Originally posted by swalker
3. In the ten commandments, Anglicans accept the Protestant set of commandments that contains the commandment, "Thou shalt not worship a graven image."
HUH?!?
The ones I learned as a kid were the ones you seem to think are the "Catholic" ones, but I promise you, Lutherans are Protestants. Nailing stuff to doors, boo-yah.
The graven image thing is, quite clearly, part of "no other gods before me".
It is, of course, always interesting to compare these with, for instance, the Hebrew set. It is popular for people attacking Christianity to try to throw further doubt by comparing with the stuff listed in Exodus 34, but this is missing the point; that's just God taking an opportunity to make a speech. He's not repeating "the same" words, because we *already read those*.
Actually, our pastor, who was exceptionally good about pointing things out, pointed out that the "ten commandments" is a human name, not a thing we find in the Bible (at least, I can't find it), and that there are different ways of subdividing it. For instance, he pointed out the thing where some people treat all the coveting as a single commandment, and other people treat the graven image thing as part of "no other gods", and so on and so forth.
Obviously, given all the fluff over icons, it's clear that the question of "graven images" is a thing that has been debated. I think Exodus 34, and the golden calf, make it pretty clear that this is the same as "molten gods". The question is not "do we sometimes have physical symbols that help us focus our thoughts on God", but "are we worshipping symbols instead of God". I have not known Catholics who do the latter, but I have met people who worship a given Bible more than they worship God, IMHO.