E-mail:			What the Bible teaches about Marriage... 2 The following article was produce by the polygamy page to complement the first article by Steve Butt, which appeared on the bfree listserve (membership details available form http://bfree.org)

Thank you, Steve, for putting into words what many of us know to be true.

I have recently read a thesis on polygamy and the Bible, which is available on the Internet (at http://www.polygamy.net ) and which defends polygamists - but, despite this it had a real problem. The real failing in the thesis is that it perpetuates the myth that the Bible talks of two types of marriage.

The Bible only talks of marriage - and it doesn't seem to care about counting how many wives a man has. Trying to think of two systems of marriage is a sure way of getting confused!

A follow on from this is that when we use the phrases "polygamy" or "monogamy" we are often referring to the doctrines -not the practices. Many critics of polygamy try to reinforce their position by claiming that just about everybody everywhere ever is or was monogamous. But this is a clear abuse of the language. If someone lives in a culture where he can take two wives, believes it is acceptable to take two wives, and happily accepts polygamy as part of life, but only actually has one wife himself, then it is really taking a bit of a liberty to call him a monogamous person.

In fact. the vast majority of cultures have been like the Biblical culture in this regard - marriage was marriage - no matter how many wives were involved.

Another consequence of biblical teaching is that we shouldn't really be deciding whether we are going to be polygamous - all of us, single or married, should be deciding whether or not to marry specific people -  not setting out to be polygamists, but making a decision in each case as to what is the appropriate and wise course of action. If this means that we have two or three wives at the end of it - so be it. But let's not see this as the goal from the start.

The good thing about "polygamy" is that when we accept that a man is allowed more than one wife by God, and that a woman is not allowed more than one husband, we are forced into examining what God would teach us about how men and women are different, and we can examine God's order of creation, whether we choose to call it patriarchy or headship. We can then see that God has set up authority within the family, a different sort of authority in the church, and a different sort of authority in the government - if you like, a trinity of authorities, which co-exist.