Showing results by author "R. J. Rushdoony" in All Categories

The Easy Chair with R.J. Rushdoony is an audio series of colloquies, casual conversations, and roundtables presented by Chalcedon Foundation. Various topics are discussed solo by Rousas John Rushdoony and with guests, covering all areas of life and culture. Looking at life from a theonomic, Christian Reconstructionist perspective, we properly apply God's word to our lives. These episodes were originally recorded in the 1980’s-1990’s.

An entire generation of victory-minded Christians, spurred by the victorious postmillennial vision of Chalcedon, has emerged to press what the Puritan fathers called "the Crown Rights of Christ the King" in all areas of modern life. Central to that is Rousas John Rushdoony's jewel of a study, God's Plan for Victory. The founder of the Christian Reconstruction movement set forth in potent, cogent terms the older Puritan vision of the irrepressible advancement of Christ's kingdom by his faithful saints employing the entire law-word of God as the program for earthly victory.

One of the most neglected but pervasive threats to the Christian world and life view is that of neoplatonism. This leftover of ancient Greek philosophy is grounded upon a dual aspect to reality: It views that which is form or spirit (such as mind) as good and that which is physical (flesh) as evil. Neoplatonism is a "dialectical" philosophy that tries to reconcile two basically hostile concepts and retain both within its system.

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 eternal decree of God. Time and history, therefore, have meaning because they were created in terms of God's perfect and totally comprehensive plan. The humanist faces a meaningless world in which he must strive to create and establish meaning.

There is a resounding call in Hebrews that we cannot forget without going astray: "Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach" (13:13). This is a summons to serve Christ the Redeemer-King fully and faithfully, without compromise. In our time, it calls for a break, not only with the prevailing culture of humanistic statism and its messianic claims and pretensions, but also a wayward church that has made itself the handmaiden to Christ's enemies.

Round table discussions on a variety of subjects from a Christian perspective.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries that was a self-conscious move away from the Reformation's emphasis on faith and revelation. It was the mind of man that became the new standard. "My own mind is my own church," wrote Thomas Paine in his Age of Reason (Part First, 1794), which was an attack on all religion that claimed to be authoritative and Christianity in particular.

First published in 1970, this book helped spur the modern rise of postmillennialism. Revelation's details are often perplexing, even baffling, and yet its main meaning is clear: It is a book about victory. It tells us that our faith can only result in victory. "This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith" (1 John 5:4). This is why knowing Revelation is so important. It assures us of our victory and celebrates it. Genesis 3 tells us of the fall of man into sin and death. Revelation gives us man's victory in Christ over sin and death.

The Beatitudes are the kingdom commission to the new Israel of God, and R. J. Rushdoony elucidates this powerful thesis in an accessible and engaging commentary on the world's greatest sermon.

Rushdoony’s Sermons in First and Second Corinthians are the last of his Biblical commentaries—delivered shortly before his passing—but it represents a fitting close to his teaching ministry. He said Paul’s letters are difficult to preach on because they speak to the sins of Christians, and with the church at Corinth, the long list of sins included division, strife, injustice, immorality, doctrinal error, and the abuse of the sacraments.

The book of Leviticus has not been a popular subject of study in the modern church. Much like the book of proverbs, any emphasis upon the practical applications of God's law is readily shunned in pursuit of more "spiritual" studies. Books like Leviticus are considered dull, overbearing, and irrelevant. To be spiritual, in the modern sense of the term, means to live on a "higher" level where today's Christian is governed more by the impressions of the heart than a carnal commandment.

All law is based upon morality, and morality is itself based upon religion. Therefore, when the religion of a people is weakened, so also is its morality undermined. The result is a progressive collapse of law and order, and the breakdown of society. Men, though, see law as a limitation on their liberty, and Christianity is held to be the most restrictive with its emphasis upon Biblical law as the foundation for morality and liberty.

Early Christians were called "heretics" and "atheists" when they denied the gods of Rome, in particular the divinity of the emperor and the statism he embodied in his personality cult. These Christians knew that Jesus Christ, not the state, was their Lord and that this faith required a different kind of relationship to the state than the state demanded. Because Jesus Christ was their acknowledged sovereign, they consciously denied such esteem to all other claimants. Today, the church must take a similar stand before the modern state.

The first section summarizes the case laws. The author tenderly illustrates how the law is for our good, and makes clear the difference between the sacrificial laws and those that apply today. The second section vividly shows the practical implications of the law. The examples catch the reader's attention; the author clearly has had much experience discussing God's law. The third section shows that would-be challengers to God's law produce only poison and death. Only God's law can claim to express God's "covenant grace in helping us."

Revolt Against Maturity is a study of biblical psychology. Biblical psychology contrasts sharply with a science of the mind based on the religious presuppositions of humanism, which regards man as having no constant nature. A science of the mind based on humanism views the mind as a clean slate and man's nature as plastic to be molded by men and institutions in the image of man for the new order he will establish. The biblical view sees psychology as a branch of theology; theology is a study of all that the scriptures declare about God.

Our faith should be an informed one because the god who created all things speaks to every sphere of life, and all facts should be studied in light of the revelation of god in scripture. This is the foundation of Christian dominion. For R. J. Rushdoony, true government was the self-government of the Christian life in terms of God's law, so he wrote his position papers to better equip Christians to apply their faith to all of life.

Hypocrisy replaces virtue when men cover their sins rather than confess them to God. This is all too common when men do not preach and practice a Biblical doctrine of confession. The challenge is first to restore the meaning of confession as taught in the Scriptures. As long as confession is seen as a Romanist doctrine, we have no hope of recovering this vital aspect of Christianity. In this path-breaking volume, R. J. Rushdoony examines the Biblical teaching on confession and sets it over against the errors of Romanism and the neo-Freudianism of modern Christian counseling.

The Foundations of Social Order was, and remains, the most unique book ever written in the history of Christendom. Nothing like it has been written before, and nothing like it has been written since.

Man has trampled God's law underfoot. In doing so, he has misused himself and trampled on the God-given rights of his fellowman. He is conscious of his guilt and seeks self-justification through self-atonement. The author makes it perfectly clear that there is only one way of escape from present slough and despair. It is in turning in heartfelt repentance to God who has already provided atonement in the sacrifice of his son. And true repentance includes a return to the doing of God's will as revealed in God's word, the Bible.

Exactly what has public education been trying to accomplish? Before the 1830s and Horace Mann, no schools in the US were state-supported or state-controlled. They were local, parent-teacher enterprises, supported without taxes, and taking care of all children. They were remarkably high in standard and were Christian. From Mann to the present, the state has used education to socialize the child. Public education became the means of creating a social order of the educators' design. Such men saw themselves and the school in messianic terms.