Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Since we are holding to our purpose, and choosing from Scripture what is useful for life in the work of education, we must sketch in summary form what kind of person the one called a Christian ought to be throughout his whole life. We must begin, then, from ourselves and from the way it is fitting to conduct ourselves. Aiming, then, at the proper measure of our composition, we must say what sort of relation each of us should have to his own body, or rather how it ought to be directed. For whenever someone, led by reason from external things and even from the very regimen of the body up to the understanding, learns accurately the theory of what naturally happens to a human being, he will know not to be zealous about externals, but to purify what is properly the human being's own — the eye of the soul — and also to keep even the flesh itself pure. For the one who is cleanly released from those things by which he is still dust — what more useful possession could he have toward traveling the road to the apprehension of God? Other men, indeed, live in order to eat, just as the irrational animals do, for whom life is nothing but the belly; but for us the Educator commands us to eat in order to live. Eating is not what we are here for, and pleasure is not our goal; rather food is accepted for the sake of staying alive on this earth, and reason trains that continuance toward incorruption. This food is simple and unelaborate, suited to truth, fitting for simple and unelaborate children, serviceable for living, not designed for luxury. And this living, composed of two things, health and strength, is best served by food that is easy — useful for digestion and for lightness of body — from which come proper growth, health, and strength, not the unjust, precarious, and wretched kind that comes to athletes from forced feeding. The many varieties of seasoning, then, are to be spat out, since they breed manifold harms — bodily ill-conditions, upset stomachs — the taste turned to prostitution by some ill-starred art of fancy cookery and the vain craftsmanship of pastries. For they dare to call "nourishment" the pursuit, amid luxuries, that slides into harmful pleasures. Antiphanes the Delian physician even named this — the multiplicity of dishes — as one cause of disease, since those who are discontented with the truth, out of a varied vainglory, forswear the moderation of diet and go hunting after foods brought from across the sea. For my part I feel pity at their sickness, yet they feel no shame at boasting loudly of their own fussy self-indulgences, chasing after moray eels from the Sicilian strait, eels from the Maeander, kid-goats from Melos, mullets from Skiathos, shellfish from Pelorus, oysters from Abydos, and they do not skip the sprats of Lipara or the Mantinean turnip, nor even the beets raised among the Ascraeans; they hunt down scallops out of Methymna, Attic flatfish, thrushes fattened on bay-berries, and Chelidonian figs — the very figs for whose sake the luckless Persian king once threw five million troops against Greece. Besides these they buy up birds from the Phasis, Egyptian francolins, the Median peacock. Varying these with sauces, the gluttons gape after delicacies — whatever the earth, the depths of the sea, and the boundless expanse of air nourish — providing for themselves by their own gluttony. These greedy, meddling men, quite literally, seem to be dragging the whole world into a net for the sake of luxurious living, going about "sizzling in frying-pans," wearing out their whole lives around the mortar and pestle, all-devourers, clinging to fuel like fire itself. But they even effeminize the easy, wholesome food of bread by sifting out the nourishing part of the wheat, so that what is necessary in food becomes a reproach to pleasure. There is no limit among men to this gluttonous craving. For it has run aground even on pastries and honey-cakes, and further on sweetmeats, discovering a multitude of after-dinner treats, hunting after every sort of flavor. And it seems to me that such a person is nothing but a jaw. "Do not desire," says Scripture, "the dishes of the rich, for these belong to a false and shameful life." For they cling to delicacies which after a little while the dung-heap receives, but for us who hunt the heavenly food, it is necessary that it rule over the belly that is under heaven, and even more over the things attached to it, which "God will abolish," says the apostle, rightly cursing gluttonous desires. "For foods are for the belly," from which this truly fleshly and corruption-working life hangs. But if some, using a loose tongue, dare to call certain little suppers reeking of roast-smell and gravies "love," defiling that saving deed of the Word, which is good and holy love, with cooking pots and rivers of gravy, blaspheming the name with drink and luxury and smoke, they are mistaken in their supposition, expecting to purchase God's promise with little dinners. For gatherings held for good cheer we too would reckon among little suppers and breakfasts and receptions, and we would rightly call such a gathering by that name, following common usage; but the Lord did not call such feasts "love-feasts." He says at one point, "When you are invited to a wedding, do not recline in the place of honor, but when invited, take the last place," and elsewhere, "When you give a lunch or dinner," and again, "But when you give a reception, invite the poor," for whom especially a dinner ought to be given; and further, "A certain man gave a great dinner and invited many." But I perceive from where this specious name for dinners has flowed — from the throat and a frenzy that haunts the dinner table, as the comic poet says. For "truly, the many do most things for the sake of dinner." For men have surely not learned that God provided food and drink for his creature, man, for the sake of safety, not for the sake of pleasure — since bodies are not by nature benefited by the costliness of foods. Quite the contrary: those who use the cheapest fare are stronger, healthier, and nobler, as household servants are compared to their masters, and farmers to landowners; and not only more robust, but more sensible too, as philosophers compared to the rich. For they have not clogged the mind with foods, nor deceived it with pleasures. But love is truly heavenly food, a rational feast: "it bears all things, endures all things, hopes all things; love never fails." "Blessed is he who will eat bread in the kingdom of God." And of all falls, the harshest is for love, which never falls, to be cast down from the heavens above onto gravies here on the ground. Do you then suppose I consider this a dinner, this thing that is being abolished? "For if," it says, "I give away all my possessions, but do not have love, I am nothing."
On this love the whole law and the word depend. If you love the Lord your God and your neighbor, this heavenly banquet is in the heavens, while the earthly one is called a dinner, as has been shown from Scripture — a dinner that comes about on account of love, but is not itself love, but a token of a communal and generous goodwill. "Let our good, then, not be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking," says the apostle, so that it not be thought to be some daily lunch, "but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit." Whoever eats of this breakfast will acquire the best of things, the kingdom of God, having practiced from here on a holy assembly of love, a heavenly church. Love, then, is a pure thing, fit for God, and its task is sharing. "Attentiveness to instruction is what love means," says wisdom, "and to love her is to keep her laws." These common feasts have some spark of love in them, kindled from ordinary food and habituated toward the eternal food. Love, then, is not a dinner, but let the feast be made dependent on love. "Let your sons learn," it says, "whom you loved, Lord, that it is not the produce of fruits that nourishes man, but your word, which keeps safe those who put their trust in you" — since a just man will find life not through bread alone.
Let our dinner, then, be plain and unencumbered, fit for wakefulness, unmixed with varied kinds of dishes — and this too is not without instruction. For self-sufficiency is a good nurse for fellowship, love having a rich provision in self-sufficiency, which, presiding over food measured out in just quantity, manages the body toward safety and even bestows something of itself on one's neighbors, whereas a diet that overflows self-sufficiency does harm to a person, making the soul sluggish and rendering the body prone to disease. And truly, the pleasures of elaborate seasonings drag in unbearable reproaches — greed, gluttony, delicacy-eating, insatiability, voraciousness. Flies belong to these names, and weasels, and flatterers, and gladiators, and the "wild tribes of parasites" — men who, for the pleasure of the belly, have sold off, some their reason, some their friendship, some their very life, crawling on their bellies, beasts in human likeness, made in the image of their father, the gluttonous beast. Those who first called such men "prodigals" [asōtoi] seem to me to have rightly hinted at their end, understanding them, by a compression of the letter sigma, as "un-saved" [asōstoi]. For are these not the men busied about their platters and the deranged elaborations of their seasonings, humble-minded, earth-born, pursuing a life for a day as though they were not going to live at all? The Holy Spirit, through Isaiah, calls these men wretched, gently withdrawing the very name of "love" from them, since their feasting was not according to reason: "But they made themselves merry, killing off calves and offering up sheep, and saying, Let us eat, let us drink, since tomorrow we shall be dead"; and to show that he counts such extravagance a sin, he goes on to add, "and this sin of yours shall not be forgiven you until you die" — deciding not that death is an unfeeling release from sin, but that death is a repayment for sin, not a saving death. "Do not rejoice over petty luxury," wisdom says.
Here we must also remind ourselves about what is called food offered to idols, in what sense it is enjoined that we must abstain from it. Those things seem to me foul and abominable, over whose blood hover the souls of the dead, come up out of Erebus. "For it is not my wish that you become partakers with demons," the apostle states, since what feeds the saved differs from what feeds those perishing. We ought to steer clear of such things, not from fright (for they hold no real power), but for the sake of our own conscience — a holy thing — and from revulsion toward the demons, given the abomination bound up with their very name over these offerings, and further because of the wateriness of those who suppose most things slip by too easily, "whose weak conscience is defiled thereby. For food will not commend us to God"; "nor does what goes into a man defile him, but what comes out," it says, "of the mouth." The natural use of food, then, is indifferent: "for neither if we eat do we abound," it says, "nor if we do not eat are we lacking"; but it makes no sense for those judged worthy of heavenly, spiritual nourishment also to share "the table of demons." "Do we not have authority to eat and drink," says the apostle, "and to take about with us wives?" But clearly, mastering our pleasures, we restrain our desires. "Watch, then, lest this authority of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak."
We ought not, therefore, to misuse our Father's gifts like prodigals, as in the gospel image of the rich man's son, but to use them, as rulers do, without partiality. For indeed we were appointed to reign and to have mastery, not to be enslaved to foods. It is admirable, then, looking toward the truth, to cling to the food from above, the divine food, and to be filled with the insatiable vision of what truly is, tasting the pleasure that is firm, abiding, and pure. For it is this love that the eating of Christ signifies we ought to receive; but it is thoroughly irrational, useless, and inhuman to be nourished, like cattle being fattened for slaughter, looking down at the earth and bent over tables — men of the earth ever pursuing the gluttonous life, burying the good somewhere down here in a life that will not be, flattering only the swallowing, on account of which cooks have become more highly prized than farmers. For we are not doing away with social good will, but we suspect the slide of habit as a calamity. So gluttony must be given up, and we should partake only of what is needed and little else; and should an unbeliever invite us and we decide it is proper to accept (since keeping away from disorderly company is a good thing), he instructs us to eat whatever is placed before us, "raising no questions on account of conscience," and in the same way he told us to purchase from the market without hesitation whatever we find there. We must not, then, abstain altogether from various foods, but we must not be zealous about them; it befits a Christian to eat what is placed before him, showing honor to the host through a companionship that is harmless and free of gluttony, but considering the costliness of what is brought in a matter of indifference, and despising the delicacies as things that soon will not exist. "Let the one who eats not despise the one who does not eat, and let the one who does not eat not judge the one who eats." Going on a little further he explains the reason for the instruction, saying, "the one who eats, eats to the Lord and gives thanks to God, and the one who does not eat, does not eat to the Lord and gives thanks to God" — so that righteous food is thanksgiving; and the one who is always giving thanks is not preoccupied with pleasures. And if we should also be urging some of our fellow guests toward virtue, all the more must we abstain from these gluttonous foods, presenting ourselves as a clear example of virtue, since we ourselves have had Christ. "For if any such food scandalizes my brother, I will never eat it," he says, "forever, that I may not scandalize my brother," gaining the man by a little self-control. "Do we not have authority to eat and drink?" And "we have come to know," he says, "that no idol exists in the world at all, and that for us there is one God only, the source of everything, and a single Lord, Jesus." But "the weak brother is destroyed," he says, "by your knowledge, the brother for whom Christ died. And those who wound the conscience of their weak brothers sin against Christ." For this reason the apostle, taking care on our behalf, discriminates about dinners, saying, "do not associate together," "if anyone called a brother is found to be sexually immoral, or an adulterer, or an idolater, do not even eat with him" — neither conversation nor food — suspecting the defilement that comes from this, just as also from the tables of demons.
"It is good, then, not to eat meat nor drink wine," he himself acknowledges, as do the followers of Pythagoras; for this belongs more to beasts, and the vapor rising from them, being murkier, darkens the soul. Yet if a person does eat such things, no wrongdoing results, provided he eats with restraint, without clinging or growing attached to them, nor gluttonously craving the delicacy; for a voice will echo in his ears, saying, "Do not for the sake of food destroy the work of God." For it belongs to a very foolish person to marvel and gape at what is set out at popular banquets after the luxury found in reason itself; and it is far more foolish to have enslaved one's sight to side dishes, the intemperance being carried along with them, so to speak, by the servants. And how is it not useless to rise up over one's couch, all but throwing one's face into the platters, poking out from one's couch as though from a nest — this well-worn habit — in order to catch, through their breathing, the wandering vapor? And how is it not irrational to plunge one's hands into the delicacies, or to keep reaching out toward the dish, not tasting but, as it were, snatching, gorging oneself immoderately and unbecomingly? For one can see such people resembling swine or dogs rather than men, on account of their voracity, hastening to stuff themselves, so that both jaws bulge together as the vessels around the face swell further, and moreover sweat pours out from them, gripped by insatiability and panting from intemperance, the food being pushed down into the belly by an unsociable haste, as though into provisions for a journey, not stored up for proper digestion. Everywhere excess is an evil, but it is most exposed in matters of food. Delicacy-eating, then, is nothing other than excess in the use of relish, and gluttony is a madness about the throat, and belly-madness is intemperance about food — as indeed the very name shows, madness about the belly, since "margos" means one who is raving. So the apostle, checking those who practice wrongdoing at feasts, says: "for each one takes his own dinner beforehand in the eating, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk. Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God and put to shame those who have nothing?" And among those who do have, the ones who eat without restraint, the insatiable, put themselves to shame; both act badly — the ones by burdening those who have nothing, the others by exposing their own intemperance before those who do have. Necessarily, then, addressing those without shame who indulge dinners without restraint, the insatiable, for whom nothing is ever enough, the apostle again, a second time, burst out with an indignant cry: "Therefore, my brothers, whenever you gather to take a meal together, wait one for the other; if a man is hungry, let him eat at home, so that your gathering does not bring you under judgment." We must abstain, then, from all servility and intemperance, touching what is set before us in an orderly manner, keeping the hand and the couch-covering and the chin unstained, preserving the decorum of the face undistorted, not behaving unseemly even in swallowing, but extending the hand with order and at intervals. * * One must also guard against uttering anything while eating; for the voice becomes unseemly and indistinct, choked off by cheeks stuffed to the brim, and the tongue, weighed down by the food and blocked from doing its natural job, produces only a garbled sound. Nor is it fitting to eat and drink at the same time; for it belongs to the greatest intemperance to confuse occasions whose uses are not in harmony. And "whether you eat," it says, "or drink, do all things for the glory of God," aiming at true frugality, which it seems to me the Lord himself pointed toward when he blessed the loaves and the grilled fish he served his disciples as a meal, setting forth a fine model of plain, unfussy food. That fish, indeed, which Peter caught at the Lord's command, hints itself at food that is easy, God-given, and moderate; for it also suggests taking away, from those who come up out of the water to the bait of righteousness, prodigality and love of money, symbolized by the coin found in the fish, so that he could set aside empty pride, and by handing over the coin to those who collected the tax, giving to Caesar the things belonging to Caesar, he might reserve what belongs to God for God alone. The stater might have other interpretations too, not unknown, but the present occasion is not suited for working them out. This reminder suffices, as we make use, for our present purpose, of flowers not out of tune with our argument — as we have often already done — drawing off, toward what is urgent in our inquiry, from the wide-benefiting spring planted by reason, for the watering of what has been sown. For even if "all things are lawful for me, not all things are helpful" — for whoever does everything permitted soon slips into doing what is forbidden. And just as righteousness is not achieved through greed, nor self-control through licentiousness, so too the Christian's diet is not acquired through indulgence; for truth's table stands at a great distance from "dishes designed to gratify craving." For even if all things came into being especially for the sake of man, it is not good to use all of them, nor even always. For occasion and time and manner and purpose contribute no small weight toward what is beneficial for the one being trained, and what is fitting has the power to abolish the belly-centered life, whose wealth is what draws one out, wealth that does not see keenly but is blinded in its gluttonous excess. No one is poor with regard to necessities, nor is a man ever overlooked; for the one who nourishes the birds and the swimming creatures, and, in a word, the irrational animals, is one — God; and not one of them lacks anything whatsoever, even though they give no worry to what they will eat. And we are better than these, insofar as we are lords, and closer to God, insofar as we are more self-controlled. Our existence began not so that eating and drinking would be the point, but so that knowing God would be. "For the righteous," it says, "eats and is satisfied in soul, but the bellies of the wicked are in want," reaching after unceasing gluttony. Costliness is fitting not for solitary enjoyment, but for communal sharing. We must therefore stay on guard against foods that seduce the appetite and talk us into eating without any hunger. For is there not, even in a moderate frugality, a healthy variety of foods? Bulbs, olives, some vegetables, milk, cheese, seasonal fruits, and all kinds of boiled dishes without gravies. And if roasted or boiled meat is needed, it should be shared. "Do you have any food on hand?" the Lord asked the disciples after he rose from the dead. "And they" (since they had been taught by him to practice frugality) "handed him a portion of grilled fish, and he ate it in their sight and spoke to them," says Luke, whatever the words were. In addition to these, those dining reasonably should not be overlooked as lacking a share even of dessert fruits and honeycomb. For among foods the most suitable are those one can use just as they are, without fire, since they are also readier at hand; second are the cheaper ones, as we have said before. But over those who fuss about inflamed tables, nursing their own passions, a most gluttonous demon presides, whom I for my part would not be ashamed to call the "belly-demon," the worst and most utterly ruinous of demons. This one is quite similar to the one called the belly-speaking demon (ventriloquist). It is far better to become blessed than to have a demon as a housemate; and blessedness is measured by the practice of virtue.
Now the apostle Matthew partook of seeds and tree-fruits and vegetables, without meat, while John, going beyond even that in self-control, "ate locusts and wild honey." Peter too abstained from swine's flesh; but "a trance fell upon him," as the record of the apostles' deeds sets down, "and he beholds the sky opened, and something like a great sheet lowered by its four corners down to the ground; and on it lay every four-footed beast and creeping thing of the earth and bird of the sky; and a voice spoke to him: Get up, Peter, slaughter and eat. Yet Peter answered: By no means, Master — nothing profane or impure has ever passed my lips. And once more, a second time, the voice returned to him: Do not name common what God has made clean." So then for us too the use of food is a matter of indifference. "For it is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man," but the notion that lack of self-control lies in food is empty. For God, having formed man, said, "Everything shall be for you to eat." But "better a dish of vegetables with love than a fatted calf with hatred" — this rightly recalls the saying just quoted, that it is not the vegetables themselves that constitute love, but that meals are to be taken with love. The middle condition is good in all things, and not least in the arrangements one makes for feasting; for the extremes are treacherous, but the middle courses are good. And the mean is whatever lacks nothing of what is necessary; for the desires that follow nature are bounded by sufficiency. To the Jews, through the Law, frugality was proclaimed in the most well-ordered way; for the Instructor, through Moses, took away from them the use of countless things, attaching reasons to the prohibitions — reasons spiritual, though hidden, and reasons carnal, which were made plain and which they in fact believed: to some, that the animal does not have a cloven hoof; to others, that it does not chew the cud; to others again, that among water creatures it alone lacks scales — so that very few things at all were left suitable for them to eat. And even of those he allowed them to touch, he again forbade the ones that had died of themselves, and those sacrificed to idols, and those that had been strangled; for it is not lawful even to touch these. For since it is impossible for one who indulges in pleasant things to hold back from approving of them, he set the opposite course of training against it, until it should loosen the headlong rush toward self-indulgence that comes from habit. For most people, pleasure has bred harm and grief, while overeating breeds in the soul insensibility and forgetfulness and folly. And they say that children's bodies grow well and increase in height precisely from a spare diet; for the breath that runs up toward growth is not hindered when abundant food does not block the free passage of its course. Hence Plato, who zealously pursued truth among the philosophers, kindling anew the spark of Hebrew philosophy, denounces the life of luxury, saying: "And when I came, that so-called blessed existence there, crowded with Italian and Syracusan spreads, gave me no pleasure whatsoever — stuffing oneself twice each day and never once retiring to bed alone, and all the practices that attend such a life; for from these things no man under heaven could ever become wise, practicing such things from youth, nor will he ever be tempered to so admirable a nature." Plato, then, had some acquaintance with David, who, setting up the holy ark in his own city, in the midst of the tent, and making joy for all the people under him, "before the Lord distributed to all the host of Israel, from man to woman, to each a cake of bread and a portion of meat and a wafer from the pan." This food was sufficient, and it was Israelite; the pagan sort is excessive. "Never could he be temperate" who indulges in such fare, burying his mind in his belly, most resembling the fish called the ass-fish, which Aristotle says is the only one of all animals to have its heart in its stomach. This sort of man Epicharmus the comic poet calls "belly-twisted." Such are those men who have put their faith in the belly, "for their god is their stomach, and their pride lies in their disgrace, their thoughts fixed on things of the earth." Of these the apostle foretold nothing good, saying, "their fate is ruin."
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