Abstract:
The twentieth-century Calvinist philosopher-theologian, Rousas John Rushdoony is considered
to be the father of the 1950s Christian Reconstructionist movement in the United States—a
movement dedicated to advancing the idea that Biblical ethics should be perpetually normative
for all societies, including in the civil realm. In essence this was a social theory and Rushdoony
based his Christian Reconstructionism on his idea of theonomy, which he considered to be the
only alternative to the heresy of antinomianism, the rejection of Divine Law. His theonomic
principle, the basis of his Christian Reconstructionist political position and engagement, was
rhetorically sanctioned by a distinct eschatological optimism, which was in turn shaped by his
distinctly Christian historiography—a philosophy of history for which he was, via the Dutch-
American philosopher Cornelius van Til, largely indebted to the Christian-historicists of the
nineteenth-century, in particular the Swiss scholar Jean-Henri Merle d’Aubigne. By means of the
phenomenological-narrative approach of the contemporary philosopher of history, David Carr,
this article amplifies how Rushdoony's philosophy of history played an integral role in shaping
his eschatological optimism or postmillennialism in which the expectation that the preaching of
the gospel in the contemporary age will result in amazing revivals, and this will mean that before
Christ returns, the world’s inhabitants will for the most part, be considered to be Christian in
orientation. Rushdoony consciously employed this notion as a narrative framework that
sanctioned his distinct theopolitical position and engagement. The role of Rushdoony’s distinctly
Christian philosophy of history in terms of narratively sanctioning his postmillennial theopolitics,
is thereby amplified in a novel way.
