Journal: Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies
Volume: JIRBS 05:1 (NA 2018)
Article: Interpretations of Sabbath Rest in the Early Church and Early Medieval Era
Author: Jon English Lee

JIRBS 5 (2018) p. 103

Interpretations of Sabbath Rest in the Early Church and Early Medieval Era

Jon English Lee^*

^* Jon English Lee, Ph.D., Systematic Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Pastor of Discipleship, Morningview Baptist Church, Montgomery, AL.

Evidence almost unanimously favors the Sunday (Lord’s Day) observance by the church since the time of the apostles.1 This essay will examine the theological rationale behind that observance throughout the first half millennium of the church. This study will demonstrate that though the theological foundation of Lord’s Day observance has changed in its emphasis over the life of the church, there exists a history of interpreting God’s rest in Genesis as prescriptive, even if the language of “creation ordinance” does not appear until the last couple hundred years.

Contrary to the claims of authors like Samuele Bacchiocchi, whose work will be examined below, Christians in the early church observed Sunday as the day of worship from the very beginning. Richard Bauckham summarizes the evidence nicely:

Sunday worship appears, when the evidence becomes available in the second century, as the universal Christian practice outside of Palestine. There is no trace whatsoever of any controversy as to whether Christians should worship on Sunday, and no record of any Christian group that did not worship on Sunday. This universality is most easily explained if Sunday worship was already the Christian custom before the Gentile mission, and spread throughout the expanding Gentile church with the Gentile mission. It is very difficult otherwise to see how such a practice could have been imposed universally and leave no hint of dissent and disagreement.2

JIRBS 5 (2018) p. 104

This section on the Sabbath in the early church demonstrates that, contra Bacchiocchi’s claim, Sunday observance was nearly universal from the beginning of the early church and that, while the terminology of a Christian Sabbath is not found, the idea of weekly Sabbath rest being a creation ordinance is inconsistent with the theology of many of the early church theologians.3

Pliny the Younger

While not an early church father, Pliny does offer one of the earliest extra-canonical testimonies of Christian worship practices. Pliny the Younger, a Latin author who was appointed a Roman consul by Emperor Trajan in AD 100, was also later the governor of the provinces of Pontus and Bithynia. In a letter written to the emperor between AD 111–113, Pliny wr...