Divorce Expert Stirs Up Muddy Waters
UPDATE: Scholarly responses to Instone-Brewer's article here and here (They aren't very sympathetic).
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David Instone-Brewer, senior research fellow in rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge, and author of Divorce and Remarriage in the Church (IVP) presented an abridged version of his findings in a recent Christianity Today article. Having never researched the topic for myself, I found the article to be enlightening and comforting. His research and reasoning seemed solid, and his presentation was convincing... until a friend of mine encouraged me to read what seems to be the scriptural pivot point of Brewer's thesis, Exodus 21:10-11, in its context.
For those of you who are regular Incarnate readers, you will remember my previous post on this passage, lamenting the incomprehsibility of God's justice displayed in the allowance of a father to sell his daughter into slavery. The enigma this passage brings to bear on the divorce conversation is that this ordinance falls right smack-dab in the middle of a polygamous marriage. If you're going to appeal directly to this passage for grounds of divorce, you have to accept along with it the stipulations it presents for marriage and thereby permit polygamy.
However, the author's appeal to this passage is not direct. His appeal is to Jesus, and he is interpreting Jesus' command in light of His social context. The question then becomes, What did Jesus make of polygamy? Would He appeal to this portion of scripture in determining the rules of divorce while rejecting the bounds of marriage (i.e. the option for polygamy)? That, I believe, is the question at hand, and one that unfortunately remains unanswered.
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David Instone-Brewer, senior research fellow in rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge, and author of Divorce and Remarriage in the Church (IVP) presented an abridged version of his findings in a recent Christianity Today article. Having never researched the topic for myself, I found the article to be enlightening and comforting. His research and reasoning seemed solid, and his presentation was convincing... until a friend of mine encouraged me to read what seems to be the scriptural pivot point of Brewer's thesis, Exodus 21:10-11, in its context.
For those of you who are regular Incarnate readers, you will remember my previous post on this passage, lamenting the incomprehsibility of God's justice displayed in the allowance of a father to sell his daughter into slavery. The enigma this passage brings to bear on the divorce conversation is that this ordinance falls right smack-dab in the middle of a polygamous marriage. If you're going to appeal directly to this passage for grounds of divorce, you have to accept along with it the stipulations it presents for marriage and thereby permit polygamy.
However, the author's appeal to this passage is not direct. His appeal is to Jesus, and he is interpreting Jesus' command in light of His social context. The question then becomes, What did Jesus make of polygamy? Would He appeal to this portion of scripture in determining the rules of divorce while rejecting the bounds of marriage (i.e. the option for polygamy)? That, I believe, is the question at hand, and one that unfortunately remains unanswered.
Dr. Instone-Brewer was kind enough to respond to this post via email. Here was his reply:
ReplyDeleteYou make an interesting point - ie that if you
use a passage you have to take the context into
account. Jesus was certainly against polygamy (as
he says when answering the question about divorce).
But I'm not sure about your principle that you
have to accept everything in a law in order to
employ the principles which God reveals through
that law. We no longer use oxen to tread out
grain, but we still learn from the law about oxen
that workmen should be paid. I don't think we
should throw out a revelation from God simply
because part of it doesn't apply to our society any more.
The rabbis of Jesus' day no longer accepted the
practice of slave wives (who had a lower status
than a free wife) but they found in this text the
principle that if the lowest of the low (ie a
slave wife) had these three rights, then it was
logical that any married person had these rights.
THis is the same argument which Paul makes about
the ox - if they have right to eat from the crop,
then any other worker also has those rights. They
believed that so much that they wrote it into
their marriage contracts. And Paul affirms these
rights for married couples in 1Cor.7.
See more at www.Divorce-Remarriage.com