"You shall have no other gods before Me. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Exodus 20:3-6
Last time we began considering the second commandment: No Idols. We mentioned that the Roman Catholic version of the Ten Commandments rolls the first two commandments into one, and how they still have ten when they roll the second into the first. (See the previous post of you missed it.) We then began considering why they do this. First, how does a Roman Catholic priest answer the question?(1)
On a Roman Catholic (RC) online publication(2), a RC priest sets out to answer the question. He does not actually answer the question why the RC church combines the first two commandments as much as he explains why idolatry is not bad. In my experience, this is the way the RC church virtually always explains doing away with the second commandment regarding idolatry.
Idolatry is explained away as not sinful because God commanded the Israelites to build the tabernacle, which had images of angels, and because God commanded Moses make a bronze image of a serpent on a pole for the people to look at in order to recover from poisonous snake bites. How should we understand this explanation?
According to their argument, idolatry is not wrong because God directed the Israelites to make images. According to this logic, idolatry is not wrong because God commands it. This neglects answering why elsewhere throughout scripture God overwhelmingly forbids and condemns idolatry.
The plain and simple fact is that in the miniscule number of times that God directed the Israelites to make images: (a) HE directed them to do so; (b) HE told them exactly what these images were to look like and how they were to be used; and (c) HE is GOD!
That is clearly different from people creating images (especially to be used in worship) on our own, out of our own imaginations!
Next Time: A speculative reason why the RC church re-numbers the Ten commandments and why the prohibition of idols is so important.
Notes:
(1) I understand that one Catholic priest does not speak for the entire RC church, but this priest only says what virtually all RC apologists say on this matter.
(2) Click Here to read the article in this RC online publication.