Divorce and remarriage are perennial problems for Christians. People know that divorce is wrong, but they do it anyway. Every generation brings forth books and articles dealing with whether and when divorce and remarriage are permitted according to Scripture. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church allowed divorce in some situations but never remarriage while the first spouse still lived, no matter the circumstances. Against this position, the Lutheran Reformation taught that in a few situations (adultery and malicious desertion) God permits a divorce, and if he permits a divorce, he also permits remarriage. Treatise 78 puts it so: “Unjust also is the tradition which forbids an innocent person to marry after divorce.” (endnote 1) This classic Lutheran position is based on Matthew 5:32; 19:9; and 1 Corinthians 7:15, but among Protestants there are variants both on the left and on the right. Permissive approaches to divorce and remarriage are not hard to find (endnote 2). On the other hand, passages such as Mark 10:2–12 have led some Protestants to question the Reformation position on remarriage and to take positions on remarriage very similar to what the Lutheran Reformation rejected (endnote 3).
The latest entry in this debate is an impressive monograph by A. Andrew Das, the Niebuhr Distinguished Chair and Professor of Religious Studies at Elmhurst University, Elmhurst, Illinois. Das is well-known to CTQ readers from his commentary on Galatians in the Concordia Commentary series (2014). Das takes a very conservative view in which remarriage is never permitted so long as the first spouse still lives.
Chapter 1 deals with the cultural setting of the New Testament: the widespread acceptance of remarriage in both Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures.
In chapter 2 Das reviews various scholarly approaches to the Gospels and how these affect the issue of divorce and remarriage. He avoids source-critical approaches and instead opts for a combination of “dissimilarity, embarrassment, multiple attestation, and what is common.” Using these approaches, he finds that in the Gospels “Jesus taught strictly against remarriage as adulterous” regardless of the causes for the divorce. Das assumes that the original recipients of Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels did not know about Matthew’s Gospel, and thus were taught an absolute prohibition of remarriage, at least before the death of one’s former spouse (103).
Chapter 3 examines the exception clauses in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 in detail. Das finds that these are genuine exceptions: there can be divorce on account of πορνεία (143).
In chapter 4, Das argues that the exception clauses in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 only permit divorce in a case of adultery, but not remarriage. In order to make this explanation fit with Matthew 19:9, Das suggests that the reading of Codex Vaticanus (in which the wording of the exception is identical to Matt 5:32) may be original, or that a reconstruction of the text is needed so that one word (μοιχᾶται) can mean a metaphorical “adultery” when one divorces (but not literally “adultery,” i.e., carnal intercourse of a married person outside the marriage) and at the same time regular, physical adultery when one remarries (175–177). Apparently, Das wants one word to mean two different things in the same sentence at the same time. Furthermore, Mark 10:11–12 and Luke 16:18 are for Das the clearer passages, controlling the exegesis of Matthew 5:32 and 19:9.
Chapter 5 deals with Paul’s teaching on remarriage in 1 Corinthians 7. Das argues that 1 Corinthians 7:10–11, which forbids remarriage after divorce, applies in all situations except the death of the former spouse, and that v. 15 does not permit remarriage after suffering a divorce. Instead, “He or she may permit the divorce to take place” (198). Yet on pp. 29–30 Das had shown that in the Greco-Roman context an abandoned person was already legally divorced. How could an abandoned/divorced spouse then permit the past divorce to take place?
In chapter 6, Das considers the witness of the early church, especially before the Council of Nicaea. Early Christian writers got their ascetic views from the Bible, but they also opposed extreme views, such as the absolute prohibition of marriage and the prohibition of the remarriage of widows and widowers. (Though to be honest, the remarriage of widows is precisely what Athenagoras [241–243] and Tertullian [252] forbade, and what St. Paul [1 Cor 7:8–9, 39] permits and commands!) Das is aware that some early Christians were more ascetic than the New Testament, but he argues that their rejection of some extreme ascetic views renders their remaining ascetic views reliable indications of the meaning of the New Testament.
The attempt to shore up the church’s practice of discipline is wholly needed in this era of at-will divorce and remarriage, in which everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Moreover, the coordination of the Lord’s general prohibition (such as in Mark 10) with his exceptions (in Matthew 5 and 19) needs to be clearly articulated in each generation. Das has raised all these issues, treated them in detail, and made an argument that will be welcomed by many scholars and churchmen, if not by all.
Das’s analysis of the meaning of Greek words and his descriptions of the ancient near east, second temple Jewish, and Greco-Roman contexts are unquestionable and reliable. He is also committed to the unity of the New Testament’s message. But his basic position is (at least to my mind) untenable: that remarriage is not permitted even after a divorce that God permits. I find an underlying ambiguity throughout the book concerning the marital status of people whose divorces God permits. Das treats them both as divorced by God’s permission, but at the same time still married to the former spouse in God’s eyes. (For why else would a remarriage be adultery?) Das’s book will surely influence exegetes and churchmen for years to come, but I fear that it will wrongly trouble the consciences of pastors and people, and lead Lutheran pastors to qualify their confessional subscription, at least with regard to Tr 78.
Benjamin T. G. Mayes
Associate Professor of Historical Theology
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana
Endnotes
- W. H. T. Dau and F. Bente, eds., Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church, German-Latin-English (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 527. See also Luther, The Estate of Marriage (1522), in Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 45, ed. Helmut Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1962), 30–35; On Marriage Matters (1530) in Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 46, ed. Helmut Lehmann (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 310–315; Philip Melanchthon, The Chief Theological Topics: Loci Praecipui Theologici 1559, trans. J.A.O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 2011), 490–496; Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent, Part 2, trans. Fred Kramer (St. Louis: Concordia, 1978), 740–755.
- E.g., Craig S. Keener, And Marries Another: Divorce and Remarriage in the Teaching of the New Testament (Peabody, MA.: Hendrickson, 1991).
- E.g., William A. Heth and Gordon J. Wenham, Jesus and Divorce: The Problem with the Evangelical Consensus (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1985); William A. Heth, “Divorce, but No Remarriage,” in Divorce and Remarriage: Four Christian Views, ed. H. Wayne House (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 73–129. Heth later recanted his former views: William A. Heth, “Jesus on Divorce: How My Mind Has Changed,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 6, no. 1 (2002): 4–29.