Birth control and the Bible

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Lazerlike42:
Could you by any chance list these verses?
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I can, but one has to understand some history to understand the verses.

A few centuries before the time of Christ, someone discovered that a plant called silphium, growing wild in the North African desert, had excellent birth control properties. (The silphium of today is not the same plant.) This put it at the head of a list of other successful birth control herbs, asafoetida (sp?) and Queen Anne’s Lace, and some others.

These were collectively referred to as *pharmakeia *in New Testament Greco-Roman society.

Cyrene, Libya (the home port of Simon of Cyrene) became the main export city for silphium. Cyrene grew rich on silphium, as people around the Mediterranean "beat down the doors) to get as much silphium as they good, to disconnect sex from the risk of conception.

In the recipient ports, the main purchasers of silphium were fortune tellers! Why? Because throughout the Roman Empire, promiscuous girls would gather around the local fortune teller, hear their fortunes respecting their latest love matches, and then the fortune teller, after receiving a fee for the usually-optimistic love fortune, who sell the girls some silphium as “protection” for their next few dates.

Husbands and wives would also gather around the fortune teller to purchase pharmakeia.

For this reason, birth control substances came to be referred to with the euphemism “sorcery,” meaning “sorcerer’s stuff.”

How little things have changed! Today people *still *go to the pharmacy to buy their pharmakeia, or birth control pills or condoms, while they buy those little rolled-up fortunes or astrology magazines at the counter!

In any event, at four places the Bible nastily condemns use of pharmakeia.

At three of the four places, we are told that pharmakeia users will be damned.

It is hard to see that that is what is going on in our modern translations, for translations of the Bible into English have mistranslated pharmakeia – literally, “drugs” – to read “sorcery,” paying homage to the Greco-Roman euphemism for contraceptives, “sorcery.”

I’ll look the article up tomorrow and post the verses.
 
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BibleReader:
I can, but one has to understand some history to understand the verses.

A few centuries before the time of Christ, someone discovered that a plant called silphium, growing wild in the North African desert, had excellent birth control properties. (The silphium of today is not the same plant.) This put it at the head of a list of other successful birth control herbs, asafoetida (sp?) and Queen Anne’s Lace, and some others.

These were collectively referred to as *pharmakeia *in New Testament Greco-Roman society.

Cyrene, Libya (the home port of Simon of Cyrene) became the main export city for silphium. Cyrene grew rich on silphium, as people around the Mediterranean "beat down the doors) to get as much silphium as they good, to disconnect sex from the risk of conception.

In the recipient ports, the main purchasers of silphium were fortune tellers! Why? Because throughout the Roman Empire, promiscuous girls would gather around the local fortune teller, hear their fortunes respecting their latest love matches, and then the fortune teller, after receiving a fee for the usually-optimistic love fortune, who sell the girls some silphium as “protection” for their next few dates.

Husbands and wives would also gather around the fortune teller to purchase pharmakeia.

For this reason, birth control substances came to be referred to with the euphemism “sorcery,” meaning “sorcerer’s stuff.”

How little things have changed! Today people *still *go to the pharmacy to buy their pharmakeia, or birth control pills or condoms, while they buy those little rolled-up fortunes or astrology magazines at the counter!

In any event, at four places the Bible nastily condemns use of pharmakeia.

At three of the four places, we are told that pharmakeia users will be damned.

It is hard to see that that is what is going on in our modern translations, for translations of the Bible into English have mistranslated pharmakeia – literally, “drugs” – to read “sorcery,” paying homage to the Greco-Roman euphemism for contraceptives, “sorcery.”

I’ll look the article up tomorrow and post the verses.
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No doubts, but in the interest of full disclosure and thoroughness I’d be curious as to a source for that data.
 
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mercygate:
A Baptist told me they flipped on the issue because it is not specifically mentioned in the Bible. So much for sola Scriptura – since before they changed their minds they must have thought their position was Bible based.
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Well abortion is not specifically mentioned in the Bible are Baptist willing to flip flop on this issue too?
Oh wait a minute they already did in the early 70’s the Baptist conventioned voted to ok abortion then in during the mide 80’s they voted to reverse that decision and are now against abortion.
See how sola scriptura works or better yet doesn’t work.
Whatever I feel like doing I can somehow justify it if its not textually spelt out in the Bible. Guess what in an ever changing world more and more things are facing things not spelt out in the Bible. Artificial Inseminations, Embronic stem-cell research, cloning, etc etc.
How are these waffling protestants going to determine truth when it is not spelt out for them in the Bible?
As for abc it is basically the same as abortion in the Bible the principles are clear even if it is not spelt out we are called to be fruitfull and multiply and each child is a blessing from God not a burden there is no expiration date on the thoughts of God that happened in 1930. Last I checked the Lambeth Conference was a protestant council not claiming to be infalliable but rather the opinoin of the Anglican communion so how this rubs off on a Baptist is anyone’s guess. But we do know there is once church who claims to be infalliable and her opinion has been consistent for 2000 years concerning ABC and abortion and very few christian denominations can say that anymore even for abortion much less both convtroversial stands in a secualrist world.
 
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javelin:
Actually, I told her about this long ago, and her reaction now is that she wants to know why they flipped on that issue. She’s assuming they must have had a good reason. I’m hoping that looking into it will only show her that they didn’t, but I don’t know anything about why they changed. Thus the request for the historical information on the topic.

Thanks for the link – I’ll check it out.

Peace,
javelin
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check out Margetet sanger’s negro project

blackgenocide.org/sanger.html (particuarly pg. 2 & 3)
 
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javelin:
Hello all,

My wife disagrees with the Church on its stance concerning artificial birth control (as does just about every one of her friends, including the Catholics), but she just recently said that she was willing to start a study of “why” beginning with Sacred Scripture and looking into why and how Protestant churches flip-flopped from banning them to accepting them completely. She also was recently enamored with someone who liked going to the original Greek text of Scripture. So…

Can anyone suggest a “study guide” that talks about the historical evolution of thought on birth control, from a scriptural basis (preferably with references to the original Greek), that does justice to the Catholic Church’s position? She doesn’t just want to read a “Catholic book” on the subject – she wants to start with scripture and history. At the same time, I don’t want to just look at Protestant sources, as their opinion is quite clear.

Thanks in advance.

Peace,
javelin
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My wife and I took a Natural Family Planning class at a nearby parish…it was great. The group…The Couple to Couple League For Natural Family Planning was started by Roman Catholics but open to all denominations. We discussed when and why there was a Protestant shift towards birth control in 1930. I highly suggest taking the classes and checking out their website it has alot of the information you are looking for…
ccli.org/
 
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BibleReader:
I can, but one has to understand some history to understand the verses.

A few centuries before the time of Christ, someone discovered that a plant called silphium, growing wild in the North African desert, had excellent birth control properties. (The silphium of today is not the same plant.) This put it at the head of a list of other successful birth control herbs, asafoetida (sp?) and Queen Anne’s Lace, and some others.

These were collectively referred to as *pharmakeia *in New Testament Greco-Roman society.

Cyrene, Libya (the home port of Simon of Cyrene) became the main export city for silphium. Cyrene grew rich on silphium, as people around the Mediterranean "beat down the doors) to get as much silphium as they good, to disconnect sex from the risk of conception.

In the recipient ports, the main purchasers of silphium were fortune tellers! Why? Because throughout the Roman Empire, promiscuous girls would gather around the local fortune teller, hear their fortunes respecting their latest love matches, and then the fortune teller, after receiving a fee for the usually-optimistic love fortune, who sell the girls some silphium as “protection” for their next few dates.

Husbands and wives would also gather around the fortune teller to purchase pharmakeia.

For this reason, birth control substances came to be referred to with the euphemism “sorcery,” meaning “sorcerer’s stuff.”

How little things have changed! Today people *still *go to the pharmacy to buy their pharmakeia, or birth control pills or condoms, while they buy those little rolled-up fortunes or astrology magazines at the counter!

In any event, at four places the Bible nastily condemns use of pharmakeia.

At three of the four places, we are told that pharmakeia users will be damned.

It is hard to see that that is what is going on in our modern translations, for translations of the Bible into English have mistranslated pharmakeia – literally, “drugs” – to read “sorcery,” paying homage to the Greco-Roman euphemism for contraceptives, “sorcery.”

I’ll look the article up tomorrow and post the verses.
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Great stuff! Do you have references, though? This would definitely help if there was something to help backup the idea that the Greek pharmakeia refers to artificial birth control drugs.

Peace,
javelin
 
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Lazerlike42:
No doubts, but in the interest of full disclosure and thoroughness I’d be curious as to a source for that data.
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The article cited Archaeology Magazine, I think, for the historical analysis.
 
Deus Vult:
My wife and I took a Natural Family Planning class at a nearby parish…it was great. The group…The Couple to Couple League For Natural Family Planning was started by Roman Catholics but open to all denominations. We discussed when and why there was a Protestant shift towards birth control in 1930. I highly suggest taking the classes and checking out their website it has alot of the information you are looking for…
ccli.org/
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Our NFP class was through the CCL, but unfortunately my wife doesn’t have that high an opinion of that group. She sees it as taking a pretty extremist position. As an example of why she thinks that, we know a couple who are Catholic and very open to life, as well as being very involved with the CCL. They are also VERY pro cloth diapers, and still nurse and sleep with their four year old, even though they have three younger children also (all nursing).

While my wife is totally fine with them choosing to live that way, she adamantly insists that she’s “can’t live like that”. So, however wrong it might be, she equates the CCL with people like that, and thus doesn’t trust that the group is practical.

Peace,
javelin
 
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javelin:
Our NFP class was through the CCL, but unfortunately my wife doesn’t have that high an opinion of that group. She sees it as taking a pretty extremist position. As an example of why she thinks that, we know a couple who are Catholic and very open to life, as well as being very involved with the CCL. They are also VERY pro cloth diapers, and still nurse and sleep with their four year old, even though they have three younger children also (all nursing).

While my wife is totally fine with them choosing to live that way, she adamantly insists that she’s “can’t live like that”. So, however wrong it might be, she equates the CCL with people like that, and thus doesn’t trust that the group is practical.

Peace,
javelin
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Well, you can tell her that I am a Republican, and yet I am neither rich nor a “hick.” The association holds the same weight.
 
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javelin:
Our NFP class was through the CCL, but unfortunately my wife doesn’t have that high an opinion of that group. She sees it as taking a pretty extremist position. As an example of why she thinks that, we know a couple who are Catholic and very open to life, as well as being very involved with the CCL. They are also VERY pro cloth diapers, and still nurse and sleep with their four year old, even though they have three younger children also (all nursing).

While my wife is totally fine with them choosing to live that way, she adamantly insists that she’s “can’t live like that”. So, however wrong it might be, she equates the CCL with people like that, and thus doesn’t trust that the group is practical.

Peace,
javelin
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The family you reference seems to be a bit extreme…that is not what CCL is about. I would not judge them on this family. I have four kids and each of them slept with us untill the next arrived approximately two years apart. Most people who have older kids sleeping in there beds have a disipline problem with their kids more than anything…but thats a whole other topic. As far as what CCL teaches about nursing they mention that in other cultures of the world it is common to nurse childern four plus years but this is more out of necessity not the norm for example…third world. It is not the norm to nurse past two years of age in the western world.
 
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javelin:
Hello all,

My wife disagrees with the Church on its stance concerning artificial birth control (as does just about every one of her friends, including the Catholics), but she just recently said that she was willing to start a study of “why” beginning with Sacred Scripture and looking into why and how Protestant churches flip-flopped from banning them to accepting them completely. She also was recently enamored with someone who liked going to the original Greek text of Scripture. So…

Can anyone suggest a “study guide” that talks about the historical evolution of thought on birth control, from a scriptural basis (preferably with references to the original Greek), that does justice to the Catholic Church’s position? She doesn’t just want to read a “Catholic book” on the subject – she wants to start with scripture and history. At the same time, I don’t want to just look at Protestant sources, as their opinion is quite clear.

Thanks in advance.

Peace,
javelin
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Visit ww.omsoul.com and get info by Janet Smith. Janet Smith also has a talk on contraception and proportionality that may be available from St Joseph’s Press, I saw her at a conference.

That was the original departure that protestants had-- they used the argument that the totality of the marriage must be open to procreation not each act and that therefore contraception inside marriage was licit for serious reasons. Janet Smith refutes this argument in one of her books and on one of her tapes.

Other sources:

Twelve Tough Issues, What The Catholic Church Teaches and Why by Archbishop Daniel Pilarczak

The Bible and Birth Control by Charles Provan

Life Giving Love by Kimberly Hahn

Contraception Why Not by Janet Smith

encyclicals Humanae Vitae and Casti Connubii
 
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javelin:
Great stuff! Do you have references, though? This would definitely help if there was something to help backup the idea that the Greek pharmakeia refers to artificial birth control drugs.

Peace,
javelin
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Didache 2:2 – I think it’s 2:2 – clearly uses pharmakeia to refer to “contraceptives.” The didache was written in the same era as the Book of Revelation.

The Didache condemns, in this order, (1) use of magiae – curses against conception; (2) *pharmakeia – *contraceptives; (3) abortion; and (4) infanticide.

The context defines the use. Do you understand what the Didache is doing? – it is condemning progressively invasive interruptions of the reproductive process.

A letter of Pope Clement does the same.
 
Okay, here are the four verses condemning connection with pharmakeia, three of them very straightforwardly declaring that those who make use of pharmakeia will be damned to Hell fire…

Galatians 5:19-21: 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery [pharmakeia], hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, 21 occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.** I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.**

Revelation 9:21: 21 Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic potions [pharmakeia], their unchastity, or their robberies.

Revelation 21:8: 8 But as for cowards, the unfaithful, the depraved, murderers, the unchaste, sorcerers [pharmakeus], idol-worshipers, and deceivers of every sort, their lot is in the burning pool of fire and sulfur, which is the second death."

Revelation 22:14-15: 14 Blessed are they who wash their robes so as to have the right to the tree of life and enter the city through its gates. 15 Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers [pharmakeus], the unchaste, the murderers, the idol-worshipers, and all who love and practice deceit.

Note how each use of the *pharmak-*related term is paired-up with sinful sexual activity. (Commentators aware of the contraceptive meaning of pharmakeia concede that “idolatry” in the Galatians verse probably refers to fertility worship in the Gnostic temples competing with Judaism and Christianity – celebrating the Gnostic pantheon with sex.)

Note also that three times the Bible points out that (presumably unrepentant) pharmakeia users will be damned.
 
2:2 {Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery,} thou shalt not corrupt boys, thou shalt not commit fornication, {thou shalt not steal,} thou shalt not deal in magic, thou shalt do no sorcery, thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born, {thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods, thou shalt not perjure thyself, thou shalt not bear false witness,} thou shalt not speak evil, thou shalt not cherish a grudge, thou shalt not be double-minded nor double-tongued;
2:3 for the double tongue is a snare of death.
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earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-lightfoot.html
The context defines the use. Do you understand what the Didache is doing? – it is condemning progressively invasive interruptions of the reproductive process.
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Kirsopp Lake’s translation makes it even clearer:
2 “Thou shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery”; thou shalt not commit sodomy; thou shalt not commit fornication; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not use magic; thou shalt not use philtres; thou shalt not procure abortion, nor commit infanticide;
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I would like to add, besides all the angles that you are trying to present to your wife in support of the Church’s teaching against any form of ABC, if you are not already, you should be fasting and praying in a regular manner for your wife’s conversion. Understanding that conversion (of mind and heart) to the way’s of God are ultimately and firstly the work and will of the Holy Spirit.
 
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