Moreover, pietism, because it makes man primary in salvation (by denying God's sovereignty and predestination), sees all things in terms of man rather than in terms of God. Thus, to cite a specific example, a minister, totally pietistic, saw the meaning of all events in relationship to himself. If a storm upsets his plans, it meant that Satan was trying to hinder him. If he foolishly made a costly blunder, it meant the Lord had brought it to pass to teach him something. The meaning of all events was no larger than himself; the whole universe revolved around frustrating or abetting him. Trains were late, or on time, because the Lord (or Satan in some cases) had a special purpose in it for him.
Such an attitude is not unusual. It has been fostered by generations of preaching. It reduces the sovereign and totally personal God to the level of a witch or warlock playing esoteric games with people. It does not make God personal; it makes God capricious, and a capricious God is ultimately impersonal, because He has no inner consistency or nature but merely unconscious drives and impulses.
Moreover, this minister's attitude was really a form of devout humanism, not Christianity. In a biblical theology, all things have reference to God, and God is totally in control of all things, so that nothing can be understood without reference to Him. In a consistent humanism, all things have reference to man, and nothing has any meaning apart from man. To understand the meaning of anything means to understand it as it relates to man. Moreover, in a theocentric universe, there is between man and God a whole multiplicity of secondary causes and consequences, so that, although God can act directly, He normally acts through His total work of history, which is totally ordained by Him; even God's miraculous acts within history are a part of that total context, the primary meaning of which is primarily determined by Him....
Thus, Charles Wesley rejoiced when his wife and daughter were hideously pockmarked following smallpox, because, therefore, "they cannot fall heir to sin of vanity." Such a view means that a man's essential attitude towards the world is that it is something to be rescued from rather than something to conquer as God's vicegerent.
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Rushdoony, from Institutes, Vol. 2
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