The Sotted Sire

“Bondage and death the cup contains; dash to the earth the poisoned bowl! Softer than silk are iron chains, compared with those that chafe the soul.”¹ Those are lyrics we used to sing here. On a Friday in late March 1839, the General Conference of our denomination, as it existed then, “resolved that strong drink, as it is usually used, is an evil and should not be practiced in our church.”² They wanted “all our members to become total abstainers from all intoxicating drinks.”³ Eventually, the rule was phrased that “none of our members shall be permitted to use as a beverage any intoxicating drinks,” and if somebody did so, “such member shall, upon conviction, be excluded from the church.”⁴ Though we rephrased the message about church discipline in 2008, we didn't drop our historic claim about total abstinence from alcohol being “the only truly responsible position for members of our churches” from our Discipline until 2016.⁵ So if you were a member here a decade ago, and you drank a beer one day after work, or enjoyed a margarita at a nice restaurant... phew, you got away with it!

One of the historic hallmarks of our denomination is a longstanding commitment to the temperance movement. A number of groups in the early nineteenth century were swept up into an uncompromising condemnation of alcohol as utterly evil. The science of their day, as they read it in keeping with a common-sense philosophy then prevalent, told them alcohol was an artificial and unnatural substance, “poisonous, dangerous to race survival, and lacking in nutritional value.”⁶ Even the smallest sip of alcohol interfered with the senses and excited the imagination, thereby already impairing “the balance between mind, emotion, and will.”⁷ We therefore, they said, “have no right” to drink a drop of it “unless prescribed by a doctor.”⁸ And so, privileging their hygiene-focused middle-class values as a measure of holiness, they concluded that every Bible reader before them had simply been too blinded by alcohol to see the true abstinence Bible for what it was.⁹ As an old song of that era had it, “When Noah bade the ark farewell, he did not make his wine to sell, and if the danger he had known, he would have left the grapes alone!”¹⁰

Now, however, we know that, far from being unnatural and artificial, “alcohol routinely turns up in natural environments.”¹¹ Fruits and other high-concentration sugar sources, when colonized by yeasts, ferment without our help. And we've seen animals who know it, like little tree-shrews in Malaysia that binge on a nectar as alcoholic as beer, elephants walking away unsteady from the fermented fruit of an African tree, and howler monkeys going wild for the alcohol-rich orange fruit of a Central American palm tree.¹² Alcohol is a lightweight molecule that travels a long distance, and so animals that eat a lot of fruit, including primates, can use it to find the best sugary fruits.¹³ For animals like that, an attraction to alcohol is a very helpful adaptation. And since – however and whyever he did it – God made our bodily animal nature in the same mold, it's not surprising that we have a similar impulse. Even Adam and Eve quite possibly would've been “routinely exposed to a low alcohol concentration in their diet” of fruits in Eden.¹⁴

Noah's pioneering work was in taking control of that natural phenomenon and making beverage alcohol, a wine. We heard last Sunday that this was part of God's plan: he gives growth to grapevines for the sake of “wine to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15). Sufficiency in wine is part and parcel of the prophets' picture of the life of God's favor (Amos 9:14), so God gave his people “a land of grain and wine” (Deuteronomy 33:28). One wine expert calls it “an analgesic, disinfectant, and general remedy all rolled into one.”¹⁵ Up until recently, wine was the best antiseptic we had, which is why the Good Samaritan pours it on the wounds of the man beaten on the road to Jericho (Luke 10:34). And since water could often have bacteria or parasites in it, wine was often safer, hence why Paul advises Timothy to “no longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23) – because, in a pre-modern world, “those who drank fermented beverages... lived longer.”¹⁶ Not only that, but wine was “a perfect medium for dissolving and dispensing drugs,” making “fermented beverages... the universal medicines of humankind.”¹⁷

So, given that science shows us that alcohol is a natural phenomenon in creation, and that the Bible tells us that God intended us to ferment wine from grapes, and that scripture and history alike attest to multiple good purposes that wine and other such things could serve, I'm very glad that our denomination's law threatening church discipline against any and every sip of it is no longer off the books. Our forebears seem to be in jeopardy there of falling afoul of the Apostle Paul's warning against false teachers who “require abstinence from foods,” and drinks, “that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth; for everything created by God is good, and nothing,” including things containing alcohol, “is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:3-5).

So far, so good. But there's a principle of toxicology called hormesis, where for some substances, a little bit is a help but a big bit is a hurt.¹⁸ While the health benefits of low-level alcohol consumption are still hotly debated by scientists,¹⁹ it's possible alcohol is hormetic. (So is oxygen, also toxic to us in unnaturally big doses!) So, as one early Jewish writer put the matter, “this is the perception a wine-drinker requires: so long as he is decent, he may drink, but if he exceeds the limit, the spirit of error invades his mind.”²⁰

Hence, “the use and enjoyment of wine needs great care.”²¹ Our animal attraction to alcohol was designed for low doses in chewed fruit, for which there's a built-in limit of how much alcohol we could get before we're full; but beverages like Noah's wine bypass that safeguard, and, with concentrated alcohol now so cheap, that poses a serious danger.²² That's why Israel's wise men advise us to “not look at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly; in the end, it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder” (Proverbs 23:31-32). It's no wonder some Jews wondered if the wine-grape was the fruit that damned Adam and Eve.²³ For “wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise” (Proverbs 20:1).

Well, Noah's wisdom lapses. His wine leads him astray, and the serpent in it bites him. “He drank of the wine and became drunk” (Genesis 9:21). Some early Christians excused Noah here, figuring Noah “did not know the nature of wine,” that it could get him drunk,²⁴ so “he didn't know how much he should take..., and so, through ignorance, he was surprised into drunkenness,”²⁵ “the result of inexperience, not intemperance.”²⁶ Then others said that, even if Noah drank before the flood, it had taken so long to get his vineyard grown that, due to “the long absence of wine,” he'd lost the tolerance he expected to have.²⁷ But others more frankly confessed that Noah had been “led into committing a grave error through the wine.”²⁸

The tragic truth is that “even the greatest saints sometimes fall.”²⁹ As Noah drinks cup after cup, his gut lining absorbs more and more alcohol molecules, transferring them to his bloodstream. His liver puts out enzymes to process ethanol into acetaldehyde, and then other enzymes to turn acetaldehyde into an acetate salt; but Noah's building up blood alcohol faster than his enzymes can metabolize it. Not only does it get into various other organs, but it slips easily across Noah's blood-brain barrier, getting access to all sorts of chemical pathways in his noggin.³⁰ The result of that, the Bible depicts, is that “your eyes will see strange things, and your heart utter perverse things; you will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea” (Proverbs 23:33-34), to “reel with wine and stagger with strong drink” (Isaiah 28:7).

Whatever Noah's excuse, one early bishop remarked that “voluntary intoxication... clouds the intellect more severely than any demon..., robbing its victim of any sense of values.”³¹ By drinking to drunkenness, such a person “willingly and knowingly deprives himself of the use of reason,” which is the faculty that lets us clearly see and follow God's will.³² Drinking to excess is “an irrational action that leads to further irrational actions.”³³ Hence even a “small excess is more harmful in drink than in other things.”³⁴ It's not great for you; it's not great for society. Consuming alcohol is one of the top medical risk factors for all sorts of things, and alcohol-related disorders cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars each year, to say nothing of the rest of the world.³⁵

But matters get worse. Isaiah scoffs at “heroes at drinking wine” who chase it at all hours, from early morning to late into the night (Isaiah 5:11, 22), thinking, “When shall I awake? I must have another drink” (Proverbs 23:35). Even in ancient times, you could see people who made alcohol a lifestyle, “yet, despite yesterday's spree, still gulping down one drink after the other.”³⁶ Hosea warns that wine has power to “enslave the heart” (Hosea 4:11), to the point where a person is “swallowed by wine” (Isaiah 28:7). For reasons scientists are still trying to understand, regular drinking for some can create a dependency, an addiction, that so stacks the brain against the will that a person may drink compulsively even while taking no pleasure in any of it.³⁷

Our denomination has long felt the addictive perils of alcohol. Our founding bishop had a brother who might well qualify as an alcoholic, confessing that “I could not resist it, and... if I was started, then all resistance was gone,” try as he might.³⁸ As the brother traveled for work, he often had to live hotels where the owners sold alcohol. The results were predictable; the brother's health deteriorated, and the bishop lost his brother in 1905, less than three months after the bishop excoriated his brother for “the way in which you threw your life away.”³⁹ Their letters are tragic and painful to read, with little sympathy in evidence. The devastation of alcohol addiction is a too-common story now and then, and it used to be far worse. In the first seven decades of our nation, alcohol abuse skyrocketed until the average American drank over five gallons of absolute alcohol each year, much more than today.⁴⁰ It's no wonder there developed an organized prohibition movement, the point of which wasn't to go after drinkers but to go after dealers (like some of those tavern-keepers and hotel owners of the day) who used the addictive qualities of alcohol as a profitable weapon for “the exploitation of the weak, impoverished, and defenseless.”⁴¹ Our denomination was, no surprise, a big supporter of Prohibition, deeming the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment “a glorious triumph in the warfare for the uplift of humanity.”⁴² Despite the fourteen-year experiment, however, our sad finding was: “the national thirst is still unabated.”⁴³

Noah's thirst could've developed into a drinking habit that risked addiction. But he didn't: his excess in drinking “was reserved to that one instance alone.”⁴⁴ Still, even on that one occasion, it laid Noah low. “He became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent” (Genesis 9:21): Noah “reclined with his thighs naked and uncovered,”⁴⁵ then “passed out in the tent unclothed.”⁴⁶ Not a pretty sight, least of all from a fellow in his seventh century.

Taking a step back, the new world has a new garden, where Noah, a second Adam, has reached out and picked the fruit, making wine with it; and as a result of what he does with the fruit, he's found naked “in the midst of his tent” (Genesis 9:21). It's obvious what the Bible's getting at here, right – garden, fruit, nakedness? This is “a replication of Adam's sin,” happening all over again in the clean new world.⁴⁷ And Noah's tent will provide little more protection than Adam and Eve's fig leaves did. This is “a bad start to a second human race.”⁴⁸

The Israelites under Moses had to be careful in their camp, since the LORD dwelled with them, “so that he may not see any thing of nakedness among you” (Deuteronomy 23:14). Yet here Noah adopts “an indecent state of nudity,” albeit in the privacy of his tent and not in public.⁴⁹ Not only was that a cultic offense, but it was deeply embarrassing. For a person's naked body to be exposed was a disgrace (Isaiah 47:3). It's no wonder Nahum warns Nineveh that God will “make nations look at your nakedness and kingdoms at your shame” (Nahum 3:5). When prisoners of war were taken captive, they were often led away “naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered” (Isaiah 20:4), as “a form of humiliation for defeated enemies.”⁵⁰ “By disrobing, Noah invests himself with a lowered status, one befitting powerless captives and servants.”⁵¹ He's ripped away his dignity.⁵²

We know that, in many cases, drunkenness can be a gateway to committing further sins. When the Apostle Paul warns us, “Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery” (Ephesians 5:18), he's paraphrasing an earlier Jewish book that said, “Do not be drunk with wine, because wine perverts the mind from the truth, arouses the impulses of desire, and leads the eyes into the path of error.”⁵³ Early Christians worried that a drunk person is thereby rendered “more capable of evil,”⁵⁴ and can be a real danger to others, even unintentionally, as we see often on the road, with a third of traffic fatalities related to alcohol.⁵⁵ “Thus he commits sin and is unashamed. Such is the drunkard, my children: he who is drunken has respect for no one,”⁵⁶ and may “sin by uttering lewd words, by fighting, by slander, by transgressing God's commands.”⁵⁷

But in addition, excessive alcohol also “lessens strength and multiplies wounds” (Sirach 31:30). We're told how several Israelite royals were assassinated while “drinking himself drunk” (1 Kings 16:9) or while “merry with wine” (2 Samuel 13:28). Inebriation often plays a tragic role in impairing victims of sexual assault, heightening their risk and vulnerability.⁵⁸ Just so, Noah, in his tent, is “brought low like a motionless corpse.”⁵⁹ – naked, unconscious, and too addled by alcohol to regain consciousness any time soon, clearing the way for whatever it is his son Ham does to victimize him in the very next verse (Genesis 9:22).

But early Christians wondered if perhaps God allowed this sin at the level of the letter for the sake of an even greater beauty at the level of the spirit. For “all this was said in type of the Savior,”⁶⁰ in that “the drunkenness and nakedness of Noah... contain the mystery of Christ's suffering and death.”⁶¹ Jesus, during his conversations with his dearest disciples, often foretold his coming passion in terms of “drinking the cup that the Father has given me” (John 18:11), “the wine of God's wrath poured full strength into the cup of his anger” against the sin of the world (Revelation 14:10). Jesus prayed not to drink it, if there were any other way (Mark 14:36).

But there wasn't. “He drank and was inebriated” by suffering as he was beaten and crowned.⁶² “When they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them” (Matthew 27:35). “His mortal flesh was stripped naked,”⁶³ “and his thighs were laid bare – the dishonor of the cross.”⁶⁴ Like the naked Noah victimized by some act of Ham's, the naked Christ “endured abuses and derision and submitted to the ultimate torment of the cross.”⁶⁵ And in this story, all of us play the role of Ham, for when we fall away to sin, it's “crucifying once again the Son of God to our own harm and holding him up to contempt” (Hebrews 6:6). The voices of mockery toward the Lord, the contempt for his inebriating suffering, are our voices. Noah's sin reveals Christ's salvation.

But also in a moral sense was the tale of Noah set down for us, “so that we may guard against drunkenness as much as possible, with the picture of such a fall clearly described before our eyes in Scripture.”⁶⁶ Jesus himself tells us to “watch yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with... drunkenness..., and that day [of his coming] come upon you suddenly like a trap” (Luke 21:34). Why would it then be a trap? Because drunkenness can so dull “the reason of the human mind... that it does not even have concern for itself, much less for God.”⁶⁷ One early Christian suggested that “men drinking insatiably the wine... made a transgression worse than Adam and... commit themselves to the eternal fire.”⁶⁸ A bishop later followed these lines with the declaration that truly voluntary drunkenness (as opposed to compulsive, as sometimes in addiction) is “a mortal sin... classed with homicide and adultery and fornication.”⁶⁹ And they got this from their Bible, because St. Paul lists “drunkenness” among the “works of the flesh” and “drunkards” among those who “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19-21; 1 Corinthians 6:10).

No wonder some ancient readers, stepping beyond Scripture, advised that “if you wish to live prudently, abstain completely from drinking,”⁷⁰ and that a person “will do well if she avoids the use of wine entirely.”⁷¹ That's especially the case for someone with addictive tendencies or who otherwise is “easily the worse for taking wine” – according to theologians in the Middle Ages, for somebody like that, the consumption of even small amounts of alcohol would become “unlawful.”⁷² To toy with that serpent waiting at the bottom of the cup, to play games with its fangs and risk its venom while aware of the consequences, would ignore the goodness of God. “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise” (Ephesians 5:15).

For the rest of us who are lawfully free to do so, if we then choose to imbibe, the standard must be “careful moderation in the use of alcohol,”⁷³ to “not drink wine to the point of losing self-control.”⁷⁴ “Since we belong to the day, let us be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:8), even as we enjoy a moderate dose of alcohol with thanks as God's provision. Yet in it all, “be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers” (1 Peter 4:7). But whether we take the cup or not, as St. Augustine says, “let us be temperate, and, in whatever we do, let us know why we are doing it.”⁷⁵ Understand your freedom in Christ, but be mindful, as were the campaigners for justice in the age of Prohibition, of how your choices relate to commercial interests of exploitation even today.

Remember also that “it is good not to... drink wine... that causes your brother to stumble” because of your influence (Romans 14:21). Be judicious in time, place, and company. In the presence of those who may suffer deep offense or else be misled to drink intemperately if they see you drink even temperately (“nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean” [Romans 14:14]), join them in abstaining. But, in the presence of those who may be misled to drink intemperately if your abstention leads them to think the rule for Christians is heavier than they can bear, model temperate partaking before their eyes. “So then, whether you... drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Instead of intoxication with alcohol, the Apostle bids us instead “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). As one pre-Christian philosopher put it, “when grace fills the soul, that soul thereby rejoices... so that, to many of the unenlightened, it may seem to be drunken, crazy, and beside itself.”⁷⁶ Just so, at Pentecost when the apostles and other disciples were “all filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4), skeptical onlookers accused them of being “filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13) despite it being just nine o'clock in the morning (Acts 2:15). Those skeptical onlookers misperceived the beautiful intoxication of the grace of the Holy Spirit, proving themselves unenlightened in not being able to see the signs of great grace in the apostles' souls – the same grace, the same Spirit, that should be operative in the Church's gathered worship as we sing, thank, and revere Christ our Lord with all love (Ephesians 5:19-21).⁷⁷

So “wake up from your drunken stupor,” the Spirit cries, “and do not go on sinning” (1 Corinthians 15:34). In light of our blessed hope, why should we “fall away or weigh down our hearts with drugs and drunkenness?”⁷⁸ There's a gospel of hope for the world for us to spread! There's a channel of blessing we're meant to become! The Holy Spirit is at hand! And “the fruit of the Spirit is... self-control,” or sobriety (Galatians 5:22-23). Thus the sober saints “are drunk in a sense, for all good things are united in the strong wine on which they feast, and they receive the loving cup from perfect virtue.”⁷⁹ May we, clothed in the Christ who became inebriated and naked for us, drink this virtue forever, being swept up in “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17)! Hallelujah! Amen, and amen.

1  Lucius M. Sargent, “Temperance Hymn,” #732 in Hymn-Book of the Evangelical Association (Evangelical Association, 1882), 435.

2  John Seybert, journal entry for 29 March 1839, in J. G. Eller, Journal of Bishop John Seybert (typescript, 1953), 10:94.

3  Temperance Committee Report, 1869, in S.C. Breyfogel, Landmarks of the Evangelical Association (Eagle Book, 1888), 222.

4  The Doctrines and Discipline of the United Evangelical Church (United Evangelical Church, 1894), §§38, 113.

5  2015 National Conference Journal (Evangelical Congregational Church, 2015), 4-7 and 6-1; 2016 National Conference Journal (Evangelical Congregational Church, 2016), 4-5.

6  Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press, 2011), 35.

7  Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press, 2011), 37-38.

8  J. Kanagy, “The Effects of Strong Drink,” The Evangelical Messenger (8 May 1851): 34.

9  Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press, 2011), 90-91.

10  Henry H. Hadley, “Noah and the Wine,” #140 in H. H. Hadley, Rescue Songs (S. T. Gordon and Sons, 1890), 133.

11  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 2.

12  Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 26-28.

13  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 6.

14  Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 30.

15  Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 305.

16  Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 357.

17  Patrick E. McGovern, Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture, rev. ed. (Princeton University Press, 2019), 341.

18  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 44; Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 25.

19  To consider the status quaestionis just this year, health benefits of alcohol are supported by, e.g., Creina S. Stockley, Henk F.J. Hendriks, and R. Curtis Ellison, “ISFAR Reiterates Its Defense of Moderate Alcohol Consumption's Health Benefits,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 85/1 (January 2024): 136-140; but they are denied by, e.g., Tim Stockwell, Jinhui Zhao, James Clay, Christine Levesque, Nitika Sanger, Adam Sherk, and Timothy Naimi, “Why Do Only Some Cohort Studies Find Health Benefits from Low-Volume Alcohol Use? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Study Characteristics That May Bias Mortality Risk Estimates,” Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs 85/4 (July 2024): 441-452.

20  Testament of Judah 14:7-8, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:799.

21  Philo of Alexandria, On Noah's Work as a Planter 39 §162, in Loeb Classical Library 247:297.

22  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 58.

23  3 Baruch 4:8-9, in Alexander Kulik, 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (De Gruyter, 2010), 188.

24  Ambrose of Milan, Second Defense of David 3 §18, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:160.

25  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:204-205.

26  Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 56, in Library of Early Christianity 1:117.

27  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 7.2.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:144.

28  Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.2.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:101.

29  Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis 9:20-22, in Luther's Works 2:167.

30  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 79-80.

31  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.17, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:210.

32  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q.150, a.2, in Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 18:433.

33  Matthew Levering, Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 73.

34  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q.149, a.1, ad 2, in Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 18:426.

35  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 91.

36  Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.2 §26, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 23:116.

37  Kent Dunnington, Addiction and Virtue: Beyond the Models of Disease and Choice (IVP Academic, 2011), 54-55; Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 90-98.

38  Joseph H. Heil, letter to William F. Heil, 17 August 1891, in Evangelical Congregational Church Archives.  The larger passage reads as follows: “I am certain if I would have stayed home, I would have gone to ruin.  Whenever I was sober, I would never touch any liquor - that is, if I had to buy it myself.  But you know there is Ammon Andreas, Nelson Roth, Walter Hawk, and many others that came here and had bottles in their pockets.  Then whenever they did offer me a drink, I could not resist it and knew well that they did know my habit, so I was too light-minded that I did not care to resist them.  If I was started, then all resistance was gone.  Then if I had money, then I had no rest until it was all gone.”  In a subsequent letter dated 18 January 1892, Joseph reflects that at one work site, “I got drinking some wine,” and at the next place, “I had wine brought to me mostly every hour, and so by degrees I got to sipping & sipping until I was as far down as ever.”  Elsewhere in his 17 August 1891 later, Joseph claims to have now “lost that habit,” and professes that “I know by the help of God, I can resist every temptation.”  Similarly, in a 2 December 1892 letter, Joseph asserts boldly that “intoxicating drinks don't bother me any more.”  Sadly, this was not to be so. 

39  William F. Heil, letter to Joseph H. Heil, 15 December 1904, in Evangelical Congregational Church Archives.  The larger passage reads as follows: “Whenever I think of the way in which you threw your life away, I feel disappointed, but there is no use in getting angry about it.  It may be true that father was too stern and too open in his method of correcting you, but the fact remains that you were self-willed, thought you knew best, and was inclined to be disobedient.  You might have gone away and done better, but you never had the willingness to stick to anything patiently and make the best of it.  My own experience in trying to help you was exactly as father.  You had chances to do well, you missed them, and you are in your present condition as a result.”  Joseph's reply four days later (19 December 1904) was meek: “Do not worry, I meant no harm.  You are very kind to me.  I am so attached to you that I would run the risk of my own life to save yours.  You may perhaps think it foolish of me to write so, but it is the solid truth.  I have better hopes now.”  Joseph died less than twelve weeks later, on 8 March 1905.

40  Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait, The Poisoned Chalice: Eucharistic Grape Juice and Common-Sense Realism in Victorian Methodism (University of Alabama Press, 2011), 9; Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle, A Natural History of Wine (Yale University Press, 2015), 20.

41  Mark Lawrence Schrad, Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition (Oxford University Press, 2021), 15.

42  Temperance Committee, in Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Annual Session of the East Pennsylvania Conference of the United Evangelical Church (United Evangelical Church, 1919), 92.

43  Temperance Committee, in Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Session of the East Pennsylvania Conference of the United Evangelical Church (United Evangelical Church, 1921), 81.

44  Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 11 §36, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:51.

45  Cyprian of Carthage, Letter 63.3, in Popular Patristics Series 33:174.

46  Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 395.

47  Seth D. Postell, Adam as Israel: Genesis 1-3 as the Introduction to the Torah and Tanakh (Pickwick Publications, 2011), 105.

48  Paul Borgman, Genesis: The Story We Haven't Heard (IVP Academic, 2001), 36.

49  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.141, in Loeb Classical Library 242:69.

50  Michaela Bauks, “Clothing and Nudity in the Noah Story (Gen. 9:18-29),” in Christoph Berner, Manuel Schäfer, Martin Schott, Sarah Schulz, and Martina Weingärtner, eds., Clothing and Nudity in the Hebrew Bible (T&T Clark, 2019), 384.

51  Gideon R. Kotzé, “Looking Again at the Nakedness of Noah,” in Renate M. van Dijk-Coombes, Liana C. Swanepoel, and Gideon R. Kotzé, eds., From Stone Age to Stellenbosch: Studies on the Ancient Near East in Honour of Isak (Sakkie) Cornelius (Zaphon, 2021), 204.

52  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 204.

53  Testament of Judah 14:1-3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:799.

54  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.11, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:206.

55  Robert Dudley, The Drunken Monkey: Why We Drink and Abuse Alcohol (University of California Press, 2014), 91.

56  Testament of Judah 14:3-4, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:799.

57  Testament of Judah 16:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:799.

58  Maria Testa, “Understanding and Preventing Alcohol-Related Sexual Assault,” in David DiLillo, Sarah J. Gervais, and Dennise E. McChargue, eds., Alcohol and Sexual Violence (Springer, 2023), 24-25.

59  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 29.11, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:206.

60  Jerome of Stridon, Homilies on the Psalms 13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 48:94.

61  Leander of Seville, The Training of Nuns 19.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 62:213.

62  Jerome of Stridon, Homilies on the Psalms 13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 48:95.

63  Augustine of Hippo, Answer to Faustus the Manichean 12.23, in Works of Saint Augustine I/20:139.

64  Jerome of Stridon, Homilies on the Psalms 13, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 48:95.

65  Bede, On Genesis 9:21, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:209.

66  Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 1.2 §34, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 23:134.

67  Leander of Seville, The Training of Nuns 19.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 62:213.

68  3 Baruch 4:16 (Greek), in Alexander Kulik, 3 Baruch: Greek-Slavonic Apocalypse of Baruch (De Gruyter, 2010), 188.

69  Leander of Seville, The Training of Nuns 19.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 62:212.

70  Testament of Judah 16:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:799.

71  Leander of Seville, The Training of Nuns 19.9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 62:213.

72  Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, q.149, a.3, in Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 18:428.

73  Matthew Levering, Aquinas's Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 73.

74  Testament of Issachar 7:3, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:804.

75  Augustine of Hippo, The Advantage of Fasting 5 §6, in The Works of Saint Augustine I/10:303.

76  Philo of Alexandria, On Drunkenness 36 §146, in Loeb Classical Library 247:395.

77  Charles H. Talbert, Ephesians and Colossians, Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2007), 129-130.

78  Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 361.21, in The Works of Saint Augustine III/10:239.

79  Philo of Alexandria, On Drunkenness 36 §148, in Loeb Classical Library 247:397.