From Scripture, Tanner, from Scripture. Allow me:
The Bible mentions at least one form of contraception specifically and condemns it. Coitus interruptus, was used by Onan to avoid fulfilling his duty according to the ancient Jewish law of fathering children for one’s dead brother. “Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.’ But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother’s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he slew him also” (Gen. 38:8–10).
The biblical penalty for not giving your brother’s widow children was public humiliation, not death (Deut. 25:7–10). But Onan received death as punishment for his crime. This means his crime was more than simply not fulfilling the duty of a brother-in-law. He lost his life because he violated natural law, as Jewish and Christian commentators have always understood. For this reason, certain forms of contraception have historically been known as “Onanism,” after the man who practiced it, just as homosexuality has historically been known as “Sodomy,” after the men of Sodom, who practiced that vice (cf. Gen. 19).
Contraception was so far outside the biblical mindset and so obviously wrong that it did not need the frequent condemnations other sins did. Scripture condemns the practice when it mentions it. Once a moral principle has been established in the Bible, every possible application of it need not be mentioned. For example, the general principle that theft is wrong was clearly established in Scripture; but there’s no need to provide an exhaustive list of every kind of theft. Similarly, since the principle that contraception is wrong has been established by being condemned when it’s mentioned in the Bible, every particular form of contraception does not need to be dealt with in Scripture in order for us to see that it is condemned.
The apostolic tradition’s condemnation of contraception is so great that it was followed by Protestants until 1930 and was upheld by all key Protestant Reformers.** Martin Luther said**, “[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime. . . . Consequently, he deserved to be killed by God. He committed an evil deed. Therefore, God punished him.”
John Calvin said, “The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring.”
John Wesley warned, “Those sins that dishonor the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he [Onan] did displeased the Lord—and it is to be feared; thousands, especially of single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls.” (These passages are quoted in Charles D. Provan, The Bible and Birth Control, which contains many quotes by historic Protestant figures who recognize contraception’s evils.)
And this is from Charles Gore, Anglican Bishop of Oxford, writing in 1930 after the Lambeth Conference:
The Report of the Committee of the Lambeth Conference—which, like the other reports, was received only and not accepted by the Conference, but which forms the basis of the resolutions—acknowledges both that the general use of contraceptives is ‘one of the greatest evils of our time’ and that ‘there is in the Catholic Church a very strong tradition that the use of preventive methods is in all cases unlawful for a Christian.’ In seeking to reverse that tradition it points out that ‘it is not founded on any directions given in the New Testament.’ This is true of birth prevention, and also of suicide. Almost at the moment when the Lambeth Conference published its Report, Dr. Inge at the Conference of Modern Churchmen was urging the reconsideration of the Church’s condemnation of suicide in extreme cases. If this movement were to become popular and urgent, one may wonder what a future Lambeth Conference may say about suicide. The fact is that our Lord, though He must be acknowledged to have given one specific law to His Church—on the indissolubility of marriage—on the whole abstained from legislating for His community, as, for instance, Plato legislated for his ideal community in The Laws. He gave the Church moral principles both in His teaching and by His example; and He founded (or refounded) the Church, to which, or to the ministers of which, He gave the power of legislation and spiritual discipline with a divine sanction. (‘What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven’: ‘whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.’) Certainly the earliest Church, as pictured in the Acts and the Epistles, knew that it possessed these powers, and confidently used them. I am not raising the difficult question of infallibility in their exercise. Even Innocent III at the height of ecclesiastical idealism admitted that ‘it sometimes happens that the Church looses one whom God has bound, and binds by the judgement of the Church one who in God’s sight is free’; but I see manifold reason to believe that in the case of Birth Prevention the 'very strong tradition in the Catholic Church ’ has been in the right, and has divine sanction. It is a practice which it has rightly judged to be unnatural, like other sadly common misuses of the sexual organs . . . But the justification of the pleasure (the sexual pleasure of intercourse) lies primarily in its direction towards the end of propagation. This is assuredly the lesson of biology and the lesson of Holy Scripture and of Church tradition. Mankind in its wilfulness has been always seeking to separate the pleasure from its end by different kinds of practices which have been condemned by the Church as unnatural.
:shrug:
Well gee Tanner…let’s have a look at what the Word of God actually says.
