This is How We Should Live

The answer to the Great Antinomianism is clear cut: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4). It is that every word that man must hear, believe, and obey. It is the infallible word, and there is not another kind of word from God.1

Is it possible to reduce the thinking of R. J. Rushdoony, or Christian Reconstruction, to a single idea? For the critic, Rushdoony represents the primary source material for a frightening religious dystopia of unelected clerics who rule an unwilling population with Old Testament law as their public policies. Over the years, this conspiracy theory appears almost seasonally particularly with presidential election cycles.

For critics within Reformed circles, the critique is typically leveled at theonomy taking God’s law too far and/or the postmillennial over-confidence of Christian dominion.

Both critiques miss the fundamental idea in Rushdoony’s thought, which is that man shall live by every word that proceeds from God’s mouth (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4), and like it or not, there are implications for such a comprehensive world and life view. We would argue the implications are most certainly the victory of God in history.

Good, Acceptable, and Perfect

When our Lord retorted to Satan that man shall live by every word of God (Matt. 4:4) the obvious reference was the law, the prophets, the psalms, and the wisdom literature, i.e., the Old Testament. Now, as New Testament believers, we have in addition the gospels and epistles which are equally God’s infallible word and replete with God’s revealed will for His people. Therefore, they are also part of every word that proceeds from God’s mouth, and as God’s prophetic people, we are to continually cast aside humanistic thinking that we might better understand and apply God’s thought to every area of life as it says in Romans 12:

1. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Was that not Rushdoony’s mission? Did he not devote himself to proving that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God for all areas of life and thought? For him, this was how a Christian expresses dependency upon God’s every word and submits himself to it:

To pick and choose at God’s word is to place ourselves above it and to reduce it to a resource for man to use. The true prophet stands on the whole word of God, without reservations. Christ as the faithful prophet answers Satan each time with Scripture, declaring, “It is written” (Matt. 4:4,7,10).2

Taking Back by Self-Government

Of course, it’s much easier for the Christian to think of God’s Word only in terms of matters of the heart, but the end result is the cultural decline we’re witnessing today. For Rushdoony, he was driven to understand how the Scriptures speak to every sphere of life, not simply our individual sanctification, as important as that is. When Rush was once asked how he writes his book, he prefaced his answer with a simple description of the central motive for his scholarly calling:

I’m always studying because I’m interested in something. I want to explore something. I want to know what God’s Word is for it.3

This is why he saw his own work as merely scratching the surface of the work that needed to be done. To rethink all areas of life in terms of God’s Word is beyond the capacity of a single scholar, or even a single ministry. This is a calling for all of us as we look for ways to apply God’s Word utilizing the tithe as a means to underwriting Christian institutions, charity, and other dominion work.

We are to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, and this has implications for every area of life and thought. What came about by the quiet revolution of Christian schools and homeschooling must now extend to more areas of life as we “take back” government by self-government in terms of God’s law-word.

1. R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in Two Volumes (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1994), p. 23.

2. Ibid., p. 284.

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXbPcuiXZ2Q