# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 21_S1004
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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if general experience did not teach that sin is committed unceasingly against the divine law in this matter! It cannot indeed be denied that in the development of the human race, according to its conditions and those of a national or other community, the order of God in this respect assumes different forms, while its essential content under all circumstances remains recognizable and inviolably holy. From this changeableness of form, demanded by the manner of propagation, expansion and education of men, that is, of the particular application and appearance of the law, it is also alone explicable how, concerning the significance of the same, such undeniable wavering is found among the most noted theologians and canonists, even from among the believers, and how some of them, in unconcealable contradiction to the confession of evangelical liberty, make themselves guilty of an unfounded rigorism and approximation to canonical human ordinances. But it is always far preferable that too rigid a fence be drawn around the family relationships with regard to sexual mixture, than that the magistrates, as happens only too often nowadays, quite without necessity let marriages contrary to nature, which by nature violate the personal superiority or subordination and mutual connection, be concluded among the people with the most irresponsible indifference. To be sure, as to the one side of the divine natural law for the so-called degrees of marriage, which rests on the relation of the begetters to the begotten, of grandparents to grandchildren, etc., and on the due reverence of the young toward the older members of the family, and is to preserve these from the wholly subversive equalization through intermarrying: it is, with the exception of a few of the rudest peoples sunk down to the beast, so deeply grounded in the inborn moral feeling that it has been denied philosophically only by strong spirits, namely the exceedingly corrupt bearers of the spiritual and political upheavals, in contradiction to their own inward perception. Nor may the objection count for anything that the man remains the head of the woman and therefore only the woman need be the younger to make the marriage natural: for the shame of one's own blood is not thereby removed, and only within the destination of the sexes for one another, within the conjugal fellowship, is the woman's calling subjection, but the fellowship itself, as the circle enclosing the spouses, a perfect equality of both, since each party is indissolubly bound with body and spirit to surrender to the other. Precisely this is the most reprehensible thing in a marriage, when in the place of personal adjustment through sexual-spiritual love steps the unjustified dominion of selfishness in the possession of the other as a serving instrument.

In the innermost of our consciousness the voice of a Spirit (God) makes itself known, which, remaining by creaturely right proper to the chaotic depth of men's hearts, stirs their inner waters (the life of feeling), that they may be directed away from their own self and the world to a Higher, which alone is the true ground and the fulfilment of their existence. There is a fundamental disposition in our soul toward the voice of that Spirit who bears us and also renews in us the heartbeat of a life pleasing to Him — a purely spiritual organ, which was capable of mediating the original connection with God and of receiving impressions and stirrings which now can arise only independently of the person's will. Since the walk in divine obedience is contrary and opposed to man's selfish inclination, and he, though as a free creature he retains the striving to go beyond what he is at any moment of his existence, yet the fellowship of God with him, possible to the creature, which conditions the goal-directed development of his self, has ceased: the perceiving of this rent bond sounds, demanding the debt, as an unfulfilled admonition: Thou shalt. Man is no longer able to desire in its truth that toward which the fundamental force of his being, his fundamental longing, points, but putting something arbitrary in its place, he becomes, fallen to death, however often the impulse of conscience declares itself unsatisfied, ever more averse and estranged from the life of God. Although now the will is evil, the knowledge blind and unreceptive, the feeling dulled and wicked: yet there remains over against them in the ground of the mind, as reflection and image of that which is holy, the rule or the idea of perfection, communicated at the beginning of creation to this end, that it might mirror itself as human knowledge of the true and good, that is, that the consciousness might awake at the working of its fundamental impulse, like in essentials to the general content of the positive divine law, only that man, having once fallen into the perverse direction, becomes accustomed wilfully to misjudge the peaceless disunion between himself and the voice of conscience, and the spiritual power of the soul hardens itself against hearkening to it. The same voice gives witness of a debt or obligation of reverence toward him on whom our existence depends — whom as the beginner and author of all things the eye of reason, compelling the sensual understanding to a life-filled unity, teaches us to find in creation, — and that in the self-conscious relation of everything creaturely to the LORD of hosts true morality is comprehended, the life's destination issuing in obedience and love of the rational creature toward the great God and Creator, in harmonious union with the expression of the holy final purpose reflected throughout the whole universe, that all things be according to their essential perfection and work accordingly. Since now also a dependence of existence is found between parents and children, namely in so far as these have to thank those for their life: so the feeling of the shamefulness of an irreverent conduct spreads quite of itself, as a necessary consequence of the feeling of dependence on God, also to the human begetters, who already by the light of nature bear God's image upon them. (Quite otherwise are the relations shaped toward the worldly and spiritual government, of which neither the one nor the other rests originally on the state of nature, but this mediates the spiritual regeneration, that is grounded on the divine sanction of the state.) And one perceives from this how essential on God's part the creation in us of such an impulse in the minds of men is, through which a natural abhorrence against incest between parents and children, and indeed of the straight ascending and descending line of kindred, stirs itself on the whole. The application also to marriages with the brothers and sisters of the parents, etc., or with the surviving spouses of the same persons, to whom the respect for the parents passes over, results likewise from this, only that these marriages, as belonging to the collateral line, concern more the other side of the legal relation, to which we now come, and can therefore be excused through imperative necessity. At the same time it follows from what was said before that it belongs to the magistrates, who indeed have to care not for the realm of conscience, yet for the law as rule and norm of outward duties, by virtue of this their office, to separate immediately and entirely to dissolve, irrevocably and without exception, all marriages which are in themselves contrary to nature, that is, in which no cases of dispensation may occur, which therefore are never, in no way, to be permitted, when they have already been consummated. (Cf. Spener's theol. Bedenken II. p. 555.)

The revealed divine Word it is that gives here the most exact elucidation of the human feeling darkened by sin and illumines it with its bright light. The divine fundamental law, that everything which is already of one flesh may not again mingle fleshly, is clearly and plainly stated in it. In the plan of the great work of love which Jehovah began through creation and carries on into the eternities through the victory of the Son of man over the destroyer, the human race is a principal part, and again in this, for the present world, the system of procreation, marriage, family and upbringing. The particular of this plan only revelation can teach, which however was also originally universal and fails only where men have let it perish or even resist its restoration besides. All crimes now which are contrary to the divine plan, especially to the development of man and his history demanded in it, belong under