The Instructor 2.1.1–2.1.18

Keeping to our aim, then, and selecting the Scriptures that bear on the usefulness of instruction for life, we must sketch in outline what the one called a Christian ought to be through the whole of life. We must begin, then, with ourselves, and with how we ought to order ourselves. Aiming at the proportion of our treatise, we must say how each of us should behave toward his own body, or rather how he should direct it. For when someone, led by the Word from external things, and from the care of the body itself, to the mind, has accurately learned to contemplate what happens to the human being by nature, he will know not to be eager about external things, but to cleanse what is proper to the human being, the eye of the soul, and to purify the flesh itself. For one who has been cleanly released from the things by which he is still dust, what better has he than himself for going on the way to the comprehension of God? Other people live to eat, as indeed the irrational animals do, whose life is nothing but the belly; but the Instructor commands us to eat so that we may live.

For food is not our business, nor pleasure our aim; food is admitted for the sake of our continuance here, which the Word is training for incorruption. This food is simple and plain, suited to truth, fitting for simple and plain children, as being suited to living, not to luxury. And this living is made up of two things, health and strength, to which easy food is most suited, useful for digestion and for lightness of body; from it come growth, health, and strength that is right, not wrong or precarious and wretched like that of athletes from forced feeding. The many kinds of dishes are to be spat out, since they breed various harms: bad condition of the body, upset stomachs, the taste being debauched by an ill-starred art of cookery and the vain art of pastry. For they dare to call food the pursuit of luxuries that slides into harmful pleasures. Antiphanes, the physician of Delos, said that this variety of dishes is one of the causes of disease, when people, dissatisfied with the truth, forswear moderation in diet out of varied vanity, and go searching for foods from across the sea.

(… foods from across the sea.) For my part I feel pity for their disease; but they are not ashamed to sing the praises of their own luxuries, searching out the lampreys of the Strait of Sicily, the eels of the Maeander, the kids of Melos, the mullets of Sciathus, the mussels of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos; not leaving out the sprats of Lipara, or the Mantinean turnip, or even the beets of the Ascraeans. They seek out the scallops of Methymna, the Attic turbot, the thrushes of Daphnis, and the swallow figs for which the ill-starred Persian marched into Greece with five million men. Besides these they buy birds from the Phasis, Egyptian francolins, the Median peacock. The gluttons, altering these with sauces, gape for the dishes, procuring for their gluttony “whatever the earth and the depths of the sea and the immeasurable expanse of air produce.” These greedy busybodies seem simply to sweep the world with a net for their luxury, surrounded by “hissing frying-pans,” spending their whole life around the mortar and pestle, devouring everything, clinging to matter like fire.

They even make effeminate that easy food, bread, sifting out the nourishing part of the wheat, so that what is necessary in food becomes a reproach to pleasure. Gluttony has no limit among human beings. It has run aground on cakes and honey pastries and sweetmeats, inventing a host of desserts, hunting for every kind of dish. Such a man seems to me nothing but a jaw. “Do not desire,” says Scripture, “the dishes of the rich; for these belong to a false and shameful life.” They cling to dishes which the latrine soon receives; but we, who seek the heavenly food, must rule the belly beneath the heavens, and still more what is attached to it, which “God will destroy,” says the apostle, rightly cursing gluttonous desires. “For foods are for the belly,” and on them this truly fleshly and destructive life depends. And if some, with unbridled tongue, dare to call by the name of agapē (love) certain little suppers reeking of the savor of meat and sauces, insulting the good and saving work of the Word, the sanctified agapē, with pots and streams of sauce, blaspheming the name with drink and luxury and smoke, they are mistaken in their idea, expecting to buy God's promise with little suppers. For gatherings for the sake of good cheer we too would reckon as little suppers and dinners and receptions, and would rightly call such a meeting so, following the Word; but the Lord did not call such feasts “love feasts” (agapai). He says in one place: “When you are invited to a wedding, do not recline in the place of honor, but when you are invited, recline in the lowest place”; in another: “When you give a dinner or a supper”; and again: “But when you give a reception, invite the poor,” for whom above all a supper should be made; and further:

“A certain man gave a great supper and invited many.” But I see where the fine-sounding name of suppers flowed from: from gullets and the madness of going to dinner, as the comic poet says. “For truly most things for most people are for the sake of dinner.” They have not learned that God prepared food and drink for his creature, the human being I mean, for the sake of being kept alive, not for pleasure; since bodies are not by nature benefited by expensive foods. Quite the contrary: those who use the cheapest foods are stronger, healthier, and nobler, as servants are than masters and farmers than landowners; and not only more robust but wiser too, as philosophers than the rich; for they have not buried the mind under food nor deceived it with pleasures. But love is truly heavenly food, a rational feast: “It bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things; love never fails.” “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God.” The hardest fall of all is for love, which does not fall, to be thrown from heaven above to the ground among the sauces. And do you think I consider a supper, which is done away with, to be love? “For if I give away all my goods,” it says, “but have not love, I am nothing.”

The whole law and the Word depend on this love; and if you love the Lord your God and your neighbor, this is the heavenly feast in heaven. The earthly one is called a supper, as has been shown from Scripture: a supper that takes place because of love, but the supper is not love; it is a sign of sharing and generous goodwill. “Let not your good, then, be spoken evil of. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink,” says the apostle, so that the daily meal may be understood, “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Whoever eats of this meal will gain the best of all things, the kingdom of God, having practiced here the holy assembly of love, the heavenly church. Love, then, is a pure thing and worthy of God, and its work is sharing. “Care for instruction is love,” says Wisdom, “and love is the keeping of her laws.” These festivities have a spark of love, accustoming us through common food to eternal food. Love, then, is not a supper; but let the feast depend on love. “For let your sons, whom you loved, O Lord, learn,” it says, “that it is not the growing of crops that nourishes a man, but your word preserves those who believe in you”; for the righteous man will not live by bread. Let our supper be plain and light, suited to wakefulness, unmixed with various dishes; nor is this without instruction. For love, a good nurse of the young, has a rich provision for fellowship, self-sufficiency, which, presiding over food measured in just quantity, directs the body wholesomely and shares something of itself with neighbors; while a diet that overflows self-sufficiency harms the human being, making the soul sluggish and the body liable to disease. Indeed, the pleasures of rich sauces bring on hard-to-bear names of reproach: daintiness, gluttony, fish-hunger, insatiability, voracity. Proper to these names are flies and weasels, flatterers and gladiators, and “the wild tribes of parasites,” who have sold for the pleasure of the belly, some their reason, some their friendship, some their life, crawling on their bellies, beasts in human form, in the image of their father, the dainty beast. Those who first called them asōtoi (“profligates”) seem to me to hint at their end, understanding them as asōstoi (“not to be saved”), by the dropping of the letter sigma.

For are not these the people busy with dishes and the foolish elaborations of sauces, the base-minded and earthborn, pursuing the life of a day as if they would not live? The Holy Spirit pronounces them wretched through Isaiah, quietly withdrawing the name of love, since the feast was not according to reason: “But they made merry, slaughtering calves and sacrificing sheep, saying, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” And that he counts such luxury as sin, he adds: “And this sin of yours shall not be forgiven until you die,” judging, not that senseless death is forgiveness of sin, but that death from salvation is the repayment of sin. “Do not delight in a little luxury,” says Wisdom. Here we must also mention the so-called things sacrificed to idols, and in what way we are commanded to abstain from them. Those things seem to me foul and abominable, over whose blood flit “the souls from Erebus of the dead who have died.” “For I do not want you to become partners of demons,” says the apostle, since the foods of the saved and of those who perish are different. We must abstain from them, then, not out of fear (for there is no power in them), but out of regard for our conscience, which is holy, and loathing the demons to whose names they are dedicated because of their foulness; and further, because of the weakness of those who take many things unsteadily, “whose conscience, being weak, is defiled.

For food will not commend us to God.” “Nor does what goes in defile a man,” he says, “but what comes out of the mouth.” The natural use of food, then, is indifferent: “For neither if we eat are we the better,” he says, “nor if we do not eat are we the worse.” But it is not reasonable for those who have been counted worthy to partake of divine and spiritual food to share in “the table of demons.” “Do we not have the right to eat and drink,” says the apostle, “and to take wives about with us?” But clearly, by mastering pleasures, we restrain desires. “Take care, then, lest this right of yours become a stumbling block to the weak.” We must not, like prodigals, after the image of the rich man's son in the Gospel, misuse the Father's gifts, but use them without attachment, as masters; for we were appointed to reign and to rule, not to be slaves to food. It is admirable, then, to look up to the truth, to cling to the divine food from above, and to be filled with the inexhaustible contemplation of him who truly is, tasting the firm, abiding, and pure pleasure. The eating of Christ shows that we must receive this love. But it is utterly irrational, useless, and not human, to be fed for death like fattened cattle, those from the earth always looking down to the earth and stooping over tables, pursuing the dainty life, burying the good here in a life that will not last, flattering only the swallowing, for the sake of which cooks have become more valued than farmers.

We do not do away with social intercourse, but we regard the slippery slope of habit with suspicion, as a calamity. So we must decline daintiness, partaking of a few necessary things. And if one of the unbelievers invites us and we decide to go (for it is good not to mix with the disorderly), he commands us to eat whatever is set before us, “asking no questions for conscience's sake”; and likewise he ordered us to buy what is sold in the meat market without inquiry. We must not, then, abstain altogether from various foods, but we must not be eager about them. We should partake of what is set before us, as befits a Christian, honoring the host by a harmless and moderate sharing in the gathering, regarding the expense of what is brought in as indifferent, and despising the dishes, which will shortly be gone. “Let not the one who eats despise the one who does not eat, and let not the one who does not eat judge the one who eats.” A little further on he explains the reason for the precept: “The one who eats, eats to the Lord and gives thanks to God; and the one who does not eat, abstains to the Lord and gives thanks to God,” so that righteous food is thanksgiving (eucharistia); and the one who always gives thanks is not occupied with pleasures. And if we would urge any of our fellow guests to virtue, we should abstain all the more from these dainty foods, presenting ourselves as a clear example of virtue, as we ourselves have Christ. “For if any such food makes my brother stumble,” he says, “I will never eat it, so that I may not make my brother stumble,” gaining the human being by a little self-control. “Do we not have the right to eat and drink?” And “we know the truth,” he says, “that an idol is nothing in the world, but there is truly only one God for us, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus.” But “by your knowledge,” he says, “the weak brother is destroyed, for whom Christ died; and those who wound the conscience of weak brothers sin against Christ.” So the apostle, taking care for us, distinguishes suppers, saying “not to associate”: “if anyone called a brother is found to be sexually immoral or an adulterer or an idolater, not even to eat with such a one,” whether in speech or at table, suspecting the defilement from it, as also from the tables of demons.

“It is good not to eat meat nor to drink wine,” he himself admits, and so do the followers of Pythagoras; for this belongs rather to beasts, and the vapor from meat, being more turbid, darkens the soul. But if anyone partakes of these, he does not sin; only let him partake with self-control, not clinging to them nor dependent on them, nor greedy for the dish; for a voice will sound in his ears, saying, “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.” It is very foolish to marvel and gape at what is set before us at public feasts after the luxury of the Word; and much more foolish to enslave our eyes to the dainties, our incontinence being carried around, so to speak, by the servants along with them. How is it not unseemly to rise up from one's couch, all but throwing one's face into the dishes, leaning out from the couch as from a nest, as the saying goes, to catch the wandering steam with one's breath? How is it not irrational to smear one's hands in the sauces, or to reach constantly for the dish, not tasting but snatching, filling oneself immoderately and indecently? One can see such people more like pigs or dogs than human beings for their greed, hurrying to be stuffed, so that both cheeks swell at once and the vessels about the face stand out, and besides they are drenched with sweat, gripped by insatiability and panting from incontinence, the food being thrust with unsociable haste into the belly, as if they were storing up provisions for a journey, not digesting.

Excess, which is evil everywhere, is exposed most of all in the matter of food. Gourmandise is nothing but excess in the use of delicacies; gluttony is madness about the gullet; and belly-madness is incontinence about food, and, as the name implies, madness about the belly, since margos means mad. So the apostle, checking those who practice wrongdoing at a feast, says: “For each one goes ahead with his own supper in eating, and one is hungry and another is drunk. Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?” Among those who have, those who eat without restraint, the insatiable, shame themselves; and both do wrong: the one, by burdening those who have nothing; the other, by exposing their incontinence before those who have. So, of necessity, addressing those who have lost all shame and use suppers too freely, the insatiable, for whom nothing is enough, the apostle again broke out in an indignant voice: “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.

If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not come together for judgment.” We must abstain, then, from all servility and incontinence, touching what is set before us decorously, keeping hand and couch and chin unsoiled, preserving the good form of the face undistorted, not behaving indecently in swallowing either; but we should stretch out the hand in order and at intervals. … We must also guard against saying anything while eating; for the voice becomes unseemly and indistinct when confined by full cheeks, and the tongue, pressed by food and hindered in its natural action, gives out a crushed utterance. Nor is it fitting to eat and drink at the same time; for it is the height of incontinence to confuse the times of things whose uses do not agree. And “whether you eat,” he says, “or drink, do all to the glory of God,” aiming at true frugality, which the Lord too seems to me to have hinted at when he blessed the loaves and the broiled fish with which he feasted the disciples, introducing a fine example of simple food.

(… example of simple food.) And that fish which Peter caught at the Lord's command also hints at easy, God-given, and temperate food. He advises us to take away from those who come up out of the water to the bait of righteousness their profligacy and love of money, like the coin from the fish, so as to separate them from vainglory; and, giving the stater to the tax collectors, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, to keep for God what is God's. The stater could have other interpretations, not unknown to us, but the present is not the right time to work them out. It is enough to recall it, using for our purpose flowers of the Word that are in tune with it, as we have often done already, drawing the most useful spring to the urgent point of the inquiry, to water what the Word has planted. For even if “I am permitted to partake of all things, not all things are profitable”; for those who do everything that is permitted quickly fall into doing what is not permitted. As justice does not come from greed, nor self-control from licentiousness, so the Christian's way of life is not acquired by luxury; for the table of truth is far from “lewd dishes.” For even if all things were made above all for the sake of human beings, it is not good to use all things, nor always. The occasion, the time, the manner, and the purpose give no small weight toward what is profitable for one being instructed; and what is fitting has power to do away with the life devoted to the belly, which wealth tends to call forth: not a wealth that sees sharply, but an abundance blind about gluttony. No one is poor in necessities, nor is a human being ever overlooked; for there is one who nourishes the birds and the fish and, in a word, the irrational animals: God; and they lack nothing at all, though they take no thought for food. And we are better than they, as their masters, and nearer to God, as more self-controlled. We were not made to eat and drink, but to exist, having been made for the knowledge of God. “For the righteous man,” it says, “eats and satisfies his soul, but the bellies of the ungodly are in want,” craving unceasing daintiness.

Costliness is suited not to solitary enjoyment but to sharing with others. So we must guard against foods that persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite. Is there not, even in temperate frugality, a healthy variety of foods? Bulbs, olives, some vegetables, milk, cheese, fruits, and all kinds of cooked dishes without sauces. And if roast or boiled meat is needed, it may be taken. “Have you anything to eat here?” the Lord said to the disciples after the resurrection. “And they” (having been taught by him to practice frugality) “gave him a piece of broiled fish; and he ate before them and said to them,” says Luke, what he said. Besides, those who dine according to reason should not be kept without their share of sweetmeats and honeycombs. Of foods, the most suitable are those that can be used at once without fire, since they are also readier; and second, as we said, the cheaper ones. But those who stoop over steaming tables, nursing their own passions, are led by a most dainty demon, whom I would not be ashamed to call a “belly-demon” [and] the worst and most ruinous of demons. He is very like the one called a ventriloquist (“belly-speaker”). It is much better to be happy (eudaimōn, “with a good daimon”) than to have a demon as housemate; and happiness is found in the practice of virtue.

The apostle Matthew partook of seeds, nuts, and vegetables, without meat; and John, exceeding in self-control, “ate locusts and wild honey.” Peter abstained from pork; but “a trance fell upon him,” as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, “and he sees heaven opened and a vessel let down to the earth by four corners, and in it all the four-footed animals and creeping things of the earth and birds of the air; and a voice came to him, Rise, kill and eat. But Peter said, By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common or unclean. And the voice came to him again a second time, What God has cleansed, do not call common.” For us too, then, the use of food is indifferent. “For it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man,” but a vain opinion about incontinence. For God, when he formed man, said, “All things shall be food for you.” “Better vegetables with love than a calf with deceit”: this recalls well what was said before, that love is not the vegetables, but suppers are to be taken with love. The middle state is good in all things, and not least in the preparation of meals; since extremes are dangerous, but means are good.

The mean is whatever lacks none of the necessities; for natural appetites are limited by sufficiency. To the Jews frugality was enjoined through the law with great wisdom; for the Instructor, through Moses, took away from them the use of a great many things, attaching reasons, the spiritual ones hidden, the fleshly ones plain, which they believed: to some animals, that they do not have divided hooves; to others, that they do not chew the cud; to others, that they alone of water creatures do not have scales; so that very few indeed were left them suitable for food. And of those he allowed them to touch, he again forbade what had died of itself, what was offered to idols, and what was strangled; it was not lawful to touch even these. For since it is impossible for one who uses pleasant things to refrain from accepting them, he set against this the opposite training, until he should break the habitual rush toward luxury. In human beings pleasure has bred much harm and pain, and overfeeding begets in the soul sluggishness, forgetfulness, and folly.

They say too that children's bodies grow well and increase in height when their food is scanty; for the breath that runs up into growth is not hindered by much food blocking the free passage of its course. So Plato, the philosopher who most zealously sought the truth, kindling the spark of Hebrew philosophy, condemning the luxurious life, says: “When I came, the life called happy there, full of Italian and Syracusan tables, did not please me at all: to live filling oneself twice a day and never sleeping alone at night, and all the practices that go with this life. For from these no one under heaven could ever become wise, practicing such things from youth, nor will he be blended with so wonderful a nature.” For Plato was not unacquainted with David, who, setting up the holy ark in his city in the middle of the tent, made merry with all the people under him, and “before the Lord distributed to all the host of Israel, from man to woman, to each a loaf of bread, a cake baked on the hearth, and a pancake from the pan.” This was sufficient food, the food of Israel; the food of the nations is excessive. The one who uses it “would never even be likely to become self-controlled,” having buried his mind in his belly, very like the fish called the ass, which alone of all animals, Aristotle says, has its heart in its stomach. Epicharmus the comic poet calls it “belly-turned.” Such are the people who have put their faith in the belly, “whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.” For them the apostle foretold no good, saying, “whose end is destruction.”