St. Methodius of Olympus: The Vegan Life is Pure and Righteous. By Dr Chapman Chen

Saint Methodius of Olympus (?- 311 AD) praises veganism for its purity and condemns anti-vegans for animal abuse, for grounding their pleasure in animals’ suffering, and for opposing Christ, virtue, and true spirituality. (As Methodius condemns animal abuse, what he calls “vegetarian” translates to “vegan” in modern terms.)

In his lost work De Cibis, preserved by Epiphanius (Panarion 64.3), he boldly states:-

“If the vegetarian life is pure and free from wrongdoing, and not thought unrighteous (since we can live on the fruit of the earth), we do not act at all justly, since of old we have done injury to those creatures by slaughtering them for our pleasure. Nor was it enough for us to take our ease at their expense, and enjoy their labours, but after so much service we take them to be slaughtered, and make their harm our pleasure.” (De Cibis VII.2) https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Methodius-De_Cibis_20151.pdf

And also,

“…the blood and ashes of the heifer… were not what was awaited, but the Lord Christ.” (De Cibis IX.1)

In Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Methodius contrasts the lust of the flesh (ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκὸς), which includes incontinence, luxury, and greediness of the belly, with the desire of the soul:-

“For there are two motions in us, the lust of the flesh and that of the soul, differing from each other, Galatians 5:17, whence they have received two names, that of virtue and that of vice. And we ought to obey the most noble and most useful leading of virtue, choosing the best in preference to the base.” (Banquet, Discourse 8, ch. 17) https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/062308.htm

Methodius of Olympus was an early Greek-speaking Eastern Christian bishop, who operated within the eastern Mediterranean intellectual world in the late 3rd–early 4th century. He is best known as one of the last major Christian Platonists before Nicaea, a sharp critic of Origen, a leading ascetic theologian who strongly emphasised purity and bodily discipline, and an early Church Father opposed to flesh-eating. According to St. Jerome (On Illustrious Men, Ch. 83), Methodius suffered martyrdom at Chalcis at the end of the newest persecution, i.e., under Diocletian.

Full Text: https://www.vegantheology.net/post/st-methodius-of-olympus-the-vegan-life-is-pure-and-righteous-by-dr-chapman-chen