Sacramental Marriage: Absolutely Indissoluble (even after death?)

Some early Christians, most notably Athenagoras of Athens and Tertullian, considered the marital bond to be absolutely indissoluble (even in the case of death). Athenagoras of Athens, for example, states:

For we bestow our attention, not on the study of words, but on the exhibition and teaching of actions, — that a person should either remain as he was born, or be content with one marriage; for a second marriage is only a specious adultery. “For whosoever puts away his wife,” says He, “and marries another, commits adultery;” not permitting a man to send her away whose virginity he has brought to an end, nor to marry again. For he who deprives himself of his first wife, even though she be dead, is a cloaked adulterer, resisting the hand of God, because in the beginning God made one man and one woman, and dissolving the strictest union of flesh with flesh, formed for the intercourse of the race. (Legatio pro Christianis, 33)

[N.B.] If the marital bond is absolutely indissoluble (even in the case of death), then it logically follows that all remarriages are adulterous. However, since St. Paul allowed for remarriage in the event of death, the bond itself cannot persist after death; otherwise St. Paul would be complicit in promoting sin. (cf. Rom 7:2-3; 1 Cor 7:10-12, 39)

In addition, Orthodox canons have always allowed widows to remarry, though with some restrictions. She may not marry her first husband's spiritual brother (i.e., one with the same godfather), since that would be marrying her own brother. They take "the two become one flesh" literally, so that the relatives of the husband now have the same degree of relation to the wife, and this family relation remains even when the husband dies.

In a similar line of thought, Tertullian said:

Therefore a wife, when her husband is dead, will not marry; for if she marry, she will of course be marrying (his) brother: for "all we are brethren." Again, the woman, if intending to marry, has to marry "in the Lord;" that is, not to an heathen, but to a brother, inasmuch as even the ancient law forbids marriage with members of another tribe. Since, moreover, even in Leviticus there is a caution, "Whoever shall have taken (his) brother's wife, (it) is uncleanness— turpitude; without children shall (he) die;" beyond doubt, while the man is prohibited from marrying a second time, the woman is prohibited too, having no one to marry except a brother. (De monogamia, 7)

[N.B.] The quoted work from Tertullian comes from his post-Montanist period. Among the Montanist doctrines was an absolute prohibition of remarriage even for widows. In his Catholic period, Tertullian wrote to his wife: "The same who brings us into the world must of necessity take us out of it too. Therefore when, through the will of God, the husband is deceased, the marriage likewise, by the will of God, deceases. Why should you restore what God has put an end to?" (Ad Uxorem, I, 7)

He clearly acknowledges that marriage ends with death, though he counsels widows not to remarry. (cf Ad Uxorem, I, 1)

The more rigorist view was frequently espoused for several reasons: 1) Christians should, if they can, prefer the celibate state over the married state; 2) the "order" of widows had an esteemed ecclesiastical function, so refusing this state was almost like refusing a vocation; 3) Christian marriage has a non-carnal, companionate aspect, so remarriage seems to entail a want of love or spiritual loyalty to the first spouse; 4) marrying only once most perfectly exemplifies how God first established marriage. These are all good reasons for advising widows not to remarry, but none of them rises to the level of requiring an absolute prohibition, abandoning the Apostle's tolerance of second marriages.