Does the New Testament Approve Remarriage after Divorce?

Gordon Wenham is Professor of Old Testament, University of Gloucestershire, and is known internationally for his scholarship. He is the author of numerous books and ar ticles, including the two volume commentary on Genesis in the Word Biblical Commentary series. His most recent book is Story as Torah: Reading the Old Testament Ethically. He is also the co-author of the book Jesus and Divorce. “A text out of context is a pretext” is the slogan of all those who try and teach the art of preaching and exegesis. It is my contention that, in their original context, all the Gospel divorce texts should be understood as condemning remarriage after divorce. The full arguments for this view are set out in Jesus and Divorce.1 In this article I wish to address the issue more concisely by considering the various contexts in which the divorce texts may be read: first, the broadest context, the early church’s understanding of the gospel texts; second, the narrower context of the whole New Testament witness to marriage; third, the context in Matthew’s gospel; and finally the context of the debates of first-century Judaism within which Jesus was arguing. By way of a coda I shall then consider whether the dominical condemnation of divorce and remarriage necessarily means that it is excluded in a society that calls itself Christian. The analogy with Jesus’ teaching on violence does, I shall suggest, give a model for behaviour in a world where the new creation has been inaugurated but is not complete.