Did Jesus define marriage when he criticised divorce?

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When Jesus answered a ques­tion from some Phari­sees about divorce (in Mat­thew 19:3‑10 and Mark 10:2‑12), he uttered the famous phrase, “What God has joined together, let not man sepa­rate.” And in his reply he alluded to Adam and Eve by quot­ing phrases from Gen­e­sis 1 and 2 that in­cluded the terms “male and female”, “man”, “wife”, “two” and “one flesh” [1]. In general, in Chris­tian theo­logy, all these ele­ments have been taken as defin­ing mar­riage. But Chris­tians in favour of “gay mar­riage”, in other words, unions be­tween two peo­ple of the same sex, ques­tion the need for this inter­pre­ta­tion. 🤔

Today I’ll explain some of their argu­ments. 😃

A key text

First of all, I ought to em­pha­sise that what Jesus says to the Phar­i­sees on this occa­sion is a key text in the homo­sexu­al­ity debate.

Jesus with some Pharisees or rabbis, by Grok.

☝️It’s not an exag­ge­ra­tion to say that it pro­vides prob­a­bly the most impor­tant bib­lical argu­ment for reject­ing gay mar­riage. Much more so than the tiny hand­ful of verses that appear to con­demn homo­sexu­al­ity (which have their problems, see this previous post).

There’s no doubt that a major­ity of Chris­tians see in these words of Jesus unequiv­o­cal sup­port for tra­di­tional hetero­sex­ual mar­riage. Even a fair num­ber of gay and les­bian believers hew to these (and other) verses and, after con­clud­ing that their sexual orien­ta­tion is impos­sible to change, turn their back on mar­riage and opt to remain single and celi­bate. We should salute this cou­ra­geous atti­tude 💪, of want­ing to fol­low the Lord what­ever the cost.

These people need our recog­ni­tion and sup­port 👏. And we should­n’t have them side­lined in our faith com­mu­ni­ties. On the con­trary, they ought to be able to fully de­velop their cal­ling and gifts in the church.

☝️At the same time, there are other Chris­tians, equally com­mit­ted to the teach­ings of Jesus, who see good reasons for not neces­sar­ily taking his com­ments to the Phari­sees as an exact or exclu­sive defi­ni­tion of mar­riage. I am not refer­ring only to believ­ers in the LGTBI+🌈 com­mu­nity. There are also respect­ed theo­lo­gians, pas­tors and lead­ers in our churches ⛪, who, though het­ero­sexual them­selves, have come to this con­clu­sion. How can that be?

Photo by krakenimages on Unsplash.

The context is crucial

To try to find a strict uni­ver­sal appli­ca­tion for some­thing Jesus said in a given con­text, to spe­cific peo­ple, can be fool­hardy. For instance, do we take it as an abso­lute prin­ciple never to invite friends or relatives for a meal 🥗🥩🍷 in our home, based on these words of Jesus?:

When you give a lun­cheon or din­ner, do not invite your friends, your broth­ers or sis­ters, your rela­tives, or your rich neigh­bours; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a ban­quet, invite the poor, the crip­pled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they can­not repay you, you will be re­paid at the resur­rec­tion of the righteous.
(Luke 14:12b‑14, NIVUK [2])

I would guess that few, if any, of us see this as an abso­lute. We note that Jesus was speak­ing “to his host” (Luke 14:12a), an in­fluen­tial and well-to-do Phar­i­see. And that the con­text is the guests’ snob­bish­ness and desire for prom­inence.

Image created by Grok.

🫵 Having said that, maybe we should still take more seriously the atti­tude and prior­i­ties that Jesus was point­ing to.

The specific context in this case

What we’re focus­sing on today is described by Mat­thew and Mark as a query about the legit­i­mate reasons for a man to divorce his wife. This stemmed from a theo­lo­gical dis­cus­sion at the time between two rab­bin­i­cal schools (Hillel and Sham­mai) about the pos­si­bil­ity of divorce “for just any reason”🫰, how­ever insig­nif­i­cant [3].

Some rabbis arguing, by Grok.

According to Hillel (whose view was already the major­ity posi­tion in Jesus’s time) even a burnt or badly cooked 🥣 meal could be enough for a divorce, based on what the Law of Moses says in Deuteronomy 24:1.

Jesus refused to enter into their legal­istic inter­pre­tive dis­cus­sion. He ap­pealed directly to a higher author­ity than Moses: 👉 God him­self and his divine pur­pose regard­ing mar­riage when he created the world.

Moises vs. God, using images by ChatGPT.

Jesus’s comment “let not man sepa­rate” can obviously be under­stood, in a broad general sense, as refer­ring to every­body 🌎. But his imme­diate target 🎯 was undoubt­edly the rab­bis and Phar­i­sees whose inter­pre­ta­tion encour­aged “easy divorce”, for any tri­vial matter.

And Jesus had no truck with using one spe­cific verse in Deu­ter­onomy as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. He showed it was impor­tant to seek God’s will in a more general way 🔍, taking into account his char­ac­ter and his deal­ings with human­kind.

And what about “male and female”?

It was the Pharisees them­selves who spoke about 👩🏻‍🤝‍👨🏽 man and woman/wife (the Greek word has both mean­ings) in their ques­tion. Jesus simply replied in a similar vein. So there’s no need to assume, in the words of Jesus, a spe­cial interest in defin­ing marriage.

What’s more, no one there was con­sid­er­ing any­thing other than hetero­sexual mar­riage. “Gay mar­riage” was un­think­able in that time and place 🙃.

Photo by Joeyy Lee on Unsplash.

And the whole empha­sis of Jesus’s answer cen­tred on the goal of per­ma­nence in the mar­riage rela­tion­ship, as God’s divine aim. And that no one should make it easy to weaken or break the mar­riage bond.

Not taking Jesus’s words as absolutes

The Bible itself gives us several rea­sons for not taking Jesus’s words about divorce in an abso­lute sense, appli­ca­ble to all situations:

• Matthew included in Jesus’s words an excep­tion, a legi­ti­mate ground for divorce: the Greek term por­neia (Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9), which has to do with sexual immo­ral­ity. Its mean­ing here is debated 💬, and it’s trans­lated in dif­ferent ways in our Bibles [4], but it was ob­vious­ly an excep­tion to the rule.

• The apostle Paul also offered us an excep­tion (in 1 Corin­thians 7:15). He saw that there were cases of con­verts whose unbe­liev­ing spouses did not want to con­tinue in the rela­tion­ship 🫷, where divorce was best. In all like­li­hood, accord­ing to most modern Bible schol­ars, that included the pos­si­bil­ity of re­marrying.

• These days, many com­men­ta­tors also note that the “hard­ness of heart” that Jesus pointed to still exists. Some­times, then, divorce is unavoid­able ⛓️‍💥 and, of all the options, may be the least bad alter­na­tive 😐.

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash.

So, if we don’t take Jesus’s words about divorce as abso­lutes, maybe we don’t need to do so with “male and female” either. 🤔 At the very least, we know that Jesus could be very com­pas­sion­ate and under­stand­ing faced with irreg­u­lar or frowned upon situa­tions in that society, such as the Samar­i­tan woman who had had five hus­bands and was now living with a man she was not married to (John 4:5‑42).

If none of this convinces you

I fully under­stand those Christians who are reluc­tant to rethink what has always seemed so clear to them in the Bible about sexual­ity, mar­riage, gen­der, and so on. For a long time I was one of them 🙂. But very grad­ually, and not with­out a fair bit of teeter­ing back and forth 🥴, I came to a point where:

• Firstly, I gained an enor­mous respect for Chris­tian think­ers that had adopted an affirm­ing stance on homo­sexual­ity. 🤔 Not only did they have some really good argu­ments, but on many other issues they seemed to be spot on, and thor­oughly in tune with the gos­pel mes­sage. 👏

• Secondly, I re-examined the way I myself read and under­stood the Bible as the word of God 📖. I still strive for it to inspire and chal­lenge me. But I refuse to get tied up in knots through a liter­al­ist ap­proach which, in real­ity, can­not be truly main­tained in any coher­ent way.

Through­out this pro­cess I have had to remem­ber, over and again, that God wants us to be merci­ful, not judg­men­tal [5]. And that the Phar­i­sees, so upright and scru­pu­lous with the Scrip­tures, and always ready to point the fin­ger at others 🫵, were the ones most crit­i­cised by Jesus.

📌 If you would like to com­ment on this post (in the lan­guage of your choice), you can do so at the end of the Span­ish ver­sion, here.

Notes

[1] These are the words that occur in prac­ti­cally all Eng­lish trans­la­tions. The first expres­sion, “male and female”, comes from Gene­sis 1:27 (part of the first crea­tion account). And the words “man”, “his wife” and “one flesh” are taken from Gene­sis 2:24 (the end of the second crea­tion account). The word “two” does not figure in the Hebrew (Maso­retic) text of Gene­sis 2, only in the Greek trans­lation, the Sep­tua­gint (LXX), in Gene­sis 2:24 and 2:25.

[2] NIVUK: The Holy Bible, New Inter­na­tional Ver­sion® (Angli­cised), NIV®, copy­right © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.®, used by per­mis­sion of Bib­lica, Inc.®; all rights reserved worldwide.

[3] Only Matthew (Matthew 19:3) clearly iden­ti­fies the crux of the Phari­sees’ ques­tion. The rab­bini­cal dis­cus­sion cen­tred on the mean­ing of the Hebrew expres­sion ervat davar, used in Deu­ter­on­omy 24:1, as a legit­i­mate rea­son for a man to divorce his wife. This Hebrew expres­sion is strange, vague, and dif­fi­cult to trans­late. This is evi­denced in modern trans­la­tions, that range from “some­thing about her he doesn’t like”, “some­thing objec­tion­able”, “some un­seem­ly thing”, or “some­thing wrong with her”, to “some­thing in­decent”. Bible­Gate­way gives us a pretty com­plete list with this link.

[4] The Greek term porneia could refer to a wide range of illicit or im­moral sexual beha­viours. That’s why many modern trans­la­tions trans­late it in these verses in Mat­thew with very general terms, such as “sexual immo­ra­lity” (NIV, ESV, …) or “unchastity” (RSV, …).

Many com­men­tators, at least in the Protes­tant tra­di­tion, assume that it prob­ably refers to “unfaith­ful­ness” (GNT, Phillips, …),  or maybe the non-virgin­ity of the bride, hence “for­ni­ca­tion” (KJV, …). How­ever, most trans­la­tions (MSG is a notable excep­tion) avoid directly trans­lat­ing por­neia as “adul­tery”, in order to ensure a con­trast with the Greek verb moichao occur­ring in the same verse, which does simply mean “to com­mit adul­tery”. For their part, some, but not all, Cath­olic Bibles (NABRE, …), for doc­trinal reasons, favour trans­la­tions posit­ing unlaw­ful (hence, annul­lable) mar­riages. There is a pretty com­plete list of all the ways porneia has been trans­lated in these Bible­Gate­way links: Mat­thew 5:32, Mat­thew 19:9.

[5] This is a recur­ring theme in the New Tes­ta­ment. See, for exam­ple: Mat­thew 5:7, 9:13, 12:7, 23:23; Luke 6:37; James 2:13, 3:17.