Note 56 — VII. TERTULLIAN. 160–240 (?) A.D.

It is worth noting that neither the original (βρωμάτων) of the “Authorised Version,” nor the meats of the “A. V.” itself, says anything about flesh-eating in this favourite resort of its apologists. Both expressions merely signify foods of any kind; so that the passage in question of this Pastoral Letter—which is apparently post-Pauline—can be made to condemn absolute fasting only: nor does the context warrant any other interpretation. As to St. Paul, the great opponent of the earlier Christian belief and practice, it must be conceded that he seems not to have shared the abhorrence of the immediately accredited disciples of Jesus for the sanguinary diet, especially of St. Matthew, of St. James, and of St. Peter, who, as we are expressly assured by Clement of Alexandria, St. Augustine, and others, lived entirely on non-flesh meats. The apparent indifferentism of St. Paul upon the question of abstinence is best and most briefly explained by his avowed principle of action—from the missionary point of view useful, doubtless, but from the point of view of abstract ethics not always satisfactory—the being “all things to all men.”