Man, Woman, and Family in Christ – Part nine

3. The “execptive clause”

(a) Adultery as a Ground for Divorce and Remarriage

A very widespread view is that the Lord forbids divorce on any other ground than the unfaithfulness of the partner, but that He allows it for this cause, and permits the remarriage of the innocent party subsequently. Though this view is not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church (which officially forbids both divorce, even for adultery, and remarriage), nor by the Church of England (Which allows cessation of conjugal life but prohibits remarriage), it is widely supported in other protestant circles, and well represented in the Christadelphian community too. Thus the Speaker’s Commentary goes so far as to say that “the present passage does not prohibit divorce, and consequently re-marriage, in the one case of adultery; it affords no sanction to the distinction drawn between the guilty and the innocent party as regards the permission to marry again. Such a distinction may or may not be desirable on the grounds of social expediency, but it derives no support from the present passage¹ This is also the view taken by the late Brother John Carter.²

It depends, of course, on the possibility of equating “fornication” with “adultery” in Matthew 5:32 and 19:5. If that equation could be positively proved, the case for permissive divorce and remarriage for adultery (at least for the innocent partner) would be very strong. If it proved possible but not compelling, the case would be in doubt, and other grounds would need to be considered before deciding the issue. If it proved impossible then another interpretation of the passage would become essential.

(b) Can “Fornication” and “Adultery” Be Equated?

There is no doubt what the word “adultery” (moicheia) means: it is irregular sexual association of a married party with someone other than husband or wife. As we have said, the significance in Old Testament times was somewhat restricted by the fact that a man might marry the maiden whom he had corrupted, in addition to any wives he already had, but in a monogamous society either partner might be guilty in the same way as the other, and since the Lord contemplates the possibility of a woman putting away her husband, He is clearly thinking in terms of the contemporary situation.

But there is considerably greater flexibility about the word “fornication” (por­neia). It probably refers to ritual abominations associated with heathen worship in Acts 15:20,29; 21:25; and (as a verbal form) in Revelation 2:14,20. It has to do with association with a harlot in Revelation 17:2; 18:3,9. It is used of a specific case of adultery (incest) in 2 Corinthians 5:1. And these uses are sufficient to show that the word is of wider application, and that, though it may refer to adultery as such, it need not. This, if we went no further, would leave us in the middle position considered above: the Lord might be allowing divorce and remarriage for adultery and He might not. Other circumstances would have to be drawn in to help us decide.

And one such circumstance arises immediately. It can reasonably be asked why, if the Lord had meant adultery in the verses under examination, He did not use the word. It would, apparently, have been quite easy to say, “Whoever puts away his wife, unless she is an adulteress already, commits adultery by doing so, and makes her an adulteress on remarriage.” If there was a self-evident identity in meaning between the two terms we should be less concerned, but we have already shown that there is not, and so the problem remains.

Then the next step is obviously to ask: Was it the Lord’s practice to use the words interchangeably? There is not much evidence, but such as there is points to a very definite conclusion. Jesus says that “fornication’s and adulteries proceed out of the heart of man,” and the words are reported both by Matthew, who mentions the receptive clause, and by Mark, who does not.³ The same is true of Paul, who refers to “fornicators, idolaters, and adulterers” in one place, and to “adultery and fornication” (AV text only) in another. The Letter to the Hebrews says that “fornicators and adulterers” will be judged by God.⁴ It seems clear that the words cannot be identical when they are coupled together in this way, and it is evidently possible that, whereas adultery is necessarily used of misconduct of married people, fornication may in these contexts be used of the misconduct of those who are not formally married—a thought which certainly seems to be in Paul’s mind when he writes: “To avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and every woman her own husband.”⁵

So the answer to the question in the heading of this section must be: the two words cannot always be equated; when they are used together it is hard to see how they can be; and the Lord Jesus does use them together in a way which suggests that, at least sometimes, He drew a distinction between them.

( c) Does the thought of Divorce for Adultery Harmonize with the Passages themselves?

It is very hard to see that it does. For the immediate reaction of the disciples on being told that they ought not to divorce except for fornication is to say, If the case of a man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry!”⁶ If they were merely being denied the right to divorce and remarry when their wife was faithful, what was the ground for their outraged cry ? Surely faithful husbands would not consider, whatever the school of Hillel might say, that it was morally right to divorce a faithful wife? Especially in the light of the prophets’ message as to how heartily the Lord hated putting away? Had not sensitive men all the safeguards they wanted if the Lord were really allowing them to divorce wives who betrayed them?

That they were so upset seems to the present writer good reason for believing that the Lord was not, and they knew He was not, giving them license to divorce their wives for adultery. The disciples must have felt that the Lord was asking them for a degree of loyalty to an unfaithful wife which it was very hard to bear, and it is hard to understand their answer as meaning anything other than: “If I have to stick to my wife no matter how unfaithful she may be to me, I would rather have stayed a bachelor!” The answer the Lord gave to this is not the immediate point, though we must return to it: the important point is that, if the disciples had understood that it was quite all right to divorce a wife who turned out to be an adulteress, and start married life again with another, they could hardly have reacted in the way they did. In the face of this it is very hard to maintain that fornication can be equated with adultery in this passage.

(d) How does “What God hath Joined Together” Affect the Issue?

Decisively, in the writer’s view. We have already seen reason to believe that married couples, married as pagans, were disturbed when one of them accepted the faith, as to whether they ought to continue such a marriage in being; and that Paul comforts the believer with the assurance that God validates such a marriage for the believer’s sake if the other party is willing to continue it. From this it seems that God can only be regarded with assurance as “joining together” those who consciously seek that He should do so.

But, quite apart from this, at whatever point God is regarded as joining together the two partners, it is obvious that, if “fornication” means “adultery” in this passage, the joining together has come first, and the fornication afterwards. Can we possibly argue that, though God has joined two people together, His joining becomes void when one of them transgresses? It is hard to see that we can, and if we cannot we must suppose that the Lord disapproves of the rupture of a marriage from such a cause. Once the union has, so to speak, been recorded in the registers of heaven, it is not the will of Jesus that it should ever be broken, even for so grave a sin as the adultery of one of the parties.

At this point the question of forgiveness arises. It is true that the Law prescribed stoning for the adulterers. It is also true that Jesus declined to endorse the actual execution of this in the case when a guilty party was brought to Him. And it is certainly true that God required a prophet to take just such a sinner to him as his wife, as a symbol of His own willingness to forgive the harlot nation of Israel. Can it be that the Lord is recommending, or in any way encouraging, an attitude to one’s partner which would, in the nature of the case, make reconciliation next to impossible?

(Indeed, it might well be said, if on this basis a man were to divorce his wife, and she were to be married to another, then the provisions of Deuteronomy 24 would apparently make her return to him actually offensive in the sight of God).

Of course, the case against the Lord offering divorce in the case of adultery would remain incomplete were it not possible to offer an alternative explanation of “except it be for the cause of fornication”. But it is possible, and this must be our next task.

(e) An Alternative Explanation of “The Exceptive Clause”

We have already observed that the one provision in the Law for divorce appears to concern a case where a man, having been betrothed to a woman, finds some “thing of nakedness” in her at the first point where such a thing would be likely to be discovered, and thereupon repudiates the marriage.

Now although we were unwilling to make this statement more precise, it is obviously possible that one such shameful thing could be the discovery that his bride was not a virgin. It is true that the extreme remedy for this discovery⁷ could, if the husband were to go to the lengths of attempting a public exposure, the death of the woman. But then, as now, there would doubtless be many occasions, not only when evidence sufficient to satisfy the judges would be difficult to produce with finality, but also when the bridegroom was too sensitive to the claims of mercy and understanding to be willing to invoke the full rigor of the Law.

We have an example which Jesus Himself would doubtless know well. When Joseph discovered that his betrothed was with child “being a righteous man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily”⁸

. As it turned out, Joseph was mistaken in his suspicions, but had he proved to be right, he would have side-stepped the possibility of public exposure, and simply given Mary a writing of divorcement. It is not to the point that the Jews, by this time, would have had no lawful right to stone an unfaithful woman: she would at least have been branded with the offence and become the occasion of public reproach at Joseph’s insistence. And he was prepared to do his best to lighten her lot, despite the fact that he believed himself to have been deceived in her.

That is, he believed her, at that point, to have been guilty of fornication. She was betrothed to him, and he thought she had betrayed her promise. Joseph believed that he had the right to repudiate the marriage because of this, and was preparing to do so. In this instance the expected child was all the evidence required, but there could be others where the disclosure could only be expected at the last moment.

Is it not therefore entirely possible that the Lord was saying, “Since when God has joined two people together I do not wish them ever to be parted, save by death, the only ground on which, consistent with this principle, on which a man should be at liberty to repudiate his contract of marriage, is that which arises when his betrothed is unfaithful to him.”

The objection which springs to mind at once, of course, is that to our way of thinking a fiancee would not be called a wife. But to the Jewish way of thinking it was obviously different, for the angel said to Joseph: “Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife”⁹. In fact there appears to be a strict parallel between “Whosoever shall put away his wife—except for fornication”, and “Mary the espoused wife of Joseph being with child —Joseph was minded to put her away”. The word for “put away” is the same in all cases, though this is not specially significant, since it has the general significance of “release”, and is widely used in other contexts.

1. Speaker’s Commentary in loc.
2. Carter, Marriage and Divorce, chapters 3-6. Though I differ from Brother Carter on this matter, there is much in this book which seems to be absolutely right, and the learning and thoroughness of the work make it excellent background reading whichever view one holds. In particular, the chapter on “The Pauline privilege” states much more fully the conclusions reached independently by the present author before this book was contemplated.
3. Matthew 15.19; Mark 7.21.
4. 1 Corinthians 6.9; Galatians 5.19; Hebrews 13.4, RV.
5. 1 Corinthians 7.2.
6. Matthew 19.10.
7. Deuteronomy 22:13-21.
8. Matthew 1:18-19.
9. Matthew 1:18-19.