REACT: New Testament Prof. Craig Keener's Divorce and Remarriage Interpretation

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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 reacting to Dr.
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Craig Keener's view on divorce and remarriage.
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Uh Lagos Bible Software, they actually just put this video up not that long ago.
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Lagos Bible Software is like a fantastic Bible software.
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I have a subscription to it.
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It's great.
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Actually, I recommend people get a subscription to it.
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It's worth the subscription price just for the audio courses that you get.
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The color, the branding for Logos is blue.
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So I'm wearing blue in solidarity with Lagos Bible software.
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Earlier, I did a reaction series, a nine-part series reacting to Mike Winger's view on divorce remarriage.
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You can find that uh on YouTube.
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I have a under the playlist section, you can find it there.
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So I did a whole reaction video to that because people need to know how am I going to respond to somebody like like a Mike Winger.
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Mike Winger is really popular.
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He's a more popular speaker, but Craig Keener is like in a different lane.
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He's more in the academic lane.
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He'll be telling us about his credentials here in a moment.
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He is a former president of the Evangelical Theological Society.
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That's rarefied air reserved for people like Al Moller and D.A.
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Carson and people like that.
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Now, I disagree with him.
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That's hence the reaction video, but I don't want this to seem like everything Craig Keener says is bad or whatever.
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Most of what he says, I'm sure I would totally agree with.
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I don't know all of his different teachings and other different subjects, but this is a smart guy.
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And so on most things we're going to have uh agreement on, but on this particular subject, we disagree, and that's what we're going to get into right now.
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Did Paul allow divorce and remarriage or not?
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In 1 Corinthians 7, his words are both debated and deeply personal for many.
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Today on What in the Word, I'm joined by New Testament scholar Craig Keener to unpack this challenging passage.
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Welcome to the podcast, Craig.
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It's great to be with you, Kirk.
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Yeah, let me just say later on, Kirk's going to tell us that Logos doesn't, you know, endorse any particular review of either Kirk Miller or Craig Keener, here the scholar.
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They're just interviewing them to get their perspective on these different topics.
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But the fact that Logos would have Craig Keener come on one of their public-facing videos like this just shows you the credibility and reputation that Dr.
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Craig Keener has uh has uh earned over uh the course of his scholarship.
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And before we get started, uh Craig, would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself for those who are who may be unfamiliar with you, how you serve Christ and his church?
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Sure.
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I'm a professor of biblical studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.
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I'm married to Medine Wasunga Keener.
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And um she works with especially international students because she used to be one before she got her doctorate.
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And um I also well I mentor doctoral students, I I teach doctoral and master students, and I uh write on biblical topics about 20,000 pages, 40 books so far, and and so on.
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Yeah, so you are a maybe we could call an elder statesman in biblical scholarship.
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So um one of the Well I didn't mean it in that way, but uh you are uh yeah, a premier uh scholar specializing in the New Testament uh specifically.
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Um and today we are going to be talking about uh 1 Corinthians 7, 12 through 16.
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And let me just ask you what makes this passage so difficult?
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Why are we spending a whole conversation on this text?
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Part of it is trying to harmonize this with the Gospels where Jesus talks about divorce.
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And part of it is there have been different views through church history, like many of the early church fathers no divorce, no remarriage, and then you have um in the Reformation people looked at it again and uh said, No, there are certain exceptions in the New Testament.
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But then there's also the added complication that divorce is so common in our culture that we have a lot of people who've suffered from it, and so it's a sensitive issue uh personally and pastorally too.
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Yeah.
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And like so, yeah.
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So he says the church fathers had no divorce, no remarriage.
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They would allow divorce for adultery, but they didn't, they they didn't allow for remarriage even after uh the innocent party to adultery, divorced the marriage.
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Now, I don't agree with the church fathers on that, but that's that that's just to be precise there.
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He he kind of skipped over the the Orthodox.
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A lot of people in the West just don't can think about what the Orthodox teach on this subject.
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I have some videos about that uh that you can watch, but um, and he talks about how in the Reformation uh that more exceptions were interpreted by the reformers, and that's true.
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You see that championed by uh Martin Luther, and you also see with John Calvin, and kind of spreads and it gets formalized in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is a fantastic confession of faith, except I disagree with it on divorce and remarriage.
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And there might be some other parts, like little nuances that I disagree with.
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I'd have to go back and look.
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And he's right, in modern times, we have a higher divorce rate.
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So what Dr.
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Keener's talking about here is like pastorally, how it's difficult and everything.
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But one way to interpret that is what Paul writes in Galatians 5, 9, that a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
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That once you start having uh uh all these divorces and remarriages, there's all this pressure exerted.
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And then people try to find ways to accommodate the practice of their days.
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Um, interpreting 1 Corinthians chapter 7 is hard because we're trying to understand what Jesus and Paul said together.
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Oh, and so Logos is looking into this with 1 Corinthians 7, which is uh kind of an awkward way to enter into this discussion.
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Normally you'd start with uh what Jesus says in the Gospels, or you start with the Old Testament, but rarely would you start with Paul.
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Uh, and and you'll see you'll see how that gets awkward later on, but we'll still be able to get through it.
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It'll be fine.
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Let me add at the beginning, we always like this um to note in in this show that as we talk about these issues, whatever issue we're talking about, um, the any view that's represented or that's presented by a guest, um, or even things I have to say um in these shows, they are this is not the position uh that Logas is taking.
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Um we we recognize that Christians disagree over these matters, good Christians disagree.
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And that is, of course, true um when it comes to the topic of divorce and remarriage, which is incredibly debated.
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Um, the other thing is that it's an incredibly personal issue for me.
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I I appreciate Kirk's uh statement here about how good Christians can disagree on subjects like this, and I I agree with him about that.
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I think I would like to see more people who are permissive.
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Now, Dr.
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Keener has a more permissive view, it we'll see that in a moment.
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But I would like to see more people who have a permissive view, whether they're scholars or pastors or church leaders, be more accepting of people who have a more restrictive view on these passages.
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Many.
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Um, this is not we should never discuss the Bible as purely in the abstract.
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Um, so every part of the Bible should be personal, but um many people's lives have been touched by divorce.
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Um, I think of pastors who have to um or who get to walk with people through um difficult marriages and be there for them, and and maybe pastor people who have been through divorces.
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We think of people who's who who know family members and friends, maybe parents who have experienced divorce, or maybe you're listening to this and you're wrestling with divorce, or maybe you've gone through divorce.
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And so we never want to talk about this as if we're talking about people someplace somewhere else who aren't impacted by this.
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This is, we understand this is a sensitive and deeply personal topic.
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We need to have truth and love.
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I totally agree with all of that.
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As long as we don't change our conclusions because we're being sensitive.
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That's a caveat that we have to have in there, because that's very easy to do with this issue.
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So our sensitivity doesn't change the original intention of the biblical writers.
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And therefore, our sensitivity shouldn't change our interpretation of what they wrote.
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Um, but there are a lot of viewpoints, as I said.
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Um, and maybe before we get too far into the weeds of those views, let me read the passage that we're going to be specifically focusing on verse 15.
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That's probably the the uh the main center of debate of debate.
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But I'll I'll read verses 12 through 16 for context.
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And I have the NASB open here.
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Paul writes this, he says, But to the rest I say, not the uh but to the rest I say, not the Lord, that if any brother has an unbelieving wife and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her.
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And if any woman has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she must not divorce her husband.
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For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband, for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy.
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Yet if the unbelieving one is leaving, let him leave.
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The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us in peace.
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For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband, or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
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Now, Craig, can you help us understand the context of this passage and how it that that context informs our approach to this specific paragraph and verse 15 in particular?
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Sure.
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Paul's writing this to uh the Christians in Corinth.
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They've just been Christians for a few years.
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Um it's a pretty young church.
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And um he's got a lot of issues he's got to deal with in the church.
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And in 1 Corinthians 7, he's responding to a letter that they wrote to him.
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He says that in in verse 1.
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Uh now concerning the letter about which you wrote to me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.
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Well, apparently they've said it's good for a man not to touch a woman, and he's responding to that um and qualifying that.
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Uh well, it's a little late to say that now that you're married.
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Um you need to go ahead and act married, since you are married, especially given the preceding paragraph about um sexual immorality in the church.
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So, you know, you you think you're being whole holy and spiritual by abstaining, but then you wonder why your spouse is visiting prostitutes and so on.
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So um then he comes to another issue.
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Well, what happens if you're married and your spouse a lot a lot of them would have been married before they became Christians.
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Your your spouse is not a Christian, or the parents arranged the marriage, your spouse is not a Christian, and you think, well, we're spiritually incompatible, can we break up?
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And so he quotes a saying of Jesus, verses 10 to 12.
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That's why he he says there, not I, but the Lord says this.
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He's quoting a saying of Jesus.
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And then when he goes on to qualify that uh in in verse 12, he says, No, this is what I say, not the Lord.
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He's not saying that what he says is not uh significant or inspired.
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Actually, in I think verse 40, he says, No, I think I have the Spirit of God, which is one of the closest, you know, closest to explicit points of Paul speaking of inspiration in his letters, but he's saying this isn't a saying of the Lord.
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This is my saying.
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And like Jesus says, you've heard it said in the law, you shall not commit adultery.
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I say to you, you shall not break up your marriage.
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Uh Paul says, You've heard it said by Jesus, but this is what I say to you to qualify in a kind of situation that Jesus didn't address.
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It is true that the Corinthians, their viewpoint, their interpretation was that celibacy is required for the Christian life.
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That was the argument.
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It's good for a man not to touch a woman because they thought that we got to be a celibate or whatever.
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And oh, look, we have these unbelieving spouses, we would like to divorce them, right?
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Um, but Paul is saying something different.
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Paul is saying, well, celibacy is preferable.
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It's preferable.
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And Dr.
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Keener says that Paul uh agrees with them that it's good for a man not to touch a woman, but he qualifies it.
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And I think that's that's right that Paul is saying celibacy is preferable, but not required.
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Uh, and if you're married, stay together.
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Like it's a little late for the celibacy thing.
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Now you already got married.
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So when the Corinthians are asking about, well, we have these believer, unbeliever marriages, can we break them up?
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Paul goes, no.
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And you see that in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 10 and 11.
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That context right there, I just want to pause here, is really important because uh later on in verse 15, uh, Dr.
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Keener is going to claim that Paul has an allowance for uh divorce and remarriage there.
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And here's the point from the context, nobody's looking for remarriage.
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The Corinthians aren't looking for remarriage, they're trying to get out of marriage, they're not looking for remarriage.
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So, and Paul is like, well, celibacy is preferable.
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And he knows they want celibacy, they want out of these marriages.
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So nobody's looking for remarriage.
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What's odd later on in verse 15 for Dr.
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Keener to think that Paul is implying, congratulations, you can get remarried.
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Congratulations, we don't want to be, we don't want to be remarried.
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So that's something to consider later on when we get to verse 15.
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Now, Dr.
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Keener here then says something that I disagree with.
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Now it is true that in verse 10 and 11, Paul paraphrased Jesus' teaching, right?
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Jesus famously calls remarriage adultery seven times in the Gospels.
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Paul, he just paraphrases here's what Jesus says.
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It's not like a direct quote word for word, it's a paraphrase.
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It is also true that verses 12 and following, Paul is teaching something that Jesus did not have occasion to address.
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And Dr.
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Keener does say that Paul is continuing to apply Jesus' teaching to believer, unbeliever marriages.
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And that's really important here because there's actually a whole view in evangelicalism that Kirk will bring up much later on in this video.
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There's a whole view that Jesus' teaching was only for believer-believer marriages and was not for believer-unbeliever marriages.
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And Dr.
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Keener right here rejected that concept.
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He says, no, verse 12 and following, uh, that Paul is applying Jesus' teaching to believer-unbeliever marriages, saying, Jesus said, don't divorce.
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So if you're married to an unbeliever, don't divorce.
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Oh, that is great.
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Now, but here's the part that Dr.
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Keener says I disagree with.
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So let's go back to this and just listen to it uh closely here.
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This isn't a saying of the Lord.
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This is my saying.
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And like Jesus says, you've heard it said in the law, you shall not commit adultery.
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I say to you, you shall not break up your marriage.
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Okay, so Dr.
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Keener says, you know, Jesus said, You have heard it said in the law, you shall not commit adultery.
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I say to you, you shall not break up your marriage.
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So, but what Jesus actually says is different.
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If you look at Matthew 5, uh, what he actually says is, you have heard uh to give a certificate of divorce, but I say to you, remarriage is adultery.
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So Dr.
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Keener says it's you have heard it said, don't commit adultery, but I say to you, don't remarry.
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But actually, it's don't it's the certificate of divorce that Jesus is uh rejecting in Matthew 5, 31 and 32.
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He's not rejecting the teaching on adultery or um qualifying that.
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What he's saying is Moses had a law in Deuteronomy 24.1 that a man could give his wife a certificate of divorce, but I say to you, basically, don't divorce, don't remarry.
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So Jesus was overriding the Mosaic law on divorce there.
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So what Paul, and that's different than what Paul is doing here.
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This is just a wrong kind of analogy from Dr.
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Keener, in my opinion.
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What Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 7, 12 and following, he's not overriding Jesus.
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He's not qualifying what Jesus says.
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Paul is applying what Jesus said to a question Jesus wasn't specifically asked about.
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Paul is applying it.
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Now, Dr.
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Keener, it's interesting because he just said this that um Paul is applying Jesus' teaching, and then he says, well, he's like qualifying Jesus' teaching.
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We I mean you gotta you gotta pick a side here.
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So I I think he's applying what Jesus taught.
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And so my question for Dr.
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Keener is do you think Jesus was applying or explaining Deuteronomy 24 law in Matthew 5.32?
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So you go to Matthew, Matthew 5.32, Moses said certificate of divorce, but I say don't divorce, don't remarry.
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And you also have that in Matthew 19, 7 through 9, where the Pharisees say to say to Jesus, Yeah, but Moses had this certificate of divorce, and then Jesus says, Yeah, that was for your hardness of heart.
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So is Jesus explaining Deuteronomy 24?
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Yes, Deuteronomy 24 is good law, and we need to apply it right now, and you're just not applying it correctly.
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Is that what Jesus is doing?
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Or is what Jesus is doing is he's saying, Yeah, okay, Moses lets you do the divorce thing.
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We're not doing that anymore.
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That was for hard-heartedness, you know, but I say to you.
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So to me, it sounds like Jesus is overriding the Mosaic law uh from Deuteronomy chapter 24 by going back to the beginning.
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Jesus is not embracing the regulation.
00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:09.039
That's what that's the Pharisees' position, embrace the regulation.
00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:12.319
Jesus is instead going back to the beginning before the regulation.
00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:13.440
So my question to Dr.
00:18:13.519 --> 00:18:20.559
Keener is was Jesus applying and explaining uh the Mosaic law or was Jesus overriding it?
00:18:20.720 --> 00:18:26.559
Uh is Jesus' law the same or different than the Mosaic Law, another way of asking the same question.
00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:34.400
And my second question is: do you think Paul is applying or explaining Jesus' teaching, or do you think Paul is overriding Jesus' teaching?
00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:37.920
There's just no way Paul is overriding Jesus' teaching.
00:18:38.079 --> 00:18:39.680
He's got to be applying it.
00:18:39.839 --> 00:18:43.519
And Jesus, on the other hand, was overriding the Mosaic Law.
00:18:43.599 --> 00:18:44.720
So that's not the same thing.
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:50.319
So what Jesus does with the Mosaic Law is not what Paul is doing to Jesus' teaching, not the same thing.
00:18:51.599 --> 00:18:54.400
I say to you, you shall not break up your marriage.
00:18:54.640 --> 00:19:04.000
Paul says, you've heard it said by Jesus, but this is what I say to you to qualify in a kind of situation that Jesus didn't address.
00:19:04.319 --> 00:19:09.519
So yes, you're not allowed to break up your marriage, but what happens if the other spouse walks out of it?
00:19:10.079 --> 00:19:29.839
In in Corinth, as elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world, if either party w walked out of the marriage, it was over by by definition, because um, under Roman law, marriage was held together by mutual consent, and Roman law was very relevant in Corinth, which was a Roman colony.
00:19:30.319 --> 00:19:37.279
So either party could walk out, that was the end of the marriage, and Paul is saying that's not on you.
00:19:37.440 --> 00:19:39.920
You can't you can't do anything about that.
00:19:40.319 --> 00:19:50.480
So uh what what other uh implications that might have will wait until we uh uh unfold the passage, but yeah.
00:19:51.440 --> 00:20:00.880
Yeah, so now I agree that 1 Corinthians 7, verse 15 is about what happens if your unbelieving spouse walks out on the marriage.
00:20:01.119 --> 00:20:06.160
Uh, if either party walks out, it ends the marriage legally, legally, under law.
00:20:06.319 --> 00:20:09.039
So I agree that was the law.
00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:11.039
Well, let's start.
00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:27.759
Um, maybe you can walk us through the different interpretations and the arguments for and against them if you want to take kind of the a first view and and help us understand why this view exists, what people look to in the text to establish that view and maybe how you'd evaluate it then.
00:20:28.240 --> 00:20:36.319
Okay, so I got to say I really like how Kirk Miller here is trying to structure uh this conversation.
00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:42.160
He he wants the different views and the arguments for and against each one.
00:20:42.400 --> 00:20:44.720
Now, I'd tell you, unfortunately, I don't know that Dr.
00:20:44.799 --> 00:20:47.039
Keener actually goes through all the different views.
00:20:47.759 --> 00:20:49.279
I'll defend them here a little bit.
00:20:49.359 --> 00:20:49.759
It's hard.
00:20:49.839 --> 00:20:54.799
There's a lot of different views, and to have them all off the top of your head and to be able to give them all is difficult to do.
00:20:54.960 --> 00:20:58.559
But here's the point this is absolutely the right way to proceed on this.
00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:05.839
You want to get the different views, understand the pros and cons of each one, and then pray and then try to decide what you think the scripture teaches.
00:21:10.799 --> 00:21:15.920
Well, I think verse 10 is pretty clear.
00:21:16.240 --> 00:21:22.480
Um because we already have that in the Gospels that you're not supposed to leave your spouse.
00:21:22.640 --> 00:21:26.640
Um, there's some debate about whether leave means divorce.
00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:39.680
Uh it doesn't have to mean that, but again, in the Greco-Roman world and especially with Roman law, it effectively did mean that, that if somebody walked out of the marriage, that was the the end of the marriage.
00:21:40.480 --> 00:21:52.720
Uh and it we'll go back and well, hopefully we'll go back and talk about the the gospel passages as well, because that that provides a context for uh you know what Paul is is citing here.
00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:59.759
Um and then you have um Paul dealing with a different situation.
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.240
Well, what happens if you have a spouse who's not a believer?
00:22:04.559 --> 00:22:09.519
And Paul is saying Jesus' teaching still applies here.
00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:18.880
You can't say that God hasn't joined it together just because you weren't believers when you got married, or just because this is important.
00:22:19.039 --> 00:22:19.279
Dr.
00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:22.960
Keener just said Jesus' teaching still applies here.
00:22:23.119 --> 00:22:28.319
So when a believer marries an unbeliever, uh uh they are joined by God.
00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:29.279
So I agree with Dr.
00:22:29.359 --> 00:22:30.079
Keener there.
00:22:30.240 --> 00:22:37.440
Jesus' teaching applies to all valid marriages, regardless of whether one, both, or neither are believers.
00:22:37.599 --> 00:22:40.720
Jesus' teaching applies to all valid marriages.
00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:48.160
Now that might sound obvious, but I mentioned this a minute ago, but most evangelicals say the opposite.
00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:54.559
Most evangelicals that I'm aware of say that in verse 12, there's a phrase.
00:22:54.720 --> 00:22:56.480
The phrase is to the rest.
00:22:57.039 --> 00:23:05.200
And they interpret that phrase uh to mean that Jesus' teaching does not apply to believer, unbeliever marriages.
00:23:05.279 --> 00:23:06.720
Now, why would they say that?
00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:17.920
Well, because later on, when they get to verse 15, where Paul says a believer is not enslaved after an unbeliever uh abandons the believer, they want to be able to say that that abandonment frees the believer to remarry.
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:24.319
But there's a problem because if the abandonment frees the believer to remarry, that contradicts what Jesus says.
00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:29.200
Jesus never said you can remarry uh because you were abandoned.
00:23:29.440 --> 00:23:33.279
So Jesus said remarriage is adultery and he gave one exception.
00:23:33.359 --> 00:23:36.559
And whatever you think that exception is, it's not abandonment.
00:23:36.799 --> 00:23:42.720
So, therefore, if all you had was the teachings of Jesus, you would conclude you cannot remarry because you're abandoned.
00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:52.480
So, to make it possible to remarry for abandonment, uh, most evangelicals say that Paul narrows Jesus' teaching to only believer-believer marriages.
00:23:52.720 --> 00:23:56.240
And they get all that from to the rest, which to the rest doesn't say that.
00:23:56.720 --> 00:23:57.759
It's not what it says.
00:23:57.920 --> 00:24:06.640
Um, so that and then they construe the spouse who abandons a non-believer, even if they claim faith, uh, and that way they make it permissible to remarry for abandonment.
00:24:06.720 --> 00:24:15.680
So if so here's what they do they say if you got two believers who are married and one abandons, they'll say, Well, the abandoner must not have been a believer.
00:24:15.920 --> 00:24:21.440
And so now that was actually, you thought it was a believer-believer marriage, but it was actually a believer-unbeliever marriage.
00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:26.640
And so then because of after the abandonment, then the believer can go ahead and remarry.
00:24:26.799 --> 00:24:30.960
And that's just a really cute kind of system that they have uh there.
00:24:31.119 --> 00:24:39.200
And it really doesn't work because they also then think that Jesus teaches an allowance to be able to divorce and remarry for adultery.
00:24:39.440 --> 00:24:49.200
So if Jesus could imagine uh imagine somebody who claims to be a believer and then commits adultery, he couldn't imagine somebody who claims to be a believer and abandons.
00:24:49.599 --> 00:24:50.640
That doesn't make any sense.
00:24:50.799 --> 00:24:59.440
I don't understand this category where Jesus is only talking about believer-believer marriages and one of them is an adulterer, but but he couldn't have been an abandoner because that's that's too terrible.
00:24:59.599 --> 00:25:01.359
I that doesn't make any sense to me.
00:25:01.519 --> 00:25:12.160
So so then if it was a believer-believer marriage and Jesus gave an exception for adultery, then he would also have to give an exception for abandonment uh if this whole system was going to hold together.
00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:16.319
And now I don't think the exception is for adultery, or and I don't think there's an exception for abandonment.
00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:17.359
We'll get into that.
00:25:17.599 --> 00:25:24.720
Okay, but if you look at Jesus' teaching in Matthew 5, Matthew 19, Mark 10, Luke 16, here's my question.
00:25:25.039 --> 00:25:31.519
How could any of those audience members at the time think Jesus was only speaking about believer-believer marriages?
00:25:31.599 --> 00:25:32.160
How is that possible?
00:25:32.240 --> 00:25:33.759
Go ahead and look at the passages yourself.
00:25:33.839 --> 00:25:35.759
There's no way they could have concluded that.
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:40.319
Jesus rooted his teaching in creation, which applies to everybody.
00:25:40.400 --> 00:25:43.039
We're all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
00:25:43.279 --> 00:25:48.000
Jesus taught it to the Pharisees in Matthew 19, and they were unsaved.
00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:48.799
So Dr.
00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:55.839
Keener is right that Jesus' teaching all applies to all marriages, not just believer-believer marriages.
00:25:56.000 --> 00:26:08.240
Um, and so uh as so the result is that verse 15 cannot allow a person to remarry after abandonment because Jesus doesn't permit remarriage for abandonment.
00:26:08.319 --> 00:26:09.279
Uh now, unfortunately, Dr.
00:26:09.359 --> 00:26:12.880
Keener doesn't make that deduction here, uh, as we'll see.
00:26:13.039 --> 00:26:16.799
And here you'll you'll just uh it's what seems to me, and maybe Dr.
00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:21.200
Keener has a way to explain this, but it sounded like a contradiction here from Dr.
00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:29.680
Keener's reasoning because earlier he said he treated what Paul said as like a qualifier to what Jesus said.
00:26:29.839 --> 00:26:32.559
But here he says that Paul is applying Jesus' teaching.
00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:39.200
So again, we really got to nail down is did did Jesus apply or override the Mosaic Law?
00:26:39.279 --> 00:26:42.640
And is Paul applying or overriding Jesus' teaching?
00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:47.599
There's just no way Paul is overriding Jesus' teaching, and there's definitely Jesus who was overriding the Mosaic Law.
00:26:47.680 --> 00:26:49.279
So those are two different things going on there.
00:26:49.440 --> 00:26:50.880
Okay, let's continue.
00:26:53.039 --> 00:26:54.880
Your spouse isn't a believer.
00:26:56.160 --> 00:27:08.559
And when he goes on to speak of the verse 14 is one of the most uh difficult uh passages for uh just uh probably any any view on it.
00:27:08.640 --> 00:27:15.920
Uh what does it mean that the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her husband?
00:27:16.319 --> 00:27:20.079
Uh presumably it doesn't mean that they're automatically saved.
00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:26.799
First Peter 3 actually uh talks about trying to win the unsaved spouse to to the Lord.
00:27:27.039 --> 00:27:43.200
Uh but what it what it does mean uh well I think what it means you had discussions about this in antiquity where say uh one spouse was a Roman citizen and the other wasn't.
00:27:43.440 --> 00:27:45.359
What was the status of the children?
00:27:45.680 --> 00:27:56.319
Well, here uh we're talking about what's the status of the children in a mixed, spiritually mixed marriage, and I think it's probably talking about uh the degree of influence.
00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:13.200
If there's a divorce or if one party walks out of the marriage, uh in antiquity, uh the husband would normally get the children, especially if if you know they were all Roman citizens, uh, the husband would would get the children.
00:28:13.440 --> 00:28:21.440
If the wife is the believer and you know the children are left behind, her uh her influence is uh is pretty much negated.
00:28:21.519 --> 00:28:29.599
The husband usually quickly remarried in that culture, and um the step stepmother would be the uh the main influence.
00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:36.640
So I think it's talking about the sphere of influence, uh access to to the children.
00:28:37.279 --> 00:28:48.559
But then verse 15 is the one we uh uh uh where the the debates uh come in the most because uh in the gospels, in some of the gospel passages, it looks like there's no exception.
00:28:48.960 --> 00:28:51.119
No, no remarriage is permissible.
00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:58.559
And so in verse 15, is when it says the believer's not under bondage, does it just mean the believer is free to divorce?
00:28:58.799 --> 00:29:02.880
Although verse 15 is where a lot of the debate happens.
00:29:03.039 --> 00:29:12.720
Verse 15 is also the uh textual basis that most evangelicals use to justify most uh divorces and remarriages.
00:29:13.039 --> 00:29:17.359
So verse 15 of 1 Corinthians 7 is a high-stakes verse, matters a lot.
00:29:17.599 --> 00:29:20.960
The phrase here that matters is the phrase not enslaved.
00:29:21.119 --> 00:29:27.680
So we have a believer and an unbeliever, the unbeliever departs, the believer is not enslaved.
00:29:27.839 --> 00:29:30.079
So the question is what does not enslaved mean?
00:29:30.240 --> 00:29:36.079
He assumes, without proving it, that not enslaved means not married.
00:29:36.480 --> 00:29:40.640
I don't think not enslaved means not married.
00:29:40.799 --> 00:29:42.160
So what Dr.
00:29:42.319 --> 00:29:48.640
Keener thinks is happening is that Paul is talking about the marriage bond when he's talking about slavery.
00:29:48.960 --> 00:29:56.160
What he's saying is that the marriage bond is broken by the abandonment, uh, presumably by the abandonment and the divorce.
00:29:56.400 --> 00:29:58.240
Now, I would say that's that's incorrect.
00:29:58.400 --> 00:30:07.039
So they are legally divorced when people they abandon, they're legally divorced, okay, but they're still married from God's eyes, from God's perspective, they're still married.
00:30:07.279 --> 00:30:13.119
Um, that's, you know, and and so Jesus calls remarriage adultery seven times in the New Testament.
00:30:13.279 --> 00:30:21.359
And and so the concept that remarriage is adultery is because legal divorce isn't sufficient to actually end a marriage bond.
00:30:21.599 --> 00:30:30.240
So if a husband and wife are married and they get a legal divorce, it's like irreconcilable differences or whatever, they get a legal divorce, from God's perspective, they're still married.
00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:32.000
The divorce doesn't do anything.
00:30:32.079 --> 00:30:33.759
It's it's it's as if they didn't get a divorce.
00:30:33.920 --> 00:30:35.279
Divorce, not divorce, doesn't matter.
00:30:35.359 --> 00:30:37.599
God views them as still married, he joined them together, they're married.
00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:45.839
So then if the man, let's say, remarries, that remarriage is a continual state of adultery against the first spouse.
00:30:46.079 --> 00:30:51.279
Mark chapter 10, verse 11 and 12, it says that his remarriage is adultery against her.
00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:57.200
So he is he is cheating on a person who is the person he's cheating on, his first wife.
00:30:57.359 --> 00:30:57.920
Why is that?
00:30:58.000 --> 00:30:59.599
Because the divorce has not dissolved the marriage.
00:30:59.680 --> 00:31:04.880
If the divorce did dissolve the marriage, it would be impossible to commit adultery in any sense.
00:31:05.119 --> 00:31:10.240
But since it did not divorce the marriage, the remarriage is adultery against the first spouse.
00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:19.599
So back in back to 1 Corinthians 7, verse 15, not enslaved is the Greek word duolo, and it's somebody who is enslaved.
00:31:19.759 --> 00:31:22.720
Uh, if someone is bound in a marriage, that's a different Greek word.
00:31:22.880 --> 00:31:23.839
That's deo.
00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:30.799
So, for example, later in this chapter in verse 39, deo is used to say that a woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
00:31:30.880 --> 00:31:31.839
That's the marriage bond.
00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:34.079
Woman's bound to the husband, that's deo.
00:31:34.160 --> 00:31:37.839
That's a different Greek word with a different meaning for a different relationship.
00:31:38.079 --> 00:31:40.319
Duolo is for slavery.
00:31:40.400 --> 00:31:45.759
It's used later in verse 21, six verses after this one, it's used uh in this chapter.
00:31:45.839 --> 00:31:46.799
Uh, it's a different form.
00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:48.799
It's duolos, but it's the same idea.
00:31:48.880 --> 00:31:51.759
It's referring not to marriage, but to slavery.
00:31:52.000 --> 00:32:03.519
So I am arguing that the believer who was abandoned by the nonbeliever is not free from the marriage, but rather they are free from the practical encumbrances of a difficult marriage.
00:32:03.599 --> 00:32:07.920
They had to, you know, believer, non-believer are married, presumably at the difficult relationship that they're in.
00:32:08.079 --> 00:32:10.160
And so when the unbeliever leaves, it's this feeling of relief.
00:32:10.240 --> 00:32:12.960
Oh, finally, I don't have to deal with this challenging relationship.
00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:15.519
I can do what my heart really desires, which is to serve God.
00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:17.440
Finally, they're not going to hold me back.
00:32:17.599 --> 00:32:20.720
And the same thing with a slave, Paul references in verse 21.
00:32:20.880 --> 00:32:24.319
The slave uh has to do what the master tells them to do.
00:32:24.480 --> 00:32:27.440
And uh now they can't do what they really want to do, which is to serve Christ.
00:32:27.519 --> 00:32:31.039
They are fervent, they want to serve God, and they can't because they're under this relationship.
00:32:31.119 --> 00:32:36.240
They're encumbered by this pre-existing relationship from before they were converted.
00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:46.960
Earlier, I mentioned that in 1 Corinthians 7, this part of the letter is addressed to people who are trying to get out of marriages so that they can be as faithful as possible in their Christian walk.
00:32:47.119 --> 00:32:57.519
So, and Paul says faithfulness means staying in your marriages, but if you're abandoned, then you can have what you're looking for: a life of service to Christ without the encumbrance of a difficult, unbelieving spouse.
00:32:57.759 --> 00:33:02.160
When he says you're not enslaved, he means you are no longer encumbered by this difficult marriage.
00:33:02.319 --> 00:33:07.359
Now, there is an action that Paul wants the believer to take in 1 Corinthians 7, 15.
00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:08.640
There is an action.
00:33:08.880 --> 00:33:11.920
And the action is let it be so.
00:33:12.160 --> 00:33:17.359
That's the command from Paul to the believer who's abandoned by their non-believing spouse.
00:33:17.599 --> 00:33:18.319
So now Dr.
00:33:18.480 --> 00:33:24.640
Keener is going to argue uh that there's nothing for the believer, the believer can do about this unbeliever leaving.
00:33:24.799 --> 00:33:25.279
Well, you can't.
00:33:25.519 --> 00:33:25.839
They left.
00:33:25.920 --> 00:33:26.480
What are you going to do?
00:33:26.640 --> 00:33:27.839
You can't stop them from leaving.
00:33:28.079 --> 00:33:31.680
So Paul can't be saying, uh, let it be so.
00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:33.839
But that's actually the words in the text.
00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:42.720
So Paul clearly thinks there's some kind of speech or conduct that the believing spouse could do to try to maybe stop the unbeliever from leaving.
00:33:42.880 --> 00:33:45.839
There's something that they could do that Paul is like, don't do that.
00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:47.359
Don't do that thing.
00:33:47.519 --> 00:33:48.319
Let them go.
00:33:48.559 --> 00:33:55.039
It likely means something like it's okay to use persuasion to keep your unbelieving spouse there with you because it's a marriage.
00:33:55.119 --> 00:33:57.200
People should stay married and you don't want them to leave.
00:33:57.279 --> 00:34:02.240
And then if they leave, then they're uh they go marry somebody else and they're gonna be kind of trapped in that marriage.
00:34:02.319 --> 00:34:05.920
It's gonna be an adulterous remarriage, and it's gonna be harder for them to get saved later on.
00:34:06.000 --> 00:34:11.280
So maybe that's what the believer is thinking, and they're like, Well, you know, I want you to uh not do that.
00:34:11.360 --> 00:34:15.519
And, you know, also maybe the believer is like, also, we have children together and we need to raise these kids together.
00:34:15.679 --> 00:34:16.159
What are you doing?
00:34:16.239 --> 00:34:18.320
You can't be leaving like this, it's bad for the kids, right?
00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:19.119
So all these things.
00:34:19.199 --> 00:34:23.119
So the believer can use persuasion to try to keep the unbeliever there.
00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:26.639
But but it's not okay to use like pressure and leverage.
00:34:27.199 --> 00:34:29.519
When people are married, their lives are integrated together.
00:34:29.679 --> 00:34:32.320
You got family and friends and assets and all kinds of stuff.
00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:37.440
And if somebody tries to deintegrate, they can make it very difficult and practical ways to do that.
00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:40.480
And so, and so I think Paul is saying, let it be so.
00:34:40.639 --> 00:34:46.400
Don't be using leverage on the person and pressuring them and kind of making it untenable or very difficult for them to leave.
00:34:46.639 --> 00:34:48.239
Use persuasion, sure.
00:34:48.480 --> 00:34:49.920
Don't use pressure and leverage.
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:51.280
That's not the Christian way.
00:34:51.360 --> 00:34:53.039
We're called to be uh peace.
00:34:53.119 --> 00:34:57.119
And hey, listen, if they leave, now you can do what your heart desires, which is to serve Christ.
00:34:57.199 --> 00:34:59.760
You're no longer enslaved by this difficult relationship.
00:34:59.920 --> 00:35:01.199
I think that's what Paul is saying there.
00:35:01.280 --> 00:35:05.280
He is not saying, congratulations, you who want to be a celibate, you're free to remarry.
00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:06.880
I don't think that's what Paul is saying there.
00:35:07.440 --> 00:35:27.119
So the believer doesn't really have a choice in that, in a sense, because according to the law um in in the diaspora, not not so much in Judea and Galilee, but according to uh Roman law, if the if either spouse walks out of the marriage, it it is effectively dissolved.
00:35:28.639 --> 00:35:31.679
Uh or does it mean freedom to remarry?
00:35:33.119 --> 00:35:36.639
Um that's the that's the big debate in verse 15.
00:35:37.199 --> 00:35:47.599
And some people will say, well, look, later in the passage, it speaks of uh a believer being free to remarry if their spouse dies.
00:35:48.719 --> 00:35:59.679
And in Romans 7, uh the believer, well, under the law, a person is free to remarry only if their spouse dies, otherwise they're bound to the marriage.
00:36:00.320 --> 00:36:06.719
But Romans 7 is speaking in a general way because actually the law did make provision for divorce.
00:36:08.639 --> 00:36:13.519
So the other view is that the So Dr.
00:36:13.679 --> 00:36:20.159
Keener here is responding to an objection from people who are in the permanence camp, which is the camp I'm in.
00:36:20.400 --> 00:36:22.239
Permanence is a little bit of a misnomer.
00:36:22.400 --> 00:36:24.400
I would just say that marriage is undivorceable.
00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:31.920
I don't think marriage is technically permanent because I think if a spouse dies, the surviving spouse is free to go ahead and remarry.
00:36:32.079 --> 00:36:34.960
So that would mean marriage is not totally, totally permanent.
00:36:35.039 --> 00:36:39.519
Uh, but uh the label is permanence, it's stuck, so I'll I'll accept the label.
00:36:39.599 --> 00:36:43.440
So he's he's he's he's responding to an objection from permanence, people.
00:36:43.599 --> 00:36:52.079
And the objection goes like this 1 Corinthians 7, later in the chapter, Paul says, a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
00:36:52.239 --> 00:36:53.599
That's verse 39.
00:36:54.559 --> 00:37:03.599
Therefore, Paul cannot be saying an abandoned spouse, an abandoned believer is free to remarry because only death ends a marriage.
00:37:04.159 --> 00:37:10.719
And so Keener's responding that same statement from Paul, wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:13.039
Paul also says that in Romans 7.
00:37:13.199 --> 00:37:18.960
But in Romans 7, it's speaking about the law, and the law permitted divorce and remarriage.
00:37:19.199 --> 00:37:26.079
So, therefore, the statement from Paul must be a general statement that doesn't outline all the exceptions.
00:37:27.039 --> 00:37:29.440
So now, here's the problem with Dr.
00:37:29.519 --> 00:37:31.280
Keener's reasoning on that.
00:37:31.920 --> 00:37:46.079
Even if we say Romans 7 was about the Mosaic government law, instead of talking about like the law from the Eden or the law from Jesus, even if we just say it's the Mosaic government law, like from Deuteronomy 24, verse 1, here's the issue with that.
00:37:46.239 --> 00:37:57.119
If you look at Deuteronomy 24 there, it even says the remarriage is wrong because Deuteronomy 24 says if the woman is divorced and remarried, she is defiled.
00:37:57.840 --> 00:38:09.199
So just because Deuteronomy 24 didn't use the state, the government, to forbid remarriage, that does not mean Deuteronomy 24 said the first marriage is over.
00:38:09.599 --> 00:38:12.159
And that's a that's an easy mistake to make.
00:38:12.320 --> 00:38:22.000
But in fact, Deuteronomy 24, 1 through 4 teaches the first marriage is not over, since the woman is defiled by the second marriage.
00:38:22.480 --> 00:38:28.800
So Paul's statement that a woman is bound to her husband for life has always been true.
00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:38.559
That was true in the Garden of Eden, that was true during the Old Testament period with the Mosaic law, even with all the polygamy and everything else that happened there in the divorce and remarriage.
00:38:38.960 --> 00:38:44.320
Paul's statement that a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives has always been true.
00:38:44.400 --> 00:38:46.079
And it's true in the New Testament, it's true today.
00:38:46.239 --> 00:38:49.519
The next question that's going to come up in people's minds is they're going to say, well, wait a minute, wait a minute.
00:38:49.679 --> 00:38:54.559
There are men who had multiple wives in the Old Testament who appear to be going to heaven.
00:38:54.639 --> 00:38:57.920
People are divorcing remarriage in the Old Testament, and we presume that they're going to heaven.
00:38:58.159 --> 00:39:05.679
So how is it that if somebody is a polygamist today, I would say they're not going to heaven if they die in a polygamous state?
00:39:05.840 --> 00:39:08.239
But in the Old Testament, they would be going to heaven.
00:39:08.480 --> 00:39:10.000
And here's what's going on.
00:39:10.159 --> 00:39:15.760
In the Old Testament, more sin was tolerated than is tolerated in the New Testament.
00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:19.119
Now, for some people, this is a radical concept, but it really shouldn't be.
00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:28.960
So polygamy and remarriage was tolerated more than with believers, but Jesus raises the standard in the New Testament.
00:39:29.199 --> 00:39:32.719
When I say he raises the standard, I don't mean he changed the moral law.
00:39:32.800 --> 00:39:33.440
I'm not saying that.
00:39:33.519 --> 00:39:36.960
The moral law has always been the same, it's never going to change, it's always been the same.
00:39:37.119 --> 00:39:39.440
What I'm saying is the tolerance went down.
00:39:39.840 --> 00:39:41.440
By raising the standard, tolerance went down.
00:39:41.519 --> 00:39:42.159
It means the same thing.
00:39:42.239 --> 00:39:43.519
That's what I'm that's what I mean there.
00:39:43.679 --> 00:39:49.280
So the tolerance for sinful conduct is different, it's less now than it was in the Old Testament.
00:39:49.920 --> 00:39:57.519
So we see this when Jesus says in Matthew 5.17, he that Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill.
00:39:57.599 --> 00:40:01.119
And fulfill means to add until it's full.
00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:11.760
Now, what's interesting about this verse is people, evangelicals today, tend to interpret Matthew 5.17 to try to prove that Jesus didn't change anything with the law.
00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:14.000
But that is the opposite of what he says.
00:40:14.159 --> 00:40:17.599
What he says is that he's not here to abolish the law.
00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:18.400
That's true.
00:40:18.639 --> 00:40:25.039
But not abolishing doesn't mean not changing, because he says, I'm not here to abolish, I'm here to fulfill.
00:40:25.519 --> 00:40:28.079
And the word fulfill means to fill.
00:40:28.159 --> 00:40:30.000
So you have a vase, it's half full.
00:40:30.159 --> 00:40:32.639
Now we're going to fill it all the way up to the top.
00:40:32.800 --> 00:40:34.639
That's adding to the law.
00:40:34.800 --> 00:40:39.840
So an analogy that might be helpful to understand this concept of how you can add but not abolish.
00:40:39.920 --> 00:40:40.559
Let me explain this.
00:40:40.639 --> 00:40:46.960
You can override old laws to bring uh to lower the kind of the tolerance for sinful conduct.
00:40:47.039 --> 00:40:48.480
So here's how that would work.
00:40:49.039 --> 00:40:56.400
Suppose you have a sandy beach and you have an umbrella on the sandy beach and it casts shade over a particular area.
00:40:56.559 --> 00:41:03.440
And then you cut, and then somebody comes in the next day and they take a much larger umbrella and they plop it in the sand near this umbrella.
00:41:03.519 --> 00:41:11.920
And this large, much larger umbrella casts a shadow over the space that the old umbrella cast, but also a lot more space as well.
00:41:12.079 --> 00:41:12.880
That's what it's like.
00:41:13.039 --> 00:41:17.519
It fulfills, it overrides the lesser law, the Mosaic law in the Old Testament.
00:41:17.679 --> 00:41:20.559
And we see this all over the place when you begin to look for it.
00:41:20.800 --> 00:41:23.920
So uh we're we're not requiring circumcision anymore.
00:41:24.079 --> 00:41:25.840
The Sabbath changed from Saturday to Sunday.
00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:27.840
I know not everybody agrees with that, but I think that's the case.
00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:33.760
We're no longer doing sacrifices, we don't need a temple, we don't have high priests, we're not celebrating the high holy days, right?
00:41:33.840 --> 00:41:39.440
And if you look at Hebrews 7, verse 12, it says that there is a change in the law in the New Testament.
00:41:39.519 --> 00:41:45.599
And so the change uh for divorce and remarriage is what was tolerated before, is not tolerated now.
00:41:45.760 --> 00:41:50.400
That's why Jesus said, Moses allowed it for your hardness of heart in Matthew 19, 8.
00:41:50.480 --> 00:41:59.360
That's why Jesus said in Matthew 5, 31, 32, you have heard it was said by Moses, certificate of divorce, but I say to you, divorce and remarriage is adultery.
00:41:59.599 --> 00:42:01.760
So he's raising the standard.
00:42:01.920 --> 00:42:12.480
Um, and the general principle that the moral law forever binds everyone, and the theological idea that Christ in the gospel strengthens the obligation is in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
00:42:12.559 --> 00:42:14.639
It's in chapter 19, part five.
00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:30.719
Here's what it says: the moral law doth forever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof, and and that not only in regards to the matter contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God, the creator who gave it.
00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:39.440
Neither does Christ in the gospel anyway dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation.
00:42:39.599 --> 00:42:44.960
And so this is also the view from the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Church from way back.
00:42:45.119 --> 00:42:57.280
Uh, so it's really just more of a modern evangelical thing that as far as I can tell, uh, where this has become popularized, that that the Mosaic law, like that we're still doing it or something, that that Jesus is just uh applying it and explaining it.
00:42:57.440 --> 00:42:58.719
That's not what's happening at all.
00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:02.320
Jesus is overriding it with with regards to divorce and remarriage.
00:43:02.400 --> 00:43:03.360
So just going back to what Dr.
00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:12.719
Keener uh said, now I don't rely on this whole argument about uh verse 39, a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
00:43:12.960 --> 00:43:14.559
I don't I don't rely on that argument.
00:43:14.800 --> 00:43:21.840
I don't say that, well, um, because in verse 39 there's no exceptions, it's just bound as long as you live.
00:43:22.159 --> 00:43:27.599
That therefore uh uh not enslaved uh can't mean not married.
00:43:27.679 --> 00:43:30.079
I don't rely on that argument for a number of reasons.
00:43:30.239 --> 00:43:31.039
Well, here's what I do.
00:43:31.119 --> 00:43:35.440
I just go to verse 15 and I say not enslaved does not mean not married.
00:43:35.599 --> 00:43:41.519
If it did, Paul just called the nature of marriage to be slavery, which is an absurd outcome.
00:43:41.760 --> 00:43:47.840
Here's what here's what I want to know from evangelicals who think an abandoned spouse is permitted to remarry in the New Testament.
00:43:48.000 --> 00:43:54.000
If you read 1 Corinthians chapter 7 and verse 15, you observe that an abandoned spouse is quote, not enslaved.
00:43:54.159 --> 00:43:55.199
That's correct.
00:43:55.440 --> 00:44:03.679
But then you assume not enslaved means not married, and then you Deduce from your assumption that the abandoned spouse is free to remarry.
00:44:03.760 --> 00:44:05.199
Now, here's what I want to know.
00:44:05.440 --> 00:44:08.000
Why do you say that the nature of marriage is a covenant?
00:44:08.400 --> 00:44:15.280
If you think the phrase in 1 Corinthians 7, 15, not enslaved, means not married, you should say that the nature of marriage is slavery.
00:44:15.679 --> 00:44:19.760
When the man gets on one knee, why shouldn't he ask his girlfriend to be his slave?
00:44:19.920 --> 00:44:22.719
Why not replace wedding showers with slavery showers?
00:44:22.880 --> 00:44:23.920
We should update the vows.
00:44:24.079 --> 00:44:25.760
Do you take this man to be your slave?
00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:31.840
In the same way that none of us would call marriage slavery, Paul didn't either in verse 15.
00:44:32.480 --> 00:44:40.719
When he said not enslaved in verse 15 of 1 Corinthians 7, Paul meant you're free from the challenges of a difficult spouse who now left you.
00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:42.559
He did not say they're not married.
00:44:50.079 --> 00:44:54.000
Jesus called it adultery seven times in the New Testament.
00:44:54.559 --> 00:44:57.440
The believer is not bound in such a situation.
00:45:03.599 --> 00:45:13.360
And here we could cite ancient divorce contracts and what bound and loosed specifically meant in such contracts.
00:45:13.599 --> 00:45:15.760
And we also could look at verses 27 and 25.
00:45:16.079 --> 00:45:16.559
Okay, so Dr.
00:45:16.719 --> 00:45:19.599
Keener uh made a claim here that I dispute.
00:45:19.760 --> 00:45:26.159
So he said that the phrase not enslaved is what would be written in divorce contracts, divorce certificates.
00:45:26.320 --> 00:45:33.840
Uh now the argument is since this is what would be written in a divorce certificate, Paul's audience would know he meant not married when he said not enslaved.
00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:38.079
However, not enslaved is not what is written in those divorce certificates.
00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:40.079
Now check out this video from Dr.
00:45:40.239 --> 00:45:46.079
Keener, where he correctly states what is required on divorce certificates, and it's different than what he just said here.
00:45:46.880 --> 00:45:51.519
The essential formula in the bill of divorce is you were free to anyone.
00:45:51.679 --> 00:45:54.719
You were not bound, you were you were free to any man.
00:45:54.800 --> 00:45:57.199
So, in other words, free to remarry.
00:45:57.599 --> 00:45:59.679
That was the point of divorce.
00:46:00.239 --> 00:46:07.119
Um when there was no freedom to remarry, it was because a valid divorce had not taken place.
00:46:07.679 --> 00:46:19.440
So when Jesus says you can't divorce your wife and then marry somebody else because that's adultery, what he's saying is the original divorce wasn't valid.
00:46:20.239 --> 00:46:30.880
All right, so the certificate of divorce under the Pharisees, which is what was used by everyone under uh Jewish law, required the phrase, quote, you are free to marry any man.
00:46:31.280 --> 00:46:37.679
Now remember, Deuteronomy 24 only allowed a man to give the certificate of divorce to his wife and not vice versa.
00:46:37.920 --> 00:46:49.440
If a man, let's say a man's going to divorce his wife and he wrote on the certificate, you are not enslaved on a certificate of divorce, they would not be viewed as divorced under Jewish law.
00:46:49.679 --> 00:46:51.199
That would not be a divorce.
00:46:51.440 --> 00:46:53.519
That would be an invalid divorce.
00:46:53.760 --> 00:46:57.599
A totally different document was used to free a slave.
00:46:58.000 --> 00:47:02.559
And marriage and slavery were everybody understood those are two totally different institutions.
00:47:02.639 --> 00:47:08.719
So and the document that would be given to a slave to free them was called a manumission, totally different document.
00:47:08.960 --> 00:47:21.199
The fact that Paul wrote not enslaved in verse 15, and that would not work on a certificate of divorce, is evidence that Paul did not mean not married when he wrote not enslaved.
00:47:21.519 --> 00:47:22.239
So what Dr.
00:47:22.320 --> 00:47:25.280
Keener is doing is assuming something.
00:47:25.360 --> 00:47:30.719
He's assuming that Paul is speaking to a type of freedom in verse 15.
00:47:31.039 --> 00:47:34.960
And it's the same type of freedom imagined in the certificate of divorce.
00:47:35.119 --> 00:47:37.199
That's what he is thinking is going on here.
00:47:37.440 --> 00:47:43.920
But he makes that connection by trying to equate the words not enslaved to you are free to marry any man.
00:47:44.079 --> 00:47:46.000
And just think about those two phrases.
00:47:46.159 --> 00:47:49.519
You are not enslaved, you are free to marry any man.
00:47:50.079 --> 00:47:51.599
Are those synonymous phrases?
00:47:51.679 --> 00:47:52.480
Do those mean the same thing?
00:47:52.559 --> 00:47:52.960
Of course not.
00:47:53.280 --> 00:47:54.960
They don't mean the same thing at all.
00:47:55.199 --> 00:48:01.599
So if not enslaved meant not married, then every time a master freed a slave, the master divorced his slave.
00:48:01.920 --> 00:48:06.880
God's people were slaves in Egypt and they wanted to be freed.
00:48:07.199 --> 00:48:18.719
Does anybody think, does anybody does it even occur to anybody to think that the Egyptian slaves, God's people, were married to Egypt?
00:48:18.880 --> 00:48:21.840
They were married to Pharaoh and the government.
00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:22.719
No, of course not.
00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:23.280
Of course not.
00:48:23.360 --> 00:48:24.079
It's not a marriage.
00:48:24.159 --> 00:48:25.679
That's not the nature of the relationship.
00:48:25.760 --> 00:48:26.559
It's slavery.
00:48:26.719 --> 00:48:27.679
That's not marriage.
00:48:27.920 --> 00:48:31.360
So anyway, that there's just no way that's what Paul meant there.
00:48:32.480 --> 00:48:34.639
But I don't want to get ahead of the discussion.
00:48:34.719 --> 00:48:38.239
So I can go there now, or we can we can wait if you prefer.
00:48:38.639 --> 00:48:41.679
Yeah, let's wait um on some of those details.
00:48:41.920 --> 00:48:51.679
But one view, for instance, there there is, and and a lot of these views are not, views on divorce and remarriage are not just about how one interprets First Corinthians seven.
00:48:51.760 --> 00:49:01.920
As you've mentioned, um, even just hovering over this footnote um or this note in the NASB, um, it it presents some of these other gospel accounts.
00:49:02.079 --> 00:49:09.760
Um, Matthew's account contains what's called that exception clause, the poor, the uh, the fornication um exception.
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.559
The other gospels, uh, Mark and Luke do not include that exception.
00:49:14.639 --> 00:49:17.039
And so there's all debates about that.
00:49:17.199 --> 00:49:18.559
Why does Matthew include the exception?
00:49:18.639 --> 00:49:20.159
How should we understand the exception?
00:49:20.320 --> 00:49:22.320
And then there is Paul's exception here.
00:49:22.400 --> 00:49:30.719
And so a lot of the views are about divorce and remarriage relate to how you synthesize all of this together, how you read these texts together.
00:49:30.960 --> 00:49:41.199
Um, there is one view that would say Christians are disallowed from divorce and also then by implication, disallowed from remarrying.
00:49:41.360 --> 00:49:47.440
Um, how would they maybe interpret this passage, the arguments they would give, and how do you evaluate that view?
00:49:50.000 --> 00:50:02.079
In in this passage, they would say that um not being bound in such uh such cases just means you know it's not your fault if the other person walks out.
00:50:02.639 --> 00:50:07.119
Like verse 16, you you have no way of knowing whether you're gonna be able to win them.
00:50:07.280 --> 00:50:09.679
If they want to leave, you can't stop them.
00:50:10.079 --> 00:50:12.079
And that's obviously true.
00:50:12.159 --> 00:50:13.360
You can't stop them.
00:50:13.840 --> 00:50:21.280
Um you can maybe try, but on under under ancient law, there was no way you could you could prevent that.
00:50:22.719 --> 00:50:23.360
Okay, so Dr.
00:50:23.519 --> 00:50:35.840
Keener is responding to people who have the permanence view, uh, who say not enslaved means not obligated to stop the unbeliever from leaving.
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:40.559
Okay, or something like not obligated to try to restore the marriage.
00:50:40.960 --> 00:50:48.639
So I just want to reiterate that what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:15 is that if the unbeliever departs, let it be so.
00:50:49.199 --> 00:50:54.239
Uh, so that indicates that there is some speech or conduct that a believer could take to attempt to prevent the separation.
00:50:54.320 --> 00:50:55.840
That Paul is saying, well, that's just going too far.
00:50:55.920 --> 00:50:56.719
You don't need to be doing that.
00:50:56.880 --> 00:50:57.280
So Dr.
00:50:57.360 --> 00:51:00.800
Keener sees this kind of in black and white terms.
00:51:00.960 --> 00:51:03.280
The believer can't stop them from leaving.
00:51:03.440 --> 00:51:06.079
Paul can't mean don't try to stop them.
00:51:06.320 --> 00:51:07.199
Uh so therefore, Dr.
00:51:07.280 --> 00:51:09.440
Keener argues not enslaved must mean something else.
00:51:09.519 --> 00:51:11.119
It must mean not married.
00:51:11.440 --> 00:51:21.440
But that just can't be right because Paul says, let it be so, which means that there is at least something that the believer could do to try to prevent the divorce, but that Paul is telling them not to do that thing.
00:51:21.599 --> 00:51:24.159
So I think not enslaved means something slightly different.
00:51:24.400 --> 00:51:28.960
So I think it means not encumbered by this difficult relationship from serving God.
00:51:29.119 --> 00:51:34.400
So that includes the idea that the believer doesn't need to follow the unbeliever around for the rest of their life and try to restore the marriage.
00:51:34.559 --> 00:51:35.760
It includes all of that.
00:51:35.920 --> 00:51:37.360
But the main point is not that.
00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:47.519
The main point is that the abandoned believer in 1 Corinthians 7 is now more free to do what their heart desires, and that is to serve God unencumbered by that difficult marriage.
00:51:47.679 --> 00:51:59.119
So and I get that from reading 1 Corinthians 7, 15 in the context of verse 21, which talks about a slave who is freed and therefore able to serve Christ.
00:52:01.119 --> 00:52:10.159
Would that view maintain that the believer, if their spouse or their former spouse leaves them, it's like, well, you can't control what they do.
00:52:10.239 --> 00:52:11.360
So obviously that's true.
00:52:11.440 --> 00:52:13.119
The question isn't whether that's true.
00:52:13.280 --> 00:52:17.280
The question is whether that's what Paul is saying or if he's saying something more than that.
00:52:17.519 --> 00:52:22.239
But under this view, um that you can't stop someone from leaving.
00:52:22.400 --> 00:52:27.199
So in that sense, you're not under bondage to keep trying to maintain the relationship.
00:52:27.360 --> 00:52:33.199
Um, would they hold that the marriage is still in the eyes of God intact then?
00:52:33.440 --> 00:52:42.880
Um it depends on how literally they take the passage that remarriage is adultery in in the gospels.
00:52:43.519 --> 00:52:46.480
So that's a that's another debate.
00:52:46.559 --> 00:52:51.840
And for that, we would we would need to look at those passages to whole nother conversation.
00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:52.559
Yeah.
00:52:52.800 --> 00:52:53.119
All right.
00:52:53.519 --> 00:52:53.840
Yeah.
00:52:54.079 --> 00:52:54.639
Okay, yeah.
00:52:54.719 --> 00:52:55.920
So there's that view.
00:52:56.079 --> 00:52:58.320
Um, and and how would you evaluate that?
00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:00.079
Um, this is not your view.
00:53:00.159 --> 00:53:04.800
So, what would be maybe how you would why you find that unconvincing?
00:53:05.360 --> 00:53:11.840
Well, because of what bound and loosed actually meant in divorce contexts in ancient.
00:53:13.199 --> 00:53:13.599
So Dr.
00:53:13.760 --> 00:53:22.000
Keener continues to assume not enslaved means the same thing as not bound to a spouse, despite the fact that marriage and slavery are two different things.
00:53:22.159 --> 00:53:34.000
The Greek word in 1 Corinthians 7 15 is a different word than is used for marriage, and he referenced marriage divorce contracts, and we already covered how putting not enslaved on a divorce contract would not divorce people.
00:53:35.440 --> 00:53:36.400
Ancient sources.
00:53:36.559 --> 00:53:45.679
So being bound to the marriage obviously means you can't in monogamy, it means you can't marry somebody else.
00:53:48.800 --> 00:53:59.519
But in ancient Jewish divorce contracts, both those recovered from the Judean desert and some earlier New Testament commentators weren't aware of those.
00:53:59.920 --> 00:54:04.400
But also in Mishnah Getin IX, um, the mission is a bit later.
00:54:05.199 --> 00:54:09.840
Um, but it's this is uh going back to the schools of Shemai and Hillel.
00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.000
So it reflects probably the generation of Jesus' ministry.
00:54:15.039 --> 00:54:22.880
When you hear an evangelical talk about divorce or remarriage, and they're gonna go to the Talmud, usually this is where they're gonna go.
00:54:23.039 --> 00:54:28.880
So the Pharisees had two schools of thought, two rabbis that people followed that were kind of a big deal.
00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:31.280
It was Hillel and Shemai.
00:54:31.440 --> 00:54:36.800
And Hillel was bigger, and he kind of won the debate over time for on most subjects most of the time.
00:54:36.960 --> 00:54:44.320
So anyway, so Hillel interpreted for uh Deuteronomy 24, verse 1, that divorce was allowed for any cause.
00:54:44.480 --> 00:54:45.760
Now you had to have a cause.
00:54:45.920 --> 00:54:48.719
If you had no cause, technically that's no good.
00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:54.079
But if you had if you had any cause, it could be a very small cause, then you may divorce.
00:54:54.400 --> 00:55:04.559
Hillel also believed, according to the Gemera and the Talmud, that if a wife cheated on a husband, that he must divorce her.
00:55:05.039 --> 00:55:09.280
Uh Hill believed you a man could divorce his wife for any cause.
00:55:09.519 --> 00:55:12.880
Wife can't divorce her husband, but the husband can divorce the wife.
00:55:13.039 --> 00:55:13.360
Okay.
00:55:13.519 --> 00:55:22.559
Now, Shammai believed a husband uh could divorce his wife for adultery or we'll call it adultery-adjacent conduct by the wife.
00:55:22.719 --> 00:55:26.960
Now, notice the husband is doing the divorcing, both for Hillel and Shammai.
00:55:27.119 --> 00:55:28.480
The wife is not doing the divorcing.
00:55:28.559 --> 00:55:30.079
Now, the can the wife ever divorce?
00:55:30.239 --> 00:55:30.639
Yes.
00:55:30.800 --> 00:55:37.599
If the court determined that their marriage is invalid, then the court would require the husband to divorce the wife.
00:55:37.760 --> 00:55:43.840
Now, Hallel and Shemai do not premise their view on Genesis.
00:55:44.079 --> 00:55:47.360
Jesus does premise his teaching on Genesis.
00:55:47.599 --> 00:55:51.599
Halel and Shemmai, they premise it on Deuteronomy chapter 24.
00:55:51.679 --> 00:55:58.000
In Matthew 19, the Hill school of the Pharisees confronted Jesus, as we can tell from verse 3, because he says, Can you divorce for any cause?
00:55:58.079 --> 00:55:59.119
That's a halel thing.
00:55:59.280 --> 00:55:59.519
Okay.
00:55:59.679 --> 00:56:00.000
And Dr.
00:56:00.159 --> 00:56:05.920
Keener will say that Jesus chose a view that is closer to the Shemai view, which is that adultery allows for divorce and remarriage.
00:56:06.000 --> 00:56:06.320
That's Dr.
00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:10.480
Keener's uh interpretation of the exception clause there in Matthew 19.
00:56:10.639 --> 00:56:15.119
The idea that Jesus' teaching was similar to the Shemai teaching is full of problems.
00:56:15.360 --> 00:56:19.360
Shemai did not teach a woman could divorce for adultery, but Dr.
00:56:19.440 --> 00:56:21.119
Keener thinks Jesus taught that.
00:56:21.360 --> 00:56:26.159
Shemmai did not teach a man or woman could remarry after abandonment, but Dr.
00:56:26.239 --> 00:56:27.840
Keener thinks Paul taught that.
00:56:28.079 --> 00:56:32.239
Shemmai allowed a man to divorce a woman for immodest behavior, but Dr.
00:56:32.400 --> 00:56:34.239
Keener doesn't think Jesus taught that.
00:56:34.480 --> 00:56:42.239
Shemmai premised his teaching on Deuteronomy 24, verse 1, but Jesus premised his teaching on Genesis 1.27 and Genesis 2.24.
00:56:42.400 --> 00:56:50.800
Also, Jesus specifically rejects the Deuteronomy 24, verse 1 allowance for divorce in Matthew 19, verses 7 and 8.
00:56:51.039 --> 00:56:52.800
And here's the other problem.
00:56:53.119 --> 00:56:53.360
Dr.
00:56:53.519 --> 00:57:01.440
Keener and most evangelicals will bring up Hillel and Shemai, but they rarely bring up the Damascus document, which was likely believed by another group called the Essenes.
00:57:01.599 --> 00:57:06.239
This is the third largest group, we believe, of uh Jewish believers at the time of Jesus.
00:57:06.400 --> 00:57:14.159
And they wrote that if a man marries a second woman in the lifetime of his first wife, he commits fornication.
00:57:14.800 --> 00:57:22.000
And so this document and this document premises its conclusion on the same argument from Genesis that Jesus uses.
00:57:22.239 --> 00:57:29.440
So I now I argue that there were not two views contemporary with Jesus, but that there were three views.
00:57:29.599 --> 00:57:37.840
So I don't think that Jesus chose, you know, Pharisee one over Pharisee two, but rather Jesus affirmed the view of the Essenes in the Damascus document.
00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:39.440
They root their views in Genesis.
00:57:43.440 --> 00:57:46.639
It all lines up much closer to what Jesus said.
00:57:46.800 --> 00:58:02.960
So if someone wants to view Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage through the lens of, you know, what were the different views at the time, they should lay out all three views, Hillel, Shemai, Essenes, and then argue for which one they think Jesus' view is closest to instead of leaving out the Essenes.
00:58:03.199 --> 00:58:05.840
Jesus' view is much closer to the Damascus document.
00:58:05.920 --> 00:58:06.800
It's like not even close.
00:58:06.880 --> 00:58:12.480
It's like, it's it's like almost the same argument, almost exactly, as what you see in the Damascus document.
00:58:12.559 --> 00:58:14.239
So this idea that, and so what Dr.
00:58:14.320 --> 00:58:19.199
Keener's going to do when this evangelicals do this all the time is they say, Well, there's two views, Hillel and Shemai.
00:58:19.519 --> 00:58:22.800
Pick which one you think Jesus was uh was teaching.
00:58:23.039 --> 00:58:25.599
And they'll say, Well, Jesus' teaching was closer to the Shemai view.
00:58:25.679 --> 00:58:28.639
So that must have been essentially what Jesus was teaching there.
00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:34.320
And that is just not the right way of looking at it, you're just leaving out a whole different view that's much closer to what Jesus taught.
00:58:38.559 --> 00:58:43.280
He would have known this stuff if he studied under Gamaliel, who was a Hillelite.
00:58:44.400 --> 00:58:56.800
Uh I'm probably going off too much into too much detail, but all that to say um we also have it attested from that period from these documents from the Judean Desert, these ancient sources.
00:58:57.119 --> 00:59:07.519
That the Jewish divorce contract, the basic uh explicit expression of that was you are uh you are now free.
00:59:07.679 --> 00:59:12.800
That was said to the the woman when she was given the certificate of divorce.
00:59:13.519 --> 00:59:21.679
And when it was spelled out more fully, you are now free to any man, or when it was spelled out even more fully, you're not free to marry any man.
00:59:22.000 --> 00:59:31.519
Not being bound in that context explicitly meant you're no longer held to this marriage, you're now free to marry any person.
00:59:32.719 --> 00:59:39.599
Okay, so again, not enslaved on a divorce certificate would have been viewed as an invalid divorce.
00:59:39.840 --> 00:59:48.559
So Paul is not using the technical divorce certificate language in 1 Corinthians 7, 15 to indicate that an abandoned spouse is free to remarry.
00:59:48.719 --> 00:59:51.039
And what's we what's odd to me about this is Dr.
00:59:51.119 --> 00:59:57.280
Keener just said that what you have right on the certificate of divorce is you are now free to marry any man.
00:59:57.360 --> 00:59:59.760
And then he says that's the same thing as saying you're not enslaved.
00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:01.119
And so you're gonna have to decide.
01:00:01.199 --> 01:00:02.800
Yeah, I and put it in the comment below.
01:00:02.960 --> 01:00:03.840
Do you think that's the same thing?
01:00:03.920 --> 01:00:07.679
Do you think you're free to marry any man and you're not enslaved?
01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:09.119
Means the same thing.
01:00:09.360 --> 01:00:10.159
We'll continue.
01:00:12.000 --> 01:00:16.400
And also something relevant in in this context.
01:00:16.559 --> 01:00:23.599
Like some people say, well, the context doesn't mention divorce again, but it actually does.
01:00:24.159 --> 01:00:35.360
And this is why I'm glad we're using the NSB here, because a lot of translations for some reason they don't they don't stick very closely to the uh forms of the verbs.
01:00:35.840 --> 01:00:44.239
In verses 27 and 28, uh Paul Paul is giving advice for those who are able to bear the advice.
01:00:44.719 --> 01:00:52.079
Don't uh you know, it's it's it's healthier to stay single.
01:00:52.320 --> 01:00:57.679
He gives the same advice to both divorcees and to single people in that context.
01:00:57.840 --> 01:00:59.519
So verse 27.
01:01:01.519 --> 01:01:03.519
So I'm a little confused by Dr.
01:01:03.679 --> 01:01:11.519
Keener's characterization of this as advice, as opposed to like teaching that they're obligated to abide by.
01:01:11.679 --> 01:01:15.199
I understand when you're on video, you say things maybe you didn't mean or whatever.
01:01:15.280 --> 01:01:17.519
So I don't want to uh belabor that too much.
01:01:17.760 --> 01:01:19.360
But um, before Dr.
01:01:19.519 --> 01:01:24.639
Keener goes into these verses uh that he's gonna talk about, we need to have some context that Dr.
01:01:24.719 --> 01:01:28.880
Keener, I think, skipped over, but perhaps he doesn't view the chapter this way.
01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:29.840
Uh, I don't know.
01:01:30.079 --> 01:01:36.400
But Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 addresses distinct groups of people in different sections.
01:01:36.719 --> 01:01:40.800
And you really have to know which section you're in and which group he's speaking to.
01:01:40.960 --> 01:01:46.480
Otherwise, you're gonna think that instruction for this group actually applies to this other group, and it doesn't.
01:01:46.559 --> 01:01:49.280
And I think that's the mistake that's happening in this video here.
01:01:49.440 --> 01:01:56.960
So, in so for example, in 1 Corinthians 7, in verses 8 and 9, he's speaking to widows and widowers.
01:01:57.199 --> 01:02:00.159
And you know that because he says, he says at the very beginning there in verse 8.
01:02:00.239 --> 01:02:03.599
And then for verse 10 to 24, he's speaking to the married.
01:02:03.679 --> 01:02:05.840
And again, you see that because in verse 10 he says to the married.
01:02:05.920 --> 01:02:10.880
And starting then in verse 25, Paul writes, to the betrothed, totally different group.
01:02:11.039 --> 01:02:14.000
Paul is going in reverse chronological order.
01:02:14.159 --> 01:02:21.920
First, widows and widowers, they're the oldest, the most honorable, that whole thing, and then to the married, and then to the betrothed, presumably the youngest.
01:02:22.159 --> 01:02:22.880
You see this with Paul.
01:02:22.960 --> 01:02:28.079
He tends to write to the highest or the most honorable or the oldest first, something like that.
01:02:28.159 --> 01:02:31.119
And he goes to the younger or less honorable, whatever, later on.
01:02:31.280 --> 01:02:33.280
Okay, so that's just how he tends to write.
01:02:33.840 --> 01:02:37.360
Um, so in starting in verse 25, Paul writes to the betrothed.
01:02:37.599 --> 01:02:45.199
And it's important to note that when a man and woman were betrothed to be married at this time, they called them husband and wife.
01:02:45.440 --> 01:02:48.159
They were not husband and wife, but they called them that.
01:02:48.320 --> 01:02:51.440
That's how those Greek words were used at that particular time.
01:02:51.599 --> 01:02:57.039
So they're not actually married, but the words we ordinarily reserve for marriage were used for the betrothed couple.
01:02:57.199 --> 01:03:08.159
Now you can see that very clearly in Matthew 1, 18 and 19, where it says, Joseph and Joseph uh and Mary were betrothed, and Joseph was her husband.
01:03:08.480 --> 01:03:13.440
You might scratch your head and go, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, how can you be a husband if you're not married?
01:03:13.599 --> 01:03:16.079
But that's how those words were used at that time.
01:03:16.320 --> 01:03:20.719
So here in verse 25, um, we're talking, talking to the betrothed.
01:03:20.800 --> 01:03:29.280
So when Paul, after verse 25, talks about a husband or a wife, Paul is talking about a betrothed people, not married people.
01:03:29.440 --> 01:03:31.679
He's not talking to married people there.
01:03:31.920 --> 01:03:32.320
So Dr.
01:03:32.400 --> 01:03:35.840
Keener treats this passage as though Paul was speaking to married people.
01:03:36.000 --> 01:03:37.360
That's totally incorrect.
01:03:37.440 --> 01:03:37.840
He's not.
01:03:38.000 --> 01:03:41.840
Verse 25 clearly shows this passage is to the betrothed.
01:03:42.000 --> 01:03:45.599
The married section ended at the end of verse 24.
01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:51.119
He says, Are you bound to a wife?
01:03:51.840 --> 01:03:54.000
Don't seek a wife.
01:03:56.400 --> 01:03:58.639
Uh are you released from a wife?
01:03:59.199 --> 01:04:03.360
No, he doesn't say a lot of translations just say, are you unmarried?
01:04:03.920 --> 01:04:07.519
But he's not saying, are you simply unmarried?
01:04:07.920 --> 01:04:12.239
He's saying are you demarried?
01:04:12.559 --> 01:04:16.639
That is, not are you free, but are you freed?
01:04:17.039 --> 01:04:17.519
Literally.
01:04:17.760 --> 01:04:24.400
Ah and and so he says and there's only a couple ways to get freed from a marriage.
01:04:24.480 --> 01:04:26.719
That is one, okay.
01:04:26.960 --> 01:04:30.239
So I I agree the passage is talking about being freed.
01:04:30.480 --> 01:04:31.360
That's not the question.
01:04:31.519 --> 01:04:33.280
The question is freed from what?
01:04:34.239 --> 01:04:34.880
And Dr.
01:04:35.039 --> 01:04:40.480
Keener says it means freed from a marriage, but it's not talking about marriage, it's talking about betrothal.
01:04:40.639 --> 01:04:46.480
So he's saying if you're freed from a betrothal, and then you go and remarry somebody else, that's not sin.
01:04:46.559 --> 01:04:48.000
That's what Paul is saying here.
01:04:49.280 --> 01:04:51.840
Divorce, the other is your spouse dies.
01:04:52.159 --> 01:04:55.679
Uh presumably, he doesn't have to say, Don't kill your spouse.
01:04:55.840 --> 01:04:59.599
I mean, the Corinthians were young Christians, but presumably they knew enough to know that.
01:04:59.760 --> 01:05:00.000
Yeah.
01:05:00.239 --> 01:05:02.559
So are you are you bound to a wife?
01:05:02.719 --> 01:05:04.719
Are you are you married to a wife?
01:05:05.199 --> 01:05:07.119
Don't seek to be unmarried.
01:05:07.679 --> 01:05:09.920
Are you unmarried from a wife?
01:05:10.400 --> 01:05:12.239
It has to mean the same thing, it just meant.
01:05:12.639 --> 01:05:15.119
So in other words, are you don't seek to be divorced.
01:05:15.199 --> 01:05:18.000
Uh if you are divorced, don't seek to be married.
01:05:18.480 --> 01:05:29.119
But then the next verse in verse 28, he says, But if you do, you haven't sinned, and if a virgin does, they haven't sinned.
01:05:29.679 --> 01:05:41.679
So he says the same thing for divorced of divorced person, presumably for the kind of exception he makes earlier, that he says for um for for a virgin.
01:05:42.559 --> 01:05:48.000
So he's recommending uh not marriage, just like he does for virgins.
01:05:48.559 --> 01:05:54.480
But the the issue uh would seem to be the validity of the divorce.
01:05:54.639 --> 01:05:56.000
Don't break up your marriage.
01:05:56.159 --> 01:05:57.360
He's he's clear on that.
01:05:57.440 --> 01:05:59.360
He cites Jesus very clearly on that.
01:06:00.400 --> 01:06:07.440
But also, you know, if your marriage is broken up against your will, you're not bound to the marriage.
01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:14.239
You're not still married to the person, which means it's not adultery in God's sight.
01:06:14.719 --> 01:06:26.400
Okay, so this is just a great example of how missing uh missing the context in this case where Paul switched from the married to the betrothed in verse 25, how missing that context can lead you to incorrect conclusions.
01:06:26.559 --> 01:06:34.960
If you think Paul wrote that anyone who is divorced is free to remarry, you cannot square that with what Jesus and uh Paul wrote.
01:06:35.119 --> 01:06:38.400
Like for example, in 1 Corinthians 7, 10 and 11.
01:06:38.480 --> 01:06:40.000
That is that is unsquarable.
01:06:40.400 --> 01:06:46.159
So there's no way verse 27 is speaking about married people, it's talking about betrothed people.
01:06:48.400 --> 01:06:54.400
So I while you were speaking, I pulled up a text comparison just to see how the different translations.
01:06:54.559 --> 01:06:58.159
There are a couple others that retain release in both instances.
01:06:58.559 --> 01:07:06.400
Um that is interesting, but some of the others say free, which could make you simply think unmarried as in you've never been married.
01:07:06.480 --> 01:07:10.320
Is it and that's free instead of freed, even though the Greek is pretty clear.
01:07:10.960 --> 01:07:11.440
Yeah.
01:07:12.000 --> 01:07:22.400
So the CSB, for instance, says um it retains release in in both cases, it looks like, um, as well as I thought there was one other.
01:07:22.639 --> 01:07:24.239
Um, so that's interesting.
01:07:24.400 --> 01:07:36.480
So and and you're arguing then based on the use of this word, um Kirk Miller here uh pulled up the Greek word for uh duolo, and that's the word used back in verse 15.
01:07:36.639 --> 01:07:39.039
And he's looking at the Greek word for not enslaved.
01:07:39.360 --> 01:07:40.320
We talked about earlier.
01:07:40.480 --> 01:07:40.800
Dr.
01:07:40.880 --> 01:07:49.199
Keener thinks that not enslaved means not married, and I think not enslaved means not encumbered from being able to serve God by this difficult relationship.
01:07:49.360 --> 01:07:52.719
In order to try to figure out what he meant, they're like, well, let's look at the Greek word.
01:07:52.960 --> 01:07:58.880
Um, and the meaning of this word as he has it on the screen here clearly means enslaved.
01:07:59.039 --> 01:08:06.400
So now there's another Greek word in uh in that verse for not, and then together they mean not enslaved.
01:08:06.480 --> 01:08:11.280
And now, if you look at the definition for the word and how it's translated, it it just means enslaved.
01:08:11.360 --> 01:08:12.719
That's where it's translated everywhere.
01:08:12.960 --> 01:08:15.199
Enslave or a variation of that concept.
01:08:15.440 --> 01:08:18.640
It's never used in the New Testament to mean married.
01:08:18.720 --> 01:08:19.119
But Dr.
01:08:19.279 --> 01:08:23.439
Keener, uh, he's gonna go up um a level of generality.
01:08:23.600 --> 01:08:26.960
So so he's he's thinking to himself, something like this, I think.
01:08:27.119 --> 01:08:32.880
Well, what does marriage, the concept of marriage or that relationship of marriage, have in common with slavery?
01:08:33.199 --> 01:08:40.560
And if you go up to a level of generality, uh they both entail relationships of some kind, and they both have obligations.
01:08:40.720 --> 01:08:46.159
And so what I look to is the aspect of marriage and slavery that they have in common, the relationship aspect.
01:08:46.399 --> 01:08:50.960
The slavery relationship is difficult and it encumbers a Christian from fully serving Christ.
01:08:51.119 --> 01:08:57.520
And so a believer-unbeliever marriage relationship is also difficult and it also encumbers a Christian from fully serving Christ.
01:08:57.680 --> 01:08:59.039
So that's how I understand it.
01:08:59.199 --> 01:08:59.760
But from Dr.
01:08:59.840 --> 01:09:06.239
Keener, he he he deduces that Paul means not married by not enslaved, and he does that by looking at the obligation side of the equation.
01:09:06.319 --> 01:09:14.159
So what he says is that marriage has an obligation to it, slavery there's an obligation to it, and so Paul is speaking to the obligation part.
01:09:14.640 --> 01:09:17.119
But here's the here's the issue that's problematic.
01:09:17.439 --> 01:09:21.359
Slavery is a one-way binding, it's unilateral.
01:09:21.439 --> 01:09:25.840
The the slave is bound to the master, but the master is not bound to the slave, right?
01:09:25.920 --> 01:09:28.000
But marriage is bilateral binding.
01:09:28.079 --> 01:09:33.680
The human-to-human slavery is bad, but marriage is honorable.
01:09:34.000 --> 01:09:40.960
Later, uh, in the same to the married section of this chapter, Paul refers to slavery in verse 21.
01:09:41.439 --> 01:09:45.840
And the freedom experienced by the freed slave is freedom to serve Christ more fully.
01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:48.479
Uh, it's not freedom to be re-enslaved, right?
01:09:48.560 --> 01:09:56.319
So that tracks more with my view about how it's freedom from this difficult relationship, this uh daily practical experience with being married to this person, living with them.
01:09:56.479 --> 01:09:57.600
Now, the other problem with Dr.
01:09:57.760 --> 01:10:07.039
Keener's assumption that Paul is analogizing the obligation to slavery to the obligation of marriage is that a different Greek word is used for the obligation of marriage in this chapter.
01:10:07.199 --> 01:10:10.720
So that Greek word is deo, it's in verse 39.
01:10:10.800 --> 01:10:20.880
And typically, when two different Greek words are used near each other to refer to similar ideas, the reason two different words are used is because they mean two different things.
01:10:21.039 --> 01:10:31.199
So that means that duolo does not refer to the marriage obligation, but rather the practical difficulties of a believer-unbeliever relationship.
01:10:32.640 --> 01:10:35.600
Um you are not bound.
01:10:35.680 --> 01:10:36.319
This is the word.
01:10:36.399 --> 01:10:37.920
So I have a word study pulled up here.
01:10:38.000 --> 01:10:42.720
This is the word for bound here, which is oftentimes used in the context of slavery, as we see.
01:10:42.880 --> 01:10:48.720
But you're arguing that this word means more than just because there would be a second view.
01:10:48.880 --> 01:10:52.880
So we've talked about the view that says no divorce and thus no remarriage.
01:10:52.960 --> 01:11:01.039
There's another view that would say that Jesus and Paul, so this passage allows for divorce, freedom in that sense.
01:11:01.279 --> 01:11:08.319
But once you're divorced, sort of there's there's no going back to you're not, you should not, you ought not to remarry.
01:11:08.399 --> 01:11:09.760
That would be illegitimate.
01:11:10.000 --> 01:11:24.560
And you're and you're arguing against that view now by saying that the very word that Paul uses in terms of the context, the Greco-Roman context, as well as even how Paul uses it later in the chapter, um, argues against that.
01:11:24.640 --> 01:11:26.479
Is that am I understanding you correctly?
01:11:26.960 --> 01:11:27.359
Yes.
01:11:27.520 --> 01:11:37.520
Yeah, and I'm saying that we need to take the the word in in light of how it's used specifically in divorce and remarriage context.
01:11:37.840 --> 01:11:38.000
Yeah.
01:11:38.159 --> 01:11:44.159
Now, what would you say to someone who says, okay, that's that's that's great, that we see how this word is used.
01:11:44.319 --> 01:11:49.039
And this was the exact word that was used in those in those contexts you're referencing, or is something similar used?
01:11:49.439 --> 01:11:51.840
The divorce contracts were normally in Aramaic.
01:11:52.159 --> 01:11:52.720
Okay, okay.
01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:57.680
Uh but yeah, it's the same, it's the it we it would be translated this way.
01:11:58.000 --> 01:11:58.319
Okay.
01:11:58.800 --> 01:12:03.119
Um, what if so Okay, so I disagree with Dr.
01:12:03.279 --> 01:12:10.319
Keener that divorce contracts uh would be translated into Greek to say not enslaved.
01:12:10.479 --> 01:12:14.159
You're free to marry any man, not enslaved wouldn't be wouldn't be in there.
01:12:14.560 --> 01:12:21.119
So what what if someone I could see someone maybe arguing back, um rebutting, well, that's sort of the outside context.
01:12:21.279 --> 01:12:24.319
How much should we be reading that context in Paul?
01:12:24.399 --> 01:12:30.159
Like just because that was the context doesn't mean that Paul is assuming the same sort of arrangements.
01:12:30.479 --> 01:12:32.800
Um, like maybe he's going against the grain.
01:12:32.880 --> 01:12:35.119
How would you respond to that claim?
01:12:35.680 --> 01:12:44.159
I do think we uh it's an advantage to us to be able to have archaeology and evidence from the time, and we can use that to help us understand the text.
01:12:44.319 --> 01:12:47.119
I don't think it's necessary in the divorce remarriage context.
01:12:47.199 --> 01:12:59.439
I think you're gonna come to the same conclusions if you read, if you understand what they meant uh at the time as you would if you take all the archaeological information and the Talmud and all the stuff that we've got today uh to help us.
01:12:59.600 --> 01:13:06.319
Um, really, the question is do we read it in the cultural context of that time or the cultural context of our time?
01:13:06.560 --> 01:13:10.319
Because inevitably, we're going to be not even knowing it.
01:13:10.399 --> 01:13:17.439
We're going to be reading into uh the text are our notions from today, and we're going to be putting anachronisms into the text.
01:13:17.600 --> 01:13:28.800
For example, most people, it doesn't occur to them to think that when uh Matthew uh is writing in Matthew chapter one that Joseph is the husband of Mary.
01:13:29.119 --> 01:13:33.199
Uh, if if Matthew hadn't written that they were betrothed, people would think that they're already married.
01:13:33.359 --> 01:13:40.479
That's what we would think today, because we don't use husband and wife in the exact same way that it was used at the time that Matthew wrote the gospel.
01:13:41.119 --> 01:13:46.079
It is important to be able to have the cultural context then because our our alternative is to use our context.
01:13:46.239 --> 01:13:47.680
And there is an argument to be skeptical for.
01:13:47.840 --> 01:13:51.920
Let me let me just say that, because we have archaeological stuff that we've dug out today.
01:13:52.079 --> 01:14:03.920
What if tomorrow we dig out something totally different and then we realize oh, because because we reinterpreted this verse based on limited archaeological data, we misinterpreted it.
01:14:04.079 --> 01:14:05.520
Uh, but now we have more data.
01:14:05.680 --> 01:14:10.319
Now we now we're going to change our interpretation of it because we were just missing some information.
01:14:10.560 --> 01:14:15.439
And so that's a danger when you are using historical uh documentation and stuff.
01:14:15.520 --> 01:14:21.439
I still think it's uh on balance, it's better to use historical context uh than not, but that is that is a danger.
01:14:21.520 --> 01:14:27.920
So people do have to be careful with reading historical stuff and archaeology and using that as part of your interpretation.
01:14:28.000 --> 01:14:29.680
But I do think it's probably better.
01:14:32.239 --> 01:14:32.960
Or that argument.
01:14:33.760 --> 01:14:37.359
If he's going against the grain, you would expect him to make that more explicit.
01:14:37.600 --> 01:14:37.760
Okay.
01:14:38.000 --> 01:14:45.359
I mean, he's using he's using the wording that was used uh in divorce contexts, in a divorce context.
01:14:45.520 --> 01:14:51.119
And so um it's it's what he would expect his audience to uh to understand.
01:14:51.439 --> 01:14:59.680
And again, uh later on in the context in verses 27 and 28, uh I think it's it's clear that uh he means the same thing.
01:15:00.960 --> 01:15:02.479
No, uh Okay, so Dr.
01:15:02.560 --> 01:15:04.640
De Keener just repeats this that it was in the divorce contract.
01:15:04.720 --> 01:15:10.640
I'm just gonna need to see somebody's gonna have to show me a divorce contract that said you are not enslaved.
01:15:11.199 --> 01:15:20.159
And it does not say you are free to marry any man, and uh some kind of evidence that they took that to mean a valid divorce.
01:15:20.319 --> 01:15:22.000
And I'm just not going to find that.
01:15:22.079 --> 01:15:23.600
I just I just don't think that that exists.
01:15:23.760 --> 01:15:25.279
In the Talmud, it says the opposite.
01:15:25.359 --> 01:15:28.960
In the Talmud, it says you had to say you are free to marry any man.
01:15:29.199 --> 01:15:33.359
Saying you are not enslaved would have been an invalid divorce.
01:15:33.520 --> 01:15:35.359
I've read 25 books on the subject.
01:15:35.439 --> 01:15:39.520
I don't see anybody showing me a divorce certificate that says you are not enslaved.
01:15:39.600 --> 01:15:46.800
And if there was that, then the next step would be someone's gonna have to show me that was a valid divorce because the Talmud would say it's not a valid divorce.
01:15:46.960 --> 01:15:51.199
So there's just really no evidence for the idea of not enslaved, meaning not married.
01:15:51.520 --> 01:15:54.960
Now, I did, I I would I'd be curious what you have to say about the end of the chapter.
01:15:55.039 --> 01:15:55.840
You mentioned this.
01:15:56.000 --> 01:16:06.479
Um, admittedly, he says, so he talks about here, he's talking about if the spouse dies, and everyone like the Christians are, as far as I know, maybe there's some outliers, but Christians are pretty universally.
01:16:07.439 --> 01:16:07.600
Okay.
01:16:08.159 --> 01:16:17.199
Christians are pretty universally agreed, at least pretty universally agreed, that when a spouse dies, that frees you from the marriage and presumably then remarriage.
01:16:17.520 --> 01:16:22.079
Paul seems to say is say such in his analogy in Romans 7, as you mentioned.
01:16:22.399 --> 01:16:25.359
And yes, I I agree a person can remarry if their spouse dies.
01:16:25.600 --> 01:16:28.960
Um now Paul uses this language, a wife is bound.
01:16:29.199 --> 01:16:32.720
And he says that if the husband dies, she is free.
01:16:32.880 --> 01:16:38.560
Now, these are not uh you can see in the bottom of my screen, um, Lagos is showing me the underlying Greek.
01:16:38.720 --> 01:16:43.359
These are not, this is not the exact same word that he uses up in verses 15.
01:16:43.600 --> 01:16:47.840
Um, so Kirk brings up the point that I mentioned earlier.
01:16:48.000 --> 01:16:53.600
Uh bound in verse 39 is deo, not enslaved in verse 15 is duolo.
01:16:54.079 --> 01:16:55.920
Not the same word, not the same word.
01:16:56.000 --> 01:17:00.720
Kirk mentions it here, he sees it there in Lagos, which is wonderful Bible software, let me just say.
01:17:00.880 --> 01:17:07.520
So bound has a specific technical meaning in the marriage context to refer to the marriage bond.
01:17:07.760 --> 01:17:11.840
Duolo in verse 15 doesn't refer to the marriage bond.
01:17:11.920 --> 01:17:15.199
So not enslaved doesn't mean not married.
01:17:16.640 --> 01:17:26.720
But one could argue that the sense is so similar that we should then take the idea of like if bound here means presumably that they're free to remarry.
01:17:27.039 --> 01:17:34.319
Um, which um it talks about, I mean, you that seems to be a pretty safe assumption, most people would recognize.
01:17:34.640 --> 01:17:45.439
Um, so Kirk says it's an assumption that Deo in verse 39 and Duolo in verse 15 mean the same thing because the sense is the same.
01:17:45.600 --> 01:17:53.920
But notice neither Kirk nor Keener are comparing duolo uh in verse 15, duolos in verse 21, right?
01:17:54.000 --> 01:17:57.680
They're going from verse 15, here's a word, to verse 39, here's a word.
01:17:57.760 --> 01:17:59.760
We think these mean these two words mean the same thing.
01:17:59.920 --> 01:18:00.239
Okay.
01:18:01.119 --> 01:18:04.640
But there's another word to look at that I think is pretty important.
01:18:04.800 --> 01:18:07.039
That's the word duolos in verse 21.
01:18:07.199 --> 01:18:11.119
So verse 21 has uh a number of things that are important about it.
01:18:11.359 --> 01:18:13.920
Verse 21 is the word is much closer.
01:18:14.000 --> 01:18:18.159
It's duolos, and the word in verse 15 is duolos.
01:18:18.479 --> 01:18:20.399
Same same root concept about slavery.
01:18:20.560 --> 01:18:24.239
So it's talking about the same concept, slavery.
01:18:24.800 --> 01:18:27.680
They're both in the to the married section, right?
01:18:27.760 --> 01:18:34.640
The to the married section goes from verse 10 down to verse 24, and I'm talking about comparing two verses between in verse 15 and verse 21.
01:18:34.720 --> 01:18:38.319
So they're right there uh in that same little passage there.
01:18:38.399 --> 01:18:45.359
So it would seem like that would be closer context to help you understand the meaning of duolo in verse 15.
01:18:45.840 --> 01:18:54.640
So if we understand verse 15 in light of verse 21, then the freed person is not supposed to get re-enslaved, right?
01:18:54.720 --> 01:18:58.000
In verse 21, the idea is you're you're free from slavery there.
01:18:58.239 --> 01:19:00.479
If you can get your freedom, you should get it, Paul writes there.
01:19:00.560 --> 01:19:01.359
And so that would be great.
01:19:01.439 --> 01:19:02.479
Now you can serve Christ.
01:19:02.640 --> 01:19:06.079
The idea is not, the idea is not you're freed, so now you can go get into slavery again.
01:19:06.159 --> 01:19:06.880
No, of course not.
01:19:07.039 --> 01:19:09.039
The idea is you're freed, so now you can serve Christ.
01:19:09.199 --> 01:19:19.439
So if you understand verse 15 in light of verse 21, then the idea would be that your uh when your unbeliever leaves you, now you're free to serve Christ, not free to remarry.
01:19:19.680 --> 01:19:24.319
But if you understand verse 15 in light of verse 39, then the freed person can get remarried.
01:19:24.399 --> 01:19:28.720
So the question is we have to figure out which verse is closer to Paul's meaning in verse 15.
01:19:28.960 --> 01:19:35.359
Verse 21 or verse 39, it's obviously verse 21, verse 15 and verse 21, they're both talking about slavery.
01:19:35.439 --> 01:19:39.119
They're using essentially the same Greek word, they're much closer to each other in the text.
01:19:39.279 --> 01:19:42.720
Verse 21 appears to be an analogy back to verse 15.
01:19:42.800 --> 01:19:47.520
Uh, so it's like referencing verse 15 and verse 21, where verse 39 isn't referencing verse 15 in any way.
01:19:47.680 --> 01:19:56.880
So that's there's basically no reason to select verse 39 over verse 21 to be the context by which we understand not enslaved in verse 15.
01:19:57.600 --> 01:20:06.880
Um, that therefore we should take the similar language of binding and freedom as would you as implying the freedom to remarry.
01:20:06.960 --> 01:20:08.880
Would you is that a good argument in your opinion?
01:20:09.199 --> 01:20:10.720
Yes, yes, I think so.
01:20:10.960 --> 01:20:13.119
It's it's it's used synonymously.
01:20:13.520 --> 01:20:13.840
Okay.
01:20:14.159 --> 01:20:20.800
So so we've kind of walked through the views, the no remarriage, no divorce, no remarriage, the divorce, but no remarriage.
01:20:20.960 --> 01:20:25.600
And then the view that you're articulating is divorce is allowed.
01:20:25.760 --> 01:20:30.399
Um, and when divorce occurs, remarriage is allowed.
01:20:30.640 --> 01:20:32.319
Would you qualify that in any way?
01:20:33.119 --> 01:20:37.600
Yeah, I think that I think the point is don't break up your marriage.
01:20:37.840 --> 01:20:46.640
And the exception is when you can't control it, then you're not held responsible for that.
01:20:46.800 --> 01:20:49.279
So okay, so Dr.
01:20:49.439 --> 01:20:57.760
Keener thinks that Jesus taught a person can remarry if their partner was uh unfaithful.
01:20:58.000 --> 01:21:03.840
That's the Westminster Confession of Faith view, the innocent party to adultery is another way people label that view.
01:21:04.560 --> 01:21:05.039
So Dr.
01:21:05.199 --> 01:21:09.359
Keener thinks Paul taught a person can remarry if their partner abandons them.
01:21:09.520 --> 01:21:10.239
So from that, Dr.
01:21:10.399 --> 01:21:16.960
Keener deduces what he thinks is like the background concept underlying these two exceptions.
01:21:17.520 --> 01:21:20.720
So exception one is for adultery, exception two is for abandonment.
01:21:21.039 --> 01:21:21.680
And so Dr.
01:21:21.840 --> 01:21:28.640
Keener is trying to figure out what is the background idea that results in adultery and abandonment as being exceptions.
01:21:28.720 --> 01:21:30.880
That's what he, that's the work he's doing in his mind.
01:21:31.039 --> 01:21:36.399
And the background concept is his real view on divorce and remarriage.
01:21:36.560 --> 01:21:43.760
So the background concept is if you're enough of a victim, you're allowed to divorce and remarry.
01:21:44.079 --> 01:21:49.359
But here's the problem with that background concept: it contradicts directly some of the text.
01:21:49.520 --> 01:22:02.479
So, for example, if you look at the second half of Luke 16, 18, Jesus said, He who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.
01:22:02.640 --> 01:22:02.880
Okay.
01:22:03.439 --> 01:22:07.279
So here's a woman who is abandoned by her husband, she's the victim.
01:22:07.760 --> 01:22:08.800
He divorced her.
01:22:09.439 --> 01:22:10.479
She didn't do the divorcing.
01:22:10.560 --> 01:22:11.840
He she couldn't do the divorcing.
01:22:11.920 --> 01:22:13.439
He he would give her a certificate of divorce.
01:22:13.520 --> 01:22:14.560
This is the Jewish law, right?
01:22:14.880 --> 01:22:16.800
If she remarries, it's adultery.
01:22:16.880 --> 01:22:18.319
Now again, she's the victim.
01:22:19.359 --> 01:22:23.359
And Jesus says, if she, the victim, remarries, it's adultery.
01:22:24.319 --> 01:22:25.760
And so Dr.
01:22:25.920 --> 01:22:33.920
Keener says the victim can divorce or remarry, but this text in Luke 16, 18, says if the victim remarries, it's adultery.
01:22:34.000 --> 01:22:38.880
Now, also if the perpetrator remarries, it's also adultery, but we're just focused on the victim question because that's Dr.
01:22:38.960 --> 01:22:40.319
Keener's like theory.
01:22:40.479 --> 01:22:41.600
The victim can remarry.
01:22:41.760 --> 01:22:42.159
So Dr.
01:22:42.319 --> 01:22:42.880
Theory, Dr.
01:22:42.960 --> 01:22:48.720
Keener's theory must be incorrect because Luke 16, 18 says the victim cannot remarry.
01:22:49.199 --> 01:22:50.319
So to this, Dr.
01:22:50.479 --> 01:22:56.960
Keener's standard like reply is that Jesus was just giving a general rule and not laying out the exceptions.
01:22:57.039 --> 01:22:59.680
But that reply doesn't work here in Luke 16, 18.
01:22:59.840 --> 01:23:01.520
The woman was the victim.
01:23:02.000 --> 01:23:03.439
Her husband divorced her.
01:23:03.520 --> 01:23:09.119
Nothing in the text of or uh or context here indicates that she was the bad actor.
01:23:09.920 --> 01:23:13.039
Rather, it looks like her husband was the bad actor.
01:23:13.199 --> 01:23:16.479
And Matthew 5.32 says something uh similar there.
01:23:18.640 --> 01:23:22.239
Um so it's not saying divorce is allowed across the board.
01:23:22.560 --> 01:23:22.720
Right.
01:23:22.800 --> 01:23:23.840
Yeah, that's a good clarification.
01:23:24.319 --> 01:23:39.520
You know, um it's it's a matter of the b uh in in with all the exceptions, the believer is not allowed to break up their marriage, but if the marriage is broken up against their will, now the question is what does that entail?
01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:45.840
We have the explicit exception here of abandonment, explicit exception in Matthew 5 32 and 19.
01:23:46.960 --> 01:23:49.279
Of um infidelity.
01:23:52.399 --> 01:23:52.640
Dr.
01:23:52.800 --> 01:23:58.079
Keener is going to address uh uh the the line the line drawing problem.
01:23:58.239 --> 01:24:03.920
Okay, how much of a victim does somebody have to be before they can divorce and remarry?
01:24:04.159 --> 01:24:08.720
Now, this is a nightmare of a problem for people with the permissive view.
01:24:09.039 --> 01:24:12.479
When does the conduct qualify as adultery?
01:24:12.560 --> 01:24:19.199
There are a number of things a spouse could do that are uh unfaithful, but it's not really adultery, or it's unclear if it's adultery.
01:24:19.279 --> 01:24:23.680
So, what qualifies as infidelity that allows for divorce and remarriage?
01:24:23.840 --> 01:24:26.000
What if somebody gambles away all the money?
01:24:26.239 --> 01:24:29.439
Does that make a spouse sufficiently a victim so they can divorce and remarry?
01:24:29.600 --> 01:24:32.159
What if a spouse uses the silent treatment for five years?
01:24:32.239 --> 01:24:34.640
Does that qualify as abandonment?
01:24:34.800 --> 01:24:39.760
So we have a line drawing problem, total nightmare for people with a with a permissive view, total nightmare.
01:24:40.000 --> 01:24:40.880
Second, Dr.
01:24:41.039 --> 01:24:46.000
Keener said the exception clauses in Matthew 5.32 and Matthew 19.9 are for infidelity.
01:24:46.159 --> 01:24:48.720
Now, I disagree with that interpretation.
01:24:48.960 --> 01:24:55.600
In those two passages, the exception is in the Greek the word pornea, which is typically translated fornication.
01:24:55.840 --> 01:25:02.479
The word fornication can refer to, you know, one type of sexual sin or it can refer to all kinds of sexual sin.
01:25:02.640 --> 01:25:07.359
And if it means one kind of sexual sin, uh that would have to be indicated by the context.
01:25:07.520 --> 01:25:10.960
It has to be indicated by the context because otherwise you wouldn't know which one it is.
01:25:11.119 --> 01:25:12.640
Is it homosexual conduct?
01:25:12.800 --> 01:25:14.000
Is it sex outside of marriage?
01:25:14.239 --> 01:25:15.279
What kind of fornication is it?
01:25:15.359 --> 01:25:18.479
You wouldn't know unless the person tells you, here's what I mean by it.
01:25:18.800 --> 01:25:19.359
Is it incest?
01:25:19.439 --> 01:25:24.880
They'd have to tell you what they mean by uh fornication for you to kind of narrow it down to one kind.
01:25:25.119 --> 01:25:28.319
So I agree with all of that, that you need context to limit it.
01:25:28.399 --> 01:25:32.800
And if you don't have context, then generally it means all kinds of sexual sins.
01:25:33.039 --> 01:25:41.359
When the exception, when fornication, whatever Jesus meant by that, when fornication occurs, that does allow uh divorce and remarriage.
01:25:41.600 --> 01:25:42.479
I agree with that.
01:25:42.640 --> 01:25:47.359
So all we have to figure out is what does the word fornication actually mean?
01:25:47.520 --> 01:25:47.840
Dr.
01:25:47.920 --> 01:25:49.920
Keener thinks it means adultery.
01:25:50.159 --> 01:25:51.920
For example, the wife cheated on the husband.
01:25:52.000 --> 01:25:52.960
That's what he thinks.
01:25:53.119 --> 01:25:54.319
I don't think that's what it means.
01:25:54.479 --> 01:25:59.520
I think Jesus specifically tells us what he means in the second half of Matthew 532.
01:25:59.600 --> 01:26:06.000
And what he tells us is that the kind of sexual immorality is an invalid, adulterous remarriage.
01:26:06.159 --> 01:26:09.520
It's in the second half of Matthew 532, where Jesus spells that out.
01:26:09.680 --> 01:26:11.279
So here's the concept.
01:26:11.600 --> 01:26:18.960
Suppose you have a man, he's 25 years old, and he finds a young lady, she's 24, I don't know, and so he marries her.
01:26:19.119 --> 01:26:22.880
This is his first marriage, but it's her second marriage.
01:26:23.039 --> 01:26:25.840
It's an adulterous remarriage.
01:26:26.239 --> 01:26:32.640
What I'm saying is if that 25-year-old man divorces her, he can remarry.
01:26:32.800 --> 01:26:33.199
Why?
01:26:33.359 --> 01:26:36.239
Because his marriage to her was an invalid adulterous remarriage.
01:26:36.319 --> 01:26:39.600
And that's what Jesus says in Matthew 5.32, the second half.
01:26:39.760 --> 01:26:44.640
He defines what he means by prunea when he says if a man marries a divorced woman, he commits adultery.
01:26:44.800 --> 01:26:51.359
That sexual sin, adultery, is what he means by fornication in the exception clause of Matthew 5.32.
01:26:51.439 --> 01:26:52.640
So now why can the man remarry?
01:26:52.800 --> 01:26:57.760
Somebody might say, well, the man was married at age 25 and then he divorced her, he's a divorced man.
01:26:57.920 --> 01:26:59.520
He shouldn't be remarrying, right?
01:26:59.760 --> 01:27:00.960
Well, this is the exception.
01:27:01.119 --> 01:27:04.720
The exception is he can remarry if his first marriage was invalid.
01:27:04.800 --> 01:27:10.560
And the reason is because if he goes to remarry, he's not cheating on his first wife because they were never married.
01:27:10.640 --> 01:27:11.920
He has no obligation to her.
01:27:12.079 --> 01:27:15.199
His only obligation to her was to divorce her because it was an invalid marriage.
01:27:15.279 --> 01:27:18.880
He had to leave her so they can quit their fornication, quit their adultery.
01:27:19.039 --> 01:27:21.279
Now, somebody might say, now, Chris, I don't understand.
01:27:21.359 --> 01:27:29.920
The word fornication usually means sex outside of marriage, but she's, you know, married, quote unquote, to her first husband, even though they're divorced, under my theory, right?
01:27:30.000 --> 01:27:31.840
That's why her remarriage is adultery.
01:27:32.000 --> 01:27:36.479
Well, the sex between the man and the woman is fornication between them.
01:27:36.560 --> 01:27:40.239
That's the sin between them because they're not married, the man and the woman.
01:27:40.479 --> 01:27:43.520
It is true, it is also adultery against her first husband.
01:27:43.680 --> 01:27:45.279
So there's two sexual sins going on.
01:27:45.359 --> 01:27:49.439
There's the sin of his uh sex with her between them.
01:27:49.520 --> 01:27:50.239
That's fornication.
01:27:50.319 --> 01:27:55.439
There's also a second sin going on that it's on top of that, which is it's adultery against her first husband.
01:27:55.600 --> 01:27:58.479
So it's both fornication and adultery at the same time.
01:27:58.640 --> 01:27:59.840
And that's actually what the Damascus does.
01:28:00.079 --> 01:28:08.239
Document, I think, is referring to when it says that if a man marries a second woman while his first wife is alive, then he commits uh fornication twice.
01:28:08.319 --> 01:28:09.600
He commits two sexual sins.
01:28:09.760 --> 01:28:12.960
The two sexual sins would be the sin between them because they're not married.
01:28:13.039 --> 01:28:18.960
So though that sex that they have is a sexual sin, but it's also cheating against his first spouse.
01:28:19.359 --> 01:28:23.600
Now we see the word fornication used this way by the early church.
01:28:23.680 --> 01:28:27.760
We see it in the Damascus document where it calls a remarriage fornication.
01:28:27.920 --> 01:28:33.119
And we see Jesus explaining that that's what he means by fornication in Matthew 5.32.
01:28:33.199 --> 01:28:42.079
Let me write so that part where Jesus says, whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery, that's the scenario Jesus is referring to in the exception clause.
01:28:42.239 --> 01:28:45.039
The man married a woman who is divorced.
01:28:45.199 --> 01:28:48.560
And so the sex between them was fornication.
01:28:48.880 --> 01:28:52.720
So additionally, the exception clause can't be for adultery.
01:28:52.960 --> 01:28:53.119
Dr.
01:28:53.199 --> 01:28:57.119
Keener thinks the except it be for sexual immorality refers to adultery.
01:28:57.199 --> 01:29:04.560
So that again would be the case where a man's married to a woman, she is unfaithful to him, and so then the man divorces her and he remarries.
01:29:04.640 --> 01:29:05.279
So that's Dr.
01:29:05.439 --> 01:29:06.640
Keener's view on it.
01:29:06.800 --> 01:29:08.479
Westminster Confession faith, a faith view.
01:29:08.560 --> 01:29:10.960
It's also called the innocent party to adultery view.
01:29:11.039 --> 01:29:14.880
It's very popular in evangelical circles, but I think it's I think it's incorrect.
01:29:15.039 --> 01:29:19.840
But there's a number of problems, actually, with that view that a lot of you evangelicals have never heard of.
01:29:19.920 --> 01:29:21.439
So I'm just going to give you a couple of them.
01:29:21.600 --> 01:29:27.199
First of all, if you look at Matthew 532 and Matthew 19, 9, the man is divorcing the woman.
01:29:27.359 --> 01:29:30.560
And then there's the exception clause, but the man's divorcing the woman.
01:29:30.720 --> 01:29:35.600
So under this theory, it would only allow the man to divorce the wife for infidelity.
01:29:35.760 --> 01:29:39.199
It would not allow the wife to divorce the man for infidelity.
01:29:39.359 --> 01:29:43.039
So it'd be a gendered exception that favors the man.
01:29:43.359 --> 01:29:49.039
Because there is never an exception clause that allows a woman to divorce her husband for sexual immorality.
01:29:49.199 --> 01:29:56.159
Now, that is not a problem under my view, because the point is that if the marriage that they entered into was invalid, they can, they can and should divorce that.
01:29:56.239 --> 01:29:58.560
And then they can remarry because it wouldn't be cheating on the first spouse.
01:29:58.640 --> 01:30:02.159
So the logic of it doesn't require a gendered result.
01:30:02.640 --> 01:30:11.119
But if you think Jesus' exception was for sexual immorality, then he's telling his audience only a man can divorce his wife for infidelity.
01:30:11.199 --> 01:30:13.840
A wife can't divorce her husband for infidelity.
01:30:13.920 --> 01:30:15.279
It doesn't work the other way around.
01:30:15.520 --> 01:30:20.560
Consider Jesus is speaking to people who believe the moral law is gendered.
01:30:20.640 --> 01:30:26.560
They're accustomed to Deuteronomy 24 that allows a man to divorce a wife, but not a wife to divorce a husband.
01:30:26.800 --> 01:30:33.680
So thinking like that their whole life, and then they hear Jesus say, oh, there's an exception for adultery, that's what they would have thought he meant.
01:30:33.920 --> 01:30:41.199
If they thought he was taking the Shemai view, that's what they would have thought he meant, that a man can divorce a wife for infidelity, but not vice versa.
01:30:41.359 --> 01:30:53.840
There are all of these things, Jesus' actual words, the shamai view, and just the way they thought the moral law was gendered would all have made them think that Jesus was only allowing a man to divorce for infidelity, not vice versa.
01:30:54.000 --> 01:31:00.800
But that's a real problem because that goes against like the whole context of how Jesus and Paul write and talk about divorce and remarriage.
01:31:00.880 --> 01:31:03.359
The rules for divorce and remarriage are the same for both genders.
01:31:03.439 --> 01:31:09.199
And you see them, you see the genders flipped in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19, in Mark 10, and in Luke 16, 18.
01:31:09.359 --> 01:31:14.000
Also, all of 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul spends a lot of time flipping the genders.
01:31:14.079 --> 01:31:23.359
If the widow this and the widow were that, and the betrothed guy, this, and the betrothed woman that, the rules are the same back and forth, but suddenly for adultery, they're not the same.
01:31:24.239 --> 01:31:25.520
That doesn't make any sense.
01:31:25.760 --> 01:31:37.119
So then adultery can't be what he meant by the exception clause because it would be a gendered outcome, which would be uh against uh the context of what uh Jesus says in Paul rights on the subject.
01:31:37.279 --> 01:31:41.520
So that's the first problem with uh interpreting the exception clause as adultery.
01:31:41.680 --> 01:31:53.439
The second problem with treating the exception clause as being uh for adultery is that Jesus specifically rejects divorce for adultery in Matthew 19 verses 7 and 8.
01:31:53.600 --> 01:31:54.560
Let me say that again.
01:31:54.720 --> 01:31:59.680
Jesus specifically rejects divorce for adultery in Matthew 19, verses 7 and 8.
01:31:59.760 --> 01:32:05.119
There, the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorcing for adultery based on Deuteronomy 24.1.
01:32:05.279 --> 01:32:07.439
That's their question in Matthew 19, 7.
01:32:07.520 --> 01:32:10.399
Now Jesus says, no, that is not okay.
01:32:10.560 --> 01:32:12.640
It is not okay to divorce for adultery.
01:32:12.800 --> 01:32:16.479
He says that in verse 8 that Moses allowed you to do that for your hardness of heart.
01:32:16.640 --> 01:32:22.239
Divorcing a man divorcing his wife because she cheated on him is hard as a hard-hearted act.
01:32:22.399 --> 01:32:24.560
That's what Jesus says in Matthew 19:8.
01:32:24.720 --> 01:32:30.960
Now we know the Deuteronomy 24, 1 allowance for divorce was divorcing for adultery.
01:32:31.119 --> 01:32:34.399
We know that because of Jeremiah chapter 3, verses 1 through 8.
01:32:34.560 --> 01:32:38.720
There, the divorce that occurs there is because the wife uh committed adultery.
01:32:38.800 --> 01:32:40.000
That's why the divorce was there.
01:32:40.079 --> 01:32:43.439
And it references back to Deuteronomy chapter 24 in verse 1.
01:32:43.600 --> 01:32:47.920
Also chapter 24 and verse 1, if you look at the Hebrew word there, it's for a matter of uncleanness.
01:32:48.000 --> 01:32:52.159
That word is usually, almost always, related to some kind of sexual sin.
01:32:52.640 --> 01:32:59.039
In Deuteronomy 24:1, Moses permitted uh them to divorce for uh men to divorce his wife for adultery.
01:32:59.119 --> 01:33:06.560
And then Jesus in Matthew 19, verses 7 through 9, he rejects and overrides the Mosaic permission for divorce for adultery.
01:33:06.720 --> 01:33:12.159
So Jesus specifically rejects, specifically rejects divorcing for adultery.
01:33:12.319 --> 01:33:17.600
Also, those were Hillel Pharisees that were talking to Jesus in Matthew 19, 7 through 9.
01:33:17.680 --> 01:33:24.960
And in the Talmud, Hillel said that Moses commanded a man to divorce his wife for adultery.
01:33:25.039 --> 01:33:27.600
That's in the Gemera section of Giton 19.10.
01:33:27.840 --> 01:33:33.920
So that's the question they raise in Matthew 19:7, where they said, Why then did Moses command to give her a writing of divorcement?
01:33:34.000 --> 01:33:34.880
That's for adultery.
01:33:34.960 --> 01:33:40.479
And then Jesus specifically rejects divorce for adultery in Matthew 19, verse 8.
01:33:41.760 --> 01:33:47.039
Um what else could be um yeah, we could we could talk about that.
01:33:47.199 --> 01:33:58.640
I think probably physical abuse, uh putting cyanide in your spouse's coffee, things like that would probably but but not like I just got tired of the person.
01:33:58.800 --> 01:33:59.680
That's absolutely not.
01:34:01.439 --> 01:34:08.159
All right, so I I agree that safety is a justification to retreat in any scenario, married or whatever.
01:34:08.399 --> 01:34:19.119
So if retreating is insufficient to be safe, you know, it's a husband and wife are married and there's abuse uh and there's a safety problem for the spouse or their child.
01:34:19.359 --> 01:34:25.359
If retreating is insufficient to be safe, then a legal divorce is necessary to be safe, then a legal divorce is permissible.
01:34:25.439 --> 01:34:30.479
But a person cannot remarry as they're still married to their bad spouse for life.
01:34:30.560 --> 01:34:35.039
Now I have an episode about divorcing for safety as well, as you can watch and learn more about that.
01:34:35.119 --> 01:34:39.039
But if there is a safety issue, step one is get safe.
01:34:39.199 --> 01:34:44.079
Step two is call the police, and step three is call your church leaders.
01:34:46.239 --> 01:34:48.079
Let's let's hold, I'd love to get into that.
01:34:48.159 --> 01:34:49.920
Let's hold off some of those practical questions.
01:34:50.079 --> 01:34:51.439
It is important to say too.
01:34:51.600 --> 01:34:52.399
I think you would agree.
01:34:52.560 --> 01:34:53.760
Tell me, tell me if not.
01:34:53.920 --> 01:35:10.239
But like it's important to state that even if scripture, on and as you're interpreting it, does a does permit divorce, it's not like I don't think anyone would argue that scripture has a willy-nilly sort of lax view of marriage and divorce.
01:35:10.399 --> 01:35:13.199
Um, from the beginning it was not so, Jesus said.
01:35:13.279 --> 01:35:17.439
And Paul is expanding on what Jesus says by saying, not I, but the Lord.
01:35:17.520 --> 01:35:18.399
He's referencing Jesus.
01:35:18.479 --> 01:35:25.119
Now he's saying, as an apostle, I'm sort of expanding on something, a situation that Jesus did not directly address.
01:35:25.199 --> 01:35:42.640
Um, but there's no view that I'm aware of that is, I mean, I'm sure there are some people, but um, among um, let's just put it this way typically um people are not approaching, even where they do see permissions for divorce and remarriage, it's not a case of sort of anything goes.
01:35:42.720 --> 01:35:50.800
There's, and even here, when we say that on the view that you're articulating where Paul permits divorce, it's not permission under any circumstance.
01:35:50.960 --> 01:35:57.439
He's like he says, even in the passage above, that there is a situation where someone leaves their spouse.
01:35:57.600 --> 01:36:03.039
Um, it looks like two believe two believers, for instance, and one illegitimately leaves the other.
01:36:03.439 --> 01:36:10.399
Okay, so Kirk quickly brings up the idea that verses 10 and 11 from 1 Corinthians 7 is about two believers.
01:36:10.800 --> 01:36:17.039
And if you look at that passage, uh, does anything in that text indicate this only applies to two believers?
01:36:17.279 --> 01:36:17.840
It doesn't.
01:36:18.000 --> 01:36:19.359
Nothing in the passage says that.
01:36:19.439 --> 01:36:20.479
Now, some people will say this.
01:36:20.560 --> 01:36:26.319
They'll say, Well, it's written two believers, so it's only a moral rule for believers.
01:36:26.479 --> 01:36:32.399
But does that mean that when a text says honor your parents, that only applies to children who are believers?
01:36:32.960 --> 01:36:34.239
No, that's not how this works.
01:36:34.399 --> 01:36:35.359
It applies to everybody.
01:36:35.520 --> 01:36:38.880
So verses 10 and 11 are a paraphrase of Jesus' teaching.
01:36:39.119 --> 01:36:45.439
And if you look at Matthew 19, Jesus is teaching about divorce and remarriage to the Pharisees who are unsaved.
01:36:45.680 --> 01:36:49.840
So it's the rule that they are supposed to follow, even though they're not saved.
01:36:49.920 --> 01:36:53.680
So he premises it in creation, which applies to everybody.
01:36:53.920 --> 01:36:59.520
So how could anybody in Jesus' audience have thought that was only about believer-believer marriages?
01:36:59.680 --> 01:37:01.199
They would not have thought that.
01:37:01.359 --> 01:37:06.239
Uh, if you look in Mark 10, Jesus talks about a woman who divorces her husband and remarries.
01:37:06.399 --> 01:37:10.880
A woman divorcing her husband was not under, uh, was not doing that under, you know, Jewish law.
01:37:10.960 --> 01:37:16.640
So this is somebody acting outside of the Mosaic government kind of tolerance for divorce.
01:37:16.800 --> 01:37:24.720
So now, so the question then is where does Kirk get this concept that verses 10 and 11 are just for believer-believer marriages?
01:37:24.960 --> 01:37:28.159
So where he gets this from, this is a popular evangelical view.
01:37:28.319 --> 01:37:32.399
I'm pretty sure this is where he gets it from, is the phrase to the rest in verse 12.
01:37:32.560 --> 01:37:47.279
And so what he thinks is to the rest means that now Paul's going to be talking about believer-unbeliever marriages, and that the preceding text then therefore must have been only about believer-believer marriages, which then narrows all of Jesus' teaching to believer-believer marriages.
01:37:47.359 --> 01:37:49.840
And they get all of that from the phrase to the rest.
01:37:50.000 --> 01:37:52.399
But that's not what Paul means by to the rest.
01:37:52.479 --> 01:37:57.840
What to the rest means is, hey guys, I just paraphrase what Jesus says in verses 10 and 11.
01:37:57.920 --> 01:38:03.439
And now I'm going to be applying that to some situations Jesus did not specifically speak on.
01:38:03.600 --> 01:38:06.880
It's not intended to narrow Jesus' teaching to believer-believer marriages.
01:38:07.039 --> 01:38:07.600
And uh Dr.
01:38:07.760 --> 01:38:09.359
Keener seems to agree with me on this.
01:38:09.439 --> 01:38:15.680
He said earlier that Paul is applying Jesus' teaching to believer-unbeliever marriages in verses 12 and following.
01:38:15.840 --> 01:38:32.079
So instead of thinking of this passage as Jesus teaching to believer-believer marriages and Paul's teaching to believer-unbeliever marriages, instead we should think about this as Jesus' teaching on all marriages, and Paul's applying Jesus' teaching to a specific question from the Corinthians.
01:38:32.239 --> 01:38:39.439
So the point is, Paul is saying, here's what we know from Jesus, and deducing, here's what it means for your specific scenario.
01:38:52.159 --> 01:38:56.399
Um, and so we're talking about specific situations.
01:38:56.720 --> 01:39:00.399
Um, we talked about the use of the word, one of the questions I had was about this.
01:39:00.560 --> 01:39:05.279
So in the Lagos um exegetical guide, it automatically pulls up important words.
01:39:05.359 --> 01:39:08.960
And so these are really helpful uh to see in a passage like this.
01:39:09.199 --> 01:39:13.520
One of the key words is this word for separate, another is enslaved.
01:39:13.760 --> 01:39:21.359
We talked about this idea of enslaved or bind bind, like how that's used in this context, how it's used outside of First Corinthians.
01:39:21.520 --> 01:39:24.239
What about this word um separate or leave?
01:39:24.399 --> 01:39:26.880
I think the NASB just has leave.
01:39:27.359 --> 01:39:38.479
Um the question is, does that word imply because I could see someone saying, well, hey, it's just saying let that person leave, like physical separation, but not necessarily legal divorce.
01:39:38.640 --> 01:39:40.800
Um help us think through that matter.
01:39:41.359 --> 01:39:44.159
Yeah, and people people will sometimes say that.
01:39:44.720 --> 01:39:56.399
Um But the the the problem the problem is that in the Greco-Roman world, if a spouse left, it automatically dissolved the marriage.
01:39:57.279 --> 01:40:01.039
So yeah, so I I agree with Dr.
01:40:01.199 --> 01:40:01.760
Keener there.
01:40:02.319 --> 01:40:04.479
That if a spouse leaves, the marriage is auto-divorced.
01:40:05.039 --> 01:40:11.359
Again, putting it in the in the specific context of how the wording would be used uh back then.
01:40:11.840 --> 01:40:22.239
And actually it sometimes was used as I recall, I should I should have gone and looked this up, but I think it I think it's already pointed out by Deisman's light from the ancient East.
01:40:22.319 --> 01:40:24.159
So over a century ago, I think.
01:40:24.399 --> 01:40:30.079
Um where sometimes carizo was used with regard to divorce.
01:40:30.640 --> 01:40:30.800
Okay.
01:40:31.359 --> 01:40:42.079
That's why I was wondering if it's ever used, if Paul is just using it sort of in a illustrative metaphorical sense, or if it's actually ever used with that um with that semantic range.
01:40:42.319 --> 01:40:43.840
Um yeah.
01:40:44.079 --> 01:41:16.000
So maybe another question uh that sometimes comes up um is Paul uses this language, I'm trying to find it here, but he says, in such a case, um, and I know that people sometimes point to, yeah, in such cases right here, um, people sometimes point to this because let's just sort of uh for sake of time, when people talk about exceptions for divorce and then for divorce and remarriage, if they hold the that that additional element.
01:41:16.479 --> 01:41:20.479
Um the exceptions are when Jesus talks about fornication.
01:41:20.720 --> 01:41:28.640
So if a spouse commits fornication, um, there's the passage here that talks about abandonment, um, is typically the language people use.
01:41:28.720 --> 01:41:31.039
Um so someone just abandoning the marriage.
01:41:31.199 --> 01:41:35.920
Um, but there are others who hold that there may be even further exceptions.
01:41:36.079 --> 01:41:37.760
So you mentioned abuse, for instance.
01:41:37.920 --> 01:41:44.399
Now, some people will say abuse is functionally a form of abandonment.
01:41:44.560 --> 01:41:52.960
If you abuse your spouse, you've so mistreated them that it's as if you, even if you haven't walked away and you're still like that person still wants to be married.
01:41:53.199 --> 01:42:03.039
Functionally speaking, they have so mistreated their spouse that it is it should be sort of included in this exception from 1 Corinthians 7.
01:42:03.199 --> 01:42:04.960
Other people don't feel the need to do that.
01:42:05.119 --> 01:42:09.840
They would just simply say the exceptions that the New Testament provides are not exhaustive.
01:42:09.920 --> 01:42:21.920
We shouldn't get willy-nilly with any exceptions, like uh a spouse burns toast and so you should divorce them, or you just get sick of them and you're not yeah, yeah, you're not physically attracted to them anymore, or whatever.
01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:26.720
Like we we need to be serious about um the permanency, the intended permanency of marriage.
01:42:26.960 --> 01:42:48.399
But but I know um I think Andy Nicelli, for instance, who wrote an article surveying all the texts, he argues that in such cases, this this language shows that Paul is leaving the door open um in a in a way to say, like, I'm talking about instances that happen, and this is not the exhaustion of such instances.
01:42:48.640 --> 01:42:58.399
Um, I'd be curious what you have to say about Paul's use of that language in such cases, if you if if you think that's helpful as we approach the topic of divorce and remarriage.
01:42:59.199 --> 01:43:29.279
I do, and and actually um and Andy Nicelli via you have taught me something because I hadn't I hadn't paid attention to that before, but I think that makes sense uh given uh how Paul uses uh language like such such cases uh elsewhere, like where he's giving a vice list in Galatians 5, and he says, and such things like these, you know, it's not exhaustive, but it does um but but it also means they need to be analogous.
01:43:29.439 --> 01:43:39.119
So again, not just like yeah, so I think in such cases means abandonment or something analogous to abandonment.
01:43:39.279 --> 01:43:43.760
So a safety problem uh is a form of abandonment if there's like abuse, for example.
01:43:43.840 --> 01:43:46.079
But again, that doesn't mean a spouse can remarry.
01:43:46.239 --> 01:43:51.439
It just means that after the separation, they're free to serve Christ without the encumbrance of that difficult relationship.
01:43:51.520 --> 01:44:06.720
But I agree in principle with the idea that in such cases, uh, you know, extends to analogous things and uh safety would be an analogous uh situation to abandonment, because they're compelling the person to retreat, which causes them to be not in the same dwelling anymore.
01:44:08.079 --> 01:44:25.039
Um again, the schools of Shemai and Talel uh in Mishnah 159 in in Jesus' day they were debating grounds for divorce, and Jesus weigh in, sort of on one side, a little bit stricter, but um so I just want to note real quick that Dr.
01:44:25.119 --> 01:44:30.079
Keener says Jesus doesn't totally take the Shemai view, but kind of the Shemai view.
01:44:30.159 --> 01:44:34.319
And that daylight between Jesus and Shemai, I think, shows a weakness uh of Dr.
01:44:34.399 --> 01:44:35.920
Keener's uh particular interpretation.
01:44:36.079 --> 01:44:38.479
I think there's actually a lot of daylight, as I mentioned earlier, between Dr.
01:44:38.640 --> 01:44:43.039
Keener's interpretation of Jesus and what Shemai taught.
01:44:43.199 --> 01:44:48.800
So uh, and there's so much daylight, in fact, that you just can't really say that Jesus and Shemai agree.
01:44:50.640 --> 01:44:54.800
School of Shemai says you can divorce your wife if she's unfaithful.
01:44:55.119 --> 01:44:59.600
School of Hillel says you can divorce your wife if she burns the toast.
01:44:59.920 --> 01:45:03.359
You know, for basically any cause, the husband is allowed to do it.
01:45:03.439 --> 01:45:20.239
And Rabbi Akiba, a later rabbi from the School of Hillel, says, if you find someone more beautiful, so the examples you gave of things that are not acceptable are actually, you know, the kind of things Jesus was clearly repudiating when he when he weighed in on the subject.
01:45:20.479 --> 01:45:20.800
Yeah.
01:45:21.039 --> 01:45:31.199
I how would you go about determining um because you you've contributed, this is an area where you've written quite a bit on, and you've contributed to multiple view books or at least one book.
01:45:31.359 --> 01:45:42.159
Um, and I believe you've you've you've been the one defending that position that there are there are more exceptions beyond just the ones directly mentioned in scripture.
01:45:42.479 --> 01:45:43.920
Is there a controlling principle?
01:45:44.079 --> 01:45:45.920
I liked how you said they have to be analogous.
01:45:46.079 --> 01:45:55.600
Um I know some people have spoken about like things that are so um rupturing, like they they effectively rupture the covenant, they effectively violate it.
01:45:56.560 --> 01:45:56.720
Right.
01:45:56.800 --> 01:45:56.960
Yeah.
01:45:57.039 --> 01:46:02.960
So how would you go about what would be that principle if someone was to say, this gets really practical?
01:46:03.199 --> 01:46:11.279
Like, how is this not just, you know, Pandora's box to just it is kind of a Pandora's box.
01:46:11.439 --> 01:46:30.079
So and not only because there's like this largely undefined, unmoored from the text victim perpetrator framework, and you have to define who the victim is, and good luck in a lot of cases, but also because if someone remarries and they were not supposed to, they'll say, well, just express remorse and continue the remarriage.
01:46:30.159 --> 01:46:39.039
So it's a Pandora's box for both those reasons, because there's a bunch of gray areas where they have a hard time figuring out if somebody is permitted to divorce and remarry under their theory.
01:46:39.119 --> 01:46:44.800
And then even in the cases where they're not allowed to divorce and remarry, if they do, they just say, you know, express remorse and you can stay in your remarriage.
01:46:44.880 --> 01:46:49.119
So it's a Pandora's box, uh, opens the door to uh lots of divorces and remarriages.
01:46:49.279 --> 01:47:02.560
And and by the way, that's a bit the bigger problem, the fact that they don't require the divorcing of remarriages that they would say are adulterous, they'll say it's adulterous, also continue it, which is the bigger problem uh here than actually the victim perpetrator framework, in my opinion.
01:47:02.800 --> 01:47:08.159
But the the they'll just never say a person should divorce their remarriage.
01:47:08.239 --> 01:47:10.479
Now, Kirk Kirk said something that was interesting.
01:47:10.640 --> 01:47:18.399
So he said that a spouse who is a perpetrator can act so badly that they rupture the covenant of marriage.
01:47:18.800 --> 01:47:22.720
So first, we have to ask the question what is the nature of marriage?
01:47:22.880 --> 01:47:26.159
And you'll notice they just jumped into 1 Corinthians 7 and got into the text.
01:47:26.319 --> 01:47:28.479
This is something that uh evangelicals do a lot.
01:47:28.640 --> 01:47:35.920
We like to get into the text, stay close to the text, and we don't like to think about and talk as much about the nature of things, but inevitably it comes up.
01:47:36.159 --> 01:47:37.600
You just really can't avoid it.
01:47:37.760 --> 01:47:47.520
Uh, and because the problem is if you don't have uh a concept of what like the nature of marriage is, what's gonna happen is you're gonna go to text one and you're gonna come to one conclusion.
01:47:47.600 --> 01:48:01.439
You're gonna go to text two and you're gonna come to a different conclusion, and you're not going to realize that you have a background contradiction because your conclusion in text one assumes the nature of marriage is A, and your conclusion from text two is gonna assume the nature of marriage is B.
01:48:01.520 --> 01:48:04.159
And those are not the same, those are contradictory to each other.
01:48:04.239 --> 01:48:11.439
So we're not, we don't do the nature thing as much because we're trying to stick close to the text, which is a good aim, but you you have to get into the nature of things.
01:48:11.680 --> 01:48:17.439
Kirk's statement seems to assume the nature of marriage is covenant, and that's a very popular evangelical view.
01:48:17.600 --> 01:48:20.239
But I think the nature of marriage is family, and Dr.
01:48:20.399 --> 01:48:22.640
Keener uh he kind of says it both ways.
01:48:22.800 --> 01:48:26.319
So sometimes he calls it a covenant and sometimes he calls it family.
01:48:26.479 --> 01:48:28.800
He's got it on his website that he calls it, he does both.
01:48:28.960 --> 01:48:29.520
Uh so Dr.
01:48:29.600 --> 01:48:30.560
Keener says it both ways.
01:48:30.720 --> 01:48:33.520
The difference is that a family cannot be undone.
01:48:33.760 --> 01:48:37.199
Uh, you can't make your brother to not be your brother.
01:48:37.279 --> 01:48:38.159
It's a fact.
01:48:38.319 --> 01:48:40.079
A covenant you can undo.
01:48:40.239 --> 01:48:42.560
You're not supposed to, but you can undo.
01:48:42.720 --> 01:48:43.920
So consider this.
01:48:44.000 --> 01:48:52.000
So a contract is an agreement between two humans, and a covenant is an agreement where God's involved in a special way.
01:48:52.399 --> 01:48:55.600
So I agree that the consent to marriage is a covenant.
01:48:55.680 --> 01:49:00.640
Yeah, there's an agreement, and the nature of the agreement is a covenant because God's involved in a special way.
01:49:00.720 --> 01:49:01.920
God joins them together.
01:49:02.079 --> 01:49:03.600
But that's not really the question we're asking.
01:49:03.680 --> 01:49:05.600
We're not asking about the nature of the agreement.
01:49:05.680 --> 01:49:12.560
We're asking about the nature of the marriage, the relationship, what's going on there, and the nature of the marriage itself is a family.
01:49:12.720 --> 01:49:14.159
Now, I get that from the same place Dr.
01:49:14.239 --> 01:49:16.479
Keener gets it when he calls it a family.
01:49:16.560 --> 01:49:22.159
And that's Genesis chapter two, where Adam says of Eve, she is now my bone of bone and flesh of flesh.
01:49:22.319 --> 01:49:29.119
And that's family language, as you also see in Genesis 29, 14, where uh Laban says of Jacob, are you not my bone and flesh?
01:49:29.199 --> 01:49:30.560
And that's the exact same reasoning Dr.
01:49:30.640 --> 01:49:31.600
Keener uses.
01:49:31.760 --> 01:49:39.920
So he is, he appears to agree with that, at least in theory, but he doesn't always, in my opinion, apply it consistently to his view on divorce and remarriage.
01:49:40.000 --> 01:49:44.000
If it's a family bond, it cannot be dissolved except by death.
01:49:44.079 --> 01:49:45.600
So I think it's a contradiction in Dr.
01:49:45.680 --> 01:49:46.479
Keener's view.
01:49:46.640 --> 01:49:56.079
But Kirk implies it's a covenant, and he says that the perpetrator spouse can commit conduct that ruptures the covenant.
01:49:56.319 --> 01:49:59.039
Now, I don't know what he means by rupture here.
01:49:59.199 --> 01:50:01.520
Maybe he Means just damages the relationship.
01:50:01.600 --> 01:50:02.560
Maybe that's what he means.
01:50:02.720 --> 01:50:09.119
But usually when I hear evangelicals kind of use these phrases, what they mean is something like it ends the marriage.
01:50:09.359 --> 01:50:11.920
And if that's what he means, we have a problem.
01:50:12.079 --> 01:50:19.439
So if a if a wife commits adultery on Monday and the husband doesn't know it, are they still married on Tuesday?
01:50:19.600 --> 01:50:20.399
That's my question.
01:50:20.560 --> 01:50:26.479
And now I'm sure Keener and Kirk would say, yes, they're still married on Tuesday because there's not been a civil divorce.
01:50:26.880 --> 01:50:29.520
Civil divorce would be required in their view to dissolve the marriage.
01:50:29.840 --> 01:50:33.920
So that conduct, the adultery, did not end the marriage.
01:50:34.079 --> 01:50:40.640
So I just want to mention that because what people do sometimes is they'll say, Well, my spouse cheated.
01:50:41.359 --> 01:50:43.520
That ended my marriage.
01:50:43.760 --> 01:50:48.560
And my divorce is just like updating the legal records of it.
01:50:48.640 --> 01:50:49.600
And that's just incorrect.
01:50:49.680 --> 01:50:51.840
And that's not Kirk and Keener's actual view.
01:50:52.000 --> 01:50:56.000
But sometimes when people hear, oh, it ruptured the covenant, they think, oh, the marriage is already over.
01:50:56.079 --> 01:50:59.279
I just have to go ahead and go to the courthouse and get and take care of it.
01:50:59.359 --> 01:51:00.640
But that I don't think that's their view.
01:51:00.800 --> 01:51:05.840
But sometimes it's like unintentionally kind of received that way by the audience.
01:51:07.760 --> 01:51:10.479
What's what's the controlling hermeneutic here?
01:51:11.199 --> 01:51:24.319
I think the controlling hermeneutic is you look at the exceptions that are explicit, and those exceptions are all all when the other person is breaking breaking up the marriage.
01:51:24.479 --> 01:51:26.720
So another Okay, so Dr.
01:51:26.880 --> 01:51:28.319
Keener just kind of said the same thing.
01:51:28.399 --> 01:51:32.159
He said, uh, when the other one is breaking up the marriage, but yeah, that's not true.
01:51:32.239 --> 01:51:36.720
If until the divorce happens, under Keener's view, the marriage is not is not over.
01:51:36.880 --> 01:51:44.880
He might say it's substantially contributing to the breaking up of the marriage, but to say that they're they're breaking it up or they broke it, I think is not actually what his his view is.
01:51:45.119 --> 01:51:52.479
I think what they mean is the fault for the divorce as on the uh bad actor, on the perpetrator.
01:51:52.560 --> 01:51:54.000
I think that's what they mean there.
01:51:54.079 --> 01:52:05.920
So in other words, the believers should do their best to preserve and make whole their marriage, but it doesn't take two to break up a marriage.
01:52:06.079 --> 01:52:07.439
Some people say it takes two.
01:52:07.600 --> 01:52:08.960
That's not always the case.
01:52:10.000 --> 01:52:10.159
Right.
01:52:12.960 --> 01:52:13.439
Yeah.
01:52:13.840 --> 01:52:28.960
If I can give um an example, because at a certain point I can you know, I I I do the exegesis, my job as a biblical scholar is easier than as a pastoral counselor in the sense that I can say, don't break up your marriage.
01:52:30.000 --> 01:52:36.880
But if the other person breaks it up, um and you know, I I see abuse as an analogous situation.
01:52:37.039 --> 01:52:39.039
That's the one that I've been explicit about.
01:52:40.000 --> 01:52:41.840
But how do you define abuse?
01:52:41.920 --> 01:52:45.039
That gets a little bit more tricky.
01:52:45.840 --> 01:52:56.079
But in actual pastoral situations, it can get really tricky where sometimes we don't completely know the answer.
01:52:56.159 --> 01:52:59.439
Uh we don't know who's telling the truth or whatever.
01:52:59.680 --> 01:53:10.560
And and so we have to um principle of grace, principle of keeping together marriage, put those principles together.
01:53:11.520 --> 01:53:29.920
I I came across a situation, this was actually in a different country, where uh somebody pulled me aside and said my wife um she uh she refuses to touch me, she refuses to uh uh do anything with me.
01:53:30.000 --> 01:53:32.239
Um she barely will speak to me.
01:53:33.359 --> 01:53:36.479
And I I I probed deeper.
01:53:36.640 --> 01:53:39.279
I mean, I I said, was she abused at some point?
01:53:39.439 --> 01:53:41.920
And he said, not that he knows of.
01:53:42.000 --> 01:53:49.920
I mean, he uh didn't know that enough to know like growing up if she was, but as far as as far as he knew, that wasn't the case.
01:53:51.439 --> 01:54:01.920
I knew I was only hearing one side of the story, but from the side of the story I was hearing, she was effectively abandoning him without leaving without leaving the home.
01:54:02.079 --> 01:54:06.560
And I know this can be for either gender, but in this case it was uh it was the wife.
01:54:07.520 --> 01:54:17.039
And he said she wants me to be the one to file for the divorce, so I'll be the guilty one.
01:54:18.880 --> 01:54:19.840
What should I do?
01:54:20.319 --> 01:54:21.199
Am I allowed?
01:54:21.279 --> 01:54:22.960
I can't love her anymore.
01:54:23.279 --> 01:54:26.880
And I I just prayed for God to give me wisdom.
01:54:28.640 --> 01:54:35.600
And I s what I suggested was okay, well you can't love her anymore for her sake.
01:54:35.840 --> 01:54:52.800
You say, Can you love her for Jesus' sake and try one more year of showing her love and we will pray that God will change things and that um he says, For Jesus' sake, I'll do it.
01:54:53.439 --> 01:55:16.399
Now, some people will think I was too strict and some people think I was too lenient, but yeah, when we put it into the pastoral practice, we come up with a lot of hard situations that go beyond where our exegesis takes us, and we we have to do our best to rely on principles.
01:55:17.199 --> 01:55:18.079
Okay, so Dr.
01:55:18.239 --> 01:55:26.800
Keener is honest about the immense problems with applying his view to real-world situations.
01:55:26.880 --> 01:55:29.520
I really appreciate his honesty.
01:55:29.680 --> 01:55:34.239
And you can see how he's unsure, he's pausing, he's sighing.
01:55:35.119 --> 01:55:38.880
And that's because his view is unworkable.
01:55:38.960 --> 01:55:42.560
Uh, there's this line-drawing problems all over the place.
01:55:43.039 --> 01:55:52.960
And you have not only the question of how much victimization is required to permit divorce and remarriage, you also have the question of how much information do you actually have?
01:55:53.760 --> 01:55:56.720
Will both sides even talk to you?
01:55:56.960 --> 01:55:59.840
Are both sides telling you the truth?
01:56:00.239 --> 01:56:11.199
They might even tell you what they think is actually the case because they have strong emotions and they have been persuaded that that is the case.
01:56:11.520 --> 01:56:19.760
When perhaps if they didn't have as much strong emotions, they would characterize things and give different rendition of what occurred.
01:56:20.000 --> 01:56:34.640
So it may not be that they're like lying, it could just be that they're uh persuaded and they're biased because they're in the middle of it and they're genuinely telling you what they think is the case, but it's not really an accurate representation.
01:56:34.960 --> 01:56:41.760
So, based on this unworkable system, church leaders are supposed to advise someone whether they can remarry.
01:56:41.920 --> 01:56:51.600
And if they get it wrong, which is inevitably going to happen under this system eventually, the church leaders will be condoning adultery.
01:56:51.680 --> 01:56:56.399
They'll be saying, you can remarry when they're not supposed to be able to remarry.
01:56:56.720 --> 01:56:58.159
And that's pretty bad.
01:56:58.319 --> 01:57:01.920
It's a pretty bad outcome for this system that Dr.
01:57:02.000 --> 01:57:04.000
Keener advocates for.
01:57:04.239 --> 01:57:10.720
I think the academia in evangelicalism is basically like informally over the churches.
01:57:11.119 --> 01:57:15.840
So these scholars are the ones teaching the pastors who teach the church.
01:57:16.079 --> 01:57:19.279
So the scholars don't have, you know, legal control over church property.
01:57:19.359 --> 01:57:20.880
They can't hire and fire pastors.
01:57:20.960 --> 01:57:21.920
I understand that.
01:57:22.239 --> 01:57:31.600
But if you had to draw like an informal org chart of evangelicalism and a high level, academia is basically over the churches.
01:57:31.680 --> 01:57:36.720
The professors are teaching the future pastors, the pastors are not teaching the professors.
01:57:37.039 --> 01:57:46.560
So it is essentially the responsibility of evangelical academia to give specific instructions on what to do in these individual cases.
01:57:46.720 --> 01:57:51.760
If they're going to teach, there's all these exceptions, there's these principles and all that stuff.
01:57:51.920 --> 01:57:55.199
You're going to have to give specific directions.
01:57:55.680 --> 01:58:00.319
I personally think it's irresponsible to say, here are some general principles.
01:58:00.640 --> 01:58:01.840
Good luck.
01:58:02.479 --> 01:58:09.600
Uh, that's that minimal level of guidance ensures church leaders will end up condoning adultery eventually.
01:58:09.840 --> 01:58:20.319
So, right now, these scholars are saying, here's some high-level guidance, we'll leave you church leaders to incur the guilt of inevitably making wrong decisions in complex situations.
01:58:20.880 --> 01:58:22.319
I just think that's wrong.
01:58:22.560 --> 01:58:31.279
You know, I mean, they're sending out seminary students in their 20s, you know, and sending them out and saying, all right, here's some general principles, unworkable theory.
01:58:31.439 --> 01:58:32.880
It's on you if you do it wrong.
01:58:33.039 --> 01:58:50.079
And of course, they're going to do it wrong because you have two students who come out of these seminaries and they're two different senior pastors years later, and student A and student B see the exact same situation and they they sincerely, genuinely try to apply the principles that you taught them, and they're going to come out with different conclusions.
01:58:50.159 --> 01:58:53.600
And one of them is condoning adultery and the other one is not, and we don't know which was which.
01:58:54.000 --> 01:59:02.000
So I don't think evangelical academia should be putting thousands of church leaders in impossible situations like this.
01:59:02.159 --> 01:59:05.840
If you want them to follow your system, adjudicate these scenarios.
01:59:06.000 --> 01:59:08.560
Now you can imagine a ton of these kinds of cases.
01:59:08.720 --> 01:59:11.840
You can get feedback from pastors about them, what's happened here, what's happened there.
01:59:11.920 --> 01:59:20.880
You can categorize them and you can write them in a book or put them on a website, and then a pastor or elder can follow your system to determine the precise, correct outcome in specific cases.
01:59:20.960 --> 01:59:26.239
If you're going to have this theory, you need to codify it and go through the detailed situations.
01:59:26.399 --> 01:59:31.119
Otherwise, you're teaching your students to morally fail in this area.
01:59:31.279 --> 01:59:37.199
I just think it, I just think it's victimizing the students to give them this unworkable theory and say it's difficult.
01:59:37.359 --> 01:59:43.119
We understand good luck, and then they're going to morally fall in this area when they condone adultery in the future.
01:59:43.199 --> 01:59:45.600
I just think it's not a responsible way of handling this.
01:59:46.079 --> 01:59:49.840
We we have to do our best to rely on principles.
01:59:50.079 --> 01:59:50.720
Yeah.
01:59:51.119 --> 01:59:56.000
Um, I you have mentioned the other passages and how we synthesize these.
01:59:56.159 --> 02:00:00.960
So I I ran a um smart search in the Bible.
02:00:01.039 --> 02:00:03.520
Um, what does the Bible say about divorce and remarriage?
02:00:03.600 --> 02:00:13.520
And so Logras is able to pull up the various passages um in scripture, um, Old Testament as well, but these synoptic passages.
02:00:13.680 --> 02:00:19.760
Um and so we have kind of those brought to our fingertips, help us make sure we're not missing any major ones.
02:00:19.840 --> 02:00:25.279
But yeah, how would you how would you maybe help us synthesize and think about the statements from Jesus?
02:00:25.439 --> 02:00:29.920
I think specifically the exception clause um around fornication.
02:00:30.079 --> 02:00:40.720
And yeah, you get this statement frequently um in Jesus, even when he doesn't include the exception clause about um whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.
02:00:40.960 --> 02:00:42.880
So, how should we think about that language?
02:00:42.960 --> 02:00:48.239
Uh very literally, it would seem to disallow any divorce or remarriage.
02:00:48.720 --> 02:01:00.880
Well, if we take it, if we take it very literally, this will have real implications for pastoral ministry because it means that people on their second or third marriage are actually living in adultery.
02:01:00.960 --> 02:01:03.520
It's not, it doesn't talk about the wedding, it talks about the marriage.
02:01:03.680 --> 02:01:11.359
So every time they have intercourse, in which case we should be breaking up second or third marriages.
02:01:11.680 --> 02:01:14.479
And some people actually do teach that.
02:01:14.640 --> 02:01:16.640
I've come across that before.
02:01:18.319 --> 02:01:19.600
Okay, so I appreciate Dr.
02:01:19.760 --> 02:01:28.159
Keener's agreement that if Jesus' teaching is literal, second and third marriages ought to be broken up.
02:01:28.399 --> 02:01:29.520
That's my view.
02:01:29.680 --> 02:01:33.680
Uh, when Jesus called remarriages adultery, he meant just what he said.
02:01:33.760 --> 02:01:34.239
He meant that.
02:01:34.319 --> 02:01:34.720
So Dr.
02:01:34.800 --> 02:01:44.399
Keener seems to be implying since breaking up a second and third marriages is like disruptive and it's difficult, then it's implausible that this is what Jesus meant.
02:01:44.720 --> 02:02:00.479
But actually, we should expect whatever Jesus taught here to be difficult, since the disciples even objected to it in Matthew chapter 19 by saying, if Jesus, if your teaching is true, if this is the case, it's better not to marry at all.
02:02:00.720 --> 02:02:10.239
So if an interpretation of Jesus' teaching makes a regular person say, that's extreme, that's not evidence that the interpretation is wrong.
02:02:10.479 --> 02:02:16.000
Rather, whatever Jesus taught here, it would make a regular person astonished by his teaching.
02:02:17.199 --> 02:02:21.600
But the question is, Jesus often uses hyperbole.
02:02:22.079 --> 02:02:25.840
So is this literal or is it hyperbole?
02:02:26.079 --> 02:02:56.079
In the context of Matthew 5.32, where you do have an exception clause, but even apart from the exception clause, the um the question of hyperbole, going back to verse 28, you've got six times where Jesus says, You've heard it said, but I say to you, well, in verse 28, Jesus says, Whoever looks in a woman to lust after her, um, or going back to the Septuagint, it's probably evoking the commandment about you shall not covet your neighbor's your neighbor's wife.
02:02:56.159 --> 02:03:04.720
Uh whoever looks in a woman to lust after her or to covet her sexually is uh has committed adultery in his heart.
02:03:05.600 --> 02:03:08.319
And then he gives her a response to that.
02:03:08.960 --> 02:03:19.520
He says if your eye causes you to to stumble, or tr trips you up, or your or your hand or your foot, cut him off.
02:03:21.439 --> 02:03:29.199
But most people I know they must never have lusted because they've never, I mean, they have both of their eyes.
02:03:29.359 --> 02:03:29.840
Yeah, wow.
02:03:30.319 --> 02:03:41.760
So what we most of us take that figuratively, uh, in the sense that we take it as hyperbole or rhetorical overstatement, graphic way of driving home the point.
02:03:42.000 --> 02:03:49.199
It's true, but it's true keeping in mind the figure of speech.
02:03:49.279 --> 02:04:02.560
It's like getting a camel through the eye of a needle, or uh uh gulping down the camel hole, or um moving mountains, or a number of other uh rhetorical overstatements.
02:04:02.720 --> 02:04:10.720
When we come to the very next paragraph, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.
02:04:11.520 --> 02:04:18.560
So is that literal or is it like what he just said in the in the preceding paragraph?
02:04:19.359 --> 02:04:26.399
If it's if it's literal, then we would need to break up second and third marriages, considering them all illegitimate.
02:04:26.560 --> 02:04:35.760
If it's hyperbole, it's a graphic way of saying don't divorce, because the validity of a remarriage depends on whether the divorce was valid.
02:04:35.840 --> 02:04:45.600
I mean, if you if you remarry but you're still married to the original person, and monogamy is the rule, then you know, then it is adultery.
02:04:45.680 --> 02:04:46.960
It's literal adultery.
02:04:47.760 --> 02:05:00.800
Um so uh the the the exception clause that Jesus gives, I think, also qualifies things further because uh this is in Matthew 5, 32 and 19.
02:05:01.920 --> 02:05:09.840
Some would argue that the exception clause uh Jesus didn't have to state it because it's already implicit, everybody understood.
02:05:10.079 --> 02:05:19.039
If the marriage is already broken up, if you have a valid divorce, then uh you know it wouldn't be it wouldn't be adultery if you're married.
02:05:19.279 --> 02:05:37.520
But in any case, whether this is Matthew's correct interpretation or explication of Jesus' meaning, or whether Jesus explicitly said it, either way, the point seems to be that I think what Dr.
02:05:37.760 --> 02:05:44.399
Keener is trying to say is whether Matthew is directly quoting Jesus or whether he is properly paraphrasing Jesus.
02:05:44.479 --> 02:05:45.039
I think that's what Dr.
02:05:45.119 --> 02:05:51.039
Keener is saying that he he's not opening up the possibility that Matthew incorrectly wrote down what Jesus said.
02:05:51.119 --> 02:05:52.159
That's not that's not what he's saying.
02:05:52.560 --> 02:05:56.800
That um infidelity would be grounds for a valid divorce.
02:05:57.039 --> 02:06:00.399
Now, people don't all take pornea the same way here.
02:06:00.720 --> 02:06:24.560
Jesus doesn't use the word moi, which is the common word for adultery, he uses pornea, and so some people have said, well, this pornea could be incest, like it is in 1 Corinthians 5, or an incestuous marriage, like Greeks said Egyptians would marry their sisters, or so on, and Greeks could marry their half-sisters.
02:06:25.199 --> 02:06:27.119
Greeks said Persians married their mothers.
02:06:27.199 --> 02:06:31.119
I don't know if that's really true, but um, that's what Greeks thought.
02:06:31.279 --> 02:06:42.720
Um, so the problem with making it a narrower, or some people say, well, it's it's just during the betrothal period rather than the actual marriage.
02:06:42.800 --> 02:06:45.680
So, like what Joseph did with with Mary.
02:06:45.920 --> 02:06:54.399
The the problem is the pornea doesn't have a narrower meaning than moiia, it has a broader meaning than moiia.
02:06:54.479 --> 02:06:56.399
It's any kind of sexual immorality.
02:06:56.640 --> 02:07:00.800
So if anything, it would be broader than adultery.
02:07:00.880 --> 02:07:06.640
I don't know if you're married how uh how sexual immorality would be broader.
02:07:06.960 --> 02:07:15.680
It seems to me it would be the same thing, but um yeah, for that would be uh unfaithfulness to the covenant.
02:07:15.840 --> 02:07:21.520
If there's no specification in the context that narrows it down, then in 532 and 199.
02:07:22.159 --> 02:07:37.520
Uh and again, adultery was grounds for divorce pretty much everywhere in the ancient world, even the school of Shemai accepted it, and it was it was not just accepted, it was mandatory.
02:07:38.000 --> 02:07:53.520
Under Roman law, a husband who knew that his wife was being unfaithful and refused to divorce her could himself be prosecuted on the charge of linokinium, that is, being her pimp, because that was considered like prostitution under under Roman law.
02:07:54.079 --> 02:07:59.760
So just to say generally, it it means sexual immorality.
02:07:59.840 --> 02:08:06.960
It was a standard charge in antiquity with the understanding that the other person is breaking up the marriage.
02:08:07.600 --> 02:08:08.560
Okay, so Dr.
02:08:08.720 --> 02:08:16.399
Keener didn't raise my view of the exception clause, but I think Jesus explains the exception clause in the second half of Matthew 5.32.
02:08:16.800 --> 02:08:22.079
Uh the idea is that if a man married a divorced woman, uh his marriage would be invalid.
02:08:22.159 --> 02:08:27.359
So the sex the man has with the divorced woman is fornication because uh they're not actually married.
02:08:27.439 --> 02:08:33.119
So that was the meaning of the word pornea or fornication there in the exception clause in Matthew 5.32 and Matthew 99.
02:08:33.359 --> 02:08:41.119
So if the marriage is invalid because it's an adulterous remarriage, the man can remarry after divorcing that invalid marriage.
02:08:41.279 --> 02:08:41.680
So Dr.
02:08:41.760 --> 02:08:50.479
Keener said there's nothing in the context to narrow the meaning pornea to something more specific than all sexual immorality.
02:08:50.560 --> 02:08:51.359
But I disagree.
02:08:51.520 --> 02:09:01.520
I think Matthew 532b is there to give a more narrow, specific meaning to pornea, and that is an invalid, adulterous remarriage.
02:09:01.680 --> 02:09:02.000
Dr.
02:09:02.079 --> 02:09:06.880
Keener uh also said that everybody knew adultery allows for divorce.
02:09:07.199 --> 02:09:08.800
That is not true.
02:09:09.039 --> 02:09:10.079
That is not true.
02:09:10.239 --> 02:09:15.840
The Damascus document does not allow somebody to remarry because their spouse cheated on them.
02:09:16.000 --> 02:09:21.520
Jesus' divorce and remarriage argument mirrors the Damascus document's statement.
02:09:21.600 --> 02:09:27.359
So the Pharisees specifically ask Jesus about divorcing for adultery in Matthew 19, 7.
02:09:27.439 --> 02:09:30.159
And in the next verse, Jesus says, No.
02:09:30.720 --> 02:09:39.840
To see that, you you'd have to compare Matthew 19, 7 and 8, and Deuteronomy chapter 24, 1, and Jeremiah 3, verses 1 through 8.
02:09:39.920 --> 02:09:44.560
So there's just no way Jesus is permitting divorce for infidelity.
02:09:45.680 --> 02:09:50.399
Now, Matthew only speaks of it with regard to the the wife's unfaithfulness.
02:09:50.880 --> 02:10:01.760
And in the saying that we have in Luke, it also uh seems to work out that way that the um the husband is the one with the right to to remarry.
02:10:02.560 --> 02:10:07.359
Uh and the husband is the one with the authority to divorce.
02:10:07.600 --> 02:10:11.840
That fits Jesus' context in in Judea and Galilee.
02:10:11.920 --> 02:10:16.479
And so that's what Matthew naturally would have been addressing.
02:10:16.800 --> 02:10:36.079
But Mark has the saying uh in both directions, and that makes sense because when they're asking about um when the Pharisees ask Jesus in Mark chapter 10 about divorce, the context of it goes beyond the context in Matthew.
02:10:36.239 --> 02:10:46.159
The context in Matthew, Matthew's addressing a situation, this was a live debate among the schools of the Pharisees, precisely in Jesus' day.
02:10:46.399 --> 02:10:48.319
What are the proper grounds for divorce?
02:10:48.479 --> 02:10:50.640
Any cause with the Hillelites?
02:10:51.119 --> 02:10:55.359
Or is it specifically marital infidelity?
02:10:55.520 --> 02:11:05.439
Although the Shemites included in that, like going out in public with nude hair, if a woman wasn't wearing her head covering, she was trying to commit adultery, whether she succeeded or not.
02:11:05.680 --> 02:11:09.359
So, you know, there's a cultural context to that as well.
02:11:09.840 --> 02:11:15.520
But in in Mark, Mark isn't so interested in the Pharisaic debate.
02:11:15.680 --> 02:11:21.039
He's more interested, he introduces it by talking about they were testing Jesus.
02:11:21.199 --> 02:11:30.239
And that word testing appears elsewhere in Mark in like Satan testing Jesus, but also the Pharisees test Jesus in chapter 12.
02:11:30.399 --> 02:11:59.600
When they're trying to get him in trouble uh with the government, well, here I think they're trying to get him in trouble also, because earlier in Matthew, sorry, earlier in Mark, there's only one case of uh uh a situation with a marriage breakup, and that's when Herod Antipas, this is chapter six, Herod Antipas and his his wife Herodias, they get married.
02:12:00.399 --> 02:12:02.399
But they've both been married to somebody before.
02:12:03.279 --> 02:12:07.600
And uh Herodias divorces her husband to marry Herod.
02:12:07.680 --> 02:12:08.720
It was a big scandal.
02:12:08.800 --> 02:12:11.920
Josephus talks about the scandal as well.
02:12:12.800 --> 02:12:15.279
Josephus being a first century Jewish historian.
02:12:15.920 --> 02:12:20.479
So when you come to chapter 10, um, they're testing Jesus.
02:12:20.880 --> 02:12:27.119
John the Baptist got executed for criticizing Herod and Herodias's marriage.
02:12:27.680 --> 02:12:28.800
All right, let me just pause right here.
02:12:28.880 --> 02:12:29.039
Dr.
02:12:29.119 --> 02:12:46.800
Kinger doesn't mention this, but uh it appears that John the Baptist's objection to Herod and Herodias's marriage was because it violated the Leviticus 18 laws on uh prohibiting incest because he was marrying his brother's uh wife, not because it was a divorce and a remarriage.
02:12:46.960 --> 02:12:49.840
I'm not saying that John the Baptist had a different view than Jesus on divorce remarriage.
02:12:50.079 --> 02:12:51.199
I don't think that's the case.
02:12:51.439 --> 02:12:54.079
I'm just saying that wasn't his specific objection there.
02:12:54.239 --> 02:12:54.560
And Dr.
02:12:54.640 --> 02:12:56.079
Keener doesn't raise that here.
02:12:56.159 --> 02:13:05.520
It's not really relevant for the point he's making, but I just wanted to highlight that that little uh fact there that John the Baptist was objecting because it was incestuous.
02:13:06.079 --> 02:13:13.199
Jesus in Mark chapter 10 states a principle that would mean it's adulter, that that was an adulterous remarriage.
02:13:15.039 --> 02:13:24.560
Well, in in chapter in chapter 10 of Mark they're asking Jesus about, you know, is it lawful to divorce?
02:13:24.720 --> 02:13:30.800
They've probably heard his his teaching before that he's against he's against breaking up your marriage.
02:13:30.960 --> 02:13:37.520
And so uh if he says certain things publicly, it can get him uh in hot water.
02:13:37.680 --> 02:13:40.880
That's how they got that's how John the Baptist got in hot water.
02:13:41.039 --> 02:13:48.399
So um anyway, uh let me let me get back to the uh the heart of the discussion here.
02:13:48.479 --> 02:13:55.840
Uh Jesus appeals to creation, so they're they're appealing to the law of Moses, making uh divorce allowable.
02:13:56.880 --> 02:14:05.840
Jesus says, uh, well, it was only because of the hardness of your heart that that uh that God allowed that, that Moses allowed that for you.
02:14:06.239 --> 02:14:07.760
Uh that was a concession.
02:14:07.920 --> 02:14:13.600
And even Pharisees admitted that some things in the law were concessions, that God's ideal standard was higher.
02:14:13.840 --> 02:14:22.000
Jesus appeals to an earlier passage in the law that would be more controlling passage for God's ideal, the way God created us.
02:14:22.159 --> 02:14:26.239
And of course, the kingdom is restoring that creation ideal.
02:14:26.399 --> 02:14:31.279
Uh God didn't make our hearts to be broken, to have to deal with betrayal.
02:14:31.439 --> 02:14:37.520
God didn't want us to go into marriages thinking, okay, well, maybe it's going to break up.
02:14:37.760 --> 02:14:40.159
He wanted us to be faithful to our marriages.
02:14:40.319 --> 02:14:42.960
That was the uh plan from the beginning.
02:14:43.199 --> 02:14:51.359
He weaves together two texts from Genesis, uh, where God made them one, uh, Genesis 1, 26 and 27.
02:14:52.239 --> 02:14:58.079
Um, well, then we know that the woman is taken from the man, but they become one flesh again.
02:14:58.479 --> 02:15:04.000
Uh there's a restoration, a bringing together male and female in marriage in in chapter two.
02:15:04.560 --> 02:15:08.640
Um and uh they're no longer two but one flesh.
02:15:08.720 --> 02:15:10.960
Uh, the end of the end of verse eight there.
02:15:11.359 --> 02:15:16.880
And since it's clear that God joined them together as one flesh, let no one separate them.
02:15:17.279 --> 02:15:30.159
And so the disciples ask him uh privately about what's going on, and uh that's where Jesus talks about whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.
02:15:30.720 --> 02:15:45.119
Now, if this is literal, uh obviously again breaking up uh second and third marriages, and he and he puts it both directions, which uh would fit the situation of Herod and Herodias.
02:15:45.840 --> 02:16:00.159
Um Pharisees were against uh against that kind of behavior, big outcry in Judea against it, but Herod and Herodias feel free to follow Greek practice where either party uh can divorce the other.
02:16:00.319 --> 02:16:01.680
And so it fits that.
02:16:02.000 --> 02:16:14.239
It'll also be relevant to Mark's audience because Mark's audience in the diaspora, uh even Jewish people often follow the the Greek practice in the Greek and Roman practice in the diaspora.
02:16:15.279 --> 02:16:19.039
But here's the here's the thing as to whether it's meant literally or not.
02:16:20.079 --> 02:16:25.520
In in verse 11, he talks about it being adultery if you were married.
02:16:25.840 --> 02:16:30.239
So in other words, what that means is you're still married to the original spouse.
02:16:30.720 --> 02:16:32.159
That's why it's adultery.
02:16:32.479 --> 02:16:34.479
That's uh part of the image.
02:16:35.040 --> 02:16:42.639
But in verse uh uh nine, he says, what God has joined together, let no one separate.
02:16:43.840 --> 02:16:47.840
He doesn't say you can try, but you're still going to be married to each other.
02:16:48.719 --> 02:16:55.200
I appreciate that he says he says if Jesus meant adultery literally, you would have to break up second and third marriages.
02:16:55.440 --> 02:16:56.079
Totally agree with that.
02:16:56.159 --> 02:17:04.399
So, but what he's saying here is that there are two texts in Matthew and Mark 10 that point in different directions.
02:17:04.719 --> 02:17:09.440
Mark 10, 9 implies man can dissolve a marriage.
02:17:09.680 --> 02:17:15.120
Mark 10, 11 through 12 implies man cannot dissolve a marriage.
02:17:15.440 --> 02:17:16.479
So, which is it?
02:17:16.639 --> 02:17:23.840
Either man separates doesn't mean separate, or it must mean that adultery doesn't mean adultery.
02:17:24.079 --> 02:17:24.319
Dr.
02:17:24.479 --> 02:17:29.840
Keener will say adultery doesn't mean adultery, so man can dissolve a marriage, but he shouldn't.
02:17:30.079 --> 02:17:32.000
That's how he reconciles that.
02:17:32.159 --> 02:17:32.719
Here's the problem.
02:17:32.799 --> 02:17:37.040
Uh Mark chapter 10, verse 9 is part of an argument Jesus is making.
02:17:37.120 --> 02:17:44.559
So the argument goes like this Genesis tells us that man and woman are made separate from each other, Genesis 127.
02:17:44.719 --> 02:17:52.399
And when they marry, their sex is called one flesh, indicating the human experience of marriage is an experience of unity.
02:17:52.639 --> 02:17:58.559
Therefore, Jesus infers that when they were married, God must have joined the husband and wife together.
02:17:58.719 --> 02:18:04.719
What therefore, what therefore, see the word therefore in the text of Mark 10, what therefore God has joined together.
02:18:04.879 --> 02:18:06.479
Let not man separate.
02:18:06.559 --> 02:18:09.600
So God must have joined the husband and wife together kind of supernaturally.
02:18:09.680 --> 02:18:23.440
So the idea is that the human experience of marriage is designed from, it's patterned after, it's symbolic of, it's a it's a picture of the spiritual reality of what occurs when people are actually married.
02:18:23.760 --> 02:18:28.079
So the idea is what spiritually happens when people are married is God makes them family.
02:18:28.239 --> 02:18:31.760
So you can't just make a person your family that God makes them family.
02:18:31.840 --> 02:18:33.520
That's what happens when people are married.
02:18:33.840 --> 02:18:38.719
The nature of marriage, the way it's designed, how it's going to work is it's going to show forth that same unity.
02:18:39.120 --> 02:18:42.239
That's what Jesus is inferring there in Mark chapter 10.
02:18:42.319 --> 02:18:48.719
So if you look at Matthew chapter 1, 18 through 24, you see Joseph is betrothed to Mary.
02:18:49.120 --> 02:18:52.239
The angel tells Joseph to take Mary as his wife.
02:18:52.479 --> 02:18:58.000
Joseph takes her as the wife, but they don't have sex until sometime after Jesus was born.
02:18:58.159 --> 02:19:03.600
They were married when Joseph took her as his wife, and they were one flesh later.
02:19:03.840 --> 02:19:08.479
The point is that when a man and woman are married, God joins them before they have sex.
02:19:08.719 --> 02:19:14.479
So Jesus is saying the reason we know God joins them is the nature of marriage is designed to be unity.
02:19:14.639 --> 02:19:18.000
So, and we see the same thing with like uh the way communion is designed, right?
02:19:18.079 --> 02:19:19.440
Where you have bread and wine.
02:19:19.600 --> 02:19:21.040
And why is it bread and wine?
02:19:21.120 --> 02:19:22.879
Because that's symbolic of body and blood.
02:19:23.040 --> 02:19:25.440
It wouldn't make sense to eat, I don't know, grass clippings.
02:19:25.600 --> 02:19:28.319
It has nothing to do with, it's not symbolic, it doesn't picture it at all.
02:19:28.479 --> 02:19:32.959
And so with marriage, oh, the actual conduct with husbands and wives is unifying.
02:19:33.040 --> 02:19:36.479
They leave father and mother and they have a child together, child looks like them.
02:19:36.559 --> 02:19:40.079
So it has that unity there, and they have one flesh is another form of unity.
02:19:40.159 --> 02:19:42.319
So Jesus is talking about look at all this unity stuff.
02:19:42.479 --> 02:19:45.360
He's focusing on one flesh because the word one there is doing a lot of work.
02:19:45.520 --> 02:19:46.719
There are two, now they're one.
02:19:46.799 --> 02:19:54.719
So he's talking about the unity there, and the unity uh there in the human experience shows that the nature of marriage is God joined them together.
02:19:54.959 --> 02:20:01.600
So to understand this, you have to kind of take a step back and understand that marriage has like three steps uh back in the time of Jesus.
02:20:01.680 --> 02:20:06.399
There was betrothal, then there was marriage, and then there was intimacy that came after the marriage.
02:20:06.559 --> 02:20:12.000
So when Jesus says the therefore God has joined them uh together, he was drawing a conclusion.
02:20:12.399 --> 02:20:14.959
He was inferring that joining is the actual marriage.
02:20:15.040 --> 02:20:23.920
And it's and so when he says, let not man separate, Jesus is referring to living together, being married together, being experientially in your daily life unified.
02:20:24.079 --> 02:20:30.079
Uh Jesus does not mean you can unjoin what God has supernaturally joined together.
02:20:30.159 --> 02:20:37.680
So similarly, if churches, for example, stopped taking communion, that doesn't undo the supernatural reality that communion was designed from.
02:20:37.840 --> 02:20:44.799
For example, Jesus says in Mark chapter 7 that by their traditions, the religious leaders were making void the word of God.
02:20:44.959 --> 02:20:52.559
Obviously, Jesus didn't mean the word of God was actually being made void, just that it was being taught and applied uh in an improper way.
02:20:52.879 --> 02:20:58.000
So there's what there's what God does and how humans are to respond in harmony.
02:20:58.079 --> 02:21:01.600
And that's what Jesus was referring to here in Mark chapter 10 and verse 9.
02:21:01.840 --> 02:21:08.319
God joined, so you guys should act in harmony, don't act in disharmony, just like they when they were making the word of God void.
02:21:08.479 --> 02:21:10.799
We're supposed to receive God's word, we're supposed to follow it.
02:21:10.879 --> 02:21:12.399
We're not supposed to misapply it.
02:21:12.479 --> 02:21:17.040
Uh, if you misapply it and override it by traditions, Jesus would call that making the word of God void.
02:21:17.120 --> 02:21:20.000
It's not actually void, it's just not being applied correctly.
02:21:20.159 --> 02:21:21.600
So it's the same kind of concept here.
02:21:21.760 --> 02:21:22.559
So that means Dr.
02:21:22.719 --> 02:21:35.280
Keener's attempt to make the word adultery to not be adultery here, uh, just uh by applying, you know, Mark chapter 10 and verse 9 and trying to use Mark 10, 9 to kind of supersede the word adultery here doesn't work.
02:21:35.760 --> 02:21:40.639
He doesn't he doesn't take it literally like you're still married.
02:21:40.879 --> 02:21:45.040
And so the question is these are two kinds of sayings.
02:21:45.520 --> 02:21:56.079
One is giving the the moral imperative don't break up your marriage, and the other uh is using the image of hyperbole to graphically reinforce it.
02:21:56.399 --> 02:22:02.399
That's why you can have an exception, like the exception for infidelity in Matthew.
02:22:02.719 --> 02:22:09.680
But if uh Joe isn't married to Teresa anymore, how can Teresa still be married to Joe?
02:22:10.719 --> 02:22:15.600
So once you've got an exception, it it looks at this like hyperbole.
02:22:15.680 --> 02:22:21.280
Same same with the exception in First Corinthians uh exceptions, maybe in 1 Corinthians 7.
02:22:21.920 --> 02:22:32.719
And also when Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well, right, uh, he doesn't say you you were married once and you've lived with five guys since then.
02:22:33.040 --> 02:22:39.360
He says you were married five times and you're not married to the guy you're living with now.
02:22:40.319 --> 02:22:48.959
So the mistake that he makes here with the Samaritan woman is that the words husband, wife, married, divorce do not convey validity.
02:22:49.120 --> 02:22:53.520
So it is true that Jesus said you've had five husbands, the man you're with now is not your husband.
02:22:53.680 --> 02:22:56.959
And so if the word husband conveyed validity, then Dr.
02:22:57.120 --> 02:23:01.200
Keener's point uh has uh some value to it here.
02:23:01.360 --> 02:23:03.520
But the words don't convey validity.
02:23:03.680 --> 02:23:07.360
The Greek words do not mean the marriage is valid or invalid.
02:23:07.520 --> 02:23:17.680
You have to derive whether or not the writer or the speaker means, believes those marriages were valid or invalid by the context, not the Greek word.
02:23:17.840 --> 02:23:24.319
So Jesus calls these guys husbands, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't tell us whether Jesus viewed them as valid marriages or not.
02:23:24.479 --> 02:23:30.479
So they were husbands legally, so that's a different question from whether or not God views those as valid marriages.
02:23:30.639 --> 02:23:36.000
So for example, in Romans chapter seven, the woman's second husband there, that's not a valid marriage.
02:23:36.239 --> 02:23:45.920
In Mark chapter seven, Mark says Herod married Herodias, but that was an incestuous marriage, and Mark did not believe that was a valid marriage.
02:23:46.079 --> 02:23:53.680
First Corinthians chapter seven, verses 10 and 11 says the woman is divorced from her husband, but still calls the man her husband.
02:23:53.920 --> 02:23:55.760
So, and also says that she is unmarried.
02:23:55.840 --> 02:24:02.959
So that tells us the Greek words here do not convey validity because there's no way to make sense of 1 Corinthians 7, 10 and 11, if all those words are literal.
02:24:03.200 --> 02:24:07.920
To know whether or not they thought that marriage was valid or not, you have to understand the context of it.
02:24:08.159 --> 02:24:17.040
If what we had from Jesus' teaching was just a Samaritan woman, we would not really know for sure whether or not Jesus was saying those were valid marriages or not.
02:24:17.200 --> 02:24:20.319
He is throwing shade at her, you know, multiple marriages.
02:24:20.399 --> 02:24:25.440
So you might think he thinks those are not valid, but you wouldn't know for for certain from that passage.
02:24:25.520 --> 02:24:33.600
So that would be an unclear passage to be able to use to try to derive Jesus' whole theory and viewpoint and his teaching on divorce and remarriage.
02:24:36.239 --> 02:24:44.639
So you can't take all the sayings literally, and the majority of the sayings it looks like okay.
02:24:45.600 --> 02:24:51.760
Um all of them except the you know, you're you're still married, it's adultery.
02:24:52.559 --> 02:24:57.200
All of the others qualify that and show us that Jesus is using hyperbole.
02:24:58.239 --> 02:25:02.639
Well, except Paul also says a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
02:25:02.799 --> 02:25:06.159
So you'd have to add in Romans 7 and 1 Corinthians 7 as well.
02:25:06.319 --> 02:25:13.840
And then Paul uh in 1 Corinthians 7, 10 and 11, when he paraphrases Jesus' teaching, doesn't never doesn't allow for any remarriage there.
02:25:14.399 --> 02:25:17.360
In that case, which again he often often does.
02:25:17.840 --> 02:25:40.879
And the hyperbole would be functioning, presumably in this way where adultery adultery is such a um uh rupture-causing act, um that to comparably to illegitimately leave your spouse and remarry is likewise such a rupturing act to what ought to have been the permanency of your marriage.
02:25:41.040 --> 02:25:50.319
So, under this interpretation, Jesus wouldn't be saying, in the eyes of God, you are literally still married, despite legally remarrying and divorcing and all that.
02:25:50.559 --> 02:26:00.639
This so here's another weird problem with this view is if you look at Matthew chapter 19, verses three through six, Jesus is making an argument.
02:26:00.799 --> 02:26:01.520
He's building an argument.
02:26:01.600 --> 02:26:02.799
He was asked, Can you divorce?
02:26:02.959 --> 02:26:04.639
And he says, No, and he's building an argument.
02:26:04.719 --> 02:26:08.559
If you look at his argument, it's a no exception kind of argument.
02:26:08.719 --> 02:26:12.879
God joined them in the Garden of Eden, don't divorce, that's it, right?
02:26:13.040 --> 02:26:17.040
And that's why the Pharisees then ask him in verse seven, well, what about divorcing for adultery?
02:26:17.120 --> 02:26:19.680
They ask him again, you know, what about this Mosaic thing?
02:26:19.760 --> 02:26:22.399
You know, and then Jesus says, No, that's not good enough in verse eight.
02:26:22.559 --> 02:26:28.079
So, so there's actually a lot of text that gives you the idea that marriage is permanent.
02:26:28.159 --> 02:26:42.079
And so it's it's just very strange to read all of that and then come to the conclusion that, oh, it's all hyperbole and you know, Jesus didn't really mean what it otherwise sounded like and what all, you know, basically the entire early church thought he meant, which is that, which is that marriage is permanent.
02:26:42.159 --> 02:26:44.239
I mean, they would excommunicate you for life.
02:26:44.399 --> 02:26:50.559
I mean, this is not just a few people in the early church, this is like everybody, basically, in the early church said would excommunicate you for life.
02:26:50.719 --> 02:26:55.440
We have council after council with canon after canon saying that they would deny you communion for life.
02:26:55.600 --> 02:27:00.799
This was like everybody understood that that was uh what Jesus meant there.
02:27:00.959 --> 02:27:05.680
So it's just kind of odd to be like, oh, it was clearly hyperbole, everybody would have known it at the time.
02:27:05.760 --> 02:27:09.760
When people at the time did not know that in the early church, they did not think that's what he meant.
02:27:10.559 --> 02:27:24.639
This hyperbolic interpretation would see adultery as a stand-in for as hyperbolic language for just how devastating um the act of divorce and remarriage would be to what the the original marriage ought to have been.
02:27:25.040 --> 02:27:25.360
Yeah.
02:27:25.520 --> 02:27:31.120
And in the same way, whoever looks in a woman to lust after has committed adultery in his heart.
02:27:31.520 --> 02:27:33.680
Um, that there's an element of hyperbole there.
02:27:33.760 --> 02:27:38.559
Now, the all right, so let's address this hyperbole question, the hyperbole argument.
02:27:38.799 --> 02:27:41.680
Adultery in the heart is is not hyperbole.
02:27:41.760 --> 02:27:44.639
You know, sin starts on the inside and then it comes out.
02:27:44.799 --> 02:27:48.479
And first, it usually first comes out in words and then it comes out in deeds.
02:27:48.639 --> 02:27:52.079
So adultery in the heart is pretty precise language, actually.
02:27:52.319 --> 02:27:53.040
Let me address Dr.
02:27:53.120 --> 02:27:54.719
Keener's like larger point here.
02:27:54.879 --> 02:27:57.200
Yes, Jesus does use hyperbole.
02:27:57.280 --> 02:28:03.840
Uh, faith to move mountains and camel through the eye of a needle and swallowing, swallowing a camel are are examples of hyperbole.
02:28:03.920 --> 02:28:13.120
But you know, the passage where Jesus says, if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, because it's better to go to heaven with one eye than to hell with two eyes.
02:28:13.280 --> 02:28:16.319
That's technically, I don't think, actually, hyperbole.
02:28:16.399 --> 02:28:19.760
Not that Jesus is telling trying to tell people to maim themselves.
02:28:19.920 --> 02:28:20.479
He's not.
02:28:20.639 --> 02:28:30.239
But the the fact is, if an eye was causing you to sin, it would be better to go to heaven with one eye than to hell with two eyes.
02:28:30.399 --> 02:28:31.520
I mean, that that's a true statement.
02:28:31.600 --> 02:28:33.760
That's not hyperbole, it's literally true.
02:28:33.840 --> 02:28:39.040
Actually, the power of that statement is how extreme it is and how undeniably true it also is.
02:28:39.200 --> 02:28:40.319
That's why it's a powerful statement.
02:28:40.399 --> 02:28:45.600
So it's not actually hyperbole, it's just the fact that your eye isn't what causes you to sin, it's your sinful nature.
02:28:45.760 --> 02:28:47.760
And so it's your sinful nature that you should cut off.
02:28:47.840 --> 02:28:51.280
And that's what Jesus' whole point there is, and it can be hard to do.
02:28:51.520 --> 02:28:58.799
When Jesus calls remarriage adultery seven times, did he mean, did he mean it was adultery, or did he mean it was something else?
02:28:59.040 --> 02:29:07.520
The first reason why Jesus meant adultery when he called remarriages adultery, if Jesus meant something other than adultery, he would need something in the context to tell us that.
02:29:07.680 --> 02:29:10.239
Now, consider the exception clause.
02:29:10.399 --> 02:29:10.719
Dr.
02:29:10.879 --> 02:29:20.239
Keener and other evangelicals rightly say if pornea in the exception clause is not infidelity, you need something in the context to tell you that.
02:29:20.399 --> 02:29:25.120
Now, I think we have something in the context of Matthew 5.32b, but here's my point.
02:29:25.280 --> 02:29:37.200
They stress you have to have something in the context to make pornea mean something other than all kinds of sexual sin, but they don't need something in the context to make the word adultery to not have its ordinary meaning.
02:29:37.360 --> 02:29:40.639
How could Jesus' audience know he meant it hyperbolically?
02:29:40.799 --> 02:29:49.440
At the time of Jesus, if a woman was invalidly divorced and she remarried, the remarriage was called adultery literally.
02:29:50.000 --> 02:29:58.639
How is Jesus' audience supposed to know he didn't mean adultery the way that term was ordinarily used in the divorce from remarriage context of the Jewish people?
02:29:58.879 --> 02:30:10.399
For example, if you read Romans chapter 7, included in the meaning of that text is that if a woman was married to two men at the same time, she was an actual adulteress.
02:30:10.559 --> 02:30:13.600
Not hyperbole, actual adulteress.
02:30:13.920 --> 02:30:17.520
Paul was not being hyperbolic, he was being precise.
02:30:17.680 --> 02:30:18.719
And so is Jesus.
02:30:18.879 --> 02:30:23.040
The second reason why Jesus meant adultery when he called remarriages adultery, Dr.
02:30:23.200 --> 02:30:26.319
Keener thinks Jesus meant adultery hyperbolically.
02:30:26.559 --> 02:30:30.799
That means remarriage isn't adultery, it's adultery light.
02:30:31.200 --> 02:30:35.680
So Mark 10 tells us the adultery is against her, that is, it's against the first spouse.
02:30:35.760 --> 02:30:36.399
So here's why Dr.
02:30:36.479 --> 02:30:37.760
Keener's view doesn't work.
02:30:38.239 --> 02:30:41.280
He has a substantial internal contradiction.
02:30:41.440 --> 02:30:41.760
Dr.
02:30:41.920 --> 02:30:48.399
Keener says if a spouse commits infidelity, the other spouse, the innocent spouse, can remarry.
02:30:48.559 --> 02:30:56.559
He says if the remarriage of the guilty spouse is literally adultery, then uh the innocent spouse couldn't remarry.
02:30:56.639 --> 02:30:57.360
And here's why.
02:30:57.840 --> 02:30:59.360
Walk through the logic here.
02:31:00.000 --> 02:31:03.920
One, the guilty spouse remarried, it would be adultery.
02:31:04.159 --> 02:31:13.920
Two, therefore, the guilty spouse is still married to the innocent spouse, therefore the innocent spouse would still be married to the guilty spouse, and therefore the innocent spouse's remarriage would be adultery.
02:31:14.159 --> 02:31:14.479
Right?
02:31:14.639 --> 02:31:23.360
So the whole point is if the guilty spouse's remarriage is adultery, that's because they're still married to the innocent spouse, which means the innocent spouse's remarriage would also have to be adultery.
02:31:23.680 --> 02:31:28.159
So uh, since the innocent spouse's remarriage isn't adultery, in Dr.
02:31:28.239 --> 02:31:31.920
Keener's view, the first marriage must actually be over.
02:31:32.159 --> 02:31:33.920
This marriage must actually be over.
02:31:34.159 --> 02:31:37.360
So Jesus says adultery, but he doesn't mean adultery.
02:31:37.520 --> 02:31:39.040
He means it hyperbolically.
02:31:39.200 --> 02:31:41.680
He's not saying you're violating your marriage.
02:31:41.840 --> 02:31:44.559
He's saying hyperbolically it's adultery.
02:31:44.719 --> 02:31:45.680
So so Dr.
02:31:45.840 --> 02:31:50.399
Keener says Jesus is saying uh remarriage is adultery light.
02:31:50.559 --> 02:31:53.520
Uh so okay, but here's why that doesn't resolve Dr.
02:31:53.680 --> 02:31:55.040
Keener's problem.
02:31:55.440 --> 02:31:58.719
Adultery light leaves him with really the same issue.
02:31:58.959 --> 02:32:03.600
Um, it's just that, it's just that now he's just redefined the marriage to be marriage light.
02:32:03.680 --> 02:32:04.879
So let's go through the steps.
02:32:05.120 --> 02:32:10.479
If the guilty party, uh guilty spouse remarries, it would be adultery light under this view, right?
02:32:10.639 --> 02:32:15.520
Therefore, the guilty spouse is still attached in a marriage light way to the innocent spouse, right?
02:32:15.600 --> 02:32:17.360
This has to be something that they're violating.
02:32:17.440 --> 02:32:18.719
It's adultery against her.
02:32:18.879 --> 02:32:22.479
So if it's adultery light against her, there's still some kind of obligation there.
02:32:22.639 --> 02:32:26.239
So therefore, the guilty spouse is still attached in a marriage lightweight to the innocent spouse.
02:32:26.399 --> 02:32:34.399
Therefore, the innocent spouse would still be attached in a marriage lightweight to the guilty spouse, and therefore the innocent spouse's remarriage would also be adultery light, but that's not what Dr.
02:32:34.479 --> 02:32:35.120
Keener thinks.
02:32:35.200 --> 02:32:35.360
Dr.
02:32:35.440 --> 02:32:40.239
Keener thinks the innocent spouse can remarry, and it's not adultery in any sense.
02:32:40.479 --> 02:32:42.399
So therefore, it's not enough for Dr.
02:32:42.479 --> 02:32:45.280
Keener to say Jesus meant adultery hyperbolically.
02:32:45.440 --> 02:32:50.719
He would have to say Jesus said adultery against her, but he meant something other than adultery against her.
02:32:50.879 --> 02:32:54.799
So it's not just a matter of degrees, adultery versus you know, lesser adultery.
02:32:54.959 --> 02:32:55.120
Dr.
02:32:55.200 --> 02:32:59.680
Keener would have to say that Jesus used the word adultery but didn't mean adultery, meant something totally different.
02:32:59.920 --> 02:33:02.159
So imagine a man enters his first marriage.
02:33:02.239 --> 02:33:07.680
He marries a woman who's divorced her one and only prior husband, and she divorced him for infidelity.
02:33:07.920 --> 02:33:11.600
So that's the innocent party to adultery, remarries, right?
02:33:12.000 --> 02:33:15.120
The man is married to the divorced woman for 20 years.
02:33:15.440 --> 02:33:15.760
Dr.
02:33:15.920 --> 02:33:20.639
Keener thinks that that marriage is valid and morally permissible.
02:33:20.799 --> 02:33:21.120
Okay.
02:33:21.760 --> 02:33:25.840
Then her first husband from 20 years ago, he finally remarries.
02:33:26.000 --> 02:33:26.319
Dr.
02:33:26.399 --> 02:33:33.600
Keener would say her first husband committed adultery light against his wife from 20 years ago when he entered his second marriage.
02:33:33.760 --> 02:33:47.120
For that to be true, the woman's first husband has some kind of connection to his first wife, and that connection is substantial enough that Jesus would call his remarriage hyperbolically adultery against her, even 20 years later.
02:33:47.440 --> 02:33:54.399
So, in some way, her first husband is cheating on her by his remarriage, after even though she's been remarried for 20 years.
02:33:54.559 --> 02:33:59.600
The only way that works is if she's still married to her first husband because there is no permission to divorce and remarry.
02:34:00.319 --> 02:34:02.159
For adultery, for infidelity.
02:34:02.319 --> 02:34:02.719
So Dr.
02:34:02.799 --> 02:34:04.799
Keener just needs to explain how this is going to work.
02:34:04.879 --> 02:34:10.479
If Jesus wasn't speaking hyperbolically, here's the question: What exactly does adultery against her mean?
02:34:10.639 --> 02:34:19.680
So if you were going to say this not in hyperbolic terms, but you were going to say this in precise terms, what exactly is the adultery?
02:34:19.920 --> 02:34:22.239
Because it's adultery against her.
02:34:22.319 --> 02:34:23.760
There's still some kind of connection there.
02:34:23.920 --> 02:34:25.760
You're going to have to make sense of that.
02:34:26.639 --> 02:34:31.440
Um, what is the marriage light thing that the man violates with his adultery light?
02:34:31.600 --> 02:34:33.200
What is that connection that he's violating?
02:34:33.360 --> 02:34:34.639
He's doing adultery against her.
02:34:34.799 --> 02:34:42.319
What in what way is he uh is he sinning against his first wife 20 years later when he remarries after she's been married for 20 years?
02:34:42.559 --> 02:34:51.040
Is there any evidence for that, whatever that concept is of what the adultery light is, what the nature of the marriage light thing is?
02:34:51.200 --> 02:34:54.799
Is there any evidence for this concept in the early church or extra-biblical writings?
02:34:54.879 --> 02:34:58.159
Now I've researched and I have found nothing to support anything like this theory.
02:34:58.319 --> 02:35:04.959
This is totally foreign, as far as I can tell, from all the early church stuff that I have read, tons of passages from the Talmud.
02:35:05.040 --> 02:35:05.920
Nobody's talking like that.
02:35:06.000 --> 02:35:08.959
So I just don't think that's what Jesus meant.
02:35:10.399 --> 02:35:13.840
Say, uh, well, it's just hyperbole in the world.
02:35:14.000 --> 02:35:14.559
It doesn't matter.
02:35:14.639 --> 02:35:14.959
Yeah, right.
02:35:15.200 --> 02:35:17.520
The point of hyperbole is to drive home the point.
02:35:17.680 --> 02:35:21.440
Don't break up your marriage, uh, be faithful to your marriage.
02:35:21.760 --> 02:35:28.319
Um, one final question, coming back to 1 Corinthians 7, um, specifically verses 12 through 15 or to 16.
02:35:28.479 --> 02:35:39.440
Now I imagine someone preaching through Corinthians, or maybe they're preaching and they're coming across, um, they're maybe tackling divorce and remarriage texts in some context, preaching or teaching, I should say.
02:35:39.680 --> 02:35:42.000
Um, maybe they're preaching the whole chapter.
02:35:42.079 --> 02:35:43.280
I could see someone doing that.
02:35:43.440 --> 02:35:44.799
That would be quite a task.
02:35:45.040 --> 02:35:50.399
Um, but it's all sort of it's all a unit, a larger unit in that sense.
02:35:50.479 --> 02:35:53.440
But let's let's focus specifically on verses 12 through 16.
02:35:53.520 --> 02:36:00.319
If someone was preaching just that paragraph or they're preaching this paragraph within a larger sermon on the on the entire chapter.
02:36:00.479 --> 02:36:05.440
Do you have any advice you would give to the preacher or teacher when it comes to these verses?
02:36:06.159 --> 02:36:16.799
Yeah, I hope I think Paul makes um Paul Paul gives enough latitude to deal with a lot of the situations we have to deal with.
02:36:17.600 --> 02:36:29.840
And he is talking to believers, so not what happened to them before they got married, because divorce and remarriage was really common in a Roman context, a Roman urban context.
02:36:29.920 --> 02:36:37.120
And so presumably a lot of them came from backgrounds where this was already before their their conversion.
02:36:38.399 --> 02:36:54.000
But it's still gonna probably in the average congregation, it's still going to step on some people's toes who are contemplating or haven't repented of breaking up their marriage.
02:36:55.120 --> 02:37:19.440
And we also have to we also have to be especially careful for those who may have been hurt, um, may have may have been betrayed by divorce, didn't want it or didn't want their marriage to break up, or they were like not in the explicit exceptions, say they they left because their husband was beating them or something.
02:37:20.079 --> 02:37:26.799
And I think most of us pastorally would say you you shouldn't stay there and let them beat you.
02:37:26.959 --> 02:37:28.799
You have the opportunity to get out.
02:37:29.440 --> 02:37:45.760
But they may feel especially because uh if they come from churches or even some people in our own church may look at them like uh you shouldn't have left your marriage.
02:37:47.120 --> 02:38:12.000
We have to be be as careful as we can with our wording, given the range of people who may be hearing us, to to make sure to uphold these major principles of fidelity to marriage, but not being hard on people whose marriage was broken because of uh circumstances beyond their own control.
02:38:14.159 --> 02:38:32.959
And if somebody uh is responsible for it, then it's important to it's important for them to take ownership of that and to make things right with God and insofar as possible with their former spouse and with if children were involved.
02:38:33.120 --> 02:38:37.600
I mean divorce has such a terrible impact on children.
02:38:38.159 --> 02:38:45.520
Um I'm just thinking of the pastoral implications of of these things, but I think it's I really think that Dr.
02:38:45.600 --> 02:38:51.040
Keener cares about being kind, and I think that's a wonderful trait.
02:38:51.120 --> 02:38:55.360
And this is something that those of us who are on the permanent side can learn from.
02:38:55.520 --> 02:39:03.120
I think he's actually a very smart man, and a lot of stuff I'm sure I could learn from him from his uh many writings and all of his uh scholarly work.
02:39:03.280 --> 02:39:10.159
But here's what I want to point out sometimes those of us who have a permanence view, we're worried about being kind.
02:39:10.639 --> 02:39:15.760
And and we're worried, like, well, will that make us slip up in our interpretation?
02:39:15.920 --> 02:39:18.479
Will we be faithful to the text?
02:39:18.719 --> 02:39:24.079
And we're so accustomed to being like attacked for our views that we can just can kind of get a martyr complex or whatever.
02:39:24.319 --> 02:39:29.120
But if we meet someone who is divorced, we don't know who left who.
02:39:29.440 --> 02:39:31.360
Uh, we don't know what happened there.
02:39:31.600 --> 02:39:39.040
So now if they're remarried and their prior valid spouse is alive, we know the text says that remarriage is is adultery and that needs to be the remarriage needs to be divorced.
02:39:39.120 --> 02:39:40.159
I I understand that.
02:39:40.319 --> 02:39:49.120
But we shouldn't come to the conclusion that divorce, uh, sorry, that marriage is permanent because we have a personality trait to be harsh.
02:39:49.200 --> 02:39:52.399
It's just what we honestly believe the text says.
02:39:52.559 --> 02:40:00.559
We're supposed to read the text for what it says and then share our view with people, and then they'll they'll agree with us or disagree with us or whatever, whatever happens here.
02:40:01.440 --> 02:40:07.600
But we also shouldn't forsake you know, sympathy and empathy and kindness.
02:40:07.760 --> 02:40:12.559
The scripture says God's kindness leads us to repentance.
02:40:12.799 --> 02:40:13.600
So we have to do both.
02:40:13.680 --> 02:40:21.360
We have to have truth and love and not just try to pick one or the other uh like it's some kind of competition between the two when when it certainly is not.
02:40:21.520 --> 02:40:23.760
So I am really glad that Logos did this.
02:40:23.840 --> 02:40:25.920
Kirk Miller did this interview with uh Dr.
02:40:26.079 --> 02:40:26.399
Keener.
02:40:26.719 --> 02:40:29.440
You can hear their view, you can hear my view, you can decide for yourself.
02:40:29.600 --> 02:40:31.280
Let me know what you think uh in the comments.
02:40:31.440 --> 02:40:33.040
Logos Bible software is fantastic.
02:40:33.120 --> 02:40:34.479
By the way, they're not paying me to say this.
02:40:34.559 --> 02:40:35.520
I actually use it.
02:40:35.600 --> 02:40:37.120
I have a subscription for it.
02:40:37.360 --> 02:40:40.799
I recommend it to people to get it if they can afford it and they're gonna use it.
02:40:40.879 --> 02:40:42.399
It's really good Bible software.
02:40:42.559 --> 02:40:45.120
Also, get a copy of my book, Divorce Your Remarriage.
02:40:45.200 --> 02:40:46.319
You can get that at Amazon.com.
02:40:46.399 --> 02:40:48.159
I have a link to that in the description below.
02:40:48.319 --> 02:40:50.479
Subscribe, like, do all the things.
02:40:50.559 --> 02:40:52.639
And let me let me know what you thought about this episode.
02:40:52.719 --> 02:40:54.159
And I will talk to you next time.