Guinness uses "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" in "Empty Chair" commercial

[David R. Brumbelow]

The Bible speaks often of the olive, yet, much like wine, it does not detail how they processed it. Yet both were raised, processed, and used extensively by Israel and the surrounding nations. This was true of other foods as well.

David R. Brumbelow

David, I’m sorry, but you’re wrong again. Anyone who has ever watched wine made is going to recognize the basic process from the Biblical narratives. You have the winepress and wineskins, trimming the vines and using the waste wood for fuel, and a consistent acknowledgement of the intoxicating nature of wine. The problem you have is not that the Bible does not describe the making of regular wine, but rather that the fact that it does doesn’t match your narrative.

For that matter, if the making of “wine” in Bible times were simply the reconstituting of a grape syrup or the boiling of raisins to produce a juice-like substance, as you assert, what would the miracle at Cana be? Both of these processes can be completed within an hour. No, the miracle at Cana is that out of water, Jesus made old wine quickly—a wine that would take months to ferment and age.

Mark,

I like that you’ve tried to stay on point from the beginning regarding your question of mixing alcohol and a hymn. Having said that, isn’t your position an a priori assumption that drinking is worldly? You can only react negatively to the commercial, as apparently an elderly church patron did for Tyler, if you think it worldly.

Despite Brumbelow and others’ great efforts to promote a position that is more technical than scriptural, and certainly built on more cultural a priori preconceptions, you can only think it worldly if you think alcohol sinful. Since we know sin manifests itself from spiritual deficiencies and carnal desires (James 1:14-15), the object of choice taken into the physical body, be it alcohol, or a piece of food, contains no inherent detritus of sin (Mark 7:15). And since we can conclude from Scripture that matters of the heart are supracultural and timeless, it seems quite narrow and untenable to maintain a black and white stance, upon which a key requirement is the assessment, taxonomy and integration of such a dynamic creature as culture. Therefore, you must prove alcohol sinful before you can disparage the commercial’s adaptation of the hymn.

While not necessarily relevant to the actual stated topic, this article is relevant to the rabbit trails. And, I don’t know where else to post this article that I believe can be profitable to those brothers and sisters who choose to imbibe. A good friend of mine wrote this - http://joffrethegiant.blogspot.com/2014/07/dear-fellow-christian-beer-h…

I am not saying drinking alcohol is in and of itself sinful. What I am saying is that while drinking alcohol responsibly might be lawful, it is not useful or helpful (1 Cor 6:12) in American society. People who are not as controlled as you will see you drinking, and might take your drinking as license for them to drink.

Your friend Joffre the Giant that you linked to was so sarcastic I don’t get his point. Is he in favor of using alcohol and is mocking to the maximum anyone who doesn’t drink alcohol, or is he against alcohol and is mocking those who think drinking is acceptable. Either way, the blog contains at least one curse word (and a link to help him be a soccer missionary to Brazil!). It is a sad example of what Christians think is acceptable either way.

Joffre has a comment section on his blog. I don’t need to speak for him.

Pardon me, I thought you linked to his blog to introduce his thoughts here.

My response was snarky. I apologize. Please forgive me.

You stated that you don’t understand his point. That’s not engaging his thoughts. And that’s fine. Seriously, that’s fine. Honestly, I think that the post will speak past you. Your context is too different from the intended audience for the post to resonate with you, I think. I did write that I was posting the article for Christians who imbibe. You don’t. And, you believe that imbibing is out of bounds on some level for Believers. Maybe it’s poor etiquette for me to post an article directed at an exclusive audience in a forum with a much broader audience. If so, the moderators can step in. Online communication mostly baffles me.

Now, before I get back to my plea that you ask him, let me say that knowing his context may be helpful. He lives in Greenville, SC. He is not, nor did he grow up a fundamentalist. But, living in Greenville, he often interacts with “ex-fundies” who conflate freedom and the Gospel. He didn’t write that post in a vacuum. You may not understand this, but Joffre is often a stop-gap for ex-BJU students who feel the pull of sites like SFL and authors like Rachel Held Evans and Donald Miller. You may not agree nor like his standards, but, whether you ever realize it or not, guys like Joffre are your ally. I’ll say this; the post is saying, among other things, that my freedom to drink beer is far less important than my relationship with a brother in Christ like you. Think about that in terms of BJU and SFL.

Now, having said that, I don’t want nor do I need to speak for Joffre. I’m a big fan of going to the source, and unlike many articles, the source of this article is accessible. Please, ask him what he meant. Challenge him. Joffre is a big boy, literally …. and literally.

[Mark_Smith]

I am not saying drinking alcohol is in and of itself sinful. What I am saying is that while drinking alcohol responsibly might be lawful, it is not useful or helpful (1 Cor 6:12) in American society. People who are not as controlled as you will see you drinking, and might take your drinking as license for them to drink.

Mark, above you said drinking is worldly. You can’t switch horses midstream. Worldliness is the antithesis of godliness. It is a scripturally defined concept/doctrine. So, if alcohol is not sinful, how is it worldly?

You’re also saying it’s not helpful, but that’s an opinion based on ?? Ample scriptures directly contradict that thought process, i.e. it’ s a blessing.

So how do you define worldliness and how does an alcoholic beverage fit into that doctrinal position?

[Mark_Smith]

I am not saying drinking alcohol is in and of itself sinful. What I am saying is that while drinking alcohol responsibly might be lawful, it is not useful or helpful (1 Cor 6:12) in American society. People who are not as controlled as you will see you drinking, and might take your drinking as license for them to drink.

Let’s start with the most obvious objection; Biblically speaking, it is OK to drink unless doing so will lead to sin. So I cannot give someone a license to drink; God did that. God provided the wine in John 2.

Going further, we might paraphrase this as if a glutton saw me enjoying a brat yesterday at the baseball game, which I did, he might see that as a license to eat a whole plateful and thus sin, hence my enjoyment of a bratwurst was not glorifying God in enjoyment of something good, but rather the sin of lacking compassion for my brother. There were certainly gluttons at the game yesterday.

The trouble with this is that Scripture does not record our Lord as subsisting on rice cakes, but rather He ate whatever His hosts offered—including wine, and without concern that the glutton in the neighborhood might see His eating and drinking and see that as a “license” to eat and drink. That license was, of course, given that in Genesis 1:29 and Genesis 9:3.

Really, it’s also wise to keep in mind that Romans 14 primarily deals with food and drink bought after being sacrificed to Greek gods, not simply food and drink—the poor and slaves got most of their meat and wine from this source. And so I am happy to avoid idolatry and gross sin in my eating and drinking.

And the problem drinker? Well, for him to see a member of his church at the bar or restaurant drinking alcohol, does he not have to be….at that bar or restaurant himself, and looking inside with enough attention to identify the patrons already? In other words, the person who sees this is….asking for trouble already, no?

Put shortly, I am perfectly happy to avoid idolatry and gross sin in my eating and drinking. I am not willing to take the blame for another man’s sin if he uses my enjoyment of a brat to justify his gluttony, or my enjoyment of a cup of wine to justify drunkenness, as I abstain from both.

The Bible says Jesus turned water to wine (John 2). It does not say He turned water to alcohol.

For an excellent article on this by Mark Creech, see:

http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2013/04/jesus-turned-water-to-wine-…

David R. Brumbelow

[David R. Brumbelow]

The Bible says Jesus turned water to wine (John 2). It does not say He turned water to alcohol.

For an excellent article on this by Mark Creech, see:

http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2013/04/jesus-turned-water-to-wine-n…

David R. Brumbelow

#wut

Wine is not alcohol? Am I reading that right?

Jesus turned water into what? (John 2)

OK, David, so you’re citing your blog, which cites another blog, which cites your book…..why not just admit that it’s your work and cite some actual sources?

It’s worth noting that most Greek references make clear that oinos almost always refers to ordinary, fermented wine, and it’s also worth noting that the process of making wine is emphatically not decomposition. Yeast processes the sugar into alcohol in an anaerobic process that releases carbon dioxide, the bubbles in beer or champagne. Vinegar results when the process is aerobic in the presence of acetic acid bacteria.

Plus, a cultural hint is that the master of the feast says it was really, really good—both Greek and Hebrew preferred aged, fully fermented wines, what we would today call a dry red. Had it been sweet, the master of the feast would have been perplexed at grape juice out of season, and would not have called it the best in the same way that oinophiles today disdain Welch’s and most sweet reds. The Bible makes clear that new, sweeter (but yet alcoholic) wines were preferred by young women in the same way that “umbrella drinks” and wine coolers are the province of young women today.

(yes, I know this, it happens when you get your bachelor’s at a party school, Michigan State in my case….one does not need to spend a lot of time on frat row or wake up with hangovers to learn these things….it’s in the student newspaper)

Is it possible that Jesus could have made it nonalcoholic? Perhaps, but keep in mind a wedding was a weeklong festival, and everybody there knew what the ordinary feeling of having drunk wine was. So if hundreds of people drank something they thought was a dry red, but never felt it, that would likely have been noted, too. So for someone who is familiar with oinoculture, the idea that the Bible describes a nonalcoholic beverage goes completely against everything noted by John 2.

There was no word for “alcohol” in the Bible or in ancient times.

In the Bible and in ancient writing the word wine was used of both fermented and unfermented wine.

Jesus, in the same verse (Matthew 9:17) called both unfermented and fermented wine by the name oinos (wine).

Aristotle said sweet wine would not intoxicate.

Plutarch gave a confused discussion of why some wine would intoxicate and some would not, yet he called both wine.

Ancient writers referred to un-intoxicating wine.

Isaiah 65:8 refers to grapes on the vine as wine.

Just pressed wine / grape juice is called wine (Proverbs 3:10; Isaiah 16:10; Joel 2:24).

And, as already mentioned here, the ancients had multiple ways of preserving unfermented or nonalcoholic wine.

Jesus turned water to wine in John 2. It never says He made great quantities of alcohol. It does not say whether the wine was unfermented or fermented. Again, Scripture called both fermented and unfermented wine by the same name, the name wine.

So for you to insist the wine Jesus made was fermented / alcoholic - well, that is your interpretation, not you just taking the Bible for what it says.

David R. Brumbelow