Decalogue

Decalogue

In Christian Tradition

Decalogue (in patristic Gr. ἡ δεκάλογος, sc. βἰβλος or νομοθεσία), another name for the biblical Ten Commandments, in Hebrew the Ten Words (Deut. iv. 13, x. 4; Ex. xxxiv. 28), written by God on the two tables of stone (Ex. xxiv. 12, xxxii. 16), the so-called Tables of the Revelation (E.V. “tables of testimony,” Ex. xxxiv. 29), or Tables of the Covenant (Deut. ix. 9, 11, 15). (…)

The lofty ethics (e.g. tenth commandment) is in itself no sound criterion, whilst the external form of the laws, though characteristic of later codes, need not be taken as evidence of importance. But the general result of a study of the Decalogue as a whole, in connexion with Israelite political history and religion, strongly supports, in fact demands, a post-Mosaic origin, and modern criticism is chiefly divided only as to the approximate date to which it is to be ascribed. The time of Manasseh (cf. especially its contact with Micah vi. 6-8) has found many adherents, but an earlier period, about 750 b.c. (time of Amos and Hosea), is often held to satisfy the main conditions; the former, however, is probably nearer the mark.

The Decalogue of Exodus xxxiv

These consist not of precepts of social morality, but of several laws of religious observance closely corresponding to the religious and ritual precepts of Ex. xxi.-xxiii. The number ten is not clearly made out, and the individual precepts are somewhat variously assigned. They prohibit (1) the worship of other gods, (2) the making of molten images; they ordain (3) the observance of the feast of unleavened bread, (4) the feast of weeks, (5) the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, and (6) the seventh-day rest; to Yahweh belong (7) the firstlings, and (8) the first-fruits of the land; they forbid also (9) the offering of the blood of sacrifice with leaven, (10) the leaving-over of the fat of a feast until the morning, and (11) the seething of a kid in its mother’s milk. This scheme ignores (other commands). (…)

To those accustomed to look on the Ten Words written on the tables of stone as the very foundation of the Mosaic law, it is hard to realize that in ancient Israel there were two opinions as to what these “Words” were. (…)

The Decalogue in Christian Theology

Following the New Testament, in which the “commandments” summed up in the law of love are identified with the precepts of the Decalogue (Mark x. 19; Rom. xiii. 9; cf. Mark xii. 28 ff.), the ancient Church emphasized the permanent obligation of the ten commandments as a summary of natural in contradistinction to ceremonial precepts, though the observance of the Sabbath was to be taken in a spiritual sense (Augustine, De spiritu et litera, xiv.; Jerome, De celebratione Paschae).

The medieval theologians followed in the same line, recognizing all the precepts of the Decalogue as moral precepts de lege naturae, though the law of the Sabbath is not of the law of nature, in so far as it prescribes a determinate day of rest (Thomas, summa, Ima IIdae, qu. c. art. 3; Duns, Super sententias, lib. iii. dist. 37). The most important medieval exposition of the Decalogue is that of Nicolaus de Lyra; and the 15th century, in which the Decalogue acquired special importance in the confessional, was prolific in treatises on the subject (Antoninus of Florence, Gerson, etc.).

Important theological controversies on the Decalogue begin with the Reformation. The question between the Lutheran (Augustinian) and Reformed (Philonic) division of the ten commandments was mixed up with controversy as to the legitimacy of sacred images not designed to be worshipped. The Reformed theologians took the stricter view. The identity of the Decalogue with the eternal law of nature was maintained in both churches, but it was an open question whether the Decalogue, as such (that is, as a law given by Moses to the Israelites), is of perpetual obligation. The Socinians, on the other hand, regarded the Decalogue as abrogated by the more perfect law of Christ; and this view, especially in the shape that the Decalogue is a civil and not a moral law (J. D. Michaelis), was the current one in the period of 18th-century rationalism.

The distinction of a permanent and a transitory element in the law of the Sabbath is found, not only in Luther and Melanchthon, but in Calvin and other theologians of the Reformed church. The main controversy which arose on the basis of this distinction was whether the prescription of one day in seven is of permanent obligation. It was admitted that such obligation must be not natural but positive; but it was argued by the stricter Calvinistic divines that the proportion of one in seven is agreeable to nature, based on the order of creation in six days, and in no way specially connected with anything Jewish. Hence it was regarded as a universal positive law of God. But those who maintained the opposite view were not excluded from the number of the orthodox. The laxer conception found a place in the Cocceian school.(1)

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Notes and References

  1. Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)

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