasn't much better: "A recent analysis of decayed human fecal remains in an ancient Jerusalem cesspool found an abundance of tapeworm and whipworm eggs, indicating that almost everyone had them."
Christianity at first seemed to Rome like one cult among others, but over time others succumbed as bad news made the Good News stand out more. Stark notes that disease readily spread in dirty ancient cities, so Christians became blessings to their communities not only spiritually but physically. Simple provision of food and water to severely weakened people often allowed them to recover: Nursing by Christians may have cut mortality by two-thirds.
Stark doesn't sugarcoat common pagan practices such as abortion and infanticide: Because of a preference for boys similar to that in India and China today, historians estimate that while Christianity was on the rise Rome generally had 131 males per 100 females. (With no way to treat infections and not even any soap, abortion also killed many women and left others sterile.) The male/female ratio was 140/100 in North Africa and other parts of the empire.
Abortion was as vile then as now and physically even harder on women. The famous Roman medical writer Aulas Cornelius Celsus urged surgeons to use "extreme caution and neatness" as they killed the unborn child with a long needle or spike, and then forced a "greased hand" up the vagina and into the uterus—all this without any anesthesia. The surgeon would then insert a hook "into an eye or ear or the mouth" of the unborn child, and pull him out, unless the baby was positioned crosswise or backward, in which case the surgeon should slice him up and pull him out piece by piece.
Stark shows that ancient Greece and Rome were not glorious: Many residents were slaves and even those who were free lived at a bare subsistence level. Much as in Europe today, Romans started having few children—even when emperors offered subsidies to those who had more—and fertility fell below replacement levels. Meanwhile, the Roman government became corrupt and inflation set in. Rulers thought of new ways to rob taxpayers and killed Christians whenever they needed scapegoats.
After Stark spends 200 pages on the triumph of Christianity, he turns to some defeats. The biggest ones came in the Middle East and across northern Africa, where Muslims murdered hundreds of thousands. Stark, quoting Muslim bragging about churches and lives destroyed, points out that "a great deal of nonsense has been written about Muslim tolerance." He calls the Crusades a "fundamentally defensive" counter-attack "precipitated by Islamic provocations, by many centuries of bloody attempts to colonize the West, and by sudden new attacks on Christian pilgrims and holy places."
Stark also criticizes other historians for being "as gullible as tourists, gaping at the monuments, palaces, and conspicuous consumption of Rome." He decries "the inability of intellectuals to value or even to notice the nuts and bolts of real life," and goes on to note medieval progress in windmills, crop rotation, chimneys, and a host of other practical matters.
He also calls "the Renaissance" a ridiculous myth: "Had there really been a return to classical knowledge, it would have created an era of cultural decline since Christian Europe had long since surpassed classical antiquity in nearly every way."
And yet, Stark mocks the idea of a medieval "Age of Faith," for "the masses of medieval Europeans not only were remarkably skeptical, but very lacking in all aspects of Christian commitment." Most people seldom if ever went to church, and some who did slept and snored, played cards while the pastor preached, or brought their dogs: "Most medieval Europeans were completely ignorant of the most basic Christian teachings," and many priests did not know the Lord's Prayer or other fundamentals.
The book has one major weakness. While Stark is right to see the triumph of Christianity as integral to the triumph of science—"It was only because Europeans believed in God as the Intelligent Designer of a rational universe that they pursued the secrets of creation"—he criticizes commitment to biblical inerrancy. Still, it's clear that the Protestant Reformation increased Christian commitment and even contributed to improvements in the Roman Catholic Church, as a "Church of Piety" arose to challenge "the Church of Power."
In later chapters, Stark compares American religious liberty to the state churches of Europe and sees denominationalism as a strength, not a weakness. He looks at Christian growth around the world in recent decades as one more assault on the conventional wisdom that modernity trumps religion. He avoids triumphalism in writing about Christianity's long-term triumph—we do not know what tomorrow will bring—and he teaches us to avoid pessimism in considering our temporary problems.
For, as Samuel Stone wrote about the Christian church in 1866, "'Mid toil and tribulation, / And tumult of her war, / She waits the consummation / Of peace for evermore; / Till with the vision glorious / Her longing eyes are blest, / And the great church victorious / Shall be the church at rest."
Source: http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19634
JOHN CALVIN AND POSTMILLENNIALISM
by Greg L. Bahnsen
Reformed theology (as distinguished from evangelical or Lutheran theology) takes as its father the indisputable theological master of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin. The heritage of postmillennialism in Reformed theology can be traced to the Cavinian corpus of literature. J. A. De Jong, in his doctoral dissertation at the Free University of Amsterdam (As the Waters Cover the Sea), asserted that “John Calvin’s commentaries give some scholars cause for concluding that he anticipated the spread of the gospel and true religion to the ends of the earth.”[1]
J. T. McNeill, the editor of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion for the Library of Christian Classics, speaks of “Calvin’s conception of the victory and future universality of Christ’s Kingdom throughout the human race, a topic frequently introduced in the Commentaries.”[2] In his recent study, The Puritan Hope, Iain H. Murray stated that “Calvin believed that Christ’s kingdom is already established, and, unlike Luther, he expected it to have a yet greater triumph in history prior to the consummation.”[3] The judgment of these men (and those secondary sources upon which they depend) is certainly well grounded in Calvin’s writings.
About the view that Christ would have a literal one-thousand-year reign upon the earth (namely, premillennialism), Calvin said this “fiction is too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation.” At the same time, he indicated his implicit disagreement with the view (fostered by later amillennilalists) that the millennium pertains to the intermediate state of the saints (i.e., their disembodied heavenly rest subsequent to physical death and prior to the general resurrection); according to Calvin, the “one thousand” of Revelation 20 pertains to “the church while still toiling on earth.”[Institutes 3:25:5] Nor would Calvin have agreed with the position that says the millennial triumph of the saints is simply the spiritual (invisible) victories in the Christian’s heart or the internal blessings privately experienced by the church (namely, one school of amillennial interpretation). With particular application to the kingdom of Christ, he said, “it would not have been enough for the kingdom to have flourished internally.”[Commentary on Psa 21:8] Calvin saw the Psalmist as saying that the prosperity and strength of the King of God’s choosing must be visible and publicly acknowledged; Christ must be shown victorious over all His enemies in this world, and His kingdom must be demonstrated to be immune from the various agitations currently experienced in the world.[Commentary on Psa 21:17]
In his commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2:8, Calvin declared:
“Paul, however, intimates Christ will in the meantime, by the rays which he will emit previously to his advent, put to flight the darkness in which antichrist will reign, just as the sun, before he is seen by us, chases away the darkness of the night by the pouring forth of his rays.
This victory of the word, therefore, will show itself in this world . . . . He also furnished Christ with these very arms, that he may rout his enemies. This is a signal commendation of true and sound doctrine – that it is represented as sufficient for putting an end to all impiety, and as destined to be invariably victorious, in opposition to all the machinations of Satan.”
For Calvin, the kingdom of Christ was viewed as established at the first advent and continuing in force until the second advent. During this interadventual period, the church is destined to experience widespread success; throughout history it will bring all nations under the sovereign sway of Christ. To this interadventual period Calvin referred many of the glorious prophecies about the Messiah’s kingdom found in the Old Testament. “The saints began to reign under heaven when Christ ushered in his kingdom by the promulgation of his Gospel.”[Commentary on Dan 7:27]
Commenting upon the Isaiah 65:17 prophecy of God’s creating new heavens and a new earth, Calvin said: “By these metaphors he promises a remarkable change of affairs; . . . but the greatest of such a blessing, which was to be manifested at the coming of Christ, could not be described in any other way. Nor does he mean only the first coming, but the whole reign, which must be extended as far as to the last coming. . . . Thus the world is (so to speak) renewed by Christ . . . and even now we are in the progress and accomplishment of it. . . . The Prophet has in his eye the whole reign of Christ, down to its final close, which is also called ‘the day of renovation and restoration.’ (Acts iii.21)”
Commenting on John 12:31 Calvin notes: “The glory of God shines . . . never more brightly than in the cross, in which . . . the whole world was renewed and all things restored to order.”
About Isaiah 2:2-4, Calvin had the following to say: “while the fullness of days began at the coming of Christ, it flows on in uninterrupted progress until he appears the second time for our salvation.” During this time “the church, which had formerly been, as it were, shut up in a corner, would now be collected from every quarter. . . . The Prophet here shows that the boundaries of his kingdom will be enlarged that he may rule over various nations. . . . Christ is not sent to the Jews only, that he may reign over them, but that he may hold sway over the whole world.” The triumphant progress of the church, reigning under Christ, will be remarkable down through history; the soteric restoration of the world will be increasingly evident as all nations come under the rule of the Savior. Such was Calvin’s hope, his biblical philosophy of history.
The scepter of Christ’s kingdom by which He rules is “his Word alone,” and Satan with his power fails to the extent that christ’s kingdom is upbuilt through the power of preaching.[Commentary Isa 11:4] Calvin boldly proclaimed that “the labour of Christ, and of the whole Church, will be glorious, not only before God, but likewise before men. . . . Hence it follows, that we ought to have good hopes of success.”[Commentary at Isa. 49:6] “We must not doubt that our Lord will come at last to break through all the undertakings of men and make a passage for his word. Let us hope boldly, then, more than we can understand; he will still surpass our opinion and our hope.”[Cited by Murray, Puritan Hope, xii]
The confidence of the Reformer was clearly expressed in his expositions of the Lord’s Prayer at the second petition (“Thy kingdom come”):
“now, because the word of God is like a royal scepter, we are bidden here to entreat him to bring all men’s minds and hearts into voluntary obedience to it. . . . Therefore God sets up his Kingdom by humbling the whole world. . . . We must daily desire that God gather churches unto himself from all parts of the earth; that he spread and increase them in number; . . . that he cast down all enemies of pure teaching and religion; that he scatter their counsels and crush their efforts. From this it appears that zeal for daily progress is not enjoined upon us in vain. . . . With ever-increasing splendor, he displays his light and truth, by which the darkness and falsehoods of Satan’s kingdom vanish, are extinguished, and pass away. . . . [God] is said to reign among men, when they voluntarily devote and submit themselves to be governed by him. . . . by this prayer we ask, that he may remove all hindrances, and may bring all men under his dominion. . . . The substance of this prayer is, that God would enlighten the world by the light of his Word, — would form the hearts of men, by the influences of his Spirit, to obey his justice, — and would restore to order, by the gracious exercise of his power, all the disorder that exists in the world. . . . Again, as the kingdom of God is continually growing and advancing to the end of the world, we must pray every day that it may come: for to whatever extent iniquity abounds in the world, to such an extent the kingdom of God, which brings along with it perfect righteousness, is not yet come.”[Commentary at Matt 6:10]
This prayer for the evident success of the Great commission will not be in vain, according to Calvin; our hope for success should be bold, for we must not doubt that Christ will accomplish this purpose in the world. Here we have the postmillennial vision for preconsummation history.
Footnotes
1. J. D. De Jong, As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-American Missions 1640-1810 (J. H. Kok N.V. Kampen, 1970), 8.
2. J. T. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2: 904.
3. Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope: A Study in Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (London: Banner of Truth, 1971), 40.
Reformed theology (as distinguished from evangelical or Lutheran theology) takes as its father the indisputable theological master of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin. The heritage of postmillennialism in Reformed theology can be traced to the Cavinian corpus of literature. J. A. De Jong, in his doctoral dissertation at the Free University of Amsterdam (As the Waters Cover the Sea), asserted that “John Calvin’s commentaries give some scholars cause for concluding that he anticipated the spread of the gospel and true religion to the ends of the earth.”[1]
J. T. McNeill, the editor of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion for the Library of Christian Classics, speaks of “Calvin’s conception of the victory and future universality of Christ’s Kingdom throughout the human race, a topic frequently introduced in the Commentaries.”[2] In his recent study, The Puritan Hope, Iain H. Murray stated that “Calvin believed that Christ’s kingdom is already established, and, unlike Luther, he expected it to have a yet greater triumph in history prior to the consummation.”[3] The judgment of these men (and those secondary sources upon which they depend) is certainly well grounded in Calvin’s writings.
About the view that Christ would have a literal one-thousand-year reign upon the earth (namely, premillennialism), Calvin said this “fiction is too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation.” At the same time, he indicated his implicit disagreement with the view (fostered by later amillennilalists) that the millennium pertains to the intermediate state of the saints (i.e., their disembodied heavenly rest subsequent to physical death and prior to the general resurrection); according to Calvin, the “one thousand” of Revelation 20 pertains to “the church while still toiling on earth.”[Institutes 3:25:5] Nor would Calvin have agreed with the position that says the millennial triumph of the saints is simply the spiritual (invisible) victories in the Christian’s heart or the internal blessings privately experienced by the church (namely, one school of amillennial interpretation). With particular application to the kingdom of Christ, he said, “it would not have been enough for the kingdom to have flourished internally.”[Commentary on Psa 21:8] Calvin saw the Psalmist as saying that the prosperity and strength of the King of God’s choosing must be visible and publicly acknowledged; Christ must be shown victorious over all His enemies in this world, and His kingdom must be demonstrated to be immune from the various agitations currently experienced in the world.[Commentary on Psa 21:17]
In his commentary on 2 Thessalonians 2:8, Calvin declared:
“Paul, however, intimates Christ will in the meantime, by the rays which he will emit previously to his advent, put to flight the darkness in which antichrist will reign, just as the sun, before he is seen by us, chases away the darkness of the night by the pouring forth of his rays.
This victory of the word, therefore, will show itself in this world . . . . He also furnished Christ with these very arms, that he may rout his enemies. This is a signal commendation of true and sound doctrine – that it is represented as sufficient for putting an end to all impiety, and as destined to be invariably victorious, in opposition to all the machinations of Satan.”
For Calvin, the kingdom of Christ was viewed as established at the first advent and continuing in force until the second advent. During this interadventual period, the church is destined to experience widespread success; throughout history it will bring all nations under the sovereign sway of Christ. To this interadventual period Calvin referred many of the glorious prophecies about the Messiah’s kingdom found in the Old Testament. “The saints began to reign under heaven when Christ ushered in his kingdom by the promulgation of his Gospel.”[Commentary on Dan 7:27]
Commenting upon the Isaiah 65:17 prophecy of God’s creating new heavens and a new earth, Calvin said: “By these metaphors he promises a remarkable change of affairs; . . . but the greatest of such a blessing, which was to be manifested at the coming of Christ, could not be described in any other way. Nor does he mean only the first coming, but the whole reign, which must be extended as far as to the last coming. . . . Thus the world is (so to speak) renewed by Christ . . . and even now we are in the progress and accomplishment of it. . . . The Prophet has in his eye the whole reign of Christ, down to its final close, which is also called ‘the day of renovation and restoration.’ (Acts iii.21)”
Commenting on John 12:31 Calvin notes: “The glory of God shines . . . never more brightly than in the cross, in which . . . the whole world was renewed and all things restored to order.”
About Isaiah 2:2-4, Calvin had the following to say: “while the fullness of days began at the coming of Christ, it flows on in uninterrupted progress until he appears the second time for our salvation.” During this time “the church, which had formerly been, as it were, shut up in a corner, would now be collected from every quarter. . . . The Prophet here shows that the boundaries of his kingdom will be enlarged that he may rule over various nations. . . . Christ is not sent to the Jews only, that he may reign over them, but that he may hold sway over the whole world.” The triumphant progress of the church, reigning under Christ, will be remarkable down through history; the soteric restoration of the world will be increasingly evident as all nations come under the rule of the Savior. Such was Calvin’s hope, his biblical philosophy of history.
The scepter of Christ’s kingdom by which He rules is “his Word alone,” and Satan with his power fails to the extent that christ’s kingdom is upbuilt through the power of preaching.[Commentary Isa 11:4] Calvin boldly proclaimed that “the labour of Christ, and of the whole Church, will be glorious, not only before God, but likewise before men. . . . Hence it follows, that we ought to have good hopes of success.”[Commentary at Isa. 49:6] “We must not doubt that our Lord will come at last to break through all the undertakings of men and make a passage for his word. Let us hope boldly, then, more than we can understand; he will still surpass our opinion and our hope.”[Cited by Murray, Puritan Hope, xii]
The confidence of the Reformer was clearly expressed in his expositions of the Lord’s Prayer at the second petition (“Thy kingdom come”):
“now, because the word of God is like a royal scepter, we are bidden here to entreat him to bring all men’s minds and hearts into voluntary obedience to it. . . . Therefore God sets up his Kingdom by humbling the whole world. . . . We must daily desire that God gather churches unto himself from all parts of the earth; that he spread and increase them in number; . . . that he cast down all enemies of pure teaching and religion; that he scatter their counsels and crush their efforts. From this it appears that zeal for daily progress is not enjoined upon us in vain. . . . With ever-increasing splendor, he displays his light and truth, by which the darkness and falsehoods of Satan’s kingdom vanish, are extinguished, and pass away. . . . [God] is said to reign among men, when they voluntarily devote and submit themselves to be governed by him. . . . by this prayer we ask, that he may remove all hindrances, and may bring all men under his dominion. . . . The substance of this prayer is, that God would enlighten the world by the light of his Word, — would form the hearts of men, by the influences of his Spirit, to obey his justice, — and would restore to order, by the gracious exercise of his power, all the disorder that exists in the world. . . . Again, as the kingdom of God is continually growing and advancing to the end of the world, we must pray every day that it may come: for to whatever extent iniquity abounds in the world, to such an extent the kingdom of God, which brings along with it perfect righteousness, is not yet come.”[Commentary at Matt 6:10]
This prayer for the evident success of the Great commission will not be in vain, according to Calvin; our hope for success should be bold, for we must not doubt that Christ will accomplish this purpose in the world. Here we have the postmillennial vision for preconsummation history.
Footnotes
1. J. D. De Jong, As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millennial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-American Missions 1640-1810 (J. H. Kok N.V. Kampen, 1970), 8.
2. J. T. McNeill, Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 2: 904.
3. Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope: A Study in Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (London: Banner of Truth, 1971), 40.
terça-feira, 3 de julho de 2012
R. J. Rushdoony: Champion of Faith and Liberty
by
P. Andrew Sandlin
Late
this past Thursday evening, Rousas John Rushdoony, founder and long-time
president of the Chalcedon Foundation, was ushered into His Lord’s
presence after several months of rapidly declining health.
The
Christian world has lost a giant.
I
first encountered Rushdoony in what most consider his magnum opus,
Institutes of Biblical Law. I was a young intellectual fundamentalist
(yes, there are such people), pastor of a small Baptist church in
the Midwest, and committed to a system of doctrine called dispensationalism.
This theology taught, among other things, that the spiritual and
moral conditions of the present world are destined to get worse
and worse. The implications of this view had worked themselves deeply
into my consciousness and ministry. As I read Rushdoony’s Institutes,
I recall thinking to myself, "I don’t understand much of what
this man is saying; but whatever it is, it surely is important."
In time, Rushdoony’s writings rekindled in me a vision of earthly
victory (theologically called postmillennialism); and it reoriented
my entire life.
Rushdoony
gave me back my hope.
And
he gave the Christian world much more.
Central
to Rushdoony’s thought was the authority of Biblical law. He did
not mean by this just the law of the Old Testament, essential though
it is, but the entire Bible, which he saw as God’s binding word
for man, His creature. In fact, Rushdoony often used the expression,
"the law-word of God" to refer to the whole Bible. He
believed that man’s main problem was sin, human autonomy, the attempt
to play God by rebelliously establishing his own, depraved moral
standards. The Bible (all of it), Rushdoony believed, was given
to man by God to govern his entire life.
Despite,
or rather, because, of his commitment to the binding authority of
God’s Word, Rushdoony was an unflagging advocate of liberty: political,
religious, and ecclesiastical. Two of his books from the 60s, The
Nature of the American System and This Independent Republic showed
that the United States’ heritage of freedom is anchored squarely
in the Bible and the Christian Faith. He considered himself a "Christian
libertarian," and he believed that sustained political liberty
was impossible apart from orthodox Christianity. He hated with a
passion every form of statism (including "Christian" statism),
and he was almost as hard on secular libertarians as he was on statists,
since both, he was convinced, manifested a sinful autonomy toward
God that guaranteed the tyranny of man by his fellow man.
Perhaps
no man was more responsible for the 70s revival of Christian political
action than Rushdoony. He held that the Christian Faith cannot be
limited to Sunday church meetings, but must work its way out into
the marketplace and society on Monday. Amid the ravages of the Cold
War (Rushdoony was not a pro-militarist conservative) and the moral
breakdown of the 60s, Rushdoony boldly proclaimed that Christians
must apply the Faith in all areas of life, including politics, and
that meant dismantling the mammoth state. He wanted political government
replaced with church government, family government, and especially
self-government. If these governments did their job, there would
be little use for the state.
Most
importantly, R. J. Rushdoony was a man of faith. Like all other
great Christians, his faith was simple, and therefore, profound.
He simply took God at His word. If the Bible taught it, he believed
it, no matter how odd or silly it seemed in the eyes of the modern
world. He was a man who absolutely abhorred the theologically liberal
dictum that Christians must conform the Bible and the Faith to the
modern culture. He believed just the opposite: Christians must conform
the modern culture to the Bible and the Faith. He loved God, he
loved the Bible, and (therefore), he loved liberty.
One
of the great privileges of my life was his request that I join him
at Chalcedon in his work. His life and thought have made an indelible
impression on me and on countless others, many who have known him
only through his writings.
He
will not be forgotten, and his work will stand the test of time.
February
12, 2000
P.
Andrew Sandlin is Executive Vice President of the Chalcedon
Foundation which since 1965 has been dedicated to applying
historic, Biblical Christianity in today’s world. He is the author
of Christianity: Bulwark of Liberty and several other works.
Professor R.J. Rushdoony
Rev. R. J. Rushdoony
December 1997
It is a privilege and a form of wealth to be born into a rich culture, and most Americans, although they fail to recognize it, are born rich. My father and others with an extensive knowledge of various cultures often remarked that the poor in America were richer and freer than most of the world's peoples.
Now add to that the fact of being born into another culture, and yet living here in America, and one can see how wealthy an immigrant or foreign family can be, if they know and respect their heritage. I had the wealth of an ancient Christian Armenian culture and all the vast treasures of an American one.
My father was born in a remote village on a mountain next to Ararat. He lived where his family had lived for perhaps 2000 or so years. Having played as a boy in the churchyard where his father (of the married clergy) had been a priest of the Church of Armenia, my father had memorized the names of his ancestors for fifteen or more centuries back, from the gravestones and church records. My mother came from Van City, which was relatively modern and prosperous.
As a boy, I heard stories from survivors, including our family, of the massacres and the long death march. I heard of the martyrdom of many, including my paternal grandfather, first blinded, then a year or two later killed by the Turks. My maternal grandfather was killed while on a pilgrimage to a favorite monastery church.
My father knew the ancient liturgy as the very beautiful songs of medieval monks. They still echo in my memory with their intense faith.
I was thus born rich though materially poor. My father loved California. Having spent time in Europe in his student days, he knew and thought highly of it, especially Switzerland; but he held that Americans failed to appreciate the often greater beauty of their own country.
Up until my college years, I was immersed in the Armenian community. With time, I lost my ability to read and write Armenian, but the cultural impact remained. I was a child of two worlds and two cultures.
This enabled me to see, as I grew older, how both American and Armenian cultures had steadily left their moorings and had drifted from a strong Biblical and theonomic faith to a vague evangelicalism. I was brought up with unchanging reverence to believe that the Bible is the very word of God.
I can vividly remember each Christmas my father's reading the nativity accounts. I recall him helping us decorate the Christmas tree and telling us that it signified Jesus Christ, the tree of life, ever-green, ever-alive. The ornaments were fruits, or simulated fruit ornaments, to set forth Revelation 22:2. I can recall coming home from kindergarten with my first tale of a Santa Claus, amazed and excited. My laughing father cleaned the chimney, but my cousin Edward, two years older than I, told me it was a silly American story. I always disliked Santa Claus after that.
In Armenia, there was no neutral ground between Islam and Christianity, and I came to realize that there is no neutral ground anywhere. But, to my dismay, the country was drifting into a belief in neutral ground, with all racial groups in that drift. As a student at the university, then in seminary and in the ministry, I came to realize that this belief in neutrality was becoming a kind of new religion, especially among scientists and among churchmen who advocated a rationalistic apologetics. It is difficult for me to express the deep revulsion I felt towards this, then and now. It gave me an intense appreciation of Cornelius Van Til when I encountered his thinking. My horror for neutralism has only deepened with time.
Almost from the day I learned how to read, I began to read the Bible. I loved its majesty, beauty and certainty. In my later university years, I would read as much as an hour, out loud, saturating myself with the glory of God speaking to man. Over the years, when speaking at various churches, I try when possible to read Scripture myself in the service, rather than having another do it. It is a privilege I cherish.
I have been doubly blessed in being an heir of two Christian cultures. Truly, I was born rich.
Rev. R. J. Rushdoony is chairman of the board of Chalcedon and a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical Law to society.
December 1997
It is a privilege and a form of wealth to be born into a rich culture, and most Americans, although they fail to recognize it, are born rich. My father and others with an extensive knowledge of various cultures often remarked that the poor in America were richer and freer than most of the world's peoples.
Now add to that the fact of being born into another culture, and yet living here in America, and one can see how wealthy an immigrant or foreign family can be, if they know and respect their heritage. I had the wealth of an ancient Christian Armenian culture and all the vast treasures of an American one.
My father was born in a remote village on a mountain next to Ararat. He lived where his family had lived for perhaps 2000 or so years. Having played as a boy in the churchyard where his father (of the married clergy) had been a priest of the Church of Armenia, my father had memorized the names of his ancestors for fifteen or more centuries back, from the gravestones and church records. My mother came from Van City, which was relatively modern and prosperous.
As a boy, I heard stories from survivors, including our family, of the massacres and the long death march. I heard of the martyrdom of many, including my paternal grandfather, first blinded, then a year or two later killed by the Turks. My maternal grandfather was killed while on a pilgrimage to a favorite monastery church.
My father knew the ancient liturgy as the very beautiful songs of medieval monks. They still echo in my memory with their intense faith.
I was thus born rich though materially poor. My father loved California. Having spent time in Europe in his student days, he knew and thought highly of it, especially Switzerland; but he held that Americans failed to appreciate the often greater beauty of their own country.
Up until my college years, I was immersed in the Armenian community. With time, I lost my ability to read and write Armenian, but the cultural impact remained. I was a child of two worlds and two cultures.
This enabled me to see, as I grew older, how both American and Armenian cultures had steadily left their moorings and had drifted from a strong Biblical and theonomic faith to a vague evangelicalism. I was brought up with unchanging reverence to believe that the Bible is the very word of God.
I can vividly remember each Christmas my father's reading the nativity accounts. I recall him helping us decorate the Christmas tree and telling us that it signified Jesus Christ, the tree of life, ever-green, ever-alive. The ornaments were fruits, or simulated fruit ornaments, to set forth Revelation 22:2. I can recall coming home from kindergarten with my first tale of a Santa Claus, amazed and excited. My laughing father cleaned the chimney, but my cousin Edward, two years older than I, told me it was a silly American story. I always disliked Santa Claus after that.
In Armenia, there was no neutral ground between Islam and Christianity, and I came to realize that there is no neutral ground anywhere. But, to my dismay, the country was drifting into a belief in neutral ground, with all racial groups in that drift. As a student at the university, then in seminary and in the ministry, I came to realize that this belief in neutrality was becoming a kind of new religion, especially among scientists and among churchmen who advocated a rationalistic apologetics. It is difficult for me to express the deep revulsion I felt towards this, then and now. It gave me an intense appreciation of Cornelius Van Til when I encountered his thinking. My horror for neutralism has only deepened with time.
Almost from the day I learned how to read, I began to read the Bible. I loved its majesty, beauty and certainty. In my later university years, I would read as much as an hour, out loud, saturating myself with the glory of God speaking to man. Over the years, when speaking at various churches, I try when possible to read Scripture myself in the service, rather than having another do it. It is a privilege I cherish.
I have been doubly blessed in being an heir of two Christian cultures. Truly, I was born rich.
Rev. R. J. Rushdoony is chairman of the board of Chalcedon and a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical Law to society.
R. J. RUSHDOONY: POSTMILLENNIALIST
About R.J. Rushdoony
Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) was born in New York City to recently arrived Armenian immigrants who had fled the Turkish massacres of 1915-1916. Within weeks his parents moved to Kingsburg, California, where his father founded an Armenian-speaking Presbyterian church. He spent his boyhood, save for a time when his father was a pastor in Detroit, Michigan, on the family farm in Kingsburg.
Rushdoony graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in English in 1938 and an M.A. in education in 1940. He attended Pacific School of Religion, a Congregational and Methodist seminary near the Berkeley campus, and graduated in 1944. He was ordained that year by the Presbyterian Church, USA and was a missionary to the Piute and Shoshone Indians on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in a remote area of Nevada for eight and a half years.
In 1953 Rushdoony took a pastorate in Santa Cruz, California, a small retirement town on the ocean. He left the PCUSA in 1958 and joined the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, bringing into it another church in Santa Cruz. While in Santa Cruz he published By What Standard? an analysis of the thinking of Cornelius Van Til, who argued that the Christian must not base his thinking on autonomous human reason, but rather on self-consciously Scriptural grounds. Van Til was a professor of religion, but Rushdoony expanded Van Til's "presuppositional" thinking to all of life and thought. Rushdoony's writings therefore cover a broad spectrum of subjects because he believed in rethinking all area in terms of the Word of God. These areas included theological and Biblical studies as well as history, education, law, science, philosophy, psychology, economics, and epistemology.
By the mid-1950's Rushdoony had also firmly adopted a postmillennial eschatology, which gave his writings a characteristically optimistic perspective. During his pastoral years in Santa Cruz he published Intellectual Schizophrenia and finished The Messianic Character of American Education. These two books stirred a great deal of interest in the establishment of Christian schools. Later, in the 1970's and 80's, when Christian and home schools and parental control of children's education was challenged, Rushdoony frequently appeared around the U.S. as an expert defense witness on behalf of churches, schools, and parents.
In 1962 Rushdoony retired from the full-time pastorate and became a researcher and writer, first for the William Volker Fund and then with its spin-off, the Center for American Studies, before working on The One and the Many on a research grant. This book examined the necessity of a Trinitarian approach to the philosophical tension between unity or diversity as ultimate.
In 1965 Rushdoony founded Chalcedon, a Christian educational think-tank. His own personal monthly newsletter eventually developed into the Chalcedon Report, a monthly magazine.
In 1974 one of the last major aspects of Rushdoony's thought was published with the first volume of The Institutes of Biblical Law. In this volume he advocated the applicability of Biblical Law. In doing so, Rushdoony distinguished between justification, God's declaration of our righteousness on the merits of Christ's atonement which is by grace and sanctification, which is the believer's growth in grace. Sanctification, he held, was to be oriented around greater obedience to the Word of God. A believer in covenant theology, Rushdoony held Old and New Testament to be binding except where Christ's person and work clearly superceded the old covenant. Rushdoony's work on Biblical law gave rise to the theonomy, or theonomic (literally "law of God") movement, though he personally used that term less frequently than others, preferring to refer to "Biblical law" or "the law of God."
Rushdoony's optimistic eschatology, combined with his belief in the Lordship of Christ, Van Tillian persuppositional thinking and particularly his affirmation of Biblical law gave rise to what he termed "Christian reconstructionism," the idea that Christianity must proclaim not only personal renewal in the gospel, but God's requirements for every area of life and thought in personal, social, economic and cultural settings. Never an organized movement but rather a perspective on Christian duty, the term "Christian reconstruction" was used by others with differing approaches to its meaning.
In later years, Rushdoony wrote many works, some yet to be published. He also published several commentaries and published his Systematic Theology in two volumes.
Source: http://www.entrewave.com/view/christrules/s101p1447.htm#Top
Rousas John Rushdoony (1916-2001) was born in New York City to recently arrived Armenian immigrants who had fled the Turkish massacres of 1915-1916. Within weeks his parents moved to Kingsburg, California, where his father founded an Armenian-speaking Presbyterian church. He spent his boyhood, save for a time when his father was a pastor in Detroit, Michigan, on the family farm in Kingsburg.
Rushdoony graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A. in English in 1938 and an M.A. in education in 1940. He attended Pacific School of Religion, a Congregational and Methodist seminary near the Berkeley campus, and graduated in 1944. He was ordained that year by the Presbyterian Church, USA and was a missionary to the Piute and Shoshone Indians on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in a remote area of Nevada for eight and a half years.
In 1953 Rushdoony took a pastorate in Santa Cruz, California, a small retirement town on the ocean. He left the PCUSA in 1958 and joined the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, bringing into it another church in Santa Cruz. While in Santa Cruz he published By What Standard? an analysis of the thinking of Cornelius Van Til, who argued that the Christian must not base his thinking on autonomous human reason, but rather on self-consciously Scriptural grounds. Van Til was a professor of religion, but Rushdoony expanded Van Til's "presuppositional" thinking to all of life and thought. Rushdoony's writings therefore cover a broad spectrum of subjects because he believed in rethinking all area in terms of the Word of God. These areas included theological and Biblical studies as well as history, education, law, science, philosophy, psychology, economics, and epistemology.
By the mid-1950's Rushdoony had also firmly adopted a postmillennial eschatology, which gave his writings a characteristically optimistic perspective. During his pastoral years in Santa Cruz he published Intellectual Schizophrenia and finished The Messianic Character of American Education. These two books stirred a great deal of interest in the establishment of Christian schools. Later, in the 1970's and 80's, when Christian and home schools and parental control of children's education was challenged, Rushdoony frequently appeared around the U.S. as an expert defense witness on behalf of churches, schools, and parents.
In 1962 Rushdoony retired from the full-time pastorate and became a researcher and writer, first for the William Volker Fund and then with its spin-off, the Center for American Studies, before working on The One and the Many on a research grant. This book examined the necessity of a Trinitarian approach to the philosophical tension between unity or diversity as ultimate.
In 1965 Rushdoony founded Chalcedon, a Christian educational think-tank. His own personal monthly newsletter eventually developed into the Chalcedon Report, a monthly magazine.
In 1974 one of the last major aspects of Rushdoony's thought was published with the first volume of The Institutes of Biblical Law. In this volume he advocated the applicability of Biblical Law. In doing so, Rushdoony distinguished between justification, God's declaration of our righteousness on the merits of Christ's atonement which is by grace and sanctification, which is the believer's growth in grace. Sanctification, he held, was to be oriented around greater obedience to the Word of God. A believer in covenant theology, Rushdoony held Old and New Testament to be binding except where Christ's person and work clearly superceded the old covenant. Rushdoony's work on Biblical law gave rise to the theonomy, or theonomic (literally "law of God") movement, though he personally used that term less frequently than others, preferring to refer to "Biblical law" or "the law of God."
Rushdoony's optimistic eschatology, combined with his belief in the Lordship of Christ, Van Tillian persuppositional thinking and particularly his affirmation of Biblical law gave rise to what he termed "Christian reconstructionism," the idea that Christianity must proclaim not only personal renewal in the gospel, but God's requirements for every area of life and thought in personal, social, economic and cultural settings. Never an organized movement but rather a perspective on Christian duty, the term "Christian reconstruction" was used by others with differing approaches to its meaning.
In later years, Rushdoony wrote many works, some yet to be published. He also published several commentaries and published his Systematic Theology in two volumes.
Source: http://www.entrewave.com/view/christrules/s101p1447.htm#Top
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