Christ, the End of the Law: The Decalogue and Christian Ethics

This is the first of a number of planned meditations upon the Decalogue (from the Greek, meaning “ten words”) or Ten Commandments. The Decalogue has an enduring place in the life of all Abraham’s children, Jews and Christians alike,^[1] and forms one of the three basic building blocks of Christian catechesis for those entering the Church. In the subsequent meditations, I will take each of the commandments, reflecting briefly on its biblical-historical context, before considering at length its contemporary Christian significance.

This post will proceed in four steps. First, I will ask (assuming a mostly gentile Christian readership) if the Decalogue is properly a legal code for us. Do we have a right to claim it for our own? Second, and backing up from this initial question, I’ll clear a bit of ground with a basic introduction to Christian ethics. What, from a Christian perspective, constitutes a good human act? How does the Decalogue figure into such considerations? Thirdly, I will return to the question of the Decalogue’s intended audience to explore its historical context within the story of ancient Israel, reflecting on the themes of election and covenant which are irreducibly linked to the meaning of the Decalogue. Finally, I’ll consider the enduring Christian significance of the Decalogue by arguing that, along with the New Testament authors, Christ did not come to bring an end to the law but rather to deepen and fulfill it. The Decalogue, then, has perennial value for Christian moral reflection, as the remainder of these posts hope to show.

The Decalogue: Whose Law Is It?

In the first place, the Decalogue is the covenant document God gave to ancient Israel. Its historical context, its specific content (the law concerning the divine name, e.g.), and even its later function in the life of the people of Israel (the stone tables on which the Decalogue was written, it should be remembered, were placed inside the holiest object in their tabernacle/temple, i.e., the Ark of the Covenant [Ex 25:16]), all show that the document’s meaning is indelibly bound up in this covenantal context.

Furthermore, the Decalogue’s content is designed to order the life of the community of Israel. It is addressed specifically, in the words of one biblical scholar, “to individual adult male heads of households,” though its significance is for each member of the community.^[2] It is possible that the two tables refer not to two sides of the Ten Commandments, but two tables each containing all ten commands as the documents belonging to each party of the covenant: one for God, one for the people.^[3] While the Ten Commandments are of deep importance, they are nonetheless just the first ten of a much longer Torah full of laws of moral, cultic and societal significance for the nation of Israel. Disregarding its setting in the story and covenant of Israel with their God will almost certainly do violence to the meaning of the Decalogue.

In the light of this highly particular, covenantal context, ought Christians to read the Ten Commandments as their own? I will address this question in due course. For now, I’ll pause for a brief excursus on Christian ethics.

Christian Ethics: In What does the Moral Life Consist?

There are a number of tensions within Christian ethical reflection, and I don’t have the space or competence to address them here. Instead, I will simply state my commitments and assume them from here on out, leaving the reader to my betters for the specific arguments.^[4] The first tension in Christian ethics is the relationship between nature and supernature or nature and grace. Does the Christian way leave behind natural virtue (embodied, for example, in the classical cardinal virtues) in preference for the supernatural way of Christ (i.e., the way of charity)? Related to this is the question of creation and eschatology (the study of the last things). That is, does the reality of the resurrection fundamentally reshape ethical norms? This would be evidenced in the “renunciative” vocations or “ideals of perfection” (poverty, chastity, obedience) which derive their logic entirely from the truth of the resurrection.

Furthermore, there exists debate concerning the ground of moral norms themselves: what makes for a good human act? Is it merely the presence of a divine command? Is it the social and personal consequences of human action? Another way of phrasing these questions is the following: should Scripture or human reason guide Christian thinking in moral reflection? How can we know a particular action is good?

Moral reflection should take as its point of departure the nature of man. “Moral teaching,” Josef Pieper wrote, “is first and foremost about man,” which is to say, moral teaching should be based on what man is or ought to be.^[5] For this reason, the approach to ethics most widely held in the history of Christian thought is virtue ethics. That is, ethics based on what it means to be an excellent human being (vir, “man” in Latin is the root of virtus, which means virtue/excellence).^[6] Virtue ethics considers the formation of character as the principle goal of a good ethical system, rather than the mere fulfillment of duty or the good consequence of actions (relevant as those questions are to the formation of character). So the approach to Christian ethics taken in these reflections on the Decalogue will be the virtue ethics tradition. As we will see, the Ten Commandments, and the Torah more generally, were given for the formation of Israel’s moral character.

Furthermore, a basic commitment of the traditional virtue ethics approach (especially in its chief exponent, St. Thomas Aquinas) is the robust affirmation that grace does not destroy but perfects nature.^[7] This means that no matter how radically eschatological Christian ethics may be (and, we will see, Christian ethics is deeply informed by the reality of resurrection and Christian hope for the future), a truly Christian vision of the moral life will never run roughshod over the natural order. Instead, where nature and grace appear in tension, grace will only ever radically fulfill nature, bringing it to completion and perfection. More on this as we go.^[8] For now, note that no matter how distinctly Christian ethics is shaped by the gospel, it will always be rooted somehow in the natural order, perfecting and fulfilling the precepts of the natural law as they are presented in the Decalogue.^[9]

Here one may connect the tradition of virtue ethics to the Christian relationship to the Ten Commandments. We have seen that Christian ethics is concerned more with the formation of character than with specific actions in fulfillment of certain ethical duties (as important as they are) or securing happy consequences (significant as that may be). Rather than those more proximate goods of ethical life, the right answer to the titular question of this section (“in what does the moral life consist?”) is this: the formation of character. That will prove to be the link between Israel’s covenant with God, the virtue ethics tradition, and a Christian relationship to the Ten Commandments.

Israel’s Vocation

What role, then, does Israel play in a Christian reflection on the Ten Commandments? The question of Israel’s vocation and eschatological significance is a much broader and more complicated topic than is necessary for this post.^[10] For our purposes, it will suffice to outline three basic elements of the vocation of Israel in covenant with the one God.

Israel was called to be God’s people in the promised place following the divine pattern of life. Forgive the alliteration. In many respects, the nation of Israel took up the Adamic vocation from Eden: to work and to keep God’s dwelling place in holiness. Israel the nation became a little outpost of Eden, seen especially in their tabernacle/Temple which was patterned after Eden.^[11] Their essential role in covenant with God was to be his people, his priests, those who draw near to God and reveal him to the nations. God called Israel, at the foot of Sinai, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6).^[12]

Furthermore, Israel’s identity was entirely wrapped up in the fact that they were to dwell in the land God promised to Abraham. What is the significance of the land for the people of Israel? How does it relate to their vocation? Joseph Ratzinger summarizes well: “The land was given as a space for obedience, a realm of openness to God, that was to be freed from the abominations of idolatry.”^[13]

So the land was to be a space set apart for the pure worship of the one God. Following from this, Israel was to follow the divine pattern of life. This involved not only the grand ethical norms set forth in the Decalogue, but even the tabernacle/Temple cult regulations for offerings and purity, the festal calendar of Israel, farming practices, and many of the nitty gritty details of their national life in covenant with God.

These brief observations of the vocation of Israel may lead us to think, once again, that the covenantal character of the Decalogue renders its significance null for (at least gentile) Christian believers. This conclusion would be a misunderstanding of the nature of Israel’s vocation. Remember, they were called to take up the ancient vocation of Adam – the calling, that is, of humanity writ large. The call of Israel is a summons to return to this universal vocation, even if it means specific things for Israel and for no other nation. In the words of Matthew Levering, “The Decalogue holds a central covenantal place because it communicates the natural law as elevated into the covenantal context of God’s call to Israel to be God’s people and to be holy.”^[14] Thus, Israel kept the natural law through the Decalogue until the day when the nations would come to know God’s Law through the Messiah who was to come.

Christ and the Commandments

The Lord Jesus did not come to abolish the Law but to deepen and fulfill it. It is important to remember that in view of the covenantal context of the giving of the Decalogue, the Law was not seen as a burden that God laid on his people’s shoulders. It is, rather, through and through a gift of God’s grace. If this particular grace of the Law was given to the Israelites of old, how can it ever make it into the hands of the (largely gentile) Church? How could the nations come to inherit the gracious Law of the Lord?

The eschatological hope of Israel’s Scriptures is full of imagery of the Gentiles receiving God’s law through the outpouring of the Spirit, the nations streaming into Zion (Jerusalem) to worship the one God and following the Torah from the heart. At the threshold of the New Testament, we find Jesus depicted as taking up the baton of Israel’s story. He is very carefully depicted by the Evangelists as the son of Abraham and David, the new Moses, the new Prophet. He takes up the vocation of Israel, he fulfills it, and the Gospel ends with the Messianic commission to take his message of a fulfilled and deepened Torah to the nations: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19–20).

The mount of Jesus’ inaugural sermon was a new Sinai. The new Moses figure expounded the Torah, deepening it, fulfilling it. The people were astonished at how Jesus taught with “authority” in his radical interpretation of the Torah. In the words of Ratzinger, “Obviously, this does not refer to the rhetorical quality of Jesus’ discourses, but rather to the open claim that he himself is on the same exalted level as the Lawgiver – as God. The people’s ‘alarm’…is precisely over the fact that a human being dares to speak with the authority of God.”^[15]

As one whose teaching had the character of divine command (“you have heard it was said, but I say unto you…”), Jesus’ mission was decidedly not to abrogate the Law: “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt 5:17). He was a prophetic interpreter of the Torah; he so plumbed the depth of its inner logic that the ethics he presented his disciples is, in the deepest sense, the fulfillment of the Torah.

The Decalogue and the Christian Life

In view of the vocation of Israel and the prophetic fulfillment of the Torah presented in the teaching of Jesus, I am finally in a position to render a judgment on the place of the Decalogue in the Christian life. The two threads I have drawn come together at last. The general introduction to an ethics of virtue (“a good human act is that which is done by a good human being”) and the covenantal context of the Decalogue (it is irreducibly linked to the covenant God made with the sons of Abraham, his people, at Mt. Sinai) are stitched together in this: the Messiah.

Christ’s gift of the fulfilled, deepened Torah is for us the law of liberty. We can know what it means to act well as human beings by following the Messiah’s lead. Through him, we come into covenant relationship with the God of Israel, maker of heaven and earth, and we are reconciled to our primordial vocation (which was given to Adam and Eve in the garden, and later to Israel, God’s chosen people): to love God and to love our neighbors. By following the Messiah, we fulfill the Law.

My subsequent reflections on the Decalogue will take each of the commandments in turn, considering first the biblical context of each commandment and then reflecting on the implications of the commandment for the contemporary church. As followers of the Messiah, Christians will benefit from careful reflection on each of the Ten Commandments. For Christ offers us the same old Law summarized in the Decalogue and the twofold love commandment (Matt 22:34–40). At the same time, this same old law, re-presented by Christ, is radically new. For Christians no longer have the tablets of stone, but the crucified and risen Messiah himself. No longer is the command an external ethical ideal but is embodied in the incarnate Savior: “A new commandment I give to you,” Jesus told his disciples, “that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (Jn 13:34).

Notes

1. I am not sure of Islam’s relationship to the Decalogue. ↑
2. Daniel I. Block, “The Decalogue in the Hebrew Scriptures,” in The Decalogue through the Centuries: From the Hebrew Scriptures to Benedict XVI, ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 9. ↑
3. Block, “The Decalogue,” 12. ↑
4. See, for example, Victor Lee Austin, Christian Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012). ↑
5. Josef Pieper, The Christian Idea of Man, (South Bend, IN: Saint Augustine’s Press, 2011), 3. ↑
6. For reasons beyond my competency to diagnose, virtue ethics lost favor in late modernity. The genealogy of the demise of virtue ethics probably follows a similar path to the genealogy of the demise of traditional metaphysics, since virtue ethics follows a thoroughly realist account of human nature – that is, all humans share the same fundamental structure or form; therefore, each human’s perfection consists in broadly the same thing: the development (in their own particular, personal inflection) of the human capacity to be fully human. ↑
7. See Thomas Aquinas, ST I, Q. 1, A. 8, ad. 2: “gratia non tollat naturam, sed perficiat.” https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.I.Q1.A8. ↑
8. There are certainly a number of well-intentioned arguments rejecting this commitment to the integrity of “nature” as a norm for Christian moral thinking. However, the more I’ve learned about the traditional Thomistic position, the more comfortable I have become in facing these objections. At the end of the day, the commitment of St. Thomas on the questions of sin, nature and grace is simply this: God did not make a mistake in creation, and he does not abandon the work of creation in his work of redemption. The grace given in Christ surely elevates, develops and brings created human nature to heights it would not otherwise attain, but that is never to extinguish the light and significance of creation for Christian moral reflection. ↑
9. I understand that this final point that the precepts of the natural law are presented in the Decalogue is a controversial one. Nonetheless, I simply leave it here as an assertion, entrusting my readers to the wealth of resources among the Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to this effect. ↑
10. A good place to begin a more involved reflection on these questions would be Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Israel, (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021). ↑
11. See L. Michael Morales, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus, New Studies in Biblical Theology, vol. 37, ed. D.A. Carson, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP 2015). ↑
12. Unless otherwise noted, biblical references in these posts will be taken from the The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Crossway, 2001. ↑
13. Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker, (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 83. Ratzinger continues with the following observation: “From this perspective, the exile, the withdrawal of land, could also be understood: The land has itself become a zone of idolatry and disobedience, and the possession of the land had therefore become a contradiction.” ↑
14. Matthew Levering, “Thomas Aquinas,” in The Decalogue through the Centuries: From the Hebrew Scriptures to Benedict XVI, ed. Jeffrey P. Greenman and Timothy Larsen, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 69. ↑
15. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 102–3. ↑