Are Christians Permitted to Eat Unclean Animals?

[The Remonstrant]

Soyeong, are you a Seventh-day Adventist?

[One Bad Pig]

Soyeong, are you a Seventh-day Adventist?

No, he's a Messianic Jew.

[mikewhitney]

No, he's a Messianic Jew.

It was the Messianic Jews of the first century who caused problems for Paul in Acts 21:17ff. (This isn't finding a problem with Jews today who are simply acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah.)


The Jewish followers of Christ may have had a general requirement to adhere to the Law of Moses until the fall of the temple. The continuing adherence to the Mosaic Law would have been partly been for the goal of maintaining some common ground with Jews who still were under the Law. We see pressure on Paul by Jewish followers of Christ in Acts 21. But imagine if these Jewish Christians had stood out as non-followers of the Law. As seen in Hebrews, there was even compulsion to avoid assembling together lest they be identified as Christians and then be persecuted.

It is interesting that the passage reiterates the instructions given for Gentiles.
Act 21:24 Them take, and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that they may shave their heads: and all may know that those things, whereof they were informed concerning thee, are nothing; but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law.
Act 21:25 As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.

Paul wouldn't have had a reputation about being against the law for Jews if Paul's message to Gentiles had included adherence to Jewish law. There had to be some element of truth for the Jerusalem Jews to have thought Paul was preaching this also to Jews.

[Cow Poke]

For the record, I always clean the animals I eat before I eat them.

(at least, the ones I eat on purpose)

[Soyeong]

1) The main point of the vision was not food, it was the fact that the Gospel was not reserved just for the Jews. It should not be the *first* place we look in discussing food laws. However, I do believe it is *a* relevant passage.

2) In this context, it is more likely that "common" and "unclean" are virtual synonyms than distinctly separate categories. More to the point, in v. 15, God corrects Peter not in the way YOU are suggesting, but by reminding him the He had "made" certain things clean, the clear intent being that those things *were* at one time "unclean."

See above. I don't believe you are interpreting the passage correctly.

The Bible does not use the word for "common" and "unclean" interchably, but rather the word used in the Septuagint for "unclean" is always akatharsia, nor koinas. Furthermore, if they were virtual synonyms, then Peter could have simply objected by saying that he had never eaten anything that was unclean, but adding that he had never eaten anything that was common indicates that he was communicating something in addition to not eating anything that was unclean. Likewise, the fact that God only rebuked him for his use of the word "common" and not his use of the word "unclean", but you have interpreted his vision as through God had only rebuked him for his use of the word "unclean". In addition, Peter could have obeyed God's command by simply killing at eating one of the clean animals, so we need an explanation for why he objected to doing what God's Law permitted him to do.

This is a dishonest dumb-ass debating tactic, akin to "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

It is not disobedience if the Law is no longer in effect.

The existence of the category of moral law means that there is also a category of non-moral laws which are not immoral to disobey. If such a category exists, then there should be evidence of it, but if there are no examples of this, then I do not see any grounds for making the distinction between moral and non-moral laws. All of God's righteous laws are eternal (Psalms 119:160), so they have always been in effect and will never cease to be in effect.

[quote]In Gal. 3:10, Paul directly alludes to the "curse" for disobedience promised in Deut. 27:26. He follows by asserting that Christ "redeemed us from the curse of the Law," and in light of the context and of other Pauline writings, there's a good chance this is a synecdoche meaning we are redeemed from the curse of having to live by the Law.

Psalms 119:1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord!

Not even earthly fathers given instructions to their children in order to curse them, so that is much more true for our Heavenly Father, who said that His Law was given for our own good in order to bless us (Deuteronomy 6:24). Again, in Deuteronomy 30:15-20, obedience to the Law brings life and a blessing, while disobedience brings death and a curse, so the Law itself is a blessing, not a curse, and and being set free from the curse of the Law is being set free from living in disobedience to it. In Titus 2:14, it says that Jesus gave himself to redeem us from all Lawlessness, not that He gave himself to redeem us from the Law.

I have occasionally heard Law-enthusiasts claim that "Love your neighbor as yourself" covered how we are to relate to each other, and "Love the Lord your God..." covered all the various and sundry other laws. That's an interesting notion, but I believe it misses the essence of the point Jesus was making.

In any case, all three of the Synoptists include those "Two Great Commandments," albeit in somewhat different forms and contexts. Matthew says the Second is "like" the First, and some lexicons say the word (homoios) literally means "the same as." Luke actually combines the two into one. That is consistent with Paul in Rom. 13 and Gal. 5, both of which say that obeying the Commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is all that is needed to fulfill the whole Law.

Further, both Matthew and Luke include the instruction to "treat others as you wish others to treat you." In Matthew, this is explicitly said to sum up the entire OT (Law and Prophets).

In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus was asked about which was the greatest commandment, not about which was the only commandment that we should follow. The reason why all of the other laws hang on the greatest two is because they are all example of what it looks like to correctly obey them. For example, obedience to the command to help the poor looks like obedience to the command to love our neighbor, so the command to love does not replace the other commandments, but rather it is the essence of them. The greatest two commandments at a lot easier said than done, so thankfully God gave all of the other commandments and sent Jesus as an example to paint us a picture of what that looks like. In other words, if you were to compare someone who lived in obedience to the greatest two commandments with someone who lived in obedience to the Mosaic Law, then there would be no difference because both would look like the same example that Christ set for us to follow.

You are reversing Paul's point by your cherry-picking. The next chapter (Rom. 4) shows that the *way* faith upholds the Law is that the Law itself declared that Abraham was justified by *faith*, irrespective of "works."

In Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that faith is one of the weightier matters of the Law, so obedience to it is about expressing our faith in God to guide us in how to rightly live. Living by faith is always associated with living in obedience to God, such as with the examples of faith listed in Hebrews 11, whereas disobedience to God's Law is referred to as breaking faith, such as in Numbers 5:6. In James 2:17-18, he said that faith without works is dead and that he would show his faith by his works, so doing good works in obedience to God's commands is what faith looks like.

While it is true that Abraham believed God, so he was justified, it is also true that Abraham believed God, so he obeyed God's command to offer Isaac, so the same faith by which he was justified was also expressed as obedience to God, but he was justified by his faith, not by his obedience because our justification is not something that can be earned, which is the point that Paul was making in Romans 4:1-8.

This is, frankly, stupid mix-and-match Bible "study." Look to what 1 Peter itself says for what "holy conduct" means. Don't drag in the Obsolete Covenant unless Peter explicitly cited it. And if he did, you need to explain how and why he did it.

Whenever the NT quotes or alludes to the OT, it is often a good practice to read the entire the entire passage that the quote was referring because the authors of the NT were deeply rooted in the OT and there is often more context than just what was quoted that they were intending to bring to mind. Every time that Jesus opened his mouth to teach, you should be doing a word searches on the key words or phrases that he used because it is amazing how rooted he was in the OT. About 1/3 of the verses in the NT contain quotes or allusions to the OT, so when 1 Peter 1:16 directly quotes the OT, I don't see how you can deny that what he was quoting from has relevance to what he was speaking about. It was not as though Peter was in disagreement with God about what it means to have a holy conduct and was teaching his own thing.

[Soyeong]

For the record, I always clean the animals I eat before I eat them.

(at least, the ones I eat on purpose)

For the record, the reason that God prohibited eating unclean animals was not because they hadn't been washed. :P

[Soyeong]

The "correct way to interpret that" is within the context. Mark was the one who quoted Jesus there, and Mark explained directly that in saying that, Jesus "declared all foods clean."

Certainly Jesus considered Lev. and Deut. to be "Scripture." He also considered Himself to be I AM (John 8). As the One who revealed Himself and His memorial name to Moses at the burning bush, He had the authority to give the Law, and He had the authority to change or revoke it.

In Mark 7:19, Jesus had just finished criticizing the Pharisees as being hypocrites for setting aside the commands of God in order to establish their own traditions, so Jesus should not be interpreted as turning around and even more hypocritically doing what he just finished criticizing them for doing. In Galatian 4:4, Jesus was born under the Law, so he was obligated to obey it, and the fact that he was sinless means that he lived in complete obedience to it, but if he could change it on whim, then the fact that he was sinless would hold no significance. In Deuteronomy 4:2, it is a sin to add or subtract from the Law, so if Jesus had done that, then he would have sinned and disqualified himself as our Savior. Likewise, in Deuteronomy 13:4-5, the way that God instructed His people to determine that someone was a false prophet who was not speaking for Him was if he taught against obeying God's Law. So if Jesus had been teaching them to rebel against the Father, then Jews who have rejected him as the Messiah for that reason would be acting in accordance with what the Father has instructed them to do. His critics would have had for once a legitimate reason to stone him and they wouldn't have needed to find false witnesses at his trial, but this incident was not even brought up, and it doesn't even appear that anyone noticed that he made such a radical statement in rebellion against the Father.

The issue that Jesus was discussing in Mark 7 was in regard to a man-made ritual purity law they were criticizing his disciples for eating with common hands, so Jesus should be interpreted as continuing to speak against that tradition rather than jumping topics to speaking against obeying the Father. It is far, far more reason to interpret Jesus as simply sticking to the topic of conversation.

[Cow Poke]

For the record, the reason that God prohibited eating unclean animals was not because they hadn't been washed. :P

I really didn't think I needed sarcasm tags.

[Soyeong]

You are arguing moral values, and I agree, the moral values of God do not change and we are obligated to obey them. But dietary laws given to the Israelites were not moral laws. They were purity laws, meant to keep the Israelites separate from the surrounding tribes. There is nothing inherently immoral about eating pork, or mixing textiles. The same with the temple ceremonies and laws. We don't have to follow those either.

Morality is in regard to what we ought to do and we ought to obey God, so all of God's Laws are inherently moral. In 1 Peter 2:9-10, Gentiles are now part of God's chosen people, holy nation, a royal priesthood, and a treasure of God's own possession, so Gentiles also have the delight and the privilege of getting to obey the instructions that God gave for how to fulfill those roles.

A number of God's laws came with conditions under which they should be followed, so for example there is nothing wrong with not keeping the Sabbath holy when it is not the 7th day for the same reason that there is nothing wrong with not keeping God's laws in regard to temple practice when there is no temple in which to practice them. When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, the condition for their return to the land was to first return to obedience to God's Law, which required them to have access to a temple that they didn't have access to while they were in exile, so we should be faithful to obey as much as we can obey. If we believe that God can be trusted to give laws for our own good in order to bless us, then we should have the attitude of looking for reasons for why we have the delight or getting to obey God's Law rather than the attitude of looking for every excuse under the sun to avoid following God's guidance. So there are both legitimate and illegitimate reasons for not obeying a particular law and there is a difference between someone who is not keeping the Sabbath holy because it is not the 7th day and someone is is not keeping the Sabbath holy because they are rebelling against what God has commanded.

[Soyeong]

most of those are not laws at all, and we are talking about obeying the Mosaic Law and you are listing NT advice (not laws)?

it contains stuff like:

Five Things to Consider:

The ravens (LUKE 12:24)
The lilies (LUKE 12:27-28)
Truth (2 TIMOTHY 2:7)
That you are capable of falling (GALATIANS 6:1)
Christ (HEBREWS 3:1; HEBREWS 12:3)

Three Things to Continue in:

Love (JOHN 15:9)
Prayer (ROMANS 12:12; COLOSSIANS 4:2)
Truth (2 TIMOTHY 3:14)

---

I was making the point that that viewing the four laws listed in Acts 15:19-21 as an exhaustive list of everything that would ever be required of a mature believer would be to disregard over 99% of the commandments in the NT, including those expounded upon by Jesus. Even if you disregard to point about there being 1,050 commandments in the NT, most Christians do not consider that to be an exhaustive list of everything that is required of them.

You quote Romans 3:31 out of context but ignore the previous verses:

21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in[h] Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement,[i] through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

Paul is saying that having Faith in Christ IS upholding the law.

Righteousness is a character trait of God that is expressed by doing what is righteous, and God's Law is His instructions for how to express that character trait, not for how to attain it. When we have a character trait, then we will express it through our actions, so when God declares us to be righteous by grace through faith, He is also declaring us to be someone who therefore expresses His righteousness through our actions in obedience to His instructions for how to do that found in His Law. In other words, the reason why we have received the righteousness of God was not in order to hide it under a bushel, but in order to let it shine through our obedience (Matthew 5:13-16). In Romans 3:21-22, the Law and the Prophets testify that the righteousness of God comes through faith in Christ for all who believe, so this has always been the one and only way to attain righteousness, however, because we have received the righteousness of God, we should therefore express it through our actions, so in Romans 3:31, Paul did not want us to conclude from the fact that we attain righteousness by faith apart from the law that our faith therefore abolishes our need to obey it, but rather our faith in Christ upholds the Law by leading us to obey it.

The spirit of the law. Not the letter of the law.

There difference between follow the letter of the law and the spirit of the law in not in regard to following different sets of laws, but in regard to the manner in which someone follows it. For example:

Leviticus 19:12 “‘Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

Someone who was focused on obeying the spirit of this law would understand that its intent is for us not to swear falsely, whereas someone who was focused on obeying the letter of this law exactly how it was written would understand that we can swear falsely just as long as we don't do so in God's name. So following the letter of the law undermines both the intent of what God has commanded us to do and why He has commanded us to do it, and following the spirit of the Law does not mean that we should not obey what God has commanded in His Law.

You are basically denying Christ's sacrifice for you by trying to fulfill the law yourself. And you will fail.

In Galatians 5:14, loving your neighbor fulfills the entire Law, so it is something that anyone can do and that countless people have done, and is not done in denial of Christ's sacrifice, but because of it.

[Soyeong]

That list is an impressive exercise in missing the forest for the trees. Jesus himself distilled the Law into 2 commandments; you're making the mistake of equating examples with commands. Love God, love neighbor; all else is how to do so.

I agree that all of the other commands are how to obey the greatest two commands, which is why I am arguing in favor of obeying all of the other commands.

[Soyeong]

I really didn't think I needed sarcasm tags.

I thought there used to be a smiley that sticks out its tongue, which is what the ":P" was supposed to be, but I guess I'll have to settle for a

[Soyeong]

Your walls of text make it hard to answer you so I will just pick that parts that I feel like are most important and apologize if I miss anything.

1. Peter couldn't kill and eat anything, it was a vision
2. The purpose of the vision was an analogy. God was saying that just like the animals in the vision, both clean and unclean are now all clean, so both the Jew and the Gentile belong to God and are "clean"
3. If the animals were not combined all into one category of "clean" then neither are Jews and Gentiles. You can't have it both ways.
4. The rest of your argument above is just poor rationalization on your pat. Like someone else said, you are making much to big of a deal out of the word "common" and ignoring that God said he "cleansed" what Peter was refusing to eat, which means whatever Peter was referring to was "unclean"

Whether or not Peter could have actually eaten anything in his vision is completely irrelevant and deliberately missing the point. God commanded Peter to do something that the Mosaic Law permitted him to do and he could have responded affirmatively, but he objected to eating a clean animal, and understanding why he objected is key. The point that God was making to him was in regard to why he objected in regard to incorrectly labeling clean animals, which he interpreted three times as being in regard to incorrectly labeling Gentiles without saying a word about now being able to eat unclean animals, so when you insert what you want it into the interpretation of his vision, then that is called eisogesis.

1. Yes the bible does say we can't keep the law. Read Romans and Hebrews. All have fallen short of the Glory of God and all of our good deeds are as rags, etc. This is why Jesus was sent, because nobody could keep the Law except him. 2. Jesus didn't abolish the law, he kept the law so that we could receive HIS righteousness because we can't keep it.
3. And again, you are adding to the Law and adding in stuff that was purely for the Old Covenant between God and the Israelites which they broke over and over. You don't have that covenant with God, You have a new covenant with him through Jesus. A different contract. And it doesn't include dietary restrictions except abstaining from blood and food sacrificed to idols (which Paul even said was not a restriction if it didn't bother you)

You are being overly legalistic.

In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, God said that He Law was not too difficult to obey and I believe Him, do you? He went on to say that obedience brings life and a blessing while disobedience brings death and a curse, so choose life! So it was presented as a possibility and as a choice, not as something that only Jesus could do. The Law itself came with instructions for what to do when the people sinned, so perfect obedience was never an expectation. If we needed to have perfect obedience for some strange reason, then there would be no point in repentance because it wouldn't change the fact that we have already failed to have perfect obedience, so the fact that repentance has value means that perfect obedience was never a requirement to earn something. The righteous deeds of the saints are like fine white linen (Revelation 19:8), not like filthy rags, and the fact that there are righteous deeds of the saints means that there are some who have obeyed God's Law. Jesus expressed His righteousness through his actions and what that looked like was obedience to the Mosaic Law, so that it what it will look like when we have received his righteousness. We did not receive his righteousness so that we could hide it under a bushel, but in order to let it shine through our obedience.

While we are under a New Covenant and not the Mosaic Covenant, we are nevertheless still under the same God with the same nature and therefore the same instructions for how to walk in His same ways and express His same character traits. For example, God's righteousness is eternal, so any instructions that God has ever given for how to act in accordance with His righteousness are eternally valid regardless of which covenant we are under, if any. However, as part of the New Covenant, we are told that those who do not follow those instructions are not children of God (1 John 3:10).

Things that are matters of opinion are optional, but the commands of God are not, so Paul should not be interpreted as saying it is ok to rebel against God's commands if doesn't both you.

It is not being legalistic to think that followers of God should follow God.

So you just ignore what Paul actually said and substitute what you want him to have said? That my friend, is eisogesis. Reading into the text what is not there. He was talking about people LIKE YOU who would hold captive those who belong to Christ with false humility, telling us keep the parts of the Mosaic Law that we are not even subject to. Paul was condemning people like YOU, Soyeoung. You should take that to heart and repend.

It is important to look at the context of what is described of the views of the people who were judging the Colossians in order to correctly understand what they were being judged for doing. Paul described them as teaching human traditions and precepts, not as teaching obedience to God's holy, righteous, and good commands, so they were being judged for not following human traditions and precepts because they were following God's commands. This is exegesis, while it doesn't say anything about them teaching parts of the Mosaic Law, so that is you reading into the text what is not there by inserting what you want them to be judged for doing, which is eisogesis. Paul was encouraging them not to let any man judge them and keep them from obeying God, so it is ironic that you would try to use this verse to justify your refusal to obey God.

[NorrinRadd]

No, he's a Messianic Jew.

Oh!

Ok, the kind that recognizes Jesus as "I AM," or the kind that's actually an infidel and doesn't know it?

[Soyeong]

Where did the Judaizer go?

I completely agree with Paul's stance against the Judaizers and have never suggested that all Gentiles need to become circumcised in order to become saved. Paul was not an enemy of God, so his problem with the Judaizers was not that they were teaching followers of God to follow Him commands, but that they were wanting to require Gentiles to obey their works of the law in order to become justified.