A Brief History of Sunday: From the New Testament to the New Creation

von Justo L. González

Verlag:

Eerdmans

, 2017

Overview

In this book noted Christian historian Justo González tells the story of how and why Christians have worshiped on Sunday from the earliest days of the church to the present.

After discussing the views and practices relating to Sunday in the ancient church, González turns to Constantine and how his policies affected Sunday observances. He then recounts the long process, beginning in the Middle Ages and culminating with Puritanism, whereby Christians came to think of and strictly observe Sunday as the Sabbath. Finally, González looks at the current state of things, exploring especially how the explosive growth of the church in the Majority World has affected the observance of Sunday worldwide.

Readers of this book will rediscover the joy and excitement of Sunday as the early church celebrated it and will find inspiration in an age of increasing indifference and hostility to Christianity.

Key Features

• Discusses Sunday as a day of worship throughout history
• Presents an authoritative yet accessible historical overview of Christian Sunday worship

Contents

• Part 1: Before Constantine
  • Naming the Days
  • When to Meet
  • The Significance of the First Day of the Week
  • Christian Practices on the First Day of the Week
• Part 2: From Constantine to the End of Antiquity
  • Constantine and the New Imperial Policy
  • Changes in Christian Worship
  • Laws Regarding the Lord’s Day
  • Christian View on the Sabbath
• Part 3: The Middle Ages
  • A New Sunday Piety: From Feast to Funeral
  • A Day to Pray and to Play
  • Aquinas on Sunday and Sabbath
• Part 4: The Reformation and Beyond
  • The Reformation
  • British Puritanism and the Sabbath
  • Seventh-Day Sabbatarianism
  • The Continuation of Puritan Sabbatarianism
  • Secularization and Renewal

Top Highlights

“Second, many may be surprised to learn that connecting Sunday with the fourth commandment finds very little warrant in the early church, and that calling Sunday ‘the Sabbath’ is a relatively new phenomenon.” (Page viii)

“The seven-day week as we now know it seems to have originated among the ancient Semitic and Mesopotamian peoples.” (Page 2)

“In brief, the first day of the week, most commonly called the Lord’s day—the kyriaka or dominica—was taken as a celebration of the three great events of salvation history. It was first of all the day of the resurrection of the Lord and therefore the beginning of the new creation. It was also the very first day of the first creation, and therefore a time to rejoice in the goodness of God’s bounty. And it was the eighth day of the week, and therefore a day of hope pointing to the consummation of all things.” (Page 31)

“It is interesting to notice that the author of Revelation, arguably the most immersed in Jewish culture and literature of all New Testament writers, seems to use the phrase ‘the day of the Lord’ to refer to a particular day in his own life. Most scholars agree that this is a reference to the day when the church would gather in worship to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.” (Page 10)

“This interpolation shows that, at least as late as the fourth century, some or perhaps even most Christians observed the Sabbath, and then the Lord’s day on the following day. In other words, the Lord’s day, celebrated on the first day of the week, was not a substitution for the Sabbath, but a separate celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.” (Page 23)

About Justo L. González

Justo L. González is a retired professor of historical theology and United Methodist minister. His more than one hundred books, published in ten languages, include the acclaimed three-volume History of Christian Thought and The Story Luke Tells.