Does Orthodox Christianity permit remarriage?

Q: I’ve heard that the Orthodox Church permits remarriage. Isn’t this a departure from the Lord’s teaching in scripture?

We should start by countering a common misconception that remarriage is allowed. It would be logical to ask the same question with a small variation: Why does the Orthodox Church allow robbery, rape, or murder? Each of these sins, with repentance and a period of separation from the sacraments, can be forgiven and the person restored to full Communion. That does not imply that the Church winks at these sins; rather it acknowledges that a person who makes harmful choices is not a lost cause; he is capable of restoration, and our goal is his repentance and healing, not his exclusion in order to maintain our imagined purity.

Marriage is a public, legal, social union. Some cultures enter into it with a negotiated contract or dowry; other’s simply pay for a license. Additionally, the couple comes to the Church to receive a sacramental blessing on their union.

When a person’s spouse dies, or the marriage ends socially and legally, the Church tries to respond with pastoral grace and comfort. A person whose marriage ends due to death or legal separation and divorce, is not committing a sin which the Church needs to address (though few divorces are entirely the fault of one person, and there are likely either sins or emotional scars that require addressing in confession.)

When a widow or divorced person decides to contract a new marriage, in Roman times as well as today, he is contemplating a social and legal act; secondarily, he is asking the Church to do something in response.

In the fourth century, St Basil the Great views remarriage in tis way: as a social and legal act outside the Church, to which the Church has to respond for the salvation of the individuals:

“There is no law as to trigamy: a third marriage is not contracted by law. We look upon such things as the defilements of the Church. But we do not subject them to public condemnation, as being better than unrestrained fornication.” — St Basil, Letter 199, canon 50

In another canon he clarifies the Church’s twofold obligation: First, to clearly identify this as not a normative sacramental marriage but an act of sin; and secondly, to provide some avenue whereby this couple may be restored through repentance to the Communion of the Church:

“In the case of trigamy and polygamy they laid down the same rule, in proportion, as in the case of digamy; namely one year [of excommunication] for digamy; some authorities say two years. For trigamy men are separated for three and often for four years; but this is no longer described as marriage at all, but as polygamy; nay rather as limited fornication. It is for this reason that the Lord said to the woman of Samaria, who had five husbands, he whom thou now hast is not your husband. He does not reckon those who had exceeded the limits of a second marriage as worthy of the title of husband or wife. In cases of trigamy we have accepted a seclusion of five years, not by the canons, but following the precept of our predecessors. Such offenders ought not to be altogether prohibited from the privileges of the Church; they should be considered deserving of hearing after two or three years, and afterwards of being permitted to stand in their place; but they must be kept from the communion of the good gift, and only restored to the place of communion after showing some fruit of repentance.” — St Basil, Letter 188, canon 4

The Book of Needs (the Trebnik or Euchologion) is the text that all Orthodox priests use for sacraments and blessings. The service of a second marriage is an authoritative, real world application of the canons on remarriage. In the OCA’s English translation of the Book of Needs (vol. 2, page 181), before the service text, is this directive to the priest:

“One who is married for a second time is not crowned, and it is forbidden to commune of the Holy Mysteries for two years; and one who is married for a third time, for thee years” — (11 Canon of St Nicephorus)

From the reply of the blessed Nicetas, Metropolitan of Heraclea, to a question from Bishop Constantine:

“The judgment of the law, therefore, is that is it not customary to crown; but the Great Church [Constantinople] does not keep this, and for those marrying a second time it lays crowns, and no one is reproached for this. Otherwise, they that enter into a second marriage are forbidden Divine Communion for one or two years. But the priest who serves this service is not permitted to sup with them, according to the Seventh Canon of the Council of Neo-Caesarea.”

Then at the beginning of the service is a reminder that the office for a second marriage is meant for widows and widowers; that the bishop’s explicit blessing must be obtained before the service can happen; and that if either party has been divorced, then the bishop must be consulted.

Finally, in place of the joyful prayers celebrating the union of two virgins, the service of a second marriage features prayers for forgiveness and mercy, interceding for the couple.

The Church’s response to a member’s choice to remarry is to offer them a path to repentance and restoration, and to reluctantly bless the civil union that these two people have already chosen to enter.

That is the nature of economia: a bishop, given the apostolic authority to “bind and loose,” may choose to act counter to the norms that are meant to form our personal and ecclesiastical lives. The Church seeks the salvation of individuals, not a uniform standard of behavior, and we hope that every sinner may be guided through repentance to reconciliation and Communion.