Catholic and Protestant Sabbath Quotations

The Authority Question Remains

After examining New Testament Sabbath and first-day passages, the Catholic Mirror, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Baltimore during Cardinal Gibbons's tenure, argued on September 16, 1893, that “so far, not a shadow of pretext can be found in the Sacred Volume for the Biblical substitution of Sunday for Saturday”. Its next article would address the Lord's Day language. Read the transcribed series.

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, answers 450–453, grounds Sunday in Christ's Resurrection and the new creation, treating it as fulfillment of the Sabbath's spiritual meaning. That is more than an appeal to institutional power. Luther and the Augsburg Confession defend Christian freedom concerning the day. The Westminster Confession, 21.7–8, instead teaches a continuing weekly moral obligation whose appointed day changed at the Resurrection. These are different arguments.

The Sabbath case begins with God's blessing of the seventh day at Creation, its place in the Ten Commandments, and Jesus's description of its human purpose and His lordship. The accounts of the Resurrection and the first-day gathering, and Paul's collection instruction, do not themselves state a transfer command. The strongest Sunday reply is cumulative: new creation, apostolic practice and the church's authority can establish an obligation without one sentence spelling out the transfer. Westminster 1.6 expressly allows conclusions necessarily deduced from Scripture. The question is whether that conclusion follows from the texts and covenant argument. A nineteenth-century opponent's verdict cannot settle it.