A few useful questions
What does someone mean when they say “the Bible is clear”?
They may mean a direct command, a conclusion drawn from several passages, a piece of case law, a church rule, or wise advice. The label does not tell you whether the claim is true, but it does tell you what kind of support it needs. Please use these questions on my argument before you use them on anyone else.
Can you point to the sentence?
When someone presents a teaching as a direct command, ask where it is written. If no sentence appears, the opposite is not automatically permissible. Many Christian beliefs are conclusions drawn faithfully from the whole Bible, but the reasoning should be shown instead of presented as a quotation.
What kind of claim is it?
You may be hearing a direct command, an inference, a church rule, civil law, or wise counsel. Naming the kind of claim helps you weigh it fairly.
Does a law approve everything it regulates?
Scripture gives laws about slavery, divorce, debt, warfare, and other parts of a fallen world. The existence of a rule does not tell us, by itself, that God approves of the entire arrangement. Ask what legal status the passage recognizes, whose rights it protects, what wrong it names, and what it leaves open.
Read the whole conversation
Who is speaking? Who is being addressed? What question started the conversation? Look at the words that carry the meaning, then read what comes before and after. Context can strengthen a familiar reading or show that it was answering a different question.
Give the other reading a fair hearing
Describe it in words its supporters would recognize. If an answer only works against a weak version of the objection, it has not answered the objection.
Does the conclusion fit every passage?
One law, story, silence, or disputed phrase cannot settle this question. A sound conclusion has to make sense of the laws, the household stories, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles without quietly changing what any of them says.
Six things a teacher may mean
Several of these may appear in the same sermon and sound equally direct. Separating them makes it easier to see where each one gets its authority and what kind of evidence it needs.
- Command
- If someone says God commands a thing, ask to see where. “You shall not steal” is a command because the sentence is there.
- Inference
- Some of Christianity's most important doctrines are gathered from several passages. An inference can be faithful and true. It should still be explained as an inference.
- Case law
- A law may recognize a legal status, assign rights, or limit harm without praising every part of the situation. Ask exactly what the law establishes before drawing a moral conclusion from it.
- Church discipline
- A church may set rules for its members and leaders. The honest way to state such a rule is as the church's discipline, not as a verse that everyone else somehow missed.
- Civil law
- Christians are bound to obey the marriage law where they live. That authority is real, but it comes from civil government rather than from a new sentence in Scripture.
- Prudence
- Sometimes the wisest answer is, “Do not do this.” Wise counsel can save a family even when it is not a universal command.
Try it with seven familiar statements
These examples were written for this exercise. Choose the kind of claim you hear, then compare your answer with the explanation.
Example 01 / 07
written examples · not quotations
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
What kind of claim is this?
Use the same questions on this site
My argument is not “the Torah regulates plural households, therefore God approves of them.” That would prove too much. I am asking what status the laws recognize, which obligations they preserve, how the narratives and prophets judge these households, and whether Jesus or the apostles later establish an exclusive numerical rule. Every part of that argument should stand up to the questions above.
Please reject any page that makes a passage say more than it does, whether the mistake favors the traditional conclusion or mine.
Every page in the Texts ends with links you can open. If a source shows that a page is wrong, write to us. The correction, date, and previous wording will remain on the corrections page.
If I am wrong, here is what would show it
Any one of the findings below would require me to change the conclusion and publish a correction.
- If the best-supported reading of Leviticus 18:18 is a general prohibition against taking any second wife while the first lives, the legal case changes at its center.
- If Genesis 2:24, as Jesus and Paul use it, establishes not only what one marriage is but also an exclusive limit for every husband, the canonical case fails.
- If mias gynaikos andra can be shown to carry a settled numerical sense in first-century usage, the 1 Timothy page is wrong about what grammar can decide.
- If the laws recognize plural households only as temporary accommodations, in the way Jesus characterizes Mosaic divorce, and later Scripture ends that accommodation, I must say so.
- If the narratives or prophets identify plurality itself as the sin, rather than the adultery, injustice, idolatry, or abuse committed within a household, my reading of those stories is wrong.
- If the New Testament makes a stronger cumulative case for an exclusive monogamous norm than my reading can explain, my argument fails even without a single sentence that states the rule.
- If the historical sources on the Drift have been misquoted, mistranslated, or read out of context, the historical argument weakens in proportion, and each source record is published with its locator so that this can be checked one by one.
A sound reading of the text still would not tell a particular person what to do. Motives, resources, existing promises, civil law, and the wellbeing of the family already present could make the answer an emphatic no. Something may be permitted without being wise for a given person, and permission never makes it a command.
The best way to see whether these questions are useful is to try them on a real passage. There are eight in the Texts section. I would start with the one you think makes the strongest case against my conclusion.