7. Responsibility and Law (Remastered)

Responsibility and the Law

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Deuteronomy 24:17–18, and our subject, ‘Responsibility and the Law.’

“Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge: But thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore, I command thee to do this thing.”

A central point of Biblical Law is summed up in one sentence; Deuteronomy 24:16. 

“The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” 

This is a fundamental and important principle. This law is cited in Kings and Chronicles as well as in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. There are certain central aspects of this law which must be noted in order to appreciate its significance. 

First of all, responsibility is an aspect of every law system; someone must be held responsible whenever there is an offense. No law system can escape this fact; for every crime, there must be a responsibility, this is inescapable. If there is no responsibility, then no law enforcement is possible.

Thus, the important question to ask with respect to any doctrine of responsibility is this: Who is responsible? The answer to this question is a religious question. It makes clear, how you answer this, what you believe. The responsibility can be attached to the family, to society, the community, the environment, to the gods, or to a person. Where the responsibility is placed makes for a fundamental difference in your social order. “Who is responsible?” This is an all-important question, and the way you answer this makes all the difference as to how you begin then to deal with the world. 

Second, we must not forget in terms of this law that the Biblical doctrine is one of individual responsibility. The essence of sin is personal guilt. According to Genesis 3:9-13, the sinner tries to evade personal responsibility, this is basic to his sin. So that, when God confronted Adam and Eve with their sin, the attitude of Adam was:

“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” ⁱ

So that Adam, instead of confessing his personal responsibility, blamed Eve, “My environment, my wife,” and ultimately, God. “You, God, are responsible for my sin because you gave Eve to be my wife, and I would never have been in this problem if it had not been the woman and you.” Similarly, Eve evaded her responsibility by saying:

“The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” ⁱⁱ

This, then, in the essence of sin in the Biblical point of view; the evasion of personal responsibility. Whereas godly man assumes responsibility for his actions. He does not say, “It was the condition that made me do this,” but, “I, even I, have done that which is evil in thy sight.”

Third, related to this question of who is responsible, the question is, “To whom?” Because the very word ‘responsible’ means accountable to someone or to something. So that, when you say, “Man is responsible,” or if you say, “Society is responsible,” or, “The family is responsible,” then you have to follow with this point, “To whom?” And again this question is all-important, and the answer is religious one; “Are you responsible to the family, or to the community, or to the state?” The Biblical doctrine is that we are responsible first of all to God, in essence to God:

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,

And done this evil in thy sight: ⁱⁱⁱ

David said with respect to his sin. Now, it was an act of adultery so that there was a responsibility to a man and to a woman, and yet in essence it was to God, primarily it was a sin against God, secondarily only against man. God confronts man at every point with His total law, and therefore man has a total responsibility at every point to God; essentially and basically to God, only secondarily to man.

Fourth, we must then say that guilt cannot be shifted to others or passed on to the people around a man. Guilt is non-transferable, this is an important point in theology. A disposition or a nature can be inherited, but not guilt. We may inherit a disposition from our parents which predisposes us to a temper that can lead us into guilty actions, or a stubbornness which may be a vice or virtue depending on how we use it, or a disposition perhaps to alcoholism, but we inherit only a nature, not a guilt. Thus, man inherits from Adam a sinful nature, but he does not inherit Adam’s guilt. 

In Adam we have a nature that is one of total depravity, that is, every aspect of our being is tainted with sin. So that, whether it is our intelligence, our mind, or our will, or any other aspect of our being, it is governed by this sin, this desire to put ourselves ahead of all else, to be our own God. So we inherit this nature, but we do not inherit Adam’s guilt. We then incur our own guilt. This distinction between guilt and nature is fundamental to the Biblical doctrine of law, and this is absent from most legal systems. Where guilt is transferable, then punishment is transferable. Of course, this is, in essence, the blood feud. 

We’re all familiar with the story of the Hatfields and McCoys, and some years ago Life magazine had long, long article on the Hatfield-McCoy feud. Now what was the essence of the feuding? Well, if one Hatfield had done something then all the Hatfields had to pay. If one McCoy did something, then all the McCoys were guilty of it, so that you could shoot any Hatfield or any McCoy for what one Hatfield or one McCoy had done. Guilt, in other words, was transferable; the guilt of one is the guilt of all. 

Now, this is, in essence, not the position of the old blood feud, but it is the essence of modern sociology. We were given quite a treatment along these lines when President Kennedy was assassinated. We were told that we were all guilty, the guilt was transferable. Responsibility, guilt, and punishment are inseparable under law or under thought. You cannot separate them; where there is responsibility, there is guilt, and there must be punishment.

So that, if you take responsibility away from the individual, where it rests in Biblical Law, you transfer also guilt and punishment. And so it is, when you begin to weaken Christian faith or to destroy it, you destroy also the doctrine of individual responsibility which has been responsible for all the progress of the Western world and you pave the way for collective guilt and collective punishment. 

This is the essence of Marxism. Marxism holds an entire class to be guilty, and this guilt attaches itself and is transferred to anyone who in any respect by any opinion associates itself with that class. Responsibility, guilt, and punishment, because they are a unified system, are transferred by Marxism to everyone that opposes the communist regime. 

Now, because our political philosophers, our sociologists, are not Christian, they themselves are guilty of the same kind of thinking. And so, we are all blamed equally for the guilt of a few and there is a transference of responsibility, guilt, and punishment. 

Today the doctrine of individual responsibility, the Biblical doctrine, has been undermined. And for the undermining of this we have to go back to the theory of evolution. Basic to evolutionary thought is environmentalism; man is a product of his environment. He has evolved in relationship to a changing environment and the actions of that environment upon him, so that man is a product of nature, of the world. Therefore, man is a creature of his environment, rather than a creature of God, and man is what an evolving world has made him, and man’s actions are a product of that environment and its molding of man. This means, therefore, that the environment is responsible for man, and the environment must be blamed for what man does. Thus, the family is responsible; the parents, or the husband, or the wife, or the community. Society is blamed for the crime of the juvenile delinquent and of the criminals, and so it is punished. The lawless, thus, are absolved of guilt, and the guilty made innocent while the innocent are punished. 

Now, we must ask the question because those who are critical of our position will raise it, “Does the Bible teach nothing of community responsibility?” And the answer is, “Yes, of course it does.” But the responsibility of the community, according to Scripture, is to see that justice be done. It is not that the community is held guilty for the crime, but only that the community is held guilty of the crime if it does not see that justice is done. 

So there is, in this sense, a community responsibility for justice. In Deuteronomy 24:17 it is made clear that the family cannot be blamed nor society. And those who are aliens, who are without family cannot be taken advantage of; justice is not social, it is individual. And social justice is an attack on individual responsibility and the immunity of the innocent. Therefore, the community has a responsibility both to see that justice is done and to protect those who are alone as they face justice. So that the alien, the stranger, must be rendered justice in every situation, there can be no prejudice against him. But it also means that, when justice is not done, according to Deuteronomy 21:1-9, if a murder cannot be solved, the whole community then bears the responsibility. An atonement had to be made before God as well as restitution to the offended person. 

Thus, in Christian law until fairly recently, within the last century, the community had a responsibility when a crime was not solved. In England for example, a fine was levied upon every district for every unsolved crime because the community had a responsibility. Very often restitution had to be made by the community to the injured party or his heirs if justice were not done. 

It is interesting at this point to note that the Biblical Law does not use the word ‘crime.’ Check a concordance and you’ll never find the word ‘crime,’ only transgression, transgression. Now, the word ‘transgression’ indicates a deliberate offensive action. The word ‘crime’ which is crept in in modern times is different; it doesn’t indicate responsibility in the same way. “A crime has been committed,” we say, but when we use the Biblical word, “There has been a transgression,” it is an active word, it indicates that somebody willfully, deliberately, was guilty of a transgression or an assault, an offensive action against another. So that the word ‘transgression’ means a deliberate violation of God’s Law, whereas the word ‘crime’ is neutral, it doesn’t necessarily imply an actor, it speaks just of an offence, and you can attach that offense to society or the family, or the environment generally. 

In Biblical Law, you see, we have an ultimate personalism. The triune God, you see, is the author of all things, and every offense is an offense against the person of God primarily, and secondarily the person of man. Whereas in modern sociology, in modern criminology, we have a basic impersonalization. Because of its evolutionary perspective, we evolve out of nothing, and persons are not the basic thing; ultimately there is chaos, impersonal chaos. And so, crime too is an impersonal kind of thing; it isn’t the self-conscious, deliberate act of a man. And therefore you read persons out of offenses, out of crimes. Crime becomes an impersonal offense. Thus, law that is humanistic, evolutionary, is disrespectful of persons. Persons are not in charge, things govern the world. Hence, people are treated very callously by social scientists because their belief is that, since man evolved out of an impersonal world and has always been manipulated by an impersonal environment, why should man object when social scientists manipulates him? Because, after all, he’s never had anything in the way of a personal world, and the best that he can account for is this impersonal social scientist; he’s never had it so good.

The de-christianization of society, therefore, is also the depersonalization and the destruction of man. Thus, our text, Deuteronomy 24:16, disappears from all society with its belief in individual responsibility where a belief in the personal God, where a belief in Christian faith wanes and disappears. To have individual responsibility we must return to Biblical faith.

Let us pray.

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we thank thee that in this world of storm and turmoil, where the foundations are shaking and the earth slips and slides, we have a foundation that cannot be shaken, even thine infallible Word. Ground us day by day more firmly on thy Word that so among the many changes of this life our hearts may surely there be fixed to where our true joys are to be found, even in Jesus Christ our Lord. Bless us, our Father, as we ground ourselves on the Rock of ages. In Jesus' name. Amen. 

* * *

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

Yes? 

[Audience member] The Civil Rights revolution is characterized by this doctrine of irresponsibility, it seems. They want to transfer the responsibility for crimes committed long before our birth to this generation; you can’t transfer either freedom or responsibility. ^iv

[Rushdoony] A very good point. Basic to the civil rights revolution is this anti-Christian doctrine of responsibility. And you’re very right in stating even as we cannot accept responsibility for the crimes committed in the past, neither can we accept the responsibility for the freedom we inherit from the past. Each generation must reestablish again itself on the foundations of godly liberty or it will destroy its inheritance. And this is one of the problems. We’ve prided ourselves too often today on what our forefathers did, and what our forefathers did we are destroying. And of course, our Lord attacked the Pharisees because, He said, “You say ‘had we been alive in the days of old we would not have stoned the prophets.” But, He said, “You yourselves are the same as those who stoned the prophets and are doing the same today in that you will crucify me.” So He made it clear that they could not claim virtue from the past, any more than guilt could be inherited from the past. 

Another question?

Yes?

[Audience member] When we are saved, we aren’t only saved from our sin, but our natures are fundamentally changed. Is that correct?  ^v

[Rushdoony] Yes, you’re right. When Christ saves us, He saves us not only from our sin, but He regenerates us so that our old sinful nature is transformed and the new man now in us, Jesus Christ, is of a different nature. 

Now, the old Adam is judicially dead, but he is still alive and kicking and the process of sanctification is to mortify the old man and to make the new man, Jesus Christ, more and more the ruling force in our lives. 

[Audience member] Is there a significance to all this rain that we are having?

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s a good question. Now, one of the points that the Bible does make is when the people offend God, among the things with which He judges them are storms and droughts, various kinds of natural disaster. And we must say, on top of that, that when storms come, if man has sinned against God by his abuse of the earth, those storms carry a more fearful consequence. In other words, when men deal with the earth with contempt for the realities of the earth, then they pay for it. For example, the kind of construction that has been going on in areas where there should be no construction, or else there should be deep foundation where the earth can slip, where there’s shale underneath the surface, to build as they have is clearly wrong, and they know enough of geology to know that you can’t do that sort of thing.

A great deal of the damage around the State has been because of our highway departments, their road cuts. They cut into a bank and then heavy storms erode that bank and the whole thing begins to slough. So, these are judgments on us, and these things do bring out some of the consequences. 

While we’re on this matter there’s something I’d like to call your attention to. We’ve been treated to lately to a lot of fraud in the papers and on television and the radio, in this indignation over the oil leak. Now, that was terrible, but what is the answer they’re proposing? Federal controls. Now, who are the worst offenders as far as polluting the ocean? Governments; State and City and Federal government agencies. 

Now, the destruction wrought by this oil leak is one thing that happened from the oil companies in I don’t know how many years of offshore drilling. But every day of every year the pollution, here for example, just here alone, is phenomenal in the sewage that is dumped into the ocean. It’s killed off the kelp beds to a great extent, and kelp beds are basic to a great deal of industry. The kelp beds are used, they are harvested for a great deal of industrial use. With the killing off of the kelp beds, the fishing has been hurt. Up the coast, say, to Monterey Bay, and the pollution there has destroyed the tremendous canning industry. Cannery Road, for example, at Monterey is now gone. All the canneries that were once there, block after block of them. I think there are three or four of them now operating, and they’re operating out of fish that’s brought in from Alaska and so on. Go up to the San Francisco Bay, and you’ll find the same thing. In other words, a great to do is being made about this oil slick, which is bad but is a once-in-a-generation thing and nothing about the continual pollution. 

For example, a very interesting fact of pollution, the most fearful pollution in North America, is Lake Erie. Where is the pollution coming from? It is coming from industrial waste that is dumped and urban waste, all of which is under Federal agencies, which are allowing this to continue, or City governments. And it’s continuing incessantly to the point that in Cleveland today and adjacent areas one of the major fire hazards are the rivers that flow into Lake Erie. 

Now, have you ever heard of rivers as a fire hazard? The rivers catch on fire, regularly! It’s dangerous to flick a cigarette butt into the various streams around Lake Erie because of the tremendous amount of gases generated, plus the oil and various natural wastes. The sewage alone generates a considerable amount of gas. And today they are frightened about what is beginning to happen in Lake Erie. The deposits of various sewage and wastes and so on are at a depth of twenty-five to a hundred and twenty-five feet. And the various chemicals in this huge sludge are beginning to combine to form various gases and they’re afraid of what may happen, and the tremendous destruction this could wreak. And yet, all this is under government agencies, you see.

Well, I got off on a bypass there, but it’s a very important point today. So that next time someone talks about the oil slick, agree with them that it’s bad, but worse is what is happening every day of every year. 

[Audience member] Is there an individual and a national responsibility for sin? Does God still judge nations? ^vi

[Rushdoony] Yes. There is individual responsibility for individual sin, and a national responsibility for national sins, and God very definitely then brings judgement. 

It’s very interesting to go through American history and see how God has used, for example, the weather to protect people. Now, a few years ago a lawyer, Timothy Campbell, wrote an interesting book on how God had providentially used the weather and natural circumstances to make possible this country. How, for example, when the Pilgrims landed, they would have, had they landed a year or two earlier, been wiped out by the Indians. But in the winter prior to their landing an epidemic, a plague, had virtually wiped out Indians from New England. So that the settlement of the Pilgrims was possible there. ^vii And then he begins from that to trace how again and again in subsequent history and, for example, in The War of Independence the weather saved the American cause. We would have been completely destroyed had it not been for providential storms and circumstances which delivered us. 

Now, there’s a long, long history of this sort of thing so that we must say God does use the weather to bring judgement or blessing upon a people.

Yes?

[Audience member] Are the cited instances due to cause and effect or the special intervention of God? ^viii

[Rushdoony] Cause and effect require a belief in God. In other words, people who do not believe in God do not believe in causality. This is why the modern philosophers and your modern philosophers of science deny the concept of causality and substitute for it a ‘probability concept,’ because they deny causality. To say that there is cause and effect is to deny that there is a person behind things, you see, and they deny the person of God. 

We have been hearing the last two Monday nights, and I urge you to come tomorrow night to hear Dr. Bolton Davidheiser in our Chalcedon lectures, there are some notices in the back. And in those lectures, Dr. Davidheiser has been pointing out, very tellingly this past week, to what lengths they go to deny that there is any cause, that things have just happened, that there is no law. And he cited this last week, one major scientist who criticized various scientific textbooks because they referred to the idea of law and of cause, to purpose, to meaning. And he said we must remove all such concepts from our textbooks in order to make them truly scientific.

Yes?

[Audience member] Since all scientists work with the laws of thermodynamics, how can they deny law and causality? ^ix

[Rushdoony] A very good point. Well, the answer is they’re schizophrenic. As Dr. Van Til has pointed out, when they work in the laboratory, they work in terms of the laws of thermodynamics and whatever other laws they’re dealing with. When they get out of the laboratory, they deny these things. So, they are taking advantage of the fact that the world is God’s world and that there is a law in it and that there is causality without admitting that they do so. If they were true to their statements then they could have no science, because they would have to say there is absolutely no order in the world, no law, no causality, nothing follows from something else. So they are dishonest themselves. Thus we must say, if they were faithful to their beliefs they could have no science. 

[Audience member] There are, however, first causes and secondary causes. ^x

[Rushdoony] Yes. God is the first cause and everything else whether it be man or natural forces constitutes a secondary cause. All secondary causes are determined by the first cause, God.

Yes?

[Audience member] Can you comment on the current problems in Nigeria? ^xi

[Rushdoony] Yes. Because of the rain it’s a little hard to hear today. The Biafra problem in Nigeria has several things attached to it. First, most of the Christians of Nigeria are in Biafra. And, while they are trying to deny it, this is, in part, a religious war. And the Christians of Biafra are being systematically wiped out. 

Second, these new African states are dummy countries; there is nothing to tie them together. Because, for example, in what is called ‘Congo’ today, there are any number of tribes that are totally unrelated to one another; different culturally, very hostile to each other. And the idea of bringing them together is nonsense. The whole purpose of having these countries is to have units of manipulation. Actually, there is more control of these peoples in Africa now then when they were under colonial administration. But, if they allow these people to split up, then the ability to control will be gone. So that if Africa splits into as many countries as the people of Africa would like to split, how could you possibly manipulate these African countries? You’d have a different country every few miles as each different tribal group said, “We want our independence.” And the result is there is a hostility to independence by Biafra for this reason. 

Now, after talking so much about the rights of the colonial people to self-determination, it reveals the hypocrisy of all of this by opposing the right of the Biafrans to self-determination. So that this whole facade of liberation is a lie, it has been hypocrisy from the beginning. 

Well, our time is up and we are adjourned, and I trust you get home safely. 

i. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 3:12.

ii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ge 3:13.

iii. The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Ps 51:4.

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. T.J. Campbell, Central Themes of American Life, 1959.

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.