In any case, mixture notwithstanding, the drink was capable of rendering the person who drank too much of it inebriated and there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that one had really to devote himself to drinking wine in order to get drunk. I hardly know how to respond to Mr. MacArthur. At one point in his lecture, Pastor MacArthur may have given himself away. There, I think, is the problem. And that conviction, deeply held as it is in his mind and heart, has made it much more difficult for him to face the facts.
Wine is wine.
It was largely the same drink then as it is today. It is a drink that the Bible celebrates in many ways, as we shall see, but it is a gift of God, like all of his gifts, that man can sinfully abuse. With the best will in the world, and with my respect for Mr. MacArthur's ministry still very much intact, I tell you, his effort to distinguish between the largely unintoxicating wine of the ANE and Greco-Roman world and what is called wine today must be considered a failure. And, most teetotalers among Christian scholars accept that fact and argue for total abstinence on completely different grounds. Here then is our first point.