The Position of Protestantism on Contraception
Protestants are Christians who adhered to the Reform initiated by Martin Luther and John Calvin, who themselves separated from the Roman Catholic Church and wanted to reform it.
The Reform is based on the
recognition of the Bible as the infallible Word of God, fully
inspired by God, and, therefore, an authority in matters of faith and
life, superior to that of any church tradition or human authority.
This
implies that an 1. Exegesis
is the study of the Bible, the word means "to extract the
meaning" of a given text. Traditional exegesis requires
the following steps: analysis of significant words in the
translation, review of the historical and cultural context,
confirmation of the passage’s limits, and finally, contextual
analysis of the text. Biblical exegesis starts with the
presupposition of faith according to which the Holy Spirit inspired
the authors of the Scripture’s texts, thus making it a divine
revelation.exegesis[1]
of the Bible is done according to 2. This
is the «hermeneutic», which is the discipline of text
interpretation in order to find what it really means: What God
has said in the beginning, and eliminating what he never said. This
discipline includes the whole scope of interpretation. One uses tools
like different Bible translations, Bible dictionaries, interlinear
Bibles, times and phrases used in Greek, a concordance, etc.very precise rules[2],
in order to understand and respect the original meaning inspired by
God, and not merely rely on a "free interpretation" which
arbitrarily rejects such rules, according to personal whim or
convenience (as Liberals do).
The position of Protestantism against contraception (and abortion all the more) is deduced from the study of biblical texts, and not from the "natural law," which Protestantism rejects, or from the authority of the Church itself, even if its position is also confirmed by the Fathers of the Church[3]. This position has been somewhat forgotten since 1930, when the eugenics lobby managed to circumvent the Anglican Church on this issue[4]. The Liberals followed this path, as many sincere but misinformed Protestants did. However we are now witnessing a return to protestant orthodoxy, as more and more Protestants go back to the true Protestant doctrine: opposition to contraception[5].
The texts of the Bible are consistent and mutually reinforce each other in a worldview according to God. They allow for an unambiguous understanding of contraception as a sin. A noteworthy study was done by Charles Provan[6] who identified 9 arguments and did a research on the statements of Protestant theologians. We have divided those arguments into three categories and we have updated that study by adding a fourth category as a result of recent findings. Hormonal contraceptive products have abortifacient properties, which have been publicly proven and are now known, this equates contraception with abortion (which is regarded in the Bible as murder.)
What the Bible Says About Contraception
It’s obvious that the word "contraception", coined in the twentieth century, does not appear in the Bible, whose latest books date from the 1st century. This is probably why contraception propagandists say that the Bible does not mention it. However, issues of fertility and refusal to procreate are widely discussed, and the biblical law is full of examples that transcend time.
A. God’s Plan for Humanity Involves Fertility
From Genesis, God gives man a
mission, the "cultural mandate," which is to dominate the
earth and everything in it (Genesis 1:28.) Despite 7. The
fall is the historical event for understanding the current state of humanity. This episode is described in
the book of Genesis (Gen. 3:1-7). Humans disobeyed God because they wanted to be God themselves, trying to
determine for themselves the good and the evil without trusting God.
This arrogance led to death, as God had warned man before: and
from that moment men became mortal (Gen. 3:8-24).
However, God announces together with that condemnation, his plan of redemption for man (v. 15)...the
fall[7],
the cultural mandate persists and is even supplemented by a universal
mission to teach all nations and make faithful disciples of Jesus
Christ, to whom all power was given. The fertility of
Christians is the most effective way to fulfill this "great
mission;" which our contemporaries sometimes have difficulty
understanding.
The word "sin", in Hebrew "hattat," comes from a word which means to miss the target, err, or be twisted, crooked. That’s what men do when they decide to determine for themselves what is good or evil (Gen. 3:5), refusing to trust the Creator. Contraception is, therefore, sinful because it violates the mission that God had planned for men:
"Be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis
1:27-28)
...it is a commandment of God, the first to the married couple.
Contraception obviously implies disobedience to this commandment. No
other passage in the Bible changes or cancels this commandment, that
is why it remains valid today, especially since it is corroborated by
many other passages, including Gen. 9:1, which occurs after the
Flood, and Jeremiah 29:4-6 where God commands his
people to «procreate sons and daughters,» even though they are in captivity.
The Natural Function of Women (Rom. 1:24-28)
The Scripture says here that God punishes the cultures which reject
worship and abandon themselves "to degrading passions." The
path to these degrading passions begins when men and women give up
"natural sex to engage in practices against nature." This
is the final result of the rejection of "natural relations with
women" (i.e. having children.)
Childbirth
and Salvation for Women (1 Tim. 2:15)
Does St. Paul state here that women will get salvation by becoming
mothers? Not exactly. Salvation is primarily a matter of grace and
not human effort. What St. Paul says here can be paraphrased as: If a
woman is really saved, she will prove her faith and her salvation by
doing good deeds. The path of obedience to God, which leads to
eternal salvation, involves (for married women) to have children if
they can.
We can conclude that for a married
woman, the fact of rejecting the possibility of having children is to
reject the good deeds that St. Paul speaks about.
B. Fertility Is a Blessing and Not a Burden
When God commands something, he gives you the means to do it. Thus the over-publicized fears of overpopulation by some pressure groups can only be conceived as with a total lack of faith in God, which is the case of these people: their Eugenics and racism has caused more misery and murders than the alleged overpopulation; they are at war against human populations and seek to harm them.
Children are a blessing given by God (Ps. 127:3-5,
1 Chr. 25:4-5 &
26:4-5,
Deut. 30:9)
The relation of this omnipresent vision in the Bible regarding
contraception is very clear: preventing children from being conceived
is like preventing them from being born. This is to deny God’s
blessing. This attitude expresses contempt towards God.
The lack of procreation is a misfortune (Hosea 9:10-17,
Exodus 23:25-26)
God considers sterility or few children as negative, something he
inflicts as a punishment. Contraception becomes akin to a terrible
disaster, it's like calling the curse on oneself.
Castration
is considered a physical defect (Lev. 21:17-20,
22:20-22,
24-25,
Deut. 23:1)
The quoted passages describe as a "defect" crushed, injured,
torn or cut testicles, as well as being blind, disabled, or having
broken limbs, festering and running sores. God states here that it is
not good to have crushed or damaged testicles. The media and
textbooks that promote vasectomy do not do it from a Christian
perspective. Christians should consider vasectomy as a
self-mutilation, which is prohibited by the Bible.
The seed is equivalent to the descent (Heb. 7:9-10,
Job 10:8-11)
If we look for the word "seed" in the Old Testament, we discover
an interesting fact: The same Hebrew word "zerah" is used
to designate 2 different things:
- a) Seminal fluid (Genesis 38:9, Lev. 15:16-18, Lev.15:32 etc.),
- b) children or people after their birth (Genesis 46:6, and also Gen.3:15, 4:25, 7:3, 9:9, 12:7, 13:15-16, 15:3-5, etc.)
The reason why the Scriptures use the same word is that all humans have once existed in the form of a seed, from the perspective of an ongoing process. The word "seed" is used to designate the human being, before and after conception. The use of contraception is not just the elimination of the seed (which does not seem to disturb anyone), but also the elimination of future persons.
C. Contraception Goes Against God’s Law
The incident of Onan (Genesis 38:8-10, Deut. 25:5-10)
This passage in Genesis refers to a custom which was subsequently included in the Law in Deuteronomy 25. This Law of Levirate was a mechanism to preserve and perpetuate the family line in Israel. But the penalty for refusal to observe it was not serious: if a brother refused to do his duty, the offended sister-in-law could publicly spit on his face and take away a sandal, and then he was called "the barefooted." This did not imply the death penalty. But verse 10 of Genesis 38 tells us that God has regarded the incident of Onan as more than just a refusal to perform a duty, it was an offense so serious that he slew Onan.
John Calvin in his Commentary on Genesis[8] says:
“Moreover he [Onan] has not only shortened his brother concerning the right due to him, but he rather spilled seed on the ground than to raise a son in his brother's name.
Verse 10: And the thing which he did displeased the LORD. Less neatly the Jews speak about this matter. I will content myself with briefly mentioning this, as far as the sense of shame allows to discuss it. It is a horrible thing to pour out seed besides the intercourse of man and woman. Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is double horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family, and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born.
This wickedness is now as severely as is possible condemned by the Spirit, through Moses, that Onan, as it were, through a violent and untimely birth, tore away the seed of his brother out the womb, and as cruel as shamefully has thrown on the earth. Moreover he thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race. When a woman in some way drives away the seed out the womb, through aids, then this is rightly seen as an unforgivable crime. Onan was guilty of a similar crime, by defiling the earth with his seed, so that Tamar would not receive a future inheritor.”
The reformer will even consider the coitus interruptus as an abortion of the future generation!
Some say that Onan was killed by God because he did not show love for his deceased brother by refusing to procreate his descendants. Deut. 25 nullifies this argument, since the refusal of the Levirate does not imply the death penalty but only a humiliation. We must find Onan’s cause of condemnation in his deviation from that which was prescribed by Deut. 25: he spread his semen on the ground.
In his book, Charles Provan cites a long list of Protestant theologians who, like Calvin, interpret the incident of Onan as a condemnation of contraception. Some even see it as an even more serious act than incest and adultery[9]!
The
penalty of sex crimes (Lev. 20:13, 15, 16, 18,
Genesis 38:8-10)
In the Bible, sex crimes can be divided in 2 categories:
- a) sexual offenses prohibited because of who is the actual or potential sexual partner (e.g., adultery, incest, etc.)
- b) offenses that are prohibited because of the act itself.
It is this latter group that concerns us here. These are offenses regardless of the partner with whom they are committed:
- Homosexual relations between men (Lev. 20:13)
- Bestiality between a man and an animal (Lev. 20:15)
- Bestiality between a woman and an animal (Lev. 20:16)
- Sexual relations with a menstruating woman (Lev. 20:18)
- Coitus interruptus (spreading of the semen) (Genesis 38:8-10)
What do these 5 sins have in common? They all represent sterile forms of sexual relations, and therefore are opposed to God’s commandment "Be fruitful and multiply."
D. Contraception Cannot Be Separated From Abortion
- The use of contraception produces what we call the "contraceptive mentality," in which sexuality is dissociated from procreation and degraded to the rank of merchandise subjected to a market of pleasure.
- The use of contraception increases the number of instrumental abortions, because during frequent "failures" of contraception, the idea of having a baby is generally excluded. Statistics prove it solidly: the myth of contraception that would prevent abortion is, therefore destroyed.
- The use of hormonal
contraception causes abortions
because fertilization can take place anyway (after accidental
ovulation); "contraceptive" hormones then act as
abortifacients to prevent the survival of the formed human embryo:
it is then an abortion. The woman who undergoes this process is not
necessarily aware of it, especially as the propaganda spread by the
media, the State and eugenicists hide this reality. The
abortifacient nature of hormonal contraceptives is now an
indisputable fact, scientifically proven
(see The Impact of the Pill on Implantation Factors,
John Wilks, and Postfertilization Effect of Hormonal Emergency Contraception
of Chris Kahlenborn, Joseph B. Stanford and Walter L. Larimore).
On the other hand, IUDs are mainly abortifacient, because they make the uterus inhospitable to the unborn child and thus cause its death.
Therefore, abortion is definitely murder, because:
- The zygote, embryo and fetus are young human beings that have all the chromosomes of humans. The only difference between them, a child, a teenager, an adult and an old man, is the development, which is a continuous phenomenon,
- To intentionally kill an innocent human being is murder. The fact that this human being is a disturbing factor does not mitigate the action.
The Bible forbids murder (Exodus 20:13,
Genesis 9:6,
Lev. 24:17,
Matt. 5:21, etc.) and even foresees
the death penalty for the murderer.
Thus, contraception is not only the
abortion of a future generation, not yet conceived, but to quote
Calvin, it means to also voluntarily risk the abortion of children
already conceived (conception occurs at fertilization.) Hormonal
contraceptives have an abortifacient action in significant
proportions, and the Bible considers that to pose a risk of death due
to negligence is a potential homicide (Deut.22:8).
The use of hormonal
contraception is then as reprehensible as an attempted murder.
There Is No Protestant Position In Favor of Contraception
Following the manipulation of Lambeth[4], some say that Protestants are for contraception.
This statement is false because the liberals who claim to be Protestants actually have nothing in common with them (see The position of the Secularists where their true nature is exposed), and the few sincere Protestants who follow them do so because they haven’t considered the question seriously; and thus cannot be considered as basis for a defensible position.
1. Exegesis is the study of the Bible, the word means "to extract the meaning" of a given text. Traditional exegesis requires the following steps: analysis of significant words in the translation, review of the historical and cultural context, confirmation of the passage’s limits, and finally, contextual analysis of the text. Biblical exegesis starts with the presupposition of faith according to which the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the Scripture’s texts, thus making it a divine revelation.
2. This is the «hermeneutic», which is the discipline of text interpretation in order to find what it really means: What God has said in the beginning, and eliminating what he never said. This discipline includes the whole scope of interpretation. One uses tools like different Bible translations, Bible dictionaries, interlinear Bibles, times and phrases used in Greek, a concordance, etc.
3. Among the Fathers of the Church John Chrysostom, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Lactantius, Jerome, Epiphanius of Salamis, Augustine, Ceasarius of Arles, etc. spoke against contraception. However, some of the Fathers of the Church have wrongly included elements of ancient Greek philosophy from Aristotle, Plato, etc. The issue of «animation», i.e. when the soul enters the body (40 or 80 days after fertilization, according to Aristotle), is typical of this kind of mistake, because in the Bible, human beings are conceived as a whole, and the dualism of soul/body does not exist.
4. The bishops of the (Anglican) Church of England accepted on August 15, 1930, although with difficulty, Resolution 15 of the Declaration of the Lambeth Conference. This resolution authorized the use of artificial contraceptives in marriage "when there is morally sound reason," which naturally drifted in the 1960s to universal acceptance without any reason, by most Protestant denominations that had become liberal. The architect of this turnaround in 1930 was the spokesman for the Anglican Church in London, Reverend William Ralph Inge (1860-1954), friend of Margaret Sanger, liberal and well-known eugenicist (influential member of the English Eugenics Society.) Margaret Sanger quotes a heretical exegesis of Inge in her book "The Pivot of Civilization" (1922), Chapter 9:
Dean Inge believes Birth Control is an essential part of Eugenics, and an essential part of Christian morality. On this point he asserts: «We do wish to remind our orthodox and conservative friends that the Sermon on the Mount contains some admirably clear and unmistakable eugenic precepts. ‘Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? A corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither can a good tree bring forth evil fruit. Every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’ We wish to apply these words not only to the actions of individuals, which spring from their characters, but to the character of individuals, which spring from their inherited qualities. This extension of the scope of the maxim seems to me quite legitimate. Men do not gather grapes of thorns. As our proverb says, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If we believe this, and do not act upon it by trying to move public opinion towards giving social reform, education and religion a better material to work upon, we are sinning against the light, and not doing our best to bring in the Kingdom of God upon earth.»
5. See also http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Feb/18/abortifacient-effect-birth-control-pill/, http://www.lifeandlibertyministries.com/archives/000356.php, http://www.missionariestopreborn.com/birth_control.html, http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9704word.asp.
6. The Bible and Birth Control, Charles D. PROVAN, 1989, Zimmer Printing, 410 West Main St., Monongahela, PA 15063, USA.
7. The fall is the historical event for understanding the current state of
humanity. This episode is described in the book of Genesis (Gen. 3:1-7).
Humans disobeyed God because they wanted to be God themselves, trying to
determine for themselves the good and the evil without trusting God.
This arrogance led to death, as God had warned man before: and
from that moment men became mortal (Gen. 3:8-24).
However, God announces together
with that condemnation, his plan of redemption for man (v. 15)...
8. In primum Mosis librum, qui Genesis vulgo dicitur, Commentarius Jean Calvin, 1554. Also in English at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom02.html.
9. It’s the case of Luther (1483-1546) and Abraham Calovius (Lutheran, 1612-1686), who consider the act of Onan as "far more atrocious than incest and adultery." It may be noted that, in fact, Tamar committed prostitution and incest with her father-in-law and yet she was not convicted. This woman of character even appears in the genealogy of Jesus.
Home | Full display |