Tested new Chinese AI (unfortunately probably making myself vulnerable). I asked Kimi to review the book and answer the following question:
How does the author addresses objection to polygyny when someone says there is one church also known as one bride. Does he even address this?
Answer:
Yes, the author addresses this theological objection, though somewhat indirectly and in his typically polemical style. He does not quote Ephesians 5:25–32 at length, but he tackles the underlying premise— that the marital bond must mirror an exclusive, monogamous union between God/Christ and His people— in two main ways:
1. He denies that marriage is a theological mystery at all, and treats it as a purely political/civil contract. On pages 11–14 and again on page 23, the author (and his annotator Athanasius Vincentius) argue that marriage is not a sacrament but a political institution common to all peoples (Gentile, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian). He writes that marriage "is rightly numbered among purely political contracts, notwithstanding that it is explained in Theological Common Places and confirmed by sacred rites of the Church minister" (p. 23). By removing marriage from ecclesiastical theology, he sidesteps the "one bride" sacramental analogy entirely. He even calls the sacramental view a "yoke of Anti-Christ, who from marriage made a sacrament for exercising tyranny" (p. 13).
2. He turns the "God and His spouse" analogy on its head. On page 31, he comes closest to your specific question. After arguing that monogamy breeds "Gynocracy" (rule by women), he writes:
"For the husband, as superior, can have many inferiors, and God himself ought to be uniquely worshipped by his spouse, yet he is not bound to be intent upon one alone, nor to love her exclusively, just as He Himself does; this is proven in Scripture concerning marriages..."
In other words, he uses the very analogy you mention but reverses its expected conclusion: if human marriage is to mirror God's relationship with His people, the lesson is that the superior party (God, and by analogy the husband) is not restricted to a single object of love. The "spouse" owes unique worship, but the superior is free to have many inferiors.
3. He separates "one flesh" from monogamy. On page 27, he argues that when Christ cites Genesis in Matthew 19, He speaks only of the indissolubility of marriage ("they ought to cleave one to another until death"), not monogamy. The author insists that "one flesh" means a unity that cannot be dissolved by divorce, not that a man may contract with only one woman.
Does he address the Church specifically as "one bride"? Not in a focused, sustained exegesis of Ephesians 5. His strategy is less to refute the "one bride" metaphor directly and more to dissolve the theological framework that makes the metaphor binding on human marriage. By making marriage a civil/political act and by arguing that God's relationship to His people actually authorizes multiplicity in the superior party, he neutralizes the force of the objection without engaging it on purely sacramental grounds.
