Quotes from R.J. Rushdoony

Freedom in the Biblical sense is always at a price; it is a costly gift, and it requires great things of us.

The purpose of Christian education is not academic: it is religious and practical.

Our character is revealed under pressure.

Slaves are governed by the fear of man, and, whenever the fear of man replaces the fear of God in a society, slavery reappears and increases.

T]he more man accepts his limitations, the better is he enabled to know things truly.

The resurrection of the body forbids us to despise the material realm.

The triune God exercises total government over all things, and He requires us as His image-bearers to exercise government in Christ in our own spheres in terms of His law.

The Bible is God's law-word which must govern every sphere of life and thought.

If God be denied, then His sovereignty and infallibility accrue to other agencies.

We sin if we do not confront sin as sin.

Humanism believes in salvation by works of law. By vast appropriations of money, and dedicated labor, [it] is trying to save all nations and races, all men from all problems, in the hopes of creating paradise on earth. [It] is trying to bring peace on earth and goodwill among men by acts of state and works of law, not by Jesus Christ.

Problems are a part of life in a fallen world, and they are necessary part of it, necessary to our testing and to our growth.

We are getting what we paid for, and if we want something else, we are going to have to pay for it, in work, sweat, and sacrifice.

because the world is God's creation and law order, it is the truth which in time shall prevail and triumph.

Before the rise of Deism, Calvin condemned the pragmatic deism which relegated God to heaven and left the government of the world to men.

The doctrine of vocation or calling gained currency as men began to take time and history seriously. If the goal of the Christian life is a neoplatonic flight from this world, then pietism has effectively undermined the doctrine of non-ecclesiastical callings. To speak of having a calling is usually to speak of the clergy and clerical office.

There are more ways of stealing than simply holding a gun to a man's head. Whenever and wherever by fraud, deception, or coercion we take from anyone what is rightfully their own, and which they have no desire to surrender, we have robbed them.

The basic function of law is to restrain (Rom. 13:1-4) not to regenerate, and when the function of the law is changed from the restraint of evil to the regeneration of man and society, then law itself begins to break down, because an impossible burden is being placed upon it...Only as we return to a Biblical foundation for law shall we again have a return to justice and order under law.

Law is good, proper, and essential in its place, but law can save no man, nor can law remake man and society.

Man lives in time but his life transcends time.

Humanistic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For Humanism, salvation is an act of the state.

God in His law requires the death penalty for homosexuals.

The goal is the developed Kingdom of god, the New Jerusalem, a world order under god's law.

There can be no good character in civil government if there is none in the people. You cannot make a good omelet with bad eggs.