How To Teach Your Children The Heritage And Doctrine Of Polygamy

[Calm]

Can you please provide scripture where God commands polygamy?

Sec 132 for one.

Also anything dealing with Levirate marriage.

[Tacenda]

Sec 132 for one.

Also anything dealing with Levirate marriage.

Speaking of the bible, but since you mentioned it, Levirate marriage, does it trump the scriptures against? I'm just having major problems with polygamy and as you touched on before, polyandry.

[Calm]

Speaking of the bible, but since you mentioned it, Levirate marriage, does it trump the scriptures against? I'm just having major problems with polygamy and as you touched on before, polyandry.

So put up the scriptures against polygyny and put up the scriptures for polygyny and why don't you see if there is actually a contradiction?

Do you believe or not that God commanded Levirate marriage? It is in the Bible that he did. If he did, does that not mean that at least in some cases he may command polygyny even if in others he forbids it?

[Closet Doubter]

. . . . There is no official Church doctrine that polygamy will be practiced in the Celestial Kingdom. In the Celestial Kingdom nobody will be put into a relationship that does not result in a fullness of joy.

Briefly, according to Valerie Hudson and Section 36 and 132, choosing enter the sacred covenants of sealing is all that matters from the standpoint of the individual’s exaltation as a member of God’s eternal family. The actual people to whom one is sealed might or might not change in the re-forging of the great family link of all of God’s exalted children. Everyone will be sealed together. That is one of the reasons the Church does not cancel sealing’s of a wife in a divorce situation unless another marriage sealing is to take place, because what matters is that the wife chose to marry a worthy Mel Priesthood holder -even though she will most likely end up having that sealing transferred to someone else. The first husband remains a stand in until a transfer can take place.

Such stand in or proxy marriages were common in the early Church because one could not be sealed to loved one who were not baptized in the Church before they died.

Women will be free to have any such sealings transferred in the Celestial Kingdom.

I haven't read all the posts here and maybe this has been addressed but when did the doctrine of the Church change? I have ALWAYS been taught that polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom is an official doctrine. If that doctrine is changed, doesn't the change have to come from the Q15 or can arc-steadiers change the doctrine on their own because the Q15 are being quiet on the subject?

[Azariah]

Did you grow up in the Church?

I would beg to differ. There have been mixed feelings about it since as long as I can remember, which goes back to the early 60s.

I would of thought Polygamy was an "issue" ever since LDS church leaders began practicing it in the 1840s.

[Calm]

I haven't read all the posts here and maybe this has been addressed but when did the doctrine of the Church change? I have ALWAYS been taught that polygamy in the Celestial Kingdom is an official doctrine. If that doctrine is changed, doesn't the change have to come from the Q15 or can arc-steadiers change the doctrine on their own because the Q15 are being quiet on the subject?

Can you point to what you mean when you say celestial polygamy is an official doctrine? There are different interpretations of that floating around and depending on the interpretation one can point to 132 as evidence of official doctrine or not.

[treeface]

It was pretty much a logical process based on a few axioms...that God's greatest gift to men is love, both his own and others is the first. Second, that heaven is a state of maximized joy and happiness (why would it be anything less?) and therefore maximized love and thus the family structure will be one that maximizes the opportunity to express all forms of love to each other in the best way possible.

After that, it is simply an observation that women in general are as capable as men, though perhaps not as prone, to loving more than one man at a time (and I don't mean lust or even simply romantic love, I mean the full form of love that comes from committing to share one's whole existence with another) and thus if the goal of celestial polygyny is to maximized the opportunity for men to experience love both with their wives and children, then surely the same must exist for women. And if it is possible for celestial women to have maximized love without the experience of polyandry, with only one man, then surely it is equally possible for celestial men to experience maximized love with only one woman.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your line of reasoning here. I agree with the principle that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And once we've overcome jealousy, we'd naturally want maximum happiness for the person (or persons) we love. Continuing down this road, it is not inconceivable that, for example, a woman could have multiple husbands, and at the same time be one of several wives of one (or more) of those husbands. Sounds gross and immoral down here, but we may see things from a very different perspective up there. And I think the LDS scriptures leave the door open for this sort of heaven, though it's not something that is overtly taught.

Edited November 29, 2012 by treeface

[Rivers]

Can you please provide scripture where God commands polygamy? I think there are some that show he is against it.

There are places in the scriptures that say The Lord gave certain men wives but nothing that I know of which explicitly says "I command you to practice polygamy." But I suppose The Lord giving giving somebody an additional wife is a commandment to marry her.

[Nathair/|\]

In answer to the thread title, my parents gave me the Storm Testament novels and the Yorgason brothers' Soderbergh novels.