Tuesday 2 August 2011

Luther shocker on how to treat adultery

Following some tricky pastoral situations in the parish, I've been reading up on the issue of divorce. Today I came across this comment by Luther on what kind of treatment adulterers deserve:
The temporal sword and government should therefore still put adulterers to death, for whoever commits adultery has in fact himself already departed and is considered as one dead. Therefore the other ('the innocent party') may remarry just as though his spouse had died (Martin Luther, The Estate of Marriage in Works 45.32)
Whoooa!

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