# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 52 —

not a deliberate sin (peccatum proæreticum) or an obstinate one (obstinatum), since we ourselves recognize nothing else in them than an error, and see before our eyes those reasons which are nevertheless not slight but are capable of giving one much hesitation in the matter." (Loc. cit., pp. 554 f.)

2. How does it stand with the penalty of childlessness, which is indeed threatened in such cases but does not always come to pass? Answer: It goes with it as with the promise in the Fourth Commandment: "That it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth." There too the opposite sometimes seems to occur and the promise to fail. This we must simply leave to God, as to how He will carry out the threat according to His wise and hidden counsel.

3. If now two persons who have lived in a *Schwagerehe* [marriage with a deceased wife's sister] have gone apart, should they be forced together again or not? Answer: Here it depends on the reasons for which they have separated. If they have separated because it struck their conscience that they could no longer live in their marriage as one displeasing to God, they should not be forced together again.

4. If now, however, the *Schwagerehe* is a sin against the moral law, do those who are in a *Schwagerehe* not live in continual sin? Should one not, indeed must one not, demand from such persons, as a sign of their repentance, the dissolution of such a marriage? Answer: It depends on whether we are to regard such a marriage as a real marriage or as fornication. If the latter is the case, then the matter lies plainly before our eyes. But this, that God Himself says that such persons shall die without children, and that God Himself made an exception in the levirate marriage and recognized it as marriage; this, that God does not say, as of the marriage with a deceased husband's brother: it is a shameful thing — should move us to recognize the *Schwagerehe* as marriage and to exhort those who have entered into it contrary to God's ordinance to beg God sincerely and with a contrite spirit to forgive them their wrong, and then to go on living together in confidence. The severe words of the Leipzig theological faculty, as well as the harsh utterances of Luther when he had to speak in the council of the jurists, had their reason in part in this, that they had to speak in the state church, in which such a marriage was also not permitted by the state and the one who entered it nevertheless did not lead a legitimate marriage. When Luther speaks alone, for his own person, to counsel consciences, he speaks differently from the jurists. One should take the analogous case: if someone has come into the ministry by unlawful means, one could still not say that he does not have the office, or that one must take it from him again. No, he should do penance and then be all the more faithful and diligent in his office.

As a last citation the following was submitted to the consideration of the Synodical Conference (*Synodalconferenz*):