The Rest of Life

Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective

Ben Witherington

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781467436694
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

When was the last time you heard a sermon on the theological importance of play? What do rest, eating, studying -- and sex -- have to do with the Kingdom of God? Strangely, although these activities together take up much of our time, they seldom receive much discussion from a biblical point of view.In The Rest of Life Ben Witherington explores these subjects in the light of biblical teaching about the Kingdom of God and the Christian hope for the future. He shows why and how all the normal activities of life should be done to the glory of God and for the edification of others. Focusing as it does on practical, everyday matters in an accessible style, this topical study is ideal for both individual reading and small-group discussion.

CHAPTER ONE

Is There a Sabbatical Plan for Christians?

The Sabbath . . . means togetherness instead of separation, permanence instead of transience, continuity instead of disruption, and presence instead of absence.

Sigve Tonstad

The debate began with the earliest Christians. Paul and the Judaizers had all sorts of struggles over the issue of how much of the Mosaic covenant should be applied to the followers of Christ. Should they all be circumcised, even the Gentiles? Should they keep the Jewish Sabbath? What about the food laws? Paul, for his part, and the author of Hebrews as well, believed that covenants and their strictures were package deals. As Paul says plainly in Galatians 3–4, if you allow yourself to be circumcised, taking on the oath sign of the Mosaic covenant, then you are obligated to keep all 600+ commandments given on Moses’ watch. His basic advice to all his converts was — Don’t go there. Indeed, as we shall see, he urged that Christians should not be enmeshed in observing Jewish festivals (new moons, Sabbaths) any more than they were obligated to get themselves circumcised. The new covenant had a new set of rules, and what was confusing was that some of the old rules were carried over into the new covenant, but most were not — especially not the boundary-defining rules about circumcision, Sabbath, and food.

Since there has been a Sabbath controversy in the church since almost Day One of its existence, it behooves us to look at this matter closely, but we need to be aware that Sabbath talk is part of the larger dialogue in Scripture about rest, sleep, restoration, Jubilee, and a cluster of related topics. In this chapter we will be conversing with a crucial recent study on these matters — Sigve Tonstad’s The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day.

I am not interesting in getting involved in the sometimes rancorous debate as to whether the Lord’s Day is the Christian Sabbath or not. (I don’t think the New Testament supports such an equation of the two. I do think that the Lord’s Day is the appropriate day of Christian worship in light of Easter.) I am interested in Christians having an adequate theology of rest, whether it involves the Sabbath or not. But we must, however, engage the debate as to whether Adventist practice of the Sabbath is what all Christians should follow, as this sort of globalizing theology of rest can lead not merely to contention, but ironically enough to a short-circuiting of the larger and more meaningful discussion of a theology of rest.

Lost and Found — Sabbath and Seventh Day

It is the thesis of S. K. Tonstad, in his well-written and wide-ranging study titled The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day, that the majority of Christendom needs to resurrect and recover the observance of the seventh day, the Sabbath.¹ His concern is, however, not just with the loss of a “day of rest” or a particular ritual pattern to the Christian week, but with theology — “The character of the seventh day is misconstrued if it is seen as a national or religious marker of identity and not as a theological statement. To the extent that it is a part of God’s story, it cannot be suppressed indefinitely. It must reassert itself to complete its God-ordained mission; it cannot remain permanently in exile” (p. 5). That Tonstad uses strong language in his study is understandable. He is an ardent Seventh Day Adventist, and he clearly has a “dog in this fight” as we would say in North Carolina.

As might be expected, the author will address the seventh day in the Old Testament, the seventh day in the New Testament, and postbiblical issues raised by the eclipse of the seventh day, issues such as the alienation between Christians and Jews, the estrangement of Christians from the material world, and the loss of understanding of the theological depth of the seventh-day observance. It is clear that the author sees the eclipse of seventh-day observance as one of the direct causes of some of these problems.

For Tonstad’s case, much hangs on his reading of Genesis 2:1-3, and as one reads his exposition of this text, one begins to see where the argument will go. He says, “By the act of hallowing the seventh day God drives the stake of divine presence into the soil of human time” (p. 21). This sentence is characteristic of the rhetoric of this book, which abounds in potent metaphorical images. And here is where we begin to see some of the oddity of the case he wants to make. What Genesis 2:1-3 says is that God ceased (shabbat) from creating. In other words, the seventh day is when he was not actively involved in doing some creative work in his material creation. The text suggests something more like God sitting back and enjoying what he had just accomplished and seeing that it was very good. The seventh day itself is not the capstone of creation. If anything deserves that title it is the creation of woman last of all creatures. Rather, the seventh day is the day when one takes time to appreciate the creation already finished. And it is this day that God both blessed and hallowed. The absence of divine creative activity is not the same thing as divine presence.

And what exactly does it mean to say God finished his work on the seventh day? Does it mean he created this day especially and set it apart from all other days? This statement in Genesis has always been puzzled over, and it led in fact in the Septuagint (or LXX) version of Genesis 2:1-3 to the translation that God finished his creative work on the sixth day! The work in question, however, cannot be the day itself, since the Hebrew says he finished it “on that day.” The activity in view must surely be his blessing and hallowing of the day, not a further act of creation.

Blessing and hallowing, while not a materially creative work, can nonetheless be said to be an activity. And perhaps it might be well to remember that when it comes to that, Jesus said that God is always working, in some sense (John 5:17). To cease from creating is not the same as to cease from all activity. And finally, the text does not say “and God said let there be a seventh day, and lo there was a seventh day.” The seventh day is not a special creation of God. Indeed, one could argue that the seventh day is still ongoing, as God has still ceased from his inaugural creation work, and in Genesis 2:1-3 there is no statement saying “there was evening and morning, a seventh day.”

Tonstad rejects the usually scholarly logic that Sabbath observance was something that came into play in the Exodus tradition, and should be distinguished from the seventh day of creation material in Genesis 2, preferring unitive readings of Genesis following older Jewish scholars such as U. Cassuto and N. Sarna. He thinks the Documentary Hypothesis has run out of literary gas. In his view, the Sabbath must be seen as an ordinance of creation for all time — all this deduced from Genesis 2:1-3. The net effect of this hermeneutical move is that the Sabbath and its observance rest on all humankind; it is not a rite set up for God’s chosen people, Israel, alone.

One of the problems with a good active theological mind that works synthetically, as Tonstad’s does, is that it tends to overread texts, by which I mean it reads more theology into a text than is there. Tonstad, for example, wants to see the seventh day, and God’s benediction on the seventh day, as not merely a retrospective evaluation of the goodness of God’s creative work, but prospective of redemption. He suggests that the “orientation of the seventh day from the beginning oscillates between memory and hope, between the reality of Paradise Lost and the prospect of Paradise Regained; the oscillation of hope is stronger than the oscillation of memory. In its original configuration, the seventh day must be seen as promise as much as memorial. It forecasts that God’s ‘very good’ will be sustained, transforming the human experience into a journey of hope” (p. 59).

Unfortunately, as the British would say, this is “over-egging the pudding.” Genesis 2:1-3 is clearly retrospective, not prospective; it does not in itself promise anything about the future, nor does it establish a particular pattern of Sabbath observance. That clearly comes later, when there is a people, Israel, to do such observing. That is not to deny the connection between the seventh day in Genesis and the later Israelite worship pattern; the latter definitely is grounded in the former, but the two are not the same. The seventh day is God’s celebration of his own creative work, and since God is not a narcissist, understandably nothing is said about worship, or even creatures needing to worship the creator God, at that juncture. As Tonstad admits, there is only one text in Genesis that deals with the seventh day and its theology, Genesis 2:1-3, and there is frankly no attempt there to connect that to a remedy for what happens afterwards, namely the Fall.

As is well known, Paul connects the new covenant with the Abrahamic covenant, in distinction from the Mosaic covenant (Galatians 3–4), and thus it becomes important for Tonstad that somehow he connect Abraham to Sabbath observance and the Sabbath commandment. His attempt to do this is weak, because the most he can muster is the fact that Abraham is said to keep some commandments of God, though there is no evidence whatsoever that he kept the Sabbath. It is entirely an argument from silence to suggest Abraham was a sabbatarian, and indeed Paul’s distinctions between the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants should have warned us against such a reading of the Abraham story.

To a real extent, a person’s theology of rest is going to be determined or affected, at least, by his or her theology of work. If work is seen as a curse, then rest is seen as an inherent blessing, and so the two are viewed as reciprocal. But there is a problem with this whole perspective, as I have shown in the earlier books in this Kingdom series.² The problem is twofold: (1) worship is not necessarily the same thing as rest, and (2) work is not a curse. The inauguration of the Sabbath day (Exodus 16) is an attempt to get Israel to once more focus on the worship of the one true God after years when there had been nothing but slavery and work. With freedom came the opportunity and obligation to worship, and God set up for them a weekly practice that involved rest from other activities, but not from worshiping God.

Tonstad makes much of the fact that the Exodus 16 text says that God remembered his promises to Abraham. Indeed, he did, but he did not promise Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob a Sabbath observance, nor is there any hint they observed such a day in Genesis. He promised them a relationship, a homeland, descendants, and some freedom from oppression. Now we learn in Exodus 16 that the most important part of the freedom was freedom to continue cultivating that deep relationship with God, freedom to worship, and Exodus 19:4 says that God had not merely delivered Israel but “brought you to myself.” The real goal was more a promised relationship than a promised land. Or better said, it was both, with the emphasis on the promised ongoing relationship.

Close examination of Exodus 31:13-17 reveals that the Sabbath pattern is a sign between God and Israel, a perpetual covenant between God and Israel, a reminder that it is God who hallows and sanctifies things, including his own people. Nothing is said or suggested here about such a covenant with humankind in general, or that God had made such a covenant with all of humankind before the Exodus-Sinai events. Remembering the sabbatical pattern of God’s creation is one thing, and remembering a previous ordinance to observe a Sabbath by a people is another; Exodus does not ask Israel to remember such a previous ordinance, it asks them to remember God’s creation pattern, and God’s covenant faithfulness with the patriarchs — a different matter.

What fallen people, who endure suffering, sin, and sorrow, disease, decay, and death, need far more than rest and restoration is resurrection, which makes them immune to all the effects of fallenness. And whereas the retrospective old pattern of liberation focused on a day of rest and restoration, and thereby of renewal of a personal relationship and worship, what the new pattern of liberation focused on was not the old sort of redemption, a mere freedom from, but a new sort of redemption and salvation that enabled a freedom to.

Worship in light of the eschaton is not worship that makes allowances or is a response to the Fall with its breaking of the relationship with God. Worship in the light of the eschaton is worship in spirit and in truth whenever and wherever. It does not require a holy spot (Mt. Zion), nor does it require a holy day, for all days in the eschatological view are holy unto the Lord. Eschatological worship looks forward to not merely when we will study war no more, but when there will be no more night. New heaven and new earth are not a mere continuation of a sabbatical pattern, they are the completion of a new covenant with humankind, the fulfillment of the promise of Easter and the first resurrection, the raising of Jesus.

There is a reason why there is no temple in the new creation, and it is because there is no division between sacred and secular days, zones, or places anymore, something Jesus announced in John 4 already. Paul foresees all this clearly when he says that while some observe one particular day unto the Lord, others see all days as the Lord’s days, and he thinks they are right. He thinks we shouldn’t insist on anyone observing a Sabbath day anymore, not because he has given up on rest, restoration, or worship, but because since the resurrection of Jesus we are now looking forward to a time when all days are hallowed. The sabbatical pattern is a pattern for God’s people in a fallen world, a world where there is night, where there is need for rest, where work is never done, never completely finished. It is not a pattern from or for the eschaton, where there is no night, no need for rest, and work is complete in various senses.

The question is whether Christian worship and life should be patterned on the Kingdom that is still to come, or on the original old creation pattern, whether Christian worship and life should be about new life, resurrection life in Christ, or the old birth, the old creation, the old creatureliness, the old need for rest and restoration. My answer is, we are not under the old creation, old covenant mandate anymore. We are under a new covenant mandate and we should daily remind ourselves, “If anyone is in Christ there is already a new creation.” The Sabbath mandate is for those who have been born, and in particular for those in Mosaic covenant with God. The new creation, new worship mandate is for those who have been born again of water and Spirit, who live out of the future and not primarily out of the past. They live out of the eighth-day Easter morning, and not the seventh, the close of the old creation workweek.

Were Adam and Eve, before the Fall, given a commandment to keep the seventh day holy? No. Their only commandment was to stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Was toilsomeness in work due to a fallen creation said to be something inherent in the nature of work, or was it said to be part of the curse on the ground due to the Fall? The latter is true, and rest in that context becomes relief from the effects of the Fall on work, not part of the original creation mandate.

One of the interesting ideas in Tonstad’s book is that the Sabbath is a sign like a flag is a sign. I would say that actually it’s a symbol — something that participates in the reality to which it points. It points to God’s ceasing from his creative activity, and as such when Israel does the same they participate in such ceasing from creative activity. Just as people react violently in the U.S. to flag burning, so Exodus says death is the penalty for violating the Sabbath, as it is sacred.

Another interesting idea is the relationship of Sabbath observance and creation keeping and care. One of the more important aspects to Sabbath law is that it has concern for those most vulnerable and heavy laden — the beast of burden, the slave, the resident alien (Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:12-15). It prioritizes from the bottom up not the top down, with most concern for those who most need rest (pp. 126-27). Tonstad calls the Sabbath year and the year of Jubilee “Sabbath satellites” that extend the pattern of rest to debt and the need of the land for rest.

Isaiah 56:4-5 foresees a day when eunuchs and strangers who keep the Sabbath and hold fast the covenant will be given a place within God’s house and an everlasting name, a name better than sons and daughters. Isaiah’s vision is about those who choose to do this, and so it goes beyond the ethnic view of a people. Instead of an ethnic group we have a confessing community.

Isaiah 66:23 suggests that when new creation rolls around it will involve new moons and Sabbaths. But what it actually says is that all flesh shall come to worship before God, from new moon to new moon, from Sabbath to Sabbath. Isaiah develops a Sabbath ideology that goes beyond Israel into an eschatological situation involving everyone. He has the last word about Sabbath in the Old Testament, not Nehemiah or later Old Testament developments. And this vision of the end, when lion lies down with lamb, involves the demise of the serpent — he will bite the dust (Isa. 65:25). Tonstad eloquently puts it this way: “The serpent who at the beginning bit the fruit of the tree of knowledge will, in the end, bite the dust” (p. 157).

For Tonstad’s case to work, namely that the Sabbath is for all people all the time, and not just specifically for Jews, he must marginalize texts like Nehemiah 13:3 and maximize Isaiah 56–66, for Nehemiah separates Israel from those of foreign descent. Tonstad is forced to admit that the subsequent history of the Sabbath observance moves more along Nehemiah’s lines than Isaiah’s vision (pp. 167-68). Nehemiah suggests to Tonstad an approach involving exclusion and coercion, something he sees continued with the Pharisees and Jewish officials in the Gospels (Matt. 12:2; Mark 2:24; Luke 6:2; John 5:16). Attempts to dilute Jewish distinctiveness and distinctive praxis are seen as threats to the national and ethnic identity (cf. 1 Macc. 1:1-61; 2:42). According to Tonstad, Pharisees were believers in coercion. A perceived attack on Sabbath observance was seen as an attack on exclusive Jewish existence, excluding Gentiles. Sabbath observance was seen as an essential feature of Jewish identity. The evidence that this was the early Jewish view, and that they read the Pentateuch to say that the Sabbath was set up for the Hebrew people, is clear in various kinds of early Jewish literatures. For example, consider the following two quotes:

Rabbi Levi: “If Israel kept the Sabbath properly even for one day, the son of David would come. Why? Because it is equivalent to all the commandments” (Exodus Rabbah 25:12).

Rabbi Johanan in...