# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S13
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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not only Mark 6:18 but also in the parallel passages, Matthew 14 and Luke 3, with great emphasis the words "brother's wife," and it would be quite absurd to suppose that this terrible addition, which St. Mark especially emphasizes by the words "for he had married her," stands there somehow idly.

But even if we grant that the passage Mark 6 is not as compelling as the Corinthian passage, we have here once again a proof of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture, in that the precious Word of God, which, as the hymn says, "lets itself be twisted by no one, be he as clever as he will," always offers at least one telling passage, and thereby also distinguishes itself from words of human wisdom.

But should anyone object that the fact that John rebukes this marriage of Herod as sin does not yet prove that Herod had offended against a moral commandment, since it is indeed also conceivable that John is here censuring a transgression of the ceremonial law, one would have to point out that this cannot be the question, since the Savior says expressly that the law goes up to John the Baptist, and therefore reached its end with him and lost its validity. By this, however, only the ceremonial law can be meant, which the Lord Himself and His disciples also did not keep; for of the moral law we read that not one tittle of it shall pass away. How Chemnitz regarded this passage, Mark 6:18, we see from a passage of his Loci [Theological Commonplaces], which reads:

"In the time of the freedom of the New Testament the Baptist rebukes Herod from these (Mosaic) laws, Mark 6:18: 'It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife.' John does not rebuke the king for robbery and adultery, but censures him for incest on the ground of the law of Moses, Leviticus 18:16, concerning the forbidden degrees. And he does this in the New Testament, when the Old had already reached its end. For the law and the prophets prophesied until John, Matthew 11:13. From which it is clear that these laws are not to be counted among the ceremonial ones. And Paul, 1 Corinthians 5:1, subjects the man who had taken his stepmother, according to these laws, to excommunication and delivers him to Satan. Whereas of the ceremonial laws he says elsewhere: 'Circumcision is nothing,' Galatians 6:15, compare Colossians 2:16. . . . Paul uses this proof in 1 Corinthians 5:1: 'Such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles.' Without doubt that incestuous man argued that the law of Moses had come to its end in the New Testament, and that it was therefore permitted to marry his stepmother. But Paul shows that that law has not been abolished, because the Gentiles have a horror of such defilement." (Loci th. P. III, fol. 206.)

"Our seventh ground of proof," Dieterich writes further, "rests on the natural inscription in the hearts of all people. This is confirmed by the laws of the emperors, the civil law, and the