Covenant Theology In Outline Form 36: Matthew 19 on Divorce & Remarriage

Shema Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.  Historical Prologue  2  And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. 3  And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”  General Stipulations  4  He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,  5  and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  6  So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”  Specific Stipulations  7  They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?”  The Historical Regulation 8  He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you ...
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Romans 1 & Sola Scriptura

Objection - The Bible doesn’t teach Sola Scriptura. The Church is necessary to make Scripture intelligible for the student/reader.  


By way of reply…


It isn’t infrequent for Roman Catholics & Orthodox apologists to raise this objection.  When you think about what they are saying, the sound very like Village Atheists who argue that human minds are required for numbers to exist & math to be intelligible.   It’s the same reasoning process:  suppress God’s image, ability, & authority, then look to one or more created (human) images for use as a sufficient epistemic warrant for faith & practice. 


The Protestant reply historically runs through 2 Timothy 3:16 - 17 & its declarations on the sufficiency & utility of Scripture.    That move is a valid one, but I think that it can be made stronger when part of a two-pronged approach that includes what Paul says about Scripture’s sufficiency & utility in 2 Timothy & what he teaches in Romans 1 about sound reasoning processes.  


Romans 1:18 - 32 is clear that God’s moral intention for the created order is for it to testify to His existence, attributes, & authority.    The text teaches us that humanity, consequent to the Fall, did openly & notoriously suppress God’s image & authority & supplant it with the own & that of other created images, and then humanity reasoned their theology, philosophy, & ethics accordingly. 


The Bible itself is the result of a theopneustos enterprise in which God & man collaborate & the result is an inerrant & infallible set of written documents published as universal Scripture.  The Bible therefore expresses the mind of God in matters of faith & practice, and since our minds are not necessary for these principles to exist, they inhere in God’s mind. 


The insertion of the Church as a necessary component for Scripture to be intelligible/understood is a classic example of suppressing God’s necessary, sufficient, sinless, holy, & just image & authority & supplanting it with an image or set of images that is/are unnecessary, insufficient, errant, at times sinful, & known to be at times unjust / hypocritical.   The Church is just a collection of reasoned, principled minds none of which are necessary, ergo any ecclesiastical epistemology  that is not Sola Scriptura is definitionally heterodox & futile according to the most foundational principle of sound reasoning laid out in Romans 1. 


May God bless us all, each & every one, and “Go & sin no more.” 

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