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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The question of the Sabbath is still a living issue. Unfortunately it is also one that all too often becomes bogged down either in a legalism which prescribes a list of do's and don't's (mainly don't's), or in a humanism which leaves us to please ourselves. In between, there are many who are frankly puzzled. On the one hand they are not enthusiastic about the Scottish Sabbath of the past (though in actual fact our forefathers do not seem to have found it as grim and irksome in practice as we feel it must have been), while on the other hand they are apprehensive of what is commonly known as the ‘continental Sunday’. But there seems to be equally little promise in the nondescript hybrid which is fast emerging among us, and which has no definite character at all but is merely a part of the ‘weekend’. Obviously new thinking is urgently needed here. This article attempts a few steps in that direction. It takes its cue not from the fourth commandment, but from a Gospel passage (Mark 2.2–28) which in a sense points behind and before it and sets the whole question of the Christian Sabbath in a new light.
page 427 note 1 We are here of course following Mark's version, which is probably nearest the original. Matthew substitutes a different ‘proof’ from the Law (Matt. 12.5). Luke, who as a Gentile writing primarily for Gentiles had perhaps little feeling for the niceties of rabbinical argument, omits the reference altogether (Luke 6.4f). Incidentally, the fact that the statement about the Sabbath being made for man could so easily drop out both in Matthew and in Luke surely lends further support to our contention that it was not felt to be a vital part of Jesus' point—although, unlike Matthew's substitute, it is certainly a great help towards the proper understanding of that point.
page 428 note 1 This incidentally would be one very good reason, though not the only one, for preferring the expression ‘Lord's Day’. It is only a pity that this expression, too, has become so heavily overladen with legalistic associations.
page 430 note 1 For what follows cf. also the suggestive series of questions by means of which Barth seeks to point the way to the proper observance of Sunday as (I) peculiarly God's day, (2) a day of joy, (3) a day of community, (4) the first day of the week (Kirchliche Dogmatik, 111.4, pp. 72–79).
