The Christian Vanguard

Someone on Facebook asked me why I think contraception is immoral. This is what I wrote. When asked, “Why think contraception is wrong” we should lay out what our metaethical theory is. What is it that makes a thing wrong in the first place? St. Paul employs the Natural Law approach to ethics in Romans 1:26-27 when he writes, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that when men and women exchange their natural desires for unnatural ones, they do something vile, and they commit a shameless error. So, St. Paul is using basic Natural Law to explain the condemnation of homosexuality. But St. Paul doesn’t explicate the underlying metaphysics, so, allow me to do so. Why is it that when something is unnatural, it is wrong? It has to do with two metaphysical commitments within the Natural Law, first is essences, and the second is teleology. An essence is what makes a thing the kind of thing it is. It is in the essence, or definition, of a triangle to have three sides. It is in the essence o...

It has been a while since I posted my reply to Douglas Jacoby's short outline on contraception. I shortly received feedback, which I did request, but elsewhere, and not directly here, though I would appreciate it if it were posted on my blog. I didn't immediately respond, since I was busy with other things, like getting a girlfriend. A much wiser use of my time I think. Anyways, I'm finally getting around to responding to what the members of the ICOC have said in response to my response . 

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. 

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.

It started with marriage. I love debates, and one of the debates that brings light with its heat is the same-sex marriage debate. I'm a Christian, so my position is already determined for me theologically, yet when discussing with non-believers, starting with this presupposition is not adequate. So I thought to myself, how can I go about making such an argument against same-sex marriage? I read around, looked at some articles, some in books, some in magazines, and some online. I took what I thought were good points and meshed them into a general worldview. I also considered criticisms and I constructed my view with those in mind to sidestep some pitfalls. So what you see was that product of all that. Basically, what I came up with was this (as far as I know, my syllogism is original):