Download 1. First things first: our starting point 2. Our conclusion

1. First things first: our starting point
We start with our clear convictions on the subject of marriage: first, that it is God’s intention that people
should be married for life; second, that marriage is not everyone’s calling, but that singleness, too, can
be a God-ordained gift, to be honoured and valued by the church; third, that divorce was not part of
God’s plan, but was simply permitted by him because of the hardness of the human heart (Mt 19:8); and
fourth, that divorce must not be accepted as an inevitable outcome when a relationship hits problems,
but that marriages should be fought for, supported and sustained until all hope of a continuing
relationship has utterly evaporated.
Our discussion has also been informed by several core values to which we are unhesitatingly committed:
(a) The importance of forgiveness and the centrality of grace in Christian faith and the believer’s
lifestyle
(b) The importance of reconciliation between people, and between human beings and God; and the
fact that reconciliation is at the very heart of the gospel message
(c) The need for – and the possibility of – repentance for sin and error
(d) The Bible’s view of marriage as essentially a lifelong commitment
(e) The significance and worth of singleness as a way of living honoured by God and capable of bringing
great blessing and fruitfulness
(f) The conviction that change is possible, and that human lives are not condemned to be what they
always have been, but that God can transform us by his Spirit
2. Our conclusion
The Leadership Team has studied with some care each of the three views which Christians have taken
on remarriage. After all of the work that has been done, we feel that we are unable to endorse
unequivocally any of the three positions. We can see objections and drawbacks to each of them.
We have come to the conclusion that the NT is not overturning the OT’s acceptance of remarriage
after some divorces. Believers therefore may still be able to remarry after divorce, and although the
end of their first marriage should be seen as human failure, the second marriage may be honouring to
God and acceptable in his eyes.
We will give some of our reasons for this conclusion in the second part of this paper. But first we will
outline what this means for the way we plan to proceed in these matters at Belmont.
What would happen?
Our conclusion means that remarriage at Belmont will become possible – but it will never be an easy
option, and will happen only after extensive discussion with the Leadership Team. When such a
discussion takes place, we will not focus primarily on the cause of the original marriage failure to
determine whether a remarriage would be ‘valid’. It is often difficult to come to fair conclusions
anyway; and, as we say elsewhere in this paper, we are not convinced the so-called ‘exception’ phrases
in the New Testament are intended to provide ‘permissions to remarry’.
The issues we will explore with a divorcee who is considering remarriage are these:

Has every possibility of reconciliation with the former spouse been explored and pursued
rigorously?

With regard to the previous marriage, is there a continuing openness to appropriate confession,
repentance for past failure, healing and forgiveness?

Has the possibility been considered seriously that God’s future calling might now be to
singleness?

Are the couple now considering marriage both Christians? (In the case of non-Christians seeking
remarriage, we would consent where appropriate; although we will not marry or remarry a nonChristian to a Christian, which continues our current practice.)

Are the couple willing to undergo a course of marriage preparation and after-care which
includes specific components for those remarrying after divorce?
Such discussions would, of course, be motivated only by a loving concern to seek God’s best, as these
brothers and sisters both look back and look forward to the future. The conversations might be difficult
in pastoral terms, but we believe that Scripture calls us to them. This level of pastoral engagement
normally will mean that those wanting to remarry will have been active and established members of the
fellowship for some time, and known to the Leadership Team.
None of this, however, implies that we are weakening our position on marriage. Jesus’ words in Mt 5
and 19 re-emphasise the importance of marriage, and God’s deep desire that it should not be dissolved.
Remarriage must never be seen as a “get-out-of-jail-free” option which simply wipes out the past and
lets us start again whenever we wish. If marriage truly is a picture of Christ’s relationship with his Bride
the church, then the solemnity and binding nature of the marriage covenant must be upheld and
defended resolutely.
What have we been trying to achieve?
In all of this exploration, we have had three primary concerns at heart. One is to be faithful to Scripture
wherever it leads us, and to refuse to build our future practice on imperfect understandings of the Word
of God. That has led us to a position where we are unable to adopt any of these three views, and we
hope that you can see why.
You may not agree with us, and if so, we hope you will tell us where you believe us to be wrong, and
help us understand the Scriptures a little better. We do not want this complicated issue to become a
battleground; let’s use our differences to build bridges of understanding and trust so that what God is
doing at Belmont will not be compromised by disagreement.
Our second concern has been to find a way ahead in pastoral practice which enables us to support and
strengthen marriage, while at the same time affirming the calling of singleness, and yet ministering
appropriately to divorced believers who are contemplating the possibility of remarriage. We will have to
work hard to find ways of putting this into practical action. But we believe the position we are taking will
make it possible to improve our ministry in this area.
Our third concern has been to hold the fellowship together, and to deal with this important, sensitive
area thoroughly and well without allowing it to distract our attention from the strategic role which God
has given our church in mission to our city. Whatever our personal conclusions about these matters,
let’s stay united and work together for the cause of Christ through our common life in him.
One implication of this decision is that we will invest more time and effort in supporting marriages
within our fellowship, in preparing couples for success in marriage, and in supporting those who are
single more effectively.
Next Steps
We want to ensure that discussions are as uniform and open a process as possible, and so we will agree
clear discussion guidelines and decision criteria. Discussions with couples will be undertaken by a small
group delegated by the Leadership Team: not just one person, nor the whole team.
We are proposing that this policy should come into effect as from July 2014. We continue to be grateful
for your prayers for this process, and also for the times when we will be involved with couples who wish
to discuss the possibility of remarriage.
3. How we have looked at the Scriptures
The following sections outline the considerations we have given to each of the main views and the key
passages which discuss the topic.
We recognise that beyond the clear convictions with regard to marriage stated at the beginning of this
document, Bible-believing Christians frequently disagree on questions of divorce and remarriage. When
divorce does take place, does the Bible teach that those who have ended their marriage must remain
single as long as their former spouse is alive? Or is it possible that in some cases at least, remarriage
might be a positive, nurturing, God-honouring possibility?
In our initial discussion paper on the subject, we highlighted three positions which Christians have taken
on remarriage:
(a)
Marriage is for life, therefore remarriage is adultery, and so there must be no remarriage. This
was the view of many of the early Christian writers, the Catholic church down through the
centuries, and is shared today by many Reformed thinkers such as Andrew Cornes and John
Piper.
(b) Remarriage may take place if a marriage has ended for one of two reasons – adultery and
desertion. This was the view of Reformation leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin,
who enshrined it as law in Geneva in 1561, and it has remained the standard view of
evangelical teachers (including most of Belmont’s own forefathers in the “Brethren” tradition)
until quite recently.
(c)
Remarriage may take place when a marriage has ended for a number of different reasons. This
view was held by others of the Reformation leaders: Zwingli allowed divorce for many reasons
including insanity and life-threatening behaviour; Martin Bucer permitted it when the couple
mutually agreed they wanted it. In practice this view has been held by many churches but
never defended persuasively from Scripture, until quite recently when David Instone-Brewer
argued that we have always misunderstood Jesus’ teaching in Matthew, and that Exodus 21
gives us biblical grounds for approving divorce and remarriage in a wide variety of situations.
Our thinking
The Leadership Team has studied each of these views with some care. We have been enormously
helped in this by the insights, ideas, arguments and suggestions submitted to us by a remarkable
number of Belmont members, and we would like to express our gratitude to those who have helped us
in our thinking. We are conscious too that many have been praying faithfully for us as these discussions
and explorations have gone ahead. We are immensely thankful for everyone’s participation in this
venture of seeking God’s will.
After all of the work that has been done, we feel that we are unable to endorse unequivocally any of the
three positions. We can see objections and drawbacks to each of them. While we would not quarrel
with Christians who adopted any of these solutions – we can see that there are some biblical grounds
for all of them – we are not certain that there is enough scriptural evidence for us to be able to say
confidently of any of them, “This is what the Word of God says we must do.”
We are not convinced that the statements of Jesus and Paul ruled out remarriage completely. Nor do we
believe that we can legislate a simple formula from the New Testament to help us calculate when
remarriage is and is not possible: we do not think that the two “exception” passages, or indeed InstoneBrewer’s verses from Exodus, can be used in that way.
If this is so, then the NT is not overturning the OT’s acceptance of remarriage after some divorces.
Believers therefore may still be able to remarry after divorce, and although the end of their first
marriage should be seen as human failure, the second marriage may be honouring to God and
acceptable in his eyes.
Why did we reach these conclusions?
We found each of the three common views attractive for different reasons. But ultimately we had to
conclude reluctantly that none of them seemed completely adequate as an explanation of the biblical
evidence.
No remarriage
The attractiveness of this position lies in the fact that it seems to take the relevant Scriptures at face
value, and interpret them as literally as possible. It is a key rule of Bible interpretation that statements
should be read literally unless there are good grounds for believing they are metaphorical. And when
Jesus says in Matthew 19:9, “Anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and
marries another woman, commits adultery”, what can it mean except that remarriage is adulterous?
Surely Jesus was announcing a new, higher standard: remarriage was an Old Testament concession to
sinful people; under the New Covenant marriage is for life.
However, there are good reasons to be cautious about rushing to this conclusion. For one thing, if Jesus
were announcing such a radical change, we might have expected him to spell it out more clearly. Jesus
is, after all, speaking into a culture where remarriage after a divorce was the common expectation; are
we sure he is overthrowing the widely accepted contemporary understanding of the Jewish Scriptures?
Instone Brewer suggests that it is only remarriage after an ‘invalid’ divorce that Jesus is describing as
‘adulterous’, such as the ‘Any Matter’ divorces favoured by followers of Rabbi Hillel but apparently
condemned here by Jesus. On this reading, Jesus is not forbidding any remarriage following divorce; to
do so would have been a contradiction of the OT Law, which Jesus had after all come to ‘fulfil’. But
marriages that have broken down due to irreconcilable fracture such as that caused by sexual betrayal
have ended ‘validly’, and so remarriage in those circumstances is a possibility.
Such arguments are not conclusive, but they do present significant challenges to the ‘no remarriage
under any circumstances’ interpretation. To continue to refuse all divorcees the option of remarriage is
therefore, we feel, too rigid an application of a teaching that is clearly open to a wider range of
interpretations.
Although that conclusion has been driven by our re-examination of the relevant scriptures, it will also
have an impact on some of the major practical difficulties in applying the “no remarriage” interpretation
in church life. How, for example, do we deal with members or newcomers who have decided to remarry
– and so, on the initial reading, are living in continual adultery? Some argue that only the initial act of
remarriage is adulterous, but that the relationship thereafter is holy and honourable. That is a
distinction which it would be hard to justify from Scripture. Some argue that our current policy of
welcoming back to Belmont without any limits or censure ‘adulterously’ remarried couples is a
commendable act of Christlike grace and a realistic recognition of the different stances held by
Christians; others have described it simply as a compromised fudge.
And despite Paul’s teaching on the dignity and spiritual potency of singleness (1 Corinthians 7: 32 - 35),
many divorced Christians significantly struggle with the prospect of remaining unmarried for the rest of
their lives. Some will certainly see in their divorce a clear call to singleness and to the more focused
devotion to the ‘Lord’s affairs’ that Paul describes, but we are no longer convinced that celibacy is the
inevitable demand of Scripture for the divorced Christian.
Two exceptions
The attraction of the “two exceptions” view is that it provides a clear formula which seems easy to
apply. If adultery has taken place (Mt 5:32, 19:9), or if a Christian has been deserted by a non-Christian
partner (1 Cor 7:15), the marriage can be ended and remarriage can take place.
However, once again there are difficulties. Why is the adultery “exception” not found in Mark or Luke? If
it is one of the two all-important conditions for ending a marriage, would it not be prominent in their
accounts too, as well as in Matthew? Perhaps, then, it doesn’t mean what it seems to say; and Bible
scholars have come up with several alternative ideas (that it doesn’t refer to adultery, but to incestuous
marriage, or misbehaviour during betrothal, or invalid mixed marriages). If any of these ideas are
correct, the “exception” for adultery vanishes.
Then there is the question of the word used for “marital unfaithfulness” – not the standard word for
adultery (moicheia) but a more general word (porneia). Some scholars say that this proves adultery is
not being described. Others say that, yes, the word would be moicheia for a man’s conduct, but porneia
means “adultery” when applied to a woman. When there is so much doubt and disagreement among
the experts, we feel unsafe in concluding that Mt 5 and 19 provide an “adultery exception” to sanction
divorce and remarriage.
1 Cor 7, where Paul argues that a woman deserted by a non-Christian husband “is not bound”, also
raises questions. For one thing, obviously, we cannot necessarily extend this “exception” to cover all
cases of abandonment; it describes very specifically a case in which a Christian is abandoned by a nonChristian. It gives no warrant for divorce and remarriage when a Christian is deserted by another
believer.
And if the Lord Jesus had already said that there was only one exception – adultery – that could end a
marriage, why did Paul take it upon himself to propose another one – abandonment? It seems to us that
if these truly were the two crucial cases in which a marriage can be ended, the information would be
more clearly presented than in fact it is.
Most importantly, however, opponents of this “two exceptions” view never tire of pointing out that
neither the Matthew passages nor 1 Cor 7 say anything specifically about remarriage. Is it possible that
Jesus and Paul are stating cases where divorce can indeed take place – but are assuming that no
remarriage will follow?
For example, the word used when Paul says “she is not bound” is not the normal legal term used for
someone who has obligations to a marriage contract. Instead he uses an unexpected word which means
“not enslaved”; and some teachers assume that this means the wife is under no obligation to carry on
seeking the renewal of the relationship, but not that she is now free to marry someone else.
The evidence is unclear and so we would find it difficult to maintain the “two exceptions” view
confidently.
A wider range of exceptions
David Instone-Brewer’s recent work has proved very popular in the evangelical world. Its attractiveness
is based on the perception that he has discovered a wider range of divorce grounds within Scripture
itself – grounds which Jesus would indubitably have accepted.
Now the conclusion we have reached is very much the same as Instone-Brewer’s: that divorce and
remarriage are possible under a wider range of conditions than just two. Where we part company from
him is that we are not completely convinced by his attempts to find a scriptural basis for this.
He argues that Jesus was answering a specific question which the Pharisees put to him, and so failed to
mention other grounds for divorce which both Shammaites and Hillelites took for granted. InstoneBrewer claims that Jesus must have accepted them too (because he fails to mention them or challenge
them) and that these other grounds can be found in Exodus 21:10-11. Neither Jesus nor Paul ever
specifically annulled this Old Testament legislation, and so it must still be in force today.
The verses in Exodus 21 give instructions about how a slave wife is to be treated. If she has been
betrothed to her master or her master’s son, and then either of them marry someone else, she must be
guaranteed three things: food, clothing and marital rights. Otherwise she is to be set free.
Instone-Brewer argues that although this verse is talking about slavery, not marriage, it would have
been interpreted by Jewish scholars as a summary of the rights to be expected by all married women.
The same three provisions occur in Near-Eastern marriage codes again and again. And so divorce can
take place when marriage partners are denied sustenance (food), upkeep (clothing) and love (marital
rights). Jesus, and the Pharisees, would have taken this for granted so naturally that they would never
have thought of mentioning these extra grounds for divorce in their arguments.
We are not convinced. For one thing, his whole case depends on an argument from silence: what Jesus
did not say. This is an uncertain basis on which to erect a radical new interpretation. For another thing,
Exodus 21 is not about divorce, but the freeing of a slave; not about marriage failure, but the acquiring
of an extra partner.
The word used for “marital rights” is an odd one, used only here in Scripture, and we aren’t sure
whether it means “sex” or “oil”! The scholar (Shalom Paul) who has traced ancient Near-Eastern
marriage contracts, and on whose work Instone-Brewer depends, actually believes that it means “oil” –
which would destroy Instone-Brewer’s three categories.
However, David Instone-Brewer may yet be proved right; we just don’t know. In our view, he has not yet
made his case adequately enough for us to adopt his interpretation.
So what are the three key passages saying?
It is a much easier thing to point out the deficiencies of existing interpretations than to come up with a
new one! And we would certainly not claim that we understand these parts of Scripture as fully as we
would wish. However, since we value the Word of God and wish to remain faithful to it, we need to ask
the question: what might these passages really be teaching?
If the New Testament does not rescind the Old Testament permission to remarry, then the passages in
Matthew 5, Matthew 19, Mark 10 and Luke 16 - where Jesus makes his statements about divorce - are
not laying down rules for all marriages. Rather, Jesus is answering a specific question which was being
put to him to trap him (Mt 19:3) - an invitation to take sides in the Shammai/Hillel debate about
“divorce for any reason”. Matthew 19, the longest passage, gives us the context of Jesus’ statements,
which the other passages assume: he is saying quite definitely that divorce “for any reason” is absolutely
wrong.
Jesus sympathised more with the followers of Shammai than with Hillel’s, but both schools of thought
assumed that in any case divorce (and remarriage) would be likely to happen quite often. In his reply to
them, Jesus challenges that. He calls them away from their obsession with proof texts to justify sinful
actions and to read the Scriptures in the light of God’s original plan for men and women.
The Lord’s conclusion is that the Pharisees have gradually watered down the idea of marriage and its
binding commitment in order to create a situation in which they can easily escape from the most solemn
of promises. In his reply to them, Jesus “raises the bar” on the importance of marriage: he emphasises
that marriage is a massive undertaking, a covenant between two people which God intends to be lifechanging and lifelong. When people divorce “for any cause” they simply commit adultery, and bring
others into that situation too.
Divorce in Jesus’ day included the automatic right to remarry, as several writers of the period make
clear. This is Josephus, the greatest of Jewish historians and a near-contemporary of Jesus:
He that desires to be divorced from his wife for any cause whatsoever, (and many such causes
happen among men,) let him in writing give assurance that he will never use her as his wife any
more; for by this means she may be at liberty to marry another husband, although before this
bill of divorce be given, she is not to be permitted so to do.
So when Jesus says, “If anyone divorces his wife and marries another…” the sin he is condemning is not
simply the remarriage on its own. He is talking about the whole “divorce-and-remarriage” package because he is addressing the issue of “for any cause” divorce.
If this is the case, then Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 7 becomes easier to understand. When Paul says
that a Christian abandoned by a non-Christian partner is “not bound”, he means “free to remarry”. The
alternative interpretation which we’ve looked at - “under no obligation to carry on seeking the renewal
of the relationship” - doesn’t seem likely, since in Roman or Jewish eyes the relationship was already
dead as soon as one partner deserted. The divorce had already happened; trying to keep the
relationship alive was not an option. And Paul, who is concerned to follow faithfully the directives of the
Lord Jesus (1 Cor 7:10), upholds the vital importance of the marriage bond but does not rule out
remarriage for some divorced believers.
In conclusion
There is much more that could be said; but this brief sketch will suffice to show why we believe a
consistent reading of all the scriptural evidence leaves open the possibility of remarriage after divorce.
And so it is on this basis – dealing with difficult Scriptures as honestly as we can, accepting the full
authority of the Word of God while endeavouring to reflect the pastoral heart of the Great Shepherd of
the sheep – that we propose to proceed within the life of Belmont Chapel. We covet your prayers for
the pastoral wisdom and insight which we will need from God’s Holy Spirit in order to pursue this path
honourably and well.