I think the largest issue in communication is this. You have a church which has black and white laws, this is allowed, and this is not.
We have a church in which people are considered on an individual basis for many issues, and many other issues are expected to be part of their spiritual growth, and a person entering the Orthodox church, in general, is expected to take several years just to get a grasp of it all.
The decisions made in our churches are, for the most part, made between a spiritual father, one who knows us well and even intimately, and the parishioner. Because we have these really close and special relationships with our clergy, because we are a church which relies on intuition, insight, and other spiritual kinds of decision-making instead of something written in a book, and because we see the canons as *guidelines*, not laws, we just are not able to say yes or no to many of your questions.
Both Monkfan and Kolokotronis tried to explain this, and did it well, I think. I don't know why I am trying to lamely follow in their footsteps, but there it is.
What I hope is not being revealed in your postings is a need for a church to be evaluated based on what they allow and what they do not allow. This, forgive me, is a very sad statement. And yes it is Pharisiacal. Extremely so.
Three things.
First, thank you for the answer, which is that there is not a rule. It is possible in the Orthodox Church to be married a second time after a divorce, in certain circumstances, if a parishoner works it out with his/her priest. Is that accurate?
Second, thank you for emphasizing the difference in approaches. Yes, the Catholic Church is rulebound, apparently much moreso than the Orthodox Church, or at least the Orthodox here seem to think that is so. I personally have my doubts. I suspect that were I to press the issue, forward (which I am not going to do), I would discover that Catholics have a lot of clear cut rules, while the Orthodox have a lot of rules that are not clear cut ab initio, but which become "clear matters of faith" when they are pushed. This would follow from the cultural difference between the primarily rationalistic approach of Westerners to things, contrasted with the primarily mystical approach of Easterners. In the Western Church, there is an answer, and anyone can go look it up in a book. In the Eastern Church, there is an answer, and it is found in the authority of the priests to perform, or not, a sacrament.
As to the Pharisee jab, it was unnecessary. I will let it pass without a counter-jab, but I will defend myself. Simply: Jesus is different. There is a Bible out there, with lots of rules. Jesus modified some of them, and his words and acts are written down in the Gospels. Divinely inspired men writing before and after Jesus wrote under the emprise of God the Father or the Holy the Spirit, but what they wrote has to be interpreted, since it is a man interpreting God.
Jesus is different because he WAS God. There is no filter. So, correctly, the words and deeds of Jesus are the only time that the direct and unfiltered Word of God was relayed directly, in the first person, over an extended period of time, in public. With Paul, there are indications at times that Paul thinks this or Paul thinks that. This is all interesting, and Paul's was a great spirit, worthy of consideration. But whatever Jesus thought or said or did are the thoughts, words and deeds of God, full stop. No filter, no "interpretation". In Jesus, we have God directly interpreting EXACTLY what He means. There is no room for confusion, there is no ambiguity. Jesus is God. Therefore, obviously, everything else in the Bible, and everything in religion, and everything else that man does has to be interpreted in light of what Jesus said and did, because Jesus was the only man who was literally God incarnate, and the only completely unfiltered and unintrepreted divine message we have.
Now, the Pharisees interpreted Moses this way and that way and added their own traditions, and they contradicted Jesus. Which means that they were automatically wrong. Jesus was God. He wasn't just a man inspired by God - He was God as a man. Therefore, when Jesus said that written parts of the Scripture itself - the divorce rules of the Torah - were mere human traditions and NOT inspired by God, that overrides every other human being who had ever spoken before or has spoken since who says that every word of the Bible was inspired by God. We have an inkling that is not so, because Paul himself says at some points that he has no message on a given point (like women and headscarves), but then ventures his opinion. Paul could have opinions that were not divine. Jesus could not, because he was God. That means that if Jesus says that the divorce rules in the Torah were Moses' allowances to the hardness of the hearts of men, but not from God, it means that the divorce rules in the Torah were not inspired by God, and Jesus has explicitly identified a part of the Bible as NOT the inspired Word of God (and therefore, one cannot simply hold up the Bible and say "Every word in this is the Inspired Word of God" - because Jesus WAS God, and Jesus said "No, it isn't" by giving an explicit example of something in the Bible that says "God said", but Jesus says "God never said that".) Where Jesus contradicts the older Bible, the older Biblical passages that contradict Jesus are revealed as human traditions and not divine by the very fact of Jesus' having said so. Because he was the only man in the Bible who was God, and therefore whatever HE says, specifically, is the Word of God, and everything that derogates from that is a Pharisaic tradition that defies the direct Word of God.
Now, yes, it is true, Jesus does say that not a jot nor a tittle shall pass from the Law until all is fulfilled. But by that he clearly means God's law, and not God's law plus all the human rules that have been written up as God's law, but which aren't. Jesus explicitly pointed to the Old Testament divorce rules as something in the Scriptures that is NOT the inspired Word of God. Jesus doesn't say "I am changing this." No, he says "It was not like that in the beginning" - it NEVER WAS the Law of God, and it NEVER WAS the Word of God, even though the Torah says, in black and white "God said". Jesus said 'God did NOT say', and Jesus was God, therefore, God did not say, and that is the end of the argument for all time, forever.
In the Catholic Church, we recognize that the Gospels are a different animal from the rest of the Bible, by singing the Alleluia and sealing our heads, lips and hearts with a cross while standing to hear the Gospel. Church traditions can interpret Paul, but no Church has the authority to allow its traditions to override the words of Jesus, because He was God.
This brings me to the point of divorce. It is not the Catholic Church that says "No remarriage after divorce".
It was Jesus, who says in three Gospels, no divorce except for adultery, and remarriage after divorce is adultery." That's God speaking directly. The traditions, ecumenical councils and reasoning of the Orthodox or Catholic or any other Church is unavailing against a direct and explicit rule laid down by God Jesus.
That is why I asked about divorce. I was not being Pharisaic in my eyes. When God walked the earth, this was a big issue for him, big enough for him to have made a public discourse of it. And it was a big enough issue for God that God sent the Holy Spirit to record the same message, straight from God's lips, in three separate Gospels. I am not a Pharisee at all. I was asking a question about something that God was utterly explicit about. I asked the question because I was curious to see the relative strengths of tradition. I cannot see any way around the prohibition on remarriage set out by Jesus at all. Jesus was more explicit, in more Gospels, about no remarriage than he was about anointing the sick with oil (a sacrament), and as explicit as he was about baptism. Is baptism optional?
Why not?
Because Jesus laid down the rule of baptism and bound me to it.
But Jesus was every bit as explicit about divorce, so why am I a "Pharisee" for bringing up the words of Christ Jesus?
Can one ever be a Pharisee by looking at what Jesus said and asking about it? That's all I did?
The counter-jab is obvious, but I will refrain. My question was not the question of a Pharisee. It was a question for information, from one who takes what Jesus said more seriously than anything that any other man before or since has said, even men in mitres. Because Jesus, alone, was God. Therefore, whatever He said is true and the law, and all of our traditions have to perfectly reflect that or they reveal themselves to be wrong ab initio.
Where Jesus DIDN'T say anything, we have to fill in the blanks. But where he DID say something, I believe that we are so utterly bound that even the power of the keys he gave to Peter are unavailing. Peter could make laws for the Church, but Peter could not directly overrule God. And certainly he never even attempted to. Therefore, we should not think that we can either.
To a limited extent, Churches MUST be evaluated based on what they allow and do not allow. That limited extent is Jesus. Whatever Jesus commanded, like baptism, is not optional, and any church that derogates from what Jesus commanded errs. That is not true for Old Testament or other New Testament traditions, because those were the traditions of men. But Jesus was God. What HE said is binding Law that cannot ever be changed without defying God. Thus think I. And that is why is asked the question about divorce.
Frankly, I was SURPRISED by the answer. I would have assumed that the answer would be that divorced people who remarry are in a state of sin, like Jesus said. I would have expected the Orthodox Church to be hard about that.
It is interesting that they apparently are not.
On what authority does any Christian Church override the explicit, thrice spoken rule of Christ that a remarriage after divorce is adultery?
That is not a Pharisaic question, because I refer to no tradition nor Church rule. I am referring to the stark words of God Incarnate in the Gospels. What authority can possibly override THAT?
"If they remarry outside of the Church anyway, may they still take the sacraments?"
In Churches under the EP the answer is a resounding NO. I have seen this many times. The Synod of the GOA as recently as the late 80s or early 90s dropped the requirement of a remarriage in the Church of converts from Roman Catholicism. I know there is a requirement of at least a blessing for converts from generic Protestantism. For an Orthodox person to marry outside the Church means an automatic denial of at least communion until the union is regularized within the Church. Churches under the EP will allow three marriages in a lifetime, no matter what the reason for the end of the previous marriage. In the case of civil divorces, an exxlesiastical divorce must be obtained from the local bishop, which is an act of economia within the discretion of the bishop. He may or may not grant it. It should be noted that these are divorces and not annulments and are pure economia.