After an intensive study of the Scriptures and church history, I came up with the following conclusions about the Sabbath.
1. Nearly the entire Bible and Judaeo-Christian history recorded there point to a seventh-day observance.
2. Though there is no expressed command to change from one day to another, the early church assumed that Jesus' resurrection, Pentecost, and a statement of Paul pointed to a new day of rest as well as a new day of celebration.
3. Ignoring the ages-old tradition of the Jewish prophets and apostles, the post-apostolic church allowed a hybrid day to develop, a day in almost every respect patterned after the Jewish Sabbath, but, in animosity against the Jews, not allowed to be on their day. The new Sabbath would be better. It would be on the day of the Sun.
4. Fed by many Imperial and Papal decrees over the centuries, first-day observance was cemented into the minds of believers for all times as having been established by God when in fact it was established by the official church. See how it is worded in Roman Catholic canon law for the "faithful" of that group: (1985 , Paulist Press, p. 853)
"Sunday is the day on which the paschal mystery is celebrated in light of the apostolic tradition and is to be observed as the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church..." This tradition is further explained thus: "By a tradition handed down from the apostles [by which here they mean a practice, not a statement] , which took its origin from the very day of Christ's resurrection, the Church celebrates the paschal mystery every eighth day, which day is appropriately called the Lord's Day or Sunday [but by whom? and by what authority except its own?] For on this day Christ's faithful are bound to come together into one place... The Lord's Day is the original feast day, and it should be proposed to the faithful and taught to them so that it may become in fact a day of joy and of freedom from work."
Allow me also to paraphrase from Sadlier's Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, #347-349 : "The Sabbath is at the heart of Israel's law... but for us a new day has dawned: the day of Christ's resurrection... the 'eighth day'
begins the new creation..." The argument is made that the creation is less important than redemption. With this we agree, while seeing the same pattern in both events, namely, rest following and preceding a great work of God.
And in the same work, #2168-2190, there is a quotation from Justin, I, Apol 67, "We all gather on the day of the sun, for it is the first day when God, separating matter from darkness, made the world, and in this same day Jesus Christ our Saviour, rose from the dead." Over and over, proof of a day of rest is offered by citing monumental work! The Sabbath is to celebrate the end of work, yea, no work at all, not the beginning of work.
Again on 2175, "In Christ's Passover, Sunday fulfills the spiritual truth of the Jewish Sabbath." There you have it. Rome speaketh. But on what authority? Her own.
More statements of justification in #2176: "The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship 'as a sign of his universal beneficence to all.' Sunday worship fulfills the moral command of the Old Covenant, taking up its rhythm and spirit in the weekly celebration of the Creator and Redeemer of His people.
Here the switch is actually made from seventh to first day. The first day becomes the new Sabbath, the new holy day. To this we must object. Worship can take place at any time of any day by the Spirit, just as Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4 of the absence of geographical boundaries for a true worshiper. I know of no day of worship given us by New testament writers. Worship is in the Spirit. But as to the day of rest, there is no reason to believe that the original command to His people has been changed by any event of the first century. Surely the rhythm of the weekly celebration cannot be changed by an edict from man. God blessed the seventh day, and it is blessed until God un-blesses it.
In 2177, "The Sunday celebration of the Lord's Day and his Eucharist is at the heart of the Church's life. Sunday is the day on which the paschal mystery is celebrated in light of the apostolic tradition and is to be observed as the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church."
Now it is more than rest. It is enforced rest. Soon, it will be "Rest or die!" Yet somehow this is supposed to be different than and better than the Jewish Sabbath?
Finally, in 2190, a summary: "The Sabbath, which represented the completion of the first creation, has been replaced by Sunday which recalls the new creation inaugurated by the resurrection of Christ." And most Protestants agree!
I trust I have not created a dilemma for anyone. But it seems to me that Sunday observance, in its present form, embodying not only a day to meet, but a day of enforced rest, was created not in Scripture, but in the Vatican.
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