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Divorce and the BibleMajor re-think on divorceDIVORCE AND THE BIBLE This is an important and valuable contribution to the current debate about the Bible’s teaching on divorce. The central thesis is that marriage was designed by God as a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5). Hence marriage is a covenant, but (and this is the vital point) husband and wife have different roles and responsibilities within the covenant relationship. The husband is to love, provide and care for his wife (as Christ loves the church), and the wife is to submit to her husband and be faithful to him (as the church to Christ). These distinctive roles of husband and wife mean that each party has slightly different grounds for divorce. The husband can only divorce his wife for sexual infidelity (representing apostasy on the part of the church). The wife can divorce her husband not only for infidelity, but also for lack of love and practical care (a failure to represent Christ’s loving provision for his people). At this point Hamer builds on the work of Instone-Brewer (Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible, Eerdmans, 2002), that it was understood by the Jews in the time of Christ that a woman could divorce her husband if he did not provide her with food, clothing and conjugal love. But Hamer’s important insight about the different roles of husband and wife brings new light to the subject, and gives a fresh reading of some difficult texts. When we now re-read Jesus’s teaching in the gospels, we find that he is invariably asked about the grounds on which a husband can divorce his wife. The answer is only on the grounds of sexual unfaithfulness. But Jesus is never asked about the grounds on which a wife can divorce her husband. These would have been understood, and were not controversial among the Jews of that day. Hamer’s argument is convincing as far as it goes, but a number of practical questions remain. When asked who should decide if the husband’s provision of food, clothing and love is inadequate, he responds that only the wife can make that decision (p.38). So we have the prospect of a Christian woman declaring (unilaterally) that her husband is not living up to her expectations and, therefore, (legitimately) divorcing him. This opens up the prospect of very easy divorce for a woman who has grown weary of her husband, or who is critical (perhaps unfairly) of how he fulfils his responsibilities to her. In Old Testament times, there would have been great difficulty for a woman thinking of divorce because of her economic dependence. In our day there are no such obstacles; so she can get an easy divorce, and he is stigmatised as a failing husband. My own view is that there should be clear objective evidence of a husband’s failure before divorce is contemplated. Another problem is that while the author emphasises the distinctive roles of husband and wife, he neglects legitimate areas of mutuality. For example, in 1 Corinthians 7 Paul maintains that both husband and wife have an obligation to fulfil their marital duty to their spouse. So surely a husband has grounds against his wife if she denies any sexual relationship. And can this not be extended to situations where the wife is abusive to the point of violence? Cannot a case be made that in these circumstances she is effectively refusing to live as a wife with her husband? I am also uncomfortable with what appears to be endorsement of cohabitation as effectively equivalent to marriage, even though a permanent covenant relationship has not been formally and publicly declared (p.7). Such difficulties are raised not to undermine the thesis, which appears to be fundamentally sound. But perhaps further work is required to refine our understanding of marriage and divorce, and build upon the fine work which Hamer has begun. Bill James,
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