# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S343
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Teaching of the Lutheran Church concerning Sunday. 343

passage prove the limits as to how far the obligation of the Sabbath is now to be abolished; rather they determine these limits as seems fitting to them. That they nevertheless wish to maintain a general positive law, to keep one out of the seven days of the week, they appeal especially to the following: 1) The Sabbath was already legally ordained before the sin of the first humans in the Garden of Eden, according to Genesis 2:2. Answer: This is not proven. The conclusion of the most general history of creation, to which the first three verses of the second chapter still belong, and from which point on the particular history of creation and of the first state of mankind, chapter 2:3, is then taken up, can mention the Sabbath in advance (per prolepsin), because it was ordained for the first humans immediately afterward, before they were put out and indeed driven out of the garden.*) Since this interpretation has many similar examples in the books of Moses in its favor, and our opponents must at least grant it as equally possible, they may not, for the sake of one inconclusive passage, restrict the clear passages, e.g. Colossians 2:16-17. 2) The patriarchs, before the law, that is, before the establishment of the covenant at Sinai, already had the Sabbath, hence also the division of time into weeks occurs among all (??) peoples; it therefore does not belong to the peculiar laws of the Jews, and hence it will be just as much a generally binding positive law as it already was before the Mosaic law. Answer: The latter does not follow from the former. The oldest generations, before Israel became God's set-apart people and was afterward set over against the nations of the world, had several ceremonial laws. History teaches this of sacrifices, as also of several other examples, e.g. the eating of blood, of clean and unclean animals, and it is also generally attested at Genesis 26:5. Such a law was indeed also the Sabbath; hence, because it had fallen into disuse during the Egyptian bondage, it was immediately reimpressed when they were to receive food from heaven, while they were still on the way to Mount Sinai, Exodus 16:22-30. 3) For the observance of the Sabbath two reasons would be given: the one, namely the remembrance of the deliverance from bondage in Egypt, applies only to the Israelites; the other, however, namely the memorial of creation, applies for all times, and therefore the third commandment still binds us to that extent even now. Answer: It is so with all ceremonial laws, that their purpose is a general truth, or the kingdom of God established forever in his Christ. For they ordain directly types and memorials of it, or serve indirectly to secure God's typological dispensation with the Israelites. The essential

*) This is treated at greater length in my treatise "On the peril to the soul of those who do not keep Sunday holy," in my "Collection of Spiritual Treatises." Leipzig, by Dyk, 1753, pp. 235-243. (Crusius.)