Systematic Theology

Lesson #4

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Speech

Track: 4

Dictation Name: RR10??

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

[unknown speaker] What we’re going to do tonight is to study sovereignty and taxation. My aim is to show you that you cannot divorce taxation from the concept of sovereignty; that whoever is sovereignty has the power to tax, and whoever is not sovereign does not have the power to tax. Nowhere is sovereignty more clearly evident than in the area of taxation. Taxation is the means by which sovereignty is impressed upon the hearts and minds of men. This is the purpose of taxation. The purpose of taxation is generally seen as ‘to raise funds’ but this is not the basic presuppositions the (far east powers?) have.

Whoever claims the power to tax is claiming that he is the ultimate owner of all things. When the state claims the power to tax, disclaiming it over man and his property. Well we can understand this in the fact that when a man refuses to pay his property taxes his property can be taken away from him and extolled for exact taxes. If he refuses to pay his income tax his wages can be garnered and other property confiscated and sold to pay his income tax. If he refuses to pay his taxes on his automobile, a man can lose the use of his automobile, they say he cannot operate it on public roads. If he uses it anyways he’s stuck with a fine and possible imprisonment.

So failure to pay taxes means you can lose your property, your liberty, and restrictions on your life. This is a claim that the state owns all of his property, all of his liberty, all of his life. Now this claim of ownership, this is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about sovereignty, is a prior claim by the state on all of man’s goods. You pay the tax first, then you can use the property. If it’s the head or poll tax you pay your poll tax in order to vote, in order to use your life and liberties as you want.

Taxation is always a claim of ownership, and every tax laid by the state is a claim that the property that is taxed is owned by the state. Sales tax, property tax, income tax; all taxes are items the state claims that it owns. If, for example, the state does not tax an item, it’s really claiming that it doesn’t really won the item or consider it valuable or lawful. For example, in the state of California the state does not tax heroin, so obviously heroin has no value, it’s not legal, therefore it’s not taxed. Now if an item is taxed by the state then it’s considered by the state to have some value. So the state really determines what is valuable and what is legal, and what is illegal and has no value. If a man sells heroin he has to pay taxes, his money is lawful. The heroin he sells is not subject to any form of taxation.

Now, a court hearing has no bearing on whether the state has the power to tax. Since the state claims prior ownership to all property it is claiming that it owns all of the lands lines, which you can test in court, it’s not the power of the state to pick or to levy taxes... it’s only whether the taxes that it claims are legal in terms of a higher principle. That principle could be the constitution, the juror, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or in the name of the people. But the power to tax itself is never a contestable fact in court, there’s never a contest over whether the state has the power to tax because the state claims an ownership of all items, and if it owns all items, and it has the power to tax - it will exercise the power to tax. Therefore we understand that the issue is not of a stricter tax, but of the power to tax. The power of sovereign.

Every organization of (design?), democracy, Aristocracy, dictatorship, monarchy, republic, every form of political organization has at its base this claim of ownership. It’s claiming a province. So we’ll exercise that claim of ownership and sovereignty in the power to tax, we’ll impress upon the citizens this ownership of their lives, their liberty, and their property, by claiming this power to tax.

Now this claim is made by the state, by man, that man owns the world; it is to claim that man is as God. Ownership. Well we can see this in a democracy, it’s the voice of the people is the voice of ‘god’ and the people own everything. People have the right to tax everybody in society. Well what happens in a democratic order is that every group sees itself as the true voice of the people, so every group is trying to tax every other group. So every group is trying to tax every other group, we’re trying to control the range of government that is the true voice of the people in order to have all the other groups of society... Which is why democracy always ends up in contests, in conflict, and the destruction of society.

Another thing about democracy is that the minorities are always the ones with the most (successful?). It’s only a small number of people who are successful morally, intellectually, and financially. It’s the voice of the people, the vast mob, sees this minority as having outstanding virtue and will tax this minority. They will try to reduce them to one common level, one common denominator, because they have to. If they look at this minority - they are better off than the people, and this minority testifies to the people that they are not the gods they think they are. Because no god is much of a god if someone else is richer, more brilliant, and better off than {?}. In democracies you always have a tendency to reduce everything to one common denominator.

Now what we have said of democracy applies to every (false?) form of education. If you have a minority running the country, monarchy, it will claim that it owns all things. You have to remember that the queen of England sees the citizens as her subjects. Not merely free men, but technically, legally, every citizen of Britain is a subject of the queen. In reality every citizen every citizen is a subject of parliament - parliament is {?{ sovereign. As one parliamentarian said, “If parliament wanted all blue eyed babies killed, parliament would have that power.” Why? Because it owns everyone. It’s making a claim to sovereignty. What this means is that every individual would decide, every {?}, every association, every family is simply a steward of the prevailing god of that time. If the people and every individual is merely taking care of his life and his property for the benefit of the people (?) and monarchy, when everyone is taking care of their property and their lives, a steward forced {?}. Dictatorship of the proletariat, a republican form of government...

Whatever form of social organization you establish on humanistic lines, every individual, business, and association is merely a steward; and any time that he does not handle his personal property - or his corporate property - in terms of the laws of the land, then his property and his life can be taken away from him, because he’s an improper steward of his goods.

This we have to remember. Whoever claims to be owner of man and his world, is claiming that man is a steward for him. Now the basic label principal, ownership, stewardship, are inherent in man. They are inherent from the creation of the {?} of gods. When God created man in the garden of Eden he established the principle of sovereignty over man. God saw himself to be creator over man and his world, he saw himself as the upholder of man and his world. All things upheld by the power of the Word, he says in Hebrews 1:3, which means that God rules everything. God is sovereign. So when Adam fell, he no longer wanted to be ruled by this concept that God is Lord... Instead he turned to himself and said, I am the lord, I will determine good and evil, I am sovereign.

You can’t escape the concept of sovereign. Someone has to make the rule by which everyone lives. Well if it isn’t God, it’s gonna have to be man. If God doesn’t own the world, then man has to own the world.

This means that there is always a Creator/creature distinction in every social organization. Whoever rules the time sees himself as the creator of man, the owner of man, the sovereign over man. Well if God created the world, then God sees himself as the owner of man. You need to look daily with prayer to the 24’th Psalm, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. The world and they that dwell therein.” God owns everything. God owns man, the world, {?}. Therefore everything has to be ruled by God’s law. But to the state this isn’t true. God is an enigma; man must make the rules by which man must live. Man makes the rules, the laws, he determines who rules, he owns the society of man. The state {?} to that owner.

And you think the state does not regard itself as being {?} U.S. owners of the stewards of the country. The state sees itself as being the state and {?} of the taxes. The taxed is the subject of the state. Since God says he is God and man is man there is an absolute distinction; God is Creator, man is his creature. The state makes that claim now. It is saying that it is the creator and man is its creature.

The issue that faces every man is the issue of sovereign, the issue of ownership. Who created man, and to whom is man accountable? Who is the sovereign Lord over all, who is the creature to be ruled? And who is the Creator who is to rule? Now the answer to the issue of sovereignty is the answer to the problem of taxation. Whoever taxes man is claiming to own him, he’s claiming he’s the owner of man. Not only claiming the owner of man, he’s claiming to be sovereign lord of man. If the state is owner, the state holds everything and has the place to tax man. Now if God owns everything, God is going to tax man, because the purpose and function of taxing man is to force man to recognize he is God. If God is our Lord, we pay God’s taxes. If the state is lord then we willingly will want to pay the state taxes.

The power to tax will always be exercised because the power to tax is an aspect of sovereignty and whoever is sovereign is going to impress the principal upon man that he is Lord. The other question the world raises, money.

God has taxes, there are approximately six or seven taxes that God levies on man. God does not need to tax money, how many (souls?) was he able to raise the sons of Abraham? So why does God tax the sons of Abraham? Because God is trying to impress upon man a principle. And the state, which believes itself to be God, is also doing the same thing. It’s also impressing upon man that it is god.

So all claims to power to tax are legitimate, legal, if they come from lawful authorities. Whoever is Creator of this world has the power to tax, whoever is the creature of this world has no power to tax. What we’re saying, then, is that God is Lord over creation and he has the power to tax...the {?} do not. If the state has the power to tax, but God does not. Since man did not help God create the world or himself, God created all things out of nothing, then the power to tax must belong to God not to man. All taxes levied by God are legitimate and legal, because he is Lord and we conform to he is. His own law. All taxes levied by the state are illegitimate and illegal if they do not conform to the Word of God. Every tax levied by the state in violation of scripture is {unmarriageable?}. It has to be.

If God were to recognize one tax, one law levied by the humanist state apart from his own revelation of himself and scripture, he would be acknowledging that man is co-affirmative or equal with him. He would be saying that man has the right to make good and evil, to establish law {?} for all of man. God would be saying that Adam’s original transgression, the desire to be as gods, {?} was alright, done business. He didn’t. He would be endorsing the sin of Satan and the sin of Adam. Every law whether taxation or not that is in violation of scripture is seeing the eyes of God as being illegitimate and illegal because it does not conform to his word. It’s cut and dry, black and white.

The state can sin as well as the individual and the family, and the state sins every time it violates the Word of God. For Christians, all authority has to stem from God’s laws. They have to think God’s thoughts after him. They have to see scripture as the only basis for the organization of society, family, and control over the individual. They have to see that all activity that does not conform to the word of God is illegal and illegitimate and is a {?} in the sight of God. It is (unnatural?) because it denies that Christ is Lord! And that Christ rules the world! It denies that Christ created the world, and that the Holy Ghost sanctifies the world and all them that dwell therein. It denies that God - the three persons of the Godhead - own the world and own man. The state forces man to step in tune every time it taxes man, every time it lays taxes it is saying, ‘I am as God’, when it taxes in violation of the word of God.

Now the person who supports state taxation that is in violation of scripture has been robbed. A robber of the children of God. Any person who purports or endorses state taxation that is not authorized by scripture is a partaker of thieves, ‘When thou sawest a thief, then thou consented with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers’ as it says in Psalm 50:18. The man who allows himself to be carried away with humanistic taxation for humanistic good is in violation of scripture. Lawful taxation can always spring from lawful authority, and all lawful authority can only spring from God. This is something we must recognize when we understand taxes. A state levied tax that didn’t flow for the purposes of a (family?) opinion of man, therefore in the eyes and the judgement of God all these taxes are illegal. They are illegitimate, and they are invalid. And the taking of life, liberty, and property from God’s preachers - and therefore are all these taxes are a tax against God... It’s a sin against God when one of the preachers has his property confiscated for violating the system. It’s a sin against God when unlawful taxes are laid upon this world, because it’s God’s world and God has said what taxes are legitimate and lawful.

What this system of taxation tries to do is to strip God of creation. We claim man is his God and God has no power on {?}, and that utopia can be built in the absence of God. God cannot sanction this. God cannot allow this, and thus God punishes all those who support illegal taxation or who levy illegal taxation. When society taxes beyond what God allows, inevitably that society will crumble. It is historically proven that taxation by the state when they exceed 25% is {?} because inflation. In every historical precedent when the state has turned to inflation as a means of financing state activity, it has ruined it’s currency and has been destroyed in radically (no time?). Only 25% percent limit is the tax the law can levy upon man. Man has a built in barometer. He’s willing to pay 25% on anything he’s got, but when the state compensates over 25% he will resist. Therefore the state will return to inflation as a means of financing this desire.

The answer to the problem of taxation can only be solved first by asking the question, ‘who is God?’ Sovereignty is indivisible. It’s like tax{?}, as one of our founding fathers said: “There’s no such thing as partial sovereignty from a {?}. Those who claim partial sovereignty are really claiming they have sole sovereignty. Only God is sovereign, only God is Lord, only God has the power to raise taxes. Well we can tell who claims the power of the sovereign in society by seeing who lays taxes. In our age, it’s the people. You go to court, it’s the people of the state of California versus. {?}. Therefore the people are claiming to be sovereign, and the agency of the people is always the government.

See Germany, under Hitler, personal loyalty was required of every person in the armed forces; therefore, Hitler was god. Is Malaysia you have the dictatorship of a proletariat, which means {?} power.

God says “I have the power to tax”, and by claiming the power to tax he claims total ownership over man. Taxation clearly reveals who is the lord of our lives. What taxes we pay, what taxes we are willing to pay, what reasons we are willing to pay taxes, these will reveal to us who our god is.

You should understand one thing in closing... Christians do not pay taxes to the state because the state demands it. The Christian never sees the state as having the power to tax. That’s the {?} because the state is not sovereign. But the state has under God’s law the power to collect taxes. Even though they are illegal and illegitimate in the eyes of God. Why? Because God has given the state that power: render unto Caesar that which is Caesar, render unto God that which is Gods. The Christian does not recognize the sovereignty of the state by paying state’s taxes, it recognizes the sovereignty of God. The Christians pay the state its due - even though it’s wrong for the state to take its due, because it’s really not due to it - because Christ is sovereign and he told us to render unto Caesar that which is Caesars. The Christian cannot take part in a tax revolt. He cannot endorse rebellion, because rebellion is the sin of Adam.

But he cannot stop paying God his due. The Christian must pay God’s taxes. If he pays the state’s taxes but refuses to pay God his due - he is really saying that the state is Lord, or he’s staying that he is Lord and because the state is bigger and can inflict a great amount of pain upon him, he will go along with the state. Must we must always remember that because Christ is Lord and our sovereign, we must pay our taxes, and every time we pay his taxes the principle of Lordship and sovereignty will be ingrained upon our minds so that we will come to know God even greater. Because the principle of taxation in the scriptures is not for the purpose of raising revenue, but for the purpose of knowing God as He {?}. Every time we obey the law of God, we come to know God more fully. And every time we come to know God more fully, we become (more like?) Christ.

Taxation is unavoidable. You will always pay taxes. The question is, whose taxes are we going to pay? The question is, why are we going to pay taxes? The answers to the issue of sovereign is the answer to the issue of taxation. The answer to the question, ‘who is Lord?’ is the answer to the problem that we face in our age. If Christ is Lord, then we must pay God’s taxes. If man is Lord, then we must pay man’s taxes. There’s no other choice. You must see all taxation as being required in God’s word. All other taxation is unlawful and we submit to it only because we have a redeeming Christ and we follow his every dictation. [audio ends]