Many Seventh-day Adventists tell the story of the change of the Sabbath to Sunday by simply citing the famous decree of Constantine in AD 321. This book makes it clear that one needs to pay careful attention to this early history of the transition from Sabbath sacredness to Sunday sacredness because it is more complex. González, a Methodist and famous for having written numerous books on religious history (most notably his respected three-volume History of Christian Thought), has given us an important addition to his vast corpus of publications.

Right at the outset González delimits his topic by noting that he has several Adventist friends. But Adventist readers should not be surprised that he reads both Revelation 1:10 and the Didache (a very early Christian document first published in 1883, dated to the late first century by some scholars and to the first half of the second century by others) in their reference to “the Lord’s day” as an implicit reference to Sunday. However, it should be noted that the language used in the Didache (14:1) may not refer to a day at all. Furthermore, he asserts that

at least as late as the fourth century, some or perhaps even most Christians observed the Sabbath, and then the Lord’s day [that is, Sunday] on the following day. In other words, the Lord’s day, celebrated on the first day of the week, was not a substitution for the Sabbath, but a separate celebration of the resurrection of Jesus (p. 23).

Nevertheless, as he admits, “it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine most of the details of Christian worship in the early centuries” (p. 36).

There is rich material that Adventist scholars and pastors will be able to glean from this book. For example, he succinctly summarizes the major shift with Constantine, who became a patron of Christianity (scholars vigorously debate how sincere he was through this process). Yet it is clear that the Christian church changed afterward. The liturgy became more elaborate, vestments and artifacts were worn by the priest, music was sung by choirs, and the congregation was meant to sit and admire. Thus a mystical power was supposed to possess the participant as an act of devotion. Also, new and often elaborate houses of worship were erected, as the church wrestled with what to do with explosive growth. Such growth necessitated a drastic reduction in the period of preparation for baptism (pp. 48–51). Despite Constantine’s command to rest, González argues that it was only later that the notion of Sabbath rest became associated with Sunday (p. 60).

The medieval era brought a “new mood” for worship. While it is clearly recognized that prayers for the dead appear in Jewish literature during the intertestamental period (2 Macc 12:38–46), González observes that the Christian doctrine of purgatory did not become firmly established until Gregory the Great (who was pope from 590 to 604), when the practice of saying masses for the dead became commonplace (p. 72). By this time also, rest was now required as part of Sunday worship. The list of forbidden activities grew and became specifically defined, paralleling earlier rabbinic discussions (p. 86). Finally, at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church established Sunday worship as deriving from the authority of the Church (p. 99). This was in response to the Protestant Reformers, who rejected the apocrypha as an authority along with any practices (e.g., prayers for the dead) that could not be proven from the Old and New Testaments. González argues for a rather innocuous transition from Sabbath to Sunday that somehow started early but whose full acceptance took many centuries, and that such full acceptance was not really complete until at least the time of the Reformation. Trentine Catholics used this as a point of criticism against Protestants, who by worshipping on Sunday thereby affirmed the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

Adventist pastors and scholars will appreciate the sections on seventh-day Sabbatarianism—both as related to revivals of seventh-day observance in conjunction with the Anabaptists and, still later, among the Puritans. One area of weakness is that the author does not adequately explain why there were still other groups, such as the Waldenses of northern Italy and along the French border, who refused to accept the control of the Romish Church, including Sunday worship, for many centuries (up until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries). A similar argument can be made that there were other groups outside of Western influence, such as Sabbatarians in Goa, India and among the Ethiopian Christians of Africa who similarly preserved worship of the seventh-day Sabbath (at least up until Roman Catholic missionaries “converted” them in the seventeenth century). Also of note is the author’s observation that the translation of the word “Sabbath” was in fact connected to the seventh day for many languages. In English, however, the word for “Saturday” does not have this same connotation, thus making it easier to equate Sunday with “Sabbath.” González argues that this made the transition of Sunday as a replacement for Sabbath fully complete with the early American Puritans (p. 118) who made Sunday into “Saint Sabbath” (p. 121). Seventh-day Adventist scholars¹ have already noted the importance of Puritanism for Adventist theology so this cursory section will not be much of a surprise, and in fact I wish it could have been developed a little more fully.

Altogether this book is a quick yet thorough overview of Sunday worship, which, as indicated above, often overlaps with the seventh-day Sabbath during the past two millennia. The chapters are short and easy to read. Seventh-day Adventists can learn much from this interpretation of the history of Sunday sacredness, including the complexity and diverse shades of meaning that this day has had throughout Christian history. It also means that in the telling of the change from Sabbath to Sunday, one must be cautious since so few documents remain from this early period— some historians estimate that less than one percent of known documents have survived. What is clear is that some Christians were beginning to worship on Sunday by the mid second century, but only later did Sunday take on the character of a day of rest. For centuries, both days were honored by Christians in various places and sometimes they worshipped on both Saturday and Sunday. González’s book makes a contribution by suggesting just how complex this change was across the centuries and in various places.

As someone who teaches a class on the history and doctrine of the Sabbath it is very difficult to find resources. I have personally updated and used a compendium of sources originally compiled during the 1980s, and unfortunately another significant volume² is out of print. This should be a reminder of the need for an up-to-date, well-researched monograph on the seventh-day Sabbath, which the BRI is currently working on. Until then, this book may be a helpful resource for those who teach in this area. Despite its flaws, it can still offer some helpful insights about the interpretation of Sunday since it provides a helpful summary of some of the latest Sunday research. The wealth of recent publications cited in this book indicates that it is high time for Seventh-day Adventist scholars to publish more on this vital topic.