Wikipedia entry: "Christian views on contraception"

Wow. I could have saved myself a lot of time.

I just came across the Wikipedia entry, "Christian views on contraception." Because of the way Wikipedia is created, the articles aren't always reliable or authoritative, but this one is well-researched and annotated. It looks like a user nicknamed CyberAnth has done most of the work on it. Very impressive.

The article covers Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant (mainline, evangelical, Reformed, Lutheran, Anabaptist -- you name it) views on the topic and does a good job of explaining the main points of contention. It's given me many new links to articles I plan to read on the topic.

The Marriage Bed

I came across this evangelical Christian website on marital sex, called The Marriage Bed, which has a page called Birth Control: A Christian Perspective. It covers the different methods, how they work, and what the ethical and moral considerations are for each.

They make this interesting comment about Natural Family Planning:

We have theological problems with NFP because it violates the Biblical command to only abstain from sex for the purpose of fasting and prayer (1 Cor 7:5).

LCMS: "No objection" within a fruitful union

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the most conservative of the major Lutheran denominations in the U.S., doesn't have an official position on contraception, but a 1981 report on sexuality by the Synod's Commission on Theology and Church Relations was "commended to the Synod for study and guidance" by the Synod in 1983. The report contained the following statement:

In view of the Biblical command and the blessing to "be fruitful and multiply," it is to be expected that marriage will not ordinarily be voluntarily childless. But, in the absence of Scriptural prohibition, there need be no objection to contraception within a marital union which is, as a whole, fruitful. Moreover, once we grant the appropriateness of contraception, we will also recognize that sterilization may under some circumstances be an acceptable form of contraception. Because of its relatively permanent nature, sterilization is perhaps less desirable than less-far reaching forms of contraception. However, there should be no moral objection to it, especially for couples who already have children and who now seek to devote themselves to the rearing of those children, for those who have been advised by a physician that the birth of another child would be hazardous to the health of the mother, or for those who for reasons of age, physical disability, or illness are not able to care for additional children. Indeed, there may be special circumstances which would persuade a Christian husband and wife that it would be more responsible and helpful to all concerned, under God, not to have children. Whatever the particular circumstances, Christians dare not take lightly decisions in this area of their life together. They should examine their motives thoroughly and honestly and take care lest their decisions be informed by a desire merely to satisfy selfish interests.

With respect to voluntary childlessness in general, we should say that while there may be special reasons which would persuade a Christian husband and wife to limit the size of their family, they should remember at all times how easy it is for them simply to permit their union to turn inward and refuse to take up the task of sharing in God's creative activity. Certainly Christians will not give as a reason for childlessness the sorry state of the world and the fear of bringing a child into such a world. We are not to forget the natural promise embedded in the fruitfulness of marriage. To bear and rear children can be done, finally, as an act of faith and hope in God who has promised to supply us with all that we "need to support this body and life."

This is pretty close to the view expressed by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

And it seems to me that the reasons cited here for the use of contraception are very nearly the same as those that Catholics cite as grave reasons for using Natural Family Planning to avoid conception while having sex.

“Use NFP: It Doesn’t Work!”

Tim Bayly links to a funny Catholic take on Natural Family Planning: The best thing about it, says H. W. Crocker III, is that it doesn't work, and you wind up with a big family, just as God intended.

Crocker makes the case for his marketing method:

As a slogan, "Use NFP: It Doesn’t Work!" has many strong arguments in its favor. First, it is true. NFP proponents tout its 99 percent effectiveness rate, but they neglect to mention that this is true only if the husband is in the Navy and assigned to extended, uninterrupted sea duty of three-year tours or longer. Otherwise, for most Catholics I know, NFP means a baby every two years or so, though the rate can slow with age, as the couples learn a proper respect—that is, fear—for each other and are too tired in any event for what Catholics call "the conjugal act."

Then he comments on an enthusiastic NFP advocate:

As a slogan, "Use NFP: It Doesn’t Work!" puts the focus where it belongs—on babies—and away from a technique, a technique that wrongly strikes most lay Catholics as medieval. If only it were medieval, then it would be effective: a sturdy, padlocked, handsomely designed, pewter chastity belt.

Instead, NFP is shiny, modern, and scientific, as its advocates are always quick to emphasize. In his book The Truth of Catholicism, George Weigel approvingly quotes several paragraphs from a woman in love with NFP. She reminds us that:

Natural Family Planning is not the justly ridiculed rhythm method, which involves vaguely guessing when the woman expects to ovulate and abstaining for a few days around day fourteen of her cycle. The full method involves charting a woman’s waking temperatures, changes in cervical fluid, and the position of the cervix.

Nothing unnatural or artificial about that, is there? Her raptures climax with NFP apparently transformed into "Narcissism For Pleasure":

But the turning point came for me as I watched, month after month, as my temperature rose and fell and my hormones marched in perfect harmony. I had no idea I was so beautiful. I found myself near tears one day looking at my chart and thinking, "Truly, I am fearfully and wonderfully made." My fertility is not a disease to be treated. It is a wonderful gift. I am a wonderful gift.

Er, if you say so, missy. If my wife talked like this, I’d have her committed. Happily, my wife, bless her heart, takes a more robust line: "Barefoot and pregnant is better than high-heeled and professional!" That’s the spirit!

Crocker's plain-spoken humor is a refreshing contrast to the types who will go on and on in the vein of the NFP advocate he quotes, the kind who sell NFP as a cure for every marital, spiritual, and physical ill, including dandruff and toenail fungus.

Et semini eius: The problem with arguing from natural law

If I understand the Catholic teaching on contraception correctly (and I'm sure I'll be told if I don't), it isn't derived solely from Scripture, but depends on natural law. The idea behind the "Theology of the Body" -- it seems to me -- is that we should look at the workings of the body, particularly the interaction of male and female bodies in sex, and discern the Creator's intent in His design. From that intent, we deduce what we must do to be in harmony with the Creator's intent for our use of our sexual capacity. Thus we discover laws of God that are not set out in Scripture, are not deduced by good and necessary inference therefrom, but are written in nature.

The danger I see in this approach to discerning God's moral will is that it is not solely dependent on the Word of God, which is God-breathed, or even (if you Catholics will feel more comfortable with this) on the Word of God and the Tradition of the Church, but is instead dependent on some theologian's perception and understanding of nature, at the point in time when he wrote. That understanding of nature is not God-breathed, infallible, or inerrant.

Consider the English words we use for the contents of male ejaculate: semen and sperm. semen is the Latin word for "seed." Sperm is derived from sperma, the Greek word for "seed."

("Contents of male ejaculate" is an awkward phrase, but for the purposes of this discussion, about the derivation and use of the words "sperm" and "semen," it's the only way to be clear.)

In Matthew 13:24 -- "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field." -- "seed" is a translation of the Greek word sperma. Jerome in the Latin Vulgate Bible renders the word as semen. This is the literal use of the word sperma -- the seed of a plant.

In Luke 1:55, the end of the Magnificat, sperma is used to refer to the descendants of Abraham, recipients of God's promises. Obviously, it isn't literal here. Again, the word is rendered in Latin as semen (actually, it's dative case, semini), and in English, it's "seed" or "descendants" depending on the translation.

In Genesis 38:9, the story of Onan, the Vulgate has Onan spilling his semen on the ground, while in the Septuagint, the word sperma is used to refer to Onan's late brother's descendants, but isn't there explicitly as the object of execheen (spill), although it seems intended to be understood, which means that sperma is used here to refer to male ejaculate and metaphorically to refer to someone's heir or descendant.

The fact that these words are treated as equivalent indicates the understanding of human reproduction throughout all but the last 180 years of history. The contents of male ejaculate was thought to be equivalent to a seed, and we know now that that isn't true.

A plant seed needs only nutrients and protection to reach maturity. All the necessary genetic information to make a new plant is already contained in the seed.

That isn't true of the contents of male ejaculate. In order for a new human to develop, a male gamete has to unite with a female gamete. At that point, and only at that point, you have the human equivalent to a plant seed -- the necessary genetic information is complete and only nutrition and protection are required for it to develop into a full-grown human.

But Augustine and Aquinas didn't understand that, nor did Luther and Calvin. They thought the male ejaculate itself contained the seed, complete in itself, needing only the hospitable environment of the womb -- the soil for the human seed. Given that view of reproduction, it's no wonder that ancient and medieval theologians regarded "spilling the seed" as a monstrous act, the destruction -- not the prevention -- of precious souls.

If you have that kind of mistaken understanding of the mechanics of reproduction, it would lead you to draw wrong conclusions about the divine purposes behind those mechanics, which would in turn lead you to wrong conclusions about what God expects us to do in light of those purposes.

So if natural law is the basis for your case against contraception, it isn't unreasonable that in 1930, for the first time, a Christian denomination would conditionally approve the use of contraception, because it had only been 100 years since the human ovum was discovered and only 55 years since the necessity of the union of sperm and egg for reproduction was confirmed.

I wonder what, if anything, orthodox Protestants who lived in this period of discovery, men like Spurgeon, Hodge, and Warfield, had to say on the issue of birth control.

Addendum: After re-reading this, I feel I should clarify a couple of points.

In citing the way the words sperma and semen are used in the Greek New Testament, the Septuagint, and the Vulgate, I'm not meaning to suggest that the Bible is mistaken in its presentation of human reproduction. The words were used by the original author (or by the translator, in the case of the LXX and the Vulgate) in the ordinary way that they were used by their contemporaries. The Bible isn't a textbook on reproductive microbiology.

John Calvin wrote often about God's accommodation to human limitations. "God's accommodation, as Calvin explains, does not so much comprehensively express who or what God is, but rather, puts who or what He is in language and types that we fallen creatures can understand." So just as parents adjust our vocabulary to suit the understanding of our children, so God communicated His word through His prophets and apostles in the language the people of the time and place understood, using words in ways that were meaningful to them.

God makes plain His expectations of His people in Scripture. We should heed and obey what is taught there, but I don't believe we should enslave ourselves to uninspired and inaccurate views of nature and science and the uninspired commandments derived therefrom.

Tim Bayly: Contracepting couples lack faith in God's promises

In an entry from last October, PCA pastor Tim Bayly says that our use of birth control demonstrates a lack of faith in God's promises. (Tim is the brother of David Bayly, whose sermon on contraception was discussed in an earlier entry.)

He draws a parallel with God's call in Malachi 3:

Again, the principle: Man refuses to use the gifts God has given us to worship Him, and instead we take and use them for our own selfish purposes. We spend the money He gave us but refuse to tithe. We make love with the woman He provided as our helpmate but refuse to allow that love to be fruitful.

He suggests that those Christian couples who deliberately limit their fertility are just like the unfaithful servant in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, who, out of fear, buried his master's money in the ground, rather than putting it to use and making it multiply.

What a perfect picture of Christians’ stewardship of the womb today. Walking by faith is risky and it’s clear that God will hold us accountable for the instruction and discipline of our children. So out of fear we block the womb, sheath the rod, and claim we’ve done it all for our Master.

The ironic thing is that no people across history have been blessed with the wealth God has poured out on us, but no generation of the Church has been more stingy in its use of that wealth for fruitfulness and multiplication. Twenty-five hundred square foot homes that are heated and cooled; food in the dumpsters behind our supermarkets that would make our ancestors shake their heads in disbelief; automatic washers and driers; stoves, refrigerators, and freezers; educational opportunities unheard of across history; disposable diapers, high chairs, and car seats; what more do we need?

But we look at prior generations of Christians and shake our heads in disbelief. "Susannah Wesley had fifteen children. Can you believe it? The poor woman."

Poor woman nothing. God blessed her with children and those children were her glory, each of them being a gift from God. We stand gazing at her with our own children holding their soccer trophies and SAT scores in their grubby hands, and we dare to claim we have been fruitful, too? We have helped in the multiplication and filling of the earth?

No, we have hidden our lights under a bushel; we’ve buried our talents in the ground. Instead of asking God to pour out His blessings on us, we’ve asked Him to overlook our stinginess, to spare us from stretch marks, to deliver us from the evil of a fruitful womb.

Bayly then depicts how this attitude works out in the home:

Our wives plead with us for more children but we’re the boss and we know the meaning of responsibility and good stewardship. "That’s it honey, we’re done. No more rewards. No more blessings and fruitfulness. We’re going to do something for ourselves. Finally we’ll be able to get ahead and save for our retirement. I’m tired of messy diapers and kids crying at night. Our last will be in all-day kindergarten soon. You’ll be able to get a job and help out with setting up their college funds. Call the doctor and set up an appointment for me to have a vasectomy, would you? Won’t it be nice to make love without worrying about an accident?"

(Around my house, it's my wife who has been making that argument.)

In a more recent post on the topic, Tim Bayly addresses the possibility of exceptions:

There may be extraordinary circumstances in which a Christian man and his wife would consider intentionally circumventing the fruitfulness God placed at the heart of marriage. If so, they should understand that such circumvention bears a heavy burden of proof when one stops to consider the one-voiced witness in this matter of both Scripture and the Church through the ages. To be more specific, as a pastor I am not prepared to say such circumvention is always wrong. But I don’t hesitate to say that most couples who have chosen to limit the fruitfulness of their love have done so in ignorance of this biblical teaching and command, and are unlikely to have been doing so by faith. And whatever is not of faith is sin.

David Bayly: Birth control "is a form of abortion"

The excerpts from Augustine, Calvin, and Luther were previously published on BaylyBlog, a joint venture of Tim Bayly and David Bayly, two brothers who are both PCA pastors in the Midwest.

Here is a link to the text of a sermon on birth control by David Bayly. He begins with a few implicit arguments from Scripture -- that children are a blessing from God, and as such are not to be limited; that we are still under the command to fill the earth and subdue it; that the Levitical laws concerning uncleanness after menstruation practically guarantee intercourse in the most fertile time of the month. Bayly says that these passages point toward God's will with regard to birth control.

He then deals at length with Genesis 38:1-11, and the account of Onan's wickedness and death. Specifically, the question is what is the sin for which God punishes Onan. Bayly writes:

Because we're not given an explicit answer in our passage, two theories have come to dominate thinking about this passage today: one a modern explanation and one the explanation of the Church universal for 1900 years up till the mid-20 th century. In recent years, many have suggested that the sin of Onan was his failure to provide offspring for his dead brother. This is not the classic view of this passage, but if you have spent your life within evangelical Protestant circles, it's likely that this is the only explanation you have ever heard for the wickedness Onan committed in the sight of the Lord.

The second explanation is the one which has dominated church history, yet it is almost unheard-of in Protestant circles today. By this explanation, what Onan did which was wicked in the sight of the Lord was his specific method of denying Tamar a child. This explanation says that it was Onan's practice of coitus interruptus, the only common and universally available form of birth control in ancient times, which lies at the root of his sin. By this view, God punishes Onan with death not for denying his brother offspring but for spilling his seed upon the ground.

Bayly points out that this is one of the rare occasions where God directly puts someone to death for his wickedness, which puts Onan in a league with Ananias and Sapphira and Nadab and Abihu. What follows is a methodical account of the flaws in the first explanation (and a third as well), leaving us with only the classical view of Onan's sin.

He brings his argument to this conclusion:

Is birth control permitted? I am increasingly persuaded by God's Word that it is not, that, as Calvin suggests, it is a form of abortion.

He acknowledges that one's situation may make this an especially hard teaching, but dismisses the importance of circumstances:

But may I say to you that our sensitivities cannot become our hermeneutic: we cannot let our personal situations and reasons for feeling a certain way about any passage be the decisive filter through which we view that passage. This is not faithfulness to the Word of God.

To date, the PCA, Bayly's denomination, has not issued a statement regarding contraception.