by Standerinfamilycourt

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
– 2 Timothy 4:3-4

Who is Shane Willard?
There is not much about this itinerant evangelist in the Christian press or other public sources, so we rely mostly on what he says about himself on his website,  quoted verbatim here, that he “has been in full-time ministry for 20 years. He began working in full-time ministry as a youth pastor of a small church. Since that time, Shane has held multiple pastoral positions at various sized churches. Shane now ministers full time in America and internationally, particularly in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. With degrees in both clinical psychology and theology, Shane is known for being an informative, brilliant and humorous communicator.  Shane is mentored by a pastor with rabbinical training, and teaches the context of the Scriptures from a Hebraic perspective. This perspective helps people to see God’s Word in a completely new way and leads them into a more intimate relationship with the Messiah, Jesus Christ.”

 It appears from the flavor of his sermon content that this (unnamed) rabbinical “mentor” of Willard’s might possibly be a practitioner of kabbalah, the mystical Jewish-rooted gnostic heresy.   Regardless of whatever else Shane Willard is, it is quite clear that he is an unabashed humanist, which shouldn’t be at all surprising to find in a trained and formerly-practicing clinical psychologist.   It should also be noted that Shane Willard appears to be in a covenant marriage, and is apparently not motivated by being in an adulterous remarriage, despite his advocacy of it for others.

“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in.   Aim at earth and you will get neither.”    –  C.S. Lewis

Willard’s current ministry seems to be primarily to evangelical churches in Australia and New Zealand, a few of which are Word of Faith churches.   The Facebook page for Kabbalah Centre Australia has over 4,000 followers.

As Willard’s video message unfolds, it is also quite clear that his claims of expertise in the Greek texts are false, despite his assertion of a “theology degree” (no further elaboration offered or found to be researchable).

 

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;  until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.   As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;  but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
– Ephesians 4:11-14

The first kabbalist whiff of windy doctrine comes about 5 minutes in, when the straightforward, hell-linked warning of Christ, that “marrying” the estranged spouse of another living person is ongoing adultery, is hijacked by gnostic application of the Hebrew concept of (H:259) echad (אָחד),  most likely in order to simply distract from the true narrative, and substitute a more humanistically-palatable one that is not, in fact, hermeneutically supportable.   This is also the first clue that Willard-the-theologian is not doing his own scholarly work before accepting carte-blanche the input of his “rabbinic mentor”.   Notice throughout the video the glaring lack of hermeneutical rigor (which this blog post will be filling in, as appropriate).

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. “  –  Deuteronomy 6:4-5

Even without a “theology degree”, we are all called to be Bereans, including those of us in Willard’s audience.

Willard asserts:  “The first big idea (that you can’t read this passage without knowing) is…The concept of ‘echad’ in the ancient Jewish world was ‘unity within diversity’.   To have like (sic) unity is one thing, like if something is one solution. but to have diverse elements coming together…that is unity.  That is echad….The Wallabys played as one team tonight – that’s echad….Deuteronomy 6:4 was called the ‘shema’…the idea is that this God is this mysterious mixture of unity within diversity.   He’s diverse yet He’s ‘one’ …And the concept is that all of us, all of creation is made in the image of God.  Since God is ‘echad’ and we are made in the image of God, then we are ‘echad’.   We are unity in diversity…The world itself is ‘echad’.   Billions and billions of different parts, and if only one gets out of alignment, it affects the whole.  If the ocean temperatures change too drastically, it creates incredible weather phenomenon way far away…it’s almost like the whole world has to be in someone else’s hands…that is ‘echad’…The idea is this: if God is ‘echad’, and we are made in the image of God, then ‘echad’ is the force that holds us all together.   The concept is that you cannot come against the very force that holds the universe together and not expect to be torn apart yourself…so you can’t enter into things like gossip and slander and murder and hatred and judgment and calling someone a fool, and adultery and divorce.   All of these things sabotage ‘echad’…But the overarching command…you can summarize the entire chapter 5 by saying this: order your life in cooperation with unity, and avoid things things in your life the sabotage unity, because wherever you enter into engaging in the sabotaging of unity you are simply going to tear yourself apart because ‘echad’ is the force that holds the universe together, you are a part of the universe, if you enter into an act that sabotages the force that holds the universe together, you yourself will be torn apart because you are not the exception to the rule…”

Sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it?   The problem is the consistency of application, given where Mr. Willard has this sermon going in the next several minutes, now that it has actually launched from a false opening premise.    As the earlier link to authentic Hebrew scholar Jacob Prasch describes, kabbalah always mixes partial truth with a heretical vector leading away from Christ.    Humans holding the universe together?   We thought Jesus had that role.   We were unaware, from scripture at least, that He shared this role with any human agents.

FACT CHECK:  No part of Deuteronomy 6 refers to the horizontal relationship between humans.   Furthermore, though the context of a few Old Testament passages will support the “unity” idea, the vast majority of the nearly 1,000 references to “echad” refer simply to the number, one, as most arguably it does in Deuteronomy 6:4.
The context of that entire chapter relates only to the vertical relationship between a human and their Sovereign God.   Kabbalah, however, posits that God has some sort of dependency on how humans “relate” to each other (temporally, of course), on which the fate of the universe “depends”.    Compare to how Jesus later adds the vertical relationship in the Matthew 22 exchange with the rich young ruler.   Jesus does so, however, without denigrating God’s absolute sovereignty in any way.     To elevate the horizontal relationship above the vertical one, in the way Willard suggests, is itself a form of idolatry.   Unrepented idolators have no inheritance in the kingdom of God, and will be thrown into the lake of fire.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”   And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’   This is the great and foremost commandment.  The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’   On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”  –   Matthew 22:36-40

Deuteronomy 6 is a reference, in fact, to the first four of the ten commandments:  to have no other Gods before Him;  to make no image that a man will worship in place of Him;  not to misuse His holy name to attribute it to a vain act; and to honor the Lord by observing the Sabbath.     Love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

The major commentators (Ellicotts, Bensons, Matthew Henry, Pulpit Commentary, etc.) appear unanimous that the only “oneness” supported by the context of Deuteronomy 6 supports the Trinity, but reflects that God is not many competing gods, instead He is the only true God, sovereign over all created things.   He does not need the participation of any of those created things to achieve this.  Using the separate fact that mankind is indeed made in His image, wrongly inserted into this context, creates a triangulation that subtly opens the door to the conflicting kabbalistic doctrine.   Once the “shema” is hijacked in this way,  kidnapping the sermon on the mount for temporally-focused,  humanistic distortion purposes becomes a cake-walk, as we shall soon see.

So, if Deuteronomy 6:5 only alludes to the first four commandments, what about the final six commandments?    In fact, those are the “horizontal” commandments governing how humans are to relate to each other.   Hence, the sermon on the mount is not really an “echad” or a “unity” concept, but one of “do unto others (with an eternal, not only a temporal perspective) as you would have others do unto you.”   In other words, it is the Golden Rule.   The unity ultimately results from obeying the Golden Rule, but if the focus is eternal rather than merely temporal, a little “disunity” is going to be unavoidable in arriving there, given the sin nature that is in all of us.

Indeed, Willard’s “rabbinic mentor” might have more accurately advised him that the Wallabys actually played that night with (H:251) achdut אָח (“as brothers”  Ps. 133:1; – אחדות) ., the more common Hebrew term for “unity”.   

The next “big idea” Willard introduces, with reference to the sermon on the mount, is that Jesus wasn’t really referring to the place of eternal punishment, torment and separation from God when He spoke of hell in Matthew 5:29-30.   He was merely speaking of the rubbish heap outside the city which can be likened to sabotaging the “echad” unity that we’re all universally “responsible” for.   He argues at about 11 minutes in that Jesus didn’t use the Greek word “hades“, but rather “gehenna“.

Says Willard:  “The word He used for ‘hell’ here is ‘gehenna’.   Gehenna, not ‘hades’.   This was not the hell after the grave.   This was not, ‘Hey, take care of this, or I might torture you forever and ever’.  Um, no….This was the town garbage dump.   They called gehenna the place where the fire does not die and there’s weeping and gnashing of teeth.   The reason is because this was the town garbage dump and they had to keep the fire going all the time in order to keep the smell of the garbage out of the city.  It was also the place where they buried people who couldn’t afford a tomb, so there was always families standing there weeping over their lost loved ones.   It was also the place where stray animals would scavenge for food, so all the time in gehenna you would hear barking and biting and all this stuff from the stray animals… so when Jesus said, ‘Hey, beware of these things lest you get your whole self thrown into gehenna’, essentially what He’s saying is, ‘if you start rationalizing this kind of behavior, before you know it, your whole life will be on the garbage heap.’ “

While that is likely to be quite true in a temporal sense, Willard offers no support for his notion that there isn’t also an eternal consequence (“um, no”) for “sabotaging ‘echad‘ “.   He references Matthew 18:9, the verse where Jesus repeats the warning that He gave in Matthew 5 to take drastic action as necessary to avoid hell.

This argument of Willard’s that “gehenna” doesn’t literally refer to hell is easily discredited by noting the other scriptures where Jesus referred to hell, including Matthew 10:28, Matthew 23:15, Mark 9:43, 45 and 47, and Luke 12:5.    The other issue is that “sheol” is a Hebrew term, and while it’s possible there is an original Hebrew text of the gospel of Matthew still existing somewhere in the world that was translated into Greek after Matthew wrote it in Hebrew, most biblical scholars say this is unlikely.     Even so, this only deals with the language in which Matthew recorded what he witnessed from Jesus, but we still don’t know conclusively whether Jesus was actually speaking to His Jewish audience in Hebrew or Aramaic.    Hence, Willard’s expectation that the “real hell” be referred to in biblical text as “sheol” or “hades” seems ignorant, and even worse, seems to reflect an actual ignorance of those texts.   The clear context in the overwhelming majority of the scriptures noted above is clearly the place of eternal punishment, not merely the symbolic “garbage dump”.

The scriptures where “hades” was actually used reflects that the apostles Luke and John were more likely to use that term, while Matthew and Mark most often used “gehenna”.   The distinction between them is of no material consequence.     It should  be further noted that Luke, in chapter 16, used “hades” in linking one who dies in the sinful ongoing state of remarriage adultery to hell (Luke 16:18-31), in precisely the same context that Matthew earlier linked it to “gehenna” (Matthew 5:27-32) – namely, dying while “married” to the God-joined spouse of another living person.   Willard’s theory also ignores much that Paul and the writer of Hebrews had to say on the topic (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Hebrews 13:4) in reference to not inheriting the kingdom of God.   It’s easy to recommend adulterous remarriage to people if you’re not in that situation yourself, and you don’t believe it will cost others their eternal souls, even though the bible makes that quite clear in numerous passages.    This points up one of the key reasons why humanism is never compatible with following Christ:  it is devoid of any concern whatsoever for eternal souls.

But (ironically) jump back and listen to what Willard says at 9:27….
“…later in the sermon on the mount, He goes on to say, retaliation and revenge and these sorts of things….”     Willard stops short of citing the refusal to forgive, which is also mentioned in the sermon on the mount, as well as Matthew 18:23-35, where Jesus makes it clear that if we refuse to forgive anyone’s sin against us, our sins will not be forgiven.    What is marrying someone else while our covenant spouse still lives, if it is not retaliation, revenge and refusing to forgive?    (Apparently it’s only “sabotaging echad” and landing one’s life on the garbage heap — but wait, there’s more, since that’s not the picture Willard starts to paint a bit later in his message about remarriage).

By now, everyone is wondering how a remarriage apologist can be almost 15 minutes into an hour-long sermon and not yet done the customary butchering of the so-called “exception clause”.      Not to worry, this is Willard’s third “big concept” from the sermon on the mount, and he does it with an unusual and expansive flair.
(Never mind that verse 5:32 is not even about a guilty partner, nor is the actual context about an “innocent” person who initiates a “divorce” remarrying, per se.   It’s about the shared guilt of putting an innocent wife in a potential hellbound remarriage situation by divorcing her.)

Undaunted, however, Willard declares….“marital unfaithfulness; the word in Greek there is porneia…not moicheia.   Sometimes it gets translated ‘adultery’ …that is not the Greek translation of what Jesus was saying here.   The word they translate is ‘porneia’ which essentially was a broader term around ‘out of controlness’ ….the root word, porneia, which is where we get the word pornography from, is any time you use someone else’s skin as an object….Let me put it this way, it’s any time you treat your wife as a piece of property instead of a person filled with the dignity of God.   This starts to bring some things into play.   I’ve had many, many counseling situations because I was a counselor for years, and, um, one in particular, the man was horribly addicted to pornography.   And the wife just could not take it one more day, and can you blame her? ”  

  SIFC :  No I cannot blame her.  But since Matthew 5:32 is neither about pornography nor about disgusted wives (who had no Mosaic provision to initiate divorce in any event – perhaps Willard’s “rabbinic mentor” neglected to fill him in on that),  the passage to look to for guidance in that situation is 1 Corinthians 7:11.

“….and his big argument, instead of being repentant for this addiction that was destroying his family was, ‘she can’t leave me, because I’m not cheating’…when actually the word Jesus used was ‘porn’, so the idea was, you can’t make it too closed-off.   It’s not adultery, it’s marital unfaithfulness.   Which raises all kinds of questions about how marital unfaithfulness would have been taken in the 1st century….so, it can all be summarized in this statement:  don’t.sabotage.echad.”

  SIFC :   In what way, sir?   Indulging in an addiction….or taking our own revenge against the addict?   Did you not say that both things were “sabotaging echad” ?    Does that mean that there are offsetting (kabbalist) penalties, then?

In Daniel R. Jennings’ book,  Except for Fornication, the scholarly author points out through photocopies, beginning on page 63,  that all of the concordances and bible dictionaries that were written prior to the 20th century translated the Greek word “porneia” narrowly as either “whoredom”, “unchastity” or “fornication”, consistent with the root meaning of “porne“ which actually meant “to sell off“.    Not one of them translated “porneia” broadly as “marital unfaithfulness”.   That was done by a liberal 20th century translation committee run by humanists.   Even the Latin term, “fornication” comes from the word “fornix” which were the Roman colonnade columns under which prostitutes carried on their trade.

The Received Texts (Antioch manuscripts) do not record Matthew 5:32 merely showing an act of unchastity / whoredom, but a report of an act of unchastity / whoredom:

[ “…gunaika  autou parektos logou porneias….”]

This alone makes the context unable to support  a translation of porneia that would be broad enough to encompass all contemporary forms of “marital unfaithfulness”.    Such a “report” (logou) specifically relates to the betrothal period up to the wedding night when such unchastity would be discovered.     Taken with the earlier context problem mentioned with regard to Matthew 5:32,  i.e., that the passage is not even addressing any actually “guilty” wives, nor any “right” on the part of their dismissing husbands to remarry, Willard’s claims about broad “marital unfaithfulness” (at least based on this passage) are completely baseless.    Willard later refers to post-marital “breaches of the ketubah”, the Hebrew betrothal contract, so he shows that he is not completely ignorant of the kiddushin custom, but doesn’t show himself to be thoroughly conversant on it, either, as we shall later see.

By now, everyone is no doubt also wondering where the customary exploitation of the red-herring dispute between Hillel and Shammai comes into Willard’s message.     In due course, he sashays over to Matthew 19 as well for that obligatory ritual.    However,  “standerinfamilycourt” would like to make the observation that at no point in this message is the inseverable one-flesh metaphysical reality, described by Jesus in Matthew 19:5-6 and Matthew 19:8, ever discussed.     Evidently, it’s of extreme urgency for we created beings to “help” God hold the whole universe together, but of little importance to cleave to the God-joined one-flesh entity He created with His own hand between us and the spouse of our youth,  or to honor the exclusive, unconditional covenant to which He is a party with that one-flesh entity, which His word says twice that only death can dissolve.

At 23 minutes in, Willard does the traditional exploitation of the so-called “exception clause” and the substituted concept of “marital unfaithfulness”.    He then claims that Jesus makes an “odd” statement:  “and if any person marries a divorced woman, they cause her to commit adultery.”     What’s so “odd” about that Mr. Willard?   He doesn’t answer that question, but instead launches into the classic tactic of someone who is on very shaky biblical and moral ground in their defense of serial polygamy – ad hominem.    Declares Mr. Willard:  “now, that…statement…unfortunately, has been wielded in a highly inappropriate way like a sword to make people feel guilty.   What do you say to a twenty-five year old girl that has went (sic) through the horror of divorce and she really desperately in her heart wants a family of her own?   She dumbly got married at seventeen.  He was gone by twenty, and now she’s ‘doomed forever’ – why?  Because ‘Jesus’ said so.   And who is telling her that?  People who follow Jesus and are supposed to be spreading LOOOVE throughout the WOORLD…”

  SIFC :  What about emotional arguments that are wielded like a sword, sir, simply because you don’t have a biblical leg to stand on, and want to distract from that obvious fact in order to prop up your bald-faced humanism?    We say to this unfortunate girl exactly what the second of the two most authoritative “sword-wielders” who ever lived have already told her in no uncertain terms:

A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord….but if she does leave, she must remain unmarried, or else be reconciled to her husband….

Meanwhile, to you, Mr. Willard, we say that your concept of “love” is pretty distorted if it doesn’t take into account the poor girl’s eternity, and, that of her prodigal spouse who just might repent.    Take up your argument with Jesus Christ!    Perhaps a little “guilt-riddenness” and “shame-riddenness” will eventually keep this woman and her progeny out of hell if she takes your advice and disobeys the clear word of God not to enter into a subsequent union that both Jesus and Paul repeatedly called adulterous.  (Oh, that’s right, obedience will only keep her out of the smoldering garbage heap that exists only in this life; we sword-wielding non-kabbalists forgot momentarily!)

But, here it comes…Willard goes on to claim that “well-meaning Christians don’t have first hand knowledge of the all-important debate that was going on in the 1st century between Hillel and Shammai…. to read this…” (e.g., Jesus’ very clear, thrice-repeated statement that  everyone who marries one who has been put away enters into an ongoing state of adultery) “…without understanding that [pacing frantically across the platform] will lead well-meaning Christians, I’m sure, to wield [accompanying flourish of an arm-gesture] the sword of the Lord in a highly inappropriate way.”

Perhaps, sir, we “well-meaning Christians” have bothered to read the entire Matthew 19 passage, and from its full context while comparing with numerous other passages where Jesus said the same thing (whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery),  and where He directly linked remarriage adultery with going to hell.   Perhaps from doing so, we know pretty conclusively that based on Matthew 19:6 and 8 and 12, He was soundly disagreeing with both Hillel and Shammai.    Perhaps the only “sword” anybody rightly wields is the same one Jesus and Paul already wielded, along with all of their disciples for the next 400 years to follow.    Perhaps if Jesus wanted His law to vary by the endless humanistic “complexities” and “stories”, there would be an “exception clause” in Luke and Mark, and a considerably longer one in Matthew.

“What if there was infidelity and it just kept happening? “

  SIFC :  1 Cor. 7:11

“What if there was abussssse? ” (hisses Willard) “What if…he wrapped the phone cord….around her neccccck…because she bought the wrong kind of minttssss?”  (hisses Willard)

  SIFC :  1 Cor. 7:11, and the criminal justice system (assuming she survives all that, if she’s quick-thinking maybe she can take a selfie as evidence)

It gets more disrespectful of the word of God from there, so those interested can join the video at 26 minutes, and we’ll spare the rest of the social justice tirade.   “What if, what if, what if…”    What if, on that day, the only thing Jesus is interested in hearing about any of it is…“Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”  (Luke 6:46)

At 29 minutes, Willard makes a very interesting claim.   He says that under Mosaic law, a man had to go to the rabbi to secure a bill-of-divorcement (a “get”) with which to dismiss his wife.    Most scholars talk about early history where the husband simply said “I divorce you” and put  a bill-of-divorcement (ha git)  in the repudiated wife’s hands that protected her from stoning should she remarry.    If there was an express requirement to go to a rabbi for this, issuing from Moses, he was sufficiently detailed about such matters that most likely he would have so specified in Deuteronomy.    We all can plainly see that Moses did not.  It is possible that the rabbinic tradition might have embellished this point, as it did on many other things in the time between Moses and Christ, but outside of that undocumented possibility there is really no backing for Willard’s claim that in biblical times, rabbis issued the “gets”.   There is some documentation for the custom of using of special scribes to prepare the “gets” under the dictation of the husband, but not rabbis.

Several minutes later(42:50), Willard makes an even more preposterous claim that Jesus, in His rabbinical role, was in the business of approving and dispensing bills-of-divorcement, ’cause that’s what rabbis do.      That’s right, He who said “Moses allowed….but from the beginning it was not ever this way”, and “Therefore what GOD has joined, let no human put asunder” was allegedly in the business of signing the hard-hearted papers to put asunder.    “Standerinfamilycourt” can think of few more blasphemous statements about Jesus than to liken Him to a “family court” judge!

Willard’s pattern of triangulation should be getting pretty obvious at this point, from Matthew 5, which does not quite make the point he hoped to make (since its context is not about anybody’s “right” to remarry at all, actually) to Matthew 19, which relies on abuse of Deuteronomy 24 to force a point that Matthew 19, in its own proper context, does not even make.    Triangulation. also, from the unsupported suggestion that rabbis issued “gets” for use by husbands, to the criminally-insane claim that Jesus did so, and finally to the claim that wives could also go to the rabbi for her “get” (41:00) if the husband didn’t materially provide for her according to the terms of the betrothal contract…insisting (in Instone-Brewer fashion) that this, too, constituted “marital unfaithfulness” (36:00).

But, what to do with that messy assertion of Jesus that (according to Willard) “doesn’t make sense”, that everyone who marries a divorced person enters into an ongoing state of adultery?    Simple, you claim with a straight face (32:00) that it’s only referring to the dismissed woman in Deuteronomy 24 whom Moses said couldn’t be taken again as a wife by her original husband.   That’s the divorced woman a guy (more precisely, her God-joined one-flesh) can’t marry without committing adultery.   Problem solved.   That is, if you completely ignore Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:11-12.   Which Willard indeed did

By this point in Willard’s message, all pretense at hermeneutics is dispensed with, and the floodgates of humanism swing wide open.   Next we’re scolded: “The dignity of the person takes precedence over your moral rightness.”     Several aggrieved parties in his Australian audience were comforted who have allegedly “eaten the judgment of the church” just for wanting to live as though this life is all there is.   But it’s time to get back to “breaking echad” and the help that God needs from us to hold the universe together….

Careful to ensure that no marriage passage goes undistorted, we are informed at 47:50 concerning Malachi 2:13,  where we learn: “Rabbis taught that divorce ‘floods the altar with  tears’ “

Come again?   This is another thing you do: you cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and with groaning, because He no longer regards the offering or accepts it with favor from your hand. Yet you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

(My bible seems to say it’s the divorced-and-adulterously-re-wed priest flooding the altar with tears because he’s found out he can’t keep both his legalized adulteress and fellowship with his God.)  

This sermon on the sermon on the mount starts to wrap up at 48:50  where, predictably, we’re reminded (with Isaiah 50:1 and Jeremiah 3:8 as his witness):  “You worship and you serve a ‘divorced God.  God is divorced.  In the book of Exodus, He married Israel.  It was a marriage proposal.”      Indeed, it was a marriage proposal, and God’s bride Israel was handed a ketubah, in the form of the Ten Commandments. That made the arrangement a betrothal, not a consummated wedding.    The future wedding is described in Revelation 19.   God is “divorced” at the moment from a betrothed bride who became defiled, not a consummated one.    Fortunately, even Moses cannot prohibit the Almighty from taking her back to Himself after she is purified.  Misuse by remarriage apologists of the spiritual adultery analogy God was making through the two prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, is addressed in this earlier post.  

Back to Malachi 2:  “Malachi 2:16 is a scripture that gets quoted so horribly… [we’d have to concur, since it’s typically applied to the opposite parties versus what the context specifies ] … “I hate divorce says the Lord God of Israel.  Maybe He hates divorce because he was going through one…maybe…”

Or maybe what He hates is “shalach” — the  immoral abandonment, “putting away”, of an inseverable one-flesh union His hand personally joined, for the illicit purpose of pursuing a legalized adulterous relationship that will never be anything but a legalized adulterous relationship, according to the word of God…maybe.    Maybe He hates the eternal consequences of dying in that unrepentant state…maybe.   Maybe it’s altogether blasphemous to suggest that God would be going through that kind of a “divorce”.    In fact, when Malachi delivered that word, God was actually trying to put the nation of Israel back together, decades after the prophesies of both Jeremiah and Isaiah, following the exilic chastisement that was nearing its completion by Malachi’s time.
I wish we were finished rebutting Willard’s creativity, on that note, but alas….

“Somebody asked me once in a situation like this, ‘Shane what do you think about divorced and remarried preachers?’   And it was obvious in her tone…she didn’t like ’em.  To which I said, ‘well, before you go disqualifying people from your stage, you might want to consider that that attitude disqualifies God Himself, because He’s divorced…and He remarried the Gentiles.”

Really?

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?   “Lord, they have killed Your prophets, they have torn down Your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.”  But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” … But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree,  do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you…. And they also, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.  For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?  –  Romans 11:1-4, 17-18, 24

An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife….. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?) – 1 Timothy 3:2, 4-5

  SIFC:  It certainly seems safe at this point to rule out the Apostle Paul as Mr. Willard’s undisclosed “rabbinic mentor”,  does it not?

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