Recently the Logos Bible Software blog posted an excerpt from David Instone-Brewer’s book Moral Questions of the Bible: Timeless Truths in a Changing World that argued that “Jesus criticized polygamy as a warped version of the lifelong committed relationship of a one-plus-one marriage.” Instone-Brewer recognizes that up until the Roman era (about the time of Jesus), polygamy was considered a valid marriage model both in biblical thought and within Judaism in general, but he argues that “Jesus took the side of the Romans against the Jewish establishment on this occasion.”

I have been concerned for quite some time about a modern tendency to twist the Bible to say what we want it to say rather than to listen to what it actually says, and here, in my opinion, is a classic example. In this article, I want to show how Instone-Brewer has twisted the words of Jesus and Paul to oppose polygamy. In a subsequent article I will survey the biblical teaching on the subject, showing that the Bible does not condemn polygamy, and consider what the Bible’s failure to oppose polygamy means for the church today in view of the recent uptick in “ethical non-monogamy.”

The (Foreign?) “Problem of Polygamy”

The blog post begins with a section titled, “The Problem of Polygamy Today,” though its focus is on polygamy encountered on the mission field, with no mention of the fact that ethical non-monogamy is not a merely foreign issue that missionaries encounter in some distant land. Increasingly the western world is questioning the normalization of monogamy, with one recent study noting that 24% of Gen Xers and 37% of Millennials failed to “somewhat agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement that couples should be monogamous. So we don’t need to make this an issue that relates to some hypothetical “African tribal chief” out there as Instone-Brewer does. This is an issue that is all around us. I know of people who don’t go to church anymore because they are afraid that their relationship will not be accepted by churchgoers.

The Instone-Brewer quote in this section on “The Problem of Polygamy Today” is particularly troubling:

When an African tribal chief converts to Christianity, what happens to all his wives? Should he divorce them and send them back to their parents’ home in shame and penury, or should he live away from them in a separate house, but continue to provide for them financially? This is a classic problem for missionaries in countries that practice polygamy, and one to which there is no easy answer—just the fervent hope that the next generation will marry only one wife! It must seem very strange for those polygamous families when their normal, socially acceptable lifestyle is suddenly regarded as immoral.

No, Dr. Instone-Brewer, there is an easy answer: stop imposing Western values on the peoples we do missionary work amongst! Stop opposing the words of the prophets about divorce (Malachi 2:16) or the words of Jesus that what God has joined together, let no one separate (Mark 10:9)! If, as you admit, the Old Testament and other Palestinian Jews of Jesus’ day saw polygamy as acceptable, who are we to regard the polygamy of your hypothetical African tribal chief as “immoral”? When sending people away in shame is considered a better option than fidelity to marriage, you know that Western values have trumped biblical values, especially if, as we will note in the next post, the Bible never opposes polygamy.

Did Jesus Side with the Romans against the Old Testament?

But Instone-Brewer has what he considers a biblical reason for thinking divorce or separation is better than polygamy. He argues that while “[p]olygamy had been considered perfectly normal and proper [in Judaism] until the Romans took over, … Jesus took the side of the Romans against the Jewish establishment.” With these words Instone-Brewer commits a common and troubling rhetorical move, referring to “the Jewish establishment.” Christians have long struggled with anti-Semitism (yes, even us evangelicals today!), and we have trouble hearing the words “the Jewish establishment” and not automatically thinking, “That must be right, because we know that opposing the Jewish establishment was what Jesus was all about.” Jesus the Jew had a much larger problem with Roman beliefs and ethics than he did with his own religion and especially with a practice that was rooted in the Old Testament and practiced by the most faithful Jews throughout history. (On the Old Testament view of polygamy, see my other post, “The Bible, Polygamy, and the Church Today.”)

But another problem should be immediately evident to us: Jesus never addresses the topic! Instone-Brewer has to take Jesus’ teaching about divorce in Mark 10:1-12 and make an inference from it about what Jesus thinks about polygamy. His logic, however, is so convoluted that we have to admit it is an effort to twist Jesus’ words to make the Bible say what Instone-Brewer wishes it would say. Here is the logic:

First, Dr. Instone-Brewer notes that there were some Jews in Palestine (specifically the Qumran community) and many outside Palestine (in the greater Roman world) who agreed with the Romans that polygamy is immoral. He then notes that the Qumran community read Genesis 1:27 (“God created them male and female”) alongside Genesis 7:9 (“two and two, male and female, they went into the ark”) to imply that only two people could marry. His point is not that these passages make this point or that the logic of the Qumran community is a good interpretation of these texts. (“We may not be convinced by their logic, but as far as they were concerned it was case proven.”) He just wants to make the point that Genesis 1:27 is important to the Qumran community for this reason.

Then Instone-Brewer notes that Jews in the diaspora (i.e., those outside Palestine) had another way of seeing polygamy as against Scripture. He gets this idea simply from the fact that when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the translators “added a word to Genesis 2:24.” Whereas the Hebrew text could be translated, “Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and they will be one flesh”; the Greek translation says, “For this reason a man will leave behind his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.” Instone-Brewer argues that the words “the two” were added to “to show that polygamy was wrong.”

But the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Hebrew Bible regularly uses dynamic equivalent translations, and Instone-Brewer is probably reading too much into why the translators used the words “the two” here. Since the passage was speaking of two people here, Adam and Eve, the words “the two” would have been a natural choice. Furthermore, even polygamists saw marriage as a union between two people; they simply thought that the man could become one flesh with one woman and then one flesh with another. Even the apostle Paul could apply Genesis 2:24 to the case of a married man having relations with a prostitute: now he, who is one flesh with Christ and with his wife, is also one flesh with a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:16). It is not at all clear how saying that “two” become one in marriage tells us anything about whether that two-to-one transformation can happen with another person after the initial marriage union. When Abraham took Sarah as his wife, the two became one flesh even though Abraham also had concubines (Genesis 25:6) and, after Sarah’s death, took another wife, Keturah (Genesis 25:1), who presumably also was made “one flesh” with him. It says in 2 Samuel 12:8 that God “gave” King David multiple wives, but this does not mean that there was no point at which “the two” became one flesh. Polygamy in the ancient world was a repeated experience of two becoming one flesh. Why David Instone-Brewer reads the Greek translation of Genesis 2:24 as an attempt “to show that polygamy was wrong” is unclear.

But the argument gets even more convoluted. Instone-Brewer writes:

When the Pharisees were questioning Jesus about divorce, he took the opportunity to set them straight about polygamy, too. Jesus used both sets of arguments used by other Jews. He quoted the key verse used by Qumran Jews (Gen 1:27) and even said this was what happened “at the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6, which presumably reminded his listeners that Qumran Jews called this “the foundation of creation”). Then he quoted the verse preferred by Jews outside Palestine—Genesis 2:24—including the additional word “two” (Mark 10:8; Matt 19:5). By deliberately using both arguments, Jesus emphasized that he agreed with those Jews who taught monogamy, contrary to the Pharisees.

This argument is loaded with problems. First, Jesus did not take “the opportunity to set them straight about polygamy, too.” There is no indication in Mark 10 that the issue of polygamy has even entered Jesus’ mind. The passage is about divorce, and Jesus argues that Scripture is on the side of those who do not permit it. This is where Jesus keeps his focus throughout the passage, and it is twisting the words of Jesus to imply that he is addressing a different issue than the one the passage is about. It is possible when we speak to one topic that what we say may have implications for another topic, but to claim that Jesus was trying to “set them straight about polygamy, too” is to twist Scripture.

Of course, Instone-Brewer claims that this is what Jesus is doing because he thinks that the word “the two” here in the Gospel of Mark means Jesus took the side of those who thought marriage was limited to two people, but this is problematic as well. First of all, the Gospel of Mark is written in Greek, not Hebrew, and Mark regularly quotes the Greek version of the Old Testament though Jesus would have quoted the Hebrew text that did not contain the words “the two.” This is the way the Gospels generally work. If I quote Jesus, I generally quote an English translation. This doesn’t mean I think Jesus used the exact words in this translation; it’s just a way of quoting the text as my audience is familiar with it. By using the words “the two,” Mark simply quotes the text as his Greek audience knows it, without making any claim that Jesus used those words over the Hebrew version of Genesis 2:24 or that Mark prefers the use of the words “the two” over a version that lacks those words. Instone-Brewer is reading too much into the form of Mark’s quotation here.

There is another problem with Instone-Brewer’s argument. He implies that Jesus’ reason for quoting both Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 is because Jesus wants to show his agreement with both anti-polygamist groups (neither of which he is a part) over against the mainstream view of Palestinian Jews (the group he is in!). Not only is this a wild guess at why Jesus quoted these two passages, but it is unlikely. Remember that Jesus is addressing the issue of divorce, not polygamy. Would it not be natural – even if polygamy is not on your mind – to turn to the two creation texts that address marriage when discussing the legality of divorce? Why suggest that Jesus turns to these two texts because he happens to know that some scroll stored at Qumran uses the one text against polygamy and that someone might (mis)read the Greek translation of the other text as opposing polygamy? Jesus’ audience is an Aramaic-speaking audience in Palestine, not the community gathered in Qumran or diaspora Jews who would have been most familiar with the Greek form of the text. Instone-Brewer’s argument is so forced that we must conclude it is nothing other than eisegesis, an effort to make Scripture say what we want it to say, which should strike us as quite troubling!

There are other problems here, including how Instone-Brewer subtly identifies the pro-polygamy stance with “the Pharisees” though I am not aware of any evidence that suggests it was a particularly Pharisaic belief, and how he suggests that Jesus is reminding his listeners of Qumran views when it is not clear that others wouldn’t have called this “the beginning of creation” or that Jesus’ audience was that familiar with Qumranic theology. But to keep this brief I want to focus instead on Instone-Brewer’s claim that Jesus “deliberately us[ed] both arguments” to “emphasize[] that he agreed with those Jews who taught monogamy, contrary to the Pharisees.” This is a twisting of Jesus’ argument plain and simple. Jesus is not speaking about the issue of polygamy; he did not use arguments against polygamy here but simply quoted Scripture having to do with marriage and divorce; he never contrasted himself to the Pharisees with regard to polygamy; and he does not here express any agreement or disagreement with anyone on the issue of polygamy. Instone-Brewer is wrong on every point.

This is not to say that Jesus didn’t have a stance on polygamy. Jesus seems to have been pro-celibacy in general (Matthew 19:10-12). One can imagine that if someone asked him, “Should I take a second wife?” he would have answered, “Better is he that takes no wives at all!” But would he have seen those with multiple wives as having engaged in an “immoral” activity by marrying them? There is nothing in the Bible that suggests this.

Did “Jesus and Paul Change God’s Commands”?

Instone-Brewer follows his discussion of Mark 10:1-12 with an argument that Paul “took the teaching against polygamy further by reversing the command that a man had to marry his dead brother’s wife.” In short, the Old Testament commands that if a man dies, having given his wife no children, his next of kin is obligated to marry her (even if that man already has a wife) and to give her a son who could carry on his brother’s family line. Instone-Brewer takes Paul’s command that a widow is “free to marry whomever she wishes” (1 Corinthians 7:39) as a reversal of this Old Testament law. But there are two major problems with his argument.

First, the levirate marriage law is specific to widows who have no sons and would not have applied to widows in general. Second, the law was not taken in Paul’s day (or even in Ruth’s day a millennium earlier!) as requiring the woman to marry the next of kin if there was another potential suitor for her. This law was already understood within Judaism to give the widow the freedom “to marry whomever she wishes.” To see Paul’s words here as reversing an Old Testament command is to twist Paul’s words out of a desire to make the New Testament anti-polygamy.

Instone-Brewer then asks, “Why did Jesus and Paul change God’s commands?” His answer: God’s commands are temporary and it’s God’s purposes that should always be the focus. He explains this as follows:

God’s purpose for marriage was to help individuals find mutual support in families. When there were too few men due to warfare, this purpose was accomplished by allowing polygamy to ensure male heirs. In more stable times, polygamy resulted in many men remaining single because wealthy men could have many wives. In order to maintain God’s purposes at times like these, the rule about polygamy had to change. God’s purposes are eternal, but his commands change in order to carry out those purposes in different situations. We might summarize God’s purpose in the words of Psalm 68:6: “God sets the lonely in families.”

In other words, Instone-Brewer suggests that polygamy was intended for times where there is a great disparity between the number of men and the number of women in a culture. If there is no such disparity, polygamy is immoral because it opposes God’s ideal of setting the lonely in families. (One could note that polyandry, the marriage of multiple men to one woman, could reverse any disparity created by polygyny, the marriage of multiple women to one man, but this is besides the point here.) Here again, Instone-Brewer is twisting Scripture. Psalm 68:6 is not giving the purpose of marriage. It is a verse about how God provides a home for the fatherless and the widow. The NRSV gives a more literal translation than the NIV here: “God gives the desolate a home to live in.” This is not about “loneliness” so that it should be applied to the poor man who is single because the rich men have taken all the available wives; it is about a person who does not have family – no brothers or cousins or anyone to take them in. Mephibosheth is a classic example (2 Samuel 9). He didn’t need a wife; he needed a king to take him into his home. Marriage may be one way that God gives the desolate a home to live in, but we show our lack of awareness of ancient Near Eastern hospitality when we think that Psalm 68:6 means everyone should be able to marry someone. That is not at all what David was talking about in this psalm.

Conclusion

David Instone-Brewer concludes that “Jesus criticized polygamy as a warped version of the lifelong committed relationship of a one-plus-one marriage.” When we examine his arguments, we find that he has built one forced argument on another to make Jesus say something that Jesus does not say. This should trouble anyone with a commitment to Scripture, regardless of what we think of the ethics of polygamy.

God forbid that any of us should let our traditions trump Scripture. God forbid that we should use our intellectual prowess and our research (two things Dr. Instone-Brewer has in abundance!) to twist the words of Jesus! We may think marriage should be a lifelong union between one man and one woman, but let us not make out the Bible to say this just because we believe it.

If we are going to be faithful to Scripture, we need to be more open-minded when reading it. We need to listen to what the Bible actually says rather than what we want it to say. In my next post, I will attempt to do this, surveying the Biblical teachings on polygamy and then considering why monogamy might be desirable even if it is not mandatory. But we should always start with Scripture and move to interpretation. If we start with the interpretation we want and then seek words like “the two” and “whomever she wishes” as phrases that we can hang new meanings on, then Scripture is no longer our guide; instead we have decided that we will guide Scripture according to our values. And that is a troubling abuse of Scripture.

It is often said that the Bible defines marriage as “a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman,” meaning that polygamy is unbiblical.[1] But the Bible offers no such definition and has a very different take on polygamy. Lamech, Jacob, Esau, Gideon, Elkanah (the father of Samuel), David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Ahab, Jehoram, Joash, and Jehoiachin were all polygamists. In addition, Nahor, Abraham, Jacob, Eliphaz, Manasseh, Caleb, Gideon, Saul, David, Solomon, and Rehoboam all had concubines. We do not know how many others in Scripture had multiple wives; these are just the ones whose wives come into the story. Moses may have been a polygamist, too, but it is not clear if his Midianite wife Zipporah was still alive when he took his Cushite wife in Numbers 12, less than a year after Zipporah comes to him in Exodus 18.

Polygamy in the Law of Moses

It is not that these men disregarded the law of God. The law itself allowed for and even called for polygamy in certain situations. There were certain restrictions put in place, such as Leviticus 18:18, which says you should not marry both a woman and her sister (as Jacob did). And there were instructions about how to do polygamy well: “If a man takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife” (Exodus 21:10). Or consider Deuteronomy 21:15-17:

If a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the one who is disliked, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn. He must acknowledge as firstborn the son of the one who is disliked, giving him a double portion of all that he has; since he is the first issue of his virility, the right of the firstborn is his.

In other words, the Torah does not view polygamy as a bad thing itself; it simply commands husbands to love their wives well, regardless of how many wives they may have.

Another law states that if a man dies, leaving a widow with no sons, his next of kin should marry her, which would often lead to the next of kin having multiple wives (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). But polygamy was necessary in a patriarchal, war-torn society. When woman are largely dependent on men for their sustenance and survival and men are dying in war, multiple women needed to be attached to one man (cf. Isaiah 4:1). And so the law of Moses was written to allow for and even encourage polygamy.

Polygamy: A Blessing or a Curse?

Of course, most men could not afford multiple wives, but the wealthy could, which is why those listed above tend to be kings and prosperous patriarchs. But for those who could have multiple wives, it was not only an acceptable arrangement, but was viewed as a sign of God’s blessing. It was because Jacob had two wives and two concubines that he was able to have twelve sons and become the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. The prophet Nathan tells David that it was God who gave him Saul’s wives when Saul died, and God would have given him more (2 Samuel 12:8)! His multiple marriages were God’s gift to him. In other words, the Old Testament portrays multiple wives as a good and desirable thing. If “he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains pleasure from the LORD” (Proverbs 18:22), how much more the one who finds two wives? This is why the heroes of the Bible are the men with more wives and concubines. These were a sign that these men were blessed by God. And in turn, having multiple wives allowed these men to have a “quiverful” of sons (cf. Psalm 127).

At the same time, the Bible highlights challenges that come with multiple marriages. Because Jacob favored Rachel over Leah, the two struggled for his attention. Something similar happened with Peninnah and Hannah, the wives of Elkanah. Even Sarah and Hagar had tension that did not end well for Hagar. This is why the Torah has the laws that it does about not marrying a woman and her sister or about not neglecting the first wife when taking a second: polygamy presents challenges not known to a monogamous family. It can become easy for one wife to be neglected when a “better” one comes along, and this neglect is a sin.

The story of Solomon is even more striking. Solomon is criticized for having taken many wives, but the problem is not that he was polygamous (this was expected of a king), but that he married foreign wives who led him to introduce the worship of other gods in Judah. It is here that sin comes into the picture, according to the biblical worldview. Polygamy is not a sin, but it has the potential of tempting one toward sin.

Marriage and Biblical Wisdom

So does the Bible define marriage in monogamous terms? No. The Bible allows for multiple marriages but disallows the mistreatment of a spouse. The Bible also urges wisdom. The king is told that he “must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself” (Deuteronomy 17:17, NRSV). How many wives is “many” and how much silver and gold is a “great quantity” is not specified. Wisdom calls for temperance. Just because someone can have more than one spouse doesn’t mean they should. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins because it turns us in upon ourselves. Jesus points to a better way: “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34). In all things – love, relationships, marriage, life – our goal is not to amass more but to love more.

Many who followed Jesus decided to forego marriage altogether. Paul warned: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 7:32-35). He clearly says in this same chapter that “if you marry, you do not sin, … yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that” (1 Corinthians 7:28). Perhaps the same can be said of polygamy: it is not a sin issue, but it is a wisdom issue. Is polygamy wise?

The Normalization of Monogamy

It was the Romans who introduced the idea that polygamy is immoral. While there is no biblical warrant for this assessment, there is wisdom to the Roman way. Sociologists have noted how polygamy is often rooted in economic disparity and can further that disparity, giving the wealthy man a larger family which can perpetuate its own power and wealth.[2] In times when a society is not war-torn, polygyny (multiple wives for one husband) can lead to poorer men being unable to find wives and have families. In some cases polygyny can lead to abuse, as is highlighted in the Netflix series “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.” Not to mention that tensions are more likely to arise when there are multiple people desiring the attention of one, as we noted above.

This may be why Paul lists being “a one-woman man” as one of the qualifications for being an overseer or a deacon (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6). This is the only place in the Bible where monogamy is held out as preferable to polygamy, and still here, polygamy is not seen as a sin. Was it because a polygamist would be too occupied with a larger family to be able to oversee the church well? Was it because a polygamist would be viewed less favorably in the wider Roman world? It is hard to know, but Paul does see wisdom in urging Timothy and Titus to appoint monogamist overseers and deacons.

We also see both in the New Testament and in the wider world around the New Testament an increasing status of women. So far we have considered only the concept of polygyny (one man, multiple wives), not the concept of polyandry (one woman, multiple husbands), an arrangement that is unknown in the biblical world. Polygyny is often rooted in a patriarchal society, but the New Testament is pushing toward a society where “there is neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), where not only does a husband have authority over a wife but the wife has authority over the husband (1 Corinthians 7:4). This shift from a mentality where men own their wives to a more egalitarian model was perhaps not made fully enough to lead to polyandry in the first century but was made fully enough to make monogamy seem more natural than polygyny.

So the move to normalize monogamy happened naturally as Christianity gained influence in the Roman world and as Christians wrestled with what it meant for a wife to have authority over her husband’s body as well as vice versa. But this does not mean that polygamy is inherently sinful or forbidden. Nowhere is this thought expressed in the Bible. There are different family models, and there were good reasons for monogamy to become normalized, but it is not the only biblical family model.

What This Means for the Church Today

Polygamy is currently illegal in much of the western world, but it is likely only a matter of time before this changes, and already polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamy are becoming increasingly common.[3] The Church is not really ready for this. I have friends who are effectively in a polygamous marriage who wouldn’t dare walk into a church for fear of judgment. As the Casting Crowns song says, “The weight of their judgmental glances tells him that his chances are better out on the road.” People trying to manage multiple relationships are in need of biblical wisdom and the grace of God, and sadly they feel unwelcome in the Church. If we want to be the body of Christ, his “hands and feet,” we have to become like Jesus and be friends of those who live unconventional lifestyles. The purpose is not to convert them to conventional lifestyles but to help them fulfill the royal law of Scripture: to love selflessly.

Jesus said that the Torah and the Prophets all hang on two commandments: loving God and loving neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40). Elsewhere he said that the Law and the Prophets are summed up in doing to others “whatever you wish that people would do to you” (Matthew 7:12). Paul taught that “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). James said that “the royal law of Scripture” is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8). Scripture repeatedly emphasizes that our calling is to love others. And when Jesus tells the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” what he means is not that we should teach them all to be monogamists (something Jesus never taught), but that we should teach them what he said it all boils down to: loving God and loving neighbor.

This is what the world around us needs. How will marriages survive, especially marriages that involve multiple relationships? Through biblical, Christlike, self-sacrificial, unconditional love. The Church needs to model this in the way we love the world. We need to help the world see what it means to deny the self and to love others as we love ourselves.

The Bible gives a lot more freedom in defining marriage than we tend to admit, and the Bible is far more concerned with empowering people to love one another than with defining societal models. There is a reason for this: cultures change, and what it means to love our neighbor changes with the culture. This is why many of the Old Testament laws were no longer applicable in the New Testament. The enduring feature of biblical law is love of neighbor (Matthew 7:12; 22:34-40; cf. Romans 13:8-10). All else is commentary about how the Israelites could best do this in their own cultural setting.

The same can be said of Paul’s letters: He is giving instructions for how to live out the royal law within a particular cultural setting, but we must determine what that looks like in our own cultural context. This is why we read 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and don’t require women to wear head coverings today. We recognize that Paul’s teaching about head coverings is instruction about how to love one’s neighbor in a different context than our own and that we must discover what it means for us to best love our neighbor in our own cultural context.

All biblical interpretation involves a process of determining the deeper principles that lie behind the context-based instruction, and determining how to best apply those principles in our own setting. Again, cultures change and what it means to love our neighbor changes with the culture. For centuries the Church has attempted to apply biblical wisdom to the traditional marriage, but as society moves away from traditional marriages, the Church should be there to help society see how biblical wisdom can help it navigate these changes.

Sinlessness, Holiness, and Wisdom

The Bible uses different models for thinking about right and wrong actions. The model most people are familiar with today is sin, which involves transgressing against a commandment of God. Having multiple partners is not a sin, but there are other categories to consider.

The Bible also speaks in terms of holiness, which biblically refers to being consecrated or set apart for a specific purpose. Biblically, a person could avoid all sins and yet not be holy. Meanwhile a person could be set apart for a special purpose and yet sin against one of God’s laws. When we speak of “holiness” in the biblical sense, we are not speaking of sin issues but of consecration. A priest or a Levite, for example, was set apart for God in a special way that the common Israelite was not. Israel itself was a “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), set apart from the nations of the world. This meant that they didn’t just avoid sins, but they lived in a way to set them apart from the other nations. The concept of holiness was continued in the Catholic priesthood, where priests would avoid marriage altogether, not because marriage was sinful, but because the priest was “holy,” set apart for a special purpose.

A third category the Bible uses is wisdom. A person is to avoid laziness not because laziness is sinful (in the biblical sense of the term), but because it is foolish since it leads to poverty (Proverbs 6:6-11). As Christians we should ask not just if polygamy is sinful (it is not), but if it is wise and if it is a proper way to consecrate ourselves to God’s purposes for our lives.

For me it is the category of holiness that inspires me to be “a one-woman man.” A person devoted to one spouse has undivided loyalties. When I consider my call to love my wife “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25), I see myself as best able to fulfill this calling if I am consecrating myself for my wife alone. My being “a one-woman man” is how I practice holiness both to my wife and to God. Others will be struck more by the wisdom of monogamy, as polygamy is a more challenging marriage structure. Others still will find that for them, polygamy may be both holy and wise, and still others will find that for them singleness is the best path. People do life differently, and the Bible provides model polygamists, model monogamists, and model lifelong singles. Each person must find the best way to honor God with their own lives (Romans 12:1-3; 1 Corinthians 6:18-20).

Conclusion

Most who are reading this will choose the path of monogamy, and that is a good thing. I have found a 20+ year focus on loving one person to be a great blessing. But let us make that choice because it is the holy and wise choice for us, not because we think that polygamy is a sin against God. This will help us to love others for whom it might be holy and wise to love multiple partners. And let us train each other that marriage should be rooted in the command to love others as ourselves. If we cannot learn selfless love, we are not ready to take on one marriage, let alone two. The role of the Church is not to condemn people who do things differently but to love them and to help them learn biblical wisdom and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Only if we admit that the Bible is not so condemning toward people with other marriage models will we be able to love them unconditionally and set for them an example that will help them in their own relationships.

[1] For the quote, see for example, https://www.desiringgod.org/topics/marriage. For a typical argument that the Bible teaches that polygamy is immoral, see Lexham Press, “Polygamy in the Bible (and What Jesus Said about it),” Logos Bible Software Blog, and my response to it, “Polygamy in the Bible: A Response to David Instone-Brewer.”

[2] Walter Scheidel, “Monogamy and Polygyny,” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, 5-6.

[3] Jessica Klein, “Ethical non-monogamy: the rise of multi-partner relationships,” BBC, March 25, 2021.