New Testament and the Food Laws 2: A response to J.Piper.

Did Jesus declare all 'foods' clean?

Without knowing the whole story, we are bound to misinterpret things. There is a TV trope known as ‘Out of Context Eavesdropping’ where one person hears only one side of a conversation and jumps to the wrong conclusion. For example, on an episode of the Simpsons Lisa overhears her crush talking to someone names Clara and thinks she is his girlfriend. But it is his sister. Or in an episode of Diff’rent Strokes, Willis and Arnold overhear their adopted father say that black boys should be with black families, and end up thinking that he doesn’t want them. But it turns out that he was just repeating what a white social worker had said before she was thrown out. Without understanding other cultures, misunderstandings are bound to arise too. Consider how in Japan, the common American act of tipping is actually taken as an insult. Or how in the Middle East a thumbs-up is the equivalent of giving someone the bird. Similar things happen in Christianity too. Many onlookers since the beginning have questioned why we ‘eat the body of our god’ because they misunderstand Communion. So, as we can see, it is important that we understand cultural context and get all the information, lest we come up with a misguided interpretation of what others are about. And this is also true when we approach the scripture. It is easy to unintentionally misread a passage of scripture because we import modern ideas or we are missing a key piece of historical/cultural information. We saw in our last post that this was true of Matthew 5:17, and as we will see in the following posts, it is also true of Mark 7.

In my last post, I agreed with John Piper that we as followers of Jesus need to listen to what Christ said about the Old Testament Law. Having considered textual, idiomatic, and linguistic context of ‘fulfil’ from the first example that he provided of Matthew 5, we saw that Jesus was actually teaching the opposite of what Piper suggested it meant, namely, that in fulfilling the Law, He was faithfully teaching and upholding it. We also saw that there was nothing in the law or the prophets that demonstrate that God had intended for the faux category of ‘ceremonial law’ to be only temporary.

There is, however, another teaching from Jesus that Piper quoted which looks very much like He did do away with the food laws, and that is from Mark 7:15-19:

 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.” And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled? (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

And reading that does make it look like a ‘done deal’. 'See, Jesus declared all foods clean.' And for Piper, “[this] is the key text…” But is this verse saying what we think it says? Did Jesus in fact annul and abolish the food laws in this dispute with the Pharisees? Let’s look at the textual and cultural-historical context before examining its linguistic context.

In verses 1-5, we are provided with the situational context and we discover that the dispute was about the washing of hands according to ‘the traditions of the elders’. As the Pharisees asked Jesus “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (v5). As Mark explains, the Pharisees had taught all the Jews that they must wash (baptise) their hands and cups and crockery before eating, especially after being in the marketplace. This is not because they are germaphobes, but because of their understanding of clean and unclean. They believed that everyday things considered ‘clean’ can be contaminated by something inherently unclean. In this case, they believed that by being in the marketplace among the Gentiles that their hands would become contaminated. And if they did not ceremonially wash their hands, their food would become inedible through its defilement. When something clean became defiled, the Pharisees called it ‘common’, or in the Greek koinen. For example, the disciples were eating with ‘koinais hands' (Mark 7:2,5). The category of ‘common’ is often equated with the category of ‘unclean’ from the Law. However, in the Septuagint, unclean (e.g Lev 11:18) is never translated as koinen, but rather akatharta, further demonstrating that they are different categories.

Based on repeated use of koinen and the phrase ‘tradition of the elders’ in this passage, we find that, “Mark is careful to point out that the disciples have not violated the Torah but [rather] the… ‘tradition of the elders’” (Rudolf, p 294). Note too how Moses or pigs never come into this conversation at all. Therefore, any apparent challenge made to clean/unclean distinction of food in this dispute needs to be understood through the lens of this context, i.e. the traditional Pharisaical category of ‘common.’

The first apparent challenge the food laws is found in verse 15:

“Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”

This statement is often taken to mean that eating bacon doesn’t make you unclean anymore. And there is truth to this, because there is a difference between the nature of ‘unclean’ food and nearly every other unclean thing in Leviticus. When someone became unclean through excessive menstruation, childbirth, touching a dead body etc… a ritual was provided to make them clean again. But when it came to eating pig or prawns, there is no cleansing ceremony. There were no restrictions on access to the Tabernacle for those who had eaten unclean food. The only way they did make one unclean, is by touching their carcass (Lev 11:24-28), but this was true of clean foods too (Lev 11:39-40), meaning there is a difference between a carcass and prepared food. It is also important to note that here Jesus is talking about things that make you ‘common’ (koinen), whereas in Leviticus 11 only eating “the swarming things that swarm on the ground” will make you ‘unclean’ (akathartoi [LXX]). Thus, we can say that eating unclean foods (with one exception) never made you unclean or common. Moreover, in Matthew’s account of this discussion, Jesus concludes by saying:

But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile [make koinen] anyone (Matt 15:18-20).

This further reinforces that this debate is about the traditions of the elders and not the Levitical food laws. Therefore, we can better understand Jesus as saying in verse 15 that the eating of clean food with common hands will not render that food, or you, common.

This is also true of verses 18 and 19 where we find Jesus explaining to the confused disciples:

Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

To clarify his teaching, Jesus gives his disciples a lesson in biology lesson to let them know that whatever impurities the food ‘may’ have, God designed the human body to use that which is good and to remove that which is impure. Moreover, all food enters the stomach and the digestive tract, and not the heart - the source of sin - and its impurities are expelled. And again, Jesus is talking about the category of polluted, or ‘common’ food, not inherently unclean meat. So, as we covered with verse 15, He is not (and cannot be) talking about a pig making us unclean.

Then comes, as it appears in most English translations (except for the KJV), a parenthetical commentary statement from Mark:

“In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean” (NIV).

What is most interesting, is that this phrase isn’t in the Greek. Rather it merely says ‘purging all food’ (katharizon panta ta bromata). So how did modern translators get ‘Jesus declaring all foods clean’ out of ‘purging all foods’? Well, in most languages, verbs and nouns need to match grammatically. In English, we discern the relationship between words and ideas primarily through the use of word order, pronouns, and conjunctions. In languages like Greek, where word order is not as important syntactically, to know who is doing what and what word relates to what idea, one needs to match words through what is known as 'case endings.' The main word we are looking at in particular, purging: katharizon, is a singular masculine participle in the nominative case (the subject, or ‘main actor’ in the sentence). And because the closest matching singular masculine nominative is ‘Jesus’ all the way back in verse 18 (and He said), the translators concluded that Jesus must be the one doing the cleansing. There is, however, an exception to this rule:

“In Greek grammar… the nominative singular participle may sometimes refer to something within the previous context or to something implied in the context not explicitly mentioned, even though it may not be in the same grammatical case” (Hegg, 2)

This is what Daniel Wallace in his book, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics calls a 'pendant nominative' which refers to a word that is independent of the grammatical arrangements of a sentence, but still related to the subject at hand. The Net Bible study notes explain that this construction occurs when "a description of something within the clause is placed in the nominative case and moved forward ahead of the clause for emphatic reasons." We see an example of this in Luke 24:47:

“that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”

The verb ‘beginning’ is a nominative singular participle with no matching noun to act as its antecedent. However, we can tell that it is referring to the preaching of repentance. In the same way, the cleansing of foods is related to the previous clause of the body expelling what was eaten, but for the sake of emphasis - since the issue of purification was what drove the conversation - purify is changed to the nominative case. Therefore, we are not bound grammatically to attach ‘purging all foods’ to a noun 38 words prior. Instead, we can understand the phrase as the conclusion to Jesus’ biology lesson. 

But grammar is not everything. We need to consider context too. Earlier in in verses 6-8, Jesus’ response to the Pharisee’s question comes in the form of a reprimand and quotation of Isaiah, accusing the Pharisee’s of “rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish [their] tradition.” This is a rebuke against the Pharisee’s prioritisation of ritual impurity (as defined by their tradition) over ‘moral’ defilement (as defined by the commandments of God). By responding to the Pharisee’s challenge in this way, Jesus is reminding them that the commandments of God overrules their traditions, especially the ones that negate God’s Law. We see something similar in Matthew’s Gospel:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. (Matt 23:25-26).   

Therefore, based on his rebuke, we see that Jesus’ argument “centres on a single point – the overarching priority of the Torah” (Rudolf, p 295), and his entire point in this encounter was to rebuke traditions that subtract from the word of God. Thus, when it comes to verse 15 and 19 it becomes extremely unlikely that after Jesus declared the sacredness of the Law, rebuked the Pharisees for hypocritically neglecting ‘the commandments of God’, He then goes and abolishes a significant part of the Law, the implications of which I discussed in my previous post. Some might argue that Jesus had the authority to modify the Law, but if He did, why was He later asking the Father if He could bypass the cross? That is one stipulation of the Law that I am sure Jesus would have wanted to change.

But let's say that Jesus was actually declaring all foods clean, I have two questions:

1. Why is there such a lack of reaction? Why was this never mentioned at Jesus’ trial? Changing a law like this would mean instant conviction. Instead, they needed people to lie to try and convict Him. Moreover, consider how in the mind of Jesus’ audience forbidden food was not simply unclean, but detestable. In fact, Many Jews in the Hasmonean period (140-116 BCE) “chose to die rather than be defiled by food…" (1Macc 1:62-63, 2 Macc 7). Although this is a kind of argument from silence, the silence is nonetheless worth noting. 

And 2. Why in Acts 9 was Peter - who was here and got the explanation - so adamant that they still unclean? I know that Peter had his slow moments, but this was post Pentecost. Granted he wrestled with the idea of the inclusion of Gentiles, but once explicitly explained to him, he got it. So for Peter to insist that unclean food still existed at the time of his vision makes no sense. (I will cover this more deeply in my next post.)

As we have examined Mark 7:1-19, we see that this conversation had nothing to do with Levitical food laws, but rather the traditions of the elders. This is the case for many of Jesus’ confrontations with the Pharisees. Therefore, based on the grammar and the context of this statement, we can conclude that Jesus was not doing away with the divine commandment to abstain from unclean food as proposed by John Piper and many others.

It appears that because the context and grammar of this encounter with the Pharisees were ignored and overlooked, the interpretation and translation of Jesus’ teaching is corrupted by ‘Out of Context Eavesdropping’, leading to the misunderstood conclusion that that the food laws were done away with.  Rather, Jesus was challenging the Pharisee’s preoccupation with ritual purity and man-made traditions over and against the commandments of God and the weightier matters of the Law.

Having considered the teachings of Christ as put forward by John Piper, we find that they are not actually saying what he claimed they were saying. I agree with Pastor John that we need to follow Christ’s teaching on how to relate to the Old Testament Law. But as we have seen, we have no record of Him teaching that the food laws are done away with. Although, that is not all the New Testament has to say on food laws. Maybe He did teach it and it wasn’t written down. Considering its significance that is surprising, but not impossible. I’m sure if John Piper had time in his podcast, he would have discussed Acts 10 and Romans 14 as well. These will be the focus of my next posts.

References

Blass, Debrunner, and Funk. A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Hegg, Tim. Mark 7:19b – A Short Technical Note. Retrieved:

       http://www.torahresource.com/EnglishArticles/Mark7.19ShortNote.pdf

House, Colin. Defilement by Association: Some Insights from the Usage of KOINOS/KOINOU in Acts 10 and 11. Andrews University Seminary Studies. 2, 1983, p 143-153

Novation, On the Jewish Meats. Retrieved:

       http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf05.vi.iv.i.html

Reiscio, Mara & Walt, Luigi. “There is Nothing Unclean” Jesus and Paul against the Politics of Purity. ASE. 29, 2012, p 53-82.

Rudolph, David. Jesus and the Food Laws: A Reassessment of Mark 7:19b. Evangelical Quarterly. 74, 2002, p 291-311

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OutOfContextEavesdropping
Wallace, Daniel. Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Zondervan, 1996. p51-53.

Zell, Paul. Exegetical Brief on Mark 7:19: “Who or what makes all foods clean?” Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly. 109, 2012, p 209-212.

New Testament and the Food Laws 1: A response to J.Piper.

I had been planning for some time to write an article about the place of Old Testament food laws in the life of the Christian, but because I have just started some holidays I was putting it off for a little bit. That was until I saw an episode of ‘Ask Pastor John’ on the Desiring God website (here) that was a response to a question on the topic, and felt that it needed a response. Not so much as a direct response to him (the odds of him actually reading it are a million to one), but rather that his take is a summary of the common argument against the need for Christians to follow biblical food laws. And ones that I argued in unison for some time too. In fact, it is only since the beginning of this year that I had come to the position I have, which is just over a year since I began to recognise the relevance of Torah in the life of the Christian. And there is a good reason I put off looking into it: I was worried about what I might find. I was scared that I would have to abandon my arguments as to why I can disregard the food laws. And changing a diet can become difficult. I was worried about the social awkwardness of having to say ‘I don’t eat bacon.’ And my concerns were warranted. I found that the common arguments don’t hold much water once you dig a little deeper into their proof texts and telling people you’re not eating pig products can have people accuse you of being fussy, Jewish and even eating Halal. And saying goodbye to hotdogs, pepperoni, and 90% of a pizza menu can make mealtimes difficult. But, like celiacs, vegetarians, and diabetics, you learn to adapt. But in the end, it is more important to obey what you see scripture as teaching rather than what is popular, convenient, and delicious. And I don’t judge or condemn those who disagree with me. I make jokes with my wife about ‘eating the demon meat’, but it’s only in good fun.

Before I begin I want to say two things. The first is that I recognise and know from personal experience that if this is new to you, your inclination is going to resist much of what I am going to write, just as I did. But I ask, as I always have since I started writing these posts, that you lay aside your theological traditions and love of bacon, and consider what I have to say with prayer and humility, an open mind, and an even more open Bible. And I invite you to provide feedback in the comments section below. The second, is that my critique of John Piper’s answer should not be taken as disrespect or a rejection of him. I have much respect for his theological wisdom and experience and many of his teachings have been edifying and encouraging. And so it is with humility that I outline why I disagree with him on this issue.

I’m going to split this response over a few articles. In the first two, I am going to be responding to John Piper’s main points, which is primarily centred around his interpretation of Matthew 5:17-18, and Mark 7. In the following posts, I will be addressing Peter’s vision of the sheet in Acts 10, and Paul’s words in Romans 14 that ‘nothing is unclean’ and his words to Timothy ‘For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected.’ So if you get to the end of this and say ‘but what about…?’, they’re coming.  If you can think of any others, please comment below.

The episode of Ask Pastor John that I am responding to begins with a listener asking the question: 

"I would really like to know whether it is sinful for me to eat pork and bacon." 

In his response, Piper begins by saying:

The good impulse is the desire to obey God. There’s nothing wrong with that. That belongs to what it means to be a Christian. The bad impulse is the failure to obey Christ who teaches us how to obey God in regard to the Old Testament.

So for Piper, we need to listen to Christ and what he said about obeying the Old Testament. And to that I say "amen"! We need to keep the teachings of Christ supreme in our walk, so I know that John Piper is coming from a good heart and right motives. He then moves on to quote Matthew 5:17-18 to see what Jesus did say:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Piper explains that in this passage, Jesus is explaining that through Him, the Old Testament Law was modified, which includes doing away with the food laws. As he explains:

in Jesus [is the fulfillment and accomplishment] of the Law and the Prophets that God always intended in the Old Testament as the consummation and the end of the ceremonial laws. So, the effort to hold on to the prohibition of eating pork is, in effect, a refusal to submit to God’s plan for the fulfillment of the Law in Jesus.

As I said earlier, I can see and agree with the heart of where John Piper’s interpretation of this passage is coming from. Like Stephen, Piper is telling people not to resist the Holy Spirit in its working out of God’s plan for humanity (Acts 7:51-53). I also agree that we should live in the freedom and liberty that the Gospel provides. Unfortunately, Piper’s exegesis and interpretation of Matthew 5 falls short in a few ways. I have discussed this at length here, however what follows is an abbreviated form of that.

Firstly, his interpretation of fulfil neglects the linguistic and historical/cultural context of the word. When interpreting Scripture, it is important that we allow the meaning of the word as used by the author to influence our exegesis, not what we think it means. Consider, for example, C.S. Lewis’ use of the word queer in the Narnia series. Surely we wouldn’t say the series is about a homosexual lion. So, what was meant by fulfil when Matthew wrote his Gospel? Well, the word used for fulfil in Matthew is the Greek word plerosai, which means to make complete and to fully teach. It’s like adding chocolate chips to cookie dough. In fulfilling the chocolate-chip cookie-dough, you’re not throwing away the dough; you’re making it complete by adding the chocolate chips. When it comes to fulfilling the Law, what Jesus was doing, was revealing the depth and significance of the commandments of God. Moreover, the use of ‘fulfil’ in the active voice rather than the passive voice (plerothe) means that it is different to the prophetic function of fulfillment (Matt 8:17, 13:35 etc…). This is further brought out when we consider the idiomatic meaning of the phrase, ‘fulfilling the law’. In Jesus’ day, to ‘fulfil the law’ was a Rabbinic term that meant to uphold and correctly teach. And to say a commandment was done away with and no longer relevant, is to ‘abolish’ that law (Mishnah, Pirke Avot, 4:14; Horayot 1:3); something Jesus said he didn’t come to do.

Secondly, note that Piper neglects to quote the very next verse:

Therefore [because I have come to correctly teach and uphold the Torah] whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments [including food laws] and teaches others to do the same [‘put some pork on your fork’] will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

By Jesus’ own words, if He has relaxed the prohibition on unclean meat, He has just made Himself least in the Kingdom (the next post will deal with Jesus' authority to change the Law).

The third is Piper’s claim that:

In the Old Testament, God always intended for the consummation and end of the ceremonial laws.

This point is difficult to uphold for two reasons.

Firstly, I don’t see that in scripture. I see nowhere that Leviticus 11 was only temporary. I see nothing in the prophets about them going to be removed (Amos 3:7). I do, however, see the opposite in the very words of Jesus John Piper quoted earlier, that not the smallest detail will pass from the Law, “until heaven and earth pass away.” Taken literally, that hasn’t happened yet. Taken metaphorically, it means it never will.

Here’s three further examples:

1. Through Malachi, the Lord declares that He does not change and that the people should return to His statutes (Mal 3:6-7). If eating pig was an abomination in His eyes in the days of Moses, that would not change. (Read more here)

2. In Isaiah, God says that after the Judgement:

Those who sanctify and purify themselves to go into the gardens, following one in the midst, eating pig's flesh and the abomination and mice, shall come to an end together, declares the Lord (Isa 66:15-17).

Why, if pig is okay to eat, will God put an end to eating it?

3. In Ezekiel, it is prophesied that after the reconstruction of the Temple, the return of God’s glory, and the restoration of Israel (with whatever millennial framework you want to interpret that):

[The Priests] “shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common, and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.” (Ez 44:23)

If clean and unclean is done away with, why are they teaching it?

But, if there is a verse that says that the food laws are temporary, I would love to read it. Piper seems to invoke how God’s people are now made up of more than the nation of Israel as justification for this position, since “the prohibition of certain foods as unclean was a temporary part of God’s way of making Israel distant or distinct from the nations of the world.” But I have dealt with the irrelevance of that claim in my previous posts of how we as Gentile-born followers of Christ are now a part of Israel. Also, we are encouraged in the New Testament to ‘be holy as God is holy’ (1Pet 1:16), and set apart from the world (Jn 17:14-15)) which is the same justification given for the food laws (Lev 11:44-45).

The second problem with this claim is that this division between ceremonial law and moral law is a false categorisation. As E.P Sanders (p.194) explains, “Modern scholars often try to divide the law into ‘ritual’ and ‘ethical’ categories, but this is an anachronistic and misleading division.” In reality, the scriptures only provide two related categories of Law: how we relate to God, and how we relate to others (e,g, Matt 22:36-40, Lev 19:18, 1Jn 4:20). But even if a case could be made for moral and ceremonial law categories, consider how the most repeated commandment in the New Testament, to abstain from idolatry, is ceremonial rather than moral in nature. Consider too that three of the four ‘minimum requirements’ from Acts 15, are ‘ceremonial’ and food related.

Piper also invokes Galatians 5:6, and substitutes pork eating for circumcision saying, “Neither pork eating nor non-pork eating counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” And in terms of justification, absolutely, which is what Galatians is about: people accepting formal conversion to Judaism as a means for salvation, as symbolised in the term ‘circumcision.’ The letter to the Galatians was never written to nullify ceremonial law, but rather challenging a salvation based on works and national identity, as in Acts 15. So, to substitute circumcision with eating-pork doesn’t work as circumcision was seen as the way of getting in and abstaining from pig was because they are in. And Piper is correct in saying that Paul in his letters does not send people back to “the Old Testament ceremonial laws of circumcision and food laws.” But this is most likely because Paul, in writing to Gentile-born converts, had to spend more time teaching them to obey the ‘second great commandment’, and commandments prohibiting sexual immorality and idolatry as religion and morality was a foreign concept to Roman Pagans. Honouring one's god through ceremony and ritual, however, was second nature. Nonetheless, Paul agreed with the Jerusalem council (and the Holy Spirit) that the Gentile-born believers would learn the Torah in the synagogue (Acts 15:19-21).

So as we have seen, Matthew 5 and Galatians are not good places to defend the ‘legalisation of pig meat’ as the typical interpretation, as espoused by Piper, seems to ignore their historical, idiomatic, and textual contexts. Because of the amount of words needed, I am leaving until the next part of this series to examine Piper’s use of Mark 7 and ask, did Jesus really declare all foods clean?

References

Sanders, E. P. Judaism : Practice and Belief, 63 BCE-66 CE. Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992.

Babylonian Talmud: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Talmud/talmudtoc.html
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