by Standerinfamilycourt
“There are some Christians who believe very vigorously that Matthew did not grant an adultery-exception for Jesus’ prohibition of divorce. Even though one would be hard pressed to find a professor teaching at a mainline seminary more strongly opposed to divorce and remarriage-after-divorce than me (not bragging, just stating it as a fact), I am apparently too soft for some. Doesn’t mean I’m right (it is the evidence that counts, not some apparent position in a self-contrived middle); just an observation.” – Dr. Robert A.J. Gagnon, 7/30/2015
On July 20, The Gospel Coalition published a very good piece from John Stonestreet and Sean McDowell called “6 Things Christians Can Do About Same-Sex Marriage”. Dr. Gagnon took exception to one of their points: “We can stop implying in our words and actions that homosexual sin is worse than all other sexual sins…” which runs counter to one of the chief tenets of his writings, i.e. that homosexuality is one of the worst of all sexual sins, and (specifically) worse than adultery. Wrote the authors: “Too often, homosexuality is singled out as “what’s wrong with America” while other sexual sins get a wink and a nod. This is wrong.”
The professor responded by commenting at length on the post on TGC’s Facebook page. It seems rare for Dr. Gagnon to comment on public Facebook pages, as opposed to private ones. This occasion, therefore, opened up an uncommon opportunity for some marriage-permanence warriors, who agree with him in far more respects than disagree, to politely engage him on a few points where we do disagree. In all, four of us weighed in on that particular thread.
After a few more general exchanges with “standerinfamilycourt” and a couple of others, Sharon Henry challenged Dr. Gagnon on his favored view of the expansion of the definition of the Greek “porneia” by contemporary scholars, lexiconographers and bible translators, to include all forms of sexual immorality, and specifically adultery, (despite the Greek “moicheia” being separately mentioned by both Paul and Jesus in several scriptures alongside “porneia”). Sharon, though certainly not as learned as the professor, has extensively studied many lexicons from over various centuries, has extensively studied Jewish betrothal and marriage custom, and has engaged other scholars and linguists in her work to harmonize Matt. 5:32 and Matt. 19:9 with the vast bulk of OT and NT scripture which those two verses seem to contradict. That is, these verses are contradictory if they are interpreted as providing an “exception” for adultery committed after vows have been exchanged, and after God’s supernatural act of joining of a covenant bride and groom as no longer two but one-flesh, and the marriage has been consummated.
Lacking any support for such a marriage bond ever being dissoluble (by men) in the context of the direct symbolism of marriage covenant in almost every book of the bible, nor in the history of what the early church fathers, without exception, taught to the contrary–from the cross all the way up to the days of polygamous Emperor Constantine, nor in the personal integrity of 16th and 17th century “Reformers” (documented anti-Semites and on-record condoners of concurrent polygamy) who gave rise to so-called biblical grounds for civil divorce and remarriage, there are only two basic pieces of alleged evidence on which proponents of the “exception clause” can possibly attempt to hang their hat:
(1) an expansive literary and mixed-biblical usage of “porneia” that suggests it extends beyond the wedding night to adultery, incest, sodomy, and the like, and
(2) looking wistfully back at that which Jesus utterly abrogated in Matt. 5: 27-32 — to the old Mosaic accommodations of “putting away” described in Deuteronomy 22 and 24.
The exchange between the professor and Sharon continued in fascinating range and depth from July 26 through August 5, and we believe, has been enlightening to anybody following it over those many days. At best, however, we believe this word debate can only conclude in a “draw”, because the wisdom of man ultimately falls short of the inspiration of God. One of Sharon’s sources in this exchange, Kyle Harper of the University of Oklahoma (Journal of Biblical Literature 131, no. 2, 2012) suggests a similar result is all that is possible concerning the etymology of porneia.
“If we deny Him, He also will deny us;
If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself
Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” – 2 Timothy 2: 13-15
Writing in 1957, Rev. Milton T. Wells, an Assemblies of God bible college president said of debates of this sort over word translations: “Fortunately, Christ did not leave the Christian Church in ignorance respecting the meaning of His statement in Matt. 19:9, whichever reading of the original Greek one accepts. The harmony of the parallel accounts of Matt.19:1-12 and Mark 10:1-12 provides the context which clarifies the matter completely. “Etymology will kill you, but context will save you.” The statements of the Epistles respecting the same subject confirms the testimony of the two integrated Gospel accounts and the testimony of the early Church.” – “Does Divorce Dissolve Marriage?”, Chapter VIII– A STUDY OF THE VARIANT READING OF MATT.19:9
It should be noted that Dr. Gagnon is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a well-regarded media authority on biblical sexual ethics. Just as he asserts, his defense of the permanence of marriage, in the sense that remarriage while a covenant spouse is still living constituted adultery in Jesus’ view, is as vigorous and firm as it can possibly be without running completely afoul of the Westminster Confession, the Calvinist-based doctrine which asserts that (in direct contradiction to Matthew 19:6, Mark 10:9, Romans 7:2 and 1 Cor. 7:39) the marriage bond can be dissolved by human action, and asserts a further “exception”, “allowing” remarriage not only due to adultery, but also due to marital abandonment.
Sharon, on the other hand, was formerly the non-covenant wife of another woman’s covenant husband. The Lord began to convict her that her church-blessed civil marriage of more than 15 years, happy and prosperous in every other respect, was not lawful in God’s eyes. Her testimony is available here. She was grieved to learn that in God’s eyes she was an adulteress, and the adultery she was committing was against that covenant wife. She also realized what repentance from her remarriage-adultery must entail. To Sharon, this was no theoretical or abstract theological exercise. In her circumstances, she needed to be certain that the word of God, rightly divided, backed up what the Holy Spirit was telling her. So she embarked on her lengthy study for two or three years before taking civil action, and she separated from her husband within their house in the meantime. Online resources have become increasingly available at low or no cost to the lay person with critical thinking abilities, enabling the general public to study as deeply as any seminary student might. Indeed, at one point in her exchange with Dr. Gagnon, he remarked, “Sharon, thank you. Interacting with you has strengthened my knowledge of the meaning of porneia, reinforcing my previous position and adding more nuance to it. But you probed harder than even most seminary students could probe and forced me to dig deeper.” July 30 at 7:40pm
Sharon’s life experience, so common in this age of church / state institutionalized adultery, is only one of dozens of such testimonies available online and in our permanence-of-marriage fellowship, as the Lord is moving to cleanse and prepare His bride for His return. Sharon has engaged other prominent scholars, such as Dr. Leslie McFall, in similar fashion on the etymology of porneia, though his views are even less supportive of the “Matthean exception” in the Westminster Confession than are Dr. Gagnon’s. (Like Dr. Gagnon, Dr. McFall believes that the etymology of porneia encompasses a range of sexual sins, but, unlike Dr. Gagnon, he does not believe this justifies the Matthean exception, nor does it justify remaining in an adulterous civil remarriage Dr. McFall has exposed some critical evidence on page 2 of his paper [linked below] that the Greek texts transcribed by Erasmus originally stated there was no exception for porneia until he himself tampered with it – which would render this entire debate moot with regard to today’s pervasive sequential polygamy, and perhaps still valid with regard to other sexual sins that exclude, if unrepented, from heaven.)
With the utmost deference, we’d like to respond to a couple of Dr. Gagnon’s reactions, as he states them above. We applaud while we fully agree that we would indeed be hard-pressed to find a professor teaching at a mainline seminary more strongly opposed to divorce and remarriage-after-divorce than Dr. Gagnon. However, we find the next remark, “I am apparently too soft for some”, a bit odd. That characterization seems to imply that we see him, or that he sees himself, as some sort of appointed arbiter of “biblical grounds”, gavel-in-hand. On the contrary, we see him as an anointed discipler of some of this nation’s “shepherds” at a very critical point in history, exactly as Paul was, and we are puzzled why his comparison of himself with other fallible seminarians of mainline denominations is even relevant. Is Jesus Christ not the measuring stick for truth, doctrine and conduct? If Dr. Gagnon must compare himself with a man, why would he choose these men over Paul, whose kindred passion was to teach shepherds to contend for the faith, and whose revelation came from the baptism in the Holy Spirit? Would either Jesus or Paul even remotely agree with these mainline seminarians with whom Dr. Gagnon is comparing himself? We think not! Given where their Westminster Confession-based system of “sanctified” adultery has taken our society, and has seriously endangered our very democracy, we think Jesus wouldn’t flinch in calling these mainline (or evangelical) seminarians “whited sepulchres full of dead men’s bones”.
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
– The Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 1:20.
Lastly, we doubt we are the only Christians (though we may be the few largely Protestant Christians) who believe very vigorously that Matthew did not grant an adultery exception for Jesus’ prohibition of divorce. Matthew, after all, was simply a scribe to a Jewish audience, and an eyewitness narrator of what Jesus taught. He was the only one of the 12 apostles whose gospel was written primarily to Jews in their cultural context, including the marriage-related elements of Mosaic law and Hebrew betrothal custom. He was not, however, an authority figure in the Jerusalem church who wrote separate commandments. That role was undertaken primarily by Peter and by James, neither of whom spoke of any exception or permission to remarry. Mark, who travelled and ministered primarily with Peter, and Luke, who was Paul’s missionary companion, both address their gospel accounts to Gentiles in their very different Greco-Roman culture. Hence Luke’s gospel reflects strict marriage commandments from Jesus (likely taught to him by Paul) that perfectly complement what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7, once the Greek term for “bound” is correctly translated in verse 15. In similar fashion, Mark’s gospel reflects an exceptionless view of the indissolubility of what God has joined, probably taught to him by both Peter and Paul.
- With regard to Matthew, his gospel and Mark’s together describe the scene in the house (Matthew 19:10-12; Mark 10:10-12) where the disciples are crestfallen that Jesus has just countermanded their Mosaic permission to divorce from a consummated marriage at all, (perhaps the only positive instance of marriage redefinition in all of recorded history) so that they say in effect, “well, we probably should stop getting married then!” It does not make sense that the Jewish disciples would have had this extreme reaction if Jesus had simply affirmed the Mosaic law, or only slightly narrowed it. What we also know is that they came out of that house, and after Pentecost some weeks later, they discipled the early church fathers who unanimously taught for four centuries that there was no exception which dissolved the marriage bond, short of physical death of one of the spouses.
- various sources attribute some non-canonical works to Matthew, and say that he traveled to various countries as an evangelist, including Ethiopia, where he may have been martyred. It is possible that he may have written something in those deuterocanonical works that reinforces the idea that he personally granted some exception to dissolve what God otherwise said cannot be dissolved. However, several of the same church fathers who were very staunch expositors of the indissolubility of the marriage covenant except by death, make other mentions of Matthew and his works. These include Origen, Ignatius and Jerome, all of whom made very forceful statements that remarriage in all cases was sequential polygamy that imperiled souls.
This is the truth we are trying to point the church back to, before the Lord simply abandons our society to its apostate ways in final judgment. We feel that many Catholics would heartily agree with us in this.
Notes: (1) Sharon Henry’s book, JEWISH MARRIAGE, BIBLICAL DIVORCE, AND REMARRIAGE.July 2015.pdf is available for download.
(2) Many of Dr. Gagnon’s extensive writings are available for download on www.robgagnon.net. His paper, “Divorce and Remarriage-After-Divorce in Jesus and Paul” is downloadable here.
(3) Dr. Leslie McFall’s definitive work on the indissolubility of the original marriage covenant, “Biblical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage” is nearly 600 pages in length. A link to one of his shorter pieces is provided here.
7 Times Around the Jericho Wall | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce!
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