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The Teaching of the Early Fathers of the Church on Contraception
E-Text IVE Press, Maryland 2016Institute of the Incarnate Word, Inc.All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Fr. Joseph LoJacono, IVE
The Teaching of the Early Fathers of the
Church on Contraception
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Originally published as a License Thesis for John Paul II Institute, Washington D.C. 2009 with the below title.
Original title “The Development of the Teaching that Contraception is an Anti-Life Act in the Early Fathers of the Church, From Apostolic Times through St. Augustine”
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Table of Contents
Introduction 10Chapter 1 The Cultural influences 18
Ancient Theories of Embryology.........................33The Influence of Stoicism on the Early Fathers of the Church.........................................39The Influence of Neo-Platonism on the Early Fathers of the Church.................................48
Chapter 2 Teaching about Contraception in the Ante-Nicene Fathers 57
The Jewish Background......................................58Christian Sexual Morality in the Pre-Nicene Era......................................................................64The Scriptures and Contraception.......................76Early Development of the Teaching on Contraception.....................................................87
Chapter 3 Teaching about Contraception in the Post-Nicene Fathers 108
St. John Chrysostom Testimony of the East.......117The Teaching of St. Augustine...........................124
Conclusion 143Bibliography.....................................................152
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Introduction
Until recently, the Church taught that contraception was a sin against life. For example, the Si aliquis canon, which was in effect from the time of Gratian in the 12th
century until the codification of Canon law in 1917 said, “If someone [si aliquis] to satisfy his lust or in deliberate hatred does something to a man or woman so that no children be born of him or her, or gives them drink, so that he cannot generate or she conceive, let it be held as homicide.”1 In the Catechism of the Council of Trent contraception was coupled with abortion as something akin to murder: “married persons who, to prevent conception or procure
1 Regino Prumiensis Abbas, De Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis, (Churchly Disciplines and the Christian Religion) 2.89, (PL 132:301) translation from John T. Noonan Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 168.
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abortion, have recourse to medicine, are guilty of a most heinous crime—nothing less than wicked conspiracy to commit murder.”2 St. Thomas Aquinas further taught that contraception is always wrong, even during fornication. In reply to a question on why simple fornication is a sin he says,
Nor in fact, should it be deemed a slight sin for a man to arrange for the emission of semen apart form the proper purpose of generating and bringing up children…the inordinate emission of semen is incompatible with the natural good of preserving the species. Hence, after the sin of homicide whereby a human nature already in existence is destroyed, this type of sin appears to take next place, for by it the generation of human nature is impeded.3
2 “Marriage as a Natural Sacrament” in Catechism of the Council of Trent: For Parish Priests, (Tan Books and Publishers: Rockford, IL, 1982), 344.
3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Three: Providence Part II, Vol. 3. q. 122, trans. by Vernon J. Bourke, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 146.
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This manner of teaching against contraception goes back even to the patristic era as witnessed in many of the Fathers of the Church. For example, St. Jerome says,
You may see many who were widowed before they were wed, shielding a guilty conscience by a lying garb. Did not a swelling womb or the crying of their infant children betray them, they would go about with head erect and on skipping feet. But others drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived.4
Today some claim that the Church has now abandoned the understanding of contraception as an act against life and no longer considers it an intrinsically evil act. They claim that the way the Church explains the immorality of contraception in her more recent teaching, such as found in the
4 St. Jerome, “Letter 22 to Eustochium,” 13, 1-2, in The Letters of St. Jerome, Ancient Christians Writers, (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963), 145.
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encyclical Humanae Vitae and Catechism of the Catholic Church, shows that the Church has accepted some change in her perennial teaching about contraception. Maggie Hume in her chapter in the book, Rome Has Spoken…A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How They Have Changed through the Centuries, claims that Church has changed the grounds of the condemnation of contraception. She explains that in the past the Church taught that contraception was a sin akin to murder in documents such as the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Yet, more recently, Pope Paul VI taught in Humanae Vitae it is a sin because it is not open to the transmission of life. She says John Paul II also broke from tradition teaching that it is a sin because it violates the “full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love.” This, she says, shows that there is room for
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an even more radical change on this doctrine, so that the Church in the future may no longer see contraception as a sin.5
Without doubt, recent magisterial teaching has used different language to explain the doctrine about contraception. For example, the emphasis of John Paul II in his theology of the body conferences has been on the notion that contraception violates marital love and falsifies the language of the body. However, while emphasizing the personalistic argument against contraception he has, in a few instances, called it “anti-life.” In a homily in Nairobi, Kenya commenting on Gaudium et
5 Rome Has Spoken . . . A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How They Have Changed through the Centuries. Eds. Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (New York, NY: The Crossroads Publishing, 1998). Ken Whitehead summarized Maggie Hume’s chapter in a helpful book review. Kenneth D. Whitehead, “Does it make any difference whether Rome has spoken or not?” Homiletic & Pastoral Review, (January, 2000), retrieved from www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Homiletic/JAN00/review.html (July 17, 2007).
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Spes paragraph 50 he said, “That is why anti-life actions such as contraception and abortion are wrong and are unworthy of good husbands and wives.”6 He has also associated contraception with abortion as sins coming from the same source, saying in Evangelium Vitae, “contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree.”7 One can thus see that John Paul II considered this manner of
6 Pope John Paul II, “Homily at Mass for Youth, Nairobi, Kenya,” L’Osservatore Romano, English Edition, (August 26, 1985), 5. The pope also referred to contraception as part an “anti-life mentality” that is not open to life in a “Mass for families,” homily in Onitsha, Nigeria, February 13, 1982 available from http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/1982/ (accessed on July, 17 2007). He also grouped it as an “anti-life attitudes which include the active promotion of birth control, abortion and the death penalty” in an “AD Limina address to the Bishops of the Philippines,” Oct. 30, 2003 available from http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2003/october (accessed on July 17, 2007).
7 John Paul II, The Gospel of Life: Evangelium Vitae, (Washington D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1995), paragraph 13, p. 24.
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characterizing contraception as sin against life to be valid.
John T. Noonan in his book Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists, written in 1965, shows that some believe that this teaching was formed in a historical milieu that may no longer be relevant to our own. In his introduction, he explains, “No Catholic Theologian has ever taught, ‘Contraception is a good act.’ The teaching on contraception is clear and apparently fixed forever.” Yet, he sees room for change on the teaching about contraception, explaining later that
The recorded statements of Christian doctrine on contraception did not have to be read in a way requiring absolute prohibition… The doctrine was formed in a society where slavery, slave concubinage, and the inferiority of women were important elements of the environment affecting sexual relations.
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Underpopulation was a main governmental concern. The doctrine condemning contraception was formulated against the Gnostics, reasserted against the Manichees, and established in canon law at the climax of the campaign against the Cathars.8
As Noonan highlights, one’s view of how contraception came to be taught as anti-life affects ones acceptance or rejection of Church teaching today. Thus, an investigation of how this teaching developed within the historical milieu of the early Church is important. In this study, I hope to shed light on this issue by considering how this teaching developed in the early Fathers of the Church from the Apostolic times through St. Augustine. I will consider whether one can verify the thesis that the anti-life argument is essentially rooted in apostolic and patristic teaching, in such a way, that it is not just a historically bound
8 Noonan, Contraception, 6, 532.
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way of explaining the teaching, but in fact accurately describes what contraception is and how it is an intrinsically evil act.
I will investigate the origin of the anti-life argument against contraception in the early Fathers of the Church in four chapters. In the first chapter, I will consider some important religious, philosophical, social and scientific notions in the patristic era that may have helped shaped the anti-life argument against contraception. In the second chapter, I will trace the sources on the teaching against contraception in the Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Church, explaining how the teaching that contraception is anti-life fits in with each author’s theological concerns and the historical context of the period. In the third chapter, I will trace the sources on the teaching against contraception in the Post-Nicene Fathers of the Church, noting the
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theological and historical circumstances that may have helped shape their teaching. I will then offer some conclusions based on the historical investigation of these sources, as to, what were the primary reasons Church teaching against contraceptive developed as it did. I will further consider how an understanding of this process may help to shape contemporary teachings about sexual ethics.
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Chapter 1 The Cultural influences
Mankind has accounts indicating that people practiced contraception almost from the beginnings of written records, including methods such as vaginal suppositories, oral contraceptives, coitus interruptus and even a form of the rhythm method. Most of the ancients considered abortion and infanticide to be legitimate methods of family planning when contraceptive methods failed or when they saw them simply as safer alternatives. Ancient Egyptian papyri, dating from as early 1850 B.C., indicate different methods prescribed for the prevention of birth, including various pessaries applied to the vagina and drugs for types of oral contraceptives. The Jewish sources point toward knowledge of coitus interruptus
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related in the biblical story of Onan and rabbinical commentaries detail the use of a mokh, a spongy substance inserted in the vagina to prevent contraception. Soranus, a Roman gynecologist in the second century A.D., recommended several types of prescriptions for suppositories, oral medicines for preventing conception and a form of rhythm method in which he recommended abstaining from sex around menstruation, when the woman was believed to be fertile.9
Dioscorides, a first century A.D. pharmacist, had the most extensive discussion of the topic in antiquity. He
9 The Petri or Kahun Papyrus 1850 B.C., The Ebers Papyrus 1550 B.C. ,The Berlin Papyrus 1300 B.C. recommends tampon like materials or drug formulas to prevent conception. Norman Himes, Medical History of Contraception, (Baltimore, MD: Gamut Press, 1936), 59-66. For the Jewish sources see Himes, Medical History of Contraception, 70-74. For Soranus recommendations see Owsei Temkin M.D. trans., Soranus’ Gynecology, Book I, 60-65, (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1956), 62-68.
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recommended antifertility agents that modern science has found to have some real effect as contraceptives. For example, he recommended Juniper Seeds, which modern scientific testing has determined to be about 60-70 percent effective in blocking implantation and Queen Anne’s lace which modern studies say is close to 100 percent effective in preventing implantation. He, however, typical of his time often failed to distinguish between abortifacients and contraceptives, explaining that the herb, which moderns call “Queen Anne’s lace, causes the abortion of the menses and embryo.”10 Galen, the foremost physician of antiquity, and Pliny the Elder also mention a number of contraceptives. Of course, not all methods were this effective and other techniques to prevent contraception, coming
10 Most contemporary medical literature also incorrectly defines agents that prevent the implantation of a fertilized embryo as still contraceptive when they are in fact abortifacient.
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from folklore or magic, were also prevalent in antiquity such as amulets, which Soranus discourages.11
In the Roman world of the early patristic era, few objected to any means for avoiding unwanted pregnancies such as contraception, abortion and infanticide. They were just different forms of fertility control in thinking of the Roman culture of antiquity. They rarely distinguished contraception as different from abortion or infanticide; they saw all these acts as against the formation of life, which did not reach its conclusion until birth. In fact,
11 Dioscorides recommends over thirty herbs that he thought one could use as contraceptives or as abortifacients in De Materia Medica, John M. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 30-45, 58. Pliny refers to contraceptives in Natural History, Chs. 20-24& 90. Galen mentions them extensively in De simplicium medicamentorum 6.3 to 9.18, cited in Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance Ibid., 74-86. For Soranus see Temkin, Soranus’ Gynecology, Bk. 1, 63, p. 66.
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Roman law until late antiquity even recognized the right of a father as head of the family to sentence to death any of his children for reasons he saw as just, under the practice called paterfamilias. Though, in practice, Roman culture lessened this by the emphasis of pietas, which conveyed a more loving respect and honor to the parent-child relationship,12 it fostered a mindset that at times gloried in gladiator games, harshly subdued any rebellions by slaves and frequently broke into persecution of Christians.13
12 For a good overview of the role of paterfamilias as it developed into late antiquity see Richard P. Saller “Pietas and patria potestas: obligation and power in the Roman household” Chap. 5 in Patriarchy, property and death in the Roman family, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 102-132. Also Suzanne Dixon, The Roman Family, (Baltimore, MD.: The John Hopkins University Press, 1992).
13 In Roman history, the prevalence of gladiator games using condemned prisoners is well documented. Likewise, there is the famous case of Spartacus, whose slave rebellion ended in his whole army being crucified en masse. Further, the frequent
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Though there were no official records, circumstantial evidence suggests abortion was apparently widespread in the Roman Empire. Plato and Aristotle, highly respected by Roman philosophers, both proposed abortion for eugenic reasons on behalf of the state. Philo in the first century A.D., commenting on the culture of his time, condemned abortion that was widespread in the Roman empire of his time. Soranus the gynecologist recommends several methods for bringing about abortion, including purging the abdomen with clysters, carrying things heavy beyond one’s strength, and using a concoction of olive oil and rue. Though Soranus discusses the ethical debates surrounding the prohibition of abortion attributed to Hippocrates, his
persecution of Christians under the reign of Nero, Diocletian and Vesperian shows that this culture had violent tendencies. See M. Cary and T.J. Haarhoff, Life and Thought in the Greek & Roman World, University Paperbacks, (London: Methuen & Co. LTD, 1968), 130; 160-161.
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listing of abortion techniques shows it was widespread. During a condemnation of abortion Tertullian, (150-225 AD), also describes vividly a method for medical abortions, which he says the Greek doctors Hippocrates, Asclepotades, Herophilus, Erasistratus and Soranus practiced. Soranus, however, expresses concerns that abortion techniques that use sharp instruments were dangerous and in general thought it better to use contraception than abortion because of the danger to the mother.14
The Roman world generally accepted infanticide, a safer alternative for fertility control than some forms of contraception and abortion, which could involve taking
14 Cf. Plato’s Republic 5:9; Aristotle, Politics, 7.14.10; trans. by Trevor J. Saunders, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995). Philo of Alexandria, The Special Laws, 3.20.110. See Tertullian, On the Soul, Chapter 25, in Tertullian: Apologetic Works and Minucius Felix Octavius, (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1950), 238. Soranus’ Gynecology, Book 1, 60-61, 63-65, p. 65-66.
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dangerous drugs or undergoing risky medical procedures. It was an accepted cultural practice that the father had the right to expose the newborn child if he did not wish to accept the child as his; this was particularly true for handicapped children. Soranus takes this for granted in his comments for the midwife, saying she should “consider whether it [the child] is worth rearing or not.”15 Seneca the philosopher also said, “unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal.” Others also used infanticide simply as a means of limiting family size. Some of the elite families practiced infanticide to ensure that they did not spread their wealth too thinly, among many descendents, and the poor because they felt they could not take on the expense of another child. The laws against infanticide
15 Ibid., Book II, 79, p. 80.
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in the sixth century by Justinian, confirming fourth century laws, show that this practice continued even into the Christian era.16
However, there were some dissenting voices that condemned contraception, abortion and infanticide. Cicero in a speech from about 65 BC declared his approval for a woman condemned to death because she had an abortion, calling it an injustice “to the father, the family name, the family’s inheritance rights, the human race and the state.” Seneca praised his own mother for not committing an abortion. Favorinus, 80-150 A.D. spoke of abortion as an evil only one degree less a criminal act than infanticide.17 The satirist Juvenal condemned abortion saying “Yet these [poor] women at
16 Lucius Annaeus Seneca, “De Ira” in Seneca Works English & Latin. Trans. John W. Basore, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970). Cicero also mentions Infant exposure of handicapped children in De Legibus 3.19. 27:37. See also Tac. Germania 19; Dig. 40.4.29 and Juvenal. 6.603. Justinian’s laws are mentioned in Dixon, The Roman Family, 121-122.
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least endure the perils of childbirth, suffer the nuisance of nursing—but when did you ever discover labor pains in a golden bed? There are potent prescriptions, Fine professional skill, to be hired for inducing abortions. Killing mankind in the womb.”18 Caesar Augustus outlawed abortion in a series of laws designed to combat celibacy, childlessness, and the limiting of family size through abortion and infanticide. This, however, may have been due to his desire to protect the pure Italian line of Roman nobility and increase the population for the army.19
17 See Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish &Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World, (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1982), 26-28. Cicero’s speech is in Pro Cluentio 11.32. Seneca’s reference is in Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, 12.1.
18 Juvenal, The Sixth Satire, 590-601, trans. by Rolfe Humphries, 592-601 in Juvenal in English, ed. Martin W. Winkler, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2001), 399.
19 These laws are in Lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus, 18 BC; Lex Papia Poppaea 9 A.D. usually
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Musonius Rufus, the Stoic philosopher 30-100 A.D., had the most wind-ranging condemnation of infanticide, abortion and even contraception as against the nature of marriage itself. Stoicism, as Musonius’ contemporary Epictetus explained, believed that man’s fertility is connected to God as a seed of being passed onto us from him.20
called Lex Julia et Papia. This explanation for Augustus’ reforms is suggested in Dixon, The Roman Family, 120-121. The records of the Roman laws are preserved in Lex Iulia and Lex Papia Poppaea available in P.E. Corbett, The Roman Law of Marriage, (London: Clarendon Press, 1930). Later the emperor Septimus Severus, 193-211 A.D., along with his successor Antoninus Caracalla, classified abortion as crimina extraordinaria meaning crimes punished outside the normal system of formulas, often meaning exile when enforced. However, the Roman jurist Paulus thought abortion was condemned just for being a bad example. See Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church, 30-31.
20 Speaking about the nature of the universe Epictetus says, “from god have descended the seeds of being, not only to his father or grandfather, but to all things born and engendered on earth, but chiefly to rational beings, since they alone are equipped by nature to share in god’s society, being entwined with him through reason.” Discourses, 1.9.4, in R.F. Dobbin, Epictetus, Discourses, Book I: Translation, Introduction, Commentary, (Oxford, UK: Clarendon
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This under girded the thinking of Musonius.21 In a discourse on “Should Every Child that is Born be Raised” he cites the Roman laws against abortion and childlessness approvingly and praises those who accept in hospitality all the children the gods give them. Origen shows that Musonius was highly regarded by at least some of the early Christians, calling him an “example of the best life.”22
Press, 1998) quoted in Gretchen Reydams-Schils, The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 123-126.
21 After speaking approvingly about laws against abortion and childlessness, he explains, “One may remark what a fine sight it is to see a man or woman surrounded by their children. Surely, one could not witness a procession arrayed in honor of the gods so beautiful than this sight? What is more enviable than these parents, especially if they are good people? For whom would one more gladly join in praying for blessings from the gods.” Musonius Rufus, “Should Every Child That is Born be Raised?”, Discourse 15, in Cora E. Lutz, Musonius Rufus: “The Roman Socrates”, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947), 99.
22 Origen, Contra Celsum, Bk. 3, 66, trans. Henry Chadwick, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
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Romans considered marriage to be primarily for having children in order to perpetuate the name of the family and in a way carry-on oneself through progeny. In the republican era of the Roman Empire, a law required senators to answer the question “Have you married for purpose of creating children?”23 However, with the easy acceptance of contraception, abortion and infanticide this end of marriage was considered fulfilled after the birth of one son. Some philosophers such as the Neo-Pythagoreans explained in a treatise that to have marriage just for pleasure and not for procreation was evil.24 Plutarch, (50-120
Press, 1953), 172. 23 The question is in Dixon, The Roman Family,
67. The law is in Val. Max. 7.14, Aul. Gel NA 43.2.24 Ocellus Lucanus says it is particularly well
established “that we have intercourse not for pleasure but for the purpose of procreation…The Sexual organs are given to man not for pleasure, but for the maintenance of the species.” in Ocellus Lucanus, The Nature of the Universe, 44.
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AD), a Roman moralist, also cited approvingly a law which he says was enacted by Romulus allowing for divorce for taking medicine that prevented having children. He also speaks against unlawful forms of intercourse with one’s wife and the acceptance of children that were conceived explaining, “Husband and wife must go about this piously, keeping themselves pure of any unholy or lawless intercourse with others, or not sowing where they do not wish the crop to grow, and where they are ashamed if the fruit comes, and seek to hide it.”25 Musonius Rufus again represents the best of Roman philosophy recognizing that a marriage not open to children is not a real marriage but seeing that marriage, by its
25 It is unclear whether his reference to medicine refers to abortifacients or contraceptives. Plutarch, “Romulus”, 22:3 in Plutarch’s Lives, Vol. 1 of 11 volumes, Loeb Classical Library, p. 161-163 The quote is from Plutarch, “Advice to the Bride and Groom,” 42, in Advice to Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His Wife, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11.
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nature has an affective unitive significance. While speaking about the nature of marriage he approaches what John Paul II will emphasize later,
For to what other purpose did the creator of mankind first divide our human race into two sexes, male and female, then implant in each a strong desire for association and union with the other, instilling in both a powerful longing each for the other, the male for the female and the female for the male? Is it not then plain that he wished the two to be united and live together, and by their joint efforts to devise a way of life in common, and to produce and rear children together, so that the race may never die? 26
He does not mean this union should be just on the biological level, as if, the man and woman were just two animals. He sees that “marriage both embraces and goes beyond procreation [realizing] that the
26 Musonius Rufus, “Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy?” Discourse 14, in Lutz, Musonius Rufus, 93, 153.
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relationship has a value in itself.”27 Contrary to the stereotypical portrayal of Stoicism by such authors as John T. Noonan, he does not think marriage should be without affection.28 Rather, he believes that children enhance the affective unity of the couple and are important part of common life as he says,
The husband and wife…should come together for the purpose of making a life in common and of procreating children, and furthermore of regarding all things in common between them and nothing peculiar or private to one or the other, not even their own bodies. The birth of a human being which results from such a union is to be sure something marvelous, but it is not yet enough for the relation of husband and wife, inasmuch as quite apart from marriage it could result from any other sexual union, just as in the case of animals. But in marriage there must be above all perfect companionship 27 Ibid. 28 John T. Noonan believes Stoicism was a great
influence on the early Fathers of the Church, characterizing the philosophical system as teaching that marriage is just for procreation with no affective dimension. Noonan, Contraception, 46-49; 75-77.
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and mutual love of husband and wife, both in health and in sickness and under all conditions.29
Ancient Theories of Embryology
Theories about embryology in antiquity helped to shape how people understand human life and influenced their beliefs regarding how much value they should give that life at different stages of development. Aristotle was the greatest influence on theories of embryology in antiquity, though others had some influence on how people perceived it. He taught that the male seed provided the active form, which shaped the passive matter of the woman provided by the menses. He believed that the embryo developed in the mother’s womb like some sort of machine programmed to produce a definite result. He believed in a three-fold
29 M. Rufus, “What is the Chief End of Marriage” Discourses 13A, in Lutz, trans. Musonius Rufus, 89.
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development of the embryo in which it received the vegetative, sensitive and intellectual souls. At conception, the embryo received a vegetative soul allowing it to have as much life as a plant. At this point, the soul of the embryo while shaping the vegetative functions of the human embryo had a potentiality that already contained openness to receiving the sensitive and intellectual faculties of the body. Once the embryo developed to a certain level, it acquired the sensitive soul, from which time it took on the qualities of an animal. Lastly, it acquired the intellectual soul so that it could act like the rational animal, man. He did not believe that these souls were breathed in by any external source, but were rather internally generated from the potentiality of the first given soul. Significantly, he believed that the human soul was not generated in males until 40 days after conception and in females until 80
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days.30 His theory will greatly influence how many Fathers of the Church pictured the development of the embryo.
Other theories of embryology existed such as that of the Hippocratic, the Stoic and to some extent, Gnostic views, which may have helped shape the thinking of Antiquity and the Fathers of the Church on this subject. The Hippocratic School in medical literature believed that life came from moisture being dried up by fire and fire being subdued by moisture alternately. They believed embryos developed at different rates in this scheme from 40 days to 3 to 4 months. The Stoic theory of embryology was similar to the school of Hippocrates. They believed that all of matter was a mix of the elements of fire, water, air and earth; human
30 See Aristotle On the Generation of the Animals especially book II. His three soul theory of the embryo is summarized in Joseph Needham, A History of Embryology, (New York, NY: Arno Press, 1975), 48-50.
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life was a mixture of these elements and the alternating of cold, hot, wet and dry, helped to develop the embryo. In their mind, the embryo was not different from an animal and just part of the mother. Galen the physician, 2nd century A.D., posited four stages for the development of the embryo moving from a seminal stage, like the seed of a plant, to the final developed stage where the organs and all the parts of the body have become clearly visible, such as in a full grown plant.31
The Fathers did not develop theories of embryology of their own but tended to take over contemporary theories. Clement of Alexandria shows his reliance on the Aristotelian embryonic theory in The Instructor. In this work, he shows his belief
31 For the Stoic theory see John Sellars, Stoicism, Ancient Philosophies series I, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 96-98 and Needham, A History of Embryology, 60. For theory of Hippocratic school see Needham, A History of Embryology, 32-34 and for Galen’s Ibid., 69-73.
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that the soul was infused at 40 days.32 Likewise St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ephraim held that the embryo did not receive a soul until 40 days after conception. In contrast to this view, Tertullian, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Macarius of Egypt believed that the soul came about at the same time as the body, which was generated from the souls of their parents, just as the embryo’s body came from its parents. This seems to be based on their theory that the soul was in some way material, a doctrine they held in reaction to the Neo-Platonists. Tertullian in this school of thought posited that the soul was infused into the body at conception, but only in a seminal way, so that, an embryo “becomes a
32 Clement of Alexandria, Christ the educator / Clement of Alexandria., 1.6.39, Trans. Simon P. Wood. (New York, NY: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1954).
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human being in the womb from the moment that its form is completed.” 33
The end-result of adopting theories of embryology current at the time was that the Fathers did not clearly demark when human life began. In reference to abortion St. Basil spoke of how we make no “reference to formed or unformed” when speaking of the embryo both are considered murder.34 This will influence the idea of “contraception” which was often not distinguished from
33 St. Augustine, De Immortalitate et de Quantitate Animae. For the other references see “The Orthodox view on Abortion”, Rev. Fr. Victor Potapov, Adapted from a sermon at The Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Washington DC, downloaded from www.stmichaelsgeneva.org/MoralTeachings--Abortion.htm, (October 2008); Tertullian, “On the Formation and State of the Embryo. Its Relation with the Subject of This Treatise” chap. 37, On the Soul, in Tertullian: Apologetic Works and Minucius Felix Octavius, 266.
34 St. Basil, “Letter 188” in The Fathers speak, St Basil the Great, St Gregory of Nazianzus, St Gregory of Nyssa / selected letters and life-records, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986).
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“abortifacients” for one could use drugs that prevented the formation of the embryo already one month in the womb, yet, claim this was only preventing the formation of animal, which had not received a human soul.
The Influence of Stoicism on the Early Fathers of the Church
The Early Fathers of the Church saw the moral doctrines of Stoicism as teaching much that Christians could agree with, as witnessed by such writers as Clement of Alexandria in Stromateis and Tertullian who called Seneca “Our Seneca”. One can see a clear example of the influence of Stoicism in Pantaenus, the teacher of Clement of Alexandria and first director of Catechetical school of Alexandria, who Eusebius called an “ornament of the philosophical system known as stoicism.” Origen and Justin
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Martyr in their works draw upon Stoic philosophy. Justin Martyr, however, who was first a follower of the Stoa as a pagan converted to Christianity because he saw the philosophy as unfulfilling, ultimately, declaring that Christianity was the true philosophy. Likewise, Origen and his pupil Clement of Alexandria, though they used Stoic philosophy current at the time, pointed toward Christ as the ultimate source and end of the search for wisdom.35
35 Tertullian called Seneca “our Seneca” showing his respect for this philosopher in De Anima, 20 quoted in John Sellars, Stoicism, 138. This same sentiment was echoed by St. Jerome in Against Jovinian, 1.49. Eusebius claims Pantaenus was St. Clement's teacher in Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, 8.10, trans. G.A. Williamson, (New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1965), 156. For the general influence of philosophy on the Fathers of the Church see the chapter “The Patristic Period” in Frederick Copleston, SJ, A History of Philosophy: Mediaeval Philosophy, Vol. 2, Part I, Image Book, (New York, NY: Doubleday Dell Publishing, 1993), 13-39. For Justin Martyr’s view of true philosophy see Pope Benedict XVI, “St Justin, Philosopher and Martyr,” General audience, Wednesday, March 21, 2007. See Origen, Contra Celsum. In this, he writes against Celsum a Neo-
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One can see the particular influence of Stoicism on the moral teachings of the Fathers in terms of their emphasis on enkrateia, translated sometimes as self-control, chastity or continence, which the Stoics saw as part of the life of virtue that encompassed their philosophy. The Stoics in general believed that one’s happiness is based on virtue alone. They saw emotions as merely products of mistaken judgments, which one could eradicate by the application of right thinking. The one who epitomized this was the Stoic sage Socrates. They taught that the key to our happiness is to ground our emotions, impulses and all of our actions in reasoned self-control; the one who truly lived in the image of the Stoic sage, a
Platonist who criticized Christianity and defends Christ’s teaching superior over all philosophies. See Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis. This is an apologetic work designed to show that the way to true philosophy is only found in Christianity.
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life of virtue, would truly be happy.36 Seneca perhaps explains their philosophy well when advising his mother Helvia upon his exile that “externals have little weight and exert only slight pressure in one direction or the other. The sage is neither elated by prosperity nor depressed by adversity.”37
However, they did not promote the complete suppression of emotions as they are stereotypically thought of as teaching. They did teach an ideal of apatheia, i.e., freedom from all emotions, but they also promoted eupatheiai, i.e., good emotions that promote virtue. What was important is that the emotions be under rational control.38 Clement of Alexandria shows that
36 Sellars, Stoicism, 14,17, 122-123.37 Seneca, “Consolation of Helvia,” in The Stoic
Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters, trans Moses Hadas, (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1958), 111.
38 The Stoic philosophy Diogenes Laertius explains, “They say that there are three good emotions (eupatheiai): joy (charan), caution
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this understanding of self-control had a great influence on the early Fathers, but falls short of the life of grace. He comments,
Human self-control [enkrateia], (I am referring to the views of the Greek philosophers) professes to counter desire rather than to minister to it, with a view of praxis. Our idea of self-control is freedom from desire. It is not a matter of having desires and holding out against them, but actually of mastering desire by self-control. It is not possible to acquire this form of self-control except by the grace of God.39
(eulabeain) and wishing (boulēsin). Joy, the counterpart of pleasure, is a rational elation; caution, the counterpart of fear, is rational avoidance, for thought the sage will never feel fear he will still use caution. And they make wishing the counterpart of desire, inasmuch as it is rational appetency.” DL 7.116. Seneca also said “joy was an elation of the soul that trusts the goodness of its possessions.” (Epistulae. 59.2) Quoted in Sellars, Stoicism, 118-119.
39 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis Books 1-3, III, 7.57, trans. John Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 85, (Catholic University of America: Washington D.C., 1991), 291. For reference to the
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The early Fathers echoed some of the teaching of the Stoics’ moral teaching related to marriage, family and sexual relations. Later Stoics such as Musonius and Hierocles reacted to Plato’s proposal in the Republic to dissolve marriage for the sake of the state by teaching that marriage was the “essential starting point of the larger community.” Many of the Stoics, including Musonius Rufus cited above and Hierocles, c. 200 AD, held that a marriage not open to children was immoral. These two also believed that marriage’s purpose was not limited to procreation but found its true fulfillment in the communal life of a man and a woman.40 At times, the views of Stoics on sexuality may seem rather negative, because
Greek word enkrateia see Clement of Alexandria, in Miscellanies III, 7.57, in David G. Hunter trans., Marriage in the Early Church, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 54.
40 Reymond-Schils, The Roman Stoics, 149, 159-160.
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in their eyes it tends to stir up the passions in ways hard to control. Some of the fathers will also highlight the Stoic teaching of enkrateia to support their view that the celibate life is greater than the married life. This led them to, at times, unfortunately, portray marital sex in a very negative light. In the quoted passage below, Seneca compares lack of control in sexual relations to men acting like beasts, though he historically he was known to show great affection to his wife Paulina.41 However, Jerome will quote Seneca to uphold his belief that sexual relations hindered the spiritual life.
A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion. Let a man govern his voluptuous impulses, and not rush headlong into intercourse. There is nothing blacker than to love a wife as if 41 The story of Seneca’s loving affection for his
wife at the point of his death is related in Tacitus, Annals, 15.60-64. For his lifelong affection for his wife see Reymond-Schils, The Roman Stoics, 171-172.
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she were and adulteress. Men who say they have contracted marriage and are bringing up children, for the good of country and of the race, should at least imitate the brutes, and not destroy their offspring in the womb; nor should they appear in the character of lovers but of husbands.42
This passage shows that the ethical teaching of the Stoics flowed from their view of nature, which saw maxims coming from the order of the world. Seneca explains this in a letter on the theme of moderation saying, “Our principle, you remember, is ‘life according to nature.’” One can see an example of what he means by this in this letter, by one of the maxims he recommends includes, to have moderation in dress, neither being too lavish or too poor.43
42 Jerome, Against Jovinianus, in Letters and Select Works, trans. W.H. Fremantle, Book I, 49, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st Series, 1889 reprint, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publisher, Inc., 1999), 385.
43 Seneca, “Moderation”, The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, 170-171.
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Nature, however, for the Stoics is not just a biological reality, but a world imbibed by the divine. As pantheists, they believed that nature is a living being that organizes and regulates itself with a consciousness that one might call God. In their physics, they explain that all things have interiorly a spark of the divine in them through the pneuma or breathe of the God that pervades and holds them together.44
In human procreation they speak of a special connection to the divine in which the divine logos, which structures reality in a rational manner, passes on part of itself. Epictetus explains it saying, “from god have descended the seeds of being, not only to his father or grandfather, but to all things born and engendered on earth, but chiefly to rational beings, since they alone are equipped by nature to share in god’s society,
44 Sellars, Stoicism, 95-98.
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being entwined with him through reason.”45 Clement of Alexandria will echo some the sense that nature has a rational quality in his work The Instructor when speaking of marriage and procreation saying, “Nature treats legitimate marriages as it does eating and drinking: it allows whatever is appropriate, useful, and dignified, and it urges us to desire to produce children. But those who indulge in excess violate the laws of nature and harm themselves in illegitimate unions.” In this same work, he equates God with “logos” who gives order to sexual morality, showing his clear attempt to engage stoic philosophy.46
45 Discourses, 1.9.4, in R.F. Dobbin, Epictetus, Discourses, Book I: Translation, Introduction, Commentary, (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1998).
46 Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, Book II, 90-91 in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 42-43.
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The Influence of Neo-Platonism on the Early Fathers of the Church
The ancient philosophy based on the works of Plato referred to as Neo-Platonism also had a great impact on the way the early Fathers of the Church articulated the Faith. Many of the Fathers of the Church from Origen to St. Augustine were greatly influenced by Neo-Platonic ideas that helped to shape their understanding of the cosmos, gnoseology, mysticism and even their conception of God. While stoicism may have provided a bridge to the Roman culture in which the Fathers lived for ethical thinking, Neo-Platonism seemed to many of the Fathers more conducive for connecting a Christian conception of the soul and the order of creation to the surrounding Roman culture. St. Augustine, greatly admired Plotinus and Porphyry who, he claimed, were his favorite philosophers among the
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pagans. The Cappodochian fathers, St. Basil and St. Gregory, were also greatly influenced by the Neo-Platonic school of Athens.47
The early Fathers liked Platonism because of its teaching that there was one creator God from whom all the beings in the world derived in an orderly manner. Plotinus, 204-270 A.D., in defining God focuses on the image of “One” saying, “It is by the One that all beings are beings.” He later adds “The One begets all things, it cannot be any of them neither thing, nor quality, nor quantity, nor intelligence, nor soul.”48 His thought will be picked up by the
47 For the influence of Neo-Platonism on St. Augustine see Johannes Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 4, reprint of 1950 edition, (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1995), 346-347. For it’s the Cappadocian fathers see R.T. Wallis, Neo-Platonism, (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972), 1.
48 Plotinus, “The Good or the One” 1,3 in The Essential Plotinus, trans. Elmer O’Brien, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Inc., 1986), 73-77.
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Fathers to develop the way of negative theology for understanding what God is by seeing what he is not. They, however, recognize some tensions with the Neo-Platonic view of God as supremely one when trying to develop an understanding of a Trinitarian God. The soul (psyche) has a special place in neo-Platonic metaphysics as being posited as the highest level of reality in a three-tiered unified division of the world into Hypostases also including Intelligence (nous) and the One. Plotinus teaches that the world has a supreme Soul connecting all things; this is similar to the teaching of the Stoics, but unlike their teaching, this soul is purely immaterial. The individual soul in the view of Plotinus contains all the divine Hypostases, is immortal, cannot sin nor be ignorant. It is divided into parts sometimes called higher or lower depending on
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whether it fulfills a vegetative function or intellectual function.49
The Neo-Platonic understanding of how the soul relates to the body is significant for understanding how this can influence one’s view of the body and its relation to such things as sexuality. Plato taught that the soul is immortal, and Christians would agree with him on this; but, against Christian doctrine, he taught that death was liberation from the body, a teaching Christians rejected. In his view, the highest goal of the soul was contemplation, which was primarily an activity of the soul. He had a dualistic sense of man, which saw the soul as the real person and the body as simply an image of an ideal archetype. Some
49 For Neo-Platonism’s influence on the Theology of via negativa see and Plotinus teaching on the soul see Wallis, Neo-Platonism, 11, 2-3; 66-74. For the Neo-Platonic influence on the development of the Trinitarian dogma of the Church see Harry Astryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation Vol. 1, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956), 257-304.
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of these Platonic and Neo-Platonic ideas influenced the Fathers of the Church such as Origen and Clement of Alexandria insofar as they helped to develop the ascetic and spiritual tradition of the Church. St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa will use some elements of Neo-Platonism based on the later development of Plotinus to hold together the body and the soul in a dynamic unity. St. Basil will take up the Neo-Platonic idea that there is an intelligible realm of light and a sensible world created in the image of the light. Based on this model he explains that, “the human person is a microcosm sharing in both worlds, but destined ultimately for life with God.”50
Neo-Platonic notions of the body and spirit influenced Fathers of the Church in
50 St Basil’s view of the body and other Fathers of the church are discussed in Benedict Ashley, O.P., Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian, (Braintree, MA: The Pope John Center, 1995), 117-120.
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different ways. Many of the Eastern fathers were influenced by Neo-Platonic ideas, which made them see the body as a lower reality and bodily sexuality as only coming after the fall. St. Gregory of Nyssa in The Making of Man taught that after the fall there was a second creation to allow man to live in the sensible world of matter, which included bodily sexual relations. St. Ambrose, who was also greatly influenced by Stoicism, took up some of its thought through the influence of St. Basil. In his commentary on Genesis called the Haxameron, he taught that the soul or mens, the inner part of the soul represented the true inner man, while the body was only an outward instrument. Perhaps also influenced by St. Paul, he taught that the total human person was alienated from God after the fall and now there is a conflict between the
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inner man of the spirit and outer bodily man which he called flesh.
St. Augustine was influenced by Neo-Platonism to emphasize the importance of a focus on the interiority of man, but he added to this notion an emphasis on freedom and God’s love for us. He developed the idea of the will of man’s loving response to a loving God that was just not present in the Neo-Platonists. He further taught that the body is the place where the consequences of the fall are seen in concupiscence, a drive for physical goods manifested especially in sexual desire. He assumes a basic ordering of creation and the soul, which fits into a scale of being descending from “God-angels-men-plants-inanimate objects.” This shapes his ethics so that he teaches that a vocation focusing on God and the life of the soul, virginity, is superior to one focusing on the needs of the body in sexual desire and
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procreation, marriage.51 He, however, held the body to be fundamentally good and unlike the eastern Fathers, he believed there would have been sex before the fall. His theology ended up departing from Neo-Platonism by denying that the human person is equated with the soul, but saw the body as an important as well.52
Neo-Platonism based on Plato’s teaching believed the body was just an ideal
51 Gerard O’Daly, “Hierarchies in Augustine’s Thought,” Chap. XI, in Platonism Pagan and Christian:
Studies in Plotinus and Augustine, (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2001), 143-154(page numbers from original article). See the sevenfold scheme of being in St. Augustine, De Animae Quantitate, 70-76; De Vera Religione, 49; De Doctrina Christiana, 2,10-12 and De Sermone Domini, 1, 10-12.
52 St. Augustine speaks about the goodness of creation in St. Augustine, Answer to Faustus a Manichean, Chap. 30, 1-5.Trans. Roland Teske, S.J., In The Works of Saint Augustine, Heritage Institute, vol. 19. (New York, NY: New York City Press, 2007). His development of a positive view of the body and the influence of Neo-Platonism in his on his anthropology is discussed in Ashley, Theologies of the Body, 125-132.
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archetype of the real man, which was the soul. In this light, it was not overly negative to the body but saw it rather as a hindrance to contemplation of the Ideal World. They generally taught that the primary reason for sex was procreation for this gave the best outlet for the sexual drive that tended toward earthly things. Plato taught in the Symposium that it is best to direct one’s sexual energy toward the Ideal World giving an incentive for some of the Neo-Platonist to uphold celibacy as the ideal for a philosopher. Plotinus taught that “love is more perfect when it does not aim at procreation.” His point with this statement was not to endorse alternative types of sexual relations such homosexual or contraceptive heterosexual love but the non-sexual love of philosophers, for, he thinks the real aim of external activities should be
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contemplation.53 The Neo-Platonists thus did not see sex as evil as the Manicheans did but a lower reality that pulled one away from contemplation of the Divine. Some of the Fathers will pick up this notion to defend the supremacy of virginity over married life and promote the asceticism as a way of freeing the soul.
Overall, different philosophical schools of antiquity had an influence on the early Fathers of the Church as means to help them shape their dialogue with the Roman world and further help them to develop important concepts in morals and theology. However, philosophy was not the primary influence on the thinking of the Fathers; Stoic ethics was not simply the moral teaching of early Christianity neither was
53 For Plato’s teaching and Plotinus view on love see Wallis, Neo-Platonism, 9, 86 and Plotinus, “Beauty,” 1.5, and “The Good or the One” 9.9, “Contemplation,” 3.5, in The Essential Plotinus, 38, 86, 167.
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Neo-Platonic metaphysics simply the metaphysics of early Christians. St. Justin Martyr, St. Clement of Alexandria, Origen in their use of Stoic philosophy were attempting the give the best exposition of the Faith to the pagan world in era when this philosophy was very influential in the area of Alexandria. They tried to make the point that pagan philosophy, though having some truth to it, must give way to the true philosophy of Jesus who revealed the fullness of ethical teaching. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine also greatly admired the thought of Cicero, but as St. Augustine highlights in his Confessions54 he found his philosophy ultimately unfulfilling for the yearnings of his heart. The Cappodochian fathers also engaged Neo-Platonism to refute its claim that Pagan Platonism was
54 See. St. Augustine, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, III, 56-57. trans. John K. Ryan, (New York: Doubleday, 1960). And St. Augustine Contra Academicos.
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superior to Christianity. Likewise, Augustine engaged in this same exercise. In essence, the Fathers believed that Christian revelation and somewhat the Jewish heritage were more important for shaping their understanding of sexuality and contraception than pagan philosophy.
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Chapter 2 Teaching about Contraception in the Ante-Nicene Fathers
The Jewish Background
Judaism greatly influenced the apostolic Church inasmuch as all the apostles were practicing Jews. Although in time the Fathers sought to establish how Christians were different from Jews, they still respected the teachings of the Old Testament on the sanctity of life.55 It is important then to consider the Jewish teaching on questions about contraception and their view of how infantile life came into being as one influence on the early Fathers of the Church. Based on the commentary in
55 For a general reference on the influence of Judaism on the Church see Carl E. Purinton, Christianity and its Judaic Heritage, (New York, NY: The Ronald Press Company, 1961).
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the Talmud, one can surmise the beliefs the Jews held during the time of Christ’s life about these issues.56 They considered everything associated with the transmission of life to be sacred because it was ordained by God and meant to lead to the coming of the Messiah. They were against abortion, infanticide and celibacy, for they considered children as a blessing from God.
As I cited above, Philo testifies to the general Jewish regard against abortion, unique in the Roman world. The Roman historian Tacitus also noted how the Jews loved the begetting of children, thus
56 The Talmud is a collection of commentaries on scripture by distinguished Rabbis over the centuries. It was principally written down during the period of 70-200 A.D. Due to the wide range of dates of the original material it preserves, it is sometimes hard to designate certain teachings as coming from a particular time period, i.e. before or after the life of Christ. For a general outline of its writings see “The World of the Talmud” Chapter 8 in Purinton, Christianity and its Judaic Heritage, 143-158. It is available in translation. See The Talmud of Jerusalem, trans Moses Schwab, (New York, NY: Herman Press, 1967).
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rejecting abortion and infant exposure. Josephus, a Jewish apologist, portrays the attitude of Jews who lived by the Mosaic Law saying, “The Law orders all the offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus; a woman convicted of this is regarded as an infanticide, because she destroys a soul and diminishes the race.” Michael J. Gorman, after considering all the literature on abortion in Jewish literature in antiquity, concludes that “extensive research has discovered no mention of a nontherapeutic Jewish abortion in any texts of the Hebrew Bible or of other Jewish literature through A.D. 500.”57
57 See Philo, The Special Laws, 3.20.110; Tacitus, Histories 5.3; Josephus, Against Apion, 2. 202 in The Jewish Wars. Gorman explains that behind the Jewish rejection of abortion was a regard for “the duty and desire to populate the earth and ensure both Jewish survival and the divine presence; second, a deep sense of the sanctity of life as God’s creation, a respect extending in various ways to life on all its manifestations and stages; and, finally, a profound
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However, Jewish Rabbis at the time of Christ allowed contraception under certain conditions. Yebamoth 34b cites two rabbis that teach that the act of Onan was unnatural. Shabbath 110b prohibits castrating men as well as offering castrated animals in sacrifice. However, this same section, as Noonan says, “speaks of the sterilizing potion of roots, and, without expressly condemning the drink,” adding a statement of Rabbi Johanan that “seems to imply that sterilization indirectly achieved, without affecting the genital organs, is permissible.”58 Yebamoth 34b will also permit the use of coitus interruptus for the sake of the health of woman who is nursing. Rabbi Bebai also says in Yebamoth 12b says
horror of blood and bloodshed.” Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church, 33-34.
58 Noonan, Contraception, 50.
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that a very young married woman can also use an absorbent.59
Though the opinions of some Rabbis allow contraception, Jewish teaching sees semen as sacred, for it conveys life. Thus, when semen is emitted outside of the sexual act it causes ritual impurity. The Talmud
59 Yebamoth 12b says, “Rabbi Bebai recited before Rabbi Nachman: Three categories of women may use an absorbent [in Hebrew, moch] in their marital intercourse: a minor, a pregnant woman, and a nursing woman. The minor, because otherwise she might become pregnant and as a result might die. A pregnant woman because otherwise she might cause her fetus to become a sandal [a flat fish shaped abortion due to superfetation]. A nursing woman, because otherwise she might have to wean her child prematurely [owing to her second conception] and he would die. And what is a minor? From the age of eleven years and one day until the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under or over this age [when conception is not possible or where pregnancy involves no fatal outcome, respectively] carries on her marital intercourse in the usual manner. This is the opinion of Rabbi Meir.” quoted in Ronald H. Isaacs, “Procreation and Contraception” reprinted from Ronald H. Isaacs, Every Person's Guide to Jewish Sexuality, (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson publishers, 2000) www.myjewishlearning.com. (Accessed, October 30, 2008).
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teaches that intentional stimulation of the genitals or even the touching of genitals causes impurity in a grave manner. Niddah 13b-14a compares masturbation to the spilling of blood or adultery. It also says lesser acts such as the unintentional emission of seed during the night or on camel rides causes one to be impure. Further, before one is purified of “spilling the seed” he is prohibited from such things as Torah study, saying God’s name, wearing Phylacteries and participating in other acts of worship. Rabbi Johanan ben Napaha takes this to this extreme, saying that “whoever emits semen in vain deserves death.”60 St. Clement of Alexandria will use language that seems to echo concerns about “wasting of the seed” during a marital act.61
60 These teachings are given in Berachot 22b, Succah 26b and Niddah 13.
61 St. Clement of Alexander, Christ the Educator. II, 10.91, in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, p. 42.
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These prohibitions are associated with semen as the means of procreation by the Talmud. Yet, some Rabbis believed the procreative purpose of the marital act was fulfilled once one had two children, a male and a female.62 Overall, one can say that the Jews at the time of Christ believed the sexual act and everything associated with it is holy because it was the means for procreation. Yet, one could also say they had a global view of the marital act in which the man and woman should be oriented toward having children as a rule in marriage, but that not every sexual act needs to be open to life.
62 Cf. “The duty to have children is based on the rabbinic interpretation of a verse in the Book of Genesis 1:28: ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’ The Talmud (Mishnah Yevamot 6:6) cites the following: According to the school of Shammai, being fruitful and multiplying is interpreted as having a minimum of two sons, while according to the Hillel school it is interpreted to mean a son and a daughter (because the Bible says ‘male and female He created them’), Isaacs, “Procreation and Contraception.” See also Chagigah 2b
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Christian Sexual Morality in the Pre-Nicene Era
Christian teaching about sexuality will build on the inheritance of Jewish thought coming from the Scriptures, but it will add a new perspective rooted in the reality of the Incarnation that transforms sexual morality from within in terms of how it regards marriage, life and procreation. In this paper, I can only touch on a few aspects: (1) how marriage, as Jesus taught, was designed by God as an indissoluble union to image the perfect fidelity of God; (2) the Christian view of the dignity of human life as made in the image of God; (3) the interior transformation of the Christian toward sexuality, living life in Christ; (4) sexuality in the context of promoting purity and virginity.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus goes beyond even the strictest Jewish teaching of
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his time, declaring the complete indissolubility of marriage, saying,
And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?’ He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one?’ So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.’ They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?’ He said to them, ‘For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery.’ (Matthew 19:3-9 Revised Standard Version).
Jesus shows how his teaching is different from the Judaism of his day by
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explicitly rejecting the common practice which allowed for divorce. In this passage, He rejects the Mosaic allowance of divorce for the “hardness of the heart,” instead calling marriage back to what it was in the “beginning.” He goes on to teach that divorce and remarriage are wrong, in such a manner, that the disciples believing this impossible to live say that it is better not to marry. Without going into detail about the exception for “unchastity” from the Greek term ‘porneia’63, one can note that the disciple’s reaction shows that Jesus was surprisingly stricter on the question of divorce than others in his time. The Hillel school of his day taught that one could
63 For a discussion of this see Ronald Lawler, Joseph Boyle. and William E. May, Catholic Sexual Ethics (2nd Ed. Our Sunday Visitor, 1998), 260-264 and Joseph Fitzmyer, “Matthean divorce texts and some new Palestinian evidence.” Theological Studies 37 no 2 June (1976), p. 197-226 and Joseph Jensen, “Does porneia mean fornication: a critique of Bruce Malina.” Novum testamentum 20 no 3 July (1978), p 161-184.
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divorce only because of adultery; yet, Jesus here gives no conditions that would allow divorce. The Early Fathers echoed this teaching from the first century in the Shepherd of Hermas to St. Augustine,64 all holding that Christians could not divorce; only disputing over whether separation is allowed.
64 Many examples of this teaching from the first century to St. Augustine could be cited. Cf. The Shepherd 4:1:6. St. Justin Martyr, (A.D. 151), First Apology, 15; St. Athenagoras, (A.D.177), A Plea for Christians, 33.St. Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 202) Stromata, 2:24; Tertullian, (A.D. 206), To My Wife, 2,8:4; Origen, (c. A.D. 244), Commentary on Matthew; The Local Council of Elvira, (A.D. 300), Canon 9, St. John Chrysostom, (A.D. 370), On Matthew, 62:1; St. Ambrose, (A.D. 385), To Vigilius, Letter 19:7; St. Jerome, (A.D. 396), Letters 55:3; St. Augustine, (A.D. 419), Adulterous Marriages, 1:9:9, On Marriage and Concupiscence, 1,10 [11] (A.D. 420). Most of these references are summarized in the article, John, A. Hardon, S.J., “Mixed Marriages: A Theological Analysis,” Eglise et Théologie 1 (May 1970) 229-260. For an article by a biblical scholar on early Church teaching see Gordon J. Wenham, “Matthew and Divorce: an Old Crux Revisited” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, v. 22, (1984), p. 95-107.
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The difference between the Jewish and Christian teaching about divorce is significant, showing a development of the Old Testament teaching about the absolute monogamy of marriage and the impossibility of divorce. The later Prophets testify that marriage was seen as a metaphor imaging the exclusive and indissoluble relationship that Yahweh had with Israel. The Prophet Hosea testifies to this relationship imaging through his own marriage with a prostitute how God calls his people back even after they committed adultery with other gods.65 Yet, as the above Gospel account shows the Rabbis never reached the idea that divorce could be completely forbidden by God.
65 There is a good summary of the Old Testament development of the importance of monogamy and the indissolubility of marriage in his Theology of the Body conferences, in John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein, conferences 36.5-37:1-5; 94:6-95:7, (Boston, MA: Pauline Book & Media, 2006). All references to Theology of the Body will be to this edition.
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Ephesians 5:21-33 shows how the New Covenant went even further than these Jewish scholars could have imagined by using the image of marriage to convey the irrevocable self-gift of Jesus to his Church, a covenant which cannot be broken.66
Secondly, the early Christians inherited from Jews a great respect for life that firmly rejected abortion and unjust killing. However, Christianity showed a respect for the dignity of all life that went beyond the sometimes-limited Hebrew view. Under the Mosaic covenant the Hebrews had carried out a ban against the Canaanite race that called for the killing of all the inhabitants of towns from the men at arms down to even the children. Though this was only carried
66 For an explanation of how these verses reflect on the nature of marriage see John Paul, Theology of the Body conference John Paul II, “The Dimension of Covenant and of Grace,” in Man and Woman He Created Them, Part II, Chap. 1, conferences 87-102.
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out against the corrupt Canaanites its memory was preserved in the so-called “curse” psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures.67 Christians, however, had a great regard for all life, pagan or Christian, as they saw the Incarnation of God as revealing more fully the dignity of men, made in the image of God.
Some early Christian apologists showed Christianity’s great respect for every human life as made in the image of God, in contrast
67 For how the ban reached to children see Deuteronomy 7:1-5. For how the “ban” was strictly enforced in the early history of Israel see, Josh. 6:18; 7:1, 11-26; 1 Sam. 15. The Mosaic Law declared a ban against the seven Canaanite nations because of their corruption and promised the land to Israel. See Deut. 9:4-6. The Mosaic Law however, showed mercy to other nations, other than the Canaanites, as long as they made peace with Israel. See Deut. 20:10-18. For modern ears one of the most striking examples of the curse psalms is 137:8-9 “O Daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!” For other examples see 69:22-28; 83:9-18; 109:6-20. 137:7-9.
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to the pagan culture of the time. In their respect for life they went beyond the limited view of Judaism that focused on the preservation of the Hebrew race from which the messiah would come. Minucius Felix sums up the attitude of Christians toward the sanctity of life while reacting against a charge that Christians practice child-sacrifice. He first condemns the widespread practice of infanticide, the use abortifacients and gladiator games. Then he offers the idea that Christians loath any kind of killing, saying, we “are not allowed either to witness or to hear of human slaughter, and the awe we have of human blood is so great that we do not even taste that of animals for food.” He makes no distinction here between the murder of Christians and non-Christians. Theophilus of Antioch, and Hippolytus,
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additionally testifies to a sentiment in the early Church against any form of violence.68
Christianity also went further than Judaism in its focus on purity in regards to everything related to the sexual act. While the Mosaic Law had many precepts against adultery it focused on the exterior behavior. Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, however, calls for a stricter form of purity that interiorizes the commandment against adultery in way that includes even one’s thoughts. As presented in the gospel of Matthew Jesus says, “You have hear that it was said ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:27-
68 See Minucius Felix, Octavius, chap. 30, in Tertullian: Apologetic Works and Minucius Felix, 387. Theophilus of Antioch, “To Autolycus,” Book 3.15. in Eberhard Arnold, The Early Christians in Their Own Words, (Farmington, PA: The Bruderhof Foundation, Inc.: 2003), 101. Hippolytus, “Church Order in The Apostolic Tradition,” 16; Ibid., 90.
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28 RSV). St. Paul related how the teaching and the person of Christ changed the way one looks at sexuality in 1 Corinthians. He explained,
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute! Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two shall become one.’ But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body (1 Cor. 6:15-20 RSV).
St. Paul teaches that Christianity demands, not only that one takes the name of Christ, but in some way to be united to him, which in turn calls one to a greater
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purity. Through baptism we have put on Christ, who is the head of his bride, the Church. Thus, every sexual sin, adultery, fornication, masturbation, etc. has a sacrilegious nature; it violates our bridal union with Christ. Fornication for him is not just a matter of transgressing a law; it is now, under the new law of grace, a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit who resides in the Christian. Earlier in the same letter, St. Paul listed a series of sins for which one would not enter into the kingdom of God including the immoral, idolaters, adulterers, and homosexuals (1 Cor. 6:9-10). This reflects that for St. Paul that a Christian who is redeemed and incorporated into Christ cannot be but pure.69
69 John Paul II retrieves the older patristic and medieval claim that a married man can commit adultery with his own wife if he seeks sex merely as way to gratify his desires without concern whether he is abusing his wife in order to do so. Cf. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, Part II, Chap. 3, conference 43.
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The Early Christians echoed the focus of St. Paul on purity, yet, sometimes they took it to extremes declaring that sexuality was licit only when it was explicitly directed to procreation, by the law of nature.70 St. Clement of Alexandria, in a typical example of this thinking, teaches that the married man should not feel any lust for his wife, for, he believes Christians must have virtue beyond that of the Greek philosophers. Some Fathers teach that marital intercourse when the wife is pregnant is immoral for it has no procreative purpose. St. Jerome and St. Augustine also at times teaches that sexual intercourse in marriage can only be sanctified if it has a procreative purpose.71
70 This extreme view never received official approval of the magisterium. See “Historical Outline of Views on Conjugal Intimacy” in John C. Ford, S.J., and Gerald Kelly S.J., Contemporary Moral Theology, Volume Two: Marriage Questions, Chap. 9, (The Newman Press: Westminster, MD, 1964), 169-187.
71 Cf. St. Clement of Alexandria, says, Miscellanies III, 7.58 trans. John Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 85, (Washington D.C.:
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St. Jerome will preach that marriage is a lesser vocation because it allows for more temptations.72
However, one can note that St. Jerome’s teaching on sexuality shows that he saw marriage in the context of the more perfect calling to virginity; this will be a common focus of many of the Fathers. St. Clement of Alexandria will offer his teaching about sexuality in the context of defending Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 292. For Fathers who opposed intercourse with pregnant wives see. St. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus, 2.10.93; Origen, “Fifth Homily on Genesis 4.” For St. Augustine teaching on the procreative purpose of marriage see St. Augustine, “Marriage and Concupiscence,” 1.17.
72 He says, “What he [St. Paul] says is something like this—God indeed permits marriage, He permits second marriages, and if necessary, prefers even third marriages to fornication and adultery. But we who ought to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service, should consider, not what God permits, but what He wishes: that we may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. It follows that what He merely permits is neither good, nor acceptable, nor perfect.” St. Jerome, “Against Jovinianus,” Bk. 1.37 in Jerome: Letters, (1994 reprint), 291.
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marriage against the Gnostics and promoting virginity. Much of St. Ambrose’s teaching about sexuality can be found in his works speaking about virginity and consecrated widowhood. St. Augustine’ will often bring up virginity and continence even when he is speaking about marriage. For the Fathers sexuality was intimately associated with striving for chastity and the living celibate life, for the bodily reality of sexuality could not be separated from the call to holiness. This understanding of human sexuality influenced their teaching on contraception. 73
73 For the context of St. Clement teaching on marriage see Quasten, Patrology, vol. 2, 34-35; Cf. St. Ambrose, On Virginity, bk. 1.6.24-6.30, Concerning Widows, Chap. 13.75-80. Cf. St. Augustine, The Good of Marriage, chap. 7, 22-23; Marriage and Concupiscence, 11; Adulterous Marriages, bk. 2, Chap. 12.
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The Scriptures and Contraception
Some suggest that the first teaching on contraception can be found in Galatians 5:20 where St. Paul condemns “pharmakeia” a Greek term that some believe can refer to contraception.74 This is set in the following passage (RSV translation):
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 74 Fr. William Saunders, in a non-scholarly
article, explains why it may be associated with contraception saying, “Pharmakeia denotes the mixing of potions for secretive purposes, and from Soranos and others, evidence exists of artificial birth control potions.” Fr. William Saunders, “Contraceptive References in the Bible (part 5),” Arlington Catholic Herald, (August 7, 2003). Downloaded from www.catholicherald.com/saunders/03ws/ws030807.htm August 2008.
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idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:16-22)
In this translation, pharmakeia is rendered as “sorcery.” This Greek word is found in the New Testament in Revelation 9:21, where it is listed during a condemnation of murders, immorality and theft and in Rev. 18:23 where it is associated with “deceptive” drugs. Outside of scriptures, Tatian uses it in his Address to the Greeks to refer to medicine given by demons. Similarly Aristides in his apology uses it when speaking of drugs coming from false gods. St. John of Chrysostom uses pharmakeia to refer to abortifacient drugs in his homily on Romans. Philo of Alexandria associates it with the making of potions for the practice of magic. Plutarch uses it in his
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Lives referring to a law punishing the wife for taking drugs to prevent having children, which may refer to contraception, abortifacients or both. One striking place where it is absent is Soranus’ Gynecology where he specifically distinguishes between herbs given as abortives (Grk. phtorion) and those given as contraceptives (Grk. atokion).75
The Fathers assessment of the use of “drugs” (“φαρμακενς”, “φαρμακεια”, pharmakon, pharmakeia)76 recognized that
75 Cf. Tatian, Address to the Greeks, Chap. 18.1. Aristides, The Apology of Aristides, Chap. 10. St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 24” in Homilies on Acts and Romans. Philo of Alexandria, Special Legislation, 3.94: 98. Plutarch, “Romulus, 22.3”, in Plutarch’s Lives. These and other references can be found in Frederick William Danker, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd. edition, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1049-1050. For Soranus see , Gynecology, 1.19.60.
76 See The Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance defines the word as follows in its Greek Lexicon, 5331-5332 entries “φαρμακενς”, “φαρμακεια”. Thayer and Smith. “Greek Lexicon entry for Pharmakeia.” “The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon.” 1999.
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drugs used to alleviate sickness were often intermingled with the practice magic and witchcraft. Some in the early Church condemned “pharmakeia” or “pharmakon” associating it with the potions of sorcery as condemned in Galatians 5:19 and the 1st
century work, Didache. Some Christians such as the 2nd century author Tatian in the midst of condemning pagan pantheism strongly rejected “pharmakeia.” 77 He was apparently reacting to the connection in Greco-Roman thought among physicians that saw saw “pharmakeia” as sent by the gods in as much as they wondrously cured. Among the “pharmakeia” were some drugs that were used as contraceptives and abortifacients; these were particular loathsome to Christians who recognized the
77 See, “Tatian’s Rejection of Medicine” chapter 6,in Amundsen, Darrel W. 1996. Medicine, society, and faith in the ancient and medieval worlds. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 162-169.
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sanctity of the procreative act.78 Augustine, in contrast, distinguished the legitimate use of drugs for medicine (physica) and their superstitious use.79 It took some time for Christians to dissociate the pantheistic notions of nature as giving some kind of divine healing power, an idea coming Stoic and Neo-Platonic sources, from the medicinal use of drugs.80
The basic root word in Greek pharmakia refers to drugs, sometimes for
78 See for example how the term “maleficium” is used in the Salic Law of the Franks made under Guntram (597-593). Noonan, John Thomas. 1965. Contraception; a history of its treatment by the Catholic theologians and canonists, 145-158.
79 See Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, ed. R. P. H. Green (Clarendon Press: Oxford 1995), p. 109 (2.111), bk. 2, chap. 20.
80 See Chapter 19 in “Early Stoics and the Logos” Drozdek, Adam. 2007. Greek philosophers as theologians: the divine arche. Aldershot [u.a.]: Ashgate, 229-246 and Cooper, John W. 2006. Panentheism, the other God of the philosophers: from Plato to the present. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 38-43.
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medical use, sometimes for use in sorcery. 81 Additionally, St. Ignatius of Antioch uses the term pharmakon in a positive sense for “medicine of immortality.” St. Jerome in his Latin Vulgate translates the word
81 The basic root word in Greek pharmakia refers to drugs, sometimes for medical use, sometimes for sorcery. In Rev. 21:8 the derivate pharmakoi is used condemn sorcerers. In Rev. 22:15 the term pharmakoi is used in a list condemning several types of immoral behaviors. Cf. Dr. Steven Waterhouse, “Outside the Heavenly City: Abortion in Rome and the Early Church’s Response” (Amarillo, TX: Westcliff Press, 2006), downloaded from www.webtheology.com June 2008. It is also found in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament in Exodus 7:11, 22; 8:7 where it is associated with the sorcery of Pharoah’s magicians against Moses. A derivative pharmakeuseis is used in Didache 5:1, where it associated with a list condemning immoral behaviors. St. Clement of Alexandria will use pharmakois a derivative to refer to abortifacients. Danker, A Greek English Lexicon. A derivates of this word pharmakoi is also found in the Testament of Abraham, A. 17, the Testament of Joseph 5:1, Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 4.30.2. Shepherd of Hermas, 3.9, where it refers to the harmful use of drugs. In the Testament of Joseph 2:7 it uses this term to describe beneficial drugs. The Shepherd of Hermas 3.9, 7ab, uses the term pharmakois to refer to one who performs extraordinary things through occult means. Much of this information is summarized in the article by Dr. Steven Waterhouse, “Outside the Heavenly City” and
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pharmakeia as “veneficia” which means roughly “drugs.” Though St. Jerome’s translation takes the term in its generic meaning, I think it touches on the fact that this word can refer to several things under the category of “drugs,” sometimes as medicine, sorcery, abortifacients or contraceptives. Overall, I think Jerome’s translation of Galatians 5 as “drugs” is the most accurate, noting that it most properly refers to drugs used for occult purposes such as sorcery, which could include their use as abortifacients and contraceptives.82
The story of Onan and Tamar in Genesis 38 was also cited some by the
Danker, A Greek English Lexicon.
82 Cf. St. Ignatius of Antioch, The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, chap. 20. Some Fathers commented on this passage without referring to contraception. Cf. St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, bk. 5.11.1.5.; Tertullian, De Resurrectione, 49.11.54, On the Soul, 40.3.17; St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis, bk. 6.147.1.14.
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Fathers, in the Middle Ages and even up to today as condemning contraception. It reads as follows:
It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua; he married her and went in to her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er. Again she conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. She was in Chezib when she bore him. And Judah took a wife for Er his first-born, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's first-born, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him. Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.’ But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his; so when he went in to his brother's wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. And what he did was displeasing in the
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sight of the LORD, and he slew him also. (Genesis 38:1-10 RSV)
Some modern scholars think that Onan was killed because he refused to follow the levirate law, which required a brother-in-law to wed his brother’s widow if he died; however, this interpretation does not exactly fit the situation. The law as enumerated in Deuteronomy calls for a public disgrace of the brother-in-law who does not fulfill this requirement, but not capital punishment.83 Other scholars think he was punished for a lack of family affection or following the law to which one was committed and finally some for the use of contraception.84 Gordon J. Wenham gives
83 Cf. Deut. 25:5-10,“One scholar suggests that the story of Onan as a pre-Sinaitic event reveals, “only the duty of Levirate, but not necessarily Levirate Marriage.” Samuel Belkin, “Levirate and Agnate Marriage in Rabbinic and Cognate Literature”, The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 60, No. 4. (Apr., 1970), pp. 275-329.
84 John T. Noonan, though not a biblical scholar gives a summary of much the exegeses on this text in
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a good explanation based on a literal reading of the text saying, “in Onan’s case it is especially reprehensible, for God’s repeated promise to the patriarchs was that he would make them fruitful and multiply Onan is thus deliberately frustrating the fulfillment of those promises.” However, since Onan was punished for one deliberately non-procreative act there is a strong case that this passage refers to contraception.85
the early 20th century citing, John Skinner, August Dillmann, Herman Gunkell and Gerard Von Rad, Heinrich Holzinger and Joseph Chaine saw Onan See footnote 6 in Noonan, Contraception, 34.
85 Gordon J. Wenham, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 2, Genesis 16-50, (Word Books Publisher, Dallas, TX: 1994), 367.Contrary to what John T. Noonan says (cf. Contraception, 102), St. Jerome’s translation of the original Hebrew was correct. The Hebrew says it was one, not repeated acts “displeasing to the Lord.” Cf. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. OX, (Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.: Boston, MA, 2003), 50. Manuel Miguens supports this interpretation based on a close reading of the Hebrew text saying, “in a strict interpretation the text says that what was evil in the sight of the Lord was what Onan actually did (asher asah).” Manuel Miguens, “Biblical Thoughts on
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The fathers of the Church were aware of the law of levirate marriages in Deuteronomy and recognized it in the dispute between Jesus and the Sadducees, but did not see this law as decisive in interpreting the story of Onan. Origen was the first to refer to the Onan text, but interpreted it in an allegorical way that had no reference to the condemnation of the act of contraception. St. Ephraem, said, “Onan acted out of both hate for his brother and love for Thamar, and was killed for ‘his bitter trick.’” St. John Chrysostom mentions this text, but thinks Onan was condemned for his wickedness. St. Augustine speaks of the Onan story in his work Reply to Faustus the Manichaean in terms of etymology saying the name Onan means “their grief” for he does not treat their grief well as he Human Sexuality,” a chapter from the book, Human Sexuality in Our Time, ed. George A. Kelly. (Boston, MA: St. Paul Editions, 1979). 112-115.
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wastes the good he has on the earth. He, however, says the elder son Er is more evil in comparison. St. Sulpicius Serverus says Onan was condemned simply for spilling his seed. St. Zeno of Verona explained Onan’s act allegorically saying the spilling of the semen represented a form of idolatry rejecting the work of God.86
It was not until the fourth century that any Father used this passage specifically in connection with contraception. St. Epiphanius made the first use of the Onan
86 See St. John Chrysostom, “Matthew 22 & 23.”Homilies on the Gospel according to St. Matthew. For Origen see Noonan, Contraception, 101. He says, this is “an explanation with some ambiguities of the original text” The original is from St. Ephraem, Commentaries on Genesis and Exodus, 34.1-2.St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 62,” in Homilies on Genesis 46-67; St. Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book 22, Part 2. Cf. Sulpicius Severus, Sulpicii Severi Chronicorum, bk 1, Chap. 11; St. Zeno Veronensis, “De Juda.” in Tractatus, Liber Secundus, Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 11. Additionally, another Jewish work amplified by Christians, adds details portraying Onan’s sin as more heinous because he lived with Tamar for a year before having relations with her. See The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, chap. 4.
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text as condemning contraception when speaking against the practices of the Gnostics. In the Panarion, he condemns Gnostics for forbidding procreation and committing coitus interruptus referring to the crime that Onan son of Judah is said to have committed. St. Jerome refers to the story condemning Onan as an example of illegitimate intercourse in marriage because he refused to procreate with his brother’s wife and engaged in illicit passion. St. Augustine in Adulterous Marriages also says Onan was killed for having intercourse with his wife in an unlawful manner, which prevented procreation.87 Though at first the
87 See St. Epiphanius. Panarion 26.5.2; 26.11.11; 63.1.4 in The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book II and III (sect 47-80, De Fide). Trans. Frank Williams. Bk 2. (New York, NY: E.J. Brill, 1994), 86. St. Jerome, “Against Jovinianus,” 1:20; St. Jerome, “Letter XXII to Eustochium,” par. 12, The Letters of St. Jerome, also refers to in his Commentary on Genesis without condemning Onan. Cf. S. Hieronymi, Libri Bresith, Id Est Geneis. Liber Genesis, in Migne, vol. 28.Cf. St. Augustine, Adulterous Marriages, 2.12.12.
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Fathers did not connect the Onan story to contraception it seems to follow from their teaching about the procreative purpose of marriage. By the fourth century they finally make explicit reference to the Onan story as condemning not only coitus interruptus, but also all non-procreative intercourse such as contraception.
Early Development of the Teaching on Contraception
Starting with the apostolic fathers there was a focus on condemning the anti-life practices of the pagans, who sought to suppress fertility and kill their children through abortion and infanticide. Scripture remained the preeminent source for their teaching about sexuality and life issues imbuing everything they taught in this regards. However, the philosophical movements and culture of the time also
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greatly influenced how they presented their teaching on these issues as they sought to explain the faith to their contemporaries. The teaching about contraception is often intertwined with many concerns of the Fathers and is not always presented in a systematic way such as one sees later with such theologians of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thus, it is important to see the teaching of the Fathers speaking about contraception in their context.
The Early fathers of the Church, because of their concern to overcome the anti-life mentality of the pagans did not distinguish very clearly between contraception and abortion, and often associated them with infanticide, for all these acts were against life. A First century A.D. book the Didache, also known as The Lord’s Instruction to the Gentiles through the Twelve Apostles, shows this ambiguity.
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In Chapter 2.2, it condemns pharmakeuseis, along with abortions, and the killing of newborn children. Right before this magic is condemned, in context, it seems to refer to the use of sorcery that may be associated with abortifacients. Later it will condemn under the way of death “murderers of children” and “destroyers of what God has formed.”88 Although, this document does not clearly speak of contraception it condemns the use of drugs (pharmakia) to commit abortion and by implication such “potions” as used in sorcery to control fertility.
Non-Christian literature sheds light on this, showing the close association of the use of pharmakia with fertility control. Plutarch recounted how one of Romulus’ original laws for Rome permitted husbands to divorce his wife for adultery and for medicine
88 Translation from William Varner, The Way of the Didache: The First Christian Handbook, (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2007), 5.2, p.32.
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(pharmakia) in regards to children. Within the Greek medical tradition such drugs also seem to be suspect as evidenced by the words of the traditional form of the Hippocratic Oath. It says, “Neither will I administer a poison (pharmakon) to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly (homoios), I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.” As I indicated above, Soranus, the Gynecologist, offers a technical distinction between some herbs that cause abortion and some that are contraceptives.89 Yet, outside of the medical field the distinction might not have been clearly made. Conclusively, what one can say is that pharmakia was associated with the taking of potions to
89 Cf. Plutarch, Romulus 22, (Oath 18-20). Soranus says, “A contraceptive differs from an abortive, for the first does not let conception take place, while the latter destroys what has been conceived. Let us, therefore, call the one ‘abortive’ (phthorion) and the other ‘contraceptive’ (atokion).” Soranus’ Gynecology, trans. Temkin, bk.1,19, 60.
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prevent having children, as one application of its use as a drug.
The Epistle of Barnabas shows how the early Church saw unnatural sex as immoral; the author condemns oral sex as it is an unnatural form of sexual relations. The author explains how Moses spoke of some animals as unclean because of their bad qualities saying, “But also he hated the weasel [see Lev. 11:29], fittingly. Do not, he is saying, be such a person. We hear of such men, who perform a lawless deed uncleanly with the mouth. Neither associate with those unclean women who perform the lawless deed with the mouth.” Later in words echoing the Didache, speaking about the “way of death” it declares, “Do not murder a child by abortion, nor kill it at birth.” This declaration is wrapped within the context of condemning unchaste activity as it explains earlier, “Do not be sexually promiscuous. Do
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not commit adultery. Do not be sexually perverted.” (Literally “Do not be a corrupter of boys”).90 The writer then associates unnatural sex, abortion and unchaste activities, as way of showing a distinction between Christian behavior, the “way of light,” as different from pagan behavior, the “way of death.”
This distinction between Christian and non-Christian behavior is an important emphasis that will be continued by the 2nd
and 3rd century Apologists who will in different ways develop the teaching on contraception. St. Athenagoras shows the typical concerns the apologists had to defend the morality of Christians in contra wise to the pagans. He explains in a Plea for Christians,
90 Epistle of Barnabas 10.8. in Barnabas and Didache, trans. Robert A. Kraft, Apostolic Fathers: a New Translation and Commentary, 19.4-5, (New York, NY: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1964), p. 112, 143, 145.
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If they really thought promiscuous and unrestrained sexual intercourse wrong, they ought to hate Zeus who begot himself children by his mother Rhea and his daughter Kore, and who took to wife his own sister; or Orpheus their poet who told of Zeus’s wickedness and of his impieties worse than those of Thyestes, though he too had intercourse with his daughter, wishing for kingly rule and revenge, and being bidden thereto by an oracle. But so far are we removed from promiscuity that it is not allowed us even to look with passion upon another; for, as Scripture says, he that shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. God made our eyes to be a light to us, and we may not use them otherwise. For us a wanton glance is adultery, seeing that our eyes are made for a different purpose, and we are judged for what is no more than a thought. How then could such as ourselves fail to enjoy a reputation for chastity?91
In this apology, St. Athenagoras explains that Christian morality demands that one
91 St. Athenagoras, Embassy for Christians, Chap. 32, (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1956), 73.
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strive to be chaste in all relations, even to keeping custody over ones eyes. He picks up on the emphasis of the Stoic philosophy of his time for self-control (enkrateia), as I discussed above, however, this is enveloped within a scriptural quote from Christ referring to how one should not look at a woman lustfully (Matt. 5:28). This puts into context the next paragraph that says that procreation should only be for marriage.
Because of our hope of eternal life we despise the lesser goods of this life, even the pleasures the soul has herein. Each of us looks upon the wife he has married according to the laws we have laid down as one who will bear him children—no more. The farmer sows his seed in the ground and waits for the harvest, not troubling to sow his land again the while. For us too the begetting of children is the limit of our indulging our passions, and one might find many amongst us, both men and women, who are growing old in virginity, their hope being to have fruition of God. If a life of virginity and self-deprivation recommends one to God,
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while to come nigh even to the thought of passion turns one away from God, then, if we shrink from the thought, much more will we flee from the deed. 92
One can see here how St. Athenagoras enfolds his teaching on marriage into the call for holiness of all Christians and sees chastity in marriage connected to the call to virginity. His teaching about the marriage being for procreation and the condemnation of abortion and infanticide cannot properly be understood out of the context of the call for purity in all of sexuality. One can notice that abortion and infanticide are often treated together as sins against marital chastity; likewise, as the teaching develops contraception will be condemned under this same auspice. This teaching is further set in the context of a condemnation of the anti-life practices of the pagans such as the use of drugs to control fertility. The 2nd century
92 Ibid., chap. 33, p.74.
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Author Diognetus gives another typical example showing how Christians valued unborn life and the virtue of chastity in opposition to the culture of the time. He says of Christians, “They marry like everyone else and have children, but they do not expose them once they are born.”93
Some of the other Greek apologist will also condemn some practices in marriage that they consider against nature, relying on the notion of logos. St. Justin Martyr speaks of a married woman who he thinks justifiable separated from her husband because she considered “it wicked to live any longer as a wife with a husband who sought in every way means of indulging in pleasure contrary to the law of nature.” He goes on to relate how she would, “by continuing in matrimonial connection with
93 Epistle to Diognetus, 6, in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Bart D. Erhman, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 141.
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him, and by sharing his table and his bed, become a partaker also in his wickedness and impieties.”94 This presents the idea that will be repeated by other apologists that sexual relations in marriage should be done according to “nature.”
St. Clement of Alexandria will expand on what natural sexual relations in marriage mean. He starts his discussion of marital intercourse by explaining how sexual intercourse is restricted to marriage and that “begetting children is the goal of those who wed.” Then he speaks of how the logos, the principle for the creation of the world, condemns homosexuality and pedophilia in particular. He connects the Platonic teaching to the words of Moses in Leviticus 18:20, 22 explaining, “Furthermore, Moses left no example of any ancient Hebrew who
94 St. Justin Martyr, Second Apology, 2.2, in St. Justin Martyr The First and Second Apologies, trans. Leslie William Barnard, (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1997), 73-74.
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had intercourse with a pregnant wife. For mere pleasure, even when pursued in marriage, is illicit, improper, and irrational.” 95
In the midst of this teaching about logos, a stoic term, which in his eyes echoes the teaching of scripture, he condemns the wasting of seed saying, “Only with a wife are you permitted to enjoy physical pleasure for the purpose of producing descendents, for this is all that the Logos, allows, We have a share in the divine work of creation must not scatter seed randomly, nor should we act disrespectfully or sow what cannot grow.” As I mentioned above he echoes some Stoic concerns about sexuality that seem to disparage sexual relations all together. He even makes the argument, “By spilling his seed a man loses as much substance as one
95 For how Clement uses the term “logos” see Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 2, p. 21-23. Quote from Clement of Alexandria, Christ the Educator, Bk. II, 10.83. in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 41.
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sees in a body, for what has been expelled is the beginning of a birth.” Nature as understood through the Logos he explains is the guiding principle. He goes onto explain, “But to have intercourse without intending children is violate nature, which we must take as our teacher.” He adds concerning nature:
Our entire life will be spent observing the laws of nature, if we control our desires from the start and if we do not kill off with devious instruments the human creature that has been conceived according to divine providence. For women who, in order to conceal incontinence, make us of death-dealing drugs that completely expel the mortal creature, abort not only the embryo, but also human kindness.96
He offers here what may be one of the first formulations of a natural law, which he says condemns unnatural sexual relations and abortion. He further explicates his
96 Ibid., 42- 45.
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understanding of natural law in Miscellanies 3 where he more explicitly uses Stoic terminology, yet this is always enfolded into the Christian call to holiness. St. Clement shows the influence of stoic philosophy in this work by the extensive focus on self-control over the passions as I discussed above (cf. p.18). He summarizes his teaching on marriage showing how self-control becomes a keystone for him saying,
In general, let our affirmation about marriage, food and the rest proceed; we should never act from desire; our will should be concentrated on necessities. We are children of will, not desire. If a man marries in order to have children he ought to practice self-control. He ought not to have sexual desire even for his wife, to whom he has a duty to show Christian love. He ought to produce children by a reverent, disciplined act of will. 97
97 St. Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies III, 7.58 trans. Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church, p. 292.
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Other apologists will also show their disapproval of marital relations that are not open to procreation. Origen, a pupil of St. Clement, in Contra Celsum, commends the Jews for their chastity as cited above. saying, “nor were there among them women who sold their beauty to any one who desired to have sexual intercourse without having children, and wished to outrage the natural purpose of human sexual powers.”98
Some of the Latin apologists spoke of immorality in marital relations, using the form of Roman apologies. Marcus Minucius Felix, circa 200 A.D., wrote what many considered to be the most polished dialogue against the pagans in style similar to that of Cicero, the Roman pagan philosophy.99 In the passage referred to above, he first condemns the human sacrifices of the
98 Origen, Contra Celsum, Bk, VI. Chap. 42. Chadwick, 297-298.
99 Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 2, p. 155-163.
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pagans and their practice of abortion then proclaims, “there are women who swallow drugs to stifle in their own womb the beginnings of a man to be—committing infanticide before they give birth to their infant.” The Latin text uses the phrase “originem futuri hominis extinguant,” which is ambigously translated as “stifle...the beginning of a man to be” or in another translation “extinguish the source of the future man.”100 This may refer to taking drugs in order to cause the abortion of embryos, which he perceives as not yet having a human soul following Aristotlean embryology. However, he may also have in mind contraceptive drugs which prevent the
100 Marcus Minucius Felix, Octavius, 30. in The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix, trans. G.W. Clarke, Ancient Christian Writers series, vol. 39, (New York, NY: Newman Press, 1974), 107-108. The Latin says, “sunt quae in ipsis visceribus medicaminibus epotis originem futuri hominis extinguant et parricidium faciant, antequam pariant.” The second translation is in Octavius, 30, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.
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child from being born (pariant); the context does not resolve his meaning. The most one can conclude is that he opposes taking drugs with murderous effects, causing “parricide” abortive or contraceptive.
Some of the Latin Fathers continued the idea that marital relations have no other purpose than procreation. Lactantius, an early 4th century author, compares the sexual organs to eyes that have no other purpose than procreation. He explains,
It is necessary, therefore, that each person recognize that the union of two sexes has been given to living creatures for the sake of procreation and that this law has been imposed on these desires to produce a succession. Just as God did not give us eyes so that we may see and thereby do what is necessary to live, so also we have received that part of the body called the genitals, for
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no other reason than to generate offspring.101
Though he has received much criticism from contemporary moral theologians,102 what should be recognized is that this comparison was made in the context of a condemnation of the immodest behavior of the pagans and the promotion of chastity. Right before this comparison he condemns
101 Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book VI, 23, in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 74.
102 Charles Curran S.J. for example thinks that the Lactantius and other early Fathers were overly influenced by Stoicism and Ulpian, the jurist, in such a way that it affected negatively the way they developed their theory of natural law. See Charles Curran, “Absolute Norms in Moral Theology,” in New Look at Christian Morality, (Notre Dame, IN: Fides, 1968), 74-89; and “Natural Law,” in Directions in Fundamental Moral Theology (Notre Dames, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1985), 119-72. There were, however, other influences such as Cicero, who as representative of the Stoics, taught that “natural law” was only applicable to man as a rational being. Others think the Fathers natural law thinking developed organically from the apostolic tradition. Cf. John S. Grabowski and Michael J. Naughton, “Catholic Social and Sexual Ethics: Inconsistent or Organic?” The Thomist (October, 1993), v.57 n.4, p. 555-578.
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the pagans for establishing houses of prostitution and defiling “young men of tender age” through prositution. For him the following of nature is equated with following God. For, in the same paragraph as this passage he goes on to say, “All who profess that they are disciples of God should be so raised and educated that they are able to control themselves.”103
The unitive dimension of marriage, however, was not ignored by the early fathers, who recognized marriage as good, when they defended it against those who considered marriage all together evil. Tertullian speaks highly of a holy marriage saying,
What a bond is this: two believers who share one hope, on desire, one discipline, the same service! The two are brother and sister, fellow servants. There is no
103 Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book VI, 23, in Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 72-74.
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distinction of spirit or flesh, but truly are two in on flesh. Where there is one flesh, there is also one spirit. Together they pray, together they prostrate themselves, together they fast, teaching each other, exhorting each other, supporting each other.104
St. Clement of Alexandria will speak of how “marriage of true lovers of wisdom leads to a concord derived from the Logos. It tells women to beautify their character rather than their appearance; it enjoins husbands not to treat their wives as sex-objects, making their goal the violation of their bodies, but directing their marriage to support throughout life and to self-control at the highest level.” Origen also will see
104 Tertullian speaks of marriage blessed by the Church first saying, “What words can describe the happiness of that marriage which the Church unites, the offering strengthens, the blessing seals, the angels proclaim, and the Father declares valid? For even on earth children do not rightly and lawfully wed without their fathers’ consent.” Tertullian, Address to His Wife, 2.8, Hunter, Marriage in the Early Church, 38.
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marriage as a type of the unity of Christ and the Church.105
Tertullian offers a condemnation of the immoral activities of the pagans which shows how the distinction between contraceptives and abortion was not at all that clear. He says,
But, with us, murder is forbidden once for all. We are not permitted to destroy even the fetus in the womb, as long as blood is still being drawn to form a human being. To prevent the birh of a child is a quicker way to murder. It makes no difference whether one destroys a soul already born or interferes with its coming to birth. It is a human being and one who is to be a man, for the whole fruit is already present in the seed.106
105 St Clement of Alexandria, Stomateis, bk. 2, 141,143, trans. Ferguson, The Fathers of the Church, 252-253. Cf. Origen, Fragments, Commentary of Origen On the Epistle to the Ephesians, 5:32.
106 Tertullian, Apology, 9.8, Tertullian: Apologetic Works and Minucius Felix Octavius, 31-32. The Latin text says, “Nobis vero semel homicidio interdicto etiam conceptum utero, dum adhuc sanguis in hominem delib[er]atur, dissolvere non licet.
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In another work he will explicity condemn surgical abortion as I referred to above (cf. ftnt 19). He also makes the point of explaining that the soul is infused into the child at the moment of conception saying, “Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.”107 Nevertheless, it is not clear from the quotes whether he is speaking of contraception or the abortion of unformed embryos.
St. Hippolytus, circa 225 A.D., offers the clearest expression condemning
Homicidii festinatio est prohibere nasci, nec refert, natam quis eripiat animam an nascentem disturbet. Homo est et qui est futurus; etiam fructus omnis iam in semine est.” Tertullianus, Apologeticus Adversos Gentes Pro Christianis, 9.8, J.P.Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol.1.
107 As discussed above he believes the soul was in some way material and infused at conception in reaction to Platonism. See Tertullian, On the Soul, 27, in Tertullian Apologetic Works, 242-245.
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contraception in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. He explains,
Hence so-called faithful women began to try contraceptive drugs, and to bind themselves round in the hope of aborting what they had conceived, because they did not want to have a child by a slave or a humble man on account of the family ties and huge property. Look what a pitch of impiety this lawless man has come to, in teaching adultery and murder in one go.108
Here Hippolytus uses the term atokiois pharmakois, rendered in this translation as “contraceptive drugs,” which literally means “dissolving or corrupting drugs” in organic material. Soranus used this in his Gynecology specifically of contraceptives wherein he explains the difference between
108 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 9.12.25, in Catherine Osborne, Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 347. (In other editions this is book 9 chapter 7, CF. ANF). The Greek text can be found in Patrologiæ Græcæ vol. 16c: col. 3398, p. 3388. It was wrongly attributed to Origen by Migne.
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contraceptive drugs (pharmakia) and abortive drugs saying, “A contraceptive differs from an abortive, for the first does not let conception take place, while the latter destroys what has been conceived.” Dioscorides, a medical doctor, circa 77 A.D, also used the term atokiois in reference to contraceptive drugs to take away conception. Interestingly, atokiois was used in Didache 5:2, in an apparent reference to abortion, wherein it condemns “destroyers of what God has formed.” 109 Here atokiois refers to destroyers of embryos and not destructive drugs; however, outside of the medical field this distinction might not have
109 The Danker, Lexicon gives the primary definition as “breakdown of organic matter, dissolution, deterioration, corruption.” It also indicates how it can be used metaphorically of persons to mean “immoral act” or “inward depravity.” It is also used in Didache 5:2 to mean “abortion” and Didache 16:3 to mean “corrupter.” Danker, A Greek English Lexicon, p. 148.For Soranus, see, Soranus’ Gynecology, Book 1, 60, p. 62.Cf. Dioscorides, De materia medica, 1.81, cited in Dioscorides on Pharmacy and Medicine, 59.
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been clearly understood. Hippolytus seems to be the first to clearly distinguish between contraception and abortion among the Fathers. It is important to note he condemns both as anti-life kind of activities; for, contraception drugs dissolve organic material, while abortion kills what has already been conceived. However, one must see his doctrine within context; for, he primarily sees contraception as one of the many impure activities of the pagans, including abortion prostitution and homosexuality. Contraception then is a sin against purity that specifically works to destroy the possibility of new life, which in this sense can be called anti-life.
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Chapter 3 Teaching about Contraception in the Post-Nicene Fathers
The fathers of the fourth century further developed the Church’s teaching on contraception in response to the different cultural conditions that came about after the peace of Constantine and the fight with the Manicheans. These fathers were concerned with preserving the goodness of marriage and procreation against heresies that sought to disparage matter, the body and procreation as evil. They became more concerned about chastity for Christians who now lived in a time of relative peace with the pagans. They wrote in a time of the great monastic movement, which sought holiness by distancing itself from the temptations of the world that seemed especially to pressure
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those who lived in the cities. In this light, such figures as St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine sought to promote the value of virginity and celibate widowhood as superior to that of marriage.110 In the midst of their controversies with the Manicheans, who rejected marriage as evil, and others who indulged in an unchaste lifestyle, they articulated a doctrine about contraception.
The first to discuss contraception was St. Epiphanius, circa 375 A.D., who while condemning the immoral practices of heretical sects, shows his disgust of their use of contraception saying, “But though they copulate they forbid procreation. Their eager pursuit of seduction is for enjoyment, not for procreation.” He goes on to compare their sin to that of Onan and Tamar as I
110 Cf. St. Ambrose, Concerning Virgins; St. John Chrysostom, On Virginity: Against Remarriage; St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus; St. Augustine, On Holy Virginity.
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mentioned above. Epiphanius, known for his zealous traditionalism and desire to condemn heresies, taught that contraception was gravely immoral in order to preserve the orthodox teaching on marriage passed on from the fathers. He thought the heretics were disparaging the holiness of marriage, by using it as an outlet for lust rather than entering into it as a holy vocation. Contraception for him was contrary to the virtue of marital chastity that all married couples should live. 111
St. Ambrose of Milan, who inspired St. Augustine to return to his faith, was an ardent promoter of consecrated virginity and sought to encourage chastity among Christian married women. In one book On
111 St. Epiphanius, Medicine Chest, 26:5:2, trans Williams. He led the movement in Jerusalem against Origen amongst others “he held responsible for Arianism and whose allegorical interpretation he regarded as the root of all heresies.” Quasten, Patrology, 384-385. See St. Epiphanius, Medicine Chest, 64.
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Holy Virginity, he promoted the value of virginity, teaching that it is superior to marriage in that in provides a more holy environment for following the Lord. Nevertheless, he does not disparage marriage, but rather encourages Christians to live it in a more holy manner. He primarily emphasizes that whatever one’s vocation is they should live it in a chaste manner.112 He shows this concern in his work Haxameron, a commentary on the six days of creation wherein he offers a condemnation of drugs taken to prevent having children, saying,
Those who are very poor expose their infants and refuse to lay claim to them
112 St. Ambrose says, “There are three forms of the virtue of chastity: the first is that of spouses, the second that of widows, and the third that of virgins. We do not praise any one of them to the exclusion of the others. . . . This is what makes for the richness of the discipline of the Church.” St. Ambrose, De viduis 4, 23, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 2349, 2nd Edition, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1997).
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when they are discovered. Even the wealthy, in order that their inheritance may not be divided among several, deny in the very womb their own progeny. By the use of parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs in the genital organs themselves. 113
This looks like it could be a reference to abortifacient drugs, as Noonan suggests, however, I think the Latin indicates otherwise. The important phrase in Latin is , “et parricidalibus succis in ipso genitali alvo pignora sui ventris exstinguunt.” This implies, as the translation above indicates, that the parricidal mixture “parricidalibus succis” does not apply to the fetus, but to the fruit that could come from the womb.
113 St. Ambrose, Hexameron, 5:18.58, trans. John J. Savage, (New York, NY: Fathers of the Church inc., 1961), 207. Latin, “Pauperiores vero abjiciunt parvulos, et exponunt, et deprehensos abnegant. Ipsae quoque divites, ne per plures suum patrimonium dividatur, in utero proprios necant fetus, et parricidalibus succis in ipso genitali alvo pignora sui ventris exstinguunt, priusque aufertur vita, quam tradatur.” St. Ambrosii, “Quintus. De Opere Quinti Diei,” 5.18.58, Hexaemeron, bk.6. J.P. Migne, Patrologia Latina.
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This then is not a reference to an embryo in which a human soul has not yet been formed. The reference to the poor who commit infanticide and the rich who choose another methods points to it being a contraceptive, for as Soranus indicated114, drugs taken to cause abortion were often very dangerous, contraceptives less so. The rich then would most likely choose contraceptives. His use of parricidalibus to describe the contraceptive act shows he sees it as in some way akin to murder, an anti-life kind of act preventing procreation.
St. Jerome will further develop the analogy of “murder” to explain how it applies to both abortion and contraception. Though I quoted this letter above, it is best to see it in its full context. In his “Letter 22
to Eustochium,” in which he extols the virtues of a life of virginity, he derides the
114 Cf. Soranus’ Gynecology, Book 1, 63-64.
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immoral behavior of some Christian women, explaining,
You may see many who were widowed before they were wed, shielding a guilty conscience by a lying garb. Did not a swelling womb or the crying of their infant children betray them, they would go about with head erect and on skipping feet. But others drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived. Some, when they learn they are with child through sin, practice abortion by the use of drugs. Frequently they die themselves and are brought before the rulers of the lower world guilt of three crimes: suicide, adultery against Christ, and murder of and unborn child.
Immediately before this text, St. Jerome says “Amnon, her brother, was inflamed by an unlawful passion for Thamar, his sister” showing that he clearly sees the Onan story as an example of non-procreative marital relations. In this paragraph, he first speaks of fallen virgins who indulge in unchaste activity. He then explains what often follows
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from this unchaste behavior, some turn to sterilization, and if this fails, they use abortive drugs. In Latin the important phrases are, “Aliae vero sterilitatem praehibant, et necdum sati homicidium faciunt. Nonnullae cum se senserint concepisse de scelere, abortii venena meditantur.” One might literally translate this as “Some truly supply sterility and are not yet satisfied to perform murder. Some, when they feel themselves to have conceived through guilt, are medicated with abortive drugs.” A literal rendering shows the striking metaphor that St. Jerome uses comparing sterility to murder. He thus distinguishes it from the second possible crime wherein one murders their unborn child by abortion.115
115 St. Jerome, “Letter 22 to Eustochium,” 12-13, 1-2, in The Letters of St. Jerome, Ancient Christians Writers, (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963), 144-145. The highlighted Latin reads, “Videas plerasque viduas, antequam nuptas, eracta cervice et ludentibus pedibus incedunt. Aliae vero sterilitatem
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It is not entirely clear from the context why St. Jerome may have seen contraception as akin to murder. However, in the last sentence he may provide a clue to his of this metaphor. In this sentence, he refers to the deadly nature of abortions in his time, which he says weighs the woman down with the grave sins of adultery and child-murder at their death. The use of the analogy of murder for contraception and the reference to damnation suggests that he may consider contraception as sort a spiritual death such as in the First Letter of John (1 John 3:16-17.)
In his Letter to Jovinianus, St. Jerome condemns non-procreative sex saying, “But I wonder why he the [Heretic Jovinianus] set praehibant, et necdum sati homicidium faciunt. Nonnullae cum se senserint concepisse de scelere, abortii venena meditantur, et frequenter etiam ipsae commortuae, trium criminum reae, ad inferus perducuntur, homicidae sui, Christi adulterae, necdum nati fillii parricidae.” S. Hieronymus, “Episola XXII Ad Eustochium, Paulae Filium,” 13 in Patrologia Latina, ed. JP Migne, vol. 22, p. 30.
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Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?”116 This condemnation of the anti-procreative was more positively put by another 4th
century writer St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who said,
But let those be of good cheer also, who, being married according to law, not making it wanton by uncontrolled license; who recognize times of abstinence, that they may give themselves to prayer; who, at the assemblies, bring into the Church clean bodies as well as clean garments; who have entered into marriage for the sake of begetting children, not for self-indulgence.117
116 St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus, 1:20. 117 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, IV.25, in
The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem: a New Translation, trans. Leo P. McCauley S.J., Fathers of the Church, vol. 61A, (Washington D.C.: Catholic
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St. Jerome and St. Cyril of Jerusalem both show an intimate link in the minds of the early fathers between procreation and marriage; such that they do not think one can really call a union “marriage” if it is not open to procreation. For them anti-procreative sex such as the kind in which Onan engaged is an unchaste activity contrary to the nature of marriage and its procreative purpose. This shows one emphasis among the fathers that contraception was a sin against marriage itself; later, some will couple this with the idea that is also an anti-life kind of act.
St. John Chrysostom Testimony of the East
In the East, there was a similar belief against non-procreative sex articulated by St. John Chrysostom. He shows this in his
University of America Press, 1969), 131-132.
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strong condemnation of castration given in his commentary on Galatians 5, saying, “Where then are those who dare to mutilate themselves, seeing that they draw down the apostolic curse, and accuse the workmanship of God, and take part with the Manichees?”118 In a homily on Matthew, he will use even stronger words condemning men who castrate themselves saying,
for such a person is venturing on the deeds of murderers, and giving occasion to them that slander God’s creation, and opens the mouths of the Manicheans, and is guilty of the same unlawful acts as they that mutilate themselves among the Greeks. For to cut off our members has been from the beginning a work of demonical agency, and satanic device, that they may bring up a bad report upon the works of God, that they may mar this
118 St. John Chrysostom, “Homily on Galatians V” in Saint Chrysostom: Homilies on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, ed. Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 13, (Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI, 1887).
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living creature, that imputing all not to the choice, but to the nature of our members, the more part of them may sin in security as being irresponsible, and doubly harm this living creature, both by mutilating the members and by impeding the forwardness of the free choice in behalf of good deeds.119
Clearly, St. John Chrysostom was opposed to sexual relations not open to procreation. Castration seems particularly heinous for him for it additionally destroys a God given organ, preventing the good procreative acts that could come in the future. Marital intercourse for him is thus good when done with a procreative intent but evil without it.
This, however, does not fully explain his teaching on marriage, for he gives great value to other qualities of marriage besides the procreative significance. In his “Sermon on
119St. John Chrysostom, “Homily LXII” on Matthew XIX in St. Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, 62:3, ed. Philip Schaff, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 10, (Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, MI, 1887).
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Marriage,” he makes explicit what he thinks is the purpose of marriage. While speaking of marital chastity he says, “These are the two purposes for which marriage was instituted: to make us chaste, and to make us parents.” He goes on in this same sermon to explain how some marriages are childless, but that they still have significance to promote chastity, which he says, “takes precedence.”120 In another sermon on Ephesians 5:22-33 he displays his awareness of the unitive significance of marriage extolling the value of love in marriage. In a beautiful passage on marriage, he advises the husband to say,
Tell her that you are convinced that money is not important, that only thieves thirst for it constantly that you love her more than gold…Tell her that you love her more than your own life, because this present life is nothing, and life in such a way that in the world to come you will be united in perfect love. Say to her, ‘Our time here is brief and fleeting, but if we are pleasing to God, we can exchange this life for the Kingdom to come. Then we will be perfectly one both with Christ
120 St. John Chrysostom, “Sermon on Marriage” in St. John Chrysostom: On Marriage and Family, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986), 85.
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and each other, and our pleasure will know no bounds. I value your love above all things, and nothing would be so bitter or painful to me as our being at odds with each other. Even if I lose everything, any affliction is tolerable if you will be true to me.’ Show her that you value her company, and prefer being at home to being out. Esteem her in the presence of your friends and children.121
St. John Chrysostom who showed a concern both for the procreative and unitive significance of marriage was clearly opposed to contraception. He explicitly teaches against contraception in one homily where he condemns those who give into drunkenness and turn to prostitutes saying,
Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication,
121 St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 20 On Ephesians 5:22-33”, in Ibid, 61.
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from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation.122
In this homily, he was referring to those who give into drunkenness and turn to prostitutes without thought for either the immorality of the deed or the consequences of their action. He uses colorful language to convey to his listeners that this can result in unplanned pregnancies for which the harlot will then seek an abortion. He uses the familiar term “pharmakia” which as I mentioned above is an ambiguous term that may or may not refer to contraception depending on the context. The above translation brings out how this passage condemns the use of contraception connecting “medicines of sterility” to
122 Saint John Chrysostom, “Homily XXIV” on Romans, quote from Noonan, Contraception, 98. The only widely available translation of Rev. J. Walker, in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers is rather poor.
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“murder before birth.” The phrase “medicines of sterility” which Migne translates from Greek as “herbae in sterilitatem”123 condemns prostitutes for using sterilizing herbs so they could pursue harlotry. Immediately, after this he speaks of how there is “murder before” and then later, “Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation.” Later, he will show his true concern saying, “Do you teach that the woman who is given to you for procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing?” Here St. John Chrysostom is not very clear whether he is speaking of abortion or contraception,124 but he condemns both of
123 Joannis, Chrysostomi, “In Epist. Ad Rom. Homil XXIV,” J.P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 60, 699
124 Due to this lack of clarity, some scholars such as Michael Gorman see this text as perhaps referring only to abortion, stemming from the problematic understanding of embryology. See Gorman, Abortion
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them as against procreation, anti-life kind of acts, under the general auspice of murder. This is significant in that he not only sees them as unchaste activity but also sins against life.
He also associates anti-procreative acts with abortion in one homily on Matthew. In this homily, he speaks of those who have fallen into covetousness saying, “that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome: many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have maimed their nature, not only by slaying their children after birth, but by not suffering them even to be born at all.”125 He
and the Early Church , 70-72. I, however, think the context as discussed above, with a more precise translation, shows Chrysostom was really thinking of contraception.
125 St. John Chrysostom, “Homily 28” on Matthew 8:23-24 in St. Chrysostom: Homilies on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, ed. Philip Schaffer, vol. 10, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, (New York, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886), 312.
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clearly takes for granted that sterilization by castration or through drugs by either spouse is immoral as he condemns those who “have maimed their nature” so that they can remain childless. Again, we see how he connects contraception with murder, in this case with infanticide. While he does not say here that contraception is akin to murder, he does associate the two in a context that condemns all non-procreative acts. It then seems for him that when one loses sight of the true end of marriage—procreation—then he ends up pursuing anti-life kind of activities.
The Teaching of St. Augustine
St. Augustine taught a similar doctrine about the procreative end of marriage, giving his teaching about contraception in his consideration of the “bonum prolis” or
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good of children.. He, however, developed an understanding of marriage in a more in depth manner than any Church Father before him. Today, he is seen by some to have a very negative view of sexuality shaped by his experience as a Manichean even as he professed a conversion to his Catholic faith.126 Noonan, in particular, thinks Augustine’s reaction to Manichaeism caused him and other contemporaries to react in an extreme manner driving them to teach that marriage is only for procreation.127 A close reading of Augustine
126 For one scholar who thinks this is see, Hvan Oort, “Augustine and Manichaeism: new discoveries, new perspectives” Verbum et Ecclesia, JRG 27(2) (2006), 709-728. See also, Elizabeth E. Clark, “Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine's Manichean Past,” in Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith: Essays on Late Ancient Christianity, (Lewiston, NY: Studies in Women and Religion, 1986), 291-349.
127 Noonan says, “The Manichees are for Augustine the archetypal advocates of contraception, and his judgments on contraception must be read against the background of his judgment on the Manichees.” p. 122 see his chapter “The Morals of the Manichees and St. Augustine” in Noonan,
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reveals that his teaching on marriage and sexuality, which forms his view of contraception, is more subtle than this.
As David Hunter, an Augustine scholar explains,
one can trace a development of St. Augustine’s thought on sexuality in his writings revealing a move from a strong Neo-Platonism in reaction to the Manicheans128 to a more integral Christian understanding of sexuality in
Contraception, 107-139.
128 The Manicheans were a Gnostic group that believed in two gods, one that was evil who made the created world and one who was good who made the spiritual realm. According to the teachings of Mani, the founder, the sparks of the divine are trapped as points of light in the material world and need to be released through the secret rituals of the illuminated. In general, procreation and everything associated with the material world was considered evil. They, in particular, thought procreation trapped divine particles of in evil matter; thus, they condemned it. For a short description of Manichaeism see “Reaction of Despair: Manichaeism” Chap. IV, sect. 21, in Fr. Newman Eberhardt, C.M, A Summary of Catholic History, Retrieved from CD, Welcome to the Catholic Church, Version 2.0, (Gervais, OR: Harmony Media inc., 1997).
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his later years. His early writings reflect his self-identity opposing Manichaeism, in which he adopts a Neo-Platonic viewpoint tending to emphasis the spirit over the body. This emphasis leads him to teach that the only good purpose for marriage was procreation. 129
He shows his early focus on the procreative intent of marriage in one of his early writings against the Against the Morals of the Manicheans, 388 A.D., in which he says,
Are you not the people who are accustomed to admonish us to observe, as much as we can, the time at which a woman is ready for conception after her menstrual period and to abstain from intercourse at that time so that a soul does not become entangled in flesh? From this it follows that you think that taking a wife is not for the sake of procreating children but for the sake of satisfying lust. But marriage, as the very laws of marriage cry out, unites a man and a woman for the sake of procreating
129 David G. Hunter, “Augustinian Pessimism? A New Look at Augustine’s Teaching on Sex, Marriage and Celibacy”, in Recent Studies in Early Christianity: Christianity and Society, Ed. Everett Ferguson, (New York, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999), 125-149.
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children. Whoever, then, says that to beget children is a more serious sin than to have intercourse certainly forbids marriage and makes the woman no longer a wife but a prostitute, who in return for certain compensation is given to the man to satisfy his lust. After all, if she is a wife, it is matrimony. But it is not matrimony when the effort is made that she not become a mother.130
His concern is to condemn the Manichean belief that procreation is evil, responding by teaching that marital intercourse not open to life is wrong. In this context, he mentions a form of rhythm method practiced by the Manicheans, based on an observation of menstruation. It is important to note that the method of birth control is not important to him, but he
130 St. Augustine, The Catholic and Manichaean Ways of Life, bk.2, 18.65, in Roland Teske, S.J., Answers to the Pelagians II: Marriage and Desire, Ed. Boniface Ramsey, The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century, Part I, Vol. 24, (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press. 2006), 98.
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condemns their action because of their intent to prevent procreation.131
A few years later, again writing against the Manicheans, St. Augustine shows his loathing of their contraceptive practices while defending the behavior of Abraham saying,
For that eternal law, that is, the will of God, who is the creator of all creatures, who takes care of conserving the natural order, permits the release of the delight of the mortal flesh in intercourse from the dominion of reason not in order to serve for the satisfaction of lust but in
131 Even after Humanae Vitae affirmed the use of the natural periods of infertility, it is still valid to condemn using it with a contraceptive intent. Humanae Vitae affirms this condemning “every action, which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act [or indeed of any genital act], or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes [intendat], either as end or means, to impede procreation [ut procreatio impediatur].” Thus, it condemns the intention to contracept not only contraceptive actions. Translation from William E. May, Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995), 72.
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order to provide for the well-being of the race. On the contrary, the disordered law of the Manicheans commands that those having intercourse above all avoid having a child, so that their God, whom they bewail as bound in all seeds, may not be more tightly bound in a woman’s fetus. In that way their God is spilled out in a shameful emission rather than bound by cruel fetters.132
Here he clearly condemns the Manichean intent to prevent procreation through contraception; for, he distinguishes between the seed and the fetus. He condemns the fact that the Manicheans do not want their God, bound in seed, to be “more tightly bound in a woman’s fetus.” Furthermore, he implicitly denies coitus interruptus by saying, “their God is spilled out in a shameful emission rather than bound by cruel fetters.” The thrust of St. Augustine’s attack against Faustus in regards marriage is the Manichean desire to
132 St. Augustine, Answers to Faustus a Manichean, 22.30, 319.
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prevent procreation, but still allow for lust, for earlier he condemns him saying,
you also violate a subsequent commandment, namely, You shall not commit adultery (Ex. 20:14), so that you detest in marriage most of all the fact that children are procreated, and thus you make your Hearers adulterers with their wives when they take precautions so that the women with whom they have intercourse do not conceive. For they marry them by the law of marriage, as marriage tablets proclaim, for the sake of procreating children, and since by your law they fear that they may attach a particle of your God to the foulness of flesh, they have intercourse with their women by an impure union only for satisfying their lust. But they accept children unwillingly, though they should have intercourse only for this reason. How, then, do you not forbid marriage, as the apostle foretold concerning you so long ago, when you try to take away from marriage that which makes it marriage? When that has been taken away, husbands will be shameful lovers, wives will be prostitutes, bedrooms will be brothels, and in laws brothel-keepers.133
133 Ibid., 192.
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St. Augustine knew from his past personal experience, living as a Manichean hearer, that their rejection of the procreative purpose of sex led to seeing the purpose of sex as primarily to fulfill one’s lustful desires. For him a marriage full of lustful intentions makes husbands “shameful lovers” and wives “prostitutes.” His past unchaste lifestyle shaped how he saw sexuality and the power of concupiscence active in man after the fall.134 Later he will reiterate this in his letter against the Manichean Secundius saying,
I know the reason for your indignation. For you are not as displeased at the promiscuous woman because of her fornication as you are displeased that the fornication was changed into marriage and transformed into marital chastity. For you believe that in marriage your
134 St. Augustine’s recounts his Manichean past and recalls his memories of impure living in his reflections of memory in the Confessions. Cf. St. Augustine, Confessions, bk. 4, (Manichaeism) bk. 10, chap. 30-31.
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God becomes bound in tighter chains of the flesh through the procreation of children. You think that prostitutes spare your God because they try not to conceive so that they may serve lust that is free from the duty of bearing children.135
St. Augustine’s focus here is not just that contraception prevents procreation but that it also promotes lust. He sees the two tied together; one cannot deny the procreative meaning of sexuality without promoting lust, making marriage into prostitution.
Later in his life, St. Augustine will seek specifically to develop a theology of marriage in reaction to the controversy with Jovinian. In about 401, he wrote the book The Good of Marriage purportedly in response to some concern about St. Jerome’s
135 St. Augustine, Answer to Secundinus a Manichean, Bk. 1, Chap. 21, in The Manichean Debate, introduction and notes by Roland Teske, S.J., Ed. Boniface Ramsey, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Part I, Vol.19, (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 2006), 384-385.
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treatise on Virginity, which seemed to belittle the vocation of marriage.136 St. Augustine, who at this time also wrote on virginity, continues to teach the necessity of the procreative purpose of marriage, but more precisely works out his teaching about sexuality saying,
The intercourse necessary for generation is without fault and it alone belongs to marriage. The intercourse that goes beyond this necessity no longer obeys reason but passion. Still, not to demand this intercourse but to render it to a spouse, lest he sin mortally by fornication, concerns the married person. But, if both are subject to such concupiscence, they do something that manifestly does not belong to marriage. However, if in their union they love what is proper rather what is improper, that is, what belongs to marriage rather than that which does not, this is granted to them with the Apostle as an authority . .
For, although the natural use, when it goes beyond the marriage rights, that is,
136 Cf. St. Jerome, Against Jovinianus.
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beyond the need for procreation, is pardonable in a wife but damnable in a prostitute, that use which is against nature is abominable in a prostitute but more abominable in a wife. For, the decree of the Creator and the right order of the creature are of such force that . . . when the husband wishes to use the member of his wife which has not been given for this purpose, the wife is more shameful if she permits this to take place with herself rather than with another.137
St. Augustine here expresses a very strict understanding of the proper end of sexuality in marriage. He believes intercourse in marriage without a procreative intent contains some element of lust. Sexual intercourse done to yield to the lustful cravings of the spouse is at least pardonable, but not if it is done in way contrary to nature. In the above paragraph, he condemns by this logic all non-natural
137 St. Augustine, The Good of Marriage, 11-12, in Treatises on Marriage and Other Subjects, trans. Charles T. Wilcox, et al., The Fathers of the Church, vol. 27, (Washington DC: Catholic University of America: 1955), 24-25.
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relations as damnable, oral and anal sex, and direct sterilization or contraception. However, this is not the summation of his teaching on marriage as he goes on to say,
[Marriage] does not seem to me to be a good solely because of the procreation of children, but also because of the natural companionship between two sexes. Otherwise, we could not speak of marriage in the case of old people, especially if they had either lost their children or had begotten none at all. But, in a good marriage, although one of many years, even if the ardor of youth has cooled between man and woman, the order of charity still flourishes between husband and wife.138
He does seem to hint here at a notion of significance of marriage beyond just procreation. His major focus here, however, is to promote charity rooted in trying to prevent the other from committing adultery, a sentiment that the tradition would later
138 St. Augustine, The Good of Marriage, chap. 3 in St. Augustine: Treatise on Marriage, Wilcox, 12.
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develop in a more positive way.139 I will return to this below when considering medieval developments in the understanding of marriage. It is important to note that the couple is incontinent; yet, Augustine still says one should not try to avoid a possible procreative act. Thus, he thinks avoiding procreation is wrong not only because of the physical act that prevents procreation, but also because of the intent to prevent procreation.
In his work on Adulterous Marriages St. Augustine further elaborates his vision of marriage in relation to continence and concupiscence saying,
If, then, he practices continence, neither let him marry nor beget children. However, if he does not control himself, let him enter into lawful wedlock, so that he may not
139 St. Augustine will later call this the good of fidelity, one of three goods of marriage: offspring, fidelity and sacrament. See Ibid., Chap. 24, Chap. 8.
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beget children in disgrace or avoid having offspring by a more degraded form of intercourse. There are some lawfully wedded couples who resort to this last, for intercourse even with one’s lawfully wedded spouse, can take place in an unlawful and shameful manner, whenever the conception of offspring is avoided. Onan, the son of Juda, did this very thing, and the Lord slew him on that account. Therefore, the procreation of children is itself the primary, natural, legitimate purpose of marriage. Whence it follows that those who marry because of their inability to remain continent ought not to so temper their vice that they preclude the good of marriage, which is the procreation of children.140
Here, he reiterates his teaching that marriage, which is a lower calling then complete continence, is for procreation and
140 St. Augustine, Adulterous Marriages, 2.12.12 in St. Augustine: Treatise on Marriage, Wilcox, 117.
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the control of concupiscence. He, however, distinguishes between sexual intercourse to control concupiscence and unlawful intercourse, which he says seeks to avoid the conception of offspring, reiterating it with a reference to Onan. St. Augustine, ever keeps before his mind St. Paul’s teaching “it is better to marry than burn with passion” (1 Cor. 7:9) which he interprets to mean that marrying controls the desire to fornicate and commit adultery. Based on this he teaches that marital intercourse without a procreative intent is a venial sin, though pardonable.141
141 See St. Augustine, The Good of Marriage, Chap. 11; and On the Excellence of Widowhood, Chap. 4. Paul Ramsey offers a good explanation of how St. Augustine’s interpretation of the marriage due, properly understood, correctly follows St. Paul’s teaching p.127-129. Paul Ramsey, “The Ethics of St. Augustine,” in The Ethics of St. Augustine, ed. William S. Babcock, (Scholars Press: Atlanta, GA, 1991), 115-145. On Marital Intercourse as a venial sin, see St. Augustine, The Good of Marriage, chap. 8. It is important to note is that he always has before his mind the reality of how the fall affects sexuality believing it would have been different in paradise. He
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In his book on Marriage and Desire, 420 A.D., St. Augustine gives a summation of his teaching on Marriage, sexuality and contraception saying,
It is, nonetheless, one thing to have intercourse only out of the desire to have children; that involves no sin. It is something else to seek the pleasure of the flesh by having intercourse—though not with someone other than one’s spouse; that involves a pardonable sin. For, even though one does not have intercourse for the sake of having children, one does not, nonetheless, prevent the procreation of a child for the sake of this sexual passion, either by an evil intention or by an evil act. Though they may be called husband and wife, those who do this are not truly husband and wife, and they do not preserve any reality of marriage. Rather, they merely use the good name of marriage to cover over their shamefulness. They are, however, revealed for what they are when they go to the point of exposing the unwanted children who are born to them. They were not, after all, willing to
best expresses this in his later writing “Letter 6 to Atticus.”
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rear and to have with them the children they did not want to bear . . . At times this lust-filled cruelty or cruel lust goes so far that it even procures drugs to cause sterility, and if they are not effective, it somehow extinguishes and destroys within the womb the fetus already conceived, desiring that its own offspring perish before it begins to live. Or, if it was living in the womb, it desires that it be killed before it is born. Certainly, if both of them are such people, they are not husband and wife, and if they were such from the beginning, they did not come together in marriage, but rather in debauchery. But if both of them are not such people, I venture to say; either she is in some sense the prostitute of her husband, or he is an adulterer toward his wife.142
In this passage, he speaks about possible sins in marriage: lust, infanticide, abortion and contraception, which flow from his fully developed teaching on marriage and sexuality. In his reasoning, he makes the
142 St. Augustine, Marriage and Desire, bk.1, 15.17, in Teske, S.J., Answers to the Pelagians II: Marriage and Desire, 40-41. (Also called Marriage and Concupiscence).
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same argument about marriage devolving into prostitution as he does in his attack on the Manicheans. The only difference here is that he mentions in Latin “sterilitatis venena procuret” the use of “sterilizing drugs” to secure barrenness explicitly. Here he brings together the anti-life mentality of contraception with the consequence of lust that flows from marital intercourse not open to procreation. He clearly thinks that such couples who engage in such practices should not even be called married, but harlots or adulterers. Thus, this leaves one with two notions about contraception in St. Augustine that he sees it under two aspects: as an anti-life kind activity and an act contrary to the nature of marriage.
Though St. Augustine developed a theology of marriage and sexuality more than any other father before him, his theology of marriage was still inadequate in
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some regards. He never developed the unitive significance of marriage or even his own notion of fidelity as more than just to prevent the spouse from sinning. Even though he hints that marriage is more than just for procreation, those following him needed to develop what he left unsaid. Noonan believes the inadequacies of Augustine’s theology of marriage led theologians to assert that it was just for procreation for the next 1000 years to the detriment of marriage.143
This assertion, however, is wrong, for some medieval theologians develop insights of the Fathers and their own thoughts about how marriage had meaning beyond just procreation. Alexander Hales in his Summa, a compilation of 13th century Franciscan thought, extols how marital love promotes humility, charity and mutual help and
143 See Noonan, Contraception, 138-139.
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support. St. Bonaventure in his Breviloquium sees the union of man and woman as a symbol of the Trinitarian love of God and the Hypostatic Union of God with humanity in the Incarnate Word. Marriage for him is the symbolic representation of all the other sacraments, ecclesiology and man’s communion with God. 144 St. Thomas Aquinas developed the idea of marriage as a community of mutual service and fidelity under the virtue of Justice. This included a deep appreciation of natural love in marriage, which he saw as bringing friendship and a sweet society through the act of intercourse. Oresme describes the union of the male and female in marriage as the fruit of reason and deliberation, which is amiable and leads them to live more fully.
144 For Bonaventure see Sr. Paula Jean Miller, Marriage: The Sacrament of Divine-Human Communion: A Commentary on St. Bonaventure's Breviloquium, (Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1996).
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The Nuptial liturgy of “The Great Church of York” expresses the unitive nature of marriage saying “Lo, brethren, we are come here today before God and his holy angels and all his saints… to couple and knit together, that is to say, of this man and of this woman, that they be from this time forth but one body and two souls in the faith and law of God and holy Church.” This testimony takes for granted that this teaching on marriage is acceptable as they felt no need to speak in a polemic language. Thus, one can say the medieval theologians appreciated marriage for more than just for procreation, while continuing to teach that contraception was gravely wrong. The modern development of the unitive significance of marriage should not then be seen as opposed to the teaching of the
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Fathers and developed further in the Middle Ages.145
145 The attitude of Medieval theologians is summarized in Fabian Parmisano, “Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages land II” New Black Friars, 80(1969)599-606,649-660. See also “Sex in the Catholic Tradition,” in Ronald Lawler et al., Catholic Sexual Ethics, Chap. 3. p. 46-64. For the unanimous teaching of Medieval theologians against contraception see Noonan, Contraception, Chapters, V-X, p. 143-300.
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Conclusion
This study of the development of the anti-life argument against contraception in the early Church has revealed some important aspects of the foundation of the Church’s teaching. The primary influence on the Fathers in their development of this teaching was the teaching of Christ as articulated in the scriptures. They were secondarily influenced in their development of this teaching by their Jewish inheritance and contact with the pagan culture and philosophy of the time. They carried on the Jewish respect for the life and the sanctity of sexuality, but showed an even greater respect for the dignity of all life as made in the image of God. The early Church additionally regarded Christ as teaching a stricter view of sexual morality than the
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Jews or the Pagans. The Fathers followed St. Paul’s teaching that incorporation into Christ calls for an interior conversion toward purity greater than the external prohibitions emphasized by the Jews. Christians emphasized certain virtues such as chastity and self-control in a way that went beyond the Jews as they emphasized the value of virginity, the impossibility of divorce and the sanctity of every single sexual act. Christians taught that every act must be open to life, while the Jews had a more global view of the marital act allowing for contraception.
The Christians further developed their understanding of Christ’s call to purity and respect for life in contrast to the paganism of the time. In the Didache and the Letter of Barnabas, the Fathers showed their clear rejection of abortion and pharmakia used to control fertility. The apologists followed this
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emphasis, continuing to reject abortion and fertility control while engaging Stoic and neo-platonic philosophy. They echoed some of the sentiments of the Stoics against non-procreative sex, yet as St. Clement of Alexandria and St. Justin Martyr testified, they saw these philosophies as ultimately unfulfilling and needing to be supplemented by the saving grace of Christ. They showed a respect for the true elements of philosophy of their time, some of which showed a great respect for embryonic life and marriage as primarily for procreation. They additionally recognized, as did some Stoic philosophers at the time, that Marriage had a meaning beyond just procreation. They worked to develop under the influence of Stoic philosophy how sexual morality is governed by a natural law that includes the rational aspect of man and an openness to the Divine. While working to show Christianity’s
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contrast to the anti-life mentality of the Pagans they often did not distinguish closely between abortion and contraception, but simply condemned them both as attempts at fertility control. This period culminated in the first clear teaching against contraception by St. Hippolytus who saw this as a sin against purity just as are prostitution and homosexuality; he condemns contraception along with abortion as an anti-life kind of activity.
The post-Nicene fathers (e.g., Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Augustine) particularly developed the distinction between contraception and abortion as against the virtue of purity, which are anti-life activities. In contrast to the teaching of the Manicheans, they condemned the idea that marriage and sexuality were evil and promoted the value of procreation as the primary purpose of marriage. In contrast to
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the lack of chastity they saw prevalent during their time, they emphasized the value of virginity, and chastity in marriage, condemning castration, sterilization and contraception as opposed to the nature of marriage. St. Ambrose St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine particularly developed how contraception is an anti-life kind of activity like abortion and infanticide in that it works against the formation of life. Though these fathers had an inadequate understanding of embryology, this did not limit their condemnation of all forms of contraception and abortion for they saw all of these acts as grave sins against the procreative purpose of marriage.
Later theologians received much fruit from Father’s teaching about sexuality, marriage and contraception as they developed the seeds that the early fathers culled from Scriptural reflection and oral
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tradition. The early Fathers clearly taught that marital relations not open to procreation were immoral; chastity is a supreme virtue that touches on one’s very relationship with Christ and that failure to follow Christ’s call to holiness by living chastely leads to abortion, infanticide, homosexuality and pedophilia. They saw an intimate link between impurity and anti-life activities; in their minds if one rejects the virtue of chastity this leads to contraception, abortion and infanticide. To emphasis this connections they used the metaphor of “murder,” showing how they saw even contraception as akin to murder, as an anti-life kind of activity. The Fathers saw contraception as a sin under two categories, first being against the nature of marriage and second as an anti-life activity. Putting these together, they saw it as an unchaste
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practice against the nature of marriage that chooses as an object an anti-life activity.
Contemporary theology has developed certain aspects of the Church’s teaching on marriage and family that were inadequately addressed by the Fathers or left in only seminal forms, including how the Church’s moral teachings flow from natural law, the unitive significance of marriage and the anthropology, which underlies an adequate understanding of sexuality. St. Augustine in particular in his teaching, which was so influential for later theologians, never came to the idea that marital relations could build up communion in marriage and taught that if these relations were not done for procreation they were at least a venial sin. Later theologians such as St. Thomas Aquinas will have to fill in where Augustine left off, pointing toward the communitarian aspect of marriage and its opposition to the
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virtue of justice. Yet, he, as did most other medieval theologians, maintained that contraception is opposed to the virtue of chastity and that it chooses as an object the prevention of procreation.146 More recently, John Paul in his Theology of the Body conferences has developed more in depth the unitive significance of marriage, which he teaches, following Humanae Vitae, can never be separated from the procreative significance, and has further grounded this teaching in a more adequate anthropology.147 Recently some theologians such as Germain Grisez have sought to develop a more adequate natural law theory to show how the Church’s moral teaching
146 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Libros Sententiarum, IV, 31, 2, 3.
147 See especially “He gave them the Law of Life as Their Inheritance”, Chap. 3 in John Paul II, Male and Female He Created Them.
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flows from an understanding of integral human fulfillment.148
Nevertheless, the Fathers reveal for us some important groundwork for those who wish to understand the doctrine and nature of contraception. They point toward contraception as being closely related to all anti-life activities that seek to prevent the formation of a child, such as abortion and infanticide. They point toward contraception being intimately linked to the virtue of chastity and see that if one does not live chastity they cannot truly call themselves a Christian, incorporated into Christ. They further teach that one who denies the procreative significance of marriage opens the door for lust, prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia, contraception,
148 See Germain Grisez, “Natural Law and the Fundamental Principles of Morality” Chap. 7 in The Way of the Lord Jesus: Volume 1, Christian Moral Principles, (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983).
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abortion and infanticide. All these activities are in their mind the fruit of unchaste living. This is important for our contemporary culture for the Fathers teach us that one cannot separate chastity from anti-life activities, nor divide contraception, abortion and infanticide into separate issues; for, they all flow from denying the procreative significance of marriage. We should not then wonder at the U.S. Supreme Court in their Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that saw abortion as flowing from the right to contraception.149 For, in the minds of the Fathers, one cannot separate abortion from
149 The majority argued in the ruling that “The Roe rule's limitation on state power could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” Section E, in Planned Parenthood of SouthEastern PA v. Casey, 505 U.S. 883, (1992).
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contraception as John T. Noonan tried to do.150 They are, as John Paul II said in the quote above from Evangelium Vitae, two fruits from the same tree (see pg. 3). Following then the wisdom of the Fathers, one can see that every teaching on marriage and family, from abortion to homosexuality goes back to how one sees contraception and the procreative significance of marriage.
150 Noonan tries to distinguish abortion from contraception as a separate issue thinking that the Church has adequately grounded her teaching on abortion, in contrast to contraception. See John T. Noonan, The Morality of Abortion: Legal and Historical Perspectives. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
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