Law and Dominion

Government

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Law and Dominion

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Genre: Lecture

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Dictation Name: RR263B3

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Some of this material will be rather elementary for some of you who have been with me on some of these things. Ron Johnson for example was down and spent 20 hours listening to me in a couple of days. But I do feel this is basic and some of this material hopefully within a year will be in print. Then on our next occasion we shall go more deeply into areas of conquest, areas of Christian Dominion, the extension and development the implications of Christ Kingdom.

But this hour we are going to deal with a very necessary subject; government. Because I do not believe that we as Christians can cope with the problem until we understand what government means. Our problem is that a false view of government has led to Statism. We have associated the word with the Federal Government or the State Government. When we say government we are talking about the State house or Washington D.C.

The Puritans would never have understood that usage. For them government as it must mean for all Christians first of all the self government of the Christian man. God created man and gave him dominion, requires of man that he exercise responsibility, and man can never forget that government begins with his self government. Second the most basic governmental institutional government in the world is the family. I shall return to the family in a few minutes. But the family most definitely is the government. It is man's first government, his first church, his first school. It is basic in the government of man. All of us are governed by the family every day. Our responsibilities as members of a family. Then third the church is a government. Too often today the church does not govern. We have had problems throughout history when the church has over governed but, the church is inescapably under God a basic form of government. First the self government of the Christian man, second the family, third the church, and fourth the school.

The School is a very necessary and important government. This is why it is so necessary and critically dangerous to turn the government of our children over to humanist through the state school. The school governs in a critical way in a critical period of our lives. Then fourth vocation, our calling, our work governs us. The conditions of our work determine a great deal the way we act five and sometimes six days a week. Our work governs us.

Then sixth society governs us because the world around us has certain social requirements and expectations. We behave differently in different parts of the country in different communities. Because the culture around us imposes conditions and requirements and we bend to those requirements. Society for example in the south is very different from society in Los Angeles. Each area imposes certain requirements on people to which they respond consciously or unconsciously. And then seventh we have what the puritans always called civil government; the state. They never spoke of Civil government as government. But, what we have today is the attempt of the state and Statism to equate the word government with itself. Which means then that all things are placed into the hands of the state. The power to govern the individual, the family, the church, the school, the vocation, society, everything. And we have that problem today with the federal government. The courts have seen fit in recent years to take a multitude of cases that would have never been considered before.

We have seen cases effecting Christian schools, the right of parents to discipline their children, the right of parents to educate their children in the kind of school they want. Or how long the hair of a school boy should be, or whether his civil liberties are being infringed when a school teacher in a public school tells him that he should cut his hair in a certain way or dress in a certain way. In other words the state says we are the government.

And the state has infringed on every area and is seeking total power in every area. We'll return to that subject in another hour but, suffice it to say at this point the word of Lordship is the same word as our more modern term, sovereignty. If Christ is Lord then the State cannot be sovereign. And sovereignty is a total concept. It means the right to lay down the law in every area of life. And if the state is sovereign as it claims to be it will lay down the law in every area of life. But if God the Lord is sovereign He will as He has in His word lay down the law for every area of life.

But, today we see the state transgressing. Hegel said, "The state is god walking on earth." And some of the things the modern state seeks to do are appalling. I could spend a couple of hours just recounting what I see in courts but, let me sight one example. About two months ago I was in North Dakota for the trial of Christian school parents. This was a Christian school on the boundary of two counties and it had students from both counties. The school was obviously a superior one because the parents were quite a remarkable group. The fathers were on trial for having their children, criminal charges by the way, in a school that refused to submit to state control. The fathers included the district attorney of one state-one county, the outgoing or retiring county superintendent of schools in another county, a top ranking military officer, and other assorted fathers who were clearly outstanding citizens, who definitely would not have paid money to put their child in an inferior school. But they were on trial and were facing a prison sentence.

The attorney general of the state granted immunity from prosecution to their wives. And then put them on the stand and compelled them to testify against their husbands. Now historically we have had, although this is being breached in a number of states at the other end of the country through legislative action, laws stipulating their cannot be spousal testimony one against the other. This goes back to the Bible because the Bible says a husband and wife that the twain are one flesh. Therefore for the one to testify against the other is self-incrimination. And Biblical law says that testimony must be at the mouth of two or more witnesses, but, not confession. The Bible does not admit confession unless there is collaboration. It took centuries on the part of dedicated Christian legal experts to bring about a change in our culture whereby it became a matter of law that you could not be compelled to testify against yourself, nor could your husband or wife be compelled to testify against you. But now a number of states have breeched that law. It does open the door to the restoration of torture because we have breached both the fifth amendment and spousal testimony..

We began the breech of the fifth amendment when we compelled members of the mafia to get up before a congressional committee and testify because they had been granted immunity. That seemed a clever idea. If they testified their immunity was worthless they would have been killed so we sent them to prison. Clever trick but consider what it did to law. And today the immunity has been breached and it is being seriously in several states in the east and the south that spousal testimony to be admissible.

Of course we should not be surprised. There is a war against the family. The family and Christ and His church and every realm, the Christian school, and every Christian agency. The family in particular is a target. The family under God has the most important powers of any institution in society. In fact the basic power in any society are given to the family. Every basic power save one the death penalty. This is why of course Cain could not be killed for his murder. Only members of his family comprised humanity at the time. But the basic powers of society are first of all control of children. If you control children you control the future. And hence control of the children is given by God not to the church or to the state but, to the family; to the family under God.

Second control of property. Control of property in scripture belongs to the family. We today believe that property ownership can be discussed under two headings; private ownership and state ownership or communism. The Bible does not consider either. For the Bible it is family ownership. We have a relic of that in our community property laws. And the family is the steward of property from the past to the future which takes us to the third point.

Inheritance; the Bible has laws regarding inheritance. It is the Godly seed that is to inherit because the future must be capitalized under God. And we are not to capitalize the ungodly and the destruction of Christ's kingdom and so inheritance is governed in God's law. But, consider what has happened in these areas. Children now well, their control is passed into the hands of humanists; the state. We have had cases where the courts have declared that parents have no right to believe that children belong to them. They belong to the state. Parents have had their children taken from them for spanking them. Property today belongs to the State.

Jonathan Hues a historian has done two volumes on research on what has happened to property in this country. We hold it in terms of the law in Free Simple and Free Socage, which is language of Feudalism. It means on a grant to a feudal tenant with a right for its use and to pass it on to our heirs unless the Feudal Lord chooses to take it which he can do with or without compensation.

Justice Story in the early 1500's spoke of that language as simply a relic of the law. But, in a grain elevator case I believe in the 1850’s or 60's a justice of the Supreme Court restored the feudal reality of that language. The state is the true owner now of all property, and of course of inheritance. Instead of the first born or the oldest Godly heir gaining a double portion and with it the responsibility the care of the children today the State takes the first portion and says if there is any need to take care of the old folks we'll do it. We'll provide some welfare. So these basic powers of the family have been usurped by the state and we need as Christians to fight for their restoration. This is why the Christian school movement is under attack.

Then a forth area of power which the family has is welfare. He that doeth not care for his own hath denied the faith Paul says and is worse than an infidel. Welfare is the province of the family. The family has a responsibility to care for its members and as a church and we'll return to this at a later hour to care for the members of a Christian family. Here again we've had a major usurpation and because men like Lester Roloff represent a Christian return to Biblical premises he has been under attack. Then of course education is a province of the family. The fifth great power; children, property, inheritance, welfare, and education.

And the state today seeks to have a monopoly on education. This is the reason why the Christian schools are taken to court. The state claims a monopolistic right and says we shall control every school as a part of our right. It's an ironic fact that in case after case the Christian schools have been able when the court has ordered testing to demonstrate that they are markedly superior in terms of standard testing they come out two or more years as many as four years ahead and now of course the state attorneys move to block all testimony with regard to such testing.

And it does not bother the state that their schools are not on a common level. It is their sovereign right and a sovereign right must be exercised. So they plead their case simply on the basis of sovereignty; a subject that we will return to in a later hour. In the previous hour I referred to the fact that civil government in scripture is a very limited force and the church again is a very limited force. That these basic areas of government that I have referred to represent God's plan for government. God as the Lord says government is to be exercised in a variety of ways; self-government of a Christian individual, the family, the church, the school, vocation, society, and civil government. There can be no monopoly therefore and hence the state's tax is limited the church's tax is limited and God's tithe is to be used to create a variety of Governmental agencies under God and then you have indeed a free society; a radically different way of life.

Now it was once the fact and there are a few legal scholars that are beginning to do research in this that laws in these other spheres were once binding because all of society believed that is the way life should be; commercial law, commercial contracts, the sphere of vocations were binding. They were not within the province of the state to adjudicate to control or to enter into; Family law. A French scholar in particular has done some remarkable research on family law and how from the fall of the Roman empire until recently Family law was without any interference from the state governed and we did not have the problems that we do today. The family saw itself as a governmental sphere under God. And the church recognized that. Consider for example the word presbyter or elder or the old, testament captain. Do you know that the Biblical plan of government was by elders in every sphere of life and that every man was to be trained to be an elder to rule under God beginning with his household and every sphere that was his.

And Jethro first suggested it under inspiration of God to Moses and Moses later in Deuteronomy one declares that the Lord had thus said because he had it from the Lord that he was to choose captains or elders or presbyters over tens and fifties and hundreds and thousands so that all of life was to see each sphere; the family sphere, the civil sphere, the religious sphere, government by elders. And there was a highly developed system of government.

To this day the synagogue is formed in Judaism when ten elders, ten married men come together. Not because a board of rabbis says go to now we will have a synagogue in Seattle or somewhere else. No, the ten elders make up the synagogue. They begin the rule, the government, the teaching and when they feel they are ready to and can afford to they call in a Rabbi. This is what constitutes a synagogue. And this is what originally constituted a church. This is why the term elder was used in the New Testament because this was the plan of government for every area. And this is how they civilized Europe.

Do you know that originally the College of Cardinals was 70 laymen? They were not ordained men. They were elders. And they governed the bishop. And it was council of elders everywhere and they governed in terms of the Biblical pattern.

The fundamental faith was that sovereignty, Lordship belonged to Jesus Christ. That government was upon His shoulders. and He commissions us to go forth and make disciples of all nations. And that we as elders every man an elder when he becomes the head of a household must exercise rule and authority and this was the plan of government. And this is what we need to work to restore. And the key institution in all of this, the training ground is the family and then the function of the church is to become the barracks room where the men are armed to go forth, are taught how to exercise dominion to go out and govern under God.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a pastor in Detroit in the 20's, early 30's, when my father was a pastor there also. And my father said he was always a very disturbed and unhappy man and he drifted of course from there on into modernism or neo-orthodoxy, Barthianism. But at the time he wrote when he was in Detroit a kind of diary which was later published. The title was Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic. I think there are a few passages in that book were the best things that Niebuhr ever wrote and the key was one when he said the church was not what it was created to be in the Bible. Today the Church can only be compared to the Red Cross. It's not active in the war. It's sitting on the sidelines with the stretcher picking up those who are wounded and fall to the side and it is rendering first aid to the defeated. But, the real war is over there. And yet we go on singing like a mighty army moves the church of God. But, it should be. And when it recognizes that it has to be the training barracks to arm the elders of God and their helpmeets to go forth and to bring all thing unto captivity of Jesus Christ then we will see a very different kind of work. Because then the government will be upon His shoulders and we will be setting forth the crowned rights of Christ the King in all things.