Posted on 11/05/2006 6:57:21 AM PST by Gamecock
Protestant reflection on the consumption of alcohol has undergone a dramatic transformation since the Reformation. Whether this change stems from the rise of pietism or the triumph of middle-class morality, contemporary evangelical ideas about alcohol are at odds with the views of the Protestant reformers. Attending to the reformers' ideas, then, is important not only for those who would claim to be their heirs but also for a good understanding of what the Bible teaches about alcohol.
Calvin Addresses the Old Testament
In a sermon by John Calvin on Deuteronomy 14:26, which is arguably the classic Old Testament text with regard to drinking alcoholic beverages, the command reads:
"And you shall bestow that money for whatsoever your soul lusts after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever your soul desires: and you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, and your household."
Calvin's exposition of this verse is interesting. He accentuates not only the glory of God but eating and drinking in the presence of the God of glory. When we drink wine or strong drink, we drink in the audience of the heavenly Vintner who expects us to enjoy his gifts.
Calvin also cautions us that Deuteronomy 14:26 was a crucial text of the fifth century Manichaean heretics who were dualists in creation. Their theology was that the character of the good God is a sufficient guarantee that he would not have filled the universe with things that man could abuse to his own damnation. They deduced that the material universe is not the work of God, but of the devil. And they employed as a rampart this same verse. Calvin wrote of them:
A certain sect of Heretics called the Manichees, which scorned God's law and the prophets, alleged this present text and such other like, to show that the God of the Old Testament as they blasphemously term him, was a God of disorder and such a one as kept no good rule. For why, said they, he laid the bridle upon his people's neck, and bade them eat whatsoever they like, and so as the meaning was to make them drunkards and gluttons, by encouraging them to eat and drink after that fashion. But the true God (said they) will have folk to be sober, whereby a man may see that the Law is not given from heaven.
Against the Manichees, Calvin argued that meat and strong drink are gifts that should be unwrapped in the presence of God. He wrote that we "never come to the table, without considering that God is present there."
The Manichaean approach to wine may be illustrated by some contemporary fulminations. For example, the Koran reads: "O true believers! Surely wine and gambling and stone pillars are an abomination, of the work of Satan." Again: "There is a devil in every berry of the grape." In American Church history, Dr. Thomas Welch introduced Welch's grape juice to replace wine in 1869. Welch was a Methodist minister (and dentist) who learned of Pasteur's experiments about how yeast and grape juice interact to create wine. Thus, Welch experimented with a method of boiling wine and filtering it so that the alcoholic content was removed. The result was "Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine." Later, his son Charles carried the torch himself, desiring to give the church what he called "the fruit of the vine, instead of the cup of devils." So pervasive is the anti-alcohol bias today, that even the translators of the New King James Bible seemed to abandon their translation integrity by substituting "similar drink" for "strong drink" in Deuteronomy 14:26.
Reformation Churches Allowed Alcohol
The Churches of the Protestant Reformation were universally tolerant of drinking. This was unwittingly attested to by Erasmus of Rotterdam, who although remaining loyal to Rome, yet when rebuked for drinking Pommard on a fast day, said, "My heart is Catholic, but my stomach is Protestant." He was neutral to the Reformation, but he was not neutral about wine.
John Calvin also expressed his heartfelt gratitude for wine. He wrote in his The Institutes of Christian Religion that "It is permissible to use wine not only for necessity, but also to make us merry." Calvin praised the transubstantiation of the water into wine at Cana of Galilee as "most excellent wine." He laid down two conditions for wine drinking: First, it must be moderate, "lest men forget themselves, drown their senses, and destroy their strength." Calvin even argued that "in making merry," those who enjoy wine "feel a livelier gratitude to God."
Interestingly, Calvin's yearly salary in Geneva included several barrels of wine. The Town Council recognized the large number of guests he would be expected to entertain; thus he was given "the substantial annual salary of 500 florins, together with twelve measures of wheat and two bossets (perhaps 250 gallons) of wine."1
Calvin was also persuaded that wine should be served during the administration of the Lord's Supper. He catechized his catechumens accordingly, "But why is the body of our Lord figured by bread, and his blood by wine?" He answered that "by wine the hearts of men are gladdened, their strength recruited, and the whole man strengthened, so by the blood of our Lord the same benefits are received by our souls."
Like Luther, Calvin also compared music with wine. He believed that music was the first gift of God, having the power to "enter the heart like wine poured into a vessel, with good or evil effect."2
Concerning drunkenness, both Calvin and Luther thundered. Calvin warned, "If a man knows that he has a weak head and that he cannot carry three glasses of wine without being overcome, and then drinks indiscreetly, is he not a hog?" Luther's unscientific definition of drunkenness is classic: "Drunkenness: when the tongue walks on stilts and reason goes forward under a half sail." These pithy phrases are reminiscent of one of their pedigree, Increase Mather, who was to preach to New Englanders: "Wine comes from God, but the drunkard from the Devil."
Calvin's commentary on the vow of the Rechabites to obey the Fifth Commandment by forgoing wine will startle all Rechabite-like clones (Jer. 35). He wrote that the self-abnegation of the Rechabites was not that they denied themselves sinful things, but things supremely good. He projected himself into the Rechabite family when he said that their willingness to forgo wine was "hard."
Luther's Strong Advocacy of Alcohol
Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all had "Protestant Stomachs." Luther wrote a love letter to his wife when he was away from home complaining that "there is nothing fit to drink here." He then pled the impossible from Catherine who herself was a trained brewster:
It would be a good thing for you to send me the whole wine cellar and a bottle of your own beer as often as you can. If you don't I shall not come back for the new beer. Amen. Your lover, Martin Luther.
Again, he wrote her:
You must wonder how long I am likely to stay or, rather, how long you will be rid of me. I keep thinking what good wine and beer I have at home, as well as a beautiful wife, or shall I say lord?
Luther also had a mug that was encircled by three rings. One ring represented the Lord's Prayer, another the Ten Commandments, and the third the Apostle's Creed. A memorable incident occurred in Luther's life when he was amused on one occasion that he could drain the glass of wine through the Lord's Prayer, but his friend Agricola could not get beyond the second ring, the Ten Commandments.
Luther was so adamant about using wine in the Lord's Supper that he said in his Table Talk that "if a person can't tolerate wine, omit it (the Sacrament) altogether in order that no innovation may be made or introduced."
The Diet of Worms featured no diet of beer! Luther was brought a tankard of German beer by the footmen of the Duke of Brunswick. He was heartily appreciative. "As Duke Erick has this day remembered me," he said, after a good draught, "so may our Lord Jesus Christ remember him in the hour of his last conflict."
When Luther was married, he was presented with several casks of beer, but the university gave him a large silver tankard, "platted with gold on the outside and inside, weighing five pounds and a quarter."
Martin Luther's counseling of depressed students sometimes included recommendations for drinking wine. Writing to a young man in 1530, he counsels him to fight against Satan by joking and laughing and talking nonsense. He urges the man to drink, especially if the devil has tempted him not to drink. Luther may have been the first to recognize that our wily enemy the devil may tempt a saint not to drink. His "nouthetic" counseling featured the following advice:
We are nowhere forbidden to laugh, or to be satisfied with food, or to annex new possessions to those already enjoyed by ourselves or our ancestors, or to be delighted with music.
One must always do what the Devil forbids. What other cause do you think I have for drinking so much strong drink, talking so freely and making so often, except that I wish to mock and harass the devil who is wont to mock and harass me?
John Knox, the colossus of the Scottish Reformation, composed a letter before leaving Scotland on how Protestant religious instruction should be practiced in his absence. He urged Protestants to read the Bible regularly, even if God's elect people became bored or weary. If they wearied, the antidote was to remember their persecuted brethren who were in no position to read the Bible at all. Knox argued:
If such men as having to read and exercise themselves in God's holy Scriptures, and yet begin to weary, because from time to time they read but one thing, I ask, why weary they not also each to eat bread? Every day to drink wine? Every day to behold the brightness of the sun?
The premise that wine drinking was a daily occurrence seems undeniable.
On November 15, 1572, Knox ate his last dinner. Two friends joined him at noon. Knox sat at the meal with them, and ordered a fresh hogshead of wine to be drawn. A hogshead was no pittance. It measured about fifty-one gallons. Knox even lamented that because of the immanency of his death that he would probably not be present to finish the hogshead.
The great Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli was also partial to wine. Zwingli compared the Word of God to "a good strong wine." He writes:
To the healthy it warms his blood. But if there is someone who is sick of a disease or fever, he cannot even taste it, let alone drink it, and he marvels that the healthy is able to do so. This is not due to any defect in the wine, but to that of the sickness. So too it is with the Word of God. It is right in itself and its proclamation is always for good. If there are those who cannot bear or understand or receive it, it is because they are sick."
We read in the Confessions that originated from the Reformation that wine is commanded in the Lord's Supper. For example, the Heidelberg Catechism, which was written by Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus in 1562, presupposes both bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. What is more, the Heidelberg glorifies wine-drinking in common meals too, when it speaks of "wine that sustains this temporal life." The Westminster Larger Catechism (Q-168) defines the Lord's Supper as "a sacrament of the New Testament, wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine according to the appointment of Jesus Christ." The regulative principle is in part a culinary principle: It tells us that we must allow the Lord to set our tables and to pour our wine so that our cups run over.
Christian Liberty and Wine
It is clear that the reformers regarded the use of wine in the Lord's Supper as an absolute. The question is: What were their views about the use of wine outside the context of public worship? Would they concur that if wine "offends" another brother that it should not be drunk? Is this not the teaching of Paul who wrote that "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world stands?" (1 Cor. 8:13).
To answer this question we must assess a common, superficial interpretation of the word "offend." Many will use the word "offend" in a way altogether foreign to the Apostle Paul. There are some who take offense at virtually anything that contradicts their own traditions. To allow such Christians to regulate our lives would be folly. Practical Theology Professor R. B. Kuiper writes:
Emphatically though he taught that Christians must serve one another in love, he did not promise never to do anything that might possibly displease a brother.... What Paul meant was that he would scrupulously refrain from knowingly placing, by his conduct, a stumbling block before his brother over which the brother might fall into sin.3
Biblically, "to offend," means to make a person sin. If we place someone in a context where he feels pressured to eat or to drink what he cannot do in faith, then we have "offended" him (Rom. 14:20, 23). But to "offend" does not mean to displease or irritate a brother. If this were the meaning, then the Christian who drinks wine or strong drink would have greater justification to be offended, since wine is a gift that should elicit our praise (Ps. 104). "To offend," means to "stumble" or trip a brother into sin. Because of this narrow meaning, and with specific regard to Christian liberty, it might even be permissible to drink wine in the presence of a weak brother, as long as we do not grandstand it, or use the occasion to pressure a weak brother to sin against his conscience. A "weak brother" is not weak because he is easily irritable; a weak brother has a weak conscience.
The ascension of teetotalism, or abstinence, in the American church scene did not come easily. In his Religion and Wine (subtitled, A Cultural History of Wine Drinking in the United States) Robert C. Fuller documents the teetotaler's arch dilemma. His dilemma was not primarily how to abolish wine altogether, but how to cope with the temperate drinker, that is, the drinker who heartily drank but with no ruinous side effects.
This strategy can be seen in the work of the nineteenth century minister and historian Daniel Dorchester, who distinguished himself by rewriting viticulture history and redefining Christian liberty. His first strategy was to argue that wines available to the nineteenth century consumer bore no resemblance to the wines of biblical ages. He maintained that biblical wines were "mild, nonharmful." This was due, he said, to the differences between soil and climate. Then, Dorchester reproduced a famous chart composed by Dr. Benjamin Rush (who wrote in 1784) that listed the ill effects of alcohol. However, Dorchester willfully omitted Rush's category that equated wine with virtue. For example, Rush associated wine with "cheerfulness" and "strength" and "nourishment." But Dorchester's greatest challenge (and embarrassment) was the temperate drinker. Fuller has written, "The moderate drinker was a vexing problem that threatened to invalidate their whole line of reasoning." Thus, Dorchester began by ignoring the moderate drinker altogether. Then he emphasized that wine was not reliably "temperate" as we might first think. Editorialists spread disinformation that wine in the United States was adulterated with more potent spirits. This strategy was crowned with the teetotaler's viniferous application of 1 Corinthians 5:7 -- where Paul warns about a "little leaven" leavening the whole lump. In other words, even while granting that a little wine may not souse a man, prohibitionists maintained that its ultimate effect could only lead to societal debilitation. To drink the smallest measure of wine was to predestinate drunkenness for others (if not for oneself). Therefore, the Temperance Recorder of 1835 explained:
Our views with regard to pure wine are, that the Bible sanctions its moderate use -- that there can be no immorality in such use, under certain circumstances; but in our present condition with the fact that pure wine is fatal to the recovery of the drunkard, because it intoxicates, often forms the appetite for stronger drinks in the temperate, and its use by the rich hinders the poor from uniting with temperance societies -- that all, or nearly all the wine in this country, is a most vile compound; these are the reasons why we urge abstinence from all wine.
The reader will notice such expressions as "vile compound," "but in our present condition," etc. All of these arguments have invaded and occupied the Church today. Added to these contentions is a specious argument from Romans 14:21, where Paul¹s use of the word "offend" is interpreted as a trumpet for even moderate drinkers to cease and desist. Thus, the teetotaler agenda through the Volstead Act of 1919 was imposed upon all America until its repeal in 1933. Virtually all American denominations consented to it, even though they were not required by law to forego communion wine.
Hundreds of years before the anti-alcohol juggernaut in the United States and the unofficial endorsement of the Volstead Act in American churches, John Calvin foresaw the danger of a new cult of abstinence. In his commentary on Psalm 104:15, he writes that God has given "wine to make the heart of man glad," he warned against making the peril of drunkenness "a pretext for a new cult based upon abstinence."
The rhetoric behind this "new cult based upon abstinence" is often sharper than a doubled-edged sword. Our Lord himself was accused of drunkenness when he was called a "winebibber." This is the old strategy of the Devil, whose name means "slanderer." It is well for us to remember that the Devil slanders moderate drinkers, calling them drunkards; and that he slanders drinks, calling them evil.
Martin Luther's response to the iconoclasts, who sought to demolish abused objects, has a fitting application to the interplay between alcohol and Christian liberty. He wrote:
Do you suppose that abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused? Men can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit and abolish women? The sun, the moon, and the stars have been worshipped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky? ... See how much He has been able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and preach. The Word did it all. Had I wished I might have started a conflagration at Worms. But while I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.
Deuteronomy 14:26 teaches that God's people are to drink "wine" and "strong drink" in God's presence. The New Testament corollary is 1 Corinthians 10, which teaches all drinking for Christians is religious. "Therefore whatsoever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31).
Footnotes
1 - John T. MvNeil, The History and Character of Calvinism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) p.160.
2 - Ibid., p.149. 3 - R.B. Kuiper, To Be or Not to Be Reformed, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1959(, p.139
***If you drink wine, you're going to get tipsy.***
???????????? I drink wine occasionally, and never get tipsy. Never.
I don't see how drinking wine could possibly make someone less holy or even have anything to do with holiness??
"I can't provide a direct correlation between the rise of Dispensationalism, Fundamentalism and anti-alcoholism, but there certainly is an implied correlation."
That is just nonsense. The temperance movement started out as part of the Women's Sufferage movement of the 19th century and was picked up by the Weslyan Methodist Church and spread throughout most denominations, including the Quakers. A quote from the WCTU's history:
"The crusades' primary participants were middle class Evangelical Protestant women. Many felt a national organization should be established of these crusaders. In August of 1874, Martha McClellan Brown, a long-standing temperance worker from Ohio, Jennie Willing, corresponding secretary of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist church and a professor of English language and literature at Illinois Wesleyan University, and Emily Huntington Miller used their extensive church network contacts to circulate a letter to all the women's temperance organizations that had cropped up across the country urging elect a delegatefrom each congressional district to send to a national organizing convention. 16"
"In the Second Presbyterian Church on Wednesday, November 18, 1874, 300 women assembled to establish the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Sixteen states were represented, with 135 women registered as delegates. At this convention, the organization was put in place with elected permanent officers and a constitution. Mrs. Annie Wittenmyer was elected president, with Miss Frances E. Willard as corresponding secretary, Mrs. Mary Johnson as recording secretary, and Mrs. Mary Ingham as treasurer. 17 It was also at this meeting that the rule of only women as voting delegates and office holders was firmly incorporated"
Actually, you just proved the point of my post. If there wasn't a correlation, there certainly was a convergence.
Anti-alcoholism became a major "sacrament" of the fundamentalist movement as it emerged from 1878 to the 1920's. There was some major hand-holding going on.
"major "sacrament" of the fundamentalist movement"
It was never a "sacrament" of the Fundamentalist movement. The phrase "abstain from the sale and use of intoxicating drink as a beverage" is incorporated into many church Covenants, liberal and conservative. I represent many ABC churches, Baptist churches and Pentecostal churches that are not dispensational or Fundamentalist churches that have that in their Covenant. The phrase is not usually found in the Constitutions or Bylaws of the churches nor is it usually a condition of membership. It is a goal they seek to practice, like attendance at church meetings, tithing and helping one another.
Second, with all due respect, did you even read my post? If you did, and you maintain your argument, do you mean to suggest that anti-alcoholism sprang full blown from the womb of Women's Suffrage and the Temperance movement alone?
Third, did you read the original article?
Or do you simply like to argue?
I maintain that nothing in your previous post challenges anything I said in mine, and nothing in my post contradicts anything in your post. As with most historical movements, anti-alcoholism can claim more than one parent
I also maintain, that until the beginning of the evangelical enthusiasm which sprang from the millenialism of the mid 1800's, having an alcoholic drink was quite commom among Christians (obviously, there were some Christian groups who didn't condone alcohol) and was not routinely condemned.
Fundamentalism, one of the off-shoots of dispensationalism, which itself is one of the off-shoots of millenialism, up until recently has made it almost a commandment not to drink alcohol, among many other prohibitions, witness many of the posts in this thread. The mighty Temperance Movement, of which you speak, has virtually disappeared. Temperance today is mostly found in Fundamentalism/Evangelicalism.
That was unkind. Sorry.
Bootlegging gangs during prohibition (the insane attempt by unitarians and their evangelical dupes to make their neighbors holier than Jesus by force and threat of force) were overwhelmingly Jewish and Italian. Both cultures had strong family structures -- and both treated alcohol as another normal foodstuff, not some kind of evil magic voodoo juice.
Yes. He enjoyed all of God's blessings, and food and wine are blessings from God.
And I didn't say or even remotely imply that you could not. I pretty much agree with what you say, which is why I used the phrase "cause another to stumble" instead of "offend," which I think is likely a translation that does not accurately reflect the original Writer's intent.
MM
I imagine anyone hurt by alcohol would have similar feelings, regardless of their faith. I understand how alcohol abuse is bad, but that is more a function of the user, not the alcohol. It's just like guns, drugs, nicotine, most anything, in that the specific item itself is not evil/bad, but the person that abuses it or uses it for evil.
I think to be more accurate, teetotalism sprang from the Pietist movement, which spanned most all denominations (and gave birth to many...particularly the Methodists) from which millieniumists, dispensationalists, fundamentalists, and evangelicals also have root.
Pietism really started in Germany in the late 1600s, peaking there in the 1750s, and out of Lutheranism gave birth to the Moravian church--the first great foreign missionary sending Protestant group. John Wesley, father of Methodism was also inspired by Pietism (translating it into the English world) and this inspired 19th Century revivalism--which gave birth both to the temperance movement and, to the slavery abolitionist movement. Many of those denominations became more theologically liberal (Pietism eventually broke down into an emotional/romantic movement--the basis of theological liberalism) hence many of the late 19th Century and early 20th Century temperance types were not actually even orthodox (or fundamentalist) in any real sense. Of course the idea that sin lies in an external substance...not one's own heart...is NOT an orthodox idea. Oddly enough though, today's temperance folks are usually either very fundamentalist Christians, or, MADD types, with an axe to grind.
The idea that churches would sign (extra-biblical) convenants never to drink though, in a sense trying to surpass the righteousness of the life of Jesus....to me though, is very troubling--showing tremendous legalistic impulses.
He was human as well so "technically" he could have been (i.e. above a .10 blood alcohol level), but to think Christ turned into a driveling fool who couldn't stand up straight is downright unsensible...
The bottomline is Christ showed us how to act...that we can enjoy His gifts (yes, alcohol is a gift from God) in a fashion that allows us to experience their benefits but not to abuse those gifts by overindulging...
I certainly wouldn't argue with you regarding Pietism and tee-totalism (and I'm far from an expert on Pietism, or much else). There were many roots to anti-alcoholism, and obviously there were many who abstained from alcohol prior to the rise of any organized Temperance movement.
But I heartily agree with your last paragraph with regard to legalistic (dare we say Pharisaic?) impulses.
Bringing in Pietism, BTW, adds yet another layer to this thread which really has its roots in the Reformed attitude toward drinking. It was after, all, muscular Dispensationalism (Fundamentalism), with its emphasis on the don'ts (don't drink, smoke, dance, go to the theater and movies, wear lipstick and make-up, read the paper on Sunday, etc.) that began to take center stage in the 1870's and bumped Reformism out of the mainstream.
The reformers believed no matter what the passage from the OT, whether DIRECTLY applicable or not, we can learn IN PRINCIPLE from it.
Yes, of course, we don't do the old covenant festivals anymore, however, the principle here is that drinking in celebration--far from being an abomination--which the prohibitionists would have us believe, was a part of worship, actually prescribed by God. Obviously getting drunk (and/or sick) is (and was) always wrong, however joyfully celebrating together using God's gift of alchohol can be a good thing.
Don't be foolish...there's a difference between "drinking" and "drinking to excess." The Reformers recognized it, the first-century church recognized it, and sensible people today recognize it.
If you yourself aren't strong enough to control your drinking, then do what you must to avoid the enemy's trap; but do not generalize your particular problem into doctrine or, worse, dogma.
It's very common these days to hear evangelical pastors rail from the pulpit about the evils of Demon Rum. These same men advise us all, in the interest of holiness, to never let a drop of the stuff pass our lips. Yet, in many places in the Bible where drunkenness is condemned, gluttony is condemned right there along with it.
And how often do you hear gluttony condemned from the pulpit? Out of the mouths of men who, in many cases, clearly have not been by any means underfed? Addressing a congregation which nervously checks their watches if the pastor speaks too long, because they want to beat the Sunday lunchtime rush at the Golden Corrall?
Too often in modern Protestantism drinking is condemned in toto, whereas eating to excess is granted carte blanche. Neither of these attitudes squares with scripture.
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