Took another half day off work today, to welcome another air conditioner tech into the bosom of my home. He looked my late, lamented unit over for the household warranty company, called in his findings (he concurred with the previous diagnosis) and told me the company would get back to me. I’m now waiting for that call.
The possibilities are two. One is that they’ll just replace the dead condenser. This will be good in the sense of saving me money just now, when money’s tight. Less good long-range. The other possibility is that they’ll offer some kind of deal on replacement of the whole shebang, which will raise the problem of how much that may cost, and how I’ll cover it.
Actually there’s a third possibility. They may just deny coverage, which the tech casually remarked they did on the last unit he inspected for them.
A number of decisions about what I’ll be doing this summer await that final verdict.
Learned something new from Vol. III of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis today.
It had always seemed a little… squishy to me, the way Lewis maintained (as he does in a couple letters in this volume) that there can be no Christian remarriage after divorce, right up until the time he fell in love with a divorced woman and wanted to marry her. (The original BBC version of Shadowlands deals with this dilemma, by the way, while the later theatrical version ignores it.) One understands the power of love, of course, not to mention his heroic willingness to take on married life (and step-fatherhood) with a woman he expected to die very soon. But it seemed a little self-serving, in view of his previously expressed views.
But Hooper notes here, between letters written in March, 1957:
About the time Joy was admitted to hospital with cancer, Lewis discovered that William Gresham had been legally married before his marriage to Joy, and that his first wife had been alive at the time of this second marriage. Lewis took the view of the Catholic Church that his second marriage was therefore invalid, leaving Joy free to marry again.
I’m aware that the No Remarriage rule doesn’t have many Protestant (probably not even many Catholic) adherents these days, but that passage comforted me.
And when I say that, I want to make it very, very clear that I don’t want to start a debate on the subject. My own church body holds to the old, hard rule, and I personally agree with it, which is one of many reasons I’m still single (Let’s face it—the best single women in my age group are almost always divorced).
You should see the angry e-mails I got a few years back, when I took out an ad on a Christian singles website and tried to explain—really, really gently—that I couldn’t consider marriage to a divorced woman. A couple writers accused me of saying “everybody who’s divorced is going to Hell.”
What I say is, let everyone be convinced in their own consciences, and I’m happy to leave the judgment to God.
(By the way, I went through a self-serving period myself, when I lived in Florida. I attended an excellent singles group down there, and it included a number of admirable and very attractive divorced women. I found myself unaccountably persuaded, for a while, that remarriage was permissible. But I never got a date anyway.)
Now let the flaming begin.
No flaming here.
St. Paul says in the 1 Corinthians 7 passage that if an unbelieving spouse leaves, the Christian is not under bondage in such cases.
Could you explain why your denomination believes that the believing person may not marry a Christian, if his/her unbelieving spouse has “departed” from the marriage?
Don’t expect me to turn around and criticize the reasoning and thus get into a debate. I just wonder what the biblical reasoning, or even nonbiblical reasoning, is. The question has to have come up. I’m not asking you for any personal reasons you might have, just the denomination’s ones.
Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I was under the impression two exceptions are acceptable. (Dale has mentioned the first.) As regards the second; if a person’s spouse has committed adultery the innocent party is able to remarry. (This is the position taken by John Murray in the Classic Bible dictionary.)
Our take on 1 Corinthians 7 centers on verse 10-11: “A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband.” We interpret verse 15 to mean that the woman is not bound to remain in marriage with a spouse who has abandoned her. We take verse 11 to still apply here, meaning she is not free to remarry.
We understand the Lord’s teaching in Matthew 5:32 to be the overarching principle that sets the parameters: “I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”
I don’t like it any more than anybody else. One of my own tests of genuine religious conviction is whether a person believes the parts of his religion that don’t suit his personal feelings.
If I understand Murray he believes the woman in Mathew 5:23 has reference to a woman unfairly (unbiblically) divorced. ie. a man has divorced a woman without biblical warrant.
– I’m done.
Well, I’ll put in that I don’t believe the Lord requires abstinence from those who have been divorced prior to their salvation or the innocent who have been divorced through abandonment or adultery. I also think Lewis’ reasoning on an invalid second marriage is without merit.
No flames? No feedback?
Thanks, Lars.
It’s this sort of matter that raises Doubts in my mind about whether it really is tenable to believe, as I go on saying like a good Protestant, that the Bible is clear enough for everything we need to know – – the analogy of the Lamp that gives light for where you need to put your feet even if it doesn’t shine widely enough to show you everything you might be curious about. Obviously the matter of divorce and remarriage is not a matter of “curiosity” but of the keenest immediacy, and millions of sincere Christians want to follow its prescriptions and proscriptions. But here we have a matter that really does seem hard to settle for the satisfaction of all Bible-believers, leading to one and only one correct interpretation.
Not to forestall any comment you’d like to make on my previous comment, Lars; but I’d like to open up a new topic, if you’re interested, having to do with the role of the Lutheran Confessions in the Association of Free Lutheran Churches, to which you belong. (As I set this new topic up, I’d also like to provide a little information for the interest of non-Lutherans who might be wondering about what Luther and the Lutheran Confessions say.)
Luther said, “If a spouse has committed adultery and the fact can be publicly proved [e.g. by the adulterer’s acknowledgment of the sin], I may and dare not keep the other person from being free, from permission to obtain a divorce, and from marrying someone else. But if it can be done, it is very much better to reconcile the two and keep them together,” etc. I quote from the anthology What Luther Says, ed. Ewald Plass, page 902. This isn’t Luther’s private opinion, but the stance of the Lutheran Confessions. In the Book of Concord, in the “Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope,” we read that “the tradition which forbids an innocent party to marry after divorce” is “unjust” (page 333 of the Tappert edition of the Book of Concord).
These texts are adduced not to prompt a debate about divorce and remarriage. I thought that non-Lutherans would be interested in knowing that the early stance of the Lutheran church is that divorce and remarriage are possible in the circumstance indicated (cf. 1 Cor. 7).
But my question to you is, what is the stance of the AFLC vis-a-vis the Lutheran Confessions? Since the AFLC does not agree with the Confessions on this matter, what is its position about the Confessions?
In my circles, pastors pledge adherence to the Confessions /because/ they are a faithful statetment of what the Bible teaches; this is contrasted with the stance of some who have pledged adherence to the Confessions /insofar as/ they are a faithful statement of what the Bible teaches. The former position is the “quia” position, while the latter is the “quatenus” position. Do AFLC pastors expressly pledge a quatenus adherence?
And then I would also ask, given the relative importance of the Confessions (apparently), where is the determinative source for AFLC pastors? Rosenius? Hauge? Or their own and their congregations’ sense of the Bible?
I seek information, not debate.
Dale, in response to comment #7, I understand what you’re saying, and I think this shows the simplicity of our application of sola scriptura, which is the idea you describe. It’s truth that we, the body of Christ, need only the Scriptures for direction in all areas of Christian living and worship, but the body of Christ is not you or me alone. We need each other. We need the village of the Lord, the community of Christians sharing all spiritual gifts with each other, to properly understand the Scripture. We shouldn’t raise one minister’s words or a confession to the same authority as Scripture, but in submission the Holy Spirit, we should humbly consider words of the pastor and teachers He has raised up to teach us. And that won’t guard us against strong disagreement.
Well, it’s a little more complicated than that for Lutherans, Phil. It’s a perfectly defensible position to say that Scripture is above the Confessions. However, it would also be accurate to say that if you consider the Lutheran Confessions unsatisfactory explanations of Scripture, then you’re not a Lutheran, whatever else you may be.
I don’t know how to answer the question. I do know that the No Remarriage rule was the standard position in the early days of the old American Lutheran Church. There used to be a little tract called, “The Pastor Said No,” published by Augsburg, which was published precisely for the job of explaining the church’s position to couples who had been turned down for weddings on that point.
But I don’t know the history of the rule. I’m seeking information from those better informed. I’ll let you know if I hear anything.
Please do respond further.
Candor requires that I acknowledge that the quia-quatenus thing I just mentioned is largely something that gets trotted out when my kind of Lutherans want to criticize Lars’s kind of Lutherans. Fact is, we’re not 100% quatenus ourselves, if that means doing and preaching exactly as the Confessions indicate. Most importantly, while the Confessions say that the Sacrament is administered every Sunday and on holy days (such as today’s Feast of the Ascension), such practice is very, very uncommon in Confessional Lutheran circles. Also, FWIW the Confessions say “We do not forbid prayer for the dead.” But Confessional Lutherans don’t pray for the dead, at least as I have ever seen.
(Not to start a flurry about what “prayer for the dead” would be. It would not be prayer to God [let alone to the saints] to reduce the time someone has to spend in purgatory. I imagine it would be something like what I do privately from time to time, that is, pray for some departed person that the Lord would receive hinm or her into His kingdom.)
Heh, heh, it doesn’t appear we get a flurry of any kind of comment. 🙂
Phil, re your #9 above, do you know Mathison’s book The Shape of Sola Scriptura?
No, I don’t.
Shape of Sola Scriptura is by a Reformed author. He distinguishes the common evangelical “solo scriptura” from the “Tradition I” that seems to approximate what you describe. As I recall, Tradition II was identified with Eastern Orthodoxy and Tradition III with Roman Catholicism as adding to Scripture, while Tradition I sees Scripture as uniquely authoritative, but the Scriptures as interpreted within the historic Church.
FWIW I have a Lutheran pastor friend who wasn’t all that impressed by the book, but I liked it enough to give away a copy and buy one for myself.
I hope for more from Lars with reference to my #8 above and also your #10, Lars. I’m wondering when, under what conditions, Lutherans came to see Luther and the Confessions as too lax. Just offhand I wonder if, within Lutheran circles, this coincided with the movement to forbid alcohol despite the acceptance of alcohol, but not drunkenness, in Christendom. In other words, as something characteristic of the pietist revival. But while I think use of alcohol has always been permitted in Christendom except by (I’ll say “sects” without meaning an overtime of disdain) sects, I’m not sure that the view of divorce and remarriage that Luther and the Confessions describe was widely countenanced in the ancient Church. The Orthodox regard themselves as /the/ Church of the Fathers, though, and FWIW they tend to be pretty liberal about divorce and remarriage, as I understand.
Yep. Tradition I as you describe it would be where I stand. Does Mathison see that as an error or that sola scriptura is something other than that?
Regarding your quia-quatenus thing, wouldn’t any respectable pastor hold to both in a sense? I mean, if I understood and agreed that the Book of Concord faithfully represented the Scriptures, I would pledge my faith to them (quia). But if my study of the Word lead to me to different conclusions on some of the minor issues, I would have to hold humbly to my understanding Scripture (quatenus). If I disagreed on a major issue, then I would have to reject the confession I suppose.
My understanding is that the prospective and the practicing Lutheran pastor studies the Bible and the Book of Concord throughout his life, and, yes, in the event that he determined that, for whatever reason, he could not affirm it, he would leave Confessional Lutheranism. I’m still waitingt o hear from Lars about the status of the Confessions in the AFLC; my impression is that AFLC Lutherans would regard the Confessions as generally good theology, but would not pledge themselves to them.
Pastors in Confessional Lutheran churches leave every so often. In the LCMS, for example, a prominent pastor, John Fenton, recently left Lutheranism for Orthodoxy. Such events are hard on people, but they do not tear a denomination apart, and I think the Confessional subscription is a lot of the reason; everyone knows that here are the doctrinal confessions of the church, take them or leave them. You don’t have the phenomenon in Lutheranism, not much, that seems to be common in evangelical circles, in which pastors and their teaching (sometimes perhaps novel teaching) get mixed up with congregations splitting, etc.
Of course this can happen even in a Confessional church. My own congregation and pastor are out of the little Evangelical Lutheran Synod because of a disagreement about the doctrine of the ministry. But in general this adherence to dogmatic confessions has a lot to be said for it. Of course, if you’re a Pentecostal it may seem like institutionalized quenching-of-the-Spirit.
OK, here’s one thing–the Book of Concord is not historically a doctrinal standard in the Norwegian or Danish Lutheran churches. This is because the king of Denmark (I forget which one), when the book was delivered to him, decided that it was solely concerned with German theological controversies and would not be helpful in his realm. He actually banned the book within the kingdom.
Otherwise, I also expect that Pietism has something to do with it. Pietists traditionally reject all “adiaphora.” In other words, they deny that “disputed matters,” not clearly decided in scripture, are matters of Christian freedom. “If it’s doubtful, it’s dirty,” as in shirt collars. If there’s any question about a matter, the Pietist rejects it–thus the famous rules about drinking and dancing.
I consider myself essentially a Pietist, but I can’t agree on the adiaphora issue. So I’m only a pseudo-Pietist, or something.
Those are interesting comments, Lars, although I’m not quite sure they answer my questions (if that’s what was intended).
Hmmm … it looks like quite a discussion has ensued. As a pastor in the AFLC I think I should weigh in on a few things. Until now my attentions this week have been focused on a weighty matter, namely, that my father passed away last Friday. A man of deep faith – our loss is Heaven’s gain.
First, I need to set the record straight, that it’s only “half right” that the AFLC has a strict “no remarriage” position. A significant number of pastors hold that position, but many don’t, and in fact it’s one of several significant issues in which AFLC pastors are allowed to differ. The seminary does tend to put the weight of its influence behind the No Remarriage position.
Secondly, the AFLC has the “quia” position on the Confessions, but with a shorter list of confessions than some of the other groups. To clarify Lars’ comments about the status of the Book of Concord, the AFLC follows the Scandinavian tradition of subscribing to the three creeds, the Augsburg Confession, and the Small CAtechism. The full Book of Concord includes all those documents plus some others, such as the Large Catechism, the Formula of Concord, and the “Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.” But, as Lars said, the additional documents were perceived by a Scandinavian monarch as an unnecessary importation of German theological controversies.
So, some Lutheran groups such as the AFLC follow the “short list”, and others such as the LCMS follow the “long list” which comes from the German Lutheran heritage. The old ALC was one of the first mergers of German and Scandinavian groups and bridged the gap by giving primary status to the “short list” of Confessions and including the rest of the Book of Concord in some kind of secondary status. Though the AFLC as a whole only goes by the “short list”, there are individual churches that subscribe to the “long list” in their constitutions, including the church in Texas where I first served after ordination.
So officially the AFLC is “quia”, but only with the “short list” of Confessions provided by the SCandinavian heritage. And the fact is, a number of AFLC pastors have gone for years without reviewing the Augsburg Confession.
And it’s arguable that in practice we tend to interpret certain statements in the Confessions with a great deal of “latitude”.
Thanks for the information, Michael. And condolences on the loss of your father.
That is fascinating information, Michael. Thank you.
I don’t have that old attitude towards divorce. But I sympathize with it. And I was always a little suspicious of Lewis’ changes of views on divorce too. Funny enough, I had the same experience of relief when I found out about Lewis’ rationale. I love me some casuistry.