Questions Concerning Clean and Unclean Creatures

The following questions and answers deal with God’s instructions to us concerning clean and unclean creatures. One thing to understand here is that in the beginning it was never God’s design that anything, including animals, should die. According to Genesis 1:29-30, the original diet for mankind was simple and plant-based. It wasn’t until around the Flood when God instructed man to eat certain types of meat that were considered clean and fit for food because the waters wiped out all the vegetation (Genesis 7:2-3; 9:1-3). Later, God reminded His people of the difference between the clean and the unclean by having Moses write it in the book of the Law (see, Leviticus 11; Deuteronomy 14).

Please keep in mind however that, just as the instructions concerning divorce were only given “because of the hardness of [our] hearts” and “from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:7-8), these instructions concerning meat-eating were added accommodations as well. With that said, the questions and answers in this section are not so much about vegetarianism, but whether or not the New Covenant cancels the distinction between clean and unclean creatures. We will answer the claim that the Law of God is arbitrary and that the death of Jesus somehow changed the DNA of the creatures that are unclean (unfit to eat/never designed as food) into something clean (fit to eat/now considered food).