An Informed Faith: The Position Papers of R.J. Rushdoony

The Great Fear marks the collapse of societies when faith dies. As seen in the French Revolution and repeated throughout history, fear begins in the human conscience before it erupts socially. When people abandon God, meaning dissolves, reason falters, and irrational terror takes hold. Men believe anything because they believe nothing, and chaos follows.

The only true antidote is the Great Faith—not passive belief or escapism, but living, obedient faith grounded in God’s Word. Biblical faith overcomes fear by affirming God’s sovereign rule over all of life. It applies God’s law, exercises godly dominion, and acts with confidence that Christ reigns now. Where fear paralyzes, faith conquers.

Quietism turned Christianity into passive inward spirituality, separating heart from mind and prayer from action. It treated engagement with doctrine, law, and society as unspiritual, redefining holiness as withdrawal from the world. By minimizing moral struggle, Biblical law, and Christ’s lordship over history, Quietism replaced obedience with spiritual quietude. The result was an irrelevant faith that surrendered culture and responsibility, contrary to Biblical Christianity’s call to active, faithful service under Christ the King.

Cartesianism makes the human mind the source of truth and reality (“I think, therefore I am”), replacing God’s revealed world with subjective ideas and symbols. In theology, this turns Biblical history into “myth” or “meaning” while denying real events like the incarnation or resurrection.

At root, it repeats Genesis 3:5—man deciding reality for himself. Scripture teaches that man’s problem is sin, not ignorance, and that truth comes from the triune God, not autonomous human thought.

Pietism rejected doctrine as “dead” and reduced Christianity to emotion and private experience. Being “born again” was emphasized without Biblical definition, while theology, catechism, and the full counsel of God were sidelined. Faith became feeling rather than truth grounded in God’s Word.

The result was a weakened church and a strengthened state. As Christianity turned inward and man-centered, enthusiasm shifted from Christ’s Kingdom to nationalism and statism. Emotionalism replaced obedience, and personal experience displaced God’s authority.

Biblical Christianity is not anti-feeling, but it is God-centered, doctrinal, and comprehensive—calling believers to think rightly, live faithfully, and bring all of life under Christ’s lordship.

Pietism began as a reaction against cold formalism, but it quickly became a distortion of the Christian faith. By dismissing doctrine, theology, and systematic teaching as “dead knowledge,” Pietism reduced Christianity to emotional experience and private devotion. Being “born again” was emphasized, yet stripped of clear Biblical meaning, while catechism, preaching the whole counsel of God, and intellectual engagement with Scripture were sidelined. Faith became intuition and feeling rather than truth grounded in God’s revealed Word.

The long-term consequences were severe. Pietism weakened the church and strengthened the state, turning Christianity into a private, inward religion while nationalism and statism filled the vacuum. As doctrine faded, enthusiasm was easily redirected from Christ’s Kingdom to earthly powers. Churches became people-centered rather than God-centered, focused on pleasing congregations instead of proclaiming God’s law-word and lordship over all of life. Emotionalism replaced obedience, and “heart religion” was set against “head religion,” as if loving God with the mind were a sin.

Ultimately, Pietism proved implicitly antinomian and man-centered. It shifted authority from the triune God to personal experience, fostered censoriousness, and encouraged retreat from culture, law, and responsibility. Biblical Christianity, by contrast, is God-centered, doctrinal, and comprehensive—calling believers not merely to feel deeply, but to think rightly, live faithfully, and bring every area of life into obedience to Christ the King.

Catharism was a medieval revival of Manichaean dualism that masqueraded as true Christianity while denying its foundations. By asserting two ultimate powers—a good spiritual god and an evil material god—the Cathars rejected creation, the incarnation, the resurrection of the body, and the Trinity. Christ, for them, was only an appearance, not God made flesh. Salvation was escape from matter, not redemption of the world. This led inevitably to hostility toward Biblical law, marriage, property, and history itself. The Old Testament was treated as the work of an evil creator, and God’s law as an obstacle to salvation.

The social consequences were destructive. Cathar spirituality bred antinomianism, sexual perversity, contempt for family and property, pacifism mixed with violence, and a retreat from responsibility. Their “holiness” rested on human renunciation rather than God’s grace, producing elitism, despair, and even suicide. Because they denied law, they could not build a godly order; because they despised creation, they abandoned dominion. Their legacy—false spirituality, hostility to law, retreat from history, and contempt for the material world—has repeatedly resurfaced in the church.

Biblical Christianity affirms the goodness of creation, the reality of the incarnation, the authority of God’s law, and Christ’s kingship over history. Salvation is not flight from the world but its restoration under Christ. The Cathars represent the perennial temptation to exchange faith and joy for dualism and despair—and to call that exchange “spirituality.”

Pelagianism places man at the center of salvation, treating God’s grace as an aid rather than the decisive cause. By denying original sin and affirming human ability, it recasts conversion as a human choice God merely approves. In doing so, it rejects eternal security, minimizes Christ’s atoning work, and turns salvation into self-improvement rather than resurrection from spiritual death.

The consequences are far-reaching. Pelagianism fuels humanism in both church and state, transferring trust from God to man, education, science, and government. It produces a culture that excuses sin, idolizes victimhood, and expands state power while denying divine authority. Scripture, history, and modern collapse all testify to the same truth: man cannot save himself. Only God’s sovereign grace in Christ redeems, restores, and gives lasting hope.

Pelagianism teaches that man is not fallen in his whole being and can choose God by the power of his own will. Sin is minimized, original guilt denied, and salvation becomes a cooperative project between human decision and divine help. Grace, rather than being sovereign and necessary, is treated as optional or proportionate to human effort.

The result is a Christianity centered on enthusiasm, decisionism, and revival emotion rather than the regenerating power of God. By shifting salvation from God’s action to man’s choice, Pelagianism drains the church of assurance, humility, and true power. Where grace is no longer sovereign, faith becomes shallow, the gospel becomes moralism, and the church becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Arianism denied that Jesus Christ is very God of very God, reducing Him to a created being and turning God into an unknowable force. What looked “reasonable” and culturally acceptable in its day had devastating long-term effects: it destroyed certainty in God’s Word, emptied revelation of final authority, and replaced divine truth with human power. When Christ is no longer the full and final revelation of God, men inevitably look elsewhere for certainty—most often to the state.

History shows the fruit. Where Arian thinking spread, rulers flourished and tyranny followed. Without an incarnate Lord and an infallible Word to judge kings and nations, the state becomes god walking on earth. Modern parallels abound: relativism, Darwinism, statism, and even occultism all grow where Christ’s deity and authority are denied. The lesson is stark and enduring—diminish Christ, and darker powers rush in to fill the vacuum.

Donatism arose from a sincere desire for a pure church, but it turned holiness into a test of legitimacy rather than a fruit of grace. By insisting that the validity of sacraments and the church itself depended on the personal purity of ministers, Donatism shifted confidence from Christ to men and institutions. This destroyed assurance, fostered separatism, and replaced faith in God’s sovereign grace with trust in human righteousness.

Against this, Augustine rightly insisted that salvation and the efficacy of Word and sacrament rest in Christ alone, not in the moral state of the minister. The church is not a museum of the already holy but a school of grace for sinners being sanctified. Whenever zeal for purity eclipses charity, forgiveness, and patience, Donatism reappears—whether in churches or in politics—producing condemnation instead of renewal. The Kingdom of God advances, not by censorious separation, but by sovereign grace working through God’s Word.