I have always conceived of the God of the Bible as an engineer before he is a king. Unlike any other king, he is the maker of his realm, and as a perfect being, he must clearly put perfect thought into perfect design and then into perfect form. I admit that I believe in the creation story, if just not quite the timeline that is literally associated with it by young Earth creationists. For certain reasons, reasons I won't go into, I can conceive of how it is possible. Perhaps it is only fitting that the Vox mob is crowing about polygamy.
As a sort of liberal, lay calvinist, I am naturally not going to see eye-to-eye with most of them. I believe in unconditional election, total depravity, predestination and all of the other calvinist doctrines. I also believe in the doctrine that is typically called something like "the two wills of God." The mistake that arminians, and they dominate Vox's blog by a wide margin, make is that they assume that God actually likes most of what happens. God allows a lot of totally wicked stuff to happen because God respects our free will, though within the limits that our wills are bound to our natures. In the very depths of my soul, as a Christian and an engineer, I see in Genesis the fundamental truth about the relationship between human mates. One to one, and only one to one, as the preferred will of God. Our birth rates reflect this too, as we are born almost 1:1 male, female.
This makes perfect sense to me, as a lay calvinist, because scripture makes it clear that this world we have today is a perversion of God's natural order. The world, itself, is a perversion of God's design. Yet even a total perversion retains some connection to what it originally was. The existence of polygamy in ancient Israel does not mean that God approved of it. In a state of grace, monogamy would be the only relationship possible because Adam and Eve were 1:1, and the purpose of salvation is a return to grace. Yes, I know that in heaven there will be no marriage, but in a theoretical state of grace here and now, it would be one woman for one man because that was the original design.
It's fine by me for anyone who wants to, to live according to the Law, but they should do so with the understanding that it is the Spirit, not the Law, which brings salvation. There is no salvation for those who satisfy themselves with making feeble attempts to live just by the literal basics of the Law. There will be greater mercy for the man who gives up a hypothetical freedom to have more than one wife, and who struggles terribly with lust, for the sake of pleasing God, than there will be for a man who takes multiple wives and satisfies himself that since he is marrying the women he desires that he is not a sexual sinner. In theory the two are not mutually exclusive, but only a blind man lives with the expectation that he is the exception to a rule.
Now, let me throw this out here...
In old Israel, God approved of polygamy because it suited He and the Jews purposes, which was to multiply as much and as quickly as possible. Because, the Jewish bloodline is just that, you're born a Jew. You must choose to be a Christian, so realistically, there's no shortage of supply of possible Christians out there. It's just dependant on us to spread "The Word" and convert, so there's no necessity to have multiple wives and a thousand children.
Exactly, Billy. This is what Calvinists call the two wills of God. God has a preference, but is willing to accept something else. Sometimes God is willing to accept a substitute because it better fits His plan than His ideal at the moment. I guess you could say that while God is principled, He's not an ideologue...
Everything clearly explained:
http://www.lunaseas.net/history/thetruth.html
"Sometimes God is willing to accept a substitute because it better fits His plan than His ideal at the moment."
I thought God was perfect. How could he ever get in the position of needing a substitute if he knew from the outset that his first choice wasn't the best choice. And why would he ever choose imperfect over perfection if he was indeed perfect.
Perhaps its not God that's flawed but the imperfect people that are trying to figure him out. Hmmm.
Tobin,
God's plan was, and is perfect, but he allowed humanity to screw it up. That's the key that the Bible makes clear. Sin screwed up God's plan originally, but being omniscient, God foreknew this and made his plan able to recover even as it was being temporarily ripped apart by sin.
The point that I and the Bible make on this is that God has chosen to mostly work with humanity, while naturally reserving final control over our destiny. To summarize, I suppose you could say that God intended monogamy, but allowed sin to create polygamy, which he tolerated for a period, and then began to return humanity toward monogamy.