Taste and see that the Lord is Good

On a wintry evening during my sophomore year of high school, I sat in an armchair reading as I waited for Mom to pick me up from my piano lesson. As my eyes glazed over selections from Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles due for class the next day, one paragraph leapt off the page and fixed my attention. Aquinas claimed that there would be no food or feasting in eternity. To someone who had relished preparing and sharing food from a young age, the concept of paradise without eating sounded paradoxical.

Five years later, Aquinas’ argument prompted me to begin the exegetical project that became my undergraduate thesis. In his work, Aquinas argues for a physical view of food in this life that represents a later spiritual reality; our current reliance on food is a weak reflection of our dependence on God, and the pleasure we take in eating feebly reflects the pleasure we take in Christ. As I began my research and considered the angles from which I could approach the project, I decided to examine the nature of food in the Old and New Covenants to determine what we ought to believe about life in the New Heavens and New Earth. Ultimately, my thesis seeks to affirm the enduring value of food as communion in God’s relationship with man, both now and in eternity. But rather than casting out Aquinas’ claim entirely, I argue that his view as halfway there: we should view our bodies in light of the New Heavens and Earth in which God will make all things new—a reality that is both physical and spiritual, given to us by God, that we will experience with all our senses (including taste).

If Jesus had not become a physical man, then my thesis would be a wasted project.

In my thesis, I outline the role of food in Scripture from the beginning of time: God places the first man in a garden laden with fruit. The man, however, unlawfully eats from the one forbidden tree. In so doing, he argues that he can live by bread alone, rejecting the word of God and breaking fellowship with Him. The pride of the first sin lies in the fact that Adam and Eve had communion with God but, in their eating, declared that they did not need or want it. Their primary desire was “to be like God,” not to trust Him. From Genesis 3:15 onward, God in His kindness gradually unfurls His plan to restore the fellowship Adam destroyed, by making covenants with His people—covenants in which food is not only a symbol but also a means of communion between God and man. In Exodus 19, God summons Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel to ascend Mount Sinai, see God, and feast in His presence. The meal is a confirmation of the covenant God has just made with Moses, detailing how Israel should reconcile herself to God and walk in His ways. Later, in the Deuteronomic blessings, we see that abundant produce and the presence of God go hand-in-hand; an indication of God’s favor upon His people is homes full of children and good food. We hunger, are sated, and delight in food as in our Father. He invites us into His holy presence to commune with Him. We die without food, and we die without the Bread which comes down from heaven.

At the center of this truth is the incarnation: Jesus, the Son of God, came to earth as a man. He broke bread with the outcast and lowly, resisted Satan’s temptation to turn stone into bread in the wilderness, fed the 5,000, and instituted Communion as His memorial—much of His ministry revolved around eating. The Lord’s Supper is the thanksgiving memorial of Christ’s death on the cross, which speaks to our current state and looks forward to when we, the Church, will eat and drink anew with Him in His Father’s kingdom. The Eucharist demonstrates the “already but not yet” aspect of our redeemed state in a fallen world, awaiting its reconstruction.

If Jesus had not become a physical man, then my thesis would be a wasted project. Had Christ not physically ascended to the Father, the Eucharist would be merely a remembrance with no forward-looking dimension. If we did not anticipate the return of Christ to judge and to reign, then Communion would be limited to thanksgiving for the past work of Christ—but to what aim? Christ did not hang nailed on the cross, bleeding and broken for Adam’s sin, so we might float as spirits with Him in heaven eternally. The wounded hands and feet of the Jesus who met the disciples on the road to Emmaus bore testimony to His defeat of death. He returned in glory, breathing flesh and bone. While the disciples did not immediately recognize Him, they certainly did not mistake Him for a ghost. Rather, they knew Him as Lord when they saw Him sit down to break bread and eat with them, actions characteristic of Jesus of Nazareth. “Now it came to pass, as He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.”

Therefore, we may believe, consistent with the Scriptures, that, as the New Earth continues to blossom and bear fruit, food will remain in eternity as a demonstration of God’s love to us and as a means of communion with Him.

When we consider man’s fall, his hope in a Redeemer, and the work of that Redeemer, we cannot ignore the role of food in the story. Adam eats sinfully; God’s people slaughter and eat animals to cover their iniquities; God blesses His people with food and curses them with famine; Jesus represents Himself in a meal and dines with the undesirable; and the Scriptures point to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb as the culmination of human history, when man at last will enjoy perfectly restored fellowship with God and feast with Him in eternity. In taking on human flesh, Jesus has eternally embraced the physicality of creation; in the final Resurrection, Jesus will bring heaven to earth. He is Immanuel, God with us. This is the very God-man who ate in His resurrected body to commune with His disciples. In Him, God and man are joined together—the ultimate marriage of heaven and earth. And we anticipate the reborn world to be like the old world in that it is an expression—though perfected—of God’s good pleasure. He made creation to delight Himself, and, as Psalm 8 says, He has given man dominion over creation. Therefore, we may believe, consistent with the Scriptures, that, as the New Earth continues to blossom and bear fruit, food will remain in eternity as a demonstration of God’s love to us and as a means of communion with Him.

I thank Aquinas for his article, which stirred me to a deeper contemplation of the significance of the incarnation. And I look forward to passing him the potatoes at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

<sub>1. Leonard J. Vander Zee, Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 155.
2. Luke 24:30-31 (NKJV)</sub>