Authors: Patrick Coffin
And also: “My frame was not hidden from thee, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance; in thy book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are thy thoughts, O God!” (Ps. 139:15–17).
We post-modern Westerners have unconsciously imbibed a Darwinian way of interpreting life events insofar as we identify God’s mysterious hidden designs with random, non-rational forces.
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The biblical writers, however, saw no contradiction in holding simultaneously that (a) God causes human life to be, and (b) human beings also cause human life to be though sexual intercourse. Look at any play. What the playwright ultimately wants for his characters does not, from the perspective of the play’s created universe, arbitrarily force the characters’ actions and choices. Even though, say, Shakespeare’s “will” for Hamlet is ultimately transcendent of the world of the character, the melancholic Prince lives his life “freely.”
Likewise, God, in His own sovereign and mysterious way, wills human persons to be as their First Cause while the secondary causes (a.k.a moms and dads) also act freely and according to the desires of their hearts. Beyond the human actors in the real-life drama called history stands the reality of God’s providential plan. That God Himself causes human beings to be ought to cure our casual attitude toward preventing births. So when contraceptors say, “We don’t want any more kids,” our Bible-based reply ought to be, “And which of your kids don’t you want?”
“Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, ‘I have gotten a man with the help of the L
ORD
.’ … And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, ‘God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him’” (Gen. 4:1, 25).
“The L
ORD
visited Sarah as he had said, and the L
ORD
did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived, and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him” (Gen. 21:1–2).
“So Bo’az took Ruth and she became his wife; and he went in to her, and the L
ORD
gave her conception, and she bore a son” (Ruth 4:13).
“Then Eli would bless Elka’nah and his wife, and say, ‘The L
ORD
give you children by this woman for the loan which she lent to the L
ORD
’; so then they would return to their home. And the L
ORD
visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the L
ORD
” (1 Sam. 2:20–21).
“After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she hid herself, saying, ‘Thus the L
ORD
has done to me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men’” (Lk. 1:24–25).
The Bible consistently underscores God’s “Author’s rights” in the birth and multiplication of human beings.
“The angel of the L
ORD
also said to [Hagar], ‘I will so greatly multiply your descendants that they cannot be numbered for multitude’” (Gen. 16:10).
“And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.… As for Ish’mael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him and make him fruitful and multiply him exceedingly; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation” (Gen. 17:2, 20).
(God to Abraham): “I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies …” (Gen. 22:17).
(God to Isaac): “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give to your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves.… And the L
ORD
appeared to him the same night and said, ‘I am the God of Abraham your father; fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your descendants for my servant Abraham’s sake’” (Gen. 26:4, 24).
Genesis 28:3 (Isaac to his son Jacob): “God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.”
Genesis 41:52: “The name of the second he called E’phraim, ‘For God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.’”
Genesis 48:3–4: “And Jacob said to Joseph, ‘God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me, and said to me, ‘Behold, I will make you fruitful, and multiply you, and I will make of you a company of peoples, and will give this land to your descendants after you for an everlasting possession.’”
Exodus 32:13 (Moses to God): “Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to whom thou didst swear by thine own self, and didst say to them, ‘I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it for ever.’”
Leviticus 26:9: “I will have regard for you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and will confirm my covenant with you.”
Deuteronomy 1:10–11 (Moses to the people): “The lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude. May the L
ORD,
the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times as many as you are, and bless you, as he has promised you!”
Deuteronomy 28:63: “And as the L
ORD
took delight in doing you good and multiplying you, so the L
ORD
will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you; and you shall be plucked off the land which you are entering to take possession of it.”
Deuteronomy 30:5: “And the L
ORD
your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, that you may possess it; and he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.”
Joshua 24:3–4a (Joshua prophesying to the people): “Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac; and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau.”
1 Chronicles 27:23: “David did not number those below twenty years of age, for the L
ORD
had promised to make Israel as many as the stars of heaven.”
Psalm 105:24: “And the L
ORD
made his people very fruitful, and made them stronger than their foes.”
Psalm 107:38: “By his blessing they multiply greatly; and he does not let their cattle decrease.”
Isaiah 26:15: “But thou hast increased the nation, O L
ORD;
thou hast increased the nation; thou art glorified; thou hast enlarged all the borders of the land.”
Isaiah 51:2: “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for when he was but one I called him, and I blessed him and made him many.”
Jeremiah 30:19: “Out of them shall come songs of thanksgiving, and the voices of those who make merry. I will multiply them, and they shall not be few; I will make them honored, and they shall not be small.”
Jeremiah 33:22: “As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendants of David my servant, and the Levitical priests who minister to me.”
What about the flip side? How does the Bible treat sterility? To our modern ears, some of the biblical accounts sound harsh, even a little bizarre, especially in the Book of Leviticus. But blessings and curses are a recurrent Old Testament theme. The prophet Jeremiah identifies Yahweh’s punishment with childlessness: “Therefore deliver up their children to famine; give them over to the power of the sword, let their wives become childless and widowed” (Jer. 18:21).
The same theme is echoed later in Hosea: “Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel; Like the first fruit on the fig tree, in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Ba’al-peor, and consecrated themselves to Ba’al, and became detestable like the thing they loved. Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy, no conception.… Give them, O L
ORD—
what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts” (Hos. 9:10-11, 14).
Leviticus 21:17 describes congenital sterility as a blemish in Israel’s high priests (due to their special role in embodying God’s holiness), and Deuteronomy 23:1 forbids men with crushed testicles or who are castrated from entering the assembly.
In preparing His chosen people for their entry into Canaan, the Lord promised the Israelites two blessings: protection from disease, and a complete absence of miscarriage and sterility (Ex. 23:25–26), a promise renewed in Deuteronomy 7:13–14 immediately following the reception of the Ten Commandments. Traditional Judaism has always taught that a home without children is a home without blessing. Not surprisingly, there is no Old Testament word for bachelor. Sorrow is the universal emotion of childless Old Testament women.
Deuteronomy records an interesting prohibition: “When men fight with one another, and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall have no pity” (Deut. 25:11–12). The editors of the
New Jerusalem Bible
tag this scene “Modesty in Brawls.” Is that really all that is going on? As a moment’s thought will verify, the wife had far less modest avenues available with which to intervene. What’s at stake in protecting the integrity of the sex organs goes beyond merely fighting fair. It’s at least curious that there is no mention of punishment for grabbing or cutting off any other part of the enemy’s body.
The Mosaic civil laws regulating sexual practice stem ultimately from a positive view of fertility. Leviticus 20 lists a number of sexual perversions that earned the death penalty: adultery and incest (Lev. 10–12); sodomy (Lev. 20:13), male-animal bestiality (Lev. 20:15); and female-animal bestiality (Lev. 20:16). The first ten verses of Leviticus 20 prescribe death for anyone “who gives any of his children to Molech”—the ancient equivalent of being offered up to a Planned Parenthood clinic.
This is not to imply that the Mosaic punishments are still in force. They are not. The Old Law, with its ritual purities and strict sanctions for the sake of community order, was fulfilled by the coming of Christ, and is no longer binding in its minutiae.
Yet Christ did not throw out the baby of truth with the bath water of the old rituals, and neither does the Church. Contrasting Moses with Christ, the Letter to the Hebrews affirms the basic validity of the Mosaic moral logic: “For if the message declared by angels was valid and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” (Heb. 2:2–3). Jesus Himself said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished” (Mt. 5:17–18).
For those looking for scriptural evidence for the Catholic teaching against birth control the granddaddy passage is the Onan incident in Genesis 38. Pius XI cites it in
Casti Connubii
(1930), which, in turn, is referenced in
Humanae Vitae
(1968). For Protestant “protesters” of birth control, the Onan episode is proof positive of God’s abhorrence of the practice.
The context of the story can be pictured as three concentric circles with the Onan incident at the center. Moving outward, the next circle is the ancient Hebrew custom called the law of the Levirate, which obligated a brother to marry his dead brother’s widow to carry on the family line of the deceased. (More on that shortly.) The third contextual circle is the way the passage has been understood by the Catholic Church and, as we’ve seen, by all Protestants for five hundred years before 1930. The following analysis draws on the work of Brian Harrison, OS, STD,
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and John Kippley.
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But before we look at the context, here is the text: