Proof of the Law of Monogamy in Christianity
Proof of the Law of Monogamy in Christianity
2- Thus It Was From the Beginning
1- Two: Male and Female:
When the scribes and the Pharisees came asking the Lord Christ about divorce to test Him, He said to them: “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). It is understood from this, implicitly, that the Lord Christ cares that matters return to what they were from the beginning, because the system God established for humanity from the beginning was the system suitable for it. And since humanity deviated from it, it must return to it. And the phrase “from the beginning” was also mentioned by the Lord Christ in the first part of His speech with the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 19:4).
So what was from the beginning? He said to them: “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:4–6).
This, then, is Christian marriage:
A- Only two: male and female.
B- God joins them.
C- In a marvelous unity in which they are no longer two but one.
D- And no man can separate them.
Yes, no third body can enter between them and separate them—even temporarily—in order to form for itself a union—even temporarily—with one of them. For marriage is not composed of three parties but of two only, as shown from the words of the Lord Christ, and as the dual expression is repeated more than once in His speech.
2- A Divine Order Since the Beginning of Creation:
The idea that marriage be between two only, and that a man have one woman and no other, is therefore not a new idea brought by Christianity, but rather the original condition of the divine order that existed from the beginning. And how was that?
The Book of Genesis says:
“And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that Adam should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him’… And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.’ Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:18–24)
The earth was empty of inhabitants, and yet God the Creator, who wanted the earth to be filled with human beings, made for Adam only one wife! And Adam was by himself in this vast universe, and yet God created for him only one helper to share his life.
Thus God Himself laid down the foundations of single marriage (monogamy). And in this the Book of Genesis also says about all people represented in the first two spouses: “… male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth…’” (Gen. 1:27–28). And Genesis concludes this divine order with the phrase: “Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” (Gen. 1:31)
3- The Comments of the Saints and Scholars:
This divine order left its mark upon the saints and scholars of the early centuries among the teachers of Christianity, so they elaborated in explaining it:
St. Jerome, in his letter written in 409 A.D. to Ageruchia about the unity of marriage, said: “The creation of the first human teaches us to reject more than one marriage, for there was only one Adam and one Eve…”.
And earlier, in his book written in 393 against Jovinianus, he said:
“In the beginning one rib was turned into one wife. And the two became one flesh, not three or four; otherwise, how would they be two if they were altogether many?”
And Tertullian, who lived in the second century, addressed this point also in his book “To His Wife,” saying: “Adam was the only husband of Eve, and Eve was his only wife: one man for one woman.”
And he elaborated further in his book An Exhortation to Chastity, saying:
“The origin of the human race provides us with the idea of the unity of marriage. For God in the beginning set an example for later generations, making one woman for the man, although matter did not fail Him to make others, nor did ability fail Him. Nevertheless, more than one woman God did not create… ‘And the two shall become one flesh,’ not three nor four. For if they were three or four, they could not be two in one body.”
And before Jerome and Tertullian, the twelve apostles of the Lord Christ said in their teachings, the ‘Didascalia’: “From the beginning of creation, God gave one woman to one man, and for this reason the two are one body.”
4- Humanity Breaks This Divine Order:
This is what God established from the beginning, and what He implanted in the human conscience before giving a written law. But humanity sinned and broke the divine order. And Cain, who killed his brother Abel and was cursed by God along with his descendants, produced from his line a man who was also a murderer: “Lamech,” the first man mentioned in Scripture to have married more than one woman, as Genesis says: “Then Lamech took for himself two wives” (Gen. 4:19).
And St. Jerome says in his book against Jovinianus: “Lamech, a man of blood and a murderer, was the first to divide the one flesh into two wives. But the killing of the brother and the second marriage were removed by the same punishment, the Flood.” And this is what actually happened, for fornication spread on the earth. For the grace of marriage that God gave to humans to beget and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, they misused as an evil means to satisfy bodily lusts. So God became angry and flooded the earth with the Deluge, and erased this great evil from the earth, that He might renew it in purity once again.
5- God Restores the Principle… in the Days of Noah:
And now we may ask: “What law did God establish for marriage after the earth was purified from injustice and uncleanness?” It is the same law He established from the beginning and saw that it was very good, the law of “one wife.”
Genesis records this matter, mentioning that God said to Noah: “You shall enter the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you.” (Gen. 6:18) This text is explicit that Noah had only one wife, and this is supported by Scripture’s words: “Then God spoke to Noah, saying: ‘Go out of the ark, you and your wife, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you’… So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him.” (Gen. 8:15–18)
And just as Noah had one wife, so also his sons—each had one wife: “Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth… These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.” (Gen. 9:18–19)
Noah and his three sons were four men, and they had four women only, each man with one wife, making a total of eight human souls that entered the ark.
This is confirmed by St. Peter the Apostle in his First Epistle with an explicit verse (1 Pet. 3:20): “The longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved.”
And the same meaning appears explicitly in Genesis: “On that very same day Noah and Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark.” (Gen. 7:13)
With the same principle of “one wife,” God renewed humanity in the days of Noah, while the earth was empty—as in the days of Adam—and God wanted to fill it.
And this is clear from His words to Noah and his sons as He had said to Adam before: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth; and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth and on every bird of the air…” (Gen. 9:1–2)
God truly wanted the earth to be filled and inhabited, but He also wanted this to take place in a holy manner consistent with the divine order He had established for marriage from the beginning, which is the “law of one wife.”
6- Even Animals and Birds… By the Same Principle:
Even the animals and birds were placed under the same system when God renewed life on the earth. Genesis records God’s command to Noah:
“And of every living thing of all flesh you shall bring two of every sort into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive.” (Gen. 6:19–20)
And Noah did this and entered with his family into the ark:
“They and every beast after its kind, all birds after their kind, every bird of every sort. And they went into the ark to Noah, two by two, of all flesh in which is the breath of life. So those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him.” (Gen. 7:14–16)
The same law God executed for animals and birds, though He varied the quantity—yet not the law—between clean and unclean animals. He said to Noah: “You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the earth.” (Gen. 7:2–3)
The wisdom in this was that clean animals and birds had to be increased in number (while preserving the same principle) for two reasons:
A- To offer from them sacrifices to God as Noah did when he came out of the ark (Gen. 8:20).
B- And also to be food for people afterward (Gen. 8:3).
If God placed this principle even for the mute animals which had not reached the dignity of humanity, how much more must the law given to man uphold it?!
7- The Comments of the Saints and Scholars:
Thus the matter was not left without comment from the saints and scholars of the Church.
St. Jerome said:
“Thus also in the ark—which Peter the Apostle interprets as a figure of the Church—Noah and his three sons entered, each with one wife and not two; and likewise, among the unclean animals, he took one pair: male and female, to show that the second marriage has no place even among beasts, nor among reptiles, crocodiles, and lizards…”
Tertullian also commented on this, saying:
“When the human race was born the second time, the unity of marriage—for the second time—was its mother. And behold the two in one flesh return to be fruitful and multiply: Noah and his wife with their sons, all in the unity of marriage. Even among the animals it was possible to observe the unity of marriage… By the same principle He commanded the selection of groups of seven pairs, each pair male and female. What more can I say?! Not even the unclean birds were allowed to enter into a partnership (marriage) with two.”
8- The Lord Christ Works to Restore What Was From the Beginning:
This is the sublime order God desired for humanity from the beginning, which humans failed to reach for a long time. It is the same order taught by the Lord Christ and to which He called people, rebuking them for their lower state by saying: “From the beginning it was not so.” (Matt. 19:8; Mark 10:6)
And Tertullian was right in saying:
“The Lord Christ worked to restore many things to what they were from the beginning, so He abolished divorce—which did not exist from the beginning—and restored the unity of marriage which existed from the beginning, and He did not bind man with circumcision or the prohibition of certain foods, since those restrictions did not exist from the beginning…”
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in Al-Keraza Magazine – Third Year – Issues Three and Four, March and April 1967
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