Is there a good Biblical basis to ban Polygamy?
I’ve sort of been keeping up with the recent debate over homosexuality started by this post on CoG. Does God abhor homosexuality? And if so, what should a Christian in 2008 do about that (if anything)? I’ve been thinking about this, and the rallying cry of those activists engaged in this debated on a political level is “one man, one woman” or something to that effect. There are sometimes dark whispers that the gays are going to open the door for the polygamists. Most Christians (at least those I know) would oppose polygamy, and I would agree with them on that matter. The social consequences of polygamy tend be that girls are forced to marry young and the young men are driven out of the community so the paedophiliac old geezers can have some more 13 year-olds for themselves.
But is it unbiblical? Consider
- Genesis 2:24 says that a man will leave his parents to be united with his wife as “one flesh” but it doesn’t explicitly prohibit further unions.
- David, said to be a man after God’s own heart, was definitely a polygamist, as was his son, Solomon who built the temple. The same was true for other kings of Israel and Judah.
- Deuteronomy includes rules for handling succession in the case of multiple wives. Clearly this was a common enough occurrence that a ruling needed to be made on the matter.
- The pastoral epistles in the NT say that elders or deacons should be husbands of “but one wife” which makes monogamy a requirement for church leaders, but, more pointedly seems to implicitly admit that there were polygamists in the early church.
- Deuteronomy 17:17says not to take too many wives, but doesn’t give us a number.
- Leviticus 18:18 says not to take two sisters as wives, but thats about it.
- Mark 10 may look like a ban, but seems to focus on divorce more than marriage.
So why are we against polygamy now? I imagine that for a number social and cultural reasons it fell out of favour and became frowned upon. The meanings of Genesis 2:24 and the pastoral epistles were tweaked and/or amplified. As I say though, this is a good thing. But it is an innovation that the Bible does not record in any obvious fashion such as “No one should ever commit polygamy.”
We seem to have been capable of prohibiting something that the Bible was prepared to, at the very least, tolerate. Is this better or worse than tolerating something the Bible prohibits?
I don’t think we have grounds to say polygamy is inherently sinful. I agree that it makes sense to leave it behind and pursue monogamy instead. Monogamy does overwhelmingly seem to be God’s ideal. But declaring polygamy as sinful doesn’t have strong justification.
I do believe that polygamy is sinful. However, I think that there is something to the idea that the justification for that is weaker.
First off, there is no clear condemnation of polygamy in Scripture. There is no equivalent Romans 1 for polygamy.
Second, there are rules in place to guard against the abuse of polygamy. There are no such rules in the case of homosexuality.
Third, it much less obvious that the practice is wrong. It does not violate biology. It is not obviously a violation of Scripture.
However, I do think that Genesis 2 and the pastoral epistles set this as the moral standard. Notice that these same epistles say that their leaders are also to be self-controlled, not prone to drunkenness, and so on. Lack of self-control and drunkenness are sins. So why wouldn’t polygamy be a sin also?
Because these other acts are condemned bluntly in other Scriptures. Our concept that drunkenness is wrong does not hang on that passage alone.
Consider also, God made certain provisions for polygamy in Law. If polygamy is inherently immoral, then God’s making provisions in the Law for polygamic issues is a form of condoning, and therefore also immoral.
I disagree. In fact, I think that the case of slavery and that of polygamy are exactly parallel. In both cases, limitations are given. In both cases, certain things are forbidden outright as sins (too many wives, slavetrading, sisters as wives, mistreatment of slaves, etc). Both lack clear pronouncements against them and both are not obvious violations of Scripture.
Nonetheless, the church has historically condemned both of these practices in strong terms. The church has also regulated said practices as a means of eliminating them. They understood the regulations present in the Bible to have the same role. So I do not think that making provisions for an immoral practice is itself immoral.
Also:
in Matthew 19:5, Matthew quotes Jesus quoting a particular translation of Genesis which interpolates “the two” into the verse “i.e., “And the two shall become one flesh” instead of “they shall…”), and was used by anti-polygamists of his day. We have a good indication, then, which direction Jesus leaned on that issue, which would also explained why the early Christian movement did the same (in, e.g., their requirements for pastors, who were supposed to be examples for others).
I think polygamy is not ideal, but not absolutely prohibited. (Ed: See my correction: http://civitatedei.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/re-polygamy/)
One could also add the witness of the OT: from my general knowledge, just about every time there is a story with polygmay in the OT, there is domestic strife of some kind recorded. This seems to imply that this is ultimately a bad idea.
Consider that in every individual act of marriage the “two become one” because by definition marriage is always between two people. Does this explicitly preclude this act being duplicated resulting in additional “one”? I’m not sure it’s overtly exclusive though it might suggest exclusivity. Polygamy is not “a bunch of people married to each other.” It is Joe married to Alice. And Joe married to Susan. And Joe married to Karen. Each an instance of two becoming one.
We can find a very weak parallel even in the Bride of Christ in that it is viewed as a collective whole, but within that whole there are multiple individuated relationships to Christ (again, I know this is weak and I’m not using it as a proof of anything).
Exactly. As I said in my first comment:
Replying to Matt:
I agree they are parallel, but for the opposite reason. I do not think either are explicitly immoral. What you seem to be doing is taking commentary and admonition surrounding the issue and using it to make a judgment of the issue itself.
You cannot take the pronouncement, “treat your slaves with respect,” to mean the same thing as, “don’t have slaves.”
There are provisions made because these kinds of issues are a very fast track to sin (again, they’re not God’s ideal). Certainly we are best to avoid these circumstances just as we are best to avoid placing ourselves too near to temptation (thus the need for leaders to especially distance themselves from such easy well-springs for sin). However, in the same way as a being near to temptation is not wrong, neither can being near to these issues.
Again, what is the justification for declaring the act itself wrong because its resultant or related acts are wrong?
Dan:
Also, I should point out, just because the pastorals imply there were polygamist Christians, does not imply that the early church would have permitted someone to engage in a polygamous union.
Consider the analogy with marriage to an unbeliever: Paul prohibits people from marrying outside of the Lord, but then allows people who were already married to unbelievers prior to their conversion to remain with them (and in fact commands them to in the case where the unbeliever consents to remain married). Slavery is also parallel: Paul commands slaves to become free if it is possible, and believers to not become the slaves of men, but also does not command all slaves to rebel. So there are two matters involved here: whether engaging in a polygamous marriage is wrong, and whether staying in one is prohibited once you are in it. This would be relevant to our understanding of the OT law’s ‘regualtion’ of polygamy, as well.
There was certainly a place in ancient times, and perhaps in third-world countries, where polygamy was preventative welfare. In those days, many women yet outlived their husbands and it was imperative to provide for her protection and physical needs in her old age. This was done by providing her with at least a son if not several. Polygamy in more primitive cultures is a means of God’s providence.
Certainly, one of the considered abuses of polygamy is the mere sexual satiation of the man. I would observe, however, that one wife is plenty.
“The pastoral epistles in the NT say that elders or deacons should be husbands of “but one wife” which makes monogamy a requirement for church leaders, but, more pointedly seems to implicitly admit that there were polygamists in the early church.” It should be pointed out that polygamy was not common in Greco-Roman antiquity at the time of the NT. All kinds of promiscuity, however, was common, such as sex with slaves and prostitutes. The expression “but one wife”, to which you refer is literally, “one-woman man”– an idiomatic expression also used of a “one-man woman” of the older widow in 1 Tim 3. Since Paul allows for the widow to remarry, the idiom should probably be understood as a reference to marital faithfulness, not as prohibition against polygamy (or against remarrying after the death of a spouse). So Theodore of Mopsuestia interpreted the passage.