Showing results by publisher "Chalcedon Foundation" in Religion & Spirituality

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.

The purpose of Law and Society, this second of three volumes of The Institutes of Biblical Law, is to show how God’s law applies to every aspect of our lives and world. There are in God’s word specified consequences, curses and blessings, for disobedience and obedience. We cannot understand history apart from that fact.

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.

Man was called to dominion (Gen. 1:26-28), and to establish his reign over the world under God. By his fall, man introduced the reign of death into the world, and as long as he remains in the Fall, sin reigns in him unto death, both in time and eternity. Christ, however, by his grace and the gift of righteousness, enables man to reign in this world, and to reign through righteousness in time and eternity.

To attempt to study Scripture without studying its law is to deny it. To attempt to understand Western civilization apart from the impact of biblical law within it and upon it is to seek a fictitious history and to reject 20 centuries and their progress. The Institutes of Biblical Law has as its purpose a reversal of the present trend. it is called "Institutes" in the older meaning of that word--i.e., fundamental principles, here of law, because it is intended as a beginning, as an instituting consideration of that law that must govern society.

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.

There is a marked resemblance between our time and that of Elijah and Elisha. Their day was an age of syncretism, of radical compromise between the worship of the Lord and Baal worship. The two had been blended together to make one religion, so that a refusal to see the necessity for uncompromising religion marked Israel. In Chariots of Prophetic Fire, R. J. Rushdoony challenges the Church of our day to resist compromise and the temptation of expediency and realize that the power today does not lie in politics or governments, but in God’s men of faith.

The question of where ultimacy lies should be central to the Christian. It is easy to see the social implications of allowing priority to fall to either the one or the many. This volume examines in-depth the Christian solution to the problem of the one and the many—the Trinitarian God. Only in the godhead is this dilemma resolved. Only in the Trinity does there reside an equal ultimacy of unity and plurality.

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.

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.

The Lord desires a people who will embrace their responsibilities. The history of Israel in the wilderness is a sad narrative of a people with hearts hardened by complaint and rebellion to God's ordained authorities. They were slaves, not an army. They would recognize the tyranny of Pharaoh but disregard the servant-leadership of Moses. God would judge the generation he led out of captivity, while training a new generation to conquer Canaan. The Book of Numbers reveals God's dealings with both generations.

Jesus is the true bread of life, come down from heaven. His flesh, His true humanity, is our bread of life; this He gives for the life of the world. We are in Him no longer the sinful and death-bound sons of fallen Adam, but the just and life-bound people of the last Adam. Christ gives us His flesh, His glorious humanity, so that we are remade into people of righteousness and eternal life.

Essentially, all of mankind is on some sort of exodus. However, the path of fallen man is vastly different from that of the righteous. Apart from Jesus Christ and his atoning work, the exodus of a fallen humanity means only a further descent from sin into death. But in Christ, the exodus is now a glorious ascent into the justice and dominion of the everlasting Kingdom of God.

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.

Dr. Rushdoony had predicted that the humanist system, based on anti-Christian premises of the enlightenment, could only get worse. Rushdoony was indeed a prophet. He knew that education divorced from God and from all transcendental standards would produce the educational disaster and moral barbarism we have today. The title of this audiobook is particularly significant in that Dr. Rushdoony was able to identify the basic contradiction that pervades a secular society that rejects Gods sovereignty, but still needs law and order, justice, science, and meaning to life.

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.

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."

Faith and Action is the complete collection of the essays of R. J. Rushdoony written for the Chalcedon Report between 1965 and 2001 along with several transcripts of his recorded talks. The large volume The Roots of Reconstruction only contained his Chalcedon Report essays up until 1985, so most of the essays included in Faith and Action were unavailable to listeners for many years until now.