CT Continues to Promote Lent, But Early Christians Kept Something Else

Over the past few years, I have noticed that some Protestants sometimes are embracing the Roman Catholic season of Lent. This year Lent falls from March 9 – April 23. The improperly named Christianity Today again posted an article (yesterday) related to it titled, “What People Gave Up for Lent, According to Twitter”. And while some items on the list were intended as a joke (giving up Twitter itself was number 1), this is consistent with a pattern from CT to try to get non-Roman Catholics to find non-biblical holidays more acceptable.

Lent is a forty-day period of time that proceeds the Catholic holiday commonly called Easter. During this time, observers tend to give up something they like (such as a food, like meat or certain meals or a form of secular entertainment, like television) essentially as a form of “fasting” for the purposes of getting closer to God or for penance.

Specifically many:

…observe Lent by fasting, performing penance, giving alms, abstaining from amusements…(Ramm B. Lent. World Book Encyclopedia, 50th ed., Volume 12. Chicago, p. 175).

Here is how The Catholic Encyclopedia defines Lent:

The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days’ fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season (Thurston H. Transcribed by Anthony A. Killeen. A.M.D.G. Lent. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IX. Published 1910. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York).

In other words, Lent means the Spring season (it may be of interest to note that Easter is a Teutonic word as well).

But since Lent means Spring and Lent now begins and is primarily in the Winter, where did it really come from?

The falsely named Christianity Today also reported:

The Beginning of Lent…
Until the 600s, Lent began on Quadragesima (Fortieth) Sunday, but Gregory the Great (c.540-604) moved it to a Wednesday, now called Ash Wednesday, to secure the exact number of 40 days in Lent—not counting Sundays, which were feast days. Gregory, who is regarded as the father of the medieval papacy, is also credited with the ceremony that gives the day its name. (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2004/lent.html)

Let’s Lengthen Lent…
pre-Lenten festivals such as the Mardi Gras have turned into bacchanals that have become a reproach to civilization.So what do we do? Observe Lent or ignore it?…I hope to be in my church on Ash Wednesday as a worshiper. (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/marchweb-only/34.0.html)

Lent
March 9 – April 23, 2011
Lent is one of the oldest observations on the Christian calendar. Like all Christian holy days and holidays, it has changed over the years…(http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/)

Despite claiming that it is part of the “Christian calendar”, the fact is that neither Ash Wednesday nor Lent can be found to be endorsed in the Bible. Obviously, many of those at the falsely named Christianity Today do not believe in sola Scriptura.

The Bible

Neither the Bible, which was not written in a Teutonic language, nor its translations (which sometimes are) uses the terms Lent.

The Old Testament uses the term Spring four or so times, but in the context of wars, not fasting. It does, however, endorse certain religious observances for that time of the year. It also mentions that the year begins on the first day of a certain lunar month (called Abib or Nisan) which is normally the first day of Spring (though it does not actually use that term). Note that God defines when the year begins:

This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you (Exodus 12:2 NKJV, throughout unless otherwise noted).

The God-ordained religious festivals mentioned as occurring in what is the Spring season of the year include Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost.

Here is the mention of the first two:

‘These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread (Leviticus 23:4-6).

The above were clearly observed by Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church (for additional documentation, please see the articles Passover and the Early Church, Melito’s Homily on the Passover, and Should Christians Keep the Days of Unleavened Bread?).

Here is a couple of verses about the days of unleavened bread and eating:

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel…For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cutoff from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations you shall eat unleavened bread (Exodus 12:15,19-20).

Since no leaven is allowed to be eaten during the days of unleavened bread, this could be considered as a form of fasting. It however, differs from the Lenten forms of fasting in that it begins the day after Passover and lasts for seven days. Most (and in some years, all) of the Lenten fasting occurs prior to the Passover (and most of it occurs in the Winter, not the Spring season, in spite of the fact that Lent means Spring).

The next observance mentioned in the Old Testament comes during the days of unleavened bread:

Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it (Leviticus 23:10-11).

Jesus Himself (who was also our Passover 1 Corinthians 5:7), fulfilled this sometime after He was resurrected (cf. John 20:17,27 KJV). This day was used both in the Old Testament and New Testament times to count when the next holy day would occur. Here is the Old Testament comment:

‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath (Leviticus 23:15-16).

The Greek term, used in the New Testament, is Pentecost, which means 50th, from the practice of it being the fiftieth day from the wave sheaf offering. The above are all the religious periods that the Old Testament mentioned that occur in the Spring (none, other than the weekly Sabbath, occur in the Winter season).

The term Spring is not mentioned in the New Testament. When referring to the early Spring season, the New Testament mentions biblical holy days, like Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread (for early Spring) and Pentecost (for late Spring)–it also mentions that Jesus and/or His disciples observed all of those. While the New Testament does mention a period called “the Fast” (Acts 27:9), scholars of most religious communities admit that this is referring to what is called in Hebrew Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement in English, which is a holy day that occurs in the Fall.

Thus, there is no specific Winter-Spring fast that the Bible (Old or New Testaments) teaches should be followed.

But there is Something in the Bible People Are Actually Told to Give Up Each Year

The Apostle Paul taught:

Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

There is no doubt that early Christians kept Passover. And there is substantial evidence to show that they kept the Days of Unleavened Bread, and not Lent, in the Spring. Notice, for example, a letter than Polycrates sent to the Roman Bishop Victor in the late second century:

We observe the exact day; neither adding, nor taking away. For in Asia also great lights have fallen asleep, which shall rise again on the day of the Lord’s coming, when he shall come with glory from heaven, and shall seek out all the saints. Among these are Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who fell asleep in Hierapolis; and his two aged virgin daughters, and another daughter, who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests at Ephesus; and, moreover, John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and, being a priest, wore the sacerdotal plate. He fell asleep at Ephesus. And Polycarp in Smyrna, who was a bishop and martyr; and Thraseas, bishop and martyr from Eumenia, who fell asleep in Smyrna. Why need I mention the bishop and martyr Sagaris who fell asleep in Laodicea, or the blessed Papirius, or Melito, the Eunuch who lived altogether in the Holy Spirit, and who lies in Sardis, awaiting the episcopate from heaven, when he shall rise from the dead? All these observed the fourteenth day of the passover according to the Gospel, deviating in no respect, but following the rule of faith. And I also, Polycrates, the least of you all, do according to the tradition of my relatives, some of whom I have closely followed. For seven of my relatives were bishops; and I am the eighth. And my relatives always observed the day when the people put away the leaven. I, therefore, brethren, who have lived sixty-five years in the Lord, and have met with the brethren throughout the world, and have gone through every Holy Scripture, am not affrighted by terrifying words. For those greater than I have said ‘ We ought to obey God rather than man’ (Eusebius. Church History, Book V, Chapter 24. Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. Excerpted from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series Two, Volume 1. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. American Edition, 1890. Online Edition Copyright © 2004 by K. Knight).

Notice that Polycrates said that he and the other early church leaders (like the Apostles Philip and John, and their successors like Polycarp, Thraseas, Eumenia, Sagaris, Papirius, Melito) would not deviate from the Bible, and that they knew the Bible taught them to keep the Passover on the correct date, and not on a Sunday. Also notice that they always observed the day when the people put away the leaven. Polycrates also reminded the Roman bishop that true followers of Christ “obey God rather than men”.

Notice what a respected Protestant scholar reported about the second century:

The most important in this festival was the passover day, the 14th of Nisan…In it they ate unleavened bread, probably like the Jews, eight days through…there is no trace of a yearly festival of the resurrection among them…the Christians of Asia Minor appealed in favor of their passover solemnity on the 14th Nisan to John (Gieseler, Johann Karl Ludwig. A Text-book of Church History. Translated by Samuel Davidson, John Winstanley Hull, Mary A. Robinson. Harper & brothers, 1857, Original from the University of Michigan, Digitized Feb 17, 2006, p. 166).

In the late third century, Anatolius of Alexandria wrote the following:

I am aware that very many other matters were discussed by them, some of them with considerable probability, and others of them as matters of the clearest demonstration, by which they endeavour to prove that the festival of the Passover and unleavened bread ought by all means to be kept after the equinox…

But nothing was difficult to them with whom it was lawful to celebrate the Passover on any day when the fourteenth of the moon happened after the equinox. Following their example up to the present time all the bishops of Asia—as themselves also receiving the rule from an unimpeachable authority, to wit, the evangelist John, who leant on the Lord’s breast, and drank in instructions spiritual without doubt—were in the way of celebrating the Paschal feast, without question, every year, whenever the fourteenth day of the moon had come, and the lamb was sacrificed by the Jews after the equinox was past; not acquiescing, so far as regards this matter, with the authority of some…(THE PASCHAL CANON OF ANATOLIUS OF ALEXANDRIA. Chapters V,X, p. 415, 419).

This should be proof to any with “eyes to see and ears to hear” that some who professed Christ were keeping the Days of Unleavened Bread centuries after Jesus died. Could this have ended up being changed and called Lent?

And while avoiding bread was number 20 on the CT Twitter list, leaven itself was not on the list, almost no one who observes Lent actually tries to observe the biblical instructions about avoiding all leaven as a Christian practice each year.

The original practice of the earliest Christians were to observe Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. Christians, like some of the observant Jews, purge their homes of leaven prior to to sunset on the 15th of Nisan (which starts Monday after sunset in 2011). And Christians avoid leaven for those seven days. This is something that the Bible teaches and early Christians practiced.

Will you follow those who followed Christ or do you prefer later adaptations?

Some articles of possibly related interest may include:

Is Lent a Christian Holiday? When did it originate? What about Ash Wednesday? If you observe them, do you know why?
Mardi Gras: The Devil’s Carnival? Do you know that in Bolivia the carnival/Mardi Gras time is part of a celebration known as the Devil’s Carnival? Did Jesus celebrate Carnaval? Where did it come from?
Is There “An Annual Worship Calendar” In the Bible? This paper provides a biblical and historical critique of several articles, including one by the Tkach WCG which states that this should be a local decision. What do the Holy Days mean? Also you can click here for the calendar of Holy Days.
Passover and the Early Church Did the early Christians observe Passover? What did Jesus and Paul teach? Why did Jesus die for our sins?
Melito’s Homily on the Passover This is one of the earliest Christian writings about the Passover. This also includes what Apollinaris wrote on the Passover as well.
Should Christians Keep the Days of Unleavened Bread? Do they have any use or meaning now? What is leaven? This article supplies some biblical answers.
The History of Early Christianity Are you aware that what most people believe is not what truly happened to the true Christian church? Do you know where the early church was based? Do you know what were the doctrines of the early church? Is your faith really based upon the truth or compromise?