Posted on 10/05/2012 3:22:55 AM PDT by koinonia
From a transcript of Scott Hahn telling his story: We [Kimberly & I] got married right out of college. Both of us had so much of the same vision. We wanted to do ministry together [as Presbyterians], we wanted to share the good news of Christ, we wanted to open up the Bible and make it come alive for people...
We were off to seminary a week or two after our wedding...
[In] a course that Kimberly took her first year... Dr. Davis had all the students break up into small groups so that each small group could tackle one topic... One dinner she announced that she was in a small group devoted to studying contraception. I remember thinking at the time, "Why contraception?"
The year before when I took the class, nobody signed up for that small group and I told her. She said, "Well, three others have signed up for it and we had our first meeting today. So and so appointed himself to be chair of the committee, and he announced the results of our study even before it began. He said, 'Well, we all know as Protestants, as Bible Christians, that contraception is fine, I mean so long as we don't use contraceptives that are abortafacients like the I.U.D. and so on.' He announced further that really the only people who call themselves Christians who oppose artificial birth control are the Catholics, and he said, 'The reason they do, of course, is because they are run by a celibate Pope and lead by celibate priests who don't have to raise the kids but want Catholic parents to raise lots so they can have lots of priests and nuns to draw from, you know.'"
Well, that kind of argumentation did not really impress Kimberly. She said, "Are you sure those are the best arguments they would offer?" And I guess he must have mocked or said, "Well, do you want to look into it yourself?" You don't say that kind of thing to Kimberly. She said, "Yes," and she took an interest in researching this on her own.
So that night at dinner... she said, "I've discovered that up until 1930, every single Protestant denomination without exception opposed contraception on Biblical grounds." Then I said, "Oh come on, maybe it just took us a few centuries to work out the last vestiges of residual Romanism, I don't know." And she said, "Well, I'm going to look into it."
...she handed me a book. It was entitled Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant by John Kippley... I began to read through the book with great interest because in my own personal study, going through the Bible several times, I had come upon this strong conviction that if you want to know God, you have to understand the covenant, because the covenant was the central idea in all of Scripture. So when I picked up this book I was interested to see the word 'covenant' in the title, Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant. I opened it up and I began reading it, and I said, "Wait a second, Kimberly, this guy is a Catholic. You expect me to read a Catholic?" And the thought occurred to me instantly at that moment, What is a Catholic doing putting 'covenant' into his book title? Since when do Catholics hijack my favorite concept?
Well, I began to read the book. I went through two or three chapters and he was beginning to make sense, so I promptly threw the book across my desk. I didn't frankly want him to make any sense. But I picked it up again and read through some more. His arguments made a lot of sense. From the Bible, from the covenant, he showed that the marital act is not just a physical act; it's a spiritual act that God has designed by which the marital covenant is renewed. And in all covenants you have an opportunity to renew the covenant, and the act of covenant renewal is an act or a moment of grace. When you renew a covenant, God releases grace, and grace is life, grace is power, grace is God's own love. Kippley shows how in a marital covenant, God has designed the marital act to show the life-giving power of love. That in the marital covenant the two become one, and God has designed it so that when the two become one, they become so one that nine months later you might just have to give it a name. And that child who is conceived, embodies the oneness that God has made the two through the marital act. This is all the way that God has designed the marital covenant. God said, "Let us make man in our image and likeness," and God, who is three in one, made man, male and female, and said, "Be fruitful and multiply." The two shall become one and when the two become one, the one they become is a third child, and then they become three in one. It just began to make a lot of sense, and he went through other arguments as well. By the time I finished the book, I was convinced.
It bothered me just a little that the Roman Catholic Church was the only denomination, the only Church tradition on earth that upheld this age-old Christian teaching rooted in Scripture, because in 1930 the Anglican Church broke from this tradition and began to allow contraception, and shortly thereafter every single mainline denomination on earth practically caved in to the mounting pressure of the sexual revolution. By the 1960's and 70's, my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, not only endorsed contraception, but abortion on demand and federal funding for abortion, and that appalled me. And I began to wonder if there wasn't a connection between giving in a little here and then all of a sudden watching the floodgates open later. I thought "No, no, you know the Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years; they're bound to get something right." We have a saying in our family that even a blind hog finds an acorn, and so it was, I thought. That was my second year.
ping :-)
I am not Roman Catholic, and I agree that deliberately avoiding children is sin. I have been very guilty of this sin in the past, and asked the Lord forgiveness. He has blessed my wife and I with 11 children.
Yes, there are challenges, to be sure. There are heartbreaks, there are disappointments. But there are also victories and triumphs and many joys. We wouldn’t change anything.
See my tagline.
I think it goes deeper than just “unlawful,” because contraception says that God made human beings wrong ... that when He looked at His completed creation, crowned by man and woman made in His image, and “behold, it was very good,” He was incorrect.
This is not just a technicality, “You say tomayto, I say tomahto,” but an issue that profoundly affects and reflects our understanding of God and His heart towards us.
Very interesting article. Wonder why Scott Hahn knows that the plural of Christian is Christians, but doesn’t know that he and Kimberly are the Hahns, not the Hahn’s.
God has really BLESSED you....11....how wonderful.
Very interesting article. Wonder why Scott Hahn knows that the plural of Christian is Christians, but doesn’t know that he and Kimberly are the Hahns, not the Hahn’s.
God says, "Be fruitful and multiply;" IMHO it is the devil who says, "Be sterile and don't multiply (so I can more ready rule the world!)." The sinister Georgia Guideposts convince me of this. People like Ted Turner are publicly announcing (in the spirit of Margerat Sanger and Adolf Hitler, not to mention the global-warming crowd) that the world population needs to be severely reduced (95%!!!). Lord have mercy on our society!
Sorry...I'll stick to hating the killing of innocents lives, not the prevention.
as a pragmatist (and a confessed, lapsed Catholic), not being able to afford raising a child(another child? a 10th or 11th child?), then getting pregnant is a sure way to force early abortions...better to not get pregnant in the first place.
His tapes on the Book of Revelations are fabulous.
That’s my mistake, not his. :-)
Hahn’s. Tell the editor who wrote the headline, not the author.
Instead of being pragmatic, the option consistently presented by the Catholic Church (and all Christians prior to the Anglican decision at the Lambeth Conferences in 1930) is to be open to life, trust in God's providence according to the Gospels - like the lilies of the field and the birds of the air - and let God decide the number of children He wants to give to a family (instead of us telling God and human nature how many children we will "plan" to have).
As an aside, it's interesting that "birth control" is about not having births and, for many, not exercising self-control; so a sort of contradiction in terms. Likewise, "Planned Parenthood" is, in my opinion, better dubbed "Planned Barrenhood" because they certainly are not promoting having offspring. They definitely don't have a placard with this quote on it:
Behold the inheritance of the Lord are children: the reward, the fruit of the womb. As arrows in the hand of the mighty, so the children of them that have been shaken. Blessed is the man that hath filled the desire with them; he shall not be confounded when he shall speak to his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 126:3-5)
Just as a final thought, it is interesting to note that contraception and sterilization are, without talking about philosophy or the Bible or theology, just unnatural. I heard of a group of hippies who wanted to be "natural" and not use contraception and in seeking for others of this mindset the only outfit they found to hold their position was the Roman Catholic Church - they became Catholics and formed a lay Dominican community. (Sorry I can't find a specific reference, but it's an interesting story - not often that hippies make there way into the Catholic Church!).
God bless you.
May God continue to bless you & your family!
she said, “I’ve discovered that up until 1930, every single Protestant denomination without exception opposed contraception on Biblical grounds.”
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interesting article. thanks for posting it!
not being able to afford raising a child
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i agree abortion seems a greater evil.
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but, the CHurch supports a couple delaying a child,
for serious reasons.
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and NFP, is 99% effective.
it simply requires a bit of discipline.
( and, the few days of abstinance, can actually cause couples to enhance their marriage, and treat it less casually.)
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http://ccli.org/nfp/effectiveness/index.php
“.. group of hippies who wanted to be natural...”
Ha!! In advising my own daughters I like to highlight the hypocrisy of the greenie/hippy crowd. The women are pro choice and pro birth control. Most of the college aged women are taking birth control. I enjoy pointing out the discrepancy involved in consuming only organic chemical free vegetables and then daily ingesting a powerful synthetic hormone that fools the body into thinking it’s pregnant!! And this certainly includes the ivy league types who are supposedly smarter than the rest of us! My neice graduated from Cornell and was brainwashed to be as pro contraceptive as most all who reside in the happy/hippie valley in Ithaca - yet she is a strict Vegan!!
Also - isn’t giving birth the most natural thing for a woman to do rather than kill her unborn child?
This seems a bit off topic, but consider this - Christians know that we are created by God. Therefore God understands our nature thoroughly because he created that nature. Our inherent natural reproductive qualities were His intention. The prevention/interference with this process is articifical and man made. At the very least this nce is interference with His plan implies a lack of trust - and at worst it is an actual sin. The saints know to trust God completely - just as Jesus on the cross had total trust in His Father - His will be done.
This has been a burden on my mind for the past year. The goalposts have been moved by the church in relation to the world. The world moves and then the church. Now, we are at the point, even good and sincere Christians get their daughters on birth control at 16. Good and sincere married Christians allow the wife to get the birth control injection which last 3 months or so with side effects. I am not innocent in any of this, my kids are grown, but articles the past year have caused me to talk with them about God and contraception.
I grew up in an all Catholic, Irish and Italian community in The Bronx, NYC. I saw many families with 8-10-14 kids. for the most part the kids were not regulated as well as families with 2-3 kids... limited resources prevented them from getting higher education and as they got older, they were doing stuff out in the streets that their parents had no idea about...because the parents were too busy taking care of the plethora of babies still in the house.
in the day of the family farm, where you ‘bred’ your own farm help and expected a good chunk of progeny to die in childhood, making lots of babies was not only common, but made good sense.
we do not live like that anymore...life expectancy is way up from the 1800s...power equipment does most of the hard work on farms and most people live in the burbs or cities....
it just does not make sense to breed like that anymore.
IMHO....
It’s not “breeding”. It’s being fruitful and multiplying.
Your language shows you think we are little more than animals. Our language shows we believe we were created in the image and likeness of God and have a godly purpose.
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