Nature and Contraception

I just started reading John Jefferson Davis’ Evangelical Ethics, and the first issue he discusses is contraception. It is a really interesting chapter that helped me think about the issue in ways I hadn’t really considered, but I didn’t necessarily follow some of his conclusions or implications about the proper evangelical response to contraception.

Davis discusses the both the Roman Catholic and Protestant historical responses to contraception. In Humanae Vitae, Paul VI writes that using natural forms of family planning is acceptable, and “the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by their constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.” The word natural seems to be used a lot to explain the Roman Catholic position on this issue, and artificial methods of contraception are excluded. However, in the “Protestant Affirmation on the Control of Human Reproduction,” released by conservative American scholars in 1969, a year after Humanae Vitae was published, says that “the prevention of conception is not itself forbidden or sinful providing the reasons for it are in harmony with the total revelation of God for married life…The method of preventing pregnancy is not so much a religious as a scientific and medical question to be determined in consultation with the family physician.”

The evangelical Protestant response, though, must come from Scripture, Davis writes, and he outlines the relevant biblical passages concerning contraception. In the New Testament celibacy is given greater legitimacy, and abstinence is allowed by mutual agreement for a season of prayer, which would indicate that maximum fertility is not necessarily God’s will and purpose for Christian marriage. Davis also broadens the application of abstinence for prayer to include other spiritual reasons, including “the good of the family and the welfare of the children already born” (55). He further suggests that the nature of man as made in the image of God justifies the use of contraception. He writes:

Man is not just part of nature, but is called to be a responsible ruler and steward of nature on God’s behalf. Man, as a conscious being, is to direct all his powers, including his procreative ones, toward their appointed goals, with the guidance of the principles revealed in Scripture. Man’s calling is not simply to let “nature take its course,” but to consciously redirect nature toward the fulfillment of the divine plan. Just as God himself created the human race and re-created a fallen humanity according to a conscious plan, so it would follow that man, as God’s vice regent on earth, should imitate God by exercising his procreative gifts according to a conscious plan. God did not create by a blind act of passion and will; neither should those made in his image.

He concludes from this that artificial contraception is acceptable as long as it does not harm any babies or parents in its use. Based on the above quote and the gist I got from chapter, I would say that Davis takes issue with all the Catholic talk about nature. And I don’t understand it.

Many years ago, I read in a book that something like 90 percent of astronomers believe in God. They study nature, and they know that there has to be a God who made it just so. When I read about childbirth or breastfeeding, I am amazed at the intricacies of God’s creation in the female body. Things didn’t happen by accident, and I think we can learn God’s purposes when we study His creation. We can see God intended mothers to breastfeed when incredibly nourishing liquid starts coming out of us and the newborn baby innately starts looking for it moments after birth. God created human bodies to reproduce, and we can learn that by studying human bodies.

I don’t think it follows, then, that people who let “nature take its course” are completely unconscious of what they’re doing. People are thinking beings made in the image of God, so they generally know what the consequences are when they “let nature take its course.” We do participate in the creative process, but I don’t think that participation is the same as “redirecting nature.”

I have never understood the difference between natural means of contraception and artificial means, but I think I do now. God allows the use abstinence for seasons of prayer, and if you broaden seasons of prayer to include other purposes as Davis does, then you are still leaving the marriage act as God created it to be. If we learn by nature that God created bodies to reproduce through sex, you don’t change the nature of sex by abstaining as you see fit.

I would like to read other arguments about natural vs. artificial contraception and the concept of nature in general, but Davis’ particular argument defending the use of artificial contraception does not sit well with me. I think it leads to other problems that surface in the very next chapter on reproductive technology that I’ll discuss another day.