Where so many Protestants go wrong in deliberating the morality of contraception is their failure to distinguish between creation and nature. As Brent Waters comments in his work, Reproductive Technology:Towards a Theology of Procreative Stewardship, “Although creation is good because of the imprint it bears of its creator, and its created order has been vindicated by Christ’s resurrection, its perfection will be accomplished only in Christ in the fullness of time.” Therefore, when we view our fertility as merely a natural (read, unCreated) function to be altered at whim, we are thereby rejecting it’s innate Createdness, and any intention of both the Creator and Redeemer for the ends of our fertility. Naturalism brings with it no intentionality on the part of nature, no plan as how best to steward it. Creationism on the other hand, is rich with an understanding of not only the original created order, but also the teleos (or ends) to which it has been, and is being vindicated and redeemed in Christ.
Consider this…
“Since dominion is a divine blessing, God expects its recipients to exercise it in accordance with creation’s vindicated order and appoint end in Christ. According to Oliver O’Donovan, the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ vindicates creation and its order. The word ‘creation’ implies a given order; otherwise the universe would consist of undifferentiated matter and energy. Since God’s created order includes all creatures and the natural processes upon which they depend, creation’s vindication provides an objective and expansive focal point for moral deliberation. This does not mean that we may simply look to nature and discover given norms or ethical principles. This would reduce creation to nature, diminishing the significance of Christ’s resurrection. Rather, a vindicated creation discloses a natural ethic that can only be perceived in its ordering in and to Christ as the head of creation and first born from the dead. It is what Christ’s resurrection reveals that enables us to see a created order instead of a more narrowly construed natural order.” – pg 34, Reproductive Technology: Toward a Theology of Procreative Stewardship
‘BH
2 Comments
August 15, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Isaiah 29:16
16 You turn things upside down,
as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!
Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,
“He did not make me”?
Can the pot say of the potter,
“He knows nothing”?
Isaiah 45:9
“Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘He has no hands’?
Romans 9:21
Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?
September 10, 2008 at 6:44 am
[...] the issues that I talk about (family ethic issues in particular — although I’ve made attempts). In the end however, I’ve been quite hesitant to make extensive use of the [...]