Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity or affinity forbidden by the Word. Nor can such incestuous marriage ever be made by any law of man or consent of parties, so as those persons may live together as man and wife.
The Confession appeals to the relationship rules set forth in Scripture. Remember our previous discussion of the uses of the Law. Restrictions regarding consanguinity also included one's in-laws. The value of observing these restrictions, aside from the commonly regarded intent of preventing genetic diseases, is to preserve morality and seemliness and decent order within relationships. It is therefore interesting to learn that, while these restrictions have largely been observed in the West at least up to the present time, there have been some Presbyterian bodies that have deleted this paragraph despite accepting the Confession as a whole. I have not done sufficient research to investigate the thought behind such an exception. Perhaps there has been some thinking that the OT consanguinity rules were too restrictive.
Tomorrow: Lawful grounds for divorce.
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