On the Ten Commandments

Q. What are the Ten Commandments?
A. The Ten Commandments are the laws given to Moses and the people of Israel.

Q. What do we learn from these commandments?
A. We learn two things: our duty to God, and our duty to our neighbors.

There are few biblical texts that have played as large a role in church and public life as the Ten Commandments. From their setting in Scripture to the contemporary debate about their public display, the Commandments have seemed to embody God’s will for human life as fully as any particular body of teaching or Scripture. Martin Luther famously said: “This much is certain: those who know the Ten Commandments perfectly know the entire Scriptures and in all affairs and circumstances are able to counsel, help, comfort, judge, and make decisions in both spiritual and temporal matters” (Large Catechism, in Kolb and Wengert, Book of Concord, 382). The Commandments—also known as the Decalogue (“the Ten Words”…)—probably rank with the Twenty-third Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer as the best-known and most memorized texts from the Bible.

—Patrick D. Miller, The Ten Commandments, “Introduction”

Thus, Patrick Miller gives us a helpful introduction to this the topic of the next section of the Catechism—interestingly the only section of the Catechism dedicated to specific quotations from scripture (in this case from Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5). Because of the excellent work Miller has already done introducing and contextualizing the Ten Commandments, the posts on this section, and particularly this post providing context for them, will be largely summaries of his excellent work.

Miller offers five reasons why these commandments should be given such a prominent place in Christian life and practice based on the prominence accorded them in Scripture. They are 1) the only body of instruction in the entire Old Testament given twice, given in Exodus and Deuteronomy; 2) they are given directly from God to the people; 3) they are the first set of legal material given and marked off from the rest of the legal material that follows in Exodus and Deuteronomy; 4) they are written “by the finger of God on stone,” indicating both the significance of their origin and their enduring character; and 5) in contrast to the rest of the legislation that is written on scrolls to be put next to the ark, the Ten Commandments were intended to be put into the Ark of the Covenant itself.

The simultaneous simplicity and centrality of these ten laws has led to them being taken very seriously throughout Christian history. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Martin Luther, representing the Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran strands of Western Christian thought respectively, all treated the interpretation of the Ten Commandments at length. From the early church on, Christians have thought of the Ten Commandments as representing something beyond divine revealed law to represent a kind of summary of the natural or moral law available to all humanity. Since 1604, the Church of England has expected that all churches display the Ten Commandments and until very recently Anglican, Lutheran, and Reformed worship have all integrated the recitation of the Ten Commandments in a way akin to prominence given to both the Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer. While it does not frame every instance of Sunday worship in our Episcopal churches anymore, the Ten Commandments are still potentially recited during the penitential order that opens our worship during Lent and other penitential times. The centrality of the Ten Commandments in scripture, theology, worship, teaching, and even civil life all point to their foundational nature for ordering Christian life and community.

Miller goes on to offer six points that need to be kept in mind when engaging with the Ten Commandments. First, there is a tension between the universal applicability and particular revelation of the commandments. While one can find all the commandments dealing with how to treat other people in other Ancient Near Eastern law codes, the versions from Israel assume that one cannot separate how one deals with neighbors from how one deals with God. Second, the simplicity of the commandments requires that they be interpreted; this is implicit in the fact that so much of the Old Testament is taken up with offering legal codes meant to clarify these ten. Third, since they require interpretation, the Ten Commandments are not the end, but rather the beginning, of a long, living, and complex tradition and life of interpretation and grappling with how to live in Christian community. Fourth, regardless of whether they are framed positively or negatively, there is both a negative and a positive aspect to each commandment, meaning both a sense of prohibition and exhortation. Fifth, there are different ways of numbering the commandments depending on the tradition one finds oneself in; like Miller in his book, our Catechism and Liturgy follow the Reformed tradition in making the prohibition against other gods the first commandment and the prohibition against idols the second. Sixth, the commandments are not hermetically sealed or neatly divided, showing that different parts of the moral life interpenetrate each other.

Given the importance of the Ten Commandments for Scripture, Christian tradition and worship, the emphasis in the Catechism, and the foundations of civic life, it is unfortunate that memorizing, reflecting on, and interpreting the Ten Commandments does not have the same central place that it used to. We would do well to return these to a place of prominence along with the Lord’s Prayer and the Creeds as a text that is internalized in order that it may form Christian hearts and minds.