Salvation and Godly Rule

Marriage & the Family

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: Marriage & the Family

Genre: Speech

Track: 69

Dictation Name: RR136AL69

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. For as many as are lead by the Spirit of God, they are the Sons of God. For he hath not received a Spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye hath received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba, Father. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we rejoice that thou hast given unto us the Spirit of adoption, whereby we can come to thee crying out from our hearts, committing unto thee all our hopes, our fears, our joys, and our doubts, in the certainty that thou art able, that with thee, nothing is impossible and all things are possible, that thou hast called us, and the good work thou hast begun in us, thou wilt complete unto thy glory, and our joy and fulfillment in thee. Bless us in thy service. Use us mightily to thy praise and glory, establish us ever more firmly in thy word, and make us effectual in terms of thy calling. Grant us this, we beseech thee, in Jesus name. Amen.

Our scripture lesson is again Genesis 1:26-28, the implications of which we are seeing so tellingly set forth the last two weeks we will now analyze with respect to Marriage and the Family. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

Technically considered, the doctrine of salvation is limited to God’s sovereign act of redeeming grace, but salvation does not take place in a vacuum. It is in the context of life. One of the problems in the last two centuries, and especially in the last fifty years in this country, is that the orientation of things to life has been lost. Things are now discussed in relationship to academic matters, or in relationship to an institution and thus, things are discussed in relationship to the state or to the church, and thereby, the vitality and the vital nerve{?} is often cut. Salvation does not take place in a vacuum, but in the context of life. Man was created to exercise dominion under God, as Gary North explained the last two weeks. He had a calling, a central and important calling to set forth, to develop the implications of God’s word in terms of creation.

So that, in a sense, Adam was created by God a poor man, but with the potentiality of great wealth, created in a world that was very good and without sin, but which required tremendous development.

In man’s salvation, he was restored, or awaked to that calling which he had forsaken in his sin, or in his sin had attempted to realize that, apart from God, on humanistic terms, to establish not the kingdom of God, but the city of man. Salvation, therefore, reestablishes man in the calling toe exercise dominion and to subdue the earth.

Now, we cannot speak of impotent Christianity. This is like talking about Christian atheism. The idea of impotent Christianity is a contradiction in terms. Where there is indeed not a formal but an actual salvation, there is also the power of God. Things begin to happen, and this is why we must write off a vast amount of Christianity today. We dealt with this some few months ago, but scripture makes it clear there is no such thing as an impotent faith, or a powerless salvation. Where the power of God unto salvation is manifested, things happen. Great things happen.

Man, having been established in the power of God unto salvation, manifests it in active gation{?}, in active dominion, and the world begins to change. The family is the first of area of that kingdom{?}. It is the basic area. It was as a family that man was first of all called to exercise dominion, and it is in the exercise of that claling that he was to feel his loneliness and therefore, the need of the helpmeet. The implications of this doctrine, of salvation and of dominion and its relatinship to marriage and the family have been virtually forgotten in our time. It survives only as a relic, and one or two marriage services.

I shall describe one such service, because I know it best, the Armenians. But let me say before I do, that Oaks & Hill, in their study of royal costume, which is a study of royal costumes as they survived in Europe and in various parts of the world, indicate that at one time, coronation was a universal feature of all marriage services. That’s very true. Now, to describe the traditional Armenian wedding service which featured the coronation of the bride and groom, both wore crowns. On top of the crowns was also a cross, the cross and crown to indicate that it was the atoning work of Christ which restored man to his kingship. The coronation took place prior to the wedding in the home, with the family’s gathered, and the crown that was made for each placed on their head in a formal service, with ritual songs sung. Then, on the wedding day, two wedding processions set out, one from the bride’s home and one from the groom’s, each of them wearing their crowns, each of them mantled with royal robes in purple to indicate their kingship and queenship. The groom wore a dagger in his belt to indicate that he was now out to defend his dominion and to extend it, and with a Bible clasp to his breast to indicate that this was the principle of his dominion, the word of God. The hymns that were sung in the wedding service celebrated the coronation of a new salvation area, an area of salvation and dominion, and the wedding service declared the emphatic relationship of marriage, of redeemed people, and the redemption of the entire world, and of bringing all things into dominion to Christ.

The crowns were blessed. There was a prayer for the eternal crowns which to not pass away, and for a conquest in history over the forces of Satan, and then the service went on to say, “In thy living name, God and Lord, maker of heaven and earth who madest all things by the word of thy behest. Thou {?} man the first Adam and established from him the marriage of Eve. Thou crownest him with thy glory and saidest Lo, they are very good. Thou blessed the marriage of Seth and there from the earth increased down to Noah. Thou blessedst the marriage of Noah and there from the earth drew her heritage down to Abraham. Thou blessedst the marriage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and they increased on earth and were crowned in heaven. Out of the stock of Judah, thou blessedst David and from the seed of David, Marian, and from her, didest beget the savior of the world when thou becamest crowner of all things. Now with blessing let this crown be blessed in the marriage of these persons, that this servant and handmaid of thy may pass their lives in peace in all righteousness to the end that Satan be driven afar from their midst, and thy mercy may come upon them, and that we may utter to thee Praise and glory, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit now and forever.”

In other words, marriage was seen as the means whereby God, through his saints, brought forth Christ, and the means whereby man’s dominion was to be first of all established, and Satan driven afar. Very clearly, therefore, the marriage service once was emphatically a declaration of the meaning of salvation and of a post-millennial faith, and this was universal in marriage services everywhere.

Moreover, it is interesting that it still survives in Armenia and was once common in many another country, that the wife was referred to as queen, the crowned one. The usage of “honey” or “dear” is modern. The ancient usage was in various forms to refer to the wife as the crowned one, or queen, again, setting forth what was once the significance of marriage, the area in which man exercised, first of all, his dominion, and God’s chosen, original, and greatest institution.

The primary purpose of marriage was thus, not simply procreation, but dominion, and procreation was simply an aspect of this, and toward the end that the saints possessed the earth. The cultural mandate thus began with the family and must still begin with the family, and the family cannot be limited to the modern Adamistic family. That is, those who are living under one room: the husband, the wife and the chidlren. This is the nuclear family, not its sum total. The family is something broader.

Now, in the ancient world, the family was often very {?} but on ungodly terms. Very often, the pride and the clan represented to the “nth” degree the family system, and blood was everything. This was not {?}. One of the most ungodly forms of the pagan family system was ancestor worship. In such a {?} dominion was indeed in a perverted form associated with the family, but in a totally godless form, and the Bible, the law of the family, is not the law of the clan, but God’s law, and the fmaily must be aligned with God’s law.

One of the early names for the church was the Christian race, or the family of God, so that the family was seen in terms of a basically religious orientation, rather than in terms of a blood orientation. This also was true of the Hebrews, and to this day, among orthodox Jews, if a son transgresses the law or abandons the faith, he is no longer a member of the family. The service of the dead is read over him in the family, and they no longer have a son or a daughter, as the case may be.

The biblical family thus is in terms of the faith, and it very often extends beyond the blood relationships in terms of a Christian sense of family. To illustrate, two families. One a family that is nominally a Christian but is not truly so, and is a member of a thoroughly irreligious church. Each member of the family, their three children goes its own way. They have no sense of moral responsibility to one another nor to the grandparents. It is a marriage in a biological and a legal sense, but neither in a Christian or in any respect a moral sense, because even adultery and fornication are tolerated within limits.

In another family, again three children. In this case, two sons and a daughter. One son, one daughter have never married. All three children reside some distance from the home, but it is a closer knit family than most that live under one roof. The two unmarried, one son, one daughter, put the other through the university after they themselves got through, are caring for the parents, and are more or less adopted many of the elderly and childless people in their hometown. They regularly visit their parents, and also these elderly Christian friends, take care of them, take them to the doctor, bring them gifts, and in one way or another have become children to them, because they feel, as Christians, a responsibility toward them. They have a strong sense of family, and they also have a sense of a necessity for dominion. In this case, the two unmarried children who have some means have encouraged these elderly people to think of giving their funds to things that would further the work of Christ in his dominion, to schools and institutions that would extend the dominion of Christ. All three children exercise dominion under God, and have a sense of the Christian family.

The third family is one only in a legal and a sexual sense. In the second family, it is a form of social organization with theological premises, so that it exists and governs where no sexual relations exist. The family is, first of all, a social organization, and it is the prime area of dominion. It has more than a personal significance. When the family is reduced to purely personal sense, the theology of the family is gone. The family must be seen as God’s primary institution, whereby dominion is to be exercised.

In the modern world, Romanticism and Pietism have reduced the family to the personal and emotional level, and even Christians are indifferent to the theological and social significance of the family. When we were studying biblical law, we saw that the family controls the central areas of life, those areas which govern society: children, property, and inheritance. These are the determining agencies in any society. Modern society seeks control over all three areas. It seeks to be the new family of man, to be the area of dominion, and to be the new God and creator.

Because the family is the primary area of dominion and of social organization, it is also the primary area of deformation, and whenever a society decays, the decay first appears in the family, and today, wherever the family is in decay, society is in danger, and is doomed in fact.

It is important, therefore, to see the centrality of the family and to {?}. The great enemies of the family have been, historically, both church and state, and in the modern era, the state schools. The church has often been an enemy to the family by trying to become the primary institution, by seeking to take over and monopolize so much of the life and time of people, that very little time for family life remains. I have mentioned many times before how many churches boast of having activities for young and old, day after day, monopolizing, in other words, every member of the family to the destruction of the family. The state, by preempting those things which belong to the family by controlling education, again seeks to destroy the family.

But today, we have the greatest revival of the family in the past two centuries. This may seem to be surprising. We are seeing, on the one hand, the breakdown of the family outside of the faith, but we are seeing also the return of the family and of a hunger for family life to a startling degree. The Christian school movement is an eloquent evidence of the reviving strength of the family. It is created because parents want more than what the state schools can give, which is the theft of their children. But even more, it appears in the most perverted in their hunger for family life. One of the tragic and disastrous illustrations of that was the film “The Godfather.” One of the startling aspects of that was its appeal to people. Why? One of the most common remarks heard about that was concerning the mafia, or the criminal family loyalties. “That’s the way it should be,” or “I’d like to be in a family where people were ready to kill to defend you,” and so on.

One of the other perverted aspects of it is the incidents, very, very high across country of associations like the Manson family. What is the appeal? The sense of family, of dominion, however perverted, the hunger for it. Today, pimps make no bones about it, but they are doing very well precisely because with these girls, many of whom are from very wealthy homes, they provide the sense of family and dominion, and authority, however perverted, but it’s not present in their legal families.

But to cite another illustration of another sort. Very often, as I travel back and forth across country, I have discussed the family and its centrality in Christian schools, and their importance, and I very often introduce a subject and Dorothy has heard me do it more than once, to see how people react to it. I throw out the subject of arranged marriages, how the once existed very often in the past and how, in some circles, they still exist, and it is interesting how anyone over 25 or 30 bridles and is hostile to the idea. In fact, as in one instance this week and be very emotional to their hostility to it, but it is very interesting also how many college youth respond favorably to the idea, and feel that it would be good if the family would bring forth prospective brides and grooms, and arrange things, and exercise some authority. Very interesting, the hunger for that type of family life. There is, today, a potential as never before, for the revival of a strong and biblical kind of family life. Without it, there can be no reconstruction, no new society.

I was very interested this morning as I was reading about 7:00, a new book, a large study of the age of Arthur, of the British Isles in the very early period just when Rome was collapsing, and Roman authority was disappearing, how very definitely the area of strength in the Christian movement there was the family life. In the extent to which biblical law was adopted, wholesale and applied across the {?}, especially with respect to the family as well as other areas, and how this provided for the tremendous strength which gave British Christianity, for awhile, the edge and made it the missionary force in Europe.

Today, therefore, one of the most impressive sights we can see is that the family again is returning to its strength, not without struggle, not without real heartbreaks and battles, but with a very real sense of the basic issues.

About a decade or so ago, a very brilliant Jesuit scholar, Cervantes who, together with Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, wrote a very important study entitled simply, The Family, predicted therein that, whereas everyone was foreseeing the death of the family and of marriage, he felt everything pointed to its strongest revival in the days ahead, and that revival he felt was already underway, but precisely because so many of our institutions were collapsing, people with any faith were and are being thrown back onto the basic institution, the family, and reviving its strength, religiously and governmentally, educationally, and in every way. It is important for us, therefore, to recognize this family, and to recognize what the wedding service once set forth, that man, who had been created in God’s image to exercise dominion, and created as a family to this end, was reestablished therein by our Lord’s atoning work, our salvation, and the wedding service once set forth this fact, that kingship and queenship of man, that here was the primary area through which the saving power of God was to be manifest. His kingship set forth the institution through which dominion is to be effective in every realm. The family thus, in the biblical sense, the family as more than simply blood and property, but as controlling children, property, and inheritance, must again have priority in our thinking. It is basic to godly reconstruction. Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thou hast called us and established us in Jesus Christ, in kingship and dominion, and hast given us in thy appointed way, a blessed and a joyful way. We thank thee, our Father, that in our coronation, we are crowned with responsibilities and joys, and our given tasks which we can accomplish, and are given the assurance that our labor is never in vain in thee, but in that which we do, thou art ever at work, and that thy glorious purpose shall never fail. O Lord, our God, we thank thee that thou art the Alpha and Omega of all things, and we praise thee in Jesus name. Amen.

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

[Audience] Is there a {?}

[Rushdoony] No. Marriage is not a sacrament. The sacraments are two-fold. They are baptism and communion. This does not mean that marriage is any the less important, you see. It is not a sacrament, but it is God’s primary institution, and God’s basic means of acting in the world, the family, even more than marriage. The family. Now, I mentioned Manson. One of the things about Manson that’s interesting. He called it “the family,” and it is interesting that he recognized certain things because, while he was and is incredibly perverted, he is not stupid. He recognized the need for a non-blood family, that the world now required a family that was religious and spiritual essentially in its relationship, and so he established it on a religious basis. Now, of course, it was a totally anti-Christian basis, and the girls in the family spoke at him as both Jesus and savior. He was everything, but the essence of it is that he recognized that the traditional blood legal family had failed and that the family had to be a religious entity, and a sense of family associate people even where there were not blood ties, that it had to be the religious aspect more than the blood. So, it was a very significant thing, and the meaning of it was not lost on any of the girls. One or two books have been written on the subject, and it’s very clear in them, how they recognize that here was something religious, and this was their basic loyalty.

Any other questions? Well, I have a couple of announcements to make. First of all, I’d like to remind you of the Chalcedon seminary July 23, 24, and 25. Now, Monday through Tuesday at 6:00 p.m., it is a seminar for Christian school teachers, but from Tuesday 7:00 p.m. to Wednesday evening, at 9:00, the seminar is designed, Tuesday evening and all day Wednesday, for all who are interested in Christian reconstruction, who are interested in Christian perspectives in economics, in history and philosophy, and literature, in every area of life, and there are leaflets on the lectern in the back, for the seminar. So, please taken them and if you are interested, send in your registration as early as possible.

Then, this Saturday, July 14, at 1:00 p.m., there will be a picnic lunch of the Chalcedon family and friends at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Argast{?}, and we urge you to come. There are announcements on the back lectern also, and you probably received your in the mails already. If you have any questions, please ask Mrs. Argast{?}, would you stand, Mrs. Argast, so if anyone doesn’t’ know who you are, they can speak to you afterwards, and be sure to let her know that you are coming. Either give her a ring, her number is on the announcement, or speak to her this morning.

Now, are there any other questions? We have just a minute or two left. If there’s not, let us bow our heads for the benediction.

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

End of tape