Here’s an instructive passage from one of my favorite contemporary Christian writers.
From Lauren F. Winner, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity
Christian tradition has historically articulated a threefold purpose for sex: sex is meant to be unitive, procreative, and sacramental. That means, in simpler language, that sex is meant to unite two people, it is meant to lead to children, and it is meant to recall, and even reenact, the promise that God makes to us and that we make to one another in the marriage vow––that is, we promise one another fidelity, and God’s Spirit promises a presence that will uphold us in our radical and crazy pledge of lifelong faithfulness.
Each of these ends of sex has a basis in scripture. The unitive aspect is hinted at in Genesis 2:23, when Adam says that Eve is “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” The procreative purpose is also spelled out in Genesis, in God’s instruction to be fruitful and multiply. Finally, the sacramental end of sex is implied in Ephesians 5:32, when Paul, having offered a set of guidelines for how husbands and wives should relate to one another, says, “This is a profound mystery––but I am talking about Christ and the church.” At first blush, it seems like something of a non sequitur. But, in fact, it tells us what marriage, and marital sex, is: a small patch of experience that gives us our best glimpse of the radical fidelity and intimacy of God and the church.
These three purposes––the unitive, procreative, sacramental, and procreative––are deeply interwoven with one another. Openness to children reshapes how we experience and understand sex; procreative possibility changes the way sex is unitive and sacramental. The unitivity of sex, for example, looks different when we remember that unitive sex might produce kids. Without the possibility of procreation, sex can quickly become part of a romantic two-ness, wherein the couple simply becomes more and more deeply interested in one another. The prospect of procreation reconfigures unity, forcing the couple out of themselves, out of a potentially suffocating and selfish oneness, and toward another––toward a stranger, a neighbor, a baby whom they might welcome into their home. When procreation is possible, unitive sex is fruitful beyond simply the couple themselves. (This procreative potential is one thing that keeps marriage from becoming, in Kierkegaard’s candid phrase, an ingrown toenail.)
So, too, the possibility of procreation affects how we understand the sacramental aspect of married love and sex, for, again, procreation redirects the lover’s attention beyond the spouse, beyond the marriage bed. This is the way sacraments are always meant to work: the Eucharist happens at the table of the body of believers, but we do not stay put at the table; we take Communion with one another so that we might be equipped to follow Christ’s injunction to go out into the world. The same is true with baptism––we are washed clean not so that we can preen over our purity and cleanliness, but so that we can go into the world with the unwashed. And sex that is open to procreation is sex that pushes us to be other-directed, that pushes us to leave the bed and journey into the household, and the wider community.
Of course, it is possible for sex without procreation to be incarnate, sacramental, and other-directed. Consider a husband who is sterile, or a wife who is past menopause––these marriages can be as open and hospitable as a marriage that produces children (although that openness and hospitality may require a different level of intention). Nonetheless, experience, nature, and scripture suggest that there is a deep connection between the work of sex and the possibility of procreation.
Technologically effective birth control has severed those connections. We can reaffirm them without necessarily landing at the Roman Catholic position––we can, for example, say that the whole of a married couple’s sex life needs to be open to procreation, but each and every sex act need not be. And we can worry about technology’s separation of sex and procreation because we see that it does violence to what sex is finally about (pp. 65-67)
Cross-posted at Mere Orthodoxy.
June 16th, 2010 | 11:40 am | #1
Reading this makes me wonder which church Winner is a member of. I am unaware of a church that in some fashion permits contraception and also regards marriage as a sacrament. Of course I may simply have overlooked it if it does exist.
June 16th, 2010 | 1:11 pm | #2
DAVID: Professor Winner belongs to an Episcopal church. Why do you perceive a conflict between permitting contraception and regarding marriage as a sacrament?
June 16th, 2010 | 1:13 pm | #3
This footnote from Winner’s book may clarify her position:
I am still in the early stages of rethinking Protestantism’s twentieth-century embrace of birth control. I intuitively believe we Protestants have some rethinking to do, but where we land after all that rethinking is not yet clear to me. It seems that we need not end up at either of the extremes of the Vogue ad or the Humanae Vitae. (I applaud the Orthodox Jewish model of managing contraception. Orthodox Jews are allowed to use birth control, but they are not allowed to make decisions about contraception individually. Instead, a married couple meets annually with their rabbi, and the three decide together whether the couple ought to use contraception for the next six to twelve months. This model is not only judicious, it is also communal. It implies a recognition that even intimate decisions about sex and family are not, finally, “private” decisions, but decisions in which the community has authority.) For good Protestant defenses of birth control that hinge on the idea that over the course of a marriage, sex needs to be open to procreative and unitive functions, but that not every sex act need be open to procreation, see James Neuchterlein, “Catholics, Protestants, and Contraception,” First Things 92 (April 1999): 10-11. Indeed, the Catholic insistence that each and every sex act be open to procreation may ironically be connected to the broader culture’s idea that each and every sex act is supposed to be mind-blowingly orgasmic and feel emotionally transformative. In each stance, we see a narrow scrutiny of each single sex act, as though each sex act can be isolated from the household, from the domestic warp and woof in which it plays out. Neither view seems able to understand married sex not as a series of discrete indicidents but rather a years-long unfolding (pp. 166-167).
June 16th, 2010 | 1:36 pm | #4
Christopher Benson write: “Why do you perceive a conflict between permitting contraception and regarding marriage as a sacrament?”
Simply because I am not aware of any church that regards marriage as a sacrament permitting contraception. Protestant churches insist that there are only two sacraments: baptism and the Lord’s supper. Rome does not permit barrier methods of contraception. I have read conflicting accounts of the Orthodox position. It may be that, in the absence of tighter organizational unity, there is no stance binding on all of the autocephalous territorial/ethnic churches.
June 16th, 2010 | 2:53 pm | #5
Compare two claims:
(1) The purpose of sex is procreative.
(2) The purpose of chewing is digestive.
I’m not even tempted to think that the truth of claim (2) implies any norms against the occasional merely pleasurable use of bubble gum. Should I be?
June 16th, 2010 | 2:55 pm | #6
I see the argument for the procreative necessity in (most) marriages here as being based on deductions and social reasoning. While scripture does describe children as being a blessing, it seems like Winner treats it as more of a requirement than is substantiated in an authoritative text.
June 16th, 2010 | 3:24 pm | #7
Anglicans aren’t quite Protestants, but for a sketch of the Anglican position beginning in the early 20th Century (which tried to “reaffirm them without necessarily landing at the Roman Catholic position––we can, for example, say that the whole of a married couple’s sex life needs to be open to procreation, but each and every sex act need not be”) see Eberstadt’s essay in the Feb. issue of FT.
June 16th, 2010 | 5:40 pm | #8
DAVID: I think it’s worth nothing that Winner describes one of the purposes of sex as “sacramental” (adjective) and not as a “sacrament” (noun). Consider how she uses the word “sacramental”:
Sex “is meant to recall, and even reenact, the promise that God makes to us and that we make to one another in the marriage vow––that is, we promise one another fidelity, and God’s Spirit promises a presence that will uphold us in our radical and crazy pledge of lifelong faithfulness . . . Finally, the sacramental end of sex is implied in Ephesians 5:32, when Paul, having offered a set of guidelines for how husbands and wives should relate to one another, says, ‘This is a profound mystery––but I am talking about Christ and the church.’ At first blush, it seems like something of a non sequitur. But, in fact, it tells us what marriage, and marital sex, is: a small patch of experience that gives us our best glimpse of the radical fidelity and intimacy of God and the church.”
June 16th, 2010 | 9:35 pm | #9
Hiya,
Thanks for the post and comments. The sacramental portion of sex has to do with God’s order in creation. When God created the Adam there was no need for sexual differentiation. Further, since God declared His covenant with the Adam (don’t eat…) we may take the image of God as complete so far as it goes. SO its quite possible that what were later separated as masculine and feminine were both present in the Adam as they are in God.
When God made the woman, he separated the masculine and feminine that were both present in the Adam, and gave to each a body appropriate to its role in creation.
We don’t have any record of the experience of sex from before the fall, but in the sacrament of intercourse, what God had separated was sacramentaly rejoined. All of human experience with sex has been after the fall, so it’s broken. None of us has experienced sex according to the designers manual. we only experience it in a world wherein each and every aspect of our lives is touched by sin.
I’m with the author that our churches need to not only talk about sex, but also sex related issues like birth control.
June 17th, 2010 | 12:26 am | #10
Janice,
You’ve misunderstood natural law, which implies that while things can be used for purposes besides their final cause, they cannot be used for purposes that condradict their final cause. Contraceptive intercourse isn’t just enjoying the pleasure of sex; it’s enjoying the pleasure at the expense of its final cause: procreation. Chewing gum doesn not contradict the final cause of teeth: the digestion of food. It’s just an additional function. Contraception is more comparable to smoking. Breathing tobacco is pleasurable to some but it contradicts the final cause of breathing: to fill one’s lungs with fresh air.
Protestants ought to read up on Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and John Paul’s philosophy and theology before they think they have refuted the Catholic position.
Also, while I respect Laura Winner’s remarks, I think she still has some reading to do. Her argument that the procreative meaning can be maintained in the sum total of the acts has repeatedly been proven false both logically and historically.
June 17th, 2010 | 12:40 am | #11
Dave,
It looks like you’ve misunderstood chewing gum. The gum base ingredient in chewing gum (which is typically a synthetic rubber) is specifically designed so as to prevent the chewable mass from being broken down and digested.
Preciously little sense can be made of your claim that, while contraception “contradicts” the procreative purposes of sex, chewing gum doesn’t “contradict” the digestive purposes of chewing.
June 17th, 2010 | 12:43 am | #12
“Indeed, the Catholic insistence that each and every sex act be open to procreation may ironically be connected to the broader culture’s idea that each and every sex act is supposed to be mind-blowingly orgasmic and feel emotionally transformative”
Here’s the problem with this. If you don’t artificially manipulate the body, then each and every act is, by nature, open to procreation. This is the point: God has created man and woman in such a way that unity and potential for procreation occur simultaneously. To use contraception would be to separate what God has joined together in the very structure of the act. However, God has also given woman a fertility cycle. Lerning this cycle and practicing periodic continence, which requires self-control, not only accepts what God has created, it cultivates the virtue of self-crontrol which is a necessary prerequisite to sacrificial love.
Being open to procreation does not mean intending to procreate. It simply means respecting the final cause of sexual intercourse by not artificially manipulation what God has created. In this way, the Catholic position is far from that of which Winner accuses it. It rejects contraception outright because it inherently contradicts creation. However, it accepts a form of family planning that embraces the created order and demands the virtue of love.
June 17th, 2010 | 1:08 am | #13
Janice,
You’re missing the point. Contraception is used precisely for its capacity to make the sexual act infertile. Chewing gum is fine because it does not contradict the purpose of teeth, which is to chew FOOD and digest it. That the gum itself resists digestion is irrelevant. The point is that you do not chew it for indigestion of food. In contrast, contraceptive sex makes you unable to procreate, yet would sex exist if procreation didn’t?
I realize that gum and sex are not easily comparable, and there are much better analogies that can be made. But I would encourage you give natural law a chance before writting it off so quickly.
June 17th, 2010 | 1:26 am | #14
Dave,
Your sloppy descriptions cause you to miss the parallels. You are overly eager to write them off:
(1) Just as sex is procreative, chewing is digestive.
(2) Just as the latex of a condom is designed to prevent procreation, so also the synthetic rubber gum base of chewing gum is designed to prevent digestion.
(3) Just as a condom renders sex non-procreative, gum renders chewing non-digestive.
(4) Just as one doesn’t have sex with a condom to procreate, one doesn’t chew on gum to digest.
(5) Just as sex wouldn’t exist if procreation didn’t, so also chewing wouldn’t exist if digestion didn’t.
June 17th, 2010 | 1:28 am | #15
Janice,
Maybe this is a better example. I’m no doctor but the purpose of a gag reflex is, I think, to prevent choking. Now persons with bulimia might use this reflex to willfully vomit to lose weight. This is wrong because it takes something that God created for our own health and manipulates it for a purpose of our own, a purpose that contradicts our health.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with pleasure. I’m saying that if God intended for us to experience sexual pleasure carefree of the prospect of children, isn’t it strange that he created us so that both outcomes result from the same act?
June 17th, 2010 | 1:31 am | #16
In what sense is this a “better” example than chewing gum?
June 17th, 2010 | 1:56 am | #17
Janice,
You’re using your premises, not mine. Here’s the difference between the two: sex is inherently linked to procreation in that you can not naturally have intercourse without potential fertility. But chewing is not inherently linked to digestion. You can chew many things and spit them out if you like. But this doesn’t mean that the final cause of chewing isn’t digestion and then nutrition. It just means that you don’t need to always use your jaw and teeth for such a purpose. If, on the other hand, you were to chew something that made you incapable of consuming and digesting food, then this would be a problem.
I though the above comment might be a better example because it emphasizes what I mean by contradicting the pupose that God assigns to a thing from the beginning.
June 17th, 2010 | 2:06 am | #18
Have you never read about Onan? Genesis 38:9
June 17th, 2010 | 2:21 am | #19
For Onan to have intercourse and spill his seed was to reject the very nature of intercourse, which is always meant to culminate in the emission of seed into the vagina. For there wouldn’t be any seed in the first place if it wasn’t meant to end up there.
Okay I have to go so lets just commit to having as much hubba bubba as possible tomorrow and call it a night.
June 17th, 2010 | 2:29 am | #20
Kinda makes you wonder about what you’re doing if you “chew many things and spit them out.” Compare:
June 17th, 2010 | 7:48 am | #21
How about folks who chew gum while having contraceptive sex?
;-)
June 17th, 2010 | 10:36 am | #22
Janice,
Why do you insist that chewing must be accompanied by swallowing? I’ve already said that while chewing’s purpose is to digest food, you can chew for other purposes which do not hinder or frustrate one’s capacity to digest food.
Contraceptive sex is diffferent. The natural purpose of sex is procreation. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other purposes, nor does it mean that you must intend to procreate each time. But it does mean that artificially making the act infertile is irrational in a similar way that chewing something that’s harmful to the body’s digestive system would be.
You say that this is exactly what gum does. But gum is not meant to be ingested. The fact that it prevents one from digesting itself makes sense because gum isn’t food! Now if gum imparied your ability to digest food, like smoking impairs you ability to breathe, then yes, chewing gum would be immoral.
You seem to think that after comparing sex to chewing you have an airtight case againt the Catholic position. But regardless of what comparison we are using, you still need to address the argument that God created the link between unity and procreation and so we have no right to separate it. We need to prove that contraceptive sex is moral rather than assuming it is innocent until proven guilty. This is the way Christians approached the topic until modernity prevailed in the 1930s.
June 17th, 2010 | 12:26 pm | #23
“sex is meant to be unitive, procreative, and sacramental.”
I think it also counts as good exercise. So, four-fold.
June 17th, 2010 | 1:35 pm | #24
Dave,
Well, why do you insist that intercourse be accompanied by “the emission of seed into the vagina”?
You can likewise have sex for other purposes which do not hinder or frustrate one’s capacity to procreate.
So likewise, the natural purpose of chewing is digestive. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t other purposes, nor does it mean that you must intend to digest each time.
And you still need to address the argument that God created the link between chewing and digestion and so we have no right to separate it.
Likewise, we need to prove that gum chewing is moral rather than assuming it is innocent until proven guilty.
June 17th, 2010 | 4:50 pm | #25
You use contraception in order to eliminate the procreative purpose of sexual union. You don’t chew gum to eliminate the ‘food-digestive’ purpose of teeth but simply in addition to such a purpose. If you can’t see the clear difference between the two, and thus the faulty logic in your original post, then there is nothing more I can say.
June 17th, 2010 | 4:57 pm | #26
All, but you forget #11 and #13: we add the synthetic rubber gum base “to eliminate the ‘food-digestive’ purpose of chewing.
If you can’t see the clear [parallels] between the two, and thus the faulty logic in your [various objections], then there is nothing more I can say.
June 17th, 2010 | 5:39 pm | #27
I already explained why the nature of the gum is irrelevant. Gum isn’t meant to be digested. Nor does it affect one’s ability to digest food.
I chew gum usually to change the tast in my mouth. In terms of the capacity of my teeth to chew food, my gum-chewing habit does not conflict with my food-chewing. In other words, these two usues of my teeth can be fulfilled separately because the purposes do not occur simultaneously.
In sex, however, the unitive and procreative meanings exist simultaneously in the very structure of the act, as God created it. Utilizing one without the other contradicts the integral nature of the act itself.
June 17th, 2010 | 5:44 pm | #28
You may want to read Humanae Vitae, which constantly appeals to the inextricable nature of the two aspects of intercourse. My point above is that chewing for pleasure and chewing for nutrition are not inextricable as are unity and procreation in sex.
June 17th, 2010 | 5:59 pm | #29
Just like condoms aren’t meant to transmit semen. Nor do they affect one’s ability to procreate.
I have contraceptive sex usually to enjoy the sex. In terms of the capacity of procreative organs to procreate, my contraceptive sex habit does not conflict with my procreation. In other words, these two uses of my procreative organs can be fulfilled separately because the purposes need not occur simultaneously.
In chewing, however, the chewing and digestive meanings exist simultaneously in the very structure of the act, as God created it. Utilizing one without the other contradicts the integral nature of the act itself.
You may want to think. My point above is that chewing for pleasure and chewing for nutrition are just as extricable (or just as inextricable) as are sex for pleasure and sex for procreation.
June 17th, 2010 | 6:31 pm | #30
An aside: Dave powerfully exemplifies a characteristic feature of many conservative minds.
In the face of a challenging thought, he jumps to embrace any idea that seems to reconfirm–conserve–his old beliefs, without making the slightest effort to consider the obvious rejoinders. His mind seems controlled by a powerful impulse, not to think about challenges, but to dismiss them as threats. It’s a propensity, a mode of thought. Here we have it on striking display.
June 17th, 2010 | 9:23 pm | #31
Janice,
Having read the above exchange and your rather smug remarks about your debating partner, the thought occurs to me that your choice of such a trivial activity as chewing gum as your comparison to the act of sexual intimacy may reveal unintentionally more of your attitude toward the sacramental union of husband and wife than you intended to reveal.
You sound ever so much like a liberal Protestant with your impatience with Tradition and your insistence that sex is easily reduced to a pleasurable experience – like taking a bath or eating a good meal or even, dare I say, like chewing gum.
Dave has not availed himself of all the arguments that stand arrayed against your position, but I agree with him that you would greatly benefit from a close reading of John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body.
As an Evangelical professor, I find my students resonate with the high view of human sexuality found in this work much more than they do with the “It’s no big deal – just like taking a drink of water” view of the dominant culture.
June 17th, 2010 | 9:52 pm | #32
Craig Carter,
You do well to qualify you claim about what the analogy reveals about my “attitude toward the sacramental union of husband and wife.” As an Evangelical professor, you must know enough about the parables of Jesus to know that, in interpreting an analogy, one ought to try to focus on the actual point of the analogy.
But if you have arguments addressing the point of the analogy, please proceed.
June 17th, 2010 | 10:29 pm | #33
Truth Unites … and Divides get my vote for the funniest comment:
How about folks who chew gum while having contraceptive sex? ;-)
Thanks for bringing some levity to an overheated conversation.
Isn’t it possible for all Christians to agree that “sex is meant to unite two people, it is meant to lead to children, and it is meant to recall, and even reenact, the promise that God makes to us and that we make to one another in the marriage vow––that is, we promise one another fidelity, and God’s Spirit promises a presence that will uphold us in our radical and crazy pledge of lifelong faithfulness” (qtd. from Lauren Winner, Real Sex)?
June 17th, 2010 | 10:42 pm | #34
Of course, the hat trick is to chew gum while having contraceptive sex while wearing antiperspirant.
But let’s not get into the purposes of sweating and the “contradictions” thereof.
June 18th, 2010 | 8:00 am | #35
“Truth Unites … and Divides get my vote for the funniest comment:
How about folks who chew gum while having contraceptive sex? ;-)
Thanks for bringing some levity to an overheated conversation.”
You’re welcome, Christopher Benson. Speaking of overheated, has it been your observation that if someone were to chew gum really fast and/or have sex really fast, they then become overheated?
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