From: HERRICKD@beast.cs.hh.ab.com (daniel lance herrick)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Abuse and Divorce
Date: 28 Jul 92 06:59:36 GMT

This is a reply only to the article quoted below, I have not seen the
thread.

In article <Jul.20.01.38.16.1992.1170@dumas.rutgers.edu>, aaron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (Scott Aaron) writes:
> The REASON God hates divorce is that he respects vows and 
> covenants and expects his people to fulfill their vows (Mal. 2:14, Ecc 5:4).  
> In general, when a man divorces his wife and marries another, he rejects his 
> covenant of marriage with his first wife.  That is what God hates:  the 
> breaking of the covenant.  The entire book of Malachi is God being ticked off 
> with Judah because Judah has rejected its covenant with the Lord.
> 
> Now, when a man beats his wife, he breaks the covenant of marriage (second
> part of Malachi 2, especially with the NIV marginal translation).  Once the
> covenant is broken, the wife is no longer bound to it; she can divorce and
> remarry.  This is not to say she MUST divorce, but she is allowed to if
> she wishes.  She is not bound to the covenant.
> 
> This is the "marital unfaithfulness" to which Jesus refers in Matthew 19:
> unfaithfulness to the covenant of marriage.  In such circumstances, divorce
> and remarriage is allowed.

Your treatment is faithful to the texts you name.  I think we can gain
a little more understanding by considering more of the Law.

In a society governed by God's Law, both parties to adultery die at
the hands of the Civil Magistrate.  This brings their marriage covenants
to an end and releases their spouses to enter into other covenants.

We live in a society that is "more enlightened" and does not "put the
evil away from among us".  Instead, we keep the adulterer and the
adulteress around to destroy the peace.  We tell the agrieved party that
they should love and forgive and stay bound.  After all, God hates divorce.

A better hermeneutic recognizes that, even though our Godless society
does not recognize the authority of God's Law, the marriage covenant died
when the covenant breaker killed it.  It is pious claptrap not founded
in an understanding of all of Scripture to insist that they are bound
to this corpse who is still walking around after killing it's marriage
covenant.  Scripture does not require faithfulness to a dead spouse.  The
only mechanism in our society to "legally" break the bond that the covenant
breaker has already, in fact, broken, is a divorce proceeding initiated
by the aggrieved party.

After saying these things, we have to recognize that the death penalty is
not required and is not applied in all cases.  I'm not going to dig out the
normative references, instead, there is an example that is spread through
all the Old Testament.

God often, usually in the words of a prophet, calls the chosen people His
wife.  Over and over and over, He charges that she has gone whoring after
other gods, He chastises her, and He restores her to her place beside Him.
(Two passages I can invoke without looking them up are Ezekiel 23 and the
book of Hosea.  There are several cycles of restoration in Judges, but the
image of a marriage is rare there if it appears at all.)

Thus, it is appropriate for the aggrieved party to seek the restoration
of the covenant breaker into the covenant.  It is NOT required.  In fact,
Matthew 24 describes the final divorce between God and His first wife, 
making room for His new Bride.

These ideas are developed carefully with proper documentation in a book
called Second Chance by Ray Sutton.

dan herrick       dlh%dlhpfm.uucp@ab.com     dlh%dlhpfm@ncoast.org