MARRIAGE DIVORCE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11254, 5 July 1922, Page 5

MARRIAGE DIVORCE

SCRIPTURAL TEACHINGS SEEMING DISCREPANCY IN BIBLICAL REFERENCES. BISHOP SPROTT’S VIEWS. The teachings of the Scriptures in regard to marriage and divorce were dealt with at some length by Bishop Sprott in the course of his opening address to the Anglican Synod yesterday afternoon. It was well known, or should be well Known, said His Lordship, that there was a seeming discrepancy between the account of our Lord's teaching on divorce as given in St. Matthew’s Gospel and that given in St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s. In St. Mark and St. Duke (St. Mark x. 2-12'; St. Luke xvi. IS) our Lord seemed to forbid divorce with re-marriage for any cause whatever, and to pronounce such re-mar-riage a breach of the Seventh Commandment. In St. Matthew’s Gospel an exception to this absolute indissolubility of the marriage bond was made twice over on the ground of conjugal infidelity, which seemed to imply that in such a case re-marriago was permissible (St. Matthew v. 22; xix. 3-9). He presumed that it was, in part, at least, due to this seeming discrepancythat there had been for ages, and was still, a divergence in the practice of the Church, the Eastern Church following St. Matthew in sanctioning divorce for infidelity, and consequently, re-marriage, the Western Church following St. Mark and St. Luke in refusing to sanction such divorce with re-marriage. In a sermon preached at Westminster Abbey tyvo years ago, Dr Charles, Archdeacon and Canon of Westminster, admitted that probably St. Mark’s account of Our Lord’s words regarding divorce was verbally more correct than St. Matthew’s. Our Lord did not- expressly state in so many words the exception given by St. Matthew, but he maintained that it was not necessary to do so, inasmuch as Our Lord’s immediate hearers would, as a matter of course, supply the exceptive clause from their own knowledge. VALIDITY OF MOSAIC LAW. Dr Charles held that Our Lord recognised the validity of the Mosaic law, which enacted that the adulterous wife and her paramour should be put to death. But there was another Mosaic law which did deal with divorce, and which was full of ambiguity. This permitted a man to divorce his wife if he “hath found some unseemly thing in her.” Anyone who carefully read S't. Matthew’s and St. Mark’s accounts of the discussion would agree with Dr Charles. Dr Sprott thought that St. Matthew’s account was, on the whole, much the clearer. VIEWS OF MARRIAGE. “This is not the time to attempt to expand fully the view of marriage implied in these words,” continued Dr Sprott. “But I must turn aside for a moment to give a hint as to its meaning, for here, I think, is to be found the fundamental difference between Our Lord’s conception of marriage and some prevalent modern notions on the subject. I suppose to many readers the words have seemed enigmatic. The reason, no doubt, i 3 that here, as elsewhero in the Gospels, we have not a full verbatim report of what was said, but shorthand notes, as it were, giving at most the salient points. This whole passage can be read in exactly one minute. It is incredible that not more was said on either side on one of the burning questions of the day. This is one reason why Our Lord’s teaching requires great concentration of thought, and is not to be grasped by the cursory reader. TO INTERDICT SEPARATION? “At first glance Our Lord’s argument seems wholly to rest upon the literal truth of the first and second chapters of Genesis. And, of course, even so, it would have been convincing to His immediate hearers, who unreservedly accepted their literal truth. But, like Our Lord’s other references to the Old Testament, His argument will be found to rest upon principles which are valid quite apart from the Old Testament. What, in effect, Our Lord does is to go behind all human enactments —back to man’s nature as that has been, through whatever process, constituted by the Creator. The creation of sex, and the structural unity which it produces between man and woman—a unity even closer than that of parent and child—will he seen. He suggests, when thought out in all its implications, to interdict separation. God has not only created this structural unity in the original creation of man, but He haa so written the law of it on man’s moral and rational nature that, normally, the holiest feelings and most solemn sanctions gather around it. But the unity itself does not consist in these feelings and sanctions, but underlies them. The act of joining together is said to be God’s, because the constitution which produces it is His. Divorce, on the other hand, is a matter of human legislation; and the human is not to set aside the Divine. Such seems to be the meaning of Our Lord's words, and it enables us to see just where modern notions diverge from His thought. In the modern mind the conception of marriage as a unity grounded in the nature of man’s constitution is being more and more forgotten; and marriage is becoming more and more to be regarded as a more legal status, dependent for its continuance on the sentiments of the individual and the decisions of courts. But sentiment, divorced from nature, becomes sentimentality, and sentimentality is forever shading off into the profoundly immoral., In the thought of Christ, on the other hand, marriage is an ordinance of nature. It is one of the primal facts of human life. The sexes complement one another as the two halves of one whole. It is time not the creature of law. Law can simply recognise and protect it.” ADULTERY ONLY.

St. Mark (continued Dr Sprott) omitted the exceptive clause, hut if Charles’s reasoning was correct, he had much warrant for saying the clause would have been tacitly supplied by all Our Lord’s immediate hearers. Such, then, was Christ’n decision on the burning question of the day. . . . Divorce for any carae less than adultery was not permissible. He excepted adultery, because, as the law of adultery showed, adultery in itself broke the tie whioh no court could break. All that the court did in that case was formally and publicly to record the breach already made, and to impose flic appointed penalty. When that offence had been committed, freedom to re-marr.v would seem to follow. Tt was one thing to solemnise with the rites of (>.-> Church t.lin marriage of an

innocent and much-injured person, and quite another and different matter to solemnise with the rites of the Church the re-marriage of the guilty party who had given no evidence of repentance, and, indeed, could give no evidence of repentance, save by abstaining from marriage altogether. The third resolution of the Lambeth Conference virtually took the position which they themselves had taken, namely, that Governments could not be called upon to impose by law the Christian standard of marriage upon citizens, many of whom did not recognise the authority af that standard; but it claimed that in the interests of moral progress the Church in every country should he free to bear witness to that standard. He did not think that the Government of New Zealand, as at present constituted, seriously contemplated interfering with that freedom.