DIVORCE & REMARRIAGE IN THE CHURCH
By David Instone-Brewer
Paternoster Press. 203 pages. £8.99
ISBN 1 84227 180 6
This is a popular version of the more substantial academic volume Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible by the same author, published by Eerdmans. Dr. Instone-Brewer has served as a Baptist pastor and is keen to apply his biblical research to the practical situations of church life. Any church leader who has faced the challenge of marital break-up, divorce, or remarriage in his congregation will welcome this useful contribution to the current debate.
The central thesis of the author is that we need to re-read the NT teaching on divorce (particularly the passages in the gospels) in the light of first-century Judaism. It was commonly understood amongst the religious leaders of the time (claims the author) that there were four established grounds of divorce. The first was adultery (which is affirmed by the words of Christ). The other three were the failure of the husband to provide his wife with proper food, clothing, and conjugal love; these were well-established from the case law in Exodus 21 about the obligations of a husband to his slave wife - and if his slave wife was entitled to expect these things, then how much more the free wife.
