After many years of study and of confronting trying and heartbreaking marriage problems - of more basic nature than fornication - a sincere brother with tender compassion has rethought what he formerly preached about marriage and divorce, and has given way to hurtful doctrines. In his book he quotes extensively from the renowned Lutheran R. C. H. Lenski.

My brother writes that "we need to study the Greek text to fully understand the issue of marriage and divorce," and he introduces us to such words as aktionsart, aorist, protasis, apodasis, and the middle voice (p. 13.) One despairs when he thinks how little the common people who heard Jesus gladly (Mark 12:37) knew about those words, or how little the billions of us non-Greeks living today know about them. In addition, our scholarly brother introduces to us a German word to help us to understand marriage and divorce (p. 31-32). I am suspicious of any doctrine which is not clear in our English translations of God’s Word.

My brother speaks of the Greek aorist as "always punctuliar or point action, one time action? (p. 13). If I understand properly, the Greek aorist never tells what kind of action is involved; it only specifies some act is mentioned. (For those who want to check the derivation, the word aorist is made up of the alpha privative plus horidzo, set limits.) An aoristic action sets no limits on the kind of action. The context determines whether the action is point (punctiliar, as Matt. 13:14; 27:38), linear (durative, as Matt. 25:8; John 5:7), or iterative (repetitive, Matt. 15:23; 1 Cor 15:31). Grammarians illustrate point action by a dot(.), linear action by a line (_) and iterative action by a series of dots (…).

To remove the idea that Jesus’ word moichatai in Matthew 5:32; 19:9 means living in adultery, my brother holds that Jesus had only point action in mind, namely, the divorce and marriage ceremony, not in living together afterward. But if the legal ceremonies of divorce and remarriage themselves make a person an adulterer, then an unheard of and bizarre definition of adultery has been invented.

My brother affirms that Jesus’ word moichatai "has nothing to do with the sexual activity of the second marriage" but is "the one time action of divorcing and marrying another" (p. 26). He further says that the alleged punctiliar action of moichatai does not even involve a remarriage, but that adultery is "simply divorcing" (p. 33); "adultery is committed if one divorces a faithful spouse" (p. 19).

My well-read brother reproduces a chart from Olan Hicks containing three statements from Jesus: (1) If a man puts away his wife, except for fornication (2) And shall marry another (3) Commits adultery (p. 22).

The chart is scriptural (Matt. 19:9), but my brother in his doctrine reverses numbers 2 and 3: he teaches that (1) If man puts away his wife, except for fornication, (3) He commits adultery (p.19), (2) Whether or not he remarries (p. 16). This reversal of numbers is comparable to the Baptists reversing statements 2 and 3 in Mark 16:16.

To the common man, the idea that legal ceremonies can be called adultery is strange and unbelievable and manufactured. The common man does not separate the marriage ceremony from the life in marriage that follows. That being true, the common man conceives of the phrase "commits adultery" as physical action, and that Jesus was saying that any man (with one exception) who swaps wives is guilty of adultery, Such a swap usually is not punctiliar and momentary, but he keeps on "adulterizing" himself for the duration of the marriage.

R. C. H. Lenski surprisingly departs from my brother in the alleged punctiliar action. He says of a man who marries a divorcee that he is an adulterer in "the present durative sense," and explains why the meaning is not a one time point action: "he constantly bears the stigma," and that "as long as both" he and his new wife "live, this shadow will follow them" (p. 29).

Due to the specific meaning of the word adultery, instead of its calling for durative action (which might be interpreted as continuos), it would be more precise to speak of the word’s denoting the iterative or repetitive or interspersed action of a couple’s living in adultery.

But my brother affirms there is no such thing as "living in adultery" (pp. 21, 26, 40, etc.). The Samaritan woman who "had been married to five husbands," says my brother, was not "living in adultery" (p. 21). Since "she and Jesus thought she was married" those five times, my brother would not have told her to repent and return to her first husband; he would have told her to stay with the man to whom she was then married (?) (pp. 21, 26).

On the other hand, the New Testament describes the possibility of living in sin, fornication, lusts, malice, envy, and uncleanness (Rom. 6:2; 8:13; Eph. 2:3; Col. 3:5; Titus 3:3; 1 Peter 4:2). Thus as long as those who have no right to cohabit do cohabit, they are living in adultery.

Not only does my brother give a non-dictionary definition of adultery as legal ceremonies, but also he gives another non-dictionary meaning: "to violate marriage by disrupting it, in ways other than fornication" (p. 12). Adultery, he says, is "any violation of the [marriage] covenant" (p. 33). He quotes Lenski that "the real sin is … the disruption of the marriage," not in "marrying another" (p. 16). True, the disruption precedes remarriage, and is a real sin, but marrying another (adultery) is a real sin too, so real it bars people from heaven (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

To sustain his non-dictionary and non-NT definition of adultery - any violation of the marriage covenant - my friend resorts to Lenski: "The English translation is inadequate: ‘he commits adultery’" (p. 31). What Lenski says is inadequate is all that the Greek word means; it does not include violations of the marriage covenant (as sinful as they are), and the English translation, true to the Greek and adequate, does not include them either.

Then Lenski abandons both the Greek and English and goes to the German to find a broader meaning of adultery: "the verb," he says, "means ehebrechen, ruin marriage" (p. 31). It is true that the German word brechen, meaning break, cut, or crush, when joined to Ehe, marriage, is comprehensive: anything that breaks or crushes a marriage, adultery or otherwise, ruins a marriage. But Jesus did not speak German, and the Greek word he used is not as comprehensive as enebrechen.

The word adultery both in Greek and English, unless qualified, has a limited physical meaning, a violation of the marriage bed. In Jesus’ eyes, a person’s becoming "one flesh" with a non-spouse is the only reason grave enough to break up a home and start another (1 Cor. 6:16; Matt. 19:9). Therefore my friend’s and Lenski’s appealing to a broader German word must be considered as adding to God’s Word.

The fact that the Jews, in worshiping idols instead of Jehovah, were pictured as guilty of figurative adultery (Jer. 3:8) does not mean that when Jesus spoke of adultery he meant "unfaithfulness to a covenant of marriage, not necessarily physical adultery" (p. 14). When Jesus spoke of adultery he referred to it in three ways: (1) physical, fourteen times (Matt. 5:27, 32; 15:19; 19:9, 18; Mark 7:21; 10:11-12, 19; Luke 16:18; 18:11, 20; Rev. 2:22); (2) mental, one time (Matt. 5:28); and (3) figurative, a general unfaithfulness in all of life, three times (Matt. 12:39; 16:4; Mark 8:38). James added one more figurative use, unfaithfulness to God (4:4). But neither Jesus nor James nor any other NT wrier spoke of adultery as "unfaithfulness to a covenant of marriage."

My friend well points out that the KJ translation of Matthew 5:32a, "whoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery," uses the active voice erroneously about the innocent wife, saying that she commits adultery. Jesus of course did not make that error. He said that the wicked husband makes her to be "adulterized" (an archaic word but a literal translation of Jesus’ aorist passive infinitive, moicheuthenai), "to suffer adultery, to be debauched" (Thayer). The innocent woman has been victimized, used, and exposed. She has not committed adultery, but she has been left as though she had done so: her virginity is gone forever.

Then my friend abandons his close study of the passive voice, as used by Jesus in 5:32a, and with Lenski mistakenly tries to use the same voice in 5:32b, "he who marries her that has been released is stigmatized as adulterous" (p. 27). The alleged passive idea indicates that it is not a sin committed by … the man who marries" the divorced woman, "but an injustice caused by the husband who dismissed his wife and to her husband who marries her" (p. 28). Thus the man marrying the divorcee, according to my friend and Lenski, is guiltless.

Their error is in overlooking the fact that the verb moichatai may be taken in the middle voice, and thus be active in meaning, just as the KJ says, "whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." Confirmatory that the verb should be taken as middle, not passive voice, is the fact that Luke 16:18) in a parallel statement uses the active voice, moicheuei: "whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery" (KJ).

But my friend and Lenski assert that the innocent person "may marry again even as Paul so plainly declares in 1 Corinthians 7:15 and commits no sin" (p. 32, 49). On the contrary, Paul did not make such a declaration in 1 Corinthians 7:15 or in any other place. He did give a release from the obligations due to her husband who had left her, but he did not give a remarriage privilege. If he had, he would have been allowing desertion as a ground for divorce and remarriage, whereas Jesus had allowed only fornication. As my friend emphasized in another connection, "one must not add to the scriptures" (p. 39).

My friend misuses 1 Corinthians 7:24, "Let each man wherein he was called, therein abide with God," by teaching that no matter what your past life has been, "if you marry, you have not sinned" (p. 50). One could as logically apply 1 Corinthians 7:24 to thievery and idolatry and homosexuality. To those three callings my friend would object, but not to polygamy: "There is absolutely no evidence that those who practiced polygamy had to divorce all but their first wife before they could become Christians" (p. 39).

Paul said that if a woman "marries another man while her husband lives, she shall be called an adulteress" (Rom. 7:3). My friend’s new doctrine holds that her marrying another man while her husband lives does not make her an adulteress; that whether she ever remarries or not (p. 16), her adultery is "when she breaks the covenant of marriage with her first husband" (p. 52).

Herod Antipas (tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, 4 B.C.-A.D. 39) was married to the daughter of King Aretas of Arabia. Herod Philip (tetrarch of northeast Palestine, 4 B.C.-A.D. 34), Antipas’ half-brother, was married to Herodias, the daughter of Antipas’ and Philip’s half-brother Aristobulus. Antipas fell in love with Herodias, and proposed marriage. She agreed but demanded that he "divorce Aretas’ daughter" (ANTIQ. 18, 5, 1). Then "Herodias took upon her to confound the laws of our country, and divorced herself from her husband while he was alive, and was married to Herod [Antipas], her husband’s brother" (ANTIQ. 18, 5, 4).

According to Roman law, and according to my firend, since both Antipas and Herodias had legal divorces, and so were unmarried, they were single people and free to marry. But John the Baptist told the king, "It is not lawful for you to have her" (Matt. 14:4), that is, according to the Jewish law.

But why did John talk to Antipas about Jewish law? Antipas’ father, Herod the Great, was of "pure Jewish stock," wrote his historian, Nicholas of Damascus (cf. Schaff-Herzog, V, 244). However, he must have been wrong, for his father Antipater was an Idumaean and his mother Cypros was an Arabian. But among Herod’s seven wives two were Jewesses, both named Mariamne, and so Jewish blood came into the family. Aristobulus, Herod’s son by the first Mariamne, thus was a half-Jew, and so Herodias, his daughter, was one-fourth Jewess. Herod Philip was a half-Jew by the second Mariamne. Luke called Drusilla, a granddaughter of Aristobulus, a Jewess (Acts 24:24). Thus there must have been some responsibility of Antipas to Jewish law for John to condemn him.

My friend says that since the Jewish law allowed divorce and remarriage, what John was condemning was "incest" (p. 17). It is true the Jewish law allowed divorce and remarriage (Deut. 24:1-2), and it is true that it condemned marriage between those "near of kin" (Lev. 18:6). Antipas was her half-uncle, but John did not condemn Antipas and Herodias for incest; if so, he would have condemned both of her marriages. For each was to a half-uncle. What was wrong with the second marriage that was not wrong with the first? What Jewish law had they violated?

Josephus (a Jew) said that Herodias "took upon her to confound the laws of our country." "The laws of our country" (the Pentateuch) were flaunted by Antipas in two ways: (1) he had coveted his neighbor’s wife, and so he broke commandment number ten of the decalogue, "You shall not covet … your neighbor’s wife" (Ex. 20:17); (2) he had committed adultery, and so he broke commandment number seven (Ex. 20:14), and that "with another man’s wife" (Lev. 20:10), even his brother’s wife" (Lev. 18:16).

John the baptist did not accuse Antipas and Herodias of incest, but said, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife" (Mark 6:17). My friend would say that after Herodias had divorced Philip, she no longer was his wife, and therefore Antipas did not commit adultery in marrying a legally divorced woman. But in God’s sight she was still Philip’s wife. After Antipas and Herodias had married? Both Matthew (14:3) and Mark (6:17) and Luke (3:19) call Herodias "Philip’s wife."

In God’s sight even a king was not allowed to marry another "man’s wife" (Gen. 20:3). God stigmatized such an act as "sinning against me" (Gen. 20:6). And a pagan king agreed with the Lord that people in "a righteous nation" would not stoop to such conduct (Gen. 20:4).

It is sad that a beloved brother in the Lord has, out of good intentions, so twisted his thinking as to say John was condemning Antipas and Herodias for incest, of which they were not guilty; and to infer that Antipas and Herodias did no wrong in marrying, for divorcees "do not sin in getting married" (p. 21).

My friend tries another route to legitimatize unscriptural marriages, saying it is

I too think it strange that nothing in detail is said about early Christians leaving unscriptural marriages. However, we do have the information that in Corinth (korinthiadzo, to corinthianize, to practice harlotry) there were people who had been fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sexual perverts, etc (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Many Corinthians "hearing, believed, and were baptized" (Acts 18:8). It is hard to believe that they came into the church without quitting their sins, of which adultery was one. It is hard to believe that Paul did not teach the same thing that Jesus did, that everyone divorcing and remarrying, except for fornication, is an adulterer (Matt. 5:27-29).

My friend, failing to find his and Lenski’s thinking in English translations, points out the English translations err in other ways too: the KJ has inserted "Easter" (Act 12:4), and has failed to translate the Greek word baptidzo; the NIV makes a baby a sinner (Psa. 51:5); and the NEB has "Saturday night" (Act 20:7). But the fact that these versions err in a few places does not change the fact that they are true to the Greek in making it clear to non-Greek readers that in Jesus’ eyes anyone divorcing and remarrying, except for fornication, is an adulterer.

If my brother’s book is correct, Jesus had no need to say any thing about marriage except for one to be kind and faithful to the spouse one now has, just so it is a legal marriage, including polygamy (pp. 38-40). My brother repudiates homosexuality (p. 40), but on his position that one is not to break up any legal marriage, if two men legally married to each other (Colorado, California) ask to place membership where my friend is preaching, he would ask the church to accept them, and he would say to the two men: "stay married" (p. 26).

Jesus used only a few words about marriage and divorce. If we consider his words in Mark and Luke as being repetitions of those in Matthew’s, he used only eight verses (Matt. 5:31-32; 19:4-6, 8-9, 11-12). Does it require sixty-five closely printed pages to make Jesus’ message clear?

My friend has devoted many months in preparing his book, not to justify his own breaking the covenant of marriage with his godly wife (I have been a guest in their home), which he has not, but because he has a sympathetic heart toward people with marriage problems. However, he should not allow sympathy to alter Jesus’ teachings. His book alters Jesus’ teachings and has done harm and should be burned. We cannot understand why Jesus gave some teachings, but he knows what is best.

I have written to my brother that I pray he will reconsider, and return to the old paths where he formerly walked, and will live long enough to undo as much as possible the harm that has been done.