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Predigten und Texte zum Dekalog, Februar 2002
The Third Commandment in Some Orthodox Traditions, Grant S. White

The Ten Commandments have not had the formal place in Orthodox catechesis which they have held in Protestant traditions. That is, unlike Luther's or Calvin's cathechisms, when Orthodox have made catechisms for themselves (for example, Peter Moghila's Catechism or the late twentieth-century French catechism The Living God), the Ten Commandments have not occupied much space. Likewise, the Decalogue does not appear regularly in liturgical worship (at least in the Byzantine tradition) as it does in the Anglican, Lutheran, and Calvinist traditions. The Beatitudes are sung at each celebration of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and so this practice probably is the parallel to the reading of the Decalogue in those Protestant traditions. In this sense, the Beatitudes have become a kind of New Testament Decalogue. However, to put things this way runs the risk of opposing a "New Testament" code of ethical laws to one from the "Old Testament." Doing so not only puts us in danger of proclaiming a kind of neo-Marcionism. It also does not proceed from the commonly-accepted Christological center of Orthodox scripture interpretation. Christ himself cited the Ten Words to the rich young man who wanted to know what he needed to do to inherit eternal life; one can suggest therefore that a Christological hermeneutic will itself point interpreters to the Ten Commandments.

Orthodox view the Ten Commandments as a signal part of the larger body of Scripture, which itself gives voice to the Tradition in which the Church lives. Orthodoxy of course embraces the rejection of Marcionism in the second century; therefore the Ten Commandments (and of course the entire Old Testament) must remain in the Church. The question as always has to do with how the Church interprets the writings of this part of the canon.

There is no single authoritative interpretation of the Third Commandment in Orthodox Christianity. One wishing to find Orthodox interpretations of the Third Commandment has to cast her net widely, and look in the canons of church councils and their interpretation, in sermons, in ascetical and catechetical literature. Of course, in two pages it is impossible to give even a cursory glance to all these sources. What follows, therefore, is necessarily selective. In the Orthodox churches, interpretations of the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy have been shaped through the centuries by several factors. 1. The eventual shift from Sabbath to Sunday as the Christian weekly day of liturgical celebration, a change which happened in part because of the marginalization in the second and third centuries of Christian communities which continued to keep the Sabbath, but also because of the basic link between the first day of the week and the Resurrection in early Christian tradition.

2. Ascetic and monastic traditions, which maintained the importance of the commandment for Christians, but tended to interpret it typologically or allegorically within the framework of one or another understanding of the ascetic's journey to God through the exercise of praktik_, physik_, and theologik_. For example, one finds in the Philokalia, the eighteenth-century collection of ascetic writings whose popularity began to revive dramatically in the twentieth century, a number of texts written from this point of view. For example, in sections 51 through 60 of his First Century on Theology St. Maximus the Confessor interprets the sixth, seventh, and eighth days as types of the ascetic's movement from the conquering of the passions to the intellect's rest from images, to that which is beyond creation and time. Thus Maximus says.

The sixth day is the complete fulfilment, on the part of those practising the ascetic life, of the natural activities which lead to virtue. The seventh day is the conclusion and cessation, in those leading the contemplative life, of all natural thoughts about inexpressible spiritual knowledge. The eighth day is the transposition and transmutation of those found worthy into a state of deification" (St. Maximus the Confessor, First Century on Theology 55, Philokalia, ET Palmer, Sherrard, and Ware, p. 125). Thus the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy undergoes a fundamental shift toward the individual and his or her ascetic struggle. But at the same time in his discussion of the sixth, seventh, and eighth days Maximus manages to hold together both the Law and the Gospel, both of which are necessary for the ascetic's progress. Thus at least here Maximus stands in contrast to other writers in the Orthodox tradition who express a supercessionist view of the Law in relation to the Gospel.

3. At the same time, however, Saturday became a day on which the Eucharist was celebrated, both in parish and monastic practice. The result of this development was the canonical requirement that no fasting take place on Saturdays, save the Saturday before Easter. One can see here the relationship between Eucharist and festivity, i.e., that because the Eucharist celebrates the Resurrection, one does not fast in the presence of that celebration. However, another interpretation of the lack of fasting on the Sabbath also appears in Orthodox tradition via the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, a church order compiled in the vicinity of Antioch sometime in the 370s or 380s. In a discussion of the Ten Commandments (II.36.2), the author exhorts all Christians to observe the Sabbath, and (in the French translation of Marcel Metzger in Sources chrétiennes 320, p. 261), "en considération de celui qui a cessé de créer, mais non de protéger, tu observeras le sabbat, qui consiste à méditer les lois, et non à ne rien faire des mains. Écarte toute convoitise illicite, toute mauvaise action poussant des hommes à la perdition, toute colère." Thus the Sabbath observance involves imitation of God in cessation from work, but also because God did not thereby cease to provide for or care for the creation, Christians ought to cease from immoral actions as well. Canon 64 of the Apostolic Canons, found as an appendix to the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, proscribes fasting on Sundays. In its commentary on this canon, the Pedalion, an encyclopedic collection of Orthodox canon law first published in 1800, notes this connection between God's resting from the labors of creation and says:

For as regards Saturday we do not fast, mainly and essentially because it is a day of rest and the one on which God rested from all His works of creation . . . So, in addition to the real and inner reason why we do not fast on Saturday, which is, as we said, that on that day the Creator of all things took a rest, there is the further reason . . . in that we thus avoid the semblance of agreeing with the said heretics [i.e., those who fasted on the Sabbath]." (ET Cummings, 1958, pp. 110, 111) This interpretation of the Sabbath freedom from fasting constitutes a tradition quite separate from that associating freedom from fasting with the celebration of the Eucharist, and stands closer to Jewish interpretation of the Sabbath commandment.

4. The eventual application of the Third Commandment to Sunday itself, i.e., Christian interpretation of the Sabbath rest as now applying to Sunday. This interpretation of the commandment in relation to Sunday came to be codified in civil law, first by Constantine the Great, and then by Theodosius and Justinian.

Grant S. White
Acting Professor of Church History
Faculty of Theology, Department of Orthodox Theology
University of Joensuu

E-Mail: Grant.White@joensuu.fi


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