R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism and a champion of theonomic Calvinism, would likely have approached Charles Williams’s theology with a mixture of suspicion and critique, despite acknowledging certain shared moral concerns. Here’s a synthesized projection of how Rushdoony might have evaluated Williams, based on Rushdoony’s worldview, theological method, and recurring themes in his work:
1. Epistemological Concerns: Mysticism vs. Biblical Revelation
Rushdoony’s Viewpoint:
Rushdoony was firmly committed to epistemological self-consciousness: the belief that God’s Word alone (Scripture) is the source and standard of all knowledge, ethics, and theology. Any appeal to mystery, intuition, or mystical experience apart from God’s law-word was, in his eyes, a step toward autonomy and humanism.
Williams’s Romantic Theology:
Williams often embraced mystical categories like co-inherence, substitution, and sacramental romantic love. These were not derived directly from Scripture but from theological speculation, liturgical tradition, and poetic intuition. Williams wrote of lovers as “rungs on a ladder to God,” and saw beauty and eros as indirect revelations of divine love.
Rushdoony’s Likely Response:
Rushdoony would likely reject Williams’s romantic theology as mysticism untethered from God’s law. He would warn that Williams’s approach placed too much weight on human emotion and experience, making eros a potential idol. In The Foundations of Social Order, Rushdoony criticizes mysticism for creating a realm of truth divorced from the covenantal structure of biblical law.
“Mysticism is always the antinomian route to salvation: it seeks communion with God without the mediation of God’s law or Christ’s atonement.” – Foundations of Social Order
2. Sacramentalism and Anglican Theology
Williams’s Anglo-Catholicism:
Williams, as a member of the Anglican Church and a close associate of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, leaned toward Anglo-Catholic sacramentalism. He had a high view of marriage, communion, and the Church, often emphasizing sacramental presence in daily life and relationships.
Rushdoony’s Calvinistic Theonomy:
Rushdoony’s Reformed theology rejected sacramentalism as a residue of Romanism. He held to a covenantal and judicial understanding of the sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper were signs of God’s covenant, not mystical channels of grace.
Rushdoony’s Likely Response:
Rushdoony would have seen Williams’s view of marriage and romantic love as a theological error, conflating creation with redemption, and confusing the common grace of creation (marriage) with the special grace of redemption (Christ’s atonement). He would object to the sacramental elevation of eros as bordering on idolatry.
3. View of Human Nature and the Role of Law
Williams’s Emphasis on Co-inherence and Exchange:
Williams taught that individuals can bear one another’s burdens spiritually—even, mystically, take on another’s fear or sin in love. His idea of exchange was rooted in poetic and mystical analogy with Christ’s atonement.
Rushdoony’s View of Substitution and Law:
Rushdoony would insist that only Christ can substitute for another in matters of guilt. He would strongly reject the idea of human beings participating in each other’s atonement or guilt-bearing, seeing this as a denial of penal substitutionary atonement and a confusion of categories.
“The law of God never grants man the prerogative of salvation or healing through mystical participation. Salvation is judicial.” – paraphrase of Rushdoonyan logic
He might concede that Christians should bear one another’s burdens ethically and communally (Galatians 6:2), but he would not allow for the mystical transfer of fear or sin, which he’d likely call gnostic or occult in flavor.
4. The Cultural Mandate and Dominion
Rushdoony’s Vision:
Rushdoony saw man’s purpose in terms of dominion under God’s law—taking every thought, institution, and culture captive to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). His theology was constructive, judicial, and covenantal.
Williams’s Vision:
Williams, while deeply moral, focused more on individual sanctification, mystical union, and poetic vocation than on reforming social structures or applying biblical law.
Rushdoony’s Likely Response:
He would likely judge Williams’s theology to be inward, aesthetic, and passive—a retreat from the cultural mandate. He might respect Williams’s literary talent and moral seriousness, but still find his theology impractical and pietistic, disconnected from the social and legal structures of biblical civilization.
5. Esoteric Tendencies
Williams’s Use of Occult and Poetic Language:
Williams was deeply influenced by Dante, the Arthurian myths, and even early Rosicrucian and Platonic traditions. His use of arcane symbols, poetic theology, and references to mystical disciplines (including his interest in the supernatural) would have raised red flags for Rushdoony.
Rushdoony’s View:
He strongly opposed esotericism and syncretism, warning that such influences were gnostic threats to biblical faith.
Conclusion:
Rushdoony likely would have seen Charles Williams as a sincere Christian with grave theological errors, particularly:
- Too much reliance on mystical experience
- Confusion of law and love, creation and redemption
- A weak doctrine of substitutionary atonement
- An overly aesthetic and private theology, detached from biblical law
Yet he might have found some shared values: reverence for marriage, opposition to moral relativism, and the seriousness of spiritual life.
Summary Table: Rushdoony vs. Williams
| Topic | Rushdoony | Charles Williams |
|---|---|---|
| Source of Truth | Scripture alone | Scripture + poetic/mystical insight |
| Sexual/Romantic Love | Creational, covenantal, not mystical | Sacramental, revelatory, mystical |
| Substitution/Exchange | Penal, Christ alone | Shared, mystical bearing of burdens |
| Sacraments | Signs/seals of covenant | Mystical channels of grace |
| Cultural Theology | Dominion under God’s law | Personal sanctification through poetic experience |
| Mysticism/Esotericism | Rejected as Gnostic | Embraced as meaningful poetic theology |
If Rushdoony had written a formal critique, it might have resembled his style in The Foundations of Social Order or By What Standard?—a sober rebuke grounded in biblical law and epistemological critique, yet not without recognition of Williams’s moral earnestness.
Comparing R.J. Rushdoony and Charles Williams on “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2)
This single verse expresses a profound New Testament ethic—but R.J. Rushdoony and Charles Williams interpret and apply it in starkly different ways, reflecting their divergent theological systems.
Below is a structured comparison of how each thinker would understand the meaning, mechanism, and limits of “bearing one another’s burdens” and its connection to the “law of Christ.”
1. Source and Nature of the Command
Rushdoony: Judicial and Covenantal
- For Rushdoony, this verse expresses a covenantal, ethical responsibility grounded in God’s law.
- “Burdens” refer primarily to moral struggles, sins, or hardships within a Christian community that require pastoral or judicial response.
- The “law of Christ” is not a vague ethic of love—it is the comprehensive biblical law, now fulfilled and applied in Christ.
- Therefore, bearing burdens = upholding God’s law by serving others lawfully—correcting, comforting, and aiding fellow believers in covenantal terms.
“The law of Christ is the law-word of God as applied and incarnated in Christ… not a departure from law, but its true fulfillment.”
(Institutes of Biblical Law, paraphrased)
Williams: Mystical and Sacrificial
- For Williams, this verse is a window into the mystical economy of love that governs redeemed relationships.
- “Burdens” may be fear, guilt, pain, or suffering, even spiritual weight, which can be mystically transferred or shared between persons through love.
- The “law of Christ” is self-sacrificial love, expressed through what he called substituted love—taking another’s burden into your own soul as an act of redemptive compassion.
- Williams sees this as an extension of the Cross: what Christ does ultimately, believers may do in miniature—carrying one another’s fear, trauma, or sin in a deeply interior, mystical sense.
“The doctrine of substituted love declares that one man may bear another’s burden… as the substitution of the Cross is the center of history, so it may be repeated in the history of the soul.”
(He Came Down from Heaven)
2. Mechanism of Burden-Bearing
Rushdoony: Ethical Action within Boundaries
- Bearing a burden means helping someone without taking over their moral agency.
- It’s framed in legal-personal terms: instructing the wayward, assisting the weak, lending materially or judicially aiding justice.
- Rushdoony rejects any mystical transfer of guilt or emotion, which he sees as gnostic or occultic.
“Man cannot transfer sin or fear to another man… except judicially, through Christ. The rest is spiritual illusion.”
(paraphrased from Foundations of Social Order)
Williams: Mystical Substitution and Co-Inherence
- Williams believed in a real, though mysterious, interior transfer: that one could voluntarily carry another’s fear, anxiety, or sin.
- In Descent into Hell, a character willingly bears a young woman’s fear of encountering a ghostly doppelgänger—he takes the burden into himself, and she is freed.
- He described this as “co-inherence”: the mutual indwelling of persons, after the model of the Trinity and the Body of Christ.
“The substitution may be accepted, and the burden passes; the burden is not destroyed but borne.”
(Descent into Hell)
3. Christological Grounding
Rushdoony: Penal Substitution Alone
- Only Christ, as the sinless Lamb of God, can bear another’s guilt judicially.
- Christians may bear with the sins of others, but never bear them in the sense of actual substitution.
- Any claim of mystical burden-bearing by humans would obscure the uniqueness of the Cross and violate biblical law.
Williams: Christ as Archetype of Human Love
- Christ’s atonement is the model for all true love.
- He believed humans, in union with Christ, could imitate the Cross in daily acts of substitutionary love—not for atonement, but for spiritual solidarity and healing.
- For Williams, this didn’t compete with Christ’s work; it was a participation in it through love.
4. Communal Vision and Practical Implications
Rushdoony: Kingdom-Oriented Covenant Society
- Bearing burdens builds a covenant community where biblical law is applied with mercy.
- The goal is social restoration through justice, not mystical union.
- Practical implications include mutual accountability, charity, discipline, and applying God’s law to every area of life.
Williams: Redemptive Personalism
- Co-inherence creates a spiritual community of mutual indwelling—where each person lives in the lives of others.
- The goal is redemptive healing, emotional transformation, and union in love through spiritual acts of generosity.
- His model would inspire pastoral empathy, intercessory prayer, and even poetic or liturgical expressions of mutual suffering.
Summary Table
| Category | R.J. Rushdoony | Charles Williams |
|---|---|---|
| Nature of “Burden” | Moral, ethical, judicial (sin, hardship) | Emotional, spiritual, mystical (fear, guilt, pain) |
| Meaning of “Law of Christ” | God’s revealed law, fulfilled in Christ | Law of sacrificial love; co-inherence |
| Mechanism | Ethical action, not substitution | Mystical substitution and interior bearing |
| Christ’s Role | Sole bearer of sin; model of judicial atonement | Model for spiritual imitation in love |
| Practical Expression | Covenant community, justice, charity | Spiritual solidarity, healing, imaginative empathy |
Final Reflection
Rushdoony and Williams both take Galatians 6:2 very seriously, but they apply it to two different universes:
- Rushdoony’s world is covenantal, judicial, and structured by law. Bearing burdens is about restoring one another through biblical order.
- Williams’s world is poetic, mystical, and Trinitarian. Bearing burdens is about sharing inner life through sacrificial love.
Both uphold the seriousness of Christian responsibility to others. But where Rushdoony builds the city of God with law and duty, Williams sings of a kingdom where love invisibly binds soul to soul.
Each reveals a facet of the truth. One guards orthodoxy and justice; the other opens up mystery and mercy.
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