What the Early Church Believed: Marriage

The teaching of Christ

Jesus taught that whoever divorces and remarries commits adultery (Luke 16:18; cf. Mark 10:11-12). Paul agrees: a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives, and she is an adulteress if she lives with another man while he is alive (Romans 7:2-3). This applies to sacramental marriages between baptized persons; a different rule applies when one party is unbaptized (1 Corinthians 7:12-15). Amid the easy divorce of the Greco-Roman world, the Fathers proclaimed indissolubility, as the Church does in our culture (CCC 1614-1615), while other denominations have accommodated divorce.

Annulment and separation

A baptized couple may remarry while a former spouse lives only if no valid marriage existed, for example because valid consent was not exchanged. A tribunal can then declare the marriage null, and the parties are free to marry (CCC 1629). There was no divorce and remarriage in God's eyes because there was no marriage. If they are truly married, they may sometimes live apart or separate legally, but are not free to remarry (CCC 1649). This is the Lord's command: a wife should not separate from her husband, or if she does, remain single or be reconciled, and a husband should not divorce his wife (1 Corinthians 7:10-11). The sacrament gives the grace to live it, for God will not let us be tested beyond our strength (1 Corinthians 10:13).

The witness of the early Church

• Hermas (80): a man may put away an adulterous wife, but if he marries another he commits adultery.
• Justin Martyr (151): those who contract a second marriage, even if legal, are sinners, as are those who look with lust.
• Clement of Alexandria (208): Scripture allows no release from the union; marrying while the former spouse lives is adultery.
• Origen (248): a woman married while her former husband lives is an adulteress, and the man who marries her commits adultery.
• The Council of Elvira (300) denied Communion to those who abandoned a spouse and remarried.
• Ambrose (387, 389): you may not marry another while your wife lives; human law may permit it, but divine law forbids it, for what God has joined no one may separate.
• Jerome (396, 398): so long as a husband lives, whatever his vices, the wife may not take another; a dismissed wife may not be replaced while she lives.
• Pope Innocent I (408): a woman who remarries while her husband lives is regarded as an adulteress.
• Augustine (419): a wife ceases to be a wife only by her husband's death, not by his adultery; the sacramental bond, like that of Christ and the Church, is not lost by separation or adultery.