Sunday is the Lord's Day--Interesting Random Facts
So, given the fact that throughout the Bible, the Sabbath is supposed to be on Saturday, why do we celebrate it on Sunday?
My 8th grade Bible teacher told us that the Church moved it to Sunday because Jesus rose again on a Sunday.
But I recently got into a discussion with a 7th Day Adventist about it. And I began to think that the explanation my 8th grade Bible teacher gave us was probably a bit simplistic. I mean, what was the history of this decision? When were the church councils? What was the debate?
(And funny, I thought, that I had never been intellectually curious about this before. But a lot of things are like that, aren't they? You can go for years without thinking about something, and then suddenly get curious about it one day.)
My 7th Day Adventist friend told us that the whole reason the Catholic Church moved it to Sunday in the first place was because they were trying to co-opt the Roman day of Sun worship. (Sunday was also the Sun Day in the classical Roman calendar as well.) This actually sounds plausible enough. The early church co-opted a number of ancient pagan holidays and rituals. (Easter and Christmas were both former pagan holidays that the Church co-opted, for example).
According to Wikipedia, no one really knows when or why the early Church switched the Lord's Day to Sunday. It was just one of those things that got established somewhere in early Christian tradition, and then people have been guessing about the reason ever since. The theory about Jesus rising from the dead on Sunday is one plausible explanation. But the theory of trying to co-opt the Sun worship day is also plausible, and apparently Constantine's edict officially moving the Lord's Day to Sunday was also influenced by Pagan Sun Worship.
Either way, it is an odd Church tradition that is explicitly in conflict with numerous Biblical texts both in the Old Testament and the New Testament.
I mean, sure, Christianity broke with Judaism on any number of traditions. But usually there is some scripture in the New Testament that explicitly justifies that break. We don't get circumcised anymore because Paul wrote in the New Testament that gentiles no longer have to get circumcised. We don't keep Kosher laws anymore because Peter had a vision in the book of Acts that he could eat unclean meat.
But the day of rest on Sunday? There is nothing in the Old or New Testament to justify this. (Jesus and Paul both kept the traditional Sabbath day.) And there is tons of stuff in the Bible about remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy. Like, it's a really, really big reoccurring theme throughout the Bible. And also seems to be implicitly supported in the New Testament by the respect Jesus and Paul give to the Sabbath. So.... kind of strange that the early Church just disregarded it for some unknown reason, right?
Bonus Interesting Random Fact
...Speaking of 7th Day Adventists, there is a lot of interesting stuff on Wikipedia about 7th Day Adventists. Check out this whole long article on "The Great Disappointment" about what happened when Jesus did not return on October 22, 1844.
Sunday, June 09, 2019
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Great find on "The Great Disappointment." Curious how it captured the imagination of the larger public, eh? Mostly resentment ("tarred and feathered" in Toronto -- yikes) but also inspirationally (the Bahá'ís -- who knew?). Thanks for the link.
Yeah, Wikipedia is great, huh? Perfect catnip for people like us.
I also thought the whole discussion about True Believer Syndrome was interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Disappointment#Other_views
The main article about 7th Day Adventist Church has any number of fascinating tidbits in it as well. For example, I was surprised to learn they were actually formed near my neck of the woods, in Battle Creek Michigan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church
Also, this from the same article:
Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump attacked his opponent Ben Carson's Adventist faith during the 2016 GOP primaries. Trump told his supporters, "I'm Presbyterian; boy, that's down the middle of the road...I mean, Seventh-day Adventist? I don't know about that. I just don't know about it."
Sez the prez who knows SFA about Presbyterianism. Yeesh.
A student teacher in my Grade 9 year made mention of his being 7DA. He was a sweetly enthusiastic young guy, so I've tended to view the religion favourably thanks to him.
And I was musing the other day that it couldn't be that hard to convert to LDS material. They've always been an appealing bunch, just for doing a better job than most when it comes to looking after their own.
I wonder if anyone's caught up with the slobs who fell for Harold Camping's proclamation? It's been, what, 10 years? I wonder how they've been coping?
The friend I mentioned above was also a very friendly person.
Growing up mainstream protestant, I was taught that these other branches of Christianity were a bunch of kooks. But it's interesting how reasonable a lot of their beliefs are.
I wrote this up about my conversations with Jehovah's witnesses back in 2007.
https://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2007/12/jehovahs-witnesses-and-me.html
Their ideas about the Trinity, and about Hell, actually seemed more reasonable than mainstream Christianity.
Likewise, 7th Day Adventists seem to have more Biblical support for their idea of the Sabbath being on the traditional Sabbath day.
...But, I think both of these religions actually have their crazy sides once you get into some of the other beliefs.
LDS, by contrast, strikes me as just crazy all the way through. There's no part of LDS that I think is more reasonable than traditional Christianity. But the people are much nicer. I've never met a Mormon that wasn't super nice.
I was just looking Harold Camping up just now. Interesting. I somehow missed that whole thing.
"Just crazy all the way through" got my hackles up, so I meditated on the matter a bit longer. Could LDS be any crazier than, say, Orthodox Judaism, another religion (with clothes, dietary restraints, etc) that appeals to me?
Then I recalled an old blog-buddy who'd been baptized LDS after chasing a hot Mormon girl just a little too far. And, yes, his account makes it sound like something I would have a difficult time accommodating.
I probably phrased myself poorly. I don't think the intellectual theological foundation of Mormonism is completely crazy, but I don't think Mormon communities themselves are crazy. Their day to day life is probably just as normal as everyone else's. There's probably an interesting discussion to be had about the disconnect between irrational theology that is subscribed to by otherwise rational people--if we were to continue down this thread. I think it's more extreme in Mormonism, but it's probably true to some extent in all religions.
But, yeah, the intellectual foundation of Mormonism is just sheer crazy bonkers in my opinion. Judaism, despite it's weird prohibitions, has some plausible claim to historical tradition. At least some of what is in the Old Testament is vouched for by history and archaeology. That's more than you can say for anything in the book of Mormon.
Thanks for the link, by the way.
I've read some of his blog before, through your influence, but hadn't read that post.
In addition to debating Jehovah's Witnesses in Japan, I also spent some time debating Mormons. They used the exact same line on me. "look into your heart, and it will tell you if it's true."
A few years later, I was talking to an ex-Mormon, who told me that that's the line the Church trained them with. They were specifically trained to avoid getting trapped in any intellectual discussion about the merits of their faith, and trained always to re-direct the conversation back to what you felt in your heart.
Another interesting discussion thread--Perhaps an interesting discussion to be had at some point about the reliability of what people feel in their hearts when it comes to deciding religious truths.
"Deciding religious truths" -- or truths of any variety, really. "Look into your heart" is not-bad advice, by and large -- assuming, of course, that you aren't utterly set upon by forces intent to bending your will to their purposes. And brother, are there ever a host of those.
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