339. 6. If a Christian takes more than one wife, he commits not only natural adultery but spiritual adultery as well. The point that a Christian who takes more than one wife commits natural adultery, is according to the Lord's words, namely, that it is not lawful for a man to divorce his wife, because they were created from the beginning to be one flesh, and that whoever divorces his wife without just cause and marries another, commits adultery (Matthew 19:3-11). Still more, then, is this true of one who does not divorce his wife but keeps her and marries another in addition.

The law thus given by the Lord with respect to marriages takes its deeper rationale from spiritual marriage; for whatever the Lord enunciated was in essence spiritual. This is what is meant by His saying:

The words that I speak to you are spirit and are life. (John 6:63)

The spiritual content in the present instance is that polygamous marriage in the Christian world profanes the marriage of the Lord and the church, likewise the marriage between goodness and truth, and moreover the Word, and together with the Word, the church. And profanation of these is spiritual adultery. (To see that profanation of the goodness and truth of the church by abuse of the Word has a correspondence with adultery and so is spiritual adultery, and that falsification of goodness and truth is connected similarly, though in a lesser degree, consult what we demonstrated in The Apocalypse Revealed, no. 134.)

[2] Polygamous marriages in the case of Christians would profane the marriage of the Lord and the church, because there is a correspondence between that Divine marriage and the marriages of Christians (on which subject see nos. 116-131 above ¹ ). This correspondence is entirely lost if one wife is taken in addition to another, and when it is lost the married person is no longer a Christian.

Polygamous marriages in the case of Christians would profane the marriage between goodness and truth, because that spiritual marriage is the origin from which marriages on earth spring; and the marriages of Christians differ from the marriages of other peoples in this, that as good loves truth and truth loves good so as to be one, so husband and wife love each other and are one. Consequently, if a Christian were to add one wife to another, he would sunder that spiritual marriage in him; thus he would profane the origin of his marriage and so commit spiritual adultery. (On the point that marriages on earth spring from the marriage between goodness and truth, see nos. 83-102 above ² .)

A Christian by polygamous marriage would profane the Word and the church, because viewed in itself the Word is a marriage of goodness and truth, and the Church similarly, insofar as it derives from the Word (see above, nos. 128-131).

[3] Now, since a Christian person who knows the Lord is in possession of the Word and has the church from the Lord through the Word, it is apparent that he has a capability and potential beyond that of a non-Christian for being regenerated and thus becoming spiritual, and also for attaining truly conjugial love, inasmuch as the two go together.

Since those Christians who take more than one wife commit not only natural adultery but at the same time spiritual adultery as well, it follows that the damnation of Christian polygamists after death is more severe than the damnation of those who commit only natural adultery. In response to my asking about their condition after death, I received the reply that heaven was totally closed to them, and that they appear in hell as though lying in a tub of warm bathwater. So they appear from a distance, even when standing on their feet and walking. This circumstance befalls them a result of their internal madness, I was told; and some of them are cast into chasms that are located at the boundaries of their worlds. ³

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