Is masturbating without fantasizing a sin?

[Ave Maria]

Also, the early Church Fathers were taught by the apostles themselves. Here is what they have to say:

Clement of Alexandria
"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 [A.D. 191]).

Clement of Alexandria
"To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (ibid. 2:10:95:3).

Lactantius
"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (ibid. 6:23:18).

Epiphanius of Salamis
"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).

 

[HeavenlyMetal]

Masturbating in itself is not a sin, but makes you unclean. (Leviticus 15:16)
Those who are unclean are denied of the benefits of being a believer until they are clean again. (2 Chronicles 23:19) (Deuteronomy 23:10-14)

The lustful fantasies that usually accompany masturbation is definitely sinning. (Matthew 5:28)

How to be clean again? Well in the old days all you could do was wait. Now we can ask Jesus for forgiveness and to make a new clean start. That involves immediatly overcoming unclean habits, and asking to be lead in the spirit and not the flesh. Since the holy spirit dwells in us, we can overcome uncleanliness by living in the spirit.

Like almost any unclean health problem, the idea is prevention.

Some people see masturbating without lusting as a tool to drive out temptation. Not very effective and it's just not worth being unclean & feeling guilty.

 

[Freedom63]

Fine, I will provide Scripture:

For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell."
(Acts 15:28-29 RSV)

Masturbatio is unchastity.

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 Corinthians 6:18-20 RSV)

It is definitely not glorifying God by masturbating.

We must not indulge in immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day.
(1 Corinthians 10:8 RSV)

This verse is referring to sexual immorality which is what masturbation is.

But fornication and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is fitting among saints. Let there be no filthiness, nor silly talk, nor levity, which are not fitting; but instead let there be thanksgiving. Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure man, or one who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
(Ephesians 5:3-5 RSV)

Masturbation is impurity.

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
(Colossians 3:5 RSV)

Masturbation is impurity and results from passion.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from unchastity; that each one of you know how to take a wife for himself in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like heathen who do not know God; that no man transgress, and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we solemnly forewarned you.
(1 Thessalonians 4:3-6 RSV)

Again, masturbation is unchastity.

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood.
(Acts 15:19-20 RSV)

Again, masturbation is unchastity.

Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
(Romans 13:11-14 RSV)

This clearly says we are not to gratify the desires of the flesh. Masturbation results from desires of the flesh.

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 sperm on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother. And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD, and he slew him also.
(Genesis 38:8-10 RSV)

As you can see here, God slew Onan because he spilled his seed on the ground. Are you not doing the same when you touch? All sexual acts are to be open to life. Masturbation most certainly is not open to life.

There is not one of these verses that is dealing with masturbation. NONE!!
And of course Onan's sin was NOT masturbation but disobedience to God for not impregnating a woman who was not his wife.

Sexual desire is not lust of the flesh. It is created by God and declared good. Any desire can become sinful...but sex is not inherently sinful nor is the desire for. Again...not one of these verses has ANYTHING to do with masturbation.

 

[Freedom63]

Also, the early Church Fathers were taught by the apostles themselves. Here is what they have to say:

Clement of Alexandria
"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 [A.D. 191]).

Clement of Alexandria
"To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (ibid. 2:10:95:3).

Lactantius
"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (ibid. 6:23:18).

Epiphanius of Salamis
"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).

And these men severely damaged God's intent and allowed their own perversions to destroy the purity of God's creation. The church is still paying a heavy price for their failures.

 

[hedrick]

The Protestant focus is on lusting after a woman because, based on the Protestant view of sola scriptura it is proof-texted by certain passages.

There are certainly Protestants who do this. But the better writers look at how concepts are treated throughout the Bible, much as you say you are doing.

The problem here is that when you start abstracting out the overarching principles, there is often more than one way to do so. At the highest level, we have at least two different approach in the Bible. We have the OT legal tradition, which tends to view thing in terms of law and purity, and then we Jesus, who rejected both. The prophets are largely with Jesus in this, although they don't deal with the same range of moral issues that he does. The NT church tends to be ambiguous. Officially they side with Jesus, as in Acts 15 and Paul's teachings against legalism. But it's clear from Paul's letters that not everyone agreed with him on this, and even Paul shows the influence of purity now and then. The Catholic church seems to have returned to purity-based morals pretty early. Not that Jesus' teachings were completely forgotten, but they did tend to get viewed in a certain way.

I do agree that some Protestant views on this topic are a bit inconsistent. Not so much with Jesus as with the rest of their sexual teachings. But remember that the traditional conservative Protestant view is basically the same as yours. The liberal Protestant view is also consistent. For some reason some evangelicals side with liberals on this issue, although on almost all other sexual issues they take the traditional conservative view. While I agree with them in this case, I don't see how it follows from their principles, which on other sexual issues tend to follow the approach of maintaining sexual purity. In fairness, note that many of the evangelical responses in this thread reject masturbation.

However logical consistency is not the highest goal. My guess is that the motivation for accepting masturbation is primarily pastoral. Since Jesus tended to side with people's good over what his contemporaries thought was the consistent religious position, I think we have some reason for that. The same thing has driven many evangelicals to consider divorce as a lesser of evils. Again, I think that's a position Jesus would agree with. I just wish those specific concessions to reality would cause evangelicals to reconsider their more general commitment to the legal / purity based sexual ethics. But that might lead to a reconsideration of the ultimate unmentionable.

 

[Armistead14]

Also, the early Church Fathers were taught by the apostles themselves. Here is what they have to say:

Clement of Alexandria
"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 [A.D. 191]).

Clement of Alexandria
"To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature" (ibid. 2:10:95:3).

Lactantius
"God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital ['generating'] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring" (ibid. 6:23:18).

Epiphanius of Salamis
"They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption" (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).

Who cares what these men had to say, they were corrupt, cruel and thought sex was evil...with women anyway, many feel some where gay because they claimed no natural attraction from birth to females.

 

[Freedom63]

Who cares what these men had to say, they were corrupt, cruel and thought sex was evil...with women anyway, many feel some where gay because they claimed no natural attraction from birth to females.

Indeed!!!

 

[dayhiker]

hedrick,
Thanks for that post. That made a whole lot of sense to me. Has anyone written extensively about that idea?

A couple of years ago, I was reading about purity laws.

The idea was that every people group had purity laws in ancient times. It was these laws that told each other who belonged to what group. This is seen in statements that for Israel food are unclean, dead bodies are unclean, sperm and menstruation is unclean, certain dress is unclean, certain diseases are unclean etc.
Other clans had a different set of things that were unclean. This goes along with God saying these rules are to separate from the nations around them.

To be unclean was to be in the wrong place. Example: a person on the way to work spills coffee on their pants. Now she was just drinking the coffee that was clean. Her pants were clean when she put them on, but now the coffee is on the pants and neither is clean any longer.

To be unclean is to have mixture. Example no to wear clothes that are made of mixed threads. One can wear either on or the other, but not the mixing. Or the skin disease: one is clean with clear skin. Then one is unclean as the disease spreads. But Moses says one one is completely leprous they are clean not more unclean.

Today we use our passport or the status of our residence as proof of who we belong to, is our counties purity law, not these purity laws or certain actions.

This is part of what was going on in the NT when the Gentiles accept Christ. Did they now have to forsake their Gentile purity laws and obey the Jewish purity laws? Or was God saying the gospel is forever one. We are God not because we kept the Jewish purity laws or even some other groups purity laws. We are God's be Christ is our purity law. Because we put our faith in Christ, our identity is Christ, what sets us apart of other groups isn't that we obey one of their sets of purity laws, but we obey Christ. Christ is our purity.

So when Paul says Christ is the end of the law, he is saying Christ is the end of us obeying and showing our identity by obey purity laws. Nor does the NT set out a new set of rules about how to dress, what foods to not eat, how to deal with dead bodies and what sexual acts mean we have to stay out of church/fellowship for so many hours or until we can wash. If the NT did this our missionaries would be spending most of their times making all cultures stop following their purity laws and start following a list in the NT.
If one wanted a purity law from the NT I'd submit that the law of love is the one that would qualify.

 

[Armistead14]

Dayhiker,

You've pointed out the biggest error in Christian history, as different groups accepted Christ they felt the need to force their cultural codes on others combined with the gospel. Sadly, history shows the codes became more important than the gospel itself.

As I've stated in missions, I've seen codes pushed on tribes with the gospel, mostly purity/sexual codes and I've seen the gospel taught letting people continue in their traditional culture, for instance teaching natives their nakedness is sinful. It's a sad fact christianity pushing codes instead of the gospel, destroyed more tribes of people that can be counted and forced people by doctrine or the sword to switch to a value system other than what they had been taught for generations.

 

[hedrick]

Has anyone written extensively about that idea?

Yes, some of the recent work on the social-science background of religion deals with this. Tektonics has a reasonable page with a couple of references that I believe are to significant scholarship in the area: http://www.tektonics.org/af/cleanman.html. I'd start with them.

I'm not sure that the only purpose of purity is to set up boundaries between people. Certainly defining boundaries between the covenant people and the world is part of it, but I doubt it's the whole function. That page hints at other functions, and I'm sure the references go further.

While order is necessary, it seems pretty clear that Jesus deemphasized purity. You can see his attitude in his response to the rich young ruler: no human can hope to be pure; our goal is obedience. Similarly in his parables, slaves don't get any kind of credit for obeying. I think that includes purity, at least as it is often treated traditionally. Jesus focuses on intent and likely effect. Mat 12:3 seems one of the clearest examples of this.

Look particularly at the traditional concept of virginity. It's one thing to say that we shouldn't have inappropriate sex. But virginity turns it into a kind of possession that parents and husband value in ways that go beyond just caring whether someone is doing right.

Purity and obedience can lead to some of the same behavior, but they reflect very different attitudes towards ourselves and others. Honor killing seems to me the ultimate example of caring too much about purity.

I don't read a lot of current books on ethics. That's where you'd expect to find this. The best example I've seen of a treatment of sexual ethics in light of Jesus' actual priorities is a report on sexuality done years ago by the PCUSA, "Keeping Body and Soul Together", in http://oga.pcusa.org/publications/human-sexuality1991.pdf. [warning: huge file] It doesn't care much about conventional sexuality purity, but looks more carefully at questions of informed consent and situations where someone is likely to be pushed into doing something that they shouldn't. At that time the majority in the PCUSA wasn't ready for that approach, and it was rejected. It's still used by conservatives as an example of the deviations of the PCUSA. Parts of it now look almost laughably dated, and I don't agree with all of its suggestions, but it's still one of the few papers I know of where a major denomination makes a serious attempt to look at the implications for sexuality of Jesus' actual approach to ethics.

 

[dayhiker]

Yes, hedrik, I agree people still value the purity rituals. It seeks to be part of the human make up to want purity rules. But as I've observed its interesting that different people value different rules.

To me the biggest purity rule in the Bible and one I do follow is that idol worship will make one impure. After that the ritual I follow drop off pretty quick.

Since this thread is about masturbation, I think most of the church that teaches masturbation is a sin are really saying its a purity ritual more than what I see the Bible defining as sinful.

 

[restres]

Kittel indeed does a great job.
When I studied this Greek word, it was interesting to see that its the word Paul used for "Thou shall not covet."
I also remember that its the word used to describe Jesus' desire to have the last supper with the disciples and the good angels have this desire to know about what God is doing with the human race. I can't remember exactly how its worded.

So the word is used of good desires and bad. Masturbation likewise can be to good desires or bad. That's what makes is sinful or not.

 

[dayhiker]

restres ... that's exactly what I noticed when I studied that Greek word. ^5

 

[Armistead14]

restres ... that's exactly what I noticed when I studied that Greek word. ^5

Kittel is considered one of the best if not the best greek translators, maybe second to Jerome who translated the bible from greek to latin.

They both view it the same.......

 

[Izdaari Eristikon]

Be aware that there's an issue hiding here that hasn't shown up until this posting: non-procreative sex. Christian tradition has fairly widely held that sex has to be for procreation. This led to a rejection of contraception, masturbation, and various other things. Catholics rejected non-procreative sex more strongly than Protestants, but it's there in both traditions. Many, possibly most, Protestants came to accept contraception. There's been a slight tendency for conservative Protestants to change back. But Protestants are still softer on non-procreative sex. Hence many Protestants, even evangelicals, accept masturbation as long as the circumstances aren't likely to produce lust. (Yes, such circumstances are possible.) But not all. And objections can be for several reasons: (1) a disbelief that masturbation can ever be separated from lust, (2) a more general concern over non-procreative sex, including things other than just masturbation, or the following: (3) This doesn't turn up in discussions about masturbation as often here, but in the context of homosexuality, it's common to see an argument that sex is intended only for use in marriage. Depending upon whether you think this includes masturbation it could say that masturbation is permitted within marriage, but not outside it. The fact that many evangelicals consider masturbation as acceptable for single people suggest that they don't see it as the sort of sex that is restricted to marriage.

For what it's worth, I don't think the prohibition of non-procreative sex is Biblical, I think masturbation isn't always associated with lust, and I think it can be OK even outside of marriage. But my general position on sexual ethics is that Jesus is more concerned about how sex affects our relationships with others than on prohibiting a specific list of actions.

Agreed.

I don't believe the tradition against non-procreative sex is biblical or theologically correct.

 

[sniperelite7]

Of course it isn't, read song of songs and associate the words with hebrew euphemisms. They are clearly enjoying sexual activities that are not intended for procreation.

One might as well just argue that driving a car is sinful because we as humans were made to walk.

 

[The Fox]

No, nothing wrong with it. Haven't tried that myself but I can imagine it must be very boring and frustrating, though.

 

[Zebra1552]

Ok so I know that sexual fantasies are wrong

And what do you base that idea on? Where is that written? Who told you this?

but what about just the act of masturbating without any fantasies? Is the physical act itself wrong to just "blow off steam"?

Masturbation is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is reading into it, or has not read it.

 

[street preacher]

Fornication covers all sexual sins

 

[dayhiker]

Hi Street preacher ... Welcome to CF.

Have you studied the history of the word fornication?