Are 1Ti 3 and Titus 1 Prohibiting Polygyny ?
We have been confronted with 1 Timothy 3:2,12 and Titus 1:6 several times in our conversations with different people. Let me sum up here the most common claims concerning these verses, as well as our stand with regards to Paul's list of requirements for elders.
"Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?" (1Ti 3:2-5)
"Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well." (1Ti 3:12)
"if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination." (Tit 1:6)
The first thing to say about these verses would be that for some reason, most Christians view the monogamy requirement for overseers and deacons as a moral requirement, reading these verses as a general condemnation and prohibition of polygamy. They often argue that these overseers are to be a moral example to the whole congregation, that everyone should aspire to be an overseer, and that these verses, rather than being specific requirements for a specific "job" in the early church, would be general guidelines for holy living. If polygyny is forbidden for overseers and deacons, the argument goes, it must be a bad thing from the past, a sin, something that Yahweh tolerated for some time when the patriarchs and kings of the Old Testament took more than one wife, but that certainly nobody was supposed to do anymore in Paul's days, nor nowadays.
This argument poses a few problems.
First, there is no indication that the requirement of monogamy has any moral implications. Not all the requirements are moral requirements - being able to teach, or being hospitable, or more generally speaking, being a good manager of the whole household, are not moral but practical considerations. In the same way, the requirement of polygamy is a practical one, as I will explain later. The fact that it is the first one in a list of requirements and is mentioned right after the general statement "should be above reproach" does not automatically mean that husbands of more than one wife are not above reproach. With the same logic, the inability to teach would also make someone "not above reproach" anymore, but this is never concluded.
Secondly, Paul would be the only one prohibiting polygamy in all of Scripture, and his statement would be in sharp contrast with both the Law (think Levirate marriage) and practical examples from the times of the Patriarchs and kings. As Scripture does not contradict itself, there would have to be two or three witnesses, so to speak, i.e. other passages in Scripture, that support Paul's prohibition, and there are none. Besides, Yahweh is not exactly know to tolerate anything that is sinful in His people for any amount of time in the Old Testament, but rather hastens to show His disapproval, and punishment is quick to follow. But we find no condemnation of Jacob or David or any other of the polygamists in Scripture as far as polygyny is concerned. They sin in any number of ways, and we are always told what the sin is, and the punishment too. Just as one example: Jacob and Elkanah (Gen 29 and 1Sa 1) both favor one of their wives - Rachel and Hannah. In both cases this results in (temporary) barrenness for the favored wife while the one that is loved less has children. The problem is not polygamy, but favoritism, and we find a prohibition of favoritism in a general sense in the law, of course(Exo 23:3).
Thirdly, the assumption that everyone should aspire to be an overseer or deacon is just that, an assumption. If people were still to actually do what overseers were supposed to do according to Yahweh's Law Word, they would probably not be so keen on being an overseer anymore, and you find this attitude amongst the Amish still, for example. Being a deacon is a burden more than anything, something the whole family is effected by, and if I am correctly informed, those that aspire to be deacons amongst the Amish are already disqualified from the job. Being an overseer is viewed as a badge of honor in modern churches though, and I guess that's where the assumption comes from.
To claim, furthermore, that Paul defines here the general standard for "holy living" means to pull these requirements out of the specific context Paul gives them, explicitly, in 1 Timothy 3:15 and, even more clearly so, in Titus 1:5. If I am looking for standards of holy living, the Old Testament spells out at length what obedience to Yahweh's Law Word practically means, and Paul too gives us a nice concise example of this: the "fruit of the spirit" list in Galatians 5. There is no need to turn to specific job requirements for a general guideline, when Scripture gives us plenty of general and practical advice on holy living otherwise. Interestingly enough, none of the other guidelines contains monogamy which is most probably why those who wish to proclaim monogamy as the only biblical form of marriage favor theses particular verses, and generously disregard the specific, explicit context.
So what is our position on Paul's statements ?
We read these verses not as a prohibition against polygyny in general, but as a restriction that is specific for overseers / deacons, which means that we do not read this requirement as a moral one, but rather a practical one, like the ability to teach, or be (wealthy enough to be) hospitable, or manage the household well.
Reading Paul's statements in this way makes sense to us because it relates to the requirement concerning the children and how they turned out: Since only someone who is married, has children, and has proven that he can lead his household well is considered suitable, all his children must be grown up so that one can tell if they have turned out well, i.e., if they continue in Yahweh's ways or not. In the article about fathers and daughters we described briefly the responsibility parents have for their children, and we see the same reflected here: The way the children turn out falls back on the parents.
Now, if a man has more than one wife, he can have children comparatively late in life. It is not impossible for a man to father children up to the age of 60 and even older, so by the time his youngest children would have been of age, a man like this would be fairly fairly old. In addition, a big family will need a lot more attention than a smaller household, and if a man is to lead the church as well as his family, he needs time for that. So from a practical perspective, a monogamous man will be younger by the time it can be gauged whether he meets the requirements or not, and he will have the extra time (once his children are gown) to lead the young church.
On a side note, I think this also indicates that the young church was a substitute for the families that had been broken up by the division Christ brought between father and son, mother and daughter etc., and that, in the long run, churches were meant to be substituted in turn by big family units lead by a patriarch and his sons. Maybe that is why modern Churchianity seems to be further away from Yahweh's Law Word than ever.
While our interpretation rests mainly on the practical implications of polygyny and monogamy, James W. Stivers (http://familyabbeys.org), who put some time and effort into defending biblical polygyny, points to another reason for Paul's restriction of elders to one wife: Nepotism. In order to prevent one family, or a few families, from getting too powerful within a community and use their power to oppress the other members of the community, families of the leaders should be smaller family units. Stivers relates this back to the restriction against an excessive harem and excessive horses and wealth for kings in the OT, as well as the examples of kings of Israel who did use their power against the people, as Yahweh had the prophet Samuel predict in 1Sa 8. Stivers' whole argument, of which this is only a small part, (the whole paper is a 72 pages article titled "Eros Made Sacred"), is to be had for free at http://familyabbeys.org/eros.htm. We aren't connected to Stivers in any way, and don't necessarily agree with him in everything he says, but I'd rather give the link than paraphrase his argument further.
In short, the answer to the question posed in the title, "Are 1Ti 3 and Titus 1 Prohibiting Polygyny ?", is:
1Ti 3 and Titus 1 do not prohibit polygyny generally speaking, but only for overseers and deacons.
