11. Love and the Law (Remastered)

Love and the Law

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Leviticus 19:17-18. We shall, in a sense, be covering familiar ground and summing up things that we have more than once considered, our subject being ‘Love and the Law.’ Leviticus 19:17-18

“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”

The great father of democracy, one of the greatest of all humanists, the man who more than any other has influenced modern education, was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. When at the university of California some years ago in the course of taking work in education, I was assigned to read Rousseau. The thing that startled me was that there was indeed nothing new in my reading. His thinking had become so a part of our education, our politics, our religion, of the intellectual air we breathe, that I found it impossible to read a line of Rousseau and find anything new. Here, obviously, was one of the key minds of the modern world.

I picked up a secondhand copy of his autobiography and read it. It so appalled me that I threw the book away, perhaps the only time I’ve ever done that with a book. A little bit about Rousseau’s life will say something of the character of the man. He was a tramp, when he was not a kept man for Madame de Warens, which he was off and on over a period of years. He was thoroughly irresponsible and a parasite. He lived for many years out of wedlock with Thérèse Levasseur, a hotel employee. This man, whose books on education are still basic to all our schools and to child psychology, had five children born to him and Thérèse out of wedlock, and as soon as they were born, he carted each of them immediately to the foundling home. He could not be bothered even with his own children, this great expert on child training! 

He tells us very eloquently how much he loved virtue, in fact, he said when he thought about it he wept, he was so deeply moved. But in action, he was a totally irresponsible and vicious man. He believed that he had a perfectly good heart, and all men were naturally good, but that it was organized society that made men bad. Typical of the kind of reforming Rousseau did, once, when in Venice he picked up a prostitute and took her to his room, after undressing and getting in bed he began to beg her to take the path of virtue. He was clearly in the wrong position for such a plea, but for Rousseau, actions were not important, what was in the heart of man was everything. The feelings, the heart of man, for Rousseau, were determinative, and by definition man’s heart, for him, was naturally good.

It is no wonder that under such a humanistic faith law has extensively eroded. It is no longer the act of the man, the act of the murderer which is judged, but his feelings or mental state. When Rousseau, in bed with his prostitute, could believe that he was a noble reformer because his heart by definition was good, and when he could see himself as the great child expert when he carted his children off to a foundling home, it is obvious that crimes are no longer important, it’s the heart of the criminal which determines everything. 

So today we see the spectacle of the Sirhan trial. Where there is no question as to his guilt, it is admitted on both sides, the question is with respect to his mental state, his feelings; Rousseau has won. 

Similarly, Rousseau has won in that love as the great humanistic virtue has become all-important and by definition all humanists are people who have a love of humanity in their hearts, and therefore they are perfectly good. But we who as Christians oppose them are by definition hatemongers. So that, the party of love, the humanists, are by definition good, no matter what crime they commit, whereas we are by definition guilty when we have committed no crime.

Now love, of course, does appear in Scripture very emphatically, but not in the context of humanistic feelings. We are told in our Scripture:

“Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart:” ⁱ

Now ‘brother’ in this passage means a fellow believer. 

“…thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.” ⁱⁱ

That is, this means, “Execute the duty of reproof in such a manner that thou dost not incur sin by it.” Therefore, part of the obligation of love to our neighbor is to keep him from falling into sin. With regard to our enemies at the latter part of this chapter; the stranger, the foreigner, the Egyptian, justice with regard to all matters is our obligation of love towards him.

Now St. Paul sums up this matter; we are also told:

“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people…”

And then summing it up:

“…thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.”

Leviticus 19:18.

The whole chapter of course, deals with how we love our neighbor, and St. Paul sums it up thus.

“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Romans 13:10.

Love worketh no ill to his neighbor. It means, therefore, that: 

“Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people…” ⁱⁱⁱ

It means thou shalt not turn >??means, therefore:

“Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him…” ^iv

All the laws of this chapter and elsewhere are summed up in the commandment of love of neighbor which is:

“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Romans 13:10.

It means therefore that a person, as we have pointed out before, loves his neighbor if he keeps the law in relation to him. If you do not kill, nor commit adultery, nor bear false witness, or covet in word, thought or deed; if you keep the law in relationship to your neighbor, you have loved him. 

Love in terms of Scripture is more than a feeling, it is a way of life, the law. The idea of a good heart with evil deeds is the schizophrenic view of man, but this is the view of man which we find in humanism today. People are excused for all kinds of ungodly actions, criminal actions, “Their heart is good,” we are told. And we are told sometimes that when people are insufferable in their discourtesy and rudeness, that we must be tolerable towards them, because they are really good-hearted people. Well, if they’re good hearted, let them show it! “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Our Lord made in emphatic; a grape vine brings forth grapes, but a thistle cannot bring forth grapes or figs. A tree or a plant bears the fruit of its being. A person reveals by their actions what they are. The Biblical view of man is not schizophrenic. The intent, the heart, the feelings, are revealed by the actions.

The humanist, however, has a schizophrenic perspective. The humanist insists, “Well, all these evil deeds cannot mean that the person is evil, they are good, therefore you must indeed hate the act, but you must love the person.” Can anything be more schizophrenic and hostile to Scripture? Scripture says concerning man in Genesis 6:5:

“…every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

That the unredeemed, the unbelieving are evil through-and-through. Man is a sinner, the Christian is a sinner saved by grace, and he, because now grace is offered him in his heart, brings forth good in terms of the new man within him. 

Thus the Pauline principle is that the commandment means:

“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” ^v

Therefore, what a man is is revealed by the way he keeps the law. 

The humanist today, therefore, is faced with a contradiction; he affirms that man is good, but he recognizes that man’s works are evil. He has forsaken the law, and therefore he is now forsaking love also. The test of love must be the act of love. And can a man claim that he loves someone whom he kills? Can a man claim that he has good will toward someone as Sirhan did with respect to Kennedy, that he thought to was a very noble and heroic figure and still kill him?

“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour…”

The humanists, therefore, are faced today with a paradox, with a contradiction, and how are they explaining it? A few of the humanists are now beginning to recognize that they indeed have a problem. How are they going to account for evil? One of them has just written a book entitled The Pornography of Power, Lionel Rubinoff, and its thesis has been summed up by a reviewer in these words:

“It is, however, in his analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that the assumption underlying The Pornography of Power is most readily grasped. Of Stevenson’s portrayal of the ambivalence of human nature, Rubinoff writes: ‘Dr. Jekyll, the humanist, originally creates Mr. Hyde (in itself a thoroughly evil act) so that the forces of evil incarnated in a Hyde can be scientifically studied and eventually banished from the human psyche. So confident is Jekyll in the iron strength of his own virtue that he sincerely believes he can give birth to evil without being corrupted by it. Alas, the virtuous Jekyll is no match for the satanic Hyde: once the demon has been released, the angel seeks every excuse to descend himself into the depths of depravity.’

Few men can comfortably contemplate the concept of the natural supremacy of evil over good in humanity. The Judaeo-Christian tradition eases the anguish by holding out the hope of salvation through the exercise of a semblance of free will in the worldly fight with the Devil’s forces. What is an increasingly secular age to do with the knowledge that evil is an inextricable part of man’s nature? Face it, says Rubinoff. Bring it out into the open.” ^vi

Now, here is an interesting thesis. According to this man, one of the more advanced humanists who is ready to face up to the fact that there is evil in man, man has, as it were, a ‘Jekyll and a Hyde’ in him. He is, in a sense, neutral. He has both good and evil. And what Jekyll did was a mistake, he scientifically tried to study the evil, so he gave it particular existence so that finally it destroyed him.  

Now, according to Rubinoff, this fact of evil is a part of our nature; we have both good and evil, we are both angel and devil. In other words, we are not sinners, we are struggling with these two aspects so that we sit, as it were, as a Trinity. There is man and there is the angel and the devil in him. How shall we cope with this problem? This is his answer:

“The greatest evil in becoming addicted to such pornography, says Rubinoff, is that it stunts the growth of the imagination, the only instrument by which man can truly understand—and so live with—the despairing truth of his dual nature. As examples of how to use the creative imagination in facing up to evil, Rubinoff singles out Jean Genet and Norman Mailer. Much of their writing, he says is essentially an effort to create positive values by confronting the negative and the irrational within themselves, living with it and turning it into art.

Like most programs for self-improvement, Rubinoff’s ideas are easier to talk about than to apply. On one level, his book could encourage low-grade scatology as a form of salvation. On another, The Pornography of Power offers an esthetic substitute for religion, by which men less creative than Genet and Mailer must try to grope their way to self-knowledge with the aid of the artist’s images of evil.” ^vii

Now, this rather involved language says simply this, “How are we going to save ourselves as we confront this devil and this angel in ourselves? Well, the answer is not radically different from Jekyll and Hyde except that the Jekyll experiment was a scientific one and ours must be an aesthetic and artistic one.” And so he singles out Jean Genet and Norman Mailer. He says, “These people gave artistic expression to the evil within themselves, so that if you give expression to the evil in yourself, you let it work out of you as it were. And then, somehow, you can purge yourself of it and the angel can come forth.” 

Now, who are these two men he cites as the men who opened the way of salvation to us? Norman Mailer of course, the novelist, has shown exactly how he gives artistic expression to this in his writings, which I would not recommend, and in his actions. At one party he looked at his wife and decided it would be interesting to try to kill her, and so he proceeded to try to murder her and was only restrained from killing her, he did her considerable damage with a knife, by the other guests at the party. It was an experiment in creative imagination.

Jean Genet has been a professional thief and pervert for years, and is now a saint of humanism because he has decided, “Since I am experimenting in every kind of evil and there is no sin according to our modern faith, then I am a saint! And I am only expressing the evil in me more freely than others.” In other words, this is the answer, “Give expression to the evil, give expression to the evil, work it out of your system. Let us become, in other words, people who create a world of love and law by embracing evil as a creative venture.” In other words as St. Paul said, summing up this kind of humanistic faith in his day, “Let us sin that grace may abound.”  This is the modern gospel as well as the ancient sin. And this is therefore the practice of this generation. The ‘love generation,’ therefore, says, “The way to a world of love is by means of total evil. Let us give free expression to everything in our being, let us practice a lawless doctrine of evil as a higher law and the higher love.” 

This, then, makes clear why the love generation is also the evil generation, why it practices evil; ritualistically, deliberately, because it is antinomian to the core, that is, ‘anti-law.’ Its doctrine of love is the negation of law. For as the Biblical doctrine of love is the fulfilling of the law, so if love for this generation becomes the negation, the violation of law, it becomes, in essence, the love of evil and the practice of evil. Love without law is in essence, therefore, the affirmation of evil and the very manifestation of evil. It is the logical development of humanism, that having separated love from law it has become evil incarnate.

We, then, who believe in terms of Scripture that God is love, and that we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, must declare that love is the fulfilling of the law. For our God is a God who is a God of law, a God whose word is a Law-Word, and it is therefore the manifestation of love, for:

“Love worketh no ill…”

Does not break the law in relationship to his neighbor.

Let us pray. 

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee for thy Word, and we thank thee that thy Word shall prevail against all the assaults of ungodly men. We pray, our Father, that therefore thou would ground us more firmly in thy Law-Word. Make us the people of godly love so that as we face these manifestations of evil, this love of evil, we may be bold and victorious and that thy truth prevail in and through us. We give thanks unto thee, our Father, that thou hast called us together by thy Spirit and made us strong in thee. Keep us ever close to thee, faithful to thy Law-Word, that we may face all the vicissitudes of life as more than conquerors through him that loved us, even Jesus Christ our Lord. In His name we pray. Amen. 

* * *

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

Yes?

[Audience member] Where does the expression ‘the pornography of power’ come from? These one-worlders talk a lot about loving our neighbor, would you care to comment on that? ^viii

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all I do not believe that the expression ‘the pornography of power’ or of violence is Rubinoff's creation, although I think he has given it new popularity. Occasionally, this expression occurred as much as ten and twelve years ago. Second, the word ‘neighbor,’ of course, is used elsewhere in Scripture so that it is inclusive of all men. But in the sense that internationalists use it, it is not the word ‘neighbor’ that they pervert, but the word ‘love,’ so that they require a kind of ‘family love’ for all men, and an antinomian anti-love of all men. They convert the ‘neighbor’ into a kind of family member rather than someone to whom we must keep the law.

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you comment on the psychodrama format and its relevance to today’s lesson? ^ix

[Rushdoony] This is a very common type of existentialist philosophy today. You give expression to the evil within you as though it were purgative, a means of salvation, that it worked purgation. Now, the psychodrama is a milder form of the same kind of purgation; you act out the hostilities and the evil in you. But this was a milder form the new kind of psychodrama if we could use it says that we actually live it. You give vent to every kind of perverted impulse because only then can you be truly good. So that you encounter this in a variety of persons today and it is increasingly the vocal philosophy and psychology of our day.

Yes?

[Audience member] This sounds a lot like ‘sensitivity training.’  ^x

[Rushdoony] Right, Yes. You put your finger on it. This is the foundation of the sensitivity training of today and of the group therapy; it is to give expression to everything in you, it is to be open to ‘total feeling’ because this ‘total feeling’ means you incorporate within yourself every kind of perverted appetite and impulse and give expression to it. 

This also explains much of our movies today, and our television programs; they are designed to further sensitivity training so that whereas you don’t get it if you don’t go to a sensitivity training school, you will get it be going to the movies today. This is the entire purpose.

Yes?

[Audience member] Why don’t they feel remorse for their sin? ^xi

[Rushdoony] They are told not to feel any remorse. Remorse, guilt, represents a Christian hangover and is wrong. Therefore they are told they should not feel it. This is why, of course, when people are held to be, “Not guilty by reason of insanity,” or are, with respect to homosexuals for example, they are sent into a mental institution. The kind of training they normally receive is that they should not regard what they have done as an abnormal act, but as a variety of human experience. In other words, the guilt feeling is what they rid them of.

Yes?

[Audience member] How come that for all their vaunted rationality, none of this makes sense? ^xii

[Rushdoony] They can rationalize anything, but that doesn’t make it rational, it is clearly contradictory. But the whole position of humanism is increasingly schizophrenic, and we will be going into that aspect of schizophrenia here is the humanistic position next week.

Yes? 

[Audience member] What do the mean when the use the word the ‘pornography’ in relation to power? ^xiii

[Rushdoony] Something ugly, evil, dirty. In other words, power to them is something dirty. And this is their attitude to power exerted to anyone over anyone else so the basic implications of their phrase are anarchistic. Any kind of police force, you see, is pornographic, you see, it’s dirty because it constitutes a violence against another person; this is the rational.

Yes?

[Audience member] Isn’t this all leading to destruction?

[Rushdoony] You’re right. The purpose of this evil is to be a destruction of the present order and everything that it represents. Along those lines I’d like to read just a passage by a Negro revolutionary which is from a church periodical, a very important and influential one entitled Renewal. This man says:

“The political programs, I’d see it as a coalition of forces, a coalition of black and white forces working to create revolution in this country, organizing on all levels, political, social, cultural, and economic trying to destroy the thought pattern that this system allows to exist. For instance there are white people who would be more beneficial if they worked basically in transferring skills to black people who don’t have them. There are black people who would do much better organizing than white people could do in the communities, and so on. White people, for instance, what he means by organizing could have infiltrated the wall if they could have moved into it and destroyed it through distention, embezzlement, whatever... It could have been destroyed. 

The same thing has to be done in the democratic party, we have to begin to move into the democratic and republican parties and begin to destroy them through distention and other means the same way we have destroyed the leftist organizations by distention and bickering and fighting within. A house is not a house unless it has a firm foundation. And if you begin to crack the firm foundation the house will go down. We have to begin to infiltrate the institution of this society to try to make them what we want them to be by destroying them and rebuilding them. The revolution is to destroy and the revolution is to build.”

In other words, this is their rationale. They want to give vent to total destruction and evil so that the entire world of Christian law and order can be destroyed. Just as free love was legalized, total destruction of everything the old order… was made a policy of the Soviet Union through the twenties in order to wipe out the Christian past, and then they could begin with Soviet law; total destruction for a total recreation of man and society, this is the rationale.

Yes?

[Audience member] How come they use the law if they know the law? ^xiv

[Rushdoony] They are anti-law to the core. They are out to destroy the law because they know the law and reject the law, and they hate it with all their being.

Yes?

[Audience member] Since we usually have a problem of semantics with the humanists, how is it that they agree with us on what is evil, and what is the nature of this agreement?

[Rushdoony] Good question. In a sense there is no agreement in a very real sense. Because, while on the surface they are defining certain things as evil, it is only the aggressive aspects of these actions that they see as evil, and even that is not entirely held. In other words, what they are saying is, “It is only evil to commit these acts that you Christians speak of as ‘evil’ if there is aggression, only if force is used. Any kind of perversion, any kind of evil is permissible if coercion is not used.” So that it is to this they want to give free expression. The violence they want done is to things, rather than persons. If we try to defend these things then, of course, we are getting in the way, and it’s not their fault if we are hurt. If they are trying to destroy a church or your home, which represents the old order, and you get in the way or get caught in the flames, it’s not their fault, they weren’t doing coercion to you as an individual. It’s an interesting fact here, speaking of semantics, how far these people go. 

Now, one of the things that’s often made out to be one of the great acts of injustice in American history is the execution of the persons tried for the Haymarket Riot murder. Well, let’s examine what happened first because this is something our history books deal with, and it’s cited as one of the great evils where we unjustly killed, through judicial process, certain people. 

In the 1880’s there were a series of strikes in Chicago led by the anarchists who had controlled the union. This was the day, you recall, when there were many bomb-throwing anarchists all over the world, and many heads of states were killed by anarchists, including a couple of our Presidents; Garfield earlier, and McKinley later. 

Now, these anarchists were having May Day demonstrations when Chicago was having a particularly tense situation because of the strikes. So when a mass meeting of these anarchists and the union members was scheduled in Chicago, I believe on the 4^th of May. I think they waited for the weekend or something, I don’t recall. The mayor of Chicago asked permission to address the meeting and to make a plea for law and order, for a peaceful settlement of the strike and of their differences.

When the mayor left, inflammatory speeches were made, the police were still there a small number of policemen. Finally, one of the leaders said: “We’re through with talk. What are we waiting for? Let’s get the dynamite and start blowing up the homes of the rich!” And so on. At this point the police charged forward to arrest the speakers for incitement to riot; one of the people in the crowd threw a bomb and I believe seven policemen and a bystander were killed. The person who threw the bomb was never located, it was never known who it was. The eight leaders on the platform, the eight anarchists, were arrested. The State never claimed that they were the ones who threw the bomb, but just as a person who in a crowded theater where there is no fire deliberately shouts, “Fire! Fire!” and creates a panic and people die is guilty, so the state held that these eight leaders were guilty of the murder of these policemen. They had incited the riot, they had incited the violence. 

Subsequently, four were executed, and then a liberal governor commuted the sentences of three. One committed suicide in prison, and he was run out of office for so doing. And he has been made, John P. Altgeld, one of the great heroes of liberalism. There is huge monument to these eight anarchists. But the point I’m leading up to was this; these anarchists in their plea claimed they had never advocated violence. Now, here were people who were teaching how to manufacture bombs, and how to use it, in their papers. Why? By definition anarchy was anti-force, it was the negation of force and violence, what was the problem?

Well, the reactionary capitalists were simply trying to block the forces of history, the movements of history, theywere the ones who were using force! Whereas the anarchists, their position was the negation of force, they were just trying to create a new society, you see. So, by definition, they had never used force! Their bomb-throwing was just an attempt to eliminate the forces of reaction and violence because the police represent violence, therefore they were just trying to clear the ground of the violence. 

Now, this is the same kind of semantics that you’ve encountered in Marxism today and in anarchism today. It is the redefinition of words so that we are, by definition, the people of violence and they are, by definition, a people whose position is the negation of violence. Thus, they can assault the police and cry, “Police brutality!” After all, the police should have submitted to the beating, then it would not have been police brutality.

Yes?

[Audience member] What’s the core of motivation today in education?

[Rushdoony] Well that’s a big question, but basically again; motivation in education today is premised on a thoroughly humanistic concept of man, a concept. So that it feeds man in terms of Rousseau is naturally good or at best, neutral. Therefore, the kind of motivation it works for is never in terms of the Biblical concept that man is a sinner and he needs discipline and law to govern him and to motivate him properly. Proper motivation, therefore, means giving free expression to whatever is in the child. If this includes what we call ‘evil,’ this is the way toward the development and the productivity of a child’s nature. 

[Audience member] They are trying to divorce us from emotions. ^xv

[Rushdoony] They would only say you must divorce yourself from Christian emotions and feelings and sentiments, but you must express these humanistic emotions and feelings and sentiments in order to be truly educated. Thus, the argument that is used against Christian schools, and parochial schools, and private schools, is that they do not permit the development of the democratic sentiment and feeling, because they do not meet with every kind of person and child in such a school. 

Our time is up and we must adjourn now. 

i. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Le 19:17.

ii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Le 19:17.

iii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Le 19:16.

iv. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Le 19:13.

v. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ro 13:10.

vi. “Facing It,” a review of The Pornography of Power by Lionel Rubinoff, in Time, vol. 92, no. 26 (December 27, 1968), p. 66.

vii. “Facing It,” a review of The Pornography of Power by Lionel Rubinoff, in Time, vol. 92, no. 26 (December 27, 1968), p. 66.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xiii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xiv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.