Posted on 02/14/2014 7:17:17 AM PST by marshmallow
Atlanta Pastor Barrett Owen said months of continuous news about Pope Francis I and his concern for “the least of these” inspired him to go public with his growing admiration for the Roman Catholic leader. He’s not the only evangelical who values the new pontiff’s approach.
A Baptist preacher in Georgia said months of exposure to television and online news reports about Pope Francis I just finally got to him.
And that’s a good thing, said Barrett Owen, pastor of National Heights Baptist Church in Atlanta.
“It seemed like he had a critical mass of news stories that just resonated with me,” Owen said. “He consistently overwhelms me how determined he is to give such a positive face to Christianity.”
Contributing to that media mass were articles and blogs published by agencies like Religion News Service and Christianity Today, often extolling the humility and least-of-these approach to ministry of the world’s most visible Christian leader.
So what did Owen do? He added to the deluge of evangelicals-who-love-the-pope commentary by penning a Feb. 7 blog on the topic for ABPnews/Herald.
Titled “#popecrush” after the trending Twitter hashtag for social media users infatuated with Pope Francis, the blog starts right off with a list of 10 things Barrett said he admires about the pontiff.
They include Francis choosing to ride in compact cars instead of limos, sneaking out of the Vatican to secretly visit homeless people and refusing to condemn homosexuals.
“The 10 items I listed in just seconds,” he said in a telephone interview. “They just came off the top of my head.”
(Excerpt) Read more at abpnews.com ...
Great question.
Of course there are always exceptions to the rule...And there are a few division; Reformed Baptist, Litehouse Baptist and so on...It is certainly out of the ordinary that Baptist churches promote speaking in tongues...
Choirs with/without robes??? Not a deal breaker...Musical instruments in the church??? Again not a deal breaker...
Some things you can pretty much universally count on is salvation is by grace thru faith without works...And baptists are counting on the shed blood of Jesus Christ for a spot in heaven...
The Baptist churches I am familiar with require baptism for membership...I believe that is pretty universal...
The Southern Baptist Convention is a weird duck as far as I'm concerned...I know there are non Baptist churches that are affiliated with that organization...Doesn't make sense to me...
All those things that have nothing to do with doctrine are insignificant...
So I'll stick with my proclamation with a little caveat which is; as far as doctrine is concerned, those things which must be followed for salvation, Baptists have a pretty universal understanding in spite of no central leadership telling them what to believe...
Some say that it was only for his violation of the Law of the Levirate, a sin of selfishness, that Onan was slain. (The Levirate required the brother or closest male kin of a childless widow to give her children who would be considered as children of the dead brother.) However, Deuteronomy 25:5 spells out the punishment for the selfish refusal to fulfill the Levirate, and it is only a public shaming, not a death penalty. (The widow is supposed to arraign the non-compliant brother-in-law at the gates of the city before the elders, strip off his sandal, and spit in his face.)
Further, in the Onan account there are three people who violated the Levirate—--Onan, Judah his father, and Shelah his younger brother—--but the only one to receive the death penalty is the one who went through the motions of the covenant act but made it an act of contraception.
For a more complete treatment, please see http://www.nfpandmore.org/2006_SIN_OF_ONAN.pdf
To summarize, neither Judah nor Shelah was willing to knowingly impregnate Tamar, but they were not punished by God for this selfishness and disobedience, nor did the Law require the death penalty, but only exposure to public scorn.
This suggests that Onan was not killed only for refusing his Levitate duty, but for something in addition to that.
There were two elements: one, WHAT did Tamar's in-laws intend? (the "end".) And second, HOW did they intend to do it? (the "means".) Judah, Shelah, and Onan had the same end in mind, the same intention: not to impregnate Tamar. So why was only Onan seen by God as so evil that he was slain?
This doesn't need any guessing or supposing: the answer is right there in the text. It doesn't say he was struck down for what he didn't do (he didn't have a child by Tamar.) It ways he was slain for what he DID do: (Genesis 38:10) "What he DID was evil in the sight of the Lord, and he killed him also."
So it wasn't the mere intent (not to impregnate Tamar) that he was punished for, it was the means, the way he did it: he perverted the marriage act. He went through the motions of a covenant act, but deliberately deprived it of its natural fertility.
This sin is akin to sacrilege. It is sabotaging a sacred sexual union, making a parody of it.
So, think of the two parts of the moral evaluation --- the end, and the means. In Judah and Shelah's case, their "end" was selfish, but they were not killed; in Onan's case, his end was selfish (same as Judah and Shelah) but his means --- what he DID in the sight of the Lord was evil: and the Lord killed him.
So I would conclude that if Onan had avoided impregnating Tamar via the use of NFP, he would not have been killed for the sin of contraception, because there would not have been any act of contraception. There would only have been periodic abstinence motivated by selfishness.
We can answer the question of why God treated Onan differently than He did Judah and Shelah, by seeing that He distinguished plain selfishness, from selfishness PLUS SACRILEGE: perverting the act of intercourse. The latter He deemed far worse.
If you do, well, there's not much more I can say.
Have a good evening, and thanks for the discussion, iscool.
The law had not been given at that time to the Hebrews so there was no “Law of the levirate” for Onan to have violated. Only tribal customs and a vaguesence that the God El was overseeing their family from the time of Abraham thru Isaac, then Jacob their family patriarch. Judah was the branch of Jacob thru Jesus Christ was to come...that Lion of the tribe of Judah. In the end, via Tama’s crafty subterfuge and God’s timing, was Judah made the direct father of the child with Tamar.
There was a Satanic attempt to interfere with the line of Jacob thru Judah and God acted divinely and directly in this case. We see this interference again when Pharoah attempted to have the first born Hebrews killed. Pharoah thought he was reducing a population threat, but Satan knew that God had promised Abraham that he would bring the Hebrews out of Egypt after 400 years and thus tried to quash God’s plan by killing any of the potential leaders that would have been born at that time. Moses was spared by being hidden in the bull rushes until he was discovered and adopted by a princess of Egypt.
Finally we see this attempt of Satan again, when Herod was moved to kill all male children in the Bethlehem region 2 years and under in a scatter shot attempt to kill our Messiah.
The stakes and the battle were orders higher than just violated Mosaic laws of human sexual conscuspiscence and family/tribal mores.(Which weren’t even handed down or put into effect until the Covenant was handed down at Sinai)!
The battle between Satan’s seed and Eve’s seed rages even now...rest assured though, Satan’s head has already been crushed. Nothing left but the writhing of the tail and body...
I was raised Catholic, but it never really made sense to me. At my Confirmation we were told to commit our lives to Jesus, and I took that seriously, but the rituals of the church never clicked with me. My dad passed away soon after I graduated high school and I drifted away from church - until I met and married a Baptist preacher's daughter. It turns out that "commit your life to Jesus" is the same thing that the Baptists call being born again or saved, which made perfect sense to me(or maybe by then I was old and mature enough to understand better). Be that as it may, I am happily walking with Jesus now which is all that really matters.
It was a serious question. I don't do gotchas. Consider these few points WRT this topic. Onan's "spilling his seed upon the ground" is not all that different than spilling seed on "infertile" ground. In that sense, a man using the withdrawal method (which is not, generally, all that great of a contraceptive method though they didn't know it back then) accomplishes the same result (or tries to) as a man who only has sex with his wife when she is not ovulating and is infertile. Additionally, neither Judah nor Shelah were punished by God for their refusal. Judah, though, DID get drunk and Tamar slept with him (her father-in-law) and she conceived. God did not kill Judah for the sin of sex outside of marriage with his own daughter-in-law. Somehow, I do not think the sin of Onan was his withdrawal so much as his refusal to obey God, his sexual use of Tamar with no intention of fulfilling his familial duties and the plans of God to raise up the Messiah through his line.
Lastly, I'm pretty positive Onan wasn't the inventor of this act - though some call it by his name - it was probably something people did back then to avoid impregnating a woman, be she a wife or a prostitute. Since Scripture says nothing else about this, I see it as conjecture to base an entire doctrine on such a small piece of evidence. How many other men has God killed for doing the same thing? If it were such a GRAVE offense, why no strictures against it anywhere? I know this is a "biggie" with Catholicism and that Catholics pride themselves on being the stalwarts on the subject, but there really is no escaping the truth that Natural Family Planning (NFP) has the same negative intent as other types of birth control such as withdrawal or barrier methods. I don't think I am alone in seeing a double standard.
Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as the head of the Church.
Baptists don’t recognize each other in RCIA class.
Baptists don’t recognize each other in RCIA class.
I thought the joke was that if a Catholic takes a Baptist buddy fishing, he should take another Baptist along so that none of them drinks up the Catholic’s beer!
Oh and I might add...so the really drunk Catholic has a choice of 2 Baptist sober designated drivers to get him home after a day of fishing.
As for the fish....fish fry fellowship dinner at Bubbaville Baptist, Sunday after church....y’all come, ya hear?!
All the things you’re saying here are excellent and provide a valuable context for correct understanding. The Bible records Onan’s contracepted act, and God’s response. And His response was that He struck him dead, for “what he did was evil in the sight of the Lord”.
Do you think it’s a sin for married couples to have intercourse when the wife is infertile?
Since there is no way a woman can truly tell if she may or may not be fertile, and even so called “post menopausal” women have been caught by surprise, when would the couple ever have sex, if sex during an infertility period was a sin?
Marriage is Honorable in all, and the bed undefiled...but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. Hebrews 13:4
I was raised Christian Missionary Alliance as well as Baptist. My grandfather was a CMA minister. Bedtime Bible stories when I was young sent me off to sleep, and along with my regular church teachers was my mother and father teaching me basic bible lessons and verses, AW Tozer readings in the bulletins and magazines, Sprinklings of Spurgeon, goads to my conscience by the Holy Spirit, and a strong tutoring in apologetics albeit via books written by CS Lewis.
Even with all that, I did not always live the life I should have lived...but I’ve been married 25 years by the grace of God to my first and only wife and am sober, not given over to drunkenness or drugs.... or for that matter to despair.
And thanks for taking this topic seriously.
"... (a man using withdrawal) accomplishes the same result (or tries to) as a man who only has sex with his wife when she is not ovulating and is infertile."
Yes, if the men don't impregnate their wives, they're getting there same result. However, I hope you realize that
(1) Levirate obligation aside, not having babies is not, in itself, a sin (I'm sitting here not having babies right now) --
(2) so I undertook to morally evaluate the other element of Onan's behavior: not the end (no pregnancy) but the means (intentionally impairing the natural fertility of the sex act, i.e., contraception.)
My argument was not that intending no baby is wrong, but the WAY he did it was wrong. Are you getting that?
"Additionally, neither Judah nor Shelah were punished by God for their refusal. Judah, though, DID get drunk and Tamar slept with him (her father-in-law) and she conceived. God did not kill Judah for the sin of sex outside of marriage with his own daughter-in-law."
LOL --- it's actually weirder than that! Tamar is actually praised by Judah for being more righteous than himself (Gen. 38:26) ; her accomplishment is celebrated even generations later as a famous blessing (Ruth 4:12); and Tamar's one of only four female ancestors of Jesus given honorable mention in Matthew's genealogy (Matt. 1:3). There's an excellent reason for this: what she did was considered virtuous.
I did a BUNCH of research on this and related issues. I would be very pleased, really, if you would read what I wrote about it: http://www.wf-f.org/12-1-Wiley.html It was a fun article to write, and I think you'll find it a fun article to read.
(Authorial eyebrows darting up and down.)
On your last point: yes, I agree that Onan probably was not the first contraceptor, just the first one mentioned in the Bible. I am reasonably convinced that the prophets of Israel didn't do much inveighing against contraception, since for the most part it would have been seen as insane, as well as disgusting. It would be like the frequent reiteration of commandments against rolling in sheep dung: no sh*t, Shadrach!
As I mentioned before, the multiple, robust, and unified testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures is that the blessing for the womb is fertility; the curse is barrenness.
That's one reason why it's false to say all of Christianity (until 1930, anyway) was basing "an entire doctrine on a small piece of evidence." The evidence that sex is, by God's intent and by His intricate design, an inherently unitive and procreative act, goes straight through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
To say the evidence of this is "small," is like the Gay Christian apologists who say that there's only a few lines in the Bible against male-on-male sex, and that's -- they say --- all about male cult prostitution, not about homosexuality itself --- and if homosexual conduct in itself were so bad, Jesus would have mentioned it. But He didn't: not even once.
This gay argument is not valid, because while Jesus didn't say a lot about homosexuality, He did say significant things about the nature of marriage; He did not repudiate the millennia-long unanimous Hebrew moral view about sex and fruitfulness; and He instructed and inspired St. Paul who reflected and amplified the selfsame moral view of marriage in his Epistles.
There are a lot of things we know from a correct sense of the goodness of God's Creation, which expand on moral principles in Scripture. The Scriptural prohibition of pharmakeia condemns the harmful use of any drug: we don't need a special commandment "Thou shalt not inject endocrine disruptors to impair thy normal physiological function." The Scriptural prohibition of porneia condemns any unnatural sex practice: we don't need a special commandment "Thou shalt not insert thy semen up somebody's butt, down their throat, or into thy little latex baggie."
This is not an exclusively "Catholic" thing. All Christians saw Scriptural morality this way until very, very recently. The huge abandonment of this aspect of Scriptural morality came in my mother's lifetime.
The next innovation is going to be the beaming Christian OK on gay sex: and that is already WELL underway. (500,000 Links, anyone?)
"Natural Family Planning (NFP) has the same negative intent as other types of birth control such as withdrawal or barrier methods."
As I said before --- and I don't mind saying it again! --- intending "no babies right now, please" is not a negative or evil intent. It is an intent that COULD be evil (e.g. if it's motivated by selfishness), or COULD be good (e.g. if it's motivated by protecting the mother's life or health, or in cases of economic hardship and so forth.) Limiting pregnancies can even be a grave moral duty.
It's not the intent of limiting pregnancy (in itself) that's a sin. Do you get that?
Hold it right there.
Source:
European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology
Summary:
Researchers have found that a method of natural family planning that uses two indicators to identify the fertile phase in a woman's menstrual cycle is as effective as the contraceptive pill for avoiding unplanned pregnancies if used correctly, according to a report published online in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction.
Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221065200.htm
OK, let's try your statement again:
"Since...even so called “post menopausal” women have been caught by surprise, when would the couple ever have sex, if sex during an infertility period was a sin?"
I don't know anybody who thinks sex during an infertile period is a sin.
Agreed, mdmathis6? Agreed, boatbums?
That sounds good to me. Praise God for such wonderful favor.
"Is this passage of scripture the source of the Catholic Church’s teaching against contraception?"
It's the most explicit and therefore easiest to refer to Scripture, so a qualified "yes" is probably the best answer. There are other reasoned arguments but in the age of soundbites and short attention spans they've fallen by the wayside. Most people no longer care enough about their immortal souls to honestly work through a well reasoned argument as opposed to a quick, one line, answer even if the answer is based on something taken out of context.
But you just need to actually let "Scripture interpret Scripture" in good "Sola Scriptura" tradition to arrive at the same conclusion.
Deuteronomy states the penalty for refusing to continue your brothers line and it is definitely not the death penalty. Therefore when Scripture says God killed Odin because of what he did it means just that, not for his intention to not continue his brother's line. So what was it he did as opposed to what he intended? What he did was he spilled his seed on the ground and for what he did God struck him down.
The fact that the contraception supporting crowd who argue over the meaning of Odin being struck dead ignore their own espoused method of interpretation in order to not interfere with their preferred interpretation has long been a source of entertainment for me.
It something of an acid test, actually, of who actually studies Scripture to arrive at the correct interpretation as opposed to saying they have a Scripture based belief when in fact they have just adopted the first lame interpretation that suits their preferences.
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