A Little Wine

1 Timothy 5:23 (No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.)

23 Μηκέτι ὑδροπότει, ἀλλὰ οἴνῳ ὀλίγῳ χρῶ διὰ τὸν στόμαχον καὶ τὰς πυκνάς σου ἀσθενείας.

This is one of those verses that seems to vex a number of people.  How can we be teetotalers if Paul tells Timothy to οἴνῳ ὀλίγῳ χρῶ?  He's not saying that Timothy should be getting drunk, but that a little wine is good for his stomach.  What to do with this?

One explanation I've heard is that we should translate οἴνῳ as grape juice here.  However, I looked at 3 lexicons and they all translate it as "wine."  Friberg writes, "iterally, of the juice of grapes, usually fermented."  So it is remotely possible that Paul could be telling Timothy to drink grape juice and not fermented wine.  The person who gave me this theory also said that the admonitions not to drink much wine are about fermented juice, but that Jesus actually just made grape juice.  The argument from John 2 is untenable because of the word μεθυσθῶσιν in verse 10 which refers to getting drunk.

Another explanation is a bit more nuanced.  It says that this actually defends abstaining from wine because that's what Timothy was doing.  Timothy was so concerned about his purity that he did not drink wine and Paul had to encourage him to do so.  That makes a certain amount of sense.

However, I think that the most reasonable way to read this is that Paul told Timothy to drink wine and, therefore, wine is not a bad thing by itself.  The abuse of it certainly is, but the wine is not the problem.  As Christians we can enjoy alcohol in moderation.  This is not something that we flaunt in front of others, particularly those who cannot partake in good conscience.

My goal with this as with any other passage is to make a reasonable exegesis not bound by cultural presuppositions.  I hope that I have accomplished that here.

Vintner's Collection

John 2:9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now."

9 ὡς δὲ ἐγεύσατο ὁ ἀρχιτρίκλινος τὸ ὕδωρ οἶνον γεγενημένον καὶ οὐκ ᾔδει πόθεν ἐστίν, οἱ δὲ διάκονοι ᾔδεισαν οἱ ἠντληκότες τὸ ὕδωρ, φωνεῖ τὸν νυμφίον ὁ ἀρχιτρίκλινος 10  καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ· πᾶς ἄνθρωπος πρῶτον τὸν καλὸν οἶνον τίθησιν καὶ ὅταν μεθυσθῶσιν τὸν ἐλάσσω· σὺ τετήρηκας τὸν καλὸν οἶνον ἕως ἄρτι.

This is end of the account of Jesus' first public miracle.  Here He made up for a shortage in wine at a wedding He attended with His mother.  The Roman Catholic Church uses this text as a proof that we should use Mary as an intercessor because she can make Jesus do things that He otherwise wouldn't do.  I don't think that is what this text is all about.  Instead, I think that this shows that Jesus has command over creation.  After all, He did create it.  He is God and should be worshiped as such.

It also throws a wrench into anyone who tries to say that the Bible argues for abstinence from alcohol.  Abstinence is a fine idea and, frankly, there are not many good reasons to drink; however, we need to be careful about making the Bible say what our tradition says that it says.  To me, the interesting word is μεθυσθῶσιν, which is a subjunctive aorist passive 3rd person plural.  The phrase "drunk freely" is a euphemism for what Thayer describes as "to become intoxicated, to make drunk."  In other words, you serve inferior wine after people have had their senses dulled.  The only way to make sense of that is to understand this as real wine that was consumed in a way that we would normally think of.

Apparently Jesus made real wine.  To argue otherwise is to go against the plain reading of the passage as well as reason.  I do not want to minimize the deleterious effects of alcohol.  I see some of them every time my mom visits.  I lost an aunt partly because of it.  But let's not try to make the Bible say something it doesn't say.  If our Lord made real wine then we should just leave it at that.