Law and Liberty Quotes

“Our increasingly humanistic laws, courts and legislators are giving us a new morality. They tell us, as they strike down laws resting upon biblical foundations, that morality cannot be legislated, but what they offer is not only legislated morality, but salvation by law.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“Our basic problem today is that we have two religions in conflict, humanism and Christianity, each with its own morality and the laws of that morality.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“Law is good, proper, and essential in its place, but law can save no man, nor can law remake man and society.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“Humanistic law aims at saving man and remaking society. For Humanism, salvation is an act of the state.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“We may disagree with the morality of a law, but we cannot deny the moral concern of a law.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“Those who hold to the Christian faith see law as an ultimate order of the universe. It is the invariable factor in a variable world, the unchanging order in a changing universe. Law for the Christian is thus absolute, final, and an aspect of God's creation and a manifestation of His nature. In terms of this, the Christian can hold that right is right, and wrong is wrong, that good and evil are unchanging moral categories rather than relative terms.

From an evolutionary perspective, however, we have a very different concept of law. The universe is evolving, and the one constant factor is change. It is impossible therefore to speak of any absolute law. The universe has evolved by means of chance variations, and no law has any ultimacy or absolute truth. As a result when we talk about law, we are talking about social customs or mores and about statistical averages. Social customs change, and what was law to the ancient Gauls is not law to the modern Frenchmen. We can expect men's ideas of law to change as their societies change and evolve. Moreover, statistics give us an average and a mean which determine normality, and our ideas of law are governed by what is customary and socially accepted.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“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.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“But, while a man can be restrained by strict law and order, he cannot be changed by law; he cannot be saved by law. Man can only be saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.”
― R. J. Rushdoony, Law & Liberty

“A man’s life, from birth to death, is guided, affected, and colored by family relations. The basic unit of the social order is the family. The family is the socially stable unit where the family has liberty and property.”
― Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“The future of the family is thus at stake in the future of the private ownership of property. And both rest alike on respect for the sovereign law of God.”
― Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“A professor, who had left teaching soon after World War II, lectured to a group of students at a major Western university a few years ago on the decline of liberty. To his shock, one of the first questions asked by a student was simply this: “What’s so wonderful about liberty? What makes you think it is necessary for man?” For the students, security was a necessary social objective; liberty was not.”
― Rousas John Rushdoony, Law & Liberty

“Law for the Christian is thus absolute, final, and an aspect of God’s creation and a manifestation of His nature. In terms of this, the Christian can hold that right is right, and wrong is wrong, that good and evil are unchanging moral categories rather then relative terms.”
― Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty

“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.”
― R.J. Rushdoony, Law and Liberty