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

In this episode, R.J. Rushdoony and Otto Scott interview Joseph McAuliffe about his Christian faith and business ministry. McAuliffe recounts his conversion in 1971 at Bowling Green State University, his early dispensational training, and eventual realization—through Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law—that God’s kingdom is relevant to all areas of life, including business. He emphasizes that business is a divine calling, a ministry under God, and should be treated as holy work.

McAuliffe explains the founding of Businessgram, a publication addressing finance, economics, and business from a biblical perspective. He highlights the lack of ethical and entrepreneurial training in traditional business schools, and the need for Christian businessmen to recognize their sphere as a legitimate ministry, separate from the church but equally under God’s authority. He notes that many Christians mistakenly undervalue business, treating it as inferior or merely a platform for evangelism, instead of embracing its unique calling.

He shares practical outcomes of this approach, citing 28 entrepreneurial businesses started by church members in Bowling Green, Ohio, which eliminated local unemployment and demonstrated that Christians can integrate biblical principles into successful enterprises. McAuliffe warns against presumptuousness and stresses careful planning, proper capitalization, and wise counsel. Overall, he sees Christian business as part of a broader cultural and eschatological restoration, fulfilling God’s command to steward and disciple nations through practical engagement in the marketplace.

Docetism: The Crippling Heresy

Docetism denies the full humanity of Christ, treating His incarnation as a mere appearance rather than real flesh and blood. Scripture condemns this error plainly: “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (2 John 7). By spiritualizing Christ, Docetism also devalues God’s law, history, and the physical world, leading to retreatism and powerlessness in the church.

A Christ who is not truly incarnate cannot truly redeem. The gospel is not escape from the world, but Christ’s victory in the world—body and soul—calling His church to faithful obedience and dominion under Him.

Modern Gnosticism

Modern Gnosticism repeats an ancient error: it elevates elite “knowledge,” symbolism, and changing ideas above the plain Word of God. It rejects the literal meaning of Scripture, especially Genesis, downplays God’s law, and scorns ordinary believers as naïve, while adapting Christianity to current philosophy, science, and cultural fashion.

Whether in theology, art, politics, or even conservatism, modern Gnosticism replaces God’s unchanging truth with evolving meanings set by the spirit of the age. Yet Scripture remains clear: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot extinguish it” (John 1:5).

In this wide-ranging episode (Sept. 16, 1986), R.J. Rushdoony opens with Tertullian’s striking line—“Your Emperor is more our Emperor than he is yours”—to argue that Christians alone can truly interpret civil power because they know rulers come by God’s providence, whether as judgment or blessing, and this certainty is part of why the early Church outlasted Rome. From there he surveys the spiritual emptiness that made paganism hopeless (“grant me what I deserve”) and critiques how first-century Judaism could be reduced to external markers (“perhaps you will find mercy”), contrasting both with Christianity’s vitality in reaching “the man in the Roman street.” He then pivots through a series of modern parallels and warnings: stories from early American life on duty, marriage, and work ethic; a note on how unbelief can be treated as the great sin while immorality is minimized; a biting example of educational decline producing arrogant illiteracy; and economic reflections on regulatory “welfare for the well-to-do” that strangles nations over time. He closes by exposing the modern idolatries of **peace-at-any-price** and **need-as-morality** (“I need, therefore I am”), spotlighting Sweden as a cautionary model of state intrusion, and ending with a sobering picture of public-school historical ignorance—calling listeners to recover faith, virtue, and real dominion before cultural decay becomes irreversible.

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Gnosticism

Gnosticism teaches that evil lies in the material world and that salvation comes through secret knowledge, not through Christ’s finished work. It rejects the Old Testament, God’s law, and moral responsibility, replacing grace with human insight and autonomy.

Though ancient, Gnosticism lives on today—in modern art, philosophy, theology, and ethics—where immediacy replaces mediation, feelings replace truth, and man replaces God. Against this, Scripture declares a God who speaks, commands, judges, and saves—and who is nearer to us than we are to ourselves.

Rushdoony highlights books connecting history, faith, and society. Ussher’s Annals of the World ties God’s blessings and judgments to Israel’s obedience. Early Christians, per Davies, practiced charity seriously, contrasting Pharisaic legalism. Verzone and Ferrar show the church’s spiritual and cultural significance. Modern works reveal God’s design in the immune system (In Self-Defence), social impacts on disease (The Disease Detectives), and moral challenges in law and society (Garris, Phillips, Russell, Mills, Krasnov). Arnold’s biography illustrates American perseverance and moral education. The session closes with a humorous note on a “Catholic computer.”

Heresy today thrives under the banner of “personal choice.” In the name of peace, churches often silence defenders of orthodoxy while tolerating false teaching. Truth is sacrificed to harmony, and those who insist on Scripture are labeled divisive.

Modern culture denies objective truth altogether, treating belief as personal preference rather than submission to God’s revealed Word. This spirit makes heresy normal and orthodoxy suspect. Yet the task remains: to contend for the faith once delivered, even when the age prefers choice over truth.

All true knowledge begins with God. When man makes himself the final judge of truth—treating nature, reason, or experience as ultimate—knowledge collapses into meaninglessness. Apart from God, facts become brute and irrational, and reason has no foundation.

Scripture is clear: man cannot escape dependence on his Creator. Though he rebels morally, he remains under God’s law and government. Without God there is no knowledge—only confusion; with God, meaning and truth are possible.

Modern man tries to redefine reality to escape God. By making reality equal to human reason, experience, or this physical world alone, God is pushed aside as unnecessary—or silenced altogether. This is autonomy at work: man making himself the measure of all things.

Scripture exposes the flaw. When reality begins with man, God is eventually eliminated. When reality begins with God, truth, meaning, and moral accountability remain intact. Denying God doesn’t change reality—it only distorts how we see it.

Autonomy is man’s ancient sin—the desire to be his own god, defining good and evil by personal standards. In modern life this shows up as art for art’s sake, science for science’s sake, and reason judging all things, all detached from God, law, and accountability.

Scripture exposes autonomy as rebellion. God’s law reveals man’s sin, not to destroy him, but to point him to grace. The real choice is clear: autonomy or theonomy—self-law or God’s law. Autonomy leads to anarchy; only submission to God’s authority leads to truth, order, and life.