Eighth Commandment

Money & Measures

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Money and Measures

Genre: Speech

Track: 78

Dictation Name: RR130AQ78

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

“Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the Lord.”

In this law, God begins by declaring that “ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment,” or justice. The word “judgment” here is our modern word “justice.” Then, it goes onto specify the areas in which God very strictly requires justice. The words are somewhat unfamiliar to us, or have changed their meeting, so it is important to analyze this passage with respect to some of the key words.

First of all, “meteyard,” The term meteyard is one that designates measures of length or surface. We would say the yard, foot, inch, mile, and similar measures constitute meteyards. The second word here is “weight.” Weight for us has reference to pounds and tons, but in scripture, weight has an entirely different connotation. It does refer to what we mean by weight, but in a very limited area. Weight has reference to talents and shekels, and similar weights, which are weights of money. That is, of gold and silver, so that when the scripture speaks of weights, it is talking about what we mean by money, or should mean by money, because the reference is specifically to gold and silver. The third term is “measure.” Measure means here measures of capacity, both liquid and dry measures. A little later it specifies some of these measures; ephah and him. Balances is what we mean by the word “weight,” or “weights.” Scales, in other words, is the reference in balances.

This passage therefore, is a very important one. It refers to certain things which are basic to all commerce, every day life, and the material life of society. The fact that weights meant money was known from the very beginning. There has never been any illusion about this matter. The Bible speaks of money as a weight. For example, in 1 Chronicles 21:25, we read “David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight.” We’re not sure precisely how much a gold shekel was in weight in terms of our standards today, but it was almost certainly a half ounce.

At this point, it is interesting to note how much preaching today is irrelevant. It has become too spiritual. It has forgotten the realities of our everyday life. Any investigation in any good Bible dictionary will tell you that weight means money. For example, one of the finest of the Bible dictionaries is Fairbairn’s Bible Encyclopedia. There is a long article several pages long by Bonar on weights in which he gives a very specific and precise definition of the weights of the Bible, and yet Bonar wrote one of the best known commentaries on Leviticus, which is still in print, after a hundred years, and in the course of his treatment of this law, he reads a spiritual meaning into it, and never once refers to the material significance of weights and measures; meteyard or balances, and this illustrates a common fallacy. The average preacher feels he has to be talking about something spiritual, but the Bible from beginning to end, relates not only to things spiritual but things material, to the whole of reality, every side of it, to heaven and to earth, to economics and to politics, to the family and the school, to the earth, and to everything around us.

At this point, when we turn to the Talmud, which is sometimes very much damned among Christians, we find that it speaks more clearly. The Talmud is often very faulty in its commentaries, but at this point, in commenting on this passage in Leviticus, it’s comment is very interesting, “Why did the divine law mention the exodus from Egypt in connection with interest, {?} and weights? The holy one, blessed be he, declared it is I who distinguished in Egypt between the firstborn and one who is not a firstborn. Even so, it is I who will exact vengeance from him who ascribes his money to a Gentile and lends it to an Israelite on interest, or who steeps his weights in salt, or who attaches it to his garment threads died with vegetable blue and maintains that it is real blue.”

In other words, what the Talmud said is that God in this passage says, “I am the Lord your God which brought you out of the land of Egypt,” and if you obey my laws, then you are indeed one of my elect, but if you disregard this law, then you demonstrate that you are reprobate.

A Hebrew Christian, C.D. Ginsburg who, towards the end of the last century, became one of the great Old Testament commentators in England, has commented on the significance of this law in Israel and its enforcement from the days of Nehemiah to the time of our Lord, and his passage on this commandment is very interesting. “It will be seen that the lawgiver uses here exactly the same phrase with regard to meting out right measure which he used in connection with the administration of justice in verse 15.” In other words, anyone who is dishonest in money, or in measures of any kind, is like a corrupt judge. To continue, “Ye therefore who declares that a false measure is a legal measure is, according to this law, as much a corrupt judge and defrauds the people by false judgment as he who in the court of justice willfully passes a wrong sentence. Owing to the fact that men who would otherwise distain the idea of imposition often discard their scruples in the matter of weights and measures.

“The Bible frequently brands these dealings as wicked and an abomination in the Lord, whilst it designates the right measure as coming from God himself, as witnesses Deuteronomy 25:13 and 15, Ezekiel 45:10-12, Hosea 12:8, Amos 8:5, Micah 6:10-11, Proverbs 11:1, Proverbs 16:11, Proverbs 20:10 and 23. According to the authorities during the second temple, he who gives false weights or measure, like the corrupt judge, is guilt of the following five things. He first defiles the land. Second, profanes the name of God. Third, causes the Shekinah (that is, the presence of God) to depart. Fourth, makes Israel perish by the sword, and fifth, to go into captivity. Hence, they declared that the sin of illegal weights and measures is greater than that of incest, and is equivalent to the sin of denying that God redeemed Israel out of Egypt. They appointed public overseers to inspect the weights and measures all over the country. They prohibited weights to be made of iron, lead, or other metal liable to become lighter by wear or rust, and ordered them to be made of polished rock, of glass, and the like, and enacted the severest punishment for fraud.”

This passage, I think, is revealing. The first pure food and drug laws, the first inspection of scales, the first inspection of money to make sure it was gold, and silver, and of standard weight came under the Mosaic law.

This law, therefore, has very important implications. We might add, before we deal with these implications, the many verses that Ginsburg cited in this quote which I just read, are not all the verses that the Bible has on the matter of just weights and measures. Is it not a sin, therefore, when it is so often spoken of in scripture, and made so important by God? That nothing is said by the church about it today that men can preach a lifetime and never speak about this law?

Now, as we turn to the analysis of this law, let us once again look at the text of Leviticus 19:35-37. “Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure. Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have: I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the Lord.”

Now, first of all, this law makes clear that the old Latin and the modern laissez faire principle caveat emptor, Let the buyer beware, is not biblical. Dishonest merchandising is, according to scripture, a matter for the courts, as serious as dishonest judges in court. On the other hand, the liberal principle of today, Let the seller beware, is not biblical either. The laissez faire promoted irresponsibility by the seller, and liberalism today promotes irresponsibility by the buyer. The state is, according to scripture, to ministry of justice. God has ordained, according to scripture, a ministry of grace, the church, and the ministry of justice, the state, and the state therefore, as the ministry of justice, has the duty to maintain justice in the marketplace, but it cannot confuse justice, of course, with charity.

Now, it is true that the state, as the policeman, can be corrupt. When I first started college, I worked for a time in a big market on Market Street in San Francisco. This was during the Depression, and one of the things that I noticed very quickly was that many places, many of the concessions in this huge market, at that time the world’s largest market, had dishonest scales, and I learned that there were major markets up and down Market Street that had dishonest scales. All they had to do was to bribe the inspector and they got by with it, and the amount of money they made was considerable. This does not mean that we should, therefore, do away with such inspections. We do not abolish the court because most of our judges today are not godly men. The state will be corrupt, and the officials will be corrupt when the society is corrupt. The key is not the state, but the religious state of man and of society. You cannot have a good state if you do not have godly people, and {?} is first of all, the regeneration of men, but false weights and measures are, as God declares, unrighteousness in judgment or justice, and therefore, they are a matter of just jurisdiction for the state.

Now, we saw that meteyard means measures of length or of surface, that is, the yard, the foot, the inch, and the mile. Justice requires maintaining strict standards in these matters and penalizing fraud, frauds in land transactions, in goods, in materials, in any kind of measure. Third, we saw that the biblical word translated as weights always means weights of gold and silver or money, so that this is a prohibition against fraud in money. It requires that money be by weight, weight of gold and silver. When God issues a bill of indictment against Jerusalem in the first chapter of Isaiah, he declared, “Thy silver is become dross.” IN other words, instead of your silver money, you now have Johnson slugs, counterfeit money, or paper money without any backing. It is significant that, in terms of this law, because out forefathers in this country were believers, American coinage was by weight. Our gold coinage was in terms of the ounce. The double eagle is an ounce, 900 finest gold, the eagle half an ounce, the five dollar gold piece a quarter of an ounce, and so on. In other words, by weight. As a matter of fact, not only was our silver coinage by weight with a specified number of grains of silver, but for a time over a century ago, our trade dollar actually carried on it, since it was used overseas, the varying number of grains in the coin.

Fractional reserve banking therefore, and paper money without backing or partial backing is fraudulent money and a violation of law. It is counterfeiting. All ministers who do not condemn false weight and measures share in the guilt of silence. They are like corrupt judges. They corrupt God’s word.

Inflation is fraud, because it is the manipulation of money, the printing of paper money by the government as a means of robbing the people. Solomon condemns this kind of thing repeatedly, and Solomon incidentally was a strong, hard money man. Proverbs 20:10 reads, “Diverse weights (now weights remember means money) and diverse measures, both of them are like abomination to the Lord.” In other words, money then was minted not in a circle as coins by as standard weights. The shekel was a weight, and if the weight was adulterated or trimmed, this was an abomination to the Lord. Proverbs 20:23, “Diverse weights are an abomination unto the Lord and a false balance is not good.” Notice here where it speaks both of weight, that is money, and balances which is what we mean by weight, it makes clear that the worst of the two is doctored money. It is described as an abomination unto the Lord, but bad scales, false balances is not good. Not as serious. It is an offense against God, but the other is an abomination because it destroys and it robs a people. It is theft of everyone through whose hands the money passes.

This was not only a matter of legislation in the law, but through the prophets. Ezekiel in the last days of Jerusalem, which perished because of the bill of indictment by God that they had turned their silver into dross, withdrawn their silver weights and issued false weights, gave as the requirement by God when they reestablished Jerusalem after the captivity, the exact ratio of the shekel to the lesser and the greater weight, as well as every other kind of measure. You’ll find this in Ezekiel 45:9-12. God very specifically lays down the law and says, this is the relationship so that there can be no tampering with the shekels or with the liquid measure, the dry measure, or the measure of length or surface. It was this important in the sight of God, and this fearful a sin to tamper with these things. In fact, God declares through his {?} a lack of justice here is a violence and spoil, and exactions.

Then next, with respect to measures of capacity, that is, liquid and dry measures, Isaiah in the bill of indictment, declares that one of the reasons why God will send them into judgment and captivity is because your wine is mixed with water. Now God felt this was a capital offense. Would you destroy standards, you destroy everything that makes life livable. It destroys relationship between man and man. When men tamper with the word of God, they are destroying a standard, and all life is all out of kilter in the spiritual realm, and when men destroy money, they destroy all economics. When they destroy measures of capacity, they again destroy communication. They tamper with life itself. Now, of course, the way of tampering as Isaiah made clear is not merely by changing the size of a quart bottle.

Of course, we have that now a days. You get all kinds of big packages today, you buy soap in a super big package and you don’t get as many ounces of soap very often as you did in the smaller package, and there are all kinds of ways today of giving you more, supposedly, and less. Ice cream is made in such a way that air is blown into it in the process of manufacture, so that when you buy a quart of ice cream, you’re not buying a quart. It comes in a quart container, but it is not a quart. That is a violation of the law. Watered wine, air-filled ice cream, watered fruit. I know, as a boy, that many, many supposed Christians, when I was a boy on the farm, who were in church every Sunday morning and evening, and were very self-righteous about how good they were as Christians, nonetheless, would water their food just before picking, if they could get away with it and an inspector did not get by. Why? They could add tons to their harvest and make a lot of money. Of course, it cut the flavor so your fruit was not as tasty, but they made money thereby. It was quite a common trick before, now it’s not as commonly practiced because they have ways of detecting it, for ranchers to take their cattle off water to fence them off from the water, and then throw a lot of salted hay to them, make sure they were good and hungry. So when they finished eating the hay and they were ready to turn them loose on water, they tanked up on water and got bloated with it, and of course, weighed heavily when they were taken immediately to be sold.

Now, of course, the buyers have their own dishonest scale, as it were. The scales are inspected by the state, but they will take the cattle to market in closed trucks so that the water runs off the cattle, they sweat them so in the closed truck without circulation and they lose weight heavily, and they rob the rancher that way, sweated stock. All of these are violations of the commandment of just measures.

Then fifth, just balances, what we would call today called just weights or scales, and Amos declares in Amos 8:4-8, that the poor are especially victimized this way in that they are least able to protect themselves.

Then finally, the consequences of this law, of the violation of this law, are apparent in the land itself, scripture declares. Amos, for example, declares the judgment shall sweep over such a land as the Nile floods Egypt. God requires obedience. He declares that, because he has saved his people, “Therefore shall ye observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the Lord,” and in Deuteronomy 25:13-15, Moses reemphasized this law of God, declaring, “Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”

In other words, God emphatically declares that he will lengthen the life of a people and a nation that obey his law here, and he will cut short the life of a people that does not obey his law here, with regards to weights and measures, with regard to money and every other kind of measure.

This then is an important fact. If God declare he will shorten our lives and the life of the nation for violation of this law, is it not a sin not to declare this to the people of God? It was once declares commonly. There is a great deal, for example, in Luther about this, and Luther spoke out very strongly. Incidentally, there is a very strong passage in his commentary on Romans, the great series of lectures with which the Reformation began on the sin of inflation, and a doctored money, a fraudulent coinage. In his commentary on Deuteronomy, Luther says, “A just weight and just measure shall be preserved in the community, so that a poor person and one’s neighbor are not cheated. This also has general validity for all exchanges of all contracts, that the seller give just and equitable wares for the money of the buyer. Here greed knows unbelievable injustices and tricks in changing, cheapening, imitating, and adulterating merchandise. Therefore, it is no small part of the concern of government to have an eye here to the common good.” Note what Luther said. “No small part of the concern of government.” That is, of the ministry of justice. Therefore, Luther felt it was no small part of the ministry of the word to declare the word in these matters, in other words, to be relevant to every day life. The old saying certainly holds good today, that too many preachers are so spiritually minded that they are of no earthly good.

The modern legal tradition, in relationship to this law, finally, should be discussed. First of all, the older liberalism and the present day conservatism has been strongly laissez faire, the thesis of laissez faire is that the self-interest of everybody adds up to the general good. In other words, let everybody go their own selfish way, with no interference from the state, and the general self-interest of all adds up to the public good. Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware. As a result, it has had no concern for the state enforcement of this law. This law was a part of our heritage. It was a part of America up to approximately the Civil War, but since the Civil War until the Wilsonian Era, the rule of the individual, his self-interest prevailed.

On the other hand, the New Liberalism and socialism affirm the rule of the state. They maintain that the self-interest of the state leads to the greatest good of all, because supposedly, the state has the welfare of all people at heart, and of course, we have seen that this is not true. The era from the Civil War to World War 1 produced the robber barons and a great many injustices. What good there was in it was a hangover from our Christian heritage, and the period from World War 1 to the present has seen a steady drift into a tyrant state. The first alternative, laissez faire, offers no protection to the individual from the sin and rapacity of men. The second offers no protection from the sin and rapacity of the state.

Our perspective must be the biblical one. The biblical rule is not the rule of the individual nor the rule of the state, but the rule of God and his law. God’s self-interest is alone the true foundation of law and order. We cannot trust to the self-interest of man or the state. Man is a sinner and the state reflects the sin of man, but God’s self-interest is alone the true foundation of law and order. God as all holy, righteous, and just, does most wisely decree and govern all things. Only as men are redeemed, regenerated by the blood of Jesus Christ, only as they submit by grace or by the compulsion of a Christian order to God’s law, can there be justice. If God’s law order is not respected, then neither man’s self-interest nor the state’s self-interest can preserve the social order. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee for the plain speaking of thy word. We thank thee that thy word is a light and a lamp unto our feet, and we thank thee that it is so filled with glorious promises. O Lord, our God, indeed we, as a nation, have sinned against thy word. We have forsaken thy law and we have adopted false weights and measures in things material and things spiritual. We thank thee, our Father, that thy word speaks to us, and by thy grace we have come to thee. Grant, our Father, that we move in terms of true standards thy word in every realm, and that our life be prolonged in terms of it, unto the end that we may rebuild and that thy law word may again prevail and the counsels of men and nations, of churches and schools. O Lord, our God, bless and prosper us to this end, we beseech thee. In Jesus name. Amen.

The land is defiled. Second, it profanes the name of God. Third, it causes the Shekinah, or the presence of God, the glory of God to depart. Fourth, it makes Israel perish by the sword, and fifth, to go into captivity. This is from the various statements throughout the law concerning these violations. Yes?

[Audience] I wonder if this law would cover this. Eight years ago we bought an extended policy, two years later fell apart {?} because {?} was so poorly made, us and about fifty other people {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, that would cover it.

[Audience] The builder was around thirty-five years old and in the meantime, he committed suicide {?} you know, take their life, but what building code {?} in this {?}

[Rushdoony] Not zoning, and that type of thing, but a requirement of honest dealing by a contractor, yes. Definitely. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] I wanted to ask you another question. {?} If the word “vanity” was used so often in the scriptures, I wonder if it had a different and {?} meaning then than what we think of as {?}

[Rushdoony] You can best translate “vanity” into our modern terminology by the word “futility.” Yes. Mary, you had a question?

[Audience] I wondered if you would define Arminianism?

[Rushdoony] Would I define Arminianism? First of all, Arminianism, which is spelled Arminianism, is really the Protestant form of Thomism, or Scholasticism. It is the basic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas adapted, and cheapened to a great degree, and made into a Protestant doctrine. As a result, your Arminians are really theologically a part of the Roman tradition. Arminianism, except for its doctrine of the church, is a denatured version of Thomism. In fact, Thomism is far closer to the faith than is Arminianism. Now, Arminianism basically denies the sovereignty of God. It declares that it is not the sovereign act of God which saves man, but man’s choice. Man chooses God. Man’s faith saves him. In this respect, the Reformation phrase, “Justification by faith,” is one I prefer not to use because it has been destroyed in a sense by Arminians. They say, “Yes, we believe in the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith.” In other words, our faith saves us, but what Luther meant by that is justification by God, who through his gift of faith, works the miracle of a changed life in our hearts. As a result, we should more properly as against the Arminians, use the expression “justification by God,” or “By the grace of God,” because they inescapably define faith as man’s choice, not the gift of God.

Now, there are degrees of Arminianism, but Arminianism in its conclusion as well as in its beginning is humanism. A few years ago when I spoke at Riverside, about five years ago, there was one extremely fundamentalistic minister present who protested against what I had to say because it had, as its foundation, he says, the damnable doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Now, for him, the essence of the matter was that man, by his faith, chooses God, and all that Jesus did was to open up the possibility of salvation and then man can choose to accept what God does. In other words, implicit here is the omnipotence of man against the omnipotence of God. Arminianism is therefore humanism.

It’s interesting you ask this question because, although I did not use the word Arminianism, my newsletter for December, which is going out this week on Thursday, and we’re going to have the announcements, if Vic will get them Wednesday to the women’s meeting, of the Christmas Festival as well as Gary’s article on wage and price controls, in that mailing, but in this newsletter, I deal with the so-called passion for souls. The passion for souls is a humanistic thing, and you find when you talk to these men who have this passion for souls, that they have no passion for the word of God, and all these revivalists want the lowest common denominator kind of theology. I talked with one man who’s one of the most prominent men on the team of one very famous evangelist, as famous as any today, without mentioning any names, who followed a very loose view of Genesis 1, and he was ready to read all the geological ages into Genesis 1 and a kind of progressive evolution, and still say he believed in the Bible, and he welcomed Bernard Ramm’s book Harmony of Science and Scripture, and those of you who’ve read it know what a radical compromising book it is, and I said, “How can you accept something that is so plainly guilty of doing violence to scripture?” and his answer was, “But this position doesn’t lead into a conflict with people about science and the Bible.” In other words, compromise is at the heart of Arminianism. It sacrifices the word of God. What is important? He told me and all these evangelists. If you start bringing down scripture, every time, when you find that they’re weak on scripture, “Well, we can’t bother with the fine points of doctrine,” and finally their answer to me, every time I’ve tangled with one of these characters has been, and I mentioned this in the newsletters, “Well, what you lack is a passion for souls.” In other words, they have no passion for the word of God and for the glory of God. Souls are important and you can do violence to the word of God in the name of man. Now, this is humanism, and today it’s humanism that’s captured the church. This is why some of them are so ready to go along with the civil rights revolution, or to talk about love continually, because of this basic humanism. “You’ve got to love everybody.” Why? Doesn’t the Psalmist say, “Do I not hate them that hate thee? “Yea, I hate them with a perfect hatred. The enemies of God we are to hate, but the humanist cannot do this. He cannot stand division between men.

Now, in This Independent Republic, one of the points I made was that every theology has to have a doctrine of an undivided godhead. There can be no division in the godhead. If you have a division in the godhead, your religion collapses. Therefore, of course, the early church had to battle, as I point out in The Foundations of Social Order, to maintain the unity and the equality of the three persons of the godhead. Now, if you’re a humanist, then you worship man, and what do you have to have to be logical, philosophically, in terms of your faith? The unity of your godhead, the unity of man. You cannot tolerate anything that divides man from man, but our Lord said, “I came to bring a sword, to divide households, in terms of myself. Not in terms of your petty quarrels, but in terms of myself, in terms of the fundamental truth of God versus Satan, the regenerate versus the unregenerate,” but humanism has to have a united mankind, because it has to have a unity of the godhead, and therefore, the humanist will do everything to bring men together.

In my current newsletter, I quote one theologian who says that we must have peace at any price, and so he asks Americans to surrender at every point to the civil rights demands of Negroes. Yes?

[Audience] I’d like to ask a question about this, that’s been going on for some time now, the Age of Aquarius and all over the demonstrations, do you know anything about that? {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the occultists, the theosophists, and so on, of course, are increasingly influential. Your most popular books, your best selling books today, are not those on the bestselling list. They’re occultist books. The money in occultist books today is phenomenal, and of course, occultists and astrologers like Jean Dixon have become extremely popular and they are syndicated writer here in Los Angeles and others. They make tremendous money. Now, according to these people, the Age of Aquarius is the age we are going to go into, and it’s an age in which the elite masters are going to rule the world for the welfare of mankind, and there will be peace and prosperity, and plenty, and everything under the hidden masters. Yes?

[Audience] Mr. Rushdoony, {?} one church, has become very concerned with {?}God’s word {?}. Is this what is turning our Reformed churches into fundamentalistic reformed churches? I mean, I hate to add the, I don’t know how to say this, but it just seems to be it really hurts, and it seems they are preaching the Gospel, they do preach{?} the foundation{?} and this is {?} they are not preaching the Bible in whole, all of them, and this is what is hurting us.

[Rushdoony] Yes, it is pietism, and it is staying with the A, B, C,’s. Now, you cannot learn to read unless you learn your A, B, C’s. As a Christian, you cannot begin to understand unless you are saved. Those are the A, B, C’s, but you don’t spend all your time, once you learn the A, B, C,’s, going over the alphabet, do you? You proceed from there to the mature things, the whole counsel of God, but today, the Reformed churches, like the fundamentalists, well, all the churches just concentrate on the A, B, C’s. I know some fundamentalist churches where they actually say the only thing that should be preached from the pulpit is the message of salvation. I know one elder in a fundamentalist church who got after the pastor because he wasn’t’ preaching, “Ye must be born again,” every Sunday.

Now, in effect, a lot of the Reformed churches are doing the same thing. They’re concentrating on a few doctrines with respect to salvation. They go a little bit beyond John 3:16, but then they don’t go out into the whole counsel of God as it relates to every day life, and so the church becomes irrelevant, and it becomes a congregation of babes in Christ. Now babes are not well behaved. We believe in total depravity as Christians, and we believe that children need discipline or they get out of hand, and maturity, the ability to govern one’s self, is something that comes with growth and Christian maturity. St. Paul condemned those Christians who were still babes in Christ, who were still with the elementary things, with milk rather than strong meat, and the word he used on one occasions for babes, in the Greek, is idiotes, which is our English “idiots.” You’re still idiots in Christ. You’re not growing. Now, this may be a harsh judgment, but the church today is full of idiots. They don’t grow. How can they grow if they are given nothing but milk and pabulum? This is why there must be a revival of the preaching of the whole word of God. Yes?

[Audience] {?} fundamentalism {?} churches, I noticed {?} or God {?} there was only one person in the Trinity, {?} only pray, and {?} that can cause {?} to their {?}salvation {?} salvation referred to Christ {?} Why would that be? I know {?} because {?} but if this is {?} because they use the word God instead of Christ.

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is true and it’s because, well, you find with some, it is really a sin to refer to God because then you’re an Old Testament believer rather than a New Testament believer, and with others, when you say “God,” it refers only to God the Father, not God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, which is heretical. The word “God” refers to the Trinity, not just God the Father or not just Jesus Christ. The word God refers to the Trinity. If you’re talking about the Father then you must say God the Father. So, this is heretical, but the church today, you see, has forsaken sound doctrine by and large, or else withdrawn into a narrow, pietistic mold. Yes?

[Audience] Can you bring up something else, your definition of fundamentalism, fundamentalist?

[Rushdoony] Fundamentalism. Fundamentalism, as a term, began in the 1890’s when a series of essays were published by a variety of writers entitled The Fundamentals. At that time, those fundamentals were written by men who were among them, Warfield and others, who were great Reformed scholars. However, the term came to be especially after World War 1, exclusively used by the Arminians, who felt that no one was a fundamentalist unless they were Arminian in theology, so that the term Fundamentalism has come to refer to the Arminians, rather than to say, the Reformed churches, or the Lutheran churches, or the Anglican churches, and theologies that are thoroughly biblical. Yes?

[Audience] Joey {?} Hargiss{?} constantly uses the term, we are members of the New Testament church. What does he mean by that?

[Rushdoony] Yes. He is a member of the Church of Christ, one branch of it, which calls itself a New Testament church, and openly denies the validity of the Old Testament and of the law. As a matter of fact, many of them, and I believe that Hargiss{?} may be among them, I know that many of his associates are, are extreme dispensationalists so that most of the New Testament is not valid for them either. It belongs to the kingdom age when the millennial kingdom is established by Christ among the Jews. That’s {?}

[Audience] {?} but the millennium and the establishment as the kingdom on earth, but he’s using that {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, for him, the Old Testament is valueless, and I would be a heretic in his sight for preaching as I have today. Yes?

[Audience] The Arminians use this passage of Revelations 3:20, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him and he with me,” and they use this all the time. Would you please comment on that in relation to mans choosing {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Outwardly, we go through the act of choice, and our choice is real. Our choice is a secondary cause, or a secondary choice. In other words, the fact that God is the first cause does not remove the reality of second causes, as the Westminster Confession of Faith declares. Rather, it establishes the validity of second causes. Thus, my choice ultimately reflects God’s decree and decision from all eternity, but what I do is still real for me. I don’t feel any compulsion. I am free to do that which it is my nature to do. So, I am free, as I act, but the ultimate cause of all things is God who made all things. “Known unto God are all his works from the foundation of the world.” Now you see, scientific determinism is different from predestination. Scientific determinism says everything has been determined by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. Therefore, nothing we do has any significance, but predestination says our choice is real, our will has validity, precisely because God created all things. So there’s world of difference between the two.

Well, we’re running way over time. I’ll take one or two more questions. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, of course, it’s a major problem and you have put your finger on the problem. Today, the churches have become what they are and they’re suffering. Very few ministers are happy in their work, and I’ve talked to a number of godly pastors whose name you’d recognize, and there is no joy in their work. They are suffering. The church is not what it should be. It should be a place for joyful growth together, a pastor and people. Of course, this is one reason why we are concerned with Chalcedon. We want to establish the principles of Christian reconstruction in every area; church, state, school, everywhere.

End of tape