Bridget Mary's Blog: "Indissolubility of Marriage Based on Misinterpretation of Ephesians 5, Augustine, Council of Trent" by John Chuchman

The indissolubility of marriage

is based on a misinterpretation of Ephesians 5,

which likens the relationship between husband and wife

to the relationship between Christ and the church.

The latter relationship is a mystery,

mysterion in Greek.

Unfortunately the Latin word for mystery was sacramentum,

and Augustine mistakenly argued that

the mystery found in the Christ-church relationship

must also be found in the husband-wife relationship.

Since Augustine believed

the Christ-church relationship could not be broken,

he erroneously concluded that

the husband-wife relationship must be indissoluble.

Centuries later, medieval schoolmen or scholastics

compounded the error

by misinterpreting Augustine

thinking that when he said that there is a sacramentum in marriage,

he meant that marriage confers a sacrament

like baptism, confirmation, and so on.

This is how scholastic theology came to the false conclusion

that marriage is a sacrament

and that it is indissoluble.

Little did the bishops at the Council of Trent realize

that their doctrine was based on a bad translation of Augustine,

whose theology in turn

was based on a misunderstanding of the Epistle to the Ephesians.

Christian marriage is not indissoluble

and there is no need for annulments,

and Catholics do not sin when they divorce and remarry.

An edited and reformatted excerpt

of an article on Catholica