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Article Excerpt
Within the next several weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on two cases involving the Ten Commandments on public property. But whatever the court decides, it is theologically mistaken to display the commandments in a generic public context. To do so ignores the fact that the commandments make no sense if they are not embedded in a specific narrative.
The first commandment begins, "I am the God who brought you out of Egypt, out of slavery." That means that the divine "I" is not a placeholder for any generic concept of the divine. This "I" refers to a specific God, a particular God, who has a concrete and historically contingent relationship with this "you," who are a concrete, specific and historically contingent people. The Ten Commandments make sense only on the basis of the relationship between Israel and Yahweh. They are not generic rules of thumb, a shorthand of moral common sense.
This point is basic, and, once grasped, changes our conception of Christian ethics.
The Ten Commandments are given at that moment in the biblical story when vows are made and a covenant is sealed. By the time we get to Exodus 20, we know a lot about this particular God and why this covenant is taking place. We have been through a narrative, a history or story in which certain events have happened. Later...
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