[Question:]{.underline} Where does the Bible say that a person can only marry once?
[Answer]{.underline}: It is from its very beginning that the Bible declares that marriage is between one man and one woman and that it is for life. We find this clearly taught in the book of Genesis, at the moment of the creation of our first parents, before even the original sin was committed. “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.” (Gen 2:24). It is true that even amongst the Israelites the original unity of marriage was gradually corrupted, when God allowed them to take more than one wife. Finally, Moses granted permission to them to put away their wives (Dt 24:1), permitting divorce under certain conditions, thus corrupting the original indissolubility of marriage. If God allowed this dispensation from the precepts of the natural law and of the sixth commandment, it was, as the Scripture says, on account of their hardness of heart, and because these were only secondary precepts.
It was Our Divine Savior Himself who restored marriage to its primitive state of one man with one woman, and for life. He did so, quoting the above-mentioned text from the book of Genesis, and concluding thus: “Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Mt 19:6). When questioned as to how He could contradict Moses, who permitted that a bill of divorce be given, He has this to say: “Because Moses by reason of the hardness of your heart permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.” Divine Legislator as He was, he then pronounces the solemn statement that if a man marry a second time, he commits adultery, and this even if he is obliged to put his wife away for infidelity: “And I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery.” (Mt 19:9). Here is the clear condemnation of the two vices against the unity of marriage: polygamy and divorce.
This teaching of our Divine Savior is confirmed elsewhere in the New Testament, in particular in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, reiterating that this teaching comes from Christ Himself: “But to them that are married, not I but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away the wife. (I Cor 7:10&11). That marriage is indeed until death the couple do part is explicitly taught once more both later in the same chapter and also in his letter to the Romans, when St. Paul speaks of the law of marriage: “For the woman that hath an husband, whilst her husband liveth is bound to the law. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband” (Rm 7:2; Cf. I Cor 7:39).
These are the reasons, then, that the Catholic Church distinguishes itself from the other monotheistic religions as being the only one that defends the unity and indissolubility of marriage. This literal interpretation of Sacred Scripture, from the book of Genesis to the New Testament, is also the reason why it is distinguished from the other so-called Christian religions, being the only one that defends the indissolubility of marriage, without exception, against divorce. If this seems to some to be a moral standard that is not attainable, it is one of the characteristics of the Church’s holiness, possible through the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.