“Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?”
For it doesn't go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body. (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.) — the anatomical argument: food enters the digestive system, not the heart — the seat of moral reality. The heart is where defilement originates (verse 21); the stomach is not. Mark's parenthetical in saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean is a retrospective theological application of the principle to the dietary laws — the application that Peter will need a vision to grasp (Acts 10) and that will reshape early Christianity's relationship to Gentiles.
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