THE SABBATH AND THE JUDAISERS
Rev. J.W. Deenick. Trowel & Sword. April 1966
In our issue of March I promised to deal somewhat further with the question whether it is correct to assume, as it is assumed, that Paul teaches the cancellation of the fourth commandment (or part of it, or certain aspects of it) under the New Testament and that according to Paul the Sabbath was never meant for mankind as a whole, but that as a mosaic institution it was meant for Israel only. I ventured to suggest that this was not correct.
We turned already to what seemed to be the most difficult text, Col. 2:16,17 and we found that no one should too hastily or too triumphantly conclude from verse 17 that Paul declared the institution of the Sabbath to be a shadow, which having been fulfilled in Christ, has been abolished. I propose that we look somewhat further into this passage and listen at the same time to what certain authorities in the field of exegesis have to say about it. I admit that the value of listening to authorities has its limitations, seeing that authorities have an inclination to disagree among themselves, yet I believe that there is usually something to learn from listening.
The controversy with the Judaisers.
If we then consult Kittel’s “Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament”, (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament – translation added), the very latest in New Testament scholarship, we find in the sections on the words “sabbath”, “food” and “drink” that Dr. Eduard Lose, Dr. Johannes Behm, and Dr. Leonard Goppelt agree that Paul’s problems in the churches of Galatia and in the church of Collossae sprang from the teaching of Judaistic preachers, who partly under the influence of pagan ideas concerning abstinence and ascetism, taught a mixture of Jewish and pagan legalism: “do not handle, do not taste, do not touch”. Paul discerned clearly that if this type of legalism penetrated the church it could do irreparable harm unless it was firmly contradicted.
The teachings of Judaism were not new. The Lord Jesus himself had clashed with it continually. It claimed to be the religion of the Old Testament, but it was not. It had in fact turned the whole Old Testament upside down. The religion of the old Testament never was legalistic, neither before and nor after Moses. The God of the Old Testament was a God of grace. The God of Judaism was a God of mere accountancy. According to Judaism all human actions were accounted for in the books, on the debit side or on the credit side. And to have been circumcised, to have observed the earlier mosaic and the later rabbinical regulations concerning Holy days and Holy places, purifications and fasting, was reckoned to weigh heavily on the credit side. It was this type of moralism and legalism that had murdered the true service of God in Israel and that took the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross, when he in no uncertain terms denounced and ridiculed it.
In the days of Paul this system again tried to enter the church. It was a cunning trick of Satan. It would have killed all truly spiritual life in the church. The Judaisers made a double mistake. In the first place they made the same mistake as the pharisees by introducing a system of legalism, a system of salvation by works. Over against this error Paul maintained, as the Lord Jesus had done, that salvation is by the grace of God through faith. God is not a God of mere accountancy, He is a God of grace. He was that already under the Old Testament, He is that still.
Abraham was not justified by the works of the law, neither was David; both were justified by faith in the mercy of God, see Galatians 3:6-9.. In New Testament times however the Judaisers added to this a second mistake. They continued to demand obedience to mosaic institutions that had been done away with in the death and resurrection of Christ. Over against this misunderstanding, which ignored the shadow-character of the mosaic law, Paul contended that Christians are no longer under such obligation seeing that when the reality had come, as it came in Christ, there was no sense in returning to the shadows.
Colossians 2:16,17
Most authorities then agree that Paul in Col.2:16,17 had these Judaisers in mind when he wrote: “let no one pass judgement on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to festivals or a new moon or a sabbath”, see also Prof. Runia, November issue page 5. Certain Judaisers in the Church were passing a Judaistic and legalistic judgment on other members because they did not observe the mosaic stipulations for holy days and holy places, for purifications and fasting, for clean and unclean food and drink, clean and unclean plates and cups. They demanded that these mosaic rules be again observed and that e.g. the new moon festival and the sabbath day be again celebrated in the old mosaic style. Concerning the sabbath e.g. there were in the law of Moses certain stipulations of a “typical” and punitive character, which the rabbis of later years worked out casuistically making it a very intricate system of sabbath rules. In Moses’ law they were meant for the Israelitic (sic) period of the covenant of grace only. Prof.Dr. S. Greydanus in an article on the law in the Epistles of Paul (Almanak 1942) refers to this text as a passage in which Paul deals with the ceremonial rules and regulations prescribing how they should eat and drink and observe their celebrations. It is of these typically mosaic institutions, which needed a typological explanation, that Paul says that they found their realisation in Christ.
The reader may well ask why all this explaining is necessary and what precisely is the point that I desire to prove. Do you remember that the “new approach” contends that Paul in this text declared the sabbath abrogated? I contend that Paul did nothing else but declare a certain mosaic manner of celebrating the sabbath to have been abolished. That is why I referred to the Judaisers. They wanted things to be done legalistically and mosaically. Now, to do a thing legalistically is always wrong. Legalism was a wicked and fatal sin already under the Old Testament. But under the New Testament it was also wrong to do things “mosaically”, And that was precisely what Paul was up against. In this text he does not reject the sabbath as such but the mosaic sabbath, because the time for the mosaic sabbath had passed. And it was this mosaic sabbath that the Judaisers wanted to introduce. To conclude from this text that Paul cancelled the sabbath as such, or even worse the fourth commandment, is to ignore that Paul’s conflict was with the Judaisers and that he does not speak of food, drink, festival and sabbath in a general sense, but of the Old Testament stipulations concerning each of these.
Galatians 4:10
If we keep this in mind, Galatians 4:10 cannot present too many difficulties. In Galatia too the Judaisers had been at work, trying to introduce their double error of legalism and Old Testament usages; circumcision e.g. and the observance of holy days. They offered a whole calendar of holy days. This appealed to many Christians; to some because of their Jewish background, to others because of their pagan past. In the pagan world they had been used to religious festivals and ceremonies, to “tabus” and abstinences; to the “do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” philosophy. But Paul clearly discerned the dangers. This is not the gospel that I preached to you, he wrote, see 1:6.
As far as circumcision is concerned Paul’s attitude was: “do not be circumcised”. He had two reasons for this. In the first place, the Judaisers were legalists and taught that circumcision. was a necessary condition for salvation. And further the Judaisers overlooked the typically Old Testament shadow-element in circumcision which was no longer significant under the new covenant. This point of the sacrament of circumcision is interesting in this connection because were it not for Col. 2:11,12 we could have easily come to the conclusion that Paul declared that circumcision had been abolished. On the basis of passages like Galatians 5:2-7, Romans 2:25-29, Romans 3:30 one could easily argue that Paul saw circumcision as of no value at all for the New Testament church and declared it cancelled. It is only through Colossians 2:11,12 that we understand that Paul does not mean this at all. There he points that this sacrament of initiation has merely been changed in its manner of administration and that to the Colossian Christians their baptism was their circumcision. From this we learn not to be too hasty in concluding that Paul believes Old Testament institutions to have been cancelled, certainly not when they are also found outside the mosaic law.
In Galatians 4:10 then the matter of a calendar of holy days is raised. Paul says: “You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have laboured over you in vain”. On the ground of this text many come to a hasty conclusion and say that from this text it is clear that Paul reproached the Galatian Christians for still observing holy days and that this naturally included sabbath days. This it seems to me is rather too triumphant a way of dealing with this text. Paul may certainly have included the sabbath when he wrote: “you observe days”. He may have thought also about fast-days and feast-days apart from the sabbath. But what did he mean? Paul did certainly not rebuke the Galatian Christians for having certain celebrations; he objected to their observance of these celebrations in the spirit of Judaism which was the spirit of legalism and of returning to the mosaic law. What Paul could not stand was the fact that they observed these days, months, seasons and years in the hope of thus satisfying the demands of a holy God.
And further, those who so easily conclude from this text that Paul rebuked the Galatians for observing the Sabbath as such again ignore that Paul’s controversy was with the Judaisers. They demanded mosaic celebrations, a mosaic sabbath. This Paul could never accept. I could perfectly agree with Dr. Alexander Ross, who comments that “no support can be found here for the idea that the sabbath has been abrogated by Christ. What Paul is condemning here is the scrupulous observance of the Jewish sabbath with all its Pharisaic strictness and the scrupulous observance of other sacred days “as a means of salvation” New Bible Commentary, 1961 on this passage.
Romans 14:5
Finally there is Romans 14:5, a text that has given difficulty to many Bible readers. Here Paul goes so far as to say “that one man esteems one day better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let everyone be fully convinced on his own mind”.
The crucial question is whether Paul in this passage meant to include the sabbath among those days which, according to some, were all alike. Many feel that he did. They hold that here too Paul had the controversial point of holy days in mind. In the New Bible Commentary mentioned above two professors from Scotland, G.I. Thomson and F. Davidson, propose that the two problems at issue in Rome were “flesh eating and holy days”. Yet, if this would be so there seems to be no reason why anybody could deny that Paul most likely included the sabbath among those days which were according to some no holier than any other day and that Paul does not blame them for it.
Professor Dr. S. Greydanus, however, in his commentary on Romans (1941) proposed a wholly different exegesis of the text. He suggested that it is not at all likely that Paul here thought of raising the issue of holy days and their observance, including sabbath observance. Had Paul suspected the influences of Judaism behind the problems in Rome he would have been far more outspoken in his condemnation of such holy days – judaistically held – and he would certainly not have left it to the individual conscience of each member to decide whether or not a day was “holy” enough for a feast.
Greydanus pointed out that the issue under consideration in the whole of Chapter 14 is that of fasting and abstinence of certain meats, and he gave as his solution that the days to which Paul referred were certain fast-days that came to be honoured in some christian circles in Rome. On certain days which they considered to be sacred (certainly not the sabbath which was according to old Jewish custom a feast-day with the best of food) they abstained from certain meats. Other believers in Rome declined to believe in any such days, to be holier than others.
Greydanus is, of course, not alone in giving this explanation. Before and after him others have believed this to be the correct exegesis and not only those who take a more puritan view of the sabbath. I was intrigued to see that Dr. G.E. Meuleman e.g. who a few years ago defended the “new approach” in a series of articles in “Het Gereformeerde Weekblad” gave as his opinion that Greydanus’ exegesis is correct. In that case this passage does not speak about sabbath observance and Paul does not leave it to the liberty of each Christian whether he will observe the sabbath or not.
So far about these three pauline passages. It was valuable, I believe, to spend sone real time and care on these texts because according to the “new approach” it would be Paul who forces us to believe that the sabbath has been abrogated, that the sabbath never was a creation institution and that therefore when the Lord Jesus said that “the sabbath was made for man” he actually meant that it was made for the people of Israel from Moses to the death of Christ. Now having studied Paul’s references to the sabbath, do we come to the conclusion that this is indeed so and that Paul simply compels us to admit that the fourth commandment (or part of it or certain aspects of it has been cancelled?
I hope to have made clear why I believe that in the first two passages Paul condemns certain legalistic and mosaic manners of observing the sabbath, which had nothing to do with the fourth commandment, and that he declared the mosaic sabbath to have been cancelled but not the sabbath as such; that in the passage in Romans Paul speaks in a rather relaxed manner on the supposed holiness of certain feast-days; and that in not one of these passages Paul says anything, either directly or by implication, about the cancellation of the sabbath, as it comes to us through e.g. the fourth commandment.
Those who contend that Paul in his conflict with Judaism on the sabbath contended that the sabbath had been cancelled might just as well reason that Paul in his conflict with Judaism on the issue of the whole law contended that the whole law had been cancelled when he said that we are no longer “under the law but under grace” and that “we are discharged from the law”, Romans 6:14 and 7:6.
Mark 2:27
But I suggest that we now turn to one significant word of the Lord Jesus on the sabbath: “the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is Lord even of the sabbath”. The word used in the Greek text for “man” is “anthropos”, The Lord Jesus used this same word when he said e.g. “man shall not live by bread alone” or “how much more value is a man than a sheep.” The angels according to Luke 2, sang of “peace among men” and there the same word is used; and when John wrote in 2:25 “for he himself knew what was in man”, he used “anthropos”. Kittel’s Worterbuch in an article on the word says that it is generally used to indicate man as species. There seems to be no reason why we should not take it here in the same sense as in which it is generally used: “the sabbath was made for the species: man”, precisely as the Lord Jesus according to John 2 knew “what was in the species: man”.
The “new approach” is naturally somewhat embarrassed about this text, and it has tried to tone down its significance. If this text was to teach that the sabbath was meant for all men, how could this be reconciled with the contention of the “new approach” that it was made for the Israelites only, and only from Moses to Christ’s death? And what else could this text teach? When Jesus said “for man” he must have meant “for man”, and although the Jews from Moses to Christ’s death were men certainly not all men are Jews. Or, was Jesus imprecise in his statement? But if it was imprecise it was actually false, because if someone claims that he loves children, meaning that he loves his own children only he makes a false statement.
But I am sorry to have used so much space already. In a final article I would like to say a few more things about this text, about the sabbath in connection with the creation, and about the sabbath in connection with the Sunday; and then I hope to close with a few concluding remarks.
J.W. DEENICK
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