Remarriage For Circumstances Beyond Adultery Or Desertion
REMARRIAGE FOR CIRCUMSTANCES BEYOND ADULTERY OR DESERTION
Craig S. Keener
It is a privilege to share this volume with my co-contributors. I have long respected Gordon Wenham as one of the finest evangelical Old Testament scholars; William Heth is one of the most prodigious scholars on the biblical teaching on divorce and has long been a personal friend.
Although this chapter is pastoral in its focus, I am first of all a biblical scholar. Like my coauthors in this book, I have treated the pertinent texts more extensively in earlier writings. I did so especially in an earlier book on divorce1 and in a more recent commentary on Matthew;2 the exegetical questions also resurface in a recently published commentary on 1 Corinthians. 3 Those works provide much fuller documentation, references to other texts, and answers to objections I cannot address in this brief chapter.4
I have often argued that the Bible permits remarriage for the innocent party whose partner abandoned or proved consistently unfaithful to them (a position argued in this volume by Bill Heth).5 In this chapter, however, I have the more diffi cult, though important, task of arguing for the possibility of remarriage beyond the explicit New Testament exceptions. I believe that the NT exceptions point us to principles that can guide us in some extreme situations the NT writers did not directly address. I argue that abuse is analogous to the sorts of circumstances the NT explicitly addresses; I also argue that remarriages remain true marriages in God’s sight, hence that the church should work to preserve, and not to break up, such marriages. To bring new divorce into such marriages would compound the sin of divorce.
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND REMARRIAGE
The New Testament includes five or six passages that explicitly address the question of remarriage:
TOPIC
SCRIPTURE
Jesus’ summary statement on the moral intention of the law
Matthew 5:32
Jesus’ summary statement on the moral intention of the law
Luke 16:18
Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees
Matthew 19:9
Jesus’ debate with the Pharisees
Mark 10:11-12
Pastoral application by Paul
1 Corinthians 7:15
Pastoral application by Paul
1 Corinthians 7:27-28
However we interpret these texts, it is clear that all of them oppose divorce; yet it is noteworthy that four of these six texts allow exceptions.
Jesus warned that whoever remarries commits adultery (Matt. 5:32; 19:9; Mark 10:11 – 12; Luke 16:18). If he intended this statement literally, the new union is adulterous; hence sin occurs during every act of intercourse (not simply during the remarriage ceremony). In this case, we should not merely forbid divorced church members to remarry; we should regard their remarriages as adulterous unions and thus seek to break them up, even if the remarriages preceded their conversion. Most of us who have been pastors or are on ministry staffs of churches (or have otherwise served in church leadership) can imagine with horror the pastoral implications of this doctrine. (It would also be surprising, if this had been Paul’s practice in Corinth, that Paul did not have to address the subject in his correspondence there. Given what we know about divorce in Greek and Roman urban culture in Paul’s day,6 many of his converts must have already been remarried at the time of conversion.)
A few churches actually try to implement this practice literally. After one couple I know about came to Christ, the wife decided she had sinned in marrying her current husband because she had been divorced from another husband many years earlier. Over the next decade, she insisted on sleeping in a separate bedroom, apart from her current husband. Some ministers, dissatisfied with such separate sleeping arrangements, seek to break up new marriages entirely. I will argue below that such teachers have seriously misinterpreted Jesus’ teaching. Indeed, they create new divorces, thereby directly undermining the same teachings they accuse others of undermining!
Adultery against One’s Spouse
Jesus warned, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her” (Mark 10:11). We should note first the final words, “against her.” Such divorce is not a victimlesscrime; Jesus declares that this action is wrong because it wrongs an innocent party. In his culture, a wife could be divorced for almost any reason, and she had little economic recourse once divorced. This compounded the offense of the divorce.7 Yet the heart of the offense would be true in any culture: to break faith with one’s spouse is wrong.
Clearly Jesus is against divorce. He is against divorce because it violates a covenant; can wound the innocent; and is bad for spouses, children, society, and ourselves.8 Jesus is not, however, against those who have suffered divorce, and he is specifically defending, at least in Mark 10, those who are divorced against their will.9 With many other scholars, I would argue that, while Jesus uses a graphic rhetorical form to communicate his point, the point is to prohibit breaking one’s marriage, not to require permanent singleness for those already divorced.10
But what does the Lord mean by “commits adultery”? When Jesus’ predecessors and contemporaries used the expression literally, it meant sleeping with another man’s wife.11 If Jesus speaks literally, his calling remarriage adulterous can mean only one thing: he is claiming that in God’s sight one or both members of the remarrying couple remain married to their original spouse. Every act of intercourse would therefore be adultery, and every moment of emotional intimacy would be emotional unfaithfulness to the first spouse.
Even more troubling, if all marriage is indissoluble in God’s sight, then even the innocent party remains bound to the marriage. This is explicit in Luke 16:18: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
The Character of Jesus’ Saying
Did Jesus mean this saying literally? In view of the rest of Jesus’ teaching on the subject, the case is much stronger that he was using hyperbole, i.e., rhetorical overstatement.12
Five observations support the likelihood that Jesus meant this saying hyperbolically. First, Jesus regularly used hyperbole and other graphic rhetorical devices. Ancient speakers commonly used hyperbole, and Jewish sages used it, especially in memorable sayings like this one.13 One cannot read many of Jesus’ sayings and doubt that he often spoke this way. Can a camel really fi t through a needle’s eye (Mark 10:25)? Did Pharisees really gulp down camels whole (Matt. 23:24)? How often did Jesus’ followers move literal mountains (Mark 11:23)? Although I believe that the church should take Jesus’ teachings about possessions far more seriously than we do, most Christians regard as hyperbole the command to give absolutely everything (Luke 12:33; 14:33), and many early Christians observed the principle without impoverishing themselves (Acts 2:44 – 45; 12:12 – 13; cf. Luke 3:11). That Jesus often used hyperbole does not prove the fact he was doing so here, but it should silence objections that claim it unlikely.
Second, the very context of the divorce saying in Matthew 5:32 is hyperbole.14 Jesus not only calls remarriage “adultery” in 5:32; he calls lust “adultery” in 5:28. If we are ever tempted to break up subsequent marriages as acts of “adultery” based on 5:32, we ought to take equally seriously Jesus’ remedy for the “adultery” of lust in 5:29 – 30: “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. . . . And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” Certainly Jesus provides a graphic warning against the danger of eternal destruction if we continue in marital unfaithfulness, whether by lust or (more conclusively) by breaking up a marriage; but few interpreters in history have taken Jesus’ solution for the former as literally as his solution for the latter.15
Third, and more significantly, Jesus’ other teachings in fact assume the dissolubility of marriage. When I say “dissolubility,” I do not mean that Jesus elsewhere permitted us to divorce; he taught against it.16 But I mean that Jesus elsewhere contradicts the notion that marriage is ontologically indissoluble, i.e., that in God’s sight one remains married to one’s original spouse (the grounds for making remarriage adulterous).
Jesus does not say to the woman at the well, “You were married once and have lived with five men since then.” Rather, he says, “You were married five times but are just living with someone now” (John 4:18).17 Some interpreters may counter that Jesus was speaking figuratively to this woman rather than in his saying about remarriage.
It is, therefore, important to note that the very context of the saying with which we began, Mark 10:11 – 12, recognizes that marriage is ontologically dissoluble. “Therefore,” Jesus warns, “what God has joined together, let no one separate” (10:9 TNIV, emphasis added). There is little point in forbidding a separation that cannot occur in any case. Jesus forbids it because it can but should not occur. The image of remarriage as adulterous (presented hyperbolically, as if marriage is indissoluble) serves the same rhetorical function: preserve your marriage. It is demand, not a cosmic law claiming that marriage remains intact no matter what.18
Fourth, Matthew twice specifies an exception for the innocent party (Matt. 5:32; 19:9).19 Jesus prohibits divorce here except for the cause of unfaithfulness (porneia). The meaning of porneia has been much debated, but it should be read as any sort of sexual infidelity against the marriage. It is a basic rule of biblical interpretation not to overspecify the meaning of a term; while porneia can include incest, premarital sex, or extramarital sex, it is a broader term that, when left unqualified, includes any kind of sexual immorality. There is no contextual reason to suppose a narrower interpretation here, and for that reason more scholars favor the infidelity interpretation than any other single position. 20 “Except for infidelity” makes good sense in a context that discusses interpretations of the law: in all ancient law, infi delity was a standard legal charge affecting a divorce settlement.21
This interpretation perfectly fi ts the context of Matthew 19:9. In Matthew 19:3, the Pharisees ask Jesus about the lawful grounds for divorce. In Jesus’ day, two schools of Pharisaic thought debated this very question: Does Deuteronomy 24 allow husbands to divorce their wives for any reason (so the school of Hillel), or only for marital unfaithfulness (so the school of Shammai)?22 Jesus sides with the latter (Shammaite) school of interpretation, though his hyperbole states the matter far more strongly than any Shammaite would: not only is divorcing a faithful spouse wrong, but such a divorce is invalid in God’s sight. Jesus establishes his case by appealing to God’s original purpose for marriage in Genesis 2:24; in the new kingdom ethic, obeying God’s ideal takes precedence over concessions to human weakness in a civil law (Matt. 19:4 – 8).23 This appeal prohibits disciples from breaking up their marriages; but does it address those whose marriages are broken against their will?
The issue in question in the hyperbolic image of remarriage as adultery is whether the person remains married to his or her original spouse in God’s sight. Therefore, Jesus’ allowance of divorce in case of the spouse’s unfaithfulness must permit the innocent party to remarry subsequently, since the divorce is valid and the person is no longer married to the adulterous spouse. No (monogamist) laws permitted remarriage without a valid divorce; conversely, a valid divorce by definition (often explicit in divorce deeds) constituted freedom to remarry.24
But while the point of the exception clause is to relieve the betrayed party from being mistreated by the church, it also has implications for the other party and for how we should interpret the saying. If the innocent partner is no longer married to the guilty party in God’s sight, how can the guilty party still be married to the innocent one?25 That the text does not need to raise the question reinforces the point: while the exception for infidelity is meant to free the innocent party, the saying is meant simply to prevent divorce, not to make an ontological statement about its indissolubility.
Fifth, Paul, an inspired interpreter of Jesus’ saying, recognizes another exception.26 He acknowledges that Jesus warns the believer not to divorce or abandon a faithful spouse (1 Cor. 7:10 – 11). But Jesus did not specifically address the situation of a spouse leaving the believer, a situation Paul envisions in religiously mixed marriages in 1 Corinthians 7:12 – 15. So Paul qualifies Jesus’ teaching for this situation.27
Qualifying a general principle for a situation not specifically envisioned in the principle in no way meant dishonoring the principle.28 Jewish sages often offered sayings like proverbs that were general principles requiring qualification in some situations, and most people in antiquity understood the need to interpret such sayings accordingly.29 They did so even for legal principles30 and the brief kinds of statements concluding public arguments31 (such as Mark 10:9 or Matt. 19:9). Such general principles could confl ict among themselves if applied beyond the situation to which they most clearly applied!32 Just as Jesus qualifies earlier Scripture without rejecting it (Matt. 5:22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44), Paul quotes Jesus and then adds his own wisdom (1 Cor. 7:10 – 12), which he believes is from the Spirit (7:40).
Paul notes that if the unbeliever (not bound by Jesus’ teaching) leaves the believer, the believer is “not under bondage” (7:15). This is the exact language in ancient divorce contracts for freedom to remarry, and one could not expect his words to mean anything else in this context.33 Why does Paul feel free to apply Jesus’ words this way? Probably because he understood the character of Jesus’ teaching better than most of us do today. He recognized the hyperbolic element in the image and understood that Jesus’ prohibition of divorce was a general principle to which there might be exceptions.
Paul probably intends this assumption also in 1 Corinthians 7:27 – 28.34 Although he addresses “virgins” in this context (v. 25), he distinguishes those freed from marriage in verse 27 from virgins (v. 28).35 He is merely digressing to offer a comparison with his previous words in verse 15. One who is bound to a wife (i.e., married)36 should not seek to be freed (i.e., divorced), nor should one who has been “freed” (lit.; not simply “free,” i.e., “unmarried” more generally, as in the NIV) seek marriage. If “freed” means divorced in the first line of verse 27, it must at least include divorce in the second line. But Paul goes on to affirm that those who do remarry have not sinned (v. 28); this is identical to the counsel Paul offers virgins (vv. 25 – 26, 28).
WHICH EXCEPTIONS?
Probably four of the six divorce texts in the NT (Matt. 5:32; 19:9; 1 Cor. 7:15, 27 – 28) make exceptions for an innocent party. Some wish to explain away the four exceptions that explicitly qualify the principle (stated more baldly in Mark 10:11 – 12; Luke 16:18). By this hermeneutic, however, one could never use other texts to qualify those containing general principles, even though it is plainly necessary, for example, in proverbs (a form influential in the teachings of Jesus and other Jewish sages).
Consider these two examples:
• A lazy person becomes poor, and a diligent person becomes rich (see Prov. 10:4; cf. 14:24); yet it is better to be poor and righteous than rich and wicked (see Prov. 28:6; cf. 16:8)
• We should answer a fool according to his folly, lest he think himself wise (Prov. 26:5); but we should not answer a fool according to his folly, lest we be like him (Prov. 26:4).
So shall we answer or not answer a fool?37 By placing the two proverbs side by side, the book of Proverbs invites us to carefully consider how to apply each one.
Similarly, when addressing the demands of discipleship, Jesus tells us to “hate” our parents (Luke 14:26); yet in a different situation he requires us to love and honor them to the point of supporting them (Mark 7:9 – 12). And again, Jesus declares that those who call others “fools” will be damned (Matt. 5:22); yet he himself calls religious hypocrites “fools” (Matt. 23:17). Examples could be multiplied, but these should be sufficient to make the point. Refusing to qualify general principles by other principles would make nonsense of much of our Bible.
The two explicit biblical exceptions, adultery and abandonment, share a common factor: they are acts committed by a partner against the obedient believer. That is, the believer is not breaking up his or her marriage but is confronted with a marriage covenant already broken.38
OTHER EXCEPTIONS?
Could there be other exceptions? Not if we must be able to quote a specific saying of Paul before we declare one — but there may be some if we follow his example. Granted, we are not writing sacred Scripture as he was, but Paul did not know that his letter to the Corinthians would become part of the canon (he could not be sure that the Lord would tarry that long), only that he surely had the Spirit’s leading (1 Cor. 7:40).
If Paul had to reapply Jesus’ teaching in a new way for a situation Jesus did not directly address, we may be called on to do the same. This is, in fact, an essential factor in how we approach the Bible: we must hear and obey its point, not just quote its words. Otherwise we can address only a limited range of issues the Bible specifically addresses, and not countless others that we must argue from biblical principles. The Bible says little or nothing specifically about abortion, the abolition of slavery, drug abuse, pornography, domestic abuse, and many other pressing issues, yet most of us believe that it holds serious implications for these issues. Dare we “freeze” its message in ancient history and simply quote it to cover all of our needs? Or must we read it dynamically as God’s Word to the first readers in their situations, which he intends for us to reapply in analogous ways when we face different situations?39
Consider how Jesus and the Pharisees clashed over divorce. Both quoted biblical texts, but Jesus looked for the principle that revealed God’s ideal purpose. The Pharisees emphasized the wording of the law without sufficient regard for the very people the law was meant to help, because their “hearts were hard” (TNIV; just as Moses used the law’s wording to accommodate their hard hearts [cf. Mark 10:5]). Jesus consistently looked past the specific formulations of commands in the law to the heart of the law (e.g., Matt. 5:17 – 48).40 Most Christians today do not regard all laws in their OT form as binding on Christians, but we learn from their principles.
On a practical level, the question of other exceptions is a pressing one. This would be true even if the only reason were one for which marriage is important to single people who have never been married. If Paul advises that marriage is a spiritually helpful solution to the dangers of passion (1 Cor. 7:9),41 should we think that divorced Christians, many of whom have tasted marital intimacy, are necessarily less tempted by passion than unmarried single Christians who (ideally) have never tasted it? I do not intend this observation as a moral argument justifying all remarriage (some might exploit such a “reducing temptation” argument to justify any sort of behavior roundly condemned by Scripture), but as a pastoral argument highlighting the importance of considering the question of other exceptions.
Yet our exceptions to Jesus’ rule against divorce should be consistent with the character of the exceptions in the NT: the believer is not free to break up the marriage but only to accept that the unrepentant partner has irreparably broken it. As Southern Baptist ethicist David Gushee notes, “One cannot find a biblical text in which burning a child or a wife on the arm with a cigarette (or throwing them down the stairs or banging their heads against the wall or enlisting them in a murder plot) is listed as grounds for divorce. Such actions, however, constitute a fundamental assault on the meaning of the marriage covenant.”42 Given the usual pattern of physical abuse (in which the abusive spouse periodically apologizes or excuses the behavior but, without commitment to serious counseling, does not change), I believe that God would hold us responsible to accept a pattern of abuse as grounds for divorce and thus, on the argument above, also for remarriage.43
But some pastoral situations invite us to define “abuse.” Few church leaders today would protest at least temporary separation when a husband is beating a wife and her life or physical safety is in danger. But is beating where we draw the line? A disabled man once confided to me that his wife lived off his disability, yet she was leaving him uncared for, hoping to get his inheritance as soon as he died. She was not beating him, but was he in any less danger?
Facing Some More Difficult Questions
At the opposite extreme, few would accept as “abuse” the sort of harsh words that are, sadly, all too common in marital arguments. Yet between harsh words and physical abuse lie a variety of difficult situations. What of a woman whose husband’s incessant verbal assaults have reduced her to the point of contemplating suicide? This is not physical abuse, but most would at least expect separation and counseling in the hope of helping the couple survive. Still, anyone can claim “abuse,” and people who simply want to end their marriages often offer such claims. How do we evaluate the genuineness or extent of abuse? Likewise, granted that our goal is preserving marriages, when does the counselor accept one partner’s intransigence as irreversible (at least on a pessimistic reading of 1 Cor. 7:16)?
My specific role as a biblical scholar does not qualify me to deal with questions beyond the clear biblical cases, and the claims become much more complicated beyond physical abuse. Some circumstances do indeed appear analogous to biblical exceptions, but I fear writing words that some would use as an “easy out” in a difficult marriage. Yet, unlike many scholars, pastors and other church leaders cannot escape such questions, which confront us in our practice of ministry. Otherwise we may simply turn a blind eye to sinful behavior that is already affecting marriages in our congregations. (Continuing to be an associate pastor in a church and to teach pastors in a seminary that is oriented toward practical ministry helps keep me in touch with the sorts of concrete, real-life concerns I had to grapple with as a pastor, though full-time pastors face these concerns on a much more regular basis than I do.)
I think of several women whose husbands were drug addicts. One, who resisted the thought of divorce for years because she loved her husband, finally divorced him after he had stolen and sold everything they had, causing them to lose their home. Another cared little about her house but divorced her husband after he beat her in front of their child. Another remained faithful over the years, but her husband exploited the situation to get their children hooked on drugs. I don’t have all the answers, but as the writer in this book assigned to defend additional exceptions, I have the responsibility at least to ask the question, are these cases “abuse”? Asking it more controversially, if these marriages end, must these women remain permanently unmarried?
If a member of my congregation, broken by such suffering in years past, is now able to enter a healthy marriage, will I agree to perform the remarriage ceremony, or will I refuse to participate? When I grapple with such questions, I remember the way Jesus treated the broken. And while I’m trying to decide the case, I also remember how Jesus treated “righteous” people like me, who felt the need to judge everyone’s case: “They [teachers of the law and Pharisees] tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matt. 23:4 TNIV). And perhaps, “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent” (Matt. 12:7). Or even, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would have been better for him . . . to be cast into the sea” (Matt. 18:6, my translation). Such verses do not tell us where to draw the line; they do, however, raise the stakes if we draw it too strictly.
Some evangelicals go further, citing examples like “sexual abandonment” as grounds for divorce. I am reticent to count “neglect” and sexual deprivation as permission for divorce (though they demand counseling); despite the value of marital relations for controlling temptation, Paul does not include sexual deprivation in grounds for divorce, even though he mentions both subjects in the same context (cf. 1 Cor. 7:2 – 6, 10 – 16). I do believe that the sacrifices of preserving the marriage bond are worth enduring as long as there remains hope of saving the marriage. Yet some evangelical biblical scholars and pastoral counselors have argued that deliberate sexual “abandonment” does sever the marriage covenant (a “one flesh” union defined in part by physical intimacy, except when this is physically impossible).44 Ideally, this book could represent their position as a fourth, beyond my own, hence representing a broader evangelical spectrum.
Extreme Examples
Although I am reluctant to go so far, extreme examples give me pause. A young man in another country confided that his wife had refused the slightest touch and nearly all conversation since they married. I could neither confirm nor deny his claim that her refusal was unprovoked and that she had never been abused. In his country (as in the Bible), arranged marriages are common, so his knowledge of her before the marriage was likely less substantial than is common here. But now he wanted advice. She was refusing to divorce him because she believed it was wrong, but she was urging him to divorce her; he was sure they needed to divorce, as reluctant as he was to be divorced.
Was her alleged behavior analogous to unfaithfulness? I was reluctant to stand before God someday, having offered advice either unhealthily strict (like Paul’s opponents in Galatia) or too lenient (like many of the Corinthian Christians). Like others this husband had consulted, I had to admit I did not have an easy answer beyond what was explicit in Scripture. I had no access to the wife or opportunity for counseling; I had one hour with this man and might never see him again. Yet I offered what little I could.
“I cannot keep loving her!” he pleaded.
“If you cannot love her for her sake, can you try to keep loving her for now for Jesus’ sake?” I suggested.
During the next year, we would pray for a miraculous breakthrough in his marriage. For Jesus’ sake, he said, he was willing to do that. Some readers of this book will think me too lenient for not simply rebuking his consideration of divorce; others will think me too harsh for not endorsing the burial of an apparently dead union. Not having the answer myself, I merely pose the question for you to consider.
I like writing Bible commentaries that deal with objective, concrete information; where I lack that, I usually take refuge in the biblical scholar’s freedom to say, “I don’t know.” But in real-life pastoral situations, we sometimes have to make decisions (even if it is sometimes simply the decision not to make one), regardless of whether we know all the answers. Biblical scholars help keep pastoral counselors anchored to the text’s demands, but pastoral counselors also stretch us to consider situations that our articulation of those demands has not addressed.
The lack of absolute certainty on where best to draw the line in some cases is an admitted problem of my position, one I feel keenly. Yet this is often a problem when we must move from explaining the original meaning of biblical passages to applying them to unexpected situations today. I suspect that Jesus did not intend to tell us where to draw the line so much as to make us faithful to our marriages. The exceptions were for marriages broken against our will; I wish these exceptions were much rarer than they are today.
REMARRIAGE WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS?
Let us for a moment imagine that we could always determine the innocent party (in divorces where there is one) and never faced ambiguous cases. Even in such an unlikely scenario, we still face the practical question of the guilty party. After the publication of . . . And Marries Another, a man called me in anguish. He admitted that he had been the guilty party in his divorce many years earlier; after the divorce, he remarried, started a new and happy family, and over the years had several children. Convicted by the Lord for how he had treated his first wife, however, he genuinely repented of the divorce and sought to make restitution. Then he discovered that his former wife, who had never remarried, was praying for his return. He had noticed that I had not addressed his situation in my book, and he wanted the Bible’s guidance. I had not wanted to confuse the clear biblical case for exceptions by introducing less clear issues in the book. But now a Christian needed an answer.
Certainly we should consider certain factors before allowing remarriage. For emotional reasons, even an innocent party is wise not to remarry immediately; remarriages right after divorces usually lead to new divorces. Dysfunctionalities must be corrected, and wounds and insecurities healed; this is even more the case for a clearly guilty party, who may well repeat the same behavior in a subsequent marriage. Further, it is biblically appropriate for a clearly guilty party (such as an adulterer or abuser) to be placed under some form of church discipline until he or she has offered clear signs of repentance and made restitution as best as is possible. Given the various venues available for weddings, we cannot stop a premature or morally wrong marriage from taking place; but we can speak truth in love, which will likely be remembered a few years hence when troubles inevitably come.
Paul warned believers who (against his instructions) divorced committed spouses that they should either remain single or return to their spouses (1 Cor. 7:10 – 11).45 This is consistent with our understanding of Jesus’ divorce saying articulated above, because reconciliation remains possible if neither partner has remarried. The focus, in other words, is still on preserving (or, in this case, restoring) marriage rather than on treating a remarriage as adultery.
But what happens once the other spouse remarries, making reconciliation (the likely point of 1 Cor. 7:11) impossible? Or when the person divorced before his or her conversion, hence before understanding Jesus’ teaching the way a believer should? Or what if the believer ignores this passage and simply remarries? I am loathe to imagine a genuine believer disobeying Paul’s teaching; but if, God forbid, a person claiming to be a believer divorces without adequate cause and remarries, do we seek to preserve the new marriage or to separate it as an act of adultery? (This is a question separate from the matter of church discipline.)46 Because I am convinced that Jesus’ saying about remarriage being adultery was hyperbole, I believe that its point was (as in all other NT teachings on divorce) to prevent the dissolution of marriage, not to prevent remarriage perse. Therefore, I conclude that we need not consider breaking up subsequent marriages, whether or not we would have approved of the divorce.
“PERMITTING” REMARRIAGE
From my perspective, the chapter’s question requires a further clarification: What do we mean by “permitting” remarriage? If we mean approving of the divorce that preceded the remarriage, there are many evangelical scholars who would feel more comfortable with a wider range of exceptions than I do. Like my fellow contributors to this book, I am fairly conservative in resisting divorce, at least by the standards of how the North American church lives. But the book’s subject is about remarriage after divorce, not about divorce per se.
A second way to approach the question, therefore, would be, “Under what circumstances would I sanction a remarriage?” Certainly the biblical texts pose no problem for me with regard to the innocent party. Thus, were the question simply, “Would you ever sanction a remarriage?” the biblical text would protect me from anxiety in my task. Yet such a question may be closer to the lot that has fallen to my friend Bill Heth. I offered my best answer to the hardest question under “Remarriage without Exceptions?” above: I believe that genuine, demonstrated repentance is efficacious when reconciliation (the best form of restitution) has become impossible. This seems clear at least in the case of one who divorced before becoming a Christian; though the divorce may have been a sin, it was probably not a deliberate revolt against the teaching of the one the person calls Lord.
But there is a third approach that seems to me to be closer to the heart of this book’s question, one that the texts in question force on churches with remarried but repentant members who were not specifically “innocent parties.” In light of the biblical texts about divorce, I understand the real question of “permitting remarriage” in terms of accepting a remarriage as a valid marriage in God’s sight once it is done. Are we called to break up second marriages as acts of adultery? I would argue that we are called to value them as genuine marriages and thus to nurture them and seek to prevent further divorce. Treating the subsequent marriage as a valid one, we should recognize that two wrongs (a second divorce) will not create a right.
REMARRIED PERSONS IN CHURCH LEADERSHIP
Those who prohibit remarried (or often even single divorced) people from ministry most often appeal to 1 Tim othy 3:2, sometimes translated as “husband of but one wife” (lit., “one-woman man”). That “one wife” is addressed specifically to divorce, however, is hardly self-evident. Some cultures apply the text to prohibit polygamy; Eastern Orthodox tradition cites it against remarriage after a priest’s wife’s death.
The phrase parallels one used for widows in 1 Timothy 5:9, where it echoes a phrase used in many inscriptions to praise faithful wives whose husbands had no reason to divorce them. That verse’s context probably rules out a prohibition of remarriage (5:14). In ancient Ephesus, a “one-woman man” as a criterion for church leadership likely referred to marital faithfulness, in contrast to the use of concubines or the widespread practice of extramarital affairs.47 While this standard is important anywhere, it certainly must have borne repeating in Ephesus, where (in addition to immorality being rife in the broader society) some strict false teachers were prohibiting marriage altogether (1 Tim. 4:3).
The wife of one young minister left him for her friend’s husband. He fought the divorce for two years, the maximum his state allowed, hoping to convince her to return, but she refused. Thereafter he was barred from ministry in many circles for years — not because anyone doubted that he was the innocent party but, as some leaders put it, to “maintain a standard.” 48 (The standard evidently was, “It is not enough to be godly; you must also be able to control your spouse’s choices.” One wonders what this says for both Hosea and God himself in the Old Testament.) Ironically, when this man finally remarried fourteen years later, the discrimination stopped.
Indeed, we must apply a standard, but applying it to a victim rather than to a perpetrator is like punishing a rape victim because we oppose rape. In God’s sight, condemning the righteous is no less sinful than justifying the guilty (cf. Exod. 23:7; Prov. 17:15). Some churches also have a double standard. I have, unfortunately, known cases where pastors abandoned their spouses for other partners; the abandoned wife often became a pariah in her own church and was sometimes treated (especially by those loyal to their pastor) as being responsible for the breakup of her marriage.
What of a person who broke up a marriage twenty years ago, was afterward converted, and has lived a godly life since then? Should we exclude him or her from leadership any more than we would exclude a former murderer (like Saul of Tarsus or Moses) who has demonstrated repentance and maturation in the faith? Does it fi t biblical principles to treat this sin as less amenable to cleansing by our Lord’s blood than any other?
SUMMARIZING THE CASE
I have argued that divorce is permissible for adultery, abandonment, and abuse (not, of course, for such contemporary claims as “incompatibility” or “growing apart”). I have also argued that the primary point of Jesus’ teaching is the exclusion of divorce, so we should recognize later remarriages as legitimate marriages (i.e., we should not seek to break them up), whether or not we concur with the grounds for the divorce. This is not to deny the propriety of exercising church discipline in the case of a clearly invalid divorce, but to suggest that two wrongs (i.e., the breaking up of a subsequent union) do not make a right.