# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 9 —

To the objection that it is nevertheless incomprehensible how an Abraham, who had married his own sister, and a Jacob, who had married his wife's sister during her lifetime, can be described in Scripture as such holy men, in view of the prohibitions of marriage in our chapter, in which such marriages are set forth as abominations, and how we find their marital situation not censured in them, it was indeed first replied: Sarah need not have been Abraham's own sister, and in Jacob's case a divine dispensation undoubtedly took place; but it was very expressly emphasized that one must never base one's argument on the individual examples that occur here and there in Scripture, for that means putting out onto the wide sea, where one can find no bottom any longer. We are to hold to the rule and judge the individual examples by it, and where we cannot, to commend the matter to God. —

That we are dealing here with relative laws of nature, which, as is evident from the penalties, are meant to remain in force, is also clear from the fact that God does not demand them, so to speak, arbitrarily, as for example in the prohibition of eating pork, which He simply demands without adding a reason such as: it is unhealthy for you; no, with these prohibitions we read as the reason added: It is thy flesh, etc., that is, you will thereby become one flesh with a person with whom you are already one flesh; you will thereby commit a sin not unlike self-defilement. —

To the objection that the feeling that marriage with a brother- or sister-in-law is impermissible is for the most part not present, as it is with the other forbidden degrees of marriage, especially in the ascending and descending line, the reply was that among some heathen peoples too marriage with a sister was not held to be shameful, and that, for example, among the Greeks the abuse of boys was not counted immoral, so that one could justify these shameful deeds also in this way. We were living in just the time that, according to Christ's saying, recalls the days before the Flood, which are described thus: "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose," Genesis 6:2. And when even in Christendom dying wives urge their husbands to marry their sister after their death, as so often happens, that is simply one more proof of how widely, almost throughout, the fear of God's commandment is carried to the grave by human feeling.

To meet the objection: If it says with these prohibitions, "For it is an abomination," and they therefore belong to the law of nature, they must also have been binding on the first human beings, since God is unchangeable, the following passages from Gerhard and Deyling were read aloud.

Johann Gerhard writes thus: "We grant that the ground of the prohibition in all these laws, which are reckoned to the law of nature