Notes on the Sabbath

This is an addendum to a major piece I was writing from 2020-2022, Re-Examining The Protestant Work Ethic. The contents here were in line with the themes explored there, but really warrant its own separate train of discussion.

In line with the writing I have been doing on work and the division of time, we have the Sabbath, a theological stumbling block for the modern church. You’d expect that with a topic which is so seldom delved into by most Christians, that it’s either an issue of minor importance or one that has long been settled. This isn’t the case: there currently remains no real consensus on how to interpret the Fourth Commandment despite how frequently it is invoked in Scripture.

Throughout its history, the Church has failed to provide a satisfactory answer to the essence of the Sabbath and its relationship to the Lord’s Day. In its early years, the Church avoided the matter of religious days entirely as to appease pagan converts.

It’s not entirely clear how Sunday was celebrated in the very early centuries of church history nor how in that period Sabbath and its relationship to the Lord’s Day was viewed. There can be no doubt, however, concerning the state of affairs that began to emerge in the fifth century…with the issuance of the Edict of Milan (AD 313), was the inclusion of many within the ranks of the faithful for whom professing Christian faith was little more than empty words. The erstwhile pagan now became the nominal Christian, with predictable results… Among the concessions the church made to the pagan world about it was a failure to take a clearly defined stand on the matter of festivals and religious holidays. Such celebrations had played an important part in pagan worship. (Gaffin 1998, 15)

As we moved into the medieval era, the matter began to take upon a ultra-legalistic (and often arbitrary) nature. One could dress meat but not wash dishes. One could travel to a shrine but not return from it. This is another matter in which one would not be wrong to draw parallels between the practices of the Pharisees and that of the medieval Catholic Church.

As the medieval period progressed, the true meaning of the Lord’s Day almost disappeared, and the complexion of its celebration became increasingly colored by the legalistic system it was a part… The situation however, continued to intensify as time passed. As the church hierarchy strengthened its domination over the life of the individual, so did the prescriptions regarding conduct on the Lord’s day increased both in number and in minuteness… in the final analysis all these regulations are part of a sacramental system, where observing them was believed to have a part in determining an individual’s state of grace. (Gaffin 1998, 17-19)

As the Reformation itself marked a massive re-examination of all aspects of Christian doctrine, it is not surprising that this would apply to the Sabbath too. But the scope of their project meant that they often couldn’t give their full focus to investigating this question, not when much more urgent matters of doctrine had to be hashed out.

It may be difficult for Christians today to appreciate fully the spiritual and intellectual turmoil the Reformers experienced in breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, however, we can understand how those called to spend their lives in dispelling centuries-long darkness that had engulfed truths that are the indispensable life source of Christianity, would not likely be as concerned with questions related primarily to a specific and less central aspect of piety.

For Calvin, forced to spend an entire lifetime contending for a fully gracious salvation and the Scriptures as our sole authority in matters of doctrine and practice, the Sabbath question never recieved the attention it might have, nor was it subject to the full force of his exegetical powers. In short (and at the risk of suggesting an ultimately false disjunction), his dominating preoccupation was gospel, not law. (Gaffin 1998, 144)

Through the course of the Reformation, we saw a variety of views pop up from groups such as the Puritans and the Anabaptists. Most of these can be broken down into one of two camps, however: the Sabbatarians and the non-Sabbatarians. The debate really manifests itself as a debate on Law: the Sabbatarians held that because Christ came to fulfill the Law that it still applied, but

I think what’s missing from a lot of these discussions though is the question of why. The Sabbatarian arguments repeatedly come back to invoking the commands outlined in Scripture, and are often rooted in larger debates regarding covenants and the Law in the abstract. These are important discussions to have, but what’s missing from the discussion is the Sabbath itself. It does not make sense to view the Sabbath as merely a stand-in for broader discussions of Law, when Scripture clearly affords it a much more significant place.

To be fair to the Reformers though, that’s not to say there hasn’t been any genuine discussion. Both Luther and Calvin connected this to some concept of rest, both in the physical and spiritual sense. Calvin took it a step further, arguing that it was primarily a rest from the works of sin, and that this could be tied to the Great Commandment. But, as pointed out subsequent theologians such as Jonathan Edwards, this doesn’t really explain the position in Scripture that the Sabbath is given.

For Calvin, spiritual rest is ceasing from sin, and the positive side of such cessation is loving “the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… and… your neighbor as yourself”. But according to the uniform teaching of Scripture, the… particular elements of the Decalogue are related to Christ’s love summary as a species to a genus, specific aspects to an integrating whole.

Consequently, to attribute any one of the ten commandments, the comprehensive force that properly belongs to Christ’s summary deprives that particular commandment of its place in the Decalogue… The notion of spiritual rest he finds there gives to it a basic force it cannot have biblically; a part of the Decalogue recieves the meaning divinly intended for the whole. Johnathan Edwards, for one, already grasped this point. In commenting on Calvin’s views, he says, “And if it stands in force now only as signifying a spiritual, Christian rest, and holy behaviors at all times, it doth not remain as one of the ten commands but a summary of all the commands.” (Gaffin 1998, 145)

The other items of the Decalogue we are able to understand the deeper meaning behind without sacrificing their specificity. Take the Second Commandment for example. Countless commentaries have been penned regarding the profound theological significance of this command, and the discussion often strikes to the essence of what a “graven image” is. From understanding this command we get an appreciation for the invisible God and how the scope of his being is incapable of being contained in any one image.

We see this applied in Scripture too; during Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 5:21-27) what do we see? He takes these prohibitions in the Decalogue, such as those pertaining to murder and adultery, and fulfills them by investigating the nature of each command. One cannot understand the sin of adultery without understanding this essence of lust, murder without anger.

We must not imagine Christ to be a new legislator, who adds any thing to the eternal righteousness of his Father. We must listen to him as a faithful expounder, that we may know what is the nature of the law, what is its object, and what is its extent. It now remains for us to see, what Christ condemns in the Pharisees, and in what respect his interpretation of it differs from their glosses. The amount of it is, that they had changed the doctrine of the law into a political order, and had made obedience to it to consist entirely in the performance of outward duties.

Hence it came, that he who had not slain a man with his hand was pronounced to be free from the guilt of murder, and he who had not polluted his body by adultery was supposed to be pure and chaste before God. This was an intolerable profanation of the law: for it is certain, that Moses everywhere demands the spiritual worship of God. From the very nature of the law we must conclude, that God, who gave it by the hand of Moses, spoke to the hearts, as well as to the hands and to the eyes. (Calvin’s Commentary on Matthew 5:21)

It only makes sense to approach the Fourth Commandment with this same mentality too. This is one of those areas where I believe it is useful to look towards Jewish theology to get an understanding of the original purpose and character of the Sabbath. The main work I’m going to be looking at for this sort of dialogue is The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

(It is worth noting that my general instinct is to caution against this sort of Judeo-Christian analysis. The existence of Christ requires one to view the old Scriptures in a radically different light than had he not been the Son of God. Yes, Christ came to fulfill the Law, but when we speak of fulfillment (πληρόω), or completion, we admit the incompleteness of what came before. It’s a concept that is fundamentally retrospective in its impact. We see this notion of Christ as an “inflection point” throughout Scripture (Romans 5:9-11, Romans 8:1-4, Hebrews 6:13-20). However, it is still important to understand the Law to make sense of how it is fulfilled. When the Church insufficiently fails to address certain matters pertaining to matters of the Law, I do believe it is worthwhile to engage in dialogue to re-examine foundations, as long as the utmost caution is exercised. One key example of this is the Reformers adopting the Jewish canon of the Old Testament, discarding the Apocrypha. I don’t see sufficient reason to doubt that modern-day Jews are unable to testify to the tradition of the Sabbath and its character.)

So, before we can even get to the question of whether or not the Sabbath is binding to Christians, we have to first understand what the Sabbath is. But understanding the Sabbath in essence requires that we understand how God (and by extension the day) relates to the concepts of space and time. I’ve selected out some passages to help get these concepts across:

Even religions are frequently dominated by the notion that the deity resides in space, within particular localities like mountains, forests, trees or stones, which are, therefore, singled out as holy places; the deity is bound to a particular land; holiness a quality associated with things of space, and the primary question is: Where is the god? There is much enthusiasm for the idea that God is present in the universe, but that idea is taken to mean His pres­ence in space rather than in time, in nature rather than in history; as if He were a thing, not a spirit. (Heschel 1951, 4)

The Bible is more concerned with time than with space. It sees the world in the dimension of time. It pays more attention to generations, to events, than to countries, to things; it is more concerned with history than with geography. To understand the teaching of the Bible, one must accept its premise that time has a meaning for life which is at least equal to that of space; that time has a significance and sovereignty of its own.

…Pass­over, originally a spring festival, became a celebration of the exodus from Egypt; the Feast of Weeks, an old harvest festival at the end of the wheat harvest (hag ha­kazir, Exodus 23:16; 34:22), became the celebration of the day on which the Torah was given at Sinai; the Feast of the Booths, an old festival of vintage (hag ha­asif, Ex. 23:16), commemorates the dwelling of the Israelites in booths during their sojourn in the wilderness (Leviticus 23:42f.). To Israel the unique events of historic time were spiritually more significant than the repetitive processes in the cycle of nature, even though physical sustenance depended on the latter. While the deities of other peoples were associated with places or things, the God of Israel was the God of events: the Redeemer from slavery, the Revealer of the Torah, manifesting Himself in events of history rather than in things or places. Thus, the faith in the unembodied, in the unimaginable was born.

Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time. Unlike the space-minded man to whom time is unvaried, iterative, homogeneous, to whom all hours are alike, qualitiless, empty shells, the Bible senses the diversified character of time. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. (Heschel 1951, 7-8)

And it’s from here that we begin to get an understanding of what this “essence” I spoke of earlier could be. Sabbath was not merely a “shall not” to work, but something to be positively observed and celebrated (Exodus 31:12-17). It served as a reminder to the Israelites that they and their God are related through time. That by experiencing the moment in itself (as opposed to experiencing a Time that is subordinated to Space), the individual is reminded of what lies in Eternity.

Thus the essence of the Sabbath is completely detached from the world of space. The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. When the Romans met the Jews and noticed their strict adherence to the law of abstaining from labor on the Sabbath, their only reaction was contempt. (Heschel 1951, 10)

As discussed earlier, keeping the Law does not mean to simply abstain from an activity in a purely legal sense, but rather instead realize a greater good that the command embodies. By upholding the Sixth Commandment, we affirm the value of human life. The negation of adultery in the Seventh is implicitly an affirmation of love and commitment in marriage. Even the Law as a whole is explicitly presented as an embodiment of the broader concept of Love (1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Matthew 22:37-40). This is the mistake the Pharisees made with their own interpretation of the Sabbath, where they transformed the practice into a political order. Outward expression was their primary concern, rather than the essence, what it actually meant for man.

The glorification of the day, the insistence upon strict observance, did not, however, lead the rabbis to a deification of the law. “The Sabbath is given unto you, not you unto the Sabbath.” The ancient rabbis knew that excessive piety may endanger the fulfilment of the essence of the law.”

…To observe the seventh day does not mean merely to obey or to conform to the strictness of a divine com­mand. To observe is to celebrate the creation of the world and to create the seventh day all over again, the majesty of holiness in time, “a day of rest, a day of freedom,” a day which is like “a lord and king of all other days,” a lord and king in the commonwealth of time. (Heschel 1951, 17-20)

This ties back into the larger point of my essay when we consider how much of this command is intrinsically tied to these concepts of labor and time. The language used to discuss the Sabbath very much echoes the language used in these deconstructions of work.

To the biblical mind, however, labor is the means toward an end, and the Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, is not for the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for the forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work. “Last in creation, first in intention,” the Sabbath is “the end of the creation of heaven and earth.” The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living. (Heschel 1951, 14)

When we then reflect back on our industrial society, one in which every hour is spent either working, resting from work, or drowning ourselves in the products of our work; one in which the scale of our industry exists for the soul purpose of finding dominion over space, it has very grim implications. The modern “weekend” may happen to overlap with the Sabbath and the Lord’s Day, but its purpose very transparently goes beyond that. Otherwise there would be no need for the secular world to observe this. The weekend’s primary purpose in our society is to serve as that rest from labor, but is that okay? Should we remain content with this? What are we to make of the weekday then? Questions have been raised by other Jewish thinkers such as Buber and Kaufmann as they grappled with these dilemmas in modern life.

Buber succeeds in endowing the social sphere with a religious dimension. Where other critics of religion tend to take away the sabbath and leave us with a life of weekdays, Buber attacks the dichotomy that condemns men to lives that are at least six-sevenths drab.

While man cannot live in a continual sabbath, he should not resign himself to a flat two-dimensional life from which he escapes on rare occasions. The place of the sacred is not a house of God, no church, synagogue, or seminary, nor one day in seven, and the span of the sacred is much shorter than twenty-four hours. The sabbath is every day, several times a day. (Buber 1970, 30)

I largely agree with Kaufmann’s sentiment here, but with the stipulation, that — coming from the Christian perspective — it is not just possible, but necessary to strive towards this so-called “continual Sabbath”. If the Sabbath represents a temple of time, a holy moment sanctified by God, then what are we to make of it once that temple’s veil is torn? The veil we see referenced in Matthew 27 represented a separation between man and God, a place set apart for the Lord to dwell. With its tearing, Christ brings together what was once separate.

Christ, the true and everlasting Priest, having abolished the figures of the law, opened up for us by his blood the way to the heavenly sanctuary, that we may no longer stand at a distance within the porch, but may freely advance into the presence of God. For so long as the shadowy worship lasted, (287) a veil was hung up before the earthly sanctuary, in order to keep the people not only from entering but from seeing it, (Exodus 26:33; 2 Chronicles 3:14.) Now Christ, by blotting out the handwriting which was opposed to us, (Colossians 2:14,) removed every obstruction, that, relying on him as Mediator, we may all be a royal priesthood, (1 Peter 2:9.) Thus the rending of the veil was not only an abrogation of the ceremonies which existed under the law, but was, in some respects, an opening of heaven, that God may now invite the members of his Son to approach him with familiarity. (Calvin’s Commentary on Matthew 27:51)

In this sense, I’d argue the “continual Sabbath” represents the fulfillment of this law. The completion is attained by taking the day and transposing it onto the entire week. The individual stands before God not as a duality of a working-man and a Sabbath-man, but in a unified existence. When Paul instructs us to do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), it means all; he doesn’t make exception for meals, so why should he for work? The totality of our existence — even our routines, struggles, and sufferings — constitute the canvas against which our continual relationship with our Creator manifests.

With this new light, we can appreciate what the Reformers were able to grasp: just as with the other tenets of the Law, Christ has not abrogated, but rather instead elevated the Sabbath.

Still there can be no doubt, that, on the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ, the ceremonial part of the commandment was abolished. He is the truth, at whose presence all the emblems vanish; the body, at the sight of which the shadows disappear. He, I say, is the true completion of the sabbath: “We are buried with him by baptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life,” (Rom. 6:4). Hence, as the Apostle elsewhere says, “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holiday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days; which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ,” (Col. 2:16, 17); meaning by body the whole essence of the truth, as is well explained in that passage. This is not contented with one day, but requires the whole course of our lives, until being completely dead to ourselves, we are filled with the life of God. Christians, therefore, should have nothing to do with a superstitious observance of days. (Calvin 1536, 2:8:48)

We cannot settle for the “six-sevenths drab”; if this world continues to drag our attention away from the Almighty, to beat people down until they can only conceive the mundane, then it must be revolted against. While even in the context of sinful societies God can make use of our labors, it does not relieve us of our responsibility to resistance.