Paganism Surviving in Christianity

by Abram Herbert Lewis

Thus the law and the gospel are in harmony, and teach that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”

But some will say, “Christ and His Apostles did all this as Jews, simply.” If this be true, then Christ lived and taught simply as a Jew and not as the Saviour of the world. On the contrary, He was at war with the false and extravagant notions of Judaism concerning questions of truth and duty. If Christ were not a “Christian,” but a “Jew,” what becomes of the system which He taught? If His first followers, who perilled all for Him and sealed their faith with their blood, were only Jews, or worse, were dissemblers, doing that which Christians ought not to do, for sake of policy, where shall Christians be found? The assumption dies of its own inconsistency. More than this, New Testament history repeatedly states that the Greeks were taught on the Sabbath the same as the Jews; and in those churches where the Greek element predominated there is no trace of any different teaching or custom on this point. The Jewish Christians kept up their national institutions, for a time, such as circumcision and the passover, while all Christians accepted the Sabbath as a part of the law of God. The popular outcry against the Sabbath as “Jewish” is unscriptural. Christ was in all respects, as regards nationality, a Jew. So were all the writers of the Old Testament, and all the writers of the New Testament. God has given the world no word of inspiration in the Bible, from Gentile pen, or Gentile lips. Is the Bible therefore “Jewish”? The Sabbath, if possible, is less Jewish than the Bible. It had its beginning long before a Jew was born. It is God’s day marked by His own example, and sanctified by His blessing, for the race of man, beginning when the race began, and can end only when the race shall cease to exist. Christ recognized it under the Gospel as He recognized each of the other eternal laws with which it is associated in the Decalogue; recognized them as the everlasting words of His Father, whose law He came to magnify and fulfil. It is manifestly unjust and unchristian to attempt to thrust out and stigmatize any part of God’s truth as “Jewish,” when all of God’s promises and all Bible truths have come to us through the Hebrew nation.[166]

As we were compelled to go outside the Bible to find the influences which undermined the Decalogue and the Sabbath, so we must seek for the origin of Sunday observance outside of that book. We find the first mention of such observance, and of reasons therefor, in the same author, Justin, who we have seen was the first to formulate the anti-law and anti-Sabbath doctrines which have already been examined.[167]

This earliest reference to Sunday observance is found in Justin’s Apology as follows:

“On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the Country, gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits; then when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread, and wine, and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows, and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”[168]

There is nothing scriptural in the reasons given by Justin; the first is purely fanciful, and is in accord with the prevailing gnostic speculations of those times. His statement that Christ was crucified on Friday is the beginning of a popular error, which has come down, not unchallenged, but largely uninvestigated. Some writers claim that the last clause intends to state that Christ taught His disciples when He first appeared to them, what Justin had written concerning the Sunday; but one has only to read Justin’s words to see how entirely unfounded such a claim is. At all events, there is not a word in Scripture to support the reasons adduced by Justin for Sunday observance.

It is important that the reader note carefully what sort of Sunday observance Justin describes. Laying aside all “suppositions,” and “inferences,” and ex-post-facto conclusions, we learn from him that at the middle of the second century a form of religious service was held on Sunday. But it is equally evident that there was no sabbatic regard for the day. Sir William Domville summarizes the case as follows:

“This inference appears irresistible when we further consider that Justin, in this part of his Apology, is professedly intending to describe the mode in which Christians observed the Sunday.... He evidently intends to give all information requisite to an accurate knowledge of the subject he treats upon. He is even so particular as to tell the Emperor why the Sunday was observed; and he does, in fact, specify every active duty belonging to the day, the Scripture reading, the exhortation, the public prayer, the Sacrament, and the alms-giving: why then should he not also inform the Emperor of the one inactive duty of the day, the duty of abstaining from doing in it any manner of work? The Emperor well knew that such abstinence was the custom of all his Jewish subjects on the Saturday (die Saturni), and could readily have understood it to be the custom of his Christian subjects on the Sunday (die Solis, as Justin calls it in his Apology), and, therefore, if such was the custom of Christians in Justin’s time, his description of their Sunday duties was essentially defective. It is not, however, at all probable that he would intend to omit noticing so important a characteristic of the day, as the Sabbatical observance of it, if it was in fact Sabbatically observed. But even were it probable he should intend to omit all mention of it in his Apology to the Emperor, it would be impossible to imagine any sufficient cause for his remaining silent on the subject in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew; and this whether the Dialogue was real or imaginary, for if the latter, Justin would still, as Dr. Lardner has observed, ‘choose to write in character.’... The testimony of Justin, therefore, proves most clearly two facts of great importance in the Sabbath controversy: the one, that the Christians in his time observed the Sunday as a prayer day; the other, that they did not observe it as a Sabbath-day.”[169]

Such is the summary of the case at the year 150 A.D. No-Sabbathism and a form of Sunday observance were born at the same time. Trained in heathen philosophies until manhood, Justin accepted Christianity as a better philosophy than he had before found. Such a man and those like him could scarcely do other than build a system quite unlike apostolic Christianity. That which they did build was a paganized rather than an apostolic type.