NOTES for Rom 14:14

In Yahwism, as in Judaism, the concepts of purity and impurity were key in religious life. At first glance it may seem that these were purely ritual restrictions, partly borrowed from the pagan world. But this is still not quite so. The concepts of purity and impurity were connected with ideas about life and the human person that were characteristic already of pre-exilic Yahwism and that later became usual for Judaism as well. The Bible describes the human person as a twofold, spiritual-natural being.

God "breathes" into the person "in the nostrils," as the Hebrew text says, that breath of life which makes him human. And human life itself is a stream that includes both a spiritual and a natural component. God's breath of life comes into contact with nature in it, penetrating it and changing its quality. This stream of life is called by the Hebrew word usually translated into Russian as "soul."

Naturally, the intensity and quality of this life-stream can be different. In the world and in human life there is something that clogs its channel and slows its flow; this is called in biblical language impurity or defilement. First of all, of course, the consequences of committed sin defile a person. But in pre-Christian times there were also other things in the world that could defile a person, leading to the shallowing and exhaustion of the stream of his life.

Everything that has to do with death, decay, entropy, everything of this kind reduced the measure of the fullness of a person's life and lowered its quality. And in such a state, a meeting with God became problematic for a person, or even altogether impossible: in order to meet Him, to experience the reality of His presence in the place He Himself had chosen, one already had to possess a certain minimum of fullness and intensity of one's own existence.

In Sheol, in the realm of the dead, God is not praised because His presence does not reveal itself there: the existence led there by the dead is minimal existence, when the stream of life has almost completely dried up. Before the coming of Christ all this had to be taken into account. But with Christ the Kingdom also entered the world with all its fullness of life, previously unseen and unknown.

Now everyone who lives this life no longer needs to fear that some processes in the untransfigured world will prevent him from living the fullness of the life of the Kingdom. Now only a person's own sin can hinder him. And, of course, the fear of impurity: fear often creates its own object. Whoever still fears the impurity of the fallen world will inevitably encounter its effect on himself. The rest, who have chosen Christ and the Kingdom, need not worry on this account, for the breath of the Kingdom is stronger than any destructive forces of this world.