The Ten Commandments 4
Honoring God’s Name: Jesus Christ as the True Name of God
aF’ti al{
yKi aw>V’l; ^yh,l{a/ hw”hy>-~ve-ta,
aF’yI-rv,a] tae hw”hy> hQ,n:y> al{
s `aw>V’l; Amv.-ta,
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. Deut. 5:11
For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, says the LORD of hosts. [Malachi 1:11 (KJV)]
Introduction:
God gave the first four Commandments to teach Israel how to honor Him as their God. Most discussions of the Decalogue quite properly ask what the Ten Commandments can and should mean for us today, how we should act in our time to meet God’s commands, God’s Torah. The emphasis in these studies is on the present conditions in which Christians live and what obedience to the Decalogue should mean for our time. This is certainly legitimate. Indeed in this essay we will review one important way some think the Third Commandment should be honored, i.e., by rejecting religious Fundamentalism. But in such discussions the focus is on us, on what we should will and do in relation to the Commandments. Easily forgotten that the starting point for the Decalogue is God’s willing, requiring something of Israel and of Christians. .
Before we ask what the Commandments can mean for us today, we need to remember that the Decalogue is God’s own Commandments to Israel. In them God is announcing His will. What our will should be, i.e., how we should fulfill those commandments, arises as a problem only after God has stated His will. In the first four Commandments God shows, in four different ways, that and how God wants, expects and demands being Israel’s God. The First Table of the Decalogue shows God concerned about His own dignity, importance and status.
Israel’s God is a jealous God. Strangely, God’s self-concern about being Israel’s only God (the First Commandment); that Israel worship Yahweh without images (the Second Commandment) ; that God’s Name be rightly used (the Third Commandment) ; and that God’s Sabbath be rightly honored (the Fourth Commandment) is often ignored. The notion that God is a “jealous” God, that God will tolerate no rivals, is a very obvious theme, explicitly stated, in the First Table of the Decalogue. But God’s jealousy sounds like a primitive idea to many modern ears, an intolerant notion. Being primitive and intolerant clash with today’s prevailing values. Modern people often admire Asian religions because their deities are not “jealous gods.” One can be a Buddhist and also honor Shinto or Hindu deities. Asian gods tolerate their worshippers honoring other gods. Perhaps this is one reason why Asian religions appeal to many modern and postmodern people. We will return to this theme at the end of this essay.
The tolerance of “the gods of the nations” is apparent in the Old Testament. The Old Testament gives no indication that the gods of surrounding nations, e.g., Moloch, the Queen of Heaven or Ishtar, tolerated no rivals, were jealous gods. Apparently they were tolerant and flexible, not requiring exclusive worship. The religion of Israel must have seemed “exclusive” and “intolerant” in Old Testament times as well.
The jealousy of God and fear of the Lord are closely connected. Largely lost in modern piety, but very vivid in that of earlier generations, is fear of the Lord. We read in the book of Proverbs that the “fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. But our religious teachers today are likely to assure us that this “fear” is not the kind that should make us afraid to act contrary to God’s will but that this “fear” only means to respect God. Why this respect is legitimate seems less clear. The many stories in the Old Testament of God’s punishing those Israelites who violate God’s moral and ceremonial law are for most modern ears gruesome and embarrassing.1 They belong logically to the notion that God is not to be mocked, not to be trifled with. These stories of God punishing, even killing Israelites who violate His ceremonial law or who are to be stoned for breaking God’s moral law are difficult for us today. But these stories exist and, like the vengeance passages in the Psalms, we should try to face them unblinkingly and not ignore them.
Each of the four first Commandments is a demand of One concerned with his value and dignity as Israel’s God. This motif unites the first Four Commandments and constitutes them as a distinct Table of the Decalogue.
God’s Name
The Third Commandment concerns God’s Name. What’s in a name? This question could quickly involve us with philosophers who have focused strenuously on language for the last one hundred years. With the revolution in linguistics, from an historical approach (chronological study of morphology, phonology, e.g., Grimm’s Laws) to a structural approach, (begun by Ferdinand de Saussure at the turn of the century)2, philosophers of language have poured much energy into the perennial question of how the names refer to things and people. But we do better to begin with our daily world where ordinary people are also concerned with their names.
True, the Third Commandment concerns God’s name, not our names or the names of ordinary things. In our secular culture, few people are concerned with God’s name; secular people don’t refer to God at all, and if they do it is not to refer to God as a real being. For most people, the Third Commandment amounts to little more than their parents’ admonition not to “cuss.” Therefore, the prohibition against misusing God’s name will seem to most people an archaic, even primitive concern. But for Christians (as well as for Jews and Moslems) the Third Commandment concerns the most important name: God’s own name. The Third Commandment prohibits misusing that name. What does this Commandment tell us about God Himself? This is our leading question in this essay.
Before we begin with the august task of discussing God’s name (hopefully avoiding violating the very Commandment we are discussing!) and its proper and improper use, we will briefly discuss personal names applied to human beings. The purpose is to begin with a realm of naming familiar to us all, even to those who have no interest or respect for “God’s name.” Then we will ask about the Third Commandment in the context of the witness of the New Testament and especially about Jesus’ teaching and the references to “the name of Jesus” in the New Testament.
As explained in earlier essays in this series, we try to interpret the First Covenant (witnessed to in the Old Testament) in the light of the Second Covenant (the New Testament.) The principle here is that Christ, and therefore the New Testament witness to Christ, is the center from which Christians understand everything. From the New Testament, therefore, Christians try to understand the deepest meaning of the Old Testament. Therefore we examine the Third Commandment in the context of the Old Testament after we have discussed it in the context of the New Testament. After this look at the Bible we briefly examine a medieval theologian, St. Bonaventura, and a Reformation theologian, John Calvin. We ask how they received and passed on the Third Commandment. We conclude this essay looking at one major way contemporary people apply the Third Commandment: the critique of Fundamentalism as a misuse of God’s Name.
What’s In a Name? Naming in Everyday Life
What’s in a name? Even in our secular and pragmatic society the answer is “a lot.” Our public life has lost almost every vestige of what religious phenomenologist, Rudolph Otto, called “fear and trembling”3 which sacred names in the past evoked in all cultures. Modern science and technology has “desacralized” the world for us; for us language is not filled with power to evoke spirits. For centuries, words and even names have been increasingly viewed as arbitrary, pragmatic, and utilitarian.4 Nevertheless, in a least two contexts, the personal and familial and the economic, names are important.
In the context of family, especially, family trees, a person’s name is important. The family name establishes an individual’s relation to earlier generations and thus to history and to some extent, the public realm. The given name (also called one ”first name”), combined with the family name, helps express a person’s unique identity. Taken together, the family name and given name (along with the first person singular pronoun, “I”) provide a person with a word for subjective self-reference and provides other persons an objective word they can speak to address and refer to another person as a unique individual.
That names are important in this familial context is indicated at least in two ways. First, people don’t like to have their names misidentified, mispronounced, or toyed with. If you mispronounce a person’s name, they will almost always correct you. If you misidentify someone, they will also correct you. “No, I am not Person A, I am Person B.” Persons view their names as a kind of extension of themselves; they expect their names to be treated with respect. People show a certain jealous concern about their own names.. And, taking care to refer properly to another person is a mark of respect shown toward that person. This human trait should help us understood why God would want His name to be used rightly.
Second, public documents, e.g., passports, birth certificates, diplomas, medical, insurance and other documents of record, allocate great attention to getting names right. In public documents, such as birth certificate, social security cards and passports, a person’s name “locates” them in the public arena. We encounter here a basic trait of names; a trait that has enormous theological importance. Names are a public extension of the self. When one names oneself, one discloses oneself publicly.
Realizing the way names allow a person to “go public” should help us understand why individuals resist having their “name, ” in the sense of their reputation, brought into disrepute. Legal means are available for a person to defend “their name”, if they think it has been falsely discredited. Entertainer Carol Burnett successfully sued The National Enquirer for falsely alleging that she was seen drunk in a restaurant. American TV evangelist Jerry Falwell sued (unsuccessfully) a newspaper for publishing a caricature depicting him as committing incest with his mother in an outhouse.5
In the economic sphere names are important in relation to “brand names.” A Bavarian newspaper recently reported how a north German brewery, Warsteiner, was pressuring a local, Bavarian, family-owned brewery, named Steiner, to change its name. The ground for the pressure was that Warsteiner’s, the largest beer seller in Germany, that consumers outside Germany could confuse the two names.6 Examples from the fields of popular music and authorship are common. Songwriters or other writers sue music companies or publishers for publishing a song or novel whose idea was allegedly stolen from them. Very often the name of a clothes designer becomes associated and is printed on the piece of apparel. Gucci handbags are such prestige pieces that cheap imitations are widely available in tourist sites.
What have we gained for understanding the Third Commandment by inquiring about naming at the human level? We begin to understand the significance of using God’s Name rightly when we remember that the issue of our using God’s name rightly only arises after and because God Himself has disclosed His name, Yahweh, to his people. In so doing, God has presented Himself publicly. In making himself present publicly, God makes himself vulnerable to his name being ignored, misused, and trifled with. A key point for this essay, therefore, is that the basis and premise for the Third Commandment is the act by which God names himself, which God did in the preamble to the Decalogue itself, in the Shema. We dealt with this act of Self-naming in the first essay of this series.
The Lord’s Name in The Second Covenant
A good place to begin our examination of the Lord’s Name (and the Third Commandment) in the New Testament is the Lord’s Prayer. It’s opening, in the familiar King James English version is: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Three aspects of this opening are important for our topic.
“Father,” according to the witness of the New Testament, was Jesus’ most usual way of addressing God. While “Father, ” as an appellation for God, is not common in the Old Testament7, it is central to Jesus’ teaching. “Father” is, in the New Testament, not merely a role designation. For Jesus, and in the Lord’s Prayer, “Father” is a personal name, a term of address.
However, “Father” is also a role designation. Of course, “Father” must be understood analogically; God is not a father in the same sense that a human male can be a father. However, the “Father” implies a double relationship. One relationship is generative: a father (with a woman) generates a son. The second relationship is the second, reciprocal filial relation. In the New Testament portrayal of Jesus’ relation to God, the Father, there is a double aspect: the father-son relationship involves both difference (the father is not the son; the son is not the father) but also unity (the son derives from the father; the son has the same nature as the father, the son’s will is one with that of the father.) Also, this relationship is not reversible; the Son derives from the Father, the Son stands under the authority of the Father. Jesus’ name of God, “Father” literally combines a personal name with a complex, reciprocal relationship of difference and union.
A second important facet of the opening of the Lord’s Prayer is the first person plural possessive pronoun “our.” Jesus invites his disciples, in teaching them this prayer, to share in his personal relation to God as Abba, Father, Thus, the relationship between God and the Son is in a sense sharable. No other human being beside Jesus can share his special relation to God as the Son. Yet in and through Jesus, other human beings can share in Jesus relation to the Father, as the Son. Paul’s metaphor of adoption fits into this picture.
The third important feature of the Lord’s Prayer opening is that the Father is in Heaven, and His Name is to be hallowed on earth as it is in heaven. The words of the prayer make clear that God’s name is already recognized, revered and honored as holy in heaven. The prayer engages the one who prays in the wish that God’s name also be honored on earth, as it already is in heaven. Thus, the prayer implies a duty, a calling, and a task. In teaching this prayer, Jesus not only invites his disciples to enter into and share his relation to God, the Father. Jesus also invites them to enter his mission of promoting the holiness, i.e., the acknowledgement of God, the Father’s worth, sanctity, and transcendence on earth. We therefore, should see in this petition of the Lord’s Prayer the single most direct and most important affirmation of the Third Commandment in the New Testament.
A second passage in the New Testament, from the Sermon on the Mount is pertinent to the theme of proper use of God’s name. In Matthew 7: 21-23, Jesus warns those who call on him, Lord, Lord, who say they prophesied and cast out demons in Jesus’ name and did many deeds in Jesus’ name, will not, for these reasons alone, enter the Kingdom of Heaven. For “only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
This passage is important, because the idea of acting “in the name” of someone is central. Moreover, that person is Jesus himself, not God, the Father who is in heaven. Important to note is that Jesus does not criticize anyone for casting out demons, prophesying and doing deeds “in Jesus name.” The basis for non-admission is not acting in Jesus Name but calling on “Jesus’ Name” but not doing “the will of my Father in heaven.” Jesus, in effect, is preventing appeals to Jesus’ Name (identity and power) independent from a prior obedience to the will of God, the Father.
This brings us to what is novel and central for Christian belief in the New Testament. The Name of Jesus is granted by Jesus, himself, by St. Paul and by other New Testament writers the same status as the Name of God in the First Covenant. A representative passage is St. Paul’s Letter to the Philippians8:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself taking the form of a slave being born in human likeness. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.
Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
We highlight three themes in this passage relevant for the Third Commandment. The first and most important is that the Name of Jesus has a double denotation. “The Name of Jesus Christ” means, as we will see when discussing “the Name of God” in the First Covenant, two things at once. First, “the Name of Jesus Christ” refers to the reality of Jesus Christ, i.e., Jesus Christ in the totality of his own, intrinsic reality, dignity, and power to save. Second, “the Name of Jesus Christ” is that same reality, i.e., the total reality of Jesus Christ, as recognized in its intrinsic worth by human beings, and thus as the object of human praise, adoration, reverence, worship and respect. The Name of Jesus, therefore, means not just the reality and power of Jesus, but also that reality as acknowledged in its full meaning and worth by human beings. Here we see the basic structure of naming we discussed in the previous section of this essay.
Second, this status of “Jesus Christ” is grounded in God, the Father. God “highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” The authority of God is sustained despite Jesus Christ’s Name attains the same status as the Name of God. This is possible because God grants this status to Jesus Christ. We observe the subordination of Son to the Father that is intrinsic to the Father-Son relation, as discussed above.
The third theme is the causal relationship between Jesus self-emptying unto death and God’s giving to Jesus Christ a status equal to himself. The key word is “Therefore” connecting the verses about Christ’s self-emptying even to the ignominious death on a cross and the exaltation of the Name of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ emptied himself (in obedience to the Father’s will), the Father has exalted him. This humiliation and exaltation is a basic theme in St. Paul’s theology. It applies first of all to Jesus as the Christ and then also to those baptized in Christ, who “die with him in order that they will be raised with him. ‘ This pattern of humiliation and exaltation also recalls Jesus’ own teaching about who will save his life and lose it, about who will be first and last, and about ruling and serving.
Another verse, this time from John’s Gospel, exemplifies the radically new element of the Second Covenant in relation to the First Covenant. Jesus Name (i.e., the Name of the Only Begotten Son) is the Name through which salvation comes. Salvation for the First Covenant came only through the Name of the Lord,
Those who believe in him (the Son) are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (Gospel According to St. John 3: 18)
In verses 14 and 15 of this same chapter, the author refers to the Son of God “being raised up” thus establishing a striking parallel to St. Paul’s words about God’s highly exalting Jesus Christ. The Johannine verse, goes beyond this and explicitly connects to the First Covenant, drawing the analogy between Jesus Christ’s being “lifted up” and Moses’ lifting up the protecting bronze serpent in the wilderness, i.e., the copy of a poisonous serpent which were sent by God as punishment for sin.
What does God’s exaltation of the Name of Jesus Christ mean for the Third Commandment? The Third Commandment is formulated negatively: we should not take the Lord’s Name in vain. Positively the Commandment means to honor properly the Lord’s Name. What does it mean, for the New Testament, that “the Lord’s Name” be properly used? This passage from Philippians says exactly what this means. It means to honor God’s designation of Jesus Christ as the Name, which is above every name, as the Lord before whom every knee in heaven, and earth should bow. It means that those who believe in God in Christ should so honor Christ as Lord. And it means that God’s will regarding Jesus, be proclaimed, that believers should call non-believers to the proper honoring of God’s Name.
Another decisive verse in the New Testament is the closing verses of Matthew’s Gospel: 28: 19-20. Jesus commands the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching to them to keep all which he has taught them, and behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the ages.”
Of interest here is the phrase “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” This phrase, of course, has been received in all the churches as the formula of baptism, and as the designation of the Three Persons of the Trinity. Thus, the churches have understood their obedience to Jesus’ Command.
Noteworthy is how, in receiving the Third Commandment, the early Jesus movement granted equal status to The Son and The Holy Spirit as to “the Father. ” We should note, of course, that this status is dependent on the statement immediately prior: “all authority has been given to me on heaven and earth.” This authority is given to Jesus from another, from the Father. This claim accords perfectly with the verses we have just studied above from Philippians. The Holy Spirit, in the witness of the New Testament is not a separate reality from God, the Father, either. For example, In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and is the Spirit that orients believers to the Father in prayer.
This “formula” containing the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is immediately connected also to baptism. Jesus himself underwent the baptism of John in the Wilderness. Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples did. St. Paul provides an early and most extensive explanation of the meaning of Christian baptism in the New Testament. By baptism, the believer dies and rises with Jesus Christ, enters with Christ into Christ’s death and rises with Christ in Christ’s resurrection. Thus, baptism is, along with faith itself, is a means by which God brings believers, by the power of the Holy Spirit, into the sphere of the Father’ saving work in Jesus Christ. This saving work, accomplished through the Son or Word, who manifests the Father, both enacts the Father’s will and, by enacting it, discloses that will. In this sense Jesus Christ is the Name of the Father. We could perhaps even say that the meaning of God’s Name in the Old Testament is actualized in the Name, “Jesus Christ. “
Therefore, baptism, understood as an act of incorporation into Christ and into God’s purposes and work in Christ, involves honoring God’s Name. Faith, in one key meaning in the New Testament, is the act of free confession of trust in, affirmation of and submission to God’s indeed work in Christ, through the Holy Spirit, in response to the proclamation of the Good News in and by the Church. Faith, therefore, is also a form of honoring God’s Name and fulfilling the Third commandment.9 Thus, faith and baptism together constitute the basic way people fulfill the Third Commandment in the New Testament, honoring God’s Name, i.e., God’s reality and expressed purposes and reputation.
The Lord’s Name in the First Covenant
In the second essay in this series, we pointed out that by the First Word of the Decalogue, the Shema, “Hear O Israel, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery …” (Exodus 20.2) God identifies himself as a personal God. As we mentioned above in this essay, in this verse God actually provides Israel with a personal name. As Old Testament Professor, Murray Newman, points out, in the worship of Israel, this name is never spoken or read aloud, only written, as an act of reverence. “Yahweh” is the only proper, and therefore explicitly personal name for God in the entire Old Testament, Newman points out. “There are many names for God—God of Israel, God of Abraham, Holy One of Israel, etc. But there is only one proper name. “Yahweh” is a (the) personal name of God”, Newman says.
Understanding the full significance of “God’s Name” in the Old Testament requires knowing that in Near Eastern cultures, and perhaps even more widely, disclosing one’s name meant making one vulnerable to its wrong use by another. That is, knowledge of the name could be used to exert magical control. This magical use/misuse of one’s name may be a factor in the story of Jacob’s struggle at the River Jabbok with “a man who is also God.” This being renames Jacob Israel, but will not provide his own name at Jacob’s (Israel’s) request. 10
Understanding the name as an extension of personal being may also be central to the important text, Exodus 3:13-14. This is the account of Moses’ “call” at the burning bush. Moses asks God to tell him His name, because the Israelites would demand of Moses the name of the God who had sent Moses to them. God’s first answer is, “I am who I am,” which can also be translated, according to the study notes of the NRSV Oxford Annotated Bible, “I will be what I will be.” God then says to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.” The NRSV note to this verse says that the Hebrew word for ‘Lord”, when spelled with capital letters stands for the divine name, YHWH, which in this verse is connected with the verb ‘hayah,’ “hayah” to be.11 The passage then continues, “God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.”
This passage is important not only because in it God announces his name solemnly and “officially.” Also important is how God names Himself. God names Himself by describing what he has done, namely has chosen Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and promised to be their God. God defines himself as the One who has chosen this People and who promises to be with this People and promises a future for the People of Israel. Abstractly stated, God defines himself through what he does and through future, promised, works. This is quite different from an abstract, ontological definition of God as “being itself.” Naming himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is a definition through expression of will in action; it is a description of personal engagement and involvement in the lives of a people among the nations of the earth. 12
Thus, “name” is centrally important in the Old Testament as a designation for God. In the first place, the Old Testament is full of verses in which God refers to Himself as “my name.” When God refers to His own name, the meaning is God’s power and authority as recognized on earth.
A typical and clarifying passage is Exodus 9: 15. This passage comes from the story of Yahweh’s instructions to Moses. God will free the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt. God chose Moses to speak on behalf of God himself and on behalf of the Israelites to Pharaoh. Moses is to bring Yahweh’s message to Pharaoh. According to that message, the purpose of the afflictions God sends upon the Egyptians is that God’s name become known and respected throughout the earth.
Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Rise us early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. For this time I will send all my plagues upon you yourself and upon your officials, and upon your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But this is why I have let you live: to show you my power, and to make my name resound through all the earth. (my emphasis.) 13
This passage is significant for two reasons. First, it indicates the meaning of “God’s Name” which is so often used in the Old Testament. God’s Name is synonymous with God’s being, God’s power, God’s reality; it is synonymous with God’s power to act as God in relation to the world. Second, the passage is important because it shows the horizon or framework in which God is spoken of in the Old Testament. God’s will have his name known and honored; the disclosure of His Name, i.e., his deity, is for the sake of God being known and honored as God. God’s glory, the disclosure of his power and fullness of being, is the purpose of God’s actions, of the making known of God’s Name.14
The Name of God refers then both to God, Himself, and God’s commitment to Israel. Exactly as the Covenant at Sinai involves a double commitment, so does God’s giving of His Name. The Covenant obligates Israel to obey Yahweh as God’s People. But in the Covenant, God also promises to be their God, i.e., to fulfill the promises made to Abraham. Similarly, through giving His Name, Yahweh obligates Israel to honor God as God. But God also promises to bless Israel through this divine Name. The blessing, which God commands Moses to give Aaron and his sons for them to pronounce to Israel, brings this double aspect of God’s Name clearly:
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Thus shall you bless the Israelites: You shall say to them,
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.
So shall they put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them. (Numbers: 6: 22-27. )
In announcing His Name, Yahweh both discloses Himself and “puts His Name on the Israelites” and promises to bless them.
Because God has “put His Name on Israel, Israel is not to use the name of other gods. To use their names is to rely on their reality and power. This, of course, is a violation of the First Commandment, to have no other Gods beside Yahweh. Hence, among the many statutes and laws, which God gives Israel through Moses, is the command “Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips.” We see that invoking other gods not only dishonors Yahweh by implying that Yahweh cannot or will not fulfill His promise to bless Israel. To invoke other God’s also contradicts Israel’s very identity as God’s people, upon whom God has put His Name. Thus, we see how the opening three Commandments—to have not other God’s beside Yahweh, to worship God without images, as the nations do, and not take the Lord’s Name in vain.
Generalizing from the examination of these pertinent passages, we can conclude that God acts in the Old Testament paradigmatically by choosing the people of Israel, by calling them to freedom from bondage in Egypt and by leading them to the Promised Land. To honor God’s name is to honor God as God, i.e., as the One who discloses Himself in is act of choosing Israel and guaranteeing Israel’s future as God’s people.
This understanding of honoring God’s Name is open to the teaching we found in the New Testament. The Old Testament teaches that to honor God’s Name is to acknowledge God who discloses Himself in his acts and his promises. These acts and promises, for the New Testament, come to fulfillment decisively in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
St. Bonaventura on the Third Commandment15
St. Bonaventura’s Third Collatio on the Ten Commandments provides a window into western, medieval appropriation of the Commandment prohibiting taking the Lord’s Name in vain. What can we learn from Bonaventura’s reflections on the Third Commandment?
As we noted in a previous essay in this essay, Bonaventura links the First Table of the Law (which we count as having Four Commandments) with the first Three Commandments with the Three Persons of the Trinity. This corresponds to his platform theological principle of organizing all his theological reflection according to the doctrine of God as Trinity. It also shows how Medieval Theology “read” the Old Testament through the eyes of the New Testament and read the Bible theologically, not simply as a collection of historical documents. The first thing we can learn from Bonaventura, then, is the paradigm of a Christian, theological reading of the Old Testament, generally, and the Third Commandment specifically. This means, however, that Bonaventura counts the Third Commandment as the Second Commandment.
According to Bonaventura’s Trinitarian reading of the First Table of the Law, the First Commandment corresponds to the Father, i.e. to generativity as paternity, to the divine majesty, and to God as efficient cause of creation, to the first Person of the Holy Trinity. Bonaventura correlates the Second Commandment, against taking the Lord’s Name in vain, to the Son, the principle of filiation, of exemplary causality, and of truth.
Bonaventura teaches that we fulfill the First Commandment by humbly adoring God’s unique majesty. This humble adoration requires, Bonaventura goes on to say, abjuring all pacts with demons, i.e., the use of verbal incantations, inscriptions or images or sacrifices involved in magical rites. Obedience to the Command to worship God alone also requires rejecting all superstitious errors and worldviews that replace God with some other object of worship. Humble adoration of God also requires contemplating perverse images of creatures, for reasons of pride, avarice or lasciviousness,
Believers obey the second Commandment, Bonaventura says, chiefly by holding teaching which is faithful to the truth as revealed by God (praecipitur fidelis confitio summae vertatis; prohibiere abnegator veritatis.) Thus, as Bonaventura had previously announced, the meaning of a commandment involves not only what it explicitly prohibits but also what, by implication of the prohibition, what it positively requires. Bonaventura focuses on the idea of fidelis confitio summae veritatis (faithful confession of the highest truth), i.e., on the speech act of taking vows. Bonaventura’s reason, there is little doubt, is that such vows are often or usually made “in the name of God” or may, as in the case of affirming the Creed, confess truths about God. The dictionary defines what Bonaventura means here by “vow” as “an earnest promise or pledge that binds one to perform a specified act or behave in a certain manner, esp. a solemn promise to act in accordance with the prescriptions of a religious body.” So for Bonaventura the subject of the Third Commandment (again, for Bonaventura the Second Commandment) is truthful vow making.
Bonaventura distinguishes two kinds of vows: iuramentum assertotium/testmonium and iuramentum promissorium. The iuramenum assertotium/testimonium is a vow by which one solemnly declares that something is true or gives testimony as a witness. Giving testimony in court would be a contemporary example, as would a speech act such as “I swear, by God, that I did not steal your money.” The iuramentum promissorium is a speech act whereby one solemnly promises to do something. Taking marriage vows or vowing to act according to the Constitution or taking religious vows would be examples of promissory vows.
Speaking generally about both kinds of vows, Bonaventura believes that one vows truthfully when one speaks the truth, when one judges justly and when one speaks uprightly (iudicium)16. Bonaventura specifies truthful vow taking with these three attributes based on Jeremiah 4: 2 and its Gloss. Thus, again, speaking generally about all kinds of vows, a person honors the truth in vow taking, when he or she affirms what is true, when he or she does not claim that as true what, in he or she knows in fact to be false, and when he or she does not affirm as certain what he or she in fact doubts. To violate any of these three aspects of truth is to deny the truth. When this is done “in God’s name” one violates the Commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain.
Bonaventura then applies these general considerations about what constitutes truth in vow taking to each of the two kinds of vows. In relation to the Iuramentum assertorium, truth is present when a person does not deny truth, nor affirms falsehood (as truth) nor assert as true what is known to be doubtful (Veritas autem est in iuramento assertorio, quando homo non negat verum noc affirmat falsum nec asserit scienter dubium). Each such discourse lacks correspondence between what one says and what is in the heart (quia sermo est iudicativus eorum quae sunt in corde.)
But we speak falsely in an iurametum assertio also when we speak unjustly. A just assertive vow occurs when one does not speak against the mandates of divine law, nor against the precepts of holy mother church nor in at the risk/loss of one’s own or another’s salvation (Fit autem cum iustita, quando non fit contra mandatum divinae legis neque contra praeceptum sanctae matris Ecclesiae neque in dispendium salutis propriae vel alienate.) Thus, we note that Bonaventura assimilates morality to the general nature of truth or falsity. One teaches falsely when one confuses moral wrong and right.
Finally, an assertive vow is truthful when performed uprightly. Uprightness is lacking when the one making the vow acts without considering whether what is said is true or false, just or unjust, fruitful or unfruitful. In such cases one violates truthfulness because one vows temerarie, i.e., casually or frivolously. Thus, Bonaventura includes deliberation and responsible consideration of behavior as a form of truth.
Turning next to promissory vows, Bonaventura observes that there are three kinds of promissory vows. One kind promotes the good (promovendum bonum); a second preserves fidelity (conservandam fidelitatem); and a third promotes mutual peace (ineundam mutuam pacem.) Inferiors make the first sort of vow to superiors; the second occurs between equals; the third occurs from superiors to inferiors.
In the first kind of promissory vow, an inferior vows a good to a superior. This involves, says Bonaventura, a triple utility: faith in the mind, love in the affect and peace in effect. These three utilities promote goodness.
The promissory vow between equals, promoting fidelity, happens in three ways, i.e., to the avoiding evil, for the settling of controversies and for the elimination of infamy. Thus, when a person does not deny the truth or affirm falsehood evil is avoided. A promissory vow can settle controversies. Finally, the example of Deuteronomy 21: 6 shows that a vow can remove infamy from a person, e.g., in the case where a person finds a corpse.
Finally, the promissory vow, again at the literal level or in ordinary life, can promote peace, because a vow can avoid mortal sins.
Moving from the literal to the spiritual level, Bonaventura says we avoid taking the Lord’s name in vain in three ways: in effect, in promising and in experiencing. In effect, we do not take the Lord’s name in vain when we speak the name of God in the context of the sacraments. An example would be “I baptize thee in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
By contrast, we misuse the Lord’s name in relation to the sacraments when we do not believe what the church teaches about the sacrament, when we believe the teaching but do not dispose ourselves to an effective reception of the sacrament, and when we do not keep the grace received in the sacrament, because we sin.
We do not take the name of the Lord in vain in promising, for example, when someone promises in God’s name to go on a particular pilgrimage or to perform some other religious duty, e.g., when we vow to enter a religious order. But we do take the Lord’s name in vain in making religious vows when we delay without good reason from doing the religious action we vowed, i.e., when we procrastinate from fulfilling the vow, or when we do not perform the religious action we promised in God’s name to perform or when we deny the truth of Christian faith completely, i.e., commit apostasy.
Finally, we do not take the name of the Lord in vain in experience, when, for example, we make a vow, as such. But we do so when we utter a curse in God’s name, especially if we curse God, himself. We also take the name of God in vain experientially when we speak falsely about God, denying a truth about God or affirming something false about God. Finally, we take God’s name in vain experientially when we speak about Christ in his humility and human weakness derogatively. This is especially blasphemous, because God in Christ assumed our frail humanity for our salvation.
We see from this summary of Bonaventura’s Lecture on the Third Commandment that his thinking moves at two levels. The first is the level of every day life where God is named in the context of declarative and promissory vows in worldly context. The second level is a religious level, where a person speaks about religious teaching or makes religious vows invoking God’s name.
Can we learn anything from Bonaventura’s treatment of the Third Commandment?
First, profound and striking is Bonaventura’s coordinating the Third Commandment with concern for truthfulness and with the Second Person of the Trinity. The Eternal Word is the perfect image of the Father and is the Exemplar according to which each thing in the world and the cosmos as a whole was created. Since St. Augustine, if not already in John’s Gospel-Prologue, Jesus Christ is linked with the Truth in an absolute, ultimate sense. Bonaventura wants to be true to this theological tradition. The Third Commandment has fundamentally to do with the Truth of God and with human relationship to that truth in thought word and deed. By linking the Commandment about God’s Name with Jesus Christ, as the revelation of God, and with truth generally, Bonaventura helps us see the revelatory character of naming, its duality of referring to the one named and relating the one named to another. Names identify someone’s very own reality, and, in so doing, makes that reality public. Jesus Christ, as the Word of the Father and the Son of the Father, shares the divine essence and also makes that divine essence known. Jesus Christ is, as we said in the section on the New Testament, the true Name of the Father. Thus, the theme of God’s Name and of Jesus Christ as the true Name of the Father, concerns the nature of truth as correspondence between mind/name and reality. Bonaventura thus helps Christian theology connect theological discourse with philosophical discourse about truth. 17
Instructive also is Bonaventura’s connection between truth telling and moral teaching. Teaching what is unjust, what is morally wrong, is a moral lie. In making this connection, Bonaventura reminds us that, as the whole medieval theological tradition held, being, goodness and truth cannot be separated. These “universals” are equiprimordial and convertible. In God and in God’s world, because the Father, through the Son, creates it, “facts” and “values” cannot be ultimately separated.
A weakness of Bonaventura’s whole treatment, however, is that he confuses the issue of God’s Name as such and honesty of vows at the human level. Of course these levels cannot be ultimately divided. However, Bonaventura’s rule of coordinating the First Table of the Law with the Three Persons of the Trinity requires him to talk about human vows, which is a topic in itself in the Second Table of the Law.
John Calvin: A Reformed Appropriation of the Third Commandment
In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin provides a brief but profound assessment of the Third Commandant. The scope of his analysis is only seven paragraphs.18 But the discussion is profound because Calvin connects the Commandment against taking the Lord’s Name in vain to the very nature of God. At stake in the Commandment is honoring God as the Truth. Did Calvin read Bonaventura? Most probably.
Calvin reaches this depth of analysis by beginning with the question: what do we really do when we invoke God’s name as a warrant for a statement or promise we make? And oath, he says, is “calling God as witness to confirm the truth of our word.” (Paragraph 23) But calling on God in this way affirms that God relates to truth. Specifically, invoking God as a warrant for the truth of oath is making a confession not only that God is true but also that God is One who can and will “bring all things to light.” This confession about God’s nature as truth as the one who brings truth to light is, therefore, “part of our worship of God.” (Paragraph 24), i.e., confessing God to be Truth itself.
In contrast, to consciously swear something false, i.e., something not true or not morally right, in God’s name, is to insult God as the Lord of Truth. We associate God with falsehood and thus dishonor God, Himself.
Calvin finds it only coherent and cogent that God threatens with special punishment those who swear by another god. Thus, God warns the Israelites not to invoke the names of other gods. And through the prophet Zephaniah God threatens to “sweep away” those who bow down and swear to the Lord, but also swear by Milcom.” (Zephaniah 1:1-4). 19
Calvin addresses the challenge from the Anabaptists who cited the Sermon on the Mount as warrant that no Christian should ever swear and oath in God’s name. Calvin’s counterargument is that Jesus is not forbidding the involving of God’s name in every case of vowing, but only in trivial kinds of invocations, such as in the name of the temple, the earth or the heaven.
Calvin’s treatment of the Third Commandment is important because he teaches that the Commandment concern God’s very nature. God is the truth, and misusing God’s name is a form of blasphemy, of denying both God’s own nature and God’s power to bring to light what is true and what is false.
A Modern Use of the Third Commandment: Condemning Fundamentalism
Today, everyone condemns “Fundamentalism,”20 both most believers and nonbelievers. What does “Fundamentalism” mean now? In political and religious argumentation21 today, “Fundamentalism” is an indictment people apply to views that appear to them based on a literal reading of the Bible or Koran. Usually “fundamentalist” views contradict modern liberal assumptions. So, for example, those opposing, on religious grounds, elective abortion or blessing same-sex relations are branded “Fundamentalists,” not necessarily because they interpret the Bible literally but because they refer to the Bible at all as a basis for their viewpoint. This way of using “Fundamentalism” is often little more than an underhanded rhetorical label deployed to discredit those proposing views with which one disagrees.
More serious is the application of “Fundamentalist” to persons legitimating terrorist and other violent acts on religious grounds. Thus today one speaks of Islamic Fundamentalists, referring to those willing to explode bombs in public places, or Jewish Fundamentalists who violently resist removal from illegal settlements, or Hindu Fundamentalists who burn Christian churches and Buddhist Temples and Christian Fundamentalists who murder physicians who run abortion clinics. Usually these violent acts are legitimated by reference to the religious texts sacred to the religion in question.
An example of this second use of “Fundamentalism” is an article by Hartmut Krauss printed as a commentary to a photo collection about the Ten Commandments.22 Krauss’ essay is included in the chapter about the Third Commandment and therefore is intended to be read as a commentary on that Commandment. We will note that Kraus himself makes no reference to the Third Commandment in his essay. In fact, we will show that the essay is interesting not so much for what it teaches us about the Third Commandment as what it shows us about the constraints laid on authors in our secular age when they write on theological topics.
In the first paragraph of Part II of his essay, Kraus introduces the phrase: “die unterschiedlichen religoesen Fumdamentalismen” ….(the different religious Fundamentalisms). He does not explain why this word is legitimately used in this context. In the rest of his article he uses “the Fundamentalists” as if the meaning and legitimacy of this phrase in this context is established and need not be discussed.
Another feature of this essay is its mixture of two kinds of discourse.23 One kind is the discourse of value-neutral description. The other discourse is value-leavened vocabulary applied to “Fundamentalism.” Placed by the editors of this volume in the chapter about the Third Commandment, leads the reader to assume that “Fundamentalism” violates the Third Commandment. However, Kraus nowhere explicitly connects his analysis of Fundamentalism with the Third Commandment. His rhetorical strategy, and that of those who selected this essay and its placement for this volume, seems, therefore, to be letting pejorative words describing Fundamentalism (e.g., terrorist, repressive, absolutistic) work in the reader’s mind to view that Fundamentalism violates the Third Commandment. This is not argument; it is itself a kind of rhetorical violence.
In fact, what Fundamentalism violates are central norms of modern Liberalism, e.g., tolerance, the relegation of religion to the private sphere of personal preference; the reduction of religion to feelings and attitudes, and the commitment to vague notions of progress through education and science. Kraus observes in one place that Judaism, Islam and Christianity give the community a higher status that modern individualistic cultures. By making this correct point he helps to give his essay an air of objectivity and scientific description. But his attack on Fundamentalism by innuendo and perjoritive language is unrelenting. Had he positively evaluated the importance of community, he could have made “Fundamentalism” more comprehensible.
Lest I be misunderstood by this criticism of Kraus’ rhetorical strategies to support violence in the name of the Bible, let me clearly say that using psychological or physical force to enforce religious beliefs and practices violates basic Christian beliefs and norms. In the New Testament, God’s Name is honored by good works (Matthew 5: 14-16) and by proclamation of God’s saving work in Christ, not by forceful conversion. Jesus Christ invites people to God’s Rule; he embodies that Rule in his life and death. He does not use violent means and he does not call his followers to use violence in the cause of the Kingdom. As the revelation of God, Jesus Christ thus represents God’s way of winning sinful people back to right relation to himself. Rather than exercise violence, Jesus absorbs it and carries into the divine life, where it is overcome by love. Thus, God’s power is the power of the appeal of love. As we noted in footnote 14, John’s Gospel speaks of Jesus “lifted up from the earth (i.e., on the cross) drawing all people to himself,” God accomplishes His will not by force but by the attraction of sacrificial love.24
Such a theological argument, however, makes religious beliefs the explicit basis for a critique of violence and terror legitimated by sacred scriptures, which Kraus attacks in his essay. Writers today trying to be published and read in our secular culture can’t make such explicit religious appeals, even if they are believing Christians. This appeal to religious beliefs would violate the standards of liberal intellectual discourse, which exclude arguments based on sacred scriptures. When secular discourse wants to attack a faith-based belief, therefore, it has to resort to the rhetoric of guilt by association and innuendo. We will illustrate how Kraus does this.
Kraus identifies two characteristics of “Fundamentalism.” One is a reading of history that sees modernization as a decay of true social values, which should rest on God. Fundamentalists, Kraus says, are not merely traditionalists, however. “Fundamentalists” want to marshal an appeal to transform religious tradition to legitimate violent political practices today (eine militant-aktivistischen Ideologie und normativen Praxis umgestalten). The second characteristic is an arbitrary selection of traditional moral norms that should then be applied to actions today. (die willkuerlich ausgewaehlten, radikalisiereten und politisch-aktivistisch uminterpretierten Glaubensinhalte als absolute Handlungsnormen durchzusetzen. ) This, Kraus describes this “dictatorial absolutizing of religious norms” as the attempt to translate religious beliefs into a “totalitarian order for daily life” in whose framework nonconformity should be suppressed by “terrorist means and special organs of repression.” Note that the objective description is correct, but Kraus can only express his criticism by choice of perjoritive adjectives like “dictatorial,” “ideology,” “arbitrary,” etc.
Kraus does admit that inherent in Judaism, Christianity and Islam are not our modern notion of individualism but rather a strong sense of religious community. Traditionally, these religions placed the welfare of the community before the self-actualization of the individual person. Then Kraus launches again his double discourse of objective description, subjective pejorative adjectives. Kraus writes of the American “Fundamentalists” goal of a “repressive-terrorist mastery of individual life style (repressive-totalitaere Beherrshung der individuellen Lebensfuehrung). His examples are legalizing school prayer, the teaching of Creationism along with Darwinian evolutionary theory, and de-legalizing elective abortion. Kraus closes his discussion of American Fundamentalists declaring that “the antinomian combination in the US of economic liberalism and Protestant Fundamentalism creates an imperial Superpower which is a ruling power hindering the defense and establishment of a world-wide, progressive-humanitarian value order.” (In dieser antinomischen Beschaffenheit als zugleich kapitalistisch (wirtschaft-liberalistisch) und religioes (-fundamentalistisch) grundierte imperiale Supermacht stellen die USA ein herschaftsstrukturelles Hindernis fuer die Verteidigung und Durchesetzung einer weltweiten progressive-humanistichen Werteordung dar.) Again Kraus uses not argument but negative and positive adjectives —“imperial,” “mastery-structure,” “progressive.”
Kraus asks, at the beginning of his essay, whether violence in the name of religion is inherent in religion or is a subjective misuse. He points out, accurately, that religions have enlisted political support and provided sacred legitimization to different political orders. This allows religions to enlist political power to promote the religion itself. Kraus focuses on “religions of revelation”, specifically Judaism, Christianity and Islam, because these monotheistic faiths make absolute truth claims and thus divide people into believers/unbelievers, into we/they. Kraus, however, never answers this question which his title and opening paragraphs declare to be the basic issue he addresses in the essay. Were Kraus to argue that violence is inherent and intrinsic to monotheistic religions he would add his voice to others writing today. His failure directly to answer the question he poses as the central issue of the article is confusing. I wondered whether Kraus was afraid of alienating readers who were adherents of these monotheistic religions. What he does do is focus on Christianity’s history of violent treatment of those held to be non-believers. Thus, he may be giving his answering by implication rather than direct assertion.
Regarding Christianity, Kraus observes that the history of oppression and violence against alleged enemies of the Christian faith has been common. He refers specifically to the Crusades, to persecution of Jews, to witch burning, burning of heretics and the Inquisition. Thus, Kraus wishes to establish the point that Christianity (and other religions of revelation which also have a history of violence) paradoxically combines an appeal to love and mercy with the practices of violence against nonbelievers. Kraus cites examples from Christian, Jewish and Islamic history to show that the sacred texts of these religions can be and have been interpreted to support both love and mercy and also violence against “enemies” of the religion.25
Kraus’ essay illustrates an appropriation of the Third Commandment under the constraints of modern public discourse. Such constraints are extremely unhelpful for dealing with the Ten Commandments. We saw how the modern dogma of the separation of fact and value requires Kraus to resort to an unworthy discourse of guilt by pejorative adjective. He fails to justify his use of the word “Fundamentalism” and he fails to argue on religious grounds against a religious viewpoint. Kraus’ essay is more interesting for what it shows about how secular norms constrain writers on religious topics than for what it has to say about the Third Commandment.
Conclusion
Our study of the nature of naming uncovered its basic dual form of self-designation and public designation. In the biblical witness, God has a personal name and that name is to be acknowledged publicly by Israel and eventually by the nations, as the name of the one true God. Thus, the nature of God’s Name and the nature of God’s revelation are structurally similar.
Reading the Third Commandment through the witness of the New Testament, we claim that to honor God’s Name is to honor Jesus Christ as the Name whom God has established above every other name in heaven and earth. As the Incarnation of God’s Word, Jesus Christ is of one essence with the Father, and thereby fully embodies God’s Name. The theological expression of this truth is the Christian dogmas of the Incarnation of the Word and of God as Holy Trinity. The liturgical expression of Jesus Christ as the Name of God are the formulas of baptism and of blessing by which Christians begin and end their lives as believers.
David Scott
Murnau, Germany
October, 2005
1 One example is Leviticus 10: 1-20, where two sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, are killed by Yahweh for making and unauthorized offering.
2 Ferdinand de Saussure in cours de linguistique generale (Paris:Payot, 1981), observes that the connection between a sign and its signified is arbitrary. For example, the large four footed animal often used for riding is called in Germany Pferd, in England horse, and “ ma” in China.. From this observation derives the germ of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s image of natural languages as “games” as set of arbitrary rules for speaking about things. However, structural linguists sill have not satisfactorily explained why the designated word in an language has the capacity to refer the minds of speakers and hearers to the things to which they refer.
3 In his classic phenomenological study, The Idea of the Holy.
4 Citing the linguistics of de Saussure and the notion of language games in Wittgenstein as evidence of the desacralization of language should not be interpreted to mean these scholars did not make great contributions to linguistics and philosophy of language respectively. My point is that in very different ways, each view of language drives a wedge between concept/word and reality, thus draining the name of ontological power, the power of the very being of what is denoted by the name.
5 The suit failed on grounds of First Amendment right of freedom of speech. One expert in constitutional law claimed that cartoonist’s caricature of a public figure cannot violate a public figures rights.
6 Muenchenr Merkur #232 Wochenende, 8./9 Oktober, 2005, page 9
7 To my knowledge only in Isaiah 63.16.
8 Philippians 2: 6-11.
9 Other pertinent passages in the New Testament about the Name of Jesus and the Name of God, which could not be explicitly discussed in the limits of this essay are: Acts 3:16; 4:15; 9: 15; John 17: 6; John 1; 12; 22; 10:25; 12:28;
10 See also Judges 13:17 as story in which the angel of the Lord refuses to divulge his name, “ because it is too wonderful.” V. 18.
11 Philosophical theologians have made much of this verse, suggesting that God’s name, “I am who I am” is satisfactorily equivalent in meaning with the metaphysical notion of “being itself” or esse ipsum. Indeed, if Yahweh is etymologically related to ‘hayah’, to be, there may some substance in this claim. An example of this philosophical/theological tradition is Thomas Aquinas of the question “Utrum hoc nomen ‘Qui est’ sit maixme nomen Dei proprium” in Summa Theologica I Q. 13 A. 11. In the Sed Contra, Thomas cites Exodus 3:13-14.
12 We call the reader’s attention to the first essay in this series, where we claimed that the ultimate “setting” of the Decalogue is God’s blessing of all the nations through His people, Israel.
13 An analogous passage is in Leviticus, where God warns Israel against blaspheming His name. See Leviticus 24:13-16.
14 The Fourth Gospel has God’s glory as a basic theme. That God’s glory will be manifested on the cross which “will draw all people to myself” shows the paradoxical character of God’s power as the power of attraction through love. This point is decisive when we contrast New Testament teaching to violence done in the name of the God of the Bible.
15 In an earlier essay in this series we noted that Bonaventura conforms to the western Catholic enumeration of the Decalogue. Therefore, he counts the Commandment against taking the Lord’s Name in vain as the Second Commandment.
16 Iudicium is translated as “uprightness” in the New Oxford Annotated Bible. The Gloss, and no doubt Bonaventura’s Vulgate (Jerome’s) translation, used “iudicium.” The standard Latin dictionary translation of “iudicium” is “trial”. But iudicum can also mean judgment, or decision requiring deliberation. In III Sent d. 39 c. 9 et ibid. Comment. A.3 q3. Bonaventura discusses this point. As truth concerns the veracity of the matter/subject of a vow and justice concerns the cause of making a vow, iudicium concerns the person who is vowing, the quality of his or her character.
17 The classical, medieval theory of truth was the correspondence theory: adaequatio rei et intellectus. See Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica I Q. 16, De Veritate. Other notions of truth exist, i.e., truth as comprehensiveness and truth as coherence and truth as consensus. Exploring notions of truth would take us beyond the framework of this essay. A good resource is Bruce Marshall, Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume I (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988): 8ff, 17ff, 48ff and 151ff.
18 Institutes of the Christian Religion Book II, Chapter VIII, paras. 23-27.
19 Milcom was a god worshiped by the Ammonites as Ba’al was a god of the Canaanites. The “host of the heavens” was the object of Assyrian worship.
20 “Fundamentalism” is in quotes because most people using it today indicate little or no knowledge of its historical origin and its developing history. Originally “Fundamentalism” referred a particular movement of conservative American Protestant theology at the beginning of the twentieth century. The context of the movement was a response/reaction of some Protestant Christians to perceived departures from Christian truth caused by the influence of science, technology and secular ideas. Thus, the original context for the word was a “conservative/liberal” dispute among American Protestants in the early decades of the twentieth century. The “Fundamentals” were five basic Christian teachings, e.g., the Virgin Birth, the physical resurrection of Christ, the Second Coming of Christ, named in a series of pamphlets as constitutive of Christian orthodoxy. Secularists often seem unaware that they themselves hold certain principles, e.g., religion as a private matter; tolerance as the highest moral principle, as absolutely certain and unquestionable, universal truths. Some contemporary “Liberals” and “Progressives” seem to conservatives and traditionalists, therefore, as arrogant and dogmatic, the same qualities they are charged with.
21 I distinguish argumentative discourse from the discourse of historical description. However, as Nietzsche pointed out in Von Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie fuer das Leben (Part Two of Unzeitgemaesse Betruchtungen) history can be written to promote a particular interest. The slogan is often repeated: “ the history is written by the winners.”
22 Hartmut Kraus “Missbrauch und/oder Konsequente Radikalisierung des Religiosis: Zum totalitaeren Character des kulturuebergreifenden Fundamentalism” (Misuse and/or logical radicalization of the religious: Concerning the totalitarian Character of Culture-Transcending Fundamentalism.)In Die Zehn Gebote: Eine Kunstausstellung des Deutchen Hygiene-Museums (Dresden: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004): 86-96.
23 The modern dogma that values and facts are incommensurable force writers who want to sound “scientific” to make their moral evaluations indirectly, e.g., by innuendo and choice of negative descriptive to speak about views they don’t like. Thus, Kraus’ essay is suffused with the tone of objective (sociological, sociological-psychological) description. However, this apparently objective discourse allows the author to express his moral judgments by choosing negative words to characterize the views that are judged morally wrong. This is blatantly manifest in Kraus’ essay. The result is a double discourse exemplified in this essay. The text is objective description; the subtext is moral condemnation.
24 John 12:32. We have already mentioned the analogous image of the Son of God being lifted up , and its parallel to Moses lifting up the saving bronze serpent in the wilderness.
25 Kraus, when discussing this contrast in Islam alleges that two sets of texts exists in the Koran, a set from Mecca and another set from Medina. Each set takes opposite views, he says, on the issue of jihad against enemies of Islam. So far as I know, Moslems make no such distinction between the origins of the verses in the Koran; they give equal authority to each verse. (See Kraus, page 97). Whether Kraus’ literarily critical claim is true or not , he is applying a modern historical-critical approach to the Koran practiced in western academic circles in relation to the Bible. Probably faithful Moslem readers of Kraus would interpret Kraus’ hermeneutical approach as a form of western cultural imperialism. Kraus does not address this issue in his essay; thus he leaves the impression of speaking oracles of truth from some standpoint transcending all cultures.