A place to snark and vent about CoC doctrine and/or our experiences in the CoC. This is a place for SUPPORT and AGREEMENT only, not a place to tell someone their experience and feelings are wrong, or why we disagree with them.
bnot wrote:No one can say alcohol is totally off limits and explain their way out of these verses: Matthew ch 11: 18For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. 19 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." I've never heard of anyone being caller a waterbibber or a grapejuice bibber. Drunkenness is spoken against, not drinking in and of itself. (something hardline coc will never admit)
If, as Opie says, COCers "nail to the cross" the Deuteronomy verse I cited above and disregard its clear "authorization" (at least to the Israelites) of alcoholic beverages, then this verse that you cite, bnot, is my "go to" verse. Clearly Jesus was drinking alcohol or else he would not have been called a "winebibber." I suppose you could construct a scenario in which Jesus had a lot of grape juice to drink and someone saw it and thought it was wine (but it wasn't) and accused him of being a winebibber, but then wouldn't that provoke the "appearance of evil" argument that COCers so often (and incorrectly) employ to say that you shouldn't do anything that even looks like it might be something wrong? Where's the COC prohibition against grape juice? In a glass it looks just like wine!
The new wine argument does work without pasteurization and refrigeration.
Luke 5:37-39 KJV
And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.
But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.
No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.
The reason the bottles burst is CO2 gas from too rapid of yeast growth from yeast culture in the old bottles. I is too rapid. Fermentation has been a storage method for thousands of years.
zeek wrote:There we have it in Jesus' own words. People prefered old wine to new for the old was better.
I see you caught that. Good attention to detail! The marriage at Cana bears this out. I suspect it was a marriage in Jesus's own family and that the woman that he responded to was his mother. This is not provable but reading between the lines it is a distinct likelihood. There are signs that he was somewhat resistant in that he said that it was not his time yet. In other words if I start performing miracles now I bring my ending closer. Not fear but timing. My son likes some wines. I'll have to ask him if he prefers grape juice. Over much of Europe I drank wine and beer at age 19. German beers have a higher alcohol content. People there think nothing of it. It goes with meals. Different cultures handle this differently. In Germany at restaurants a bear or wine with a meal was expected. You were not served water. If you asked for it. You would be handed a glass of spudelwasser (sparkling water). The spell checker doesn't do German. Wasser is water in German. Germans tack adjectives onto nouns. You can get incredibly large words. You often have to find the noun first. The "w" is pronounced as a "v." It is in fact a double "v." The noun can be buried in adjectives tacked on. German has its local dialects. The people speak somewhat slurring words together. I had a woman at a hotel ask me, "wann frustucken." It sounds like "vaughn fruu stook en." Literally it means. "When breakfast" Actually it means "When are you going to have breakfast" in a short form. Hotels there often serve a continental breakfast. I mentioned it only because it is a good example of the kind stuff translators have to deal with even in the Bible. They get to fill in the context. Are they inerrant in their assumptions? You cannot know. Neither can the Church of Christ. Time for sanity.