# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S247
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran Division of the Ten Commandments. 247

...letter of their "second" commandment demands, and if they truly bow as unconditionally as they claim under the word of the divine Lawgiver, then they may not, like the serpent in Paradise, first brood over the "why" and "wherefore" of his commands, nor seek to slip away through rationalist reservations and legal loopholes, but must obey in self-denial, "because we ought not to be wiser than God" (Heidelberg Catechism, on the "second" commandment). Now surely they will grant our modest request? They will take good care not to; they know very well that they would then have to be ashamed before God, before his saints, and before all the world. Before the world, because a condemnation of the representational arts already appears absurd to sound reason; before the holy men Moses and Solomon, who even had all manner of imagery placed in the tabernacle and the temple; before God himself, who not only commanded the cast cherubim on the ark of the covenant and the bronze serpent in the wilderness to be made, but moreover attached his presence and help to these very two images. 14) How do the defenders of the "oriental-reformed" form of the Decalogue handle their own second commandment? Like enlightened, haggling exegetes they bargain over its sense and scope, and since each wants to strike out precisely whatever does not suit his purposes, they fall into disagreement even among themselves — yet suppose that we "occidental-Lutheran" dunces do not notice. "Just make no cast, carved, or chiseled images!" cries the one — "No, no church images!" says the other — "Not at all, just no images of God!" says the third. Most ridiculous of all is the Heidelberg Catechism, which — in all honesty — does not know at all what to make of its second commandment (Question 92), and has to suck a content for it out of its own fingers. Its lofty wisdom amounts to this: a) "God can and may by no means be depicted"; b) "Creatures, however, may be depicted"; c) "but the images are not to be tolerated in the churches." (Questions 96, 97, 98.) That fits the biblical text like a fist fits an eye. No, no, you enlightened "oriental-reformed" gentlemen! Your second commandment does not permit you to depict so much as a straw or a toothpick, and whoever, say, paints the latest Parisian fashions in a fashion journal, him you must declare just as idolatrous as if he had set up a herm in the church. For — "you shall make yourself no image, nor any likeness, neither of this — nor of that —, nor of that" —. 15) The form of the second commandment for Luther's Catechism "long proposed" by Stier reads, word for word: "You shall make yourself no image nor any likeness; you shall not worship them, nor serve them; for I am the Lord your God. What does this mean? We are to fear and love God, so that we do not depict or represent to ourselves his invisible and incomprehensible being according to our own art and imagination, nor worship our own handiwork in place of God; but we are to worship God as he has revealed himself through his Word and his image." (op. cit., p. 21.) Stier adds that in doing so he did not intend