Contra Jacoby

A friend from the ICOC has forwarded this link from one of his (very few) teachers. I haven't talked about the issue much, so I suppose this will be a good brushing up. Douglas Jacoby thinks it is permissible to use contraception.

Let me begin by saying that I haven't listened to the podcast, but I read through his notes (it's faster to read than to listen). I will assume there isn't much left out, or at least, nothing important left out, so my response should suffice. 

So, the relevant portion of scripture here is Genesis 38. Jacoby claims that the reason that God killed Onan was because of his failure to fulfill his duty. I have written about this particular interpretation, so I will just copy the relevant portion. 

Firstly, the paragraph ends with "What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so he put him to death also." So it all depends on what the word "did" refers to. The word "did" always, grammatically speaking, refers to the nearest thing it follows.

For example, imagine I said, "I tagged a wall and then went and stole some fruit. Then I went to walmart and beat up a wrongfully accused bike thief. Then, we went to Panda Express. It was terrible." What does the word "it" refer to? The word "it refers to the nearest thing it followed, in this case, Panda Express. When I say "It was terrible" I am saying the food was bad. While everything else I did was certainly bad as well, words like "it", "that" and "did" refer to the closest thing it followed. So, in this passage, what is the last thing that happened before God got mad? The last thing he did was spilling semen on the ground, or, not conceiving.

Secondly, even if it were the case that it was the heart behind it that made God angry, isn't it true you have that same heart when we use contraceptives today? If the act of sex is the total self-giving of one self to the other (which is it), then isn't it greedy to keep back your fertility from the person you are supposed to be giving everything to? Isn't is trying to take away God's providence?

And towards the end of the post, I write 

In verse 26, we learn it was the duty of Shelah to provide an heir. Shelah didn't provide an heir, so why didn't God strike him down? Maybe because it had nothing to with providing an heir, but with contraception.

I want to make two additional points against the view that Deuteronomy is the key to interpreting Genesis 38. First, it might be anachronistic to say that Genesis has Deuteronomy in mind if Genesis was written before Deuteronomy. I'm not precisely sure which came first, so, for that reason, I say it might be anachronistic (and add to that the fact that the story takes place before anything like this would have been written). But if it is not, this is still problematic for Jacoby and company. It might be said, and reasonably so, that these were oral cultures, and so even if the duty wasn't written down yet, it was surely widely known. That's fine, but that opens a bigger can of worms concerning the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. But that's neither here nor there I suppose. 

My second additional point is that Deuteronomy doesn't fit the passage in Genesis because the punishments are not the same. Here is the passage in full. 

But if the man does not desire to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ “Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’ then his brother’s wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face; and she shall declare, ‘Thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’ “In Israel his name shall be called, ‘The house of him whose sandal is removed.’

There already is a punishment for not fulling one's duty in this case, and it was NOT death. So, if you fail to do your duty, you get spat on. Onan wasn't spat on. So Onan's punishment was not for failure to fulfill his duty. The difference in punishments makes it less likely that God's punishment of death was for failure to fulfill his duty as described in Deuteronomy. 

This is the bulk of his substance, so I'll just quote and comment for the rest. 

Unlike Gen 1, the Gen 2 account has no mention of procreation — and yet this is exactly the place one might expect to find it, since this is where God seeks to provide for the man's needs

What do you think it means to be one flesh, as it says in Gen 2?

In short, sex is not limited to procreative purposes. There is such a thing as (godly) sexual play.

Sure, but who here says that procreation is the only reason for sex? No one, not even Catholics. This is a straw man, a refusal to understand the Catholic position.

We may be surprised that the historical position of Protestants has not been to allow contraception, yet -- as with so many things -- our society has undergone multiple moral and ethical changes in the last half-century or so.

That should concern you, and it should be concerning to your readers (and more importantly your students) that you nonchalantly advocate for these views. This should at least set off a few red flags. 

Paul does not mention procreation anywhere in his reasoning.

And that's fine. That's not Paul's focus. It's whether or not people should be married if they burn with passion. The topic at hand is not the nature and purpose of sex.

Eph 5 — "The two shall be one" = the climax of the apostle's argument. (“One” appears 14x!) The primary image of marriage is oneness.

Then stop advocating for married couples to have sex with contraception. either your reproduction system is part of you or it is not. Either you give that to your partner, or you do not have unity. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Song of Solomon 1-8 celebrates sexual play, with no explicit provision for sex for procreation or parenthood.

 Yeah, but like I said, no one saying otherwise. I suppose its time to bring up the important other-than/contrary-to distinction. You can enjoy sex. It is other than procreation. But it cannot be contrary to procreation.

Nowhere does the Bible forbid infertile couples to have sex.

What is this, talking points from the Advocate? You know, it's no coincidence that the court cases that allowed contraception is what logically lead to abortion, the legalization of homosexuality, and now to gay marriage, so is it really any wonder that this is beginning to sound a lot like a liberal advocate for same-sex marriage?