Kurt Norlin responds to comments on his
earlier plea for understanding and dialogue
I appreciate the positive response to my
earlier letter. Maybe it is indeed a hopeful sign, as Pastor
McGarey suggested, that we can have an exchange like this. To
continue the dialogue, I'd like to reply to Pastor Anderson-Little's
letter, which raises a couple of issues.
First off, and briefly: I hadn't meant to contrast
Biblical standards with the idea of inclusion, as if inclusion weren't a
Biblical concept. It is a Biblical concept, and a central one.
The challenge for all of us is to be Biblically inclusive while at the
same time standing Biblically against sin.
Now about divorce and remarriage. Many conservatives do
have misgivings about appointing divorced and remarried persons to
positions of church leadership, precisely because of the Mark 10 passage
and similar passages in the other synoptic gospels (Mt 5 and 19, Lk 16),
and because of Paul's teaching (1 Co 7). I am sure that the PCUSA has
lost members over this issue. However, other conservatives have stayed
and, although some of them are privately uneasy, they are indeed not so
bent out of shape as to protest publicly. Why is that? It's hard for me
to speak for all conservatives on this point, but I'll do my best to
give a representative reply.
One reason relates to Biblical interpretation. I'm not
formally trained in exegesis, but I'll take a shot at laying out the
conservative view. Briefly, Biblical teaching seems less clear-cut on
divorce and remarriage than on homosexuality.
Divorce and remarriage are, after all, permitted under
the Law as communicated through Moses; see Dt 24 (also Lev 21, 22 and Nu
30). It is not God's ideal (that's Jesus' point in Mk 10) but the Old
Testament sets a precedent for making allowance for human weakness in
this particular area.
Some of Jesus' teaching on the topic, at least, seems
to involve hyperbole. In Matthew 5, Jesus says that a man who divorces
his wife makes her an adulteress! Since this follows
immediately after an exhortation to gouge out one's eyes and cut off
one's hand rather than fall into sin, it's reasonable to think that
Jesus is exaggerating for effect (or speaking figuratively, or whatever
we want to call this). Possibly there is a hyperbolic element
in play in other passages where Jesus describes divorced and remarried
persons as adulterers.
Jesus and Paul each refer to special circumstances
where apparently the strictures on divorce, and perhaps remarriage, are
looser. In Matthew, the circumstance is divorce on grounds of
infidelity. This exception isn't mentioned by Mark and Luke, but in
Matthew, at least, there is the suggestion that spousal infidelity
creates a special case of some sort. And in 1 Corinthians, Paul seems to
identify another kind of special case, namely divorces between a
believer and an unbeliever. The believer should try to keep the marriage
together, but if the unbeliever wants divorce, the believer "is not
bound." What this means isn't entirely clear, but there may
be an implication that the believer is not married in the sight of
God--in which case (re)marriage would be an option.
Finally, in every passage (even Mt 5), the focus of
moral judgment is on the one who initiates a divorce. There is little or
no suggestion that a person unwillingly divorced (the victim of the
divorce, if you will) is obligated to remain single thereafter.
And there is a second reason why conservatives who
stay in the PCUSA haven't generally drawn a line in the sand over the
ordination of divorced and remarried persons to positions of leadership.
Divorce and remarriage in one's past, even if they count as sinful
behavior, don't constitute ongoing sinful activity. What's done
is done. (Divorcing the new spouse would only compound the wrong.) By
contrast, I think that many conservatives would have reservations about
ordaining a person who recently divorced and remarried. I also
think a lot of conservatives would be less than eager to appoint someone
who, having divorced and remarried, made a point of regularly, publicly,
arguing that it was all right to do so. But on the other hand,
conservatives aren't eager to grill people about their marital
histories. Consequently, we might say (tongue only partly in cheek) that
in practice there's a sort of don't ask/don't tell policy: if a person
has divorce and remarriage in his or her past, then conservatives will
politely assume that either this wasn't sin (i.e., it was an exception
case, such as infidelity by the first spouse) or else it was a sin that
the person has recognized, repented of, and moved on from. This is the
same courtesy that should be (and, in my limited observation, is)
extended to persons who are known to have engaged in homosexual behavior
but now appear to be living faithfully in marriage or chastely in
singleness.
In closing, I want to make sure the point of my
argument is understood. Although I have been presenting the
"lenient" reading of the New Testament passages on divorce and
remarriage, I'm not completely sure that this is the right reading. Not
do I think most conservatives are sure. So I'm not arguing that divorce
and remarriage are all right. I'm not even arguing that although divorce
and remarriage are wrong, people who go through them can later be
deacons and elders. All I'm doing is laying out the considerations that
make the whole question complicated enough to keep conservatives from
going to the barricades. This question does indeed take one into
"the murky world of Biblical interpretation"; conservatives
see much more cloudiness here than on the homosexuality issue. I think a
lot of conservatives might express their feelings this way: yes, we've
kept the peace on divorce and remarriage, even though we may have
misgivings. But far from being encouraged to think that we should loosen
up about other things, too (like homosexuality), we're now all the more
on our guard against erosion of our denominations adherence to Biblical
morality.
I sense, behind the question about divorce and
remarriage, a suggestion that conservatives cut heterosexuals slack more
readily than they do homosexuals. I can't deny that it sometimes looks
that way, and I won't try to make excuses. It is a given that there will
be sin even on the side that is in the right on this issue, whichever
side that is. I also acknowledge that when the Biblical passages dealing
with homosexuality are scrutinized, complications arise there, too.
Complications arise whenever any text is
studied closely. The conservative view is just that there is a lot less
murkiness, less wiggle room, in the Biblical teaching on homosexuality
than in the teaching on divorce and remarriage.
Kurt Norlin
