Book Review: Moral Vision, Divorce and Remarriage

The chapter of Hays' Moral Vision I read this week was on divorce and remarriage (chap. 15). In keeping with his general method, he begins with the descriptive task:

1. Mark 10:2-12
In this text, Jesus prohibits a husband or wife from divorcing the other spouse, and remarriage in either case is said to be to commit adultery.

There are two really intriguing aspects of this passage, both of which Hays mentions at least in passing.

a) The first is that Jesus tells the wife not to divorce her husband. This may not strike us as odd, but it is not at all clear that wives could legally divorce their husbands in Galilee at this time. For this reason, perhaps the majority of NT scholars do not believe that Jesus said it quite this way. Most think what Jesus said was that husbands should not divorce their wives. Then Mark and Paul, writing for a broader cultural context, expanded Jesus' prohibition to include wives divorcing their husbands, since this was possible in the Greco-Roman world. Christian tradition would thus have balanced out Jesus' historical teaching as the gospel expanded beyond the borders of Israel.

This will of course be a controversial claim, although I do not believe we can listen to the gospels and not conclude that the Spirit of Jesus has sometimes been conveyed in the gospels well beyond the things Jesus actually said while on earth. Nevertheless, the fact that Paul focuses first and I believe foremost on the wife divorcing the husband in his relating of what the Lord said (1 Cor. 7:10-16) must at least raise the question of whether scholars have correctly understood what was and wasn't possible at the time in Galilee.

b) The second striking thing about Jesus' words in Mark 10 is that he says that the husband who divorces and remarries commits adultery against his wife. This statement must have sounded very bizarre to Mark's and/or Jesus' audiences. I do not just mean that it was a really "liberal" "feminist" type statement that was revolutionary in the way it took the woman into account, although I imagine this is true as well. [I find it nearly impossible to read Jesus as a conservative in his world]

It is just that the word adultery at the time meant to shame a man by sleeping with his woman, with his "property," so to speak. One could not by definition commit adultery against a woman. I've tried to think of a way to convey the wierdness of the statement. Perhaps this starts us toward the connotations: "Anyone who trades in his dog for another steals himself away from the dog." So if the current understanding of ancient adultery is correct, this statement would be another example of Jesus' hyperbolic speech.

Hays' most important thought on Mark 10 is that Jesus places staying in marriage within the context of discipleship, following Jesus. This section of Mark is Jesus' trip to Jerusalem to die and Jesus is teaching his followers how to be true disciples in it. By implication, Hays thinks, staying within marriage comes to be part of following Jesus, even when it can involve suffering.

2. Matthew 19:3-12
Hays points out three ways in which Matthew's version of the Mark statement (assuming Markan priority) modifies Mark:

a. Matthew removes the "adultery against her" statement.

b. Matthew drops the prohibition of a woman divorcing her husband.

c. Matthew adds an exception clause: "except for porneia."

Overall, Hays believes that Matthew adapts Jesus' saying to make it more practiceable and brings it more closely into line with Jewish custom and the patriarchal assumptions of Jewish law. Thus no mention of a woman divorcing her husband is made and the kind of exception necessitated by purity rules in the Jewish law is made.

Hays also mentions that since Matthew deals with this issue twice, here and in Matthew 5:31-32, it may have been an issue of some concern in his community.

This section of Hays' chapter deals with two other matters of relevance: what porneia is and the two Pharisaic schools. Hays discusses the options that 1) porneia means adultery, 2) porneia means pre-marital unfaithfulness during the betrothal phase and 3) that it refers to incestuous relationships. I agree with him that we should probably 4) take it as a catch-all term that would include a large number of sexual sins, certainly including adultery and incest.

Hays rightly concludes that Matthew's Jesus lines up more closely with the School of Shammai than the School of Hillel. The School of Hillel allowed divorce for almost any reason. The School of Shammai only allowed it for porneia and thus for reasons of purity only. Hays, as most scholars, believes however that Jesus himself probably did not enumerate the exception clause and that it is a Matthean adaptation. [In this sense Jesus' words are more restrictive than either of these schools, yet more liberal in a way since he seems to disregard the concern for the purity of the man]

Hays on remarriage after divorce notes that Matthew does not explicitly prohibit a divorced man from remarrying a woman who has not previously been married (now looking at Matthew 5:31-32), while the divorced woman who remarries commits adultery. An interesting twist to note here, I think, is that Matthew's Jesus does not actually prohibit a woman from remarrying. Strikingly, he assumes a wife will remarry! Any man who divorces his wife forces her to commit adultery [against him]. In short, he is causing her to sin against himself by forcing her to marry another man!

This is again exactly the kind of hyperbolic speech we would expect of Jesus, even if we are less certain whether this is a historical statement or a distinctively Matthean adaptation.

An interesting part of Matthew 19 is the indication that staying in a marriage might involve some suffering of shame. Hays at least mentions the sometimes made suggestion (e.g., Malina) that to become a eunuch for the kingdom of God might refer to the figurative castration a husband can receive in terms of his honor by remaining in a marriage with a woman who disgraces him culturally.

3. Luke 16:18
I wonder if Luke gives Jesus' saying closest to its most original form? Anyone who divorces his wife commits adultery and whoever marries her commits adultery.

4. 1 Corinthians 7:10-16
Because Paul mentions the wife divorcing her husband, his version of the divorce logion is closest to Mark's. Of course Paul's statement is actually the closest to Jesus in time, since all the gospels were all written decades later than 1 Corinthians (I personally date the current form of Mark to the early 70's).

The main addition Paul makes is his allowance for an unbelieving spouse to depart--"if the unbelieving spouse departs, let her depart." This "pastoral improvisation," as Hays puts it, now comes into play as the gospel reaches a Gentile audience where we face the possibility that one spouse will become a believer and the other will not. It is surely noteworthy that Paul does not insist a Christian man force his wife to convert!

Also fascinating is Paul's statement that the unbelieving spouse and their children are sanctified and made holy by continguity with the believer. Hays reads this verse a little differently than I do. Hays thinks it is optimistic, "Who knows, maybe you will save them?" I read it more in the sense, "Let them depart, you ultimately can't save them for sure by staying with them..."

Hays' Synthesis
In Hays synthesis of these biblical data, he notes that despite some of the diversity, divorce is always seen as exceptional--"divorce is therefore flatly contrary to God's will" (372). He also notes, however, the principle of accommodation we see. Mark and Paul adjust Jesus' teaching to a Hellenistic context and Matthew brings it more into line with patriarchal Jewish customs.

Hays turns to Malachi where marriage is seen as a mirror of God's covenant with Israel. He turns to Ephesians where marriage is put in the context of the cross. The image of marriage is an image of redemption (e.g., Revelation) and of new creation. Divorce, by contrast, is an image moving in the wrong direction.

Because the church is a community, divorce can never be a private matter for a Christian. Paul's pastoral concerns in particular reflect the interests of the community of faith ("God has called us to peace").

Hermeneutics
Hays notes that love and justice are never brought into the equation of divorce in the NT. Christian tradition does not favor divorce, for it was hardly even possible until recent days (although the RC church used the idea of annullment to work with the exigencies of life). Hays suggests that experience currently is what has been used these days to trump all else (e.g., Spong), but without any basis in either Scripture or tradition.

He suggests six things about appropriating the biblical text on this issue:
1. Marriage is an aspect of discipleship, a reflection of God's faithfulness.

2. Divorce is contrary to God's will except in extraordinary circumstances. The NT mentions two: porneia and the will of an unbelieving spouse. But the NT itself models a process of reflection and adaptation with regard to what such exceptional circumstances might be. Hays suggests spousal abuse would likely be one obvious adaptation the church today might want to make.

3. Marriage is not grounded in feelings of love but in the practice of love. Lack of fulfillment is not a Christian basis for divorce.

4. Sometimes a spouse can deeply wrong the other, as Matthew implies, to the extent that the marriage cannot continue.

5. Remarriage cannot be excluded as a possibility not least because of the principle of redemption. He thinks the fact that it is better to marry than to burn with passion can apply here as well.

6. The community of the church must seek to find ways to provide koinonia for those divorced persons who choose not to remarry.

Once again, while we can always disagree on details, I find Hays once again a model of how to appropriate Scripture.