05.4. Whom you are allowed to marry

Whom you are allowed to marry In the fourth place, let us now consider which persons may enter into marriage with one another, so that you may see it is not my pleasure or desire that a marriage be broken and husband and wife separated. The pope in his canon law has thought up eighteen distinct reasons for preventing or dissolving a mar­riage, nearly all of which I reject and condemn. Indeed, the pope himself does not adhere to them so strictly or firmly but what one can rescind any of them with gold and silver. Actually, they were only invented in order to be a net for gold and a noose for the soul, 2 Peter 2:1-22 [2 Peter 2:14]. In order to expose their folly we will take a look at all eighteen of them in turn. The first impediment is blood relationship. Here they have forbidden marriage up to the third and fourth degrees of con­sanguinity. If in this situation you have no money, then even though God freely permits it you must nevertheless not take in marriage your female relative within the third and fourth degrees, or you must put her away if you have already married her. But if you have the money, such a marriage is permitted. Those hucksters offer for sale women who never have been their own. So that you can defend yourself against this tyranny, I will now list for you the persons whom God has forbidden, Leviticus 18:1-30 [Leviticus 18:6-13], namely, my mother, my stepmother; my sister, my step­sister; my child’s daughter or stepdaughter; my father’s sister; my mother’s sister. I am forbidden to marry any of these persons. From this it follows that first cousins may contract a godly and Christian marriage, and that I may marry my stepmother’s sister, my father’s stepsister, or my mother’s stepsister. Further, I may marry the daughter of my brother or sister, just as Abraham married Sarah. None of these persons is forbidden by God, for God does not calculate according to degrees, as the jurists do, but enumerates directly specific persons. Otherwise, since my father’s sister and my brother’s daughter are related to me in the same degree, I would have to say either that I cannot marry my brother’s daughter or that I may also marry my father’s sister. Now God has forbidden my father’s sister, but he has not forbidden my brother’s daughter, although both are related to me in the same degree. We also find in Scripture that with respect to various stepsisters there were not such strict prohibitions. For Tamar, Absalom’s sister, thought she could have married her stepbrother Amnon, 2 Samuel 13:1-39 [2 Samuel 13:13]. The second impediment is affinity or relationship through marriage. Here too they have set up four degrees, so that after my wife’s death I may not marry into her blood relationship, where my marriage extends up to the third and fourth degrees - unless money comes to my rescue! But God has forbidden only these persons, namely, my father’s brother’s wife; my son’s wife; my brother’s wife; my stepdaughter; the child of my stepson or stepdaughter; my wife’s sister while my wife is yet alive [Leviticus 18:14-18]. I may not marry any of these persons; but I may marry any others, and without putting up any money for the privilege. For example, I may marry the sister of my deceased wife or fiancée; the daughter of my wife’s brother; the daughter of my wife’s cousin; and any of my wife’s nieces, aunts, or cousins. In the Old Testament, if a brother died without leaving an heir, his widow was required to marry his closest relative in order to provide her deceased husband with an heir [Deuteronomy 25:5-9]. This is no longer commanded, but neither is it forbidden. The third impediment is spiritual relationship. If I sponsor a girl at baptism or confirmation, then neither I nor my son may marry her, or her mother, or her sister - unless an appropriate and substantial sum of money is forthcoming! This is nothing but pure farce and foolishness, concocted for the sake of money and to befuddle consciences. Just tell me this: isn’t it a greater thing for me to be baptized myself than merely to act as sponsor to another? Then I must be forbidden to marry any Christian woman, since all baptized women are the spiritual sisters of all baptized men by virtue of their common baptism, sacrament, faith, Spirit, Lord, God, and eternal heritage [Ephesians 4:4-6].

Why does not the pope also forbid a man to retain his wife if he teaches her the gospel? For whoever teaches another be­comes that person’s spiritual father. St. Paul boasts in 1 Corinthians 4:1-21 [1 Corinthians 4:15] that he is the father of all of them, saying, “I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” According to this he could not have taken a wife in Corinth; neither could any apostle in the whole world have taken a wife from among those whom he taught and baptized. So away with this foolishness; take as your spouse whomso­ever you please, whether it be godparent, godchild, or the daughter or sister of a sponsor, or whoever it may be, and disregard these artificial, money-seeking impediments. If you are not prevented from marrying a girl by the fact that she is a Christian, then do not let yourself be prevented by the fact that you baptized her, taught her, or acted as her sponsor. In particular, avoid that monkey business, confirmation, which is really a fanciful decep­tion. I would permit confirmation as long as it is understood that God knows nothing of it, and has said nothing about it, and that what the bishops claim for it is untrue. They mock our God when they say that it is one of God’s sacraments, for it is a purely human contrivance. The fourth impediment is legal kinship; that is, when an unrelated child is adopted as son or daughter it may not later marry a child born of its adoptive parents, that is, one who is by law its own brother or sister. This is another worthless human invention. Therefore, if you so desire, go ahead and marry any­way. In the sight of God this adopted person is neither your mother nor your sister, since there is no blood relationship. She does work in the kitchen, however, and supplements the income; this is why she has been placed on the forbidden list! The fifth impediment is unbelief; that is, I may not marry a Turk, a Jew, or a heretic. I marvel that the blasphemous tyrants are not in their hearts ashamed to place themselves in such direct contradiction to the clear text of Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:1-40 [1 Corinthians 7:12-13], where he says, “If a heathen wife or husband consents to live with a Christian spouse, the Christian should not get a divorce:” And St. Peter, in 1 Peter 3:1-22 [1 Peter 3:1], says that Christian wives should behave so well that they thereby convert their non-Christian hus­bands; as did Monica, the mother of St. Augustine.

Know therefore that marriage is an outward, bodily thing, like any other worldly undertaking. Just as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk, ride with, buy from, speak to, and deal with a heathen, Jew, Turk, or heretic, so I may also marry and continue in wedlock with him. Pay no attention to the precepts of those fools who forbid it. You will find plenty of Christians – and indeed the greater part of them – who are worse in their secret unbelief than any Jew, heathen, Turk, or heretic. A heathen is just as much a man or a woman – God’s good creation – as St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Lucy, not to speak of a slack and spurious Christian. The sixth impediment is crime. They are not in agreement as to how many instances of this impediment they should devise. However, there are actually these three: if someone lies with a girl, he may not thereafter marry her sister or her aunt, niece, or cousin; again, whoever commits adultery with a woman may not marry her after her husband’s death; again, if a wife (or husband) should murder her spouse for love of another, she may not subsequently marry the loved one. Here it rains fools upon fools. Don’t you believe them, and don’t be taken in by them; they are under the devil’s whip. Sins and crimes should be punished, but with other penalties, not by forbidding marriage. Therefore, no sin or crime is an impediment to marriage. David committed adultery with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, and had her husband killed besides. He was guilty of both crimes; still he took her to wife and begot King Solomon by her [2 Samuel 11:1-27] – and without giving any money to the pope!

I must pursue this subject a bit further. These wise guys posit the hypothetical case of a man who sins with his wife’s mother or sister. Had this happened before the marriage it would have been a crime which would prevent and break up the proposed marriage. Since it happened subsequent to the marriage, however, for the sake of the wife – who is innocent in the matter – the marriage may not be dissolved. Nevertheless, the husband’s punishment is to be that he shall live with his wife but have no power to demand of her the conjugal duty. See what the devil through his fools does with the estate of marriage! He puts hus­band and wife together, and then says, “Be neither man nor woman.” As well put fire and straw together and bid them not to burn! If one were to impose upon the pope a command one-tenth as hard as this, how he would rage and storm, and howl about unlawful authority! Away with the big fools. You just let marriage remain free, as God instituted it. Punish sins and crimes with other penalties, not through marriage and fresh sins. The seventh impediment they call public decorum, respect­ability. For example, if my fiancée should die before we con­summate the marriage, I may not marry any relative of hers up to the fourth degree, since the pope thinks and obviously dreams that it is decent and respectable for me to refrain from so doing – ­unless I put up the money, in which case the impediment of public decorum vanishes. Now you have heard a moment ago that after my wife’s death I may marry her sister or any of her relatives except for her mother and her daughter. You stick to this, and let the fools go their way. The eighth impediment is a solemn vow, for example where someone has taken the vow of chastity, either in or out of the cloister. Here I offer this advice: if you would like to take a wise vow, then vow not to bite off your own nose; you can keep that vow. If you have already taken the monastic vow, however, then, as you have just heard, you should yourself consider whether you belong in those three categories which God has singled out. If you do not feel that you belong there, then let the vows and the cloister go. Renew your natural companionships without de­lay and get married, for your vow is contrary to God and has no validity, and say, “I have promised that which I do not have and which is not mine.” The ninth impediment is error, as if I had been wed to Catherine but Barbara lay down with me, as happened to Jacob with Leah and Rachel [Genesis 29:23-25]. One may have such a marriage dissolved and take the other to wife. The tenth impediment is condition of servitude. When I marry one who is supposed to be free and it turns out later that she is a serf, this marriage too is null and void. However, I hold that if there were Christian love the husband could easily adjust both of these impediments so that no great distress would be occasioned. Furthermore, such cases never occur today, or only rarely, and both might well be combined in one category: error. The eleventh impediment is holy orders, namely, that the tonsure and sacred oil are so potent that they devour marriage and unsex a man. For this reason a subdeacon, a deacon, and a priest have to forego marriage, although St. Paul commanded that they may and should be married, 2 Timothy 3:1-17 [1 Timothy 3:2; 1 Timothy 3:12], Titus 1:1-16 [Titus 1:6]. But I have elsewhere written so much about this that there is no need to repeat it here. Their folly has been sufficiently exposed; how much help this impediment has been to those in holy orders is obvious to all. The twelfth impediment is coercion, that is, when I have to take Grete to be my wife and am coerced into it either by parents or by governmental authority. That is to be sure no marriage in the sight of God. However, such a person should not admit the coercion and leave the country on account of it, thus betraying the girl or making a fool of her, for you are not excused by the fact that you were coerced into it. You should not allow yourself to be coerced into injuring your neighbor but should yield your life rather than act contrary to love. You would not want anybody to injure you, whether he was acting under coercion or not. For this reason I could not declare safe in the sight of God a man who leaves his wife for such a cause. My dear fellow, if someone should compel you to rob me or kill me, would it therefore be right? Why do you yield to a coercion which compels you to violate God’s commandment and harm your neighbor? I would freely absolve the girl however, for, as we will hear later, you would be leaving her through no fault of her own.

How about a situation where a man is so attached to a girl that she is bestowed upon him at the point of a gun? Does the principle of coercion apply here? It does not, because the girl understands that coercion is involved, and is therefore not being deceived. In this case it is indeed proper that he be com­pelled to keep her, because of the fact that he has ruined her. For Moses wrote that whoever lies with a girl shall keep her or, in the event that her father is unwilling, pay money in accordance with her father’s demand, Exodus 22:1-31 [Exodus 22:16-17]. The thirteenth impediment is betrothal, that is, if I am en­gaged to one girl but then take another to wife. This is a wide­spread and common practice in which many different solutions have also been attempted. In the first place, if such an engage­ment occurs without the knowledge and consent of the father and mother, or of the guardians, then let the [fiancée’s] father decide which girl is to remain as the wife. If she is betrayed it is her own fault, for she should know that a child is supposed to be subordinate and obedient to its father, and not become engaged without his knowledge. In this way, obedience to parental authority will put a stop to all these secret engagements which occasion such great unhappiness. Where this course is not fol­lowed, however, I am of the opinion that the man should stick to the first girl. For having given himself to her he no longer belongs to himself. He was therefore incapable of promising to the second girl something that already belonged to the first and was not his own.

If he does so nonetheless and carries on to the point where he begets children by her, then he should stick with her. For she too has been betrayed, and would suffer even greater injury than the first girl were he to leave her. He has therefore sinned against them both. The first girl, however, is able to recover from the injury done her because she is yet without children. She should therefore out of love yield to the second girl and marry someone else; she is free from the man because he jilted her and gave himself to another. The man himself though should be made to suffer punishment and make amends to the first girl, for what he gave away really belonged to her. The fourteenth impediment is the one touched on already, when a husband or wife is unfit for marriage. Among these eighteen impediments this one is the only sound reason for dis­solving a marriage. Yet it is hedged about by so many laws that it is difficult to accomplish with the ecclesiastical tyrants.

There are still four more impediments, such as episcopal prohibition, restricted times, custom, and defective eyesight and hearing. It is needless to discuss them here. It is a dirty rotten business that a bishop should forbid me a wife or specify the times when I may marry, or that a blind and dumb person should not be allowed to enter into wedlock. So much then for this foolishness at present in the first part.

(The sixth commandment)

(Lucas Cranach – The Ten Commandments)