Is it the Biblical? -By Rev. Fr. Joe Oluoma
Practically, check children from polygamous homes and those from monogamous homes.
It’s more difficult to practice polygamy in this fast paced and materialistic age than it was in the more agrarian periods.
How much time would a man have to satisfy the emotional and intimacy needs of his wives and children?
These are one question and two expressions that can easily be misconstrued and erroneously parroted by ignorant Christians.
It is not everything in the Bible that we do. In Genesis 12:14ff, Abraham lied about his wife to save his head, we cannot use it and teach men to use their wives as safety bargains when the chips are down.
It is in the Bible that Sarah gave her maid to Abraham for childbirth, but it is neither an exhortation nor injunction for women to be generous with their maids to their husbands in the face of childlessness.
It is in the Bible that Elijah slaughtered hundreds of the prophets of Baal, that doesn’t mean Christians should begin to slaughter unbelievers and worshippers of idols with their deities.
On polygamy, there’s no where the Bible mentions it as a doctrine. There are polygamous marriages in the Bible, that doesn’t mean the Bible sets it up as the ideal standard to christian marriage.
The language of Genesis 2:24 is monogamy: “This is why a Man (singular) leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife (singular) and the Two become one flesh” Our Lord Jesus Christ will repeat the same thing in Matthew 19.
Monogamy is taken as the ideal from the language of Genesis 2:24: “that is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one”. The language is singular and not plural.
Then Adam was given one wife by God. If polygamy were the ideal, God would have given Adam more than one wives, the ribs to make more women were not lacking.
The only argument advanced for polygamy so far is cure for men’s high libido or sexual preference. Doesn’t it sound selfish and unfair to the women and children especially?
Before David cheated with Bethsheba, he already had multiple wives. Let’s not use men’s sexual indiscipline to canonise polygamy.
While I will not criminalize polygamy, I wouldn’t push it as an answer to men’s sexual antics and fantasy. if men were taught to live monogamously ab initio, they would have been doing it better by now.
As it stands now, monogamy is the doctrine of the church. The church has the authority and power to teach doctrines that are revealed by sacred scripture and tradition. If we keep trying, we will get better. For now, it is one man, one woman, no more no less.
