The Soulful Eye

So before I get into this let me make one thing clear.  None of the particular discussion that follows is directly about the moral status of animals.  It’s about one aspect of the concept of food in antiquity generally and early Christianity particularly and most specifically in Paul’s letters.   You could get from here to current moral debates about animals a few different ways but that’s absolutely not what the context of this is.   That said.  Let’s take a look at something you probably don’t hear much about on Sunday.

In Belly and the Body in the Pauline Epistles, Karl Sandnes takes a look at an under appreciated if not completely overlooked aspect of Paul’s letters, the theme of the belly and belly worship. He argues that this topos in Paul cannot be properly understood without placing it against the larger backdrop of the Graeco-Roman linguistic fields of belly and body.  In the ancient world the belly was a subject of physicians, moral philosophers, and politicians.  Physicians operated under the Hippocratic notions of balancing the humors.  Physiognomists mapped out correspondences between outward appearance and inner qualities.  Moral philosophers argued for and against (shocking- I know) the merits of mastering bodily desires.   Rhetoricians in the religious and political arenas had quite a bit of belly language to work with.   Sandnes frames this study as such …

An investigation into Paul’s belly-dicta might to some appear as narrow and limited; after all Paul does not speak frequently about the stomach.  If, however, the relevant texts are placed within the broader framework of how Paul conceived the human body, the belly-texts will gain in interest.  It is the conviction of the present writer that the belly-dicta are not simply rhetorical devices aimed at vilifying opponents.  They are significant sources for how Paul instructed his recent converts, and attest his thought about bodily needs.  This conviction roots belly-worship firmly in Pauline theology as well as in ancient moral exhortation. [5]

So, first things first.  What references exactly are we talking about?

Primarily:

• Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. (Phil 3:19 NRSV)
• For such people do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the simple-minded.(Rom 16:18 NRSV)
• “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. (1 Cor 6:13 NRSV)  where the quote is a Corinthian slogan that Paul is responding to
• Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.” (1 Cor 10:7 NRSV) Paul’s borrowing this quote from Exodus 32:6

Secondarily:

• It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, “Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.” (Titus 1:12 NRSV) where the quote serves as reference to the larger available stereotypes in Greece at the time
• If with merely human hopes I fought with wild animals at Ephesus, what would I have gained by it? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Cor 15:32 NRSV) where the quote is a Corinthian slogan that Paul is responding to

A final general consideration is Paul’s theology of the body which Sandnes contextualizes in chapter 1, specifically that the body, and not just the mind, can be involved in idolatry. [17-20]  Pagans and Christians can be differentiated by the way they use their bodies.  Paul lists bodily sins as idolatry (Rom 1:18-32), relates it to epithumia (lust) and specifically bodily lusts, lusts of the Flesh.  Enslavement to bodily vices marks the former pagan life.  Even those under the Law were helpless because Law had no power over passions deriving from the body.  Christians, however have the tools they need to master their bodies and should.  The tools are the participation in Christ’s sufferings and death through baptism and the eucharist.  The spiritual life continues to involve opposition to the desires of the flesh (Gal5:16).  Paul provides himself as an example in various places with the language of enslaving his own body (mastering desires) and the language of athletes in training (again bodily mastery).  “Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.” (1 Cor 9:25–27 NRSV).   (personal aside: In 1 Cor 8-10 he’s developing a long, rather circuitous argument for his food-idolatry connection.  See here for a full work up of that.)    

Up next, a look at some examples of the Graeco-Roman background material.