Divorce and Remarriage

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of marriage from Matthew 19:1-11 in this address from The Gospel Coalition.

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It’s a great privilege for me to be with you. Granted the profile of this group, I don’t intend to lecture for an hour. I would like to lay out some things I view as fundamental and then we’ll open it to questions and comments. I’d like to say questions and answers, but there may be more questions than answers. I’m not quite sure. We’ll see.

Within confessing evangelicalism today, there are three broad positions that are adopted by various subsets on the divorce and remarriage question. First, there is the position made famous now by Heth and Wenham and by Andrew Cornes in England and a few others. This is the position that insists, although divorce may be permissible under certain tight circumstances, remarriage is never permissible.

On this view, the exceptive clauses, that is the clauses that say except for porneia or except for moicheia or except for fornication or except for adultery, apply only to the divorce statements but not to the remarriage statements of Scripture.

I should perhaps say Heth himself, who used to be one of the most ardent supporters of that view, has recanted, and today he adopts the more traditional view that, in fact, I still hold. Syntactically, I think that is correct. That is, I think it’s very difficult on the basis of Greek syntax to make those statements apply only to the divorce part of the statements. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that position as there.

On the other hand, there has arisen in the last few years a position increasingly acceptable in evangelical circles that was almost unknown among us a few years back. This has been best put forward by David Instone-Brewer. He is the librarian at Tyndale House in Cambridge and an expert in rabbinic thought and antecedent Jewish literature.

His position runs something like this: In addition to the exceptive clauses, all of the biblical passages in the New Testament that deal with divorce and remarriage all wrestle with the question of what constitutes a valid divorce. He then enmeshes the entire discussion in rabbinic thought of the day. In particular, he focuses on one Old Testament passage, Exodus 21, verses 9 to 11. It’s worth taking a moment to understand what the debate is about. This is actually talking about a woman who comes in as a slave or a foreigner into a marriage.

Verse 9: “If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.” Virtually everyone acknowledges this presupposes divorce and remarriage.

The rabbinic argument was an a fortiori argument. That is to say, if there can be divorce and remarriage where there is no support, where there is negligence, where there is abuse for what was in fact a slave woman or a foreign woman, then how much more would there be similar rights for a free-born Israelite woman?

He enmeshes all of his discussion, therefore, in this rabbinic inference from one Old Testament text, even though he acknowledges there is no New Testament text that finally grants some similar permission to remarry today. In other words, Instone-Brewer’s argument is, granted what the Old Testament says, granted the rabbinic inference on an a fortiori argument, then all of the New Testament discussion has that as its background.

Therefore, he would say in the New Testament, granted that there is nothing that overturns that rabbinic inference, then divorce and remarriage may take place, not only for porneia (fornication) but also for serious negligence or abuse, and that position is becoming very widespread.

The methodological problem, it seems to me, is what Samuel Sandmel, a great Jewish scholar, used to call parallelomania. Nowadays there is some discussion about the tension between parallelomania and parallelophobia. Let me explain, because it’s worth getting this one right. Parallelophobia is the fear of adducing parallels. Parallelomania is the penchant for adducing parallels. With parallelomania, you do your exegesis by appealing to parallels.

In other words, you may not be listening to what the text actually says so much as domesticating the text by an appropriate series of parallels. If you want a really excellent example of that, read Hans Dieter Betz’s commentary on Galatians. In his case, he doesn’t appeal to Jewish background; he appeals to Greco-Roman background. He works right through Galatians, and he has parallels for everything! At the end of the day, he’s reading Greco-Roman parallels into the text of Galatians, and that’s how he interprets Galatians.

At the end of the day, you start asking yourself, “Is that what Paul actually says, or this so appealing to parallels that Paul becomes domesticated?” Parallelophobia is the inverse error. That is, you’re so much afraid of appealing to parallels that you don’t take care as to understanding how literature worked in the first century or how terms functioned or what the categories of debate were in the first century. Thus, the biblical text is in danger of being somehow abstracted from history. You can see how that could become a danger, too.

In this instance it seems to me all of the errors with respect to Instone-Brewer are on the parallelomania side. The fact of the matter is you cannot find a single text that makes unambiguous reference to this Jewish debate. You just can’t do it, so with the greatest respect for my dear friend David Instone-Brewer, I think he’s leading us slightly astray.

As the Heth and Wenham argument took us, it seems to me, too far to the right, for lack of a better set of axes, so it seems to me Instone-Brewer is taking us too far to the left. He’s not listening attentively enough to what the Scripture actually says. He’s focusing too much on what it must say, granted a certain rabbinic reading of one Old Testament text. Then the danger of parallelomania is just too strong, it seems to me, for us to base all our practice on.

Granted that, it will be no surprise at this point that I come to the third position which is basically the traditional position, but I want to run quickly through two or three texts in this regard and tell you how I understand them, why I make the judgments I do, and then we’ll open it up to questions and answers and broad discussion.

Begin with Matthew 19. We could take time to work through Mark 10 and Matthew 5 and related passages, and certainly we must ask the question about how these passages cohere, but let’s begin with Matthew 19. “When Jesus had finished saying these things he left Galilee and went into the region of Judea to the other side of the Jordan. Large crowds followed him, and he healed them there. Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?’ ”

All commentaries point out this was a standard debate at the time generated in part by developments from the school of Hillel. The question was, “What were the grounds of acceptable divorce? What validated a divorce?” Hillel went pretty far in this respect, so probably this avoids parallelophobia. Probably this debate is against that kind of background, which we know was happening in the first century.

Jesus’ answer turns in the first instance on creation order. “ ‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female” and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one. Therefore, what God has joined together let not man separate.’ ”

All sides agree, I’m sure, in this room that’s the default position. That’s where we begin. The problem is, of course, although we acknowledge that as the beginning point, we start immediately asking for the exceptions. Then suddenly the exceptions take up so much of our attention that we lose this creation structure. There’s something really awful about that.

I strongly recommend to you the book by Christopher Ash called Marriage: Sex in the Service of God which begins to put together a creation and typology structure that is really important to keep at the forefront of our minds. For our purposes today, we have to go immediately, I know, to the exceptions. That’s part of what we’re here to discuss. Yet, I still want to insist creation and the typology of Scripture says something astonishingly important. I’ll come back to that a bit more at the end.

That’s, in any case, Jesus’ first appeal. “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Of course, the passage to which they are referring is Deuteronomy 24:1–4. Syntactically, that reads in effect one long “if” clause that takes up the first three verses and says, in effect, if a man marries and then finds something indecent (the Hebrew expression is ‘ervah dabar), some indecent thing in her and then in due course divorces her, then marries someone else, then divorces her, is he permitted to remarry the first one? The answer is no. He’s not. That’s what that passage is about.

Jesus, therefore, reminds them he does not command someone divorce his wife, but clearly Jesus is presupposing Moses permits divorce under certain circumstances, although the command of Deuteronomy 24 is not to remarry the first spouse under those conditions, whatever the ‘ervah dabar is. That expression, ‘ervah dabar, is astonishingly ambiguous, and people have been arguing about it ever since.

A chapter or two earlier it actually refers to human excrement. It’s ‘ervah dabar, something indecent which you’re supposed to bury when you’re out in the military field, for example. Clearly, that’s not what’s at stake here, but it shows the flexibility of the referent in the expression itself. Almost certainly, it is what Jesus interprets to mean by porneia, which is a very flexible term: not simply adultery but virtually any sexual indecency.

Some people, therefore, fasten onto passages where porneia refers to child abuse or other passages where it refers to adultery or other passages where it refers to some other particular sexual sin, and then they try to say, “You see the word can mean that and perhaps that’s what it means in this context.”

Methodologically, that’s really a strange way of proceeding because, in fact, the term can refer to individual sexual sins, and yet the meaning of it is a pretty broad category. Unless there is contextual reason for thinking of it in very narrow terms, then the normal way of reading the expression is in the breadth of its semantic range. That is, fornication, sexual indecency without being all that explicit as to which particular form of sexual indecency is in view.

I would include, thus, for example, homosexuality or pedophilia and a number of other kinds of indecency as well. Inevitably, when you have something as broad as that then sooner or later you start asking questions, “Where is the line drawn?” Supposing, for example, there is lots of sexual foreplay but no actual consummation. Short answer: I don’t have a clue. At what point do you draw the line? We can reason a little farther than that, but at the end of the day, porneia is a very broad category indeed.

Supposing, for example, someone is really hooked into pornography but has never actually acted out. Does that constitute grounds? Well, I doubt it, but at the end of the day, porneia is a broad category and we’ll come back to working through the pastoral implications of that in a few minutes as well.

“Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard …” Already, divorce is seen as a reflection of something ugly, something sinful in the human heart and life. “ ‘… but it was not that way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery.’ The disciples said to him, ‘If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.’ ”

Then Jesus’ classic response in verses and 11 and 12: “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way, others were made that way by men, and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

In some ways, this is a kind of Jesus equivalent of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, where the apostle Paul insists marriage is a charisma. It’s a gracious gift from God, and celibacy is a charisma, so we’re all charismatic. In this instance, we can’t have both charismatic gifts at the same time, but both are gracious gifts from God to be received with thanksgiving.

Thus, the outworking of both in our lives should be received with gratitude without trying to hold up either celibacy or marriage as a kind of superior gift. That removes some of the asceticism of the patristic generations, and it should remove some of the endless hedonism of the twenty-first century too. Both can be seen as charismatic gifts, but we’ll come to some outworkings of that in due course.

So far, I would argue what we learn from the teaching of Jesus is that divorce and remarriage are wrong, that from the beginning marriage was divinely instituted, and wherever there is divorce and remarriage there is evidence of the hardness of the human heart. Nevertheless, it is conceded in Moses and it is conceded by Jesus.

Then, of course, the additional factor is the so-called Pauline exception (1 Corinthians 7). It is important in wrestling with 1 Corinthians to recognize the “Yes, but” form of Jesus’ arguments. I know this point is disputed, but I would be prepared to defend it at some length. It seems to me Paul is arguing against polarized positions in the church on half a dozen fronts, so some of his argument, therefore, has a “Yes, but” form.

He tips his hat in one direction and says, “Yes, yes, yes, you’re quite right, but …” Then he tips his hat in the other direction and says, “Yes, yes, yes, but …” Instead of simply giving a straightforward answer he’s also concerned for pastoral unity. Thus, we see, for example, in the following chapter in the matter of meat offered to idols, on the one hand he can say, “Yes, yes, yes, everything God made is good. You have perfect freedom in this regard, but for the sake of those with a weaker conscience …” And so on. There is another sort of argument that goes on.

Likewise, in the chapters on the pneumatika, “Yes, yes, yes, I thank God I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in the church I’d rather speak five words in a known tongue than 10,000 words in an unknown tongue,” because he’s very concerned for intelligibility in the context of the local church.

He doesn’t quite go so far as to say, “Absolutely no way,” but on the other hand, this “Yes, but” form of argument shows there are higher principles that are involved. So also here. He says things like, “Yes, yes, yes, it’s good for a man not to marry, but …” and “Yes, yes, it’s good to remain celibate, but …” You don’t feel the thrust of the balance of his wisdom until you get the yes and the but together.

There are only one or two places in all of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians where it’s all negation. For example, when it comes to the Lord’s Supper, “In the following directives I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more damage than good.” With respect to their practice of the Lord’s Supper there’s no yes. There is only the but, as it were. Do you see? It’s astonishing in one of the two rites God has given that Christ has laid on his church at that very point Paul has only criticism. It’s astonishing.

That makes it all the more important to hear the tension in the “Yes, but” form of argument here. In the first seven verses, “Yes, yes, yes. It’s good for a man not to marry.” That’s not correct. “It’s good for a man not to touch a woman …” There is no evidence the phrase to touch a woman was synonymous with to marry. Fee is entirely right in his commentary at that point.

“It is good for a man not to touch a woman …” That is, there is something good to be said about the kind of asceticism that withdraws from any form of sexual contact, “… but since there’s so much immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.” There are two things to be observed about this.

The first is that the argument is reciprocal. That is not Jewish already. In other words, as you work right through this chapter and the divorce exceptions and so forth, what you discover is, on every front, it is reciprocal: what applies to the man applies to the woman. In this respect, Paul has already taken the discussion right out of typical rabbinic debates.

The second thing to observe is this is not the only reason Paul would have for marriage (that is, it releases sexual pressure), but it is a valid reason. It is part of the way God has made us. We can return to that one later if you like, but it is important to keep saying marriage, amongst its many other functions in the service of God, does release sexual pressure and acknowledges how we have been made.

“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife and, likewise, the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way …” Notice the reciprocal relationship all the way through. “… do not deprive each other except …” Now then, that means in marriage there should be mutual giving in sex with no withdrawal except for the three conditions given.

First, with mutual consent. That is, it’s not imposed by one side or the other. Secondly, it’s only temporary, for a time. Thirdly, for spiritual purposes. That is, the mutual consent for a time is so they can have more time to actually pray together and things of that order. Sometimes when I bring this up in class, there are students who look at me somewhat aghast and say, “How can the desire to pray mean this is sufficient ground somehow for withdrawing from sex? Can’t you have sex and pray?” I say to them, “Transparently, you’re not married.”

You can get so busy in life that finding time for sex or finding time to actually pray together become mutually exclusive options. It’s not just in the twenty-first century that we find ourselves so desperately busy. In the first century, likewise, people could be just so busy that they decided for spiritual reasons to actually give up sex for a while so they could spend an hour praying together once or twice a week. How often do you spend time praying for an hour or two with your spouse? We are so busy, aren’t we?

Paul has some very tight restrictions in this respect. Once you’re married, you’re not supposed to give up sex except by mutual consent for a short period of time and then for a spiritual purpose. It’s quite remarkable how strong Paul is in this respect. On the one hand, he can say, “I wish all men were as I am, at this point celibate, but each man has his own charisma from God. One has this charisma; another has that.”

“Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But …” There’s the “Yes, but” argument. “… if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord) …”

You are as aware as I am a little further on he says, “I, not the Lord.” (Verse 12) This does not mean he is saying one part is inspired and another part isn’t. Usually, when the apostle Paul refers to the Lord by itself and certainly here, he’s referring to the Lord Jesus, and in particular the Lord Jesus in the days of his flesh.

What he has to say then, “Not I, but the Lord” in verse 10, is a summary of what he understands the Lord Jesus to have taught: “A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife.” A summary of the Lord’s basic stance toward marriage and divorce. “To the rest I say …” Now he adds, “(I, not the Lord.)” That is, the Lord Jesus did not actually introduce this particular instance. That is, a mixed marriage, so we come to the so-called Pauline exception.

“If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbeliever leaves, let him do so. A believing man or woman is not bound in such circumstances; God has called you to live in peace.”

What shall we make of this? Immediately, one faces the astonishing (for the day) reciprocity of the description. That is, it cuts both ways. That was simply unknown in rabbinic circles, as it’s unknown, for example, in Muslim circles today. The man can divorce his wife. In fact, where Sharia law applies, he need merely say, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you” with witnesses and she is divorced. Then under Sharia law, she is not to be acknowledged as a pure woman any longer even by her own family, but here there is perfect reciprocity in the arrangement. He can divorce her; she can divorce him. That’s the first thing to observe.

The second thing has to do with this sanctification language. In some pado-Baptist circles but certainly not all, this text is used to justify pado-baptism, but in my judgment the best pado-Baptist circles avoid that sort of inference like the plague because it applies equally to the unbelieving husband. That is, the unbelieving husband the unbelieving children are alike, sanctified by the presence of the believing spouse.

What is meant by this sanctification? Well, when one looks at the qadowsh word group or the hagiaz word group in the New Testament, one observes a huge range again. The shovel that takes out the ash from the altar in the Old Testament is said to be sanctified. It’s not moral, it’s not growing in increasing conformity to Christ, but it is in some sense reserved for God.

By virtue of its function, by virtue of its use it is reserved for God, so there is a sense, then, in which the unbelieving spouse and the children of a mixed marriage are in, some sense, reserved for God, because in God’s providence they have been brought under the aegis of a Christian parent or a Christian spouse. It’s a wonderful privilege!

Therefore, we’re told in verse 16 this becomes the primary mission field of the believing spouse. The believer must not be the one who leaves (it just must not happen). But supposing the unbeliever leaves. Then what happens? Then we’re told the believing spouse is not bound in such cases, and the whole debate turns on what that means.

Does it mean he or she is not bound to try to keep the whole thing together? It seems to me that’s a desperately insipid inference because, in fact, he or she (the believer, in this case) doesn’t have any choice. This is something that is being pursued by the unbeliever, so most see today the inference is, “is not bound and, therefore, can remarry,” under this instance.

That’s why it’s sometimes called the Pauline exception. That is, it is an exception to what Jesus said in that he has drawn a further argumentation from biblical principles but deals with a case Jesus himself, by Paul’s own admission, did not address. Does that mean, therefore, wherever you have incompatibility or basic negligence you now have sanction, after all, for the kind of structure Instone-Brewer is advocating?

Immediately, it seems to me, you have to remember this is, first, a mixed marriage and, secondly, it’s a mixed marriage where it seems to be, in the context, the Christian commitment itself that has stipulated the withdrawal. In other words, what we have here is not A is a non-Christian and B is a backslidden Christian, and they get married, Then B wants to return to Christ, and after a few more years of neglect and abuse and incompatibility, A withdraws, so now B is happy to go and get remarried.

Almost certainly what Paul has in mind is that A and B are not Christians. B becomes a Christian, and A can’t stand it despite B’s best efforts of holding the whole thing together, so A insists on a divorce. The question then becomes, “May B remarry under such circumstances?” In our culture, this almost never happens. It does sometimes. I’ll come back to them in a moment.

In the Muslim world this happens not infrequently, except it’s always tilted one way. That is, the woman can’t divorce her husband, but the husband can divorce his wife, and the question then becomes, “May she remarry?” I think the answer is if you see this is the sort of situation the Pauline exception has in mind, yes, she may.

I’ve seen one or two instances where this applied. One of our graduates a number of years ago became pastor of a church in California. This church had a pretty aggressive evangelistic outreach, and one of the evangelistic Bible studies that was connected with the church drew in a young woman who really was soundly converted.

It turned out she and her husband had married two or three years earlier in an agreed open marriage. They literally went to sex orgies together and to all kinds of wife-husband swapping parties (the whole bit), and when she became a Christian, perhaps stimulated, in fact, by growing guilt in her own life.… Who knows? When she became a Christian, she felt she couldn’t do this anymore, but she actually went so far as to say to her husband …

She would not divorce him if he wanted to continue doing this, but she just couldn’t do it anymore, and he said, “You’re not the woman I married,” and divorced her. Is she bound in such cases? Immediately, you perceive there’s something else going on in this instance, too, because he’s still having affairs, so at least in principle, you don’t even need to appeal to the Pauline exception here. That is, you’re back to porneia, aren’t you?

Pastorally, most instances of abandonment today sooner or later result in another porneia relationship. When I was pastor of a church on the West Coast of Canada a number of years ago, we had a young woman who was brought into one of our evangelistic groups, and she became a Christian. It turned out she was the wife of an RCMP officer who was known to be one abusive drunk. He was really a nasty piece of work.

She was already in process of divorce when she actually started coming to our group, and the divorce came through about the same time she became a Christian. I don’t even remember which was first at this juncture. It was just a mess. She had been physically abused, battered, the whole bit, and how do you phone the police in that case? Your husband is the police. It was just a mess. The divorce went through. She became a Christian, and then she wanted to know a couple of years later whether she could remarry. She had two lovely lasses.

In this case, there was no evidence the husband linked up with any other person. In the vast majority of instances, that’s what happens, so sooner or later, if you wait a couple of years you have a porneia case and, in any case, you don’t need to appeal to a Pauline privilege even if you think the Pauline privilege is stipulated by the text.

In this particular instance, he just became a hard-drinking, miserable loner. That’s what he became. There was no evidence he was doing something else on the side, so we worked with this woman through the biblical text and said, “For the life of me, I don’t think this is an instance of the Pauline exception.”

It’s not as if he had abandoned her because she had become a Christian. It’s not a case of suddenly sanctioning incompatibility, and there was no evidence on either side of porneia, so frankly, we counseled her to hold her peace, be faithful, be a godly woman, and trust the Lord and see what would happen.

Her little girls were 4 and 5 when she became a Christian. I left the church. Years later, I went back when the older daughter was being baptized on her eighteenth birthday. This woman had retained her integrity. Her former husband had never remarried. All her life, she became a really godly woman.

Now the oldest daughter has to be 30 or 35. We made sure there were two or three other families in the church who were put on her to sort of sustain her, make her part of a bigger family, have some male help around who was secure who could fix plumbing and help out in a variety of ways.

It worked out in that case astonishingly well, but it means even if this exegesis of the Pauline exception is right, it doesn’t serve as a back door into mere incompatibility as an excuse for divorce and remarriage, but I would say that’s the only case I’ve seen quite like that. I’m sure there are others around, but it’s the only case I’ve seen like that, because usually what happens when you have this kind of breakup is, sooner or later, porneia becomes a factor in any case.

One more inference drawn from this. If this exegesis is correct, if this is a fair representation of what the Bible says, then I do take the advice of John Murray and others in this respect. Part of the problem is having a church policy that is seen to be fair and consistent. If you will permit a remarriage in one case and not in another case, then pretty soon somebody is going to say you have a double standard here or you have a kind of remarriage approach according to favoritism or the like.

Supposing then there is a divorce on grounds which, according to this exegesis, are biblically unsanctioned. That is, the divorce comes about, so far as the courts are concerned, because of incompatibility. Five years later one of the partners has become a Christian, wants to remarry, and the other partner is now shacked up with somebody else or maybe married to somebody else. Can you remarry this Christian partner? The grounds for the divorce have been biblically illegitimate, but the situation that now prevails would say remarriage is permissible.

At this point there is porneia going on. John Murray’s counsel (I think it’s good counsel; I know it’s pragmatic, but I still think it’s good pastoral wisdom) is for the elders of the church, the church court in effect, to recognize there is a ground for divorce other than what the state recognized, so the basis for allowing remarriage in this case is not the reason for the divorce granted by the state but a new situation so that you have, in fact, issued a kind of ecclesiastical divorce.

I think that’s pastorally shrewd because it means, therefore, you can distinguish between two instances of incompatibility. Let’s say A and B and C and D are both divorced on biblically illegitimate grounds, but five years later, one of the two partners wants to marry somebody else, but in the first instance now there is porneia that has kicked in and in the other instance not.

Do you see? If your sole ground for permitting or refusing is the court-sanctioned divorce, then you really have to treat them both alike, don’t you? But if, in fact, the porneia category is crucial, then you have church-recognized, public grounds for treating one differently from the other without any valid grounds for a favoritism charge.

Let me come back to a broader vision again. This is all getting technical, exegetical, narrow, and finally, almost casuistical as you try to invent a category like an ecclesiastical decree in order to handle pastorally difficult situations, but it is important to come back and preserve the sanctity of marriage not merely as an end in itself but as something that is really supposed to mirror the relationship between Christ and his church.

If we deal with this subject only from the point of view of what we are allowed to do and not from the perspective of what God has ordained from the beginning and of how many things in the created order are actually God-ordained reflections of what we should be able to perceive in the whole eternal, spiritual order of things, then we’re robbing marriage of its essential beauty and goodness.

One of the things I love about Ephesians 5:21–31 is the way you think you understand what Paul is talking about when he suddenly says, “Of course, really I’m talking about the other one,” which shows how, in his mind, the relationship between husband and wife is so tied up with the relationship between Christ and the church and, antecedently, God and Israel, that he cannot entirely disentangle them.

He goes down one track far enough and then tells you, “I’m really talking about the other one here,” and then flips it and goes the other way. You realize our notion of typology, of symbol-laden structure in the very heart of reality God has made is so thin today that we do not adequately see the glory of God in the created order that reflects things behind the material creation, and I suspect that is true at level after level after level.

Those of you who were at The Gospel Coalition will remember how John Piper talked about one of the things that helps us understand the faces of evil in the world is to see sin and destruction and tornadoes and hurricanes and so on are, in some ways, the result of God’s curse on the world to teach us just how ugly the rebellion is behind it all that shows the inevitable results of the horrific rebellion we call the fall.

Thus, there is a sense in which 9/11 or Katrina or Iraq is also telling us how God looks at sin. That is, the things that are taking place in the plane of history are also telling us something far, far, far more profound, and there is a sense in which we must see marriage that way too, or else we begin to lose the fundamental coherence of all of Holy Writ. I’ve rabbited on long enough. At this point, do you want to raise questions or make comments?

Male: Let’s go back to your RCMP story. The advantage this woman had is that she divorced a man who was abusive to her and to her children. You told her she couldn’t remarry. That’s fine, but is divorce under those conditions legitimate? We have situations, for example, where women are being abused and children are being abused. I had a woman say to me, “I could endure the abuse, but it’s destroying my children.” Should we at that point counsel, “Get a divorce, but you have no grounds for remarriage”?

Don Carson: What I would say in this case is where there is.… Let’s take the easier case first of all before you get the harder ones. Where there is physical abuse and real danger, then you are pastorally mandated, I would want to argue, to secure her safety. Nowadays that is done either by divorce or some kind of court-ordered separation by which he cannot come close and so on. You are advocating some sort of court-sanctioned separation for the sake of safety. I would insist upon it.

At that point, if the question of remarriage comes up, I would say, “This isn’t the time or place to think about it.” If it’s already church policy what the exceptions are, then the answer ought to be obvious, in any case, “This by itself does not sanction remarriage,” but in 95 to 99 percent of the cases, this bozo is going to go and be shacked up with somebody else in a few weeks or a few months. That is probably what’s going to happen, so that, in fact, the most difficult situations, it seems to me, usually don’t arrive.

Male: Sometimes wives are counseled, though, “You’re the believer, so you shouldn’t be the one initiating the divorce,” but sometimes they have to if they are protecting their children.

Don: I agree with that entirely. I don’t think Paul is even raising the question here. If, on the other hand, you back up from the optic of merely divorce and remarriage on sexual and other grounds to questions of actual safety, does either Jesus or Paul envisage some situation where you stay there so you can get battered to death? Doesn’t the mother have some sort of obligation, then, also to protect the children?

It seems to me you’re backing up to a broader optic where, in fact, when it has gone that far what you ought to be doing is prosecuting the jerk. This is a criminal offense. It’s an immoral matter. The Bible does not sanction we ignore physical abuse. It seems to me where there is that sort of physical abuse you should be encouraging her, in fact, to press charges.

Male: And get a divorce?

Don: It will work out that way for the sake of court protection nowadays. In other words, I don’t think this sort of text is even addressing that sort of question. I do insist the tightness of the divorce and remarriage connections are on the ground of porneia and this conceded Pauline exception. The reason why I’m even slow on the Pauline exception is because it’s the only passage that explicitly runs in that direction, and I hate to build entire systems of either theology or ethics based on one or two verses.

That’s the danger, so I don’t want to sort of open up the door and make every tough case suddenly grounds for opening the thing up to incompatibility, but in fact, I would still want to say in that case my pastoral counsel has been, would be, and still will be, if the fellow has started hitting you, you have the right to press charges. You may even have the moral obligation to press charges. What he’s doing is illegal, immoral, and dangerous. Yes?

Male: In Matthew 19, if we go back, it starts off referencing porneia, and then you go on from there and he says adultery. It’s kind of a translational question, but if there is both porneia and adultery, why do they go with adultery? Can we deduce that the reasons extend beyond adultery since one is adultery and the other one is not? What are the parameters if that’s the case?

Don: Moicheia (adultery) under rabbinic law could actually only be committed against the husband. In other words, if she was unfaithful it was adultery. Adultery was not actually used when he was unfaithful against her in rabbinic law. That’s quite interesting all by itself. As he works out this particular instance, then moicheia may be the most common instance of porneia so sometimes that verb is thrown in, but on the other hand, the fact that porneia is used here and in the Matthew 5 passage and so on shows it is the larger overarching category.

I suspect behind that is the theology of one flesh. One flesh union is more than physical coupling. It is physical coupling, but it’s a deeply symbol-laden physical coupling that brings two people made in God’s image by God’s design different so they complement each other into one organism, and that becomes a wonderful thing that actually pictures Christ and the church.

Thus, it’s porneia that, in fact, smashes that coupling or betrays that coupling, that is setting aside that coupling, that is dirtying that coupling, that it seems to me is the fundamental ground. In other words, we have such a merely functional view of sex that we don’t see just how bad porneia really is. Then moicheia, I would argue, is merely the kind of breaking of porneia that is most common where, in fact, what you’re really dealing with is a marriage. Sir?

Male: Many of the things you have said today have just been messing me up inside because I can relate to so many of the things you have said. I deal with thousands of people who are, for example, in jail who we as a church have no idea how to deal with, nor do we want to deal with, their messes.

Many of them go in married and they get out divorced. Many of them, like I did, were involved in sexual immorality to the highest core. How do we counsel them in terms of living a righteous life when we do not have a real biblical position on how we are going to deal with them with their messes?

For me, my wife left me when I went into jail. Now as a new believer.… I basically caused her to find someone else because I was very abusive and very much unfaithful to her. She divorced me; I couldn’t contest it. She found somebody else and married him. Many scholars from colleges counseled my current wife not to marry me because I was a “mess” case. Do you know what I’m saying?

So she got conflicting views from PhDs and peers from respected institutions in this country not to marry me, but she did it anyway, and I am the most joyful human being on the entire earth. Now what do we do as an evangelical group of people in dealing with real life and real messes and real issues in how to love our neighbors, especially when we deal with crime due to the result of the broken family which is happening more in the church than in the pagan world? How do we deal with all of that?

Don: My dear brother, thank you for your candor. Let me say two or three things. First, by your own description of your own circumstance, at the mere level of mere picky exegesis, everything you’ve described of yourself doesn’t fall outside of any of the parameters I’ve already given.

Male: Yet, many people who are scholars at colleges counseled my wife then not to even touch me.

Don: I’ll tell you what. I won’t be responsible for what they say, and they won’t be responsible for what I say. In other words, I cannot defend everything other people do; I can only tell you what, as far as I can see, the Word of God actually says.

Some counsel may have been given then (I don’t know you or your circumstances well enough) saying, “Has this fellow got a track record yet of showing how the gospel really has turned him around?” In other words, were they counseling her not to marry you because of their understanding of the divorce-remarriage texts or were they saying, “This guy is a brand-new baby Christian; give him a little time to grow up”? Again, I don’t know the background here.

What I would be happy to say to someone about to marry a person who has been very sexually abusive in the background, and so on and so on, and now has become a Christian is, “If this person really is a Christian, the gospel is most powerful. It can change anybody, but make sure there’s enough of a track record to make sure you’re not just getting snookered. If this person really does love you and if the gospel really is taking hold here, you’re going to see this worked out in terms of gentleness and integrity and honor.”

Then I would say, “God bless you. I’ll conduct the wedding.” I have said things like that, but on the other hand, it may be the part of wisdom for someone who has given a testimony of conversion and you’re not quite sure if the fruit is there to wait a little while. After all, Jesus himself says, “By their fruit you shall know them.”

I want to insist in the strongest possible way that the gospel actually does transform people, so the gospel must always be presented as a message of forgiveness and of transformation and of hope, and where there is that sort of mess you don’t say, “Because you have a mess, therefore, you’re going to have to be celibate all the rest of your life.” I’m not saying any of that. On the other hand, there may be pastoral wisdom in walking slowly and cautiously and taking some time, both for your sake and for the other’s sake.

Male: How do we deal with sexual crime as a church when we as a government have no idea how to define it. Today, the biggest cases are a sex offender, and we don’t know exactly what he or she did? How are we as a church going to help the government or inform them in how to deal with this issue when we, in fact, won’t have anything to do with them?

Don: Again, there are churches and there are churches and there are churches, so I don’t want to generalize here. I could tell you of some churches that are doing a lot of things right in really tough case inner cities of one sort or another and some churches who are doing a lot of things wrong.

Let me back off and give a couple of elements of perspective. I don’t want to give easy answers. You know, “Just do the following 16 points, turn the crank, and everything will be happy.” This is a mess, but first of all, most of us are familiar with statistics that say divorce rates and abuse and things like that are as prevalent in evangelical circles as they are in the population at large, and such statistics are deeply troubling.

What you need to be aware of are further statistics done both by Gallup and by some other pollsters who have thrown in some extra filters. You can’t say, “Are you really truly born again?” I mean, how do you do that on a statistic? But they’ve thrown in some extra filters. “Do you call yourself an evangelical?” Yes or no. If you say yes, “Okay. We want to look at you.”

“Do you read your Bible at least three times a week?” Yes or no. “If yes, we want to look at you. Do you go to church at least once a week?” Yes or no. You start putting in the filters. “Do you think it’s important to bow to the lordship of Christ in everything you say, do, and think?” You put in the extra filters. By the time those filters are in, then you compare their sexual mores and behaviors and so on with the population at large, and there’s a huge gap.

What that tells me is there are a lot of people out there who think of themselves as Christians and/or think of themselves as evangelicals who aren’t converted, but it shouldn’t be too surprising that where people genuinely are converted their lives change. The Bible insists it will be the case. The Bible really does not have any place for a completely untransformed believer. That’s an oxymoron. It’s a contradiction in terms.

We want to insist, on the one hand, lives change with the gospel and this gospel is transforming. We want to do all of that while at the same time being wise and faithful in how we preach, how we teach, and so on right across the board, so the reason why laws are enacted today to compel us to report, for example, child abuse and things like that is to protect children, and I’m all for that, to be quite frank. As far as I’m concerned, the government has done the right thing in that regard.

There are dangers because every once in a while you get two 15-year-olds who come along and concoct a story that actually is untrue. I’ve seen one instance of that. Just horrendous! On the other hand, what that means is in our churches and in our youth groups and this sort of thing we are going to have to be increasingly careful to work in pairs of adults and in places where there is clarity and cleanness all around so we cannot easily be in a position where we are open to abuse. We’re just going to have to be extra careful. At the same time, you have to thank God for laws that start protecting children against the degrees of abuse you see today.