Book - Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the Bible

Book: Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the bible - link
- Page 6 - If marriage and sexual union were one and the same, the Bible could not speak about illicit sexual intercourse: instead (in referring to fornication) it would talk about informal marriage. Adultery would no longer be adultery, but informal bigamy (or polygamy). But the Bible does speak of sexual sin outside of marriage and doesn't give the slightest credence to the notion that adultery is bigamy. Throughout, the scriptures refer to marriage, in itself, as something other than and distinct from sexual union (licit or illicit). the words marriage and fornication (porneia, which means any, and all, sexual sin) can not be equated.
  - Though it may be easy in the abstract to accept the fact that sexual relations do not constitute marriage, when we come to th ematter of divorce we so often find people humming a different tune. Some erroneously say that adultery itself dissolves marriage because a new marriage is made. But that is not true either, biblically speaking.... A marriage is consumated when a man and woman exchange vows before God and each other, and they entere in to a covenantal relationship. Marriage authorizes sexual relations. The honemoon union is proper and holy (Heb 13:4) only because the young coupel is already married. And adultery, later on, while exerting tremendous strains on the marriage, does not dissolve it. Sexual relations per se do not make a marriage and do not break a marriage....
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