From d86cb341943b6d8bcb0db08eee1d1d6e86a880cc Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Tim Van Baak <tim.vanbaak@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2023 20:20:00 -0800
Subject: [PATCH] Add Schmemann article

This isn't quite in line with the other articles in this directory, but there isn't another place to put it. This probably awaits reorganization of the whole /ecumen/ directory into another subdomain.
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+---
+title: The Indissolubility of Marriage: The Theological Tradition of the East
+author: Alexander Schmemann
+date: 1967-10-18
+source: https://archive.org/details/bondofmarriageec00bass/
+comment: Archive.org says this paper was delivered at an interdenominational symposium sponsored by the Canon Law Society of America and held at the Center for Continuing Education at the University of Notre Dame. The ["Comment and Discussion"](#comment) section is, I therefore assume, a Catholic response to Schmemann's article.
+---
+
+ALEXANDER SCHMEMANN*
+
+\* Dean of St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, Tuckahoe, New York. Father Schmemann is the author of *Sacraments and Orthodoxy* (1965), and *The World as Sacrament* (1967).
+
+## [I.](#I) {#I}
+
+I must begin this paper by stating the initial paradox of
+the Eastern Orthodox approach toward marriage. On the
+one hand, the Orthodox Church explicitly affirms the
+indissolubility of marriage;[^1] yet, on the other hand, she
+seems to accept divorce and has in her canonical tradition
+several regulations concerning it.[^2]
+How can these apparently contradictory positions be reconciled? And, first of
+all, what does this paradox mean? Is it an uneasy compromise
+between the maximalism of theory and the minimalism of practice, that famous “economy” which the
+Orthodox seem to invoke so often in order to solve all
+kinds of difficulties? I think that no answer can be given
+to any of these questions before an attempt is made to
+understand the complexity of the Orthodox teaching about
+marriage.
+
+[^1]: See F. Gavin, *Some Aspects of Contemporary Greek Orthodox Thought* (London, 1923), pp. 384 ff.; Bishop Sylvester, *Orthodox Dogmatic Theology*, 4 vols. (Kiev, 1897), pp. 539 ff.
+
+[^2]: N. Suvorov, *Kurs Tserkovnago Prava* (Manual of Canon Law), (Yaroslave, 1889), II, 331 ff.
+
+A western Christian may not realize that this teaching
+has never taken the form of a consistent and systematic
+doctrine in which the liturgical rites, the canonical
+requirements, the theological interpretations and finally the
+demands of reality would be expressed within a unified
+framework. Does it mean, however, that there is no
+Orthodox doctrine of marriage, doctrine which would in turn
+serve as a norm for practice? No! But it means that this
+doctrine has not been given a “juridical” formulation and
+remains, as much of Eastern Orthodox theology in general,
+in the state of affirmations rather than explanations, is
+expressed more often in liturgical rites rather than canonical
+texts, and finally, serves as a guiding principle rather
+than explicit legislation.
+
+The starting point for any elucidation of this doctrine is,
+of necessity, in the Orthodox understanding of matrimony
+as *sacrament*. Here one must keep in mind that in the
+Orthodox Church, sacramental theology has never been
+formulated in clear and precise definitions as in the West.
+It is true that in postpatristic manuals of dogmatics much
+of the western approach to sacraments has been rather
+uncritically adopted. This “westernized” theology, however,
+so obviously contradicts the earlier and more normative
+Orthodox tradition, that of the Fathers and of the liturgy,
+that it cannot be accepted as an adequate expression of
+the Orthodox “lex credendi.” When speaking of the
+sacrament of matrimony, we must, therefore, see it within a
+wider perspective of the Orthodox meaning of sacraments
+in general.
+
+It is sufficient for our present subject to stress that the
+sacrament or *mysterion* in the Orthodox tradition implies
+necessarily the idea of a *transformation*, of a “*passage*”
+from the old into the new and, therefore, an eschatological
+connotation.[^3] The sacrament is always the passage from
+“this world” into the Kingdom of God as already
+inaugurated by Christ, and of which the Church herself is
+the “sacrament” in “this eon.” Thus, in the baptismal
+death and resurrection, man is not simply absolved of his
+original sin but is truly “transferred” from the old creation
+into the new. In the sacrament of anointment, he is
+introduced into the Kingdom inaugurated on the day of Pente-
+cost by the Holy Spirit. In the Eucharist the Church
+fulfills herself by ascending to the Kingdom of God, to “His
+table in His Kingdom.” All sacraments are considered
+eschatological in the sense that they manifest and
+communicate in this world the reality of the world to come.
+Hence, and this is the second important observation, all
+sacraments are fulfilled in the Eucharist which, according
+to the patristic teaching, is the “sacrament of sacraments”
+because it is in a very concrete sense the sacrament of the
+Kingdom. Finally, all sacraments are truly sacraments of
+Christ, i.e., are ontologically connected with his death,
+resurrection and glorification.
+
+[^3]: See my book *Sacraments and Orthodoxy* (New York, 1965).
+
+How are these categories applicable to matrimony
+which, different in this from all other sacraments, does not
+seem to be directly and immediately connected with the
+“Christ event” and which exists as a universal and natural
+institution outside the Church? The answer to this
+question is given partially at least in the liturgical celebration
+of matrimony.
+
+## [II.](#II) {#II}
+
+The present liturgy of matrimony in the Orthodox
+Church consists of two services—the Betrothal and the
+Crowning—the first service taking place normally in the
+vestibule of the church and the second, having primarily
+the form of a procession which introduces the couple into
+the Church. We may leave out of this paper the
+description of the complex development of these services and
+the various strata of symbolism with which they were
+adorned on the liturgically fertile soil of Byzantium.[^4] Let
+us rather concentrate on the fundamental significance of
+this peculiar “liturgical dualism” of matrimony.
+
+[^4]: See A. Raes, SJ., *Le Mariage dans les Eglises d Orient* (Chevotogne, 1958).
+
+There can be no doubt that the first service—the
+Betrothal—is nothing else than the Christianized form of the
+marriage as it existed always and everywhere, ie., as a
+public contract sealed before God and men by those
+entering the state of marriage. It is, in other terms, the
+Christian “blessing” or “sanction” of the marriage, its
+acceptance by the Church. It appears rather late in the
+history of the Church and at a time when for all practical
+reasons the civil society coincided with the Church and
+when the Church was given an almost exclusive control
+over family. In the early pre-Constantinian Church, the
+only requirement for the members of the Church who
+wanted to marry was the preliminary permission of the
+bishop.[^5] This means that the Church did not consider
+herself to be the performer of the marriage as such and early
+documents stress the recognition by the Church of all
+civil laws governing the marriage.[^6] But if the Church did
+not “institute” the marriage, she was given the power to
+“transform it” and such is the real meaning of
+*matrimony as sacrament*. “Lo, I make all things new”: this from the
+beginning was also applied to marriage. And, it is this
+“transformation” of the marriage that constitutes the
+content of the second service mentioned above—the Crowning
+—which begins precisely as all Christian sacraments with
+a procession. The procession signifies that the “natural”
+marriage is taken now into the dimensions of the Church
+and, this means, into the dimensions of the Kingdom. The
+earliest form of this service was the simple participation
+of the newly married in the Encharist and their partaking
+as “one flesh” of the Body and Blood of Christ.[^7] Even
+today, though it has severed its connection with the
+Eucharist, the rite of matrimony keeps the indelible mark
+of its Eucharistic origin and the common cup given to
+the couple at the end of the service points back to the
+Eucharistic chalice.[^8]
+
+[^5]: St. Ignatius, *Ad Polycarpum*, 5 v.
+
+[^6]: See for example, *Epistola ad Diognetum*, v. 6; Athenagoras, *Lecatio Pro Christianis*, chap. 33, Migne, *PG* 6, 965; Ambrose, *De Inst. Virg.*, 6, Migne, *PL*, 16, 316; John Chrysostom, *Hom 56 in Genes*, 29, *PG* 54, 488.
+
+[^7]: See A. N. Smirensky, “The Evolution of the Present Rite of Matrimony and Parallel Canonical Developments,” *St. Viadimir's Seminary Quarterly*, 8 (1960), 40, n. 1.
+
+[^8]: See A. Raes, *op. cit.*, p. 49.
+
+In this sacramental transformation, the marriage
+acquires new dimensions. Its content and goal now is not
+mere “happiness” but the *martyria*, the witness, to the
+Kingdom of God. It is given the power to be a service of
+Christ in the world and a special vocation within the
+Church. Above everything else it is a sacrament of the
+Kingdom, for the family is one of the basic *antitypa* of the
+Kingdom.[^9]
+
+[^9]: See *Sacraments and Orthodoxy*, pp. 59 ff.
+
+The whole patristic tradition deals with matrimony
+almost exclusively in these categories in which the marriage
+is connected with the great mystery of Christ and the
+Church.[^10] This tradition, in other terms, is interested in
+the marriage as transformed and fulfilled in Christ and
+the Church—this transformation being also the fulfillment
+of the natural marriage. It deals, so to speak, with the
+ideal marriage which has died to its natural limitations
+and has risen to a new life in which it is totally
+transparent to Christ and to His Kingdom. This marriage, it is
+obvious, is indissoluble and the very categories of
+dissolubility or indissolubility simply do not apply to it. It
+transcends them because by its very nature it is already a
+transformed and transfigured marriage. And, in a certain
+way, it is only such marriage that the Church teaches and
+reflects upon and, in a sense, only such marriage is
+recognized by her and it is only to such marriage that her
+positive evaluation of matrimony is referred. An example of
+this can be seen in the canonical regulations forbidding
+the ordination of all those whose marriage is not
+“perfect,” i.e., first and unique on both sides. The marriage,
+thus, belongs to the *theologia gloriae* as in fact a part of
+ecclesiology and eschatology. The Church rejoices, so to
+speak, in this foretaste and anticipation of the Kingdom
+of God.
+
+[^10]: See A. Raes, *op. cit.*, p. 8 and also S. Troitsky, *Christianskaia Philosophia Braka* (Christian Philosophy of Marriage), (Paris, 1934).
+
+## [III.](#III) {#III}
+
+There exists, however, another dimension of the
+marriage—this one rooted in the pastoral mission of the
+Church in the world. If the fundamental doctrine, or
+better to say, *theoria*, vision of the marriage, as still expressed
+in the liturgy, belongs to the early, maximalistic and
+eschatological period of the Church, this second dimension
+is the fruit and the result of the long and painful
+pilgrimage of the Church through history. It would be
+improper to describe it as a lowering of the standards and
+as compromise with all kinds of “real situations.” For it
+belongs to the very essence of the Eastern Orthodox
+tradition to keep together, in a truly antinomical way, on the
+one hand the “impossible” demands on man—demands
+that entered the world when God became man so as to
+“make man God”; and on the other hand the infinite
+compassion toward man of the One who took upon Himself
+the sins of the world. Regarding marriage, it is as if, in
+one and the same breath, the Church were proclaiming
+its Divine nature and destiny, yet also, its existential
+ambiguity—the marriage as one of the major battlefields
+between the good and the evil, between God and the
+devil, between the New Adam and the old; marriage as
+inexorably rooted in the tragedy of the original sin. The
+Church keeps the glorious vision revealed to her by
+Christ; she gives the gift to all, but she also *knows* the
+“impossibility” for man fully to accept both the vision
+and the gift. Just as in the Eucharist the Church, while
+inviting her members to communicate says: “Holy things
+are for the holy,” shows that only “One is Holy,” the
+maximalism of the Church’s revelation about marriage is
+precisely that which makes her condescending to the
+unfathomable tragedies of human existence.
+
+The whole point therefore is that this is not a
+“compromise” but the very antinomy of the Church’s life in this
+world. The marriage *is* indissoluble, yet it is being
+dissolved all the time by sin and ignorance, passion and
+selfishness, lack of faith and lack of love. Yes, the Church
+acknowledges the divorce, but she *does not divorce!* She
+only acknowledges that here, in this concrete situation,
+this marriage has been broken, has come to an end, and
+in her compassion she gives permission to the innocent
+party to marry again. It is sufficient, however, to study
+only once the text of the rite of the second marriage to
+realize immediately the radical difference of its whole
+“ethos.” It is indeed a penitential service, it is
+intercession, it is love, but nothing of the glory and joy of that
+which has been broken remains.[^11]
+
+[^11]: See Hapgood, *Orthodox Service Book*, pp. 302 ff.
+
+In practice, all this may be deeply misunderstood.
+During the long centuries of the Church’s organic connection
+with Christian states, she had to accept many functions
+and duties, if not contrary, at least alien, to her nature.[^12]
+This has been reflected in the liturgy and in ecclesiastical
+legislation and requires a detailed and patient study. If,
+however, one asks about the “essence” of the Orthodox
+teaching about marriage, one finds it in this apparently
+paradoxical tension—its belonging to Christ and His
+Kingdom and, therefore, its indissolubility on the one hand
+and the pastoral recognition of its human frailty and
+ambiguity on the other hand. Only within this tension a
+fruitful study of the Orthodox concept and practice of
+both marriage and divorce becomes possible.
+
+[^12]: See A, N. Smirensky, *op. cit.*
+
+# [COMMENT AND DISCUSSION](#comment) {#comment}
+
+The ancient Christian traditions of the East converge with
+the belief of the Catholic West in a common affirmation of the
+sacramental holiness of marriage. In the plan of redemption
+the earthly reality of marriage has been transformed in Christ
+into an image, an icon, of the union of Christ with the Church.
+Man and wife are joined in a permanent relationship to each
+other that transcends the limitations of natural compatibility as
+a witness of the fidelity of the Lord to His people. In this
+perspective divorce and remarriage are more than a failure
+of personal commitment. They are a tragedy for the Church,
+the broken pieces of a holy ideal shattered by sin and human
+weakness.
+
+The pastoral concern of the Church for the tragedy of
+broken marriage is to respond to human frailty with healing
+forgiveness. In the Christianity of the East, this forgiveness
+implies permission to marry again. The Church neither grants nor
+acknowledges divorce, but to the lonely and abandoned it
+sorrowfully grants the right to take another spouse. For the
+person and for the Church this is a penitential recognition of
+the harsh reality of sin and the deep need for God’s grace.
+The liturgical form of the second marriage itself expresses the
+paradox of sin and grace in the words of an antinomy that
+encapsulates the very life of the Church itself. For the Church’s
+role in the world is a constant reconciliation of opposites, the
+glory of ideals *in statu Patriae* and the reality of sin *in statu viae*.
+
+The theology of marriage, its liturgical expression and
+canonical discipline belong to the area of antinomy. It is
+precisely in the acceptance of the consequences of this antinomy
+in the life of the Church that there is to be found the greatest
+difference between Orthodox and Latin belief. Between
+Oriental and Latin traditions the most fundamental discrepancy
+does not lie in the interpretation of the exceptions of Matthew’s
+Gospel or even in the understanding of sacramentality in
+regard to marriage. Rather, it is to be found in diverse
+conceptions of the nature and role of the Church in the world.
+
+In Byzantine eclesiology the life of the Church moves
+constantly upon two different levels of reality. The dichotomy of
+the Kingdom of God revealed and present in a yet unredeemed
+and sinful world gives rise to a conflict of opposites that
+belongs to the very nature of the Church. Within this context
+there exists the parallel development of theological reflection
+upon the sacramental indissolubility of marriage and the
+canonical provisions designed to meet its failure. There is a
+theology of marriage as a reflection of the Kingdom and a
+juridical counterpart mirroring human weakness.
+
+Three main stages mark the historical evolution of the
+Oriental Church’s approach to marriage and divorce. In the
+primitive Church we find a basic acceptance of marriage as it
+existed in the world. The writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch
+portray a bishop living among his people and uniting them into
+one community in Christ. He knew the faithful and brought the
+blessings of the Church to them at every personal change in
+the status of their lives. It is not clear that St. Ignatius speaks
+of a sacramental action in the blessing of marriage, but his
+words fit into an ecclesiological concept in which all
+sacraments are involved in the one sacrament of the Church. The
+holiness of marriage lies within the holiness of the Church, It is
+the Church that transforms life and marriage. But first the
+Church had to accept and bless the life that existed. She had
+first to accept the worldly reality of marriage.
+
+In the pre-Constantinian Church we find an acceptance of
+marriage as it existed in Roman society, including all the
+regulations and customs of marriage prevailing at that time.
+At the same time the great effort to proclaim the Kingdom of
+God effected a gradual transformation of society. Within the
+community of the Church all things are made new. Marriage
+came to have a new meaning for the baptized in relationship
+to the central and allembracing reality of the Eucharist.
+Marriage received the acknowledgment of the bishop as the
+head of the community of the faithful. With this came the
+gradual integration of matrimony into the constitutional act
+of the Church, the holy Eucharist.
+
+Then came the great and tragic confusion created by the
+reconciliation between the Church and the empire. On the
+one hand it was a glorious triumph for the Church. On the
+other it created enormous problems for both Church and
+state. An extremely complex semi-Christian society provided
+an environment for a disconcerting mixture of roles. At this
+time the Church had not yet developed its own specific system
+of canonical legislation. It made every effort, however, to
+influence the civil legislation by Christian principles. The state
+sanctioned the canons of the councils as state laws, but the
+Church did not sanction state law as canons. The Church’s
+legislation was integrated into civil legislation, but civil
+legislation was never to become a part of the Church.
+
+Between Church and state there was a hesitant and uneasy
+balance. The Church saw itself as the Body of Christ and the
+temple of the Holy Spirit. Yet to the state it was mainly a
+society, a corporation, a visibly structured organization. The
+conversion of Constantine, real as it was, was still completely
+within the pagan presuppositions of conversion. The Edict of
+Milan was not a Christian document. It was a typically
+syncretistic pragmatic gesture. The more Constantine became
+Christian the more intolerant he became. By the end of the
+century Theodosius said that everyone who was not a Christian
+was a mental case and should be burned. This is far from the
+freedom in which the Church rejoiced at the Edict of Milan.
+
+The Church’s teachings on marriage could not be imposed
+upon the state in their entirety, because the reality of greatest
+concern to the Church lies beyond the province of the state.
+What occurred was a gradual effort to transform society in
+general and, in so doing, bring to bear upon the law a strong
+moral influence. Divorce became more and more difficult to
+obtain. Women moved up the social ladder to a greater equality
+with men. Fundamentally, however, the tension continued to
+exist between the human reality and the Christian ideal.
+Marriage was one of many great sectors of society to be
+Christianized, transformed and introduced to new dimensions of
+‘meaning, But this was only possible within the Church and not
+within the logic of civil legislation.
+
+The third stage occurred when the Church, in the person
+of bishop or priest, became the minister of marriage. In a
+vacuum of leadership, the Church received the total
+responsibility for the familial sector of social life. Born of this necessity
+were the purely temporal dimensions of the Church's dealings
+with civil and societal realities. It seems that the Church was
+almost forced to take on functions that do not naturally belong
+to it. Christianity assumed the role of the pagan state religions
+of the old empire. The Church was given a responsibility by
+the state to fulfill a civil role in society in regulating the
+temporal life of man. At this stage the sacramental view of
+marriage began to be translated into canonical prescriptions.
+The notion of the indissolubility of marriage took on extensive
+juridical implications.
+
+Looking back upon this era, Orthodox theology makes a
+distinction between the disciplinary tradition of the Church
+as a whole and the various canonical traditions of the
+particular churches. Reasons for divorce and remarriage changed,
+were expanded or restricted by the different national churches
+at various times in history. But the Church itself always looked
+upon divorce with the greatest reluctance. It always sought
+to distinguish a temporal responsibility on the level of social
+relationships from its essential role in integrating man into
+the Kingdom. The Church felt no basic need to exercise judicial
+authority in the temporal order. Its primary task was to refer
+temporal life to the order of revelation and sacramentality.
+
+Today the Church no longer controls the destinies of civil
+socicty. It no longer exercises a purely social jurisdiction. But in
+the present stage of transition, it still acts as if it must cling
+to that power and responsibility. The Church still feels the
+weight of an ancient responsibility for all temporal
+arrangements. Within the ambiguities of this situation, Orthodox
+practice now wavers between the Byzantine or Russian
+imperial legislation on what constitutes grounds for divorce and
+the legal rules of the states and nations in which she lives.
+
+The ambiguity of the Church’s stance between a theology
+that stresses the indissolubility of marriage and the canonical
+practice that allows dissolubility is not to be understood as a
+compromise with the world. It is precisely the lot of the Church
+in the world. Sin is not a juridical crime. It is a rebellion against
+God. The Church confronts the reality of sin both *in statu Patriae*,
+from which stems her teachings and eschatological
+orientation, and *in statu viae*, from which comes her pastoral
+concern for man.
+
+Within Orthodox tradition there is no such thing as divorce.
+The Church can no more remove the sacramentality of a
+marriage than she can remove the consecration from the
+Eucharistic Host. The Church simply grants the right to
+remarry in certain cases. What about the previous marriage? The
+ontological status of that first marriage is simply never made
+a matter of question. To ask the question supposes a static
+view of reality. Within the dynamic action attributed to the
+Holy Spirit by Orthodox theology, marriage can exist only
+while people actually live a marriage. If the marriage is not
+lived, it is dead. It is nothing. The real problem is not the
+abstract, Aristotelian essence that might remain, but what is to be
+done in pastoral terms with the existing situation. This is where
+the mechanics of canonical procedure in allowing remarriage
+are rooted.
+
+The basic question today is not how to delineate various
+new juridical reasons to allow divorce and remarriage. It is
+rather the question of what constitutes the sacramentality of
+marriage and how close does this sacramentality constitute
+a reality that can be expressed in juridical terms. What is the
+relationship between what can be described as the maximum
+of the Church’s teaching, which is not only an ideal, but the
+revelation of the true ontology of marriage and the real
+situation of man?
+
+Is the dialectic between indissolubility and dissolubility just
+a matter of toleration or rather a category of tension which has
+to be kept if the Church is to fulfill her mission among men?
+Unless we ask the most basic questions about the nature of
+marriage and its relationship to the mission of the Church, the
+very sensitive question of divorce and remarriage will not be
+solved. The whole complicated development of the Church’s
+teaching on marriage is one expression of her fundamental
+relationship to the world. It is only from a study of this relationship
+in which the problem is truly rooted that a solution can be
+found.
+
+In Orthodox tradition sacrament or “mysterion” implies
+necessarily the idea of a transformation, a passage from the
+old into a new dimension of both meaning and reality. The
+Church’s salvific mission to the world is fulfilled in a presence
+to the world in as far as the world can be transformed and has
+to be transformed by it. The world is not something wholly
+separated from the Church. It is the very matter of the
+Kingdom. In this sense, marriage is transformed by the Church and
+in the Church, while divorce remains a part of the morality
+of the world. It is a morality that the Church cannot be
+indifferent to or spurn. She must not only be interested in the
+morality of the world but must also transform it to a new
+reality.
+
+Dr. Noonan's paper concluded quite convincingly that some
+Christians considered marriage dissoluble at a particular time
+in history. He did not go beyond this premise to generalize
+upon this practice of the Church as being decisive for a later
+period. “It has been done for two hundred years in the past.
+Therefore, it can be done today” was not his conclusion. This
+type of argumentation would run counter to the reality of
+growth inherent in the nature of man and religion. It would be
+a type of legal positivism foreign to Christianity.
+
+Morality develops into a greater refinement of norms and
+a greater perceptiveness of judgment from reflection upon the
+existing situation of man in the light of primary principles. At
+one time slavery was accepted by Scripture, by tradition and
+by the Church. But today no one can consider slavery morally
+acceptable or even indifferent. The argument that it was
+accepted at one time does not prove that it can be accepted
+again. The Church moves with history and adjusts itself to
+developing human reality. As with the eventual rejection of
+slavery, so in the understanding of marriage there may be an
+evolution from an acceptance of dissolubility to belief in its
+absolute indissolubility. The ultimate criterion will not be the
+practice of the past, but the meaning of Christian marriage
+in the light of the real human situation today.
+
+On the other hand, the argument from the *praxis ecclesiae*
+does have a negative value. Development cannot imply
+contradiction. The Church is based upon a revelation and an
+institution in which tradition is implied. The *quod traditur* is an
+essential element in a revealed religion. To be Christian means
+to be traditional because tradition belongs to the
+revealed religion. So there exists the antinomy of developing
+human nature that precludes a happening of one time from
+being normative for all time and the need to study history to
+find the negative limit beyond which contradiction excludes
+continuity. The problem of tradition is closely connected with
+the meaning of the theology of real development in doctrine.
+
+We cannot say that at one time the Church believed one
+thing and at a later time she believed another in contradiction
+to it. The Church, in fact, in the early period was largely
+unconcerned with the institutional expressions of society.
+However, from the very beginning she had a notion of man, a
+notion of society and a notion of the destiny of man, which
+ultimately excluded the possibility of man’s being enslaved.
+Again, the Church had from the beginning, in the New
+Testament and in the Fathers, an intuition, an understanding, a
+vision of marriage as indissoluble. Yet this vision could not be
+made an immediate practical possibility because of the
+extremely adverse social conditions of the time. The teaching had
+to develop gradually. It was only at the time of the Emperor
+Leo VI in the tenth century that matrimony as a liturgical
+service was made obligatory for all Christians of the empire.
+This became the pastoral and missionary means of the Church
+to reach the people. Legislation prior to this time was mainly
+concerned with problems of regulating marriage and divorce.
+Now it became a question of how to impose upon the people
+the Christian view of marriage. The liturgical form developed
+as a teaching of what marriage should be. Christian history
+shows the explicitation, not the change, of a particular truth.
+There is a slow and patient evolution within society that brings
+about a real development.
+
+When we study the past, we study it not only in the effort
+to see how many metamorphoses took place, but how certain
+basic ideas—God, man, history, world, nature—developed and
+were refined. It would be a catastrophe if today we suddenly
+proclaimed, as a kind of ecumenical achievement, that whereas
+in the past we had thought of marriage as indissoluble, today
+we all agree that it is dissoluble. On the other hand, to simply
+maintain the old tradition of absolute indissolubility would be
+equally intolerable. We are moving today, not in the direction
+of a liberation of marriage from medieval conceptualizations,
+but rather toward a deepening awareness of what has always
+been central in the belief of the Church, regardless of the
+inadequacy of the juridical or philosophical categories in which
+it has been expressed. For almost two thousand years, the
+Church has proclaimed that marriage is sacred and
+indissoluble. Yet all the while she has reluctantly accepted its
+dissolution to some extent as a tragic human failure.
+
+There will always be a clash between the Kingdom and the
+world, the ideal and the exception, the eschatological hope
+and the reality. This dialectic between lofty goal and the
+reluctant acceptance of failure must maintain a proper balance
+in order that a real development may occur. Where the
+dialectic is ignored or overemphasis is given only one side, ultimately
+the impasse results in stagnation. Both sides of the dialectic
+have a role. St. Paul said that in the Kingdom “there is neither
+male nor female,” yet he treated women in the same category
+as children and slaves. The role of women in the Church
+suffered in the imbalance of the latter perspective. It is only
+when we explore more fully the reasons why St. Paul
+enunciated the fundamental equality that a restoration of balance
+can be achieved. In similar fashion, between ideal and
+exception the imbalance resulting from an overemphasis upon
+the ideal will be corrected by exploring the implications of the
+human reality that makes exception possible.
+
+In the theology of marriage of the Eastern traditions the
+primary point of departure is not the natural properties of
+marriage, but the supernatural union that it images. In the
+liturgy of matrimony the last act of the rite is the coronation:
+“Now receive these crowns in God’s Kingdom.” In its ultimate
+reality marriage is not measured by its current cultural
+acceptance. It is an icon of the Kingdom. Marriage transcends
+happiness. It transcends contract and even the family. But
+having defined marriage in these supernatural terms,
+Orthodoxy still remembers the natural dimension of marriage. The
+tension between the two exists and is inescapable. It is
+important, however, that the starting point of understanding
+begin, and not end, with revelation. The modern reduction of
+marriage to happiness and sexual fulfillment to which the
+Church may add a transcendent demand is not adequate. For
+Christians marriage is primarily a union witnessing the union
+of Christ and the Church.
+
+At the time of the revival of the study of Roman Law which
+inspired the science of canon law in the Western Church, a
+juridical conceptualization overtook the personal and
+theological vision of marriage. The canonical conception came to center
+upon consent and copula, instead of divine mystery and human
+relationships. With this came a canonical refinement of the
+conditions for the validity of the marital contract. Rather than
+the *consortium totius vitae* of an earlier humanism or the
+“mysterion” of the Fathers, marriage came to be equated with
+contractual obligations and rights. A whole machinery was
+set up in the Latin Church to adjudicate the validity of
+marriages according to the canonical definition of a unique
+contract giving the right to bodily acts of reproduction. In an
+effort to achieve legal clarity, both the personal elements of
+this unique relationship and the supernatural context of
+mystery were pushed to the background. Consequently, where we
+in the Church should be speaking of the common life of two
+spouses who are children of God, we are probing in tribunal
+practice the conditions of a contract for bodily acts. The result
+is a sterility of vision that has reduced the great mystery of
+human and divine love to an unreal formulation of legal rules.
+
+The Church’s primary task in marriage today is to proclaim
+the full richness of both divine revelation and human
+understanding. It is not to inform the world that the Church now
+accepts new rules for allowing divorce and remarriage. We
+must become less interested in the judicial forum, and more
+concerned about a catechesis of marriage. In fact, all that we
+say about the indissolubility or dissolubility of marriage implies
+a grasp of the preliminary question, what is marriage. It is
+toward an understanding of this sacred mystery that we must
+now strive together from all the traditions of the Christian
+experience.
+