Christianity and the Vegetarian Undercurrent
(The following is an unpublished promotional article for The Yogi Diet dealing with Christianity's relationship to the vegetarian undercurrent in the biblical and Abrahamic traditions.)
The old adage about what not to discuss in polite company used to name three topics: sex, politics, and religion. Now there’s a fourth—nutrition.
But that’s a bit overstated. It’s not that nutrition is necessarily controversial within Christian circles. It’s just that it should be. The controversy is rooted in the tension between Christianity’s original vegetarian undercurrent and that undercurrent’s present stagnation in the Christian West. A primary purpose of my book, The Yogi Diet: Spirituality and the Question of Vegetarianism, is to reconsider the significance of vegetarianism in Christianity and also in Judaism and Islam—the other two religions that comprise the Abrahamic tradition.
At the beginning of Genesis, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden are called to be vegetarians:
See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
—Gen. 1:29
Further, this command of vegetarianism includes all of God’s creatures:
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
—Gen. 1:30
But this vegetarian command applies to an idealized state that no longer exists after the Fall. The inclusion of all creatures in Genesis 1:30 makes this abundantly clear. Today, to expect obligate carnivores such as cat family members—who cannot live healthily on vegetable matter—to follow a vegetarian diet would be absurd. As for human omnivores, most would arguably find it difficult to sustain the vegetarian command, even if they were willing. Suffice it to say, however, that the entire Abrahamic tradition is off the hook because of the meat-eating sanction given to Noah after the Flood (Genesis 9).
But here’s the rub—the sanction to eat meat comes with the condition of abstaining from blood. As God says to Noah:
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
—Gen. 9:3–4
Blood signifies life, which is from God, and abstention from consuming blood acknowledges that taking life for food is not ideal. The blood prohibition is the fundamental condition for eating meat in the entire Abrahamic tradition, and, as such, it is essential to the tradition’s vegetarian undercurrent. The undercurrent’s purpose is to keep the vegetarian ideal alive until it can be realized in the distant future. It begins with the blood prohibition to Noah but develops further with the advent of Judaism.
Besides prohibiting blood, Judaism excludes fat and distinguishes between creatures that are prohibited and allowable for consumption. Strange as it may seem, the distinction concerns the polluting effects of flesh on the human soul and spirit. All meat is alleged to have such effects, but prohibited creatures more of an effect because of their carnivorous and predatory nature.
Paradoxically, though, eating nonprohibited meat is simultaneously recognized as having a beneficial purpose. The renowned Jewish rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook develops this notion in outlining the rationale for the meat-eating sanction and the conditions surrounding it: Before the Flood, humanity had degenerated to a condition of wanton killing and even cannibalism due to an overpowering craving for flesh. The meat-eating sanction after the Flood assuaged this craving, and the restrictions imposed served a variety of purposes:
• The blood prohibition provokes awareness that killing for food falls short of perfection.
• The distinction between prohibited and allowed creatures restricts meat’s worst effects.
• The fat prohibition stimulates human strengthening. (Rabbi Kook does not say how such a strengthening is to be understood, but Rudolf Steiner elaborates that a lack of dietary fat stimulates the body to make its own, and the resulting inner activity is conducive to spiritual development.)
• Both the blood and fat prohibitions temper consumption by limiting pleasure.
Meat is allowed because it is craved, but the restrictions check the craving while fostering the developmental process of overcoming it. Also, the craving itself signifies a need that is linked to human moral development and the challenge of living harmoniously with other human beings. To live in harmony requires strength, which meat helps to provide. Once the ordering of human relations has been achieved through an evolutionary process, however, the time will come for ordering relations with animals as well. But first human relations must be ordered, and the stimulating effect of meat provides assistance.
In short, Rabbi Kook envisions an evolutionary process leading back to the vegetarian ideal by way of the meat-eating sanction. At the same time, he does not reject the impulse to vegetarianism. Indeed, he even encourages it, but only to the extent that individual capacity is not overtaxed.
The Abrahamic tradition’s vegetarian undercurrent, then, found its fundamental, minimal requirement in the blood prohibition given to Noah and was significantly strengthened by the additional restrictions that Judaism imposed on meat eating. In Christianity, however, the undercurrent began to slacken. In about 50 CE (see Acts 15), and under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the Council of Jerusalem decided to hold gentile Christians, not to the Mosaic laws, but instead only to those few laws going back to Noah—including the blood prohibition—which are understood to apply to the righteous of all nations. The Council’s decision is justifiable in that the Jews themselves found the rigors of the Mosaic laws to be unbearable despite generations of practice. Not so justifiable, however, is that the blood prohibition, too, eventually fell away. One argument was that the prohibition was merely a temporal measure to keep peace between Jews and Gentiles in the first Christian communities. Others included the notion that “all foods have been made clean” (referring to Peter’s vision in Acts 10 about all creatures being made clean) and the Gospel passages asserting that “nothing going into the mouth defiles” (Matthew 15 and Mark 7).
As recently as 2008, the Pontifical Biblical Commission of the Catholic Church reiterated the argument that the prohibition was a temporal measure, adding that its significance was symbolic, not theological and asserting that “after the apostolic era, the Church did not feel obliged to . . . formulat[e] precise rules for the butcher and kitchen.”1 Such an assertion notwithstanding, various popes and councils throughout the first millennium and into the second repeated the blood prohibition. The first such council was the Council of Gangrene in 325; the last such pope was Calixtus II in 1120—all, however, to no avail. After the theologian Robert Pullen disparaged the blood prohibition in Paris in 1122, it just faded away in the Christian West (although the Eastern Orthodox Church continued, and continues today, to observe it).
There remains, though, a clinching argument for claiming that the blood prohibition was never meant to disappear but to endure. Originating in the seventh century, Islam makes that argument in the Qur’an:
He has only forbidden to you dead animals, blood, the flesh of swine, and that which has been dedicated to other than Allah.
—Qur’an 2.17, 16.115
The significance of restating the prohibition this way is profound, for it means that in the same Abrahamic tradition three divine beings—Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, and Allah—all declare with one voice that blood is not allowed.
To reiterate: the purpose of the blood prohibition that started with Noah is to check the unreflective consumption of meat and to keep the vegetarian ideal alive as a moral force. This impetus will lead back toward Paradise and a vegetarian future in which humankind and all of God’s other creatures will live in harmony.
Is defending the blood prohibition, then, merely an argument for purging meat of any trace of blood? Hardly. Animal husbandry and slaughter—as practiced by Jews, disregarded by Christians, but then renewed by Muslims—are an important part of the complex of practices and ideas related to the blood prohibition and the vegetarian undercurrent. For Christians to have ceded responsibility for husbandry and slaughter to secular forces has meant unleashing the forces of mammon, the biblical term for the debasing influence of the pursuit of material wealth. The factory-farming model, which exempts farm animals from animal-cruelty laws, is predicated on utility and profit, and its products represent foods sacrificed to idols—the idols of utility and profit. And foods sacrificed to idols are forbidden to Noah and his sons, to Jews through the Mosaic laws, to Christians at the Council of Jerusalem, and to Muslims in the Qur’an as well—in short, they are forbidden to the righteous of all nations.
There is much more to say about the vegetarian undercurrent that applies to Christianity specifically (and about the process of reclaiming the vegetarian ideal). But these few indications should suffice to demonstrate the importance of the undercurrent and of the blood prohibition’s fundamental role.
Thoughtful persons might see it as tragic that the blood prohibition has disappeared in the Christian West, thereby rendering the vegetarian undercurrent stagnant among Western Christians. That is the reality today, but hope springs eternal for the metanoia or rethinking that can lead to revitalization. This will require, however, that nutrition becomes a topic of serious conversation within Christianity, despite any attendant controversy.
1. “The Bible and Morality, Biblical Roots of Christian Conduct,” Pontifical Biblical Commission, Cultural background, accessed March 29, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/con..., 13.
The old adage about what not to discuss in polite company used to name three topics: sex, politics, and religion. Now there’s a fourth—nutrition.
But that’s a bit overstated. It’s not that nutrition is necessarily controversial within Christian circles. It’s just that it should be. The controversy is rooted in the tension between Christianity’s original vegetarian undercurrent and that undercurrent’s present stagnation in the Christian West. A primary purpose of my book, The Yogi Diet: Spirituality and the Question of Vegetarianism, is to reconsider the significance of vegetarianism in Christianity and also in Judaism and Islam—the other two religions that comprise the Abrahamic tradition.
At the beginning of Genesis, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden are called to be vegetarians:
See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food.
—Gen. 1:29
Further, this command of vegetarianism includes all of God’s creatures:
And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
—Gen. 1:30
But this vegetarian command applies to an idealized state that no longer exists after the Fall. The inclusion of all creatures in Genesis 1:30 makes this abundantly clear. Today, to expect obligate carnivores such as cat family members—who cannot live healthily on vegetable matter—to follow a vegetarian diet would be absurd. As for human omnivores, most would arguably find it difficult to sustain the vegetarian command, even if they were willing. Suffice it to say, however, that the entire Abrahamic tradition is off the hook because of the meat-eating sanction given to Noah after the Flood (Genesis 9).
But here’s the rub—the sanction to eat meat comes with the condition of abstaining from blood. As God says to Noah:
Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.
—Gen. 9:3–4
Blood signifies life, which is from God, and abstention from consuming blood acknowledges that taking life for food is not ideal. The blood prohibition is the fundamental condition for eating meat in the entire Abrahamic tradition, and, as such, it is essential to the tradition’s vegetarian undercurrent. The undercurrent’s purpose is to keep the vegetarian ideal alive until it can be realized in the distant future. It begins with the blood prohibition to Noah but develops further with the advent of Judaism.
Besides prohibiting blood, Judaism excludes fat and distinguishes between creatures that are prohibited and allowable for consumption. Strange as it may seem, the distinction concerns the polluting effects of flesh on the human soul and spirit. All meat is alleged to have such effects, but prohibited creatures more of an effect because of their carnivorous and predatory nature.
Paradoxically, though, eating nonprohibited meat is simultaneously recognized as having a beneficial purpose. The renowned Jewish rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook develops this notion in outlining the rationale for the meat-eating sanction and the conditions surrounding it: Before the Flood, humanity had degenerated to a condition of wanton killing and even cannibalism due to an overpowering craving for flesh. The meat-eating sanction after the Flood assuaged this craving, and the restrictions imposed served a variety of purposes:
• The blood prohibition provokes awareness that killing for food falls short of perfection.
• The distinction between prohibited and allowed creatures restricts meat’s worst effects.
• The fat prohibition stimulates human strengthening. (Rabbi Kook does not say how such a strengthening is to be understood, but Rudolf Steiner elaborates that a lack of dietary fat stimulates the body to make its own, and the resulting inner activity is conducive to spiritual development.)
• Both the blood and fat prohibitions temper consumption by limiting pleasure.
Meat is allowed because it is craved, but the restrictions check the craving while fostering the developmental process of overcoming it. Also, the craving itself signifies a need that is linked to human moral development and the challenge of living harmoniously with other human beings. To live in harmony requires strength, which meat helps to provide. Once the ordering of human relations has been achieved through an evolutionary process, however, the time will come for ordering relations with animals as well. But first human relations must be ordered, and the stimulating effect of meat provides assistance.
In short, Rabbi Kook envisions an evolutionary process leading back to the vegetarian ideal by way of the meat-eating sanction. At the same time, he does not reject the impulse to vegetarianism. Indeed, he even encourages it, but only to the extent that individual capacity is not overtaxed.
The Abrahamic tradition’s vegetarian undercurrent, then, found its fundamental, minimal requirement in the blood prohibition given to Noah and was significantly strengthened by the additional restrictions that Judaism imposed on meat eating. In Christianity, however, the undercurrent began to slacken. In about 50 CE (see Acts 15), and under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the Council of Jerusalem decided to hold gentile Christians, not to the Mosaic laws, but instead only to those few laws going back to Noah—including the blood prohibition—which are understood to apply to the righteous of all nations. The Council’s decision is justifiable in that the Jews themselves found the rigors of the Mosaic laws to be unbearable despite generations of practice. Not so justifiable, however, is that the blood prohibition, too, eventually fell away. One argument was that the prohibition was merely a temporal measure to keep peace between Jews and Gentiles in the first Christian communities. Others included the notion that “all foods have been made clean” (referring to Peter’s vision in Acts 10 about all creatures being made clean) and the Gospel passages asserting that “nothing going into the mouth defiles” (Matthew 15 and Mark 7).
As recently as 2008, the Pontifical Biblical Commission of the Catholic Church reiterated the argument that the prohibition was a temporal measure, adding that its significance was symbolic, not theological and asserting that “after the apostolic era, the Church did not feel obliged to . . . formulat[e] precise rules for the butcher and kitchen.”1 Such an assertion notwithstanding, various popes and councils throughout the first millennium and into the second repeated the blood prohibition. The first such council was the Council of Gangrene in 325; the last such pope was Calixtus II in 1120—all, however, to no avail. After the theologian Robert Pullen disparaged the blood prohibition in Paris in 1122, it just faded away in the Christian West (although the Eastern Orthodox Church continued, and continues today, to observe it).
There remains, though, a clinching argument for claiming that the blood prohibition was never meant to disappear but to endure. Originating in the seventh century, Islam makes that argument in the Qur’an:
He has only forbidden to you dead animals, blood, the flesh of swine, and that which has been dedicated to other than Allah.
—Qur’an 2.17, 16.115
The significance of restating the prohibition this way is profound, for it means that in the same Abrahamic tradition three divine beings—Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, and Allah—all declare with one voice that blood is not allowed.
To reiterate: the purpose of the blood prohibition that started with Noah is to check the unreflective consumption of meat and to keep the vegetarian ideal alive as a moral force. This impetus will lead back toward Paradise and a vegetarian future in which humankind and all of God’s other creatures will live in harmony.
Is defending the blood prohibition, then, merely an argument for purging meat of any trace of blood? Hardly. Animal husbandry and slaughter—as practiced by Jews, disregarded by Christians, but then renewed by Muslims—are an important part of the complex of practices and ideas related to the blood prohibition and the vegetarian undercurrent. For Christians to have ceded responsibility for husbandry and slaughter to secular forces has meant unleashing the forces of mammon, the biblical term for the debasing influence of the pursuit of material wealth. The factory-farming model, which exempts farm animals from animal-cruelty laws, is predicated on utility and profit, and its products represent foods sacrificed to idols—the idols of utility and profit. And foods sacrificed to idols are forbidden to Noah and his sons, to Jews through the Mosaic laws, to Christians at the Council of Jerusalem, and to Muslims in the Qur’an as well—in short, they are forbidden to the righteous of all nations.
There is much more to say about the vegetarian undercurrent that applies to Christianity specifically (and about the process of reclaiming the vegetarian ideal). But these few indications should suffice to demonstrate the importance of the undercurrent and of the blood prohibition’s fundamental role.
Thoughtful persons might see it as tragic that the blood prohibition has disappeared in the Christian West, thereby rendering the vegetarian undercurrent stagnant among Western Christians. That is the reality today, but hope springs eternal for the metanoia or rethinking that can lead to revitalization. This will require, however, that nutrition becomes a topic of serious conversation within Christianity, despite any attendant controversy.
1. “The Bible and Morality, Biblical Roots of Christian Conduct,” Pontifical Biblical Commission, Cultural background, accessed March 29, 2017, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/con..., 13.
No comments have been added yet.
