The Bible on wine

NOW THAT I'M letting you peek at my emails to other folks ....

This is something I wrote several years ago to a minister who taught that imbibing alcohol is sinful.

Dear Sirs (and Madames),

[Y]our position on wine confuses me--frankly, because you seem to have arrived at your position by ignoring many scriptures which encourage the wise and moderate use of wine and other alcoholic drink.

In your article on Biblical health principles you say:

There is one word 'wine,' which either means the unfermented juice of the grape (non-alcoholic) or it means the fermented juice (alcoholic)."

Question: Accepting for the sake of argument that the above might be true, how does one determine which kind of juice is being referred to in a given scripture? Do you simply assume that all the positive references must be about unfermented juice, while all of the negative references are to fermented wine? On what would you base such an assumption?

But the Bible is clear; it says to drink the wine, the unfermented juice of the grape, when it's fresh in the cluster: "As the new wine is found in the cluster, And one says, 'Do not destroy it, For a blessing is in it'" (Isaiah 65:8). And concerning fermented juice: "Look not upon the wine..." (the fermented juice) "...when it is red "(Proverbs 23:31).

Is. 65:8 contains no command or even recommendation to drink only fresh grape juice and avoid wine. It simply says that men do not destroy a cluster of grapes because there is yet a "blessing" (or source of blessing, benefit, gift) in the "new wine" they produce. NIV says:

This is what the Lord says: "As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes and men say, 'Don't destroy it, there is yet some good in it,' so will I do in behalf of my servants; I will not destroy them all.

In context, this would seem to indicate a cluster of grapes that remained unpressed after a wine pressing. Don't throw them out; there is still juice (i.e. "new wine") in them!

As for Proverbs 23:31, we must remember two things. First of all, the Proverbs are proverbs of a wise man, not commandments from the Eternal. Secondly, many of these proverbs utilize the literary device of hyperbole. For example:

Pr 23:1- When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:
And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.

Thirdly, other verses from Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, written perhaps by the very same author, clearly portray wine in a positive light. In fact, wine and other fermented "strong drink" are mentioned from Genesis to Revelation--sometimes in a negative context, other times neutral or positive.

Wine was involved in the Temple worship (Lev. 23:13) and Yahweh even demanded "the best of the wine" (Num. 18:12); "plenty of corn and wine" was seen as a delightful blessing (Gen. 27:28).

Contrary to commanding abstinence, Yahweh recommends that His people buy "strong drink" on certain occasions--notably, during the Feast of Tabernacles! (Deut 14:26)

Too much wine is indeed a "mocker," but you ignore the scriptures that say that the right use of wine "maketh merry" (Ecc. 10:19). Again in Ecclesiastes, we are told: "Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepts thy works" (Ecc.9:7). And very revealingly, the Psalmist compares Yahweh himself to a "mighty man who shouteth by reason of wine!"

Grape juice does not make one "merry"--at least not any more so than does water or milk. And, while it may make children smile, I defy you to show me how it might cause mighty men to shout! The very idea is absurd.

Messiah's water-to-wine miracle: It stretches the bounds of credulity to imagine that the wedding guests were excited to get a new supply of grape juice. It also stretches the bounds of credulity to imagine that people present at the wedding would remark:

Every man at the beginning doth set forth good grape juice; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good grape juice until now. (Joh 2:10).

Furthermore, Messiah tells us:

And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish (Lu 5:37).

Commentaries note that it is the process of fermentation which causes the old wineskin to burst when new wine is put into it. Messiah was clearly referring to real, fermented wine, and he assumed that his audience was very familiar with this product. For indeed, as he noted:

Lu 5:39
No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

Here, also, without even the slightest hint of condemnation, we find Messiah confirming that "old wine" is more enjoyable than new.

If anything is obvious in scripture, it is that wine enjoys an honored place as a blessing from our Creator, and that the Bible recommends total abstinence only in rare cases. (Biblical recommendations to abstain, or refererences to men who abstained such as John the Baptist, are the "exceptions that prove the rule" that alcohol was not only broadly permitted, but encouraged--within moderation.)

It is also obvious that when the Bible refers to wine, it is always, or nearly always, referring to wine, not raw grape juice--and when it refers to strong drink, it is *not* referring to milk!

While it is true that the abuse of alcohol destroys families, health, and lives, so does the abuse of food. In fact, the Bible condemns gluttony as soundly it condemns drunkenness. Should we take that as a command to abstain from eating?

Since you undoubtedly used a concordance to find the negative scriptures on drunkenness, the neutral and positive references to wine and "strong drink" cannot have escaped your attention. Unfortunately, for reasons known only to the Eternal and yourselves, you chose to emphasize the negative and ignore the neutral and positive. That sort of arbitrary interpretation of the Word of God does not inspire confidence in your exegetical skill or your intellectual honesty.

I hope you will revise your official doctrine to accurately reflect scripture. It is never righteous to distort scripture--not even in support of a seemingly noble cause. It is never acceptable to try to "improve upon" the commandments of the Eternal by concocting our own, the sin of the Pharisees (Mt 15:9, Mr 7:7, Col 2:22, Tit 1:14). For "there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Pr 14:12).

God the torturer?

J.P. HOLDING RUNS an impressively huge Christian apologetics site called Tektonics. (Christ was a tekton -- an architect.) He has saved my bacon in many an online debate with atheists, skeptics or Eastern mysticalists challenging the truth or authority of the Bible. However, he's not immune from error. Here's my recent email to him.


I have had occasion to visit your site several times in the last several years and I consider it pretty impressive! My latest visit (via a link from CRI) led me, somehow, to your article "The Crucifixion, the Nature of Hell, and Shame." was hoping to find a different answer from the standard defense of the "eternal torment" idea which dissatisfies skeptics, and increasingly, believers such as myself. I'm wondering why you seem not to have considered the unequivocal OT view that human life ends -- i.e., actually ends completely and totally -- at death? And the concomitant emphasis on our total dependence upon future resurrection -- as opposed to the notion that we are inherently "immortal souls" that are somehow entitled to live on forever?

I looked in vain for an indication that you considered the original meanings of the words such as nephesh (often rendered "soul") and sheol and hades (often rendered "hell"). As you know, nephesh does not denote or even connote anything that lives on after death, nor necessarily anything spiritual: it is applied to animals as well as to human and translated variously as "life," "breath," or "being." You also must be aware that sheol and hades denote the grave, where life ceases; not some underworldly or otherworldly place of eternal life in conscious torment! Whereas gehenna was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem, where refuse was tossed -- and completely burned up, as opposed to surviving forever in flaming torment.

Not only the terms, but the scriptures in their context, and OT and NT eschatology, point overwhelmingly to the sequence: individual death; "sleep" in the grave; return of Christ; then (and only then), collective resurrection of the dead from their graves. This leaves no possibility of anyone being either in heaven or hell at present. Note, this sequence is given in apocalyptic passages as well as non-apocalyptic (such as I Cor 15).

God says he will "remember" the work of his hands (us), and quite literally -- from his infinite memory he can reconstitute the mind and personality of each and every one of us, and place them inside new bodies. Therefore, there is no need for "souls" to survive death: our Creator is 100% capable of re-creating us when the time comes.

Seeing that human life is mortal and dependent upon God's sustaining will, if God should withdraw his presence, then life must cease to be altogether. This is precisely what is portrayed as the ultimate fate of the wicked: "the second death." This is the wages of sin: death -- not eternal life in unhappiness. (Eternal life, rather, is a gift from God -- not an inherent quality of being.)

This is my view since it is the plain teaching of scripture, rather than an esoteric and difficult reading based on mistranslations and imported Platonic ideas. Also, it happily allows God to be what he tells us he is: a God of love rather than a cruel torturer. The one who said of his own murder at the hands of hateful schemers, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," could never consign someone to infinite, never-ending torture (whether physical flame or psychological anguish) for the few finite sins committed in just a flash of time passed here on earth. Rather, those whom he cannot save (and I truly doubt that at the end there will be many -- if any at all), he will mercifully put out of their misery or simply leave them as they are -- dead and buried.

I urge you to consider this as it is evident that it has escaped your attention.