The Ninth Commandment

False Freedom

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 19

Track: 102

Dictation Name: RR130BD102

Date: 1960s-70s

Proverbs 19:5, and our subject, “False Freedom.” Proverbs 19:5, “A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.”

Some few years ago, a pioneer study in the Ten Commandments was written by Rev. T. Robert Ingraham. It was a survey of the Ten Commandments, devoting a chapter to each of the commandments. At the time that it was published, I was with the {?} Foundation, and through the foundation I distributed a great many copies of this study to ministers across the country. Their reactions were very revealing. Uniformly, they criticized the book for its treatment of the Third and Ninth Commandments: thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; thou shalt not bear false witness.

Mr. Ingraham in his study of these two commandments related them very closely to the courts of law, to perjury and to slander. And the clergy were unanimous across country in stating this has nothing to do with the court. This is simply moral counsel against profanity and against gossip.

Now in a minor sense, both of these are forbidden by these two commandments, but Mr. Ingraham’s book, The World Under God’s Law, was absolutely correct in its evaluation of these commandments. They do deal with law. The Ten Commandments are Law. And nothing makes more obvious the fact that the reference is to the law than to examine the rest of scripture.

Our text this morning is the Proverbs 19:5. Now the book of Proverbs is an excellent commentary on the law. Over and over again, it cites the law, declares it to be the true way of life, draws more conclusions from it, and re-states the law. Our text says two things:

         A false witness shall not be unpunished. In other words, there must be prosecution of a false witness. The word unpunished can also be rendered, ‘have innocence,’ that is acquitted. It has reference to a court of law. It requires that wherever there is a case of perjury, there be prosecution.

         The second half of the verse states, “and he that speaketh lies shall not escape.” Again, the reference is to a court of laws. He that speaketh lies—he that is guilty of slander and of libel shall not escape prosecution. In other words, the courts have a duty to prosecute libel and slander as a part of the criminal law. This is no longer the case. A man must bring civil suit, must become his own prosecutor if he has been libeled or slandered. And his chances of ever gaining a conviction are very, very slight. The law {?} no longer cares.

This makes clear that which we referred to last week, that the Biblical Law concerning speech does not give us a declaration of freedom of speech. The Bible does not affirm the modern concept of free speech. The logical advocates of the free speech movement were the Berkeley rioters on the free speech movement.

In terms of the Biblical Law concerning speech, freedom is for truth. It is not for false witness in any sense. In fact, in terms of scripture, true freedom of speech rests on a prohibition of false witness. We have today among the advocates of free speech, a serious misreading of the U.S. Constitution of 1787. The First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.” This is now read to mean that the prevalence of the federal interpretation in every realm; that is, the federal government has the right to enter the area of religion, of speech and the press to say that its concept is to prevail and that there can be no abridgement, no legislation in these realms. But what the Constitution actually means was that the federal government was barred from these areas, that regulation with respect to religion, to speech and to press were a matter of state’s rights, and/or reserved to the citizens thereof. Only the federal government was barred from any regulation in this area. This meant therefore that the states could have laws with respect to false witness, could say that the press had no right to publish anything that was not true, could regulate speech, and prohibit libel and slander, could regulate religion and say that Christianity was the law of the realm. And only Christianity was the legally-permissible religion. But by misinterpreting the Constitution, they have said that anarchy is in effect the law.

Let us examine, for example, what a writer of 1857 (over a century ago), had to say. The writer, John Henry Hopkins, Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Vermont; his book, The American Citizen, His Rights and Duties According to the Spirit of the Constitution of the United States. Let me add further, that when Bishop Hopkins wrote this manual, there was not a single critic who saw anything wrong with what he had to say. Let’s see what he said on religion. “The religious rights of the citizens of the United States consists in the enjoyment of his own conscientious choice, amongst all the forms of our common Christianity which were in existence at the time when the Constitution was established. This must be taken as the full limit of fair and legal presumption, as the first two chapters have sufficiently proved. Therefore, I hold it preposterous to suppose that a band of Hindus could settle in any part of our territories and claim a right under the Constitution to set up the public worship of Brahma, Vishnu, or Juggernaut. Equally unconstitutional would it be for the Chinese to introduce the worship of {?} or Buddha in California. Neither could a company of Turks assert a right to establish a mosque or the religion of Mohammed. But there is one case, namely that of the Jews, which forms an apparent exception; although it is in fact, supported by the same legal principle. For the meaning of the Constitution can only be derived from the reasonable intention of the people of the United States. Their language, religion, customs, laws and modes of thought were all transported from the mother country and we are bound to believe that whatever was tolerated publically in England was doubtless meant to be protected here. On this ground, there is no question about the Constitutional right of our Jewish fellow citizens, whose synagogues have long before been established in London. But with a single exception, I can find no right for the public exercise of any religious faith under our great federal charter which does not acknowledge the divine authority of the Christian Bible.”

Now, Hopkins’ statement is abundantly borne out in all the documents of the day. We know that in the courts of law well through 1860 and beyond (in fact, only recently have they been altered), no one could testify in a court of law unless he could affirm the Bible to be the Word of God and to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity. The only exception was the Jew, because the only Jews in the country then were the Orthodox Jews, and they believed in Biblical Law. Therefore, since they believed in the Biblical Law, they could testify by taking an oath in terms of the law.

Now, the same was true of free speech. Freedom of speech and press were subject to the state law and the freedom was only that which was within the boundaries of Biblical Law; that which did not permit false witness. If false witness were made by anyone in the press or by speech, he was guilty to criminal charges for bearing false witness. But this standard has eroded. By the 20th century, the ideal social order and the ideal civil government were seen as one dedicated to uninhibited liberty. And society’s basic purpose was seen as freedom of religion, freedom of press, freedom of speech—whatever you chose to do in these areas.

It’s not surprising that since we have had this standard of absolute liberty, we have been losing liberty steadily. A society which makes freedom its primary goal will lose it because it has made not responsibility, but freedom from responsibility its purpose. Where freedom is the basic emphasis, it is not responsible speech which is fostered, but irresponsible speech. Now the Biblical Law says there is freedom for responsible speech, no freedom whatsoever for irresponsible speech. The modern concept is freedom of speech, responsible or irresponsible. When you absolutize the idea of free press and free speech, libel and slander replace responsibility. In several critical court decisions lately, we have seen that when the press has engaged in obvious libel, they have been sustained in the name of freedom of press. Where men have engaged in obvious slander, vicious slander, they have again been upheld by the courts in the name of free speech. When freedom in this sense replaces responsibility, tyranny and anarchy take over.

Our goal must be God’s law order in which alone is true liberty. The law against false witness is basic to true freedom, but today as we have seen in the name of free speech, false witness is tolerated. This is logical. If we permit false religion, why not false witness? The one follows the other. If a lie has rights in one area, why not in every area? To exalt freedom above all else, to absolutize liberty, is to deny the distinction between true and false witness and between right and wrong in every area. This was the point of the free speech movement in Berkeley, {?}. They were logical. They were wrong, but they were the most logical Americans of today, because the free speech movement advocates (or as they have been called, the filthy speech movement advocates) said, if we believe in free speech, it means any kind of speech. It means that freedom is our absolute and therefore, we declare that we have the right to prove that the administration is made up of a group of hypocrites. We will use the P.A. system here in front of Sproul Hall, the Administration building, to utter every kind of pornography, every kind of obscenity, every kind of blasphemy, because we want to stand for freedom! Freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of action. Therefore, they declared over the P.A. system, that they wanted the same rights as the dogs on campus, to copulate openly and publically. In other words, they were absolutizing freedom. They were taking the implications of what our courts and our schools are teaching and carrying it to the logical conclusion.

But where freedom is absolutize and made the prior and ultimate consideration as good and evil, then Gresham’s Law is operative. Now, Gresham’s Law, as applied to money said that bad money drives out good money. This is true in other realms. A lie drives out the truth. Pornography drives out good literature, clean entertainment. Gresham’s Law operates in more realms than the economic. When you have an emphasis on irresponsible and total free speech and free press, you have the rapid triumph of dishonest advertising, dishonest merchandizing, false witness in every area. And then statue laws are unable to control the situation and you have progressive tyranny. As one administrative agency after another is created to deal with these abuses and to limit your freedom, rather than dealing with it in terms of scripture, where it is simply a matter of criminal law that anyone who bears false witness in any area is liable to prosecution.

Today false witness is given protection by law in the name of freedom. And the result whenever this has happened in history is a progressive deterioration of quality in every area. The laws against false witness are virtually gone. Dishonesty and false witness are increasing therefore in every realm. Today in the name of freedom, we have what calls itself a free press but is increasingly a menace to freedom of the press. Recently there was a very interesting item in the Sunday Telegraph of London. It is interesting that each country will criticize the dishonesty of the press in the other country. But this was reported in the Review of the News, and I quote. “There is a growing concern, reported The Sunday Telegraph of London recently following seven months of secret investigations by a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, which uncovered evidence of deceptive reporting by American news organizations, national magazines, and their slanted, doctored and arrogant treatment of the news. The report found that a television team assigned to a student demonstration in California had arrived at the spot with its own picket signs, which it distributed to the demonstrators they were to film. The news organizations which have participated in court cases, a fact which Washington terms, ‘inexcusable interference with the administration of justice,’ that the News Department at CBS had attempted to finance the commando invasion of Haiti, a definite plan to intrude on the conduct of foreign affairs. The investigative team also uncovered evidence that CBS reportedly staged a pot (marijuana) party among college students in suburban Chicago. The film of the party appeared later as a legitimate news report to document the wide-spread use of drugs among upper-class college students and to push for a radical change in the narcotics law. The congressional committee recommended finally, according to the Sunday Telegraph, that a section of the Federal Communication Act prohibiting deceptive practice in television entertainment be extended to make the falsification of news a federal offense.” It’s interesting that we didn’t get reports of that subcommittee’s findings in this country.

Wherever freedom is the absolute, the result is not freedom, but anarchism. Freedom must be under law, or it is not freedom. The removal of all laws does not produce freedom but rather anarchy and tyranny and a murderer’s paradise. The Marquis de Sade demanded such a world. But the liberty he required made all good men potential victims and gave him and his associates the right to kill at will.

Freedom as an absolute is really the assertion of man’s right to be his own god. It is a radical denial of God’s law order. It is man’s claim to divinity, to be his own god, to have total autonomy. This concept of freedom is a pretext for every Humanist, for every anarchy, whether they are Marxists, or Fabians, or Existentialists, or Pragmatists, they all use this idea of freedom to gain totalitarian powers and destroy God’s Law.

True freedom is freedom for something. Freedom is not something in itself. Freedom is for something. If all men are free to murder, there is then no freedom for godly living. There is no peace or safety except for murderers. If men are free to steal, then there is no freedom for private property. If there is freedom to bear false witness, there is no freedom for truth. Therefore, the Bible has freedom for something; for private property, for true witness, for life that is lived under God’s Law. It has no freedom for murder, for adultery, for theft, for false witness.

Accordingly, our scripture emphatically declares that he that is guilty of perjury must be punished. And he that speaks lies or slander shall not escape. It calls for a social order in which there is freedom for responsible speech. St. James said, so speak ye, and so do as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. There is a law of liberty. And without law, there is no liberty.

Let us pray.

Deliver us, oh Lord, from those who would convert our land into a place of freedom for murderers, freedom for adulterers, for thieves, perjurers and slanderers. And give us again, oh Lord, freedom under thee—responsible freedom, that we may again be a land of liberty. Establish us oh Lord in Thy Law-Word. And make us the salt of the earth that we may restore and preserve those things which are of Thee and confound and destroy those things which are against Thee. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Are there any questions now with respect to our lesson first of all?

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, there is no such ground. All the evidence we have from reading things like Josephus, reading the apocryphal books which describe in some cases the history of the time, reading the writings of the rabbis indicates that it was precisely this way. And we know that the Early Church adopted this standard, that this was the law in Christian countries until fairly recently, but it was the law in these United States until recent times.

Yes.

[Audience] In reference to obscenities, which do occur, and I {?} freedom of speech was the {?} for more than {?} come in and more {?}

[Rushdoony] It’s a major problem in our day. But it isn’t, and hasn’t been historically. Historically when you go back and find, say, 60 years ago as obscene, their standards were good, and they did make it possible for us to have real freedom and they protected us from that which was pornographic.

Prior to World War I, this country had more real freedom than we can begin to imagine today. But then, it did have laws against pornography and obscenity and against false witness. what it did was to make possible true responsible freedom.

[Audience] Those things occurred {?} and standards were pushed out of the way {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Of course, the argument is, it’s a private life and therefore we should include it. Well, garbage is a part of life, but we don’t put it in the living room. We don’t say we have to live with it. We dispose of it, you see.

In other words, this business that pornography is a part of life, obscenity is a part of life and therefore it should be a part of our everyday life is really a part of the existential philosophy that there is no such thing as good and evil. Everything is equal; therefore you live with everything equally. Now in terms of this philosophy, there can be no progress because you then say, what’s the point of changing anything, since everything is equal?

Remember last week I read portions of a long review of Gunther Stents’ new book as reviewed in Natural History, in which Stent prophesied the end of science as things were continuing because there’s no ground any longer in modern thinking for any discrimination between right and wrong, good and bad, health or sickness, or anything. And he sees as an atheist, the problem, and had felt that we are going to see the death of mankind. And he was logical. Of course, the editors, as I’ve point out, said they couldn’t buy his optimism. They thought the picture was much worse than Stent portrayed it.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I see very little chance of these Christians waking up.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] They’re not waking up because they’re dead. They have the form of godliness, St. Paul said of such people, but they lack the power, or the life thereof. If after all they’ve seen in recent years, they don’t wake up, nothing else is going to wake them up.

It’s like the—I’ve cited this example before, and I think it’s a very telling one, of the woman in Shanghai, a liberal, Chinese, liberal in religion and background, who when the Japanese occupied Shanghai, and there was a massive rape of herself and other women that they’d captured, her own report of the episode is the most shocking thing, because she kept telling herself, ‘This can’t be true. This can’t be real. It’s just a bad dream, because people are naturally good. This can’t happen. It isn’t true.’ Now, if under circumstances like that, you can’t wake up, you see, you never can.

And this is true of most people in the churches today. They’re so addicted to their illusions. It’s like a narcotic with them. The worse things get, the more they are wedded to their dreams. This is why I no longer will speak to the average religious group on a campus whenever I’m invited to speak to campus groups. Because, whether they are liberal on the one hand, or evangelical on the other, they are so wedded to their illusions they don’t want to be disturbed. I’d rather speak to a group of leftist students. At least they’ll get upset, and angry; you can shake them. But there’s no hope for these.

I was interested along these lines to see some hope in some interesting quarters in the last issue of Christian News for April 27, 1970. And this was personally pleasing to me. A group of students at Santa Barbara UC during the recent episodes there, disturbed 5,000 copies of a report entitled Coming of Age in Isla Vista. The report concludes that America has lost its Christian foundation and its Humanist “Christian Democracy” knowing no absolutes and declaring God dead is considered a hypocritical sham by a large cross-section of the college generation. In desperation for some ideals, something to cling to, they turned to the Abby Hoffmans, Jerry Rubins, Herbert Marcuses, Bobby Seales, and other advocates of Marxist revolution lifestyle. The concept of a Christian State, drawn largely from the writings of R.J. Rushdoony and Herman D{?} is introduced in this report as an alternative to either Fascism, Communism, or Woodstock-style stoned anarchy. The Christian State concept differs from these in being a republic based on laws and principles derived from God through His inspired Word, which laws and principles define and limit the State and prevent it from becoming the final source of law or truth, as it is under Communism and Fascism and more and more under American Humanist Democracy.

Well, these youngsters have a lot more awareness of what’s going on. They recognize that a world is dying around them, and they’re not expecting to be raptured out of it, but to re-establish again the concept of a Christian State.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, and our Lord said if you love me, keep my commandments. And if they will not keep His commandments, and if they despise His commandments, well, every tree, our Lord says, is known by the fruit it bears.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, they’re church members. They’re not Christians.

[Audience] I {?} really, truly {?} think {?} will not as Christians do {?} in their little church groups {?}

[Rushdoony] Well then, they’re idiot Christians.

[Audience] But the ones that I have, when they’re out the door, {?}

[Laughter]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, they’re going to fall apart, in most cases.

[Audience] Do they only think they are?

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] They only think they are… Christians. We have a... {?} with my sister {?} and {?} confirm our faith, that… {?} very proud of the {?} and {?}

[Rushdoony] Well, to give another example, I’ve cited this once before. One of the biggest fundamentalist churches in the state, the Sunday School Superintendent is a man who has repeatedly molested girls in the Sunday school. But will they every do anything about it? Oh, no. He confesses each time with tears and we can’t be legalistic about this. We’re not under law, we’re under grace, and he obviously shows God’s grace when he comes before the church board and cries and confesses, and he shows the mighty workings of the Spirit. Now to me, that’s blasphemy. And people who stay in that church are guilty of blasphemy. They may profess to believe the Bible and they supposedly give good testimonies, but that isn’t anything but a testimony to Satan as far as I’m concerned.

Yes.

[Audience] I also taught {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but the Bible also says forgiveness is always conditional upon restitution. In other words, what did Zaccheus do to prove he was worthy of forgiveness? He said if I have robbed any man, I will restore four-fold and five-fold. And then our Lord said, this day has salvation come to this household. So forgiveness is not a matter of words, it’s a matter of restitution. And of course, they will cite, ‘we must forgive.’ And I had a letter today about a minister in Northern California, a very ugly character; very ugly. Who gets up and says we should not judge, and so on. He never quotes our Lords words, judge righteous judgment. And of course, it’s not surprising that he is great for this total forgiveness, because if anyone ever needed whitewashing day-by-day, he does.

Yes.

[Audience] I have a question on this. Isn’t it possible that some {?} can have better character {?}, in other words, any {?} and that... {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. I grant you that, and I grant you that in many of these churches, there are Christian people who are better than their theology. But sooner or later, a point comes and they leave. They cannot live side-by-side with that kind of evil and tolerate it, if they are Christians.

Yes.

[Audience] In that {?} reported on, {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, I hadn’t seen this yet. I just –

[Audience] -- article … {?}

[Rushdoony] Christian News is well worth reading. The format is not the best, but it is excellent.

What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Oh, no, I don’t know that one. I don’t have that one.

Yes, another question over here.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] … {?} the anti-law {?} they have, and they say… {?} against the law... {?} into our own environment... {?} And we still to a great {?} follow the law, in spite of what we found day-by-day, so {?} I think there are {?} sometimes and {?}

[Rushdoony] That’s true, there’re some leaving all the time.

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Ah, I can’t quite hear you.

[Audience] … seeing eyes, they cannot see, and have hearing ears but they cannot hear, and then there’s {?}

[Rushdoony] Right. This is in Isaiah 6. It is the most often quoted verse in the New Testament, that hearing, they will not hear, and seeing they will not see lest their hearts turn and they be converted.

Now supposedly 60% of the people in the United States are church members, Catholic and Protestant. One of the first points at which the Early church, when it was only a handful of people meeting in homes confronted the Roman Empire on the issue of abortion. The Church had not been more than a few years old and had tackled the Roman Empire on that subject.

But consider what’s happening today. The governor of the State of California this last week said, “Our public health department has told us its projections, that if the present rate of increase continues in California, a year from now, there will be more abortions than there will be live births in this state, and a great proportion of them will be financed by Medi-Cal.” And what can you say for the Christianity of these people, these 60% when they tolerate this? They should be able to stop it cold since they’re the majority. But they’re not, which indicates their impotence, or the fact that they are by and large church members, rather than Christians. And of church members, we have many. Christians are not in evidence, because our Lord said, ‘by their fruits shall ye know them,’ and the fruit is not there!

Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

Yes.

[Audience] What would they do .. {?}

[Rushdoony] What will they do – what?

[Audience] {?} the fathers? {?} … Do you take the man…? {?}

[Rushdoony] The attitude of all of them at that church is that if he has the experience, if he goes forward at the next revival meeting, it’s all finished.

[Audience] Well can he attack them…? {?} the girls … {?} day in court.. {?}

[Rushdoony] I doubt it. And I doubt that there would be anyone in that congregation of a few thousand people that has enough stump in him or any life to do anything like that. They’re all too namby-pamby. They’re a dead, sick people.

[Audience] {?} .. but if they did allow an attacker to be acquitted, for his attack on a sister’s … {?} there would be {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Not that I condone an attack, but there isn’t anyone with that much moral indignation in the group.

Well, our time is up, unless there’s one more question, let’s bow our heads for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit guide you and protect you, bless and govern you this day and always, in Jesus’ name, amen.