Early Church Fathers and Divorce/Remarriage

aiighty

In my husband's case his first wife 1) admitted she entered the marriage under false pretences. She admitted that she lied about things saying what she thought my husband wanted to hear. 2) renounced Christ entirely. She joined some supposedly Jewish sect.

Personally, the longer my husband and I are together the more convinced I am that we were meant for each other from the beginning. I do not know why we had to go through the things we did before we finally came together.

Personally, the longer my husband and I are together the more convinced I am that we were meant for each other from the beginning. I do not know why we had to go through the things we did before we finally came together.

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maybe the reason for all the early garbage that you went through was to help convince you that God has called you two to be together.

1 Corinthians 7 says that when an unbelieving spouse departs the one left is not bound.

The RC idea is not based on patristic tradition its based on semantics. Neither scriptures nor the Fathers ever spoke of annullments, they spoke of divorce and adultery.

Thomas Aquinas spoke of annullments in the context of secular law forbidding consanguinity. Roman law flip flopped on what degree of kinship disqualified a couple for marriage, so those couples marrying who were within the 4th degree of kinship were legallly annulled. Basically when it was found out that cousins married each other in violation of the consanguinity laws their marriages were voided..

It was also used by kings to put away their original wives to remarry a new more desireable queen. Kings most likely valued the legal definition of annullment in order to manipulate which son or daughter or grandchild could legitimately lay claim as heir to his throne. Unfortunately this annullment practise then became the norm.

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buzuxi02 said:

The RC idea is not based on patristic tradition its based on semantics. Neither scriptures nor the Fathers ever spoke of annullments, they spoke of divorce and adultery.

Thomas Aquinas spoke of annullments in the context of secular law forbidding consanguinity. Roman law flip flopped on what degree of kinship disqualified a couple for marriage, so those couples marrying who were within the 4th degree of kinship were legallly annulled. Basically when it was found out that cousins married each other in violation of the consanguinity laws their marriages were voided..

It was also used by kings to put away their original wives to remarry a new more desireable queen. Kings most likely valued the legal definition of annullment in order to manipulate which son or daughter or grandchild could legitimately lay claim as heir to his throne. Unfortunately this annullment practise then became the norm.

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so another example of Western legal thinking influencing Western theology. yeeshness.

I'm curious as to where the language " marriage is spiritually dead" comes from. People can be spiritually dead, but marriages don't have a spirit apart from the people.

That would make any such declaration dangerous.

I guess if the people are spiritually dead, and neither is following what St Paul commands us to do as husband and wife, then it is spiritually dead maybe....I dunno. that is a good question though.

So what, then, constitutes spiritual death while the body is alive? And how can divorce be justified while keeping a person in good standing ( in communion) with the Church if they are "spiritually dead"? To actually be in communion is to be spiritually alive, however weakly...

I just see enormous illegitimate wiggle room in such lack of definition, and that at least 98% of divorces now allowed in the Church between two practicing Orthodox Christians to be unjustified.

I think a marriage can become spiritually dead from abuse or infidelity. Before my husband, I dated a man for two years. He mistreated me, mistreated me, mistreated me. I'd get upset, and he'd be better for awhile, but he always went back to mistreating me. So, after two years, I realized that not only did I not love him anymore, I pretty much hated his guts. Granted, we were not married, but I have seen similar things happen in marriages.

My soon to be ex sister-in-law almost seemed like she devoted herself to the cause of making my little brother's life a living hell. It was just awful. Long before they finally split, I said that if I were to win a really big lottery I'd give her a large amount of money to get away from my brother and my family.

rusmeister said:

So what, then, constitutes spiritual death while the body is alive?

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Adam and Eve in the Garden spiritually died before they physically did. if death means separation, then that can occur.

rusmeister said:

And how can divorce be justified while keeping a person in good standing ( in communion) with the Church if they are "spiritually dead"? To actually be in communion is to be spiritually alive, however weakly...

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I don't know, ask a canonist or canon lawyer

rusmeister said:

I just see enormous illegitimate wiggle room in such lack of definition, and that at least 98% of divorces now allowed in the Church between two practicing Orthodox Christians to be unjustified.

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I agree

I'm just saying, for the benefit of all and sundry, that such language allows anyone to define anything they want as "spiritual death". If we are all spiritually dead, then there should be no marriage. If it can be defined as "constantly unhappy with spouse", then the commitment of marriage means nothing.

I'm translating the greatest book I have ever read on the topic: GK Chesterton's "The Superstition of Divorce". And GK shows, heck, he predicted how all of the divorces and broken families, single parents, fatherless children, deadbeat dads, etc etc would come about, a hundred years ago.

We have been far too lax on divorce, priests have been, imo, too quick to approve and tolerate; even in the Church we have made it too easy, and mirror the world, rather than trying to be not of the world. Not that we should condemn and punish, but we ought to put a lot more effort into telling at least our own people that divorce is NOT "OK" or normal; it is somehing we should be highly penitent about, it is a failure of marriage, and not a way to try out different spouses until we find "the right one". For an Orthodox Christian, the right one is the one you married in the first place. Your job, when it becomes hard, is to learn to love your wife like Christ loved the world, and gave Himself up to be spat on, beaten and crucified for it.

I hear you rus, I am just saying if you don't like the statement, your best bet is to talk to someone who knows the canons and such who maybe could define it in a way you like better. that stuff is above my paygrade

and I should also say, that folks get married for salvation. if the person you married was not for the salvation of your soul, God would not have allowed it (especially in the Church). I think that we lost that eschatological view and see marriage merely as a contract.

ArmyMatt said:

I hear you rus, I am just saying if you don't like the statement, your best bet is to talk to someone who knows the canons and such who maybe could define it in a way you like better. that stuff is above my paygrade

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It is not a question of what I like, of what pleases my taste, but of how we understand the meaning of words and what truth - or lack thereof - that conveys; what the conventions are (and even whether the conventions are legitimate or not).

ArmyMatt said:

and I should also say, that folks get married for salvation. if the person you married was not for the salvation of your soul, God would not have allowed it (especially in the Church). I think that we lost that eschatological view and see marriage merely as a contract.

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The entire modern age ia an age of contract, of dependence on written and signed documents, as opposed to the Middle Ages, which can be called the age of the vow, when it was a person's word that mattered and was held as sacred. Chesterton outlines this and contrasts them both with the ancient world, in which one's status alone determined things.

My translation of his book into Russian has become an important life work for me. In my parish alone, multiple families with multiple children are divorcing; it is insane when people who are both professing, practicing Orthodox Christians see divorce as a reasonable option.

http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/divorce.txt

rusmeister said:

It is not a question of what I like, of what pleases my taste, but of how we understand the meaning of words and what truth - or lack thereof - that conveys; what the conventions are (and even whether the conventions are legitimate or not).

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I understand, that is why I said you should contact someone who knows the answer to what that phrase means.

rusmeister said:

The entire modern age ia an age of contract, of dependence on written and signed documents, as opposed to the Middle Ages, which can be called the age of the vow, when it was a person's word that mattered and was held as sacred. Chesterton outlines this and contrasts them both with the ancient world, in which one's status alone determined things.

My translation of his book into Russian has become an important life work for me. In my parish alone, multiple families with multiple children are divorcing; it is insane when people who are both professing, practicing Orthodox Christians see divorce as a reasonable option.

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I hears you. that is why the first thing I was told during my engagement and when I was a married man of less than a day was that this is for salvation, and that it is cosmic.

rusmeister said:

My translation of his book into Russian has become an important life work for me. In my parish alone, multiple families with multiple children are divorcing; it is insane when people who are both professing, practicing Orthodox Christians see divorce as a reasonable option.

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I pray you will be able to do the translation justice
My wife and I came across two different copies of Dostoyevski's "The Idiot" in a book store the other day. She was going to buy the cheaper of the two but I picked a few random passages and read out the way each had been translated. We bought the more expensive copy. There was simply no comparison.

prodromos said:

I pray you will be able to do the translation justice
My wife and I came across two different copies of Dostoyevski's "The Idiot" in a book store the other day. She was going to buy the cheaper of the two but I picked a few random passages and read out the way each had been translated. We bought the more expensive copy. There was simply no comparison.

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Indeed. I thought this would be a two-month slam-dunk; it has turned into a three-year project - and counting.
I am not the ultimate translator; I am the initiator and project manager. There have been many evenings when I hosted groups of people, mostly who read English with a fair degree of proficiency (but I also tried to include people who weren't - to spot Anglificized Russian translation by the Anglophiles), providing beer, kvass, tea and munchies, and reading sections together. I read the English and simultaneously spoke the text aloud in my less-than ideal Russian (the tremendous advantage of having me in the project is that I understand the original text more clearly and thoroughly than anyone else). My words were immediately converted into much better Russian by the others, following along with copies of the original text, me clarifying and explaining dual meanings, them coming up with analogous Russian expressions, idioms, etc. that produced a working text, but took two years of VERY part-time meetings, less than once a month. Then editing began. Numerous errors or inaccuracies were both found and created, found again, footnotes ON THE PAGE (and not at the end of the book, where few will trouble to turn pages to find them), and then, even the discovery that a chapter had been omitted from the text everyone was footballing around!

And you don't need to wait for a translation: you can read the original text now! No footnotes, though. You can Google or Wikipedia references, as I sometimes did, or you can ask me; a couple of times I had to appeal to the American Chesterton Society for help.

Prayers much appreciated as I try to complete this, my small blow against the epidemic of divorce, that the Lord might bless it and have it lead to the saving of perhaps more than just a few families and the glory of God!