Counterpoints and Rebuttals
Objection #1 Jesus didn’t drink wine, he drank grape juice.
Nope. He drank wine. Some reason that since the gospel says Jesus “offered the cup”, but does not specify here that it was wine, then we can imagine it filled with any one of several substances. But in the next sentence, Jesus says he “will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” In the previous post, we looked at this phrase in detail. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the communion cup was unfermented, the gospel narratives make clear Jesus drank wine at other times, because his adversaries were using it in their political ads against him.
For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.
Matthew 11:18-19
Maintaining that Jesus had no problem with fermented drink, but then when it came to the Last Supper, explicitly selected non-fermented drink, must provide reasons for why this selection was non-explicit to us. Jesus drank wine and offered wine as the symbol of his blood to his disciples to remember him. Those cleaving to grape juice will have to find viable reasons elsewhere.
Objection #2: We want our believing children to share in the Lord’s Supper, and kids can’t drink wine.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution prohibits Congress from restricting religious practice, including sharing in the communion cup for minors. Having a child’s first experience of a fermented drink be in the nursery of his life and saturated with the meaning of wine, will draw his boundaries for alcohol in pleasant places for the rest of his life. Wine in communion may be more likely to prevent a flippancy toward alcohol rather than encourage it when exposed to its beautiful nuance and intention when young.
Objection #3 Some new believers have had a sordid past with alcohol, either abusing it themselves or having family members who have. Using juice can remove an unnecessary barrier between them and the Lord’s Supper.
Pastoral approaches need to be taken where alcohol abuse has wrecked lives. Harsh or jarring changes to something as vital as the sacraments can dislodge believers. However, we must be careful if we think our personal history, struggles, or prejudices give us the choice to opt-out of obedience to Jesus. Pain does not put us in a position to amend his commands, especially when it yields the assumption he is as nonchalant about giving his instructions as we are in keeping them. We cannot ignore clear teachings just because someone has a history of abusing good things; that list would be long indeed.
To those who have personally abused the drink, the fear may be that even the tiniest sip of fermentation would send them tumbling off the back of the wagon. They have vowed never to touch the stuff, sacraments notwithstanding. Perhaps it is their tender conscience that makes them wary, or a fear of waking a dormant beast. But we must see here an inconsistency. God knows us. He understands genetic predispositions to abuse, to the extent they exist; alcoholics existed then as they do now. Jesus was not a dullard clumsily instituting rites that two thousand years later we could say, “If Jesus had known better he never would have…” He did know better, he had taken all things into account. If the smallest drink would ignite latent alcoholism in unsuspecting believers, then Jesus would be guilty of triggering millions of people into sin. There is no reason to think that God will abandon believers due to genetic predispositions when they obediently partake of the sacraments.
Additionally, it makes little sense that our sinful overindulgence in a good gift of God translates into avoiding its appropriate use. If it were, the gluttons and gossips would have to give up breakfast and talking. When the Corinthians abused the sacramental feast by getting drunk (1 Corinthians 11), Paul chastised them harshly but did not take away the wine.
Those with addictions are free to abstain everywhere else in their lives without judgment or pressure to imbibe. But avoiding the wine of the Supper, which symbolized Christ’s death for the sinner, including the sin of his overindulgence, is avoiding the symbol of forgiveness of the very sin they are drinking it for. Indeed, for one saved from such a past, the use of wine may be especially potent. Reverence, wonder, and community are heartier cures for our addictions than abstention.
Jesus beckoned his followers with the alluring call to “Come and see”. Our call to the world from the inside the Church ought to be the same. Newborns in the kingdom are also invited to come and see the Lord who is there, to suckle fatty milk of the word. We fashion our worship of God based on His instructions, not after the colic of new believers.
For those who are considering the unbelievers’ opinions of the church, it makes little sense to fashion the worship of those who believe in God after the sentiments of those who do not.
Objection #4: Many Christians believe alcohol is a sin, or at least have chosen to abstain. Therefore. we should use juice in the Lord’s Super to keep from offending the weaker brother.
This is the most common objection I have personally encountered. It is important to note that Paul’s weaker brother deference is not a blank check to allow the feeble to draw the boundaries of worship. Today, where victims hold a place of preeminence, misunderstanding who the weaker brother is can hold the church hostage within the rigid boundaries of the emotionally frail. Wound-collecting victims are not the weaker brothers Paul is referring to.
Weaker brothers aren’t looking to lord it over others. Rather, they are shy around freedom and eager to honor God, not wanting to spurn His kindness in saving them. This precious faith must be protected and not caused to stretch and snap into sin. But Paul clearly tells us the weaker brother is weak because he lacks knowledge and therefore has a friable conscience. Their knowledge deficit of Christian freedom has not yet expanded to that of a mature believer.
For if anyone with a weak conscience sees you who have this knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, won’t he be emboldened to eat what has been sacrificed to idols?
1 Corinthians 8:10
Paul is addressing the new believer who has not yet developed a robust understanding of sin, grace, and obedience, and so draws his boundary lines snugly around his weak conscience. He has low moral stamina and his conscience would give out if he attempted to lift the same freedom he sees mature believers bench pressing. The problem is not eating or drinking this or that, which Paul clearly says is an indifferent matter, it is his own tender conscience.
Paul’s intention here is not that we should allow the weaker Christians to control worship, or glue foam around all the pointy parts of Christianity. As the weaker brother grows in the knowledge of grace, he will become strong and stout-hearted. Willowy sinews and weeny muscles grow and swell as he moves from milk to the meat of the Word. But in the meantime, the mature believer ought not to place his own freedom over the weaker conscience of his brother.
But like we saw during the height of Temperance, it was not little-faithed new believers that were politely requesting a wine alternative in an attempt to stay clean. It was the rigid, sterile, thin-lipped legalism of supposedly mature Christians trying to tidy up the messy commands of the Lord. Legalists do not stumble when someone offends their boundaries: they are livid. Jesus was kind and patient with the weak but went the long way around just to step on the dangly tassels of the prim Pharisees.
No teacher wants his students to retain a novice’s ignorance; no sensei wants his white belt to remain harmless; no pastor wants a new believer to stay weak. They need marrow in their bones. Jesus wants us to grow out of superstition, fear, and weakness into the freedom of thanksgiving and liberty of conscience.
Once we understand who the weaker brother is and why he is weak, we can turn our attention to the matter at hand: does this deference to a weak conscience extend to the sacraments?
No. While I do believe there is a conversation to be had for legitimate health reasons, such as Celiac disease, we do not get to amend the sacraments based on our fears. We have already trusted Him to save us from our sins, can we not extend that trust to his choice in the sacraments? Do we let our experience superimpose a dark narrative over God’s intentions? Doesn’t He have the right to trump our pain with His grace?
Anton LaVey, the author of the Satanic Bible, baptized his daughter in a Satanic temple. Imagine this daughter (Lord willing) one day confessed faith in Christ, yet was hesitant to enter a baptismal because of its association with a previous life. Would we defer to this weak conscience? Of course not. In fact, it would be poisonous to seedling faith to do so. The symbol she underwent by her father was a perversion of the true symbol Jesus commands as evidence of death and resurrection. Baptism into Christ symbolizes the very death of the way of life she had left. Proper use of symbols overturns their abuse. Through the gospel, He restores the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25).
Objection #5 It doesn’t matter, wine is a symbol. A believer can just as meaningfully experience communion with Jesus drinking grape juice as he can wine. Suitability to carry the meaning, not exactly recreating original circumstances, is what is important.
The previous objection was the most common, this is the most important. It is most important because it says the most about our hearts. This entire series itself is an answer to this question, and so I will not rehash everything, but I mention it as a separate objection to highlight the presumption that this is an indifferent matter, that Jesus doesn’t care.
In situations where a new and alternative scientific theory is offered to explain natural phenomena, the burden of proof is on the novel theory to demonstrate how and why it is superior to the established explanation. The same is true here. The Belgic Confession (1561), Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Westminster Confession of Faith(1647), Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), and Baptist Confession of Faith (1689) all posit the use of wine in the sacraments. No confessions or catechisms suggest otherwise.
Notice that none of the confessions differentiates wine from unfermented drink. Why is this? It is because the availability of unfermented grape juice was nil to none, for one, and secondly, there is no evidence any tradition existed otherwise until the 19th century. It may be argued that citing the creeds, catechisms, and confessions of the historical church is a non-starter since there was no significant source of unfermented juice prior to pasteurization. But then where comes the frequent and insistent counterargument of grape juice enthusiasts of the ubiquity and availability of unfermented drink? History’s silence on the matter speaks very loudly.
The burden of proof lies in Welch’s lap. A preponderance of evidence and superior explanatory power must be presented by the young whipper snapper before the old bull is turned away. It is not on wine to defend itself, as it has the weight of history and the Lord’s command.
It also begs the question, if Christ used wine, which he did, then why would any one of us want to change it in the first place? Stretching the latitude of the Lord’s commands is a presumption we better be prepared to justify with solid reasons.
And if we maintain that what is in the cup is merely the suitability to convey meaning, are we as loose with other sacraments? Could we bury a convert in three cubic feet of compost and dig them out? Certainly would symbolize death and resurrection better than water. A baptismal filled with Dove anti-bacterial soap would convey the meaning of cleansing, given our understanding of modern germ theory. Exactly how abstract are we allowed to be with the sacraments?
And let us not forget, that entire denominations have been birthed from the sacraments not being honored as Jesus indicated. Locate your nearest Baptist pastor and ask to be baptized in a shower stall, see how it goes.
Objection #6 To specify wine over grape juice means specifying everything. And if we can’t specify everything and we have to settle somewhere, then why not grape juice? It is the suitability to convey the meaning that is important, not duplicating the original conditions.
As alluded to above, this doesn’t mean we have to match the ABV of Jesus’s communion wine to the four decimal places of scientific notation. Neither is it incumbent on us to match the wheat kernel that would have been extant in the Levant during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. Legalism grows on the tails of the Bell curve. Insisting on fine-tuning the sacraments to exact historical precision can approach the same legalism of late-stage Temperance demanding juice. Lines must be drawn somewhere.
But it is wrong to think that just because we cannot replicate the wine’s conditions, then we can settle for abstractions. Strict adherence to other sacraments, such as water for baptism, has been uncompromising. And unleavened bread has been used unquestioningly in communion because of yeast’s symbolism of sin. So we already have a proof case for choosing one substance over another like substance for its inherent properties and the sybolism of those properties.
Suitability to carry meaning is not the point; obedience to Jesus is. If God instructs us to tow the camper with a diesel truck, swapping for an EV for its reduced sin emissions may seem like a no-brainer, until the time comes, and it has now come, when that EV is running low on juice.
Thought Butter 