Much of the church seems to make peace with divorce. Our congregations often fail to discipline even divorce that is clearly sinful (eg., when persons initiate divorce because of an adulterous affair which they want to continue).
It is wrong and inconsistent for the church to remain silent when divorce happens but then turn around and decry same-sex marriage.
Nonetheless, there are two short and simple reasons why this happens, reasons why congregations tend to view a same-sex couple as different from those who have divorced and remarried:
1. Few remarried couples stand up in a church and say “our divorces did not involve sin.” Even fewer suggest that the church needs to change its official stance that divorce is sin.
2. The church generally believes that the remarried couple is not continually committing the sin of adultery,
One pastor’s approach to divorce: when a couple’s marriage is broken, they should not seek divorce, but counseling. If counseling fails and if staying together is injurious, they may choose separation — though their failure to keep their covenant must be faced as sin needing forgiveness. If they choose divorce, now there is the (additional) sin of breaking their covenant. Can they be forgiven? He says yes. Can they remarry new partners? He again says yes, and adds: “Sexual relations would not be an act of continual sin.”
—John R. Martin, Divorce and Remarriage: A Perspective for Counseling (Herald Press 1974 & 1976) p40
but that the consummation of the second marriage is also an act which destroys the validity of the first marriage. Deuteronomy clearly implies that the first marriage is not still in effect after a remarriage: it gives an absolute prohibition against resuming the first marriage (24:1-4). Paul teaches that one abandoned by an unbelieving spouse is “not bound” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Jesus teaches that one can divorce (which implied remarriage in that culture) without sin when there is “marital unfaithfulness” (Matthew 5:32, 19:9). When a congregation does not believe that the remarried couple is “living in sin,” but believes that the same-sex couple is doing so, they will of course respond to the two couples differently.
There is a (complicated) way in which texts on same-sex practice and texts on divorce are analogous. However, this ends up arguing against same-sex marriage.
In Scripture we often see the people of God moving towards an ultimate ethic. Many Bible texts do not express an ultimate ethic but only incremental movement towards that ethic. For instance, texts on slavery show wide diversity: some seem to affirm the system of slavery and some seem to undercut it. We are seeing in these texts a journey toward the ultimate ethic regarding slavery, abolitionism. (Read more here on the Bible’s journey toward an ultimate ethic on slavery, war, women, etc.)
Sometimes ethical diversity within Scripture arises from another dynamic. In these cases the people of God already know (and have largely embraced) the ultimate ethic. The diversity comes from the people discerning exceptions to this ultimate ethic on a case by case basis. Here, divorce is an example. Matthew 19:3-6, Mark 10:11-12, and Luke 16:18 set forth the ultimate ethic: divorce and remarriage is wrong. Matthew relaxes that standard a bit, adding an exception: “except for sexual immorality” (5:31-32, 19:8-9). Paul in 1 Cor. 7:15 adds another exception: when an unbelieving spouse leaves, the believer is no longer bound. (This is Paul adding the exception: he says “I, not the Lord” after earlier saying “not I, but the Lord.”) We today add another exception: in the case of abuse. The exceptions are not new laws undercutting the ultimate ethic but examples of the church discerning of how to best live in a messed-up world where marriage covenants sometimes get irrevocably ended. When one party smashes a marriage beyond repair (e.g., by marrying another), Jesus and his church acknowledge it and don’t insist that the partner left behind live like they are still in that marriage.
Now let’s bring same-sex marriage into the picture. Are the biblical texts on homosexuality like the divorce texts (showing an ultimate ethic as well as allowing some exceptions)? Or are they like the texts on women and slavery (showing movement toward an ultimate ethic)?
If the former, then we know that God has already given the church the final word on same-sex relations: they are always unholy. The only question remaining which the church needs to grapple with is whether some forms of pastoral accommodation are needed, whether there are exceptions to this ethic against same-sex marriage that the church might discern on a case by case basis, as there is with divorce. (For instance, what about a recently converted lesbian couple who have children by adoption or in vitro fertilization?)
If the latter, then we know that the New Testament may not yet have given the church the ultimate ethic on homosexuality. Perhaps the church in that day was not ready for it yet; God realized that the struggle of sorting out this matter was a struggle for another time, that the people were still sorting through the implications of the Gospel for male/female, Jew/Gentile, and slave/free relations and weren’t ready to grapple with the matter of same-sex relationships.
So which is it?
The texts on same-sex practice might be like the texts on divorce (i.e., matters about which the people of God already know the ultimate ethic):
• At least, there are ways the biblical texts on homosexuality do not fit into the pattern of the texts on women and slavery. Those texts on slavery and women were less restrictive than the culture around them (i.e., the texts moved persons toward giving more freedom and value to slaves and women than the surrounding culture gave them). In contrast, the homosexuality texts were more restrictive than the Greco-Roman culture around them (i.e., the texts gave less freedom for same-sex relations than the surrounding culture gave).
• Here is a way to tell that a biblical ethical instruction is not showing an ultimate ethic: it no longer works in our contemporary world. For instance, if today’s farmers follow the instruction to not harvest the corners of their fields, it does not help the poor—if we follow that text today, we are no longer fulfilling the purpose of the text! But in our world today the homosexuality texts still work: we still today see lacks in gay and lesbian sex (eg. the pattern of a majority of committed male couples agreeing to allow outside sexual partners; the loss of same-sex couples having their bodies fit sexually, leading them to the search for substitutes for the opposite-sex plumbing, with accompanying risks; the loss of children in the same-sex household being able to grow up around both a man and a woman). In other words, the biblical texts on same-sex relations may be showing an ultimate ethic.
Even if the people of God in biblical times indeed did receive the ultimate ethic on same-sex relations (as they had on divorce), there’s still another question that needs to be resolved. Might the church be able to discern exceptions to this ultimate ethic on a case by case basis—as they did on divorce? (This would be Holben’s “Pastoral Accommodation.”) Those in the church who are theologically conservative hesitate to do this, because the New Testament church does not do this, and so Scripture cannot lead us in doing this. Nonetheless, we must acknowledge the possibility that the New Testament church was not ready for even a nudge toward any exceptions to the ultimate ethic on homosexuality, and that the Spirit of God had to wait until today to give us this nudge. That possibility is far from sure, however—the Greco-Roman world showed much openness to same-sex relations, which would have given the Spirit opportunity to lessen the ultimate prohibition against homosexuality for the New Testament church. Those in the church who are progressive also hesitate to take this stance. They want to see same-sex relations as a positive good that can be celebrated (Holben’s “Affirmation”) rather than an exception that might on occasion be allowed.