Remarriage after Divorce

Vindicated has an interesting point to make on remarriage after divorce. Together with scathing comments on our casual acceptance of serial monogamy amongst Christians, he asks if we are going to be strict against gay marriage should we not be equally strict against remarriage after divorce?

A point well made. Christians are adept at holding double standards.

I believe the biblical pattern is a choice of celibacy or lifelong heterosexual monogamy. Homosexual acts are never described in any positive way. Celibacy is commended as the path best suited to the service of Christ. Those unable to embrace celibacy are permitted to marry, and this is always described in a heterosexual context.

So, what when it goes wrong?

Moses permitted divorce. This should be read in the context of arranged marriages, and we should be cautious about how we apply it to a Western romantic marriage. It was not there for when they stopped feeling gooey, it was primarily a remedy for a breach of the arranged marriage contract. (see the story of Mary and Joseph)

Jesus explains that this provision was not part of God’s desired plan – it was a pragmatic response to the hardness of hearts of the men. God hates divorce.

Jesus also rejected the notion that you can legitimise adultery by legally divorcing your wife so that you can legally marry your mistress – it may be legal but it is still immoral. But note that remarriage after divorce was permitted in the law, otherwise Jesus would not have been able to make this comment. I don’t think Jesus is rejecting remarriage per se. I think he is saying you can’t divorce with the intention of remarriage. And when he makes the exception – “except for some uncleaness”, I think he is saying that if your partner has been unfaithful then you are permitted to remarry.

This covers the case where a partner wants to use divorce to legitimise adultery [no you can’t] and the case where adultery has already occurred and the innocent party is permitted to remarry. But what of the case where a marriage has simply broken down? I think divorce is permitted, but not remarriage. An example is in Corinthians – if one half of a pagan couple is converted and the pagan divorces the Christian, so be it, but the person is not free to remarry until the pagan dies. And I think we should enforce this just as strictly as our anti-gay-marriage stance. I used to think that if a reasonable time passed and the divorcee met a new person not connected with the original divorce, and was not simply on the rebound, then marriage would be permitted, but I have moved away from that view.

That’s what I think, and because I think it, it must be true because I am always right, by definition. Honest, guv.

But what do we do now that we do have remarried couples from cases where there has been no adultery?

If gay civil partners came to join my church, for their membership to be meaningful I would feel they should separate, and if that us unacceptable to them they should go to a church with different doctrines. Should we equally ask remarried people to separate? Ezra made the people who had wrongly married pagans to divorce them. On the other hand, David was permitted to continue with Bathsheba, even though his marriage to her was effectively adulterous, and she was blessed by God with inclusion in the genealogy of Christ. I read somewhere that as soon as you consummate your marriage to a previously divorced person, the act breaks the bond with the former partner and forms a new bond with the new partner. I don’t like that approach, though I can see where it is coming from.

It seems to me that the question is all about ‘One flesh’. One flesh is not simply about penetration, though that is essential, or about the exchange of ‘seed’, though that is essential, or about having a baby, though that is the fullest expression of it. ‘One flesh’ is about the unity of the two halves – the reunion of Adam and his rib. It is also about Christ and the church. These illustrations for me exclude homosexual relationships. [if I go to the hardware store and there is a box of electric plugs and a box of electric sockets, I can choose what I want from the boxes but I only get a flow of electricity if I put the plugs into the sockets and they are connected to the mains and to the lamp/machinery – that is the only way they fulfil their designed functions - if i put plugs together or sockets together nothing happens even if they are wired up - it's not what they were made for.]

Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is the fulfilment of ‘one flesh’ Anything else damages ‘one flesh’. Which is why Paul will not take the members of Christ and become one flesh with a prostitute. Pre marital sex, extra marital sex, polygamous sex, serial monogamous sex, all mess up the ‘one flesh’.

But Christ is pragmatic. Not that he compromises, but that he understands sin, and is not thwarted by it. In Christ there is healing. In Christ, the wounds to the flesh are restored.

Abraham the friend of God, had Sarah, Hagar and Keturah. Israel, the prince with God, had four wives. David, the man after God’s own heart, had six wives. Rahab the prostitute and adulterous Bathsheba are ancestors of Christ. So is Tamar, through her entrapment of her father in law.

So this is my verdict.

Heterosexual relationships, even broken and sinful ones such as remarriage after a non-qualifying divorce, can be redeemed, can be blessed, and can somehow reflect a healed and restored ‘one flesh’, whereas homosexual ones cannot because they are do not meet the intention of 'one flesh'. Find me one place in scripture where a sexual same-sex relationship is blessed in any way, and I will review this verdict.

And so I do not find any hypocrisy or inconsistency in remarrying [some] divorcees but not homosexuals, or in pragmatically accepting imperfect heterosexual marriages but not gay ones.

But let us apply these theoretical theological viewpoints at all times with love, compassion, and empathy. We should not dilute the truth, neither should we beat people with it.