Tag Archives: fasting

Food Offered to Idols

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What is most frequently offered in religious rituals? Food! Religious food practices shape communities–what people do or do not offer to the gods and do or do not eat together identifies who we are as societies. What the Hebrews and the Egyptians ate before the Exodus helped distinguish the two communities. Read about food in ancient Egypt here.


So, concerning food that is offered to idols. We know that in the world an idol is nothing and there is no God but one…. But food will not put us in the presence of God. We are not inferior if we do not eat nor are we superior if we do eat. (1 Cor. 8:4, 8)

The parish in Corinth was torn apart by several disputes, one of which involved what was or was not legitimate to eat. It was meat that had been sacrificed to idols was the problem. The obvious question is, “Then why not just go buy meat from the kosher butcher?” No problem with idols then. Problem solved.

There was a large Jewish community in Corinth with plenty of kosher butchers. I could spend 20 minutes–or several hundred words–talking or writing about how the animosity between the Jewish and the Christian communities was ready to boil over at the least provocation. Christian patronage of kosher butchers was simply not possible. Tensions between the two communities were just too high.

The Christian neighbors that needed to experience God’s peace and harmony in Corinth were more than just two theological factions or two groups that wouldn’t eat together or speak to each other at coffee hour. The labels of “weak” and “strong” throughout the epistles are code words for ethnic identity and social status. The weak were the Jewish believers, the socially disadvantaged, those on the periphery of the culture, the people who could be expelled from town because the powers-that-be don’t want to be bothered with them—just as the Jews had been expelled from Rome several times already. (Many of the Jews in Corinth being, in fact, refugees who had settled there after the most recent expulsion from the great capital, only a few years before St. Paul came preaching there.)

The strong were the Gentile believers, the socially powerful and important, the people who would probably think that it might actually be a good idea to expel the “weak” from town if they got too troublesome or demanding.

St. Paul declared that he would give up meat forever—that he would fast as the Prophet Daniel had fasted in Babylon because there was no kosher meat available—to maintain the harmony of the Christian community. St. Paul said that anyone who joined him in that fast, joined him in maintaining that harmony would also be maintaining the harmony not only of the community but the harmony of their personal relationship with God. The fast established and maintained the love and reconciliation between members of the congregation. The fast—like the holy kiss—was an expression of love for both God and neighbor.

“We Have Knowledge!”

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Traditional Easter baskets are full of eggs, meat, cheese, and holiday Easter bread. People bring their baskets to church to be blessed and share the food with their families, friends, and neighbors. Community identity is forged by what people do or do not eat together.


Concerning food that has been offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs us up but love builds us up. If anyone thinks that he or she knows something, that one does not yet know as he or she ought to know. (1 Cor. 8:1-2)

Having spent all of chapter 7 talking about various aspects of marriage, St. Paul turns to the subject of food. He discusses various aspects of food for the next three chapters of this epistle. Food was important to the Christians of Corinth. Food is still important to Christians today.

The Corinthian parish had evidently written to St. Paul and asked him several questions about food. What to eat? Who to eat with? How to maintain their Christian identity in connection with food?

St. Paul begins by pointing out that although all the Corinthians claim to have knowledge, there is both “false knowledge” and “true knowledge.” The difference is that true knowledge goes together with love. False knowledge puffs up people, making them proud and arrogant. True knowledge, united with love, brings people into fellowship with each other. “We have knowledge!” was apparently the slogan or motto of the faction of the parish that was proud and arrogant. St. Paul warns these people that too often the people who claim to know more or know better are–in fact–the ones who know the least about the truth.

“Whatever knowledge we may have, it is still imperfect,” said St. John Chrysostom when he was preaching about this passage. “Where God is concerned, we cannot even say just how wrong our perception of him is.” He warns them, “More than anyone else, the arrogant injure themselves.”

Conjugal Debts

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The Church, the Bride of Christ, is born from his side when the blood and water pour forth from the lance-wound in his side, just as Eve was born from the side of Adam. As bride and groom, the Church and Christ can be said to owe each other a “conjugal debt” that is “paid” in the Eucharist. “Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.” (St. John Chrysostom)

Let a man give to his wife what he owes her; similarly, a wife to her husband. A wife does not have authority over her body, her husband does; likewise, a husband does not have authority over his own body, his wife does. Do not deprive one another …. (1 Cor. 7:4-5)

Evidently the Corinthians had written a series of questions to St. Paul, some of them about marriage. In response, St. Paul writes a short treatise On Marriage in chapter 7 of First Corinthians. It was common for philosophers and later Christian theologians to write essays about the good and bad qualities of marriage; St. Augustine wrote an especially famous essay On the Good [Aspects] of Marriage.

Jewish tracts about marriage and pagan philosophers writing about marriage agree about the power of sexuality. St. Paul concurs with these ideas. The sexual relationship is at the heart of the marital relationship and the sexual availability each spouse owes the other came to be known as the “conjugal debt.” St. Paul writes that the spouses could agree to deny each other for short periods, so as to be better able to focus on prayer, but should never stay away from each other for long.

What is a “short” period? What is a “long” time? Jewish practice expected a married couple to abstain for one or two weeks each month because of the wife’s menstrual cycle. Soldiers and priests were expected to abstain during their times of active service–partly because they weren’t at home. Scholars of the Torah could abstain for a month but not longer; this meant they could not go away to distant libraries for months at a time. Ordinary workmen were not allowed to abstain for more than a week; this meant they had to come home every week if they had a job that required them to live away from home.

Early Christians expected that married couples who were fasting would also abstain from sexual activity; some manuscripts of First Corinthians read that couples should only abstain in order to engage in “prayer and fasting.” There were two fasting days each week and anyone receiving Holy Communion was expected to fast the night before as well. Converts preparing for baptism were expected to fast for three days. (This pre-baptismal fast is what became Holy Week and then Lent.)

St. Paul was not married. It was unusual for a Jewish man to not be married so a few people think he might have been a widower without children. Whether he had been married as a younger man or not, he urged the Corinthians to remain as they were when they converted: married or single or widowed. Stability of life–itself an important monastic virtue in the 6th century–was important to St. Paul. Such stability involved a stable homelife which included a stable reliance on the “payment” of the “conjugal debt.”