The Ten Commandments, Meilaender, and Community
Meilaender’s new book on the Ten Commandments was a fascinating read to me for several reasons. Below is a short review of it that I just submitted to the journal Interpretation — it should come out soon. But my review is rather short and straightforward. I plan to follow this post with a few more blogs about some aspects of this book I found most insightful, intriguing, and questionable — namely, (a) his placing of the relationship between love of God and love of neighbor within a sacramental vision of reality, (b) the “organic” way he things about ethics from marriage outwards, and (c) his way of treating gender relations within the marriage bond.
Thy Will Be Done: The Ten Commandments and the Christian Life
by Gilbert Meilaender
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. 144 pp. $21.99 cloth. ISBN 9781540961969.
In this compact yet often profound exposition of the Ten Commandments, Meilaender takes up and renews this traditional genre by showing us its tremendous usefulness for teaching about the ends and purposes of Christian living in general, and for engaging many important contemporary ethical issues. The book does not step through each commandment in turn; instead, the heart of it is structured around “five different bonds that unite human beings in community: the marriage bond, the family bond, the life bond, the possessions bond, and the speech bond” (p. xi). Meilaender sets up the discussion of these bonds (discussed in chapters 2 through 6) by first discussing how the ten commandments are related to “The Law of Christ” (chapter 1). Working carefully with both Paul and Luther, Meilaender guides the reader in this opening chapter through the tricky terrain of law, gospel, and the different aspects of the Old Testament law, showing the proper place the ten commandments have for guiding Christians into a life of love of God and neighbor. In the final chapter (chapter 7), “The Great and First Commandment,” Meilaender relates love of neighbor to love of God, showing how a “theologically grounded worldliness” (p. 115) need not be in tension with love of God, but rather is a key part of its expression.
The structure of the book is a priceless lesson in itself. By focusing on those five “bonds of life,” Meilaender places the commandments within the horizon of God’s good intentions for a flourishing human community. He further situates those bonds “within the history of redemption, which includes not only their created nature but also their need for healing and the promise of a redeemed creation” (p. 123). For example, in his chapter on “the life bond,” this three-fold structure allows him to first focus on what “thou shalt not murder” means for care for life “in creation.” He then discusses “just war” in the midst of our fallen world in need of healing, and ends the chapter with a discussion of funeral practices that exhibit care for life and hope for resurrection. Setting the commandments within that narrative framework as well as within a vision of flourishing human community lends a richness to the discussion and guards against overly legalistic interpretations. My only complaint is that in his discussions of many hot topics today – gender roles, just war, the pros and cons of a market economy among them – Meilaender has very limited acknowledgement that his particular stances, stances approvingly measured by the Catechism of the Catholic Church above all, might meet other valid interpretations. That being said, this is book of great wisdom written by a top scholar in a quite accessible manner; it is a short master course on how to read, interpret and apply those familiar laws from Mount Sinai to our complicated world today.
