How Sunday Observance Began, Part One

Objection:

History proves that the Sabbath was done away with by the Apostles and the Christian church. The Lord’s Day—Sunday—now takes the place of the Old Testament sabbath..

Answer:

(The following, by Frank H. Yost, appeared as a series of articles in the Review and Herald in 1952 and is reprinted here.)

Sunday observance began in the church in Rome. Records from the dim second century show that it was the leaders of the church in Rome who put emphasis upon it.

The reason they assigned for Sunday observance was that Christ rose upon that day. The observance began under Sixtus, who was the papa (pope) 20 or leader of the church of Rome about AD. 125 (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chap. 24, par. H.)

But this was not at first a weekly observance, coming once each week after the Sabbath, as it was later, and as it is today. It was annual. It came once a year, at the time of the awakening of spring.

In bringing in the practice of Sunday observance the papas of the church in Rome brought about a change in traditional Christian practices of that day.

Very early, Christians had formed the habit of celebrating annually in the spring the memorable dosing clays of Christ’s life. Christ was crucified on a Friday, and died about the time the Jewish Passover lamb was being slain. It was just before sunset of the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, the first month of the Jewish religious year. (Luke 23:46-56; John 18:28; 19:30-34; cf. Lev. 23:4-8.)

It became a tradition among early Christians, both Jews and Gentiles, to celebrate the crucifixion of Christ at the time the Jews were entering their Passover season. The Christians took their reckoning of the date from the Jews, and gathered in homes or in hired halls (they had no church buildings in that early day) at the same time the Jews were gathering for the celebration of the Passover. For this practice there is not a single word of authorization in the Bible. We are told that this practice began as early as the time of the apostle John. (Ibid., book 5, chap. 24.) Some Christians apparently kept only the day, the fourteenth of Nisan. Others celebrated the period from the crucifixion to the resurrection. Still others observed the whole time of the Jewish festival, which was the Feast of Unleavened Bread described in Exodus 12:15-20 and Leviticus 23:4-14, and lasted till the twenty-first day of Nisan. (Ibid., pars. 2, 12, 13.)

But in any case the celebration centered on the day of the crucifixion, the fourteenth of Nisan, when “Christ our Passover” (1 Cor. 5:7) died for sinners. It was observed without concern for which day of the week it might be, somewhat as Christmas is celebrated among Christians today, by date and not by day of the week.

It was this custom that the church of Rome undertook to change, by leading all Christians to celebrate, not the crucifixion, but the resurrection; and not on the fourteenth of Nisan, regardless of the day of the week, but always on Sunday, the first day of the week, regardless of the exact date. The church of Rome won in this endeavor, and the reasons are not hard to find.

One reason was anti-Judaism, the ancestor of the anti-Semitism of today. The Jews had always been opposed to Christianity. They rejected Jesus when He was on earth. They brought about His crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. They discredited the fact of His resurrection. They persecuted the New Testament church even to the death, as in the case of Stephen. They led the pagan Roman authorities to persecute the Christians, and indeed told such ugly tales about them that mobs in the cities were incited to bloody violence against the followers of Christ. Tertullian named the synagogues “fountains of persecution.

The Jews and the Romans

But the Christians had cause to dread the Jews for political reasons. The Jews had always been a problem to their Roman conquerors. As the “chosen people of God” they resented deeply being ruled by despised Gentiles, and rebelled again and again. They fought against Herod when he sought to assume the kingship of the Jews granted him by the Roman Senate. They caused the removal of Archelaus, Herod’s son (not without cause), as ruler in Jerusalem, and brought about the seating of a Roman procurator instead. Their bitter antagonism toward the Romans becomes dear in the Gospels.

In Acts 18:2 we learn that all Jews were expelled from Rome. In the year 68 their rebellious spirit led them into a furious revolt, which resulted, AD 70, in the destruction of the city of Jerusalem and the death of thousands of Jews. From then on the Jews were especially marked as a political problem in the empire. There was another outbreak about forty years later, not so serious or so widespread, but still damaging to any good relations between the empire and Judaism.

About the time Pope Sixtus was beginning to bring about the change in the Christian spring festival, the worst revolt of all broke out. For a period of seven years and over a wide extent of the Roman Empire the Jews rebelled. Thousands upon thousands of them were killed; thousands were driven from the empire. The city of Jerusalem was again completely destroyed. A plow was symbolically dragged over its desolated site, and Roman decrees forbade any Jew again to set his foot upon the spot. The Romans then proceeded to rebuild the city under the emperor Hadrian as a strictly Gentile city.

Christians in the city of Rome especially dreaded being confused with the Jews. It was known that Christianity had sprung from the Jews and that some of the practices and observances of Christians were like those of the Jews. There was good political reason for Pope Sixtus to lead his church away from a celebration timed to the Jewish Passover, when he sought to have the spring festival fall always upon a Sunday, instead of upon the fourteenth of Nisan.

It is worthwhile to pause here and notice what is written in The Great Controversy concerning the Christians and anti-Jewish feeling and its effect in the Sabbath-Sunday controversy:

“To prepare the way for the work which he designed to accomplish, Satan had led the Jews, before the advent of Christ, to load down the Sabbath with the most rigorous exactions, making its observance a burden. Now, taking advantage of the false light in which he had thus caused it to be regarded, he cast contempt upon it as a Jewish institution. While Christians generally continued to observe the Sunday as a joyous festival, he led them, in order to show their hatred of Judaism, to make the Sabbath a fast, a day of sadness and gloom.” Pages 52, 53.

But for the pope to stress the resurrection day meant that he was stressing the day of the sun. The spring had for ages been a special time for the worship of the sun. Astrologers had named as the sun’s day the one coincidental with the Jewish first day of the week, and sun worshipers on this day, as Tertullian tells us, moved their lips in adoration to the sun as they faced the cast at daybreak. (Apology, chap. 16.)

The first hour of the day of the sun was used to reverence the sun, as the first hour of the moon’s day was used to reverence the moon; and so on through the cycle of the seven days, for Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn each had a day, with Saturn’s day coinciding with the seventh day Sabbath.

Sunday and Sun Worshipers

A converted sun worshiper would not feel out of place at the spring festival, beginning to be urged by Pope Sixtus of Rome, for it fell both at a season and on a day familiar to him as a sun worshiper. The pope’s insistence that the resurrection, and not the crucifixion, must be celebrated in spring, and not on the Jewish fourteenth of Nisan, but always on Sunday, the day of the resurrection, put Christians, by an ecclesiastical trick, as it were, in the position of honoring the sun’s day.

About twenty years after the time of Pope Sixtus, when Polycarp, the head of the church of Stityrna and famous martyr, visited the church of Rome, he knew no celebration of the resurrection and no honoring of Sunday. He and Pope Anicetus of Rome discussed the question, but they avoided controversy, and each agreed to follow the custom he had been observing. Pope Anicetus declared that his practice went back to the time of Sixtus, and Polycarp said that his went back to the apostles. They agreed to disagree. (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chap. 24, pars. 16, 17). Not so complacent was a later pope, Victor. (About AD. 200). He saw that quiet pressure from Rome in favor of Sunday was not too successful. In his pride of office he ordered all bishops excommunicated who would not follow Rome’s plan for the spring festival. At that early day no church recognized the authority of the pope outside of Italy; in fact, the Papal See was not always honored in Italy. But Victor, assuming a general authority which later popes were increasingly to exercise, sought to legislate for all Christendom. And it was in the interests of Sunday. He failed in his plan of excommunication, but not in the respect given to the day of the sun. (Ibid., pars. 9-11)

By then another step in Sunday reverence had taken place. Justin Martyr tells us that about AD. 155:

“On the day called Sunday there is an assemblage of all who live in the cities or the country, and the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets are read so long as there is time. Then the reading having ceased the leader in discourse gives the admonition and the challenge to imitate these good things. Thereupon we all rise together and offer prayer. And as we said before, when we have ceased praying, bread is brought, and wine and water. And the leader in like manner offers prayers and thanksgiving, as much as he is able, and the people express their assent, saying the ‘Amen.’ And there is a distribution to each one and a partaking of that over which thanks have been given, and it is sent to those absent by the deacons. And those having means and who are willing, each one according to his choice, gives whatever he wishes. And the collection is deposited at the leader’s home, and he himself provides for the orphans and widows, and for those who on account of sickness or for any other reason are in want, and for those who are in prison, and for the sojourning strangers. And in a word, he is a guardian to all those who are in need. And we all in common make our assembly on Sunday, since it is the first day in which God changed the darkness and matter and made the world, and Jesus Christ our Savior rose front the dead on the same day.” First Apology, chap. 67.

Justin wrote this Apology to the emperor, and made a point of telling hint of this Christian act of worship taking place on the day of the sun. He was in Rome when he was writing, and he was describing the weekly Sunday keeping of the church of Rome and the surrounding churches under its influence.

Weekly Observance of Sunday Begins

Just how the step was made from the annual observance of Sunday to weekly worship on Sunday is not clear, but the step was made, and was made in Rome.

Under the guise of honoring the blessed resurrection of our Lord, Rome brought about the honoring of the day of the sun. Wrote E. G. White:

“I saw that God had not changed the Sabbath, for He never changes. But the pope had changed it from the seventh to the first day of the week; for he was to change times and laws.” Early Writings, p. 33.

“The pope has changed the day of rest from the seventh to the first day. He has thought to change the very commandment that was given to cause man to remember his Creator. He has thought to change the greatest commandment in the Decalogue, and thus make himself equal with God, or even exalt himself above God. The Lord is unchangeable, therefore His law is immutable; but the pope has exalted himself above God, in seeking to change His immutable precepts of holiness, justice, and goodness. He has trampled under foot God’s sanctified day, and on his own authority, put in its place one of the six laboring days.” Ibid., p. 65.

“Roman Catholics acknowledge that the change of the Sabbath was made by their church, and declare that Protestants, by observing the Sunday, are recognizing her power… The Roman Church has not relinquished her claim to supremacy; and when the world and the Protestant churches accept the Sabbath of her creating, while they reject the Bible Sabbath, they virtually admit this assumption.” The Great Controversy, pp. 447, 448.

That the charge here put to the account of the Church of Rome is valid, witness Socrates, skilled historian of the church, writing about AD 450. He says:

“For although almost all Churches throughout the world celebrate the sacred mysteries on the Sabbath of every week, yet the Christians of Alexandria and at Rome, on account of some ancient tradition, refuse to do this.” Ecclesiastical History, book 5, chap. 22.

In view of Rome’s studied endeavor to establish Sunday keeping and put Sabbath observance in eclipse, how displeasing it must have been, then, to Pope Gregory of Rome, AD 600, to find in his own territory those who were keeping the Sabbath! In book 13 of his Epistles, Letter I, he says, in great bitterness of soul:

“It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so as to forbid any work being done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these but preachers of Antichrist?”

We can answer Pope Gregory. These were not preachers of Antichrist. They were preachers who would obey the commandments of God and serve Christ, who is the Lord of the Sabbath. In emphasizing the Sabbath they were not advocating a compromised faith but the very truth of Scripture.

The only weekday that is identified in the Bible by a particular name is the seventh day, called the Sabbath. Numerous texts in the Bible use this name. The day is known in history.

The only other day of the week identified in the Bible is the first day of the week, known not by a name but by a number. It is called simply “the first day of the week.” This English expression is used to translate a Greek phrase “first, or one, of the Sabbath, or Sabbaths.” Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1, and John 20:1 are the texts that tell of the resurrection of Christ on the first day.

John 20:19 uses the expression and states that Christ came to the disciples in their fear and distress on the evening after the resurrection. Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2 also speak of the “first day of the week.” In the first case Paul’s farewell discourse to the church at Troas is mentioned. In the other the believers of Corinth are asked to lay by them, that is, in their homes, an offering on each first day of the week, so that Paul will have awaiting him when he comes to Corinth a gift to send to the needy Christian Jews at Jerusalem.

The use of the word Sabbath to mean “week,” the total period marked off by the Sabbath day, is quite commonplace. Besides its use in the texts just given, it is used in the Hebrew for “week” in Leviticus 23:15, 16, where counting seven Sabbaths and an additional day, one is to arrive at the fifty days leading to the feast of first fruits, or Pentecost, which means “fiftieth.” The word Sabbaths here must mean “weeks” to give the full tally of the fifty days. Seven weeks, or seven times seven days, plus one day, equals fifty.

Early Use of Sabbath for Week

This same use of Sabbath to mean “week” is found again and again in the writings of Christians as late as AD 430:

1. In the Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, we read of fasting “on the second and fifth days of the week.” Chapter 8. The Greek reads, “second of the Sabbaths and fifth.” The date of this document is about AD 150.
2. The so-called Constitution of the Holy Apostles, in book 5, chapter 19, has the expression, “the first day of the week.” The Greek reads, “one of the Sabbaths.” The date of this document is approximately AD 300.
3. Gregory of Nyssa in his Oratio II has this: “The Hebrew nation calls the whole seven days Sabbaths. The evangelists use the expression, ‘One of the Sabbaths,’ indeed, for the first day of the week. The Greek reads, ‘one of the Sabbaths,’ for the first day of the sevens.” Gregory of Nyssa wrote about AD 390.
4. Tertullian, a Christian Latin writer, about AD 225, in his treatise On Fasting speaks in chapter 14 of fasting on the “fourth and sixth days of the week.” The Latin reads here, the “fourth and sixth of the Sabbath.”
5. Augustine, the famous Latin theologian and bishop of North Africa, who died in the year AD 430, uses the word Sabbath to mean “week.” In an Epistle to Casulamus, chapter 3, paragraph 10, he speaks of the “very second day of the week.” The Latin reads, the “very second day of the Sabbath.” In the same letter, chapter 13, paragraph 30, he speaks of the “very fourth day of the week” and the “fifth day of the week.” The Latin reads, the “very fourth of the Sabbath,” and the “fifth of the Sabbath.” In his commentary on Psalms 80, paragraph 2, Augustine names all the days of the week, calling the first day of the week the Lord’s day, and the last, the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath; the other days of the week he calls the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth “of the Sabbath.”

Similar use of the word Sabbath to mean “week” is found in John Cassian’s Institutes, book 5, chapter 19; in canon 30 of the third council of Orleans, AD 538; and in canon 9 of the first council of Macon, AD 581. There is one other name given in the Bible for a day of the week, and that is “Lord’s day.” It is the usual name given for the first day of the week after about AD 200. But it is used only once in the Bible, in the book of Revelation 1:10, written before the year AD 96. The term is not used in any other literature contemporary with the book of Revelation, whether Biblical or pagan, or before that time.

It was an entirely unique expression up to that time, and for many years after. But the fact that Sunday is called “Lord’s day” in AD 200 does not mean that a hundred years before, John means Sunday when he uses the term “Lord’s day” in the book of Revelation. It is not valid to force a late expression or word back into its past to name a practice or interpret a phrase.

Possible Meanings for “Lord’s Day”

There are several possible meanings for the expression “Lord’s day”:

1. That John was talking about the Christian Era as “the Lord’s day.” But it seems untenable that John would be informing his readers in indirect style that he was receiving instruction from the Spirit during the Christian Era, when there could be no mistaking that fact. Anyone who would be at all interested in reading what John had written would know that at that time Christ had already been incarnated, had lived, had died, and had ascended to heaven. The application seems without point. Furthermore, the phrase is punctiliar, dealing with specific time.
2. That he was speaking of “the Lord’s day” as the day of judgment, the last time when Christ is to bring all things earthly to a close. It is argued that John’s visions deal with final world events, and that therefore he was considering himself as living for the moment among those scenes. But here again applies the same objection as under number one above. Would he not have written that he was in vision “concerning the Lord’s day,” or that he was being transported “into the Lord’s day,” had he meant the last days of judgment?
3. That he was speaking of an emperor’s day as the “Lord’s day.” Papyri of the second century found in Egypt show that there were “Augustan,” or emperor’s, days, hemerai sebastai, which were to commemorate the anniversary of an emperor’s birth, of his coronation, or of an imperial visitation to a locality. Such days were celebrated. Was John in vision on such a day?

It seems unlikely that John was using the phrase in question with this meaning. In the first place, no instance has been found of such a day being called a “Lord’s day,” although the emperor was called lord, and other things pertaining to him were called kuriakos “of the lord.” In the second place, it seems extremely unlikely that John would use the word “Lord” as applying to the emperor, even when speaking of a day dedicated by others to the emperors. Christians were well known for acknowledging only one Lord and King. This place they gave to Christ alone, and were in consequence, persecuted as political enemies of the Roman State. They refused to call the emperor lord.

The Meaning of “Lord’s Day”

What day, then, is the Lord’s day? No contemporary sources outside the Bible give us any help. But, as might be expected, the Bible gives us help. It does not speak of Sunday. It knows the first day of the week only as “the first day of the week,” and attaches to it no sanctity.

But is there not a day of which Christ is Lord? Yes, the seventh day Sabbath is so described all through the Bible. It is the day that belongs to the Lord. Jesus Himself so stated when He said, “For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.” Matt. 12:8. What “Lord’s day” could there be, of which Christ is Lord, aside from the day, the Sabbath, of which Christ declares He is Lord? None.

The Sabbath is the Lord’s day of the Bible. It is, says the Lord, “my holy day.” (Isa. 58: 13). It is plainly designated in the fourth commandment: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”

Can we identify this Lord God to whom the Sabbath pertains? Paul says:

“Moreover, brethren, I would not that you should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea. And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.” 1 Cor. 10:1-4.

It was Jesus Christ Himself who did all these things for His people, and who commanded that the Sabbath, the “Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” His day, should be kept.

Indeed, Christ being the Creator (John 1:1-3; Col. 1:13-17), it was He who first blessed and hallowed the Sabbath at the close of creation week (Gen. 2:1-3), and who was in “the days of his flesh” (Heb. 5:7) the Lord of the Sabbath. Because He is “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to day, and for ever” (Heb. 13:8), He is the Lord of the Sabbath today. The seventh day is the only true Lord’s day.

Why did John call it “the Lord’s day,” an expression not used in just that form up to his time, nor for a century after? We do not know. We are not told. But we suggest that John, knowing the expression then applied to unholy pagan observances, applied a parallel one to the day belonging to his divine Lord: the Sabbath of creation, of the commandments, and of the gospel.

John knew of no “Lord’s day” significance for the first day of the week. In harmony with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, he mentions with significance only the seventh day Sabbath. In nearly all the sixty times where the Sabbath is mentioned in the New Testament, there is excellent opportunity for pointing out that the seventh day is superseded by the Sunday, or that the Sunday was to be observed in addition to the Sabbath, if that had been the case, but no word is said to intimate this. Rather, the Sabbath is pointed out as a day of worship, which both Jesus Christ and Paul made use of in that way, as a matter of habit (Luke 4:16; Acts 17:2), and is called the day of which Jesus is Lord (Mark 2:28).

But was not the “first day of the week” called “the Lord’s day,” or given some other prominence in the writings of men who lived at the close of the apostolic age, or in the decades immediately following? The answer is No, emphatically No.

To be continued…