Divorce and Remarriage in the Church

Divorce and Remarriage in the Church: Biblical Solutions for Pastoral Realities
by David Instone-Brewer
Paternoster Press 2003

This is an important Christian book on the sensitive and controversial subject of divorce and remarriage. It is not exaggerating to say that if David Instone-Brewer's interpretation of the biblical texts is correct, then the Church's traditional interpretations of the grounds for divorce and prohibition of remarriage are in need of major revision.

In the opinion of this reviewer, Instone-Brewer's argument provides a biblically consistent, pastorally caring, legally realistic and genuinely loving and fair road map through one of the most difficult areas of practical theology.

Most Protestants recognise the need for divorce and remarriage in the fallen and imperfect world we all inhabit. Many theologians come up with interpretative schemes that try to take the biblical texts seriously while providing practical solutions to real life situations. I think the position in the Westminster Confession, for example, is like this. It allows for remarriage after divorce by treating the "offending party" in the divorce "as if they were dead", and hence the marriage bond is completely severed. However, there is little real biblical justification for saying that a party in a divorce should be treated in law as if dead. It is, however, a practical solution to the issue.

Likewise, many theologians and pastors will take Paul's exception of "desertion" in a wider context than purely physical abandonment to include situations where there has been moral desertion, such as physical, mental or severe emotional abuse. Others have widened a strict reading of Paul to include the situation where a professing believer deserts his or her spouse on the reasoning that such a person can be treated as a unbeliever if they will not be reconciled to their spouse.

From the time of the Reformation, there have been theologians who argued that because on any reading, the New Testament seems to allow for divorce for adultery and desertion, it must be right by good and necessary consequence that divorce be permitted for worse sins than adultery or desertion, such as physical or sexual abuse.

All these practical solutions are attempts to respect the biblical texts while recognising that a strictly literalistic interpretation of what those texts is extremely difficult for real life pastoral situations. There is also a feeling in many people that such interpretations - which would, to give an extreme example, require a Christian wife to remain married to a husband who was physically torturing her everyday as long as he lives with her and does not commit adultery - are not consistent with the Christian gospel or with God's attributes of love, mercy, compassion and justice that we are to mirror in our lives.

The triumph, it seems to this reviewer, of Dr Instone-Brewer's position is that it works naturally with the biblical texts when interpreted in their original context rather than finding ways which frankly look like they are trying to get around the texts (at least in their most restricted interpretation). Instone-Brewer provides good and just solutions to the issue of divorce backed up by solid scholarship on the social and religious background of the first century world that the New Testament was originally written for.

The author has been criticised for making divorce too easy, but this is certainly not what he advocates.

He summarises his conclusions as follows:

• The Bible's message for those suffering within marriage is both realistic and loving
• Marriage should be lifelong, but broken marriage vows can be grounds for divorce
• Biblical grounds for divorce include adultery, abuse and abandonment
• Jesus urged forgiveness but allowed divorce for repeated unrepentant breaking of marriage vows
• Only the victim, not the perpetrator of such sins, should decide when or whether to divorce
• Anyone who divorces on biblical grounds or who is divorced against their will can remarry.

This reviewer found his arguments compelling and even if in no sense the last word on this subject, they surely demand serious consideration by the Church, and engagement by opponents of the views put forward by the author.

For a covenant theologian like myself, who believes in the essential continuity of the old and new administrations of the one Covenant of Grace, the fact that this view does not drive a wedge between divorce in the Old Testament and divorce in the New Testament (which the traditional interpretation of the New Testament texts does), is also an attractive feature of this argument. Indeed it has always seemed strange that the traditional view necessitates the New Testament being somewhat more strict, more rigorous, more legalistic than the more practical and gracious provisions of the Old Testament which recognises human weakness in a fallen world. Dr Instone-Brewer's argument actually removes this apparent anomaly by showing how the New Testament texts grow out of the Old Testament texts rather than being a radical break with them.

This book is written for the general reader and the busy pastor. The exegesis and background history are concise and to the point. Dr Instone-Brewer has also written a much larger book which incorporates far more of his research in this area of biblical studies. The other book is entitled Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context. This reviewer definitely plans to read the larger book at some point in the future.

Note: Both of Dr Instone-Brewer's books are available to read online at his website
http://www.divorceremarriage.com/