Mark 10:11 poses a terrible threat to our opponent's position. So clear and powerful is this passage, that a preemptive effort was made by some to take it off the table before we even made use of it in this present discussion! Brother Gwin devoted four debate charts to the passage, in an effort to deny its implications. We shall examine one of these in this review and the remaining 3 in our next review. Consider the following:

   It is quite obvious why brother Gwin needed to try to take Mark 10:11 out of the debate discussion: It bears a striking resemblance to the truth that brother Reeves defended by denying brother Gwin's proposition! Consider what Mark 10:11 teaches:

   In his debate proposition, brother Gwin affirmed that a woman who finds herself in the exact condition as the put-away woman of this passage, commits adultery by putting away her fornicator-husband and remarrying. It is easy to see why he was forced to make the arguments that he did.

   1. The passage plainly says that the husband who puts away his wife for just any cause (per the question put to Jesus in 10:2; Mt. 19:3) commits adultery against his wife that he repudiated. No amount of “scholarly testimony” can successfully negate the obvious meaning of the passage. The context makes it crystal clear!

   2. The chart claims that “Brother Reeves says….” Well, what brother Reeves says (affirms) is this: when fornication occurs, the innocent spouse is permitted by divine authorization to repudiate the guilty mate and to remarry. This divine permission is conditioned upon one thing only: the innocent spouse’s having the cause of fornication (Mt. 19:9a, by implication). Mk. 10:11 proves that the innocent wife now has that cause, since her husband committed adultery against her! That is what brother Reeves says that this passage proves. All of the talk about “the put-away subsequently putting away” is concocted by brother Gwin and associates and is injected into what Jesus in this passage says. So, brother Reeves ignores it entirely as being extraneous to what Jesus is here teaching. What happened, if anything, to the innocent spouse on the part of the ungodly mate, prior to the fornication committed by the guilty mate, is no consideration at all in what Jesus in this passage says. Jesus puts no provisos to this statement in Mk. 10:11. So, we'll put none, and brother Gwin needs to withdraw his.

   3. Brother Gwin (and others) say, “There are scholars who argue .. the first.” Yes, and there are many more who say that “her” is actually the original wife per the question of the Pharisees (10:2)! So, what is proven by brother Gwin’s statement about a point argued by some scholars? He is about to dump what his “scholars” say as not proving anything. Why, then, did he bring up his “scholars” in the first place? What did he hope to accomplish? Was he hoping to accomplish something by the mere power of suggestion? If so, and he really had no confidence at all in the surmisings of these "scholars," was brother Gwin acting dishonestly in his presentation?

   4. By saying, “Regardless,” brother Gwin admits that he has no point to make here. He here surrenders what he previously proposed. He must not be convinced himself!

   5. The Greek word EPI, here translated “against,” is declared by Thayer to mean just that, and he gives Mark 10:11 as an example of it so being used!

   6. Let brother Gwin cite us a major, well-known English version that, in Mark 10:11, says “with” instead of “against.” Will he do it?

   7. The chart tells us that “Brother Reeves has NOT … Luke 16:18.” Correct! Brother Reeves does not circumvent the prohibition on “put away” persons remarrying, per the passages cited, because those passages direct themselves to cases where there was no cause of fornication for the putting-away. So, of course, the “put-away” person, AS WELL AS THE “PUTTING-AWAY” PERSON, are prohibited from remarrying.

   Neither does Mark 10:11 “circumvent” anything. It does inform us that adultery is committed against an innocent wife when her husband repudiates her for just any cause and marries again. It does show that the innocent wife now has the sole cause that Jesus gives that permits the innocent spouse to repudiate the guilty mate and to remarry.

   8. Those of brother Gwin’s persuasion feel the power of Mark 10:11 against their erroneous position in this brotherhood controversy. They all run to a few scholars who argue that EPI, in Mark 10:11, “may” mean “with” the second wife, but then they turn around and abandon their argument on what those few scholars say. They know that it is hard to withstand the scholarship of the combined hundreds of scholars who were involved in the production of the reliable translations of the New Testament. Surrendering their argument about the identity of the woman in Mark 10:11, they fall back on their old fallacious argument of the “put-away woman,” as a category of persons who may not remarry. They completely ignore the contexts of the passages they cite, which passages all deal with cases where there was NO CAUSE OF FORNICATION in evidence when the putting-away was done by the ungodly spouse! Then they glibly apply their now famous “put-away woman” to a scenario where FORNICATION HAS BEEN COMMITTED against her. They make a serious mistake. By denying that the fornicator's adultery is "against" his mate, they deny the innocent's right to act upon his spouse's fornication! Furthermore, they render adultery irrelevant just because it was committed by a spouse after his departure from the innocent mate. The Bible says fornication gives the innocent spouse the cause for exercising the divine right to repudiate the guilty one, and to remarry.

   This completes part eleven of our study. Please check the next article in the series.

Introduction | Part Ten of the Series | Part Twelve of the Series

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