The presumption that the so-called moral precepts of the Decalogue could be separated from our obligation to worship God would, I think, strike the Church Fathers as distinctly odd. Augustine, for example, notes that ‘The beginning of freedom is to be free from crimes…such as murder, adultery, fornication, theft, sacrilege and so forth. When once one is without these crimes (and every Christian should be without them), one beings to lift up one’s head toward freedom. But this is only the beginning of freedom, not perfect freedom…” The commandments cannot be separated, viewed in isolation from one another, and in particular, from the first commandment.”
Stanley Hauerwas, “The Truth About God: The Decalogue as Condition for Truthful Speech” from Sanctify Them In The Truth, page 47.
Tag: Stanley Hauerwas
Excerpt #21
That politics and nature are so intimately conjoined is perfectly consonant with the character of God’s dominion as expressed in the Decalogue. In this regard, it is clearly correct to speak of the Decalogue as God’s ‘natural law, insofar as the Ten Commandments reveal what our lives should look like as people created for friendship with God. But the expression ‘natural law’ does not entail a knowledge which could be had anterior to or separable from an understanding of the politics of God’s law. Because politics and nature are indissolubly joined, because grace and nature cohere, it would be a mistake to assume that a correct understanding of one could be had without the other. As both Aquinas and Luther argue, the last nine commandments in the Decalogue depend upon, and in that sense are an elaboration of, the first. This means that our understanding of the natural cannot be separated from the political any more than the theological can be separated from the ethical/ecclesial.
Stanley Hauerwas, “The Truth About God: The Decalogue as Condition for Truthful Speech” in Sanctify Them In The Truth, page 45
Excerpt #20
From a Wesleyan perspective, to be made holy, to be made capable of accepting forgiveness for our sins so that we might worthily worship God, is not just ‘personal holiness.’ As Augustine argued in The City of God, nothing is more important for a society than to worship God justly. Without such worship terrible sacrifices will be made to false gods. Contrary to the modern presumption that as enlightened people we are beyond sacrifice, few societies are more intent on sacrifice than those we call modern. Societies that think they have left sacrifice behind end up basing their existence on the sacrifice of the poor in the name of human progress. Christians believe that we are the alternative to such sacrificial systems because we have been given the gift of offering our ‘sacrifice of thanksgiving’ to the One who alone is worthy to receive such praise. That is what makes us a holy people, a people set apart, so that the world might know there is an alternative to murder.
Stanley Hauerwas, Sanctify Them In The Truth: Holiness Exemplified, page 11.
Justin DaMetz 