Chapter III — Duties From the Moral Law (Toward God)

Duties Flowing from the Moral Law.

Concerning the duties of man toward God.

a) The first duty of man is to know God and to confess Him as Creator, Maker, and fashioner of the universe; for it was for this purpose that he was fashioned. Whoever does not know God and does not confess Him as Creator and fashioner deviates from his own destiny and denies and rejects the divine grace lavished upon him. such a person is guilty of unbelief and ingratitude before God; (2) he ought to believe in His divine revelation, which was made to him in many portions and in many ways from the foundation of the world for his teaching, illumination, and guidance, and above all the revelation made through the Son of God for the salvation of the world; for without divine revelation the salvation of human beings and their freedom from the tyranny of the devil was impossible. The one who does not believe in divine revelation denies the work of salvation, and the one who denies it, having placed himself outside it, is condemned; but let him confess His divine attributes, for through confession he confesses the unceasing relation of God and His particular providence toward human beings. The one who denies these things attributes to God the abandonment of the world, denies His daily benefits toward human beings, and rejects faith, hope, and love toward God. Such a person is wretched; wretched he passes through life, and wretched and pitiable he departs from it. (4) For the human being ought to praise, bless, worship, glorify, and give thanks to God.

These duties flow from the moral law.

What other moral reasons impose upon the human being the duty to worship the divine?

The following: The human being ought to worship God.

Because God made him in His image and likeness, so that he might establish on earth a kingdom like the one in heaven, of love and freedom, and so that human beings as angels of God on earth might praise and bless God—which is his mission; because through such hymnody he communes with the angels and draws near to God, to whom he is destined to approach and pass; because the divine majesty, His infinitely perfect attributes, and the splendor and greatness of His divine nature call the human being to praise and glorification; because the infinite benefits lavished upon him by God ought to inspire his thanksgiving; and because God wills that His kingdom be restored on earth, so that He may bestow His own goods upon him—for He created the human being in order to make him a partaker of His own goodness and blessedness.

What other duties toward God flow from the moral law?

From the moral law flow also the following duties. 1) He must submit and be obedient to God and fulfill His divine will, which is inscribed upon his heart; for only in this way does he truly become free, perfected, and sanctified. 2) He must love Him with all his soul, with all his heart, with all his strength, and with all his mind; for this is the very purpose of his creation, and only such love is worthy of God. And 3) he must have faith in Him and hasten toward Him, striving to return to Him by becoming pure in mind and heart.

What theories and practices indicate a rejection of this duty?

a) Atheism, impiety, idolatry, man-worship, pantheism, materialism, and the false notions about God held by the pagans and those who deny divine revelation, and heresy; b) unbelief, despair, hatred; c) Epicurean principles, sorceries, enchantments, divinations, auguries, superstitions; and d) lying, perjury, false swearing, blasphemy, cursing, godlessness, and the profanation of the Lord’s days out of indifference, or greed, or contempt. All these things are forbidden also by the Mosaic law in the first four commandments, which the Christian has a duty to keep; whoever transgresses them sins greatly against God.

Among the most important duties toward God are: reverence toward His divine name: whoever utters the name of God irreverently and without compelling necessity sins greatly against God; likewise, those who swear thoughtlessly in their daily conduct to confirm the truth of their words sin greatly, as do those who swear for trivial gain; equally, those who swear without serious and compelling necessity. Therefore, a Christian ought not to take an oath unless required to do so by civil law; and when swearing, he ought to swear for the sake of truth and justice and to say nothing beyond the truth.

On Oaths, False Swearing, and Perjury.

What is an oath?

An oath is an invocation of the divine name to confirm a true word.

What is false swearing?

An invocation of the divine name to confirm a false word as true in order to deceive one’s neighbor.

What is perjury?

The transgression of the sacredness of the oath, and false swearing.

Is an oath, swearing, permitted?

The use of oaths among one another appears from sacred Tradition to be completely forbidden. Our Lord Jesus Christ, fulfilling the law of Moses, says to His disciples: Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform your oaths to the Lord’. I swear not at all ..... but let your word be, Yes, yes; No, no; “But anything more than this comes from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37). That it is forbidden even before the Sanhedrin is not proven by what has been said;

such a prohibition could have been regarded by the Jews as an attack on the laws of the Sanhedrin and on the state itself and denounced by the guardians of the law, but nothing of the sort happened, so the Savior does not appear to be forbidding oath-taking before the authorities. On the contrary, from other passages of the holy Gospel and the epistles of the holy apostles it appears that an oath before the authorities is permitted. The disciples of the Savior are shown to understand the prohibition in this way. The Apostle Peter denied the Savior with an oath (Matt. 26:72–75). The Apostle Paul does not at all appear from his words to accept a complete prohibition of oaths, because in the epistle to the Hebrews he speaks of the use of the oath as necessary without even disapproving it, saying, “For people swear by someone greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation” (6:16). That the Lord’s words forbade oath-taking among one another is also shown by the words of the Apostle James, who in his catholic epistle, citing the very words of the Lord and forbidding oath-taking, adds “so that you may not fall under judgment” (5:12), from which it appears that he forbids the use of oaths among one another, because before the authorities they would fall under no judgment.

Our Lord Jesus Christ accepted the oath proposed by the high priest of the Sanhedrin. The evangelist Matthew records the following: “And the high priest stood up and said to him (to Jesus), ‘I adjure you by the living God, that you tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so’” (26:63). And “You have said so” is equivalent to the pronouncement of an oath and a confession of the truth; The subsequent words of the Savior bear witness to this, through which he affirms that he is the Son of God, who presents himself as the Son of Man, and whom they will see from now on seated at the right hand of the Power and coming on the clouds of heaven; and the words of the high priest bear witness that he blasphemed. The Apostle Paul likewise often swears, invoking the name of God for the confirmation of his words (Acts 20:26; Gal. 5:3; Eph. 4:11; Rom. 9:1, etc.).

From what has been said it becomes clear that the oath is not absolutely forbidden by sacred Scripture, and the Christian who is summoned to an oath by the authorities and powers, and who accepts the oath for the service of truth and righteousness, does not sin. This is also shown in another way by the spirit of Christianity, which is a spirit of freedom and truth. Through the prohibition of the oath, what was sought was not the prohibition of the utterance of the name of God according to the Jewish spirit, but reverence toward the divine name and the moral formation of the human person. But reverence and moral formation are in no way harmed by the acceptance of the oath imposed by the authorities.