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And so it went through the centuries. There were those who forbade all alcohol, but these seemed to be in the minority. Augustine of Hippo noted in Confessions, (Book 6, Chapter 2), that his mother's bishop forbade alcohol "even to those who would use it in moderation, lest thereby it might be an occasion of gluttony for those who were already drunken (and also because these funereal memorials were very much like some of the superstitious practices of the pagans)." But he also personally acknowledged wine's beneficial qualities.

The Protestant Reformers had little qualms with alcohol as well, as Dave Armstrong discusses in his Web page Alcohol: Biblical and Catholic Teaching. Martin Luther even converted part of his monastery into a brewery. And in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (4:13:4), John Calvin wrote, "If you vow abstinence from wine, as if there were any holiness in so doing, you are superstitious; but if you have some end in view which is not perverse, no one can disapprove.

"But, as is widely known, evangelical Christians led the charge against drink in the nineteenth century. Evangelist Billy Sunday railed against booze as fervently as he preached salvation. What caused the change? It's a topic historian Mark A. Noll addressed in a January 19, 1979 Christianity Today editorial we are reprinting today at ChristianityToday.com.

More recently, pastors and professors have echoed the pre-Prohibition theologians. The winner of the best-designed Web page on Christians and alcohol goes to Antithesis.com, which has reprinted Jim West's article on the subject, "What Would Jesus Drink?" It originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of Tabletalk, the monthly magazine of Ligonier Ministries and R.C. Sproul. West looks at the role wine played in Christ's ministry and passion, concluding that Jesus did not happen to drink wine. It is "God's special drink."

If West's is the best-looking online article on the topic, the one by Daniel B. Wallace, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, is the most quoted. His site, part of The Biblical Studies Foundation site, hasn't really been updated since 1997, but it's an excellent overview what the Bible says on the subject:

The general contours of biblical teaching are that wine is a blessing from the Lord, something to be enjoyed. But like any good gift from God, it can be abused: in this case, abuse involves addiction and drunkenness. But whenever we condemn others who are able to enjoy God's good gifts in moderation as though they were abusers, we misrepresent biblical Christianity. At bottom, it seems that biblical Christianity has a much different face than what much of modern Christianity wears. In many respects, we resemble more the ancient Pharisees than the Lord's disciples.

Ray Pritchard, pastor of Calvary Memorial Church in Oak Park, Illinois, takes an approach very similar to that of J. Lawrence Burkholder and Christianity Today: voluntary abstinence. Careful to distinguish his encouragement from a mandate, Pritchard argues that the dangers of using alcohol far outweigh any potential benefits.

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April (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44