Christianity Today’s issue of December 14, 1992 featured a survey of more than a thousand of its readers. Here is what it found with regard to views on remarriage:
Seventy-three percent accept the remarriage of a Christian if the former spouse committed adultery or remarried . . . Only 4 percent of the subscribers completely rule out any remarriage for a Christian after divorce.
The majority believe that fornication (73 percent) and desertion by a non-Christian spouse (64 percent) are two scriptural grounds for remarriage. At the same time, a significant minority believe Jesus taught that believers should not remarry after divorce (44 percent) and that God designed marriage to be permanent, and remarriage constitutes adultery (44 percent). Less than four out of ten believe there may be reason for remarriage other than adultery or desertion.
Christians – Catholics and Protestants alike — need to get back to the biblical teaching on marriage and divorce that was held by the early Church. One Protestant proponent of the early Church view is William A. Heth, professor of New Testament and Greek at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, and coauthor with Gordon Wenham of Jesus and Divorce (Thomas Nelson). In that same issue of Christianity Today, in a piece entitled “Remarriage: Two Views,” he debated another Protestant professor, and argued:
Even though marital separation or legal divorce may be advisable under some circumstances (persistent adultery, abuse, incest), Jesus calls remarriage after any divorce adultery . . . textual studies now confirm that the original text of both Matthew 19:9 and 5:32 contain Jesus’ additional unqualified statement that finalizes his teaching on the subject: “And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”
Paul’s “let them remain unmarried or else be reconciled” (1 Cor. 7:10-11) says the same thing . . . Where Paul specifically mentions the possibility of remarriage, in both instances he notes quite explicitly that one of the spouses has died (1 Cor. 7:39; Rom. 7:2-3).
Finally, in 1 Corinthians 7:27-28, Paul is not telling divorced individuals to feel free to remarry. He is telling engaged or formerly engaged couples who have come under the ascetic teaching at Corinth to feel free to marry should they so desire (see vv. 33-38).
Christians who are serious about conforming their lives to the commands of God in the inspired Bible need to ponder all of these things very carefully. It’snot enough to merely coast along with the spirit of the times. St. Paul commands us to “not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2). The Catholic Church and more traditional Protestant churches that still disallow divorce can work together to try to influence our culture and to be “salt”: to preserve it from further moral and familial decay.
SOURCES
Cross, F. L. and E. A. Livingstone, editors, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1983.
Dunn, James D. G., Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, London: SCM Press, 2nd edition, 1990.
Herbermann, Charles G., editor, The Catholic Encyclopedia, New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1913; sixteen volumes.
Kittel, Gerhard, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, translated and abridged into one volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985.
Orr, James, editor, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., five volumes, 1956.
Robertson, Archibald T. [Baptist], Word Pictures in the New Testament, Nashville: Broadman Press, 1930, 6 volumes.
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Meta Description: Examination of the biblical (and Catholic) teaching about the indissolubility of marriage & about divorce.
Meta Keywords: Divorce, Bible & divorce, Jesus & divorce, marriage, matrimony, annulment, indissolubility of valid marriage
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