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"And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (Gen 2-23-24) |
The Berean Christadelphians |
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Index
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Divorce and Remarriage
Nothing has wrecked the fellowship between like minded brethren as has the various teachings on Marriage and Divorce. Brethren reached conclusions that they were comfortable with, and then sought to force their conclusions on the rest of the brotherhood, creating great discord. The extreme has swung in both directions, from those who appear to argue that divorce is required in certain circumstances and refuse fellowship who do not see divorce as permissible: to those who argue that there is in fact, no such thing as divorce; and who refuse fellowship to those who think there is. And there is almost every shade of this question imaginable, in between. We, as Berean Christadelphians, have suffered through many attempts to have one position or other forced upon us. We have resisted this, and held to the foundation Christadelphian position. We believe that divorce is an evil, a horrible evil, but we recognize that God through Christ has permitted this, when another evil raises it's ugly head in a marriage. We have never legislated one way or other, on the question. We keep the ideal marriage law clear before us. Then, we allow ecclesias who suffered with such a problem to settle the matter in the manner they deemed best. Our Restatement makes our point as clearly as possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. DIVORCE-in relation to the brethren and sisters of Christ. We believe divorce is contrary to the commands of Christ. We believe that remarriage after divorce is contrary to the commands of Christ. "And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord; Let not the wife depart from (korizo: put asunder, Matt. 19:6) her husband: But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife." (1 Cor. 7:10-11). We believe further that these two evils are not only contrary to divine command, but are in direct violation of the deep principles of the mind of Christ. They will be eschewed as unthinkable by all true brethren and sisters of Christ. (This is a statement of basic principles only. It goes without saying it was not intended to contravene the teachings of brethren Thomas and Roberts.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- The teachings of bre. Roberts and Thomas concerning Scriptural divorce for certain causes are acknowledged, though we wish to keep clear the ideal. We do not wish to emphasize the permissions for divorce, because the fleshly mind is so weak and so apt to look for ways of corruption that such discussion will tend to make matters worse. Therefore, we focus on the ideal divine marriage law of one man, one woman, married for life. At the same time we do not wish to be holier than God through Christ. It was Jesus who allowed certain exceptions to the divine law. We will not presume to forbid what Jesus allowed. We simply will let Christ judge.
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