"PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE" PROF. HAROLD SENKBEIL & DR. RICHARD WARNECK CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 1-800-825-7234 * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * * * >> DAVID: We've been speaking about marriage. But I suspect issues related to the dissolution of marriage are even more problematic for pastors. What do the Scriptures teach about divorce? Is divorce ever permissible? >> DR. RICHARD WARNECK: The question about divorce, David, is a question that has been with the church, I guess, from day one. But it's a question more urgent today since the population at large, 50 percent of marriages, we are told now nationwide, end in divorce. That's very unfortunate. Leaves in the trail and in the wake a lot of unhappy people. The church in its ministry wants to try to prevent divorce where possible because as many, many divorced persons have related to me and possibly also to you, David, those that you have encountered, divorce is never really an answer to marital problems and difficulties. In fact, usually it's like the old Pandora's box, it opens the lid to many more problems than persons really anticipated. In our culture, people are sold on the idea that divorce is a way out of a difficult situation and that once they are divorced, they are free and then they can soar�as an eagle, as it were. Instead, most persons are lonely and their problems become more and more complicated. So the church really needs to help these persons and to help marriages stay together. But your question is really whether divorce is ever permissible. Probably we ought to discuss this subject just a little bit from the vantage of the passages in the Gospels, and particularly I Corinthians 7 which address this issue of divorce and remarriage. For you to study these passages as thoroughly as possible, I would commend to you this very fine work from the CTCR, "Divorce and Remarriage: An Exegetical Study" is the title. So you'll want to have that as a resource. Let's speak to the issue and begin where Jesus begins with the assumptions that he makes on the basis of God's creation that when a man and a woman come together in marriage, the Lord intends them to stay together, nothing tentative about that at all. Until death does them part. We read about his words in his teaching in Matthew 19 and Mark 10. He was pressed with a question similar to yours, David, by the Pharisees, only they were a little more testy with their question. They came to him in a spirit of bravado and ex claimed one day "well is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" I believe they were expecting to trip our Lord up in the discussion. They were unsuccessful. The Lord responded and said, "well, you know the word to Moses." and he was citing the code in Deuteronomy Chapter 24 where the Lord provided for a woman, in this instance, who was put out of her marriage casually by�casual divorce from her husband. Where was she in that culture? She was out of her marriage. She was therefore really out of society altogether. And so the mosaic law had a provision that the husband initiating divorce against his wife for maybe some willie-nilly negligible reason would have to write her a writ of divorcement that attested to her status now so that everybody would comprehend where she was. And our Lord said, "well, that provision was made due to the hardness of your hearts." in other words, in no way did that writ of divorcement provided under the mosaic law, in no way did that indicate that God was approving of divorce. It was a societal accommodation for the sake of this poor woman who was just bereft and left out. So the point here is that the Scriptures and our Lord's teaching really do not have any room for divorce. For instance, the passage in Malachi, chapters 2 versus 16, very interesting that Yahweh chastises the faithless breaking of marriage covenants by men and their wives. He comes down very hard on this. You have that graphic, pointed statement where the Lord says "I hate divorce" in Malachi Chapter 2. So the casual putting away of one's spouse was never looked on kindly by the Lord God. In fact, in those days, he attributed many difficulties for the people at that time due to their very casual divorce practice. There's a reason why their offerings were no longer accepted by Yahweh. And very much is made of those negative results from the practice, rather widespread apparently, of simply putting spouses away by�casual, unwarranted divorce. Now that's a passage in the Old Testament. Very pointed and focused on this issue. Now returning to New Testament, the Apostle Paul comes at this issue much differently. Instead of posing the question directly, "is divorce permitted?" he approaches the issue if the vantage of marriage and the permanence of marriage. And he does this in I Corinthians 7, also Romans Chapter 7. And I just want to cite a couple of phases for you on this point. The apostle speaks about marriage, and he wants marriage to stay intact, husbands and wives, remaining faithful to each other because they are bound to one another. Romans 1, he appeals to the law, binding a person during his or her life to his or her spouse. And he suggests if a married woman, for instance, disregards the law that binds her to her husband as long as he lives and as long as she lives, if she disregards this law and lives with another man while her husband is still alive, she will be called an adulteress. That's the way the apostle puts things. If her husband dies, she is free from the law in this matter and under these circumstances she is no�adulteress if she marries another man. Then the apostle counsels towards single life. Except if a person cannot remain continent, that is exercise self-control, that is control sexually, then it's better to marry, he says, than to be consumed in the flame of passion. First Corinthians 7 verse 9. But he adds, "those who are married should remain in that estate. The wife should not separate from her husband." this is his specific statement. "nor should he divorce his wife." I Corinthians 7:11. For his premise is "a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives." reiterating what he said Romans 7. "only if she be separated from her husband by death is she free to be married to whom she will." verse 39 of I Corinthians 7. My point is, David, that divorce really is unthinkable for the Christian in view of the teaching of the apostle. Remarriage is discussed only in instances where there has been separation of a marriage by death and the partners will no longer joined to one another. So my point is: Divorce is really outside the discussion. But then, David, it is part of the discussion, indeed. And our Lord's teachings�-- and we go back to the Gospels for a moment�-- indicate that he was very cognizant of the fact that sins in marriage finally result in situations where one or the other partners are just out of the marriage. And, yet, he is always emphasizing that marrieds stay married with two exceptions. And we, in our pastoral practice, have a term for that. Some debate whether it's a good term or a term used ill advisedly. It's "grounds for divorce." Now, Jesus put it in terms of kind of a caveat. He said husband are wife are married to each other and never the two shall part until death parts them except it be for important nay an, unfaithfulness, fornication or unchastity. What he means by that expression in Matthew 5:32 and in Matthew 19:9 is that divorce really is out of the picture except if one of the partners is unfaithfully sexually with carrying on an affair or a relationship with a person other than their spouse. In that instance, Jesus indicates by that "except clause" that person offended by the marriage that should have stayed intact but has essentially been unbroken by the unfaithfulness of the other, that person left by the sin of the other may be free to divorce. And the assumption is free, then, to remarry himself or herself to another party as they wish. The difficulty with these passages is that in pastoral practice, some of us over the years have played a little foot loose here. I remember studying these matters as you are in my own seminary training where our professor made much of the fact that some pastors were kind of looking for an out for a person who came to them with unhappy marital situation. And if this person indicated that their wife or their husband had been unfaithful, then the pastor jumped right in. And he said oh, well that changes things. If that's the case, then you're free. You can get a divorce and you can go even marry another. What our professor was saying is: Whoa! Put the brakes on this. Jesus was not intending to give people easy outs of their marriage. Not at all. So we have, I think, matured a little bit in our outlook on this and in our practice. I know it was my practice in the ministry following the lead of my professor way back in the seminary when a lady, for instance, was offended by the fact that her husband had an affair with another woman, still we encourage that wife to do what she could to stay in the marriage, to be forgiving of her�erring husband. After all, the forgiveness of sins is the very heart of our�-- of the Gospel and our whole Christian faith and life. To be forbearing and forgiving. And if that husband is genuinely repentant and he comes back to his wife and he says "I've been a louse. I'm terrible. I made a horrible mistake. I still love you. And I want to be in this marriage together." and she is forgiving of him, chances are that thing can go on. The correct correction is made and we keep the marriage intact. The point is that Jesus' words should never be taken when these "except clauses," that is, as an easy out of anyone's marriage. We always encourage the marriage to stay together. Now, of course, if a lady as we've described is so offended by this action of her unfaithful husband that she cannot bring herself to live as a married partner with him any longer, I mean, she finds this action so despicable, if that's the case, then I think we say to a Christian lady�like that, well if it's impossible for you, in spite of the fact that you want to forgive your husband and you do forgive him but you cannot live with him, then maybe it may be best that you part and separate with a divorce. You have the grounds. All right. But we don't come to that counsel very easy and very, very lightly. Now, I said that there were two grounds in our understanding here. Actually the words of Jesus focus on the issue of unfaithfulness, but the Apostle Paul raises another issue which makes it impossible for the marriage to continue. And our word for that is desertion. In fact, we add an adjective to it, malicious desertion. And our judgment here is guided by the Apostle Paul's consideration of a Christian married to a nonchristian in the ancient world. Here's a lady married to a man who is in the pagan Roman society. She is a Christian. The apostle's first counsel there in those verses, I Corinthians 7:12-15 is: Stay married. Don't divorce your husband. Just because he's not a Christian. But then he adds the caveat, if the husband departs. And you know a man in the Roman society could do that. A wife had no recourse. He could simply say: You're not my wife any longer, bye. You're gone, I'm gone. This is the end of it. All right. Apostle says if the one party departs, the other party, the brother or sister, the Christian in that case is not bound. And we think he means not bound to a marriage which is no longer because of the desertion of the other party. And that's how we understand those passages. Now, some pastors have pressed the passage to say very narrowly well, Paul is talking about a Christian and a non-Christian. It really doesn't apply when two Christians are married together and the issue of desertion surfaces in their relationship. We believe that's pressing the text unduly. It can happen in a Christian marriage where you have a husband and a wife who are both confessing Christians, both members of the church, that one or the other deserts their marriage partner. But let's understand what desertion is and what desertion is not. Because this is another area where some persons like to rationalize. In other words, they have a very sensitive conscience about getting a divorce. Pastors work this way, as well. "boy, I sure do not like and I find this very uncomfortable that the people coming to me want to get a divorce. What's going on here? Boy, we'd all just like to latch on to some reason that would sustain the action of divorce and kind of relieve our conscience a little bit." And so some people are pleading all kinds of circumstances as desertion. You see, they know what the Scriptures teach here, they've been caught in cat an key assists and the like. Cat e key assists. So let's focus on this just for a moment. I think it's well and good. What is desertion? May I suggest, David, that this definition might serve us. Desertion in the instance that the apostle is speaking here in first Corinthians 7 is the persistent refusal of a married person to fulfill his or her role with attending responsibility in the marriage. I want to emphasize the persistent refusal. Refusal. So it's a volitional thing. That becomes desertion. Now, that could be a number of things. We've already mentioned the physical absence of one married partner from the marriage. Man just picks up, leaves, takes off, never heard from again. He's deserted his family and his wife in particular. Another aspect could be tier and cal conduct was our old term. It is now the term abuse. And I mean abuse in the severest sense. Where a wife, for instance, and her children are actually fearful of living under the same roof with a volatile personality that her husband is or has become. I can cite you an instance or two from my own ministry years ago where a husband actually went to the drawer in the kitchen, pulled out knives and ran after chasing the wife and children in the house. They had to get out of the house if they could. Flee to the neighbors, get the police and so on. When these instances occur repeatedly to the point that the wife is absolutely frantic about the unpredictable anger and violence of her husband, that husband essentially has deserted that woman. And there are nuances of abuse that sociologists and counselors can document that fairly well fit under this category. A third area would be the refusal of the sexual life to our marriage partner. When there are no real medical factors involved. One or the other marriage partners, let's say a wife, simply tells her husband one day, "there no more of that. That's it." should a man have to live with a woman and be refused marital privileges and rights in the area of their sexual intimate life? No. That's one of the profound purposes of marriage. So in this instance, a wife could fairly well be deserting her husband. Okay. David, those are some instances where desertion really kicks in and, finally, makes it impossible for that marriage to continue. But you're going to raise the question about alcohol, about drugs and other dependencies. Well, occasionally well meaning people come to the pastor and says "my husband makes such a nuisance of himself with a bottle, I don't know whether he's an alcoholic. Maybe he is. He's certainly heading in that direction. I want out of the marriage." well, now, wait just a minute. The man's drinking problem itself probably is not desertion because if you put him on the spot and pressed him, he would probably say no, I didn't want to desert my wife, I really want to be a good husband. But he has that propensity or he has some other dependency, drugs or whatever. The real issue here is whether or not the man in this instance is willing to cooperate and pour�everything into a rehabilitation program and really deal with this problem that's interfering with his marriage and their whole home and family life. If an individual like this man is hesitant or he lacks the sincerity or he just refuses to pursue some program open to him to rehabilitate him, that could become desertion. But you know that's a distinction from the problem itself. It's that the man is not willing to do something about the problem in that way he can eventually be so persistent that he deserts his spouse. Okay. Well, we ought to mention several things else that desertion is not. For instance, disabilities and impairments that befall a marriage due to tragedy, accidents and so on. They are certainly not brought on by the willful action of one or the other spouses, but these are just burdens and crosses that befall a marriage at times. And you cannot say that they are desertion. They are unfortunate, indeed. Absence from the marriage necessitated by military service are business obligations where both spouses have agreed that to the arrangement, which may call one or the other away from their family and away from their home for long periods of time, that is not desertion, either, even though it can create real difficulties for them. So we come to the question of incarceration. And, David, pastors in your generation are going to be ministering to many more people who are incarcerated, in prison for one reason or another. Is this desertion? Here we have a man who gets himself involved foolishly in a thievery ring. He is apprehended, convicted, sentenced to seven, eight years in the state penitentiary. And his good wife comes to the pastor and says, "look, my husband was just an idiot. He goes and gets himself into this trouble and now he's up there for seven, eight years, and I'm here. And you know I have needs, too. And I really want to divorce this husband. As far as I'm concerned, he's deserted me." Well, I don't know how you're going to field that one, David, but let me tell you a man who is in prison, the last thing he needs is for a wife to reject him and to receive at the prison mail service through the mail service his papers, divorce papers. So let's be cautious how we give people freedom out of their marriages when even in the face of difficulties the better part of valor would be for them to stay in the marriage. Well, is divorce ever permissible was your question? David, we really should not use the word "permissible." a divorce can happen and a person may remarry and unfortunate circumstances when one of the spouses has been unfaithful or they find themselves in a marriage which is hopelessly separated and broken by desertion. But even then, pastors will ever advise against divorce as much as possible and encourage marriages to stay intact for the welfare of the spouses, for their children, for everyone concerned. * * * * * This is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in Order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings * * * *