In the path we are to follow which leads to our deification, we are expected to grow in knowledge and virtue, though never at the expense of love:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.
For this very reason make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love (2Peter 1:3:-7).
We must remember that in the pursuit of virtue, love is the highest virtue, and the principle by which all other activities must be judged. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1Corinthians 13: 1- 3).
How are we to go about this? We must pursue excellence, but as St Maximus the Confessor points out, we must do so in the proper fashion. If we are excessive and pursue a specific good improperly, mistreating those who do not follow us in our path, we will end up like the Israelites who tried to collect too much manna while out in the desert:
Manna means the word of God, which is appropriately united with all through action and knowledge and which nourishes the soul. Therefore, whenever someone has used it properly and reasonably, that is, when one follows the middle way of the virtues, equally avoiding an excessive or minimal use of them, he gathers the manna sufficiently. But whenever one does not use reason properly but excessively – for it would be well to show the meaning of the passage by a single virtue – such as, whenever someone who pursues continence avoids licentiousness but judges marriage to be abominable, already the logos of continence ‘has become rancid’ for him by the immoderacy of his excess, and it not only becomes rancid, but also brings forth worms, that is, it gives birth to other passions.[1]
Like the Buddha, St Maximus points out that a good can end up harming us or those around us when we follow it to an extreme. Virginity is good, and a virtue worth pursuing; but marriage is also a good and must not be denigrated for the sake of virginity. The same can be said about other virtues. While there are moral activities all should follow, beyond those necessities, there is before us a slew of possibilities, of paths we can take as we live in the world. Some will be better than others, but many which are not the best would nonetheless be fine pursuits in and of themselves. When we find ourselves inclined to follow a path less taken than others, we must not become an extremist and reject the legitimate paths others have taken. When we do so, we have pursued a goal outside of its proper place, because we have ignored love, the foundation of all virtues, and so end up with nothing. Or, as Siddhartha told the Buddhists, we will end up breaking like a stringed instrument which has had its strings tightened too much, because we have not understood the proper way to pursue the virtues.
A great example of this is found in the life of St. Francis of Assisi. He kept charity above his own desires and wishes. He wanted to live a simple life, one which abstained from cooked foods and meats; for the most part, he followed a simple vegetarian diet. On his own, he certainly did this. But when he was greeted by others and taken in to their homes and fed, he did what he could to accept their hospitality, even to partake (in one fashion or another) the food which he would otherwise not eat:
When he went out among men, he conformed himself to his hosts in the food he ate because of the Gospel text (Luke 10:7). But when he returned home, he kept strictly his sparse and rigid abstinence. Thus he was austere toward himself but considerate toward his neighbor. Making himself obedient to the Gospel of Christ in everything, he gave an edifying example not only when he abstained but when he ate.[2]
St Francis’ example shows how we should put charity and the desires of others above our own pursuits, and how doing so would not end with us going against our goals. He reminds us that the goal of the virtues is to transform us, to make us followers of Christ in all things.[3] St Francis is the ideal example of the Christian vegetarian, one who pursues the virtue of abstinence from meat without it affecting his relationship or thoughts of others. The Christian vegetarian should be pursuing his diet as an act of virtue, in the dictates of charity, and as such must always remind themselves that the virtue must not be used to denigrate those who follow the acceptable practice of meat eating – to be militant is to act contrary to the charity which should lay behind the practice of the virtue.
And it is a virtue, when it is followed for proper reasons. As fasting is already recognized as a way to combat the sin of gluttony, so taking up a vegetarian discipline is acting against one of the eight deadly sins.[4] Indeed, as some authorities have pointed out, the fall of humanity can be said to be caused, in part, by glutton, by giving in to the inordinate and excessive desire for food; and what happened once under happened is shown to happen again and again in Scripture. “The vice of gluttony delivered Adam up to death; by the pleasure of the appetite consummate evil was brought into the world. Through it Noah was mocked, Cham was cursed, Esau was deprived of his birthright and married into a Canaanite family. […] Gluttony, also, made the people of Israel worshipers of idols and strewed the desert with their bodies.” [5] It was a temptation that Jesus himself would have to face and overcome in order to rectify Adam’s sin. “The first Adam would not have been able to be deceived by gluttony had he not had something to eat and immediately and lawlessly misused it, not was the second tempted without the enticement of some substance, when it was said to him: ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.’”[6] In pursuing the control of the stomach and disciplining it by becoming a vegetarian, one is joining in the work of Christ against gluttony, and for that reason, it can be seen as a virtue.
St Jerome provides another reason why one might want to become vegetarian: they could desire to live life in accordance, not to God’s leniency, but to God’s initial desire for humanity – that is, they seek to live life in a pre-fallen modality, abstaining from meat because it was allowed only after the further degeneration of humanity that occurred at the time of the flood[7]:
At the beginning of the human race we neither ate flesh, nor gave bills of divorce, nor suffered circumcision for a sign. Thus we reached the deluge. But after the deluge, together with the giving of the law which no one could fulfil, flesh was given for food, and divorce was allowed to hard-hearted men, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though the hand of God had fashioned us with something superfluous. But once Christ has come in the end of time, and Omega passed into Alpha and turned the end into the beginning, we are no longer allowed divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat flesh, for the Apostle says, It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine. For wine as well as flesh was consecrated after the deluge.[8]
This is a higher path, to be sure, and is not expected of all (as the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul demonstrate). But, while allowing for the frailty of humanity, it is interesting to note that many of the earliest Christians, like St Matthew, were said to have pursued this virtue, showing that its value was recognized even by the Apostles.[9]
There are other noble reasons why one could decide to partake of the vegetarian virtue; not all vegetarians seek to control their stomach through fasting, nor are they seeking some pristine, pre-fallen lifestyle; for example, we find many merely seek to have a more harmonious relationship with the world, and to become better stewards of its resources.[10] A vegetarian diet (or, a diet which consumes only small amounts of meat in the year) helps combat the excessive amount of resources used and the suffering created by factory farming – a concern which Pope Benedict shares with PETA: “Certainly, a sort of industrial use of creatures, so that geese are fed in such a way as to produce as large a liver as possible, or hens live so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds, this degrading of living creatures to a commodity seems to me in fact to contradict the relationship of mutuality that comes across in the Bible.”[11] We must be concerned with the world we live in, and the creatures living in it; a carefree approach to the world tends to lead to a carefree approach to fellow humanity and their suffering.[12] But if this is the reason one pursues the virtue of a vegetarian lifestyle, it is clear why the rule of charity, and the middle path of virtues, must be met here. To be militant and derogatory towards those who do not follow this virtue is to go against the principle by which this can be and is made into a virtue.
Some might think that a Christian vegetarian is closing in on Gnosticism, and might fall for its sin. But this is not the case. Rather, St Clement of Alexandria points to the way the Christian vegetarian is to think: “‘It is good, then, neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine,’[Rom 14:21] as both he [St Paul] and the Pythagoreans acknowledge. […] If one partakes of them, he does not sin. Only let him partake temperately, not dependent on them, nor gaping after fine fare.”[13] This acknowledgement is what differentiates the orthodox Christian vegetarian from heretics such as the Cathars: they understand their position is a virtue, and not a necessity; they understand, as long as the non-vegetarian follows the fasting regulations put in place by the Church, they do not sin.
However, if it is right to see the vegetarian lifestyle as a virtue, then it points to something that the non-vegetarian should realize: meat eating is allowed, but it is a leniency which should not be abused. Meat eating is allowed in moderation and in accordance to one’s needs. Excessive meat eating is connected with gluttony, a grave sin indeed. “To become a slave to the pleasures of the table is to make the stomach one’s god.”[14]
Footnotes
[1] St Maximus the Confessor, Questions and Doubts. Trans. Despina D. Prassas (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010), 57.
[2] St Bonaventure, The Life of St Francis in Bonaventure. Trans. Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 218, 219.
[3] The Buddha also suggested something similar: “Jīvaka, I say that there are three instances in which meat should not be eaten: when it is seen, heard, or suspected [that the living being has been slaughtered for the bhikkhu]. I say that meat should not be eaten in these three instances. I say that there are three instances in which meat may be eaten: when it is not seen, not heard, and not suspected [that the living being has been slaughtered for the bhikkhu]. I say that meat may be eaten in these instances,” The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Trans. Bhkikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 474.
[4] “There are eight principle vices that attack humankind. The first is gluttony, which means the voraciousness of the belly; the second is fornication; the third is filagyria, which is avarice or the love of money; the fourth is anger; the fifth is sadness; the sixth is acedia, which is anxiety or weariness of heart; the seventh is cenodoxia, which is boastfulness or vainglory; and the eighth is pride,” St John Cassian, The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey, O.P. (New York: Paulist Press, 1997), 183.
[5] St Basil, On Renunciation of the World in St Basil Ascetic Works. trans. Sister M. Monica Wagner (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1950), 25.
[6] St John Cassian, The Conferences, 183.
[7] Pope Benedict is in accord with Jerome on this: “We can read how, at first, only plants are mentioned as providing food for man. Only after the flood, that is to say, only after a new breach has opened between God and man, are we told that man eats flesh,” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002, 78. St Maximus the Confessor, following Proverbs 24:16a thought humanity suffered seven great falls, each leading to a worsening condition of humanity. See St Maximus the Confessor, Questions and Doubts, 75.
[8] St Jerome, Against Jovinianus in NPNF2 (6):360 (I.18).
[9] “And happiness is found in the practice of virtue. Accordingly, the apostle Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without flesh,” St Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor in ANF (2):241.
[10] “At the conclusion of this Message, I should like to address directly my brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church, in order to remind them of their serious obligation to care for all of creation. The commitment of believers to a healthy environment for everyone stems directly from their belief in God the Creator, from their recognition of the effects of original and personal sin, and from the certainty of having been redeemed by Christ. Respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of creation, which is called to join man in praising God (cf. Ps 148:96),” John Paul II, Message for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace 1990, ¶16.
[11] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, God and the World, 78-9.
[12] “Human attitudes and behavior toward creation directly impact on and reflect human attitudes and behavior toward other people,” Patriarch Bartholomew, Encountering the Mystery: Understanding Orthodox Christianity Today (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 94..
[13] St Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor in ANF (2):240.
[14] St Basil, The Long Rule in St Basil Ascetic Works. trans. Sister M. Monica Wagner (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1950), 275. To be sure, this is not to say a vegetarian cannot become a glutton; far from it – indeed, if all they pursue is the abstinence of meat, it is very easy for them to find the worm of glutton affecting them as well.
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