But food commends us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse.
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
“Neither shall we have any abundance if we do eat, nor shall we suffer any loss if we do not eat.” That is to say: neither will the former make me rich, nor will the latter make me poor.
The natural use of food is then indifferent. "For neither if we eat are we the better "it is said, "nor if we eat not are we the worse.".
For it is not in the food of the belly, that we have heard good to be situated. But he has heard that "meat will not commend us"
But meat commendeth us not to God. The eating of idol sacrifices or of any other food is in itself no help towards piety, which makes us acceptable to God. Therefore, we that are string ought not, under the pretext of piety, to wish to use all things as alike indifferent. The Apostle here turns to the more advanced, and warns them to avoid giving offence to the weak.
It is foolish, therefore, as well as wrong, for heretics to wrest this passage into as argument against the choice of food and the fasts of the Church. Food, indeed, does not commend us to God, for it is not a virtue; but abstinence from forbidden food is an act of temperance, obedience, and religion, and does therefore commend us to God, as it commended Daniel and his companions, the Rechabites, John Baptist, and others. Cf. notes to Romans 14:17.
For neither if we eat are we the better. If we eat of idol offerings, we do not on that account abound the more in virtue, merit, and grace, which commend us before God, and ...
Meat doth not commend us to God. It is an admonition to those, who because they knew that meats offered to idols were not worse, would not abstain, even when this scandalized the weak brethren: he tells them that eating or not eating of them, does not make them more acceptable to God, nor puts them to any inconvenience, since they may get other meats: therefore they ought not to make use of their liberty, when it proves a stumbling-block to the weak, and makes them sin. (Witham)
Food by itself is neither here nor there. But as he goes on, Paul reveals all the harm which might arise from eating meat which had been sacrificed to idols.
9. But meat does not commend us to God. For neither if we eat are we the better, nor if we eat not are we the worse. Do you see how again he takes down their high spirit? In that, after saying that not only they but all of us have knowledge, and that no one knows any thing as he ought to know, and that knowledge puffs up; then having soothed them, and said that this knowledge is not in all, and that weakness is the cause of these being defiled, in order that they might not say, And what is it to us, if knowledge be not in all? Why then has not such an one knowledge? Why is he weak?— I say, in order that they might not rejoin in these terms, he did not proceed immediately to point out clearly that for fear of the other's harm one ought to abstain: but having first made but a sort of skirmish upon mention of him, he points out what is more than this. What then is this? That although no one were injured nor any perversion of another ensued, not even in this case were it right so to do. Fo...
