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Introduction
In the small bit of free airtime I have, I often fill it with the Michael Knowles show from the Daily Wire. I am no rabid fanboy of his show, nor the broader Wire cast, but I have a duty to fill myself in on their perspective because so many I know are more or less tilted toward the rabid fanboy end of the spectrum and Knowles is the easiest for me to tolerate. I appreciate his unashamed implementation of his Roman Catholicism into his politics, unlike some of the other Daily Wire hosts who tend toward a secularist style of conservatism. However, I was listening to an episode today (episode 1162) when a serious issue arose that gave me enough of a conniption to sit down and put my fingers to keyboard over it. And so here we are.
The Issue
Knowles was covering a story a bit over halfway through his show regarding a young police officer who had committed adultery with six of her coworkers. The husband had decided to try and save the marriage, and Knowles agreed with this decision to the (anticipated by him) shock of his audience. His reasoning? Knowles argued for what is often called the permanence view of marriage; namely, that there are never any grounds for a legitimate divorce.
While he made his case based primarily upon the more conservative, traditional strain of Roman Catholicism, he also began to incorporate what are thoroughly theologically liberal arguments. He brought up the Matthew 19 text, anticipating objections, and argued that because of the porneia exception being excluded from the other gospel accounts, the supposed ambiguity of what porneia refers to, and the absence of it from Paul’s epistles, then we should not consider there to be any valid biblical grounds for divorce.
This got my attention immediately: do any of these arguments sound familiar to you? These are the exact kind of arguments, in their structure, used by liberal interpreters to arrive at the conclusion that homosexuality is not counted as sinful in the Bible. It often goes like this: “Well, we find no mention of it in the gospels, the word itself is too ambiguous in its meaning, or does not at all, refer to homosexuality, and it only appears a few times in the Bible anyways so it must not be of importance!” A comparable structure and style of reasoning is found in Knowles’ arguments: Absence from Pauline epistles (paralleled with absence from Jesus in the liberal argument), ambiguity in the language, and it only appears one time.
Right after arguing for the permanence of marriage, Knowles proceeds into an ad read for the Daily Wire’s razor company, and plays a clip of their famous (or infamous) ad video wherein Jeremy Boreing rolls around with scantily clad women on each arm. The former caught my attention, but the latter spurred me to my desk to write this piece.
The Conniption
I will not, in this article at least, give you my full case against the permanence view of marriage. While I think Knowles certainly failed in his arguments to establish it, others in evangelical circles who hold the permanence view have at least attempted to reckon with the Matthew text in a more honest, and exegetical, fashion. I also will not be refuting Knowles’ major arguments, for I think they handle themselves quite readily in the parallels I provided above. I will refer the reader to the following two works on marriage for a defense of valid biblical cases of divorce that accurately summarize my current view on the subject: Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible by Jay E. Adams, and Divorce and Remarriage in the Church by David Instone-Brewer.
It is not my purpose here to reckon with the best arguments for the permanence view, nor to critique it, nor to establish my own view. Rather, I wanted to show how the permanence view can be wielded to justify what I am calling no fault porneia. How is it that five seconds prior to putting forth to his audience a picture of masculinity and success that entails porneia, Knowles could with a straight face argue for a permanence view of marriage?
On a permanence view of marriage, a husband or wife can engage in this no fault porneia with no substantial (temporal) consequences when it comes to the marriage itself. Sure, the other spouse may become miserable, the children embittered, but they are stuck with the offending spouse/parent if a permanence view is held by both parties and their pastor. No counsel will be given to consider a full break of the covenant, even though one party has already abandoned it entirely. Maybe, as Knowles mentioned in the case of abuse, a separation will be recommended, but since there is no physical violence happening this will likely not happen.
And so a family is stuck in limbo, awaiting a miracle or an end to the misery through the death or incapacitation of the offending spouse or, in the case of the children, coming of age to leave the home. In the same way in which a permanence view can create a kind of no fault abuse, there are at least civil authorities who might intervene in such a situation. In the case of no fault porneia, no such rescue is available, at least not in our current point in history. Maybe church discipline is enacted up to the excommunication of the offending spouse, but this again leaves the family with no recourse to escape their situation.
The Point
To be clear, the possible consequences of a view when put into the hands of sinful men is not necessarily an argument for its falsehood. I would encourage all who read this to consider the inconsistencies in some of the so-called conservative movement when it comes to their arguments for these positions, how in many cases the positions are built on the same sand their opponents build their positions on.
As Christians, we ought to build every position we have, political or otherwise, on the all sufficient Word rightly handled. I would recommend a read of the books I mentioned earlier for what I think is a proper structuring of a biblical view on divorce, and to be equipped to reason with whomever, liberal or conservative, you might encounter who opposes it.
For the sake of preserving the great end of marriage as an image of the gospel in Christ’s covenant faithfulness to His bride, we ought not to seek to preserve marriages which abominate that image, but instead use the kind tools God has granted because of the hardness of our hearts. May we preserve marriages at all costs, but it takes two to covenant together and preserve a marriage, and for those who do not repent and seek the forgiveness of God and their spouse a divorce may be biblically necessary for the sake of peace and the preservation of the witness to the gospel.
Men, be faithful to your wives, and do not seek the no fault porneia that the world, even the ‘conservative’ one, offers to you.
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