William A. Heth
A RESPONSE TO GORDON J. WENHAM
William A. Heth
Gordon Wenham’s position that Christians should not remarry after divorce for whatever reason is the view that I championed in everything I published between 1982 and 1997. In the early 1980s, we coauthored a book that set forth a modified version of the early church’s no-remarriage understanding of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus and Divorce first appeared in the United Kingdom in 1984 and in the USA in 1985, and we collaborated on an updated version in 1997. I will be ever grateful for the influence Gordon Wenham has had on my life and count him as my mentor and a dear friend.
As I will state in the conclusion to my chapter, some very good arguments can be made for a no-remarriage view. Gordon has summarized most of these in his chapter. This view, as diffi cult as it is to apply, would be certain if we could be sure of two major points: (1) that Jesus’ teachings, especially his statement that “anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery” (Matt. 5:32b; cf. Luke 16:18b), are aimed directly at countering the freedom for remarriage expressed in the Jewish bill of divorce; and (2) that Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 7:15 (“is not bound”) does not imply freedom for remarriage.
REASONS MY VIEW CHANGED
Over time, I began to doubt the certainty of these points and thus launched out in a new direction. Many of the reasons for doing so still remain after reading Gordon’s chapter. I concluded that (1) I misconstrued the significance of marriage as a “kinship” relationship; (2) I was mistaken about the nature and permanence of biblical marriage covenants; (3) I downplayed the seriousness with which God views the sin of adultery; (4) I did not fully appreciate the significance of the cultural and biblical recognition of the differences between valid and invalid divorces; and (5) I did not give enough consideration to Jewish interpretive traditions and cultural assumptions that first-century readers brought to their reading of the New Testament.
Two additional personal observations led me to reconstruct my interpretive framework. First, I could not come up with a satisfactory biblical answer for the practical dilemmas caused by a blanket no-remarriage conclusion. Upon hearing about my no-remarriage position, a fellow seminary student blurted out, “Do you mean to tell me that my friend, whose wife left him and his four kids for a lesbian, has to remain single for the rest of his life?” To “suffer for what is right” (1 Pet. 3:14) may well cover such cases, given the assumption that marriage is indissoluble. However, I struggled with why Jesus would impose such remarriage restrictions on an offended innocent party.
A second personal concern bothered me. For fifteen years, I tried to make the best case possible for a no-remarriage understanding of the New Testament teaching, yet I was not able to persuade other New Testament scholars whom I greatly respected. I knew my own intellectual limitations well enough not to presume that I must be right.
COULD ALL OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD?
The four points of Gordon’s argument for a no-remarriage understanding of Jesus’ teaching are coherent and tightly interconnected. The question he asks — “Could all of the early Christian writers have misunderstood the gospel divorce texts?” — leads me to ask this question: “If Jesus had permitted remarriage, what motivated the church fathers to take a more stringent stand?” The unanimity of the early church’s no-remarriage teaching has to be reckoned with.
Readers can work with two hypotheses: (1) Gordon is right, and these early writers were faithfully passing on what Jesus taught; or (2) the church fathers restricted Jesus’ prohibition in line with a growing asceticism in the early church. I find the latter more probable. This asceticism was visible in embryonic form already in the New Testament (cf. 1 Cor. 7:1, 28, 36; 1 Tim. 4:3; Col. 2:21), and it eventually led to the requirement that ministers in the Roman Catholic Church be celibate. The extent to which this asceticism manifested itself is evident in those writers who disallowed second marriages even after the death of a spouse (Athenagoras, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria), contrary to the clear teaching of the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7:39). Athenagoras (ca. AD 177) went so far as to refer to marriage after a spouse’s death as a veiled form of adultery! Most of these writers also took a very dim view of sexual relations within marriage, much like the ascetics Paul confronted in Corinth (1 Cor. 7:1b). In effect, most church fathers said, “Marital relations are only for begetting children, and even then you’d better not enjoy it!” This was hardly the teaching of Paul (1 Cor. 7:2 – 6; 1 Tim. 4:4).
HOW GORDON AND I AGREE AND DIFFER
Gordon and I agree that Jesus did have a major confl ict with the Jews of his day. We differ on whether Jesus was totally restrictive on remarriage after any divorce (Wenham) or almost totally restrictive (Heth). We agree that Jesus radically redefined the permanence of marriage in view of God’s creation design. He firmly opposed the dominant Hillelite “no fault” divorce practices; but the exception clause in Matthew points to some type of agreement with the minority view of Shammai. As far as the debated Deuteronomy 24:1 ground is concerned, Jesus recognized adultery as constituting a valid or legitimate ground for divorce. Adultery is a major violation of the marriage covenant (cf. 1 Thess. 4:6). But unlike Shammai, Jesus did not require, but probably permitted, divorce and remarriage. Jesus’ teachings, rather, stressed marriage’s permanence and the need for the forgiveness and repentance that could keep a marriage intact.
So if Jesus’ divorce sayings were powerful prophetic statements (Mark and Luke) intended to do away with all the Hillelite abuses, and if they were not intended to be taken as exceptionless absolutes (Matt. 5:32; 19:9; 1 Cor 7:15), then the disciples’ exasperation with Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19:10 is readily explained on the view that Jesus restricted valid grounds for divorce and remarriage to those that took place because of unrepentant sexual immorality. I agree that Jesus does not back off from driving home the idea of lifelong permanence of marriage in the face of the disciples’ objection in Matthew 19:10. Matthew 19:11 – 12 can even be understood as Jesus’ assurance that divine enablement to remain single is given to those who divorce or have been divorced for reasons other than unchastity (v. 9). Thus, interpreting Matthew 19 to allow remarriage after a legitimate divorce does not make Jesus contradict himself.
I agree with Gordon that explicit permission to remarry is far from Jesus’ mind when he speaks out against divorce and remarriage. I agree that the exception clause in Matthew 5:32 may well indicate only that “should a wife have already committed adultery, her husband can hardly be said to have made her commit adultery.” When readers encounter “exceptions” in New Testament divorce texts like Matthew 19:9 (“except for marital unfaithfulness”) and 1 Corinthians 7:15 (“A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances”), there are really only two ways to interpret them. These exceptional situations either permit (1) divorce but not remarriage, or (2) divorce and remarriage. I would contend that the most natural assumption first-century readers would bring to these texts is that a legitimate ground for divorce is specified, and a valid divorce left permission for remarriage. Given the readers’ assumptions, neither Jesus nor Paul would have had to specify that remarriage is permitted. But a prohibition of remarriage where valid grounds for divorce are specified in that first-century culture would require greater clarification by the biblical writers.
The strongest argument I find for believing that Jesus did not want his disciples to remarry is that in both Testaments marriage is a picture of the relationship between God and Israel and between Christ and the church. To this I would add that Paul exhorts believers to follow his example as he imitates Christ (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1), and Jesus calls his disciples to become the kind of people who share the characteristics of God himself (Matt. 5:44 – 48; cf. Eph. 4:1 – 2). In the Old Testament, God lovingly pursued unrepentant Israel and seemingly refused to cast her off. If believers are to be imitators of Christ and God, they would seemingly never give up on the hope of restoring a relationship, no matter what has arisen to destroy it. But as I note in my chapter, fallen humanity this side of a renewed heaven and earth is not quite parallel in the comparison to either Christ or God.
I resonate with so much of what Gordon writes in the final application section of his chapter. As one of my pastor friends recently told me, “Most, if not all, of the divorce and potential remarriage cases do not seem to come close to the mostly restrictive view that you hold, let alone the totally restrictive view that others hold. Even if they do, I have yet to see one work hard to reconcile. We’re a ‘throwaway marriage’ culture, and it is so terribly sad.” Everything Gordon writes in his concluding section would help turn around this state of affairs in the church.