Divorce And Remarriage in the Church
From Neoredemptive
David Instone-Brewer wrote a piece for Christianity Today, presumably reflective of the content of his 2006 book, "Divorce And Remarriage in the Church", in which he makes a nuanced case about Jesus' language in speaking about divorce:
John Piper, author of What Jesus Demands from the World (among many others), wasn't too crazy about his conclusions, or his method of relying upon first-century rabbinical texts to interpret Jesus' words:
Andreas Köstenberger was stuck somewhere in between:
The Short, Short Version
Instone-Brewer's argument, in a nutshell, is that when the Rabbis in Matthew 19 ask Jesus about divorce "for any cause", they are referring to a specific legal theory from the Hillel tradition ("any cause divorce"), and that therefore Jesus' answer must be understood as implicitly endorsing an alternative rabbinic theory according to which the just causes for divorce are "a cause of nakedness" (adultery) or for other causes enumerated in Levitical law (most importantly "neglect").
The Neoredemptive Take
First, thank God all three of these men (and many others like them) are struggling to take Scripture seriously and work out a compassionate pastoral approach to divorce and remarriage which is scripturally faithful. If you take any of their positions because you have studied Scripture and considered it prayerfully, you have done better than most Christians who simply go along with some watered-down consensus ethic that seems (to them, anyway) like "what Jesus would want". (The usual subtext to such notions is, of course, "Jesus wants me to be happy, right?") Rather than interpreting Scripture in light of who we want Jesus to be, we should make a point of discovering who Jesus is through our diligent study of Scripture.
Second, we think all three would agree that a generous dose of pastoral wisdom, compassion, and grace is absolutely necessary when we as Christian leaders work with and counsel those in difficult marital/post-marital/inter-marital situations (and when we labor in our own marriages as well). We absolutely need to make clear that Jesus has drawn lines concerning this matter which we are not meant to cross, but we must also understand and make clear that he has not done so to ruin our lives and destroy our joy, but rather for the sake of our righteousness in Him, our joy in Him, and our testimony concerning Him. Unquestionably we, as God's people, are to hold marriage in a place of high honor and high esteem, and the bar for "rending asunder" two people who profess to follow Christ should be set equally high.
Because of our high esteem for marriage, we are wary of establishing a standard for Christians in marriage which relaxes the plain reading of the Scriptures. Marriage, for Christians, is a public and personal picture of Christ and the Church. A husband seeking to divorce his wife is a picture of Jesus forsaking His Church, which (thank God) He will not do although we give Him ample cause to do so justly. A wife seeking to divorce her husband is a picture of the Church turning away from her Christ, a very real and very destructive habit that we must war against and not encourage.
In saying this, we are on the one hand being entirely unreasonable; we will not make room for the church to baptize the lusts of the flesh and the discontentment of selfish sinners. We do believe that, in Christ, all things are possible, including the redemption of a broken marriage. At the same time, we are not unwisely unreasonable. Where a man becomes a satan who comes to steal, kill, and destroy, we would place no burden upon his wife to faithfully follow him to her own destruction. Where a woman habitually plays the harlot, we would place no compulsion upon her husband to tolerate and underwrite her sin. But our goal, always and in all things, is to seek redemptive healing, to direct both parties toward Christ-likeness, and ultimately to bring about a healthful and Godly reconciliation and reunion that brings glory to God, encouragement to the saints, and zeal to our testimony of the redemptive power of God.
Finally, we are suspicious of this argument offered by Instone-Brewer (although in fairness we probably should read his book where there may be a more nuanced and less obviously lacking presentation of it):
When Jesus answered with a resounding no, he wasn't condemning "divorce for any cause," but rather the newly invented "any cause" divorce. Jesus agreed firmly with the second group that the phrase didn't mean divorce was allowable for "immorality" and for "any cause," but that Deutermonomy 24:1 referred to no type of divorce "except immorality."
This argument appears to be based on a transposition of words from the Rabbi's question into Jesus answer that is not actually present in the text. Jesus' pattern, as best we can tell, is to answer more important questions than are asked of him, and to answer them more thoroughly and more truly than a direct answer to the question at hand would be. The Rabbis may well have been asking Jesus a technical question about "any cause" divorce; Jesus' answer lacks the technical language of "any cause", and in its place offers a universal quantifier:
And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (ESV)
We should absolutely be aware of Mosaic divorce law when we read Jesus' response; however, this does not give us permission to temper His righteous indignation against divorce by suggesting that He didn't mean what He appears to have said because he was only closing one particular invented loophole and not the other "loopholes" which were present in the Mosaic law. Jesus' habit is to do far more than to demand we live up to the Mosaic law; rather, He calls us to live lives of "impossible" righteousness (see the next verses where his disciples balk, or the entire Sermon on the Mount for that matter) -- Kingdom of God lives, not by our own power but rather by the redemptive power of the Holy Spirit living within us (see The Divine Conspiracy).
