Within this series of posts I am investigating some of the contextual factors that influenced the early church’s decision for Sunday gathering. I also plan to look at several of the earliest church documents that speak to the Sabbath/Lord’s Day issue.[1]:

In the previous post I demonstrated how Roman persecution of the Jews made the early church’s liturgical practices no mere academic exercise. Similarly, the Greco-Roman calendar and worship patterns also played significant roles in the early church’s corporate worship practices.

Roman Calendar

By the second century, the Roman calendar week had special significance attached to each day. Each day was given one of the seven known planets to be its ruler and patron. While the exact date on which this calendar tradition began is uncertain, “the earliest evidence for the existence of the planetary week is to be dated toward the end of the first century A.D.”[2]

Particularly of note for this study, Romans devoted the second day of the planetary week to the sun.[3] Several examples evidence can be given as evidence to support the thesis that sun-god worship was certainly prevalent at the beginning of the second century.[4] For example, after his conquest of Egypt in 31BC, Augustus had two obelisks sent to the Circus Maximus and the Mars Field in Rome. These were both, “dedicated to the Sun—Soli donum dedit.”[5] Tertullian’s De spectaculis records that “the huge obelisk” was still standing in the circus, and that the circus was “chiefly consecrated to the Sun.”[6] Furthermore, Tacitus, a Roman senator and historian, reports that the circus contained an old temple dedicated to the Sun.[7]

The exact extent of Roman sun-god worship and its impact on early Christianity is beyond our current study.[8] For now, it is enough to say that the weekly pattern of a day devoted to a deity was in place during the life of the early church fathers.

Roman Worship and Language

Related to the weekly pattern of sun-god devotion was the Roman worship of the emperor. Jungmann explains that, “Since the end of the first century, kurios, dominus, was applied more and more as a distinctive name to the Roman emperor, making of him a divine being.”[9] Nero was the first to use the title. By the time of Domitian, who called himself “Lord and god,” the use of kurios became increasingly related with the throne. Eventually the “adjective kurios is found in… Greek vocabulary only with the meaning ‘imperial.’”[10] Indeed, Bauckham demonstrates that the word group appears rarely, except in imperial references.[11]

This “imperial” appropriation of the term kuriakos had implications for the newly-born church. The terms “Lord’s Supper” and “Lord’s Day” became dangerous confessions. Explaining the takeover of the terminology, Jungmann summarizes, “So kuriake hemera is the day of our Kyrios, our king, the day on which our ‘Lord’ celebrated His triumph, His resurrection. ‘The Lord’s day’ is therefore a proud, imposing name, and a profession of faith.”[12] To claim to be meeting on the Lord’s Day was a potentially treasonous statement.

As the previous posts have shown, Roman persecution of the Jews, the Roman calendar structure, and the Roman custom of divinizing and worshiping their emperor were all part of the contextual atmosphere in which the early church fathers lived and wrote. The exact impact of each of these factors is hard to determine, but the recognition of such Roman influences is crucial in order to properly interpret the works of the early church. In the following posts, I plan to examine what some of the early church fathers thought about Sabbath/Lord’s Day observance.

About the Author:
Jon English Lee

Jon English Lee (M.Div.) is a Ph.D. student in Systematic and Historical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His research interests include ecclesiology, particularly liturgy and sacraments, and the development of doctrine.

Twitter:
@jonenglishlee

  1. This post is adapted from Jon English Lee, “Second Century Witnesses to the Sabbath and Lord’s Day Debate,” The Churchman, forthcoming 2014.  ↩

  2. Willy Rordorf, Sunday: The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest Centuries of the Christian Church, 181. Cf. Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday : A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, 237.  ↩

  3. Willy Rordorf, “Sunday: The Fullness of Christian Liturgical Time,” in Everett Ferguson ed., Worship in the Early Church, 300. See also, Rordorf, Sunday: The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest Centuries of the Christian Church, 24–38; Paul Cotton, From Sabbath to Sunday: A Study in Early Christianity, 129.  ↩

  4. For a thorough examination of the evidence, see Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday : A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, 238. See also, Gaston H. Halsberghe’s The Cult of Sol Invictus.  ↩

  5. Corpus Inscriptorium Latinarum VI, 701, as quoted in Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday : A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, 239.  ↩

  6. Tertullian, De spectaculis 8.  ↩

  7. Annales 15. 74, 1; cf. also 15.41, 1. See also, Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday : A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, 239n8.  ↩

  8. Some proposed influences include the theme of Christ as the “Sun of Righteousness” in early Christianity, the adoption of an eastward orientation for prayer (the direction in which the sun rises), and the date of Christmas (Christian adoption of pagan Saturnalia, celebrating the birth of the sun-god). For more on these influences, Samuele Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday : A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity, 252.  ↩

  9. J. A. Jungmann, Early Liturgy, to the Time of Gregory the Great, 21. Emphasis original.  ↩

  10. J. A. Jungmann, Early Liturgy, to the Time of Gregory the Great, 21. Emphasis original. Another example given is that κυριακή ψῆφοι = imperial finances or imperial treasury.  ↩

  11. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, 222. Emphasis added.  ↩

  12. J. A. Jungmann, Early Liturgy, to the Time of Gregory the Great, 21. Emphasis original.  ↩