Power, Family, Community and Law

The Centrality of the Family: Q & A

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Sociology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 9

Track: 40

Dictation Name: RR113A1

Date: 1974

Hear now the Word of God as it is given to us in Ephesians 3:14 following. Our particular interest tonight is with the 15th verse. Ephesians 3:14 following:

“14For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,

16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;

17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;

19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

21 Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.”

St. Paul tells us that the whole family in Heaven and earth is named by the Father, all of creation, all things in Heaven and earth, and very specifically, the family as we know it.

What does it mean to be named by God? It is important for us to understand the meaning of the word name in scripture, because if we fail to understand what that word means, we miss a very rich and important aspect of scripture. To name in the Bible is to define. When God created Adam, and named him Adam (earth), he defined him. “Dust thou art and unto dust returnest.” But He also made possible the further definition of man as He summoned him to obedience and later, after the Fall, summoned His people to faith and to a new name in Christ. When Adam was asked by the Lord to name the animals, this was as scientific task. He was told to understand the nature of God’s creation, to go through all things round about him, to define them, to see God’s purpose in the various animals, why they were created, the very families they belonged to, to understand God’s handiwork.

Over and over again, we meet this significance of naming in the Bible. To cite a very important example of it, we do not know what Abraham’s original name was. Scripture never gives us his name before he was called of God. God called him out of Ur of the Chaldees and named him Abram (father of many). Later on He named him Abraham (father of a great multitude; many nations). Now when He so-named Abraham, He asked Abraham to walk by faith and to bear that name by faith because when he was called Abram, he was a father of none. In those days, only a very rash and wealthy man dared bear a name that did not describe him.

Men’s names changed as their character changed. No doubt when Abram came to Canaan and the people there met him and asked him his name, and he said, ‘My name is Abram,’ they said, ‘Oh, how many sons do you have?’ ‘Well, none.’ ‘How many daughters?’ ‘None.’ They must have laughed behind his back that he would dare go by such a name when he was childless. But Abram bore that name in faith; faith in God’s promise that in due time, God would give him a son and that in the fullness of time, his descendants, by faith, would be as the stars of the Heavens—innumerable. It took faith to bear that name.

And so it is through all of scripture, names are definitions. The name of Jesus is a definition. Jehovah saves. It announces the salvation of God. And we are told that when we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, God gives us a new name which no man knoweth, that in the New Creation, the fullness of the meaning of this new name will be open and manifest to all, that we who were nothing but dust and dead in sins and trespasses have been redeemed by Jesus Christ, have been made a new creation. And now as we grow in sanctification, that new name which describes us becomes more and more obvious until in the New Creation it is known by all. We have defined ourselves by our faith and by our works, our growth in sanctification.

All things are defined by God the Father. He is their creator, their maker. The family is named (defined) by Him, so that when we think of our families, we are not to think in terms of modern unbelief, that the family is a part of the evolution of man and something that developed as a convenience for handling children, because in the human species (unlike some animals), the baby needs care and so the family (sociologists with an Evolutionary perspective tell us) has this natural function of taking care of the young. And possibly in the future, it will be unnecessary, they tell us, as we develop modern and more superior means of taking care of the family. In a report submitted to the Federal Council of Churches, in their Florida meeting of a few years ago, they spoke of the family as something like the tribe: important for its time in human history, but coming now to the end of its usefulness. We cannot think that way. The family is named (defined) by God! And our lives must be defined by the Word of God. And God has set forth in His Law-Word the meaning of the family. Moreover, the family is the one institution God created in paradise. So that the family, marriage, is the one thing today which is a remnant of the Garden of Eden. Nothing else from Eden has survived. But the family, which God established in the Garden of Eden, is still with us. True, infected by the Fall. True, subject to all the besettings of our sins, but still God’s ordination for us.

Now we do not have time to go into the details of what God’s Law has to say about the family, but just briefly, to summarize the high points. There are three basic powers in any society. Control of those three basic powers means control of that society. It is important for us to understand this. These three basic powers are understood by the enemy. They are understood by the ungodly sociologists, the planners, the socialists who dream of remaking the World in their ungodly pattern.

The first of these basic powers is the control of children. Whoever controls the children controls the future. The children are tomorrow. They are the future and control of them means that the world of tomorrow is controlled. This is what Horace Mann understood. Horace Mann as a Unitarian and a Socialist, wanted to eliminate the influence of Evangelical Christianity from the land. He and his associates spoke of it as the great evil, biblical faith. Senator Charles Sumner, the great abolitionist senator, spoke of it as the serpent’s coils about our children. That’s how he referred to biblical faith. And so they devised an idea to take children away from God, from the family: public schools. This was their avowed purpose! Let us take over the schools from Christians, because at that time, there were only Christian schools. And by taking over the schools, controlling them through the State, we will eliminate Christianity from the land. They dreamed they would remake the world thereby, and they said in a century (meaning the 1930s), through control of education, and re-educating the child in terms of a secular, a Humanistic faith, we will have paradise on earth in the United States. Prisons will have disappeared, except as museums so people will know how terribly people lived back 100 years ago in the dark ages of Christianity. Poverty will disappear. Social problems will disappear, if we take children away from the family and biblical faith. In those days, when Horace Mann began his work, the average age of criminals in the prisons of the United States (and there were not many of them in prisons then), was 45. By 1916, the average age of all prisoners was 19. And the numbers have vastly increased.

Man, as he tries to name, to define life apart from God, destroys it. But God according to His Word gives children, one of the three basic powers of society, into the hands of the family. And He requires throughout His Word, in Deuteronomy 6, in Ephesians 6, in Proverbs, in countless passages that children be reared in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The basic power therefore that controls the future is children, and God requires us as Christians to govern our children, to educate them in terms of the Lord and His Word, to establish godly schools, Christian schools where they may all their days be trained, not in unbelief, but in the Word of God; and might understand all things in terms of the Word of God.

The second great power, which is basic to controlling any society, is property. And the Bible gives control of property into the hands of the family. This is why there is an attack today on property as well as the parental control of children. It is aimed at destroying God’s pattern.

The third great power in any society is control of inheritance. And again, God places that power in the hands of the family. According to the Law of God, the eldest son, unless he were ungodly, was to receive a double portion. In other words, if there were three children, it was to be divided four ways and the eldest son was to get half, and in return for that, he had the duty of caring for his parents, providing for them all their days. This was once routine among all Christians. I talked to one woman recently who came not too long ago from Europe and she said homes there were built with two kitchens. Why? For the heir and his bride to have one, when they married, while the mother cooked in the other. They cooked two meals in the kitchen. Why did they do it that way? Because it was the duty of the heir to provide for his parents and to make sure that as long as the mother wanted to cook, she continued cooking. Doesn’t scripture teach so? This was her attitude.

It was one of the greatest days in history when these standards of scripture were written into the law of the western world. That in itself is one of the most dramatic stories in our history, and yet it is not in the textbooks today. Because our textbooks, our history books, are written by Humanists, who hate the Word of God, who hate the men of faith.

Back in the 6th century, there was an animal trainer in the Roman arena who died while still fairly young, and left his widow and three girls, I believe their ages were 5, 7 and 9. The girls were sold by the circus authorities to a house of prostitution, and in those early years, began to serve as prostitutes. The middle girl was named Theodora. When she was in her late teens, she was taken by a businessman on a trip to North Africa; they quarreled and he abandoned her. She became sick and was near death. A Christian took her in, nursed her back to health and meanwhile read scripture to her and instructed her in the faith. She did not accept the Lord that time. She returned to the capital and went back to her work. But the Word spoken to her bore its fruit. Within a couple of years, she was a Christian. Meanwhile, a young man, a lawyer, had fallen in love with her. Together they grew in terms of the faith. The young lawyer’s uncle and guardian was a general, an old man. The emperor, childless, fearful that the empire would be torn apart by civil war because he was childless, with various factions contending to gain power, named the old general, his friend, as his heir. He died, the general, Justin, succeeded him as emperor, and dying a few years later, his nephew, Justinian, became emperor, and his wife, Theodora, the girl who had been sold to a house of prostitution when a child, became empress. They began a revision of law, of Roman law. And Theodora saw to it that everything the Bible had to say about sex and the family was written into law.

o       First; that the only legitimate family was the monogamous biblical family: on man, one woman—no concubinage, no mistresses.

o       Second, all non-marital sexuality was made illegal and punishable by law. And it was applied to rich and poor alike. No longer were the wealthy lords and nobility to be allowed to live as they pleased.

o       Third, only the legitimate wife and children could inherit the property. Previously, it was commonplace for a wife and her children to be tossed out in the streets within an hour after the death of the father, because he had signed the property over to a mistress, of whose existence they knew nothing. In pagan antiquity, that was legal. And there are many who are trying to make it legal again. But only the legal children, only the legal wife, the legal family could control property. The Word of God was made the law.

Until our time, the legal work of Theodora, the Code of Justinian, has governed family law throughout Europe and the Americas. In our time, there has been a growing legal revolution against it as a part of the hatred of the faith, and as a part of the vilification of Theodora and her work.

But God placed these three basic powers in scripture in the hands of the family. He named, he defined the family, as the basic institution on earth. The family is more important than the State or the Church. It is the first church of the child, the first school, the first government. It is the basic institution of society.

But today, the family is under attack. The children, we are told, belong to the State. Property is being taxed out of existence. The inheritance tax, the most iniquitous of all taxes, wipes out 75% of all people who die. Their family is wiped out—the business, the farm, whatever they have—75%, because the entire estate has to be made liquid in 90 days—or in nine months, and the taxes paid. It is deliberately anti-Christian. The proceeds of the inheritance tax do not keep the government going more than a day or two, but it does destroy the family. That’s its purpose.

And so it is, that we as Christians, as we face the world today, must rebuild the family, must re-establish our control over our children and their schooling, must recognize that property is a stewardship from God to be used for His purpose, to strengthen the family and to strengthen His work in every area through the tithe. And to remember that scripture means what it says wen it declares, “A good man leaveth an inheritance for his children’s children.”

The family is the basic power. The enemy knows it. It is time we realized it. God declares it is important. He named it, we are told, defined it, gave it these tremendous powers. Power is not in Washington, nor in your State Capital. Power is in your home—the power God ordained. This is why every Socialist, every Marxist country makes its basic attack on the family. By destroying the family, they will take care of the church. If they shatter the family, the church cannot exist. They know full well that where the family is strong, the church withdraws into the four walls of the family with perhaps one or two others, and is secure. In the days of Rome, the Christians could stand up under persecution because the church was in the home for at least two centuries. Sometimes no more than 10, so they would not attract attention. And in Red China today, the church limits itself to about ten people, meaning about one family, or two families at the most. Then there is no attention attracted, just a couple of families visiting together, but worshiping God, teaching their children the Word of God. Now, this cannot be done if the family’s strength is shattered, and so the incessant attack of the enemy on the integrity of the family.

God named the family. He defined it. And we as His people must define the family after God—make it the bulwark against the World, make it a source of strength to the faith and to our children. Man’s task at creation was to name, to define, all things, to understand them as God created them. And so the animals were brought to Adam, that he might understand their relationship and might see that a deer was related to other herbivorous and mammalian animals and might see something of the order and the classification in God’s creation.

Now we, as the redeemed of God, as members of the new humanity, of the second and last Adam, Jesus Christ, are called in Him to name, redefine all things, in terms of His Word. To say to the State, it is your duty to be according to scripture, a ministry of justice, to say to the sciences that they must understand God’s creation in terms of His Word. To say to the school that it must be the agency of the family, rearing up the children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and enabling them to understand all things in terms of God’s creative purpose, so that they can be kings, priest and prophets under God—kings, who exercise dominion in every area of life; prophets who interpret all things in terms of the Word of God, and priests who use all things in the service of God an dedicate whatever they are and whatever they do to the Lord, to the King of Kings and Lord of Hosts. Thus, as we look at our daily life, and especially at our homes, we must remember our calling. God, who named, who defined the family, asks us to name it, to define it, to give it its form in terms of His Word and His calling, so our children, and our children’s children may know that the Lord is God and that in all things they must serve Him.

Many years ago, when I first began my ministry in San Francisco’s Chinatown, it was my privilege to meet and work in connection with a Donaldina Cameron Home. I don’t know whether anyone here has ever heard of Donaldina Cameron. Is there anyone who has? A very remarkable woman, a very great woman, a slip of a Scotch woman, who migrated to this country and felt the Lord called her to go into Chinatown (in those days the Barbary Coast), when they were bringing in shiploads of girls, slave girls, from China, 12- 14- 15-years old, and selling them to houses of prostitution. In three or four years, those girls were diseased and they would be put into a closet with a bowl of rice and the means to commit suicide and then they were replaced. Donaldina Cameron went into that area where policemen dared not go alone and began rescuing those girls! She took them into her home, converted them to Christ, made them Christian teachers, mothers, church workers, made her work the nucleus of a strong Christian movement among the Chinese of San Francisco. And she told me that perhaps the most moving experience of her life was when she was still in Scotland, her grandfather after whom she was named, Donald Cameron, an old-fashioned Scotchman who loved the Word and read it day in and day out, was asked when he was fairly young, as one of the pillars of that little community, to be an elder of the church and he refused. He said it is too great an honor for me. Let us see if I have proven myself faithful unto the Lord when my children and my children’s children love and honor the Lord and know Him as their Savior. And she said, “It was a great day in the village when Donald Cameron saw with joy his grandchildren professing their faith in Christ and accepted then the eldership. And with trembling hands, came forward to serve his first communion with several rows of younger Camerons sitting there in the pews. It’s a memory I’ve always treasured, because it is truly a Christian witness.”

And so God calls us, to do the same thing with our children and our children’s children. God defined the family. He requires us to define it, to name it, to give it structure in terms of His Word.

Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou has called us to be fathers and mothers in Jesus Christ, that Thou hast given us so great a responsibility, the key responsibility to the shaping of the future—the control of children, of property and of inheritance. Lord, make us wise stewards unto Thee that we may use our children and our possessions, knowing that we will account for them unto Thee. Make us ever joyful in Thy service, ever mindful, oh Lord of the great calling that is ours in Jesus Christ as priests, prophets and kings, to name and to define every area of life and thought in terms of Thy Word. We gave thanks unto Thee, our Father, for this congregation and for its pastor, for their hearing ears and their delight in Thy Word. We thank Thee our Father that Thou hast called us to be Thy people, and that Thou hast given us such great promises in Jesus Christ, whose Word unto us is ‘yea’ and ‘amen.’ Oh Lord our God, how great Thou art! And we praise Thee, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[Audience] {?} question this evening, we have several that deal with inheritance. A lot of people would like to know how to implement the Biblical Law. Would the best way to change the unbiblical property tax and inheritance be by a legal test case or by electing a majority of Christian representatives who believe this way?

[Laughter]

[Rushdoony] Somebody asked me recently how you could beat the inheritance tax, and I said, ‘Very simple; don’t die!’

[Laughter]

That’s a little hard to do, though. Now, I’m very concerned about this because it is anti-Christian in purpose and very dangerous. So one of the things our foundation is doing, is we have contacted two very fine CPAs (Certified Public Accountants), as a matter of fact, you, some of you, may know the son of one and the brother of other, the Rev. Dale Dykema, who used to be in Fort Walton Beach, and we have asked the two Mr. Dykemas, to write a brief manual or pamphlet on how a Christian can go about best avoiding the worst problems with regard to inheritance tax, by preparing yourself in advance. To a considerable measure, it is possible to minimize the damage. Now, only as we evangelize and educate through the Christian schools more and more people, are we going to eliminate the inheritance tax.

Some of you no doubt know that it was one of the ten points of the Communist Manifesto. Public schools were another of the ten points. And Marx and Engels knew the damage both of those would do to the faith, and indeed have done. There was a time when through the inheritance and through the tithes of Christians, all your hospitals were Christian, all the elderly and the needy, all welfare cases were taken care of by Christians, by churches, by tithed agencies. The taxing structure has been designed to prevent that. I could get really wound up on this, but let me just cite one example which I do include in my Institutes of Biblical Law.

In the Soviet Union, let us say we were all living together in one apartment building, a collective housing unit, and I got sick. And you all knew it would take weeks on end before they would give me a welfare check, and meanwhile I’d be on the ragged edge, and you’d say, ‘Well, let’s take up a collection for the poor man and help him out.’ You’d all be under arrest. You’d be counter-revolutionaries. Why? In extending Christian charity to anyone, you would be creating a government outside the government. Now, this is the power of the tithe. This is the power of charity. It is a real government. This is why the Soviet Union is against it, makes it illegal, and this is why Hitler in Mien Kampf spoke out against it vehemently.

Well, it’s going to be an uphill struggle, but it’s an important one for us to be involved in. And meanwhile, I hope that a year from now, we will have this little manual out so that Christians can plan ahead. This is extremely important. Very few people know what happens when someone dies, because it isn’t the kind of thing families talk about, but the damage is incredible.

To give you an idea, to cite a couple of names you’ll recognize; one in California, Marilyn Monroe, died. She left an estate of about $15 million. It had to be liquidated in a brief number of months. At that time is was 15. Now it’s 9; which meant everything had to be sold at a sacrificial price. And since there were only a few buyers for what she had to sell, the residual rights, and her films and all, they got it at their price. After taxes, there was less than $5,000 left for her mother. Ernie Kovacs, the comedian, died unexpectedly in an accident, $16 million estate. His widow went to work to try and salvage it. All that was left was $16,000. Now that’s what happens when you’re not prepared.

Good stewardship requires preparation, so one of the things our foundation is going to do is precisely to help prepare for that.

[Audience] This is related, and may have been covered already. How do you intend to leave an inheritance to your children and your children’s children with the present estate tax structure? And can the inheritance be anything other than money? I believe that’s the meaning of this last question.

[Rushdoony] Of course, the inheritance first of all must be the nurture and admonition of the Lord which St. Paul requires us to leave our children. That’s the basic inheritance. But then, the scripture also says, ‘a good man leaveth an inheritance for his children’s children.’ This takes stewardship. And this takes care with our money. Most people today are interested in living it up and do not provide for their future. They want the best of everything. Well, you can’t have it that way and provide for your children.

I know that we didn’t take a vacation all the years that our children were in Christian schools. We had six children and the last, our son, is now in college, so we’re near the end of the road there. We never bought a new car. We don’t have a color television set, but we certainly have six godly children that we’re proud of. And we’ve been able to help them to put something aside for their future, to have an inheritance, and we feel that’s more important than some of the things we may have missed. We had our vacations at home, and I feel that you cannot do your Christian duty toward your children or towards your church without some kind of sacrifice. And actually, I don’t feel it was a sacrifice. It was a pleasure. I wish we’d had more children.

[Audience] Relating to the talk, what or who is the enemy?

[Rushdoony] Well, the enemy in scripture is spoken of as Satan. The enemy very often is ourselves and our sinful hearts, so we had better remember that the enemy is not only out there, but he’s often working in here. So we had better reckon with the enemy out there and the sinful heart in us, the old man that wants us to slacken off and to be easy-going about our faith. There are too many Christians who are content to be saved as by fire—you know, just to get in, to remain idiots in Christ or babes in Christ, because somebody who remains a babe is an idiot, instead of being mature men in Christ. So, the enemy is out there, but he’s often very much at work in here.

[Audience] You mentioned work, growth, and sanctification. Could you explain this further?

[Rushdoony] Yes. We are justified by the sovereign grace of God through Jesus Christ and His atoning blood. Works have nothing to do with our justification. We are saved by the grace of God unto salvation through Christ.

Our sanctification, however, is very definitely a matter of our growth in obedience. Faith without works is dead. If there is no evidence of sanctification, then there is no faith. Our sanctification is by obedience to the Law of God. This is what Luther and Calvin both said. The Rule of Faith, that is, the means of sanctification is the Law. And our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, said, a good tree only bears good fruit, but a corrupt tree bears corrupt fruit. Now, our works are simply that good fruit.

We are dead to the Law as an indictment, as a death penalty. In that respect, we are dead to the Law. Now, some people get this twisted. They say the Law is dead. Scripture never says the Law is dead, but that we are dead to the Law as a death penalty, as an indictment, but we are alive to it as the righteousness of God. It is written on the tables of our hearts. Once the Law was a death penalty, a sentence. Now it’s an aspect of the new man in us, and we are saved, St. Paul says, that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us.

[Audience] Could you explain the roles of prophet and priest as they pertain to the husband of the household?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The question doesn’t say anything about the role of king. I guess that’s very obvious!

[Laughter]

As prophet, the husband has the duty to expound the Word of God to the family. He is God’s prophet, interpreting the Word of God, the duties that each member of the household has, what God wants them to know, to declare to them, ‘This is the way. Walk in it.’ To interpret things in the world round about for the child, in terms of the Word of God, the meaning of all things as scripture declares it.

And as priest, it is his duty to dedicate himself and his household to the Lord, both by prayer, by the use of his substance, and by seeing to it insofar as he is able, that his entire household is dedicated to the Lord.

The husband has a very important role as prophet and priest. I think it’s tragic that in our time, so many men have abdicated. They leave it to the mother to take charge of the religious education, see to it that the kids go to church and so on.

Do you know there is a difference between the biblical word for father and the pagan word. The pagan word for father in almost every country and almost every language—not quite all, is simply ‘be-getter, sire’. It refers to the purely physical act of fatherhood. But the Hebrew word ‘ab’ and the Aramaic ‘ab-ba’ has nothing to do with the physical paternity. It means ‘protector, nurturer, authority’. That’s a marvelous meaning. It means, then, unfortunately, that most people in this country including too many Christian men, are not fathers in the biblical sense, but only in the pagan sense. They are the begetters of the children, but they’re not the authority, the protector, the nurturer. That’s what it means to be a father. A father in that sense is truly a prophet and a priest.

[Audience] In International Relations, and other courses, I’ve had great difficulty getting the professor to comment on morality, right and wrong, and so forth in our lectures. Could you share some insights on why they attack our morality?

[Rushdoony] Yes, very definitely. Because, you see, no god is under a moral law. We cannot say that God is governed by morality because morality is not over God to judge him, it is simply the expression of His nature.

Now, in the modern era, man is the god. That’s basic to modern education, basic to modern philosophy. So man is, as Nietzsche said, beyond good and evil. Good and evil don’t apply to him. Original sin is very simply this, as scripture defines it in Genesis 3:5, ‘ye shall be as god’ (every man his own god), ‘knowing’ (and the Hebrew word for knowing has the force of determining, deciding, establishing for yourself) what constitutes good and evil. So that there’s no good an evil, you see, Satan told Eve, over man. Good and evil is simply the expression of your being. So when you talk about morality, you’re talking about morality in a Christian sense, as God’s Law above and over us, requiring us, saying ‘Thou shalt not,’ because ‘I the Lord have declared it!’ It’s an authority, the authority of God over us. But for them, morality is ‘Do your own thing’. That’s moral. Situation ethics, as the modernist seminaries teach it. So naturally, they’re not going to be too open about saying we don’t believe in morality as you do, but what they’re actually teaching is Humanistic morality: man creating his own moral law, his own rules as he goes along. “Do your own thing.” That sums up their morality.

[Audience] If the family is so important, do you believe that there will be a family unit in the hereafter? And they say, meaning internal marriage. Don’t know what that means.

[Rushdoony] I don’t know what internal marriage is, but there is no marrying, nor giving in marriage, but there is a family in Heaven, the family of our Lord. The household of faith; so that in the New Creation, we are all one family, and this is the goal of the family here and of the Church, to prepare us for the great family of God in Heaven. Because the New Creation transcends our world, it’s hard for us to imagine that. We know this is so, we’re not told the details, because scripture never says anything just to satisfy our curiosity, only what we need to know.