No-fault divorce is a horrific tragedy that has allowed far too many spouses to destroy their families when they should have been pressured to work things out. We should strive to reform civil laws and family courts to more closely approximate God’s design for marriage, including its permanence. Marriage is entered into with vows, “til death do us part,” and married persons should be held to those vows unless the covenant has been broken.
At the same time, I’d argue that biblical grounds for divorce are considerably broader than many conservative Christians and churches recognize. The Reformed tradition generally recognizes adultery and abandonment as grounds for divorce. But how much those categories can be stretched remains a matter of debate. For example, Exodus 21:10-11 does not get nearly the attention it should in these discussions, but it should inform our casuistry as to what counts as covenant breaking. Adultery is grounds for divorce; but a long term pattern of withholding sex is too (cf. 1 Cor. 7:1-9). Physical abandonment is grounds for divorce; but reviling and violent behavior while staying under the same roof is tantamount to abandonment as well. As a general rule, if a spouse engages in a pattern of behavior that should lead to immediate excommunication, it could also become grounds for divorce. This can include committing a capital crime (even if the one who commits the crime is not executed by the state), unrepentant habitual drunkenness, failure on the part of an able bodied man to provide for his family (or financial recklessness that negates his ability to provide), a pattern of long term porn use (especially if it destroys his ability to perform sexually), and so on. Obviously, a session will have to be involved in making these judgments, and should do so in an even-handed way. The covenant of marriage is too important and too publicly consequential for people to determine on their own if they have grounds. This is why the Westminster Confession teaches that church and state should both seek to remedy troubled marriages, but when that fails and a spouse believes they have grounds for divorce, “a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills, and discretion, in their own case” (WCF 24). In other words, the session will have to make a ruling in such cases, according to biblical principles and prudence.
Sadly, in our day, the state often grants divorce when it shouldn’t and the church sometimes refuses to grant divorce when it should. Churches that are too cowardly to do church discipline often keep people trapped in marriages with covenant breaking spouses.
But there are further complications. 1 Corinthians 7:11 seems to open the possibility of a spouse divorcing *without* biblical grounds, while still remaining in good standing in the church, provided they agree to not remarry and remain open to future reconciliation. Obviously, this strikes many of us as counter-intuitive; it seems like a loophole, so to speak, in the Bible’s teaching on marriage and divorce. But I don’t know how else to make sense of what Paul says. I addressed this issue in a sermon years ago (follow-up notes available here; note especially the Rob Rayburn quote.
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1 Cor. 7:12-16 is wisdom/casuistry for a specific case where two non-Christians are married, one converts, and the other doesn’t.
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The issue in 1 Cor. 7:12-16 is not believers marrying unbelievers. Paul is speaking into a missionary situation and addressing something Jesus did not talk about in his earthly ministry. I think most commentaries will view the text the same way I am here: a non-Christian couple hears the gospel, one spouse converts but the other doesn’t, and that raises issues about what should happen next. Should the believer stay in the marriage or not?
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We have to be whole Bible Christians. Jesus was addressing a particular distortion of the law that was common in his day. But what Moses and Paul teach on the subject (under the inspiration of Jesus’ Spirit) has to be weighed in the discussion as well.
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We should certainly should be willing to suffer for the good of our marriages. And just because you have grounds does not mean you can (or should) exercise those grounds. In many cases, there are other considerations that should be brought into play (eg, children). While Christ suffered for his people on the cross, he does not put up with covenant breaking, eg, in John 15, he cuts off (divorces) fruitless branches and casts them into the fire.
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“Can I ask, if you say immediate excommunication provides grounds for divorce what of apostasy?”
1 Corinthians 7:12-16 is the main biblical answer to that question. Granted, Paul is probably speaking to a situation where one spouse converts to the faith instead of abandoning it – but what he says still seems to apply. Provided the unbelieving spouse wants to stay in the marriage, the believing spouse should stay too. But most of the time when someone apostatizes from the faith, they change their lifestyle considerably and would not likely want to stay in the marriage, or live faithfully in the marriage.
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