Definition: Adultery vs. Fornication

[aineo]

Once again, I kept looking past this thread because the topic didn't particularly interest me, but after seeing activity so often on it, I decided to open it and see what was happening. Andrew and Tom, thank you both for sharing your points of view on these passages and really stretching my spiritual muscles.

Tom, you have posted two articles in this thread, and though I have read both of your books, I don't recall ever seeing your articles. Would you be so kind as to direct me to where you publish your articles? I would greatly enjoy the opportunity to read more of your writings.

 

[tship67]

Hello, aineo:

I no longer have a website up. There's a story there. It got shut down by the website host. They said it pertained to out-of-date software generating spam emails by third parties. May be true but i believe this was a pretext. I believe it was because they did not like the CONTENT. They did not respond to my email inquiries when I tried to get help getting the site back up and running. I regard their failure to respond to me as a dead giveaway that the CONTENT was the issue. Most of what was there is cached and I can probably reconstruct the site if I want to elsewhere. Haven't decided yet whether that is on my agenda.

If you have read both of my books, you pretty much have everything you need to extricate yourself from the many falsehoods surrounding the whole area of marriage, divorce, remarriage, polygyny, etc., and to get a sound foundation on all these topics.

I'm including another article below on the Samaritan woman in John 4 by me, and a link to William F. Luck's book, "Divorce and Remarriage," specifically his appendix, "On the Possibility of Non-Sexual Adultery," in which he discusses both Exodus 21 and Matthew 19:9. You should understand that Luck and I came to our basically identical conclusions completely independently of one another. I was referred to Luck's book in 2010 and my conclusions on this topic were formed long before that. I noted in "Man and Woman in Biblical Law" that the DIVORCE in Matthew 19 is essential to the charge of adultery, and the real meat of my book was all written in the 1989 - 1992 timeframe. I've been "onto" this aspect of biblical teaching for a long time.

My treatment of John 4 is another example of how critical it is to APPLY the correct hermeneutical assumptions when interpreting a passage of Scripture, and not to simply believe in those assumptions (i.e., the unity and continuity and non-contradictory nature of Scripture).

Here is the link to William F. Lucks article: https://bible.org/article/possibility-n ... l-adultery

And here is my article on the Samaritan won of John 4:

JOHN 4: THE SAMARITAN WOMAN

The following is a sample from my book, They Shall Be One Flesh, along with a comment from one of the members of our Yahoo group, newcovenantpatriarchy@yahoogroups.

The Commentators: #3, Paul E. Steele and Charles C. Ryrie + Yahoo NCP post
Copyright 2010 by Tom Shipley
All Rights Reserved

3 He (Jesus) left Judaea, and departed again into Galilee. 4 And he must needs go through Samaria. 5 Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. 7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink . 8 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) 9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink ; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. 11 The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? 12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 13 Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: 14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. 15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw . 16 Jesus saith unto her, Go , call thy husband, and come hither. 17 The woman answered and said , I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said , I have no husband: 18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

Another Dispensationalist treatment of the subject of marriage, divorce and remarriage, is Meant to Last, by Paul E. Steele and Charles C. Ryrie. This work may be considered in many ways the epitome of what I am critical of among Evangelical commentators and what I am arguing against in my thesis. Theirs is more of a popular treatment of the subject than a systematic inquiry. However, they are articulate writers and it is presented in a very organized and succinct manner. Steele and Ryrie do manage to cover a lot of ground in a relatively short thesis. They begin, reasonably enough, by asking the most fundamental question, “What is Marriage?” and by denying the fundamental proposition of this present work:
Living together or consummating the physical relationship does not in itself constitute marriage.

"When Christ encountered the woman of Samaria, He asked her to go and call her husband. She denied that she had a husband and Christ countered with these words: “You have well said, ‘I have no husband’: for you have had five husbands; and the one whom you now have is not your husband” (John 4:17-18). In other words, though she was living with a man and having sexual relations with him, this did not constitute a marriage.
There are those today who purport the idea that when two people have a sexual relationship they become one flesh and that this is recognized by God as constituting marriage. Such an idea cannot be supported from Scripture."—pg. 8

Needless to say, I have shown in this present volume that this idea unquestionably IS supported by Scripture—and with a great wealth of many passages to validate the thesis. I have already dealt with this objection earlier, but for the sake of responding specifically to Steele/Ryrie, let us reiterate what we can and cannot validly infer from the John 4 passage.

As I pointed out earlier, bringing the full weight of Scripture to bear upon the question avails us of only one possible conclusion: the woman at the well in John 4, though not with a husband, was still lawfully bound to her fifth husband. Jesus’ focus with the woman is on her factual living arrangement. When he tells her, “You have no husband,” he is not expounding a point of law to her, but demonstrating his knowledge to her of her actual circumstances, of her physical separation from her fifth husband. She does not have a husband as a matter of practical reality and living arrangement. She is not physically with her lawful husband. We see the thrust of Jesus’ interactions with her in her reaction:

28 The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, 29 Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?

We have seen both in the Law of Moses (Exo. 22:16-17, Deut. 21:13, Deut. 25:5, etc), and in the numerous examples examined of marriages commencing in the Scriptures, that the one flesh principle is unquestionably at the very heart of the marriage covenant. We saw this in regard to Abraham and Hagar, Jacob and Bilhah, Jacob and Zilpah, Onan and Tamar, etc. Unless we wish to propose a radical contradiction in the Bible’s teachings, Jesus must be referring to the woman’s physical separation from her lawful husband when he says she has no husband. Jesus is not speaking de jure, of law, but of situation and circumstance. Apparently she had left or put away her husband for the man she was then living with. In other words, this woman was an adulteress. So, we see that Steele’s and Ryrie’s objection and proposed meaning of the passage is simple to refute and requires no long, encyclopedic rationalization. The correct proposition here is very easy to understand and has a common sense rendering immediately relevant to the situation at hand.

This passage is routinely used by commentators with the end in view of exhorting young "unmarried" Christians to "get married" rather than to "live together," "cohabitate," or "shack up." It is routinely presupposed that the Samaritan woman to whom Christ spoke was either a widow or legitimately divorced from her fifth husband. The truth is, however, neither of these inferences can be logically deduced from the passage. Indeed, the weight of Scripture impels us to an entirely different conclusion: namely, that she was not legitimately divorced from her fifth husband. In other words, the Samaritan woman was an adulteress.

The Samaritan woman was still lawfully married to her fifth husband. Any other conclusion concerning her marital status sets this passage in contradiction to the entire corpus of biblical revelation on the topic of marriage. That the woman was still lawfully bound to her fifth husband is the only logical inference which can be drawn. To assert that this passage disapprobates cohabitation as marriage posits it to be in direct contradiction to Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 2:23-24, Matthew 19:4-6, I Corinthians. 6:16, Ruth 3, Ezekiel 16:8, Exodus. 22:16-17, Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Deuteronomy 21:10-13, Deuteronomy 25:5-10, Genesis 16:1-4, Genesis 24: 67, Genesis 29:15-26, Genesis 29: 29-30, Genesis 30: 1-6, etc. All of these passages teach that cohabitation, that is, the one flesh union, constitutes marriage. It is simply irrational to deny this.

John 4 does not explicitly inform us of the marital status of the Samaritan woman at the time she spoke to Christ. Her marital status must be inferred from other passages relevant to the topic of marriage. Those passages are listed in the above paragraph and were exegeted in particular in the previous exposition (or will be later). That the woman was still married/bound to her fifth husband is consistent with those passages. We will now proceed to show how it is consistent with John 4 itself.

The objector will say, "But did not Jesus explicitly say the woman had 'no husband'? And that she had 'had' five past husbands? How can you say that she had a husband when Jesus said that she had none?" The answer to this question is sufficiently and convincingly supplied by Romans 7:1-3:

1 Know ye not , brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth ? 2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth ; but if the husband be dead , she is loosed from the law of her husband. 3 So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead , she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

The woman in Romans 7 is spoken of as being "married" to another man and yet an "adulteress" at the same time. Well, if the woman of Romans 7 is truly married to another man, then how can she be said to be in adultery? How can a woman be in adultery with her own husband?

Note well: the logical dilemma here is identical to that created by the proposition that the woman in John 4 is still married to her fifth husband!! The only difference is that the apparent "contradiction" is explicit and on its face in Romans 7.

The solution to this dilemma lies in observing the distinction of language between that which is spoken of in a de facto (of fact) sense and that which is spoken of in a de jure (of law) sense. In Romans 7 Paul speaks of the woman who is married to another man (i.e., de facto) and yet still an adulteress (i.e., de jure). Legally, lawfully, the woman is still bound in marriage to her first husband; her marriage to another man is not a lawful marriage but adultery. Yet Paul speaks de facto of her being “married” to another man. An illegitimate divorce or mere factual separation does not constitute a lawful divorce. Thus, the verbal distinction between law and fact is a distinction of language used elsewhere in the New Testament, and, indeed, in regard to the exact same issue and circumstance addressed by Christ in John 4. Therefore, it is in vain to argue that this distinction of language could not have been employed by Christ himself in John. 4

When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that she had had five husbands, past tense, he is speaking of the factual circumstances of her life. She was no longer living with them, or, more to the point here, with the fifth husband. When Jesus said that she had no husband, present tense, he again speaks to her factual circumstances. She was not living with a husband. She was without a husband, though still lawfully bound to one. She was living in an adulterous relationship with the man she was with, who could not lawfully have her. She was, in the words of Romans 7, an adulteress because she was married to another man while her husband yet lived. I conclude, therefore, based upon the scriptural testimony as a whole, that the Samaritan woman was either illegitimately divorced or simply separated from her fifth husband. In either case, she could legitimately be spoken of as "having no husband" (de facto), that is, of not living in marital union with her lawful husband.

John 4 is, therefore, no valid objection to the thesis of one-flesh as marriage.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*** from Yahoo NCP discussion group on this issue: “We were doing an overview of 2 Samuel in Sunday School today and I noticed that when David retrieves his wife Michal from her husband Paltiel in 2 Samuel 3:14 & 15, the same language and terminology is employed as in John 4 and Romans 7. Here look:

2 Samuel 3; 14 And David sent messengers to Ishbosheth Saul's son, saying , Deliver me my wife Michal, which I espoused to me for an hundred foreskins of the Philistines.15 And Ishbosheth sent , and took her from her husband, even from Phaltiel the son of Laish 16 And her husband went with her along weeping behind her to Bahurim. Then said Abner unto him, Go, return And he returned
This scripture above recognizes David's lawful marriage to Michal and at the same time recognizes her factual circumstances in the adulterous marriage to Paltiel. I see Saul and Paltiel as being the guilty parties, not Michal. Lest anyone suggest that David had not yet entered into sexual relations with Michal, this says otherwise. Here:

2 Samuel 19 10 And Saul sought to smite David even to the wall with the javelin; but he slipped away out of Saul's presence, and he smote the javelin into the wall: and David fled, and escaped that night.11 Saul also sent messengers unto David's house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning: and Michal David's wife told him, saying, If thou save not thy life tonight, tomorrow thou shalt be slain. 12 So Michal let David down through a window: and he went, and fled, and escaped.13 And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.

Saul gave Michal to Paltiel after this escape.Here:

1 Samuel 25 44 But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David's wife, to Phalti the son of Laish, which was of Gallim.
Going back a bit farther in Ch 18

2 Samuel 18: 27 Wherefore David arose and went , he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king's son in law . And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife. 28 And Saul saw and knew that the LORD was with David, and that Michal Saul's daughter loved him.

Hope this is helpful.
Tom

 

[tship67]

Hello, aineo:

I thought it might be beneficial to you to peruse my commentary on William F. Luck's writings. This is a little lengthy for a conversation style forum but I don't have a link to direct you to so i copied and pasted it below. This will give you a better feel for what is involved grappling with the nuts and bolts of all these related issues, including the theological aspects of Luck's non-sexual adultery thesis. This copy is without the original italics, etc. so it might lack something in the nuancing, but this should give you a more in-depth look at the subject

Here it is:


The Commentators: # 2, William F. Luck, Sr.


One of the best treatments of the subject of divorce by an Evangelical commentator is William H. Luck’s Divorce and Remarriage, subtitled, “Recovering the Biblical View.” (The reader should pause and ponder Luck’s subtitle at length.) Luck is a rare breed—a Dispensationalist who takes seriously what the Law of God, contained in the Old Testament, has to say on the subject. Luck not only examines the Old Testament passages but treats them as normative and authoritative, and spends a lot of time on exegesis. This fact alone puts Luck light years ahead of the overwhelming majority of Dispensationalist commentators. Luck may be more than rare in this regard; he may be positively unique. Luck is a former Moody Bible Institute alumni (or is it alumn in the singular?), a decidedly Dispensationalist institution. Says Luck in his Foreword to the 2nd Edition, “Though Moody was then a dispensationalist school, I always had a strong respect for the Old Testament.” Luck’s “though” in this statement says volumes, maybe a lot more than he consciously intended. Luck has come to the same conclusion as I have and as has John Murray in his magnum opus, Principles of Conduct:

I believed that I had shown the theoretical necessity of a non-conflicting view. In my teachings at Moody I believed that I had shown the general harmony of biblical rules.—pg. x

One cannot help but to wonder why such a proposition should even be an issue among those who profess to believe that the Bible is the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. Unfortunately, Luck is decidedly at odds with the nearly monolithic stance of his Dispensationalist colleagues on this point. Predictably, taking the Word of God seriously has led him down a divergent path on a related issue:

I expected criticism. I got it…one of the troubling reactions to the first edition was the criticism it received over the issue of polygyny. You would think from reading my critics that I was some kind of closet fundamentalist Mormon apologist. A posture I strongly denied. Why then is it in the book?

…When I arrived at the teaching of the Mosaic Law on the sin of adultery, I anticipated doing a quick and easy subject. But, in my attempt to define “adultery” in Old Testament terms, I was surprised to find that its definition was always related to the woman’s marital status, never the man’s. As I worked, I fought the conclusion that it was defined that way to accommodate multiple marriages for the male…Old Testament professors I consulted seemed embarrassed by the subject, but few denied it…

I realized that if plural marriages were morally accepted by God at least up to the days of Jesus, it had to be taken into account in understanding His teaching on adultery and remarriage. What didn’t seem reasonable was that God suddenly changed the rules on marriage half way down the historical pike. My colleagues and logic having failed to save me, I wrote on like a lamb to the slaughter…and when the book was published the knives came out. You would think, as I said above, that it was the only topic in the book. Nonetheless, the “cutting” criticisms did not seem effective in proving my conclusions wrong.—pg. x-xi


The proverbial “fly in the ointment” is the Dispensationalist presupposition common among the ranks of Evangelicals which proposes varying or even radically contradictory ethical norms from one point in time to another. To the reader acquainted with my first Volume, you will remember that my subtitle in that volume is, “Resurrecting the Biblical Family,” strikingly similar to Luck’s, “Recovering the Biblical View,” showing that Luck and I both share a common view that the Straight Word of Scripture has been significantly lost or misunderstood. I have only recently discovered Luck’s book within the last couple months of writing this review (April 2010), being referred to it by a friend. The similarities between Luck’s thesis and mine are not due to any familiarity with each other or the other’s writings.

There are many very significant areas of overlap in understanding shared by Luck and myself that are, in general, divergent from the usual Evangelical view of things. Those areas of overlap include:

1) as noted by the quote from Luck above, that the biblical definition of adultery is always related to the marital status of the woman, never the man’s,

2) that polygyny is lawful both under the Old Covenant, as well as the New Covenant, (Luck devotes a whole Appendix to the subject, pgs. 251-269),

3) that Genesis serves as a prologue to the Law (Divorce & Remarriage, pg. 5) and, therefore, Genesis is consistent with the Law, not antithetical in any particular,

4) that the “one flesh” concept in Scripture is covenantal, as opposed to an ontological or metaphysical concept (e.g. J. Carl Laney, Heth/Wenham), (see pg. 23),

5) that Exodus 21:10-11 occupies a premier place of importance in the biblical jurisprudence of divorce, and that there is an unfortunate avoidance of this passage by commentators (see Luck, pgs. 29, 47),

6) that the failure to provide for the wife on the part of the man constitutes a breach of the one-flesh covenant, and by implication other more extreme offenses do so as well, such as physical abuse, etc. (Luck, pg. 32, etc.),

7) that groundless divorce itself constitutes adultery, even if there is no directly sexual act involved, (again, Luck devotes a whole Appendix to this thesis, pgs. 273-284)

8) that lawful divorce in Scripture is punitive (in regard to the offender) or remedial (in regard to the innocent party) in nature, (pg. 52, 87, 95, 209, 215, and 225)

9) that divorced women are morally permitted to remarry under the Law of God, (pg. 47, 243) and

10) that adultery in Scripture did not necessarily lead to execution, but could terminate in divorce, and Luck cites Jeremiah 3 as exegetical evidence in unison with me, (pg. 85, 86).

Interesting, is it not, what doctrinal conclusions one comes to when the Old Testament is taken seriously as the Word of God?

Needless to say, this is a very wide swathe of common understanding. The main area of divergence between Luck and me concerns Deuteronomy 24. Luck, from my perspective, has failed to extricate himself from the exegetical mire bequeathed to us all from prior commentators, to wit, that Deuteronomy 24 supposedly grants a “concession for sinful divorce” to the man. As I have noted in the preceding material, the “nakedness of a thing” (erwath dabar in the Hebrew) in Deuteronomy 24:1 denotes fornication (and so Jesus interprets it in Matthew 19:9) and the divorce mentioned in that passage is punitive in nature against the woman; and the “hardness of heart” mentioned by Christ in the Gospels refers to the hardness of heart manifested in acts of sin, i.e., men hard-heartedly taking other men’s wives and women hard-heartedly committing adultery and other sexual sins against their husbands. The second main area of divergence from me is that Luck denies that marriage consists essentially of the one flesh sexual bond of a man and woman (although it would appear that he equivocates somewhat in this regard—see pgs. 16, 18, 19, 22). That proposition, of course, is the fundamental thesis of this present work. Nevertheless, the areas of overlap are quite weighty, indeed, and of no small consequence.

Concerning equivocation regarding the proposition that the marriage covenant consists essentially of the one flesh sexual bond, note for example, that on pg. 16, Luck states:

Thus I do not feel comfortable to argue…that “one flesh” does not have any specific sexual significance. “One flesh” does seem to speak of physical reunion, and under the circumstances it seems strained to avoid the mechanism of sexual intercourse as important to the text of Genesis 2:24…

A “one flesh” relationship seems to be primarily an organic one, which, in the case of human beings, would be sexual. Marriage, however, is not primarily sexual. It is not the “one flesh” but the “cleaving” that constitutes the marriage.—pg. 16

As I pointed out in regard to J. Carl Laney’s The Divorce Myth, there is an artificial distinction created here between the idea of “cleaving” and becoming “one flesh.” These terms are a form of synonymous parallelism, repetition of the same concept in different terms, a mode of expression used throughout Scripture. And then on pages 21-22, Luck states:

“From early in its first book, the Bible speaks of marriage in the language of organic union…our conclusion, then, is that marriage is the moral context of a profound union accomplished by the physical union of two persons” (again, emphasis supplied).

This is all unintended on Luck’s part but the equivocation arises from a lack of precision regarding the concepts in question: Luck denies what he affirms in the same breath.

I should mention concerning the areas of overlap in Luck’s and my theses that the one flesh teaching of my thesis provides a theological foundation for Luck’s assertion for point #8 above, that there is such a thing as non-sexual adultery, such as, for example, capricious divorce, or so neglecting the wife or abusing her that treachery is committed against the marriage covenant. Luck’s insight is precisely right on target but he has a problem here, as he himself admits: there would seem—on Luck’s premises—to be no support in the Old Testament for the proposition.

What then is the difference between treachery and adultery as words in the Old Testament? All adultery is a kind of treachery, but not all treachery is a kind of adultery. Clearly, when a man has a sexual relationship with a married woman, that is adultery. His treachery comes in interfering with the covenant of another man, and getting the woman to break her vow of monogamy to him. But what of a man breaking his marriage covenant with a woman? [Luck means here unlawful divorce.—T.S.] Is that also adultery? As argued above, no Old Testament text supports that per se, but then no text supports applying adultery to a man who divorces his wife and marries another. Yet Jesus calls that adultery. We have argued that when Jesus does so, it is because of the divorce, not the remarriage. We suggest, then, that adultery is a breach of the marriage covenant.—pg. 281

Luck could have been a little clearer here: he means to say that the term “adultery” should be defined as “a breach of the marital covenant.” What exactly breaches the marital covenant and can be called adultery is then specified in particular by the case laws of the Old Testament, including, preeminently, Exodus 21:10-11. The problem is that Luck makes this conclusion as an inference solely upon the words of Jesus in the New Testament. This has Jesus asserting a proposition (or more correctly, an inference) unsupported by any Old Testament principle. The temptation here is to just leave the matter at that and to say, well, after all, this is the Lord Jesus speaking and what he says is authoritative. True indeed, but is not Jesus expounding Old Testament law? What is Jesus basing this upon? Luck has this doctrine “floating in the air,” as it were, ungrounded to anything specific in the Old Testament.

The one flesh proposition I am advancing in this book, based upon Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament, provides what Luck is lacking in his thesis. It is lacking because Luck explicitly rejects the (sexual) one flesh nature and basis of marriage as definitive of the relationship. Note well: with the one flesh proposition as a theological foundation, overt sexual adultery and neglect of the basic needs of the wife (Exo. 21:10-11) and outright abuse are all sexual sins because they touch upon and violate the sexual, one flesh marriage bond, even though neglect and abuse are not directly sexual in and of themselves. This is what we all should have gleaned from Genesis 2:23-24 and Matthew 19:4-6. In other words, Luck need not have looked for any non-sexual adultery, in the strictest sense of the concept, because there really is no such thing. The offenses he perceives as non-sexual are in fact sexual in nature. And he perceives them as non-sexual because he does not define the marriage covenant in essentially sexual terms. I would argue that neglect of the wife by the husband is a sexual sin, and that abuse of the wife is a sexual sin, as well as overt adultery being a sexual sin. Luck’s proposition of “non-sexual adultery,” though correct, cannot be logically sustained on his premises. It remains vulnerable to the charge of arbitrariness. It lacks the necessary connection to the true biblical definition of marriage. The one flesh thesis of this book shines the spotlight on the organic connection between the biblical doctrine of marriage, and what constitutes its violations.

Luck is emphatic that Jesus did not come to abrogate OT marriage and divorce laws.

The second thing that stands out is that Jesus is loyal to the Old Testament Law. In verses 17-19 He tells His listeners that he has not come to abolish the least of the Old Testament rules, but that they shall stand until “heaven and earth pass away.” It seems clear, then, that Jesus means to recover the Law and bring out its fullness, not to make changes in it that would negate the least of its principles. –pg. 97, (see also pgs. xi, 95, 96, 99, 100)

On this point, Luck and I are in complete agreement. With that point established, let us look at Matthew 19 afresh:

3 The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? 4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read , that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5 And said , For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.


Here is a fundamental question: Upon what Old Testament law did Jesus base his assertion that divorce for the cause of fornication (“porneia” in Greek) is justified?

The doctrine of divorce asserted by Jesus is straightforward: fornication (as distinguished from the more specific adultery, or moicheia in the Greek, a form of fornication) is a valid ground for divorce. This is explicit and there can be no honest debate about the point. Since, as Luck himself argues, Jesus is not establishing a new law but recovering the old law and bringing out its fullness, which specific Old Testament law is Jesus basing his statement upon? Jesus MUST be bringing an already-existing law to bear upon the subject. Which law is it? Our choices are actually quite limited; there are only so many passages on divorce in the Law. It cannot be Exodus 21:10-11 because that law concerns the right of the woman to obtain a divorce. It cannot be Deuteronomy 21:14 because that law, once again, says to allow the woman to leave. It cannot be Exodus 22:16-17, because that passage concerns the right of the bride’s father to make the determination to annul the marriage, not the husband. It cannot be Deuteronomy 22:19 because that law concerns the prohibition against divorce. It cannot be Deuteronomy 22:28-29, because that is another prohibition against divorce. It cannot be Leviticus 21:7, 14 because that law simply acknowledges the existence of divorced women in the community.

A rather amazing fact comes to light at this point. There is only one more divorce provision in the Law: Deuteronomy 24:1-4! By a simple process of elimination, there is one, and only one, law that is the possible source of Jesus’ teaching, and that is precisely the law the Pharisees question Jesus about. Deuteronomy 24 is the only law addressing any kind of reason for the husband to divorce his wife. The conclusion here is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar—no, make that as solid as the Rock of Ages, --which is that Jesus is elucidating Deuteronomy 24:1 when he says “except for fornication.” Jesus interprets the “erwath dabar,” nakedness of a thing, or “uncleanness,” of Deuteronomy 24:1 as fornication, or in Greek, porneia. And that this fornication, or erwath dabar (Hebrew), porneia or “uncleanness” (KJV) is a valid and lawful ground for divorce. This includes, but is not restricted to, adultery.

Let us note, once again, Greg Bahnsen’s remarks on Deuteronomy 24:1-4:

(T)he Pharisees had misused Deuteronomy 24:1-4 by ignoring the sole, proper ground which it set forth as justifying the husband’s disfavor and subsequent divorcing of his wife. The cause of the disfavor could not legitimately be just anything, but according to Deuteronomy 24:1 it had to be some “indecent (unclean) thing.” It has been correctly observed that Christ uses the word “fornication” in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 to explain or interpret “unclean thing” in Deuteronomy 24:1 (emphasis supplied) and thereby acknowledges the permanent validity of that law thus interpreted in a strict sense. By making fornication the only exception to the general disapprobation of divorce, Christ was harmonizing with the Mosaic law which made indecent or unclean behavior the only legal cause of divorce.—Theonomy in Christian Ethics, pg. 104


There is no concession to sinful hardness of heart to have its way in Deuteronomy 24 but rather punishment of it. There is a fundamental error occurring in the usual Evangelical understanding of Matthew 19:8. When Jesus says “because of the hardness of your hearts,” he means, “Because of the hardness of your hearts expressed through fornication he allowed you to put away your (offending) wives, but from the beginning, when there was no sin, this was not so. Marriage was meant to be perpetual.” In other words, there is no ground in Scripture for capricious divorce, no, not even in Deuteronomy 24:1. There must be fornication (erwath dabar, “nakedness of a thing”) on the part of the wife before there can be a legitimate ground for divorce. That is the essence of Jesus’ teaching.

In a personal communication about this issue, Luck states:

So what does erwat dabar entail?

3) To restate the matter, if erwat dabar involves a morally unjustifiable act, then Jesus should not have pointed the finger at the hardhearted men. The problem most people have with Jesus’ words is that they fail to see that Jesus was speaking to the men. His words are: “for the hardness of your hearts Moses permitted you to put away your wives.” He does not say, for the hardness of hearts Moses permitted people to put away their marriage partners.” Their question was about male rights and Jesus responded by pointing out male sinfulness. To ignore this fact and make Jesus’ rebuke a gender non-specific one is unjustified and completely confuses the dialogue.


This is another one of those contentions which is plausible (standing isolated on its own) which evaporates when the Bible is considered in its total context. The reader will recall our earlier exposition where I commented on those who maintain (on linguistic grounds) that Deuteronomy 24:1-3 only describes divorce but does not permit it. On the surface, based on a strictly literal understanding of the passage, they are quite correct. But this interpretation is very shallow and involves a kind of tunnel vision which completely overlooks Jesus’ explicit teaching that Deuteronomy 24 allows divorce. This “allowance” goes well beyond mere description.

Luck’s contention regarding the phrase, “because of the hardness of your hearts,” is that divorce was granted specifically because of moral sin in the heart of the males. Luck maintains that “Jesus was speaking to the men…male sinfulness.” Why MUST “because of the hardness of your hearts” refer specifically to the sin of the men? Or if it does look at it from this angle, why CAN’T it be referencing the majority of all fornication which occurs in the form of adultery where men, AND OTHER MEN’S WIVES, commit fornication? Why CAN’T Jesus be referring simply to the condition of ALL fallen humanity, namely hardness of heart, sin, original sin? Luck has failed to perceive that he has fallen prey to an a priori assumption at this juncture. How can it possibly be proven that Jesus refers specifically to the sin of the males? Or, for that matter, to hardness of heart in general? Neither referent is logically deducible from the one sentence in and of itself.

Let us set aside the precise point of contention here for the moment. What cannot be argued is that 1) Jesus affirms that divorce is instituted in the law due to hardness of heart (either of men, or women, or both). Jesus then goes on to affirm that 2) divorcing a wife is permitted specifically for fornication, and if divorce occurs for any other reason, adultery is committed. Is not Jesus expositing the Law here? Again, I ask, which law is he expositing?

Question: why would we ever conclude that the all holy God would permit in His Law a man to divorce his wife for any other cause and reason than the one Christ here specifically says is the only valid reason? Ergo: the referent of “hardness of heart” must refer to the sin of fornication (usually involving both a man and a woman) manifesting hardness of heart, that is, sin in the heart. The law does not institute divorce to permit the commission of sin but rather to punish and redress sin.

Moreover, the precise question the Pharisees put to Jesus concerns what valid cause a man may have to divorce his wife. And Deuteronomy 24 addresses the man divorcing his wife. Provision had already been granted specifying the proper grounds for a woman to divorce her husband in Exodus 21. If there is hard heartedness on the man’s part, Exodus 21:10-11 is sufficient to address the situation. Deuteronomy 24 specifies a man divorcing the wife. And it specifies the reason. Do we wish to maintain that the reason in the passage is only DESCRIPTIVE in nature? I reply that, just as Moses permits divorce in Deuteronomy 24 (and does not merely describe a scenario), so also the uncleanness there is permitted as a justifying cause (and is not merely described as the occasion). Denying that “uncleanness” in Deuteronomy 24 is a justifying cause for fornication is the same error as claiming that the divorce itself is merely descriptive in nature. Ergo, when Jesus says that divorce was granted because of “the hardness of your hearts,” he has in mind the hard heartedness of fornication.

 

[CecilW]

How does this thread on adultery and fornication relates to Matthew 5:28?

"But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Does it mean that any man (married or single) already commits adultery with a woman (married or single) even just by looking at her with lust?

Wow! Online for the first time in a long time.

The above question is from page 4, and is followed by scads of scholarly, erudite sounding, LONG posts which I scanned to see if anyone gave the simple answer. Didn't find it.

Since I believe Scripture is intended to be simple, here goes my version.

The problem with the above verse is one of translation and current English usage.

We have several words for snow -- powder, slush, etc. Certain Eskimo tribes have something like 17!

We also have some words to describe female humans -- girl, woman, lady, hoe, fox ...

Hebrew used 4, which described a female's marital state.

• Never married
• Married
• No longer married due to divorce, and
• No longer married due to death

These were translated into English as, respectively,

• virgin
• I don't remember for sure. Woman? Married woman?
• Divorced woman, I think, and
• widow

Greek was just a little narrower, using only 3, to wit:

• virgin = never married
• woman = married at present
• widow = no longer married, whether due to death or divorce.

This let's us solve Jesus' statement rather handily. He is commentarying on the 10th Commandment, "Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife..." by saying, "If you look at a MARRIED WOMAN, desiring to get your freak on with her, you're committing adultery in your heart."

Looking with desire "to have and to, um, hold from this day forward" at a woman never married, or at one who has lost her husband, whether through death or divorce, is a) not the subject of his statement, b) not the subject of the 10th commandment, and c) of course it is fine. Else how would you become motivated to marry? Sheez! :lol:

 

[Jim]

I believe a simple biblical definition of lust is: having a burning or strong desire for something or someone. Lust is sinful when either covetousness Rm.7:7, Ex.20:17, Dt.5:21, or idolatry Col.3:5 is involved. Otherwise it is not. In 1Cor.10:6, we can conclude that not all lust is evil, and that it doesn't always involve sexual relations.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

To chime in on the good debate between Andrew and Tom Shipley, I would say that Tom is perhaps using the wrong term. Instead of using "adultery", I would rather say the marriage in Exodus 21:7-11 a marital dissolution (ended or divorce in effect) based on neglect of marital rights. I think some might want to call the situation in that passage adultery because the woman seems to be able to remarry but that is an unnecessary conclusion for two reasons.
1. Adultery involves sex acts and in Exodus 21:7-11, no sex acts are involved
2. A woman being able to remarry for reasons other than adultery is not unprecedented because the same allowance is given for mixed-faith marriages in 1 Corinthians 7:12-15. The reason in the latter case clearly does not involve adultery but rather it involves the differing faiths, yet remarriage is permitted.