Deuteronomy

The Family and Its Centrality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 72-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 072

Dictation Name: RR187AM72

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Oh come let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with songs. Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God we give thanks unto Thee for all Thy mercies, past, present and future. For we know that Thy hand is upon us for good all the days of our life. Teach us therefore to see all things as coming from Thy hands with an eternal purpose for our good and give us joy in Thee and in Thy ways and victory in all things. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 22:22-30. Deuteronomy 22:22-30. Our subject: The family and Its Centrality.

“ If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel.

23 If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her;

24 Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

25 But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.

26 But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and slayeth him, even so is this matter:

27 For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.

28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found;

29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days.

30 A man shall not take his father's wife, nor discover his father's skirt.”

As [Unknown] and other Romans saw the depravity of pagan Rome they idealized the pagan tribes of Germany whose moral conduct was clearly evil. But of course they were far away and the Roman readers of [unknown] would not know the difference. It was his way of rebuking them. One of the appeals of the church to Romans was its moral superiority but in time in the generation before the fall of Rome the church began to resemble the old Rome. Shortly before the fall of Rome Salvion [sp?]wrote and I quote:

“The church herself which should be the appeaser of God in all things what is she but the exasperator of God. Beyond a few individuals who shun evil what else is the whole assemblage of Christians but the bilge water of vice. How many will you find in the church who are not either a drunk or a beast or adulterer or a fornicator or a robber or a debaucher or a brigand or a murderer. And what is worse than all this? They do all these things almost increasingly.” Unquote.

Saint Augustine tended to concentrate on the sins of paganism, writing at the same time as Salvien, but Salvien was unsparing of all sinners in and out of the church. He and other church fathers saw Rome’s fall as due to the destruction of the family and the prevalent view of sex as recreational. The biblical perspective was echoed by them although with non-biblical aesthetical overtones. In biblical law most of the death penalties are associated with offenses against the family because the family is the basic institution in God’s sight. Treason in biblical law is against the family. Some sociologists, namely the late C.C. Zimmerman of Harvard, have stressed the same centrality of the family as basic to the survival of civilization. This has not stopped in increasing assault on the family nor the moral decline. Now we have a growing number of men who because of the prevailing immorality are unsure of the paternity of their children and the psychological and social results are devastating. The first of the five laws in our text, verse twenty two, concerns adultery, mutual consensually adultery. The penalty for both is death. The statement, ‘so shalt thou put away evil from Israel’ means that a way of life contemptuous of consequences and of God and man must be broken. The modern existentialist temper rejects all social, religious, and familial considerations in favor of a totally personal desire. This limitation of concern is a danger to society and it must be put away as evil. The second case involves a man and a betrothed virgin. This offense occurs within the city where help would be available had she screamed for help. Because she was silent and consented she is guilty, both the man and the woman are sentenced to death. If there were no one within hearing she would not be guilty. It is especially an offensive act on the man’s part because the woman was betrothed, he hath humbled his neighbor’s wife we are told. The third law, verses twenty five to twenty seven, deals with a case of rape in the country side where no cry for help would bring rescue. The man only is guilty and the penalty is death. In terms of Deuteronomy 22:19 and 29 and Exodus 22:16 and 17 the man in such cases must also pay the equivalent of a dowry to the girl. The money or livestock however it came would come out of his estate.

The fourth law, verses twenty eight and twenty nine, concerns an unbetrothed virgin. This is the same law as Exodus 22:16-17. Because the girl is not betrothed if the father agrees then on payment of a dowry of fifty shekels, a very great sum, the two can be married. He can never divorce her, the father is the decision maker, this is a fundamental fact of God’s law. Whether or not they marry the girl gets that dowry. The father must be the responsible protective person and the defender of his daughter. Covenant children must have covenant morality. Deuteronomy 23:17 declares there shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel. The fifth law forbids all sexual acts with a stepmother. This is the law we find also in the code of Hammurabi. In Ezekiel 22:10 this is one of the offenses that the prophet charges to the Judeans. Now, if the family is indeed the fundamental institution of society and basic to civilization, then these laws are basic to the life of nations. But the family is now under unsparing attack, statism cannot flourish where a strong family basis exists in a society. The disillusion of the family precedes culture decay. There were scholars who between the wars called attention to this fact, the family basis of freedom and society. They are virtually forgotten now and all their massive research neglected. According to Matthew 18:20 our Lord declares:

“For where are two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in the midst of them.”

Now it’s important for us to understand this text. It is usually taken as referring to the church which it certainly can.

But as we look at the records of how the church understood it in the very earliest days we see something different. For example, Clement of Alexandria in his stomata tells us this text refers to the family. Tertullian in On Repentance says in a company of two is the church but the church is Christ, now Tertullian comes well after Clement but his is not an equation of the church with an institution. Again commenting on this text in his book on baptism Tertullian wrote and I quote:

“Moreover after the pledging both of the [unknown] in the promise of salvation under three witnesses there is added of necessity mention of the church in as much where there are three, that is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is the church which is a body of three.”

So again Tertullian does not refer it to the institutional church. This is the definition in other words as more than institutional and it centers it on the triune God. Moreover the fact that the early church saw the family as the church is simply a reflection of the familistic nature of biblical faith and that in the Old Testament the family was the church and the father the high priest or the priest. How biblical this view of the family is appears of course in First Peter 3:7:

“Likewise ye husbands dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers be not hindered.”

This is a remarkable text, very commonly misunderstood. For one thing there is undue concentration on the wife as the weaker vessel; however as a scholar of many generations back, John [unknown] of Edinborough pointed out, the term is comparative as it requires both the man and the woman to see themselves as weak creatures or of vessels in God’s sight. As [unknown] concluded both are weak but the woman is weaker. This is very much the reverse of the common definition which says the man is strong but the woman is weaker but the grammar does not permit that. The Christian family is an area of grace and therefore a manifestation of the great church in Christ. In the early church chastity was an expression of the life of faith. The chaste family was a separated family, Tertullian in the chaplet or [unknown] tells us that the holiness of every day family life was basic to the Christian family. He tells us and I quote:

“At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps or couch or seat, in all the ordinary actions of our daily life we trace upon the forward the sign.” Unquote.

The sign of the cross. The sign of the cross permeated family life, now notice what has happened. Although the sign of the cross is disappearing from most churches today it was originally a sign made when they were in the house, in and out of the house. At the table when they seated themselves, when they went to bed, because that was the area of faith and of the life of faith supremely. Then it was transferred to the church, it was a great revolution, no one has ever written on the sign of the cross and of the revolution that occurred from the family to the church. The sign of the cross was basic to family life. Now this may distress some Protestants to say that the sign of the cross was common in the early church but its meaning was very important. Liturgy had been made basic to the life of the family and the house, including the reading of scripture and prayers. Sexuality was a sphere thus also set apart in terms of God’s law for holiness. When the church removed the centrality of the two or three from the family to the church it also stripped man of his priesthood.

The reformation began with a strong emphasis on the priesthood of all believers and in no time at all it tended to forget about that and concentrate on building up the institution. Liturgy existed in the church but it was especially basic to the life of the family. The whole of the family in terms of this became an area of high seriousness. Not surprisingly the results were remarkable and a strong family culture became in time basic to Christendom in the early church and then at the Reformation. One scholar has written a book which deals with the priestly role of the father with the Reformation. When as in Salvion’s day before the fall of Rome and during the fall a Christian procession of faith could be helpful to political advancement decay set in and the church decayed, Christians so-called had become pagans. C. C. Zimmerman was right, the future of civilization depends primarily on the family, Zimmerman and [unknown] were right in stating and I quote:

“From birth to grave there is scarcely any great action of consequence that can be performed by a person even in our free society that is not guided and colored by family relations. The individual person in his family meaning is the real unit in society. Detached, or non-familisticly, guided individuals exist only in imagination or in dis-colored surroundings such as prostitution, crime or skid row.” Unquote.

In other words as Zimmerman a socialist saw it, to try to destroy the family is to reduce all of life to the level of prostitution, crime and skid row. This he wrote in 1956 and certainly since then this is what has been happening. Our humanistic age and its scholars are working to put our culture on skid row, naturally, they hate God’s law. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank Thee for Thy word, engrave it upon the table of our hearts, make it a part of our breath, our life. Make us again a Christian family based people that we might do great things for Thy kingdom. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] Well property holds family together and the American families have been destroyed by various depressions and by inheritance taxes as much as by social behavior.

[Rushdoony] When you examine the basic powers of the family as given in the bible you see that the state has a better knowledge of those things, the humanists and the state, then the churches do because they have zeroed in on those powers to control children, to control property, to control inheritance, to control education and to control welfare. The state has zeroed in on them and in so doing it has worked to paganize civilization, to take us back to what existed before the fall of Rome. Because it was precisely the breakdown of the family that destroyed civilization and this is why as one or two scholars in dealing with the revival of family life with the reformation and then the counter-reformation saw where the strength of the reformation was. And you have the Code of Joseph developed, the holy family, to restore family life in Catholic circles and that’s what created the strength of the counter-reformation. Both sides reemphasized the family, but of course the state immediately worked against the family in both Catholic and Protestant countries. Yes?

[Question] I have taught on occasion to self [unknown] seminars specifically geared towards women and the subject of rape had come up in terms of this passage. Don’t you think that the modern trend encouraging women not to struggle is a devaluation of women’s chastity and her duty to protect herself?

[Rushdoony] It is part of the effort to say you do nothing, let the police do it all, when the police cannot do it all. The other day a man in New York who had been robbed again and again both in his house and on the street shot and killed the two men who mugged him who were criminals with a considerable record. He was arrested and immediately the police issued a statement that this is the kind of thing we don’t want to happen. It should be left to us, well the man had left it to the police for a long time and nothing had happened, all they do is to file a report on it. They haven’t the time or the manpower to do it all. So what they are counseling is surrender which the criminals know and which is a great help to them, they don’t want people resisting. Yes?

[Question] Well Mr. Scott pointed out just a couple minutes ago one of the things that has degraded or de-estimated the family is the inheritance tax. And in my studies of the law I have discovered that the inheritance tax is always been a manner of stature, even back through the Arab common law all the way to a statute that [unknown] made and before that. Which is very interesting because I think in light of that what we have seen today is the situation where we have rather than a, for instance, family ownership of property, we have individuals owning property so that when they pass it on to their sons or unto the daughters, whatever, it is not, you know, the family has not retained ownership of the land as in the Old Testament example, but it actually has been moved or inherited by the next person in line. So that we see a family ownership of property almost completely gone and we have individuals who are owning the property.

[Rushdoony] Yes, we forget that the taxation of property has been a part of the humanistic statist philosophy and this country it came in with the Unitarians primarily and it did not hit the South until after the Civil War when it was forced on them. The modern temper brought it in to many parts of Europe, it still does not exist in a few countries, it does not exist, for example, in Greece. It is a means of destroying the family and its heritage. Now at one of the dinners at the school conference in Idaho this past week I sat next to a man who’s been in the forestry service and is now in conservation. And he told me there is a direct connection between long term family ownership and good conservation practices. He said if there is a piece of property, a branch or a farm, that has been in a family for several generations and it is not seen as a business but a way of life that they are going to pass down to their children and their children’s children he said they are practicing on their own the best conservation policies imaginable. They are ready to listen to me, and they are ready to show me things they have done that are very helpful. But he said if it is someone who has gone into it in terms of a purely commercial enterprise they are not going to think long term because they are in it to make money and they are going to sell it when they retire and that’s it. So he said there is not much you can teach them. So he said we talk a great deal about conservation but no one is ready to say how important a family based culture with a future orientation is. If you’re at a point because you expect your children and your children’s children to be there you have a different way of dealing with the land and with the air then anyone else.

[Question] About what time periods did the sign of the cross migrate from the home into the institutional church?

[Rushdoony] We don’t know because no one has really studied that. It’s a very important question, there are so many areas where because we’ve had a statist orientation no one has attempted to do anything. Until Zimmerman there were no sociologists dealing with the family, all you had were studies like Morgan, one of the pioneers in sociology, was with marriage in terms of sex. Histories of the various sexual arrangements over the centuries, no concern with the family. That’s very recent. One of the pioneers in this area was [unknown] who in Russia, a liberal, a leftist, he was in the dooma of the socialists after the collapse and he clearly saw the impotence of the socialists and the brutality of the Marxists. Well, it led him to a study of things and he quickly recognized the breakdown of the family that had preceded the Russian revolution, a breakdown that a great many of the writers, novelists, had substantially contributed to. One of the classic works which was regarded at least when I went to school as a classic that you had to read: Sanine, which ridiculed any inhabitations with regards to sexuality, this type of thing. Then he began to study cultures and he saw that when you have a sensate culture that reduces the meaning of sex to personal enjoyment, pleasure, experience, you have a breakdown in civilization, you have a collapse. Well, between wars and with one or two men up till about the late fifties you had an awareness of this. The tremendous flowering of work in this area, but it didn’t arouse general interest but I was at Harvard once and visiting with a faculty member, I asked about Zimmerman and he commented with some amusement that he was pretty much isolated and on weekends he would take off to go into the woods to a place he had there because he didn’t have the fellowship of the faculty. So there is a great need for a revival of scholarship in this field and to develop it in related fields.

Any other questions or comments? If not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we thank Thee that we live and move and have our being in Thee. So that as we face a world of evil we are not alone, that greater is He that is with us then he that is within the world. Make us strong therefore as we serve Thee and more than conquerors in Christ. 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.