Miscellaneous

Christianity and Taxation

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Religious studies

Lesson: 3-18

Genre: Lecture

Track: 23

Dictation Name: RR107B3

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

The Function of the Elders

Ian Morris in his little book Ministers of God, calls attention to an interesting aspect of church office. He declares and I quote: “The eldership was not the creation of the Christian church. The Christians were all Jews, and they took over the office of elder from the Judaism with which they were familiar. It will repay us accordingly to give some attention to the Jewish elders. These men were officials responsible for the administration of Jewish communal life. They had responsibilities in both what we would call civil and ecclesiastical affairs. Their law was the law of Moses, which deals impartially with both. The function of the elders was apparently centered on the law. They were to study it, expound it, and deal with people who had offended against it. There are obvious similarities between this office and that of the first Christian elders.”

Indeed as we examine the literature of the early church, it does clearly appear that the office of the elder was closely related to the law. The law was the instrument, whereby the Christian man was to bring himself under the dominion of God and the world around him.

Our subject today is another aspect of the law as it relates to the postmillennial position. Our subject is taxation. The sad fact is that today commentaries and Bible dictionaries have nothing to say on the subject. This reflects their disinterest in the subject. The Bible has been unhappily, progressively, for many generations now, perverted into a church book. Whereas in reality it is a book for all of life and for every institution, for church, state school, home, science and all things. Moreover as we go to the Bible and we see its institution’s we see them with ecclesiastical eyes.

Thus the tabernacle is viewed as a kind of Old Testament church. This is to miss the meaning of the tabernacle and the holy of Holies. The holy of holies was the throne room of God the sovereign king of Israel, from whence he ruled His people. It was indeed the religious center, but it was also the civil center of the nation.

Atonement is not only ecclesiastical, but civil

Every aspect of life in terms of scripture is religious, and therefore God rules over every aspect of life. Our lord said: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God.” The purpose of our lives must then be the restoration of God’s reign and order. Central to that restoration is taxation. Now taxes in Scripture are of two kinds, required by God to the king. The first kind of tax is the poll or head tax. The poll tax is described for us in Exodus 30:11-16. At this point, many people are misled, because this tax which was later called the temple tax in New Testament times, even though it was paid to the Sanhedrin, the governing body of the nation, civil and ecclesiastical. Because the poll tax as it is given to us in Exodus declares that this money is atonement money of the children of Israel, to make atonement for your souls. And immediately everyone thinks this is religious, it is talking about atonement. But again our great error has been that we have reduced doctrines to their ecclesiastical dimension. When we go back to the ancient world we find that atonement was also a civil matter.

Let us take the Roman Empire for example. No one could retain citizenship if they did not appear at the annual lustrations, or the Roman Day of Atonement. Citizenship rested on atonement. Now whatever personal acts of atonement they sought by their sacrifice at the temple, the annual Roman day of atonement required the presence of every citizen. Every businessman then who was overseas had to be home for the annual Roman day of atonement. The only ones who absence could be excused were soldiers in military service, whose names then were read by a public official at the atonement ceremonies.

The covering of the law

Now this kind of rite was common to all of antiquity. What was its significance? Its significance was precisely this, there was a recognition that an atonement or a covering was provided religiously, but it was also provided through civil government, a covering, a protection, from evil, from the enemy. From every kind of threat. So that the citizen who did not submit to the annual day of atonement in whatever the culture was by definition a non-citizen and an outlaw, no longer under the protection of a covering of the law. Thus atonement had its personal, religious aspect, and it had its civil but still religious aspect.

Thus, the poll tax was collected by the civil order, and at the same time as the collection of the poll tax there was a military census. Both the tax and the military census were all males 20 years old and older. The tax and the census alike were for the purpose of the defense of the nation, and the poll tax went to the civil government for the administration of justice, the state being the ministry of justice.

We are further told that this tax had to be equal for all. “Everyone that passed among them that are numbered from 20 years old and above shall give an offering to the Lord. The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering to the Lord to make atonement for your souls.”

The use of the Tithe

There was thus to be an equal weight of silver, because the reference here is not to a coin but to a weight of silver, to be paid by every male 20 years old and older. Ad discriminatory taxation was thus forbidden. The Levites were not taxed. The head tax or poll tax thus was paid to the civil authorities as the required tax for the maintenance of a covering or atonement of the civil order. This was the first tax according to Biblical law.

The second tax was the tithe. Now the tithe again has been radically misunderstood and has been made into an ecclesiastical affair. It is religious rather than ecclesiastical. The tithe we are told was: “Holy unto the Lord.” What was the significance of this? To put it into modern terminology, it was given to the Lord and to the Lords work rather than to the church.

1/10 of the tithe went to the priests. One tenth. So that we would say in modern language, one percent of the income, actually, or one tenth of the tithe, went directly to the sanctuary. The rest was paid to the Levites, part of it also went to the sanctuary in that part of it went for the support of music, but the rest went to a variety of purposes, in that the Levites met the necessary social functions of society, serving as they did with the use of the Tithe money in some civil offices, administering to the various social functions of society. They were the teachers of Israel.

What did the Tithe do?

A second tithe, the poor tithe, every other year, went to welfare. Thus the average tithe depending on how it is computed by various scholars, was about 15 or 18 percent per year of everyone’s income. These tithes were as I indicated, paid unto the Lord. Thus Elisha received the tithes even though he was neither priest nor Levite. He received it in order to further the work of the school of the prophets which he had begun.

Now it is important to understand this tithe and to understand what it was in the ancient world, in the Old Testament, and in the early church, because the tithe as it then was understood, continued into the early 1800’s in this country and in much of the Western world. The end of tithe began shortly before the French Revolution, and the French Revolution marked formally the end of the tithe in the Western world. What did the tithe do?

The tithe maintained for centuries until recent generations, all hospitals in the Western world. It maintained all schools. The first state supported school in the United States was in Massachusetts in 1833-34. Prior to that tithe funds took care of all schools as well as of all hospitals, all forms of emergency relief. Every kind of necessary social function in society. Thus, most of the basic government of society was not by the state, it was by the Christian man through his tithe.

The compulsory Tithe

The state could, as the state did in the United States, require that the tithe be paid, and assist in the collection of it, without touching a penny of it. Thus in the states of the south as well as in the North, In many cases well into the 1800’s, a state official checked to make sure that the tithe was paid by every citizen of the state. The citizen could be free to designate the tithe to various agencies, but he was under obligation to pay it. This meant that there was a very limited state. The state of a necessity was very small, because all of the functions which have now accrued to the state were once functions of the tithe.

We can begin to understand why George Washington felt that it was so grievous a matter when in his old age he saw the compulsory payment of the tithe by all citizens of Virginia repealed, and felt it was tragic. And indeed it was.

The consequence was that life took on a different and progressively pagan dimension. The basic social functions of society were no longer unto the Lord through the tithe, but they were now a function of the state. Now these social functions are a necessary part of every social order. If they are not by the people of God, through Gods tax the tithe, they are going to be met by the state, and the purpose of the state in administering whether it is health or education, is power. The appreciation of power unto itself.

The Christian meaning of foundations

As a result, the major revolution in the western world, was the disappearance of the required tithe, and the collapse of the social institutions that depended upon it. The major means of reform throughout the centuries was dried up. Throughout the medieval period as well as in the Christian era, the tithe was the basis of every major reform. Was the church decadent? Well then, men rose up who became the recipients of the tithe and produced a reform. The Cistercians, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, various foundations, and similarly under Protestantism, one agency after another, one foundation after another arising, and the people of God giving their tithe to it, in order that the basic Christian functions of society could be met. Not until the Carnegie foundation was established at the beginning of this century did we have any such things as a non Christian foundation. The meaning of foundations was entirely, exclusively Christian.

They were agencies whereby the people of God through their tithe met the basic needs of society in the name of God and to His glory. When the state took over and began to tax and the tithe disappeared, the world was secularized. This is why basic to any program of victory which post millennialism is, is a restoration of the law, which includes the Biblical law of the tithe, To its full scope and its full function. Consider what the tithe could do in the state of Mississippi in a very short time if every confessing Christian in the state of Mississippi tithed? The tremendous variety of institutions which could minister to every need, black and white. The radical reformation of society that would take place. It was precisely this that throughout the Christian centuries was the continual source of Christian Renewal.

The power to tax is the power to destroy

A continuing tax whereby because it was unto the Lord, the people of God gave it, and were able to have the material where with all to further their work of continual Reformation. These then were the two forms of taxation as Biblical law specified them. The poll tax to the state, the tithe unto the Lord. The poll tax going directly to the central civil authority, the tithe paid to the local and other agencies at the will of the people, although required by the state. The head tax supported the state, the military power and its courts, the tithe supported all other agencies, and its recipients could be used by the state as the Levites were at no extra cost.

Society so order of necessity could not develop a strong central power or a bureaucracy. You notice that there was no land tax, no property tax in Biblical law. The property tax is a fairly new thing in our society. In the south, it is only a little more than a hundred years old. The property tax was first introduced in New England as Deism and Unitarianism arose. It was early recognized by the Supreme Court as a deadly thing, within the first generation after its introduction, a Supreme Court decision acknowledged: “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” And for this reason it specified the tithe agencies, Christian institutions could not be subjected to the tax, because it would enable the civil order to destroy God’s order. It was not until after the war between the states that because of grim necessity and because of the military governments that the property tax was introduced into the south. The Bible does not acknowledge such a tax: “The earth is the Lords, and the fullness thereof.”

The beginning of welfare

Tax on land was seen as a tax on God and against His law order. Now Gods tax, the tithe is an income tax, not a land tax. A stewardship report as it were to the Lord. Significantly also the Scripture specifies that only when we give above and beyond a tithe can we say that we have given a gift to the Lord. The tithe is not a gift to the lord, it is His tax. We owe it to Him.

In the modern world, taxation has progressively become not so much an instrument for the support of the state, but an instrument of social revolution. We need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that the purpose of the tax is to support the civil government. A friend of mine, now retired, was formerly a special investigator for a senate committee. He was only able to get so far with his work, because he said: “The most difficult thing of all to investigate is the Federal government.” And so he said: “I have no way of knowing what the truth of my estimate is, but,” he said: “I do not feel it is unreasonable to say that 70% of the taxes collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue go to support the activities of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.”

The main purpose of taxation is no the purpose of the government, it is social revolution. The Government could dispense with all inheritance taxes and it would make a very slight difference so far as the income of the Federal and the state governments are concerned. But the importance of income taxes or inheritance taxes is this: They destroy the power of the family to perpetuate its strength, by passing from Father to Son a power and an inheritance that will enable them to maintain a position of authority and leadership in the community.

Today taxes are deliberately passed for no other purpose than the redistribution of wealth. One person has made the statement that the purpose of taxation now is to take property from those who cannot use it wisely, and give it to those who have none of it.

Taxation now is state sponsored revolution and destruction. Some few years ago when I was studying welfare in the United States, I was very interested in learning how precisely the modern welfare system arose. Up until approximately 1907, in every crisis, tithe money in the United States took care of welfare needs. In that year there was a depression. At that time, all the unemployed were taken care of by Christian foundations, Christian churches, Christian agencies. And it is interesting to see the kind of thing they did. For example in the Kansas city area the various Christian agencies got together, they bought a rock quarry, they took every man who was out of work, and they put him to work for example on the rock quarry and similar projects, they accumulated a lot of gravel for road work, for construction work, and just piled it up there. After the recession or depression was over, they sold it and they recovered the money they had expended.

Through a variety of such activities, not only in Kansas City but elsewhere, those who were out of work were provided for. There was an amazing, a sound, a thoroughly Christian program taken care of by the people Of God. I mentioned Kansas City because this is critical to the story of welfare. What happened there? A very enterprising young politician was impressed. And it occurred to him: “What a marvelous thing it would be if I were controlling all the dispensing of these funds to those who are now receiving welfare. The political power would be enormous.” So when the depression was over, he visited the various churches and the foundations and a variety of civic groups, and he gave fulsome praise of all that these religious agencies had done. But he said: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we freed them from this responsibility. If we added a fraction of a penny to our taxes and took care of it when it next occurred through the city and the county, and we enabled all these wonderful Christian brothers to concentrate on spiritual goals.” Well after about a year or two of speaking he sold the community on this and he passed a measure adding a fraction of a penny to their taxes, which has since ceased to be a fraction of a penny of course, and it was amazing how many people there were immediately who began to appear on the welfare roles.

God’s law alone assures a Godly order

The young man who had this brilliant idea was Tom Pendergast. It was the beginning of his power; entirely based on welfare, and the dispensing of it. Within a few years, two or three years, other politicians in every big urban center of the United States, borrowed the idea from Tom Pendergast, and the modern welfare system was born. And its purpose form the beginning has not been to minister to human need, but to build up political power. And today this is the same purpose in education, and in every other area.

There is no reversing of this trend of the concentration of power in the state, until the people of God again restore Gods order, by taking back from the state the basic social functions of society through the tithe. God’s law provides the way. God’s law alone assures a Godly order. This is why therefore, the postmillennial position as it makes its stand in terms of a restoration of God’s order, emphasizes God’s law in proving his law of taxation. Are there any questions now? Yes?

Questions and Answers

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] A good question, how do we go about taking back this responsibility? It is being done very extensively now by the Christian school movement. Now this is a deadly thing from the standpoint of the state. I cited to some of you separately that Columbia Teachers College a few years ago estimated before the Christian school movement really got under way, that at the present rate of growth of the Christian school movement, the public schools will have disappeared by the end of this century. Its only 30 years away. Now of course they are trying to combat that, and one of the things they will try to do is to funnel, and this is the Fabian socialist suggestion from Britain, tax funds to the Christian schools in order to gain control over them.

But this is one way. Then for Christians again to revive their care of aged and the needy in their midst, at one time every church had in almost every county, facilities for taking care of widows and orphans. In California I know we had an excellent group of orphanages, and in the San Francisco area, Captain Dollar of the Dollar steamship lines had a large orphanage where almost every orphan in the San Francisco area was cared for, and there was never a dollar boy as they were known who went astray. They were really brought up in the reformed faith with a solid education, and they were outstanding men. But the state closed them down.

Now, what we need to do is to reestablish in every area you see our Christian institutions.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, well we are paying the penalty you see, for having surrendered. The sins of the father shave descended unto the children. However, in computing Gods tithe, even though the state will not recognize what you pay to the Christian school, I feel that you can legitimately count that in terms of God, no the state, as a part of your tithe.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Of course. The church is church centered, and we have to be God centered. But I believe it can be done, and I believe God prospers us as we do it. Now even apart from what I pay out for the Christian education of my children, I pay above and over 10% to various Christian agencies, as well as a poor tithe. And I might add through Chalcedon we also have our poor tithe, we use our poor tithe there to put boys into Christian School who otherwise could not go. We feel that we are under obligation to God to be faithful to his law. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is the better solution, tax relief by the state for those who have their children in Christian schools. Sooner or later we will get that, not because the politicians are generous, but because they want votes. We had a very interesting thing happen this last winter in California, the Christian schools there had their annual banquet, they had a convention of the various Christian schools, and guess who the speaker was? It was Governor Reagan. Now it’s not because Governor Reagan has ever shown the slightest interest in Christian Schools, but it is because he has begun to realize that the movement is growing so rapidly, here is a block of vote’s he cannot afford to neglect. So he came there and he flattered them wholesomely, because now they are an element to be contended with. So ultimately there will be tax relief, I think. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No it is, well. It may be, but separation of religion and the state is not valid, it is impossible. Every state is an establishment of religion, there can be no separation. Under God the state is as full obliged to be Christian as the church is, and God will judge the Federal government and the government of the state of Mississippi and of California if they are not Christian just as we will judge the Presbyterian and the Baptist and the Episcopal churches if they are not Christian. Every area of life has a positive duty to serve God.

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, the question is: “How does the law of the Jubilee fit into the modern structure generally, because the law of the Jubilee required the restoration of the law to the original owners. That is a very good question. From everything we know, the restoration of the land applied only to the original territories that were divided among the twelve tribes. For example when the tribe of Dan or a portion of it moved to the North and took over a portion of Syrian territory, the Jubilee apparently from what records we have, did not apply there. Then after the exile when there were settlements that were outside the boundaries of the old Israel, again there the law of the Jubilee was not applied. Thus it apparently had a limited application to precisely the territory that was originally divided. However that law has had a long and a significant influence in Christian history.

Thus in the United States, it is interesting how that law, or a variation of it, self consciously was applied. Thus, in, well I don’t know whether this was true of Mississippi, because Mississippi was established later than the original colonies. But in the Carolinas, in Massachusetts, and in others of the original colonies, you could not sell your land or alienate it unless there was a meeting of the church and of the authorities of the township, and they examined the prospective buyer, and they agreed. And they could refuse on the ground that it was an inheritance for your children and your posterity, and it should not be alienated.

So the influence of that law in this country was very, very marked. It was a very difficult and almost impossible thing in the original colonies to alienate your land. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, by and large the au-millennial regards the law as no longer relevant except as moral guide lines for the individual. He does not see it as applicable to the social order and to the state. And I do have friends who are Protestant Reformed, the Hoeksama group, and they of course feel that I am practically a social gospeler, because I want to see the law of God applied to society. And my answer is that I am simply applying the word of God, not a Marxist or a Fabian concept.

Now the Pre-millennial of course, is hostile to any such thing, because Christ is going to usher in a millennial reign. And they are consistent at least, in that the logical pre-millennial refuse to use the Lord Prayer in their church services. “Thy Kingdom Come? No. Not by anything we do.” You see. That is their attitude. And they are logical. I believe of course that Pre-millennialism and Au-millennialism are programmed for defeat, but that Post-millennialism with its doctrine of the law is programmed for victory. The historic position of Reformed thinkers in this country in the Presbyterian tradition has been Post-millennialism. In the Princeton school it was not until Vos went to Princeton that anything but Post-millennialism was taught. Machen was Post-mill. I didn’t know this, but Doctor Smith informed me yesterday that Cornwell was apparently post-mill. It’s something to check out. But the Presbyterian tradition has been in this country post mill, until fairly recently. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I don’t believe Doctor Van Til has ever expressed anything about this area, and he has always been very modest about not going outside of his precise area. I think he is aware of where Machen stood, and where I stand, but he has never commented. One of the interesting things that in the early days of Machen, the Church Historian of Westminster, Machens best friend, Doctor Charles Woodbridge was the church historian there, and Woodbridge is pre-millennial. They were very, very close friends, Machen and Woodbridge, and in fact he remembered Woodbridge in his will most generously. And Doctor Woodbridge himself told me this story, he was always anxious to convert Machen out of his post-millennialism, into pre-millennialism. And one day while they were walking along, Machen said: “Well Charlie, I only have one objection, one little thing against pre-millennialism.” And Woodbridge said: “I bit. I thought, well I can get him over that one little hurdle.” So he said: “What is that? What is it?” and Machen said: “It isn’t in the Bible.” Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, One of the major things that happened was the infiltration of Unitarianism first of all in New England, and a variety of other philosophies which destroyed the whole of their theological position. My associate Gary North is making a study of the doctrine of property, especially in the Puritan period and in this country, and he has already seen a very close connection between the Post-millennial faith, and periods of tremendous Christian advance. There has also been a dissertation written by this unpublished by a scholar at a secular university in the East, I have sent for it and gotten a Xeroxed copy of the dissertation, but I haven’t got a chance to read it yet, because Gary borrowed it promptly and is using it, but I hope sometime in the next couple of months to get it back and study it. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. One of the best statements of the Post Mill position in the form of a commentary, two of the best, are Calvin’s Commentary on Isaiah, and especially Alexander’s Commentary on Isaiah. J.A. Alexander. Yes, was there a question back there?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] In what sense? Specifically what area?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are going to have the kind of thing portrayed in the latter chapters of Isaiah, and then finally the second coming. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] To credit? Yes that is a good question, and a big one. In my commentary on the law that I am writing a give a number of chapters to that. The law does not permit debts beyond 6 years, in other words the law of the Sabbath specifies that we cannot mortgage our future, we belong to God and our future belongs to God. Under normal circumstances there is to be no debt. “Owe no man anything save to love on another.” When necessary, it is to be contracted, but only for a period of 6 years. Thus we are to avoid debt living in so far as is humanly possible. I myself have studiously avoided anything in the way of debt, I don’t owe anybody anything. Our trust, Chalcedon on the one hand doesn’t owe anything, but our ranch trust does owe some money, but when we contracted the debt, which was $400,000, we specified 6 years only, which made the man who was selling it to us, and the man at the bank scratch their heads. 6 years? 10, 15, 20, 30 was something they knew, but 6 years was kind of strange. But the Lord has prospered us in that, and we have already eliminated 3/4ths of the debt with over 3 years to go. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] How do I interpret a thousand years?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, this is so involved a question that it leads to question after question. So I would rather avoid it, not because I want to duck the question, I deal with it in my forthcoming book, Thy Kingdom Come. It is an involved textual question, and therefore would require a more precise answer than you can give in brevity. It is a symbolic number, it does indicate a period of a glorious reign, we are not to take what Revelation 20 gives to us as chronological in its account, because very obviously it reverses everything that Ezekiel gives us, in Ezekiel we have the, and Revelation, the appearance of Gog and Magog on the one hand before, and on the other hand after, which is a deliberate confounding of chronology, and I believe it is intended by God to prevent us from viewing these things chronologically as a chart for history. I think the weakness of too many people as they approach Revelation is, that they want to walk by sight, not by faith. And what Revelation gives us is God philosophy of history, his assurance of triumph over it, not something to enable us to walk by sight. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What commentary would I recommend on the book of Revelation? I can’t think of any one that I would recommend above any other, I like as a rather popular one, Hendrickson, which is Au Mill, More than Conqueror, (Alensky?), again not Post Mill has again wrote another good one, which as far as specific texts and words are concerned is excellent, the section in Ellicott’s commentary is quite good, there are a number that as they deal with specific passages are good. The study by Ramsey of the letters to the 7 churches is very rewarding, (Kick?) on Revelation 20 is good reading, there is quite a variety of works written which are of interest.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] There isn’t anything that has been written that is available now on the Post millennial position, as I said my Thy Kingdom Come will be studies in Daniel and Revelation, as well as Matthew 24 and the Thessalonian passages, and a few other things, and it should be out, oh I hope by summer or fall. Yes? Presbyterian and Reformed.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] I am not interested in the private schools, and I feel that the private school movement by and large is a dying one. Statistically private schools are closing their doors. In the face of the radical assault we are now undergoing, the revolutionary assault, the private schools are not standing up. In Southern California as well as across country according to the statistic, the handful of private schools in the United States, they are on the run. They are losing out steadily; I don’t think they will be around after too many years, because the very kind of influences that you find in the public schools which are so detrimental to the youth are reappearing in the private schools. So I write them off. At first I won’t have anything to do with them, and second they have no future. The Christian school is the growing movement.

Our time is just about up, let me add one thing. The Christian school movement is growing rapidly even though the parochial school movement is also declining. It is not only the private schools but the parochial schools that are waning. The Catholic Church today is closing about 200 or more parochial schools a year. That’s a fantastic number. They are as they are being influenced by secularism, losing their interest in parochial education. So, when we speak of the rapid increase of children in non-public schools, the Christian school movement is not only making up for the loss by the closing of the parochial schools but is responsible for the growth.

Well, it is a little past 11 so our time is up.