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January 15,2017 |
| History of the Sabbath in Christianity | ||
The 4th Commandment says to keep the Sabbath holy by resting. The vast majority of churches, however, do not keep any day holy. A few Christians keep Sunday as their holy day, and a few keep Saturday as their holy day. Most Christians can only name one denomination that keeps the Sabbath - The Seventh Day Adventists.
How did things get to be this way? In this study, we'll skip through history to find how the Christian world changed from Sabbath keeping.
My father was a pastor until I went into high school. I remember our family would often go to play at parks when I was a child. My dad loves ice cream, and sometimes when we were out, he would see a convenience store and go for ice cream. But sometimes he would come back empty-handed because he had forgotten it was Sunday. In those days almost all stores were closed on Sunday. But I remember one time he came back with ice cream, but suddenly his expression changed. He had just realized it was Sunday and that he had found a store that was open.
At that time most people observed Sunday according to what the 4th commandment says - no work. That included no commerce because that would require others to work, which is also part of the 4th commandment. That is what most theological seminaries and Bible schools were teaching the pastors of that time, and that is what the pastors taught in the churches and observed themselves. Most people went to church, and therefore most businesses were closed on Sunday. In our time however, the few businesses that close on Sunday are considered freaks and hated by some for doing so.
At that time pastors were moved frequently, and we moved to a new city. Times were changing, and the church in this new city had largely given up Sunday Sabbath observance. In fact it was now common for the church people to go out for lunch or dinner on Sunday. This change was sweeping the country. It was a slow change in each congregation because many people disagreed with it, so it happened in some churches and cities before others. Because we moved from a place where the change hadn't even started to a place where it was complete, we saw it as a fast change. What took 10 or 20 years for others, took 400 miles for us.
My father wasn't sure how to handle it. He wanted to be with the other church people, but all his life he had avoided commerce on Sunday. In the end he decided we would do what the rest of that congregation was doing. I don't know why I remember him telling us about that decision. I was a kid; what did I care? Yet, I do remember. As confused as a Sunday Sabbath observance is, in our family, it ended that day.
It was the 60s and the 70s. Many changes were occurring in society. The sexual revolution was going on. Divorce suddenly shot up. Many people were turning away from the church and opening their businesses on Sunday, and the church wanted to patronize those businesses.
What caused this? Had there been a revelation so that the church now understood they didn't need to keep the Sabbath? No, they gave it up so they could eat at restaurants on Sunday. The truth is that most people believe what they want to believe.
There are many different views on the Sabbath observance. This varies with denomination, but it can also vary within a denomination. Even within a church, there can be different views.
The Catholic Church has always believed the Sabbath observance was meant for Christians, and still do. They still observe it as a rest, though many of their members do not. They differ from the Bible in that they believe an ancient Pope moved the observance to Sunday. This is acceptable to them because they believe a Pope has that authority.
In the non-Catholic churches, there is no commonality.
Denominations such as Seventh Day Adventists, Church of God (Seventh Day), and the Messianic Churches observe the Sabbath. They observe it on the 7th day, Saturday on our calendar, according to the commandment. In many of these churches, though, they have slipped away from a day of resting and believe that resting your butt in a pew for an hour or two is sufficient.
Even within the mainline denominations, there are churches or subgroups that observe the Sabbath. For example, there are Sabbath-keeping Baptists.
Within the mainline denominations, the Sabbath is now a very divisive topic within the church. Even though most of the churches abandoned their Sabbath observance only 40 or 50 years ago, it is now like it never happened.
If you asked the majority of their laity why they don't keep the 4th Commandment, you would get a blank stare. It has become such a foreign idea that most people are not prepared to consider that the 4th Commandment might apply to Christians. They may have spent their entire lives in the church and never heard a sermon that talked about it.
At a higher level in the mainline denominations, the response would likely be a statement that no Christian has ever observed the Sabbath - which is plainly false. Some of them reject the idea very forcefully, claiming that it would be a sin to do so.
At the Theologian level in the mainline denominations, they recognize that the first churches, those started by the apostles, all observed the Sabbath and did so for about 300 years. They also know the history from there, which is our next topic.
Summarizing, the vast majority of the non-Catholic church now believes the 4th Commandment doesn't apply to Christians and never did, though there is no agreement as to why.
The history of Sabbath Observance in Christianity is the story of people trying to get rid of it or trying to change it into something they like better, but it keeps popping up again. From a bigger perspective, we can say that Satan's minions hate the Sabbath observance. Therefore Satan hates the Sabbath observance. But why would he hate it and try to stop it if it was no longer the will of God?
In the Protestant churches of our time, there are many different ideas about why the Sabbath isn't for Christians. The general understanding is that something Jesus said or did, or something about his death, caused the Sabbath observance to be canceled. Therefore, we'll start this history immediately after Jesus' death.
And they returned, and prepared sweet spices and ointment, and on the Sabbath they rested according to that which had been commanded. (Luke 23:56)
In this verse, we see something the Bible does quite frequently - it provides seemingly unnecessary elaboration. It does this to catch our attention, to get us to think. In this case, it would have been enough to say only "on the Sabbath they rested" and not say "according to that which had been commanded." Everyone at that time knew the Sabbath was a commanded day of rest. Even now, Christians know that. So there is no need to say those words.
There is a need though. God knew that there would be a time when people would claim that Jesus canceled the Sabbath or that his death did that. This verse makes two points:
Despite this verse, some Christian authors still insist the Sabbath was canceled by Jesus' death. They say Jesus just hadn't told his disciples, and it would take Christians 300 years to figure it out.
The churches created by the apostles all observed the 4th commandment, on the Sabbath (Saturday)1, just as the Jews did. There are enough historical references that support this.
After the apostles had all died, the Church of Rome, which became the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), began moving events to Sunday. They moved Passover and Pentecost first. Much later, they moved the Sabbath observance to Sunday. At some point, what we now know as Palm Sunday was moved.
The RCC says they did it. We Protestants find it odd that they would admit to changing God's law. They see it differently. They say the Pope, as the acting Messiah (Vicar of Christ), has the authority to do that, and the fact that he succeeded in doing it shows that he had the authority. If God hadn't approved, they would not have succeeded.
The Catholic Church, … by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from Saturday to Sunday. (The Catholic Mirror, official publication of James Cardinal Gibbons, Sept. 23, 1893)
For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible. (Catholic Virginian Oct. 3, 1947, p. 9, art. "To Tell You the Truth.")
Question: Which is the Sabbath day?
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. (Peter Geiermann, C.S.S.R., The Converts Catechism of Catholic Doctrine (1957), p. 50)
We have made the change from the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of the one holy Catholic Church. (Bishop Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday)
The change to Sunday observance of the Sabbath began first in Rome and quickly spread to Egypt, especially the city of Alexandria, which had become very popular with the Romans after Rome conquered Egypt. There was a lot of travel and trade between the two cities. Some Egyptian obelisks can be found in Rome today. Many Romans left Rome entirely and lived, died, and were buried in Egypt.
Although almost all churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, have ceased to do this. (Socrates Scholasticus, quoted in Ecclesiastical History, Book 5, chap. 22, quoting Sozomen Church History book 7 - written shortly after A.D. 439).
Though the change to Sunday Sabbath had been going on for some time, it wasn't made official until 364 A.D. at the Council of Laodicea (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm). There, they determined a rule (canon) which says:
Canon 29 - Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday, the Sabbath, but shall work on that day; but the Lord's day (Sunday) they shall especially honor, and, as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from Christ.
By this, the RCC says that the Sabbath is still Saturday, but they have moved the observance of the Sabbath to Sunday.
When analyzed, four important truths are evident in this canon.
Two other canons from that council give us an idea of what was going on.
Canon 37 - It is not lawful to receive portions [food] sent from the feasts of Jews or heretics, nor to feast together with them.
Canon 38 - It is not lawful to receive unleavened bread from the Jews, nor to be partakers of their impiety.
Romans did not like Jews, and Christian Romans didn't want to act like Jews, be seen with Jews, or be associated with Jews. Jews specifically, and Semites generally, were considered crude people. In fact they were all ordered to leave Rome during New Testament times.
And there he found one man, who was a Jew, whose name was Aqilaus, who was from Pontus, who at that time had come from the country of Italia, he and Priscilla his wife, because Claudius Caesar had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome, and he came to them. (Acts 18:2)
This Roman bias against Jews and Semitic peoples carried into the Roman church. Christianity would have a strong anti-Semitic current until after World War II.
51 years before these canons, in 313 A.D., Roman Emperor Constantine had signed the Edict of Milan, which decreed tolerance for Christianity throughout the empire. By the time of the Council of Laodicea, the RCC was becoming very powerful. It began persecuting Christians who observed the Sabbath on Saturday or did anything else the church was against. In time the persecution turned to killing. This continued until the Reformation in the 1500s.
Some of the people who reject the Sabbath also reject the idea that the RCC was the one who changed it. It's awkward for Protestants to accept that they are doing what a Pope commanded. Whatever, the RCC claims that they did it, and they have the historical documentation to prove it.
During the Reformation, there were some reformers who wanted to move the Sabbath back to Saturday, but too many of them didn't agree or were afraid they would lose too many followers, and thus the Reformation would fail.
Therefore Sabbath observance on Sunday continued into the Protestant church and remained, at least in North America, until roughly the 1970s.
Not all the reformers left the RCC; some tried to reform from within. A council, called the Council of Trent, was called to deal with the desire for reformation by the Bishops and Cardinals of the church. The educated within the church knew there were problems with many of the traditions, and the Protestant theme of Sola Scriptura (only the scriptures) called to them.
They were at an impasse until someone noted that the Protestants didn't really believe in Sola Scriptura. If they did, they would have stopped keeping the Sabbath on Sunday. Therefore the Protestants were just a revolt against the authority of the church. With that, the council hardened, and it formalized all of its beliefs, completely without any reformation.
At the time of the Reformation, every Christian observed the Sabbath. They either observed it on Sunday or on Saturday. No one believed the 4th commandment didn't apply to Christians. There are now many theories about why the Sabbath observance doesn't apply to Christians, or only applies in novel ways. These are all inventions that have come out of the Protestant church. To this day the RCC believes it has moved Sabbath observance to Sunday, and I know a devout Catholic woman who will not work on Sunday or engage in commerce on that day.
I presented this study to a Bible study group at my previous church, which was not a Sabbath-keeping church. At the end, there was a time to discuss.
One lady said, "We don't really keep any day holy, do we?". I said, "No," and wondered what she would say next. There was nothing more. I could see her curiosity fade. I guess she saw it as one of those unexplainable things in life. She was comfortable doing what she had always done.
Another lady said, "The only church that keeps the Sabbath is the crazy Seventh Day Adventists, right?" It was quickly explained that the pastor's best friend in ministry was at Beth Simcha, a church that kept the Sabbath. She didn't know what to make of that, but she had lost interest anyway.
Most Christians aren't that interested in learning for themselves how God wants us to live. They are happy to do what the church says they should. For some, even that is more than they can handle.
1 "Sabbath." Cross, F. L., ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. New York: Oxford University Press. 2005