Divorce question

[Ernie]

Anabaptist quotes

Jakob Hutter
“We are called to live according to the teaching, life, and Spirit of Christ.”
“No one can be a true servant of God unless he walks in the commandments of Christ daily.”

Peter Riedemann — Account of Our Religion, Doctrine, and Faith
“Christ did not teach in order that His teaching should remain in words only, but that it should be fulfilled in deed.”
“The gospel must be practiced with the whole life.”
“The believer should be minded as Christ was minded.”

Menno Simons
“Behold, beloved reader, thus true Christianity consists not in outward appearance, but in a new creature, in piety and unfeigned love.”
“They are in fact regenerated people, who are changed from earthly-minded to heavenly-minded.”
“The doctrine of Christ has to be lived and practiced.”
“True Christians seek those things which are above; they fashion their lives according to the Word of the Lord.”
“The New Testament is the testament of grace, peace, liberty, and eternal salvation through Jesus Christ.”
“The doctrine and life of the holy apostles, confirmed by Christ Jesus, must remain unchangeable.”
“We do not go to Moses for doctrine and sacraments, but to Christ and His apostles.”

Dirk Philips
“Christ says: If ye love me, keep my commandments. Therefore all true Christians practice and observe the doctrine of Christ.”
“The holy Word of God demands not hearers only, but true doers.”
“Whoever boasts of grace while disregarding the commands of Christ is deceived.”
“The doctrine of the New Testament alone is the rule of our conscience and life.”
“We are under the obedience of Christ in the New Testament.”

Peter Walpot
“The gospel is given not merely for knowledge, but for obedience and practice.”
“A Christian life must correspond to the teaching of Christ.”

Hans Denck
“No one may truly know Christ unless he follows Him in life.”
“The Scriptures testify of Christ so that men may imitate Him.”

Balthasar Hubmaier
“In all disputes concerning faith and religion, the Scriptures alone, and especially the New Testament, shall decide.”

[JohnH]

There is Ezra 10:3.

My denomination uses that as justification for why you should separate from a spouse when a member marries a non-member. This injunction is clearly aimed, though, at telling men of the Israelite nation they needed to separate from non-Israelite wives. Such a notion at all would be extremely offensive to modern-day people.

What? Your denomination permits (or encourages?) separation in the case of a member marrying a non-member?

A member choosing to enter a marriage outside of church is grounds for immediate excommunication. I thought other conservative Anabaptists generally had the same policy - you can't just run around marrying anyone you want.

[JohnH]

My denomination uses that as justification for why you should separate from a spouse when a member marries a non-member. This injunction is clearly aimed, though, at telling men of the Israelite nation they needed to separate from non-Israelite wives. Such a notion at all would be extremely offensive to modern-day people.

What? Your denomination permits (or encourages?) separation in the case of a member marrying a non-member?

I guess I wouldn't feel like it's totally wrong for a GOGICM woman to separate from her husband if he were to get married to a non-member...

This exact thing actually happened once. Technically, he is guilty of bigamy, but apparently you can get away with it and not get prosecuted these days.

[JohnH]

This is accurate I believe. When joining my church I asked about divorce from a different religion, thinking they would try and play a game of “that marriage was never legit so you are ok to divorce”. But the ministry held that even muslim or secular marriages are considered valid and should not be broken up. I personally hold to the position that both parties should stay celibate and single until an ex-spouse dies.

I've always found this a strange position that some Swiss background Anabaptists have taken up.

Deuteronomy 24 explicitly authorises divorce and remarriage. It just establishes some rules around it. It's the worst possible basis I can think of for trying to come up with a strict "no divorce and remarriage" stance, and in any case, Christians generally do not try to comply with the Old Testament law, particularly around customs for marriage. (If we want to dig deeper into the Old Testament law, it does have a particular type of marriage where divorcing your wife isn't allowed; if you rape her before marriage, and then enter into a marriage with her according to OT law, you are not allowed to ever divorce her.)

The New Testament doesn't teach us about some oddball category of people who are technically married so they can't be married to someone else yet it is impossible for them to reconcile to any spouse. That doesn't make any sense, and it particularly doesn't make any sense for an innocent spouse who hasn't done anything at all to be signed up for this strange lifelong celibacy (unless their spouse conveniently dies).

Over in Africa, some of our missionaries had some cross-over with a group that had previously been evangelised by the Beachys (I believe), and was a situation where a guy had more than one wife. The Beachys taught he could only be with one of them, and had to be celibate until only one (or zero) wife/wives were alive. So he just had all the wives except his favourite wife killed. As I understand it, the Beachys changed their policy after that.

It's probably fine for Old Order, ultra conservative, etc. type of groups to say they have a stricter understanding or structure around marriage than what is generally taught in the Bible. But I think trying to torture the teachings of the NT into "Well, we can't do something unless the Bible allows it" seems like a rather extreme answer in this case, particularly when Jesus' exact words were "whoever divorces his wife (except for immorality) and marries another commits adultery". Trying to tighten that up to remove the exception clause doesn't seem like a plain and simple reading of the NT, nor is it attempting to simply follow the simple teaching of the scriptures.

[ken_sylvania]

This is accurate I believe. When joining my church I asked about divorce from a different religion, thinking they would try and play a game of “that marriage was never legit so you are ok to divorce”. But the ministry held that even muslim or secular marriages are considered valid and should not be broken up. I personally hold to the position that both parties should stay celibate and single until an ex-spouse dies.

I've always found this a strange position that some Swiss background Anabaptists have taken up.

You're saying this is actually a thing?

[MattY]

So you believe that the Scriptures promote and hold up the notion of breaking up marriages with children? Where?

As was mentioned earlier, in Ezra the breaking up of marriages entered into in direct violation of the law of Moses is held forth as a praiseworthy thing. And not only breaking up the marriages, but putting away the children resulting from those marriages. Why wouldn't the principle carry forward to marriages that Jesus says constitute adultery?

Is it actually praiseworthy? Breaking up such marriages was never commanded in Scripture, in fact it arguably goes against the teachings of the Old Testament, not to mention the New Testament as well (even though the marriages themselves were also against the Law). The mass divorces were proposed by a man, not commanded by God, and the text merely records what Ezra said and what they did. Both Ezra and Nehemiah start with hope, good intentions, and obedience, but both have anticlimactic endings deliberately woven into the text. They're not hagiographic tales about heroes making everything right; they're showing that even these godly leaders did not bring the change Israel needed and although Israel was back in the land, their spiritual condition was not very different. Both Ezra and Nehemiah were flawed and did not bring the Kingdom of God, and in that way, the strange, anticlimactic endings point out man's brokenness and the need for a Savior.

So I think these things should flavor our discernment and our response. If we want to create a set of guidelines for these cases, I also think it's important to take things like these into account:

1. The "except for adultery" clauses in Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 9:19.
2. "Not bound" and "free" in 1 Corinthians 7. If you read the chapter as a whole, people who are "not bound" are free to marry. And that seems to include this part: "But if the unbelieving spouse leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances; God has called us to live in peace."

It's simply not accurate to say that 1 Corinthians 7 says that people who are "not bound" are free to marry. Just because a person is "not in bondage" to a particular person doesn't automatically mean they may legitimately be "bound" to another person. Verse 11 makes this clear - a separated wife is instructed to remain unmarried, clearly putting the lie to the idea that she is free to remarry.

But that (the bolded part) is a legitimate interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7 and it seems to be the best interpretation. Verse 11 is addressing a different situation to verse 15 and so its instructions do not apply to the situation in verse 15. In fact the instructions in verse 15 are intended to be a contrast to the instructions in verse 11.

Let's go through it step by step.

1. Verse 11 is addressed to a wife who has left her husband: she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. The same applies to husbands.

2. Verses 12-14 explain that the same still applies to a husband or wife living with an unbelieving spouse: If the spouse is willing to stay, the Christian spouse must stay also.

3. Drop down momentarily to verse 15 and note that the situation addressed here is different than the situation addressed in verse 11: the unbeliever, not the Christian spouse, is the one who has left. And Paul gives different instructions here.

4. But go back up to vs. 10-13: Note that Paul uses two different Greek words in these verses, chōrizō which basically means separate, leave, or depart, and aphiēmi, which means more literally to divorce or put away. But don't get the wrong idea: Paul means the same thing in both cases, kind of like using the words dissolve or breakup to mean divorce in English. It's just a stylistic difference - don't exaggerate the difference. The fact that "depart" means "divorce" in verse 11 can be seen by the fact that Paul says, Let her remain unmarried. The divorce has already occurred and she is in a situation where she might remarry, so Paul says, Don't. Either remain that way or be reconciled.

This can be further confirmed by noting that in verses 10-13, Paul is paralleling his instructions, giving the same instructions to both husbands and wives. In verse 11 Paul is not intending to give the husband different instructions than he gave the wife at the end of vs. 10:

Let not the wife depart from her husband... and let not the husband put away his wife.

He similarly addresses husbands in vs. 12 and wives in vs. 13 in the parallel situation, making sure it's clear that wives ane husbands have the same instructions.

5. Now let's go back to verse 15:

But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart [chōrizō]. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases.

Paul once again uses the same word as he did at the end of vs. 10/beginning of 11. It's not a difference in meaning, but using the same word stylistically emphasizes the contrast Paul is making: This is a different situation. The unbeliever, not the Christian, has departed (divorced). And the Christian is not under bondage in this case.

Once again, "depart" here means divorce, just as in vss. 10-11. So this is not giving a second reason for divorce (abandonment - the first reason would be adultery, per the Exception Clause), as if the spouse can leave without divorcing and then you can go get a divorce. No, this is saying that if your spouse divorces you (you are the innocent party, your spouse left the marriage and sought the divorce), you are no longer bound to them.

If Paul had wanted to say that they should remain unmarried or reconcile in this latter case, he could have. Instead, what he says contrasts to what he said earlier: A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases. In vs. 11, they are bound (as in verse 39): they must either remain unmarried or reconcile. It would make no sense to say you're not bound but you still must either marry or reconcile, since that is precisely what Paul is saying they are not bound to do.

[Ernie]

It would make no sense to say you're not bound but you still must either marry or reconcile, since that is precisely what Paul is saying they are not bound to do.

Good thoughts in your post, MattY.

I do have a question about your word "must" above. Could the word "may" be inserted in your sentence just as well, or is "must" the only word that works in your argument?

[Ernie]

1. Verse 11 is addressed to a wife who has left her husband: she must remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. The same applies to husbands.

What if she has already remarried? Then what?

[JohnH]

This is accurate I believe. When joining my church I asked about divorce from a different religion, thinking they would try and play a game of “that marriage was never legit so you are ok to divorce”. But the ministry held that even muslim or secular marriages are considered valid and should not be broken up. I personally hold to the position that both parties should stay celibate and single until an ex-spouse dies.

I've always found this a strange position that some Swiss background Anabaptists have taken up.

You're saying this is actually a thing?

I'm referring to his very last sentence, "all parties* should stay celibate and single until an ex-spouse dies".

* (There are at least 3 parties involved.)

[MattY]

It would make no sense to say you're not bound but you still must either marry or reconcile, since that is precisely what Paul is saying they are not bound to do.

Good thoughts in your post, MattY.

I do have a question about your word "must" above. Could the word "may" be inserted in your sentence just as well, or is "must" the only word that works in your argument?

Whoops! I meant, "It would make no sense to say you're not bound but you still must either *remain unmarried* or reconcile, since that is precisely what Paul is saying they are not bound to do." I'm not sure if that changes your question. But in vs. 11, the wife who has left must either remain unmarried or reconcile.