C. Mervyn Maxwell, Ph.D., is professor of church history at Andrews University Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

 

WHY DID early Christians start ob serving Sunday instead of the seventh-day Sabbath?

The most attractive answer is that they did it out of love for Jesus.

There is no doubt, for example, that Justin Martyr loved the Lord. In the middle of the second century Justin willingly gave his life for Christ's sake and was beheaded by Roman authorities. Shortly before his arrest, but when he already knew that his life was in danger, he had the courage to publish a tract in the city of Rome in which he wrote, "I both boast and with all my strength strive to be found a Christian." 1 All his life Justin was fond of witnessing for Christ as an active Christian layman. He studied Bible prophecy with pagans and Jews alike, and appears to have won a considerable number to the church. There is no doubt that Justin loved the Lord.

And there is no doubt that he preferred Sunday to the seventh-day Sabbath. "Sunday is the day," he wrote, "on which we [Christians] all hold our common assembly." And why did they do so? Because on that day God "made the world" and Jesus Christ "rose from the dead." 2 According to Justin, Christians also worshiped on Sunday because that day "possessed a certain mysterious import" 3—as a symbol of sanctification and as the Christian replacement for Old Testament circumcision—which in Justin's view "the seventh day did not possess."

Even earlier in the second century, a Christian writer, usually known today as Barnabas (though we don't know his name for certain), delighted in the observation that Christians "celebrate with gladness" the "eighth day." 4 The term "eighth day" was commonly applied to Sunday by early Christians be cause it followed the seventh day and because it reminded them of the covenant promises of circumcision, a rite that was performed when a Jewish child was eight days old. And why did Christians celebrate with gladness the eighth day? Because, said Barnabas, "on that day Jesus rose from the dead."

As a whole, the second- and third-century Christians whose writings have come down to us provided Christ-centered reasons for preferring the first day of the week to the seventh. Christ was the New Law, they said. Christ introduced the New Covenant. Christ, even though He kept the Sabbath as a Jew, abolished sacrifices, circumcision, and Sabbath for the Christian Church. Christ, after His second coming, would provide heavenly rest during the eternal eighth day that would follow the millennium. The commonest reason given for emphasizing Sunday was, of course, the fact that Jesus on that day rose from the dead.

This is not surprising. By the time Barnabas and Justin were writing, Christ's resurrection was only a century or so in the past. Abraham Lincoln lived about a century prior to our time today, yet many things he did stand out vividly in our awareness. Now suppose that after being killed by Mr. Booth, and buried, President Lincoln had come back to life. What an impact that would have had on people all around the world! It is not difficult to imagine the effect that Christ's resurrection had on the people who lived in the world in the early Christian centuries. Think of the impact it still has!

The Gospels repeatedly assert that Jesus rose from the dead on the "first day of the week." 5 It follows naturally that Gentile Christians tended to look on the first day of the week as some thing very special.

There is something else to be considered. The Gospels show plainly that in Christ's day the Sabbath had been so encrusted with man-made regulations that it no longer reflected the beauty of God's original creation. Jesus Himself fearlessly defied these traditions, and it is little wonder that many early Christians felt there was a sharp contrast between Sabbath-keeping as practiced by the Son of God and as it was kept by the Jews of their era. Viewed from this standpoint, those Christians who gave up the Sabbath (many did not give it up and others kept both days) did not abandon the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments but the Sabbath of contemporary legalism. Sunday, with its joyous resurrection, seemed a vastly superior memorial of their Saviour's love.

Now some historians have suggested other reasons than the love of Christ for the change of emphasis from Sabbath to Sunday. Some, for example, have sup posed that it was done in obedience to specific instruction left behind by Jesus Christ Himself. But if the early Christians knew of any such directive they never quoted it or even alluded to it. This is remarkable.

Another group of scholars has suggested that the second- and third-century Christians adopted Sunday in preference to the seventh-day Sabbath as a result of the influence of pagan sun worship. Without question, the sun was worshiped by people who lived in the Roman Empire during the centuries under discussion here and sun worship did play a vital role in the early fourth century when the Sunday rest was decreed by Constantine (A.D. 321), but there is little evidence that the sun occupied the unique position attributed to it by some modern authors. When the Emperor Caracalla tried to impose sun worship in the early years of the third century, the Romans laughed at him. Although sun worship has always played a role in pagan religions, it wasn't until the end of that century that the sun enjoyed real prominence among the Roman gods—and by that time many Christians, at least, had been ob serving Sunday for 150 years. 6 In his Apology addressed to the Roman Government, the great Christian writer Tertullian specifically refuted the charge that Christians worshiped on Sunday in honor of the sun.7

If we are going to draw our conclusions from the clearest evidence avail able, it seems that we shall have to say that those second- and third-century Christians who preferred Sunday to the Sabbath did so largely because they loved the Lord and thought that Sun day keeping honored His memory.

Sixteenth-Century Challenge

Ever since the early centuries, Sun day observance has continued to dominate the Christian church. Nonetheless, Sunday was vigorously challenged in the sixteenth century, after the onset of the Reformation.

As devout Roman Catholics through out central Europe grappled with Mar tin Luther's appeal for a return to "the Bible, and the Bible only," the hearts of many of them were deeply stirred. The cry, sola scriptura, soon rang from their lips also, and they too determined to put aside tradition in favor of the Word of God. Hundreds of thousands of Catholics abandoned the confessional and penances of the medieval church and adopted Luther's definition of righteousness by faith. And they did so at the risk of their lives.

Some of these brave Christians who were so deeply grateful for Luther's new insights soon began to wonder if the good professor himself were following his convictions to their logical conclusions. Andreas Fischer and Oswald Glait,8 who asked whether Christians had any basis in sola scriptura for ob serving the first day of the week instead of the seventh, both ultimately died for their faith.

Fortunately for us, Luther sent theologians to dialog with Fischer and Glait. From their records we learn that Fischer and Glait insisted that Jesus nowhere asked His followers to keep holy the day on which He rose from the dead. They asked where any scriptural authority could be found for such a be lief. Certainly the second- and third-century church fathers had never cited such a command from Christ, and Fischer and Glait affirmed that they couldn't find one either.

The Sabbath, said these Sabbatarians, was not to be confused with the types and symbols of the ceremonial law. It was not to be linked with circumcision and sacrifice. The Sabbath, they said, was sanctified by God as far back as Creation week; thus the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27) before man sinned, before he needed a ceremonial system.

Further, Glait and Fischer emphasized that the seventh-day Sabbath was placed in the Ten Commandments, where it stands not as a typological ceremony prefiguring the future coming of Christ as Redeemer but as an appropriate memorial to work previously completed by Christ as Creator. According to the Bible, said these men, the Sabbath belongs to the unchangeable moral law.

And if Jesus nowhere asked His fol lowers to change from the seventh to the first day, did He anywhere state the opposite, that they should not? In the Sermon on the Mount, Glait and Fischer observed, Jesus said, "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished" (Matt. 5:17, R.S.V.). But did His apostles change the day? Glait and Fischer pointed to the second chapter of the book of James, where an apostle says that if we break the law in any one point we break it all.

Then if neither Christ nor His apostles authorized the change from Sabbath to Sunday, who is responsible for the change?

Glait and Fischer called attention to both Old and New Testament prophecies. On the basis of sola scriptura they referred to Daniel 7 and 2 Thessalonians 2. Daniel 7:25 predicted the emergence of a powerful religious movement that would think to "change times and laws." Second Thessalonians 2:7 warned that even in the middle of the first century the "mystery of lawlessness" (R.S.V.) was already at work.

Glait and Fischer loved the Lord. Like Justin in the second century they too were willing to die for their Saviour, and they did give up their lives for Him. Fischer was thrown over a castle wall. Glait was hurled into the Danube.

Is it possible that men who loved Christ with all their hearts and were willing to die for Him could all have been right about the Sabbath in the second century and in the sixteenth century when they said such opposite things about the holy day?

If we judge these men by their motives, we rejoice that all alike appear to have loved their Lord. But if we judge their teachings by sola scriptura, what shall we say?

Is it possible that Fischer and Glait had a valid point when they referred to 2 Thessalonians 2, with its "mystery of lawlessness"?

A mystery is something that requires special insight in order to be adequately understood. Is it possible that good men like Justin and Tertullian and Barnabas and countless other early Christians were unwittingly misled by their teachers and their own hearts and that thereafter they looked appropriately into Christ's empty grave but not closely enough at His written Word?

Notes:

1 Justin, Second Apology 13, Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), 1: 192, 193.

2 Justin, First Apology 67, ANF, 1:186.

3 Justin, Dialogue With Trypho 24, ANF, 1:206.

4 Barnabas, Epistle 15; compare the translation here with ANF, 1:147.

5 Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19.

6 Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra, is the most popular source for the assertion that Mithraic sun worshipers directly influenced Christian Sundaykeeping. But Cumont provides no evidence that Mithraists did in fact treat Sunday in a special way. In any case, Mithraism rose to prominence too late to explain Christian Sunday observance.

7 Tertullian, Apology 16, ANF, 3:31.

8 See Gerhard Hasel, "Sabbatarian Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century," two parts, Andrews University Seminary Studies V (July, 1967), 101-121, and VI (January, 1968), 19-28.


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C. Mervyn Maxwell, Ph.D., is professor of church history at Andrews University Theological Seminary, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

January 1977

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