Can you please explain why Mark and Luke don’t contradict Matthew about remarriage?
Question:
Can you please explain why Mark and Luke don't contradict Matthew about remarriage? Matthew records the porneia exception, but Mark and Luke reject all exceptions.
Answer:
You are making an assumption that because something is not mentioned that it is a rejection. That is not true. All you can know is that it wasn't mentioned. See: Why does Matthew mention the exception to divorce but Mark and Luke don't?
Question:
Thanks for responding.
Law doesn't work that way. If I tell you you may remarry if you divorce your wife for porneia, and I simultaneously tell you that all remarriage is prohibited, I have given you two conflicting sets of rules. If humans were not short-sighted sinners and we wanted to disallow remarriage, we have Mark, Luke, and Paul for support. 3 to 1 against all remarriage. We also are admonished to keep our vows to our own hurt.
Lots of rules against all remarriage, if we simply look.
Answer:
I'm sorry but God doesn't contradict Himself. Claiming to find a rule due to differences only means you don't understand what God said. You cannot add or take away from God's commands and you are proposing to take away something Jesus said because it doesn't match your view.
Question:
OK. Then why take Matthew as being the true revelation? He wrote to a Jewish audience who understood Jewish engagement they called marriage. If your engaged wife was not a virgin, you could have her stoned or, as Joseph thought, divorced quietly to save Mary pain.
Answer:
Matthew is as much a part of the New Testament as Mark, Luke, and John. The fact that you are trying to separate God's inspired word to eliminate something you don't like tells me a lot about your view of the Bible.
Notice that you cite Joseph's desire to divorce Mary as a fact, even though it is only found in Matthew. But you want to ignore what Jesus said because the exception clause was only recorded in Matthew. You are being inconsistent because of your belief and not because of what the Bible says.
Question:
I simply wish to honor what Mark, Luke, and Paul wrote. Either all three must be ignored to permit godly remarriage, or we have to admit a contradiction, or we have to suggest that Matthew meant to explain Jesus's words in a Jewish context. I don't see any reason to make Matthews's words our standard given that the other three disagree.
Answer:
I put my thoughts together in an outline: Respecting Silence. What you are doing is claiming that Matthew does not contain God's word -- that it is not inspired. I cannot accept that position.
Question:
Mark, Luke, and Paul are not silent about the exception, they reject it. Given the 3 rabbinic schools of thought, there would be no reason for a reader of these latter 3 to assume that Jesus took the Shammai position. Two of them quote Jesus apparently clarifying the law and both chose to omit his exception. Why would they omit it? If this omission was done by the will of God, He has authored confusion. He should simply have had them repeat the Matthew exception. We Christians have a conflict here, but as we are called to keep our vows... No exceptions are given except for evil vows, we can never divorce with God's approval. Christians can't sue for divorce in human courts anyway. The so-called right to divorce and remarry does not exist for Christians.
Answer:
Since you reject the inspiration of the Bible and refuse to consider the reason that you originally asked for, I have to end this fruitless discussion. What we have here is a person who asks a question, not because he is looking for an answer but because he wants a platform to promote his false doctrine. His point was proven false in several different ways.
