4. The Unlimited Liability Universe (Remastered)

The Unlimited Liability Universe

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture lesson is three verses from our last week’s study, Deuteronomy 28:1,2, and 15, and our subject, ‘The Unlimited Liability Universe.’

“And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.”

Deuteronomy 28:1-2.

“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee”

Deuteronomy 28:15.

Last week, as we analyzed the significance of the curses and the blessings of Deuteronomy 27 and 28, we saw that Scripture not only teaches a doctrine of irresistible grace, but also irresistible curses and blessings. Just as God is absolute and sovereign in our salvation (the doctrine of irresistible grace) so in our sanctification or in our judgment, God again is sovereign and irresistible. And these verses which we have again read declare that when we are faithful to God and obey His Word, these blessings shall come upon us, that is they shall pursue us and they shall overtake us, “if thou shalt harken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.” But they are similarly irresistible curses if we disobey the Lord. 

This brings us therefore to the subject of limited liability, as basic to the meaning of this passage. Now today, the terms ‘limited liability’ has been reduced to a purely business term. When a British or Canadian corporation lists itself as ‘Eversham Works, Ltd.,’ it means it’s a limited liability company. When an American corporation says that it is ‘the John Doe Company, Inc.’ it means that it is a limited liability company. Now, what does that mean? Much, well, let us say virtually all of our language today has been carefully pruned from its religious implications. For example, when we talk about psychology we don’t think we’re talking about the Bible. But psychology literally means ‘the doctrine of the soul.’ And psychology is properly the doctrine of the soul from the perspective of Scripture. But the psychology we are taught today is an anti-God psychology, it has been deliberately separated from everything that is scriptural. The same, for example, is true of anthropology. ‘Anthropology’ means the doctrine of man. Anthropology was also once a branch of theology and it was taught together with theology, but it has been separated from the Bible. Economics, the old name for economics, when you took the course in a college or a university up until, well, my father’s day, was ‘moral economy’ because it was the question of stewardship under God. So that my father studied the old conservative economics that libertarians profess today except it was called moral economy, and it was premised on a thoroughly godly perspective. What we have done, you see, is to take every area of life and to separate it from the Word of God, to separate it from the heart, which means death. 

Now the same is true of limited liability. Let’s examine limited liability, and then we’ll understand why it came about, and when it did come about. Originally, there were virtually no limited liability companies. As a result, if you invested, say, $100 in a share of a company, or became a partner in a company, if that company went into debt, you were liable for its debts to the full extent. In order to satisfy the debts of the company in which you have a share, and/or, were a partner, they could come in and sell all your possessions to satisfy the debt. 

Now this is the only kind of business that was operated in the United States up until the Civil War. What did this do? It meant that every shareholder and every business partner was very responsible. He did not allow the company in which he had a partnership or a share, to contract a debt lightly. It was not a debt economy. Every shareholder voted, made it his business to know what was going on because otherwise he could be wiped out. 

Now, the law, in the 1830’s approximately, made it possible, in New York and one or two other States, to have a limited liability company, but very few people would have any part of a limited liability company. Why? They said it’s immoral, immoral. It created an irresponsible company, which can go into debt head over heels, and an irresponsible shareholder, who’s only interested in dividends and not in the management of the company. 

When the same thing came up in England, it was fought out and debated at great length, and the conclusion that some of the opponents of limited liability came to, and their arguments were never answered, was, if you limited liability, you take away responsibility and ultimately you have a population of irresponsible people and socialism, and it’s worked out that way. After the Civil War, limited liability companies became the rule in the United States, and you had the robber barons and so on, and a progressive development of a debt economy and socialism.

Now, why the shift from an unlimited liability type of business, to a limited liability type of business? At the same time, you had a shift from Biblical faith throughout the United States, and so after the Civil War you had the Darwinian world. It was a religious revolution, and an economic revolution. Why? Why did the godless prefer, and bring about, rapidly, a limited liability type of economy? 

I think C.S. Lewis, as he describes his conversion, puts his finger on it. Now, C.S. Lewis isn’t always someone we can agree with, but the thing about C.S. Lewis that marks him as a Christian was, that in spite of his shortcomings at times in his ideas, he was a rigorously honest man. And he described, with sometimes painful honesty, his own failures as a pagan. And as he describes why he preferred being an atheist, he was happy to be an atheist prior to his conversion, and felt that he was the most miserable man in England when he felt I must accept Christ. He says this:

“To such a craven [that is a coward, and he says the atheist is a coward - RJR] the materialist’s universe has the enormous attraction that it offered you limited liabilities. No strictly infinite disaster could overtake you in it. Death ended all. And if ever finite disasters proved greater than one wished to bear, suicide would always be possible. The horror of the Christian universe was that it had no door marked Exit.… But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deap-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word Interference. But Christianity placed at the center what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer. If its picture were true then no sort of ‘treaty with reality’ could ever be possible. There was no region even in the innermost depth of one’s soul (nay, there least of all) which one could surround with a barbed wire fence and guard with a notice of No Admittance. And that was what I wanted; some area, however small, of which I could say to all other beings, ‘This is my business and mine only.’” ⁱ

Now that’s an honest statement of the atheist position, he wants a limited liability universe. And therefore he seeks to create a limited liability political and economic order; socialism. The more socialistic he becomes, the more he demands a maximum advantage and limited liability from his social order and from his religion. And of course what he is demanding is an impossibility. Man’s best security is to live with reality, with the fact of an unlimited liability universe. 

Now, the curses and blessings of the Law speak of unlimited liability. Man cannot step outside of God’s world of consequence. At every moment of every point, man is overtaken and surrounded, totally possessed by the unlimited liability of God’s universe. “These shall come upon thee and overtake thee, if thou shalt harken or if thou shalt fail to harken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.”

But man wants to escape from such a universe. He tries to do it on the one hand by atheism, and another by a pseudo-acceptance of God. In atheism, as William Ernest Henley’s poem ‘Invictus,’ he says that there is no unlimited liability, because he is the unlimited sovereign.

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

Therefore nobody can impose any liability on me, I am the lord of all that I survey.

On the other hand, the religious pseudo-acceptance is mysticism and pietism and pseudo evangelicalism; the claim to have accepted Christ while at the same time denying his Law, it is antinomianism.

During the great awakening in Colonial America, just before the War of Independence, many of these antinomians actually forsook their wives and became sexually promiscuous to prove that they were dead to the Law, to prove that there was now no liability since they were in Jesus Christ. Now, this is anti-Christianity masquerading as Christianity. What such a false religion always espouses is a limited liability universe in God’s name, and that’s atheism under the banner of God. Such a religion is interested in what it can get out of God, not in worshipping God. 

Friedrich Heer, one of the greatest of the Medieval historians, has said of the Medieval mystic Eckhart, that he gave the soul a:

“…sovereign majesty together with God. The next step was taken by a disciple, Johannes of Star Alley, who asked if the word of the soul was not as mighty as the word of the Heavenly Father.” ⁱⁱ

In other words, man’s word now is equal to God’s Word, and therefore man is beyond liability. The new sovereign is thus man, and a limited liability is actually transferred to God. But the Biblical doctrine of God says that God is absolute sovereign. God’s power, His Word, His decree, His predestinating counsel, absolutely governs, determines and underwrites all reality, and it is utterly impossible for any contingencies to exist in God. There are no surprises in the universe for God, no liabilities, because He is sovereign. But because man is a creature, he faces a world of unlimited liabilities, a world where he is responsible. And that’s what liability means; responsibility. He is responsible, without reservation, to God at all times; that’s unlimited liability. This means that man cannot escape God. Though I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I flee to the uttermost parts of the world, to the depths of the sea, to the highest place in heaven, behold, thou art there. Man can nowhere, and at no time, escape God. 

Dr. Van Til has summed up the matter, I think very powerfully, and to quote him:

“The main point is that if man could look anywhere and not be confronted with the revelation of God then he could not sin in the Biblical sense of the term. Sin is the breaking of the law of God. God confronts man everywhere. He cannot in the nature of the case confront man anywhere if he does not confront him everywhere. God is one; the law is one. If man could press one button on the radio of his experience and not hear the voice of God then he would always press that button and not the others. But man cannot even press the button of his own self-consciousness without hearing the requirement of God.” ⁱⁱⁱ

Man wants to reverse this position does he not? He wants to say, “Let God be liable if He fails to deliver at my request.” Let man declare that his experience is everything, and God is bound by man’s feelings, and then man can sin and do as he pleases with impunity. Man wants God to be liable, and he wants to be free of liability, of responsibility. It’s like the man a generation or two ago, who, when he was dying, asked if he had besought God for forgiveness of sins and made his peace with God. He needed to, and his answer on his death bed was, “Let God forgive me, that’s His business.” ^iv The responsibility is God’s, not man’s.

In such a religion there is no worship; this is why paganism had no service of worship. This is something we often fail to realize, that there is no worship service in Buddhism, or any other religion. Now, in imitation of Christianity they have begun to adopt some, but historically there has been none. Paganism has temples where you go to buy insurance. You go, and you make a gift to the god at the temple, and you ask for something in the way of insurance, a limited liability. And you say, “I want this and that in return for this, and I am paying well for your services, so you had better deliver it, and if you don’t, I’ll take my services elsewhere.” Now, this is literally true. The ‘worshipper,’ so-called, was not a worshipper in paganism, but a person seeking limited liability, buying insurance, and he shopped around for the best-paying god. 

In our faith, we are in a world of liabilities, we can never escape responsibilities. Those who say, “Praise the Lord, since I accepted Christ all my troubles are over and ended,” have always throughout my ministry, made me wonder about their honesty, if not more because most of the Christians I know have all kinds of problems. The world is a battlefield, there are casualties, but the battle is the Lord’s, and its end is victory. And we can go through the Bible and see how much the greatest saints suffered. Job suffered and said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” St. Paul described his experience in prison, beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, betrayed, “in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness,” and yet through it all knowing he was blessed of God unto victory, and he was. We cannot escape from the battlefield, to do so is to flee from the liabilities of warfare against sinful men for battle with an angry god. To face the battle is to suffer the penalties of man’s wrath and the blessings of God’s grace and love. 

Now, apart from Jesus Christ, men are judicially dead, the Scripture declares. That is, they are under the death sentence before God, no matter how moral their works. With regeneration there is a beginning of life, true life. But man does not thereby come out from under liability, he is still a responsible person. But what has happened is that he moves from the unlimited liability of the curse, to a limited liability to the curse; there is no Hell for him, no ultimate judgment, once he is truly redeemed. But now he is under the unlimited liability of blessing; a limited ability to curse, to judgment, to punishment at the hand of God, unlimited liability for blessing. The unregenerate are under unlimited liabilities to curses, but under limited liability to blessing. Thus, we always move in a world of responsibility and liability. 

The real reason to the objection to Hell that you so often find is that Hell affirms unlimited liability. And so some people try to make it a place of probation, you go there for a season, it’s a reformatory, and then when you have reformed sufficiently, up you go into heaven. This is asking for a world without liability, unlimited liability. 

But man cannot escape an unlimited liability universe because God is God, and man as a creature is absolutely responsible to God. It is an unlimited liability universe. The important question is this, in which area is man exposed to unlimited liability; to unlimited liability to the curse, because of his separation from God, because he has denied Christ, or is he under unlimited liability to blessings, because of his regeneration, because of his faith in union with, and obedience to, Jesus Christ? This is the choice. 

Let us pray. 

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that this is an unlimited liability universe, that thou art God and not man. We thank thee, therefore, that the wicked shall not escape, that thou shalt repay them to the full extent. We thank thee our God that through Jesus Christ we have been placed in a position of limited liability to curse, and unlimited liability to blessings. Teach us therefore so to walk in obedience to thy Law-Word that we may prosper in thy blessing, that we may ever open wide our mouths with faith and obedience that thou mightiest fill them. O Lord, our God, how great thou art, and we praise thee. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

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

While we’re waiting for a question, I think I’ll just quote something here from a book about a hundred years ago, A Substitute for Holiness, or Antinomianism Revived. It was a critique written of the Plymouth brethren, the Darbyites, we would call them today the Scofield people, the Scofield Bible followers. And he quotes John Agricola, whom I cited about three weeks ago who was the one who in the modern era was the father of Protestantism. And in 1537, Agricola wrote:

“Art thou steeped in sin— an adulterer or a thief? If thou believest, thou art in salvation. All who follow Moses must go to the devil; to the gallows with Moses.” ^v

Now, this was to Christians, to Luther and his associates, who were affirming that the believer was the one who alone truly kept the Law, and had a duty to keep it. 

Now an interesting fact is that premillennialism was a product of antinomianism. Why? Well, if you deny the Law, you either must become a modernist, a liberal, who says, “The answer to all our problems is a social gospel,” or you must say, “Well, the answer to the world’s problems is the premillennial return of our Lord and He will do everything, we don’t do anything.” As a result, when antinomianism was revived by Darby, premillennialism was also revived, which had been an ancient form of antinomianism. 

In this book, Steele [the author] reports that one of the expectations that happened at that time was this. A number of Americans who became convinced of the Scofield Darby position, decided since Christ was going to return to Jerusalem to establish a millennial kingdom. They wanted to be on hand, to be the first ones to apply for high position in the new world kingdom. And so he says that: 

“A handful of Americans, fragments of families, possessed by this infantile interpretation of Scripture, are eking out an existence in Jerusalem [this is 1877 - RJR]. They have adopted and are called by the name of ‘The American Colony.’ They are determined to be at the head of the line of office-seekers when the new administration comes in.” ^vi

That’s really pathetic and tragic. 

Yes.

[Audience] What is your assessment of the influence of George Whitfield, Dr. Rushdoony? ^vii

[Dr. Rushdoony] Whitfield’s influence was good, very good. There were different aspects of the Great Awakening; the great leaders in the colonies were Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards. Whitfield’s influence was the finest, the best. If Whitfield had triumphed rather than Wesley in the Methodist movement, Methodism would not have gone in the direction that it did. However, what happened was that in New England, an element, disagreeing radically with Edwards and even more radically with Whitfield, became radical antinomians and made it a point to break the Law, to commit adultery, to steal, to do everything to prove that a Christian was beyond the Law. There was a minister named Davenport, who was their leader, not to be confused with the Davenport in the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. So they were a part of the Great Awakening, but you cannot blame Whitfield for them. It was entirely separate. Whitfield’s work was the greatest in the period. 

Yes.

[Audience] Is Pietism not simply prayer and the like, and therefore a good and necessary thing, Dr. Rushdoony? ^viii

[Dr. Rushdoony] No, no. Pietism is not prayer; pietism is running away from responsibility. It is substituting prayer and mystical devotions for action.

Now, if your roof started to catch fire, and you decided to pray instead of getting out there with a hose and bucket, then that would be a violation of the spirit of prayer, you see. But since you’re not on the fire line, you have a duty to pray for those who are and to pray that God will preserve those who are threatened. There’s a difference, you see. 

Yes.

[Audience] Did you say that the gentleman’s name was Agricola? ^ix

[Dr. Rushdoony] Agricola, yes. 

A few things I’d like to share with you. And this I think is very, very interesting, an indication of the lengths to which some ministers will go. 

This from the Presbyterian Journal of September the 9th, this is Southern Presbyterian:

“An official of the American Lutheran Church has suggested that it is possible to identify an endorsement of abortion in a remark of Jesus Christ.

‘Speaking of Judas,’ wrote Dr. Carl F. Reuss in The Lutheran Standard, ‘Jesus said, 'It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.’’”

And so he goes on to say this means that Jesus was for abortion. Now that’s the kind of blasphemy we have prevailing today. 

Then I think a very interesting thing that is so revealing from the Ann Landers column, which is one of the best ‘gospels according to man’ that you can find anywhere. This letter. 

“Dear Ann Landers. 

A big family argument is going on. It started over snapshots. Our relatives are all crazy over pictures. Our daughter Rosa was married a few weeks ago, and being five months pregnant, she asked all relatives to please leave their cameras at home while I have a brother who brought his camera to the church and took dozens of pictures.

Last night he brought the pictures to our house, Rosa was present. Some of the pictures were very good. Others were very bad, if you get what I mean. Rosa became upset. She feels that since her uncle brought his camera after everyone had strict orders not to, he should hand over all the prints and negatives and let her decide which ones should be used and which should be destroyed. Is she right? Between two fires.

Dear B, I believe the bride’s wishes should be respected.”

Now this is a classic example of how appearance is everything today, rather than reality. Now, it is sad and tragic when a situation happens like this where a girl does get pregnant and has to be married, but in all good decency, to go down the aisle five months pregnant, and then expect everyone to act as if nothing is wrong and no pictures to be taken, this is reversing everything, everything. It is really the height of absurdity and a telling example of how appearance now is what matters; you preserve appearances, not moral standards. 

Then the other day I read Robert Payne’s book, The Christian Centuries from Christ to Dante, which I don’t recommend; it’s worthless, by and large. However there is a very interesting passage in it that I think is very well worth quoting. 

It reads,

“Throughout the writing of this book I have been haunted by a story written by the Danish poet Jens Peter Jacobsen. He tells of a strange emaciated monk, ‘pale as linen, with black eyes glowing like dying embers, with melancholy, pain-stiffened lines around the mouth which seemed to have been carved with a knife out of wood,’ who appeared during a plague at Bergamo when all the survivors were given over to despair. His purpose was not to encourage them, but to expound a new, heroic, and more terrible gospel. He said:

“They made Christ carry the Cross through the whirling dust, they stripped his garments from him and left him naked in the sight of all, and then they drove the nails in his flesh, and raised up the Cross, and no one showed any sign of pity. They said: ‘If Thou be the Son of God, come down from the Cross,’ and they reviled him.

Then he tore his feet free from the nails, and clenched his hands round the heads of the nails and tore them out, so that the arms of the Cross bent like a bow. He leaped down to earth, snatched up his robe so that the dice rolled along the slopes of Golgotha, and then he threw the robe round his shoulders with the wrath of a King, and ascended to Heaven.

So the Cross stood empty, and the great work of redemption was never fulfilled. There is no mediator between God and us. There is no Jesus who died for us on the Cross.

Then one who heard him, a butcher, cried out: ‘Nail him on the Cross again.’

There was no impiety in the butcher’s words, for he was saying only that the Cross was necessary to human life, and there could be no mediator except the crucified Christ. Nor was there any impiety in the words of the strange monk, for he was describing one of the many aspects of the Crucifixion: Christ had indeed descended of his own will from the Cross, thrown his royal mantle over his shoulders, and ascended to heaven, leaving the Cross empty. A single event had taken place, and those who were present and those who contemplated it in their daily lives saw it under different aspects, under different skies, in different ages, knowing that the event took place in time and eternity, and that Christ absent was all the more present.” ^x

And so on. He doesn’t see all the significance of it, but the point of the story is a tremendous one. Christ went to the cross voluntarily and because of it, he is the mediator between God and man. The only sufficient savior as well as our Lord and lawgiver. 

With that our time is up, let’s bow our heads for the benediction. 

* * *

Now, go 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. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), p. 171 f.

ii. Friedrich Heer, The Intellectual History of Europe, p. 179.

iii. Cornelius Van Til, A Letter on Common Grace (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1955), p. 40 f.

iv. Heine, on his deathbed said, “The good God will pardon me, for that's His job."

llico, No More Apologies (London: The Religious Book Club, 1941), 76f.

v. Daniel Steele. A Substitute for Holiness or Antimonianism Revived; or The Theology of the So-Called Plymouth Brethren Examined and Refuted. Second Edition, with Index. Boston: The Christian Witness Co., 1899, p. 47.

vi. Daniel Steele. A Substitute for Holiness or Antimonianism Revived; or The Theology of the So-Called Plymouth Brethren Examined and Refuted. Second Edition, with Index. Boston: The Christian Witness Co., 1899, p. 355.

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. Robert Payne. The Christian Centuries from Christ to Dante. First Edition. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1966, pp. 15-16.