Constantine and Pagan Capitulation? Why Christians Worship on Sunday Instead of Saturday

Theological Letters

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Why do Christians worship on Sunday as opposed to on Saturday like the Jews did before them?

If you’re very online, you’ve probably heard a rumor that this is actually a pagan capitulation. In other words, at some point within Christianity, specifically due to the conversion of Constantine, Christianity began to engage in a various forms of syncretism, merging elements of paganism with Christianity. The result was a distorted hybrid as opposed to pure Christianity.

If you’ve heard this, the case runs something like this when applied to Sunday worship. Early Christianity—namely, Jesus and the Apostles—obviously worshiped on Saturday because they were Jews, and that’s when Jews went to synagogue or the Temple, if they could. Thus, early Christian worship was on Saturday. But in the 4th century, there emerges a pagan emperor named Constantine, who converted to Christianity.

Now, his conversion is dubious—seemingly motivated by political or pragmatic reasons—and following this dubious conversion, Constantine starts to mingle his paganism, which is still there in the closet, with his newfound religion, Christianity. This is where we get the sort of pagan syncretisms that give rise to Roman Catholicism as we know it today.

One of these forms of syncretism is the movement of worship from Saturday to Sunday. Constantine doesn’t do this to honor Christ. Rather, what this veils is his honor of the pagan sun god, Sol Invictus, to whom he was previously devoted. How do we know this? We know this because we know exactly when Constantine decreed that all of Rome is supposed to take a day of rest, and he says specifically why: to honor the venerable day of the sun. Hence, he’s referring here to the real reason for the day of rest on Sunday, namely, to honor the sun god.

This decree is later solidified within Christianity as this syncretism spreads with the blending of pagan politics and the Christian Church at the Council of Laodicea in 364 AD. At that council, we have the very clear mandate: Christians are no longer to worship on the Jewish Sabbath. They are supposed to worship on Sunday. And here we are today, still commemorating the pagan day of worship on Sunday rather than the Saturday Sabbath.

Such is the case. Is it true?

There are certain things about it that are, in fact, true. What are they? Yes, there is an emperor named Constantine who, in the 4th century, converts from paganism to Christianity. That’s a well-known fact.

As for the sincerity of his conversion, I’m not going to debate that here because it’s immaterial to the question at hand for reasons that we’ll see shortly. Suffice it to say that Orthodox Christians, like myself, tend to look at Constantine and his life and think there’s good reason to believe his conversion and his faith were sincere.¹ Certainly, the Christians of the day believed the same. But as I said, the question is immaterial to the matter of Sunday worship.

Let’s bracket the question of whether Constantine was a good guy or a bad guy, and whether his faith was authentic or not. Let’s instead look at whether it’s true that Constantine issues an edict in 321² that moves Christian worship from Saturday to Sunday. We can see quite plainly the answer is No.

Evaluating the Claim: New Testament and Early Christian Testimony

We already begin to see in the book of Acts (20:7) and in 1 Corinthians (16:2) signs that Christians had started to gather on the Lord’s Day, which was the first day of the week, which is to say Sunday.

In addition to this New Testament testimony that Christians were beginning to gather on Sunday, we also find the testimony of the Ante-Nicene fathers. Who are the Ante-Nicene fathers, and why are they relevant? They’re relevant because “ante” doesn’t mean against Nicene or against Nicaea. Instead, ante (in Latin) means before Nicaea. And what is Nicaea? Nicene or Nicaea refers to the first major ecumenical council of the Christian Church. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, the ecumenical councils of the first millennium were gatherings of the entire Christian Church, with representatives from the Christian East and the Christian West, meant to adjudicate a question of theology about the faith handed down by the Apostles.

When talking about the Ante-Nicene fathers, then, we’re talking about fathers who are before the first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (325 AD). In other words, the very early fathers, many of whom are called Apostolic Fathers, precisely because they knew the Apostles. When we look at an Apostolic father like Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–108 AD), who was a bishop in the early Church, we find additional testimony (well before Constantine) that Christians worship on the Lord’s Day, echoing the New Testament testimony.³ And Ignatius is far from the only such testimony. We could add other ante-Nicene fathers, such as Justin Martyr (c. 100–165 AD), as well.⁴

Part of the question here is why was there a movement from gathering on the Sabbath Saturday to the Lord’s Day and worshiping on Sunday? Was it pagan capitulation? Perhaps people like Ignatius and Justin were deeply rooted in their paganism that even though they had embraced this new religion, they couldn’t quite shed that pagan skin they wore long before it. I’ll tell you this, it’s not likely if you actually read the lives of these saints.

Whenever I discuss this question of whether there is some sort of syncretism between Christianity and paganism—when I would teach historical theology, for example—one of the places I would begin in order to set the tone for the question is by reading to my students the account of the martyrdom of Justin Martyr. (If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth reading.) Why would I do this? I’ll tell you the story and then I’ll explain why.

Justin and a group of Christians are brought before the prefect of Rome, Rusticus, to be interrogated. While Justin is being interrogated, he admits that he was a student of philosophy and had studied all the major schools of pagan thought. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that Christianity is the true philosophy. Rusticus gets pointed: “You’re a Christian then.” Justin says plainly, “Yes, I am a Christian.” The Christians with him say the same. The prefect decides to cut to the chase. He tells Justin that what he needs to do is offer pagan sacrifice to the gods, and then he’ll let them go. But Justin says quite plainly, “No right-thinking person falls away from piety to impiety.”⁵ All of his companions say the same.

The prefect gets a little more pointed and says, “Now you do know if that’s your final answer, I’m going to torture you without mercy.” He says, “Yes, I know.” And they say, “Yes, we know.” “Is that your final answer?” “Yes, that’s the final answer,” saying plainly, “Do what you will, for we are Christians, and do not sacrifice to idols.”⁶ The results? They’re all tortured and martyred at the hands of the emperor.

Why would I share this story as a way of setting up the question about pagan syncretism? The reason is this. Whenever someone begins to paint a narrative that says, “I know that we have certain figures like Justin Martyr who profess to be Christians, but if we look at their thought, what we see is they’re really clinging to their old paganism. They can’t get rid of it. And so, they’re trying to find a way of merging their new life as a Christian with their old life as a pagan.” In other words, it’s an indictment. Somebody like Justin would be mortified at the suggestion that he was somehow hanging on to falsehoods from his former pagan life. Yet that is the accusation. When you read the account of his martyrdom, it becomes unlikely that that accusation holds water.

What about St. Ignatius? He was a bishop, so perhaps he was drunk with power, wanting to impose his will, talking about the importance of bishops within the ancient world and with that, of course, imposing certain pagan commitments, like Sunday worship. Here’s the problem with that. Somebody like St. Ignatius, if you read his letters, some of those letters are written on the road to him being taken to the coliseum to be fed to lions. Needless to say, if you’re about to be fed to lions, the last thing you’re thinking about is solidifying your power here on earth. When you read the words of Ignatius, it’s very clear he has no intention of escaping this fate. Quite the contrary, he wants to be food for lions. He writes to his readers—to his flock—and says, “Suffer me not to die,” by which he means do not rescue me from this fate so that I might go on living on this earth, “but let me live,” by which he means be made food for lions.⁷ He explains that when he is conformed to the sufferings of the Son of God, he will find in that paradise that awaits on the other side that he has become fully human.⁸ Those aren’t exactly the words of somebody who’s sitting around thinking about worldly things, like how to consolidate worldly power, and how to hold on to pagan trappings.

The reason I bring these stories up is that the narrative that suggests that figures like Ignatius and Justin are merely clinging to their old pagan commitments simply isn’t plausible when you look at the lives of these men. This fact paired with the New Testament testimony creates significant problems for the narrative that Sunday worship is somehow a Constantinian invention.

If paganism isn’t the motive for moving the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday, what is the reason? Surely, there must be an explanation. And there is—and a good one.

Before we get to that, however, I want to say a couple of things about Constantine’s edict in 321 AD about a day of rest on the venerable day of the sun. It’s true that Constantine issued the edict, and it’s entirely possible that what Constantine is doing with that edict is providing cover for the Christians who were supposed to try, if at all possible, to avoid work on Sunday. That’s the sort of thing stated at the Council of Laodicea in 364 (in canon 29). If you can avoid work, you should. But why doesn’t Constantine simply tell the pagan empire that they should take the Lord’s Day and not work? The reason is simple: it’s a pagan empire. Keep in mind that Christianity was not just broadly persecuted, but considered largely illegal up until 313 AD, when the Edict of Milan legalized it, giving it sanction. The edict didn’t make the Roman Empire Christian, of course; it simply ensured that Christianity is tolerated. But to the broader empire, Christianity remained a minority religion that was only recently tolerated. To tell the pagan empire to take the Lord’s Day off wouldn’t mean anything. Hence, Constantine refers to Sunday as the venerable day of the sun, which is the day his pagan hearers would have recognized. Notice that the edict doesn’t say one is to venerate the sun. It simply identifies the day of the week with a term the pagan hearers would have recognized. To turn this into a declaration that we worship on Sunday because it is the day of the sun is a significant distortion. As we have seen, the Christians were already worshiping on Sunday.

The True Reason: The Eighth Day of Creation

All of this brings us back to the question at hand. If not paganism, then why did the Christians begin to worship on Sunday rather than on Saturday? To understand what we find within the Eastern Church fathers, we have to consider the doctrine of the Eighth Day of Creation. What is this?

Within the Genesis creation account, we find something interesting. If we attend to the days of creation, most are familiar with the fact that when reading Genesis, certain things are made on Day One and then on Day Two and so on, until reaching the Sabbath rest on Day Seven, when God rests from all of his work. One of the details that is oftentimes missed by contemporary readers, but not by the Eastern fathers, is that each day of creation has a beginning and an end, a morning and an evening, except one of them: the Seventh Day. Why is this significant? It’s significant because what this signals to the Eastern Fathers is that what follows in human history from that point forward are the events of the Seventh Day. In other words, human history unfolds as part of the creation narrative. Not until later do we encounter the Eighth Day of the creation story.

So, what is that Eighth Day? To see the answer, we have to look at another aspect of the creation story, which concerns the making of man and the significance of the making of man to the Eighth Day of creation. There is another detail that the Eastern Fathers notice within the creation account, specifically the creation of man. Within the making of man, God says explicitly, “Let us make man in our own image and according to our own likeness” (Gen 1:26). He then goes on and makes man in his own image. Likeness isn’t repeated.

The Eastern fathers tend to see something significant in this omission. The significance is this. The image of God—if we trace that phrase throughout the Eastern fathers—has largely to do with the nature of man. Specifically, the fact that we are rational, that we are free, that we have the capacity to commune with God, that we’re spiritual beings who have a soul that is invisible and immaterial. They name all of these as ways we image God. But notice that all of them have to do with the nature of man—that we by nature are rational, free, and so on.⁹ The likeness, by contrast, has to do with active attributes of God.¹⁰ What do I mean? Consider this. When it comes to our talk of what God is like, terms like the following unfold: God is merciful or he is loving or he is kind or he is just. Those sorts of attributes within the Eastern fathers are identified as activities, things that God does. In other words, the Eastern Fathers understand the nature of God to be beyond our grasp, and yet we come to understand the divine nature as God operates, as his operative powers are expressed and come down to us, as Basil of Caesarea (330–379 AD) puts it.¹¹ This is sometimes referred to as the distinction between God’s essence and his energies.¹²

Why do I bring this up? I bring it up because this is critical to understanding how the Eastern Fathers understand the difference between God’s image and his likeness.¹³ As I said, the image of God has to do with our bare nature, the fact that we are rational, the fact that we are free, the fact that we are spiritual. The likeness of God, by contrast, has to do with the active imitation of God by which we come to commune with and participate in God. The likeness of God concerns our active expression of our reason, our will, our spirituality in ways that mirror God, where we show forth or articulate that image-bearing nature in love, in justice, in mercy, and in these ways become co-workers with God, cooperating with God and communing with these same attributes that exude from him.¹⁴

When the Eastern fathers look at this distinction, what they see in the Genesis story is that the making of man is incomplete within the narrative. God makes man in his own image and with the intent of us bearing the likeness of God. The likeness, being communion by active imitation of God, is something that we must freely cooperate in and bring about. In other words, man must cooperate in the completion of his own making. If you’re familiar with your Bible, you know how the narrative goes. Does man cooperate? No. Rather than continuing in obedience to God and being conformed to God’s likeness, man retreats into sin and vice. Far from bearing the likeness of God, we very much obscure and hide the image of God that is within us.

The reason this is important is because this sets the context for how the Eastern Fathers understand the nature of the Christian gospel and specifically what Christ is doing in the incarnation. In the incarnation, what these fathers understand to take place is that the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the one who has the life of God within himself because he’s of the same nature as his Father, joins himself with human nature. In joining himself with human nature, he drives out the corruption and energizes it. He heals it. He restores it.¹⁵ The relevance of this is that what the Eastern Fathers see happening in the incarnation is not some sort of remedy to a judicial predicament. What they see is that the Creator God, the second person of the Trinity, is completing the making of man from within man.

If you look at the work of John Behr (e.g., in The Mystery of Christ), drawing specifically on Ignatius of Antioch, he makes the case that when Christ says, “It is finished” (John 19:30), what is finished is the making of man. What the second person of the Trinity is doing in the incarnation is exactly that. In the incarnation, he is unearthing that image of God that had been buried underneath passions and corruption and healing that nature, and then through his energetic activity, his obedience to the Father through his martyrdom and all the rest, is remaking man and bringing about the likeness of God within humanity. That is the thing finally completed in his martyrdom.¹⁶

This is why the Eastern Fathers understand his Resurrection is the dawn of the Eighth Day of creation. With the making of man complete, what we see in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the dawn of the Eighth Day, when all things are being made new. His Resurrection is the new reality that all of creation is being brought into; that is the Good News and the work of redemption that is supposed to spread through all of creation.

For that reason, we find the Eastern Fathers talking about the Eighth Day of creation as the Lord’s Day or the Day of Resurrection. We can see this in figures like Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373 AD), for example,¹⁷ as well as in early Christian literature, like the Epistle of Barnabas (c. 70–132 AD), where the Day of Resurrection marks the dawn of the new creation.¹⁸ And just as the Sabbath was a commemoration of one particular day within the creation story, so Sunday worship, the Lord’s Day, is a commemoration of the next day within the unfolding narrative. On Saturday, the Jews had celebrated God’s day of rest, the Seventh Day. The Christians, seeing the dawn of the Eighth Day in the Resurrection of Christ, come to celebrate that new day of creation, the day that we are now in—the Eighth Day of creation.

You can hear this if you attend an Eastern Orthodox Church and listen to the hymnody during Holy Week, where you will hear mention of not only the Day of Resurrection but also of the Eighth Day of creation.

Such is the background of things like the Council of Laodicea as well. If you look at the canon where Sunday worship is discussed (canon 29), it refers to the celebration of the Sabbath as Judaizing, and bids Christians to instead worship on the Lord’s Day. Why? Because, like all things within early Christianity, there was a recognition that the Jewish law—the customs, circumcision, and things like this—were shadows of realities that were to come. Once that reality shows up, you cease to practice the shadows—this being St. Paul’s point in his letters to the Galatians and Colossians (Gal 4:10; Col 2:16-17). The shadow has served its purpose, and we now have the substance, which is Christ. Whenever that substance is abandoned in order to hold onto the shadow, one is engaged in what, first, Paul and then later Christians identified as Judaizing. In other words, clinging to the old ceremonial law as opposed to abiding by the substance that is here, which is Christ. And this is precisely what we find in the Council of Laodicea: you’re not to stop work on Saturday and celebrate the Jewish Sabbath, but instead, you are to celebrate the Lord’s Day, the Day of Resurrection—and if you can avoid work on that day, you should.

That is why Christians worship on Sunday rather than on Saturday. No, it’s not because of paganism.

1. Within the Eastern Orthodox Church, Constantine is a canonized Saint.

2. Codex Justinianus, 3.12.2.

3. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistula ad Magnesios, 9:1.

4. Justin Martyr, Apologia Prima, 67.

5. The Martyrdom of the Holy Martyrs Justin, Chariton, Charites, Paeon, and Liberianus, 4.

6. The Martyrdom of the Holy Martyrs Justin, Chariton, Charites, Paeon, and Liberianus, 4.

7. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistula ad Romanos 4:1.

8. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistula ad Romanos 6:2.

9. E.g., Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, 7.7; Gregory of Nyssa, Oratio catechetica magna, 5.

10. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 5.6.1; Basil of Caesarea, Homilia I: De Origine Hominis, 16.

11. Basil of Caesarea, Epistula, 234.

12. For the definitive work on this topic, see David Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West, passim.

13. For a more thorough treatment of this distinction, see my letter, “Anthropology, Deification, and Asceticism (1 of 3).”

14. On this concept of participation in or partaking of the divine nature, see my letter, “Anthropology, Deification, and Asceticism (2 of 3).”

15. See Athanasius, De Incarnatione, 3; Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum, 7.1.

16. On this view of the Incarnation, see “Anthropology, Deification, and Asceticism (2 of 3).”

17. Athanasius, De Sabbatis et Circumcisione, 4.

18. Epistula ad Barnabam, 15:8-9.