Jurisprudence

Discussion on Ethics and Theonomy

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 3 of 3

Track: 95

Dictation Name: RR150B3

Date: 1960’s-1970’s

[Moderator] Rush do you have a suggestion as to how we can proceed? How would you like to do it?

[Rushdoony] Well perhaps I can give a very brief statement as to certain premises in my position and then we can take it from there with questions that will go into more specific areas.

[Moderator] That sounds good.

[Rushdoony] Perhaps the best way to begin is to say that from the Biblical perspective there are essentially two kinds of ethics. A theocentric or a God centered ethics, and a anthropocentric or man centered ethics. You have the essence of humanism in ethics summed up in Genesis 3:1-5. The tempter is program is that every man should be his own God knowing or determining for himself what constitutes good and evil. This is at the heart of humanistic ethics. Ethics is to be determined by man as indeed law and all things else are to be constructs of the human mind. The ostensibly autonomous mind of man becomes the determiner, and if the thing does not meet the criteria man establishes then it is found wanting.

One British Humanist, a man of science has summed it up thus reversing the first statement of the Westminster Catechism; That if there is a God the chief end of God is to glorify man and to enjoy him forever. So that the center of creation around whom all things must revolve is man. On the other hand the essence of a theocentric ethics is summed up of course in the Ten Commandments “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” It is the every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God which is the standard in all moral behavior. We are strictly forbidden to take the name of the Lord in vain, profanity is a sin; and profanity in the Biblical sense means that which is outside the temple or outside the Lord. So whenever our life steps outside of the Lord, out from under His word into our word we are profane. Most of the modern world is given over thus to profanity. It seeks its own standards and its own laws and its own criteria in determining things such as abortion; everyone has the right to do what they will with their own body. And in every other area, capital punishment – well men are going to determine the right and the wrong of that in terms of purely human categories so that it is criticized as being offensive to man or defended on the ground that it’s better for society. In other words even the defense capital punishment that is commonplace today is a man centered offense; and we cannot agree with that because for us it is not because it is better for human society, but that God requires it. It has to be theocentric

So we have clearly in scripture this tremendous differentiation. Who’s God? The Lord or man, and whose word prevails, whose word governs?

Then we have another factor that complicates the ethical scene, it is the element of Hellenistic thought that has permeated the church so that we have tripartite views of man as well as dualistic views of man. Man is scene in Greek terms as body, mind, and soul or also in Greek terms as being mind and body. Now the Greeks believed that there were two kinds of substances, or being. One was ideas or pattern or mind, or soul, the spiritual realm; which was good by nature and by definition. The other was the material realm, the world of matter; which in itself was meaningless, mindless, formless, and required the operation of mind upon it to get any character. Pushed to its extreme this kind of thinking leads to dualism such as you have in Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism; the Greeks tried to hold these two kinds of being in a dialectical tension and throughout the history of Christendom unfortunately dialectic has prevailed. The old Greek dialectic was matter and mind, the medieval dialectic was nature and grace, the modern dialectic is nature and freedom. But dialectic has governed thinking throughout the centuries.

But Christianity, scripture, does not see two kinds of being here on the human level but the uncreated being of God and the created being of man. It’s not our soul, our mind which is good and our body which is evil; but man in the totality of his being was created good and in the totality of his being fell. Satan is a purely spiritual being but it doesn’t prevent him from being totally evil. Now the Greek dialectic has had a profound influence. It has saturated the church through the centuries and whenever it has become very dominate it has destroyed ethics. To illustrate when, with the rise of arostinian {?} thought, Greek thinking again became powerful in the church you had the rise of medieval pietism which emphasized heart religion. If your heart was right then no matter what sins you were involved in people couldn’t condemn you. “Well you can’t say that he’s a reprobate because how can you judge his heart?” Well our Lord of course gives the answer to that “by their fruits shall ye know them.” A good tree brings forth good fruit; a bad tree brings bad fruit. So our Lord tells you how you can judge anyone, by their fruits, man as an unity.

But it got so bad that as I learned only yesterday in some of my reading as I was flying here, Abelard the real founder of scholasticism went so far as to say the men who crucified our Lord were good and holy men, because in their heart they believed they were doing the right thing and were crucifying a blasphemer and an enemy of God’s word. In other words the heart becomes the whole judge and by definition the heart is the realm of holiness, it is by nature holy. And as long as the heart acts with sincerity all is well. One of the followers of Phiny Mahan {?} went so far as to say in terms of this heart religious that a Hottentot in Africa had a better chance of being saved then a Christian because what he knew was less and in his heart he was more likely to follow sincerely and faithfully what he knew and believed. So we have a great deal of this heart religion, this pseudo pietism in the modern world and I’ve had mother’s of vicious hoodlums tell me “my boy in his heart is really a good boy.”

One of the first times I heard that was a man who was feared by the FBI as a particularly vicious and dangerous killer. And on one occasion if I may digress he knifed a man in a gambling house, this was in Nevada, in the presence of 26 witnesses, and when the FBI came there wasn’t a witness who was ready to say he saw it. Everyone one of them was looking in the other direction they were so deathly afraid of him. I was regularly called in on that case because I was the only one he trusted; I was good to his mother. He never was but his mother felt that he was a good boy at heart. Now that thinking we’re all familiar with, and that type of thinking has perverted and complicated the ethical picture, which in terms of scripture is a very clear one “by their fruits shall ye know them.” Our Lord gives us the standard of judgment, and our Lord says “judge not” when you judge by your own measures because if you do you are going to be facing a meeting out in terms of that same type of judgment. But we are, our Lord also said something that very few people remember, judge righteous judgment; judge in terms of God’s righteousness and his word.

Our big problem today of course is humanism in ethics. It has saturated the church, it commands the world and the result is the progressive disintegration of our society and our culture and of the churches. I feel very strongly about this because as I travel I am appalled at the extent to which there is a toleration say of homosexuality within evangelical churches, and the extent to which the sexual revolution has saturated the church. So that there are, I find, actually pastors who defend the sexual revolution on the grounds that as long as it’s a loving relationship between two Christians it is legitimate. Now that’s not a news doctrine it’s an ancient one, it has a part to play in this country and the later part of the last century among some of the Negro churches. The congress man Julian Vaughn, his grandfather pastor was a leader in it, it was called the clean sheets theory or doctrine. If two clean sheets are rubbed together they don’t dirty each other, but if you have a dirty sheet against a clean sheet both get dirty, and the doctrine was that if two Christians had relations together there was nothing wrong. That was the clean sheets doctrine; and I find that again in many white churches today.

As a matter of fact about four years ago when I still lived in Southern California in Canoga Park one Sunday afternoon when I got home there was this police commander waiting to see me and he came in in great distress. He belonged to a Bible church about a mile or two away, very strong church, and he said “do you know what happened in our service today?” He said the pastor was preaching about grace and he started to digress and he said “I was at a wedding last night” and he said “in a sense the wedding was wrong because we had to have the law, and we had to have the service and that’s still the law, but we’re under grace. So if we really practice the faith we wouldn’t need a marriage license and a marriage ceremony.” And he said “I got up right in the middle of the sermon and ticked him off and said “as a police commander I had enough problems with youth without him corrupting church kids, and stomped out.” And he said, “was I right?” And of course I assured him he was, and went into the fact that a Christian cannot be antinomian. He told me later that the church officers called on him and said “well we know it’s sounds bad what the preacher said but after all that is the scripture isn’t it?”

Now this is the kind of thing I find not only stated but sometimes practiced. So the study of Christian ethics in our day is all important and has to be God-centered. WE have to see this, as I said last night, as God’s command word. Now are there any questions?

[Moderator] I’m going to let Dr. Eddie {?} start it off, you‘re the leader of the class.

[Audience member] I think that where I’m coming from and where we’re operating from in of course trying to understand the various options, technical {?} options and alternatives, the alternatives, all alternatives do not include a Biblical ethic. We are there. I guess what one of the kinds of questions that confronts us most directly, maybe two; I deal with two. We don’t have any problems, I can’t say that, we have a minimum of problem with the areas where matters are black and white. We can deal with those, if it’s clearly articulated in scriptures then we can work our way through it. But there’s a lot of grey areas, you know genetic manipulation, who gets the organs in transplants, these kinds of things that we don’t really have a clear mandate. At least the determination of the mandate comes through on inference and so on rather than by, you know chapter 6 verse 2, this kind of thing.

And the second kind of question that I’m very much interested in and I think might be even more helpful to us, and I know you’ve thought a lot about this, what is your program for bringing Biblical ethics and Biblical law into the contemporary situation. What are some of the concrete proposals that you are putting forward in, spring this off.

[Rushdoony] First of all it begins with us. We apply it in our own lives and in our own family, thus I take very seriously what scripture says in the Old Testament it’s very plainly stated that debt is to be for six years. We cannot mortgage our future endlessly, Solomon says “the borrower is servant” or literally slave “to the lender.” Paul says “owe no man anything save to love one another.” My wife and I have lived debt free all through these years, saving enough so that we could buy a place someday and then pay it off in six years. And I feel the Lord’s bless us richly, I won’t go into it. Providentially we came into a place for the third of the value, 100 acres of which our foundation now has thirty. And got it for a third of the value of the house we have. I feel that this was the Lord’s blessing for obeying Him at that point. And we operate our foundation on a cash basis only, and we feel the Lord’s blessing us in that respect. So I apply those things, I believe in restitution and I apply it. And those who come to our persuasion apply restitution also wherever they are. One of our number is now one of the top judges in North Carolina and he has written into the state code in a recent revision restitution as an option for judges so that they can require restitution of criminals. We have now a judge in another state who is the presiding judge of the court of appeals, comparable to what other states call their supreme court, who is beginning to adopt these scriptural premises and using them. We have congress men who are now saying “how can we implement God’s law? We’ve got a lot of ungodly legislation on the books.” So it’s each person in his place, in his calling.

Now you mentioned the area of genetic engineering. Well we have one of the most prominent surgeons in the country on our mailing list; he listens to our weekly tapes very faithfully. He’s headed several medical associations and groups of surgeons and he’s gotten in touch with me, I’ve met him a time or two on this, and we’ve chatted by phone and he’s said “I am beginning to see that our flaunted medical practice is ungodly. That the doctor wants to play God, that he is exploring in the area of genetic engineering and transplants and so on when the options for far better means are available but the research is gone in those areas. We are deliberately researching in areas where the doctor can play God.” And he said “in these transplants of organs” he said, “we are cannibalizing people. We have changed the definition of death so that we can get to the living body and take the organs out before there’s actually death in any historic or true sense of the word.” So he said “would you be willing to sit down and work with me on this?” and he said “I will sit down and document exactly what is going on from the medical point of view.” He said “it’s been covered over with respectability.” And he said “I have been involved in it, and I’m seeing where it’s going. It’s a determination to play God, to engineer a man, to remake a man step by step.”

So I don’t know where this is going to lead us but I think this is marvelous, here is a man in the profession who is exploring it faithfully in terms of scripture, and he is re-reading scripture in terms of “what are the implications of the word of God for what I’m doing? I’m beginning to see clearly that my fellow practitioners want to play God. And in private their conversation is such that although it is clear that they would never publicly say so this is the pleasure of the direction we’re taking.” So this is what must be done, much of what we call grey areas are areas where we are ignorant. Many of these areas that he’s talked to me about I as an outsider may have strong feelings, but I don’t have the knowledge. And he’s opening up these areas step by step so that this will be a thoroughly sound study from the medical perspective as well as theological. Now this is what we are trying to further, we want specialists in these areas to say “what does the word of God say for my discipline so that as an informed man I can do something.

[Audience member] Are you in touch with people like Coop {?} in Philadelphia?

[Rushdoony] Yes I know Dr. Coop’s work. He is connected with the University of Pennsylvania medical school and he has written a very fine book on abortion and in a symposium on the subject he has an excellent chapter as well.

[Audience member] What do we do in areas where committed Christians have some measure of knowledgability and education and yet come up with differences of understanding relative to these kind of matters and also relative to scriptural differences?

For example let’s take in the matter of divorce and remarriage. There are sharp differences among Christians in this regard, some say “there are no cases where re- marriage is permissible as long as the spouse lives {?}” What kinds of relationships among knowledgeable and diligent students, committed believers where there are differences, how shall we live together?

[Rushdoony] Yes, well of course if you’ll read my Institutes of Biblical Law you’ll see that my views of marriage and divorce depart from a great deal of current practice, and some people would regard my views as rather loose. I don’t, I regard them as scriptural. I don’t feel that I therefore must look down on those of my brethren and I have among those who support our research institute people of very diverse unions, from charismatic to Catholics, I have two priests who{?}

Yes but I, well I’ve written recently at their request for a New Wine Magazine {?} their January/February issue and in January I was in the 700 club. Of the two nearby priests are both evangelically minded. I’m in their rectory and they’re in my home and they actually support our ministry. And the reason I get along with them is I don’t feel my quarrel is with fellow Christians, I may disagree but I wasn’t called to fight God’s people, I was called to preach the word and to carry the word to all peoples. So I’m ready to live at peace with them whatever our differences. And if they don’t want to live at peace with me I don’t trouble them I’ll go my own way.

So I feel that as we grow in grace our differences will be resolved, and if they’re not the Lord is our judge, I’m not their judge nor are they mine. I don’t feel that we have to have a unanimity to have fellowship, or to have unity in the faith.

[Moderator] I’d like to ask, the second question. And I would like to follow along on his second point. Without giving the tenets of what you would think would be a Biblical law structure in America, I would like you to talk about the mode or the means. He’s asking “how do we get there?” And I’d like you to pick up on a statement you made last night. You want to go from the bottom up, from the family up, not from the top down. And to my complete surprise you felt that Massachusetts Bay Colony was a churchocracy in that it went from the top down. Discuss mode, discuss matter if you will.

[Rushdoony] Yes I am very vehemently hostile to statism. I believe in a minimum of civil government in terms of scripture as I outlined last night, a very limited state; limited to a head tax as in terms of scripture. I believe in a very limited role for the church, the church is a teaching agency, it has the ministry of the word, it carries on the Levitical function of instruction. It’s an armory from whence the people armed with the word of God go out and apply it. But the basic instrument of theocracy is the Christian man applying the word of God wherever he is. So that the Christian man goes out in his family and in his calling and applies the word of God. It isn’t somebody over him, it’s the Holy Spirit instructing him and guiding him.

In other words it is anti-institutional. This is one reason why some of the charismatics like what I have to say, you see. I don’t believe in the charismatic manifestations but I put the emphasis upon the Spirit as the agency, not church or state.

[Moderator] I also was intrigued last night that they way we’re going to get there from the bottom up is not necessary by consensus, speak to that point please.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the whole emphasis, the idea of consensus in fact comes from Rousseau and Rousseau gets it from ancient Greek thought. A consensus demands that everyone conform to the spirit of the group. This is why ostracism was developed in the Greek city states. You perhaps remember the case, who was it Aristarchus? Was abolished, he was known as “the just.” And when the vote was being taken for his ostracism he stopped and asked one of the people who had just cast a vote how he felt and he said “oh I voted for his banishment”. And he said “Do you know the man?” “Never met him.” “Well why do you want him ostracized?” “Well because I’m tired of hearing him called “the just”” Now that was the democratic consensus in ancient Greece. The democratic consensus in terms of Rousseau is really that the elite establish what the general will is, it doesn’t mean the majority vote. But even if it is the majority vote it’s a tyranny because it says that if a majority of one says “This is what constitutes the consensus.” Then it must be.

Similarly it’s a tyranny if you have to have perfect agreement, Quaker style you know; they’ll meet endlessly until everybody agrees. I was a missionary among the Paiute and the Shoshone Indians. And the Paiutes’ the chief would give the word and everybody would fall into line whether they agreed or not; and if you were a college graduate, as one or two of them were, and the chief gave the direction in a certain way, you bowed down, you didn’t disagree. The Shoshone’s who had once been a great nation and foundered on this, required perfect agreement. When they were asked by the Paiutes to go to war against the whites when the Civil War broke out, all the Shoshone’s of the West met on the Reese River in Central Nevada to decided whether they would go to war, and every warrior had to agree. So the governor, territorial governor appeared to argue against going to war.

And when electricity finally was coming to the reservation one old Indian didn’t want it, so the officials of Idaho power traveled 150 miles over a rocky road, not an inch of pavement week in and week out, and the tribe met in full session, the Shoshone’s that is, and they would meet by the hour trying to persuade Jimmy Bell, this old Indian. And finally old Jimmy got up and he said “I’m still against it, but I will agree since everybody wants it.” Really the old man was so tired of the meetings; they were going to talk him to death. Now you see when you say that you’re going to have to have a consensus or some kind of human agreement, whichever way you go you’re going to create a tyranny of some sort. And I don’t want that, I’m saying “let’s each serve God as He guides us and live at peace one with another.” And I don’t have any trouble living at peace with anybody. When people want to fight with me I walk away, I get criticism all the time and I’m told that nowadays about every month that there is controversy over Biblical law somewhere in the world a magazine has an article attacking my position. And regularly they write and ask me to, they send me the copy and want me to respond and I don’t even bother to read them. I toss them into the waste basket. I’m not interested; I don’t want to fight with anybody. I’m serving the Lord and I’m happy doing it; if they don’t like me, well so much the worse for them. [laughter]

[Moderator] At this point I’m going to ask you a very specific question about Massachusetts’s bay; and then I’ll open it to the others. You said last night for example you were perfectly willing to have a theocratic form of theonomy, God’s rule upon the earth, that would tolerate differences in Sabbath observance for example, or in question or infant adult baptism you would allow different beliefs in this area, now that’s very different from what our conception of what a Christian theocracy is and the only example we’ve got is Massachusetts’s bay; Christian theocracy in American culture. Now Bahnsen in Theonomy and Christian Ethics and Francis Nigel Lee who was here last week; have more or less from the top down kind of view, a churchocracy type of view. They would look quite favorably on Massachusetts bay in many respects, now what I’d like you to do is list for us as briefly as you can how you feel bay erred, what they did that was wrong, and what you think they did was right.

[Rushdoony] Alright. First of all in our school of thought there are a great many men who hold to this position. Now both Nick Lee and Greg Bahnsen come from a very strong and strict reformed tradition where the church has tremendous power and everything goes through the channels of the church so that while exegetically they would agree with me when they get to talking they tend to see too much power there concentrated. They’re very fine and Godly men, and I love them dearly but I think at this point they’re not consistent.

Now, Massachusetts bay colony began as an experiment in a holy commonwealth. They came out of a background of a highly centralized power, Britain. The divine right of kings, an absolute authority governing at the top; a church that prescribed everything and if you departed from that script subscription you were kicked out, and you were imprisoned. As a result while from our perspective, certainly from my perspective of Massachusetts Bay colony was very definitely wrong. We must see it historically as a step in the right direction in that they moderated the extremism of centralized control from the top that prevailed in Britain.

Now as puritans they took very seriously the belief in the priesthood of all believers, which of course is a cornerstone of my position. We are called to be a royal priesthood and I went into some application of that this morning in chapel so you can see the direction I’m taking. In the second volume of Biblical Law which is now in the printers hands will develop this aspect, it is called Volume II of Biblical Law, Law and Society so I’m very pleased with the name of your seminar.

[Moderator] I didn’t know that, is that Craig press?

[Rushdoony] No, Millburn press will bring it out. But in that I develop this aspect in one of the forth coming issues of Christian Reconstruction I will have a long article on the priesthood of all believers and the development of that doctrine which the puritans affirmed but they were afraid to let go on. So they did this, government should be in the hands of the priesthood. What is government? Now here they were very sound. They never spoke of the state as government, and that is one of the great evil’s of our time. When we say “government” we mean the state or the federal government. The first area of government was the self-government of the Christian man. Second, the family as basic area of government. Third, the church is a government. Fourth, the school is a government and you’re governed here, there’s no getting around it, by the discipline of study, of classroom, of requirements and so on. Fifth, your vocation is a government. Dr. Kickzola {?} must get up at a certain time and go to class, and he has certain requirements. He’s governed by his vocation as we all are. Sixth, society is a form of government; we are governed by what our society requires and demands of us, so that we conform ourselves to the community and its requirements. And Sixth, the state or what the puritans call civil government.

Now they said, in a Christian commonwealth we must have the priesthood of all believers, the priests of God must govern both in church and state. Well at this point they became frightened, so they decided “now who will qualify as a priest?” So they subjected in their original meaning when they founded the colony every member of the colony to a very searching cross-examination, a theological cross-examination, and they wound up with seven priests. In terms of the way they examined them I would say that there isn’t a pastor in any of the churches today, or maybe one or two in the country, who would qualify as priests. They would wipe out the clergy of our time and government officials. But only those seven could hold office in church or state, so in a sense they believed it was a perfect democracy of the priests of God. But for the first years it was limited to those seven. Little by little it was expanded to include more and more, but it was because they were fearful of the implications of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, that was the cornerstone.

It led in the right direction, and this is why Isaac Backus who was the founder of the Baptist churches was very clear in telling these old line Calvinist; he said “I’m a better Calvinist than any of you, I take the doctrine of the priesthood of believers far more seriously than you do. And I believe it leads to the kind of form of government that I advocate; and to the very emphatic separation of church and state.” But the Holy Spirit guiding the priests in both realms rather than a board examining everybody who’s going to be a priest, you see. And the work of Isaac Backus is to little recognized, Yale university press has begun to publish his works, there’s a fat volume of his papers out, it’s a very beautiful read. And there’s a two volume work by the editor McGlaughclin {?}on the growth of this type of Baptistic element at that time and the expansion of this doctrine.

[Moderator] What did they do that was right? What did Massachusetts bay do that was right? You just illustrated the top down.

[Rushdoony] Yes, they were right in stressing the priesthood of all believers. They were wrong in feeling that somehow they had to stand between the Holy Spirit and these priests and say who qualified.

[Moderator] Who are the burgesses, how does that fit in?

[Rushdoony] Yes, in some states what we would call the legislators were called burgesses. And to this day for example in Virginia you still have the House of Burgesses.

[Moderator] Now only these may vote, is that correct?

[Rushdoony] Yes…

[Moderator] And they have to be member of churches.

[Rushdoony] Well, yes. They had to follow the requirement.

[Moderator] Church membership was one of the rules for franchise.

[Rushdoony] Yes, but before church membership was a theological examination.

[Moderator] Now do feel a church membership rule for a franchise, is that from a top down…

[Rushdoony] That’s wrong.

[Moderator] That’s wrong. And what would the opposite be, what would you advocate?

[Rushdoony] Yes, let me say that sometimes you find historians saying that the idea of Christianity being strong in the colonial and early constitutionally period is a myth because only fifteen percent of the people in the United States were church members in 1815. But that doesn’t mean what we would think it means today, about 60% of the people are members. But then everybody went to church and everybody believed in the Bible but only 15% qualified as members.

Now, let’s see what was…?

[Moderator] Church membership for franchise.

[Rushdoony] Yes, no of course I don’t believe in that at all.

[Moderator] And what’s the alternative?

[Rushdoony] The alternative to franchise is this, subsequently they came to say anyone who believed in the Bible, this was the next step as a result of the work of Backus and some of the others who believed in the Bible as the word of God; so that a Jew who believed the Bible to be God’s law qualified as a voter. In other words they said “you will have anarchy finally in the country if anyone can believe as they see fit.” “In those days there was no king in Israel everyman did that which was right in his own eyes.” And ultimately a franchise means some kind of active faith.

Now the problem then is, who determines the faith? Do you have to make a subscription? Well Jefferson made a subscription. If the truth had been known about Jefferson’s actual belief in Virginia he would have been denied the right to vote. We know what Jefferson believed because we have his papers that were private then. At that time in Virginia his own children could have been taken away from him on the grounds of being an unfit parent because he denied the doctrine of the trinity, and that was grounds for removing children from ones custody. It might have been better for Jefferson’s general, but it still would not have been Godly you see. I believe that would have been a sin to do so.

[Moderator] To separate the children would have been a sin?

[Rushdoony] Right. So you see the problem, at some point some kind of determination has to come in that constitutes an authority, which I don’t agree with. The answer’s not to say “well, where are we going to fix this authority? Somewhere on the human level someone’s going to have to say it’s so and that’s it.” And they play with that and they progressively took it down to a lower and lower level but there was always somebody with a say so. Well I think the alternative is to say “look you’re never going to solve society and its problems by intervening at some point with a fiat word.” What you’re going to have to say is “we have a vocation as priests to bring every area of life and thought to dominion, and to reach out to these people.”

Now, this is why I am so concerned with the Christian school movement. It’s the greatest means of evangelism we have in our day. As I travel cross-country I find entire congregations that have been built out of parents who had no connection with the faith but sent their child to a Christian school because they wanted a better education. And they wound up as Bible believers, so I see evangelism as a basic task and the authority is the Spirit of God, and this is how people are reached.

[Moderator] Very good, I’m going to open it up now.

[Audience member] I like to do a little bit in the question of woman within the ministry, women within the church, what kind of things a women would be doing and not be doing within the church.

[Rushdoony] Yes, the subject is woman’s rights as it were.

Now first all in two realms the word of God places woman in a subordinate position, in the home and in the church they’re under authority in both realms. Now to be under authority does not mean to be inferior; because I have very often worked for men that I regarded as definitely my inferiors, but I was in a position where it was my duty to obey them, and when I did not it was by duty to leave. I worked at the beginning of the 60’s for a very powerful and wealthy foundation with untold millions to spend. And it was a very cushy position financially, but I found that I could not agree with the direction they were taking as a Christian. Now there were some staff members who tried to stage a revolt against it, I stated my position very respectfully, and when they couldn’t agree I felt that I had been brought in under false pretences to a degree, and I was. They didn’t want me to help chart a Christian direction, they wanted to have a nice Christian front for certain ceremonial reasons. I made clear that I couldn’t buy that, I was respectful. I thought I had to be under authority even though felt that I was better {?} than they were; so I left, they respected that and they subsidized me for two years. I didn’t ask for it, they gave me a research grant. That enabled me to work and to start our foundation.

Now, woman are never spoken of in scripture as inferior. What we have in scripture for example in Proverbs is a picture of a women who is every bit a remarkable person; her husband sits in the gates, that is he’s an elder. Apparently an elder in civil government because they sat at the gates to judge or to govern, he was a councilor or a judge there. She was managing all the affairs, the farms, the merchandizing. He was obviously a prominent man; and she was governing all things very capably. Moreover the woman is strongly protected in the Bible by the dowry, and if she were seduced and the man were unacceptable to the father as a husband he had to provide a dowry so that she went into the marriage, when she next married, with a double dowry. So while in a sense she had a disadvantage, she’d been seduced, she had an advantage in that her next husband -or her husband, not only provided a dowry, which normally was equally to three years wages. In Laban’s case he demanded seven years; he was a stinker. So she had a great deal of capitol. This was a protection to the wife. If the husband sinned and transgressed, she could leave the marriage with a dowry, the family capital as it were. Just think what it would involve if there were a divorce in this circle and three years wages had been given to the wife.

Now in the colonial period let me say this was still practiced. The clergy could not do it because they were not well paid un-happily, which is a sin because Paul says that they are worthy of double honor, which means double pay if they are faithful in the word. So it was the ministry which first developed the insurance companies of this country, and through insurance they provided a dowry. And it used to be, and it still is to a degree in California, if a wife is divorced the husband if he is at fault has to provide and continue to pay on an insurance policy. Now it’s going out but there’s still some cases of that. So that the wife he has left has that protection of a substantial insurance policy.

Well let me go a little further to deal with this. Some of the results of standard testing in our time have been quite remarkable. You know the IQ tests and the achievement tests are all doctored. They are doctored so they will show no racial or sexual differences. There are racial differences, different races have different aptitudes. Not that one is inferior and the other is superior, but the aptitudes will have different focal points. Well in standard testing, now there are not too many women here but maybe the word will get out through the few of you who are here present, woman equal or surpass men on any impartial testing in every area except two. Women are clearly better than men on these standard, un-doctored tests. The only two areas that men excel in are: One, aggression. Which is the term they use in these testing’s; but we would call dominion. And the other is abstract reasoning. A woman excels in practical reasoning; very emphatically.

So it’s very clear that not only did God not make woman inferior to men, in most departments they’re clearly superior; most wives know this. [Laughter] But they don’t let on, they know how proud men are. So in these two areas, in the family and in the church, men are given authority. So very clearly I do not believe in woman ministers. But it’s a very unwise husband or a very unwise pastor who does not depend very heavily on his wife and on the women in the church, who treats them as though they are to shut-up and sit still. Or like the old saying that some men in some parts of the country used about woman “when you marry a woman keep her barefoot and pregnant, and she’ll be too busy to bother you.” [laughter]. I hope I didn’t put any ideas in anyone’s head.

All the way in the back, Jeff.

[Audience member] I’m willing to concede a lack of knowledge in this area but I wish you would address this question. How do you see your system not leading to Phariseeism?

[Rushdoony] Alright, first you answer me this question; why would it lead to Phariseeism?

[Audience member] Well you have a, if I’m correct, a historical basis that it did.

[Rushdoony] No.

[Audience member] Are you thinking of Massachusetts Bay?

[Audience member] No, I was thinking of the book he held up; the Bible. Did the theocracy of Israel, or what you’re attempting to put into effect; did that not lead to Phariseeism?

[Rushdoony] No Phariseeism was a departure from the word. The characteristic pharisaic motto was “the word is like water, but the interpretation is like wine.” So that the Pharisee’s put all their trust in their own interpretations; and step by step they used their interpretation to depart from scripture. In the Talmud you read at a point a statement, there’s a long serious of decisions dealing with the tenth commandment “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors’ wife.” And they take that to define “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” So what constitutes adultery? Why, it’s having a relationship with your neighbor’s wife. But if the woman isn’t your neighbor’s wife, then it isn’t adultery. [laughter.]

[Moderator] Give the Hasidic you gave me last night.

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, right. Saul Bellow for example, I believe it’s in Saul Bellow’s book which came out a year ago Journey to Jerusalem; a liberal Jew without any faith, just because as a Jew he ought to see it. And on the plane there is seated near him a Hasidic Jew, poor garment worker in New Jersey who had saved up money to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. And he sees Saul Bellow eating the food, which it was not pork or shellfish, but it was not kosher in its present preparation; and he was horrified. And he said “how can you as a Jew eat that food?” And then after some discussion he said, now mind you here is Saul Bellows a very rich man, and this poor Hasidic Jew was a garment worker, an immigrant, only 5-6 years in this country he said, “I will pay you $15 a week for life if you will agree to eat only Kosher food.” And Saul Bellows was touched and he said “Why are you ready to do that?” “Because I feel it’s my duty to save you.”

Now that was pharisaic salvation, it was an external. And yet at one of the stops on the way this Hasidic Jew saw no sin in going in terms of this Talmudic regulation that I was talking about, going to a gentile prostitute. After all that didn’t violate the commandment, she was not a neighbor’s wife, she was not Jewish. You see, now that’s Phariseeism, it creates its own law and it despises the word of God. So our Lord said of them “Ye make the word of God of none effect with your predictions.”

[Audience member] Does your system come down to any type of interpretation of the law and if so who does the interpretation, or how is the interpretation derived?

[Rushdoony] I don’t call it my system, it’s scripture. And I’m not telling you that you are bound by what I say, but I’m saying you’re bound by this word and I’m asking you to read it and take it seriously. I read it, I took it seriously, I felt I could not live in debt and that the Lord would bless me if I lived in obedience to his word at this point and every other point. I’m not jumping you if you are in debt, and I’m not asking you whether you are. That’s between you and the Lord you see. I don’t concern myself with that.

[Audience member] Ok, but you throughout history various people have read that book and come up with different interpretations. Joseph Smith would not agree with you, Sun Myung {?} would not agree with you, and the followers of these particular people would not. And yet they would claim, especially the Jehovah Witnesses would claim that they are people of one book. And yet I’m sure their interpretation of that book is not at all like yours, so we come down to the ethic of who’s right.

[Rushdoony] Alright, now that question strikes just as well of you. What about your position, none of those people agree with you, does that mean your position has no standing? Or that you’re wiped out?

[Audience member] No but we have to determine, we have to come up with some, don’t you have to come up with some ground rule of interpretation if you’re going to have a {?}

[Rushdoony] What you’re saying is some human authority is going to say “This is it boys.” And I don’t want that, I don’t believe in it. I’m saying that here is the infallible inerrant word of God, and I’m saying that guided by the Spirit I’m going to read it and apply it, and if you do the same I’ll be happy. But I’m not going to sit in judgment on you.

[Audience member] Are you happy to let the Jehovah witness practice the way he feels his interpretation of the word of God should go?

[Rushdoony] I don’t agree with him, but I’m not his judge. He’s going to meet the Lord on judgment day so I go my own way. You see I have enough to do without going around saying “what are you boys doing? You know you’re all wrong, and I’m going to tell you chapter and verse where you’re wrong.” I know people who spend their life doing that. I know people who, some people I think highly of, very intelligent, knowledgeable Christians, will spend day and night documenting what every church and what every cult does that is wrong. And they can go to their shelf and pull down books and document all this, and they feel they’re doing a great work for the Lord; and to me, so what? So what?

[Audience member] Can I push this just a little farther? I’m maybe not pushing you at all, you’re pushing me, I thank you for that.

[Rushdoony] I don’t feel pushed.

[Audience member] A little earlier in the discussion here you talked about your role in the church, or in the service of Christ. Did you refer yourself as a pastor? I know you refer to yourself as a servant.

[Moderator] And this will have to be the last response please.

[Rushdoony] What was the word, do I what?

[Audience member] See yourself. I’m referring to a statement you made a little earlier, but that’s a side issue. In your office, in your service of Christ, in your obedience to this one book can you in all good conscious take the passages that tell you to preach the word, or to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, or the passages that deal with evangelism, can you take those and still put those into your system without attempting to show these other people their faulty interpretation?

[Rushdoony] You see, my answer to that question is, I’m not trying to or set other Christians straight. I’m out to evangelize the lost.

[Audience member] So if the Jehovah witness is lost you’re out to evangelize him?

[Rushdoony] If I come across one, I don’t force myself on anyone Jehovah witness style. Let me add one thing. Saint Paul as he wrote to the Corinthians said “I judge not my own self.” Why? Because judgment is the prerogative of the Lord; I take his word and apply it. I’m His servant, He’s going to judge me; you’re his servant; he’s going to judge you. Fine that’s it.

[Moderator] The truth certainly involves a polemic as you can clearly see in all of his writings. Well I have to close this meeting here, some of you want to meet him, some of you have only got six minutes to make the transition to another class. So I’m going to close with prayer and then let you meet brother Rushdoony. Let’s pray

Father thank You for these moments together and for this presentation, and for this extremely encouraging word from the Lord. We ask that you will bless brother Rush as he goes to Akron and then to Atlanta and back home to California, bless his ministry Lord and give him strength equal to his day and to his calling, and Father we look forward to that day when we shall meet again. And if Jesus tarry we ask that we should be found faithful until then in supporting one another in Christ. In Jesus name we ask it, amen.