# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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ment, where by virtue of the law on the forbidden degrees in Leviticus 18:8 and 20:11 he not only sharply accuses a Corinthian who had married his stepmother, but even delivered him to Satan, 1 Corinthians 5:1; in which passage it is especially to be noted that the Apostle presents this wicked deed as so exceedingly vile, since even the Gentiles, by the law of nature, would feel an abhorrence of it." . . .

This is probably one of the most powerful grounds. For we find in the New Testament such degrees forbidden as belong to the most extreme of those forbidden in Leviticus 18, with the exception of the case of the uncle's wife; for the stepmother stands in the same relation as the brother's wife. So even if not all the cases are listed in the New Testament that the Old Testament names, the few that do occur are so compelling that one must wonder how anyone can still doubt that those prohibitions of marriage in Leviticus 18 are also binding in the New Testament as moral laws, to which the whole of mankind is subject.

The passage 1 Corinthians 5 is especially clear, on which Chemnitz in his Examen Concilii Tridentini [Examination of the Council of Trent] says the following: "It appears that among the Corinthians, among the other disputations about freedom, namely that Christians in the New Testament, because they are free of the Law, are permitted everything, this also was one, that together with the remaining Levitical laws that concerning the degrees forbidden in Leviticus was likewise abolished; for under the pretext of this freedom one man had taken his stepmother. But Paul, in saying in 1 Corinthians 5 that of such a union even the Gentiles do not know what to say, shows that those laws on the forbidden degrees are not ceremonial but commandments of the law of nature, which concerns all people and all times. For it is a very strong proof that those laws in Leviticus belong to the law of nature that the heathen lawgivers, to whom the divine law was unknown, count the forbidden degrees almost in the same way. The Baptist also, whose office brought the Law to its end, confirms those prohibitions, for he says to Herod: 'It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife.'" (Exam. Conc. Trid. ad Sess. VIII. can. 3. fol. m. 429 s.)

But the passage Mark 6:18 also possesses full probative force. For apart from the fact that we are not in a position to decide whether Philip was still alive at the time when Herod was rebuked by John, both the wording of the passage itself and the context indicate that when John says "thy brother's wife," his point is to designate the worst and most wicked kind of adultery, namely incest. Had the Baptist intended to rebuke a sin that was common at that time and that was subject to no censure before the Jewish state, namely that a man married a woman whom another man had dismissed with a bill of divorce, he would surely have said: "It is not lawful for thee to have another man's wife." But now there stand