(Rough notes of a talk given to a specially-convened church meeting. The pastor
there had recently married a divorcee, and opinions among church members were
divided…)

Rowland Croucher

‘Marriage is an impossible arrangement between two imperfect people’
(Dr. Arch Hart).

‘The basic cause of divorce is marriage’ (Bertrand Russsell, 1921).

We address tonight one of the most complex issues for our faith and
life. Like homosexuality and abortion or women in leadership, there’s
little in the Bible that directly answers the questions we moderns are
asking…

There are deep pastoral and personal issues here. I’ve never met a
divorced person who says after the event: ‘Hey that was a terrific
experience – can’t wait to go through that again!’ No one thinks divorce
is wonderful. No one gets married in order to experience the thrill of
divorce.

And it’s easy for others to be critical. Plutarch tells of a Roman
who divorced his wife. Holding up his shoe before his critics, he
praised its beauty and construction. ‘But,’ he added, ‘none of you can
tell where it pinches me.’

Sometimes the critique comes out of our pain. I recently counseled a
man who remarried a year after his divorce came through. His two adult
children refused to attend the wedding: they admitted that their grief
and anger were mixed in with their ideas about the event.

So many passing through the valley of divorce and remarriage repeat
the ancient cries ‘God help us. Lord have mercy.’

I’m an amateur theologian or biblical scholar, so I’ll be speaking
here mainly as a pastor. I invite you to pray with me that the Lord
will give us humility as we come to the Scriptures. (If godly scholars
differ, let the rest of us live with a little caution at some points).

Divorce is quite an industry: our local paper has an advertisement
for ‘Divorce "R" Us" offering low cost divorce! 1994 saw
the world’s first magazine entirely devoted to the subject. It’s called
‘Divorce’, and published in France: in the first two months, the editors
received 1,000 letters…

# An Australian federal parliamentary report released August 1998,
‘To Have and to Hold’, which examines marriage, divorce and the
aftermath, estimates that dysfunctional marriage breakdowns cost the
community up to $6 billion a year – plus of course the inestimable
trauma suffered by women, men and children.

# According to one social commentator, a young girl growing up today
is likely to have more husbands than she will have children.

# While husbands once initiated most divorces, the situation has now
reversed itself: more wives now seek divorces.

The problem for us as Christians is how we preserve the ideal of
lifelong commitment while responding with grace and love to those who
for one reason or another experience marriage breakdown.

Christians have had three major attitudes on this broad issue:

1. Conservative: The Roman Catholic church regards marriage as a
sacrament and divorce as improper on any grounds. It does allow
application for nullity. Roman Catholic clergy used, in the past at
least, to break up second marriages contracted by their people after
divorce on the grounds that they were ‘living in sin’, in a state of
protracted adultery. The Catholic Church has set up a two-level
morality, one for priests monks and religious and another for the laity.
Those in religious orders are to avoid worldly activities that could
result in divorce, require the use of coercive violence, or involve them
in too much economics. So they take vows of chastity, poverty and
obedience to church authorities. On the Protestant side John Stott (a
bachelor by the way) is conservative on this issue: ‘We should have the
courage to resist the prevailing tide of permissiveness and to set
ourselves against divorce and remarriage on any other ground than the
two mentioned in Scripture (immorality and the ‘desertion’ of an
unbelieving partner)’ (Divorce, IVPress, 1973, p.30).

2. ‘Moderate’. Tony Campolo (‘The Success Fantasy’, Kingsway 1993,
pp. 122-126) writes: ‘Some scholars suggest that even the apostle Paul
may have suffered a divorce. We know he was married because he was a
member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, and marriage was a prerequisite for
membership in that august body. These scholars pose that after his
conversion, Paul and his wife may have separated because she could not
adhere to his new lifestyle and belief. While this is speculation, some
people wonder if an unhappy marriage could be part of the reason Paul
extolled singleness as a preferred state…

‘I think the church is obligated to accept the difficult challenge
of upholding a principle, on the one hand, and being gracious to the
violators on the other… Rather than being judgmental [with the woman
caught in adultery] Jesus showed grace to the woman, forgave her, and
gave her a new start in life.’

3. ‘Liberal’. Muriel Porter (‘Sex, Marriage and the Church’,
HarperCollins, 1996, p.110): ‘The church [has always had a] masculine
bias and a one-eyed approach on matters of sexuality. It betrays, too,
an ugly hypocrisy: the use of twisted theological reasoning in order to
justify the dissolution of a marriage if a man’s property rights were
threatened but not if a woman’s very life was put at risk’.

1. Cultural context.

# Until 50 or 60 years ago a woman had no economic independence.
She needed her husband for food and shelter and often put up with abuse
or cruelty or disinterest on a scale modern women would not be prepared
to do.

# The referendum permitting divorce in Ireland was passed in 1995 by
a narrow margin – 50.23% of the voters. The previous attempt in 1986 to
legalize divorce was defeated by a 2 – to – 1 ratio.

# Australia, in 1997, had the third highest divorce rate in the
world, after the U.S. and the U.K. (2.9 per 1,000 people, versus 4.6 and
3.0).

# Our media tends to promote excitement / eros… so for many
marriage becomes a boring routine when the flame has died down…

# Related to this is our over-emphasis on individualism and romantic
love. Michael Medved’s ‘Hollywood vs. America’ is a devastating critique
of the way tghe movie industry has shaped our values. Is it 97% (?) of
all sex in Hollywood productions is between unmarried persons?

# There is also the problem of stereotypical conceptions of
gender-roles… overvaluing autonomy and undervaluing covenant,
commitment and enduring relationship…

# Perhaps the most important modern social phenomenon – highlighted
by the Men’s Movement in the last 15 years: the inability of our
post-industrial Western cultures to initiate boys into men. A case could
easily be made for MANHOOD issues being the root of most modern Western
social problems. (See under ‘men’ / ‘manhood’ on our website). I
regularly ask women’s and men’s groups: why does someone like Bill
Clinton, by his own confession, seek inappropriate liaisons with young
females? What’s your view?

# Then, too, we have a modern theology sometimes dominated by
psychology, emphasizing relationship at the cost of covenant, pleasure
over character. Today we talk more about people being happy than people
being good.

# And, finally, ‘no fault’ divorce. This is debatable… (is it the
cause rather than the occasion of our increasing divorce rate?).
Previously it was not possible to exist viably outside the economic unit
of the family. Feminism and women in the workplace has changed all that.
For example, a woman does not have to be imprisoned within an abusive
marriage these days…

You will think of other factors…

2. What does the Bible Say?

Genesis 2: 18-25. Marriage is a ‘creation ordinance’: it is clearly
intended for life. Marriage is a permanent and exclusive union. This is
the divine purpose and ideal.

Deuteronomy 24:1-4 allows divorce on the grounds of ‘uncleanness’.
Jewish scholars have long debated whether this included any
inappropriate behavior (NRSV: ‘something objectionable’) or sexual
unfaithfulness. There were three major Jewish schools of thought: Rabbi
Shammai said Moses was talking about adultery; Rabbi Hillel – anything
that would cause a wife to lose favor with her husband; Rabbi Akiba (as
liberal as you could get!) – a man could divorce his wife if he found
another woman more desirable! The only remarriage banned in the Mosaic
Law was remarriage to a former husband, if the woman had remarried and
divorced. If, say, a woman divorces, remarries and divorces again, when
she is divorced by the second husband, she cannot go back to the first
one, though the law allowed her to take a third husband. A case could be
made that this regulation is not about divorce as we know it, but about
‘mixing’ (human seed): in the ancient near east mixing cloth,
agricultural seeds etc. was forbidden in most legal codes…

The purpose of this legislation was neither to enjoin divorce, nor
to encourage it, nor even to approve it, but to prescribe certain
procedures if it took place.

Mathew 5:27-32

Matthew 19:5ff.: Jesus points out that Moses’ permission (not
‘command’ as the Pharisees put it) for divorce had only been given
because of human sinfulness (19:8), and went on to say that ‘whoever
divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits
adultery’ (Matthew 19:9; also 5:32).

Mark 10:12: Note here that Jesus speaks of a woman who divorces her
husband: previously only a man could divorce his wife.

‘The silence of Mark and Luke need not be explained as due to their
ignorance of the exceptive clause; it may equally well have been due to
their taking it for granted’ (JRW Stott, Divorce, IVPress 1973 p.17).

Luke 16:18:

1 Corinthians 7:12-16: Paul adds another permissible cause for
divorce (the so-called ‘Pauline privilege’) – desertion by the
unbelieving partner. In these circumstances he allows for the
possibility of remarriage. This may have been a common difficulty in
that day: in any age the society may present peculiar difficulties that
render the continuation of some marriages problematic or impossible.

So: for Moses/Jesus/Paul: divorce is both possible and permissible
in some cases…

But divorce is nowhere commanded nor even encouraged in Scripture.
Divorce is against God’s will. God hates divorce.

3. Theology: how to interpret the Bible today.

At a conference on Divorce and Remarriage in 1981, in an opening
address the speaker said: ‘The issue has been complicated by the
difficulty anyone has in arriving at a truly objective theology. No
matter how erudite the theologian is… one’s emotional background,
one’s preconceived notions, one’s preconceived ideas result in some
degree of eisegesis [reading something into the biblical text that the
author did not intend]…’ (Christianity Today, November 20, 1981,
p.46).

First I want to share a little of my journey with the Bible.
Yesterday at Gateway Baptist Church in Brisbane I preached from 1 Peter
3:8 ff. Live in harmony with one another, says Peter. He advocates
unity-in-diversity. Accept one another, as God in Christ has accepted
you, enjoins Paul (Romans 15:7). I’m reading a little book by Michael
Hollings on Prayer. When asked, ‘Why do you pray?’ he answers, ‘Because
my mother prayed.’ Why do I marry divorcees sometimes? One answer:
because I have rejected the pharisaism of my childhood.

But there’s more.

3-1. In Jewish hermeneutics there is a distinction between halakah
and haggadah: halakah is prescriptive and legislative, practical
instruction about good conduct; haggadah is affective and imaginative,
using the forms of poetry, story and figures of speech such as
hyperbole. The context of Matthew 5 – the sermon on the mount – is pure
haggadah. I’ve not heard of anyone plucking out their right eye for
leading them into sin or cutting off their right hand as a literal
command. ‘Take no thought of the future’ – anyone not got superannuation
or any other provision for the future? ‘Sell all you have and give to
the poor’… Matthew 19 and Mark 10 has the divorce saying in a similar
context. But in Luke 16:18 the saying stands in baffling isolation,
unrelated to what goes before or follows; from which then nothing can be
concluded either way. The sin of the eye that undresses a woman, and the
sin of divorce – both were and are tolerated with complacency: the
teaching of Jesus was meant to disturb that complacency.

3-2. Jesus’ attitude The woman of Samaria (John 4:1-22) was almost
certainly a divorced woman: she’d had five husbands and was now living
now in a defacto relationship. Jesus did not condone what she had done,
but looked for a way to bring healing, and grace and redemption. Notice
that Jesus did not condemn her as though she had done something that
could not be forgiven for her whole life. Neither did he suggest that
she should go back to a previous husband. In the text he does not even
call on her to marry the man she was then living with.

The woman caught in adultery (John 8) is the paradigmatic story
about Jesus and sinners. For Jesus acceptance precedes repentance; with
the pharisees it was the other way around: ‘I do not condemn you’…
before ‘Go and sin no more’. The pharisees reversed this: people are
sinners first. ‘Repent first… and you’ll be acceptable around here…’

Frederick Dale Bruner’s excellent commentary on Matthew (Word, 1990,
pp. 684 ff.) has some wise words: ‘… Churches are to seek with all
available means to avoid every injustice in assigning guilt, to avoid
all hardheartedness with the wounded and penitent, and to minister,
provisionally but believingly, every possible justice and every possible
mercy to those who come to her for guidance in these killing fields of
divorce and remarriage…We have found three wills of God (or one will
and two permissions) in Jesus’ teaching, in a descending order –
inviolate marriage, divorce for the violated, and (sometimes) remarriage
for the violated as well. Is there a fourth possibility: remarriage for
the violator? To ask this question is to ask two others: Is there
forgiveness of sins in the gospel? Is there the possibility of a new
beginning for the repentant in the New Testament? … This teaching is
not in our text (Matthew 19:9) but it is in our text’s context, namely
in the _gospel_ that surrounds our text. There are two great errors to
avoid here: (1) teaching the present text so rigorously that the
impression is left of no context of gospel – i.e. no forgiveness of sin
and sinners; and (2) diluting the present text’s high imperatives so
quickly with the context’s forgiveness that repentance, holy living, and
honest discipleship are sabotaged…’ [As the Westminster confession of
faith puts it]: ‘Of Marriage and Divorce: …Remarriage after a divorce
[may be] granted on grounds _explicitly_ stated in Scripture (Matthew
19:9; 1 Corinthians 7:15) or _implicit_ in the gospel of Christ…’

Grace and forgiveness: with God there is always a new beginning. The
potter can rework the clay (see Jeremiah 18). The church’s willingness
to re-marry can be a powerful symbol of the Gospel, just as our
unwillingness can be a powerful negative symbol.

My experience at Blackburn Baptist Church in the 1970’s was that 50%
of those we remarried came to faith: this was the most productive
evangelistic mission-field of all! Divorced people are often very
bruised and have been victims of prejudice, even hatred.

Remember Jesus who gave those strict commands about divorce, also
was strong on ‘Do not judge…’

4. Guidelines for re-marriage

I have operated under the following guidelines when counseling those
who wish to remarry:

4-1. They must have a willingness to talk through the reasons why
the first marriage / previous marriages failed. I believe there is
rarely a totally ‘innocent’ party. This process usually takes about six
one-hour sessions.

4-2. There must also be a willingness to work through the process of
forgiveness towards previous partners, and a responsible attitude of
nurturing support for any children of that/those relationship/s.

4-3. If there has been a romantic/sexual liaison with the
prospective marriage partner while one or both were previously married,
the couple must show a willingness to be truly penitent about that
extra-marital/adulterous behavior.

4-4. We draw up a covenant for the couple – in addition to the vows
they will put together for the marriage service. The covenant is
specific about all the major areas of the new relationship –
faithfulness, communication, sexual love, finance etc. – with a built-in
accountability to come back from time to time to talk through with me
how it’s all going.

A further note: should there be a different standard for leaders in
the church than for others? Yes and no. Yes: leaders must know that they
have a more serious responsibility to model Christian/covenantal
faithfulness and loyalty to God’s will and God’s Word. However, in may
ways when a leader is in trouble, he/she needs more grace: their journey
through the pain of divorce can be very lonely, and being in the
firing-line, very damaging emotionally. The same grace Jesus
demonstrated towards hurting people must be the grace we show towards
all – leaders and others…

5. Conclusions:

‘ So we live in the tension between our ideal of what marriage
should be and the harshness of experience in a sinful world. Sometimes
divorce is the lesser evil. Just as Christians hold that there is life
after death, so we hold that there is hope after divorce.’ (Stackhouse,
p. 686). In our fallen world divorce is, unfortunately, the lesser of
two evils. (In an extreme case I counseled separation for a woman
married to a psychopath, who mercilessly beat his wife and children:
they eventually divorced). Jesus told us to be peacemakers, but most
Christians are prepared to admit that fighting Hitler was a righteous
thing to do – even kill him, as Bonhoeffer reluctantly believed. There
are awful times when the hell of war might be preferable to the hell of
peace.

We need a pastoral and a prophetic word. God loves sinners, and
welcomes us into a new relationship and new life; but God hates
divorce… But divorce is not an unpardonable sin. Galatians 6:1: ‘My
friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received
the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.’

The faith of Jesus is all about the possibility of forgiveness, the
magnificence of God’s grace, and the experience of making a fresh start
after our sins and failures. Reject legalism: it gets in the way of
sinners coming to Jesus. The early Christian churches were filled with
people who’d been notorious sinners (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; Ephesians
2:1ff, 5:1,ff).

A divorced pastor who was tossed out of the ministry by his church –
and they also refused to pay him a stipend while he was trying to sort
his life out, writes: ‘While my church was trying to convince me that
divorce and ordination are always incompatible and that God could no
longer use me, I pored over the Bible. There I read of forgiveness, of a
prodigal being unconditionally welcomed home after a moral failure, of
an adulterous woman whom Jesus did not condemn, of a hot-tempered
disciple who after denying his Lord, was gently restored with a
threefold, loving challenge. I could find no record of anyone in the
Bible ever being suspended or deposed from office. David was a
king-in-waiting for years because God would not depose a straying King
Saul. Judas, the thief and betrayer, lost his place in Christ’s inner
circle through suicide, not through rejection by Jesus. Jesus used Paul
the persecutor, Matthew the extortionist. Peter, Paul and Barnabas did
not lose their office when they disagreed so violently that they could
not work together… I pleaded for understanding and a second chance as
Christ gave Peter, but the Church turned a deaf ear.’ Gerald Oosterveen,
‘Rebirth to Ministry in Mid-Life’, Perspectives (publisher and date
unknown) p. 10.

‘Those with stable marriages must not cast stones at those who
divorce. Happy marriages are a precious gift which we should celebrate
with thankfulness, for few if any deserve this gift… We are all
tempted to put our trust in activities that strain marriages – the lust
for success, the pursuit of career, the deceptive solace of liquor, the
fascination of sexual novelty, the quest for self-fulfilment. Jesus
tells us that me must strive after the ideal, but that since our lives
are often less than ideal, we dare not judge others, “lest we be
judged”.’ (Max L Stackhouse, ibid).

Now don’t get me wrong: unconditional acceptance does not mean
unconditional approval. Of course, the adage about ‘loving the sinner
but hating the sin’ is about something easier said than done. Most
sinners don’t feel loved by most Christians! In divorce a covenant has
been violated, yes. But people have also been hurt.

‘What would Jesus do?’ Good question.

Oh love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul on thee…

Bibliography

Christopher Colson, Recovering from Divorce (Hodders, 1993). Highly
recommended.

George R. Ewald, Jesus and Divorce (Herald Press 1991), writes from
a Mennonite context in the U.S. where his church was pondering whether
to remarry divorcees. A careful exposition of all the relevant Scripture
passages leads Ewald to urge the church to be less legalist about
divorce and remarriage. There are useful pastoral and liturgical
guidelines for those who divorce and seek responsible remarriage in the
Church.

Max L Stackhouse, ‘Living the Tensions: Christians and Divorce’,
Christian Century, July 30, p. 685

Robert Warren, Divorce and Re-Marriage (Grove, 1992): ‘Divorce is
always a painful experience and the chuurch’s first task is to speak (by
word and action) of God’s attitude of grace and mercy for those who go
through this trauma. Discipline is appropriate where believers act
contrary to Scripture but, even when true guilt is involved, the church
needs also to minister to the self-doubt, sense of rejection, shame and
complete disorientation that is usually involved in divorce. In
particular it is important to avoid the use of the label
"divorced" as a means of giving identity to a person. It
describes what has happened to a person: it should never be used to
define who they are.’ (p.5)