One sermon that has gotten a lot of traction in Christian circles lately is one by a very gifted preacher by the name of Voddie Baucham, regarding the "permanence view of marriage" - a view that says the bible allows no exceptions for divorce and remarriage, and that no matter the marital state one is in, he or she should remain in that state - the current marriage is ended only by death; anything other than that is adultery in God's eyes.
You can hear the sermon here
Sermon Audio Download of the sermon
He begins the sermon by quoting from a book titled, "Divorce and Remarriage: a Permanence View" by Jim Eliff (a book also getting a lot of discussion regarding this issue) where he quotes the author as saying...
Divorce and wrongful remarriage are forgivable sins. We want to start here, at the heart of our faith in Christ. When Jesus died, He did not fail to atone for the misdeeds of His people in this critical area. Even the person who has acted as wrongly as possible in this matter may be fully forgiven, and may have a fulfilled life of service to God after repentance. Also, God mercifully blesses many second marriages that began sinfully. This is a mystery for which we can all be extremely grateful.
Voddie then expounds his case for why marriages should never be undone; and even if you find yourself in a marriage after divorce, you should not undo the second marriage to restore the original one. He has many valid points to make in this sermon, and he does so with much grace and love toward those who might find themselves in such a situation.
For those of you who have not heard this sermon, you can go to it at this link:
While I appreciate Voddie's heart in this matter of how to handle a person who is divorced and might be remarried while the original spouse is still alive, and while I appreciate so many good points he makes along the way, I find what I believe is a bit of a hole in his logic near the end of his sermon.
Toward the end of the sermon, he addresses this issue of whether or not a second marriage should be redone to put the first one back together. I am not here saying that I subscribe to the position that an "adulterous" marriage should be undone to put the original one back together. (I'm not saying I don't hold it, either. Perhaps it should; but my jury is still out on that one.) What I am saying is that Voddie's argument at the end of this sermon to make this case is flawed in my opinion. Because I find it a flawed argument, I am posting my opinion about it here to get some good discussion going about this point.
Here is what Voddie's argument is. He starts out making the statement that Jesus never says that to stay in the second marriage is a continual act of adultery. Voddie states that the remarriage is an ACT of adutery, not a state of adultery. The ACT of divorcing and then the ACT of remarrying and then the ACT of intimacy is the adultery - he says we don't see anywhere Jesus saying that every act of intimacy in the new marriage is another act of adultery - he says that only the original remarriage is adultery, and after that (I suppose?) God now blesses the new marriage, and we should stay in it. He says that continuing in the new marriage is not a continued act of polygamy or polyandry.
To prove this presupposition, he points to the passage of scripture where Jesus is talking to the woman at the well, and he says to her, "you have had 5 husbands." not "you currently have 5 husbands." He says that Jesus never said to her that you currently have 5 husbands because you're married to all of them and so you're committing polyandry."
Here is where I think his argument is flawed. My first problem I have with his logic is that the greek Jesus uses when he says "and whoever divorces and marries another commits adultery," in the Greek, is implying it IS a continuous state. For Voddie to state that it is an ACT of adultery rather than a STATE of adultery is a theological conclusion rather than a textual one. While the Greek here doesn't HAVE to imply it is a continuous state of adultery, it is the first sense one would get from a reading of the Greek text; therefore, the conclusion he draws is to argue for the non-obvious interpretation of the text in Matthew rather than the obvious one. Every theologian has to do this to a greater or lesser degree, but it is a weak argument when the text leans toward arguing something different.
Secondly, reading this conversation with Jesus and the woman at the well, and reading all of that into the conversation expects that Jesus would have talked to her with a paragraph instead of a sentence so that others would not later misread this conversation as a doctrinal treatise. You see, the woman was familiar with Jewish law at the time. The Jews allowed for divorce and remarriage, even though Jesus said it was adultery to do so. But in this conversation with her, his point was simply to let her know she had been married 5 times so that she knew he was a prophet; not to expound to her with great detail why what she did was wrong so that she would know she was a sinner. (She already knew that).
While Voddie's point might seem valid from his side of this fence, it is a weak argument from the side that sees it as a continuous state of adultery. From that perspective, this conversation was not intended to make a statement about divorce and remarriage; it was a conversation to show how Jesus interacted with a particular person at a particular time, without getting into exactly the type of conversation the Pharisees were constantly trying to draw him into. This point should not be missed.
The third logical mistake it seems he makes is this: he says, "NO. NO. To divorce and remarry the original spouse is wrong - you don't recommit a sin in order to demsontrate your repentence for the first time you did it." But those who see it as adulterous don't see it as doing something wrong to end a marriage that God never blessed because it was adulterous from the start; they see it as necessary obedience.
Voddie says that Jesus never accused her of having 5 husbands currently, and he never accused her of being in polyandry. What he seems to miss is that those who do say you need to undo the new ones to redo the first wouldn't say that either. He is attacking the absurdity of an argument from the other side that the other side would already agree with him about. They never said it was polyandry. They merely said it was adulterous.
The power to define the terms is the power to win the debate; especially when the other side is not there to defend itself. Those who say the adulterous marriage should be undone would not say the woman currently had 5 husbands. They would say if her first one was still alive when she married the others, then each of the other marriages other than the first would be illigitimate and adulterous, and she should return to the first because she was committing adultery against her first husband.
In my opinion, neither side should take a hard doctrinal stance on the implication of this particular verse on this particular issue, as Jesus' statement was not meant to point out to the woman the particulars of how badly she had sinned in her life, but to make her realize who Jesus was - the man who knew her life, her sins, and was willing to speak to her anyway. And it's all this verse is about.
If we are to come to solid conclusions about these issues, we need to be careful to let each side define its own terms as they use them in their own arguments; otherwise, though we speak the same words, we've lost the ability to communicate.
Your thoughts on this discussion are welcome.
