If Worship on Sunday is wrong, then why do SDA parishes rent their churches to Traditional Christians?

reddogs said:

Ok lets take a look. I go to Wednesday night service and worship and praise with the brethren. Is it the Sabbath, no. I have elders meeting on Tuesday and do worship and praise with the elders. Is it the Sabbath, no. I have church board meeting on or near the first of the month on a weekday and do worship and praise with the board. Is it the Sabbath, no. And then get this, I have mens ministry meeting on Sunday morning and do worship and praise with the men. Is it the Sabbath.. are you getting the direction I am going with this...

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tall73 said:

No, I am not getting the direction you are going with this.

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The Liturgist said:

And the Roman Catholic Church renamed Dies Saturnae to Sabbato in Latin, and Dies Soli to Dominca, and Monday through Friday as Feria II-VI.

I have proof right here:

https://divinumofficium.com/cgi-bin/horas/kalendar.pl#Aug

Notice how Saturday is referred to as Sabbato (abbreviated as Sabb).

But don’t take my word for it, I asked a fresh chatGPT session to explain how the names of weekdays changed under the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches:

Christianity did not preserve the pagan weekday system in its liturgical languages

The claim that Catholic or Orthodox Christianity must be “pagan” because English speakers say words such as “Thursday” or “Saturday” confuses inherited vernacular vocabulary with the terminology actually adopted by the Church.

The ancient Roman planetary week used the following names:

Modern day	Pagan Roman name	Meaning
Sunday	Dies Solis	Day of the Sun
Monday	Dies Lunae	Day of the Moon
Tuesday	Dies Martis	Day of Mars
Wednesday	Dies Mercurii	Day of Mercury
Thursday	Dies Iovis	Day of Jupiter or Jove
Friday	Dies Veneris	Day of Venus
Saturday	Dies Saturni	Day of Saturn

The ancient Church did not make this planetary nomenclature its normal liturgical system. In ecclesiastical Latin, the Roman Church used:

Day	Ecclesiastical Latin	Meaning
Sunday	Dominica or Dies Dominica	The Lord’s Day
Monday	Feria II or Feria secunda	Second day
Tuesday	Feria III or Feria tertia	Third day
Wednesday	Feria IV or Feria quarta	Fourth day
Thursday	Feria V or Feria quinta	Fifth day
Friday	Feria VI or Feria sexta	Sixth day
Saturday	Sabbatum	The Sabbath

Thus, in the liturgical Latin of the Roman Church, the days of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn became numbered ferial days and the Sabbath. The day of the Sun became Dominica, the Lord’s Day, commemorating the Resurrection of Christ.

The Orthodox Greek terminology is equally explicit:

Day	Greek	Meaning
Sunday	Κυριακή — Kyriakē	The Lord’s Day
Monday	Δευτέρα — Deutera	Second
Tuesday	Τρίτη — Tritē	Third
Wednesday	Τετάρτη — Tetartē	Fourth
Thursday	Πέμπτη — Pemptē	Fifth
Friday	Παρασκευή — Paraskevē	Preparation
Saturday	Σάββατον — Sabbaton	Sabbath

Friday is called “Preparation” because it was the day of preparation for the Sabbath, terminology found in the New Testament itself. Sunday is not the “day of the Sun,” but Κυριακή, the Lord’s Day.

Church Slavonic, used liturgically throughout much of the Slavic Orthodox world, likewise contains no series of names honouring Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn:

Day	Church Slavonic	Meaning or derivation
Sunday	недѣ́лѧ — nedělja	The day of no work or rest
Monday	понедѣ́льникъ — ponedělnikŭ	The day after Sunday
Tuesday	вто́рникъ — vtornikŭ	Second day
Wednesday	среда̀ — sreda	Middle of the week
Thursday	четверто́къ — chetvertokŭ	Fourth day
Friday	пѧто́къ — pętokŭ	Fifth day
Saturday	сꙋббѡ́та — subbota	Sabbath

English presents a different history. Germanic peoples translated or replaced several Roman planetary names with the names of roughly corresponding Germanic gods: Mars with Tiw, Mercury with Woden, Jupiter with Thor, and Venus with Frigg. English therefore inherited Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. It also retained Sun-day, Moon-day and Saturn-day.

That linguistic inheritance does not mean that Christians worship those deities. A word’s remote etymology does not determine the religion of everyone who later speaks the language. Otherwise, anyone who says “January” would be worshipping Janus, anyone who says “March” would be worshipping Mars, and anyone mentioning the planet Jupiter would thereby become a pagan.

More importantly, when Christians developed their own ecclesiastical terminology, they did precisely what this criticism alleges they failed to do:

• 
  []The Roman Church replaced the planetary names with Dominica, numbered feriae, and Sabbatum.
  []The Greek Church used the Lord’s Day, numbered days, Preparation and Sabbath.
• The Slavonic Orthodox tradition used rest, numerical or positional names, and Sabbath.

Therefore, the continued existence of pagan-derived words in English proves something about the history of the English language. It proves nothing about Catholic or Orthodox worship.

The same principle appears in Scripture. The New Testament uses ordinary Greek words produced within a pre-Christian culture, yet no Christian concludes that using the Greek language constitutes worship of the Greek gods. Christians may replace pagan terminology when doing so serves the Faith—as the Churches demonstrably did with their weekday systems—but Christianity has never taught that merely pronouncing a word with a pagan etymology is an act of idolatry.

In summary: the pagan Romans had days of the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. The historic Churches gave the Christian world the Lord’s Day, the biblical sequence of numbered days, the Preparation and the Sabbath. Appealing to modern English weekday names while ignoring the actual Latin, Greek and Slavonic ecclesiastical terminology is therefore historically misleading.

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The Liturgist said:

The information you provided accusing the Roman Catholic Church came from outside the Bible, and outside of any Roman Catholic church document.

You also quoted chatGPT.

I’ve just provided evidence from the same source you used debunking your claim, and now you’re trying to invoke a “proof outside the Bible” argument?

You accused the Roman Catholic Church of using Latin names for days of the week derived from Pagan deities, which if true would have occurred after the death of the Apostles - I have proven this is not the case by quoting Roman Catholic liturgical calendars and by using chatGPT to generate information.

This is an example of an extreme ad hominem fallacy (since you’re rejecting documents based on a source that pertains to a historical subject not discussed in Scripture), as well as raising the goalposts.

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prodromos said:

The only thing that came to my mind is hypocrisy, but I don't think that is what he is aiming for.

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The Liturgist said:

Red herring fallacy. I never claimed it wasn’t.





You made an offtopic post asserting various pagan names of days came from: If Worship on Sunday is wrong, then why do SDA parishes rent their churches to Traditional Christians?

This post was not topical to the subject of the thread, so I don’t know why you made it, but in making it, you used extra-Biblical sources out of context to imply traditional Christians were engaged in sun worship or were referring to the seventh day as Saturday for purposes of Paganism. These extra biblical sources included chatGPT output and graphics.

What makes it okay for you to use chatGPT and extra-Biblical graphics when criticizing traditional Christians, but not me? Especially when in both cases the information is factual (the sources you quoted were correct, but also irrelevant as far as Orthodoxy is concerned because we do not refer to the Sabbath as Saturday or to the first day as Sunday.



I am not disputing the pagans origin of the name Sunday or the name Saturday or other weekdays in Germanic languages - chatGPT was correct.

I used chatGPT to show that the name of every weekday was stripped of its pagan origins in all Orthodox-majority countries by the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox and that seventh day of the week was referred to using the divinely-sanctioned name Sabbath, and the Roman Catholic church did the same thing in the case of Latin (which is why in Latin derived languages. I also quoted a Roman Catholic missal, which is proof positive that the ancient Roman church, long before the schism with the Eastern Orthodox, renamed Dies Saturnae to the Hebrew-based name Sabbato, so that the pagan diety Saturn would not be commemorated but rather the day would be referred to via the Hebrew name given in the Bible.

So again, what makes it permissible for you to use extra-Biblical sources, but not me? The only difference is I did not use the sources out of context.

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The Liturgist said:

Me too, so why are you criticizing me?

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SabbathBlessings said:

I am not criticizing you personally, certainly nothing you demonstrated, I focus on the argument itself and Scripture. I have said very little about "you" personally, you make it personal, I try to stick with the Scriptures. I only speak about you personally when you claim I said things that I haven't and asked you to prove it from quoting my posts.

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MarkRohfrietsch said:

So, neither the Bible nor AI; but your personal opinion is all that matters. When we quote Scripture, it is ignored, when we use our own words, we are admonished. We get it. Your theology is "my way or the highway"; so there is little or no point engaging in a one sided debate.

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SabbathBlessings said:

There is no Scripture that says Sunday is the Lords day.

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prodromos said:

The Church, which is the household of God, which Scripture calls the "pillar and ground of truth", has seen fit to name as the Lord's day, the day of the week on which Christ rose from the dead after resting in the tomb on the Sabbath.
There is no Scripture that says the Sabbath is known as the Lord's day.

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The Liturgist said:

So the question remains - why are is your denomination renting spaces to Christians like us who believe that? And why are you defending the practice while concurrently saying that even our nomenclature for the first day is sinful?

Let’s review: your church is taking money to rent space to traditional Christians who:

1. Worship primarily on the first day
2. Use fermented (alcoholic) wine in the Eucharist
3. Believe that wine becomes the actual blood of Christ and not a memorial (and thus ceases to be intoxicating)
4. Additionally in the case of some Orthodox churches you rent to, drink additional blessed wine which is still wine and still intoxicating as a means of ensuring the Eucharist is thoroughly washed down.
5. Eat pork, venison, rabbit, and shellfish in addition to other meats, sometimes as part of Agape meals or meals commemorating our departed loved ones held after church on the first day
6. Pray for the dead, because we believe this can impact the eschatological status of their souls before the Resurrection
7. Venerate saints, who we believe are alive with Christ, asking for their intercession
8. Venerate our lady Theotokos, the Mother of God, asking for her intercession, because we believe she was taken up bodily
9. Read lessons from Old Testament books your church regards as uncanonical.
10. Baptize infants

Additionally, because the space is used by your church on the Sabbath that has the effect of obstructing some services we would otherwise celebrate on the Sabbath, for example, the Vesperal Divine Liturgy held on the morning of on Great and Holy Saturday would have to be cancelled or held in the afternoon, which would greatly decrease attendance because the main liturgy is at midnight in many Eastern churches, or in the evening, which would push it into what we call the Lord’s Day (although we believe the liturgical day ends at the end of vespers, so the Great and Holy Sabbath ends midway through that liturgy, which is why the Eucharist is then celebrated wearing white vestments in Slavonic parishes rather than the black vestments of Great and Holy Friday.

About the only commonality aside from the fact that officially we refer to the Seventh Day as the Sabbath and we changed the word to conform with the Hebraic word in every language where we have a majority, as I previously demonstrated, is perhaps the way Eastern Christians (EO, OO, Assyrian, Eastern Catholic) baptize, since will also baptize unbaptized older children and adults unless we deemed their original baptism sufficient, as was the case with my United Methodist baptism, although any infants born into the church are baptized as well - in all cases this is done with three full immersions, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

At any rate it seems strange to me that your church would want to take money from other Christians whose beliefs are the polar opposite of yours in other respects.

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The Liturgist said:

So the question remains - why are is your denomination renting spaces to Christians like us who believe that? And why are you defending the practice while concurrently saying that even our nomenclature for the first day is sinful?

Let’s review: your church is taking money to rent space to traditional Christians who:

1. Worship primarily on the first day
2. Use fermented (alcoholic) wine in the Eucharist
3. Believe that wine becomes the actual blood of Christ and not a memorial (and thus ceases to be intoxicating)
4. Additionally in the case of some Orthodox churches you rent to, drink additional blessed wine which is still wine and still intoxicating as a means of ensuring the Eucharist is thoroughly washed down.
5. Eat pork, venison, rabbit, and shellfish in addition to other meats, sometimes as part of Agape meals or meals commemorating our departed loved ones held after church on the first day
6. Pray for the dead, because we believe this can impact the eschatological status of their souls before the Resurrection
7. Venerate saints, who we believe are alive with Christ, asking for their intercession
8. Venerate our lady Theotokos, the Mother of God, asking for her intercession, because we believe she was taken up bodily
9. Read lessons from Old Testament books your church regards as uncanonical.
10. Baptize infants

Additionally, because the space is used by your church on the Sabbath that has the effect of obstructing some services we would otherwise celebrate on the Sabbath, for example, the Vesperal Divine Liturgy held on the morning of on Great and Holy Saturday would have to be cancelled or held in the afternoon, which would greatly decrease attendance because the main liturgy is at midnight in many Eastern churches, or in the evening, which would push it into what we call the Lord’s Day (although we believe the liturgical day ends at the end of vespers, so the Great and Holy Sabbath ends midway through that liturgy, which is why the Eucharist is then celebrated wearing white vestments in Slavonic parishes rather than the black vestments of Great and Holy Friday.

About the only commonality aside from the fact that officially we refer to the Seventh Day as the Sabbath and we changed the word to conform with the Hebraic word in every language where we have a majority, as I previously demonstrated, is perhaps the way Eastern Christians (EO, OO, Assyrian, Eastern Catholic) baptize, since will also baptize unbaptized older children and adults unless we deemed their original baptism sufficient, as was the case with my United Methodist baptism, although any infants born into the church are baptized as well - in all cases this is done with three full immersions, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

At any rate it seems strange to me that your church would want to take money from other Christians whose beliefs are the polar opposite of yours in other respects.

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