IBL13: Law in the New Testament

The Tribute Money

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 6

Track: 134

Dictation Name: RR130BV134

Date: 1960s-1970s

Luke 20:20-26, “The Tribute Money.” Luke 20:20-26,

“20And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.

21 And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly:

22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?

23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, why tempt ye me?

24 Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's.

25 And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's.

26 And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marveled at his answer, and held their peace.”

This is one of the best-known stories of the New Testament. The purpose of the Pharisees, according to Matthew, was to entangle Him in His talk. St. Luke gives us a more specific statement, “and they watched him and sent forth spies which should feign themselves just men that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.” By this is meant the Roman governor. What was their purpose? Time and again as they had confronted Jesus and tried to prove that He didn’t really believe in God’s Law, that He didn’t really espouse all those laws given through Moses centuries ago. Jesus had confounded them and had strongly affirmed the law. Now they planned to use His affirmation of the law to destroy Him.

According to the Law of God, there is only one tax that the State can exact. This is a head tax, a poll tax, an equal amount for every mail 20 years old and older. This tax provided for the basic function of government: the courts, military protection, and that was about it. It provided for very limited government. The other tax was the tithe. Both taxes were called God’s tax. And the tithe provided for the basic social functions of the social order: education, religion, welfare, health, medicine, just about every possible social function. But here was the Roman government taxing every person in Palestine in terms of a head tax and this head tax being used as well to provide religious services in Rome for emperor worship. It seemed to be a parody on God’s taxing laws.

There were purists who said that this tax by the Romans was ungodly; illegal. That no Jew who truly believed in the Law of God should pay it; of course they paid it, even as they said so. Now they wanted Jesus to make the same statement publically so that they could denounce Him to the Roman government and have Him arrested.

In every age, governments have been the same. Over and over again in history we have seen various states and empires treat rather casually rioting against the citizenry. But when you espouse that people pay no taxes then you get into trouble. Then you are stepping on the toes of the State.

Their strategy thus, was a very subtle and a clever one, an intelligent one. We are told that the Herodians and the Pharisees were in this together, according to Matthew and Mark. The Herodians favored the Roman tax and the Herodian rule because they said, this is better than a direct Roman rule. The Pharisees were normally hostile to the Herodians, but we find them together at this point united in their opposition to Jesus Christ. The question was prefaced with fulsome flattery: “master” (or ‘rabbi, teacher,’) “we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly.” (They didn’t think so, but they wanted to set him up with flattery.) “Neither acceptest thou the person of any.” (You tell the truth without regard to anyone so put your head in the noose now for us.) “But teachest the way of God truly.” Now after all this flatter comes the question. “Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar or no?”

The Greek text makes it clear that this had reference to the direct head tax required by Caesar. Very, very clearly in that tax, Rome was assuming a divine role. It was requiring religious assent to emperor worship. The coins by their inscription and their design made known the imperial philosophy: Caesar as god incarnate, Caesar as savior.

By way of answer, Jesus asked for a denarius. It is translated ‘a penny.’ He did not ask this of His disciples, or produce it out of the disciples’ treasury. He asked those who questioned Him to show Him a denarius. Then when they produced this from their pockets, He asked whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said Caesar’s of course. The coin had Caesar’s image on it as god. The coin proclaimed Caesar not only as god, but as Pontifex Maximus, that is, High Priest.

Now very clearly, the coins were religious. Very clearly, those who used them and those who paid taxes with them were serving other gods, which his forbidden, is it not? “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” His questioners knew this. And they knew that Jesus knew it. And so they expected Him to say, well you cannot of course have any part in this. Since this coin is blasphemy on both sides, proclaiming a ruler both to be god and the great high priest, and since this tax is used among other things, to maintain the great temple in Rome, which is the center of the cult of emperor worship, it is not only blasphemy, it is forbidden. This was their expectation. This was the answer they expected. But our Lord said unto them, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s and unto God the things which be God’s.”

The word ‘render’ can also and better be translated ‘give back.’ Give back to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. It is your moral duty. The same word is used by St. Paul in Romans 13:7 when he says, render (or give back to all) their dues, tribute to whom tribute, custom to whom custom. What our Lord was saying in part was this—they were living within the Roman Empire, they were receiving certain things from the Roman Empire (its military protection, its government) and however much they disliked it, it was providing the government. It was providing the coinage, it was providing the social order; therefore give back to Caesar his due.

But the fact still remained that the two poll taxes, God’s tax and Caesar’s tax stood in opposition. One was paid to the emperor and the other to a godly state, and the imperial tax provided for the daily sacrifice for the welfare of the Roman emperor. But Jesus did not affirm the Roman claim, simply the Roman power: render. Give back to God the things that are God’s.

The Early Church understood the meaning of this passage and they declared quite rightly that our Lord was referring to Numbers 8:13, following, and that this meant that everything belongs to God. Israel had departed from God’s rule and authority and from His law and had placed itself by its sin under Roman rule and authority. They were not serving God. They were serving other gods. They were rejecting the Son of God. Therefore, Caesar was properly their god; therefore give back to Caesar his due. Give him the honor, the custom, the tribute which is his due, but remember everything belongs to God. Render (give back) to God everything that is God’s.

Obedience is due to all authorities under whom we find ourselves. Rome was now their master and had to be obeyed. But more than that, what were the implications of their entire position? They wanted Jesus to say, and trap Himself, and face death, pay no taxes to a godless government. This was their secret position. They did not dare teach it. They did not dare publicly espouse it because they didn’t want to be arrested. But this was their position and this was what ultimately led to the Jewish-Roman War and to the death of Israel.

We can understand the issue by the wildness temptation of our Lord. Satan had tempted our Lord to follow the way of empire, that way which the politicians recommend to us today; give the people bread and miracles, perform all kinds of great works to enable them to walk by sight, to enable them to have cradle-to-grave security. Turn the stones into bread (economic security). Cast Thyself down, perform a great miracle so that people will know you have unlimited power and nothing is impossible for Thee, so that no faith is necessary, they can walk by sight. They know then they have perfect security. This is the way of Caesar throughout the centuries, the way of the State. The world of Caesar, the world of Statism seeks to create a new world without God, to give a man security which is not from God but from the State, without regeneration, but by acts of State.

And through the centuries, the State has exacted a heavy tax trying to accomplish this but gaining nothing. The answer to Caesar’s way is not disobedience. The Caesars were planning a paradise on earth. They were operating a welfare state. They were offering their citizens cradle-to-grave security, not only apartment buildings constructed through public housing by the Roman emperors to provide for welfare recipients, not only food rations and wine rations, but also free services, everything to be taken care of. Not only cradle-to-grave security, but the removal of all problems! Paradise on earth! This was the program of the Caesars. This was what that coin represented, Caesar as god and high priest, the one who was going to usher in paradise on earth. It was wrong and it was blasphemous, just as what Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin and all the other capitals offer today is wrong and blasphemous.

But the answer to Caesar in every age is not disobedience, not a refusal to pay that tax, such as the Herodians and the Pharisees wanted Jesus to say, because the final implications of such disobedience is revolution. Such disobedience is the first stage in revolution. And revolution ultimately is Caesar’s way, the belief that man’s efforts by works of law or by works of armament can re-make man and the world. God’s way is regeneration and then reconstruction of all things in terms of His Law, and so His answer was, render (give back therefore) unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

Obey all due authority. This is a minor aspect of our duty, the important one: render, give back to God, what is His due—your life, your tithes, your firstfruits, your vows, your sacrifices—everything. This is exactly the meaning that the Early Church drew from this passage. As a matter of fact, it would be easy to go to passage after passage in the apostolic fathers in which they say, what our Lord said was, give to God everything—your life, your tithes, and all. As a matter of fact, Justin Martyr cited this passage and their obedience to it, both parts of it as the characteristic mark of the Christian, and he said in part, “And everywhere we, more readily than all men endeavor to pay to those appointed by you the taxes both ordinary and extraordinary as we have been taught by Him, where at that time some came to Him and asked Him if one ought to pay tribute to Caesar and He answered, tell me whose image does this coin bear, and they said Caesars, and again He answered them, render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. Whence to God alone we render worship but in other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, praying that with your kingly power you be found to possess also sound judgment. But if you pay no regard to our prayers and frank explanations we shall suffer no loss, since we believe, or rather indeed are persuaded that every man will suffer punishment in eternal fire according to the merit of his deeds and will render account according to the power he has received from God, as Christ intimated as He said, to whom God has given more, of him shall more be required.”

Not a very happy saying for Roman governors and emperors to hear from their best tax payers, the most faithful tax payers, who said we render, we give back to God the things that are God’s and to you to whom much has been given, more will be required, and if you fail to render to God the things that are God’s the eternal fires of hell await you. It’s no wonder that the persecution abounded and Rome fell.

What is due to Caesar is due to him, said the Church fathers, by God’s providence, purpose and counsel. What is due to God, what all men owe Him is everything. Therefore, in this blessed season especially, we should ever be mindful that it is our duty according to our Lord to give back, to render unto God the things that are God’s. He having created us and through Jesus Christ His only-begotten Son having redeemed us, is doubly our Lord, and has total claim on all of us and all our possessions. Let us therefore be wise stewards of the things which are God’s. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we gather together to render back unto Thee the things which are Thine, and so our Father we commit ourselves afresh unto Thee, our substance, our hopes, our joy, our all. Use us mightily, oh Lord in Thy service and make us ever-mindful, our Father that the very hairs on our head are not only numbered by Thee but are Thine, and Thou having redeemed us will do yet more and care for us. Oh, Lord our God, how great Thou art and we praise Thee. In Jesus’ name, amen.

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

Yes?

[Audience] In the demonstration of the tithe, {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] How was that managed? In those days, you had the Roman government, and had {?}

[Rushdoony] The tithe then, and throughout the Christian centuries, until fairly recently, went for a number of things. It could go in part to the temple and the synagogue. It could go to the school. It could go also for hospitals, to any number of a variety of things that provided the basic social functions of society, so that through the centuries, the tithe covered the basic social functions of society.

[Audience] Rome {?} had … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, a good question. This varied from place to place. In Virginia, you had to pay the tithe to a tithing man, a state officer who then allotted it so the State collected it, but the State did not use it.

Now in Virginia, up until well into the War of Independence, the only taxes you had were the head tax and the tithe. During the War of Independence, they passed some special emergency taxes to support the war. These emergency taxes were necessitated because they went onto paper money and debauched their currency. Those taxes became permanent, unfortunately, as war taxes tend to become. But in Virginia until late in the War of Independence, the only taxes were in terms of the Bible.

Yes.

[Audience] {?} Now the tax, {?} … what you call a poll tax {?}

[Rushdoony] The poll tax is virtually gone now, but as it existed until recently, it had declined until it was only a tax for all those who voted, and it was next to nothing. It was something like $3, $5, $10 in a few cases, very minor tax which you paid when you registered to vote. So the poll tax had become nothing of what it originally was.

Yes.

[Audience] So now {?} oh about 10 years ago, there was a {?} around the country we had {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] {?}

[Rushdoony] What?

[Audience] Are they still {?}

[Rushdoony] I don’t think so. I believe they were all abolished recently by the Federal government, but they were all remnants of the old biblical tax. Nevada was one of the states that still had the poll tax.

Yes.

[Audience] When you said {?} you said the only viable {?} We’re not supposed to pay them today? {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, the implications of this that, well, usually the way it is interpreted today is that this has reference to Church and State, that the two are separate and you give to the State the things that belong to the State and to the Church the things that belong to the Church. But that’s a very limited and not an accurate meme.

Yes.

[Audience] What of your commandment to pick up your {?} tax?

[Rushdoony] We are what?

[Audience] What of your commandment of States to {?} tax?

[Rushdoony] To be a tax collector…

[Audience] Yes. You were commanded to do this, for the State. How… that would be breaking the {?}

[Rushdoony] Your choice then is either to, you have to sometimes choose between the lesser of two evils. We cannot be revolutionists, you see, and the implication of disobedience at that point would be ultimately revolution. Only if the State commands us to disavow God can we stand up then.

[Audience] That’s where {?} not to stand {?} pay tax to, or the command that you break that command of God

[Rushdoony] Well, let’s put it this way: when the State commands against God’s Law with respect to our property or our work, the resistance we make must be legal resistance. Legal resistance; that is, using the courts as far as possible, but only when the State commands with respect to our person and to our worship do we have the right to disobey. Let me illustrate:

If the State tomorrow said you could not worship God nor possess a Bible nor call yourself a Christian, you would have to resist them there. Or, if the State (and this has actually happened) commands that you commit immorality, in one case with the Persian Empire, under the rule of M{?} and his Communist order, they actually commanded the, one country, that everyone submit and commit incest because this was a ritual of M{?}ism. And they resisted. They were then justified under God because here was a command that affected their person, their faith, their morality. But when it affects our property, our resistance should be legal and through the courts of law.

[Audience] So our tithes {?} which our {?} made to the {?} The House of Burgess … {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, but they were not resisting the government, they were defending their government. This is the difference.

In that case, it was a foreign government making claims on them. You see, each one of the colonies was an independent government. Each of them had as its king the same king that the English had, so that King George III was king of England, king of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and so on. Now, their obedience to them was as king of Virginia. What the king of England did was to conspire with Parliament to destroy the government of the separate colonies and turn it over to Parliament. So that when Parliament tried to legislate it was an alien country. It was as if, say, the Soviet Union today said we are going to abolish the California legislature, replace the governor and change your laws. You would not be disobeying the law then, would you, if you resisted them. You would be standing in faithfulness to your law. So Patrick Henry and George Mason and George Washington were standing in faithfulness to the laws of their country and the Declaration of Independence was a bill of indictment against King George III for violating the charter, for unconstitutional activities in conspiracy with Parliament. So you see, they were defending themselves against outside invaders and it was not revolution.

Our time is just about up. I’d like to share a few things with you of interest, on from this morning’s paper, an article. It’s the second time we’ve had articles like this this week, and there’s about one a week these days. I’ll just read a portion of it, the heading, “Erotica Held no Key in Sex Offenses.” New York. Exposure to pornography during adolescence had little effect on persons who later became rapists and child molesters, reports a study conducted by the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, and so on. The jist of it is that supposedly a great deal of research, and some of it is published in the current issue of Psychology Today proves that there is no connection between pornography and sexual crimes.

Now, it’s very interesting that the press has had this twice this week and once a week for a month or two. The President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography produced all kinds of so-called evidence that this was true. The report was not accepted by President Nixon, a minority in the committee protested the hearings, police chiefs and criminologists across the country protested the hearings. Why? The whole thing was fraudulent and stacked from the beginning. They refused to hear any police experts or criminologists or authorities who demonstrated conclusively that there was a connection between pornography and crime, a very, very marked, a very high relationship. Instead they went to all kinds of off-beat organizations that had an axe to grind that were out to champion pornography and to prove that it was innocent.

Now, we are not being told anything about all these other reports which are available across country from any police department of any size, from criminologists, from sociologists. Instead we are given doses of propaganda from this report that the president refused to accept, which was demonstrated to be fraudulent, and every few days it appears as though it were news of some proven fact. This is the kind of news we’re subjected to these days.

Then, Tuesday, December 8, 1970, this account of a trial in New York: a Brooklyn man, who allegedly passed a bank teller a note reading, “give me all the money you have” was acquitted Monday of attempted robbery on the ground he had not frightened the teller enough. Clearly, he was the man who tried to hold up the bank. The teller passed the note on to somebody else to read and they tripped an alarm and the man left and walked right into the hands of the police. He admitted he was the one at that time, but when it came to court, the judge freed him on that ground.

We discussed this matter some time ago when we dealt with the fact that today, not the act but the mind increasingly is the thing in the courts. Criminal intent; whether a person was killed or not, what was going on in the mind of the killer that counts today. Now it’s gone so far that if you don’t scare a teller when you’re robbing them, you’re not guilty.

Then this, an interview with Dr. William Albrecht. In case you don’t know who Dr. Albrecht is, he is the greatest living soil scientist, and while he is an Evolutionist and we can’t agree with him there, his writings in this area are the most important work done in the past two generations. This is the interview:

Destruction of the soil by man’s increasing use of chemical fertilizers is moving the U.S. and the rest of the world towards a disastrous famine, warned the noted biologist. “We won’t learn our lesson until man people are eliminated,” Dr. William A. Albrecht said during an interview with a national newspaper, “We’ll never learn our lesson in time to save ourselves.” The 81-year old scientist who taught at the University of Missouri for 50 years and headed its Soils Department is now active as a writer and lecturer. “Agriculture is created, but man has messed up its potentiality,” he said, adding that the death of the soil was slow when we used horses for power because a certain amount of manure was returned to the earth. “Now that we’re using artificial fertilizers such as ammonium sulfate, we’re killing the soil faster. Man has been plundering the soil to such an extent that he is destroying its fertility. As a result, the protein in our grain crops is rapidly diminishing,” Dr. Albrecht said. “As a case in point,” he noted, “the average protein content of wheat grown in Western Texas in 1940 ranged from 16-19%. In 1968 it ranged from 11-13%.” Dr. Albrecht said protein content is a key factor in measuring the quality of grain crops. The soil expert emphasized, “You’ve got to have fertile soil to grow healthy plants. Only healthy plants can provide proper feed for animals and only healthy animals can provide meat to sustain man, but our crops are getting so weak that they will cease to survive even in the mid U.S. very few farms still have half of their virgin fertility.” Dr. Albrecht tied in this loss with ill health. “If you’re not nourished properly, you won’t survive,” he said, “That’s why sickness is increasing.” Dr. Albrecht predicted that soil fertility will decrease to the point where many farmers will fail economically. This he said will be accompanied by an epidemic of sickness and disease due to poor nutrition.

Then, finally, very briefly, a report on our Christmas festival. Last year we took in a little better than $1,400 for our publication fund. I was in error when I told some of you we took in about $1,700 last year. It was $1,446. This year the returns are not all in as yet, but it is in excess of $1,700 and may reach $1,800, for which we have cause to be thankful to God and to all of you who worked so faithfully to help us make it a successful festival.

Let us bow our heads now for the benediction.

And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.