The theological implications of Ben Mayes’ position
Mayes Quotes are from the video “What Does the Bible REALLY Say About Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage? (w/ Dr. Benjamin Mayes),” from the @javierperd2604 youtube channel.
Jesus’ phrase “commits adultery” is explained by Dr. Mayes: “to get remarried is a state of life that is going to include adultery; adultery is with a married person outside of the marriage.” This is very close to the Roman sacramental view of marriage in that adultery does not break the one-flesh bond; indeed, it cannot be broken according to its mandates but only by God (leaving annulment aside). The person continuing in the remarriage is said to be effectively “shacking up” or “living together” by Mayes. It is the “exact same thing; that is the way God is seeing this.”
However, Jesus does not explicitly state this; it is merely assumed. Our Lord does not use any ongoing or specific words that indicate a state of adultery. Mayes compares divorce to theft. What does the repentant thief do? Return the item. It is strange to compare a union of two people, since marriage requires consent, to an item that has no willingness or unwillingness. In reality it is more like ice cream—an item that cannot necessarily be returned once consumed or ruined. There is no one-flesh union that theft breaks. Adultery is very different than theft, since the Lord does the uniting in marriage.
The issue is that this permanent conception of the marriage union, unbreakable even by adultery, denies what Christ actually says, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6). Man can separate a marriage. But he should not and has no permission to do so. Divorce is sin, but God’s work is separated routinely in this world. But legislating that remarriages be broken up increases divorce, at least legally and practically.
Mayes contends, “What the Lord says in present tense ‘is committing adultery.’ The present tense very often has an ongoing sense.” “Very often” is not always, nor is it conclusive enough to build a theology off the tense of one word. To declare marriages thought valid by all as ongoing unrepentant sin, the burden of proof is very high. It is a very weak argument.
So then married intercourse is called adultery, intercourse with someone else’s spouse or not one’s own “real spouse.” “So it’s literal adultery.” Mayes insists it is not the entering of another marriage that is adultery, but “it’s the state of being remarried.” Jesus does not say that remarriage is “a continual sinful lifestyle,” nor are these remarriages required to be broken up.
Of course, unlike some fringe protestants, Mayes leaves exceptions for remaining in adulterous marriages as a lesser evil. But if any remarriage is truly living in a state of unrepentance, it cannot be allowed, nor should Communion ever be offered to anyone continuing in impenitence.
What is a committed legal remarriage that has existed for years (while a former spouse still lives)? Does the Church have the authority to declare legal, civil marriages that all parties believe are true marriages null? This is what Rome does, desiring to usurp civil authority, but the Lutheran position has been that God makes marriage, while government regulates it, though human laws cannot redefine or expand the Lord’s institution. The Church speaks God’s Word to consciences; it should not imitate the government to become a rule-making body over civil affairs.
Mayes insists that “A forbidden marriage is not a marriage.” Therefore, remarriage in this understanding is much like a ‘homosexual marriage,’ which is never valid. But the classical Lutheran position is that remarriage is a one-time act of adultery that breaks the former bond of marriage and establishes a new union. That speaks only to the reality of the new one-flesh bond, not whether either one is repentant. I wrote previously: “Remarriage means a previous one-flesh bond, God’s own work, is broken, so it always entails adultery, no matter how unfair to man. Once a new marital bond is established in valid marriage, a new one-flesh union has been established by God and should be respected.”
It is no surprise that Mayes’ solution turns the church into a lawmaker and human arbiter of great complexity to potentially disrupt families, rather than simply the mouth of God, which proclaims His Word. Even Mayes’ solution is full of exemptions and difficulties, which show that marriage is a practical good and a natural estate of God, which preserves from sin and establishes His good order. A Christian is to honor marriage as God’s calling.
Evidence to the Contrary
“Adultery is therefore not a breach of contract, not personal harm inflicted upon the partner, not a formal violation of the law, but destruction of the divinely fashioned one-flesh reality. Elert, The Christian Ethos, 90.
Chemnitz speaks about the forbidding of remarriage according to church laws:
No, they have many causes [to make it a sacrament], namely, that matrimonial matters may be subject only to ecclesiastical judges in order that they may be able to impose their prohibitions and their implementation as snares on the consciences of men; that they may sell dispensations all the more dearly; that it may not be permitted to the innocent party after a divorce again to contract marriage permitted by divine right …because second marriages are really a kind of fornication and prostitution. (Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent II:729.)
The status of remarriage as “fornication and prostitution” is exactly what Mayes is claiming. He is upholding the evil of divorce, but in this defense he defaces those in real marriages desiring to be faithful to God’s will. It is a grave error to call sin what our Lord does not. Repentance is a state that man cannot fully judge, nor is action always able to be carried out to demonstrate it conclusively, since it is before God and enabled by His Spirit.
Marriage is a natural order. The church is not a legislative body to decide based on its own man-made rules who can marry. “… marriage belongs to the natural order of creation and not to the order of redemption in Christ” (Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther, 89). “God’s work can be put asunder, that is, broken. Adultery does break the divinely created bond of marriage.”
Theodore Laetsch, “Malicious Desertion,” CTM 4:3 (1933)
Though the marriage has been broken in a manner utterly displeasing to God, though the departing unbeliever will be called to account by the Lord, yet the Supreme Legislator in these matters declares the deserted spouse to be no longer under bondage (199).
… adultery, [is] the sin of breaking the marriage bond and severing it in a manner forbidden by God, Matt. 19, 9 (200).
If that is made impossible because the deserted spouse has remarried or refuses to resume marital relations with the deserted (and she has the right to do so, 1 Cor. 7, 15), then of course the congregation cannot insist on the return of the deserter to his former spouse, but must be satisfied with the confession of, and apology for, his desertion (202).
Divorce and Remarriage: An Exegetical Study, CTCR, 1987:
If the permanent commitment of marriage is referred to as establishing an “indissoluble union,” this should not be understood to mean that marriage cannot be dissolved. A covenant relationship can, through the unfaithfulness of either or both covenant partners, be broken. God’s command is that it must not be broken. … “Nor does he [Jesus] speak of indissolubility, which means literally ‘impossibility of being dissolved.’ Jesus does not say the union cannot be dissolved; He says “What God has joined together, let no man separate.’ Indeed, the prohibition itself implies that it can be sundered” (11).
It is significant that Jesus quotes the Septuagint rendering when He states, “and the two shall become one flesh.” The insertion of the word “two” accents the fact that something completely new is created by the sexual union (11).
Thus, by its very nature the one flesh union cannot tolerate the intrusion of a third party (12)
The spouse who divorces his/her partner on the grounds of porneia [sexual immorality] does not by that act cause the partner to become adulterous; the partner has already committed an adulterous act and sundered at the deepest level what God has joined together (25).
Thus, as marriage may be destroyed by the procurement of divorce, so may unchastity on the part of a spouse lead to the severance of the marital union (25).
