The Bible clearly says Jesus drank wine. But was that wine actually alcoholic, or was it more like grape juice?
In this episode of Practical Apologetics, we look at what Scripture says about wine, the wedding at Cana, the difference between drunkenness and drinking, and the common claim that biblical wine was nonalcoholic.
We also trace how the nineteenth-century temperance movement helped popularize the idea of “two wines” in Scripture and how that belief became a piece of Christian folk theology still repeated today.
This episode is not an argument that Christians should drink alcohol. It is an argument that we should practice exegesis rather than eisegesis and let Scripture say what it actually says.
Scripture discussed:
John 2:1–11
Luke 7:33–34
Ephesians 5:18
1 Timothy 5:23
Psalm 104:14–15
Proverbs 20:1
Proverbs 23:29–35
Sources:
John Anthony Dunne, The Mountains Shall Drip Sweet Wine: A Biblical Theology of Alcohol
Christopher C. H. Cook, Alcohol, Addiction and Christian Ethics
John L. Merrill, “The Bible and the American Temperance Movement: Text, Context, and Pretext,” Harvard Theological Review
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