[Linux4christians] beer?

[Adam York]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005 19:17:38 -0800 (PST), jeremy and dana thompson
<jcprotect at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> I had a little greek in bible college, and you will
> actually find that there were many wells in the old
> testement that were perfectly fine, for instance the
> woman at the WELL.  and the greek word used most of
> the time in the new testement is a highly fermented
> wine. the water Jesus turned in to wine was actually
> alcoholic.  

Absolutely correct.  Actually you don't even need any knowledge of
Greek to determine this.  In fact the comments of the master of the
banquet in John 2 indicate that not only was this alcoholic, but it
was of the highest potency in it's alcoholic content.  The fact that
the Scriptures clearly forbid drunkenness, doesn't seem to preclude
our Lord from creating and promoting this rather potent drink to those
at this wedding feast.  Let's not rush to judge our brothers or
sisters in Christ whose consciences allow them to drink beer, wine etc
when our Lord himself allows for this in His own ministry.
 
On a side note it seems interesting to me that the church's tendency
to not only flee drunkenness but ANY use of alcohol altogether seems
to be a very modern phenomena.    Haven't most Christian traditions
going back 2000 years used fermented wine in communion?  I know this
is true of my own (Presbyterian) as well as Lutheran, Anglican,
Episcopal, (I'm not sure about Methodists).  The same is true outside
of protestantism (Catholicism and Orthodoxy).  I'm not terribly well
versed on Baptist history, but I think my Baptist brothers may not
share this same use of wine in communion in their history (please
correct me if I'm wrong).use of wine in communion in the past.  Not
only does it seem modern, but distinctively American.  I don't think
temperate use alcohol is nearly as looked down upon in other countries
as it is in the US.
 
If anyone wants to condemn drunkenness, I'll be glad to join in with
you, but let's not use the Bible's prohibition of drunkenness to
forbid ANY use of alcohol any more than we ought to forbid anyone to
eat any food on the basis of prohibitions against gluttony.
 
Adam 
 
P.S. 
If anyone wants to buy me a free beer, I'll gladly accept and give
thanks to God for being able to enjoy that aspect of His creation to
His glory.


you can find this to be true by using any
> concordance to the bible.  And I went to a very
> conservative bible college.
> 
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