Presbyterian Papists

Recently I got into an impromptu debate on Facebook about Sabbath-keeping and Sunday sports. A couple of preliminary observations:

1. My own position is based on ecclesiology. Given the fact that Christian identity has a corporate dimension (e.g. public worship) as well as an individual dimension, it makes sense for churches to have an agreed-upon day of worship. In principle, independent local churches could have their own religious calendar. For instance, some Messianic congregations worship on Saturday. It's logical for denominations to synchronize the day of worship. And there's value generally in all Christians having a common day of worship.

However, the choice of day is flexible. The principle is normative, but the implementation is contingent and variable. 

2. It's reckless for fathers to risk making their sons estranged from the faith as well as their fathers by drawing a line in the sand over adiaphora. Of course, hardline Sabbatarians don't think that's adiaphoric, but that's what the debate was about. 

Jake 

The NFL is one of the greatest if not the greatest affronts to God's 4th commandment. I don't see how someone can believe the biblical teaching about the Sabbath and participate in the NFL.

Benjamin

Since the 4th has already been brought up, it's worth raising the fact that there are 6th Commandment issues here as well.

Hays 

Is Calvinism anti-sports?

Mason 

No, it’s anti-trampling-underfoot-the-Lord’s-day

Hays 

Where does the Bible canonize the Gregorian calendar? Can you give me chapter and verse on where it mandates Sunday worship on the Gregorian calendar?

Does whatever calendar was used in the 2nd millennium BC match the Gregorian calendar? Did it have the same number of days per month? Does Sunday always fall on the same day in the same continuous sequence? What about leap years? 

Blake

I know you're smart enough and well-informed enough to know the WCF's position on the Sabbath, and to know that those men and the institutions where they teach/have taught have taken vows to uphold it.

Hays 

So you're ducking the substantive question. Try again. Sunday worship presumes a calendar. Which calendar does the NT authorize as the God-approved calendar for Sunday worship? The Gregorian calendar?

Blake 

lol ok have a good one

Hays 

So you run and hide because you can't answer tough questions. Got it. If the NT mandates Sunday worship, that presumes a calendar. What day Sunday falls on is a calendrical question. So what calendar does the NT mandate? The Mosaic Jewish calendar? The Julian calendar? The Gregorian calendar? The Chinese calendar? The Mayan calendar?

Brian 

Don’t be so asinine. It’s one in seven, the first day of the seven day week, calendar doesn’t really make a difference. how many times does the sun set and rise in a day on your other calendars?

Blake  

The NT endorses the second edition of the Galactic Starfleet Modified Calendar, obviously. The one that has two more nights than days and works on log scale.

Hays 

Thanks for your anti-intellectual response. Very revealing. So it doesn't actually matter whether or not we're worshipping on the same day as 1C Christians. But if that's not mandated in Scripture, if the choice of Sunday is just a culture-variable convention, what makes it Sabbath-breaking to play sports on a day that's just an arbitrary, post-biblical convention?

Ben

This is on the level of coming into this group and complaining when no one will defend infant baptism against your biblical arguments

Hays 

Actually, this is why many Reformed churches (as well as evangelical churches generally) hemorrhage young people. They can't defend their traditions. That's a great recipe you've got there for losing your kids to the world.

Brian 

Steve, I don’t know how to explain to someone that the first of the week is always the first day of the week no matter how many days are in a month, you do understand that right?. Or that the first day in seven is always the first day is always the first in seven no matter many days are in a year. You know you that if June 30 is a Wednesday that doesn’t make July 1st a Sunday right? And to answer your other “intellectual” question, Sunday is still the first day in seven even on a leap year, because that’s how counting works.

Hays 

Condescension doesn't work when you miss the point. The first day of the week according to an extrabiblical assignment. So once again, you position commits you to canonizing the Gregorian calendar.

Brian

I really just dont know what to do for if you can’t get that the first day of a seven day week is the first day of a seven day week even on a leap year.

Hays 

Your formulaic reply consistently fails to engage the argument.

Bennett 

Men who serve as officers in the PCA (and other denominations that use the Westminster Standards) affirm the validity and current applicability of the 4th commandment. The Confession, and both the Shorter and Larger Catechisms address this.

Anyone who chooses to work in professional sports (esp. football) knows that they will break their vows (held important by the Lord in Scripture, when made for godly reasons) if they do so.

This is the first issue to be dealt with, the breaking of his vow. He didn't have to make it, but he did. If he had come to change his view, and no longer thought such work (or any non-mercy work) would violate the Lord's Day Sabbath, it was his responsibility as an officer to report such change of views to his presbytery.

This cuts to an issue of integrity and honesty. An exegetical and theological discussion of the historic understanding of the Lord's Day, such as seem to want to argue, is appropriate for someone in Mr. Reich's position before he took his ordination vows, not after (until and if the PCA changes the Westminster Standards).

Hays

i) Presumably you grant a distinction between lawful and unlawful vows. Church officers shouldn't be required to take unlawful vows as a condition for church office. Agreed? 

ii) So you're claiming that Scripture delegates to the papacy (specifically Pope Gregory XIII) the authority to mandate the day of worship for all Christians. Hence, if a Christian plays sports on the day of worship stipulated by the pope, he has violated the fourth commandant, which was promulgated under a different calendar. Likewise, if a Presbyterian church officer coaches on Sunday, then he has violated the sixth commandment because his vows bind him to honor the day of worship stipulated by the pope.

iii) There's a distinction between what Scripture mandates and culturally-variable and/or extrabiblical calendrical conventions. So, are you saying the Bible mandates worship on a particular day as defined by an extrabiblical calendar? Is it breaking the Sabbath to worship on a day other than Sunday as assigned by the Gregorian calendar? Does an extrabiblical calendrical convention obligate the day of worship for Christians?

Bennett 

You're arguing with the substance of the view. This post is about confessional inconsistency and integrity. You're making your argument on the wrong thread.

I hope you see this. I don't think it's that nuanced a point.

Hays 

Yes, my point is substantive. It's your position that church officers are required to take take unlawful vows?

Likewise, It's your position that church officers violate the 4th commandment if they disobey the pope by worshipping on a day not prescribed by the Gregorian calendar or violate the 4th commandment by not worshipping on a day prescribed by the Gregorian calendar?

Landon

The reckoning of week days is totally independent of the reckoning of months. Gregorian, Jewish, Arabic, whatever- people can and do use all these calendars at the same time and all agree that today is Friday. And whatever day they moved from Julian to Gregorian calendars and adjusted the date (it was September 1752 in the future US)- the next day of the week was the same as it would have been otherwise.

Hays

If you drop ten days from the Julian calendar, doesn't that reset the days by moving them back, so that while they may be called the same days, they are not observed on the same days as the Julian calendar, but ten days earlier? For instance, I've read that Isaac Newton was born on Christmas Day, December 25. 1642 on the Julian calendar (still in use in Protestant England at the time); whereas that's January 4, 1643 on the Gregorian calendar. Then there's the shift caused by leap days.

Consider a bit of relative chronology: the Gregorian calendar was promulgated in 1582 by Gregory XIII, the Westminster Assembly met between 1643-1652, while England only switched over a century later (1752). It's anachronistic to suppose the Westminster Divines were committed to a papal calendar as the litmus test of Sabbatarian fidelity.

Shane 

This group is for people who believe in the basic Reformed faith which includes a belief in the Lord’s Day as the Christian Sabbath. Your questions are answered in standard Reformed works on the topic.

Hays 

And belief in the basic Reformed faith evidently requires submission to the pope. Thanks for the clarification.

1. There are several distinct issues. (i) One is whether Sabbath-keeping in general is obligatory for Christians. (ii) Then there's the additional question of whether Sunday-worship is obligatory for Christians. The creation-ordinance argument is a strong prima facie argument for (i), but not for (ii). 

In addition, there are strong prima facie arguments against Sabbatarianism, viz.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/schreiner-qa-is-the-sabbath-still-required-for-christians/

In responding to Presbyterian Sabbatarians, I grant the principle for argument's sake, responding to them on their own grounds. My point was that even if we operate within that framework, it suffers from a level-confusion by confounding a timeless principle with a human custom. 

Speaking for myself, I don't regard the Sabbatarian assumption as a given. The arguments pro and con are finely balanced. 

2. If you drop 10 days from the calendar, then you have to renumber the days. (Not to mention leap days every four years.) So there's a shift in what Sunday is. 

Now I don't have a problem with Sunday worship or the Gregorian calendar. It is, however, fundamentally confused to accuse Christians of violating the fourth commandment if they don't worship on what is merely a customary day. Even if there's a divinely-mandated principle, there can't be a divinely-mandated day without a divinely-mandated calendar.

The Sabbatarian argument blurs the distinction between a divine principle and a contingent implementation. So the argument comes apart at the seams. That's an internal weakness of the argument. Even if the principle is normative (which, in itself, is disputable), a particular application is contingent and optional. 

Then that's further aggravated by an amoral appeal to the 6th commandment, disregarding the distinction between lawful and unlawful vows. 

The church is not the voice of God. Although there's nothing wrong with independent churches or denominations having practical arrangements, their specific arrangements lack the force of divine obligation. 

This is one reason we had a Reformation: the church of Rome invented artificial religious duties.

Just as a matter of math, if you drop ten days from the calendar, then it can't be the same number of intervening days, corresponding to the old calendar. If you went back seven days, the old calendar and the new calendar would match. But it doesn't work with ten days. 


These are matters of indifference unless and until someone presumes to say that worshipping on a different calendar day violates a commandment from the 2nd millennium BC.