Can Christians eat black pudding?
Image via Wikipedia To the uninitiated in the mysteries of Scottish haute cuisine, it should perhaps be said that black pudding is not haggis! It is a sausage made of blood and suet, sometimes with flour or meal. It seems a trivial question. Why the vigorous debate? Because, of course, of the Old Testament ’s regulations about eating blood (Lev. 17:10ff). Although (as far as I am aware) no theological dictionary contains an entry under B for “The Black Pudding Controversy,” this unusual discussion raised some most basic hermeneutical and theological issues: How is the Old Testament related to the New? How is the Law of Moses related to the gospel of Jesus Christ ? How should a Christian exercise freedom in Christ? The Council of Jerusalem , described in Acts 15, sought to answer such practical questions faced by the early Christians as they wrestled with how to enjoy freedom from the Mosaic administration without becoming stumbling blocks to Jewish people. These were ques