Just Another Blog in the Wheel

Dear Steve: Recently I responded to a facebook article entitled something like “forced monogamy encourages sexual immorality” posted by a gentile convert to Messianic Judaism in which he seemed to suggest it was okay to have a sexual relationship with someone besides ones wife, although if an offspring results then a man must take financial responsibility for that child. Somehow that doesn’t sound very biblical to me (except perhaps the latter part of paying child support)! What would your opinion on this be?

Robert Louis Dabney, in his little tome on ethics, surveys the Scripture teaching on monogamy. God created Adam & Eve. The first bigamist was a jerk. Every patriarchal instance of bringing in more than one female would move anyone who was awake when they read the accounts to avoid multiple partners like a plague. Who has woe? Who has sorrow? The fool who thinks you can stuff the house into a harem. Idiots.

Dabs goes on to remind us that honor is enjoined for mother and father (one of each), and the commandment forbids coveting the neighbor’s wife, not wives. These and assorted other mentions, make a nice little case that the Creator’s obvious intention, if the Bible be the judge, is lifelong monogamy between two people (one of each gender, and yes, there are but two) of like faith.

The really interesting element to all this is that the polygamists are just drooling, waiting to have a go at those who think sola scriptura means that no tradition is authoritative. The Moron, I’m sorry, Mormon arguments have been published for well over a century. Take a peak if you want to know the sound you’ll hear down the road a piece. What this particular babbler you refer to may say is completely inconsequential. But when the issue is seriously put forth by folks in the Public Square (the enemy, you might have guessed, is almost certain to employ WOMEN as the chief advocates of polygamy, assessing it as an ideal situation where Ms. Domestic can wash all the pots she wants while Ms. Career goes out and earns some bacon), the real battle will be engaged wherein Protestants who remain blind to the inescapability and importance of tradition, will be publicly humiliated.

Rummaging in the attic for Viagra will not help them recover from the shame. North American Evanjellyism is flaccid to stay, in part because they don’t hear the Lord of All saying in a thousand voices that, while His Enscripturated Word is indeed the final arbiter in all disputes where the subject is indeed addressed in the Bible, He has not elected to have the Bible speak about everything. And that is okay! Silly jellyfish don’t realize that a high view of Scripture can be joined to heretical zeal for want of interpretive skills, while a somewhat less than fully appreciative view of the power of God’s Word in Scripture may well be joined to a staunch advocacy of orthodoxy.

Do you follow this? I’m sorry if I sound muddled. The above is actually cogent, even if it isn’t well said. But let me add a little P.S. The Jews can clearly trace their ban against polygamy, not to the Bible, but to a particular ruling of a particular rabbi one thousand years after the Messiah came (my time line, not theirs–mine is correct). Would you rather have a universal proper practice predicated on an extra-Biblical authority, or a doctrine of Biblical authority that is forced to confess before a watching world that it’s a little bit fuzzy on this question of multi-partnered marriage?

In keeping with the brilliant exegesis applied to some things I’ve spoken or written, I suspect it would be well to say: If anyone thinks they detect less than fully Protestant sentiments in the above, they are wrong. Anyone who smells a budding apologist for Rome should have their nose examined. And anyone who senses a less than maniacal devotion to the authority of Scripture hasn’t much sense.

All right, Weirdsma, you got your answer. Now send a donation to Messiah’s. You can Paypal it at our site: MessiahNYC.org. And how about a few illustrations from your talented hand?

steve