Posted: 2/4/2006 9:27:51 PM EDT
[#8]
Onan's sin was in pulling out (coitus interruptus), not in his "failure" to give Tamar a child. If he had properly had intercourse with her and she didn't conceive would God have killed him for not giving Tamar a child? No. His sin was in his action of deliberately robbing the sex act from its life-giving ability. Judah and his younger son also violated the Levirate law, as did Onan. So why didn't God kill all three of them? The punishment for violating the Levirate law was public humiliation, not death! Judah broke the Levirate law by not letting Tamar wed Shelah, and Shelah violated the Levirate law by not insisting on the marriage when he came of age. Onan did more than just violate the Levirate law. He went through the motions, but prevented the act from bearing the fruit it is designed to bear. He deliberately contracepted. I shall quote part of a booklet "Birth Control & Christian Discipleship:" 1. Biblical scholar Manual Miguens has pointed out that a close examination of the text [Gen. 38:9-10] shows that God condemned Onan for the specific action he performed, not for his anti-Levirate intentions. The translation "he spilled his seed on the ground" fails to do full justice to the Hebrew expression. The Hebrew verb shichet never means to spill or waste. Rather, it means to act perversely. The text also makes it clear that his perverse action was related towards the ground, not against his brother. "...His perversion or corruption consists in his action itself, not precisely in the result and goal of his act... In a strict interpretation the text says that what was evil int he sight of the Lord was what Onan actually did (asher asah); the emphasis in this sentence of verse 10 does not fall on what he intended to achieve, but on what he did." 2. In the context of the entire chapter, Genesis 38, it is clear that Onan is only one of three persons who violated the Levirate. His father, Judah, and his younger Brother, Shelah, also violated the Levirate law, and Judah openly admitted his guilt in verse 26. After Tamar had tricked Judah into having intercourse with her and getting her pregnant, thus getting Tamar accused of harlotry, he admitted, "She is in the right rather than I. This comes of my not giving her to my son Shelah to be his wife."
When three people are guilty of the same crime but onlyone of them receives the death penalty from God, common sense requires that we ask if that one did something the others did not do. The answer is obvious: only Onan went through the motions of the covenantal act of intercourse but then defrauded its purpose and meaning; only Onan engaged in the contraceptive behavior of withdrawal."
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It goes on in more detail, but that gives you an idea of what the time-honored (meaning centuries-old) interpretation is, and not just by Catholics. What many people today don't realize is that for the vast majority of Christianity, artificial contraception was condemned and called Onanism, even by Protestants going back as far as Martin Luther. Until 1930 at the Lameth Conference (Anglican), not one single Protestant denomination approved of artificial contraception. All of the anti-contraceptives law in the US at the turn of the century were put in place by Protestants. It was the SCOTUS case of Griswold vs. Connecticut that struck down laws against contraceptives that opened the door for... you guessed it... abortion. The two are inseparably linked (or so said Margaret Sanger, the foundress of Planned Parenthood), and the very same cases that opened the door for contraceptives and abortion are the exact same cases used to strike down Texas's anti-sodomy laws and are being used by judges to push same-sex marriage. Homosexual activity is the logical progression from artificial contraception (and this is coming from someone who supports artificial contraception). If it is ok to rob the marital act of it's life-giving property, making it a sterile act done solely for the purpose of orgasm, then any opening or device or creature will suffice as well, as they also make the sex act sterile and done only for pleasure. Here is a quote from a man who very clearly identified himself as dissenting from the Catholic teaching on human sexuality: It seems unreasonable to maintain that there is a difference between allowing a husband and wife to use the condom adn allowing them to ahve anal intercourse since netiehr fulfills the natural law doctrine's requirement of insemination in the vagina. Likewise there is no difference between using the condom and coitus interruptus or any of the other so-called sins prohibited under the doctrine such as masturbation, homosexuality, and bestiality." ~Michael F Valente, Sex: The Radical View of a Catholic Theologian
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Here are a few quotes by some well-known Protestants: "[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime. . . . Consequently, he deserved to be killed by God. He committed an evil deed. Therefore, God punished him." ~Martin Luther
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"The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring." ~John Calvin
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"Those sins that dishonor the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he [Onan] did displeased the Lord—and it is to be feared; thousands, especially of single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls." ~John Wesley
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