IBL13: Law in the New Testament

Antinomianism Attacked

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 3

Track: 131

Dictation Name: RR130BU131

Date: 1960s-1970s

Begin with prayer.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee in this blessed season for all Thy blessings unto us. We thank Thee, our Father, for the joy of salvation, for the blessedness of Thy protecting care, for the certainty of Thy government. We thank Thee our Father for our heritage in this country and we pray, our Father that Thou wouldst strengthen us by Thy Word and by Thy Spirit that we may stand fast in the defense of the things which are of Thee and of our Christian liberties in this country. Make us mindful, our Father, this week of the multitude of Thy blessings, so that we may in all things with a grateful heart acknowledge Thy grace, Thy mercy and Thy goodness. Bless us now by Thy Word and by Thy Spirit and grant us Thy peace. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Our scripture is Mark 7:1-23, “Antinomianism Attacked.” Mark 7:1-23:

“1Then came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem.

2 And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashen, hands, they found fault.

3 For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.

4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables.

5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashen hands?

6 He answered and said unto them, well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.

9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.

10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:

11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.

12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;

13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

14 And when he had called all the people unto him, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand:

15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.

16 If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable.

18 And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;

19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?

20 And he said, that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

21 For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,

22 Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:

23 All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”

The religious leaders of Israel rejected our Lord’s declaration of His messiahship. They rejected His implicit declaration of His status as Son of God. Our Lord’s demands for a religious reformation and regeneration (rebirth) in terms of Himself were also denied. They resented moreover, His attack on tradition and our Lord’s declaration that they themselves were the lawless ones. Tradition for them was a necessary development of law and inseparable from it. Our Lord saw it instead as a perversion.

This issue came to a focus at the time of the third Passover in the instant we read in our scripture. The disciples were attacked by the scribes and the Pharisees as violators of the law because they ate their meal with defiled (that is to say, unwashen) hands. This does not mean that they ate with dirty hands, but with ceremonially unpurified hands. This text, incidentally, is no excuse for children who want to tell their mother they don’t have to wash their hands before they come to dinner. We might add parenthetically that the Hebrews were very clean people. Today we have some knowledge of Turkish baths but we don’t realize they were not Turkish. The Turks took them over when they conquered Constantinople and adopted them. They were Roman baths at that time, but they were not really Roman baths. The Romans adopted them from the Hebrews, so it was the Hebrews originally who had the baths, and the Puritan expression, “Cleanliness is next to godliness” is a lot older than the Puritans. It goes back to the Hebrews and their beliefs. They were a very particular, a very clean people. Thus, the disciples were not eating with dirty hands. What was the point?

The point was that there was a voluminous set of regulations that the Pharisees had whereby they separated themselves from what they believe to be a defiled and a contaminated world—the world of other people. They were the pure ones, the holy ones. And therefore, although their hands were clean and they may have stepped out just for a moment after eating to chat with some passerby, when they came in they would dip their hands in water and just flick the water from them and dry their hands, a ceremonial ritual to say ‘We are washed of the world. We have separated ourselves from it.’ It was a ritual saying you had nothing to do with the outside world and your food and your life was separated from it. Pilate adopted this ceremony of the Jews when he called for water and ritually washed his hands in it to say I’m innocent of this man’s blood. He knew that this was a ceremony that they would all understand.

And so it was that cleanliness was not the issue. The issue was a whole body of regulations whereby the Pharisees said we are the clean people and we separate ourselves from an unclean world by this ceremonial washing. Our Lord answered and said unto them, “Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, for laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.” Even pots and cups—everything had to have the ceremonial sprinkling or ritual washing even though they were clean, to separate them from the outer world.

And our Lord called them first of all, hypocrites. He knew better than we do the meaning of hypocrite, because it was a word derived from Greek culture, from the stage. The chorus in the Greek theatre expressed its mood, whether it was a comedy or a tragedy or whether they were a particular type of character by holding up a mask which depicted the character. The mask, therefore, in front of their face, indicated a two-faced man. This was the origin of the meaning of hypocrite; two-faced, a front, a false front to the world to conceal the real person, an actor. So our Lord said, your righteousness is hypocrisy, it’s a play. It’s acting. And in vain, and futility to you worship God. Al l your worship then, because it is hypocrisy, is futile. It is meaningless in the sight of God.

The disciples had been charged with breaking the law. Jesus turned the tables on the scribes and Pharisees and charged them with breaking the law by setting up in its place their man-made laws, and He said in [Mark 7] verses 9-13,

“9...Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition.

10 For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death:

11 But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; he shall be free.

12 And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother;

13 making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.”

First of all, our Lord in these verses spoke of the Law of Moses as the Commandment of God, the Word of God. This is important. He didn’t say it was Moses’ Law, it was God’s Law! At this point we are very often wrong, because we speak of it as the Law of Moses. It was the Law of God given through Moses, and a very strict orthodox Jew will not tolerate the expression, ‘The Law of Moses.’ He will correct you. He will say it’s God’s Law, not man’s. And he’s right.

Then our Lord said, ye substitute for the commandment, for the Word of God, your own tradition. And He gave an example. For Moses said honor thy father and thy mother and whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death. Then He proceeded to declare that they were violating both these laws, therefore they were guilty of death. How? Well, the scribes and Pharisees who were often the rulers so that they handled both Church and State (controlled both), had set up a very fine plan of estate planning, in their own estimation. Now some of you recall there was a problem a few years ago, and it hasn’t been straightened out yet, whereby some people were getting around income taxes by turning over their entire estate to the church, putting it in the name of the church, on the condition that as long as they were alive, they were going to get the full use of it as their pay. And there would be no taxes. Now, the Pharisees had set up something similar.

The Law of God required that parents be supported if they were in need. This is a part of the Biblical Law of inheritance. Inheritance, according to scripture, is a two-way street. Every child, even if his parent doesn’t leave him a dollar, gets 21 years of care, support and education and very often more. That’s a real inheritance! Add that up in dollars and cents and there isn’t a child living who’s been cared for by his parents who hasn’t received a very sizeable inheritance. It adds up to a lot of money. On top of that, children receive an inheritance very commonly at the death of their parents. Now, according to scripture, it’s a two-way street. When the parents are old and have need of care for one reason or another, they are entitled to the support of their children. Inheritance is a two-way street. And our Lord on several occasions deals with this. On one occasion, he said if anyone has not taken care of his parents and comes to the altar, his gift is not acceptable to God. On this estate planning, people would arrange, if they didn’t like their parents, or didn’t want their parents to have a claim on them, to give their estate to their children, whatever the children’s share was, and the rest all went to the church or to the synagogue or to the temple. Therefore, they would say, well (and they would live off the income meanwhile), and they would say to their parents, oh, I’m sorry; I can’t support you because my estate is Corban. It’s already given away. There’s nothing except my income. And our Lord said this was dishonoring father and mother and equivalent to cursing father and mother and deserving of death. “Ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother, making the Word of God of none effect through your tradition which ye have delivered.” You nullify, you set aside the Law of God by your tradition and you deserve to die.

They had begun by saying the disciples were irreligious law-breaking men because they didn’t go through this ceremony of washing their hands ritually. And in return, they were told by our Lord that they were the real law-breakers and that they deserved to die. Then our Lord called the people close to Him and he said unto them, “…Hearken unto me every one of you, and understand: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” He then entered a house and when they were in there, the disciples asked him, they didn’t understand this, and so he said unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him, and he said, that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders. All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

Now here we come to the crux of the matter. But let’s back up just a moment before we come to grips with this passage. The scribes and Pharisees prided themselves on being leaders of the blind. St. Paul refers to this expression of the Pharisees in Romans 2:19 when he speaks of them as a guide of the blind. In other words, the people were stupid. They were blind. And they as their leaders, well, they were wise men leading blind men. And our Lord in this same incident as Matthew reports it in Matthew 15:13, 14 said when the disciples told him, do you not know that the Pharisees are offended by your words? And our Lord answered saying, “…every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Every plant, every law, every institution, which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. There are a great many things around us that are going to be rooted up! If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. A lot of things are going to wind up in the big ditch, are they not?

Now our Lord put the issue very bluntly. That which defiles a man, that which renders him unclean before God comes from within. This was the issue between Himself and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were advocating precisely what Satan and Adam and Eve in their fall had advocated. Yea, hath God said? It’s not man’s fault, it’s the environment’s. The woman that Thou, God, gavest to be with me, she did give me and I did eat. I had a bad environment in the woman. And the serpent, he did give me and I did eat. Both of them pleaded a bad environment. The Pharisees held that the outward act and the inward act had no connection from the heart. The outward act was connected not to the heart but to the environment. The Pharisees were environmentalists. That which came from without defiled a man. A man’s actions were a product of his environment. And Jesus said a man’s actions are the product of his heart, because he is fallen. Environmentalism leads to Antinomianism because it denies responsibility in favor of environmental conditioning. You see, this is why the Pharisees denied both conversion, regeneration on the one hand and the Law of God on the other. Their belief was in environmental conditioning. Therefore, they ceremonially washed their hands. They were not a part of that environment.

They were holier than thou, self-righteous. They were creating for their poor blind people a better environment. Wash your hands. Separate yourself from the outer world so you won’t be contaminated. Don’t get mixed up in the problems of the world. After all, let the world go its way to Hell. You have no obligation to it. It’s a bad environment and until you can take control, as we hope to do when we have a revolution (the Jewish/Roman War, you remember, 66-70 A.D. was their hope), and we can gain control, then we can change that environment and all will be well. But until you can control the environment, it’s just too bad, boys. You can’t do a thing. So their whole effort was essentially, on the one hand either to withdraw or to attack in a revolutionary way; because the hope of man was environmental. You had to change the environment.

But our Lord said that which comes from within the heart, that defiles a man. Therefore, man must be born again. And then having been regenerated, he must live in terms of God’s Law. And the two go hand in hand. They are different aspects of the same thing. Those who deny regeneration will end up by denying the law, and those who deny the law will end up by denying regeneration. They will become environmentalists.

The biggest kind of business today in dealing with the clergy is the pastoral psychology type of book. There’s a lot of money in it. Why? Because the church by and large is going overboard on this, that manipulating people is the answer; manipulating people to create a new environment, not the Word of God, but changing their environment. Love people. Give them an environment of love, or change their home surroundings and situation and so on and all will be well. Environmentalism is a part of Phariseeism.

And purity for the Pharisees was therefore a ceremonial matter. It was not a thing of the heart. It was external. When one believes in regeneration and in the law, then purity is a question of the heart and the obedience of man to the law. Our Lord therefore brought the issue to a head. The conflict between Himself and the Pharisees was root and branch—a total one. Their answer to man’s problems radically differed from those of our Lord. Their answer was not regeneration and it was not the Law of God. It was environmentalism and the traditions of men, and having denied the power of God unto salvation, they had to replace the laws of that salvation with their traditions of men which emphasized environmentalism.

Hence it was that in every respect, they were at war with our Lord. But our Lord not only summed up the matter very well, but was a prophet when He declared, “every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up. If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

We are therefor in a day of great uprooting, a day when men are heading for the ditch blindly and recklessly. There is no answer to these problems except that which our Lord gives, regeneration and the Law of God. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto Thee that Thou art He who does govern all things; that Thou shalt uproot every plant, every institution, every law which Thou hast not planted or ordained. And Thou shalt lead all the blind into the ditch and those who stand in terms of Thy saving power and Thy Law-Word Thou shalt cause to shine as the Son in righteousness. Bless us, oh Father in Thy service. Make us zealous in obedience to Thee. Fill us with the hope that maketh not ashamed, that we may ever be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray, amen.

Any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience] Well, just a clarification, this isn’t an exact reversal of the Pharisees thought that, as in, uh, were—depended on the environment, in other words, and we say that, our own heart, you know…. it’s a complete reversal is what I’m trying to say. One says environment causes actions, the other says actions are caused by inference.

[Rushdoony] Right. Diametrically opposed positions.

[Audience] Absolutely reversed.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And today we have become anti-Christian in our answer to problems. We have become environmentalists to the core. And you see, environmentalism leads ultimately and inescapably to Marxism. Marxism is thoroughly consistent environmentalism.

[Audience] Was that why you didn’t push for ecology then?

[Rushdoony] Well, not entirely, but the ecology push is fraudulent. There’s no question there’s a great deal of truth in it but there’s no question also that it has been politically motivated as a means of creating a lot of problems and turmoil.

There’s an interesting book written by James Ridgeway, who is a leftist, but he charges that the government itself has been largely responsible for the pollution and one of their answers to it is various forms of birth control, abortion, population control. So coming from a leftist, this is a very significant statement. His answer, however, is more government control.

[Audience] What is the name of it?

[Rushdoony] I’ll, uh, try to get the title for you. The author is James Ridgeway. It’s just published.

[Audience] Attorney General Ramsey Clark stated today that environment is the cause of all crimes.

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is why Ramsey Clark in some respects has been our best attorney general in recent years. Although the worst, from our point of view. I say the best because he’s been more self-conscious about what he’s advocating. And the others have been some of them, wishy-washy and they’ve not had a clear-cut position, but Ramsey Clark knows what he believes. He’s systematic. He’s consistent. And this is why when he has argued in Congress, when he was Attorney General of the United States, he really made fools out of some of the Conservatives; because basically, they were environmentalists without realizing the implications of their position, and he pushed them to the wall.

Yes?

[Audience] Well, in an interview yesterday, Ramsey Clark pointed out that he regarded the law as a means to promote social change.

[Rushdoony] Yes. He has been one of the most brilliant men we’ve had in Washington, therefore one of the most dangerous.

[Audience] He’s a thorough scoundrel.

[Rushdoony] Um-hm.

Yes?

[Audience] Would you care to comment on the four spiritual laws of the Campus Crusades? I think there are two or three things left out.

[Rushdoony] Yes, uh, first of all, the idea that God loves you and has a plan for your life is wrong, because they begin by positing the love of God for sinners rather than the fact that all sinners are under judgment. Now by leaving out what they do, they begin by assuming that God has no law in His being, no judgment, no righteousness. They put the whole thing on a love basis, and this is wrong.

I think Gary Noth’s Campus Crusade critique is a very excellent analysis of the weaknesses of Campus Crusade.

Yes.

[Audience] You said that psychological pastoral counseling, which I know is a big thing today, but people, pastors do need to counsel people, and when they do if they counsel them according to God’s Law, for instance, if a man be drunk and a pastor brings him to a saving knowledge of the Lord, the environment of that family is going to be changed.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but you see the answer to counseling a drunk is first of all the Word of God. And today, most of the clergy are studying all these pastoral psychology books rather than scripture. They don’t have a consistent position and so they wind of with all kinds of nonsense.

One of the things that amuses me most is that some of these people who feel that various Christian psychologists are doing such a wonderful job. I know one case where I’ve heard a number of couples who’ve gone to one and they thought he was wonderful, and he helped them so much, but as far as I can see, those couples are scrapping the same as they always were. I don’t see wherein they’ve been helped. But they’ve come to believe so much in psychology.

Now, there’s a difference between pastoral psychology and pastoral counseling. Pastoral counseling is in terms of scripture, in terms of the Word of God. Pastoral psychology feels that it’s basically a manipulation of the person and of his environment that produces the change.

[Audience] So there is no such thing as Christian psychology per se.

[Rushdoony] Well, yes there is. You see, the word psychology literally means ‘doctrine of the soul.’ And psychology and anthropology were once aspects of theology. But there is no such thing, I would agree with you, as Christian psychology such as you have in the secular world. Some of these so-called Christian psychologists are simply taking the psychology of the natural man and baptizing it, as it were. They’re taking a basically environmental position and mixing in a little bit of gospel with it and they think they’ve got something! Now, some of these people are very fine men, very kindly, well-meaning men. But they have not thought out their position systematically. They have not built their psychology on scripture. They’ve gone to Kunkle’s We-Psychology, they’ve borrowed a little bit from Freud, and they’ve borrowed a little bit from Gestalt psychology and they’ve put all this hodgepodge together with whatever ideas suit them and they think they’re good gimmicks to work with people.

[Audience] My question, on my question, on that, you made the difference, or the distinction between Christian psychology and counseling giving scripture as a basis.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes. Right. Now, what a Christian theologian should do, and it needs to be done, is to study scripture systematically, develop the psychology that scripture teaches. Now, one of the first premises of such a psychology (and it would be a big job and needs to be done from the ground up) is this: non-Christian psychology and the psychology that so-called Christian psychologists use begin by assuming that the basic problem of men is childishness. In other words, they take an evolutionary position, man was once primitive and the child is a primitive and man is reverting to this continually. Now, in terms of scripture, we cannot say this. What must we say? Man was created in Adam a mature person so the beginning of man is maturity, not a primitive background, an ape man, or a cave man or as a child. His beginning is in maturity. And what has the sin of man been but rebellion against maturity.

So the essence of a Christian psychology is not to explain man in terms of a child but to explain man as someone who is trying to escape from maturity which is his inescapable calling. You see? That would be a Christian psychology, but no one is doing this today. No one.

Yes.

[Audience] Have you read Jay Adams’ book, Competent to Counsel?

[Rushdoony] I have just started it and it seems to me the first chapters where he points to the defects are excellent. I haven’t gotten beyond that to see how he does.

[Audience] Yes, he points out in there, and he attacks the new school of psychology of Mahler, Rachin, Glasser, and these people, and they use some of the, uh, hope, you say, and it looks like Christianity in that they say that man’s guilty conscience is caused by a real offense. He has broken standards, however, the new school of psychology is saying that these standards are simply man-made standards from whatever culture you’re in, it was wrong for you to break them, and as soon as you admit this and make restitution, you’re going to be relieved of your guilt feelings and your various psychosomatic illnesses. And Adams is saying these people have something that looks good, and they’ve got a certain measure of success with it in treating people, but they altogether deny the vertical, man’s relation to God and it’s strictly horizontal, and so Adams turns around the other way and says, what you’ve done, you’ve broken God’s Law, it’s an absolute, it has nothing to do with your culture and you’re {?} to God and to your fellow man restitution and I got a good impression of the book—

[Rushdoony] Very good. Yes.

[Audience] What’s the name of the book and the author again?

[Audience] Um, Jay Adams Competent to Counsel, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company sells it for $2.50.

[Rushdoony] Now, Mahler is one of the most brilliant writers here, he is completely non-Christian. But Mahler has denied, as Dr. Zoz has, who’s also vehemently anti-Christian. But Mahler said there’s no such thing as mental sickness, psychological sickness. There’s only sin. But, he says, I will not accept the man-God aspect of sin because (for him, there is no God), sin is man-to-man. So he said mental sickness comes in where, there is the so-called mental sickness is really sin, when there is a wrong relationship, a sinful relationship between man and man. So he goes back to a biblical terminology, except that he removes God out of it and puts man in the place.

Yes.

[Audience] Well, there can’t be any such a thing as sin unless it’s sin against God!

[Rushdoony] Exactly. Exactly.

[Audience] I was reminded of {?} man, or {?} did in college who was trying to cross Evolution with Christianity, something like Christian Evolution,

[Rushdoony] Yes…

[Audience] and it was a punishing thing, because at the time I attended that college, they were so fundamental, it was absolutely painful.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

One more, and then I’ll-

[Audience] {?} … if any was found guilty…

[Rushdoony] Yes. A very good question. You see, the sin he referred to was adultery in that particular case. In other words, you cannot be guilty of an offense and be a judge in the case dealing with that offense. That’s the limitation there.

Well, alright, one more before we go on.

[Audience] I just wanted to ask you about a preview of a book called, {?} by Branson? I {?} forward by a radical, liberal radical theologian {?} ah, there’d been a report that he’s gathering {?} together and is studying this particular book, {?}

[Rushdoony] No, I don’t know the book.

Now, by way of conclusion I’d like to read just a couple of passages from a book that I picked up; so happy to locate it at a book fair yesterday and I got up early this morning and I had it read by 8:00. It’s Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land. Now, the Laxalt family is a fine Nevada family. They’re Basques. One of the four Laxalt boys (4 boys, 2 girls), was governor of Nevada until recently, and Robert is a writer and he’s writing about his father who came here at the age of 17 from the Pyrenees Mountains as an immigrant, became a sheep herder. And, you remember I spoke of sheep herders in one of my recent Chalcedon reports as a future-oriented people? They have to be with the responsibility that is theirs. They spend most of the year out with the sheep, caring for them. They’re a very well-organized, methodical, neat people. If you’ve ever gone to a sheep wagon, it’s a masterpiece of organization and cleanliness. They are a very particular, fussy breed of men; they do their own knitting, their own baking, their bread is superb! Sheep herder’s bread is about as fine a bread as you could ever eat. If they are sleeping out in the open, where they make their campsite is as neat and clean as anyone’s living room. They are so particular. At least this was true of the old generation sheep herders that I knew.

Well, this man of course is like that, very much future-oriented, in fact so much so that he was always saving things for the future, and if they gave him an extra-fine pair of gloves, well that was too good to use now, he’d put it in the drawer for in the future.

But I’d like to read just a few passages because I think it has something to say to us in terms of scripture as well.

“My father was a sheep herder and his home was the hills. So it began when he was a boy in the misted Pyrenees of France. And so it was to be for most of his lifetime in the lonely Sierra of Nevada. And seeing him in a moment’s pause on some high ridge with the wind tearing at his wild thickness of iron-gray hair and flattening his clothes to his lean frame. You could understand why this is what he was meant to be. My mother used to say a man like that should never get married because he didn’t go with a house. An in her own way, I guess she was right because I can remember thinking it and knowing it too when I saw him bent over a campfire at night with the light playing against the deep bronze of his features and making dark hollows of his eyes. And with his own humor etching more strongly, and nose a little off-kilter from when he’d been kicked in the face during his horse-breaking days, I believed that if there had been a hundred sheep camp in the hills, I could have known my father’s in an instant.

“In that little circle of canvas and leather, things had as much their own place as in a living room. If it was a new camp and not an old stop, he laid the fire pit to its precise liking. In a sheltered half-cave of rocks facing against the afternoon wind so that there would be as few ashes as possible in the evening meal. His kayaks or pack bags were always stacked to the left of the tent flap, covered by a square of canvas and held down with a shovel or a {?}beam. Summer or winter, his canvas bed and mattress of boughs or branches was placed inside the tent with his head near the entrance so that if it were winter and there was a little tin stove inside, he could reach over and start his morning fire without getting out of bed.

“When I was a boy and we brothers would visit him each summer for a few weeks, I wondered about his neatness in the camps. It seemed to me that the mountains were a good place to shuck off most of the manners and cleanliness, and then finally I came to realize that the sheep camp was my father’s house.”

Then he describes his, a time when his father tried to retire at 65:

“Sometime later when prices were good and when it became apparent to him that none of his sons would follow him in the livestock business, my father sold his sheep. Afterward, he came home to the house in Carson City for his first prolonged stay. It was a rare reunion. The family was happy because for a few years past, everyone had been trying to convince my father that he should come home. As my mother told him, ‘You’re not a young man any more to go kicking around those hills like that!’ She said this with conviction even though my father, then 65 years old could still walk his sons down to their knees. My father did not adjust very well to living in a house. He could not sit in any easy chair or sofa, but quietly preferred to relax on the floor or on hard chair. He felt the same way about his wife’s soft bed. Though he slept alone and on high in an attic room, the family could hear him tossing until late at night.

“To keep busy, he chopped wood. At every pretext he escaped to the mountains to haul down dead tree trunks and limbs, stacking them in the back yard for sawing and splitting. After a few months, the yard looked like a lumber mill and there was firewood stacked neatly in every conceivable corner of the house. It was a big, old rambling house in Carson City, Nevada. Everywhere we turned, there was firewood. Little rooms that we had forgotten existed were jammed with it, and in order to walk through the alley, one had to thread one’s way wearily through towering avenues of firewood.

“When the work possibilities in firewood were exhausted, my father built a corral, the likes of which I am certain has never been seen in Nevada. He built it in a sagebrush flat near town with the idea of using it at some vague time when he might go back into sheep, but it never held a head of stock, for lumber he used boards and posts that once graced the old territorial hotel my folks had torn down to make way for places of business. It was the sturdiest corral in the state and also the fanciest. No other corral I’m sure could claim an elaborate sprinkling of gingerbread trim and pillars that once were the pride of a hotel.

“After that, my father began to pace. He had always managed to appear cramped in a house, but now he resembled something caged. His skin unbelievably lost its deep bronze. For the first time we could remember, he mentioned that he had a pain. It was after dinner one night that my father picked up the evening newspaper. No matter how much light there was in the room, he always held his paper inches away from the glare of a lamp, force of habit from long years of reading in his tent at night by the dim light of a candle or a kerosene lantern. And also, he was far sighted from his life in the mountains, so he held it at arm’s length. My father was reading in this fashion when he gave a start. He composed himself quickly and continued to read with anobvious intensity and when he was through, he folded the newspaper and put it down and then went directly to his attic room. After a moment, the family began to hear sounds of rummaging and of clumping. My brother picked up the paper and thumbed through it until he found the story.

“A Basque of involved and familiar name who had sold his sheep and retired a few months before had died. The next day in the early dawn, before the family was awake, my father left the house; and several days later we learned that he had signed on as a herder for a big sheep outfit in the next valley. He had gone back to the mountains to stay.”

And then he goes on to describe his father, an old man, a sheep herder and how when in a storm, and he was there to help him, it was almost a foregone conclusion that not a lamb could be saved (they were lambing), and the weather had turned and it was a sleety snow and the lambs were dropping and freezing almost in a matter of minutes after their birth. Even though it was hopeless, he worked all night and saved two lambs, out of 1,000 or so. Never ate in that time, and then dropped into his sleeping quarters without eating. And how on another occasion when a lion attacked, a mountain lion attacked one of the lambs, his father went after it—I’ll read that.

“My father was about 20 feet in front of me when he reached the meadow and came face to face with the lion.” His gun was back at the camp and he didn’t have it but he went after the lion all the same. “I had been looking at the ground and the first warning I had of it was when I heard the sob in Barbo’s throat.” (That’s their dog.) “I jerked my head up and I saw the lion. I remember only feeling an odd shock at the fact of its freedom and then my mind and my face both froze. They must have stared at each other for full seconds. The lion cocked his head to one side almost curiously and rumbled once deep in his chest. Then slowly my father raised his makhila, his walking stick, and began to advance toward the lion. The rumble started again, this time an ominous warning and with that startling, suddenness of motion, the lion dropped into a crouch. Even then there was not a hint of hesitation in my father’s movements. He did not falter once in his stride. His stick was still raised in the air as though not to fend, but strike and his pose was menacing. They were only a few feet apart when the lion, as though he had suddenly become uncertain, straightened and then crouched again and then incredibly began to back up. And now his neck was not rigid any more, he tossed his head snarling and showing his fangs, and still my father pursued him in that relentless advance. When I remember I realize that the lion must not even have known that he, where he was backing, because when his hind quarters met the pole fence he recoiled as if he had been burned and in one lightning motion wheeled completely around. And when he turned to face my father again, the confusion was gone and the motion deadly. This time his eyes were burning red and he was crouching to spring. And still my father did not pause an instant but came toward him with his stick raised in the air. There was a single beat of time before the lion sprang, when he seemed to arrest his muscles and reset them. Afterward, I could remember, but at the instant I could not understand that this had happened. When the lion left the ground, my mind had already prepared its next image, that of seeing my father go down in a blinding flurry of talons; but he did not. By some feat, the lion seemed to leap directly at him and then arch his body away so that he actually came to light at the sight of my father and then almost in the same motion he began to run away. He did not bolt, but took his leave, loping unhurriedly in the direction of the trees, looking back and snarling every once in a while as though maintaining a degree of self-respect. My father did not follow him, but stood now with his stick to the ground and leaning on it, watching a little, watching until the lion had disappeared into the trees.” That was his protectiveness toward his sheep; to go after a mountain lion without even thinking, with nothing but his walking stick.

[Audience] A cowboy would have had a gun strapped on his leg.

[Rushdoony] Yes. But on another occasion he said, he went up to the sheep camp and found his father not able to use his hand and what developed was that his father, in his 70s then, had had a stroke a few days before and had passed out, had come to unable to move, and the realization the sheep have to be tended, he had struggled to his feet, using his stick and one good leg, and gone to work immediately, making sure, with his dog, the sheep were safe. And with that heroic effort, in a few days he had managed to make some recovery.

Now that is the old loyalty of a sheep herder to his sheep. That’s why they’re a dying breed. There are very few who have that loyalty today.

Now, my point is this: I’ve just given you a very few episodes in the book as a whole, Sweet Promised Land, Robert Laxalt. It’s worth reading. This is the kind of thing that scripture means when David, himself a shepherd, said, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” That kind of protectiveness, that kind of care is exactly what the psalmist means. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

And even as old Dominique Laxalt with, a stroke, pulls himself together and continues his work, the sheep are there and have to be cared for; this is the kind of devotion to the flock, the care of the flock, that our shepherd gives to His flock. It’s a glorious thing to be a member of the flock of Christ.

[Audience] Seems to me that book was used in {?}’s magazine somewhere {?}

[Rushdoony] This came out in 1957. You might find it in the libraries, or look around for it in used book stores. Robert Laxalt, Sweet Promised Land. It’s a beautiful story.

[Audience] Was Robert the governor?

[Rushdoony] No, it was his brother; I believe Paul is the governor. There was an article by one of the Laxalt boys in a recent National Geographic on his visit back to the old country and of course, here Robert describes his visit with his father in his old age and it’s a moving story of how difficult it is to get their father to agree to the terms and to go and to spend that money, and they want him to buy a new suit. Well, the suit he got when he got married over 40 years ago was still good! What was wrong with that? And they had trouble getting him to buy a new suit, finally, in Reno and when they did, he wanted to spare the new suit as well as the old one and to go in his Levi’s. He had a new pair of Levi’s. That was good enough to wear on the TW plane back and save his suit for when he got there! And his return trip home is very, very moving.

[Audience] {?} saving in connection with, with, my Mother’s generation. She was always saving. We didn’t know for what, but she would save!

[Rushdoony] Yes. For the next generation. Yes, for the next generation.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] I think we have something coming up.

[Audience] How do you spell the last name?

[Rushdoony] L-a-x-a-l-t.