Page "Polygamy" Paragraph 18

Periodically, Christian reform movements that have aimed at rebuilding Christian doctrine based on the Bible alone ( sola scriptura ) have at least temporarily accepted polygyny as a Biblical practice.

For example, during the Protestant Reformation, in a document referred to simply as " Der Beichtrat " ( or " The Confessional Advice " ), Martin Luther granted the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who, for many years, had been living " constantly in a state of adultery and fornication ," a dispensation to take a second wife.

The double marriage was to be done in secret, however, to avoid public scandal.

Some fifteen years earlier, in a letter to the Saxon Chancellor Gregor Brück, Luther stated that he could not " forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture.

" (" Ego sane fateor, me non posse prohibere, si quis plures velit uxores ducere, nec repugnat sacris literis.

")< ref > Letter to the Chancellor Gregor Brück, January 13, 1524, De Wette 2: 459.