1. Authority of the Family (Remastered)

The Authority of the Family

R.J. Rushdoony

‘The Authority of the Family,’ Genesis 1: 27-30. 

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.” ⁱ

We begin this morning our series of studies in the Fifth Commandment; “Honour thy father and thy mother.” This is the commandment to which we will devote a considerable amount of time because it is so central to an understanding of the problems of our generation as well as the meaning of Scripture. Four of the Ten Commandments deal with the family:

1.Honor thy father and mother.

2.Thou shalt not commit adultery.

3.Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife nor anything that is thy neighbors, and 

4.Thou shalt not steal. Because, as we shall see, when we come to that commandment, property in Scripture is family-oriented. 

Now, the Biblical perspective is alien to the Darwinian worldview, and today the central thrust, although very few people are aware of it, of evolutionary thought, is directed against the family.

Now, this seems strange to many people because they can call attention to the fact that there is a great deal of attention paid to the family and importance ascribed to it in our anthropology textbook. I just reviewed a series of anthropology textbooks recently, and of course this is very true. A great deal of attention is given and importance ascribed to the family by evolutionary anthropology. But this an historical importance. It is seen as a central social institution in man’s history. But the perspective is that this is something that is virtually a part of our caveman past, as it were. And several generations ago Letourneau, the great French anthropologist, laid down the guideline for the Darwinian perspective, the evolutionary perspective on the family. When he said the family is of great importance because it represents the old collectivity in man’s history, but in the future the new collectivity will be the state.ⁱⁱ In other words, in man’s evolution the old collectivity or collectivism has been the family, but now the new collectivism is the state, and so the family is obsolete, it must be abolished, it must give way, Letourneau said, to the state. 

Now, this is the modern scientific religious and educational view, and we cannot understand what is happening in the churches today, or in science, or in the schools, until we realize that they have this anti-family perspective. They will pay great lip service to the family as the great institution of the past, the old collectivity, but it must give way to the new collectivism of the state. This was very baldly stated at a National Council of Churches general assembly when the study guide for the churches, written by Colin Williams, said that the family, like the tribe of the Indians and of the primitive people, had to give way had to give way to the new, which is the state. 

Now, as we analyze this evolutionary perspective, we have to understand, first of all, how importance it—how important it is in determining the world around us, and what it is that it is saying so that we can determine what it is trying to do.

After Darwin, one of the key figures in understanding this perspective is William Robertson Smith, whose central book was Religion of the Semites. Thus, he exercised a double influence; in the world of science on anthropology and on psychiatry and psycho analysis in particular, and in the world of religion because he examined the background of the Semitic people, ostensibly the background of the Bible. We are best familiar with the thinking of Robertson Smith, which of course now is the decisive influence on the modern seminary, and therefore on the pulpit, by going to Freud, because Freud was the great populizer of William Robertson Smith. 

Now, according to Smith mankind originally had the primal horde, but the time came when a problem was created because the primal horde was dominated by the father. The father claimed all the women and he drove out the sons. The sons then finally banded together to kill the father and to eat him, and to possess the mothers and the daughters. Now, according to this perspective, the three basic drives in man, his will to live, are; to commit incest, parricide, and cannibalism. The three basic aspects of the will to death in man are the feelings with respect to these three drives of guilt; a guilt feeling with respect to incest, parricide and cannibalism.

Now in terms of this basic aspect of man’s background, this primal horde theory, religions are classified as of two kinds; religions of the father and religions of the mother. And of course, in terms of this, they classify Biblical religion as a religion of the father and the cannibalism appears in the communion service, eating of the son in this case. How they get around that is a long and involved story, but does not concern us, but enough of this rather gruesome and totally false, as well as evil, theory. 

Suffice it to say that the important aspect of this is that religion is seen as a projection of the family. I am going to repeat that because you are not going to understand the modern world until you understand that fact. Religion is seen as a projection of the family. Religion is the mother-cult or the father-cult. How then are you going to destroy religion? If you are humanist, if you are a socialist or a communist, a revolutionist, you are going to destroy religion by destroying that which projects it, the family. 

But this isn’t all, because, as religion developed, and as the modern Biblically-oriented family developed, according to these theorists, the Biblical concept of the family is the private ownership by the man of the woman and of the children. And a part of this is also the concept of the private ownership of property. Therefore as these anthropologists said, and Marx and Engels simply picked up this kind of thinking from the prevailing anthropology, they did not invent it. What, for example, Frederick Engels in his The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State wrote was simply a popularization of what Morgan, the American anthropologist, had written. You see then, the centrality of the family. Out of the Biblically-oriented family comes religion, the religion of the father, which is the religion they are especially concerned with destroying, but religion as a projection of the family. And property is a creation of the family in terms of its Biblical character. So, destroy the family and you will destroy religion and private property. As I said before, you cannot understand the modern world, you cannot understand education today or evolutionary science, or revolutionary socialism until you understand this fact. Hence the hostility to the family. 

This is why in the Soviet Union, immediately after the revolution, the first thing that was abolished was the family, long before they began any real attacks on the churches, because, in terms of their theory, this was the key thing, abolish the family, abolish the family and then you make possible the abolition of religion and property. And so, and we shall come to this at a later time, there was the immediate communization of all women sexually, something you don’t read in the textbooks. It was a law that remained in effect for about fifteen years, and the purpose was to destroy religion and property by destroying the family. And this is why today, when the public schools represent this kind of evolutionary thinking to the core of their being, they are first and last anti-family, they work to destroy the authority of the family, to create rebellion. The best product of the modern school is the hippie, it is the student rebel; he has learned his lesson best of all. And you cannot cope with the revolution of our day until you recognize this fact. Of course, in my two books on education; Intellectual Schizophrenia, and The Messianic Character of American Education, I deal with the philosophies of education and the extent to which they are geared to this perspective, and more definitely in Freud I analyze the background of it. 

Now, as we turn to the Biblical doctrine of the family, there are a few things by way of generalization that we have to say as we begin. First of all, the Biblical doctrine of the family is plainly God-centered, the family is God-centered in function and origin, the family is part of God’s purpose for man, it is that area in which man is to function to the glory of God and to his self-realization. Man is truly man in terms of the family, he finds himself in terms of it. 

Second, in terms of Genesis 1:27-30 God created man to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it under God. And this is essential to the family, to the function of the family, to the role of man in particular. Man was created to exercise dominion over the earth, to subdue it, to develop it, and woman was created to be his helpmeet in this calling. This calling is not changed because of the Fall, it is become more difficult because sin and death has entered into the world, and so there is all the more in the way of development and subjugation. We have now the effects of sin and death all around us in our own bodies, all of which have to be fought and overcome and subdued as a part of our calling to subdue the earth, and to exercise dominion over it. 

Now, this calling gives to man a possessive function. To subdue and to exercise dominion means private property, does it not? You bring the earth under your dominion, or you bring an area of life under your dominion, as an engineer, as a scientist, as a doctor, as a farmer, or you develop something through business. All of this involves private property, a possession of an area, and man is God's appointed governor to use the earth, to exploit it, to develop it to the glory of God.

Third, the exercise of dominion and possession clearly involves responsibility and authority. Man is responsible to God for his use of the earth, and he must discharge his duty in terms of his sovereigns royal decree and work. God’s word is the authority we find in work, the royal decree in terms of which he subdues the earth. 

It is interesting to note that in the Early Church, and in some churches to this day, the reading of the whole of Scripture, any portion of Scripture, is treated as the royal decree, and therefore, as in ancient times, when the king’s proclamation was read, the people stood, so in some churches to this day there is a standing for the reading of Scripture. In the Marxist scheme, authority is transferred from the family to the state. The family is in effect abolished wherever the state determines, education as well as the vocation and the religions and the discipline of the child. If the state has jurisdiction in these realms, if it takes over the education of the child as well as its discipline, and controls the child’s religion through its teaching, then the state has superseded the family. There is only one function then left to the family, and that is procreation, and even that is increasingly an area where the state proposes to control. In the Soviet Union, of course, the family as a procreative instrument was called back into being in the mid-thirties by Stalin when he realized how drastically the birth rate was being affected, and for military purposes in the future, he felt that the family simply as a breeding factor had to be recreated, but this is its only function, and it is now subject to very strict controls. As one set of planners says, “We’ve got to have more breeding,” and the others say, “No. More birth control.” And so they fluctuate from one to the other purely in terms of state planning. One side argues, “We need more labor,” and the other says, “We are not producing enough food, so even though your department needs more labor, we can’t produce enough food, so you’ve got to discourage births.” The family, in effect, is abolished.

The meaning of the family is not to be sought in procreation. There are some churches that define marriage and the family in terms of procreation, but the family must be defined in terms of Genesis 1:27-30. That instrument which God called into being as His chosen instrument whereby man is to exercise dominion over the earth, it is to be the home base, as it were, for dominion, for authority. 

Fourth, we must say that the function of the wife in this aspect of God's law-order is to be a helpmeet to the man in the exercise of his dominion and authority. Her position is like that of a prime minister to a king. His calling is to exercise dominion in a particular realm, and she is to be his ‘right-hand man,’ as it were, in the fulfillment of that calling to subdue the earth and to exercise dominion over it in his domain. A Prime Minister is not a slave because he is under the king, neither is a woman a slave because she is under the authority of the man, and those who so represent the woman’s position in Scripture are guilty of perverting it. The description of the virtuous woman, the good woman, in Proverbs 31:10-31, give us a picture of a confident wife who is a manager of a sizeable estate, a businesswoman, a mother, a person of real confidence and authority.

In terms of Scripture, therefore, the family has the central function in society, and great authority for the man and the woman in terms of it. It is the key institution. It is significant, therefore, that the family has been, under the evolutionary frame of things, the center of attack. Their reasons for attacking it, this whole evolutionary scheme are completely false. But they are right in seeing it as the key institution. They are determined to destroy it. They can tolerate private property and religion to a far greater degree than they can the family, because they know that once they have destroyed the family, the others will crumble. It is not surprising, therefore, that today there is a rapid crumbling of religion and of property, because the family has been undermined. We shall see as we analyze the significance of the family in relationship to property, what has happened to the concept of inheritance, what has happened to the concept of society and of  culture. The family as God created it was the one institution in paradise because it is the central institution under God for man and his being. 

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thy Word speaks plainly, clearly and authoritatively. We thank thee that thou hast called us to be men and women under thee, to live in family. We thank thee for our families, we thank thee, our Father, that thou hast made us as families thy chosen instruments, thy bulwarks of strength against an evil world. And we thank thee that as we face this evil world and its assault, we have the assurance of thy Word, that we shall conquer in Christ’s name, and that which survived the assault of Satan in the fall, and that which survived age after age, the assault of tyrants and of the enemy, shall by thy grace prosper and abound, and to thy glory be the instrument for the re-conquest of the kingdoms of this world. Bless our families therefore to this purpose, and give us joy and pride and thanksgiving in our family life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes.

[Audience member] What is the purpose of younger and younger birth control?  ⁱⁱⁱ

[Rushdoony] Its purpose is the intrusion of the state into the domain of the family; the family is to disappear as it were. It is simply to become a department of state.

Yes.

[Audience member] Lost question about the nature and origin of the family.

[Rushdoony] This has been part and parcel of our entire educational and sociological worldview. It has saturated everyone’s thinking so that we have picked this up without realizing what it means. But of course this is basic now to psychiatry, and an important part of any psychiatric cure you see, is to undo the family’s work. That’s why the parents, the family is always the guilty party. This is essential; you have to undo the family first.

[Audience member]  It seems that the church puts emphasis on the family, while seeking to control it.  ^iv

[Rushdoony] Right, very very definitely. 

What I have given here today comes right out of textbooks.

Yes.

[Audience member] I was talking to someone who said that we are not under the old law but under the law now of the heart, we are not necessarily even under the Ten Commandments. What could I have said to her?  ^v

[Rushdoony] Ask her, well, it’s interesting to meet someone who doesn’t believe in worshipping the one true God, who doesn’t believe in honoring his father and his mother, who believes in committing adultery, stealing, and killing.

[Audience member] She believes in the Ten Commandments, though.

[Rushdoony] If she’s not under the law, then she is free to break them, you see. Just push her to the conclusion. “You are an adulteress then? You believe in murder and killing? You feel you have the freedom to do it? You either have the freedom to do it and it’s your right and liberty to do so or you are under that law and God will hold you guilty if you commit adultery and if you kill.” 

[Audience member] Does the Bible show where laws have been changed? ^vi

[Rushdoony] Wherever laws have been superseded, the New Testament makes it clear. But our Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount that he had come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Yes.

[Audience member] With the destruction of the family, won’t they also destroy the state? ^vii

[Rushdoony] In a sense, yes it will, but the state doesn’t see it, it sees it as its fulfillment. It believes that the old collectivism, or ‘collectivity’ to use their term, must give way so that the new collectivity can flower and flourish. This is their thesis.

[Audience member] Can’t they see that the destruction of the family leads to anarchy?

[Rushdoony] But, from their perspective this growing anarchy is an assault, you see, on everything we cherish, they want to see that assault, they believe that they can direct it to their ends ultimately, and in a sense they are right, in that these anarchists look to a social order, you see, as the answer. Anarchists and communists, ultimately, are in one camp, they unite, they work together to destroy the old order because their solution is ultimately in a social order, and the ‘family of man’ to use their expression, the family of man replacing the Biblical family.

Yes.

[Audience member] Theoretically, um the Marxists preach that the state will eventually wither away but it only ever becomes stronger under their reign and control.  ^viii

[Rushdoony] Yes, and you see, their definition of a ‘state,’ this is an interesting point that is often missed, is the democratic or the monarchic or the republican state, and the communist state is not a state, it is the people, it’s the workers governing themselves. So they will have a totalitarian order of their own which replaces our state, and that’s the ‘withering away of the state.’

Yes.

[Audience member] Surely no-one, really, is against murder. The Ten Commandments are essentially agreed upon by all cultures. ^ix

[Rushdoony] Well, for example murder. I could bring books here to you and read them an entire hour, on justification of murder. Books which are being published today. Why? The idea that there is an absolute law that says, “Thou shalt not kill,” is what they oppose, the idea of any absolute law. Once they break this down, then they will say well, “We will determine what is most socially useful, it may be socially useful to murder you, but not to murder me.” But the idea that there is an absolute law; ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness, or commit adultery and covet…,’ this is what they hate about the Ten Commandments. It imposes, they say, a tyranny, an absolute law, and hence their radical hostility to the Ten Commandments.

Yes. 

[Audience member] An absolute law means an absolute judgment. ^x

[Rushdoony] Exactly. An absolute law means an absolute judgment, you are so right.

Yes.

[Audience member] Why are the Soviet youth destroying the socialization of their country?  ^xi

[Rushdoony] They are even more radical than their rulers. What we must realize is that the youth protest behind the Iron Curtain is not geared toward any absolutes, it is geared toward a total relativism. And so they are against any strong action by the state because they are against a stand on anything. 

Now, Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago is assumed to have been a protest against the Soviet order in terms of our kind of thinking, but it was a protest in terms of a total relativism, and when one American writer visited Pasternak, he expressed bewilderment that Americans saw his entire work in terms of a theological protest, it was a Marxist protest. A Marxist is a total relativist, a communist is one who is a relativist about everything except communism. The students, you see, are more relativistic than the government, they are better Marxists.

Yes.

[Audience member] When Christ said in that verse with the adulteress and He said, “He who is without sin throw the first stone.” What did that mean? 

[Rushdoony] We will come to that when we deal with the command on adultery as well as a commandment with regard to bearing false witness. So if you will hold that we are going to deal with that.

Well, one more question…

[Audience member] What does it mean when they try to say that a criminal, for example, had an extra chromosome, and that was the reason for their crime, or they had a chemical imbalance or the like? ^xii

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is the attempt to blame chemistry rather than character. Not too many years ago, if a doctor said that ulcers were caused by worry, a mental condition, he was ridiculed in medical schools because it was a matter of chemistry you see, and they could prove it! Now, we keep trying to explain everything in terms of chemistry rather than character, and this is simply part and parcel to this picture. 

I want to pass on a few things to you that I think are of interest, the Dan Smoot Report for October 28th 1968, I would just like to read a little bit from it, because I think this is so telling a description of what our country is like today:

“On July 27 on 1968 a small group of black militants booed vice president Humphrey off the platform when he was trying to make a political speech in a Watts section of Los Angeles. On July 29, Humphrey returned, determined to woo the Watts votes. His host was Negro soul singer James Brown, presenting the Vice President to a gathering of about a hundred and fifty negroes who seemed bored. Brown said he would not endorse Humphrey for President unless Humphrey promised, ‘To give the black men what he wants, ownership. He wants his own things, houses, banks, hotels, hospitals.’

Stepping up and declaring that he had favored four years all the things James Brown specified Vice President Humphrey said, ‘and if you elect me president you will get them, I can promise you that!’ James brown said, ‘If the man do this, I got the feeling I endorse him.’ Vice president Humphrey replied, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you. You stick with me and I’ll stick with you.’ Having endorsed Humphrey, James Brown undertook to initiate him as a soul brother. He demanded that Humphrey dance the boogaloo for the entertainment of the small crowd. When Humphrey demurred, Brown said, ‘You can do the boogaloo man, if you got soul.’ ‘Oh my goodness, Jimmy,’ Vice President Humphrey gasped, as he tried to follow the beat  of the band. Humphrey often wanders beyond the limits of propriety and good taste even in his serious moods. Note this crude mixture of blasphemy and mawkish sentimentality from a political speech he made on September 27 1964 while campaigning in Ohio: 

‘John Kennedy loved Ohio more than any other State except his beloved Massachusetts, yet he lost the State in 1960. You owe something to his memory, you have the opportunity to redeem your State. I want you to undo what you did in 1960. I want you in honor of our late president to go to work between now and November 3, vote! And send the message so that John Kennedy in Heaven will know we won.’“

Now, Humphrey is clearly the worst, but I don’t see how we can follow the campaign of any of the candidates without being profoundly embarrassed as Americans. We indeed have sunk low when this kind of thing is political campaigning. And I think we are much further along than the country was some years ago when the crash of ‘29 hit it and we didn’t know what had happened. 

I was reading recently of the contemporary accounts. First I remember it at the time, and this certainly confirms my impressions as a boy. When black Thursday came along, nobody believed it was anything more than a very brief thing, the world was going to go on in terms of their illusions. For example, this was one comment:

“The country enjoys a good banking system and a powerful and liquid super system in the Federal Reserve. The people are richer as a whole than ever before. The overwhelming majority can look with equanimity upon convulsions in the market.”

Then the Literary Digest completely ignored the crash in its issue of November second. On November the ninth it carried an article titled: “Wall Street’s Prosperity Panic,” and it treated the whole thing as a joke. Then it concluded: 

“Future historians, it is freely predicted, will speak of it as ‘the prosperity panic of 1929.’ The panics of the past were brought about by something fundamentally wrong with finance or business, crop failures, earthquakes, strained international relations, prohibitive rates for money, inflated inventories and the like remarked the Wall Street Journal. But this October catastrophe on Wall Street is purely a speculative stock market panic, all authorities agree. The essential soundness of business is emphasized everywhere.”

So it was nothing at all, the Federal Reserve had all the necessary powers and would take care of it, so nobody need worry, there was no depression coming.

Well after that I think this might be in order. This is a little bit of wisdom from “Smidgens.” It’s the last-minute checkup on his candidacy by a candidate in Congress. And as he looks over things he says: 

“I got this election all locked up, every poll shows I’ll win by a landslide. It’s a good thing too, I don’t know what I’d to if I didn’t get reelected. I’d hate to go home and try to make a living under the laws I helped pass.” 

And this one I liked from “Morty Meekle,” some of you may have seen it, Winthrop and his girlfriend are watching two men fight: 

“Look Winthrop, those two men are fighting! Who is that man they keep shouting, ‘hit him in the mouth, hit him in the mouth.’? 

“That’s Doctor Farley, the dentist.” 

Well, with that we are… Oh! One thing more, one thing more. I was chatting with Bill Richardson, our State Senator this week, and we were discussing the economic situation. He said, of course, that the best way to describe what was going on in Washington and Sacramento among governmental authorities as well as business men was in terms of a story that he knew about three ministers who wound up in hell.  They had all applied at the gates above and when they got there the Devil said, “Why are you in hell?” And the Baptist said rather sheepishly, he said: 

“Well I got sent down here because I’d been dipping into church funds.” 

The Methodist minister said: 

“Well, I was refused entrance and sent down here because I was a little too affectionate towards somebody’s wife.” 

Then he turned to the Christian scientist and he said: 

“I am not here, and it’s not hot.” 

And Bill Richardson said that’s exactly the mentality of business and government today, “We’re not here, and it’s not hot.” And with that we are adjourned.

i. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 1:27–30.

ii. C.`h. Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage. The Contemporary Science Series (London: The Walter Scott Publ. Co., 1911, 3rd edition), p. 356.

iii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

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xii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.