| Accessories By Manufacturer | |
|
|
Email Newsletter
Get info on Sales, Events, New Products, and More!
|
|
|
|
|
| Divorce and Remarriage: Four Christian Views | 
 enlarge | Creators: J. Carl Laney, William Heth, Thomas Edgar, Larry Richards, H. Wayne House
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Category: Book
List Price: $20.00
Buy Used: $1.78
You Save: $18.22 (91%)
New (26) Used (29) from $1.78
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 156787
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 267
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0830812830
Dewey Decimal Number: 241.63
EAN: 9780830812837
ASIN: 0830812830
Publication Date: April 1990
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Some wear on book from reading, some spine creases, wear on binding and pages, we guarantee all purchases and ship all items via USPS mail.
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Editor H. Wayne House brings together four contributors to debate varying Christian views on divorce and remarriage.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Interesting to note: June 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Good book. It's interesting to note that Heth has actually reversed his position to actually allow for re-marriage under select circumstances. see three views on divorce and remarriage.
so, the second author would by and large disagree with most of his own essay in this book.
Explains Different Views Well April 29, 2008
This book explains four major views of divorce and remarriage within a narrow stream of evangelicalism. Not only are the four views explained, but the authors of opposing viewpoints are allowed to reply and respond. This book will help Christian leaders, particularly those serving as volunteer leaders, determine their position on these issues.
 The Fourth Protestant View November 16, 2007
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
There should have been FIVE Protestant views. Cf. the Westminster Confession of Faith (http://opc.org/wcf.html), Chapter 24 "Of Marriage and Divorce", Paragraph 6:
"Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage: yet, nothing but adultery, or such willful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church, or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage: wherein, a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills, and discretion, in their own case."
The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) has been the confessional standard of the Presbyterian branch of the Christian family for 360 years since its composition in Westminster Abbey in London in 1646. While to be sure many Presbyterians pay it mere lip service, justifying false gospels and homosexual "marriage", it was the creed of many of our founding fathers in our own Revolutionary War. Many British called the Revolution the "Presbyterian War" because of the heavy Presbyterian influence behind it. Much more important, Presbyterians have spread the Gospel throughout the world.
This time-honored view permitting remarriage if a spouse commits adultery or departs as an unbeliever, is conspicuous by the book's absence. Since imo it is the right position, it does not surprise me that each author can critique the other three, because all four are simply wrong.
Why wasn't the Westminster view included? It's like writing a survey of the OT prophets without ever mentioning Isaiah. Or Elijah.
I see several possibilities for the omission:
1) The authors didn't know the WCF position, which shows inexcusable ignorance;
2) They figured any WCF man could take the other positions to the woodshed, while defending his own position with an unassailable authority;
3) They could find no WCF man willing to associate himself with the book. What star major league ball player plays in the minors?
I warn you, brothers: "He who sows discord among brethren is an abomination unto the Lord" (Pro. 6:16, 19).
I advise you to disengage from your faulty exegesis that causes some to delete, or evade, the "exception clause" (Mt. 5:32, 19:9) from your Bibles. I advise you also to read and understand the clear 1 Cor. 7:15 permission to remarry when an unbelieving spouse leaves the marriage for he is "not bound". Especially if the unbeliever remarries.
Not bound to what? What else but the marriage? What part of "not bound" is there not to understand?
Otherwise, what will you say to a woman whose husband walks out on her and marries someone else? "If only you'd lived under the Law you could remarry (Dt. 24:1-4), but because you are so unfortunate as to live under a "better covenant founded on better promises" (Heb. 8:6) you may not"?
Or if her husband had committed adultery: "If only we were under Moses, we'd put him to death (Lev. 20:10, Jn. 8:5), but under this same "better covenant", the oaf is still alive so you may not remarry"?
I have no doubt some of you are causing people to fall away from the Christian faith. I once met a man living in a Baptist rescue mission. He had his story to tell - they all do - a sad story of sinning and being sinned against, that brings so many physically healthy but emotionally shattered adults to the point where they cannot take care of themselves, and they are isolated from family and friends who can or will help them.
I still remember twenty years later the seething indignation with which he laid into those who insisted he could not remarry (I have greatly sanitized his words):
"John, what do they expect me to do? Play with myself every night?!"
Brothers, here is indeed a little one who, as far as I can tell, has fallen away through incompetent pastoring. Only eternity will show how many like him there will be. One of the "doctrines of demons" that Paul warned would cause some to depart from the faith was the prohibition to marry (1 Tim. 4:1f.). I doubt the Holy Spirit had only Catholic celibate clergy in mind.
Would that those who led that man astray tied a millstone around their necks...
Please bear with my exhortation. I want you to stop giving stones to people who come to you for bread, or for your words to impart death, not life. I prefer Christ not to say to you:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tie heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, and lift not a finger to move them (Mt. 23:4, 13).
It is precious little compensation if you help your people bear burdens that were never commanded in the first place. God removed the burden from his people's shoulders in Egypt (Ps. 81:6), and Christ freed us from the even greater tyranny of sin. He expects you, as teachers, to remove burdens, not load strange, unscriptural ones on the backs of his people which were unheard of when they were under the Law - and which you are not bearing yourselves.
Like you, I can cite "one size fits all" proof-texts: "Because of the fornications, let each man have his own wife, and each woman her own husband" (1 Cor. 7:2). Did Paul not say "each man...each woman"? Or do divorced persons lose their gender along with their marriage rights?
Instead, I will only say it is pastoral recklessness to forbid a divorced person, whose body is "wired for sex", to remarry, thereby denying him the Apostle's general remedy for obeying the command he made a few verses prior:
"Flee fornication" (6:18).
John
Very Hard to Read, But Potentially Useful April 17, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
As a man with multiple college degrees in difficult areas and one not generally scared of an obscure or even obtuse volume, I must admit that this little book had me utterly cowed on the first reading. It is divided into four sections on each of four views of divorce and/or remarriage, and when it is permissible for the diligent Christian.
The first two sections (supporting the views that all divorce is prohibited to the Believer and that divorce may be allowed but remarriage never is) were very hard to follow. Upon the third reading, it became quite clear where the two contributors to this collaborative work were going and how they intended to get there, but the exegesis used to support the path for their respective journeys was just a little too hard for me to understand. As a non-expert in the matter of biblical languages, that is not great cause for surprise, since many key points hinge upon fine nuances of Greek or in some cases, upon the juxtaposition of Greek passages from the Septuagint with the corresponding Hebrew from the Masoretic texts. More suprising is that in a couple of instances, my biblical Greek instructor (who strongly advocates the second view) could not follow the subtleties of these arguments either, nor could others who have taught or tutored Greek.
The third section (which is closer to my own view) was a lot more lucid than the first, but contained no clinching arguments, and if anything left me less warm to this point of view after I finished the chapter than before I had started.
The fourth section (which if I had to pick only one view for all situations is the view I most closely hold to, at least when put into practice with caution, restraint, and face-to-face accountability with someone well-equipped to play "devil's advocate") was also pretty lucid, but the arguments were in places pretty superficial and not able to stand the scrutiny to which they were subjected by the other three writers (or even then scrutinies of me - a rather sympathetic reader).
Each writer had space to comment on the main points of the other three. This is often helpful in volumes such as these, but in this case, most of the "rebuttal" arguments were spent on merely restating the writers own view, rather than directly engaging the other writers or trying to directly rebut their facts, logic, or conclusions.
I would recommend this book to a scholar who has a strong stomach (while the tone of the rhetoric is pleasant, cordial, and professional, its content is intellectually frustrating in places), a strong interest in the subject matter, and a competant if not strong knowledge of Koine and LXX Greek and basic Hebrew. Others would be better served by other volumes.
The one aspect of this book that was helpful to me and which I think would be helpful to any pastor or counsellor working with broken or estranged marriages and families is the little exercise that each writer is required to address at the end of their dissertaion as an appendix. The exercise presents each writer with a hypothetical scenario (I would imagine this scenario to be a composite that the editor put together from real people he had actually counselled) of a person faced with an imminent divorce and asks them to provide counsel in written form. This makes clear how each author applies their scholarship in a plausible scenario and shows what it may mean to real people whom Christ loves.
I give the book 3 stars, but with the caution that it could be a 5-star to some readers and a pure loser to others.
An exegetical wrestling match - not for the faint of heart January 7, 2006
33 out of 35 found this review helpful
The Rev. Fr. Johann W. Vanderbijl III
My mother divorced her first husband because he beat her repeatedly and severely. (He evidently did the same thing to his second wife, allegedly attempting to strangle her in front of my older half-brother.) She was excommunicated by the Church of England for doing so, an act that caused her to lose her faith for a long period of time. Nonetheless, she did get remarried to my father and I am the second of their two children. All this to say that I must admit that I approach any book on divorce and remarriage with a certain presupposition firmly in place - just like the four different writers. Perhaps it is best to be up front about the myth of total objectivity and at least be honest with regard to one's particular slant. Having said that, I agree with all of the writers that the Scriptures must be allowed to speak for themselves and in trying to find a solution to this very emotional and difficult subject one must strive to be as objective as possible, however hard that may be.
Some of the basic principles of biblical interpretation that I was taught at seminary involve:
1) a determination to use the whole of God's revelation (and to avoid like the plague the temptation to use only texts that support your particular view or, worse, to use one part of Scripture to contradict another - there are many forms of this, one of which is to assign the offending portion to a later redactor or editor and another is to repeat ad nauseum that this is the ONLY place that the "exception" is to be found, giving the impression that the "exception" may be explained away in one or other fashion) in an attempt to present a studied and balanced conclusion of all the biblical data (Edgar makes an excellent case in his reply to Laney's chapter on page 62: "Any adequate analysis of Scripture on this subject must be based on all the passages. All the passages must be allowed to speak and must speak in harmony with all the others. To interpret some as if the others did not exist, and to then use the resulting interpretation as the basis to deny the explicit statements (exceptions) of those not originally taken into consideration is not really basing one's view on Scripture. It is instead a selection of passages which, taken by themselves, seem to fit the interpreter's presuppositions and then using these to get rid of those passages containing specific statements contrary to the interpreter's presuppositions.");
2) a determination to interpret a passage within the larger and more immediate context within it's own historical sitz-im-leben;
3) a determination to prefer the most obvious interpretation rather than to perform amazing feats of mental and exegetical gymnastics to prove that some obscure meaning at the far end of the semantic range of the word in question is really what the author meant to say.
and 4) a determination not to base one's argument on silence. In other words, the fact that text does not say anything about a specific subject (either affirming or denying) does not mean that it is open season for interpreters to shoot down another's reluctance to be dogmatic. Deuteronomy 29:29 says: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." That which is revealed is sufficient for us to live godly lives...speculating on that which has not been revealed is moving into areas where we may wander if we wish, but only with extreme caution.
Another thing to avoid is emotionalism. Just because my mother was divorced and remarried doesn't make it biblical. So it unhelpful to ask questions like: "Does God expect the battered wife to remain, waiting helplessly for the next outburst of fury? Does God expect the victim of constant verbal abuse from a spouse who can only prop him or herself up by cutting down the partner, to continue being diminished and demeaned?" (cf. p. 69) Questions such as these tend to cloud the issue and bring in more confusion than clarity. In short, we are to be as honest as possible and to avoid any form of deceit no matter how well meaning our intentions may seem to be.
Having said this, how do the four different writers (J. Carl Laney: No Divorce and No Remarriage; William Heth: Divorce, but no Remarriage; Thomas R. Edgar: Divorce and Remarriage for Adultery or Desertion; Larry Richards: Divorce and Remarriage under a Variety of Circumstances) handle the biblical text in their various attempts to arrive at their respective conclusions? They all seem to agree that God's original intension for Man was for marriage to be a permanent bond between one man and one woman (Genesis 2:20-25). It is from the Fall on that their views on the indissolubility of marriage, impropriety in marriage (mixed marriages, adultery, abuse, desertion, and so on), divorce and remarriage go in different directions. St. Matthew 5:31-32 and 19:3-11 (the two times an exception is made with regard to ideal permanence of marriage) seem to be the field most fought over. Laney seems to put a lot of stock in the fact that the New Testament authors had different audiences...yet, when all the biblical passages (which really have only one Author) are used harmoniously and as complementing each other, this argument is hardly worth the paper it is written on. The absence of the exception clause in Sts. Mark and Luke is no different to the absence of the birth narrative in St. John...or to the absence of the Magi in all the Gospels save St. Matthew. Laney's argument (cf. especially his comments on page 199) seems to support a situational type of ethic in which the audience influenced the moral instruction written to them by the Apostles.
Each writer also references Deuteronomy 24 and they apparently agree that the law seems to be regulating the present practice of divorce. The fact that Jesus actually says as much in St. Matthew 19 is not disputed. It is the exception clause that seems to be the real stickler.
The comparing of Ezra 9 and 10 and 1 Corinthians 7 also seemed to raise problems as the writers struggled to deal with the historical situation leading up the act of "putting away".
What is interesting (if not bewildering, especially for the lay reader!) is the way they explore the meaning and semantic range of certain words such as "cleave", "put away", "not bound" and "porneia". Clearly their language skills are pitted towards their own interpretations!
Another particular beef of mine is how writers tend to use the Early Church Fathers or the Reformers to back up their interpretations. They either seem to indicate that there was perfect unity and agreement amongst these our esteemed forerunners or they write them off completely as having fallen into error if they do not agree with them or they use only one part of their interpretation while ignoring the other side of the same coin. Laney is a good example of this last tendency. On page 38 he writes: "While the church fathers held that divorce was permitted for adultery...they did not interpret the exception clause to allow for remarriage. This interpretation of the divorce texts remained the standard view of the church in the West until the sixteenth century when Erasmus suggested that the "innocent" spouse had the right not only to divorce, but also to contract a new marriage." In other words, it seems Laney is using the lack of teaching on the "exception clause" in the Early Church to support his view against remarriage. But he shoots himself in the foot when he adds: It is significant that those who had the closest contact with the language and culture of the New Testament did not regard the exception to apply to remarriage." Thus his own argument can be used against his view on divorce.
Traditions and commentators throughout the Ages are marvellous aids that help us in our search for proper biblical understanding and application, but they are only aids and should never be used (or abused) as evidence against the Scriptures themselves. Edgar speaks to this on page 136: "I do not agree that quotation of other's opinions is adequate basis for argument. They must be proven by exegetical arguments...Theology can only arise from an exegesis and harmonizing of all the passages on a given subject"
The writers of this book all claim to use the Scriptures. They all refer to and deal with the same texts, either in their own chapters or in their response to each other. And yet they still arrive at radically different views. None of them believe this is due to the fault of Scripture (although Laney's problem with the exception clause comes dangerously close) - they all blame the other's faulty exegetical methods. In this, they are most probably correct. Thus it is left up to the reader, bless his or her heart, to figure out for themselves, using the basic exegetical rules outlined above, which one of the writers deals most honestly with all the biblical data before them.
Without having read any other material by these four writers, I can only base my conclusions on what they have written here in this book. It seems to me that Edgar strives to deal most faithfully with the biblical text, steering clear of an emotionalism evident in Richards and exegetical gymnastics or outright denial as in the case of Laney and Heth. Although both Heth and Edgar allow for a biblical divorce (Richards seems to hold that both divorce and remarriage is wrong, but, as we live in a sinful world, we should simply seek forgiveness and move on - that may be an over simplification of his view, but that's what he seems to be saying here), Edgar alone seems to fulfil all the criteria for proper hermeneutics, taking into consideration all that has been written on the topic in Scripture, comparing the various scriptures with each other being careful not to make one contradict the other, taking into consideration their different historical situations, always preferring the clear meaning of the text rather than looking for obscure possible translations to bolster his view, and finally he does not base his position on the silence of some of the texts.
|
|
|
Site by: Troy Peterson | |
