Customer Reviews

The Bible and Birth Control

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I LOVE any non-Catholic book which discusses the evil of contraception and I am always happy when Protestants discover that contraception is against God's law. However, while this book is very good in that regard, it borders on hearsay, as the author seems to look at sex ONLY for procreation, neglecting any unative aspect (that aspect of the marital act which unites the spouses). I say this because there are passages in this book which seem to indicate that the author believes that sex while infertile (already pregnant, past menstruation, etc.) is considered contraception and hence gravely immoral. Now the author never says this, but I was left wondering if he believes this. So I have to say that one must be a little bit cautious when reading this because sex is BOTH procreative AND unative, and the two should never be artificially separated.

Other than that, the book is very good. It is full of bible verses illustrating that children are a blessing from God and barrenness is always something that is considered bad. There are also a plethora of quotes from Luther and many, many, many other PROTESTANT reformers on the evilness of birth control. It is important for the Protestant to realize that EVERY Christian denomination prior to 1930 unequivocally reject birth control as gravely immoral. Why? That question is worth looking into, and this book is a great place to start. It contains an essay by the author published in an article some years ago, as well as two responses to the article (the first is really, really bad, as it consists entirely of consequentialist thinking... very sloppy thinking for a Christian), and finally the author's final rebuttal. It ends with pages after pages of quotes from Reformers on the evilness of birth control, as I mentioned above. Very short, and can probably be read in one sitting.

Again, if you are a bible Christian, you owe it to yourself and the Lord to find out why Christians opposed birth control for the first 1900 years of Christianity.

Provan's book makes a very good case against contraception and the contraceptive mentality. "Very good" is an understatement -- "airtight" is more fitting.

His presentation is excellent and his provision of church leaders to prove that prior to the 20th century *all* Christians new that contraception was sinful.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time getting people to read the book. They will dismiss it apriori by saying that the world "needs" contraception, or that "scripture doesn't specifically forbid it" (which is semantic dancing), or "since contraception didn't exist in biblical times, it can't have said that".

I fear for those who dismiss Provan's arguments based on the thought of the worldly. They may call themselves Christian, but they are not following God or Christ.

Provan builds a great case for the Biblical teaching against contraception, utilizing scripture, the testimony of Protestant church fathers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and the like), and the testimony of various Protestant church councils.

What one finds most tragic, though, in reading this book is that nobody in the Protestant church is listening. This is the fruit that the Protestant reformation has sown. In rejecting the teaching ministry of the Church in favor of Sola Scriptura, the individual Protestant can look at the scriptural arguments Provan makes and say "nice exegesis, but I don't agree". Likewise, the individual Protestant can look at the testimony of the Protestant fathers and Protestant Councils and say "well, they're not infallible".

Another irony...Provan takes great pains to show his readers that he's no Catholic, by including several anti-Catholic quotations. Yet here he is, reinventing the wheel on an important Christian doctrine, on which the Catholic church's teaching has been consistent. If he is right in his exegesis, and the Bible forbids contraception, his next question should be "what church teaches this? Where I will find the truth?" When he finds that there is only one church that teaches this, he would know that that is the church that God established, one, holy, catholic and apostolic...

In making his case against contraception, Provan ultimately makes a case for the Catholic Church and against the Protestant Reformation. And thats a case that needs to be made, again and again, until once again the Christian church can stand unified before the world.

Provan does a wonderful job exegeting multiple Bible passes, especially Gen 38:8-10, the sin of Onan. I highly recommend thsi book, whether you're Catholic or Protestant.

While I agree with a previous reviewer that there are some instances in which a quote is clearly taken out of context, the overall thematic elements in the book show a true consistancy: Prior to the early 1930's no Christian Church accepted contraception.

One must ask then, regardless if they are Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, did the Christian Church, for 2000 years get it wrong? Are we only now 'discovering' truth in the Bible?

Or perhaps being 2000 years removed from the time of Christ, it is those who embrace the culture of death that have it wrong.

Look up the very first command that God gave to man in the book of Genesis directly after mans creation. I'll share it with you here: "Be fruitful". Now find in scripture where it states that God's command to be fruitful is fulfilled or superceded by another command. There is none.

http://www.flyfreeministries.org/forum/ http://phorum.phatmass.com

Provan's book is as fresh and challenging today as when it was first written nearly two decades ago. That the work of Provan and other defenders of Christian tradition has not been in vain is seen in the most recent Open Embrace (by no means pure, however - the Torodes accept the papistic rhythm method, for instance). Provan has moreover inspired an army of Protestant writers who are now keenly aware of the inconsistency of being pro-life when it comes to abortion but pro-choice when it comes to contraception.

Provan's task is to show that both the Scriptures and the Christian tradition are on the side of openness to children. That the first denomination to capitulate on the issue was the Anglican Church (founded on divorce, the religion with more doubts than beliefs, home to Bishop Spong, etc.) and only as recently as 1930 is more grist for Provan's mill.

Provan walks the reader through a careful re-examination of the traditional "prooftexts" against contraception ("Be fruitful and multiply," "Children are an heritage from the Lord," the example of Onan) and finds modern exegesis falling woefully short of the standards set by Luther, Calvin, Chemnitz, et al. As Melanchthon argued in the Apology for the Augsburg Confession (a confessional document, incidentally, Ra McLaughlin), that God's command, "Be fruitful and multiply," applies only to Adam and Eve is akin to saying "Let the land produce vegetation" applies only to the plants in Paradise. The command holds for all who share the nature of Adam and Eve, i.e., all mankind.

And far from making the case for Roman Catholicism, Provan shows that Protestants have historically been more faithful to God's Word on the issue of openness to children than Roman Catholicism - a point which the Roman Catholic historian and jurist John Noonan concedes in his monumental study, "Contraception." Indeed, as John Noonan argues, there is not a little to the conjecture that the pope would have gone the way of Margaret Sanger back in the sixteenth century had it not been for those stalwart Reformers (Jerome had already given the Church the argument that "Be fruitful and multiply" was no longer relevant).

Every Christian should want to live in accordance with the will of Him who sent His son to die and rise for us. That His will includes a true openness to the gift of children rather than a false "stewardship" which commodifies children and views birth control as medicine (what does that make the child whose existence the medicine of contraception is used to prevent?) is a point Provan helps us recognize. In short, a must read for all conscientious Christians.

Provan has done a great deal of work compiling historical references pertinent to birth control. In fact, a huge portion of this book consists simply of quotes from Reformers and other honored historical figures. Regardless of one's theological conclusions on the subject of birth control, the book is worth the money simply for this data.

Unfortunately, when one looks up the original works from which most of the quotes were drawn, one finds that the quotes have been misrepresented or taken out of context. More often than not, the authors quoted were not making the points Provan implies or states they were making. Some few historical quotes do, indeed, support his interpretations of Scripture, but by no means is the case as clear as Provan would like us to believe. In those cases in which the authors do agree with Provan, there are generally clear exegetical errors on the part of the historical figures.

Part of Provan's goal in this book is to demonstrate that Protestants at large have traditionally rejected birth control, which brings us to another shortcoming of the book. Specifically, Provan fails to recognize/admit that the authors he quotes do not speak for the traditions they represent. Rather, they are simply examples of people within those traditions, who may or may not represent the broader views of those traditions, but who in any case do not represent any "official" positions of those traditions. Many Protestant churches are confessional and/or present formal documents of their official stances. No such formal documentation is presented to offer an official stance for any church prior to this century, whether for or against birth control. Other denominations are not confessional and/or present no formal documents on their positions, so that these denominations also lack any official positions on birth control.

Another large portion of Provan's argument depends, of course, upon his exegesis of relevant Scripture. Here he assumes a hermeneutic conducive to his conclusions, but not one that can hold its own against solid biblical scholarship. More careful analysis of the Scriptures in question yields conclusions quite different from Provan's and even from those of many of our traditional heroes. Our heroes were often right about the big things, but they got a number of the details wrong. Then too, they weren't fighting battles over birth control, so they were frequently happy to accept the inherited status quo (i.e. the Roman Catholic position) on such relatively minor issues.

After reading this work carefully and looking up a vast number of the sources quoted, I was confirmed in my belief that the case against birth control is not grounded upon solid exegetical principles, and that the historical case against birth control has not been established.