Annulment Vs Divorce

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Summary

The following is an edited series of exchanges with Orthodox and Baptists. This text is by Dave Armstrong and William Klimon

QUESTION

Let me ask you this David, aside from the fact that we call a divorce a divorce, and you call it an annulment, how is your position morally superior? Suppose our bishops decided to play it your way: A case that was previously under consideration for a divorce in which the husband was on his 3rd marriage (the previous two ending in the death of the first two wives) and a wife, charged with adultery -- in the Orthodox approach, the husband could not have remarried because this was his 3rd marriage, and the wife (if guilty) could not have remarried because she was guilty; but following the Roman method, this marriage could just be annulled, and both parties would be free to marry again. How is this the stricter position? How is it morally superior?

ARMSTRONG

Your scenario is clearly "stricter" in the sense that it is more "sexually (or, "ascetically") rigorous." Then again, why do you object when we are more rigorous and strict than you with regard to the celibacy of priests? Stopping at three marriages (in the case of deaths - say during a war, pestilence or a plague or something) is certainly more arbitrary than our biblically-based criteria of the preferability of priestly celibacy (which you impose on monks and bishops).

Moral superiority is another question. Remarriage after the death of a spouse does not violate any principle of sacramentalism, since marriage vows apply up to the death of one party only. As to the man on his third marriage in such an instance, he may or may not be able to marry again in Catholicism, depending on the sacramentality and validity of the third ostensible marriage. Adultery in and of itself is not grounds for annulment, if the marriage was a valid one in the first place. So that if there were no grounds, he would not be able to remarry (in a Catholic ceremony, at any rate), just as in your view.

If the marriage was indeed invalid, then why shouldn't he be able to marry legitimately? Why penalize him because his first two wives died, by God's Providence? He was faithful to to his marriage vows in each case. That's the whole point. It seems that now you guys are getting a bit legalistic and Pharisaical, huh? But this prohibition is no different in kind than our celibacy requirement, which you so despise (and which has considerably more practical and pastoral justification behind it).

Now as to the adulterous woman: if she never intended to honor the vows and the sacramental nature of marriage, then there was no marriage, period. If one doesn't even believe or intend to keep a vow as they are saying it, how can it have any binding force? This is as sinful as (and not essentially morally distinguishable from) an immoral affair, and cannot sensibly be acknowledged as a valid marriage in either of our views, it seems to me. Don't Eastern Orthodox recognize that there is such a thing as a sham "marriage" which was never seriously undertaken by one or both parties in the first place? This is self-evident. I don't see how it could be denied.

So why should the man be punished in that eventuality? Can she marry again? Sure, she can straighten herself out, reform herself, learn what really constitutes marriage, grow in the faith, repent and confess, meet the right guy, get the proper premarital counseling, and have another chance. Welcome to mercy and forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation. Welcome to the fallen human race! "He who is without sin . . ." She had never been in a valid marriage in the first place, so she is free to enter into a valid one. If she had been, then the Church is powerless to do anything, as by definition such a marriage is indissoluble.

On the other hand, quite ironically, by now forbidding her to validly marry because she sinned sexually, you burden her with the very "undue" penalty for which you chide us for imposing on those we deem to have been legitimately and sacramentally married (now dysfunctional in some fashion). So that now your practice of "condescension" is not applied, thus (using Eastern Orthodox rhetoric) condemning the woman (due to not accepting "reality"?) to even worse sins of promiscuity, fornication, perhaps masturbation, unbridled lust, etc.

This being the case, how, then, is your view "morally superior" to ours? I say we are the ones who uphold both the principle and inviolability of sacramental matrimony, and mercy, whereas you are willing to deny both, according to - respectively - moral laxity and an arbitrary, cruel legalism. In conclusion, then, your hypothetical situation backfires as support for your outlook.

QUESTION

Also what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church as regards to annulments? I read that the American Catholic Church gave over 11,000 last year,

ARMSTRONG

The higher numbers can be explained two ways:

1) more and more people have not the slightest inkling of what a "sacramental marriage" is, and what responsibilities it entails; hence; these "marriages" were never sacramentally (and that is the key) valid in the first place. This would be a legitimate reason for greater numbers.

2) heterodox priests and bishops may be abusing the power to annul marriages; giving in to societal pressure, which would be a grave sin on their part, possibly leading to their damnation if they willfully persist in violating Church teaching.

QUESTION

What about the annulment of Joe Kennedy's 11 year marriage. How could the Church annul a marriage of 11 years that produced children? Is this not de facto making annulement the same as divorce?

ARMSTRONG

Children per se do not make a marriage valid, if it was not undertaken with the proper understanding of what the sacrament of matrimony is. I don't know the particulars of the Kennedy case, but it may be an instance of liberal abuse, as in #2 above.

QUESTION

Is the Roman Catholic Church through a technicality beginning to slide down the slippery slope on marriage and ending marriage that many Protestant churches (sadly in some cases my own Southern Baptist Convention ) have gone? I would hope the Catholic Church will stand tall on this issue.

ARMSTRONG

As I've argued many times, our doctrine on this has not changed in the least, whereas Protestants do change their official stands and long history of conservative marital teaching. Annulment - properly understood - is not divorce at all. Rather, it is the determination that the proper elements of a valid, consummated, sacramental marriage was never met in the first place. If a marriage is sacramentally valid, it cannot be annulled by any power on earth. It may appear to be so, but it is not in God's eyes, and whoever violates His moral teaching will pay a penalty for it, if not in this life, then perhaps in the next (whether purgatory or hell). Jesus is very clear on this.

QUESTION

You keep asking for quotes from the Fathers to support the Orthodox position,

ARMSTRONG

Indeed. When will you guys produce that? If you are right, I should think that would be an easy task. I have always thought that the Orthodox sought to be faithful to the Holy Fathers, so this is most disappointing. We have supported our viewpoint from the Fathers (my paper Divorce: Early Church vs. Eastern Orthodoxy).

QUESTION

The Orthodox position is the same as yours. We also believe that remarriage after divorce is sinful.

ARMSTRONG

So it's sinful, but you allow it . . . Very well, then. I will take your word that the Orthodox Church sanctions and upholds - even has a ceremony for - that which it itself regards as sin. In my humble opinion, that's an even more objectionable position than holding that divorce isn't a sin, because it involves hypocrisy and compromise; an accommodation with that which God hates (Malachi 2:16). I don't mean to be harsh or judgmental, but I don't see how a Christian could regard this stance otherwise. Christianity cannot sanction sin and wrongdoing, period.

QUESTION

We Orthodox do not argue the fact that remarriage after divorce is sinful.

ARMSTRONG

Duly noted. I shall keep this post for when someone asks me about your position. You have stated it very clearly twice now, and in my opinion, refuted your own position.

QUESTION

Let me say it again so that we have no doubt....please mark this down in your notes: THE ORTHODOX CHURCH BELIEVES THAT REMARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE IS SINFUL. I have said it three times now....a holy number.

ARMSTRONG

Okay - even more documented now. Let me state our position in caps, too: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BELIEVES THAT "REMARRIAGE" IS SINFUL IF ONE OR BOTH PARTIES IS ALREADY MARRIED, SINCE A VALIDLY CONSUMMATED, SACRAMENTAL MARRIAGE IS INDISSOLUBLE. AND WE DO NOT SANCTION WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE SIN.

QUESTION

The question is, how do we deal with real people who have fallen into this sin? The Roman Catholic Church has come up with the idea of annulments. That is, the marriage did not really exist in the first place. This is a very clever answer to the problem.

ARMSTRONG

We didn't come up with it, the Apostle Paul did. Our Lord Jesus did. St. Ambrose, St. Leo and other Fathers did, as I demonstrate below.

QUESTION

In Orthodoxy, we allow the spouse who was the innocent party to remarry, the other spouse is out of luck. However, the service is not the same as it is in the first marriage. The service in a second marriage is more of a penitential service. Why do we allow this?

ARMSTRONG

I hope part of the penitence is for the Church which is possibly compromising with sin (in cases where a theoretical annulment could not be obtained) in order to allow this "marriage."

QUESTION

Because the Church is a hospital for the soul, not a court room. In the Church, sometimes we have to choose between the lesser of two sins.

ARMSTRONG

I regard that as atrocious Christian ethics myself. If we start allowing sins, it is a slippery slope, and by the same logic, many sins could then be justified. Why single out marriage? If the idea is to avoid related occasions of sin, I could think of a dozen additional examples of a scenario like that.

QUESTION

Recall that the Church speaks for Christ on Earth. So what we have here is a decision that, in some instances, is made by the Church to allow a person to remarry lest they fall into fornication.

ARMSTRONG

What you don't seem to understand is that if a divorce takes place in instances of an existing valid sacramental marriage, then the Bible and the Fathers are both clear that a second "marriage" is a state of perpetual adultery. Jesus never taught as you do here. So in effect you are saying that "rather than burn and commit fornication, our Church will sanction an adulterous state." This is nonsensical morality. Two wrongs don't make a right. I can hardly believe I am reading this.

QUESTION

When I was still Roman Catholic I used to wonder how the Orthodox could call the RCC legalistic, when obviously they seems much more obsessed with the canons and traditions. It was because when the Orthodox say that the RCC is legalistic they are not faulting them for their observance of rules, but rather in the placing of rules above an individual soul.

ARMSTRONG

Yeah, far be it from us to harm a soul by preventing it from entering into a sin so serious its eternal destiny might be jeopardized. We will be like you, then: rather than tell them the difficult truth which will help them to be more righteous (Jesus did that a lot, too - remember the rich young ruler?), we will inform them of an easy way out, and sanction a sin which Jesus and the Fathers didn't allow at all.

QUESTION

To say that a rule is engraved in stone and that there can be no exceptions is to undermine the authority of the Church to bind and loose.

ARMSTRONG

Yes, relativists, antinomians, many libertarians, secularists, and theological liberals argue the same way: they tell us that Christian morality is too rigid and archaic, and that there are no absolutes: we must exercise a flexibility and compassion which takes into account human frailty, situation ethics, and modern society. Teenagers can't be expected to abstain, so we will pass out condoms to them and not even try to stop them from engaging in sex. Rather than protect them from the possibility of contracting AIDS by urging abstention, we will give them a balloon for sexual purposes and hope that it doesn't break. We're willing to take that chance (with their lives). Instead of telling college kids they shouldn't get drunk, we know they will anyway, so we will come up with the claptrap about "designated drivers." Where does such reasoning end? The eternal destiny of a soul is far more important than even saving one's life.

QUESTION

In Orthodoxy we have what is called economia. Economia means to lessen a rule for the sake of a person's soul. It is the perogative of the Bishop to exercise this economia.

ARMSTRONG

So what other sins are allowed as cases of "economia?" The lesser of two evils . . . ?

QUESTION

So, what I am saying here essentially is that the Roman Catholic Church should get off of their high horse when it comes to this issue. We all agree that remarriage after divorce is sinful. The difference is in how we deal with it.

ARMSTRONG

Obviously. We continue to follow through on the notion that it is sinful and thus we won't allow a second "marriage." But if an ostensible "marriage" was in actuality never valid in the first place, the couple can be released to enter into a valid sacramental marriage. That is mercy and economia exercised in harmony with the upholding of right and wrong - not a compromise with what is inherently immoral. The concept is fundamentally different.

QUESTION

You have your annulments, which makes bastards out of the children of these "non-marriages,"

ARMSTRONG

"Bastard" is a secular, legal term, and derogatory at that. Therefore it has no relevance whatever to Church rulings regarding sacramentality. The Catholic Church has never taught this (though, of course it is a common slander which you parrot).

QUESTION

It is very logical and seems to get around the problem.

ARMSTRONG

There is moral logic and consistency, and there is moral illogic and inconsistency and incoherence.

QUESTION

And we simply admit to the fact that people make mistakes, and that not everyone can remain chaste after a divorce, and they should not be punished indefinately for a divorce that is the fault of the other spouse.

ARMSTRONG

"The two shall become one flesh." Your teaching might be preferable if ethics were relative and if we didn't have such clear NT and patristic teaching that "remarriage" is adulterous, and that true marriage is indissoluble. In my humble opinion, those things make your position impossible to consistently take from within a Christian framework.

QUESTION

With regards to birth contol...I posted the following back in July.....

"...For what its worth, in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad birth control is still considered a sin. However, it is not quite as black and white as in the Roman Catholic Church."

ARMSTRONG

Another clear case of a sliding scale of ethics. This is downright shocking and depressing. Another act is wrong, is sinful (by your own admission), yet you will allow it. That's all I need to hear. What is there to argue further? Black is white, and white is black.

QUESTION

But here again, we are dealing with souls. The Church is larger than its canons. The canons were made to serve the people, not the other way around. That is one reason that we have Bishops. They can decide how strictly canons should be applied on a case by case basis.

ARMSTRONG

When Jesus contended with the Pharisees over, e.g., the levitical legality of rescuing a sheep on the Sabbath, He was not saying such an act was wrong, which He was now relaxing for pastoral purposes, in order to accommodate human weakness. Quite the contrary; He was saying that such acts never were wrong, but that they were misunderstood as being forbidden by the Law when in fact they were not contrary to the Law - properly understood spiritually. He said that the Sabbath was made for man, not vice versa.

Orthodoxy, on the other hand (if you are representing it properly - and I sure hope you are mistaken) is asserting that what is truly sinful and wrong can be relaxed and allowed, as an exercise of pastoral mercy or prudence. Such a principle is never found in the Bible. Jesus didn't tell the woman caught in adultery that she was free to engage in sin because she couldn't help it. No, He said, "go and sin no more." By your reasoning, the early martyrs could have exercised "economia" and bowed down in idolatry to Caesar to spare their lives. They could have reasoned, "it is too difficult to be burned alive or eaten by lions, so God and the Church will understand if I renounce Christ in order to get out of this mess."

Uh uh. I don't buy this at all. It is very dangerous ground which Orthodoxy has decided to tread. And without biblical and patristic precedent . . . You can get mad at me if you want, but I won't back down because it is the easier, more pleasant course. God didn't call me to be an apologist in order to win a popularity contest. Oftentimes it is a thankless task. I must speak out against what I (i.e., my Church) believe to be wrong. I am not saying anything the Fathers before me didn't say. I stand with them, and on Holy Scipture. I am accountable to God as a teacher. And again, I am just a messenger.

QUESTION

By the way...I don't believe that there is any Eastern tradition or anything in the early Tradition of the Western Church that supported the use of annulments.

ARMSTRONG

I cited both Scripture and referred to my compilation of Fathers in that regard. But all one has to do to establish that is to show that there is a distinction between merely civil and sacramental marriage. If that is true (which I think you would grant), then clearly a marriage can exist which is one sort but not the other, more sublime type. And that is the presuppositional basis for an annulment, which Bill Klimon shows (below) even existed in the East. I don't consider this a particularly difficult concept to grasp. Nor should it be at all controversial, in my opinion.

QUESTION

I had asked earlier if you have any history that supports the practice of annulments. Is there any historical justification within common Church Tradition for their usage?

ARMSTRONG

From my paper on the subject, the following are the two clearest examples:

St. Ambrose

There is hardly anything more deadly than being married to one who is a stranger to the faith, where the passions of lust and dissension and the evils of sacrilege are inflamed. Since the marriage ceremony ought to be sanctified by the priestly veiling and blessing, how can that be called a marriage ceremony where there is no agreement in faith?

{To Vigilius, Letter 19:7 (A.D. 385), in FC, XXVI:176}

This is an unambiguous example of the "Pauline privilege," which is a type of annulment.

Pope St. Leo the Great

And so a wife is different from a concubine, even as a bondwoman from a freewoman. For which reason also the Apostle in order to show the difference of these persons quotes from Genesis, where it is said to Abraham, 'Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.' And hence, since the marriage tie was from the beginning so constituted as apart from the joining of the sexes to symbolize the mystic union of Christ and His Church, it is undoubted that that woman has no part in matrimony, in whose case it is shown that the mystery of marriage has not taken place.

{To Rusticus, Epistle 167:4 (A.D. 459), in NPNF2, XII:110}

This raises a very interesting point, one I had not previously thought of (praise God for your call for clarification! LOL). The OT distinction between a concubine and a wife is somewhat analogous to our distinction between civil and sacramental marriage - itself the kernel and foundational premise of the concept of annulment. Sarah told Abraham to have sexual intercourse with the slave girl Hagar in order to produce a child (she being barren up till that time).

This was a Hebrew custom in those days. Concubines were protected by Mosaic law (Ex 21:7-11, Deut 21:10-14), though they were distinguished from wives (Judges 8:31) and were more easily divorced (Gen 21:10-14). Remember, God approved of the sending away of Hagar and her son Ishmael (Gen 21:12), not because they were evil or disparaged by Him (see Gen 17:20, 21:13,17-20), but because Sarah was Abraham's wife in the fuller sense (akin to sacramental marriage), as St. Leo argues above, following the Apostle Paul (see Gen 17:15-21; Gal 4:21-31).

But later prophets encouraged monogamy (Mal 2:14 ff.) and the ideal woman of Proverbs 31 lived in a monogamous society. Later, of course, Jesus taught that monogamy (with no divorce) was God's ideal from the beginning (Mt 19:1-12; cf. Gen 2:24). Divorce - so Jesus said - was permitted to the Jews only because of "hardness of heart." But the "except for fornication" clause of Matthew 19:9 is interpreted by us (and, I believe, the Fathers) as a case of non-matrimonial ongoing fornication as opposed to real marriage, and as such is a biblical basis for annulments, along with the Pauline privilege (1 Cor 7:15), which has always been accepted by the Church.

So there you have it: three biblical arguments and two patristic citations. Even the OT biblical evidence for annulment (by strong analogy), considered in isolation, is stronger than for many doctrines we both (and all Christians) accept, such as the resurrection of the body, heaven, the atonement of Christ, original sin, the Eucharist, and other doctrines, which were all developed much more fully in the New Testament. In this case, too, the NT builds explicitly upon the kernels of the Old Testament.

QUESTION

Albeit, as a legal device they may have some utility they have been misused recently within the Catholic Church and used improperly as a form of de facto divorce.

ARMSTRONG

No one denies that abuses take place, but that does not prove whether or not the concept is valid or invalid. Arguments from abuses never rise to "essence." I know you wouldn't appreciate it if I made this sort of argument about something in Orthodoxy.

QUESTION

The use of annulments in conjunction with Catholic divorces need to be discussed as you try to critique the Orthodox views toward divorces...views which are Biblical and Traditional as well.

ARMSTRONG

Again, in our case, it is a matter of abuse. I have shown you the biblical and patristic rationale for both annulments and "no divorce." You have institutionalized the sin, precisely as you have done with contraception and division (and what we have always refused to do). That is our beef with you (the biggest moral objections we have).

QUESTION

The annulments still look like divorces in fact. A rose or in this case a skunk still is skunk but only by another name. It appears unfortunately that the annulment game does lead to more moral Christians or to more loving parents or spouses. Catholics are no more moral than most Protestants or Orthodox in their behavior as a result of the use of the annulment loophole.

ARMSTRONG

This has absolutely nothing to do with my post, which was about the Fathers' views on marriage, remarriage, and divorce, and about how Eastern Christendom changed the primitive, apostolic Tradition on this - following the emperors rather than councils and popes, the Bible and the Fathers (as was clearly documented).

Not a word has been "spoken" about these things - which were, after all, what my post was about. It's an historical argument (about the actual early Tradition), not a moral or philosophical or ethical one, about what constitutes an annulment, how corrupt our marriage tribunals are, etc.

Either Orthodoxy has diverged from the teaching of the early Church and the Fathers on this or we have. But ignoring the issue doesn't advance the discussion at all - nor does switching it over to corruptions in practice. As Joe Louis said, "he can run but he can't hide." The "ring" in this instance is Church History.

The same tactics have been used in the past by my Orthodox friends with regard to contraception. Unable to prove that the Fathers allowed it in any way, shape, or form, the debate is switched over to the nature of Natural Family Planning (NFP). This reminds me of today's politics, too: instead of responding to anothers' actual argument, or defending yourself with facts, just attack the attacker (in this case the Catholic Church, which is said to be playing "games" with annulments and rationalizing about the essential distinction between NFP and contraception).

I think the facts speak (loudly) for themselves. If Orthodox want to say that the Fathers were simply wrong on this issue en masse, then that is an option, I suppose, but it sounds more like Protestantism to me than what I understand as the Orthodox self-conception of their unique preservation of apostolic Tradition.

And I still can't comprehend a view which holds that "divorce is a sin and evil, yet we as a Church sanction it under certain circumstances." Is there not something fundamentally wrong in that picture? I would prefer Luther's half-facetious "be a sinner and sin boldly" to this!

QUESTION

Aren't annulments innovations that are corruptions?

ARMSTRONG

The concept - rightly understood - isn't an innovation, but rather, a development of the notion of valid sacramental marriage. Corruptions of the process are just that, but they don't touch on the essence of a true annulment, any more than a Hans Kung or any other heterodox buffoon passing themselves off as "Catholic" affect the essence and validity of true Catholic dogma (or your liberals affect true Orthodoxy).

QUESTION

they don?t have any biblical support?

The "Pauline privilege" (1 Cor 7:15) would be an example of a situation which precisely fits a certain type of annulment (and the Church has always accepted it - for the very reason that it is so clearly taught in Holy Scripture). Also, we argue (with much exegetical and linguistic justification) that Jesus' "except for adultery ('porneia')" in Matthew is a reference to an adulterous affair which is in actuality no sacramental marriage at all. I also cited the parallelism of Abraham and Hagar / Sarah above. You may think differently, but then you have to deal with the overwhelming consensus of the Fathers.

QUESTION

There is no precedence in either early Eastern or Western Church history.

ARMSTRONG

Maybe not in the East, since that's where the false notion of dissolubility and permissible divorce originated. But certain aspects of annulments are seen in some of the patristic quotes I presented. But if I recall correctly, there were many easterners in that collection, such as St. John Chrysostom.

QUESTION

Don't annulments undermine your whole notion that divorce does not exist in the Catholic Church?

ARMSTRONG

No, not in the slightest, because annulments and divorce are entirely different in essence. You can complain about annulments if you like, but that does not make them the equivalent of divorce. The least you could do would be to get the definitions right - without which no constructive discussion is possible. We're just ships passing in the night.