Part Three - Life in Christ – Section Two: The Ten Commandments – Chapter 1

The 1st Commandment: I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me. (continued)

445. What does God prohibit by his command, “You shall not have other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2)?

This commandment forbids:

• Polytheism and idolatry, which divinizes creatures, power, money, or even demons. 
• Superstition which is a departure from the worship due to the true God and which also expresses itself in various forms of divination, magic, sorcery and spiritism.
• Irreligion which is evidenced: in tempting God by word or deed; in sacrilege, which profanes sacred persons or sacred things, above all the Eucharist; and in simony, which involves the buying or selling of spiritual things.
• Atheism which rejects the existence of God, founded often on a false conception of human autonomy. 
• Agnosticism which affirms that nothing can be known about God, and involves indifferentism and practical atheism.

446. Does the commandment of God, “You shall not make for yourself a graven image”, forbid the cult of images? (Exodus 20:3)

In the Old Testament this commandment forbade any representation of God who is absolutely transcendent. The Christian veneration of sacred images, however, is justified by the incarnation of the Son of God (as taught by the Second Council of Nicea in 787AD) because such veneration is founded on the mystery of the Son of God made man, in whom the transcendent God is made visible. This does not mean the adoration of an image, but rather the veneration of the one who is represented in it: for example, Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angels and the Saints.