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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.
--- a/src/page/ecumen/tomos-1285-blachernae.md
+++ b/src/page/ecumen/tomos-1285-blachernae.md
@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Additionally, we acknowledge a single hypostasis of the incarnate Word, and we b
 [^5]: Rom. 10:3
-[^6]: The word "blasphemy" is used repeatedly by Gregory to describe Beccus' doctrine concerning the procession of the Spirit. To be sure, the deeply biblical nuance of the word in Scripture and in patristic literature did not escape him. In the New Testament, the word indicates violation of the power and majesty of God (Mark 2:7; Luke 5:2 1). In the early patristic period, opposing theological views were stigmatized as blasphemy. See especially G. Kittel (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, I (Grand Rapids-London, 1964), 621-25.
+[^6]: The word "blasphemy" is used repeatedly by Gregory to describe Beccus' doctrine concerning the procession of the Spirit. To be sure, the deeply biblical nuance of the word in Scripture and in patristic literature did not escape him. In the New' testament, the word indicates violation of the power and majesty of God (Mark 2:7; Luke 5:2 1). In the early patristic period, opposing theological views were stigmatized as blasphemy. See especially G. Kittel (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, I (Grand Rapids-London, 1964), 621-25.
 [^7]: Psalm 73:27
@ -63,17 +63,14 @@ And Beccus was asked by the emperor and by the holy synod to state the reasons f
 [^18]: Luke 9:62
 1. To John Beccus and to those who follow him, to Constantine Meliteniotes and George Metochites, who were born of us,[^19] and who were reared in our customs and doctrines, but who did not abide in them despite the fact that these were their own and of the Fathers, and had been established with the passage of time ever since the Christian faith began to be preached in these parts. But these, against which not even the gates of hell have prevailed nor shall prevail[^20] — they have despised, and I do not know why they condemn them, or why they refuse to praise them. But then they introduced instead a belief that was entirely unknown to its authors, for they respect neither the text's antiquity nor those who revealed these truths, namely, the ones who spoke of the things of the Spirit not for any other reason but because they were filled with the Spirit. To these men because they were so corrupt that they held beliefs both strange and alien to our traditions to the detriment and destruction of the Church; and, sometime later, they renounced this madness and declared by word and in writing before countless eyes and ears that they would be accursed if, in the future, they should not be found in full possession of the traditional faith, but drawn to a belief alien to the Church; and because they did not abide by their own written statement concerning this repentance, but changed their mind and opinion and again turned to their previous apostasy, as if possessed of a rebellious nature and a faithlessness toward ancestral doctrines, to these, because they wickedly turned away and preferred this separation from their own Church, we pronounce the resolution which they have pronounced upon themselves (or in the case of those who, in the future, will dare to do so), we cut them off (since they hold such views) from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a1}
 [^19]: Cf. 1 John 2:19
 [^20]: Matt. 16:18
-2. To the same [John Beccus], and to those who along with him were rash enough to introduce into the apostolic faith matters which the teachers of the Church did not hand down and which we have not received through them, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
+2. To the same [John Beccus], and to those who along with him were rash enough to introduce into the apostolic faith matters which the teachers of the Church did not hand down and which we have not received through them, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cur them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a2}
 3. To the same, who say that the Father is, through the Son, the cause of the Spirit, and who cannot conceive the Father as the cause of the hypostasis of the Spirit — giving it existence and being — except through the Son; thus according to them the Son is united to the Father as joint-cause and contributor to the Spirit's existence. This, they say, is supported by the phrase of Saint John of Damascus, "the Father is the projector through the Son of the manifesting Spirit."[^21] This, however, can never mean what they say, inasmuch as it clearly denotes the manifestation — through the intermediary of the Son — of the Spirit, whose existence is from the Father. For the same John of Damascus would not have said — in the exact same chapter — that the only cause in the Trinity is God the Father, thus denying, by the use of the word "only," the causative principle to the remaining two hypostases.[^22] Nor would he have, again, said elsewhere, "and we speak, likewise, of the Holy Spirit as the 'Spirit of the Son,' yet we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son."[^23] For both of these views to be true is impossible. To those who have not accepted the interpretation given to these testimonia by the Fathers, but, on the contrary, perceive them in a manner altogether forbidden by them, we pronounce the above recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a3}
 [^21]: John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, in Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos II, 36 (= PG 94.849B): "He Himself [the Father], then, is mind, the depth of reason, begetter of the Word, and, through the Word, projector of the manifesting Spirit."
@ -81,16 +78,13 @@ And Beccus was asked by the emperor and by the holy synod to state the reasons f
 [^23]: Ibid., 30 (= PG 94-832B).
-4. To the same, who affirm that the Paraclete, which is from the Father, has its existence through the Son and from the Son, and who again propose as proof the phrase "the Spirit exists through the Son and from the Son." In certain texts [of the Fathers], the phrase denotes the Spirit's shining forth and manifestation. Indeed, the very Paraclete shines form and is manifest eternally through the Son, in the same way that light shines forth and is manifest through the intermediary of the sun's rays; it further denotes the bestowing, giving, and sending of the Spirit to us. It does not, however, mean that it subsists through the Son and from the Son, and that it receives its being through Him and from Him. For this would mean that the Spirit has the Son as cause and source (exactly as it has the Father), not to say that it has its cause and source more so from the Son than from the Father; for it is said that that from which existence is derived likewise is believed to enrich the source and to be the cause of being. To those who believe and say such things, we pronounce the above resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
+4. To the same, who affirm that the Paraclete, which is from the Frather, has its existence through the Son and from the Son, and who again propose as proof the phrase "the Spirit exists through the Son and from the Son." In certain texts [of the Fathers], the phrase denotes the Spirit's shining forth and manifestation. Indeed, the very Paraclete shines form and is manifest eternally through the Son, in the same way that light shines forth and is manifest through the intermediary of the sun's rays; it further denotes the bestowing, giving, and sending of the Spirit to us. It does not, however, mean that it subsists through the Son and from the Son, and that it receives its being through Him and from Him. For this would mean that the Spirit has the Son as cause and source (exactly as it has the Father), not to say that it has its cause and source more so from the Son than from the Father; for it is said that that from which existence is derived likewise is believed to enrich the source and to be the cause of being. To those who believe and say such things, we pronounce the above resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a4}
 5. To the same, who say that the preposition "through" everywhere in theology is identical to the preposition "from" and, as a result, maintain that there is no difference in saying that the Spirit proceeds "through the Son" from saying that it proceeds "from the Son" — whence, undoubtedly, the origin of their idea that the existence and essence of the Spirit is from the Son. And they either infer a double or a single procession of origin, and join the Son to the Father according to this explanation of "cause," both of which are beyond all blasphemy. For there is no other hypostasis in the Trinity except the Father's, from which the existence and essence of the consubstantial [Son and Holy Spirit] is derived. According to the common mind of the Church and the aforementioned saints, the Father is the foundation and the source of the Son and the Spirit, the only source of divinity, and the only cause. If, in fact, it is also said by some of the saints that the Spirit proceeds "through the Son," what is meant here is the eternal manifestation of the Spirit by the Son, not the purely [personal] emanation into being of the Spirit, which has its existence from the Father. Otherwise, this would deprive the Father from being the only cause and the only source of divinity, and would expose the theologian [Gregory of Nazianzus] who says "everything the Father is said to possess, the Son, likewise, possesses except causality"[^24] as a dishonest theologian. To these who speak thus, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a5}
 [^24]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 34, PG 36.252A; cf. also Mouzalon's use and explanation of this proof-text, in PG 142.293A-B.
 6. To the same, who contend that the unique essence and divinity of the Father and the Son is the cause of the Spirit's existence — an idea which no one who has ever had it in his mind has either expressed or considered making public. For the common essence and nature is not the cause of the hypostasis; nor does this common essence ever generate or project that which is undivided; on the other hand, the essence which is accompanied by individual characteristics does, and this, according to the great Maximus, denotes the hypostasis.[^25] But also, according to the great Basil, because he too defines the hypostasis as that which describes and brings to mind what in each thing is common, and which cannot be described by means of individual characteristics which appear in it.[^26] Because of this, the indivisible essence always projects something indivisible (or generates the indivisible that generates), in order that the created may be [simultaneously] the projector as well as the projected; the essence of the Father and the Son, however, is one, and is not, on the whole, indivisible.[^27] To these, who absurdly blaspheme thus, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a6}
 [^25]: Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Letter 7: To John the Presbyter, PG 91.436A.
@ -99,25 +93,20 @@ And Beccus was asked by the emperor and by the holy synod to state the reasons f
 [^27]: On this section, cf. John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, in Kotter, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, II, 27 (= PG 94.825A-B).
 7. To the same, who teach that the Father and the Son — not as two principles and two causes — share in the causality of the Spirit, and that the Son is as much a participant with the Father as is implied in the preposition "through." According to the distinction and strength of these prepositions, they introduce a distinction in the Spirit's cause, with the result that sometimes they believe and say that the Father is cause, and sometimes the Son. This being so, they introduce a plurality and a multitude of causes in the procession of the Spirit, even though this was prohibited on countless occasions. As such, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a7}
 8. To the same, who stoutly maintain that the Father by virtue of the nature — not by virtue of the hypostasis — is the Holy Spirit's cause; the result is that they necessarily proclaim the Son as cause of the Spirit, since the Son has the same nature as the Father. At the same time, they fail to see the absurdity that results from this. For it is necessary first that the Spirit be the cause of someone, for the simple reason that it has the same nature as the Father. Secondly, the number of the cause increases, since as many hypostases as share in nature must, likewise, share in causality. Thirdly, the common essence and nature is transformed into the cause of the hypostasis, which all logic — and, along with this, nature itself — prohibits. To these, who believe in such things strange and alien to truth, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a8}
 9. To the same, who state that, in reference to the creation of the world, the phrase "through the Son" denotes the immediate cause,[^28] as well as the fact that it denies the Son the right to be creator and cause of things made "through Him." That is to say, in theology proper [the study of the Trinity in itself], even if the Father is called the initial cause of the Son and the Spirit, He is also, "through the Son," the cause of the Spirit. Accordingly, the Son cannot be separated from the Father in the procession of the Spirit. By saying such things, they irrationally join the Son to the Father in the causation of the Spirit. In reality, even if the Son, like the Father, is creator of all things made "through Him," it does not follow that He is also the Spirit's cause, because the Father is the projector of the Spirit through Him; nor, again, does it follow that, because the Father is the Spirit's projector "through the Son," He is, through Him, the cause of the Spirit. For the formula "through the Son" here denotes the manifestation and illumination [of the Spirit by the Son], and not the emanation of the Spirit into being. If this was not so, it would be difficult, indeed, even to enumerate the theological absurdities that follow. To these, who irrationally express such views, and ascribe them to the writings of the saints, and from these stir up a multitude of blasphemies, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a9}
 [^28]: Immediate or primordial cause: προκαταρκτικὴ αἰτία; cf. Basil, On the Holy Spirit, PG 32.136B.
 10. To the same, who declare that the Son is said to be the fountain of life in the same way that the Virgin Mother of God is said to be the fountain of life.[^29] The Virgin is so called because she lent living flesh to the only-begotten Word with a rational and intellectual soul, and became the cause of mankind born according to Christ. Similarly, those who understand life to be in the Holy Spirit will think of the Son as the fountain of life in terms of cause. Hence, their argument — from conclusions drawn of incongruous comparisons and examples — for the participation of the Son with the Father in the procession of the Spirit. And yet, it is not because the Virgin is said to be the fountain of life that the only-begotten Word of God is called the fountain of life. For she is so called because it is from her that real life came, for the same Word of God and true God was born according to His humanity, and she became the cause of His holy flesh. As for the Son, He is the fountain of life because He became the cause of life for us who were dead to sin; because he became as an overflowing river to everyone; and because, for those who believe in the Son, the Spirit is bestowed as from this fountain and through Him. This grace of the Spirit is poured forth, and it is neither novel nor alien to Scripture were it to be called by the same name as Holy Spirit. For, sometimes, an act (ἐνέργεια) is identified by the name of the one who acts, since frequently we do not refuse to call "sun" the sun's own luster and light.[^30] To these, whose ambition is to draw such conclusions, and to reconcile what by nature cannot at all be reconciled, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God.
 {#a10}
 [^29]: For the use of the phrase in patristic literature, sec G. W H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1961-1968), fasc. 4, 1080.
 [^30]: Cf. Patriarch Philotheus' words in Against Gregoras, PG 151.916D: "And this divine splendor and grace, this energy and gift of the all-Holy Spirit, is called Holy Spirit by Scripture ... for we call 'sun' not only the solar disk, but the splendor and energy sent forth from there."
 11. To the same, who do not receive the writings of the saints in the correct manner intended by the Church, nor do they honor what appears to be the closest [interpretation] according to the patristic traditions and the common beliefs about God and things divine, but distort the meaning of these writings so as to set them at variance with the prescribed dogmas, or adhere to the mere word and, from this, bring forth strange doctrine, we pronounce the above-recorded resolution and judgment, we cut them off from the membership of the Orthodox, and we banish them from the flock of the Church of God. 
 {#a11}
 Certainly, the doctrines of the above-listed and already expelled individuals are filled with blasphemy, malice, and fall short of all ecclesiastical prudence. Even if Beccus, the father of these doctrines — or someone among his zealous supporters — confidently affirms that these teachings are the thoughts of the saints, in reality, we must suppose him a slanderer and blasphemer of the saints. For where have the God-bearing Fathers said that God the Father is, through the Son, the cause of the Spirit? Where do they say that the Paraclete has its existence from the Son and through the Son? Again, where do they say that the same Paraclete has its existence from the Father and from the Son? In what text do they teach that the one essence and divinity of the Father and the Son is the cause of the Holy Spirit's existence? Who, and in which of his works, ever prohibited anyone from saying that the hypostasis of the Father is the unique cause of being of the Son and the Spirit? Who among those who believe that the Father is the cause of the Spirit has taught that this is by virtue of the nature, not by virtue of the hypostasis? And who has failed to maintain this as the characteristic that distinguishes the Father from the other two hypostases? Finally, who says that those other teachings, about which he has lied by insulting the Fathers, belong to the Fathers? He abstains from neither evil. For at some places he alters their own words, and, even when he uses the words without distortion, he does not adhere to their true meaning. Neither does he look at the aim that the author had in mind, but arrogantly passes over the purpose and the desire, and even the express intent of the author's statement, and adheres to the word and, having obtained the shadow instead of the body, composes books. And this is like saying that he twists ropes of sand and builds houses therefrom to make I do not know what, unless it is a monument and a memorial — the former, an advertisement of his folly the latter, a declaration of the struggle he undertook against his own salvation. This being so, we condemn the doctrines themselves together with their authors, and judge that their memory, like the expelled, be eliminated from the Church with a resounding noise.