1 Corinthians 9:27

*Asceticism* — from the Greek askēsis, training — is the practice of bodily and spiritual discipline through restraint. Paul's verb I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection uses athletic-training imagery: the body's appetites brought under the control of the will so that they do not betray the work of the gospel. The concept runs through scripture under different names. In the Old Testament, the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6) regulates abstinence from wine, grapes, and contact with the dead. Daniel and his three companions refuse the king's food (Daniel 1). John the Baptist eats locusts and wild honey in the wilderness (Matthew 3:4). Anna the prophetess fasts in the temple day and night (Luke 2:37). Jesus fasts forty days at the start of his ministry and teaches a quiet pattern for fasting in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:16-18). The Bible does not endorse asceticism as a path to salvation — Paul rebukes the Colossian gnostics for touch not, taste not, handle not austerities that have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh (Colossians 2:21-23). But the New Testament treats disciplined restraint as a tool for the life of faith: prayer with fasting, simplicity for the sake of others, bodily training that serves the spiritual. The later monastic tradition — from Antony of the Desert in the third century through the Benedictines, Cistercians, and Trappists — read these passages as a mandate for institutional ascetic life. The Reformers tempered the institutional version but kept the practice: Luther fasted; Calvin's Geneva expected ordered restraint of the appetites; the Puritan fast-days are direct descendants. In popular usage abstinence often refers specifically to refraining from alcohol or sexual activity; asceticism is the broader and older category that contains it.

• Numbers 6
• Daniel 1
• Matthew 6
• Colossians 2