# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S290
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

290 On Matters of Marriage.

...that whoever divorces his wife on account of fornication and adultery does not thereby cause her to commit adultery; rather, she has torn asunder the bond joined by God; and if he marries another, he does not commit adultery, since he has been lawfully separated by the authority; likewise if the wife has been wronged by an adulterous husband — except where the guilty party has been forgiven, and the two have again been joined together in marriage: and whoever marries the innocent party who was divorced for such a cause does not commit adultery either. That person may therefore, according to divine law, marry again without dispute.

3. The question now arises whether a person divorced on account of her own adultery may marry again, or not. By divine law such a person ought to be put to death, Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22; John 8:5.*) Adultery is against the natural law; the penalty incurred through it was made known by God, through Moses, to the church of the Old Testament, and was therefore commanded for all times as a model for the civil authority to follow. But if the latter departs from this arbitrarily, and the guilty party is punished neither with death nor with lifelong imprisonment — what then? So long as the innocent party responsible for the civil divorce has not yet himself remarried, the guilty party may not think of any other marriage, but must, in true repentance and crucifixion of the flesh through faith, with heartfelt prayer, seek reconciliation with God and men, and also with the deeply offended and wronged spouse. But should the latter prefer to enter into another marriage, then Dr. Luther pronounces the following judgment, grounded on 1 Corinthians 7:9: "Do you ask, then, what is to become of the other one, if perhaps he too cannot maintain chastity? Answer: for this very reason God commanded in the Law that adulterers be stoned, so that they would have no need to ask this question; so too the civil sword and authority ought still to put adulterers to death. — But where the authority is negligent and remiss and does not put them to death, the adulterer may go off into some other, distant land and marry there, where he cannot restrain himself; but it would be better to shun him as dead — dead to him, for the sake of avoiding a bad example." ("On Married Life," Leipzig edition, vol. XXII, p. 202.) So it was also observed after the Reformation in Saxony and other evangelical lands. Cf. Johann Gerhard, Loci Theologici, de conjugio, vol. VII, Jena ed., p. 1047.

*) Note. The reason Christ the Lord did not condemn the woman in that passage was that his first coming was not meant for pronouncing legal judgments, for holding court as a prince of the kings of the earth, but he was made low and placed under the Law, to seek and to save what was lost. He wrote with his finger on the ground, in order nevertheless to indicate to the accusers that it was he who had himself inscribed the Law on the tablets of stone, and to point to Revelation 20:12ff.