Quick Question: What is Remarriage?

Euodius

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What is the nature of remarriage?

Is it true that there is a different marriage ceremony for the second marriage? What do the differences in these services say about the unseen reality of the second marriage?

Why the three marriage limit? Is that just arbitrary?
 

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Why the three marriage limit? Is that just arbitrary?
Three strikes, you're out...?
full
 
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ArmyMatt

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What is the nature of remarriage?

Is it true that there is a different marriage ceremony for the second marriage? What do the differences in these services say about the unseen reality of the second marriage?

Why the three marriage limit? Is that just arbitrary?

it's more repentant than a first marriage. if there is a reception, the clergy are not to attend.
 
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rusmeister

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I think there are unseen, metaphysical realities that we have practically no conception of in sexual relations. I think this was illustrated well in Yulia Voznesenskaya’s novel “My Adventures in the Afterlife” (Moi posmertnye priklucheniya), an Orthodox fictional work in Russian that takes seriously the idea of tollhouses. In the confrontation with the tollhouse of sexual sin, she sees people literally melded together in a hundred strange ways, the idea of becoming one flesh with multiple people incarnate.

That’s not a direct answer to the issue of remarriage, but I think it hints at why it should be (but often is not) perceived as repentant.
 
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buzuxi02

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Christianity never endorsed serial monogamy or serial marriages. Jesus responded to the woman at the well that her 5th-6th husband is not her husband. Not because she didnt have some formal ceremony recognizing it, but because it is an impossibility.
Christianity only allowed remarriage when one spouse died. The Apostolic Constitutions make clear that their can only be three, any beyond the third is a sign of being unclean, while a second and third marriage while allowable are problematic as well.
 
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buzuxi02

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Three strikes, you're out...?
full
It's actually more strict than that. Third marriages require special permission from the bishop and are usually disallowed if the person has already had offspring in his previous marriage. In the first three hundred years of christianity remarriage after conversion to Christ was only sanctioned in cases of young widows. If you were divorced you were not to remarry unless your previous spouse died.
 
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ArmyMatt

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Why? Is it like a protest?

no, it's not allowed because a second marriage ceremony is always repentant. it's an acknowledgment of our fallenness and brokenness.
 
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Euodius

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I think there are unseen, metaphysical realities that we have practically no conception of in sexual relations...In the confrontation with the tollhouse of sexual sin, she sees people literally melded together in a hundred strange ways, the idea of becoming one flesh with multiple people incarnate.

Frightening... the sexual revolution really does fit the idea of the movie The Blob.

I understand that the metaphysical realities are outside of conception (hence why they are unseen), and I've read a lot of Orthodox books on the topic like Fr. Josiah Trenham's commentary on St. John Chrystostom on Marriage - which talks a bit about this topic.

So, how would this apply to the sexually abused? I know the canons do not fault the victim, but the spiritual damage to the victim cannot be understated. Are they so brought into a 'blob' by the perpetrator's sin? What would the implication here be?
 
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Euodius

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no, it's not allowed because a second marriage ceremony is always repentant. it's an acknowledgment of our fallenness and brokenness.
I hear the second ceremony isn't commonly used in the American Diaspora.

I've also heard that the common cup of the second ceremony isn't Eucharistic. Is this true? And if so, what does that imply?
 
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ArmyMatt

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I hear the second ceremony isn't commonly used in the American Diaspora.

I've also heard that the common cup of the second ceremony isn't Eucharistic. Is this true? And if so, what does that imply?

not sure of the numbers of how common it is.

and the common cup isn't Eucharistic even for the first wedding.
 
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Euodius

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and the common cup isn't Eucharistic even for the first wedding.

Ah, okay, it seemed like that was implied by what I was writing. So, what is the significance of the common cup?
 
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ArmyMatt

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Historically, wasn’t the common cup the Eucharist? The couple, desiring to be married, would approach and commune together, and from that point they would be considered married?

something like that, yeah.
 
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