Unfinished

Travis Fentiman
MDiv

May 2026

.

Outline

Intro
The Question

.

.

Intro:
Wood Heating & Power Plants

You live in the cold Northeast of America and still heat your old, leaky house with a wood stove due to the cost of heating.  On the Lord’s Day it takes significant time and work for you to feed logs into the fire and tend it throughout the day. Keeping the stove going is not a matter of life or death, but keeping the temperature pleasant does take extra time and work than simply doing the minimal to get by.  You earn a raise and decide to upgrade to electric heating.  Now you do less work on the Lord’s Day and pay the electric plant’s employees for heating your house comfortably on the Lord’s Day.

There was a time when everyone used wood heating.  A lot of work and time on the Lord’s Day was being devoted out of necessity to sustain this.  In transitioning to power plants, the whole community is able to do a lot less work on the Lord’s Day by delegating relatively few employees at the plant to do the work for all more efficiently.  To do this greater good, and keep the Lord’s Day better, it is only necessary to pay the employees for their labor, such payment not being something specifically religious, but common to human society and in accord with the light of nature, Christian prudence and the general rules of the Word.

If everyone in America did their own wood heating it would involve exponentially more work on the Lord’s Day than for a dedicated few at power plants to do it.  Likewise, if everyone in America made their own meals and cleaned them up on the Lord’s Day, it would involve much greater work on the Lord’s Day than persons eating at restaurants.  The very economic foundation of profitable businesses is that they can provide a service more efficiently and (usually) better than the patron.  They can do the service better with less work.  If one objects to paying for others’ more efficient labor on the Lord’s Day, one can always go back to wood heating.

.

Defining the Question

On any view of the Sabbath, or Lord’s Day, even the most outwardly rigorous, it is maintained that eating at a restaurant may be moral; and this not only under great necessity, but regularly.  The main argument has been given; what remains is only to fill out the more pertinent details and answer objections for the sake of satisfying consciences and better understanding Scripture.  To define the question more closely:

1. Let Westminster Confession 21.8 be granted, that “This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest all the day from their own works, words, and thoughts, about their worldly employments and recreations (Ex 20:8; 16:23, 25-26, 29-30; 31:15-17; Isa 58:13; Neh 13:15-22); but also are taken up the whole time in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy. (Isa 58:13; Mat 12:1-13)”

2. Let the rest of the teachings of the Westminster standards be granted as well, such as the Larger Catechism on the 4th Commandment (#115-21) and other ethically relevant sections, such as #99.

3. The Westminster standards nowhere explicitly forbid eating at restaurants on the Lord’s Day; thus if the practice is consistent with the principles elucidated therein, the issue is not a confessional one, but there is breadth for it.

4. It is maintained eating at a restaurant on the Lord’s Day may fall under “duties of necessity,” in reducing personal and overall work-load.  It is not being argued eating at restaurants apart from necessity is right, but that so eating may involve a relevant degree of necessity so that one may better keep the Lord’s Day holy unto the Lord.

5. The issue is not about zeal, whether one would be willing to abstain from restaurants if God said to.  I abstained from eating at restaurants on the Lord’s Day on principle for around 20 years, till greater light came in God’s mercy.  Everyone should be willing to do anything God says.  Would you be willing to eat at a restaurant on the Lord’s Day if it is God’s will for you to do so?

6. The issue is not whether one must eat at restaurants on the Lord’s Day, as there are so many particular, individualized factors which may make it more profitable for persons not to eat at them at times.  The issue is Christian liberty to use indifferent or good things, or things not disallowed, profitably.

7. The issue is not if any particular restaurant is fitting or convenient for keeping the Lord’s Day (some most certainly are not), but only that a restaurant in principle could be.

8. The issue is not public policy per se, if such restaurants became more ill-used and scandalous than the good they did, whether a community ought to close them on the Lord’s Day.  Rather, the issue is whether a restaurant can be so privately and lawfully used, in any circumstances, for our benefit and the glory of God.

Give a preview.

.

Nature of the Lord’s Day

The Lord’s Day is not a purely moral obligation, like not murdering, insofar as its obligation has changed before (**) and as the Lord Jesus gives exceptions to it (***).  Rather, it is partly positive (link), meaning that it has been imposed by God’s mere choice

 

.

Objections

But the unbelieving employees are not keeping the Lord’s Day

.

Corollaries

Being a Christian employee and an owner, explain how this is good

.

.

.

Related Pages