Perfect Marriage, No Divorce-Matthew 5:31-32; 19:3-9

 Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage (video). Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (powerpoint) “…a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate” (Mt 19:5-6). “…anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Mt 5:22).

What does the Bible say about marriage, divorce and remarriage?

• Jesus is against divorce. He is for marriage–a sacred, holy and inviolable union created by God to make a man and a woman “one flesh” (Gen 2:24).
• Marriage is a permanently binding commitment in which man and woman become one. The one-flesh union of Adam and Eve provides the pattern for all subsequent marriages. Therefore…
• Permanent monogamous marriage is the biblical norm and divorce is always contrary to God’s creation design. Remember that divorce is not God’s will.
• Christians are to see their marriages as expressions of discipleship and to renounce divorce. [“…let no one separate” (Mk 10:9; Mt 19:6) should be read as a prohibition of divorce.]
• Marriage is perichoretic, just as the relationship within the One-and-Three God is called perichoresis–mutual indwelling and inter-penetration of Father, Son and Spirit. Divorce destroys perichoresis, our indwelling of one another.
• It is particularly noteworthy that the Bible does not appeal to love as a principle that ought to determine whether or not a marriage should be dissolved. (In Ephesians, where divorce is not under consideration, love is mentioned not so much a principle governing marriage, but as a narrative description of how Christ has treated the church.)
• The worldview dooming marriage (including Christian marriages) is to view marriage predominantly through the lens of romance, personal fulfillment and wholeness, self-expansion, sexual satisfaction and Hollywood.
• Those who try to justify divorce among Christians—for reasons beyond those allowed by the NT—tend to appeal to general principles (no more fullness of life, growing alienation, an increasing inability to communicate, the spouses taking radically different life paths, no more life or potential for life in their marriage, etc) and to disregard the NT’s specific rules.

Divorce confuses the church today because marriage confuses. And marriage confuses the church today because love confuses. Love is understood through the lens of romance, personal fulfillment, self-expansion, sexual satisfaction and Hollywood.

Marriage is hard. For a man and a woman to build a life together, bringing their often conflicting needs and desires into a harmonious whole, is a great challenge, possible only through grace. When a couple is able over the long haul to build a successful marriage, they will find deep joy and consolation. Such joy and consolation, however, are attainable only through patience, mutual sacrifice, and disciplined fidelity. Consequently, particular marriages are often fragile entities, and the question of divorce looms over the church’s life.

Marriage is to be binding and permanent. Though there are complex differences among the five N.T. passages that directly address divorce (Mk 10:2–12; its parallel in Mt 19:3–12; Mt 5:31–32; Lk 16:18; and 1 Cor 7:10–16), they all affirm marriage as a permanently binding commitment in which man and woman become one. All discussion of divorce must be understood only as a matter of exceptional–and tragic–qualification to this norm.

50% divorce rate. For a long time in Western culture, up until the middle of the 20th century, the church’s prohibition of divorce was supported by a powerful set of social conventions that made divorce a nearly unthinkable option, a last resort in desperate circumstances. In U.S. culture at the end of the 20th century, however, divorce has become so commonplace that it is in some communities virtually the norm. The statistic that there is about 1 divorce for every 2 marriages in the U.S. has been widely reported, and everyone can cite anecdotal evidence of the way in which divorce has touched his or her life or the lives of family and friends. One day a boy with both parents came home sad. When asked why, he said, “All my classmates have two or three daddys but I have only one.”

The collapse of cultural strictures against divorce has left the church in serious need of fresh theological and pastoral reflection about divorce and remarriage. The pain and complications of divorce cast their shadows across almost every congregation, yet the church often fails to address the issue forthrightly. In some churches divorce remains a taboo, and divorced persons are ostracized. In other churches, however, divorce is treated almost casually, and members are not in any serious way held accountable to their marriage vows.

A disastrous line of thought regarding divorce. The mainstream of U.S. society has an easy de facto acceptance of divorce. It lies in the conviction that we must avoid being judgmental: the operative canon for much of mainstream Protestantism: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” (Mt 7:1). (In its original context, this saying of Jesus warns that those who judge others are liable to the judgment of God. As popularly understood, however, the saying is heard as enjoining a tacit social agreement that we should all look the other way: “If you don’t judge me, I won’t judge you.”) If someone opts out of a marriage commitment, that is his or her own business, and no one else should presume to pass judgment. Furthermore, if the gospel is a word of grace, so the thinking goes, then we must at all costs avoid legalism. To require people to stay in difficult marriages against their inclination would be to impose a harsh law contrary to the spirit of love. This line of thought has had disastrous consequences for the church.

The church’s permissive attitude toward divorce has developed within a wider cultural context that regards marriage as a purely private affair, based on feelings of romantic love. One “falls in love” and gets married; when the feeling of being “in love” dissipates, so does the basis for the marriage. Or, worse yet, in the reigning therapeutic worldview, marriage is seen as a means to the individual’s achievement of fulfillment and personal wholeness; if the partner comes to be a hindrance rather than an aid to the goal of fulfillment, there exists not only a license but even a duty to dissolve the relationship and look for a better one. Such attitudes are to be found not only on TV talk shows and on the self-help shelves of shopping mall bookstores but also in the counseling practices of many Protestant clergy and in the pages of the church’s journals. For example, Bishop John Shelby Spong of the Episcopal Church advocates the church’s adoption of liturgical ceremonies to bless the end of marriages:   “Without compromising its essential commitment to the ideal of faithful, monogamous marriage, the church needs to proclaim that divorce is sometimes the alternative which gives hope for life, and that remaining in a marriage is sometimes the alternative which delivers only death. The fullness of life for each of God’s creatures is the Christian church’s ultimate goal for human life. When a marriage serves that goal, it is the most beautiful and complete of human relationships. When a marriage does not or cannot serve that goal, it becomes less than ultimate and may well prove less than eternal. In such a case the church needs to accept the reality and the pain that separation and divorce bring to God’s people, and to help redeem and transform that reality and that pain.”   Noteworthy is the description of faithful monogamous marriage as an “ideal” and the suggestion that a marriage that is “less than ultimate” in its promotion of “fullness of life” should probably be terminated. The couple had experienced “growing alienation” and “an increasing inability to communicate” because the partners were taking “radically different life paths.” Thus, they realized that there was “no more life or potential for life in their relationship,” and they decided to part as “friends who respect and care about each other.” So they went to the bishop of Newark for blessing of their decision.

Can the church bless divorce? If so, under what conditions? What guidance might the NT provide on the questions of divorce and remarriage?   All five texts (Mk 10:2–12; its parallel in Mt 19:3–12; Mt 5:31–32; Lk 16:18; and 1 Cor 7:10–16) that addresses divorce is in the rule mode, and all of them attribute the rule against divorce directly to Jesus. Matthew’s exception clause clearly indicates that the rule is intended to govern the behavior of Christians. His rule against divorce (Mk 5:31–32) points to a specific norm that is to be obeyed. The detached saying in Lk 16:18 also reads as a rule. Paul elaborates some more rules (1 Cor 7:12–16). In Mark’s account (Mk 10:2–9), Jesus initially rejects the Pharisees’ request for a rule pronouncement but later articulates a rule for his disciples (Mk 10:10–12).

Ewan McGregor’s 2018 Golden Globes acceptance speech. Ewan McGregor thanks estranged wife and new girlfriend for Golden Globes 2018 win. Amy Grant’s divorce was not God’s will.

References:

1. McKnight, Scot. Sermon on the Mount, the Story of God Bible Commentary. Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 2013.
2. Wright, N.T. Matthew for Everyone. Westminister John Knox Press, Louisville, KY.  2002.
3. Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: community, cross, new creation: a contemporary introduction to New Testament ethics. Part One, 4. The Gospel of Matthew: Training for the Kingdom of Heaven. Part Four, 15: Divorce and Remarriage. HarperCollins Publishers, NY. 1996.

(A) MARK 10:2–12

Marriage as discipleship. Within Mark’s Gospel, this teaching on divorce occurs in the central section of teachings on discipleship (8:31–10:45), bracketed between Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi and Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem. As we have seen in our discussion of Mark,6 this portion of the Gospel repeatedly stresses the costliness of discipleship and the necessity of servanthood and suffering for those who are Jesus’ followers. Disciples are called to take up the cross (8:34), to be “servant of all” (9:35, 10:42–45), to make whatever radical sacrifices are necessary to enter life (943–48), to become like little children (10:15), and to give up family and possessions for the sake of the gospel (10:29–30). At first glance, the controversy discourse pericope on divorce (10:2–12) seems to sit oddly in this context. Why has Mark placed this unit here rather than in one of his two major collections of controversy materials (2:1–3:6 and 11:27–12:37)? Upon reflection, the answer becomes clear: by placing this material in its present narrative location, Mark presents marriage as one aspect of discipleship. In contrast to the Mosaic permission of divorce, Jesus issues a declaration against it and then teaches his disciples that divorcing one spouse to marry another is nothing more than a devious form of adultery. Divorce is a sign of hardness of heart; those who follow Jesus are called to a higher standard of permanent faithfulness in marriage. (It is noteworthy that husbands and wives are not included in the list of family members who should be left behind for the sake of Jesus and the gospel [Mk 10:29].) This framing of the passage may also suggest that marriage, like the other aspects of discipleship treated in this section of Mark’s Gospel, should be understood as a form of sacrificial service, though this point is not made explicitly in the text.

The divorce certificate is to protect women. The Pharisees pose the question about divorce to Jesus, Mark tells us, as a way of “testing him” (10:2). Why should this question be understood as a test? The practice of divorce was universally accepted within Judaism; the only debated issue was the legitimate grounds for divorce. The most probable inference—in Mark—is that the Pharisees already had heard that Jesus opposed divorce and saw here an opportunity to expose his inconsistency with the Law of Moses. In the ensuing dialogue, Jesus and his interlocutors engage in nuanced verbal fencing. Jesus responds to their question with a deftly worded question of his own: “What did Moses command you?” Their answer: “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.” The distinction between permission and command, marked by the verbs employed in this exchange, provides the basis for Jesus to escape the charge of opposing Moses: the Torah certainly does not mandate divorce. Indeed, the passage in question, Dt 24:1–4, presupposes the practice of divorce and merely prohibits a man from remarrying his divorced wife after an intervening 2nd marriage; that is the only commandment actually stated in the passage. The certificate of divorce was no doubt originally intended as a document of legal protection for the woman, proving that she was free to remarry; again, however, this is presupposed rather than legislated by Dt 24:1.

One flesh is indissoluble. Having forced his interlocutors to concede that the single pertinent Torah text expresses a permission to divorce rather than a commandment, Jesus makes two bold hermeneutical moves. 1st, he declares that the permission—and its accompanying commandment prohibiting the husband from reasserting any claim over a woman whom he has divorced—is a concession to “your hardness of heart”; for the reader of Mark’s Gospel, the inference is clear that “hardness of heart” is associated with lack of faith in Jesus and resistance to the power of God (Mk 3:5, 8:17). Those who trust God as revealed through Jesus will not seek such an escape clause from their marriages. For with God all things are possible (Mk 10:27), and for those who believe, hardness of heart can be overcome. The 2nd hermeneutical move is the more fundamental: he appeals “behind” the Mosaic Law to God’s original intention, as disclosed in the creation story. Thus he trumps Scripture with Scripture: “From the beginning of creation” God made man and woman for each other (Gen 1:27) and declared that their union made them “one flesh” (Gen 2:24). The importance of this last point is underscored by verse 8b, Jesus’ exegetical comment on Genesis 2:24, which reiterates the “one flesh” affirmation. Sexual intercourse in marriage is not merely the satisfaction of individual appetites, as eating is, but it links two persons together—literally and spiritually. It effects what it symbolizes and symbolizes what it effects. Thus, the sexual union of man and woman creates a indissoluble bond.

God joins, man separates. Jesus’ two hermeneutical moves prepare the way for his apodictic (clearly established or beyond dispute) pronouncement in Mk 10:9: “Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” The inclusive-language translation of the NRSV, just cited, slightly blunts the force of the opposition between theos and anthropos in this pronouncement. “What theos has joined together, let not anthropos separate.” God does the joining; it is the fallen human being who does the separating. Jesus’ response—as so often in the controversy dialogues—refuses to answer the question in the terms it was posed. In one sense, the Law of Moses is left in place, acknowledged but categorized as a concession to human sin. The concluding pronouncement, however, suggests that those who enter the kingdom of God will live by seeing marriage in light of God’s original creative will. When the frame of reference is shifted in this way, the Pharisees’ question about divorce is shown to be not only a disingenuous effort at entrapment but also an exercise in small-minded quibbling, an attempt to circumvent the ultimate intention of God. The new wine of the gospel bursts the old wineskins of the Law’s restrictions and permissions (Mk 2:21–22).

Divorce is antithetical to God’s original design. Another way of putting this observation would be to say that the Pharisees quiz Jesus about the rule governing divorce, but Jesus reframes the issue by appealing to the Genesis narrative as constituting the symbolic world within which marriage must be understood. Once marriage is construed within the story told by Scripture, divorce—even if it is permissible in some narrow sense—is seen to be antithetical to God’s design for male and female.

Having thus escaped the Pharisees’ trap by demonstrating that his teaching against divorce is deeply grounded in the Torah, Jesus later gives further private “in-house” instruction to the disciples: “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mk 10:11–12). There are two different ways of interpreting this saying.

(1) According to one interpretation, Jesus, while conceding that there may be situations (owing to human hardheartedness) in which divorce is permitted in accordance with the Law, excludes the option of remarriage. On this reading, Jesus’ teaching would stand in agreement with the position of the Qumran community, as articulated in the Damascus Document. The Qumran community’s blistering critique of establishment Judaism included the charge of committing fornication by “taking a second wife while the first is alive, whereas the principle of creation is, male and female created He them.” Although this passage could be read as forbidding polygamy, scholarly opinion has inclined toward understanding it in the sense of Mark 10:11 as including the prohibition of remarriage after divorce. Particularly interesting is the Damascus Document’s citation of Gen 1:27 as the scriptural basis for condemning remarriage (cf. Mk 10:6); this demonstrates that the position ascribed to Jesus in Mark 10 has clear points of contact with one stream of rigoristic pre-Christian Judaism.

(2) The other way of reading Mk 10:11–12 is to interpret it as a restatement of Mk 10:9: whoever divorces in order to remarry (the normal procedure) commits adultery, so divorce should be renounced altogether in the first place. This interpretation has the advantage of providing greater internal continuity in Mark 10. It is likely that Mark has taken a traditional saying of Jesus (Mt 5:31–32, Lk 16:18) forbidding remarriage after divorce and radicalized its implications by placing it in conjunction with the controversy story of verses 2–9.

On any reading, the teaching of Mk 10:11–12 contains surprises. The greatest of these is the statement that the man who remarries after divorcing his wife commits adultery against her. This declaration posits a fundamental redefinition of adultery; in Jewish Law and tradition, adultery was a property offense, a form of stealing a man’s property by “taking” his wife. Thus, adultery could by definition be committed only against a man, for the husband was not in any reciprocal sense regarded as the sexual property of the wife. Jesus’ teaching, however, changes the rules of the game with one bold stroke. William Countryman underscores the wide-ranging implications of Jesus’ innovative teaching on this point:

Under the provisions of the Torah…it was impossible for a man to commit adultery against his own married state. In a single phrase, Jesus created such a possibility and thus made the wife equal in this regard, too. He not only forbade the man to divorce his wife, but also gave her a permanent and indissoluble claim on him as her sexual property. Henceforth, his sexual freedom was to be no greater than hers.

Thus, Mark 10:11 is not merely a standard halakic (Jewish law) ruling: it is a stunning reversal of convention that demands a rethinking of the character of marriage and the power relations between husbands and wives. The other surprise is the reference to the wife’s action of divorcing her husband in Mk 10:12. Since this option was not normally granted to women under Jewish Law,15 this part of the saying is usually regarded as Mark’s adaptation of the tradition to the legal situation of the Greco-Roman world, where wives could initiate divorce (1 Cor 7:10–16).

In sum, Mark 10:2–12, starting from a question about the legal permissibility of divorce, opens out into a symbolic refraining of marriage as an aspect of Christian discipleship and as a reflection of God’s primal purpose in creating humanity male and female. When the question of divorce is seen in this perspective, it becomes clear that divorce is a violation of God’s intent; those who are Jesus’ disciples will renounce it, just as they renounce many other prerogatives in order to follow Jesus on the way of the cross.

(B) MATTHEW 19:3–12

Matthew, who is consistently concerned to place the teaching of Jesus in counterpoint with emergent rabbinic Judaism, reformulates the Pharisees’ question to Jesus so that it corresponds to an issue actively debated among the rabbis in the first century: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” The question alludes to the dispute between different rabbinic schools reported in the Mishnah:

The School of Shammai say: A man may not divorce his wife unless he has found unchastity in her, for it is written, Because he hath found in her indecency in anything. And the School of Hillel say: [He may divorce her] even if she spoiled a dish for him, for it is written. Because he hath found in her indecency in anything. R. Akiba says: Even if he found another fairer than she, for it is written, And it shall be if she find no favour in his eyes….

Thus, in Matthew’s account, the Pharisees ask Jesus to take a position on a well-known controversy. Does the husband have the right to divorce the wife for anything that displeases him, or only for unchastity?

Matthew has rearranged the material so that Jesus, rather than answering the question with a question, as in Mark, gives a forceful direct response, ending with the pronouncement that human beings should not separate the one-flesh union that God has joined (Mt 19:4–6). Consequently, his answer, as initially formulated, is more strict than even the school of Shammai. The Pharisees then protest Jesus’ statement by appealing to Dt 24:1 (saying, in interesting contrast to the Mark account, “Why then did Moses command us…?”). Jesus offers the accusatory response that the Mosaic permission was a concession to their hardness of heart and concludes with a dictum that effectually locates him in agreement with the school of Shammai: “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for porneia, and marries another commits adultery” (Mt 19:9).

This last formulation differs from Mk 10:11–12 in three crucial particulars: Matthew omits Mark’s startling prepositional phrase “against her” and drops the provision against a woman divorcing her husband (Mk 10:12). Both of these changes have the effect of bringing Jesus’ teaching back into line with conventional Jewish understanding of divorce practices by preserving a patriarchal understanding of marriage.18 The third Matthean alteration of Mark, however, has proven the most difficult to interpret: Matthew adds an exception clause, specifying grounds on which the husband may after all legitimately divorce the wife. Such a provision is entirely lacking in the Markan tradition, as well as in the tradition as transmitted by Luke and Paul. There is therefore good reason to think that this exception clause—found also in Matthew 5:32—represents Matthew’s own casuistic adaptation of the tradition. (It is possible that the exception clause, rather than being the evangelist’s own contribution, was already traditional in Matthew’s community.19 For our present purposes it makes little difference; the point is that some early Christians—whether Matthew or his predecessors—found it necessary to supplement the received tradition with a qualification. For the sake of simplicity, I will continue to speak of this qualification as Matthew’s modification of the saying.) The radicality of Jesus’ teaching is softened to make it more readily applicable as a rule for the community’s practice.