THE LIVING WORD
Reading Scripture from the Heart of the Church
Children Are a Blessing from the Lord
Does Scripture have anything to say about contraception?
Dr. Mary Healy
Although the Bible does not contain any direct prohibition of contraception, the Church’ s teaching on this subject is derived from fundamental truths about marriage and sexuality revealed in Scripture as well as in creation itself. It is similar to the case of other moral issues such as polygamy. Although Scripture nowhere condemns polygamy, over the centuries both Jews and Christians came to recognize this practice as fundamentally incompatible with the dignity of the human person and with God’ s plan for marriage.
There are several biblical truths that help to ground the Church’ s prohibition of contraception.
First, there is the Bible’ s strong emphasis on the fact that children are a gift from God. God’ s very first blessing and commandment has to do with childbearing:“ God blessed them, and God said to them,‘ Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth …’”( Gn 1:28). With this command, God gives human beings responsibility for their reproductive powers. The sexual union of spouses is for the exalted purpose of participating in God’ s own work of creation, populating the earth with new human beings created in his image and likeness.
The people of Israel considered this command a solemn obligation as well as a wonderful blessing. Many biblical passages celebrate the gift of offspring:
“ Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’ s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!”( Ps 127:3- 5; see Ps 128).
Second, Scripture implies the mysterious involvement of God himself in every act of human conception. In Genesis we read,“ Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying,‘ I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD’”( Gn 4:1). This divine intervention becomes even more evident in the description of Hannah’ s childbearing after being healed of infertility:“ The LORD visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters”( 1 Sm 2:21; emphasis added). In every conception of a human life, God performs a new act of creation: A new person with an eternal destiny comes into existence, a new face reflecting God’ s image in the world in a way it has never been reflected before. To refuse this mysterious divine action is to shut the door in God’ s face and exclude him from the great mystery that is meant to image him in the world( cf. Eph 5:32).
Third, Scripture indirectly reveals the disordered nature of contraceptive acts. Genesis tells the brief story of a son of Judah named Onan, whose brother had died. According to the norms of the time, a man whose brother had died leaving a widow should marry her and raise up offspring for his brother( a practice later known as the levirate law).
“ But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’ s wife he would waste the semen
on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and he put him to death”( Gn 38:9-10).
Onan was motivated by selfishness, not wishing to share his inheritance with children who would be considered his brother’ s. But his sin was not merely a matter of avoiding the levirate law, since the law allows the brother to refuse, with a penalty only of public humiliation, not death( Dt 25:6-10). Genesis implies, rather, that Onan’ s grave wrongdoing was to frustrate God’ s purpose for sexual union, and especially to oppose the fulfillment of God’ s promise that he would multiply the descendants of Abraham( 17:6; 28:3; 35:11).
Finally, the deepest biblical truths grounding the Church’ s teaching on contraception are those so eloquently articulated by Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body. As he showed, God designed the marital act to be the visible expression of a covenant in which a man and woman give themselves to one another entirely and without reserve— including their potential motherhood or fatherhood.
Dr. Mary Healy is professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart.
36 Sacred Heart Major Seminary | Mosaic | Spring 2018