Grounds of Divorce: Adultery and Wilful Desertion
Two scriptural grounds for the dissolution of a true marriage.
Settled clearly
Background
Roman canon law held marriage absolutely indissoluble: even adultery did not warrant the dissolution of the bond (though separation from bed and board was permitted). The Continental Reformed had broken with this position, allowing divorce on grounds of adultery (Matt. 19:9) and (in Calvin's reading) wilful desertion (1 Cor. 7:15). Erasmus had argued more expansively for additional grounds, but the mainline Reformed had taken the two-grounds position. Westminster needed to settle the question for English and Scottish ecclesiastical practice.
The Assembly’s handling
WCF XXIV.5-6 affirms the two-grounds Reformed position. XXIV.5: 'Adultery or fornication committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract.' XXIV.6: 'In the case of adultery after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a divorce: and after the divorce, to marry another…' and 'nothing but adultery, or such wilful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage.' This is more permissive than the strictest Catholic and Anglican readings (which limited remarriage even after adultery) and stricter than the Erasmian and most later Protestant readings (which permitted additional grounds).
Parties
The Reformed two-grounds position
Marriage is dissoluble only on two scriptural grounds: adultery (Matt. 19:9) and wilful desertion (1 Cor. 7:15). On either ground the innocent party may remarry.
- Edmund Calamy the Elder (1600–1666)
- Edward Reynolds (1599–1676)
- Anthony Tuckney (1599–1670)
- Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600–1661)
Roman absolute indissolubility (rejected)
Marriage is absolutely indissoluble; adultery permits separation from bed and board but not remarriage. Trent, Session XXIV.
Erasmian expansive grounds (rejected by the Assembly)
Multiple grounds for divorce beyond adultery and desertion — including cruelty, incompatibility, incurable illness, mutual consent. Erasmus, and (later, more radically) John Milton's *Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce* (1643).
Confessional language
WCF XXIV.6: 'Although the corruption of man be such as is apt to study arguments unduly to put asunder those whom God hath joined together in marriage; yet nothing but adultery, or such wilful desertion as can no way be remedied by the church or civil magistrate, is cause sufficient of dissolving the bond of marriage.'
Ontology placement
This crux bears on the following attribute of the Westminster ontology. The Westminster baseline value is marked WCF.
VIII · Civil & Last Things · Oaths & Marriage
Legacy
Milton's *Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce* (1643), *Tetrachordon* (1645), and *Colasterion* (1645) had pressed the case for expansive grounds — incompatibility, irreconcilable difference — against what would become the Westminster position; Milton's tracts were attacked by Herbert Palmer before Parliament in 1644. The two-grounds position remained the Reformed standard until 20th-century revisions: the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) maintains the Westminster reading; the PCUSA loosened the language in the 20th century.