# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 30 —

"If we go by the general rule v. 6 (Leviticus 18), where it says: 'None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him,' literally ad carnem (s. reliquias) carnis suae [to the flesh (or remnants) of his flesh]; then the secundum genus affinitatis [second kind of affinity] is certainly permitted. For no more persons are forbidden to one another than those where one is the flesh of the other's flesh; or, more plainly: no one is forbidden to me further than my flesh, and thus my parents, children and descendants and brothers and sisters, and then their flesh, whether by blood kinship or by affinity, namely the brothers and sisters and spouses of these same. But what goes further, and would have to be called caro carnis carnis meae [flesh of flesh of my flesh], and where a double marriage comes in between, as the secundum genus affinitatis involves (in that the stepfather's flesh is his deceased wife, her flesh is her also deceased son, whereas the widow of the latter would now be flesh of the flesh of the flesh), is no longer contained in this general prohibition of God through Moses and thus cannot be considered forbidden on God's part either." (Theol. Bedenken [Theological Opinions]. II, 523.)

Spener proceeds in the same way in another opinion on the case in which a person of high rank intended to marry the full sister of his previous wife. He writes:

"The first foundation of my Negativae [negative view], then, is the divine general command from Leviticus 18:6: 'None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, etc.; . . . I am the LORD'; which (latter) addition is generally made to those laws in the transgression of which the divine majesty considers itself especially offended. But what is given here as 'nearest blood relation' means properly in the original language of the Law: no one shall approach to the flesh of his flesh or reliquiis [remnants] of his flesh; and thus the Lord forbids me therein those who are nearest to my flesh, consequently those who are born of my flesh, or from whose flesh I am born, or who are born with me of one flesh; which we shall see agrees completely with the degrees named separately in the divine Law. So that forbidden are the ascendants and descendants, then brothers and sisters and the brothers and sisters of the parents, who are flesh of our flesh; but this prohibition does not extend further to those who are flesh of flesh of our flesh. As this is correct, and so far as it is perhaps not disputed in blood kinship itself, so it has no less place in affinity, since spouses are one flesh, Matthew 19:5 from Genesis 1:24 [sic]. Hence in all laws this general rule, that my wife's blood relations belong to me in the same degree through affinity as my own, is accepted and rests firmly on such a ground. As the examples of the separately named divine prohibitions again prove. For forbidden in the first degree in ascending and descending line are the father's wife, the daughter-in-law, the wife's daughter and