5. Holiness and the Law (Remastered)

Holiness and the Law

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scipture is Exodus 19:1-6, and our subject, ‘Holiness and the Law.’

“In the third month, when the children of Israel were gone forth out of the land of Egypt, the same day came they into the wilderness of Sinai. For they were departed from Rephidim, and were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount. And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.”

Before the law was given, God, as this passage makes clear, declared through Moses that the purpose was that Israel be a holy nation. Our concern today is with the doctrine of holiness in its relationship to the law. The word ‘holy’ is an important one for us if we are to understand Scripture. The word ‘holy’ literally means a cutting, a separating. It also conveys the meaning of devotion. It is a cutting, a separating, for a purpose. Holiness, first of all, has reference to God who is separate, who is non-tresspassable, unapproachable. Holiness, therefore, in its first and basic sense for us, that of a separation, that of a cutting, means law.

Now, at this point we must recognize that a vast amount of the church today, as it speaks of holiness, does not think of law. Many evangelical churches that emphasize holiness, tend to be antinomian, that is anti-law. Indeed, they will not even use, some of them, the Ten Commandments in any service in their church, because for them the Ten Commandments are not a part of God’s requirement today, which is, of course, sinful on their part. But law is, according to Scripture, the principle of the cutting or separation.

First, God calls out the people and says, “I shall make you a holy nation,” then he gives them the law, which is the principle of their holiness, of their separation, of their cutting. Wherever there is law there is a cutting, a separation. Every law in the Bible, therefore, is a law of holiness. The minute you have a law, you have a division. When you have a law that says, “Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother,” you have on the one hand those who obey, and those who don’t, you’ve made a division. When the law declares, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” you have a division. When the law says, “Thou shalt not steal,” again you have a separation, a cutting, a division, and that’s exactly what holiness is.

The holy person is the person who moves in terms of God’s established line of separation of cutting. Wherever there is law, there is an inescapable line of separation. Biblical Law therefore establishes the godly line of separation, the godly concept of the holy. Marxist law establishes the Marxist line of separation and the Marxist line of division between that which is holy and profane. And of course, Marx made it clear in one of his earliest writings that what we must do is to establish a line of division and tell the people that those who are on the other side of the line are demonic and we must, as it were, consign them to hell. So that Marx definitely harked back to the Biblical language, to the Biblical terminology. And with reason, he was establishing a law, Marxist law, and therefore in terms of that law there was a cutting. For us, true holiness is the separation in terms of God’s standard. If there is no law, there is no separation, no holiness. The antinomians talk about holiness, but they deny it by denying law. Holiness is not an emotional feeling, it is a cutting in terms of the Law-Word of God.

Thus, second, we must say that every Biblical Law is concerned with holiness. Every law of Scripture is a holiness law. Every law makes a division between the law abiding and the outlaw. Some laws set forth the principle of separation in a symbolic as well as a literal form. Now, the Mosaic Law declared that God’s Law-Word was the principle of life. The Law-Word was given to the covenant-people, to the redeemed people, as their principle of life. Having been redeemed from death, now they were to live in terms of life, God’s Law-Word. And in terms of that, some of the laws set forth just exactly what was involved symbolically. For example, there was a requirement of separation from death. The laws that called for a ritual purification, a very simple matter, from any handling of dead bodies, was to set forth the fact that they as the people of the law, of the covenant, had been separated, by the grace of God, from death; that their destiny was eternal life in Him. They witnessed to the fact that they had a perpetual separation from death, that death itself was the doorway to life for them by the recognition that they were to be separate from death, that they had to go through a ritual purification after touching death; their destiny is life.

Similarly, disease was to be separated from and there was to be a washing after any handling of disease. Again we have here the same principle affirmed. There was a principle of health involved in that all contagion was to be avoided, and there had to be a washing after any contact with it, but this again was an illustration that life was their destiny. And hence, a wide variety of law set forth segregation from disease; health, wholeness, is the destiny of the people of God. And because wholeness, health, is the destiny of the people of God, self-mutilation in any form was forbidden, including tattoos. And any kind of self-willed mutilation of the body was forbidden. Holiness, therefore, means life; it is a separation from death, from disease, in terms of God who is the principle of life.

Third the laws of holiness also included laws concerning vows. A man is always bound by his vows. What is a vow? A vow is an oath taken in the name of God, and a man is duty-bound to keep a vow, and only when the conditions of a vow are broken by someone else is he released from the vow. Why this absoluteness with regard to vows? It is the name of God.

Now, the Scripture says God’s Word does not return unto Him void but it accomplishes that which He ordains. So that whenever God speaks, it is done. God said “Let there be light, and there was light.” God spoke the word, and creation appeared. God speaks and that which He speaks immediately comes to pass. Now, because this is what God’s Word involves; the absolute certainty that a thing is accomplished, therefore, when a man vows, he is saying,  “I take upon myself this authority, the authority of God and declare, “In the same way that God’s Word does not return unto Him void, my word shall not return unto me void.” And if I vow to tell the truth, I tell the truth whether I live or die. And if I vow to give something to God in return for something that I ask, then I give it, come what may.” A vow, therefore, required absolute fulfillment. A man in a vow set himself apart in terms of God’s absolute holiness. God accomplishes that which He purposes, and in a vow a man links himself with this holiness of God, this especial holiness. A vow could be made only by a free man. A wife or a daughter, according to the Scripture, cannot make a vow without permission of the father or husband, because she is under his authority. A widow or a divorced woman, according to the law, can really vow because she is now on her own. But normally only a man, a free man, can make a vow.

A fourth aspect of holiness, as it appears throughout the law, is with regard to food. The laws concerning food as they appear in the Bible are unique in all the history of the world. Virtually everything in our modern conception of eating and of good health with respect to eating comes from the law. The law forbad, for example, the eating of any flesh torn by beasts of the field; dead animals. These, however, could be sold to the Gentiles, who had no objection to eating such animals. And the law declared that they were not to try to force their standards on those who did not believe them, and as long as they stated honestly what it was they were selling, this was acceptable in the sight of God. The eating of fat and of blood was forbidden. The clean and the unclean animals are extensively listed as, for example, in Leviticus 11. The forbidden foods are called “abominable,” and they must be abominable to God’s people. The foods that are permitted are spoken of as a blessing, and congenial to the health of the people. And health is cited, therefore, as an aspect of holiness.

Then fifth, the laws of holiness which bring especial and symbolic attention to separation include the law of dress. Transvestite dress, that is women dressing men, and men dressing as women is strictly forbidden, it is called a “perversion.” A mixing of materials such as wool and linen is also forbidden, as is hybridization generally because it is spoken of as an unnatural and a sterile thing, a contempt of the lines of creation.

Then again, sixth, the laws of holiness require that the land itself be considered as holy. And the land, we are told repeatedly, can be defiled. And the people of God are called upon, therefore to practice soil conservation, and we have laws concerning soil conservation, which we shall consider later, and a variety of other laws concerning the use of the soil, of the land, all of which have its purpose, that the land itself, because it is the Lord’s, “The earth is the Lord’s.” “For all the earth is mine,” our Scriptures declares, must be separated unto God.

Then finally, they must be a holy people, or a holy nation as the sixth verse of our lesson declares.

“And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation.”

Just a few months ago a book was published by a prominent theologian, the gist of which is that Christian conservatives are theologically defective. The book from beginning to end is a long attack on conservative Christians. And one of the points, a central attack, is that, “These foolish people,” the writer declares, “believe that there can be such a thing as a holy nation.” And, the writer declares, “This is impossible, holiness is only a personal attribute.” Well, his position is obviously not scriptural. After all, we have here a reference to, “an holy nation.” Holiness is thus more than a personal attribute. Holiness indeed can be and should be a personal attribute, believers should be holy unto the Lord, separated unto the Lord. But holiness is not only a personal inner attribute, but it can be a personal outer attribute. For example, 1 Corinthians 7 says that husbands or wives of believers, who themselves are not believers, are, “Holy unto the Lord.”  What is the meaning of this? Such people are not believers, they do not profess faith in Christ. But as long as they do not oppose the faith of their spouse, God regards them as separated unto Himself and therefore under a particular care and protection, they are a part of His covenant-people, even though they themselves are not saved, even though they themselves do not profess faith.

But what constitutes a ‘holy nation?’ A holy nation has its principle of separateness, or cutting, in terms of law, God’s Law. But a country that, for example, establishes capital punishment, that establishes restitution for theft, that establishes the fact that godly faith is under the protection of the law, such a people are a holy people, such a nation is a holy nation because it has established God’s Law as a principle of separation, as the law of the nation. Therefore, in spite of these critics, we can say that the United States was a holy nation.

Not too many years ago, within our lifetime, some States said that only Christians could be citizens. Until a few years ago, some states actually said that you could not testify in any trial unless you believed in God. And if you go back to the last century or a hundred years ago, in many States you could not vote if you denied Scripture and the doctrine of the Trinity. We were a holy nation, we were applying God’s Law as a principle of separation, we had capital punishment, we had restitution for debt, we had all the Biblical principles of law strictly applied, and that makes a people a holy nation. We are now in process of trying to establish a humanistic doctrine of holiness, and our law is separating people in terms of a humanistic concept of ‘cutting’ or separation.

There’s an old expression that very well sums up the doctrine of holiness, “the cutting edge of the law,” this is holiness. Law draws a line of division. And today the law is no longer drawing God’s line of division and hence it is that we are fast approaching anarchy. The books of Judges summed it up very well in its themed verse:

“In those days there was no king in Israel…”

And the ‘king’ it had reference to was God the King, ruling from His palace, the Tabernacle, his throne, the holy of holies.

“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Judges 21:25.

And today because the principle of holiness, God’s Law, and the cutting edge of the law, has been denied, every man does that which is right in his own eyes, and we have anarchy. But God requires of every nation that they be a holy nation; they will either be devoted to Him, or they will, by God then, be devoted to destruction.

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that though men seek to make void thy law, thy land stands, and the cutting edge of thy law shall lay low the workers of iniquity. We thank thee, our God, that in thy holiness thou doest forever decree that the line of separation must stand, and in thy judgment age after age thou doest cut down the evildoers, and dost bring thy judgment like light upon the sons of men. We await, O Lord, thy cutting, and we thank thee that by grace in Jesus Christ we have been separated unto thee, made a holy people unto thee. Increase our faith, O Lord, day by day, that we may abound in holiness, may stand fast in terms of thy Law-Word, and in the day of adversity may triumph. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now?

Yes?

[Audience member] Question about Mao and China.

[Rushdoony] Exactly, very good point, and we shall be coming to this later. When a nation is a holy nation it is blessed, very definitely, and apart from it, it is cursed. Now, there’s no question about the fact that China, very, very early for example, you cited China, did attain a very high degree of civilization. Very, very early before the time of Christ there was quite an advanced civilization in the Far East, but what happened? Very early also they went to a radical relativism. Taoism, for example, with its Yang/Yin philosophy says that there is no truth, no truth whatsoever, only that which is ‘fitting’ or appropriate for that particular time. Confucianism, again, was a philosophy or relativism, no truth. Buddhism, again a philosophy of total relativism. All the philosophies and religions of China for over two thousand years has been radically relativistic, denying that there is any truth and as a result China has stagnated. Now, periodically of course, it has had a measure of progress, as some invader has taken over China and established itself in great power. But as soon as the invader becomes saturated with this philosophy then they too succumb, and stagnation takes over.

For example, one of the most dramatic… Well, several of them, for example, Genghis Khan. He took China, and his son Kublai Kahn established perhaps the most splendid regime of all in China, until it all disappeared. Why? Because this total relativism took over. The Manchus, again, conquered China, and they were conquered, like all conquerors of China, by this relativism. Because this relativism said there is no difference between good and evil, there is no up and no down, no right and no wrong, no good and no bad. You can have no progress then with such a position, you only have total stagnation. And so it is that every country that denies Biblical Law ends up ultimately in this kind of thing. This is why Dr. Eugen Rosenstock Huessy, a very outstanding German sociologist who came to Dartmouth and has taught at UCLA and is now retired. Quite a liberal, but he began to have second thoughts, very strong second thoughts about his liberalism, spoke of what is happening in the United States now as the “Chinafication of America.” He said we are headed for the same anarchic stagnation.

[Audience member] So you’re saying that a woman in a man’s household couldn’t make a vow? i

[Rushdoony] Without seeking permission, yes.

[Audience member] Didn’t that make her a slave? ii

[Rushdoony] It meant not a slave, nor a servant in a household, nor a woman, nor a child.

[Audience member] How about government?

[Rushdoony] No, it didn’t include government. In other words, you as a free man make a vow; you’re going to make it cautiously and not in defiance of the facts of life around you. You’re going to make it responsibly; you don’t make impossible vows then.

Another, yes?

[Audience member] How about the one about mixing wool and linen, does that still hold today?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Basically I believe the Biblical Law still stands, and I think someday we may find out that such mixtures are not the best for the health. But the principle there is that hybridization of any kind is a defiance of the laws of nature and productive of sterility. And of course, this does present a problem for us today because practically the seeds you buy are hybrid seeds, and as a result you cannot get seeds out of your own garden, normally.

Moreover, it is presenting problems. For example, I was very interested to learn the last time this May when I was in Houston, from someone whose family has a couple thousand acres of farmland, that hybrid corn, while it’s very productive, is also very bad for cattle, very bad for them. For one thing, it is hard and it damages their teeth and there are a number of things about the hybrid that are not good. But nowadays in terms of yield they go for this type of product which does have very unhappy consequences. And he said it was his idea that they got through investigating the subject they would find that the hybrids had a lot of other side effects apart from the very obvious ones that he saw in the feeding pens when he was feeding his cows.

I don’t think we can violate God’s Laws with impunity. Now, of course, the mule, you see, was forbidden because the mule was a hybrid, and of course, sterile. Every now and then you read about a mule having young, it has periodically hit the papers, not so much now that the mules are beginning to disappear, but you find out that it was a hoax. There’s good reason why, I think, from my perspective as a boy who grew up on the farm, one of the routine things when I was a boy was, well, two things. There was always somebody in the classroom at school, and always somebody at church, with their arm in a sling or on crutches. One reason was the ‘Model T’ as far as the broken arms were concerned, cranking them, but the other was mules. And anyone who’s ever worked around mules knows what a headache they can be. They’re just not normal, there’s something warped about them. They are high-strung and nervous and a jack-rabbit jumping out of the vines. When you’re plowing, can set a mule off, and they’ll be in the next County before they stop. Mules were a nightmare for farmers. Their only advantage was that they were faster, but you pay for it, believe me!

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you speak further on the sale of ‘unclean’ meat to the Gentiles by the Jews?  iii

[Rushdoony] Well, you had the Gentiles at all times living side by side with the Hebrews. There were always Gentiles who were converted, a very sizable number of them left Egypt with the Hebrews, but they were not compelled to abandon their ways. They were forbidden to propagate idolatry, but they could live side-by-side with the Hebrews and were not compelled, for example, to recognize their laws and abide by them. And therefore if they wanted to eat such meat and they considered it fit to eat, you could sell it to them, as long as you told them exactly what the meat was. In other words, it was not a case of coercion of these Gentiles, compelling them to follow dietary rules that they did not believe in. You and I today, in the main, follow the Biblical dietary laws. This is one reason why, for us, it is sometimes difficult to go into an alien cultural because you can’t be sure of what they eat.

Yes?

[Audience member] What’s the difference between clean and unclean animals?  iv

[Rushdoony] There is a difference between clean and unclean, but the basic difference is this, beasts of prey are, by in large, almost entirely if not entirely, unclean. Herbivorous animals are clean, that as a rough rule, is the best.

Yes?

[Audience member] Indistinct question about vows.

[Rushdoony] The vow cannot be dissolved unless the terms of the vow are broken, if there’s more than one person involved in it. For example, marriage vows are binding unless the terms of the vow broken, and then the law provides what the terms are under which it can be broken. This is a vow made with a man. A vow made with God has to be fulfilled.

Yes?

[Audience member] Question about the relationship between case law and the Ten Commandments.

[Rushdoony] Of course, I’m taking up the Ten Commandments one by one and we’re still on the second. The principle is not new with me, it’s an old one, that all ten of the commandments state broad principles, then the rest of the law gives case laws illustrative of these commandments. Now, I’m simply following the rough outline that two theologians established, one John Calvin, the other Edersheim, a great Jewish Christian scholar of a hundred years ago. But a good deal of this, I’m doing on my own because there’s been practically nothing done on the law. In fact, in the last century, there has been not a single thing of any consequence. You have collections of sermons on the Ten Commandments, but they’re very superficial, the law has been largely neglected.

Yes?

[Audience member] Question about the law of God and the law of the land.

[Rushdoony] Yes. First of all of the law was at one time a part of the legislation of every country in the West and all the law in this country was a part of the common law of the country, so the judges could give decisions not only out of the statute books but right out of the Bible, this was routine in the United States.

But, beginning in the eighteenth century, there was a steady rebellion against Biblical Law. The Enlightenment, or humanism, arose. By the end of the century, this culminated in the French Revolution in Europe, which was a war against Biblical faith, primarily. And one prominent humanist of the day said the trouble with the king was not that he was bad, if he had been bad he would have been tolerable, but because he was good and trying to be a Christian monarch, and for this they had to eliminate him, they had to have a revolution because they could not tolerate any return to strong Christian standards.

Now, with the French Revolution, they systematically set-out, in France, to destroy all Christian Law, all Christian Law, and they replaced it with a totally humanistic law, which is very dangerous. One thing that was overturned, for example, was the principle in Biblical Law that you were innocent until proven guilty. In France today you’re guilty until proven innocent, this is one of the ‘blessings’ of humanistic law, and we have adopted it in two areas in this country. One, before the various commissions and bureaucracies of the government if you have an appeal in labor relations, for example, and the other is military law. In military law you’re guilty until proven innocent. And in our civil courts, of course, our old Christian principle of innocent until proven guilty is rapidly being endangered.

Now, when the French Revolution overthrew the old order, its hatred was so intense for everything that was Christian Law, that because the old law protected even the trees and the mountains and the Law of Moses, as we shall see, forbid even cutting fruit trees down when you’re attacking an enemy, you cannot wage war against the earth because the earth is the Lord’s. You can wage war against your enemy, but not against God’s earth. The French Revolution went to work and stripped the mountains of trees to say, “So there! We’re thumbing our nose against all the old order.” And to this day France has a major problem of erosion because of that total stripping of all the forests.

Now in this country the American Revolution was what Peter Drucker, a conservative of sorts, but a moderate basically, has called the conservative counter-revolution. In other words, as against what was happening in Europe, we went the other way, we went the Christian way. But the anti-Christian humanistic forces went to work. Very early they commanded Harvard and the intellectual community. The Christian Laws prevailed until the Radical Republicans capture Congress in the Civil War, and after that we began to depart from it. The common law still makes it possible to appeal to this, but the courts and the lawyers know nothing about common law. So you see it has been systematically weeded out.

In other words, you remember in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell describes ‘newspeak’ and ‘double think,’ and so on, and the hole through which all history is dropped and destroyed so that the new history can be remade, this is what we’ve done. Once all of this was a part of our legal heritage, but you wouldn’t know it to read the history books, you’d never dream that it actually was there, nor what they have done. Just as they stripped all the forests of France that had been there for ages protected by Christian Law and grown by Christian Law. The Black Forest of Germany, by the way, is not a naturally-grown forest, it’s the path of the Reformation, of the Lutheran principle, the Biblical principle, of protecting the earth. So the forests of Germany are a product of Biblical Law. Well, just as they stripped the forests, so they stripped the law books and stripped the country of everything that represents the old order.

Yes?

[Audience member] Can you comment on the role of conspiracies in the French Revolution and the movements which it spawned?  v

[Rushdoony] There have been elements of conspiracy very definitely in this, and you can trace them in the French Revolutionary movement, but it’s been broader than that. It’s been the philosophy of humanism, a radical anti-God spirit. And one of the things that they did very early which was very, very telling, they captured the intellectual community and they took over the production of Encyclopedias. So that from the very first Encyclopedia, this was to be a means of brainwashing all the generations to come. “Let us produce a compendium of knowledge, so that instead of getting that deals with the Bible, and something with philosophy, and something here, so that you get a collection of different books, let’s have one big set. And let’s command every future set that comes out, lets control this field, then we can change the world’s thinking.” And this is where the Encyclopédistes in France set out, and they’re thinking, well it’s brilliant. You’ve got to give them credit for it, and controlled the future very easily through that movement.

Well, our time is up and we stand adjourned.

i.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

iii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

iv.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

v.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.