The Seventh Commandment: Multi-Attracted, the Orientations of Lust (Part One)
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14)
“Whosoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another committeth adultery” (Lu. 16:18)
Philip of Hesse, a Lutheran Prince, found himself in a marriage that made him extremely unhappy. He was a notorious adulterer, and the counsel of his sister was “why don’t you just marry one of your many whores?” With this reputation, even the most creative Lutheran theologian could not come up with grounds for divorce. Luther counselled him to take another wife after the manner of the Old Testament Patriarchs. Philip’s wife even gave her consent, Philip took a second wife, and had three more children with the first. This is the same Philip whose army Luther unleashed against the peasants, killing 100,000.
Philip told Luther that without a second wife he would find it impossible not to commit adultery. He was attracted (today we would say "oriented") to more than one wife. He had multiply-partner attractions, or orientations. He was not born to be monogamous. Luther believed him, and allowed him to become polygamous. Luther preferred polygamy to divorce (many examples here), until it got so out of control, the State stepped in and outlawed it. Because the State was the head of the church, everyone had the right to be in it, "washed" (1Cor. 6:11), or not, and this was a church exercise in what Peter would call "sow washing" (2 Pet.2:22). If the ax is never laid to the root of the tree, you're left snipping the entanglements of its poisonous fruit. This is what comes when you leapfrog over the Sermon on the Mount. Calvin tried to contain the sow by moving against her with torture-executions in Geneva, while Puritans resorted to beheadings, witch-burnings, and lopping ears. They could not get rid of the wallow, because they denied their followers the cleansing power of "the ax laid to the root of the tree." When they leapfrogged over the Sermon on the Mount, they allowed Herodias to decapitate the Bible, and turn Paul into a headless monster after the manner of Moses.
“He that looketh on a woman to lust after her, committeth adultery.” So what to do? The Bible tells you to marry here, and find fulfillment in the God-ordained mandate: “better to marry, than to burn.” This was the only solution Luther could think of. And he would later confirm that he would give the same counsel again. God would not create a desire (or orientation) and not at the same time ordain an outlet. Multi-marriage was the only solution. No man could be expected to suppress or mortify inordinate lust. The answer was to expand marriage to avoid breaking the Seventh Commandment. After all, this is what marriage is for. Philip told Luther that he could not love his first wife, but claimed to love the second, so it was no longer a loveless marriage.
But what if a person had desires for which there is no divinely-ordained outlet? Luther did not deny the legitimacy of Philip's extra-monogamous orientation, and found a divinely-ordained outlet in Old Testament polygamy. The result was a scandal that caused an uproar in Europe. No one came to Luther’s defense--problems of political bedrooms were easily solved elsewhere with "exception clauses," as with Henry VIII. Luther never wavered. Philip was too big to fail. When the famous theologian Karl Barth brought his mistress into his household, his mother asked how a preacher could do this. He maintained that the love he had for his mistress must be from God (he is considered the greatest theologian of the last century). She finally relented, because he was too important for the work of God. Evangelicals here in the US knew he was a man of filthy habits, but pretended otherwise. His student, the well known Mennonite John Yoder, long beheld the mistress at the family dinner table of his teacher, and came back to a life of rape at Goshen Seminary. This was long known at Goshen, but he was too big to fail, so they covered it up, and he continued to rape. Notre Dame knew he was a rapist and covered for him until his death. He traveled the world speaking at Peace Conferences--his victims sent letters to Goshen from all over the world. Only now does the Mennonite Church acknowledge his violence against women. Lutherans and Mennonites find common ground at last. Divorce is the root of violence against women and child abuse.
Luther saw in Philip’s inability to be monogamous a valid concern. Philip steadfastly maintained that he could not refrain from adultery, and that his lusts could neither be contained nor mortified. Luther allowed polygamy to keep him from committing the sin of adultery, and to help soothe his troubled conscience. Because he had multiple-partner orientations, why not expand marriage to allow the dignity that comes with the sanctity of marriage? Because those desires will not go away. And Philip would argue that he was born that way, just as some are born to monogamy. So how could God create him with a gift and not provide the opportunity to use that gift?
What was Philip to do? He burned after other women? He could not refrain. He was openly and unashamedly Multi-oriented. That God would create him this way and condemn him for it was unthinkable. The Sermon on the Mount warning of "cutting out the right eye to save the soul" was at best incomprehensible or meant for another time. That a God of love would torment a man like this was a denial of justification by faith alone, a denial of grace, and made salvation dependent on repentance, thus adding good works to faith. For Luther, the Gospel delivered man from the guilt, but not the power, of sin. Multi-orientation was his identity. He outed himself to Luther and Bucer--although, he never was in the closet. He was a notorious adulterer. But how is an adulterer to live a dignified life, if society denies him the dignity of solemnizing his lifestyle? What right did society have to deny him the dignity of living his life without the indignity of pointing fingers. Like the Pope says, if such a person loves God, who is he to judge?
The rest of the world told him he had to find it within himself to find fulfillment within the Seventh Commandment: one man, one wife. But he would sooner be dead. He was determined to be Multi-oriented, and also determined not to be ashamed of being Multi. The rest of the world would simply have to come around, sooner or later. Luther agreed. No man, having such unbridled lusts could be expected to pine away in utter misery and frustration for the rest of his life. So he allowed Multi-oriented marriage. A man for the times. 100,000 slaughtered peasants and now many wives. Could you sit next to this man in your church? How would you pray with such a man? As long as he is saved, you say, or born again, who's to say what is and what is not the only orientation. Luther would not use such language. Just use the word faith, he would say, or grace. Leave works out of it. This is why he called James "a strawy epistle." Because James mixed up faith and works. He didn't like the epistles of Peter much better. Because both were too much like the Sermon on the Mount. Which is why the descendants of Luther-Calvin like to refer to their doctrines as "Pauline." By leapfrogging over the Gospels they were able to twist Paul into a modern day Moses, and killing and adultery flourished again just like among "them of old time," the difference being that now they were saved and born again, or elect.
to be continued