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MGTOW A Culture Killer?

For what it’s worth.
A person of Jewish heritage was telling me that concubinage is common in the NY area
Told me of a specific case in which the man has 3 wives and 3 concubines. Every one of them has a contract, incidentally drawn up by one of the concubines who is a lawyer. The contracts specifically state that they are a concubine. That he has the right to dismiss them at will. And that any children belong to both parents jointly.
Evidently there are women who accept this.
 
rockfox said:
Then you must be wiser than I.
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Maybe I'm just simpler. He says He will confound the wise. But it really is simple. If you stick it you bought it. It belongs to you and you're responsible for it.

Remember that this is a metaphor for Christ and the church so are their categories of Christians? Does Christ treat some if us differently than others? Which of us are His brides and which of us are His concubines? And what does that mean for or walk with Him?
 
ZecAustin said:
Remember that this is a metaphor for Christ and the church so are their categories of Christians? Does Christ treat some if us differently than others? Which of us are His brides and which of us are His concubines? And what does that mean for or walk with Him?
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I'm trying to stay out of this part of the discussion, but wanted to say something about this. Marriage is not a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the church. The relationship between Christ and the church is an example or ideal to which we as husbands and wives are to aspire. We don't try to understand Christ and the church in terms of what we understand about marriage. We try to understand our responsibilities in marriage to the extent we understand the relationship between Christ and the church, and the point Paul was trying to make about that.

That's not dispositive of the concubine question. There is clearly some distinction between different classes or types of women being made in the OT, and it appears to me at the very least that a concubine is more than an ordinary slave and less than a wife-in-the-fullest-sense-of-the-word. Different sets of legal rights apply. We may or may not be able to get more specific than that. In any event, it does not follow from that that whatever concubinage was in the OT that the point Paul was making in the NT about the responsibilities of husbands to wives would apply in exactly the same way to concubines then or now.
 
andrew said:
I'm trying to stay out of this part of the discussion, but wanted to say something about this. Marriage is not a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the church. The relationship between Christ and the church is an example or ideal to which we as husbands and wives are to aspire. We don't try to understand Christ and the church in terms of what we understand about marriage. We try to understand our responsibilities in marriage to the extent we understand the relationship between Christ and the church, and the point Paul was trying to make about that.

That's not dispositive of the concubine question. There is clearly some distinction between different classes or types of women being made in the OT, and it appears to me at the very least that a concubine is more than an ordinary slave and less than a wife-in-the-fullest-sense-of-the-word. Different sets of legal rights apply. We may or may not be able to get more specific than that. In any event, it does not follow from that that whatever concubinage was in the OT that the point Paul was making in the NT about the responsibilities of husbands to wives would apply in exactly the same way to concubines then or now.
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This is just some thing we disagree on. The metaphor is all entwined in both directions. The whole reason God instituted marriage was as a testament to the relationship between Christ and the church. And in fact the metaphor would only apply to men if it only worked the way you describe, or at least the way I understand they way you're describing.

In order for women to get any utility from it it has to illuminate the husband and wife as well as Christ and the church. The text calls it a great mystery and its a difficult and complex passage but I believe strongly that it runs both ways.
 
That's fine, Zec, but while you're trying to keep things all "simple", I have to point out that Paul's analogy is "we do in our human lives as we see it working in the spiritual domain". So going by what's written, first we get our heads around the relationship between the assembly and Christ, then we understand better how we are to discharge our responsibilities as husbands and wives. Everything else is your private opinion.

Paul gets sort of carried away talking about Christ and the church, then admits that and reins himself in, and then gets back to practical application. The "great mystery" is his excursus into the spiritual teaching, but there's no 'great mystery' about what his practical application was once he gets back to business.
 
The real takeaway here is that women will understand submission only to the extent they see the assembly of men modeling submission to Christ.

IRL, when I am talking with men whose wives are balking at plural marriage, we invariably wind up talking about why the wife doesn't trust the man's leadership and what has the man been doing over the years before this division that would cause his wife to have confidence that her husband is following Christ and not just rationalizing his desires. If he's setting the pace, leading from the front, things will work out. Otherwise, not so much.
 
Question 1: Is a thread split in order?

Question 2: What do we believe are the similarities and differences between Abraham's responsibilities in his relationships with Sarah (undisputed wife), Hegar (slave of Sarah given to Abe to make babies), and Keturah (described in one verse in English as a 'wife' (but we know the Hebrew says he "took a woman"), and described in another verse using the particular Hebrew word translated 'concubine' in English)? What is the difference, if any, in the women's responsibilities to Abraham?

The word 'concubine' literally means 'lie with', so I'm suggesting that the only real legal difference is between slaves and free women (might be useful to consider Gal 4 in this context), and the word concubine is just a descriptive word typically used to distinguish a slave one is lying with (and presumably making babies with) from a slave one is not having such relations with. We assume a man is lying with his wife-woman, so the word 'concubine' might be used sometimes in ways that are confusing, but generally just means a woman the man has cleaved into, which includes presumably all wives and only some slaves.

Perhaps the word 'concubine' doesn't create a new legal class of woman at all. Just a few regulations that are driven by the sex/children issue.
 
Well I don't see the efficacy of "exploring" it further with a post split. Some of the old lines of demarcation have gotten highlighted in his a few posts; differences on submission, approach to scripture and more.

We've gone down these roads before and there is no resolution. Maybe we could post links to the old threads or bump them back to the top or something so men can go through them and see if they want to pick up where they were left off the last time.
 
Good points.
 
ZecAustin said:
Remember that this is a metaphor for Christ and the church so are their categories of Christians? Does Christ treat some if us differently than others? Which of us are His brides and which of us are His concubines? And what does that mean for or walk with Him?
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Would the metaphor of grafting work here? I have no dog in this fight, but that thought occured.
 
steve said:
There is strong dissension amongst the brethren over the prospect of polygyny.
What I find fascinating is how strong the opposition is to any concept of concubinage. The pressure bury it in the OT is, to me, an indication that the enemy fears this as s useful tool also.
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Steve, I am not specifically speaking to you, I am just mentioning things that came to my mind after having read your post.

I think one of the routes by which this has been accomplished is with a grand misinformation campaign. I have read a number of Christian writers who seem to perceive concubine as the dictionary term for sex-slave. Then they proceed to effort to explain why God "allowed" such "evil" things in the "Old Testament". I expect that for many of them, the man who has more than one wife is little if at all better (in their eyes) than the man who has a concubine ("sex-slave"). I've read many comments (youtube, blogs, articles) from women who seem fully persuaded (and even angry perhaps) that polygyny has no benefits for women what so ever, but only for the man, and that is; sex.

I think that defending polygyny and concubinage might benefit from a tac of separating exactly what is being defended from what is not. Many seem to approach poly in the bible as if they already know it's wrong, and then dig up whatever they can to "prove" it. Arguing scripture with these might not be as effective as determining why they already "know" that poly is wrong, and then showing them the facts of how their understanding is wrong. I think that those "facts" which were used to conclude that poly is wrong might be a significantly more assailable target than the outgrowths of that, which is their "knowledge" that poly is wrong and the bible verses they use to "prove" it.

I am pretty sure that I have seen people arguing where both are right in their own position but misunderstood each other's position, and therefore thought the other was wrong. I am almost certain that I have been of them even recently. Had they discovered that they misunderstood each other's position, they might have discovered a great deal of common ground on the topic they thought each other was so wrong about. Reasonable people, each having quality information, seem to oft arrive at the same conclusion. I see a lot of what appears to be deliberate corruption of information including meanings of words, and misframing of the situation. That misframing is misinformation about the frame of the debate, which is put forth as a self evident fact that is not in dispute. Other things are then put forth as the disputed information. They then proceed to argue within that wrong reference-frame, and this causes one side of the dispute to seem like the obvious winner.

I have tried to reason with people about polygyny and other matters, and it can take repeated and detailed explications of how a certain two things are not synonymous before the frame of the debate can be switched, and the person understand what exactly I am defending, and what I am not. If they think I am defending something that is actually wrong, because right and wrong have been conflated; it seems a battle already lost. Rather, I think that the first step is to strictly define what it is that is being defended, before efforting to defend it. The terms must be properly defined so both sides are thinking the same thing when a certain word is used. Sadly, the person might even think it strange, and that you're mincing words, when you effort to be so specific, when the umbrella term seems just fine. It might even seem that you're trying to generate a distinction where there is none.

I am not of the mind that everyone is even able to hear the truth. I believe that for some, their mental framework for processing information and understanding the world around them is so broken and corrupt, that no amount of truth, in the near term, shall be persuasive. These might have a beloved lie that they want to be true (feminists?), and so whatever comes along that might conflict with that lie is not soon accepted. Some might even shutdown as they see truths arrive, which they cannot dispute, that are chipping away at the foundation of their beloved lie.

As for concubinage being a useful tool; I think that we see all kinds of problems caused (at least in the sense of being a link in the causal chain) by large numbers of women going around who are not ruled over by a man. The process of easy divorce, seems like more of the same; resulting in mass numbers of woman not being ruled over by a man.
 
I care not whether we split or not. It has become of topic of its own though.

andrew said:
The word 'concubine' literally means 'lie with', so I'm suggesting that the only real legal difference is between slaves and free women (might be useful to consider Gal 4 in this context), and the word concubine is just a descriptive word typically used to distinguish a slave one is lying with (and presumably making babies with) from a slave one is not having such relations with. We assume a man is lying with his wife-woman, so the word 'concubine' might be used sometimes in ways that are confusing, but generally just means a woman the man has cleaved into, which includes presumably all wives and only some slaves.

Perhaps the word 'concubine' doesn't create a new legal class of woman at all. Just a few regulations that are driven by the sex/children issue.
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Every culture had a different practice of concubinage. However in no culture I've seen discussed did the word concubine cover wives.

I wouldn't draw conclusions about concubines from the meaning of the English word because it is a transliteration of a Latin word, which meant something like 'lie with'. That is different from the Hebrew and Greek meanings of the word which has a much more derogatory connotation related to seduction.

The Roman's often did not have a derogatory view of concubines and while it could include relations with slaves, it often didn't (likely mostly so).

For the Greeks (who used basically the same word as the Hebrews), it rarely meant slaves. For the Hebrews, many of the examples in the scriptures are of slaves, as are the only laws related to concubines. But not all of the examples and historically it wasn't solely a relationship with slaves.

Moreover there aren't that many laws about concubines or wives and the former mainly relate to protections owing to their slave status and use a word particular to slaves. Non-slave concubines were free to leave and needed no such protections. But none of the concubine laws related to children.

It is easy to say that concubines are sex-slaves. One can find some justification in scripture and it allows one two reasons to easily dismiss it as not for today: slavery is illegal and relationships not founded in mutual love are now considered wrong.

Which is horribly ironic since for the Hebrews it may have often been the case that the difference between wife and concubine is the wife was an arranged contractual marriage not out of love while the concubine a free relationship founded on love.
 
steve said:
The enemy of our souls fights that which he fears. He fights anything that gives righteousness an advantage.
Of course marriage is under attack.
There is strong dissension amongst the brethren over the prospect of polygyny.
What I find fascinating is how strong the opposition is to any concept of concubinage. The pressure bury it in the OT is, to me, an indication that the enemy fears this as s useful tool also.
I don’t see the point of it in this day, but I have found that you find the most gold where you find the most opposition.
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Steve, this is a really good observation. I'd love to see further discussion about why this might be.
 
rockfox said:
Steve, this is a really good observation. I'd love to see further discussion about why this might be.
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Which statement are you referring to?
 
@rockfox, you haven't really responded to my point (if that was your intention), and I didn't say some of the things you appear to be responding to.

Would rockfox or anyone else like to try responding to the questions I asked?
andrew said:
What do we believe are the similarities and differences between Abraham's responsibilities in his relationships with Sarah (undisputed wife), Hegar (slave of Sarah given to Abe to make babies), and Keturah (described in one verse in English as a 'wife' (but we know the Hebrew says he "took a woman"), and described in another verse using the particular Hebrew word translated 'concubine' in English)? What is the difference, if any, in the women's responsibilities to Abraham?
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I'm thinking particularly of Keturah, here, due to the fact that she is described differently in different passages. Any thoughts?
 
andrew said:
What do we believe are the similarities and differences between Abraham's responsibilities in his relationships with Sarah (undisputed wife), Hegar (slave of Sarah given to Abe to make babies), and Keturah (described in one verse in English as a 'wife' (but we know the Hebrew says he "took a woman"), and described in another verse using the particular Hebrew word translated 'concubine' in English)? What is the difference, if any, in the women's responsibilities to Abraham?
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I personaly don't see a difference in any of the three's responsiblities to Abraham. Despite their status, whether a given, bought/slave or a taken women, they are still his women and he is their head. They are under his cover with all the same responsiblties to him. That's just my take.
 
steve said:
Which statement are you referring to?
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All of it:

The enemy of our souls fights that which he fears. He fights anything that gives righteousness an advantage.
Of course marriage is under attack.
There is strong dissension amongst the brethren over the prospect of polygyny.
What I find fascinating is how strong the opposition is to any concept of concubinage. The pressure bury it in the OT is, to me, an indication that the enemy fears this as s useful tool also.
I don’t see the point of it in this day, but I have found that you find the most gold where you find the most opposition.
Click to expand...

I had sort of taken opposition to concubinage part of the usual knee jerk reaction to anything counter to received tradition (esp. related to women). But I think you are astute in your observation of what the enemy does; there is more going on here.

There is a phrase thats become more common lately: you receive flak when you're over the target. So I am curious as to what it is about concubinage (theologically or in practice) that is useful for us today.

Thoughts anyone?

andrew said:
you haven't really responded to my point (if that was your intention), and I didn't say some of the things you appear to be responding to. Would rockfox or anyone else like to try responding to the questions I asked?
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I didn't mean to misconstrue your point, I was sort of just riffing from a statement you made. I kind of addressed what you were saying but I see I didn't address Keturah and I can see how that could affect the answer. I'll look into that.
 
rockfox said:
So I am curious as to what it is about concubinage (theologically or in practice) that is useful for us today.
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From what I have pieced together about the concept, the only part of it that I might find useful is the limited-length-of-time factor.
There is much talk of male fear of commitment. With the horror stories that I have heard about things happening in relationships, I can understand why women would have a fear of making a lifelong commitment. As I said in another post, I would rather accept a two year, for instance, trial marriage with hopes that she would re-up and make it a forever covenant, than shrug my shoulders as she walks away with her fears of making a covenant before YHWH that could possibly be a lifelong mistake.
I just heard another story today of a woman getting beaten up on her wedding night. “You are now my property and I can do as I please”.

Btw: Part of the enemy’s plan is to attract abusers to practice their version of “patriarchy” in order to discredit the movement for all of us. We have all seen it happen.
We are in a war my friends, and we are the ambassadors for our side. Wise as serpents and harmless as doves we must be.
 
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