Posted on 04/14/2016 6:43:34 AM PDT by C19fan
That
Two? I couldn’t even stand being married to one. Its cheaper and less hassle to just pay a woman good money to show up every now and then.
My wife is one of 7 daughters...no way in hell do I approve of your recommendation. lol
“on the nature of my soul in the afterlife or some such”
To be clear: nothing at all intended toward your soul, or whether or not you advocate polygamy (i figured you didn’t). That’s impossible anyway online like this. Just an idea I humbly hope Freepers reading will think about.
As you did too - because you’re right; it is Biblical.
But didn’t Jesus override that in the Gospel?
But didn’t Jesus override that in the Gospel? - I don’t recall Jesus speaking out against having multiple wives. At the time of Jesus’ life the Greek aka Hellenistic culture was dominant and Greek/Hellenistic culture was monogamous so that had become the norm in Jewish culture as well. Who knows, an expert may state the practice was dying out in the Middle East before Alexander The Great’s conquest. It probably was. The Persians were sucking up a lot of wealth from their conquered so plural marriage was probably cost prohibitive for many by the time the Greeks arrived? Speculation on my part.
Thank you!
Interesting he comments on the dynamic that a man with four live-in girlfriends would be okay but he’d only get in trouble if he were to call them his wives.
The relationship is the same no matter what. The outrage only occurs if there’s an outward sign of commitment. So long as they’re all just shacking up then society is fine with it.
I think most would say Jesus corrected this when he talked about marriage being one-man-one-woman, anything else is adulterous. MT 19:9 comes to mind. That’s where I got the “hard-hearted” reference from, too.
It was an inference rather than a clear cut pronouncement by Jesus. It is clear from his apostles that is what they learned from Jesus though. Jesus for example did not declare men with multiple wives need to ditch them, etc.
Matthew 19:9King James Version (KJV) 9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
I read that to mean that the husband may never divorce his wife, except in the single instance of "fornication", whatever that meant in the context of his time (I understand it to me continuing marital infidelity on the part of the woman, not that man). Note that Jesus says that only men can ever "put away" their spouse - this option never was available to women.
My point is that just because a polygamist man can't divorce one of his wives in no way implies that he can't have more than one wife to begin with. That simply does not follow.
Let's keep in mind that at the time of Jesus polygamy was very common in Israel. It is telling that Jesus never brings it up directly. Nowhere does He say in the Gospels that those living in polygamous marriages had to leave them, or that all future marriages of His followers had to be monogamous only. He seems simply to accept the practice and insists only that men may not "put away" their wives for any reason other than her infidelity.
After Jesus, the Church began to reject polygamy due to the fact that polygamy was illegal under Roman law and the early Church had enough problems with the Roman authorities persecuting them to make a fuss about some "right" to polygamy. St. Augustine wrote a thing about this. Basically, he wrote that polygamy had its uses in order to keep the birthrate up, but we don't need that now, and for other considerations that may have applied to the Patriarchs but don't apply to the people of 350 AD in the Roman Empire, that insisting on it would cause untold problems, etc. and so it's forbidden to Christians as a matter of Church discipline.
The Church's position developed along those lines insisting on exclusive monogamy thereafter as a matter of doctrine. It really is a very clear example of cultural assimilation of the Church by the larger Roman society. The Church began the long process of losing its direct connection to its roots in first century Judaism.
St. Thomas says much the same thing. Polygamy does not violate the Natural Law, the Patriarchs were all engaged in it, so it's not per se sin, but that there are all sorts of great reasons that monogamy is superior to polygamy (which I agree with) and so it's not permitted in Church law.
I was raised by devout Roman Catholic parents. I very respectfully reject, in general, the Protestant accusation that the Catholic Church allowed in far too many pagan accretions that the Reformation set right by returning to Scripture alone. But really, if you look at the history, the RCC's complete acceptance of the monogamy of Roman law (albeit without divorce) into core Church doctrine on marriage to the exclusion of even the possibility of polygamy is the most glaring example of "pagan accretion" that there is. It strikes me as more than a little ironic that my Protestant friends would so zealously reject all possibility of polygamy, given its deep Scriptural roots.
“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”
So you’re saying Jesus might have followed up, and said, “If a man does NOT put away a wife, and then marries others, he’s not committing adultery.” Or “A man may retain his wife, and marry others. What makes it adultery is when he puts away any of his wives.”
And then there is no limit to the number of wives? Should he have set it at, say, four?
Is 2,000 years of praying disciples, Church fathers, saints, nuns, priests, pastors, and lay people not enough to convince you?
Once gay marriage was legalized in this country your arguments were vacated because what will cause polygamy to be legalized is when three men decide they want to be married. The courts will fall all over themselves legalizing it then.
Myself, I still don’t understand why a society that openly embraces shacking up with multiple partners only has a problem when that behavior wants to become a commitment.
A man married to one woman can also have a mistress living with the couple and that’s A-Okay in this country. It only becomes an issue if he wants to commit to both women.
From the article:
“Given these rights, it seems strange that the law prohibits me from forging sexual relationships with multiple partners and calling them my spouses after we’ve made a mutual religious commitment. If I called them girlfriends or boyfriends, I’m protected by the Constitution. So, it seems indefensible that I can’t call them wives or husbands.”
More or less the same thing I said.
Unexpected. /s
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