Fasting

The practice and purpose of fasting.

Passages that substantially address this topic, in date order.

• Didache 1.3Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Bless and pray for enemies, and love those who hate you.
• Didache 7.4Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Fast before baptism.
• Didache 8.1Anonymous · ca. 50–150 (often ca. 100) · Fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, not on the days the hypocrites fast.
• 1 Clement 53.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God told Moses the people had made an idol.
• 1 Clement 55.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Esther risked her life and saved her people by fasting and prayer.
• Epistle of Barnabas 3.1Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Isaiah on the fast God does not want.
• Epistle of Barnabas 3.2Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · Outward signs of fasting are not enough.
• Epistle of Barnabas 3.3Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · The true fast: justice, freeing the oppressed, feeding the hungry.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.1 (54.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Hermas is keeping a “station,” a fast.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.2 (54.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Hermas fasts as he is used to.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.3 (54.3)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The Shepherd says this is not a true fast.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.4 (54.4)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · God does not want an empty fast.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.1.5 (54.5)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The true fast is to avoid evil and keep God's commands.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.6 (56.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · First avoid evil words and desires.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.7 (56.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · On a fast day eat only bread and water, and give the money saved to widows, orphans, or the needy.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.3.8 (56.8)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Such a fast is an acceptable sacrifice.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 2.2.1 (6.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · After fasting, Hermas understands the writing.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.1.2 (9.2)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · The woman tells Hermas to meet her in his field.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.10.6 (18.6)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · She tells him to fast and ask humbly.
• Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.10.7 (18.7)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · A young man warns him not to harm his body by excessive fasting.
• 2 Clement 16.4Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Almsgiving, fasting, prayer, and love: almsgiving lightens sin.
• To the Philippians 7.2Polycarp of Smyrna · ca. 110–135 · Believers should hold to the teaching handed down from the beginning, watching in prayer and fasting as the Lord taught.
• First Apology 61Justin Martyr · ca. 150–155 · Justin describes baptism: instruction, prayer and fasting, then washing in water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, called “illumination.”
• Dialogue with Trypho 107.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Nineveh repented at Jonah's preaching.
• Dialogue with Trypho 15.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin turns to the true fast.
• Dialogue with Trypho 15.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:1–2.
• Dialogue with Trypho 15.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:2–4.
• Dialogue with Trypho 15.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:5–6.
• Dialogue with Trypho 15.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:7–9.
• Dialogue with Trypho 15.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Isa 58:9–11.
• Dialogue with Trypho 40.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The two goats of the Day of Atonement signify Christ's two comings.
• The Instructor 2.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Book 2 begins the practical instruction with the body: others live to eat, but the Christian eats to live, cleansing the soul's eye and purifying the flesh.
• The Instructor 2.1.11Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Paul and the Pythagoreans say abstaining from meat and wine is good; eating meat is not sin, but gluttonous table manners make people like pigs and dogs.
• The Instructor 2.1.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Simple foods such as bulbs, olives, vegetables, milk, cheese, and fruit are healthy; the risen Lord ate broiled fish; the glutton is ruled by a “belly-demon.”
• The Instructor 2.1.16Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Matthew ate no meat and John the Baptist ate locusts and honey; but Peter's vision shows that food is indifferent, and the middle way is best.
• The Instructor 2.1.17Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The mean is having what is necessary; the law's food restrictions trained the Jews in frugality by breaking the habit of luxury.
• The Instructor 2.1.18Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Plato condemned the luxurious life, as David's simple distribution of bread shows; those whose god is the belly face destruction.
• The Instructor 2.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Food is for life, not pleasure; simple food gives health and strength, while elaborate cookery breeds disease.
• The Instructor 2.1.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Gluttons search the world for delicacies, spending their lives around the kitchen.
• The Instructor 2.1.7Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The church's common meal should serve love and be plain and moderate; gluttony makes human beings like beasts, crawling on their bellies like the serpent.
• The Instructor 2.10.112Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · John the Baptist wore camel's hair and ate locusts and honey, and Elijah wore a sheepskin: examples of frugal, simple life.
• The Instructor 2.2.21Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The impulses of youth must be cooled by water; grown men should take their midday meal dry, since excess drink shows incontinence.
• The Instructor 3.12.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · God hears the one who acts justly; the fast God chooses is freeing the oppressed and feeding the hungry, and the sacrifice he wants is a broken spirit and a heart that glorifies him.
• Prophetic Extracts 14.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Food does not make us righteous; fasting symbolizes dying to the world so as to live to God on divine food.
• Prophetic Extracts 14.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Fasting empties the soul of matter and makes body and soul ready for God's word.
• Prophetic Extracts 14.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Worldly food is the old life of sin; divine food is faith, hope, patience, knowledge, peace,
• Prophetic Extracts 14.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · and self-control; blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, a hunger of the soul.
• Excerpts from Theodotus 84.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Hence the fasts, prayers, raised hands, and kneeling before baptism: a soul is rescued from the lions' mouth, and temptations follow from the angry powers.
• Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? 42.15Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–210 · John assured him of Christ's forgiveness, kissed his right hand, and restored him to the church through prayer, fasting, and teaching: an example of true repentance.
• Miscellanies 2.20.105Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The law trains us in self-control, the foundation of the virtues, by forbidding the fattest foods, pork and fish without fins or scales, which serve luxury.
• Miscellanies 2.20.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We must avoid exciting foods and luxury; self-restraint is God's great gift, and he will not forsake those who choose it; Christ's kind yoke drives us from faith to faith to salvation.
• Miscellanies 3.12.85Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Paul foretold that some would forbid marriage and foods, which God created good to be received with thanksgiving; no one may be compelled to abstain from marriage, meat, or wine, though abstaining with thanksgiving is also good.
• Miscellanies 3.15.99Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The true eunuch is the one who begets no truth; by obedience he bears fruit; the apostles begot spiritual children; the eunuch barred from God's assembly is the barren in word and deed, but those who make themselves eunuchs from sin are blessed.
• Miscellanies 3.4.33Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who live like the worst of the worldly cannot claim a higher nature; Christ demands righteousness greater than the Pharisees', and Scripture teaches obedience and self-control.
• Miscellanies 3.6.48Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the ascetics have already received the resurrection, they should stop eating too; abstinence alone proves nothing, since pagans and the Magi practice it; the kingdom is not food and drink, and self-control is a hidden virtue of the soul.
• Miscellanies 3.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The righteous of old ate with thanksgiving and married with self-control; Paul forbids judging over food; Christ himself ate and drank; the ascetics cannot claim to surpass them.
• Miscellanies 3.7.57Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Greek self-control fights desire; Christian self-control, a gift of God's grace, aims not to desire at all, as Moses fasted forty days; desire that lingers inside still sins in memory.
• Miscellanies 3.7.60Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Those who reject marriage and food out of hatred for the flesh are like pagan ascetics, such as the Brahmans and the Indian “Holy Men,” who abstain from meat, wine, and women.
• Miscellanies 4.19.119Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Esther, by fasting and prayer, saved Israel from Haman; Miriam shared leadership with Moses; Susanna, condemned by the lustful elders, remained an unwavering witness to chastity even to death.
• Miscellanies 4.22.138Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The perfect man has passed beyond self-control to freedom from passion; he gives and fasts in secret, doing good by settled habit; he must walk the narrow way, drawn by the Father through grace, and pities those who hate him.
• Miscellanies 6.12.102Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The knower prays at all times, first for forgiveness, then for power to do good and to understand creation, aiming at the face-to-face vision; fasting means abstaining from all evil, and righteousness must be complete on every side.
• Miscellanies 7.12.75Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows uses this life only as need requires; he understands the Wednesday and Friday fasts, named after Hermes (gain) and Aphrodite (pleasure), as a lifelong fast from greed and lust.
• Miscellanies 7.12.76Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The one who knows fasts from evil deeds and evil thoughts; he keeps the Lord's day whenever he casts off a bad thought, and he disciplines his eyes, seeing the beauty of others with the soul rather than with desire.
• Octavius 8.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Caecilius describes Christians as a secret, low-class conspiracy that despises the gods.
• On Baptism 20Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Candidates should prepare for baptism with prayer, fasting, vigils, and confession of sins; after baptism they should pray for spiritual gifts and remember Tertullian in their prayers.
• On Prayer 18Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Those fasting should not refuse the kiss of peace after common prayer, since that reveals their fast, which Christ commanded be kept hidden; only on the public fast of Passover is the kiss rightly omitted.
• On Prayer 19Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · On fast days (“stations”) Christians should still attend the Eucharist and may receive the Lord's body and keep it to take later, without breaking their fast.
• On Prayer 23Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Christians do not kneel on Sunday or during the Easter season, as signs of joy, but kneel at other times, especially on fast days; Scripture sets no fixed times, only to pray always.
• On Repentance 11Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Tertullian mocks those who shrink from the discomforts of penance, comparing them to candidates for office who endure worse for a single year's honor.
• On Repentance 9Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · The second repentance must be shown outwardly in exomologesis, public confession with sackcloth, ashes, fasting, weeping, and kneeling before the presbyters and the faithful, through which God pardons.
• On Patience 13Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Patience is also exercised in the body: in fasting and penance, as Nebuchadnezzar showed, in continence and celibacy, and above all in enduring persecution and martyrdom.
• Against Marcion 2.18Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The law of “eye for eye” was meant to restrain violence by the fear of immediate requital; the food laws taught self-control and prepared for fasting; and the sacrifices kept an idolatry-prone people bound to the true God.
• Against Marcion 4.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The call of Levi, the question of fasting, Christ as bridegroom, and the sayings on new wine and patches all show Christ fulfilling the Creator's law and prophets, not separating from a foreign god.
• Against Marcion 4.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · In the sabbath controversies Christ did not destroy the Creator's sabbath but fulfilled it, allowing the relief of hunger as David did and doing God's work of saving life, as Elisha had done.
• To Scapula 4Tertullian · 212 · Tertullian urges Scapula not to fight against God, citing lenient governors, Christian healings of pagans, the favor of Severus, the rain miracle under Marcus Aurelius, and the blameless life of Christians.
• Refutation of All Heresies 10.25.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Summary of the Montanists: orthodox on creation and Christ, but they prefer their prophets to the Gospels and impose new fasts.
• Refutation of All Heresies 8.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Montanists exalt their prophetesses above the apostles; orthodox on God and Christ, they add new fasts and dietary rules.
• Refutation of All Heresies 8.20.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Encratites, orthodox about God and Christ, abstain from meat and wine and forbid marriage, more like Cynics than Christians.
• Against Celsus 5.49Origen · ca. 248 · The Jewish food laws were symbols until Christ declared all foods clean; Christians, unlike Pythagoreans who fear eating reincarnated kin, abstain from meat only as a discipline to master the body.
• Against Celsus 8.22Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do keep the Lord's day, Preparation days, Easter, and Pentecost, but for the perfect every day is the Lord's day, a preparation, a passing-over to God, and a Pentecost of prayer and the Spirit.
• Against Celsus 8.23Origen · ca. 248 · Set feast days are reminders for ordinary believers, a “part” of the festival that the perfect keep always; Christian feasts are far more dignified than pagan festivals of drunkenness, and the feasts of God's law involve humbling the flesh.
• Against Celsus 8.28Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says Christians should either abstain from all meat like Pythagoras, or admit that all food, drink, and air come from demons; Origen notes that Scripture itself commends abstaining from meat for a brother's sake.
• Against Celsus 8.30Origen · ca. 248 · The apostles forbade idol offerings and blood because they feed demons; Christians may abstain from meat for self-control, not because of Pythagorean transmigration, and they honour the bodies of the dead with burial because of the resurrection.
• On the Lord's Prayer 32Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Prayer must be joined with good works, fasting, and almsgiving, like that of Cornelius.
• On the Lord's Prayer 36Cyprian of Carthage · ca. 252 · Christians, living in Christ's light, should pray at night too, anticipating the endless day of the kingdom.
• On the Lapsed 29Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian urges the lapsed to confess their sin while still alive and to return to God with fasting, weeping, and mourning.
• On the Lapsed 30Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Cyprian rebukes lapsed men and women who live in luxury, bathing, feasting, and adorning themselves, instead of mourning their spiritual death with true penance.
• On the Lapsed 31Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · Even the innocent three youths in the furnace and Daniel confessed their sins to God with fasting and humility.
• On the Lapsed 35Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The lapsed must do long and earnest penance with prayer, fasting, mourning, and generous almsgiving, spending on the poor the property that caused their fall.