Key quotes about "Sovereignty"
I recently spent some time one evening reading through Rushdoony's Sovereignty. I certainly didn't read every word or even every page, but I had previously read through the book more meticulously and had underlined/starred key points. This time around, I mostly re-read these portions and typed some of them for future reference, which are included below. Rushdoony provided much wisdom for an era that has forgotten who is sovereign.As Samuel Adams said, in an era during which our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, by signing "The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America," so may it be said of us in our generation: "We have this day restored the Sovereign to Whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come."
I therefore present the following thought-provoking points of wisdom from Rushdoony:
"Totalitarianism begins with the belief that human sovereignty or state sovereignty exists" (p. 4).
"God's government of the world begins with the self-government of the Christian man" (p. 11).
"Because He [God] is the King here and now and forever more, His law-word must govern us now and always, and all things must be reordered and remade to conform to His royal word" (p. 40).
"Failure to recognize that God is the sovereign means that He is treated as a human resource, and Jesus Christ is seen as the great fire and life insurance agent" (p. 93).
"If sovereignty has its locale in man, then morality and law will to all practical intent originate in man" (p. 104).
"Christians, by affirming the sovereignty of the triune God and the universal Kingship of Jesus Christ, thereby deny the modern doctrines of sovereignty and the people" (p. 107).
"Sovereignty is an inescapable concept. If men will not have God as their sovereign, they will soon have monsters ruling over them as their man-made sovereigns" (p. 117).
"When people today speak of 'government,' they mean the state, whereas the true government begins with the self-government of the Christian man, and government means the family, church, school, our vocation, our society, and its many institutions and agencies, and only partially the state" (p. 153).
"God's law-word gives man the way to dominion, and dominion is not domination" (p. 165).
"Law once meant a religious and moral force; it now means statist power and coercion. The modern state has seen itself as the messianic savior of man, as the great culminating hope of the ages. The state, republican or democratic, Marxist or fascist, is the supposed solution to human ills and problems" (p. 189).
"The state cannot provide an ethic, because its rule rests on power, coercive power. In the modern era we are seeing again what destroyed the Middle Ages, the transfer of law and justice from God to the state. This means also the transfer of every department of human life to statist control" (p. 198).
"There is no recognition or admission that law or justice can exist above and beyond the state. Man thus is trapped in a closed world, the state" (pp. 198-199).
"Sovereignty and rule are attributes of God, and to claim the right to rule in one's own name is a claim to sovereignty or divinity" (p. 243).
"In our time, the state has declared its independence of God, and the church has withdrawn from the necessary relevance of Christian faith to the state and to every other sphere of life. Both are under the judgment of God for their course of action and their rejection of Christ's crown rights" (p. 259).
"Statist atonement is destructive, not regenerative, because the state is a false savior" (p. 275).
"As the state's incompetence grows, so too does its claims to authority, its claim to total relevance, and, in time, its claim to totalitarian power" (p. 319).
"There is no abstract justice existing in independence of God" (p. 323).
"Political conservatives seek justice in a return to constitutionalism, forgetting that what may have been good in the past was due to men's Christian character rather than a form of civil government" (p. 339).
"If we invalidate authorities on the evidence of any sin or error, we guarantee anarchy" (p. 379).
"We live totally in God's creation of total meaning, and hence of total accountability and responsibility" (p. 380).
"Man lives his life in time and history; to be indifferent to the past and the future is to be ignorant and incompetent in facing the present" (p. 391).
"The state or civil government can be a ministry of justice under God, or it can become a parasite" (p. 397).
"It [a desire to control populations genocidally] is still endemic among intellectuals, who love to believe and propagate the myth of overpopulation. It is basic to abortion, and the good liberals who advocate abortion do not tell us that a very high ratio of the murdered babies are black; this would lay bare their racism" (p. 404).
"A census now enumerates far more than a head-count; the questions asked grow more numerous and detailed. A census now is an important aspect of statist planning; its purpose is the welfare of the people as determined by the state" (p. 418).
"The nations of the world in the twentieth century have been progressively wedded to counterfeit money, i.e., to fiat currencies. Counterfeiting reality is thus basic to their way of life" (p. 431).
"The atoning work of Christ is denied by the modern state as having any relevance to its structure. The atonement, however, makes it clear that God's law and justice are ultimate and basic to creation, and all things are fallen and distorted apart from it" (p. 432).
"The error of Greco-Roman thought, reproduced by both church and state in the medieval era, was the assumption that the one sovereign must be on earth" (p. 458).
"Our Lord defines greatness in authority and power as a faithful, humble ministry under God to men" (p. 465).
"... Christianity is being disestablished and humanism established as the religion of the land" (p. 468).
"Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him" (Psalm 2:11-12).
posted by C.S. Hayden @ 5:25 PM
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