Contemporary Cultural Ethics

Dominion Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Culture

Lesson: Dominion Man

Genre: Speech

Track: 07

Dictation Name: RR132D7

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

It is man’s purpose now, man’s calling, to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. Man, because of the Fall, was deflected from this task. He sought to create a realm of dominion as his own god, to exercise dominion in a domain that did not belong to him, to have a jurisdiction over good and evil, to absolutize himself.

As a result, man lost dominion over himself and over the earth, and the earth was cursed for man’s sake. In consequence, it became a frustration to man as he worked with the earth. His own relationship in marriage, an area of joy and peace, according to the purpose of God in the creation ordinance, became now an area of frustration, and tension, and hostility. But God, by his grace, established a covenant people, a covenant plan, covenant redemption, and in Jesus Christ, instituted the new creation. Man in the covenant is restored to the task given to man originally, to exer4cise dominion and to subdue the earth.

Now, there are many who hold that the creation mandate was abrogated by the Fall, and has no relevance to anyone, save Adam and Eve, that anything that took place before the Fall belongs to another dispensation and has nothing to do with us as Christians. Well, of course, this would invalidate if it were logically pursued, to the very fact of marriage, because Genesis 2:21 following is obviously declared binding by our Lord in Matthew 19:3-12. Our Lord does not assume that this is another dispensation and that marriage, therefore, is abolished, but antinomianism, by its logic, has had to wage war against the creation mandate, and against the law.

A few years ago, in San Marino, California, as a meeting of the Bible Presbyterian Church, Dr. Carroll McIntyre pushed through at his insistence a statement condemning any belief in the validity of the creation mandate, and he has extensively propagandized that position since. This is, of course, the logic of antinomianism, and the logic of antinomianism must push further. An Antinomian cannot stand still anymore than a covenant-keeper in the Reformed faith can stand still. We develop the implications of our position. We push out in terms of the mandate that we have.

Thus, it should not surprise us that even the creation ordinance is under attack insofar as marriage is concerned. In the San Fernando Valley, at one Arminian, antinomian, fundamentalist church, the pastor not too long ago, just in the past year, stated from the pulpit that a marriage ceremony really had no place and it was a part of a legalism that Christians did not belong to because we are under grace, not under law. This, however, was not new. During the Great Awakening, there were men of the antinomian persuasion who broke radically with Edwards and others, and insisted that it was the duty of those who were supposedly converted under their ministry to forsake their wives and their children, and to be ready to take up with one, two, three, four, as many women as they chose on an entirely antinomian basis of a feeling of mutual grace.

Now, the logic of antinomianism does lead to that kind of position as it has several times in the history of the church, but the logic of the Reformed faith does requires us to say that covenant man is dominion man. Covenant man is dominion man, that having been called by God to be again a covenant keeper, he is, of necessity, a man who must exercise dominion in terms of that covenant, that the covenant has a law, that the law of that covenant is spelled out for us in scripture. It is impossible for a covenant to exist without a law. The idea of a covenant requires a law. Therefore, when God gives a covenant to man, he spells out the terms of that covenant in his law. The covenant is an act of grace, but the terms of the covenant are a legal contract, whereby man is bound to the terms of that contract to obey this God of grace.

The new, or better the renewed covenant in Jesus Christ reaffirms the foundations of the old and the continuity with the old so that twelve tribes are replaced with twelve disciples. The church, in one of its earlier names, was known as the New Israel of God, as well as Followers of the Way, and a little later as Christians. The significance of violation and of obedience to the covenant is spelled out very emphatically in two great chapters. Leviticus 26 and especially in Deuteronomy 28, where God declares the consequences of obedience and disobedience, the blessings and the curses that follow, and he declares that there are certain inevitable blessings that follow upon obedience, and inevitable curses that follow upon disobedience. “These things shall come upon thee and pursue thee, and overtake thee,” so that scripture affirms, as I point out in Biblical Law, not only irresistible grace, but irresistible blessings and irresistible curses.

These chapters, Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 are repeatedly echoed in the New Testament. They are echoed in such verses as Revelation 21:3, 2 Corinthians 6:16, 1 John 1:9, Luke 15:18, Romans 11:2, 26, and 28, 1 Timothy 4:8, Luke 19:43, and other verses. We miss the framework of these citations in the New Testament if we do not know that they are harkening back to the these two key chapters that deal with dominion, or reprobation, in terms of the covenant and the covenant law.

Moreover, Christ, in his atonement, and by his resurrection, declares St. Paul in Romans 6:9, destroys the power of sin and death. Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law but under grace, in Romans 6:14. The curse of the law, the death penalty, has been fulfilled in Christ and we are freed from the law as an indictment. So that the New Testament speaks of the restoration of dominion to the new Adam, Jesus Christ. It declares that we are made alive in him, that all dominion now is in his hands, and St. John in Revelation 1:5-6 declares that he has empowered his people to be kings, exercising dominion, and priests, dedicating all things to God in him, stating, and from, “Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.”

Now we are all familiar with the doctrine whereby we are, in Christ, now kings, priests, and prophets. Dr. Van Til, in his Defense of the Faith, has a most eloquent section in one of his chapters on the significance of this for the Christian man. As a king, he is to rule the earth and to exercise dominion over it under Christ, and to bring it under the sway of Christ. As a priest, he is to dedicate all of the earth to the triune God. As a prophet, he is to declare the word of the Lord to the world, to develop its meaning in terms of his calling, his place in life, his station, whatever he is and wherever he is as churchmen, as citizen, as father, as a workman, in every capacity, to be a prophet of God.

Now, we fail to understand that doctrine if we do not recognize the meaning of kingship. A king must exercise dominion or he is no king. The idea that one can be king without dominion is a modern sophistication that never occurred to anyone in Antiquity, and certainly not to any writer of scripture. We do have kings without any practical authority or dominion today, but that is a modern sophistication. It is impossible to conceive of that in any scriptural terms. No other idea is tenable in scripture other than that a king is one who exercises dominion. We are therefore, kings in Christ. John 1:12 declares, “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name,” and God has no powerless sons.

Now, the means of exercising dominion and kingship is the law of God. Every law system is a plan of conquest. It is impossible to recognize the significance of law unless we see it as a plan of conquest. There are two ways in which, historically, conquest can be achieved. One is militarily and the other is through law, through ethics, because ethics, morality, declare that, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” They impose a standard upon men. They penalize departures from it. They bring man, as an individual and man socially, into subjection. It is a means whereby we, individually, exercise dominion over our being, and socially, exercise dominion wherever we are. Law is, therefore, inescapably a plan of conquest, and we fail to understand the significance of law if we do not see it as the means whereby the righteousness of God is to prevail in a fallen world. Revelations 22:14 and 15 declares, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”

It is wrong, I believe, to refer this passage to the world beyond the Second Coming. It is a promise to those who, in history, obey God’s word. It gives them the right to the Tree of Life, and citizenship in the New Jerusalem, in Christ’s kingdom. The New Jerusalem here is very plainly contrasted to the old Jerusalem. The old Jerusalem is made up of the pseudo-covenant members, whether from old Israel, or from the church, people who are outwardly of the covenant but in reality, belong to that city which crucified Christ. It is the city, says St. John in Revelation 11:8, “which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was crucified.”

Now, the goal of fallen man as we have seen in our previous meetings has been to become his own god, but the end thereof is death. Not too long ago, in a study edited by Terry Southern, Richard Seaver, and Alexander Trocchi, Writers in Revolt, An Anthology, a series of selections representing the modern Existentialist temper in our society, the editors wrote of the collapse of values. They saw this as hailing the advent of a golden age. They declared that the worldwide collapse of values so that even the most obtuse of men had to say that things are falling apart was something to rejoice in, because it meant the old order was perishing. “So, as they speak of the collapse of values,” the editors write, “it is seen in the particulars of the price fixing arrangements between rival corporations, and in the contradictions on editorial pages. It exists in every case in the unparalleled profusion of murder, rape, mayhem, suicide, insanity, divorce, drug addiction, and fraud taking place in our culture, or in short, wherever a man and an act are seen to discard tradition, to smash an idol, to grope with blind urgency for something of value, the present clamor for unity is our culture or as some wag put it, togetherness, is nothing more than the panicked recognition of its total absence. To understand the absence of unity in our culture, and its lack of any immediate prospect, we have only to examine the nature of the principle dynamic force at sway. In considering a dynamic force in any particular culture, it is usually clear what is intended. That is, a force of influence which determines motivation and behavior to the extent that it is broadly felt, or evident in the society. It is implicit that, at the heart of such a force, would be a body of knowledge, belief, and prophesy in varying proportions. In the strict term then, in the strict sense, the term is synonymous with the term ‘religion.’” But, they go on to say, this is ended now.

Every society heretofore that has had any existence has had, without variation, a religious foundation. Even until recently, as recently as the beginning of the 1960’s, society still had a religious foundation, be it however non-Christian, but now, the religious foundations of society are gone. Why? Well, you may recall during this week, I have pointed out what constitutes a social order, a law structure, a society. At the top, there is a religion. That religion has a system of ethics. That ethics is codified as law. It is incorporated as a state. There has never been a society heretofore that has not so existed. Whether we look at Ancient China, Japan, India, the Roman Empire, Greece, Egypt, the nations of the world today, the tribes in any part of the world, we find this correlation. A religious foundation, a presupposition, which creates an ethic and the ethics give itself form, is embodied in a law structure which is the state.

Now, according to editors Southern, Seaver, and Trocchi, this is at last disappearing. It’s in a state of collapse, because now, they say, there is a new order that has been born, theology. Whether you define that in humanistic terms, because a humanistic theology is one which begins with the presupposition of man as God. Theology has governed the world up until now, but theology has given way now, finally, to something else. Psychology. Psychology is now the governing, the motive force throughout the world, and so they look for the dawn of the golden age, a post-religious age in which psychology rather than theology governs.

Now, of course, we would have to say, first of all, psychology has roots in theology for us. We believe that psychology is simply a branch together with anthropology of theology. Our doctrine of God determines our doctrine of man and of man’s mind and soul, and it is no less true of humanism. Humanism’s doctrine of psychology presupposes a theology of man. On the other hand, we would have to say, yes, there is some truth to what Seaver and Southern, and Trocchi have said in that now the priority is no longer in the theology of humanism. They want to abandon that. They’re not thinking of mankind. They have surrendered the concept of mankind. The old impetus, to think of one world, mankind as a unit, is now waning. You’re still, if you’re thinking that way, in the world of Wendell Willkie and the fifties, and the United Nations which today, has no great impetus behind it, nor any great enthusiasm for it on the part of the liberals and the new left. It represents an outworn relic, the faith of yesterday, because today, the new concern is, we will eliminate that apparatus. We will concentrate existentially on the individual, on psychology on man.

Now, of course, this creates a tremendous problem. They expect a golden age to develop out of psychology. What we can hear, as Christians, echoes of the book of judges. “In those days there was no king in Israel.” The Lord God of Hosts had been rejected as king, “and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” In the last hour we saw that Karl Marx was fearfully concerned with the implications of anarchism, that one of the problems as he saw it was that a logic of atheism, the logic of unbelief, led to the kind of thinking that Max Sterner represented in The Ego and His Own, that it meant that every man was his own law, and it created an impossible world which Marx saw would lead to the death of man rather than the golden future of man. That only what man was totally programmed, as it were, in terms of the communist state and beyond alienation and so on, could he achieve a kind of a stateless world, but even then, much of what Marx has to say represents an illusion in that he still envisions a state, only it is no longer called the state, but these new thinkers have abandoned all that. They want psychology alone to govern, that man out of his own being, out of his own existence, without reference to anything outside of himself, will determine his own life and his own society. This is the world, very plainly, of the Marquis De Sade. The Marquis De Sade called for this precisely; the total legality of all things save Christianity. Freedom to do as one pleases without reference to anything except one’s own psychology.

And as a result, instead of a golden age developing as these thinkers believe, we would have to say rather that it is the end of the road, the death of humanism that they are rather announcing. It is killing itself, because the exclusive concentration on psychology is not only the death of ethics. It is the death of man.

Now ethics, whether we are dealing with right or wrong, is moral action. It deals with the world of moral action. Moral action means supplanting evil with good so that, “Let him that stole steal no more.” Moral action inevitably creates a social order. As we saw earlier, it involves a plan of conquest. This plan of conquest is an impossibility we saw earlier also, if we have a monastic ethics and evil is metaphysical. Then we are waging an impossible war because evil is an important, necessary part of our being, and we can never eliminate it. There is no possibility of moral victory. Whereas, if in biblical terms we see evil as moral, then the possibility of conquest is there. It is a certainty, so that moral action will lead to triumph.

Now, in terms of psychology, there is no possibility of victory. If the whole world of man is his own psyche, there is no possibility of him exorcising any part of his being, and so man is caught in a perpetual St. Midas dance in a world of nothingness, and there is no possibility for his success, for his victory, for anything except his defeat.

I hope, as a result of the developments in the two classes this week, you have begun to see that we are at one of the most critical points in all of history, where there is a growing development of the basic presuppositions of biblical faith on the one hand, and on the other hand, a growing development of the basic presuppositions of unbelief. These two systems are now in increasing confrontation. You are dealing with them on all sides. You cannot pick up a newspaper or turn on a television set, or go to a novel, or go to a film without seeing the contrast between the modern world of psychology, of Existentialism, and the biblical world of theology and the ethics of the one in conflict with the other. You are in a war. There is no escaping that battle. If you turn your back on that war or try to act as though it does not exist and retreat pietistically, you will be destroyed, but we have the assurance from God in his word that if we meet the enemy in open conflict in an obedience to his word that we shall prevail, and so the calling you have and the time you live in is a tremendous and an exciting one.

When I wrote Intellectual Schizophrenia, which was somewhere around 1958 or 1959, I concluded by saying that instead of viewing the future as a dark and a foreboding one, it was actually a most exciting one, that we were living and are living in one of the most exciting eras of all history. When the issue is being joined, when the battle is at hand, and since we are clearly on the winning side, who can overthrow the Lord God of Hosts? We can go into that battle if we go fully armed in Christ with the joy of salvation and the certainty of victory. It is important, therefore, that in the days ahead, all of you give yourselves to your studies here at the seminary, not with a professionalism that this is a routine that you have to go through, studying systematics and ethics, and Old Testament and New Testament, and what not, in order that you can get your degree and go out and get a church, and live a comfortable life, and preach a lot of pious pap to people, not rocking any boats, nor fighting any battles, but making sure you get ahead, and you will, if you please men, get ahead with men, but not with the Lord, then I feel very sorry for you if that’s your goal. But if you see your opportunity here as one of preparation for battle in perhaps the most important era of all history, then you have a great and an exciting future. You’re going to have more than a few scars before it’s over, but battle scars are things to be worn with dignity, and they do have their reward with the Lord.

I trust, therefore, you will see your studies not as something academic, but as something vital and necessary for the preparation which you must undertake for battle. This seminary was battle-born. I’ve known of the hopes for it, as I said in the last hour, back in the last 1940’s and 1950’s, I was here in the first ministerial institute before the building was actually through escrow and was in the possession of the seminary, the white house. I know something about the history of the seminary, perhaps not as much as some of you, but it is battle-born. It should prepare you, it hope to prepare you, for battle. I trust you‘ll see your training that way.

Are there any questions now? Yes?

[Audience] Could you briefly outline your millennial view? {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, I would prefer to recommend you to one of my books. I’d make a little bit out of it then, too. So, Thy Kingdom Come, as well as other books of mine, and Biblical Law will tell you about it, and very briefly, I do believe that as we extend the scope of God’s kingdom through regeneration, and then as we apply God’s law, regenerate men in obedience to God, extending the scope of his kingdom through his word, we will see progressively the curse removed from the earth, the progressive conquest of men, nations, institutions, areas of life, we will see, in terms of Isaiah, a growing longevity for man as the curse recedes, and a glorious reign of the saints in every sphere of life throughout the earth, and along period of prosperity and blessing before the end.

Some of the old Reformed thinkers in this country said that, in view of the kind of population we would have and incidentally, they did estimate the population of the United States when it was three million during the War of Independence, some of the men like Bellamy and Hopkins estimated that by the year 2000, it would be 200 million. So their thinking was quite good. They said that, in view of the great population the world would have, and the sway of Christ and his kingdom among those tremendous peoples in all continents, islands, and nations, at the end of the world, the total number of the redeemed would be so great that the number of the reprobate would be insignificant by comparison. In fact, I forget which one of them it was, stated that it would be something, he said, hypothetically, comparable to a ratio of 17,000:1. Now that’s how optimistic some of the Reformed men were, and they definitely felt that it would be a very, very glorious fulfillment of God’s reign in all the arts, the sciences, in every sphere of life, and it would be the realization of the image of God in man to an extent not yet realized. Yes?

[Audience] I’m having difficulties understanding the way you seem to present it, the world and society as it is today.

[Rushdoony] I don’t get {?}

[Audience] And what seems to be happening. The down pull of theology {?} psychology. I can’t see that. I can’t see the world getting better.

[Rushdoony] Oh, the world isn’t going to get any better. Yes, the world and mankind are going to go down the drain as they are continuing, but we are going to redeem more and more, and we’re going to snatch them as brands from the burning. They’re at the end of a rope. What direction is there for society? It has exploded every kind of humanistic, non-theistic potentiality for society. The anti-God position has ended up in a self-contradiction. It has no way to go. It’s a tremendous opportunity for us. This is why Van Til stresses the negative apologetics. He says point out to the ungodly that they have cut out the ground from under themselves in terms of the direction of their thinking, that the only way they can maintain anything is on borrowed premises, and they themselves are now cutting out those borrowed premises from underneath themselves.

So, a godless society is not going to be able to function. It will be brought to its knees. Yes?

[Audience] Your opening remarks this afternoon left me with two impressions that I would like to refer to. In the dominion of Adam and Eve, their intrusion into the dominion of knowledge of good and evil.

[Rushdoony] Their what?

[Audience] Are you proposing the view that if they had successfully passed the probation that they would not have had the knowledge of good and evil?

[Rushdoony] No, that knowledge of good and evil, it means to know has the force, as Kuyper has pointed out, of determining, deciding. To know good and evil, to be as God, knowing good and evil means to determine for yourself what constitutes good and evil. So, it was not that in the sense you mean it, that they didn’t know what was good and evil, but that they accepted good and evil on God’s terms before the Fall. When God said it was good, they accepted it as good. When God said, “Thou shalt not,” they accepted it. Then, they decided, “We will be our own god, determining, knowing for our self what constitutes good and evil.” Yes?

[Audience] The second, is it your contention that only covenant man is dominion man?

[Rushdoony] Yes, only covenant man is dominion man, because sin, scripture says, has dominion over us apart from Christ.

[Audience] Then where does that leave you in terms of common grace, and fallen man executing elements of, parts of the cultural mandate?

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, I don’t like the terms, this gets into a totally new area of discussion, “common grace.” I prefer Van Til’s term “creation grace,” and I believe that as culture develops, men progressively depart from that aspect. The logic of their position leads to the destruction of their own premises which are borrowed premises, and they work out the premises of their fall, their sin, and they destroy themselves. So, I do not believe that fallen man can maintain a culture, or maintain any kind of social order. He destroys it ultimately, and as you trace through every society that has thus far existed, every non-Christian society, and ostensibly Christian ones, you find that these presuppositions ultimate destroy them. As they develop them to their logical conclusion, they have cut the ground out from their own society. Yes?

[Audience] Would you be willing to comment on two scripture passages for us in relationship {?} particular view, and it’s in Romans 7:1-6 and the other one’s {?} two passages.

[Rushdoony] Alright. Now, let me get both of them. Romans 7:1-6. Well, I have commented on Acts 15:28 and that entire passage in Institutes of Biblical Law, so I’ll refer you to that. I’m entitled to a little plug here, but I have dealt with that and the meaning of the counsel of Jerusalem and the action they took place, so I refer you to that in detail. Now, in Romans 7, I have commented on that briefly so I’ll take a moment. It deals with the fact “that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God,” and it goes on to say that we are delivered from the law and so on.

Now, St. Paul is not there saying that the law is dead. Who dies? It’s the husband or the man. Therefore, the law no longer has a jurisdiction. It does not say the law is dead, but the man is dead, and what is his point? I come to Christ as an old man, a sinner. I am bound to the law. It has a death penalty, an indictment against me, but when I die in Christ, it is I who die, not the law. I am dead to the indictment of the law against me, to the claim of the law against me. It no longer has a death penalty awaiting me. So that I arise in Christ and I can say I’m free from the law, from the condemnation. Now, Paul uses the law in a variety of terms, but here, it has reference to the law as a death sentence, but then he goes on to say in Romans 8:4-5 that we are saved. Why? That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. So you see, we are previously a law-breaker. We die to the law, not the law that dies, so that the law no longer has a claim against us. Now, the law is written on the table of our hearts which means it’s a part f our being, because of the new man in us, Jesus Christ, and now we live out the law. We’re not enemies. Yes?

[Audience] The reason I asked is in verse 6, and you didn’t quite finish getting to verse 6. It says, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive,” and he seems to interpret in the next phrase what he means by the law. He says, “so that we serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.”

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are discharged from the law as an indictment, and we serve in the Holy Spirit now. Previously, the law was something that, well, we walked around. We tried to meet the letter of it as Israelites, if we were Israelites, but we didn’t have any liking for it. It was a burden. It was a yoke. It was an unpleasant thing, and we were playing a game with it, to obey it, but now, we serve, not in terms of the letter, but in terms of the newness of spirit. We’re not being legalists trying to see, “What games can we play with the law?” Now, we don’t understand the reference there fully in terms of the letter, if we fail to realize that the Talmud deals with the law as letter. What does that mean?

Well, you can understand that because all you have to do is to look at Supreme Court decisions today. For example, one of the things in the Talmud that appears, and I don’t want to condemn the whole Talmud. There is much in it that’s very important for us historically and exegetically, because the Talmud is nothing but a series of legal decisions over centuries, wherein rabbis met and they debated some item of law, and we have all of this. So, some are good, some are horrible. They deal, for example, with one of the Mosaic legislations which deal with the seduction of a woman. Then they say how is a woman to be defined? Well, a woman is to be defined as someone of such-and-such years, because prior to that she is not a woman. Well, then if you seduce someone who is underage, it doesn’t constitute fornication or seduction then, does it? And so, they would gain an acquittal on that. Do you see what I mean?

Now this is the kind of thing that Israel had refined. This was Phariseeism. This was the interpretation of the law in Israel. This is why our Lord said, “You have made the word of God of none effect through your traditions.” Through the letter of the law, they had made nonsense of the law so that they could make, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” actually mean that you had a license for adultery. “Thou shalt not steal,” they could turn around and make a license for theft. It’s very rewarding sometime to go through some of these commandments and the specifics of the case legislation, in the Talmud, to see what they did with the letter of the law, because they were insistent it is the letter of the law that counts. The letter of the law. So that when St. Paul speaks of the letter of the law, he is indicting the whole Pharisaic method of interpretation. Now, it’s the letter of the law that the Supreme Court is applying today, and it can make the Constitution say something exactly contrary to what it does. It can take a piece of legislation and turn it upside down. Does that help explain that?

[Audience] Yes, sir.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience] Going back to the punishment{?} of only covenant man, being the dominion man, in the book of Genesis, after the Fall, it seems to be the line of Cain that is most recorded as becoming most involved in trying to subdue the earth. The first musical instruments by Tubal-Cain and the whole, it seems to be that the reprobate line was the line that was really engaged in carrying out the creation mandate where it’s the covenant mind {?} you know, {?} that kind of record in regards to this.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, or it isn’t given to us. That’s very true. There is no question that the unregenerate have often shown remarkable abilities. They are still created in the image of God. They are, as men created in the image of God, inescapably concerned with dominion. It is an aspect of the image of God, but they cannot more than fragmentarily attain it, and they work to the destruction of even that which they attain, and scripture says that if the wicked flourish it is that they be destroyed, and it tells us that the wealth of the nations shall be brought into the kingdom. It will not do them any good, but it will feed the kingdom of God, the people of God. Yes, man is not altogether consistent until man is in hell or in heaven. You will find that there is some of the covenant breaker in us, and something of the covenant keeper in the unregenerate, but in hell and in heaven, the tares and the wheat are fully what they are. Yes?

[Audience] On page 2 of The Institutes, you say that the God of scripture gives grace and law remain the same in every age, and then, as I talked to you earlier about, on page 28, it says there is no record of evidence of the Sabbath prior to Exodus. The problem that I have at the present time, I have a high regard for your book, but personally I see a weakness, which seems to me an inconsistency on your part as a man who wants to take the law of God and to make it {?}, make us responsible in every area to it, and more particular to Gary North’s article in the back on the Economics of the Sabbath. He seems to really knock down Sabbatarians and make some ruthless remarks to John Murray, etc., but to me, I see in this book an overall emphases of taking the law of God, which I see the Sabbath being a part of it. Now, you want to stringently take the law and apply it, but when it comes to the Sabbath there seems to be a weakness, and I don’t understand this particular point on page 2, then reference to page 128, and also more strongly I see this weakness on the Sabbath in Gary North’s article, which I don’t know how much you embrace of it.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, first of all, there was a point in time when God set forth the Sabbath law, when he had a covenant people for the first time, a covenant mind, definitely now, to perpetuate this, so the law comes into being. Now, Gary North and I have, at different points, attacked Sabbatarianism. I’m very strongly against it, because I believe that it represents a deformity of the commandment, but I believe, in our sense, that we are stricter Sabbatarians than those who claim to take the Sabbath seriously? Why? And there will be, in Revolt Against Maturity and especially in Godly Rule and Salvation, which will be out in about a year and a half, a great deal more on the Sabbath. We believe the Sabbath so seriously that we believe it is not only one day in seven, but one year out of seven. We believe in a Sabbath for the land. We believe in a Sabbath with regard to debt, that we cannot mortgage our future. We believe the Sabbath has very broad social and personal implications for all of society, and what we are attacking is the church idea of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath is primarily, in its meaning, not worship. That’s secondary. It’s rest. It is rest, and that rest is to be a total one, that we are to rest from our labors because our salvation, our life, is to depend on the Lord, and so you find someone who’s stricter about the matter of debt than we are, about a matter of the seventh year, and I will say we are perhaps not as strict Sabbatarians as they are.

[Audience] (multiple people talking)

[Rushdoony] No, our time is up now.

End of tape