In his chapter of Ruined Sinners to Reclaim, Stephen Wedgeworth outlines his understanding of a Protestant doctrine of concupiscence before landing on two areas of application, both are around sex and sexuality. The second is about same sex attraction but the first is about contraception.
Whilst he doesn’t go so far as ruling out contraception entirely, it becomes clear that he takes a negative view and is at least suggesting a high level of caution.
His take is founded in the understanding that children are a primary good in marriage. From there if I’m reading him right sexual pleasure divorced from procreation is at least potentially sinful. He raises scenarios where a couple are married but with no intention, indeed a positive rejection of having children.
As Wedgeworth is talking specifically about concupiscence, then it seems to me that his concern is with a husband or wife’s sexual desire for their spouse.
A couple of points stand out here. First, his example, rather than illustrating the robustness of his doctrine of concupiscence serves only to highlight the complexities. The view that concupiscence is sin suggests that the initial desire is sinful.
Yet, the decision about contraception highlights the potential complexities of a process. Is the husband’s initial desire for his wife really sinful or is it the later decision to use contraception? It might be argued that this decision had been made prior to the specific desire but wouldn’t that mean that the whole marriage relationship was sinful rather than one act?
Indeed, might the desire at the initial stage be seen not so much as temptation but rather an interruption to the childlessness of the marriage, a godly prompting?
All of this of course does assume that sex without procreation is sin. This is where I believe the pastoral carelessness is, its about the willingness to throw out undeveloped ideas to explode like grenades without thought about how they will land. This is the difference between that surgical care of the pastor and a kind of reckless destructive attitude.
It is worth saying up front that I do agree that children are one of the important purposes of marriage. If you are hearing me suggest that we should treat this lightly, you are mishearing me. I also am aware that it is possible to enter into a marriage relationship without consideration for this and in a way that becomes a form of extended individualism
However, I think it is worth remembering that physical children are only one of the purposes of marriage. Marriage is rooted in God’s recognition that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone and so Eve is made as helper in the context of work and worship. Obviously, filling and subduing the earth must involve procreation but there is more to it than that. There is the subdue/stewarding/ordering aspect as well as the filling aspect.
There are therefore other reasons for marriage than procreation. A Christian couple may be spiritual parents as they make disciples and partner in Gospel ministry. A couple may also parent through fostering or adoption.
I have said many times before that the decision not to have children may not be selfish and indeed for various health reasons may not be a simplistic choice. There are of course decisions about timing and about number of children that are legitimate.
The other factor is the assumption that sexual intimacy as a narrow aspect of marriage is only for procreation. Yet I think there are clues in the Wisdom literature including Song of Songs that there are other aspects to and reasons for sexual desires and intimacy.
This should surely encourage some caution before we rush to judge the use of contraception as sin.
Even if we have theological or ethical question marks about its use, surely this should discourage us from introducing such concerns in the middle of discussions about other things without doing the careful ethical/theological thinking and without some degree of pastoral sensitivity.
Faithroots 