REACT: Adam Robinson on Divorce and Remarriage

YouTuber Adam Robinson discussed Jesus's teaching on divorce and remarriage ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7bMesTO44A ).  In his presentation, Adam summarized Jesus's teaching in a way that gave the man more rights than the woman.  In doing so, Adam recognized that Jesus's exception clauses in Mat 5:32, 19:9 only provide the man the right to divorce and remarry in the exceptional scenario, not the woman.  This poses an insurmountable gender problem for the "adultery" view of the exception clause.  Adam "bites the bullet" by accepting a gendered exception despite its inconsistency with the New Testament's gender neutral morality on divorce and remarriage.  However, this gender problem is remedied under the "already married" view of the exception clause, as I explain in this episode.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to the Divorce Your Remarriage Podcast. Today I've got someone, a YouTuber, who I actually actually like the way he teaches. It's just very, I don't know, thorough and step by step, just the way he teaches, it's it's uh really helpful, easy to follow. But anyway, and he's got an awesome accent. I like that too. But he teaches on uh divorce and remarriage, a lot of different topics, actually, and divorce and remarriage is one of them that he covers. And in his teaching on this, he does something that I have not seen a lot of people do, and that is he notices something in Jesus' teaching on Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 that I think just escapes most people. So here's how this works. So Jesus called divorce and remarriage adultery. He did that seven times in the New Testament. Two of those times, Jesus included an exception clause. And the exception clause says except for fornication. And so there's a big question about number one, what does what does this exception include? Like under what circumstances would the exception apply? That's the first question. The second question is when it does apply, what does it let you do? Can you divorce only, or can you divorce and you can remarry? Now, I would say if you look at Matthew 19, 9, you have to be able to divorce and remarry in the exceptional situation. So the only real question left is what is the exception clause all about? Like under what circumstances does it relate? Now, I would say Jesus tells us in black and white very plainly what the exception clause means. He tells us that in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 32, in the second half of that for in of that verse, Jesus says that whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. And I think that's what Jesus is talking about in the exceptional situation. That the reason why that's there is to tell you what the exception clause means. I have a whole video where I explain the actually, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that's what's going on in the exception clause. I have a whole video about that. But the idea is this a man married a divorced woman. That marriage is adultery. It's an invalid marriage. She is already married. So she's not available to be married because she's already married, because divorces don't divorce. This is really the whole premise behind Jesus' teaching. Somebody divorces, the divorce doesn't do anything. That changes government records. But from God's perspective, they're still married. Like nothing happened. They're still married. So that's the whole premise behind all these teachings from Jesus. So the exception clause is talking about a situation where uh someone marries somebody who else who is already married. So I have the already married view of the exception clause. Now, that's not what our friend Adam Robinson believes, who we're gonna watch here in a moment. He thinks the exception clause is for adultery. So a man is married to a woman and she is unfaithful, she commits adultery, and so the man's able to divorce her, and then he can go ahead and remarry if he wants. And so that's what Adam thinks. Now, one of the criticisms I have raised of this view, of which there are many criticisms actually, but one of the ones I've raised is that if this was true, it would only allow the man to divorce the woman for infidelity, but not vice versa. The reason I say that is if you look at Matthew 5.32 and Matthew 19. Who's doing the divorcing? The man is doing the divorcing. So that means who's doing the infidelity? Well, that would be the woman in those two situations. Is there a case where a woman divorces in one of these scenarios Jesus talks about? Well, yes, in Mark chapter 10, Jesus does talk about a woman divorcing a man. So that's a scenario Jesus can imagine would happen. He's not only limited to the maybe Jewish experience of uh divorce where the man would give the woman a certificate of divorce, he also has in mind just the kind of the Roman Empire divorce thing where they would allow a woman to divorce. But he doesn't give an exception clause when he's talking about the woman divorcing. He only gives an exception clause when he talks about the man divorcing. So then if you thought the exception clause refers to infidelity, then you would think the exception clause only permits the man to divorce for infidelity. But if the man cheats, the woman cannot divorce for infidelity. In fact, there are some early church writers who came to that very conclusion for that very same reason. And Adam Robinson comes to the same conclusion today. Normally, I would think somebody today, if they thought, yes, the exception clause would only allow the man to divorce for infidelity and not the woman, I would think that today somebody would say, Oh, I must be misunderstanding the exception clause because there's no way there's like an unequal right being given here by Jesus. But Adam Robinson doesn't do that. He goes, Well, I guess it's an unequal right. Now, what's interesting about this is if you look at Mark chapter 10, verses 11 and 12, you see that Jesus flips the genders. It doesn't matter who's doing the divorcing, the man or the woman, it's still adultery to remarry. The gender doesn't matter. If you look at Luke 16, 18, again, Jesus flips the genders. If you look at Matthew 532A and Matthew 19, 9, again, the genders are flipped. If you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 7, Paul is spending a lot of ink flipping the genders back and forth, back and forth, the whole chapter to make sure everybody understands this is a gender-neutral area, that there's not a gendered rule that favors the man and disfavors the woman. People are accustomed to at this time moral norms favoring the men and disfavoring the woman. For example, in Deuteronomy chapter 24, the man can give the wife a certificate of divorce, but she can't give him a certificate of divorce. They're just accustomed to gendered rules. And so that's why they have to spend a lot of time letting everybody know, hey guys, these rules are not gendered. So when you see all of that emphasis, and then you see the exception clause, where if there's a particular interpretation of it, like Adam Robinson's interpretation of it, you would end up with a gendered rule. You go, something is wrong here. I must have the wrong interpretation of the exception clause. That's what I would hope people would would come to, that conclusion. But Adam doesn't. Adam bites the bullet and he says, I guess it's a gendered exception. Let's hear from Adam.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

In sum, according to Jesus, remarriage is only permissible for men who have been divorced if they divorced because their wife committed sexual immorality. However, no man, regardless of circumstances, may marry a divorced woman. Finally, divorced women are not allowed to remarry for any reason.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I appreciate Adam's honesty. If you're going to say that the exception clause is for infidelity, then you can only understand that to mean the man has the right to divorce for infidelity and not the woman. Now, I don't agree with that. I don't think this is a gendered exception at all. But if you're going to say it's infidelity, you're going to have to, if you want to be intellectually honest, you're going to have to say it's a gendered exception. And so that means Westminster Confession of Faith has to be wrong because it gives the rights to both men and women. And there's no way to read Matthew 5.32 or Matthew 19.9 that way. Now imagine yourself hearing Jesus at the time on the Sermon on the Mount and then later arguing with the Pharisees in Matthew 19. You are accustomed to gendered rules that favor the men. And then you hear Jesus give this exception clause. And let's say you think he was referring to infidelity. Would you think Jesus automatically is flipping the genders? Why would you think that? Nobody you know does that. The Pharisees aren't doing that, the Sadducees aren't doing that. Nobody is doing this flipping the gender thing. Let's say you're a Pharisee. Let's say you're from the Hillel school, that was one of the rabbis, or you're from the Shemai school. Yeah, that's one of that's another one of the rabbis. And let's say you've been growing up, going to a synagogue, and they've got a bunch of rules that favor the men and disfavor the women. It is double standards every day, all over the place. And then you hear Jesus give this exception clause. And let's say you thought he was referring to infidelity in the exception clause. Would you automatically flip the genders and think, oh, women should also then be able to divorce and remarry if their husbands are unfaithful? No, of course not. Of course not. It wouldn't even occur to you to do that. So if Jesus meant also women could divorce for infidelity, he would need to say that. The fact that he didn't say that and he doesn't say it in Mark 10 tells you that if it was for infidelity, then it was only a right given to men. And that should make us all very uncomfortable because intellectually it doesn't make any sense with the rest of Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage. So I appreciate Adam for his brutal honesty there with the scriptures, with his view, being consistent. Although I have to say I disagree with his end conclusion, go ahead and get my book, Divorce You or Remarriage. Be sure to subscribe, like, comment. I'd love to know what you have to think about all this. And I'll see you guys next time.