Monday, May 21, 2007

Help with the Sabbath (or the Lord's Day)

I am confused about this Christian Sabbath thing. My thing is this (a few things): I think that it is pretty clear that the Ten Commandments are binding for Christians because of the way that the new testament uses them and assumes that they are binding on Christians. However, it seems that there is little or no evidence that the Lord's day is to be practiced as a sabbath. Yet, Christians are the new and true Israel and it is true that the New Testament requires that Christians meet on the first day of the week for corporate worship. Further, the law of God (which I believe is the ten commandments) is written on our hearts. I believe this because of Jeremiah 31:31-34 and passages like 2 Corinthians 3 (where the contrast is between the law being written on tablets of stone and on tablets of human hearts). The only thing that was written on tablets of stone by God was the ten commandments, not any other laws. The other laws under the Mosaic administration were written down by Moses. Further, Paul talks about the doers of the law being justified in Romans 2. The law, I believe, is talking about the ten commandments (Romans 2:21-23). Therefore, it must be biding on the Christian as a rule of life (the historic third use of the law as set out by Calvin). What confuses me most about this issue is that Mohler, Luther, Calvin, and Gill (just to name a few) don't believe in a Christian Sabbath. Rather, they believe in the observance of the Lord's day with the emphasis on the positive importance of the corporate gather together in worship, fellowship, and praying with God's people. The emphasis is not on resting. Therefore, they would not call it a Christian Sabbath. What makes this more confusing is that Mohler says it is emphatically not a Christian Sabbath and then he quotes the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM), which says this:
The first day of the week is the Lord's Day. It is a Christian institution for regular observance. It commemorates the resurrection of Christ from the dead and should be employed in exercises of worship and spiritual devotion, both public and private, and by refraining from worldly amusements, and resting from secular employments, work of necessity and mercy only being excepted.

Mohler actually quoted this and still says that it is not a Christian Sabbath! I am confused. I'm even more confused because the BFM came from New Hampshire Confession which came from the 1689, which are both Sabbatarian. The New Hampshire Confession basically says the same thing, except the title is "The Christian Sabbath" instead of "The Lord's Day". It is almost like they want it to be called the Lord's Day but observed as a Sabbath...

Further, I have come to embrace the regulative principle of the Church, which is the opposite of the Anglican normative principle. The Anglicans say that, with regards to worship, anything that is commanded and anything that is not expressly forbidden is okay for the church to do in the activities of worship. The puritan regulative principle says that, for corporate worship, the tasks of the church, and the government of the church, only that which is either commanded or that which has Biblical precedence is true worship. Because it is God's house (or temple) He has the right to say what is and is not acceptable (1 Timothy 3:15). It is not the same as how I would do family worship or how I make many of the personal decisions I make. In our every day life we take the principles that we learn in God's word and apply them in the ways that we think best. Every situation is not addressed in scripture, but we can take the principles in God's word and apply them to those situations. Not so in the way that God's church is run because it is his place of special presence (Matthew 18:20). Much like God set out the specification of His temple in the OT, He has the right to determine how church is to be done. You get the point.

What does this have to do with the Sabbath? Well, if God is going to specify the way that worship is to be done, then would he not specify the day of worship?

Another thing I am wrestling with on this is the fact that the Bible does not trace the origins of the Sabbath back to the Mosaic Covenant but back to creation. Exodus 20 8 "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. Men like John Owen and Vos have argued that the Sabbath was a creation ordinance and, therefore, does not go away with the comng of the new covenant. According to them it is binding on all generations because it is part of the law written on the hearts (conscience) of all men from birth as Romans 1 and 2 set out.

Any help here? I am confused and need the help of my theologically-minded brothers.

3 comments:

Mark Redfern said...

Vinnie,

You've basically opened up all the implications (or at least several of them) in Pastor Sam's material on the Lord's Day.

I don't think I am the best one to help you out here since I am still working through many of these issues.

Drop Pastor Sam an e-mail (if you don't have it, I can give it to you) and send him a link to this post.

It's good to see this blog resurrected! What does Epignosis mean?

Vinnie Beichler said...

Mark, I think you know what epignosis means, but it will give me an opportunity to explain. I will put this in my blog explanation: It is a Greek word found in the New Testament that means precise and correct knowledge in general and precise and correct knowledge of things ethical and divine in particular. Basically, it means to be theologically accurate, but not mere head knowledge.

Vinnie Beichler said...

From an email sent by Sam Waldron:

Vinnie,

It seems to me that you have basically answered your own questions. Follow your sound theological instincts and not the very confused teachings of men. I listened to Mohler's sermon on the Fourth Commandment and found it very sad and certainly not up to his own normal theological and logical standards. Mohler's and others conduct in weakening the SBC statement regarding the Lord's Day is certainly surprising and very sad. Ask Fred Malone about this.

I do not think that Calvin can be accurately called an anti-sabbatarian. Actually, a thorough studies of his writings witnesses to both "sabbatarian" and anti-sabbatarian strains in him. See my website and its treatment of the Christian Sabbath for the evidence for this.
The only statement in your blog I would take issue with is that there is little or no evidence for the observance of the Lord's Day as a Sabbath. I am not sure how to respond to this statement. It is a little surprising to me. Of course, there is from one perspective little evidence for the Lord's Day period. The phrase is used in only one passage. Yet, a theology of the Lord's Day is woven into the NT throughout and comes out especially in the first day of the week passages. What evidence there is it seems to me constrains its practice as a Christian Sabbath. I would argue that on New Testament grounds alone the Lord's Day must be understood and therefore practiced as a Christian Sabbath. Again see my website and its teaching on the Lord's Day in its critique of New Covenant Theology. My website is www.samwaldron.us.