Some voices from history regarding the establishment of Sunday sacredness -
[SIZE=12pt]Ignatius, Barnabas and Justin, whose writings constitute our major source of information for the first half of the second century, witnessed and participated in the process of separation from Judaism which led the majority of the Christians to abandon the Sabbath and adopt Sunday as the new day of worship. Their testimonies therefore, coming from such an early period, assume a vital importance for our inquiry into the causes of the origin of Sunday observance (Samuele Bacchiocchi, Ph. D., Andrews University- FROM SABBATH TO SUNDAY: A HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE RISE OF SUNDAY OBSERVANCE IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY[/SIZE] -Chapter 7 -ANTI-JUDAISM AND THE ORIGIN OF SUNDAY)
[SIZE=12pt]"Until well into the second century we do not find the slightest indication in our sources that Christians marked Sunday by any kind of abstention from work."--W. Rordorf, Sunday, p. 157. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]North African half-heathen Christians who led out in Christian worship on Sunday, were also the first to call Jesus Christ the true Sun-god, and to direct their prayers toward the east--the rising sun--to rise early in the morning that they pray facing the sun as it arose. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215 AD.) frequently called Christ the true Sun, and he urged the pagans to accept Him as such. Origen (c. 185-254) said, "Christ is the Sun of Justice; if the moon is united, which is the Church, it will be filled with His light." Cyprian (d. 258), Bishop of Carthage told believers "to pray at sunrise to commemorate the resurrection . . . and to pray at the setting of the sun . . . for the advent of Christ." "They took a much easier view of certain pagan customs, conventions and images and saw no objection, after ridding them of their pagan content, to adapting them to Christian thought."--J. Danielou, Bible and Liturgy, p. 299.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"Cults of the sun, as we know from many sources, had attained great vogue during the second, third, and fourth centuries. Sun-worshipers indeed formed one of the big groups in that religious world in which Christianity was fighting for a place. Many of them became converts to Christianity . . . Worshipers in St. Peter's turned away from the altar and faced the door so that they could adore the rising sun."--Gordon J. Laing, Survivals of Roman Religion, p. 192. [Dr. Laing(1869-1945) was a Canadian-born university professor and later dean at the University of Chicago]. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]It was the Roman Imperial plan on several occasions, to unite all religions of the Empire into one religion--sun-worship: "The Jewish, the Samaritan, even the Christian, were to be fused and recast into one great system, of which the sun was to be the central object of adoration."--Henry Hart Milman, The History of Christianity, bk. 2, chap. 8 (Vol. II, p. 175). [Dr. Milman (1791-1868) was an important historian of England and dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London]. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Though Sunday is mentioned in so many different ways during the second century, it is not till we come almost to the close of the second century that we find the first; instance in which it is called “Lord’s day.” [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]Clement, of Alexandria, A.D. 194, uses this title with reference to “the eighth day.” If he speaks of a natural day, he no doubt means Sunday. It is not certain, however, that he speaks of a natural day, for his explanation gives to the term an entirely different sense. THE HISTORY OF THE SABBATH by J.N. Andrews page 160[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Tertullian, A.D. 200, is the next writer who uses the term “Lord’s day[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt].” He[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]defines his meaning, and fixes the name upon the day of Christ’s resurrection. Kitto[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]says this is “the earliest authentic instance” in which the name is thus applied, and we have proved this true by actual examination of every writer, unless the reader can discover some reference[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]to Sunday in Clement’s mystical eighth day. Id page 162[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Origen, A.D. 231, is the third of the ancient writers who call “the eighth day” the Lord’s day.[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt] He was the disciple of Clement, the first writer who makes this application. It is not strange, therefore, that he should teach Clement’s doctrine of a perpetual Lord’s day, nor that he should state it even more distinctly than did Clement himself. Origen, having represented Paul as teaching that all days are alike, continues thus: — “If it be objected to us on this subject that we ourselves are accustomed to observe certain days, as for example the Lord’s day, the Preparation, the Passover, or the Pentecost, I have to answer, that to the perfect Christian, who is ever in his thoughts, words, and deeds serving his natural Lord, God the Word, all his days are the Lord’s, and he is always keeping the Lord’s day.” Against Celsus, book 8, chap. 29; Testimony of the Fathers, p. 87. Id page 165[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The “Lord’s day” of the Catholic church can be traced no nearer to John than A.D. 194, or perhaps, in strict truth, to A.D. 200, and those who then use the name show plainly that they did not believe it to be the Lord’s day by apostolic appointment. [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]To hide these fatal facts by seeming to trace the title back to Ignatius; the disciple of John, and thus to identify Sunday with the Lord’s day of that apostle, a series of remarkable frauds has been committed, which we have had occasion to examine. But even could the Sunday Lord’s day be traced to Ignatius, the disciple of John, it would then come no nearer being an apostolic institution than does the Catholic festival of the Passover, which can be traced to Polycarp, another of John’s disciples, who claimed to have received it from John himself! Id pages 166and 167.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“The festival of Sunday, like all other festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the intentions of the apostles to establish a divine command in this respect, far from them, and from the early apostolic church, to transfer the laws of the Sabbath to Sunday. Perhaps at the end of the second century a false application of this kind had begun to take place; for men appear by that time to have considered laboring on Sunday as a sin.”[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]Neander’s Church History, translated by H. J. Rose, p. 186.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The following is taken from The Great Empires of Prophecy by A. T. Jones. Pages 349-351 and 357-359.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]The next step in addition to this was the adoption of the day of the sun as a festival day. To such an extent were the forms of sun-worship practised in this apostasy, that before the close of the second century the heathen themselves charged these so-called Christians with worshiping the sun. A presbyter of the church of Carthage, then and now one of the “church fathers,” who wrote about A.D. 200, considered it necessary to make a defense of the practice, which he did to the following effect in an address to the rulers and magistrates of the Roman Empire: — “Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude, believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer. But you, many of you, also under pretense sometimes of worshiping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sunday to rejoicing, from a far different reason than sun-worship, we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed they are ignorant.” — Tertullian [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]“Apology,” chap. 16.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]And again in an address to all the heathen he justifies this practice by the argument, in effect, You do the same thing, you originated it too, therefore you have no right to blame us. In his own words his defense is as follows: —[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“Others, with greater regard to good manners, it must be confessed, suppose that the sun is the god of the Christians, because it is a well-known fact that [/SIZE][SIZE=14pt]we pray toward the east[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt], or[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt] because we make Sunday a day of festivity. What then? Do you do[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]less than this? Do not many among you, with an affectation of sometimes worshiping the heavenly bodies, likewise move your lips in the direction of the sunrise? It is you, at all events, who have admitted the sun into the calendar of the week; and you have selected its day, in preference to the preceding day, as the most suitable in the week for either an entire abstinence from the bath, or for its postponement until the evening, or for taking rest and[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]banqueting.” — Tertullian [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]“Ad Nationes,” book 1, chap. 13.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]This accommodation was easily made, and all this practice was easily justified, by the perverse-minded teachers, in the perversion of such scriptures as, “The Lord God is a sun and shield,” and, “Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings.” [/SIZE][SIZE=7.5pt]F456[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt] As this custom spread, and through it such disciples were multiplied, the ambition of the bishop of Rome grew apace. It was in honor of the day of the sun that there was manifested the first attempt of the bishop of Rome to compel the obedience of all other bishops, and the fact that this attempt was made in such a cause, at the very time when these pretended Christians were openly accused by the heathen of worshiping the sun, is strongly suggestive.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]From Rome there came now another addition to the sun-worshiping apostasy. The first Christians being mostly Jews, continued to celebrate the Passover in remembrance of the death of Christ, the true Passover; and this was continued among those who from among the Gentiles had turned to Christ. Accordingly, the celebration was always on the Passover day, —[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]the fourteenth of the first month. Rome, however, and from her all the West, adopted the day of the sun as the day of this celebration. According to the Eastern custom, the celebration, being on the fourteenth day of the month, would of course fall on different days of the week as the years revolved. The rule of Rome was that the celebration must always be on a Sunday — the Sunday nearest to the fourteenth day of the first month of the Jewish year. And if the fourteenth day of that month should itself be a Sunday, then the celebration was not to be held on that day, but upon the next Sunday. One reason of this was not only to be as like the heathen as possible, but to be as un like the Jews as possible; this, in order not only to facilitate the “conversion” of the heathen by conforming to their customs, but also by pandering to their spirit of contempt and hatred of the Jews. It was upon this point that the bishop of Rome made his first open attempt at[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Absolutism………………………………..................[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“Accordingly, after having taken the advice of some foreign bishops, he wrote an imperious letter to the Asiatic prelates commanding them to imitate the example of the Western Christians with respect to the time of celebrating the festival of Easter. The Asiatics answered this lordly requisition by the pen of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, who declared in their name, with great spirit and resolution, that they would by no means depart in this manner from the custom handed down to them by their ancestors. Upon this the thunder of excommunication began to roar. Victor, exasperated by this resolute answer of the Asiatic bishops, broke communion with them, pronounced them unworthy of the name of his brethren, and excluded them from all fellowship with the church of Rome.”[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]— Mosheim [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]“Ecclesiastical History,” century 2, part 2, chap. 4, par. 11. Maclaine’s[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Translation………………………………............................[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]While this effort was being made on the side of philosophy to unite all religions, there was at the same time a like effort on the side of politics. It was the ambition of Elagabalus (A.D. 218-222) to make the worship of the sun supersede all other worship in Rome. It is further related of him that a more ambitious scheme even than this was in the emperor’s mind; which was nothing less than the blending of all religions into one, of which “the[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]sun was to be the central object of adoration.”[/SIZE][SIZE=12pt] — Milman [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]“History of Christianity” book 2, chap. 8, par. 22.[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]But the elements were not yet fully prepared for such a fusion. Also the shortness[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]of the reign of Elagabalus prevented any decided advancement toward success.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Alexander Severus (A.D. 222-225) held to the same idea, and carried it into effect so far as his individual practice was concerned. “The mother of Alexander Severus, the able, perhaps crafty and rapacious, Mammaea, had at least held intercourse with the Christians of Syria. She had conversed with the celebrated Origen, and listened to his exhortations, if without conversion, still not without respect. Alexander, though he had neither the religious education, the pontifical character, nor the dissolute manners of his predecessor, was a Syrian, with no hereditary attachment to the Roman form of paganism. He seems to have affected a kind of universalism: he paid decent respect to the gods of the Capitol; he held in honor the Egyptian worship, and enlarged the temples of His and Serapis. In his own palace, with respectful indifference, he enshrined, as it were, as his household deities, the representatives of the different religions or theophilosophic systems which were prevalent in the Roman Empire, — Orpheus, Abraham, Christ, and Apollonius of Tyana.... The homage of[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Alexander Severus may be a fair test of the general sentiment of the more intelligent heathen of his time.” — Milman [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]Id., book 2, chap. 8, par. 24. His reign also was too short to accomplish anything beyond his own individual example. But the same tendency went rapidly forward.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]On the side of philosophy and the apostasy, the progress was continuous and rapid.“Heathenism, as interpreted by philosophy, almost found favor with some of the more moderate Christian apologists.... The Christians endeavored to enlist the earlier philosophers in their cause; they were scarcely content with asserting that the nobler Grecian philosophy might be designed to prepare the human mind for the reception of[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Christianity; they were almost inclined to endow these sages with a kind of prophetic foreknowledge of its more mysterious doctrines. ‘I have explained,’ says the Christian in Minucius Felix, ‘the opinions of almost all the philosophers, whose most illustrious glory it is that they have worshiped one God, though under various names; so that one might suppose either that the Christians of the present day are philosophers, or that the philosophers of old were already Christians.’ “These advances on the part of Christianity were more than met by paganism. The heathen religion, which prevailed at least among the more enlightened pagans during this period,... was almost as different from that[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]of the older Greeks and Romans, or even that which prevailed at the commencement of the empire, as it was from Christianity.... On the great elementary principle of Christianity, the unity of the supreme God, this approximation had long been silently made. Celsus, in his celebrated[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]controversy with Origen, asserts that this philosophical notion of the Deity is perfectly reconcilable with paganism.” — Milman [/SIZE][SIZE=12pt]Id., par. 28.”[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]The text of Constantine's Sunday Law of 321 A.D. is : [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"One the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for gain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March, Crispus and Constantinebeing consuls each of them the second time." Codex Justinianus, lib. 3, tit. 12, 3; translated in History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff, D.D., (7-vol.ed.) Vol. III, p.380. New York, 1884 [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]Here is the first Sunday Law decree of a Christian council. It was given about 16 years after Constantine's first Sunday Law of A.D. 321: "Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday [in the original: "sabbato"--shall not be idle on the Sabbath], but shall work on that day; but the Lord's day they shall especially honour, and as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they are found Judaizing, they shall be shut out ['anathema,'--excommunicated] from Christ."--Council of Laodicea, c. A.D. 337, Canon 29, quoted in C.J. Hefele, "A History of the Councils of the Church," Vol. 2, p. 316. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"Modern Christians who talk of keeping Sunday as a 'holy' day, as in the still extant 'Blue Laws,' of colonial America, should know that as a 'holy' day of rest and cessation from labor and amusements Sunday was unknown to Jesus . . . It formed no tenet [teaching] of the primitive Church and became 'sacred' only in the course of time. Outside the Church its observance was legalized for the Roman Empire through a series of decrees starting with the famous one of Constantine in 321, an edict due to his political and social ideas."--W, W. Hyde, "Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire," 1946, p. 257. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"The Church made a sacred day of Sunday . . . largely because it was the weekly festival of the sun;--for it was a definite Christian policy to take over the pagan festivals endeared to the people by tradition, and to give them a Christian significance."-- Arthur Weigall, "The Paganism in Our Christianity," 1928, p. 145. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"Remains of the struggle [between the religion of Christianity and the religion of Mithraism] are found in two institutions adopted from its rival by Christianity in the fourth century, the two Mithraic sacred days: December 25, 'dies natalis solis' [birthday of the sun], as the birthday of Jesus,--and Sunday, 'the venerable day of the Sun,' as Constantine called it in his edict of 321."--Walter Woodburn Hyde, "Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire," p. 60. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"This [Constantine's Sunday decree of March, 321] is the 'parent' Sunday law making it a day of rest and release from labor. For from that time to the present there have been decrees about the observance of Sunday which have profoundly influenced European and American society. When the Church became a part of State under the Christian emperors, Sunday observance was enforced by civil statutes, and later when the Empire was past, the Church, in the hands of the papacy, enforced it by ecclesiastical and also by civil enactments."--Walter W. Hyde, "Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire," 1946, p. 261. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"Constantine labored at this time untiringly to unite the worshipers of the old and the new into one religion. All his laws and contrivances are aimed at promoting this amalgamation of religions. He would by all lawful and peaceable means melt together a purified heathenism and a moderated Christianity . . . Of all his blending and melting together of Christianity and heathenism, none is more easy to see through than this making of his Sunday law: The Christians worshiped their Christ, the heathen their Sun-god. . . [so they should now be combined."--H.G. Heggtveit, "illustreret Kirkehistorie," 1895, p. 202. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"If every Sunday is to be observed joyfully by the Christians on account of the resurrection, then every Sabbath on account of the burial is to be regarded in execration [cursing] of the Jews."--Pope Sylvester, quoted by S.R.E. Humbert, "Adversus Graecorum Calumnias," in J.P. Migne, "Patrologie," p. 143. [Sylvester (A.D. 314-337) was the pope at the time Constantine 1 was Emperor.] [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]As we have already noted, excepting for the Roman and Alexandrian Christians, the majority of Christians were observing the seventh-day Sabbath at least as late as the middle of the fifth century [A.D. 450]. The Roman and Alexandrian Christians were among those converted from heathenism. They began observing Sunday as a merry religious festival in honor of the Lord's resurrection, about the latter half of the second century A.D. However, they did not try to teach that the Lord or His apostles commanded it. In fact, no ecclesiastical writer before Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century even suggested that either Christ or His apostles instituted the observance of the first day of the week.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"These Gentile Christians of Rome and Alexandria began calling the first day of the week 'the Lord's day.' This was not difficult for the pagans of the Roman Empire who were steeped in sun worship to accept, because they [the pagans] referred to their sun-god as their 'Lord.' "--EM. Chalmers, "How Sunday Came Into the Christian Church," p. 3. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"Down even to the fifth century the observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued."--Lyman Coleman, "Ancient Christianity Exemplified" chap. 26, sec. 2, p. 527. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"What began, however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as a Christian regulation; and a long series of imperial decrees, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, enjoined with increasing stringency abstinence from labor on Sunday."--Huttan Webster, "Rest Days," pp. 122-123, 210. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"A history of the problem shows that in some places, it was really only after some centuries that the Sabbath rest really was entirely abolished, and by that time the practice of observing a bodily rest on the Sunday had taken its place . . . It was the seventh day of the week which typified the rest of God after creation, and not the first day. "--Vincent Jo Kelly, Forbidden Sunday and Feast day Occupations, 1943, pp. 15, 22 [This Catholic University Press publication was written by a priest of the Redemptorist order]. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"The early Christians had at first adopted the Jewish seven-day week with its numbered week days, but by the close of the third century A.D. this began to give way to the planetary week; and in the fourth and fifth centuries the pagan designations became generally accepted in the western half of Christendom. The use of the planetary names by Christians attests the growing influence of astrological speculations introduced by converts from paganism . . . During these same centuries the spread of Oriental solar [sun] worships, especially that of Mithra [Persian sun worship], in the Roman world, had already led to the substitution by pagans of dies Solis for dies Saturni, as the first day of the planetary week. Thus gradually a pagan institution was engrafted on Christianity."--Hutton Webster, Rest Days, pp. 220-221. [Webster (1875-?), was an author, historian, and professor at the University of Nebraska]. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“The last day of the week was strictly kept in connection with that of the first day for a long time after the overthrow of the temple and its worship. Down even to the fifth century the Observance of the Jewish Sabbath was continued in the Christian[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]church, but with a rigor and solemnity gradually diminishing until it was wholly discontinued.”[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]Coleman Ancient Christianity Exemplified, chap. 26, sec. 2.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“During the early ages of the church, it was never entitled ‘the Sabbath,’ this word being confined to the seventh day of the week, the Jewish Sabbath, which, as we have already said, continued to be observed for several centuries by the converts to Christianity.”[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]Anc. Christ. Exem., chap. 26, sec. 2.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“The observance of the Lord’s day was ordered while yet the Sabbath of the Jews was continued; nor was the latter superseded until the former had acquired the same solemnity and importance which belonged, at first, to that great day which God originally ordained and blessed. But in time, after the Lord’s day was fully established, the observance of the Sabbath of the Jews was gradually discontinued, and was finally denounced as heretical.”[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]Anc. Christ. Exem., chap. 26, sec. 2.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“The ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed together with the celebration of the Lord’s day by the Christians of the East church above three hundred years after our Savior’s death; and besides that, no other day for more hundreds of years than I spake of before, was known in the church by the name of Sabbath but that: let the collection thereof and conclusion of all be this: The Sabbath of the seventh day, as touching the alligations of God’s solemn worship to time, was ceremonial; that Sabbath was religiously observed in the East church three hundred years and more after our Savior’s passion. That church, being the great part[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]of Christendom, and having the apostles’ doctrine and example to instruct them, would have restrained it if it had been deadly.”[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]Edward Brerewood, professor in Gresham College, London . Learned Treatise of the Sabbath, p. 77, Oxford, 1631.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]And Sir Win. Domville says: —[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]“Centuries of the Christian era passed away before the Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in A.D. 321.”[/SIZE] [SIZE=12pt]Examination of the Six Texts, p. 291.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]"Our observance of Sunday as the Lord's day is apparently derived from Mithraism. The argument that has sometimes been used against this claim, namely, that Sunday was[/SIZE]
[SIZE=12pt]chosen because of the resurrection on that day, is not well supported." Gordon J. Laing, "Survivals of Roman Religion," p. 148. [/SIZE]
