Well folks, I’m both sorry and happy to say it: There’s good news and there’s bad news. That glass of red wine you’ve been drinking for its supposed health benefits? Well, turns out, it’s both half full and half empty. Oh, and – here on Good Friday, a good-news-bad-news kind of holiday if ever there was one – that Anselmian substitutionary theory of atonement you’ve been counting on all these years? Yeah, that too may have a hole or two.
But first, the booze.
A new study, here reviews over 40 years worth of research into the health effects of human alcohol consumption. It conclusively shows that moderate drinking protects you from… not a goddamn thing. Sorry to be so blunt. But there you have it. How in the hell could we have got it so wrong for so long? Well, it’s worth reading the review. It points out for starters that much of this research was funded by the brewing/distilling industry.
But beyond that, in a methodological nutshell: Many people in many studies who were teetotalers for other-than-religious reasons are people who had to give up drinking because of non-alcohol-related health concerns. For example: A guy getting chemo for prostate cancer quits drinking because it interferes with the drugs he’s taking to treat his condition. I don’t have to tell you this poor fellow is more at risk of dying than the guy without cancer. So the folks in the extreme no-alcohol end of the drinking distribution fare more poorly health-wise over the long haul right alongside the heavy drinkers, who of course tend to die more often because of liver cirrhosis and traffic accidents.
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It turns out that moderate drinkers tend to be moderate about a whole range of activities: Everything from diet and exercise to their non-type-A approach to love, work, and recreation. Being driven to extremes is bad for you in all kinds of different ways, while moderation’s inherently protective all across the board. One or two glasses of wine with dinner only appears to prevent heart attacks and strokes. It’s actually NOT the antioxidants in fermented-fruit-of-the-vine that makes this so. But rather, it’s because moderate drinking is associated with being wealthier, less obese, and having better dental care. That’s right, you heard me: The Wonders of Modern Dentistry.
So anyway, I guess you can see all this in one of a couple of ways. One way, the half-empty way, is to say, “Aww hell, I shoulda had a V-8 (with vodka). And while you’re at it, pour me another.” The other way, the half-full way, is to say, “Hey, moderation’s a great way to live. I think I’ll stick with it.” Whichever way you choose is entirely up to you. As for me? Well, pour me a glass of that Pinot Noir. But only one, and make it a small one. Thanks.
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Alright, who was Anselm, what is “atonement,” and what exactly is being substituted for what here on Good Friday? In a nutshell: Anselm was a monk in the Middle Ages whose ideas about the significance and mechanism of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross were later picked up and popularized by the great Catholic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. Atonement? That’s how sins get cancelled, and how debts end up paid-in-full, making God and man “at one.” And “substitutionary?” Aye, therein lies the rub, as Shakespeare once famously said.
Anselm held that the death of the God-human (Christ) on the cross was the only rationally intelligible way in which sinful humankind could be reconciled with God. Atonement is made possible through Christ, by whose infinite merits humanity is purified in an act of cooperative satisfaction of a perfect (also angry) God. For Anselm, satisfaction functions as an alternative to punishment….”
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Much MUCH more is available at Wikipedia, here. The holes I mentioned before? Well, it has to do with the “God-being-pissed-off” part. At the root of it lies the inherent contradiction of “theodicy,” defined in the Oxford dictionary as “the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.” To boil it down: An all-good God who is also all-powerful can only allow evil to exist in a world in which He is either a) not all-good, or b) not all-powerful. Anything less compromises one or more of the three basic terms of our initial proposition about how divinity and humanity are related.
So, substitutionary atonement is a kind of theological loophole that allows us to maintain the basic Trinity of terminology above by having God come down from heaven to take on particular human historical form (Jesus of Nazareth), pay the price of sin Himself by sacrificially dying on Calvary’s cross, thereby satisfying all divine power/goodness requirements with a kind of cosmic switcheroo. I won’t even get into Occam’s Razor (the philosophical principle which states that the simplest explanation is usually the best one) because Anselmian logic is so convoluted – not to say counter-intuitive, ahem – well, let’s just say that thinking about it too long or too hard might just drive some folks to drink. And if there is one thing we know for sure after the last 40 years of research it’s that drinking too much is definitely bad for you. My guess, it’s probably not good for God either, but that’s just a guess.
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Anyway, that’s all the good and bad news I can abide for one day: Happy Good Friday, y’all! You know, when you think about it for even half a second, that’s the kind of double-talk (Say WHAT? Happy Crucifixion Day? What part of that, exactly, is “good” – at least for those of us not into Anselmian S&M?) that might make a medieval monk blush. Except of course for good old Martin Luther: “Sin on boldly!” Yep. He really did say that. I kid you not.
