On Fasting, against the Psychics

Contents

Reading pages: 1–10 · 11–17

1. 1Tertullian attacks the “psychics,” who reject the New Prophecy because it teaches frequent fasting, and sets out their charges against its fasts, station-days, and dry diet.
2. 2Tertullian lays out his opponents' case: that only the days when the bridegroom was taken away bind Christians, that other fasting is voluntary, and that Scripture condemns scruples about food.
3. 3Fasting's rationale goes back to Adam, who lost salvation by eating; hunger is the antidote by which the first sin of the appetite is expiated.
4. 4God at first gave man plants and after the flood allowed flesh, not to reject fasting but to strengthen man by freedom before later requiring greater abstinence.
5. 5The food laws of Israel trained the people in abstinence, and Israel's craving for Egypt's meat and onions repeated Adam's sin of the belly.
6. 6Experience shows that a full stomach dulls the mind and breeds lust and forgetfulness of God, while Moses and Elijah, fasting forty days, met God face to face.
7. 7Examples from Israel, Hezekiah, Nineveh, Ahab, Hannah, and Daniel show fasting reconciling God, averting danger, and winning knowledge of mysteries.
8. 8In the New Testament Anna, Christ's forty-day fast, his teaching on fasting and on casting out demons, Cornelius, and Paul all commend fasting.
9. 9Dry diet and abstinence from wine have biblical precedent in Daniel, Elijah, David, Samuel, Aaron, and Timothy, so xerophagy is neither new nor vain.
10. 10Against the claim that stations must end at the ninth hour, Tertullian argues from the hours of prayer in Acts, the Lord's death and burial, and Moses, Joshua, Saul, and Daniel for later stations.
11. 11Fasting, dry diet, and stations are old and useful, not new or empty; neither the devil nor an antichrist would enjoin duties to the true God, so the charge of heresy or false prophecy fails.
12. 12Fasting prepares Christians for prison and martyrdom, whereas the psychics feast their imprisoned confessors, as with Pristinus, who died drunk and denying Christ.
13. 13The psychics themselves fast beyond what tradition fixes and bishops order fasts; the Paraclete's appointed fasts, like the Greek councils, rightly bind those who receive him.
14. 14Keeping Christian fast days is not the Galatians' error, since the church also keeps Easter, Pentecost, and weekly fasts; Paul rejected Jewish ceremonies, not new Christian solemnities.
15. 15Paul condemned heretics who reject the Creator's foods, not the church's limited fasts; Scripture, Christ's own fasting, and Isaiah's words confirm fasting rightly done.
16. 16Scripture punishes gluttony in Israel, Eli's house, and the prophet from Judah; even the heathen humble themselves by fasting, while the psychics make their belly their god.
17. 17Tertullian ends by comparing the psychics to Esau selling his birthright for stew, mocking their love-feasts and double portions, and urging fasting as training for the spiritual contest and martyrdom.