Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Studying Arguments

Most discussions about divorce get tangled up far too quickly in discussions of what is “legal.” In others words, divorce is thought to be lawful if all the appropriate t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. And in the words of the Westminster Confession, men are apt to “study arguments” in order to make sure the whole is legal. This can happen in both the civil and biblical realms. In other words, we often treat divorce in the text as a very wooden phenomenon. If it happened “this way,” then it isn’t adultery to remarry. If it happened the “other way,” then it is. But our Lord teaches us here that divorce is a sexual phenomenon, and He relates it directly to a man’s motivations. So while we do have to consider first the outline of the biblical teaching on the nature of divorce, we must not forget this motivational question, which we will return to at the end of our chapter.
Douglas Wilson, Fidelity, pg. 68.

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