Divorce - Revoked or Redefined?

In When Dogmas Die I wrote that Jesus revoked the Mosaic permission for men to divorce their wives. This is only partially true, for what Jesus objected to was frivolous divorces.

“The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.” His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” (Matt 19:3-10, NKJV)

In Malachi and 1 Peter we find that God hates divorce which is sought only in order to re-marry and does not regard the prayers of those who abuse their wives and break the covenant.

“And this is the second thing you do: You cover the altar of the LORD with tears, with weeping and crying; so He does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands. Yet you say, “For what reason?” Because the LORD has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously; yet she is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. “For the LORD God of Israel says that He hates divorce, for it covers one’s garment with violence,” Says the LORD of hosts. “Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.” (Mal 2.13-16, NKJV)

“Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Pet 3.7, NKJV)

The Mosaic Law gave permission only for men to divorce, but the New Testament sees both men and women seeking divorce in order to remarry.

“So He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10.11-12, NKJV)

Hence it seems that divorce itself is not forbidden, but frivolous divorces with the sole purpose to remarry.

The one legitimate reason given for divorce is adultery as seen in both Matthew 19 and Jeremiah 3.

“Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also. So it came to pass, through her casual harlotry, that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to Me with her whole heart, but in pretense,” says the LORD.”  (Jer 3.8-10, NKJV)

But what is meant by Israel’s adultery is idolatry and the same is found in the New Testament.

“Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4.4, NKJV)

Hence adultery in the Bible is not strictly sexual in nature, but rather a transferring of one’s love and devotion to another object. Mental and physical abuse follows the same pattern: the transferring of one’s love and devotion from one’s spouse to the illusion of one’s right to hurt, for love doesn’t harm one’s neighbor (Rom 13.10). We may also ask why God would insist that a believer should lack peace if married to another believer since he does not require such from a Christian married to an unbeliever.

“Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband. But even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And a husband is not to divorce his wife. But to the rest I, not the Lord, say: If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?”  (1 Cor 7.10-16, NKJV)

Naturally the New Testament assumes and expects that Christians live according to its precepts of loving one’s neighbor and doing unto others as one would have done unto one’s self, but often Christians fail to attain the lofty goal.  The Mosaic law granted permission for Israeli men to divorce because of the hardness of their hearts and as long as both men and women do not allow their hearts to be softened, divorce will remain a reality.

Who Can Represent God?

We are told God is male because the Bible uses the masculine default when talking about God (for example, God is called a Father) and therefore only men can represent God.

However, also the devil is called a father.

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. (John 8:44-45 NKJV)

If only men can represent God because God is male, does this mean that only men can represent the devil, i.e. be evil, since the devil is a male? 

Growing in Christ

The purpose of pastors and teachers is to help Christians grow in their faith.

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Eph 4:11-16 NIV)

However, the hierarchical nature of the modern church leadership ensures that Christians remain perpetual children, dependent of their leaders instead of becoming leaders and teachers themselves – the goal of our growth in Christ.

 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Heb 5:11-14 NIV)

Children must shed their dependence of their parents if they wish to become grown-ups themselves. The first step towards growth is critical thinking; instead of obeying without a question, the teenager challenges what is being said, and through that challenge, learns to distinguish good from evil. An untrained mind depends on someone to tell her what is right and wrong; a trained mind no longer needs someone to lead the way: instead she has become someone who can lead others. To become a mature Christian (a “spiritual” person) instead of remaining a child (a “carnal” person) is the goal of our faith. Happy are those Christians whose spiritual leaders recognize this and allow them to grow up instead of forcing them to remain children in order to bolster their own (false) authority over the flock.

Did the Early Church Uphold a Twofold Subjection?

A couple of months ago I participated in a long and heated debate about women and the man’s authority. As the debate was ending, I mentioned how the creation-based subjection began with the twofold subjection in the scholastic period. As proof I quoted Matthew Henry:

Genesis 2.21-25

That Adam was first formed, then Eve (1 Tim 2:13), and she was made of the man, and for the man (1 Cor 11:8-9), all which are urged there as reasons for the humility, modesty, silence, and submissiveness, of that sex in general, and particularly the subjection and reverence which wives owe to their own husbands. Yet man being made last of the creatures, as the best and most excellent of all, Eve's being made after Adam, and out of him, puts an honour upon that sex, as the glory of the man, 1 Cor 11:7. If man is the head, she is the crown, a crown to her husband, the crown of the visible creation. The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust double-refined, one remove further from the earth.

Genesis 3.16

She is here put into a state of subjection. The whole sex, which by creation was equal with man, is, for sin, made inferior, and forbidden to usurp authority, 1 Tim 2:11-12. The wife particularly is hereby put under the dominion of her husband, and is not sui juris-at her own disposal, of which see an instance in that law, Num 30:6-8, where the husband is empowered, if he please, to disannul the vows made by the wife. This sentence amounts only to that command, Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; but the entrance of sin has made that duty a punishment, which otherwise it would not have been. If man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love; and, if the woman had not sinned, she would always have obeyed with humility and meekness; and then the dominion would have been no grievance: but our own sin and folly make our yoke heavy. If Eve had not eaten forbidden fruit herself, and tempted her husband to eat it, she would never have complained of her subjection; therefore it ought never to be complained of, though harsh; but sin must be complained of, that made it so. Those wives who not only despise and disobey their husbands, but domineer over them, do not consider that they not only violate a divine law, but thwart a divine sentence[i]

Our opponent – a Christian school teacher – told me that the early church has always taught a twofold subjection. I didn’t think much about it until a few days ago, when during a walk I suddenly began to think about his statement: if the church has always taught a twofold subjection of Eve, why does the modern church no longer do so?

The church got rid of the twofold subjection in the 1980s when Gen 3.16 was returned to its original position as a description of a consequence of sin. Now, why did the church do so? The answer: because it was universally acknowledged that it could not be a commandment as the church had previously taught, for why would God reward the man with authority over the woman if the man was equally guilty? The patristic church had taught that the first woman was solely guilty (the man being innocent) and therefore she was punished with a servile subjection. This, however, was ruled out as un-biblical belief little over two decades ago.

But what about the early church? Did the first and second century church teach a twofold subjection? Such a belief cannot be found until in the writings of the fourth-century bishop Augustine, who had to resort to neo-Platonism and a faulty reading of the creation account to create a creation-based subjection – a task in which he ultimately failed. All Christian writes, including Augustine’s contemporaries, wrote that the first man and woman were created equal and that it was only due to sin that the man was given authority over the woman. They based this belief on the Roman concept that the first woman had ruined the man - his equal - and was therefore justly punished with servile subjection. But if we take the Roman concept out of the picture, what other reason was there for God to punish only the woman since the man was equally guilty? None can be found, wherefore the modern church now claims that the woman desires to control the man as a result of sin - a novel belief that cannot be found until the twentieth-century. 

In conclusion, the early church did not teach a twofold subjection, nor is it possible for the modern church to do so. For the modern church to teach a twofold subjection, it must first affirm with the patristic church that only the woman was guilty, a belief contradicted by Romans 5; and secondly, it must affirm with the scholastic church that the woman was subjected to the man originally because the woman lacked reason, a belief contradicted by Genesis 1, which states that both the man and the woman were created in the image of God. The modern position, which is an exact reversal of the patristic teaching and which contradicts the beliefs taught by the early church, is based on a faulty reading of 1 Timothy 2, which ultimately cannot be defended without resorting to the twofold subjection, as seen in our recent debate.

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[i] (Gen 2:121-25, 3:16; from Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1991 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)

Organic People

When we add stuff that doesn’t belong we make things taste different. For example, have you ever noticed how pure spring water tastes softer than chemically treated city water? And have you noticed how organic foods taste better than processed foods? They all look the same, but as soon as you take a bite, the flavor tells a different tale.

The same is true of humans as well. When we add things that do not belong in the human heart, it becomes hard. You can’t always tell from the outside what is in the inside – some have the appearance of goodness - but as soon as you spend time in their company, the truth becomes evident. People who follow God sound softer and their thoughts are purer. Sin makes people hard, unyielding, unforgiving, and unloving. But the good news is that we don’t have to be that way. We can become “organic” people by refusing to add stuff that doesn’t belong in us, such as, “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like”(Gal 5:19-21, NKJV). Instead, “organic” people exhibit “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Gal 5:22-23 NKJV). Just imagine a world where everything was organic, from plants to people! That would be a world just the way God intended it to be from the beginning.

Because You Listened to Your Wife...

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."  (Gen 3:17-19 NIV)

This text is usually interpreted to mean that men should not listen to women, for look what happened to the first man when he listened to a woman! But the interpretation misses the point. The point is that Adam had earlier blamed God for giving the woman to be with him - had the woman never existed, he wouldn’t have taken the fruit and everything would have been just fine! To this God responds, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree, the ground will be cursed because of you.” There would be no passing of blame; everyone, including the first man, would have to accept and live with the consequences of the entrance of sin in to the world. And so we have.

The entrance of sin has complicated more than one thing in the world. Because what we see is a distortion of the world as God created it, a lot of things that are evil are called good. Rob Bell writes in Love Wins, A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate or Every Person Who Ever Lived:

Do you know any individuals who grew up in a Christian church and then walked away when they got older? Often pastors and parents and brothers and sisters are concerned about them and their spirituality – and often they should be. But sometimes those individuals’ rejection of church and the Christian faith they were presented with as the only possible interpretation of what it means to follow Jesus may in fact be a sign of spiritual health. They may be resisting behaviors, interpretations, and attitudes that should be rejected. Perhaps they simply came to a point where they refused to accept the very sorts of things that Jesus would refuse to accept. [i]

Could it be that the church has mingled truth with error to such a degree that people must leave to find the truth? Consider for example one of the many interpretations of the effects of the first disobedience: Should women confine themselves to their homes while the men go out to the world as breadwinners in order to re-create the blissful garden? First of all, there was no bread to be won in the garden; there were a lot of trees – the first man and woman had to only reach out and take the first fruit they saw. Secondly, there was no home to be made. The woman roamed the garden as freely as the man for there was no housework. What we today call “God’s design” appeared with sin as the eviction of our first parents from the garden made us responsible for the things once given to us freely by God.

... which brings us to the thorns and thistles. The once fertile soil began to produce weeds; wheat would appear only if the soil was cultivated carefully. The garden that had been a place of leisure and pleasure, not work, was lost and exchanged with a world filled with hard labor and grief. Ever since, humankind, that once enjoyed the blissful existence of plenty, has had to daily walk the tightrope between enough and not-enough. Starvation, disease, death; we know them all too well. And if we happen to belong to the Bottom Billion, they are our constant companions. But what has the church to say about all of this? Do we hear the ceaseless call to feed the poor and the hungry? Not really. Instead we are like the old Romans – we outdo each other building larger, ever grander mansions in which God does not dwell. And out the backdoor leaves yet another faithful who couldn’t find in her Bible the call to build yet another house for God, but who heard the gentle whisper of finding God in the least - impacting instead of impressing.

Now, that’s a thing Jesus would accept, just as he has always accepted all women and men who have challenged the dogmas of their times in order to remain faithful to God - not the church. 

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[i] Bell, Rob, Love Wins, [NY, Harper Collins, 2011], 8.

Created in the Image of Theologians

Humans really like conformity, uniformity, and similarity. When everything is the same, the world seems a friendlier place, a comforting place, where nothing surprises or threatens.  Anything strange or different is deemed a threat to that peace, wherefore humans have always tried to destroy everything that breaks the artificial harmony through laws, customs, segregation or annihilation.

This tendency to create uniformity spills over to the realm of theology as well. God is so vastly different from us that we humans have a hard time understanding who God is. For examples, God is a spirit, not a corporeal creature - how can we relate to such a being? One answer has been to re-create God in our own image. Theologians, exasperated with the challenge to explain God, have made God sound and look awfully like themselves: white males whose job is the rule everyone else; thus the heavy emphasis on authority and subjection, the supposed “maleness” of God (although God does not have reproductive organs) and the imperial elevation of the white skin over the darker shades. But this is not who God is.

God is not like humans; humans were created in the likeness of God. Sin has corrupted that image wherefore we no longer see God when we see a human. In the new creation, which we become when the corrupted nature is put off and the new nature is put on, our inner person is transformed until it once more resembles who God is. This transformation is through the Spirit and knowledge: the Spirit teaches us to know Christ until we have become just like him. But this transformation does not take place without our co-operation. We must put off the corrupted nature and be willing to learn. For this reason God gave us teachers so we would no longer be like small children, always wavering from one belief to another, but that speaking truth to each other we would grow in all things into Christ, the head (Eph 4.11-16). When we have grasped the love of Christ, and we are rooted and established in it, we will be filled with fullness of God – we will be like God and do the things God does (Eph 3.14-19). As a contrast, those who do not think it worthwhile to know God are filled with envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice (Rom 1.28-29, NIV).

If we must be like God and do the things God does, what is God like?

God is incorruptible (aphthartos, lit. undecaying, Rom 1:18-25)
God is light (phos, lit. to shine or make manifest, 1 John 1:5-7)
God is righteous/just (dikaios, i.e. that which is fair to all, just, 1 John 2:25-29)

God is pure (1 John 3:1-10)
God is love (1 John 4.7-18)
God is true (alethes, lit. not concealed, John 3:31-36)
God is spirit (pneuma, John 4:21-24)

Allowing God’s Spirit to re-create these traits in us is what the new creation is all about, for what matters is that our trust in God is manifested through love – love for God and love for our neighbors (Gal 5.6). When we love, we are like God, who is love.