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I got an email that said:
Why do Catholics have...the ten Commandments changed to suit their rules?
Before we begin, we should say that the Commandments are not numbered in the Bible. The Lord has not explicitly set out for us how they are to be numbered. If we were to number every "command" in those sections of the Bible we would have about 17 commandments or more. So different efforts have been made to number and group them over the centuries. Two of the major players in the early Church were Augustine and Origen. We Catholics consider these two guys Saints. Catholics and Lutherans generally prefer those set out by Augustine and the Eastern Churches and Protestants follow the Commandments set out by Origen.
| Catholic/Lutheran (As per Augustine, around 400 A.D.) |
Protestant/Orthodox Churches (As per Origen around 200 A.D.) |
|
|---|---|---|
| 1 | I am the Lord your God: you shall not have strange Gods before me. | I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. |
| 2 | You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in Vain. | Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. |
| 3 | Remember to keep holy the Lord's Day. | Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. |
| 4 | Honour your father and your mother. | Remember the Sabbath Day. |
| 5 | You shall not kill. | Honor thy father and mother. |
| 6 | You shall not commit adultry. | Thou shalt not kill. |
| 7 | You shall not steal. | Thou shalt not commit adultery. |
| 8 | You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour. | Thou shalt not steal. |
| 9 | You shall not covet your neighbour's wife. | Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. |
| 10 | You shall not covet your Neighbour's goods. | Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house nor his wife nor anything that belongs to him. |
The great Protestant Evangelist Jerry Falwell actually disagrees with this complaint against the Catholic Church. The following statement is on Jerry Falwell's web site. http://www.falwell.com/?a=news&news=prstencom
As Dr. Falwell promised on the June 22, 1999 Rivera Live television program, here are the Ten Commandments from the King James Version of the Bible, used most widely by Protestants, and the Ten Commandments as found in the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, which uses Scripture quotations adapted from the Revised Standard Version and New Revised Standard Versions of the Bible...As you can see, the difference between the two versions is minimal.
This is the Catholic first Commandment.
1. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image.
Even Jerry Falwell acknowledged that Catholics did not remove the commandment "You shall not make for yourself a graven image." It is part of the first commandment "You shall have no other god's before me." (Section 2, Chapter 1, Part IV) We have not removed it. The Jewish people also place "you shall not make any graven image" with the commandment "thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me."
Here are two paragraphs from the Catholic Catechism which talk about the history of the 10 Commandments:
2065 Ever since St. Augustine, the Ten Commandments have occupied a predominant place in the catechesis of baptismal candidates and the faithful. In the fifteenth century, the custom arose of expressing the commandments of the Decalogue in rhymed formulae, easy to memorize and in positive form. They are still in use today. The catechisms of the Church have often expounded Christian morality by following the order of the Ten Commandments.
2066 The division and numbering of the Commandments have varied in the course of history. The present catechism follows the division of the Commandments established by St. Augustine, which has become traditional in the Catholic Church. It is also that of the Lutheran confessions. The Greek Fathers worked out a slightly different division, which is found in the Orthodox Churches and Reformed communities.
It is perfectly acceptable for a Catholic to follow the Origen numbering system or the Augustine system. Each numbering system has its strengths and weaknesses. For example, the Origen system (that most Protestants use, except the Lutherans) lumps coveting your neighbor's wife under the commandment of coveting his possessions. But the opening chapters of Genesis make it plain in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that a woman is not a man's "possession" like a horse or livestock. He is the bone of his bones and the flesh of his flesh. (Gen 2:23)
So although the Bible tells us that there are 10 Commandments, it does not tell us how they are numbered. Perhaps what falls where was not an essential thing. What is important is that we follow all of what is written in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21, not just the one sentence statements that we have numbered.
When we look at Scripture, even Deuteronomy and Genesis have differences in emphasis on different commandments.
When I go into a hardware store, it is not important whether I find the sink faucets in the Kitchen section or the Bathroom section. What matters is that the hardware store has faucets. What matters for our salvation is that we read all of the Scripture. Both Catholics and Protestants should be reading the entire section under each of the headings of their Commandments, and if they do that they will both be reading the same thing. We must understand the full Gospel.
Lord Jesus, let Your prayer of unity for Christians
become a reality, in Your way
we have absolute confidence
that you can bring your people together
we give you absolute permission to move
Amen
Excellent post!
Perhaps the most important point is that versification of the Scriptures is purely a human invention, and a relatively recent one at that.
The table is a marvelous illustration of the late Lutheran World Federation President Rev. Dr. Franklin Clark Frey's observation that "the Lutheran Church is a bridge church; not really Catholic and not truly Protestant". On the numbering of the Decalogue we are constantly needing to explain ourselves to Calvanist dominated Protestantism.
I heard a really interesting mnemonic at a Presbyterian church about the Ten Commandments. (Believe it or not, this was adult Sunday School.)
1. Hold up one finger. This stands for the one God.
(Thou shalt have no other gods before me.)
2. Hold up two fingers like a pair of scissors, and start cutting, as in arts and crafts. (Thou shalt not make any graven image.)
3. I don't remember this one quite as well as the others -- but I think it was put up three fingers as if taking the scout's pledge. (Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.)
4. Put down four fingers and walk them across the table. Liken this exercise to a family going to church. (Thou shalt keep holy the Sabbath.)
5. Hold up five fingers and take an honor pledge.
(Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.)
6. Put one finger into the palm of the other hand. Let the other five fingers collapse into the first finger, as if dead. (Thou shalt not kill.)
7. Make a pair of scissors with two fingers of the right hand then snip at the wedding ring (possibly imaginary) on the left hand. (Thou shalt not commit adultery.)
8. Put out both hands but hold back your thumbs, as if they have been cut off in the Middle East for the crime of stealing. (Thou shalt not steal.)
9. Put one hand down and four fingers up of the other hand, as if being sworn in court. (Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.)
10. Put out both hands and clutch at everything in sight.
(Thou shalt not covet.)
Thanks for posting, I'm surprised the "Catholics deleted no idols command so they could worship their statues and/or Saints" Jack Chic-esque notion hasn't generated a thread such as this on FR. It's good to have this "out there", so to speak, to refer to later.
For those who may be particularly dense, there are MORE than 10 commands in Exodus, so SOMETHING must be condensed to fit them into TEN Commandments.
The spirit of the "no graven images" command was to not WORSHIP anything above or equal to God. It doesn't mean to not make them PERIOD; indeed, later in Exodus itself, we see God commanding Moses to build an Ark with images of CHEREBUM on it.
We Catholics do not worship the images of Saints. Even when some of us bow/kneel to statues. We actually laugh at people who say by SIMPLY bowing/kneeling to a statue, that's WORSHIPING the statue, or even the Saint it depicts.
We laugh. We really do.