Early Christian Vegetarianism

Tara asks: "is it true that some early Christian communities were vegetarian?"

Short answer: It's very likely that some were, but probably not for the reasons that modern vegetarians have now.

Long Answer: I did some checking around, and it looks as though there are a few vegetarians out there who want to argue that Jesus, et. al. were vegetarian on the principle that meat is bad, animals are to be valued, etc. I find this very difficult to believe based on two pieces of evidence from the gospel: First, Jesus and the disciples were part of a fishing culture, and second, because of a story in which Jesus explains why he's not an ascetic.

In the story of the loaves and the fishes, found in all four of the gospels, Jesus and his disciples are out in the middle of nowhere, and a huge crowd of thousands has followed them there to hear Jesus talk. As it's getting on toward night, the disciples try to get Jesus to set some boundaries and send everyone home for the night. But Jesus' heart swells with compassion and he says, "Well, what kind of food do we have on hand?" There was a little boy there with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. Jesus blesses the paltry offering and sends the disciples out into the crowd to hand out the pieces. By the time they're done, the whole crowd has been fed--with leftovers. Based on that story, it would surprise me if Jesus didn't eat fish.

Second, going vegetarian in those days was a spiritual practice for ascetics. If you wanted to get in touch with God through self-denial, one route was by not eating meat. Jesus, however, was more of a party animal than an ascetic. On one occasion, some ascetics confront Jesus because he drinks wine and has a good time hanging out with sinners. Jesus says, "Look, you can't mourn while the bridgegroom is still here." In other words, Jesus wasn't an ascetic, although you could see in that story the early Christians trying to explain why they were fasters (now that the bridegroom is gone) while Jesus wasn't.

So what about those early Christian vegetarians? Basically, there were a couple of reasons why you might be a vegetarian back then: first, as a spiritual practice related to fasting. By eating less, fasters have more time to contemplate God's presence. It's a mystical thing.

Second, Christians became vegetarian in an effort to avoid eating meat offered to idols. Back in those days, all the meat was offered to the gods before people sat down to eat it. Some early Christians took the attitude that it didn't matter if they ate the food since the gods were fake anyway. But others were disturbed by that practice. In this passage, Paul advises against eating food sacrificed to idols, and hence advises a vegetarian diet.

God's Grandparents

Heather conveys a question from her Sunday Schoolers-- "Does God have grandparents?"

Short answer: no.

Long answer: Since God is an eternal and uncreated being--God has always existed and does not have an origin or a source--God can't have grandparents because they would have existed before God did. There are examples I'm familiar with in Greek and Native American mythology of the gods who rule the world being born from earlier beings--parents and grandparents, and in some strands of Buddhism it's possible for a person to be reborn as a god, so presumably in that rebirth you'd have god ancestors, but in the monotheistic traditions--Judaism, Christianity, Islam--God always existed and does not have parents.

This raises an interesting issue in trinitarian theology. [Somewhat technical explanation to follow--ed.] Because classical trinitarian theology has required that the Christ be a co-equal person within the Trinity, and not somehow lesser than or subsequent to the Creator or Holy Spirit, even though Jesus is the Son of God, the two of them (and the Holy Spirit) are all uncreated and eternal beings.

CS Lewis describes it this way: you should imagine three books that have been resting on a table throughout eternity. Just because one book is lying underneath the other doesn't mean that they aren't all eternal, just that they have a particular relationship to one another--that of one supporting the other. The relationship itself, in this case, is eternal as well.

While I tend to think that trinitarian theology gets a little ahead of itself in being able to describe the very inner workings of God, and that it's nearly impossible to extrapolate something clean and logical from the Bible on the topic of God's nature, I do appreciate the importance that the trinity implies for relationship. The trinity as Christian tradition has imagined it suggests that God is not a single, lone-ranger, self-sufficient and independent force, but is in fact an egalitarian community within herself, bound together into one being by love.