I read, with interest, an article on the "Faithful Word" website, regarding the thought of getting back together with your first husband or wife after one or both of you have been remarried in the meantime.
The Faithful Word, on remarrying an original spouse
The author of this web site supports his or her position rather well - the arguments seem reasonably well thought-out,
and based on the presuppostions brought to the consideration, it seems he or she is trying to be fair to the argument, and the consideration at hand.
As I see it in review (and I read it recently, though not just now, before I write this review, so please bear with me if I miss a finer point or two) but it seems there are a couple presuppositions that are made in this particular assessment of the situation which seem to be made incorrectly, and which I wish to challenge, or at least to try to challenge with some thoughts of my own.
The position presented is basically that the wedding vows initiate the marriage covenant. It is not sex that forms the marriage bond, and as such, the "adultery" that occurs when a remarriage takes place is an ACT of adultery, not a STATE of adultery. The adultery is the act of making a new marriage covenant, when there is one that is still in place previously, (logically, I would assume, because the divorce didn't end the first marriage covenant.) And so "adultery" occurs "in the act of making new wedding vows." The position presented on that web site says that the sex that occurs in the new marriage is not sinful; it was the initial act of making the wedding vows to the new spouse that was an act of sin, and it is that act of sin that needs to be repented of, and repentence from that doesn't mean busting up the new marriage to put the old one back together; instead, repentence means acknowledging that the sin of adultery had been committed in the making of the vows, but the new vows stand, and they should be maintained.
I've heard this argument before. It's the common one made from that side of the fence on the divorce-remarriage debate. But the position has its problems. First of all, it seems there some logical "quantum leaps" taken here (unintentionally, it seems obvious enough, but quantum leaps in logic, nonetheless).
First of all, the commonly understood definition of "adultery" by any biblical or non-biblical scholar is sex by one (or both) of the partners in the marriage with anyone outside of the marriage. It has been said before that the power to define the terms in an argument is the power to win the debate. And in this case, it seems in order for this argument to be made, you have to buy that author's position that adultery occurs with the making of wedding vows. That seems a real stretch. The reason that Jesus said that divorcing a spouse and making wedding vows to another person is entering into an ONGOING CONDITION OF ADULTERY (and that is what it says in the greek - not an act, but an ongoing condition) is because the point he was making was the fact that simply proposing new wedding vows to a new bride or groom doesn't automatically mean that God is putting His blessing on this new "marriage" simply because we invoke His name to do so. Jesus' point was made around an obvious assumption - the assumption that new wedding vows were made in order to legitimize the acts of sexual intercourse which would afterwards be "justified" in the mind of the new husband and wife because of the vows somehow making it right. Jesus' point was that the new vows didn't change anything - the ongoing living condition that would result after the new vows is simply a condition of living in an ongoing state of adultery.
Another common problem that I see in the author's logic is such as is in his analysis of the passage in John, chapter 4, where he is speaking of Jesus with the woman at the well. This paragraph I will quote from the website itself:
"...it was Jesus who said she had had five different husbands, and the man she was living with at the moment was not her husband at all (John 4:18). From this we know that simply living with someone and having sex with them does not make them a spouse, for marriage requires a binding contract. We also know that Jesus considered each one of her previous marriages to have been real marriages, for He called each of her five previous covenant partners 'husbands' even while recognizing that the last lover was not a 'husband.' "
First of all, the author says,
"From this we know that simply living with someone and having sex with them does not make them a spouse, for a marriage requires a binding contract." This is true. But then he says,
"We also know that Jesus considered each one of her previous marriages to have been real marriages, for He called each of her five previous covenant partners 'husbands' even while recognizing that the last lover was not a 'husband.' " This is not necessarily true, at all.
The new testament looks a fair bit different when you look at it in Greek than when you look at it in English. For instance, there are a few things to note that are significant before you even begin to look at the translations. In Greek, there is no different word for wife or woman, there is no different word for husband or man. The only way to tell which is implied is by context, and if the person is referred to as "the man" or "a man" or "her man." Similarly, it is "the woman" or "his woman." If it says, "her man" or "his woman" it is translated "husband" or "wife." Secondly, the expression "to have" or "had" in the context of discussion about husbands and wives is pretty much a synonymous term with "married." For instance, when the Sadducees approached Jesus with the story of the seven brothers, they used this expression - "the first one had her, the second one had her..." and it was understood in the context, and is translated so, that they were saying these brothers all married her. (Another curious little tidbit is that there is a word for widow in greek, but no word for widower; read that into 1 Corinthians 7 and it takes a different flavor, but that is a different topic.)
Anyway, look at what it says from the Greek, and then let me try to put a different "spin" on what it says (we all have 'em - like it or not, every translation has a "spin" on the text based on the presuppositions brought to the translating table). And so, based on this same text with Jesus and the woman at the well, but looking at it with the presupposition that remarriage is an ongoing condition of adultery, based on the greek... what it
says is...
"... the woman answered him and said, 'I have no man.' Jesus said, 'you said correctly, for you do not have a man, for you have five men, and the one you are having now is not your man."
What it
means (how it is interpreted, which is what any bible translation requires - an understanding of what it says, and what it means when it says it, when spoken in the words of another language) What I believe it
means (with good reasons to say it, also...) is...
"Jesus said, 'you have spoken correctly, that you do not have a husband, for you have become married to five men, and the one to whom you are now married is not really your husband." That's a mouthful! And as controversial as it seems to be, I think there is ample justification to translate it this way. It all depends on the presuppositions you make theologically before you try to interpret the text in the original based on language and cultural considerations before you try to translate it into your current language.
If you make the presupposition that divorce ends the covenant (or, as in the case of The Faithful Word, here) you make the assumption that the new wedding vows break the old one) then you interpret "the one you now have" as a lover (as "The Faithful Word" does) rather than as a husband by law (as I and many others believe); if you make the assumption, based on the Greek text, that Jesus spoke of the ongoing new marriage
as an ongoing condition of adultery, then you will translate Jesus' words here as "the one you are now married to" as a "husband," yet
not one she is entitled to have in God's eyes, because it is an
adulterous marriage. "The husband you have now is not
your husband."
Like I said before, the power to define the terms is the power to win the debate. If we define adultery as making new vows rather than having sex outside of a legitimate marriage, then we can justify a whole bunch of stuff as now legitimate. But if we define adultery as sex outside of marriage, then we have to see in Jesus' words a statement that declares remarriages are not legitimate in God's eyes. And so, in this case, the question becomes, "if it is an ongoing condition of adultery, rather than a single act of adultery, then what does repentence look like?"
I have heard others, such as Craig S. Keener and Voddie Baucham propose the idea that the adultery that Jesus was speaking of was an act of adultery, and not a state of adultery, but the greek in these passages does not bear this out. The early church fathers, when they spoke of these sayings of Jesus in their writings all understood Jesus to be referring to an ongoing state of adultery, rather than a mere "single act" of adultery. And they were familiar with the common usage of the greek, and understood this, so much so that in their writings on the subject, they spoke even more clearly of this adultery as an ongoing condition, and they even went so far at times as to require church discipline until these new "marriages" were repented of and walked away from.
In fact, Craig Keener makes the very bad argument (in my opinion) that Jesus could not have been speaking of adultery in these cases as being an ongoing condition, because if he did, then it would mean that all these divorced and remarried people we see today are living in a state of adultery, but this just doesn't seem that it can be the case, and so we have to conlude from this that Jesus' point was really about an act of adultery, not an ongoing condition of adultery. This seems to be constructing an argument based on the conclusion you want to make. It seems to be bad logic. Defining remarriage as an act of adultery rather than a state of adultery (based on what you can do with the English translation) and redefining adultery to include the idea that marriage vows are adultery, rather than sex outside of marriage being the adultery changes the whole conversation.
As I said before, the power to define the terms is the power to win the debate. But careful consideration of the terms requires some tweaking from "The Faithful Word" on this post. As Walter Martin once said, "if words don't mean in context what they mean by definition, then we have lost the ability to communicate."
As always, your thoughts are welcome.