I don't think anyone is "recommending" that anyone else drink alcohol. Some of us are trying to respond to one person who has "recommended" that no Christian drink at all. I personally don't give a rip whether bwsmith drinks. However, I do care about being called unwise on account of statistics and other fear-mongering.

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Davidius
Husband of Emilia
Member: First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham (RPCNA) - Durham, NC
Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, German Literature and Classics

This may explain the old adage about Baptists being Methodists with shoes, and Presbyterians being Baptists who can read. To round out the adage, Lutherans might qualify as Presbyterians who drink to excess, and Episcopalians as Lutherans who know when to say when. - D.G. Hart

Yes, the beginning of wisdom is a proper fear of the Lord – however, what I said, was “ Since the warnings so clearly describe what may come from use – I believe a healthy fear is wise.”
The warnings to which I referred were warnings that the Lord outlined.

I apologize for misunderstanding your question.

I did not say that truth was found in statistics – nor that we should be afraid because of statistics – but using them and the information they offer is helpful in make use of knowledge.

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bwsmith
wife, mother and grandmother!
Severna Park Evangelical Pres. Church (PCA)

I simply don't agree. Again, I have provided ample opportunity for clarification along those lines. Instead of clarity that resulted along a proper motivation, I kept getting more of the same overstatement and blurry explanation.

I didn not ask for chapter and verse. I asked for some warrant. The point for the motivation to avoid something or commend something must be for Christ's sake. It is therefore incumbent upon the arguer to present the case in which a certain course of behavior is likely pleasing to Christ. I would even have accepted a line of argumentation along the lines of Romans 6. I take no issue with the idea that "...let not turn our liberty into a license to sin...." I don't need chapter and verse for that to be wise. However the argument is framed, however, it needs to align to a biblical principle, even if broadly, and be couched in terms that can be argued for so that the mature understand how it is applied.

I know you have personal convictions against alchohol use. I personally think that if somebody was arguing against something else using the same tack and not clarifying when challenged with a concern that a Gospel motivation remains unexpressed that you would probably see more clearly the manner in which this was argued from the beginning. To recap the line of argumentation read below and ask yourself: What is distinctively "Christian" about the below arguments?

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Rich
Okinawa, Japan

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Rich, I drink wine at the communion. It is not my personal conviction that I am against alcohol use. You seem to be misunderstanding what the other side is saying.

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Yours sincerely,


"Illum oportet crescere me autem minui."

This is the whole problem with your presentation.

I have met Christians who believe that drinking alcohol is sinful because they believe that the purpose of drinking alcohol is to get drunk. I would disagree because I have known people who drink alcohol who had no intention of getting drunk. They were not drinking to get drunk. Getting drunk is not the only reason why a person would want to drink alcohol. For example, Paul told Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach and his frequent illnesses (1 Timothy 5:23)

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Curt Hayashida
member, Community Bible Church (Non-denominational)
Vallejo, CA

I wasn't referring to use in the Sacrament of course. I don't believe I'm misunderstanding at all.

I'm going to say this one more time and then quit this thread because it has been said so many times now that it should be obvious.

It's all about the motivation. As I've asked above, I didn't find anything distinctly Christian in the above arguments. I didn't even find a single point of balance.

It is one thing for me to make a case that a certain course of action may be prudent. If I begin by pointing out that not taking a course of action is likened to putting a gun to one's head and taking a chance that one of the chambers might be loaded then, if I'm arguing Biblically, I need to be able to sustain that point.

If I cannot, it simply does not do when other point out the fuller Biblical position of a thing to continually retreat back into a one-sided presentation of the dangers. If you read the above in their context, every time someone wanted even a simple acknowledgement that there is a Biblical balance to this issue, the responses were as the above: "Well nobody thinks they're going to be addicted."

It's not as if I didn't see the kernel of truth in what bw was saying but her presentation didn't even admit to a fuller Biblical treatment. Nothing about Gospel motivation, simply the terror of a substance that seizes control of you that you have no control over. The Christian, in fact, is no longer a slave to Christ because alchohol, in her presentation, is a substance that seems to possess power in itself to enslave.

In your presentation above, for instance, you make an argument that would even be worth pursuing about private enjoyment vs. social enjoyment of the fruit of the vine. BW's presentation did not even admit to a single aspect where the drink could be responsibly enjoyed as a blessing given by God. It would be interesting to engage on whether she agrees with you on whether wine should be used in the Sacrament as the same line of reasoning is typically used by its opponents about addiction and the like.

Next, as I have repeatedly offered, everything needs to be subjected to our understanding of the Gospel. You'll never see me arguing for liberty for license sake. Nevertheless, alchohol use is a great substance to obscure one's belief in liberty and the way in which Christians are to be taught in how to exercise it. Types of mollycoddling do nothing but have the person focus on the prohibition itself as opposed to why it is being argued for. As I have repeatedly demonstrated, I have not seen anything in her presentation that indicates that the motivation offered to a person would be based on anything other than "...this is in your best interest that you not do this because it will destroy you...." On one level that is a good motivation but it is not a fully developed motivation. I would have liked to see a motivation developed that focused upon our status in Christ and the manner in which Paul argues that we ought to do things that flow out of doxology. Perhaps you detect something in her argumentation that I have missed but I haven't seen a bit of it. Frankly, if we're arguing about a thing in the Law of God forum then this is a requirement and not an option lest we forget how the Law and how wisdom function in the light of the Gospel.

Thus, it's not that I don't see the "warnings and threatenings" and conclude there is no validity in them. It is that we are in the Law of God forum and I have repeatedly asserted that there is a lack of a proper development of how these warnings function. Frankly, one need not go into a Reformed Theology board to get all the warnings about how alcohol can destroy your life. I dare say I've probably had more exposure to the effects of alchohol as a leader of thousands of Marines. I've ordered men and women into treatment. I'm not ignorant of its dangers.

But this is a Reformed board and when we talk about Law and wisdom, it's in light of the Gospel. To argue simply as the world does to warn people of the dangers of alcohol is incomplete. When challenged, bwsmith has repeatedly refused to bring a Biblical balance to her presentation. To chalk it all up to: "Well, nobody knows that alcohol can ruin your life" is dubious as if that's not apparently obvious to the casual observer.

I have made many (hundreds) of gallons of wine and beer. As well as *ahem* reading about (thats right everthing I know about the distilation process I learned from books) distillation.

The key to alcohol content is sugar. Yeast is a living organism that "eats" sugar. This produces 2 by products, Alcohol and CO2 (fizzzy bubles).

Alcohol levels of 12 % (or more!) are entirely natural. It requires NO outside manipulation or "fortification". This level of alcohol will cause drunkeness if consumed to excess. Heck, we have all seen guys knee-walking drunk on coors lite. That has a level of around 4%.

So unless the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD changed the fundamental laws of the universe, something not even the most radical full-preterist would claim, then these claims are so much nonesense. Any person who claims that "bible wine" has a lower alcohol content is ignorant. Any person who repeats it after having it explained is lying or a flat-earth type of crank.

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Kevin Rogers
Sovereign Community Church, PCA
Moncton NB

Would someone just please tell me if I need to cancel our fellowship time at the local brew pub and move it to someplace "safe" ... like Old Country Buffet.

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Tom Albrecht
Member, Covenant URCNA, New Holland, PA.

"I'm not a famous man. I'm just a simple country doctor with horse sense."

Okay, this is not about the Gospel, I have no scriptural warrant for this save love of neighbor - please don't eat at Old Country Buffet! They put something in the food so people won't eat too much of it, (they eat too much anyway) and whatever it is disagrees with my stomach. it isn't a "safe" place to gather IMHO.

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The man who is disposed to think of his sin as a great calamity, rather than as a heinous crime, is not likely either to reverence God or to respect His law. - John Kennedy, 1873
Meg
Blog
Member, Intown Presbyterian Church,PCA, Portland, OR

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All of that food! Don't ya know that 1 in 3 people have the potential to be obese??

Why would you put that pot roast in front of someone who could abuse it???

Exactly. The fermentation process is the fermentation process...is the fermentation process...

However, out of curiosity, I was doing a search on the net regarding this topic, and what many claim is that the alcohol content was lower due, not to the fermentation process, but rather because the drink was supposedly diluted with water, something like 3-4 parts water to 1 part drink (reminds me of drinking something like a Bud Light).

The two questions I would have regarding this dilution of wine claim is:

1) Is there any credible evidence of this? The websites I read that purport this do not cite any sources. They only assert this to be the case.

2) If it is the case that wine was in fact diluted with water, what exactly was the purpose of doing so?

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~Greg Carpenter~
Deerfield Beach, FL

"It is a throne of grace that God in Christ is represented to us upon; but yet it is a throne still whereon majesty and glory do reside, and God is always to be considered by us as on a throne." –John Owen

Understanding that I have NO knowledge of the veracity of the dilution claim, don't these same people claim that the only reason they drank wine so much is because the water was impure? Why would they put this impure water into their wine if they couldn't drink the water in the first place?

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Personal conviction is not antithetical to Gospel-motivation. Personal conviction should informed by the Gospel's call to love your neighbor. I am assuming the bwsmith (and everyone else here, even you) is motivated by the same Gospel mandate to "love your neighbor" - and there is the "Gospel-motivation" you seem to miss.

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R. Anthony Coletti
Midway Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Jonesborough, TN
[i]et venite et arguite me dicit Dominus[/i]

The alcohol purifies the water.

BTW. I believe the alcohol content of wine is not simply a function of the amount of sugar. The yeast dies after the alcohol level gets too high for them to survive. The wine can contain more sugar, but the yeast will still die when the alcohol the produce gets too concentrated. ... So I wonder how hardy the yeast was back then? Could it produce the same levels of alcohol as todays commercially cultivated yeast? Maybe todays yeast can produce higher levels of alcohol.

So Anthony, no one would question bw's motive. It's wonderful. The motive has nothing to do with building a biblical case for or against drinking alcohol. The gospel rebukes autonomous thought however, the gospel is historical fact, the gospel is life changing power and is independent of our sentiments.

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Bob Vigneault (Bawb Vēēn-yo)
I just know there's got to be a pony in here somewhere!

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Today's super yeasts are more able to endure higher alcohol levels but I don't believe this argument needs to be about alcohol level. Alcohol is not the problem, drunkeness is.

I can't say for certain, but I believe it was common practice.


Wine is not a cheap as water. But mixing wine with water has benefits. The wine sanitizes and preserves the water by killing of bacteria. And the reason for drinking wine in the first place was for a safe source of water. You drank for the water, not for the buzz. So adding water simply made it possible to drink more water safely - without risking getting drunk.

Undiluted wine may have been save for special occasions or for later in the day. You wouldn't drink pure wine all day because of the costs and the side effects. You simply needed it to hydrate your body.

I agree. But it helps to know what the wine was like back then, and how it was consumed. They probably drank quarts or gallons a day, but it may have had much lower alcohol content and was often diluted with water. We don't tend to add water to our wine, nor can we drink the same quantities without getting drunk.

I wonder if the several glasses of wine back then would even give you a buzz? Today, I can't drink more than half a glass without it effecting my head. And back then, getting drunk was probably expensive. You'd need to be rich to be an alcoholic them. ... Maybe. ... Just wondering.