Appendix B

RUSHDOONY ON THE TITHE: A CRITIQUE

And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. Neither must the children of Israel henceforth come nigh the tabernacle of the congregation, lest they bear sin, and die (Num. 18:21-22).

The text is clear: the Levites as a tribe were entitled to the entire tithe. That is, they had a legal claim on it: "all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance." This inheritance was as secure legally in God's eyes as the landed inheritance of the other tribes. Of course, it was far less secure operationally; the men of Israel did not always pay their tithes. Those who refused to pay their tithes to the Levites were guilty of robbing God. As surely as it was theft to steal title to another man's land, so was it theft to withhold any part of the tithe from the Levites. The first form of theft was active; the second form was passive; but both were theft. "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation" (Mal. 3:8-9).

The context is equally clear regarding the legal basis of this entitlement: the Levites' service as guardians of the tabernacle/temple's sacramental boundary. They were required to stand at this sacramental boundary and restrain (probably execute) anyone who trespassed it (Num. 18:1-22).⁽¹⁾ The Levites' entitlement and the Levites' task as boundary executioners were explicitly linked by the Mosaic law.

There can be no doubt: the Levites were entitled to the whole tithe. I ask again: On what legal basis? The text answers: their service in the temple. But which form of service: Sacramental or social? I answer: sacramental. Rushdoony answers: social. On this seemingly minor issue, the Christian Reconstruction movement has divided. It will remain divided until one side or the other gives up its view of the judicial basis of the tithe, or until one of them disappears. (The latter is more likely.) Contrary to those people who blame all institutional divisions on personality conflicts -- even God vs. Satan, I suppose -- the dividing issue here is ecclesiology: the doctrine of the church, and has been since 1981.⁽²⁾

Church and Tithe

The theology of the tithe is not a minor issue; it is central to biblical ecclesiology. It is also important for a proper understanding of the covenant -- specifically, the church covenant.⁽³⁾ The tithe is an aspect of judicial authority in the church, i.e., point two of the biblical covenant model, hierarchy-representation.⁽⁴⁾ This representation is both substitutionary ("Who or what in history dies in my place?") and judicial ("Who in history declares me judicially acceptable before God?").

The proper performance of this representative ecclesiastical office does mandate certain social services -- charity, for example -- but the covenantal-judicial basis of the eldership is not social; it is sacramental (point four of the biblical covenant model: oath-sanctions).⁽⁵⁾ A man is not a minister of the gospel just because he calls himself one or because he is charitable. He is a minister only because he has been ordained by a lawful church. Ordained ministers guard the sacraments against profane acts: boundary violations. That is, they control lawful access to the sacraments. They include some people and exclude others. The following four aspects of a church are judicially linked: the formal ordination of ministers by other ministers (i.e., no self-ordination or ordination exclusively by laymen), hierarchical authority (an appeals court system), ministerial control over legal access to the sacraments, and the local institutional church's exclusive authority to collect and distribute all of its members' tithes in God's name. To deny any one of these aspects of the church is to call into question all four. So it was under the Mosaic Covenant; so it is under Christ's New Covenant. Rushdoony has implicitly denied the first two points by defending ecclesiastical independency, and he has emphatically denied the other two. He is consistent (or at least he was until 1992).⁽⁶⁾ His theological critics had better be sure their theological positions are equally consistent.

The Doctrine of the Church in Christian Reconstruction

The major dividing issue within Christian Reconstruction has been the doctrine of the institutional church. Officially, the movement split in 1981⁽⁷⁾ over Rushdoony's outrage regarding a minor theological point in an essay I submitted as my monthly column in the Chalcedon Report. I had relied on a passage in James Jordan's 1980 master's thesis.⁽⁸⁾ Rushdoony had made a very similar observation in the Institutes, which he probably had forgotten making.⁽⁹⁾ I find it difficult to believe that this blow-up on Rushdoony's part was based merely on a brief section in Jordan's master's thesis. Jordan had sent him a copy of it over a year before the blow-up; he had remained silent about it. I believe that the real offense was our view of the institutional church, which we had begun to promote vigorously through the fledgling Geneva Divinity School. There was an irreconcilable division over the correct answer to this question: What is the fundamental institution in the long-term process we call Christian reconstruction? Rushdoony has repeatedly answered: "the family," along with its subordinate agency, the Christian school. The "Tyler wing" of the Christian Reconstruction movement answered: "the church." There is no way to reconcile these views.

If this dispute were simply over the percentage of men's income owed to God, it would not be a major dividing issue in our day. There is nothing unique about Christians today who dismiss as "legalism" any suggestion that they owe ten percent of their net income to God. But Rushdoony, as the co-founder of Christian Reconstruction, could hardly take this antinomian approach to the question of the tithe. The Bible is clear about the tithe's mandatory percentage: men owe ten percent of their net income to God.⁽¹⁰⁾ The argument is not over the tithe's percentage; the argument is over which agency (if any) possesses the God-given authority to collect it and then distribute it. The debate within Christian Reconstruction is over this question: Where is the locus of God's delegated sovereignty over the allocation of tithe: In the tither or the institutional church? I answer: with the institutional church. Rushdoony answers: with the tither.

Church and Tithe

From 1965 until today, Rushdoony has sporadically attempted to cobble together his doctrine of the institutional church in order to support his view of the tithe. His view of the tithe is that Christians can lawfully send the tithe anywhere they wish; therefore, the institutional church has no lawful claim to any portion of the tithe, or at least not above the tenth of a tenth that went to the Aaronic priesthood under the Mosaic law. He has needed a doctrine of the church in order to defend such a thesis theologically. In this appendix, I examine the connections between his view of the tithe and his view of the institutional church.

This has not been an easy task. Rushdoony has never written a book on the doctrine of the church, nor do I expect him to, for reasons that will become clear as you read this appendix. (This is even more true of his defense of the continuing authority of the Mosaic dietary laws: not so much as one full page of exegesis devoted to the topic, despite its great importance for him personally as a distinguishing mark of his theology.)⁽¹¹⁾ There is no issue of Chalcedon's Journal of Christian Reconstruction devoted to the doctrine of the church. I assure the reader, this was not my decision as the editor of the first fifteen issues, 1974-1981. In Tyler, I participated in a symposium on "the Reconstruction of the Church" in 1985, which my monetary offering above my required tithe financed.⁽¹²⁾

Church and Family

Late in his career, Rushdoony has attempted to trace the institutional church back to the family -- not just chronologically but covenantally. This theory of ecclesiastical origins is the heart and soul of this, his most important theological error. He writes: "The father of the church was Abraham, with whom God made a covenant (Gen. 15), and through whom the covenant sign, circumcision, was instituted (Gen. 17). The covenant with Israel in Exodus 20 is a continuation of the same covenant, a covenant of grace and law. The church thus began as a family, and the structure of both the covenant nation and congregation retained this same character."⁽¹³⁾ The church began as a family, Rushdoony says; hence, the family in both his theology and his social theory is the central institution: the master covenantal model. Rushdoony's social theory is familiocentric. He regards the institutional church as an extension of the family.⁽¹⁴⁾ In his view, the great war for the minds of men is the war between family and State. The Bible teaches otherwise.

What Rushdoony fails to recognize is that the priesthood did not originate with Abraham. It originated with Melchizedek. Abraham paid his tithe to Melchizedek (Gen. 14:20), and he received bread and wine from him (Gen. 14:18). Jesus Christ's high priestly office was grounded in Melchizedek's primary priesthood, not Levi's secondary and judicially subordinate priesthood (Heb. 7:9-10). Here is the fatal flaw in Rushdoony's familiocentric argument: Melchizedek had no parents (Heb. 7:3). I take this literally: Melchizedek was therefore a theophany. At the very least, he had no genealogy, indicating that his authority was not derived in any way in the family. Melchizedek is the refutation of Rushdoony's ecclesiology and therefore of his entire familiocentric social theory.

The Biblical Position: Ecclesiocentrism

I have long disagreed with Rushdoony on the centrality of the family in Christian society. The fundamental institution in history is not the family; it is the church, which extends beyond the final resurrection as the Bride of Christ (Rev. 21). The family does not: there is no marriage in the resurrection (Matt. 22:30). Jesus made it plain: the false ideal of the sovereign family is a far greater threat to Christianity than the false ideal of the sovereign State. Jesus never spoke this harshly regarding the State:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me (Matt. 10:34-37).

The family is temporary, limited to history: no marriage in the resurrection. "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matt. 22:30). The State is temporary, also limited to history: no suppression of evil (Rom. 13:4) in the post-resurrection, sin-free world. But the church is eternal. The church is therefore the central human institution. The family and the State are legitimate covenantal institutions in history, but they do not possess the most important authority given by God to any institution: the power to excommunicate. Why is this the most important sanction? Because it alone is binding in eternity. Breaking the family bond by death or divorce is not binding in eternity; physical death through execution is not binding in eternity. In contrast, lawful excommunication is binding in eternity. Christian social theory must affirm without compromise or qualification that the true sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper are more important in history than the democratic State's imitation sacrament of voting or the family's imitation sacrament of sexual bonding.

Rushdoony understands the relationship between church authority and excommunication, so in order to defend his sociology of familism, he has denied that the church possesses the authority to excommunicate, as we shall see. He has thereby denied the existence of the keys of the kingdom -- the judicial authority of the institutional church in history (Matt. 16:19). He does this in the name of Christian orthodoxy, as we shall see.

 

The Conservatives' Position: Familiocentrism

Why do social and political conservatives traditionally identify the family as the central institution of society? There are two primary reasons. First, because they reject the liberals' assertion that the central social institution is the State. In this they are correct. Such a view is necessary but not sufficient for accurate social theory. Second, because they adopt natural law theory. We must examine both assumptions: one incomplete and the other incorrect.

Anti-Statism

Conservatives regard the family as the only institution with sufficient authority and respect to challenge the State successfully on a long-term basis.⁽¹⁵⁾ They view the social function of the institutional church as an adjunct to the family, just as liberals see the church as an adjunct to the State. Conservatives rarely view the institutional church as a covenantally separate institution possessing superior authority to both family and State. This is a serious error of analysis.

The authority to excommunicate is the greatest judicial authority exercised in history. The lawful negative sanctions of the rod (family) and the sword (State) are minor compared to the sanction of excommunication (Matt. 16:19). But because formal excommunication does not impose bodily pain in history, modern man dismisses the church's authority in both history and eternity. This includes modern conservatism. It also includes most Protestant churches, who refuse to honor each other's excommunications. They thereby deny Jesus' words: "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28). The only agency in history that lawfully announces a person's condemnation to hell -- short of repentance before physical death -- is the institutional church. This authority is implicitly recognized by the modern Western State. A condemned criminal on his final walk to the place of execution cannot legally be accompanied by his spouse or his political representative; he can be accompanied by a minister.

The battle between patriarchalism and statism in the West has been going at least since the rise of the Greek city-state, an outgrowth of clans and family sacrifices.⁽¹⁶⁾ The problem is, the family always loses this battle as a covenant-breaking society advances over time because the family does not have the power possessed by the State: the monopoly of life-threatening violence. Step by step, the State replaces the family in the thinking of most members of covenant-breaking society. The State possesses greater power; in the power religion of humanism, this justifies the expansion of the State.

The family fights a losing defensive battle when it fights alone. Its authority is steadily eroded by the State. For example, the divorce rate rises when the State replaces the family's functions, especially its welfare functions. Therefore, if the familiocentric view of the church were true -- the church as an adjunct to the family -- the church would inevitably lose alongside of the family. Yet this view of the church is widely held today. Result: those people inside various church hierarchies who seek power have increasingly allied themselves and their churches with the State.⁽¹⁷⁾

Natural Law Theory

An implicit natural law theory undergirds conservatism's social analysis: belief in the existence of moral absolutes that are discoverable by universal logical principles. This faith in moral-logical universals undermines the judicial authority of the church. The Trinitarian church is not universal in human history; the State and family are. "Religion" and "the sacred" are undeniably universal in history; the church is not. Because the family and the State appear to be the universal institutions, and because the church exists only where Christianity has made inroads, conservatives conclude that the war for liberty can be won only if the family is strengthened against the State. The church is regarded by conservatives as a useful ally in the family's battle against the State. The church serves as social cement; this is preferred to political cement. Whenever the church claims more than this subordinate role for itself, American conservatives become leery. This is why the primary authors of the U.S. Constitution -- right-wing Enlightenment humanists⁽¹⁸⁾ -- were willing to mouth words of praise for "religion," but never for Jesus Christ as the incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, nor for His church.⁽¹⁹⁾ Religion in general is elevated; the church in particular is demoted.

This view of the church implicitly places world history above church history because the institutional church has been narrower in its influence than mankind up to this time. The most widely accepted opinions and logic of "mankind in general" -- the covenantal sons of Adam -- are assumed by natural law theorists to be the legitimate moral and judicial standards for all societies. This implicit and sometimes explicit humanism of natural law theory is contrary to the Bible's revelation of God's work in history through His covenant people. Covenant-breakers are adjuncts to covenant-keepers in history, just as the lake of fire (Rev. 20:10) will be an adjunct to the culmination of the New Heaven and New Earth (Rev. 21:1) in eternity. Covenant-keepers rather than covenant-breakers are the focus of history. Israel was central to the ancient world, not the great empires. The exodus is central to human history, not the fall of Troy. The angel of death is central to human history, not the Trojan Horse. The Pentateuch is central to human history, not The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid. Moses is central to human history, not Plato and Aristotle. Special grace is central to history, not common grace.⁽²⁰⁾ Natural law theory, whatever its specific ethical content may be -- on this crucial point, natural law theorists disagree -- is the outworking of common grace. Bible-revealed law, not natural law, is central to history. Looking back from eternity, all men will recognize this. Men are required by God to evaluate history in terms of what He has revealed about eternity, not evaluate eternity in terms of what men assume about history. Humanism denies this. So does natural law theory.

Rushdoony's Ecclesiology

We come now to Rushdoony's doctrine of the church. He subordinates it to the doctrine of the family. In doing so, he adopts familiocentrism, though not natural law theory. This abandonment of theonomy in favor of traditional conservatism has undermined the very foundation of his theology. His view of church and family was an anomaly in his original theology -- an error no larger than a man's hand. Like Elijah's cloud, it has grown into a mud-producing storm since 1981.

Rushdoony has systematically avoided developing a doctrine of the institutional church. He offers one chapter in the Institutes (XIV) and one in Systematic Theology (XII), but both are incomplete. Neither addresses in detail the judicial issues of the ordination of ministers and public excommunication by ordained church officers. This is especially absent in Systematic Theology, completed in 1984 but not published until mid-1994. He has broken not only with the Westminster Confession of Faith (which he officially had to affirm until he resigned from the ministry of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1970) and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Episcopalianism (which he has officially affirmed since 1974), but with all of Trinitarian orthodoxy from the Council of Nicea forward.

Critics of the church's lawful, God-ordained claim on every individual's lifetime commitment again and again seek to elevate "Christianity" and dismiss "the church," as if there could somehow be Christianity without the church and its mandated sacraments. One sign of a person's move away from historic Christianity's doctrine of the church to conservative humanism is his adoption of the pejorative word, Churchianity.⁽²¹⁾ The person who dismisses "churchianity" is often a defender of his personal ecclesiastical autonomy: a sovereign individual who judges the churches of this world and finds them all sadly lacking. In his own eyes, all the churches fall short of his almost pure and nearly undefiled standards. No church announces God's authoritative word to him; rather, he announces God's authoritative word to the churches. No church officer represents him before God; instead, he represents himself. Like the foolish defense lawyer who hires himself as his own advocate in a court of law, so is the man who is contemptuous of "churchianity." He confidently excommunicates all churches for failing to meet his standards. All congregations have failed to measure up, except (should he deign to begin one) his own. He ignores the obvious: a self-excommunicated person is no less excommunicated.

Rushdoony's views on the institutional church have become adjuncts to his theory of the tithe. Prior to his assertion in 1991 of the Chalcedon Foundation's status as a church (initially, he called it a chapel)⁽²²⁾ as well as a governmentally chartered educational organization, his views on the tithe were fully consistent with his views regarding the visible church. They constituted a single, consistent, and monumental error. This error, if applied retroactively to the conclusions of Volume 1 of The Institutes of Biblical Law, would destroy the covenantal basis of Rushdoony's theology and therefore also his social theory.

The fact is, his three-fold error came late in his career. This shift in theology began shortly before he left the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1970, but it was not completed until the early 1980's. In other words, what Volume 1 of The Institutes hath given, Volume 2 need not take away. Only small traces of his error are visible in Volume 1; this error can and must be separated from that foundational book. Because of this, I find it necessary to challenge the book that he and Edward Powell co-authored, Tithing and Dominion (1979).⁽²³⁾ The chapters are identified as to which author wrote which. I refer here only to Rushdoony's chapters. (Rushdoony broke decisively with Powell shortly after he broke with me and Jordan.)

Tithing and Dominion

With respect to dominion the Bible teaches, first, that the dominion covenant was established between God and the family. God has assigned to the family the primary dominion task in history (though not in eternity): to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:26-28) -- a biological function.⁽²⁴⁾ Second, as we shall see, the tithe is a mandatory payment from man to God through a covenantal institution: the church. Therefore, if the tithe were the basis of dominion, God's law would mandate a tithe to the family, the agency of dominion. But there is no God-specified mandatory payment to the family, i.e., no legal entitlement. On the contrary, it is the productivity of individuals, families, and other voluntary associations that is the source of both tithes and taxes. This is inevitable: the source of the funding cannot be entitled to funding.⁽²⁵⁾ The individual⁽²⁶⁾ or family is the source of the funding. The tithe is therefore owed to the institutional church by the individual or the family.

Rushdoony has defended the tithe as the foundational basis of biblical dominion. He has also described the church as an unproductive organization, as we shall see. Conclusion: if the tithe is foundational to dominion, and if the church is unproductive, then it is the tithe rather than the church which is the source of Christianity's cultural productivity. In terms of such a perspective, the institutional church's importance in the dominion process is secondary to the tithe's importance. This is exactly what Rushdoony began saying publicly after 1973.⁽²⁷⁾

It is not clear to me whether his doctrine of the church and his doctrine of the tithe originally stemmed from his decision to redirect his own tithe money into the Chalcedon Foundation and to remove himself from the authority of any local church, or whether his shift in theology came first. These events surely paralleled each other chronologically.⁽²⁸⁾ He did not bother to articulate his views until the late 1970's. Today, however, it is clear that his published doctrine of the church is an extension of his published doctrine of the tithe. He constantly writes about the tithe; until his 1991 essay in Calvinism Today, he steadfastly refused to write clearly about the institutional church.

In June, 1994, his two-volume Systematic Theology appeared.⁽²⁹⁾ The manuscript had been completed in 1984. Chapter 12, "The Doctrine of the Church," was more radical and confrontational against Calvin's doctrine of the church than had been Chapter 14, "The Church," in Institutes of Biblical Law. But what came later, in the early 1990's, was more radical and confrontational than Systematic Theology.

Church and Sanctions

In contrast to the family, both State and church are lawfully entitled to economic support from those who are under their respective covenantal authorities. The State's jurisdiction is territorial (e.g., over non-covenanted resident aliens) and judicial (e.g., over its covenanted citizens who live outside the State's territory⁽³⁰⁾). The church's jurisdiction is equally judicial, though not (in Protestant societies) territorial. Both institutions have lawful claims before God over a small portion of the net productivity of all those under their jurisdiction. Their God-given authority to impose negative sanctions against those who refuse to pay is the outward mark of their covenantal sovereignty. To deny the right of either church or State to bring such sanctions is a denial of their God-delegated covenantal sovereignty.

Rushdoony has understood this with respect to the State; he has therefore opposed the tax revolt or "patriot" movement.⁽³¹⁾ But he has denied that any payment is automatically owed to the institutional church. No church can lawfully compel its members to pay it their complete tithe or even any portion thereof, he insists. "It is significant, too, that God's law makes no provision for the enforcement of the tithe by man. Neither church nor state have [sic] the power to require the tithe of us, nor to tell us where it should be allocated, i.e., whether to Christian Schools or colleges, educational foundations, missions, charities, or anything else. The tithe is to the Lord."⁽³²⁾ He then cites Malachi 3:8-12. With respect to the tithe, Rushdoony believes in the divine right of the individual with respect to the institutional church: no earthly appeal beyond conscience. This is not an error of logic on his part; it is a consistent application of his ecclesiology.

The existence of a mandatory payment to the church is evidence of a covenantal relationship: a legal bond established by a self-maledictory oath⁽³³⁾ which each church member takes either explicitly or representatively (by parents). The church has a lawful claim on a tithe of every member's net increase in income.⁽³⁴⁾ Unlike the State, which is ruthless in collecting taxes owed to it, the modern church rarely enforces its lawful claim. This is not surprising: the modern church rarely enforces anything under its lawful jurisdiction.⁽³⁵⁾ The State has arrogated power to itself in the face of the churches' defection. In our day, most Christians regard this as normal and even normative. They prefer to think of the church as judicially impotent. They prefer to think of the State's physical sanctions as the greatest possible sanctions. They refuse to regard formal excommunication as threatening them or anyone else with eternal consequences. Like the humanists, they prefer to fear men rather than God. They stand in front of the local church and in effect chant the child's challenge: "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names [`excommunicant'] can never hurt me!"

Neither the State nor the church is a profit-seeking organization. This is why both possess lawful claims on a small part of the net productivity of their members. Therefore, they cannot be primary agencies of dominion in history. They are secondary agencies of dominion.⁽³⁶⁾ Thus, I conclude, the tithe cannot be a primary aspect of dominion. It is a secondary aspect.

Productivity

This is not to say that church and State are not economically productive. They are the source of God's authorized covenantal sanctions: the negative sanctions of the sword (State) and the positive and negative sanctions of the keys of the kingdom (church). Rushdoony's language is seriously misleading when he writes that "church and state are not productive agencies."⁽³⁷⁾ This is the language of secular libertarianism, not Christianity. Nevertheless, he makes an important point: "The state is a protective agency whose function is to maintain a just order, to insure restitution for civil wrongs, and to protect the people from external and internal enemies. . . . The church's function is protection and nurture by means of its ordained ministry."⁽³⁸⁾ What is the biblical meaning of "protection"? Civil protection means the defense of boundaries -- judicial rights against invasion, either by individuals or by the State itself. Protection by the State is achieved by its enforcement of negative sanctions against evil-doers (Rom. 13:1-7). Biblically speaking, the State provides no lawful positive sanctions, e.g., nurture. Protection by the church is also achieved through its imposition of negative sanctions (e.g., I Cor. 5). Nurture by the church is the product of positive sanctions (e.g., II Cor. 8).

Rushdoony mistakenly contrasts these beneficial covenantal functions with what he calls "productivity." His view of productivity is incorrect. These covenantal functions are basic to productivity, but they cannot be financed unless those under their authority remain productive. The income of both church and State must come from the outside: from God through the individual and the corporate entities that are under the respective jurisdictions of church and State.

Rushdoony discusses the non-productivity of the church in a chapter on the Lord's Supper (Holy Communion). He makes a catastrophic theological error by denying the sacramental basis of the church. "The problem in history has been the unhappy sacramentalization of church and state."⁽³⁹⁾ He rightly castigates the idea of a sacramental State, but then writes: "Similarly, the church sees itself as the sacramental body and preempts Christ's role. Communion is thought of as a church rite rather than Christ's ordinance." This contrast implicitly assumes that Holy Communion is not a church rite, i.e., not a biblically mandatory ritual: a false theological assumption if there ever was one. He reduces communion to a "feast of charity" or a "love feast."⁽⁴⁰⁾ He never acknowledges the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as a divinely empowered covenant-renewal ceremony of the institutional church, a ceremony that invokes God's positive and negative sanctions in history and eternity.

The institutional church has only one ultimate means of discipline: excommunication, i.e., excluding a person from the rite of the Lord's Supper. Without the positive sanction aspect of the Lord's Supper, the negative sanction of exclusion is judicially meaningless. Such a nominalist view⁽⁴¹⁾ of the Lord's Supper strips the institutional church of its disciplinary authority. Rushdoony has not heeded Calvin's warning when Calvin wrote that "it is certainly a highly reprehensible vice for a church not to correct sins. Besides, I say our Lord will punish an entire people for this single fault. And therefore let no church, still not exercising the discipline of the ban, flatter itself by thinking that it is a small or light sin not to use the ban when necessary."⁽⁴²⁾ Nor, with respect to local church membership and faithful weekly attendance, did Rushdoony pay attention personally, from at least 1971 until late 1991 -- assuming that the Chalcedon Foundation is in fact a church⁽⁴³⁾ -- to Calvin's next warning: "But this is not to say that an individual is justified in withdrawing from the church whenever things are contrary to his will."⁽⁴⁴⁾ Calvin was not a defender of the individual's autonomy in relation to the institutional church. Calvin fully understood what the sole basis of a declared Christian's judicial separation from the institutional church has to be: excommunication.

The Sacraments

The sacraments are means of bringing God's sanctions in history on his people: blessings and cursings. They are covenant signs. They are oath signs. Rushdoony insists that the sacraments are family rites, not rites administered under the exclusive jurisdiction of the institutional church. He replaces the sacramental church with the sacramental family.

Baptism

Rushdoony sees Baptism as a covenant sign, which it is. But affirming covenant in general is not sufficient. A covenant sign must be administered. Which institution has been granted this monopoly by God: church, state, or family? For two almost thousand years, the church's answer has been clear: the church. This opinion, Rushdoony says, is a sign of the hardening of the church's arteries. "Baptism is a covenant fact. The church has converted it into an ecclesiastical fact. Circumcision in the Old Testament is a family rite, because the family is the primary covenant institution; the family gives birth to and rears the child."⁽⁴⁵⁾ But physical birth is Adamic; Adam's sons need adoption.

Was circumcision a family rite? No; it was an ecclesiastical, priestly rite. The head of a household may have administered this rite as a household priest in a nation of priests (Ex. 19:6). If so, was this done in his judicial office of father or priest? The issue here is covenantal authorization. The question of covenantal authority is easy to decide. Answer this question: Who possessed the sole authority to annul the rite of circumcision by the excommunication of covenant-breakers? The answer is obvious: a Levitical priest, not the father. Covenant-breakers were to be cut off from the church and therefore from citizenship by excommunication.

How do we know that the father did not possess this authority? Because excommunication mandated family disinheritance. But a father had no authority to disinherit his son. "If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his" (Deut. 21:15-17). If he could not disinherit the hated wife's son, surely he could not disinherit the loved wife's son. Rushdoony commented on this passage several times in Institutes of Biblical Law, but he failed to make the judicial connection linking circumcision, excommunication, and disinheritance. All were exclusively priestly acts.

As a household priest, the father may have circumcised his sons. We are not told this specifically regarding the Mosaic era. Surely, without specific revelation, we should not draw revolutionary ecclesiastical conclusions from the mere possibility that the father circumcised his son. But if he did, he did so a delegated agent of the Levitical priesthood. He did not retain the authority to excommunicate, i.e., judicially revoke the covenant. This points to the two-fold judicial reality of circumcision. It was priestly in two senses: general and special. First, the father representatively invoked the covenant oath in the name of his son through the rite of circumcision. He had a lawful role as a father: a general Israelite priest (Ex. 19:6). Second, in invoking the covenant oath, he affirmed the law of the covenant. As a general priest, perhaps he could lawfully do this. But a special priest of the tribe of Levi, not the head of the household, would determine whether the circumcised son met the stipulations of the covenant: confession of faith and outward obedience to God's law. This identifies both sacraments as ecclesiastical.

Having defied the entire history of the church by proclaiming baptism as a family rite, Rushdoony then condescendingly announces: "Having said all this, let me add that much of the church's teachings on baptism are [sic] very important. The error has been to limit its implications to the society of the church, and membership therein."⁽⁴⁶⁾ This is as persuasive as a statement from some dedicated socialist: "Having said all this, let me add that much of the Austrian School economists' teachings on the free market is very important. Their error has been to ground their system on the idea of private property."

The Lord's Supper

Having announced the transfer of the authority to baptize from the church to the marital family, he immediately moves to a discussion of the Lord's Supper. He begins: "As we have seen, baptism is in to [sic; he means into] the covenant of our God."⁽⁴⁷⁾ This was never a matter of dispute. What is a matter of dispute is which covenantal agency possesses the right to baptize. This is a dispute between Rushdoony and (in round numbers) all the theologians in the history of the church.

He writes: "Like baptism, the Lord's Table or communion is rooted in the Old Testament, in the Passover."⁽⁴⁸⁾ He appeals to Jesus: "Ourrd's institution of this rite came with the Passover celebration and with His interpretation of the meaning of Passover as fulfilled in Himself."

Let us pursue this assertion for a moment. The move from Passover to the Lord's Supper came in the upper room on the night before Jesus' crucifixion, as Rushdoony affirms in Institutes of Biblical Law.⁽⁴⁹⁾ Let me ask an obvious question: Where were the wives and children of the apostles? Peter had a mother-in-law (Matt. 8:14); presumably, he also had a wife. His wife was not in the upper room, nor was his mother-in-law, who dwelt in his household. Unless Rushdoony is ready to affirm the celibacy of the apostles, he faces a monumental problem: Passover was in no way a family rite in the sense of a marital family. The Head of a new household of faith administered the rite that night. This household was confessional. Something radical had taken place in the exterior form of Passover that night, but not judicially. Jesus did not violate the Mosaic Passover.

Unless the Lord's Table was a judicially radical break with Passover - which Rushdoony denies - then this change in outward form points to an inescapable conclusion: the judicial-covenantal agency of final authority over the Passover was never the marital family. To the extent that the family administered certain aspects of this rite, it did so, as in the case of baptism, under authority delegated from the priesthood. The Lord's Supper honors this judicial fact. The special priesthood of the institutional church still possesses authority over the rite; the general priesthood is still subordinate. This was always the case judicially in Mosaic Israel; the Lord's Supper makes this judicial reality visible to all. But some people refuse to see.

Rushdoony has remained silent about the implications of this transformation of outward celebration. Had he ever discussed the change in celebration, he could not readily have come to this conclusion: "As we examine the Lord's Table or eucharist from the perspective of Scripture, we must recognize that it is the Christian Passover. The Passover of Exodus is a family rite; it was oriented to admitting the smallest child able to speak and understand into the joy of salvation and the meaning of salvation (Ex. 12:21-27). It is no less a family celebration in the New Testament; the family is now Christ's family."⁽⁵⁰⁾

Judicially, this statement is correct, but it proves the opposite. The Lord's Supper is no less a family celebration than Passover was under Mosaic law because, judicially speaking, Passover never was a rite under the authority of a marital family. It was always a rite of God's adopted family: the institutional church. This is why all the families of Israel had to journey to a central location to celebrate Passover (Deut. 16:6-7). Passover in Israel was never celebrated at home. It was celebrated outside the geographical jurisdiction of a family's tribe because it was celebrated under another tribe's authority. This authority was national because it was Levitical: the tribe of Levi. It was therefore under the authority of the special priesthood. The twelve non-priestly tribes could not claim any originating authority over Passover. This means that the general priesthood of Israel, i.e., members of the twelve non-Levitical tribes, could not lawfully administer Passover apart from the presence of the special priesthood: the Levites. Like King Jeroboam (I Ki. 12:25-33), Rushdoony ignores this. Jeroboam, however, was not a familist.

We return to the question of excommunication. No one who had been excommunicated could lawfully attend Passover. The physical mark of circumcision was judicially irrelevant; the officially declared judicial status of the excommunicate was the only relevant legal issue. Only the Levitical priesthood had the authority to excommunicate. Furthermore, the father or other household head did not have the authority to invite an excommunicated son or daughter to celebrate the Passover. The excommunicate was considered covenantally dead. (Orthodox Jewish sects continue to this day to have public burials of those sons who have converted to a rival religion.)

Rushdoony's view of the local church affected his doctrine of the sacraments. He neglects -- and his exposition necessarily denies -- the sacramental basis of the local church's authority to collect the tithe. "As against an empty rite, Christian fellowship in Christ's calling, around a table, is closer to the meaning of the sacrament."⁽⁵¹⁾ But if the judicial rite of the Lord's Supper is not backed up (sanctioned by) the promise of eternal sanctions, both positive and negative, then it is truly an empty rite: judicially empty -- the nominalist-fundamentalist-memorialist view of the sacraments: Anabaptism.⁽⁵²⁾

Rushdoony's post-1973 published view of the church is non-covenantal: the church as a fellowship without judicial sanctions rather than an institution possessing the judicial keys of the kingdom. He has even insisted that a church has no lawful authority to discipline those members who refuse to attend its worship services: "We are urged not to forsake `the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is' (Heb. 10:25), but the church is not given authority to punish those who do."⁽⁵³⁾ Then who is? Only God, apparently. There is supposedly no appeal beyond the individual's conscience: the "divine right" of a non-attending church member. Then what judicial authority does the institutional church possess? In Rushdoony's view, none. What meaning does church membership have? Less than membership in a local social club, which at least requires the payment of dues for membership. In Rushdoony's theology, a local flower arrangement society possesses more authority over its members than a local church possesses over its members.

Rushdoony's view of church discipline represents a fundamental break from the history of the church, including the theology of the Protestant reformers and especially Calvin. Rushdoony insists (without any citations from the Bible) that a Christian has the God-given authority to remove himself indefinitely from a local congregation and cease taking the Lord's Supper, but without ecclesiastical judicial consequences. This necessarily implies that self-excommunication, which is a form of excommunication, is not an actionable offense within the church. This is a denial of Holy Communion, for it is a denial of excommunication.

From Calvinism to Autonomy

Calvin was clear about the keys of the kingdom in history. He cited Matthew 16:19: "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." He then commented that "the latter applies to the discipline of excommunication which is entrusted to the church. But the church binds him whom it excommunicates -- not that it casts him into everlasting ruin and despair, but because it condemns his life and morals, and already warns him of his condemnation unless he should repent. . . . Therefore, that no one may stubbornly despise the judgment of the church, or think it immaterial that he has been condemned by the vote of the believers, the Lord testifies that such judgment by believers is nothing but the proclamation of his own sentence, and that whatever they have done on earth is ratified in heaven."⁽⁵⁴⁾ This is why the sacrament is a monopoly, the church is sacramental, and the tithe is owed to the church. Rushdoony denies all three conclusions.

Rushdoony had ceased being a Calvinist by the late 1970's. He became a predestinarian Congregationalist without a local congregation (until he announced his own in 1991), a man who holds a Baptist view of church hierarchy: "Another aspect of jurisdiction is this: every church, small or great, is Christ's congregation, not man's. Its loyalty must be to God in Christ, and to His law-word, not to a denomination nor a sister church."⁽⁵⁵⁾ Late in his career, Rushdoony has begun to issue his Baptistic anathemas against all church hierarchies: "There is in this an implicit and sometimes unconscious heresy. Heresy is a strong word, but nothing less can describe the problem. This authoritarian attempt to control other churches is revelatory of a lack of faith in the triune God and an unseemly faith in the power of man. It assumes the virtual non-existence of the Holy Spirit."⁽⁵⁶⁾ Those who hold a hierarchical view of church government are members of a modern Sanhedrin, he says. "We must separate ourselves from modern Sanhedrins."⁽⁵⁷⁾

This is a strange line of theological reasoning from someone who retained the title of minister of the gospel only through his ordination by a tiny Episcopalian denomination (total number of congregations in the denomination: two, both of them located hundreds of miles away from Rushdoony). During his years of ministry in this officially hierarchical denomination ("sanhedrin"?), he refused to attend any local church. He continued to avoid taking the Lord's Supper. He clearly abandoned Calvin's doctrine of the church. This is why Calvinists who started out with him in the early 1970's (or in my case, the early 1960's) have been excluded from his presence. Their view of the church is, in his eyes, anathema, and so are they. He will not tolerate opposition on this point.

Defining the Institutional Church

The church possesses the authority to include and exclude people from the sacraments: "binding" and "loosing." The Bible teaches that the tithe is judicially grounded solely in the covenantal authority of the church, which in turn is grounded on its unique sacramental monopoly. We see this connection between tithing and sacramentalism in the first biblical example of tithing: Abraham's tithe to Melchizedek, the priest of Salem, who gave Abraham bread and wine (Gen. 14:18). It was not Melchizedek's office as king of Salem that entitled him to Abraham's tithe; it was his priestly status, which authorized him to distribute the positive sanction of Holy Communion: bread and wine. Rushdoony discusses Melchizedek briefly, but only with respect to the authority of the priesthood generally; he does not mention the tithe or Holy Communion.⁽⁵⁸⁾

What is noticeable about Rushdoony's avoidance of any clear definition of the church is that he has long refused to define the institutional church as the exclusive source of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Instead, he has focused on the church in the broadest sense, i.e., the kingdom of God. He writes in Law and Society: "Second, the church is the City or Kingdom of God. It is thus more than any church (as we call it) or state can be. The boundaries of God's church include every `church,' state, school, family, individual, institution, etc. which is under Christ's royal law and rule. But it includes far, far more."⁽⁵⁹⁾ Notice that he placed church in quotation marks when referring to institutional churches -- organizations possessing the authority to excommunicate. He did not do this with the following words: state, school, family, individual, institution. Do these quotation marks indicate an underlying contempt for local institutional churches?

What, then, of the lawful role of the institutional church? Until Systematic Theology, he had avoided dealing with two crucial issues: a judicially binding ecclesiastical hierarchy and the uniquely sacramental nature of the church. The real issue is this: the church as an oath-bound, covenantal, hierarchical institution whose elders possess the power to excommunicate those who rebel against church authority. He rejects a carefully avoids a covenantal-judicial definition of the church, substituting a functional definition. "It should be apparent by now that our concern is less with the church as an institution and more with the church as the witness to and the evidence of the life and the work of the triune God in history."⁽⁶⁰⁾ In Law and Society, he wrote: "Very clearly, the church in Scripture means the Kingdom of God, not merely the worshipping institution or building. . . . It includes godly men and their possessions, and the earth they subdue in the name of the Lord."⁽⁶¹⁾ He then launched into a chapter titled, "Church Imperialism." It is a long attack on bishops and church hierarchy, which he insisted are pagan in origin: "ecclesiastical totalitarianism."⁽⁶²⁾

Familism

In Chapter 75, "Kingdom Courts," he returns to his fundamental social theme: familism. He has already equated the church with the kingdom of God. "In the Kingdom of God, the family is in history the basic institution."⁽⁶³⁾ The unique, central social institution is not the institutional church, he insists; rather, it is the family. The family possesses an authoritative court, he insists -- indeed, the authoritative court in history. In contrast, Rushdoony rarely discusses in Law and Society the existence of authoritative church courts except in the context of family courts, which possess superior authority, he says, since the pattern of all government is based on the family. Jethro's hierarchical appeals court in Exodus 18 "utilized an already existing family office, the eldership. The elders are mentioned before Jethro speaks, in Exodus 18:12. They were heads of families, clans, and tribes."⁽⁶⁴⁾ Notice that Rushdoony adopts the term elder, used in the New Testament to designate an ecclesiastical office, to identify what he insists was a "family office, the eldership." This was a denial of what he had written in the Institutes: "The elder, first, was what the name indicated, an order man in a position of authority. The elder was comparative, so it could mean a man ruling over his household."⁽⁶⁵⁾ What it could mean, he said in 1973, it always means, he said in 1984. He goes on: "Scripture gives us the basic ingredients for success: the godly family, and the system of elders."⁽⁶⁶⁾ In his chapter, "The Theology of the Family," he writes that "the family is a community, the central community. . . . The family is the Kingdom of God in miniature when it is a godly family. . . ."⁽⁶⁷⁾ It is God's Civilization.

No Evidence Offered

To prove this, he offers no evidence. There is no verse in the New Testament that refers to elder as the head of a family. Luke 15:25 refers to an older son. Presbuteros usually refers to a church office. Bauer's definitive lexicon offers no example of presbuteros as a head of family, either in the New Testament or Greek literature. The word means what it means in English: older.⁽⁶⁸⁾ This grammatical assessment is supported by the long entry in Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.⁽⁶⁹⁾ Rushdoony in 1984 rested his argument on an assertion for which there is no grammatical evidence.

He then compounds his error: "Another office, that of deacon, is the name for a family servant."⁽⁷⁰⁾ Not according to Bauer or Kittel, it isn't. It means simply servant. It usually refers in Greek literature to someone who waits on a table, just as its context indicates in Acts 6. The author in Kittel lists six general uses for the term in the New Testament: waiter at a meal, servant of a master, servant of a spiritual power, servant of Christ, servant of God, servant of the church. He oers no example of household servant.⁽⁷¹⁾ It is always dangerous to base an important theological point on an appeal to grammar. It is sometimes legitimate, but risky. When you do this, make sure there is as least some grammatical evidence.

Training in the Family

Rushdoony goes on: "Furthermore, the training for government in church, state, and other areas is in Scripture essentially within the family."⁽⁷²⁾ A statement of chronological fact is not a judicial standard for holding office. That we learn lots of things in our families is incontrovertible. This sociological fact has no judicial implications unless the Bible says it does. The Bible does not say what Rushdoony here says that it does.

Why should the family be regarded as the "kingdom of God in miniature"? Why not the State? Why not the church? The fact is, there is no "kingdom of God in miniature" -- no single institution that uniquely represents God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is the holy realm of God's dominion in history through formal covenanting by His people and their faithfulness in extending this dominion.

What Rushdoony insists on is the judicial separation of the New Testament office of elder from the institutional church. "Moreover, there is no reason to restrict Paul's counsel concerning the election of elders (or bishops) to the institution for worship. Paul's church is the Kingdom of God, the assembly of the redeemed. His counsel sets forth the requirements for eldership in every realm, church, state, school, etc."⁽⁷³⁾ With such a broad definition of elder as a ruler in general, the eldership loses its sacramental character. This is Rushdoony's oft-stated goal: the de-sacramentalization of the institutional church.

There are two enormous theological risks inherent in such a view of the church: 1) the attempted de-sacramentalization of society, i.e., secular humanism; 2) the attempted sacramentalization of either State or family. The fact is, sacramentalization is an inescapable concept. It is always a question of which institution becomes elevated to sacramental status. Unfortunately, Rushdoony has not understood that sacramentalization is an inescapable concept. He seeks to de-sacramentalize the institutional church, but he remains silent about any substitute. He does not see the Lord's Supper as an ecclesiastical matter, but rather fundamentally a family matter: "The central sacrament of the Christian faith is a family fact, a common sharing of bread and wine from the Lord's Table."⁽⁷⁴⁾

Which institution becomes the prime candidate for sacramentalization in place of the church? In Rushdoony's theology, there is no possibility of the sacramentalization of the State, but why not the family? Rushdoony has moved dangerously close to this conclusion. In between his assertion of the family as the kingdom of God in miniature and his discussion of the office of elder as "first of all a family office,"⁽⁷⁵⁾ this disconcerting statement appears: "Our regeneration establishes a union with the Lord. Our every sexual act is an essential step which makes us a member of the other person."⁽⁷⁶⁾

Rushdoony needed to qualify his language covenantally. It is legitimate to describe Christ's love for His church as the love of a husband for his wife, as Paul does in Ephesians 5:23-33, but not when you begin with a theory of the church as an extension of the family. Also, not when you personally refuse to take the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, for this refusal raises the issue of a substitute sacrament. Biblically, there is no form of covenant renewal for the family except through membership in the institutional church and participation in the Lord's Supper. But if the uniquely sacramental character of the institutional church is denied, then what is to prevent the substitution of sexual bonding for the Lord's Supper?

There is no court of earthly appeal beyond the family, Rushdoony says. Here is his defense of patriarchalism -- and therefore of clannism. "The strength of family government is that the godly family, while having numerous problems and disputes, settles these within its own circle. The family is the institution of strength. To go outside the family is to deny the family and to break it up."⁽⁷⁷⁾ This means the divine right of the family -- no earthly appeal beyond it, either to church or State. Although he never mentions the word, this is the divine right of the patriarch. He presents this novel thesis as an exegesis of I Corinthians 6:1-8, where Paul enjoins members of the Corinthian church not to go before pagan civil courts. In short, he argues for the divine right of the individual against the institutional church (the tithe issue), but not against the hierarchical family.

The Family as the Central Institution

His Systematic Theology makes his familiocentrism explicit. "The family is central to the covenant and therefore to every Christian institution, church, state, school, and all things else."⁽⁷⁸⁾ Rushdoony again cites Exodus 18 to prove his contention that the family is the central institution. Exodus 18 established a hierarchical chain of appeals courts. The problem for Rushdoony's argument is that this was civil government. It did not apply explicitly to Aaron, the priest. It applied to the tribes. Rushdoony insists that "both the synagogue and the church were ruled by elders; obviously both saw this as God's requirement."⁽⁷⁹⁾ With no footnote, he infers from unnamed extra-biblical sources that only elders served as leaders of the synagogue. There is no biblical evidence about the synagogue, presumably a post-exilic institution. But even if this eldership was required, this does not lead to his conclusion, namely, "The office of elder was more than tribal: it originated in the family; the head of the family was its elder. God thus ordained that the family be the nucleus of government."⁽⁸⁰⁾ Where does it say in the Bible that only family heads may be civil rulers? Nowhere. Rushdoony did not cite a single biblical law to support his contention. Fact: Samson was an unmarried civil judge for many years.

What about the church? Here, there is biblical evidence that a man must be a successful ruler of his own household before being ordained by a church as a minister (I Tim. 3:1-11). This no more makes the family the nucleus of all government than a requirement that a man must be able to read in order to vote in a civil election makes literacy the nucleus of all government. The family is a training ground in learning how to govern. There is nothing revolutionary in this observation. The church is to use the family as a surrogate. If a man cannot rule well in his family, Paul said, do not make him a leader in the church. The odds are against his success. That this requirement governs ordination to the pastorate is clear to everyone except seminary professors and churches that ordain unmarried seminary graduates. They have substituted term papers for family rule as the screening criteria. This has been disastrous for the church.

First Timothy 3 does not make the family the nucleus of all government. Self-government is the nucleus of all government. This is why there will be a day of final judgment in which each person will be judged by God. God will not ask where your parents are, or your children, or your ministers, or your rulers. God will ask only what you thought of His son, Jesus. The reason why Paul specified the family as the screening institution is that family government makes visible a man's skills of self-government in the context of a nearly universal hierarchy. There are more heads of families than heads of civil government. If the family were the nucleus of all government, somewhere in the Bible there would be a law making marriage a requirement for civil office. Nowhere does such a law appear. But Rushdoony's commitment to patriarchalism is greater than his commitment to biblical law. Hence, he wrote in 1984: "The biblical form of government requires that men and the families be trained to govern. The basic government is on the family level, and all other forms of government rest thereon."⁽⁸¹⁾

In Politics of Guilt and Pity (1970), he wrote: "The basic government is man's self-government. Other governments of man include the family, the church, the school, his business, and many private associations as well as public opinion."⁽⁸²⁾ This was the ideal of government that had attracted his early associates. In Institutes of Biblical Law, he also began with self-government under God. "Government means, first, self-government, then the family, church, state, school, calling, and private associations as well as much else."⁽⁸³⁾ But much later in the book, and perhaps three years later in terms of when he wrote this passage, he began to modify his earlier position. "The basic government of man is the self-government of Christian man."⁽⁸⁴⁾ But a hint of a shift in his perspective -- a cloud no larger than a man's hand -- immediately followed: "The family is an important area of government also, and the basic one. The church is an area of government, and the school still another." Notice: he used the word basic for both self-government and family government. This equality could not survive indefinitely. In Systematic Theology, he moved the family to first place. This represented a major shift away from his original theology. He now places an institution at the center of both his social theory and his theology; before, his social theory had rested on the principle of self-government under God's law. This proposed central institution is not the church. It is the church's oldest rival, the one Jesus had warned against most strongly (Matt. 10:34-37).

Rushdoony goes on: "Furthermore, the training for government in church, state, and other areas is in Scripture essentially within the family."⁽⁸⁵⁾ A statement of chronological fact is not a judicial standard for holding office. That we learn lots of things in our families is incontrovertible. This sociological fact has no judicial implications unless the Bible says it does. The Bible does not say what Rushdoony here says that it does. Government rests on the declared word of God, not on an institution. On the day of final judgment, a man is not judged in terms of his family's profession of faith. He is not sent to heaven or hell based on his participation in a family. He stands as an individual made in God's image.

The Rhetoric of Contempt

Rushdoony in 1991 delivered a lecture, "Reconstructing the Church," to the Third International Conference on Christian Reconstruction, held in England. He briefly summarized the traditional Protestant and Reformed three-fold definition of the church: orthodox preaching, administering the sacraments, and disciplining. He calls this definition "reductionism."⁽⁸⁶⁾ Its limitation, he says, is that it focuses on the institutional church, not the members and their responsibilities. He then quotes William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army -- a worldwide parachurch organization that closely resembles a church but does not offer the sacraments. Rushdoony favorably cites Booth's description of the late-nineteenth-century church in England as a "mummy factory."⁽⁸⁷⁾ This was a clever remark made by a "General" whose organization's publicly recognized symbols are neither the cross of Christ nor a communion cup but instead are: 1) a large bass drum beaten by a lady wearing a funny hat; 2) a black cooking pot and a hand-wrung bell jingling for our cash each Christmas. Let me say it early: the church has never been a mummy factory. This truth was learned by the Pharaoh of the exodus, who never became a mummy. He drowned instead. Local churches may produce some spiritual mummies in certain eras, but the church is God's bride. Rushdoony's rhetoric here is suicidal.

What is extremely significant is this: in his earlier days, Rushdoony had forthrightly affirmed the familiar three-part definition of the church, defending all three points as crucial in the war against humanism. In his 1983 book, Salvation and Godly Rule, he included a chapter on "Outlaw Cultures." The essay's internal evidence indicates that it was written in 1972.⁽⁸⁸⁾ Rushdoony wrote eloquently and to the point that "the marks of a true church, i.e. a body of worshippers, have been defined for centuries as the faithful preaching of the word of God, the faithful administration of the sacraments, and the application of Biblical discipline. Without these things, we are not talking about the church in any historical or theological sense. Instead, a purely humanistic ideal of a denatured church is given us. Such a church is simply a part of the City of Man and an outlaw institution at war with the City of God."⁽⁸⁹⁾

I agree completely with his excellent summary of the marks of a true church and the humanistic implications of any denial of it. The problem is, nineteen years after he wrote it, eight years after he published it, Rushdoony openly repudiated it, and more than repudiated it: became contemptuous of it, ridiculing it. The transformation of his theology during the 1980's was extensive -- a fact not widely perceived by his followers or his critics. He replaced his original commitment to the theology of Calvin and the Protestant reformers with something resembling Anabaptism -- and, in some cases, theological liberalism, as we shall see. This transformation centered in his doctrine of the church, but it was not confined to it.

In 1977, Rushdoony adopted a sharp rhetoric regarding amillennial though theologically orthodox churches. In a 57-page book titled, God's Plan for Victory: The Meaning of Postmillennialism, he referred to the mythical "Orthodox Pharisees Church" (p. 9), whose initials were OPC, the same as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Rushdoony had openly begun to burn his ecclesiastical bridges behind him. He has never stopped burning them. This is what I call the Roger Williams syndrome: no church meets his standards. He finds himself worshipping in smaller and smaller settings, always led by himself. Today, it is mainly his family members and employees of Chalcedon who regularly attend his Bible studies -- or, as he has called them only since late 1991, church worship services.

Having invoked the phrase "mummy factory" with respect to the modern church, he then rallies to the defense of parachurch ministries, referring to "the common and contemptuous use of the term parachurch. . . . People who rail against parachurch activities want to limit Christ's work to what they can control."⁽⁹⁰⁾ Well, that all depends. If the particular parachurch ministry deliberately and self-consciously conducts pseudo-worship meetings but without the sacrament of the Lord's Supper during the hours when churches normally conduct worship meetings -- the Salvation Army comes to mind, as does Chalcedon's Bible studies (1968-1991) -- then the critics have a legitimate complaint. Also, if a parachurch ministry actively solicits tithes that belong solely to the institutional church, then the critics have a legitimate complaint: opposing the theft of the tithe by interlopers. The issue is to be decided by an appeal to God's revealed word, not to rhetoric, i.e., the institutional church as a "mummy factory."

 

A Question of Jurisdiction

What Rushdoony has ignored since 1973 should be obvious to anyone with any familiarity with the West's judicial theology and Reformation history: Protestantism's definition of the church as an institution was a means of identifying the church's lawful jurisdiction. That is to say, the traditional Protestant definition places judicial boundaries around the church as an institution -- a major goal of the Protestant Reformation, especially the limiting of the sacraments to baptism and the Lord's Supper. Like the U.S. Constitution's limitation of the national government's jurisdiction, this traditional Protestant definition was designed to place boundaries around what the institutional church could rightfully claim as its area of legitimate covenantal authority. It is no more meaningful to criticize the familiar three-fold definition of the institutional church -- i.e., that this definition does not describe what church members should do -- than it is to criticize the U.S. Constitution because it does not specify what citizens are supposed to do. The judicial issue is this: What is the institutional church authorized by God to do as His designated monopoly?

It is therefore misleading -- I would call it deliberately, self-consciously subversive -- for a theologian of Rushdoony's stature to criticize the traditional Protestant definition of the institutional church on this basis: that it does not tell us what church members are supposed to do. Church members can and should do lots of wonderful things; but they can also avoid doing lots of wonderful things and still remain members in good standing -- and not be contemptuously dismissed as mummies. The judicial issue is what is crucial here: defining what the institutional church must do in order to be a faithful covenantal organization under God. At this absolutely crucial point in his theology, Rushdoony in 1991 abandoned historic Protestantism's judicial theology in favor of a definition of the church based on "fellowship" and "good works" -- the traditional view of theological liberalism.

Having misled his readers on this point, Rushdoony then goes on to mislead them even more. He says that the church must perform the Great Commission: establish the crown rights of King Jesus, baptize nations, and teach them to obey God's word. Notice: not one reference to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. While Matthew 28:18-20 mentions only baptism, the establishment of the church requires the Lord's Supper. Any theologically accurate discussion of the Great Commission must assume the accuracy of the three defining judicial marks of the institutional church. But if you have just ridiculed the institutional church as a mummy factory, your reader may not notice what you are really doing: removing respect for the judicial authority of the institutional church as the sole legitimate source of the sacraments. Was this Rushdoony's goal in 1991? I think it was. Rushdoony in mid-1991 had not taken the Lord's Supper, except when lecturing at some distant church, for over two decades.⁽⁹¹⁾

The Legal Basis of the Tithe

The judicial foundation of the tithe is not its supposedly primary role as an aspect of dominion; it is rather based on the church's covenantal role as the monopolistic guardian of the sacraments, which establishes its possession of the keys of the kingdom. In this sense, the church's authority is the same as the Levites' authority under the Mosaic covenant: guardian of the holy. Its ultimate means of discipline is excommunication: separating former members from the communion table. There is no church authority apart from the sacraments. Remove respect for the sacraments, and you thereby remove respect for church discipline. This has been the pattern of modern fundamentalism, and Rushdoony is in this regard a dedicated fundamentalist, not a Calvinist. Calvinism is not merely a belief in predestination. Luther believed in predestination (The Bondage of the Will), but he was surely not a Calvinist. Luther and Calvin divided over the issue of the Lord's Supper: a sacramental issue. Calvin devoted the longest section of his Institutes to a study of the church: Book IV. Break with Calvin on his doctrine of the church, and you have broken with Calvin. This is what Rushdoony has done. This is a major reason why Rushdoony's theology is rejected without a fair hearing by pastors and theologians within the Calvinist world: they see him for what he is, an ecclesiastical independent who happens to believe in predestination and infant baptism.

Dominion and Subordination

The requirement to exercise dominion is a requirement to seek a profit; on this point, see Jesus' parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-31), which immediately precedes His description of the final judgment. The tithe is paid out of the net increase of our efforts. In short: no increase = no tithe. Individuals and families produce net increases; churches, at best, invest excess funds in profit-seeking, non-church endeavors. The family, not the church, is the primary agency of dominion, and because of this, the family is not granted any economic entitlement by God. The church is entitled to the tithe; non-church agencies are not. Dominion has nothing to do judicially with the God-given authority to collect the tithe. Dominion does have something to do with paying the tithe, however: a public acknowledgment of one's institutional subordination to God's church.

That Rushdoony can speak of tithing and dominion as judicially linked, and then announce that the church is not a productive institution, points to his anti-ecclesiastical conclusion: a denial that the institutional church has a legitimate claim on the tithe. But the fundamental topic is not tithing and dominion. Rather it is tithing and subordination. When we get this clear, and only then, should we begin to consider the next topic, subordination and dominion.⁽⁹²⁾ Only to the degree that Christians are subordinate before God through membership in His institutional church are they fully empowered by God to extend His comprehensive dominion. Subordination (point two of the biblical covenant model) precedes dominion (point three). Rushdoony has denied this covenantal reality in his writings and his actions since 1974.

Social Services vs. Judicial Sanctions

Rushdoony defends his view by separating the Levites' sacramental function from their cultural and social functions. He argues that the Levites performed many social services, "providing godly education, music, welfare, and necessary godly assistance to civil authorities."⁽⁹³⁾ Thus, Rushdoony concludes, it was their provision of these social services that justified their collection of the tithe. They did not possess a legal claim on the tithe, Rushdoony argues. If they failed to provide these cultural services, Israelite church members had an obligation to cut them off financially. They still do, he insists.

It is worth noting that this view of church authority is shared by the modern American liberal. The modern liberal's acceptance of the idea of tax exemption is based on his theory of useful social services. The liberal allows the State to grant tax exemption to churches on the same basis that it grants tax exemption to non-profit, government-chartered charitable foundations such as Chalcedon. The liberal categorically rejects any suggestion that the Trinitarian church is automatically tax-immune, based on its separate covenantal status as a God-ordained government -- a government that possesses the authority to impose judicial sanctions.⁽⁹⁴⁾ Analogously, Rushdoony regards the church as having no lawful claim to Christians' tithes based on its separate covenantal status as a God-ordained government which possesses the authority to impose judicial sanctions. In his theology, the church has no legal claim on members' money greater than their desire to support it because of the social services it provides them. In short, Rushdoony's theology of the church's claim on the tithe is the same as the liberal's theology of the church's claim to tax exemption. They both ask the church the same question: "What have you done for society lately?"

"This tithe belongs to God, not to the church, nor to the producer."⁽⁹⁵⁾ This observation is irrelevant for any discussion of the tithe. Of course the tithe belongs to God; everything belongs to God (Ps. 50:10). The question is this: What institution possesses the God-given monopolistic authority to collect the tithe from covenant-keepers? That is, which institution possesses the God-given authority and responsibility to pronounce God's negative sanctions against someone who refuses to pay? The biblical answer is obvious: the church. Rushdoony disagrees with this answer. He wants to remove from the institutional church any legal claim to the tithe.

He raises the spurious issue of an apostate church in order to destroy the legal claim of all churches: "It cannot be given to an apostate church without being given thereby against God, not to Him."⁽⁹⁶⁾ This is quite true; it is therefore an argument for a person to leave an apostate church. In fact, the best indicator to a church member that he should transfer his membership to another church is that he can no longer in good conscience pay the tithe to the church that now possesses lawful authority over him. The individual has the God-given authority and responsibility to decide which church to join; he does not have the authority to decide not to tithe to this church. But in a world filled with non-tithing Christians, Rushdoony's doctrine of church and tithe finds many supporters.

Church and Kingdom

Rushdoony argues that the individual has the God-given authority to decide where his tithe money should go. As a statement of the God-delegated authority of the believer, this is true, but only in a very specific and limited way: his authority to transfer his membership to another congregation. But Rushdoony is not talking about this form of conscience-based authority before God. The decision Rushdoony speaks of is a decision made not on the basis of where the Christian chooses to have his local church membership, but rather on the basis of the Christian's assessment of the broadly defined cultural performance of the church's officers. "The priests and Levites, to whom it [the tithe] was originally given, had charge of religion, education, and various other functions."⁽⁹⁷⁾ The tithe, he says, must constitute the financing of every aspect of Christian reconstruction, not just the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments: "But the law of the tithe makes clear it is God's money and must go to God's causes, to Christian worship, education, outreach, and reconstruction. . . . And the tithe must bear the whole burden of Christian reconstruction."⁽⁹⁸⁾ (This is clearly incorrect: the tithe is only one-tenth of one's net increase. Everything a person has is supposed to be devoted to Christian reconstruction: heart, mind, soul, and capital.) In short, "What we must do is, first, to tithe, and, second, to allocate our tithe to godly agencies. Godly agencies means far more than the church."⁽⁹⁹⁾ The Levites provided education, music, and so forth. "The realm of the godly, of the Christian, is broader than the church. To limit Christ's realm to the church is not Biblical; it is pietism, a surrender of Christ's kingship over the world. The purpose of the tithe must be to establish that kingship."⁽¹⁰⁰⁾

It is clear why Rushdoony refuses to cite the texts in Numbers which established the legal basis of the claim of the Levites to the tithe. These passages explicitly link the tithe and the office of ecclesiastical guardian. It was not the Levites' social services that entitled them to the tithe; it was their boundary service as the temple's agents of execution: guardians of what was sacramentally holy.

Rushdoony makes a valid Protestant point: the kingdom of Christ is larger than the institutional church. As he says, limiting the kingdom to the institutional church is indeed the essence of pietism. But he has created great confusion in his own mind and his followers' minds by equating the tithe and charitable giving to the broader kingdom. This view of the tithe is equally pietistic: it limits the financing of the kingdom. The kingdom of Christ in history is comprehensive. It must be extended by every bit of productivity at the disposal of covenant-keepers.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ When a Christian makes a profit or earns a wage, all of this is to be earmarked for extending the kingdom of Christ, broadly defined: education, entertainment, the arts, leisure, capital formation, etc.

The kingdom of Christ is not extended primarily by charitable institutions. The kingdom of Christ is extended through dominion, and this is financed by Christians' net productivity. Rushdoony understands this "net productivity" principle with respect to taxation: the State may not lawfully tax capital, only net income. This is why he has long opposed the property tax as anti-Christian.⁽¹⁰²⁾ But he does not acknowledge that this same principle also applies to the tithe. Neither tithes nor taxes are the basis of dominion: net productivity is. That is, growth is the basis of dominion. Where there is no doctrine of progressive dominion in history, there is no doctrine of economic growth.⁽¹⁰³⁾ This growth of God's kingdom comes primarily through two processes: 1) the confiscation of Satan's assets through God's adoption of Satan's human disciples; 2) the economic growth enjoyed by God's human disciples, which enables them to redeem the world through purchase.⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

The kingdom of Christ, broadly defined, must be equated with the total efforts of covenant-keepers: heart, mind, and soul. What is my conclusion? First, all of the tithe goes to the local church. Second, gifts and offerings can go to other charities. Third, the kingdom of Christ is extended by total productivity, including economic productivity. Fourth, total economic productivity, not charity, is the primary economic means of extending God's kingdom in history. This is why God promises long-term economic growth to covenant-keeping societies (Deut. 28:1-14). More wealth per capita should come from covenant-keeping men than is used up by them.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ Covenant-keepers should leave a positive economic legacy to their grandchildren.⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just" (Prov. 13:22).

Sovereignty

If you want to find out where sovereignty lies in any social system or social theory, you must do two things: 1) identify the sacraments; 2) follow the money.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾ In Rushdoony's theology, the kingdom of God is based on a compact between God and the individual Christian. The institutional church is without covenantal authority in this God-and-man compact. Church officers must take whatever they receive from church members and be thankful to the donors for whatever this is. Rushdoony's ecclesiology allows church officers no legitimate institutional sanctions to impose on those members who send all or a portion of their tithe money elsewhere.

The judicial question surrounding the tithe is this: Who lawfully retains sovereign control over the allocation of the tithe? Rushdoony's answer: the individual Christian, not the officers of the church. "The Christian who tithes, and sees that his tithe goes to godly causes, is engaged in true social reconstruction. By his tithe money and his activity he makes possible the development of Christian churches, schools, colleges, welfare agencies, and other necessary social functions."⁽¹⁰⁸⁾ (And, he might have added, non-profit educational foundations, but this would have appeared self-serving.) He does not mean that Christians retain ultimate control over the allocation of their tithes by choosing which local congregation to join; rather, they retain immediate allocational authority in their capacity as church members or even as non-church members.

If this were true, then Rushdoony might ask: What if the Christian can locate no agency that meets his standards of social action? Can the Christian then lawfully tithe to himself in order to fund the doing of his own good deeds? Why not? More to the point, can he set up his own church and tithe to it? As of 1991, Rushdoony apparently believes that this is the case. He claims that Chalcedon has somehow become a church. (Then what are the members of what was formerly its Board of Trustees: Ruling elders? There was never any restriction against women serving on Chalcedon's Board of Trustees; Rushdoony's wife Dorothy so served when I was a Trustee in the 1970's. Can women now become elders in his new church? Or have Chalcedon's By-Laws been rewritten to exclude women?)

I have argued that tithe money can and should go to all kinds of charitable services, but it is church officers who are invested with the God-given authority to decide which of these endeavors to support and in what proportion.⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ Rushdoony asserts that it is the tithe-payer's God-given authority to make these decisions. "Since the tithe is `holy unto the Lord', it is our duty as tithers to judge that church, mission group, or Christian agency which is most clearly `holy unto the Lord'."⁽¹¹⁰⁾ Rushdoony does not define the holiness of the recipient organizations as legal holiness -- a formal, judicial, covenantal, setting apart by God through His written revelation -- but rather as social holiness, to be judged by individual tithers. In Rushdoony's ecclesiology, the church cannot bring judgment against individuals who refuse to transfer to the church ten percent of their net income; on the contrary, they bring judgment against the church by withholding these funds and sending them elsewhere, such as to a non-profit, Federally tax-exempt, incorporated educational foundation located in central California.

Here is where the rubber of Rushdoony's anti-ecclesiastical worldview⁽¹¹¹⁾ meets the covenantal road. The primary issue here is authority over money. In Rushdoony's published theology, lawful authority over the distribution of the tithe lodges in the individual Christian. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and the piper-payer in Rushdoony's theology of the tithe is the individual Christian. Rushdoony's theory of the proper financing of the kingdom of God is therefore individualistic, despite his affirmations to the contrary.

High Priest and King of Kings

The New Testament affirms that Jesus Christ is both King of kings and High Priest. His absolute sovereignty is revealed institutionally in history through the existence of biblically compulsory payments to two covenantal institutions: State and church. The State has a lawful claim on a portion -- under ten percent (I Sam. 8: 15, 17) -- of the productivity of those under its jurisdiction. Why? Because the civil magistrate is a minister of God (Rom. 13:4). The church has a legal claim on ten percent of its members' net income. Why? Because church officers are ministers of God. In both cases, the officers' ministerial function is what identifies these two institutions as sovereign. Compulsory taxes go to the kingly institution; members' compulsory tithes go to the priestly institution. Both institutions are covenantal. Both are entitled to a portion of our income. A person can no more legitimately allocate his tithe than he can legitimately allocate his taxes. He does not have the authority to do so; in both cases, he is under the threat of institutional sanctions, meaning he is under the threat of God's sanctions.

It is a major weakness of Rushdoony's social theory that he fails to identify anywhere in his writings the judicial and economic distinctions between Christ as High Priest and Christ as King of kings. The Bible teaches clearly that the tithe is mandatory. It goes to the church, and only to the church. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Heb. 7). In Rushdoony's social theory, Christ's office as High Priest has no institutional sanctions.

In one limited sense, he is correct. The church technically cannot excommunicate people who, like Rushdoony, refuse to join a local congregation or take the Lord's Supper. But the church does not need to bring formal sanctions against those who are self-excommunicated.⁽¹¹²⁾ Self-excommunication is excommunication. It is sufficient that the church publicly identify self-excommunicated people as excommunicates. (Rarely does any local church do this.) Church officers who serve the Lord's Supper to such self-excommunicated individuals have denied their holy offices as guardians of the sacraments. It is not surprising that a loose view of the sacraments is normally accompanied by a loose view of the church and a loose view of the tithe.

The Chaldedon Foundation

Rushdoony for decades has paid his tithe to his own educational foundation, Chalcedon. He did not belong to any local church until early 1991, when he declared Chalcedon, a church. Problem: his published theology of the tithe rests on a fundamental confusion between the sacramental function of the church and its educational and nurturing function. His published theology of the tithe does not acknowledge the judicial requirement of the individual Christian to finance the sacramental aspect of the kingdom by means of his tithe, and the dominion and kingly aspects by means of voluntary donations above the tithe to non-ecclesiastical organizations.

Prior to 1991, Chalcedon, like the Institute for Christian Economics, was kingly rather than priestly in its calling.⁽¹¹³⁾ Neither organization is entitled to any portion of the tithe⁽¹¹⁴⁾ except at the discretion of churches that collect tithes and then donate the money to either organization. (As the saying goes, "Don't hold your breath.") The donor owes his local church his tithe; he does not possess the authority to allocate his tithe money (priestly, sacramental money) to other organizations. Chalcedon, ICE, and all other parachurch and educational ministries owe it to their supporters to warn them never to send in donations unless they first tithe to a local church.⁽¹¹⁵⁾ This limitation would keep most of them quite tiny to the extent that they are financed by tithes, since very few Christians tithe. Rushdoony in the late 1970's invented a theology of the tithe that justified Chalcedon's collection of part or all of Christians' tithes. This self-interested theological confusion undermined his theology of the kingship of Christ and the dominion covenant.

Rushdoony's theology of the tithe rests on an economic distinction within the calling of the Levites: sacraments vs. social works. The Mosaic tithe, he says, was owed primarily because of the socially important services that were performed by the Levites. Only the one percent going to the priests directly constituted the sacramental portion; nine percent went for social services. "Only a handful of Levites were engaged in temple service, as against the vast numbers whose work was instruction (Deut. 33:10)."⁽¹¹⁶⁾ Note: his focus is on instruction. This is consistent. Chalcedon until 1991 was a strictly non-profit, government-chartered educational institution.

He has made his views clear, that "nowhere in Scripture is man or the church given the power to require or enforce tithing."⁽¹¹⁷⁾ On this weak theological reed he has built his theology since 1979. (Ironically, it was my tithe to my church that was used to finance the publication of Tithing and Dominion.)

 

A Single Storehouse

The Bible does not speak of multiple storehouses of the tithe; it speaks of only one storehouse. If a society violates this single storehouse principle of the mandatory tithe, it brings itself under God's negative corporate sanctions. If it obeys this principle, it gains God's positive corporate sanctions.

Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts (Mal. 3:8-12).

Note that the word is storehouse (singular), not storehouses (plural). But this is not how Rushdoony summarizes the text: "The tithe was given to the Levites, who stored the animals and grain in storehouses (Mal. 3:10) until they could either be used or sold. It is a silly and self-serving modernism which leads some clergymen to insist that the storehouse is the church. . . . The Levites had very broad functions in Israel: they were the teachers (Deut. 33:10), the musicians, the judges at times, the medical authorities and more; superintending foods and their cleanliness was a part of their duty."⁽¹¹⁸⁾ But the issue is not, in Rushdoony's phrase, "self-serving modernism." The issue is the actual text of Scripture. Men must not become self-serving when they read the text of Scripture -- liberals or conservatives. The text speaks of a storehouse: singular.

What Rushdoony always ignores in this connection is that the Levites protected the place of sacrifice. While they did indeed provide legal advice and other services, the office of Levite was defined in connection to the tithe as a judicial office: guardian of the temple. He then calls self-serving and modernist all those theologians who have identified the storehouse with the church: the receptacle of the tithe. Almost three decades of sending his own tithe to Chalcedon is presumably not self-serving, in his opinion. But those who say that the tithe belongs only to the local church are modernists and pietists. You know: modernists such as John Calvin, who commented on Malachi 3:10 by describing any withholding of the tithe from the priests as a form of sacrilege: "They had been sufficiently proved guilty of rapacity in withholding the tenths and the oblations; as then the sacrilege was well known, the Prophet now passes judgment, as they say, according to what is usually done when the criminal is condemned, and the cause is decided, so that he who has been defrauded recovers his right. . . . Bring, he says, to the repository (for this is the same as the house of the treasury, or of provisions) all the tenths, or the whole tenths. We hence learn that they had not withholden the whole of the tenths from the priests, but that they fraudulently brought the half, or retained as much as they could; for it was not without reason that he said, Bring all, or the whole."⁽¹¹⁹⁾

Calvin understood exactly what crime against God was involved in withholding the full ten percent from the Levites: sacrilege. Paying the priests their tenth of the tithe was not sufficient to avoid the crime of sacrilege, Calvin said. They had to pay the entire remaining nine-tenths to the Levites. Sacrilege is an attack on God's sacramental institution, the church -- an attack on the sacraments. Calvin also understood clearly that the tithe went to the Levites and priests because of their judicial offices as guardians and administrators of the sacraments. This economic entitlement was grounded judicially in the sacraments, and only in the sacraments. Any other duties performed by the Levites and priests were incidental to their administration of the sacraments. Calvin never referred to these supplemental social activities. Rushdoony, in sharp contrast, categorically denies any sacramental authority to the institutional church. He has abandoned the theology of Calvin and the Puritans in the name of Calvin and the Puritans. Rushdoony has moved from Calvinism to Anabaptism. Nowhere is this clearer than in his published view of the tithe.

Rushdoony's Social Gospel

We can see Rushdoony's break with Calvinism in his false distinction between the Levites' task as educators and the place of sacrifice, the sanctuary. "Education was one of the functions of the Levites (not of the sanctuary)."⁽¹²⁰⁾ To prove this supposed separation of religious education from the sanctuary in the Levitical calling, he would have to identify the judicial basis of the Levites' separation from the other tribes in terms of their provision of social services. This cannot be done textually. Numbers 18 is clear, as we have seen: the separation of the Levites from the other tribes was based on their unique access to the temple and its sacrifices. This separation was based on a geographical boundary -- legal access to the tabernacle/temple -- and not on their provision of social services, especially educational services.

Is the education of children lawfully a function of the church, the State, or the family? Rushdoony has always denied the legitimacy of education by the State, but he has been ambivalent regarding the educational authority of church and family. "The Christian school is a manifestation of the visible church, and at the same time, an extension of the home."⁽¹²¹⁾ But which one possesses institutional sovereignty? Economically, the answer is clear: the agency that funds education. What about judicially? On this point, Rushdoony has been ambivalent. But this much is clear: if education was the function of the Levites, and this function was separate from the sanctuary (i.e., the sacrifices), as he insists was the case, then the Levites as educators were under the authority of families if families paid for education by allocating their tithes. This is exactly what Rushdoony's theology of the tithe concludes. This means that pastors as Levite-educators (i.e., as tithe-receivers) are under the authority of families. Since he denies the sacramental character of the church, he strips the church of all covenantal authority. It cannot impose sanctions for non-payment of tithes. Once again, we are back to familism-clannism.

Rushdoony's voluntaristic view of the tithe is shared by most of the modern church and most of its members, which is why the modern church is impotent, both judicially and economically. This is why statism has visibly triumphed in our day. Rushdoony admits this when he writes that "the abolition of the tithe has opened the way for truly oppressive taxation by the state in order to assume the social responsibilities once maintained by tithe money."⁽¹²²⁾ But he errs once again: the fundamental issue is not money; it is the sacramental character of the church. The fundamental issue is the judicial basis of the local church's claim on ten percent of the net productivity of its members. This claim is sacramental-judicial, not social-economic.

Rushdoony always discusses the primary role of the church ("Levites") as a social agency, openly denying its sacramental character. He is wrong, and this single error has produced more harm for the Christian Reconstruction movement than anything else in his writings. He has no respect for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and it shows. Without covenantal sanctions in history, there could be no covenant: church (keys), State (sword), or family (rod). He has stripped the institutional church of her lawful negative sanction -- excommunication -- by stripping divine sanctions from the Lord's Supper. He wrote himself out of the church, 1970-1991, in order to justify his self-excommunication from the church.

The Case of the Missing Theology

In this respect, Rushdoony has become a consistent defender of a Social Gospel. His pietist critics have recognized this, although their view of the tithe is rarely better than his, and their view of the sacraments is only slightly better. Rushdoony's theology does defend gospel preaching as a function of the church, thereby avoiding the liberal version of the social gospel. But the institutional church has three aspects: the preaching of the gospel, the administration of the sacraments, and the authority to police access to the sacraments, i.e., church discipline (the keys of the kingdom). One searches in vain in Rushdoony's writings for even one page devoted to a theological exposition of the discipline of the church. He steadfastly refuses to discuss the meaning of the keys of the kingdom. This is why he has never published so much as a chapter on the doctrine of the church: sacraments, tithe, and discipline.

Rushdoony's view of the church is not even remotely Reformed. He uses Calvinist phrases, but he long ago abandoned Book IV of Calvin's Institutes. Rushdoony's ecclesiology is not a little bit wrong; it is completely wrong.

 

The Fatal Flaw in Rushdoony's Theology

Rushdoony began to develop the rudiments of his theology of the tithe in the late 1960's, after Chalcedon had received its tax-exempt status from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. In The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), he writes: "Moreover, the modern church calls for tithing to the church, an erroneous view which cuts off education, health, welfare, and much else from the tithe."⁽¹²³⁾ He understands that his view of the tithe transfers power to the members, who are supposedly under no judicial requirement to pay their tithes to the church: "If the church collects the tax, the church rules society; if the state collects the tax, the state rules society. If, however, the people of God administer the tithe to godly agencies, then God's rule prevails in that social order."⁽¹²⁴⁾ The central legal issue is administration: Who has the God-given authority to distribute the tithe? The Bible is clear: the church. Rushdoony is equally clear: the tithe-payer.

Notice Rushdoony's implicit assumption: because God says that He is entitled to a tithe, a godly society is determined economically by the agent who distributes it. The biblical fact is very different: the judicial status of a godly society is determined covenantally in terms of which agency collects and then distributes the tithe, for this identifies which god rules in society by which representatives. A Christian society is identified biblically by the widespread presence of churches that collect the tithe, i.e., churches that possess and exercise their God-given authority to impose negative sanctions against members who refuse to pay the tithe.⁽¹²⁵⁾ God blesses covenantally faithful societies, and tithing to God's church is a primary mark of covenantal faithfulness. Cause and effect move from law (boundaries) to sanctions (blessings and cursings). But the judicial issue is God's delegated authority: Who owes what to whom? In short, who lawfully holds the hammer? Is the fundamental authority of the kingdom of God primarily economic, with Christian individuals holding the hammer, or is it primarily judicial, with church officers holding it?

Compulsory Support

With respect to civil government, Christians have always acknowledged: individuals owe taxes to the State. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, Jesus said (Matt. 22:21). The individual does not lawfully allocate how his taxes will be spent; the State's officers do.

With respect to the family, Christians have always acknowledged: Children owe support to parents. This is not optional. Even priests must pay, Jesus said. No priest can escape this obligation by crying, "corban," as if this obligation were a voluntary gift (Mark 7:11-13). (Corban is the Hebrew word used in Leviticus 2:1 to describe the meat [meal] offering, i.e., the second sacrifice.)

Then what about the church? Does the tithe-payer have the God-given authority to decide to pay the tithe to any organization other than the institutional church? No. Paying the tithe to the institutional church is each church member's legal obligation before God. In all three covenantal institutions, paying money is not a matter of choice; it is a matter of legal obligation. The allocation of the money so collected is not the decision of those who pay.

Rushdoony's Libertarianism

Rushdoony has misidentified this authority structure. In his view, economics, not God's covenantal law of the church, is determinative: a godly society, he says, is financed by the tithe. Again, his libertarian presuppositions are obvious. He was not exaggerating when he announced on national television in 1987: "I'm close to being a libertarian. . . ."⁽¹²⁶⁾ As he sees it, the success or failure of God's non-profit kingdom institutions will be determined by God's sovereignty by means of the decisions of individual Christians regarding where to pay their tithes -- decisions made without any legitimate threat of institutional sanctions from the recipients. Sanctions -- positive or negative -- are imposed by individual Christians on the recipient institutions; the institutions have no legitimate negative sanctions of their own. The institutional church is described by Rushdoony as being little more than an income-seeking business that competes for the consumers' money. This view of church financing removes the power of the keys from the church. This conclusion is completely consistent with Rushdoony's pre-1991 view of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper: a rite without covenantal sanctions.

Rushdoony's libertarianism and individualism are both visible in his view of the tithe. On this topic, Rushdoony is an economic determinist. He says, in effect: "He who controls the allocation of the tithe controls Christian society. The individual Christian lawfully controls the allocation of the tithe, so he should control Christian society. The institutional church has no lawful authority to compel such payment by any threat of sanctions. Hence, the individual is judicially autonomous in the allocation of the tithe. Only God can impose negative sanctions against him." This is the libertarian theology known as the divine right of the individual. Divine-right theology always rests on a presupposition that someone -- the king, the legislature, or the individual -- is beyond legitimate institutional sanctions in history. Rushdoony's radical individualism is clearly seen here. He has rejected covenant theology in favor of Anabaptist theology.

Rushdoony has written repeatedly that individualism always leads to statism. The humanist State can compel payment of taxes, can demand obedience, and therefore it possesses divine rights. That is, the humanist State claims autonomy from (and therefore authority over) every rival institution. To challenge such a view of the State, there has to be an appeal to another authority with authority that is equal to the State's in many areas and superiority to it regarding the collection of funds from its members. In short, the authority of the church to collect tithes from its voting members prior to the tax collector's extraction of money from church members must be affirmed in civil law. The church must have legal priority over the State's authority in the involuntary collection of money.⁽¹²⁷⁾ Only if some other covenantal institution possesses comparable authority over its members' money can we identify an agency with comparable covenantal authority.

Rushdoony's theology of the tithe denies such authority to the church. This leaves only the family as a rival covenantal institution. But, biblically speaking, the family possesses neither the sword nor the keys of the kingdom. This is the fatal flaw of Rushdoony's social theory. Rushdoony's anti-ecclesiastical theology can offer only two futile alternatives to the divine right of the State: radical individualism or patriarchalism-clannism. The State historically has overcome both of these alternatives, from ancient Greece to the present. He pointed this out in The One and the Many. "In early Greek and Roman cultures, paternal power was religious power, a power continuous with all being and essentially divine, requiring duties of the father and conferring him with authority. The father, as Fustel de Coulanges has shown, in The Ancient City, was under law; but, it must be added, he was not only under law but a part of that law and continuous with it in the chain of being. He was thus to a degree the law incarnate, in that he possessed a measure of the ultimate law in his person. This manifestation of law moved steadily from the father to the state, so that the state, originally the creature of the family and of the fathers, made itself the father, and the source of law, with the family turned into its creature."⁽¹²⁸⁾

By rejecting a sacramental defense of both the church and the tithe, Rushdoony has converted his theology into a conservative version of the social gospel. The legitimacy of the church, manifested in Rushdoony's ecclesiology only by its ability to persuade church members to donate money to it, is grounded on the good deeds that churches perform in society. This is the U.S. Internal Revenue's view of non-profit status, the liberal's only reason for allowing the church to escape the tax man.

Rushdoony's view of the church is libertarian. He views the church strictly as a voluntary society. In his view, the church is not founded on a self-maledictory oath before God, for such an oath would transfer judicial authority to church officers as God's monopolistic agents. They could then lawfully compel payment of the tithe by members.

His view of church authority creates a divine right of the individual church member. The individual alone supposedly is God's designated agent who lawfully controls the distribution of the tithe rather than the church's ordained authorities. Beyond him there is no ecclesiastical appeal.

The alternative to a Christian view of society that places the church covenant at the center of its social theory is either a statist view of society or a patriarchal view of society. Rushdoony, faithful to an Armenian heritage that did not survive the second generation of immigrants -- his generation -- has chosen the latter view. Patriarchalism cannot survive for even three generations in a society that prohibits arranged marriages and allows easy divorce.

It also cannot survive the biblical view of marriage. It was Roman law, with its intense patriarchalism, that kept the clans alive. The English common law heritage was, from the twelfth century onward, utterly hostile to the revived Roman law's view of marriage and family authority, which steadily gained new respect and power on the Continent.⁽¹²⁹⁾ That Rushdoony should be regarded as soft on divorce, which in some cases he is,⁽¹³⁰⁾ is ironic: nothing undermines a patriarchal society -- the family as sacramental -- faster than the widespread acceptance of divorce on demand. His own sad experience with his first marriage, like the similar experiences of his brother and his sister, should have warned him.

Conclusion

The Levitical cultural and social services that Rushdoony lists as the basis of the Levites' reception of the tithe were all subordinate aspects of their primary judicial function: to guard the sacramental boundary around the tabernacle/temple. Secondarily, Levites were to declare God's law and to help the priests administer some of the sacrifices and some of the liturgies of worship -- what Rushdoony dismisses as mere "rites." The text in Numbers is clear: the tithe was based on the Levites' sacramental separation from the people -- in other words, their holiness. "And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. Neither must the children of Israel henceforth come nigh the tabernacle of the congregation, lest they bear sin, and die" (Num. 18:21-22).

The New Testament has not abrogated the Old Testament. The church's hierarchical authority is grounded on the same judicial foundation that the Levites' authority was under the Mosaic law: their God-ordained service as guardians of a sacramental boundary. The requirement of each church member to tithe exclusively to the institutional church that lawfully administers the sacraments rests today, as it did in the Mosaic law, on the uniquely sacramental character of the church. The mark of the church's institutional sovereignty is its control over lawful access to the sacraments. This control necessarily involves the enforcement of a boundary: the right to exclude. The church's authority to exclude people from the Lord's Supper is the ultimate judicial basis of its discipline. Excommunication means exclusion from Holy Communion: the Lord's Supper. Because the institutional church possesses this sacramental monopoly, it alone possesses the authority to collect the full tithe of every member.

This authority to exclude is imparted to church officers by means of their possession of the keys of the kingdom. "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Matt. 16:19). Without access in history to the keys of heaven, there can be no kingdom of Christ in history: no heavenly keys = no earthly kingdom. The keys invoke heavenly sanctions; often, they invoke visible earthly sanctions. A king without sanctions in history is not a king in history. The most important sanctions in history are in the hands of those who control the keys to the kingdom: officers of God's visible church.

Rushdoony has, in recent years, poured out his verbal wrath on the institutional church in his attempt to broaden the definition of the church to include the family and non-profit educational institutions, and, in his words, "far, far more."⁽¹³¹⁾ This is why Rushdoony's view of the visible church has undermined his theology of the kingdom of God in history. Volume 2 of The Institutes of Biblical Law undermines Volume 1. What was a flaw no larger than a man's hand in Volume 1 became a whirlwind in Volume 2. It stripped him of his doctrine of the church covenant -- a covenant grounded in an oath before God (baptism) -- for every covenant must have negative institutional sanctions. His theology allows no formal negative sanctions for the church. If a Christian can, without consequences, decide that he does not need to take Holy Communion in a local church for a quarter of a century, then what threat is excommunication? The correct answer is: he cannot do this without consequences. It is an answer Rushdoony refused to accept until 1991.

Rushdoony's view of the tithe has stripped him of his Calvinism, for it led to his rejection of the authority of the institutional church. This has been a heavy price to pay. It is not easy to be taken seriously as a Calvinist theologian when you promote an Anabaptist or patriarchal view of the Lord's Supper, a Baptist ecclesiology, ordination in a two-congregation Episcopal denomination, and a local congregation with a highly suspicious chronology. It would have been far cheaper just to have paid a tithe to some local congregation and have been done with it from 1964 until the present -- cheaper, that is, for a person willing to submit himself to another pastor. But after 1964, Rushdoony was unwilling to do this.

Rushdoony has therefore paid a heavy price: the bulk of his life's work is conveniently and illegitimately dismissed by serious churchmen as the work of a theological and personal screwball. By cutting his ties in 1970 with any denomination that was more than a few years old, he forfeited his ability to transfer his intellectual inheritance to someone of his choice. Only the institutional church survives intact until the day of judgment. Only the institutional church offers God-guaranteed covenantal continuity in history. If the institutional church rejects a man's work, that work cannot stand the test of time. It will be weighed in the balance and found wanting. To the extent that Rushdoony's work does survive, it will survive only because of the continuity provided by those who remain inside the institutional church, pay their tithes to the institutional church, and receive the Lord's Supper from men who have been lawfully ordained by other lawfully ordained men: the laying on of hands. This is true of every Christian's legacy. If the institutional church refuses to incorporate and develop a man's ideas in history, these ideas will not come to fruition in history. If a Christian's spiritual heirs remain peripheral to the institutional church, his legacy will remain peripheral in history. This truth may not seem relevant to a premillennialist or amillennialist who sees the cultural effects of the gospel in history as marginal, but it is extremely relevant to a postmillennialist, or should be.

Contempt for God's institutional church is theologically fatal. God's church is not now, nor has it ever been, a mummy factory. The institutional church, for all her flaws, is God's bride. God has no other.

Footnotes:

1. On the debate within modern Jewish scholarship on the Levites as executioners -- Jacob Milgrom vs. Menahem Haran -- see James B. Jordan, "The Death Penalty in the Mosaic Law," Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 3 (Jan. 1989), Pt. 3. Milgrom argues that the Levites were armed guards; Haran denies this. Jordan agrees with Milgrom.

2. For a detailed study of the sacramental basis of the tithe, plus additional information on the background of Rushdoony's theology of the tithe, see Gary North, Tithing and the Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994).

3. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), chaps. 10, 11.

4. Ibid., ch. 2.

5. Similarly, the office of civil magistrate, called "minister" by Paul in Romans 13:4, is also based on point four: sanctions, in this case, negative sanctions. He punishes evil-doers (v. 4).

6. North, Tithing and the Church, ch. 10.

7. My last year as editor of The Journal of Christian Reconstruction was in 1981.

8. Jordan's master's thesis had been accepted by Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia). The offending passage -- on the circumcision of Gershom by Zipporah -- appears on pages 85-86. An expansion of this observation was later published by Jordan in his book, The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23 (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), Appendix F, "Proleptic Passover." Rushdoony initially demanded that I defend my observation in greater detail, which I did. He then said my defense was insufficient. He then fired me as editor of The Journal of Christian Reconstruction. I later published a larger version of this defense: "The Marriage Supper of the Lamb," Christianity and Civilization, No. 4 (1985). No other critic has ever written to Jordan to challenge his essay as heretical. I have never received a single letter from anyone other than Rushdoony, pro or con, regarding my essay. The whole incident was officially based on a trifle. In this appendix, I deal with what I regard as the unstated dividing point: Rushdoony's view of the institutional church.

9. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), pp. 427-29. On the close connection between Rushdoony's comments and my own, see North, "Marriage Supper," p. 218.

10. There is a subordinate question: the third-year tithe and the poor tithe. Were these separate, additional tithes? Rushdoony argues that they were. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 53.

11. He never comments on I Corinthians 8: "Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled. But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse" (vv. 7-8).

12. James B. Jordan (ed.), "The Reconstruction of the Church," Christianity and Civilization, No. 4 (1985).

13. R. J. Rushdoony, "The Nature of the Church," Calvinism Today, I (Oct. 1991), p. 3. This journal is published in England: P. O. Box 1, Whitby, North Yorkshire YO21 1HP.

14. I would call any social theory emanationist which traces the origin of church, State, or family to one of the other institutions. Christian social theory must be Trinitarian, insisting on the covenantal uniqueness of each of the three institutional covenants.

15. One of the strongest statements to this effect was written by G. K. Chesterton. The family, he wrote, "is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state." Chesterton, "The Story of the Family," in The Superstition of Divorce (1920); The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, vol. 4 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), p. 256. His reference to eternity betrays his confused social theology: neither the human family nor the state is eternal; the church is (Rev. 21, 22).

16. Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955).

17. C. Gregg Singer, The Unholy Alliance (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1975). This book is a detailed history of the Federal Council of Churches and its successor, the National Council of Churches.

18. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), Part 3.

19. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln spoke of religion and morality as great benefits for society. Neither of them was willing to profess personal faith in the work of Jesus Christ as the sole pathway to eternal life. Religion in their view is instrumental rather than foundational. See Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963). Washington refused to take the Lord's Supper throughout his adult life. Lincoln avoided commenting publicly on his religion except in the 1846 Congressional campaign, when he issued a handbill admitting that he was not a church member, but assured voters that they should not vote for a man who scoffs at religion. "Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity," The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1953), I, p. 382. See also his "National Fast Day Proclamation" (Aug. 12, 1861), where he spoke of "the Supreme Government of God." Ibid., VI, p. 482.

20. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 6.

21. For a good example, see Rushdoony's editorial, "Copycat Churchianity," Chalcedon Report (June 1992).

22. The Chalcedon Report (Jan. 1992) published an article by Rushdoony, "The Life of the Church: I Timothy 5:1-2." That essay was introduced as follows: "Note: The Life of the Church was a communion sermon at the Chalcedon Chapel evening service, October 27, 1991."

23. Edward A. Powell and Rousas John Rushdoony, Tithing and Dominion (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1979).

24. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 3.

25. There are parent-child economic requirements, but these are intra-family relationships.

26. This would include those fictitious legal individuals known as corporations. One way to solve the problem of tithing on retained earnings would be for ten percent of the common shares of all new corporations to be assigned to a specific church from the beginning. The church would automatically participate in all dividends and capital gains.

27. When I served as a Board member of the Chalcedon Foundation in 1975, Rushdoony was directing his own tithe into Chalcedon, as he told me. I was a paid staff member at the time. He did not ask me to follow his lead, nor did I volunteer to do so. I have no reason to believe that he subsequently re-directed his tithe to a local church, since he did not belong to a local church.

28. North, Tithing and the Church, ch. 10.

29. R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, 2 vols. (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1994).

30. U.S. citizens living outside the U.S. must pay income taxes on their salaries. The first $70,000, however, is exempt.

31. R. J. Rushdoony, "The Tax Revolt Against God," Position Paper 94, Chalcedon Report (Feb. 1988), pp. 16-17.

32. Ibid., p. 16.

33. Sutton, That You May Prosper, pp. 83-91. Rushdoony refuses to discuss the self-maledictory oath as the judicial basis of all four biblical covenants: personal, church, State, and family. He defines the covenant as God-given law rather than as oath-invoked God-given law. This unique judicial oath formally invokes God's sanctions. Without this formal invocation, there is no redeeming covenant bond possible. There is only the general, Adamic covenant bond: a broken covenant. Rushdoony's definition does not acknowledge this fact. He writes: "In the Biblical record, covenants are laws given by God to man as an act of grace." Rushdoony, "Covenant vs. Contract," Chalcedon Report (June 1993), p. 20. If correct, this definition would make the covenants universal, since biblical laws govern everything in history, as he has long argued. But if he were to discuss the sanctions-invoking oath as basis of the four covenants, he would have to discuss oath-breaking in the church and its formal sanctions: the doctrine of excommunication. He would also have to discuss in detail Article VI, Section III of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits religious test oaths for Federal (national) office. This is why the U.S. Constitution is an atheistic, humanistic document -- a fact which Rushdoony has refused to accept for over three decades. See North, Political Polytheism, Appendix B: "Rushdoony on the Constitution."

34. This obligation does not apply to gifts from husbands to wives and vice versa; nor does it apply to intra-family gifts to minors. Parents who feed their children need not set aside a tithe on the food so consumed. The obligation is covenantal, and the institutional payment of the tithe by the head of the household serves as a representative payment for all of its members.

35. At worst, a pastor who is convicted of adultery is suspended for a year or two. I know of at least one case where an admitted adulterer was asked by his presbytery only to transfer to another presbytery. The members' idea of negative sanctions was limited to "Not with our wives, you don't!" He voluntarily left the ministry. I bought part of his library.

36. This is why the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18-20 is not strictly an extension of the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:26-28. A small portion of the fruits of dominion are brought to the institutional church. The church is not the source of these fruits. The institutional church, through its authority to declare someone as an adopted son of God, brings covenant-breakers formally into the eternal household of God, but the institutional church is not itself a family. It possesses greater authority than the family.

37. Rushdoony, Law and Society, Vol. 2 of Institutes of Biblical Law (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1982), p. 129.

38. Idem.

39. Ibid., p. 128.

40. Idem.

41. The nominalist acknowledges no judicial authority beneath the words that define the sacraments. Thus, the sacraments become a mere memorial. This was Zwingli's view of the Lord's Supper. It is also the Baptist view.

42. John Calvin, "Brief Instruction for Arming All the Good Faithful Against the Errors of the Common Sect of the Anabaptists" (1544), in Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Against the Libertines, edited by Benjamin Wirt Farley (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1982), p. 65.

43. On Rushdoony's assertion in February, 1992, that it is, see North, Tithing and the Church, p. 159.

44. Calvin, Treatises, p. 65.

45. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 732.

46. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 734.

47. Ibid., p. 735.

48. Idem.

49. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 46.

50. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 736. In Institutes, he called it a family service (p. 752).

51. Rushdoony, Law and Society, p. 129.

52. On this question, Zwingli was an Anabaptist.

53. Rushdoony, "The Nature of the Church," Calvinism Today, I (Oct. 1991), p. 3.

54. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), IV:XI:2. Edited by Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), II, p. 1214.

55. Rushdoony, "Nature of the Church," p. 3.

56. Ibid., p. 4.

57. Ibid., p. 8.

58. Rushdoony, Law and Society, p. 368. He does not mention Melchizedek in Volume 1.

59. Ibid., p. 337.

60. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 777.

61. Ibid., p. 337.

62. Ibid., p. 341.

63. Ibid., p. 343.

64. Ibid., p. 368.

65. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 740.

66. Ibid., p. 369.

67. Ibid., p. 389.

68. Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, translated by William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich (4th ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1952] 1957), pp. 706-7.

69. Kittel, vol. VI, pp. 651-83.

70. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 683.

71. Kittel, vol. II, pp. 88-89.

72. Ibid.

73. Ibid., pp. 368-69.

74. R. J. Rushdoony, "The Life of the Church: I Timothy 5:1-2," Chalcedon Report (Jan. 1992), p. 15.

75. Law and Society, p. 389.

76. Idem.

77. Ibid., p. 345.

78. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 678. The chapter seems to have been written prior to 1984.

79. Ibid., p. 680.

80. Idem.

81. Ibid., p. 681.

82. Rushdoony, Politics of Guilty and Pity (Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1970] 1978), p. 144.

83. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 240.

84. Ibid., p. 772.

85. Idem.

86. R. J. Rushdoony, "Reconstructing the Church," Calvinism Today, II (July 1992), p. 24.

87. Idem.

88. Whenever Rushdoony includes newspaper citations, the date of the latest citation is probably close to the time he wrote the essay. Prior to his move to Vallecito, California, in 1975, he threw out his lifetime collection of newspaper clippings. (What I would have paid for this collection had I known in advance he intended to trash it!) The chapter cites a local Southern California newspaper, The San Gabriel Tribune: June 26, 1972. He had many disciples in the San Gabriel Valley in this period. One of the attendees of his evening lectures in Pasadena (in the San Gabriel Valley), held in the late 1960's, probably sent him the newspaper clipping. There is no footnote reference in the book to anything published later than 1973. So, I think it is safe to conclude that the chapter was written no later than the publication date of Volume 1 of The Institutes: 1973. That he could write these chapters in the early 1970's, several apparently in late 1972 and early 1973, while he was completing the manuscript of The Institutes, indicates his continuing productivity in 1970-73 period.

Compare the tightly written chapters in Volume 1 with those in Volume 2, Law and Society (1982), whose newspaper citations cluster noticeably around 1976-77. These post-1973 chapters are shorter, relying heavily on footnote references to Bible commentaries and religious encyclopedias, with few references to scholarly journals and scholarly monographs: a visible contrast with the footnotes in his pre-1974 books. The theological structure and integrating theme of Law and Society are difficult to discern, unlike Volume 1. With 160 brief chapters plus appendixes, it could hardly be otherwise.

89. R. J. Rushdoony, Salvation and Godly Rule (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1983), p. 160.

90. R. J. Rushdoony, "Editorial," Chalcedon Report (April 1993), p. 2.

91. You cannot take the Lord's Supper if you do not attend a local church. Rushdoony attended no local church except as a guest lecturer after he ceased preaching for the Anglican Orthodox Church in the mid-1960's. I attended Chalcedon's Sunday meetings from the beginning, though irregularly, 1965-71. I was employed by Chalcedon, 1968-81, and I spoke at its meetings each month, 1973-75, as did Greg Bahnsen. Not once did Rushdoony offer the Lord's Supper at a Chalcedon meeting when I was in attendance during the years that I attended them or spoke at them. David Graves, who tape recorded every Chalcedon weekly meeting from 1972 to 1981, has stated in writing that never was the Lord's Supper served at any Sunday Chalcedon meeting. I reprinted Mr. Graves statement in Tithing and the Church, p. 150. I mention this in response to Rushdoony's insistence that there is no evidence for any accusation against his ideas regarding communion, and that those people who say such critical things must "provide evidences of the charges," and if they refuse, they should be denounced "as liars and slanderers, because they cannot produce the evidences." Rushdoony says that he will no longer answer questions about this matter. Rushdoony, "Random Notes," Chalcedon Report (Oct. 1993), p. 31. I can hardly blame him for not answering: the truth is embarrassing.

92. Gary North, "Dominion Through Subordination," Biblical Economics Today, XV (Aug./Sept. 1993).

93. Rushdoony, "The Foundation of Christian Reconstruction," in Tithing and Dominion, p. 9.

94. A former employee of Chalcedon, Rev. Douglas F. Kelly, has made the case for the church's tax immunity: "Who Makes Churches Tax Exempt?" in Christianity and Civilization, No. 3 (1983), published by the Geneva Divinity School Press.

95. Rushdoony, "Tithing and Christian Reconstruction," Tithing and Dominion, p. 3.

96. Idem.

97. Idem.

98. Ibid., p. 5.

99. Rushdoony, "The Foundation of Christian Reconstruction," ibid., p. 9.

100. Idem.

101. Through common grace, it is extended even by covenant-breakers. North, Dominion and Common Grace.

102. He wrote in 1967: "The property tax came in very slowly, and it appeared first in New England, coinciding with the spread of Deism and Unitarianism, as well as atheism. Such anti-Christian men saw the state as man's savior, and as a result they favored placing more and more power in the hands of the state. The South was the last area to accept the property tax, and it was largely forced on the South by post-Civil War era, conservative elements limited it to the county and retained the legal requirement that only owners of real property could vote on the county level." Rushdoony, Chalcedon Newsletter #24 (Sept. 1967). Reprinted in Rushdoony, The Roots of Reconstruction (Vallecito, California: Ross House, 1991), p. 606.

103. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1988).

104. There is a third way: military conquest. But this method of dominion is not primary. It lawful only when it is the result of successful defensive campaigns that produce comprehensive victory in wars launched by God's enemies.

105. E. Calvin Beisner, Prospects for Growth: A Biblical View of Population, Resources, and the Future (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, 1990).

106. This is one reason why a Christian should instruct his heirs not to put him on a life-support system once two physicians say that it is unlikely that he will recover. The capital of most estates in the U.S. is used up in the last six months of an aged person's life. It is better to die in bed at home six months early and leave capital behind. Christians must buy back the world, generation by generation. This requires a growing supply of capital.

107. North, Political Polytheism, p. 553.

108. Rushdoony, "Foundation of Christian Reconstruction," Tithing and Dominion, pp. 8-9.

109. Because churches have refused to do this, they have forfeited enormous influence and authority in modern culture. See Gary North, "Royal Priests, Tin Cups in Hand," Biblical Economics Today, XIV (June/July 1992).

110. Rushdoony, "To Whom Do We Tithe?" Tithing and Dominion, p. 30.

111. Pre-1992. Today, I do not know what he believes. What he has written, however, is clear.

112. I am not referring to Rushdoony's 1992 anointing of Chalcedon as a church. I am speaking of his published theology and his two-decade absence from a local church and its communion table until 1992, when he began serving communion to himself and his family.

113. The ICE is legally chartered as a charitable trust, not a foundation.

114. Here I speak of non-members, now that Chalcedon has been designated by Rushdoony as a church. But Chalcedon Church, if it in fact is a lawful church, is not entitled biblically to the tithe money of non-members. It, too, must rely on non-members' gifts above the tithe.

115. On this point, see my response to John R. Muether in Gary North, Westminster's Confession: The Abandonment of Van Til's Legacy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), pp. 289-92.

116. Rushdoony, Law and Society, p. 127.

117. Rushdoony, "The Nature of the Church," Calvinism Today (Oct. 1991), p. 3.

118. Rushdoony, "The Tithe in Scripture," Tithing and Dominion, p. 17.

119. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, 5 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, [1559] 1979), V, p. 588.

120. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 55.

121. Rushdoony, Intellectual Schizophrenia: Culture, Crisis and Education (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1961), p. 42.

122. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 57.

123. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 513.

124. Ibid., p. 514.

125. My view is that the proper negative sanction to be used against non-tithing members is their removal from the list of voting members. They would not be allowed to impose sanctions on church officers. In the same way that civil voters who pay no taxes are a political threat to the assets of those who do pay, so are church voters who refuse to pay the tithe. See North, Tithing and the Church, ch. 3.

126. Bill Moyers, "God and Politics: On Earth as It Is in Heaven," Public Affairs Television (1987), p. 5.

127. This is acknowledged implicitly judicially in the U.S. tax code. The taxpayer is allowed to deduct tithes and offerings from his gross income before estimating his income tax (though not his FICA or Social Security tax). He pays income taxes only on the money that remains after charitable giving. This is not true in most European countries, where the State has primary claim on income, with the church taking whatever remains.

128. R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy (Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1971] 1978), p. 130.

129. Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction 1300-1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), ch. 7: "Who Controls the Marriage Decision?"

130. See North, Tithing and the Church, pp. 156-57.

131. Rushdoony, Law and Society, p. 337.

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