2. The Law in Force (Remastered)

The Law in Force

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Deuteronomy 27:26 and our subject is ‘The Law in Force.’ Deuteronomy 27:26. 

“Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.”

We saw last week the meaning of the tenth commandment. The tenth commandment is a part of the Law. Therefore the common interpretation that ‘covet’ means simply to desire is clearly and obviously false. The Law cannot govern desire unless it becomes action - the Law deals with action. We saw then, also, that the meaning of the word ‘covet’ means to desire and to take, to expropriate what belongs to another. In this sense it is in the province of the Law. The word ‘covet’ in and of itself, we also saw, is not necessarily evil in its connotation. St. Paul declares “covet earnestly the best gifts,” that is, aim hard for, strive to gain, to take, desire and take the best things in life. Covetousness is evil when its object is morally wrong. We have no right to covet our neighbor’s wife, nor his house, nor anything that is our neighbor’s. 

In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord applied some of the laws of Scripture to the heart of man. TheLaw has requirements of actions in its manward aspect; God can make requirements of the heart. God being total, His Law is total. Therefore God can require something of both man’s heart and acts. But these implications are not within the scope of human law, judges cannot deal with hatred in the heart, or with lust, but only with actions, and actions are within the scope of the Law. 

Now in Deuteronomy 27:26, which is in the epilogue to the Law, and we shall be dealing with the epilogues later on, we have a declaration that touches on the significance of the tenth commandment because, as we saw last time, the tenth commandment forbids all those things that commandments six through nine forbid. We cannot desire and expropriate our neighbor’s life, his wife or property or his reputation. And we cannot do these things according to the tenth commandment, even if we do them under the seeming guise of the Law. So that things which are outwardly legal are a violation of this commandment. And the Law therefore has an obligation to be concerned with more than the bare letter of the Law. And so this curse says:

“Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen.”

Moffatt’s version renders it:

“A curse on the man who will not give effect to the words of this law!”

It can also be rendered:

“A curse on the man who will not put into force the words of this law.”

In other words, the Law as a whole has to be put into force, and we cannot content ourselves with the bare letters of the Law. 

We are all familiar with groups and organizations that proceed quite legally to do injustice. And then say, “You had your day in court, or in presbytery, or in general convention, or in general conference, and everything was done legally.” But injustice can be done legally. And a man’s property can be taken from him legally. Legality, thus, is not meeting the requirements of the tenth commandment.

A man can legally maneuver and expropriate and take his neighbor’s wife and his neighbor’s property. But in so doing, he has broken the Law of God, broken the tenth commandment. This factor of using the law to break the Law was once important in the law. Today it no longer is, although occasionally we do find a judge who will be so guided. 

Let’s deal straight with the matter so that we can understand why the tenth commandment and why this curse is so relevant to our time, why it is wrong to desire and to take what properly belongs to our neighbor, whether we do it legally or illegally, and why there is a curse pronounced on all those who do not put into force the Law, put it into force in the fullness of its meaning. 

To illustrate, the Law requires payment of debts. At one time in English law, failure to pay a debt was not only theft, but perjury because you had sworn to repay. And so you broke the law in two points; you robbed the man because you had no desire to repay, and you went into a debt fraudulently, perjuring yourself when you signed that contract offering to repay. Clearly, a lender does need protection under the law; there are deadbeats all around us. However, in the name of protecting the lender, today many, many things have been written into the law which defraud the unwise and the ignorant. And contracts today present a wide variety of dangers. 

One person has written that it has reached the point where anyone signing a contract should have a lawyer because every contract today has so many pitfalls on both sides. The net result is the one with the most power can utilize contracts to defraud the other. Thus, the fine print of a contract may today include a waiver of defense, so that whatever happens, you’re guilty in advance. It may have a contingency liability. It may have a writ notification clause, a confession of judgment, so that you confess in advance to whatever they may accuse you of. It may have liability waivers, it may have pre-existing health conditions clauses, all of which penalize the individual as against the corporation or company or the powerful party. 

Let’s cite specific examples of this, as given by Jean Carper, in a study of the subject:

“Reluctant to sell the house they had lived in 35 years, a couple in an Eastern state signed a contract for $2,500 to have it renovated. Unfortunately, three weeks later, their contractor died of a heart attack, and the work was never begun.

Soon afterward, the couple received notice from a finance company demanding monthly payments to fulfill the contract of $2,500. The couple wrote explaining the situation, made no payments, and thought no more about it. Two months later the sheriff served papers notifying them that the finance company had foreclosed on the house and would put it up for auction—unless they produced the cash to cover the contract, plus legal fees. They sought help in every direction, but could not raise the money. Thus, incredibly—to pay for a job never done—their house was auctioned off. Worth perhaps $30,000, it was sold to an officer of the finance company for $20,000.

In another state, a 56-year-old widow bought automobile insurance from a company recommended by her insurance agent. Her policy was cancelled a year later with no explanation. Then, nearly three years later, she received a letter from a lawyer ordering her to pay the state $291.49 because she was liable for claims against this now-defunct company that had once insured her car. Out of her meager earnings, she was forced to pay a little every month until the entire amount was paid off.

How are such things possible? The explanation is: ‘fine print.’ It appears on installment contracts, insurance policies, credit cards—on almost any legal document you sign. And as many have discovered, its potentiality for disaster cannot be underestimated.” ⁱ

In the days ahead when bankruptcies increase, then some real trouble will begin as people pay the consequences of some of their contracts. 

Now, in the first of these cases, the couple had signed a contract with a waiver defense, unaware of its meaning, so no matter what happened, they were liable and in the wrong, even though nothing had been done. And this is routine. In the second, the widow had signed to the company having contingency liability. As a result, she was, in effect, a part owner of the company and responsible for its debts. And if you have insurance with any mutual company, you face the same kind of situation if anything develops. Virtually every contract today has pitfalls. 

As a result, the average person is helpless. He signs a contract because he doesn’t have cash, or he uses a credit card because he doesn’t have cash, and he has no idea of the pitfalls ahead of him. There have been all kinds of laws passed in the last twenty, thirty years supposedly to protect the little man. But actually at the same time the liabilities of the little man have been vastly increased. Why? Because whereas fifty or sixty years ago most buying was cash buying except for property, and then it was not a long-term arrangement. Everything is credit today, and as a result, every kind of opportunity has been opened up for every person to go into debt, and every kind of protection afforded to the lender, so that inescapably the weaker of the two parties is in serious trouble. 

Now this clearly violates the Law. It is injustice by law. And in all too many cases there is serious exploitation. Moreover, in the contracts that were cited in the illustration, the state was clearly involved. And the business of the state courts is increasingly the business of the state and of powerful predators against helpless and foolish people. 

When the state is under pressure and bans one loophole, it leaves room always for several new ones. And as a result, the situation has become progressively worse. There’s no answer by reforming the state, the whole premise is wrong. We are in a credit economy, or, more accurately, a debt economy, which is godless, and a people embarking on such a course cannot expect godly attitudes to prevail. And they can no more trust the state in such a situation, which is party to such things, than they can trust a thief. The reforms of a state which denies God are no more to be trusted than the reforms of a man with a gun in his hand, robbing us of our money.

A year ago, when I was in New York, I was talking to the cab driver that took me to the hotel. And he was telling me of the many, many times he had been robbed by his passengers. And he said, “You know, the thing that gets me is that some of them, after they’ve robbed me of all the money I have, and take the cab as well, to go wherever they want, some of them, not all, will give me car fare so that I can get home. And he said, you’d be surprised how big hearted they feel when they do it. It’s my money, but if they give me car fare home, so that I can take the subway and get home, they’re practically bursting with self-righteousness, they feel that they’re being so good to me!” Well, the reforms of a state which denies God are in about the same category.

This is not to deny that even in a godless state there are not good men. St. Paul, when he was on trial, did find in the process some good men. But our concern here is with the basic direction, and when a country denies God, then it has denied the Law of God, and it will use the law to defraud and to further fraud, it will use the law to enable men to seize and take that which is not theirs. And so it is only the occasional man who is not a party to this general trend. 

There was an interesting case in the Los Angeles papers recently of one judge in this area who is working against this abuse of the law. He is a small claims court judge, Judge M. Peter Katsufrakis, and the small claims court was set up originally in order to help little people. Today, the small claims courts everywhere are means whereby corporations and stores can defraud the little people. 

Supposing there is a company with headquarters in Los Angeles, and it has claims against people up and down the state. What it will do is to file claims in a L.A. small claims court for anyone from the Oregon to the Mexican border. And how can a man with $150 claim against him, who lives in Iuka City come down here to fight? And this is the net result of it. 

For examples of what happens in this particular judge’s court, where he is trying to buck the whole trend, listen to the following, from an article by David Shaw:

“A contractor’s representative had entered into an agreement with a young married couple and now the contractor was suing them.

‘The contractor didn’t do everything his representative said he’d do,’ the husband told the court.

‘I can’t be bound by what he told you,’ the contractor replied, pointing to his representative. ‘He wasn’t authorized to make any agreement. He isn’t my agent. He …’

‘Wait a minute, fellas,’ Katsufrakis cut in. ‘Don’t try that tic tac toe routine with me. I’ve seen this man in here representing you before, and if you’re going to tell me he isn’t your authorized agent now, I’ll go back through the records and void every judgment he’s been involved in.’” ⁱⁱ

But this a rare small claims court. 

You see, we cannot expect justice from men who have denied the principle of justice, God. And thus the courts, the judges, the legal system, are off base - with exceptions. Nor can the judges, the courts, and the legal system maintain their character if the character of the people is delinquent and degenerate. Courts and judges do not exist in a vacuum; they are part of the faith of the culture and of the standards of a people, and the moral standards of the people are the basic influence on the court. If the character of a nation has declined, the character of the court will not stand. The real subversion in every country is not by an enemy agent, it is by the people when their faith and their character is gone. 

Now, it is the thesis of revolutionists that what you have is an evil establishment and a conspiracy as against a great majority of innocent people. Now, this is not to deny that you have subversion, and you have conspiracies, but this revolutionary principle posits that you have a great more innocent majority, as against an evil minority. And this revolutionary principle undergirds today, radicalism and conservatism - the two are basically very close together in principle. They both overlook the fact the real problem is sin, man’s fallen nature. An orthodox Christian must deny that the cleavage exists between the people and the establishment. Instead, the moral cleavage is between all unregenerate men; great and small - right and left on the one hand, and the redeemed people of God on the other hand. This moral cleavage cannot be bridged by revolution or by the ballot box, but only by regeneration.

With the ungodly, evil covetousness, desiring and then taking whatever they want, is a way of life. They make it a principle of government, and the result is socialism and a welfare economy. They will not be changed by law or by revolution, only by regeneration. The answer there is clearly, “ye must be born again.” And then on the basis of godly men, to build a society in which no man is allowed to desire and to take that which belongs to his neighbor. Only a godly people can avoid the curse of the Law, and can confirm the words of this Law, that is, [to] put them into force, because then the principle of the Law is their new life, their new nature.

* * *

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that thou hast called us to be thy people, and the people of thy Law. And pray, our Father, that thou wouldst use us as a principle of reconstruction in our day, that in us and through us Law may be established, that men, women, and children may be reclaimed by thy grace and by thy Word to be the people of the Law. And that we may confirm, that we may put into force, all the words of thy Law. Bless us to this purpose we beseech thee. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

* * *

Are there any questions now, on our lesson first of all?

Yes.

[Audience] Is there a relationship between bankruptcy law and the Sabbath? ⁱⁱⁱ

[Dr. Rushdoony] In origin, yes. There is a direct relationship between the bankruptcy law and the law of the Sabbath because the law of the Sabbath specified that a man could not tie up his future indefinitely with debt, therefore debts were for a six year period, and were canceled on the seventh year.

Now over the generations, this law of the Sabbath and the limitation of debt to a six-year period has gradually been transformed until now you have the present bankruptcy laws, which say that a man is liable after going through bankruptcy for a six year period. He cannot go into bankruptcy again until the seventh year. So it’s quite a perversion of the Biblical Law, but it is a hangover of it. Today, it has become a major form of evasion. Many of the people who go into bankruptcy today go into it, not to go out of business, but to re-organize and to get rid of a certain segment of their debts. 

Another point in which the bankruptcy laws reflect still the old Biblical Law is this. In the Bible, property and land could not be taxed or taken; a man’s home was his castle. And to this day, in the bankruptcy laws, the home cannot be taken in satisfaction of debt. However, the government does - for taxes.

Yes.

[Audience] It puzzles me why so many Christians are completely indifferent to God’s Law. ^iv

[Dr. Rushdoony] The question we have to raise increasingly is this. Can a man be antinomian and Christian? 

[Audience] What about dispensationalists who absolutely insist that we are not under the Law, Dr. Rushdoony? ^v

[Dr. Rushdoony] What we can say is, that some people that are in this group are Christians because they haven’t grown yet to realize the issue. But many of them we cannot call ‘Christian,’ because how can you deny God’s Law, and say you belong to God? And increasingly, the antinomians are pushing the boundaries here. They are actually asserting that man has no need for the Law, it isn’t relevant. It used to be they would say, “Well… you do not kill nor commit adultery, nor steal because you’re showing your gratitude to God by doing these things.” But some of them are going a little further now, and they’re saying you don’t need these things now. In other words, their position is revealing itself, that they are not of God. “If you love me, keep my commandments,” our Lord said. It’s that simple. Can you love God and deny His commandments? 

Yes.

[Audience] You mentioned that the Middle Ages was marked, in part by antinomianism, I always thought the Middle Ages was a time of great piety, Dr. Rushdoony. ^vi

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Well, first of all, the term ‘Middle Ages’ is a useless one. 

[Audience] How so? ^vii

[Dr. Rushdoony] That term was born out of the humanist hatred of Christianity. And so they said, “Everything between the classical, pagan civilization of antiquity, and the Renaissance, was a kind of middle, or Medieval period. It was an in between period for man, which didn’t count.” 

Now, the so-called Medieval period includes a long, long period of a great variety. The earlier period used to be called the ‘Dark Ages.’ Well, they no longer can call it that. They’re informed because, as William Carroll Bark pointed out, that was the period of the great frontier thinkers, the great Christian thinkers who laid down the foundations of Western civilization and liberty. It was a period of storm and stress and invasion and trouble, but it was a tremendous fertile period; intellectually, and also in terms of technology, inventions, a great many inventions in that period. 

Then you had the period that followed it, a period of great stability when there was a great deal of peace and prosperity throughout Europe, an era of Christian development and expansion. Then the latter part of period, you had the flowering, again, of Aristotelian thought, its reintroduction into Europe, and the progressive conversion of Europe to humanism. So there’s a great deal of variety in that period. Now, you had in that period, at the earlier time, a strong emphasis on pietism on the part of the monastic movement. Some aspects of the monastic movement became anti-pietistic in practice and were the builders of the new Europe, other elements were more and more withdrawn, and pietistic. Well, finally the monastic movement gave way and the regular, or secular clergy rather, that is, those who were parish pastors, took the lead, and pietism was pushed to the background. But with Aristotelianism, pietism again came to the fore, and mysticism. So the latter part of the so-called ‘Medieval’ period saw great flourishing of pietism. And the eighteenth century saw a revival of pietism which has continued to the present. The implications of pietism have always been humanistic; it winds up in humanism. 

Yes.

[Audience] Isn’t there a connotation of evil in the term ‘Medieval?’ ^viii

[Dr. Rushdoony] Oh, evil is not a part of it in our sense of the word ‘evil.’ That is just another form of saying middle. So Medieval and middle are the same words.

[Audience] Why do these secular scholars hate it so? ^ix

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well, because it was Christian. To the extent that it was Christian they hate it. At first they regarded it as a period of darkness, but then they couldn’t do away with the evidence of the tremendous Medieval churches, the buildings, the construction, the knowledge of engineering, a great deal of knowledge. And of course there’s now some evidence coming to the fore that in medicine they actually had, in that period, the use of opiates during surgery in order to be able to perform surgery without pain. 

Any other questions? Yes.

[Audience] Some of these mutual insurance companies are bad news, Rush’! ^x

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. And I can recall what happened to a great many people during the Depression, when some of these mutual insurance companies folded and the people found that their homes, their bank accounts, their property, were liable to satisfy the debts.

Most people don’t know what that term ‘mutual’ means, when they buy insurance. Yes. It’s cheaper, and so they buy it without recognizing how costly it can be.

Yes.

[Audience] Was it legitimate to use opiates for medical purposes? ^xi

[Dr. Rushdoony] When it was used under strict medical supervision, yes. That was permissible.

Just a couple of things in the few remaining moments. First of all, tomorrow, Monday August the 10th, the monthly Bible Science meeting at college at 7:45 p.m. in Hall, room 1. On the creation of Eve, a complete look at the Biblical record and its scientific implications, by Robert, PhD in entomology at Oregon State University. Then I’d like to tell you a little bit of a book I read this week, which I think is very interesting in its implications. 

Some time ago I’d mentioned to you the fact that of course in Crete the excavations there revealed that the ancient Minoan civilization was so advanced. The palace there, a magnificent building, if you want to go and look at this picture of a fragment of it, and they found, of course, in the palace, evidences of things like running water, hot and cold running water, a sewage system, flush toilets, in fact they’d even found a toilet seat. And here one archeologist has diagrammed thus far their excavations of the sewage lines underneath the palace. Now, this was about 2000 B.C. And of course the further back you get, the more interesting the evidences of a high civilization. 

Well, it’s been my thesis that the world before the Flood had a high degree of civilization. The men at that time lived nine hundred more years. They had time to develop, and to develop advanced ideas of technology. We also know the dimensions of the Ark revealed a knowledge of what was the best kind of proportion for a ship. That was not rediscovered until in the last 150, 200 years. So, my thesis was that Noah had a great deal of technical know-how, which was brought across the Flood into the new world. 

Well, now a scholar, Dr. Charles H. Hapgood has done an interesting work entitled Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. To give you an idea of Hapgood’s qualifications, his previous work Earth’s Shifting Crust, written in ‘58, carried a long introduction by Dr. Albert Einstein. So he’s not a Johnny-come-lately, nor an insignificant man. 

What developed was this. A few years ago, an interesting map was turned up in the remains of Admiral Piri Reis, a Turkish admiral of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. In other words, a man who was a contemporary of Columbus. The map was not of his drawing; it was an ancient map, and he made comments about this map, which he had inherited from ancient times. 

Well, the map showed some very startling things. It showed North and South America, which had not been explored, quite accurately. It also showed Antarctica before ice formed there when there was no ice, before the ice age, in other words and a great many other startling things. Well, the United States requested a copy of the map, and got it, and it sat in Washington, and the Pentagon had someone working on it, and finally it was called to the attention of Dr. Hapgood, and he set a group of graduate students to working on it, to try to understand some of the mathematical computations connected with a map. They also then went to work on a number of other ancient maps, from China on to the Western world. 

What they found was that long before the invention of the chronometer, men were able to compute longitude accurately - in ancient times. They also found that their knowledge of the world was very surprising. Moreover, their technical knowhow was really amazing, that the evidence was of a world wide civilization that apparently spoke one language, very well developed in its technology, which had explored every part of the earth and had drawn very accurate maps thereof. 

As a matter of fact, he says: 

“The fact that vast areas of ancient science have remained unknown to us has recently been revealed in startling fashion by the discovery of a computer designed and built in ancient times. It was found by divers in 1901 in the wreck of a Greek galley that had been sunk off the Greek island of Antikythera in the 1st Century B.C. Transported to the National Museum at Athens, and carefully cleaned over a long period of time, it was finally examined by Professor Derek de Solla Price of Yale. He found it to be a planetarium, a machine to show the risings and settings of the known planets, and therefore very complicated. But what was particularly astonishing about it was the sophistication of the gearing system, which, Dr. Price said, was essentially modern.” ^xii

Now, an interesting point he also makes is, trying with earlier comments about the ‘Medieval’ period. 

“A considerable loss [that is, of science and of learning - RJR] seems to have occurred in the Renaissance itself. This was partly because of the invention of printing.” ^xiii

This was partly because of the invention of printing. Now, he goes on to say in part it was the contempt for anything that came before, and second, with printing, anything that was not printed, was treated as obsolete and despised. But he goes on to say that the knowledge that these ancient maps shows, and their accuracy, and the obvious fact that they had instruments and technology that we can’t imagine, and when you add to this fact that we don’t have equipment today that can move some of the stones and things that were moved in Mexico and in Egypt for the pyramids, we don’t have equipment that can move them, it could not have been moved by hand or manual labor, you realize that there was, apparently, a tremendous ancient civilization. He says: 

“It is interesting that a tradition of a universal language seems to be common in ancient literature. In Genesis we read, of course, ‘And the whole earth was of one language and one speech.’” ^xiv

But he feels this is a legend, although it’s interesting that it appears in this legend. So obviously, before the Tower of Babel, man had reached a tremendous height of civilization that he gradually began to lose, and with the Renaissance, the rebirth of paganism, he lost what had survived of it. 

Now, all of this rather frightens Dr. Hapgood, because he says, we have now greater capacities for destruction in the age of the atom and hydrogen bomb, how much of what we have developed may not be lost in the years ahead? ^xv

So this book, which on the whole is rather technical, and a lot of the computations, and all are way beyond me, as he demonstrates the accuracies of these maps, is none the less quite an interesting book. Charles H. Hapgood, Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age.

* * *

Well let’s bow our heads for the benediction. 

And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always. Amen.

i. Jean Carper, “Before You Sign—Read the Fine Print,” in Family Weekly, supplement to the Santa Ana (Calif.) Register, April 12, 1970, p. 13.

ii. David Shaw, “Fair Shake. Small Claims Court Judge Leads Revolt,” in Los Angeles Times, LXXXIX (Wednesday morning, June 10, 1970), pp. 1, 18, 19.

iii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

iv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

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. Charles H. Hapgood. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. New York: Dutton, 1979, p. 193.

xiii. Charles H. Hapgood. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. New York: Dutton, 1979, p. 195.

xiv. Charles H. Hapgood. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. New York: Dutton, 1979, p. 201.

xv. Charles H. Hapgood. Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings: Evidence of Advanced Civilization in the Ice Age. New York: Dutton, 1979, p. 189.