Another View Of Divorce And Remarriage (1)

Perhaps no other topic, or very few anyway, garner as much heated debate, flamethrowing, false accusation and overall mistreatment of fellow believers (if they are even viewed as such) as the topic of what the bible says about divorce and remarriage. I've written on this before, here and here.

Thanks to my friend Peter, who supplied me a link to something a bit different, I read a site by Dr. David Instone-Brewer on this topic. Dr. Instone-Brewer has written two books and a number of articles on this issue. How it differs from other views I've heard is that there is an allowance under God's law for divorce in cases of adultery, abuse or abandonment, stemming from Exodus 21:10-11 and from extra biblical accounts of what the "any cause" statement really meant in Matthew 19 when the Pharisees confronted Jesus.

Quoting from his Christianity Today article:

Putting all this together gives us a clear and consistent set of rules for divorce and remarriage. Divorce is only allowed for a limited number of grounds that are found in the Old Testament and affirmed in the New Testament:

• Adultery (in Deuteronomy 24:1, affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19)
• Emotional and physical neglect (in Exodus 21:10-11, affirmed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 7)
• Abandonment and abuse (included in neglect, as affirmed in 1 Corinthians 7)

Lots of interesting stuff on this site and plenty more in the links to his articles. There's apparently a critique from John Piper out there that I'll have to read, too. I'll be writing more about this soon.