The first generations of Christians were not shy about testifying to what they believed and practiced, and exposing counterfeits and heresies. As an Orthodox Christian, I am naturally very interested in what the original Christians taught and did. So I have for some time been collecting notes on what the early Church said and did about the sabbath.
I was asked recently what the sabbath means to Orthodox Christians. So while these notes are not very extensive, I sthought it might be timely to post them here: Not to argue for or against anything, but as a snapshot of what the earliest Christians pastors and teachers considered normal.
Letter of Ignatius of Antioch to the Magnesians (AD 107), ch 8-9
Do not be led astray by wrong views or by outmoded tales that count for nothing. For if we still go on observing Judaism, we admit we never received grace. The divine prophets themselves lived in the way of Christ Jesus. That is why they were persecuted, for they were inspired by his grace to convince unbelievers that God is one, and that he has revealed himself in his Son Jesus Christ… Those, then, who lived by ancient practices arrived at a new hope. They ceased to keep the Sabbath and lived by the Lord’s Day, on which our life as well as theirs shone forth, thanks to Him and his death, though some deny this.
Letter to Diognetus (c. AD 130)
As for Jewish taboos with respect to food, along with their superstition about the Sabbath, their bragging about circumcision, and their hypocrisy about fast days and new moons, I hardly think that you need to be told by me that all these things are ridiculous, and not worth arguing about. How can it be anything but godlessness that makes men accept some of the things made by God for man’s use as created good, and reject other things as useless and superfluous? And is it not impious to pretend that God forbids a good deed on the Sabbath Day? And are they not asking for ridicule when they boast of the mutilation of the flesh as a sign of their choice by God, as if for this reason they were especially beloved by him? Again, when they constantly gaze at the stars and watch the moon, in order to observe months and days with scrupulous care and to distinguish the changes of the seasons which God has ordained, in order to cater to their own whims, making some into festivals, and others into times of mourning, who could call this evidence of devotion rather than of folly?
Epistle of Barnabas (c. AD 80–120), ch 15
Furthermore it was written concerning the sabbath in the ten words which he spoke on Mount Sinai face to face to Moses. “Sanctify also the sabbath of the Lord with pure hands and a pure heart.” And in another place he says, “If my sons keep the sabbath, then will I bestow my mercy upon them.” He speaks of the sabbath at the beginning of the Creation, “And God made in six days the works of his hands and on the seventh day he made an end, and rested in it and sanctified it.”
Notice, children, what is the meaning of “He made an end in six days”? He means this: that the Lord will make an end of everything in six thousand years… “And he rested on the seventh day.” This means, when his Son comes he will destroy the time of the wicked one, and will judge the godless, and will change the sun and the moon and the stars, and then he will truly rest on the seventh day.Furthermore he says, “Thou shalt sanctify it with clean hands and a pure heart.” If, then, anyone has at present the power to keep holy the day which God made holy, by being pure in heart, then we are altogether deceived. See that we shall indeed keep it holy at that time, when we enjoy true rest, when we shall be able to do so because we have been made righteous ourselves and have received the promise, when there is no more sin, but all things have been made new by the Lord: then we shall be able to keep it holy because we ourselves have first been made holy. Furthermore he says to them, “Your new moons and the sabbaths I cannot endure.” Do you see what he means? The present sabbaths are not acceptable to me, but that which I have made, in which I will give rest to all things and make the beginning of an eighth day, that is the beginning of another world. Wherefore we also celebrate with gladness the eighth day in which Jesus also rose from the dead, and was made manifest, and ascended into Heaven.
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho (c. AD 160)
Too many references to paste here, but Justin’s arguments can be read in chapters 10; 12; 18–19; 21; 23–24; 27; 29; 43; 46–47.
Justin argues that the Sabbath was given particularly to Israel, partly as a sign of Israel’s disobedience. He presents the permanent Christian Sabbath as continual freedom from sin.
Interestingly, Justin is aware that in his day there are Jewish Christians who keep the Mosaic customs (ch 46–47). But in his experience having grown up in Palestine and lived in Rome, non-Jewish Christians do not have these practices.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies (c. AD 180), 4.16.1
We learn from the Scripture itself that God gave circumcision, not to complete righteousness, but as a sign. “Every male among you shall be circumcised; and you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, as a token of the covenant between Me and you.” Ezekiel the prophet says the same with regard to the Sabbaths: “Also I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord, who makes them holy.” And in Exodus, God says to Moses: “And you shall observe My Sabbaths; for it shall be a sign between Me and you for your generations.” These things, then, were given for a sign; but the signs were symbols, neither without meaning nor without purpose, in that as they were given by a wise Artist. But the circumcision after the flesh typified the circumcision after the Spirit. “For we, says the apostle, have been circumcised with the circumcision made without hands.” But the Sabbaths taught that we should continue day by day in the service of God. For the Apostle Paul says, “We have been counted all the day long as sheep for the slaughter,” that is, consecrated to God, and ministering continually to our faith, persevering in it, and abstaining from all avarice, and not acquiring treasures on earth. Moreover, the Sabbath of God, that is, the kingdom, was indicated by created things; in which kingdom, the man who shall have persevered in serving God shall partake of God’s table in a state of rest.
Elsewhere, in 3.14.3 and 4.8.2–3, Irenaeus teaches on the lawfulness of Christ’s doing good on the Jewish sabbath. But he has no expectation that his hearers were themselves familiar with sabbath observance.
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata (c. AD 200)
Clement likewise has no exhortation or instruction regarding observance of the sabbath, but interprets for his hearers what it meant long ago in the Bible:
- Book 1: Christ did not prevent doing good while keeping the sabbath.
- Book 4, ch 3: the sabbath, understood as abstinence from evil, signifies self-restraint.
- Book 6: Clement contrasts Jewish calendrical observance with the new and spiritual worship practiced through Christ.
Clement’s characteristic treatment is allegorical and ethical: to him the true sabbath is principally cessation from sin.
Cyprian of Carthage, Letter to Fidus (c. AD 250), ch 4
Regarding the observance of the eighth day in the Jewish circumcision of the flesh, a sacrament was given beforehand in shadow and in usage; but when Christ came, it was fulfilled in truth. For because the eighth day, that is, the first day after the sabbath, was to be that on which the Lord should rise again, and should make us alive, and give us circumcision of the spirit, therefore the eighth day, that is, the first day after the sabbath, and the Lord’s day, went before in the figure; which figure ceased when by and by the truth came, and spiritual circumcision was given to us.
Cyprian likewise treats the sabbath as a historical and typological issue of Bible interpretation rather than as a pastoral issue.
The Lord’s Day
The Church has not replaced the sabbath day with Sunday. While the first day of the week in Greek is named kyriakē, i.e. the Lord’s (day), to this day the seventh day of the week is still named sabbato (and the preceding day is paraskevē, preparation.) This use comes from scripture, where in Revelation 1:10 (c. AD 96) Saint John writes, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (en tē kyriakē ēmera.)
Outside scripture, we find this use from very early times.
In the Didache (c. AD 70–100), Christians are exhorted, ““On the Lord’s [day] of the Lord (Kata kyriakē de kyriou), gather together and break bread.”
In the second-century Gospel of Peter, the Lord’s tomb is opened “in the night in which the Lord’s [day] dawned (tē de nykti ē epephōken ē kyriakē), when the soldiers were safeguarding [the tomb],” and again “at the dawn of the Lord’s [day],” (orthrou de tēs kyriakēs).
Dionysius of Corinth, in his second-century Letter to the Church of Rome, writes, “Today we have kept the holy Lord’s Day” (tēn sēmeron kyriakēn again ēmeran diēgagomen), and about the same time Melito of Sardis wrote a book titled, On the Lord’s [Day] (Peri kyriakēs).
The earliest use of “the Lord’s [Day]” occurs in the first century, either in the Revelation or in the Didache. By the second century this name is unambiguously used as the name of the first day of the week among Christians across a wide geographic area.
