[soc.religion.christian] Legalism?

ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (11/12/90)

In article <Nov.9.00.32.59.1990.28345@athos.rutgers.edu>,
 dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) writes:
> I've been watching this thread and it's amazing how legalistic
> people have been about this issue. Wonderful debates about
> fornication vs. adultery and so forth and why the stricture on
> divorce appears differently in one gospel than it does in some
> other and so forth.

> ((They like to put heavy burdens on others while they will not
> lift a finger to help...))

This is an unwarranted inference.
The question about divorce has many facets:

    -- what should the civil laws of our several countries permit?

	Nobody in this thread has been proposing any changes to the
	divorce laws that I have noticed.  Which is to say that
	nobody in this thread is putting any burdens at all on others.

    -- what should other people do if they find themselves in a situation
       where they would otherwise _want_ to divorce their mate?

	People in this thread have been considering this question.
	The paragraph I've quoted at the top of this posting is a clear
	reference to something I wrote (and am going to post more on).
	But with respect to others, I explicitly said that I would allow
	myself to be divorced.  How precisely does that place any burden
	on anyone else?

    -- how should we treat people (1) who have have divorced another
       (2) who have been divorced?

	_That_ is where "lifting a finger to help" comes in.  Has anyone
	suggested that people who have been through divorce should not be
	received into the church or not comforted or not helped?  I didn't
	notice anyone saying that.  The only thing I saw people saying was
	that churches shouldn't marry people who have a living ex-spouse.
	If civil marriage were not available, that could indeed be a heavy
	burden.  But it is.  And that was the _only_ restriction that I
	noticed anyone offering.

    -- WHAT MAY *WE* DO if we find ourselves in this case?

	I was under the impression that my posting made it sufficiently
	clear that this was _my_ perspective on the question.  As yet I
	haven't been blessed with a wife (any Christian women reading
	this in Melbourne?).  If that does come to pass, it may also come
	to pass that my as-yet-hypothetical wife might commit adultery,
	and the question would then arise "fight or flight"?  I am in no
	position to tell other people what to do, nor is it likely that I
	ever will be.  My interest in this question is, if it ever comes
	to that, what will _MY_ choices me?

> ((The greatest commandment is this: you must love the Lord your
> God with all your heart and soul. The second most important
> commandment is like it: you must love your neighbor as
> yourself.))

So and it is.  "The rest is commentary", the "strictures" that 
Donald Hosek is so critical of explain to us what it _means_ to
love your neighbour as yourself and to love God.  The question
about divorce is a question about justice.  There was a long-term
study of divorce done in the USA.  It found that for the most part,
the spouse who had initiated the divorce had attained many of the
goals he or she had had in mind, and was now better off emotionally
than at the time of the divorce, but that even 15 years later the
spouse who had _not_ initiated the divorce was worse off emotionally
than at the time of the divorce.  (I'm sorry not to provide the
reference.  I'll try to find the book in the public library again
next week.)  What this means is that someone considering whether to
divorce their spouse ought to take in mind that it is likely to make
things better for them but _worse_ for their spouse.  This is an
"on the whole" and "other things being equal" sort of statement,
of course.  But if my goal really _is_ to love our neighbour as
myself, then other things being equal, the only long-term evidence
I've seen is that a divorce _I_ wanted and my as-yet-unfortunately-
hypothetical wife _didn't_ would not be in her interest and so would
not be compatible with "loving my neighbour".

> So what really matters in ending a bad marriage?

	JUSTICE!

> The stricture on divorce comes out of these two laws.

Exactly.  If I want to love God and my neighbour, I may not divorce.
Which I find frightening.  I don't _want_ to believe that.

> Can you really believe that
> God wants us to stay in an unhealthy and loveless marriage?

Depends on what you mean "stay".  Why do you reject separation as a
possible solution?  Paul's suggestion was that if the unbelieving
partner wanted to go, they should be allowed to.  The question is
whether _I_ may force the _other_ out if _I_ am unhappy.

> Marriage is permanent
> because the love of the two people involved is symbolic of their
> love for God.

Eh?  I don't see how you come to that conclusion.  Is the marriage
of two loving atheists non-permanent because they have no love for
God that their mutual love might symbolise?  Surely Jesus' claim
was that marriage _ought_ to be permanent because that's the way
God intended it to be?  One should love one's spouse in the sense
in which one loves one's neighbour.  If there is any command in the
Bible that husband and wife must love each other in some romantic sense,
please tell me at once.

(A minor digression:  according to Josephus, polygamy was still
practiced in his time.  He overlapped Jesus.  I've heard that some
think that Josephus himself was a polygamist.  The logion against
divorce is the one place where Jesus says something which appears
to represent "one man one woman" as the ideal.  If we decide that
we know better than Jesus about divorce, why should we not allow
and practice polygamy as well?)

> A loveless marriage is not much of a symbol, is it? 

What do you mean "loveless"?  You seem to be arguing that if someone
ceases to "love" their spouse, they should divorce rather than struggle
to rebuild the "love".  Is that so?

> We aren't called upon to come up with
> strict legalistic definitions of this and that,

Neither are we called upon to explain away commands that appear plain.

> we're called upon to love.

and we have to figure out what to _do_ to achieve that.

> Sometimes we all fall into the trap of wanting to have
> concrete rules that we _must_ follow 

I repeat that my concern in this thread is to determine what _I_ should
do.  But that's not a trap that you are talking about, it is a necessity.
We have precisely two choices:
    -- we can try to live by rules that we are conscious of.
	This is freedom, because what we are conscious of we may be
	able to reason about, correct, and replace.
    -- we can try to live by vague ideas of "all you need is lerve".
	But that is to be the slave of rules that we are not
	conscious of and are therefore not able to correct.

> and everyone else _must_ follow

Well, that's what it _MEANS_ for a belief to count as a MORAL belief;
if you don't believe that everyone who falls under the scope of a rule
should live by it, then the rule isn't a moral one.  It is important
to remember that others may be wiser than us, so a difference of opinion
is always a sign that _I_ may be wrong and a warning that _I_ must
challenge my beliefs, and to remember that others may do wrong with good
intent, so that we should be careful about judging.  But I should still
_think_ about what I should do, and that is to think about rules.

> It's too easy to sit down and cite chapter and verse and say
> that's the end of the question and forget that there are people
> involved, people who live and laugh and love.

Of course there are people involved; people who are all the time
being _hurt_ by evil.  There are real people involved in the
economic system, being paid wages and doles and buying food and
shelter.  Does that mean we shouldn't worry about getting our sums
right?  On the contrary, it means that we should take very great
care to get our sums right, precisely because other people are
going to suffer if we get them wrong.

> When you look at any commandment in the Bible, it's not enough
> to look at what it says, but at why it says it.

How very true.  The snag, of course, is that we _do_ know what it
says (though we demonstrably have arguments about what that means),
and we _don't_ know why it says it.  (Other than the final reason
"because that is God's will".)  Why did Jesus forbid divorce?
We can come up with all sorts of explanations; mine is that it turns
out in practice to usually be unjust to at least one of the parties.
(For an illustration of what things might have been like without this
command, you might try reading "Law of Desire; Temporary Marriage in
Iran" by Shahla Haeri, I.B.Tauris & co 1989, ISBN 1-85043-170-1.)
But we can't have a fraction of the confidence in these reasons that
we can in the command itself.


This whole question of "law -vs- love" and "legalism -vs- antinomianism"
and so on is a big issue for me personally this year.  I _am_ tending
more to the legalistic end, and the trouble with that is that it leads
to despair, because with Jesus having broadened the scope of "don't
commit murder" to "don't be angry with your `brother'" and of "don't
commit adultery" to "don't stare lustfully at someone" and so on I just
can't live up to it.  On the other hand, the trouble with "all you need
is lerve" is that it's devoid of content.  We simply haven't got the
sensory or computational capacity to judge each situation on its own,
"situational ethics" isn't _possible_ for human beings.  If only I were
perfectly in tune with God, so that I _knew_ by his inspiration with
certainty what I should do.  It is very easy to deceive oneself that one
_is_ in tune with God, very easy to imagine that God must think it right
because _I_ think it right.  How can I guard against such self-deception?
The only way I know (apart from not _wanting_ to deceive myself, and
asking God to keep me on the rails) is to cross-check my judgements against
"worked exercises".  If my judgements differ from those in the Book, then
what is written on my heart is not yet God's law and must be corrected.
I explain _away_ what seems to be a plain command in the Book at my peril.

This broader topic really is _the_ central issue for me this year; more
important than anything else at all.  If Donald Hosek knows a better way
to learn what is right, if he or anyone else can teach me how I can
soften frightening commands and yet remain faithful, I am _eager_ to hear
it.  There are certain passages in Matthew and Paul that I would have
given everything I possess to be able faithfully to soften earlier this
year.  (I mean this literally.  It really was that important to me.)  I
am all but desperate to learn how I may ignore these prohibitions and
still retain my intellectual integrity.

I've changed the subject line because the broader topic deserves discussion
in its own right separate from the divorce question.

If we need a specific topic to focus on, let's move it away from people
in general and ask a question about what _I_ may do.  This, by the way,
is not the issue I'm desperately concerned about, but it illustrates the
main point.

    In the Australian state of Victoria,
	-- prostitution is legal
	-- you are about 10 times less likely to catch something
	   from a prostitute than you are from a university student
	-- the men and women who are prostitutes are mostly doing
	   it because they want to (some are supporting a habit, but
	   I'm told this isn't so of the ones in the licensed houses)
	-- I am not at the moment romantically involved with anyone
	-- I have no debts or dependents, so I could afford to hire
	   a prostitute without depriving anyone else of anything I
	   owe them
	-- there is no risk of the prostitute deceiving herself that
	   a new customer loves her
	-- there's no possibility at all that I could give a prostitute
	   an STD
	-- there doesn't seem to be any social disapproval of visiting
	   a brothel -- I have been stopped in the street by a stranger
	   and asked for directions to the nearest brothel, and they
	   advertise in the phone book and on signboards on cars
So the question is,

	May Richard O'Keefe visit a legal brothel in Melbourne?

I think that the answer is "no", because I think that the "porneia" that
is forbidden to me includes sex with a woman I am not committed to, even
if by the standards of the society around me it is neither unjust nor
exploitative.  (Victorian readers may want to correct me on that, but it's
the impression I get.)  However, I _have_ come across some people who
claimed to be Christians (and were accepted as such by a major "mainline" US
denomination) who deny this, one of whom indeed told me that failure to
experiment with sex was ingratitude to God.

If we could possibly keep it sharply focussed on this one case, that
would mean that no-one could be accused of laying heavy burdens on anyone
else, and answers like "it would depend on whether ..." could be answered
by reference to the concrete situation. 

If I can be shown how to get around or soften what the NT (and the Tanakh)
say about _this_ case, I'll see how to get around the matter I really care
about.  I implore anyone who thinks the answer is "yes" to try to explain it.

-- 
The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3
may always be replied to with a lob across the net.  --Alasdair Macintyre.

wagner@karazm.math.uh.edu (David Wagner) (11/14/90)

So far there has been much bandwidth expended on this issue of divorce (and
remarriage), but no one has quite hit the nail on the head.

Our understanding of Christ's teaching on this matter will be improved if
we concentrate on his words in Matthew 19:4-6:

'Haven't you read,' he replied, 'that at the beginning the Creator
"made them male and female", and said "For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become
one flesh"?  So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has 
joined together, let man not separate."

Here our Lord defines marriage to be a 'one flesh' relationship between
a man and a woman.  He says that it is God who has joined them together,
and commands us not to break this relationship.  To break it is a sin.

This is the foundation of the Christian teaching regarding marriage.  To
concentrate on rules or exceptions that allow divorce, without understanding
this underlying principle, really is legalism.

Now read 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.  Paul urges the Corinthians, and us, to
'flee from sexual immorality.'(v.18)  He comments, in v. 15, 16, "Do you
not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?  Shall I then take the
members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?  Never!  Do you not know
that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body?
For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."

There are a number of things we can learn from this passage.  In particular
it appears to answer Richard O'Keefe's question rather clearly.  In addition
it describes the relationship between Christ and his believers as a kind of
marriage -- which is dealt with more clearly elsewhere, where the church is
described as the Bride of Christ.  However I quote this simply to show that
this 'one flesh' relationship also occurs when one uses a prostitute.  
Needless to say, this kind of 'one flesh' relationship does not have 
God's blessing, as does marriage. -- although one might note that Christ
descended from such a relationship between Judah and Tamar!

The sanctity of marriage is such that it must not be broken even if one
partner is an unbeliever.  For Peter tells us that a wife should submit
even to an unbelieving husband (1 Peter 3) so that he may be won for Christ
'without talk by the behavior of their wives'.  Paul gives similar instruction
in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.  But in verse 15 he says, "But if the unbeliever
leaves, let him do so.  A believing man or woman is not bound under
such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace."  I read this as 
follows: If one partner deserts the other (permanently, as far as we can tell,
and for no good reason), the one flesh relationship, i.e., the marriage,
is broken.  Actually such a person shows his unbelief by abandoning the 
marriage.  The innocent spouse is not bound in such a marriage.  He or she 
may remarry.

In Lutheran circles we call this 'malicious desertion'.  It was with a note
of irony that I read, about a year ago, that when some of my ancestors,
the Hepplers, left Vaihingen, Germany, around the year 1700, to come to
America, that the wife was left behind.  Church records show that she
was 'maliciously deserted'! :-) and :-(

Similarly Jesus tells us that in the case of 'marital unfaithfulness'
(Matthew 5:32, NIV), one may divorce.  Really the case is that one partner
has broken the 'one flesh' relationship by joining with another - without
God's blesssing of marriage.  The sin is breaking the bond; the divorce
that follows simply recognized this fact.  One ought to examine whether
in fact the bond is broken; in my opinion, an isolated lapse should be
forgiven and need not result in divorce.  As Peter asked Jesus, 'How
many times must I forgive my brother? Seven times?  The answer he got
was, 'You must forgive him seven times seventy times' (or perhaps 77 times,
I can't find the passage. The numbers are not to be taken literally, of
course).

Cases of spouse abuse can be taken as 'malicious desertion', but again, one
must examine whether the marriage bond is really broken or not.  I've known
at least one case like this, and believe me, it is difficult and painful 
to deal with.

Needless to say, (I hope) we should not advise the married man who consorts
with a prostitute to be faithful to the prostitute and not to his wife!
For his public confession is that he is married to his wife.  He is guilty
of false witness and of adultery.  He should repent by returning to his
wife - if she will have him.  Otherwise he should be excommunicated, as was
the man guilty of incest, as described in 1 Corinthians.

Yours in God's grace,

David H. Wagner
a confessional Lutheran
		"Oh, blessed home where man and wife
		Together lead a godly life,
		By deeds their faith confessing!
		There many a happy day is spent,
		There Jesus gladly will consent
		To tarry with his blessing.

		"If they have given Him their heart,
		The place of honor set apart
		For Him each night and morrow,
		Then He the storms of life will calm,
		Will bring for ev'ry wound a balm,
		And change to joy their sorrow.

		"And if their home be dark and drear,
		The cruse be empty, hunger near,
		All hope within them dying,
		Let them despair not in distress,
		Lo Christ is there the bread to bless,
		The fragments multiplying.

		"O Lord, we come before Thy face;
		In ev'ry home bestow Thy grace
		On children, father, mother.
		Reliever their wants, their burdens ease,
		Let them together dwell in peace
		And love to one another."
		--I Hus og Hjem, hvor Mand og Viv
		--Magnus B. Landstad, 1861.

My opinions and beliefs on this matter are disclaimed by
The University of Houston.