In Part I of this series I discussed the issue of authority as the foundational reason for not converting to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy. The highest authority is Christ and his authority is primarily mediated to us through the Apostles and Prophets as written in the Bible. All other authorities are significant, but must submit to the standard of Scripture.

Indissoluble Covenant Marriage

The most significant departure from Scripture that I see in these churches is their teachings and practice concerning divorce and remarriage. This is also the same reason that has kept me out of most Protestant churches as well. So, it isn’t a problem existing only within the walls of Rome or the East. It is presently, in this thin slice of history, ubiquitous in most churches regardless of denomination.

I’ve written a book on this issue here. You can also find a documentary/interview on it here. But to put it briefly, Jesus says, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” (Mark 10:11-12) This is repeated in various forms in Matthew 5, Matthew 19, Luke 16, Romans 7, and 1 Corinthians 7. Remarriage is always adultery in every case, though Jesus does give permission to divorce for sexual immorality, but not to remarry. And Paul gives permission to separate/divorce if a non-believer leaves a believer, but he does not give permission to remarry. In fact, when Paul summarizes Jesus’ teachings, he says that if a divorce occurs one must remain unmarried or be reconciled to their spouse. (1 Corinthians 7:11)

Additionally, the Bible never shows us a God-ordained covenant that dissolves. They can be violated or kept faithfully, but not dissolved. When they are violated they don’t dissolve like alka-seltzer in water. They remain in tact and because they remain in tact they obligate the one bound to them to repent and obey, and if the covenant-breaker persists in their covenant breaking the covenant brings curses on them. So, to say, like most Protestants, that violation of the marriage covenant dissolves the covenant and one is free to remarry is to deviate from the entire flow of Scripture and what we find written about the nature of covenants. We don’t even need Jesus’ explicit words to understand this, but He has accommodated or frailty, and anticipated our rebellion, by telling us explicitly and plainly that to divorce and remarry is to commit adultery with the subsequent spouse. It is an unlawful, adulterous marriage. And just like an unlawful, homosexual marriage, a truly repentant person must separate from it. Just like murder, theft, and sorcery, one must repent of these sins, and separate from them. For those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9)

This is all quite simple to understand and plainly there for all to read in the Gospels and Epistles. But it is hard to obey because we all know friends and family who are in these situations, and we love our friends and family more than Christ. We love the kingdom more than the King, as my dad says. And just like Protestants, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Eastern Orthodox churches have found ways to get around these hard teachings.

Roman Sophistry

The Roman Catholic Church gives a lot of lip service to the fact that divorce and remarriage is adultery. The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church states that those who are civilly divorced and remarried are to be withheld communion and they must repent by remaining continent, in other words they have to stop having sex with their unlawful spouse. See section 1650 here. Even this, to my mind, is an insufficient form of repentance, as it doesn’t call for them to literally separate from shared living quarters. But they do give a lot of affirmation to Jesus’ words about remarriage being adultery. However, they provide a way for divorce and remarriage to occur by granting annulments. They have all kinds of requirements for what constitutes a valid marriage. Their views of marriage as a sacrament contribute to this. And with all these things in place, they are able to declare that virtually any marriage was never really a true marriage. Then permit the one granted the annulment to remarry, or as they would view it, to marry for the first time. The problem is that they are simply permitting divorce and remarriage, calling it a different name, and saying, “See, we don’t allow divorce and remarriage.”

Annulments are for people like a Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at age 14 and forced to marry her captor. That is not a real marriage. It appears to me that 100% of the annulments granted by Roman Catholic Church, that I’ve witnessed, are not legitimate annulments. They don’t even come close to a situation like Elizabeth Smart’s. But their pastors and canon lawyers are talented enough in their sophistry to make any marriage not a real marriage. You can read all the Roman Catholic arguments for what constitutes a true marriage in their Code of Canon Law. I’m not going to rehearse them here. There are legitimate aspects and non-legitimate aspects. But at the end of the day, my fundamental disagreement with Rome is their permission to violate clear commands from Christ by calling it a different name.

Furthermore, Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia letter essentially says that divorced and remarried Roman Catholics may take communion. Of course, there are all kinds of ways to argue that he is not departing from the teachings of the Roman Church (whatever those are) and is simply being more pastoral and sensitive to the needs of those who are in such a position. He sounds like a soft Protestant. As long as you’re being pastoral and sensitive, one is permitted to depart from the teachings of Christ and His Apostles.

Eastern Sophistry

The Eastern churches are bit more honest in their departure. They basically permit anyone to get divorced and remarried for any reason. They just prescribe a more solemn liturgy for second and third marriages. And perhaps a time of penance before getting remarried and taking communion again. I’ve read their arguments from various sources, but here is a good distillation of them. I think they are total garbage. But you can judge for yourself. To me, they sound like weak, soft Protestants.

For example, in the 4th century, Epiphanius, the Bishop of Salamis in Cyprus wrote, “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. The holy word and God’s holy church show mercy to such a person, particularly if he is devout otherwise and lives by God’s law–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.” (Panarion, 39:4.8-10) Frank Williams, trans. (Netherlands: Brill, 2012), p.107-108.

The modern bishops are parroting the same garbage. Bishop Athenagorus (Peckstadt) of Sinope writes, “Despite the fact that the Church condemns sin, she also desires to be an aid to those who suffer and for whom she may allow a second marriage. This is certainly the case when the marriage has ceased to be a reality. A possible second marriage is therefore only permitted because of “human weakness”. As the apostle Paul says concerning the unmarried and widows: “If they can not control themselves, they should marry” (1 Cor. 7, 9). It is permitted as a pastoral concession in the context of “economia,” to the human weakness and the corrupt world in which we live.”

The Western Patrimony

Contrast this with a contemporary bishop of Epiphanius in the West, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. “It is the judgment of certain, that all men without distinction are to be admitted to the laver of regeneration (baptismal pool), which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, even although they shall be unwilling to change an evil and shameful life, rendered notable by sins and scandalous crimes, and shall even declare and make open profession, that they will continue therein…they seem to have been moved thus to dispute, as concerned at those not being admitted to Baptism, who have put away their wives and married others, or of females who have put away their husbands, and been married to others; because of these the Lord Christ without any doubt testifies, that they are, not marriages but adulteries…when we refuse to admit such persons to Baptism, it is not that we are endeavouring before the time to pluck out the tares, but that we are unwilling, like the devil, to sow tares upon the wheat: neither are we hindering them who are willing to come to Christ, but are by their own very profession convicting them of unwillingness to come to Christ: nor are we forbidding them to believe in Christ, but are shewing them that they are unwilling to believe in Christ, who either deny that to be adultery which He declares to be adultery, or believe that adulterers can be His members, who He declares through the Apostle inherit not the kingdom of God…For it is enough, that if all sins are to be refused admission into the Sacrament of Baptism, among these all is adultery…Wherefore those which are manifest sins of unchastity, are in every way to be restrained from Baptism, unless they be amended by a change of will and by repentance…But these men, where the man enters to receive Baptism an adulterer, and goes forth, being baptized, an adulterer, it is a wonder to me in what sense they think it said unto him, Behold, thou are made whole.” (Of Faith And Works, 1, 2, 30, 34, 35, 36). Translated in Seventeen Short Treatises Of S. Augustine (Oxford: John Henry Parker& F. and J. Rivington, 1847).

Jerome makes a similar point in his letter to Amandus #55. That a divorced and remarried woman needed to separate from her second husband if she wanted to receive communion. And you can find similar statements from early fathers going all the way back to the first century in the Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and the Council of Arles. One of those instances where the East can’t say they have taught what the Church has believed in all times and all places.

The Cultural Fruits of Each Tradition

If you notice, in my writings, I am careful to say that the West has a long history of generally maintaining the biblical teachings on divorce and remarriage. Those who oppose the traditional Western teachings, like Instone-Brewer, also acknowledge a general consensus. But in the East they departed early on. And from what I can tell, and from critics of the Eastern position, this basically began because the Church wanted to harmonize it’s teachings with the Empire’s civil laws. Whereas in the West, the Church was fine with being more at odds with the civil laws.

The East has been preaching cheap grace for a very long time, at least when it comes to divorce and remarriage. And I think it’s their disobedience on this issue primarily which has caused them to be so ravaged by Islam and other things like Communism. Seriously, consider some of their principle Patriarchs. The Patriarch of Constantinople lost his country to Muslims, which is now Istanbul, Turkey. His church wasn’t strong enough to resist Muslim invasion and occupation. Consider the Patriarch of Moscow. His church wasn’t strong enough to resist Communism and it’s militant atheism. Many Orthodox countries are second world nations emerging out of the former Soviet Union. And if they aren’t that then they are usually dominated by Islam like in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. These countries are not as wealthy, as strong, or as free, as Protestant nations. And I think this is directly related to their wildly deficient and unfaithful theology.

I think we can say the same thing for Protestant nations rapidly declining into further political and social chaos. But our adoption of divorce and remarriage has been a relatively new thing in practice. In America at least, we see a spike in divorce and remarriage with the so-called Greatest Generation. However, we do see permission to divorce and remarry in confessional statements like the Westminster Confession of Faith as early as 1648, and in the writings of men like Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin, who all permitted divorce and remarriage for various limited reasons, while men like Martin Bucer and John Milton permitted it for basically any reason. But we had large Protestant bodies, like the Church of England, which didn’t officially break with the traditional position until 2002. In 1648, the English parliament rightly rejected the section on divorce and remarriage in the Westminster Confession which permitted remarriage in the case of adultery and desertion. And you can even find Episcopal Churches (in New York City!) as late as 1904 not permitting any divorced person to get remarried. See this New York Times article. So, Protestant nations have had the seeds of this corrupt doctrine from the beginning, but it appears to me, that in America at least, we didn’t really start practicing divorce and remarriage on a grand scale until the 1950’s.

I also think that it is worth noting, as Protestant nations have become more unfaithful, we have seen a rise of converts to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. I believe these events correspond to each other. There is a greater concern for the externals of worship and being viewed as intellectually sophisticated, rather than a concern for internal holiness and true truth. And if you convert to Eastern Orthodoxy you don’t have to follow Jesus’ commands on divorce and remarriage. So, that’s another incentive for those not resisting our civilizational swirl down the drain.

Both the Roman and Eastern Churches fall short of Biblical orthodoxy regarding divorce and remarriage. Protestants have largely abandoned Biblical orthodoxy in this area as well. It is the number one reason, after authority, that I cannot convert to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy, and why I am not part of a Protestant denomination either. However, I happily carry the standard of our Western patrimony on this issue, even though the whole world seems to have given up on it. Truth will win out eventually, and we will look back on this time in horror at how blind and deceived we were on something so simple. And future generations will ask themselves, “Why didn’t anyone do anything?”

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