Roman Catholic And Protestant Confessions about Sunday
From the Bible Sabbath Sentinel, used by permission
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The
vast majority of Christian churches today teach the observance of Sunday,
the first day of the week, as a time for rest and worship. Yet it is
generally known and freely admitted that the early Christians observed the
seventh day as the Sabbath. How did this change come about?
History
reveals that it was decades after the death of the apostles that a
politico-religious system repudiated the Sabbath of Scripture and
substituted the observance of the first day of the week. The following
quotations, all from Roman Catholic sources, freely acknowledge that there
is no Biblical authority for the observance of Sunday, that it was the
Roman Church that changed the Sabbath to the first day of the week.
In
the second portion of this booklet are quotations from Protestants.
Undoubtedly all of these noted clergymen, scholars, and writers kept
Sunday, but they all frankly admit that there is no Biblical authority for
a first-day sabbath.
ROMAN
CATHOLIC CONFESSIONS
James
Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, 88th ed., pp. 89.
“But you may read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and you will not
find a single line authorizing the sanctification of Sunday. The
Scriptures enforce the religious observance of Saturday, a day which we
never sanctify."
Stephen
Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism 3rd ed., p. 174. "Question: Have
you any other way of proving that the Church has power to institute
festivals of precept? Answer: Had she not such power, she could not have
done that in which all modern religionists agree with her-she could not
have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for
the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is
no Scriptural authority."
John
Laux, A Course in Religion for Catholic High Schools and Academies
(1 936), vol. 1, P. 51. "Some theologians have held that God likewise
directly determined the Sunday as the day of worship in the New Law, that
He Himself has explicitly substituted the Sunday for the Sabbath. But this
theory is now entirely abandoned. It is now commonly held that God simply
gave His Church the power to set aside whatever day or days she would deem
suitable as Holy Days. The Church chose Sunday, the first day of the week,
and in the course of time added other days as holy days."
Daniel
Ferres, ed., Manual of Christian Doctrine (1916), p. 67. "Question:
How prove you that the Church hath power to command feasts and holy days?
Answer. By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which
Protestants allow of, and therefore they fondly contradict themselves, by
keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the
same Church.'
James
Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (1877-1921), in a signed letter.
"Is Saturday the seventh day according to the Bible and the Ten
Commandments? I answer yes. Is Sunday the first day of the week and did
the Church change the seventh day - Saturday- for Sunday, the first day? I
answer yes. Did Christ change the day'? I answer no! Faithfully yours, J.
Card. Gibbons"
The
Catholic Mirror, official publication of James Cardinal Gibbons, Sept.
23,
1893.
"The Catholic Church, by virtue of her divine mission, changed the
day
from
Saturday to Sunday."
Catholic
Virginian Oct. 3, 1947, p. 9, art. "To Tell You the Truth."
"For example, nowhere in the Bible do we find that Christ or the
Apostles ordered that the Sabbath be changed from Saturday to Sunday. We
have the commandment of God given to Moses to keep holy the Sabbath day,
that is the 7th day of the week, Saturday. Today most Christians keep
Sunday because it has been revealed to us by the [Roman Catholic] church
outside the Bible."
Peter
Geiermann, C.S.S.R., The Converts Catechism of Catholic Doctrine
(1957),
p.
50.
"Question:
Which is the Sabbath day?
"Answer:
Saturday is the Sabbath day.
"Question:
Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?
"Answer.
We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church
transferred the solemnity from Saturday to Sunday."
Martin
J. Scott, Things Catholics Are Asked About (1927), p. 136.
"Nowhere in the Bible is it stated that worship should be changed
from Saturday to Sunday. Now the Church instituted, by God's authority,
Sunday as the day of worship. This same Church, by the same divine
authority, taught the doctrine of Purgatory long before the Bible was
made. We have, therefore, the same authority for Purgatory as we have for
Sunday."
Peter
R. Kraemer, Catholic Church Extension Society (1975), Chicago,
Illinois. "Regarding the change from the observance of the Jewish
Sabbath to the Christian
Sunday,
I wish to draw your attention to the facts: 1) That Protestants, who
accept the Bible as the only rule of faith and religion, should by all
means go back to the observance of the Sabbath. The fact that they do not,
but on the contrary observe the Sunday, stultifies them in the eyes of
every thinking man. 2) We Catholics do not accept the Bible as the only
rule of faith. Besides the Bible we have the living Church, the authority
of the Church, as a rule to guide us. We say, this Church, instituted by
Christ to teach and guide man through life, has the right to change the
ceremonial laws of the Old Testament and hence, we accept her change of
the Sabbath to Sunday. We frankly say, yes, the Church made this change,
made this law, as she made many other laws, for instance, the Friday
abstinence, the unmarried priesthood, the laws concerning mixed marriages,
the regulation of Catholic marriages and a thousand other laws.
It
is always somewhat laughable, to see the Protestant churches, in pulpit
and
legislation,
demand the observance of Sunday, of which there is nothing in their
Bible."
T.
Enright, C.S.S.R., in a lecture at Hartford, Kansas, Feb. 18, 1884.
"I have repeatedly offered $1,000 to anyone who can prove to me from
the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law
in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone. The Bible
says, 'Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.' The Catholic Church
says: 'No. By my divine power I abolish the Sabbath day and command you to
keep holy the first day of the week.' And lo! The entire civilized world
bows down in a reverent obedience to the command of the holy Catholic
Church."
PROTESTANT
CONFESSIONS
Protestant
theologians and preachers from a wide spectrum of denominations have been
quite candid in admitting that there is no Biblical authority for
observing Sunday as a sabbath.
Anglican/Episcopal
Isaac
Williams, Plain Sermons on the Catechism, vol. 1, pp. 334, 336.
"And where are we told in the Scriptures that we are to keep the
first day at all? We are commanded to keep the seventh; but we are nowhere
commanded to keep the first day. The reason why we keep the first day of
the week holy instead of the seventh is for the same reason that we
observe many other things, not because the Bible, but because the church
has enjoined it."
Canon
Eyton, The Ten Commandments, pp. 52, 63, 65. "There is no
word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday
into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters. The observance of Ash
Wednesday or Lent stands exactly on the same footing as the observance of
Sunday."
Bishop
Seymour, Why We Keep Sunday. We have made the change from the
seventh day to the first day, from Saturday to Sunday, on the authority of
the one holy Catholic Church."
Baptist
Dr.
Edward T. Hiscox, a paper read before a New York ministers' conference,
Nov.
13,
1893, reported in New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893. "There was
and is a commandment to keep holy the Sabbath day, but that Sabbath day
was not Sunday. It will be said, however, and with some show of triumph,
that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the
week. Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New
Testament absolutely not. To me it seems unaccountable that Jesus, during
three years' intercourse with His disciples, often conversing with them
upon the Sabbath question never alluded to any transference of the day;
also, that during forty days of His resurrection life, no such thing was
intimated. Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in
early Christian history. But what a pity it comes branded with the mark of
paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, adopted and
sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to
Protestantism!"
William
Owen Carver, The Lord's Day in Our Day, p. 49. "There was
never any formal or authoritative change from the Jewish seventh-day
Sabbath to the Christian first-day observance."
Congregationalist
Dr.
R. W. Dale, The Ten Commandments (New York: Eaton & Mains), p.
127-129. "It is quite clear that however rigidly or devotedly we may
spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath. 'The Sabbath was founded on
a specific Divine command. We can plead no such command for the obligation
to observe Sunday. There is not a single sentence in the New Testament to
suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of
Sunday."
Timothy
Dwight, Theology: Explained and Defended (1823), Ser. 107, vol. 3,
p. 258.
"The Christian Sabbath [Sunday] is not in the Scriptures, and was not
by the
primitive Church called the Sabbath."
Disciples
of Christ
Alexander
Campbell, The Christian Baptist, Feb. 2, 1824, vol. 1. no. 7, p.
164. "'But,' say some, 'it was changed from the seventh to the first
day.' Where? when? and by whom? No man can tell. No - it never was
changed, nor could it be, unless creation was to be gone through again:
for the reason assigned must be changed before the observance, or respect
to the reason, can be changed! It is all old wives' fables to talk of the
change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day. If it be changed,
it was that august personage changed it who changes times and laws ex
officio - I think his name is Doctor Antichrist.' First Day Observance,
pp. 17, 19. "The first day of the week is commonly called the
Sabbath. This is a mistake. The Sabbath of the Bible was the day just
preceding the first day of the week. The first day of the week is never
called the Sabbath anywhere in the entire Scriptures. It is also an error
to talk about the change of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. There is
not in any place in the Bible any intimation of such a change."
Lutheran
The
Sunday Problem,
a study book of the United Lutheran Church (1923), p. 36. "We have
seen how gradually the impression of the Jewish sabbath faded from the
mind of the Christian Church, and how completely the newer thought
underlying the observance of the first day took possession of the church.
We have seen that the Christians of the first three centuries never
confused one with the other, but for a time celebrated both."
Augsburg
Confession of Faith
art. 28; written by Melanchthon, approved by Martin Luther, 1530; as
published in The Book of Concord of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
Henry Jacobs, ed. (1 91 1), p. 63. "They [Roman Catholics] refer to
the Sabbath Day, as having been changed into the Lord's Day, contrary to
the Decalogue, as it seems. Neither is there any example whereof they make
more than concerning the changing of the Sabbath Day. Great, say they, is
the power of the Church, since it has dispensed with one of the Ten
Commandments!"
Dr.
Augustus Neander, The History of the Christian Religion and Church
Henry
John
Rose, tr. (1843), p. 186. "The festival of Sunday, like all other
festivals, was always only a human ordinance, and it was far from the
intentions of the apostles to establish a Divine command in this respect,
far from them, and from the early apostolic Church, to transfer the laws
of the Sabbath to Sunday."
John
Theodore Mueller, Sabbath or Sunday, pp. 15, 16. "But they err
in teaching that Sunday has taken the place of the Old Testament Sabbath
and therefore must be kept as the seventh day had to be kept by the
children of Israel. These churches err in their teaching, for Scripture
has in no way ordained the first day of the week in place of the Sabbath.
There is simply no law in the New Testament to that effect."
Methodist
Harris
Franklin Rall, Christian Advocate, July 2, 1942, p. 26. "Take
the matter of Sunday. There are indications in the New Testament as to how
the church came to keep the first day of the week as its day of worship,
but there is no passage telling Christians to keep that day, or to
transfer the Jewish Sabbath to that day."
John
Wesley, The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., John Emory, ed.
(New York: Eaton & Mains), Sermon 25, vol. 1, p. 221. "But, the
moral law contained in the ten commandments, and enforced by the prophets,
he [Christ] did not take away. It was not the design of his coming to
revoke any part of this. This is a law which never can be broken. Every
part of this law must remain in force upon all mankind, and in all ages;
as not depending either on time or place, or any other circumstances
liable to change, but on the nature of God and the nature of man, and
their unchangeable relation to each other."
Dwight
L. Moody
D.
L. Moody, Weighed and Wanting (Fleming H. Revell Co.: New York),
pp. 47, 48. The Sabbath was binding in Eden, and it has been in force ever
since. This fourth commandment begins with the word 'remember,' showing
that the Sabbath already existed when God Wrote the law on the tables of
stone at Sinai. How can men claim that this one commandment has been done
away with when they will admit that the other nine are still
binding?"
Presbyterian
T.
C. Blake, D.D., Theology Condensed, pp.474, 475. "The Sabbath
is a part of the decalogue - the Ten Commandments. This alone forever
settles the question as to the perpetuity of the institution. Until,
therefore, it can be shown that the whole moral law has been repealed, the
Sabbath will stand. The teaching of Christ confirms the perpetuity of the
Sabbath."
For
further information -
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Bible Sabbath Association offers a wide variety of publications about the
Sabbath.
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Bible Sabbath Association
THE
BIBLE SABBATH ASSOCIATION established 1945
Dedicated
to
I.
sharing the Sabbath as one of the first of God's great gifts to mankind;
II.
promoting communication, understanding, and cooperation among all
seventh-day Christians.
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