This was the talk we had by Mark Chen for Sunday School today. Personally, I don't like this topic cos it rakes up bad memories, but oh well, it was good to listen to what the Bible has to say about marriage and divorce. Remarriage is a sensitive topic, cos that is the main basis for disagreement. However, I'll just type here whatever he wrote. Whether I agree with him or not is a different thing altogether. :)
Marriage (a bond between 1 man and 1 woman)
1. God ordained it.
2. It is good.
3. It is a covenant.
4. Covenants are meant to be kept (Deut 30:2) - meaning that the bond of marriage is to last till death
Divorce (which came about because of the fall of man)
1. God hates unlawful divorce (Mal 2:16)
2. God practises lawful divorce (Jer 3:8a) - E.g. adultery
3. God 'suffers' divorce (Matt 19:8) - meaning that He doesn't encourage it, but in terms of lawful divorce, He allows it to happen
4. God has regulated lawful divorce - when marriage is terminated by 3 things: either 1) death, 2) divorce resulting from adultery, or, 3) divorce resulting from desertion (defined as an unbeliving spouse leaving/divorcing/abandoning a beliving spouse)
Conclusion: God allows divorce if it is lawful (Deut 30:9), but He disallows it if it isn't lawful. He does not hate all divorce, only unlawful ones and only after the Fall of Man. However, although lawful divorce exists, it should not be pursued.
Adultery
1. Due to fornication (Matt 19:9) - fornication is a known fact, not just something in the heart or mind, nor something one pursues
2. Due to desertion by an unbelieving spouse (1 Cor 7:15)
Remarriage
1. It is allowable at the death of a spouse (1 Cor 7:39)
2. It is allowable in the case of lawful divorce (1 Cor 7:39)
3. It is allowable when there is desertionof unbelieving spouse (1 Cor 7:15)
Yup, that's all that I managed to jot down. Oh and Mark Chen also mentioned something like in Matt 19:9, 3 clauses are linked. Whatever that means, I'm not quite sure though. But it seemed to be something of utmost importance.
I came out of the talk rather confused and all that. Many questions like:
1. How can God allow divorce if He hates sin?
2. How can we constantly refer to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Scottish Church Discipline Book 1 (which was what Mark Chen does) to back up our stand? Cos these books are written by Man and not by God. So shouldn't we refer to the Bible instead? Or shouldn't both the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Scottish Church Discipline Book 1 have some reference to passages/verses in the Bible, just like the Heidelberg Cathechism and the Belgic Cathechism?
3. Why does the church allow for remarriage, in the case of a lawful divorce? (This question is kind of the most pressing one. I thought they might address it in this talk, but nothing was mentioned about it at all.)
4. Why are the controversies in church? Shouldn't the church or people in the church try to prevent schisms from renting the church asunder? (Refer to HOF 513)
So, yeah, if you do know the answers to these questions, please tell me k? Thanks :)
P.S. All those in red are things that I added in today, after the re-cap session on this topic.
Hi! If you don't mind, I'd like to comment here (: I shall try to answer without 'teaching mutiny'.
ReplyDelete1. It depends on whether God considers any divorce (without hope of reconcilliation) as sin or not. According to Mark Chen's interpretation of Malachi 2, God only hates unlawful divorce, so lawful divorce is not sin. I'd beg to differ, but I won't elaborate here.
2. They are supposed to tell us what some godly men in the past held to, based on their studies. Nonetheless, the Westminster is fallible, as you said. In fact, it was written for not only the church, but the entire country. So I think, for the hardness of the hearts of nominal Christians, the authors could not consider outlawing divorce or remarriage.
3. FERC accepts the argument that remarriage is lawful and not a sin before God, if divorce was caused by adultery. Our church does not accept desertion as a reason. In a sense, no, FERC is not FOR remarriage - every possible attempt toward reconcilliation should have been taken before that stage.
4. There are differences in doctrine because we do not have a perfect understanding of God's Word. Our sinfulness often clouds the Holy Spirit's guidance. So anyway, while we try not to argue and split, sometimes it is inevitable (even Paul and Barnabas parted). Yet we must have a spirit of forgiveness. No matter what stand is right, if we believe we will see our 'opponents' in heaven, we had best show charity and humility.
~Timothy•