"...[F]rom the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:
. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife [singular as with Adam and Eve], and the two shall become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24, cf. Matt. 19:5.
Is it not interesting that Song of Songs, the book which describes the ideal of marriage and allegorically Christ's marriage to the Church, describes love between one man and one woman? If in the New Covenant, husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the Church (Eph. 5:25), then how can they have more than one wife? There is only one Church. Christ's love is not divided; neither should ours be.
1 Tim. 3:2 says a bishop (or elder) should be "the husband of one wife." Obviously then, polygamy is not the ideal of the New Covenant. While it may be tolerated in the Church among those who already have multiple wives (since God hates divorce, Mal. 2:16), it is not a custom to be perpetuated.
The saints of the Old Covenant are not to be emulated in all regards. For example, we don't have a calling to conquer other lands for Christ, either. Rather, we are called to love our enemies, repaying good for evil, mercy instead of justice. In this way, we show forth as lights in the world God's original plan for creation, for in Christ He has reconciled the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). It is the same way with monogamy.
That's Matt. 19:8, BTW. Stupid smileys.
A comment on the article referenced:
Quote:
" God pronounces as "doctrines of demons" those who forbid marriage or abstinence from certain kinds of foods. This passage, traditionally seen through monogamist lenses, assumes that this is solely a reference to the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy and of nuns, but seen through the lenses of the WHOLE WORD OF GOD it is plain that forbidding polygamy comes under the category of "forbidding marriage" which God has said should be "received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth" , for everything created by God is GOOD. "
Now with spin: [sorry for the redundant repitition in the first and primary sentence 
]
" God pronounces as "doctrines of demons" those who forbid eating or abstinence from certain kinds of foods. This passage, traditionally seen through healthy-diet lenses, assumes that this is solely a reference to the fasting of the Roman Catholic clergy and of nuns, but seen through the lenses of the WHOLE WORD OF GOD it is plain that forbidding gluttony comes under the category of "forbidding eating" which God has said should be "received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth" , for everything created by God is GOOD. "
Evan writes: 1 Tim. 3:2 says a bishop (or elder) should be "the husband of one wife."
That chapter of 1 Timothy lists requirements for the clergy. Why would Paul list this as a requirement for a bishop if it's a law binding on all Christians?
This text by itself suggests (but does not prove) that Paul thought multiple wives were okay for non-bishops.
Similarly, the passage in Matthew you cite forbids divorce, but doesn't mention bigamy.
I agree that these passages might suggest a rule of monogamy. But if you discover that some verse in the bible vaguely suggests some rule, does that really make that rule universally binding on all Christians?
I agree that we aren't called to emulate the saints of the old covenant in all ways. Many of them were bigamists, and that doesn't prove it's permitted. But it doesn't prove it's forbidden, either. By scripture alone you can't compel or forbid polygamy.
Lawrence King writes:
"I agree that these passages might suggest a rule of monogamy. But if you discover that some verse in the bible vaguely suggests some rule, does that really make that rule universally binding on all Christians?"
This highlights one of the core problems of sola scriptura. Sola scriptura presupposes the existence of some deductive hermeneutic that can produce all of the (implied) rules that are universally binding on all Christians, from the finite text of Scripture. Godel's Theorem demonstrates that this is literally impossible.
That is part of the reason why Godel's Theorem was such a scandal to mathematicians who understood it, although to mathematicians the scandal was that there is literally no way to completely specify any class of arithmetically interesting deductive truths. Sola scriptura is not the only interpretive principle to which Godel's Theorem counterintuitively applies. As another prominent example, many Americans think that Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution represents a complete specification of Federal powers and that ipso facto we should be able to deduce when the federal government is acting within its powers versus when it is acting outside of those enumerated (completely specified) powers. Godel's Theorem (counterintuitively, to be sure, but no less truly) demonstrates the basic irrationality of that view. There are factors beyond mathematics that play into the breakdown of federalism, it is true, but the notion that we can textually express ANYTHING AT ALL completely (whether doctrines binding on all Christians or powers of a government), except in pathologically simple circumstances, is fundamentally irrational and has been proven so. Without a tradition that precedes the text and prescribes its limits there is no way to create any rationally crisp boundary, including the boundary between "required" and "not required" that sola scriptura attempts to create.
Evan writes:
>Is it not interesting that Song of Songs, the book which describes the ideal of marriage and allegorically Christ's marriage to the Church, describes love between one man and one woman?
Then again, the Song of Songs is attributed to King Solomon - he is evidently the "king" in the poem. Elsewhere, Scripture informs us that Solomon was quite the polygamist: seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3)! The "Shulamite" in the Song of Songs may well have been his favorite wife, but what shall we make of this verse:
"There are threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number." (Song 6:8; see also vs. 9)
Is this, perhaps, the rest of Solomon's harem?
Even the OT nuptial images of God's relationship with His people aren't always monogamous, as in the story of Oholah and Oholibah in Ezekiel 23. In verse 4 God says "and they were mine, and they bare sons and daughters"; ie., both are depicted as his wives (and there's no indication that they were not simultaneously "married" to him).
I wasn't saying that the requirement for elders was binding on all in the Church. I was saying that it suggests a preference for monogamy, which ultimately goes back to the order of creation. And it's pretty heavily debated what role Solomon plays in "his" book. Some people think he's an intruder, or that the lover is imagining himself as Solomon.
But if Godel's Theorem applies outside the realm of mathematics (which I never heard before - I thought it applied solely to formal systems), then even the Catholic Magisterium is incomplete. It may be a bigger set, but it's still incomplete. And I would argue that it's not a "real" entity like Scripture, since the Catholic Church hasn't agreed on everything over the past 2000 years. Now that really would have been a miracle.
>And it's pretty heavily debated what role Solomon plays in "his" book. Some people think he's an intruder, or that the lover is imagining himself as Solomon.
Is the "intruder" theory you allude to the "love triangle" interpretation? The theory that the Song of Songs tells the story of a shepherdess, her shepherd true love and King Solomon, who wickedly tries to woo her away from her true love? If so, that's a relatively new theory which, though entrenched in the Amplified Bible, has no ancient precident (and leads to a rather tortured interpretation of the text).
The book begins with the words: "The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's" (Song 1:1). This either indicates authorship by Solomon or that the book was written for him or with him in mind. King Solomon is, of course, a type of Christ, the Son of David.
To complete my thought: even if Solomon's role in the Song of Songs is "heavily debated", as you say, that very unsettled dispute leaves open the possibility that Solomon the polygamist could, in fact, be the male lover in the Song (which is the most common interpretation).
This then calls into question the argument that the Song of Songs extolls monogamy; it may simply extoll love of the favorite wife. Once we admit the meaning of the Song of Songs to be unclear, we diminish its force as an argument for monogamy from Scripture.
"But if Godel's Theorem applies outside the realm of mathematics (which I never heard before - I thought it applied solely to formal systems), then even the Catholic Magisterium is incomplete."
Godel's Theorem applies to formal systems. Any text combined with a consistent interpretive hermeneutic is a formal system. The Magisterium is not a text, and tradition is not a text.
Oh, what is more, Catholics make no claim of logical completeness combined with two-valued logic. _Sola scriptura_ is an explicit claim of logical (textual)completeness combined with two-valued logic.
What is two valued logic? We're not saying that other doctrines not in Scripture are a priori false, we're saying that if they're not in Scripture one cannot compel belief in them. And if tradition's not a text, then what is it? If it's expressed in words, it's a text.
"What is two valued logic? We're not saying that other doctrines not in Scripture are a priori false, we're saying that if they're not in Scripture one cannot compel belief in them."
Right. That is a two valued logic. One of the values is "does have to be believed" and the other is "doesn't have to be believed". The second logic value does not have to be "is definitely false"; it is enough that Scripture is asserted to be complete with respect to what must be believed.
"And if tradition's not a text, then what is it? If it's expressed in words, it's a text."
People talk about traditions using words, but tradition itself is never fully explicit. If the Deposit of the Faith were a text we could just put it into hotel nightstands. The notion that ANYTHING (other than pathologically simple things) can be completely expressed in words AT ALL, let alone in a finite text, is simply false. Russel and Whitehead embarked on their _principia mathematica_ on the Laplacian notion that once we got the right first principles all of knowledge would be just a matter of mechanical logical deduction; but Godel utterly destroyed this sort of positivism forever, in a very generally applicable way.
The notion that Godel's Theorem applies "only" in the domain of mathematics (and specifically formal systems) is not unusual, and it isn't oddball for you to raise that issue; but it is quite deceptive. You can't get around the rules of mathematics while playing baseball either.
This does imply, by the way, that interpreting Greek "Logos" as English "Word" in the beginning of the Gospel of John can be deceptive to English-speakers. Logos of course means more than a printed textual word; it is more like living breathing truth, and "in the beginning was the Truth-Idea" might be a better English translation. Translators don't always know all there is to know about the epistemic implications of their decisions though. At some point I may have to learn koine Greek, Latin, and Aramaic; the question is just which one first 
I'm aware of the difficulties with "Logos" - it's a much richer word than simply "Word," particularly because of its associations with Greek philosophy. The one I particularly like is "Account" - Christ is the explanation for why things are, for through Him they were made, apart from Him they fell, and in Him they are redeemed.
One problem with implicit tradition that I can see, however, is that it means it can be continually changed and added to. And if people object - well, that's just because no previous iteration of tradition could contain it all! So we have to introduce more dogmas - transsubstantiation, papal infallibility, assumption of Mary, etc. At least we avoid having them as logical deductions from preexisting doctrines. That would be two-valued logic, and thus epistemologically foolish. Pardon me, but this justification for the two-source theory of Church authority sounds almost postmodern. If there's no boundaries to the set of tradition, then people can't actually know what they believe - they have to have implicit faith.
And how do you know that church authorities are actually receiving these traditions as revelation - if they're not a development of previous traditions? What gives you the confidence that they're not just making them up as they go along? In other words, what would the Pope have to decree before you would say, "That's it! That goes against the Scripture that we already have accepted as authoritative." Would you say that Mary as co-redemptrix, if that was proclaimed, is a possible truth which is actually excluded by Scripture? Or is that my naive use of two-valued logic again?
"I'm aware of the difficulties with 'Logos' - it's a much richer word than simply 'Word,' particularly because of its associations with Greek philosophy. The one I particularly like is 'Account' - Christ is the explanation for why things are, for through Him they were made, apart from Him they fell, and in Him they are redeemed."
Beautiful, I like that.
[...]
"Pardon me, but this justification for the two-source theory of Church authority sounds almost postmodern. If there's no boundaries to the set of tradition, then people can't actually know what they believe - they have to have implicit faith."
I'll forgive the insult . I do find the "radical orthodoxy" of Pickstock and Milbank quite compelling: they understand and take postmodern critique seriously enough to truly destroy it rather than simply laughing at it. But the temptation to laugh in Derrida's face is pretty overwhelming, and with good reason.
"There's no boundaries" is again deceiving. There are boundaries in baseball, but every game is different. It wouldn't be licit to change the baseball out for a football, but sometimes you use a metal bat and sometimes its a good old wooden Louixville Slugger.
I don't mean to be flip (well maybe just a little); I haggled this for years with a former math professor whose doctoral thesis was on Godel's Theorem and the theory of groups. Our normal modern outlook on the relation between knowledge and mystery, as disjunctive sets, is just manifestly wrong. Everything that I know about is still a mystery (that is, I can still ask more legitimate questions about it and receive legitimate true answers). Everything that is a mystery (e.g. God) is known enough to be identified as such. Knowledge and mystery cannot be separated. Wherever you find legitimate public knowledge of any substance you will find written word, unwritten tradition, and an interpretive magisterium. The postmodern notion that this (in fact true) state of affairs invalidates knowledge in general as subjective assertions of power is obviously nonsense: atom bombs don't explode just because Oppenheimer willed them to explode. One way to look at Godel's Theorem is that it formalizes the transition between very simplified forms of mathematical knowledge and the sort of three-authority knowledge that reigns in most of normal human life.
"What gives you the confidence that they're not just making them up as they go along?"
Ultimately this does come to faith. If Christ is Lord of all, including history, and I trust in Him, then I trust in the means of salvation He has provided. Part of it for someone like me is that Catholicism doesn't sacrifice mystery for knowledge or vice versa; and part of it frankly is that I am a cradle Catholic. I wasn't a particularly good one for a long time, but it is easier to come home to someplace familiar.
A lot of what passes for orthodox Catholicism in the post VII era does flirt with opposition to the Tradition. The Pope is not and never has been lord over and above the Tradition and Scripture. What the Pope says tomorrow can't even be understood, let alone assigned an epistemic weight, without the body of text and tradition which precedes it.
"In other words, what would the Pope have to decree before you would say, 'That's it! That goes against the Scripture that we already have accepted as authoritative.' Would you say that Mary as co-redemptrix, if that was proclaimed, is a possible truth which is actually excluded by Scripture? Or is that my naive use of two-valued logic again?"
Well, in a word, yes. Godel's Theorem excludes the possibility of a simultaneous requirement for completeness and two-valued logic, it does not destroy all possibility of rationality as such (as do both Lutheranism and postmodernism).
I would have no rational problem *in theory* with the following scenario:
Suppose the Pope declares in ex cathedra form that Mary is co-redemptrix. As heresy this results in automatic excommunication of the Pope; because the Church is indefectable she cannot teach ex cathedra that heresy (definitively false belief) is doctrine (definitively true belief). She also can't teach that a particular body of text contains definitively EVERYTHING that must be believed without violating Godel's Theorem. Mathematics precludes the possibility of textually defining everything that God can command of you.
Of course my personal response to the above scenario should be prayer, trembling, penance, the Sacraments where I can find them, and the faith that Christ will resolve the crisis either during my lifetime or after. Like Job I should not (I don't claim that I am holy enough personally that I would not) falter. It is in this way that truly schismatic traditionalists fail, and protestants-from-the-right fail, although the lack of empathy for them from what passes as orthodoxy is at times appalling.
One more human way
[continued from above...]
One more human way to view the problem with _sola scriptura_ is that it is in effect demanding certainty of God, thereby negating faith. Oddly it leaves no room for a response of faith; if everything I must believe is in a text then I don't have to have faith that God guides history, guides the Church, and guides my own life despite the evil of this world. Sola scriptura is a demand for "salvation omniscience"; a demand that God must tell me explicitly everything I have to believe with no room for me to just trust Him. But some of the discoveries of the twentieth century have made that deterministic outlook rationally untenable.
In the world in which we live, you definitively MUST trust in Christ _in all things_ or cast yourself voluntarily into the fire. There are quite literally no other choices. That is the Mystery of Faith.
Thanks for the response. It's obvious that siding with the Protestants or the Catholics on the authority question is ultimately a faith issue.
Just two questions: But if the Pope can be automatically excommunicated for teaching heresy as dogma, by what authority is it known to be heresy? That means the set is bounded.
"One more human way to view the problem with _sola scriptura_ is that it is in effect demanding certainty of God, thereby negating faith. Oddly it leaves no room for a response of faith; if everything I must believe is in a text then I don't have to have faith that God guides history, guides the Church, and guides my own life despite the evil of this world. Sola scriptura is a demand for "salvation omniscience"; a demand that God must tell me explicitly everything I have to believe with no room for me to just trust Him. But some of the discoveries of the twentieth century have made that deterministic outlook rationally untenable."
I don't see what you're getting at here. Your argument in the second sentence does not logically follow. There's great mystery left in the Christian life - that is not denied by advocates of Sola Scriptura. It's not like the Bible is a magic salvation machine where you just open it and you have the Answer to Everything. Rather, Scripture is the way through which we know God, of whom we would otherwise be ignorant. Of course, we can't divorce Scripture from the Church - the Reformers didn't want what the classic Catholic stereotype attributes to them, every man his own personal church and Bible interpreter. What they did want is a society where worship was in the vernacular and where the whole counsel of God was preached in the pulpit, so that the ploughman knew as much theology as the scholar in Paris. Read Calvin's sermons, and you'll see the side of him that cared deeply about shepherding God's people.
I'd rather believe that God has actually told us everything we need to know about Him (not the same as saying "everything there is to know about Him"), then that He may have left us in the dark about some crucial points in His character. Of course we still have to trust Him: how else could we believe that God is love in the face of all this evil? I don't think that science has anything to do with it.
Just two questions: But if the Pope can be automatically excommunicated for teaching heresy as dogma, by what authority is it known to be heresy?
It isn't something I can assert juridically on my own; at most I could suspect it and tremble. But it could legitimately be asserted juridically by a future Pope.
Epistemically (as opposed to juridically) the problem of assigning degrees of certainty to different concepts and propositions doesn't have a simple solution, at least not one of which I am aware. That describes the state of epistemology in general, though; there isn't anything special about being Catholic that alters the epistemic problem, since ultimately the relation between knowledge and truth is what it is.
That means the set is bounded.
No; incompleteness does not mean that nothing is really true or really false. The mere existence of individual dogmatic assertions and individual heretical assertion is not a claim of completeness, any more than the mere existence of true and false statements is a claim of completeness. It is only when a particular text is asserted to contain the complete set of axioms for any one statement class that we have made a claim of completeness; and the statement class further has to invoke a two-valued logic (dogmatic/nondogmatic, true/false, etc) in order to run afoul of Godel.
It is almost as if the traditional Catholic practice of dogmas and anathemas was designed in anticipation of the discovery of Godel's Theorem, even though it didn't happen until the twentieth century.
Read Calvin's sermons, and you'll see the side of him that cared deeply about shepherding God's people.
I've read a little bit (though I expect at some point I ought to read more), and in any case I don't doubt it. The best deceptions are mostly true, though (not to implicate Calvin's motives; I do know much less about him than about Luther). I think the tragedy is that schism was the result rather than something more like the outcome of the Aryan crisis or the second council of Constantinople. If the Reformation had been a resounding cry of "holiness first!" without schism it would be a different world; but as we know things were more complicated than that on both sides.
I'd rather believe that God has actually told us everything we need to know about Him (not the same as saying "everything there is to know about Him"), then that He may have left us in the dark about some crucial points in His character.
Well, I'd rather have more certainty about a great many things; but this world intrinsically lacks that sort of comprehensive certainty at a very basic level. I really do see part of faith as an acceptance that we can't have that kind of comprehensive certainty, and that we must trust in God Who Reveals without demanding that kind of comprehensive written assurance. Otherwise I would be asking God to sign a pre-nup; and I wouldn't ask my wife to do that, let alone God.
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