Only Spengler could pull this one off: In a Christmas column dealing with human-animal relationships, he works this money quote into the mix:
"Most cultures do not change; they persist until their best-used-by date, and then are destroyed by their enemies or die of their own despondency. Fundamental cultural change - a change as it were in human nature - appears in human history as a response to revelation."
The column is worth reading in detail, as is one of the essays Spengler references, Michael Wyschogrod's The Revenge of the Animals.
Wyschogrod (a conservative Jew) speculates that God "would prefer a vegetarian humanity." Diet, as it relates to our spiritual life, is an issue most Christians think little or not at all about. I am amazed at how fiery some Christians can get at the comment: "I feel convicted to become a vegetarian." Think of the reaction if the comment were: "I feel convicted to eat a strict kosher diet -- I don't believe Jesus abolished all dietary requirements in the law."
I think the key question is: When the risen Christ commands Peter to "kill and eat," is he aboloshing all dietary requirements (or even all dietary concerns) for Gentile Christians, OR is he more broadly exposing Peter's limited, ethno/nationalistic vision of what new Christ followers must do in order to be saved (i.e. follow the Levitical law)?
BC
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To try to answer your key question,
"When the risen Christ commands Peter to "kill and eat," is he aboloshing all dietary requirements (or even all dietary concerns) for Gentile Christians, OR is he more broadly exposing Peter's limited, ethno/nationalistic vision of what new Christ followers must do in order to be saved (i.e. follow the Levitical law)?"
...Yes. Both.
The deeply engrained idea of clean and unclean animals was used as a greater metaphor.
A couple things:
1. The point of God declaring clean and unclean animals for the Hebrew people to eat, or refrain from eating, was so that they would be set apart from the nations to be His own (Leviticus 20:25), not so that specific animals would forever be declared clean or unclean. Jesus also made the point in Matthew 15 that it's not what goes in to your mouth that makes you unclean, but what comes out. Again, the emphasis is not so much on following the rules of what not to chow down on, but more on the heart and what comes out of a person's mouth (words).
2. Reading through the entire story of Peter in Acts 9, 10 and 11, there is a thread of God's sovereignty that bubbles up throughout, especially during the Cornelius story. Ultimately, the "kill and eat" vision was given to Peter to make the broader point of the Gentile inclusion in the Church. Were dietary restrictions also being addressed? Sure. But to focus primarily on that would be to miss the greater point.
You want to be vegitarian? Feel free. You want to eat meat. Go for it. But please don't try to make the (biblical) case that God has told His followers that they are to be one, or the other...please.
In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity. – Augustine
One big happy family we are, eh?!
tkc
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