SUBJECT:
Sabbath
QUESTION: What do the Sunday-keeping churches have
to say about the biblical authority?
ANSWER:
Roman Catholic And
Protestant Confessions about Sunday
The vast majority of
Christian churches today teach the observance of Sunday, the
first day of the week, as a time for rest and worship. Yet
it is generally known and freely admitted that the early
Christians observed the seventh day as the Sabbath. How did
this change come about?
History reveals that it was
decades after the death of the apostles that a
politico-religious system repudiated the Sabbath of
Scripture and substituted the observance of the first day of
the week. The following quotations, all from Roman Catholic
sources, freely acknowledge that there is no Biblical
authority for the observance of Sunday, that it was the
Roman Church that changed the Sabbath to the first day of
the week.
In the second portion of
this booklet are quotations from Protestants. Undoubtedly
all of these noted clergymen, scholars, and writers kept
Sunday, but they all frankly admit that there is no Biblical
authority for a first-day sabbath.
ROMAN
CATHOLIC CONFESSIONS
James
Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, 88th ed., pp.
89.
'But you may read the Bible
from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not find a single
line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The
Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a
day which we never sanctify."
Stephen
Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism 3rd ed., p. 174.
"Question: Have you any
other way of proving that the Church has power to institute
festivals of precept?
"Answer: Had she not such
power, she could not have done that in which all modern
religionists agree with her-she could not have substituted
the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the
observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which
there is no Scriptural authority."
John
Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and
Academies (1 936), vol. 1, P. 51.
"Some theologians have held
that God likewise directly determined the Sunday as the day
of worship in the New Law, that He Himself has explicitly
substituted the Sunday for the Sabbath. But this theory is
now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God
simply gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day
or days she would deem suitable as Holy Days. The Church
chose Sunday, the first day of the week, and in the course
of time added other days as holy days."
Daniel
Ferres, ed., Manual of Christian Doctrine (1916), p.67.
"Question: How prove you
that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days?
"Answer. By the very act of
changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow
of, and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by
keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts
commanded by the same Church.'
James
Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1877-1921), in a
signed letter.
"Is Saturday the seventh day
according to the Bible and the Ten Commandments? I answer
yes. Is Sunday the first day of the week and did the Church
change the seventh day —Saturday — for Sunday, the first
day? I answer yes. Did Christ change the day'? I answer no!
"Faithfully yours, J. Card.
Gibbons"
The
Catholic Mirror, official publication of James Cardinal
Gibbons, Sept. 23, 1893.
"The Catholic Church, . . .
by virtue of her divine mission, changed the day from
Saturday to Sunday."
Catholic
Virginian Oct. 3, 1947, p. 9, art. "To Tell You the Truth."
"For example, nowhere in the
Bible do we find that Christ or the Apostles ordered that
the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We have the
commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath
day, that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most
Christians keep Sunday because it has been revealed to us by
the[Roman Catholic] church outside the Bible."
Peter
Geiermann, C.S.S.R., The Converts Catechism of Catholic
Doctrine (1957), p. 50.
"Question: Which is the
Sabbath day?
"Answer: Saturday is the
Sabbath day.
"Question: Why do we observe
Sunday instead of Saturday?
"Answer. We observe Sunday
instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred
the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."
Martin J.
Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927),p. 136.
"Nowhere in the Bible is it
stated that worship should be changed from Saturday to
Sunday .... Now the Church ... instituted, by God's
authority, Sunday as the day of worship. This same Church,
by the same divine authority, taught the doctrine of
Purgatory long before the Bible was made. We have,
therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we have for
Sunday."
Peter R.
Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Society (1975), Chicago,
Illinois.
"Regarding the change from
the observance of the Jewish Sabbath to the Christian
Sunday, I wish to draw your attention to the facts:
"1) That Protestants, who
accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion,
should by all means go back to the observance of the
Sabbath. The fact that they do not, but on the contrary
observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of every
thinking man.
"2) We Catholics do not
accept the Bible as the only rule of faith. Besides the
Bible we have the living Church, the authority of the
Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church,
instituted by Christ to teach and guide man through life,
has the right to change the ceremonial laws of the Old
Testament and hence, we accept her change of the Sabbath to
Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change,
made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance,
the Friday abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws
concerning mixed marriages, the regulation of Catholic
marriages and a thousand other laws.
"It is always somewhat
laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit and
legislation, demand the observance of Sunday, of which there
is nothing in their Bible."
T.
Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb.
18, 1884.
"I have repeatedly offered
$1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from the Bible alone
that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in
the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone.
The Bible says, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.'
The Catholic Church says: 'No. By my divine power I abolish
the Sabbath day and command you to keep holy the first day
of the week.' And lo! The entire civilized world bows down
in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic
Church."
PROTESTANT CONFESSIONS
Protestant theologians and
preachers from a wide spectrum of denominations have been
quite candid in admitting that there is no Biblical
authority for observing Sunday as a sabbath.
Anglican/Episcopal
Isaac
Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, vol. 1, pp.334,
336.
"And where are we told in
the Scriptures that we are to keep the first day at all? We
are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere
commanded to keep the first day .... The reason why we keep
the first day of the week holy instead of the seventh is for
the same reason that we observe many other things, not
because the Bible, but because the church has enjoined it."
Canon
Eyton, The Ten Commandments, pp. 52, 63, 65.
"There is no word, no hint,
in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday
.... into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters.... The
observance of Ash Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the
same footing as the observance of Sunday."
Bishop
Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday.
We have made the change from
the seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday,
on the authority of the one holy Catholic Church."
Baptist
Dr.
Edward T. Hiscox, a paper read before a New York ministers'
conference, Nov. 13, 1893, reported in New York Examiner,
Nov.16, 1893.
"There was and is a
commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath
day was not Sunday. It will be said, however, and with some
show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the
seventh to the first day of the week .... Where can the
record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New
Testament absolutely not.
"To me it seems
unaccountable that Jesus, during three years' intercourse
with His disciples, often conversing with them upon the
Sabbath question . . . never alluded to any transference of
the day; also, that during forty days of His resurrection
life, no such thing was intimated.
"Of course, I quite well
know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian
history . . . . But what a pity it comes branded with the
mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun
god, adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and
bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism!"
William
Owen Carver, The Lord's Day in Our Day, p. 49.
"There was never any formal
or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day Sabbath
to the Christian first-day observance."
Congregationalist
Dr. R. W.
Dale, The Ten Commandments (New York: Eaton &Mains), p.
127-129.
" . . . it is quite clear
that however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we
are not keeping the Sabbath — . . 'Me Sabbath was founded on
a specific Divine command. We can plead no such command for
the obligation to observe Sunday .... There is not a single
sentence in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any
penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."
Timothy
Dwight, Theology: Explained and Defended (1823), Ser. 107,
vol. 3, p. 258.
" . . . the Christian
Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not by
the primitive Church called the Sabbath."
Disciples of Christ
Alexander
Campbell, The Christian Baptist, Feb. 2, 1824,vol. 1. no. 7,
p. 164.
"'But,' say some, 'it was
changed from the seventh to the first day.' Where? when? and
by whom? No man can tell. No; it never was changed, nor
could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again:
for the reason assigned must be changed before the
observance, or respect to the reason, can be changed! It is
all old wives' fables to talk of the change of the Sabbath
from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed, it was
that august personage changed it who changes times and laws
ex officio - I think his name is Doctor Antichrist.'
First Day
Observance, pp. 17, 19.
"The first day of the week
is commonly called the Sabbath. This is a mistake. The
Sabbath of the Bible was the day just preceding the first
day of the week. The first day of the week is never called
the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an
error to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday
to Sunday. There is not in any place in the Bible any
intimation of such a change."
Lutheran
The
Sunday Problem, a study book of the United Lutheran Church
(1923), p. 36.
"We have seen how gradually
the impression of the Jewish sabbath faded from the mind of
the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thought
underlying the observance of the first day took possession
of the church. We have seen that the Christians of the first
three centuries never confused one with the other, but for a
time celebrated both."
Augsburg
Confession of Faith art. 28; written by Melanchthon,
approved by Martin Luther, 1530; as published in The Book of
Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church Henry Jacobs, ed.
(1 91 1), p. 63.
"They [Roman Catholics]
refer to the Sabbath Day, a shaving been changed into the
Lord's Day, contrary to the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither
is there any example whereof they make more than concerning
the changing of the Sabbath Day. Great, say they, is the
power of the Church, since it has dispensed with one of the
Ten Commandments!"
Dr.
Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and
Church Henry John Rose, tr. (1843), p. 186.
"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."
John
Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15, 16.
"But they err in teaching
that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath
and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept
by the children of Israel .... These churches err in their
teaching, for Scripture has in no way ordained the first day
of the week in place of the Sabbath. There is simply no law
in the New Testament to that effect."
Methodist
Harris
Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p.26.
"Take the matter of Sunday.
There are indications in the New Testament as to how the
church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of
worship, but there is no passage telling Christians to keep
that day, or to transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day."
John
Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory,
ed. (New York: Eaton & Mains), Sermon 25,vol. 1, p. 221.
"But, the moral law
contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by the
prophets, he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the
design of his coming to revoke any part of this. This is a
law which never can be broken .... Every part of this law
must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages; as
not depending either on time or place, or any other
circumstances liable to change, but on the nature of God and
the nature of man, and their unchangeable relation to each
other."
Dwight L. Moody
D. L.
Moody, Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New
York), pp. 47, 48.
The Sabbath was binding in
Eden, and it has been in force ever since. This fourth
commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing that
the Sabbath already existed when God Wrote the law on the
tables of stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one
commandment has been done away with when they will admit
that the other nine are still binding?"
Presbyterian
T. C.
Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp.474, 475.
"The Sabbath is a part of
the Decalogue — the Ten Commandments. This alone forever
settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution
. . . . Until, therefore, it can be shown that the whole
moral law has been repealed, the Sabbath will stand . . . .
The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the
Sabbath."
For further information:
The Bible Sabbath
Association offers a wide variety of publications about the
Sabbath; a partial list is given below. We invite you to
write for a complete list with current prices. Sample copies
of various tracts are available free if you send a
self-addressed #10 envelope with postage for two ounces.
Books
History of the Sabbath &
Sunday
by John Kiesz (64 pp.)
God's Sabbath for Mankind
by Richard A. Wiedenheft (42
pp.)
Sabbath at Sommerhase
by Lettie Siddens (1 28 pp.)
Children's Sabbath story book, lessons & activity packet
Booklets
& Tracts
Why the Seventh-day Sabbath?
(12 pp.) The Bible Sabbath: Seventh Day or First Day? (6
pp.) The Rest of Your Life (2 pp.) Whatever Happened to the
Sabbath? (2 pp.) Roman Catholic and Protestant Confessions
about Sunday (12 pp.)
Directory of
Sabbath-Observing Groups — Information about different
seventh-day groups around the world (115 pp.)
The Sabbath Sentinel — a
magazine with information by, for, and about the seventh-day
Christian community. A free sample copy is available on
request.
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