Pilgrim said,
A man who is currently married to more than one wife, either by virtue of their culture or the laws of the land is a polygamist according to God's Word. And the Scripture is the "sole and final authority in all matters of faith and practice"... NOT culture, social law, or anything else apart from the inspired Word of God.
Just to clarify. If by this you mean the Scripture is the sole determiner of whether polygamy is a sin or not I would agree. However, if by this you mean that the Muslim’s culture in which he lives cannot determine that the converted Muslim is legally divorced because of his conversion – then I would not “fully” agree. Culture, social law, etc. does matter here and it would need to be investigated on a case by case basis (different sect, different laws, etc.).
Sola Scriptura, is the doctrine that the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule in faith and practice for the Christian. The Bible alone has ultimate and infallible authority. But that is not intended to imply that whatever other way God has made Himself known does not carry its own authority within itself. God has revealed himself in the creation and the constitution of man, as created in His image so that every person is responsible to both know God and obey His moral law. This revelation is absolutely authoritative and infallible in and of itself. What makes it fail is a problem in the person, not a problem in the revelation. It is not a “source” problem it is a “reception” problem.
As Neiswonger further states, the distinction comes in when we speak of the things necessary for salvation, or, Christian faith and practice. These things are not revealed in nature or in the constitution of man as created in the image of God. Those things necessary for salvation are revealed in ‘Scripture alone’.
There may be things that can be learned from philosophy, the sciences, and human experience, what the historic Church has called “the light of nature”, but these are taken to be inferior and fallible authorities, apprehended through fallible means. Sola Scriptura takes the Scriptures as the sole infallible rule,
but not the only rule. This is sometimes surprising even to the Christian thinker tutored in the thought of the historical Church because Sola Scriptura could seem to be saying that Scripture is the sole source,
instead of the sole infallible source, and so the source that stands above and judges all other sources.
Thus, at times government laws need to be obeyed (Eph. 5:4-8; Rom. 13, Dan. 2:21, 4:17, Prov. 8:15, etc.) if the do not in conflict with the Scripture. When a Muslim in his own country is converted to Christianity, the laws of his country still apply to him, if they do not conflict with Scripture. In the case of a converted Muslim with multiple wives, the marriages are considered nullified upon his conversion. We do not need to Americanize (or Canadianize as the case may be) the Gospel and make the Muslim convert move to America to receive an American divorce to say he is truly divorced – do we? No, indeed, the laws of his country “may” prevail. If not, then I would have to say that there is not a single real non-Jewish divorce in the US, as “the writing of divorce” Jesus spoke about (Matt. 5:31-32; Deut. 24:1-4) is one established upon OT Judaic law – and the person demanding the divorce must write the document himself and literally hand it to the other party – no process server, no lawyer, and no court of law doing the writing (Deut. 24:1-4).
Culture does matter.
Sorry, I will be gone for a while. So, hopefully someone else will step in with some culture arguments and why they are legit in some instances.
