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Does adultery dissolve the marriage bond

A pillar of the Protestant doctrine of divorce is based on Matthew 19:9. The interpretation is that adultery (marital unfaithfulness) dissolves the mar­riage bond and therefore allows remarriage following divorce. We saw in chapter 3 that Luther and Calvin claimed that adultery meant that the guilty marriage partner was as good as dead (my italics), and therefore they believed that the innocent party was free to remarry. Calvin, for example, wrote that a woman who commits adultery sets her husband free, for she cuts herself off from him as a rotten member.12

Luther said that whoever commits adultery is considered as one dead (my italics), and therefore the other may remarry just as though his spouse had died, if it is his intention to insist on his rights and not to show mercy to the guilty party.13,14 The Westminster Confession of Faith, which outlines the doctrine of the Reformed Protestant faith, says ‘in the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce, and, after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead (my italics).’15 Significantly, Luther and Calvin both acknow­ledge that the marriage union is only broken by death. So the question is whether they are correct in their amazing claim that adultery equates to the death of a marriage partner.

The report of the committee of the Lower House of the Convocation of York commented on the official Protestant position. ‘We cannot but express our strong feeling that to refuse to the convicted defendant (adulterer), and to grant to the successful plaintiff (innocent party), a licence to marry is an illogical position. They – both of them – are either married or unmarried. If both are married already, then both should be refused, because they already each have a partner alive, and a licence could only be granted for what would in fact be bigamy and adultery. If they are unmarried, the bond is broken, and the one is as free to be married as the other… The Church of England has in no way sanctioned the idea that the bond has been broken.’16

In the book Divorce in America (1925), the Bishop of Vermont warned of the inevitable consequences of a divorce law that permitted divorce for adultery. ‘Where marriage has been allowed to be dissoluble, it has been found impracticable, first, to restrict this to one cause; or second, in practice to prevent collusion in the furnishing of this cause; or third, to distinguish between the “innocent party” (where such really exists) and the guilty as to the right of remarriage. If the bond of marriage has been broken – either by the act of adultery, or by judicial sentence following upon this – it must have been broken for both parties. It can only therefore be a rule of ecclesiastical discipline which forbids a second marriage to the guilty party. On the assumption that the bond of marriage no longer exists, the imposi­tion of such lifelong penalty can hardly be justified.’17

Kenneth Kirk examined the assertion that adultery breaks the marriage bond, allowing the innocent person to remarry, in his book Marriage and Divorce. He contended that two questions arise which prove the view to be entirely untenable. ‘The first is, why should this power of “dissolving a marriage” be attributed to marital infidelity, and be withheld from sins in every degree as flagrant violations of the duty of husband to wife and wife to husband – persistent cruelty, or neglect, or desertion, for example? Indeed, many of these sins are very often more flagrant than adultery. An isolated act of infidelity may be the result of momentary passion or loss of self-control, but cruelty and desertion are conscious and deliberate. Surely, therefore, they must destroy the marriage bond even more effectively than adultery is said to do? There seems to be no satisfactory answer to this question…

‘More important, however, is the second question, even though at first sight it appears pedantic and casuistical. If adultery does indeed dissolve the marriage bond, at what moment does it do so? At the moment it is committed – or at the moment when it is first discovered by the innocent party – or at the moment when it is established as a fact after judicial enquiry? …It seems then that what must be meant by this statement that “adultery dissolves the marriage bond”, is the very different statement, “adultery makes the marriage bond voidable, if the injured party chooses to bring an action for divorce”. So stated, we have, in effect the present English law on the subject…. For it is natural to ask once more, “Why should this be asserted only of adultery, and not of other causes too?”’18

In his discussion of Matthew chapter 19, Andrew Cornes concludes that Jesus had a different idea of divorce from the Pharisees. While they conceived only of full divorce with the right to remarry, Jesus taught that divorce could take place, but it did not break the marriage bond. He makes this clear by calling remarriage after divorce adultery.19 Jesus teaches that remarriage is not only wrong, it is impossible, for it is not possible to contract a true marriage while a marriage partner is still living. ‘And it is not only wrong to divorce one’s partner: it is actually impossible in any full sense. You may be able to break the legal ties, you may be able to live apart, but you cannot destroy the marriage; your unity with your partner still exists in God’s eyes; the marriage bond can only be broken by death.’20

Supporting this interpretation Wenham and Heth say that the one flesh bond of marriage is not dissolved by legal divorce, nor by sexual relations with a third party. ‘Just as we cannot “divorce” our children from being our own blood relations, no matter how disreputable they may be, so a man cannot “divorce” his wife who is his own flesh and blood through marriage.’21 They believe that when Matthew 19:9 is analysed into its constituent parts that it makes a fitting retort to the catch question of the Pharisees. ‘They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”

Jesus replied: “It is always wrong to divorce what God had joined together: what is more, divorce, except for marital unfaithfulness, is tantamount to commit­ting adultery; and remarriage after divorce is always so”.’22 Wenham and Heth conclude that the Erasmian attempt to har­monise the teaching of Jesus in Matthew with the absolute prohibition of divorce and remarriage in Mark and Luke ‘is flawed by modern assumptions that Jesus taught against the wrong of unwarranted divorce (a “breaking” of the conjugal life) and not the wrong of remarriage (an attempt to break the union completely, reversing what God has done). Jesus was against both; but if a divorce today should take place against the Master’s will, the faithful disciple must not compound the problem by remarrying. The disciple must above all have that faith which counts his Lord’s word as good and perfect. And remarriage, which Jesus calls adultery, cannot be God’s best for his children.’23

The belief that adultery breaks the marriage bond persists among evangelical Christians who permit remarriage today. Some believe that adultery per se breaks the marriage bond and therefore permits remarriage just as if the offending husband or wife was dead. But this belief raises many difficult questions. If adultery does break the marriage bond, and if the innocent party is willing to be reconciled, do the couple need to be married again? And what if the innocent party is unaware of the adultery? Is she divorced from her husband who has secretly committed adultery? According to Heth, the view that adultery dissolves the marriage bond ‘not only degrades the conception of marriage by making its physical side the dominant consideration; it involves two absurdities. First, a man may cease to be married and yet be unaware of the fact. Secondly, it makes adultery, or the pretence of having committed it, the one way to get rid of a marriage which has become distasteful, and so puts a premium on adultery.’24

Others believe that sexual sin (referred to in the gospel of Matthew by the Greek word porneia , and translated as marital unfaithfulness) permits the innocent party to choose between divorce with remarriage, and recon­cilia­tion. That is, adultery does not per se break the marriage bond, but allows the innocent party the choice of breaking the marriage bond or not. An example of this line of thinking is given by Stephen Clark in his recently published book, Putting Asunder (1999). In his discussion of the exception clause, Clark argues that ‘where the divorce was on the basis of illicit sexual intercourse, then neither the divorce nor subsequent remarriage by the man whose wife had been the guilty party would involve him in adultery. Jesus was neither commanding nor commending divorce for such a reason, nor was he encouraging remarriage. But neither was he forbidding or discourag­ing it.’

Accordingly, ‘we are not to understand divorce as a failure to live up to the teaching that Jesus had given in (Matthew) chapter 18 on the need for forgiveness’. So the exception clause in Matthew 19:9 ‘permits divorce where the wife has been guilty of behaviour which undermines the mar­riage’.25 The implication of this teaching is that it is the choice of the innocent party that breaks the one flesh union created by God, and Jesus does not mind which choice we make. The innocent spouse has the right to choose whether or not to separate what God has joined together, and therefore the authority to choose to break the marriage bond. It is not difficult to see that this approach to breaking up a family appears to be completely against the spirit of Jesus’ teaching, who warns us not to separate what God has joined together.

The serious fault with the view that adultery breaks the marriage bond is that it ignores the message of Hosea that a husband should love his unfaithful wife again, and do all in his power to achieve reconciliation. The Bible teaches that God wants husband and wife to go to the extreme of forgiveness in order to preserve the family. All attempts in both England and America to legislate for divorce on the grounds of adultery have proved totally disastrous. Even those who argued for the initial law were not prepared to go on defending a divorce law based on adultery as the only ground.

It seems inconceivable that a law based on Scripture should prove unworkable in practice. Moreover, the attempts of various Christian denominations to carry out church remarriage of the so-called innocent party have resulted in confusion and hypocrisy. The arbitrary way in which various Protestant churches have carried out remarriages, with different denomina­tions applying different rules, and with differences even within denominations, undermines the credibility of their doctrine. The Protestant marriage discipline of selective remarriage of the innocent party after divorce remains a mystery to most people. It is now widely acknowledged that it is not possible to establish guilt and innocence in any meaningful way.

The Protestant doctrine of divorce and children