"Man is what he eats." With this statement the German materialistic philosopher Feuebach 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 Feuebach 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 auther of the first chapter of the Genesis, is God's instruction to men to eat of the earth...Man must eat in order to live; he must take to 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 that banqueting 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 creation and also the image of life at its end and fulfillment: "...that you eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom."
From one of my favourite books, "For the Life of the World," by Alexander Schmemman
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