Let's talk about food: Practicing the Presence

[Jordaens, The Supper at Emmaus, 1645]

And now back to food as sacrament--what we'll be talking about this Sunday at St Barnabas. In Monday's post I wrote, "A sacrament points to something beyond itself, but it is more than a sign. It has multiple layers of meaning, but it is more than the religious version of a symbol. A sacrament is a special kind of symbol that actually makes present the reality it evokes." The sacrament of bread and wine, then, in some way makes Jesus Christ present.

How does that work?

Catholics still use a medieval explanation called "transubstantiation." Lutherans speak of  "sacramental union." Calvinists talk about "spiritual presence." Other Protestants use terms like "holy mystery" or "real presence." Orthodox Christians like the word "mystery" and, as far as I know, don't try too hard to explain it. Many evangelical Christians celebrate the Lord's Supper but don't really believe in sacraments at all (my husband once referred to their theology as the "real absence"). Anglicans, as John Cleese wittily pointed out in his "Consumers Guide to Religion," have a democratic spirit--"if you want transubstantiation, you can have transubstantiation. If you don't want transubstantiation, you don't have to have transubstantiation. All you do is go down the road to another Church of England church and not have it."

I'm not going to argue for or against any of these positions. I rather like the quatrain that probably originated with John Donne but is usually attributed to Elizabeth I:

’Twas God the word that spake it,
He took the bread and brake it,
And what the word did make it,
That I believe and take it.

Whatever our theology about sacraments, most Christians agree that

• eating together fosters community
• the Christian community is "the body of Christ" (1 Corinthians 12:27)

The earliest Christians "devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:42). Somehow when they broke bread together, Jesus was present with them and in them, and they were present in him.

Bread and wine are dynamic symbols. Sharing bread and wine is a powerful sacramental act. All explanations inevitably fall short, as the disciples on the Emmaus Road discovered. Only when they broke bread with the stranger did they realize who he was.
_______________________________

This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'm leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.

THIS GORGEOUS GAME by Donna Freitas

As soon as I read Jana Riess's beliefnet interview with Donna Freitas, I put a hold on both young-adult novels at the public library. The Possibilities of Sainthood looked like a sure bet. Riess notes that it "got starred reviews pretty much every place that fiction reviews can be starred: PW, SLJ, Booklist, and even snotty old Kirkus."

This Gorgeous Game, I thought, might not be as good. The topic is much darker - a teen-aged girl is stalked by a priest - and though reviewers were complimentary, they withheld their stars.

Now that I've read both books, I think the reviewers got it backwards.

Review of "Committed": Elizabeth Gilbert on family values

Elizabeth Gilbert's 2006 mega-best-seller Eat, Pray, Love is a rambling memoir-travelogue in which Gilbert leaves her husband, is dumped by her lover, travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia studying food and spirituality, and ends up in bed with a Brazilian she calls Felipe. In her current book, Committed, Elizabeth marries Felipe. This is not a spoiler: the cover gives away the ending. The interest lies in how she gets there--kicking and screaming, apparently, but also interviewing everyone she meets as she travels in Southeast Asia; reading up on the history, sociology, and maintenance of marriage; and interweaving her studies with her own adventures and roller-coaster emotions.

If you're looking for a linear account of marriage through the ages, you'd do better with Stephanie Coontz's Marriage, A History (I reviewed it here). For straight memoir about a marriage that not only began, but lasted, try the late Madeleine L'Engle's Two-Part Invention. Still, there are good reasons to read Committed, even if you haven't read--or didn't much like--Eat, Pray, Love. Though both books are memoirs, the newer one is a lot less self-absorbed. Gilbert, who is now 40, seems finally to have emerged from adolescence and can now look outward, beyond her navel. Fortunately for her fans, she has retained her slightly wacky writing style.

In Committed, Gilbert offers interesting information that could lead to wisdom, such as:

• Why it is inadvisable to be infatuated with one's beloved
• How best to guard against adultery
• What characteristics make a good marriage more likely
• Why friends and family should come to your wedding
• Why self-sacrifice is not necessarily a bad thing
• Why aunties are important
  
• How to improve a relationship by doing things independently
• Why marriage is ultimately a subversive act

It ain't necessarily so

She also challenges a lot of commonly held beliefs. None of the following statements, for example, is necessarily true:

• America welcomes immigrants
• The most enduring marriages are based on love
• High expectations bring success
• Happiness is increased by having lots of choices
• Historically, marriage has always been a bond between one man and one woman
• Marriage is a religious institution
• Marriage is better for women than for men
• Traditional Christianity is pro-family

Hold the horses! Isn't Christianity practically defined by family values? Au contraire, says Gilbert:

For approximately ten centuries, Christianity itself did not see marriage as being either holy or sanctified. Marriage was certainly not modeled as the ideal state of moral being. On the contrary, the early Christian fathers regarded the habit of marriage as a somewhat repugnant worldly affair that had everything to do with sex and females and taxes and property, and nothing whatsoever to do with higher concerns of divinity.... For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked than flat-out whoring--but only very marginally.

She exaggerates, of course. Quoting Jesus on the need to reject family (Luke 14.26) and Paul on avoiding marriage if possible (1 Corinthians 7.8-9), she neglects to mention Jesus' provision of fine wine for the wedding at Cana (John 2.1-11) or the apostolic church's condemnation of ascetics who forbade, among other things, marriage (1 Timothy 4:1-3). Nor does she mention that the church required its leaders to be not only monogamously married but also parents (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1). And she completely ignores Ephesians 5.21-33, where the love of husband and wife is likened to the love of Christ for the church.

Still, she's closer to the truth than a lot of present-day Christians realize. For a scholarly presentation of the early church's sorry attitudes about the body, sex, women, and procreation, read Peter Brown's The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (my Books and Culture review of Brown and two other books is here). The sad fact is, the early church quickly abandoned its sensible Jewish heritage with its strong sense of family. Instead, it adopted views owing more to Gnostic influences than to the Hebrew scriptures. As Gilbert points out, most early and medieval Christians (including priests, by the way) went ahead and married anyway, but celibacy became the ideal--and the requirement for high churchly office.

However, I disagree with her when she characterizes Paul's advice to the unmarried--"it is better to marry than to burn"--as "perhaps the most begrudging endorsement of matrimony in human history." My favorite begrudging endorsement is from Jerome, a fourth-century saint, Bible translator, and doctor of the church. In a letter to one of his female friends, he wrote: "I praise wedlock, I praise marriage, but it is because they give me virgins. I gather the rose from the thorns, the gold from the earth, the pearl from the shell."

The verdict

Committed is enjoyable, informational, thought-provoking, and occasionally wise. To learn more about it, read one of these fine reviews:

• "Talk, Research, Marry" by Cindy Crosby in Christianity Today magazine
• "Hitched" by Ariel Levy in the New Yorker
• "Eat, Pray, Marry" by Curtis Sittenfeld in the New York Times

Doggerel for Maundy Thursday

Are you old enough to remember Arch Books, paperback Bible stories in doggerel illustrated with cartoons? I wrote three of of them back in the 70s. Concordia published the first two, but the third was too much for them. It was always my favorite, so I offer it here, somewhat updated, for Maundy Thursday.


Thirteen men around a table, something obviously wrong.
Though their heads are wrapped in halos, twelve men wear their faces long.
James is signaling to Simon; Philip looks the other way;
Thomas shakes his fist at Matthew; John has not a word to say.
Big Bartholomew, exhausted, yawns and pushes back his chair;
James the Lesser, scowling broadly, with his finger carves the air.
Judas grimaces profoundly; Andrews scratches for a flea;
Thaddeus bumps into Peter--oh, what can the matter be?

Soon the Lord will claim his kingdom. Rome approaches zero hour.
In his new administration, who will wield the greatest power?
Peter, chief of staff, barks orders; Judas, hedge-fund king, dissents;
Thomas hopes to be Chief Justice; James and John opt for Defense.
Intrigues stir Simon the Zealot (why, is anybody's guess);
He will head the Secret Service; Matthew wants the IRS.
Heads of this and that department keep the ship of state on course.
Who will be the most important when God's kingdom comes in force?
Twelve men ready to be leaders, generals, great men of might,
Department heads and cabinet members: twelve men itching for a fight.

Thirteen men around a table, thirteen men about to eat.
There's the basin, where's the servant? Thirteen men have dirty feet.
Andrew, closest to the basin, quickly chooses not to budge:
Next year's military hero can't be this year's common drudge.
Cleaning dirt from people's toenails nauseates Bartholomew.
He nods at John, then at the basin; John misapprehends his cue.
Simon, cloak-and-dagger honcho, rises, drops back in his seat:
What a blot upon his record: "This man's good at washing feet."
James the Lesser squirms and reddens; Judas stares beyond the doors.
Talented administrators should not stoop to lowly chores.
Peter talks, though no one listens; Philip's overcome with heat;
Twelve men yawn and scratch and wonder, who is going to wash our feet?

Twelve men eager to do battle, all impatient for the coup--
But Jesus looks a bit disgruntled. What is Jesus going to do?

Jesus Christ, their Lord and teacher, famous healer, son of man,
Son of God, God's own Messiah, is picking up the water pan.
With one hand he takes a towel, tucks it in his belt, and then
Rolls his sleeves above his elbows, walks by twelve astonished men,
Pours some water in the basin, puts the basin on the tile
Next to open-mouthed Thaddaeus, takes his sandal with a smile,
Dips his feet into the water, washes well between his toes,
Pats them dry, refills the basin, tucks the towel back in, and goes
To Andrew, Thomas, John, and Philip, Simon and Bartholomew,
James the Greater, James the Lesser, Levi Matthew, and Judas too.

All the feet are washed but Peter's. Jesus takes the basin now,
Moves toward Peter, kneels beside him. Peter jumps. "I can't allow
You to do the servant's labor! You are not the slave of me.
You're my rabbi, friend, and master! Go away and let me be.
Dirty feet I've seen quite often. Dirty feet I've washed before.
If you'll let me have that basin, I can wash my feet once more."
Peter grabs, but Jesus dodges. "Peter, listen for my sake.
Here's a lesson you must study: when to give and when to take.
Give your all, but not for glory. Give as long as there is need.
As a servant in my kingdom, you can plant the gospel seed.
Take from me the right to enter heaven's kingdom come to earth.
Wash your soul in heaven's fountain: take from me the second birth."

Jesus sets aside the basin. Peter clutches him in dread.
"Master, stay and wash me fully! Wash my feet, my hands, my head!"
Kneeling, Jesus washes Peter's feet, and then says to his friend,
"One who's bathed is clean all over, when just his feet are washed again.
I, your master, played the servant. Each of you should do the same.
Servants all, serve one another when you gather in my name."

Thirteen men around a table, one alone is devil-led.
Twelve men, clean in soul and body, ready now for wine and bread.

CODA
Matthew doesn't ask the question; Luke is silent, as is Mark;
Likewise, John forgets to mention (scholars thus are in the dark):
Who washed Jesus' feet?

Copyright 1978 and 2009 by LaVonne Neff; all rights reserved

Saint Patrick de l'Irlande

Tomorrow we are going to a St. Patrick's Day dinner of French and Italian food.

This makes perfect sense: tradition has it that the saint's grandmother was from la Touraine, the region made famous a millennium later by its chateaux; that Patrick studied for several years on a Mediterranean island near present-day Cannes; that he assisted the bishop of Auxerre in what would become Burgundy wine country; and that he once visited the Tuscan Pope Leo the Great in Rome (though it's possible that some of these legends confuse Patrick with Palladius, a Gaulois who also became a bishop in Ireland in the fifth century).

In honor of l'évangélisateur gaulois de l'Irlande, I am bringing two loaves of home-baked French bread to our fête patricienne. I recommend Mark Bittman's recipe, which I won't post because you really need to go out and buy his book tomorrow, or you could click on the link below and just do it.

But first, enjoy this article from the Telegraph: "French Still Like Their Daily Bread Fresh."


Oh yes, I almost forgot. Would you believe we had leftovers again tonight? The cabbage/beet/orange salad. The black bean stew, this time with some turkey sausage added to the rest of the emoluments. And the Brussels sprouts. Everything is now used up. Let the St. Patrick's Day feast begin!

Stanley Fish on Roland Burris and St. Augustine

In today's "Think Again" column, Stanley Fish refers to St. Augustine and the Donatists in arguing that Roland Burris deserves to be seated in the U.S. Senate.

Think ex opere operato, history buffs. Your priest may have been ordained by a heretic or scoundrel, but he's still a priest and the sacraments he administers are still valid. (Heave a sigh of relief, loyal Catholics.) As Fish points out,

The legitimacy of an appointment can be either a procedural or a moral matter. If it is a procedural matter, authority is conferred by the right credentials, and that’s that. If it is a moral matter – only the good can be truly authoritative (this was John Milton’s position) – authority is always precarious, and the structures of government and law are always in danger of being dissolved.

Fish does not tell the rest of the Donatists' story, however. Though St. Augustine acknowledged the validity of their appointments, he also called for civil penalties against them. The Donatists were wrong, he wrote, and if they could not be persuaded to return to the true church, they should be forced to do so. With his encouragement, churches were closed, adherents were fined, and leaders were exiled.

Presumably St. Augustine, while supporting Roland Burris's appointment, would have no objection to impeaching and imprisoning Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Abstinence now and then

In Tom Perrotta's 2007 more-or-less comic novel, The Abstinence Teacher, an odd attraction develops between Ruth, a divorced feminist sex-ed teacher (who hasn't been with a man for two years), and Tim, a married evangelical ex-doper (whose wife attempts to interest him through techniques she is learning from Hot Christian Sex). At his pastor's recommendation, Tim and his wife are reading it together, and

"considering the somewhat puritanical character of the Tabernacle, the book turned out to be surprisingly racy. The authors, the Rev. Mark D. Finster and his wife, Barbara G. Finster, proclaimed the good news right in the Introduction: 'For a Christian married couple, sex is nothing less than a form of worship, a celebration of your love for one another and a glorification of the Heavenly Father who brought you together. So of course God wants you to have better sex! And He wants you to have more of it than you ever had before, in positions you probably didn’t even know existed, with stronger orgasms than you believed were possible!'"(113)

I read The Abstinence Teacher not long after reading Peter Brown's magisterial work, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. Mr Neff had recommended Brown last January when I wailed, "Why did so many Christians quickly switch from enjoyment and thanksgiving to abstemiousness and guilt?" Brown's 500+ densely packed pages, alas, did not produce the godly gourmands I had hoped to find, but over and over Brown reinforced how very different we are from our forebears.

The world depicted in The Abstinence Teacher is depressingly familiar. Marriages fail. Children rebel. Coworkers fight. Most people drink too much. Almost nobody abstains from sex, which is likely to be recreational, impulsive, or adulterous (if other people are involved at all). Marital sex is either sad (Tim can't stop lusting after his first wife) or silly (see Hot Christian Sex above). If, when you finish a book, you like to think that its characters are going to live happily ever after, this is not the book for you.

And yet The Abstinence Teacher is a sweet book whose flawed, wistful characters are looking for, and occasionally finding, love. Though religious people are teased, they are not ridiculed. A Jewish environmental lawyer with a "Don't Blame Me--I Voted for Kerry" sticker on his Audi says to Ruth, "You gotta give credit where credit's due. These Christians turn a lot of lives around. From what I hear, Tim was a complete wreck before he found Jesus."

Back in the first century--and the second, third, and fourth--Christians were already turning a lot of lives around. Christian conversion, Brown points out, meant moving from one mode of existence to another realm altogether. Unlike Tim, who gave up drugs and alcohol and one-night stands but hung on to music and soccer and marriage, early Christians believed that conversion meant passing from death into life.

Literally.

While their neighbors avoided death by founding families and perpetuating their name from generation to generation, some Christians believed they had already entered the immortal realms and therefore had no need to marry and produce children. For these Christians, abstinence was a sign of their new life.

Other Christians believed that it was acceptable to marry and beget children, but only in one's youth--and even then, the sexual act should be completed without any accompanying passion (I don't recall that any explained how that was to be accomplished).

"By the year 300," Brown writes, "Christian asceticism, invariably associated with some form or other of perpetual sexual renunciation, was a well-established feature of most regions of the Christian world" (202).

Now that's abstinence.

What happened to cause such an attitude shift between the ancient Christian writers and Hot Christian Sex? Peter Brown doesn't say, but he strongly cautions against reading the church fathers as if they were writing to 21st-century readers. "In ancient societies," he writes,

"the body had to bear an oceanic weight of social expectations. These were very different from the expectations that weigh down upon it in our own world.... The humble body was never isolated, as it often appears to be in modern discourse--discreetly left to itself to decide whether to embrace or to abandon intercourse, whether to seek out or to avoid partners, whether of the opposite or the same sex. The body was pushed to the fore through having to bear the symbolic weight of mighty aspirations" (xlii, xliii).

There are no mighty aspirations in The Abstinence Teacher; there is no clear division between light and darkness, and very little intentional abstinence. There is, however, a great deal of isolation.

By contrast, abstinence is the ideal and goal of just about everyone quoted in The Body and Society--yet the would-be abstainers are far from isolated. Most live in families or monasteries, and even the desert hermits live in clusters of like-minded ascetics.

Tom Perrotta enjoys such dichotomies, but I'm still on my quest. I'm still looking for ancient Christians who valued marriage and community, sex and passion, children and animals, good food and wine, all things bright and beautiful. I may have to give up: the attitude I seek may be a result of the Renaissance, not the Roman Empire.

According to Dahlia Lithwick's review of Susan Squire's I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage, a noisy revolution in Christian sexual attitudes began in the late Middle Ages and

"achieved perfection in the miraculously happy marriage of a 42-year-old virgin named Martin Luther. Luther, a monk, had long railed against the evils of celibacy, believing that church doctrine had resulted in corruption and fornication. But he became his own best advertisement when he was dragged out of his monastic solitude by a 26-year-old runaway nun named Katherine von Bora. When his Katy bears and raises six children and four foster children, hauls them to the Holy Land on pilgrimage, tends his garden and makes his home-grown medicines, exterminates the mice in his barn and makes him wine and beer, all while playing hostess to a houseful of reverent disciples and acolytes, Luther is the happiest of spokesmen. And so, as part of his war on the corrupt church, he ushers in a new era of marriage, shunning celibacy and exalting companionship, procreation and fidelity. The 1,500-year-old idea of marriage as a necessary repository for the filth of human desire comes to an end. We will finally begin to marry for love. Some of us more than once."

I have put I Don't on hold at the public library, and I'm first in line to check it out. You can, however, order it from Amazon.

Holy Epiphanius, pray for us

Years ago while looking up something in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd edition, I discovered a saint who sounded strangely familiar--Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis (ca 315 - 403). I liked the closing words of the description so much that I copied them on an index card.

And then the index card went astray, and Oxford published an updated edition of the Dictionary, and some misguided editor left out the charming lines. I was bereft.

Until today when, going through a stack of old books at Mr Neff's office, I saw a dusty copy of the Oxford Dictionary. Yes! It was the 2nd edition! The words were there! And here they are. If you know anyone like this, now you'll know that he or she comes from a long and saintly tradition.

His unbending rigidity,
his want of judgement,
and his complete inability to understand any who differed from him
were reflected in his writings
no less than in his life.

Feast day, 12 May.

Resurrection, body and soul

Four months ago I mentioned a pre-publication review of Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews by Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson. Since then our rabbi gave Mr Neff a copy of the book, which I've now read. It's a fine study of the resurrection of the body, particularly in the Hebrew Bible and subsequent rabbinic teachings.

Here are a couple of gems about the unity of the person, as taught in the early centuries of the common era:

Whatever notions of the soul circulated in ancient Judaism, in rabbinic theology God was not thought to have fulfilled his promises until the whole person returned, body included. Like death, a disembodied existence was deemed to be other than the last word, for the person is not 'the ghost in the machine' (that is, the body) but rather a unity of body and soul. (204)

Both Tertullian and Irenaeus go to some pains to argue against a view of salvation that is understood strictly in terms of the survival or salvation of the soul.... As the orthodox saw it, the texture of humanity was a seamless, indivisible work of art, composed of flesh and soul--very much like the view of the rabbis we examined in the previous chapter. God will reward the blessed, body and soul. . . . Only if the whole person, both elements of which were created by God, were raised could humanity be redeemed and justice achieved. (233)

And here's a thought-provoking observation about why so many contemporary people do not believe in a literal resurrection of the body:

The major change has been widespread skepticism about the one who performs the expected resurrection--the personal, supernatural God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who intervenes in the course of human and natural events and brings about results that are otherwise impossible. The tendency among many modern people ... has been either to doubt all claims of the existence of God or to redefine God so that the word refers to human ideals and feelings alone and not to the source of miraculous acts and providential guidance. In short, in the modern world, the idea of a God who does things has become highly problematic. And whatever else one may say about a God who does not do anything, one thing is sure: he does not resurrect the dead. (215)

Road to Cana

Most Wednesday mornings I attend a church history class at St. Mike's. We've been reading the church fathers, and their opponents, on the nature of Christ. In what sense is he human? In what sense divine? How many persons--natures--wills--are present in Christ? Did the human Jesus have access to divine wisdom and power? Did the divine Jesus truly suffer and die?

For some 500 years the church struggled to define the indefinable. The Nicene creed, developed in the fourth century, affirms that Christ is both God and man:

eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

Despite the creed, quarrels about Christ's nature raged on for another century and a half. Gregory of Nyssa described the high level of interest among Constantinopolitans:

Every place in the city is full of them: the alleys, the crossroads, the forums, the squares. Garment sellers, money changer, food vendors--they are all at it. If you ask for change, they philosophize for you about generate and ingenerate natures. If you inquire about the price of bread, the answer is that the Father is greater and the Son inferior. If you speak about whether the bath is ready, they express the opinion that the Son was made out of nothing.

As I buy groceries at Trader Joe's, I don't hear a lot of discussion about Christ's nature. Christology is, however, an important theme in Anne Rice's new book, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (will vampire lovers and goth kids start reading Athanasius?). My friend Cindy Crosby's insightful review, "Truly God and Truly Man," is Books and Culture's Book of the Week. Cindy writes,

Rather than soft-pedal her beliefs, [Rice] lays them out plainly in the reader's letter at the front of the novel. "I believe in Him as God and Man, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, who came down on this earth to be born amongst us, live and work with us, and to save us. This Jesus is Sinless. This Jesus created us." No pussyfooting around here....

Rice wisely seizes on the interior conflict between Jesus as God and as man to create the tension that holds the story together—the same conflict that has seemingly paralyzed other novelists. Rice shows the audacity of an outsider to the Christian publishing world (where most of the novelizations of Christ's life have been created) and rushes in where the proverbial angels might fear to tread. But it is Rice's courage in tackling her subject matter—while still holding her protagonist in reverence—that elevates The Road to Cana above its predecessors in the genre.

Publishers Weekly's starred review, quoted on Amazon's web page, praises Rice's theologico-literary feat:

If it is possible to create a character that is simultaneously fully human and fully divine, as ancient Christian creeds assert, then Rice succeeds.

Gather round, children, and listen--good stories make good theology.

Of the quantity of drink

"Every one hath his proper gift from God, one after this manner and another after that" (1 Cor 7:7). It is with some hesitation, therefore, that we determine the measure of nourishment for others. However, making allowance for the weakness of the infirm, we think one hemina* of wine a day is sufficient for each one. But to whom God granteth the endurance of abstinence, let them know that they will have their special reward.

If the circumstances of the place, or the work, or the summer's heat should require more, let that depend on the judgment of the Superior, who must above all things see to it, that excess or drunkenness do not creep in.

Although we read that wine is not at all proper for monks, yet, because monks in our times cannot be persuaded of this, let us agree to this, at least, that we do not drink to satiety, but sparingly; because "wine maketh even wise men fall off" (Sir 19:2). But where the poverty of the place will not permit the aforesaid measure to be had, but much less, or none at all, let those who live there bless God and murmur not.

This we charge above all things, that they live without murmuring.

Holy Rule of St. Benedict, chapter XL

*A hemina is equal to half a sextary. Now you know.
(A sextary is probably about the same as a British pint, or 20 ounces.)

Death-defying Christians

In one way, early Christians had a much healthier view of the body than did their pagan neighbors: they believed that love required them to take care of the physical needs of others. In fact, according to sociologist Rodney Stark, compassion for others was a major reason that Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire and supplanted ancient pagan religions.

Stark’s 1996 book, The Rise of Christianity, offers a fascinating discussion of early Christianity’s exponential growth rate. In chapter 4, “Epidemics, Networks, Conversion,” he quotes a letter from Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria written in about ad 260 during a major epidemic:

Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ. . . . Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.

In contrast,

the heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease.

Paradoxically, the death-defying Christian community grew larger. According to Dionysius’s testimony (the plague’s “full impact fell on the heathen”) and Stark’s calculations, Christians who nursed the dying were far less likely to die during the epidemic than were pagans who did everything in their power to avoid getting sick.

Truly God, truly man

It took the Christian church more than four hundred years of constant discussion to agree to a formula explaining just how Jesus could be both God and man, without leaning too far in one direction or the other. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 issued a definition that has been accepted by most Christians ever since: Jesus is “truly God and truly man,” “consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity.”

The men who framed the Chalcedonian confession had to get past two stumbling blocks that, according to their way of thinking, made the union of God and man almost unthinkable.

First, good Hellenistic philosophers that they were, they were convinced that God is completely unchangeable. If God cannot change, he cannot suffer and he certainly cannot die. How, then, could Jesus be fully God and yet suffer and die on the cross?

Second, for reasons that I have yet to figure out, the church fathers apparently believed that all sexual pleasure is seriously sinful. A woman could conceive a child without sin, but a man could not beget a child sinlessly, and the sin of sexual pleasure transmitted original sin to the descendants of Adam and Eve. How, then, could Jesus be truly man and yet remain untainted by original sin?

Pope Leo I (the Great) came up with a way to get past both barriers. Several years before the Council of Chalcedon was convened, he had written a letter to the Bishop of Constantinople explaining how Jesus could be simultaneously God and man. His letter became known as the Tome of Leo, and the whole thing is worth reading.

Leo allowed that God might not be quite as unchangeable as the god of pagan philosophy: “The Lord of the universe veiled his measureless majesty and took on a servant's form. The God who knew no suffering did not despise becoming a suffering man, and, deathless as he is, to be subject to the laws of death.”

But Leo did not give up his belief in sexually transmitted damnation. Jesus’ birth, he wrote, was unprecedented, “because it was inviolable virginity which supplied the material flesh without experiencing sexual desire. What was taken from the mother of the Lord was the nature without the guilt.”

This is a far cry from the word of Wisdom in Proverbs 5:18–19:

Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
May her breasts satisfy you at all times;
may you be intoxicated always by her love.

Oddly, the church has often identified Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible with the Word in the New Testament. Even the dour old bishops did that, but they seem to have missed some of the connections. I'm still looking for early Christian writers with a wholesome, hearty, Hebrew view of sexual love.

Looking for an ancient godly gourmand[e]

In the Hebrew Bible, the material creation is good.
According to ancient Hebrew stories, God made a world, "saw all that he had made, and found it very good" (Genesis 1:31). He made plants that were beautiful as well as delicious (2:9) and gave them to the first humans as food. He created love and sex: "The Lord God said, "It is not good for man to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him" (2:18). He told the primal pair to enjoy each other: "Be fertile and increase" (1. 29). And Adam's lyrical response to Eve (2:23) leaves no doubt about his attitude: "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh."

In the earliest Christian tradition, God became part of the good material creation.
When the good world was broken, according to ancient Christian stories, the God who created the world came up with a way to re-create it. The creative Word "became flesh and lived among us." Jesus, said the creeds, was "true God," "one in Being with the Father." He also "became man," a man who turned water into wine--gallons of it--so a wedding feast could continue, a man whose enemies called him "a glutton and a drunkard" (Matthew 11:19).

The ancient Hebrews, like today's Jews, had a healthy attitude about bodily pleasures. The ancient Christians went one better--their God became a human being and earned a reputation as one who appreciated a good party. So here's my question--

Whatever happened?
Why did so many Christians quickly switch from enjoyment and thanksgiving to abstemiousness and guilt? Why did some early monastics think they were honoring the Creator when they shunned the company of others and gave up most food, all sex, and even clothing and shelter? Why did a great saint, Jerome, write, "I praise wedlock, I praise marriage; but it is because they produce virgins"? Why did a greater saint, Augustine, believe he had to be "continent," that is, to give up marriage and sex, in order to follow Christ? Why are there so few married people on the list of Catholic saints, even post-Vatican II saints?

I'm looking for an early Christian writer who praises creation, affirms marriage, revels in beauty, delights in good food, and gives thanks to God--without adding, even in small print, that forsaking all these things is even more admirable than enjoying them.