The True and Holy Food

So there was a certain ancient time in which those shadows and figures were to be used, a time when people had to keep away from foods that their very creation had commended but the law had forbidden. Now, though, Christ has come, the end of the law, and he has thrown open everything in the law that was dark — all the things that earlier ages had covered over with the clouds of sacred signs. For the illustrious Teacher has come, the heavenly Instructor, the one who set the completed truth in order; and under him it can at last rightly be said: “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; even their mind and their conscience are defiled.” And in another place: “Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be turned down if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and by prayer.” And again, in another place: “The Spirit says in so many words that in the last days some will fall away from the faith, giving their attention to seducing spirits and to teachings of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, their conscience branded with a hot iron, forbidding marriage and ordering people to keep away from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know God.” And in yet another passage: “Eat anything that is sold in the meat market, and ask no questions.” [a]

From all this it is plain that, now that the law is finished, all those things have gone back to the blessing they had at first, and that we must not return to the special rules about food. Those rules were laid down for a particular reason, but the freedom the good news brings has now taken them away, and their discharge has been signed. The apostle cries out: “The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy.” And elsewhere: “Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food, but God will do away with both the one and the other. The body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” God is not worshipped by the stomach, nor by foods, which the Lord says will perish and which the body’s own workings clear out into the latrine. A man who worships the Lord by what he eats has simply made his stomach his Lord.

The food that is true and holy and clean, I say, is a true faith, a conscience without a stain, and a soul that has done no harm. Whoever is fed on that is feeding with Christ as well. A diner like that is God’s own guest. These are the feasts that feed the angels; these are the tables the martyrs set. Hence that word of the law: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.” And hence that saying of Christ: “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to finish his work.” And this: “You are looking for me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of my loaves and had your fill. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that lasts into eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you; for on him the Father has set his seal.”

God is worshipped, I say, by righteousness, by self-control, and by the rest of the virtues. Zechariah tells us the same thing: “If you eat or if you drink, is it not you yourselves who eat and drink?” By this he shows that food and drink reach as far as a person and no further; they do not reach God. God is not made of flesh, so that flesh should please him, and he is not concerned with these pleasures, so as to take delight in what we eat. God delights in our faith alone, in our innocence alone, in our truth alone, in our virtues alone. And these do not live in the stomach but in the soul, and they are got for us by awe of God and by the fear of heaven, not by earthly food. Those are exactly the people the apostle rightly put in their place: men “devoted to the worship of angels, puffed up by their fleshly mind, and not holding on to Christ the head, from whom the whole body, joined at its joints and knit and grown together by its members in the bond of love, grows toward God” — men who keep instead to “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” rules that do have a certain look of religion about them, in that the body is given no mercy. Yet there is no gain at all for righteousness in it, while we are called back by a slavery we chose ourselves to the very elements we died to in baptism.

But the fact that we are given freedom in food does not mean that self-indulgence must follow. The good news has dealt very generously with us, and it has not for that reason done away with self-control. What was provided for here, I say, was not the stomach; what was shown was what food really is. It was made plain what was right — not so that we could plunge into a pit of appetite, but so that the reason behind the law could be given. In fact nothing has held excess in check like the good news, and nobody has laid down stricter laws against gluttony than Christ. He is the one who called the poor blessed and the hungry and thirsty happy, and the rich wretched: men who take their orders from their stomach and their palate, who can never run short of fuel for their cravings, so that their slavery never ends; men who count it proof of their good fortune to want as much as they possibly can, except that this way they manage to get less than they want. And by preferring Lazarus — in his very hunger, in his sores themselves, and with the rich man’s dogs — Christ used examples to hold back the two destroyers of salvation, the stomach and the palate. [l]

The apostle laid down the law of plain living and self-control too when he said: “Having food and clothing, we are content with that.” And judging that it would do little good merely to have written it, he made himself the example of what he had written; and he added, not without reason: “Greed is the root of all evils.” For greed walks in the footsteps of self-indulgence. Whatever self-indulgence has squandered by vice, greed makes up again by crime; the same round of crimes is walked over and over, so that self-indulgence can carry off once more whatever greed had heaped together.

And amid all this there is no shortage of men who have claimed the sound of the Christian name for themselves and still hand out lessons and examples in excess. Their vices have gone so far that they drink first thing in the morning while they are still fasting. They do not think it Christian to drink after food, unless the wine has been poured into empty, unoccupied veins and has gone straight down after sleep; the drink seems to have less flavor to them if food is mixed in with the wine. So you may see a new kind of man: still fasting and already drunk, not running to the tavern but carrying the tavern about with him. If one of them offers you a greeting, he does not give you a kiss — he drinks your health. What are such men going to do after a meal, when a meal finds them already drunk? And what sort of state does the setting sun leave them in, when the rising sun already looks down on them dull with wine?

But things that deserve disgust are not there to be taken as our examples. We are to take only the things that can make our soul better. And although in the good news the use of every food is given to us across the board, it is understood to be given only together with the law of plain living and self-control. For these things are very fitting indeed for the faithful — for people who are going to pray to God and give him thanks not by day only but by night as well. And that cannot happen if the mind, dulled by food and wine, has no strength to shake off heavy sleep and the weight piled on the chest.

But there is one thing in the use of food that must be guarded against with the greatest care, and we must give warning about it: nobody should think this freedom is allowed so far that he may even go near what has been offered to idols. As far as God’s making of it goes, every creature is clean. But once it has been offered to demons, it is polluted for as long as it is being offered to the idols; and the moment that is done, it no longer belongs to God but to the idol. And when a creature like that is taken as food, it feeds the person who takes it for the demon and not for God, making him a fellow guest of the idol and not of Christ — which is why the Jews too are right to keep away from it. [p]

So then: the meaning of these foods has been worked out, the purpose of the law has been weighed, the kindness that the good news brings has been recognized, the strictness of self-control has been kept in view, and the pollution of food offered to idols has been refused. Holding to the rule of truth in all of it, we ought to give thanks to God through Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord — to whom be praise and honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.