R.J. Rushdoony: Justification is an inescapable category of thought

R.J. Rushdoony asserts that justification is an inescapable necessity and category of thought for all men, whether believer or unbeliever:

It cannot be said too often that all men need justification. The doctrines of Scripture do not represent a narrow corner of the universe: they are the key to the whole of it. Men can only live as creatures made by God in His image. His word sets forth the inescapable necessities of life and thought. Just as Satan is the ape of God, all of whose kingdom and plans are a sickly imitation of the Kingdom of God, so all of man’s life and thought moves as a parody of God’s Kingdom, of salvation, justification, atonement, heaven and hell, and all things else in God’s order. Men do not abandon the doctrines of Biblical faith, wherever they are: they merely invert, pervert, and parody them. And, whatever they do, knowing that they sin, they indict God and His Kingdom in their own waywardness. (R.J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 646)