A historiography of victory : R.J. Rushdoony’s Christian philosophy of history as constitutive of his postmillennial theopolitics

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.