Officia recusati pabuli -
avoidance of meat and wine
The asceticism advocated by the
New Prophets seems to have included refusal of particular foods, not just
temporarily but altogether. Much of On Fasting has Tertullian defending refusal
of meat and wine, in particular, against attacks from the psychics, who
apparently had no such bans except during major fasts and emphasized individual
discretion once again in their application.
Although Tertullian provides
general rationales against meat and wine, he also contrasts at least the theory
supporting his version of Christian practice with forms of absolute exclusions
among followers of Marcion and Tatian. Yet the only counter-example he offers
to illustrate the distinctive approach of the New Prophecy is that of the
temporary nature of xerophagies, which might well have included avoidance of
meat and wine but was more specific. Tertullian never returns to address the
accusation that the adherents of the New Prophecy will not eat or drink
anything at all with vinositas (1.4). His argument thus seems primarily
to be that there is a difference between avoiding foods to reject the Creator
(as the Marcionites were seen to do) and doing so to render him honour (15.4).
A similar idea was expressed in his earlier work On the Apparel of Women, where
complete abstinence from meat and wine are also praised, if for the right
reasons (II.9.7).
Later in On Fasting, Tertullian
indicates that at least a temporary bread and water diet was practiced by some
among the psychici also (13.1). The actual practices characteristic of
his allies were thus not necessarily unique to them, even if their extent may
have been distinctive. Rather, the impetus given by the New Prophecy seems
likely to have catalysed existing ascetic patterns and harnessed them in the service
of the movement. What was controversial was not the practices themselves but
their application: whether individual, voluntary, and temporary, or permanent, communal,
and general. (Andrew McGowan, “Tertullian on Fasting: Asceticism and the New
Prophecy in Carthage,” in Montanism in the Roman World: The New Prophecy
Movement from Historical, Sociological, and Ecclesiological Perspectives.
Festschrift for William Tabbernee on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday, ed.
Peter Lampe and Heidrun E. Mader [Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus/Studien
zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments 132; Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024], 104)
