KENTUCKY by S. Osborn

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 22, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 17

KENTUCKY

By S. Osborn

Debate at Seatonville.—The debate at Seatonville closed March 26, after having continued five days. Eld. Harding was considered a great debater, and was highly esteemed by the Disciple church, which included nearly the entire community. He was an orator. His entire object seemed to be to evade rather than to meet an argument, and he had great tact in this direction. There are only two or three points that may be worthy of notice, as the most of his arguments were not new.

I pressed him to show what sin created the necessity for the death of Christ. He finally said it was the spiritual death of Adam. I replied, In order to make an atonement for that death, Christ would be required to die a spiritual death, then why did he die a natural death? It was not for his individual transgressions; for he had no sin. This he never answered. The communion could not commemorate this spiritual death; for there was no blood shed in that, no body broken. If there was no sin committed that required the natural death of Christ, then his natural death was in vain, and the Lord’s supper, on which they place so high an estimate, is a meaningless ordinance. He evaded this by a burst of eloquence. He said we were living under Christ’s law, and if we sinned we were amenable to Christ. I asked who was the mediator between Christ and man. Here he failed again. I showed that Christ was the Advocate between God and man. 1 John 2:1; 1 Tim. 2:5. I called the attention of the congregation to the fact that his system had no Advocate, no sacrifice for sin, no atonement; hence those who transgress Christ’s law must pay their own penalty. I compared this view with their teaching, and showed their inconsistency.

On his first-day proposition he only made one new argument, and that was on the Greek word kuriake (Rev. 1:10), translated “Lord’s day” in our version. He said this was exclusively a New Testament word, and must denote a new thing, a new day, requiring a new word to express it, just as the telephone, telegraph, etc., each required a new word. Here he cut the most of my answer off by a rule of the debate which gave the affirmative a right to close his proposition when he pleased.

But a new name does not always imply a new thing; for the followers of Christ were at first called disciples, but about ten years after the day of Pentecost they were called a new name,—“Christians.” Acts 11:26. Other examples might be cited to show the fallacy of his argument.

If the debate did no good except to confirm and establish our brethren there, it did that. We organized a little church of six members, all of whom were baptized into the faith. S. OSBORN.

In connection with the foregoing, we republish the following criticism on the word kuriake, by H. Wren, which we think sets the matter in its true light:—

LORD’S DAY AND THE GREEK.

Sunday advocates sometimes appeal to the Greek of the New Testament; and Rev. 1:10 is a text which is so used. The Greek expression there is “kuriake hemera” translated “Lord’s day.”

The argument they draw from the phrase is this: kuriake is a term which signifies relating to the Lord, i. e., to Christ. Hence, kuriake hemera is a day relating to Christ, or to the Christian dispensation. This day, they say, cannot be the seventh, as it related to the old dispensation; but it must be Sunday, as this dispensation is characterized by Christ’s having risen on that day.

Now, to our mind, this conclusion is not sufficiently obvious to carry with it a conviction of truth. If it could be shown by the advocates of Sunday that somewhere in the Bible kuriake is applied, in plain terms, to the first day of the week, their argument from Rev. 1:10 would be good. Or, if failing to find a passage where the adjective kuriake is so applied, they would produce one in which the stem, or original noun, kurios, is so used, that will do; as all will readily admit that if the noun kurios is used to express Christ’s relation to Sunday, then the adjective kuriake, which is derived from kurios, is so used in Rev. 1:10; and they have established their point to the satisfaction of every critic of the Greek.

But can they do this? All are free to admit that kuriake is an adjective derived from the noun kurios. Kurios means Lord, and kuriake means Lordlike, or pertaining to the Lord. It is, then, perfectly obvious that if kurios is ever used to express Christ’s relation to the first day of the week, when kuriake is used to describe a day, as in Rev. 1:10, this last day may be, and in all probability is, the first day of the week.

Right here is where they must stand or fall. If there is nothing in the Bible which applies either of these Greek words to Sunday, they must give up the case, since it is simply begging the question to assert that kuriake hemera in Rev. 1:10, is Sunday, without some Scriptural authority for such an assertion. It is merely to assume the very point to be proven.

An appalling fact here meets our Sunday-keeping friends. That fact is this: Neither kurios nor kuriake is ever used to express Christ’s relation to the first day of the week. But, on the contrary, kurios is expressly used to declare Christ’s relation to the Sabbath day. The Son of man is kurios (Lord) of the Sabbath day. Matt. 12:8.

Here, kurios is used to show Christ’s relation to some “day;” viz., the Sabbath day. Now, as we have seen, kuriake is an adjective derived from kurios. If, then, we anywhere find kuriake applied to some day, and there is nothing in the passage where it is so used, nor in any other passage, requiring us to acknowledge a different day from that to which kurios has been applied, we are bound to conclude that the day to which kuriake is applied is the same as that to which kurios is applied. So that kurios of the Sabbath day is identical in import with kuriake day. Amen; so let it be.