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Alcohol: Difference between revisions
→Intoxication in the New Testament
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==Intoxication in the New Testament== | ==Intoxication in the New Testament== | ||
The consumption of alcohol is discussed throughout the New Testament | |||
===Jesus and Alcohol=== | |||
Jesus referred to himself as a drinker: | |||
:''The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), Mt 11:19.</ref> | |||
Jesus also created wine at a wedding feast: | |||
:''Now there were '''six stone water jars''' there for Jewish ceremonial washing, each holding '''twenty or thirty gallons'''. Jesus told the servants, “Fill the water jars with water.” So they filled them up to the very top. Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the head steward,” and they did. When the head steward tasted the water that had been turned to wine, not knowing where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), he called the bridegroom and said to him, “'''Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the cheaper wine when the guests are drunk'''. You have kept the good wine until now!”<ref>Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible First Edition; Bible. English. NET Bible.; The NET Bible (Biblical Studies Press, 2006), Jn 2:6–10.</ref> | |||
This indicates that Jesus created somewhere between '''120 and 180 gallons of wine'''. And very good wine at that! | |||
==Alcohol and the early church== | |||
After the Holy Spirit fell on Pentecost, those on the streets mocked them, thinking that they were drunk. (Acts 2:13) | After the Holy Spirit fell on Pentecost, those on the streets mocked them, thinking that they were drunk. (Acts 2:13) | ||
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*''For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.'' (I Corinthians 12:13) | *''For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.'' (I Corinthians 12:13) | ||
In comparison, Peter said that before his conversion it was not unusual for him to get drunk ( | In comparison, Peter said that before his conversion it was not unusual for him to get drunk (1 Peter 4:3). After his conversion, however, Peter encourages Christians to "be sober". (I Peter 4:7). | ||
However, it is clear that those in the church in Corinth drank, and even got drunk: | However, it is clear that those in the church in Corinth drank, and even got drunk: | ||
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:''When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, '''another gets drunk'''. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), 1 Co 11:20–22.</ref> | :''When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, '''another gets drunk'''. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?<ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001), 1 Co 11:20–22.</ref> | ||
== | ==Alcohol in the church historically== | ||
There is no disagreement that Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine. As a result, none of the early church fathers forbade drinking. The view of total abstinence from alcohol never existed within the Christian church until the 1800s. What the church did teach was moderation. | |||
Clement of Rome was a disciple of Peter and, perhaps, Paul. Some early church fathers held him to be the authour of the book of Hebrews. He wrote a letter to the church of Corinth about 95 A.D. Here is an excerpt from that epistle: | |||
:'' | :''“Use a little wine,” says the apostle to Timothy, who drank water, “for thy stomach’s sake;” most properly applying its aid as a strengthening tonic suitable to a sickly body enfeebled with watery humours; and specifying “a little,” lest the remedy should, on account of its quantity, unobserved, create the necessity of other treatment. | ||
:''One Artorius, in his book On Long Life (for so I remember), thinks that drink should be taken only till the food be moistened, that we may attain to a longer life. It is fitting, then, that some apply wine by way of physic, for the sake of health alone, and others for purposes of relaxation and enjoyment. For first wine makes the man who has drunk it more benignant than before, more agreeable to his boon companions, kinder to his domestics, and more pleasant to his friends. But when intoxicated, he becomes violent instead. For wine being warm, and having sweet juices when duly mixed, dissolves the foul excrementitious matters by its warmth, and mixes the acrid and base humours with the agreeable scents. | |||
It has therefore been well said, “A joy of the soul and heart was wine created from the beginning, when drunk in moderate sufficiency.” And it is best to mix the wine with as much water as possible, and not to have recourse to it as to water, and so get enervated to drunkenness, and not pour it in as water from love of wine. For both are works of God; and so the mixture of both, of water and of wine, conduces together to health, because life consists of what is necessary and of what is useful. With water, then, which is the necessary of life, and to be used in abundance, there is also to be mixed the useful. | |||
:'' | :''...With reason, therefore, the apostle enjoins, “Be not drunk with wine, in which there is much excess;” by the term excess (ἀσωτία) intimating the inconsistence of drunkenness with salvation (τὸ ἄσωστονs). For if He made water wine at the marriage, He did not give permission to get drunk. He gave life to the watery element of the meaning of the law, filling with His blood the doer of it who is of Adam, that is, the whole world; supplying piety with drink from the vine of truth, the mixture of the old law and of the new word, in order to the fulfilment of the predestined time. | ||
:''...In what manner do you think the Lord drank when He became man for our sakes? As shamelessly as we? Was it not with decorum and propriety? Was it not deliberately? For rest assured, He Himself also partook of wine; for He, too, was man. And He blessed the wine, saying, “Take, drink: this is my blood”—the blood of the vine. He figuratively calls the Word “shed for many, for the remission of sins”—the holy stream of gladness. And that he who drinks ought to observe moderation, He clearly showed by what He taught at feasts. For He did not teach affected by wine. And that it was wine which was the thing blessed, He showed again, when He said to His disciples, “I will not drink of the fruit of this vine, till I drink it with you in the kingdom of my Father.”2 But that it was wine which was drunk by the Lord, He tells us again, when He spake concerning Himself, reproaching the Jews for their hardness of heart: “For the Son of man,” He says, “came, and they say, Behold a glutton and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans.” <ref>Clement of Alexandria, “The Instructor,” in Fathers of the Second Century: Hermas, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, and Clement of Alexandria (Entire), ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 242–246.</ref> | |||
=Summary= | =Summary= | ||