Posted on 10/05/2012 3:22:55 AM PDT by koinonia
From a transcript of Scott Hahn telling his story: We [Kimberly & I] got married right out of college. Both of us had so much of the same vision. We wanted to do ministry together [as Presbyterians], we wanted to share the good news of Christ, we wanted to open up the Bible and make it come alive for people...
We were off to seminary a week or two after our wedding...
[In] a course that Kimberly took her first year... Dr. Davis had all the students break up into small groups so that each small group could tackle one topic... One dinner she announced that she was in a small group devoted to studying contraception. I remember thinking at the time, "Why contraception?"
The year before when I took the class, nobody signed up for that small group and I told her. She said, "Well, three others have signed up for it and we had our first meeting today. So and so appointed himself to be chair of the committee, and he announced the results of our study even before it began. He said, 'Well, we all know as Protestants, as Bible Christians, that contraception is fine, I mean so long as we don't use contraceptives that are abortafacients like the I.U.D. and so on.' He announced further that really the only people who call themselves Christians who oppose artificial birth control are the Catholics, and he said, 'The reason they do, of course, is because they are run by a celibate Pope and lead by celibate priests who don't have to raise the kids but want Catholic parents to raise lots so they can have lots of priests and nuns to draw from, you know.'"
Well, that kind of argumentation did not really impress Kimberly. She said, "Are you sure those are the best arguments they would offer?" And I guess he must have mocked or said, "Well, do you want to look into it yourself?" You don't say that kind of thing to Kimberly. She said, "Yes," and she took an interest in researching this on her own.
So that night at dinner... she said, "I've discovered that up until 1930, every single Protestant denomination without exception opposed contraception on Biblical grounds." Then I said, "Oh come on, maybe it just took us a few centuries to work out the last vestiges of residual Romanism, I don't know." And she said, "Well, I'm going to look into it."
...she handed me a book. It was entitled Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant by John Kippley... I began to read through the book with great interest because in my own personal study, going through the Bible several times, I had come upon this strong conviction that if you want to know God, you have to understand the covenant, because the covenant was the central idea in all of Scripture. So when I picked up this book I was interested to see the word 'covenant' in the title, Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant. I opened it up and I began reading it, and I said, "Wait a second, Kimberly, this guy is a Catholic. You expect me to read a Catholic?" And the thought occurred to me instantly at that moment, What is a Catholic doing putting 'covenant' into his book title? Since when do Catholics hijack my favorite concept?
Well, I began to read the book. I went through two or three chapters and he was beginning to make sense, so I promptly threw the book across my desk. I didn't frankly want him to make any sense. But I picked it up again and read through some more. His arguments made a lot of sense. From the Bible, from the covenant, he showed that the marital act is not just a physical act; it's a spiritual act that God has designed by which the marital covenant is renewed. And in all covenants you have an opportunity to renew the covenant, and the act of covenant renewal is an act or a moment of grace. When you renew a covenant, God releases grace, and grace is life, grace is power, grace is God's own love. Kippley shows how in a marital covenant, God has designed the marital act to show the life-giving power of love. That in the marital covenant the two become one, and God has designed it so that when the two become one, they become so one that nine months later you might just have to give it a name. And that child who is conceived, embodies the oneness that God has made the two through the marital act. This is all the way that God has designed the marital covenant. God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," and God, who is three in one, made man, male and female, and said, "Be fruitful and multiply." The two shall become one and when the two become one, the one they become is a third child, and then they become three in one. It just began to make a lot of sense, and he went through other arguments as well. By the time I finished the book, I was convinced.
It bothered me just a little that the Roman Catholic Church was the only denomination, the only Church tradition on earth that upheld this age-old Christian teaching rooted in Scripture, because in 1930 the Anglican Church broke from this tradition and began to allow contraception, and shortly thereafter every single mainline denomination on earth practically caved in to the mounting pressure of the sexual revolution. By the 1960's and 70's, my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, not only endorsed contraception, but abortion on demand and federal funding for abortion, and that appalled me. And I began to wonder if there wasn't a connection between giving in a little here and then all of a sudden watching the floodgates open later. I thought "No, no, you know the Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years; they're bound to get something right." We have a saying in our family that even a blind hog finds an acorn, and so it was, I thought. That was my second year.
a Christmas carol was a socialist manifesto...
...and let me ‘Humbug’ myself before you do.
Didn’t read all the threads but I thought this joke may fit the theme of the initial article...
Why was G-d’s first commandment to Adam “...go forth and multiply?” Because-—when man saw how fun the first commandment was he’d want to keep all of the commandments! <@:-)>
Just what are the Verses ?
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Before I respond, let me throw out the opposite question, since it seems to me that the the burden of proof lies there: Since, practically speaking, all Christians were united in condemning contraception before 1930, where in the Bible does it say that one can have relations with one's husband/wife and NOT be open to offspring? Just what are the Verses ?
I don't say that to dodge the question, but would welcome your response.
Now a basic response: First, one can look at Onan (Gen 38:1-10). When his brother was killed and Tamar was left a widow, Judah told him to marry her and to produce offspring. He practiced the form of contraception which today we call "withdrawal": Onan "went in to his brother's wife, spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother's name. And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing" (Gen 38:9-10).
For Christians the marriage covenant takes on a new depth. Perhaps the most beautiful teaching on marriage in the Scriptures, a teaching which indicates how wrong contraception is, can be found in Eph 5, especially v.21-33, where St. Paul speaks of marriage as reflecting that great mystery of the spousal love of Christ the Divine Bridegroom for His Bride the Church: "This is a great sacrament (sacramentum hoc magnum); but I speak in Christ and in the church.
St. Paul's point is that from the beginning marriage was modeled on the union of Christ with His Church: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh" (Gen 2:24; Eph 5:31). And after Genesis announces this marriage covenant "God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it" (Gen 2:28).
Contraception goes against the very nature of marriage as willed by God, and certainly does not reflect the love between Christ and the Church. Imagine a Pastor limiting the number of Baptisms in his parish saying, 'God forbid that we have a large parish family' - just the thought of it is preposterous. Christ and the Church are fruitful!
I also think of Our Lord's very sad words as He carried the Cross towards Calvary: "But Jesus turning to them, said: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For behold, the days shall come, wherein they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us; and to the hills: Cover us" (Lk 23:30).
Shalom also to you!
As I just posted above, since, practically speaking, all Christians were united in condemning contraception before 1930, where in the Bible does it say that one can have relations with one's husband/wife and NOT be open to offspring? It seems to me that the burden of proof lies in showing that it is biblical to contracept.
Blessed Sunday!
Sorry for the mistake in the title. Typing without thinking or checking carefully - and I can’t erase or change the mistake! At any rate, forgive me, forgive one another, and let’s march on together in Christ.
“It seems to me that the burden of proof lies in showing that it is biblical to contracept.”
It seems to me that the Bible is silent on the issue, and therefor it probably is an area where folks are free to choose.
“It seems to me that the Bible is silent on the issue, and therefor (sic) it probably is an area where folks are free to choose.”
First of all, we are always free to choose because God gave this freedom to us.
How we choose is what matters.
As regards the silence —or not—of the Bible. There is an important significance of the two “senses of Scripture, which are the “literal” and the “spiritual”.
#116 of the Catholic Catechism says that the “literal sense” is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of a sound interpretation
The “spiritual Sense” is subdivided into
allegorical
moral
anagogical
#117 The allegorical sense gives us a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ
The moral sense lead us to act justly (written for our instruction)
The anagogical sense portends to eternal significance
In short
The Letter speaks of deeds;
Allegory to faith
The Moral how to act;
Anagogy our destiny
Viewed in the light of the Four Senses of Scripture, the Scriptural understanding of marital love is very clear.
To say that the Bible is silent on this issue is to miss—or bypass—Scripture in its Four Senses.
U-2012> Just what are the Verses ?
Now a basic response: First, one can look at Onan (Gen 38:1-10). When his brother was killed and Tamar was left a widow, Judah told him to marry her and to produce offspring. He practiced the form of contraception which today we call "withdrawal": Onan "went in to his brother's wife, spilled his seed upon the ground, lest children should be born in his brother's name. And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing" (Gen 38:9-10).
Clearly Scott Hahn is ignorant of the WORD of YHvH. Genesis 38 is not about Contraception, What is being discussed in all of chapter 38 ? Chapter 38 seems to be about "can the will of man Judah is the tribe of the first-born of Israel by assignment. Judah has three sons. Judah feared the third son would also be struck dead. Tamar removed her widow's garments dressed herself Have you ever read the entire chapter under
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
the illumination of the Ru'ach HaKodesh ?
but obedience to the WORD of YHvH.
interfere with the Patrilineal bloodline of Yah'shua".
The first(Er) displeases YHvH and is struck dead.
Onan(2nd) through the sin of PRIDE refuses to offer
his seed to Er for progeny for Judah
(levitical marriage)
He directly refuses to obey YHvH's Commandments ).
Judah then told Tamar to wait for Shelah grew up.
Judah failed to obey YHvH and give Shelah to Tamar for an heir.
as a harlot to obey YHvH and produce an heir for Judah.
At any rate, Gen 38:10 says, "And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing." It does not say that he was slain for the sin of pride or disobedience, but because the act he performed (spilling the seed) was detestable.
I agree with you that what motivated him to do this was prideful disobedience, but he was killed by God for what he did.
Catechism of the Catholic Church on The fecundity of marriage
2366 Fecundity is a gift, an end of marriage, for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added on to the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment. So the Church, which is "on the side of life,"151 teaches that "it is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life."152 "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act."153
2367 Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God.154 "Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility."155
2368 A particular aspect of this responsibility concerns the regulation of procreation. For just reasons, spouses may wish to space the births of their children. It is their duty to make certain that their desire is not motivated by selfishness but is in conformity with the generosity appropriate to responsible parenthood. Moreover, they should conform their behavior to the objective criteria of morality:
When it is a question of harmonizing married love with the responsible transmission of life, the morality of the behavior does not depend on sincere intention and evaluation of motives alone; but it must be determined by objective criteria, criteria drawn from the nature of the person and his acts criteria that respect the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love; this is possible only if the virtue of married chastity is practiced with sincerity of heart.156
2369 "By safeguarding both these essential aspects, the unitive and the procreative, the conjugal act preserves in its fullness the sense of true mutual love and its orientation toward man's exalted vocation to parenthood."157
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.158 These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil:159
Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.160
At any rate, Gen 38:10 says, "And therefore the Lord slew him, because he did a detestable thing." It does not say that he was slain for the sin of pride or disobedience, but because the act he performed (spilling the seed) was detestable.
I agree with you that what motivated him to do this was prideful disobedience, but he was killed by God for what he did.
NASB Gen 38:10 But what he did was displeasing Onan was required by YHvH's Commandments to 1) second son of Judah, slain by God for not fulfilling After reading the source article, I stand by my judgement.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
NASB Gen 38:9 Onan knew that the offspring would not be his;
It is clear that without Eisegesis, that there is nothing
so when he went in to his brother's wife,
he wasted his seed on the ground in order
not to give offspring to his brother.
in the sight of YHvH; so He took his life also.
in the text to suggest YHvH's condemnation of contraception.
produce an heir for Tamar, which will be the
bloodline for Yah'shua, which he chose to deliberately
prevent and thus violate YHvH's Commandment for
Levitical marriage. Onan = "strong"
the levitical requirement to beget a child with
the wife of a dead, childless brother
--union - "Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh" (Gen 2:24)
--procreation - "And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it" (Gen 1:28).
The entire Bible, as Scott Hahn continually has pointed out in his conferences and writings, is centered on a covenant relationship between God and His people: "And you shall be my people: and I will be your God" (cfr. Gen 17:1-7; Ex 6:7; Lev 26:12; Dt 5:2; Jer 30:22, etc.).
Covenant is not contract. A contract is made for an exchange of goods or services; whereas a covenant is an exchange of persons. Frequently the Bible refers to the covenant between God and His people in terms of marriage (cfr. Hosea 2:19; Is 54:5, 62:5; plus all of the parables of Jesus in reference to the kingdom of heaven as a wedding banquet and the references below).
Based on the Scriptures, then, marriage is instituted by God as a reflection of His covenant with His people. The love (union and procreation) of husband and wife are to reflect the love of God for His bride. For Christians this is deepened through the revelation that the love of husband and wife is meant to reflect the mystery of the union of Christ the Divine Bridegroom with His Bride the Church. (2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:32; Apoc 18:23; 21:2,9 etc.)
That said, one can readily understand Scott and Kimberly Hahn's discovery. Scott writes:
"If married love is a sacramental sign of God's love for His people-as both testaments of the Bible testify-then the act itself must accurately reflect that love. It must be faithful, monogamous, indissoluble, and fruitful. This is the foundation of all traditional Christian sexual morality, though it will surely come as a surprise to many Christians today. I know this, because it took me completely by surprise, some twenty years ago."
He continues...
"Yet Christian history's overwhelming verdict on contraception arrived as news to us, as did the powerful arguments for this teaching from Scripture and moral reasoning. Confronted with the evidence, Kimberly and I felt compelled to change our lives. So we threw the contraceptives away, and soon afterward our change of theology produced a change in Kimberly's anatomy. Our first child, Michael, was on the way."He then points out:
"Pope John Paul II has rightly called contraception "a lie in the language of love:" Sex... should be an oath in action, a complete gift of self, an embrace in which a man and a woman hold nothing back from one another. It is a gift of an entire life, and so it belongs only in a lifelong, exclusive marriage. It is a covenant exchange, an exchange of persons: "I am yours, and you are mine." Marriage is what makes sex sacramental and covenantal. The total gift of self rules out the possibility of divorce, adultery, premarital sex-and contraception. For contracepting couples do hold something back, and it's perhaps the single greatest power two human beings can possess: their fertility, the ability to co-create with God a new life, body and soul, destined for eternity. The sexual act says in its ecstasy: "I give you everything." But contraception renders that communication untrue.Read the full article here (it's well worth the time): A Lie in the Language of Love.
If anyone is sincerely interested in deepening their Scriptural understanding of marriage, Blessed John Paul II has written beautifully and extensively on the subject. His entire series of Wednesday audiences on the Theology of the Body are readily available.
God bless you all!
all very nice....just not for me.
Good Luck and Bless you.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
covenant |ˈkəvənənt|
noun
an agreement.
• Law a contract drawn up by deed.
• Law a clause in a contract.
• Theology an agreement that brings about a relationship of commitment
between God and his people. The Jewish faith is based on the biblical
covenants made with Abraham, Moses, and David.
YHvH insisted in the married state for Then the question is: Why does the Roman "church" This seems to be as a direct result of One would see this as a direct affront to YHvH. Excellent question:
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
everyone including His priests, the Levites.
why did the Roman "church"
prohibit it's priests to marry ??
exalt remaining a "virgin" ??
the syncretism of the Roman "church".
“...what a condom does is give the couple the ability to express their love without choosing to have a child...”
Altering the marital embrace to make it barren reduces it to essentially the same act as a homosexual act i.e., an act that by its very nature is their way of expressing “love” without having a child. The process of neutering the marital embrace demeans it. Purposely abstaining during the fertile time each month for serious reasons is perfectly acceptable and does not mock the potential procreative act itself.
“Altering the marital embrace to make it barren reduces it to essentially the same act as a homosexual act...”
Dang! I guess those infertile couples who keep on doing it are just a bunch of homos!
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