Part 2 - Responding to @ReformationRedPill "Does Scripture TRULY forbid polygamy"

The heart of Reformation Red Pill’s case is 1 Timothy 3:2 — “the husband of one wife” — read as Paul outlawing plural marriage for every man, not just elders. This part answers that the verse names a positive qualification (be married, be faithful), never says only one, and that calling polygyny sin requires a law no one can produce. Sin is the transgression of God’s law; an appeal to Calvin, Chrysostom, or a new “sub-creational” category is not a command.

This is Part 2 of a 3-part response — start with Part 1 and finish with Part 3.

The argument answered

• The “sub-creational sin” category invented from the Westminster Catechism’s “want of conformity” — a man-made label used to call sin what God’s law never forbids.
• The claim that divorce is itself a sin God merely “regulated,” answered by God describing Himself as a husband of two wives who issues a writ of divorce to Israel.
• 1 Timothy 3:2: the Greek heis means one, first, or some — “husband of one wife” no more caps a man at one wife than “one car” caps him at one car; read as only-one, it would disqualify God, Jacob, David, and Solomon from eldership.
• The appeal to Calvin and Chrysostom: respected men importing a Greco-Roman bias, calling polygyny a “stain” and “corruption” without ever citing the law it transgresses.
• The negative-inference fallacy and the consistency trap: if “husband of one wife” binds all men, then zero wives is also disqualifying — celibacy condemned — and serial divorce-and-remarry would somehow qualify.
• The Levitical high priest (a virgin bride only) shows particular office-rules don’t become universal sins — marrying a widow isn’t sin just because a high priest couldn’t.
• Abimelech in Genesis 20: already a polygamist, he takes Sarah “in the integrity of his heart,” and God calls him righteous — the only problem was that she was married, proving adultery is taking another man’s wife.

Scriptures examined

• 1 Timothy 3:2 — overseer, “husband of one wife”
• Exodus 21:10 — a second wife’s food, clothing, and conjugal rights protected
• Jeremiah 3:8 — God divorces faithless Israel; God as husband of two
• Ruth 4:11 — Rachel and Leah built the house of Israel
• 2 Chronicles 24:1–3 — Joash did right in the Lord’s sight; Jehoiada gave him two wives
• Leviticus 20:10 — the death penalty for a woman with two men (the actual law on adultery)
• Genesis 20 — Abimelech, Sarah, and “the integrity of your heart”

Why it matters

If a sin must transgress a law, then the burden is to name the command — chapter, verse, and penalty — that forbids a man a second wife. Where there is no law, there is no transgression.