If you have an income, are healthy, and your wife wants a baby and is healthy, there probably isn’t a valid excuse to delay children

Chip,
I am curious if you think there is a reason that Matthew included the “exception clause” and neither of the other synoptics did? Does that have any impact on how one might understand Jesus’ meaning?

It appears each of the gospels has a particular audience in mind which slightly shifts the focus from one to the other. Matthew appears to be directed particularly toward a Jewish audience. If that is true, then the clauses appearance only in Matthew likely has roots somehow in a Jewish cultural understanding.

And it is significant that Matthew, who is the only one who mentions the exception clause, is the only one who mentions Joseph was intending to divorce Mary during their betrothal, and calls him a “just man” for wanting to do so.

is the position of Laney that there is no “legitimate” divorce since we don’t have a formal betrothal period in our culture?

If that is the case, what would you recommend to a woman, say mother of 2, whose husband suddenly went off the deep end and developed a gambling and meth addiction, and is visiting prostitutes, and is therefore completely destroying the family. Can she seek a divorce to protect herself and her kids physically and financially under this Laney system? I assume she has sought counsel with her pastor and maybe professional marriage counseling all to no avail.

I have seen the above scenario twice with small detail differences! What is your advice?

I guess what I am asking is can a person seek a divorce for physical protection and health of themselves and children under the proviso of not getting remarried…or are they free to marry again? I realize there are plenty of books one could read, but nothing like a live discussion!

[Greg Long]

And it is significant that Matthew, who is the only one who mentions the exception clause, is the only one who mentions Joseph was intending to divorce Mary during their betrothal, and calls him a “just man” for wanting to do so.

Actually, Greg, the text describes Joseph as a “a just man and unwilling to put her to shame” (ESV) who “resolved to divorce her quietly”. It doesn’t actually comment on whether or not he was right to divorce her. After all, he was supposed to follow OT law and announce her as an adulteress to be stoned, if I remember correctly.

Hairsplitting? Maybe, but I read that as a description of his character and not as an endorsement of the potential divorce.

Someone mentioned 1 Cor 7 and the conjugal rights passage in the context of if a person can divorce their spouse over kids - It should be noted that the withholding of conjugal rights (NOT the withholding of children) is described there. To argue that a person can get a Scripturally permissible divorce because a spouse won’t give the other children goes quite a bit further than that passage goes.

[Chip Van Emmerik] Laney offers more than one possible conclusion, and memory indicates he leans toward the unfaithful betrothal explanation. I am more inclined to his second suggestion of the illegitimate marriage. I have done little reading of what Ryrie wrote specifically on divorce and remarriage, though I did peruse (Ryrie’s “Biblical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage”) article recently, and my brief scan suggests he also supports the illegitimate marriage understanding (see page 189 in particular).

My former pastor preached a sermon advocating the Betrothal View (which I was unfamiliar with).

From Ryrie’s book (p.187)

[Ryrie] The betrothal view builds on the fact that in Judaism a betrothed or engaged couple were considered “husband” and “wife.” Jewish betrothal was a legal contract which could only be broken by formal divorce or by death. If the betrothed proved unfaithful during the period of betrothal or was discovered on the first night not to be a virgin, then the contract could be broken. This is why Joseph was going to divorce Mary when he discovered that she was pregnant (Matt 1:19).

According to this view, then, porneia means premarital sexual intercourse (possibly John 8:41), and the exception then permits breaking the marriage contract with divorce when unfaithfulness is discovered during the betrothal period. The inclusion of the exception clause in Matthew’s gospel only is explained as appropriate to the Jewish makeup of the audience that would have originally read the gospel. Isaksson points out that this is actually not a divorce, but “it was a matter of cancelling an unfulfilled contract of sale, because one of the parties had tricked the other as to the nature of the goods, when the price was fixed.” This was an exception Jesus had to make if he did not want to side with the swindler instead of the person swindled. Because the marriage would not have been consummated, if unfaithfulness was discovered during the year-long betrothal period, the man would be free to marry someone else.

From David W Jones The Betrothal View of Divorce and Remarriage

[Jones] (p.69) Advocates of this view, then, believe that the Bible prohibits marriage partners from actively seeking a divorce, since the exception clause refers to a nuptial custom not followed today.

(p.73) …by showing that the clause does not constitute an actual exception, thereby making the Matthean divorce pericopes compatible with other biblical passages that seemingly prohibit the practice of divorce and remarriage. Advocates of the betrothal view adopt this latter approach, holding that the exception clause refers to a facet of the Jewish practice of betrothal.

(p.77) An appeal to the Jewish context of Matthew’s Gospel is made by the majority of advocates of the betrothal view.

(Jones article and a host of other articles on marriage are available at Wise Reaction)

From my perspective, it appears that this view works too hard to make the Matthean exception clause fit with the passages that prohibit remarriage after divorce. The premise seems to be that there can be no exception, so what appears to be an exception in Matthew, must be explained some other way. Admittedly, my perspective is conditioned on my first hearing the view expressed. My pastor used the word ‘misunderstood’ implying that the plain reading of the passage was incorrect, but didn’t give a full explanation of his view, not even identifying it by name. I recognized it as his view when reading articles advocating the view.

I don’t like that betrothal view. Let’s just say all churches began to teach that view of marriage. If you say that there is no legitimate reason for someone to divorce their spouse, wouldn’t that make it more enticing for some people to practice adultery, knowing that the spouse cannot leave the marriage? Unless the person also wishes to commit adultery by getting a divorce, he/she has no choice but to put up with the spouse’s unfaithful ways.

Luke and Mark do not include the exception clause. Why is it that only Matthew does? Matthew is the only one to mention Joseph and Mary.

And it is significant that Matthew, who is the only one who mentions the exception clause, is the only one who mentions Joseph was intending to divorce Mary during their betrothal, and calls him a “just man” for wanting to do so.

Just to be clear, Matthew does not call him a just man for wanting to do so, but called him a just man, which led to his desire to terminate the engagement. It probably wasn’t that his justness followed his desire, but that his justness led to his desire. He was well within “justness” to be willing to stay in the relationship (and in fact, that’s what he did and remained just).

There are several problems with the betrothal view,

First, it doesn’t address the question asked since the Pharisees were not asking about betrothal but about marriage. While it is true that betrothal required a divorce, it wasn’t marriage; it still required marriage. Furthermore, this position leads to the rather odd conclusion that the only way to break a betrothal was on account of sexual infidelity.

Second, the betrothal view places a higher value on sexual fidelity prior to marriage than it does during marriage. So one could pursue a divorce if the sexual faithfulness was prior to the marriage but not if it was during the marriage. If betrothal was the same kind of commitment as marriage (as some argue), then this makes no sense at all. If it was a different kind of commitment, then the whole view falls apart anyway.

Third, it uses the same word in the same verse to refer to both a married woman and an unmarried woman, something that is grammatically (almost) impossible (at least without making mincemeat of language itself). These is a brief summary of Edgar’s arguments against the betrothal view in House’s Four Views book (pp. 173-77). It is worth reading and studying before one adopts the betrothal view.

To try to ascertain why Matthew included it and others didn’t, and attribute it to his defense of Joseph is an exercise in mind reading of the ancients. That could be done in any number of the parallel passages in the gospel without much fruit. Probably better just to accept that he said it (actually probably that he represents Jesus as saying it), and adjust our views to fit the text.

I have read Edgar’s argument and found them wanting. I am surprised anyone actually still advances some of these points.

The pharisees asked specifically why Moses commanded divorce. Jesus made it clear that it was for an exception, which was not adultery, since adultery was punishable by death. So whatever the exception was, it wasn’t adultery.

Sex does not create marriage. Neither does it break marriage. Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. If a person was unable to have sex, the marriage doesn’t dissolve. The betrothal period however was a time of expectation. If a person rejected the expected marriage BY having sex with another person, then the choice was made to not continue in marriage.

Why the size of their vocabulary was a limited as it was doesn’t hurt the betrothal view.

I find it a valuable and legitimate question as to why 2/3 of synoptics didn’t bother to record the exception clause. You find some absurd comparison because it isn’t your view. That is fine.

James, Moses didn’t command divorce, he permitted it. Big difference there.

And what would you do if you found your wife cheating on you with another man? What if you were unable to reconcile to her and she moved out of the house to go live with another man? Would you call it committing adultery to divorce her and find another wife.

Christian, Ryrie’s wife divorced him at least fifty years ago and he never remarried.

Well, I don’t care what Ryrie did. I care what the scriptures mean.

And I believe the application would be different considering the times we live in. Since we can’t divorce someone we are engaged to. We can only divorce someone we are married to.

[christian cerna]

James, Moses didn’t command divorce, he permitted it. Big difference there.

And what would you do if you found your wife cheating on you with another man? What if you were unable to reconcile to her and she moved out of the house to go live with another man? Would you call it committing adultery to divorce her and find another wife.

Christian, I didn’t say Moses commanded divorce. I said that the pharisees asked Jesus why Moses commanded divorce.

My hope would be that I obeyed the commands of scripture over my own painful experience and didn’t compound the problem with a new marriage.

I do think that remarriage is adultery. That is the clear and explicit saying of Jesus.

[christian cerna]

I don’t like that betrothal view. Let’s just say all churches began to teach that view of marriage. If you say that there is no legitimate reason for someone to divorce their spouse, wouldn’t that make it more enticing for some people to practice adultery, knowing that the spouse cannot leave the marriage? Unless the person also wishes to commit adultery by getting a divorce, he/she has no choice but to put up with the spouse’s unfaithful ways.

Christian,

you sound an awful lot like the disciples after Jesus told them that marriage was intended by God to be for life and that anyone who married a divorced woman was committing adultery (notice that there is no exception clause offered for this offense). Matthew 19:10

In effect, they were saying, “If we can’t get a divorce for any reason, then maybe we should avoid this whole marriage business. I mean, who wants to get into something they can never get out of?”

The mentality that something must be incorrect because we do not like it is dangerous. Our question should not be what interpretation makes us comfortable or gives us the most freedom, it should be what did Jesus mean? While there may be legitimate disagreement about that, let it be based in the text itself and not in our feelings about the text.