Marriage and Virginity
unable to practice abstinence, or because he has reformed. Nevertheless, I do not see how a man can be allowed to marry someone else, if he leaves a wife who has committed adultery, while a woman is not allowed to marry someone else, if she leaves a husband who has committed adultery. If this is so, then that bond of association between spouses is so strong that although it is tied for the purpose of having children, it is not untied for the same purpose of having children.†16
It could happen that a man divorced a wife who was sterile to marry one with whom he would have children, but this is not allowed. In our own times, as well as by Roman custom, it is not even allowed to take a second wife, so as to have more than one wife living at the same time.
No doubt there could be more children born, if an adulterer or adulteress married someone else after being divorced. But if that is not allowed, as seems to be what God commands, is there anyone who does not wonder what is the purpose of having the marriage bond so inflexible? I do not think it could have been so strong at all, except that something from this weak mortal condition of mankind was being used as a symbol of something greater.†17 If people abandon it or desire to abandon it, it remains intact as a symbol calling for them to be punished. That marital partnership is not destroyed by the intrusion of divorce, so that even when they are separated they are still each other's husband and wife, and they commit adultery with anyone with whom they have union even after they have been divorced, whether it is the wife with another man or the husband with another woman. This is the status of marriage, however, only in the city of our God, on his holy mountain (Ps 48:1).†18
Marriage Is Not Merely the Lesser of Two Evils
8. For the rest, who is there who is not aware that the law of the Gentiles is different? There, when there has been a divorce, both the woman and the man marry anyone they choose without being liable for any punishment from society. Moses seems to have allowed something similar to this custom with the bill of divorce, because of the Israelites' stubbornness.†19 In this case, however, disapproval of divorce is more in evidence than approval of it.