A Simple Way to Understand Clergy Divorce
The Sixth Commandment and the Preaching Office: why shame is salutary for adulterous pastors.
Lutherans pride themselves on standing on the plain meaning of a text. Unfortunately, when it comes to issues of the Sixth Commandment, our pastoral reasoning very often slides from casuistry into evasion, rendering otherwise clear Scripture entirely opaque.
A pastor’s divorce1 is one example in which the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) has something of a policy, but it is unevenly applied. There are cases, too many, where adulterous men persist in the preaching office despite Scripture forbidding it, even if the overseers are lax. It is amplified among the laity, where divorce and remarriage are not as rare as they should be. Likewise, there are too many examples of pastors defrocked for adultery still fringing pulpits as pseudo-shepherds because they believe they are too indispensable to the world to sit silently in the pew.
Without diminishing the traumatic impact of divorce on its victims, the Bible is clear that pastors (only biological males) may only have one wife (only biological females). Below is a flowsheet that should eliminate any confusion about the outcomes when a pastor’s marriage fails and ends in divorce.
Clergy divorce flowsheet
The salutary benefit of shame
One of the reasons for Missouri’s struggle with Sixth Commandment issues is the perilous antinomian line we tread when the doctrine of justification is abused. We are definitely too quick to forgive and forget; to apply the “soothing balm of the gospel” when the pastor who violates his marital vows is eventually exposed.
We should not rush into coddling adulterous pastors because it is an incentive to premeditated repentance. Of course, confession and absolution are to be available, but let the salutary benefits of shame work out, ideally at a very great distance from the family, friends, congregation, and institutions they have damaged in the scandal.
In our therapeutic culture, shame is viewed negatively. However, it yields constructive outcomes when exercised, Scripturally, for remorse, restitution, rehabilitation, and reform. That process should be managed in silence and out of sight over a long period. The last thing the church needs is performative communal processing of shame and the rapid reintegration that results from misguided and misapplied ‘gospelly’ empathy. Indeed, we should be highly suspicious of pastors who do not process their shame in distant, prolonged solitude. Not exiled, just managed extremely judiciously with equal doses of law and gospel.
The preaching office doesn’t require chaste behavior because of antiquarian moralism, but as the very mystery and witness that Christ’s Church remains His spotless bride.
Men tend to accuse wives of malicious abandonment (refusing conjugality), while women tend to accuse husbands of abuse (especially the “emotional” sort). Well, pastors, if you are suffering in your marriage, it is just one more burden of many that you vowed, at your ordination, to bear (1 Peter 2: 19-25). Wives, unless genuine danger is present, bear the cross faithfully and patiently. The vocation of marriage demands long-suffering from both husband and wife, as each endures the other’s weakness for Christ’s sake.
Perhaps I'm too harsh and emphasizing 1 Timothy 3 on managing your household well, but I would think the flowchart is simply "Pastor's divorce finalized -> Resign call". Likewise, I've heard it many times that sin has temporal consequences, even for those who may be innocent victims of the sin. Perhaps the pastor is a completely innocent victim, but it still may be what is best for him and the congregation that he resigns. The position is not one to be coveted or sought to be maintained apart from consideration of the congregation, even one that may, at the time, be sympathetic to the pastor. He may one day be called upon to call a woman leaving her husband to repentance, and it may not be received as well from someone with his past. These things should be considered, even if a pastor is nothing more than a victim of his poor choice in a wife.
On public scandal or offense, there is a difference between giving offense and people (wrongly) taking offense. That sort of distinction must be made. If a man is surrounded by scandal, but he is innocent and did not do things at which Christians should take offense, the presence of scandal is no reason for him to cease to serve as a pastor, even if a change of place might be beneficial.
Next, if the Lord permits a divorce (e.g., Matt. 5:32; 19:9; 1 Cor 7:15), then the man is *not married* in the Lord's eyes. So if he remarries, he is still the husband of only one wife. Why then should he not continue to serve as a pastor?
But these cases need to be investigated by "wise men" in the Church (1 Cor. 6:5) and especially marital cases should be adjudicated fairly, and not just allowed for everyone to do what is right in his own eyes (cf. Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope 75, 77-78).
-Benjamin T. G. Mayes