Learn Church History with Dr. White

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On the Lord's Own Day. Now, this is another rather important issue.

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Yes. The kuriake, kuriake hemera, the

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Lord's Day, is a New Testament term. John was in the spirit on the kuriake hemera, the

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Lord's Day. And we know from texts like this, we know from Ignatius, that kuriake hemera,

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Lord's Day, is Sunday. And so once again, in one of the earliest sources that we have, the people are gathering on Sunday, not on the

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Sabbath day. And this is, this could be before the end of the first century. Why is this relevant?

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Well, you know why it's relevant. There are all sorts of folks who will tell you that it's the mark of the beast to worship on Sunday.

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That's what the original Seventh Day of Venice taught anyways. And some still do. They're the old crusty type.

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But that term, kuriake hemera, Lord's Day, something has happened.

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And Christian worship normatively is found on that particular day.

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And the gathering of the saints is to be one that is marked by unity, so that if there is disputes, they are to be taken care of beforehand.

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So there is unity amongst the people in their offering of worship. Appoint for yourselves, therefore, elders and deacons worthy of the

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Lord. Obviously, if you can, you've got enough people or people that have been called in that way.

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Men who are meek and not lovers of money and true and approved for unto you, they also perform the service of the prophets and teachers.

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Therefore, despise them not, for they are your honorable men along with the prophets and teachers.

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So this is another reason why this is viewed as a very, very early document, because it's sort of in between governmental formulations of the church.

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You still have these itinerant prophets and apostles, but you also have elders and deacons.

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And they're existing alongside of each other during this transitionary period.

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So that's why a lot of people would put this very, very early, but other people would say, well, that lasted for a while.

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The problem with that is, when we get to Ignatius, we're going to find that Ignatius, writing in the first decade of the second century, dies in 107 -108.

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Ignatius, we're going to see, already in the

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Eastern churches, a singular bishop for a particular church, normally a city, has already developed in the

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East. This is called a monarchical episcopate. You've heard of a monarch. So a monarch bishop.

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So Ignatius is the bishop of Antioch. Instead of there being a number of bishops in the house churches in Antioch, he is the guy over all of Antioch.

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But we can tell from his epistles that, for example, when he writes, and this is extremely important, when he writes to the church at Rome, he does not mention a bishop.

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He speaks to a group of men who have the leadership there in Rome.

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There is no one bishop. Primitively, up until the 140s, there was a plurality of elders in the church at Rome.

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And only later does the monarchical episcopate arrive. They're in the middle of the second century.

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That plays havoc with Rome's claims to the papacy. But that's the historical reality.

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The point is that, at least for Ignatius, there in the first decade of the second century, you already have the next step in this development.

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So either the Didache is written in more of a rural area where these developments haven't taken place, or it's extremely early, you know, 80s, 90s, which some people have put it that far back.

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But those are things that scholars sit around and write papers about when they got nothing better to do.