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(From 2007) By: Jay Dyer

Lately, I have been re-reading some old reformed Protestant materials I read several years ago. One of these books is by a very respected reformed thinker named Rousas J. Rushdoony. Rushdoony wrote and did some good things, like defending homseschoolers and giving that movement an initial impetus. However, these things don’t magically make him orthodox or erase his denials of the Incarnation. In my many dealings with reformed pastors and theologians, I’ve learned that it generally doesn’t matter what heresies their heroes have, nor does it matter how serious the heresies are. No, reformed thinkers have their demi-gods and none dare challenge them. So it doesn’t matter that Rushdoony also promoted the Jewish food laws, which is condemned by St. Paul. It doesn’t matter that Van Til said the essence of God was a Person. It doesn’t matter that Bahnsen thought one could have pictures of Christ and that he celebrated Christmas, which John Knox thought worthy of death. And none of this stuff would be so bad if the reformed didn’t claim to hold to the ecumenical councils.

No, if the reformed thinkers decide you’re a hero, you can, in fact, get away with quite a bit. Forgiving men for errors and passing them over is one thing, and it’s an aspect of love. However, when it comes to the point of excusing men or ignoring their substantial heresies on Christ and/or the Trinity, that’s another story. The reformed thinkers and pastors that have despised and blasted me, fail to realize that whatever errors I have held, I haven’t promoted serious Trinitarian and Christological errors like Van Til and Rushdoony. And none of this would be so bad if Rushdoony’s foundation wasn’t named “Chalcedon.” Other men in these circles also name their publications and churches after Chalcedon.

Rushdoony flat out denies the reality of the union in the Incarnation in his book, “The Foundations of Social Order.” He states all this in his chapters on the creeds and councils that purport to defend the councils. It should also be noted that he never quotes the Fathers or the councils directly, only from secondary sources. What a joke. What would the reformed guys say if I wrote this refutation of Rushdoony and quoted it all second-hand from some other guy’s refutation of Rushdoony? But now to the point: in a clever twist, under the guise of opposing “man-worship,” Rushdoony thought he could slip in a denial of the sanctity of Christ’s humanity because the council of Ephesus rejected Nestorius’ man-worship. But on the very page, the councils’ statements say that Christ, “must be worshipped together with his holy flesh!”

Quoting St. Cyril, Rushdoony writes:

“The position of Nestorius made the worship of man the worship of God. [quoting now St. Cyril] ‘It is horrible to say [as Nestorius does] in this connexion as follows: ‘the assumed as well as the assuming have the name of God.’ For the saying of this divides again Christ into two, and puts the man separately by himself and God by himself. For this saying denies openly the Unity, according to which one is not worshipped in the other, nor does God exist together with the other; but Jesus Christ is considered as One, the Only-begotten Son, to be honored with one-adoration together with his own flesh” (Foundations of Social Order, 40).

So notice that Rushdoony just told you, quoting St. Cyril, that Christ is to be worshipped with one worship-one adoration, directed towards the Incarnate Logos-together with His flesh. There is only one worship and one adoration because there is only one incarnate Divine Person. But that Divine Person is forever incarnate now, and is only worshipped in that form. There is no such thing, as Rushdoony proposes, as them distinct worship of only his divine nature!

Rushdoony goes on:

“But the Council made it clear that only God could be worshipped; not even Christ’s humanity could be worshipped, but only His deity. The humanity of Christ is not nor ever could be deified” (Foundations, 41).

What did St. Cyril and Ephesus just say?: “Jesus Christ is considered as One, the Only-begotten Son, to be honored with one-adoration together with his own flesh.” But this isn’t all. Rushdoony continues his denial. Pretending to make worship of Christ’s humanity as worship of creature, he cites the anti-Arian statements of Nicea (pg. 44), but Rushdoony attempts to make this mean that there is absolutely no sense in which Christ is adored in two natures. No, “only the Divinity of Christ [Incarnate] is worshipped.” He writes: “In worshipping the Son, we worship therefore not His humanity but His deity only. When we are forbidden to worship the humanity of God incarnate, it follows necessarily that all creature-worship, and bowing to a creature in worship, is absolutely forbidden. As a result, the council is clearly opposed to the veneration of the virgin Mary and the saints…” (Foundations, 47).

But again he had just quoted St. Cyril in yet another anathema: “[If anyone] shall not rather with one adoration worship the Emmanuel and pay to him one glorification as “The Word Made Flesh:” let him be anathema.” You must worship Him as one Divine Person incarnate, including his human nature! One adoration towards One Incarnate Person, including his human nature. Apparently Rushdoony was also unaware that this council was held in the Church of St. Mary which has the relics of St. John the Divine, when he tries to oppose the veneration of the Theotokos and the saints.

Rushdoony then cites the Eleventh anathema of St. Cyril which condemns him out of his own mouth:

“Whosoever shall not confess that the flesh of the Lord giveth life and that it pertains to the Word of God the Father as his very own, but shall pretend that it belongs to another person who is united to him [i.e., the Word] only according to honour, and who has served as a dwelling for the divinity; and shall not rather confess, as we say, that that flesh giveth life because it is that of the Word who giveth life to all: let him be anathema.”

What flesh does Rushdoony imagine St. Cyril is taling about, that gives life? Rushdoony won’t have any worship directed towards the Incarnate Lord, but only the Divinity. Rushdoony is undeniably a docetic Nestorian. He also cleverly leaves out the quote from the Letter of St. Cyril to Nestorius (which Rushdoony had quoted part of), where St. Cyril and the council affirm that Christ’s human nature is deified and is proven by the real presence. Yes, my reformed friends, Christ’s humanity is deified. You think that means monophystitism, but the councils that fought monophysitism are the ones that defined this very point, as we will see. Where did Ephesus & St. Cyril say this? In his second letter to Nestorius, with the Anathemas appended:

“We will necessarily add this also.  Proclaiming the death, according to the flesh, of the Only-begotten Son of God, that is Jesus Christ, confessing his resurrection from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, we offer the Unbloody Sacrifice in the churches, and so go on to the mystical thanksgivings, and are sanctified, having received his Holy Flesh and the Precious Blood of Christ the Saviour of us all. And not as common flesh do we receive it; God forbid: nor as of a man sanctified and associated with the Word according to the unity of worth, or as having a divine indwelling, but as truly the Life-giving and very flesh of the Word himself. For he is the Life according to his nature as God, and when he became united to his Flesh, he made it also to be Life-giving, as also he said to us: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood. For we must not think that it is flesh of a man like us (for how can the flesh of man be life-giving by its own nature?) but as having become truly the very own of him who for us both became and was called Son of Man. Besides, what the Gospels say our Saviour said of himself, we do not divide between two hypostases or persons. For neither is he, the one and only Christ, to be thought of as double, although of two and they diverse, yet he has joined them in an indivisible union, just as everyone knows a man is not double although made up of soul and body, but is one of both. Wherefore when thinking rightly, we transfer the human and the divine to the same person.”

It’s the real presence that refutes Nestorius, because the Eucharist gives life, and only if it were deified flesh could it give life, since the flesh of ‘some dude’ certainly cannot. That’s St. Cyril’s argument, and there is no denying it. Rushdoony, in dishonesty, spins all this to mean the very opposite of what it says. Christ is fully human, but His humanity was raised-deified. And at the end, I’m going to quote another reformed “giant” who will tell you just that. That’s how the real presence feeds us. That’s St. Cyril’s point.

Rushdoony commented on this Eleventh Anathema: “The reference here is to the sacrament of communion. St. Cyril made it clear, in his teachings, [no citation from Rushdoony!] that his position was not consubstantiation and transubstantiation, as they came to be called later. In the elements it is not the substance of the deity of Christ which is received, nor is it the eating and drinking of Christ’s real blood and flesh” (Foundations, 49). No, it is precisely what you deny, and you deny it because you are an iconoclast and hate the Incarnation.

We affirm with the councils that Christ is worshipped with one adoration as Incarnate in both natures and that His humanity was deified, as the Fifth & Sixth Councils state.

The Fifth Council States in its Ninth Anathema:

If anyone shall take the expression, Christ ought to be worshipped in his two natures, in the sense that he wishes to introduce thus two adorations, the one in special relation to God the Word and the other as pertaining to the man; or if anyone to get rid of the flesh, [that is of the humanity of Christ,] or to mix together the divinity and the humanity, shall speak monstrously of one only nature or essence (–?–?? ?–??? ??–?–?) of the united (natures), and so worship Christ, and does not venerate, by one adoration, God the Word made man, together with his flesh, as the Holy Church has taught from the beginning: let him be anathema.

The Sixth Council states in the Definition of Faith:

“And these two natural wills [in Christ] are not contrary the one to the other (God forbid!) as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will but the will of the Father which sent me!” where he calls his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh was also his own. For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature, so also his human will, although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory Theologus: “His will [i.e., the Saviour’s] is not contrary to God but altogether deified.”

Even their own masters point out that this is heretical. Reformed “giant” Louis Berkhof, in his well known “Systematic Theology,” writes on this point:

“c. Communicatio charismatum or gratiarum. This means that the human nature of Christ, from the very first moment of its existence, was adorned with all kinds of rich gifts, as for instance…the grace and glory of being united to the dinive nature of the Logos, also called the gratia emenentiae, by which the human nature is elevated high above all creatures, and even becomes an object of adoration…[that’s deification, as we say]

3. The God-man is the object of prayer. Another effect of the union is that the Mediator, just as He now exists, that is, in both natures, is the object of our prayer. It should be bourne in mind that the honor adorationis does not belong to the human nature as such, but belongs to it only in virtue of its union with the divine Logos, who in his very nature is adorabilis” (Systematic Theology, 324).

Thus, Rushdoony was Nestorian. His statements are undeniably docetic and Nestorian. And just watch, if reformed guys write back, they’ll attack me personally and call me everything in the book, and will totally neglect Rushdoony’s blasphemous statements.

Pope St. Leo himself, so “revered” (though only by pretense) by Rushdoony and his “Chalcedon Foundation,” teaches this same adoratrion of the one Person Incarnate and His deification in his 30th Sermon:

“The man, therefore, assumed into the Son of God, was in such wise received into the unity of Christ’s Person from His very commencement in the body, that without the Godhead He was not conceived, without the Godhead He was not brought forth, without the Godhead He was not nursed. It was the same Person in the wondrous acts, and in the endurance of insults; through His human weakness crucified, dead and buried: through His Divine power, being raised the third day, He ascended to the heavens, sat down at the right hand of the Father, and in His nature as man received from the Father that which in His nature as God He Himself also gave.

VII. The fulness of the Godhead is imparted to the Body (the Church) through the Head, (Christ).

Meditate, dearly beloved on these things with devout hearts, and be always mindful of the apostle’s injunction, who admonishes all men, saying, “See lest anyone deceive you through philosophy and vain deceit according to the tradition of men, and not according to Christ; for in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and ye have been filled in Him (Col. ii. 8–10).” He said not “spiritually” but “bodily,” that we may understand the substance of flesh to be real, where there is the dwelling in the body of the fullness of the Godhead: wherewith, of course, the whole Church is also filled, which, clinging to the Head, is the body of Christ; who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, God forever and ever. Amen.”