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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."

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 wordslocutions. 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. This 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 why 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.

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 acts 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?

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.

* 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.)''

Sincerely: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:Ryan CloseGmharvey|Ryan CloseGmharvey]] ([[User talk:Ryan CloseGmharvey|talk]]) 1715:5515, August 2131, 2018 (UTC)