I have just finished reading a collection of essays by James B. Jordan called “Studies in Food and Faith.”
I am going to be logging my notes and quotes here on this blog for safe keeping.
Written in 1989, it is 277 pages of some of the most fascinating insights into: the Mosaic law concerning diet and how they represented holiness for us, the meaning of clean and unclean and how Christ’s death cleansed the world, the biblical meaning of eating and how it ties into the Lord’s Supper, the relationships of animals to men and why they could serve as substitutes for us in the Old Covenant, the meaning of Peter’s blanket vision in Acts, what or who is God’s food, and much much more.
It is amazing what you have to know about the Bible in order to understand food and faith. It simply has to do with everything. Consider that the human race fell because of eating and since we will be like Jesus, we will still be eating after the resurrection. At the end of human history is the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
Eating is not just something we do, it is a basic part of God’s creation design. It is how we commune with God and each other,… but I am jumping ahead.
Here is the first quote:
It is the premise of this essay, as it is that of these essays as a whole, that the primary meaning of food in the Bible is religious. Our need for food demonstrates our dependence on God, and His provision of it shows His grace. Beyond that, how we relate to food has a lot to say about how we relate to God. The food laws God gave His people at various stages of redemptive history were all fundamentally sacramental in character.
Additionally, we have to say that the primary and ultimate factor in health is our relation to the Holy Spirit, Who is, according to the universal confession of Christendom in the Nicene Creed, "the Lord and Giver of life." Ultimately all life and power come from God, and apart from Him there is only sickness, impotence, and death. Health, therefore, is primarily religious in character.
The misuse of the Mosaic dietary code –taking it as "God’s laws of health" —arises from a failure to keep clear and central this religious meaning of food and health. The one abiding food law in the New Covenant is to join with Jesus Christ at His thanksgiving meal, the Holy Eucharistic Communion of the saints. In that we are to fellowship with God, we must eschew the table of demons (1Cor. 10:18-21), which is to eat food in any idolatrous religious setting; and in that we are to feast upon the blood of Christ, we are still to avoid all other blood (Acts 15:29). We are assured that proper communion with Christ, including the act of eating the Lord’s Supper, is conducive for good health, in that blasphemous eating results in sickness (1Cor. 11:30).
From this it is clear that good health is indeed connected to proper food, but that such proper food is nothing less than the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, given us in a mystery in the sacrament of Holy Communion
The Arguments
Jordan’s first argument he puts forth is that it is a big mistake to say that the dietary laws in the Old Testament are meant to be the healthy way to eat.
They are healthy in the sense that God would not command his people to do anything unhealthy, but they are not meant to be the perfect diet. Here are some of his reasons:
1. The Bible never ever says that the dietary laws are given for health. God does say that faithful observance will result in good health but this is because God won’t put the diseases on them, not the result of the eating. It is the result of obedience and faith. (Dt. 7:12-15; 11:8-9; 18-21;)
What, then, was the hygienic value of the law? Simply that God would not put diseases on them if they kept it. God would not put — that is the important phrase. God sends disease, and He can restrain it. The key to health is obedience and faith, not mechanical observance of health techniques. Valuable as exercise, good diet, and the like may be, they are not part of God’s revealed law.
2. If the laws are supposed to be the only healthy way to eat, then why wait until Moses. Didn’t God care if Noah or Abraham or Joseph ate shrimp or pork? If the purpose of the dietary laws were for health, God would have given them to the Patriarchs.
3. The laws are temporary in Scripture according the vision given to Peter in Acts 10. These laws are ceremonial laws and are no longer binding on us. This isn’t because God doesn’t care for our health anymore, but that the purpose of these laws was something else.
4. The Bible gives no list of edible versus poisonous plants. Surely if good health was the reason for the laws, plants would have been included.
5. The Bible states that the purpose of these laws was symbolic. “Peter’s vision in Acts 10 establishes a symbolic connection between the unclean animals and the Gentile nations, an association already set forth in Leviticus 20:22-26. No one denies this, but modern Christians are not accustomed to Biblical symbolism, with the result that full justice is not done to the laws of uncleanness.”
6. “… clean and unclean do not mean edible and inedible when it comes to food. As Genesis 9:3 makes clear, Noah was free to eat the flesh of unclean animals as well as clean. It was only with Moses, and after the erection of the Tabernacle and God’s putting His Name-presence in it, that the flesh of unclean animals was declared detestable for Israel, which meant it was not to be eaten.” pg 2.
My concern is that the Old Testament laws are being misused by persons who, with the best of intentions, want to find health hints in the Bible. My hope is that these studies will help redirect the focus of this concern and put matters back into perspective. The food law of the New Covenant is the Lord’s Supper, and sickness and health are indeed tied to its faithful observance (1Cor. 11:30). Sickness and health were related to the dietary laws of Moses for the same reason, but that reason is the Spiritual efficacy of the sacrament, not the biological mechanics of the human body. pg 3
All quotations from “Studies in Food and Faith” by James B. Jordan
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