In this study, we have focused upon the various aspects of a patriarch’s relationship to God, his family, and society at large. But the exact place for the working out of these relationships occurs on terra firma - the earth. For this reason, this chapter is of culminating importance on this theme of "Restoring the Foundations", because it is man s relationship to the land which must be restored before the home and society can be restored. Indeed, after the Biblical pattern, men are restored to God and the land simultaneously by the building of an altar of earth for the formal and open worship of God (Deuteronomy 27:5-10).

As stated in a previous chapter, a man may have an altar in his heart, and therefore able to worship God anywhere in spirit and in truth by its consecration. But in no sense can it be externalized for a witness to creation, nor can it fulfill the conditions of the Creation Mandate in filling the earth with praise and the glory of God until, and only until, the man of God builds an altar of stones upon the land (Exodus 20:24-25; Genesis 1:26-28; 2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 Corinthians 11:7; Romans 8:19-22; Psalms 85:9; 97:6; Isaiah 66; Habakkuk 2:14).

The Altar is where dominion begins. Abraham conquered the Land of Promise by stepping it off (surveying it) and building altars (establishing title). In this sense, he took possession of Canaan long before his descendants set foot on it.

Israel was God’s Throne Nation, but now, through Christ’s Atonement, the whole earth, to the extent it is under the control of His people, has become His Throne Nation (Romans 4:13). As Rushdoony explains,

It is not the land which is holy, but the Lord God who dwells therein. While Canaan is no longer a throne-land, because all the earth is the Lord’s, and in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) all of it is declared an area of impending conquest, the laws of holiness are applicable to all the earth.

- Law and Society, Institutes of Biblical Law Vol. 2, p. 309

Title-deed to land does not come from the County Recorder, nor does it come from paying a mortgage. The right to the land comes from God. And it is claimed by the building of altars.

The children of Israel took what was rightfully theirs by the righteousness of Abraham. They were the true heirs of the earth, and rightfully dispossessed and destroyed the false heirs. "The meek shall inherit the earth", promised our Lord. For this reason, Christian men everywhere should be urged to purchase land. It is the calling of redeemed man to go forth and redeem the earth. Why are families content to be imprisoned in the depraved madness of our American Sodoms? Why do Christians content themselves with worship and preaching hidden away in our church buildings, and not liberated to their pristine simplicity and greatness under the open firmament of God’s glory? Worship is better outdoors.

The land is the locale for the Kingdom of God in history. Christians, having their thinking infected by gnosticism and neoplatonism, easily overlook this fact. The family is the corporate manifestation of the Kingdom of God on Earth and the direct recipient of the Dominion Covenant (Genesis 1:26-28). Man’s first calling was to be a farmer (Genesis 2:15).

Earlier, I said that the popular definition of the family is truncated. It is so because the family is seen only in terms of its procreative and communal aspects, and not within the context of man’s dominion task. Man is not a mere animal, reproducing himself like the animals. The familial bond does not exist just for the purposes of reproduction and companionship. It is integral to man’s call to rulership (Psalms 8). Dominion defines the family, and that fact is lost to modern man who uses pseudo-familial relationships (churches, schools, corporations, governments, etc.) to rule the earth.

It is axiomatic that rule without a domain is meaningless. Kings without kingdoms are misnomers. The domain of the Triune Godhead is the substance of their original being, the infinite vastness of their own potentials. For man, made in God’s image, his domain is his own person (including seed) and the land. Man was made from the soil; and thus, the manifestation of his potentials requires the working of the soil.

Therefore, a more accurate definition of the family is a man (ruler) with his land (domain), a helper or helpers (women), and successors (sons). While God dwells in the spiritual dimension, man lives in the corporal dimension. He is soil (Genesis 3:19), and that is the reality he must subdue and rule to the glory of God. The family is the only social structure ordained by God to fulfill this vocation.

Modern society has forgotten that the land belongs to God, the Creator. It treats the land like a commodity. Yet, the Scriptures describe it as the only permanent thing this side of eternity. Men are merely sojourners, tenants upon the land. When they are gone, the land and God will remain. New stewards will take their place and will be judged by their use of it. Since man is not the owner, he acts as a trustee, holding the land and using the land to provide for the tenants who will come after him: the next generation.

In saying that men are stewards and not owners does not diminish their rights and obligations. The error of Marxism lies in its exaltation of the state to godhood. In this system, men give account of their stewardship to the state and not to God. Property rights, under socialism, become reduced to privileges and a vehicle for a new slavery. The Bible has a radically different view of land tenure.

In the Bible, there is no governmental structure to which men must give account for their use of the land. Unless a tort is involved (as in cutting-off water to owners downstream), landed men are directly answerable to God, who judges them providentially (e.g. famine,, plague, war, etc. - Deuteronomy 28). A piece of land and its owner constitute a miniature state. At Common Law, this concept is known as droit, droit - an allodial ownership of property in distinction from a feudal ownership. Only kings can hold land in allodium. The old expression "a man' s home is his castle" bears witness to the Biblical roots of Celtic-Saxon Common Law, which we have inherited in America. In Israel, all men were kings and their estates constituted separate governmental units. The owner of the land was the presiding lord and priest. For crimes, he could be judged by a jury of his peers, but on his land he was the magistrate for misdemeanors. Appeals were permitted through the decimal system of judges or directly to God through the sacral casting of lots (Urim & Thummim) or force of arms.

One astounding effect of Biblical terranomics (land law), overlooked by most commentators but which I find of central importance, is that it creates a permanent political division in society between city and country (Leviticus 25). The land could not be sold (although it could be leased) and had to be returned to the family at the Jubilee. This made urban sprawl an impossibility. And because this law was later ignored by Israel, the cities consumed the countryside, an event Isaiah saw with foreboding (Isaiah 5:8).

Unlike Marxism, which calls for an eradication of the distinction between city and country, Biblical terranomics provides for two kinds of citizen: the urbanite and the villager. Why? The answer: it provides a check-and-balance between anarchy on one hand and absolutism on the other. If tyranny and sin in the city become unbearable, people can flee to the countryside. If life in the country stagnates under entrenched conservatism, then the people can flee to the city.

During the Medieval era, a solution was attempted by creating institutional divisions of power in society: the church, the state, and the monasteries, which later became the universities. The church had the power of the sacraments; the state had the power of the sword. But the monasteries had the Scriptures. The great Reformers came from the monasteries and universities. Although they did not hold the power of excommunication and execution, they did teach the Scriptures. And after the printing press, they swayed whole nations through the power of the pen.

This division created a bi-modal and later, a tri-modal power-structure to society. Astute historians will recognize this fact, and this fact alone, as the foundation for whatever freedom existed in continental Europe.

In the Bible, however, we find a more fundamental division according to the land: the city, the village, and the wilderness.

The wilderness was literally "the unsown land", land which had not come under the dominion of man. No need for government was there, for there were no people. Natural barriers prevented it, either by climate or terrain. The wilderness was an important place. If society became utterly wicked and beyond reform, then the wilderness became the place of escape. Many of God’s people survived in the wilderness, beyond the reach of their persecutors (Hebrews 11:38; Revelation 12). The mountains, caverns, and desert places were the sanctuaries of survival, not dominion. They were places of refuge until the judgment of God destroyed the power centers of the wicked society.

In healthy times, the dominant division was the duality between the urban and rural areas. The city, of course, was the place of great power for the professional class. It is always in the places of a concentration of the population that you have the opportunity for extensive specialization and division of labor. Also, you have the opportunity and need for institutionalization to provide stability of customs, beliefs, and laws. Unlike the rural areas, houses and estates could be permanently sold in the city (Leviticus 25:29-30). So, the city was a place of great diversity and activity.

Obviously, the city was not agrarian. It was separated from the land by great walls, which did not provide easy access for the farmer to his fields. The city served as the center for commerce and industry. Since foreigners were allowed permanent residence and ownership in the city, Israelite cities were cosmopolitan.

The dangers, of course, were many. Leisure lended itself to vice, and separation from the realities of the land tended to support humanism and decadence. Stimulation from foreign influence often resulted in hedonism and idolatry.

Why did God provide this system? Ideally, the city was the place of leisure and worship. It was meant to represent the heavenly paradise and the Garden of the Lord, which was the first city enclosed and guarded by the cherubs. Walls had spiritual significance.

Yet, Eden was also a garden, a rural setting. It was a place of labor and dominion. Contrasting the city was the village of the countryside. The village relied upon the extended family to get things done. There was a personal touch to life in the village, whereas the city risked irrelevant abstraction and bureaucracy. In Israel farmers and rural craftsmen did not live alone on remote homesites, like the early settlers of the American Plains. They lived in villages and walked to and from their fields or places of work. The villages offered protection from gangs of thieves, wild animals, and general mishaps which become disastrous for those alone. The village was a self-contained, self-sufficient economy. It relied upon family and friends to solve social problems, not institutions.

To digress briefly, two generations have transformed America from a balanced society of urban and rural into a predominantly urban one. The average farm at the turn of the century was forty acres. Now, it is more like four hundred. The spreading rot of our inner cities demonstrates that an exclusively urban source of values and manners is destroying the nation.

We should also note that the Early Church was created in an urban setting. The institutional model of church officers found in the New Testament were appropriate for the city, not the village. In Israel, the Levites lived in the cities, and it was their principal task to disciple foreign immigrants which flooded into them during good times. The Levites were not intended to live in the rural areas and teach Israelites. Israelite fathers were priests to their own households. God called Israel a nation of kings and priests (Exodus 19:6 cf. 1 Peter 2:9). The ministry of the Levites reflected God’s desire for world evangelism, anticipating Christ’s Great Commission.

This fact accounts for the control the elders of a city had over its buildings and properties, although regulated by Biblical law. The urban dweller was less apt to scrupulously follow that Law. Consequently, the Levitical ministry and eldership were needed to supervise the population and maintain order.

Theologians rightfully find the basis of civil government in the Sixth Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Together with mandates like Genesis 9:6, which requires the death penalty for murder, the need for civil government is obvious. But God does not leave the structure for that civil power to chance. He provides for it in the Fifth Commandment: "Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother." In the context of the modern state, it may seem difficult to see the connection between family government and civil government. However, if we remember that a true family requires the ownership of an estate, we can find the activating mechanism.

In the Hebrew Republic, the basic level of all government, in all spheres of life, was the elder, or more literally, "the old man". The burdens of civil government were the responsibility of the Grandpas in Israel.

Parents are parents for life. And the covering they provide for their offspring grows ever larger until it reaches into the realm of institutions. The honor due them by their children is one which includes their legacy in the civilization. As men grow older, they become the exalted fathers, the fathers of fathers.

In ancient Israel, each allotment of land had a village - a cluster of houses where lived an extended family group (3-5 generations), with their servants, hired hands, and their families. Each man was the head of his respective household, but the over-all magistrate for that estate and of all who lived upon it was the leading male member. Generally, that male was the oldest father who was heir to the land. His word was final. It was he who went to the city gates to convene with the other elders as the family spokesman. Of course, the Grandpa was not to be a tyrant or a despot. If he was, Biblical laws had ways of dealing with his sins. He did not meddle in the affairs of his grown children or of residents, as a rule. He supervised the affairs of the estate. He had eminent domain. Primarily though, he was there for consultation and to sit as a judge in family disputes. The goal of Hebrew education was to train children for dominion over their own estates. That training did not end at age 18. It was a gradual process of a transference of power.

Grandpas had appellate jurisdiction within the family structure and he was the spokesman and elector for the family at the city gate. The village eldership was not subservient to the city eldership. Much like the equal suffrage of the several States in the United States Senate, they each stood on equal footing, irrespective of the populations of their constituent bodies. From this eldership was drawn the officers of government and the holders of public trust. Judges, councils, military officers, and so on, were selected from among them. Since the Levites held a monopoly of the priestly function, only their eldership could service the temple. That aspect is now gone, of course. The New Testament eldership was a continuation of the Levitical pattern, which was also provisional (Ephesians 4:11-16).

These elders are not to be confused with church elders or officers as we understand them today. These elders were still family-oriented in their rule.

Nor should they be confused with the decimal structure of government established by Moses. Moses, upon the advice of his father-in-law, established a specialized gradation of courts of Divine inspiration (Deuteronomy 1:17). These courts were appellate courts added to the natural, patriarchal government of elders which existed in Israel prior to the Mosaic system (Exodus 3:16). It has never been superseded or replaced. Indeed, a society which does not have this patriarchal eldership has no foundation.

At one time, America had something similar to this governmental structure. Voting was limited to land owners and ownership was allodial. But America never succeeded in establishing a familial form of government or a Biblical terranomic. It rejected as the twin evils of barbarism the institutions of polygamy and slavery. Failing to understand the difference between the pagan and Biblical forms of these customs, they set our nation’s course in a statist direction. And we are paying the heavy price of their fateful decisions today.

It is repeatedly argued that Biblical terranomics is impossible in a modern industrial society. I argue that industrialism and advanced technology occur prior to the burning-out of a civilization. That is because they are sustained by usury, a market economy fueled by compounding debt (i.e. inflation). An inflationary economy penalizes the producers in society and rewards the consumers. When enough producers are forced into poverty, they stop producing and the civilization collapses. Industrialism finds its cousins in militarism and totalitarianism.

If Biblical land law cannot be valid for every society in every age, then there can be no land law. We are left to human reason to do what is pleasing in our own eyes: humanistic terranomics. I do not believe God would leave to human wisdom a factor so basic to our lives and to civilization. The land is the most basic thing there is to our existence, even more basic than our sexuality. And Bible thumpers do not seem to find any shortage of commentary on sexual ethics in the Sacred Writ.

Indeed, to separate Biblical moral and civil law from Biblical terranomics creates distortions in both. Like fish in water, W.H. Freemantle has correctly insisted of Israel that "their land law was the basis of the system" (i.e. of law and government).

Now, it is easy to see how the Biblical family can be called a "commonwealth". The family village provides a social, economic, and governmental unit large enough to create self-sufficiency. Thus, many of the benefits we associate with the state or its agents (corporations, charities, agencies, etc.) were provided by the village. Education, welfare, social security, insurance, health care - all these were the province of the family group. The commercial and judicial aspects were also (vocational training, lending of money, business ventures, family courts, arbitration, discipline, marriage, and so on). Even the males of the family group over age 20 were considered an indivisible, military unit.

Much more could be said on these various aspects. However, I will mention, briefly, that the creation of the marriage bond was legitimized by the land owner in Israel (Exodus 21:3-4). Ancient Common Law marriage was much more Biblical than our present system which uses clergymen as agents for the state. I mention this because marriage, as an institution, concerns itself with children, inheritance, and property. And Rushdoony has correctly claimed that "any institution or agency which controls children, property, and inheritance is the determining agency in any society." (Salvation & Godly Rule, p. 478). That is why the logical conclusion of statism is the bureaucratic licensure and control of marriage, a proposal seriously considered by American law journals. As it now stands, the courts have assumed a de facto right to regulate marriage through its control of child custody in divorce and adoption proceedings. After the mania over the exaggerated figures of parental child abuse have sufficiently desensitized Americans to the idea, the courts will, no doubt, assert a de jure right to control marriage and child bearing, especially among those groups out-of-step with society (Christians?). All potential rivals of the state must be eliminated. They will be labeled as "cults" and dealt with accordingly.

In the final analysis, all valid government is family government, or the extension thereof. The government of heaven is a family government: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. If the Kingdom of the heavenly family is to come to the earth ("Thy kingdom come"), then we must expect it to come to the earthly family first, and then proceed to society at large.

The link between the private government of the family in the home and on the family estate with the outside world is the eldership of the grandfather. This is the forgotten ministry. And it is the restoration of this function in our society which will restore the foundations among our people.

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