Smalcald Articles III, XI: Of the Marriage of Priests

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Smalcald Articles III, XI: Of the Marriage of Priests

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noun (German)
1. Housefather.
2. Head of household, including the housefather as assisted by the housemother.

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(Martin Luther, Small Catechism, 1529)

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Smalcald Articles III, XI: Of the Marriage of Priests

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Now, as little as we or they have been given the power to make a woman out of a man or a man out of a woman, or to nullify either sex, so little have they had the power to [sunder and] separate such creatures of God, or to forbid them from living [and cohabiting] honestly in marriage with one another.

To prohibit marriage, and to burden the divine order of priests with perpetual celibacy, they have had neither authority nor right [they have done out of malice, without any honest reason], but have acted like antichristian, tyrannical, desperate scoundrels [have performed the work of antichrist, of tyrants and the worst knaves], and have thereby caused all kinds of horrible, abominable, innumerable sins of unchastity [depraved lusts], in which they still wallow. [2] Now, as little as we or they have been given the power to make a woman out of a man or a man out of a woman, or to nullify either sex, so little have they had the power to [sunder and] separate such creatures of God, or to forbid them from living [and cohabiting] honestly in marriage with one another. [3] Therefore we are unwilling to assent to their abominable celibacy, nor will we [even] tolerate it, but we wish to have marriage free as God has instituted [and ordained] it, and we wish neither to rescind nor hinder His work; for Paul says, 1 Tim. 4, 1ff , that this [prohibition of marriage] is a doctrine of devils.

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Source (Public Domain): Concordia Triglotta: The Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. F. Bente (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921). The excerpt from AC XXVI has been taken from Tappert’s English rendering of the German text, which more fully identifies the distinctive roles of husbands and wives than the Latin text that is the basis for Bente’s translation; moreover, it was the German, rather than the simultaneously produced Latin version, that was read before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. See The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 65. The full text of the Book of Concord is available at www.bookofconcord.org and much of it also is available at Project Wittenberg.

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