GOD’S DIVORCE:
Understanding New Testament divorce and
remarriage teaching
By Dr Colin Hamer
Faithbuilders. 156 pages. £10.99
ISBN 978 1 910 942 789
This is fascinating and helpful book, which is warmly commended by the fine New Testament scholar, Craig L. Blomberg as ‘the best and most thorough treatment of this topic now available’. That is high praise!
I found it particularly helpful in showing that the Bible begins with a marriage (Adam and Eve) and ends with a marriage (The Lamb and his bride the church), so that God’s intention for marriage is a central theme of the Bible. This is reinforced by drawing attention to a key OT picture – ‘Your maker is your husband’ (Isaiah 54.5) which is particularly developed in Hosea.
Genesis 2
Two key exegetical points underpin the first book. The being that Genesis 2.23, describing the particular marriage of Adam and Eve is not connected to Genesis 2.24 which describes ‘ordinary’ everyday marriage. The author thinks the idealisation of the first marriage causes us not to properly understand what the Bible teaches about marriage. This I find totally unconvincing as there is a ‘therefore’ between the two verses!
Exodus 22
The second key exegetical point is to draw attention to the teaching about the marriage rights of women slaves in Exodus 22 which, it is argued, is how the Rabbis understood women’s marriage rights generally, and is the key to understanding Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce in the Gospels. This takes a bit of getting your head around, but is helpful to an extent. Where it is less than helpful is that in the section of application to present-day circumstances, it leads the author to make divorce a possibility on too many grounds in my view – lack of care and provision generally.
This undermines the good teaching of the book that rightly sees marriage as a covenant not to be easily broken, and one that can, I believe, really only be reluctantly broken on the grounds of adultery, or desertion of that covenant by abandonment or cruelty.
Happier
The author’s position follows on from, and is dependent on the new research work of David Instone-Brewer, which, despite its helpfulness argues too much at key points on the basis of too little, according to Andreas J. Kostenberger. The latter’s book God, Marriage and Family is the ‘must have’ book on this subject. I am happier with his careful and thoroughly worked out biblical position, which is mirrored by the older but wise work of Jay Adams, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage. Despite the helpfulness and stimulation of Hamer’s work these are both, for me, a safer pair of hands on this very important subject.
