# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1906_S70
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

70 Referat über die „Schwagerehe“.

are not specifically,Jewish laws, binding upon the Israelites only,
but reassertions and réeenaetments of precepts of the moral law, bind-
ing upon both Jews and Gentiles, and valid for all times, during and
after the Mosaic dispensation. The Gentiles are nowhere said to
have ineurred divine punishment and defiled the land by not observ-
ing the Jewish Sabbath, by letting their cattle gender with a diverse
kind, by sowing their fields with mingled seed or wearing garments
mingled of linen and woolen, Lev. 19, 19, or by eating pork and other
food denied to Israel.' (Theol. Ouarterly, vol. IV, p. 345 f.) — Auf
den Einwurf der Verteidiger der Schwagerehe, daß die Vorschrift 3 Mos.
18, 16 nicht zum Moralgesetz gehören könne, weil Gott selbst durch die
Verordnung betreffs der sogenannten Leviratsehe (5 Mos. 25, 5) von
dieser Vorschrift eine Ausnahme gemacht habe, antwortet Prof. D.
Gräbner treffend also: „The objection that Lev. 18, 16 and similar
statutes could not be consideèred precepts of the moral law, inasmuch
as the moral law admitted of no exceptions, while God Himself had
ordained an exception from Lev. 18, 16 in the levirate, Deut. 25, 5,
is an argument based upon an erroneous vicew of the moral law. The
moral law is not an absolute norm, superior even to the righteous
will of God, so that éven God must shape His legislative enactments
in accordance therewith. God is righteous not inasmuch as He
conforms Ilis will and aets to the moral law, but as He is His ovn
moral norm, and the ordinances of His holy will are the norm of right
to His subjqeets. And while there is not in God à change of will,
Mal. 3, 6; 1 Sam. 15, 29; Ps. 110, 4; James 1, 17, there may be in
Him a will to change, Gen. 6, 6 f. Certain mutual relations of
created beings were ordained and established by the Oreator from
the beginning and for all times, and in establishing these relations
God had certain general ends in view. But when for the achievement
of these or other genéral or special ends and purposes ILe sces fit to
ordain ways and means beside or beyond His general ordinances, this
docs not necessitateé or justify the assumption of conflicting wills
in God. It is not an inconsisteney in God to ordain that brothers
and sisters should not intermarry, and that Cain should marry his
sister, or to punish à brother and his sister for doing to-day What
Cain did under divine sanction. And, likewise, the fact that God
ordained that in Israel, for a certain end, If ea man died, having no
children, his brother should marry his wife, and raise up seed to
his brother. is by no means incompatible with the prohibition of
marriage with a deceased brother's wife as we find it in Lev. 18, 16
for all cases not covered by Deut. 25, 2, whether among Jews or
among Gentiles. The same God who willed the one also willed the
other, though not by thé same act of volition. And Fet the moral
jaw remains à réevelation of the immutablé will of God. God never
willed otherwise than that. certain cases excepted, persons mutnally