February 17th, 2011
Author: Ian Hodge, Ph.D.
Part 1 - Fond Personal Memories
R.J. Rushdoony left this life in March 2001, just 10 years ago. At that time I wrote a tribute to a remarkable man, a friend, and a mentor. Here’s my updated version of that tribute.
It is with sadness, yet a spirit of hope, that the tribute was written to acknowledge a great man, Rousas John Rushdoony. His greatness, however, remains one of the best kept secrets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, except for a relatively small devoted and loyal following that Dr. Rushdoony accumulated in his lifetime.
“Rush”, as he was fondly called by his friends, was a unique man. I did not have the opportunity to meet him more than a dozen times during the 21 years of our association. But I thoroughly enjoyed every moment with him.
We corresponded intermittently over a period of 20 years and eventually meeting him and knowing him more intimately, was a privilege, a very great honor, and a thoroughly pleasurable experience. To be in Rush’s company was one of the most enjoyable experiences you could have.
Rush’s books tell the story of a man who was determined to provide an understanding of Christianity in a unique but important manner. He was not the usual abstract theologian. Most seminary graduates will study the creeds and councils of the early church, yet Rush provided in one small book, The Foundations of Social Order, more understanding on these events than they would ever hear in all their years in seminary. Pick up his 2-volume Systematic Theology and it is not like the regular volumes of Systematics you can buy.
In making the faith practical, Rush also made it exciting. By showing what an idea meant in practice in the past, he showed how we might work out our faith in the present and prepare for the future.
A man who believed in his work, that his calling was to redirect the Christian to the whole counsel of God in the Old and New Testaments, it was a surprise to me when, in 1979, he scribbled a short note, as was his practice, on the back of one of the acknowledgment letters he sent to everyone that ordered books or supported his work. “Why don’t you carry our books?” the hand-written note inquired.
For the next seventeen years it was a privilege and a blessing to promote Rush’s books and other Chalcedon publications in Australia and maintain a constant supply of those to readers in that part of the world. In the mid 1980’s, Rush granted me permission to supply his tapes, thus making his work available more readily and a little more cheaply (thanks to declining exchange rates in the Australian dollar at the time).
In 1991 I made the first of several visits to Chalcedon and the home of Dr. and Mrs. Rushdoony. What was significant was that in all his work he always had time for guests. He and his wife enjoyed company. And the many visitors that passed by were always made welcome. For those not brave enough to drive the Californian freeways, Rush’s hospitality always extended to driving to the airport to pick up his guests. And he was a couple of hours from the nearest airport.
In his home, the hospitality was always friendly, warm, and intensely theological. Rush liked nothing better than to discuss life from a theological perspective. He was interested in the Australian economy and how it matched (or didn’t match, as the case was more often) biblical ideals.
When the opportunity came for me to bring Rush and his colleague at that time, Otto Scott, to Australia for a conference in 1992, it was with humor that I would welcome them to the land where “socialism worked” (or so most Australians falsely believe). For ten days I was fortunate to breakfast with Rush and Otto in my own kitchen, and the discussion was always lively, humorous, but serious.
It was on that visit I learned a very practical lesson about book reading. The flight from San Francisco to Australia takes about 14 hours. The plane leaves in the evening, misses a day due to the International dateline, and arrives in Australia in the early hours of the morning after, thus leaving the wearied traveler with a dilemma: sleep during the day and be awake at night, or find something to do to stay awake for another 12 hours or so. That way you can fall into the local sleep patterns more readily.
Rush had a solution for this. “Take me to the second-hand book stores,” he said on arrival. So, on his first day in Australia on that occasion we managed to take in five bookstores. (Rush first visited Australia in the 1980s as part of a defense team for a Christian school under legal proceedings for maintaining its church status against teacher union demands to intrude on its dealings with staff.)
It was also on that occasion that I learned something else about Rush and his commitment to scholarship. As he was accumulating books to be shipped back to America, I tried a little humor on him. “Rush,” I said, “my wife says a man shouldn’t buy more books until he’s read all the ones he has already.” I had been in his home and seen the estimated 30,000+ books in his library. Reading them would have been a monumental task.
In reply, Rush responded without a smile and in that slow Californian accent that Australians find so fascinating, “I may not have read all my books from cover to cover,” he said, “but I know what is in every one them.” To view his library and see his notes in the books was evidence that this was no idle boast. But the point had been made, and my attempt at humor on this occasion backfired.
But Rush had a great sense of humor. He enjoyed a good story, and could tell a joke as well as listen to them. He read to his wife Dorothy (she was almost blind), both with tears in their eyes from laughter, a story by an Australian writer that I had sent him as a way of saying “thank you” for his visit. The Loaded Dog, by Henry Lawson, is the delightful story of a mongrel dog that liked to retrieve whatever was thrown. And when some miners threw dynamite sticks into a lake to “catch” fish, the dog could not help himself but retrieve the sticks, with burning fuses attached. Mayhem resulted, and Lawson’s storytelling vigorously captured the events that led to the blowing-up of the local hotel by the “loaded dog.” Rush delighted in funny stories.
He was, after all, a very down-to-earth person. Despite his great learning, his ability to think in a structured and logical way, he always had time for ordinary people. He had, moreover, the ability to communicate with them in simple language. I think this is one reason so many so-called academics rejected his work. He wrote with clarity. It was not possible to misunderstand the point he was making. His style of communication is indicated by his followers. The academics of this world, with few exceptions, were not his readership. Ordinary men and women, those seeking real answers that made sense, were the people who bought and read his books. These are the people who were the backbone of support for Rush over the years and continue to support the Chalcedon Foundation.
Rush was a man who knew the sadness of being maligned by his enemies and misunderstood by those he sought to win to a better understanding of the Scriptures. Yet in this he never sought vindication for himself, for he knew that he was no more than the messenger of the great King. To a friend who once inquired if he expected God to vindicate him, Rush replied: “God does not need to vindicate R.J. Rushdoony. He will, however, vindicate Himself.”
Rush is missed by all those who had the privilege of knowing him. He was like a father to many of us, offering words of wisdom and counsel, always encouraging. We loved him, and continue to miss him, as one of our own. And we look forward eagerly to that day in the future when we will all be united under King Jesus and pain and death and suffering are no more.
Of all the things I learned from Rush that stands out most, you cannot find in his books. His advice on one occasion is that “we are not every man’s censor.” This is a lesson I should have learned much earlier, and it’s still a reminder that a most ardent defender of the faith could allow people to make wrong statements, yet he did not feel the need to correct their foolishness. This is a lesson in graciousness that many of his followers, including this writer, could do well to remember.
Rush knew his share of difficulties in this life but they did not stop him from exercising his calling. He had a sense of destiny that is rare, and his family’s historical contribution to the faith played an important part in developing his own contribution to the ongoing reform of the world.
Rush’s contribution to a new Reformation, one that has turned us back to the whole Scripture so that we no longer neglect the Torah – the law of YHWH – will remain indelibly imprinted in the history of Christianity.
And I know that Rush’s desire for each one of us was this: “be faithful to the end in all things.”