Dionysius vs. the Crucified: On wine
December 21st, 2011 § Leave a Comment
“Verily, I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:25)—wine clearly appears here as the perfect and concrete emblem of the beauty of creation and the joy of dwelling at peace in the midst of others: not the wine of Dionysus, which makes fellowship impossible, promising only intoxication,… anonymity, and violence, but the wine of the wedding feast of Cana, or of the wedding feast of the Lamb. The wine of Dionysus is no doubt the coarsest vintage, intended to blind with drunkenness…the wine repeatedly associated with madness, anthropophagy (cannibalism), slaughter, warfare, and rapine. The wine of Scripture on the other hand, is first and foremost a divine blessing and image of God’s bounty (Gen. 27:28; Duet. 7:13) and an appropriate thank offering by which to declare Israel’s love for God (Ex. 29.40); it is the wine that cheers the hearts of men (Ps. 104.15); the sign of God’s renewed covenant with his people (Is. 55:1-3); the drink of lovers (Song 5.1) and the very symbol of love (7.2, 9), whose absence is the eventide of all joy (Isaiah 24:11); it is moreover the wine of agape and the feast of fellowship, in which Christ first vouchsafed a sign of his divinity, in a place of rejoicing, at Cana—a wine of the highest quality—when the kingdom showed itself “out of season” (John 2:3-10).
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite, 107-108
