New Covenant Patriarchy

Man and Woman in Biblical Law

The Institute for Christian Patriarchy is happy to announce the availability of:

by Tom Shipley Second Edition
ISBN Number: 978-0-557-52900-1

Complete Scripture and Topical Indices

$28.50 - Paper Back Edition
$ 9.99 - Downloadable File
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Book Information:
Paperback: 285 pages
Binding: Perfect-Bound Binding
Date: June 2010
Publisher: Institute for Christian Patriarchy

About This Book:

This book is a doctrinal manifesto. Its aim and purpose is to produce what many modern writers are fond of referring to as a paradigm shift. The goal is to lay the foundation for the establishment of a truly biblical social order, especially within the community of Bible-believing, Christ-honoring families. The subject matter is patriarchy and the biblical exposition contained herein is devoted to establishing the proposition that it is patriarchy which is and was mandated by God ever since the original creation of man and woman.

This work is vulnerable to being misperceived as a work primarily about polygamy since the bulk of the exposition centers around that subject. But read carefully. Note the flow of the argumentation. The biblical exposition on polygamy here serves a supporting role to the fundamental proposition of God-ordained and mandated patriarchy. In terms of this thesis, it is a secondary and subsidiary point - which is not to say that it is not important as a subject in its own right.

There are a multitude within the ranks of the Evangelical churches who are rightly and justifiably dismayed at the encroachment of feminist ideology as a subversive factor within Christendom and who are formally in favor of the biblical mandate of male headship within the Family and the Church. Sadly, almost all of the responses and reactions to this encroachment are fundamentally compromised with feminism in one way or another. This present work rejects all such compromise.

A complete Scripture Index and a Topical Index are included.

Preface
Introduction

Article 1: How Feminism Denies the Gospel
Article 2: Patriarchy Before the Fall, Part 1
Article 3: Patriarchy Before the Fall, Part 2
Article 4: Patriarchy Before the Fall, Part 3
Article 5: Patriarchy Before the Fall, Part 4
Article 6: Patriarchy Before the Fall, Part 5
Article 7: Patriarchy Before the Fall, Part 6
Article 8: In Defense of Patriarchy and Polygamy

Article 9: "Contradictions" Between Genesis and the Law of Moses, Part 1
Article 10: "Contradictions" Between Genesis and the Law of Moses, Part 2

Article 11: The Laws of God, Part 1
Article 12: The Laws of God, Part 2
Article 13: The Laws of God, Part 3
Article 14: The Laws of God, Part 4

Article 15: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #1: Lamech
Article 16: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #2: Abraham
Article 17: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #3: Jacob
Article 18: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #4: Esau
Article 19: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #5: Moses
Article 20: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #6: Gideon
Article 21: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #7: Jair
Article 22: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #8: Ibzan
Article 23: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #9: Abdon
Article 24: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #10: Elkanah
Article 25: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #11: Saul
Article 26: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #12: David, Part 1
Article 27: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #12: David, Part 2
Article 28: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #12: David, Part 3
Article 29: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #13: Solomon
Article 30: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #14: Caleb
Article 31: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #15: Caleb #2
Article 32: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #16: Rehoboam
Article 33: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #17: Joash
Article 34: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #18: Xerxes
Article 35: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #17: Belshazzar
Article 36: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #20-21: Abijah and Jerahmeel
Article 37: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #22 YAHWEH
Article 38: All the Polygamists of the Bible, #23-40

Article 39: Polygamy: Miscellaneous Passages and Comments
Article 40: Patriarchy and Polygamy in the New Covenant
Article 41: The New Covenant and Polygamy,
Article 42: Martin Luther and Polygamy: The "Strange" Case of Philip of Hesse

Article 43: The Commentators, #1: Rushdoony
Article 44: The Commentators, #2: Archer
Article 45: The Commentators, #3: Hodge
Article 46: The Commentators, #4: Murray
Article 47: The Commentators, #5: Kaiser
Article 48: The Commentators, #6: Wenham
Article 49: The Commentators, #7: Jordan
Article 50: The Commentators, #8: North
Article 51: The Commentators, #9: Smith
Article 52: The Commentators, #10: Adams
Article 53: The Commentators, #11: Lockyer
Article 54: The Commentators, #12: Tucker
Article 55: The Commentators, #13: Foh

Article 56: God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ
Article 57: Patriarchy in the Church: I Corinthians 11:2-15; 14:34-37
Article 58: Feminist Hermeneutics: Making the Straight Places Crooked

Epilogue: The Biblical Reformation of Marriage
Victims of Monogamania
Scripture Index
Topical Index

From the Back Cover

From the back cover:

“For by a secret law of nature, things that stand chief love to be singular; but things that are subject are set under, not only one under one, but, if the system of nature or society allow, even several under one, not without becoming beauty. For neither hath one slave so several masters, in the way that several slaves have one master. Thus we read not that any of the holy women served two or more living husbands; but we read that many females served one husband, when the social state of the nation allowed it, and the purpose of the time persuaded it: for neither is it contrary to the nature of marriage. For several females can conceive from one man: but one female cannot from several men (such is the power of things principal) as many souls are rightly made subject to one God.” —St. Augustine

“We should not assume that our ways are normal and that God’s ways are an abnormality which needs vindication.” —Greg Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics

“The continued obligation of the Levitical law on this subject is also recognized in the New Testament. This recognition is involved in the constant reference to the law of Moses as the law of God. If in any of its parts or specifications it is no longer obligatory, that is to be proved...If God gives a law to men, those who deny its perpetual obligation are bound to prove it. The presumption is that it continues in force until the contrary is proved. It must be hard to prove that the laws founded on the permanent social relations of men were intended to be temporary.” —Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology

Now with a Bible Index and a Topical Index.

How Strict Monogamy Forces Miscegenation

Here is how it works. Lower class males are always anxious to marry higher class women. They get a smarter, future oriented wife, who is less likely to cheat on them. She is more likely to bear and raise superior children and make him look good. If the male is a Mohammedan, once he has sired several children, he can easily forsake his wife and bring the children to his home country to make sure they are raised in an Mohammedan culture. Historically, offspring of captive Christian women have been the only life this moribund religion has been able to muster.

Why would any woman want to marry a lower class male? Because of the lack of "available" men from her own class, religion, culture, and ethnicity. This is an artificial problem of course. Strict monogamy is neither supported by Scripture nor by experience. None of the good men in any culture are "taken"; they are all available according to Biblical Law, as Tom Shipley's book show. Only when a culture dabbles with suicide does it force its women into the arms of foreigners.

But what about the historical record? Haven't we done just fine for most of church history without Biblical polygyny?

Not really. In fact, Western culture has made very little progress in sanctification. We still discount huge portions of Biblical Law. With VanTil and Rushdoony we are just beginning to recover what the church had before becoming encrusted with heresies. For instance, we have a near zero concept of the Biblical calendar, it's feast days, the 7th year sabbath, the jubilee year, and the Sabbath. God's order for time has huge implications for every area of life. But this, like many other areas of Biblical Law, has been completely lost since the earliest days of church history. No, we have a long, long way to go.

True, as long as nations did not invite invasion we kept spare women in spinster/nunnery conditions - conditions foreign to Scripture which is completely family oriented.

As godly men recover Biblical Law we will also recover Biblical marriage and be rid of feminism and injustice to women. Until then we force miscegenation by having women compelled into the arms of Uncle Sam, foreigners, effeminate, Mohammedans, and lower class men.

"Choose life that you and your children may live."

The Success of Feminism, the Rape of Women

In the upside down world of Humanism, success means slow motion suicide. Having found the soft underbelly of contemporary Christian culture (the rejection of Biblical Law) the feminists are ripping it open with all their might even if it means the emasculation of the men and culture that protect them from foreign invasion (multicultural immigration) and rape.

Economic and Political Implications of Polygyny

Monogamania comes from a denial of hierarchy and biblical law as Tom Shipley has shown. This leads to an egalitarianism where men and woman are supposed to be equal. Only they are not.

Men are in fact competitive and innovative while women are cooperative and contributing. This is why men vote in terms of free enterprise while women favor socialism. Free enterprise works best in the world outside the home where there is a minimal common covenant. Cooperation and contributing to a common good is what works best inside the home where a strong well defined covenant is the rule.

This is why Biblical law is the key to restoring marriage, politics, and economics to health and prosperity.

Men today are always confounded as to why people vote for socialism against all common sense. But it is their failure as Biblical law covenant keepers that has forced women to rely on the state and it's law thus producing socialism. But it is a false support and eventually gives way to failure and breakdown (see the end of Isaiah 3).

Biblical law is the key to restoring men to their manhood in the home and to prosperity in the marketplace.

They Shall Become One Flesh

Overview In this overview we will set out to understand what the term one flesh means. After spending many hours researching and writing I realized the constitution of a marriage must be addressed as well. However, that will be addressed in another article to come. What I can assure and this article’s assumption is, if you are male and female, have prioritized one another and expressed that commitment through the sexual act you are married. What this article will focus on is the result ‘one flesh’. We hear many lessons about this in fact we have all heard several theories as to this expressions meaning. After hearing so many sermons about the ‘one flesh’ concept that was so out of touch with scripture I decided to take it to task. The one flesh union is not the marriage by itself but it definitely is the binding nature if it. Once you understand what ‘one flesh’ means you will understand why Jesus used it to correct the easy divorce mentality (Matt 19:3-6) and the apostle Paul to correct immorality (1Cor 6:12-20).

Cutting off the branch you are sitting on.

Please understand, the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ are the same. Christ said that if they believed in Moses they would also believe in Me since he spoke of Me. More importantly, once this evolutionary thinking is brought into the discussion on the what the Scriptures teach about marriage then any thought of the ongoing validity of plural marriage is made moot since the definition of marriage would also be subject to change and "improvement."

Being free in Christ means being free from sin, not free from law. Christ saved us from the condemnation of the law so we could be reconciled to it, not to be free from it. The proper relationship between Moses and Christ is spelled out by Christ himself in Matthew 5:17-20. "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill (meaning to fill full of meaning and enforce) them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

The Pharisees thought it was a good idea to add to and take away from the law with their "traditions of the elders." They defined righteousness apart from the Law of Moses. We will have to do better than that to make it into the kingdom of heaven.

New Covenant Patriarchy Pledge

1. I do hereby pledge myself to make a covenant with my eyes, like Job in Job 30:1, to not look upon a maid.

2. I do hereby pledge to never pursue or ask more than one woman to marry me and to only consider additional wives if they beg me to marry them as per Isaiah 4:1.

Where are the women with a positive take on Biblical Patriarchy?

Tom Shipley,

I read your book, Man and Woman in Biblical Law, and enjoyed it. The biblical case for polygamy seems to be unassailable and I cannot argue with it. However, I do wonder about one thing. The mainstream views polygamy as extremely dehumanizing and barbaric, and the most perfect logical reasoning in the world will not get this notion out of people's heads, especially women's. You can find many books written by women who have lived in polygamy, hated it, and are now telling the world about how awful it is. I know that when you examine these cases closely (almost all Mormon), their misery is actually due to factors other than polygamy itself. But polygamy gets the blame. If polygamy is so great, why can I never find any books or articles, written by women, which speak favorably of it. With a lot of people, especially women, this sort of "emotional" reasoning would go a lot farther than rational biblical arguments to remove anti-polygamy prejudice. Maybe this ought not be the case with Christians who hold the Bible as the word of God, but it is in fact the case.

So if you can point me to any books or articles written by women who speak favorably of polygamy, please do this. I would love to here from you. Until I see this, I will continue to view polygamy as, if not sinful, at least inferior to monogamy.

Thanks,

Mike

Hello, Mike:

Thank you for your comments.

Alas! What you say is true. The "mainstream" (i.e., Humanists and Statists, Statist Humanists, and compromised Christian Statists and Christian socialists) despises polygamy, especially biblical polygamy, because it, unlike anything else, repudiates their worldview. It goes right to the heart of their religious presuppositions. Those who are of the secular Socialist faith will NEVER approve of polygamy until they are converted to faith in Jesus Christ (who is the Living Torah) and in the totality of His inspired Word. In the meantime they will cleave in idolatrous love to their surrogate husband, the secular socialist State.

I have little concern over this or with Mormons. "The Lord will judge them who are without."

My primary intended target audience is (or are) biblically literate Evangelicals who take the Word of God seriously. They are compromised by and with the world system and don't know it. But as long as they truly believe the Scriptures are the Word of God, there is hope for them. What is needed is for the truth to simply get a real hearing. Consider this: for all practical purposes, the case I am making has NEVER had a real hearing before the true Church. This is, in part, due to the fact that the case for polygyny has never had a true SYSTEMATIC defense of its precepts before. About the best case made prior to me was Martin Madan's "Thelyphthora," published, if memory serevs me, in 1781.

What I have done that no one else has ever done before (to my knowledge), including Madan, is to put forward a CREATIONAL pro-polygyny apology. This is POWERFUL. Up until now, the anti-patriarchal and monogamy-only proponents have enjoyed a FALSE MONOPOLY, claiming the exclusive defense of their thesis supposedly based upon the creation narrative of Genesis. I have exposed the fallacy of their doctrine. A creational defense was implicit in Augustine's statements upon the subject but never made explicit. And Augustine, like practically all of the early Church fathers, was deeply compromised with Manichaeanism and the philosophical asecticism engrained in Greek and Roman outlook. With the advent of my book, the debate on this subject can never be the same again.

In other words, do not look backwards. Look forward. History is linear, not circular, and progresses in one direction. Seeds sown in the present bear fruit in the future. The impact of the argument I have made will be felt and it will not be easily resisted. My case is simple and straightforward and easily grasped by the average person: Creation=patriarchy=polygyny.

Secondly, my defense of the patriarchy/polygyny thesis is SYSTEMATIC and complete. This is also powerful because it demonstrates that the thesis is not a "rabbit trail" out on a tangent somewhere. It is INTEGRAL to God's Law, His ethical system. It is, in fact, central.

Third, I have demonstrated that this doctrine advances, rather than repudiates, the CONSISTENCY of Scripture. You will have noted that a prominent and recurring criticism I have made of the opposing viewpoints is that they all rely heavily upon the supposition of "conflicts" in Scripture, of "inconsistencies," of "antinomies," of "concessions to sin." I have maintained (with specific exegesis) the complete and total HARMONY and consistency of Scripture. This also is very powerful. If one position fundamentally requires conflicts and inconsistencies in Scripture to validate its thesis, and the other fundamentally requires harmony and consistency, then which thesis has the most going for it from the point of view of one who believes the Bible to be the Word of God? The answer is clear.

In terms of historical progression, my book and the movement it is a part of is the vanguard of the cutting edge. This movement has just begun. And it is a patriarchal movement. Do not seek the leadership of women or their validation. It is we men of God who must take the lead, not the women. Everything else will follow in its appointed time.

I don't know where you found my book, but you might be interested to know that I have just released the final version in the last couple weeks or less. I have placed the book with Lulu Press. I now have an ISBN number; the book will now be listed in Books in Print; will now have exposure on and be available through Amazon, and now accessible to all Christian booksellers. If you believe that the case I have made is truly unassailable, would you be so kind as to point others to it? What this case needs at this time is exposure.

God bless you.

Tom Shipley

Is Tom Promoting Polyandry?

Answer: I remain open to all serious criticism of my writings, and will not hesitate to change my position on Leviticus 18:18 based on sound exposition. Leviticus 18:18 is not integral to my thesis, which is one of the reasons it is treated as a miscellaneous item.

The problem here with Critic's criticism is that he mangles the metaphor/allegory from Isaiah 62:5. He confuses and mixes the metaphor/allegory with the literal reality it represents. His logic here is quite flawed. This is very much unsound exposition. My logic in no way supports a wife getting husbands nor incestuous polyandry in that passage. Critic is clearly wrong in this accusation. This is unbridled emotion at work and not sound exposition of God's holy Word.

Moreover, Critic has given no rejoinder to the actual and specific exposition I made in my book, M&WIBL. To wit, why does the text of Leviticus 18:18 say to not take the second sister to vex "her" instead of "them?" Or, to ask the question from the other direction, why does not the text of Leviticus 18:18 ban taking the second sister so as not to vex them instead of to vex "her"? I ask, as I asked in the book, why does the situation addressed vex only the one sister and not both? If we take every word of God seriously, then must demonstrate a conclusive answer to this question, or he has not established his point. I contend that the situation addressed only vexes the one sister, as the text clearly states, because 1) the second sister is, indeed, not "vexed" by the marriage and 2) the REASON the second sister is not vexed by the marriage is because she is not contemplated as barren and childless. If, in fact, there were an inherent vexing of this sisterly relationship based upon the act of marrying two sisters constituting sin, then BOTH sisters would be vexed by the situation.

Again, I assert, the situation remedied by the ban is the potential spoiling of the sisterly relationship by taking a second sister to bear children in the presence of a barren and childless sister. In other words, this is a qualified prohibition. As I pointed out in my book, it is the only ban in Leviticus 18 which is qualified in any way. All of the other prohibitions are stated without qualification of any kind. Why? Critic, apparently, has no answer to this question. I believe I have a very sound answer to the question.

One strength of this proposition is that it has precedent by way of examples given to us by the Holy Spirit in the Word of God regarding 1) Hagar's vexing of Sara regarding her childlessness in Genesis 16, 2) the vexing of Rachel by her sister Leah because of Rachel's childlessness in Genesis 30 and 3) the vexing of Hannah by Penninah because of Hannah's childlessness in I Samuel 1. This is a very strong and repeated theme in Scripture, that is, of a childless wife being vexed by the presence of a second wife who has children. Providing an heir to a husband was a central concern of the Israelite family. It is, in fact, the overarching raison d'etre for the Hebrew family in Scripture.

Secondly, attempts to empty the metaphors/allegories of Ezekiel and Jeremiah of their significance. Is God confused or inconsistent with Himself? should re-read both my and Jay E. Adams' arguments in regard to this issue. On 's premise, the Biblical metaphors picture God as committing iniquity. Is this really rational? Is this biblical?

Accusations are one thing. Backing them up with valid exposition of the Word of God is quite another. I would submit to you that Critic has been weighed in the balances in this regard and found wanting.

God bless you.
Tom