NOTE: Time has picked up on this debate (HT: Justin Taylor)
David Instone-Brewer took the time to respond to my previous post on divorce and remarriage. In the response he clarifies some misunderstandings connected with his CT article. His response is below:
Dear Andreas
Thank you for interacting with my work at such length and with such evident understanding of my arguments.
I share your main problem with my CT article, which is that some people who are not familiar with my work might conclude that I’m advocating divorce for minor reasons. My actual conclusions are closer to yours – that neglect has to be persistent and serious, ie more-or-less equivalent to abandonment (a concept which you rightly picked up from my books).
When I wrote the Christianity Today article, I struggled greatly with the word limit for such an important subject. There wasn’t room to define neglect, so I referred readers to my Divorce & Remarriage in the Church (the full text is at www.DivorceRemarriage.com)
The book points out that ‘neglect’ is an inadequate modern-day way of summarising the stipulations of ‘food, clothing and love’ in Ex.21.10f (as repeated in marriage contracts in Jesus’ day). It also details the way in which Jesus emphasises that a wronged partner should forgive and forgive and forgive and that turning to divorce as a remedy for persistant neglect is a last resort.
I’m sorry that I have caused confusion by not making this clear in the article itself. See my response to this and other issues here.
David Instone-Brewer
[...] Kostenberger [...]
[...] The New Testament on Divorce: A interesting insight into current debate sparked by David Instone-Brewer’s article in Christianity Today. John Piper then responded, followed by this response and follow-up by Andreas Kostenberger. Very roughly speaking, Instone-Brewer considers the NT to encourage grace after a necessary divorce, John Piper believes re-marriage is never right, and Kostenberger takes the middle-ground. Instone-Brewer follows up the debate with some clarification here. [...]
Just to put my two cents in here, I ‘d like to say that after carefully reading Dr. IB’s book on this as well as Mr. Piper’s response, I really feel Dr. IB has used much sounder hermeneutics in understanding this difficult topic.
Mr. Piper has obviously fallen into the traditional snare of embracing a “current day” approach to reading these passages rather than putting them into the context in which they were written.
I have yet to see a sounder approach to this topic than what Dr. IB has presented.
I couldn’t agree more with Frank. Dr. IB has done a masterful job in treating the subject. This is evident from the books he has written which includes much of his research.
It seems that until we can see the issue of divorce with the eyes of a first century Jew, we cannot quite understand the meaning of Jesus’ and Paul’s (for Romans) teaching on the matter.
The bottom line, whatever teaching Jesus gave on divorce and remarriage is not a license for “no-fault” divorce but has to be congruent with grace.