Remarriage Issue

Reading through just some of the Bible has gotten many people into a whole lot of trouble . Reading through just some of a thread before posting a reply can make people look rather foolish, especially if that thread is a continuation of another thread that one knows nothing about .

 

Wrong! That is precisely where we do NOT agree!

 

More than a page later you have not bowed out (I really didn't expect you to). But neither did you answer the points I raised in my post immediately before this quote of yours (page 6).
I do not believe God has ever condoned either divorce or remarriage. I gave Scriptural reasons why. Can you refute them?
DHK

 

Wrong! That is precisely where we do NOT agree! </font>[/QUOTE]So you think marriage is disposable??? Something that can be thrown away?? Something that doesn't matter whether or not you stay in it??? You think it doesn't matter whether someone gets divorced or not??

Because if you don't agree with me on marriage, then you have to agree with all of those things. And I don't think you do. I think you agree with me about the seriousness and permanence of marriage. I think we disagree on how to handle certain issues when sin enters a relationship.

In the end, liberal and licentious certainly doesn't describe my teaching on divorce and remarriage. I believe God intended one man and one woman for one lifetime, until death parts them. I believe that is always God's best.

 

I know ... these "one more comments" always get me. I hate it when something very simple gets slighted or twisted a bit. Hey, at least these are not as long as the other one's were.

Yes ... of course.

I suppose these are the questions.

No. No one here argued that he condoned it. But he did permit it and people in polygamous marriages were considered "right with God" (i.e., David, Jacob, etc.) And I think we must agree that if remarriage after divroce is adulterous, then certain polygamy is. For Craig, God's solution to the polygamy problem does not appear to be "divorce" or "abstain." Why would it be to the remarriage problem? There is no biblical basis on which to assert that a married couple should get divorced or abstain within marriage, or to separate with permanence. All are explicit sins in Scripture.

Sure it does. The Bible tells us those things were written for our instruction (1 Cor 10; Rom 15). But even at that, I did not take any illustrations from teh OT. I pointed out that the OT refutes your position with clarity.

I agree. That was never the issue.

I haven't done this. What i have shown quite clearly is that God gave provisions for divorce and remarriage. I did not apply those provisions to today. You are still completely missing the point of why I invoked those. Any attempt to scripturally address the divorce remarriage issue without dealing with the teaching and implication of the Law is inadequate.

As I have pointed out, Ezra is an explicit refutation, from which your only escape is saying that divorce is not really divorce. "Putting away" is divorce, and you cannot simply redefine it.

But not in all cases, as I already pointed out.

In the end, we disagree about the meaning of the text. Given your understanding of the text, your position is clear. I do not believe that your understanding is adequate. I think it is extremely selective in its approach and for me, I cannot in good conscience subscribe to it. That's fine ... It really is. Good men differ on this subject. Just don't accuse those of us on the other side of some sinister disrespect for God's word or marriage. Most of us do not have that ... I know I certainly do not.

 

WRONG AGAIN!!!

If the first marriage is permanent, a second "marriage" while both of the original parties are still alive CAN NOT be anything other than an adulterous affair, and ending an adulterous affair is NOT a sin. You, however, have consistently argued than a second marriage is a true marriage that should not be ended, so you either believe in polygamy, or you do not believe that the first marriage is permanent. There is a HUGE difference between believing that God INTENEDED for it to be permanent, and believing that it IS permanent.

You seem to want others to believe that your belief is similar to mine because mine is the Scriptural belief. But your belief is VERY DIFFERENT from mine because my belief is the Scriptural belief, and your belief is radically different from the Scriptural belief, calling repentance a “second sin,” teaching that Jesus was mistaken in saying that there is only one ground for divorce, etc.

 

Larry,

On page 6 of this thread, you made a commitment. I see that we are now on page 8 and that you have repeatedly broken your commitment. Now I understand why the commitment of marriage means so little to you—it is just another of those commitments that are to be broken if they become inconvenient or if a better opportunity comes along. I know that you will probably argue that the commitment in marriage is a somewhat more important commitment than making a commitment to other Christians on a message board, but the bottom line is that a commitment is a commitment—one either keeps his word, or he doesn’t.

Are you going to break your commitment yet another time to argue against this post?

 

And therein lies your error. The Scripture gives numerous examples of the fact that a marriage can be dissolved. In fact, Christ's very words assume that it can be. If it couldn't, then it was absurd to tell them not to dissolve it. Why tell someone not to do something that they cannot do anyway????

Right ... and Scripture teaches the former; you teach the latter.

Both arrogant and presumptive. Your belief contradicts the Scriptures at several clear points. So while your position can be sustained, it is not beyond dispute, nor is it as clear as you pretend.

A statement of intent is far different than a commitment. It is absurd on your part to equate a statement that I was intending to bow out with a commitment of marriage. Can you really not do any better than that???

Why do you say that commitment of marriage means little to me??? You know that is not true. I believe that marriage is the same commitment you do ... for one's whole life. Where we disagree is what happens when someone decides to break that commitment. This type of argumentation is laughable. If you cannot see through the simplicity of your equation here, then ... well, I don't know what to say to that.

I did not call repentance a second sin. You know better. That was a very weak attempt to prejudice to conversation ... and you pretend to be an academic. You should know better.

Neither did I teach that Jesus was mistaken. You know better than that. You are the one who said it was a scribal gloss.

My statement of intention to bow out is not nearly a marriage commitment. You are really desparate to go after that. I can understand why you want me to stop ... your arguments are simply too easy to pass up. You have yet to mount a serious sustained argumentation against the facts of Scripture to support your point. And if I would shut up, no one would be questioning you on it.

I have greatly shortened my posts and quit responding to a lot of the stuff that was being said. But you really do make it easy with these types of posts. I don't even have to think hard to answer them. At least before, it took some thought to respond.

Don't equate my statement of intention with a commitment of marriage.

Don't pretend that I take marriage any less seriously than God does, becuase that is clearly not the case. All you need to do to know that is read what I have said or come and listen to me preach about it.

In the end, you simply do not have solid arguments from Scripture to support your position. You have overlooked way too many passages becuase they are too inconvenient. You have resorted to distorting my position as (I hope) a last resort. I wish you wouldn't have done that.

 

A man to his wife, “I didn’t promise to love you till death do us part; I only stated my intention to do so. But you exasperate me so much, I have changed my mind. We’re getting a divorce!"

Nice try, Larry!

 

Whoops! Is this another doctoral dissertation! I thought this was a debate on the BB.

 

Scribal gloss = a mistake that Jesus made. One of us must be hitting that bottle a little too hard, and I don’t drink!

 

Apparently you have torn some pages out of your Bible! If you were to buy a new one, you would find in it these verses:

Mark 10:11. And He *said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her;
12. and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery."

Luke 16:18. "Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries one who is divorced from a husband commits adultery.

Rom. 7:3. So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.

1 Cor. 7:10. But to the married I give instructions, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband
11. (but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband), and that the husband should not divorce his wife.

(NASB, 1995)

 

Good one Craig. The fact remains that you have made ridiculous analogies (accusing me a statement fo intention about a thread on the BB with a marriage commitment ... even you can see through that one ... you should be laughing your head off).

You accused me of calling repentance a sin, something you know I did not do, and if you are as academic as you say, you should have known better than to try to argue on false grounds.

You are now apparently saying that Jesus made mistakes, something that no one here should grant. It doesn't take drink to figure out that statement is misguided.

And on top of that, you are still refusing to use all of Scripture. I agree with every verse you just listed. I find it strange that you are so willing to ignore the whole counsel of God on this issue.

Hopefully one day you will. But hopefully, even before then, you will quit using ridiculous argumentative methods.

What is your educational background?

 

Larry, Ezra simply makes the statement that it is God's will for the divorce to take place. We don't ACTUALLY know if it was God's will for that to happen.

 

So, if you admit that it is God's will for the divorce to take place, how can you not "actually know" if it was God's will for it to happen? What is the difference between "take place" and "happen"?

 

I was simply pointing out that neither you nor I can definitively use Ezra as a "proof" for our positions.

You would of course say that he did know the mind of God in the situation.

I would say that Ezra assumed that he knew the mind of God in the situation.

Even still, the divorce would not have been across the board. It wasn't illegal to marry a non-jew. The gentile would have just needed to convert. Apparently the divorce was for those who refused to convert.

Besides, I am not sticking up for Craig. I do believe the law allowed divorce. The law has just been done away with and replaced by a new law.

 

I am still not sure what the difference between "take place" and "happen" is ... That seemed to be the distinction you were drawing ... that it was God's will for it to "take place" but maybe not for it to "happen."

As for the "mind of God," I think that there is no evidence to believe that Ezra was misleading the people. And the divorce may have been for limited circumstances (I believe it was). I was simply indicating that it is wrong to say that God never condoned divorce ... this passage seems to make it clear that he did. It is also wrong to say that divorce never happens because marriage is permanent. It isn't.

The OT is has been done away with. Understand that I am not using the Law to say that we should follow its mandates. I am using the Law to show that divorce does end a marriage and that, under the Law, remarriage was permissable in some cases. Furthermore, we learn from the Law that "If you keep this Law you shall live." Therefore, divorce and remarriage under the Law was not absolutely outside of acceptability before God.

 

Originally posted by Pastor Larry:

I believe the analogy with polygamy is a good one.
God never condoned it, but he allowed. The same is true of divorce. He never condoned it but he allowed it. It was never his will in the first place.
A polygamous affair is an adulterous affair. It is today. And I think you would concede as much. God told David, when rebuking him for his sin with Bathsheba, that if wanted more wives he would have given him more. The he called the affair that he had with Bathsheba adultery. It was adultery for him to lie with her, for she was another man's wife. Only whe Uriah was dead, could he lawfully take her, and that only because God allowed it in his permissive will. Strictly speaking God's will was for one man and one wife to be together in a marriage relationship. Anything outside of that would be adulterous. David suffered the consequences for his adulterous affairs with other women.

The obvious solution to a polygamous affair is to separate from all but one, and yet to somehow provide for the others. A man must have only one wife.

They are written for our instruction and adomonition, not that we should follow them.
--God commanded Hosea to marry a harlot. Does he command us to do the same?
--God commanded Isaiah to walk naked amidst the people of Israel. Does he command us to do the same among our people?
Isaiah 20:2 At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.

In the Book of Judges, the men of the city took a Levite's concubine, raped her, and left her for dead at the front of the door of the Levite. Shocked at the abuse of these men the Levite took her corpse and dissected it into twelve pieces, sending one piece of her body to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. He was never condemned for such an action. Rather it united the nation of Israel.
Is this an OT precedent therefore of how we should treat our women?

Numbers 25:7-9 and Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron, the priest, seeth, and riseth from the midst of the company, and taketh a javelin in his hand, and goeth in after the man of Israel unto the hollow place, and pierceth them both, the man of Israel and the woman--unto her belly, and the plague is restrained from the sons of Israel; and the dead by the plague are four and twenty thousand.
--Is this a precedent to use "murder" to break up a divorce or marriage?

There are many instances in the Bible where God commanded individuals to do things that he would never command today. To use such examples to justify things like divorce is just bad theology.

If it was never the issue, why have you opposed that statement at times. God never condoned divorce. You say that statement is too strong, too dogmatic. That is what set off this entire conversation. Now you are the one that is backing down. I am glad that you are agreeing with me.

God only gave provision for divorce because of the hardness of their hearts--but from the beginning it was not so.
God only gave provision for remarriage because of the hardness of their hearts but from the beginning it was not so.
It is not theologically sound to deal with the implications of the OT law on divorce and remarriage since Jesus plainly denounced it by saying that from the beginning it was not so, and then began to expound on the Creation account. He gave the Biblical account and purpose of marriage in Mat.19, and concluded by calling divorce and remarriage adultery. He left no provision for the law concerning divorce and remarriage, and neither should we.

As I have pointed out, Ezra is an explicit refutation, from which your only escape is saying that divorce is not really divorce. "Putting away" is divorce, and you cannot simply redefine it.
The word "put away" is translated "separate" in other translations, which is what they did. There is no mention of divorce anywhere in the passage. Just like idols they were to separate themselves from these idolatrous and foreign wives. It was to keep the nation pure. It had nothing to do with divorce. The same thing happened in Numbers 25 when Phineas killed both husband and wife for the sake of the purity of the nation.
For the sake of the purity of the nation, Levi and Simeon (in their zeal and anger) divorced all the Schechemite women from their husbands. It wasn't the most humane thing to do. But they were not just worried about their sister Dinah, they were also concerned about the purity of the nation of Israel, had they started intermarrying with the Schechemites.

Where have you given any definite Biblical evidence that any of these are not sexual sins?

I don't accuse you of anything. I respect your viewpoint very much. Please don't be offended by the "passion" from which I attempt to defend my position from the Word of God. I do agree, that on subjects such as this, there does come a point where good men have to "agree to disagree." But I still enjoy the discussion.
DHK

 

i flunked out of the sekond graide. spot; that my dog—is helping me to rigtht theis post holes. my dog barks alot at nite. do you have know how to make him kwit. i cant sleep at ngiht. you ar a good frend. thankyou for tocking to me about stuff. but my dog thinks that dont no the bible good. my ants birfday is tommorow she is having a pardy; would you like to come. please bring a present she like green; do you have a dog. I gess his name is not spot; have a good nigtht.

 

Larry, I wasn't trying to draw a distinction between those two words.

I was simply saying that Ezra might have assumed to know what God wanted. Nathan did the same thing when he gave David approval to build the temple. That is all I was saying.