Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ucla-cs!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: nlt@lear.cs.duke.edu (N. L. Tinkham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Birth control Message-ID: Date: 15 Jan 90 21:03:59 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC Lines: 116 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Tom Albrecht's paper, "On the Matter of Sterilization", makes, as I understand it, the following arguments (as always, corrections are welcome): 1. Children are a blessing from God, both in the sense that a. God decides when children will and will not be conceived, and b. The creation of children is good. 2. The use of contraception in a marriage, resulting in a small family, allows married women to invest time and energy in activities (including employment) outside of the home if they choose. 3. Concern about being able to provide for a large number of children financially is unwarranted, because God will supply all our financial needs. 4. Because the Bible speaks of children as a blessing but is silent on birth control, the use of contraception is not a private matter to be decided at the discretion of a couple. From these points (and observe that he presents (2) as a *negative* consequence of contraception), Tom concludes that sterilization should be avoided except for serious health reasons, and other forms of contraception, while not necessarily morally wrong, should be used only after much serious prayer and reflection (he seems to be discouraging but not forbidding contraception here). I will address the major points in turn. (1): The Bible does speak of children as a blessing. The extent to which one agrees with (1a), that children come into being because God specifically wills it so, depends on one's general understanding of the relationship between God's will, human will, and natural events, but I am willing to let the statement stand for now. I do, however, raise this objection to point (1): Something may be a blessing, a good gift from God's creation, without its being an unqualified good to be enjoyed in unlimited abundance. Food, for example, is a good gift from God for our nourishment and enjoyment, but gluttony is considered a sin, and continual overeating can be unhealthy. In the case of production of offspring, there is a limiting factor which Tom does not mention, namely, the ecological capacity of the planet on which we live. Because we are commanded to be good stewards of our resources, we must at least consider the consequences of an exponentially growing human population for the earth that God has given us. (2): I will spend little time on this point, since the possibility of married women being able to exercise the non-domestic gifts and talents given to them by God seems to me an obvious *benefit*, not drawback, of medical advances in contraception. I will, however, as a side point, object to two gratuitously offensive remarks made by Tom in his discussion of women: > To the feminists, children become yet another possession like a > house or a car. You can have as many or as few as you want. The power to choose how many children one will have most certainly does not imply that one will view those children as mere possessions. The statement is a sheer non sequitur, contributing nothing to the paper except an occasion to insult those with whom the author disagrees. > It seems clear from Scripture that there is an inseparable relationship > between the companionship aspect of marriage and the procreative aspect. > It is said that for Adam "no suitable helper was found." No suitable > helper for what? Obviously, someone to help Adam carry out God's commands > regarding work, worship and procreation. Marriage and sex involve more > than meeting the need for companionship. If all Adam needed was a compan- > ion, any of the beasts would have been suitable. Dogs make wonderful com- > panions. But a dog could not help Adam be obedient to the command "be > fruitful and multiply." I'm not sure who should be more insulted by this piece of exegesis, Tom or me: I, apparently, differ from a dog only in my ability to bear human children; Tom, on the other hand, has just declared dogs to be his intellectual equal. Ahem. The story in Genesis 2 does not explicitly mention reproduction at all. It says that Adam was alone and (despite the presence of animals) did not have a suitable helper. Eve, unlike the animals, was like Adam; she, unlike the animals, was "suitable" for him, able to cure his aloneness. Since the story mentions companionship but does not mention reproduction, I take this to be the kind of "suitability" that the Genesis author has in mind. While I can't speak for Tom, most humans find dogs to be only limited companions and would be extremely lonely without the presence of other humans in their lives. (3): I agree that there are Biblical passages indicating that God will supply all our needs. Empirically, poverty does exist -- which is what makes those passages difficult ones to interpret and apply. The empirical observation that one's financial well-being is often correlated with activities such as working, saving money, spending carefully, and so on, lead me to try to make wise money-management decisions, on the theory that good stewardship actually may have good consequences. (4): I agree that the Bible is silent on contraception (to my knowledge, the medical technology simply did not exist), but I draw from that the opposite conclusion from Tom: where the Bible is silent on a subject, and offers no clearly relevant general commands, I prefer to consider that subject a matter of personal discretion. (Yes, I am occasionally stubbornly Protestant. :-) ) The Biblical principles that I find most relevant to choices about contraception are a) Tom's principle (1), that the Bible sees children as a blessing from God, and b) that we are to be good stewards of our resources. Because of (b), it is important to me to limit the number of children I have. Modern contraceptive technology (including sterilization) allows a couple to limit family size without having to interrupt the sexual intimacy of their marital union; hence, I see that technology as not only morally permissible but as a positive good. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Nancy Tinkham Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his nlt@cs.duke.edu To the Father through the features of men's faces." rutgers!mcnc!duke!nlt