Law and Life

Capitalization and Church and State

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 23 of 39

Track: 134

Dictation Name: RR156M23

Date: 1960s-1970s

[Rushdoony] Our Scripture is again Numbers 18:21 through 28, and our subject Capitalization and the Two Basic Institutions. Capitalization and the Two Basic Institutions. Numbers 18:21 through 28. “And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. Neither must the children of Israel henceforth come nigh the tabernacle of the congregation, lest they bear sin, and die. But the Levites shall do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation, and they shall bear their iniquity: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations, that among the children of Israel they have no inheritance. But the tithes of the children of Israel, which they offer as an heave offering unto the LORD, I have given to the Levites to inherit: therefore I have said unto them, among the children of Israel they shall have no inheritance. And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Thus speak unto the Levites, and say unto them, When ye take of the children of Israel the tithes which I have given you from them for your inheritance, then ye shall offer up an heave offering of it for the LORD, even a tenth part of the tithe. And this your heave offering shall be reckoned unto you, as though it were the corn of the threshing floor, and as the fullness of the winepress. Thus ye also shall offer an heave offering unto the LORD of all your tithes, which ye receive of the children of Israel; and ye shall give thereof the LORD'S heave offering to Aaron the priest.”

In Scripture, there are two institutions of very great and typical importance, but at the same time of very limited and circumscribed powers; powers that, while their symbolic importance gives them a central importance, their powers put them in a secondary position. These two institutions are church and state. Let us examine both of these very briefly before we go on to the significance of this fact.

The state, first of all, according to Romans 13:1 to 7, among other texts, the ministry of justice. Justice is basic to the kingdom of God, and the state’s function; justice, is thus basic to God’s plan and to our world. The very fact that the state in ancient times, in Bible times, was a kingdom normally, a dominion, a realm, gives us also the analogy to the kingdom of God and we see how basic it is to Biblical thinking. However, the state, as we have seen on numerous occasions, can never be identified as the kingdom of God anymore than the church can be so identified. They are aspects of God’s kingdom. God however, while giving such tremendous import to the state and making the head thereof a person who is anointed and who was a type of the Messiah, at the same time very, very severely limits the powers of the state to a remarkable degree. As we have seen on previous occasions, in Scripture according to Exodus 30:11 through 16, a head tax or poll tax, the same amount for all males 20 and older was, apart from a very few fines, the only source of income for the state. This head or poll tax was called for atoning purposes, that is, for a civil covering for the civil protection of society. Thus the state was a very narrowly limited institution with very limited powers. The modern state, which takes 45 percent of our income direct in taxation or by indirect taxation is thus Godless and lawless. The state in Scripture, thus, has a very important typical meaning, it has a very important function as the ministry of justice, but it is very severely limited by God.

Now the same is true of the church. The church is the ministry of grace; of the word of grace. The response of man to the word of grace is worship, the formal life of the church. Worship is central to the church, worship wanes when the Word of God is adulterated or when the Word is neglected or not properly taught. The church, moreover, is spoken of as the body of Christ. Again we see the fearful, the far reaching implications of the meaning of these two basic institutions. But here again the power of the church is very severely limited. Now in our text as in other passages, we see that the tithe, the first tithe, was to be given to the Levites, and the Levites, who were to be scattered throughout the land and their purpose later stated very clearly in a number of places as in Deuteronomy 33:10 was instruction. The Levites had no inheritance in the land save the tithe; nine-tenths of it was theirs. Out of this they were to provide instruction, being scattered throughout the land, and there were every year some classes, that is a limited number, of Levites out of the hundreds of thousands of Levites that were in the land finally, fifty, one-hundred, one-hundred and fifty, who went and served in the temple, who provided the music and the care of the temple. Thus, the tithe that went to the Levites, the nine-tenths, at the most you could say perhaps a tenth of that went for temple service and that would be exaggerating. The rest went for their basic function, which was instruction. Thus, worship had a very limited power, the high priest was anointed again as a type of Christ, just as the king had been anointed, but again these two institutions with tremendous typical significance were severely limited by Scripture. Again we see the lawlessness of the church, as I go across country I commonly encounter churches that insist the tithe belongs to the church, all of it. It belongs to the Lord; it is to be distributed in terms of the Lord’s requirement by the people of God. Nine-tenths of it went for instruction. Thus, the modern church as well as the modern state claim a power and a centrality in life that Scripture does not give to them.

It is interesting in the New Testament that most of the epistles are addressed to the saints. Now some were specifically church problems that are dealt with, as in 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians are addressed to the church in Corinth and the church in Galatia. But the others are addressed to the saints, and it becomes apparent that the church is included but the total community of Christ in all its functions. Now the activities of these saints, both from Scripture and from the early church fathers included churches that met in homes. It included bible study groups that met in homes. It included charity through and also apart from the church. It included refuges for abandoned children, hospitality for strangers, hospitals were established also by the end of the 4th century, and a great many other activities. Now the control by the church of these activities also grew by that time, but in the beginning there was a difference; an interpenetration of activities not a centralized jurisdiction. The problem in Christian history has been an unhappy sacramentalization of church and state. Now we’re going to deal subsequently with the sacrament of the Lord ’s Table, and we shall go into more of its significance and why it virtually cannot be said to exist in an Biblical sense in the churches today and is often a blasphemy. But, we see in church and state an unhappy sacramentalization. The sacrament is with Christ, not with institutions. Scripture, as in Romans 6:3, in Galations 3:27, says we are baptized into Jesus Christ, not into the church. It is administered by the church, but into Christ. Similarly, the Lord’s Table sets forth not that we are one body with the church but with Christ and with one another in Christ. Now, when the modern state and the modern church sacramentalize themselves, they seek to make the people one body in themselves; to bring together, for example by statist activities law and coercion, all people into a unity, into peace one with another. The goals of the modern state all over the world are sacramental. They are trying to reproduce that which the Lord’s Supper sets forth through statist action. Our civil rights legislation is nothing more than an attempt to sacramentalize society, to bring about that which only faith and love of the brethren can produce through legislation. And the result is the destruction of the people by a Moloch state.

Now similarly, the church itself sees itself as a sacramental body and preempts Christ’s role. We shall return to this when we deal, when I next speak, with the sacrament, but it is spoken of in Scripture in Jude 12, in 2 Peter 2:13 as a feast of charity and a love feast, celebrating that the people are one family in Christ, and that there is no true sacrament without unfeigned love of the brethren and the marks of being members of the family are precisely these, as various verses 1 Peter 1:22, Romans 8:29, Hebrews 2:11, 1 John 3:14, Romans 12:40, 1 Thessalonians 4:9, Hebrews 13:1, 2 Peter 1:7, and many others state this is mark of Communion. Communion celebrates a common life in Christ. It cannot be celebrated apart from that nor reduced to a rite, although it cannot be separated from the rite. Moreover, the first Passover was also the first Sabbath of Israel. It celebrated God’s redemptive work; the reestablishment of Israel about to leave for the Promised Land and God’s calling to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. The law was given shortly thereafter for this purpose, the Sabbath is inseparable from work. It celebrates our rest in God’s efficacious justifying work and our effectual sanctifying work is to follow from that rest. Wherever the theological meaning of God’s work and man’s work is diminished, the meaning of the Sabbath and of Communion diminishes.

But there is another aspect to all of this that brings us to the heart of our interest and our concern this morning. Neither church nor state are productive agencies. Their essential function lies elsewhere. The state is a protective agency, protective of God’s order, to institute restitution for civil wrongs and protect God’s people from enemies, internally and externally. Now this is a very important function but it is not a productive function. The church, according to the Westminster Confession, has as its function the protection and the nurture of God’s people. Thus, both church and state have very important and necessary functions, but not productive ones. And this is why God in His providence, in His government, has limited the tax that goes to the state and that portion of tithe which goes for worship. Now, whenever we examine any pagan society in the past or in the present, we find this: primitive societies can never capitalize themselves because the cult requires so much in the way of their productive results that civilization cannot result. The cult observes so many rites and rituals that require so much in the way of giving on the part of the people that capitalization and the development of the culture into a civilization is impossible. Now, whenever a civilization has developed because of various shakeups; changes in the faith in the society which have led to an expanse of activity, the thing that brings about the collapse of these civilizations is simply this; the culture, the civilization is decapitalized by the state and the temple. The claim of the state to the income of the people in the form of taxes and the claim of the temple, of the religion, in the form of ever increasing demands as an insurance from this kind of disaster and that, becomes so great that some scholars have pointed out and some ethnologists and some anthropologists that people spend more of their productive time supporting the cult and the government than in supporting themselves. Now consider the implications of that for a society. Whatever culture we go to in the ancient world, we find after a certain point the power of the cult, the temple, the power of the state, begins to drain away all the capital of the people and the culture begins to collapse. It cannot maintain any kind of recapitalization and its existing capital is drained. In the modern world the same thing has happened.

Medieval culture began to decay when the church not only claimed the whole of the tithe but more than the tithe and began to build gigantic cathedrals. In the early Middle Ages you had the small chapel, beautifully built but not extravagantly built. The house of God should be beautiful. But when the church began to claim the tithe; all of it and more, and meanwhile the tyrant states were claiming more and more as the modern state began to develop, medieval civilization collapsed. And again we are seeing the decapitalization of society by church and state. Forty-five percent of the income of Americans is taken by various branches of state from local government on to the federal, from direct and indirect taxes, forty-five percent. And the churches are insistent on what they call storehouse tithing, which doesn’t mean what they claim it does, that the tithe goes to them, and you have heretical groups, hardly to be called Christian like the Armstrong people, who demand a thirty percent tithe for the church. Well what’s happening? Society is being decapitalized; it’s being destroyed. It cannot function, no civilization has been able to continue when decapitalization sets in, and decapitalization has set in today.

Now, God’s law is plainspoken here. The head tax alone for the state apart from minor fines, and one percent of one’s income or one percent of the tithe for worship. It is interesting that in Revelation 13, church and state are presented as two beasts that are destroyers of mankind. Now anti-Christianity is more than avowed hostility, it includes all departures from God’s Word including claims to powers and to income that do not belong to church and state. Moloch worship is state worship. Most recent conclusion of anthropologists is that it is questionable whether Moloch was ever a god. Moloch means king, it meant a divinized king, it meant the state claimed the right if need be to the life of the child, to any kind of sacrifice on the part of man, and we have today a Moloch state.

Now I said we were discussing capitalization and the two basic institutions. Church and state have a centrality in terms of their typical meaning, in terms of the eternal kingdom of God. But here and now what are the two basic instruments of God’s purpose? Well, we dealt with one some time ago; the family. The family has the basic powers in any culture, in any society. It has control of the children, control of property according to Biblical law, and control of inheritance. It also is the basic welfare institution of any and every society. The family thus, is certainly the basic institution in Scripture and we have to see it as such; more important here and now than church and state. In terms of the eternal kingdom of God, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage. There all the people of God are the family of God. But here and now the family is God’s basic institution.

Now it is significant the other basic institution gets the major portion of the first tithe; instruction, the Levites, the school, education. The function of instruction is the theological, the intellectual capitalization of a society. No other capitalization in any society is possible when this is neglected. Our society today is being decapitalized because first of all it has been decapitalized as far as instruction is concerned by the government schools. This is why I feel the work of Chalcedon is so important since its function is instruction. This is why from the beginning we have been concerned with promoting Christian schools, godly instruction, because it is the family and instruction which are God’s basic purposes according to His Law. The first tithe, the major, the overwhelming portion of it, nine-tenths was to provide for the Levites, scattered throughout Israel, and subsequently declared to have as their function instruction, instruction. Talk to the average American and you can see how badly we are decapitalized. Most Americans still think of themselves as Christians. They don’t know the first thing about Christ or the Word of God, or if they are members, forty to forty-five million of them, of Bible-believing churches, they’re babes in Christ, almost to the man, idiots when it comes to any real knowledge of the faith. They have been without instruction; the kind of instruction which a Christian school, which Christian educational institutions, foundations and the like, can alone provide; systematic thorough teaching. And as I said a few moments ago, no other capitalization in a society is possible if this is neglected. Instruction is thus highly production. The capture and corruption of schools is the destruction of a society. Thus, while worship is important, God gives priority to instruction, the school in this world is more basic to God’s plan than the church.

Now the function of instruction disappears in the eternal kingdom of God. The function of the church unfolds in an eternal glory. But here and now instruction has priority. The first tithe is to the Levites, nine-tenths of it. The second tithe, or which can also be called the second and third because it alternated, Deuteronomy 13:22 to 28 [This reference is a mistake], in Deuteronomy 26:12 to 15, was for the family and the poor. Now it’s very interesting, and we will return to this when we come to the study of the meaning of communion, when we study the literature of ancient Israel, Talmudic and otherwise, we find a very interesting fact. The first tithe for the Levites and the priest is called the tax. The second tithe is called the holy tithe, the holy tithe. I leave that with you, we will return to its significance when we deal with communion. Family and school are productive of communion and vocation. When church and state monopolize a man’s income, they sin and they decapitalize society and communion goes. God’s legal provisions in His Word are not haphazard. Scripture is a plan of conquest. God said in the beginning that man should have dominion and subdue the earth and the whole of Scripture is a plan to redeem fallen man and to establish him in that plan of dominion. To neglect God’s provisions is to surrender the future, it is to decapitalize society. If today only a small segment of the Christian population followed God’s law concerning tithing, civilization could be recapitalized and conquered. There is no other way than God’s way. To exercise dominion and to subdue the earth requires that we recapitalize people morally, intellectually, theologically, as well as materially, and God through His Word tells us how this is to be done. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God, we thank Thee that Thou hast given us practical ways to accomplish Thy purpose. Make us restless, our Father, till we rest in Thee and in obedience in Thee, that we might do Thy will and bring all things into subjection to Thee, to the end that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Are there any questions on our lesson now? Yes?

[Audience member] What’s the purpose of dividing the law into three parts; the ceremonial, the moral and like the judgments and statutes, what does that mean?

[Rushdoony] Yes. The division of the law into ceremonial, moral, and civil is a relatively modern distinction and it has been used really to destroy the law because by means of it they have said well this is civil, we don’t need this anymore, and this doesn’t apply to us, and they wind up with very little except thou shalt not kill, steal, bear false witness, in their most minimal meaning. Those distinctions are not in Scripture. God’s law is law and unless it is set aside by our Lord or in the New Testament, or as the sacrificial system has its meaning now terminated by Christ’s sacrifice, it is still law. But those distinctions were invented by antinomians first of all to set aside the law and unfortunately they crept into common usage. Yes?

[Audience member] I understood you to say about {?}that each man would pay {?}.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience member] {?} being for the tabernacle?

[Rushdoony] Yes, the tabernacle was the governmental tax but this was the head tax whereby the government was to be maintained. As a theocracy, the seat of government was the holy of holies; God’s throne. Yes?

[Audience member] Well, I don’t know how this question is going to come out, but what I want to ask is this, how does one know whether they fall in the realm of common grace or efficacious grace?

[Rushdoony] Well first of all, I’m not happy with the term common grace. It’s led to so many abominations really that I wish the term were abolished and something else substituted for it because it’s been a means of reinstituting the whole of domestic natural law theology. So unless one uses it very strictly in the Van Tillian sense, and he tends to use the term earlier grace as a preferable one than common grace. I question its use. But very obviously, anyone who loves the Word of God, who strives to obey it, who delights in the things of the Lord and whose heart yearns to see God’s will done; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, manifests redeeming grace, saving grace. Common grace, so called, will manifest itself as Calvin said in the fact that even the ungodly will to a degree be honest because it’s necessary, you can’t have total anarchy although even that breaks down as earlier grace disappears. I don’t know whether that answer it, is there a follow-up question you’d like to ask to clarify the distinction?

[Audience member] I was going to say that {?} prayer is definitely, I’m thankful for salvation because {?} thankful for the common grace, otherwise we’d be living in hell.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes?

[Audience member] I have the same problem. I was wondering why for a long time we have sat in churches where you are made to feel guilty if you are not pouring all your tithe there, and then that same idea {?} by a board of directors or whatever, and it is used to build beautiful entertainment centers and recreation halls, and maybe it’s a tribute to the deliberate breakdown of family where the responsibility is. Then I had wondered, I as an individual, if I feel that that’s wrong why should I contribute to that? It’s not my Christian responsibility toward God {?}?

[Rushdoony] Yes, our responsibility is to the Lord, not to the church. The tithe is the Lord’s tax. Therefore we administer it to the Lord. In Biblical Law, I cite the example of the man who brought his tithe directly to Elisha and the school of the prophets, not to the established Levites and priests of Israel, because he knew they were doing the Lord’s work. It has to be the Lord, not the institution. Yes?

[Audience member] When the Israelites left the {?} Egypt there were only seventy in number {?}. What happened to those people who were left behind in Canaan? When the people left, the Israelites left Canaan to go into Egypt there were only seventy, what happened to the rest of them?

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, I see your point. There were seventy of the family. This does not mean they did not take all of the people who were a part of their household. Now, we know that Abraham had a few hundred fighting men, he didn’t dispense with those, the inheritance that went on to Jacob, through Isaac, meant that there was a very sizable body of men. Now, the seventy number has reference to the immediate family, the wives and children. They were given the land of Goshen, a very large territory, because very obviously with these servants, these household members who were also covenant people, they were all circumcised under Abraham and subsequently. They numbered quite a few thousand. So it required a section of the country to take care of them, especially since they were sheepherders, they needed a considerable amount of territory. If you know the inter-mountain area, if you have say only five thousand men engaged in the sheep business they can take up half a state. So this is why the land of Goshen was given to them. Now by the time of the Exodus they were one people. They, as the covenant people, had married and intermarried, they were no longer going back to Haran for brides as with Isaac and with Jacob, they were intermarrying with these covenant servants and the like undoubtedly. And they had become a very numerous people, approximately two million at the time of the Exodus. Are there any other questions? If 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]