ACC ~ Matthew 19 v9

HE COMMITS ADULTERY

APOLLINARIS: To commit adultery is to have relations with a woman who is not one’s proper spouse. A man commits adultery if he brings another woman in, instead of the one to whom he was lawfully bound. The law forbade obvious adultery, which is when another man seduces the woman in the house. But the Savior includes also that adultery that has not become known to everyone or that has not been proven as having occurred physically, because it is still adultery. Moreover, Christ agrees that the unfaithful wife has rebelled because she herself has destroyed the natural yoking and is no longer treated as a wife by her husband. FRAGMENT 94. [1]

[1] MKGK 30.

SEPARATION OF THE WILL

INCOMPLETE WORK ON MATTHEW: In adultery, every thing is destroyed by the very causes through which it is born. For marriage is not made by intercourse but by will. Therefore it is not destroyed by bodily separation but by separation of the will. Thus he who dismisses his wife and does not take another is still a husband. For although he has now been separated in the body, yet he is still joined in will. When he takes another wife, then he fully dismisses the first. So it is not the man who dismisses his wife who is an adulterer but the one who takes another wife. And just as the man who dismisses a chaste wife is cruel and unjust, so he who keeps a prostitute is foolish and unjust. … Therefore we ought to be imitators of God: just as faithfully as God relates to the church, so should we relate to our wife. God will never abandon his people unless they of their own will cross over to the heathen or to heresy. HOMILY 32. [1]

[1] PG 56:802.

Mt