For the early Church

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For the early Church the Lord’s Day was not a substitute for the sabbath; it was not (so to speak) its Christian equivalent. On the contrary the real nature and significance of this new day was defined in relation to the sabbath and to the concept of time connected with it. The key position of the sabbath (and all its related prescriptions) in the Old Testament law and Hebrew piety is well known. From whatever source the weekly cycle of time may have been acquired by Israel, its religious interpretation and experience was rooted in a specifically biblical theology of time. The Seventh Day, the day of complete rest, is a commemoration of the creation of the world, a participation in the rest of God after creation. This rest signifies and expresses the fullness, the completion, the ‘goodness’ of the world, it is the eternal actualization of the word spoken about the world by God from the beginning: ‘it is very good.’ The sabbath sanctions the whole natural life of the world unfolding through the cycles of time, because it is the divinely instituted sign of the correspondence of the world to God’s will and purpose. On this day the Law prescribes joy: ‘thou shalt eat and drink and give thanks to Him who created all things,’ since ‘He who created all things honoured and sanctified the sabbath day and commanded that it should be so’ (2 Macc. 15:2-4). Faithfulness to the sabbath was bound up with the ultimate mystical depths of the people of Israel, and only by understanding it as something for which men were prepared to die is it possible to comprehend the significance of the new day introduced by the Church.

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Malihah
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