Christian Polygamy

I don't know the specifics to answer your question. But you can look at the negative attitude that they church had very early on towards marriage and sexuality.
Roman law said that a man could only have one wife. Jerome thought that it was sinful to have sex with even one's wife unless it was to reproduce and thought creating a virgin. He praised one woman for fasting so long that she had not fat on her body even in her breasts. The Christian athletes were the people who abstained from all
earthly pleasures, especially sex. At a church council in Spain in the early 300's they wrote a lot of laws for Christians to follow, almost half had to do with sex, not having before communion etc. Almost none of them can be found in the Bible.
So the Gentile church was very negative in all these areas very early. I don't know of any push back by the Jewish church. I've not come across that topic an any
of my research. The Jews continued to accept polygamy to about 1024AD in the west.

xpower said:

Was polygamy always looked at negatively in Christianity? If not, when did it start to?

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Thinking back on the instruction I had, even St. Augustine himself defended polygyny, but because of social pressures, he gave what appeared to the people a withdrawal of that position, but deep down, he really didn't completely distance himself from it.

Because Western Christianity is so deeply infused by "feministic ideologies," institutionalized religion couldn't help but to fall in lock step with the false assumption that God opposed polygyny. Those who stand on that side of the issue seem to always fall into the usual ditches of improper interpretations of scripture very similar to what mormons and jehovah's witnesses use as their means for defending their beliefs.

When did the opposition start? No idea. Many like to point to Paul's instructions specifically addressed to bishops and deacons, but such an interpretation, as I've been told, leads to some pretty big problems when it comes to the basic rules for interpreting scripture.

xpower said:

Was polygamy always looked at negatively in Christianity? If not, when did it start to?

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My understanding is that the early church received polygamous people on the basis of oikonomia, but never performed polygamous marriages or per se sanctioned them.

I have read that Luther thought that at some point polygamy might become acceptable, but I have not looked into this, and I suspect this may have been a polemical smear; at any rate it certainly is not something which Inexpect most Lutherans would agree with.

Yes, Luther did support a poly relationship for a man who's wife was very sick. The man was suppose to keep it quite. But it became public knowledge and caused a lot of problems for both the man and Luther.

Wgw said:

My understanding is that the early church received polygamous people on the basis of oikonomia, but never performed polygamous marriages or per se sanctioned them.

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There are MANY things we don't know about the early church. Unfortunately, some scholars fill in the blanks with modern dogmas to try and make the early church more consistent with modern thinking.

[/QUOTE]I have read that Luther thought that at some point polygamy might become acceptable, but I have not looked into this, and I suspect this may have been a polemical smear; at any rate it certainly is not something which Inexpect most Lutherans would agree with.[/QUOTE]

Polygamy, in culture, yes. That's what we're headed toward. Polygyny only, no. That's too sexist (in the minds of small thinkers), and an alleged abuse of women.....go figure....

Luther was just a man, with the same limitations of any other man....who was even guilty of bloodshed in his conflict with Zwingly. He was no prophet, so whether or not he made that prediction, it doesn't matter since scripture doesn't command against it for the general populace of believers?

football5680 said:

It is unacceptable today. In the Old Testament God tolerated it but it was not the original plan. Matthew 19:3-9 shows this to be true. God permitted it because the hearts of the Israelites were hard. As Christians we cannot harden our hearts and we must submit to the will of God.

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Injecting the marital model of polygyny into Matthew 19 is a total misapplication of scripture along the same vein of what we see jehovah's witnesses and mormons doing when trying to defend their beliefs that do not align with the context. Jesus was dealing with divorce, not the idea of men being limited to one wife.

If it were God's intent that all men have only one wife, then He violated His own will when He gave some men mutliple wives, and even commanded the taking of an additional wife in certain cases. The only men forbidden plural wives were elders and bishops. Never was the general populace commanded by God that only one wife for every man was the new rule with the coming of Christ. If we're going to chastise the cultists for abusing scripture in this manner, then we should adhere to our chastisements of them by refraining from perpetrating the same sins in our use of scripture.

Percivale said:

In the Bible it is tolerated but discouraged;

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Reference please.

the first polygamist was wicked,

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Is this supposed to mean something? What difference does it make that the first RECORDED plural marriage happened to involve a man who was wicked? We ALL wicked having been born in sin, and yet the Lord chooses to save us from our wickedness.

it caused conflict in some cases,

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What marriage doesn't have conflict at various times? That doesn't cast a light of negativity upon all of marriage. I would like to recommend that you study logical fallacies, because you're perpetrating some classic violations throughout.

Jesus said 'the two shall become one.'

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So, does that make Paul a liar when he stated that when a man joins with a harlot, he has become one flesh with her? (1 Cor. 6:16) Nowhere in that context does it stipulate that the man laying with a harlot had to be single in order for his joining with yet another woman was a matter of them becoming one flesh. Abraham was one flesh with all his wives, as were all the other of the Patriarchs who had plural wives, which is many of them.

Elders are to be husband of one wife.

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Most believers are not chosen elders, so that does not apply to the general populace of believers.

There's no command not to though.

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Good point.

I think there is some leeway to accomodate existing cultures (don't break up families in Africa over it), but monogamy is best.

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God's morality is absolute, therefore providing no "leeway." If it were sin for any man to have plural wives, then ALL men would stand condemned, including Abraham. God was/is the giver of plural wives to some men, and even commanded it in certain instances.

One problem with it I see is how it always seems to be in oppressive, violent cultures.

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It's also true that oppressive cultures reject the evils of extreme feminism, which has become so prevalently oppressive here in the West. If feminism were not, for example, such a horridly oppressive force against masculinity, then polygyny would be more of a reality here as well.

So, how would you feel about polyandry, or a double marriage system?

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Those forms of marriage clearly fall within the definition of adultery, so your question begs the question.

If that is undesirable, are men less willing to share than women, or is it just that men are more dominant in polygamous cultures and don't care?

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Share? When the Lord created the marital model of polygyny, he at no time said anything about the concept of "sharing" or "dominance." His moral absolutes are what they are, and when we try to inject what is not spoken, we are no better than false prophets.

football5680 said:

It is unacceptable today. In the Old Testament God tolerated it but it was not the original plan. Matthew 19:3-9 shows this to be true. God permitted it because the hearts of the Israelites were hard. As Christians we cannot harden our hearts and we must submit to the will of God.

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When one reads It, It actually says in Matthew 19:8
8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

The hardness of the hearts was Putting away wives not Polygyny.

.

Thread necromancy.

Yoderiii said:

When one reads It, It actually says in Matthew 19:8
8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

The hardness of the hearts was Putting away wives not Polygyny.

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I've seen the abuse of that section of scripture applied against polygyny so many times, it's as old or older, and just as worn out as, the race card in politics. I say that because only politics can corrupt texts so completely so as to apply injunctions against divorce as applying to polygyny. That style of interpretation is as corrupt as politics, mormonism and the doctrines of the jehovah's witnesses.

Jr

(snickering) Some people don't seem to like it that threads sometimes resurface on topics they don't like.

Jr

football5680 said:

It is unacceptable today. In the Old Testament God tolerated it but it was not the original plan. Matthew 19:3-9 shows this to be true. God permitted it because the hearts of the Israelites were hard. As Christians we cannot harden our hearts and we must submit to the will of God.

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Is it possible to stand by the exact wordings and context of the scripture on this topic? Matthew 19:3-9 goes as follows:
Scripture: Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
Context: Divorce

Scripture: “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ ? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Context: Divorce.
Commentary: The two becoming one flesh can also be said they have a child.

Scripture: “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Context: Divorce

Scripture: Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
Context: Divorce and Adultery (A married woman having sex with a man who is married or unmarried)

Where did God ban this? Basically we so-called Christians have been operating on pre-suppositions and not the actual word of God.

dayhiker said:

Percivale ... can you show were God discourages polygamy? I've not found those verse.

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Can you back these up with scripture?

anioko1 said:

Can you back these up with scripture?

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Did you notice that the post you responded to is from 2015?