II. Cleansing
8
WINE AS A BOUNDARY MARKER And the LORD spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations: And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean; And that ye may teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the LORD hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses (Lev. 10:8-11).
The theocentric meaning of this passage is that God has the authority to establish boundaries that temporarily separate a holy person from a blessing. The wine in this passage is analogous to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This prohibition applied to the priests only while they were inside the tabernacle or temple. There is no reference to the Levites. For a priest to drink wine inside the tabernacle constituted a boundary violation. The tabernacle-temple was God's place of residence in Israel. It was there that He manifested His judicial presence. This law had something to do with the special presence of God and the holiness of God. It also had something to do with the office of priest. It had nothing to do with a general prohibition against wine.
There can be no doubt that the average Israelite was allowed to drink wine. He was specifically authorized by God to drink it at the third-year feast. "And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink,(1) or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household" (Deut. 14:26). Wine is described in the Bible as a blessing from God:
And he will love thee, and bless thee, and multiply thee: he will also bless the fruit of thy womb, and the fruit of thy land, thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep, in the land which he sware unto thy fathers to give thee (Deut. 7:13).
That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil (Deut. 11:14)
And as soon as the commandment came abroad, the children of Israel brought in abundance the firstfruits of corn, wine, and oil, and honey, and of all the increase of the field; and the tithe of all things brought they in abundantly (II Chron. 31:5).
God even goes so far as to say that the absence of wine is a sign of His covenantal curse against a covenanted nation: "And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee" (Deut. 28:51). In the New Testament, we read of the spirit of prohibitionism -- the prohibition of God's gifts:
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; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; 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. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (I Tim. 4:1-5).
Why, then, this unique Mosaic Covenant prohibition for the priests? Wenham understands that there is a problem here. "The commands given to Aaron, however, are strange. Why should a ban on drinking alcohol be introduced here, and then be coupled with instructions about teaching the Israelites?"(2) He correctly identifies both aspects of the prohibition: 1) clear-headed officiating over the administration of the sacrifices, and 2) the teaching function of the priests. But he avoids discussing a very difficult and all-too-obvious problem: teaching by the priests that took place outside the boundaries of the tabernacle and the temple. Why did the prohibition against wine cease when the priest left the tabernacle? Wasn't clear instruction in the word of God just as important outside the temple's boundaries as inside?
The ban did not apply to the Levites, yet they also had a teaching function. Their office was lower than the priestly office. They did not speak with comparable authority. Was this additional authority of the priesthood an aspect of the ban?
Boundaries: God's Ownership and Priestly Sobriety The boundary of the tabernacle involved a prohibition regarding their personal use of wine. Wine was required in the sacrifices. The wine of Mosaic sacrifice was to be poured out exclusively to God and never consumed by the priest. It was not burned on the altar because, like leaven, it was a fermented product.(3) Wine accompanied the offerings. "And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice, for one lamb" (Num. 15:5). "And the drink offering thereof shall be the fourth part of an hin for the one lamb: in the holy place shalt thou cause the strong wine to be poured unto the LORD for a drink offering" (Num. 28:7). Like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, wine was specially reserved for God in the Mosaic sacrifices. The wine of sacrifice was exclusively His property. Also like the boundary in the garden, this was not intended to be a permanent boundary, but it was a requirement of that dispensation. Contrary to the anti-alcohol heresy,(4) it was not that God despised wine; it was that He regarded it as exclusively His possession in formal worship ceremonies. He saved the best for Himself.
Sobriety and Sanctuary
The priest was the person who offered sacrifices, but he was also the person who authoritatively interpreted and applied the law of God in formal judgment. This authority to pronounce judgment was also a possession of the king, who was also prohibited from drinking wine. "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted" (Prov. 31:4-5). This advice -- it was not a Mosaic law -- governed the highest civil magistrates: kings and princes. The identifying issue for the king was the enforcement of justice. The king was the final civil court of appeal. Was this high court status also the issue for the priests within the tabernacle? In some cases it was, when the priest declared the law and then imposed sanctions on someone who had come to bring a sacrifice or during one of the required feasts. Some legal counseling may have gone on. But the imposition of sanctions was not what the text refers to. The two stated reasons for this priestly prohibition were related to two priestly tasks: distinguishing clean from unclean and teaching the people God's law.
The priest knew the details of the sacrificial system. He acted as a representative agent: a boundary (mediator) between God and the people of Israel, but also between Israel and the world. Wine might disorient him. Such self-inflicted disorientation was not permitted. Therefore, if the priests failed to officiate correctly at the sacrifices, God would bring sanctions against both priesthood and people. These boundaries had to be respected. This required sobriety, but it also required the priests to respect God as the sole owner of the drink offerings. More was involved here than the mere sobriety of the priests. This law rested on the distinction between holy and unholy. In this case, the priest, as a fallen man and fallen mankind's agent, was unholy or unclean. He could not touch wine within the confines of the tabernacle. God is holy; wine was His exclusive property inside the tabernacle. This did not change during the period of the Mosaic Covenant. Only in the New Covenant era, after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, did wine again become lawful for laymen in worship, as it had been for Abram (Gen. 14:18).
Within the tabernacle, there could be discussion and study, just as there was later in the temple (Luke 2:46). When discussing God's law, men are to be alert. It is their proper service before God, their calling. But the prohibition applied only to the tabernacle. Why not outside? Because the focus of concern was not the teaching of the law as such; it was the teaching of the law in a holy place. A holy place is a sanctuary: a place sanctified by God. The declaration of the law from within the tabernacle had far greater authority than the declaration of God's law outside the tabernacle. God dwelt with Israel inside the tabernacle. His presence was judicial: throne-related (the mercy seat: Ex. 25:17-22). Any declaration of His law from within His own house had the force of supreme law. The law declared here was not mere advice. It could not be appealed. This was Israel's highest ecclesiastical court of appeal. The priest was acting as a boundary guard on holy ground. This was the boundary. It was not simply that his office was holy; his environment was holy. Jesus did not apply a whip to the backsides of the moneychangers outside the temple, but only inside. It was here that God was most offended. The temple was a house of prayer, the place where men brought their cases before God and sought God's authoritative pronouncements.
The Third Book of the Pentateuch
This interpretation is consistent with the structure and role of the Book of Leviticus. It is the third book in the Pentateuch. It is associated with the third point of the biblical covenant model. That point refers to biblical law: moral and judicial boundaries. It also relates to geographical boundaries.(5) The priest within the tabernacle was a student of the law as a boundary guard for the people in their role as God's dominion agents. As God's dwelling place, the tabernacle was the place of God's judgment. The tabernacle was therefore sanctified -- set apart judicially by God. When in the geographical-judgmental presence of God in the Mosaic Covenant era, the priest had to avoid anything that would make him lightheaded, meaning artificially lighthearted. The priest was also the one who offered sacrifices as a boundary guard whose efforts placated the wrath of God. Offering sacrifices was the crucial official activity within the tabernacle. If the priest was not alert to the ritual requirements of the sacrifices, he risked bringing under judgment both himself and those represented by him.
There was a secondary consideration. If the priesthood as a whole failed to declare and observe God's law correctly, this would undermine all lawful judgment: self-judgment, family judgment, civil judgment, and ecclesiastical judgment. This would in turn undermine the dominion activities of the family, the primary agent of dominion in history (Gen. 1:26-28). The priest was therefore to listen to God's word carefully, for it is a word of judgment. This word included His liturgical word. He was required to adhere to it precisely, just as men are to adhere to His written word precisely. The priest's actions in the tabernacle were therefore representative, which is why Jesus was so outraged by what was going on in the temple (Matt. 21:13).
The king was analogous to God. The king brought negative sanctions in history. He was required to study the law daily (Deut. 17:18-20), but he also had to execute judgment. His task was more closely associated with point four of the biblical covenant: sanctions. Thus, the king was under a sort of double prohibition. He was unwise ever to drink wine, whereas the priests could lawfully drink wine outside the boundaries of the tabernacle.(6)
Permanent Prohibitions?
The question arises: Are these prohibitions still in force? The fundamentalist insists that every redeemed person is now a priest. Because of the annulment of Israel's feasts, Christians supposedly are no longer authorized to drink strong drink. The prohibition against drinking wine inside the temple has now been extended to the whole world, the fundamentalist insists. The New Testament is therefore seen as far more hostile to wine than the Old Testament was.
The problem with this viewpoint is that wine was legitimate for the priest outside of tabernacle services, unless he had taken a Nazarite's vow (Num. 6:20; Jud. 13:7), which also prohibited grape juice and even raisins -- an aged grape product not on the fundamentalists' list of innately evil products. Why should the extension of the priesthood to every Christian require the removal of wine from the tables of the land? It is the essence of Christianity's doctrine of the priesthood of all believers that all believers are allowed to enter the temple and partake of the communion feast of God. God's full table is now open to us. He now shares with us by His grace the wine that had been ritually poured out exclusively to Him under the Mosaic Covenant. The entire priesthood can now lawfully partake of this wine inside the temple.
The Roman Catholic Church has reversed the Mosaic Covenant's prohibition in formal worship: only the priest may drink communion wine, since it supposedly becomes Christ's literal blood.(7) The Catholic layman is denied access to the full table. Outside of worship, the Catholic Church teaches, wine is as legitimate today as it was in the Mosaic economy.
In contrast to both positions, the Reformed or Lutheran Christian says that this Mosaic restriction on the priest was annulled by the establishment of the Lord's Supper, which commands all followers of Christ to take wine. Presumably, the New Covenant king is also allowed to drink wine, since the King of kings made wine at the wedding at Cana. Jesus made wine, not grape juice. The reason why it was customary to serve the less expensive wine later in a feast (John 2:10) was that people's sense of taste would have been impaired by the previous consumption of wine. A declining sense of discriminating taste is not a problem with the consumption of grape juice. (I have never heard of "discriminating taste" regarding grape juice. International grape juice competitions are quite rare. The product is seldom advertised.)
The Boundary of the Heart(8) The Mosaic Covenant required that the tablets of the law be placed in the Ark of the Covenant. They were written on stone. The New Covenant is different. Now the law is written on the hearts of regenerate people. The old sanctuary is no more. The Epistle to the Hebrews announces with respect to the annulment of the Mosaic Covenant and the Mosaic sanctuary:
For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away. Then verily the first covenant had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle made; the first, wherein was the candlestick, and the table, and the shewbread; which is called the sanctuary. And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of all; Which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant (Heb. 8:7-9:4; emphasis added).
The contrast here is between the Old Covenant and the New, between the old tabernacle and the new. The main issue in this passage is the erasure of physical boundaries that had separated the Mosaic Covenant worshipper from the tablets of the law and the exclusive area of the high priest's annual sacrifice. After the invasion by Babylon, the Ark of the Covenant was lost forever. But the veil of the temple performed the same separating function. This ended with the death of Christ. "And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (Mark 15:38). The Mosaic Covenant that God made with their fathers has been superseded. The boundary that had kept the vast majority of Israelites from exercising righteous covenantal judgment had been the barrier in their hearts. The Holy Spirit has now come and has circumcised the hearts of God's New Covenant people (Rom. 2:29). The Mosaic Covenant's laws of sacrifice also no longer apply. The preservation of justice is now based primarily on the presence of God's covenant law in the hearts of God's people. Covenant law moves outward from the heart to every human institution. In this sense, the New Covenant broke the institutional boundaries of the Mosaic Covenant. "For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him" (Rom. 10:12). That sovereign Lord rules in terms of His law.
One physical boundary between man and God in the Mosaic Covenant was wine. The priest could not drink it during worship. It was a ritual barrier. Wine in worship visibly represented a judicial boundary between God and man, just as the tree of knowledge did in the garden. Wine still does, but in a totally different way. The sacraments physically mark the boundary between God and man. This is the reason for the ritual use of wine in New Covenant times. Those who do not have legal access to this wine are warned by the very existence of the ceremony that they are judicially separated from God. The wine boundary keeps covenant-breakers outside the special protection of God -- His positive sanctions -- but God requires covenant-keepers to partake of it.(9) This includes covenant-keeping kings.
The Supreme Civil Ruler Then what of the strong advice against the civil ruler's use of alcohol? "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted" (Prov. 31:4-5). Did this advice cease with the extension of the kingship to the New Covenant citizen? Or does the advice now extend to the New Covenant citizen because of his additional authority?
To discover the answer, let us first examine the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. All New Covenant citizens are required to partake. This includes all civil rulers. They may refuse to accept the terms of church membership, but, morally speaking, they are supposed to.(10) The exclusion of the common people of God from the holy (legally separated) food of the sacrament is no longer valid. The priest is no longer given special access to the table and the shewbread; the wine is no longer to be poured out as an offering. The primary threat of wine in temple service was not that it can cause drunkenness; the primary threat was based on a ritual (judicially representational) boundary between man and God. The threat to the priest was his violation of a sanctuary boundary, not his drunkenness as such.
This was not the case with the supreme civil ruler during the Mosaic economy. Here, the threat was said to be drunkenness. That threat still exists. Drinking wine was advised against by Proverbs 31, but this had nothing to do with ritual participation in temple worship, to which kings did not have legal access. The warning of Proverbs 31 is therefore not annulled today. The question today is: What was the nature of the restriction? The answer is not found in the Mosaic law itself. The prohibition does not appear among the case laws. It appears in the wisdom literature. This does not mean that it may be safely ignored by civil rulers. It means only that there are no predictable, covenantal, negative civil or ecclesiastical sanctions attached to it.
Lifetime Possession of Civil Authority
We know that in ancient kingship, the office was inseparable from the person. There was no boundary between his person and his office. In the modern world, this is no longer true. There are no modern kings who possess supreme judicial power by virtue of their persons, except in a few small, backward, tribal nations. In modern judicial theory, all supreme rulers can be deposed. They are not "to the office born." There is no doctrine of the divine right of kings, meaning an office beyond which there is no earthly legal appeal.
The drinking habits of the Mosaic Covenant era king had to be placed under tight control, and this control was mainly self-control. There was no higher earthly judicial authority for men to appeal to except the priesthood or a prophet when a king failed to exercise lawful judgment. Kingship was not an occupation; it was a lifetime position. There was often a public anointing of the king. So, his self-control had to be superior to that exercised by common men or even priests except when they were officiating inside the temple's boundaries. The senior civil ruler was not supposed to drink wine, because drunkenness in him was too great a threat to the whole commonwealth, not just to him. He was the final civil court of appeal. The alcohol issue for him was both judicial and representational. He held a monopoly judicial position, and he held it for life. Remove the equation of office and person, and you remove the judicial basis of the Proverbs prohibition. Lifetime control over the highest judicial office in the land did bring with it a unique degree of personal responsibility, but kings are no more. Civil authority is deliberately divided in modern governments.
Today, we legally separate the office from the person who occupies it. A legal boundary is present that separates the civil office from its holder. No one has discussed this post-medieval development more profoundly than Max Weber. Writing after World War I but before his death in 1920, Weber observed: "It is decisive for the modern loyalty to an office that, in the pure type, it does not establish a relationship to a person, like the vassal's or disciple's faith under feudal or patrimonial authority, but rather is devoted to impersonal and functional purposes. . . . The political official -- at least in the fully developed modern state -- is not considered the personal servant of a ruler."(11) The ruler's word is not law. His word is governed by law. He answers to courts and voters. They can bring judicial sanctions against him if he violates the law. They can remove him from office.
Thus, in a world without kingship, there is no longer any binding prohibition against alcohol. In any case, this law never did apply to civil rulers generally. It only applied to the king. The king was analogous to the high priest. Both were at the top of their respective judicial hierarchies. Today, there are neither high priests nor kings. European kingship formally disappeared at the end of the First World War, but in Great Britain, it disappeared judicially in the late seventeenth century when Parliament asserted final sovereignty during the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.
Then who today is the king? To whom does the law apply? To no one specifically, but to everyone in his capacity as judge. Today, all citizens exercise civil rule when they vote. The Reformation's doctrine, "every (redeemed) man a priest," becomes the modern democratic principle of secular humanism, "every citizen a king." But of course no citizen is a true king. There are no true kings any longer. There is no supreme civil authority, except perhaps during wartime, when one man is designated commander-in-chief.(12) Then on what basis today can a citizen-civil ruler boundary distinction based on alcohol be maintained? The threat of excessive alcohol consumption is now everyone's threat: "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit" (Eph. 5:17-18). The Holy Spirit fills each of God's covenant people, not just the civil rulers. To be drunk with wine threatens this supernatural filling. The biblical issue here is the righteous exercise of wisdom. It was in the Mosaic Covenant, too.
Negative sanctions against civil magistrates who drink during their assigned hours for rendering judgment are not specified in the Bible. These sanctions could be political, although there are few indications that drunkenness has in any significant way reduced the electoral success of politicians. When Christian political activist Paul Weyrich in 1989 challenged the appointment of former U.S. Senator John Tower to the office of Secretary of Defense because of Tower's reputation as a heavy drinker and womanizer, Weyrich was initially challenged by the committee of U.S. Senators who were responsible for recommending to the entire Senate the vote to approve or disapprove the President's nomination. At first, it looked as though no one in high office would take Weyrich seriously. Only weeks later did public pressure build against Tower, officially because of his financial connections with the armaments industry. The Senate eventually refused to confirm the nomination. The President had to nominate someone else. But former Senator and former Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater ridiculed Weyrich's objections. Referring to the capitol city of Washington, D.C., he said: "If they had chased every man or woman out of this town who had shacked up with somebody else or gotten drunk, there'd be no government."(13) From time to time, scandals will lead to a politician's demise, but seldom is drunkenness alone sufficient grounds of the public's wrath. This sin is too easily covered up by his colleagues.
Breaking Cultural Boundaries Grape juice cannot expand until it begins to ferment. It then loses its character as grape juice. The kingdom of God broke the boundaries of the Old Covenant, just as new wine breaks old wineskins (Matt. 9:17). The imagery of broken wineskins testifies to a new, expanding kingdom that is no longer confined by old geographical and cultural boundaries. The new kingdom means a new mentality: dominion-oriented, expansionist, and comprehensive in its scope. This imagery was present in Old Covenant Israel, as the use of wine indicates: wine was not universally prohibited, and prior to the Mosaic economy, it was even allowed to the priesthood. "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God" (Gen. 14:18). Isaac's blessing of Jacob demonstrates the link between wine and dominion:
Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee (Gen. 27:28-29).
The boundary of wine for the priests testified that Israel was under temporary constraints geographically; the element of worldwide dominion was not present to the same extent as it is in the New Covenant.
Denying Expansion
The worldview of fundamentalism denies the reality of an expanding kingdom in history, meaning before Christ returns in person to set up an earthly kingdom. The kingdom of God is said to be limited to the family and the church. In some extreme formulations, the kingdom of God is equated only with the church; even the family is understood to be outside it. Writes English Baptist pastor Peter Masters: "God is especially concerned with His people. He will not give His kingdom to the world, nor will He give the world to His kingdom. The kingdom of God is the church. . . ."(14) In such a formulation, the State and society in general do not qualify even as aspects of the kingdom of God. The fundamentalist does not believe that there will ever be a time in church history when God's kingdom will transform social institutions. Continues Masters: "Where Christians have previously attempted to construct even a very limited Christian society their efforts have been sadly frustrated."(15) According to this view of history, a millennium of medieval society was either at bottom religiously neutral or else it was not really a society. This is the history of Western civilization according to Voltaire, Diderot, the Enlightenment generally, and the standard American high school world history textbook. It is fundamentalism's worldview, too, which is why there is a continuing operational alliance between pietism and humanism.(16)
Grape juice is the pietist's preference: a sweet, red liquid that looks like wine but has no bite, bubble, or joy to it. Fundamentalists do not use wine in any form because wine can be misused by undisciplined people. (They are not equally wary about their diets and their weight. It is fermented sugar that arouses their wrath, not unfermented.)(17) The imagery of broken wineskins also does not appeal to pietistic fundamentalists. They want to keep those old wineskins intact. The thought of cultural wine that breaks the institutional structures of society is foreign to their thinking. Like wine, cultural and political power can be abused, so they reject it as a matter of morality. Thus, Christians are supposed to shun power, influence, and culture in the same way that they are to shun wine. Culture means dirty movies and perversion; people who even study cultural affairs are risking being engulfed by a morally polluting worldliness. Rev. Masters is emphatic about the relationship between "endless discussion of social, economic, educational and political theories" and the enjoyment of art, which is inescapably worldly. "In many cases it leads in a subtle way to worldliness. (After all, if Christians are commissioned to take dominion over the arts, and so on, they had better start by participating in them and enjoying them.)"(18) Understand, this is Dr. Masters -- theologically consistent Dr. Masters -- not some raving backwoods preacher of the early nineteenth-century American frontier. As the institutional heir to Charles Spurgeon, Masters has nevertheless abandoned the broad cultural learning of his Calvinistic predecessor, who had no college degree but did have a wide-ranging interest in society and culture.
Pietistic fundamentalists do not have confidence in those fellow Christians who would exercise public authority in the name of Christ and in terms of His law. They prefer to be ruled by pagans. Similarly, they have no faith in culture. American fundamentalists much prefer the mindless babble and phony laugh tracks of 1950's television sitcom(19) reruns to the rigors of a Shakespearean play, with its occasional double entendres.(20) Shakespeare was clearly too worldly a fellow; in contrast, Ozzie and Harriet were innocuous.(21) American fundamentalists have preferred Ozzie and Harriet, not only as personal role models but also as cultural models.(22)
Boundaries of Work and Play The biblical office of king no longer exists; therefore, neither does the judicial prohibition against alcohol. The subordinate civil offices do exist, but the prohibition never did apply to them (Deut. 14:26). What about any other basis of prohibition? The author of Proverbs tells us that "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Eccl. 3:1). There is also "A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace" (Eccl. 3:8). There are times to celebrate and times to exercise judgment. These times are not the same. Thus, when the subordinate ruler exercised judgment under the Mosaic Covenant, he was presumably not supposed to drink, just as the priest was not to drink wine when officiating. The key factor here is officiating -- to exercise the office. Why should we imagine that this has changed? It hasn't.
It is clear why liquor and justice do not mix. The ruler is required by God to render judgment in His name. This judgment must apply the general principles of biblical justice to specific infractions. This work takes considerable skill. A person who is under the influence of alcohol in this task is to that degree not under the influence of God's law. But why should this not be true in every other instance? Why is the decision-making of civil law so crucial? The answer is this: because the civil magistrate renders judgment in God's name.
Whenever good judgment is required for the safety of others, equally rigorous standards are required. Pilots of airplanes are not allowed to drink liquor for hours prior to flights. Were it not so common for automobile drivers to drink before driving, thereby making it difficult for prosecutors to get juries to convict drunk drivers, harsh economic sanctions would be applied to those driving while intoxicated. Other people are at risk; thus, the person under the influence of alcohol or drugs is a threat to society.
But what about after work? Why should alcohol be prohibited, if the person does not subsequently drive? What about relaxation? There is no biblical prohibition. The enjoyment of conviviality is sometimes enhanced by the loosening of inhibitions that alcohol produces. This is the "merry heart" phenomenon: the reduction of worldly cares that interfere with interpersonal relationships. The merry heart is a legitimate goal when one's work is completed. "Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works" (Eccl. 9:7). Anyone who would translate the Hebrew word for wine as "grape juice" in this passage is personally unfamiliar with the merrying effects of wine -- and proud of it!
Modern fundamentalism views the God of the Old Testament as horribly harsh. For example, God's law requires witnesses to stone those convicted of a capital crime. "The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you" (Deut. 17:7). Such judicial barbarism is not required today, they tell us. "We're under grace, not law." (In fact, Christians are today universally under covenant-breakers and their laws.) Yet at the same time, they view the God of Israel as far too morally lax, allowing people to drink alcohol. In both cases, Mosaic law is a great embarrassment to them. They do not consider an alternative viewpoint, namely, that pietistic fundamentalism is a great embarrassment to God.(23)
Conclusion Is the prohibition against wine judicially relevant in New Testament times? No. The offices to which the prohibition applied -- priest and king -- no longer exist. The average citizen has legal access to the offices of minister and senior civil ruler, if he meets certain specified judicial criteria. Neither office is attained through inheritance in modern society. The Mosaic priesthood has not been inherited since its demise at the fall of Jerusalem.
The prohibition against wine for priests was limited by the boundary of formal worship before God's throne. The issue here was the ritual monopoly over wine possessed by God. He refused to share this wine with the people or their representatives. Holy Communion changed this: ministers and members can and must partake of God's blessing. The prohibition applied to kings because of the unique judicial boundary of their own persons. The issue here was the proper rendering of judgment, not ritual exclusion.
The warning to the king is still with us: when rendering formal judgment or performing actions that place others under risk, wine and strong drink are still prohibited. Wine is for celebration after daily work is over. A mild alteration of the senses in this case is legitimate, for the responsibility of rendering daily judgment is past. This points to a view of life that renounces the stress of perpetual, inherited responsibility -- the kind of responsibility appropriate only to Old Covenant kings. The pressures of New Covenant responsibility ebb and flow; they are not to become continual. The internally stressful lives of modern men point to their violation of the biblical rhythm of responsibility and celebration. Instead of hard work followed by relaxation, men today adopt killing stress and worry alternating with mindless, addictive escapism: distilled liquor, drugs, and television.
We are not to become either alcoholics or workaholics. We are also not to become either abstainers or slothful. Alcoholism is a denial of personal responsibility. Abstaining from all liquor is also a denial of personal responsibility: "If I take one drink, I'll become an alcoholic."(24) Both are wrong. Workaholism is a denial of God's sovereignty. It is the attitude of autonomy: "My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth" (Deut. 8:17b). Slothfulness is a denial of man's responsibility.
The New Testament prohibition against drunkenness is a boundary against alcoholism (Eph. 5:17-18). But God also mandates fermented wine for His Supper, a judicial rejection of the mentality of the absolute prohibition against liquor, which in turn leads to the withdrawal from culture and its responsibilities. Similarly, the law of the sabbath is an affront to workaholics: a judicial barrier. It is also an affront to the slothful: six days we are to work.
Responsibility involves the recognition and honoring of the boundary between hard work and addiction to work. It also involves recognizing and honoring the boundary between feasting and gluttony, between making merry and getting drunk. Jesus' enemies accused Him of having transgressed both of these boundaries: "The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children" (Matt. 11:19).
Modern man thinks of himself as wise, but he is foolish. He refuses to recognize God's boundaries. He ignores them and then risks falling into personal addiction, or else he creates absolute but artificial boundaries where none exist in God's word, and he then falls into a cramped personal legalism that frequently produces cultural irrelevance. Man finds many ways to deny God's boundaries. These ways are all illegitimate.
Summary A priest could not lawfully drink wine inside the tabernacle-temple.
The law did not mention the Levites.
The law was related to the judicial presence of God in the tabernacle-temple.
The average Israelite was allowed to drink wine.
Not to have wine to drink is a covenantal curse (Deut. 28:51).
Wine was to be poured out on the ground during sacrifices (Num. 15:5): God's exclusive property.
The priest announced formal judgment at the temple.
He served as a the guardian of the boundaries: sacrificial and judicial.
The distinguishing issue was the special holy place of the tabernacle-temple: priestly sacrifice and verbal judgment.
Wine was legitimate for priests outside of tabernacle service, except after Nazaritic vows.
God's full table is open to us in the New Covenant era: Lord's Supper.
Jesus made wine at the wedding feast, not grape juice.
The Ark of the Covenant contained the tablets of the law: a boundary function.
The New Covenant worshipper is not separated from God's written law by a physical boundary or a boundary of the heart.
Wine in Mosaic sacrifice represented a judicial boundary between God and man: "no trespassing."
Wine still does, but in this era, men are told to drink wine at the table of the Lord: "mandatory trespassing."
Mosaic Covenant kings were warned to avoid wine under all circumstances.
New Covenant civil rulers are told to drink wine in holy communion.
Under the Mosaic Covenant, kingship was inherited: a person-office link.
Remove this permanent person-office link, and you remove the prohibition against drinking wine.
Modern democratic legal theory separates the office from the person.
The Holy Spirit fills all of God's redeemed people today; civil rulers receive no special filling by the Spirit.
Wine is not expansive; grape juice is not.
Wine symbolizes broken traditional cultural boundaries.
Prior to the Mosaic law, the priest could drink wine in worship (Gen. 14:18).
The wine boundary in Israel was therefore temporary.
Fundamentalism denies dominion expansion in the Church Age.
It also denies the legitimacy of drinking wine.
Grape juice is the pietist's preferred liquid for the Lord's Supper: no expansion.
It symbolizes ghetto culture.
The Mosaic office of king no longer exists; neither does the absolute prohibition on kings' drinking wine.
The prohibition against drunkenness is still in force.
The Mosaic prohibitions against wine are no longer in force.
Footnotes:
1. This did not refer to Coca Cola Classic. Fundamentalist Christians and other anti-alcohol legalists have great exegetical problems with this passage.
2. Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 158.
3. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 189.
4. For a critique, see Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Christian and Alcoholic Beverages (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1986).
5. Private property is the outworking of this principle of lawful boundaries. God marks off certain boundaries, and then He assigns these marked parcels to specific individuals as His lawful stewards.
6. R. K. Harrison does not discuss the "inside-outside" aspect of the prohibition. He relates the prohibition to the teaching function of the priesthood, as well as the ritual function, ignoring the obvious: most of this priestly public teaching would have been conducted outside the tabernacle. But there the absolute prohibition did not apply. R. K. Harrison, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1980), pp. 114-18.
7. On what legal basis are Catholic layman allowed to eat Christ's body? What is so special about the blood?
8. "And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live" (Deut. 30:6).
"Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings" (Jer. 4:4).
9. An exception is valid for former alcoholics: weaker brethren (I Cor. 8:9).
10. Judicially speaking, too. See Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 2.
11. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (New York: Bedminster Press, [1924] 1968), p. 959.
12. Winston Churchill drank heavily throughout his tenure as Prime Minister of England during World War II. He began drinking in late afternoon and continued until late at night, yet this did not seem to impede his judgment. John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory -- A Political Biography (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993), p. 549.
13. John G. Tower, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), p. 330. Tower died in a plane crash a few months after this book was published.
14. Peter Masters, "World Dominion: The High Ambition of Reconstructionism," Sword & Trowel (May 1990), p. 18.
15. Ibid., p. 19.
16. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 43-44, 135-36, 144, 147, 151, 179-80, 258, 277-78.
17. Typical of the fundamentalist mindset is the concordance at the back of the Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford University Press, 1909). If you are trying to locate Deuteronomy 21:20, "And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard," you can find it by looking up the word "drunkard," but not "glutton." Similarly with Proverbs 23:21: "For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." There is no reference at all to "glutton" in the concordance.
18. Masters, "World Dominion," p. 19.
19. Situation comedy.
20. Former ordained minister Pat Robertson's satellite television "Family Channel" used to be called the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). It ran late-night reruns of 1950's situation comedies in the 1980's. By 1990, the network was almost entirely devoted to this kind of highly profitable entertainment programming. It made Robertson and his son multimillionaires, but these T.V. shows were not Christian.
21. More episodes of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet" were filmed than any other weekly drama or comedy in American television history. It had been a popular radio show before its move to television. Very few radio shows made that transition.
22. Trivia question: What did Ozzie do to earn a living? Answer: the show never said. Like Pilgrim in the pietist parable by John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Ozzie's occupation was irrelevant to the story line.
23. Reformed pietism is only half embarrassed by the Old Testament. Its defenders are repulsed by the thought of the capital sanction of stoning, but some of them do enjoy drinking.
24. This may be true for recovered alcoholics. They are under a God's physiological curse because of their former rebellion.
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