Are the Ten Commandments still valid?
Or perhaps did Jesus abolish them when He gave us the commandment of Love (Matthew 22:37-40)?
Did not Saint Augustine say: “Love, and do what you will” (Ep. Jo. 7, 8)?
And did not Saint Paul write that “For the law made nothing perfect” (Heb 7:19)?
What sense do rules have in religion?
Is it not enough to love oneself?
And if “loving oneself is enough,” why do we still teach children the Ten Commandments in catechism?
1 • Is the law a bad thing?
To us modern men, the idea of “law” is a bit bothersome.
This discomfort is mainly due to the fact that we associate two rather unpleasant concepts with the law:
- Obligation: “You must do it this way!”
- Punishment: “…and if you don’t do it this way, you’ll get a good scolding!”
So, even when we talk about God’s law (whether we like it or not), there remains a somewhat uncomfortable feeling, as we imagine that God:
- …wants to force us to behave as He says;
- …and will punish us if we make a mistake.
In fact, to the point that, in words, we say that “God is love,” but instead, we often imagine Him as a Neapolitan mastiff… or as a bus controller…
2 • Down with the law! Long live love!
Well, since:
- Modern man dislikes laws…
- And if we associate “laws” with God, we run the risk of making God also “side with the bad guys”…
…many original catechists have started to argue that “the Law is now outdated,” a thing “from the Old Testament,” that it no longer applies to us Christians. We Christians don’t need “all those rules”… it’s enough for us to preach the lo(ooo)ve of Jesus:
This idea, however, has some flaws…
…just to say: if it were so, why is there a section in the Catechism of the Catholic Church dedicated to explaining the Ten Commandments?
Haven’t they been “abolished by Jesus”?
…Not to mention that, for Christians, the Old Testament is still the word of God…
So, how do we reconcile this?
Why the rules?
Why the Ten Commandments?
3 • The 10 Commandments: these strangers!
The 10 Commandments were very important for Israel… not by chance, they are recorded in the Bible twice:
- In chapter 20 of the Book of Exodus (when God gives them to Moses for the first time);
- In chapter 5 of the Book of Deuteronomy (where Moses reviews them before the people, recalling the covenant made with God).
When one thinks of the 10 Commandments, often “synonyms” like:
- rules;
- prohibitions;
- impositions from above;
- obligations
come to mind.
However, in reality, the context in which “the ten words” (yes, it would be more correct to call them this way) arise is not that of prohibition or censorship but of a covenant.
To explain further, shedding light on a particular aspect often misconstrued: In the Bible, when the 10 Commandments are mentioned, they are often called the “tables of the Law.”
This is because, according to the Exodus account, God explicitly asked Moses to write his laws on TWO stone tablets (Exodus 24:12, Exodus 31:18, Exodus 32:15, etc.)…
The fact that there were two tablets does not mean that the commandments were divided into two parts (I can assure you that they would have fit on one tablet)… but rather that the ten words were written in duplicate.
Why?
This procedure was common in those times when a contract was made (among the Assyrians, the practice was called “tuppu dannatu”): one of the two copies remained with the contracting party, while the other was archived in the palace or temple.
The context of the 10 Commandments is that of a bilateral covenant: it doesn’t only concern the people; God is also involved in the “contract” and commits to remaining faithful to the promises of goodness made to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other Patriarchs of Israel.
So much so that the reason the Israelites choose to “follow the laws of God” is not out of fear of punishment, or moralism for its own sake, or simply because “YHWH ordered it this way”…
The real reason is written in the book of Deuteronomy:
When your son asks you in time to come, saying, “What is the meaning of the testimonies, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord our God has commanded you?”, then you shall say to your son: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand; and the Lord showed signs and wonders before our eyes, great and severe, against Egypt, Pharaoh, and all his household. Then He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in, to give us the land of which He swore to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day.”
(Deuteronomy 6:20-24)
The reason why it is advisable to trust God, follow His laws, and remain faithful to His covenant is (for almost 3000 years now) happiness.
4 • Jesus and “the rules”
In the “lists of proscription” that divide the world between “good” and “bad,” Jesus has always been placed among the first…
In the famous Sermon on the Mount (which people appreciate for its talk of “beatitudes,” being the “light of the world,” “turning the other cheek,” and “loving enemies”), at a certain point, Jesus declares:
Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.
(Matthew 5:17-18)
Commenting on this passage, one day Father Luigi Maria Epicoco (an Italian priest and theologian born in 1980) wrote:
I believe it is good for everyone to memorize this passage from the Gospel. It is somewhat fashionable to think that Jesus is a kind of shortcut to morality and rules. The saying goes: “What does it matter if you break the rules, the important thing is that you love each other!”. This cheap sentimentality is incinerated by Jesus’ affirmation in today’s Gospel. Christianity is not a way to create a do-it-yourself morality but a way to live in fullness what could become only a petty legalism itself.
To understand its meaning, allow me to use a culinary example: morality in cooking coincides with the ingredients measured just right, with cooking times, with the addition of spices, and so on. All these rules ensure that the dish turns out successful and tasty. We could say that Jesus adds the advice of an experienced chef, but it’s not enough to have good advice without first following the simple recipe. So, be careful not to think that true Christianity is the liberation from all morality because the purpose of morality is the success of a life, its happiness, not its limitation.
With this clarification, it must be immediately added that the perfection of the recipe alone is not enough to make a dish good because then it takes the art of cooking, the personal involvement of the one in charge, the ability to improvise, adjust, add, correct. Real life is always a challenge to what we have been taught. This does not mean that every situation requires its own moral reference, but that every situation invites us to apply the same recipe better, and in a constantly new and creative way. Not a new morality, but always a new way of living the same morality.
(DON LUIGI MARIA EPICOCO, from a Facebook post on February 16, 2020)
5 • The Church and “the rules”
When Paul of Tarsus spoke to the Galatians about the importance of the Law (in a letter written between 54 and 57 AD), he used another analogy:
But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.
(Galatians 3:23-25)
The law is like a tutor (that is, an educator, an instructor, a guardian): it helps form a right conscience, shows the way to go, and guides by the hand…
In other words, the law is like training wheels on a bicycle.
Paul explains to the Galatians that the outcome of the growth process consists – yes – in “removing the training wheels”…
…but it’s so that a person can ride freely, towards Christ, and live in His Charity (which we talked about earlier)…
…not to skid on the ground (that is, to sin)!
Taking up the discourse of Saint Paul, John Paul II wrote in 1993 in an encyclical:
Love and life according to the Gospel cannot be thought of first and foremost as a kind of precept, because what they demand is beyond man’s abilities. They are possible only as the result of a gift of God who heals, restores and transforms the human heart by his grace: “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:17). The promise of eternal life is thus linked to the gift of grace, and the gift of the Spirit which we have received is even now the “guarantee of our inheritance” (Eph 1:14).
(JOHN PAUL II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, 23)
Conclusion
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (a British writer and journalist) a century ago had intuited what could happen in society if laws were detached from the pursuit of happiness, limiting themselves to being “prohibitions” or “censures.”
Here is what he wrote in 1905:
A great silent collapse, an enormous unspoken disappointment, has in our time fallen on our Northern civilization. All previous ages have sweated and been crucified in an attempt to realise what is really the right life, what was really the good man. A definite part of the modern world has come beyond question to the conclusion that there is no answer to these questions, that the most that we can do is to set up a few notice-boards at places of obvious danger, to warn men, for instance, against drinking themselves to death, or ignoring the mere existence of their neighbours.
(GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON, Heretics, Linadau, Torino, 2010, p. 24)
If the law remains detached from love, I believe that what Chesterton describes is the only possible outcome.
sale
(Summer 2020)
- GIOVANNI PAOLO II, «Veritatis Splendor» (enciclica su alcune questioni fondamentali dell'insegnamento morale della Chiesa)
- FILIPPO SERAFINI, Accogliere la libertà, condividere la vita. Commento esegetico e teologico al Decalogo, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 2018
- FRANCO NEMBRINI, Di padre in figlio: conversazioni sul rischio di educare, Ares, Milano 2011