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BornInMarch
Guest
Thank you!
This is an actual answer to the question I posted, including actual evidence.
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This is an actual answer to the question I posted, including actual evidence.
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zaffiroborant
Guest
This, this, this, especially the first part, family should render “polygny for the widows” something to be regarded with utter incredulity. And again especially (can I do that
) powerful wealthy men almost always want access to sex with young women, the collection of them (making them objects to be owned) then increases their prestige in a disordered if not sick society.
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RebeccaJ
Guest
I was studying up recently on the threefold temptation, and related to this question. I’m borrowing from thesacredpage.com/2010/02/temptation-kings-nuns-and-priests_21.html
“lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” is the three fold temptation. (1John 2:15). Related to the King of Israel, in Deut 17:16-17 Moses (quoting from the above link) "forbids the Israelite king from multiplying horses (military might), women (sensual pleasure), and gold/silver (greed/avarice) for himself. These three items correspond to lust of the flesh (women), lust of the eyes (gold), and pride (self-aggrandizing military build-up).
First Kings 10–11 describe how, in his latter years, Solomon, the first Son of David to sit on his father’s throne and a kind of “New Adam” figure in the biblical story line, egregiously fell prey to the threefold concupiscence by multiplying for himself everything Deuteronomy 17 forbids."
Including wives and concubines.
It is a fact, that polygyny was practiced and regulated among the cultures of the Old Testament. The Torah makes it a law that a brother will marry his brother’s wife if he dies. A married brother was not exempt from this law.
Over time the cultures of the Old Testament, for the most part, stopped practicing polygamy and polygamy came to be viewed as a practice of paganism. Which incidentally, occurs today as there are thousands if not tens of thousands of pagans in the US who practice various forms of multiple partner marriages. Of course, they are not legal marriages.
As Christians, we follow the New Covenant, Jesus Christ. It’s already been pointed out that polygamy and Christianity are not compatible. Jesus explicitly taught that marriage is meant as it was in the beginning. And in the beginning, God created one man and one woman. God did not create a harem for Adam.
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zaffiroborant
Guest
Why as a Catholic did you not look to the Catechism of The Catholic Church for an answer? Why do you accept the answers from anonymous posters on the internet without bothering to look to the teachings of the Church?
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RebeccaJ
Guest
I agree. We are to care for widows and their children. There is no reason to require a widow to marry in order to be cared for.
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zaffiroborant
Guest
To require a widow to marry someone for care is nothing more than gilded prostitution or household slavery.
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MartinJordan
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BornInMarch
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Because he actually pointed to the line in the bible that condemned it.
Though that is a good point, I probably should have done research beforehand.
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RebeccaJ
Guest
Well yeah, OT cultures viewed women as property, spoils of war, and not as an individual but as an extension of her father and then her husband.
Jesus, was counter cultural for His time in history.
Care for widows, the poor, the imprisoned, without expecting ANYTHING in return. How shocking is that!
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iepuras
Guest
The virgin martyrs were especially shocking. By their actions, they proclaimed that their worth as an individual was not based on whether or not they married or had sex. That is downright shocking and counter cultural even today.Well yeah, OT cultures viewed women as property, spoils of war, and not as an individual but as an extension of her father and then her husband.
Jesus, was counter cultural for His time in history.
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Thorns
Guest
Didnt God instruct Abraham to sleep with his maid, Hagar?
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iepuras
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Genesis 16:1-2 indicates that it was Sarah’s idea and that Abraham listened to his wife.
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MartinJordan
Guest
Yep. Man (in this case Woman [Sarah]) worries how the world may look at themselves, instead of thinking of Heavenly things. Despite this, God has given man the free will to choose.
MJ
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PaulDupre1
Guest
Where did you get that idea? Certainly not from the bible.
It was Sarah, in her grief for not having a child (even though the Lord had promised that she would, in time, bear a son) who begged Abram to give her a child through her maid Hagar.
This took place before the Lord made His covenant with Abram and changed his name to Abraham.
This episode goes to show how important having a child, and especially a son, was to a woman at that time. It was far more important than her husband’s faithfulness or her marital happiness.
Is this because women naturally gauge their self-worth by their ability to produce offspring? I think not. Rather, the “patriarchal order” extant at that time valued a woman only in her capacity to serve her husband and to give him sons. Sadly, this has been true for most of Earth’s history after the fall.
Most people, male or female, adopt the values of the culture into which they are born. We cannot fault them for that. We see in Sarah the desperation born of an unjust value system imposed on her from without, which caused her to gauge her self-worth based on her ability to satisfy society’s expectations of her rather than on her own genuine worth as an individual.
When I reflect on Sarah (before this episode) I see a smart, savvy and very beautiful woman who could even outwit a pharaoh and amaze her husband. The fact that she was brought to this place of shame and degradation heaps condemnation on the “patriarchal order”.
It is this same shame and degradation of women that attended the LDS polygyny of the 19th and early 20th centuries. If you can stand the heartbreak, read “In Sacred Loneliness” by Todd Compton. If you ever had any notion that polygyny could be a Godly thing, this history of modern LDS polygyny will disabuse you of that notion.
Paul (formerly LDS, now happily Catholic)
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manualman
Guest
As a catholic, hopefully you recognize that the bible doesn’t work this way. You’re making expectations of the bible that are more like a Southern Baptist than a catholic.
The bible isn’t and never was intended to be a direct moral theology textbook or catechism. Rather it is the story of God revealing himself to man. God can’t be squeezed into a book, nor can a faithful moral theology able to address all issues in all permutations of nuance.
This is why Jesus gathered 12 apostles and empowered them to teach in his name after his Ascension rather than just doing his miracles and handing out tracts. You’re frustrated that the bible isn’t totally clear cut by itself apart from the authoritative interpreting authority God gave us along with it because perhaps you have incorrect expectations of what the bible is.
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rossum
Guest
God offers David more wives, after the seven he already has:
And gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and Juda: and if these things be little, I shall add far greater things unto thee. – 2 Samuel 12:8
rossum
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manualman
Guest
Off the cuff, I’d say that’s a statement of how God revoked the Kingdom from Saul for his sins and gave it to David instead. The TOPIC of the passage is the kingship of David, not marriage. Polygamy was a part of the background noise of the setting, not the point of the passage. I suspect the custom of the day when a king fell and a new king ascended was for the new king to take everything of the old king’s. God’s not endorsing that, he’s speaking to a people where they were at the time.
In other words, if this passage shows that God endorses polygamy then it also shows that God established marriage to be a relationship in which the man owns his women like mere property. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, aren’t you? The logic requires you either to accept both or neither!
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dianaiad
Guest
At the time, it was both. One may indeed argue that the topic was the kingship, but the wives and concubines were explicitly mentioned here. I don’t think anybody can argue that God disapproved of polygamy in the OT, when pretty much every single prophet and leader that He spoke to had more than one wife. It would have been very simple for Him, for instance, to tell Abraham (and Isaac, and everybody else) to stop it. He certainly gave plenty of other instructions that the folks back then had a tough time swallowing. What’s this one?
But then He came right out and used polygyny as an illustration of the transfer of the kingdom; one would think that the use of a problematic practice would not be a really good example of the transfer of a solid thing; rather like the cop telling the speeder “Of course I can give you a ticket for this! Didn’t I just let you get away with running the stop light?”
Doesn’t make sense.
Whether polygamy is acceptable NOW is the OP question: when was it, as a practice, specifically forbidden by God? A time…a declaration…something…that one can point to and say 'you could do it then and still be in good shape with God, but if you do it after this point, you are sinning?"
Well, as a Mormon I can tell you when it was.
In 1890, when Wilford Woodruff issued the 'Manifesto" saying that it was no longer to be practiced.
There was a whole bunch of resistance to it at the time, mind you, and there are quite a few breakaway Mormon sects that still practice it, but the quickest way to get excommunicated, if you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints, is to try it.
I MIGHT be willing to look at the NT verses about marriage, but even those still work if the man has more than one wife to 'cling to."
Just sayin’, is all, since y’all brought the Mormons into it.
I guess the point is, all during the OT (and among the NT Jews) polygamy was practiced. God did not ever, once, say that it was a sin and not to be practiced. He even used it…giving Saul’s wives over to David…as an example of the transfer of kingship. One generally does not use an illicit practice as an example of proving a licit one.
So…as the OP asks, when, precisely, did God say no, specifically? That is, if you aren’t going to use the Manifesto, and of course I do not expect you to do that.
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zaffiroborant
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I think 1Corinthians is pretty clear that marriage is not supposed to be polygamous.
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PaulDupre1
Guest
Well done, Ziff. This is also a good argument for priestly celibacy and consecrated virginity - things the Catholic faith prizes that other traditions mock and ridicule.
Paul (formerly LDS, now happily Catholic)
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