Professor: Rushdoony Dr. R.J.R.

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 8 of 19

Track: #08

Year:

Dictation Name: 08 Authority and False Responsibility.

[Rushdoony] Let us worship God. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh unto you. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise. Let our prayer be set forth before Thee as incense, and the lifting up of our hands as the evening sacrifice. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we thank Thee that Thou who dwellest in the heaven of heavens has chosen to dwell with those who long for Thy presence and humbly seek Thy face. We thank Thee that Thou art Thee who are the restorer of all things. Strengthen our faith, amend our lives according to Thy holy will, restore in us the joy of salvation. Bind up that which is broken. Give light to our minds, strength to our wills, and rest to our souls that we may rejoice in Thee and praise Thee as Thou hast summoned us to do. Grant us this we beseech Thee in Jesus name, amen.

Our scripture this morning is from the thirteenth chapter of the gospel of Saint Luke verses one through five, and our subject authority and false responsibility, authority and false responsibility.

“There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.

2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered such things?

3 I tell you, nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?

5 I tell you, nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” 

When we deal with the question of authority we are dealing with something which is God ordained. But the word authority has been used to cover a multitude of sins. A great deal of what passes for authority in this world is ungodly. Moreover the relationship of authority and responsibility is very important one and a tangled one. Before we go into the subject let us examine briefly some of the errors that impede an understanding of authority and responsibility.

First of all there is a great difference between the authority of God and that of man. Man is God’s creature and subordinate, and no man however God-given the authority he may have in his particular office can identify himself with God and act as though because this is a God given authority I can act like a little God. Man’s authority is derivative and always conditional. Responsibility and authority under God mean accountability to the person or the standard who is greater than ourselves. We must remember that the terms responsible and irresponsible cannot be applied to God. There is no one to whom God is accountable. He is not responsible to some idea or being greater than himself. But all of us who are not God, all of us, are responsible to persons and ultimately to God who is greater than all of us. When men seek to become God they do not live beyond good and evil, as they dream a la Nietzsche and Adam, nor do they live beyond responsibility, they simply live in terms of irresponsibility because as creatures they can only be either responsible or irresponsible. And Adam and Eve who had been created by God, and established in a pilot project for exercising dominion and subduing, developing the earth, chose to play God and immediately became less than good, solid human beings because they denied responsibility which is a part of our creature hood. The woman Thou didst give to me, she did give me and I did eat. “It’s Your fault God you gave me the woman, and it’s her fault”, and Eve had a like excuse; modern man beginning with Adam and Eve and ever since place responsibility for their sin on the environment and ultimately on God. 

Second this means that fallen man has because of His sin a bent to environmentalism. Although he claims to be a God he refuses to see himself except as a victim, not as a sinner, and there’s a world of difference. The whole modern world stresses the idea that everybody is a victim but at the same time they’re victimizing themselves. Our children can blame us according to many schools of thought, we provided the bad home. But of course we can blame our parents, or we can blame our heredity, or the community, anything except ourselves. This approach is basic to almost all psychotherapy, and psychotherapy of this sort is dangerous because it confirms people into thinking in the wrong channels and greats a dependency on a psychotherapist who supports them in their sickness, not to develop their health. 

Then third Humanism sometimes does exactly the reverse, and this is usually Humanism it’s within the church. It aggravates the problem by exaggerating responsibility. Churchmen who go in for psychotherapy in their pastoral counseling make the individual into a kind of semi-god and ultimate causality, and this is dangerous. As though you’re responsible for everything, you’re responsible for what your husband, or your wife, or your children are doing, and so you’re made to feel guilty. The scriptures says that the soul that sinneth shall die; and it tells Ezekiel that “you’ve made your witness once, then you’re innocent of the blood of any man, and that’s it.” It doesn’t tell us we have a God like responsibility for everyone that’s associated with us. That’s a sin, it’s putting a God-like responsibility on a person that God does not permit.

Moreover it exults the psychotherapist. Of course in all psychotherapy there is a hidden evil and danger, because in effect you go to a person and it’s a one-to-one relationship, “alright, heal me.” You’re the healer. Are they? And how’s it going to be done by talking, by dredging up the past, and by fixing responsibility. It’s the family, it’s your husband, it’s your wife, it’s you, and this is where the Christian psychotherapist is especially bad because he aggravates the guilt. And the hidden assumption in all of this is that man can do the healing; the psychotherapist, or the person. 

Now to illustrate this point from some very real situations, a legion of them. Men and woman go to psychotherapists to say that they’re in very, very critical trouble, emotional problems, unable to function. Why? “My spouse is unfaithful and irresponsible,” and so on and on. Now in all these situations the erring spouse is not present. So here’s a problem where there is sin, and how can you deal with a sin when the sinner is not involved in the counseling situation? There’s only one person for the psychotherapist to work on, the innocent part, and believe me they do work on them. And many a pastoral psychologist will start by indicting some way or another the innocent party: “Have you tried to win your spouse back with love? Have you loved enough? Have you gone the extra mile?” and so on. And I’ve known instances where such people have told me that they’ve made the mistake in talking to the psychotherapist after thirty-forty minutes of talking and drudging up feelings they burst out with “Sometimes I wish my spouse would drop dead. I’ve had it I’m so weary” Well this is an excellent opportunity for another guilt trip to be loaded upon someone who’s merely having a human reaction. And the same is true of children, guilt trips are imposed upon them. But none of us are perfect, none of us are without sin, none of us can have a perfect relationship one with the other, with anyone. So that we can all be made very easily to feel guilty if something goes wrong. But we are not God, and our spouse, our children, our co-workers, our associates, and our friends are not our creatures. Each of is responsible to God for what he or she is and we are in the final analysis responsible only for ourselves. We have a real but limited responsibility for others. To blame ourselves beyond a very limited degree for what happens to others is sin and presumption. 

Then fourth, humanistic psychotherapy has a double offense. It gives to much authority and power to the person while at the same time assuming that all problems are solvable by man and without reference to anything beyond man – that is God. And so the idea is that by delving into a person’s mind the problem will be solved, and instead of talking out a problem these psychotherapists talk people into worse ones. Why? They are operating within a closed system, nothing exists except man and man; and so they’re going to find the causality within you or within somebody else. But what is our text about? Certain Judeans came up to our Lord and they said “did you hear about the Galileans, whose blood Pilot has mingled with their sacrifices?” Now we don’t know anything about this incident in history it’s one of countless numbers that have disappeared except for this sentence from human perpu {?}. But Galileans had come up to the temple and in some kind of incident the legionnaires had killed a number of them so that in effect their blood was mingled with their sacrifices which they had brought up to the temple. Well why was this question brought up? It’s obvious from the next sentence “suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things?” Now to get the implication, the drift of that, we must realize the Galileans were the northern tribes, what was once the kingdom of Israel. The Judeans were the tribe of Judah, and of Benjamin, and the half-tribe of Simian and various of the ten tribe’s members that had moved south