The Doctrine of Eating What You Want To.

Food: everyone's favorite topic, especially for many Christians today. We've all heard people speak of "health" and "eating right," but where should Christians draw the line? What does the Bible have to say about this issue?

Douglas Wilson, one of my favorite authors, has written a great article entitled, "The Fat is the Lord's" in the latest issue of "Credenda Agenda." He claims that the modern dieting and health-pursuit craze can be classified as worldliness, of which Christians should take care to "not be conformed to" (Romans 12:2). As Christians, we should feel no need whatsoever to rule out certain food or drink! Matthew states that "John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, he hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children" (Matt. 11:18-19). God spoke to Noah, and told him that "every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you" (Gen. 9:3). In the Garden, God told Adam and Eve to eat freely (Gen. 2:16).

Now, what about modern foods? So much fat, grease, MSGs and the like; what of those? Obviously, the Bible speaks of none of these, so it is impossible for Christians to hold as law a charge to not consume them. Author James Jordon puts it this way: "it is not a serious matter for a physician to advise abstaining from foods for medical reasons, based on human wisdom. It is, however a very serious thing when men advocate abstaining from foods for religious reasons...valuable as exercise, good diet, and the like may be, they are not delineated in God's revealed law" (from his book, Pig Out?).

Now, this may prove offensive to many Christians, but there are many verses, some of which I have already quoted, that simply stand at odds with diet-crazed moderns. Isaiah, when speaking of the New Covenant, states that "on this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined" (Is. 25:6). God's design for His people is for them to enjoy all things edible. I'll close with a final quote from Wilson:

at the root of all the problems, we should be able to detect a false doctrine of God. Ours is a lost generation, in the grip of a deep father hunger. Because we have not had healthy relationships with our human fathers, God, we naturally assume, is parsimonious. He is tight-fisted with His abundance. We slander Him in our hearts. If it tastes like gravel, it must be from God, so the thinking goes, and restaurants tout their 'death by chocolate' concoctions as 'decadent' or 'sinful.' Something is desperately wrong here. God - not the devil - was the inventor of pleasure, sex, goodness, fermentation, and satisfaction. He was the designer of all our nerve endings and our taste buds and over a million tastes, and He gave men the ingenuity to be able to figure out how to combine all those tastes in ways that would create a trillion more. Where could we have possibly gotten the idea that He was stingy? An enemy has done this.

The Chicken or the Egg?

I've recently heard arguments from a friend of mine who says that Scripture is itself subject the the authority of Tradition. This view is most identifiable from within the Roman Catholic camp of Christianity, and it presents itself quite convincingly, at face value. The argument goes something like this: Scripture is infallible inasmuch as those who canonized were themselves infallible; therefore, these men, operating from within the Holy Tradition, bear the weight and authority of Tradition onto the canonized Scripture. In conclusion, we have the Scripture, arranged and canonized by men, which is subject to the authority of the men operating from within the Holy Tradition.

As I have said, this can sound very convincing at first, but there are some big problems with this reasoning. The biggest error that I can see is the lack of objectivity given to God's Word, the Scriptures. The way I see it, if we can give math the benefit of objectivity, we should do likewise for God's Word. Going further in this example of mathematics, we find men in the past who have developed theorems and proofs that men before them had not developed, hence they “discovered” those theorems and proofs. But it would be silly to say that they invented the very principles of math that they sought to theorize and make useful in theorem form. Most certainly math exists outside of our knowledge of it. Two and two make four, quite regardless of whether I acknowledge that or not. This objective view of math can be very helpful when searching for the authority of Scripture. Just as the objective principles of math can be acknowledged by men, so those who helped to canonize Scripture recognized its authority outside of themselves, or objectively.

Here is a second problem. No Roman Catholic would argue with the fact that there have been false, or bad traditions that have disguised themselves as tradition in the past. Many have not even been disguised. Now, I acknowledge that many bad or false traditions have been purged from the Roman Catholic church over the years, and that is a good thing. What I find contestable are the words good and bad, when applied to Tradition. Now, if it is true that Roman Catholic's place the Holy Tradition as their highest degree of authority, then how in God's Name can subjective terms such as bad or good be applied to it? If the Holy Tradition is the yardstick by which we must measure everything else, then how is it even possible that it can be questioned or deemed bad? That would be like saying that there is such a thing as good math or bad math. Now, when I say bad math I do not mean one who is poor at math, nor when I say good math, one who excels at math. I mean math itself. Math itself has no subjective qualities about it; it simply is. We must conform our minds to the principles of math, not the other way around. Likewise, if Holy Tradition is the highest authority, how then would it begin to make sense to question it? If it is, in fact, the highest authority, then we should conform ourselves to it, no questions asked. But once we begin the nonsense of saying there is good absolute authority, worthy of our devotion, and bad absolute authority, then we have begun to hold Tradition up to a higher standard, a standard objective to it's subjectivity. Now what would be the candidate for Tradition to be subject to? Men, who are creatures prone to change? I shouldn't think so. Then what? Why, the Holy Scriptures of course.

The last argument that many Roman Catholics like to raise goes something like this: both Tradition and Scripture are subject to divine revelation, which comes from God and empowers both equally. Now, this is perhaps the best of their arguments so far, but it remains unconvincing. One must ask this crucial question: How do we receive divine revelation? Of course, this is the key point where Protestants and Roman Catholics answer differently, Roman Catholics answering that they receive divine revelation from the papacy, Tradition, and Scripture, while Protestants answer only the Scriptures. Personally, in reference to the Catholic argument, I can think of nothing more circularly problematic. Maybe I just need to ask the Lord to increase my faith...for when receiving divine revelation from the papacy, Tradition, and Scripture, which have all erred in the past, sans Scripture, then I'd consider myself in deep doodoo if I placed my foundation upon something that has failed, and is certainly prone to fail again.