Pastoral approaches to remarriage in the early and medieval church

Hello brothers,

I’ve been trying to research how the Church has dealt pastorally with cases of divorce and remarriage up until the time of the Reformers. I’m coming up with a dearth of sources regarding nitty-gritty situations and how they were handled both canonically and by individual shepherds, and I’m not sure if that’s because they don’t exist or whether I’m just looking in the wrong places. Most of the early church seems to have forbidden remarriage to professing Christians and imposed strict canonical penalties before accepting remarried Christians back into fellowship, if at all. But of course as the Gospel went out to the nations, as well as to the Romans, undoubtedly many pagan men and women in second, third, or twenty-fifth marriages received the Word and believed, and it doesn’t seem credible that all of those converts were either forced into celibacy or else excluded from the assembly (as, by the way, the Romanists and Churches of Christ today maintain is required). So, how were those cases handled? How was remarriage more generally handled by Godly men up until the time of the Reformers? And, did the Reformed and Westminsterian position overturn a post-Augustinian, rigorist/sacramentalist consensus about how to deal with these cases, or was there a through-line of developing Christian thinking that organically led to the more permissive position?

And, just n.b., I’m not advocating that we consult church history to decide how we ought to deal with these cases today. I know the early church was muddled about a lot, and marriage and sexuality has been one of the worst areas of popular heresy going back to the Corinthians. I just find it odd that it’s been so difficult for me to track down any records of how this doctrine has developed and how real people have been impacted by it.

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Rome “maintains” lots of things, but from what I understand an RCC “anullment” is barely harder to get than a secular divorce these days, at least in the West.

Josh, I’d recommend you take a look at Kingdon’s Adultery and Divorce in Calvin’s Geneva. He paints the picture of how the Reformers changed course from Medieval Roman views…with some case studies.

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Good recommend, Andrew. In pastoral discussions, what’s become apparent to my brother and I is that men who adopt the no remarriage position not only aren’t Biblical (“free”), but often sound like Rome with its absolute principles combined with the get out of jail free card. The Reformers were opposed to Rome’s pharisaicalism in this as in all other areas. Here is a statement we adopted at Trinity, and before Trinity, at my former congregation, Evangelical Community Church (back in mid-nineties). I’d change some things now, but still, I hope it’s helpful. Love,
CGS-DivorcePolicy-FINAL-04-00.pdf (316.7 KB)

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Thanks to you both for the resources.

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