“Tell me...do Catholics teach that if your brother dies childless, you should have sex with his widow to raise up children?
It made sense at that time for a tribe. It is not current morality teaching by either Catholic or Baptist that I know of...but if it was the right thing to do, then certainly having sex with your brother’s widow but avoiding conception would be a sin.”
~ ~ ~
Mr. Rogers,
You don’t believe St. Augustine in the 4th century? He stated the teaching of the faith, it hasn’t changed.
Here, better than I can explain, except the last word “vice” should read “mortal sin.”
“The biblical penalty for not giving your brother’s widow children was public humiliation, not death (Deuteronomy 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. Genesis 19).”
“You don’t believe St. Augustine in the 4th century? He stated the teaching of the faith, it hasn’t changed.”
Well, since I’m not a Calvinist, I obviously disagree with St Auggie in a few places.
Deut 25 says:
“And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ 8 Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ 9 then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’ 10 And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.’”
Do you see where that is different from having sex with your sister-in-law on the pretense of creating an heir, while making sure there will be none?
If God killed everyone who ‘spilled their seed’, very few teen boys would make it to adulthood - and those that did would be homosexuals...
Unlike Deuteronomy 25:5-10, in which the sin was a refusal to marry and raise up kids, with the penalty being public shame, in the case of Onan it was after he had married that he refused to give her children, who might inherit his estate.
Yet Onan’s death (Gn. 38-1-9) was not by Moses acting according to the laws for capital punishment, but was another case of God’s sovereign judgment, after He had executed his wicked brother Er. And both were half Canaanite, and apparently the sons of adultery.
Thus there is more here than simply a refusal to procreate, and what you are lacking and trying to extrapolate is a capital law against that, but which is missing.