Deuteronomy

Guarding the Family

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 19-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 019

Dictation Name: RR187K19

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. How amiable are your tabernacles, oh Lord of Hosts, a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand. For the Lord God is a Sun and a shield, the Lord will give grace and glory, no good thing will you withhold from those that walk uprightly. Oh Lord of Hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we give thanks unto Thee that day by day Thy mercies are new every morning. We thank Thee for the grace of life, for the grace of salvation, and for the grace of Thy providential care. We therefore come to learn of Thee, to rejoice in Thee, and to sing Thy praises with all our being. Bless us, prosper us in Thy service and make us effectual for Thy kingdom, in Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture this morning is Deuteronomy 5:18. Our subject: ‘Guarding the Family’. Deuteronomy 5:18.

“Neither shalt Thou commit adultery.”

Adultery in the Bible not only means sexual infidelity by a married person but includes also the sexual faithlessness of a betrothed. The death penalty applies in Biblical law because the basic institution being the family, adultery is treason in familistic society. But our world is statist and treason is now unfaithfulness to the state. Adultery like all sin is a double offense against a man or a woman, the marital partner and the families involved and against God whose law is transgressed. Even in societies like our humanistic one where adultery is sometimes seen more or less as pleasure and variety rather than a sin, adultery has serious consequences. A high percentage of married men today are not certain who fathered the family’s children. This uncertainty has vast social consequences. Adulterous women know that such an uncertainty has commonly an unsettling and even devastating effect on their husbands. It limits their future orientation. Why work to build up an estate, a business or a farm for a son perhaps fathered by someone else.

What happens then to a father’s headship and authority? The sexual revolution was an aspect of a present oriented culture and it furthered that culture. Renaissance literature shows that the mockery of other men as [unknown] was an evil and commonplace fact and a devastating one. Suspicion introduced in such a basic a relationship as marriage has long term consequences. Among other things true marriage is a religious fact as well as an intensely personal alliance. We now see it as a bond between two people, a man and a woman. The bible underscores the fact that a new unit is created by marriage, therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. This new unit however is in continuity with the old for marriage is the basic community, after that the larger family and with some the clan. In Ruth’s statement we see this greater dimension, and Ruth said in Ruth 1:16-17:

“Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge, Thy people will be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me and more also if ought but death part thee and me.”

Ruth the widow makes this statement to her mother in law. By her marriage Ruth had changed her faith and her loyalties and for her there was no retreat. It is an interesting fact that in cultures such as the Chinese where the wife remains a part of the old family she is never treated with other than suspicion by her husband’s family. And she will steal from her husband’s family to enrich her own. Such is not a true familistic culture.

A community always has a center of power and life. In a familistic society that center is the man, the husband. And in association with him as a vice[unknown word] the wife. It is not an accident that men tend to be authoritarian. They were created to be the human centers of culture. But: in the modern world humanism has shifted the power center from the family and the male to the state. The modern state is the power center and it is intensely hostile to any other claimant to centrality such as the church. But most of all, hostile to the family, the true center. Controls on the family have as their purpose the chaining of the main rival to statist power. One of the consequences of the triumph of statism is first limitations on women. The enlightenment and the so called age of reason severely limited a woman’s power over herself and her property. Then second because this restricted women greatly and unduly, a consequence of this was the rise of feminism. Women gravitate to power. Whether as groupies ready to become the sexual playthings of media created male celebrities or as persons to whom the real world is no longer the family but the political order, politics becomes feminized as Isaiah predicted. A major political motion becomes pity for every group singled out by politics for attention. The power center of humanistic women becomes the state. For some it is state sponsored and state promoted cultural activities. For such women the power center is emphatically not their husbands nor families no matter how great their affection for them. This is why [unknown] words are so telling. In the modern world the center does not hold because it is a false center. The result is an ex-centric or off center society. Children then too are off centered and accordingly become problems or are derelict.

Where men are power centers as heads of family’s wives are also of great importance. John Adams was a man who was still close to the puritan world. General Howe the British viscount and military leader proved to be alternately good and bad as the commander of the British forces in the war of independence. Adam remarked and I quote:

“A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia a long time ago.” Unquote.

To many Adams comment makes no sense but to Adams who knew men as power centers whose wives are very powerful and central in importance as their aides the meaning was clear. Modern women are turning to the state and its culture vultures to be near to the new centers of power. But to detach power in society from the family is very dangerous. Man being a sinner, the abuses of power in families are real. In non-Christian cultures they are endemic. It must be recognized that despite abuses the family is not simply a power center in the Christian perspective it is a family, an intensely personal group. And the ties are those of blood and love among other things. Very often too the power is shared power, the family members of an important man gain in personal power and importance. The power exercised is personal and familial, not impersonal and statist. Every social order is a system of power relations. And the more impersonal the power center, the less personal the consideration given to individuals. Statist power is the cold ability to dominate, control and coerce people and to compel their conduct. In the family faith and loyalty are strong compelling forces whereas in the state it is the monopoly of legal power and police power, military power. The family’s authority and power is a moral force when faithfully exercised. The state which is the power center has military and police power in its hands. It seeks not a moral compliance but a brute force organization of society. Even sociologist Ray [unknown] summarized the defining fact o the family in these words: “It is the basic social institution.” Since [unknown] wrote that in 1944 statist revolution has triumphed. And the family is a major target of attack. Given what we see around us today it is interesting to go back to an old Roman work. It was written by Antonius between 230 and 250 A.D. And it is revealing as to what happens when the state replaces the family as a power center.

The family then becomes simply the sexual center. Antonius held as C.C. Zimmerman summarizes it and I quote:

“That people had complete confidence in the power of sex to integrate the family and social system of that time and to insure the continuity of each. The people were then ready to believe that this had always been true. And every public character of the past has been made out to be whenever possible a homosexual, to have had a mistress, to have occasionally fathered illegitimate children. It reinforces the idea that women should sustain and feed the love of the husbands by out-venusing Venus. It shows a sex life panorama as adequate if not more so as the most sophisticated writings on sex today.” Unquote.

So wrote Antonius. This primary emphasis on sexuality serves to erode the family. It gives priority to anarchistic conduct that undermines the family and it thereby furthers the states claim to be the power center. So called sexual freedom becomes an asset to the power state by helping to break the family. Every time in history that the state has moved towards totalitarian power it has been preceded and accompanied by a sexual revolution. A final word. It is remarkable how unable modern scholars are to understand the family and to write adequately of it. Perhaps the only scholar in our time who ever did so and then in his final volume there were problems was C.C. Zimmerman. The inability of these scholars to understand the family as it once was appears in a new work, a very able work by a very able man, an archeologist, Dr. [unknown]. Dr. Zenger [sp?] who did excavations in regards to Troy and related areas in that part of the world sees the adultery which led to the Trojan War as and I quote: “A trifling incident.” In fact, he insists on seeing Homer writing satirizing what was such a trifling incident. So that all of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are a comment on the absurdity of the whole thing. This is a failure of staggering dimensions, a lack of comprehension. From the perspective of the time Paris’s adultery with Helen was an assault against the king and the realm, a grim fact that called for justice.

There is no other way to understand the very popularity of Homer’s poem. Why it was regarded as a religious poem. A religious epic. Twentieth century man may regard adultery with a queen or anyone as a trifling matter but it was then an open contempt for and an assault on Greek power. This was why so many great Greeks from other cities, other political realms joined in the war. It was an expression of contempt for all of them. It was far from being a trifling matter. It treated them all as a slave people whose women could be taken at will beginning with the queen. It was an act of war. And yet I have never read an account of Homer’s work that recognizes that fact. We have so far moved away from a family based culture, from the family as the power center, but as Zimmerman pointed out, when this kind of thing happens, it is the death knell of the society. It has no foundation for the grassroots level and it begins to crumble and fall and then it has to begin again with the family based center. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy word. And we know that Thy word alone gives us the foundation for rebuilding society. We thank thee that by the grace of Thou hast manifested in Jesus Christ men women and children are remade and we pray that they may turn to Thy word to remake our world. Grant us this in Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] The fact that Homer was religious was never mentioned…[becomes unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, I had a course in Homer at the university and never once was the cause of the war treated as serious. And never once the fact that the poem was regarded by the Greeks almost as a bible. I had to read in some older works about that fact. And the whole course was so baffling I wondered why was Homer important? And it was only when I began to do some studying and rereading on my own that I began to realize what Homer was talking about, what the presupposition throughout his two epics was. It’s one reason probably why Homer is now regarded as great because we regard the Greeks as great but with no real teaching or appreciation for what he represented.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, Homer represented that was old and which in time became obsolete as the Roman city states became political in their power center. And that was the prelude to their death. And the sexual revolution of course preceded and accompanied that rise of statism among the Greek city-states. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question] Well that modern treatment of Homer is an aspect of the general contempt for religion on the part of our intellectuals.

[Rushdoony] Very well put, the version of Greek history that we get in the humanistic idolatry of Greece looks to the late degenerate period. It refuses to deal with the fact of slavery in the Greek world, and how in Athens for example, they did not allow slaves to dress with a particular type of garment that would indicate they were slaves because they knew then the slaves would realize they far outnumbered the freemen and could easily destroy them. They will not deal with the fact that from a familistic society they had become political. They will not deal with the older religious values of Greece but point after point they take a late humanistic version and the Socrates whom the Greeks even though they were moving into decadence still felt necessary to condemn, for perverting youth, is never described in anything but almost idolatrous terminology as a hero, as wrongly condemned, and yet Socrates as you have written, invented judgment. He was sufficiently masochistic that he wanted to rub what he was doing in the noses of the magistrates and gain freedom thereby. And he died not heroically. Any other questions or comments, yes?

[Question] I just wanted to make sure I understood the secrets that you described earlier, are you saying that adultery leads to uncertainty on the part of fathers on who their children are, on the consequence there is diminished future orientation and the men then cease to take dominion, this in term creates a vacuum in which the state steps in to fill?

[Rushdoony] Yes and about two years ago and I misplaced the data, studies show that about one of six younger men are not sure about the paternity of at least one of their children and that this is creating a growing insecurity and a lack of future orientation on their parts. Any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy word illumines our world, shows us the way wherein to walk and empowers us with Thy spirit and enables us to be more than conquerors in Jesus 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.