1. Introduction to the Law (Remastered)

Introduction to the Law

R.J. Rushdoony

Our scripture is from Genesis 1:26 following. We begin today our studies in biblical Law.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 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. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” 1

As we begin our study in the meaning of biblical law we shall deal with the law, first of all, as revelation and treaty. Before we begin our study of biblical law, however, it is important to recognize certain general facts concerning law. First of all, law in every culture, in every civilization is religious in origin. There is no place in the world where we can go where we can find law that is not religious. Law reflects what men believe to be basically right and wrong in a society. It reflects the ideas of culture, of justice, of ultimacy.

As a result, law is inescapably religious because your idea of justice, your idea of morality is a religious idea. Now, this does not mean that these various concepts of law are congenial to Scripture. The religion they represent may be Buddhism, Mohamedenism, Animism, Hinduism, and increasingly today, humanism. But law is, in every culture without exception, inescapably religious.

Second, in any and every society, the source of law is the god of that society. The easiest place to locate the god of any system is to look to the source of law. If the courts are the source of law and there is no higher law beyond the courts, the courts have made themselves god, as is increasingly the case in our society. If the monarch rules absolutely and makes himself the ultimate lawgiver, then he is a god. If it is the people, according to the theory of democracy, who are the source of law, then the people are the god of that system. In Marxism, it is the people as they find voice in the state. Mao Tse Tung has said, “Our god is none other than the masses of the Chinese people.” But the voice of this god can only be the Communist Party. In any and every law system, the source of law is the god of that society.

Third, it follows from this that any change of law, any change of law that affects the basic law structure of society is a change of religion. And this is exactly what we have been undergoing for the past generation or more in this country, a change of religion. And very steadily our law system has been changed in order to provide us with another religion while we are assured that there is total toleration for all religions. But humanism is now the religion and provides the law system of our American society as it does of virtually every country in the world.

Fourth, it follows from this that there can be no disestablishment of religion in any society. You can disestablish a church, but you cannot disestablish religion. A society must either have the Christian religion established, or it will have a humanistic religion, or Buddhism, or Mohammedenism, or something else. Because it must have a basic faith to provide the concept of justice, the moral code, the law system for that society. The attacks you find today in our courts on capital punishment, on restitution, on the idea that the criminal is guilty, or that the alcoholic is guilty; all these constitute an attack upon the biblical law system. And the biblical law system is being disestablished, together with Christianity, as the religion and law-basis of American society as well as English, Canadian, French, German, all Western society.

Fifth, it follows from this that there can be no toleration in any law system for another religion. You can tolerate various churches of a particular religion, various interpretations, but you cannot tolerate another religion. Because then you are saying that you are tolerating total revolution. You are tolerating the overthrow of your law system, of your political order, of everything. By tolerating humanism, this is exactly what we have done. Humanism is, at present, in the mopping-up stages of its revolution against Christianity.

Now, with these five points with respect to law in mind, let us turn to our law system; biblical law. Biblical law made possible with tremendous growth and progress of Western culture. In particular, because biblical law was so basic to the establishment of this country, it made possible the tremendous growth of this country.

In analyzing biblical law, therefore, it is important, first of all, to note three characteristics of biblical law. First of all, for the Bible, law is revelation. The very word for law in the Bible is ‘torah.’ Now, the Jews used the word ‘torah’ for the Mosaic law, but in the Bible, the word ‘torah’ is used for the whole of the Bible, for the prophets as well as for Moses, for the books of history, for everything. It means divine instruction, the divine word, the divine teaching. So the whole of Scripture comes to us as the one word, the one Law of God.

It is not possible to distinguish between the Old and New Testaments as one giving law and the other grace because the very premise of the giving of the law to Israel was the grace of God> Because God was gracious unto them, therefore, He was giving them His law, and this is definitely stated, both in Exodus and Deuteronomy before the giving of the Ten Commandments, that this is an act of grace. The law and grace are inseparable. The Bible never speaks against law in the sense in which the Bible intends it. That is, in the biblical, the Mosaic, the Christian meaning.

When our Lord and St. Paul spoke of the law as misused and attacked the law, they were not attacking the law in itself, but the false concept of law which had developed among the Pharisees. The law had been made into a mediator, into a savior, and so Jesus Christ, because he came as man’s mediator and savior, attacked the idea of the law as mediator. In other words, the false idea of the law. But He said from the beginning that He had come, not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, and to make known the fullness of its meaning. Jesus never set aside the law. He only attacked the misuse of the law.

The law was so seriously taken by the early Christians that when St. Peter received word from Cornelius to go into his home and baptize him, because it involved a break with something that he believed with respect to the law, it required a special revelation from God for Peter to go, and only the fact of revelation made his baptism of Cornelius acceptable to the church. In other words, the Christians, instead of being against the law, were so strongly for it that it took a revelation to move Peter when he felt it might involve a violation of the law. This is how seriously the law was regarded. The law, for Scripture, is a revelation.

Second, the biblical law is treaty or covenant. This is an important fact. It is a contract. It is a contract which God enters into with man as an act of grace. Man does not deserve anything from God’s hands, but God, in His sovereign mercy, gives man His law and summons him to be His people.

Now, in Sunday School picture books and Bible story picture books, when Moses is shown wit the two tablets of stone coming down from the mountain, one tablet will be pictured as having five commandments, and the other five. Sometimes four and six is the arrangements, and this is altogether wrong. In reality, each of the tablets had all ten commandments written. Perhaps on both sides, but all ten appeared on each of the Ten Commandments. Why? Because this was a treaty, and a contract, a covenant. Now, when you enter into a contract with someone else, there are two copies of that contract; one for each party, so that each party might know the terms thereof. Now, the Ten Commandments, as the summary of the whole Law of God, was given to Moses in two contracts, two copies, so that both, as they were placed in the most holy place would be there as a witness. There was the meeting place of God and his people. There, the two copies of the treaty; one for each party, were kept, as a reminder to both of the terms of the treaty, of the covenant.

The language of the giving of the law is exactly the same language that you find in the ancient world in all treaties. In this case, the sovereign, the suzerain, was God. When His mercy gave to those whom He took under his protection, even as an emperor entered into a treaty with a small powers around him, and declared that if they would obey him and yield him tribute, he would protect them. The law gives a sovereignly-dictated order of life. It governs the total life of man. For the law, there is no distinction between the inner and the outer life of man, both are governed by the law.

This appears, for example, in the Ten Commandments. For example, in the tenth, “thou shalt not covet.” Here, the inner life of man is governed, as it is in a wide variety of laws. It is a treaty, and the terms of the treaty affect the total life of man, every fiber of his being, every thought of his life. And because it is a treaty, there are, very definitely, blessings that follow obedience to the treaty, and curses that ensue for disobedience to the treaty. If the treaty is violated, judgment follows.

The third aspect of biblical law is that is constitutes a plan for dominion under God. In Genesis 1 when God created the heavens and the earth, and he created man, he created him to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. This is the foundation of biblical law. God created man to have dominion over the earth. This is stated emphatically, not only in the first chapter of Genesis, but in the second and throughout Scripture. When after the flood God called Noah and made a covenant, or renewed the original treaty with Him, He summoned Noah to exercise that which he had called Adam to do, to govern the earth, to subdue the earth, to have dominion over it. This was again renewed, this treaty, in Abraham, in Isaac, and Jacob. Through Moses, with all Israel, with David and Solomon, with Hezekiah and Josiah, and in Jesus Christ we have the New Testament, or the renewed covenant.

The only thing new about it is that a new people are now called to be the people of the covenant. The old people are cast aside because they have rejected the Lord of the covenant, they have broken the covenant. But God retains the covenant, and calls a new people, and even as there were twelve tribes in old Israel, and the new Israel, that is, the new chosen people of God, twelve Apostles are summoned to represent the continuing people of God.

What is it that we celebrate in the sacrament of the Lord’s Table? As we partake of the elements, the words of our Lord are repeated as the cup is offered. “This is my blood, the blood of my covenant,” or testament, “shed for you.” What does this mean? It means that Jesus Christ says that, “I, by my atoning work, take you who are fallen and sinful and unable to do that which God called you, to exercise dominion over the earth, and I reestablish you by my justification and my regenerating work in your calling.” And so what does the Lord’s Supper do? It reestablishes the law. It summons man again to exercise dominion over the earth under God. It declares that the purpose of Christ’s coming is to restore God’s purpose; that man, under God, should exercise dominion over the earth. The people of the law are now the people of Christ, and Christians are called now to inherit the earth, to exercise dominion over it. The biblical law is therefore, the law for Christian man and Christian society.

The biblical law was applied very early and it made very possible the growth of Christian Europe. Feudalism was an application of biblical law. The words ‘feudalism’ and ‘Federalism’ are closely related, and ‘feudalism’ simply meant a decentralized, local kind of government, with very little authority at the top. There are all kinds of varieties of local government under feudalism. There was the local lord and his manor, there was the local township, there were the local allods, owned by the farmers who governed themselves. There was a wide variety of forms of local self-government, but it was an application fundamentally of biblical law. What the Puritans did was to revive this and apply it to this country, and the Bible was the law of this country for the first two centuries or more.

But as a result of Scholasticism, a revival of Greco-Roman, especially Roman concepts of law, came in and these exercised throughout the latter Middle Ages and on the Reformation a preponderant influence. For example, Calvin, who otherwise was so perceptive of his analysis of Scripture, nevertheless says in his Institutes, that nations need not follow biblical law, but the common law of nations.2 Now, the ‘common law of nations’ was Roman law, natural law, but if you do not follow biblical law, you disestablish the Christian religion. And the Roman concept of natural law is a humanistic idea, is it not? It assumes that nature as it is, is normative, that it is not fallen, that it is good, and therefore, truth flows naturally out of it. As Christians, we do not believe there is a law in nature, but a law over nature, and to follow this idea of the common law of nations, or natural law, is to go astray and to become humanistic. And since both Catholic and Protestant scholars did this so extensively in modern times, is it any wonder that they find society around them becoming humanistic? And is it any wonder when they go out in the missionfield, their pupils turn out to be humanistic revolutionaries?

For example, two European theologians have written, concerning the state:

“It is to be God’s servant, for our welfare. It must exercise justice…” 3

That sounds fine and it’s biblical, but if you deny biblical law in favor of natural law, how can the state be God’s servant without God’s Law? They say that the state must exercise justice, but what is justice? There are as many definitions of ‘justice’ as there are religions. Our problem today, is it not, is that we have the humanistic idea of justice being rammed down our throats when we deny it, we believe in the biblical doctrine of justice?

It is no wonder that these two European theologians then go onto say a little later:

“A static legislation valid for all times is an impossibility.” 4

They just parted company with God, have they not? Because God says, “thou shalt not kill” is valid for all time, and “thou shalt not steal” is valid for all time. You either stand in terms of revealed law, or you do end up in relativistic law where nothing is valid for all time, and the law can change because truth changes.

The law for the state, therefore, must be revealed law. It is the only means whereby man can fulfill his creation mandate of exercising dominion under God. Apart from revealed law, man cannot claim to be under God, but only in rebellion against God.

Let us pray.

* * *

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee that thou didst create us to be thy people, and to exercise dominion over the earth under thee, and we thank thee that we, having gone astray in Adam, have been recalled in Jesus Christ, and the mandate has been renewed to exercise dominion. Give us grace, therefore, to do these things in thee and of thee, to proclaim the glory of thy law, and the certainty of the judgment as well as of the blessing of thy law. Make us strong in thee by thy Holy Spirit that we may be more than conquerors through him that loved us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name we pray, Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience] Are there times where we must obey God rather than the authorities? 5

[Rushdoony] Yes, there are times when we must obey God rather than man. So that God’s Law has primacy over the law of the state. And we do have instances in Scripture where men chose to obey God rather to obey man. Rahab, of course, is cited together with Abraham as one of the two great examples of faith, because what she did was to harbor the two Israelite spies and refuse to surrender them or to even admit that they had been there or were there. This was an act of obedience to God but of disobedience to the state, and God commends it.

[Audience] [unintelligible question]

[Rushdoony] Yes. We shall deal later on, as we come to the law, because we are dealing with God’s Law, you see. Not the law of the state basically, but God’s Law for the state, and since God is the lawgiver to the state, God also limits the extent of obedience to the state. It is at all times qualified by a primary obedience to Him. We shall deal with this later on at very great length.

Yes?

[Audience] Under Christian reconstruction, do you see any practical or theological rationale for Christians to secede from society? 6

[Rushdoony] You cannot secede from existing society, but a society or a state can secede from life. This is exactly what the various governments of the world today are doing with their humanistic law they are seceding from life, they are committing suicide. Just before I left there was a phone call telling me of a telegram from  about what’s happening financially in Europe. You may not know it, but we are on the brink of a gold embargo and devaluation, gold shot up rapidly in Europe, it passed $50 an ounce yesterday morning in Europe, and $60 an ounce in Asia, and the dollars are increasingly regarded as worthless, as are the Eurodollars. What’s happening? We are seceding from life. We are committing suicide. And the various nations are doing the same thing because they are violating God’s Laws for economics.

What we must do therefore, is to step aside from the course of suicide, and prepare ourselves for the future, because, as things stand, the various countries of the world have no future.

Yes?

[Audience] [Question about a new law, civil disobedience, and the state of Israel.]

[Rushdoony] Well, there’s several questions there. I’ll try to get all of them. If I forget any, remind me. First of all, the Bible does not introduce a new law. It introduces, in a sense, a new people of the law. In other words, Israel is set aside and we are put into their place, we are the new people of the law. Now, it sometimes speak of a new law, the of love, but it makes it clear that love is the fulfilling of the law, it is the keeping of the law. So it simply gives us a new sidelight on the law, a new look at it, but the same law stands.

Then, civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is legitimate only if it is in terms of obedience to God. Now, a society can have civil disobedience in terms of its basic premises.

For example, in feudal society and in early American and Colonial society, a man could legitimately have grounds for civil disobedience if he said, “What the courts or what the authorities are doing is contrary to Scripture. It is contrary to the canon.” ‘Canon law’ means ‘rule law,’ the rule being Scripture. “Therefore, I appeal to the fundamental law, Scripture, as against what has been done, or enacted.” So you are appealing from a lower law to a higher law that was recognized by the society.

Now, what is civil disobedience in our society? We are humanistic. Therefore, what is ultimate with us? It is man, man is God. So, what do those who are guilty of civil disobedience do? They appeal from the law of the state to the higher law, which is man, and they say, “I refuse to obey any law which is not of my making. I appeal to the higher law of our society.” And this is why, of course, in part, our college authorities and our civil authorities are so helpless in dealing with these people, because these people are appealing to that which they believe in, and their only recourse is, “But we’re trying to do all these things. We’ll get there. Just be patient with us.” But these young radicals have them over a barrel. They’re pursuing the logical implications which is anarchy. Because the end result of humanism, as Karl Marx clearly saw, he said, “The logical result of humanism is anarchy, total anarchy, it’s the only logical thing you can believe in, but since anarchy is not practical, we will say the only thing we can do is the most practical step, which is total dictatorship.”

[Audience] What can the Christian do?

[Rushdoony] The Christian, in this situation, must stand in terms of God’s higher law, but our Lord says:

“…be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” 7

In other words, we are not to sacrifice ourselves foolishly and needlessly. We are to make a stand only when it really counts, unless, of course, it means renouncing Christ or betraying everything we believe, but we’re not to throw ourselves away foolishly on causes.

Yes?

[Audience] Some of these civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, do appear to be appealing to a higher law, the Bible that is, it’s rather confusing. 8

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. We are in a period of transition, so that although these people, King and others, are basically humanists, in order to delude people, they appeal also to our higher law, but abusively. King has made it clear that he does not accept the Bible as the Word of God, he does not believe in the miracles, he does not believe in any of the fundamental doctrines, he was congenial to the Death of God School of Theology, he was basically Marxist in his thinking, he was a humanist to the core. But to mislead a lot of the people, he would throw out appeals to our higher law as well as to his. Now, these appeals were completely hellacious, but the whole point is you move basically in terms of the new higher law, but you use the other in order to delude the opposition.

Yes?

[Audience] Do you think there is a legitimate natural law, a law of nature? For example, as we find it in John Locke’s expression of it. 9

[Rushdoony] We must reject John Locke’s natural law as well as his presuppositions, because his natural law was designed to supplant God. In other words, the idea was that now there was a new source of power, of sovereignty. This was nature. So that natural law, in effect, makes nature God. This is its fallacy.

We must believe in a law over nature, not a law in nature. The very concept of ‘nature’ is a myth. There is no such thing as ‘nature.’ I don’t have time to go into that now, but in my book, The Mythology of Science, the first appendix, deals with the concept of nature as myth. What is nature? There is no entity such as nature. There is simply a vast world of natural objects. But to personify nature, and see this personification as a source of law is a religious approach to this world as though this world were God. And this, of course, comes out of paganism. It was not the Christian idea. Through St. Anselm, Medieval Europe had a very different concept. It was only with Abelard, who was thoroughly heretical, that this was introduced into the heart of the church, and today it has the odor of sanctity, unfortunately.

Yes?

[Audience] In the second chapter of Romans it talks about about men having not the law, but doing the things contained in the law. Could you comment on that, Dr. Rushdoony? 10

[Rushdoony] Because all men have been created by God, they unmistakable have the testimony of God written into their being. This comes not from nature, but from God. So that they reveal, at every point, everything that God created them to be. So that their own nature testifies against them when they put themselves to any other function than God created them for. So that they are unmistakably called to testify to God to glorify Him, to serve Him, and so their heart, mind, and being cries out against them when they put themselves to any other function. This has nothing to do with nature. It is the mark of the Creator.

Yes?

[Audience] Do we have any fresh news about the gold situation?

[Rushdoony] Yes. We have had no real news as to anything in the papers since Thursday. Our news is out-of-date with respect to what’s been happening to gold.

[Audience] What about Thursday’s prices? 11

[Rushdoony] We were given Thursday prices, you see. The whole fact has been kept from us. When we were told what happened Thursday night, it was, “There was no reason for this new gold rush…” supposedly, it was just a freak. Actually, it’s a total loss of confidence in us and in all the various governments, but especially in us.

Yes?

[Audience]  What then should we do with our money?  12

[Rushdoony] I’m not an investment counselor, I don’t know about that, but we are in the midst of an economic crisis. Our time is virtually up, and this is something we should welcome, even though it hurts us, because it is the judgment of God. It does demonstrate the validity of God’s Laws. And these people have been operating on the basis that there is no God and therefore, the economic laws that men have always recognized would not work.

Well, in spite of everything they can do, it is working. They’re conspiring right now to break the price of silver in order to shatter public confidence. What they’re going to do is to deny collateral on silver to banks. Banks, in other words, cannot hold silver as collateral, which means all the bullion in coins held as collateral by the banks, which is millions upon millions, would have to be dumped overnight, which would depress the price, and then they could turn around and say, “See, we told you gold and silver are worthless, and you’d lose your shirt speculating on it. It’s dropped because it’s worthless,” and it would drop to $1.70 or less from $2.53 or better now, spot price. But it would only climb back up, but the idea would be to shatter public confidence.

The whole point in all of this manipulation of the markets by the various governments is this: they want to prove there is no law, no economic law, because they want to prove there is no God that gives that law. In other words, the only god is the state. This is a religious battle. This is why they are meeting, and all these governments are really working together, sometimes they have their differences, but they are basically working together against God to prove that there is no God by destroying law, but the law will destroy them.

Well, our time is up, so we stand adjourned.

1. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 1:26–31.

2. “For there are some who deny that any commonwealth is rightly framed which neglects the law of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. How perilous and seditious these views are, let others see: for me it is enough to demonstrate that they are stupid and false.”

John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 536.

3. See H. de Jongste and J. M. van Krimpen, The Bible and the Life of the Christian, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968), 73.

4. See H. de Jongste and J. M. van Krimpen, The Bible and the Life of the Christian, (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1968), 75.

5. Question added for clarity and brevity.

6. Question modified for clarity and brevity.

7. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Mt 10:16.

8. Question modified for clarity and brevity.

9. Question modified for clarity and brevity.

10. Question modified for clarity and brevity.

11. Question modified for clarity and brevity.

12. Question modified for clarity and brevity.