Is Polygamy Still Sanctioned By God? (An Examination. For Joshua)

Did God change his mind regarding Marriage laws?

We would have to say “yes,” since we know that brother and sister marriages would have occurred before the giving of the Mosaic law. Indeed, Abraham rightly claims more than once that Sarah (his wife) was his sister. And yet God later forbids the marriage between brothers and sisters and half-siblings in Leviticus 18:9.

“‘Do not have sexual relations with your sister, either your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether she was born in the same home or elsewhere.”

We see therefore that marriage laws are not eternal and immutable but can and were changed by God over the course of time. This points to the reality that polygamy likewise, once allowed, is now forbidden and we gather that from the words of Christ as He appeals to the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman;

Matthew 19:4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 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’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

Here Jesus is quoting from the monogamy description between Adam & Eve recorded in Genesis,

Then the man said, “This, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Genesis 2:23-25

The teaching of Christ here thus is irrefutable evidence that just as there was a change in marriage laws as applied to siblings so with the words of Christ there is a change against OT polygamous marriage in the NT. This is especially so when Christ’s words are coupled with Paul’s injunction that Church officers are to be the husband of one wife.

Finally, the Scripture suggests that God’s law touching marriage will be altered yet again in the age to come.

29Jesus answered, “You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven.”

So, all this put together teaches that God has the right to change His law fitting to His desire. Of course, God’s law only changes upon God’s authority but where we find God’s authority for a change in the law there we are obliged to own that change in the law.

Scripture clearly demarcates changes in marriage laws that Christians are bound to honor. As such we can say again that polygamy is against God’s Law. This is also the testimony of the Church as seen from countless men of God through history.

[Question] Did God merely permit polygamy in the Old Testament times or was that required?

 

[Rushdoony] The norm we have in Leviticus 18: I believe its verse 18, yes, Leviticus 18:18: neither shalt thou take a wife, or if you look at your marginal notes if you have a reference, it literally is a wife to another, rather than a wife to her sister, in other words take more than one wife to vex her and so on. Now, what this does is to forbid polygamy but God’s law at the same time regulates polygamy because it recognizes that the sin of men is such that he is going to do certain things, the norm is (monogamous) marriage.

“The question is about the polygamy of the patriarchs in the old testament. Now first of all, lets look at the whole subject from the biblical perspective. From the perspective of the bible, the family is the basic institution of mankind. The family. Therefore, the bible looks at the family as against everything that is hostile to the family, therefore any kind of promiscuity, adultery, anything that is hostile to the family is regarded with total enmity. Now from the beginning, the bible recognizes monogamy as the standard from the garden of Eden. The Mosaic law makes it clear that this is the true path. These other forms are regarded as inferior, defective and more or less sinful forms of the family. But, not as bad anything that is anti-family, thus in our culture today for example, we look on polygamy with horror. ”

 

RJR

Imagination vs. History Lecture

“Polygamy is seen by God as an inferior form of marriage. The law forbids it but also imposes regulations on those who practice it.”

 

RJR

Exodus Commentary — pg. 292

Calvin on Polygamy,

 

When he soon afterwards adds, that God created them male and female, he commends to us that conjugal bond by which the society of mankind is cherished. For this form of speaking, God created man, male and female created he them, is of the same force as if he had said, that the man himself was incomplete.94 Under these circumstances, the woman was added to him as a companion that they both might be one, as he more clearly expresses it in the second chapter. Malachi also means the same thing when he relates, (Genesis 2:15,) that one man was created by God, whilst, nevertheless, he possessed the fullness of the Spirit.95 For he there treats of conjugal fidelity, which the Jews were violating by their polygamy. For the purpose of correcting this fault, he calls that pair, consisting of man and woman, which God in the beginning had joined together, one man, in order that every one might learn to be content with his own wife.

Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis 2:24

 


“They shall be one flesh.”

Although the ancient Latin interpreter has translated the passage ‘in one flesh,’ yet the Greek interpreters have expressed it more forcibly: ‘They two shall be into one flesh,’ and thus Christ cites the place in Matthew 19:5. But though here no mention is made of two, yet there is no ambiguity in the sense; for Moses had not said that God has assigned many wives, but only one to one man; and in the general direction given, he had put the wife in the singular number. It remains, therefore, that the conjugal bond subsists between two persons only, whence it easily appears, that nothing is less accordant with the divine institution than polygamy. Now, when Christ, in censuring the voluntary divorces of the Jews, adduces as his reason for doing it, that ‘it was not so in the beginning,’ (Matthew 19:5,) he certainly commands this institution to be observed as a perpetual rule of conduct. To the same point also Malachi recalls the Jews of his own time:

‘Did he not make them one from the beginning? and yet the Spirit was abounding in him.’153 (Malachi 2:15.)

Wherefore, there is no doubt that polygamy is a corruption of legitimate marriage.

The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown commentary states, quoting verse 18 from the Authorized Version: “Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her”:

“The marginal construction involves an express prohibition of polygamy; and, indeed, there can be no doubt that the practice of having more wives than one is directly contrary to the divine will. It was prohibited by the original law of marriage, and no evidence of its lawfulness under the Levitical code can be discovered, although Moses—from ‘the hardness of their hearts’ [Mt 19:8; Mr 10:5]—tolerated it…”

 


“[I]f Christianity is not to control the laws of the country, then as monogamy is a purely Christian institution, we can have no laws against polygamy, arbitrary divorce, or ‘free love.'”

 

— Charles Hodge

Note, Polygamy, or the marriage of more persons than one, as well as adultery, must be a breach of marriage-covenants, and a violation of the partner’s rights.

Matthew Henry

Commentary — I Corinthians 7

Because god has joined them together (v. 15): Did not he make one, one Eve for one Adam, that Adam might never take another to her to vex her (Lev. xviii. 18), nor put her away to make room for another? It is great wickedness to complain of the law of marriage as a confinement, when Adam in innocency, in honour, in Eden, in the garden of pleasure, was confined to one. Yet God had the residue of the Spirit; he could have made another Eve, as amiable as that he did make, but, designing Adam a help meet for him, he made him one wife; had he made him more, he would not have had a meet help. And wherefore did he make but one woman for one man? It was that he might seek a godly seed—a seed of God (so the word is), a seed that should bear the image of God, be employed in the service of God, and be devoted to his glory and honour,—that every man having his own wife, and but one, according to the law, (1 Cor. vii. 2), they might live in chaste and holy love, under the directions and restraints of the divine law, and not, as brute beasts, under the dominion of lust, and thus might propagate the nature of man in such a way as might make it most likely to participate of a divine nature,—that the children, being born in holy matrimony, which is an ordinance of God, and by which the inclinations of nature are kept under the regulations of God’s command, might thus be made a seed to serve him, and be bred, as they are born, under his direction and dominion.

Matthew Henry
Commentary Malachi


Note from Reformed Study Bible for the account of Lamech in Gen. 4:19-24

 

19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

Lamech represents both a progressive hardening in sin with his defiant embrace of polygamy.

Here’s how the original Geneva Bible phrased it:

The lawful institution of marriage, which is, that two should be one flesh, was first corrupted in the house of Cain by Lamech.

We will end with Scripture again

Deuteronomy 17:17 Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away;

The addition of wives, Scripture teaches, leads to men’s hearts being turned away from God. This is as true for men who are not kings as for men who are kings (the context of Deut. 17:17).

And we see that as the record of the OT where polygamy is never mentioned without there being a strife and conflict in the home where it was practiced.

Having pointed all this out we would have to conclude that those who continue to insist on the continued validity of polygamy are practicing antinomians on this subject and have need to repent and bow to God’s revelation.

Ligonier and Mid America Seminary are Dead as Evidenced by this Article by Dr. Eric Watkins

As a result of this article run by Ligonier’s Table-Talk

Christianity or Critical Theory?

my very little influence will be used to encourage people to withdraw their support of all things Ligonier including Reformation Bible College as well as Mid America Seminary where Dr. Eric Watkins is employed.

I encourage people to read the article for themselves. I will be critiquing the highlights (lowlights) of the above-linked piece here but people should read the piece themselves to determine if they think that I have treated Dr. Watkins fairly.

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Let me say at the outset that the tone of the article is all wrong.  The tone we as Christians should be taking against Critical Race Theory and Cultural Marxism should be less like some scholar wearing a tweed jacket, smoking a pipe while sitting in an overstuffed armchair by a toasty fire, and more like a Phineas driving a spear on a two for Tuesday special. We no longer have time to be “irenic” and “fair” with the enemy. “Irenic,” and “judicious” are not what one goes for when one is being scalped. Christians should be seeking to decapitate CRT and Cultural Marxism with all the violence they can muster and what Eric Watkins gives us is “Little House on the Prairie” analysis.

Now on to the picking apart of this scab of an article.

“At its core, critical theory perpetually challenges the notion of institutional authority and the idea that true freedom can be identified with any one system of thought—whether that be a particular religion, a stream of political thought, or an overarching view of the world.”

Eric Watkins

Ligonier Article

BLM Responds,

However, CRT also gives one system of thought that they insist must be followed in order to have true freedom. CRT does not escape what it accuses its intellectual and philosophical opponents of. CRT criticizes the idea that any particular religion can give true freedom all the while offering itself as a particular religion that can give true freedom. CRT is thus self-referentially self-contradicting.

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“The overlapping timelines of Nazi ideology and the Frankfurt school are important to note, as the latter sat in stark contrast with the former. One was an ideology of oppression through totalitarianism; the other sought liberation for the oppressed through philosophical reflection on power structures and how change comes about. Both movements were highly political and were a threat to one another in different ways.”

EW

Ligonier Article

BLMc responds,

Here we find a major mistake in EW’s analysis. Watkins asserts that Nazism was an ideology of oppression through totalitarianism while asserting that Cultural Marxism seeks liberation for the oppressed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Cultural Marxism is thoroughly totalitarian and is demonstrating that it is all about oppression. Both Nazism and Cultural Marxism were and are totalitarian movements stemming from ideologies of oppression. Watkins is correct that the two movements were a threat to one another but they were a threat to one another precisely because they were each a totalitarian movement desiring to go all totalitarian on those holding contrasting totalitarian ideologies to the totalitarian ideology they each espoused.

For Watkins to believe that the Frankfurt School was really about liberation demonstrates that Watkins should not be writing on this subject matter. Cultural Marxism engaged in philosophical reflection on power structures precisely because they wanted to eliminate the current totalitarian power structures so that they could set up their own totalitarian power structure.

And what of Cultural Marxism identification of “power structures?” Are God, family, nation, and ethnos power structures that are totalitarian that men need to be freed from? Cultural Marxism says “yes,” and assiduously works to free men from these oppressive realities. Biblical Christians say “no.”

Watkins also uses the phrased “Judeo-Christian” in his piece thus demonstrating that he is not epistemologically self-conscious in general. Judaism (Talmudism) and Christianity have absolutely zero in common and for Watkins to slam these two words together is ignorance on stilts. Watkins also talks about secular and sacred as if secular thought is thinking that is not beholden to apriori religious commitments. This is also a major mistake in analysis.

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“At the same time, critical theorists saw in Marxism yet another system of thought that proved unsuccessful in its attempt to bring equity to the world.”

Eric Watkins
Ligonier Article

BLMc responds,

Right… so they (CRT) became yet another variant of Marxism. CRT rejected one variant of Marxism but that does not mean, sans Watkins, that CRT isn’t thoroughly Marxist.

Once again, we witness proof that if professors are ignorant of Trotskyism and its influence, then Ph.D.’s are ignorant of the workings of Marxist tyranny, period. And the Frankfurt School was Trotskyism personified.  Does Watkins understand that CRT and Cultural Marxism are just expressions of Trotsky’s desire for perpetual non-ceasing revolution?

Again Watkins here seems to fail to realize that CRT is itself yet another system of thought that is seeking to bring equity to the world.

We should also challenge the notion that equity is something that any Christian should desire. Equity (as well as its predecessor — equality) in this  Marxist-CRT context are both Marxist concepts. Christians do not want to see CRT succeed in achieving equity.

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Its (CRT’s) goal is human autonomy from any objective authority whatsoever.”

Eric Watkins

Ligonier Article

BLMc responds,

Not really. That may be what it says its goal is but its goal is human submission to the subjective authority of Critical Race theory. Watkins seems not to understand that CRT is a means to an end: the disruption and dismantling of whatever little is yet left of the Christian influence on Western civilization. CRT’s goal is the diminution of the White Christian man since the White Christian man is the one who by God’s grace alone has been the carrier of Christian civilization. Again, Watkins, by not seeing this fuller picture demonstrates that the man is out of his depth.

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“At the same time, some critics of critical theory are able to agree with some of its tenants. This isn’t surprising, since “all truth is God’s truth.” Neil Shenvi, an evangelical critic of the movement, is one who finds some truth in critical theory. For example, he notes, “Critical race theorists affirm that race—as it has been defined historically and legally—is a social construct and not a concept legitimately rooted in human nature or human biology.”11 The Bible recognizes only one race—the human race. While we might distinguish between ethnicities, it is a misnomer to distinguish between races.12 If critical theory’s view of humanity stopped there, it would be easier to find more with which we could agree.”

Eric Watkins

Ligonier Article

BLMc responds,

Here Watkins demonstrates that somewhere along the way he has been drinking from the well of the Anthropologist Franz Boas who first insisted that race was not a stable category. Boas was not advocating that position from a Christian position.

The idea that race is not rooted in biology or human nature is just plain bull scat. To say this is an example of gaslighting at its best is to be far too generous. Pharmaceutical companies as well as forensic scientists as well as Doctors who do bone marrow transplants will all tell you that the statement that race is a social construct is a social construct. Watkins is just denying reality at this point and has entered into groupie gaslighting.

Social Construct?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/30/family-3-year-old-leukemia-plead-bone-marrow-transplant-donor/1293400001/?fbclid=IwAR0y790P4Xq9520rpXTX7YtqBqVMSWpeszurBh2H97cR9daJMN2N93BM8A8

Second if “race is a social construct” then the idea that there is only one human race likewise must be a social construct. Race can’t be a social construct unless every usage of it is a social construct.

Third, my Bible recognizes race when the prophet Jeremiah asks if the Ethiopian can change his skin. But, maybe Professor Watkins also believes that the spots on a leopard are also a social construct?  (See Jeremiah 13:23)

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This has birthed new terms such as “whiteness,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility” and has ultimately led to an entirely secular reconstruction of the way in which conversations about racism are now being framed.15

Eric Watkins

Ligonier Magazine

BLMc responds,

NO!

It has not led to an entirely secular reconstruction. The conversations are being framed not by secular reconstruction but by a competing religious reconstruction that is hostile to Biblical Christianity. Watkins keeps using the word “secular.” I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

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“The church is thus a colony of heaven.27 It is where the faithful are gathered from every nation, tribe, and tongue and the earthly things that divide (race, gender, and class) are set aside as our identity and unity are ultimately found in Christ (Col. 3:11).”

Eric Watkins
Ligonier Article

BLMc

Now, wait a ding-dong minute. Earlier in this article, Watkins insisted that race does not exist but now in his conclusion Watkins is saying that because of the Gospel race need not divide.

Which is it, Eric?

Secondly, here, note that Watkins goes all Gnostic here. It is true that ultimately our unity and identity are in Christ. However, that does not mean our creaturely identities as assigned to us by the creator go into eclipse.

Even after conversion, we remain male and/or female. Even after conversion, we remain yellow and/or black. Even after conversion, we remain in our various classes. Conversion does not make these realities go away nor does God require conversion to work so that our creaturely identities disappear.

I will agree though that the Church is a colony – an outpost of heaven and as a colony of heaven it should be geared up to fight the enemies of heaven — enemies like CRT and Cultural Marxism which have zero to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the whole of Biblical Christianity.

Where have all the Christian warriors gone? You are sure as hell are not going to find them at Ligonier or Mid-America Seminary if they are offering this poisonous bilge to the laity rank and file.

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“The church should be the safest place on earth for the oppressed and the victimized as the mercy and compassion of God are tangibly expressed.”

Eric Watkins

Ligonier Article

BLMc

Currently, those who are insisting that they are the chief of the oppressed include the pervert class of the LGBTQ community. Is Eric telling us that the Church should be the safest place in the world for the pervert “victimized?”

Do we think the pervert victims are going to declare the Church safe when the Church out of love for God and this putative “victim class” speaks of the coming wrath of God against sodomy, trannie-ism, and Lesbianism?

The mercy and compassion of God to the pervert class as expressed from the pulpit in the Church is the giving of God’s law. Somehow I doubt that Eric would agree with this.

 

Allow me to interject here that God does not have a special love for the oppressed who are enemies of God. Quite to the contrary, God’s opposition and wrath are foursquare upon those who are the enemies of God even when they are oppressed.

Q. Does God permit such disobedience and rebellion to go unpunished?

A. Certainly not. God is terribly angry with the sin we are born with as well as the sins we personally commit.

As a just judge, God will punish them both now and in eternity,1 having declared: “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law.”

The oppressed who are outside of Christ can only find one way to find relief from God’s just judgment of the oppression against them they may be experiencing and that is to flee to Christ.

The injunctions in the bible to protect the oppressed are to protect the oppressed who are in Christ. The antithesis in Scripture is not oppressed vs. oppressor but is between the elect and the reprobate.

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In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 23, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned a world beyond racism in which people, including his own children, would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.23 It is ironic that his hope for a colorblind, post-racial humanity has come under such serious criticism by critical theorists who suggest it has been co-opted in a way that encourages racism.24 MLK knew that his dream could not be accomplished by human effort alone, just as revolutions and riots can neither eradicate sin nor create peace. It was for this reason that MLK self-consciously distanced himself from the violent instigations of Marxism.25 God would have to “make a way . . . where there is no way.”

Eric Watkins

Ligonier Article

Once again we find this hagiographic lionizing of a great enemy of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The dulcet hints of praise for MLK are grotesque in light of the following facts concerning MLK.

On page 62 of the 01/19/98 Newsweek magazine, we find the truth about MLK that Dr. Watkins is hopefully ignorant of;

January 6, 1964, was a long day for Martin Luther King Jr. He spent the morning seated in the reserved section of the Supreme Court, listening as lawyers argued New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a landmark case rising out of King’s crusade against segregation in Alabama. The minister was something of an honored guest: Justice Arthur Goldberg quietly sent down a copy of Kings account of the Montgomery bus boycott, “Stride Toward Freedom,” asking for an autograph. That night King retired to his room at the Willard Hotel. There FBI bugs reportedly picked up 14 hours of party chatter, the clinking of glasses and the sounds of illicit sex–including King’s cries of “I’m f–ing for God” and “I’m not a Negro tonight!”

Note: What is not mentioned in this article is that Martin Luther King was having sex with three White women, one of whom he brutally beat while screaming the above-mentioned quotes. Much of the public information on King’s use of church money to hire prostitutes and his beating them came from King’s close personal friend, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, in his 1989 book, “And the walls came tumbling down.”

Not only this but it has been proven beyond a doubt that MLK was a plagiarizer. He plagiarized much of his Ph.D. thesis. He plagiarized his “I have a dream speech.” He plagiarized his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

 

Then there is the fact that MLK was Christian the same way that Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were Christians. This means that they denied cardinal tenets of the Gospel.

MLK was a loathsome man propped up by his Marxist handlers. Watkins is either ignorant or is lying.

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The visible Church is in a Babylonian captivity that makes Luther’s era look like child’s play. The current visible Church in the West — regardless of denominational flavor — is every bit as dead as was the Romish Medieval Church. The visible church is dead. Today’s clergy are every bit as pitiful as was the Roman Catholic clergy of the Medieval era. Long live the Church.

 

Federal Vision’s Mistake On The Nature of Faith

“Calvin, for example, spoke of faith as an ’empty vessel’ in order to stress its character as a receptacle that brings nothing to God but receives all things from Him.”

Cornelius Venema
Christ & Covenant Theology — pg. 338

This is why I have said in the context of the past FV debate that faith does its proper work in Justification by resting in Christ for all while doing its proper work in Sanctification by working out all that Christ works in us.

Failing to think this way makes faith into a work whereby we use to trade in for the better model of Justification. In this direction lies neo-nomianism.

Beware … An Offensive Meme Ahead

The leadership among Evangelical Inc. and the Reformed Deep State would be triggered over this meme as they are out there condemning the whole idea of Christian Nationalism. And if they are not out there condemning Nationalism they certainly are not out there touting it as

But can anyone tell me what is there about this meme that the triune God would inveigh against?

Would God be angry with us Kinists because Nationalists desire to provide for our own and specially for those of our own household? (I Timothy 5:8)

Would God be angry with us Kinists because we desire to give good gifts unto our children? (Matthew 7:11)

Would God be angry with us Kinists because we could wish that we ourselves were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of our brothers, our own flesh and blood? (Romans 9:3)

 

Frederick Douglas’ Role in Harper’s Ferry

When John Brown was captured at Harper’s Ferry, Brown’s carpetbag was captured along with him, and in it were letters from Gerit Smith (One of the Secret Six) and Fredrick Douglas implicating them in a conspiracy (everyone knows conspiracies don’t exist) behind the attack on Harper’s Ferry. Virginia’s Governor, Henry Wise, requested President Buchanan’s assistance in arresting the conspirators, and he left no doubt that the one he wanted above all was “Frederick Douglass, a Negro Man… charged with … inciting servile insurrection.”

E. Michael Jones
The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit — pg. 633

In the aftermath of the Harper’s Ferry uprising, John E. Cook, Brown’s advance man for the raid, ratted out Douglass, reportedly telling authorities that Douglass did not carry out his end of the mission. According to the Richmond Daily Dispatch, Cook informed his captors that Douglass was supposed to arrive with a “large band” of fellow raiders at a schoolhouse near Harper’s Ferry, which Cook had seized on the Monday morning after the Sunday night assault. “I conveyed the arms there for him and waited until nearly night, but the coward did not come,” Cook was quoted as saying.

“Such then was my connection with John Brown, and it may be asked, if this is all, why I should have objected to being sent to Virginia to be tried for the offense charged. The explanation is not difficult. I knew that if my enemies could not prove me guilty of the offense of being with John Brown, they could prove that I was Frederick Douglass; they could prove that I was in correspondence and conspiracy with Brown against slavery; they could prove that I brought Shields Green, one of the bravest of his soldiers, all the way from Rochester to him at Chambersburg; they could prove that I brought money to aid him, and in what was then the state of the public mind I could not hope to make a jury of Virginia believe I did not go the whole length he went, or that I was not one of his supporters; and I knew that all Virginia, were I once in her clutches, would say “Let him be hanged.”

Frederick Douglass

Clearly, Douglas along with the Secret Six should’ve been hung alongside John Brown.

Interesting tidbit … once John Brown was arrested @ Harper’s Ferry, 3 of the secret six fled to Canada immediately (Stearns, Howe, and Sanborn) while a fourth, Theodore Parker, lay dying in Italy. A fifth, Gerrit Smith had himself institutionalized in an insane asylum to avoid being implicated. Only the Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, didn’t flee or crack.