Authors: Patrick Coffin
Chapter Four
Small wonder, therefore, if Holy Writ bears witness that the Divine Majesty regards with greatest detestation this horrible crime and at times has punished it with death.
—Pius XI,
Casti Connubii
(55)
Christian proponents of birth control say that the Bible is silent on the question of birth control, and that the silence speaks volumes about God’s approval.
But the devil (the metaphor be pardoned) is in the details. In the following mini-tour of Sacred Scripture, we will find not silence, but a surprisingly rowdy collection of evidence in the form of clues, premises, and attitudes—along with a direct condemnation—all of which, taken together, present an airtight case that verifies the historic Christian teaching.
While the phrase “birth control” appears nowhere in Scripture, as we saw in the previous chapter God’s Word often teaches certain ideas without laying out explicit definitions. In this case, what God plants in the Bible through the inspired writers He brings to fruition in Tradition through the infallible Church. (I note, only partly in jest, that the Bible also nowhere commands us to call our leaders “Reverend” or “Doctor” either, nor does it mention any of the phrases held dear by many Christians, such as “accepting Jesus as my personal Savior,” “the Incarnation,” “the triune God,” and other ideas.)
In the case of contraception, the Bible paints a single, unambiguous picture, which is made even clearer by the Magisterium. From Genesis to Revelation, the Word of God fairly vibrates with the communication of life: imparting it, communicating it, affirming it, manifesting it.
1
Human birth is always depicted as a great good, culminating particularly in the promise of a Savior to be born (Lk. 1:35). The notion that sexual intercourse ought to always be open to the transmission of new life is not so much articulated as assumed in Sacred Scripture. Every biblical reference to fertility and birth is couched as a blessing; every reference to barrenness and sterility as a curse.
The Protestant Reformers looked to the Bible alone to ground their denunciations of birth control, which they leveled more stridently than any pope.
2
The onus, therefore, is on those trying to prove the contrary, since Bible believing Christians were united for over nineteen hundred years in the conviction that contraception is against God’s law. This chapter accepts that onus.
The Bible often returns to its main theme—God’s marriage proposal to the soul and the restoration of all things in Christ—a theme imparted in the language of faithfulness, fruitfulness, rebirth, kinship, adoption, covenant, filial trust, and fecundity. As John Paul the Great would put it, God’s Word speaks the language of nuptial union.
Some of the following verses have been examined in other chapters; I include them here for the sake of completeness. Taken together, out of many diverse times and contexts, they speak with one voice with the message that babies are blessings and that (not discounting human cooperation) God wills them to be for their own sake.
With one exception, the following is not a list of “proof texts,” but evidence of a clear and consistent moral outlook. The exception is the account of Onan, in Genesis 38, which, if a text proves a doctrine, I take to be a true proof text. But regarding the rest of the list, just as a few strands of colored silk don’t make a tapestry, so one or two Bible verses are insufficient to condemn all forms of birth control.
Seen one after the other, these verses reveal how solid the foundation is for the historic Christian teaching that contraception is jarringly inconsistent with the will of God. (The italics in the verses that follow are mine, added for emphasis.)
The Bible’s explicitly pro-fecundity attitude appears at the very beginning, in the Book of Genesis: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’” (Gen. 1:27–28).
Notice how the very act by which children are made—the physical basis of fruitfulness and multiplication—is given as a blessing to the couple. God’s first commandment is simultaneously a blessing, and is addressed to
adam
(Hebrew for mankind, male and female). This is the primordial unity to which Jesus points the Pharisees in His teaching against divorce in Matthew 19, back before sin “hardened the hearts” of lovers. Moses’ allowance of divorce (“because of the hardness of your hearts”) is contrasted negatively against the original order of things that Jesus came to restore.
“And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth’” (Gen. 9:1).
Not many people know that this same commandment is repeated after the flood.
“And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you’” (Gen. 35:11).
Even fewer people know about the Bible’s third “Be fruitful”! The hearer in this verse is Jacob, or rather Israel, since God had just changed his name following his nocturnal wrestling match with the angel in chapter 32. Any teaching repeated by God three times should give us pause. Further, contrary to the thinking of some dissenters, these verses do not apply only to Jews, since “Jew” comes from Judah, one of the sons of Jacob who arrives after these commandments.
These divine directives—thrice repeated and never revoked—must apply to humanity, not merely to a few distant Old Testament figures.
“And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the L
ORD
your God. Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of the beast.… And the L
ORD
will make you abound in prosperity, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground, within the land which the L
ORD
swore to your fathers to give you” (Deut. 28:2–4, 11).
This is one of the first scriptural indications that children are divine gifts, inseparable from the other elements of God’s provision and care. Here are a few more:
“Of Heman, the sons of Heman: Bukkiah, Mattaniah, Uzziel, Shebuel and Jerimoth, Hananiah, Hanani, Eliathah, Giddalti, and Romamti-ezer, Joshbekashah, Mallothi, Hothir, Mahazioth. And these were the sons of Heman the king’s seer, according to the promise of God to exalt him; for God had given Heman fourteen sons and three daughters” (1 Chron. 25:4–5).
This charmingly named passel of children was given to Heman by God, not to annoy, disgust, or punish him, but to exalt him.
“And Obed-edom had sons: Shemaiah the firstborn, Jehozabad the second, Joah the third, Sachar the fourth, Nethanel the fifth, Ammiel the sixth, Issachar the seventh, and Peullethai the eighth; for God blessed him” (1 Chron. 26:4–5).
“Lo, sons are a heritage from the L
ORD
, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like the arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Ps. 127:3–5).
Psalm 127 is a classic Old Testament text on the subject. Again, we see children depicted as coming from the creative hand of God as a reward, quite the opposite of a burden. The arrows-in-a-quiver imagery is rich in connotation. A quiver was part of a soldier’s ordinary equipment, a long shoulder-mounted sheath used to hold arrows. The Psalmist extols a full quiver, not a moderately loaded one. What warrior in his right mind is delighted to go into battle with 2.1 arrows in his quiver?
Regardless of how many actual arrows the average Hebrew quiver could hold (Scripture is not here demanding that mothers become non-stop “arrow factories”), the point is that God wants us to think maximally, not minimally, about our quiver’s capacity, and to remain open to the blessing of arrows He might bestow. As God Himself is called a warrior in Scripture ( Jer. 20:11; Zeph. 3:17; Job 16:14), the arrows of our full quivers—our children and their children—are also held in His hand, for His purposes.
As we know, some couples try for many years without having children, yet without stifling their “arrow producing” union. Others, for various medical or other reasons, can only have one or two children. “Quiverfullness” is not determined mathematically but volitionally.
“Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table” (Ps. 128:3). Olive shoots are like arrows in that they also symbolize the future spreading outward. (Olive trees can live and bear fruit for hundreds of years.) The bounteous image of olive shoots extending
around the table
says something about our 2.1 child standard.
“Then Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abim’elech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. For the L
ORD
had closed all the wombs of the house of Abim’elech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife” (Gen. 20:17–18).
“When the L
ORD
saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren. And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben; for she said, ‘Because the L
ORD
has looked upon my affliction; surely now my husband will love me.’ She conceived again and bore a son, and said, ‘Because the L
ORD
has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also;’ and she called his name Simeon” (Gen. 29:31–33).
“Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?’ … Then Rachel said, ‘God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son;’ therefore she called his name Dan … And God listened to Leah, and she conceived and bore Jacob a fifth son. Leah said, ‘God has given me my heir because I gave my maid to my husband;’ so she called his name Is’sachar.… Then God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her and opened her womb. She conceived and bore a son, and said, ‘God has taken away my reproach;’ and she called his name Joseph, saying, ‘May the L
ORD
add to me another son!’” (Gen. 30:2, 6, 17–18, 22–24).
The Lord did indeed add another son. His name was Benjamin. Had Rachel used contraception after the birth of Joseph, our New Testament would be wafer thin. It would skip from the Acts of the Apostles to the Letters of Peter and John, and the Apocalypse. Take away Benjamin and you take away the Letters of Saint Paul: The great apostle proudly reminds us in Romans 11:2 that he’s a descendent of Benjamin!
“Although [Elka’nah] loved Hannah, he would give Hannah only one portion, because the L
ORD
had closed her womb. And her rival used to provoke her sorely, to irritate her, because the lord had closed her womb.… And [Hannah] vowed a vow and said, ‘O L
ORD
of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thy maidservant, and remember me, and not forget thy maidservant, but wilt give to thy maidservant a son, then I will give him to the L
ORD
all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head” (1 Sam. 1: 5–6, 11).
“They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the L
ORD
; then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elka’nah knew Hannah his wife, and the L
ORD
remembered her; and in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for she said, ‘I have asked him of the L
ORD
’” (1 Sam. 11:19–20).
Notice a pattern? Without in any way canceling out the secondary cause of human meeting and mating, God continually shows Himself to be the first cause of new little persons. The penultimate source of human life is sexual relations; the ultimate source is God. The Psalms return to this idea: “Know that the L
ORD
is God! It is he that made us, and we are his” (Ps. 100:3).