Saturday, November 21, 2020

Sabbatic Heresy of Justin Martyr

 But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies... 2 Peter 2:1

"Justin Martyr's reasons for not observing the Sabbath are not at all like those of the so-called Barnabas, for Justin seems to have heartily despised the Sabbatic institution
 
--He denies that it was obligatory before the time of Moses, and
affirms that it was abolished by the advent of Christ. 
--He teaches that it was given to the Jews because of their wickedness, and he expressly affirms the abolition of both the Sabbath and the law. 
 
So far is he from teaching the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week, or from making the Sunday festival a continuation of the ancient Sabbatic institution, that he sneers at the very idea of days of abstinence from labor, or days of idleness, and though God gives as his reason for the observance of the Sabbath, that that was the day on which he rested from all his work, Justin gives as his first reason for the Sunday festival that that was the day on which God began his work! Of abstinence from labor as an act of obedience to the Sabbath, Justin says:

"The Lord our God does not take pleasure in such observances."

A second reason for not observing the Sabbath is thus stated by him:

"For we too would observe the fleshly circumcision, and the Sabbaths, and in short, all the feasts, if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you - namely, on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts."

As Justin never discriminates between the Sabbath of the Lord and the annual sabbaths he doubtless here means to include it as well as them. But what a falsehood is it to assert that the Sabbath was given to the Jews because of their wickedness! The truth is, it was given to the Jews because of the universal apostasy of the Gentiles. But in the following paragraph Justin gives three more reasons for not keeping the Sabbath:

"Do you see that the elements are not idle, and keep no

Sabbaths? Remain as you were born. For if there was no need of circumcision before Abraham, or of the observance of Sabbaths, of feasts and sacrifices, before Moses; no more need is there of them now, after that, according to the will of God, Jesus Christ the Son of God has been born without sin, of a virgin sprung from the stock of Abraham."

Here are three reasons: 

1. "That the elements are not idle, and keep no Sabbaths." Though this reason is simply worthless as an argument against the seventh day, it is a decisive confirmation of the fact already proven, that Justin did not make Sunday a day of abstinence from labor. 
2. His second reason here given is that there was no observance of Sabbath before Moses, and yet we do know that God at the beginning did appoint the Sabbath to a holy use, a fact to which as we shall see quite a number of the fathers testify, and we also know that in that age were men who kept all the precepts of God. 
3. There is no need of Sabbatic observance since Christ. Though this is mere assertion, it is by no means easy for those to meet it fairly who represent Justin as maintaining the Christian Sabbath.

Another argument by Justin against the obligation of the Sabbath is that God directs the government of the universe on this day equally as on all others! as though this were inconsistent with the present sacredness of the Sabbath, when it is also true that God thus governed the world in the period when Justin acknowledges the Sabbath to have been obligatory. 

Though this reason is trivial as an argument against the Sabbath, it does show that Justin could have attached no Sabbatic character to Sunday. But he has yet one more argument against the Sabbath. The ancient law has been done away by the new and final law, and the old covenant has been superseded by the new. But he forgets that the design of the new covenant was not to do away with the law of God, but to put that law into the heart of every Christian. And many of the fathers, as we shall see expressly repudiate this doctrine of the abrogation of the Decalogue.

Such were Justin's reasons for rejecting the ancient sabbath.

But though he was a decided asserter of the abrogation of the law, and of the Sabbatic institution itself, and kept Sunday only as a festival, modern first-day writers cite him as a witness in support of the doctrine that the first day of the week should be observed as the Christian Sabbath on the authority of the fourth commandment." 
J.N.Andrews