The Inseparable Mystery

John could scarcely believe his eyes. After all the patchwork visions, now appeared the simple image of a Father's canopy, beneath which stood a bride to one side and a groom to the other. John blinked. And then he no longer understood. To one side: a royal horseman aflame, a roaring lion that could swallow worlds, a gold-belted priest offering up galaxies, a living tempest storming from before the first heartbeat of time. Opposite him: the most radiant woman, with a flowing gown of white linen just like her groom's long robe... but she was a city, a church, a creation, containing multitudes, gathering up into herself all things made to last, and now gleaming far beyond all gold and every gem, wrapped in the Most High's very own glory. The thunderous cry began to go up all around. “Hallelujah!” “The Lord God Almighty reigns!” “The marriage of the Lamb!” “His Bride has made herself ready!” (Revelation 19:6-7).

She stepped toward the center of the canopy, descending the stairs out of heaven, “beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun” (Song of Songs 6:10), “lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners” (Song 6:4). “All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven in gold; in many-colored robes she is led to the king” (Psalm 45:13-14). Then the groom stepped toward her as well, shining with the same light, “anointed... with the oil of gladness..., [his] robes all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia” (Psalm 45:7-8), “crowned” for “the day of his wedding, the day of the gladness of his heart” (Song 3:11).

And with a piercing voice, the groom shouted, “'Behold, you are beautiful, my love!' (Song 4:1). 'You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride, you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.' (Song 4:9). 'You are altogether beautiful, my love, there is no flaw in you!' (Song 4:7). 'Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone' (Song 2:10-11), 'death shall be no more, neither shall there be... crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away' (Revelation 21:4). 'Look, I'm making all things new' (Revelation 21:5): 'the flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come... Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away!' (Song 2:13).”

And the bride – well, what can she do? She spreads her arms wide, she leaps to him, and she shouts aloud, “'I am my Beloved's, and,' at last, 'my Beloved is mine!' (Song 6:3). 'Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, for your love is better than wine!… Your name is oil poured out!' (Song 1:2-3). So 'make haste, my Beloved!' (Song 8:14).” And with that, the two became – infinitely beyond imagination – one, for all eternity.

John sees here the end for which all things were made, the destiny the whole sweep of scripture makes clear. History is leading up to an everlasting honeymoon, and in the wedding that will tie up all history, the groom is Jesus Christ, and his lovely bride is the Church, in all her spiritual and corporate reality. And that is what the entire story of the entire universe has been, and is, and always will be, about. From the very dawn of creation, God was announcing nothing less. He foreshadowed it from the instant he opened the side of Adam and brought forth for him an Eve. As Paul says, “This mystery is profound” – the mystery of Adam and Eve, the mystery of marriage itself – “and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church” (Ephesians 5:32).

Over the past couple weeks, we've said repeatedly that the standard for marriage is the life of Eden. Now what becomes equally clear is that the life of Eden was itself a window on the marvels of Eden-to-Come, the mystery of Christ and his Church, the Lamb and his Bride. And that means every marriage is meant to take its cues from Christ and the Church, matchless love and redemptive beauty. Christ and the Church are the very blueprint of marriage since before Eden, the blueprint upon which Adam and Eve were designed, to say nothing of all of us!¹

Paul's treatment of the mystery unrolls for us at least seven features of the blueprint for marriage. First of all, marital love is born in self-sacrifice. Marriage is, fundamentally, about the cross. Christ's blood was the bride-price for the Church: he “gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25), “bought” her redemption “with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20). And likewise, husband and wife are summoned to sacrifice in one another's service for the sake of God: to patiently bear suffering for one another, to give themselves to and for one another, to persevere through the most paralyzing trials – that is where marriage reaches its roots.

Second, marriage involves cleansing. The Church became betrothed to Christ when he “cleansed her by the washing of water by the word” (Ephesians 5:26). Like God said to Israel, “I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil” (Ezekiel 16:9). And when that bath is given to the Church, that's baptism, the “washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5) which “now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21). Each of us experiences it at different times from our limited perspective, but they're all part of a single seamless action of Jesus Christ. And on that blueprint, wife and husband are summoned to cleanse each other from the stains of their past, the seasons they've been bloodied and dirtied, to speak healing over one another.

Third, marriage seeks to nourish. One of the next gifts Christ brings to the Church is to “nourish” her, feed her (Ephesians 5:29). As God said to Israel, “I fed you with fine flour and oil and honey..., my bread that I gave you” (Ezekiel 16:19). Here, Paul has in mind the gift of communion, the eucharist, the bread and wine, the body and blood of the Bridegroom, in which Christ feeds the Church with his very own substance, his flesh for her flesh, which is always good for her and never hurtful. On this blueprint, husband and wife should feed each other with every lawful fruit of the garden, should ensure each other nourishment, should sustain one another.

Fourth, marriage seeks to cherish. Another thing Christ does for the Church, Paul says, is to “cherish” her – he literally says, Christ “keeps her warm” (Ephesians 5:29). He clothes the Church. As God said to Israel, “I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather; I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk” (Ezekiel 16:10). Christ clothed the Church with robes of righteousness like clean linen (Revelation 19:18), “clothed [the Church] with Power from on high,” the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49). The fire of the Spirit's love burns deep in the Church's belly. On that blueprint, husband and wife should keep each other warm through the coldest nights of life, nurturing and caring for one another with utmost tenderness.

Fifth, marriage seeks intimacy and closeness. Paul hints that Christ loves the Church as his own flesh and bone, an extension of his very soul and self – an incredible thing to think, when Christ is God! And it is natural, given that Christ and Church are one, for them to passionately seek and desire closeness, for them to lean toward the consummation beyond comprehension. And so, Paul says, “in the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies,” and vice versa (Ephesians 5:28). A body isn't meant to be away from itself. Husband and wife, building from the blueprint, will naturally seek and desire to be close at every level. Emptying themselves to fill themselves with each other, each will say, “Not only I but my spouse lives in me” (cf. Galatians 2:20).

Sixth, marriage seeks to beautify. Christ is working to prepare the Church with a purity she can't muster on her own. He aims to “present the Church to himself in glory, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). Paul's speaking of the Church's glorification, the splendor of heaven in her. And on that blueprint, husband and wife are summoned to help each other be beautiful, to enrich each other, bring out the best in each other, journey together on the voyage into the heart of glory.

Finally, marriage is meant to be unbroken and unbreakable. Christ already gave everything to the Church (Ephesians 5:25). Having seen the end in advance, we have absolute assurance that Christ is not going to call off the wedding. And it isn't just that he will not. Paul tells us that Christ “remains faithful” to his Church because “he cannot deny himself,” cannot reject the Church who is his own flesh (2 Timothy 2:13). He is Truth, and his vow to marry her is an “unchangeable thing... in which it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). By vowing himself to marry the Church, he's made it literally impossible for him to leave the marriage. In that regard, the Church has perfect eternal security as Church, as the predestined Bride of the Lamb.

Now, to look around, it might seem as though there's a risk of the Church getting cold feet and calling it off! After all, individual Christians certainly do, even congregations do. They desert Christ. They fool around with false gods and pestilential powers. They play the harlot on every high hill. They fall away from their first love. They divorce themselves from their God. Individuals may, groups may. But the Church, the Church as a whole, will not call off the marriage. God's word of love did not return to him void (cf. Isaiah 55:11). The vow by which Christ bound himself also binds him to give grace that guarantees the indefectibility of his Church. The Church, anchored in that grace, is prevented by the Holy Spirit from quitting – she cannot strand Christ alone at heaven's altar, cannot finally elope with any of her woeful worldly suitors. As one ancient Christian mused, “The Church has obtained her Bridegroom; she cannot marry another.”² And that being so, on the blueprint, husband and wife neither will nor can cancel the marriage once it's begun.

But Adam and Eve lit flame to the blueprint. Sin entered the world, and their sons and daughters were too weak to carry the weight of that structure of marriage on their shoulders. They could not manage marriage as it really is. The nations, in their pagan straying, were “alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that's in them due to their hardness of heart” (Ephesians 4:18). Even “all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart” (Ezekiel 3:7). “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,” Jesus explained (Matthew 19:8). That is, God temporarily refrained from holding them to his true standard. He let them get away with their Jenga towers, he refrained from enforcing the building code in full, until the day he'd bring the grace that would empower them. Then he'd lay out the blueprint again.

And that has now happened. Christ entered the world, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus revoked the Law's concessions to our hardheartedness. “From the beginning, it was not so,” nor is it any longer, for Christ overturned the concession with his “And I say to you...” (Matthew 19:8-9). So make careful note of this: It is entirely possible that the laws of the nations will say that some things are marriages when God says that they aren't. (In our day and age, we know at least some cases where this is happening.) But it's equally possible that the laws of the nations will say that some things aren't marriages when God says that they are. Legality in mortal law and validity in heaven's court are two distinguishable (and, alas, separable) things.

Jesus Christ taught that Christian marriage now really does receive the grace to make the endless mystery of Christ and his Church visibly present. Each marriage in the Lord is a parable that tells the story of the universe. And since Christ and his Church are unbroken and unbreakable, both forever having renounced the possibility of renouncing the other, every Christian marriage is lifted toward that standard – that's why, at every wedding, a necessary part of the vows made before God is confessing that no force can dissolve the union but death. And so Jesus teaches clearly, emphatically, firmly against divorce.³ “The wife should not separate from her husband... and the husband should not divorce his wife” (1 Corinthians 7:10-11).

In fact, when we take a close look at the Gospels, we find that Jesus was very specific about some of the kinds of wrong that can take place. Jesus said that “everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery” (Luke 16:18a), that “whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her” (Mark 10:11). “If she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:12). “Everyone who divorces his wife... makes her commit adultery” (Matthew 5:32a). “He who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery” (Luke 16:18b), “whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 5:32b). What all this means is that the original marriage bond of first husband and first wife survives the verdict of the earthly court, whether they realize it or not. Therefore, any attempted marriage by either one after the divorce is not a marriage, Jesus says, but an adultery. God joined together the first valid marriage, and “what God has joined together, let no human being separate” (Mark 10:9; Matthew 19:6).

Now, that is absolutely a hard saying! And Jesus' disciples thought so, too. When they heard him teach it, they objected, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry!” (Matthew 19:10). To be united with someone so closely, to give up the power of the escape hatch – the disciples were scared to do that. But Jesus didn't back down. And once he'd poured out the Holy Spirit on them, they faithfully relayed his teaching to others, even as they found grace enough to live it themselves (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:5).

And the early church received the teaching and believed it, too. Listen to their voices: “Anyone married shouldn't seek divorce.”⁴ “God didn't intend the united body to be divided and split in two.”⁵ “Of our own free will, we cleave to the bond of single marriage... We're content with one wife or with none.”⁶ “Those who, by human law, make second marriages are – according to our Teacher – sinners.”⁷ “We are... concerned... either to stay in the state in which a man was born or to remain satisfied with one marriage, for a second marriage is gilded adultery. … He who detaches himself from his previous wife... is a covert adulterer. He thwarts the hand of God (because, in the beginning, God formed one man and one woman), and he destroys the communion of flesh with flesh in the unity characteristic of the intercourse of the sexes.”⁸ “If there is somebody who has a wife, or a woman who has a husband, so should they be taught that the man be contented with his wife, and the wife with her husband.”⁹

So far, all clear. (And that is very clear and consistent, isn't it, what the Christians closest to Jesus all taught about marriage?) But Matthew expands what Jesus has said. “Everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of porneia makes her commit adultery” (Matthew 5:32). “Whoever divorces his wife except for porneia and marries another commits adultery” (Matthew 19:9). What did Jesus mean there? Are there valid divorces?

I've been studying for months and years, and I've come across seven real options for what's going on here in Matthew and what it means. Here's Option #1: When Jesus says 'except,' that's Matthew's way of having Jesus refuse to get in the middle of a fight among Pharisees. Jesus' teaching is so radical that he's making their debate pointless. It's as if Jesus is saying here, “I'm not even going to open up the door to talking about exceptions based on your debates over that word.” On this view, a valid marriage would be indissoluble – period. Can't be broken. No need to raise an argument. Any divorce is ruled out, 100%.¹⁰ That's Option 1.

Got that? Well, here's Option #2: When Jesus says 'porneia,' he's referring to impediments to marriage that render the initial marriage as having been unlawful in the first place – the things Leviticus objects to, like (for example) if the marriage was between an uncle and his niece. Invalidity of the original marriage would then be the only basis for divorce (which is then annulment). But a valid marriage is indissoluble. No valid marriage can be divorced in God's court.¹¹

Does that work for you? Here's Option #3: When Jesus says 'porneia,' he's referring to sexual misconduct in the betrothal period, what we'd today call engagement. But in Jewish law, betrothal was a legally binding contract. You needed a divorce to get out of it. Given Jewish law and the story of Joseph, Matthew has to qualify Jesus' words to say that a betrothal can end in divorce for that reason. But once betrothal becomes a valid marriage, it can't be broken: it binds both parties for life.¹²

How about Option #4? In this one, when Jesus makes an exception, he's highlighting cases of divorce that took place before the person converted and joined the church. In that case, when a divorce took place in a person's pre-Christian past, that prior marriage and divorce can be disregarded when it comes to the convert's freedom to marry a fellow believer. But valid marriages between two Christians can't be dissolved: they bind for life.¹³

Things change when we get to Option #5. In this view, when Jesus says 'porneia,' he's talking about adultery, talking about unfaithfulness in the marriage. On this ground, the offended spouse who's been cheated on is permitted to divorce the offender. However, this doesn't fully and entirely dissolve the marriage in God's eyes; it has only limited power in heaven's court. Therefore, neither party is free to remarry as long as the other one is living. All second marriages contracted while the first spouse is alive will therefore be invalid.¹⁴ Divorce (in the earthly legal sense), sometimes; remarriage, never.

And when we get to Option #6, things change even further. Again, in this view, Jesus is making an exception to his ban on divorce in the case of adultery, unfaithfulness in the marriage. Again, on this ground, the offended spouse is permitted to divorce the offender. But in this view, a divorce on the grounds of adultery really does dissolve the marriage. The offended party is therefore free to remarry even while the other former spouse is still alive. However, that is the only lawful basis for divorce followed by remarriage.¹⁵

Finally, there's Option #7, which is a lot like #6. But in this view, Jesus has really changed nothing from the Old Testament. Divorce is valid in case any of the biblical marriage vows are violated, such as vows of food, clothing, and intimacy (or, today we'd say, material support and emotional support). Therefore, on any of those grounds, the offended spouse is permitted to divorce the offender. This really does dissolve the marriage, on this view, and either party is then free to remarry even while the other former spouse is alive. However, only this group of lawful reasons for divorce exists, and divorces for other reasons are still invalid.¹⁶

Those are the seven interpretations I've seen put forward. The first four rule out divorce altogether. The first five rule out remarriage. The sixth and seventh just restrict divorce and remarriage, either to cases of adultery alone (#6) or to tangible violations of any of the marriage vows (#7). But which one is right? What did Jesus actually mean? Which is the right rule? I'd love to be able to tell you. But I don't know. And I'm not going to stand up here and pretend I do. When I preached on this topic five years ago, I was a man totally convicted of Seven, the most permissive possibility. But that's an outlier. Six has more modern support. Two is defended by some respectable scholars. Three and Four can't be counted out. And Five has been the majority reading for almost the entire history of Christianity, and that's so immensely hard to argue with, I personally would have to trust it as a safe bet, and could not in good conscience presume on anything more permissive than that to be true.

We could debate the possibilities for days. And they do matter, especially between 5 and 6 and 7. But our real problem is that neither country nor church believes in any of them. Over the past few years, we've been prone to complain greatly about how our culture has decided to redefine marriage. And that's true! America is guilty of redefining marriage, which isn't hers to create in the first place. But same-sex marriage wasn't the start of that trend. No-fault divorce laws were as big a turning point, starting when California's were signed into law in 1969 by Gov. Reagan (yes, that Reagan). Everything else in American marriage law and marriage culture today is downstream from that signature. But even that was not the beginning. Stretching back centuries, people have thrown away marriages and tried to start new ones (valid or invalid), with scarcely a moment's thought to what Jesus said.

So where does that put us? Some of us have kept up the law of Christ in this. Maybe you're content without a spouse – either because you never married or because the bonds of marriage were dissolved by death, and so you're free, if you wish, to live the angelic life for heaven's kingdom. Or maybe you're content with your one spouse, the only one who walks this earth, one living wife or husband in Christ, and in that way, the two of you live a parable of the Great Mystery. And that is holy.

But for all of us, it hasn't been so. Some of us have, tragically, been divorced under the laws of man. Your wife or your husband vowed to be with you until death parted you, but he or she walked away from that commitment and broke that vow or behave in ways that made it impossibly dangerous, to you or your children, to share room and board any longer. So mortal law divorced you, decreed you separated. But maybe that mortal law didn't have power to dissolve that bond. Maybe you know God's court in heaven didn't ratify that divorce. And you know the words of Paul, that if you've had to separate, it falls to husband and wife alike “to remain unmarried or else be reconciled” to one another (1 Corinthians 7:11). You obey that word. And you please the Lord.

Yet some of us may realize we haven't obeyed that word. Maybe you didn't know the word was there. Maybe you weren't thinking with the mind of Christ at the time. You've been divorced by mortal law and have even attempted another marriage, even though you still had a living husband or wife in the eyes of God, and maybe still do. And now you realize that Jesus, gently but firmly, speaks from the Gospel page that this is adultery.

What can you do? What does repentance look like, if you entered an invalid union, and yet it turns out that your first bond is still valid, undissolved? Some might say that repentance involves legally severing ties – a divorce of the invalid union. Others might say that repentance doesn't need that, just a physical separation of household – moving out.¹⁷ Still others might say that neither legal divorce nor separation of household is necessary, but that it's enough to live together in continence, to end the sexual dimension of the relationship, and so to recognize one another as not husband and wife in God's eyes.¹⁸ Others think that only the initial act of remarriage was an act of adultery, not the later relationship. So some think that it's enough to have sorrow and contrition over the act of adultery and to undergo a season of penance, but then the couple can live as husband and wife.¹⁹ And still others think that the season of penance isn't necessary – that repentance can be a quick and easy apology to God, after which God will happily and indulgently let the new couple get on with their life together, regardless of what other spouse may still be out there, still actually married to you in God's eyes.²⁰

For my part, I wish I could tell you God is calling only for one of the easier, gentler roads of repentance people have envisioned – that wouldn't be too painful, wouldn't put too many demands on your lives. It sure would be nice if repentance were always easy to complete. But... then here comes Jesus, and he starts talking about denying ourselves and carrying a cross and following him (Mark 8:34). It's oh-so-easy for us to preach that to others – to people with same-sex attraction, or to people who desire a spouse but struggle to find one! We find it easy to lecture them – sometimes rather smugly – about the way of the cross, don't we? But perhaps Jesus was talking to us, too. Maybe he's getting more personal than we find bearable. Maybe he says we've failed to practice what we preach. And maybe that sense of discomfort you're feeling now could be conviction, and a sense that this calls for far more prayer than you ever dreamed it did. Maybe real repentance in such a sensitive area of life will have to be so radical, it'll feel like getting crucified. And maybe nothing less than radical repentance will save us from a broad road that leads ever further down.

Whatever the details of what Jesus said, and however he invites us to fully repent of having broken them, what we can all agree on is this: that we Christians should, as a rule, be known as a people who live out the mystery of marriage – a people who treat our bonds as no more breakable than Christ's love for the Church, who treat our spouses as our very own flesh to be respected and nourished and cherished, who spur one another on to deeper holiness and health, and who live to make the good news a little bit more believable in the world (and, yes, that includes by how we marry and how we value our marriages).

But whether you're married or not ultimately doesn't matter, for whatever your state in life, you have the same call: to live toward that Great Mystery. Live toward the mystery of a Christ whose love can never let the Church go, nor can leave any opening for the Church's final love to ever let go of him. Our marriages are meant to be training grounds for, scale models of, and pathways to that Great Mystery. So above all else, let us be just “sick with love” for our Jesus (Song 2:5; 5:8)! And may the world know it by how we live, in marriage or in singleness, toward the Great Mystery – by the blueprint. Amen.

1  In what follows, I owe a sizeable debt to Andre Villeneuve, Nuptial Symbolism in Second Temple Writings, the New Testament, and Rabbinic Literature: Divine Marriage at Key Moments of Salvation History (Brill, 2016), 220-246.

2  Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.74.2

3  Matthew Levering, The Indissolubility of Marriage: Amoris Laetitia in Context (Ignatius Press, 2019), 156, 160-161.

4  Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.97.4

5  Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6.23.33

6  Marcus Minicius Felix, Octavius 31.5

7  Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 15.5

8  Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio 33.4-6

9  Hippolytus of Rome, On the Apostolic Tradition 15.6

10  Bruce Vawter, “The Divorce Clauses in Mt 5,32 and 19,9,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 16 (1954): 166; Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew (Baker Academic, 2010), 241.

11  Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Matthean Divorce Texts and Some New Palestinian Evidence,” Theological Studies (1976): 210, 221; John P. Meier, Law and History in Matthew's Gospel (Biblical Institute Press, 1976), 147-150; Ben Witherington III, Matthew (Smyth & Helwys, 2005), 362; Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew (Baker Academic, 2010), 241; Alexander R. Pruss, One Body: An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), 225-226; Paul Mankowski, “Dominical Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage: The Biblical Data,” in Robert Dodaro, ed., Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2014), 57-62.

12  Abel Isaksson, Marriage and Ministry in the New Temple: A Study with Special Reference to Mt. 19.3-12 and 1 Cor. 11.3-16 (Gleerup, 1965), 135-140; John Piper, “Divorce and Remarriage: A Position Paper,” 21 July 1986, section 11.2, <https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/divorce-and-remarriage-a-position-paper>.

13  Bernard S. Jackson, Essays on Halakhah in the New Testament (Brill, 2008), 223, 225.

14  Hermas, Shepherd: Mandates 4.1.5-8; Novatian of Rome, In Praise of Purity 6.1; Origen of Alexandria, Commentary on Matthew 14.24; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 6.23.33; Basil of Caesarea, Regulation of Morals 73.1-2; Augustine of Hippo, On Eighty-Three Different Questions 83; idem., On the Good of Marriage 7; idem., On Adulterous Marriages 1.6 and 2.13; Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 19:9; Warren Carter, Households and Discipleship: A Study of Matthew 19-20 (JSOT Press, 1994), 67-68; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20: A Commentary (Fortress Press, 2001), 493-494; Gordon J. Wenham, “No Remarriage After Divorce,” in Mark L. Strauss, ed., Remarriage after Divorce in Today's Church: Three Views (Zondervan, 2006), 41; Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew (Baker Academic, 2010), 241; Charles H. Talbert, Matthew (Baker Academic, 2010), 233.

15  Pollentius, summarized in Augustine of Hippo, On Adulterous Marriages 1.1; Martin Luther; John Calvin; Richard Tudor, The Decalogue Viewed as the Christian's Law (Macmillan & Co., 1860), 457-458; Craig S. Keener, ...And Marries Another: Divorce and Remarriage in the Teaching of the New Testament (Hendrickson, 1991), 35-36; Hans Dieter Betz, The Sermon on the Mount (Fortress Press, 1995), 250-251; Craig A. Evans, Matthew (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 125-126, 342.

16  David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Eerdmans, 2002), 184-185, 308.

17  Pope John Paul II, Familiaris consortio 84 (22 November 1981); and perhaps also John Corbett, et al., “Recent Proposals for the Pastoral Care of the Divorced and Remarried: A Theological Assessment,” Nova et Vetera 12/3 (2014): 611.

18  Pope John Paul II, Familiaris consortio 84 (22 November 1981); Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum caritatis 29 (22 February 2007).

19  There may be precedent for such a view in Basil of Caesarea, Letter 199.26

20  David Instone-Brewer, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context (Eerdmans, 2002), 314; John Piper, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence (Crossway, 2009), 170; Cathleen Kaveny, “How is Amoris Laetitia Being Received? Mercy and Amoris Laetitia: Insights from Secular Law,” in Grant Gallicho and James F. Keenan, eds., Amoris Laetitia: A New Momentum for Moral Formation and Pastoral Practice (Paulist Press, 2018), 38.