I’ll just leave it with the links above.
After sleeping on it, keeping in mind the text of the statement on divorce and remarriage adopted by Trinity Reformed Church linked above which we wrote and adopted two decades ago, this additional comment for the record:
The reason I’m being critical of men who firmly take their "no remarriage ever” stand is that they say they are holding onto a high view of marriage as God Himself also holds. Understand then that those who don’t hold to a high view of marriage are those who don’t firmly take a "no remarriage ever” stand. Whether they say it explicitly or it’s only by implication, taking the position that a high view of the marriage covenant is their reason for saying no remarriage ever is necessarily also a statement that allowing for remarriage is a lower view of the marriage covenant. So then, those who allow remarriage are participating in the serial adultery of the modern world.
Often it is stated explicitly, but even if not, the implication is necessary as they make their arguments. Cheek by jowl with that high position they craft for themselves (although the crafting is ever so meekly and humbly and charitably done) is the moral superiority of their prophetic witness in such a dark day.
In other words, there is something in it for them. This is critical to see. It must be recognized and acknowledged that both sides have a real vulnerability to being exposed as having sinful motives. Again, I say, both sides.
As is regularly pointed out in Scripture, forsaking the old paths is not just wrong, but flows from sinful desires and motivations. We must always consider what motivations there are in our own and our opponents’ positions. What may I be getting from my position and what may he be getting from his?
So, from my position, allowing remarriage may well be my unwillingness to stand as a witness against the evil moral condition of our day, particularly with regard to the covenant of marriage. I may desire to go with the flow on this, as well as to present myself as a softie to the women of the congregation by blessing what God condemns and thereby avoiding the awkwardness of refusing to bless the remarriage of our Christian sister’s new love after being abandoned by the father of her children years before for the purpose of taking up younger flesh. I may be willing to twist Scripture on sexuality issues in order to keep my job and unity in my session, and so on and so forth. I leave it to others to judge.
And what may those seeking to change the historic Protestant and Reformed church’s commitments on this be getting by doing so?
A word about who is following old paths and who is forsaking those old paths on this issue, which is to say a word about who is adhering to Scripture in this, as understood by our Protestant and Reformed fathers and their confessions of faith? Taking into account my possible sinful motives in doing so, why do I support remarriage?
Although I can’t remember officiating at any remarriages, I have supported several across the years. I believe “free” (1Cor. 7:39) does not just include freedom to divorce, but necessarily freedom also to remarry. A life with no possibility of companionship of oneness, the fruit of children, and a holy outlet for the desire for physical intimacy is not freedom. Rather, it is a punishment imposed on our sisters and brothers who are only “free” to divorce. So Calvin says in his 137th sermon on Deuteronomy, which text was 24:1ff.:
Now when Christ excepts the cause of adultery, it is to set the man in the case at free choice and liberty to marry again. For what a thing were it to bar a man from a new match; if he have observed his promise faithfully, and lived in the fear of God, and not been unfaithful towards his wife? If he be constrained to put her away, must he be punished for the offence of another? What reason were in that? Should he not have open wrong done him? Especially considering that our Lord Jesus Christ in that text adds, That all have not the gift of continency, and that such as have not received it, have the remedy of marriage, and that they ought to use it. When our Lord Jesus Christ pronounces this, think we that his meaning was that the poor wretched man who has lived blameless with an harlot, should be left in despair?
Nay: if he see filthiness in his house, he must, whether he will yea or no, cast forth such uncleanness, except he will infect himself therewith and be accounted a party in such wickedness.
Now if a man discharge his duty in this behalf, think we that God bares him of all right, and that he leaves him in such trouble and anguish, as he may not know where to become, but must remain unprovided of all remedy? It was therefore an over gross folly in men not to know that our Lord Jesus Christ leaves a man in free liberty to marry again, when his mate has violated the faith of marriage. As much is to be said in the behalf of the woman, seeing the right in this case is equal and mutual, as I have showed afore.
Calvin is always a pastor in his doctrine. Note carefully the reasons he gives for God’s allowance of remarriage; his reasons for declaring the previous marriage is not marriage any longer, and thus the innocent spouse is free to remarry. Calvin is so very sensitive to the ways Scripture can be abused (and had been for centuries by Rome) in such a way as to place poor vulnerable souls in lifelong bondage.
So yes, the Reformers also reformed the Romish denial of remarriage, as Calvin puts it here:
Thus you see how God may be honored and how his grace also and his blessing may dwell and abide in a family. And if a woman be so wicked as to prostitute herself, the husband according unto the will of God, may not only put her away, but is in perfect and full liberty to leave her, and to marry himself unto another.
The historic Reformed and Protestant church’s position countered the hypocritical practice of the Roman Catholic high medieval period in this matter.
But now, these men condemn their Protestant fathers and present Protestant brothers for error and laxity, insisting that any return of a high Biblical view of the marriage bond depends upon their reform of Protestant practice by starting a movement among us to deny that “free” means free to remarry.
Of course I don’t want to accuse them as schismatic, but anytime someone takes a central doctrine of the Church whose commitment to it has been well-worn across centuries and which is in line with the Reformers, reversing this doctrine—and at one of the most ethically sensitive places possible in the life of the congregation having to do with its families and children—he will cause division. It’s inescapable that such men cause division, particularly in elders boards. One man says he has a high view of marriage and the church should not allow remarriage. The other men look at him and begin to wonder why they always believed that remarriage was permitted in the case of porneia and abandonment? How did they get hoodwinked into being a part of what was apparently the wicked forsaking of the covenant of marriage across the world and church today? (There are always tender souls on a session prepared to receive their brother’s condemnation of their commitments and character, even if it’s not explicit.)
At this point, the man (or maybe men) present who actually know Scripture, doctrine, and church history have to pick up the cudgel and do battle, not only for the brother or sister this highly principled brother wants to consign to moral temptation and (often) impurity the rest of his life, but also the brothers present on the session who are about to join that consignment out of being told their low view of marriage is the reason they are prepared to allow remarriage in the congregation. In other words, the officers present in that meeting who know precisely the rot that followed this hypocritical position in the medieval period (and still today) must oppose this recrudescence today claiming itself as superior in its commitment to the marriage covenant; the brothers who know why the Reformers condemned this position’s condemnation of remarriage must seek to protect the unity of the church, historically, in this commitment to Scriptural remarriage.
Understand that, as with paedocommunion and Federal Vision’s flipping upside down of soteriology, it is the unified witness of Scripture and the Church’s proclamation of Scripture which is under attack. So the hurdle for these men is very high. They may be another generation of reformers or they may be merely schismatics. What is certain is that they are one or the other. In a day when adultery is everywhere and always both outside and inside the church, this issue is extremely volatile in every congregation.
Protestant fathers and Church fathers such as Origen and Jerome will prevail, or the (as I judge it) the schismatics prevail.
Let us note that John Owen summarizes the unified commitment of the church in this way, saying of freedom of remarriage following Biblical divorce (which he supported):
Again, the apostle Paul expressly sets the party at liberty to marry, who is maliciously and obstinately deserted, affirming that the Christian religion doth not prejudice the natural right and privilege of men in such cases, 1 Cor. vii.
“If the unbelieving depart, let him depart”; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. If a person obstinately depart, on pretence of religion or otherwise, and will no more cohabit with a husband or wife, it is known that by the law of nature, and the usage of all nations, the deserted party, because without his or her default all the ends of marriage are frustrated, is at liberty to marry. But it may be, it is not so among Christians.
What shall a brother, or a sister, that is a Christian, do in this case, who is so departed from? saith the apostle: they are not in bondage, they are free, at liberty to marry again.
Then note this statement Owen next makes:
This is the constant doctrine of all Protestant churches in the world. (Works, vol. 21)
Further demonstrating the unity of the church concerning remarriage, Chapter 24, Of Marriage and Divorce of the Westminster Confession reads:
Adultery or fornication committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract. 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 was dead.
What needs to be recognized is that those seeking to repudiate the historic Protestant and Reformed understanding of Scripture’s teaching on divorce (carrying with it freedom to remarry) are either reformers or schismatic. Further, we have huge records from history of the sins such bondage causes to permeate the church of the middle ages, and we see it living on in such churches yet today. Shepherds who love their flock know when the souls under their care are fornicating, but souls denying Biblical divorce cultivate ignorance of the suffering of their sheep in sin. That is my final observation, and I prove it by the history of Rome’s commitment to deny marriage both to their priests and to those who have Biblically divorced.
The Reformers were clear on this, and so we ought to be, also.
The attack upon this freedom is popular among a certain kind of pastor and online opinionater today. I’ve known pastors and elders personally who argued for it (although not in our congregations). I’ve been a part of a pastors fellowship which included a Protestant Reformed pastor, and we have debated it there. I’ve read a book or two on it by these men. And having done so, whether famous or infamous, I have no slightest sympathy for them in it.
Love,