POWER FROM BELOW

ROUSAS JOHN RUSHDOONY

One of the basic lusts of fallen man is for power, but, more accurately, his desire is for autonomous power. Man was created by God to exercise dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:26-28) in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and basic to that task is the use of godly power. But the use of power in subordination to God and in submission to His word is alien to man in revolt. Man, seeking to be his own god, and to determine good and evil for himself (Gen. 3:5), wants power in independence from and in defiance of God.

Historically and religiously, men have looked to power from above, and, in a variety of religions, men have looked to the gods for power. Non-biblical religious worship, while no less an aspect of man’s revolt against God, was still marked by a belief in a higher realm of spirits and powers whose aid it was held to be wise to seek. These higher beings could be allies of men, if properly approached. Temples of pagan antiquity were not places of worship, corporate or private, but places for transactions with the gods. The favor and help of these higher powers were sought in a particular venture, activity, or area of personal concern. If the insurance, protection, or help of the particular god or temple proved unsatisfactory, the individual took his business elsewhere and bought security or insurance at another temple or shrine. In all these cults of antiquity, and of various cultures to the historical present, the reality of a higher world of beings was assumed. It was believed, of course, that these higher beings were only different in degree from men, and that a continuity existed between men and the gods. As against the biblical doctrine of the uncreated Being of God, and the created nature of man and the universe, pagan religions held to the great chain of being doctrine. All being is one being, the differences being one of degrees between the gods and men, and between men and all other creatures. The idea of continuity militated against worship in anything resembling the biblical sense. All the same, this higher world, however different in nature than the biblical view, was held to be real.

The culmination of modem philosophy, beginning in Descartes and coming to focus in Kant and Hegel, led to Darwin and the doctrine of evolution. This doctrine had deep roots in pagan antiquity and the belief in the great chain of being and was a logical development of it. It did, however, militate against any higher world. Both the old pagan doctrine and the biblical faith were ruled out. Man was held to be alone in a meaningless universe which was a product of blind chance. There was no sentient power, no mind or purpose beyond and above man, only blind and evolving energies and forces.

Power from above was thus eliminated from the universe, in both its Christian and its pagan versions. Moreover, in looking at the power in man, it became apparent that mind, in terms of evolution, had to be ruled as a shallow-rooted late comer. The older and more basic forces in man lay below the surface, and Freud located them, as did others, in the unconscious, in the subterranean within man. There followed what Dr. Cornelius Van Til has described as integration downward into the void: man was re-interpreted in terms of the child, the child in terms of primitive man, primitive man in terms of a mythological animal past, and so on. Culture began to seek vitality in the subterranean, in what lay below modem, civilized man. Primitivism in the arts became synonymous with vitality. A jungle beat in music with an abandonment of reason became a symbol of power, and, in every area, the downward quest for power was held to be the only means of escape from sterility and impotence. The perverted, lawless, primitive, and chaotic became equated with power.

All of this was a relentless development of the logic of the modem myth. Power from above having been denied as a myth, modem man became involved in a desperate search for power from below. The earlier means of this quest of power from below was psychoanalytic, psychiatric, and artistic. It also became political, and a new breed of leaders from below began to dominate the twentieth century—Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and their paler counterparts in the democracies. Democracy itself was an enthronement of power from below: vox populi, vox dei.

The quest, however, soon took occultist directions. The human scene failed to manifest sufficient power. The source of power being the subterranean, modem man, by definition concluding that God and “the above” are dead, felt that what lies below must indeed be very powerful. The result has been the rise of magic, witchcraft, Satanism, and related interests.

Satanism is not new, and its past history is an ugly one, but the new Satanism is the most vicious yet, and potentially the most dangerous. The biblical Satan is a creature who seeks to be god and is fully aware of the existence of God (James 2:19). His program is a reasoned one: First, man is to be his own god, determining good and evil for himself (Gen. 3:5). Second, man should be freed from all testing and judgments and given cradle to grave security. If man needs bread, the stones should be made bread (Matt. 4:3). Third, faith should be totally unnecessary; man should be able to walk by sight and God should prove all things for man’s benefit (Matt. 4:6). Fourth, rightness is an attribute of the creature, and the creature should be worshipped and served rather than God (Matt. 4:8-9).

The new image of Satan is a product of Darwin and Freud. First, he is not a creature made by God but a dark force evolved out of chaos and essentially is chaos. There was never thus any higher status for Satan, but a totally subterranean one, a creature of chaos, not of God. Second, the new image of Satan is of a totally mindless, irrational, perverse being whose existence is total terror to the rational in man. The new Satan is the utter contradiction of reason, whereas the biblical Satan is an example of fallen and totally depraved reason. It should not surprise us that some of the new Satanists lose their reason and become themselves mindless. Third, because no power exists above by definition, total power is held to exist below, and the result is a growing evidence that there is a strong tendency to believe in the omnipresence and even omnipotence of Satan. Satan is held to be everywhere, operative in all situations, and hence to be reckoned with at all times. It is surprising how far this idea has infiltrated the churches. Too few churchmen remember that Satan, like themselves, is a creature, capable only of a local appearance, i.e., able to be in only one place at a time. Only God is omnipresent and omnipotent. Power from below, whether feared or courted, is thus very much a part of modem man’s faith. That power can reside in inanimate nature, as in the stars, and hence the revival of interest in astrology. It can reside in magic and witchcraft, or in other related practices, but, in any case, it is power from below.

The result of such a faith can only lead, as it already has, to a greater faith in raw and primitive violence as against reason. We can only expect, until this faith is shattered, a steady intensification of violence, crime, and revolution. Power from below means that normal sexuality is regarded as sterile and inhibited, and violence, rape, and perversion are thus regarded as raw and true power in the sexual realm.

It also means a greater stress on mindless religion, as witness the so-called charismatic movement, an emphasis on mindless experience as power. The charismatic who learns to babble insanely in what is no tongue at all has no answer therein to moral and intellectual problems, but he “witnesses” eloquently to others of the feeling of “power in the Spirit,” power which is in essence a cultivation of what is mindless and subterranean.

In the world of films, television, novels, student riots, and political revolutions, power is held to come from below. The answer to all problems is? violence. Problems are all held to be solvable if only enough violence and mindless force is applied. In the world of television, killings and brutal beatings solve all problems, and, in the world of the revolutionist, the same great faith in the healing force of violence, power from below, is in evidence.

The world thus is in crisis. Power from below is a faith which insures the triumph of mindlessness and violence. No calls for law and order can stem this intense faith of the new pagans. The so-called religious revivals of recent years have only been a part of the same ugly faith. Instead of “turning on” with narcotics, the call is for “turning on” with Jesus. Instead of the narcotic “trip,” the “trip” with Jesus (and the “great Trip,” the Rapture) are offered, so that religion is made a part of the same tradition as the pagan creed, and mindlessness is not challenged.

Only a full-orbed and intelligent orthodoxy, stressing the sovereign and triune God, the doctrine of creation, and the sovereign grace of God in salvation, can do justice to the fact of power from above. Anything short of God’s total claims is a deception.

R. J. Rushdoony’s essay highlights the shift from what some have called the “upper story” of scientific and rational thought (the phenomenal realm of Kantian science) to the “lower story” of mysticism and emotion (Kant’s noumenal realm). Its thesis is the same one which Lewis offered in The Abolition of Man and in That Hideous Strength: the technological superstructure of modern secular life and thought requires an infusion of invigorating magic. Without this, secular man loses power. The ancient world recognized this fact, as Rushdoony has noted elsewhere,⁴ and provided periodic festivals of cultural regeneration through ritual chaos— the Saturnalia, the Chronos festivals, carnival, and so forth. But modem secular man has believed himself free of such supernatural crutches. Today, however, pagan man is returning, like a dog to its vomit, to demonic sources of power and regeneration.
______________________

4. R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1971), chs. 3,4.

Gary North, Editor's Introduction, Symposium on Satanism, THE JOURNAL OF CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION, Vol. I, No. 2, Winter 1974.