remarriage
Remarriage is entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment. In theological use, the...
At a glance
Definition: Remarriage is entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment.
- Take remarriage from the biblical contexts that portray it as entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment.
- Notice how remarriage belongs to the church's worship, fellowship, discipline, and public confession.
- Do not define remarriage by tradition, reaction, or church culture alone; let the whole canon set its meaning and limits.
Simple explanation
Remarriage is entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment.
Academic explanation
Remarriage is entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment. In dictionary use, the term should be explained from its immediate contexts, its place in biblical theology, and its bearing on faithful Christian life.
Extended academic explanation
Remarriage is entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment. More fully, the topic should be interpreted through the passages that name it, illustrate it, regulate it, or warn about its misuse. A sound treatment therefore asks how remarriage relates to creation, sin, redemption, discipleship, and the church's life under Christ, without turning a practical category into a slogan detached from context.
Biblical context
Biblically, remarriage is framed by creation order, covenant obligation, wisdom instruction, Jesus' teaching, and apostolic exhortation as entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment. Scripture therefore places remarriage within holiness, fidelity, household responsibility, and love of neighbor rather than leaving it to custom, appetite, or private judgment alone.
Historical context
Historically, discussion of remarriage developed where biblical teaching had to be worked out in household life, moral formation, economic relations, legal judgment, and public order. Jewish legal reflection, patristic moral teaching, medieval canon law, Reformation ethics, and modern social theology each pressed the term into new settings.
Jewish and ancient context
In ancient Jewish and wider Mediterranean context, remarriage was heard within household structure, kinship obligations, inheritance patterns, marriage customs, honor-shame expectations, and covenant identity. That background clarifies why biblical commands address family life concretely while also challenging surrounding abuses and distortions.
Key texts
- Matt. 19:9
- Rom. 7:2-3
- 1 Cor. 7:39
Secondary texts
- Deut. 24:1-4
- 1 Cor. 7:10-15
- Luke 16:18
Theological significance
Within biblical theology, remarriage matters because it refers to entering a new marriage after a prior marriage has ended and must be considered with careful biblical judgment, clarifying how Scripture orders marriage, family life, and bodily conduct under God's authority.
Philosophical explanation
At the philosophical level, Remarriage presses questions about nature and formation, inward disposition and outward act, and the ordering of loves. Discussion usually centers on nature and formation, freedom and desire, virtue and vice, and the relation between inward disposition and outward action. Its philosophical value lies in explaining how persons are formed, not merely how isolated choices are classified.
Interpretive cautions
Do not let remarriage function as an umbrella category that obscures the passage's actual argument. Let the language be controlled by biblical eschatology rather than speculative chronology, rhetorical alarmism, or attempts to map every current event directly onto prophetic expectation. Define the entry with enough discipline that it clarifies rather than blurs the relation between exegesis, doctrine, and pastoral use, especially where traditions extend the language in different directions.
Major views note
Remarriage is usually treated as normatively addressed in Scripture, but traditions differ over how its moral claims should be specified, casuistically applied, and pastorally administered. The main points of disagreement concern lawful grounds, reconciliation, widowhood, abandonment, and how repentance and restoration should shape pastoral care.
Doctrinal boundaries
Remarriage must be framed within Scripture's account of creation, fall, embodied agency, and moral responsibility rather than reduced to psychology, sociology, or bare rulekeeping. It should neither excuse moral agency nor treat fallen desire as morally neutral, yet it must also avoid collapsing human life into therapeutic description or social mechanism. It should name sin as genuinely culpable while still accounting for habituation, weakness, and the need for grace. Used rightly, remarriage marks the moral and theological fence lines within which repentance, discipleship, and holiness can be taught with clarity.
Practical significance
Pastorally, remarriage matters because believers need wise, Scripture-shaped guidance for everyday obedience, worship, suffering, relationships, stewardship, and life together in the church.