Jesus On Divorce

Adultery is not the only Biblical justification for divorce, but it is by far the most familiar one to many Christians.  In Matthew 19:8-9, Jesus states that adultery is grounds for divorce, and since many Christians are more familiar with the often vague moral commands (apart from Mosaic Law) of the New Testament than they are with the clearer details of the Old Testament, Matthew 19's teachings on divorce are all that they are aware of.  For those who are familiar with more than just what Jesus says about divorce, his comments may appear to contradict what Yahweh already specified about divorce in Mosaic Law.

Exodus 21:10-11, for example, explicitly allows divorce in cases of certain kinds of abuse or neglect.  Deuteronomy 24:1-4 also addresses the subject, but it does not actually encourage or permit divorce in any particular scenario; it only says that to remarry someone after divorcing them and after they have been subsequently divorced by another spouse is sinful.  However, even Exodus 21's treatment of other criteria besides infidelity is outside the scope of what Jesus claims in Matthew 19, where Jesus seems to insist that only adultery justifies divorce.

Moreover, it is also worth clarifying that when Jesus speaks of adultery, he is not talking about permissible, nonsinful things like masturbating to someone of the opposite gender other than one's spouse, as these acts are neither adulterous nor sinful unless a person is motivated by a desire to betray their spouse.  Jesus is referring to having extramarital intercourse while married, which is all that Mosaic Law condemns when it addresses adultery.  It is ultimately Mosaic Law that many aspects of the Biblical stance on divorce reduce down to, not the words of Jesus, and Leviticus 20:10 plainly says to execute adulterers and adulteresses.

If a society actually adhered to Biblical morality, there would be far fewer opportunities for divorce on grounds of adultery: adulterous spouses would be put to death!  The divorce allowances Jesus clarifies here--and there are others in Exodus 21 and 1 Corinthians 7, the former of which was already mentioned--are optional for the offended party at best if one spouse commits adultery or rapes his or her partner.  Carrying out the command of Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 to execute people for adultery would leave no place for spouses to merely divorce each other instead except as a supererogatory act of mercy.

Jesus does not contradict Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22 when he permits divorce from an adulterous spouse.  If he completely replaced a core aspect of Yahweh's moral revelation in the Old Testament with a new, inherently exclusive one, he would have contradicted Mosaic Law.  The core components of Mosaic Law encompass all of the legal penalties for specific crimes and allowances for things like divorce, meaning that a God whose moral attributes never change, as Malachi 3:6 says, will not endorse a dramatically different stance on the very same issue.

Leviticus 20:10 and Matthew 19:8-9 only seem incongruent in a non-theonomist framework, which is antithetical to Christian theology.  If the conclusion evangelicals come to about this passage--that Matthew 19:8-9 supercedes Leviticus 20:10 and Exodus 21:10-11--was true, God's core moral character would have changed, which clearly contradicts foundational parts of Biblical Christianity.  This is not an internal contradiction precisely because Matthew 19:8-9 would not even apply if outright commands in earlier parts of the Bible were not disregarded.