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Welcome back to the Divorce Your Remarriage podcast.
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I'm Chris Iverson, and today we're going to be responding to the views of N.T.
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Wright on divorce and remarriage.
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We're going to compare N.T.
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Wright's view on divorce and remarriage to my view, which I have in my book, Divorce Your Remarriage.
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You can get that at Amazon.com.
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I have a link to that in the description below.
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And of course, you can hear my view on my podcast, which you're watching now, Divorce Your Remarriage.
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So who is N.T.
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Wright?
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He is a retired Anglican bishop.
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He's taught New Testament at St.
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Andrews.
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He has authored over 70 books, so the man likes to write.
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It's even in his name.
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And he is known for being part of the New Perspective on Paul movement.
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And so in this episode, we're going to look at his views on divorce and remarriage.
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My question is about divorce.
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He says, Jesus condemns remarriage after divorce in Mark chapter 10, in Matthew 5, and Luke 16.
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Paul even quotes Jesus on this point in 1 Corinthians.
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At the same time, I live in the 21st century and have many loved ones who are divorced or born from second marriages.
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How can we stay faithful to Jesus' teaching in light of these circumstances?
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Well, Tom, as you can uh no doubt appreciate, this is a hard topic, both at the level of exegesis in the New Testament, you know, what were the particular types of marriages?
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What are the the grounds of divorce?
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Are they trying to protect women from being cast out easily by husbands who go off and marry a younger woman or a more convenient marriage?
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And how do we cope with it today?
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Because I think all of us in some way or other have been, you know, touched by divorce.
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It's it's quite sad that marriages for all sorts of reasons uh can end often in very uh tragic and uh broken circumstances.
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Uh Tom, what do you have to say to our friend Matthew?
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Yeah, yeah, it it I'm totally with you, Mike.
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It is a sad and difficult topic, and certainly my family has been touched by the question of divorce and remarriage.
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And the Church of England, uh, where I've worked for most of my life, has struggled with this one because when I was young, it used to be the case, take with clergy, that if a clergy marriage split up, then the clergyman, it was always a man in those days, would have to leave parish ministry, and often they would go and become school teachers or or something else quite other, on the grounds that if their marriage had broken up, then when they as a parish priest were asked to take somebody else's marriage and were pronouncing uh God's blessing on this marriage, it felt that it was ringing hollow if in their own case it didn't match up.
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Now, we've got, I'm not sure if I want to say beyond that, but we as certain we certainly don't take that view in the Church of England as a whole today.
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There are some rigorists who would want to take that view.
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I I know some people, some wise devout Christians who say, well, actually, the teaching of Jesus and Paul has not changed, and we shouldn't be changing it just because our society is sliding this way and that.
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And as we know, societies can easily slide morally this way and that, and we uh charged with um modeling the Christian way of being human, irrespective of what the world says.
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In Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, Paul says we mustn't be conformed to this world, we mustn't let the world squeeze us into its mold.
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So I appreciate Tom's right giving the argument here from both sides with regards to the idea of a church leader, a pastor, a priest, I think he said, uh being divorced.
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The only thing I would say is that the only argument I actually heard uh so far against requiring church leaders to not be divorced was this unsupported label of rigorist.
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And uh that's just a label that's not an argument.
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And, you know, it's it's one thing to debate like what the phrase means, husband of one wife, in 1 Timothy chapter three.
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But, you know, last I checked calling somebody a rigorist is not exactly an argument, it's not exactly a cogent syllogism, even if he says it with a with a dignified accent, which he definitely has.
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So I should think that a dignified accent should come with a dignified argument, not just a label like rigorous.
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Um, and not to mention, it also kind of throws the entire early church under the bus, like not just the early church, like almost all of the of church history uh under the bus.
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So I'm not really sure rigorous is a good word for that.
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Anyway, let's continue.
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Doing things, but we must be transformed by the renewing of the mind, and that applies to everything.
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And if the world says, oh, well, now we live in the modern age, so we can swap partners and it really doesn't matter, the church says actually, no, we are called to model creation and new creation.
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And uh this isn't just some odd rule, you know, people sometimes make out that Christian ethics consists of a list of strange, unrelated rules that people made up a long time ago and and we can't see any sense in them, so we can break them at will.
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Absolutely not.
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The Christian ethic, perhaps particularly here, and you see this in Ephesians 5 as well as in the teaching of Jesus and in 1 Corinthians 7, the Christian teaching about marriage and divorce is that uh the the coming together of man and woman in marriage is a sign of God's covenant relationship with the creation.
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God and creation, it's a sign of Christ's relationship with the church, says Paul in Ephesians 5.
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And it's it's therefore not simply one miscellaneous item among others.
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The way that Ephesians works is to say God's purpose is to bring together heaven and earth.
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One of the advanced signs of this is the coming together of Jew and Gentile in the church.
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And then in chapter five, one of the special signs of it is the coming together and the staying together of man and woman.
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So there's a lot of rich and deep theology here, and he ablely shares it just kind of off the cuff.
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It's beyond going through like a bunch of mechanics, it's it's just a wonderful expression, and it uplifts uh marriage as a wonderful union by associating it with all of these ultimate things.
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And so this theology imagines a high view of the very nature of marriage, and that naturally leads to a conclusion that it that marriage cannot be dissolved while both spouses are alive.
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But we'll see that's not where Tom Wright lands.
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Marriage.
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Now, having said all of that, then of course there is Jesus' teaching in Mark 10.
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We notice that where Jesus is when he's being asked about divorce is down by the Jordan in the territory of Herod Antipas.
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And of course, John the Baptist had criticized Herod Antipas because he had snatched his brother's wife.
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Presumably, she was quite happy to be complicit with this arrangement, we're not actually told, but um, but John the Baptist had quite literally lost his head because of his opposition to Herod's divorce and remarriage.
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So asking Jesus, can you tell us about divorce, Rabbi?
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This is a way of saying, Would you like to put your head into the same noose that your cousin got stuck in?
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And so what Jesus says is in a sense cryptic because he has to go back into the house with the disciples in verse um 10 for them to ask him about the precise meaning of it.
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He is, of course, correct that John the Baptist was unjustly killed because John told Herod his marriage to Herodias was unlawful.
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You can see that in Mark chapter six.
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It was unlawful because Herodias had married Herod's brother previously.
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Herodias was divorced from Herod's brother, but Leviticus 18, 16 prohibited her from marrying Herod despite that divorce.
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So here's what's interesting about that.
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If the divorce between Herodias and Herod's brother, if that had, if the divorce had dissolved that marriage, then it wouldn't be incest for Herod and Herodias to marry because Herodias isn't connected to the brother anymore.
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Right.
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The idea is Herodias is Herod's sister-in-law.
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And so it's incest for them to have relations.
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Well, except once she divorces Herod's brother, then she's not the sister-in-law anymore, right?
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That's what you, that's what you might automatically think.
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But Leviticus 18 treats her as though she is still the sister-in-law.
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And so it is still incest.
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The fact that, the fact that it was incest for Herod and Herodias to marry shows that divorce doesn't dissolve a marriage.
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We had it all the way back in Leviticus.
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And so Josephus talks about this as well.
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He talks about uh Herodias took upon her to confound the laws of her country and divorced herself from her husband while he was alive and was married to Herod Antipas, her husband's brother.
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By her by the father's side, he was Tetrarch of Galilee.
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That's Josephus in the antiquities of the Jews.
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Okay, so it in that context, we see that Tom Wright is correct.
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Uh the Pharisees who came to Jesus questioning him on divorce and remarriage were putting Jesus in a tough spot, humanly speaking, a tough spot.
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So the Pharisees already know what Jesus believes on divorce and remarriage.
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He taught it on the Sermon on the Mount.
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Jesus is an itinerant preacher, so we imagine that he is teaching a lot of the same things and place to place that he goes to, and we imagine he'd be repeating himself at a bunch of places.
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So they heard him on the Sermon on the Mount or perhaps in one of these other messages that he gave.
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So the now, the Pharisees, they know the crowds are not going to like Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage.
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And Herod won't like it when he hears about it, if he were to hear about it.
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Now, here's where I disagree with Tom Wright.
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I don't think Jesus was being cryptic with his answer at all.
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I think he was being very plain and straightforward, and everybody understood what he said.
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It was very clear and easy to understand what Jesus said at the time.
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So in Matthew 19, we see in this in this exchange, Jesus said to the crowd and the Pharisees that divorce and remarriage is adultery.
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He said it publicly before everybody.
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That's in Matthew chapter 19.
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So there Jesus taught it publicly.
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And then in Mark chapter 10, we have an additional note that after all of that, then they went into a house and Jesus said it privately.
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So in Matthew 19, he said it publicly.
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In Mark 10, he says it privately.
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In Matthew 5, he said it publicly earlier on the Sermon on the Mount.
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So Jesus is not being cryptic, he's not hiding the ball, he is being very public and clear with his teaching to everybody.
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What he does is repeat Genesis 1 about a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife.
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And what he says is, yes, Moses gave us the command about how to divorce, but that's because you are hard hearted.
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Now, that too is cryptic, but it must mean that Jesus is offering a cure for hardness of heart.
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Okay, so Jesus does point back to Genesis as the model, the Garden of Eden.
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And this is really simple.
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The example in the garden is the example we should follow.
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So pre-fall in the garden, uh, we see what's what it's like when people are not sinning.
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In the garden, marriage was created to be permanent, therefore, separating husband and wife is sin.
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So it's stunning in its simplicity.
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And the hermeneutic, the idea is any action that is morally intolerable in Eden is sin.
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And divorce is morally intolerable in Eden, therefore, divorce is sin.
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The logic is stunning and undeniable.
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And so not only is it stunningly simple, it's also stunningly absolute.
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It's an argument that permits no exceptions.
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The argument from Genesis permits no exceptions.
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It is the ideal.
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It cuts through all the noise, all the lawyerly arguments, and all of the mental gymnastics that people did then and people do now.
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Now it's difficult to follow it in many circumstances, but it's not difficult to understand.
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And the Pharisees then ask a follow-up question.
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Uh, Tom, uh Tom Wright is in Mark 10 here, but we see the same interaction in uh Matthew 19.
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So in Matthew 19, we see in verse 3, the Pharisees originally asked about an any cause divorce.
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This was the view of Rabbi Hillel, and he interpreted Deuteronomy 24 to allow a man to divorce his wife for any cause.
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He had to have a cause, but any old cause would do.
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In response to their question about an any cause divorced, he says no to divorce in an absolute exceptionless way, in Matthew 19, 4 through 6.
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Then the Pharisees ask a follow-up question.
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This is in uh Matthew 19, verse 7.
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Why did Moses then command to divorce?
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I agree with Tom Wright that the Pharisees are claiming Moses commanded divorce.
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And we know that from the next verse.
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Jesus says Moses allowed the divorce.
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That is, Moses tolerated the divorce.
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He didn't command it.
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Now, why would the Pharisees claim Moses commanded divorce?
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Why would they say that?
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If you read Deuteronomy chapter 24, that's what they're referencing.
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Nothing in Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 1, it says anything about commanding divorce.
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Nothing in there says that at all.
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And the reason is they're asking about divorcing for adultery.
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So here's how this works.
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These are Hillel Pharisees.
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We can tell that from Matthew 19, verse 3.
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They ask about in any cause divorce there.
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That's the Hillel view.
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You see that in Gitin 910 of the Talmud.
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Well, also, if you look in the Gemera portion of the Talmud, you see a paraphrased kind of debate back and forth between Rabbi Shemai and Rabbi Hillel.
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And they're arguing over Deuteronomy chapter 24 and verse 1.
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And Deuteronomy 24 and verse 1 has a divorce there in the first verse for a phrase that's ervat.
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And the word ervat means nakedness, and the word dabar means a matter.
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And so Hillel gets an any cause divorce from this word a matter.
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Oh, you can divorce for any cause, because it says you can divorce, you know, that the man divorced her for a matter.
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Well, Shemai says, but it also has this word ervat there.
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Why is the word ervat there if it's just for any a matter?
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Wouldn't ervat be duplicative?
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Wouldn't ervat if adultery be included in a matter?
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So why would you need it to also say ervat?
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And Hillel responds with, oh no, no.
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The word adultery there, the word ervat there means adultery.
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And what Moses means there is that you're commanded, you're required, you're obligated to divorce your wife if she cheats on you.
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So when you get to Matthew chapter 19 and verse 7, and they say, Why did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?
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They're asking, why did Moses require a man to divorce his wife for adultery?
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And then Jesus rejects that ground for divorce, the divorce for adultery in Matthew chapter 19 and verse 8.
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Now that's going to surprise people that Jesus rejected divorce for adultery, because you may have heard that Jesus permitted divorce for adultery from the exception clause in Matthew 5, 32, Matthew 19.9.
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I don't think the exception clause permits divorce for adultery.
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Let me just step back and let's just look at Matthew 19 and Mark 10, this debate between Jesus and these Hill Pharisees.
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The Hillel Pharisees are basing their view on Deuteronomy, the regulation.
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That's where they're getting their rules for divorce and remarriage.
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But that's not where Jesus is starting.
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Jesus here in Matthew 19 and Mark 10, he's starting in Genesis.
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He's starting in the beginning.
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The Pharisees think we're going to find the moral law, the law of God in these individual regulations.
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That's where we're going to find the real, the real heart of God, the real law of God.
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But Jesus says, no, no, no, no.
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Those regulations, they have things allowed in there for your hardness of heart.
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They allowed you to do wrong things, but they allowed you to do them because you had hard hearts.
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And Moses is trying to mitigate sin.
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He's regulating sin so that he could have a community through which the Messiah would eventually come.
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So you could have the Holy of Holies there.
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And the people around in that in the Mosaic camp, they're living not as bad as the Gentiles, not as bad as people out in the wilderness, but they're still not maybe living as people would live in the Garden of Eden.
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They're kind of in this gray area.
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But if they can follow these laws, that's that's good enough for God to be able to dwell among them in the Holy of Holies.
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That's the idea of the Mosaic Law.
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We're just trying to manage this sin problem here in this nation.
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So the Mosaic laws there are regulating bad behavior.
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They're not approving the behavior that is tolerated.
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And so that's what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 19, 8, that people have hard hearts.
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And that's why these regulations allowed sinful conduct.
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They didn't use government force to prevent people from divorcing, for example.
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So Jesus is not being cryptic here.
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This is the second time we've heard this from Tom Wright that Jesus was being cryptic.
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It's very simple.
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Jesus just says no to divorce.
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They ask about a mosaic allowance for divorce.
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And Jesus says those divorces were sin.
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They were tolerated for your hard-heartedness.
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What Jesus says is simple, absolute, exceptionless.
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It is the furthest thing from being cryptic.
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Now, Tom Wright then said that Jesus must be offering a solution for hard-heartedness.
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It's true that Jesus does offer a cure for hard-heartedness, but that's not the emphasis in Matthew 19.8.
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The emphasis there is simply this divorcing your wife because she committed adultery is wrong.
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Let's continue to hear Tom Wright.
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That's a tough thing to say.
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And having counseled many people in different stages of marital either coming together or breakup, it's not possible just to say, oh, well, Jesus offers a cure for hardness of heart, so say your prayers and your heart will soften and then all will be well.
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Pastoral situations don't work that easily in my experience.
00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:56.319
However, that doesn't mean that it isn't still the aim.
00:17:56.480 --> 00:18:05.039
And it doesn't mean that if divorce does happen, that we then have to shrug our shoulders and say, oh well, stuff happens, really doesn't matter.
00:18:05.200 --> 00:18:09.599
Just get on with life as though nothing had uh been particularly difficult or different.
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:37.759
And because I do think that divorce leaves a wound, it leaves a wound for the people, it leaves a wound in their extended families, it leaves a wound in their community, and if the community is a church community, it leaves a wound in that church community, and actually a very damaging one because uh divorce says here are promises that were made that for whatever reason are no longer kept.
00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:47.759
And uh the entire Christian truth is based on God making promises in creation and covenant, which God has kept faithfully.
00:18:47.920 --> 00:19:03.200
And you know, that that is that is a hard saying for all those of us who've been married for 50 plus years, as I have, um, yeah, there are tough times, there are difficult times as well as joyful times, and and there's that stickability of God which is at stake.
00:19:03.359 --> 00:19:34.079
Now, having said all of the above, I would then be content, and we've actually done this in one case in my family, that if divorce has happened for whatever reason, and then one partner intends to marry somebody else, that they can, according to the law of the land where I am at the moment, they can marry in a registry office, in other words, not in a church, but then they are allowed to come into church for a blessing of the marriage.
00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:48.559
And the trouble with that, I I understand why that happens and why we've done it, but the trouble with that is that it looks to the outside observer as though, oh well, the church is quite happy they got divorced, but never mind, we're gonna do it again and see what happens this time.
00:19:48.720 --> 00:20:02.319
Um, and it's very important to communicate to the wider world that actually the one man, one woman for life thing is is not a casual old rule which we can ignore.
00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:12.079
It's absolutely vital for the health and well-being of the world in general, the church in particular, and certainly these these human beings in the middle of it.
00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:52.000
Um, so when divorce does happen, I think it's a cause for uh deep sorrow, lament, and there should be ways of doing that lament together and perhaps even with the church community, and then within that lament or arising out of that lament, if God then leaves one, leads one or both parties forward in different directions, well, that too is something which is uh uh a sorrowful, maybe second best, it may still be a good thing in its way, especially if they are then able to be faithful and wise together, but um that will always have the note of lament about it.
00:20:52.160 --> 00:21:01.039
This is a hard saying, and I'm speaking about people that I know and love, and I hope if any of them listen to this, they won't think I'm being harsh on them because I because I'm not.
00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:11.279
I'm simply trying to say this is how I currently see the landing of the New Testament in our very contested world.
00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:21.519
Okay, so I agree with Tom Wright that the pastor's challenge in helping people fix their marriages and curing hard-heartedness is immensely important and difficult.
00:21:21.759 --> 00:21:28.400
You'll notice, Tom Wright here, he rightly associates marriage with the relationship we have with God, with promises, with covenant.
00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:43.039
He wants to generically elevate the nature of marriage and deduce that divorce is therefore bad, but also act as though a remarriage after divorce is valid, but lamentable.
00:21:43.279 --> 00:21:43.599
Okay.
00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:47.200
And you can probably feel the tension in his reasoning.
00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:52.640
And here's the problem there's two separate questions you have to keep in mind when you're thinking about this issue.
00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:58.640
The first one is moral permissibility, and the second one is validity.
00:21:58.960 --> 00:21:59.759
So a marriage.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.079
A divorce or a remarriage can be morally permissible or impermissible.
00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:05.599
That's one question.
00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:10.240
That same act can be valid or invalid.
00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:16.799
That is, it either creates a valid or invalid marriage, or it does or does not dissolve the marriage.
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.279
Now, I would say divorce can never dissolve a marriage.
00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:29.039
And so Tom Wright talks about, he does an analysis of moral permissibility and then he switches over to validity and he never does, he doesn't do the analysis.
00:22:29.119 --> 00:22:33.599
He doesn't walk through the steps to say, okay, this happened, then this happened, then this happened.
00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:34.880
That's why this remarriage is valid.
00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:36.160
He doesn't walk through those steps.
00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:38.480
He just kind of passes by that.
00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:48.400
He does an analysis of moral permissibility and kind of um implies or assumes or it kind of looks like he did the validity analysis, but that is not.
00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:54.160
There are two different analyses, the moral permissibility analysis and the validity analysis.
00:22:54.319 --> 00:22:58.480
So and we can see his view on remarriage in the scenario that he mentions here.
00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:06.559
So based on the information he provided, uh, most likely this family member of his got into a remarriage that Jesus would call adultery.
00:23:06.720 --> 00:23:07.039
Okay.
00:23:07.279 --> 00:23:13.440
And Tom Wright makes it sound as if he's taking a hard stance here, but I think it's not a hard stance at all.
00:23:13.519 --> 00:23:18.799
I mean, historically, when you read theologians through the centuries on this, Tom Wright's stance is a very permissive stance.
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:23.119
He's saying they can stay in their remarriage that Jesus called adultery.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:26.079
That is a very permissive stance, historically speaking.
00:23:26.160 --> 00:23:28.480
But now he frames it like he's taking a hard stance.
00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:40.720
And this is, I noticed this is something that happens a lot with pastors today who talk about divorce and remarriage, and they'll have a very permissive view and they'll act like, oh, I have a very strict view, and I know you guys are going to be mad at me and everything.
00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:46.880
Now you understand people don't want you to call their remarriage adultery, but if you tell them they can stay in it, that's a permissive view, historically speaking.
00:23:47.039 --> 00:23:47.200
All right.
00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:51.119
So here are two significant problems with Tom Wright's permissive view.
00:23:51.279 --> 00:23:57.599
First, it imagines that the first marriage is over, which allows the remarriage to be a valid marriage.
00:23:57.839 --> 00:24:02.559
But the scriptures don't say the first marriage is dissolved upon the formation of the second marriage, right?
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:04.000
In fact, it says the opposite, right?
00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:06.640
The sex in the remarriage is adultery.
00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:09.839
That means they're still married to their first spouse.
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:16.000
The fact that sex in the remarriage is adultery means that the original divorce didn't dissolve the first marriage.
00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:20.400
Other because it can't be adultery unless they're still married to the first spouse.
00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:27.839
So what we really need is for Tom Wright and others to say, under what conditions do you think a marriage is dissolved?
00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:33.279
Because if you say it gets dissolved at divorce, I don't know, you're going to have a problem because Jesus calls the remarriage adultery.
00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:40.079
So if a husband and wife are married and they divorce for, let's say, irreconcilable differences, and the man remarries, it's adultery.
00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:41.680
So he marries a single woman.
00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:47.680
Okay, well, if you imagine that the divorce dissolved the marriage, then now the man is an unmarried man.
00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:53.680
And if he marries an unmarried woman, a single woman, their marriage, how could that possibly be adultery?
00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:56.160
Two unmarried people can't commit adultery.
00:24:56.319 --> 00:25:02.880
It's only adultery because he's still married to his first wife, which means the divorce did not dissolve the marriage.
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:08.319
Okay, so if the divorce doesn't dissolve the marriage, we're saying the remarriage dissolves the first marriage.
00:25:08.480 --> 00:25:09.440
I don't understand how that works.
00:25:09.519 --> 00:25:15.440
So even if you think the exception clause is for the innocent party to adultery, the man who divorced and remarried, he's not the innocent party.
00:25:15.519 --> 00:25:16.880
He's the guilty party, right?
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:21.119
If you're going to look at it from an innocent, guilty party perspective, he's the guilty party.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:22.880
The guilty party can't remarry.
00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:24.640
So that doesn't get the job done.
00:25:24.720 --> 00:25:27.440
What makes us know that the first marriage has been dissolved?
00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:29.440
Tom Wright never gives us an answer.
00:25:29.599 --> 00:25:33.359
He just says it's wrong to do, but maybe God let them do it.
00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:33.599
All right.
00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:35.200
And so here's the second problem.
00:25:35.519 --> 00:25:41.920
During the time of Jesus, calling a marriage adultery meant the marriage was invalid.
00:25:42.079 --> 00:25:44.240
That was a way of calling it invalid.
00:25:44.400 --> 00:25:50.960
And we see that in Romans chapter 7, where the woman's second marriage, while her first husband is alive, is called adultery.
00:25:51.119 --> 00:25:52.559
It's a fake marriage.
00:25:52.799 --> 00:26:00.240
We see this same idea in the Talmud when a woman receives an invalid divorce certificate and she remarries on that basis.
00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:04.559
Her remarriage is adultery, and the Talmud requires it to be divorced.
00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:10.240
No one hearing Jesus at the time would think Jesus taught adultery marriages were valid marriages that ought to continue.
00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:13.519
And I listen, I understand, you know, the Talmud's not scripture.
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:19.039
Obviously, I know that, but here's my point the Talmud was written by the religious descendants of the Pharisees.
00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:25.279
So when these Pharisees are hearing Jesus call remarriage adultery, Jesus knows how they think.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:28.559
Jesus knows the words they're using, and Jesus calls it adultery.
00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:37.920
He's using their language to he to tell them something that they'll understand, which is these remarriages are invalid, fake marriages, they ought to be divorced.
00:26:39.839 --> 00:26:41.440
And just as in other respects, e.g.
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:51.519
political respects, I would need to say some pretty harsh things, or things that would sound harsh to people who took a very different view politically from where I would be.
00:26:51.680 --> 00:27:16.240
So I think it's important that we don't just say, oh, well, let's just all be nice to each other, but we actually can state where the Bible puts things and then say now, if there needs to be a new arrangement, let's be honest about the fact that that's what's happening, and not pretend that we can just say, Well, the past didn't really happen, or it didn't really matter, because it did happen and it did matter.
00:27:16.559 --> 00:27:19.359
So I could go on with this a long time.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:26.160
Mike, you you may well have some personal experience as well, pastoral experience on which to draw to help us further forward.
00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:30.319
Yeah, I mean, divorce is something that's touched my family as well.
00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:44.480
I mean, and it's hard because you've got what I think is the biblical norm, which is, you know, one man, one woman for life, but you do have to deal with the messy realities that it doesn't always turn out that way.
00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:53.359
And without retreating to a kind of, oh well, such is life, you know, do the best you can and what happens, happens.
00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:55.359
You don't want to be blase about it.
00:27:55.599 --> 00:28:00.799
But I think we do have to recognize that, you know, this is a complicated part of human relationships.
00:28:01.039 --> 00:28:16.799
These things do happen, and we've got to be pastoral, we've got to be faithful in the way that we deal with it, and recognize that you know, people who are divorced or in the process of separating, they do need a lot of pastoral care, a lot of support.
00:28:16.960 --> 00:28:22.960
Uh, getting divorced uh in terms of stress levels, it's right up there with grieving for the death of a loved one.
00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:37.519
Because you know, you you're uh there is the death of a kind of of an entity, which is the marriage, and that and and the stress is similar to you know grieving for a lost family relative or something like that.
00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:42.720
So I think it's very important to minister to people who are going through these situations.
00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:45.839
So this is uh Pastor Mike Byrd.
00:28:45.920 --> 00:28:48.960
I haven't uh referenced him yet, but I just want to chime in here.
00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:53.359
The idea that the divorce is the death of an entity of marriage.
00:28:53.599 --> 00:28:59.759
Now, I mean, I understand his point about like the stress and the death of a dream and things like that, but the marriage is is not over.
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:01.839
The marriage is not is not dead, actually.
00:29:02.079 --> 00:29:08.400
Jesus' point is remarriage is adultery because the first marriage has not ended.
00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:14.079
Uh, it's ended legally and socially, but from God's perspective, those two are still married.
00:29:16.079 --> 00:29:21.359
Even if and I think it's just recognizing, like so much of life, it's not ideal.
00:29:21.519 --> 00:29:33.440
There's so much of life that is not ideal, and yet you've got to discern how do we meet others and how does God meet us at some of the lowest ebbs in our life that happen in places like divorce.
00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:36.160
Yeah, no, I I I'm totally with you.
00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:51.920
And uh the the I think to be part of our problem may be that as a society we're not good at doing lament, we're not good at facing up to deep sorrow, and so it can get buried and then it comes back in other ways psychologically.
00:29:52.079 --> 00:30:00.559
And I think to face up to it, say, here it is, it's a matter of real, as you say, a tearing apart of something which was a unit.
00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:05.599
Um, it's not just two people who came within shouting distance of each other and then drifted away again.
00:30:05.680 --> 00:30:14.000
It's two people who became a single unit, and there's a sense of tearing of flesh, uh tearing of a very, very deep bond.
00:30:14.079 --> 00:30:24.000
Um so perhaps a lack of good lament is a problem, but the real problem should be pretty obvious, and that's the divorce and perhaps subsequent remarriage.
00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:29.279
The problem is the thing that causes the lament, not the lack of good lament, really.
00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:36.559
So, and also, you know, uh Tom Wright here, he he characterizes divorce as tearing apart the union.
00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:41.119
And okay, so there's a relational separation, and and that occurs.
00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:41.759
And I understand that.
00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:45.200
And so in the daily life experience, the two people who are divorced, they're ripped apart.
00:30:45.279 --> 00:30:48.000
But ontologically, they're still joined.
00:30:48.079 --> 00:30:49.039
They're still married.
00:30:49.119 --> 00:30:53.839
The marriage has not died, the marriage has not been torn apart ontologically.
00:30:53.920 --> 00:30:57.920
They are just as married the day before they divorced as the day after they divorced.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:07.440
They are equally married in both uh on both those days because the human divorce is unable to unjoin a God-joined marriage.
00:31:07.599 --> 00:31:14.000
Just as I could not unsibling my sibling, so I cannot unspouse my spouse, their family.
00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:19.920
That's what it says in Genesis, where Adam says to Eve, You were not born of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
00:31:20.079 --> 00:31:27.200
And that uh flesh and bone language is the same language we see there in Genesis 29, when Laban says to Jacob, Are you not my bone and flesh?
00:31:27.359 --> 00:31:29.759
That's Old Testament language for family.
00:31:29.920 --> 00:31:35.440
And we tell that again, like I said, in Leviticus chapter 18, where divorce does not really end the marriage.
00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:39.839
That's why it was still incest for Herod to marry Herodias.
00:31:40.240 --> 00:31:48.319
So in these two segments, both Mike Byrd and Tom Wright have implied that divorce dissolves the marriage bond.
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:50.880
But those are just assertions.
00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:56.559
The text says the remarriage is adultery, which means the marriage bond is not broken.
00:31:56.799 --> 00:32:04.640
First Corinthians 7, 10, and 11, Paul paraphrases Jesus and says people who are divorced should stay single or be reconciled to their spouse.
00:32:04.799 --> 00:32:12.880
And if divorce dissolved the marriage bond, there would be no prohibition on remarriage, but there is because they are still married.
00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:31.680
And that when then one or other gets together with somebody else, if that is to receive God's blessing, it's as a new thing at the other side of tragedy, rather than um uh uh oh well, you know, we did that and now we're doing this.
00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:54.319
It's and that and I think God can and does and will bless those new things, particularly when the people concerned approach it with appropriate lament and um sorrow for what's happened, and then waiting for a kindly word from God to say, okay, this now is the way forward.
00:32:54.480 --> 00:32:57.599
Um these are very difficult things, and we all know that.
00:32:58.240 --> 00:33:04.400
Suppose you have a husband and wife, and they are married, and then they get divorced for irreconcilable differences.
00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:16.559
Tom Wright would say it's morally impermissible to remarry unless, based on this video, God contradicts himself and gives the person a kindly word that they can remarry.
00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:21.599
So, what Tom Wright calls a kindly word is really a contradictory word.
00:33:21.759 --> 00:33:23.359
It's God contradicting himself.
00:33:23.759 --> 00:33:30.480
Imagine, if you would, two teenagers uh who they're in love and they commit fornication.
00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:34.079
And you tell them you can't do that, that's sin.
00:33:34.319 --> 00:33:36.720
But they say, we know the Bible calls it sin.
00:33:36.799 --> 00:33:41.599
We understand that, we read it, we totally affirm that the Bible would call fornication sin.
00:33:42.079 --> 00:33:46.880
But in our situation, it's different because God gave us a kindly word.
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:51.759
And so listen, I'm sure you two teenagers, you felt all kinds of feelings, okay?
00:33:51.839 --> 00:33:55.359
And you might sincerely think that God gave you a kindly word, but he didn't.
00:33:55.519 --> 00:33:59.920
You sinned, and we're not going to all pretend like it's okay for you two to continue in your fornication.
00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:03.839
And that's the same thing as Tom Wright's divorce and remarriage scenario.
00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:12.400
This is just a more dignified version of when somebody says something that's a heretical doctrine and they say, Well, God told me, even though it goes against it goes against his Bible.
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:18.639
And so we're supposed to, we're supposed to believe them and their personal experience over the words of scripture.
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:19.360
No, I don't think so.
00:34:19.679 --> 00:34:23.840
We should take the words of scripture over somebody's belief that they got a kindly word.
00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:28.800
And Bible 101 is that we believe the scriptures over people's feelings.
00:34:29.039 --> 00:34:30.239
So let me know what you think.
00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:32.559
Leave a comment, like, subscribe, do all the things.
00:34:32.639 --> 00:34:36.320
Get my book, divorce your remarriage, and I will see you guys next time.
00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:02.160
Welcome back to the Divorce Your Remarriage podcast.
00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:07.679
I'm Chris Iverson, and today we're going to be responding to the views of N.T.
00:00:07.839 --> 00:00:09.439
Wright on divorce and remarriage.
00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:11.039
We're going to compare N.T.
00:00:11.199 --> 00:00:16.000
Wright's view on divorce and remarriage to my view, which I have in my book, Divorce Your Remarriage.
00:00:16.079 --> 00:00:17.600
You can get that at Amazon.com.
00:00:17.679 --> 00:00:19.760
I have a link to that in the description below.
00:00:19.920 --> 00:00:25.280
And of course, you can hear my view on my podcast, which you're watching now, Divorce Your Remarriage.
00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:26.399
So who is N.T.
00:00:26.559 --> 00:00:26.960
Wright?
00:00:27.039 --> 00:00:29.440
He is a retired Anglican bishop.
00:00:29.519 --> 00:00:31.280
He's taught New Testament at St.
00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:32.000
Andrews.
00:00:32.479 --> 00:00:35.759
He has authored over 70 books, so the man likes to write.
00:00:35.840 --> 00:00:37.039
It's even in his name.
00:00:37.359 --> 00:00:42.079
And he is known for being part of the New Perspective on Paul movement.
00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:46.719
And so in this episode, we're going to look at his views on divorce and remarriage.
00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:49.039
My question is about divorce.
00:00:49.359 --> 00:00:55.840
He says, Jesus condemns remarriage after divorce in Mark chapter 10, in Matthew 5, and Luke 16.
00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.439
Paul even quotes Jesus on this point in 1 Corinthians.
00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:07.760
At the same time, I live in the 21st century and have many loved ones who are divorced or born from second marriages.
00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:13.760
How can we stay faithful to Jesus' teaching in light of these circumstances?
00:01:14.079 --> 00:01:24.719
Well, Tom, as you can uh no doubt appreciate, this is a hard topic, both at the level of exegesis in the New Testament, you know, what were the particular types of marriages?
00:01:24.879 --> 00:01:26.959
What are the the grounds of divorce?
00:01:27.120 --> 00:01:36.319
Are they trying to protect women from being cast out easily by husbands who go off and marry a younger woman or a more convenient marriage?
00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:38.239
And how do we cope with it today?
00:01:38.400 --> 00:01:43.680
Because I think all of us in some way or other have been, you know, touched by divorce.
00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:54.000
It's it's quite sad that marriages for all sorts of reasons uh can end often in very uh tragic and uh broken circumstances.
00:01:54.159 --> 00:01:57.840
Uh Tom, what do you have to say to our friend Matthew?
00:01:58.319 --> 00:02:01.040
Yeah, yeah, it it I'm totally with you, Mike.
00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:07.599
It is a sad and difficult topic, and certainly my family has been touched by the question of divorce and remarriage.
00:02:07.760 --> 00:02:47.280
And the Church of England, uh, where I've worked for most of my life, has struggled with this one because when I was young, it used to be the case, take with clergy, that if a clergy marriage split up, then the clergyman, it was always a man in those days, would have to leave parish ministry, and often they would go and become school teachers or or something else quite other, on the grounds that if their marriage had broken up, then when they as a parish priest were asked to take somebody else's marriage and were pronouncing uh God's blessing on this marriage, it felt that it was ringing hollow if in their own case it didn't match up.
00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:55.360
Now, we've got, I'm not sure if I want to say beyond that, but we as certain we certainly don't take that view in the Church of England as a whole today.
00:02:55.520 --> 00:02:58.719
There are some rigorists who would want to take that view.
00:02:58.800 --> 00:03:11.280
I I know some people, some wise devout Christians who say, well, actually, the teaching of Jesus and Paul has not changed, and we shouldn't be changing it just because our society is sliding this way and that.
00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:24.560
And as we know, societies can easily slide morally this way and that, and we uh charged with um modeling the Christian way of being human, irrespective of what the world says.
00:03:24.879 --> 00:03:33.599
In Romans 12, verses 1 and 2, Paul says we mustn't be conformed to this world, we mustn't let the world squeeze us into its mold.
00:03:34.080 --> 00:03:44.479
So I appreciate Tom's right giving the argument here from both sides with regards to the idea of a church leader, a pastor, a priest, I think he said, uh being divorced.
00:03:44.719 --> 00:03:58.080
The only thing I would say is that the only argument I actually heard uh so far against requiring church leaders to not be divorced was this unsupported label of rigorist.
00:03:58.400 --> 00:04:01.680
And uh that's just a label that's not an argument.
00:04:01.919 --> 00:04:09.039
And, you know, it's it's one thing to debate like what the phrase means, husband of one wife, in 1 Timothy chapter three.
00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:19.600
But, you know, last I checked calling somebody a rigorist is not exactly an argument, it's not exactly a cogent syllogism, even if he says it with a with a dignified accent, which he definitely has.
00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:27.600
So I should think that a dignified accent should come with a dignified argument, not just a label like rigorous.
00:04:27.920 --> 00:04:39.040
Um, and not to mention, it also kind of throws the entire early church under the bus, like not just the early church, like almost all of the of church history uh under the bus.
00:04:39.199 --> 00:04:41.920
So I'm not really sure rigorous is a good word for that.
00:04:42.079 --> 00:04:42.959
Anyway, let's continue.
00:04:43.360 --> 00:04:48.560
Doing things, but we must be transformed by the renewing of the mind, and that applies to everything.
00:04:48.720 --> 00:05:00.240
And if the world says, oh, well, now we live in the modern age, so we can swap partners and it really doesn't matter, the church says actually, no, we are called to model creation and new creation.
00:05:00.560 --> 00:05:16.000
And uh this isn't just some odd rule, you know, people sometimes make out that Christian ethics consists of a list of strange, unrelated rules that people made up a long time ago and and we can't see any sense in them, so we can break them at will.
00:05:16.319 --> 00:05:17.279
Absolutely not.
00:05:17.519 --> 00:05:40.000
The Christian ethic, perhaps particularly here, and you see this in Ephesians 5 as well as in the teaching of Jesus and in 1 Corinthians 7, the Christian teaching about marriage and divorce is that uh the the coming together of man and woman in marriage is a sign of God's covenant relationship with the creation.
00:05:40.319 --> 00:05:47.680
God and creation, it's a sign of Christ's relationship with the church, says Paul in Ephesians 5.
00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.639
And it's it's therefore not simply one miscellaneous item among others.
00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:58.560
The way that Ephesians works is to say God's purpose is to bring together heaven and earth.
00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:03.439
One of the advanced signs of this is the coming together of Jew and Gentile in the church.
00:06:03.600 --> 00:06:10.319
And then in chapter five, one of the special signs of it is the coming together and the staying together of man and woman.
00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:17.839
So there's a lot of rich and deep theology here, and he ablely shares it just kind of off the cuff.
00:06:18.000 --> 00:06:28.319
It's beyond going through like a bunch of mechanics, it's it's just a wonderful expression, and it uplifts uh marriage as a wonderful union by associating it with all of these ultimate things.
00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:40.560
And so this theology imagines a high view of the very nature of marriage, and that naturally leads to a conclusion that it that marriage cannot be dissolved while both spouses are alive.
00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:44.000
But we'll see that's not where Tom Wright lands.
00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:45.600
Marriage.
00:06:45.759 --> 00:06:50.879
Now, having said all of that, then of course there is Jesus' teaching in Mark 10.
00:06:51.120 --> 00:07:00.160
We notice that where Jesus is when he's being asked about divorce is down by the Jordan in the territory of Herod Antipas.
00:07:00.399 --> 00:07:06.480
And of course, John the Baptist had criticized Herod Antipas because he had snatched his brother's wife.
00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:19.759
Presumably, she was quite happy to be complicit with this arrangement, we're not actually told, but um, but John the Baptist had quite literally lost his head because of his opposition to Herod's divorce and remarriage.
00:07:20.560 --> 00:07:24.399
So asking Jesus, can you tell us about divorce, Rabbi?
00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:30.160
This is a way of saying, Would you like to put your head into the same noose that your cousin got stuck in?
00:07:30.399 --> 00:07:42.160
And so what Jesus says is in a sense cryptic because he has to go back into the house with the disciples in verse um 10 for them to ask him about the precise meaning of it.
00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:51.120
He is, of course, correct that John the Baptist was unjustly killed because John told Herod his marriage to Herodias was unlawful.
00:07:51.279 --> 00:07:53.519
You can see that in Mark chapter six.
00:07:54.560 --> 00:08:00.639
It was unlawful because Herodias had married Herod's brother previously.
00:08:00.959 --> 00:08:08.560
Herodias was divorced from Herod's brother, but Leviticus 18, 16 prohibited her from marrying Herod despite that divorce.
00:08:08.800 --> 00:08:10.879
So here's what's interesting about that.
00:08:11.279 --> 00:08:24.240
If the divorce between Herodias and Herod's brother, if that had, if the divorce had dissolved that marriage, then it wouldn't be incest for Herod and Herodias to marry because Herodias isn't connected to the brother anymore.
00:08:24.399 --> 00:08:24.639
Right.
00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:28.000
The idea is Herodias is Herod's sister-in-law.
00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:30.720
And so it's incest for them to have relations.
00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:35.679
Well, except once she divorces Herod's brother, then she's not the sister-in-law anymore, right?
00:08:35.759 --> 00:08:38.000
That's what you, that's what you might automatically think.
00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:43.519
But Leviticus 18 treats her as though she is still the sister-in-law.
00:08:43.679 --> 00:08:45.279
And so it is still incest.
00:08:45.519 --> 00:08:52.480
The fact that, the fact that it was incest for Herod and Herodias to marry shows that divorce doesn't dissolve a marriage.
00:08:52.639 --> 00:08:54.159
We had it all the way back in Leviticus.
00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:56.639
And so Josephus talks about this as well.
00:08:56.799 --> 00:09:08.240
He talks about uh Herodias took upon her to confound the laws of her country and divorced herself from her husband while he was alive and was married to Herod Antipas, her husband's brother.
00:09:08.480 --> 00:09:12.480
By her by the father's side, he was Tetrarch of Galilee.
00:09:12.559 --> 00:09:15.600
That's Josephus in the antiquities of the Jews.
00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:20.320
Okay, so it in that context, we see that Tom Wright is correct.
00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:27.840
Uh the Pharisees who came to Jesus questioning him on divorce and remarriage were putting Jesus in a tough spot, humanly speaking, a tough spot.
00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:30.960
So the Pharisees already know what Jesus believes on divorce and remarriage.
00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:32.480
He taught it on the Sermon on the Mount.
00:09:32.639 --> 00:09:40.879
Jesus is an itinerant preacher, so we imagine that he is teaching a lot of the same things and place to place that he goes to, and we imagine he'd be repeating himself at a bunch of places.
00:09:41.039 --> 00:09:46.240
So they heard him on the Sermon on the Mount or perhaps in one of these other messages that he gave.
00:09:46.480 --> 00:09:52.399
So the now, the Pharisees, they know the crowds are not going to like Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage.
00:09:52.639 --> 00:09:56.320
And Herod won't like it when he hears about it, if he were to hear about it.
00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:59.039
Now, here's where I disagree with Tom Wright.
00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:01.679
I don't think Jesus was being cryptic with his answer at all.
00:10:01.840 --> 00:10:06.399
I think he was being very plain and straightforward, and everybody understood what he said.
00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:10.799
It was very clear and easy to understand what Jesus said at the time.
00:10:10.960 --> 00:10:17.919
So in Matthew 19, we see in this in this exchange, Jesus said to the crowd and the Pharisees that divorce and remarriage is adultery.
00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:19.679
He said it publicly before everybody.
00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:21.200
That's in Matthew chapter 19.
00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:23.440
So there Jesus taught it publicly.
00:10:23.600 --> 00:10:29.200
And then in Mark chapter 10, we have an additional note that after all of that, then they went into a house and Jesus said it privately.
00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:30.879
So in Matthew 19, he said it publicly.
00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:32.799
In Mark 10, he says it privately.
00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:36.000
In Matthew 5, he said it publicly earlier on the Sermon on the Mount.
00:10:36.080 --> 00:10:42.159
So Jesus is not being cryptic, he's not hiding the ball, he is being very public and clear with his teaching to everybody.
00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:48.559
What he does is repeat Genesis 1 about a man leaving his father and mother and cleaving to his wife.
00:10:48.720 --> 00:10:55.840
And what he says is, yes, Moses gave us the command about how to divorce, but that's because you are hard hearted.
00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:03.360
Now, that too is cryptic, but it must mean that Jesus is offering a cure for hardness of heart.
00:11:03.679 --> 00:11:08.159
Okay, so Jesus does point back to Genesis as the model, the Garden of Eden.
00:11:08.240 --> 00:11:09.279
And this is really simple.
00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:12.639
The example in the garden is the example we should follow.
00:11:12.879 --> 00:11:17.919
So pre-fall in the garden, uh, we see what's what it's like when people are not sinning.
00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:23.519
In the garden, marriage was created to be permanent, therefore, separating husband and wife is sin.
00:11:23.759 --> 00:11:26.240
So it's stunning in its simplicity.
00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:32.399
And the hermeneutic, the idea is any action that is morally intolerable in Eden is sin.
00:11:32.799 --> 00:11:36.080
And divorce is morally intolerable in Eden, therefore, divorce is sin.
00:11:36.480 --> 00:11:38.960
The logic is stunning and undeniable.
00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:43.759
And so not only is it stunningly simple, it's also stunningly absolute.
00:11:44.159 --> 00:11:46.799
It's an argument that permits no exceptions.
00:11:46.879 --> 00:11:49.519
The argument from Genesis permits no exceptions.
00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:51.039
It is the ideal.
00:11:51.120 --> 00:11:59.759
It cuts through all the noise, all the lawyerly arguments, and all of the mental gymnastics that people did then and people do now.
00:11:59.919 --> 00:12:04.320
Now it's difficult to follow it in many circumstances, but it's not difficult to understand.
00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:07.200
And the Pharisees then ask a follow-up question.
00:12:07.360 --> 00:12:13.279
Uh, Tom, uh Tom Wright is in Mark 10 here, but we see the same interaction in uh Matthew 19.
00:12:13.360 --> 00:12:19.440
So in Matthew 19, we see in verse 3, the Pharisees originally asked about an any cause divorce.
00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:27.120
This was the view of Rabbi Hillel, and he interpreted Deuteronomy 24 to allow a man to divorce his wife for any cause.
00:12:27.360 --> 00:12:30.480
He had to have a cause, but any old cause would do.
00:12:31.039 --> 00:12:42.320
In response to their question about an any cause divorced, he says no to divorce in an absolute exceptionless way, in Matthew 19, 4 through 6.
00:12:42.480 --> 00:12:44.399
Then the Pharisees ask a follow-up question.
00:12:44.480 --> 00:12:48.000
This is in uh Matthew 19, verse 7.
00:12:48.159 --> 00:12:50.639
Why did Moses then command to divorce?
00:12:50.799 --> 00:12:56.799
I agree with Tom Wright that the Pharisees are claiming Moses commanded divorce.
00:12:57.039 --> 00:12:59.360
And we know that from the next verse.
00:12:59.679 --> 00:13:02.480
Jesus says Moses allowed the divorce.
00:13:02.639 --> 00:13:04.879
That is, Moses tolerated the divorce.
00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:06.240
He didn't command it.
00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:10.080
Now, why would the Pharisees claim Moses commanded divorce?
00:13:10.159 --> 00:13:10.720
Why would they say that?
00:13:10.799 --> 00:13:14.240
If you read Deuteronomy chapter 24, that's what they're referencing.
00:13:14.399 --> 00:13:18.559
Nothing in Deuteronomy chapter 24, verse 1, it says anything about commanding divorce.
00:13:18.720 --> 00:13:20.240
Nothing in there says that at all.
00:13:20.399 --> 00:13:24.639
And the reason is they're asking about divorcing for adultery.
00:13:24.720 --> 00:13:25.600
So here's how this works.
00:13:25.679 --> 00:13:27.039
These are Hillel Pharisees.
00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:29.120
We can tell that from Matthew 19, verse 3.
00:13:29.200 --> 00:13:31.600
They ask about in any cause divorce there.
00:13:31.679 --> 00:13:32.720
That's the Hillel view.
00:13:32.879 --> 00:13:36.320
You see that in Gitin 910 of the Talmud.
00:13:36.639 --> 00:13:46.879
Well, also, if you look in the Gemera portion of the Talmud, you see a paraphrased kind of debate back and forth between Rabbi Shemai and Rabbi Hillel.
00:13:47.279 --> 00:13:51.120
And they're arguing over Deuteronomy chapter 24 and verse 1.
00:13:51.279 --> 00:13:57.279
And Deuteronomy 24 and verse 1 has a divorce there in the first verse for a phrase that's ervat.
00:13:58.399 --> 00:14:02.399
And the word ervat means nakedness, and the word dabar means a matter.
00:14:02.559 --> 00:14:06.240
And so Hillel gets an any cause divorce from this word a matter.
00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:11.279
Oh, you can divorce for any cause, because it says you can divorce, you know, that the man divorced her for a matter.
00:14:11.519 --> 00:14:13.919
Well, Shemai says, but it also has this word ervat there.
00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:16.399
Why is the word ervat there if it's just for any a matter?
00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:18.000
Wouldn't ervat be duplicative?
00:14:18.159 --> 00:14:22.080
Wouldn't ervat if adultery be included in a matter?
00:14:22.159 --> 00:14:24.480
So why would you need it to also say ervat?
00:14:24.799 --> 00:14:26.960
And Hillel responds with, oh no, no.
00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:30.399
The word adultery there, the word ervat there means adultery.
00:14:30.559 --> 00:14:38.000
And what Moses means there is that you're commanded, you're required, you're obligated to divorce your wife if she cheats on you.
00:14:38.240 --> 00:14:44.960
So when you get to Matthew chapter 19 and verse 7, and they say, Why did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?
00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:50.559
They're asking, why did Moses require a man to divorce his wife for adultery?
00:14:50.960 --> 00:14:58.879
And then Jesus rejects that ground for divorce, the divorce for adultery in Matthew chapter 19 and verse 8.
00:14:58.960 --> 00:15:09.039
Now that's going to surprise people that Jesus rejected divorce for adultery, because you may have heard that Jesus permitted divorce for adultery from the exception clause in Matthew 5, 32, Matthew 19.9.
00:15:09.200 --> 00:15:11.840
I don't think the exception clause permits divorce for adultery.
00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:19.759
Let me just step back and let's just look at Matthew 19 and Mark 10, this debate between Jesus and these Hill Pharisees.
00:15:19.919 --> 00:15:24.799
The Hillel Pharisees are basing their view on Deuteronomy, the regulation.
00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:27.679
That's where they're getting their rules for divorce and remarriage.
00:15:27.759 --> 00:15:29.440
But that's not where Jesus is starting.
00:15:29.600 --> 00:15:33.840
Jesus here in Matthew 19 and Mark 10, he's starting in Genesis.
00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:35.759
He's starting in the beginning.
00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:43.600
The Pharisees think we're going to find the moral law, the law of God in these individual regulations.
00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:47.600
That's where we're going to find the real, the real heart of God, the real law of God.
00:15:47.840 --> 00:15:49.759
But Jesus says, no, no, no, no.
00:15:49.919 --> 00:15:53.200
Those regulations, they have things allowed in there for your hardness of heart.
00:15:53.440 --> 00:15:57.840
They allowed you to do wrong things, but they allowed you to do them because you had hard hearts.
00:15:57.919 --> 00:15:59.600
And Moses is trying to mitigate sin.
00:15:59.679 --> 00:16:04.559
He's regulating sin so that he could have a community through which the Messiah would eventually come.
00:16:04.639 --> 00:16:06.720
So you could have the Holy of Holies there.
00:16:06.879 --> 00:16:16.799
And the people around in that in the Mosaic camp, they're living not as bad as the Gentiles, not as bad as people out in the wilderness, but they're still not maybe living as people would live in the Garden of Eden.
00:16:16.879 --> 00:16:18.240
They're kind of in this gray area.
00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:23.440
But if they can follow these laws, that's that's good enough for God to be able to dwell among them in the Holy of Holies.
00:16:23.519 --> 00:16:24.720
That's the idea of the Mosaic Law.
00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:28.639
We're just trying to manage this sin problem here in this nation.
00:16:28.720 --> 00:16:32.000
So the Mosaic laws there are regulating bad behavior.
00:16:32.159 --> 00:16:35.279
They're not approving the behavior that is tolerated.
00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:39.519
And so that's what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 19, 8, that people have hard hearts.
00:16:39.600 --> 00:16:43.120
And that's why these regulations allowed sinful conduct.
00:16:43.200 --> 00:16:47.519
They didn't use government force to prevent people from divorcing, for example.
00:16:47.679 --> 00:16:49.360
So Jesus is not being cryptic here.
00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:52.559
This is the second time we've heard this from Tom Wright that Jesus was being cryptic.
00:16:52.639 --> 00:16:53.600
It's very simple.
00:16:53.840 --> 00:16:55.679
Jesus just says no to divorce.
00:16:55.759 --> 00:16:58.320
They ask about a mosaic allowance for divorce.
00:16:58.399 --> 00:17:00.480
And Jesus says those divorces were sin.
00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:02.639
They were tolerated for your hard-heartedness.
00:17:02.799 --> 00:17:07.519
What Jesus says is simple, absolute, exceptionless.
00:17:07.680 --> 00:17:09.599
It is the furthest thing from being cryptic.
00:17:09.680 --> 00:17:14.240
Now, Tom Wright then said that Jesus must be offering a solution for hard-heartedness.
00:17:14.799 --> 00:17:20.480
It's true that Jesus does offer a cure for hard-heartedness, but that's not the emphasis in Matthew 19.8.
00:17:20.640 --> 00:17:26.400
The emphasis there is simply this divorcing your wife because she committed adultery is wrong.
00:17:26.640 --> 00:17:28.720
Let's continue to hear Tom Wright.
00:17:29.759 --> 00:17:31.759
That's a tough thing to say.
00:17:31.920 --> 00:17:47.920
And having counseled many people in different stages of marital either coming together or breakup, it's not possible just to say, oh, well, Jesus offers a cure for hardness of heart, so say your prayers and your heart will soften and then all will be well.
00:17:48.160 --> 00:17:52.160
Pastoral situations don't work that easily in my experience.
00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:56.319
However, that doesn't mean that it isn't still the aim.
00:17:56.480 --> 00:18:05.039
And it doesn't mean that if divorce does happen, that we then have to shrug our shoulders and say, oh well, stuff happens, really doesn't matter.
00:18:05.200 --> 00:18:09.599
Just get on with life as though nothing had uh been particularly difficult or different.
00:18:09.839 --> 00:18:37.759
And because I do think that divorce leaves a wound, it leaves a wound for the people, it leaves a wound in their extended families, it leaves a wound in their community, and if the community is a church community, it leaves a wound in that church community, and actually a very damaging one because uh divorce says here are promises that were made that for whatever reason are no longer kept.
00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:47.759
And uh the entire Christian truth is based on God making promises in creation and covenant, which God has kept faithfully.
00:18:47.920 --> 00:19:03.200
And you know, that that is that is a hard saying for all those of us who've been married for 50 plus years, as I have, um, yeah, there are tough times, there are difficult times as well as joyful times, and and there's that stickability of God which is at stake.
00:19:03.359 --> 00:19:34.079
Now, having said all of the above, I would then be content, and we've actually done this in one case in my family, that if divorce has happened for whatever reason, and then one partner intends to marry somebody else, that they can, according to the law of the land where I am at the moment, they can marry in a registry office, in other words, not in a church, but then they are allowed to come into church for a blessing of the marriage.
00:19:34.240 --> 00:19:48.559
And the trouble with that, I I understand why that happens and why we've done it, but the trouble with that is that it looks to the outside observer as though, oh well, the church is quite happy they got divorced, but never mind, we're gonna do it again and see what happens this time.
00:19:48.720 --> 00:20:02.319
Um, and it's very important to communicate to the wider world that actually the one man, one woman for life thing is is not a casual old rule which we can ignore.
00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:12.079
It's absolutely vital for the health and well-being of the world in general, the church in particular, and certainly these these human beings in the middle of it.
00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:52.000
Um, so when divorce does happen, I think it's a cause for uh deep sorrow, lament, and there should be ways of doing that lament together and perhaps even with the church community, and then within that lament or arising out of that lament, if God then leaves one, leads one or both parties forward in different directions, well, that too is something which is uh uh a sorrowful, maybe second best, it may still be a good thing in its way, especially if they are then able to be faithful and wise together, but um that will always have the note of lament about it.
00:20:52.160 --> 00:21:01.039
This is a hard saying, and I'm speaking about people that I know and love, and I hope if any of them listen to this, they won't think I'm being harsh on them because I because I'm not.
00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:11.279
I'm simply trying to say this is how I currently see the landing of the New Testament in our very contested world.
00:21:11.599 --> 00:21:21.519
Okay, so I agree with Tom Wright that the pastor's challenge in helping people fix their marriages and curing hard-heartedness is immensely important and difficult.
00:21:21.759 --> 00:21:28.400
You'll notice, Tom Wright here, he rightly associates marriage with the relationship we have with God, with promises, with covenant.
00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:43.039
He wants to generically elevate the nature of marriage and deduce that divorce is therefore bad, but also act as though a remarriage after divorce is valid, but lamentable.
00:21:43.279 --> 00:21:43.599
Okay.
00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:47.200
And you can probably feel the tension in his reasoning.
00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:52.640
And here's the problem there's two separate questions you have to keep in mind when you're thinking about this issue.
00:21:52.799 --> 00:21:58.640
The first one is moral permissibility, and the second one is validity.
00:21:58.960 --> 00:21:59.759
So a marriage.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.079
A divorce or a remarriage can be morally permissible or impermissible.
00:22:04.240 --> 00:22:05.599
That's one question.
00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:10.240
That same act can be valid or invalid.
00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:16.799
That is, it either creates a valid or invalid marriage, or it does or does not dissolve the marriage.
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:19.279
Now, I would say divorce can never dissolve a marriage.
00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:29.039
And so Tom Wright talks about, he does an analysis of moral permissibility and then he switches over to validity and he never does, he doesn't do the analysis.
00:22:29.119 --> 00:22:33.599
He doesn't walk through the steps to say, okay, this happened, then this happened, then this happened.
00:22:33.680 --> 00:22:34.880
That's why this remarriage is valid.
00:22:34.960 --> 00:22:36.160
He doesn't walk through those steps.
00:22:36.240 --> 00:22:38.480
He just kind of passes by that.
00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:48.400
He does an analysis of moral permissibility and kind of um implies or assumes or it kind of looks like he did the validity analysis, but that is not.
00:22:48.480 --> 00:22:54.160
There are two different analyses, the moral permissibility analysis and the validity analysis.
00:22:54.319 --> 00:22:58.480
So and we can see his view on remarriage in the scenario that he mentions here.
00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:06.559
So based on the information he provided, uh, most likely this family member of his got into a remarriage that Jesus would call adultery.
00:23:06.720 --> 00:23:07.039
Okay.
00:23:07.279 --> 00:23:13.440
And Tom Wright makes it sound as if he's taking a hard stance here, but I think it's not a hard stance at all.
00:23:13.519 --> 00:23:18.799
I mean, historically, when you read theologians through the centuries on this, Tom Wright's stance is a very permissive stance.
00:23:18.960 --> 00:23:23.119
He's saying they can stay in their remarriage that Jesus called adultery.
00:23:23.279 --> 00:23:26.079
That is a very permissive stance, historically speaking.
00:23:26.160 --> 00:23:28.480
But now he frames it like he's taking a hard stance.
00:23:28.559 --> 00:23:40.720
And this is, I noticed this is something that happens a lot with pastors today who talk about divorce and remarriage, and they'll have a very permissive view and they'll act like, oh, I have a very strict view, and I know you guys are going to be mad at me and everything.
00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:46.880
Now you understand people don't want you to call their remarriage adultery, but if you tell them they can stay in it, that's a permissive view, historically speaking.
00:23:47.039 --> 00:23:47.200
All right.
00:23:47.279 --> 00:23:51.119
So here are two significant problems with Tom Wright's permissive view.
00:23:51.279 --> 00:23:57.599
First, it imagines that the first marriage is over, which allows the remarriage to be a valid marriage.
00:23:57.839 --> 00:24:02.559
But the scriptures don't say the first marriage is dissolved upon the formation of the second marriage, right?
00:24:02.640 --> 00:24:04.000
In fact, it says the opposite, right?
00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:06.640
The sex in the remarriage is adultery.
00:24:06.960 --> 00:24:09.839
That means they're still married to their first spouse.
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:16.000
The fact that sex in the remarriage is adultery means that the original divorce didn't dissolve the first marriage.
00:24:16.160 --> 00:24:20.400
Other because it can't be adultery unless they're still married to the first spouse.
00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:27.839
So what we really need is for Tom Wright and others to say, under what conditions do you think a marriage is dissolved?
00:24:28.000 --> 00:24:33.279
Because if you say it gets dissolved at divorce, I don't know, you're going to have a problem because Jesus calls the remarriage adultery.
00:24:33.359 --> 00:24:40.079
So if a husband and wife are married and they divorce for, let's say, irreconcilable differences, and the man remarries, it's adultery.
00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:41.680
So he marries a single woman.
00:24:41.920 --> 00:24:47.680
Okay, well, if you imagine that the divorce dissolved the marriage, then now the man is an unmarried man.
00:24:47.839 --> 00:24:53.680
And if he marries an unmarried woman, a single woman, their marriage, how could that possibly be adultery?
00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:56.160
Two unmarried people can't commit adultery.
00:24:56.319 --> 00:25:02.880
It's only adultery because he's still married to his first wife, which means the divorce did not dissolve the marriage.
00:25:03.039 --> 00:25:08.319
Okay, so if the divorce doesn't dissolve the marriage, we're saying the remarriage dissolves the first marriage.
00:25:08.480 --> 00:25:09.440
I don't understand how that works.
00:25:09.519 --> 00:25:15.440
So even if you think the exception clause is for the innocent party to adultery, the man who divorced and remarried, he's not the innocent party.
00:25:15.519 --> 00:25:16.880
He's the guilty party, right?
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:21.119
If you're going to look at it from an innocent, guilty party perspective, he's the guilty party.
00:25:21.279 --> 00:25:22.880
The guilty party can't remarry.
00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:24.640
So that doesn't get the job done.
00:25:24.720 --> 00:25:27.440
What makes us know that the first marriage has been dissolved?
00:25:27.680 --> 00:25:29.440
Tom Wright never gives us an answer.
00:25:29.599 --> 00:25:33.359
He just says it's wrong to do, but maybe God let them do it.
00:25:33.440 --> 00:25:33.599
All right.
00:25:33.680 --> 00:25:35.200
And so here's the second problem.
00:25:35.519 --> 00:25:41.920
During the time of Jesus, calling a marriage adultery meant the marriage was invalid.
00:25:42.079 --> 00:25:44.240
That was a way of calling it invalid.
00:25:44.400 --> 00:25:50.960
And we see that in Romans chapter 7, where the woman's second marriage, while her first husband is alive, is called adultery.
00:25:51.119 --> 00:25:52.559
It's a fake marriage.
00:25:52.799 --> 00:26:00.240
We see this same idea in the Talmud when a woman receives an invalid divorce certificate and she remarries on that basis.
00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:04.559
Her remarriage is adultery, and the Talmud requires it to be divorced.
00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:10.240
No one hearing Jesus at the time would think Jesus taught adultery marriages were valid marriages that ought to continue.
00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:13.519
And I listen, I understand, you know, the Talmud's not scripture.
00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:19.039
Obviously, I know that, but here's my point the Talmud was written by the religious descendants of the Pharisees.
00:26:19.279 --> 00:26:25.279
So when these Pharisees are hearing Jesus call remarriage adultery, Jesus knows how they think.
00:26:25.440 --> 00:26:28.559
Jesus knows the words they're using, and Jesus calls it adultery.
00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:37.920
He's using their language to he to tell them something that they'll understand, which is these remarriages are invalid, fake marriages, they ought to be divorced.
00:26:39.839 --> 00:26:41.440
And just as in other respects, e.g.
00:26:41.680 --> 00:26:51.519
political respects, I would need to say some pretty harsh things, or things that would sound harsh to people who took a very different view politically from where I would be.
00:26:51.680 --> 00:27:16.240
So I think it's important that we don't just say, oh, well, let's just all be nice to each other, but we actually can state where the Bible puts things and then say now, if there needs to be a new arrangement, let's be honest about the fact that that's what's happening, and not pretend that we can just say, Well, the past didn't really happen, or it didn't really matter, because it did happen and it did matter.
00:27:16.559 --> 00:27:19.359
So I could go on with this a long time.
00:27:19.599 --> 00:27:26.160
Mike, you you may well have some personal experience as well, pastoral experience on which to draw to help us further forward.
00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:30.319
Yeah, I mean, divorce is something that's touched my family as well.
00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:44.480
I mean, and it's hard because you've got what I think is the biblical norm, which is, you know, one man, one woman for life, but you do have to deal with the messy realities that it doesn't always turn out that way.
00:27:44.640 --> 00:27:53.359
And without retreating to a kind of, oh well, such is life, you know, do the best you can and what happens, happens.
00:27:53.440 --> 00:27:55.359
You don't want to be blase about it.
00:27:55.599 --> 00:28:00.799
But I think we do have to recognize that, you know, this is a complicated part of human relationships.
00:28:01.039 --> 00:28:16.799
These things do happen, and we've got to be pastoral, we've got to be faithful in the way that we deal with it, and recognize that you know, people who are divorced or in the process of separating, they do need a lot of pastoral care, a lot of support.
00:28:16.960 --> 00:28:22.960
Uh, getting divorced uh in terms of stress levels, it's right up there with grieving for the death of a loved one.
00:28:23.440 --> 00:28:37.519
Because you know, you you're uh there is the death of a kind of of an entity, which is the marriage, and that and and the stress is similar to you know grieving for a lost family relative or something like that.
00:28:37.759 --> 00:28:42.720
So I think it's very important to minister to people who are going through these situations.
00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:45.839
So this is uh Pastor Mike Byrd.
00:28:45.920 --> 00:28:48.960
I haven't uh referenced him yet, but I just want to chime in here.
00:28:49.279 --> 00:28:53.359
The idea that the divorce is the death of an entity of marriage.
00:28:53.599 --> 00:28:59.759
Now, I mean, I understand his point about like the stress and the death of a dream and things like that, but the marriage is is not over.
00:28:59.920 --> 00:29:01.839
The marriage is not is not dead, actually.
00:29:02.079 --> 00:29:08.400
Jesus' point is remarriage is adultery because the first marriage has not ended.
00:29:08.480 --> 00:29:14.079
Uh, it's ended legally and socially, but from God's perspective, those two are still married.
00:29:16.079 --> 00:29:21.359
Even if and I think it's just recognizing, like so much of life, it's not ideal.
00:29:21.519 --> 00:29:33.440
There's so much of life that is not ideal, and yet you've got to discern how do we meet others and how does God meet us at some of the lowest ebbs in our life that happen in places like divorce.
00:29:33.920 --> 00:29:36.160
Yeah, no, I I I'm totally with you.
00:29:36.319 --> 00:29:51.920
And uh the the I think to be part of our problem may be that as a society we're not good at doing lament, we're not good at facing up to deep sorrow, and so it can get buried and then it comes back in other ways psychologically.
00:29:52.079 --> 00:30:00.559
And I think to face up to it, say, here it is, it's a matter of real, as you say, a tearing apart of something which was a unit.
00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:05.599
Um, it's not just two people who came within shouting distance of each other and then drifted away again.
00:30:05.680 --> 00:30:14.000
It's two people who became a single unit, and there's a sense of tearing of flesh, uh tearing of a very, very deep bond.
00:30:14.079 --> 00:30:24.000
Um so perhaps a lack of good lament is a problem, but the real problem should be pretty obvious, and that's the divorce and perhaps subsequent remarriage.
00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:29.279
The problem is the thing that causes the lament, not the lack of good lament, really.
00:30:29.440 --> 00:30:36.559
So, and also, you know, uh Tom Wright here, he he characterizes divorce as tearing apart the union.
00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:41.119
And okay, so there's a relational separation, and and that occurs.
00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:41.759
And I understand that.
00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:45.200
And so in the daily life experience, the two people who are divorced, they're ripped apart.
00:30:45.279 --> 00:30:48.000
But ontologically, they're still joined.
00:30:48.079 --> 00:30:49.039
They're still married.
00:30:49.119 --> 00:30:53.839
The marriage has not died, the marriage has not been torn apart ontologically.
00:30:53.920 --> 00:30:57.920
They are just as married the day before they divorced as the day after they divorced.
00:30:58.000 --> 00:31:07.440
They are equally married in both uh on both those days because the human divorce is unable to unjoin a God-joined marriage.
00:31:07.599 --> 00:31:14.000
Just as I could not unsibling my sibling, so I cannot unspouse my spouse, their family.
00:31:14.160 --> 00:31:19.920
That's what it says in Genesis, where Adam says to Eve, You were not born of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
00:31:20.079 --> 00:31:27.200
And that uh flesh and bone language is the same language we see there in Genesis 29, when Laban says to Jacob, Are you not my bone and flesh?
00:31:27.359 --> 00:31:29.759
That's Old Testament language for family.
00:31:29.920 --> 00:31:35.440
And we tell that again, like I said, in Leviticus chapter 18, where divorce does not really end the marriage.
00:31:35.599 --> 00:31:39.839
That's why it was still incest for Herod to marry Herodias.
00:31:40.240 --> 00:31:48.319
So in these two segments, both Mike Byrd and Tom Wright have implied that divorce dissolves the marriage bond.
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:50.880
But those are just assertions.
00:31:51.119 --> 00:31:56.559
The text says the remarriage is adultery, which means the marriage bond is not broken.
00:31:56.799 --> 00:32:04.640
First Corinthians 7, 10, and 11, Paul paraphrases Jesus and says people who are divorced should stay single or be reconciled to their spouse.
00:32:04.799 --> 00:32:12.880
And if divorce dissolved the marriage bond, there would be no prohibition on remarriage, but there is because they are still married.
00:32:14.480 --> 00:32:31.680
And that when then one or other gets together with somebody else, if that is to receive God's blessing, it's as a new thing at the other side of tragedy, rather than um uh uh oh well, you know, we did that and now we're doing this.
00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:54.319
It's and that and I think God can and does and will bless those new things, particularly when the people concerned approach it with appropriate lament and um sorrow for what's happened, and then waiting for a kindly word from God to say, okay, this now is the way forward.
00:32:54.480 --> 00:32:57.599
Um these are very difficult things, and we all know that.
00:32:58.240 --> 00:33:04.400
Suppose you have a husband and wife, and they are married, and then they get divorced for irreconcilable differences.
00:33:04.640 --> 00:33:16.559
Tom Wright would say it's morally impermissible to remarry unless, based on this video, God contradicts himself and gives the person a kindly word that they can remarry.
00:33:16.720 --> 00:33:21.599
So, what Tom Wright calls a kindly word is really a contradictory word.
00:33:21.759 --> 00:33:23.359
It's God contradicting himself.
00:33:23.759 --> 00:33:30.480
Imagine, if you would, two teenagers uh who they're in love and they commit fornication.
00:33:30.720 --> 00:33:34.079
And you tell them you can't do that, that's sin.
00:33:34.319 --> 00:33:36.720
But they say, we know the Bible calls it sin.
00:33:36.799 --> 00:33:41.599
We understand that, we read it, we totally affirm that the Bible would call fornication sin.
00:33:42.079 --> 00:33:46.880
But in our situation, it's different because God gave us a kindly word.
00:33:47.039 --> 00:33:51.759
And so listen, I'm sure you two teenagers, you felt all kinds of feelings, okay?
00:33:51.839 --> 00:33:55.359
And you might sincerely think that God gave you a kindly word, but he didn't.
00:33:55.519 --> 00:33:59.920
You sinned, and we're not going to all pretend like it's okay for you two to continue in your fornication.
00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:03.839
And that's the same thing as Tom Wright's divorce and remarriage scenario.
00:34:04.000 --> 00:34:12.400
This is just a more dignified version of when somebody says something that's a heretical doctrine and they say, Well, God told me, even though it goes against it goes against his Bible.
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:18.639
And so we're supposed to, we're supposed to believe them and their personal experience over the words of scripture.
00:34:18.719 --> 00:34:19.360
No, I don't think so.
00:34:19.679 --> 00:34:23.840
We should take the words of scripture over somebody's belief that they got a kindly word.
00:34:23.920 --> 00:34:28.800
And Bible 101 is that we believe the scriptures over people's feelings.
00:34:29.039 --> 00:34:30.239
So let me know what you think.
00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:32.559
Leave a comment, like, subscribe, do all the things.
00:34:32.639 --> 00:34:36.320
Get my book, divorce your remarriage, and I will see you guys next time.
