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Evdokimov cites this definition of marriage from the ''Orthodox Dogmatic Theology'' of Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow: "Marriage is a sacred rite. The spouses promise reciprocal fidelity before the Church; the grace of God is bestowed through the blessing of the minister of the Church. It sanctifies their union and confers the dignity of representing the spiritual union of Christ and the Church." And then from Evdokimov himself: "The account of the institution of marriage, found in the second chapter of Genesis, speaks of 'one flesh' without mentioning procreation at all. The creation of the woman is an answer to the statement, 'It is not good for man to be alone.' The nuptial community constitutes the person, for it is the 'man-woman' that is in the image of God. All the New Testament passages dealing with marriage follow the same order and do not mention offspring (Mt 19; Mk 10; Eph 5)" (''The Sacrament of Love'', p. 120).
Metropolitan Macarius, BTW, was the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church in the middle of the 19th c., so he presumably isn't subject to your ''ad hominem'' about being "insidiously affected by the sexual revolution of the 20th century." But then, I don't see how you could reasonably make that assertion against the current Church of Russia, either.
:Metropolitan Macarius does not, in that quote regarding his definition of marriage, endorse contraception. The challenge that there is no voice prior to the 20th century which endorses a single form of contraception still stands unanswered. The view that marriage (or sex) has its primary purpose in the union of a couple does not mean that the active separation of the procreative aspect of sex is good or acceptable.
:I think we are going around in circles talking about Jewish commentary, what the Fathers’ really mean, the about which ones are valid, about whose use of Fathers’ count as proof-texts and whose are valid citations, and how to go about reaching a patristic synthesis. I get the feeling now that we will not get any further in this particular debate.
:What may be fruitful is a discussion of what constitutes sex that is conducive to the flourishing of an Orthodox Christian. This may allow us to clarify what it is about our pictures of ideal sex that allow or do not allow for the use of contraception. Let us take an example case: anal intercourse between a heterosexual married couple. Acceptable or unacceptable? Why or why not? --[[User:Gmharvey|Gmharvey]] ([[User talk:Gmharvey|talk]]) 11:43, July 12, 2018 (UTC)
===Is NFP rightly considered to be a form of "contraception"?===
You are mistaken. Nowhere in ''Humane Vitae'' does the Pope refer to NFP as contraception. The only occurrences of a form of the word "contraception" refer to prohibited techniques. And, "Neither the Church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the later practice may appear to be upright and serious. In reality, these two cases are completely different. In the former the married couple rightly use a faculty provided them by nature. In the later they obstruct the natural development of the generative process" (sec. 16). Moreover, it is clear that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops believe that NFP is not a form of contraception. See http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/natural-family-planning/what-is-nfp/why-nfp-is-not-contraception.cfm/ The same is true of Pope John Paul II who, in his Apostolic Exhortation on marriage, ''Familiaris Consortio'', wrote: "In the light of the experience of many couples and of the data provided by the different human sciences, theological reflection is able to perceive and is called to study further '''the difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle''': it is a difference whichis much wider and deeper than is usually thought, one which involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality." Moreover, this is also the explicit teaching of the ''Catechism of the Catholic Church'', which approvingly quotes the distinction between NFP and Pope John Paul II in its Sec. 2370. Also, it adds in Sec. 2399 "The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)."
:Sure, I take your point. But it all seems like meaningless distinctions. NFP and what you would classify as “contraception” share the purpose of trying to have sex that won’t result in children – i.e. the preferment of sterile sex to sex which can produce children. --[[User:Gmharvey|Gmharvey]] ([[User talk:Gmharvey|talk]]) 11:43, July 12, 2018 (UTC)
== Chrysostom Redux ==
Much was made above about an interpretation of a quote from St John Chrysostom by George Gabriel. So I have found an unambiguous quotation from a homily of St John that is clear about the purpose of marriage, where he makes clear that marriage no longer has the essential purpose of procreation.
"At the beginning, the procreation of children was desirable, so that each person might leave a memorial of his life. Since there was not yet any hope of resurrection, but death held sway, and those who died thought they would perish after this life, God gave the comfort of children, so as to leave living images of the departed and to preserve our species. For those who were about to die and for their relatives, the greatest consolation was their offspring. This was the chief reason for desiring children. Now that the resurrection is at our gates, we do not speak of death but advance toward another life better than the present, the desire for posterity is superfluous… '''So there remains only one reason for marriage, to avoid fornication, and the remedy is offered for this purpose'''.” (St John Chrysostom, ''On Marriage and Family Life'', pp. 85-86.
:As mentioned above, saying that marriage’s essential purpose is not procreation but the avoidance of fornication does not mean that actively separating procreation from marital sex is a good thing. Non sequitur. George S Gabriel’s interpretation tried to connect the two by his talk of not having to make provisions for the act resulting in children (which is a pretty way of saying something a little different: i.e. that it is ok to make provisions such that your sex does not result in children). --[[User:Gmharvey|Gmharvey]] ([[User talk:Gmharvey|talk]]) 11:43, July 12, 2018 (UTC)
::I agree with Gmharvey, I believe that the primary purpose" of the marital act is the "expression" of the bond of love--the unitive. But this does not mean it is good to separate the procreative from the unitive. Right? Because in my view, it is precisely the couple's openness to share themselves completely without holding back anything, including their powers of reproduction, which is essential to the act's capacity to "symbolize" and so "express" their mutual love. Like two sides of the same coin, like heat and light. If you remove one of them the other is not there in the same degree. And if you take it as an act that is expressing something, you have to ask what is it that is doing the expressing. If not the sacrificial life-giving potential, then what exactly? It seems to me that St John was hyperbolically overstating his case for rhetorical effect. Nothing more. And even if we take this statement literally, that sex has no reproductive purpose, we still have to ask, 1) Is he alone among the Fathers in saying this, or is his view a part of a larger consensus? and 2) if he were here today what ways would he endorse as morally acceptable means to that good end of "avoiding fornication" without "desiring children"?--[[User:Ryan Close|Ryan Close]] ([[User talk:Ryan Close|talk]]) 15:01, August 22, 2018 (UTC)
== The Theology of the Body ==
Father Lev, or anyone else who wants to chime in,
I'm personally interested in this topic as I am trying to learn what the Church or the Fathers teach about it. And I am here in good faith to learn. Besides the very real practical results of such conversation, my intentions in brotherly argumentation are as always: stimulating colloquy, willingness to learn, and the desire not to "win" but to "win over" or "be won over."
Of all the subjects discussed here, many of them are irrelevant to me because, of course, I already agree. I do not have a dualistic / platonic idea of the body and the soul, I don't hate the flesh or the created physical world, I don't despise the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, I don't think that the celibate life is a "higher" vocation than the married life, I don't think the marital act is inherently sinful or evil, I don't think that it is only "excusable" when the procreation of children is part of it, and I don't think that the sin of Onan is relevant to this discussion. I do think that the sexual act is biologically ordained to procreation, i.e. that reproduction is it's telios. I do believe that the marital act is a beautiful Sign of the Gospel. I do believe that it "expresses" the bond of love between the husband and wife.
Furthermore, I agree that responsible parenting (or the health of one of the spouses) sometimes necessitates limiting the number of children. I don't think that Christians must have 10–15 children. Christian couples should have recourse to some form of birth control for grave reasons. But I don't know which are the morally acceptable means to that good end. And to me this question might best be answered if we think about what happens when the unitive and procreative aspects of the marital act are divided.
To that end, let me begin with something Fr. Lev has written here. Concerning St Maximus' comments:
:''In relation to women, for example, sexual intercourse, rightly used, has as its purpose the begetting of children. He, therefore, who seeks in it only sensual pleasure uses it wrongly, for he reckons as good what is not good. When such a man has intercourse with a woman, he misuses her.'' (400 Chapters on love)?
He writes:
:IF Maximos is saying that procreation is the “only" purpose for sex, then I would venture to say that the Church has not accepted his opinion on the matter. But I’m not convinced that is what he is saying, as he is criticizing in that passage the person who seeks intercourse “only” for the purpose of sexual pleasure, '''and since to say that the purpose of intercourse is to have children is NOT to exclude other purposes (i.e., the unitive), I think it is more likely that you are trying to make more of what he said than his words warrant'''. Chrysostom is clear that procreation is not the primary purpose of marriage, and that it isn’t necessary, as we have already filled the earth.
So if I understand Fr. Lev's position, the marital act should be '''*either*''' procreative or unitive or both, but not necessarily both every time. Openness to life ought to be measured "overall." The fact that sexual intercourse has as it's telios the reproduction of the species does not '''*preclude*''' other purposes. Is this a correct assessment of Fr. Lev's position? I think this point of view is summed up quite well by the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in America in their 1992 affirmation:
:''Married couples may '''*express* their love in sexual union''' without always intending the conception of a child, but only those means of controlling conception within marriage are acceptable which do not harm a fetus already conceived.''
The affirmation teaches us that the marital act is meant to '''“express their love in sexual union.”''' I believe that this is true and that this is the purpose of the marital act. However, if it is to “express” something then this implies that it is a symbolic act, a kind of language. Language is shared meaning. Language enables us to express our thoughts and feelings with others by employing symbols. Spoken language employs the symbols we call locutions. In the marital act the bodies are speaking a “language” to one another. The loving union of husband and wife is the “meaning” that this language is meant to express. '''The primary question I am concerned with is whether or not a sexual act that intentionally rejects the very bodily and conjugal symbol of this love—namely the procreative power of the couples bodies—can still “express” the same thing—namely the union of love? Or does it actually express something different?'''
“The Theology of the Body”, which presents the church with a glorious vision of the meaning of Holy Matrimony and the purpose of marital intercourse, might shed light on this question. According to the “Theology of the Body” marital intercourse is not just sharing a touch or a sensation, not just one form of affection among others. Rather, as God designed it, marital intercourse is meant to be a true self-giving and the union of two selves without reserve. In this way it is the sharing of a power — an extraordinary, life-giving, creative, physical, sexual power. In the marital union, husband and wife are meant to experience the fullness of human vitality in its very source. And it is this procreative power that the couple share with each other that uniquely symbolizes and truly communicates the love and one-flesh union of a husband and wife. In other words, the sacrificial '''life-giving''' potential shared is the symbol, the sacrificial '''self-giving''' love is what is being expressed. By the "marital act" we are not speaking only of the biological configuration of bodies known as intercourse, but rather an act of the will, the voluntary mutual self-giving and receiving (?perichoresis?) of that life-giving potential which is the powerful expressive force that uniquely speaks of the bond they share. Furthermore, this is not a kind of sexual mysticism where carnality raises up to heavenly realities but rather a creational theology of the "meaning" of down-to-earth matrimonial love. It explains how the two ends of marital intercourse — the procreative and the unitive — are linked together and why they cannot be separated.
By contrast, according to the Catholic “Theology of the Body,” in contraceptive sex no unique power is being shared except the power to produce pleasure, stripping the act of its true significance and ability to communicate. When the couple merely go through the motions of sexuality but reject each other’s fertility neither of them are giving themselves fully or accepting the other entirely. They are saying, "I want this genital feeling but I don't want to give you my fertility or receive your fertility. In this moment of intense intimacy I am holding back something and holding you back in a fundamental way." Contraceptive sex is an exercise in meaninglessness. The couple start to say one thing very beautiful with their bodies, something that speaks of love through the language of life. Then they deny that very thing in a refusal to fully know one another and nothing real is shared except sensation. By trying to found the uniqueness of marital oneness and express their love in an act of contradiction the spouses are haunted by the suspicion that their love making might be merely a false, hollow, selfish taking of pleasure.
This vision of Matrimony and the sexual act of spouses could hardly be described as sex-negative or legalistic. Far from it. This teaching is about the truth, beauty, and goodness of creation (the gift of sex and marriage as God intended it), the ugly tragedy of the fall (the brokenness of sex as selfish grasping for pleasure), and the triumph of redemption (how The sacrament of Holy Matrimony turns marriage into a sign of the Gospel of the Kingdom and gives us grace to live our married lives together for the glory of God). In other words, we should read this as good news!
In line with the OCA’s Affirmations on Marriage, Stanley Harakas teaches that the marital act '''expresses “the mutual love of spouses.”''' If the marital act is expressing something then it has a meaning. The husband and wife are speaking to one another in this act through their bodies. The sexual act isn’t supposed to be rendered meaningless or silent. It is on this basis that the Church cannot condone one night stands, the hookup culture, homosexuality, adultery, and other sexual activity that turns the sexual act into a contradiction, that makes it speak a lie. The question for me is does the act of contraceptive sex actually express the bond of love. '''Or does the couple’s mutual rejection of each other’s complete selves destroy the act's capacity to speak the language of the bond of love?'''
Let me just put it like this. When we are in the Liturgy and we sing, “We praise thee, we bless thee, we give thanks to thee...” we intend to express the meaning behind these words. But if at this point of the Liturgy the people close their mouths nothing will be expressed. If, maybe, they start to sing something completely different then something quite different will be expressed. Only when the people sing the familiar words will the proper intention be expressed.
Now the married couple has this intention, namely to express their bond of love. And in order to do this they must match their intention to the proper symbol. If they choose the correct symbol their intention will be truly expressed. The question is, what is it about the sexual act that can serve as this proper symbol? If the unitive and procreative are separable then what part of the act is it that is symbolizing the unitive expression? Is it merely the good feelings associated with receiving a certain genital sensation?
Let me also comment on a quote from Fr Sergei Sveshnikov:
:''In such a worldview [i.e. that teaches that sex is only for procreation], any union of the spouses—the union of the souls, bodies, spirits, minds—is '''*completely devalued*''' in the absence of reproduction, and the sacrament of marriage completely loses its meaning in cases when reproduction is impossible for any reason.'' < https://frsergei.wordpress.com/2018/07/02/sex-and-contraception-in-a-christian-marriage/ >
I don't know if I fully understand Fr Sergei Sveshnikov. However, the doctrine that the marital act must be both unitive and procreative does not mean that the union of naturally infertile couples is “completely devalued.” Far from it, they come together and share all that they are, including their damaged fertility, and together offer their joy, sorrow, and suffering to God in hopes of conceiving a child that they know they will love with all their hearts. There are wonderful examples of this in the history of salvation and I believe that it could possibly be a very beautiful and meaningful experience. In the terms of the "Theology of the Body", if an infertile husband gives everything he is to his wife and the infertile wife accepts all that her husband gives to her then the complete self-gift is present and the act communicates. Nothing is actually lacking. Except, of course, the contingent fact of an actual occurrence of conception, which isn't the ''sine qua non'' of the marital act's symbolic power to speak this "I love you."
However, in cases where a naturally fertile husband and wife deliberately choose to reject each other’s powers of reproduction — "I'll take whatever pleasure I can from you but I don't want to share your whole potentially-life-giving person. I reject it and hide mine from you." — '''it seems that it just is the couple’s intention to empty that act of the very life giving power which makes it capable of expressing that love in the first place.''' If you science the very expressive power of the act how can it speak? How does it not degrade the whole experience to the level of mutual masturbation or the use of prostitution—a kind of marital fornication? If the doctrine is true then it is not the doctrine that devalues their act but they themselves.
The pertinent questions, which have not yet been answered here, are:
* Is the Theology of the Body as summarized above true, in part or in whole?
* Could this kind of approach be used to explain the many patristic quotes, such as St Maximus' above, that speak of the procreative purpose of the marital act rather than having to attribute to them platonic, hyper-monastic, or stoic influence?
* If it is false, what proofs of falsity can be offered for the sake of subjective feelings of certainty, so I'm left in no doubt as to what I should believe?
* What alternate accounts can be given to people such as myself that find it an exceptionally beautiful vision of the marital act?
::* For example, can anyone present a vision of contraceptive sex that is as beautiful and glorious as the above account of the life-giving marital act?
::* Or, can anyone present an alternate anthropology where the unitive and procreative aspects of the marital act are truly separable in a way that continues to allow the marital act to be a Sign of the Gospel?
::* Or, can anyone explain how the mere giving and taking of a sensation can be as beautiful and meaningful as the life-giving marital act?
::* Or, how does one partner's desire to be given a certain kind of sensation and nothing else amount to the same self-sacrificial act of fully giving himself entirely and receiving his wife completely which would be the ''sine qua non'' of the expression of the bond of love?
::::''(Note: when I say "life-giving" I mean "potentially-life-giving" since it is the couples voluntary mutual self-giving and receiving of that potential which is the powerful expressive force that uniquely speaks of the bond they share, not merely an exchange of touch. I don't want it thought that I am saying that only those acts that actually conceive a child are "life-giving" because it isn't the contingent fact of conception alone but the voluntary act of life-giving-love that makes it so.)''
* If the Theology of the Body as summarized above is true, what does it actually mean? I don't think it is at all obvious that the account it gives of "contraceptive sex", even if true, necessarily proves that contraceptive sex is a sin.
Thank you all very much for your time and I look forward to reading your responses and learning from each of you in good faith!
Sincerely, --[[User:Ryan Close|Ryan Close]] ([[User talk:Ryan Close|talk]]) 17:55, August 21, 2018 (UTC)
:Hi, I’m glad to have your input and thoughts on the topic.
:You say that you don’t think Christians must have 10-15 children. Of course they don’t, and few Orthodox will argue that they do. But it does not follow that Christian couples should have some recourse to birth control in so-called “grave circumstances”. Married Christians do not have some kind of “right” to as much sex as they want for all their lives ''and'' a right to limit the number of children. The sense of “rights” is perhaps a dead end. The only important question seems to be: what is the ideal form of sex? What kind of sex is most perfect, most natural, most good, and most beautiful? As Christians, we are called to the perfect - anything less is to miss the mark. That an ideal is hard to attain does not make it any less of an ideal. And as you’ve beautifully put it, that idea of a man and woman both delighting in creation and delighting in the openness of this act toward creating new life, is what makes this kind of sex its ideal form. Any attempt to sunder the two degrades the act, either by isolating the unitive aspect and excluding the procreative by contraceptive techniques, or by isolating the procreative and excluding the unitive in artificial insemination or IVF.
:In this sense, the Catholic “Theology of the Body” resonates strongly with me. However, it falls short when it twists on itself in order to justify Natural Family Planning, which necessarily involves the preferment of sterile sex to that sex which unites the unitive and procreative. NFP is sometimes justified as different to “artificial contraception” in that it uses the body’s “natural mechanisms” to have sterile sex. However, would this not equally justify anal sex or coitus interruptus? Surely, it is the approach to sex that matters – one’s intentions and sense of what sex’s telos is? Surely NFP does not essentially differ from “artificial contraception” in this regard?
:I’m sorry if I didn’t address your list of questions directly. Please redirect my attention if you think I skipped over a crucial point in your argument.
:As a long aside, I think that one has to recognise that the Sin of Onan is at least relevant to this discussion insofar as Fathers treat the sin as an example of disordered sex. As a result, I’d like to say a few things here regarding what’s written in the main article (although I’m aware it’s not your interest, please indulge me as it relates to the topic). Jerome, for example clearly sees Onan’s sin as a perversion of sex for its exclusion of the procreative aspect of sex. While Origen is claimed in the main article on this page to have not interpreted the passage as a condemnation of contraception, he certainly doesn’t imply that Onan was killed for disobedience to God regarding the levirate. Rather in his one-sentence interpretation of the passage he says: “Everyone who sows (speiron) in the flesh, and buries the works of the flesh in the earth, is similar to Onan, for which reason they shall be killed.” While this is not an explicit interpretation of Onan’s sin as regarding disordered sex, it is fairly implicit - within Origen’s figurative interpretation is an assumption that Onan himself was killed for improper “sowing” of his seed per se. Chrysostom is also claimed in the main article to have not interpreted it as a condemnation of contraception. This is strictly true. However, like Origen, he certainly does not imply that Onan’s death is due to his refusing to do God’s will regarding the levirate, and abstains from going into much detail about what exactly Onan’s sin was. He merely says that God killed both Onan and Er because they were “poniros“ (i.e. evil), using the same word for both Onan and Er and potentially implying that their sin was similar - consistent with an interpretation that they were both killed for perverse sex. As for Ephrem’s commentary on the passage, I can’t say anything of it as I don’t have access to it. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if he eschewed any commentary on the gritty detail of Genesis 38, as that wasn’t his style. I’d be interested to see the translated Latin text which was referenced on the main page. --[[User:Gmharvey|Gmharvey]] ([[User talk:Gmharvey|talk]]) 15:15, August 31, 2018 (UTC)
