Eighth Commandment

Lawful Wealth

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Restitution & Forgiveness

Lesson: Lawful Wealth

Genre: Speech

Track: 89

Dictation Name: RR130AW89

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

“A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass. When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the Lord destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God.”

Our subject today is Lawful Wealth, and Deuteronomy 8 makes it very clear that there is a strict correlation between godly wealth and obedience to God’s commandment. Israel is commanded to obey all the commandments of God, “that ye may live.” Life is dependent upon obedience.

Moreover, they are told that it is God who gives them power to get well, that there is a strict correlation between true wealth, honest wealth, and obedience to the laws of God. This is a correlation which, through the centuries, has been recognized and stressed. Thus, the Westminster Shorter Catechism, in question 73-75 declares,

Which is the eighth commandment? The eighth commandment is Thou shalt not steal.

What is declared in the eighth commandment? The eighth commandment requireth the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.

What is forbidden in the eighth commandment? The eighth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever doth or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbor’s wealth, or outward estate.

Thus, through the centuries, it has been clearly seen that Thou shalt not steal has, as its affirmative counterpart, Thou shalt gain wealth. Thou shalt prosper in the Lord. The eighth commandment, to repeat, requireth the lawful procuring and furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.

Alexander White, more than a century ago, saw this commandment as covering “All matters connected with the earning, saving, spending, imperiting{?} and bequeathing of money and property. All a man’s possessions go back to the beginning of them, go down to the bottom of them, will always be found to represent so much self-denial, labor, industry. Obscure as may be the origin, history and growth of this, or that particular estate, yet it must in its beginning had been due to some man’s obedience to the creator’s law of labor and reward. Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it. This is the original charter of the right of property. Akin to the habit of industry is the sister habit of frugality and forethought.”

Now, this statement is a very important one. Because it embodies certain plain, obvious facts, that to our socialistic age have ceased to be obvious and are no longer stressed. As stated these matters that I wrote for Post Federal Savings which has circulated now in a few hundred thousand copies across country, and it is interesting the response I have gotten to it. Just within the past few weeks, I had a letter from a man in Illinois who practically went up in smoke when he read this statement, because I had stated that capitalization rested on orthodox Christian faith, on the Puritan mentality, and this was so offensive to him because he was, first of all, hostile to capitalism, and second because he was hostile to Puritanism, and third, because he was hostile to Christianity, and he was really irrational, and he wanted me to send my books to him, incidentally, freely so that he could tear my position apart.

Now, what is the point that is made here? Both by Deuteronomy 8, by the Catechism, by Alexander White, and by Christian thinkers through the centuries, it is simply this, that capitalization, the accumulation of wealth (that’s capitalization), is the conversion of wealth, of savings, and of forethought into tangible, working assets. No progress is possible without capitalization.

Now, some foolish people, like the man who wrote to me to the contrary, communism and socialism are not opposed to capitalization. They’re very much in favor of it. Capitalization is a necessity in any and every society. You have to have work. You have to have thrift, and you have to have forethought or planning. There is no progress possible without it. Without work, thrift or savings, plus forethought or planning, you’re down to the level of the savages at rock bottom. The key issue is capitalization by whom?

Communism and socialism believe in capitalization by the state. This is why it used to be said that communism was state capitalism, and that’s very true. It does not negate capitalization. It simply says that only the state can indulge in capitalization.

As a result, for state planning, for state action, for state socialism, for public work, work frugality or savings, and forethought are still necessary. However, the work is now extracted by force from the people, they are compelled to save by being taken, their savings are taken from them, or they are given very low wages, and the forethought or the planning is done by state planners.

Now, state capitalism is, of course, very defective because it is, first of all, theft or expropriation. It is a dishonest capitalization. Moreover, the forethought or the planning is divorced from the work and the savings. The work and the savings are forced out of the people. The planning is done by people who don’t pay the price for their planning, and this is why socialism, communism, are inescapably failure. There is no break of consequences placed upon the planners. It’s the people who have to pay, the planners take no risk whatsoever. All the risk is transferred to people forcefully, by compulsion.

As a result, the planners are always prodigal. They can have a five-year plan and it’s a failure, and they’re not out of business. They simply start another five-year plan, or a ten-year plan. They transfer the guilt to somebody else just as they transferred the risk to someone else. Wherever planning of forethought is separate from work and savings, instead of capitalization, decapitalization results. Thus, socialism is, by nature, imperialistic. It must continually annex, or seize, fresh territory to have fresh capital. Its capital comes only by force and expropriation.

Private capital is acquired in three ways, other than private theft, which we rule out as ungodly. It is acquired by work, by inheritance, or by gift. In all three cases, there is an incentive, because the loss is personal. You are the loser. Because there is personal loss, direct liability, there is a necessity for wise forethought, for sound planning. Thus, there are people who work and make money and lose it just as there are people who inherit, or receive as a gift money, and lose it, but the percentage of loss in such cases is negligible, as compared to the percentage of loss where you have state capitalization. It’s 100% there.

Lawful wealth is that wealth which comes to man as he abides by God’s law and applies work, thrift, and forethought to his activities. Lawful wealth is a promise of God’s covenant. As a result, Deuteronomy 8 makes emphatic the warnings of God to Israel, to the covenant people of every age, that they do not be lifted up by pride when God prospers them, that they become ever grateful to God for his blessing, because it is only by the virtue of God’s saving power that they have that character which makes possible capitalization.

As G. Ernest Wright has commented on this passage, Deuteronomy 8:11-18 in particular, “The pride is most terrible and insidious because it flouts the plainest of facts by asserting the virtual deity of self. ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ Yet Israel must remember that the wealth is by God’s power, not her own, and it is given in accord with his covenanted promises, not in payment for what the nation deserves. This is one of the strongest and most powerful passages in the Bible of this characteristic and distressing problem of human life. Wealth here is not by natural right. It is God’s gift, yet man must beware of the terrible and self-destructive temptation to deify himself which comes with it.”

At this point, people say, “What does this passage really say? After all, you have to assign it some spiritual meaning, or something vague in general because after all, look at all the men around us who gain their wealth by their own work, and how do you bring in God’s grace here?” Let us examine history.

There has never been the growth of free enterprise in the world apart from Christian civilization. It simply has not existed. It has been extremely limited, extremely primitive. There has never been possible the development that Christian civilization has brought about, and the reason is very obvious. No other religion has ever produced the character which the grace of God produces, the character which is willing to forego present pleasures for future returns, which means thrift, savings, and to combine with that the foresight, the wisdom, to use those savings wisely. You have had wealth in other cultures. For example, in India and in China, in Rome, and in Greece, but the kind of wealth that existed there usually came by extortion, by imperialism, by state capitalization of one form or another, and the people of a particular group allied to the power of the state, profiting thereby.

As a result, it was always parasitic. Wherever you have state capitalization, you do have people who can ride along with it, just as today there are more millionaires in the Soviet Union than there were in the days of the czars. These are people who, because they have connections with the government, can make millions of paper rubles, but their paper wealth can be wiped out overnight, and overnight they can be placed into a prison camp. This is not private capitalization, and the wealth in India and in China, and in ancient Rome, basically, was this kind of wealth, but Christian civilization has flourished, has grown, precisely because the Christian man, redeemed by the grace of God, had then the character to work, to save in terms of a future goal, and then to plan wisely in terms of that future goal.

Some of you heard Dr. Hans Sennholz in his seminar a week ago yesterday. Dr. Sennholz gave a very bleak picture of the future. A five cent dollar in ten years if there were no change in the present rate of decline, and of course there is certainly going to be an acceleration in the rate of inflation. Wage and price controls, the progressive destruction of capital, and a dictatorship. It’s the only kind of picture he could give, but you will recall that he also made the point that the change would have to come with the people. The people were to blame, and this is precisely it. Where there is no vision, the people perish, scripture says, and what is the meaning of vision there?

Hebrew scholars make clear that what is meant by vision is that wisdom, that foresight that comes through a knowledge of the word of God, and there is no knowledge, no foresight, in terms of the word of God today. Therefore, the people perish. This perishing will continue. It will not change until the people are recalled to the word of God, to the law of God, until they develop that character which can’t accumulate and use wisely the products of hard work, until it can capitalize, because the first capitalization is of character. Only as character develops among the people, spiritual capital in terms of scripture, can there be material capitalization, and of course, this is what we are doing here today and every day, is it not? We are working to further spiritual capitalization, as the only sound means of restoring every kind of capitalization, true capitalization, in this country. There is no other way.

Scripture distinguishes always between godly wealth and ungodly wealth. Wealth in itself is not a sign of God’s favor. It can be a witness to the fact of theft and fraud, but it can be a sign of God’s favor and covenantal blessings when it rests on the background of spiritual capitalization. Capitalization of a private character always requires a background of faith and Christian stability. It is always a product of the Puritan disposition, of the willingness to forego present pleasures to accumulate some wealth for future purposes. Without character, no capitalization, but instead, decapitalization, the depletion of wealth.

About fifteen, twenty years ago, two sociologists made an analysis of the American character. The title of their study was The Lonely Crowd. The point they made, very clearly and very ably, was that modern man is consumption-centered rather than production-centered, that he is group-directed rather than inner-directed. In other words, he moves not in terms of a faith and a character, but he moved in terms of a crowd. He is not concerned with producing, because he lacks spiritual capital and therefore, cannot produce material capital. So we have a civilization which is eating up the past and the present as well as the future. We are decapitalization centuries of Christian inheritance. Decapitalization in a society is always preceded by a breakdown of faith and character, by the mentality which says that “I have done this. My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.” It is preceded by a change in man’s life. Whenever men feel that private happiness is man’s purpose and goal rather than serving and glorifying God, and finding joy in him, wherever men feel that life owes them something, rather than seeing themselves as debtors to God, and wherever men feel called to fulfill themselves apart from God, rather than in him, there you have a society in rapid process of decapitalization, and this is our basic problem today. We have a rapid decapitalization.

Thus, if tomorrow you placed in Washington the right kind of man and had a totally different political regime, it would not affect matters in the slightest. It might barely day a few days the decline we are in, because men are spiritually decapitalized, and therefore, they live in terms of material decapitalization.

According to Deuteronomy 8:18, “But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.” The purpose of wealth is to establish the covenant, to prosper it. Its goal is that man prosper in his task of possessing the earth, subduing it, and exercising dominion over it. In other words, man must reclaim the earth, make it truly God’s kingdom, and the means to this is capitalization, of lawful wealth, and therefore, the covenant blessing is wealth. Capitalization is therefore, a radical and a total task for the Christian man. He must seek to subdue the earth and to gain wealth as a means of restitution and restoration, to establish God’s dominion in every realm, wherever godly men establish their superior productivity and gain wealth, they thereby glorify God. Wealth in itself is good and is a blessing of the Lord. It is trust in wealth rather than God, which is condemned repeatedly in scripture. Godly wealth is therefore, basic to God’s purposes for the earth. It is vital to the task of restoration.

Sometime ago, we considered the question of personal restitution. We shall return soon to another aspect of personal restitution. This has always been important to our history until recent times. Thus, as Franklin, in his memoirs mention, “A merchant names Denam, who failed in his business at Crystal{?}, compounded with his creditors and went to America. In a few years, he accumulated a plentiful fortune, returned to England in the same ship with Franklin, called his creditors together to an entertainment, and paid the full remainder of his debts with interest up to the time of settlement.” This was the way men operated then. They had an obligation to make restitution.

They also felt an obligation to gain wealth in order to restore the earth, and thus it was that the first settlers of this country declared it their purpose in subduing the earth on a new continent to restore Zion. In one of the first appeals sent back to England for more immigrants to come over, began with the words, “Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, come and join us, in rebuilding the walls of Zion, in restoring God’s order to the earth.” This was their purpose, therefore, in seeking to gain wealth, to establish God’s order.

Man must restore the earth and make it truly and fully God’s domain, his kingdom in which his law-word is taught, obeyed, and honored. Man must gain wealth to do this, and he must use it to the glory of God. To gain lawful wealth, man must know and obey God’s law. Capitalization therefore, is necessary to the creation mandate, to subdue the earth, and to exercise dominion over it. The boundaries of our dominion, therefore, must be extended in every area, in the professions, in the world of business, in the world of knowledge, in order to bring every area into captivity to Christ and his word. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou art he who giveth us power to gain wealth. Increase our spiritual capital by thy word and by thy grace, that we may grow in grace and knowledge and by work, thrift, and foresight, may recapitalize this land, establish they law-word therein, and serve and magnify thy holy name. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name. Amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, Dr. Sennholz felt that what was coming here was the Fabian socialist kind of dictatorship and socialism. Command socialism, as against ownership socialism, which is Marxism, and he definitely feels that the only way to check that is by a change in the people, which points directly to what we’re dealing with today. Yes?

[Audience] {?} material wealth in proportion to their own growth.

[Rushdoony] In proportion to the growth of socialism.

[Audience] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Except that it has not been the socialists who have produced it. It’s been produced in spite of them, and wherever they have gained power, that country has declined rapidly in its progress. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. The term “brass” as it is used there in the old King James refers to copper. Now, of course, brass has come to take on a different meaning, but when you read brass in the Bible, just read copper, and the cooper mines, of course, were well developed in that area, especially under Solomon. Any other questions? Yes?

[Audience] {?} I was wondering {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the question is was the symbol of the cross a common symbol before the time of Christ? There are many, many books written that claim the cross was an ancient symbol, and of course, the most common reference is to the Egyptian ankh, which is very widely used by hippies today. It looks like a cross, or a “T” rather, with a loop at the top. Now, this is definitely not the cross. It has a superficial resemblance, but it is an ancient Egyptian occultist, and probably phallic or sexual symbol. There is no connection between that and the cross. Now, superficially, you do find in some cultures, the cross, but it usually has reference to a number of other things. You find, for example, in ancient India, the swastika, and some people call that a cross, but very often the reference is in such crosses to a wheel, only the outer rim is left off. The wheel of life, which was a very ancient symbol, so that when you analyze these various crosses, you find that they have no reference to anything that is comparable to the Christian cross. They’re something totally alien.

Crucifixion was a common form of execution under the Romans. The people in Palestine were familiar with it, so that when our Lord said, “Take up your cross and follow me,” he was using an image that was very familiar to them, a form of execution, of dying to yourself, to be alive in Christ. The cross, therefore, in anything that is even remotely the Christian sense, is entirely new in the history of the world, in Christ, but of course, today, it’s fashionable to take very superficial resemblances and to try to make something out of them. Just as you are told, incidentally, that there are many myths of a virgin birth in the ancient world, but many religions had it. This is totally false. There is no story of a virgin birth anywhere before Christ. None whatsoever. After the time of Christ, as the gospel was preached into India, and into the Middle East, and North Africa, other religions followed the story of the virgin birth and tried to apply it to their heroes or to their gods, but in no pre-Christian document can you find stories of a virgin birth. This has been demonstrated long years past. It was summarized very powerful by J. Gresham Machen in his book on the virgin birth some years ago, in the twenties, but they still repeat this kind of story. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. There are supposedly several Llamas who are living Buddhas, reincarnations of Buddha. I don’t know how he can be reincarnated in two or three different people at the same time, but this is their belief. So that these Llamas{?} are worshiped, in effect, as a god by the particular adherence of that particular form of Buddhism. Now this is an ironic fact, because the whole point of Buddhism is a radical atheism. Buddha’s life teaching was that there is neither right now wrong, no heaven nor hell, that the only ultimate thing is nothingness, and therefore, man is destined for nothingness, and therefore, you might as well give upon life and forsake everything, because you’re going to die and it’s a big fraud, the whole of life. You’re destined possibly to be reincarnated repeatedly, but ultimately, you’re going to be dead.

Now, when they worship these Dalai Llamas, or any kind of Llama who is living Buddha, they are worshiping someone as virtually God, although they don’t believe in a god, who has told them the good news that there is no sense to it all. Now, this is the monstrosity that Buddhism is. It is a masterpiece, too, also, of evasion. You can deny life in two ways: You can deny life and Hinduism has the same belief, by forsaking it, by holing up in a cave, or in a monastery, or some such thing, or you can deny life by a total contempt for it. Thus, there are those who follow the way of the cave and of the monastery, and there are those who spend their days and nights in endless sexual exercises and gluttony. In fact, they’ve developed all kinds of games, including musical chairs, sexual musical chairs. The whole point is to say there is no meaning to sex, there is no meaning to marriage, there is no meaning to personal relationship, and we’ll show our utter contempt for it. Supposedly, because life is nothingness and it is total ugliness, you’re supposed to be kind to one another and shed no blood, because we’re all in this together and it’s a horrible thing, therefore, shed no blood. This was Buddha’s thing. Be compassionate one to another. Therefore, in Buddhism, of course, as far as possible, they avoid shedding blood. They strangle you, and they devise a number of very refined tortures to avoid shedding your blood. This is the kind of mentality it creates. It’s as sick a religion as you can hope to find. Of course, there are a lot, just about as sick, but of course, this is what happens to make when he forsakes God. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Very good question. There is a remarkable growth in Japan, although Japan has a very small, very, very small Christian population. There’s an interesting background to Japan. First of all, Christianity has left a peculiar mark on Japan. The Catholic missionaries went there, as you know, in the 17th century. They began an extensive conquest, spiritually, of Japan, so that it seemed, for a time, as though Japan was going to be a Christian nation. As a result, a very savage and repressive persecution of all Christians was the result, an attempt to wipe out all Christians and that was when you had the bamboo curtain dropped on Japan, and no outsiders until Admiral Perry went there, because the Christian conquest came so close to being a real thing, a spiritual conquest.

The interesting part is however, that the work of these monks who went to Japan never died out. It remained an undercurrent and it left a permanent mark on the Japanese character. Many of them clung to the faith with underground movements to the very last, that is, even to Perry’s day and came out into the open. So the character of Japan was made radically different from that of any other oriental peoples by this missionary work, which left its lingering marks.

Then, the very interesting thing is that the very few Japanese Christians, there are a limited number, very small percentage of the total population, have had an unbelievably strong influence in the economic life of the country. They have not converted all the people there, or even the leaders of industry, but their influence has been very powerful. I was very interested when I was with the Voger{?} Foundation in the question that was raised by the foundation. They wanted to know why this tremendous economic vitality in Japan. Why the kind of thinking that exists there, and so they wrote to a Japanese scholar and asked him to make a survey and send them a report on what was the source of this thinking, and it was quite a dramatic report that came back, because he drew a chart as well as sending a written report, and at the center of the chart, he had a name: Murata. It was about the only Japanese in Japan I knew. He’s a Calvinist who came to this country, took a degree in economics under Ludwig von Mises, went back there and began to teach von Misean economics to Christians and to non-Christians and to tell them what capitalization meant, and every kind of activity that they have any significance in Japan was on a chart radiating out of the one name in the center: Murata. The irony of it is that he’s under terrific pressure and it’s questionable how long his influence will continue, but it’s an indication of what, first the background of a Christian character which leaves its marks, a handful of Christians, and one powerful thinker can do in a country. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Murata’s influence was very important after World War 2 precisely because McArthur had left a heavy emphasis on the need for Christianization in Japan, and they were ready to listen to Christian scholars like Murata. Now, of course, there is a counter-influence, the Marxist influence in the universities and colleges, which threatens to destroy a good deal of the economic growth and prosperity Japan has enjoyed. Yes?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Zen Buddhism is one of the most radical forms of Buddhism in that it carries to the “nth” degree the implication of total relativism, nothingness. The Way is whatever you choose, you see. You accept the reality. There is no truth, there is no law, there is no meaning. So you don’t attach yourself to anything, to any principle, and you take the particular area you’re in and you say, “Well, I’m going to operate here,” you might say, as a total shock, without any principle, without any meaning, and without committing myself to fully to anything. With a kind of detachment. So, it’s a total amoralism, and total relativism. This is why Buddhism has had such a spectacular appeal in this country in recent years, because the thinking of John Dewey, and of progressive education, of all your modern philosophies of education, is really basically one with Buddhism. This is why Dewey was so immensely popular in China in the twenties when he went there to lecture, because after all, he was saying precisely the things that they had believed in China for centuries, and it thrilled them to feel that the West is now coming to believe in the truth of our culture.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, he’s a schizophrenic personality then, but there are may like that around. Yes, one last question, our time is . . .

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, to define God as the ultimate reality is not adequate from the Christian point of view. He is that, certainly, but he is also the supreme person, because ultimate reality, that could mean God is nothing but atoms, if you say atoms are the ultimate reality, or nothingness, as the Hindus say, and they call nothingness God. So, the dictionary definition is not adequate.

Well, our time is up now.

End of tape