“The purpose of marriage is not pleasure and ease but the procreation and education of children and the support of a family…. People who do not like children are swine, dunces, and blockheads, not worthy to be called men and women, because they despise the blessing of God, the Creator and Author of marriage.” - Martin Luther, (Christian History, Issue 39, p. 24).
This morning my preacher brought the Word from Hebrews 10, focusing largely on verse 23:
“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”
And it got me thinking about family planning. A confession is something that you cannot hide. Sooner or later, it will always make itself known. When you add the proof or “fruit” of time (the idea of holding fast ), much like the sun on the eastern horizon – your confession will inevitably come shining through. 
Often times however, when couples deal with contraception, that confession is anything but unwavering, and typically something less than biblical.
Here’s the problem (as Thomas Aquinas so aptly explained it). Much of today’s cultural Christianity has mixed up the idea of the telos (meaning ”completion”, “goal”, or “purpose”) of thing and the effects of a thing. Instead, we have begun to view the (telos) purpose of sex as a self-serving buffet of whatever “purpose” we decide we’d like to partake in that night. We have convinced ourselves (with the help of a few ethical tap dances, our favorite one-line proof texts taken out of their biblical context, and a culture that does all it can to convince us that children are burdens) that we have the right as created beings to exchange an explicit purpose of sex (procreative unity), with a ”crowning grace” of sex (pleasure). Sounds harmless enough, right?
Unfortunately, we couldn’t be more wrong. What we are talking about here is what Aquinas called natural law, and what I (and others far smarter than I) have called created theology. Either way, it means that because God created us, Christ redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit has sealed us – we are called to hold fast to our confession, because He who promised is faithful. And as far as your body is concerned, that faithfulness started an eternity ago. Furthermore, such faithfulness brings with it an idea of contoured humanity - meaning God tells us what “human” is, what “marriage” is, what “sex” is, and more importantly what the purpose of it all is.
Which brings us back to the question of pleasure and sex in marriage. But first, one more example:
What is the purpose of eating? What if I were to tell you that I had the right to only eat for pleasure? No nutritional value whatsoever, only things that tasted good. You would probably tell me that something so foolish is not even worth debating. But what if I were to tell you that I’m eating purely for pleasure — all to the glory of God. Hopefully you would reply, “You can’t just pick what glorifies God. That kind of stuff is not up to us.” And you know what? I would totally agree with you, and so would the Bible.
Here’s the deal. As J. Budziszewski explains in Written on the Heart:
“In drawing the two sexes together, for instance, sexual desires serve two purposes, one called procreative and the other unitive. Why not a third: pleasure? Has Thomas [Aquinas] got something against having a good time? No, but he follows Aristotle in viewing pleasure as a result of our activities rather than the purpose for which we do them — as a crowning grace, not a goal.
The problem is that pleasure can result from doing wrong as well as right. Therefore pleasure cannot be used as a criterion for judging between good and bad inclinations; rather the purposes of the inclination must be used to judge between good and bad pleasures.”
No one, not even Thomas Aquinas disagrees that pleasure in sex is good. But he admits something that a great many contemporary evangelicals are unwilling to admit: the purpose of sex is NOT pleasure. It never was and to pursue it as such is to disregard all that we know about right and wrong in matters of sexuality. To pursue a God-given blessing of sex (pleasure) rather than it’s God-given purpose, is nothing short of worship of Self. And that brothers and sisters is nothing short of idolatry.
Now, is that a confession that you are willing to live with?
‘BH
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For more information on the ethics of birth control, click here or here.
6 Comments
December 29, 2008 at 6:18 pm
At the risk of it appearing to be guilty of your so-called proof texting, would love have your thoughts on Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor 7: 1-5. In this passage it would seem that the pleasures derived from covenental sexual relations are prescriptive so as to avoid temptation that leads to sexual immorality.
December 29, 2008 at 7:06 pm
And, I might add, Song of Solomon — the entire book — is devoted to pleasure in marriage. I wonder if Luther ever read it.
December 29, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Chuck-
Having proof texts is not a bad thing in and of itself. But what proponents of birth control do is actually the opposite of “proofing”. Rather they gather verses that speak to sex and marriage and assume that the absence of an express prohibition of contraception is equal to a Divine prescription of it…according to wise human stewardship, of course. It would kind of be like me taking all my favorite verses on eating and drinking in Scripture, then upon the absence of a direct prohibition, assuming that its glorifying to God for me to eat nothing but pure sugar for the rest of my life (however short it may be because of it). Is sugar edible? Yes. Did God make sugar edible? Yes. But did God intend for me (or create my body in such a way as) to only eat sugar? Absolutely not. That’s both Biblical and common sense. Sugar is to food as pleasure is to sex. While we may get gratification out of both sugar and pleasure, neither are created to sustain us alone. As Budziszewski notes in his book, we separate the procreative nature of sex only at our peril. If man can not live by bread alone, you can bet your boots that the sugar of pleasure is but a fleeting grasp at life on our own terms.
Okay, as for Paul in 1 Corinthians. The answer is easier than you may think. While its clear that pleasure is not a purpose of sex (again, anymore than pleasure is the purpose of eating), we can still affirm that the pleasure itself has a God intended purpose — which is what Paul is affirming in chapter 7. Paul never makes the argument, nor implies, that the purpose of sex is pleasure. Rather, he argues that one of the effects of the giving of the “conjugal rights” of sex is that “Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” In the same way that a fire is pleasurable on a cold day, marital intercourse is meant to draw us back to our spouses for our own good. While marriage is seen in these verses as an answer to the “temptation to sexual immorality,” there is absolutely no ethical force (from Paul or the rest of Scripture) towards separating what marital sex actually “is”.
And that’s the clearest fallacy of your assumption, that “pleasure” is Paul’s main issue here. We assume it, and read it into his epistle, probably because we want to use it to support our reconstitution of the nature of sex; but if we’ll be honest with the text, Paul says nothing about “sex for pleasure”. Instead, he lucidly argues that covenental sexual relations are an imperative defense of faithfulness in marriage. Hence its not “sex for pleasure”. And it’s actually not “sex for” anything. It’s “sex which – defends and delivers from temptation”. Paul is not defining what “sex” is here, rather he is building upon the foundational definition of its purposes and boundaries that we get from Genesis and the rest of Old Testament Scripture. Duh, sex is pleasurable. But that’s exactly why Paul is addressing the issue of sexual immorality here. He is reminding believers that pleasure itself is not a gauge for right sex and wrong sex. Rather sex must only be undertaken under certain God given circumstances (marriage), and for God instilled purposes (the procreative unity of Genesis) and effects (faithfulness and defense against temptation). The purpose of sex is in its created nature, but its effects and “crowning graces” (as Aristotle put it) are many, pleasure being only one (albeit, much sought after).
On another note, I’d be interested to hear your argument that Paul would have intended his readers to take “contraception is okay” from his first letter to the Corinthians, seeing as that was neither the question he was answering, nor was it the force of his argument (Not to mention that Paul’s rabbinic heritage couldn’t have been more anti-contraceptive)…
December 29, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Travis-
Just to save you some time in reading the previous comment to Chuck, I’m not saying that pleasure in sex is bad, or unbiblical. I am saying, with the rest of Church history, that pleasure is not to be pursued as a purpose of sex at the negation of one of its express purposes (procreative unity). Just as we can not “define” marriage but must partake in its God-given contours of being one man and one woman; we can not “define” sex into something we prefer, rather we must partake in its God-given contours of being procreative and unitive in nature.
I assure you (though not upon any first-hand knowledge) that Martin Luther and his wife, Katharina von Bora, took great pleasure in their conjugal rights — conceiving and raising all 6 of their children. Luther wasn’t a pleasure-hater any more than you or I. But he undoubtedly knew the Bible better than us both, in more languages than both of us put together. How’s that for humbling? That doesn’t mean he’s right, just worthy of a little more consideration than contemporary cultural assumptions…
December 29, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Hank, I don’t find it being dishonest with the text to read that Paul is implicitly referring to the pleasurable aspects of marital sex, in prescribing IT as a defense against the temptation to find pleasure elsewhere. When he refers to a spouses “duty” (opheile) and denial being “deprivation” (apostereo) it would be a stretch to think he is talking about sexual intercourse for the purpose of procreation. It seems to me that what is implied is that because of our weakness, we WILL be tempted to seek sexual pleasure outside the bonds of marriage and therefore, as a prevention to that sin, it is imperative that sexual pleasure MUST be mutually provided within those bonds.
Furthermore, in acknowledging that the temptation exists, it would seem that Paul is conceding that the reason why a person would seek sex outside of marriage would be for pleasure, as I think you will agree that the motive for sexual infidelity would seldom be procreation. And it would NOT seem that Paul is suggesting that Satan tempts a person with procreation as a motivation to seek sex outside of marriage, but rather, the temptation is pleasure.
It would appear that Matthew Henry agrees when in his commentary he uses the terms “comforts of the conjugal state” and “lawful enjoyments” to refer to the pleasureable aspects of sexual relations within marriage and that Satan “ensnares with unlawful enjoyments.”
December 29, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Chuck-
The premise of your argument is fundamentally flawed. You are artificially severing the purpose of sex from an effect of sex. Paul is talking about the totality of “sex” here, so we need to as well. To use Texan philosophical language – a thing is not what it does, it is was it is. Sex is not pleasure, it is pleasurable. Therefore sex cannot be pursued solely for pleasure or it is no longer sex that you’re pursuing; rather it is pure, unadulterated pleasure.
And the other side is true as well. Sex is not procreation, it is procreative. I no more think it is moral (or biblical) to have sex solely to have offspring — with no desire to unite with your spouse in the “one flesh union” of the conjugal state, than to have it solely for pleasure. (Which is what Paul is hitting on in the preceding chapter of 1 Corinthians (“What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.” – 6:16)
What is in debate here is who decides the purposes and effects of sex. If God has purposed that sex be unitive and procreative in type, undoubtedly making it pleasurable for His good purposes (as Paul makes clear), then we have no right to decide that one purpose or effect is worth pursuing and one is not (Much in the same way that God made “marriage” to mean one man and one woman, we have no right to chose something else to mean “marriage”, because it’s God’s prerogative as sovereign Creator). For us to do otherwise would be the height of self-deification.
Science is what has loosed the knot of procreation and pleasure, not God. Is it that difficult to imagine why God would link the two? That out of a one-flesh union of self-sacrificing love, replete with all the pleasure that intimate love can bring, “life” would emerge? Instead of self pleasing, you have a one-flesh union that is life giving — whose ultimate prerogative is God’s alone.