New Covenant Patriarchy

Friday, January 28, 2005

New Covenant Patriarchy in Context

The list of problems of life under Satan in our time is getting stinkier and longer and deeper into the realm of "I just can't take it anymore."  Having, almost universally, in the church and out of it, decided that God's Law is the last thing we could want in our lives, God is granting our wish and letting our will be done.  As eagerly as preachers dish-out pap against "the Old Testament's rules and regulations," so have congregants lapped up the idea that Jesus came to save us from God's Law - except, you know, the moral laws, that is those parts of the Old Testament we all agree are moral, as long as we can place limits on them ("so don't label me an anti-nomian!").

What awaits these escapees from the God's Law are the curses outlined in the last two thirds's of Deuteronomy 28.

For those of us who love God's Law and see it as a manifestation of His character, it is a wonderful gift and the key to all the blessings of God that we were made to enjoy.  With Christ having fulfilled the Law we are never condemned by it because He has put us on the right side of the Law and it is now our friend, our delight, and the object of our study all day long.

Certainly, we have not "arrived" at full mature obedience, but we are always working on learning, and understanding God's Law more and more and changing our thoughts, words, and actions to conform to it.  As we become more mature, however many generations that takes, we will at last reap fully the promises written about in Zechariah and Isaiah, and the abundant blessings of the first third of Deuteronomy 28.

So, while those who despise God's Law, in part or in whole, are focusing their energies trying to escape the inevitable curses of God as those curses overtake them and pursue them, continually bursting their bubble-fantasy world of rebellion against the God who made reality, we will be pursuing His will, His definition of right and wrong, and His values, all the while being more and more pursued and overtaken by His blessings, health, peace, and salvation.  Biblical patriarchal polygyny is just a part of it.

Posted by Wayne McGregor on 01/28 at 09:19 AM
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Thursday, January 20, 2005

Tom Shipley Responds ... Part 3

Mr. Yeager: God did not evolve his standards over time, but He did initially reduce them, because there was no way for people to meet them. In Matthew 19:8 it says, “Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.’”

Once Jesus came to earth, it became possible for people (through the Holy Spirit’s reforming work in their lives) to meet God’s true standards of morality.

Evidence for this change in the standard for marriage is found in passages like 1 Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6. Also, in Mark 10:11 it says, “He answered, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.’” If He said that, why would it be OK to marry another woman *without* divorcing your first wife?

 
Tom:   I am glad you raised these points and once again commend my book as a systematic response to the issues at hand. You really should order a copy.
   Let me respond sequentially to the above-referenced points you make.
   First, it is sheer equivocation to say, “God did not evolve his standards over time, but he did initially reduce them.” A reduction of moral standards is an evolution, a change, of standards. I can’t really blame you so much for such hair-splitting, shoddy logic when such logical absurdities are heaped upon us ad infinitum by “authorities” who should know better. So I appeal to your God-given rationality to solve this puzzle for yourself and to lean not on the arm of flesh. Do you not see the patent non-sequitur in this assertion? Is it not, in fact, self-evident once you actually consider what kind of proposition it is? It is to say, God did not change his standards over time but He did change His standards over time.
   Secondly, as you may have already gleaned from the exerpt from my book, I have a few things to say about the “party line” interpretation of Matthew 19:8. We have already established that God’s moral Law does not evolve, a proposition you have indicated you agree with—though, as I have pointed out, subverted with equivocation.
   Since we are in professed agreement with one another that God’s moral standards do not evolve over time, we can proceed on a firm foundation to Matthew 19:8. First, since we agree that the New Covenant standard with respect to divorce is the necessity of fornication preceeding it; and second, since we agree that God’s standards do not evolve over time, then we must of necessity agree that the New Covenant standard is the same as the Old Covenant standard both of which require fornication as a necessary pre-condition for a man to divorce his wife; therefore, we must agree that the allowance for divorce under the Old and New Covenant does not represent any kind of concession to man’s sinfulness which would in fact be an evolution of God’s moral standards over time.
   The necessary conclusion is obvious: divorce is not a change of moral standard, it is not a concession to man’s sinfulness, but in fact a form of punishment against man’s hard-heartedness demonstrated in marital unfaithfulness on the part of adulterous women and demonstrated in the hard-heartedness of men who commit adultery with other men’s wives. This hard-heartedness and the consequent necessity of divorce were not so from the beginning because Adam and Eve were created upright. But when sin entered in, so did divorce as a means of redress against this evil. The idea of divorce (or polygamy) as a concession to man’s sin on God’s part is the superimposition of an antibiblical concept onto the pages of Scripture.
   Can you really believe that the divorce provision concerning an unfaithful wife does not involve some kind of penalty and punishment?
   As to the second point about the empowering work of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing I see to quarrel with.
   Finally, you cite I Timothy 3:12, Titus 1:6 and Mark 10:11 as “evidence” of a “change in the standard of marriage,” though you have already professed to believe that “God did not evolve (H)is standards over time.” Well, which is it? Your declarations are rife with confusion and contradiction. I think I have already dealt sufficiently with this above, so let us proceed to the passages you cite.
   The Greek phrase in I Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6 is “mias gunaikos andra.” New Testament Greek scholar, and respected Evangelical commentator, Jay E. Adams, tells us that this phrase, found only in these two instances, is an “unusual construction,” (Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible, pg. 81). This “unusualness” is conceded to by many other Evangelical scholars. This, of course, should immediately raise the question in the minds of astute readers, “If this construction appears so ‘unusual’ to experts in New Testament Greek, then could there be a more natural understanding of the meaning of the passage which would render the phrase more ‘usual’?” Is it possible that commentators, blinded by presuppositions about what the phrase could possibly be talking about, have overlooked an obvious alternative?
   Evidence for this is right in the epistle of Titus itself, in 3:10; “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition…” The word “first” here, “mian,” is a form of the word “mia” that is used earlier in 1:6. The word for “one” in Greek is “mia.” But the precise form of the word, “mia,” is also used in John 20:1, “The first day of the week, cometh Mary Magdalene…”
    Notice that in John 20:1 and Titus 3:10, we have 2 forms of the word “mia,” (“mia” and “mian”) both of which are translated “first” in English. This word, “mia,” is therefore capable of being translated as either “one” or “first.” Since understanding the word “mias” in I Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6 as “one wife man” results in an “unusual construction,” permit me to suggest that the correct translation here is “first wife man.” What we have in I Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6 is the rule that ordained elders and deacons in the Church should still be married to their first wives. That is to say, we have a regulation here concerning divorce, not polygamy. This rule echoes and reiterates the warning and condemnation of Malachi 2:14-16 against the priests who divorced their wives:
14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been a witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant.
15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.
16 For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.
   Note well that this Old Covenant passage addresses the priests (Mal. 3:1), the ecclesiastical officers of Israel, admonishing them against divorce; and the parallel fact of Paul addressing the ordained elders of the Christian church in reference to marriage. Is this a “coincidence” without any significance? No, the issue in both passages is the unlawful divorce of wives. The subject of polygamy only appears to be dealt with in I Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6 because of  poor translation informed by faulty doctrinal premises (that is, the monogamy-only doctrine).
   In essence, I Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6 are irrelevant to the issue of polygamy because it is not polygamy but divorce at issue. If, in fact, these two passages lay down a “one wife man” rule, then it is the only place in Scripture to do so in contradiction to the entire body of relevant scripture permiting polygamy.
   Concerning Mark 10:11 (and parallel Matt. 19:9), and your question, “ ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her.’ If He said that, why would it be OK to marry another woman *without* divorcing your first wife?”
   This is, indeed, a pertinent question and one which does have a very good biblical answer. The key biblical passage to consult and compare with Mark 10 & Matthew 19 is Exodus 21:10-11:
 If he take him another wife, her...duty of marriage shall he not diminish. If he do not (this) unto her, then she shall go out free without money.
This passage (as well a several other OT passages) rather clearly makes provision for polygamy, more precisely, polygyny, plural wives. What is notable, and seldom commented upon by commentators, is that the factual circumstances addressed by this law are directly relevant to the issues addressed by Christ in Matthew 19 and Mark 10. I quote to you what I have written in my book:
In Matthew 19:9, Jesus states, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” This statement is commonly cited as refutation of polygamy. But is it? Is it not rather a refutation of divorce on demand? What if a man does not put away his wife and marries another? If the one flesh relationship, that is the “duty of marriage” (Exo.21:10), with the first wife remains intact, then the marital bond has not been divided asunder. Is this not, in fact, precisely what Exodus 21:10 informs us? The adultery in the example given us by Christ consists of the dissolution of the marital bond with the first wife and the substitution of her with a second wife.
 
Exodus 21:10-11 commands: "If he take him another wife…her duty of marriage shall he not diminish.”

It is the failure of the husband to continue providing sexual relations with the first wife, not taking a second wife, which releases the first wife from her marriage. In short, taking a second wife does not constitute adultery, but doing so to replace the first wife does. 

Since the concubine is permitted to divorce her master on grounds of failure to provide sexual relations, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the master has violated the marital union. What word best describes the violation of the marital bond? Is it not adultery? We see, then, that this law both permits polygamy and at the same time does not permit the putting away of the first wife. If, however, the master should put her away via desertion of the marriage bed, the concubine is then given the right of divorce. How else are we to categorize the offense of the master other than as adultery? I see no plausible escape from this conclusion. This is directly relevant to whether or not Christ’s words in Matthew 19 invalidate polygamy because Exodus 21 addresses the exact same scenario as does Christ, that is, the putting away of a first wife, substituting her with a second wife, but it explicitly permits polygamy in the same context. There is, therefore, no valid way to conclude that Christ’s words in Matthew 19 invalidate polygamy.
   I hope you will consider this above quotation from my book very carefully. For it is not the imposition of extra-biblical concepts onto the pages of Scripture but Scriptural considerations themselves which bear directly upon the issue at hand.
Posted by Wayne McGregor on 01/20 at 04:59 PM
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Tom Shipley Responds ... Part 2

II
Mr. Yeager: So, what about all the men who would not be able to find wives if polygamy was allowed? The ratio of male children to female children is about 50/50. If a man has four wives, that means that there are three other men who cannot marry. In the Old Testament, the men who did not marry were the ones who could not afford to marry. In today’s society, that distinction does not exist.
Also, one-to-one marriages are not a limitation on the number of children that can be born. My parents had eight kids, and I have several friends whose parents had 10 or even 16 kids.
It seems to me that polygamy is actually damaging to children. Many studies have found that the lack of a good father figure causes significant to children. Now, my father is a great man, and was easily able to be a good father to his eight kids. But, if one man has 50 children, how can he spend time with all of them?
Tom:   In point of fact the global ratio of male to female births is 51.something to 48.something. There is a slight preponderance of female to male births. But this is hardly the whole story and it is not the most significant part of the story. Consider the following comments of Christian scholar Gary North. Though North is no friend of biblical polygamy, he certainly knows what he is talking about concerning the church. Consider:
Excess Single Women in Western Churches
Polygamy as the New Testament’s ideal standard for marriage has occasionally been defended by anti-establishment religious groups as a supposed means of strengthening the family – always the “patriarchal family.” This is a strange argument. Polygamy did not strengthen any family in the Old Testament. It surely does not strengthen families that it keeps from being formed by reducing the pool of eligible women for marriage. But what about the disparity between the number of male and female members in the Western Church? Would polygamy solve this problem?

It is not widely recognized that Western Christianity for many centuries has been afflicted by an imbalance of men and women church members. This may not be the case with Greek Orthodoxy, where equality seems to prevail,36 but it has been the case with all other major denominations.37 Women outnumber men, sometimes by wide margins. In African-American congregations in the United States, in Latin American and Italian Roman Catholic churches, and in white Pentecostal churches, women outnumber men by two-to-one or more. If Paul’s rule against marriages between Christians and non-Christians were honored by unmarried women in these groups, the formation of families would decrease.

Assume that unmarried women in the churches turned down all offers of marriage by non-Christians. Non-Christian males could not marry Christian women, who would refuse their offers. Meanwhile, many single Christian women would find no husbands. Unless the churches could find a solution to the problem of gender disparity, the widespread presence of churches in any society would produce increased crime, other things being equal. There would be too many unmarried young men.

The practical solution to this Western social problem has been simple: most Christian women marry covenant-breakers when asked, if no one else has asked or is likely to ask. This practice has continued for centuries. Adult sons of these religiously mixed marriages more often refuse to join the church than adult daughters. They imitate their fathers. Daughters imitate their mothers. They join the church and then marry non-members, just as their mothers did. In a book on this continuing disparity of membership, the author does not mention this imitation phenomenon as the reason why this disparity continues, generation after generation. He offers no explanation for the disparity, which appears in all branches of the Western church, nor does he explain why the problem does not afflict Eastern Orthodoxy. He recognizes that sons reject their mothers as role models, imitating Chapter 3 . . . I Timothy 3:1–2 their fathers,38 but he does not discuss the obvious: their mothers have broken God’s law by marrying non-Christian men, and their daughtersfollow their example. Establishing a family covenant becomes more important to unmarried Christian women than maintaining the church covenant. Romance defeats confession.

Would polygamy in the churches reduce this problem? I have twice been asked this question by a prominent African-American pastor, whose congregation is filled with unmarried women who cannot find husbands. Polygamy might solve the problem for some of these woman, but it would raise all of the other problems by setting a legal precedent which, if authorized by civil law and imitated by the general culture, would produce increased social disorder. Polygamy would not solve the underlying problem, namely, an excess of women in the churches. Because this problem is rarely discussed in public, churches have done nothing to solve it for several hundred years.

The negative aspects of not being married seem very great to eligible unmarried women. When asked by covenant-breakers to marry, they do not look into the future and acknowledge that their sons will go to hell if they imitate their fathers, which most of them will. Meanwhile, their parents and their churches offer no serious negative sanctions for this act of covenant-breaking. The lure of the benefits of marriage is not offset in their minds by the threat of immediate negative ecclesiastical and family sanctions or by longterm negative sanctions: the eternal fate of their sons and the temporal miseries of sharing a life with covenant-breakers. So, they marry these men. The disparity of church membership continues. To put it somewhat graphically, theology and sanctionless ecclesiology are no match for sexual passion during women’s child-bearing years. As a result, Satan harvests the souls of many sons of Christian mothers, century after century.
Monogamy and Social Order
39. Gary North, Inheritance and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Deuteronomy, 2nd electronic edition (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Dominion Educational Ministries, Inc., [1999] 2003), Appendix D: “The Demographics of American Judaism.” Page. 111
 
   As you can see, there is, indeed, a practical problem which could be remedied in the Church by an acceptance of biblical polygamy. The real-world question is not, “What about all of the men who would not be able to find wives if polygamy was accepted?” This question presupposes a fantasy-world which in reality does not exist. The real world reality is the excess of single Christian women with a shortage of (single) Christian men to marry. Gary North tells us in the above quote the reality of where we are without indulgence in denial and fantasy: the rejection of Christian polygamy has resulted in Satan harvesting the souls of countless millions of sons of Christian mothers century after century. If you want to deal with practical realities, why don’t we start right here?
 
 
Posted by Wayne McGregor on 01/20 at 04:34 PM
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Tom Shipley Responds ... Part 1

The following letter from Tom to a Mr. Yeager answers typical evangelical objections concerning Biblical polygyny.

Dear Mr. Yeager:

   I want to thank you so much for taking the time to respond to some of the things posted on the NewCovenantPatriarchy.com website, and apologize for taking so long to respond; I’ve been quite absorbed in other responsibilities for the last month or so.

   In any event, it may be apparent or, perhaps not, that my book is quite focused on commenting upon the same assertions and contentions you have raised as well as many other issues. I would urge you to order a copy of my book, Man & Woman in Biblical Law, since obviously these issues seemed important enough to you to respond to them. My whole thesis is laid out systematically in the book and a piecemeal response in an e-mail does run the risk of not giving the issue due diligence and consideration. The issues I am writing about are important enough to deserve diligent book-length answers and not merely ad hoc, cursory response. Be that as it may, let me answer the points you have raised. First, responding to the article, “New Covenant Patriarchy & Divorce as Punishment,” you say…

I

Mr. Yeager: If that were the case, why did Jesus say “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31-32)?

That verse implies that men divorced their wives for reasons other than adultery.
Tom:   I don’t know your level of biblical knowledge, so please, bear with me if I seem overly didactic. Whatever may be implied by Matthew 5:31-32 about the practices of the Jews in Jesus’ day, the empirical and demonstrable fact of the matter is, Deuteronomy 24:1 (the law being commented upon) establishes a requirement of a basis for divorce: the KJV uses the word “uncleanness,” as the requirement, other translations variously as “something indecent,”  “immodesty,” etc. The literal Hebrew is not a word but the phrase, “nakedness of a thing.” I ask the same question I posed in my book: what else can “nakedness of a thing” refer to other than the things people do when they are naked, that is, engage in sexual relations? It certainly does not refer to taking a shower or going to the bathroom. This is the first and most important foundational issue that must be understood in order to properly understand Jesus’ interchange with the Pharisees.

   Deuteronomy 24:1 is thus to be translated:  

When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some nakedness of a thing {fornication} in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.
 Thus, we see very clearly from a better understanding of the nature of the offense giving rise to the allowance of divorce, that divorce is, indeed, in the nature of a punishment. What is not so immediately obvious to most of us from a modern, Western mindset, is that the woman is sent away from all that pertains to the man’s house including the children. Divorce is, indeed, punitive in nature. It is a familial form of excommunication. It is a disinheritance.
   A second elementary consideration here is the phrase, “It hath been said…” This statement stands in contrast to, “It is written…” which refers to Scripture. When Jesus says, “It hath been said,” as opposed to, “It is written,” he is referring to the oral tradition of the Pharisees and scribes. In other words, Jesus is bringing the Pharisees and the scribes back to the true source of authority, the Scriptures; this is apparent on its face because the rule he propounds as authoritative is precisely the same requirement of Deuteronomy 24:1, requiring “nakedness of a thing,” fornication, as a basis of divorce. Jesus was not altering Scripture but reaffirming it. He was not making a new rule but absolutely insisting upon the old Scriptural rule.
   A third aspect of Jesus’ words to note is that when he says, “It hath been said,” he quotes what has been said, and what has been said censors and excludes and omits any reference to “nakedness of a thing,” fornication, as a basis of requirement of divorce. In other words the scribes and Pharisees were taking the smorgasbord approach to Scripture, accepting the part they liked (divorce and the certificate) and rejecting the part they did not like (the underlying requirement of fornication). They wanted a whimsical divorce-on-demand rule in defiance of Deuteronomy 24:1.
   The following quotation from scholar Greg Bahnsen, commenting upon the word “allowed” or “suffered” in Matthew 19:8,  provides further light upon what Jesus is talking about when he says that divorce was “allowed:” 

“Some commentators have mistakenly viewed this word as indicating deprecated toleration of a positive evil (i.e., reluctantly forbearing something against which you have strong scruples or detest). Such a connotation must be read into the word. It is used quite simply for the giving of candid permission (without overtones of disapprobation). When ‘epitrepo’ is used elsewhere in the NT there is no reason to think that the person using it intends to approve of something that he considers definitely improper. It is primarily used for the gaining of authorization from a superior...Jn. 19:43...Acts 21:39-40...Acts 26:1...Acts 27:3...Acts 28:16...Mat. 8:21...I Cor. 16:7...Heb. 6:3...Gen 39:6 (LXX)...Est. 9:14...Job 32:14...

Therefore, it is unwarranted to maintain that, in Matt. 19:8, Jesus represents the Mosaic law as ‘tolerating with disapproval’ an immoral activity, viz. divorce. The verse simply reports that Moses authorized the use of divorce. One should note, in passing, that the commentators who read the connotation of disapproval-of-an-immoral-activity into the word ‘epitrepo’ fail to justify their view that an all holy God could enact an immoral law. How, one must ask in astonishment, could the God who is ‘of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity’ (Hab. 1:13), the just Lord who ‘will do no iniquity’ (Zeph. 3:5), tolerate the legislation of immorality in His law, which is itself perfect, right, pure, and righteous altogether (Ps. 19:7-9)? Even leaving linguistic considerations aside this theological difficulty with the view is insurmountable.” — (“Theonomy in Christian Ethics,” n. pg. 102) 

   The idea that God allows or tolerates sin (!!!) via the provisions of His self-described “pure,” and “perfect” and “righteous altogether” Law, is a seriously defective view which the Evangelical church needs to disabuse itself of. This is a wholly unbiblical belief. Indeed, it is positively antibiblical.
Posted by Wayne McGregor on 01/20 at 11:08 AM
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