hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) (01/09/85)
I would like to give a bit of background on the Sabbath/Sunday issue from the position of Reformed Christianity. Unfortunately, I am really not able to speak for the other branches of the Church, though I will mention a couple of Lutheran items also. (For those of you not familiar with the terminology, Reformed covers those churches that are descended from the reformation is Switzerland, Scotland, the Low Countries, and to some extent England. In the U.S. it includes Presbyterians, Congregational [UCC?], and various other churches.) I claim that the history of the Sabbath is an interesting example of a general tendency in the Church: alternate reformations, which loosen things up and get us back to the spirit of things, and periods of growing legalism. It seems that humans find it uncomfortable to live without clear rules. As is well known, one of the major charges against Jesus in his trial was that he was a Sabbath-breaker. He healed on the Sabbath, and did not follow all of the appropriate laws. (By the way, he was not alone in Judaism. There would have been other rabbis who would have supported most of his stands. It is false to portray all of first-century Judaism as legalistic.) His summary was "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." It appears that the church during the next few decades continued to observe the Sabbath, but as a Jewish observance. Paul is shown going to synagogues on the Sabbath, as are other Christians. It does not seem that distinctively Christian celebrations tooks place on the Sabbath. Rather, they tended to be on Sunday, or the "Lord's Day." This appears to have been viewed as a celebration of Jesus' resurrection (which happened on a Sunday), rather than as a Sabbath. And the various rules about what could not be done on the Sabbath would not have applied to it (though of course many of the Christians would have been Jews, and would still have kept the Jewish Sabbath). By the 16th Century, Christians were applying the 4th Commandment to Sunday, and referring to it as the Sabbath. They had built up a set of rules about what could and could not be done that were similar in many ways to those under which Jesus was prosecuted. One reference I looked at claimed that this was largely a medieval innovation. But I don't claim to know anything about the period between the New Testament and the Reformation, so don't take my word for that. Anyway, both Calvin and Luther opposed this taking over of the Sabbath regulations by the Christian Church. Calvin's stand was the more radical. He did not want to use the term Sabbath at all. He argued that Christ had abrogated the ceremonial parts of the Jewish law, so we were no longer supposed to keep the Sabbath. He did agree that it was still a good idea to have regular times for meeting, and regular rest, but there was nothing magical about the number 7 or any particular day. Calvin is classified as anti-Sabbatarian. I am not an authority on Luther. However in the Large Catechism he says similar but somewhat less radical things. He also opposes any superstitious overvaluing of a particular day. But he does think we need to choose a day. He calls it the Sabbath. And he applies the 3rd Commandment [Luther counted his commandments differently than Calvin] to it, mandating a day of rest. He certainly didn't have the full set of medieval rules, but he said enough to allow opportunity for a new set to grow. Later documents from the 16th Century seem to have continued this. The Heidelberg Catechism (from the Reformed tradition) is very close to Calvin. The Second Helvetic Confession, another 16th Century Reformed document, is even more so: "we do not believe that one day is any holier than another ... we celebrate the Lord's Day and not the Sabbath as a free observance." The Augsburg Confession (a 16th Century Lutheran document) says that Sunday is not a necessary institution. It was established for convenience. It says that worship was moved from the Sabbath to Sunday specifically to make the point that it is a free observation and not the Sabbath. However it seems that such freedom can't last long. Slowly but surely people started refering to the Lord's Day as the Sabbath again, and bringing in the various prohibitions of what could be done then. The Westminster Confession (1647, a Reformed document, though one that many of us would like to put in the back of a closet somewhere) still talks about freedom from the ceremonial law. But it uses the term Sabbath for Sunday, using phrases like "in his Word ... binding on all men in all ages ... he hath ... appointed one day in seven for a Sabbath ... from the resurrection of Christ was changed into the first day of the week." This is the most bald identification of Sunday with the Sabbath, and laid the groundwork for all sorts of regulations as to what could and could not be done on the "Sabbath". In general I would say that most Presbyterians have now returned to Calvin's understanding of the Lord's Day. I would love to be able to state categorically that the "true Christian view" is that we do not celebrate the Sabbath, but rather the Lord's Day. However it is clear from above that the church has gone back and forth between two different ways of handling this issue, and that even a fairly coherent theological tradition, such as the Reformed one, will likely show both viewpoints. One's position in this issue is related to one's view on the proper use of the Old Testament in Christianity. This was a very important topic for Calvin. His view on the Lord's Day followed from a careful analysis of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and of what it means for the Old Testament to be part of the Christian scripture. This analysis has tended to get replaced by simpler legalisms. (As in so many other cases, Calvin himself is not a Calvinist, and holds exactly the opposite position from what most people would expect.) In case anyone else out there is a Presbyterian, you might like to know that the current Book of Order takes a position somewhere between Calvin's and that of the Westminster Confession. It carefully uses the term "Lord's Day", rather than Sabbath. But it does say that God has appointed one day in seven to be holy to the Lord. This clearly connects the Lord's Day to the Commandment, and to the understanding of Sunday as the Sabbath.
bnapl@burdvax.UUCP (Tom Albrecht) (01/15/85)
In article <topaz.194> hedrick@topaz.ARPA (Chuck Hedrick) writes: >... >In case anyone else out there is a Presbyterian, you might like to know >that the current Book of Order takes a position somewhere between Calvin's >and that of the Westminster Confession. It carefully uses the term >"Lord's Day", rather than Sabbath. But it does say that God has appointed >one day in seven to be holy to the Lord. This clearly connects the >Lord's Day to the Commandment, and to the understanding of Sunday as >the Sabbath. This flavor of Presbyterian (PCA) has a Book of Church Order which says "God commanded his Old Testament people to keep holy the last day of the week, but he sanctified the first day as the Sabbath by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead." 48-3. Since Presbyterians come in all shapes and sizes it may be well for us to identify ourselves with the particular denomination with which we are associated. Calvin's error seems to be in his understanding of the Sabbath as simply a part of the ceremonial law. As I pointed out in an earlier posting, the Sabbath was given to us as part of the moral law and was clearly a creation ordinance, binding on all men (Gen. 2:2,3). Calvin steers an interesting course in his discussion of the Sabbath. On the one hand he says that the Sabbath has been abrogated; on the other he says that just as the Jew was obliged to worship on a particular day and to give to their employees a day of rest from worldly cares so too is the Christian under the same obligation (Institutes VIII 32). Those of us who hold to a covenant view of scripture see a close relationship between Israel in the Old Testament and the church in the New Testament. God has made one covenant with men for the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ and has revealed this covenant in several different ways in scripture. Covenant theology teaches that the church of the OT and the church of the NT are one and the same through the shed blood of Jesus. We admit that the types in the OT pointing to Christ have been fulfilled, however the Sabbath rest for God's people is a present reality and a future promise. -- Tom Albrecht Burroughs Corp. ...{presby|psuvax1|sdcrdcf}!burdvax!bnapl