Poll: Real Wine in Communion

I only use grape juice in the Lord's Table. I think, there are plenty of principles to support such a stand, but we are hard pressed to find an absolute prohibition on using fermented wine.

 

Obviously...

But if Baptists were somehow using a non-alcoholic alternative to wine in communion, don't you think that Methodists would know about it and appropriate it instead of motivating Welch to invent a process to pasteurize grape juice?

 

"given to wine" means addicted to it. It means a wine-bibber, if you will. It does NOT mean refusing to take a sip or a few ounces of it!

In that case, in fact, the wine is given to him, not he to the wine!

 

I disagree the all Baptists come from John the Baptist. This is a weak leak in the arguement for grape juice only at the Lord's Table. He was dead before the first Lord's Table as well.

 

The notion that Baptists come from John the Baptist is a revisionist myth.

Further, the idea that only grape juice was used in communion is a revisionist myth, and a rather contemporary one. Fermented communion wine was the norm until relatively recently in church history.

 

Actually, I disagree (what else is new, eh? ). It is generally accepted by the majority of Christians (who know some history of the church) that wine was the standard communion drink for all denominations until the 1800's. Therefore the burden of proof is on the one that goes against the most common view, the one that claims something that goes against the accepted position.

Actually, the opposite is true - if Baptists throughout history were different than the rest of the church on this issue, there would be plenty of evidence of it. There is no evidence for being different if they weren't different in their use of wine. Baptists were very prolific in explaining and defending all their other doctrines where they differ from the rest of the church, why not with wine in communion? Because they weren't different.

But interesting comment about John the Baptist. Yes, because of his vow he did not drink strong drink. Neither did he eat leavened bread. The Pharisees said he had a devil. In contrast, Jesus did eat and drink, so the Pharisees called him a drunk and a glutton. You just can't win with those Pharisees.

 

Okay, I don't know the answer to this.

Before refrigeration how did Baptist churches keep grape juice fresh and unfermented for the Lord's Table?

Does grape juice not naturally ferment if it is not kept cool?

Not trying to stir anything up, I really don't know.

 

C4K, fermentation begins immediately upon the juice being extracted. Sans refrigeration and/or pasteurization, the process cannot be arrested. In biblical era days, the process of controlling fermentation was an art form. Unharnessed fermentation resulted in bitter wine. By properly controlling fermentation by encasing it in quality containers (such as new wineskins instead of old ones), regulating temperature, humidity, etc, one is able to produce a high quality sweet wine. This process was quite an art form, and remains so to this day.

In Jesus' day and prior, one was not simply able to withhold fermentation from the fruit of the vine like one could simply withhold the leveaning agent from bread. It simply wasn't possible.

Sorry, but nonalcoholic communion wine is a modern revisionist myth.

 

While I disagree with the tenor of your closing statement, the rest of your posts confirms what I suspected.

That being the case, could those who hold to a purely non-alcoholic grape juice for the Lord's Table explain how the Baptist churches used only grape juice before pasturisation or refrigeration? There is no way that every Baptist church would have access to fresh squeezed grape juice.

 

Check out these sites:

http://bible-christian.org/beerandalcohol.html

http://www.welchs.com/company/company_FAQs.html#healthFAQs

http://www.welchs.com/healthy/healthy_living.html

http://www.welchs.com/company/company_history.html

http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/books/wine_in_the_bible/5.html

http://bible-christian.org/wine.html

 

Deuteronomy 32:26 I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men:
Deuteronomy 32:27 Were it not that I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, [and] lest they should say, Our hand [is] high, and the LORD hath not done all this.
Deuteronomy 32:28 For they [are] a nation void of counsel, neither [is there any] understanding in them.
Deuteronomy 32:29 O that they were wise, [that] they understood this, [that] they would consider their latter end!
Deuteronomy 32:30 How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?
Deuteronomy 32:31 For their rock [is] not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves [being] judges.
Deuteronomy 32:32 For their vine [is] of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes [are] grapes of gall, their clusters [are] bitter:
Deuteronomy 32:33 Their wine [is] the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.
Deuteronomy 32:34 [Is] not this laid up in store with me, [and] sealed up among my treasures?
Deuteronomy 32:35 To me [belongeth] vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in [due] time: for the day of their calamity [is] at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
Deuteronomy 32:36 For the LORD shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that [their] power is gone, and [there is] none shut up, or left.
Deuteronomy 32:37 And he shall say, Where [are] their gods, [their] rock in whom they trusted,
Deuteronomy 32:38 Which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, [and] drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, [and] be your protection.

 

standingfirminChrist, I do not understand what point you are trying to make by posting that passage. Can you explain?

 

I appreciate the input on preserving unfermented grape juice, but don't see how the Song of Moses fits into this debate.

 

It doesn't. In fact, standingfirminChrist has blatantly ignored multiple posts of scripture that affirm the permissible use of wine by a believer. He's also ignored the numerous posts that refute his posts. He has to date failed to proved adequate scripture that forbids the simple consumption of alcoholic beverages. He has been able to provide scripture that forbids drunkeness, but none that forbids the simple consumption of alcohol.

 

WINE IN THE BIBLE: A BIBLICAL STUDY ON THE USE OF ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

Chapter 2

THE MEANING OF “WINE”

Samuele Bacchiocchi, Ph. D., Andrews University

"Why devote a chapter of this book to the definition of "wine"? Everybody knows that wine is the fermented juice of grapes! Such a surprise is understandable because most of today’s English dictionaries define"wine" as "fermented grape juice" or "the fermented juice of grapes," making no allowance for unfermented grape juice to be called "wine."

The universally accepted definition of "wine" as "fermented grape juice" may well explain why many Bible believing Christians have come to believe that the "wine" mentioned in the Bible must in all instances be alcoholic. This assumption, known as the "one wine theory," has greatly prejudiced the study of the Biblical teachings on the use of alcoholic beverages by leading many sincere Christians to believe that God approves the moderate use of fermented, intoxicating wine. The reasoning can best be illustrated syllogistically, as follows:

1. The Bible, like today’s English language, knows only of alcoholic wine.

2. Wine is praised in the Bible as a gracious divine blessing.

3. Therefore, the Bible approves the moderate consumption of alcoholic beverages.

The problem with this syllogism is that its first premise is very wrong. As this chapter will show, the Bible knows of two distinctly different grape beverages: the first, unfermented, refreshing and lawful; the second, fermented, intoxicating and unlawful. This view of two kinds of wines in the Bible is flatly denied by numerous scholars. Dunlop Moore states emphatically: "The theory of two kinds of wine—the one fermented and intoxicating and unlawful, and the other unfermented, unintoxicating, and lawful—is a modern hypothesis, devised during the present century, and has no foundation in the Bible, or in Hebrew or classical antiquity."1 An even stronger denial of the two wines theory is found in E. W. Bullinger’s The Companion Bible, which says: "The modern expression, ‘unfermented wine,’ is a contradiction of terms. If it is wine, it must be fermented. If it is not fermented, it is not wine, but a syrup."2

2. E. W. Bullinger, The Companion Bible (London, 1923), appendix 27.

http://www2.andrews.edu/~samuele/books/wine_in_the_bible/2.html

This may be a "turn off" for those who say the Bible permits the "moderate" use of beverage alcohol and that drunkenness is the sin, and not the drinking itself. However, facts are facts and you need to do the research objectively, not subjectively.

 

If he had been alive, he could not have drank from the cup-- whether it had become noticeably fermented or not-- since a Nazarite was never to so much as touch a grape (besides never allowing a razor to touch his hair and never touching a dead body) [Numbers 6].