Within this series of posts I am investigating some of the contextual factors that influenced the early church’s decision for Sunday gathering. In previous posts, I have highlighted several contextual factors important to the Sabbath/Lord’s Day discussion in the early church. In the previous post, I looked at the Didache’s teaching about the Lord’s Day. In this post, I want to examine what Ignatius of Antioch taught about “sabbatizing” and Lord’s Day observance.[1]

Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch around the beginning of the second century. Most scholars believe that he was martyred under the Roman emperor Trajan around AD 110.[2]

Epistle to the Magnesians 9:1

If, then, those who had lived according to the ancient practices came to the newness of hope, no longer keeping the sabbath but living in accordance with the Lord’s day [μηκέτι σαββατίζοντες ἀλλά κατά κυριακήν ζῶντες], on which our life also arose through him and his death…[3]

Similar to the Didache, this text has had its share of translation issues.[4] Most scholars translate the disputed phrase following the “Latin text (secundum dominicam [literally, ‘according to Sunday’]), omitting ζωήν and translating ‘living according to the Lord’s Day'.”[5]

Some scholars argue for translating the phrase as “living according to the Lord’s life.”[6] However, this proposal renders the following clause, at best, confusing: “no longer keeping the sabbath but living in accordance with the Lord’s life, on which our life also arose…” Others argue that the phrase is a possible reference to Christians rising with Christ in their baptism on Sunday.[7]

The most plausible interpretation seems to be that Ignatius intends to highlight the contrast “not between days as such but between ways of life, between ‘sabbatizing’ (i.e. living according to Jewish legalism) and living according to the resurrection life of Christ.”[8] The Sabbath becomes a very natural representation of Judaism as a whole, which is “radically incompatible with Christianity.”[9] Read within this context, Ignatius is teaching the Magnesians that, “Observing the Lord’s day means acknowledging that salvation is by the real death and resurrection of Jesus, ‘sabbatizing,’ the practice of the judaizers, Ignatius associates with their docetic denial of the Lord’s death.”[10]

One final interpretive note needs to be added about the day that Ignatius references. Some scholars interpret Ignatius to be writing about Easter, instead of Sunday.[11] However, given the context of this passage, in which Ignatius writes emphasizing ways of life, “reference to a weekly Lord’s Day would seem more natural.”[12] Indeed, Rordorf insists that, “This almost necessitates the translation ‘Sunday’.”[13]

Significance.

The first significance of Ignatius’s Epistle to the Magnesians is the “sharp contrast he draws between ‘sabbatizing’ and ‘living according to the Lord’s Day'.” This is the first time in recorded Christian literature that the matter had been put in such a way.[14] Ignatius is not arguing, as Paul often does, with concern for Gentile freedom from the law. Rather, his words betray a “more thorough-going distinction between Judaism and Christianity.”

The Sabbath, for Ignatius, is the badge of a false attitude to Jesus Christ, while Eucharistic worship on the Lord’s Day defines Christianity as salvation by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is an early witness to the dissociation of Christianity from Judaism which characterizes the second century, and to the wholly negative attitude to Sabbath observance that was the corollary of that.[15]

Ignatius demonstrates the growing tendency for Christians to separate themselves from Jewish customs and advocates a distinctively Christian practice of Lord’s Day gathering.

A second significance is the clear foundation that Ignatius gives for Lord’s Day observance: the resurrection. Ignatius, less than a generation removed from the Apostles, shows the beginnings of a Lord’s Day theology that will begin to blossom over the coming centuries.

A final significance is what was left unsaid by Ignatius: nowhere does Ignatius tie the Lord’s Day observance in with the eschatological "eighth day."[16] For Ignatius, the Lord’s Day is a weekly declaration of the resurrection of the Lord, particularly seen in the performance of the ordinances of baptism and the Eucharist.

In this final post I have tried to show that Ignatius has a strong Lord’s Day theology that is grounded in Christ’s resurrection. His prohibition of ‘sabbatizing’ was a call for clear separation from Jewish practices. This, along with the previous posts, hopefully will shed further light on the sabbath/Lord’s day debate that has been going on since the apostles.

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. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), 2/2.435–72. See also Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 170.  ↩

  3. Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 208.  ↩

  4. Similar to the Did. translation issues, Ignatius’s Letter to the Magnesians has seen its share of controversy over the translation of κυριακήν. Unlike the Didache, however, the use of κυριακηήν in this letter has a referent: ζῶντες. Three manuscripts have only κυριακηήν (the Latin translation of the middle recension, the Greek manuscripts of the long recension, and the Armenian version of the middle recension). One manuscript changes ζῶντες to ζωνη (Codex Parisiensis-Colbertinus). Because the bulk of the manuscripts contain κυριακήν ζῶντες, that is the text that will be interpreted here. See Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek texts and English translations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 208.  ↩

  5. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 228.  ↩

  6. See, e.g.: K. A. Strand, “Another Look at the ‘Lord’s Day’ in the Early Church and in Rev. i. 10,” New Testament Studies 13 (1967): 1978–79; F. Guy, “’The Lord’s Day’ in the letter of Ignatius to the Magnesians,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 2 (1964): 13–14; R. A. Kraft, “Some notes on Sabbath observance in early Christianity,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 3 (1965): 27–28; R. B. Lewis, “Ignatius and the ‘Lord’s Day,’” Andrews University Seminary Studies 6 (1968) 46–59; Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, 214–15.  ↩

  7. See J. Liebaert, Les Enseignements Moraux des Pères Apostoliques (Gembloux: Duculot, 1970), 51. Cf. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 247n31. Proponents of this minority interpretation might cite the verb ἀνέτειλεν, a verb which “refers to the rising of heavenly bodies rather than naturally to rising of the dead, may indicate that Ignatius has in mind the pagan name for Sunday, ‘the day of the sun’… and therefore compares Christ’s resurrection on Sunday with the rising of the sun.”  ↩

  8. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 229.  ↩

  9. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 228.  ↩

  10. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 260.  ↩

  11. Cf. C. W. Dugmore, “The Lord’s Day and Easter” in Neotestamentica et Patristica in Honorem Sexagenarii O. Cullmann, SuppNovt 6 [Leiden: Brill, 1962], 279. Cf. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 247n36.  ↩

  12. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 229.  ↩

  13. Willy Rordorf, Sunday : The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest Centuries of the Christian Church (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), 212. Cf. Stott who writes: “It is most unlikely that there is a comparison of a weekly observance with a yearly one,” in “A note on the word KYPIAKH in Rev. i. 10,” New Testament Studies 12 (1965–6), 70.  ↩

  14. Willy Rordorf, Sunday, The History of the Day of Rest and Worship in the Earliest Centuries of the Christian Church (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1968), 261.  ↩

  15. Richard Bauckham, “Lord’s Day,” in Carson, ed., From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1999), 261.  ↩

  16. A pattern, I think influenced by Jewish and gnostic tendencies, further developed in the thought of other early biblical interpreters. For more on this theme, as well as other primary sources, see: Lee, “Second Century Witnesses to the Sabbath and Lord’s Day Debate,” The Churchman, forthcoming 2014.  ↩