# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S50
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 50 —

use of their right, and that out of honor to the married state, and ordain no divorce against the will of the couple, it would yet be right and fair for them to punish the offenders accordingly, so that it may not appear as though they wished to nourish sin or promote scandals. Besides, the guilty themselves must bewail their fall into which they have come, bear the punishment of the authorities patiently, and moreover call upon God fervently to forgive the error committed in such a way that their sin may not, neither to themselves nor to their children, if any be granted them, redound hereafter to shame and disgrace or to utter ruin. For their comfort that Pauline word may serve: The Lord will let mercy befall us, for we have done it in ignorance, 1 Timothy 1:13.' (Cas. Conscient., p. 781.) Of the Jena theologian Friedemann Bechmann Deyling says: 'He answers (in his Casuistry), by distinguishing among the divine laws between those to which the threat of the death penalty is attached and those to which the penalty is attached that they shall die without children. Of a marriage that has been entered into against the divine laws of the former kind, he says that it is invalid and to be dissolved; but if the prohibition of the latter kind is in question and the marriage is yet to be consummated, it is to be prevented in every way, since God disapproves of it; but if the matter is no longer undecided and the marriage has already been consummated, and the contracting parties also cannot be moved to withdraw, then it may be permitted, since God Himself permitted it and seems to have set only one penalty on it, namely childlessness, Leviticus 20:20.' (Institut. prudent. pastoral., p. 563 s.)

"That we have not communicated the foregoing in order to prove that a pastor himself may bless such marriages through which the divine commandments concerning the degrees of kinship that hinder marriage are transgressed hardly needs mention. It is here rather only a question of how a pastor is to act when, as happens here more often than in any other country on earth, persons seek admission into his congregation or are already in it who are already living in a marriage forbidden in God's Word, for example with a brother's widow or with a wife's sister, namely whether a pastor must then make the dissolution of the marriage a condition of admission or of absolution. Our opinion is that the cases last mentioned do indeed involve marriages that were contracted against God's commandment, that is, in sin, but not incestuous unions, rather real marriages, and therefore not necessarily to be separated. What convinces us of this is chiefly the levirate marriage with the widow of a brother who died childless, instituted by divine dispensation, which dispensation would not be conceivable if this union were an incestuous non-marriage. Deuteronomy 25:5, compare Leviticus 18:16; 20:21."

The following questions were discussed under this thesis: