The Matthean-Marcan maxim (cf. Mk
10,9; Mt, 19, 6)
In the East, the statement
<<what God has joined together, let no one separate>> is also very
significant. Even though the Byzantine Church is aware that this maxim of Jesus
clearly highlights the indissolubility of marriage, she considers it as a moral
ideal that calls for obedience and not as a law that reveals an ontological
aspect of the marital bond. In other words, this Matthean-Marcan dictum does
not state that marriage cannot be dissolved; rather it indicates that the
dissolution of the marital bond is possible and cannot be eliminated, even
though it should be avoided. As Calivas succinctly puts it, <<marriages
can and do fail>> (A.C. Calivas, <<Marriages>>, 263). Hence,
the Orthodox understanding of this teaching is that Jesus presupposes the
freedom and responsibility of the person to either cooperate with the original
plan of God for an indissoluble marriage or refute it and dissolve the marriage
(P. L’Huillier, <<le divorce>>, 28). Heith-Stade remarks:
The Church Fathers, who like
everybody else in antiquity, perceived marriage as a factual situation,
interpreted this prohibition against divorce as a prohibitive indissolubility,
i.e., that a marriage should not be dissolved. The early patristic
authors never interpreted this prohibition as meaning a metaphysical
indissolubility, i.e., that a marriage could not be dissolved (D.
Heith-Stade, Marriage, 38).
The Orthodox interpretation of
these different instances of the teaching of Jesus has two major consequences:
first, the indissolubility of marriage in the East is conditional, that is,
depending on the specific case, rather than an absolute characteristic, and
second, the property of indissolubility is linked more to a moral prerequisite
than to a juridical notion or intrinsic feature (P. L’Huillier,
<<L’espace>>, 48-51). (Kevin Schembri, Oikonomia, Divorce and
Remarriage in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition [Kanonika 23; Valore, Italy:
Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 2017], 179-80)
