Notes from a facebook posting on the Ten Commandments and romantic Science

I got into a small disagreement on facebook and wanted to write a bit more. Since it’s raining this morning, I can get started as I hate to walk in the rain , especially first thing in the morning.

I reacted against a quick post question that seemed to ally the 10 Commandments with a vague mention of scientific principles. firs tissue was a direct likening of Torah with the 10 Commandments. OK, I suppose the 10 C can be a summary form of Torah, but it means more. It can be the first five books of the OT. 2) It means instruction, teaching and is not limited by any means to explication of the 10C. 3) It can mean in the NT, identity markers that distinguished Jews from the surrounding culture, sabbath, circumcision, kosher. 4) Torah gets summarized in other scriptural points: Micah’s do justice, love mercy, walk humbly before the Lord, or the love god and neighbor approach of Jesus.

Second, I react when ministers casually use science to buttress a religious point. First, we tend to be romantic about nature. We highlight harmony and ignore its terrors. I am going in for daily radiation treatments after prostate surgery and find it difficult to read of the joys of natural life. It includes more than sunsets, but is filled with entropy and death. the cruelty of nature militates against using nature as an ethical base. Trying to follow nature as a guide would not use the 10C as guide.

Third, i react when folks seem to feel that Biblical ethical material needs to be buttressed with romantic views of science. My eyebrows raise when easy attempts are made to link it to vague Eastern notions of karma, so that the 10C then get relegated to being part of a demonstration that these norms fit with a scheme of nature. I especially object when it is allied with points such as it proves that ‘what goes around comes around” when that does not comport with the Christian message of forgiveness. a critical point came when one writer spoke of physics demonstrating a living universe. This is a powerful extension of the Gaia hypothesis, but it threatens to dissolve the distinction between the Creator and the creation. Physicistsin my limited experience do see the lawlike connections in matter, but do not seem to use that as a move into making ethical pronouncements.

Fourth, in context, the 10C are presented as intrinsically important, almost as ‘self-evident” truths.

Fifth, one member of the clergy then tried to elevate the disagreement to one about natural theology. Ps. 19 was used for the point. Calvin of course noted the impact of nature as pointing toward god. He spent most of his time speaking about our blindness to the reality of God, however. In part, nature itself is blind to the nature of God. SO, he insists that not only do we have the spectacles of Scripture but that the revelation of god in Jesus Christ and the impact of the spirit deals with the issue of relying on nature to buttress the impact of the 10C. (See Matthew Boulton’s new book, for instance) Looking for some sort of ethical harmony between nature and the 10C, and using the former to give credence to the latter is, i would guess, precisely the kind of thing that elicited Barth’s famous, No, to natural theology.
As to Ps. 19. first, I have no issue with seeking linkages between creation and wisdom and torah, as generally employed. I will not see the 10C as embodying torah on its own. Terence Fretheim’s great book on God and Creation shows a relational god in dynamic activity with creation, including law/torah, generally conceived. See especially, for our purposes, his chapter on law and creation, even if he goes a bit far in his analysis of the 10C not having much new to say. Instead of that dynamic interplay of change, we are prone to make the 10C frozen and I fear that trying to tie them to science would only increase that tendency. No one, read Ps. 19 ‘s torah as being the 10C only. Rather it is about god’s communication through nature and its order and with us in our activity in the world. note well its warning in vv. 11-12 on the depths of the human heart in ways Calvin both used and approved. Even science cannot help us from being prone to errorm false assumptions, denial and other hidden faults.

Sixth, casual use of harmony between the 10C and some shards of science allow us to ignore vital work.:examining the meaning of the 10C themselves. Jesus uses the 10C as a frame for a powerful expansion of their scope, externally and internally. It seems to me that we have some excellent resources in the PCUSA adult or confirmation catechisms on the 10C or to work with the impressive extensions done by the Westminster catechism, especially the longer one, with it positive emphasis on the third use of the law.