Is food good but amoral?

Kevin Miller wrote:

I suppose one needs to clarify what one means by "moral" in the context of this particular question. I've always understood "moral" to have the idea of "righteous" and "immoral" to have the idea of "sinful." Now in the Old Testament, eating certain foods was sinful. In the New Testament, we find that those prohibitions have been removed, so eating them no longer makes one sinful. Does eating any foods make one righteous? Even though certain foods are no longer sinful, I can't think of any foods that make one righteous, so i don't see how food can be considered moral.

You ask some good questions here that I'd like to give some careful thought to before attempting to answer them. One thing that I can think of right now is that it is not correct to say, "In the Old Testament, eating certain foods was sinful." When God entered into the Noahic Covenant with Noah and his family and all the animals, God gave all animals to man to eat (Gen. 9:3). As far as we know, it was not sinful to eat any foods at that time.

To be accurate, we should say that in Old Testament times, eating certain foods only became sinful for certain people at a later time.

Kevin Miller wrote:

I don't mind you getting nit-picky about my wording. I rather enjoy it, in fact.

Considering that, I stand by how I worded this. I did NOT say, "During the entire time period of the Old Testament, eating certain foods was sinful." That would have been incorrect. I just said "in the Old Testament." I can certainly find verses in the Old Testament in which eating certain foods is sinful, so my wording is accurate.

Ok. Having in mind what was true prior to the giving of the Mosaic Covenant is vital to put what we find in the NT in proper perspective.

Ron Bean wrote:

I believe that food (especially lobster) is good but is not morally right or wrong.

Without providing any Bible to support your position, this amounts to just your opinion, which does not establish anything in a discussion other than documenting what you believe.

Kevin Miller wrote:

I suppose one needs to clarify what one means by "moral" in the context of this particular question. I've always understood "moral" to have the idea of "righteous" and "immoral" to have the idea of "sinful." Now in the Old Testament, eating certain foods was sinful. In the New Testament, we find that those prohibitions have been removed, so eating them no longer makes one sinful. Does eating any foods make one righteous? Even though certain foods are no longer sinful, I can't think of any foods that make one righteous, so i don't see how food can be considered moral.

A close examination of the context of 1 Timothy 4:4 shows that food is moral.

First, Paul informs us that the Spirit testifies that apostates who have heeded demons and their demonic doctrines command believers to abstain from foods that God has created to be received with thanksgiving:

1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; 2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; 3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

He then explains (“for” at the beginning of 4:4) God’s creating those foods to be received with thanksgiving by asserting that everything that God has created is good and not to be rejected the way those apostates were commanding:

1 Timothy 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

In context, therefore, 1 Timothy 4:4 refutes demonic doctrine about abstaining from foods with the truth that those foods created by God are good and should be received as such. Heeding the demonic doctrine and abstaining from those foods on that basis is immoral behavior—consuming these God-given foods properly (with thanksgiving) is a matter of righteousness in the face of wicked teaching to the contrary.

When Paul teaches, therefore, that everything created by God is good in this passage, he is speaking of the moral goodness of those foods that God has created and the moral goodness of consuming those foods in keeping with the consumption of them for which God has created them.

Kevin Miller wrote:

So in Romans 14, when Paul encourages believers to abstain for the sake of the weaker brother, is he encouraging people to act immorally, since there is " the moral goodness of consuming those foods" that they need to be aware of?

I only have a few  minutes here this morning, and I'm going to get to something else in your post later, but I want clarification as to whether the morality of these foods translates to an actual command to eat them, in which case the believers who abstain would be breaking such command.

Bringing in another passage like Romans 14 complicates this discussion further, but of course the answer to your question is no.

For now, you should stick to just taking in what 1 Timothy 4 teaches about this question in comparison to 1 Corinthians 8:8. There is no actual command from God in 1 Tim. 4 to eat anything; Paul's teaching there is to refute the demonic teaching of the apostates who were authoritatively directing people to abstain from good foods that God had created to be eaten with thanksgiving.

Kevin Miller wrote:

But if "immoral" refers to sin, or the breaking of God's commands, then why would it's opposite, moral, have at least something to do with commands? Are you claiming that everything in this sin-cursed world is actually moral, or in line with God's standards of life, unless He has actually commanded against it, thus making it immoral?

Scripture teaches that marriage is a moral institution (Heb. 13:4, etc.) that was created by God (Gen. 2:24). Scripture does not teach that God has commanded all human beings to be married.

Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life and always did what was upright, moral, pleasing to God, acceptable to God, etc. Jesus never married even though marriage is a moral institution created by God.

Anything that God has commanded all people to do is something that is moral that they must do. Anything that God has commanded people not to do is something that no one is to do.

There are many things that are moral (such as marriage) that God has not commanded every single person to do. Marriage is moral but it is not something that is obligatory for every human being just because it is moral.

In this discussion, it is vital to note that Paul affirms present moral goodness for foods that were created by God:

1 Timothy 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

Strictly speaking, this teaching necessarily applies only to things that God has created. God did not create carpets so we cannot automatically apply 1 Timothy 4:4 (or other similar teaching) directly to carpets in the same way that we can to foods that God did create.

Kevin Miller wrote:

Are animals morally good in regards to eating them because God originally created them for Adam and Eve to eat? It seems to me that Adam and Eve were only allowed to eat plants, but animals were not allowable to them. The prohibition wasn't removed until Genesis 9:3, so before Noah, it was immoral to eat animals. Would the prohibition thus make all animals immoral from the time of Adam to Noah?

 

Before attempting to answer your questions, let me point out that 1 Timothy 4:3-5 is not teaching specifically about eating animals because they are good, etc. The word "meats" in 1 Tim. 4:3 is a generic word for "foods" and does not specifically refer to eating animals. In 1 Timothy 4:4, when Paul says "every creature of God," the text is not just specifying "every animal"; it denotes everything created by God for food.

No, animals are not "morally good in regards to eating them because God originally created them for Adam and Eve to eat." To my knowledge, the Bible does not say specifically that God created them for Adam and Eve to eat.

Also, there is no explicitly stated prohibition prior to the time of Noah about eating animals.

No, all animals were not immoral prior to the time of Noah. God created them as good and pronounced them good even before he created Adam.

Kevin Miller wrote:

So let me ask you a specific question about something we know was explicitly prohibited at a particular time. The Israelites were prohibited from eating pigs during the time of the law. During the time of the law, were pigs immoral or were pigs good since God had created them good and pronounced them good before he created Adam?

You seem to be implying that divine prohibitions necessarily imply that the thing or activity prohibited was/is immoral. So far this afternoon, I have compiled six Scriptural instances where that was not true. I should have time to share those passages later this evening.

Kevin Miller wrote:

I'm implying that a prohibited activity should not be done. If God had prohibited an activity, then it is sin do do that activity, isn't it? I'm NOT implying that the objects used in that prohibited activity become immoral themselves. By asking my questions, I'm trying to determine if Larry or you actually assign badness to the inanimate objects that might be used in a prohibited activity. My question doesn't imply that I myself believe that to be true. Larry has implied that everything, absolutely everything, is either good or bad in God's eyes, and I want to make the point that it is actually our activities that might be good or bad, moral or immoral, and NOT the objects themselves. I'll be interested to read your passages to see if they apply to activities or to objects that might be used in an activity. If your passages are stating that the objects are NOT immoral, then that would go right along with my point. If your passages are stating that a prohibited activity is not immoral/sinful to do, then I'd be really, really interested to study out those passages.

Of course, doing a prohibited activity is sinful regardless of whether any object(s) involved in doing the activity are either good or bad.

Here are six passages to consider:

1. Genesis 2:9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God made the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree was moral because God made it. God's prohibition against eating from it (Gen. 2:17) was not because the tree or the fruit itself was bad/evil/immoral.

2. God's prohibiting Moses from going into the promised land (Deut. 32:52). Neither the promised land nor entering it was immoral. 

3. God's prohibiting David from building the Temple (1 Chron. 28:3). Neither the Temple itself nor building it was immoral.

4. God repeatedly prohibited Jeremiah from praying for the good of the people (Jer. 7:16, 11:14, 14:11). Praying for the good of the people was not an immoral activity.

5. The Spirit's prohibiting Paul and others from going to Asia (Acts 16:6) and to Bithynia (Acts 16:7) to preach the gospel. Preaching the gospel was not an immoral activity.

6. A voice from heaven prohibited John from writing down what the seven thunders had spoken (Rev. 10:4). We do not have any basis for thinking that what they said was immoral or that his writing what they said would have been immoral. 

Kevin Miller wrote:

The land was the correct place for them to be, but "moral" is a description of their decision, not a characteristic of the land itself. I do recognize I'm drawing a fine line when talking about the land not being moral, since it comes far, far closer to being moral, even with my definitions, than something like carpet would. After all, the land was the holy land. It was set apart for God's purposes. So "holy" can be a characteristic of an object, but semantically speaking, I see "moral" a referring more to a decision than to an object that is involved in that decision.

The Promised Land was not just "holy" in the sense that it was set apart for God's purposes--God also said that it was a good land (Ex. 3:8; Deut. 1:25; Deut. 8:7).

More broadly, I do not find a Bible basis for saying that something that God declares to be good is also "neutral" or "amoral." When God finished creating everything, He pronounced it all very good:

Genesis 1:31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

How you can account for this statement and many others (such as 1 Tim. 4:4) that say that things that God has made are good and still hold that they are neutral or amoral is a mystery to me. What is the biblical basis for doing so?