Revelation: History of the Sabbath and Sunday

 History of the Sabbath and Sunday

We will give here a brief history of the relationship between the Sabbath and Sunday.
From very early on we already see in some circles a decline of the value of the Sabbath and an elevation of Sunday. But how these two days related to one another, and how and whether they were observed, is a story in itself.

As an example:

“Furthermore, concerning the sabbath it is also written, in the Ten Words6 that he spoke to Moses face to face on Mount Sinai: ‘And sanctify the Lord's sabbath, with clean hands and a clean heart.’ And in another place he says: ‘If my children guard the sabbath, then I will bestow my mercy upon them.’ He speaks of the sabbath at the beginning of the creation: ‘And God made the works of his hands in six days, and finished on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it.’ Observe, children, what ‘he finished in six days’ means. It means this: that in six thousand years the Lord will bring everything to an end, for with him a day signifies a thousand years. And he himself bears me witness when he says, ‘Behold, the day of the Lord will be as a thousand years.’ Therefore, children, in six days—that is, in six thousand years—everything will be brought to an end. ‘And he rested on the seventh day.’ This means: when his son comes, he will destroy the time of the lawless one and will judge the ungodly and will change the sun and the moon and the stars, and then he will truly rest on the seventh day. Furthermore, he says: ‘You shall sanctify it with clean hands and a clean heart.’ If, therefore, anyone now is able, by being clean of heart, to sanctify the day that God sanctified, we have been deceived in every respect. But if that is not the case, accordingly then we will truly rest and sanctify it only when we ourselves will be able to do so, after being justified and receiving the promise; when lawlessness no longer exists, and all things have been made new by the Lord, then we will be able to sanctify it, because we ourselves will have been sanctified first. Finally, he says to them: ‘I cannot stand your new moons and sabbaths. You see what he means: it is not the present sabbaths that are acceptable to me, but the one that I have made; on that sabbath, after I have set everything at rest, I will create the beginning of an eighth day, which is the beginning of another world. This is why we spend the eighth day in celebration, the day on which Jesus both arose from the dead and, after appearing again, ascended into heaven.”
(Epistle of Barnabas, ca. AD 70–135)

The seventh day was, in the thinking of this writer, a kind of foreshadowing of the consummation at the end. Then the eighth begins, of which Sunday seems to be an image. This Sunday is not called a Sabbath here, but it was celebrated as a festival day by the writer.

Among some early church fathers we generally see a contempt for everything that is Jewish or appears to be so. Some despise it so strongly that they even try to cast the entire law of the Old Testament in a false light.

“But with regard to their qualms about meats, and superstition concerning the sabbath, and pride in circumcision, and hypocrisy about fasting and new moons, I doubt that you need to learn from me that they are ridiculous and not worth discussing. For is it not unlawful to accept some of the things created by God for human use as created good but to refuse others as useless and superfluous? And is it not impious to slander God by alleging that he forbids us to do any good thing on the sabbath day? And is it not also ridiculous to take pride in the mutilation of the flesh as a sign of election, as though they were especially beloved by God because of this? And as for the way they watch the stars and the moon so as to observe months and days, and to make distinctions between the changing seasons ordained by God, making some into feasts and others into times of mourning according to their own inclinations, who would regard this as an example of godliness and not much more of a lack of understanding? So then, I think you have been sufficiently instructed to realize that the Christians are right to keep their distance from the common silliness and deception and fussiness and pride of the Jews.”
(Epistle of Diognetus, ca. AD 150–225)

It must be said here that the way the Jews handled the Sabbath did not improve matters. They were very extreme in their self-invented rules, and it is easy to understand why this brought the Sabbath into disrepute among Christians in general. Many Christians reacted to this, but in a far too extreme manner.

There is a clear difference between Paul and some of these church fathers. Paul was positive about the ceremonial law and upheld the Ten Commandments as a whole. He tried to explain the continuation of the Jewish system within Christianity. Hebrews and Romans provide good examples of this. The church fathers, on the other hand, seem to despise the laws of the Old Testament entirely as something inherently wrong. It was not merely no longer for this time, but altogether wrong.

Justin Martyr, a very influential man of the second century, for example says:

“Moreover, that God enjoined you to keep the Sabbath, and impose on you other precepts for a sign, as I have already said, on account of your unrighteousness, and that of your fathers,—as He declares that for the sake of the nations, lest His name be profaned among them, therefore He permitted some of you to remain alive,—these words of His can prove to you: they are narrated by Ezekiel thus...”

Thus he seems to describe all the laws of the Old Testament as a judgment and as something arising from unrighteousness. The Sabbath is included under this. Justin Martyr has clear statements in which the Sabbath is set aside.

Sometimes this leads to apparent inconsistency, where, for example, someone like Irenaeus, who has a somewhat higher view of the law, says that the Sabbath has been abolished, but later in the same book states that the Ten Commandments have not been abolished. Despite these attacks on the Sabbath—sometimes with the understandable motivation of fighting Jewish legalism—the Sabbath was still often kept, even among church fathers.

Clement of Alexandria writes:

“And the fourth word is that which intimates that the world was created by God, and that He gave us the seventh day as a rest, on account of the trouble that there is in life. For God is incapable of weariness, and suffering, and want. But we who bear flesh need rest. The seventh day, therefore, is proclaimed a rest—abstraction from ills.”

Elsewhere he also speaks about how the entire pagan world regarded the seventh day as holy, though they did not know why. He spoke of this in a positive sense.

Further citations are:

“The apostles further appointed: On the eve of the Sabbath,47 at the ninth hour, let there be service: because that which had been spoken on the fourth day of the week about the suffering of the Saviour was brought to pass on the same eve; the worlds and creatures trembling, and the luminaries in the heavens being darkened.”
(The Teaching of the Apostles)

“Have before thine eyes the fear of God, and always remember the ten commandments of God,—to love the one and only Lord God with all thy strength; to give no heed to idols, or any other beings, as being lifeless gods, or irrational beings or dæmons. Consider the manifold workmanship of God, which received its beginning through Christ. Thou shalt observe the Sabbath, on account of Him who ceased from His work of creation, but ceased not from His work of providence: it is a rest for meditation of the law, not for idleness of the hands.”
(Apostolic Constitutions)

“Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness; for ‘he that does not work, let him not eat.’50 For say the [holy] oracles, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread.’ But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor finding delight in dancing and plaudits which have no sense in them.”
(Epistle to the Magnesians 9, longer version)

Sunday came alongside this. It did not initially replace the Sabbath in general, but existed alongside it. It was Sunday that in the course of time received the title “the Lord’s Day,” while the Sabbath continued simply to be called the Sabbath:

“I Peter and Paul do make the following constitutions. Let the slaves work five days; but on the Sabbath-day and the Lord’s day let them have leisure to go to church for instruction in piety. We have said that the Sabbath is on account of the creation, and the Lord’s day of the resurrection.”
(Apostolic Constitutions)

Tertullian responds to pagans who accused Christians of sun worship because they observed Sunday. His argument is that Christians are not sun worshipers because of Sunday, just as pagans are not Christians because they do not do certain things on Saturday:

“Others again (it is really a more refined, a more probable idea) believe the sun to be our god. We shall be reckoned perhaps as Persians, though we do not adore the sun painted on a canvas, seeing we have the sun with us everywhere in his own orb. This suspicion must be due to its becoming known that we turn to the East when we pray. But again a great many of you, in some make-believe of adoring now and then the heavenly bodies among other things, move your lips at sunrise. Equally, if we devote the day of the sun (Sunday) to joy (from a very different cause than sun-worship) we stand next in line to those who devote Saturn’s day to resting and eating, wide as they are from Jewish usage of which they know nothing.”
(Ad Nationes, Book I, Chapter 13)

Here too Sunday is portrayed as a festival day and not as a day of rest.

The local Council of Laodicea in the fourth century must also be briefly discussed. One translation states:

“Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, while they should rather honor the Lord’s Day; and, if they are able, then as Christians rest on that day. But if anyone is found to be a judaizer, let him be accursed, cut off from Christ.”

Another translation says:

“Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honouring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.”

It is clear that here Jewish practice and the Sabbath are diminished, and that Sunday itself is described as a kind of day of rest. Yet the use of the Sabbath was not completely despised even in this council:

“The Gospels are to be read on the Sabbath [i.e. Saturday], with the other Scriptures.”

“The Gospels are to be read on the Sabbath [i.e. Saturday], with the other Scriptures.”

But under what influence did the Sabbath fall into such disrepute that it made way for Sunday as a replacement? One sign of abandoning the Sabbath was fasting on that day. There was a Gnostic man who did this, against whom someone wrote:

“But he took his cue from that charlatan and swindler, Cerdo. For he too preaches two first principles. But adding something to him, I mean to Cerdo, he exhibits something different in his turn by saying that there are three principles. One is the unnameable, invisible one on high which he likes to call a ‘good God,’ but which has made none of the things in the world. Another is a visible God, a creator and demiurge. But the devil is as it were a third god and in between these two, the visible and the invisible. The creator, demiurge and visible God is the God of the Jews, and he is a judge. . . . He preaches fasting on the Sabbath. . . . He claims that we should fast on the Sabbath for the following reason: ‘Since it is the rest of the God of the Jews who made the world and rested the seventh day, let us fast on this day, so as to do nothing congenial to the God of the Jews."

This practice of fasting was common in two places: philosophical Alexandria and mighty Rome, which would gain the upper hand in authority. Thus Socrates says in the fourth/fifth century:

“Nor is there less variation in regard to religious assemblies. For although almost all Churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this.”

“In Rome they fast every Saturday.”

This proves that people worldwide still gathered on the Sabbath and also shows the position of Rome in diminishing the Sabbath. Says Sozomen in his Ecclesiastical History:

“Assemblies are not held in all churches on the same time or manner. The people of Constantinople, and almost everywhere, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the first day of the week, which custom is never observed at Rome or at Alexandria. There are several cities and villages in Egypt where, contrary to the usage established elsewhere, the people meet together on Sabbath evenings, and, although they have dined previously, partake of the mysteries.”

Thus Rome had clear influence here. It is therefore no surprise that many church fathers who lowered the Sabbath in favour of Sunday, and sometimes even introduced Sunday as a replacement, were in Rome.

The Roman Church has often used this change as an argument for tradition. The Augsburg Confession gives a good picture of this argument:

“Furthermore, it is disputed whether bishops or pastors have the right to introduce ceremonies in the Church and to establish laws concerning foods, feast days, and ranks, that is, orders of ministers, and so forth. Those who ascribe this right to the bishops refer to this testimony from John 16:12–13: I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. They also refer to the example of the apostles, who commanded to abstain from blood and from what is strangled, Acts 15:29. They refer to the Sabbath day as having been changed into the Lord’s Day, seemingly in opposition to the Decalogue. And there is no example that they cite more often than the change of the Sabbath day. Great, they say, is the power of the Church, since it has set aside one of the Ten Commandments!”

Although this is not an official infallible argument, it is frequently used, and the arrogance drips from it. In part they also believe they have a right to this, given the historical position of the church of Rome.

The catechism of the Roman Catholic priest Stephen Keenan says:

“Question: Have you any other way of proving that the Church has the power to institute obligatory feast days?
Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have done what all modern religionists agree with her in doing—she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.”

The Convert Catechism of Catholic Doctrine from 1957 says:

*“Question: Which day is the Sabbath?
Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day.

Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.”*

Martin J. Scott writes:

“Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be transferred from Saturday to Sunday. … Now the Church … by God’s authority instituted Sunday as the day of worship. This same Church has, by that same divine authority, taught the doctrine of purgatory long before the Bible was compiled. We therefore have the same authority for purgatory as we have for Sunday.”

Thus they speak the same language as none other than the little horn of Daniel 7—and rightly so:

Daniel 7:25
“He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand for a time, times, and half a time.”