HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
May a Christian divorce, and if so, may either party marry again? No question in the Gospels has been read more variously than Jesus’ teaching on this, because he speaks to it in four places that do not obviously agree. In the Sermon on the Mount he says, “whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery” (Matthew 5:31–32). Questioned by the Pharisees, he grounds marriage in creation — “what therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” — says Moses permitted the bill of divorcement only “because of the hardness of your hearts,” and repeats the exception: “whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery” (Matthew 19:3–9). Yet Mark and Luke record the same saying with no exception at all (Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18), and Paul adds a case of his own — that a believer deserted by an unbelieving spouse “is not under bondage” (1 Corinthians 7:10–16).
From these texts the church built centuries of dispute, along a few recurring fault lines: what “fornication” (porneia) means in Matthew’s exception, and why Matthew alone has it; whether the exception licenses remarriage or only separation from bed and board; whether the marriage bond is indissoluble while both live (the Latin and, later, Roman Catholic settlement), dissoluble for adultery with liberty to remarry (the Erasmian reading taken up by most Protestants), or dissoluble by pastoral “economy” (the Eastern Orthodox practice); how Jesus’ words engage the first-century rabbinic quarrel between the schools of Shammai and Hillel over Moses’ “some uncleanness” (Deuteronomy 24:1–4); and how all of this squares with the prophet’s “I hate putting away” (Malachi 2:16) and the creation ordinance of “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The “belief that developed” traced here is the church’s whole working answer to what Jesus permitted — not a single settled dogma.
Related doctrines: Marriage, celibacy, and the single life — see also the three readings scored as competing scenarios · the deprecation of remarriage after widowhood (digamy)
The earliest post-apostolic treatment. Put to the angelic Shepherd, the case of a man who catches his believing wife in adultery draws a two-part ruling: if she persists unrepentant, the husband must put her away — to go on living with her is to become “a sharer in her adultery” — yet “if he put his wife away and marry another, he also commits adultery.”1 The reason he must “remain by himself” is that the door to reconciliation must stay open: should the divorced wife repent, he is bound to take her back, so “the husband ought not to marry another, when his wife has been put away” — and “man and woman are to be treated exactly in the same way.”2 So the very earliest reader makes divorce for adultery all but obligatory for the innocent party while denying that it dissolves the bond — the “separation, not remarriage” reading of Matthew’s exception is the oldest attested one, not a late Latin invention.3
Writing to Antoninus Pius from Rome, Justin lists the divorce saying among the precepts of Christian chastity, in its bare, exceptionless form: “Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced from another husband, committeth adultery.”4 He glosses it as a verdict on remarriage — those who “by human law, are twice married” (the ANF editor notes he means a second spouse taken after divorce) are “in the eye of our Master” adulterers.5 So the second post-apostolic witness, like the first, gives no hint that a divorce frees either party to marry again. In the Second Apology Justin then records the case behind the teaching: a Christian wife at Rome who — lest she “become a partaker” in her debauched husband’s vices “by sharing his table and his bed” — gave him “what you call a bill of divorce, and was separated from him,” the earliest datable notice of a Christian acting on the divorce teaching, and the spark of a martyrdom.6
Pleading the Christians’ innocence before Marcus Aurelius, Athenagoras cites the divorce saying itself to prove his people’s chastity, and glosses it into a flat bar on both divorce and any remarriage after it: “Whosoever puts away his wife,” says the Lord, “and marries another, commits adultery” — God “not permitting a man to send her away… nor to marry again.”7 This is the earliest surviving patristic quotation of the divorce logion (Matthew 19:9) as such — Hermas ruled the case without citing it and Justin quoted only its second half — and Athenagoras is the first to supply the first half, the man who initiates the divorce. He too attaches no “except for fornication,” and goes further than either predecessor: God does not permit the man “to send her away” at all, treating the bond as surviving the divorce — indissolubility in its purest early form, stated to a pagan court as evidence, not enacted as law.8
The first witness on this timeline to quote Matthew’s exception clause — and he reads it as licensing separation, not remarriage. In the chapter “On Marriage” that closes the second book of the Stromata, Clement lays down the rule that “Scripture… allows no release from the union,” adducing “Thou shalt not put away thy wife, except for the cause of fornication” — yet at once he “regards as fornication, the marriage of those separated while the other is alive.”9 So the one saying that seems to open a door, Clement reads as bolting another: the exception permits sending an adulterous wife away, but a new marriage while the first spouse lives is itself the adultery the Lord condemns — “He that taketh a woman that has been put away… committeth adultery; and if one puts away his wife, he makes her an adulteress.” His reason is the open door to reconciliation, the same logic Hermas gave: the second husband is guilty too, “for did he not take her, she would return to her husband.”10 With the exception clause now on the table and still barred from licensing remarriage, the Alexandrian master joins Hermas, Justin, and Athenagoras in the separation-not-remarriage reading.
The fullest early treatment of the divorce question, and the first to defend divorce-for-adultery outright. Answering Marcion’s claim that Christ’s ban on divorce contradicts the Creator’s Moses, Tertullian argues in Against Marcion that Christ did not abolish the Mosaic bill of divorcement (Deuteronomy 24:1) but limited it: the prohibition is conditional, aimed at the man who dismisses his wife “for the express purpose of marrying another,” so that “divorce, therefore, when justly deserved, has even in Christ a defender” — “He permits divorce when the marriage is spotted with unfaithfulness.”11 Christ, on this reading, “exculpated rather than abolished the enactment of Moses,” restoring the creation ordinance the concession had bent “because of the hardness of your hearts”; yet the bond is not dissolved, for “to marry… whilst matrimony is undissolved, is to commit adultery.”12 In the later, rigorist On Monogamy he presses the same doctrine to its hardest edge, permitting divorce “to no cause but one” and denying the justly-divorced any remarriage: “to us, even if we do divorce them, even marriage will not be lawful.”13 So Tertullian states, earlier and more sharply than anyone before him, both halves of what became the Latin settlement — separation for adultery is licit, remarriage while the spouse lives is not.
The fullest early Greek exegesis of the divorce sayings, and the first witness here to report a gap between the church’s written rule and its actual practice. Expounding “is it lawful to put away a wife for every cause?” (Matthew 19:3–12) in the fourteenth book of his Commentary on Matthew, Origen classes Moses’ bill of divorcement among “some laws… written not as excellent, but as by way of accommodation to the weakness” — the hardness-of-heart concession — and holds that Christ permits dissolution “for… fornication alone.”14 But he then records, with disapproval yet notable understanding, that “some even of the rulers of the church have permitted a woman to marry, even when her husband was living… not indeed altogether without reason, for it is probable this concession was permitted in comparison with worse things.”15 It is the earliest surviving notice of church leaders tolerating remarriage after divorce — the seed of the later Eastern practice of pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) — set down two centuries before the canons that would formalize it. Origen calls the permission “contrary to what was written,” yet concedes its motive; and, uniquely among the early witnesses, he airs the strict reading’s cost, asking whether a wife guilty of “poisoning, or… any form of murder” may not equally be put away — a dilemma in which “there appears to be something monstrous” either way, which he leaves unresolved.16
An unusually even-handed Latin voice on the eve of the first Western councils — and the sharpest early Christian attack on the sexual double standard. In the sixth book of the Divine Institutes (composed c. 303–311, during and after the Great Persecution), the rhetorician Lactantius — a convert from Roman North Africa who taught at Nicomedia and later tutored Constantine’s son — treats marriage under the head of continence and overturns the Roman law that counted only the wife an adulteress: it is not, “as is the interpretation of public law, that she alone is the adulteress who has another man, while the male is free from the charge of adultery, though he have many mistresses,” for “the divine law so joins two with equal right into a marriage, which is two in one flesh, that whoever breaks apart the joining of the body is regarded as an adulterer” — faith “must be kept with the other by each party in a marriage,” the husband bound to the very continence he demands of his wife, since “it is evil to exact that which you yourself are not able to exhibit.”17 On divorce itself he stands with the strict line: the exception for adultery licenses only dismissal, never a new marriage while the first spouse lives — “he is an adulterer who takes a wife who has been sent away by her husband; and so is he who has, aside from the crime of adultery, put a wife away that he may take another,” for “God did not intend for that ‘one flesh’ to be separated and torn apart.”18 So Lactantius joins Hermas, Clement, and Tertullian in the separation-not-remarriage reading — but grounds it on a strict equality of the sexes before God, decades before Basil and Ambrosiaster would codify the opposite double standard, and anticipating the equality argument Jerome would later press for the same strict conclusion.
The earliest surviving Western conciliar canon law, and the first point on this timeline where a church council — not a single teacher — legislates on divorce. Meeting at Elvira in southern Spain, nineteen bishops issued three canons (8, 9, 10) against the woman who leaves a husband and marries again. The mildest bars her from communion until the deserted spouse dies; the gravest — the wife who leaves “without acceptable cause” and remarries — withholds communion “even when death approaches.”19 The decisive canon is the ninth: even a baptized wife who leaves an adulterous husband — the one party the earlier writers granted a right to separate — “may not marry” another while he lives; if she does, she is barred “until her former husband dies.”20 So the “separation, not remarriage” reading taught by Hermas, Clement, and Tertullian now becomes enforceable law: the bond survives the divorce, and the penalty falls on the second marriage, lifting only at the first spouse’s death. Eight years later the Gallic Council of Arles (314), under Constantine, met the mirror case — a young husband whose wife commits adultery — and reached the same verdict by a softer instrument: not a penalty but a counsel, “as much as is able,” that he “not take other wives while their own wives are still living, even if the latter are adulterous.”21 Between them, Elvira and Arles are the earliest conciliar canon law on divorce in the Latin church.
The fullest procedural settlement of the fourth-century East, and the first witness here to legislate a frank double standard — and to admit it rests on custom, not Scripture. In three canonical letters to Amphilochius of Iconium (Letters 188, 199, 217), later given conciliar force in the Byzantine church, Basil grants that “the sentence of the Lord that it is unlawful to withdraw from wedlock, save on account of fornication… applies… to men and women alike” — then at once concedes, “Custom, however, does not so obtain.”22 The custom he codifies is markedly harsher on the wife: a married man who falls into fornication is punished as a fornicator but not charged with adultery, and “the wife will receive the husband on his return from fornication,” whereas “the husband will expel the polluted woman from his house” — “the argument here is not easy, but the custom has so obtained.”23 A wife may not leave even an adulterous husband; the man deserted by his wife is “deserving of pardon,” but the woman abandoned by her husband “ought… to remain as she is,” barred from remarriage by the Lord’s own word (Matthew 5:32) — “by calling her adulteress, He excludes her from intercourse with another man.”24 So Basil holds the strict, separation-not-remarriage reading of the exception clause taught by Hermas, Clement, and Tertullian, and fixes a seven-year penance for deserting a lawful spouse — but applies it unequally, and, uniquely candid, twice flags that the inequality is what “custom” ordains rather than what the Gospel requires. That self-aware gap between the Lord’s rule and the church’s practice — first reported by Origen — is the seed of the later Eastern settlement of pastoral “economy” (oikonomia).
The most permissive early Latin voice on this timeline — and a frankly unequal one. Expounding Paul’s divorce charge (1 Corinthians 7:10–11), the anonymous Roman commentator known as Ambrosiaster fastens on the fact that Paul tells the separated woman to “remain single” but adds no such words to the man, and reads the silence as a licence: “it is lawful for a man to marry another woman, if he divorces a wife who sins. For a man is not bound by the law in the same way as a woman is, for the man is the head of the woman.”25 Alone among the early Latin fathers he thus reads Matthew’s exception clause as licensing not merely separation but a fresh marriage — for the innocent husband, treating an adulterous wife’s sin as a definitive breaking of the bond, exactly as Roman law did. The wife has no such right: even one who leaves an adulterous or apostate husband “does not enjoy the same rights as the man, who is the superior,” and “can neither marry another man nor return to her husband.”26 On the deserting unbeliever (1 Corinthians 7:15) he holds the abandoned union no longer binding — “it is not a sin if it is abandoned because of God” — the earliest clear Latin statement of the later “Pauline privilege.”27 So against the developing indissolubility consensus — Clement, Tertullian, Elvira, Basil, all barring remarriage while the first spouse lives — Ambrosiaster stands as the strongest patristic Latin support for divorce with remarriage, a Western outlier and a named forerunner of Erasmus. His double standard rests, as David Hunter shows, less on the Gospel than on Roman law and his own theology of male headship.28
The most openly lenient voice on this timeline — and, surprisingly, a fierce heresy-hunter’s. In section 59 of the Panarion Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, refutes the rigorist Novatianist “Purists” (Cathari), who barred the “twice-married” from communion — “for if someone marries a second wife after baptism, they never admit him again.”29 Against them he lays down the Eastern principle of concession to weakness, and — uniquely explicit among the early witnesses — folds remarriage after divorce into it alongside remarriage after bereavement: “if there has been a divorce for some reason — fornication, adultery or something else — and the man marries a second wife or the woman a second husband, God’s word does not censure them or bar them from the church and life, but tolerates them because of their weakness.”30 The concession is carefully bounded: it is no licence for bigamy — “not by letting him have two wives at once while the one is still alive” — and no commendation, since the once-married is “more highly respected”; the second marriage is borne with as a mercy to human frailty, “the first wife a divine ordinance, the second a concession to human weakness.”31 So where Origen only reported the church tolerating remarriage-while-the-spouse-lives (and disapproved), and Basil legislated a double standard he traced to bare “custom,” Epiphanius positively defends the concession as the mind of “God’s holy church” — the clearest patristic seed of the later Eastern discipline of pastoral “economy” (oikonomia).
The Eastern egalitarian counterpoint to the double standard — and a witness who reaches the strict verdict on the bond by the opposite road. Preaching on Jesus’ divorce dialogue (Matthew 19:1–12) during his brief Constantinople episcopate, Gregory the Theologian delivers the sharpest patristic protest against the sexual double standard the church’s civil law enforced: a wife’s adultery was severely punished, but “if the husband commits fornication against his wife, he has no account to give” — “I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve this custom,” for “they who made the Law were men, and therefore their legislation is hard on women.”32 God’s law, he answers, is one for both sexes — grounded in creation (“one Maker of man and woman”), in the fall (“The Woman Sinned, and so did Adam… one was not found to be the stronger and the other the weaker”), and in redemption (“Christ saves both by His Passion”) — so that the “one flesh” must have “equal honour.”33 Yet on the divorce question itself he holds the strict line of Hermas, Clement, Tertullian, Basil, and Chrysostom: “the Law grants divorce for every cause; but Christ not for every cause; but He allows only separation from the whore; and in all other things He commands patience.”34 So against Basil’s frankly-admitted “custom” double standard and Ambrosiaster’s headship-based one — both near-contemporaries — Gregory reaches the same strict verdict on the bond by the opposite road of the sexes’ equality before God, the Greek counterpart to the Latin egalitarian protest of Lactantius and a forerunner of Jerome’s equality argument.
The strict Latin verdict two decades before Augustine grounds it — and by the mentor who baptized him. Expounding Luke’s exceptionless saying (Luke 16:18) in the eighth book of his Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, Ambrose, bishop of Milan, sets divine law against the permissive Roman statute: “you dismiss your wife as if it were a right… because human law does not prohibit it; but divine law does prohibit it… What God has joined together, let no man separate.”35 Because the bond survives the divorce, remarriage while the first spouse lives is adultery — “Suppose she does marry. This is your crime of necessity; and the marriage which you imagine is adultery” — a bar he states positively in On Abraham: “it is not allowed for you, while your wife is alive, to take another wife.”36 He treats Moses’ bill as a hardness-of-heart concession Christ withdrew (“Moses permitted, he says, not God commanded… he who divorces his wife, tears his flesh, divides his body”), and reads Paul’s desertion case (1 Corinthians 7:15) narrowly — the abandoned believer is freed from blame, not licensed to remarry: the Apostle “neither commanded nor gave authority to anyone who wants to leave, but he removed blame from the one who is abandoned.”37 Crucially, and unlike his fellow Latin Ambrosiaster — whose permissive commentary circulated under Ambrose’s own name for a millennium, yet rests remarriage on the husband’s “headship” — the real Ambrose grounds the bar on the equality of the sexes: “what is not permissible for a woman is not permissible for a man… A husband owes the same chastity to his wife as a wife owes to her husband.”38 So the two Latin “Ambroses” reach opposite verdicts; the genuine one joins Lactantius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Jerome in reaching the strict conclusion by the egalitarian road.
The great Greek preacher of strict indissolubility, and the fullest Eastern statement that the bond simply survives the divorce. Expounding the Sermon on the Mount’s divorce saying (Matthew 5:31–32) in his Homilies on Matthew at Antioch, Chrysostom presses the guilt onto both men in the case: the husband who dismisses his wife “though he take not another wife, by that act alone hath made himself liable to blame, having made the first an adulteress; the latter again is become an adulterer by taking her who is another’s.”39 The reason the second marriage is adultery is the single clause on which his whole doctrine rests — divorce does not end the marriage: “tell me not this, ‘the other hath cast her out;’ nay, for when cast out she continues to be the wife of him that expelled her,” so Christ “hath shut against her also the doors of him who was afterwards receiving her.” The one lawful ground for sending a wife away is fornication, and even that licenses only dismissal, not remarriage.40 On Paul’s own charge (1 Corinthians 7:10–11) he reaches the same verdict: the separated wife must “remain unmarried, or be reconciled unto her husband” — never “introduce any other to be her husband.”41 So against the permissive Latin reading of his near-contemporary Ambrosiaster and the concession-to-weakness defended by Epiphanius, Chrysostom joins Hermas, Clement, Tertullian, and Basil in the separation-not-remarriage reading — and, as the most influential Greek voice for it, becomes the standard against which the later Byzantine relaxation into pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) is measured.
The strictest Latin voice on this timeline, and the scholar who fixes indissolubility as the Western rule. Across three works of the 390s — a letter of casuistry to the presbyter Amandus (c. 394), the Commentary on Matthew (398), and the eulogy of the Roman noblewoman Fabiola (399) — Jerome, the Vulgate translator, reads Matthew’s exception as licensing only the dismissal of an adulterous spouse, never a new marriage while the first partner lives. To Amandus, who had asked whether a woman who left an adulterous, sodomite husband and remarried under compulsion might commune without penance, he answers with a flat negative: “A husband may be an adulterer or a sodomite… yet he is still her husband and, so long as he lives, she may not marry another,” and the “second husband… ought to be called not a husband but an adulterer.”42 The Commentary on Matthew reads the exception clause (Matthew 19:9) as narrowly as anyone here — fornication alone severs the “one flesh” and frees the husband to send the wife away, but for that very reason “the husband is commanded to divorce the first wife so that he does not have a second wife while the first one is still alive.”43 Unlike his fellow Latin Ambrosiaster, who rested a permissive double standard on male headship, Jerome argues the bar from the equality of the sexes before God: “a commandment which is given to men logically applies to women also… what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men.” The Fabiola eulogy shows the rule tested on a real, pitiable life — Jerome admired her, calls her remarriage “a fault… at the same time… a case of necessity,” yet still refuses to call it lawful, and paints the vivid scene of her public penance “in the presence of all Rome” before her restoration to communion after the second husband’s death.44 So Jerome joins Hermas, Clement, Tertullian, Basil, and Chrysostom in the separation-not-remarriage reading, and gives it its most authoritative Latin statement on the eve of Augustine.
The earliest firm papal legislation on divorce, and the point where the strict reading passes from a teacher’s exhortation into Roman law. In two decretal letters answering questions from Gallic bishops — Epistle 2 to Victricius of Rouen (404) and Epistle 6 to Exuperius of Toulouse (405) — Innocent I lays down as the rule “for everyone” that a person who remarries while the first spouse lives is an adulterer, admitting no exception even for the injured party. To Exuperius he rules that of those who divorce and marry again “it is clear that both parties are adulterers,” for “those who, while the wife is living, although their marriage has been dissolved, hasten to another union cannot be other than adulterers” — grounding the verdict on the divorce logion (Matthew 19:9) and extending the charge even to the new spouses, so that “all such are to be kept from the communion of the faithful.”45 To Victricius he states the same principle as settled discipline, so severe that the remarried woman is barred not only from communion but from penance itself until a spouse dies: it is the rule “that any woman who marries another while her husband lives is held an adulteress, and leave to do penance is not granted her unless one of the two has died.”46 So Innocent fixes the strict Roman line of Elvira, Jerome, and (a decade later) Augustine as papal decretal — the reading his letters carried into the medieval canon-law collections of Gratian and Ivo. Yet in his own century the regional councils of Gaul (below) legislated the opposite, and that Roman-versus-Gallic divergence is the live seam of the fifth-century West.
The theologian who gives the Latin West its decisive doctrine of indissolubility — not by changing the strict verdict of Tertullian, Elvira, Chrysostom, and Jerome, but by grounding it. In four works across a quarter-century — the exposition of Matthew 5:31–32 in On the Sermon on the Mount (c. 393–396), On the Good of Marriage (c. 401), On Marriage and Concupiscence (c. 419–421), and the two books On Adulterous Marriages to Pollentius (c. 419) — Augustine, bishop of Hippo, makes the marriage bond a sacramentum, a sacred and permanent sign of the union of Christ and the Church, which therefore “can no way be dissolved but by the death of one of them.”47 From that sacramental character the whole rule follows: the exception clause licenses only the dismissal of an adulterous spouse, never a new marriage while the first lives, and the bar binds husband and wife alike — “it is unlawful for one who leaves her husband, even when she has been put away, to be married to another, so long as her husband lives.”48 The sacramental bond, like the seal of baptism, “is lost neither by divorce nor by adultery”; even Moses’ bill was a hardness-of-heart concession the gospel withdraws, so that under Christ remarriage after divorce “is held to be guilty of adultery.”49 Uniquely among the witnesses, Augustine reaches this by open exegetical labour rather than assertion: answering Pollentius — who read Matthew’s exception as freeing an innocent husband to remarry — he governs Matthew by the unqualified Mark 10:11–12 and Luke 16:18, concedes that the gospel words are obscure and the question not fully solved, yet concludes that “any union with other persons while their first husband or wife is alive is not marriage but adultery.”50 This sacramentum synthesis, not merely the verdict it defends, is what becomes the settled Latin and later Roman Catholic doctrine, the framework the medieval canonists and the Council of Trent inherit.
The permissive Latin counter-current to Innocent I’s strict Roman decretals — two regional councils of late-antique Gaul that write Matthew’s exception into law as a real ground for remarriage, not merely separation. The Council of Vannes in Brittany (c. 465) excommunicates the man who dismisses his wife and marries again — but only where he acts “without having given proof of the adultery”: citing the gospel’s “except on account of fornication,” it penalizes remarriage on an unproven charge, presupposing that a husband who proves his wife’s adultery may lawfully remarry.51 The Council of Agde (506), under Caesarius of Arles, enforces the same assumption by procedure: it excludes from communion the layman who casts off his wife for “unlawful or others’ unions” before stating the grounds “before the comprovincial bishops” and before “she is condemned by judgment” — requiring the adultery be adjudicated in an episcopal court first, not forbidding the remarriage that a proven case would justify.52 As David G. Hunter argues, these canons “simply translate the exception clause of Matthew 19:9 into ecclesiastical law” — the clearest conciliar evidence that the early Western church did not uniformly forbid remarriage after divorce.53 So against Elvira (which barred remarriage even for the wife of a proven adulterer) and Augustine, the Gallic councils stand with the one permissive Latin exegete, Ambrosiaster — though they rest the licence on a church-proven adultery rather than his theology of male “headship” — and anticipate the exception-permits-remarriage reading Erasmus would revive.
The point where the timeline leaves the exegetes for the civil law of the Christian empire — the substrate on which the East’s later remarriage practice would ride. In three Novellae the emperor Justinian codified the grounds, procedure, and penalties of divorce for Roman society. Novel 22 (535) recognizes, in frank Roman fashion, that a marriage may be undone by the parties themselves: dissolved “either by common consent… or (by agreement) for some reasonable reason when the divorce is called bona gratia, or because of some guilt or no guilt at all” — and it lets a divorced husband “immediately remarry” while binding the wife to a year’s delay, one of many points at which the law reckons the sexes unequally.54 Novel 117 (542) narrows divorce to an enumerated list of “just causes” — adultery (proven by formal accusation) heading the husband’s grounds — and enacts in state law the same double standard Basil had drawn from “custom”: a wife’s adultery frees the husband, but a husband’s unchastity gives the wife a ground only when it becomes open, persistent concubinage “in the same house… or… in the same city” after “repeated” reproach; a wife who divorces without lawful cause is to be “thrown into a convent, to remain there during the remainder of her life.”55 Novel 134 (556) then abolishes consensual divorce outright, directing that “no bill of divorce shall be sent, or if sent, shall be valid, for any cause other than those specified, nor shall the marriage be dissolved by consent,” and condemning a couple who part otherwise to lifelong monastic confinement — the civil law bent as near the church’s indissolubility as an emperor dared.56 But the reversal came at once: Justinian died in 565, and in 566 his successor Justin II repealed the ban and restored divorce by mutual consent (Novel 140), for “marriage is entered into through mutual affection… rightly dissolved by a contrary sentiment” — the plainest sign that this was civil policy, swinging with the throne, not the fixed law of the Gospel.57 So where Origen and Basil had reported a church quietly tolerating remarriage, Justinian shows the state that governed it — the imperial divorce law within which the Eastern discipline of pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) grew, and which its own defenders concede became an “accommodation with the powers-that-be” (weighed under Arguments).
The Eastern counterpart to the Western crystallization — the council that gives the Greek church its settled conciliar law on divorce, and the point where the tolerant strand Origen first noticed reaches conciliar form. Meeting “in Trullo” at Constantinople under Justinian II to supply the disciplinary canons the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils had omitted, the Quinisext Council legislates the divorce question in three canons. Canon 87, invoking “the holy and divine Basil” (whose canons canon 2 had just ratified as binding law), confirms the strict verdict of the whole timeline — “he who leaves the wife lawfully given him, and shall take another is guilty of adultery by the sentence of the Lord” — but heals it with the East’s graded penance (“weepers for a year, hearers for two years, prostrators for three years”) rather than Elvira’s permanent exclusion.58 Canon 93 then weighs the hard cases of the “grass widow” — the wife of a vanished or soldier husband — and, while still calling a premature remarriage adultery, grants that the case “has some excuse,” sorts culpable from ignorant second unions (the woman deceived “is not prevented from marrying”), and extends “pardon”; the returning soldier may yet “receive his own wife,” the first bond never having dissolved.59 Canon 98 brings the betrothed woman under the same rule.60 So Trullo confirms indissolubility for the East with the same verdict as the Latins — the second marriage is adultery, the bond survives the divorce — but by a gentler instrument, blending (canon 3) Rome’s “exact perfection” with Constantinople’s “kindness and consideration” so “that neither gentleness fall into licence, nor severity into harshness.” It does not yet license divorce-and-remarriage — the full Byzantine practice of dissolution by pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) develops later, in imperial civil law and the commentators — but its machinery of graded penance, weighed culpability, and pardon is the canonical seedbed that relaxation grows from. (Trullo’s separate handling of remarriage after bereavement is traced on the remarriage timeline.)
The Eastern counterpart to the Latin canonists below — the two great commentators on the church’s canons, who fix the settled Byzantine reading by glossing the strict canons through the civil law of the Christian empire. Both hold the verdict the whole timeline shares: the woman who leaves her husband and marries another is an adulteress (Basil’s canon 9, which Trullo canonized ecumenically as its canon 87 — and which Basil himself had traced to “custom,” not the Gospel). But they read that canon alongside Justinian’s divorce legislation (Novel 117, embedded in the Basilika at 28.7). John Zonaras — writing first, and the stricter reader — treats Basil’s double standard as “the ecclesiastical custom at that time” and notes that the imperial Novel does grant a wife a ground the canon denied her, permitting “wives to dissolve marriage” for a husband’s open, unrepented adultery.61 Theodore Balsamon — the official canonist, who wrote c. 1177 under imperial and patriarchal commission and whose method was to harmonize canon with civil law — states the subordination at its baldest: Basil answered “from various writings and the custom held at that time,” but “since Novel 117 of Justinian… all but transformed everything in such a canon,” the reader is sent to the imperial statute.62 This reading of the strict canon through the empire’s civil law — together with the graded penance and weighed “pardon” Trullo had already built into hard cases like the vanished husband’s wife (canon 93) — is the doctrinal bridge from the strict canons to the developed Eastern practice of dissolution and remarriage by pastoral “economy” (oikonomia), weighed under Arguments.63
The two twelfth-century textbooks that fixed the settled law and theology of marriage for the Latin West, and the direct feeders of the scholastics and of Trent. Gratian’s Decretum (c. 1140) — the “harmony of discordant canons” — gathers the patristic and conciliar authorities on divorce into a single rule, stated in his own words: “whoever has dismissed his wife for cause of fornication cannot, while she lives, marry another; and if he does, he will be guilty of adultery.”64 His method forces him to set beside the strict authorities the one permissive Latin text — the commentary on 1 Corinthians 7 circulating under Ambrose’s name but in fact Ambrosiaster’s, granting the husband alone a right to remarry — and then to neutralize it: Gratian reports the permissive passage “is said by forgers to have been inserted,” and, if defended, must be narrowed to incestuous unions and to remarriage only after the guilty spouse’s death, “since no authority permits a husband to marry another wife while the first one is still alive.”65 Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Book IV, c. 1155–58) supply the theology the canon law rested on: marriage is a sacramentum, “a sacred sign… of the union of Christ and the Church” (Ephesians 5:31–32), made not by consummation but by present-tense consent (consensus de praesenti) — “the efficient cause of matrimony is consent… not of the future but of the present” — and therefore not to be separated, the dismissed spouse bound to “remain unmarried,” the right to separate for adultery reciprocal and forfeited by the guilty party.66 Together they hand Augustine’s sacramentum to the schools: the Sentences became the textbook every master — Aquinas included — lectured on, and the Decretum the foundation of the canon law Trent inherited; the misattributed “Ambrose” text Gratian labored to explain away is the very ally Erasmus would later invoke to reopen the question.
The medieval scholastic crystallization that fills the long gap between the councils and the Reformers — the Dominican “Angelic Doctor” who gives Augustine’s sacramentum its mature conceptual apparatus, the very grid the Council of Trent would dogmatize. In the divorce questions of the Summa Theologiae Supplement (compiled from his earlier Commentary on the Sentences, Bk IV) Aquinas grounds the indissolubility of marriage in the natural law and the marriage sacramentum — “the dictate of the natural law requires the latter to live together for ever inseparably… and so the indissolubility of marriage is of natural law” — from the lifelong end of marriage and from Christ’s appeal to creation, “what God hath joined together” (Matthew 19:6).67 His governing move is a precise distinction of the two senses in which a marriage can be “dissolved”: as to the act (separation from bed and board — divortium quoad thorum), which a wife’s fornication licenses (“an impediment to a previous marriage as regards the act, although the marriage tie remains”), and as to the tie (quoad vinculum), which is impossible for a consummated sacramental marriage — “Nothing supervenient to marriage can dissolve it: wherefore adultery does not make a marriage cease to be valid… Therefore it is unlawful for one, while the other lives, to marry again,” resting the whole ruling, as its explicit authority, on Augustine’s “as long as they live they are bound by the marriage tie, which neither divorce nor union with another can destroy.”68 He reads Moses’ bill of divorce as a hardness-of-heart permission (Matthew 19:8) “recalled” under the New Law, applies the bar to husband and wife alike (“the same things are lawful or unlawful to the one as to the other” — the egalitarian standard of Jerome and Ambrose), and handles the case of a convert deserted by an unbelieving spouse — the later “Pauline privilege” (1 Corinthians 7:15) — as a real dissolution of a non-sacramental tie (“if it be not ratified, the tie is dissolved… the firmer tie always looses the weaker”), the one exception that proves the rule.69 So Aquinas states, in the scholastic vocabulary the West would keep — ratum et consummatum, the quoad thorum/quoad vinculum distinction, the Pauline privilege as exception — the settled Latin doctrine that Erasmus would reopen and Trent would fix as dogma.
The scholar who reopened divorce-with-remarriage in the Latin West, and the hinge between the patristic–medieval settlement traced above and the Protestant divergence. Eight centuries separate the Dutch humanist from Trullo, and in that interval the Western church had hardened Augustine’s sacramentum into settled canon law; Erasmus, editor of the first printed critical Greek New Testament (1516), broke with it. In his Greek text he set Matthew’s exception (Matthew 19:9) to read as an unambiguous exceptive clause — “except for fornication” — and glossed it so that the adulteress, by her sin, “has stopped being his wife,” freeing the innocent husband to marry again.70 The fuller case came in a treatise-length note attached from the 1519 edition of his Annotations to Paul’s word on the widow “free to be married to whom she will” (1 Corinthians 7:39): there Erasmus argued two propositions his contemporaries judged heretical — that the church could dissolve certain marriages for grave cause, through its own authorities or judges, and that the innocent party could then remarry — urging, as much pastorally as exegetically, that to bind spouses who have come to detest one another is not mercy but a danger — breeding “mutual quarrels, irremediable hatred, dread of poisoning and murder.”71 He read Paul’s desertion concession (1 Corinthians 7:15) as freeing the abandoned believer, pressing adultery and desertion together — the two grounds the Reformers would fix on. Against the near-unanimous fathers he had one ancient ally, the lone permissive Latin voice of Ambrosiaster (whom he knew, like everyone before the nineteenth century, under the name of Ambrose), whose reading he revived.72 Taken up by Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, and Calvin — “Erasmus laid the eggs, and Luther hatched them” — and passed through the Reformers into the Westminster Confession (1648), this became the “Erasmian view,” the majority Protestant position; the Council of Trent (Session 24, 1563) framed its carefully worded canons on marriage with exactly this claim in view.73
The first magisterial Reformer to turn the reopened Erasmian reading into the working divorce discipline of a church. Luther struck at the root of the Latin doctrine by denying that marriage is a sacrament at all — “we read nowhere that the man who marries a wife receives any grace of God” — dissolving the sacramentum on which Augustine had grounded indissolubility.74 On the question itself he taught, in The Estate of Marriage, that adultery so breaks the bond that “the innocent person may remarry”: the adulterer “has in fact himself already departed and is considered as one dead,” so the other “may remarry just as though his spouse had died.”75 He reached this reluctantly — “I so greatly detest divorce that I should prefer bigamy to it” — yet held that Christ “permits divorce, but for the cause of fornication only,” and “seems to permit a man to marry another woman in the stead of the one who has been put away.”76 Beyond adultery he added desertion, reading Paul’s “not under bondage” (1 Corinthians 7:15) to “set the believing spouse free to marry again,” while requiring that any remarriage-granting divorce be adjudicated by the civil authority and allowing mere incompatibility only a separation without remarriage.77 So against the strict line from Hermas through Jerome, Luther — building on Erasmus and the lone Latin dissent of Ambrosiaster before him — makes adultery and desertion dissolve the bond and free the innocent to marry again, the twin grounds the later Protestant confessions fix on.
The reformer who gave the Erasmian–Lutheran reading its most careful exegesis and turned it into enforceable law. In the Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Calvin reads Matthew’s exception as a real dissolution worked by the adultery itself — the unfaithful spouse “by fornication, cuts herself off, as a rotten member, from her husband, and sets him at liberty” — extends the liberty to both sexes on “an equal right” (“when, by committing adultery, he has dissolved the marriage, the wife is set at liberty”), and attacks by name the strict reading that would grant only separation and enjoin celibacy on the innocent, “very ill explained by many commentators… As if this liberty of divorce meant only not to lie with his wife.”78 A second ground he takes from Paul: the believer maliciously deserted by an unbeliever is freed, “the first and chief bond… not merely loosed, but even utterly broken through” (1 Corinthians 7:15); but mere quarrels dissolve nothing — spouses separated short of adultery or desertion “continue to be bound, so that they cannot take other husbands.”79 On Moses’ bill of divorce he follows Christ’s hardness-of-heart reading, an “indulgence” that never overturned the creation ordinance (Deuteronomy 24:1–4); and in Geneva his principles passed into the Ordonnances ecclésiastiques, whose marriage articles grant divorce with remarriage for adultery and malicious desertion to innocent husbands and wives alike — “qu’on luy ottroye: et par ce moyen qu’il ait puissance de se marier où bon lui semblera,” the wife suing on the same ground since “l’obligation est mutuelle et reciproque.”80 With Calvin the exception-permits-remarriage reading, revived by Erasmus and hatched by Luther, becomes the settled Reformed position that flows into the Westminster Confession.
The definitive Roman Catholic dogmatic close of the question against the Reformers, and the Tridentine crystallization the whole strict line had been moving toward. Session 24’s doctrine of matrimony restates the creation ordinance the timeline began from — the “first parent… pronounced the bond of matrimony perpetual and indissoluble, when he said; This now is bone of my bones” — and reaffirms marriage as a sacrament conferring grace to “confirm that indissoluble union,” the very premise Luther had denied.81 The decisive canon 7 then fixes as dogma the separation-not-remarriage reading of Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine, anathematizing the Erasmian reading point by point: it is error to say the church errs in teaching “that the bond of matrimony cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one of the married parties; and that both, or even the innocent one who gave not occasion to the adultery, cannot contract another marriage, during the life-time of the other.”82 A neighbouring canon (5) closes the desertion-and-incompatibility grounds Luther and Calvin had allowed. Yet the drafting is famously careful: canon 7 anathematizes not “anyone who dissolves a marriage for adultery” but anyone who says the church errs in forbidding it — a construction the Council adopted, after the Venetian delegates protested, precisely so as not to condemn the Eastern-rite Christians who permit remarriage by pastoral “economy” (oikonomia).83 So the West’s dogmatic close reaffirms the strict verdict of Hermas through Augustine against the Reformers — while leaving, in its very wording, a studied silence toward the tolerant Eastern strand that Origen first noticed and the Council in Trullo shaped into graded penance.
The radical Protestant outlier who pressed the Erasmian opening far past adultery and desertion — the point where the dissolution principle is carried to its logical extreme, and a named forerunner of modern “irretrievable breakdown” / no-fault reasoning. In The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, expanded 1644) the poet argued that a settled incompatibility of mind is itself a just ground for divorce: “that indisposition, unfitnes, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable… is a greater reason of divorce then naturall frigidity.”84 The whole case turns on a redefinition of marriage’s purpose: reading Genesis 2:18 (“It is not good that the man should be alone”), Milton makes companionship, not procreation or the remedy of lust, the chief end — “a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and the noblest end of mariage” — so a union that fails at that fails at its highest end.85 He meets the Gospel by reading Christ’s prohibition as aimed only at the Pharisees’ hard-hearted, capricious “unbounded licence,” not at “a good mans requisit liberty” to divorce for blameless incompatibility, and takes Moses’ “some uncleanness” (Deuteronomy 24:1) broadly, of any “displeasing natural quality or unfitnes.”86 Matthew’s exception (Matthew 19:9) he reads as illustrative, not exhaustive, widening “fornication” itself to “such a continual headstrong behaviour, as tends to plain contempt of the husband.”87 So Milton radicalizes the pastoral “detestation” argument of Erasmus — but where Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin stopped at adultery and desertion, he adds bare incompatibility. His own Puritan contemporaries recoiled — a divine preaching before Parliament in 1644 branded the tract a “wicked booke” deserving to be burnt — and the Westminster Confession (1648) would soon reassert the narrower adultery-and-desertion rule as the confessional Protestant settlement, the boundary Milton overshot.
The confessional crystallization of the Erasmian–Reformed settlement — the point where the two grounds Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin had fixed pass from the Reformers’ commentaries into a subscribed standard of faith. Chapter 24, “Of Marriage and Divorce” — drafted by the Westminster Assembly and completed in 1646, its Scripture proofs added the next year — lays down in §5 that adultery after marriage gives the innocent party leave “to sue out a divorce: and, after the divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead,” citing the exception clause of Matthew 5:31–32 and 19:9 (with Romans 7:2–3) — the very texts read, against the whole strict patristic line, as licensing not merely separation but remarriage.88 §6 then closes the grounds at exactly two: “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” — desertion resting on Paul’s “not under bondage” (1 Corinthians 7:15) — and requires the cause be adjudged by “a public and orderly course of proceeding,” the parties “not left to their own wills and discretion.”89 So the Confession canonizes the twin grounds of adultery and desertion and, in the same stroke, refuses both flanks it stands between: against Trent’s indissolubility it grants dissolution and remarriage to the innocent; against Milton’s bare incompatibility — published three years before and branded a “wicked booke” — its “nothing but adultery, or… wilful desertion” reasserts the narrower boundary Milton had overshot. Adopted whole, these divorce sections included, by the Church of Scotland (1647), it became the doctrinal standard of Presbyterianism; the near-identical Savoy Declaration (1658) and Second London Baptist Confession (1689) retitled the chapter simply “Of Marriage” and dropped the two divorce paragraphs, leaving the question to conscience.90
The modern anchor of this timeline — a Cambridge rabbinics scholar who reads Jesus’ divorce sayings against their first-century Jewish legal setting and reorganizes the whole debate around it. Instone-Brewer argues that the Pharisees’ “is it lawful… for any cause?” (Matthew 19:3) is not a general question but a technical reference to the Hillelite “Any Cause” divorce, an innovation the school of Hillel had lately read out of Deuteronomy 24:1 by splitting Moses’ “some uncleanness” into two grounds — “indecency” and “a matter” — so that “anything, including a burnt meal… could be a cause.”91 On this reading Jesus’ “resounding no” rejects the Hillelite loophole and sides with the rival school of Shammai, who restricted the Deut-24 ground to adultery alone (“except immorality”) — which is why Matthew’s exception clause (Matthew 19:9) states the Shammaite position in its own words, and why Mark and Luke, writing for readers ignorant of the rabbinic shorthand, could drop it.92 His more distinctive move is that Deuteronomy 24 was never the whole law: Exodus 21:10–11 guaranteed every wife, “even a slave wife,” the rights to food, clothing, and marital love, whose neglect freed the wronged spouse — an uncontested ground no school disputed, so absent from the Gospel debates but assumed by them. The upshot is that Jesus and Paul permit divorce, with remarriage for the innocent party, on the Old-Testament grounds of adultery, neglect, and abuse (abandonment being the ultimate neglect, 1 Corinthians 7:15).93 So Instone-Brewer stands in the divorce-with-remarriage line reopened by Erasmus and fixed by Luther and Calvin, but reaches it by a different route and widens it — grounding the case in the rabbinic frame and the Exodus grounds rather than the exception clause alone; on the disputed Deut-24 point his verdict (adultery only) coincides with the strict Shammaite–patristic reading of Chrysostom and Jerome. Whether the “Any Cause” reconstruction and the Exodus-21 grounds bear the weight he puts on them is weighed under Arguments.
The Catholic thread after Trent, set at the timeline’s modern end because its live moment is the twenty-first century: Rome never abandons the dogma of the indissoluble bond — the 1983 Code of Canon Law restates it in the sharpest terms, that a ratified and consummated marriage “can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death” (can. 1141), reserving dissolution to non-sacramental unions through the Pauline and Petrine privileges (cann. 1143–1150).94 The genuinely live development is not about the bond but about pastoral discipline — how the church treats the civilly-divorced-and-remarried, and whether they may receive communion. John Paul II’s Familiaris Consortio (1981) §84 keeps them within the church — it “cannot abandon to their own devices” the baptized — yet “reaffirms her practice… of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried,” since their state “objectively contradict[s]” the union of Christ and the church, opening the sacraments only to those who undertake “to live in complete continence.”95 Francis’s Amoris Laetitia (2016, ch. 8) declines “a new set of general rules” for “responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases,” holds that “it can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin,” and in the celebrated footnote 351 allows that the “help of the sacraments” may “in certain cases” be given — a reading Francis endorsed as having “no other interpretations” when the bishops of Buenos Aires drew from it “the possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.”96 That admission — of some divorced-and-remarried, under discernment, without the continence Familiaris Consortio had required — ignited the dubia controversy, four cardinals asking whether it breaks with Familiaris Consortio §84 and the whole strict tradition, its defenders answering that it develops rather than contradicts them, the bond’s indissolubility untouched.97 So the modern Latin development moves, from the opposite direction, toward the pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) the East practiced all along — the very strand Trent’s canon 7 had been worded not to condemn (weighed under Arguments).
Later witnesses are being added, earliest first — from the New Testament texts themselves, through the medieval and Tridentine crystallization (the Council of Trent’s carefully worded Session 24), to the modern rabbinic reframing of Instone-Brewer and the twenty-first-century Roman Catholic development over the divorced-and-remarried (Familiaris Consortio to Amoris Laetitia). Contested sub-questions — the meaning of the exception clause, whether it licenses remarriage, the Pauline privilege, and the Shammai/Hillel background — are weighed under Arguments below.
The off-timeline sub-claims about Jesus’ divorce teaching — what the exception means, whether it permits remarriage or only separation, the scope of the Pauline privilege, and how the sayings engage the Shammai–Hillel dispute — are worked as argument pages, each with its assessment. Two grouped sets lead: first the readings of the exception clause itself (what porneia means), then the arguments over whether the bond dissolves (its indissolubility, Matthew’s exception, and the Pauline privilege). The standalone questions — whether marriage is a covenant breakable by treachery or an indissoluble one-flesh bond (the definitional model underneath the whole dispute), whether the first half of Matthew’s saying (“makes her an adulteress”) presupposes the wife’s remarriage, whether Paul’s “let her remain unmarried” (1 Corinthians 7:10–11) bars the separated from remarriage even in the adultery case, why Matthew alone carries the clause, whether Mark’s wife-initiated clause (Mark 10:12) reflects Roman rather than Jewish law, the Shammai–Hillel background, whether Moses commanded or merely tolerated divorce, the rendering of Malachi 2:16, and whether the Eastern pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) permitting remarriage is legitimate — follow.
What is the “fornication” (porneia) that Matthew’s Jesus makes the one exception (Matthew 5:32; 19:9)? Four readings have been independently advanced, weighed here as a set: the majority reading that it is a wife’s sexual unfaithfulness within marriage; and three rivals that each argue the plain sense cannot stand and must be displaced — an incestuous or otherwise unlawful marriage within the forbidden degrees, a betrothed girl’s premarital unchastity, and the broad “spiritual fornication” of idolatry. Only the first holds without strain; of the rivals, the incest reading is genuinely contested on first-century evidence, while the betrothal and spiritual readings do not hold on their best case.
Does porneia in the exception clause mean a wife’s marital unfaithfulness? — the plain and majority reading, glossed as adultery by nearly every early witness (Tertullian renders the clause “except on the ground of adultery”; Chrysostom, Jerome, Theophylact, and Apollinaris the same) and held by modern critical commentary. The one puzzle it must answer — why Matthew wrote the wider porneia rather than the exact word for adultery (moicheia), which he lists as a distinct sin at Matthew 15:19 — is met by taking porneia as the broader genus of sexual immorality of which the wife’s adultery is the paradigm, not a bare synonym for it. Word and context (a man and his wife, in the Deuteronomy-24 frame) point one way. Sound.98
Does porneia mean an unlawful (incestuous) marriage within the forbidden degrees? — the reading of Joseph Fitzmyer and much Catholic exegesis, on which the exception recognizes a Leviticus-18 kinship union that was void from the start (annulment, not divorce), leaving Jesus’ prohibition intact. Its lexical foundation is real: the Damascus Document at Qumran uses the Hebrew zĕnût (which the Greek Old Testament renders porneia) precisely of forbidden-degree marriage, and the Acts 15 decree plausibly does the same. But nothing in Matthew’s context signals the incest-sense, it is borrowed from a differently-aimed decree, and the plain reading explains the passage with fewer moving parts — strong by the Palestinian-Jewish evidence, weak on the fit to this text. Contested.99
Does porneia mean betrothal unchastity (the betrothal view)? — Abel Isaksson’s and John Piper’s reading, on which Jesus permits only the breaking of a legally-binding betrothal on discovery of unchastity (as Joseph contemplated with the betrothed Mary, Matthew 1:19, using the same verb “divorce”), forbidding all divorce of a consummated marriage and so agreeing exactly with the absolute Mark and Luke. The linguistic hook is genuine, but Matthew 19 is framed from start to finish around a man putting away his wife, and the reading survives only by giving porneia a narrow betrothal-sense it is nowhere else shown to bear. Weak.100
Does porneia extend to spiritual fornication (idolatry, apostasy)? — Augustine’s “latitude of meaning” reading, taken up by Aquinas, on which the “fornication” of the exception is the broad biblical harlotry of idolatry and unbelief, so a spouse’s apostasy could ground dismissal. The metaphor is scripturally real (the prophets’ “playing the harlot”), but the chain proves too much — if every sin is “fornication” the exception swallows the rule it exists to narrow — and Augustine himself retracted it, conceding it is “no question at all” that the ground is carnal unfaithfulness. Weak.101
Grant that Jesus permits putting away a wife for porneia: does adultery — or desertion — actually dissolve the marriage bond, freeing the innocent party to marry again, or does the bond survive every divorce so long as both spouses live? Three arguments circle this one question — the affirmative thesis that the bond is objectively indissoluble, the syntactic crux of Matthew’s exception, and Paul’s separate desertion ground — and all three come out genuinely disputed.
Is the marriage bond indissoluble while both spouses live? — the affirmative thesis, and the ground the whole strict tradition rests on: Jesus answers the divorce question from creation rather than Moses (“what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” — Matthew 19:6; Mark 10:9), the “one flesh” of Genesis 2:24 is a real union, and Augustine grounds its permanence in the marriage sacramentum, the sign of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:31–32), fixed as dogma at Trent. Strong by the creation order, the three exceptionless witnesses (Mark, Luke, Paul), and the near-unanimous patristic reception; weaker where Matthew’s twice-stated exception, the ambiguous grammar of 19:9, and the gap between “let no man put asunder” (a command) and “cannot be put asunder” (an ontology the Reformers denied) pull the other way. Contested.102
Does the exception permit remarriage, or only separation? — the central disputed question of the whole doctrine. Grant that Jesus permits putting away a wife for porneia: does the exception dissolve the bond so the innocent party may marry again (the reading of Ambrosiaster, Erasmus, and the Protestant mainstream), or license only separation with the bond intact and no remarriage (the patristic consensus from Hermas to Augustine, fixed as dogma by Trent)? The crux is the Greek syntax of Matthew 19:9: does “except for fornication,” sitting between “puts away” and “marries another,” qualify the divorce alone (so remarriage stays adultery — Heth and Wenham’s adverbial-ellipsis argument) or the whole divorce-and-remarry conditional (so the innocent may remarry — Carson’s “govern the entire protasis”)? The grammar is genuinely ambiguous and cannot settle it, so the verdict turns on whether one weights Matthew’s single sentence or the three exceptionless parallels (Mark, Luke, Paul) and the church’s reception — a deadlock marked by Heth himself later changing sides. Kept distinct from dissolution by pastoral “economy” (a mechanism of practice, not a claim about the text). Contested.103
The Pauline privilege — does desertion (1 Corinthians 7:15) free the believer to remarry? — Paul’s second ground, added on his own authority beyond Matthew’s porneia: when an unbelieving spouse departs, the believer “is not under bondage” (ou dedoulōtai, 1 Corinthians 7:15). Does this dissolve the marriage and free the believer to marry again (the “Pauline privilege” of Ambrosiaster, the Reformers, the Westminster Confession, and Roman canon law — canon 1143), or only release the believer from the obligation to preserve the marriage, with no right to remarry (the Greek fathers — Chrysostom, Theophylact, Theodoret — and modern critical exegesis in Fee and Robertson–Plummer)? The load-bearing word “not enslaved” underdetermines it, and the reception splits along the same fault line as Matthew’s exception. It is the same dissolution question reached by a different proof-text (see the remarriage-or-separation argument), and it raises whether Jesus’ grounds were meant to be exhaustive. Contested.104
Is marriage a covenant, breakable by treachery, or an indissoluble one-flesh bond? — the definitional model underneath the whole dissolution dispute. On the covenant model (Gordon Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant; John Murray; the Reformed Westminster Confession; Instone-Brewer’s ketubah-contract frame) marriage is a relationship of sworn obligation ratified by oath, which — like other covenants — treachery (adultery, the “violence” of unjust divorce, Malachi 2:14–16) can break, freeing the wronged party; against it stands the ontological “one flesh” union (Augustine’s sacramentum, the Catholic bond) that no human act can sever while both live. As a model of marriage the covenant reading is well-grounded — Scripture’s vocabulary for the bond is covenantal (Malachi 2:14; Proverbs 2:17; Ezekiel 16:8), and covenant is a relation of obligation, not a fusion of substance. But the advocated inference — covenant, therefore dissoluble by breach — does not follow: covenant is a genus with expressly unbreakable members (the everlasting Noahic and Davidic covenants), and the indissolubilist tradition itself defines marriage as a covenant (Catechism §1601; canon 1055) while denying it can be broken. So the framing reframes the debate at the definitional level but throws the weight back on the exegetical remarriage-or-separation and indissoluble-bond questions it cannot itself settle. Contested.105
Does “makes her an adulteress” (Matthew 5:32a) presuppose the wife’s remarriage? — the first half of the Sermon-on-the-Mount saying says the man who dismisses his wife “causeth her to commit adultery” (poiei autēn moicheuthēnai, Matthew 5:32a). On what mechanism? The plain and near-consensus reading is that the dismissal makes her an adulteress by way of a second union it takes for granted she will enter — the very remarriage the verse’s own second half names (“whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery”) — adulterous because the first bond survives. Every father who glossed it read it so (Clement: “compels her to commit adultery”; Origen: he “gives to her the excuse of a second marriage”; Chrysostom), and modern commentary (Hagner, Gundry, France) supplies the first-century economic reality — a dismissed woman, unable to subsist alone, driven of near-necessity to remarry. The passive “be made adulterous” and the husband’s sole culpability underscore that she is the mechanism’s victim, not that she is merely stigmatized without a union; the “regarded-as-adulterous” rival is a true note folded in, not a competing reading. Sound as a presupposition of her remarriage — but it presupposes rather than entails the remarriage, and pressed as a freestanding proof of universal indissolubility it overreaches (5:32a concerns the causeless divorce, leaving the innocent party’s case to the remarriage-or-separation question). Sound.106
Does 1 Corinthians 7:10–11 bar the separated from remarriage, even in the adultery case? — Paul relays the Lord’s own charge (“not I, but the Lord”): a wife should not separate, “but if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband,” and the husband should not put her away (1 Corinthians 7:10–11). It is the New Testament’s plainest bar on the separated party’s remarriage — no porneia exception, an explicit “remain unmarried,” from the writer closest to Jesus — and the strict tradition (Chrysostom, Augustine, later Aquinas: the marriage “dissolved as to bed and board, not as to bond”) presses it as the strongest single text against the Erasmian remarriage-license. Within its scope the bar is decisive; but Paul is treating a two-believer couple parted for non-adultery reasons (continence, faintheartedness, temper — before he turns to mixed marriages at 7:12), and his “or be reconciled” presupposes a marriage no porneia has severed. Whether the charge reaches the innocent party of a marriage broken by adultery — the case Matthew’s exception raises — is precisely what is disputed, and the extension carries the innocent-party cost Origen felt (“something monstrous”) and Erasmus pressed. Conclusive within scope, underdetermined beyond it; it shares the fault line of the remarriage-or-separation and Pauline-privilege questions it feeds. Contested.107
Why does Matthew alone carry the exception clause? — Mark, Luke, and Paul all give the divorce saying with no exception; only Matthew adds “except for fornication,” and does it twice. Three explanations compete. That Matthew added the clause to soften an originally absolute prohibition is the majority verdict of critical commentary, on the transcriptional argument that one evangelist softening a saying is easier to explain than three independent witnesses each hardening a qualified one — hardest of all against Paul, who reports the Lord’s charge directly and still adds no exception. That Mark and Luke abbreviated a qualification everyone in the Jewish debate assumed — where adultery was uncontested as grounds and Mark demonstrably re-tooled the saying for Gentiles (Mark 10:12) — is well-grounded on the rabbinic and historical-Jesus evidence but does not overturn the redactional majority. That Matthew’s clause is “preteritive” and himself absolute is Vawter’s largely-abandoned harmonization. The field is genuinely divided, and the source question underdetermines the doctrine: whether the phrase is Matthew’s and whether Jesus permitted divorce for unfaithfulness come apart. Contested.108
Does Mark 10:12 reflect Roman, not Jewish, law? — Mark alone adds a mirror clause in which the wife “puts away her husband” and remarries (Mark 10:12). Because mainstream Jewish law made divorce the husband’s prerogative — Josephus states it flatly (“with us it is lawful for a husband… but a wife… cannot of herself be married to another”) — while Roman and Greek law let a wife divorce, France, Fitzmyer, and most Markan commentary read the clause as Mark adapting the saying for a Greco-Roman readership, one small datum in the case that Mark writes for Gentiles. The narrow observation (a wife as active divorcer, at home in Roman law) is essentially certain; the advocated inference (proof of a Gentile-audience redaction) is probable but short of established, because the exclusive “Roman, not Jewish” form overreaches — elite Jewish women did initiate divorce (Josephus’ Salome and Herodias; the fifth-century Elephantine contracts; the disputed Se’elim papyrus) — and the clause may instead be dominical, aimed at the live Herodian scandal (Mark 6:17–18) rather than a distant Roman one. Distinct from, but bearing on, the Matthean-source question. Plausible.109
Is Jesus siding with Shammai against Hillel’s “any cause” divorce? — David Instone-Brewer’s reframing, on which the Pharisees’ “for every cause?” (Matthew 19:3) quotes the technical name of the Hillelite “Any Cause” divorce — a procedure the school of Hillel read out of Moses’ “some uncleanness” (‘erwat dabar, Deuteronomy 24:1) by splitting the phrase into two grounds — so that Jesus’ “no” rejects the loophole and sides with Shammai (divorce for sexual sin only). The frame is real and, at the level that matters, first-century: the quarrel is preserved verbatim (m. Gittin 9:10 — Shammai “a matter of forbidden intercourse,” Hillel “even… because she burned his dish”), and the permissive practice is attested in Jesus’ own century by Philo and Josephus (“for any cause whatsoever”), not merely retrojected from the later rabbis. But the strong form over-reaches: that “Any Cause” was a fixed technical name by AD 30 is inferred from sources redacted c. 200; the claim that “all divorces then” were of that one type strains Mark, Luke, and Paul; and Jesus’ appeal behind Moses to creation arguably transcends the school-dispute rather than joining it. Strong by rabbinic and Second-Temple lights, weaker on the technical-term and “took-a-side” claims. Contested.110
Did Moses command divorce, or merely tolerate it (Deuteronomy 24:1–4)? — the Pharisees call Moses’ bill of divorcement a command (Matthew 19:7), and Jesus corrects the category: Moses “suffered you to put away your wives… because of the hardness of your hearts,” but “from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8; Mark 10:5). The reading advanced here — that Deuteronomy 24:1–4 neither commands nor institutes divorce but presupposes it and regulates one abuse, a concession to hardness rather than a positive right — is Jesus’ own, the patristic consensus (Tertullian, “exculpated rather than abolished”; Jerome, “a human choice, not a commandment from God”; Chrysostom; Augustine, the bill a check on rash separation), and the near-unanimous verdict of critical study of the passage’s case-law form: verses 1–3 are the “if,” and only verse 4’s bar on restoring the first marriage is the “then.” The rival “command/institution” reading is the Pharisees’ own, rebutted in the text and resting on a King-James mistranslation of verse 1. What stays genuinely open is a downstream question this finding does not settle — whether “from the beginning it was not so” withdraws the permission or only narrows it — carried on the remarriage-or-separation page; it shares Moses’ bill as common ground with the Shammai–Hillel argument. Sound.111
Malachi 2:16 — “I hate divorce,” or “the man who hates and divorces”? — the Old-Testament verse most cited for God’s opposition to divorce (Malachi 2:16), and one of the most textually obscure in the Hebrew Bible. Popularly quoted as the first-person oracle “I hate divorce, says the Lord” (RSV, NRSV, NASB), it is better read — with the third-person Hebrew (śānē’, “he hates,” not śānē’tî) and every ancient version (Septuagint, Vulgate, Targum, the Qumran scroll, and Jerome’s own commentary) — as a conditional about the man who hates and divorces his wife, not a categorical divine ban. The two layers rate differently: the case against the first-person “I hate divorce” is close to settled, but the positive reconstruction stays disputed — permissive “if you hate her, divorce her” (Targum, Vulgate, Jerome) versus condemnatory “the man who hates and divorces… covers his garment with violence” (Hugenberger, Collins; NIV 2011, ESV 2016). Directionally the verse is a weaker proof-text for a categorical prohibition than its citation implies, while remaining a censure of treacherous divorce; the rendering adjudicates wording, not the doctrinal dissolution question. Contested.112
Is the Eastern “economy” (oikonomia) permitting remarriage after divorce legitimate? — the third historic answer to the doctrine, beside Latin indissolubility and the Erasmian dissolution: the Eastern churches permit a divorced person to remarry (up to a limit, under a penitential rite) by oikonomia, pastoral “economy” that condescends to human weakness rather than applying the akribeia (strictness) of the canon. This argument weighs the mechanism, not the text of the exception (that is the remarriage-or-separation question): granting the text unsettled, is the pastoral relaxation a faithful development or a capitulation? Strong as a bounded principle — anciently attested (Origen’s tolerating bishops, Basil’s “custom,” Epiphanius’ “concession to… weakness,” Trullo’s graded penance), coherently grounded in a theology of a bond that can die, and pointedly not anathematized by Trent (whose canon 7 was reworded to spare the Greeks). Weaker where its later extension into church-blessed remarriage outran the patristic toleration of a penitent, where it grew entangled with imperial civil law (its own defenders concede it became “accommodation with the powers-that-be”), and under the objection that economy dispenses only from ecclesiastical, not divine, law — so its legitimacy turns on the indissolubility question it cannot itself settle. Contested.113
Hermas, The Shepherd, Commandment (Mandate) 4.1 (ANF vol. 2) — “But if the husband know that his wife has gone astray, and if the woman does not repent, but persists in her fornication, and yet the husband continues to live with her, he also is guilty of her crime, and a sharer in her adultery… The husband should put her away, and remain by himself. But if he put his wife away and marry another, he also commits adultery.” ↩
Hermas, The Shepherd, Commandment (Mandate) 4.1 (ANF vol. 2) — “In case, therefore, that the divorced wife may repent, the husband ought not to marry another, when his wife has been put away. In this matter man and woman are to be treated exactly in the same way.” ↩
The put-away-but-do-not-remarry ruling reads Matthew’s exception (Matthew 5:32; 19:9) as licensing separation from an adulterous spouse but not a new marriage. See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: The Shepherd of Hermas on divorce. ↩
Justin, First Apology 15 (ANF vol. 1) — “Concerning chastity, He uttered such sentiments as these… And, ‘Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced from another husband, committeth adultery.’” ↩
Justin, First Apology 15 (ANF vol. 1) — “So that all who, by human law, are twice married, are in the eye of our Master sinners.” The ANF editor glosses the “twice married” (digamia) as Justin’s reference to marriage with a second spouse after divorce from the first. ↩
Justin, Second Apology 2 (ANF vol. 1) — “she—that she might not, by continuing in matrimonial connection with him, and by sharing his table and his bed, become a partaker also in his wickednesses and impieties—gave him what you call a bill of divorce, and was separated from him.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Justin Martyr on divorce. ↩
Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians 33 (ANF vol. 2) — “that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery. ‘For whosoever puts away his wife,’ says He, ‘and marries another, commits adultery;’ not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again.” ↩
The gloss — God “not permitting a man to send her away… nor to marry again” — reads the divorce saying (Matthew 19:9) as a bar on the divorce itself and any remarriage after it, the bond surviving intact. The neighbouring claim (a widower who remarries is a “cloaked adulterer”) concerns second marriage after bereavement and is weighed on the remarriage timeline. See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Athenagoras of Athens on divorce. ↩
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata II.23 (“On Marriage”) (ANF vol. 2) — “Now that the Scripture counsels marriage, and allows no release from the union, is expressly contained in the law, ‘Thou shalt not put away thy wife, except for the cause of fornication;’ and it regards as fornication, the marriage of those separated while the other is alive.” ↩
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata II.23 (ANF vol. 2) — “‘He that taketh a woman that has been put away,’ it is said, ‘committeth adultery; and if one puts away his wife, he makes her an adulteress,’ that is, compels her to commit adultery. And not only is he who puts her away guilty of this, but he who takes her, by giving to the woman the opportunity of sinning; for did he not take her, she would return to her husband.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Clement of Alexandria on divorce. ↩
Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.34 (ANF vol. 3) — “I maintain, then, that there was a condition in the prohibition which He now made of divorce; the case supposed being, that a man put away his wife for the express purpose of marrying another… Divorce, therefore, when justly deserved, has even in Christ a defender… He prohibits divorce when He will have the marriage inviolable; He permits divorce when the marriage is spotted with unfaithfulness.” ↩
Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.34 (ANF vol. 3) — “‘Moses,’ says He, ‘because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to give a bill of divorcement; but from the beginning it was not so’… Now, by this answer of His (to the Pharisees), He both sanctioned the provision of Moses, who was His own (servant), and restored to its primitive purpose the institution of the Creator… must He not have rather exculpated than abolished the enactment of Moses?… Permanent is the marriage which is not rightly dissolved; to marry, therefore, whilst matrimony is undissolved, is to commit adultery.” ↩
Tertullian, On Monogamy 9 (ANF vol. 4) — “And the reason why He has abolished divorce… permitting divorce to no cause but one… But they indulge in promiscuous adulteries, even without divorcing (their partners): to us, even if we do divorce them, even marriage will not be lawful.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Tertullian on divorce. ↩
Origen, Commentary on Matthew XIV.16, 23–24 (ANF vol. 10) — “He saw that not every cause is a reasonable ground for the dissolution of marriage”; “some of the laws were written not as excellent, but as by way of accommodation to the weakness of those to whom the law was given; for something of this kind is indicated in the words, ‘Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives’”; and “our Saviour… not at all permitting the dissolution of marriages for any other sin than fornication alone, when detected in the wife.” ↩
Origen, Commentary on Matthew XIV.23 (ANF vol. 10) — “But now contrary to what was written, some even of the rulers of the church have permitted a woman to marry, even when her husband was living, doing contrary to what was written… not indeed altogether without reason, for it is probable this concession was permitted in comparison with worse things, contrary to what was from the beginning ordained by law, and written.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Origen of Alexandria on divorce. ↩
Origen, Commentary on Matthew XIV.24 (ANF vol. 10) — “But it might be a subject for inquiry if on this account He hinders any one putting away a wife, unless she be caught in fornication, for any other reason, as for example for poisoning… or for any form of murder whatsoever… In either case there appears to be something monstrous… for to endure sins of such heinousness which seem to be worse than adultery or fornication, will appear to be irrational; but again on the other hand to act contrary to the design of the teaching of the Saviour, every one would acknowledge to be impious.” ↩
Lactantius, Divine Institutes VI.23 (“Of the Pleasure of Touch and Desire, and of Marriage and Continence”), trans. Sr. Mary Francis McDonald (Fathers of the Church 49), as given at ToposText — “For such is not the case, as is the interpretation of public law, that she alone is the adulteress who has another man, while the male is free from the charge of adultery, though he have many mistresses. The divine law so joins two with equal right into a marriage, which is two in one flesh, that whoever breaks apart the joining of the body is regarded as an adulterer… Faith, then, must be kept with the other by each party in a marriage; in fact, the wife is to be taught by the example of continence to act chastely. It is evil to exact that which you yourself are not able to exhibit.” The Ante-Nicene Fathers edition (Fletcher) prints this chapter untranslated, in the original Latin: “…divina lex ita duos in matrimonium, quod est in corpus unum, pari iure coniungit, ut adulter habeatur, quisquis compagem corporis in diversa distraxerit.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Lactantius on divorce. ↩
Lactantius, Divine Institutes VI.23, trans. McDonald (Fathers of the Church 49), at ToposText — “But, however, lest anyone think that he is able to circumscribe the divine precepts, there are added these points, that all calumny and chance for fraud be removed; he is an adulterer who takes a wife who has been sent away by her husband; and so is he who has, aside from the crime of adultery, put a wife away that he may take another. God did not intend for that ‘one flesh’ to be separated and torn apart.” Latin (ANF, Chap. XXIII): “…adulterum esse, qui a marito dimissam duxerit, et eum qui praeter crimen adulterii uxorem dimiserit, ut alteram ducat; dissociari enim corpus et distrahi Deus noluit.” ↩
Council of Elvira (c. 306), Canons 8 and 10 (Latin text, Early Church Texts) — Canon 8, Latin: “Item feminae, quae nulla praecedente causa reliquerint viros suos et alteris se copulaverint, nec in finem accipiant communionem”; English tr. as at beyond-the-pale.org.uk: “Women who without acceptable cause leave their husbands and join another man may not receive communion even when death approaches.” Canon 10 extends the deathbed penalty to a Christian woman who knowingly marries a man “who deserted his former wife without cause.” See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: The Council of Elvira on divorce. ↩
Council of Elvira (c. 306), Canon 9 (Latin text, Early Church Texts) — Latin: “Item femina fidelis, quae adulterum maritum reliquerit fidelem et alterum ducit, prohibeatur ne ducat: si duxerit non prius accipiat communionem, nisi quem reliquit de saeculo exierit, nisi forsitan necessitas infirmitatis dare compulerit”; English tr. as at beyond-the-pale.org.uk: “A baptized woman who leaves an adulterous husband who has been baptised, for another man, may not marry him. If she does, she may not receive communion until her former husband dies, unless she is seriously ill.” ↩
Council of Arles (314), Canon 11 (10) (Fourth-Century Christianity) — “Concerning those who apprehend their wives in adultery, and the same persons are faithful youths and are prevented from marrying (again), be it resolved that, as much as is able, they be counseled not to take other wives while their own wives are still living, even if the latter are adulterous.” See the person-detail page for the Latin and context: The Council of Arles (314) on divorce. ↩
Basil, Letter 188 (Canonica Prima), canon 9 (NPNF2 vol. 8) — “The sentence of the Lord that it is unlawful to withdraw from wedlock, save on account of fornication, applies, according to the argument, to men and women alike. Custom, however, does not so obtain… Yet custom ordains that men who commit adultery and are in fornication be retained by their wives.” ↩
Basil, Letter 199 (Canonica Secunda), canon 21 (NPNF2 vol. 8) — “If a man living with a wife is not satisfied with his marriage and falls into fornication, I account him a fornicator… So the wife will receive the husband on his return from fornication, but the husband will expel the polluted woman from his house. The argument here is not easy, but the custom has so obtained.” See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: Basil of Caesarea on divorce. ↩
Basil, Letter 199 (Canonica Secunda), canons 35 and 48 (NPNF2 vol. 8) — canon 35: “In the case of a man deserted by his wife… If she appear to have abandoned him without reason, he is deserving of pardon… that he may communicate with the Church”; canon 48: “The woman who has been abandoned by her husband, ought, in my judgment, to remain as she is. The Lord said, ‘If any one leave his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, he causeth her to commit adultery’… by calling her adulteress, He excludes her from intercourse with another man.” The seven-year penance for deserting a lawful spouse is fixed in Letter 217, canon 77. See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: Basil of Caesarea on divorce. ↩
Ambrosiaster, Commentary on 1 Corinthians (on 7:10–11), quoted and translated in David G. Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (July 2018), pp. 45–64, at pp. 49–50 — “He did not add the words that he wrote concerning the woman: But if she separates, she should remain as she is, because it is lawful for a man to marry another woman, if he divorces a wife who sins. For a man is not bound by the law in the same way as a woman is, for the man is the head of the woman.” Latin (CSEL 81/2, p. 74): “quia uiro licet ducere uxorem, si dimiserit [uxorem] peccantem, quia non ita lege constringitur uir sicut mulier; caput enim mulieris uir est.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Ambrosiaster on divorce. ↩
Ambrosiaster, Commentary on 1 Corinthians (on 7:11), in Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (2018), at p. 49 — “For it is not permitted for a woman to remarry, if she divorces her own husband on account of fornication or apostasy… since the woman, as the inferior party, does not enjoy the same rights as the man, who is the superior. But if her husband commits apostasy or desires to enjoy his wife in a perverted manner, the woman can neither marry another man nor return to her husband.” Cf. Gerald Bray’s (IVP Ancient Christian Texts) rendering of the same comment at 1 Corinthians 7:11. ↩
Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul’s Epistles (on 1 Corinthians 7:15), Gerald Bray’s translation — “A marriage contracted without devotion to God is not binding, and for that reason it is not a sin if it is abandoned because of God.” Widely identified as the earliest clear patristic statement of the “Pauline privilege.” ↩
David G. Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (July 2018), pp. 45–64, at pp. 50–53 — argues that Ambrosiaster’s double standard reflects Roman law (adultery as a wife’s crime; Codex Theodosianus 3.16.1, a.d. 331, harsher on wives seeking divorce) and his theology of male headship (he elsewhere denies women bear God’s image, Quaestiones 45.3), and that his permission of remarriage reflects, rather than departs from, contemporary Western practice. Older scholarship (J. Rist, H. Crouzel) had held him “the only author in the first five centuries” of the Latin church to permit it. ↩
Epiphanius, Panarion 59 (Against the Cathari), 3.1, in The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Books II and III, trans. Frank Williams (Brill), p. 107 — “For they too say that they have the same faith which we do, but they will not communicate with the twice-married. For if someone marries a second wife after baptism, they never admit him again.” See the person-detail page for the full passage and context: Epiphanius of Salamis on divorce. ↩
Epiphanius, Panarion 59 (Against the Cathari), 4.8–10, trans. Frank Williams (Brill), pp. 108–109 — “But <this> can be tolerated <in> the laity as a concession to weakness… But if the man could not be content with the one wife, who had died, <or> if there has been a divorce for some reason — fornication, adultery or something else — and the man marries a second wife or the woman a second husband, God’s word does not censure them or bar them from the church and life, but tolerates them because of their weakness… not by letting him have two wives at once while the one is still alive, but <by letting> him marry a second wife lawfully if the opportunity arises, after being parted from the first.” ↩
Epiphanius, Panarion 59 (Against the Cathari), 6.3, trans. Frank Williams (Brill), p. 110 — “The first wife is a divine ordinance; the second, a concession to human weakness. And even if one marries a further wife [after the second], his weakness is still tolerated.” On the disputed restrictive reading (a second marriage only after the divorced wife’s death), see the Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Divorce”; the plain sense of 59.4.9 nonetheless extends the concession to remarriage after divorce. See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Epiphanius of Salamis on divorce. ↩
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 37.6 (“On the Words of the Gospel, ‘When Jesus Had Finished These Sayings’”) (NPNF2 vol. 7) — “Chastity, in respect of which I see that the majority of men are ill-disposed, and that their laws are unequal and irregular. For what was the reason why they restrained the woman, but indulged the man… if the husband commits fornication against his wife, he has no account to give? I do not accept this legislation; I do not approve this custom. They who made the Law were men, and therefore their legislation is hard on women.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Gregory of Nazianzus on divorce. ↩
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 37.6–7 (NPNF2 vol. 7) — “See the equality of the legislation. There is one Maker of man and woman… How, though thou art equally a body, dost thou legislate unequally? If thou enquire into the worse—The Woman Sinned, and so did Adam. The serpent deceived them both… Christ saves both by His Passion… They two, He says, shall be one Flesh; so let the one flesh have equal honour.” ↩
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 37.8 (NPNF2 vol. 7) — “Now the Law grants divorce for every cause; but Christ not for every cause; but He allows only separation from the whore; and in all other things He commands patience. He allows to put away the fornicatress, because she corrupts the offspring; but in all other matters let us be patient and endure.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Gregory of Nazianzus on divorce. ↩
Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, Bk 8 (on Luke 16:18) — “Therefore, do not divorce your wife, lest you deny God, the author of your union… So you dismiss your wife as if it were a right, without any crime; and you think it is allowed to you, because human law does not prohibit it; but divine law does prohibit it… What God has joined together, let no man separate.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Ambrose of Milan on divorce. ↩
Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, Bk 8 — “Suppose she does marry. This is your crime of necessity; and the marriage which you imagine is adultery.” The same bar stated positively in On Abraham, Bk 1 (§59) — “You are bound to your wife, do not seek a way out: because it is not allowed for you, while your wife is alive, to take another wife.” ↩
Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke, Bk 8 — on Moses’ bill, “Moses permitted, he says, not God commanded… he who divorces his wife, tears his flesh, divides his body”; on the Pauline case (1 Corinthians 7:15), “But if the unbeliever separates, let him separate… he neither commanded nor gave authority to anyone who wants to leave, but he removed blame from the one who is abandoned.” ↩
Ambrose of Milan, On Abraham, Bk 1 (§25) — “Every act of fornication is adultery, and what is not permissible for a woman is not permissible for a man. A husband owes the same chastity to his wife as a wife owes to her husband.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Ambrose of Milan on divorce. ↩
John Chrysostom, Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 17.4 (NPNF1 vol. 10) — “And observe Him everywhere addressing His discourse to the man. Thus, ‘He that putteth away his wife,’ saith He, ‘causeth her to commit adultery, and he that marrieth a woman put away, committeth adultery.’ That is, the former, though he take not another wife, by that act alone hath made himself liable to blame, having made the first an adulteress; the latter again is become an adulterer by taking her who is another’s.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: John Chrysostom on divorce. ↩
John Chrysostom, Homily on the Gospel of Matthew 17.4 (NPNF1 vol. 10) — “For tell me not this, ‘the other hath cast her out;’ nay, for when cast out she continues to be the wife of him that expelled her… He hath shut against her also the doors of him who was afterwards receiving her; in that He saith, ‘He who marrieth her that is put away committeth adultery.’” The single lawful ground: “even for him He leaves one manner of dismissal, when He saith, ‘Except for the cause of fornication.’” ↩
John Chrysostom, Homily on the First Epistle to the Corinthians 19 (on 1 Corinthians 7:10–11) (NPNF1 vol. 12) — “That the wife depart not from her husband: but if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled unto her husband… if not to cohabit with him, yet so as not to introduce any other to be her husband.” The parallel Matthew 19 homily has Christ “give the law with His own authority” (Homily on Matthew 62.1). See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: John Chrysostom on divorce. ↩
Jerome, Letter 55.3–4 (to Amandus), c. 394 (NPNF2 vol. 6) — “if a woman marries again while her husband is living, she is an adulteress… A husband may be an adulterer or a sodomite, he may be stained with every crime and may have been left by his wife because of his sins; yet he is still her husband and, so long as he lives, she may not marry another”; the penitent must “have no farther intercourse with that second husband who ought to be called not a husband but an adulterer.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Jerome on divorce. ↩
Jerome, Commentary on Matthew (398), on Matthew 19:9 — “Only fornication is what overcomes a wife’s affection… Therefore, whenever there is fornication, or even suspicion of fornication, the wife is freely dismissed. And because it could happen that someone falsely accuses the innocent person… the husband is commanded to divorce the first wife so that he does not have a second wife while the first one is still alive.” Standard English: Thomas P. Scheck, St. Jerome: Commentary on Matthew (Fathers of the Church 117; CUA Press, 2008). ↩
Jerome, Letter 77.3–4 (to Oceanus, on the death of Fabiola), 399 (NPNF2 vol. 6) — “a commandment which is given to men logically applies to women also… what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men”; “she did not know that the rigour of the gospel takes away from women all pretexts for re-marriage so long as their former husbands are alive”; and, at her public penance, she “stood in the ranks of the penitents and exposed before bishop, presbyters, and people… her dishevelled hair, pale features, soiled hands and unwashed neck.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Jerome on divorce. ↩
Innocent I, Epistle 6 (Consulenti tibi, JK 293) to Exuperius of Toulouse, cap. 6, trans. J. Stevenson, Creeds, Councils and Controversies, pp. 254–255, as quoted at “Divorce & Remarriage in the Church Fathers” — “You have also asked about those who, after divorce, have married again. It is clear that both parties are adulterers. Those who, while the wife is living, although their marriage has been dissolved, hasten to another union cannot be other than adulterers…” Latin (Migne, PL 20, col. 500B–501A): “…Quos in utraque parte adulteros esse manifestum est… Et ideo omnes a communione fidelium abstinendos.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Pope Innocent I on divorce. ↩
Innocent I, Epistle 2 to Victricius of Rouen (15 Feb 404), cap. 13, Latin in Migne, PL 20, col. 478B–479A — “Si enim de omnibus haec ratio custoditur, ut quaecumque vivente viro alteri nupserit, habeatur adultera, nec ei agendae poenitentiae licentia concedatur, nisi unus ex eis defunctus fuerit…” (“For if this rule is observed in the case of everyone — that any woman who marries another while her husband lives is held an adulteress, and leave to do penance is not granted her unless one of the two has died…”). English is an editorial translation of the verified Latin; no published English rendering of the letter was located. ↩
Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence I.10[XI] (NPNF1 vol. 5) — “a certain sacramental bond in marriage… the man and the woman who are joined together in matrimony should remain inseparable as long as they live… the nuptial bond has a permanent obligation, and can be cancelled neither by separation nor by union with another.” The “can no way be dissolved but by the death of one of them” formula is Augustine, On the Good of Marriage 17 (NPNF1 vol. 3). See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Augustine of Hippo on divorce. ↩
Augustine, On the Good of Marriage 32 (NPNF1 vol. 3) — “the sanctity of the Sacrament, by reason of which it is unlawful for one who leaves her husband, even when she has been put away, to be married to another, so long as her husband lives, no not even for the sake of bearing children.” The bar applies equally to the man: on Matthew 5:32 Augustine holds “according to a similar rule, if he shall put her away, he is to remain unmarried, or be reconciled to his wife” (On the Sermon on the Mount I.14.42). ↩
Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence I.10[XI] (NPNF1 vol. 5) — “The sacramental bond… is lost neither by divorce nor by adultery”; the world’s law “allows a divorce… without even the allegation of guilt… because of the hardness of their hearts… And whosoever does this is held to be guilty of adultery by the law of the gospel.” ↩
Augustine, On Adulterous Marriages (De coniugiis adulterinis) II.18–19, trans. Roland Teske, The Works of Saint Augustine I/9 (New City Press, 1999) — “any union with other persons while their first husband or wife is alive is not marriage but adultery.” Written c. 419 to answer Pollentius, who argued from Matthew’s exception clause (Matthew 19:9) that an innocent husband might remarry; Augustine governs the exception by the unqualified prohibition of Mark 10:11–12 and Luke 16:18, and concedes the obscurity of the gospel texts without regarding the question as fully solved. See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Augustine of Hippo on divorce. ↩
Council of Vannes (Concilium Veneticum, c. 465), canon 2, quoted and translated in David G. Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (2018), pp. 45–64, at pp. 62–63 (citing CCSL 148:152; Mansi 7:953) — “We have decreed that those men who after leaving their wives, as is said in the gospel, «except on account of fornication», have married other women without having given proof of the adultery, should likewise be cut off from communion…” Latin: “Eos quoque, qui relictis uxoribus suis, sicut in euangelio dicitur excepta causa fornicationis, sine adulterii probatione alias duxerint, statuimus a communione similiter arcendos…” A shorter English rendering in Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 4, p. 16. See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: The Gallic councils on divorce. ↩
Council of Agde (Concilium Agathense, 506), canon 25, English in Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church, vol. 4, p. 80 — “Laymen who separate themselves from their unfaithful wives without having waited for the sentence of the comprovincial bishops, in order unlawfully to enter into other unions, must be excluded from Church communion and from intercourse with the faithful.” Latin (CCSL 148:204; Mansi 8:329), in Hunter, Vergentis 6 (2018), p. 63 n. 50: “Hi vero saeculares, qui coniugale consortium culpa graviore dimittunt… si antequam apud episcopos comprovinciales discidii causas dixerint et prius uxores quam iudicio damnentur abiecerint, a communione ecclesiae et sancto populi coetu… excludantur.” ↩
David G. Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (2018), pp. 62–63 — reading Vannes c. 2 (with Philip Reynolds) as “simply translat[ing] the exception clause of Matthew 19:9 into ecclesiastical law,” and Agde c. 25 as evidence that “a woman’s adultery constituted a dissolution of the marriage and justified the remarriage of her husband, as long as the offense was properly proven before church authorities.” See the person-detail page for context: The Gallic councils on divorce. ↩
Justinian, Novel 22 (535), chs. 4 and 16, trans. Fred H. Blume, Annotated Justinian Code (Univ. of Wyoming) — ch. 4: “Marriages are dissolved by the parties thereto, if living, either by common consent… or (by agreement) for some reasonable reason when the divorce is called bona gratia, or because of some guilt or no guilt at all.” Ch. 16 (the unequal waiting period): “still she must not remarry until after the expiration of a year. That shall not apply to the husband; and he may immediately remarry… because in such case no confusion of offspring can result.” See the person-detail page for the full provisions and context: Justinian I on divorce. ↩
Justinian, Novel 117 (542), chs. 8–9 and 13, trans. Blume — ch. 8: “the sole grounds for which the husband or wife may legally send a bill of divorce… If the husband thinks that he is able to convict his wife of adultery, he shall first make an accusation against his wife.” Ch. 9 (the wife’s narrower ground on the husband’s unchastity): “If the husband lives with some other woman in the same house… or… in some other house in the same city, and that he has been repeatedly censured by his wife… the wife shall have the right to dissolve the marriage.” Ch. 13 (penalty on the wife who divorces without cause): she “shall… be delivered to the bishop… so that such bishop may see that she is thrown into a convent, to remain there during the remainder of her life.” ↩
Justinian, Novel 134 (556), ch. 11, trans. Blume — “we direct that no bill of divorce shall be sent, or if sent, shall be valid, for any cause other than those specified, nor shall the marriage be dissolved by consent… If they dare to dissolve the marriage for any cause other than those specified by us, their property shall be given to their descendants… and the man and the woman shall be thrown into a monastery for the rest of their life.” ↩
Justin II, Novel 140 (566), ch. 1, trans. Blume — repealing Justinian’s ban: “according to the ancient law marriage may be dissolved by mutual consent, and the penalty provided in the constitution of our father… shall not longer be in force. For marriage is entered into through mutual affection, it is rightly dissolved by a contrary sentiment.” See the person-detail page for the full provisions and context: Justinian I on divorce. ↩
Council in Trullo (692), Canon 87 (NPNF2 vol. 14, The Seven Ecumenical Councils) — “She who has left her husband is an adulteress if she has come to another, according to the holy and divine Basil… But he who leaves the wife lawfully given him, and shall take another is guilty of adultery by the sentence of the Lord. And it has been decreed by our Fathers that they who are such must be weepers for a year, hearers for two years, prostrators for three years, and in the seventh year to stand with the faithful and thus be counted worthy of the Oblation.” See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: The Council in Trullo on divorce. ↩
Council in Trullo (692), Canon 93 (NPNF2 vol. 14) — “If the wife of a man who has gone away and does not appear, cohabit with another before she is assured of the death of the first, she is an adulteress… But the circumstance here has some excuse… But she who in ignorance has married a man who at the time was deserted by his wife… has indeed committed fornication, but through ignorance; therefore she is not prevented from marrying… If a soldier shall return after a long time… he may receive his own wife [back again], pardon being extended in consideration of their ignorance both to her and to the man who married her.” ↩
Council in Trullo (692), Canon 98 (NPNF2 vol. 14) — “He who brings to the intercourse of marriage a woman who is betrothed to another man who is still alive, is to lie under the charge of adultery.” The programmatic canon 3 (Rome’s “exact perfection” blended with Constantinople’s “kindness and consideration”) and canon 2 (ratifying Basil’s canons) are on the same page. See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: The Council in Trullo on divorce. ↩
Basil of Caesarea, Letter 188, canon 9 (NPNF2 vol. 8) — “The sentence of the Lord that it is unlawful to withdraw from wedlock, save on account of fornication, applies… to men and women alike. Custom, however, does not so obtain” (canonized ecumenically as Council in Trullo, canon 87). John Zonaras’ commentary on Basil canon 9 (Rhalles–Potles, Syntagma, vol. IV; trans. Patrick Viscuso, as reproduced online): “this great Father states that these things prevail according to the ecclesiastical custom at that time. And from the Novel of the emperor Justinian… situated in book 28, title 7 of the Basilika… it is permitted for wives to dissolve marriage” for a husband’s open, unrepented adultery. See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: The Byzantine canonists on divorce. ↩
Theodore Balsamon, commentary on Basil canon 9 (Rhalles–Potles, Syntagma, vol. IV, p. 122; trans. Patrick Viscuso, as reproduced online) — “The saint… made a reply from various writings and the custom held at that time. However, since Novel 117 of Justinian, situated in title 7 of book 28, all but transformed everything in such a canon, read ye this, and likewise Novel 111.” The locus (Rhalles–Potles IV.122) and the Basilika 28.7 / Justinian Novel 117 reference are confirmed independently by “St Basil’s Canon 9 on adultery” (Pemptousia, 2017) and Maroula Perisanidi, “Spousal Equality in Twelfth-Century Byzantine Canon Law,” Gender & History 28.2 (2016). ↩
Council in Trullo (692), canon 93 (NPNF2 vol. 14) — the vanished/soldier husband’s wife who remarries prematurely “is an adulteress,” yet “has some excuse… because the suspicion of death becomes very great,” and “pardon [is] extended in consideration of their ignorance” on the first husband’s return. The graded penance and weighed “pardon” of these canons is the machinery the Eastern practice of pastoral “economy” (oikonomia) grew from — weighed on the oikonomia argument page (assessment: contested). See the person-detail page: The Byzantine canonists on divorce. ↩
Gratian, Decretum, C. 32 q. 7, dictum post c. 16 (Friedberg col. 1143–44), digitized Friedberg edition (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) — “His auctoritatibus euidentissime monstratur, quod quicumque causa fornicationis uxorem suam dimiserit, illa uiuente aliam ducere non poterit, et, si duxerit, reus adulterii erit” (“whoever has dismissed his wife for cause of fornication cannot, while she lives, marry another; and if he does, he will be guilty of adultery”). See the person-detail page for the full dicta and context: The Latin canonists on divorce. ↩
The permissive “Ambrose” (Ambrosiaster) text and Gratian’s harmonization: Gratian, Decretum, C. 32 q. 7 c. 17 (“…quia uiro licet ducere aliam”), Friedberg col. 1143–44; and the dictum after c. 18 (“V. Pars,” Friedberg col. 1145–46), ed. cit. — the permissive passage “a falsatoribus dicitur insertum” and, if defended, restricted to incestuous fornication and to remarriage only “after the death of the unfaithful,” “since no authority permits a husband to marry another wife while the first one is still alive” (trans. John Wijngaards, womenpriests.org). ↩
Peter Lombard, Sentences IV, on consent as the efficient cause (d. 27, c. 3, “Efficiens autem causa matrimonii est consensus… nec de futuro sed de praesenti”), LombardPress critical text (cf. Aquinas’s verbatim citation, Corpus Thomisticum); on marriage as sacramentum of the Christ–Church union (d. 26, c. 6), LombardPress; and on separation-not-remarriage under adultery, reciprocally (d. 35, cc. 1–2, quoting Jerome: “manere innuptam”), LombardPress. English renderings are of the verbatim Latin (standard published translation: Giulio Silano, PIMS 2010). See the person-detail page: The Latin canonists on divorce. ↩
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 67 (“Of the Bill of Divorce”), a. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New Advent) — “By the intention of nature marriage is directed to the rearing of the offspring, not merely for a time, but throughout its whole life… the dictate of the natural law requires the latter to live together for ever inseparably: and so the indissolubility of marriage is of natural law”; and (sed contra) man “would… oppose himself to God if he were to sunder ‘what God hath joined together’ (Mat. 19:6).” See the person-detail page for the full articles and context: Thomas Aquinas on divorce. ↩
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 62 (“Of the Impediment that Supervenes to Marriage after its Consummation, namely Fornication”), aa. 3 and 5 (New Advent) — the preamble: fornication “is an impediment to a previous marriage as regards the act, although the marriage tie remains”; a. 3: “A husband can put away his wife in two ways. First as to bed only… Secondly, as to bed and board… Now this putting away is called a divorce”; a. 5: “Nothing supervenient to marriage can dissolve it: wherefore adultery does not make a marriage cease to be valid. For, according to Augustine (De Nup. et Concup. i, 10), ‘as long as they live they are bound by the marriage tie, which neither divorce nor union with another can destroy.’ Therefore it is unlawful for one, while the other lives, to marry again.” On parity of the sexes, a. 4: “the same things are lawful or unlawful to the one as to the other.” ↩
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement, q. 67, aa. 3–4 — on the Mosaic bill: “Moses granted the Jews the bill of divorce by reason of the hardness of their heart… The saying of our Lord refers to the time of the New Law, when the aforesaid permission was recalled” (Mat. 19:8), for “the woman… whilst her husband liveth, is bound to the law of her husband” (Rom. 7:2). On the Pauline privilege, q. 59, aa. 5–6 — “marriage is dissolved in two ways. In one way as to the marriage tie, and thus marriage cannot be dissolved after it is ratified… But if it be not ratified, the tie is dissolved, if the one party remain in unbelief, and the other being converted to the faith has married again… the firmer tie always looses the weaker.” See the person-detail page for the full articles and context: Thomas Aquinas on divorce. ↩
Erasmus, annotation on Matthew 19:9, translated in Leslie McFall, The Biblical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage (Comberton, 2014), p. 33, and discussed in Davidson Razafiarivony, “Erasmus’ Exceptive Clause (εἰ μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ) in the Divorce and Remarriage Saying (Matthew 19:9): An Assessment,” Pan-African Journal of Theology 3.2 (2024), pp. 4–8 — “For whoever divorces his wife — unless she is an adulteress (for she has stopped being his wife if she has had sexual relations with another man) — forces her into adultery…”; Erasmus alone printed Matthew 19:9 as an unambiguous exceptive clause (εἰ μὴ ἐπὶ πορνείᾳ). See the person-detail page for the full text and context: Erasmus on divorce. ↩
Erasmus, annotation on 1 Corinthians 7:39 (added from the 1519 edition of the Annotationes in Novum Testamentum; critical Latin in the Amsterdam Opera omnia VI-8, ed. M. L. van Poll-van de Lisdonk, Brill 2003), in the translation of John B. Payne, Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1970), ch. 3 (“Marriage”) — laying down “two basic propositions… It should be permissible to dissolve certain marriages… by the ecclesiastical authorities or recognized judges, and to give the innocent party the freedom to marry again,” since to bind detesting spouses risks “mutual quarrels, irremediable hatred, dread of poisoning and murder.” See the person-detail page for the full text and context: Erasmus on divorce. ↩
On Ambrosiaster as the single early Latin exegete to permit the innocent husband’s remarriage (and the pre-modern attribution of his commentary to Ambrose), see David G. Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (2018), pp. 45–64; on Erasmus’ revival of that reading against the fathers, William A. Heth, “Another Look at the Erasmian View of Divorce and Remarriage,” JETS 25/3 (1982), p. 263. ↩
Heth, “Another Look,” JETS 25/3 (1982), p. 263 — the interpretation “first set forth by Erasmus… was then taken up by the reformers, and… subsequently found its way into the confession of faith drawn up at Westminster in 1648.” The Council of Trent, Session 24 (1563), Canon 7 on matrimony anathematizes anyone who says the church errs in teaching that the bond “cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one of the married parties” and that even the innocent party “cannot contract another marriage, during the life-time of the other” — the Erasmian claim — its indirect wording sparing the Greek Christians who permitted remarriage. See the person-detail page for the full reception and context: Erasmus on divorce. ↩
Martin Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), section on matrimony (trans. A. T. W. Steinhäuser, Works of Martin Luther, Holman, 1915; Project Wittenberg) — “we read nowhere that the man who marries a wife receives any grace of God. No, there is not even a divinely instituted sign in marriage, nor do we read anywhere that marriage was instituted by God to be a sign of anything”; and “since marriage existed from the beginning of the world and is still found among unbelievers, it cannot possibly be called a sacrament of the New Law and the exclusive possession of the Church.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Martin Luther on divorce. ↩
Martin Luther, The Estate of Marriage (1522), in Luther’s Works vol. 45, trans. Walther I. Brandt, Part Two (“which persons may be divorced”); full text at 1215.org (LW 45 reproduction, PDF) — “in the case of adultery Christ permits the divorce of husband and wife, so that the innocent person may remarry”; and “whoever commits adultery has in fact himself already departed and is considered as one dead. Therefore, the other may remarry just as though his spouse had died.” ↩
Luther, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), on matrimony (Project Wittenberg) — “As to divorce, it is still a moot question whether it be allowable. For my part I so greatly detest divorce that I should prefer bigamy to it, but whether it be allowable, I do not venture to decide… Christ, then, permits divorce, but for the cause of fornication only… He certainly seems to permit a man to marry another woman in the stead of the one who has been put away.” (The digital text prints a scanner error, “pennies” for “permits”; the wording here is confirmed against print reproductions of the Steinhäuser translation.) ↩
Luther, The Estate of Marriage (1522), LW 45, Part Two (1215.org PDF) — on desertion, applying 1 Corinthians 7:15 (in The Babylonian Captivity): “the Apostle gives permission to put away the unbeliever who departs and to set the believing spouse free to marry again”; on public process: “a public divorce, whereby one is enabled to remarry, must take place through the investigation and decision of the civil authority”; and on mere incompatibility (1 Corinthians 7:10–11), a sundering “only in such a way that they must both refrain from remarrying or else become reconciled.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: Martin Luther on divorce. ↩
John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), vol. 2, on Matthew 19:3–9 (Calvin Translation Society; CCEL) — “the woman, by fornication, cuts herself off, as a rotten member, from her husband, and sets him at liberty”; “as to the marriage bed, the wife has an equal right… when, by committing adultery, he has dissolved the marriage, the wife is set at liberty”; and against the celibacy reading, “This clause has been very ill explained by many commentators… As if this liberty of divorce meant only not to lie with his wife.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: John Calvin on divorce. ↩
Calvin, Commentary on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians, vol. 1, on 1 Corinthians 7:10–17 (CCEL) — on 7:15: “the first and chief bond is not merely loosed, but even utterly broken through”; on 7:10–11: “even those who are not received by their husbands, continue to be bound, so that they cannot take other husbands” — explicitly “not to be understood of those who have been put away for adultery.” ↩
Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses (Harmony of the Law), vol. 3, on Deuteronomy 24:1–4 (CCEL) — divorce “was granted in indulgence to the Jews, yet Christ pronounces that it was never in accordance with the Law, because it is directly repugnant to the first institution of God.” On the Geneva ordinance: Les Ordonnances ecclésiastiques de l’Eglise de Genève (1561), arts. 122–128 (“Pour quelles causes le Mariage peut estre rescindé”), in Wilhelm Niesel’s critical edition, transcribed text (pp. 55–57) — adultery frees the innocent party to remarry (art. 122), the wife on equal terms since the marital obligation is “mutuelle et reciproque” (art. 123), and malicious desertion likewise (arts. 125–128). Same provisions in Calvin’s 1545/46 draft, translated as the “Marriage Ordinance of 1546,” paras. 20–23, in John Witte, Jr. and Robert M. Kingdon, Sex, Marriage, and Family in John Calvin’s Geneva, vol. 1 (Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 51–61. See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: John Calvin on divorce. ↩
Council of Trent, Session 24 (1563), Doctrine on the Sacrament of Matrimony (trans. J. Waterworth, 1848; Hanover Historical Texts Project) — “The first parent of the human race, under the influence of the divine Spirit, pronounced the bond of matrimony perpetual and indissoluble, when he said; This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”; and Christ “merited for us… that grace which might perfect that natural love, and confirm that indissoluble union, and sanctify the married.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: The Council of Trent on divorce. ↩
Council of Trent, Session 24 (1563), Canons on the Sacrament of Matrimony, canon 7 (trans. Waterworth; Hanover Historical Texts Project) — “If any one saith, that the Church has erred, in that she hath taught, and doth teach, in accordance with the evangelical and apostolical doctrine, that the bond of matrimony cannot be dissolved on account of the adultery of one of the married parties; and that both, or even the innocent one who gave not occasion to the adultery, cannot contract another marriage, during the life-time of the other; and, that he is guilty of adultery, who, having put away the adulteress, shall take another wife, as also she, who, having put away the adulterer, shall take another husband; let him be anathema.” Also at Papal Encyclicals Online. ↩
Canon 5 (Waterworth): “If any one saith, that on account of heresy, or irksome cohabitation, or the affected absence of one of the parties, the bond of matrimony may be dissolved; let him be anathema.” On the deliberate wording of canon 7: after the Venetian delegates protested in August 1563 that the original draft would condemn the Greek-rite Christians in their domains who permit remarriage, the Council recast it to anathematize the denial of the church’s authority to teach indissolubility rather than the Eastern practice itself — Giancarlo Pani, S.J., “Matrimonio e ‘seconde nozze’ al concilio di Trento,” La Civiltà Cattolica (2 October 2014), summarized at Catholic Culture (2014). See the person-detail page for the full canons and context: The Council of Trent on divorce. ↩
John Milton, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Book 1, the position (Chapter I) (1643/1644; Dartmouth Milton Reading Room) — “That indisposition, unfitnes, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable, hindring, and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugall society, which are solace and peace, is a greater reason of divorce then naturall frigidity, especially if there be no children, and that there be mutuall consent.” See the person-detail page for the full passages and context: John Milton on divorce. ↩
Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Book 1, Chapter II (Dartmouth Milton Reading Room) — “It is not good, saith he, that man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him. From which words so plain, lesse cannot be concluded, nor is by any learned Interpreter, then that in Gods intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and the noblest end of mariage.” He defines marriage as “the apt and cheerfull conversation of man with woman, to comfort and refresh him against the evil of solitary life.” ↩
Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Book 2, Chapter VIII (Dartmouth Milton Reading Room) — “Moses for the hardnesse of your heart suffer’d you, that is, such as you to put away your wives… for it was seasonable that they should hear their own unbounded licence rebukt, but not seasonable for them to hear a good mans requisit liberty explain’d.” He reads Moses’ “some uncleanness” (Deuteronomy 24:1) broadly, of “some displeasing natural quality or unfitnes.” ↩
Milton, Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Book 2, Chapter XVIII (Dartmouth Milton Reading Room) — “fornication is tak’n in Scripture for such a continual headstrong behaviour, as tends to plain contempt of the husband.” The full four-passage exegesis (Genesis 1:27–28 & 2:18; Deuteronomy 24:1–2; Matthew 5:31–32 & 19:3–11; 1 Corinthians 7:10–16) follows in the companion tract Tetrachordon (1645). On the tracts’ hostile reception, see Ernest Sirluck’s introduction to the Yale Complete Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2 (1959). ↩
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), ch. 24 (“Of Marriage and Divorce”), §5 (Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition) — “Adultery or fornication committed after a contract, being detected before marriage, giveth just occasion to the innocent party to dissolve that contract. 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, as if the offending party were dead.” The section’s Scripture proofs are Matthew 1:18–20 (the betrothal case), Matthew 5:31–32 (the divorce), and Matthew 19:9 with Romans 7:2–3 (the remarriage). See the page for the full text and context: The Westminster Confession of Faith on divorce. ↩
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), ch. 24, §6 (Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition) — “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: wherein, a public and orderly course of proceeding is to be observed; and the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills and discretion, in their own case.” The proofs for the two grounds are Matthew 19:6 (the bond otherwise binding) and 1 Corinthians 7:15 (wilful desertion). ↩
On the drafting and reception: the Westminster Assembly (convened 1643) completed the Confession in December 1646 and added the Scripture proofs in April 1647; the Church of Scotland General Assembly adopted the whole text, chapter 24 §§5–6 included, on 27 August 1647. The English Parliament’s own approval of June 1648 (“Articles of Christian Religion”) pointedly omitted these two divorce paragraphs, which were never enacted in an English confession — a precedent the Congregationalist Savoy Declaration (1658) and the Second London Baptist Confession (1689) followed, retitling the chapter “Of Marriage” and dropping the divorce sections as unfit “to be an Article of our Faith.” See “Why does 2LCF omit WCF 24.5–6 on Divorce?” (Petty France, 2019). See the page for the full history and context: The Westminster Confession of Faith on divorce. ↩
David Instone-Brewer, “What God Has Joined,” Christianity Today (October 2007) — “One of my most dramatic findings concerns a question the Pharisees asked Jesus: ‘Is it lawful to divorce a wife for any cause?’ This question reminded me that a few decades before Jesus, some rabbis (the Hillelites) had invented a new form of divorce called the ‘any cause’ divorce… They decided this extra word implied another ground for divorce—divorce for ‘a cause.’ They argued that anything, including a burnt meal or wrinkles not there when you married your wife, could be a cause!” The author is “senior research fellow in rabbinics and the New Testament at Tyndale House, Cambridge.” See the person-detail page for the full argument and context: David Instone-Brewer on divorce. ↩
Instone-Brewer, “What God Has Joined” (Christianity Today, 2007) — the Shammaites “said Moses’ words were a single phrase that referred to no type of divorce ‘except immorality’”; and “when Jesus answered with a resounding no, he wasn’t condemning ‘divorce for any cause,’ but rather the newly invented ‘any cause’ divorce.” ↩
Instone-Brewer, “What God Has Joined” (Christianity Today, 2007) — on Exodus 21:10–11: “Exodus says that everyone, even a slave wife, had three rights within marriage—the rights to food, clothing, and love. If these were neglected, the wronged spouse had the right to seek freedom”; and his conclusion, “Divorce is only allowed for a limited number of grounds that are found in the Old Testament and affirmed in the New Testament: Adultery…Emotional and physical neglect…Abandonment and abuse.” The full scholarly case is David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
Code of Canon Law (1983), cann. 1141 and 1143–1150 (Vatican English edition) — can. 1141: “A marriage that is ratum et consummatum can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death.” Can. 1143 §1 states the Pauline privilege (a marriage of two non-baptized persons dissolved “in favor of the faith of the party who has received baptism… provided that the non-baptized party departs”); cann. 1148–1149 and the papal “favour of the faith” (Petrine) practice extend dissolution to further non-sacramental cases. Full texts and framing on the modern Roman Catholic magisterium page. ↩
John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (22 November 1981), §84 (Vatican English edition) — “The Church… cannot abandon to their own devices those who have been previously bound by sacramental marriage and who have attempted a second marriage”; “However, the Church reaffirms her practice, which is based upon Sacred Scripture, of not admitting to Eucharistic Communion divorced persons who have remarried… their state and condition of life objectively contradict that union of love between Christ and the Church”; the return to the sacraments requires those who cannot separate to “take on themselves the duty to live in complete continence.” See the modern magisterium page. ↩
Francis, Amoris Laetitia (19 March 2016), §§300, 301, 305 with note 351 (official Vatican English PDF, vatican.va; canonical HTML) — §300 “a new set of general rules… a responsible personal and pastoral discernment of particular cases”; §301 “it can no longer simply be said that all those in any ‘irregular’ situation are living in a state of mortal sin”; note 351 “In certain cases, this can include the help of the sacraments… the Eucharist ‘is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.’” Francis’s endorsement of the Buenos Aires guidelines (“No hay otras interpretaciones”) and their “possibility of access to the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist” are documented on the modern magisterium page. ↩
The four cardinals’ dubia (Brandmüller, Burke, Caffarra, Meisner, 2016) ask whether Amoris Laetitia now admits to communion a person who lives “more uxorio without fulfilling the conditions provided for by Familiaris Consortio, 84” (full text, National Catholic Register); the continuity defence is Rocco Buttiglione, Friendly Answers to the Critics of Amoris Laetitia (2017). The whole dispute is set out on the modern Roman Catholic magisterium page, which also links Trent’s deliberate non-condemnation of the Eastern practice. ↩
Full argument and sources on the porneia-as-marital-unfaithfulness argument page: Origen, Commentary on Matthew XIV.24; the modern consensus (France, Keener, Luz, Davies–Allison); and on the porneia/moicheia distinction, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Matthean Divorce Texts,” Theological Studies 37 (1976): 208–209. ↩
Full argument and sources on the unlawful-marriage argument page: Fitzmyer, “The Matthean Divorce Texts,” 210, 220–221 (the Damascus Document, CD 4:20–5:11); with the counter-case in David Janzen, “The Meaning of Porneia,” JSNT 23 (2001). ↩
Full argument and sources on the betrothal-view argument page: Abel Isaksson, Marriage and Ministry in the New Temple (Lund, 1965), 127–142; John Piper, “Divorce & Remarriage: A Position Paper”; with the rebuttal in Leslie McFall, “A Critique of the Betrothal View” (2014). ↩
Full argument and sources on the spiritual-fornication argument page: Augustine, Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount I.16.43–50, and his walk-back in the Retractations I.19.6. ↩
Full argument and sources on the indissolubility argument page: the creation-order grounding at Matthew 19:4–6 and Mark 10:9 (“what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder”) on Genesis 2:24; the marriage sacramentum in Augustine, On the Good of Marriage 7 and On Marriage and Concupiscence I.10 on Ephesians 5:31–32; the dogmatic close in Trent, Session 24, canon 7 and Code of Canon Law canon 1141; with the modern Protestant no-remarriage defense of William A. Heth and Gordon J. Wenham, Jesus and Divorce (1984), and the near-unanimity qualified by David G. Hunter, “Did the early Church absolutely forbid remarriage after divorce?,” Vergentis 6 (2018). ↩
Full argument and sources on the remarriage-or-separation argument page: D. A. Carson, Matthew (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 1984) on 19:9, that the exceptive clause must “govern the entire protasis” (the remarriage reading), set out in his sermon “Divorce and Remarriage” (Matthew 19:1–11); against William A. Heth and Gordon J. Wenham, Jesus and Divorce (1984), that the verbless exception attaches only to the preceding “put away” (the separation reading); on the genuine ambiguity of the syntax, J. J. Guenther, “The Exception Phrases,” Tyndale Bulletin 53.1 (2002); and on the deadlock, Heth, “Jesus on Divorce: How My Mind Has Changed,” SBJT 6.1 (2002), in which one of the two authors of the strict defense later came to permit the innocent party’s remarriage. ↩
Full argument and sources on the Pauline-privilege argument page: the dissolution-and-remarriage reading in Ambrosiaster on 1 Corinthians 7:15, Luther, Calvin, the Westminster Confession ch. 24, and Roman canon law (Code of Canon Law, canon 1143); against the separation-only reading of the Greek fathers (Chrysostom, Homily on 1 Corinthians 19; Theophylact; Theodoret) and modern critical exegesis (Gordon Fee, NICNT; Robertson and Plummer, ICC, on 7:15). ↩
Full argument and sources on the covenant-versus-ontological-bond argument page: the covenant model in Gordon P. Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant (Brill, 1994), p. 11 & ch. 4–5 (covenant as “an elected… relationship of obligation under oath,” ratified by oath), the dissolution consequence in John Murray, Divorce (1953) and the Westminster Confession ch. 24, and the contract frame of David Instone-Brewer; Scripture’s covenant vocabulary at Malachi 2:14, Proverbs 2:17, and Ezekiel 16:8; the unbreakable-covenant counterpoint at Genesis 9:16 and Psalm 89:34–35; and the indissolubilist tradition’s own covenant language in the Catechism §1601 and canon 1055. Weighed against the indissoluble-bond, remarriage-or-separation, and Malachi 2:16 arguments. ↩
Full argument and sources on the “makes her an adulteress” argument page: the unanimous patristic gloss reading the clause as a compelled second marriage — Clement, Stromata II.23 (“compels her to commit adultery”), Origen, Commentary on Matthew XIV.24 (“the excuse of a second marriage,” citing Romans 7:3), and Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 17; the modern social mechanism in Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1–13 (WBC 33A, 1993) and Robert H. Gundry, Matthew (Eerdmans, 1994), both on 5:32, with the translators’ UBS Handbook on Matthew making the remarriage presupposition explicit; and the folded-in “regarded-as-adulterous” note in the Wartburg Project on Matthew 5:32. ↩
Full argument and sources on the 1 Corinthians 7:10–11 argument page: Paul’s dominical charge at 1 Corinthians 7:10–11; the strict reading in Chrysostom, Homily on 1 Corinthians 19, Augustine, On Adulterous Marriages, Aquinas, Commentary on 1 Corinthians (“dissolved as to bed and board, not as to bond”), and Theophylact, with modern strict exegesis (Fee, NICNT; Thiselton, NIGTC; Garland, BECNT); against the non-adultery-scope and socio-historical reading of David Instone-Brewer (assuming, not repealing, the recognized grounds, incl. Exodus 21:10–11); and the innocent-party cost in Origen, Commentary on Matthew XIV.24 and Erasmus. ↩
Full argument and sources on the Matthean-exception source argument page: Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Matthean Divorce Texts,” Theological Studies 37 (1976): 205, 207–208 (the redactional majority and Mark’s Gentile adaptation of the saying); David Instone-Brewer, “What God Has Joined,” Christianity Today (2007) (the abbreviation reading); with Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (the form-critical addition), Craig Keener, …And Marries Another (the hyperbole route), and Bruce Vawter, “The Divorce Clauses,” CBQ 16 (1954) (the preteritive reading). ↩
Full argument and sources on the Mark 10:12 Roman-law argument page: Josephus, Antiquities 15.259–260 (divorce the husband’s prerogative; Salome’s divorce “not according to the Jewish laws”) and 18.136 (Herodias “divorced herself from her husband, while he was alive”); R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC, 2002), 393, Joseph Fitzmyer, “The Matthean Divorce Texts,” 205, and John R. Donahue & Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Mark (Sacra Pagina, 2002), 295, for the Gentile-adaptation reading; the fifth-century Elephantine reciprocal-divorce contracts; and, on Jewish women’s divorce agency, Tal Ilan, HTR 89 (1996), David Instone-Brewer, HTR 92 (1999), and Bernadette Brooten, EvTh 42 (1982). ↩
Full argument and sources on the Shammai–Hillel “any cause” argument page: David Instone-Brewer, “What God Has Joined,” Christianity Today (2007) and Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans, 2002) for the reconstruction; the rabbinic dispute at Mishnah Gittin 9:10 and Sifrei Devarim 269; the first-century practice in Josephus, Antiquities 4.253 and Philo, Special Laws III.30–31; with the critique in John Piper, “Tragically Widening the Grounds of Legitimate Divorce” and Andrew Cornes, Divorce and Remarriage (1993). ↩
Full argument and sources on the Deuteronomy-24 concession-versus-command argument page: the Gospel exchange at Matthew 19:7–8 and Mark 10:3–9 (the Pharisees’ “command” corrected to Jesus’ “suffered”); the case-law structure in J. Carl Laney, “Deuteronomy 24:1–4 and the Issue of Divorce,” Bibliotheca Sacra 149 (1992) and Raymond Westbrook, “The Prohibition on Restoration of Marriage in Deuteronomy 24:1–4” (1986); the patristic handling in Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.34, Jerome, Commentary on Matthew (on 19:8), Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 62, and Augustine, Against Faustus XIX.26; with the prophetic disapproval at Malachi 2:16 (whose rendering is itself weighed under the Malachi 2:16 argument). ↩
Full argument and sources on the Malachi 2:16 rendering argument page: the text-critical case for the man-subject reading in Gordon P. Hugenberger, Marriage as a Covenant (Brill, 1994), 51–83, and David Clyde Jones, “A Note on the LXX of Malachi 2:16,” JBL 109 (1990): 683–685; C. John Collins, “Malachi 2:16 Again”; the versional survey in “Does God Really Hate Divorce?” HTS Teologiese Studies 80 (2024); the ancient rendering preserved in Jerome, Commentary on Malachi; and the treacherous-divorce reading of David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible (Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
Full argument and sources on the Eastern “economy” (oikonomia) argument page: the modern statement in John Meyendorff, Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective (Internet Archive) and “Christian Marriage in Byzantium,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 44 (1990); the ancient precedents on the person pages of Origen, Basil, Epiphanius, and Trullo; Trent’s deliberate non-condemnation on the Council of Trent page (Pani, La Civiltà Cattolica, 2014; Zoghby at Vatican II); the fullest canonical study, Kevin Schembri, Oikonomia, Divorce and Remarriage in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Kanonika 23, 2017); and the civil-law critique of Cyril Vasil, S.J., in Remaining in the Truth of Christ (Ignatius, 2014). ↩