Systematic Theology – The State

Extraterritoriality

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: Government

Genre: Speech

Track: 14

Dictation Name: 14 Extraterritoriality

Year: 1970’s

O Lord our God, we give thanks unto thee as we consider the problems of church and state, but we can move and act in our time as men acted in the time of scripture, in the sure and certain conviction that thou art God, and the knowledge that thou dost rule, and thou shalt overthrow the workers of iniquity and confound those who strike out against thy kingdom. In this confidence, our Father, we come to thee to cast our every care upon thee who carest for us. In Jesus name. Amen.

We shall be considering three different subjects tonight. The first two in order, and then we shall take a break, and then after the third, we will have questions on all three, so that if you do have questions, save them up and at the end of the third session, we will consider them.

We’re racing through a bit as we consider these subjects relative to church and state, because I want to get the manuscript of this ready as soon as possible for publication. It is an urgently important subject. We hope to have three things out on church and state by Chalcedon. My study, of which this is a part, on the theology of the state, Douglas Kelly’s analysis on the history of church and state, and Bill Kellogg’s study of Tudor and Stewart legislation in England as it affected church and state. It is an important subject because our courts today are going back to Tudor and Stewart legislation to find precedence for their hostilities against the freedom of the church.

In our first session, our subject is Extraterritoriality. There is an interesting word in the New Testament which is variously translated very often as “stranger.” It is parochos, and parochia. From that word we get the very good English word of parish and also the word parochial. A parochos and a parochia was the area where non-citizens lived within the Roman Empire, or within Greek city-states. It described also the stranger himself. Now, the interesting thing is that the status of a stranger depended on who he was. A strange of what country. Well, we have that to a degree today. If a person is in our country as a stranger and he is an ambassador, or a highly placed person, a duke or an earl from England, we treat him one way, but a refugee from say, Vietnam or Cambodia, we treat very differently. Thus, a stranger in the Roman Empire, in Bible times, was an outsider either with no rights at all, or with many rights, with special privileges, depending on who he was. The New Testament describes us as strangers, strangers in this world, and strangers in the city-states, or empires, or civil governments in whose borders we dwell.

The Old Testament, unlike all the countries of that time, had a very strict law with regard to strangers. In Exodus 12:49 we read, for example, “One law shall be to him that is home born, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.” Again, in Leviticus 24:22, “Ye shall have one manner of law that is well for the stranger as for one of your own country. I am the Lord your God,” and of course, many more passages in the Bible can be cited besides these two, passage which tell us that God requires equal treatment for all peoples. There could be no barrier on racial or national grounds from the knowledge of God’s law, nor could any be barred from the Passover itself if they believed.

The foreigner had an equal right to access to God, to the throne of grace. If he were not converted, he could practice his own faith and his customs within the boundaries of Israel. He could not, however, ascend the throne. The only person who could be a king was someone of the house of David.

Now, at the same time, we have another word in the New Testament: ambassadors. We have it translated as ambassadors once in English, when Paul speaks of us as ambassadors for Christ, in 2 Corinthians 5:20. He speaks of himself in Ephesians 5:20 as an ambassador in bonds. Now, when Paul uses this language of the ambassador, and says we are ambassadors for Christ, or that I am an ambassador in bonds, too often commentators and ministers think of this as figurative language, as symbolic. Not so. Paul means very literally that he is an ambassador for Christ, and he says of all those who worked with him, and we can assume for all who work for the Lord and represent him, and are faithful to him, that we are ambassadors for Christ. We represent his kingdom, the kingdom of heaven.

Now to speak of himself as an ambassador in chains is very dramatic language, because anyone connected with an embassy, and all of us as believers are connected with an embassy from God. Anyone connected with an embassy has extraterritorial rights, and is not subject to arrest or to oppression by the state. This is why, when Iran invaded the embassy grounds, it constituted so fearful a crime before the international community. It created shockwaves all over the world, because it meant that a very ancient and very important privilege of all ambassadors, and everyone who worked for them, down to the simplest person to say, the janitor, or the cook, their rights, their liberties had been transgressed by Iran, and this was an unusual and a very ugly fact in history. When Paul, therefore, says he is an ambassador in chains, he is speaking about the evil of Rome and its law.

Now, this tells us something. First, Paul says we are strangers. Second, he says we are ambassadors. A stranger, an alien who was an important personage, had special privileges. Paul said we are all strangers, of no mean country from the kingdom of God, and we represent the kingdom of God and his claims to this earth, which is and must be his kingdom. On top of that, we have the status of ambassadors. So, Paul is saying we cannot be touched without the wrath of God descending upon a nation or a people if we are touched in our status as members of Christ, as members of his church. In other words, what you and I do as we drive our car or do our work is one thing, but what we are when we are a part of the church of Jesus Christ and in his house is beyond the reach of any Caesar, any state.

Now, we can begin to understand something of what Paul is talking about and what extraterritoriality means. In the modern age, there has been another word for it in English: capitulations. Capitulations came into being when certain powers of a very untrustworthy, dangerous, and lawless character did not abide by extraterritoriality, by the privileges of ambassadors, by the privileges of foreigners from a great power. It used to be, because we are now very degenerate in this respect, any American anywhere in the world could not be touched by a foreign power with impunity. If he committed a serious crime, American ambassadors had to be notified of the fact. If he were seized unjustly, then the United States moves. You remember what happened under Theodore Roosevelt when an American citizen of Greek descent was seized in North Africa, and he sent a very brief message to the ruler of Morocco. Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead. Raisuli was the chieftain who had seized Perdicaris for random. Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.

Now, that’s how seriously governments have treated it over the centuries. Well, the capitulations in the modern age were wrested from a number of powers, the Ottoman Empire, or the Turks; Egypt, China, Persia, Morocco, Siam and some others. Now, there were some abuses at times in the seizures of extraterritoriality, but there were also some very urgent situations which compelled them. This has been ended since World War 2, but as long as extraterritoriality prevailed, what it meant was that each of these countries had a portion of some city or the capital which was exclusively theirs, and they could not be touched. It was American, or British, or French, or British soil there, and of course, to this day, any embassy is foreign ground. No power can walk onto it and do anything, except within the agreements of international law.

The great power has always required it of the lesser power. Rome required it of the smaller states, and hence, Paul gets the language out of Roman usage, except that he asserts that greater than Rome is God the Lord, and therefore, God’s people, God’s house, God’s work must be immune from any control or tyranny by Caesar.

The early church felt that God the Lord was beyond all the state’s power to control, and the church is an embassy, and that Jesus Christ is the Lord over the church and over all states. One of the most familiar passages of scripture which we have cited before needs to be cited again. In Philippians 2:9-11, one of the great texts of scripture with regard to church and state cases, we read, “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Now what is the name that he has given him which is above every name? Lord, which means absolute sovereign, absolute owner, absolute king. So that to say that Jesus Christ is Lord is to say that he is over all, and therefore, every knee should bow to him and every tongue confess him, and I pointed out on another occasion, the early church required that every believer, when he made confession of his faith, declare, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Paul say himself, therefore, as the representative of the greatest power on earth, and over and in all creation. Paul’s confidence in his status amazed the Romans. It baffled them. Here was Paul who came from a multi-millionaire family, who had been converted to this new sect, the Christians, who was now a poor man and a prisoner, but he spoke with a confidence that shook them, as though he were more important than the Roman authorities whom he addressed.

The parochia, the parish, the house, the people of the great King cannot be controlled by other powers. Therefore, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” The church of Jesus Christ has extraterritoriality.

End of tape