Early Church Fathers
One of the greatest theologians in the early Christian church,
Tertullian, or Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, was born in Carthage
about AD 155-160. Cyprian, the Bishop of Carthage, called him the "Master."
Tertullian was one of four early church fathers who wrote extensively on the
subject of vegetarianism. According to Tertullian, flesh-eating is not
conducive to the highest life, it violates moral law, and it debases man in
intellect and emotion.
Responding to the apparent permissiveness of Paul, Tertullian argued: "and
even if he handed over to you the keys of the slaughter house...in
permitting you to eat all things...at least he has not made the kingdom of
Heaven to consist in butchery: for, says he, eating and drinking is not the
Kingdom of God."
Tertullian similarly scorned those who would use the gospel to justify
gratifying the cravings of the flesh:
"How unworthily, too, do you press the example of Christ as having come
‘eating and drinking’ into the service of your lusts: He who pronounced not
the full but the hungry and thirsty ‘blessed,’ who professed His work to be
the completion of His Father’s will, was wont to abstain—instructing them to
labor for that ‘meat’ which lasts to eternal life, and enjoining in their
common prayers petition not for gross food but for bread only."
Tertullian made his case for moderate eating by referring to the history of
the Israelites (Numbers 11:4-34): "And if there be ‘One’ who prefers the
works of justice, not however, without sacrifice—that is to say, a spirit
exercised by abstinence—it is surely that God to whom neither a gluttonous
people nor priest was acceptable—monuments of whose concupiscence remain to
this day, where lies buried a people greedy and clamorous for flesh-meats,
gorging quails even to the point of inducing jaundice.
"It was divinely proclaimed," insisted Tertullian, "’Wine and strong liquor
shall you not drink, you and your sons after you.’ Now this prohibition of
drink is essentially connected with the vegetable diet. Thus, where
abstinence from wine is required by the Deity, or is vowed by man, there,
too, may be understood suppression of gross feeding, for as is the eating,
so is the drinking.
"It is not consistent with truth that a man should sacrifice half of his
stomach only to God—that he should be sober in drinking, but intemperate in
eating. Your belly is your God, your liver is your temple, your paunch is
your altar, the cook is your priest, and the fat steam is your Holy Spirit;
the seasonings and the sauces are your chrisms, and your belchings are your
prophesizing..."
Tertullian sarcastically compared gluttons to Esau, who sold his birthright
in exchange for a meal. "I ever recognize Esau, the hunter, as a man of
taste and as his were, so are your whole skill and interest given to hunting
and trapping...It is in the cooking pots that your love is inflamed—it is in
the kitchen that your faith grows fervid—it is in the flesh dishes that all
your hopes lie hid...Consistently do you men of the flesh reject the things
of the Spirit. But if your prophets are complacent towards such persons,
they are not my prophets...Let us openly and boldly vindicate our teaching.
"We are sure that they who are in the flesh cannot please God...a
grossly-feeding Christian is akin to lions and wolves rather than God. Our
Lord Jesus called Himself Truth and not habit."
In general, Tertullian railed against gluttony, and taught that spiritual
life consists of simple living. He explained, "if man could not follow even
a simple taboo against eating one fruit, how could he be expected to
restrain himself from more demanding restrictions? Instead, after the Flood,
man was given the regulation against blood; further details were length to
his own strength of will."
According to Tertullian, the entire creation prays to God:
"Cattle and wild beasts pray, and bend their knees, and in coming forth from
their stalls and lairs look up to heaven. Moreover the birds taking flight
lift themselves up to heaven and instead of hands, spread out the cross of
their wings, while saying something which may be supposed to be a prayer."
In his commentary on the Book of Daniel, Hippolytus (AD 200) depicted the
Biblical hero and his three companions as pious ascetics. Referring to the
passage in Scripture which states that these four men did not wish to defile
themselves with the king’s meat, Hippolytus equated the purity of their
vegetarian diet with the purity of their thoughts:
"These, though captives in a strange land, were not seduced by delicate
meats, nor were they slaves to the pleasures of wine, nor were they caught
by the bait of princely glory. But they kept their mouth holy and pure, that
pure speech might proceed from pure mouths, and praise with such (mouths)
the Heavenly Father."
Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-220), or Titus Flavius Clemens, founded the
Alexandrian school of Christian Theology and succeeded Pantaenus in AD 190.
In his writings, he referred to vegetarian philosophers Pythagoras, Plato,
and even Socrates as divinely inspired. But the true teachings, he insisted,
are to be found in the Hebrew prophets and in the person of Jesus Christ.
Clement taught that a life of virtue is one of simplicity, and that the
apostle Matthew was a vegetarian. According to Clement, eating flesh and
drinking wine "is rather characteristic to a beast and the fumes rising from
them, being dense, darken the soul...Destroy not the work of God for the
sake of food. Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God, aiming
after true frugality. For it is lawful for me to partake of all things, yet
all things are not expedient...neither is the regimen of a Christian formed
by indulgence...man is not by nature a gravy eater, but a bread eater.
"Those who use the most frugal fare are the strongest, the healthiest and
the noblest...We must guard against those sorts of food which persuade us to
eat when we are not hungry," warned Clement, "bewitching the appetite...is
there not within a temperate simplicity, a wholesome variety of
eatables—vegetables, roots, olives, herbs, milk, cheese, fruits...?
"But those who bend around inflammatory tables, nourishing their own
diseases, are ruled by a most licentious disease which I shall venture to
call the demon of the belly: the worst and most vile of demons. It is far
better to be happy than to have a devil dwelling in us, for happiness is
found only in the practice of virtue. Accordingly the apostle Matthew lived
upon seeds, fruits, grains and nuts and vegetables, without the use of
flesh."
Clement acknowledged the moral and spiritual advantages of the vegetarian
way of life:
"If any righteous man does not burden his soul by the eating of flesh, he
has the advantage of a rational motive...The very ancient altar of Delos was
celebrated for its purity, to which alone, as being undefiled by slaughter
and death, they say that Pythagoras would permit approach.
"And they will not believe us when we say that the righteous soul is the
truly sacred altar? But I believe that sacrifices were invented by men to be
a pretext for eating flesh."
St. Basil (AD 320-79) taught, "The steam of meat darkens the light of the
spirit. One can hardly have virtue if one enjoys meat meals and feasts...In
the earthly paradise, there was no wine, no one sacrificed animals, and no
one ate meat. Wine was only invented after the Deluge...
"With simple living, well being increases in the household, animals are in
safety, there is no shedding of blood, nor putting animals to death. The
knife of the cook is needless, for the table is spread only with the fruits
that nature gives, and with them they are content."
St. Basil prayed for universal brotherhood, and an end to human brutality
against animals:
"The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness
Thereof. Oh, God, enlarge within us the
Sense of fellowship with all living
Things, our brothers the animals to
Whom Thou gavest the earth as
Their home in common with us
"We remember with shame that
In the past we have exercised the
High dominion of man and ruthless
Cruelty so that the voice of the earth
Which should have gone up to Thee in
Song, has been a groan of travail.
"May we realize that they live not
For us alone but for themselves and
For Thee and that they love the sweetness
Of life."
According to St. Gregory Nazianzen (AD 330-89):
"The great Son is the glory of the Father
and shone out from Him like light...
He assumed a body
to bring help to suffering creatures...
"He was sacrifice and celebrant
sacrificial priest and God Himself.
He offered blood to God to cleanse
the entire world."
"Holy people are most loving and gentle in their dealings with their
fellows, and even with the lower animals: for this reason it was said that
‘A righteous man is merciful to the life of his beast,’" explained St. John
Chrysostom (AD 347-407). "Surely we ought to show kindness and gentleness to
animals for many reasons and chiefly because they are of the same origin as
ourselves."
Writing about the Christian saints and ascetics, Chrysostom observed: "No
streams of blood are among them; no butchering and cutting of flesh...With
their repast of fruits and vegetables even angels from heaven, as they
behold it, are delighted and pleased."
Chrysostom considered flesh-eating a cruel and unnatural habit for
Christians: "We imitate the ways of wolves, the ways of leopards, or rather
we are worse than these. For nature has assigned that they should be thus
fed, but us God hath honored with speech and a sense of equity, yet we are
worse than the wild beasts."
In a homily on Matthew 22:1-4, Chrysostom taught: "We the Christian leaders
practice abstinence from the flesh of animals to subdue our bodies...the
unnatural eating of flesh-meat is of demonical origin...the eating of flesh
is polluting." He added that "flesh-meats and wine serve as materials for
sensuality, and are a source of danger, sorrow, and disease."
In a homily on II Corinthians 9, Chrysostom distinguished between
nourishment and gluttony:
"No one debars thee from these, nor forbids thee thy daily food. I say
‘food,’ not ‘feasting’; ‘raiment’ not ‘ornament,’...For consider, who should
we say more truly feasted—he whose diet is herbs, and who is in sound health
and suffered no uneasiness, or he who has the table of a Sybarite and is
full of a thousand disorders?
"Certainly the former. Therefore, let us seek nothing more than these, if we
would at once live luxuriously and healthfully. And let him who can be
satisfied with pulse, and can keep in good health, seek for nothing more.
But let him who is weaker, and needs to be dieted with other vegetable
fruits, not be debarred from them."
In a homily on the Epistle to Timothy, Chrysostom described the ill effects
of becoming a slave to one’s bodily appetites:
"A man who lives in selfish luxury is dead while he lives, for he lives only
to his stomach. In other senses he lives not. He sees not what he ought to
see; he hears not what he ought to hear; he speaks not what he ought to
speak. Nor does he perform the actions of living.
"But as he who is stretched upon a bed with his eyes closed and his eyelids
fast, perceives nothing that is passing; so is it with this man, or rather
not so, but worse. For the one is equally insensible to things good and
evil, while the other is sensible to things evil only, but as insensible as
the former to things good.
"Thus he is dead. For nothing relating to the life to come moves or affects
him. For intemperance, taking him into her own bosom as into some dark and
dismal cavern full of all uncleanliness, causes him to dwell altogether in
darkness, like the dead. For, when all his time is spent between feasting
and drunkenness, is he not dead, and buried in darkness?
"Who can describe the storm that comes of luxury, that assails the soul and
body? For, as a sky continually clouded admits not the sunbeams to shine
through, so the fumes of luxury...envelop his brain...and casting over it a
thick mist, suffers not reason to exert itself.
"If it were possible to bring the soul into view and to behold it with our
bodily eyes—it would seem depressed, mournful, miserable, and wasted with
leanness; for the more the body grows sleek and gross, the more lean and
weakly is the soul. The more one is pampered, the more the other is
hampered."
The orthodox, 4th century Christian Hieronymus connected vegetarianism with
both the original diet given by God and the teachings of Jesus:
"The eating of animal meat was unknown up to the big Flood, but since the
Flood they have pushed the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into
our mouths, just as they threw quails in front of the grumbling sensual
people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been
fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no
longer allowed for us to eat animal meat."
St. Jerome (AD 340-420) wrote to a monk in Milan who had abandoned
vegetarianism:
"As to the argument that in God’s second blessing (Genesis 9:3) permission
was given to eat flesh—a permission not given in the first blessing (Genesis
1:29)—let him know that just as permission to put away a wife was, according
to the words of the Saviour, not given from the beginning, but was granted
to the human race by Moses because of the hardness of our hearts (Matthew
19:1-12), so also in like manner the eating of flesh was unknown until the
Flood, but after the Flood, just as quails were given to the people when
they murmured in the desert, so have sinews and the offensiveness been given
to our teeth.
"The Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, teaches us that God had purposed
that in the fullness of time he would restore all things, and would draw to
their beginning, even to Christ Jesus, all things that are in heaven or that
are on earth. Whence also, the Saviour Himself in the Apocalypse of John
says, ‘I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.’ From the
beginning of human nature, we neither fed upon flesh nor did we put away our
wives, nor were our foreskins taken away from us for a sign. We kept on this
course until we arrived at the Flood.
"But after the Flood, together with the giving of the Law, which no man
could fulfill, the eating of flesh was brought in, and the putting away of
wives was conceded to hardness of heart...But now that Christ has come in
the end of time, and has turned back Omega to Alpha...neither is it
permitted to us to put away our wives, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat
flesh."
St. Jerome was responsible for the Vulgate, or Latin version of the Bible,
still in use today. He felt a vegetarian diet was best for those devoted to
the pursuit of wisdom. He once wrote that he was not a follower of
Pythagoras or Empodocles "who do not eat any living creature," but
concluded, "And so I too say to you: if you wish to be perfect, it is good
not to drink wine and eat flesh."
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