Can a person divorce and remarry and still go to Heaven?
The reason I ask is because the Bible says that one commits adultery if he divorces his wife and marries another. Since the wedding vows are to be till death do us part, said before God, then does that stand to reason that a person who gets a divorce is not really divorced before the eyes of God, and therefore one is committing adultery by marrying another, as long as their spouse is living?
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this subject.
Firstly, let's get the "Can they go to heaven?" question out of the way. Yes. Nothing about this topic has any relation to whether a person can "go to heaven". Christ doesn't suddenly stop being our Savior. So that shouldn't even be part of the conversation about the questions of divorce/remarriage.
Christ's teaching on divorce needs to be understood in the context of the time, culture, and place. In Judaism a husband could receive a certificate of divorce and give it to his wife, this was sufficient to divorce. As long as the husband gave it to her, and she received it, the divorce was final. But within Judaism at the time there were two different schools of thought:
Bet Hillel, who followed the teachings of Rabbi Hillel the Elder, taught that a husband could acquire a certificate of divorce for just about any reason, including something as trivial as the wife burning the evening meal.
Bet Shammai, who followed the teachings of Rabbi Shammai, taught that a husband could only acquire a certificate of divorce for serious offenses, such as infidelity.
Jesus' instructions on divorce follow more closely the school of Bet Shammai; whereby divorce should only be permitted for very serious offenses (such as infidelity). Keep in mind, here, that under Jewish halacha it is the husband who presents the certificate of divorce to the wife; while there were (I believe) a way for which a woman could initiate a divorce, I believe it required going to court and the court mandating the husband present the wife with a certificate of divorce.
Jesus hearkens back to Adam and Eve, that the husband leaves mother and father to be joined to his wife, and the two become one flesh, thus Jesus teaches divorce was only permitted under Moses because of human stubbornness; and that the ideal is that what God has joined together let no man separate. But even still, infidelity is still reckoned as legitimate grounds for divorce.
The issue of remarriage becomes further complicated. Jesus says that whoever divorces his wife (except for infidelity) makes her commit adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. But let's look at this in the provided context: It was the husband's responsibility to get and deliver the certificate of divorce, and Jesus is speaking against the looseness with which many divorces happened (as per the interpretation of some rabbis of the time)--Jesus' point seems to be that such frivolous divorces are not truly legitimate. And so the husband is abandoning his wife, and the result is if the divorced woman remarries, it amounts to infidelity--it's a bad situation that nobody should find themselves in. Which is why St. Paul in his letters recommends that rather than divorce, husband and wife should separate for a time and work out their issues if possible.
So here's the question: Is divorce always wrong, and does divorce always mean no remarriage? I don't think so. For one, Jesus is clear that in the case of infidelity the divorce is legitimate, and no condemnation is mentioned against either for divorcing (and remarrying) under such circumstances in Lord's Sermon.
Further: Is infidelity the ONLY legitimate grounds? I would argue no, because the alternative would be to say that in abusive marriages the abused spouse must remain, and that is atrocious and completely out of line with the Lord's teaching and way. Infidelity is the most obvious, but isn't exclusively the only valid grounds for divorce. Rather, frivolous divorce is being condemned. And abuse is not frivolous, but deadly serious.
Here I would argue thus: That each individual case must be taken seriously, rather than attempting to apply some kind of fiat proscription, individual circumstances, the people involved, etc need to be taken into consideration--and this therefore, in the context of the Church, must be regarded as a pastoral issue. Where discretion, discernment, compassion, etc are used. Rather than divorce always being condemned, rather than remarriage always being condemned, the cases need to be dealt with on their own grounds. Because ultimately the goal should be the promotion of the good. The problem with fiat style pronouncements in these sorts of matters is that it ignores the circumstances and, worse, ignores the actual human persons involved. It treats the matter as a purely abstract moral question, and not an ethical question of actual human lives.
-CryptoLutheran
