Sabbath: Import vs. Ethos

March 11, 2013

In Galatians 4:8-10, Paul calls the Galatians to task. Why? Because they had formerly been enslaved by idols, but now, having come to know God, they have returned to the weak and beggarly stoicheia (elements) of the world, becoming enslaved again. This is seen in the fact that they “observe days and months and seasons and years,” i.e. the Sabbath-oriented calendar of the Mosaic law.

At first glance, this line of argument seems mystifying. How can Paul suggest that observing the Sabbath and the new moons and Mosaic festivals is like returning to paganism? After all, God Himself gave the law, including the Sabbatical calendar.

The answer to this lies in (1) understanding Paul’s old creation-new creation contrast, as well as (2) making a distinction between import and ethos.

With regard to the former, throughout the whole of Galatians (and other letters), Paul is arguing that Torah belongs to the old creation and stands in contrast to the new creation that has come in Christ. One of the most stark Galatians passages in this regard is 6:14-15, where the contrast is between circumcision and “the world” (kosmos), on the one hand, and “a new creation” inaugurated by “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” on the other.

Against the backdrop of that old-new contrast, we need to evaluate, not only the import of the Mosaic calendar but also its ethos.

By the import of the Mosaic calendar, I am referring to its meaning as a system given by Yahweh, and referring to His worship as the one true God. In that respect, of course, the Sabbatical system necessarily stood in utter contrast to the sundry observances and festivals of paganism. So Paul is not referring to this aspect of the Mosaic calendar when he implicitly compares it to paganism in Galatians 4:8-10.

What he is referring to is the fact that like paganism, the Mosaic calendar was of necessity a constitutive element (i.e. part of the weak stoicheia) of the first creation world, and in fundamental senses, its ethos was therefore on the same level as paganism. This was not a “flaw” in the original program; it simply reflects the fact that God gave Torah as part of the first creation, and not as an answer to the old creation—an answer that would transcend it and bring in a new world. Rather, Torah (including its Sabbatical structure) was Israel’s God-given constitution for living inside the old world, the old creation.

By ethos here I am referring to the fact that, like the surrounding nations, Israel’s worship was based on the calendar. The general sense of experience with the Sabbatical calendar was a shared one, and the commonality was life under the old creation order and the overall way in which things were of necessity structured in that context. The observance of days and months and seasons and years was common both to paganism and Torah.

So far as Paul is concerned, the turning of former pagan Gentiles in Galatia to the Sabbatical system of Torah is in fact an embrace of slavery (4:8-11).

If we have understood his argument in Galatians 3:21-4:7, this should not be surprising. Paul there depicts Torah as a paidagogos (3:24-25), which is not a “schoolmaster” (as per the old King James Version) nor even a “tutor,” but rather a slave who served as a child custodian until the child came of age.

Given this, it is readily seen that a child “differs nothing from a slave” if he is governed by one (4:1-2). So long as he is a minor under the tutelage and correction of a paidagogos, he is not a free heir, but a functional slave.

This, then, is why the adoption of Torah’s Sabbatical system is an embrace of slavery. It is a willing subjection to a custodian, himself a slave, who was only ever intended as a governor for minors, and not for free adults. To follow a system of days and months and seasons and years is to willingly return to the ethos of slavery and minority.

Christians who attempt to impose a Sabbatarian character upon Sunday need to take this fact into serious consideration. While it is granted that what is being imposed is not the Mosaic law per se, it is nonetheless an ethos that intentionally attempts to be one shared with the Sabbatical system of Torah. Insofar as it is such, “Christian Sabbatarian Sunday observance” is in danger of reintroducing a partial return to the old creation, and should be resisted as incompatible with new covenant experience.

Lest this statement has not offended enough people, it should also be added that “Christian Sabbatarianism” is not alone in this danger. While there are ways in which a “church calendar” (Easter, Christmas, and so on) can be a wise and edifying device, the more this device takes on the form and experience of (for example) holy days and seasons, the more it is subtracting from Christian experience, rather than genuinely adding to it.

We have not been released from the old creation merely to return to a baptized form of the same ethos, the same sort of life experience. We have been released into the mature inheritance of the risen Christ, and we must stand fast in that freedom.