Consanguinity, affinity, and other points of divinity
In 1646 the Westminster assembly offered two controversial interpretations of the Bible that did not appear controversial at the time. One was that the pope of Rome is the antichrist and man of sin spoken of in 1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3 and 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10 (WCF 25.6). The other was an interpretation of the degrees of consanguinity (relations by birth) and affinity (relations by marriage).
Clear biblical prohibitions against incest were many and would include such things as consanguinity perversions: marrying someone within one’s own bloodline (a child or parent, aunt or uncle). Nonetheless, citing Lev 20:19-21, the assembly after debate chose to highlight only one alleged perversion, of the affinity variety: “The man may not marry any of his wife’s kindred, nearer in blood, than he may of his own; nor, the woman, of her husband’s kindred, nearer in blood than of her own” (WCF 24.4), citing Lev 20:19-21. This means, to offer the most common example, that just as a man cannot marry his own sister, so too (if his wife were to die) he could not marry her sister.
But the most common example is not the most important one. It was Henry VIII who insisted on this interpretation of Leviticus 20. He had married his deceased brother’s bride and she had not given him a male heir; he wished to annul his marriage (having it declared as invalid) and exchange Catherine of Aragon for the much younger Anne Boleyn. In fairness to Henry, he had raised concerns about Leviticus 20 prior to his marriage. But to be fair to his opponents, Henry dismissed out of hand those who quoted Deuteronomy 25.5, which positively required a man to marry his deceased brother’s wife. In an attempt to support his claim, he appointed Thomas Cranmer as head of a commission to interview theologians and church across the Atlantic Isles and Europe, with the desperate hope that a consensus would emerge showing that Catherine should not have married her deceased husband’s brother (Henry himself). Inconveniently, Christian exegetes, both Protestant and Catholic, could not agree. Thomas Cranmer nonetheless declared the Henry-Catherine marriage null and void.[1] It was a historic decision, important enough for Henry to break with the Roman Church and form a national Church of England.
This tendentious interpretation of Leviticus 20 was no part of any Reformed system of doctrine, nor even an essential point of Protestant belief. Nonetheless because of its place in the break with Rome it became part of the DNA of the Church of England. John Bower notes that by law parish churches in England were required to hang up signs that explained the rules of consanguinity and affinity.[2] Some were willing to recognize that the Bible was not as strict as the laws of England (and later, by extension, the laws of other states in the Atlantic islands). An Irish Archbishop, James Ussher, acknowledged that the Scriptures did not prohibit second cousins from marrying. He nonetheless insisted, following the conventions of the day, that such marriages were ‘inconvenient’.[3]
Barry Waugh has offered a learned study of what he calls the ‘affinity sentence’, noting especially how it played out in the courts of the largest American Presbyterian church, the misery it caused, and why it was eventual removed in the nineteenth century.[4]
It is a troubling history, for Ussher’s equivocal comment about cousins would find its parallels with deceased spouse’s siblings. Not long ago, while reading the records of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, I noticed a minute from 1783:
. . . that although the marriage of a man to two sisters successively, Viz. to the one after the death of the other may not be a direct violation of the express words of that law, yet as it is contrary to the custom of the protestant Churches in general, and an evidence of great untenderness towards many serious & well disposed Christians, and may through the prejudices or generally received opinions of the members of our Church be productive of very disagreable [sic] consequences, the persons contracting such marriages are highly censurable, and the practice ought to be disallowed in express terms by the Synod, and we do therefore condemn such marriages as imprudent and unseasonable.[5]
What followed was a debate about whether it was enough for a session to solemnly admonish the behaviour, or if something more severe should be done. The reasoning of the synod will surely strike readers today as very significant. The gathering admitted that the Bible does not obviously prohibit the practice, and yet it insisted that the practice is contrary to Protestant custom, shows a lack of sympathy to good Christians who find it offensive, and that it must therefore be condemned as unwise and “unseasonable.”
That final word was significant and prophetic: a season would come when good Christians would find the affinity sentence itself lacking sympathy for the plight of the widow or widower who wished to be married to their deceased spouse’s sibling! With sympathies changing, the confession would eventually be revised.
But three aspects of the synod’s statement stand out as painful examples of what presbyterian churches should not do.
First, and most importantly, members of the synod as much as said that the testimony of Scripture to the affinity sentence is ambiguous, but that did not lead them to change their ruling. I think it is fair to say that the Westminster Assembly’s (and Henry VIII’s) interpretation of Leviticus, and parallel passages, is plausible enough that a Christian widow or widower could decide not to go ahead with a marriage to a deceased spouses sibling. Perhaps it is even plausible enough for a minister, or a session, to be permitted to teach Henry VIII’s view. It might even be strong enough for a minister to refuse to perform such a marriage, or for a session to prohibit such a marriage in their congregation or church building, as a matter of conscience – although it is worth noting that most presbyterian churches today would not allow such freedom to a minister or session because most churches believe that the Westminster assembly’s biblical arguments were too weak for such a restriction. But surely the scriptural argument has never been so strong as to justify a requirement that all church officers must believe it. And one presbyterian denomination after another would gradually recognize this.
Second, even if it was correct that eighteenth century Protestant people shared an eighteenth century mood against marriages contravening the Confession’s affinity sentence, the synod was incorrect to say that Protestant churches agreed with the presbyterians. The affinity sentence is unique, I believe, to the Westminster Confession of Faith. And what is more, an alleged Protestant unity of opinion may suggest that we discuss a matter with humility, but it does not (or rather, should not) determine the ethical stand of a church.
Third, the synod offered a dangerous precedent in condemning a practice, however mildly, on account of an insensibility to the “generally received opinions of the members of our Church.” Requiring that “generally received opinions,” even when not obviously biblical, must nonetheless be followed, is to encourage a standard beside that of the Bible, and a highly subjective one at that. Momentously, it was in part on account of such thinking that some ministers, while increasingly persuaded that American slavery could not be defended from the Bible, nonetheless delayed or soft-peddled their condemnations of it.
It is a matter for praise that many people are coming to Christ in our day, and that new presbyterian denominations are forming around the world. I am sometimes asked to offer advice on which disputed points of the 1646 confession ought to be retained, and whether American revisions of one variety or another are to be preferred. My neutral vote as a Canadian presbyterian is that in removing the affinity sentence (as well as in other revisions), the American presbyterians got it right.
[1] For a careful account of the annulment and Cranmer’s commission, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale, 1996), 41-78.
[2] John R. Bower, The Confession of Faith: A Critical Text and Introduction (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 121-22).
[3] Bower, The Confession of Faith, 122.
[4] Barry Waugh, “The history of a confessional sentence: the events leading up to the inclusion of the Affinity Sentence in the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 24, Section 4, and the judicial history contributing to its removal in the American Presbyterian Church” (PhD diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 2002).
[5] Guy. S. Klett, ed., Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America, 1706-1788 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society, 1976), 582
