The Rise of the Roman Church

It is impossible to understand the shift in perceived sacredness from the Sabbath to Sunday without grasping the important part that the Roman Christian Church played in the first centuries after Christ. Although many factors were significant in allowing and even causing this shift, Christians resisted changes in their teachings, even in the face of extreme persecution. Other pages of this website show conclusively that Christians kept the Sabbath for centuries after Jesus ascended back to Heaven. So we must look outside of the Christian Church for the motivations that would cause Christians to abandon their Sabbath-keeping in favor of another day. Yet, we must realize that outside pressure alone could have never induced such a major change in doctrine. We will now show that the change was motivated by external pressure but was implemented from within the body of Christianity itself.

Two of the pressures against Sabbath-keeping were: anti-Judaism |0+| and sun worship |1+|. Both of these pressures were outside the Christian Church and were resisted by the majority of Christians until four things happened. 1) Sun worship became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Of course this change was most profoundly felt in the capital, Rome. 2) The Roman body of Christians became very powerful and influential within the body of Christian believers. 3) The Roman church succumbed to pagan pressure to conform to the official religion in some ways. 4) Using her influence and power, the Roman church impressed her heretical compromises upon the rest of the Christian body.

Because the sun worship webpage|1+| addresses the first point, we will here examine the last three points. Before the Roman church could be a power to mold the doctrines of Christianity, it must first gain sufficient influence to allow it to present alternative doctrines with an air of credibility. Without this credibility, the Roman church would have been simply ignored or even disciplined by the rest of the Christian Church. Only if the Roman church was considered greatly important could it present heresy and be accepted. It is easy to show that the Roman church was this important.

About the year A.D. 95, Clement, Bishop of Rome, wrote a letter to the church at Corinth to settle a discord which had broken out between the Corinthian believers. The prestige of the Roman church in this case is implied by the resolute and even threatening tone of the letter, which clearly expected obedience. In fact, Clement said, "If any disobeys what has been said by Him (Christ) through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in no slight transgression or danger." (The Apostolic Fathers, 1950, p.78)

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in his book, Against Heresies (composed under the pontificate of Pope Eleutherus--AD 175-189), describes the church of Rome as "the very great, the very ancient and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul." (Against Heresies, p.415) He then states categorically: "For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority that is, the faithful everywhere."

Please notice that by late in the second century, Christian bishops even outside Rome were advocating the authority and worthiness of the Roman church, in fact, even requiring complete agreement with and obedience to her teachings. This was the start of the Roman Catholic Church as we see it today.

The Bishop of Rome demonstrated his authority in efforts to enforce the pagan Easter celebration upon Christians everywhere. Although Easter Sunday was clothed in the garb of Christianity by using it to honor the resurrection of Jesus, many Christians resisted this obviously pagan institution. About AD 96, upon hearing of the Asian bishops' refusal to accept Easter Sunday, Bishop Victor of Rome drastically "declared all the brethren there wholly excommunicated." (Eusebius, HE 5, 24, 9, NPNF 2nd, I, p. 242.) This is perhaps the most explicit early evidence of the authority of the Roman Bishop to enforce a new custom, and even to cut off from communion of the Church an entire dissident community. Bishop Victor did not limit his excommunications to Asia alone. This new and frightening tool became the Roman Bishops' sword to cut down any who would not sway to their will.

It is hard to understand how and why such authority came to be granted the Bishop of Rome by the other Christian Churches. Rather than to speculate about the how and why, we will instead state that, by the second century AD, the Bishop of Rome held unsurpassed power to make changes within the entire body of Christians. From the point of view of Christians who wished to preserve a pure and untainted faith, this transfer of power to the seat of paganism could have hardly been worse.

Now, given the obvious power that Rome wielded within the Christian Church, it becomes clear how such a momentous change as the day of worship came to pass. Under pressure from sun worshipers (the official religion), the Roman Christians accepted several teachings: Easter, Christmas, and "Christ the Sun". Of course, these concepts originally had pagan applications, and so each had to be "Christianized." This was made desirable in part because of the strong and growing hatred for anything Jewish.|2+| Thus, the Christians, especially in Rome, were motivated to cut any ties which linked them in an incriminating way with Judaism. As persecution of Jews intensified, Christians were strongly motivated to completely separate themselves from anything Jewish. The official Roman religion provided both the pressure and the alternatives to sustain a change in certain major doctrines. The change took place in Rome first, because there was the greatest pressure, and then moved throughout the Christian Church by virtue of the Roman Bishops' authority. Surely this was a fulfillment of Paul's warning, "For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock." (Acts 20:29) Also he writes, "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;..." (2 Thes. 2:3)