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In rebuttal to certain of Fr Lev's points.
There is more to be said about Clement of Alexandria, but I don't believe that Eastern Orthodoxy considers him a saint, and he is not reckoned as a particularly influential figure. St Photos the Great deemed numerous ideas of his to be heretical. Again, not a figure on which to put a great deal of weight in seeking to determine patristic teaching. St John Chrysostom seems a better bet for a figure to consider, and he didn't think child-bearing was essential to marriage. But more to the point is how the Orthodox Church has received and understood the testimony of Fathers. I would say that the Church has not understood the odd reference to be a condemnation of family planning per se, as the particular comments tend to be about avoiding the consequence of sexual immorality or the issue of abortifacient methods. Apart from those sorts of issues, the silence of the Church on this is deafening. --[[User:Fr Lev|Fr Lev]] ([[User talk:Fr Lev|talk]]) 14:21, June 23, 2018 (UTC)
:1. Sorry for not signing and timestamping, I didn’t know how that worked. I’ll try to remember to do so for all future posts.
:2. While Onan’s sin included his refusal to fulfil his levirate responsibilities, Jerome clearly believes that both this refusal and his actively preventing his sexual act from bearing fruit resulted in his death: “But I wonder why he set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?” (Against Jovianus 1:20. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/30091.htm)
:3. While Jerome may or may not have made translational errors, this would not compromise his capacity to rule on moral issues. Thus his view on coitus interruptus cannot be dismissed on this basis.
:4. Given points 2) and 3), the challenge regarding Evdokimov’s quote stands unmet, not to mention your silence on St. Augustine.
:5. Please supply evidence for the existence of the barrier method west of China prior to the 15th century. I think that there is none.
:6. The rhythm method is one and the same as “natural family planning”. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the only voice to speak on “natural family planning” was St. Augustine, who condemned it. If a Church Father had approved of it, why wouldn’t any have spoken up?
:7. St. Caeserius of Arles clearly seems to refer to some form of family planning in his attack on contraception, and not just to extra-marital sex: "Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a woman does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman." (Sermons 1:12)
:8. The point I’m making is that there is a Patristic consensus against the use of any form of contraception. If this is the case, then modern Local Orthodox Churches, where they have endorsed contraception, have strayed from this consensus. Notable in those local Church documents that endorse contraception is a lack of any substantial engagement with those Patristic sources (and there are more than a handful) which would seem to contradict their endorsement. They are not “received” – they are simply ignored.
:9. No form of contraception has been endorsed by Church Fathers. As for the rhythm method vs. artificial methods, these seem to differ in degree of deviation from the ideal form of sex, but not in quality.
:10. You rightly point out that Clement of Alexandria’s status within the church has been disputed based on certain of his theological errors. However, his moral proscriptions were never questioned.
:11. Again you cite St John Chrysostom in a questionable way. Just because St John Chrysostom believed that a marriage which was barren was not invalid, and just because he believed that the potential for producing children was not the only good (or even the highest good) about marital sex, does not mean he endorsed sexual acts which actively prevented the possibility of children resulting from them.
:12. The Church does not need to constantly chatter about an issue when there is an obvious Patristic consensus. The silence isn’t deafening, but appropriately comes after a period of expression of unanimous opinion. --[[User:Gmharvey|Gmharvey]] ([[User talk:Gmharvey|talk]]) 07:51, June 24, 2018 (UTC)
== The 1937 Decision by the Church of Greece ==
The one local Church to condemn birth control that I know of was the Church of Greece in 1937. There is a story to that. In his book, ''Orthodoxy and the West'', [[Christos Yannaras]] attributes the decision to the influence of Seraphim Papakostas (1972-1954), writing that Papakostas's books are characterized by "legalistic moralism, spiritual self-interest centered on the individual, and a reliance on a guilt-ransom-justification scheme of salvation.... he wrote like a Protestant pietist. In his book ''The Question of Conception'', Papakostas faithfully follows Anglican and Roman Catholic opinions about contraception, presented as a quintessentially Orthodox view" [229-230). In footnote no. 386, he adds: "The misleading nature of Papakostas's book has been demonstrated by Stavropolous (1977). Papakostas's insidious influence even extended to the official publications of the hierarchy. A Church of Greece encyclical of October 1937 borrowed Papkostas's heterodox theses verbatim." The reference is to Alexandros Stavropolous, ''To provlima tis teknogonias kai i enkyklios tis Ekklisias tis Ellados'' [The Problem of Contraception and the Encyclical of the Church of Greece], Athens, 1977.
