The Family; R.J. Rushdoony

The Family R. J. RUSHDOONY THE FAMILY has been under major attack in the modern world from a number of sources, and more than one scholar has predicted the death ·of the family as Christian civilization has known it. These predictions represent not only wishful thinking but a militant hostility to the family. In order to understand the motivation for these attacks, it is necessary to recognize the social significance of the family. The Reverep.d Mr. Rushdoony is President of Cha1cedon, an educational organization dedi cated to furthering Christian research and writ ing. He is author of numerous books and a frequent speaker on college campuses. This article is reprinted by permission from Applied Christianity, December, copyright, 1972. The family in Biblical law, and in Western society since Justinian, has been the custodian of the most important things in any society: children, property and inheritance.

In Biblical law, the family alone is the custodian and controller of all three, and its social powers as a result are very great. Control over children, property and inher itance means a control over the future. As a result, every institution which dreams of power begins im mediately to attack the family be cause of its monopolistic powers in these areas. It attacks also the basic legal reform and revolution insti tuted by Justinian and Theo429 430 THE FREEMAN July dora in the sixth century. This legal revolution, which brought civil law' into conformity with Biblical law, was responsible for shifting the foundations of soci ety from the state to .the family. There were· five aspects to this legal reform with respect to the family. 1. Only heterosexual rela tions in marriage were made le gally allowable. All other sexual relations were made subject to criminal charges. 2. This law was made applicable to all classes, so that the same standard of family life and sex was mandatory for all classes and professions, and all acts to the contrary were criminal.

3. All illicit sexuality was made punishable by corporal punish ment, imprisonment,or banish ment. 4. No legal contract could be made regarding non-family sex, Le., with a mistress, concubine, prostitute, procurer, nor anyone else, and to secure such a contract made the inciting party an acces sory to a crime. 5. The family was defined as the .legitimate and nor mal way of life and status. In the medieval church, there was both an emphasis on the Christian family and a deprecia tion of it in favor of the primacy of the church. With the Reforma tion, and especially with Puritan ism, the family regained primacy, and even Rome followed suit. March 19 was now stressed (St. Joseph's Day), and the cult of the foster-father of Jesus was made, beginning in the 16th cen tury, a counter-development to the new vitality of family life in Protestant countries. Enter - The State There is no true understanding of the struggle for power in the modern world without an aware ness of these facts. The family, re-shaped in Western civilization to conform to Biblical law, was now the dominant power. By means of its control of children and their education, it defined the future. Capture of the control of children and their education thus becam~ an imperative for any so cial agency seeking to ga.in power.

The earlier power of the church was now replaced by the greater power of the modern state and its schools, instruments ably designed for social control and the disinte gration of the family and its power. In the Bible, property is im mune to taxation and seizure, and both offenses were regarded with horror (1 Sam. 8 :10-18; I Kings 21). The state now began to tax property and to assert again the old pagan power of eminent do main. Finally, the state, by means of the inheritance tax, declared itself to be the first heir, i.e., the firstborn in terms of Biblical law, 1973 THE FAMILY 431 in every familY,and it began to destroy the independent power of the family by confiscatory taxes. Not surprisingly, but rather, logically, Marx saw the theologi cal foundations of the family's strength. He attacked the Holy Family, the Trinity, as the foun dation of the earthly family, and Engels saw the family of Biblical law as the source of capitalism and property. Anti-familistic thinking governed socialist theo reticians. H. G. Wells, a Fabian Socialist, called for "the libera tion of individual sexual conduct from social reproach and from legal controls and penalties." He held to "the absolute right of so ciety to intervene directly [where] the e~istence of children is in volved."

James Bryant Conant, former president of Harvard, U.S. High Commissioner in West Germany after World War II, scientist, and investigator in education for the Carnegie Foundation, saw the family as the roadblock to democ racy. In one of his reports on edu cation, Conant wrote: Wherever the institution of the family is still a powerful force, as it is in this country, surely inequality of opportunity is automatically, and often unconsciously, a basic principle of the nation; the more favored par ents endeavor to obtain even greater favors for their children. Therefore, when we Americans proclaim an ad herence to the doctrine of equality of opportunity, we face the necessity for a perpetual compromise. Now it seems to me important to recognize both the inevitable conflict and the continuing nature of the compro mise. Democracy is the goal. How· can democracy hope to succeed if an aristocratic institution like the family, where every parent seeks the best for his children, is al lowed to survive? Clearly, it must go! Earlier John Dewey had held that orthodox Christianity had to go because it is incompatible with democracy. By seperating "the saved and the lost", heaven and hell, good and evil, orthodox Chris tianity is radically anti-democratic and is committed to a "spiritual aristocracy". "I cannot understand how any realization of the demo cratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed."

The Suicide of Culture The family's autonomy and power are thus under attack and in process of erosion. Statist edu cation is anti-familist to the core; modern legal· "reforms" have as their purpose the elimination of Biblical premises from the law.

432 THE FREEMAN July This is often openly stated. In Sweden, for example, a govern ment legal expert, Professor Alvar Nelson, has declared, "our aim is to remove all traces of Church morality from legislation." Because of the deliberate neg lect of the meaning of the family in society, the average man thinks of marriage purely as a regular ized sexual relationship which perhaps contributes to the mental stability of the children born of the union. He has no awareness of the fact that basic social power and planning, in terms of Biblical law and the conforming of West ern law to this Scriptural stand ard after Justinian, resides in the family. To surrender this power over children, property, and in heritance to the state, as has steadily been done, is for man to surrender his essential powers and freedom to the state. The nemesis of every attempt to undermine the family is the suicide of· the culture which at tempts it. Greek, Roman, and other cultures, while far below the Biblical standard in their concepts of the family, still had familistic eras. With their decay, society de cayed and collapsed.

A Brighter Side This is no cause for pessimism, however, but rather for optimism. The approaching collapse of the age of humanism and the state will see the strong revival of familism, and the United States is already giving evidence of this. Basic to that revival of the fam ily's integrity and power is a theo logical and legal reformation. There must be an awareness of the legal centrality of the family, its theological importance, and its far-reaching significance as a so cial institution. Under God, the family is a monopoly, having exclusive pow ers in certain areas. The state is in process of attempting to seize that monopoly for itself. The proven ability of the family to be the responsible agency, when it is first responsible to God, in the areas of children, property, and inheritance is the mainspring of Western civilization and its ad vances. On the other hand, our grow ing social crisis is the product of the state's incompetence in these realms. The impotence of the state is increasingly apparent in its in abili ty to cope with the problems it has created.

The times are thus exciting and alive with challenge; it is a time of decision and a turning point in history. Our future will be· family oriented, and it will be dominated by those who prepare for it. , MAN is not a creature of in stinct. In that regard, he differs in a revolutionary way from every other living creature. He is not born with instincts, like those of the birds and bees, which fit him for survival, to say nothing of gaining lasting satisfactions or happiness. Therefore, he must learn from the accumulated wisdom of his fel lows most of the ways of acting that enable him to survive, and he must get much of this knowledge and numberless skills and habits in infancy and childhood. Yet, all his life, he needs the help of his fellows in learning how to cope with his ever-changing world. As the saying goes, "Fools learn by experience, wise men learn by the experience of others."