p. 5 | Revising the Decalogue

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 31, 1910

Revising the Decalogue

WHEN people no longer believe the inspiration of the Bible, when they consider the Word of God a book like all other books, when they claim the right to revise its contents and to decide what is genuine in it and what spurious, one need not be surprised to hear that some of these modern wiseacres are also attempting to lay their sacrilegious hands on the decalogue. Not long since, a Harvard professor courted notoriety by declaring that the ten commandments ought to be rewritten. He wants a commandment inserted forbidding drunkenness, and the third commandment, against profanity, he considers to be no longer necessary; not so much because people are no longer profane, but because profanity has lost its significance, because a curse does not any longer mean what it used to. Well, perhaps it doesn’t to the Harvard professor and to some other people, who have lost their faith in, and reverence for, all that is sacred. But it certainly does still mean the same to “old-fashioned” Christians; and God himself has nowhere revealed that he has changed with regard to the profaning of his holy name. As for the proposal to add a commandment prohibiting drunkenness, this proposal, as an exchange very appropriately remarks, “suggests the intellectual caliber of the man who does not see that drunkenness, and all other sins against bodily life and welfare, are forbidden in the sixth commandment,” as well as in the seventh, because drunkenness as daily experience abundantly testifies, is a fruitful source of sins against both these commandments.

No, the decalogue needs no revision. We can spare none of its commandments, and there is no need of any additional ones. Just as the Lord’s prayer is a wonderful summary of all the things that we can possibly ask of God in prayer, so the decalogue is a no less wonderful compend of all our duties to God and to our fellow man. Both of them are equally wonderful in their comprehensive brevity and their simplicity of diction and their beauty of arrangement. Both of them, by their unapproachable excellence, plainly reveal their heavenly origin. He who studies these divine masterpieces and penetrates only a little into the depths of their contents, will be constrained to exclaim with Paul: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” Such a one would shrink with holy horror from making the suggestion that either of these divine utterances stands in need of revision.

But here comes the learned editor of the Homiletic Review, who by the suggestion of the Harvard professor is moved to this wise observation:— “It is, if reported correctly, another ‘Thou shalt not,’ banning intoxication with strong drink. This won’t do. The distinctively Christian decalogue needed by the modern world runs upon the line of ‘do,’ not of ‘don’t!’ This is the defect of the Hebrew decalogue; it consists mainly of don’t’s, addressed to a people in the moral grade of the young children, to whom we have to address many don’t’s. That the Westminster Confession calls it a perfect rule of righteousness only shows the defective conception of Christian ethics that existed in our forefathers’ time. That Jesus was not of their mind is plain in the sermon on the mount. His golden rule said, ‘Do.’”

That the decalogue consists mainly of “don’t’s” lies in the nature of the case. So far from being a defect, it is rather another revelation of the divine wisdom which framed it. It is the simplest, most direct, and most easily understood way of impressing upon all sinful men of all times, not only upon “a people in the moral grade of children,” their duties toward their God and their fellow beings. So natural is this “don’t” manner of framing laws, that all the lawgivers of all times, from the most ancient to the most modern, have adopted this form for such of their laws as set forth the duties of their subjects, and laws of this character that do not have the form of prohibitions are indeed few and far between. But what of the assertion of the Homiletic Review that Jesus improved upon

the negative form of the decalogue by his golden rule: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them”? If the editor of the magazine, instead of picking out a single word of the Master from his great exposition of the law, had taken the trouble to examine the whole of it, he would have found, perhaps to his utter astonishment, that in addition to this “do” of the golden rule, and numerous others like it, it contains perhaps an equal, if not greater, number of “don’t’s.” Here are a few of them: “But I say unto you, Swear not at all;” “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil;” “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men;” “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions;” “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth;” “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life;” etc. That the editor in question has not read the mind of the Saviour aright, is also evident from the words with which he prefaces his exposition of the spiritual sense of the divine law: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” Does that sound as if he intended to revise the law by what he was about to say? Nay, more, the golden rule itself disavows any such intention by the explanatory words immediately following it, “for this is the law and the prophets.” It is simply a summary of the law, then, expressing, in a positive way, what in the decalogue is expressed mostly in the negative form.

Neither the editor of the Homiletic Review nor the Harvard professor has made out his case. God’s law is perfect, both in contents and in form, and it does not stand in need of revision from either one of these view-points. It is, as an exchange happily remarks, an anvil upon which every hammer will be broken. “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law.” And again: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” “The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.” Ps. 19:7, 8.—Editorial in Lutheran Witness, March 3, 1910.