Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 5) - XLI - Treatise of Novatian 'On the Jewish meats'

Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol 5) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'On the Jewish meats'.

My summary
Today we read a short treatise from Novatian on Jewish food laws.

Novatian teaches us:
(i) that the law is spiritual and so must be understood spiritually, including food laws;
(ii) that to reject God's creation as unclean is to reject God;
(iii) that the food laws were given to Jews to restrain them in service to God;
(iv) that the end of the law has come in Christ;
(v) that restraint in eating is still advised;
(vi) that food offered to idols is to be avoided.

What grabbed me
Some good material in today's work, but also some strange ideas. 

Most of the weird teaching came in Novatian's attempts to spiritualise the law. 

For example: 'Thus in the animals, by the law, as it were, a certain mirror of human life is established, wherein men may consider the images of penalties; so that everything which is vicious in men, as committed against nature, may be the more condemned, when even those things, although naturally ordained in brutes, are in them blamed. For that in fishes the roughness of scales is regarded as constituting their cleanness; rough, and rugged, and unpolished, and substantial, and grave manners are approved in men; while those that are without scales are unclean; because trifling, and fickle, and faithless, and effeminate manners are disapproved. Moreover, what does the law mean when it says, "Thou shalt not eat the camel?"—except that by the example of that animal it condemns a life nerveless and crooked with crimes. Or when it forbids the swine to be taken for food? It assuredly reproves a life filthy and dirty, and delighting in the garbage of vice, placing its supreme good not in generosity of mind, but in the flesh alone. Or when it forbids the hare? It rebukes men deformed into women. And who would use the body of the weasel for food? But in this case it reproves theft. Who would eat the lizard? But it hates an aimless waywardness of life. Who the eft? But it execrates mental stains. Who would eat the hawk, who the kite, who the eagle? But it hates plunderers and violent people who live by crime. Who the vulture? But it holds accursed those who seek for booty by the death of others.  Or who the raven? But it holds accused crafty wills.  Moreover, when it forbids the sparrow, it condemns intemperance; when the owl, it hates those who fly from the light of truth; when the swan, the proud with high neck; when the sea-mew, too talkative an intemperance of tongue; when the bat, those who seek the darkness of night as well as of error. These things, then, and the like to these, the law holds accursed in animals, which in them indeed are not blameworthy, because they are born in this condition; in man they are blamed, because they are sought for contrary to his nature, not by his creation, but by his error.'

Someone is trying too hard to read between the lines.

Next week's reading
Commence the Appendix by reading 'Acts and records of the famous controversy about the baptism of heretics' and the 'Anonymous treatise against the heretic Novatian'.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.