Levente Balázs Martos
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, Budapest

Abstract: Narrative analysis of the New Testament, especially the Gospels, re-evaluates the use of time in the texts. The story told in the Gospels is not simply a chain of events randomly strung together, nor is it sufficient to understand the editor’s intention. Rather it is necessary to regard the narrative as the basis of cooperation between narrator and reader. In this study, I want to explore the perspective of time in the Gospel of Mark. The tools of narrative analysis will be used at the service of theological interpretation. The Gospel of Mark unveils itself as a complex story with a beginning preceding time, and preparing a new, open beginning. While following the description of the deeds and sayings of Jesus, the reader is invited to arrive with him at a final Sabbath and to await resurrection and new life.

Key words: narrative analysis, time structure, fulfilment, new beginning

https://doi.org/10.63154/CETR2024.1-1

One of the specific strategies of narrative texts is the way they handle time. It is the narrator who determines how the theoretically endless stream of events is segmented in his special communication. He is the one who highlights certain facts that he wants to tell, and he is the one who arranges these facts in a specific order. The order of facts and events is, of course, fixed, but the way the narrator deals with them is ultimately his decision.

In this regard, the way the Gospels handle time is apparently simple and clear. They are linear, straightforward narratives that rarely feature significant leaps forward or backward in time (prolepsis and analepsis respectively). Their plot mostly follows a single thread, and the protagonist is unmistakably Jesus of Nazareth. Compared to the modern narratives of novels and films, the storyline of the gospels is highly transparent. In a certain sense, their concentration on Jesus unites everything and everyone; the details of the plot gain meaning in him and through him.

This, however, may make us wonder: How does the special quality of time – in which Jesus is the protagonist who, based on the Gospels and New Testament accounts, can be considered the central figure of the whole history of the world – appear on the pages of the Gospels? What do the New Testament writings say about the time that characterises the world into which Jesus entered as the absolute messenger of God?[1]

Despite their essentially common message, each of the four Gospels goes its own way.[2] “World history”, as political history, as the history of human society determined by facts and rulers, was mostly the preoccupation of the Evangelist Luke (cf. Luke 1:5; 2:1; 3:1). With his references to the rulers of the world, including Emperor Augustus, Luke illuminates Jesus’ “alternative” approach to power. At the same time, these references undoubtedly create a specific history that the readers, familiar with the pagan world, can follow in time. The strategy Saint Mark differs from that of Luke, for example in that he mentions some of the worldly authorities, introduced separately in his narrative, only later, as if in passing. Thus Herod is mentioned in chapter 6, Pilate only in chapter 15, and the name of the chief priest in office at the time of Jesus is not mentioned at all.[3]

Time can also be understood in terms of the ritual world: rites and festivities mark special times and make time special. Feasts follow the cycles and rhythm of nature, or, as in the case of the Bible, they recall memorable events from the history of a community. New Testament writings do not only relate themselves to Jewish customs and feasts but also utilise and reinterpret them, facilitating a new understanding of their very history. The writers and narrators of the story of Jesus made use of these institutions, too, according to the needs and preconceptions of their addressees and their own beliefs: when constructing the time of their narrations, they built not only on the relative events of the life of Jesus or on the “absolute” events and persons of history, but also on the feasts of Jewish life, such as Sabbath, Passover, etc.[4]

In this study, I would like to present the Gospel of Mark with a special focus on the use of narrative time and the theology of time.[5] I wish to explore the Gospel as a narrative, and to that end, I will take its text as a basis and interpret it in its entirety as the product of the narrator’s work. This is not to deny the existence of prior sources, but my concept is based on the assumption that the narrator has created an independent work that reflects his own strategy and narrative intention.[6]

The “Beginning”

The inscription, or at least the introductory verse, of the entire Gospel of Mark is Mk 1:1, which starts with the word “beginning” (archē). “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”[7] The word “beginning” recalls the beginning of the book of Genesis, the origin of the world, and the whole Old Testament, though this echo is even stronger in the Gospel of John (Jn 1:1; en archē), since there we find the form “in the beginning”, similarly to the book of Genesis. This beginning is not an act as in the book of Genesis (and, consequently, as in the first few verses of the Gospel of John, which refer to Genesis), but rather an opportunity for a full-fledged Christological confession to introduce the gospel.[8]

The actual role of this sentence, however, is questionable.[9] Is it worth declaring in the first line of a text that it is in fact the first line of the text? Furthermore, if taken as a mere incipit, the word “gospel” (euangelion), in this specific context, should be understood as a reference to the written work, and therefore as a genre, which is a relatively late phase in the development of the concept in relation to the New Testament. In this later use of words and in this sense, the emphasis is not so much on the Gospel being that of Jesus but on the fact that the writing at hand is the Gospel According to Mark.

There is a group of scholars seeking a third interpretation. They suggest that in this case, the word “gospel” should not be understood as meaning the written work, but rather the process that is beginning, being maintained and supported in the book and by the book, i.e. the spread of the Gospel of Jesus. The beginning of the good news is the story itself that the reader holds in his hands. First of all, one might say that it is the good news itself, not merely the text, that should continue. But we may also wonder whether, in this particular case, the word “beginning” has a more specific meaning. Does it not refer to the beginning of Jesus’ story, which is also the origin of his good news? Accordingly, the beginning can also have the sense of “origin”. If this is the case, then we can look to Mk 1:1-13, interpreted as an introduction to the Gospel, for an indication of where the Gospel of Jesus “comes from”, when and where it begins.

The first characteristic of time as it appears in the Gospel is that it stems from God’s time (or, in part, even eternity) as revealed in the Old Testament. A significant number of interpreters believe that the narrator, with the introduction to the Gospel (Mk 1:1-13), and especially with the quotation from the Old Testament (cf. Mk 1:2-3), created a structure in which the story that begin son earth represents, continues, and fulfils the event that has already taken place “in heaven”, and is recalled by the prophetic word.[10] The prophetic word, which the narrator presents as coming from Isaiah (in reality, it is a complex quotation of Mal 3:1; Ex 23:20, and Is 40:3), is actually the word of God. God addresses his messenger in heaven, who then appears on earth in the form of Jesus. In their “heavenly dialogue”, God promises his messenger a forerunner.[11] In the introduction, the evangelist does not present the messenger first, but the forerunner. What the prophetic word described as a prehistoric and superhistorical dialogue is continued by the appearance of John the Baptist and Jesus in the wilderness. At the moment of baptism, then, the dialogue between the Father and the Son is realised on earth, on the banks of the Jordan (Mk 1:11). The beginning of Jesus, the origin of his person and all his actions are therefore to be found in the eternity of God.

One more aspect of the “beginning” should be mentioned. The original context of the quotation from Mal 3:1 refers to the prophet Elijah as the one who will return at the end of time to prepare God’s way. The introduction of the Gospel presents John the Baptist as similar to Elijah. Only John the Baptist and the prophet Elijah are mentioned in the Scriptures as wearing a “leather belt” around their waists (Mk 1:6; cf. 2 Kings 1:8; see also Zechariah 13:4 on the other prophets). Elijah, whom the Lord took up to heaven from the banks of the Jordan (cf. 2 Kings 2:6-11), is to return and prepare the way for the coming of the Lord (Mal 3:1.23; cf. Mk 9:11-13). The beginning in the Gospel of Mark is therefore not only the fulfilment of God’s will already revealed, but also the beginning of the end times and of the absolute future.

Empty and Fulfilled “Time”

The prophetic word revealed the origin of Jesus, which is also a programme to be carried out. Looking back to the eternity of God, one encounters the Eternal, ever-present and calling for a new future. Eternity can only be regarded as something in the past inasmuch as it has already made itself known in the history of salvation. Its revelation—as the heavens “are torn open” according to Mk 1:10, with the verb schizein—opens up time, making earthly, finite time a sign of the eternal.[12] When he talks about the time of Jesus, the evangelist is not creating a document which is about some self-contained period. Rather, through the narration, he is revealing the presence of the eternal God realised and manifested in time.

The wilderness is the first scene of the story of the Gospel, and thus of the manifestation of God. After the prophetic word, the wilderness also refers back to the divine revelation that now has a history in this world. The wilderness is not only a physical place, it has a meaning. This is indicated by the first occasion when time is specified in the Gospel: the forty days during which Jesus fasted in the wilderness. The number forty primarily recalls Israel’s wandering in the desert for forty years, but also Elijah’s journey to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19), and even the meeting between the Ninevites and Jonah, where the destruction of the city was expected after 40 days (Jonah 3:4).

Jesus’ withdrawal into the wilderness, then, continues the tradition of experiences of the divine, already realised in the history of Israel. In the wilderness, Israel experienced that it was indeed God who cared for them, and it was in this situation that they waited and prepared to enter the Promised Land. Elijah and the people of Nineveh also prepared to meet God and receive His mercy through one or another experience of the forty days. The wilderness thus symbolises the paradox of emptiness and fullness: the richness of the created world pointing to God seems to be destroyed or to disappear, but at precisely this moment, God himself steps closer to man. In a way, the wilderness represents the chaos before creation, as if to encourage man to face his own chaos and ask God to establish order. This is what happens as soon as the Lord overcomes temptation: the spiritual and also the physical beings of the created world worship Jesus (cf. Mk 1:13).

The withdrawal of Jesus into the wilderness takes place between the two “times” of fulfilment, corresponding to them and forming a pair with them.[13] The voice from heaven at the moment of baptism indicates a divine experience, a theophany similar to the one awaiting Jesus and the disciples at the moment of Transfiguration (9:2-9). The wilderness and temptation are soon replaced by the preaching of Jesus, however, and the Lord himself speaks of fulfilled time and the nearness of the kingdom of God (1:15).

With this programmatic exclamation on the part of Jesus, the narrator leads the readers from the wilderness that marks the beginning to the description of Jesus’ public ministry. Through the work of Jesus, the kingdom of God is realised on earth, and the power of God, ultimately God himself, becomes present.[14] But how shall we interpret the concept of fulfilled time? Should we relate it primarily to the promise of the past, or should we rather speak of the manifestation of the fullness of God?

The expression “fullness of time” or “times” is found in other texts of the New Testament as well. According to Simon Légasse,[15] the phrase pleroma tou kronou in Gal 4:4 means that the purely worldly interpretation of history has come to an end with Jesus’ birth. Eph 1:10 uses the plural pleroma ton kairon, borrowed from the Pauline tradition, which probably corresponds to the vision of the time of the apocalypse, divided into periods. The word kairos occurs twice more in the Gospel of Mark. In Mk 12:2, at most an indirect allegorical meaning can be ascribed to the “time” of the harvest, but the focus of the parable is something altogether different. Mk 13:33, by contrast, once again promises a time of salvation: the time of the second coming of Christ the Redeemer.

After comparing these texts with the statement in Mk 1:15, we may rightfully ascribe theological meaning to fulfilled time in the full and literal sense of the word. This is related to what the whole gospel shows: in Jesus, God’s present time enters the world, God’s kingdom, that is, his reign, becomes available. Jesus is described as someone who expressly acts according to God’s plan and will, and he does so throughout the narrative. He also defends the fact that he is truly the messenger of God who casts out demons by the Holy Spirit (Mk 3:22-29). He is the one who takes upon himself the fulfilment of all that “must” happen to him and in the lives of his disciples (cf. Mk 8:31; 13:7). He repeatedly refers to God’s will as revealed in the Scriptures (Mk 14:21.27.49). The ministry of Jesus thus continues and fulfils God’s eternal plan, unfolding in time what the living eternity of God means.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to consider in detail the question of what exactly the “nearness” of the kingdom of God entails. Some of the interpreters emphasise the—in a certain sense, dogmatic—fact that the eternal God “cannot give himself” partially. The great fulfilment in question is nothing other than God’s final and complete commitment. This “dogmatic” approach thus takes on a moral dimension: now it is entirely the choice of the individual and of all humankind whether they accept God’s rule into their lives and thereby allow it to be fully realised.[16]

It must be noted that the very fact that Jesus became a man, that he took upon himself the slow growth and development of human life, and that he also embraced some parts of the apocalyptic view that divides history into eras (e.g. in Mk 13), indicates that God’s plan includes the history of time yet to happen and the further unfolding of salvation. Other interpreters stress the fact that although the eschaton has already begun, it has not yet been fulfilled. Some events must necessarily happen before the time of fulfilment (cf. Mk 9:1; 13:30; 14:25).[17] So long as God does not suspend time, the kingdom of God is in a state of continuous growth and development.

Time Opened

The eternal God showed His will in the past through the prophets, and Jesus is the one to carry it out. But eternity, once revealed, is present in the world as a living beginning and freedom. In the narrative, Jesus not only does God’s “everlasting” will, that is, he not only interprets the present in relation to a kind of eternally determined plan, but he is also the one who opens up an actual future for man, for those who believe in him.[18] Jesus calls mankind to faith—faith in God, by which man can experience the omnipotence of God, enabling him to break free from the bondage of earthly life and of the threatening reality of the present (cf. Mk 5:36; 10:46-52; 11:22-24).

Having experienced the power of God, we come to believe that the ultimate goal of all people living in time is to reach the eternal God. History has yet to catch up with God who is, as it were, waiting to fulfil it so that He may be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). According to Jesus’ words, on the one hand, there will be a future for the brave and generous act of the woman of Bethany who used her precious oil to anoint Jesus (14:3-9). The gospel that began on the banks of the Jordan will spread around the world. The perspective will expand considerably to include the entire world not only in space, but also in time. The same perspective appears among the inevitable events of the end times (13:10). On the other hand, time will also come to an absolute end when the “Son of Man” returns “with the holy angels” (Mk 8:38). This is the moment of judgment that also awaits those who condemned Jesus (Mk 14:62).

Some kind of picture of the future and judgment also unfolds in the eschatological discourse of chapter 13. Although the chapter lists many events and arranges them in a kind of sequence (especially in verses 13:5-23), it is not intended to announce the events of the future, but rather to outline the expected and hoped-for fulfilment of history, including the fate of the disciples. Indeed, according to the climax of the chapter, i.e. 13:24-27, the coming of the Son of Man promises the gathering of the elect. History, then, has a positive final goal which is worth waiting and preparing for, even amid trials and tribulations. My observation that the narrator designates, and even opens up, a somewhat separate dimension of time for the reader, is even more apparent in this chapter. The suffering of believers, as described in chapter 13 (esp. in verses 9-13), threatens to discredit their hope for a positive outcome in history. By revealing the sayings and worldview of Jesus, the narrator preserves the image of an open, yet positive, and therefore hopeful future for his reader. He opens up the future, or rather, he speaks of Jesus in whom a new future is opened for man, in accordance with God’s will and plan.

Jesus and Time

People of faith are open to their future and expect the time to come in a spirit of trust. The opposite of faith is fear, doubt, and unbelief, which Jesus repeatedly condemns in the Gospel of Mark (Mk 4:40; 5:36; 11:22ff.; 8:14-21). By acting as the fulfiller of God’s plan revealed in the past, and as the implementer of God’s will, Jesus acquires the authority to teach about the future. His actions and words make it clear to those around him and to the reader that he has a real relationship with the eternal, and therefore his words about the future are also trustworthy.

The narrator portrays Jesus as painting an increasingly clear picture of the near future in the second half of the Gospel, the unit beginning with 8:27. The middle part of the narrative (8:27–10:52) is characterised by the three predictions of Jesus’ Passion (8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34). The detailed instructions on how to prepare for the entry into Jerusalem and the Last Supper (11:1-3,4-7 and 14:12-16) echo one another, conveying to the disciples and the readers Jesus’ sovereignty, his full awareness, and insightful understanding of the situation. Later, the prediction of the disciples’ betrayal is also quite specific, especially the words concerning Peter’s denial (cf. 14:30).

At the same time, Jesus does not know everything in advance precisely and in detail, or at least he gives no indication of such knowledge. One almost gets the impression that the passages just mentioned, where he presents the disciples with an accurate picture of the future, including the dialogue in 13:1-2, which predicts the destruction of the Temple, are not meant for the disciples to acquire certain knowledge of the future, but rather to create a kind of uncertainty about the time ahead. It is as if all these predictions mainly served the purpose of making the disciples leave behind their familiar vision of their own future and of the future of the world, characterised by the inviolability of their “Lord and Master”, as well as by the imagined glory, or at least moral high ground, of their heroic loyalty to him (cf. Mk 10:38-39).

Jesus’ “non-knowledge” is the most striking in relation to the end of time, the time of the return of the Son of Man, and, with it, the time of the final judgment. “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mk 13:32). The Son’s non-knowledge can only be understood in light of his trust in the Father. Just as all of his actions and his power are born out of his unconditional surrender to the Father’s will, so every instance of his non-knowledge can be interpreted as momentary conformity to the Father’s will. The revelation of specific future events seems to serve the purpose of making the disciples, together with Jesus, trust not in their own strength, but in the Father. Outlining the way of earthly suffering undoubtedly has ethical significance as well, since it renders the striving for higher status in earthly life – a life which is otherwise inevitability grim – pointless. Jesus confronts the disciples in advance not only with his own expected failure, but also with theirs, opening up to them a future in which, despite all earthly expectations, they must trust in God’s will.

Paradoxically, this is what the word spoken over the cup also says (Mk 14:25): “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” It is characterised by the certainty of Jesus (cf. Mk 14:18), the solemn knowledge that the Kingdom is about to be fulfilled, and at the same time the tormenting suspicion that the cup that Jesus must drink is also the cup of suffering (Mk 10:38-39; 14:36). Jesus’ gesture is also a reminder of the final fast that he spoke of earlier in the Gospel: the time for fasting is when “the bridegroom is taken away” (cf. Mk 2:19-22). Jesus is prophetically foretelling his imminent death, but also the hope of the fulfilment of the Kingdom.[19]

There is a self-evident constancy with which Jesus goes from village to village, town to town, person to person, healing and teaching in the first part of the Gospel. He does not plan or reflect, but – perhaps with the exception of night prayers (Mk 1:35; 6:46) – he acts continuously, that is, he responds to the call of the moment and the Eternal in it. This constancy is only interrupted, or rather torn, in the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane (Mk 14:32-42), when it becomes transparent in its essence. Jesus’ three prayers are prayers for the Father’s will to be done.[20] Jesus’ death throes begin here. Death, which takes place on the cross in a physical sense, happens in the garden in the will of Jesus. What in Jesus’ public life was manifested in trust and self-forgetful wholeheartedness towards the moment, now becomes a prolonged act, a frozen moment of crucifixion. What he overcomes is not doubt or unbelief, but the aversion of human nature to death. And all the while he believes in the fullness of time—in God’s power to preserve his life, to give him new life.

Human Time

This possibility was revealed to the disciples in Jesus. They were called to follow him not only physically, but to enter the time in which one dies to himself but lives for God. The time they are given serves this purpose, as well as the purpose of inviting others to this view of time and of life. When Mark wrote his Gospel, he was responding to this invitation. He wanted to reveal the messenger of the eternal God who entered time, Jesus, and to convey his commitment to God and man.

Interpreters have long been of the opinion that the Gospel of Mark, almost imperceptibly, yet from the very beginning, consciously prepares its readers to contemplate the cross of Jesus. The reference to the arrest of the Baptist (1:14), the mention of those conspiring to kill Jesus (3:6), and the belated account of the Baptist’s fate (6:14-29) are all indirect indications that the reader—like the disciples—will probably understand only retrospectively.

The aforementioned three predictions, the conversation after the scene of Transfiguration (9:10-13), and the language of the cup (10:38-39) are more direct indications than the previous ones. As Jesus’ actual suffering draws nearer, it is as if the narrator deliberately recalled past events with increasing frequency. He slows down his narration, metaphorically taking hold of the reader’s hand to convey his important message to him slowly and clearly. The days of Jesus’ last week in Jerusalem are relatively easy to reconstruct.[21] According to 16:1, the women found the empty tomb of Jesus on the first day of the week, that is, on Sunday. According to 15:42, Saturday was the day of rest in the tomb, and the Friday before that was the day of execution. Thursday afternoon and evening saw the preparation and eating of the Last Supper, as well as the arrest and first trial of Jesus (14:12-72). Wednesday was probably the time of the supper at Bethany and the betrayal of Judas (14:1-11). The events of Tuesday and Monday can also be clearly identified (11:12-19; 11:20–13:37). Hence, Jesus probably arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the week, Sunday (11:1-11).

The evangelist divides the last day of Holy Week into four three-hour time segments (early morning, morning, early afternoon, late afternoon). Jesus is crucified at 9 a.m., but before that – “in the morning” (15:1) – Pilate, the chief priests and the people have already convened. Between noon and 3 p.m., there is great darkness, and that is when Jesus dies. In chapter 15, Jesus speaks only once, before his death, with a painful cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Then he issues a loud cry and dies.

The metronome is beating with increasing speed, time is indicated with increasing frequency, and violent acts are described in detail. These all are signs of the time of humans, the intensification of man’s violent temper. It is similar to the experience of a train rushing towards us, rumbling ever louder and in a more menacing manner. Such an experience lingers on, taking time to fade into memory. Let us take note, it is the narrator who shares all this with his readers. He is the one who recognised in all this the sign of Jesus’ faithfulness, that this is also a fulfilment of God’s plan and of Jesus’ predictions. The Evangelist, by repeatedly foreshadowing and accurately recording the hours of suffering, continues to remind his readers of the future both lying ahead of and opening up to them.

Beginning, Again

According to Martin Ebner, the scene of the women going to the tomb of Jesus and then entering the empty tomb (16:1-8) recalls the introduction to the Gospel.[22] The location in the introduction, the wilderness, the place of emptiness and temptation, is aptly replaced by the tomb, which is obviously located outside the city and could be read as a symbol of the forces that have conspired against God. The messenger of God is John the Baptist in the introduction, and a young man in white in the conclusion, whom the other evangelists identify as an angel.

At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus elicits a joyful response from the people. Faced with the empty tomb, however, the women are frightened and run away, saying “nothing to anyone” (16:8). The narrator falls silent[23] at the women’s fear and silence, leaving open the question of the future of the gospel. Nevertheless, the reader knows that Jesus has already prophesied that the gospel will be preached until the end of the world (cf. Mk 14:9). Yet, due to the inaction of the characters in the narrative, the reader alone has the opportunity to bear witness to the gospel that he or she has just come to know. In this way, the reader himself or herself is to fulfil Jesus’ prediction that there will be a “future” for his teaching.

The fact of the new beginning of time and the new time of humanity is more acceptable in the light of certain symbolic interpretations of the time structure of the Gospel. Benoît Standaert argues[24] that time specifications are usually more frequent at the beginning and the end of narratives, and this is also the case in the Gospel of Mark. According to Standaert, the continuity of the events of Jesus’ last day corresponds to the description of Jesus’ one day in chapter 1 (1:21-39), while the narration of the last week in Jerusalem exhibits strong ties to that of the week in Galilee (1:21-3:6). If the Gospel of Mark is viewed through this lens, then the temptation in the wilderness seems to foreshadow Jesus’ final temptation, suffering and the darkness of the cross at the very beginning of the Gospel. But the heavenly words received at baptism, which are the declaration of the Father’s love, make it clear that the God of the living (12:27) will not leave his beloved Son in death.

Ludger Schenke goes even further in his interpretation of the time specifications scattered throughout the Gospel.[25] In his opinion, it is easier to grasp the time structure of the Gospel if one follows the mentions of the Sabbaths (1:21; 2:23-28; 6:1-6; 15:42). Schenke believes that the reference to the Transfiguration “six days later” in 9:2 is a reference to another Sabbath, just as he sees the Sabbath before the Sunday of 11:1 in the narrative of 10:46-52. It is most difficult for him to ascertain the timeframe of 6:30–8:26, but the night of 6:48, the remark of “for three days” in 8:2, and the three trips to Gennesaret, Tyre and Sidon, and Decapolis all add up to a week again. Schenke thus counts a total of seven weeks in the Gospel, which, he believes, the evangelist has recounted for the sake of the eighth and last week, of which only the beginning is narrated: this is the time of the women running away from the tomb, and the time of the disciples and readers who convert afterwards.

In what follows, I would like to use some of the ideas discussed above to complement Schenke’s idea and to determine its theological significance. The gospel events that have taken place “from the beginning” and are now being fulfilled seem to reflect the events of the seventh day that marked the end of creation and made it perfect (Genesis 2:1-4). The Gospel of Mark thereby has a “sabbatical” dimension. I would like to clarify this complex statement from two aspects. First, the Gospel of Mark repeatedly considers Jesus to be the one who completes the work of creation. The closing image of the short narrative of the temptation (1:13: “he was with the wild beasts”), the statement that “the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” (2:28), and later the statement in 7:37 that Jesus “has done everything well”, which can also be understood as meaning that he restored the order, peace, and completeness of creation with his miracles of healing—all of these events and episodes from Jesus’ life support the thesis that the narrator is aware of how the ministry of Jesus renews and completes creation.

It is hardly surprising that Mark’s narration aligns the time of the disciples and of the Lord with the order of creation.[26] It can be observed in the parable of the growing seed (4:26-29), which, with the alternation of night and day, and the mention of seeds,[27] seems to recall the act and time of creation.

The Lord of the Sabbath has the right to reinterpret the Sabbath. But how does he give new meaning to the Sabbath and to time in general? To answer this question, we must reconsider the passion of Jesus, and, more specifically, the sabbath day of his resting in the tomb. Is that Sabbath not the day on which God recreates the life of Jesus? Is it not the day of mysterious silence covering the face of the deep, the silence into which the Word of God will begin to speak again? Is it not precisely this waiting and silence that the community of the faithful has to go through in order to be able to believe again, this time, in the Lord who lives? If the Gospel of Mark indeed covers seven weeks of Jesus’ public ministry, then it is the last, seventh week that culminates in Jesus’ gradual, eventually complete isolation, the final loneliness experienced on the cross. The fate of Jesus is a prophecy for his disciples and future believers. Those who had worked and been active in the world up until then had to suffer the absence of God in the seventh week, but only in this way could they come back to life.

These two aspects of the seven weeks and seven Sabbaths in the Gospel of Mark complement each other. The parallels with the story of creation evoke the beginning of the world and make ritual remembrance, that is, the shaping of the present by recalling God’s past deeds, possible. Renewal through death, communication through a deathly silence, the new word, and new life given to someone who slept on the cross, as well as the silence and darkness of the seventh Sabbath are the beginning of new life, first given to Israel in the Exodus, and now, and forever, to those who believe in Christ’s redemptive death and resurrection.[28]

Conclusion

The ideas we have explored concerning the handling of time in the Gospel of Mark and its possible theological meaning presuppose a high level of combinative ability on the part of both the narrator and the reader. Ultimately, however, they are born of the loving concern with which today’s readers, the evangelists, the disciples, countless generations of Christian men and women regard the gospel. They look at it with reverence, as the beginning of their lives, and as a written record born of a real encounter with Jesus. We look for meaning in each element of the narrative. The Gospel of Mark, too, serves as tangible proof that the eternal God does not shut himself away from our momentary existence, from the hours that sometimes drag on and sometimes fly by, and from the worries we experience day after day. In Jesus, after all, we see someone who got up at dawn to fulfil his mission (1:35.38), and who retired in the evening to pray (6:46). We mourn him on whom the darkness of the night fell on the day of his death (15:33), and we rejoice, for “the pride of the ancient foe is vanquished” by him (cf. the Roman Missal, Preface II. of the Passion of the Lord), and because he was raised to new life on the first day of the week.

Ma’afu Palu has recently analysed the conception of time in the Gospel of Mark.[29] Jesus, he says, renews and fulfils the covenant that God once made with time. “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). God sanctified the time of the world and of man, and he promised through the prophets that there would be fulfilment. God brought about this fulfilment in Jesus and in the realisation of the kingdom of God as proclaimed by him. In earthly time, the name of the Eternal can only be a beginning, as it embraces and also transcends every moment of time.

[1] For a theology of time see O. Cullmann, Christ and Time. The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History (original German Zürich 1948; revised 2nd edition with a new introduction London 1962). https://doi.org/10.2307/2216490 W. Beinert, “Theologie zur Zeit”, Stimmen der Zeit 12/2012, 837-847.

[2] On the one hand, this also means that the narrator cannot tell everything he knows about Jesus and consequently the “historical Jesus” is always necessarily less than the “real Jesus.” On the other hand, the peculiarity of storytelling can also be traced back to the fact that the evangelist did not always know the exact chronological order of events and their actual historical context, so he was forced to reproduce them in the order he created himself. The order of this editing must, of course, be determined on a case-by-case basis, as far as possible.

[3] Cf. L. Schenke, Das Markusevangelium. Literarische Eigenart – Text und Kommentierung (Stuttgart 2005) 12. By this I do not want to deny the meaningful, but rather implicit and paradoxical parallels of the via crucis of Jesus on the one hand, and the via triumphalis on the other. Cf. A. T. Georgia, “Translating the Triumph: Reading Mark’s Crucifiction Narrative against a Roman Ritual of Power”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 36 (2013) 17-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0142064X13495132

[4] It seems that the Gospel of John placed great emphasis on Jewish feasts in following the story of Jesus. This is the writing in which we can find three mentions of Pesach (John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55) and other Jewish feasts (5:1; 7:2; 10:22). Cf. M. Marcheselli, “Percezione e raffigurazione del tempo nel Vangelo secondo Giovanni”, In: D. Garribba (ed.), Costruzioni del tempo nelle prime communitá cristiane. Atti del XVII Convegno di Studi Neotestamentari (Venezia, 14-16 settembre 2017). Ricerche Storico Bibliche 31 (2019) 147-184. Here 164-182. Further see I. Müllner, P. Dschullnigg, Jüdische und christliche Feste. Perspektiven des Alten und Neuen testaments (Die Neue Echter Bibel Themen 9; Würzburg 2002). https://doi.org/10.15581/006.37.13555

[5] For further studies see R. A. Monastero, “Jesús y el tiempo”, In: D. Garribba (ed.), Costruzioni del tempo, 93-112.

[6] On narrative analysis, see J.-L. Ska, “Our Fathers Have Told Us”. Introduction to the Analysis of Hebrew Narratives (Subsidia Biblica 13; Roma 1990); https://doi.org/10.1163/1568533972651630 D. Marguerat, Y. Bourquin, Pour lire les récits bibliques. Initiation á l’analyse narrative (CERF 1998); https://doi.org/10.4000/rsr.1893 J.-L. Ska, J.-P. Sonnet, A. Wénin, Analyse narrative des récits de l’Ancien Testament (Cahiers évangile 107; Paris 1999); J. P. Fokkelman, Reading Biblical Narrative. An Introductory Guide (Westminster John Knox Press 1999); https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004397484 Martos L. B., “Narratív kritika és igehirdetés. Közelítések az exegézis és a homiletika között”, In: Tarjányi B. (ed.), Út, igazság, élet. Biblikus tanulmányok (Budapest 2009) 115-138.

[7] All biblical references are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, available online at www.biblegateway.com.

[8] Cf. S. Grasso, Vangelo di Marco. Nuova versione, introduzione e commento (Milano 2003) 34-37.

[9] For a detailed analysis of the prologue to the Gospel of Mark see Simon T. L., Az üdvösség mint esély és talány. Közelítések a Márk-evangéliumhoz (Lectio divina 12; Bakonybél & Budapest 2009) 113-157.

[10] Cf. M. Ebner, “Das Markusevangelium”, In: M. Ebner, S. Schreiber (eds.), Einleitung in das Neue Testament (Studienbücher Theologie 6; Stuttgart 2008) 154-183, here 162; H.J. Klauck, Vorspiel im Himmel? Erzähltechnik und Theologie im Markusprolog (BThSt 32; Neukirchen-Vluyn 1997).

[11] Compared to the text of the LXX, the narrator altered the quotation, adding a second-person singular address, thereby creating this “dialogue.”

[12] As Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it in the title of one of his books: Das Ganze im Fragment – ‘the whole in the fragment.’

[13] Cf. B. Standaert, Marco. Vangelo di una notte vangelo per la vita. Commentario 1. Mc 1,1–6,13 (Bologna 2011) 87.

[14] Cf. B. Standaert, Marco 1., 106, which reads as follows: “In the tradition that goes back to Jesus, the talk about the Kingdom is implicitly about God himself.”

[15] S. Légasse, Marco (original French 1997; commenti biblici; Roma 2000) 88.

[16] See e.g. G. Lohfink, Jesus von Nazaret. Was er wollte, wie er war (Freiburg Basel Wien 2011) 52-65. Gerhard Lohfink is certainly right to highlight the urgency with which Jesus calls on his listeners not to miss the one-of-a-kind opportunity of salvation (e.g. Lk 14:15-24).

[17] Cf. S. Légasse, Marco, 88-89; L. Schenke, Das Markusevangelium. 12-13.

[18] Cf. O. Cullmann, Christ and Time, 93: “It is not correct to say that in Christ ’[timeless] eternity invades time,’ ‘conquers time.’ We must rather say that in Christ time has reached its mid-point, and that at the same time the moment has thereby come in which this is preached to men, so that with the establishment of the new division of time they are able to believe in it and in this faith to understand time ‘in a Christian way,’ that is, by taking Christ as the center.”

[19] Cf. J. R. Donahue, D. J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (Sacra Pagina Series 2; Collegeville, Minnesota 2002) 397.

[20] This extraordinary scene seems to turn the three narratives of crossing the sea upside down: in the latter, Jesus sleeps whereas in the former, the disciples sleep; in the latter the disciples fear for their lives, whereas in the former Jesus does. However, while the disciples proved to be of little faith, Jesus shows his unwavering faith and full trust.

[21] For the following see L. Schenke, Das Markusevangelium, 13-14.

[22] Cf. M. Ebner, “Das Markusevangelium”, 157. For a similar and hermeneutically interpreted structure of the gospel of Mark see E. S. Malbon, Mark’s Jesus. Characterization as Narrative Christology (Baylor University Press, Waco 2009) 27-43.

[23] Mk 16:9-20 cannot be the original ending of the Gospel of Mark for reasons of textual criticism, content and stylistic considerations. Rather it seems to be an addition to the narrative based on the stories of the other three Gospels. It is possible that it originally had a different ending, but there is no direct evidence of this. The present text of the Gospel is therefore attempted to be interpreted in the manner described here, as an invitation to the reader. Cf. H. Timm, “Sub contrario. Márk evangéliumának krisztopoétikája”, In: Thomka B., Horváth I. (eds.): Narratívák. Narratív teológia (Pécs 2010) 240-250; M. Ebner, “Das Markusevangelium”, 179-180.

[24] B. Standaert, Marco 1, 88.

[25] L. Schenke, Das Markusevangelium. 14-15.

[26] Cf. F. de Carlo, “Dal principio della creazione (Mc 10,6; 13,19). La riscrittura marciana della Genesi”, In: E. Manicardi, L. Mazzinghi (eds.), Genesi 1-11 e le sue interpretazioni canoniche: un caso di teologia biblica. XLI Settimana Biblica Nazionale (Roma, 6-10 Settembre 2010); Ricerche Storicho Bibliche 24 (2012) 227-254. De Carlo speaks of the relecture of Genesis with the Apocalypse in mind, that is, in the light of the final and definitive changes in Jesus Christ. The prophesised difficulties in chapter 13 depict a cosmic vision of what is going to happen to Jesus in a personal way on the cross in chapter 15. Darkness and loneliness in the hour of the crucifixion fulfil and reinterpret the beginning of the world in chaos and darkness. De Carlo comes to this “relecture” by observing the parallels between Mk 1:1 and Gen 1:1, Mk 6 and Gen 1 (bread/nutriment for the living); Mk 10 and Gen 1-2 (question of divorce, creation of man and woman), Mk 13 and Gen 6-9 (eschatological and primordial chaos). These parallels seem less convincing than the concept of fulfilment, spoken of at the beginning of the Gospel, paired with the seven weeks of the story represented by the references to the Sabbaths.

[27] The first account of creation in Genesis 1 is of special importance with regard to the time and days of creation. The order of the seven days reflects, first, the order recognisable in the created world, and, secondly, the feast of Sabbath, which binds creation to God as an everlasting, imperishable sign.

[28] I must touch on the best-known difference between the two forms of the Sabbath commandment in the two versions of the Ten Commandments here. Whereas Exodus 20:8 tells us to “remember” the Sabbath, adding a reference to the divine act of resting after creation, Deuteronomy 5:12 calls on us to “observe it and keep it holy” and refers to the Exodus, God’s saving and liberating act. O. Lukács, Sabbath in the Making. A Study of the Inner-Biblical Interpretation of the Sabbath Commandment (Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology 97; Leuven Paris Bristol 2020) 45-52 argues that both “remembering” and “keeping/observing” belong to the specific vocabulary of Deuteronomy, but it is hardly possible to decide which is the original expression. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1q26m4t.4

[29] M. Palu, Jesus and Time: An Interpretation of Mk 1,15 (LNTS 468; Bloomsbury 2012).

Margit Eckholt
University of Osnabrück, Institute of Catholic Theology

Abstract: The article builds an approach to the Sabbath from a systematic-theological perspective. In doing so, it builds on the study by Ottilia Lukács in the sense that historical- or liberation-theological perspectives on the Sabbath are linked to the more recent creation-theological approaches; moreover, there is a strong connection between social-ethical and cultic dimensions. The term Sabbath is presented within the context of Old Testament traditions, but the New Testament perspective of Jesus of Nazareth on the preservation and fulfilment of the Sabbath is also considered, with special emphasis on the Christian Sunday. The systematic-theological interpretation is embedded a panorama of the challenges that the environmental crisis and climate change pose for society, politics and the Christian community. In this sense, the Sabbath is understood as a day of “transformation,” the observance of which in current practice can contribute to the necessary “paradigm shift,” the “cultural revolution” and “ecological conversion” promulgated by Pope Francis names it in his encyclicals Laudato si’ (2015), Veritatis gaudium (2017) and Querida Amazonia (2020).
Key words: Sabbath, Sunday, Creation Day, Great Transformation, environmental crisis, creation spirituality

https://doi.org/10.63154/CETR2024.1-2

1. Introduction: The Sabbath and the Sunday Commandment in the Service of Creation and the “Good Life”

In the Old and New Testaments, the “Sabbath” is mentioned about 180 times. The command to honour the Sabbath, which follows the commandment not to “take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex 20:7), is a central tenet of the Ten Commandments given to Moses at Mount Sinai, central to the self-identification of the people of Israel:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy (Ex 20:8-11).

The Sabbath commandment as it figures in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, which originated in post-exilic times, is the focus of the exegetical work of the Hungarian theologian and biblical scholar Ottilia Lukács, who has presented a study on the “Inner-Biblical Interpretation of the Sabbath Commandment” in her volume Sabbath in the Making[1]:

Within the present context, we assume that the notion of Sabbath might have contributed to the identity building and shaping of the community in which it emerged, and it might have been part of the cultural memory. Consequently, it is my suggestion that the examination of the Sabbath as an identity marker contributes to the understanding of the literary and redactional development of the Sabbath commandment and vice versa.[2]

In exegetical works and biblical-theological studies of the last decades, the “liberation theological” perspective of the Sabbath commandment has been brought into focus; special emphasis has been placed on the connection of the Sabbath commandment with the “jubilee,” the “Sabbatical year.”[3] God’s commandment to interrupt work establishes an order that enables togetherness and is oriented towards the weak and needy. Jesus of Nazareth will take up precisely this central commandment in his first public appearance, recorded in the Gospel According to Saint Luke (Lk 4:16-22). Jesus quotes the Prophet Isaiah, saying, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (verses 18-19). When Jesus voices criticism of the Sabbath, it is in response to the enquiries made of him concerning his disciples who went through the cornfields on the Sabbath, plucking ears of corn and consuming the grains (cf. Lk 6:1-5; Mk 2:23-28). When Jesus heals on the Sabbath, as in the case of the man with the “withered hand” (cf. Lk 6:6-11; Mk 3:1-6), he does not suspend the Sabbath commandment as such. Rather he rejects false ritualism and legalistic piety in order to make room for God and his healing and liberating power.[4]

This becomes clear when he asks whether it is permissible to “to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” on the Sabbath (Lk 6:9), as well as in the emphatic statement “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Lk 6:5). In this respect, Jesus embeds the Sabbath commandment back into the structure of the commandments that the people of Israel received; it is the central “link” between loving God and loving one’s neighbour: to honour God, as the commandments preceding the Sabbath commandment make clear, and to love one’s neighbour, to honour one’s father and mother (Ex 20:12) and to respect one’s neighbour with all that belongs to him, family and possessions are two commandments inextricably linked. This “in-between” world of the Sabbath creates a space that connects the recognition of God with the recognition of one’s neighbour, a space in which human beings experience themselves as children of God, as “creatures” in relation to all other creatures. This concept will also serve as the bridge between the Sabbath and Sunday, which will develop in the young community of Christians who, having first celebrated the Sabbath in the Jewish community, go on to celebrate Sunday in memory of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and of his death and resurrection. The Son of Man who is “lord of the Sabbath” (Lk 6:5) does not suspend the commandment but fulfils it completely.[5]

In her study, Ottilia Lukács draws on the exegetical work of recent decades. She assumes that the Sabbath commandment was an “identity marker” in the times of the Babylonian exile and that the post-exilic text Ex 20, insofar as it is embedded in the history of Israel’s liberation, is proof of this fact.^[6] Through her intertextual approach and precise tracking of the inner-biblical interpretation of the Sabbath commandment, she also builds a bridge between this historical approach and the creation-theological perspective on the Sabbath, as expressed in the Seven Days of Creation as recorded in Gen 1:1-31; 2:1-3. In Gen 2:1-3 we read:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

Many exegetical works in recent years have discussed the creation-theological perspective of Sabbath rest and the structuring of time, the „completion” of creation on the seventh day or “rest” from the work of creation on that day, and have also elaborated on the connection of the Sabbath to the Akkadian new moon festival and contrasted it with the historical perspective of the Sabbath commandment. “The Sabbath commandment,” Lukács summarises,

is very much based on the Sabbath day and on the institution of the week (the rhythm of 6+1 days), therefore, a short discussion of these issues is required here. (1) The Hebrew term שׁבת derived from the Akkadian term šap/battu, which was used to denote the new moon in the Akkadian calendar, and hence (2) the Sabbath supposedly was the full moon day in the Israelite calendar during the pre-exilic period; (3) only during the exile, or even later, שׁבת was applied to designate the seventh day of the week. Thus, as soon as the Sabbath was considered as a holy day, it created the seven-day week now known as an established institution.[7]

Without wanting to make a direct judgment – which is probably also difficult to underpin historically-critically – in favor of one or the other perspective, and without focusing in a polarising way either on the social-ethical dimension of the Sabbath or on the cultic development of this day, Ottilia Lukács nevertheless insists on the distinction between pre-exilic and post-exilic text traditions and embeds the Sabbath commandment firmly in the post-exilic tradition, as God’s commandment to his people that creates identity. The concept of the Sabbath has grown precisely in and against the background of the experience of the Babylonian exile.

I maintain that the ‘pre-exilic Sabbath’ (which is mentioned together with the new moons) and the ‘exilic weekly Sabbath’ were never merged together. Instead, both preserved its original, or better: discrete characters and roles in the Israelite religion. In other words, the Sabbath which coincides with the seventh day of the week and which is regulated by the Sabbath commandments, most likely emerged and developed as the identity marker of the exiled and returned Judean community.[8]

According to Lukács, the traditions of the “full moon Sabbath” and the “weekly Sabbath” never mingled. The author enumerates the three “significant functions” of the weekly Sabbath, which became a source of identity for the people of Israel during exile:

(1) the rest-day, which was applied also for the slaves, provided the exiled community an ‘Israelite identity’ that distinguished them from the surrounding milieu and made it possible to survive exile as the people of God; (2) it was an essential element of a completely re-established monotheistic calendar, more precisely, a ‘sabbathized’ priestly calendar that received a strong monotheistic emphasis; and (3) it contributed to the establishment of a ‘special sacred time’, namely, the seventh day…[9]

In what follows, an approach to the “Sabbath” is built from a systematic-theological perspective; the exegetical debates of the last decades can only be presupposed and the study and thesis of Lukács becomes relevant in the sense that historical or liberation-theological perspectives on the Sabbath are connected with the more recent creation-theological approaches, and thus, social-ethical and cultic dimensions are interpreted side by side. The term “Sabbath” is linked to the Old Testament traditions, but the New Testament perspective of Jesus of Nazareth on the preservation and fulfilment of the Sabbath is also considered, and from there, a bridge is built to the Christian Sunday. The systematic-theological interpretation is embedded in the challenges that the environmental crisis and climate change pose for society, politics and the churches; the Sabbath is understood in this sense as a day of “transformation” whose remembrance and present practice can contribute to the necessary “paradigm shift” and the “cultural revolution” Pope Francis refers to in his encyclicals Laudato si’ (2015), Veritatis gaudium (2017) and Querida Amazonia (2020). The paradigm shift proposed by the Holy Father is necessary in view of the destruction of the foundations of life for all of creation, which has come to a head in recent years and challenges humanity to a “Great Transformation” at all levels of community – in politics, the economy, social-, cultural-, and everyday life.[10] The link to liberation theology and ecological considerations, as Leonardo Boff has been presenting them in the Latin American context for 40 years, is palpable, as is the connection to process-theological and eco-feminist works by the US Protestant theologian Sallie McFague, whose studies grow out of the dialogue with new scientific theories and lay the foundations for a dynamic understanding of creation.

The Sabbath commandment in Ex 20 – which concludes with the formulation in verse 11, that “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” – is thus related to the creation text of Gen 2:2: “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” The “rest” that Augustine also focuses on in his interpretation of the creation narrative[11] is understood as the “completion” of the work of creation in the sense that the works of the other days are not relativised here – they are considered “good” by God (Gen 1:17. 21. 31). “Rest,” which is attributed to God and which human beings have to keep because God has “sanctified” it, explicitly refers to a basic dimension, which is inscribed in creation on all days, but is remembered in a special way on the day of “rest”: everything grows out of God’s loving and living relationship, life is to be lived out of this relationship, and the human being especially, created in the “image” of God (Gen 1:26), is called to conform to this loving and living relationship in his work in creation. In this sense, the Sabbath is a day of “transformation” because the day of “rest,” which is an interruption of the rhythm of work, reminds us of the original meaning of creation and of the goodness that God has placed in it, to which all activity within creation, human activity above all, must correspond. On the Sabbath, we are therefore “called,” according to the Jewish theologian Adam Joshua Heschel, “to take part in that which is eternal in time, to turn from the created to the mystery of creation itself, from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”[12]

In this way, the Sabbath has become the mark of identity of Jewish communities. To this day, the Sabbath is celebrated as a welcoming of the “Sabbath Queen,”[13] which act opens up an “in-between” space where God inscribes himself in life and the horizon of life opens up to receive God. This open horizon lends urgency to loving one’s neighbour and caring for the “house of creation,” which requires radical conversion and transformation, especially when injustice is done to one’s neighbour and when the very foundations of life are destroyed. This is also the deep meaning of Sunday, which Christians celebrate as the first day of the week in memory of the death and resurrection of Jesus, a feast day in which the profound dimension of the Sabbath is inscribed in the celebration of the Eucharist, and praise of the Creator, who himself has approved of what he has created, and to whom honour is to be given accordingly. The Sabbath is a grand search for possibilities to participate in radical transformation in the service of caring for the common house of creation. Thus Sabbath and Sunday are “days of creation” and of “transformation” when the rhythms of human life and work are interrupted the horizon of human life is opened to receive God.

2. times of transformation: ecological challenges and the “planetary boundaries”

Every year, “Earth Overshoot Day” is calculated so as to mark the date at which point human consumption of resources exceeds or “overshoots” what the earth can (re-) generate over the course of a year. A country’s Overshoot Day is the day on which the Earth’s Overshoot Day would fall if all humans consumed at the rate of the country in question. In 2022, Overshoot Day fell on 28 July; for the rest of the year, we lived at the expense of the Earth, consuming resources taken away from future generations. In 2000, the Earth Charter, a worldwide ecumenical initiative, named voluntary commitments for a sustainable lifestyle and guiding principles for politics, the economy and society for sustainable development. Since the First Ecumenical Assembly in Europe (Basel, 1989), the Christian churches have called for ecological responsibility, conversion and “transformation.” In the spirit of ecumenical solidarity, the “Day of Creation” is celebrated in September or October, and the harvest festival in October also becomes a reminder in many congregations to use resources sparingly, to combine thanks to the Creator with insight into “ecological conversion”[14] – a formulation first used by Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato si’ (2015). According to the Earth Charter, a new beginning is necessary, as well as “a new paradigm that brings about sustainability for the common house, the Earth, and for all living beings that inhabit it in a very natural way.”[15] Many ecological movements worldwide are united by the motif of the “Great Transformation” in the face of the dramatic consequences of the environmental crisis and climate change. This concept includes both the transformation of global economic processes, and also the transformation of personal lifestyles if life on planet Earth is to have a future. The perspectives of the “planetary boundaries,”[16] represented by worldwide research institutions such as the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, touch on church positions; the “cry of the earth” that Pope Francis speaks of in Laudato si’ (2015) and his letter Querida Amazonia (2020) published following the Amazon Synod (October 2019) reminds humans of their “terrestrial” embeddedness and the very concrete “fines terrae” or “ends of the earth.” The French philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour points to this embededness in his recent publications, for example in his “Terrestrial Manifesto,”[17] which has also been received in the German context. Latour applies the concept of the apocalyptic onset of the end times to space, insisting that the planet Earth sets us very concrete limits and that it is increasingly being destroyed by human intervention.[18] Latour, like the Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, subscribes to the Gaia hypothesis of the chemist, physician and biophysicist James Ephraim Lovelock, who died on 26 July 2022 at the age of 103. As early as the 1970s, Lovelock spoke of Gaia, Mother Earth, whose intricate network of life holds together the ecological balance of the entire planet. Gaia, as Boff summarizes, is an

evolving system consisting of all living things and their surface environment, the oceans, the atmosphere, the crustal rock… a system that has emerged from the common and reciprocal evolution of organisms and their environment in the course of the developmental ages of life on earth…. In dialogue with the energies of the universe and the earth, and in interaction with the other living organisms, these have created for themselves a habitat, a habitat favourable to the maintenance of relatively constant conditions for all the elements which constitute life.[19]

In this respect, the upcoming transformation has to do with a new view of the earth and requires insight into the interconnectedness of everything created and of all living beings. In a reflection on the Covid pandemic, Bruno Latour recalls Kafka’s narrative in his essay “Where am I? Lessons from the Lockdown.”[20] Latour reflects on Kafka’s story and the transformation of Gregor Samsa. By developing a shell, a carapace, and becoming able to take on other perspectives in space, like that of a beetle, he gains a different relationship to living beings and a different understanding of what it means to be human. The fundamental question, then, is not “who” I am but “where” I am. Identity is not a question of development, but of “enfolding,”[21] of a new understanding of our relationship to the earth: “We are enclosed in it, but it is not a prison; we are merely enfolded in it. To emancipate ourselves is not to step out of it, but to explore its entanglements, folds, superimpositions, interconnections.”[22] Latour develops the vision that people have to go through a process of transformation like Gregor Samsa to become “earth-attached” and that these people “use another dimension, that of the interwoven forms of life, which obliges them to constantly cross and therefore question the relationship between small and large, limited and interwoven, slow and fast, in every subject.”[23] These are not analyses or solutions, but visions that send one in search of possible solutions:

… you must scatter to the maximum, fan out to explore all your capacities for survival, to conspire, as best you can, with the effective powers that have made the places you have landed inhabitable. Under the vault of heaven, which has become burdensome again, other people, mixed with other matter, together with other living beings, are forming other peoples. They are emancipating themselves at last. They end the lockdown themselves. They transform themselves.[24]

Latour’s apocalyptic visions are embedded in a new ecological thinking, having grown out of the experience that in this “Age of the Anthropocene,” changes affecting earth and the entire ecosystem are man-induced. While apocalyptic crisis scenarios are on the rise in secular journalism, even as Christian ideas are trivialised, Latour creatively appropriates these metaphors. It is precisely here that enlightenment by theology is needed, and in this respect the ecological crisis in the Anthropocene, in the words of the German social ethicist Markus Vogt, has an “eminently religious dimension.” It is “religion-producing: it generates a new form of questioning about what sustains our existence, gives it a future and lends it meaning .”[25] To put all of this in theological terms, this awakening is about “conversion” and radical “transformation” and, in this sense, about a “new creation,” which according to the Christian perspective begins to be realized in the Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth and in the event of his death and resurrection. In the Christ event, God has disrupted and broken open history; he himself will make “all things new” again, according to the hope expressed in the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament (cf. Rev 21:5). This broad horizon for the future enables human beings to act from a perspective of hope and with an orientation towards a togetherness which is liberating and appreciative and which respects the limits of all life that was redeemed by Jesus of Nazareth. Human beings are called to act in the service of the future and of a good life within the limits of this planet.

The path towards such a transformation requires the highest scientific efforts in all areas of human thinking and research, yet it is not only an intellectual process, but rather involves  holistic conversion and a renewed theology of creation. As the Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff writes:

We need imagination, passion and creative enthusiasm. We need to pick up the pieces of the old paradigm, gather all the wisdom of humanity, evaluate all the knowledge beneficial to life and humanity, be inspired by the generous dreams of so many cultures – especially the indigenous cultures that have known how to maintain a sacred respect for Mother Earth and to realise a respectful coexistence with her.[26]

The new paradigm includes a new “cosmovision,” a “cosmology of change,” and this is “the expression of the ecocene that will put the ecological question at the centre of its attention,”[27] a new paradigm that has been developing for 100 years: “It derives from the sciences that explore the universe, the earth and life. It locates our reality within cosmogenesis, the process of formation of the cosmos itself, which began with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. The universe is constantly expanding, self-organising, self-creating, and harbouring meaning.”[28] The natural state of this cosmology “is one of evolution rather than stability, of change and adaptability rather than immobility and permanence. In it, everything is interconnected in networks, and nothing exists outside this play of relations. Therefore, all forms of being are interdependent and work together to develop together, to ensure the balance of all factors and to maintain biodiversity.”[29] This means that the human being is integrated into a network of relationships. The human being is placed “in the midst of this nature,” “where we unfold in deep harmony and synergy, open to ever new changes.”[30] Accordingly, nature is an “open system” that “can always integrate new interactions and energy flows – in contrast to a closed system that is encapsulated within itself and finds itself outside the process of dialogue in the universe.”[31]

These groundbreaking reflections on the ecocene, which Leonardo Boff develops in dialogue with scientific theorising, are also connected with process-theological approaches to thinking about creation. We can rethink the relationship between God and the world and the relationship between human and extra-human reality with the help of process-philosophical reflections, as presented by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Such a view places the experience of the dynamics of the spirit in all reality at the centre, understands God and the world to be in the process of becoming, and takes as its starting point the fundamental experience of the vulnerability of all life. God himself suffers, as Sallie McFague puts it, in and with this “body” of the world and is in this sense “vulnerable.”[32] This view of the co-suffering God also changes the perspective on man, who is not the “lord and master of nature” that René Descartes saw him as at the cusp of modernity. Such a view of the cosmos invites man to reconsider his own vulnerability, to gain a humility that grows out of his being embedded in the “humus” of the earth, and to attend to all living things. Nature is thereby granted a dignity of her own, of which man is only the administrator.[33]

These are reflections that Pope Francis summarises at the end of Laudato si’ with the keyword of creation spirituality. Such a creation spirituality is condensed in the celebration of the Sabbath, of the Sunday, the day of rest, which at the same time means the highest form of dynamism. To let the Sabbath dawn, according to Leonardo Boff, is to “leave behind the old cosmology” in order to “reinvent our civilisation.” “The main institutions of modernity, including agriculture, religion, education, economy, must be rethought from within a living, intelligent and self-organising universe. Instead of downgrading the system of life and the earth, humanity will have to learn to ally itself with the community of life in a way that increasingly reinforces interdependence. This task will surely take the talent and energy of millions of people from all cultures throughout the 21^st century.”[34] Achieving the “Great Transformation” is “probably the great historical challenge of the present time”[35] but it is possible to meet this challenge. The hope for finding ways into the future is grounded in a theological perspective in the “breathing space”[36] that the Sabbath signifies, which is summed up in Scripture with the Sabbath commandment: “Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex 20:9-11).

3. Sabbath and the Dynamics of Transformation

The basic theological motif of transformation is inscribed in the biblical texts on the Sabbath, in the Jewish Sabbath liturgy, and also in the development of the Christian, which cannot be equated with the Sabbath simpliciter. The Sabbath means a time of rest, a cessation of work for humans and for everything that belongs to them, their property, their slaves (a reference to the social order at the time of the writing of the scriptural texts and far into modern times) and for their livestock. The Sabbath also prescribes rest for the strangers who abide on the territory of the Chosen People, and this is justified with a reference back to the creation-theological statement of God resting on the seventh day, the Lord’s day, on the seventh day of the week, when humans and animals can “catch their breath,” as it were, and experience an abundance of life and vitality.

From the divine standpoint, life is inscribed in every day of creation. The Sabbath, blessed and sanctified by God (cf. Ex 20:11), forms, according to the systematic-theological interpretation, an “in-between” world in which God’s space and man’s space touch, an “in-between” that reminds man of his being created, of his dignity as a child of God, of having been created in the image of God, and thus, of his mission and obligation to live up to this dignity in his labour of shaping a “worthy” togetherness and a “good life” for all creation. The celebration of the Sabbath or Sunday, as well as the renewed remembrance of the Sabbath commandment, inscribe the dynamics of transformation into the fabric of life. The significance of the Sabbath as a day of transformation is elaborated in three steps that are oriented towards the theological perspective on creation presented by Dorothee Sölle in her study Lieben und Arbeiten (Loving and Working).[37] First, she contemplates “working,” then “loving,” and then, the interrelatedness of both perspectives and the associated dynamics of transformation.

3.1 Working

When, in the face of the environmental crisis, climate change, and the depletion of resources, there is talk of the need for a “Great Transformation,” human beings and their activities come into focus. They are called upon to shape their activities and, in this sense, their “work,” with creativity and foresight to bring about a renewed togetherness. This togetherness entails conserving resources, working towards sustainability, and being aware of the limits of planet Earth so that the living material of Gaia is respected and renewed, and in this way, a future is made possible. From the perspective of the Great Transformation and the scientific approaches that constitute and justify it, the functional understanding of the economy and of social and political togetherness that has developed in modernity has been heavily criticized. This understanding of socio-economics sees work in the service of the increase of wealth and of economic and social progress, a definition of work that has been challenged from different perspectives since the nineteenth century. Critics have pointed out that such a conception of work leads to an “exhaustion of the self” (cf. Alain Ehrenberg) and a perversion of human life. Many new approaches to work have been presented in the last 50 years, and ecclesiastical statements such as John Paul II’s important social encyclical Laborem exercens (1981)[38] and theological publications such as the above-mentioned study by the Protestant theologian Dorothee Sölle, are part of this critique. They develop a new perspective on work with a view guided by the theology of creation. Work is certainly “toil,” but the theological interpretation that sees in work only toil and punishment in view of the “lost paradise” (cf. Gen 3:16-24) has been overcome, especially from a Catholic perspective, with the positive appreciation of work in the Pastoral Constitution of the Second Vatican Council. Man as the “image of God” continues to develop “the work of the Creator” in his work on the various levels, including his mundane everyday activities:

Man, created in God’s image, has indeed received the commission to subdue the earth and all that belongs to it, to govern the world in justice and holiness, and through the recognition of God as the Creator of all things, to relate himself and the totality of reality to God, so that everything may be subject to man and God’s name may be marvellous in all the earth. This also applies to ordinary everyday activity; for men and women who, for example, in earning a living for themselves and their families, carry out their activity in such a way that it is a corresponding service to the community, may be convinced that by their work they are advancing the work of the Creator, that they are providing for the welfare of their brethren, and that by their personal effort they are contributing to the historical fulfilment of the divine plan (GS 34).

Through work, man’s response to the divine claim to creation is realised, and his dignity is expressed as responsibility towards himself, towards others, and towards the whole of creation. It is precisely on these principles, as John Paul II formulated following Gaudium et Spes (GS), that the “primacy of work” (LE 12) is founded. “Through his work,” says the Council text, “man not only transforms things and society, but also perfects himself. He learns many things, develops his abilities, transcends himself and rises above himself. Growth of this kind, properly understood, is worth more than accumulated external wealth. The value of human beings lies more in themselves than in their possessions. Likewise, whatever men and women do to achieve a greater justice, a wider brotherhood, and a more humane order of social interdependence, is more valuable than technical progress” (GS 35).[39]

The French Dominican Marie-Dominique Chenu has unfolded this positive view of work theologically in terms of creation. Work, according to Chenu, is a decisive “factor in the becoming of humanity as a whole, a factor of ‘humanisation,’ it is the pivot of its ‘socialisation,’ by virtue of which humanity travels a decisive road towards its socialisation and its collectivity.”[40] Chenu sees the work of man at the level of “creatio continua.” Creation is not complete; man participates in the process of creation with his work, enabling the order of creation and the order of salvation to meet: “Through man, or more precisely, through the human act of transforming the world, the cosmos itself enters into the plan of salvation.”[41] Work is the process by which – through the activity of human beings – the network of creation can be shaped to allow the original mission of creation to shine again through all brokenness. In work, man expresses his “co-creativity.”[42] Work is “activity in nature,” and “participation in the divine activity.” Man is a “co-worker in creation” and a “demiurge of its unfolding through his activity as discoverer, beneficiary and spiritual builder of nature.”[43]

Marie-Dominique Chenu thinks highly of human beings, and this is an expression of his incarnational approach taken from Patristic and Scholastic theologians. These thinkers speak of the divine Logos who enters the world in freedom and love, who “takes on flesh,” and in his life, death and resurrection, renews the world and reality of mankind. In this way, the Logos affirms the original goodness of creation and the freedom of the human which stems from his dignity as a child of God. Even the “spiritual perversion of the divine plan” was, according to Chenu, “accepted by God.”[44] Work in this sense is also toil. Work can be perverted and can lead to “exhaustion of the self.” Inscribed in it are the limitations, fragility and possible culpability of the human being. Work is thus marked by the fallenness that runs through creation, by the indissolubility of evil and the possible perversion of the “good life.” Thus work can take on alienated forms; like all creation, it is threatened by the rupture of relationships. Work unfolds under the guise of broken freedom, and thus, it exhausts. It is permeated by the tension between freedom and necessity. Work, like every human activity, can be perverted into power if it is made into a self-referential activity of man and becomes “absolute,” thereby failing to refer back to the creation of all things.

Therefore, work must be related to Sabbath rest. Work and love, according to Dorothee Sölle, must always go hand in hand. The “human being capable of work and love corresponds to the Creator.”[45] Work must always grow out of Sabbath rest because only in this way does the human being realise his or her dignity as an image of God and “co-creator.” “Creatio continua” takes shape as a dynamic cooperation of God and the human being, a provision of God in the self-realisation of the human being as he shapes the world, which is constantly in the process of becoming, just as God himself is “in the process of becoming” in it. According to Dorothee Sölle, “there is an indissoluble interrelation between God and the claim to absolute human dignity.”[46] A theology of work is developed from a theology of the Sabbath, not vice versa. Thus, in modernity, Sunday has become a day of recreation, just as work has also been functionalised with the consequence that in an exhausted society, work and leisure are increasingly segregated.

A theology of work and a theology of the Sabbath fundamentally belong together. In their interrelatedness, the meaning of creation can be discovered. From the perspective of the human being, creation is participation of the human being in God’s work of creation and the possibility of a Great Transformation. Man holds on to the hope of shaping the world within the limits of planet Earth and using its possibilities in such a way that the network of life on Earth can be renewed and a “good life” becomes possible for future generations.

3.2 Loving and working

Theological work on creation reminds us above all that creation is a “granting, disposal, promise and provision of what is necessary for life and living together in a comprehensive dimension,”[47] as stated in the document of the Commission for Social and Societal Questions of the German Bishops’ Conference “Handeln für die Zukunft der Schöpfung” (“Acting for the Future of Creation”). This text elaborates on the importance of “co-creativity.” The actions of human beings and their work are embedded in the network of creation and are at its service. At times when these nets are torn, when the rainforests necessary for the earth’s ecosystem continue to be cut down despite all pleas to the contrary, when newly fanned wars stymie the struggle for sustainable economic activity, the above words, though well-intentioned, seem ineffective.

Yet we must hope against all hope. The meaning of the Jewish Sabbath is trust “in spite of everything.” This is also true of the Christian Sunday, which for Christians took the place of the Jewish day of rest after its official recognition as a Christian holiday with the legislation of Emperor Constantine in 321. In recent decades, with the intensification of Christian-Jewish dialogue, these two days, while retaining their intrinsic value, have come to be seen as „festival(s) of creation.”[48] “The Sabbath is not a human invention, but part of the divine order of creation and therefore inherent to the world as a whole. The entire cosmos is subject to the rhythm of God’s resting on the seventh day of creation.”

The Sabbath commandment, as it is named in the biblical texts Ex 20:9-11 and Ex 31:15,17 admonishes humans to interrupt work in order to “take a breather,” as Norbert Clemens Baumgart writes in his intertextual analysis,[50] referring back to the connection between the commandment to rest valid for humans, animals, slaves and strangers and the creation narrative, which speaks of God resting on the seventh day “after he had made all his work” (Gen 2:2).[51] This is echoed in Deut 5:12, which reads, “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.”

The Sabbath commandment commits human beings to an “imitatio Dei,”[52] to resting, as God did, on the seventh day. It stands for the fact that work and distancing oneself from work belong together, that the limits set for work in the Sabbath commandment do not “confine” it but rather release its creative powers.

The biblical mandate to work in and on creation is to be interpreted in terms of a mapping of ‘divine working.’ The Sabbath rest sets limits to man’s relationship to the world, which is oriented towards work and thus towards creation and change. It provides a free space in which he can orient himself anew to the divine model.[53]

Work is to be related to the rhythm of creation, preservation, cultivation and rest. It is precisely the distancing from work, the ever-new relativisation of work, that allows us to discover its meaningfulness: “God has thus placed the rhythm of work and rest in his creation. Yes, the ultimate meaning of his work of creation is not work and the struggle for survival, but the possibility for all living beings to ‘catch their breath’ (Ex 23:12).”[54] Life in abundance, understood as quality of life, is thus the meaning and purpose of the day of rest. The Sabbath is not just one of the seven days, but is understood in Gen 1:1-2:4a as the ‘crowning’ and goal of the whole work of creation. In this sense, it is not man who is the “crown” of creation, but the Sabbath. When man keeps the Sabbath, he shares in the “crowning” by growing into what God has planned for him from the beginning, by becoming an “image” of God able to participate in the transformation of creation according to this dignity.

In exegetical literature, there have been many interpretations of the aforementioned “crowning” or “completion” of creation on the seventh day. Erich Zenger speaks of the “completion of creation” as a “further act of God’s creation in that God ‘blesses’ and ‘sanctifies’ the seventh day on which he ceases to work.”[55] Baumgart and Krüger speak of “God resting” and “God ceasing,” which is not part of the act of creation, but occurs in the time after the completion of creation; the work is “brought to an end,” it is “finished.”[56] The special feature of this day is that the “day of cessation” is

directly identified as God’s object, as the object of his action (Gen 2:3a). God blesses the seventh day and thus gives it continuity. The blessing is to be understood in unity with God’s ‘sanctifying’. God sanctifies this seventh day and assigns it to himself continuously. In this way, God appears as the “rhythemiser” of that time which he himself, as Creator, has made possible.[57]

And in this manner Gen 1-2, according to Baumgart,

foreshadows the later mentions of creation in Ex 20 and Ex 31, which deal with the week and the Sabbath, and thus suggests a prior understanding to them. According to this, the Creator, in creating the cosmos, was not subject to externally predetermined time sequences, and therefore followed them. Rather, the Creator himself laid the foundation for and shaped the week with its extraordinary day. In its temporal behaviour, Israel thus imitates God’s creative timing.[58]

Thus, “God’s cessation of ‘his’ work” is “under the sign of its completion after the completion of creation.”[59] In Jewish tradition, the Sabbath has therefore been designated as a day “that is not a day,” a day, according to Rabbi Ishmael commenting on Exodus 20, that is “equal in significance to the whole work of creation.”[60] The people are called upon to prepare themselves to receive Queen Shabbat.[61]

The Sabbath, according to the interpretation of the French theologian and exegete Jean-Robert Armogathe, who also makes reference to Jewish traditions, “is the presence of God that communicates itself to human beings, it is only another name for Emmanuel, for ‘God is with us’.”[62] In the New Testament, this very God-perspective of the Sabbath is recalled when Jesus of Nazareth approaches the Sabbath critically, asking whether it is “lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill” (Mk 3:4), and when he, after having been challenged for his disciples’ plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath, says: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here… For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Mt 12:6.8). The Sabbath is theocentric in this sense, because it is a day on which the Creator himself is central, and not one of his works. Space is made for Him and for the dynamics of the transformation of His creative power. At the same time, the Sabbath is also deeply anthropocentric, because the Sabbath commandment “humanises” human work and embeds it in the living network of creation. Thus the Sabbath is an “in-between” space and “the first act of salvation history,” according to the French Old Testament scholar Roland de Vaux. When creation is “completed, God stops and can make a covenant with his creatures… The ‘in-between’ of the covenant of creation is the Sabbath kept by man (cf. Ez 20:12) in the image of the first Sabbath of the world, on which God rested.”[63] For this very reason, the dynamics of transformation are inscribed in the Sabbath, in which human beings, when they prepare themselves for Queen Shabbat welcome her, become participants.

From a Christian perspective, Sunday is the “Lord’s Day” in precisely this sense. In the Christian community, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, is understood as the mediator, the “in-between” space where God and man meet in an unsurpassable closeness, a closeness in which every man and woman following in the footsteps of Jesus receives a share.

This Jesus, who was crucified on Friday, the preparation day, and rested in the tomb during the Sabbath of Holy Saturday, God raised up on the third day “according to the Scriptures.” On this great and holy Sabbath Christ, ‘obedient to the will of the Father, in the Holy Spirit by his death gave life to the world.’ He fulfilled all the promises of God contained in Scripture.[64]

Radical transformation is the ground of the Christian hope that, despite infernos, floods and wars, forces for the Great Transformation can build and grow after all. This hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus “on the third day” (1 Cor 15:4), the day in whose memory the Christian community continues to celebrate Sunday. In Jesus Christ, according to Paul (e.g. 2 Cor 5:17),[65] a new creation has taken place, i.e. an ultimately inconceivable and unsurpassable transformation of all reality, which is “foolishness” for those who seek to understand with their human intellect, but reason for hope for those who walk in faith (cf. 1 Cor 1:18, 22-24).[66] Christians therefore celebrate Sunday as Creation Day, as a reminder of this new creation, but they do well also to remember the Jewish Sabbath and to keep in mind that Jesus himself honoured it with his whole life and in his death. The Sabbath, as Kurt Appel summarises his interpretation of it,

is the place of the Messiah and … the place where GOD happens in history, and indeed as its Sabbath, as eschatological time, i.e. as the “hour” in which the activity of man freed from guilt and mortal disease is transformed into praise and celebration. … It is the ‘hour’ in which the reconciling and healing new creation takes place as a feast and in which the festive origin of the world becomes manifest.[67]

4. A Brief Conclusion: The Sabbath as a Day of Transformation

The environmental crisis, climate change and depletion of resources call for a Great Transformation. The Earth Charter published in 2000 speaks of a “new beginning,” a “time when a new reverence for life was awakened, a time when sustainable development was resolutely set in motion, a time when the quest for justice and peace was given new impetus, and a time of joyful celebration of life.”[68] In many movements around the world, across religions and cultures, and especially in the minds and hearts of young people, there has been a growing awareness of the need to adopt a new attitude towards life and the whole of creation, a “basic attitude of transcending oneself by breaking through closed-off consciousness and self-centredness” (LS 208). This is an attitude of “solidarity, cooperation and compassion,” as Leonardo Boff writes, a new age “in which we no longer presume to be ‘little gods’ on earth, but simply human beings who regard and treat the other members of the community of life related to us, the plants, the birds, the animals, the moon, the sun and the stars, simply as brothers and sisters.”[69] From the perspective of the biblical traditions, this new spirituality is a “creation spirituality,” the basic form of spirituality that unites people of all religions and cultures. This is why Christians can celebrate Creation Day, one of the new ecumenical projects born in response to the radical crisis of the present, with all people of good will, thereby allowing the great treasure of our biblical traditions to shine anew in a secular context.

In the Sabbath and in Sunday, we find a foundational “spirituality,” the basic attitude of “transcending oneself,” the experience of being related in spirit to the whole of creation. Sabbath and Sunday remind us of the whence and whither of creation, of the inner, creative dynamism of God and the powers of transformation he has inscribed in reality. They remind us of God’s blessing and call us to praise God, the Creator. The Sabbath calls our attention to our participation in creation, our co-creative activity with regard to the transformation of reality according to the original goodness placed in creation. In this respect, the Sabbath represents the horizon that makes possible a healthy attitude to work and allows for criticism of all forms of work that are unworthy of human beings. Work becomes a “relative” concept without being relativised; rather, it reaches its most profound “reality” when embedded in the dynamics of transformation that Sabbath or Sunday signify. Work thus attains the deepest “relation to reality” and “enracinement dans le monde.” As Simone Weil puts it: “Une civilisation constituée par une spiritualité du travail serait le plus haut degré d’enracinement de l’homme dans l’univers, par suite l’opposé de l’état où nous sommes, qui consiste en un déracinement presque total.”[70] When work and rest, the interruption of work and praise of the Creator, are related to each other, human beings, to take up Simone Weil’s metaphor, become rooted, finding their footing in and on the earth and experience that they are “earthlings” and part of the living network of creation.

To understand and to grasp that the human being is an “earthling” embedded in the great network of creation is an act of consciousness based in the truth that man is an “image” of God, that he is a being consisting of a body and a soul, and that he has and is spirit. And it is precisely this spirit, as Leonardo Boff puts it, that is the “profound dimension of the human individual,” “the most secret and sacred, the realm from which the great conflicts spring, where serious decisions are made and where the fuller meaning of life is defined.”[71] This spirit is “the capacity for relationship and interconnection, in which all forms of being are interconnected,” and this “cosmic spirit, the relational matrix, attains consciousness in the individual, and therefore it can shape history and lay the foundations for a design of life that has the hallmark of spirit.”[72] When the Sabbath is celebrated in this spirit, it becomes the supreme expression and culmination of the fact that man is an embodied spirit. Herein lies – as justified by the biblical texts – the condition for human beings to embark on the path of a Great Transformation, because their power for transformation is grounded in the dynamics of transformation that is not man-made but divine.

Christians in the many movements around the world in the service of sustainability, the integrity of creation, and the future of the planet bring their creation spirituality to the task of shaping a comprehensive spirituality. Creation spirituality finds its deepest expression in the celebration of the Sabbath, which in this sense is not only celebrated as the seventh day of the week but is inscribed in the dynamics of every day as a day of transformation and creation. In the Christian liturgy, the celebration of the Eucharist on weekdays is a reminder of this truth. The Sabbath, writes Kurt Appel,

is therefore the eschatological day that is not simply added, but crosses the other days, as it were, which, incidentally, was expressed before the last liturgical reform insofar as in it every day held within itself, as it were, the possibility of Sunday service. The Sabbath of the seventh day, as God’s day, consequently enters into the centre of Israel and becomes the primordial sacrament in which the Torah itself is summed up. Thus the Sabbath can be seen as the portal through which Messianic time enters world time.[73]

Thus the Sabbath, like Sunday, “is not a day external to the other days, but their transformation from the necessity of the course of the world into the freedom of the feast. It is, as it were, the end of the self-referentiality of the other days, without being a goal different and external to them.”[74]

The possibility of transformation is inherent in the day of creation, the Sabbath or Sunday, on which people, in line with biblical tradition, open an “interspace” for the dynamics of God’s transformative powers, for the new creation that takes place in the becoming of the world at every moment. Human beings participate in this transformation by their work, realising themselves in the process as human beings in community with other human beings and with the whole network of creation. From a Christian perspective, this is why we can hold on to hope as we await and work towards the Great Transformation.

[1] Ottilia Lukács, Sabbath in the Making: A Study of the Inner-biblical Interpretation of the Sabbath Commandment. Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology, 97 (Leuven: Peeters, 2020). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1q26m4t

[2] Lukács, Sabbath in the Making, 42. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1q26m4t.3

[3] Cf. only the theological interpretation of the Sabbath and jubilee in Uwe Becker, Sabbath und Sonntag: Plädoyer für eine sabattheologisch begründete kirchliche Zeitpolitik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2006), 249–276, p. 264. Creation-theological and liberation-theological perspectives are also combined in Andreas Benk, Schöpfung – eine Vision von Gerechtigkeit: Was niemals war, doch möglich ist (Ostfildern: Grünewald, 2016).

[4] On Jesus’ position on the Sabbath according to the testimony of the Gospels, see Ernst Haag, Vom Sabbat zum Sonntag. Eine bibeltheologische Studie (Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1991), 125–137.

[5] The relationship between Sabbath and Sunday is not fleshed out in the present study from a historical perspective; the connection has previously been firmly established. Sabbath and Sunday are examined from a creation-theological perspective under the aspect of „transformation”; from there, the focus is on commonalities without relativising the differences. In this respect, the important christological perspective of Sunday is not illuminated here.

[6] Ottilia Lukács joins the interpreters who define the Sabbath as an “identity marker.” She speaks of “… the role of the Sabbath as means of identity formation, that is, a contextual reading that attempts to present the group who developed the Sabbath as their identity marker” (Sabbath in the Making, 40). This interpretation is found, for example, in the habilitation thesis by Alexandra Grund, Die Entstehung des Sabbats. Seine Bedeutung für Israels Zeitkonzept und Erinnerungskultur, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 5, 306.

[7] Lukács, Sabbath in the Making, 3.

[8] Lukács, Sabbath in the Making, 296.

[9] Lukács, Sabbath in the Making, 17.

[10] Cf. Markus Vogt, “Kirche und Große Transformation: Blockierte Potenziale – sieben Thesen zur Rolle der Kirchen in der Großen Transformation,” KirUm-Infodienst, no. 1 (2019): 4–7; Adrián E. Beling and Julien Vanhulst (eds.), Desarrollo non Sancto: La religión como actor emergente en el debate global sobre el futuro del planeta, (Ciudad de México: siglo ventiuno editores, 2019).

[11] Cf. Augustine, La Genèse au sens littéral en douze livres, Bibliothèque augustinienne, 48 (Paris: Institut d’études Augustinienne, 1972), 307: “It can be said with all probability that the observance of the Sabbath was prescribed for the Jews as a shadowy image of the future: it was a foreshadowing of the spiritual rest which God, following the example of his own rest, promised to the faithful who perform good works, under the mystery of the sign. A rest whose mystery was confirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered because he willed it, through his burial. For he rested in the sepulchre on the Sabbath: he spent that day in a kind of holy rest, having completed his week on the sixth day, which was the preparation day, and having accomplished at the wood of the cross what the scriptures had said of him” (IV, XI, 21). Quoted from: Michel Sales, “Die Vollendung des Sabbats: Vom Siebten Tag zur Gottesruhe in Gott,” Internationale katholische Zeitschrift “Communio” IKaZ 23, no. 1 (1994): 9–25, p. 14.

[12] Adam Joshua Heschel, Der Sabbat: Seine Bedeutung für den heutigen Menschen (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990), (English original edition: 1951), 10.

[13] Jan Oliva, „Ein Tag für das Leben: Vom Sabbat und seiner heilsamen Zweckfreiheit,” Geist und Leben. Zeitschrift für christliche Spiritualität 91, no. 1 (2018): 39–44. Jan Oliva refers to the Sabbath liturgy and the hymn „Lecha dodi,” which says: „Up, my friend, to the bride, / The Queen Sabbath let us receive!” (39).

[14] Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter on Care for our Common Home, Laudato Si’, 2015, edited by the Secretariat of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bonn (Bonn: Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz/ Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015), no. 216-221.

[15] Leonardo Boff, Überlebenswichtig: Warum wir einen Kurswechsel zu echter Nachhaltigkeit brauchen, (Ostfildern: Grünewald 2016), 81. – Román Guridi elaborates on the developments in Latin American eco-theology: Román Guridi, Ecoteología: hacia un nuevo estilo de vida (Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado 2018).

[16] See, e.g., Johan Rockström and Mattias Klum, Big World, Small Planet: Abundance Within Planetary Boundaries (Connecticut: New Haven, 2015)

[17] Bruno Latour, “Sur une nette inversion du schème de la fin des temps,” (ET: On a clear inversion of the end-times scheme), Recherches de Science Religieuse 107, no. 4 (2019): 601–615. https://doi.org/10.3917/rsr.194.0601

Bruno Latour, Où atterrir: Comment s’orienter en politique (Paris: La Découverte, 2017). (For this article the German edition was used: Bruno Latour, Das terrestrische Manifest [Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018].)

[18] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 90–91. Boff refers to the Brazilian scientist José Lutzenberger, who further developed the Gaia hypothesis: Gaia is an “evolving system consisting of all living things and their surface environment, the oceans, the atmosphere, the crustal rocks… a system that has emerged from the common and mutual evolution of organisms and their environment in the course of the evolutionary ages of life on earth…. In dialogue with the energies of the universe and the earth, and in interaction with the other living organisms, these have created for themselves a habitat, a habitat favourable to the maintenance of relatively constant conditions for all the elements which constitute life” (90).

[19] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 90.

[20] Bruno Latour, Wo bin ich? Lektionen aus dem Lockdown (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2021).

[21] Latour, Wo bin ich?, 165.

[22] Latour, Wo bin ich?, 167.

[23] Latour, Wo bin ich?, 168.

[24] Latour, Wo bin ich?, 172.

[25] Cf. Markus Vogt, Ökotheologie: Was ist die Kompetenz der Theologie im Umweltdiskurs? Book presentation „Christliche Umweltethik” on 15.4.2021, 1, August 11, 2022, https://www.kaththeol.unimuenchen.de/lehrstuehle/christl_sozialethik/aktuelles-ordner/umweltethik/

okotheologie.pdf.

[26] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 81.

[27] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 82.

[28] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 82.

[29] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 83.

[30] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 83.

[31] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 83.

[32] Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological Nuclear Age, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 77; Margit Eckholt, Schöpfungstheologie und Schöpfungsspiritualität: Ein Blick auf die Theologin Sallie McFague, (München: Don Bosco 2009).

[33] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 83.

[34] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 83. Boff refers to considerations of the cosmologian Brian Swimme.

[35] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 100.

[36] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 100. It is about the sustainable continuation of life in its most diverse forms, so as “preserving natural capital by giving it breathing space to regain its equilibrium and restore its lost integrity.”

[37] Dorothee Sölle, Lieben und arbeiten: Eine Theologie der Schöpfung (München 2001).

[38] Pope John Paul II., Encyclical on Human Work, Laborem Exercens, 1981 (Der Wert der Arbeit und der Weg zur Gerechtigkeit. Die Enzyklika über die menschliche Arbeit Papst Johannes Pauls II. Mit einem Kommentar von Oswald von Nell-Breuning), 2nd ed., (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1981) (abbreviated: LE). Cf. Dietmar Mieth, Arbeit und Menschen-würde (Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder, 1985).

[39] Cf. Laborem Exercens 9, “Work is a good for man – for his being human – because through work he not only transforms nature and adapts it to his needs, but also realises himself as a human being, in the certain manner of “becoming more human.’”

[40] Marie-Dominique Chenu, Die Arbeit und der göttliche Kosmos: Versuch einer Theologie der Arbeit. Trans. and Intro. by Karl Schmitt (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1956), 59.

[41] Chenu, Die Arbeit und der göttliche Kosmos, 71.

[42] Cf. Sölle, Lieben und arbeiten, 142: “Through work we enter into relationship with other people; in work, therefore, this relational character of our existence should find expression. If we have a share in creation and imitate God in our work, then our creation is also a sign of our relatedness to others and our commonality. Work that truly corresponds to who we are allows us to participate in God’s work of creation and brings us into a continuous process of mutual give and take, teaching and learning that is characteristic of good work.”

[43] Chenu, Die Arbeit und der göttliche Kosmos, 69. Cf. Sölle, Lieben und arbeiten, 57: “The workers continue the power of God on earth and collaborate in creation.”

[44] Chenu, Die Arbeit und der göttliche Kosmos, 69.

[45] Sölle, Lieben und Arbeiten, 13.

[46] Sölle, Lieben und Arbeiten, 139.

[47] Handeln für die Zukunft der Schöpfung (22.10.1998), ed. by Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Die deutschen Bischöfe – Kommission für gesellschaftliche und soziale Fragen 19, Bonn 1998), no. 62, 36.

[48] Matthias Klinghardt, “‘… auf daß du den Feiertag heiligest’: Sabbath und Sonntag im Antiken Judentum und frühen Christentum.” In Jan Assmann (ed.), Das Fest und das Heilige. Religiöse Kontrapunkte zur Alltagswelt (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1991), 206–233, here: 210. –To the relation between Sabbath and Sunday, cf. Ernst Haag, Vom Sabbat zum Sonntag: Eine bibeltheologische Studie (Trier: Paulinus-Verlag, 1991). Haag points out that the reference to the “rest” of the Sabbath and thus a theological discussion of the Sabbath had an eschatological perspective: Sabbath rest is understood as “the memorial of the completion of God’s rule as Creator and Redeemer” (181).

[49] Klinghardt, ‘… auf daß du den Feiertag heiligest’, 210.

[50] Norbert Clemens Baumgart, “Ein Gott, der Atem gibt: Zu intertextuellen Zusammenhängen im Pentateuch,” Biblische Notizen. Aktuelle Beiträge zur Exegese der Bibel und ihrer Welt 143, (2009): 46–68, p. 49. Here Baumgart also refers to 2 Sam 16:14: David flees with his people and they “refresh” (ibid.) themselves, or, as it says in a common German Bible interpretation, the “Einheitsübersetzung,” they “take a breather.” The “resting” in Ex 31:17 is for him also a “taking a breather,” a “coming back to breath” (ibid.).

[51] Gen 1: 2a, b; 3 a “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.”

[52] Baumgart, Ein Gott, der Atem gibt, 61: “Intertextually read from Ex 20:11, one can hear an imitatio dei in Deut 5:14. A rest similar to that of the Creator is to be accomplished once again in Israel.”

[53] Handeln für die Zukunft der Schöpfung, no. 68, 39. Cf. also: Thomas Eggensperger, “Freizeit und Schöpfung: Vom Wandel der Zeiten,” in Thomas Dienberg and Stephan Winter (eds.), Mit Sorge – in Hoffnung: Zu Impulsen aus der Enzyklika Laudato si´ für eine Spiritualität im ökologischen Zeitalter (Regensburg: Verlag Pustet, 2020), 207–217.

[54] Michael Rosenberger, Im Zeichen des Lebensbaumes: Ein theologisches Lexikon der christlichen Schöpfungs-spiritualität (Würzburg: Verlag Echter, 2001), 106; 107.

[55] Erich Zenger (ed.), Stuttgarter Altes Testament. Einheitsübersetzung mit Kommentar und Lexikon (Stuttgart: Verlag katholisches Bibelwerk, 2004), 19. Quoted in: Thomas Krüger, “Schöpfung und Sabbat in Genesis 2,1-3,” in Sprachen – Bilder – Klänge: Dimensionen der Theologie im Alten Testament und in seinem Umfeld. Festschrift für Rüdiger Bartelmus zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (Alter Orient und Altes Testament. Veröffentlichungen zur Kultur und Geschichte des Alten Orients und des Alten Testaments Vol. 359), ed. by Christiane Karrer-Grube/Jutta Krispenz/Thomas Krüger/Christian Rose/Annette Schellenberg (Münster: Ugarit, 2009), 155–169, p. 159.

[56] Krüger, Schöpfung und Sabbat in Genesis 2,1-3, 159.

[57] Norbert Clemens Baumgart, “Ein Gott, der Atem gibt: Zu intertextuellen Zusammenhängen im Pentateuch,” Biblische Notizen. Aktuelle Beiträge zur Exegese der Bibel und ihrer Welt 143, (2009): 46–68, p. 56.

[58] Baumgart, Ein Gott, der Atem gibt, 56.

[59] Baumgart, Ein Gott, der Atem gibt, 57.

[60] Quoted in: Jean-Robert Armogathe/Olivier Boulnois, “Am Sabbat ist Gott unter den Menschen,” in Internationale katholische Zeitschrift “Communio” IKaZ 23, no. 1 (1994): 2-25, p. 5.

[61] In his essay, Jan Oliva presents Abraham Joshua Heschel’s important reflections on the Sabbath: The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Contemporary Man (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990) (original English edition: 1951). The Sabbath is described by Heschel as a “palace in time that we build” (Heschel, The Sabbath, 13; quoted from: Oliva, Ein Tag für das Leben, 44). The Sabbath is “a reminder of both worlds – this world and the world to come (…). For the Sabbath is joy, holiness and rest; joy is a part of this world, holiness and rest belong to the world to come.” (Heschel, “The Sabbat”, 18. Quoted in: Oliva, Ein Tag für das Leben, 44.) For more on the Queen Shabbat, see footnote 13.

[62] Armogathe/Boulnois, Am Sabbat ist Gott unter den Menschen, 6; 7.

[63] Roland de Vaux, Les institutions de l´Ancien Testament, II (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1960), 380, quoted in: Michel Sales, “Die Vollendung des Sabbats. Vom Siebten Tag zur Gottesruhe in Gott,” Internationale katholische Zeitschrift “Communio” IKaZ 23, no. 1, (1994): 9-25, p. 13.

[64] Sales, Die Vollendung des Sabbats, 22.

[65] 2Cor 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

[66] “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor 1:18). “…but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23-24).

[67] Kurt Appel, “Das Fest, der Sabbat und die Ankunft des Messias unter Aufnahme einiger Gedanken Giorgio Agambens,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift “Communio” IKaZ 40, no. 2 (2011): 138-144, p. 140.

[68] “Die Erd-Charta,” August 11, 2022, https://erdcharta.de/die-erd-charta/der-text/. Qouted in: Papst Franziskus, Laudato si´, Nr. 207.

[69] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 149.

[70] Simone Weil, Enracinement (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), 128-129. (New editions: 1977, 1990).

[71] Boff, Überlebenswichtig, 155.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Appel, “Das Fest, der Sabbat und die Ankunft des Messias,” 139: The Christological references cannot be further developed within the framework of the present considerations. When in the Gospel of Saint John Jesus is designated as a “door” (Jn 10:9) or when “rest” (Mt 11:29) is mentioned in relation to Jesus, these are intertextual references to the Jewish Sabbath.

[74] Appel, 2Das Fest, der Sabbat und die Ankunft des Messias,” 143: The references to the celebration of the Eucharist cannot be developed further. A central theological moment of “transformation” is the transubstantiation of the gifts of bread and wine, fruits of human labour, into the Eucharistic species whose reception gives people a share in the dynamics of God’s transformation. Appel points out that if the Sabbath is to become a “real feast,” “the work that lies resolved in the Eucharistic species must be transformed into the rest of HIS presence.” On the other hand, the sixth day of the biblical work of creation gives man the task of continuing the divine work of creation as a statue of God. This creative activity, however, only comes to its inner completion in the festive structure of the seventh day” (143).

Eduard Fiedler Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy and Patrology
Sts Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology
Palacký University, Olomouc
eduard.fiedler@upol.cz

Abstract: In his work De Trinitate, Augustine emphasizes the importance of time in understanding the Holy Trinity. He observes that any relational distinction or difference becomes more evident and graspable when it unfolds within the flow of time and parent precedes offspring by an interval of time. Time is a gift for us to receive with love so that the relational patterns of our lives, knowledge, and desire can become real by sharing in the eternal loving bond of the Trinity. For this reason, Klaus Hemmerle, an author of the Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology (1976), claimed that no truth is more temporal than a religious truth. The article will explore the Augustinian origins of this claim and its Trinitarian meaning.

Keywords: Relations; Time; Religion; Trinity; Augustine; De Trinitate; Klaus Hemmerle; Trinitarian ontology.

https://doi.org/10.63154/CETR2024.1-3

Introduction[1]

Time and relations belong together. Realities are simultaneous in relations. Realities in relations are also sequential, proceeding one after the other. Even the most exclusive events are unique by the nature of their relationality as they change everything by relating to everything, and everything undergoes a change in relation to them. The simultaneity, seriality, and eventfulness of time reveal the ontological priority of relations. The priority of relations is of course also manifested in the dimensions of static space, but only in time do relations become a real connection, sharing, and communication. The ontological priority of relations must therefore be interpreted in terms of the priority of time:[2] only in this way can we understand the priority of relations according to their real signification, not just their relativistic or fixed givenness. And relations would not really be relations if they were merely a givenness of themselves or of their relational terms. A relation must relate.

This is why the twofold priority of relations and time is paradigmatically made known through religion. It does not matter whether etymologically derived from the uniting religare or the distinguishing relegere,[3] the phenomenon of religion is determined by temporal relationality: it refers to the way in which the meaning of fundamental anthropological, economical, cosmological, and theological relations is negotiated and sustained.[4] Accordingly, the meaningfulness of these fundamental relations is announced in various forms of religious temporality. As forms, they can be the rule of work and days inscribed in the flow of time through festivities and celebrations. Or they can be the hidden formal principle of this ordered temporal regularity, which itself looks informal and unique as an event either fully accidental or incomparable to anything else. When signs are exchanged before the eyes of all, or routes of signification are established from seemingly insignificant, hidden sources, all these forms of religious temporality manifest the priority of relations and time. Klaus Hemmerle (1929–1994) even argued that no truth is more temporal than religious truth.[5] Religion is not only one of the many manifestations of the priority of relations and time, but is directly its radicalization in history, a scandal to those who would piously associate only purely timeless truths with religion or, on the contrary, seek and engage with completely temporal truths outside of any connection with “conservative” religion.

What is the reason for this radicalization of the priority of relations and time in the phenomenon of religion? According to Hemmerle no truth is more temporal than the religious truth because the epiphanies and revelations – those very events of religious breakthrough – are not only external chronological data at the beginning of religious traditions, but internal events of their origin, apocalyptically opening up their own revelatory anthropological, economical, cosmological, and theological relationality. In his text Die Wahrheit Jesu (1976), Hemmerle argues:

Theophanic event is not only access to religion, but its very essence; for the sacred mystery enters the interest of religion not in an abstractly contemplated An-sich, but in a concrete Für-uns – and precisely this Für-mich, Für-uns is not determined by man, but pure, sovereign advent of the sacred. The theophanic event is in itself – this marks its specific temporality – coincidence of purest presence with sharpest difference. Only God is there, the wings of the seraph, or the cloud fill the whole room. And at the same time, I am thrown to the ground, I experience myself as dust and ash…[6]

As a coincidence of purest presence with sharpest difference, the dimensions of past, present, and future are knotted together in a unique way in this specific relational temporality implied in theophanic event. On the one hand, the theophanic event takes place at a certain hour and moment in history, in a certain “now”, preceded and followed by some other moments of time. On the other hand, within this chronological “now” another “Now” is happening, which is chronologically indescribable and unconditional. At a particular time, all time is happening as the very origin of all that happens. Everything past that has happened so far is given over to this “Now”. History can no longer continue as before. Everything changes in relation to the One who reveals His mysteries. As Hemmerle stresses: “Where God appears, where he speaks and calls, it is absolutely questionable whether the time and everything will continue at all. It is up to him, up to him alone… The future is his future, or it is not at all.”[7]

Hemmerle’s phenomenology of religious truth as a truth of the theophanic event recognizes, at the heart of temporality, God’s sovereign presence and transcendence, identity and difference, or, in other words, religious revelatory relation. The priority of relations and time is thus radicalized in the phenomenon of religion. Perhaps the best example of this is the Old Testament theology of the Sabbath.[8] In Christianity, the true theophanic event is the event of Jesus Christ: his birth, life, and its culmination in Easter mystery of his crucifixion, death, and resurrection, in which the very religious relation at the heart of temporality is shown to be analogous to Trinitarian relationality.[9] The self-giving of Christ as the structure of temporality is revealed as Trinitarian self-giving: both in relation to human self-giving and to supernatural self-giving in Christ.[10]

Now, how is this discovery of Trinitarian relationality at the heart of time compatible with the traditional understanding of Trinitarian relationality as eternal, and thus completely other than the realities of time? Are we not confusing divine eternity with finite temporality in this Trinitarian conception of time? How do eternity and time relate when our God is the God of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Could philosophical and theological speculations about the eternal generation of the Son from the Father or about the procession of the Holy Spirit from and between both the Father and the Son have anything to do with the finite structure of time in creation? Or is it possible to speak of something as Trinitarian only in the context of eternity, so that time or temporality must be completely set aside as non-Trinitarian or even anti-Trinitarian? In what follows, I will discuss this fundamental but difficult problem in relation to the Augustine’s De Trinitate which can perhaps help us to think more deeply about both this apparent contradiction and the mystery of how time and relations belong together. Since, according to Augustine, the meaning of time or temporality is to enable for us the fundamental relations of remembering, knowing, and loving as oriented towards the Holy Trinity, in what sense is time itself already Trinitarian, how is this Trinitarian meaning of time already anticipated in created reality as lived in those fundamental acts of the human soul from within the religious community, and how is this anticipation related to its eschatological fulfilment?

To treat these questions properly, we must first define Trinitarian ontology and understand its transformative character because it is this transformative character that transforms the classical question of the relation of Trinitarian eternity and time into the question of the relation of Trinitarian time and Trinitarian eternity. Second, I will show in what sense Augustine’s own Trinitarian ontology associated with his Trinitarian analogies in De Trinitate implies a new, Trinitarian meaning of temporality and time. Finally, I will consider the question of how the discovery of Trinitarian relationality at the heart of time is compatible with the orthodox understanding of Trinitarian relationality as eternal.

Trinitarian ontology and Hemmerle’s “Trinität und Zeit”

We began with the priority of relations manifested in time, especially in the time of religious theophany. Because the theophany of the Christian God is the theophany of relations, we find ourselves at a standstill. But if our God is the Holy Trinity, characterized by interpersonal relations of mutual self-giving (fatherhood, sonship, spiratio), then the reality created by the Triune God should also exemplify this Trinitarian relationality, which is love, in its metaphysical structure, and from the very beginning. Trinitarian ontologies argue that the priority of relations manifested in time and the priority of time over space is originally Trinitarian. There has never been a time that was not Trinitarian. This is also what motivated Klaus Hemmerle to write his Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology (1976), where he proposed a Trinitarian ontology as a new form of Christian philosophy proceeding from the reality that it is only love that remains constant despite all temporal changes.[11] If only love remains, then the central term of metaphysics cannot be objective substance or subjective self-reflexivity, but rather a relation. Anything that would like to preserve its objective or subjective identity will lose it, because in trying to preserve its own identity it replaces itself and makes itself meaningless; by repeating itself over and over again, it becomes insignificant. All meaning is born from a true relation that involves non-being, difference, movement, and change. But at the same time, this centrality of relation cannot, according to Hemmerle, be absolutized in the sense that it can always ground the reality of relations unequivocally (univoce), or that all reality may be derived from the concept of relation. If only love remains, it needs to be analogically predicated. The focal meaning of the analogia entis – analogy of being – in Hemmerle’s Trinitarian ontology is “that movement which is agape itself,” the self-giving of Christ as he mediates the eternal self-giving of the Trinitarian relations.[12]

We have already seen that this is the reason why Hemmerle recognizes the rhythm of giving at the heart of temporality: Trinitarian love and relationality serve as the foundation of our conception of time. In his later essay, “Trinität und Zeit” (1985), Hemmerle elaborates in greater detail on the Trinitarian nature of time in contrast to the modern a priori understanding of time, at the centre of which stands a subject, who is supposed to be the source of his own origin and past, and the master of all that may yet happen in the future.[13] Every new thing that could happen is possible in relation to the possibilities of the subject who becomes the only actor of history. Hemmerle observes that presence in time necessarily becomes, under these conditions, the subject’s exclusive relation to itself, resulting in the exhausting stress of a constant but unfulfillable journey towards itself, the paralyzing boredom of being enclosed within itself, or, conversely, the hectic escape of the subject from its own loneliness and isolation within itself. “The constant progress and the retreat into oneself, the flight to oneself and the flight from oneself, come to a monstrous coincidence.”[14] In the modern system of this monstrous coincidence, time consists of the possibility of my effective participation in the functioning of the whole.[15] But such participation can no longer be understood as a participation in common time, because here the “in-between” time of past and future has no original character, since the past is past only insofar as it is determined by the current function, and the same applies to the future. Moreover, this functionalized horizontal time no longer takes place vertically “in between” time and its transcendent origin or source. Finally, subject-centered time cannot be “in between” like the time of an interpersonal encounter in which we as persons are in relation to each other as past and future for each other in a common “we.”[16]

These interpersonal constellations will be the key to Hemmerle’s proposal of how to radically transform the subjective conception of time by discovering Trinitarian temporality. But this transformation is not grounded in a phenomenologically identified eidetic relationality or interpersonality as such (which would correspond to the temporal consciousness of the expectant and remembering subject in relations), but in a participation in salvation history that, despite the catastrophes and abysses of time, reveals time as hope fulfilled in Jesus Christ:

Through the incarnation of the Son, not only is the temporal structure of our passing and decaying time ‘appropriated’ and accepted by God in His Son, but this appropriation and acceptance is also the assumption of all human destinies, all time lived by man. Jesus shares our time, makes it His own in the time of His life and death and at the same time makes Himself a part of it. This offers a new chance for our time: we can share our time with Him through His Spirit, we can live His life in our lives. We are baptised into His death and resurrection, equipped with His Spirit, so that we can say ‘Abba’ with Him and in Him to the Father.”[17]

Time thus transformed and redeemed is a shared presence or a time “in between” of the Holy Spirit in which our past is revealed as saved by the self-giving of Jesus Christ and the love of the Father, and the future is a movement in the Holy Spirit with Jesus Christ back to the Father by participating in the same self-giving, including all communal and relational patterns of our lives, knowledge, and desire as sharing in the eternal loving bond of the Trinity.[18] This releases “in-between” time from the constriction or impasse of the modern subjective. The “in-between” time of past and future is restored as a movement in the Holy Spirit from the Son to the Father. This movement involves the vertical dimension of the time “in-between,” its finite rhythms and its transcendent origin as a spiritual exchange of gifts from the Father and back to Him through the sacrificial self-giving of Christ. All of this takes place within the patterns and constellations of interpersonal encounters in which we as persons in Christ are in relationship with one another and serve as past and future for each other in the life of Church. The priority of relations is manifested through the rhythm of Trinitarian movements which define time as Trinitarian.

In light of the above, the classical question of the relation of Trinitarian eternity and created time cannot remain as it is because it implies an external relation of eternity and time, while Trinitarian ontology argues that this relation must be understood as transcending the dialectic of the external and the internal as all real relations ultimately have to.[19] It was this dialectic that alienated modern “internalized” subjective psychological time (“the flight to oneself”) from modern “externalized” structural chronology (“the flight from oneself”) and made it impossible for the modern subject to perceive time as the gift of a relational “in-between”. So not only is the classical question of the relation of Trinitarian eternity and created time thus transformed into the question of the relation of relational time and relational eternity, or more precisely Trinitarian time and Trinitarian eternity, but Trinitarian ontology also opens up a kairos that goes beyond a purely objective or subjective conception of time.[20]

Augustine and time: distentio animi

This is a very bold intuition, and its continued relevance in discussions about Trinitarian ontology will depend largely on how the tradition of Christ’s self-giving in the history of the Church is made present in this new Trinitarian concept of temporality, pointing to an apocalyptic horizon of witness going to the very end of time and world.[21]As is obvious from the text of his Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology (1976), Hemmerle himself knew, of course, that to some extent he was following a previous tradition of Trinitarian thinking, especially that established by Augustine.[22] I mean not only a similar phenomenological recognition of the relational and Trinitarian structure of human subjectivity associated with Augustine’s doctrine of the human soul as the imago Trinitatis, but above all a new conception of the relation between the eternal life of the Holy Trinity and its temporal creation.

These ideas are present in the famous Book XI of Augustine’s Confessions. As is well known, a number of modern philosophers have seen in Augustine’s Confessions the key text of the philosophical tradition on time. In his lectures entitled Zur Phänemonologie des inneren Zeitbewußtseins (1904/1905), German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) pointed out that “chapters 13-28 of Book XI of the Confessions must still be thoroughly studied by anyone who deals with the problem of time.”[23] Quid enim est tempus? As Augustine wrestled with this problem, he observed that if no one asks him about time, he lives with the conviction that he understands it, but if someone actually asks him a question and demands an explanation, he is unable to answer.[24] When we are in time, we are sure of it without thinking about it; when we start thinking about it, it seems to escape us. “The past, after all, no longer exists, and the future does not yet exist.”[25] But as soon as we think about past things that no longer exist and future things that do not yet exist, we think in the present. The present therefore unifies the three planes of time: “There are three times: the present of things past, the present of things present, and the present of things future.”[26] For Augustine, speech or song are examples of the kind of presence that is a “distention of the mind (spirit) itself” (distentio animi) in the dimensions of memory, attentive insight, and futural expectation.[27] We remember, think, and expect, and thus participate in spiritual realities in time. But even the discovery of this threefold structure of the present time does not save us from its abyssal character: the present, too, is nothingness, because it has no duration, so it is clear that we cannot truly speak of time being, because it tends not to be.[28] Whereas Husserl clearly recognized the importance of Augustine’s conception of time as a distentio animi involving the consciousness of retention and anticipation, for Husserl’s disciple Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), it was exactly this philosophical attention to the nothingness implied in the historical factuality of the finite subject that motivated his interest in Augustine.[29] How could he not be fascinated by Augustine’s insight that man cannot grasp the meaning of his existence except through confessions of discontinuities, turns, and limits in time? At the end of his lectures Augustinus und der Neoplatonismus (1920/1921), Heidegger even recognized the Trinitarian structure of Augustine’s conception of human being-in-time and subjectivity, but, disregarding its openness to the nothingness of being implied in historicity, Heidegger did not show a deeper interest in this specifically theological pattern in his later work.[30] It is an irony of history that he thus repeated the same omission made several centuries before him by the author from whom he wished to distance himself, René Descartes (1596–1650).[31]

It seems that, despite the extraordinary influence of Augustine on the twentieth-century philosophy of time, this Trinitarian pattern, crucial for Augustine, has remained unconsidered until recently.[32] It turns out that a phenomenological understanding of the processual distentio animi involving finite non-being of difference and facticity as purely immanent cannot be sufficiently accurate as long as we ignore the relations that analogically link immanence to transcendence under the creatural circumstances of the historical development of religion belonging to the inseparable action of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the history of salvation. This is the direction that John Milbank’s recent reinterpretation of Augustine’s concept of time takes when he explores its Trinitarian character:

Book XI of the Confessions points ultimately to an ontology of creatures who, as temporally self-creating, are taken as participating in a God who is himself (again according later to Eriugena) eternally ‘self-creating’ as Trinitarian. We can construe this as meaning that God is in himself within himself (as well as in himself outside himself as creator) spiritual gift, since he is both cognitive language and the felt or desired interpretative response to that language which issues in ‘further’ and fully completed action.[33]

Milbank goes much further than Husserl, Heidegger, or later continental philosophers in his interpretation of Book XI of the Confessions because he does not shy away from a metaphysical interpretation of the subjectivity of the human soul against the background of the late development of Neo-Platonism. The processual distentio animi involving retention, attention, and anticipation is not a wholly immanent movement of self-consciousness, but rather a self-creative process imitating how the persons of the Trinity mutually confer their being upon each other as relations-entirely-in-act. On the other hand, it is surprising that Milbank does not connect the Trinitarian interpretation of time in Book XI of the Confessions with the actual substance of Augustine’s later major treatise De Trinitate. Had he done so, it would have become apparent that the analogy between the processual self-generation of temporal subjectivity and the self-generation of the Holy Trinity needs to be carefully refined, for, as we shall now see, the whole of De Trinitate is written to counter a conception of divine being understood as a pure eidetic relationality of power generating itself, that is, against the Neo-Platonic idol which is philosophically most similar to the Trinity but precisely for that reason most problematic.

Trinitarian temporality in De Trinitate

The author’s philosophical aim is evident from the programmatic beginning of De Trinitate, where Augustine states that he writes against “the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith (initium fidei), and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason (immaturo et perverso rationis amore falluntur).”[34] He thereby contrasts his own speculative pursuit of wisdom based on scriptural analogies and metaphors with the purely philosophical knowledge of the relational divine potency that gives birth to itself in order to be (quae se ipsam gignat ut sit). According to Augustine, this intrinsically contradictory relational notion of the self-generating divine potency corresponds neither to the creature nor to the Triune Creator.

Those who suppose that God is of such power (eius esse potentiae Deum) that he actually begets himself (ut seipsum ipse genuerit), are even more wrong, since not only is God not like that, but neither is anything in the world of spirit (nec spiritalis) or body (nec corporalis creatura). There is absolutely no thing whatsoever that brings itself into existence (nulla enim omnino res est quae se ipsam gignat ut sit).[35]

Because of this programmatic critique of the concept of potency that gives birth to itself in order to be, it cannot simply be said that both the processual self-generation of the Trinity and the processual self-generation of subjectivity within distentio animi in time are examples of one and the same transcendental self-reflexive process known from autonomous attempts to intellectually grasp one’s own identity by identifying oneself with one’s own thinking. While Augustine sees this as a philosophically seductive attempt to overcome the obvious limitations of space-time metaphors and analogies, he recognizes that a rejection of the mystery of the created space-time corporeal and spiritual categories is also a rejection of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and as such leads only to thinking of our own a priori presumptions (praesumptiones opinionum suarum) hypostatizing the nothingness implied in a purely rational starting point. In order that we may avoid this error and refrain from saying something about God that is not real either in Him or in His creation, every instance of thinking and speaking of processual self-generation must follow the revealed relationality of the Trinity, both in relation to the Holy Trinity itself and in relation to the Trinitarian time in creation.

We can therefore agree with Milbank that Augustine does not consider the question of the relation between eternity and time as a question after external determination and definition as if the relationality that characterizes the Trinity and time were merely accidental.[36] Intimate self-generation or self-creation is really at the heart of everything that is real. But this self-generation is neither an absolutization of the logic of dialectical development by the movement of reflection from being, through self-opposing non-being, back to consummated being. As is already evident from Books X and XI of the Confessions, the intimate self-generation or self-creation at the heart of everything is paradoxical self-generation born of spiritual love and self-giving in relation to the beloved other. The programmatic beginning of De Trinitate invites us to further participate in this transformative exchange of gifts and overflow, in other words, in the analogical and metaphorical mediation between eternity and time which is historically taking place within the inseparable Trinitarian acts and constellations. Such participation allows us to be born again from the Spirit of our Trinitarian childhood and thus to follow Jesus Christ on his way towards the Father.

In the later books of De Trinitate, Augustine discusses how this paradoxical self-generation-from-the-other brings about the processual analogy between Trinitarian eternity and Trinitarian time. After laying the foundations of Trinitarian logic and metaphysics in Books V-VII, Augustine begins the phenomenological journey of exploring the analogy between the inner relational life of the Trinity and creation. This journey is phenomenological in nature because Augustine realizes that he must proceed modo interiore.[37]

In Book VIII, after first exploring the fundamental act of the encounter between soul and being, truth, and good, Augustine discovers the created relationality that is most like the Trinitarian relationality or self-generation in love. Behold the three: the one who loves, the one who is loved, and love itself.[38] In the Book IX, Augustine shows how this fundamental and shared intentionality of love must be accompanied in our inner life by the life of the whole mind (mens), which also includes knowledge (notitia). How could I love what I do not know? How could I know what I do not love? This is then the first form of Augustine’s inner Trinity (mens, notitia, amor),[39] which will become the starting point for all further investigations.

When Augustine’s intentio quaerentis reaches its peak in examining the most intense element of the inner life, namely the self-relation of the thinking subject, it will be shown that reflective thinking must proceed from pre-reflective reality, from memory (memoria). This reveals the so-called inner Trinity in its true order and sense: memory (memoria), intellect (intellectus), and will or love (voluntas, amor).[40] But in order to better understand the significance of the generation of logos or thought from memory and the difference between the generation of thought from memory and the proceeding of love from both memory and thought, Augustine proposes to continue the exploration through a discussion of the external Trinity in the Book XI. Why does he do so? He argues that any differentiation will be more apparent in the external life of the soul.[41] The external Trinity includes the corporeal element as the starting point (res, forma corporis), which is united through the soul’s intentionality (intentio animi, voluntas) with our sensibility (visio sensualis), and thus the act of seeing is produced.[42] Book XII then thematizes the relationship between the external and internal Trinity, and thus the relationship and distinction between science (temporal knowledge) and wisdom (knowledge directed toward eternity) is made clear. But this distinction can only be bridged through faith in Jesus Christ, in whom time and eternity are both united and distinguished. Therefore, Book XIII is a return to the first four books of De Trinitate, which contain the exposition of the scriptural and Christological revelation of the Trinity. On this occasion, in addition to the inner and external Trinity, the Trinity of religious faith is also explored phenomenologically.

As we can see, Augustine proceeds from the Trinity of the inner man to the Trinity of the outer man, and then back again to the Trinity of the inner man contextualized by scientia Christi, that is: the Trinity of faithful religious life. Although not an ultimate step of the whole De Trinitate, this contextualization is crucial. Since the Incarnation, scientia nostra Christus est.[43] Only this tacit but affective knowledge of the cross, mediated and shared within the Church, discerns and initiates the true love in us. It is only in light of this Christological and ecclesial contextualization of the inner Trinity that Augustine can proceed in Book XIV of De Trinitate to the most difficult task of all: the search for a wisdom of the eternal that integrates the science of the temporal so that this integration makes evident how unity and plurality, eternity and time, are united both in the Trinity itself and in our soul with its temporal relational patterns. Augustine seeks the proper imago Trinitatis in us, returning to the inner Trinity, but addressing the question of its self-generation or self-creation.

At the moment of his highest speculative striving, he describes the difference between the temporalium rerum scientia, and the self-generating self-knowledge of the soul. He shows that the self-knowledge of the soul does not actually have to involve the reflexive dualism of the inner and the external mediated by the adventitious travel of the subject into the world. The self-generating self-knowledge of the soul cannot be compared to standing in front of a mirror. “The mind is not adventitious (adventicia) to itself, as though to the mind which already was came (venerit) from somewhere else the same mind which was not yet.”[44] The simplicity of the mind is eschatological, there is no dialectical doubling or dualism between the mind which already was and the mind which should “advent” to itself. The very Advent of the mind to itself is not adventitious. “It never stopped remembering itself, understanding itself, loving itself.”[45] As Augustine observers, this is especially true in the case of the minds of children. Does the child know itself?[46] Yes, but it does not think of itself reflexively, because it is preoccupied with the desire and thirst for light, for all the new sensible and temporal realities of the external world. It cannot turn back to itself reflexively because it rests in the gift of its being and moves through the wonders of all being, so it is not wedged into the relational dialectic of the inner and outer, rest and motion. But to never fall into this dialectic, or to be rescued from this dialectic after we have fallen, we must follow Christ, who makes present in the dialogical community of the Church the reality of sonship and Trinitarian childhood, real relations, and peace that are resistant to diabolical perversion of self-contradictory structures like the potency that gives birth to itself in order to be.

This distinction is crucial to our understanding of the relationship between Trinitarian eternity and Trinitarian time. Both eternity and time are certainly characterized by processual self-generation or self-creation. However, Trinitarian eternity and time do not take their origin from dialectical self-relation, but from the relational processes that generously binds and distinguishes the persons of the Trinity and the acts of the human soul, i.e., the paradoxical self-generation “from-the-other” and “towards-the-other”. The exploration of the external Trinity and of the Trinity of religious faith was so crucial for Augustine because it made these Trinitarian distinctions clearly visible. Just as the eternal Father is not the Father of himself but of the eternal Son, and the eternal Son is not the Son of himself but of the eternal Father, so the self-creating and self-generating distentio animi in time is not reducible either to absolute irrational paternal authority and power or to absolute filial rationality, but consists in the reciprocal interpenetration of memory in thought and thought in memory. At the same time, this reciprocal interpenetration itself is shown to be of the nature of relational exchange of gifts, self-giving, or the love of the Holy Spirit. What does this Augustinian gratuitous interweaving mean? Just as the momentary, timely call of love at first sight must be a gift relating to eternity (ecce Agnus Dei!), the eternal Trinitarian relations are fully in the act of mutual surprise, consisting in an unexpected timing of eternal love. It is perhaps the most surprising similarity: to be surprised by eternity in time or to be surprised by time in eternity.[47]

This is the real metaphysical and theological reason why Augustine emphasizes the importance of time for knowing the mysteries of Trinity: “The distinction is easier to observe where something crops up in time (quod tempore accedit) and where parent precedes offspring by an interval of time (ubi parens prolem spatio temporis antecedit).”[48] The non-being in the mode of differentiation that characterizes time (as we have already seen in Confessions) proves to be, in a Christological light, an opportunity to recognize the inseparable gift that the Father and the Son bestow on each other, and thus also the gift by which the inseparable unity of the human soul is formed on its way towards the eternal life.

Time as a gift for us to distinguish with love

This result of a brief analysis of Augustin’s De Trinitate shows that we can never follow the author’s explorations of time if, like most twentieth-century continental philosophers, we emphasize only the self-reflexive nature of consciousness or only the historicity of our complicated existential journey in time without considering the Trinitarian patterns of Augustine’s thought. The processual distentio animi involving retention, attention, and anticipation is not a wholly immanent movement of self-consciousness, but rather a self-creative process imitating how the persons of the Trinity mutually confer their being upon each other as relations-entirely-in-act. Here, time is a gift for us to distinguish in love so that the Trinitarian patterns of our lives, knowledge, and desire may become real by sharing in the eternal loving bond of the Trinity. The analogy between the processual self-generation of temporal subjectivity and the self-generation of the Holy Trinity needs to be contrasted with a conception of being understood as a pure eidetic relationality of power generating itself which is most like the Trinity but precisely for that reason most problematic. Rather, this analogy should be seen in a Christological light as analogous to Christ’s both temporal and eternal Trinitarian self-giving, as Klaus Hemmerle states when he argues that no truth is more temporal than religious truth.

Thus, speaking of Trinitarian temporality is not in opposition to traditional orthodoxy, which emphasizes the distinction between time in creation and the eternal life of the Trinity, but it is in direct opposition to the philosophical absorption of orthodoxy into systems of absolute logic based on the eternal self-relation of mere thought, which is supposed to be conceptually superior to creation and the Creator. Trinitarian temporality refuses to interpret the differentiation between time and eternity as a necessity of dialectical unfolding, but at the same time it does not deny it but reveals it as a differentiation in love. Trinitarian temporality is still distinct from eternity. The only thing that is new here is that this difference is neither non-thematic nor completely autonomous but is made real by Christ’s self-giving. It is neither non-Trinitarian nor anti-Trinitarian, but simply Trinitarian.

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———. Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology. Translated by Stephen Churchyard. 1st ed. New York: Angelico Press, 2020.

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[1] This publication was funded by the project “Trinitarian Ontologies: A New Philosophical Investigation into Trinitarian Relationality” (JG_2024_002) implemented within the Palacký University Young Researcher Grant.

[2] The priority of time means that time is more fundamental than space. In the context of his attempt to ground the sciences conceptually (in a sense resistant to any psychologism), Bernardo Bolzano (1781–1848) formulated the priority of the concept of time over the concept of space. “Mir nun däucht, dass der Begriff der Zeit einfacher sei als der des Raumes, so zwar, dass dieser jenen in der That schon als einen Bestandtheil enthalte; und dass wir somit die Eigenschaften des Raumes, wenn wir sie ableiten wollen aus ihrem objectiven Grunde, aus jenen der Zeit herleiten müssen; woraus sich denn von selbst ergeben würde, dass man die Lehre von der Zeit bei einer streng wissenschaftlichen Abhandlung jener vom Räume vorauszuschicken habe.“ Bernardo Bolzano, Versuch einer objectiven Begründung der Lehre von den drei Dimensionen des Raumes (Prag: Kronberger & Řiwnač, 1843). This conception of the priority of time over space influenced later phenomenological and analytic philosophical traditions in that it linked time to the principle of non-contradiction, so that any phenomenon or state of affairs to which a subject directs its intention or which it names can be real in an objective sense only if it is so and so, and not at the same time the opposite. At any given moment, the tree either blooms or does not bloom. The problem with this account of the priority of time over space is the simultaneous privileging of the logical over the real, so that time here is time only as a conceptual, “spatialised” rule, a “Bestimmung,” and not an event or story that would include its relational origin, actuality, and final meaning along with reality in the sense of the givenness of objective logical determinations in time. On Bolzano’s role in the emergence of a “third realm” of logical truth beyond the psyche and the thing itself, cf. Catherine Pickstock, Aspects of Truth: A New Religious Metaphysics (Cambridge – New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 92. Too much anti-psychologism makes us blind to the dynamics that transforms the givenness of objective determinations into a mode of self-expression of the psyche in interaction and communication with other spiritual realities of the intelligible world. Although not a philosophical text, Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2013) speaks of the priority of time over space in precisely this sense, going beyond the limits of the continental or analytic philosophical tradition. Cf. §222 of Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel (Evangelii Gaudium), 1st ed. (New York: Image, 2014).

[3] “Il termine religio non deriva, secondo un’etimologia tanto insipida quanto inesatta, da religare (ciò che lega e unisce l’umano e il divino), ma da relegere, che indica l’atteggiamento di scrupolo e di attenzione cui devono improntarsi i rapporti con gli dèi, l’inquieta esitazione (il “rileggere”) davanti alle forme – e alle formule – da osservare per rispettare la separazione fra il sacro e il profano.” Giorgio Agamben, Profanazioni (Roma: Nottetempo, 2005), 85. From Agamben’s position, this critique is understandable, but the question is whether every distancing “relegere” presupposes a connecting “religare”, and vice versa.

[4] Thus, I do not agree with the understanding of the phenomenon of religion as a particular form of sacred existence in contrast to profane existence. Cf. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, 1987), 14. The phenomenon of religion is more fundamental than this distinction.

[5] Klaus Hemmerle, ‘Die Wahrheit Jesu’, in Unterwegs mit dem dreieinigen Gott: Beiträge zur Religionsphilosophie und Fundamentaltheologie, ed. Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, Klaus Kienzler, and Richard Lorenz, 1st ed., Ausgewählte Schriften 2 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag, 1996), 183.

[6] Hemmerle, 184.

[7] Hemmerle, 184.

[8] In connection with the Sabbath, Heschel speaks of the discovery of the priority of time over space. Cf. Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man (New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1978). Most recently cf. Ottilia Lukács, Sabbath in the Making: A Study of the Inner-Biblical Interpretation of the Sabbath Commandment (Leuven: Peeters, 2020).

[9] Could the relationship of Old Testament to New Testament revelation be understood within a Trinitarian ontology in a non-supersessionist way? Sang Hoon Lee offers a certain way to this end in his interpretation of Jenson’s Trinitarian ontology. In the Holy Spirit, the second person of the Trinity is simultaneous to everything past and future. “By the Spirit, the Son Jesus is one with the old Israel in the Old Testament period, as the Spirit achieves the oneness between the Word of God and their (prophetic and inspired) words; by the Spirit, in the New Testament period, the two subsequent Israelites communities, the Jewish community and the gentile Christian community, are sustained in parallel, and in the final eschaton, the two will be one.” Sang Hoon Lee, Trinitarian Ontology and Israel in Robert W. Jenson’s Theology (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2016), 172. And because prophecy and inspiration are eventful in nature, it is clear that it is the Old Testament priority of time that corresponds to the New Testament priority of Easter time, and this connection is what takes place in history as it moves toward its apocalyptic end.

[10] Hemmerle, ‘Die Wahrheit Jesu’, 197–98.

[11] Klaus Hemmerle, Theses Towards a Trinitarian Ontology, trans. Stephen Churchyard, 1st ed. (New York: Angelico Press, 2020).

[12] “For an ontology which starts from what is distinctively Christian, the basic question cannot any longer be what endures, and what changes. As little as this question can be permitted to drop away, it can just as little be the unquestioned starting-point. For whoever thinks starting out only from what remains, begins his thinking from a lonely starting-point, from enduring to the last, from self-intentionality. The revolutionizing force of the unadorned expression that love alone remains can hardly be overestimated.” Hemmerle, 35.

[13] Klaus Hemmerle, ‘Trinität und Zeit’, in Unterwegs mit dem dreieinigen Gott: Beiträge zur Religionsphilosophie und Fundamentaltheologie, ed. Heinz-Jürgen Görtz, Klaus Kienzler, and Richard Lorenz, 1st ed., Ausgewählte Schriften 2 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Verlag, 1996), 280–94.

[14] Hemmerle, 283.

[15] Hemmerle, 285.

[16] Hemmerle, 287–289.

[17] Hemmerle, 289–290.

[18] Hemmerle, 292.

[19] Cf. Pickstock, Aspects of Truth: A New Religious Metaphysics, 232.

[20] The term kairos was appropriated for Trinitarian ontology by Piero Coda in Piero Coda et al., Manifesto: per una riforma del pensare (Rome: Città nuova, 2021).

[21] Cf. Acts 1,1-8.

[22] Hemmerle, Theses (Trans. Churchyard), 33.

[23] Edmund Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins: Mit den Texten aus der Erstausgabe und dem Nachlass, Philosophische Bibliothek, Band 649 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2013), 3.

[24] Conf. XI, 14, 17.

[25] Conf. XI, 15, 18. Augustine’s Confessions are quoted according to the translation Augustine, Confessions, trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2019).

[26] Conf. XI, 20, 26.

[27] Conf. XI, 26, 33.

[28] Cf. Conf. XI, 14, 17.

[29] This Augustinian influence is then manifested in the analysis of being (Dasein) in Sein und Zeit (1927). Cf. Ryan Coyne, Heidegger’s Confessions: The Remains of Saint Augustine in ‘Being and Time’ and Beyond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 63–64.

[30] Martin Heidegger, ‘Augustinus und der Neoplatonismus’, in Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens, by Martin Heidegger (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995), 298–299.

[31] Cf. René Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes. Vol. III: Correspondance – Janvier 1640-Juin 1643 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1956), 247.

[32] Of course, a number of scholarly works have appeared in recent decades that have contributed to a more thorough interpretation of Augustine’s Trinitarian thought. Cf. in particular Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Phillip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The Legacy of a Christian Platonist (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Lenka Karfíková, Anamnesis: Augustin mezi Platonem a Plotinem, 1st ed. (Praha: Vyšehrad, 2015); Rowan Williams, On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016); Roland Kany, Augustins Trinitätsdenken: Bilanz, Kritik und Weiterführung der modernen Forschung zu ‘De Trinitate’, Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity 22 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007).

[33] John Milbank, ‘The Confession of Time in Augustine’, Maynooth Philosophical Papers 10 (2020): 55.

[34] De Trin. I, 1, 1. Unless explicitly noted otherwise Augustine’s De Trinitate is quoted according to the translation Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 2015).

[35] De Trin. I, 1, 1. My translation with consultation of the translations of Augustine, On the Trinity: De Trinitate Libri XV, trans. Arthur West Haddan (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887); Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 2015).

[36] De Trin. V, 4, 5.

[37] De Trin. VIII, 1, 1.

[38] De Trin. VIII, 8, 12; VIII, 10, 14.

[39] De Trin. IX, 4, 4: “Ipsa igitur mens et amor et notitia eius tria quaedam sunt, et haec tria unum sunt, et cum perfecta sunt, aequalia sunt.”

[40] De Trin. X, 11, 18: “Haec igitur tria, memoria, intellegentia, voluntas, quoniam non sunt tres vitae, sed una vita; nec tres mentes, sed una mens, consequenter utique nec tres substantiae sunt, sed una substantia.”

[41] De Trin. X, 12, 19.

[42] De Trin. XI, 2, 3.

[43] De Trin. XII, 19, 24.

[44] De Trin. XIV, 10, 13.

[45] De Trin. XIV, 10, 13.

[46] De Trin. XIV, 5, 7.

[47] Children often wish that the spontaneous moment just experienced in the safe and loving presence of their parents would last forever. In De Trin. XIII, 8, 11 and De Trin. XIII, 8 ,12, Augustine reveals the logic of this desire and its Trinitarian fulfilment by the incarnation of the Son of God. Those who are already blissful (and children are, in a sense, already blissful) can no longer want to not to be blissful. So they do not want to perish. Immortales ergo esse volunt. Without the incarnation, this desire would be only illusory. “But if the faith possessed by those to whom Jesus gave the right to become sons of God (John 1,12) is to hand, then there is no question at all.”

[48] De Trin. XIV, 7, 10.

Jozef Jančovič,
Comenius University Bratislava

Abstract: The Sabbath Commandment is the most extensive and elaborated injunction of the Decalogue. In modern times critical research has dedicated much attention to the differences between the two text-versions (Exod 20:8-11 and Deut 5:12-15). Scholars have frequently interpreted these differences within the framework of historical-critical or literary-critical hypotheses. This paper aims to highlight the corresponding elements in the two texts, especially in the overall structural rationality of the Sabbath-Proclamation, in its texture and concentric shape. The meaning or semantics of such concentric arrangement is explored. Because of the considerable degree of agreement on various levels, which is demonstrated in the intertextual ties as well as in the correspondence in detail, the two texts are understood to be two variant elaborations of a literary, textually-defined entity. Therefore, the Decalogue should be reconsidered as the result of two partially independent literary traditions.

Key words: Decalogue; version; Sabbath Commandment; differences; concentric; semantics.

https://doi.org/10.63154/CETR2024.1-4

Introduction

The seminal legislative Old Testament text in tradition and theology is undoubtedly the Decalogue.[1] It is the main pillar of the Sinai covenant in Exod 19–24. The prominence of the Law and especially of the Ten Commandments is demonstrated by the consistent judging of Israel on the basis of its adherence to the Law. David Noel Freedman has argued that the story told from Exodus through 2 Kings tries to demonstrate that Israel violated the covenant by breaking each of the Ten Commandments.[2] Lists of commandments that overlap partially with the Decalogue are found in Lev 19:1-18 and Deut 27:15-26. Reworkings are found in the prophetic writings (Amos, Hosea, and Jeremiah) and in the Psalms (e.g., Psalms 50 and 81). The Lord´s speech sounding from Sinai is identified three times in Scripture as the “ten words” in Exod 34:28 (LXX deka logoi); Deut 4:13; and in Deut 10:4 (dekalogoi).[3] In addition the Decalogue is usually considered in Old Testament studies to be a paradigmatic example of the doublet.[4] It is a well-known fact that the literarily most developed and thematically most important differences are to be found in the Sabbath Commandment. The two different versions of the Sabbath Commandment have been intensely studied in the past. In modern times the hypotheses were usually raised in the paradigm of literary history or the history of traditions (Literaturgeschichte, Traditionsgeschichte).[5] This is documented in several surveys of the history of the Decalogue-research published in recent decades.[6]

I would like to examine the shape of the texture and concentric structure in the two versions, paying special attention to the formal features of the composition in each case.[7] As Helmut Utzschneider and Stefan A. Nitsche already stated, in the case of the Decalogue we are faced with two variations of a stabilized text shape, not with two different formations generated by developing tradition.[8] The extent of similarities and literal agreements between the two versions extends so far and the character of the variations in the given literal context is so fitting, that using the text as a starting point is justified. Questions like when and where these variant texts originated will not be handled in the context of this article.

1. Similarities and Differences of the Two Versions (Exod 20:8-11 and Deut 5:12-16)[9]

It is quite peculiar that a text as important as the Decalogue figures twice in the Torah in markedly different versions. It is a well-known fact that the most important literary and thematic differences between the two Decalogues are to be found in the Sabbath Commandment. The key differences of the two versions of Sabbath Commandment are well-known:[10]

1) The first word of the proclamation is already a difference: the qal infinitive absolute: זָכוֹר (remember! Exod 20:8) compared to שָׁמוֹר (observe! Deut 5:12a).

2) Deut supplements the main clause with a retrospective argument (v. 12b:כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ as the LORD your God has commanded you). The same subordinate clause appears also in the following commandment (‎כַּבֵּד אֶת־אָבִיךָ וְאֶת־אִמֶּךָ כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you… Deut 5:16).

3) The list of those addressed in the Deuteronomy-version contains two additional members in the appositional chain (וּבִנְךָ־וּבִתֶּךָ וְעַבְדְּךָ־וַאֲמָתֶךָ וְשׁוֹרְךָ וַחֲמֹרְךָ… you and your son and your daughter, your male or female slave, and your ox and your donkey… v. 14d).[11]

4) Finally, the best known variation is the different rationale – the so-called creational and the social-ethical – for the Sabbath. The first in Exod 20:11 is based on the creation of the cosmos described in Gen 1:1-2:3, while the second in Deut 5:15 is based on the redemption of Israel narrated in Exod 13:17–14:31:

1. a) The book of Exodus, relying on the priestly tradition, utilizes the contrasting creational motif of the “six days’ labor” and “the rest on the seventh day”; the argument makes an explicit reference to Gen 1, where the priestly tradition tells how the whole of creation was made in the same rhythm.[12] The Lord himself created the whole cosmos in six days and rested on the seventh day; therefore you should also rest on the seventh day and keep it holy.
2. b) By contrast, in Deuteronomy the argument follows the motif of “the servant” (עֶבֶד; v. 14c.f) and rationalizes the Sabbath Commandment as a memory of the Passover and the liberation from the Egyptian slavery. Your servant must rest with you on the Sabbath because you were also “a slave” (עֶבֶד) but now you (and your house) are free and redeemed for the Lord.

Apart from these four differences and variations there are some smaller and less important ones (a waw in the phrase you … AND your slave (Deut 5:14c); the word כָּל־ (all) in the phrase   …and ANY of your animals (Deut 5:14d); the Exod-version doubles the predicate in the last clause: therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day AND MADE IT HOLY (וַיְקַדְּשֵׁהוּ v. 11c-d).[13]

So far, biblical scholarship has paid much attention to these differences and variations and the critical study of the doublet-question of the Sabbath Commandment is usually based exclusively on the analysis of these differences. Curiously, the reverse perspective, the extent and character of the similarities and literary correspondences, has received far less attention. Nevertheless, the corresponding elements are prevalent – in both versions they represent more than 50% of the word units. Moreover, the literary congruence of the two versions lies not in the quantity of identical words but rather in the same construction of these literary units and their particular sequences.

The text of the Sabbath Commandment can be divided into five sequences, with the five respective sequences of each version versions corresponding in content, form and function.

The first sequence is the introductory clause (Exod 20:8; Deut 5:12a-b), which has the same syntactic structure in both versions. The semantic difference זָכוֹר ~ שָׁמוֹר (remember ~ observe) is an opening word (Stichwort) variation without any influence on the syntactic construction. The infinitive-absolute-form of the verb, governing the motif-word in the position of a direct object אֶת־יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת (the Shabbat day) and the adverbial construction לְקַדְּשׁוֹ (to keep it holy) build the core of both sentences and represent a strong correspondence of the two versions. Actually, this formulation does not introduce the Sabbath Commandment as a new institution or new commandment, but rather presents a parenetic exhortation. Israelites have to remember or to keep the Sabbath. This does not seem to be the core sentence of the Sabbath Commandment, which should formally correspond with other statements of the Decalogue.

The second sequence is a pragmatic definition of the Sabbath (Exod 20:9a.b-10a; Deut 5:13a.b-14a) using the contrast between six days of labor and the seventh day (which is the Sabbath for the LORD your God). Both versions of this part of the commandment are identical verbatim.

The third sequence contains the core utterance of the Sabbath Commandment (Exod 20:10b-e; Deut 5:14b-f). Here, the main clause takes the form of an apodictic law sentence (negative particle לֹא + yiqtol-form of the verb + direct object in the accusative); this clause expresses the pivotal demand of the whole utterance (cf. Lev 32:3.30.31; Jer 17:24). In both versions the basis of the main clause is identical. In addition, the Deuteronomy-version contains in vv. 14-15 a subordinate clause expressing the intention of this demand (you shall not do any work, neither you … neither your male or female servant … so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do). Moreover, the motif-word (“the servant”) also represents a link with the following sequence. Deut 5:14-15 adds an expression of purpose to the main command using the usual clause type with conjunction לְמַעַן (“so that…”) + yiqtol-form of the verb + subject. This sentence has no parallel in the Exodus-version of the Decalogue (but see Exod 23:12).

The fourth sequence (Exod 20:11a-b; Deut 5:15a-c) is the only substantially different part of the text. It serves as a development of the preceding core commandment. Due to the different connections with their preceding contexts the variants have different functions: in Exod 20:11 the whole sequence serves as a direct argumentative substantiation of the core commandment; quite differently Deut 5:15a relates the main verb וְזָכַרְתָּ (literally: and you shall remember) back to the main clause (v. 14b) as a continuation or a development of the core commandment – that means, remembering the deliverance from the Egyptian slavery belongs to the content of the Sabbath, not to its substantiation; cf. זָכוֹר in Exod 20:8.

The fifth sequence (Exod 20:11c-d; Deut 5:15d) at the end of the commandment expresses a retrospective explanation (cf. the strong conjunction עַל־כֵּן [therefore]). The two versions are partially different on the semantic as well as the syntactic level. Nevertheless, they also contain several corresponding elements (conj. עַל־כֵּן, the clause-type qatal-X with the name of the LORD as the subject of the main verb and the motif-word “the day of Sabbath” as its direct object). Both versions manifest some similarities in the outline of the literary unit. Both versions can be divided into five sequences; their order and their functions are comparable, in several parts even identical. Actually, only one of these five sequences (the fourth one) contains a major alteration.

2. The Concentric Structure of the Sabbath Commandment and its Particular Shape

Both versions exhibit some features of a concentric framework. A concentric or palistrophic arrangement of a text or composition – sometimes simply termed a “chiasmus” – uses some elements (words, phrases, motifs, sequences or some formal features) in such a way that the textual unit forms a concentric network. Multiple layers of parallel items build up a structured frame around the centre of the utterance, which becomes stylistically emphasized by it.[14] Such an arrangement is often used in the Bible and can be found in smaller textual units, e.g. Gen 1;[15] Gen 2:4–3:25;[16] Gen 6:9–9:29;[17] Gen 17;[18] Deut 5:28 – 6:3;[19] Ruth 1:16-17, 19-22[20] as well as in larger compositions, e.g. Gen 18–19;[21] the whole Abraham-cycle Gen 11:27 – 25:11;[22] 2 Chron 1:1 – 9:28;[23] Isa 10:24–12:6.[24]

The chiastic form can be used as an effective stylistic tool or as part of the compositional strategy in poetry or in narratives. Broadly speaking, according to Watson, the general function of the chiasmus is to break the monotony of persistent direct parallelism.  More specially, chiastic patterns fall into two main classes: structural and expressive. Structural chiastic patterns contribute to the overall form of a poem or prose, often providing a key to the writer’s plan. Structural functions of chiasmus are: (a) – to open a stanza or poem; (b) – to close a stanza or poem; (c) – to link components of a poem; (d) – to indicate the midpoint of a poem. “Expressive chiasmus” (or pragmatic chiasmus) is a rather vague term adopted to cover what is in effect non-structural chiasmus, where the device is used to achieve a certain effect or to heighten an effect already present in the meaning of the words. Expressive functions of chiasmus are to express: (a) – merismus; (b) – reversal of existing state; (c) – emphatic negation or prohibition; (d) – strong contrast or antithesis; (e) – other functions.[25]

2.1 The Concentric Structure of the Exodus-Version and Its Semantics

As far as the Sabbath Commandment is concerned, the palistrophic or concentric composition is quite obvious in the Exodus-version.[26] We offer in the table above the English text of the two versions of the Sabbath Commandment, highlighting the different parts of the commands already described above (section 1).

In the Exodus version of the first and last sequences (v. 8+11c-d; marked as C+C´), the phrase אֶת־יוֹם הַשַׁבָּת (the Sabbath-day) and the piel verb קִדֵּשׁ (to make / to keep holy) represent the outer thematic frame of the composition (an inclusio formed by the motif-words). In simple terms, the first and the last sentence state what the commandment is about: to make the Sabbath holy.

Both the second and the fourth sequences (v. 9a-10a+11a-b; marked as B+B´) use the antithetical polarity of “the six days” in contrast to the “seventh day” (verbatim in both sequences  יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי~ שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים [seventh day ~ the six days]). In addition, the verbs used in these sequences also show some correlation. “To make” (עשׂה) is used in a similar sense in the first sentence of both parts. The motif-words of the second sentences are not identical, but both of them – the noun שַׁבָּת (Sabbath) in v. 10a and the verb  נוח (to rest) in v. 11b –  belong here to the same semantic group; both are also related to the same subject, namely to the name of the LORD. In addition, the sequence B´ (v. 11a-b) contains the inner chiasmus that is evident not only between “the six days” and “seventh day” (שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים ~ יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי) but also between the two verbs, which have the LORD as their subject: “he made” and “he rested” (עָשָׂה ~ וַיָּנַח).

The third sequence – a single, unparalleled sentence (v. 10b-e; marked as A) – forms the center of the concentric or palistrophic composition. Because of this core position and because of the standard shape of the apodictic law formula, this utterance may be considered the core statement of the Sabbath Commandment as a whole (cf. Lev 23:3; Jer 17:24). This means, consequently, that the often-discussed problem of the positive formulation of the Sabbath Commandment[27] is dissolved; if the main sentence of this commandment is not the first, but the central clause, it corresponds perfectly by its positive formulation with the other commandments of the Decalogue. In sum: the concentric or palistrophic arrangement of the Exodus-version can be presented as a regular concentric structure, marked as a C–B–A–B´–C´ hierarchy. The version contains a rhetorical device, a large-scale chiasmus of five strophes (20:8/20:9a-10a/20:10b-e/20:11a-b/20:11c-d). The central utterance is: לֹא תַעֲשֶׂה כָל־מְלָאכָה (you shall not do any work; v. 10b). The central part (A) contains the chief thesis (a single, unparalleled sentence). The central strophe may be chiastic. In other words, the structural function of the large-scale chiasmus (built of 5 strophes) in the Exodus version is to indicate the midpoint of an utterance about the Sabbath day. The midpoint is the chief thesis of the commandment or its climax. The other parts of the chiasmus only emphasize the prohibition of the work on the Sabbath day. The parts B+B´ express the definition of the Sabbath-day and the reason why it should be kept. These two parts (B+B´) represent the inner frame, while the parts C+C´ form the outer frame.  Part C introduces the topic of “keeping holy … the Sabbath-day” and the parallel part C´ closes the text unit with the same words. Moreover, in parts C+B (and A), focus is on the person addressed (“you”); in the last two parts (B´+C´) the Lord himself is in focus as their subject.

2.2 The Concentric Structure of the Deuteronomy-version and its Semantics  

The Deuteronomy-version can be described in a similar way.[28] The palistrophic features of its composition are not so obvious, however, especially in the inner frame (B+B´). The outer frame (C+C´), which has the function of introducing and concluding the subject matter, is also focused on the chief motif-word אֶת־יוֹם הַשַׁבָּת (the day of Sabbath). Moreover, in both places this phrase is connected with an infinitive construction expressing the intention (לְקַדְּשׁוֹ to make it holy, v. 12a / לַעֲשׂוֹת to observe it, v. 15d). In addition, a typically deuteronomic phrase כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוְּךָ יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ (as the LORD your God has commanded you; vv. 12b, 15d) is used, which serves as a retrospective argument and explanation of the command.[29] This means that in these sequences the palistrophic correspondence and concentric structure are even stronger than in the Exodus-version.  The inner frame is constructed quite differently in both its parts (B+B’). Nevertheless, even here some phrasal and thematic correspondences can be found. The first is in the relationship between the instructionתַּעֲבֹד  (you shall labor; v. 13a) and the argument  עֶבֶד הָיִיתָ  ([remember that] you were a slave; v. 15b). More apparent is the double occurrence of the typical divine title in the book of Deuteronomyיְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ  (the LORD your God), which is used not only in this inner frame but also in the outer, thereby connecting the authority behind the given command (vv. 12d+15d), and bracketing the liberation act of exodus (v. 15c) and the relational content of the Sabbath יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי שַׁבָּת לַיהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ  (the seventh day is a Sabbath for the LORD your God v. 14a). Another corresponding feature is the adversative logic of the argument; in both sequences a speaking contrast is expressed by the waw between the human and the divine domain: “six days you shall labor …, BUT the seventh day is a Sabbath for the LORD your God” (v. 13a-14a) and “you were a slave in Egypt, BUT the LORD your God brought you out of there” (v. 15b.c).

When it comes to the central sequence (v. 14b-f, part A) the same may be said as in the case of the Exodus-version. The only slight difference – the partially extended enumeration of the subjects addressed – does not alter anything in the palistrophic structure. However, it is worth considering this slight divergence. How should the difference between the two versions be understood? Why is it that the Deuteronomy version makes special mention of “your ox and your donkey” but the Exodus-version mentions only the general term וּבְהֶמְתֶּךָ (nor your animals). In analysing the formal features of the text we should look at the effects or interrelations this alteration could produce in the respective versions of the text. The difference concerns the part of the text which enumerates the subjects addressed by the commandment; not only “you” yourself, but all your house with every one of its members is involved (the whole of your bayit-community, i.e. people and the animals, the family members, the slaves, both male and female, and the sojourners). The appositional chain describes the whole of a household – in other words: the elementary unit of the community of Israel, which is subject to the Law. Actually, this is the only command of the Decalogue that points directly not only to the addressed person in the singular but also to the related community. All members of the appositional sequence are provided with the suffix “your.” Fascinatingly, in this sequence the words suffixed (i.e. marked) with the pronoun “your” occur just twelve times in Deuteronomy and seven times in Exodus. These numbers carry symbolic meaning in biblical ecclesiology. For the Deuteronomists “twelve” stands for the complete identity of Israel, the perfect community of her tribes, the whole of the covenant people. For the priestly writers, on the other hand, the number “seven” represents holy perfection, faultless holiness, the specific structure of the divine domain; in the most immediate context the Sabbath is identified as “the seventh day.” The significant numbers of pronomial suffixes in these contexts are remarkable, especially in light of the highly elaborated texture of the two Decalogue versions.

3. Two Concluding Notes

The primary purpose of this paper has been to underline the concentric arrangement of both versions of the Sabbath Commandment, which are the largest textual units in the Exodus and Deuteronomy Decalogues. The large-scale chiasmus of the two Sabbath Commandments is based on the pivot pattern, where the central clauses (Exod 20:10b-e and Deut 5:14b-f) are structurally and pragmatically fundamental. The greatest advantage of this approach is the double consequence of declaring the central sentence to be the core and basic utterance of the whole commandment: (a) there is no strong tension with other commandments in the Decalogue concerning the positive or negative formulations, because the main clause fits the genre. (b) The five sequences of the Sabbath Commandment form in both versions a well-functioning literary whole. The core of the utterance (the main clause of part A), the basic demand, is identical; given differences concern the accompanying arguments, the expression of purpose or retrospective hints. Simply put, the core is identical, while the differences concern the preaching or the rhetoric of the command, providing plausible embedding in the particular (priestly or deuteronomic) contexts.

Secondly, by evaluating the nature and character of the differences between the two versions of the Sabbath Commandment, as well as the similarities and the congruence between them, we arrive – with high probability – at two, at least partially independent, fruits of the course of tradition. Their congruence, as well as the character and nature of their differences, indicates that the two versions are quite similar and interdependent, both being richly textured literary elaborations of the Sabbath Commandment.[30]

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Watts, John D. W. Isaiah 1-33. Word Biblical Commentary 24. Dallas: Word, 1985.

Wenham, Gordon. Genesis 1-15. Word Biblical Commentary 1. Dallas: Word, 1987.

______________. Genesis 16-50. Word Biblical Commentary 2. Dallas: Word, 1994.

[1] The name Decalogue was first used by St. Clement of Alexandria. The naming is based on the translation of the Hebrew term into Greek in Exod 34:28. In Scripture the Decalogue is designated as testimony (Exod 31:18; 32:15; 34:29) and as covenant (Deut 4:13; 9:9); as law and commandments (Exod 24:12).

[2] David Noel Freedman, The Nine Commandments: Uncovering the Hidden Pattern of Crime and Punishment in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2000).

[3] Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 397.

[4] Several answers have been offered to the question about the original version of the Decalogue. Earlier scholars did not hesitate to place the origin of the Ur-Decalogue in the time of Moses, others in the time of the exile or in the post-exilic period, though its beginnings may go back to a Deuteronomistic author. Any exact date of the origin of the Decalogue, or of its later expansion into its current form, is difficult to verify. It is not necessary to incline to a late date of origin, however. (cf. Hugo Gressmann, Die älteste Geschichtsschreibung und Prophetie Israels [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1921], 237; Werner H. Schmidt, “Mose und der Dekalog,” in Eucharisterion [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923], 78-119; Samuel R. Driver, The Book of Exodus [Cambridge: University Press, 1953], 413-417; Georg Beer, Exodus, HAT 3 [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1939], 103-104; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, Der Dekalog: Seine späten Fassungen, die originale Komposition und seine Vorstufen OBO 45 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982], 281-284; William Johnstone, “The Decalogue and the redaction of the Sinai Pericope in Exodus,” ZAW 100 [1988]: 361-385).

[5] Cf. Otto Kaiser, Einleitung in das Alte Testament: eine Einführung in ihre Ergebnisse und Probleme  (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1984), 73: “Hauptprobleme der Dekalogforschung sind heute: 1. Die Frage nach seiner Zugehörigkeit zu einer der Pentateuchschichten; 2. das Problem der Rekonstruktion seiner Urform; 3. die Frage nach der Ursprünglichkeit seiner Komposition und 4. nach seinem Sitz im Leben.”

[6] Hossfeld, Der Dekalog, 33-56; Frank-Lothar Hossfeld, “Zum synoptischen Vergleich der Dekalogfassungen: Eine Fortführung des begonnenen Gesprächs”, In Vom Sinai zum Horeb edited by Frank-Lothar Hossfeld 73-117, (Würzburg: Echter 1989); short outline in the encyclopedias: Lothar Perlitt, “Dekalog: Altes Testament,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie VIII. (Berlin: de Gruyter 1981), 408-413  and Eckart Otto, “Art. Dekalog I., Altes Testament,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (4^th ed), ed. Hans D. Betz (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 626-627.

[7] Cf. the concentric shape of Decalogue in Deut 5 in Jozef Jančovič, “Logika Dekalógu: teologické aspekty jeho štruktúry v Dt 5,6-21,” in Legislatívne texty Biblie, ed. Pavol Farkaš (Bratislava-Nitra: Kňazský seminár sv. Gorazda, 2007), 58-62.

[8] Cf. Helmut Utzschneider and Stefan Ark Nitsche, Arbeitsbuch literaturwissenschaftliche Bibelauslegung. Eine Methodenlehre zur Exegese des Alten Testaments (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 2001), 237: “Der Dekalog liegt bekanntlich in zwei weitgehend wortgleichen, aber doch auch signifikant unterschiedlichen Fassungen vor (vgl. besonders das jeweilige »Sabbatgebot« …). Aus Vorgängen der mündlichen Textweitergabe ist Doppelüberlieferung kaum erklärbar. Sehr viel wahrscheinlicher ist, daß eine der beiden Fassungen bei der Abfassung der anderen schriftlich vorlag; dabei kann darüber »gestritten« werden, welcher der Fassungen die Priorität zukommt.”

[9] I follow the English text of the New International Version (NIV 2011) with slight modifications.

[10] The questions of the mutual relationship between the two versions, their particular origin and the specific intentions of the variations have been discussed since ancient times (see for example Midrash ShemR 47 or Ibn Ezra in his commentary on the book of Exodus). Already Pseudo-Philo had supplemented some of the Ten Commandments by clarifying the basis of each: all work on the Sabbath is condemned with the exception of praising and glorifying God in the assembly (quoted in Scott M. Langston, Exodus Through the Centuries, Blackwell Bible Commentaries [Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006], 187). The Decalogue functions in two different ways in early Judaism. It is incorporated into Jewish liturgies (e.g., in the DSS and the Nash Papyrus) and can also provide a legal framework for the details of Jewish law (e.g., in Philo of Alexandria’s essay On the Decalogue). Philo of Alexandria composed an entire essay entitled On the Decalogue. In it he explains each of the ten utterances or oracles in legal, moral, and philosophical terms. According to Philo, the ten utterances are actually ten heads or categories of law, under which all the details of the laws may be arranged. The fourth commandment according to the Jewish numbering is to keep holy the seventh day, the Sabbath. Philo claims that this is a day that should be devoted to philosophical contemplation and no work at all should be done on this day. Philo focuses on the reason that one keeps the Sabbath day: God observed it, so human beings must follow God in all things. For Philo the Sabbath day is of universal, not particular significance. Philo reminds his readers that the details are already implicit in the ten heads or categories (i.e., the Decalogue). The example he cites is Passover, which for him is already implied in the fourth commandment to observe the holy Sabbath day (Hindy Najman, “Decalogue,” in Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. Daniel Harlow and John Collins [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 526-528).

[11] The Hebrew word-pair שׁוֹרְךָ וַחֲמֹרְךָ – your ox and your donkey is typical for legislative texts (Exod 21:33; 22:3, 8; 23:4, 12; Deut 5:21; 22:4, 10) and is used also in Isa 1:3; 32:20; Job 1:14; 24:3. Here in Deut 5:14d this typical word-pair completes the number of two previous word-pairs (your son and your daughter, your male or female slave) in the appositional chain to three just like in Deut 5:21 (You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey…).

[12] Peter Dubovský (ed.), Genezis, Komentáre k Starému zákonu 1 (Trnava: Dobrá kniha, 2008), 84-86.

[13] This last clause is a clear paraphrase or rewording of Gen 2:3 (וַיְבָרֶךְ אֱלֹהִים אֶת־יוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי וַיְקַדֵּשׁ אֹתוֹ then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy).

[14] Cf. Miroslav Hosťovecký, Biblická a semitská rétorická analýza. Teoretický a praktický úvod do metódy rétorickej analýzy pre študentov teológie (Bratislava: RKCMBF UK v BA, 2022).

[15] Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis 1-11 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961), 42-45.

[16] Jozef Jančovič in Peter Dubovský (ed.), Genezis, Komentáre k Starému zákonu 1 (Trnava: Dobrá kniha, 2008), 170-171.

[17] Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Dallas: Word, 1987), 156-158.

[18] Gordon Wenham, Genesis 16-50, Word Biblical Commentary 2 (Dallas: Word, 1998), 17.

[19] Norbert Lohfink, Das Hauptgebot. Eine Untersuchung literarischer Einleitungsfragen zu Dtn 5-11, Analecta Biblica 20 (Roma: PIB, 1963), 67-68.

[20] Frederick W. Bush, Ruth, Esther, Word Biblical Commentary 9 (Dallas: Word, 1996), 73-77.90.

[21] Wenham, Genesis 16-50, 41.

[22] Martin Kessler and Karel A. Deurloo, A Commentary on Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Paulist Press: New York, 2004), 88-90.

[23] Raymond B. Dillard, 2 Chronicles, Word Biblical Commentary 15 (Dallas: Word, 1987), 5-7.

[24] John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, Word Biblical Commentary 24 (Dallas: Word 1985), 154-156.

[25] Cf. Wilfred G. E. Watson, “Chiastic Patterns in Biblical Hebrew Poetry” (July 5, 2023 file:///C:/Users/rober/Downloads/Chiastic%20Patterns%20in%20Biblical%20Hebrew%20Poetry).

[26]  Cf. Hossfeld, Der Dekalog, 39.

[27] Albert Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel I (München: Beck, 1953), 317-320; Werner H. Schmidt, “Mose und der Dekalog”, in Eucharisterion: Festschrift Hermann Gunkel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1923), 78-119, 27.

[28] Cf. Hossfeld, Der Dekalog, 38.

[29] Lectura continua of the book of Deuteronomy after the book of Exodus makes it possible for us to see this phrase as a clear development of the Sabbath command as found in the Exodus version.

[30] Also Lothar Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament, Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 36 (Neukirchen:  Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1969), 90-96 and Hossfeld, Der Dekalog, 57 uniformly claim that the literary formation of the Decalogue originated in the deuteronomic workshop.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ausra Vasiliauskaite (sr. Gabriele OSB)
Vytautas Magnus University

Abstract: The Sabbath in Benedictine monasticism is the summit or pinnacle of liturgical life, where the presence of the Risen Christ, which sanctifies time, is made manifest to the person’s soul. In this Presence and communion the monk becomes an architect of time in the world. The goal of this article is to demonstrate that the concept of the Sabbath as sanctified time is a vital element of Benedictine monastic life according to the Rule of St. Benedict. The present paper reveals the fullness of the liturgical Sabbath celebration in the Rule of St. Benedict without touching on the central liturgical event, which is the Eucharist. The celebration of the Sabbath unfolds during the Sunday liturgy, beginning with evening vigil on Saturday and ending with night prayers on Sunday. A monk’s activity on the day of the Sabbath, i.e. day of the Lord’s resurrection, is to live in the Lord’s presence during this holy time and thereby to fill and sanctify space and the work of the upcoming week.

Keywords: Sabbath, Ordinary Benedictine Life, Rule of St. Benedict.

https://doi.org/10.63154/CETR2024.1-5

Introduction

The Sabbath is a broadly examined topic. Biblical scholars discuss the Sabbath as a heritage of the Israelite nation with its full liturgy, attending not only to its beauty, but also to its meaning. The most detailed book on the subject is Sabbath in the Making: A Study of the Inner – Biblical Interpretation of the Sabbath by Ottilia Lukács.^[1] Many authors write about Sabbath as a day of rest, because the Lord himself rested at the end of the process of creation.^[2] Others attribute a deeper meaning to the Sabbath, emphasizing that the Sabbath is not an ordinary day, but one that can never be contained in time.^[3] Researchers of monasticism write about the day of the Lord, i.e. Sunday, being an extraordinary day, but often fail to establish a clear connection with the Sabbath as it is celebrated in Jewish culture.^[4] The deep liturgical meaning is fully revealed in the Rule of St. Benedict, henceforth referred to as RB[5]. After researching various ways of liturgical worship set down by St. Benedict, it is important to examine, at least partially, the rich and varied forms of Jewish liturgical worship unique to the Sabbath day. Nonetheless, the goal of this article is not to offer an extended scholarly study of the Jewish Sabbath liturgy, but to reveal the importance of celebrating Sundays as the Sabbath for Christians. The article, then, is an invitation to think of Sundays as the Sabbath and to reflect on the importance of time and the quality of life. In this way, Sabbath worship becomes pertinent and important not only to monks, but to all Christians. Monastic men and women can witness to the importance of experiencing the Sabbath through the Sunday liturgy. Monks, too, need to be reminded of Sunday, its importance, and the need to constantly learn Sabbath worship. (In the context of this article, Sunday will at times be called Sabbath.)

The goal of this article is to demonstrate that the Sabbath as sacred time is a part of Benedictine monastic life according to the RB, and to reveal the fullness of the liturgical celebration of the Sabbath in the RB.

Research Question and Methods

The present article was inspired by a 2010 study: “On 11 June, sociological research, commissioned by the news portal DELFI and carried out by ‘Spinter tyrimai’, was published. […] It showed that while an absolute majority of Lithuanians (80,7%) consider themselves Catholic, only 4,9% attend Holy Mass every week and, in this way, truly celebrate Sundays.”^[6] Thus one can conclude that most Lithuanian Catholics are either ignorant of, or choose to ignore, the significance of celebrating the Sabbath. Some understand it as performing certain liturgical rites, others as resting and refraining from work, but the all-encompassing meaning of the Sabbath has not been fully comprehended. This may be the reason why Lithuania has the highest rates of suicide,^[7] because there is no sacred time to get away from space, to just Be instead of Doing, to return to oneself by returning to God. The Sabbath is what allows the priorities of the upcoming week to fall into place; it prevents the things in space from swallowing the human being and trapping him.

The question arises: What lifestyle could prevent a person from being swallowed up by objects in space and consumed by the worries of everyday life? That of the Benedictines, for example, who live the Sabbath fully. In this way, they pay tribute to the space of the week, i.e. to objects and to routines, but on the eve of the Sabbath, i.e. on Saturday evening, they focus their attention on the time. “Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time”[8]. Benedictine life can help by revealing the fullness of the Sabbath according to the RB and by inviting us to take at least a baby step towards a real Sabbath. The celebration of Sabbath is central to Benedictine life, where everything is based on the RB. But how and by what means is the Sabbath revealed in ordinary Benedictine life according to the RB?

This article uses aspect analysis to define the concept of Sabbath in Benedictine monasticism. Structural- and aspect analyses will be used to study the liturgical celebration of Sabbath in the RB and to clarify monk’s activities on the day of the Sabbath. In order to achieve a theoretical synthesis, it is necessary make generalizations about Benedictine monasticism and theological literature.

The Concept of the Sabbath in Benedictine monasticism

In Jewish culture the Sabbath is a holy day of rest.^[9] In the Catholic tradition, the day is to be used for contemplative purposes, since “the activity of contemplation with its praxis toward God is acknowledged as a good.”^[10] This is even more evident in monastic life.

Benedictine monasticism is the first form of monastic life in which all elements maintaining the balance of the human life and adapting to various cultures are wisely arranged. This is a lifestyle which has its own theology. The main elements of this Benedictine life are the following: life in a cenobitic monastic community, Benedictine monachism, work, and asceticism. The component of silence is involved in all of these elements. Naturally, Benedictine life is impossible without obedience to the abbot and the Rule.^[11]

Thus Benedictine monastic life is based on the RB from which comes the famous and succinct description of monastic activities, ora et labora.^[12] Prayer and work reach their culmination exactly on the day of the Sabbath, when the pastoral care of Silence becomes the pinnacle of week-long contemplation.^[13] Immersed in the divine life of grace, a monk achieves his most important goal. The whole life of the monk becomes liturgy: praise and worship of God and an act of thanksgiving.

The Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy defines the liturgy as

an exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ. In the liturgy the sanctification of the man is signified by signs perceptible to the senses, and is effected in a way which corresponds with each of these signs; in the liturgy the whole public worship is performed by the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, that is, by the Head and His members. (SC 7).^[14]

But “[…] the liturgy, in all its forms, is the manifestation and realization of the Church as the Body of Christ.”^[15] One of the ways to worship God is to sing or to read out loud the Liturgy of the Hours. The Liturgy always serves the good of the community. Thus, the Liturgy of the Hours is the public service of a community which praises, worships and serves God. Of course, the most important and central act of worshiping God and meeting Him happens in the celebration of the Eucharist. “The Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours are of central importance […]”^[16] not only in the life of a monk, but in the life of every Christian.[17] St. Benedict offered an all-encompassing definition of the liturgy when he called it opus Dei, or the work of God. “[The] Rule of St. Benedict writes about the main service, i.e. opus Dei – work of God […] RB 7, 62; 43, 3; 48, 1; 50, 3; 52, 2; 58, 7 […].”^[18]

While various forms of service are enumerated in the RB, the most important to Benedictines is the work of God.^[19] This work is performed in two directions: “[…] the work of God”^[20] for us and our work for God. This is the source of the phrase of St. Benedict ora et labora – “pray and work”. For six days, monks live as pilgrims traveling to the peak of contemplation, i.e. the Sabbath, where they meet the Living God, and are immersed in His presence and grace.^[21] From this perspective the Sabbath can be understood in three ways. First, the Sabbath is the summit of living with Christ. Since

[…] Sabbath as a day of rest, as a day of abstaining from toil, does not serve the purpose of recovering one’s lost strength and becoming fit for forthcoming labor. The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not meant to enhance the efficiency of his work. Sabbath, last in creation, first in intention, is the end of the creation of heaven and earth. The Sabbath does not exist for the sake of weekdays – they exist for the sake of the Sabbath. It is not an interlude, but the climax of living.^[22]

The second aspect of understanding the Sabbath might be that Sabbath is the summit of the whole Liturgy, because Liturgy is life. Since Benedictines spend most of their time singing the Liturgy of the Hours, it is important to note that singing on the day of the Sabbath becomes even more solemn. To be more exact, the entire week is a preparation for the solemn worship of the Sabbath. As Abraham Joshua Heschel writes in his book The Sabbath:

Angels have six wings, one for each day of the week, with which they chant their song; but they remain silent on the Sabbath for it is the Sabbath which then chants a hymn to God. It is the Sabbath that inspires all the creatures to sing praise to the Lord. […] The Sabbath teaches all beings whom to praise.^[23]

Thus everyone is invited to sing and to praise God on the Sabbath.

The third aspect is that, through liturgy, the Sabbath becomes the sanctification of time in Benedictine monastic life because “we can only master time in time.”^[24] Monastic men and women become architects of time.^[25] In this time of the risen Christ, “Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man.”^[26] This presence is most manifest in the celebration of the Eucharist.

In Benedictine monasticism, the Sabbath is the climax of liturgical life, where the closeness of the Risen Christ is revealed to the human soul, thereby sanctifying time. In this Presence and communion, the monk becomes an architect of time in the world.

After providing a brief overview of the Sabbath in Benedictine monasticism, we now go on to consider how the celebration of the liturgical Sabbath, i.e. Sunday, is understood in the RB. Sunday is the central day in the life of every Christian, and the way in which monks set this day apart is noteworthy indeed. They spend the day in prayer in liturgy. Sunday is “the great liturgy.”^[27]

Liturgical Celebration of the Sabbath in the Rule of St. Benedict

The Sabbath as an extraordinary day must somehow stand out in the life of a monk, so St. Benedict in his Rule not only enumerates the psalms to be sung, but also includes the office of Vigil, of waiting. It is also important to note that the Roman Catholic Church begins the celebration of the Sabbath by singing the Liturgy of the Hours on Saturday evening.^[28] Since Sunday is the day of the Risen Christ, the vigil symbolizes the waiting by His tomb. The “term ‘vigil’ is especially suitable for the Sunday service and is used exclusively to denote the Night Office throughout […]”^[29] in the 11th chapter of the RB. “On Sunday the monks should arise earlier for Vigils” (RB 11,1). This early rising is the continuation of the celebration of the Sabbath. In the Vigil, twelve psalms are sung and twelve responsories are read. The whole vigil consists of two nocturnes, two units of six psalms each (twelve in total). The third nocturne consists of the Te Deum, a Gospel reading (read by the abbot), and the hymn Te Decet Laus. “If the community oversleeps, the readings and responsories are to be shortened.”^[30] (See RB 11,12).

These vigils extend the Sabbath and allow the people to praise God and wait expectantly for Him. Vigils are also a form of training for the community. Monks are encouraged not to give in to laziness. Oversleeping is laziness, and St. Benedict warns his monks against it. If it happens, the offender must apologize to God in the church (see RB 11,13).

The office of Vigil is an addition to the regular prayer schedule of the other days, which consists of the usual seven hours: Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. As we read in Scripture, “Seven times a day I praise you because your judgments are righteous” (Ps 119:164). All of this constitutes opus Dei, the Work of God, according to St. Benedict.

Extensive instructions precede each part of the Liturgy of the Hours in the RB. Saint Benedict determines how many psalms are to be sung, how they should be sung, and with what intention. He creates rationale for his system of psalmody and establishes his own order of the liturgy. In his Rule “after further instructions about the Sunday psalms, antiphons, versicles, lessons and responses which bring us to the end of the second nocturn, St. Benedict indicates a variation to be observed”^[31] for a community of brothers living according to his Rule:

Next, three canticles from the Prophets, chosen by the abbot, are said with an “alleluia” refrain. After a versicle and the abbot’s blessing, four New Testament readings follow with their responsories, as above. After the fourth responsory, the abbot begins the hymn “We praise you, God.” When that is finished, he reads from the Gospels while all the monks stand with respect and awe. At the conclution of the Gospel reading, all reply “Amen”, and immediately the abbot intones the hymn “To you be praise.” After a final blessing, Lauds begin. (RB 11,6-10).

The first prayer of the morning is Lauds, also called Aurora, or dawn. It sanctifies time until sunrise and is undoubtedly connected with the Resurrection.^[32]

Sunday Lauds begin with Psalm 66, said straight through without a refrain. Then Psalm 50 follows with an ‘alleluia’ refrain. Lauds continue with Psalms 117 and 62, the Canticle of the Three Young Men, Psalms 148 through 150, a reading from the Apocalypse recited by heart and followed by a responsory, an Ambrosian hymn, a versicle, the Gospel Canticle, the litany and the conclusion. (RB 12,4).

The psalms, responsories, and readings for this hour have to do with light, joy, and the wonderful acts of God (see Ps 66; 50; 117; 62; 148-150), all of which confirm the theme of the Resurrection.

Yet without the crucifixion there would be no Resurrection. Thus, the second part of the Liturgy of the Hours of the day is Evening Vespers, which sanctifies the time of sunset, evening, dusk. St. Benedict demands, however, that the Evening prayers be sung while it is still lightso that monks do not have to use a lantern.^[33] These hours, Morning and Evening, should be prayed by the whole Church. Evening prayer corresponds to the “time of crucifixion,” when there still is enough light, but after death comes the darkness that covers the earth. When the Vespers end, the earth is covered in darkness. From this we conclude that Lauds and Vespers are the most important parts of the Liturgy of the Hours: they are inseparable like the Resurrection and Crucifixion. Moreover, the evening psalms are about begging to be saved, victory over enemies, saving the nation, and the sinners who will be crushed by God (see Ps 109,110,111,112). These themes are conducive to reflection on the Crucifixion.

Between Morning and Evening prayers are the smaller hours, the compulsory recitation of which varies throughout the universal Church. These hours are very short: Prime, Terce, Sext, and None consist of Psalm 118, which is broken into smaller pieces. The excerpts from Ps 118 are followed by other elements: a responsory, reading, hymn, and prayer, but the psalm is never sung in its entirety. During Prime, Ps 118, verses 1-4, during Terce verses 5-7, during Sext verses 8-10, during None verses 11-13 are sung. The Liturgy of the Minor Hours is important in a monk’s life because they prevent him from becoming distracted and help him to achieve focus.

Night prayer, or Compline, is just as important as morning and evening prayer. It is the end of the work of God. In it the monks examine their conscience and give thanks for the day. This part consists of three psalms: 4, 90, and 133. Night prayers are sung in a sober and grave mood, with monks calling upon God, asking for help, and asking God not to abandon them in the darkness, but to lead them on the journey towards divine light. Sleeping should also be part of the work of God, just as every other element of a monk’s life.

The Liturgy of the Hours on Sundays, then, is special in its content and distribution. On Sundays and feasts the vigils are composed of three nocturns. The Psalms chosen by Saint Benedict for Sundays are longer. Sunday Lauds or Morning Prayer (Matutina) must include a reading from the Book of Revelation. Let us now explore how the community is to perform the works of God in liturgy and prayer.

Monk’s Activities on the Day of the Sabbath

A monk must spend the whole Sunday in prayer and reading. The center of his activities is the liturgy, because liturgy is prayer. In chapters 19 and 20 of the RB, Saint Benedict discusses the relationship between liturgy and prayer. True and deep prayer begins when one stands in the presence of God. The disposition of the monk as he stands before God and the angels is important for St. Benedict. According to St. Benedict, a monk should be humble and entirely devoted; he should pray with a pure heart and repent amidst tears. The prayer and the words of the monk should be one. Good speech is good prayer. A monk’s thoughts must align with the liturgy, because it is sung in the presence of angels and of God.

Benedictine prayer is wholehearted participation in God’s Kingdom. True prayer is short and pure. The closer we are to God, the less we speak. In the presence of God, speaking increasingly gives way to listening. Maybe that is why St. Benedict does not strictly say that prayer should be short and clear. If God’s grace allows, prayer continues automatically. Sometimes prayer consists of tears of joy, sometimes of listening, sometimes of prostrating oneself in God’s presence. Other manifestations of prayer exist, but all are the fruits of God’s grace. According to St. Benedict, community “[…] prayer should always be brief; and when the superior gives the signal, all should rise together” (RB 20,5).^[34]

So “the relation of liturgy and [personal] prayer is important to St. Benedict. Monastic men and women share the same goal: to cultivate a pure heart [all the time], so that they may stand in God’s presence without any obstacles, to worship and praise Him and to serve Him. On Sunday, the monk must immerse himself in prayer. Sunday is a special day of service. St. Benedict writes that if one is to serve, he must pray while doing so.”^[35] Any other service is also a part of the work of God;[36] e.g. three cantors are chosen to serve by singing the three nocturnes.^[37] Even by sitting in the community choir, a monk already participates in the community liturgy. Preparing food for the brothers, nursing the sick, etc. are also a participation in the work of God.^[38] No matter what a monk does, he serves God, and on the day of the Sabbath, it is especially important for the monk to give himself to reading and other spiritual activities. Finally, the centre of a monk’s life must be the Eucharist. (See RB 38,5; 38,24; 63,4).

Conclusion

In Benedictine monasticism the Sabbath is understood from three aspects: it is the summit of a life with Christ, the climax of the liturgy, and the sanctification of time. Thus we can say that in Benedictine monasticism the Sabbath is the climax of liturgical life, where the presence of the Risen Christ is communicated to the heart of man, sanctifying time. In this Presence and communion, the monk becomes the architect of time in the world. Based on the RB, it can bravely be said that the Sabbath as sanctified time is a pillar of Benedictine monastic life. Its central importance is revealed through the liturgical celebration of the Sabbath and the monk’s activities on the day of the Sabbath.

Liturgical celebration of the Sabbath is understood as opus Dei. The Liturgy of the Hours is the public service of the community which praises, worships, and serves God. Liturgy itself is prayer. The liturgical celebration of the Sabbath is assigned a special place in the RB. In his Rule, Saint Benedict does not only provide the number of psalms to be sung, but also establishes the order of the Vigil. In addition to the Vigil, on the Shabbat, there are seven other times of prayer:  Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. The rhythm of monastic prayer mirrors the works of God: Morning prayer calls to mind the resurrection, Evening prayer the crucifixion, and Night prayer the end of God’s work. One purpose of the shorter Hours is to prevent the monks from getting distracted from the rhythm of God’s work. The arrangement of the liturgical hours on Sunday is a reminder of the most important Christian events: suffering, death and resurrection, though not in order, but with the power to evoke a spiritual disposition and a movement of heart.

A monk must spend the whole Sunday in prayer and reading/contemplation. The liturgy is at the heart of his activities is the liturgy, because liturgy is prayer. The Sabbath is a day when a monk must fully immerse himself in prayer to God.

Bibliography

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[1] Ottilia Lukács, Sabbath in the Making: A Study of the Inner – Biblical Interpretation of the Sabbath. (Leuven: Peeters, 2020).

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: saying no to the Culture of Now, New Edition, with Study Guide. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2017); Lynne M. Baab, Sabbath: The Gift of Rest (LifeGuide Bible Studies), Student/Study Guide Edition. (IVP Connect, 2007); Lynne M. Baab, Sabbath Keeping: Finding Freedom in the Rhythms of Rest. (IVP Books, 2005); Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives.  (New York: Bartam Books, 1999).

[3] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Šabas. (Vilnius: Pasaulio Katalikų leidiniai, 2016).

[4] Columba Stewart OSB, Prayer and Community: The Benedictine Tradition (Traditions Of Christian Spirituality). (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1998), 105; Cyprian Smith OSB, The Path of Life: Benedictine Spirituality for Monks & Lay People. (Leominster: Ampleforth Abbey Press, 1996); Esther de Wall, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict, With Forewords by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. (London: Faith Press, 1984); Ambrose Tinsley OSB, Pax: The Benedictine Way. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1994); Korneel Vermeiren OCSO, Praying with Benedict: Prayer in the Rule of St Benedict, Translated by Richard Yeo OSB. (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, 1999), 41-44; 103-112.

[5] RB – Rule of St. Benedict. Šventojo Benedikto regula: lotynų ir lietuvių kalbomis, vertė Kęstutis Gražys. (Vilnius: Leidykla “Aidai“, 1997); Šventojo Benedikto regula: lotynų ir lietuvių kalbomis, Monastica 2, Vertė Kęstutis Gražys. (Kelmė: Palendriai, 2020); RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in English, Ed. Timothy Fry, O.S.B. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1982).

[6] Jonas Vilimas, “Apie tikėjimo krizę ir liturgijos atmosferą,” Delfi, June 26, 2010, https://www.delfi.lt/news/ringas/lit/jvilimas-apie-tikejimo-krize-ir-liturgijos-atmosfera.d?id=33859783.

[7] World Health Orgnization, “Suicide rate estimates, crude – Estimates by country,” WHO, February 09, 2021, https://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.MHSUICIDE.

[8] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The SABBATH: Its Meaning for Modern Man. Expanded Edition. (New York: FARRAR, STRAUS & COMPANY, 1952), 10.

[9] Reuven P. Bulka, “Jewish Days and Festivals, Pastoral Dimensions of,” in Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, ed. Rodney J. Hunter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 608.

[10] Paul J. Johnson, III, “Rest and Renewal, Religious Tradition of,” in Dictionary of Pastoral Care and Counseling, ed. Rodney J. Hunter (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 1079.

[11] Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, The possibilities for the application of pastoral hermeneutical-communicative model in the benedictine women communities of Kaunas, Otwock and Alexanderdorf within the context of pastoral care of Silence, Summary of Doctoral dissertation. (Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University, 2014), 5, file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/6079530%20(1).pdf.

[12] Michael Casey and David Tomlins, Introducing Benedict’s Rule: A Program of Formation with drawings by Cláudio Pasto. (Germany: EOS Verlag Erzabtei St. Ottilien, 2006), 203; Michał Tomasz Gronowski OSB, Patrimonium, culture and hospitality: Benedictine monasteries as places of the meeting. (Krakow: Tyniec Wydawnictwo Benedyktynów, 2012), 63.

[13] For more on the Pastoral care of Silence, see: Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,” Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 68-70, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf; Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, Pastoracinio hermeneutinio-bendravimo modelio pritaikomumo galimybės benediktinių bendruomenėse (Kauno, Otwock’o (Otwock) ir Alexanderdorf’o (Alexanderdorf) Tylos pastoracijos kontekste, disertacija. (Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas, 2014), 127-157, file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/6079576%20(1).pdf.

[14] For more on the concept of the Liturgy, see: Algimantas Kajackas, Bažnyčia liturgijoje: Liturgijos raida istorijoje. (LKB: Lietuvos Katechetikos centras, 1998), 9-10.

[15] Edward J. Kilmartin, Christian Liturgy: Theology and Practice. I. Systematic Theology of Liturgy. (Kansas: Sheed and Ward, 1988), 105.

[16] Smith, The Path of Life, 136.

[17] Smith, The Path of Life, 136.

[18] Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,”  Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 71, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf.

[19] For more on service as a form of pastoral activity in the Rule of St. Benedict, see: Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,” Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 70-73, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf. For more on the concept of pastoral care in the Rule of St. Benedict, see: Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Pastoral Care in the Rule of St. Benedict (I),” Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 38(66) (2011): 29-40, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33371/1/ISSN2335-8785_2011_N_38_66.PG_29_40.pdf; Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,” Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 67-82, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf.

[20] Smith, The Path of Life, 122.

[21] Heschel, Šabas, 20.

[22] Heschel, Šabas, 42.

[23] Ibid, Heschel, Šabas, 55.

[24] Ibid, 29.

[25] Ibid, 32.

[26] Ibid, 19.

[27] For more on the concept of the liturgy in the Rule of St. Benedict, see: Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,” Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 73-75, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf; Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, Pastoracinio hermeneutinio-bendravimo modelio pritaikomumo galimybės benediktinių bendruomenėse (Kauno, Otwock’o (Otwock) ir Alexanderdorf’o (Alexanderdorf) Tylos pastoracijos kontekste, disertacija. (Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas, 2014), 111-114, file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/6079576%20(1).pdf.

[28] Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Vakarinė,” in Visuotinė Lietuvių Enciklopedija (Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2022), https://www.vle.lt/straipsnis/vakarine-1/.

[29] Michael Casey and David Tomlins, Introducing Benedict’s Rule: A Program of Formation with drawings by Cláudio Pasto. (Germany: EOS Verlag Erzabtei St. Ottilien, 2006), 99.

[30]  Michael Casey and David Tomlins, Introducing Benedict’s Rule: A Program of Formation with drawings by Cláudio Pasto. (Germany: EOS Verlag Erzabtei St. Ottilien, 2006), 100.

[31] Dom Hubert Van Zeller, The Holy Rule: Notes on St. Benedict’s Legislation for Monks. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 145.

[32] Cyprian Smith OSB, The Path of Life. (Souther Avenie, Leominster Herefordshire, Ampleforth Abbey, 1996), 127.

[33] Cyprian Smith OSB, The Path of Life. (Southern Avenue, Leominster Herefordshire, Ampleforth Abbey, 1996), 126.

[34] For more on the Benedictine understanding of prayer and listening, see: Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, Pastoracinio hermeneutinio-bendravimo modelio pritaikomumo galimybės benediktinių bendruomenėse (Kauno, Otwock’o (Otwock) ir Alexanderdorf’o (Alexanderdorf) Tylos pastoracijos kontekste, disertacija. (Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas, 2014), 103-114; 127-157, file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/6079576%20(1).pdf.

[35] Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,“ Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 75, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf.

[36] For more on the Benedictine understanding of work, see: Dom Rembert Sorg OSB. Holy Work: Towards a Benedictine Theology of Manual Labor. (Santa Ana, California: Source Books, 2003).

[37] Dom Hubert Van Zeller. The Holy Rule: Notes on St. Benedict’s Legislation for Monks. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 145.

[38] For more on the concepts of service in a Benedictine community according to the Rule of St. Benedict, see: Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Maldos terapija slaugant ligonius benediktiniškoje bendruomenėje,” Tiltai. Priedas: mokslo darbai. Krikščioniškojo dvasingumo ugdymas nr. 41 (2010): 80-91, https:/‌/‌hdl.handle.net/‌20.500.12259/‌50940; Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, “Ground Rules of Pastoral Care in the Text of the Rule of St. Benedict,” Soter: religijos mokslo žurnalas 42(70) (2012): 71-73, https://www.vdu.lt/cris/bitstream/20.500.12259/33134/1/ISSN2335-8785_2012_N_42_70.PG_67_82.pdf; Aušra Vasiliauskaitė, Pastoracinio hermeneutinio-bendravimo modelio pritaikomumo galimybės benediktinių bendruomenėse (Kauno, Otwock’o (Otwock) ir Alexanderdorf’o (Alexanderdorf) Tylos pastoracijos kontekste, disertacija. (Kaunas: Vytauto Didžiojo universitetas, 2014), 103-114, file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/6079576%20(1).pdf