Lutheran theology joins human sexuality to procreation. Holsten Fagerberg, in A New Look at the Lutheran Confessions (1529-1537), reflects on the Reformers’ view of the creative power of God’s Word:
God’s Word is a creative Word. When God expresses His will in the Word, something always happens. The confessional writers discovered a paradigm of this mode of operation in the Biblical account of creation. When God said (Gen. 1:11) that the earth should “put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed,” His words not only had immediate consequences, but as a further result fields bear their harvests and trees their fruit every year.Now note how he immediately continues, and connects the Word which continues to bring forth fruit with human fruitfulness:
So also with human fertility, which is based on the mandatum of Gen. 1:28 and is permanently manifested in the attraction of the sexes to each other. What God commanded once upon a time in the moment of creation continues to be realized in the sexual instincts of men and women, in the appetitus which is the natural prerequisite of marriage.What the contraceptive mindset has done is separate mandatum from appetitus. Human desire is disconnected with God’s purpose for that desire. Thus it is not difficult to see why our Lutheran forbears condemned contraception – and why we should too.
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My Words. . .
While Pastor Esget is not the first to speak in this way, he has put so very succinctly what others (including myself) struggle to say with many words. The great problem with the mentality of contraception is not simply related to lack of the openness to conception nor to the desire to prevent it. The great problem is that human sexual desire has become so disconnected with God's mandate that His mandate appears to us a burden, for some an unreasonable one, and our desire has become the higher and more noble good. Thus the whole debate lies more upon a first commandment issue than on a sixth. Words well worth considering. . .
8 comments:
Mea culpa.
Thanks be to God for His Son, for Jesus' active and passive obedience in my placer.
I am thankful for the Lutheran church (read: the Church) for her true teaching of Christ's forgiveness. Though there is still sadness for sin, it is absolved. There is no feeling of being used, or shelved like an abused pair of shoes, as there was with other evangelicals.
It was the Lambeth Conference in the early 1930s that opened the door to contraception. This was a grave error, and one that Anglicans must especially repent.
What was thought to be a benefit and a blessing to families has proved to be a massive curse on all mankind. Separating procreation from sexuality is clearly contrary to the will of God, something that we see clearly, now, only in hindsight.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!
Fr. D+
Anglican Priest
I've been to many Lutheran weddings where the priest reads an opening description of what is expected in marriage. I have often cringed when he gets to the part (and I apologize, but I'm going from memory and don't have the text in front of me) when he says "if it is the will of God, that children be produced."
This seems to stand in contradiction to what you and Pr. Esget write, namely that human sexuality is for procreation within the confines of marriage. So, if children are the will of God, why is it tempered in the LCMS marriage ceremony by the conditional "if?"
So, if children are the will of God, why is it tempered in the LCMS marriage ceremony by the conditional "if?"
Some marriages are not fertile.
On this subject of contraception, I would recommend a great book, The Christian Case Against Contraception: Making the Case from Historical, Biblical, Systematic, and Practical Theology & Ethics by Bryan Hodge. It is well written and he does good exegesis of numerous biblical passages that deal with this.
David,
Duh! Thanks for failing to answer a straightforward question, but as you are a Calvinist and not a Lutheran, I'll wait to hear from them.
Thanks for failing to answer a straightforward question
Actually it was a straightforward answer. I'm sorry you don't understand it.
David Gray's answer is correct. In this fallen world, the bodies of men and women are often broken, including with respect to fertility. Thus, marriage is for procreation where God wills it. In the case of barrenness, we acknowledge that with sorrow.
The conditional language of the rite is of great comfort to those in marriages that God does not bless with children.
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