Another argument on the interpretation of Matthew 5:32 and 19:9

Mark (10:11-12) and Luke (16:18) have rather simple and straightforward statements on divorce and remarriage: if you divorce and remarry, you’re in adultery. A standard interpretation is the Strict View:

• (SV) Divorce does not actually remove the marriage, and so if you remarry, you’re still married to the previous party, and hence are committing adultery.

It’s usual in the Christian tradition to restrict this to consummated Christian marriage, and I will take that for granted.

However, Matthew has a more complex set of prohibitions:

• Matthew 5:32: Anyone who divorces his wife, except on account of porneia, makes her commit adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

• Matthew 19:9: Anyone who divorces his wife, except due to porneia, and marries another commits adultery.

There are several puzzles here. First, unlike in Mark and Luke, we have exceptions for porneia, a generic term for sexual immorality. There are two main interpretations of this exception:

1. Except when the wife has committed sexual immorality (most commonly, adultery).

2. Except when the “marriage” constitutes sexual immorality.

Reading (1) supports the Less Strict View:

• (LSV) Except when your spouse has committed adultery, divorce does not actually remove the marriage, and so if you remarry, you’re still married to the previous party, and hence are committing adultery.

Reading (2) is based on the observation that not every legal marriage is genuinely a marriage: the Romans, for instance, might have allowed a couple to marry despite their being too closely related from the Christian point of view. In such a case, their “marriage” is not a real marriage but incest, a form of sexual immorality, and divorce is not only permissible, but a very good idea. Note that on reading (2), we can but need not suppose that Jesus verbally included the exception—the inspired author might have added it for clarification because the issue came up for converts, much as we put things in square brackets within a quote to clarify the author’s meaning (there were no brackets in Greek, of course).

Reading (2) has the advantage that it explains how all three Gospels can be inspired, even though Mark and Luke have unqualified statements of SV, since on reading (2) it is true that divorcing one’s wife and remarrying is never permitted, but it is permissible, of course, to divorce one’s partner in an immoral sexual relationship that non-Christian society may call “marriage”. Note that the Greek for “his wife” can literally just mean “his woman”, which makes the disambiguation especially appropriate.

But I want to turn towards a different and more complex argument for SV. Notice that in Matthew 5:32, instead of us being told that the man who divorces his wife (or woman) commits adultery, we are oddly told that he makes her commit adultery. But being a betrayed spouse does not constitute adultery! What’s going on? Well, the good interpretations that I’ve seen note that the social context is a society where it is very difficult to be a woman without a husband. There will thus be significant social pressure to marry or become a concubine, either of which would constitute adultery against the first husband. The realities of the day were such that very likely she would succumb to the pressure, and the first husband would have caused her to commit adultery, and thereby he would have earned himself something worse than a millstone about the neck (Matthew 18:6). This reading also nicely explains why Matthew 5:32, unlike the three other texts, does not mention the man marrying another. For the woman is going to be exposed to the social pressure to join herself to another man whether or not her (first) husband marries another.

Note that this reading of “makes her commit adultery” prima facie works on both readings of the porneia exception. On the reading where the porneia is the wife’s adultery against her husband, obviously if she is already committing adultery, by divorcing her he isn’t making her commit adultery. On the reading where the porneia is constituted by the immorality of the first “marriage”, because the woman wasn’t really married to the man, if she goes and marries another, she isn’t committing adultery.

Nonetheless, there is a serious problem for this reading of “makes her commit adultery” on the Less Strict View and reading (1). While Matthew 5:32 does not talk of the man marrying another, often the man will marry another. So now imagine this story. There is a valid marriage between Alice and Bob with no adultery, but Bob divorces Alice, and marries Charlene. At this point, Bob is committing adultery against Alice on both SV and LSV. Thus, if LSV is correct, then Alice is entitled to divorce Bob and marry another, say Dave. But if she avails herself of this, she isn’t committing adultery. In other words, if LSV is correct, in many cases the first wife will be able to avoid committing adultery without going against social pressures: she need only wait for her first husband to marry, and then the “except on account of porneia” clause on interpretation (1) frees her (and since he’s already legally divorced her, she doesn’t need to do any legal paperwork). (Of course, there will still be less common cases where she is stuck, namely when the man fails to remarry. But such a case wouldn’t be the rule, and Matthew 5:32 implies that leading the woman to adultery is the rule rather than an exception.)

On SV, the problem for the reading of “makes her commit adultery” entirely disappears. Whether or not the man remarries, there is social pressure for the divorced wife to marry, and in doing so, she would be committing adultery against the man.

Interestingly, there is a historically represented view that avoids the Strict View, allows our interpretation of “makes her commit adultery” and avoids the above interpretative problem, namely the quite awful Asymmetric View:

• (AV) A woman is not permitted to remarry after a divorce, whether or not the first husband committed adultery against her, but a man is permitted to remarry after a divorce if, and only if, the first wife committed adultery against him.

Additionally, AV also explains why neither of the texts in Matthew has an exception for porneia in the “anyone who marries a divorced woman” clause, a minor weak point for LSV. (On SV and reading (2) of porneia, we just note that one need not repeat a parenthetical clarification every time.)

In fact, while there was controversy in the early centuries of Christianity over remarriage and divorce following adultery, I understand that it was mainly a controversy between advocates of SV and AV, not between advocates of SV and LSV. However, AV was rightly lambasted by St. Jerome for being sexist, and I assume almost nobody wants to defend it now.

Thus to sum up my argument for SV:

1. One of SV, AV and LSV is true, as they are the historically plausible Christian views on marriage.

2. The right interpretation of “makes her commit adultery” is the social pressure interpretation.

3. This interpretation is incompatible with LSV.

4. AV is false.

5. Therefore, SV is true.

A method for testing definitions

I have a new method for testing definitions. Read a definiens to someone, out of context, and ask her what she thinks the definiendum is. If she doesn't come up with something pretty close to the definiendum, you've got reason to think the definition is bad.

One can also do this as a thought experiment, though it's probably less effective that way. What does "justified true belief with no false lemmas" define? Answer: nothing other than justified true belief with no false lemmas. (Maybe you were trying to define knowledge?) What does "Sex between two people at least one of whom is married and who are not married to each other" define? Answer: adultery. (Right!)

Adultery, fornication and marital relations

Start with this intuition: all adulterous actions are intrinsically wrong. Therefore, any action that is intrinsically just like an adulterous action is also wrong. Now the intrinsic character of a successful action is defined by the intentions or action plan—by what the end is and how it is intended to be achieved. Many cases of adultery do not, however, involve an intention to commit adultery. Sam knows that sex with Suzy would be adulterous, but he need not intend the sex qua adulterous. He might intend it qua pleasant or qua unitive-with-Suzy. The distinction is important. There are cases of adultery where there is an intention to commit adultery as such, as when Sam intends to make Suzy's husband a cuckold or make his own wife jealous. Such malicious cases are, ceteris paribus, morally worse than run-of-the-mill adultery done for the sake of pleasure or union.

Thus the intentions in run-of-the-mill adultery are the same as those in typical cases of fornication—to share pleasure with this person, to unite with this person, etc. If adultery is intrinsically wrong, so will these typical cases of fornication be. (And I don't think there are any atypical permissible cases of fornication, either.)

Moreover, so will cases of sexual activity within marriage when the intentions are the same kinds of intentions that typical adulterers and fornicators have. Thus, if Sam's intention is simply to share pleasure with Tamara, he is doing intrinsically the same thing as when he commits adultery with Suzy, even if Tamara happens to be his wife and Suzy doesn't. Thus, if there is to be an intrinsic difference between marital activity and adultery, the marital activity must involve intentions that adulterers cannot have, properly marital intentions such as to unite maritally with Tamara or at least to share pleasure with his own wife, Tamara. It is clear, thus, that it is possible to do something that is relevantly like adultery with one's spouse. Is this why, perhaps, when Jesus said that the man who looks lustfully at a woman has committed adultery with her in heart, he did not limit his remarks to the case of the married man or the married woman? Taking his remarks literally, to look lustfully at one's spouse is to commit adultery with her in the heart. Lust is an essentially non-marital attitude.

Now, for every possible kind of action, there are negative conditions that the intentions have to satisfy. For instance, so that a financial transaction, a hammering of a nail, a drinking of a cup of coffee, a sexual act or an act of teaching be permissible, it must not be done for a malicious ulterior end. However, sexual relations, unlike the hammering of a nail, must satisfy a positive condition on their intentions to be permissible. The intentions must be marital—of a sort that could not be satisfied outside of a marriage.

It is sometimes said that there is something wrong with a couple that stays together only because of their marriage vows rather than because they like each other. Be that as it may, if my above are right, there is something wrong with a couple that stays sexually together only because they like each other. The fact of being married needs to enter into their reasons.

More on lying

As per my previous post, the two main accounts of the wrongfulness of lying are that what is wrong is insincerity—saying something that one doesn't believe—and that what is wrong is false-telling. Here is another argument against the insincerity account, and hence in favor of the false-telling account. However, I will end by offering yet another account of the wrong in lying, which has significant attractiveness.

Case 1: You are the manager of a motel and you hate the owner. Consequently, you always put up a "no vacancy" sign when you have a vacancy and a "vacancy" sign when you don't, in order to ensure the motel not only does not get much custom, but gains ill-will among travelers. Plainly, you are lying by putting up the sign, and both the false-telling and insincerity accounts condemn your action. You are wronging not only your employer, but also wronging readers of the sign and not just by inconvenience. The action is made wrong by that which makes lying wrong.

Case 2: You are employed by a motel, and you install a computerized sign, linked to the motel's occupancy computer system. You program the computer system to post "no vacancy" when there is a vacancy and otherwise to post "vacancy." You do this with the same motives as the manager in case 1.

I don't think there is a significant moral difference between cases 1 and 2. But in case 2, we cannot analyze the deceitful sign in terms of insincerity. Granted, when the sign says "vacancy", you don't have a belief that there is a vacancy. But even had you programmed the sign to be correct, it might well be the case that you or anyone else would have a belief that there is a vacancy when the sign says "vacancy"—the computer has the information, and maybe no human does. So the fact taht you don't have the belief that there is a vacancy when the sign says "vacancy" is not the reason you've done wrong. Since in case 1, the action is, inter alia, made wrong by that which makes lying wrong, we have to say the same about case 2.

The false-telling account handles case 2 fairly easily. While it is not quite the case that you're asserting that there is or is not a vacancy, you are the person responsible for the correctness of the communication, the one who is being trusted by the reader. (That "vacancy" is not a sentence in standard English is clearly irrelevant, as it means something like that tThere is a vacancy at this establishment.) The false-telling account can be extended to say that one should not make oneself responsible for the correctness of a false communication. The precise sense of "responsible for its correctness" needs some more clarification—an interesting project—but it is plausible that there is a univocal sense of responsibility for correctness present in cases 1 and 2.

I suppose the best bet of the defender of the insincerity account is to modify the account to be conditional: One should not make oneself responsible for a communication's correctness (say, by causing that communication to be produced) when one does not believe that the communication would in fact be correct.

However, it now occurs to me that there is a third account of the wrong in lying, differing from the insincerity and false-telling accounts. This is the intention account. On this account, one is only permitted to make oneself responsible for a communication's correctness when intending that communication to be correct. What is nice about this account is that it handles the counterexamples to the insincerity account, both from this and the previous post. For instance, when one says a German sentence which one believes to express a truth that one does not believe, one is intending to make a correct communication. Likewise, when one makes a prediction that is only going to be true if one speaks (say, the statement: "I am saying the difficult word 'supercilious'"), one is intending to make a correct communication. And finally in the crooked computer programmer case, one is not intending to make oneself responsible for a correct communication.

In fact, the intention account is superior to the false-telling account and to the conditionally-modified insincerity account in the computer programmer case. Suppose the programmer is not crooked, and does things correctly, but knows that sometimes the computer memory will malfunction and misinform the code that controls the sign as to the hotel's vacancy status. On the false-telling account, the programmer has done wrong when such malfunction happens—she has caused a false communication in a way that makes her responsible for its correctness (computers aren't responsible, so all the responsibility flows back to the programmer). On the conditional insincerity account, the programmer knew that sometimes there would be a malfunction, and so she caused a communication that she believed would be incorrect—not specifically, though, but as part of a set of communications. So both of these accounts seem to make the innocent programmer who knows about the likeliness of screwups a wrongdoer.

One might bite the bullet and say that she's inculpably doing wrong, but the intention account is much neater: While she foresees that she will be correctness-responsible for a communication that is false, she does not intend that. She intends the communications to be correct, and regrets the times when they won't be.

My previous post's analogy with adultery then suggests the following moral rule: A married person is only permitted to have sexual relations when the intention is to have sexual relations with the spouse. This has the interesting, and I believe importantly correct, consequence that it is wrong for a married person to have sexual relations in which the fact that the other person is their spouse is deliberationally irrelevant, and wrong in the way adultery is. It would be equivalent to adultery for a married woman to intend to have sex with the nearest attractive person, even if that nearest attractive person were the spouse (unless "attractive" is understood in a way that makes the spousal status be a part of the attraction). This is closely related to John Paul II's remark that it is wrong to lust after one's spouse.

This may, in turn, suggest an argument against pre-marital sex. If pre-marital sex is permissible, then it seems plausible that the couple who are married could intend to have sex with one another in the same way in which they had intended it when they were not married. In other words, it would be permitted for them to intend to have sex without intending marital sex. But on the above account of adultery, it is required that the married couple intend marital sex, and hence it is very plausible that sex without that intention is wrong simpliciter.