Wow, this went from polite disagreement to accusations real fast.
I am not accusing, I am asking because I read this text in a very different way than you did.
If you actually looked at the links embedded in the words of the quotes you would have seen that those quotes come from the New Advent link to the book itself and I think your reply here is a bit of a lame, and bad, attempt to explain it way. Augustine is obviously talking about
sex within marriage in the sense that many fathers speak of it. I understand you keep getting thumbs up for your kind of indirect justifications of birth control, but let me address this directly:
I looked at the links, I read the book itself. I did not have time to fully address point by point. But again, I read things in a very different way than you did. I assume that all Fathers will be addressing sex within marriage. I do not care about thumbs ups and I am not trying to justify birth control, but advocating for the Pastoral office.
1. No father endorsed birth control, period.
That is a bold statement. I can see saying I have never read anything in the writings of the Fathers that would endorse birth control. But unless you have read them all, you cannot say the Fathers never endorsed birth control in writing. Even still we cannot speak of their pastoral guidance, save in those circumstances where they are made in writing. And even if we could agree with your statement, this does not, in and of itself, mean that it is wrong. The Fathers did not endorse the internet, should we stop using it? (The answer to this is probably, but I digress)
2. Several fathers specifically said the sexual act, even within marriage, was sinful without the intent to produce children (we just quoted Augustine, and on the top of my head Athenagora, St Hippolytus, and St Clement of Alexandria can be listed. Other men who were not saints, like Lacantius, also repeated the same exact thing). What I find mind boggling is that we are still, at this point, pretending that these men 1. did not
really say these things and 2. that this was not really a view among the fathers.
Please provide me with a quote that says that the sexual act, even within marriage, was sinful without the intent to produce children without the implication that they meant any children at all. I am unconvinced in what I saw in Augustine.
3. No fathers endorsed sexuality purely for enjoyment's sake, period.
Not for enjoyment per se, but they allowed it for reasons other than procreation, as I mentioned. Husbands and wives ought not to deny each other lest they fall into greater sin.
4. No ecumenical canon, or quote from Chrysostom says this is an issue without an objective moral basis.
But that objective moral basis must always be secondary to the salvation of the married couple. That is why they allow for sex that is not procreative.
Because of the preceding, while we can all pretend that the view of fathers that viewed sexuality has a "blameful [sic] passion" as opposed to a "blameless passion" was a minority view, what we absolutely cannot pretend the fathers believed was that they would have approved of birth control. This is because we simply lack any fathers endorsing birth control and only have statements of them rejecting it.
How about sexuality is a blameful passion which becomes blameless within marriage, not just because of the begetting of children, but because of the community of marriage.
Let's apply the painful pro-birth control logic to any other issue among the fathers. The fathers all reject the Jewish sabbath, some very explicitly. Let's pretend in the 22nd century, that observing the Saturday sabbath becomes the dominant mode among the laity. When an inquirer asks about this, he is told "Ask your spiritual father." Others make similar replies and say, "The fathers did not really mean that! They were just the extremists."
I don't find these comparable, if you do, you misunderstand me.
What's the point of looking at the patristic view of the matter if we are going to ignore all of their explicit statements with the excuse, "That's not enough fathers, so I'm not convinced it's bad, so therefore it's good." This should not be brothers! If we apply this to any other issue, it would be inexcusable. So, why is it excusable with birth control?
Again, not what I have said, not what I would say, not what most who speak on the topic say. Instead, we should understand what the Fathers say, why they said it, and how we might apply that to an issue that they did not address directly. Which is exactly what you try to do in the following.
I'll end with a quote from St John Chrysostom, which not so coincidentally comes up from his exegesis of "And make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the
lusts thereof:"
Where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot thou dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevent its being born. Why then do you abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter?
So, the preceding quote is obviously against
abortion itself. Granted, it is not entirely clear what Chyrsostom, medically, thought abortion was. If you read further, it is clear he thinks that "potions" had this effect, and he might have thought chemical means of birth control killed the seed to a child in the womb.
If you are using arguments against abortion to argue against all contraception, why is it wrong to use arguments about not depriving one another in favor of (limited use of) contraception?
Nevertheless, while Chrysostom definitely considered abortion itself worse that murder, and might have due to his medical ignorance actually thought any prevent of the birth of a child was worse than murder, this is not the point in this conversation. Look how he explains himself: "Why then do you abuse the gift of God," i.e. the ability to have children? Is not the obvious teaching that the procreative act is for "childbearing" and not "slaughter?" Wouldn't this be consistent with his teaching to not make provisions for the lust of the flesh?
abortion is clearly the abuse of a gift of God. Limited use of contraception does not have to be. The affections of a spouse are a gift of God which we abuse if we deny one another. Saint John Chrysostom says so: "Great evils spring from this sort of continence, if it is overdone. Adulteries, fornications and the destruction of families have often resulted from this. If a married man commits fornication, how much more will he do so if his wife denies herself to him? Unless there is mutual consent, continence in this case is really a form of theft." -- Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians 19:3
I'm not here to say I have not sinned with birth control in the past or I might not in the future. This is something my wife and I will work out, with our priest, depending upon our sanctification and other spiritual matters. However, for anyone to claim it is "Orthodox" to say that birth control is not "bad" and that any fathers had a positive view of sex acts which purposely avoided the possibility of having children are fundamentally dishonest with the fathers and 19 centuries of Orthodoxy.
Again, you misunderstand me fundamentally if you think I am singing the praises of contraception. If you yourself have or might use it, then you should understand that this is a pastoral issue and must remain so. I don't think the Fathers were sexual libertines, but neither do I think they were interested in placing too heavy of a burden on anyone.
Rus brought the issue of lack of clarity up. This is really what I'm fighting about--not the issue of talking to your priest, because that's exactly what I do. But, I can say with clarity what my spiritual father and former bishop, before I changed jurisidictions, said--birth control
is bad. We are sinners and do bad things. Okay, now that we got that out of the way, the better question is how we move forward in our sanctification.
I don't think speaking with clarity is what happens though. Because clarity when it is wrong is not clarity at all, but falsehood cleverly presented. I don't think that we should say that birth control is bad, I think that we should say that Chastity is one of the goals of both monastic and married life, and that sexual intercourse within marriage is still chaste. We should not abuse the marital bed to make a mockery of this chastity of marriage, but neither should we deny one another to the harm of the marriage. If you have questions on how to do this within your marriage, speak with your priest.
What we don't need to hear are long winded justifications about how the fathers "did not really say that" or "the Orthodox Church never really taught that" or other silliness. Just whip out Kallistos Ware's first edition of the Orthodox Way. He had no problem identifying the issue as the whole Church did--birth control is wrong. Let that be known to any observers of this thread that are looking for a straight forward answer.
