# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S46
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 46 —

Essayist's Pastoral Theology, pages 256-261, where "Note 14" together with the relevant footnotes reads as follows:

"Incestuous supposed marriages must be dissolved. Baier writes about this: 'When persons unlawfully joined, for example in degrees of blood relationship forbidden by the law of nature, are separated, this is not so much a divorce as a declaration that in that union no marriage bond existed, because the one person could not validly contract with the other, as a near blood relation.' (Compend. th. posit. III, c. 16, § 34.) Compare above § 21, note 2.

"Here the question now arises: which are the incestuous unions, and therefore to be annulled as non-marriages? Fecht writes about this: 'It is to be noted that when, either without previous dispensation or with one, though contrary to law, such a marriage entered into in a forbidden degree has been consummated through church blessing and married cohabitation, of which one has examples of both kinds in this province: according to some, such a marriage is also to be tolerated, on which Carpzov is to be consulted; according to others, however, it should be dissolved. Of which latter opinion almost all theologians are.' (Instruct. pastor., cap. 17, § 5, p. 186.) And so it is in fact; if we compare the relevant passages in Luther (Erlangen ed. 55, 81 ff.; Walch X, 834;*) Erl. ed. 61, 245 ff.; W. XXII, 1758), J. Gerhard (l. c. § 349), Friedrich Balduin (Tract. de cas. consc., p. 1216) and others, we find that these all declare every marriage shameful and therefore to be dissolved which has been contracted in any degree forbidden by God's Word. There are, however, also unsuspected theologians who, although they concede to no human power the right to dispense in any degree forbidden by God, are nevertheless of the opinion that there are degrees in which a marriage, for moral reasons

*) Nevertheless Luther, according to this passage, seems also not to have regarded the marriage with a wife's sister, though forbidden by God and therefore to be dissolved, as an incestuous union; he writes: "Besides all this you know that such examples are very scandalous and that wicked people take occasion from them for incest, as one has, alas! found in several cases that such people have wished to excuse themselves with the previous scandalous example." In another place, where it concerned a marriage contracted with a deceased cousin's wife, Luther indeed writes that he "cannot with a good conscience approve such a marriage as right, because it is expressly contrary not only to the law of Moses (which is regarded not as Moses' but as a natural law), but also to the written imperial laws and ordinances" — but finally Luther also expresses his uncertainty in such cases by adding: "I for my part would gladly and willingly serve this good man and oblige him, so as to follow this common rule: much is not fitting nor right which yet, once it has happened, is kept and tolerated; but conscience and the new deed leave me uncertain." (Erl. ed. 61, 244 f.; W. XXII, 1757.)