# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 25 —

b. or it says nothing definite either about the lawfulness or about the unlawfulness of this marriage.

This part of the thesis was grounded on the inferences one would perhaps draw from the wording of v. 18, and on the difficulty of convincing the congregation if these words are directed against marriage with a sister-in-law. From the words "to vex her" one could infer: so one may marry the sister if the wife is content with it; or from the word "sister": one may well marry another woman, only not the sister. It is a fact that the defenders of marriage with a sister-in-law appeal to the closing words: "while she is yet alive." Therefore, they say, one may marry the sister of the deceased wife. To be sure, the rule applies here: From the silence of Scripture nothing is to be inferred, but from it there follows only the obligation to seek in another place what is not stated. The following citation was also read:

C. Dieterich: "What the Jesuit (Bellarmine) puts forward from the third book of Moses, chapter 18, v. 18, concerning the marriage of a wife's sister during the other's lifetime, from which the Jesuit in the converse sense wants to force out a permission of this marriage after the sister's death, we answer: 1. In that we deny this. Basil says it is all too rash if one wants to force out of that which is written and commanded that which is not written and commanded. And the jurists affirm that arguments which rest on the opposite are unsound, since something absurd is forced out of them. 2. It is a sophistical trick on account of the customary manner of speaking in Scripture. For according to the manner of Scripture this appended conclusion signifies a quite undoubted negation; as in 2 Samuel 6:23: 'Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.' Ergo she had a child after her death?! That he made use of this expression there were two reasons: 1. The example of Jacob, who married two sisters; so that no one might imitate this example, Moses added this prohibition. 2. The unseemly lusts of the Jews in divorcing their wives." (Consilia und Bedenken. p. 201 f.)

Yet it was considered what difficulty it would present to make someone quite certain that marriage with a sister-in-law is forbidden here, if the person were to insist: but here it says: "while she is yet alive." —

At this point it was asked: Whether it would involve anything dangerous to say that this part of the regulations does indeed deal with marriage to a sister-in-law and contains a concession to the Jews and stands there only as a law for the Jews?

To this it was answered: In that case one would throw the whole chapter overboard, which, as we have seen, still applies to all people today. For how could one convince anyone that,