The Banquet of the Kingdom of God

"Man is what he eats."

With this statement the German materialistic philosopher Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all "idealistic" speculations about human nature. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of man. For long before Feuerbach the same definition of man was given by the Bible. In the biblical story of creation man is presented, first of all, as a hungry being, and the whole world as his food. Second only to the direction to propagate and have dominion over the earth, according to the author of the first chapter of Genesis, is God's instruction to men to eat of the earth: "Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed... and every tree, which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat..."

Man must eat in orer to live; he must take the world into his body and transform it into himself, into flesh and blood. He is indeed that which he eats, and the whole world is presented as one all-embracing banquet table for man. And this image of the banquet remains, throughout the whole Bible, the central image of life. It is the image of life at its cretaion and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: "...that you eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom."

- Fr Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World