Q. On pp. 150-51 you make the surprising comment that you don’t think that polygamy, at least in OT times was immoral, and you go further to suggest that if a polygamous person today becomes a Christian they should not divorce one of their spouses. This is said at the same time you say that monogamy is the standard held up by Genesis and the NT. I must say I find this surprising, to say the least. Polygamy, like patriarchy is surely a result of human falleness, not a part of God’s design or even God’s concession to human hard-heartedness in the OT legislation.
Polygamy is inherently bad for women, and creates an instability and uncertainty in those relationships, such that the husband never entirely and unconditionally gives himself to one partner to have a one flesh union with. The cases we have even today in the U.S. with some radical Mormons are often deeply troubling and involve all sorts of insecurities and even abuse and oppression of women. But as you say, polygamy is not endorsed in the Bible. I would say that at least indirectly it is viewed as immoral. By Genesis standards it’s a form of adultery, a failure to confine one’s self to a one flesh union with one’s partner. I don’t think one can argue that what is immoral in the light of the NT, was once moral in OT times. No…. it was simply tolerated and regulated due to the hardness of heart.
A. I would agree that polygamy was tolerated and regulated in the Old Testament due to the hardness of one’s heart. I have talked to NT scholars and they affirm my suspicion that polygamous couples were probably members, as were slaveowners, of Pauline churches. I would say that polygamy and slave-owning were both not in keeping with the Edenic idea of God’s creation. I guess it kind of depends on what you mean as moral.
In terms of polygamy today, I was just speaking of people who convert to Christianity in a polygamous relationship. I had an African student whose father had eight wives when the father became a Christian. Now if, as in a previous generation, he was told to divorce seven of those wives, that is when real instability would enter. In that previous generation when that was forced on converts, then the seven women were thrown into poverty of the most abject type. So the church as I was told changed opinion and told people like my student’s father that they could indeed should keep their wives, but they could not become leaders in the church (elders and deacons need to be the husband of one wife) and that they needed to raise their children to be monogamous in their marital relationships. This to me seems wise. These are the only situations where I would see polygamous relationships being possible.
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