Those who claim that monogamy is not natural for human beings are simply recognizing the proclivity toward procreation that characterizes the human species, the animalism that the body represents. But, vital to human relations, the soul still exercises an oversight over the body’s impulses because we are more than physical beings, we are social ones, as well. [We might add: we are spiritual ones also, made in God’s Image. This is, however, not essential to the argument before us.]
The body as a body must necessarily be absolutely selfish, carnal, and it must interpret copulation as the single most important thing for self-preservation. It is in this regard we speak of objectifying another person, seeing them solely in a physical sense [body to body].
But the soul, that makes humans social beings, sees relationships. It is, therefore, because we have a soul, that sexually we are monogamous: only one for only one. Monogamy is a social term—not a physical one. Monogamy is a relational term because it is part of a social contract, a social conversation, one person has with another. To say we are not monogamous requires that we do not believe in the soul—an idea no Christian could maintain.
Can we argue, by social definition, that one man can be in a monogamous relation with more than one woman? After all, we can have more than one sibling or more than one parent and in a social relationship with each. But we may argue that the sexual relation is different in that it is both social and physical. Language recognizes the difference in its terms for love: affection and eroticism. If we believe we have a soul, we consent to this difference as reasonable or a validly recognized distinction. It is the soul of man that now argues against multiple sexual partners or promiscuity of any sort through the emotion of jealousy which is the soul’s claim on its partner for itself.
Social Contracts and Covenants
It is the soul that recognizes social contracts—including the marriage contract. It is the soul that goes into covenant with God. Some argue that it is by the spirit not the soul that we have a relationship with God but this is a distinction without a difference. Are we dichotomous [body and soul] or trichotomous. [body, soul, and spirit] beings is a question debated in freshman seminary classes which soon lose interest because both terms speak to relationships. We like to define our relationship with God as spiritual and with each other as social—that is all.
But society is seeking to evolve past all this, to imagine life without a soul, without a moral contract, to make relations more fluid that can be easily divorced and reestablished in a faultless social environment. Society is seeking to keep relations casual and more animalistic, that is, seeking pleasure rather than partnership—the physical over the social.
Redefining society this way will destroy the very fabric social relations are made of which is a way of saying we have gone from social beings to every man for himself. No society can survive this scenario. The dissolution of the monogamous relationship, and consequently the nuclear family, is a world without a definable social order and a world that cannot appreciate God’s design and desire upon the soul.
But, then again, speaking of the soul, those who support social change of this kind, are saying man does not have one, anyway.
