The Lost Meaning(s) of the Seventh Day

The Lost Meaning(s) of the Seventh Day A-level Amphitheater November 12, 2011 sktonstad@llu.edu

3. Sabbath and the World Plot

Sabbath at the Source • Intent and actualization • Appraisal and delight • Universality and inclusion • Presence and participation • Plenitude and blessing • Memory and promise • Gift vs. obligation

Sabbath: Commandment or Gift • Commandment • Gebot (German) • Bud (Norw.) • Gift/offer • Angebot (German) • Tilbud (Norw.)

God asCommander or Giver • So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. (Gen 2:3) • Commandment or gift?

Objections • Ben Witherington: “Were Adam and Eve, before the Fall given a commandment to keep the seventh day holy? Nope.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2011/01/26/the-case-for-the-christian-sabbath-part-one * Nope (def.) disdainful negation, emphatic no

Theology of Nope • If there had been a commandment, there would have been an obligation. • There is no commandment, and therefore there is no obligation. • There will be a command, but even with the command there is no obligation because it does not apply to me. • Theology of Nope takes a miserly view of the Sabbath.

Gift and obligation in the Garden of Eden • And the LORD God commanded [ṣāwā] the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen 2:16-17)

Scrutiny of the Command in the Garden • Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God say [’āmar], ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Gen 3:1)

Journey to Nope • ‘Said’ – not ‘commanded’ – meaning a lesser obligation. • ‘Any tree’ – not ‘every tree’ but one – meaning a stricter obligation.

Irrational Command • “The sheer irrationality of the command not to eat of the tree, and of the threat to deprive of life if it was eaten, has had great effect on the history of understanding: for it has been read as if to mean that the slightest deviation from the slightest divine command, however devoid of perceptible ethical basis that command might be, was and must be a totally catastrophic sin which would estrange from God not only the immediate offender but also all future descendants and indeed all future humanity.” - Barr, Garden of Eden,12.

Arbitrary Prohibition • “It is God who is placed in a rather ambiguous light. He has made an ethically arbitrary prohibition, and backed it up with a threat to kill, which in the event, he does nothing to carry out.” • “The person who comes out of this story with a slightly shaky moral record is, of course, God. Why does he want to keep eternal life for himself and not let them share it? Even more seriously, why does he not want them to have knowledge of good and evil?” - Barr, Garden of Eden, 12, 14.

‘Killer Tree’ • “Since, then, the Garden in that place is one, why does the text say that each of the trees is to be treated as something separate, and that both of them are at the center, when the account which tells us that the works of God are “very good” teaches that the killer-tree is no part of God’s planting?” Gregory of Nyssa, Hom. in Cant., praef. (GNO 6:10.17-11.5., quoted in Richard A. Norris, Jr., “Two Trees in the Midst of the Garden (Genesis 2:9b): Gregory of Nyssa and the Puzzle of Human Evil,” in In DominicoEloquio: Essays in Patristic Exegesis in Honor of Robert Louis Wilken, ed. Paul Blowers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 220.

Prohibition vs. Freedom • “God’s words had emphasized freedom – the man could eat of every tree with only one prohibited.” - R. W. L. Moberly, “Did the Serpent Get It Right?” JTS 39 (1988), 6.

Command as Provision • “God is good in giving this commandment, for they are free to eat from any tree in the Garden, including the tree of life, with one exception.” • This one prohibition is also good because God treats man as a free moral agent.” Sidney Greidanus, “Preaching Christ from the Narrative of the Fall,” BSac 161 (2004), 266.

Command as Promotion • “Rather than serving as the means of their downfall, would have served as the means of their exaltation – to the righteousness, power, and glory God intended them to enjoy.” William N. Wilder, “Illumination and Investiture: The Royal Significance of the Tree of Wisdom in Genesis 3,” WTJ 68 (2006), 52

Command as Protection • “The divine prohibition is for man's own protection.” Jerome Walsh, “Genesis 2:4b-3:24: A Synchronic Approach,” JBL 96 (1977), 173. • “Attention is at once directed to the quarter where the possibility of evil already lurked amidst the happiness of Eden – the preternatural subtlety of the serpent: But the serpent was wily.”Skinner, Genesis 71. • They “are provided for and at the same time protected from danger.” Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11, 239.

Appraising the Divine Command • Command • Prohibition • Gift • Provision • Promotion • Protection

Gifts and Commands in the Garden of Beginnings • The gift (Sabbath) preceded the command. • The command (tree) was a gift.

Theology of Nope • “Because it is evident from the Scriptures that on the Lord’s day God rained manna from heaven, and on the Sabbath He rained none down, the Jews may understand that even then our Lord’s day was preferred to the Jewish Sabbath, that even then [it was] shown that on their Sabbath no grace of God would descend from heaven for them, and [that] no heavenly bread, which is the word of God, would come down for them.” - Origen, Homilies on Exodus, Homily VII, Chap. V.

DNA of the Sabbath • In an arbitrary manner God appointed that on the seventh day we should come to rest with His creation in a particular way. He filled this day with a content that is “uncontaminated” by anything related to the cyclical changes of nature or the movements of the heavenly bodies. That content is the idea of the absolute sovereignty of God, a sovereignty unqualified even by an indirect cognizance of the natural movements of time and rhythms of life. As the Christian takes heed of the Sabbath day and keeps it holy, he does so purely in answer to God’s command and simply because God is his Creator. RaolDederen, “Reflections on a Theology of the Sabbath,” in The Sabbath in Scripture and History, ed. Kenneth A. Strand (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1982), 302.

DNA of the Sabbath • In an _______ manner God ______ that on the seventh day we should come to rest with His creation in a particular way. He filled this day with a content that is “uncontaminated” by anything related to the cyclical changes of nature or the movements of the heavenly bodies. That content is the idea of the ___________ ___________of God, a __________ unqualified even by an indirect cognizance of the natural movements of time and rhythms of life. As the Christian takes heed of the Sabbath day and keeps it holy, he does so purely in answer to_____________and simply because God is his Creator.

The World Plot and the Divine Command • In the world plot, according to God, the gift precedes the command, and the command is a gift. • In the world plot, according to the serpent, the command is not recognized as gift, and the command is represented as a stricture.

World Plot and Sabbath • In the world plot, as gift and blessing, Sabbath precedes the command. • In the world plot, the core identity of Sabbath is gift and not command. • In the world plot, even as command, Sabbath is a gift. • Whether as gift or command, protology or eschatology, the first things or the last, Sabbath belongs to the world plot.

Sabbath and Non-Human Suffering: “No artful harms for simple brutes” Melissa Brotton, MS, PhD La Sierra University November 19

The Lost Meaning(s) of the Seventh Day