Rousas John Rushdoony

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Rousas John Rushdoony (25 April 1916 – 8 February 2001) was a Calvinist philosopher, historian, and theologian and is widely credited as the father of both Christian Reconstructionism and the modern homeschool movement.[citation needed]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Rushdoony was born in New York the son of recently arrived Armenian immigrants who had narrowly escaped the Armenian Genocide of 1915. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a B.A. in English in 1938, a teaching credential in 1939 and a M.A. in Education in 1940. He also attended the Pacific School of Religion. He later received an honorary Doctorate from Valley Christian University for his book, The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum.

[edit] Intellectual career

Rushdoony began his career as a writer in 1958, popularizing, albeit densely, the works of Calvinist philosophers Cornelius Van Til and Herman Dooyeweerd into a short survey of contemporary humanism called By What Standard? Arguing for a Calvinist system of thought, Rushdoony dealt with subjects as broad as epistemology and cognitive metaphysics and as narrow as the psychology of religion and predestination. He would write one more book applying the Van Tillian Presuppositional philosophy to critiquing various aspects of secular humanism (namely The One And The Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy) as well as many essays and book reviews, published in such venues as the Westminster Theological Journal.

Rushdoony's next focus was on education, especially on behalf of homeschooling, which he saw as a way to combat the intentionally secular nature of the U.S. public school system. He vigorously attacked progressive school reformers such as Horace Mann and John Dewey and argued for the dismantling of the state's influence in education in three works: Intellectual Schizophrenia (a general and concise study of education), The Messianic Character of American Education (a history and castigation of state-run education in the U.S.), and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum (a parent-oriented pedagogical statement).

Rushdoony would next pursued history – of the world, of the United States, and of the church. He famously maintained that Calvinistic Christianity provided the intellectual roots for the American Revolution and had thus always had an influential impact in American history. He would further this study in his works on American ideology and historiography, This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning of American History and The Nature of the American System.

[edit] Christian Reconstruction

Part of the series on
Christian Reconstruction
Ideas

Biblical Theology Church & State
Minarchism
Postmillennialism
Presuppositionalism
Theonomy
Young Earth
Advocates

R. J. Rushdoony
Greg Bahnsen
Gary North
Gary DeMar
Kenneth Gentry
David Chilton
Former advocates

James B. Jordan
Peter Leithart
Andrew Sandlin
Organizations

American Vision
Chalcedon Foundation
Influences

Abraham Kuyper
Francis Schaeffer
Cornelius Van Til
Ludwig von Mises
Financiers

Howard Ahmanson Jr
Critics

TheocracyWatch
Chip Berlet/PRA
Chris Hedges
v • d • e

Rushdoony's most important area of writing, however, was law and politics, as expressed in his small book of popular essays Law & Liberty and discussed in much greater detail in his three volume work Institutes of Biblical Law. With a title modeled after Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, Rushdoony's Institutes was arguably his most influential work, though it was largely ignored until the Francis Schaeffer espoused many similar ideas in the 1980s.[1] In the book, he proposed that Old Testament law should be applied to modern society and that there should be a Christian theonomy (a concept developed in his colleague Greg Bahnsen's controversial tome Theonomy and Christian Ethics, which Rushdoony heartily endorsed). Although supporting the separation of church and state at the national level, Rushdoony understood both institutions as under the rule of God, and thus he conceived secularism as posing endless false antitheses, which his massive work addresses in considerable detail. In short, he sought to cast a vision for the reconstruction of society based on Christian principles.

Rushdoony's work has been used by Dominion Theology advocates who attempt to implement a Christian theocracy (that is, a government subject to Biblical law, especially the Torah) in the United States. Economics, penology, authority, behavioral boundaries and the like would all be governed by biblical principles in Rushdoony's vision, but he also proposed a wide system of freedom, especially in the economic sphere, and claimed Ludwig von Mises as an intellectual mentor, calling himself a Christian libertarian.

Rushdoony was the founder in 1965 of the Chalcedon Foundation and the editor of its monthly magazine, the Chalcedon Report. He also published the Journal of Christian Reconstruction and was an early board member of the Rutherford Institute, founded in 1982 by John Whitehead. His son-in-law, Gary North, is a Christian Reconstructionist writer and economist.

[edit] Quotations

  • On political infrastructure of a Christian theocracy: "The world is in rebellion against that [Christ's] government. From these rebels and revolutionists, we hear much talk about "peace" [...] and a great deal of hostility to government. But Isaiah tied the two together: "Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end". True peace, in other words, is a product of true government. When there is true law and order, then there is also true peace. Abolish law and order, and you abolish peace and create a situation of revolutionary warfare and anarchy. By abandoning Christ as Savior and King, by abandoning His government and peace, we are moving into a world of perpetual warfare. We are engaged in "perpetual warfare for perpetual peace" because we are seeking it without Christ" (Dec. 16, 1967).[citation needed]
  • On Christian unity in evangelistic endeavors: "When we are Christians, to the extent to any degree we are faithful to the gospel, we are bigger than ourselves. And that is why whether they are Arminian, Roman Catholic, or Calvinist, people who are truly serving the Lord are bigger than their own thinking, bigger than their own faith. We transcend ourselves. And that is the glory of the gospel. It enables us to do more than we can do. It is the grace of God working through us. It is not that we teach different gospels; we are trying to teach the same gospel even though at times our emphasis will be a warped one, a limited one, a partial one. All the same, God can use it".[citation needed]

[edit] Selected works

  • The Institutes of Biblical Law (3 Vol.)
  • By What Standard?: An Analysis of the Philosophy of Cornelius Van Til
  • The One And The Many: Studies in The Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy
  • This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning of American History
  • The Nature of the American System
  • The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church
  • Intellectual Schizophrenia: Culture, Crisis, and Education
  • The Messianic Character of American Education
  • Politics of Guilt & Pity
  • Roots of Reconstruction
  • Law & Liberty

[edit] References

  1. ^ John Sugg. "A Nation Under God", Mother Jones, December/January 2006. “But because of [Institutes's] extremism and overt racism — Rushdoony denied the Holocaust and defended segregation and slavery — Institutes and its author were largely ignored in mainstream circles until the movement launched by Schaeffer found its intellectual grounding in Rushdoony’s writings.”

[edit] External links

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