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Monday, November 2, 2009

Candy on family planning.

Update below!!

Last week Candy wrote:

Welcome to Keeping The Home: "Thursday, October 29, 2009
Quiverfull, etc.


As for the biblical perspective - how many children is each family to have? Certainly it is not literally a quiver, or each godly person in the Bible should have had 12 children, but most of them did not. We are to be fruitful and multiply. Some families (such as mine, when I was a child) only have one child. I was a miracle child. My parents tried for several years before I finally came along, and I was the last and only. 'Fruitful' is relative to each family.
I read several papers on this a few years ago.  The "quiver" is the holder full of arrows that an archer carries with him as he goes into battle.  Clearly from the warrior aspect, it is much better to face down the enemy with a lot of arrows in  your quiver than not.  An archer with only a few arrows better sure be a good shot!

The verse that everyone gets so riled up about is from Psalm 127 and goes:
 3Behold, (F)children are a gift of the LORD,
         The (G)fruit of the womb is a reward.
    4Like arrows in the hand of a (H)warrior,
         So are the children of one's youth.
    5How (I)blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;
         (J)They will not be ashamed
         When they (K)speak with their enemies (L)in the gate.


A warrior would be blessed to reach back and find yet another arrow so that he could take his shot.   The writer is making an analogy between that and how blessed is each child.  I can't imagine a warrior wanting to go into battle demanding to have only a limited number of arrows - I'm pretty sure the Psalm writer would scratch his head at that type of thinking as well.

Candy goes on:




Birth control - The Bible is clear on not murdering babies. After that, the only thing we see of birth control is where a guy spilt his seed on the ground. However, that seed-spilling was not what was condemned, but the fact that he was commanded, by law, to produce seed with his new wife, to raise up a child in his dead brother's name. That was Old Covenant law, and we are not under that now. Even if we were, that instance, in actuality, had little to do with birth control; it had to do with being disobedient to God's law."

Well that guy's name was Onan and that verse was understood pretty universally to indicate a condemnation of contraception until 1930.  I wrote about Poor Onan a few years ago. This seems like a good time to bring it here.  Brian Harrison the other of The Sin of Onan Revisted up made 5 points that I find pro-contraception Christians tend to overlook when waving this verse away:



1. Indeed, a further problem faces this conventional modern reading of the passage. If simple refusal to give legal offspring to his deceased brother were, according to Genesis 38, Onan's only offence, it seems extremely unlikely that the text would have spelt out the crass physical details of his contraceptive act (cf. v. 9). The delicacy and modesty of devout ancient Hebrews in referring to morally upright sexual activity helps us to see this. As is well-known, Scripture always refers to licit (married) intercourse only in an oblique way: "going in to" one's wife, (i.e., entering her tent or bedchamber, cf. vv. 8 and 9 in the Genesis text cited above, as well as Gen. 6: 4; II Sam. 16: 22; I Chron. 23: 7) or "knowing" one's spouse (e.g., Gen. 4: 17; Luke 1: 34). When the language becomes somewhat more explicit - "lying with" someone, or "uncovering [his/her] nakedness" - the reference is without exception to sinful, shameful sexual acts. And apart from the verse we are considering, the Bible's only fully explicit mention of a genital act (the voluntary emission of seed) is in a prophetical and allegorical context wherein Israel's infidelity to Yahweh is being denounced scathingly in terms of the shameless lust of a harlot (Ez. 23: 20).

2.Was Onan perhaps slain merely for refusing to give offspring to his deceased brother's wife, as most contemporary exegetes maintain? In answering these questions one must take cognizance of the following significant fact: the penalty subsequently laid down in the law of Moses for a simple refusal to comply with the levirate marriage precept was only a relatively mild public humiliation in the form of a brief ceremony of indignation. The childless widow, in the presence of the town elders, was authorized to remove her uncooperative brother-in-law's sandal and spit in his face for his refusal to marry her. He was then supposed to receive an uncomplimentary nick-name - "the Unshod." But since he nonetheless became sole owner of his deceased brother's house and goods, it is evident that his offence was scarcely considered a serious or criminal one - much less one deserving of death. Death, however, is precisely what Onan deserved, according to Genesis. It follows that those who say his only offence was infringement of the levirate marriage custom need to explain why such an offence was punished by the Lord so much more drastically in the case of Onan than than it subsequently was under the Mosaic law. If anything, we would tend to expect the contrary: i.e., that after the law was formalized as part of the Deuteronomic code its violation might be chastised more severely than before, not more mildly. Indeed, while it is clear from the Genesis narrative that the practice of levirate marriage already existed in Onan's time, there is no biblical evidence that he would have been conscious of any divine precept to observe that practice. This problem seems to have been simply ignored, rather than confronted, by those exegetes who cannot or will not see in this passage any Scriptural foundation for the orthodox Judæo-Christian doctrine against masturbation and contraception and unnatural intercourse between a man and woman, is not exactly a pleasant theme to write about.

3.It should be remembered also that we are here dealing here with a culture which so abhorred that other form of "wasting the seed" - the homosexual act - that it prescribed the death penalty for this offence. In the light of this and the other factors we have considered, I submit that it would be not only exegetically unwarranted, but quite anachronistic, to suggest that the Genesis author, in line with the 'political correctness' of late twentieth-century Western liberalism, would have taken a relaxed, indulgent view of Onan's method of preventing conception - his "spill[ing] the seed on the ground." We should note also the parallel between the description of homosexual acts as a "wicked" or "abominable" thing in the Leviticus texts and the similar qualification of what Onan did in Genesis 38: 10.

4. Moreover, in the view of revisionist exegetes, Onan's sin is presented here as being essentially one of omission. We are asked to believe that, according to Genesis, Onan committed no sinful act; rather, that his sin was to refrain from acting appropriately toward his deceased brother because of some sort of selfish interior disposition. But why, in that case, does the text describe Onan's sin as a positive action ("he did a detestable thing")? Coming directly after the author has mentioned what is certainly an outward act (i.e., "spilling the seed"), these words in v. 10 plainly indicate a causal link between that sexual act as such and the wrath and punishment of God.

After all, it is not as if the Old Testament vocabulary was lacking in concepts or words to express sins of interior attitude, when that is the kind of sin the authors had in mind. The "heart" of man - whether righteous or wicked - is a rich and important term of moral reference in Hebrew anthropology, and to the extent that Onan's fault was indeed this siof omission, such lack of piety toward his dead brother would have been an example of what the Israelites called "hardness of heart" (cf. Ex. 7: 13, 22; 8:15; Ps 95:7f), perhaps motivated at bottom by personal vanity (not wanting to father any child who would not be legally his), or even by that sheer covetousness for his brother's property which was forbidden in the Tenth Commandment and in numerous other Old Testament passages.

Once again, however, we must ask what evidence there is that this degree of "hardness of heart" would have been seen in Onan's time as sufficient to merit death. If today's revisionist exegetes are right in claiming that "spilling the seed on the ground" is not, per se, censured in this text, it would follow that even if Onan had simply declined to marry Tamar and so abstained from intimacy of any kind with her, this complete abstinence would have been viewed by the Genesis author as no less offensive to God than the course of action which Onan chose in reality - and which earned him a divine death sentence! But we have already pointed out that such a conclusion leaves unexplained the relative leniency of Deuteronomy 25 in penalizing such offences against the levirate marriage custom.

On the other hand if, as Judæo-Christian tradition has always insisted, "wasting the seed" by intrinsically sterile types of genital action violates that natural law to which all men, Jew and Gentile alike, have always had access by virtue of their very humanness, (cf. Rom. 1: 26-27; 2: 14), this will explain perfectly why Onan's sexual action in itself would be presented in Scripture as meriting a most severe divine judgment: it was a perverted act - one of life-suppressing lust. Indeed, over and above its prohibition by natural law, such deliberately sterilized pleasure-seeking could well have been discerned as a form of contravening one of the few divine precepts which already in that pre-Sinai tradition had been solemnly revealed - and repeated - in positive, verbal form: "Increase and multiply" (Gen. 1: 27-28; 9: 1).

5.until the early years of this century, when some exegetes began to approach the text with preconceptions deriving from the sexual decadence of modern Western culture and its exaggerated concern for 'over-population.' Sad to say, these preconceptions have since become entrenched as a new exegetical 'orthodoxy' which can no longer see even a trace of indignation in this passage of Scripture against intrinsically sterile forms of genital activity as such.


******************
Updated November 4, 2009

Today Candy writes:
I am quiverful, but not of the quiverful movement. I am biblically quiverful - meaning that my quiver is full. Do I want more children? Sure, but I'm fine not having anymore, either. It's not just up to me. It's also up to my husband and God, so I am very happy either way. Do I practice birth control? We do not utilize any internal or external means, nor do we abstain when I ovulate (that would be torture). Instead, we are just "careful." I've never had an "accidental" conception from being "careful," but if I ever do, that is a-okay.
Um... if it's up to her husband, and they aren't using any internal or external contraceptive and they don't abstain but are just "careful" then I think Candy should get to know "that guy spilt his seed on the ground" because it sounds as if they are practicing Onanism. Candy defended that this way:However, that seed-spilling was not what was condemned, but the fact that he was commanded, by law, to produce seed with his new wife, to raise up a child in his dead brother's name. That was Old Covenant law, and we are not under that now. Even if we were, that instance, in actuality, had little to do with birth control; it had to do with being disobedient to God's law.

She might want to familiarize herself with the 5 points above. I also have tons of links and other blog articles on this over in my del.icio.us file.

32 comments:

Barbara C. said...

Brian Harrison forgot to mention that feet is often used as a metaphor for genitals in the OT. I'm not sure if that was just for licit or illicit acts, though. (Hmmm, I wonder if Dr. Veenker ever finished writing that book on sexual metaphors in the OT. I'll have to ask him.)

Barbara C. said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Daughter of Wisdom said...

Elena wrote:

"Once again, however, we must ask what evidence there is that this degree of "hardness of heart" would have been seen in Onan's time as sufficient to merit death."
-----------------------------------

Elena, "hardness of heart" does warrant the death penality. Please read below, Hebrews 3:8-19:

"8Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
9When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. 10Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.
11So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)
12Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
13But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.
14For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;
15While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
16For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses.
17But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
18And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not?
19So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief."

Peace.

Daughter of Wisdom said...

Our heart becomes hardened when we practice deceit (Hebrews 3:13) or unbelief and trust in God's word/commands (Hebrews 3:8-12).

Peace.

Daughter of Wisdom said...

I mean unbelief/distrust in God's word/commands. :-)

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

Elena, I had no idea who Candy was until yesterday, when I stumbled upon your blog. I became a Follower because you have some great apologetics here that make good reading whether or not one cares what Candy had to say first. =)

Elena LaVictoire said...

DOW the point wasn't does hardness of heart merit death, because clearly scripturally sometimes it does. The point was to what degree? And incidentally there are examples of folks in the bible who were set on one course that God did not smite, but brought around to the right course. Unfortunately for Onan, he wasn't one of them.

Elena LaVictoire said...

Welcome Enbrethiliel!

bill bannon said...

One can maintain the papal position on birth control without needing Onan which is about something much deeper than Augustine saw and not the levirate obligation (which Jerome proffered) nor coitus interruptus (Augustine,Luther, Calvin). While the punishment for the levirate failure was slight in the "law", there was no punishment at all in the "law" for coitus interruptus which Catholic writers don't seem to notice. The newer translation ..NAB...shows that Onan did this coitus interruptus repeatedly while the old translations led one to believe that Onan only did it once.
If you read the entire Bible, God only kills intimately for sacrilege not for sexual sins. Even Christ only uses violence at the temple money changers not at the harlots. And I've read Harrison's point about sexual detail and it is contradicted by the frequent description of males per se in the Bible being described as "he who pisseth against the wall": I Sam.25:22/I Sam 25:34/ I Kings 14:10/
I Kings 16:11/ I Kings 21:21/ 2 Kings 9:8. That is genital detail said matter of factly to denote males with no perjorative connotation. So there is no great significance to spilling the seed as detail. In fact the law gets specific about male emissions on cloth or leather and the ritual punishment is light (see Leviticus 15:16-17).

The real significance of Onan is sacrilege and the sacrilege was that of risking the non appearance of Christ the Messiah...an immense sacrilege.... who had to come from one of those four men...Judah, Er, Onan or Shelah.
Had Er and Onan used some ancient form of NFP to avoid all children, God would still have killed both of them for the sacrilege of risking the non appearance of Christ and secondly God would still have killed them so that Tamar could then proceed to the next man in line which she could not do while they lived.
She, Tamar, when Shelah the last son shows no interest, actually commits a sexual sin (incest) with Judah (who commits fornication...thinking her a harlot while she is in disguise) and God kills neither one of them despite their sexual sins in the very same story. They produce the baby that will lead next to Christ in the chain of His genealogy.
Advertent and inadvertent sacrilege alone cause God to kill intimately in the bible even if you look closer at Sodom (attempted raping of angels) or the Flood (murder seen as sacrilege...Genesis 9:5-6). Uzzah is killed for trying to steady the ark and prevent if from falling (inadvertent)/ Herod in Acts 12 accepts the appellation of "god" from the crowd and is killed by the angel/Ananias and Sapphira lie to the Holy Spirit in Act 5 and fall down dead (inadvertent vis a vis the Holy Spirit as receiver of their lie)/ 42 chidlren are killed by God through bears when they insult Eliseus....ad infinitum....72 descendants of Jeconiah are killed for not greeting the ark while David kills Uriah coveting Bethsheba...Uriah who becomes precious to God since he honored the ark by saying he would sleep outdoors as long as the ark did....and David's son is killed by God.

Augustine never noticed the deeper meaning because of his history of sexual sin (Aquinas held that after forgiveness, one may have strong dispositions to the foregiven sin) so that when he got to the passage, he saw only himself and not the deeper meaning that Christ was to come from this little family and actually from Pharez, the baby of Tamar with Judah, which was the result of two sexual sins but prior to the law being given by God.

Elena LaVictoire said...

That's a new one on me Bilbannon - and I don't think it holds that much water and it certainly doesn't discount the 5 points in the article.

bill bannon said...

Elena
Your point #1 was about detail as highly significant and I dealt with that in the references to males as those who (you know what against the wall).

Your point #2 is identical to your point #4 both of which regards Jerome's claim that the levirate obligation was key and I agreed with you that it is not but neither is coitus interruptus which has no punishment in Jewish law.

Your point #3 should be rethought. You are linking gay activity as abominable to the concept of abominable in the Onan passage as though only sexuality's offences are abominable. But that is not the case..the word is used often in the law about things which we are now allowed to do:

Lev 11:12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that [shall be] an abomination unto you.

Lev 11:20 All fowls that creep, going upon [all] four, [shall be] an abomination unto you.

Deut 14:3 Thou shalt not eat any abominable thing.

and not allowed to do

Deu 7:25 The graven images of their gods shall ye burn with fire: thou shalt not desire the silver or gold [that is] on them, nor take [it] unto thee, lest thou be snared therein: for it [is] an abomination to the LORD thy God.

bill bannon said...

ps...your number five I have no problem with though three Fathers saw "increase and multiply" as being only true of the Old Testament...Augustine, Jerome, and Chrysostom. Though your view sounds better than their's since all of them seemed to ignore the NT when it says that "women will be saved by child rearing if they continue with faith and love and holiness with modesty".


Those Fathers seemed then to be wrong and you correct in your general direction:

Augustine:
The Good of Marriage section 9 (the Jews needed to propagate…we do not): ” Whence we gather, that, in the first times of the human race, chiefly for the propagation of the People of God, through whom the Prince and Saviour of all people should both be prophesied of, and be born, it was the duty of the Saints to use this good of marriage, not as to be sought for its own sake, but necessary for the sake of something else: but now, whereas, in order to enter upon holy and pure fellowship, there is on all sides from out all nations an overflowing fullness of spiritual kindred, even they who wish to contract marriage only for the sake of children, are to be admonished, that they use rather the larger good of continence.”

Jerome in "Against Jovinianus"

Section 48
“Shall a joint-heir of Christ really long for human heirs? And shall he desire children and delight himself in a long line of descendants, who will perhaps fall into the clutches of Antichrist, when we read that Moses and Samuel preferred other men to their own sons, and did not count as their children those whom they saw to be displeasing to God?”
prior section
47
“Then again, to marry for the sake of children, so that our name may not perish, or that we may have support in old age, and leave our property without dispute, is the height of stupidity.”
_______________________________

Both men were against birth control but not because they saw many children as Christian. They saw many children..the quiver...as Jewish as Augustine notes above.
Thus they were against birth control for sexual reasons not children number reasons.

Elena LaVictoire said...

For the same of time and focus and to avoid the inevitable rabbit trails that I dislike and don't allow anyway, let's take one at a time.

Point #1 was:
If simple refusal to give legal offspring to his deceased brother were, according to Genesis 38, Onan's only offence, it seems extremely unlikely that the text would have spelt out the crass physical details of his contraceptive act (cf. v. 9). The delicacy and modesty of devout ancient Hebrews in referring to morally upright sexual activity helps us to see this. As is well-known, Scripture always refers to licit (married) intercourse only in an oblique way: "going in to" one's wife, (i.e., entering her tent or bedchamber, cf. vv. 8 and 9 in the Genesis text cited above, as well as Gen. 6: 4; II Sam. 16: 22; I Chron. 23: 7) or "knowing" one's spouse (e.g., Gen. 4: 17; Luke 1: 34). When the language becomes somewhat more explicit - "lying with" someone, or "uncovering [his/her] nakedness" - the reference is without exception to sinful, shameful sexual acts. And apart from the verse we are considering, the Bible's only fully explicit mention of a genital act (the voluntary emission of seed) is in a prophetical and allegorical context wherein Israel's infidelity to Yahweh is being denounced scathingly in terms of the shameless lust of a harlot (Ez. 23: 20).

You said: Your point #1 was about detail as highly significant and I dealt with that in the references to males as those who (you know what against the wall)

I guess you'll have to spell it out for me because I do not see how you rebutted #1 at all.

bill bannon said...

Elena,
The detail of spilling the seed on the ground is important in my paradigm also but for a different reason: the sacrilege of risking the non appearance of the Messiah is brought out by the sterility of the action. Were such detail intrinsically connected to the abominable however, it would not be taken much lighter in the Leviticus 15:16-17 regarding the males seed being on cloth or leather and incurring only uncleaness til evening.

You write: "When the language becomes somewhat more explicit - "lying with" someone...the reference is without exception to sinful, shameful sexual acts."

The RSV admired too in Catholic circles uses "lie with" in the below married situations where Catholics and even the Vulgate are more modern with "slept with"

Genesis 30:15 " he slept with her that night" NAB/ which is in the Vulgate also: "dormiat tecum hac nocte"/ RSV "lay with".
That above passage concerns Jacob having relations with his wife Leah.
___________________________________

Next regards David after he repents and accepts the death of his son as punishment and now actually being juridically married to Bathsheba who produces Solomon which the text notes God loves:

2Sa 12:24 NAB 24
"Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba. He went and slept with her (Vulgate here: dormivit cum ea...RSV "lay with") and she bare a son, and he called his name Solomon: and the LORD loved him."

Daughter of Wisdom said...

Elena wrote:

"The penalty subsequently laid down in the law of Moses for a simple refusal to comply with the levirate marriage precept was only a relatively mild public humiliation in the form of a brief ceremony of indignation. The childless widow, in the presence of the town elders, was authorized to remove her uncooperative brother-in-law's sandal and spit in his face for his refusal to marry her. He was then supposed to receive an uncomplimentary nick-name - "the Unshod." But since he nonetheless became sole owner of his deceased brother's house and goods, it is evident that his offence was scarcely considered a serious or criminal one - much less one deserving of death. Death, however, is precisely what Onan deserved, according to Genesis. It follows that those who say his only offence was infringement of the levirate marriage custom need to explain why such an offence was punished by the Lord so much more drastically in the case of Onan than than it subsequently was under the Mosaic law. If anything, we would tend to expect the contrary: i.e., that after the law was formalized as part of the Deuteronomic code its violation might be chastised more severely than before, not more mildly."
----------------------------------

The Levirate law allowed the brother-in-law to opt out of having to marry his sister-in-law BEFORE the marriage took place.

Onan had entered into the marriage covenant with Tamar when he committed his act. He was ALREADY IN THE MARRIAGE, and thus was obligated to fulfill his duties. He was killed because he DECEPTIVELY entered into a marriage covenant with Tamar, pretending that he was going to raise up offspring for his dead brother. His spilling of seed was heinous in God's sight because he misled Tamar and Judah to believe that he was going to raise up seed to his dead brother - a hard-hearted, and cruel act of deception.

Peace.

Elena LaVictoire said...

Delete Comment From: Visits to Candyland

Blogger Elena said...

The detail of spilling the seed on the ground is important in my paradigm also but for a different reason: the sacrilege of risking the non appearance of the Messiah is brought out by the sterility of the action.

I think the idea that Onan bit the dust for risking the non appearance of the Messiah is a stretch. If that was the case then Judah should have been smote for not giving his youngest to Tamarah for marriage.

No, it was the situation, the actual sexual act that is perverted because it deliberately thwarts it's life giving potential that raises God's wrath.

In regards to the Leviticus verses the first part probably is related to wet dreams or masturbation, and while that is indeed unclean and many Christians still consider that sinful, it doesn't compare with Onan's act.

I also think that in looking at Genesis 38 it isn't simply the "laying together" part is explicit but the sum of all of it.

Elena LaVictoire said...

The Levirate law allowed the brother-in-law to opt out of having to marry his sister-in-law BEFORE the marriage took place.

You help my point DOW. The marriage is finalized with consumation of the marriage. Which makes Onan doubly deceitful.

bill bannon said...

I'll end here with some notes and you can have the last word.

Judah simply did not force Shelah to marry Tamar since Shelah was probably understandably fearful of being killed also like his brothers. We see the same thing in the book of Tobias where it is the devil Asmodeus who kills all the previous husbands of Sarah and the angel then instructs the younger Tobit as to how to prevent this happening to him. Shelah may also have thought a demon killed both Er and Onan and Judah may have thought so also. The text no where indicates that any of the actors knew why the deaths were happening. This is indicated by Judah going to a harlot which rules out his being in the fear of the Lord around the issue of bad sexual behaviour.

From beginning to end, God simply kills intimately in the Bible for sacrilege not for sexual sins. Augustine was not simply an ex fornicator; he was oversexed as he points out unwittingly in the Confessions. He sent away the long time mistress that had given him a son and his mother Monica then found him a reputable young lady but she was too young to marry as yet so Augustine notes that and notes that he could not wait and he proceeds to take another mistress because he can't postpone sex apparently also constantly available sex rather than harlots. That is the man who later repented but that does not mean his proclivities were suddenly normal. Christ speaks of the devil leaving a man and returning with 7 stronger than himself/ the OT says: "do not be without fear for sins forgiven" which John of the Cross cites/ and Aquinas described the "remnants of sin" which can stay in a person after foregiveness.
All of which is to say that Augustine may not have been the best person to interpret the Onan story. Jerome also was not a virgin and ironically when Aquinas a virgin comes along, he gives defference to Augustine on sexual issues perhaps because he felt Augustine had experience. But Augustine and Jerome only had sinful experience...not married and committed sex. Yet they were to influence the topic greatly despite that.
Here in ending I'll give Augustine describing women really as breeders and that is that. You will then see Aquinas parrot him since he gave defference to him in that area:

“ I don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes the purpose of procreation. If woman is not given to man for help in bearing children, for what help could she be? To till the earth together? If help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. The same goes for comfort in solitude. How much pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and woman cohabitate.” De Genesi ad litteram 9,5-9 Augustine.

Aquinas, ST, Pt. I. Q.98, art.2 Moreover, we are told that woman was made to be a help to man. But she was not fitted to be a help to man except in generation, because another man would have proved a more effective help in anything else. (On the contrarty..section).
_________________________________

Aquinas also erred on the immaculate conception because he followed Augustine's sexual error there also which was that original sin had to be passed to Mary because her parents enjoyed sex but she was cleansed of it in the womb. The Church in the 19th century sided against that and with lesser theologians who said original sin never reached her at all.

Elena LaVictoire said...

From beginning to end, God simply kills intimately in the Bible for sacrilege not for sexual sins.

I think this is a key point. That God does kill Onan in this context is very significant. What Onan did was grossly irreverent towards the marital act which is to be sacred.

Daughter of Wisdom said...

Elena,

I don't want to diverge from the topic of this blog, but I do have scriptures that show that God kills for sexual sins. If you want, I could post some. Please let me know.

Hillary

Daughter of Wisdom said...

Elena wrote:

"In regards to the Leviticus verses the first part probably is related to wet dreams or masturbation, and while that is indeed unclean and many Christians still consider that sinful, it doesn't compare with Onan's act. "
-----------------------------------
I will share a bit of detail. I will try to be as delicate as I can, but it may still be too graphic for some.


Here is the exact quote:
16And if any man's seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.

17And every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation, shall be washed with water, and be unclean until the even.


The above verses are not referring to any specific act that causes the "seed of copulation to go out from him" (vs. 16). It is just a general reference to the ejaculate of a man leaving his body and ending up outside of his body, maybe on his hands or legs, and so on. He should wash himself if this happens.

Verse 17 deals with the ejaculate leaving his body and ending up in something or on something, such as his clothing, or on pieces of skin (a reference to ancient condoms?), or any other surface. He should also wash these items/surfaces as well.

Verse 18 is even more specific. If it gets on the woman, then she should wash herself also.

18The woman also with whom man shall lie with seed of copulation, they shall both bathe themselves in water, and be unclean until the even (Leviticus 15:18).


Semen was made to be absorbed into the body of the female. It should not end up on outside surfaces, but if it does, one should wash those surfaces.

Peace.

Daughter of Wisdom said...

A WORD OF WARNING TO MOTHERS WITH SONS:

If you know of, or see your sons 'jerking off' you should put a stop to this practice!!! This can lead to sexual dysfunction later in life, such as pre-mature ejaculation, and lack of sexual ejaculatory discipline and control during the sex act.

bill bannon said...

Hillary
You left out the word "intimately". God has many death penalties in the Jewish law including some for sexual sins. We are talking of God killing intimately (Er,Onan,Ananias, Saphhira, Herod in Acts 12, the 72 descendants of Jeconiah, the 42 children who mock Eliseus etc.) not through the death penalty laws which are non intimate.

Clare@ BattlementsOfRubies said...

DOW
"A WORD OF WARNING TO MOTHERS WITH SONS:

If you know of, or see your sons 'jerking off' you should put a stop to this practice!!!
"

Wah! Tea all over laptop!
Ew ew ewwwwwww!

Kelly said...

Candy has followed up again today. They are real Quiverful, meaning they aren't having any more children, unless they do, but they can't leave things up to God because then they would have a baby every year, but they can't abstain, because that's too hard, so instead they are "careful."

Candy's normal dizzying lack of logic, and really, too much information about their sex life.

Elena LaVictoire said...

In the comment section a reader asks her what she is careful with since she says she isn't using birth control and isn't abstaining and Candy says there is only one alternative.

Actually I can think of three:
Onanism or coitus interuptus
mutual masturbation
oral sex

I have no idea what Candy Baptists believe on any of those things.

Daughter of Wisdom said...

I don't want to be judgmental or anything but based upon the conversations on Candyland, it seems that they are practicing a form of non spiritual sex - sex done out of force of habit or as a duty/obligation. Nothing wrong with that, but don't dress it up as a Christian vocation. Non Christians also have sex too, and many times there is hardly any difference between non Christian sex and Christian sex (if there is any such thing). There are many non Christians who believe in "being careful" and who dislike contraceptives.

I advocate sacred sexuality - sexual consciousness where one has complete control over their passions, and where sex is a physical expression of God's love. This type of sex is an outgrowth of a life lived completely in the Spirit of God.

Peace.

Jennie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Jennie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Elena LaVictoire said...

All off topic remarks have been removed now. You know, you guys can e-mail each other when you want to continue talking about something that isn't on topic. There's nothing wrong with that.

Jennie said...

Thanks Elena.:)

Kelly said...

I don't want to be judgmental or anything but based upon the conversations on Candyland, it seems that they are practicing a form of non spiritual sex - sex done out of force of habit or as a duty/obligation.

Candy met her husband when she was 17 and he was 30 or 31. They lived together for a time before they married, and they did not actually get legally married for several years after their (backyard with no minister) wedding.

While I clearly don't know Candy and Erik personally, it is my general experience that couples in similar situations often do have a disordered view of sex because they don't have a very good idea of how a Godly relationship works in the first place.