“If My Wife is Holy Enough, Can I Take Another?”

The “long semester” at Nile Theological College began earlier this month. I am teaching Contextual Theology, one of my favorite courses. Some rightfully argue that all theology is contextual, that is, our understanding of God is birthed from our experience, from our context. Stephen Bevans describes contextual theology as “dialogue” between two realities: the experience of the past as recorded in Scripture and church tradition, and the experience or present to which we who do theology now live (Bevans, 1992). David Bosch, the noted South African missiologist, describes contextual theology as “theology from below,” from the underside of history, informed by the social sciences, a theology whose primary “interlocuter” or communication partner is the poor and the socially marginalized (Bosch, 1991).

As my students and I are learning together, we recognize the need to understand the Gospel and how it relates to our cultures and peoples. On that note, at the end of class during our second week together, John, a pastor, who sits in the front near the door, asked a personal and culturally informed question when he asked, “If my wife is holy enough, can I take another [wife]?” Despite some chuckles from a few classmates, I assured John that his question was appropriate and helpful. When I asked the class if John’s question was a question shared by other members of John’s people group (the Nuer), everyone affirmed that to be the case. As we were at the end of the day, I suggested that we return to John’s question at the beginning of class the following week.

Before we met the following week, I prepared a worksheet which listed several questions and a list of scripture references concerning marriage to help us. My goal was threefold: to discuss the meaning of marriage according to the Nuer and other people groups in South Sudan, to discuss what Jesus says about marriage and God’s original intention for marriage, and to compare the two. As we began the discussion about the purpose of marriage according to local Nuer culture, these dominant themes emerged: the priority of children, protection, status, power, and overpowering others through procreation of sons. We discussed the reasons a man would have more than one wife, all of which can be identified in the above themes. When we looked at what Jesus said about marriage, we observe that he cites the creation account in Genesis,

"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. (from Mark 10: 6 – 8)

One important distinction between the purpose of marriage defined by Jesus and by the Nuer lies in the idea of companionship and becoming ‘one flesh’. This idea was not cited as a purpose for marriage according to Nuer tradition and culture. 

The root question we discussed was whether it was good for a Nuer man, or even a pastor, to take a second wife, commonly practiced here in South Sudan. It seems that the motivation for John taking a second wife is that his wife is becoming old. One of the students, half-humorously and half seriously, quipped, “Well, if a wife’s husband is getting old, shouldn’t she also be able to marry a second husband, a younger man?” 

One experienced pastor felt that despite church law, which permits lay church members to have more than one wife, that the practice of marriage within the church should be for all men to have one wife only, that being the case for pastors/elders and for everyday Christians. Considering scripture, his view rings true, but the culture is still so strong. How do we make sense of the two? Although I am not sure we fully satisfied John in response to his question, I do believe that as a class we had a meaningful discussion, addressing John’s question from many important angles.

A couple of days later I was asked by an Ethiopian neighbor concerning how I had advised my student. I told him that my goal was not to give advice, but rather to help my student and the class meaningfully explore this issue for themselves, finding solutions and owning decisions. Advice from a missionary might be helpful in the short run, but long-lasting and transformative change will result from thoughtful and scripturally informed decisions made by local Christians themselves. As Christians, we invite the light of the Gospel and the Person of Jesus Christ to speak into our contexts and our cultures. Jesus must be Lord over all. In the end, as my professor at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST) says, “Our faith becomes our culture.” Lord, may it be so!