# Thomas Aquinas and eating blood



## Reformed Covenanter (Dec 8, 2018)

This subject came up in a recent thread. I noticed that Thomas Aquinas weighed in on the debate in his _Commentary on Titus_ (I do not know if @Travis Fentiman has referred to Aquinas on the subject):

41. Another objection is that in Acts the apostles commanded to abstain from blood and from things strangled (Acts 15:29). Consequently, it does not seem lawful to partake of such things. And so, all things are not clean to the clean.

I answer that some believe that this commandment should be interpreted literally, but in a mystical sense, so that by blood is understood homicide, and by strangling, the oppression of the poor. And this is good, but it is not the whole truth. Therefore, I say that literally it is a commandment, but we are not obliged to it. For some things are forbidden because they are evil; and these must simply be avoided. But other things are not evil absolutely, but for a time, and these must be observed so long as a reason exists. But the apostles forbade these things, not because they were evil in themselves, because in Matthew the Lord says the opposite (Matt 15:17). The reason behind them was that some had been converted from Judaism and some from paganism; consequently, it was necessary, if one people was to be formed, that one should condescend to another. In this matter the Jews were to be condescended to, because it was abominable to them to eat blood and anything suffocated. Therefore, to maintain peace, the apostles declared that this law was to be observed for that time.

Thomas Aquinas, _Super ad Titum_, C. 1, L. 4, 41.

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## Travis Fentiman (Dec 16, 2018)

Thanks Daniel!

In running across all the stuff I did for that webpage, I found out that at the Reformation, some or many of the Romanists argued that the prohibition not to eat blood in Acts 15 demonstrated the Church's authority to bind things beyond (and possibly even contrary to Scripture).

The reformers' response was to explicate the nature of the ordinance, that it was a Church ordinance only founded upon the occasion of preventing public scandal, and hence when the natural circumstance disappears, so must the bindingness of that ordinance, which ought to be changed by the Church. Hence the limitation on Church government and its legislative powers to only enforce things necessary to the moral commands of Scripture and not arbitrarily.

Reactions: Like 3


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