St. Augustine's Teaching on the Divine Rest of the Sabbath

The question of the God-commanded rest of the Sabbath was considered by many holy fathers. He received wide consecration in the works of St. Augustine. This material, based on a study of the theologian’s thoughts, provides answers to many questions that arise in connection with this aspect: How to understand the peace of God? How does the Sabbath relate to this? What is the meaning of this peace for a believer? Of the host of Orthodox holy fathers, Blessed Augustine, perhaps more than others, wrote about the Divine rest of the Sabbath: he touches on this issue in such key works as “Confession” and “On the City of God”, in exegetical treatises (in most detail - in a number of chapters on the book of Genesis), and epistolary heritage. In this regard, within the framework of the presentation of Orthodox theology of the Sabbath, 1 point of view of the blessed one. Augustine cannot be ignored. So, the Lord God, having completed the creation of the world in six days, sanctified the seventh - Sabbath - day: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, for on it he rested from all His works, which God created and created” (Gen. 2:3). Much later, the Lord established the celebration of the Sabbath in the fourth commandment of the Sinai law: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy; six days you shall work and do all your work, and the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God” (Exodus 20:8–10). For the theological mind, the above verses of Holy Scripture provide rich food for thought. How do we understand the peace of God? Why is this peace holy? How does the Sabbath relate to this? What is the meaning of this peace for a believer? Blzh. Augustine, asking such questions 2, in his treatise “On the Book of Genesis,” first of all draws attention to the fact that the peace of God came after the good deeds of creation, which the Lord Himself assessed as “very good” (Gen. 1:31). Thus, peace is what good deeds lead to: “it would be correct to say that just as God rested after His good deeds, so we too will rest after our good deeds” 3 . Blzh. Augustine points to the figurative meaning of the rest of the Sabbath: “the reverence of the Sabbath was commanded to the Jews as the threshold of the future, signifying spiritual peace, which, through the example of His peace, God secretly promised to the faithful who do good deeds” 4 . The ancient Saturday, according to Augustine, is also a prototype of Christ’s presence in the tomb on Holy Saturday. Finally, Saturday is an image of the Kingdom of Heaven, “the Saturday of eternal life” 5, “the Saturday that has no evening, that is, the endless rest of the saints” 6. The divine rest of the seventh day can also be understood as the cessation of the creation of something that did not previously exist. At the same time, although God rested from the works of creation, He did not for a moment cease to govern the already created world, miraculously remaining at the same time in peace and work. Blzh. Augustine writes: “we understand the expression that God rested from all His works that He did to mean that He did not create any more new creatures, and not that He ceased to preserve and manage those already created. Hence, it is true both that He rested on the seventh day and that which He continues to do to this day.” 7 Blzh. Augustine points out that the peace of God cannot be understood in the same sense as the peace of man. Having created the world, the Lord was not tired and did not need rest: “this rest should not be understood in a childish way, as if God was tired while creating” 8. God, being eternal, perfect and good, has no need for rest, since he always abides in him and is never deprived of it: “for His rest there is neither morning nor evening, because this peace has neither beginning nor end” 9. This uncreated and eternal peace is incommensurable with anything created and temporary: “The beginningless-eternal peace of God, which preceded the creation of man, is such that if you compare with it any enormous and inexpressible number of centuries (...), the comparison will not correspond to even the comparison of the slightest drop of water with the totality of the waters of all seas and oceans” 10. However, for created, and therefore time-subject to beings, the eternal Divine rest has its beginning in the seventh day: the rest of God “has neither beginning nor end; in relation to the creation He produced, this peace of God has a beginning” 11. Thus, the Sabbath day turned out to be a kind of “bridge” between God and the man he created, between eternity and time. God’s sanctification of the Sabbath can therefore be understood as condescension to the weak human nature and at the same time a call to perfection: God “never lost rest, but showed it to us on the seventh day, making it clear that His rest is found only by the perfect, for in order to instill the thought of peace He appointed the day that followed the completion of all creation” 12. Almost at the very end of his “Confession”, Blessed. Augustine enthusiastically turns to God: “You see outside of time, act outside of time and rest outside of time - but you allow us to see in time, you create time itself and peace at the end of time” 13. The Sabbath made it possible, as it were, to compare incommensurable things - the peace of God in eternity and the peace of man in time. What should this peace of a person be like? Is it limited to simply abstaining from all activities on the Sabbath, as was the case in the Old Testament? Blzh. Augustine thinks a lot about this and, like other holy fathers (for example, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, St. Justin Martyr, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Palamas), comes to the conclusion that the peace of the Sabbath has, first of all, an internal spiritual dimension, which dominates the external and ritual. The man of the New Testament is called to constant spiritual rest (Sabbath): “from the time of grace that appeared, the veneration of the Sabbath, which was expressed in the celebration of one day, was removed from the faithful. In this grace the permanent Sabbath is celebrated by the one who, by doing good, hopes for future peace and does not boast of his good deeds” 14. The New Testament man, like Christ, keeps the Sabbath by good deeds and in order to “have no sin,” that is, not to do slavish, sinful deeds 15 . Blzh. Augustine draws attention to the fact that the Sabbath bodily rest practiced by the Jews did not give them the spiritual fruits that Christians find in their constant Sabbath. Blzh. Augustine writes in his exposition of Psalm 91, 16: “Our rest comes from evil deeds, and theirs from good ones (...). God proclaims the Sabbath to us. What Saturday? First, think where it is: it is in the heart, inside us; after all, many rest in their parts of the body, while their conscience is troubled... This very joy in the peace of our hope is our Sabbath” 17 . Blzh. Augustine cries: “Open your eyes, you Jews: the sun has risen. (...) You keep the Sabbath in a carnal way, you do not have the spitting 18 of Christ” to be healed of blindness 19 . Why, then, were bodily rest prescribed to the Jews? Blzh. Augustine considers it “an image that we received as a means of our edification, and not as a duty that weighs on us” 20. Sabbath rest is given as “a type of sanctification, into which people enter through rest in the Holy Spirit” 21 . Blzh. Augustine, therefore, sees in the commandment about the Sabbath (as opposed to other provisions of the Decalogue) a figurative, mystical meaning. Accordingly, this commandment must be fulfilled spiritually, and not physically: “we are not commanded to keep the Sabbath literally, in repose from bodily labor, as the Jews do” 22. In the 17th treatise on the Gospel of John, Bl. Augustine writes that the preservation of the Sabbath was given to the Jews for a time - until the coming of the Savior, in whom the “sacrament of the Sabbath” became complete 23. Moreover, the true life that was lost after the Fall and of which the Sabbath was symbolized is “represented by the first day of the week, which we call the day of the Lord” 24 - this is the day of the glorious Resurrection of Christ, when victory over death was won and the path to eternal and blessed life was opened. So, darling. Augustine left us very valuable thoughts about Divine rest, which help us understand the deep spiritual meaning of the Sabbath commandment. God showed great mercy to man by sanctifying the Sabbath day as a sign of that endless spiritual peace that we find in Himself. Finally, God, appearing in the flesh, revealed to us the fullness of the New Testament Sabbath, which we enter not through the renunciation of any work for one day a week, but through the performance of good deeds and abstinence from sin throughout our entire lives. This peace, this Divine Saturday - when the conscience is no longer disturbed by anything evil, when the source of peace for a person is the eternal God, and not anything created and temporary - becomes an inexhaustible source of joy for the Christian. The thoughts of the darling. Augustine and other holy fathers about this - this is also an invitation to each of us to enter God's peace and always remain in it. See our article “Orthodox theology of Sunday and Saturday (on the question of understanding the fourth commandment of the Decalogue),” which also briefly talks about the views of the blessed one. Augustine. URL: http://www.bogoslov.ru/text/3386271.html “And the most important (question), what is the peace of God, is what human mind can solve?” (Blessed Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XIV // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2: Theological treatises. - St. Petersburg: Aletheia; Kyiv: UCIMM-Press, 2000. P. 399.) “How to understand that God rested in Himself from all His works?” (Blessed Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XX // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 406.) About the book of Genesis, IV, X // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 396. See also: About the City of God, XI, VIII; Confession, XXXVI, 51. About the book of Genesis, IV, XI // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 396. Confession, XXXVI, 51 // Blessed Augustine. Confession / Transl. from lat. M. E. Sergeenko; entry Art. diak. A. Gumerova. – M.: Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2006. P. 315. On the City of God, XX, VII // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 4: About the city of God. Books XIV-XXII. – St. Petersburg: Aletheia; Kyiv: UCIMM-Press, 1998. P. 385. Blzh. Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XII // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 398. Also: “the thought of idleness, laziness and inaction should not be combined with the thought of His peace, just as the thought of work, tension and effort should not be combined with the thought of His activity. He can act while resting, and rest while acting” (On the City of God, XII, XVII // Blessed Augustine. Works: In 4 vols. Vol. 3: On the City of God. Books I-XIII. - St. Petersburg: Aletheia; Kiev: UCIM-Press, 1998. P. 539). About the City of God, XI, VIII // P. 472. Blzh. Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XVIII // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 402. About the City of God, XII, XII // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 3: About the city of God. Books I-XIII. – St. Petersburg: Aletheia; Kiev: UCIMM-Press, 1998. P. 529. Blzh. Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XVIII // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 404. Blzh. Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XV // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 400. Confession, XXXVII, 52 // Blessed Augustine. Confession / Transl. from lat. M. E. Sergeenko; entry Art. diak. A. Gumerova. – M.: Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2006. Blzh. Augustine. About the book of Genesis, IV, XIII // Blessed Augustine. Creations: In 4 vols. T. 2. P. 398. Treatises on the Gospel of John, 44, 9. URL: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701044.htm In the Western tradition this is Psalm 93. The translation is based on the following source: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801092.htm. Augustine continues his thought: “The subject of praise and song in this psalm is how the Christian abides in the Sabbath of his own heart, that is, in the silence, calm and serenity of his conscience.” An allusion to the healing of a man born blind, for which Christ used clay made from spitting (see Gospel of John, chapter 9). Sermons on the New Testament, 86. URL: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/160386.htm Letter 55, from Augustine to Januarius, 12, 22. Translation based on the following source: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1102055.htm Letter 55, from Augustine to Januarius, 10, 18. Letter 55, from Augustine to Januarius, 12, 22. Treatises on the Gospel of John, 17:13. URL:http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701017.htm Letter 55, from Augustine to Januarius, 9, 17. http://www.bogoslov.ru/text/3983457.html