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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/8/2003 5:53 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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Empiress
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2002
Total Posts : 363
| Posted 3/8/2003 6:13 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Empiress: BTW, what kind of allowances do you think are dangerous? Is it dangerous to allow remarried couples who sin continually in adultery back into the church?
PoW: Is that supposed to be a cute-ish reference to the ongoing marriage of those who have been divorced. I have a friend who is a sub-deacon and who will never be a deacon -- he is remarried from a very, very young marriage. If that is what you mean (otherwise ignore this!) "shame" on you for writing: "remarried couples who sin continually in adultery."
But if you are condemning those who remarried - take that bitterness elsewhere!!!!!!!
And if you are condemning homosexuals...take that bitterness elsewhere!!!! (This is really odd.)
POW, I am of the mind that God blesses and restores people who remarry EVEN though Jesus calls remarriage after divorce "adultery." I believe people who remarry ought to be in the Church even though the Bible is so crystal clear that remarriage after divorce is adultery...it is a serious sin in the Bible. I believe that at some point, the "less than ideal" state of remarriage is forgiven and God blesses it despite that fact...and it ceases to be "sin" in that sense.
My point is that while people make "concessions" to this "sin," as you have just done by even "shaming" me by calling remarriage the sin of adultery (the Bible's words not mine!), they will not make "concessions" to homosexual relationships. Would you "shame" Jesus for saying that remarriage is adultery?
"Mat 5:32 But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
It is clear your response to my question is that we should make "allowances" for certain sins, eg that of remarriage, so in reality, you do not believe that all allowances of sin are "dangerous" or qualify as "cheap grace." How is your concession to remarriage any different than a concession to homosexual marriage?
Thanks,
~E
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/8/2003 6:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Sometimes VERB TENSE is everything:
quote:
"shaming" me by calling remarriage the sin of adultery (the Bible's words not mine!),
I call "REMARRIAGE" sin too. (The act of getting remarried.)
But your post took the tense that their continuing in that marriage is sin. And I do not say that. | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/8/2003 6:46 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Empiress:
It is clear your response to my question is that we should make "allowances" for certain sins, eg that of remarriage, so in reality, you do not believe that all allowances of sin are "dangerous" or qualify as "cheap grace." How is your concession to remarriage any different than a concession to homosexual marriage?
The big difference is that marriage, an eschatological institution, is as you have said "ordained by God." It is not a contemporary, liberal "concession" with the aim of a constructed "virtue."
Is remarriage "cheep grace." That depends. It might be. But it might just be grace. But it is never non-grace: it is either "grace" or "cheep-grace." Sin is involved.
Is sin involved in your "concession."
Answer-me-this: WHO is involved in your "concession?" By who's authority and stature?
AND, marriage is not just something that after-the-fact is externally given some award by God. Marriage is an "eschatological" act. It exists IN the eschata. The Orthodox marriage ceremony shows this. (Marriage is as eschatological as the Eucharist is; and the liturgy shows this.)
A good book for you would be this, by Evdokimov:
quote:
EVDOKIMOV Paul. GYTHIEL Anthony. trans.: SACRAMENT OF LOVE ; ORTH
This book is heartily recommended to every paster who; seeks a vocabulary that will provide a "vision" for and a "vocation" to the married estate in terms of the one theological reality articulated by the scriptures, entered by Holy Baptism and nourished by the "Eucharist" This is the best work available in English on the Orthodox view of marriage. paper. 192 pp.
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Semeia
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2001
Total Posts : 522
| Posted 3/8/2003 7:05 AM (GMT -6) | | PoW said:
I call "REMARRIAGE" sin too. (The act of getting remarried.)
But your post took the tense that their continuing in that marriage is sin. And I do not say that.
Semeia:
Adultery is sex outside of a sanctioned marriage. Jesus called remarriage adultery. It is not the "act of getting remarried" that is adulterous - it is the sex that happens in a non-sanctioned marriage that is adulterous. Adultery is about sex. When Jesus says, "whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery" he is talking about SEX. The "act of getting remarried" (which is what - the wedding vows, the ceremony?) is not the adultery, but the sex inside of that marriage IS.
For someone who places such a high value on the "traditions" of the "church fathers" - it seems to me that you would be well-familiar with how this scripture has been treated in the last two thousand years. It has been understood exactly as we characterize it, and the position of the church has been that divorced people were rejected by the church, and remarried people were told to get divorced and remarry their original spouse.
Clearly, none of us here are saying to go back to that way of treating divorced and remarriage people. What we ARE saying is that we should treat gays with the same compassion and understanding that we treat people who are living in the ongoing sin of remarriage. In fact, we believe that this compassion is based on an understanding of such unions as the best possible response to a less than ideal situation, and in that sense no longer sin.
So we see that the scripture calls it ongoing sin, and yet we also see that it is the most loving response to the situation, in the same way that to not rest on the Sabbath is sin, and yet Jesus did not sin when he "worked" on the Sabbath - even though according to a strict understanding of scripture he did.
Thanks,
Semeia
"The opposite of sin is not virtue, but faith."--Soren Kierkegaard | | Back to Top | | |
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Iconoclast
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 3/8/2003 7:05 AM (GMT -6) | | POW
I call "REMARRIAGE" sin too. (The act of getting remarried.)
Iconoclast
How very convenient. But how very unscriptural. Jesus is crystal clear that the sin of remarriage is adultery. He doesn't say that the sin of remarriage is the remarriage itself. It is on-going adultery BECAUSE you are still joined to your first spouse. “What God hath put together let no man put asunder.” Therefore divorce and remarriage is on-going adultery unless they break up and remain celibate or go back to the first spouse.
Your church is actually recognizing this reality when they refuse to allow your friend to become a deacon.
1 Timothy 3:12 - Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.
Your friend can’t be a deacon in your church because your church has determined that he is NOT the husband of one wife. That, in fact, he is still the husband of his first wife. “What God hath put together let no man put asunder.”
What is totally hypocritical is that by Jesus’ definition your friend is living in an on-going adulterous relationship that your church has decided to accommodate in all respects (“making concessions for this sin”) except for deaconship but refuses to accommodate homosexual marriage which is fundamentally no different.
And THIS is exactly what Jesus was blasting the Pharisees for with this example. He was blasting them for their hypocrisy when it came to how they dealt with sin in others. No wonder it is more convenient to interpret Jesus as saying that the remarriage itself was the sin.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edited by - Iconoclast on 03/08/2003 12:07:15 PM | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/8/2003 5:17 PM (GMT -6) | | So, case in point. Here we see both Semeia and Iconoclast declaring and effecting a proof that those who have remarried are sinning by the second.
What are we to make of this?
1. Does this mean that Semeia and Iconoclast condemn them?
2. Does this mean that Semeia and Iconoclast discount all sin and sinning, as not counting?
3. Does this mean that Semeia and Iconoclast think something in-between?
See, Empiress! | | Back to Top | | |
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John Earp
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715
| Posted 3/8/2003 9:43 PM (GMT -6) | | Semeia's claim that the universal Christian position for 2000 years has been that the divorced and remarried are perpetually committing adultery is not true. The Eastern Orthodox churches have held for centuries that there are exceptions in certain situations to the "no divorce, ever" rule, and allow up to two divorces, if memory serves me correctly. Here we have a very ancient branch (if not the most ancient) of the Church which does not say that all divorced and remarried persons are perpetually living in adultery.
Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see God (Heb. 12:14)
revivaltheology.net
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Iconoclast
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 3/9/2003 4:03 AM (GMT -6) | | POW
So, case in point. Here we see both Semeia and Iconoclast declaring and effecting a proof that those who have remarried are sinning by the second.
What are we to make of this?
1. Does this mean that Semeia and Iconoclast condemn them?
2. Does this mean that Semeia and Iconoclast discount all sin and sinning, as not counting?
3. Does this mean that Semeia and Iconoclast think something in-between?
Iconoclast
I am more than willing to answer these questions again. But before I do that I would like to ask how your church answers these question.
First it is clear from the fact that your friend can’t be a deacon because of an earlier marriage and 1 Timothy 3:12 that your church believes that your friend is NOT the husband of one wife. Therefore your church believes that your friend is still the husband of another woman who is presumably married to someone else. Now, your church is clearly basing this conclusion on Jesus saying that “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”
Matthew 19:6-9
Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except [it be] for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
Notice again that Jesus says that the sin involved is adultery. And this is easy to see. If you are still really married to your first wife and are now having on-going sexual relations with another woman (your second wife) then you are clearly committing on-going adultery.
So how does your church answer your own questions POW?
1. Does this mean that your church condemns your friend?
2. Does this mean that your church discounts all sin and sinning, as not counting?
3. Does this mean that your church thinks something in-between?
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Edited by - Iconoclast on 03/09/2003 09:06:30 AM | | Back to Top | | |
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