5. Law as Power and Discrimination (Remastered)

The Law as Power and Discrimination

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Romans 13:1-6, and our subject, ‘The Law as power and Discrimination,’ Romans 13:1-6

“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to executewrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.” i

The first commandment declares, “Thou shalt have no other God’s before me.” This can also be paraphrased. “Thou shalt have no other powers before me, independent of, or prior to me.” Now, one of the central violations of the first commandment is precisely this; to set other powers and independent to, or prior to God. And the central power which is made independent of and prior to God is the state. So it is that, when St. Paul in Romans is dealing with the doctrine of justification by faith, and deals with a priority, the absolute priority of God in salvation, that we are saved, not by our works, nor by our faith, though we are justified by faith, but we are absolutely saved by the sovereign act of God, which manifests itself in our faith. He then proceeds to the doctrine of predestination and then as he deals with the world at large, he declares that all power is ordained of God because God is the absolute Lord, the absolute power, therefore there could be no other power then God and all the powers that be are ordained of God.

Now, as we analyze the fact of power, we must realize, first of all, that power is inseparable from law. Law is not law if it lacks the power to bind, to compel, or to punish. The law is more than compulsion but without compulsion the law is not law. Power is basic. Similarly, to empty God of absolute power is to deny that He is God. When Karl Barth therefore argues against God being power, he is arguing against God being God, he is denying that godhead to God. Similarly, to separate power from the law, is to deny that it is law. God repeatedly identified Himself as the Almighty, which can be also translated as the All-Powerful. It is because He is the Almighty, because all power is His, that He can claim total sovereignty over all Heaven and earth and demand absolute obedience.

Now, power is a religious concept; where your power is there is your God, and there is your law. Law and power derive from a common source and that common source determines what is your God, what is the God of your system. This is an elementary fact, but it is a fact that is lost on many people in our generation because we have been filled with so much liberal nonsense.

Some of this liberal nonsense characterized the French government at the moment that Napoleon was seizing power. The revolutionists that had earlier seized power and had a reign of terror, were now face with someone else seizing power. But they had come to believe in the few years that had passed so much of their own liberal nonsense that as they were hearing the news that Napoleon had command of Paris with his troops and was seizing the government, one of the members of the government said, “But it is impossible for him to seize the government, we have the official seal.” But of course, Napoleon had all the power and therefore he was the lawmaker, and he was the government.

Similarly, the God of any system is the source of power and law. And hence it is in modern democracies and in modern Marxist states and in Fabian socialist states, the state becomes the God, becomes the source of law and the source of all power, and hence it is idolatry and violation of the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods, no other power, no other law before me.” Power, thus, is a religious concept.

In antiquity, the king, or the emperor was a God because he was the source of power. In the modern world, when the democratic state gains power, it claims religious prerogatives. It rejects Christianity, it works against biblical faith because it is now in process of making itself a God. In Communist countries this is openly done, and hymns are sung to Stalin or to Mao Zedong or to the state. It is the new God, it is the new source of all power.

Power is jealously guarded in every anti-Christian state, and the one thing that an anti-Christian government will not permit is a division of powers. And hence it is that our establishment is progressively anti-constitutional because the Constitution reflects the old Christian, the Biblical, the Old Testament and New Testament insistence on the division of powers. All human powers must be divided, there cannot be a concentration because this leads to idolatry, to a state playing God. And so it is the division of powers is the worst of all offenses from the governmental perspective, of every modern state.

Law is applied power, although it is more than power. Those who object to coercion are really objecting to law. Our modern left wing student rioters who object to coercion on the part of the university and on the part of the state are actually objecting to all law, because you cannot have law without coercion. Can there be any law in the family if there is no power to coerce the children on the part of the parents? Can there be any law in the schools or anywhere else in society if there is no power to coerce? Then every man is his own law.

St. Paul declares, in Romans 13:4 that the purpose of law is to be “a terror” to evildoers. Now, Paul meant exactly that. And it is interesting that every modern translation does away with the word “terror.” They’re all infected with the liberal mentality, they don’t like the idea that the law can throw fear, terror, into the hearts of evildoers. But this is precisely what St. Paul declares the purpose of the law is, and what the purpose of the civil government and of those who rule should be, it is to be a terror to the evildoers. But today the evildoers are a terror to the government, they have become the law of the land. Hoodlums march into Washington in the name of a “poverty march.” And what does the terrified government do, which subsidizes them to begin with? It gives them another $100,000,000. It was a profitable march. Who is the terror in this case? The evildoer!

But Scripture declares “The law, the civil authority, power, ordained power, should be a terror to evildoers.” For power has been so ordained of God:

“For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.”

God is absolute power, all subordinated powers derive their office, power, and authority from Him and must exist under His jurisdiction, and they must, therefore, be a terror to evildoers.

But our modern world is distrustful of power, even as it concentrates power unto itself. One of the great liberals of the last century, Lord Acton, declared, in a saying that has become quite famous:

“All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The sad fact is that many conservatives have made this liberal half-truth their favorite saying. But let’s analyze it, first of all, all power does not corrupt, godly power does not corrupt. The power of a godly husband, a godly father, to govern does not corrupt him. If he uses it properly under God, it does not corrupt him. It blesses his household and it blesses him. The power of a man to administer that which is his; his property, his money, his life, does not corrupt him. It blesses him and society at large when he uses it properly under God. Power does not corrupt when it is used properly.

Today we are faced with a twin evil with respect to the use of power; on the one hand there is the fear of using power on the part of our liberals, and on the other hand there is the immoral ungodly use of it to the destruction of society. One leads to lawlessness and anarchy, and the other leads to totalitarianism. But power does not corrupt when power is properly used. What we need is a return to the proper use of power to the respect for power, and the ability to use it under God.

Second, Lord Acton said, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then God who is the only absolute power is absolutely corrupt, and this is nonsense. Acton was wrong, man cannot have absolute power. He may strive for it, but he always remains under the absolute power of God. Not only is all power derived from God and decreed by His absolute power, but it is also decreed and bound by His absolute righteousness. Law, when it is true law, is not only power it is also righteousness, therefore it is a terror to evildoers. But, St. Paul declares, “It is the praise of the godly.” That is, it is their security, it is their praise, it is their reward, it protects them, it establishes them in their powers and in the liberty of their power.

Moreover, the very nature of the entire universe is to work to uphold its Creator and His law. So it is that in the song of Deborah we read, when Deborah hails the triumph of God against Sisera she says:

They fought from heaven;

The stars in their courses fought against Sisera. ii

The whole of nature, the whole of creation, worked against those who fought against God. Law is either righteousness or it is anti-law masquerading as law. Today all your legal philosophies are anti-law; Marxism, legal positivism, Fabian socialist law, democratic doctrines of law — all deny that law is an approximation of ultimate order and truth, and their doctrine of law is total humanism. They are the power, they make law, there is no truth beyond themselves. And whenever law is severed from righteousness and truth, it leads to anarchy and totalitarianism. Law,therefore, is not only power, but it is righteousness, and it must be derived from absolute power, absolute righteousness, God, or it becomes inescapably totalitarian.

Moreover, St. Paul declares, that law is ordained of God and it is called to be the minister of God for good. The law is required to be a ministry of justice under God. Now, this concept is humility to law. It is ministerial law, it is under God, it has limits to its power, it has limits to its jurisdiction. But all your modern doctrines of law, from your modern democracies to Marxism, have no limits to their power, to their jurisdiction. The state is its own law, there is no sense of humility, no sense of limitation. And so your modern states with their doctrines of law are proud and arrogant. They are inescapably totalitarian because they deny God.

Finally, law is always discriminatory. It must discriminate against lawbreakers. St. Paul declares that it must be a terror to evildoers, and the praise of the godly. Now, this is discrimination; terror to one, security to another. There can be no equality and at the same time law. Law always discriminates; it creates a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate. This means a fundamental inequality in society.

Now the sentimental, the soft hearted, do not like this, they’re always trying to break it. And as we shall see later,one of the points of entrance into breaking this is through children. They begin to say, “There must be no discrimination between illegitimate and legitimate children, they must have equal rights. After all it’s not the child’s fault.” This is a half-truth. What is the implication of this sentimental stance? It breaks down the family. If any illegitimate child can present himself as an heir, what has it done to the rights of the wife and of the legitimate children? It has destroyed them. Anyone can then appear under law and claim a right to an estate. And this, of course, has, as its purpose the breakdown of the family, the destruction of inheritance. The law is always discriminatory, and when it places a so-called “equality” between the legitimate and illegitimate child it is creating an inequality for the family, it is destroying the family, it is discriminating against the family.

It is impossible to have any kind of legal system without having a fundamental inequality. And what today the law is creating in the name of “equality” is a new kind of inequality. In other words, it is the Christian, it is the conservative, it is the law-abiding, it is the hard working who are discriminated against, who are now the inferior. Any law that is passed, the minute it becomes law, creates a discrimination, a distinction, an inequality. And even if you remove all law and return to the so-called state of anarchy you will then have inequality also, in that some will survive and be more powerful than others. Equality is an impossible concept. Attempts to use the law to establish equality are contradictions, they are either self-deceived who dream of equality, or they are, more commonly, attempting to deceive others in order to gain power.

And today because men will not believe in God, they seek to make themselves gods, “thou shalt have no other gods[no other powers] before me.” And today men are creating themselves and the state, their concept of the state, as those other gods and other powers.

The goal of the revolutionary activities of our day is power. It is not equal rights, it is not anything that they talk about, but power. The civil rights revolution is the case in point. When we analyze, for example, the Negro tradition as it goes back to Africa, we find that in Africa, the whole goal of man was power, pure unadulterated power through magic, through killing, through voodoo, whatever it was. In this country the whole goal of the Negro; both as a slave and afterwards through voodoo was power. Incidentally, the voodoo songs have passed into the culture at large in the form of jazz, jazz is voodoo music.

Now, the purpose of voodoo was always power. And it is simply the old savage desire for power without any responsibility, without righteousness, without God that still motivates the civil rights revolution. There is nothing that will stop it short of total power or short of godly power becoming a terror to these evildoers.

The same is true of the student revolution. What has happened again and again as they have created revolutions on campus and demanded concessions from the administration? When the administration has conceded, they have demanded more, they have refused to agree to the concession. Why? Because the concession, however exorbitant the demands were previously, were a front for a demand for total power. \And so, in whatever direction we turn, the revolutionary demands, whatever they are, are a front for the demand for power, anti-God power, attempts to become the other powers, the other gods who were set before God. And they cannot be dealt with until there is a return to biblical faith, to the belief in godly power, the exercise of godly power by ourselves and the demand that there be godly power exercised by the state, that it becomes a terror to evildoers and not to the godly.

Until we recognize that the root of all of this that we face is precisely that great idolatry of our day, the state has the power and is the god, and against this the Scriptures declares:

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Let us pray.

* * *

Our Lord and our God, we give thanks unto thee for this thy Word, and we thank thee our Father that in this day and age when men and nations seek to become gods, thou alone hast absolute power, thou art the only and the absolute true God and no other powers, no other gods can exist before thee. And we await, O Lord, thine action, thy judgment against these powers that be. Confound them, O Lord, and destroy them. Protect, defend, deliver, establish, and give victory unto thy saints. And grant that we may be delivered from the enemy, confirmed in thy freedom, and established in thy power, and that we may flourish and abound unto thy praise and glory. Grant us this we beseech thee. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now?

[Audience member] Could you clarify what legal positivism is?

[Rushdoony] Legal positivism is a philosophy of law which states that there is no law apart from the actual enacted law of the state. In other words there is no absolute law, there is no truth, there is no justice, nothing. The only law that exists is the law that the state passes, so that you cannot appeal against the state and say, “But this is wrong!” There is no right and wrong. You cannot appear to a higher law because there is no law except what the state orders.

Yes?

[Audience member] Can you speak more on the nature of the terror that the evildoer should have of God and of godly civil government?  iii

[Rushdoony] If your association with God is that of a sinner who is in high-handed action against God, there should be terror. So if God says that we should be in terror of His ministers, the ministry of judgment, the civil magistrate, how much more so in relationship to God, if we are in violation of His law?

We all loved our parents as children, but there were times when we were terrified of them we had done wrong, and we had cause to be terrified because they were going to come after us with righteous wrath. Now, it’s the same way with God. The Scripture tell us repeatedly that, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” We are also told that,“Perfect love casteth out fear.” Now, when we, in Heaven, become perfect, by the grace of God, then we will not be afraidbut now, because there is still sin in us, we have cause to be afraid of God at times, and we have cause at times to even be in terror of God. So there’s nothing wrong with terror or fear, it’s a very healthy emotion in many cases.

[Audience member] Would terror be greater than fear?  iv

[Rushdoony] Terror is a greater thing than fear, yes. I think it’s entirely healthy, I think we need a little more terror in our days in the right places.

Yes?

[Audience member] What does it mean to pledge allegiance?  v

[Rushdoony] The proper meaning is that you pledge it, the loyalty, and the obedience which is its due, under God. Just as you give to your employer, the loyalty, and the allegiance, the obedience which is his due as you do the work, but it is not a total thing. You are more than an employee, you are many other things besides and it can never be an allegiance above and beyond the requirements of the work.

Yes?

[Audience member] How can you submit to the authorities which God has put in place if those authorities be ungodly?

[Rushdoony] A very good question; this is a question which has concerned people again and again over the centuries. Now, when St. Paul wrote these words, he was writing when Nero was on the throne. And Nero was the kind of man we have to deal with in Washington today. He was a moral degenerate, he was a fuzzy liberal who gradually more and more a tyrant, and he was a totally irresponsible man. And yet St. Paul, at that point, was speaking of allegiance to Caesar, within bounds.

The answer to that is this. First of all, let us go back to St. Paul. What if St. Paul had said, “You cannot serve Nero or give him any allegiance whatsoever because this is the kind of man he is?” What he then would have been advocating would be revolution would it not? And what could have been more futile to advocate revolution in the Roman Empire when practically every person in the country was another Nero? You just didn’t have the same opportunities that Nero did.

And of course, your situation today is not much different. Practically, most the people in the United States are little Neros today. The only difference between themselves and the people in Washington is that the people in Washington have more power. So what could you do if you tried over throw such a government? You’ll only get another one of the same sort. And this was, of course, the futility of the situation in Rome. A lot of people did try overthrowing the government and did over and over again. There was a change of government finally every few years, and it only went from bad to worse. You can’t make a good omelet with bad eggs.

This is why, therefore, St. Paul in Corinthians, as he was dealing with this situation, told people that he required Christians to remain in the condition and they were. In other words, they were not to try revolution. This did not mean they were to surrender. But it meant that the basic faith was first of all in conversion.

Now, as we face the world’s situation today, and the situation in this country, one of the things we have to recognize is precisely this, that actually we’re not getting what we deserve. If we got what we deserved as a people we’d be a lot worse off.

One of the sickening facts when I was in Washington D.C. recently was to be told by people there that the situation is a lot worse since they had the rioting and things began to become more and more dangerous for anyone around the city. Why? A lot of people were on the borders of conservatism or were more or less conservative are now unwillingly to identify themselves with it. They are unwilling to admit what is happening around them. They haven’t the moral courage. What are you going to do with a people like this? There isn’t you see anything with which to build. As an old Dutchman remarked some years ago as he saw what was coming in this country and he said it was futile to start anything now, he said, “You can’t build a building with rotten wood.” So this is the reality.

Now, our course of action, then, as we try Christian reconstruction is to began first of all with the recognition, “This is going to collapse.” Since it is going to collapse, we have to prepare ourselves realistically, in terms of the fact that everything is going to fall apart around us, and second for reconstruction. We begin by preparing ourselves. We try to get the faith to others, and step-by-step to rebuild out of the ruins.

Now at what point do we refuse to obey the law? We’ve come back down to that question again. The law is ungodly, there’s no question about that. The law is so much anti-law that the law itself is breaking down progressively around us. We are the most law abiding element in the country today. The very liberals and radicals who are today ramming through the laws are the ones who are the last to obey it. So that law is crumbling around us.

Now, the law cannot compel us to destroy ourselves, at some point or other each of us in our conscience must recognize that the law is no longer to be obeyed, we must obey God rather than man. This is a point where each of us in our hearts, in terms of our conscience must determine where we will disobey, where we will make a stand. The Scripture doesn’t draw a fine line here because it can’t be done, this is to be done in terms of the situation. And we cannot say today or tomorrow when the time will come when we will say, “We have to make a stand against this or that law.” Certainly,when the law compels us to deny God or to renounce Him, then we have to make a stand. But where, apart from that, in terms of the legislation, is a matter for each person and their conscience.

[Audience member] Was this denial of the official law a consequence, the reason that there were so many martyrs during the Roman times?

[Rushdoony] The martyrdoms in the Early Church hinged upon this. The state was ready to recognize Christianity as an official religion if Christians would say, “Yes, we will take a position and be recognized as a legitimate lawful religion in the empire by recognizing the priority of Caesar.” But they refused to do that. They said, “How can we recognize the priority of Caesar?” This is to say that Caesar is greater than Christ, greater than God. “And so, we are ready to be a law abiding citizens.” And they did declare, “We are the best soldiers, the most faithful taxpayers, the most law abiding citizens, but we cannot recognize the priority of Caesar to God.”

And so this was the essence of it. And this is still the essence of the issue. This is why progressively the state will be hostile to those of us who hold to this faith because they want to be the power, the law, the god, and they will not tolerate anything which denies their priority. So this is the point at which the challenge will come again, probably, if it lasts that long.

Yes?

[Audience member] Could you speak about the idea of conscientious objection?  vi

[Rushdoony] Now, the principle of conscientious objection is a very thoroughly biblical one. It declares that the law of the state is not absolute, and therefore a man can, by appeal to higher law, argue his case. However, these people do not believe in any higher law, they are simply using and abusing this fact.

We can be conscientious objectors, but we have to recognize that increasingly it is precisely our conscientious objection that will be the least valid one in the eyes of the state. Because what the modern conscientious objector is objecting to is the idea that there is any absolute truth, any absolute law. He is working to destroy a law that is premised on Christian principles, even as he uses it. So theirs is a part of a revolutionary program.

Now, of course, the future largely depends on this; whether the breakdown will come before the modern totalitarian regimes are able to accomplish their desire to blot out everything we represent. The breakdown, I trust, will come before they accomplish their purposes. But it is significant that in the Soviet Union, today there are a lot marketeers operating in terms of old-fashioned free enterprise. That is, they are actually becoming millionaires by engineering all kinds of black marketing schemes. Occasionally, some of them are caught and punished, but the punishment is mild. In other words, they are ready to tolerate quite a bit of capitalism as a black market illegal operation, but they will not tolerate a black market church because this is the essence, to them, of everything that is counter-revolutionary. The black marketeer who becomes a millionaire and is bringing in stuff from out of the country, buying stuff from their own factories and selling it illicitly, is a criminal, but he is not a counter revolutionary, which is interesting. So the revolution is against God, rather than against capitalism.

Yes?

[Audience member] Should we be burdened about the children of churchgoers who still send their offspring to state schools?  vii

[Rushdoony] No, no it isn’t, I think we all should be burdened with the failure of Christians to see the issues and to commit their children to anti-Christian schools. There’s nothing presumptuous about it. If you had a headache, you’re going to feel it. So that when we have a very unpleasant condition it is natural to be burdened about it. All we can do sometimes is to pray and to continue to work.

One final question because our time is up.

[Audience member] Law keeping is seen only in the negative sense by all too many Christians today.  viii

[Rushdoony] Yes, law keeping is seen in merely a negative sense by too many Christians. For example to take the, to one commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” many Christians feel that they’ve kept the law just by not committing adultery. But if they exam the commandments behind that it has reference to a whole world of commandments concerning the family.

Now, what are these commandments concerning the family? Well, they have to do with the responsibility of the father and of the mother concerning covenant training for their children, which deals with Christian schools. With respect to a whole world of constructive activity you see. So although the ten commandments sums up in one statement the protective commandment, the other commandments that are behind it have to do with a whole world of reconstruction, of establishment, of institutions.

Now, the law says, “Thou shalt not kill.” When we come to it we will see what it has to do with the protection and furtherance of life which extends even to laws with respects to fruit trees. So most people take the law at the barest minimum, which is not to except it really, which is try to get by rather than to believe and to uphold the law. Well, we shall deal with these things in due time.

We are adjourned now.

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

ii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Jdg 5:20.

iii. Question added for clarity and brevity.

iv. Question added for clarity and brevity.

v. Question added for clarity and brevity.

vi. Question added for clarity and brevity.

vii. Question added for clarity and brevity.

viii. Question added for clarity and brevity.