Once again, the experts disagreed.
Few social problems have vexed the evangelical community as greatly as divorce and remarriage. With the recent spate of books flowing from the pens of evangelical authors, one might have expected some consensus. Yet, positions seem as sharply defined now as before. Marked differences were on display at the recent National Conference on Divorce and Remarriage in Milwaukee.
The conference, sponsored by the Jackson Psychiatric Center of Milwaukee, brought together a variety of leading experts, including representatives of Judaism (Rabbi David Shapiro, contributing editor of Judaism), Catholicism (Dennis Doherty, Marquette University theologian), the legal field (John McLario, general counsel for the Christian Legal Defense and Education Foundation), several noted evangelical pastors (Californians Paul Steele and John MacArthur, Jr., and Grand Rapids-based Jerome DeJong), seminary professors (Charles Ryrie of Dallas Theological Seminary and Carl Laney of Western Conservative Baptist Seminary in Portland), editor emeritus of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Harold Lindsell, and a practicing psychiatrist (Basil Jackson of Milwaukee).
The purpose of the gathering was not to give easy prepackaged answers. Rather, the meetings were to help “bridge the gap between the ivory tower of the theologians and the practical front line of the … practitioner,” in the words of Jackson, the organizer. He urged listeners to hear the answers given by people “expert in the field” so that they might go away prepared to develop their own solutions to the dilemma of divorce and remarriage.
Meanwhile, Marriage Flounders On …
The good ship marriage, the latest U.S. Census Bureau information shows, kept afloat during the 1970s—but it scraped the rocks a little, and sustained some hull damage. A census report released last month revealed that from 1970 to 1980 more marriages ended in divorce, fewer couples got married, those who did marry waited longer, and an increasing number of people chose to live alone.
The statistics also showed that births of out-of-wedlock babies increased by about 7 percent from 1970 to 1980. Fifty-five percent of all black babies born in 1979 were to unwed mothers. But the increase of out-of-wedlock births among teen-agers is greater for whites than blacks. Researchers believe the rise in such births are due to women waiting until a later age to get married and the lessened social stigma attached to an unwed mother keeping her child.
Mississippi had the highest percentage of births out of wedlock (27.2), followed by Delaware (22.9 percent), Louisiana (22.8 percent), and Florida (22.4 percent).
From 1970 to 1980, the ratio of divorced to married people doubled, while about 1 in 20 persons was divorced in 1970, 1 in 10 was divorced in 1980. The median age of the first marriage for men rose from 22 to just over 24, and for women from about 21 to 22. In addition, the number of unmarried couples living together tripled from 1970 to 1980, rising from 523,000 to 1,560,000. (Stiff, those numbers represent only about 2 percent of all households in the U.S.)
In his opening address, Jackson suggested that the issue has been complicated by the difficulty anyone has of arriving at a truly objective theology. “No matter how erudite the theologian is … one’s emotional background, one’s preconceived notions, one’s preconceived ideas result in some degree of eisegesis [reading something into the biblical text that the author did not intend]. I will get out of the exceptive clause, for example, to some degree the conditioning I bring to it,” Jackson explained. Having heard that, some might have wondered why bother to discuss the issue at all.
Doherty, the Catholic theologian, brought conferees the Roman Catholic teaching on marriage and the church’s legislation relating to the “sacrament.” With wry humor, he candidly admitted that while Roman Catholic theology does not permit divorce, Catholic practice has found various ways of accommodating it. “Law creates loopholes, and savvy lawyers can exploit loopholes and we know it,” he remarked.
The other pastors and seminary professors who spoke staked out their ground on the meaning of the so-called exception clause found in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. So extensively did the participants discuss this that the conference title ran the risk of becoming a misnomer. A more accurate designation might have been National Conference on the Matthean Exception Clause.
Two basically opposed viewpoints surfaced. The first, represented in papers by Ryrie, Laney, and Steele strongly rejected the commonly held idea that Jesus allowed divorce and remarriage in cases of adultery. Both Laney and Ryrie supported the interpretation of the Matthew 5 and 19 exceptions as referring to marriage within the degrees prohibited in Leviticus 18 (i.e., incest).
Steele made his case by dealing more broadly with the Old and New Testament passages teaching a lofty view of marriage as a “one flesh” union. But, along with the seminary professors, Steele agreed that no grammatical grounds exist for seeing the “exception clause” as permitting remarriage.
Lindsell, DeJong, and MacArthur held an opposing view. MacArthur observed that the confusion over the biblical view of divorce occurs “when we try to accommodate the divine standard to the lack of standards in our contemporary morality, or when we try to compensate for the low standards of society with a higher law than God set in his Word.” None of the speakers favored divorce, one comparing it to a man cutting off his leg to remove a splinter.
Still, Lindsell, MacArthur, and DeJong did accept adultery and desertion (in some cases) as constituting grounds for divorce when the adultery has been “unremitting” (MacArthur) and when all avenues for reconciliation have been exhausted.
DeJong devoted much of his presentation to the need for an attitude of grace to prevail, even while adhering to the specifics of the Bible’s hard words concerning divorce. He spoke of the need to restore erring brothers and sisters in a spirit of love whenever genuine sorrow over sin and repentance can be found.
