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Greek Orthodox Catechism
Constantine Callinicos, London, 1926
Part II. Ethical, 21. The First and Second Commandments
And now let us come to the details. What does the first Commandment order us to do?
The first Commandment, revealing to us the one and only true God, orders us to give to Him unhesitatingly our faith, hope and love. Our faith; because He, as the Self-existent Being, is and exists: “I am.” Our hope; because He is the unassailable refuge of each of us: “I am the Lord thy God.” Our love; because He does not cease benefiting His faithful and guiding them towards Eternity, as He took the Jews out of Egypt into the land of Canaan: “I am the Lord thy God, Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage.” These three cardinal virtues, then, are our first. duties to God, for which reason they have been designated theological virtues. And, although all three aim at the same object, yet they differ essentially. Faith is the hearty acceptance by us of all the divine revelations, the first of which is the existence of a self-revealing God. Hope, the dedication of our future to God, as being All-loving, All-merciful, All-wise and Almighty, and the perfect peace of mind that follows from that dedication. Love, the devotion of our hearts to Him, as the Supreme Good, and the complete identification of our wills with His will. And all these three virtues we must accord to God in their integrity, as due wholly and solely to Him; for He commanded:—“Thou shalt have none other gods but me.” Against the first Commandment, then, offend not only those who deny the living God, and as unbelievers, hopeless and godless, pass their life in darkness, but also the rationalists, who reject whatever their reason is unable to comprehend; the hedonists, who live for the pleasures of the body; the money-worshippers, who put all their hopes on money; the vainglorious, who sacrifice everything on the altar of worldly glory; the superstitious, who pay attention to foolish and absurd things, and fear demons instead of the one awful God; and in general, all those who rob the Creator of His honour to give it to His creatures.
What does the second Commandment order?
The second Commandment orders us to avoid idolatry, and not to make images, for this purpose, of things that are in the Heaven (sun, moon, stars) or of things that are on the earth (men, animals, plants) or of things that are in the water under the earth (fishes and the marine creatures). The emphasis of this command lies in its second part, viz., in the words:—“Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them”; for if the prohibition is understood separately from the second part, it does not give us the right meaning. God, in other words, does not prohibit in His second command the liberal Arts of Sculpture and Painting in themselves, because this would be in contradiction to all that He has said elsewhere about the decoration of the Tabernacle with cherubic pictures on the curtains and sculptured cherubs, overshadowing by their wings the Ark of the covenant (Exod. xxxvi. 35—38; xxxvii. 7—9); but He does prohibit the products of these Arts, when made into idols and revered with divine worship. No sin whatever, then, against the second Commandment is committed by those who decorate their houses with pictures, or public places with statues, or their towns with picture galleries, or their cemeteries with sculptured tombs. Nor is any sin committed by those Christians who adorn their place of worship with representations of sacred things, taken from the Bible or the lives of the saints, and use them as a sort of book to stir up their memories for the imitation of whatever is best in Christian conduct. Sin is, however, committed by the idolaters, who make statues of non-existent deities from wood, stone, or metal; who “change the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things”; and who say to a stock: “thou art my father,” or to a stone: “thou hast brought me forth.” (Rom. i. 23; Jer. ii. 27.) Idolatry is not only an offence against the true God; it is also a degradation of man’s dignity: “The idols of the nations,” sings the Psalmist, “are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not. Eyes have they, but they see not. They have ears, but they hear not. Neither is there any breath in their mouths.” Verily, “they that make them shall be like unto them.” (Ps. cxxxv. 15—18.)