B. Second Opinion

1. Exposition of the Opinion

78. Another opinion says that the giving of a bill [of divorce] and repudiation of a wife was licit for the time of the Mosaic Law; because Moses announced the Law of God, and therefore those whom he as legislator joined together and announced it, God too joined together; and those whom he separated God too separated; and God can separate those who are matrimonially joined together.

79. Again, according to Augustine, Letter 40 to Jerome ch.3 n.3 (and it is in Gratian, Decretum, p.1 d.9 ch.7), “If useful lies were admitted into the Sacred Scriptures, what would remain of authority in them?” As if he were to say, “Nothing.” And the reason is that whatever authority be brought forward to repulse a heretic, the heretic will reply that it was spoken as a lie, a jocose or officious lie, just like that one too somewhere else [cf. Ord. IV d.3 n.178]. Therefore, by similarity, if a heretic not have anything in Scripture, he will not have authority by any prescriptive authority in Scripture.

80. Likewise about advice; if any advice given in Scripture were not healthy or useful to keep, there would be no authority of observance in Scripture; therefore, by similarity, if there were any concession in Scripture about anything illicit, as this one [about repudiation], it follows that no concession of Scripture will have authority to show that the thing conceded is licit. For as concession is related to what is licit, so precept is related to what must necessarily be done, or warning or advice to what is useful. For just as a precept is not about anything that is not necessarily to be done, so neither is a concession about anything save what can licitly be done.

81. Again, a just law should not directly give occasion to sin mortally; but this concession seemed to be an occasion directly for the Jews to dismiss their wives; for if it had not been written down, they would no more have dismissed them than the fathers before the Law of Moses did; therefore, either that dismissal was not mortal sin, or the Law was not just.

2. Weighing of the Opinion

82. The way in which this opinion can be held acceptable is this: complete justice does not exist in this exchange or contract of matrimony save by divine ratification, though there is found before it what suffices for justice on the side of the exchange and the exchanging parties; and whenever such justice can be found in the exchange, it is reasonable that it ought to be ratified. But just as the exchange of the body of one man in return for exchange with the bodies of several women is something just when such exchange is necessary for procreation of offspring - and so then God justly made dispensation for bigamy, indeed approved it, on account of a greater good resulting than would, on the other side, result by exchange of one woman with one man; and the exchanging parties should, according to right reason, want so to exchange - thus in the issue at hand can God, for avoiding a greater evil than is the good of indissolubility of marriage, make dispensation that a contract may be made for a time, until the woman displease the man.

83. And in this is justice in some way preserved, because the parties should want thus to exchange, not only for attaining a greater good but also for avoiding a greater evil; and uxoricide is a greater evil than is the good of indissolubility; because the former is the evil of penalty for a killed wife and the grave evil of guilt for the killer. It would also be an evil for the whole republic, because an occasion for continuous discord and fighting, on account of the anger of the wife’s parents against the killer; and in this there would be a continuing dissipation of the family, because, with the man being killed by his adversaries or by the law, the family and the education of the offspring would be destroyed.

84. So it could, therefore, be said that, just as God made dispensation for bigamy on account of a greater good, so could he make dispensation in the repudiation of wives for the [Hebrew] nation on account of avoiding a greater evil.

85. And according to this can it be said that, since the good wine of matrimony is indissolubility and perpetual obligation, no matrimony of the Jews was perfect, because the contracts were always under a condition on account of the bill of repudiation. But in the matrimony of the New Law this good does exist, namely indissoluble union; and, in addition to this, something else, namely the signification of the union of Christ and the Church, which is the union of one with one. Now in the matrimony of the law of nature, as with Abraham, the first perfection or the first good existed, namely indissolubility, but not the second, which is to have one wife only. But in the Mosaic Law, when there was repudiation and one man had several wives, neither perfection of matrimony existed, because neither was there union of one with one nor was the union simply indissoluble; but this was done by divine dispensation.