# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 21_S1006
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lichen pair with one another, even Abraham still, as is to be inferred from 1 Moses 20, 12., with his half-sister (according to others with his brother Haran's daughter, Iscah-Sarai, just as Nahor with the elder sister of the same, Milcah, ch. 11, 29.) united themselves in the flesh — from the perception and consideration of these circumstances, I say, it must follow as undisputed that the particular provisions concerning all such relations are connected with the constitution of a people and the condition of the human race in general. Although therefore in the ordinary way no marriage between brothers and sisters and persons related by marriage (of the first kind) should take place: yet extraordinary considerations may call forth an exception here; from which it is further rightly to be concluded, 1. that though in our Christian national life the objectionableness of such marriages must make itself known, yea, it is not contrary to the pious conscience if, in commonwealths such as have shaped themselves out of the European Western church down to more recent times, also some degrees are forbidden by the authorities (and therefore dispensable) which otherwise can present no hindrance at all; 2. that, however, marriages once contracted between such relatives, as those related by marriage, brother and brother's daughter, etc., it is more advisable to leave undissolved (cf. 3 Moses 20, 20. 21.), except between brother and sister and stepbrothers and stepsisters, on account of the all too near blood and of the offense (cf. 3 Moses 20, 17. 5 Moses 27, 22.); and 3. that finally, though the individual has willingly to submit to what the civil law says, yet this must never go too far nor establish prohibitions in such excess as the Roman Catholics do, not for the sake of the common good, but in order to erect a spiritual bondage of conscience. Moreover, it can be subject to no doubt that already, as the ancient Hebrews also teach, in order to prevent both the suspicion and the enormous danger of unchastity in such close mutual intercourse, concern for the welfare of the individual requires that all the above-named marriages be recognized only as admissible for cases of necessity, and that 1 Moses 2, 24. be allowed to stand as the ground also of their prohibition; and what was nevertheless actually sinned against it in the Old Testament, as the polygamies of the patriarchs of the Jewish people, was only the natural outflow of a prevailing disposition which, at least among the latter, sought not to gratify evil lust, but the begetting of children for the sake of the lineage to be preserved for the covenant promise, and therefore was not approved by God, but, in the reciprocal action of His grace with human weakness, was overlooked and borne with.

If, then, we have obtained the derivation of the forbidden degrees of marriage from the divine law of nature attested and written in the conscience of all men, as an established result, as it was already hinted by the church father Augustine, even by Plutarch: so we are in the first place obliged to oppose with earnestness the godless opinion, as though those prohibitions belonged to the particular laws of the Israelite theocracy, which, after the abolition of the preparatory divine economy, are no longer valid in the New Covenant. Just as little, however, can we agree with those theologians who distinguish them as a positive, universally valid revelation of the divine will essentially from the natural one through the conscience; for every generally moral provision in the law of the Old Covenant, completing itself from Paradise to Sinai, must also be capable of being explained from the law of nature, if the Gentiles are judged according to it (Rom. 2, 14. 15. 12. 16. 1, 32. cf. Corinthians 5, 1.), and it was to be fulfilled in Christ JEsus, the God-man archetype, through faith in Him in us (Rom. 3, 31. 8, 4.). Insofar as the degrees of kinship presuppose the divine institution of marriage, we may include the content of the law of nature relating thereto among the hypothetical duties. Above all, however, we are led by the foregoing investigation, without contradiction, to this: that the prohibitions of marriage in 3 Moses 18. — whose fundamental law in verse 6 is expressed in the following words according to the Hebrew meaning: None of you shall approach to any person who belongs to his flesh, to unite himself carnally with her (in and out of marriage), for I am the LORD — do not go merely upon the persons indicated according to the letter, but also upon the persons not named of the same degree. Although by the teachers and church orders of most evangelical countries this rule of an extensive interpretation has been observed here: yet some, following the example of the Rabbis, moved by Luther's authority, have forsaken it, in the opinion that so specific an enumeration has its good ground in the divine revelation, and that the forbidden marriages must be restricted to those recorded therein. As to Luther first of all, it is not difficult in general to point out inconsistencies in him in manifold respects, as he also, in the points before us, declared marriage with the bride or the wife's sister after the death of the former (and with the brother's widow) permissible in 1522, but in 1535 contrary to nature, and even subjected it to dissolution; accordingly a judgment was also pronounced by the Wittenberg Consistory in Luther's lifetime in the most definite words, and even the pastor who had not prevented such a case was sentenced to eight days' imprisonment; likewise Luther (1530) advised that a marriage with the wife of a deceased cousin (father's brother) be dissolved again (against 3 Moses 20, 20., cf. Gerhard, locc. theol. VII. p. 1084), but holds those of the same degree with the daughter of a brother or sister, as also those with the father's half-sister, according to his principle cited above, not to be against the Word of God at all. Yet what has all this to do with Luther's divine calling, according to which he was a chosen instrument of God, known in heaven, on earth and in hell? Can insipid reproaches and narrow justifications obscure a man whose greatness of faith and inspired power of love (not to destroy, but to build up) had its focus in the heartfelt confidence that God could create ten Dr. Martins daily? While with popular eloquence without equal he set the Gospel of the cross over against the antichristian legal compulsion of the papacy, and, in trust upon the sole power of the Word, seized the storm of the times by the reins; the monstrous contrasts into which his century, at whose head he stood, drove him have fallen as a reflection sharply into his life's movement striving after the One high goal. In him there united a holy glow and flame, kindled at the fire of divine love, with a profound and creatively rich fullness of thought, but the establishing and completing of that for which he had broken the way and laid the foundation was not granted him. Luther is a man out of whose writings almost (as out of the Bible, to speak foolishly) all heresies can be proved, to which he himself in his disposition was yet a deadly enemy. Compare only the Formula of Concord, which carries on his work, with the earlier ones. It is therefore sometimes not well done to accept anything on Luther's authority without conscientious examination of other weighty voices and witnesses of the Church, and to set aside one's own divine certainty thereof from the Word of God.*)

*) Thus, if we appraise without prejudice Luther's calling to the reformation of the Church, its chief element is to be placed in the gift of prophecy in the wider sense, as the first in rank (Rom. 12, 7., cf. 1 Corinthians 12, 28. ch. 14.), but not in the cybernetic charisma. Rather, if we are not to conceal the historical truth, there is found in him (in comparison with Luther's insight into and proclamation of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven) a lower degree of the latter. This appears not indistinctly also from his treatment of all articles relating to legal relations and constitutional matters. In the humility of Christ he himself confesses that he writes more for the sake of consciences than of law, and testifies his great esteem for the church discipline and order of the Bohemians. It is also quite in accordance with the nature of the matter. We find the gifts of the Church throughout all history always distributed in a threefold way: 1. an eminent productivity full of inner strength and life, combined with an activity toward the outside either weak in general or, if stronger, yet energetically vehement and rough, since the spirit of order appears as an oracle within and, like the flash of lightning, wins its place; 2. an excellent activity toward the outside, to organize what is merely given, what has already been planted, with dignified dexterity and to use the understanding herein prudently, without possessing the deep-penetrating sharpness and clarity of thought of the last-mentioned, just as these are not made to find themselves more pliantly in the composition of the outward forms and, under the pressure of circumstances, to unfold them by shaping, but are well fitted together with those, for his sake whom their soul loves, to make themselves servants unto all, to gain some everywhere and to help souls from death; 3. a penetration and balance of the two gifts keeping more to a mean, without one standing out as predominant over the other. And the