The Holy Spirit and Freedom
A Rushdoony Blog
Life is the arena of theology. The doctrines of our faith have been and are being made plainer for us by the testings of history. There is a telling sentence in a recent study by Dr. Joel R. Beeke: "Saving faith is rich because it is the pith of doing Christian theology." (Personal Assurances of Faith: English Puritanism and the Dutch "Nadere Reformatie": From Westminster to Alexander Comrie (1640-1710), p. 369, 1988.) Life is a matter of "doing Christian theology." In one era of church history after another, attacks on one or more doctrines compel Christians to think more seriously of them and to deepen their understanding of Scripture.
In this century, two areas of doctrine are under especial attack: the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. As in the past, heresies cluster around neglected or under thought areas of the faith. Our concern here is the doctrine of the Spirit, not with respect to its formulation but rather its importance, and why errors here are so dangerous.
There have been recurring times and movements of error linked to this doctrine: Montanism in the early church; the many movements originating in the thinking of the Abbot Joachim of Fiora; Quakerism, and more. In part, the heresies have arisen because of the neglect of this doctrine, and, in part, to free man from God in the name of God the Spirit.
Our concern here is with the meaning of Biblical thinking with respect to the Holy Spirit. There are very important implications. Life cannot exist without patterns, direction and controls. Even those who are not Christian sneak in purpose in a disguised fashion. The believers in evolution do not allow the possibility of devolution. Is it not equally logical to affirm that all things are devolving as to say they are evolving? If you deny God's order, you must posit some other order rather than to admit universal disorder and chaos.
The question is this: what is the source of order in a universe of chance? Supposedly, that realm of chance has accidentally, by chance variations, produced our remarkable universe of apparent order. Will not change capriciously destroy that order? An answer to this, in print since 1936, is V. Gordon Childe's Man Makes Himself. Man can now supply purpose and control to a mindless evolution. Since this was written, we have seen efforts to control man's genes, to control "outer" space, and so on.
It was Karl Marx's keenest insight that he saw the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 as the assurances of the triumph of socialism. If evolution and Darwin are correct, then there is no God in control. But control, planning (or predestination), and meaning are necessary. If there is no God to supply them, then man must. Practically, this means an all-powerful state; it means cradle-to-grave controls over all of life, and it means that the state must be free from all controls in order to control its realm totally. As against this, some posited man as the center of all controls. These thinkers, anarchists, were still moving in terms of 18th century premises. They believed that Nature represents an order, and, if let alone (laissez faire), would provide man and society with freedom and order. This was, however, simply a watered-down belief in the Biblical God. To affirm such an order without God, and, at the same time, to believe in evolution, meant that these thinkers were schizophrenic in their presuppositions.
The rise of evolution meant the rise of totalitarian statism. The modern state claims powers never imagined by the pagan tyrants of old. It is able also to achieve unprecedented kinds of control because of modern technology.
The choice is this: either we are controlled by the power of the Holy Spirit, or we are controlled by the modern pagan state. Either God's providence rules all things, or the state must do so to avert disorder and chaos. This is why the doctrine and the person of the Holy Spirit are so important to man in our time. At issue is the freedom of man. St. Paul states the issue very plainly: "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (II Cor. 3:17).
Where the Spirit of God is denied, then the modern state becomes a substitute spirit, and the goal then is to create out of the state the caring, providing spirit of man. It is not an accident of history that, as the leftist student movement of the 1960s collapsed, its advocates and leaders took two directions. First, many became functionaries and bureaucrats of the state, its schools and universities. They sought to keep alive the spirit of man in a statist network. Second, many others became leaders and shapers of the new charismatic movement of the 1970s on. Having lost faith in the spirit of man, they turned with intensity to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. The spirit of man had been everything to them, the answer to all problems; now the Spirit of God was the answer. The mainline churches, to whom the Holy Spirit was mainly an article of the Apostles' Creed, were amazed and often shocked. Old-line Pentecostalism had become church-oriented more than Spirit governed, and while it gained from the new movement, was often very suspicious of it.
But something had happened: the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had become a matter of importance and of life. The Holy Spirit became a matter of more than an article in the creed to many evangelical churches.
This did not end the problems, it created new ones. To illustrate, someone arguing against a friend of ours on Biblical matters insisted that she was right because "the Spirit told me." The answer she received was, the Spirit and the Bible tell me differently. The Spirit cannot be separated from His written word. The modern age places its certainties in man, so that people say, "I think," or, "I believe," or, "I know," or, "I feel," and so on and on. The spirit of man replaces the Spirit of God. This is heretical: it frees man from God to himself! You and 1, apart from God's word and Spirit, can be as tyrannical as the enemies of God if we make idols of our spirit or our minds.
The Nicene Creed tells us: "And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the prophets." Since He is one with the Father and the Son, to neglect Him is to neglect God Himself. To separate Him from His word is false, and to identify our spirit with Him is idolatry. It is "where the Spirit of the Lord is, (that) there is
liberty," and nowhere else.
There is no good future for man and society apart from Him who is "the Lord, and Giver of Life."
R. J. Rushdoony, Position Paper - Chalcedon Report, No. 289, August 1989
Life is the arena of theology. The doctrines of our faith have been and are being made plainer for us by the testings of history. There is a telling sentence in a recent study by Dr. Joel R. Beeke: "Saving faith is rich because it is the pith of doing Christian theology." (Personal Assurances of Faith: English Puritanism and the Dutch "Nadere Reformatie": From Westminster to Alexander Comrie (1640-1710), p. 369, 1988.) Life is a matter of "doing Christian theology." In one era of church history after another, attacks on one or more doctrines compel Christians to think more seriously of them and to deepen their understanding of Scripture.
In this century, two areas of doctrine are under especial attack: the inspiration and authority of Scripture, and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. As in the past, heresies cluster around neglected or under thought areas of the faith. Our concern here is the doctrine of the Spirit, not with respect to its formulation but rather its importance, and why errors here are so dangerous.
There have been recurring times and movements of error linked to this doctrine: Montanism in the early church; the many movements originating in the thinking of the Abbot Joachim of Fiora; Quakerism, and more. In part, the heresies have arisen because of the neglect of this doctrine, and, in part, to free man from God in the name of God the Spirit.
Our concern here is with the meaning of Biblical thinking with respect to the Holy Spirit. There are very important implications. Life cannot exist without patterns, direction and controls. Even those who are not Christian sneak in purpose in a disguised fashion. The believers in evolution do not allow the possibility of devolution. Is it not equally logical to affirm that all things are devolving as to say they are evolving? If you deny God's order, you must posit some other order rather than to admit universal disorder and chaos.
The question is this: what is the source of order in a universe of chance? Supposedly, that realm of chance has accidentally, by chance variations, produced our remarkable universe of apparent order. Will not change capriciously destroy that order? An answer to this, in print since 1936, is V. Gordon Childe's Man Makes Himself. Man can now supply purpose and control to a mindless evolution. Since this was written, we have seen efforts to control man's genes, to control "outer" space, and so on.
It was Karl Marx's keenest insight that he saw the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 as the assurances of the triumph of socialism. If evolution and Darwin are correct, then there is no God in control. But control, planning (or predestination), and meaning are necessary. If there is no God to supply them, then man must. Practically, this means an all-powerful state; it means cradle-to-grave controls over all of life, and it means that the state must be free from all controls in order to control its realm totally. As against this, some posited man as the center of all controls. These thinkers, anarchists, were still moving in terms of 18th century premises. They believed that Nature represents an order, and, if let alone (laissez faire), would provide man and society with freedom and order. This was, however, simply a watered-down belief in the Biblical God. To affirm such an order without God, and, at the same time, to believe in evolution, meant that these thinkers were schizophrenic in their presuppositions.
The rise of evolution meant the rise of totalitarian statism. The modern state claims powers never imagined by the pagan tyrants of old. It is able also to achieve unprecedented kinds of control because of modern technology.
The choice is this: either we are controlled by the power of the Holy Spirit, or we are controlled by the modern pagan state. Either God's providence rules all things, or the state must do so to avert disorder and chaos. This is why the doctrine and the person of the Holy Spirit are so important to man in our time. At issue is the freedom of man. St. Paul states the issue very plainly: "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" (II Cor. 3:17).
Where the Spirit of God is denied, then the modern state becomes a substitute spirit, and the goal then is to create out of the state the caring, providing spirit of man. It is not an accident of history that, as the leftist student movement of the 1960s collapsed, its advocates and leaders took two directions. First, many became functionaries and bureaucrats of the state, its schools and universities. They sought to keep alive the spirit of man in a statist network. Second, many others became leaders and shapers of the new charismatic movement of the 1970s on. Having lost faith in the spirit of man, they turned with intensity to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. The spirit of man had been everything to them, the answer to all problems; now the Spirit of God was the answer. The mainline churches, to whom the Holy Spirit was mainly an article of the Apostles' Creed, were amazed and often shocked. Old-line Pentecostalism had become church-oriented more than Spirit governed, and while it gained from the new movement, was often very suspicious of it.
But something had happened: the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had become a matter of importance and of life. The Holy Spirit became a matter of more than an article in the creed to many evangelical churches.
This did not end the problems, it created new ones. To illustrate, someone arguing against a friend of ours on Biblical matters insisted that she was right because "the Spirit told me." The answer she received was, the Spirit and the Bible tell me differently. The Spirit cannot be separated from His written word. The modern age places its certainties in man, so that people say, "I think," or, "I believe," or, "I know," or, "I feel," and so on and on. The spirit of man replaces the Spirit of God. This is heretical: it frees man from God to himself! You and 1, apart from God's word and Spirit, can be as tyrannical as the enemies of God if we make idols of our spirit or our minds.
The Nicene Creed tells us: "And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; Who spake by the prophets." Since He is one with the Father and the Son, to neglect Him is to neglect God Himself. To separate Him from His word is false, and to identify our spirit with Him is idolatry. It is "where the Spirit of the Lord is, (that) there is
liberty," and nowhere else.
There is no good future for man and society apart from Him who is "the Lord, and Giver of Life."
R. J. Rushdoony, Position Paper - Chalcedon Report, No. 289, August 1989
