The Third Commandment

Im going to be placing some of the things that have stood out to me while Reading Rushdoony's "The Institutes of Biblical Law." These are from the section of the book on third commandment. I will run a series of them. Just to help some of it stick with me.

The first one deals with how most of the ten commandments are negative commandments,Doony points out modern man dislikes very much being told, do not... Here he shows Gods wisdom and how negative commandments limit governments. This is so current.


….A negative statement thus deals with a particular evil directly and plainly: it prohibits it, makes it illegal. The law thus has a modest function; the law is limited, and therefore the state is limited. The state, as the enforcing agency, is limited to dealing with evil, not controlling all men.

Second, and directly related to this first point, a negative concept of law insures liberty: except for the prohibited areas, all of man’s life is beyond the law, and the law is of necessity indifferent to it. If the commandment says, “Thou shalt not steal,” it means that the law can only govern theft: it cannot govern or control honestly acquired property. When the law prohibits blasphemy and false witness, it guarantees that all other forms of speech have their liberty. The negativity of the law is the preservation of the positive life and freedom of man.

But, if the law is positive in its function, and if the health of the people is the highest law, then the state has total jurisdiction to compel the total health of the people. The immediate consequence is a double penalty on the people. First, an Omni competent state is posited, and a totalitarian state results. Everything becomes a part of the states jurisdiction, because everything can potentially contribute to the health or the destruction of the people. Because the law is unlimited, the state is unlimited. It becomes the business of the state, not to control evil, but to control all men. Basic to every totalitarian regime is a positive concept of the function of law….