Marriage/Divorce: Restoring Balance, part 4

(This is the fourth of a four-part series; here are the links to part 1, part 2 & part 3.)

Over the last three posts, I have been attempting to answer the question of how to quantify refusal. As a reader said, it takes only one act of adultery to break the marriage covenant, but surely one “Not tonight” does not constitute refusal, thus violating the marriage covenant.

Since Jesus addressed divorce in the cultural and historical context as a rabbi, I went back to rabbinic writings to find out how the rabbis of Jesus’ day addressed the topic of refusal, and I discovered several things:

1. the rabbis believed sex to be a right and responsibility of marriage;
2. the rabbis even went so far as to list the amount of sex a wife would be entitled to;
3. The rabbis viewed sexual neglect as a violation of the marriage covenant deserving of non-support (after one month) and divorce (after one year.)

And what was incredible to me was that…

Marriage/Divorce: Restoring Balance, part 3

(This is the third of a four-part series; here are the links to part 1, part 2 & part 4.)

In this series of posts, I am addressing questions from a reader who asked if it were possible to quantify the amount of sexual refusal needed to justify labeling it as a violation of the marital covenant and therefore a just reason for divorce.

My first post stated that I accept as a given that there are four valid reasons for divorce, and not just the one, adultery, as most Christians believe. My last post pointed out that (in OT times and up to the time of Christ) refusal was stated by Jewish leaders as a reason for divorce, and I presented the view that refusal is a deliberate violation of the marriage vow of fidelity to your spouse.