Munster Communards
The situation of the German town of Munster, as it developed during the
radical Reformation, was very nearly akin to Jim Jones' Jonestown, with crazy people running the
show. For a time polygamy was not only permitted but mandatory for
the inhabitants of this coercive socialist utopia. Upon making
polygamy mandatory, the Munster communards found themselves obliged also to criminalize
'quarreling,' because one half the human race did not take naturally to
polygamy and fell to quarreling, which was made a capital crime. Rather ominously, this same group also did
away with money, as Pol Pot would later do:
"'For not only have we put all our belongings into a
common pool under the care of deacons, and live from it according to
our need; we praise God through Christ with one heart and mind and
are eager to help one another with every kind of service. And
accordingly, everything which has served the purposes of
self-seeking and private property, such as buying and selling,
working for money, taking interest and practicing usury … or eating
and drinking the sweat of the poor … and indeed everything which
offends us against love – all such things are abolished amongst us
by the power of love and community.'" (Anabaptist pamphlet sent
in October 1534, quoted in Murray N. Rothbard, 'Messianic Communism
in the Protestant Reformation,' an except available on LewRockwell.com).
As Libertarian Murray Rothbard insightfully notices, the
elimination of private property did not yield an egalitarian
society, but ensured only that the ruling elite controlled all the
wealth. Polygamy turned out to be more popular with the male segment of the population than with the female,
quelle surprise. It is difficult to fathom how the Munster Communards
derived their coercive wealth-sharing from a New Testament pattern
which is plainly described as non-coercive: "While it remained, was
it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own
power?" (Acts 5:4), nor how they justified a reign of terror in the
name of love, nor how they saw fit to impose upon new covenant
believers a system not compatible with Jesus' marriage
teaching, and which was never mandatory even upon those patriarchs
who practiced it, nor anywhere commended even in the Old
Testament, rather, "Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and
running waters out of thine own well. . .Let thy fountain be
blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth." (Proverb 5:15-18).
The Anabaptists, the 're-baptizers,' who taught believer's
baptism as do contemporary Baptists, were brutally and mercilessly
persecuted by both Catholics and Protestants. Some of their number
argued forcefully and eloquently in favor of religious tolerance.
But when their numbers reached a tipping point in the city of
Munster, they expelled the remaining Catholics and Lutherans from
the city, into the teeth of a winter storm. Jan Matthias had wanted
to kill them. What right had they to evict these lawful
residents and confiscate their possessions? The persecuted turned
persecutor, just as soon as opportunity offered. And a movement that
was heading in the direction of radical egalitarianism reversed
field, discarding the elected town council form of government they
had inherited in favor of monarchy under 'King Jan' van Leyden. This
party, a comely youth with a penchant for breaking into dance at
inappropriate times, lopped off heads, or let them remain, at his
whim. Thank goodness his arbitrary misrule did not last a thousand
years as projected, but for less than two: “'There they are!” he
cried; 'those are the men who boasted that they have come from Münster to preach the Thousand-Year Kingdom of King Jan!'”
(Arthur, Anthony (2011-04-01). The Tailor-King
(p. 127). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.). This
personage claimed to be no less than the new David: “Dusentschur
took a sword and handed it to Jan, saying that with that sword Jan
would rule until God himself took it from him. He commanded Jan to
bend his head and anointed him with oil, declaring that Jan was the
true inheritor of the throne of the great King David.”
(Arthur, Anthony (2011-04-01). The Tailor-King
(pp. 109-110). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.). German society, a steeply
gradated hierarchy just emerging from feudalism, was scandalized by
his humble origins as an illegitimate child and tailor's apprentice; how had
he leap-frogged from the bottom of the pile to the top, over all the intervening gradations?
One could wish he had taken from Moses, not polygamy, but a concern
for the rule of law and due process. If he had done so, then Munster could
take its place in the history of the progress of the gospel, rather
than in the history of mass lunacy.
Polygamous Bishops?
Some people think they find permission for polygamy in an unexpected place,
Paul's teaching on the marital status of bishops:
"A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife [μιας γυναικος ανδα], vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach..."
(1 Timothy 3:2).
"For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee: If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly."
(Titus 1:5-6).
The Munster Communards planted their flag here first: “Jan
cleverly refers Corvinus to Paul’s assertion that a bishop should be
the husband of one wife. 'This implies that laymen must have had
more than one; otherwise, why would the bishop be specifically
limited? There you have your text.'” (Arthur,
Anthony (2011-04-01). The Tailor-King (p. 173). St. Martin's Press.
Kindle Edition.)
These verses are in competition with "sell that thou hast, and
give to the poor" for the most imaginative exegesis by modern
readers: "The Greek text literally reads 'a one-woman man.' That
phrase doesn't refer to marital status at all but to his moral
character regarding his sexual behavior." (John MacArthur, Divine
Design, p. 145). Actually 'husband of one wife' is every bit as
literal a translation as 'one-woman man,' because γυνη means both 'wife' and 'woman,' just as ανηρ means
both 'husband' and 'man.' The early church authors thought these
verses meant that a divorced and remarried man could not be a
Christian pastor. What with the prevalence in the pulpit today of
divorced and remarried men, it has been discovered it doesn't mean
that. What then does it mean?
'Elders' and 'bishops' are the same office in the New Testament, though
they would later be pried apart into a hierarchy. Some people explain these
verses by saying that, because there were so many Christian men in the
church who had multiple wives (polygamy, they say, being very common in
those days), Paul wants elders selected from that subset of men in the
church who had only one wife at the moment. They say this verse has nothing
to do with divorce, only polygamy. There were in fact many places in the world
where polygamists could be found, even
Palestine, where Herod the Great had married, and murdered, multiple wives. Polygamy was the long-standing
custom of Persia, then governed by Parthia: "They marry each one several lawful wives, and
they get also a much larger number of concubines." (Herodotus,
Histories, Volume I, Book I, Chapter 135). Germany, India, Arabia, and many
other far-flung places practiced this custom.
Early church interpretation of this passage gives no support to
such theories: “Such a one a bishop ought to be, who has been the
'husband of one wife,' who also has herself had no other husband,
'ruling well his own house.'” (Apostolic Constitutions, Book 2,
Section 1, Chapter II, p. 785, ECF_0_07). 'Herself,' not
'themselves;' in this author's mind, the requirement is symmetrical, and is anyone claiming
polyandry was common? Nevertheless, can this 'one wife at a time' interpretation possibly be
sustained? Was polygamy really all that common in the areas where Paul
travelled?
Tacitus draws a dividing line
between the civilized world and the barbarians, saying of the
Germans, "Almost alone among barbarians they are content with one
wife, except a very few among them, and these not from sensuality,
but because their noble birth procures for them many offers of
alliance." (Tacitus, Germania, 18 Kindle location 143). This however is an
overstatement; the Greeks and Romans were not, in fact, the only
monogamists in the world, Herodotus includes traditional Egyptians
in the fold: "All these are customs practiced by the Egyptians who
dwell above the fens: and those who are settled in the fen-land have
the same customs for the most part as the other Egyptians, both in
other matters and also in that they live each with one wife only, as
do the Hellenes. . ." (Herodotus, Histories, Book II, Chapter 92).
The Greeks and Romans were aware of
these customs amongst the barbarians:
"It is a Median custom to select the bravest person as
king, but this does not generally prevail, being confined to the
mountain tribes. The custom for the kings to have many wives is more
general, it is found among all the mountaineers also, but they are
not permitted to have less than five. In the same manner the women
think it honorable for husbands to have as many wives as possible,
and esteem it a misfortune if they have less than five." (Strabo,
Geography, Book XI, Chapter XIII, Section 11, p. 266)
Polygamy, if not universal outside the sphere of Graceo-Roman
civilization, was at the very least widespread. Geographer Pomponius Mela describes African nomads who practice polygamy:
"Although, being scattered all over in family groups and
without law, they take no common counsel, still, because individual
men have several wives and for that reason more children than usual
(both those eligible to receive an inheritance and those not
eligible), they are never few in number." (Pomponius Mela,
Description of the World, Book 1, Section 42, p. 47).
But Paul didn't go to any of those places to preach! The places he went,
and where Timothy and Titus were likely to go, practiced monogamy and had
done so for a long time. Custom and law in the marriage arena were modelled
after the practice of Athens and Rome, not these other regions. The Macedonian successors to Alexander, whether
from having 'gone Persian' after conquering that empire or through
native custom, practiced polygamy, as had Alexander himself. When Marc
Antony, who already had a Roman wife, went native and married Cleopatra, it was a
first:
"Moreover, in marrying several wives, Demetrius did not
break through any custom, for he only did what had been usual for
the kings of Macedonia since the days of Philip and Alexander, and
what was done by Lysimachus and Ptolemy in his own time; and he
showed due respect to all his wives; while Antonius, in the first
place, married two wives at the same time, which no Roman had ever
dared to do before, and then drove away his own countrywoman and his
legitimate wife to please a foreigner [Cleopatra], and one to whom
he was not legally married." (Plutarch's Lives, Comparison of
Demetrius and Antonius, Chapter IV, Kindle location 4664).
This is not to say that Roman men, in particular, led particularly chaste
lives, but two marriages cannot legally be contracted at the same time,
under Roman law:
"There is no doubt that he who has two wives at once
is branded with infamy, for, in a case of this kind, not the operation
of the law by which our citizens are forbidden to contract more than
one marriage at a time, but the intention, should be considered; and
therefore he who pretended to be unmarried, but had another wife in
the province, and asked you to marry him, can lawfully be accused
of the crime of fornication, for which you are not liable, for the
reason that you thought that you were his wife. You can obtain from
the Governor of the province the return of all your property of
which you deplore the loss on account of the fraudulent marriage,
and which should be returned to you without delay."
(Emperors Valerian and Gallienus and the Caesar
Valerian to Theodora, 259 A.D.)
We hear, "In fact, while other men within the culture often had more than one wife, the apostles allowed men to rise to leadership only if they limited themselves to one wife (1 Tim. 3:2)."
(J. Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity, Kindle location 4415). Within what culture? There was no room in Roman law, which held sway over a considerable chunk of the globe, for multiple wives, though divorce was permitted. Some parts of the empire, including Palestine, were allowed
to retain their own laws, but the Romans were proud of their laws and imposed
them wherever possible. Under these laws, a man had only one lawful, wedded
wife at a time; whatever other women he might have dealings with,
their children could not be registered as his citizen-offspring.
Certainly some people saw little real difference between the widespread immorality
of married men and actual polygamy. Marc
Antony, criticized for his practice of plural marriage, defended himself
vigorously: "In a startlingly frank letter, Antonius asked Octavian, 'What's
come over you? Do you object to my sleeping with Cleopatra? She is my
wife! And it isn't as if this were anything new — the affair started nine years ago! And what about you? Are you faithful to Livia
Drusilla? My congratulations if, when this letter arrives, you have not
already been to bed with Tertullia or Terentilla or Rufilla or Salvia Titisiena — or all of them.'"
(Cleopatra the Great, Joann Fletcher, p. 278; see Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve
Caesars, Augustus, Chapter LXIX). While certainly
Octavian's adulterous ways were despicable, legalizing such immorality
is not an advance but a retreat, and the Romans were right to disapprove.
The fact that many married men of the present day are unfaithful to
their spouses is not quite the same thing as polygamy. The law gave no
recognition to plural marriage.
Paul's category: "the husband of one wife,"
would have struck his readers as a novelty, though the inverse category:
'the wife of one husband,' was familiar to them. The 'univira,' or wife of one husband, was an honored figure at Roman weddings. She was not a woman who was married to only one man at the moment, but a woman who had been married to only one man, cumulatively:
"Women who had been content with a single marriage used to be honored
with a crown of chastity. For they thought that the mind of a married woman
was particularly loyal and uncorrupted if it knew not how to leave the
bed on which she had surrendered her virginity, believing that trial of
many marriages was as it were the sign of a legalized incontinence."
(Valerius Maximus, 'Memorable Doings and Sayings,' Book II.1).
By extending the category to men as well, Paul eliminates the
double standard that was rife in the sexual morality of the pagans;
the pagans expected fidelity and chastity from women, from men not
so much. As explained by the Pythagorean author Perictyone, "In a becoming
manner she should bear any stroke of fortune that may strike her
husband, whether he is unfortunate in business, or makes ignorant
mistakes, is sick, intoxicated, or has connection with other women.
This last error is granted to men, but not to women, since they are
punished for this offense." (Perictyone, On the Harmony of a Woman,
Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, Kindle
location 5067). The rationale for the double standard is offered by the
French author Montesquieu, ". . .because the children of the wife
born in adultery necessarily belong and are an expense to the
husband, while the children produced by the adultery of the husband
are not the wife's nor are an expense to the wife." (Montesquieu,
The Spirit of the Laws, Kindle location 7097). Whatever was the Graceo-Roman rationale, Paul does not endorse it.
Subsequent to Paul, even pagans praised the ideal of male
fidelity: "He [Cato] married Atilia, the daughter of Soranus, and
this was the first woman with whom he came together, but not the
only woman, like Laelius the companion of Scipio; for Laelius was
more fortunate in having known during his long life only one woman
and that his wife." (Plutarch's Lives, Life of Cato, Chapter VII).
Although the idea was not altogether new; while in the first century, divorce was common in the Roman empire, and
indeed every kind of sexual immorality (as in our own day), Romans remembered
the early years of their Republic in an idealized way as the home on earth
of marital fidelity:
"From the founding of the city [Rome] down to its five hundred and
twentieth year there was no case of divorce between man and wife. Sp. Carvilius
was the first to put his wife away for cause of barrenness. Although he
was thought to have a tolerable reason for so doing, he did not escape
criticism, because they considered that even desire for children ought
not to have been placed ahead of conjugal loyalty." (Valerius Maximus,
'Memorable Doings and Sayings,' Book II.1).
Neither was monogamy a new idea introduced by Rome in the Greek-speaking
areas where Paul spread the gospels. With
the exception of a period when war had depopulated the city, Athenian law
generally allowed a man to register as a citizen-son only the offspring of his marriage with
a free-born citizen wife: "For this is what living with a woman as one's
wife means—to have children by her and to introduce the sons to the
members of the clan and of the deme, and to betroth the daughters to
husbands as one's own." (Demosthenes, LIX, Against Neaera, Section
122). Any other offspring he might have with any other
woman was, not a citizen, but an illegitimate child deprived of civil rights.
Consequently, a man had only one lawful wife at a time. Divorce was allowed,
but not multiple concurrent wives. Which is not to say there were no cases
of bigamy, such as occur in contemporary America; case law reflected
such: "As to the case also, that happened in the memory of our
fathers, when the father of a family, who had come from Spain to
Rome, and had left a wife pregnant in that province, and married
another at Rome, without sending any notice of divorce to the
former, and died intestate, after a son had been born of each wife,
did a small matter come into controversy, when the question was
concerning the rights of two citizens, I mean concerning the boy who
was born of the latter wife and his mother, who, if it were adjudged
that a divorce was effected from a former wife by a certain set of
words, and not by a second marriage, would be deemed a concubine?"
(Cicero, On Oratory, Book 1, Chapter XL).
In most cases Jewish rivalry and
emulation against the pagans would have produced no good result, as
Hebrew morality was higher than that of the pagans; however, in this
one case, the pagans had contrived to avoid the jealousy and
scheming inherent in polygamy. And the concept of one spouse is a rare, but
beautiful thing to us as to Martial: "Five sons, as many daughters
Juno gave me; the hands of all closed my eyes. And rare honor fell
to my wedded lot: one spouse alone was all that my pure life knew."
(Martial, Epitaph, Epigrams, Book X, LXIII, Kindle location 6039,
Complete Works of Martial).
One can find exceptions to monogamy in Rome and Athens, but they are almost such as to prove the
rule: "Pericles many years before, when he was at the height of his
power and had children born to him, as we have related, of
legitimate birth, proposed a law that only those born of an Athenian
father and mother should be reckoned Athenian citizens. But when the
king of Egypt sent a present of forty thousand medimni of wheat to
be divided among the citizens, many lawsuits arose about the
citizenship of men whose birth had never been questioned before that
law came into force, and many vexatious informations were laid.
Nearly five thousand men were convicted of illegitimacy of birth
and sold for slaves, while those who retained their citizenship and
proved themselves to be genuine Athenians amounted to fourteen
thousand and forty." (Plutarch, Life of Pericles, Chapter XXXVII,
Plutarch's Lives, Volume I, p. 196). Pericles begged for an
exception in his own case, owing to the death of his legitimate
children, and this plea "touched the hearts of the Athenians so much
that they thought his sorrows deserving of their pity, and his
request such as he was entitled to make and they to grant in common
charity, and they consented to his illegitimate son being enrolled
in his own tribe and bearing his own name." (Plutarch, Life of
Pericles, Chapter XXXVII, Plutarch's Lives, Volume I, p. 197). But Pericles was a much respected, famous politician; it was not generally
the case that an illegitimate child could be enrolled as a citizen!
This was the law, and it leaves no room for polygamy. Athens is only one
place to be sure, but not an uninfluential or out of the way one.
Sometimes people slide into this interpretation with the best of intentions.
Their beloved pastor gets divorced, through no fault of his own (it's always
through no fault of his own). Paul's instructions do not specifically exclude
a divorced man, but only remarriage. But then the lonely pastor gets remarried.
These people ought to say, 'We are making a compassionate exception in
this case rather than obeying Paul's instructions to the letter,' before
they start off down a journey of fantasy anthropology. Polygamy would not
have been common in Paul's Greek-speaking churches. These people's
native understanding of law and justice was that monogamy was the
social norm, and Paul cannot have preached to them the Pharisaic
tolerance for polygamy, given Jesus' own teaching on marriage. The idea
that Paul only meant to exclude practicing polygamists is not a
viable interpretation, in places where the civil law excluded polygamy.
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