Is There a Place for the Ten Commandments?

Theology Today, Jan 2004 by Miller, Patrick D

Before you answer that question, remind yourself of the recent action of the Alabama Supreme Court to remove the Ten Commandments from their place in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building and of the many foiled efforts on the part of others besides Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore to get the Commandments displayed in public places. This failure to gain legal approval for public display of the Commandments comes despite polls indicating that perhaps as many as three-fourths of the American population would support their display in our nation's schools. The Commandments have become a powerful symbol, a part of our culture wars. As is often the case, wars produce extreme options. In this instance, the Commandments are to be either everywhere or nowhere. Put them in every classroom or do not allow them in any public place at all-these are the choices that seem to be before us.

The controversy over the Commandments is, in many ways, rather astonishing. They are constantly in the news, frequently the subject of discussion and controversy, provoking vehement comments and arguments. Jesus' teachings are surely as important to Christians as the Commandments, but they certainly seem less controversial, if contemporary culture and media comment are any indication. It seems as if the war is not so much about the Commandments per se, however, as it is about their proper place. Where do the Commandments belong? That question, and the way it impacts our culture, reminds us of the significance of public space and what we do with it. There is not a huge debate going on about the value of the Commandments in themselves and whether they apply or should apply to our lives; but there certainly is a vigorous struggle about what we can and should do with them and, more specifically, where we should put them and what their spatial location implies.

The arguments about public display of the Commandments seem to move between appeal to the separation of church and state and the tradition of nonestablishment of religion in the United States, on one hand, and insistence on public affirmation of our nation's religious roots and moral values, on the other. I do not intend to resolve the issue of where one may and should place the Commandments, but I suggest that the question of their place takes us into some important matters worthy of our reflection.

It may be helpful to recognize that there are some unresolvable tensions inherent in the presence and appropriation of the Commandments in human society. The tension between the universality and the particularity of the Commandments is one example. There is a long history in the Christian tradition of viewing the Commandments as universal natural law. Even if one rejects that view-and it is one with deep roots, not confined to one branch of the Christian community-it is hard to avoid recognizing that the kinds of directions provided in the Commandments are widely present in a variety of societies and cultural traditions throughout space and time. They are not restricted to Christianity and judaism alone. The biblical narrative itself recognizes the wider validity and wisdom of these laws and of obeying them beyond the confines of Israel (Deut 4:4-8). Over against this view of the Commandments as a universal moral framework is the fact that they come from a particular story, are rooted in the worship of the God who acts in that story, and are given to the people of Israel at Sinai to order their life under the God who freed them from slavery. The Commandments depend from the start on a particular story and communal memory of that story as the ground for obedience. They address the totality of life with the Lord of Israel, not just getting along with one's neighbor. So the issue before us is: Can both the universality and the particularity of the Commandments be maintained so that each has its proper bite on our appropriation and display of them? In other words, can the Commandments have their place in our culture without our assuming either too much about their proper realm of authority or too little?

A second unresolvable tension in the way the Commandments are presented and function in the community that lives under their claim is the tension between simplicity and complexity. The Commandments come to us in relatively simple form. That simplicity is evident immediately in the way our culture has adopted the term "ten commandments" as shorthand for all sorts of simple rules in every sphere of life. A quick perusal of the nearest bookstore or a browse of the internet will come up with "The Ten Commandments of the Internet," "The Ten Commandments of Origami," "Ten Commandments for Making Money," "Ten Commandments of Financial Happiness," and so on. The number ten-often regarded as representing the number of fingers on our hands and so keeping things to a manageable limit-combined with the brevity of most of the commandments underscores this simplicity. One may assume that the simple character of the Commandments is, in part, to make them easy to hold on to as well as to hold to. That simplicity is crucial for our appropriation of them. At the same time, however, from the beginning of the story as we have it in Scripture, it is clear that these "simple" rules have to be worked out in the complexity of our lives. Thus, statutes and stories, proverbs and prophecies inform us how these simple commandments are to have their play and give us direction. The presentation of the Commandments in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 is followed, in both cases, by more detailed statutes and ordinances. These further "laws" open up what the commandments are about in various ways and situations and over changing times and circumstances. The question before us, then, is: Can we learn to live with the Ten Commandments as charter for a rich, complex theological and moral worldview and also as a simple, often abbreviated guide for basic human living? Can we appropriate them in their simplicity, without falling into trivialization and reductionism, and in their complexity, without falling into casuistry?