In the beginning, God ordained marriage as the permanent union between one man and one woman. After the Fall, God permitted extraordinary marital circumstances — divorce, polygamy, and concubinage — because of what Jesus called "the hardness of their hearts." But when Christ came, He did not merely repair the Mosaic framework; He instituted an entirely new and higher law of marriage, drawing hard lines in the sand that had never before been drawn with such finality.
Jesus established four unambiguous principles: the absolute indissolubility of marriage, the inadmissibility of divorce (save for porneia), that remarriage after divorce constitutes adultery, and that the marital bond — though not the loving bond — ends with death. His formula is precise: one man, one woman, for life, with no possibility of remarriage while both spouses live.
The disciples themselves recoiled at this teaching, saying: "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." Jesus responded: "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it." The Lord acknowledged the rigor of His own standard — and affirmed it nonetheless.
The problem is this: what Joseph Smith introduced in Doctrine & Covenants 132 does not merely differ from Christ's law of marriage — it directly contradicts it. And there is no visible way around this dilemma.
When the Pharisees came to test Jesus on the question of divorce, He did not appeal to Mosaic law — He appealed to creation itself. "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate" (Matthew 19:4–6).
When the Mosaic concession was raised, Jesus answered plainly: Moses permitted divorce "because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so." He thereby superseded not only the Mosaic divorce law, but all other Old Testament marital concessions — including the tolerated polygamy of Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon — by restoring the original creational ideal of monogamous, lifelong union.
When the Sadducees posed their riddle about the woman who had seven husbands, Jesus gave an answer of enormous doctrinal significance: "For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25).
This verse admits of no ambiguity. Earthly marriage, by the Lord's own words, does not continue into the resurrected state. The marital bond is ordered to this life. Its beauty and covenantal weight are real — but they are temporal. The resurrection redirects all hope from earthly unions to eternal life with God.
Far from diminishing marriage, Christ's strict standard elevates it to an icon of divine love. St. Paul, writing under apostolic authority, identifies the one-flesh union as "a great mystery" — and I am speaking of Christ and the church (Ephesians 5:32). The husband's love for his wife is meant to mirror Christ's love for His bride: total, sacrificial, faithful, and fruitful.
Christ had no bride save the Church — one, holy, undivided. Our loving unions are therefore ordered to be living parables of that singular, faithful bond. This is precisely why polygamy is not merely inconvenient for Christian theology; it is theologically incoherent. Christ did not take multiple brides. He gave Himself entirely to one.
Jesus also explicitly commends celibacy — not as a lesser state, but as a charism ordered directly to the Kingdom: "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it" (Matthew 19:12). St. Paul echoes this: the unmarried person is free to be anxious about the things of the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:32). Celibacy for the Kingdom presupposes that earthly marriage is not necessary for salvation or exaltation — a foundational Catholic teaching, and a foundational contradiction of the LDS doctrine that celestial marriage is required for the highest degree of glory.
In Doctrine & Covenants 132, Joseph Smith introduced what he called the "new and everlasting covenant" of marriage. Its provisions are specific and, on several critical points, directly opposed to what Jesus established:
D&C 132 further specifies that if a man takes plural wives and his first wife consents, and the additional wives are virgins, he is justified. If not, she "will be destroyed" — while he has merely committed adultery. The asymmetry here is striking: the woman is destroyed, not the man. This is not an elevation of marriage as Christ taught it; it is a regression to the very Mosaic concessions He explicitly superseded.
The conflict is not peripheral. If Joseph Smith's "new and everlasting covenant" is true, then one or more of the following must also be true:
Either Jesus' words on marriage meant nothing and were merely temporary; or Jesus (God Himself) can be overruled by later prophets; or Jesus' words were corrupted and cannot be trusted — which calls into question the entirety of the New Testament and all of Christianity; or God's moral laws can be downgraded over time rather than elevated, which contradicts Jesus' own pattern of fulfilling and perfecting the Law.
None of these options is theologically acceptable within any historic Christian framework. Jesus did not present His teaching on marriage as provisional. He anchored it explicitly in the act of creation itself — not in Mosaic accommodation, not in temporary dispensation, but in the permanent design written into human nature by God from the beginning.
The single hardest verse for LDS theology on marriage is Mark 12:25. Jesus did not say that the institution of celestial marriage does not apply to earthly marriages. He said simply that in the resurrection, people neither marry nor are given in marriage — they are like the angels. There is no qualification, no exception for sealed marriages, no carve-out for celestial unions. The verse means what it says.
Even within the Old Testament, God never commanded polygamy. The patriarchs practiced it; He permitted it. But every major instance of polygamy in Scripture is accompanied by its fruits: idolatry, rivalry, broken families, and ruin. Solomon's many wives turned his heart from God (1 Kings 11:3–4). Jacob's household was riven by jealousy. David's polygamy produced catastrophic dynastic consequences. God tolerated these arrangements because of hard hearts — and then Christ removed the tolerance entirely.
If God hates divorce under the old covenant, Christ's elevation of the marital standard under the new covenant leaves even less room for the dissolution and plural expansion of the marital bond.
Scripture frames the whole of human history with marital imagery. It begins implicitly with the creation of male and female and their union in Genesis, and it ends explicitly with the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation — the New Jerusalem descending as "a bride adorned for her husband" (Revelation 21:2). This grand arc is not incidental. It reveals that all of earthly marriage is typological — it points beyond itself to the eternal union of Christ and His Church.
The prophets consistently use marital imagery to describe God's covenantal relationship with His people — and the imagery is always of singular, exclusive fidelity. God is not a polygamist; He does not take multiple brides. He is the faithful husband of one people, and when Israel committed spiritual adultery by chasing other gods, it was portrayed as a profound betrayal of the most intimate bond.
The New Testament brings this imagery to its fulfillment in Christ. John the Baptist identifies himself as the friend of the bridegroom, rejoicing at the bridegroom's voice (John 3:29). Jesus identifies Himself as the bridegroom (Mark 2:19–20). Paul betroths the Church "as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Corinthians 11:2) — one bride, one bridegroom, in pure and exclusive devotion.
The Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1–13) further presses this point: readiness for the bridegroom is the condition of entering the wedding banquet — not the possession of an additional covenant or an eternal marriage rite, but faithfulness, vigilance, and the oil of grace.
The LDS doctrine of eternal marriage and the plural marriage revealed in D&C 132 cannot be harmonized with what Jesus Christ taught. The dilemma is not a matter of interpretation or emphasis — it is structural. Joseph Smith's new and everlasting covenant permits what Christ explicitly forbade (divorce, remarriage, polygamy), denies what Christ explicitly taught (the end of marriage at death), and requires what Christ explicitly commended as unnecessary (marriage for exaltation versus celibacy for the Kingdom).
The Catholic Church, by contrast, holds precisely what Jesus established: marriage is indissoluble, ordered to this life, a living image of Christ's singular and total love for His one Bride, the Church. It cannot be dissolved by civil authority, and it is not required for salvation — for Christ Himself commended the path of celibacy as a holy gift. These teachings have remained unchanged since Christ walked the earth.