Coitus interruptus

On Facebook, Dave Armstrong attempted to respond to a post of mine.

Right. This is now standard anti-Catholic boilerplate (also, often, radical Catholic reactionary talking points).

Ironically, Dave confirms my allegation in the very attempt to deflect it. Although he's a convert to Catholicism, he's at war with his adopted sect. He appoints himself the arbiter of who's a real Catholic. So he remains an outsider to his adopted sect. He's theologically purer than the priests and bishops of his chosen denomination. He stands apart and above. 

The topic was Onan and why he was killed. Hays cites what he thinks is top-notch Catholic scholarship: the modernist-influenced "The New Jerome Biblical Commentary" and "New Catholic Encyclopedia." He assumed (quite conveniently and according to his standard wrongheaded polemics) that liberal Catholic scholarship is orthodox.

I don't assume it's "orthodox." Rather, it's Catholic. This represents mainstream Catholic scholarship. You know, the kind that's routinely sanctioned by the Magisterium. 

I cited Fr. Brian Harrison: an actual orthodox Catholic scholar. 

Notice that Dave has to distinguish true Catholics from false Catholics within the One True Church®. He's the one drawing the lines. It's not as if the papacy put The New Jerome Biblical Commentary or the New Catholic Encyclopedia on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. No, this is Armstrong standing athwart his own denomination. A Catholic convert and layman who presumes to tell others which Catholic scholars are modernists and which are orthodox. This isn't coming down from the bishops. Armstrong doesn't trust the Magisterial accountability system.

He makes a very effective and pretty airtight biblical argument that apparently goes right over Hays' head as too complicated for him to grasp.

Let's examine Harrison's "airtight" argument, which is found here: 

http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt67.html

Now, it has been fashionable among twentieth-century exegetes to maintain that in these verses the Bible condemns Onan's coitus interruptus only insofar as it in effect violated the so-called levirate marriage custom endorsed by the law of Moses at a time when polygamy was not forbidden.7 According to this ancient oriental practice, a man - whether he was already married or not - was expected to marry his deceased brother's wife if she was still childless at her husband's death; and the first-born son of this union was then regarded as a legal descendant of the dead man. In other words, according to those exegetes who focus their attention exclusively on this custom in their reading of Genesis 38, Onan's sin is presented here as consisting only in his selfish intent to deny offspring to his brother's widow Tamar, and not even partly in the unnatural method he employed in doing so.

i) In what sense is coitus interruptus an "unnatural" method whereas the rhythm method is natural? Both are contraceptive techniques. Coitus interruptus isn't "unnatural" in the sense that using a condom is unnatural (i.e. an "artificial" barrier device made of latex). Even if you think coitus interruptus is wrong, that doesn't make it an "unnatural method." This is one of those makeshift distinctions you get in Catholic moral theology. Tendentious terminology to prejudice the analysis. Because Catholic apologists like Harrison must retroactively defend official Catholic teaching, they are forced to resort to ad hoc justifications.

ii) Perhaps he'd say it's "unnatural" in the sense that it frustrates the procreative purpose of sex. But by that logic, when an infertile married couple engage in conjugal relations, they are having unnatural (and sinful!) sexual relations. 

But, as I hope to show, this reading of Genesis has so little to recommend it exegetically that one can only assume that its popularity in recent decades is due mainly to the modern prejudices of theologians and exegetes who see intrinsically sterile types of sexual activity as morally unobjectionable in themselves (or even as necessary at times) - and who therefore have a strong vested interest in minimizing whatever biblical evidence there may be against these practices.

As if a traditional priest and Catholic apologist has no strong vested interest in defending the status quo.

The classical Jewish commentators - who can scarcely be accused of ignorance regarding Hebrew language, customs, law, and biblical literary genres…

Actually, "classical Jewish commentators" can be utterly ignorant of ancient Near Eastern laws, customs, &c. That was long before their time. Much of that was long-forgotten. 

 - certainly saw in this passage of Scripture a condemnation of both unnatural intercourse and masturbation as such.8 

This is silly. Masturbation and sexual intercourse are hardly equivalent–or even alike. Indeed, they are practically opposites. Having sexual intercourse with a woman is scarcely the same thing, or even similar, to self-stimulation. At best, the text could only condemn one, not both. In fact, it condemns neither. 

A typical traditional Jewish commentary puts it thus: "[Onan] misused the organs God gave him for propagating the race to unnaturally satisfy his own lust, and he was therefore deserving of death."9 And this is undoubtedly in accord with the natural impression which most unprejudiced readers will draw from the text of Genesis 38.

To the contrary, the text doesn't create the impression that he did this for self-gratification. After all, coitus interruptus diminishes the physical pleasure of the sex act.

But is this first impression correct? Is the truth really more subtle? Was Onan perhaps slain merely for refusing to give offspring to his deceased brother's wife, as most contemporary exegetes maintain? In answering these questions one must take cognizance of the following significant fact: the penalty subsequently laid down in the law of Moses for a simple refusal to comply with the levirate marriage precept was only a relatively mild public humiliation in the form of a brief ceremony of indignation. The childless widow, in the presence of the town elders, was authorized to remove her uncooperative brother-in-law's sandal and spit in his face for his refusal to marry her. He was then supposed to receive an uncomplimentary nick-name - "the Unshod."10 But since he nonetheless became sole owner of his deceased brother's house and goods,11 it is evident that his offence was scarcely considered a serious or criminal one - much less one deserving of death. Death, however, is precisely what Onan deserved, according to Genesis. It follows that those who say his only offence was infringement of the levirate marriage custom need to explain why such an offence was punished by the Lord so much more drastically in the case of Onan than than it subsequently was under the Mosaic law. If anything, we would tend to expect the contrary: i.e., that after the law was formalized as part of the Deuteronomic code its violation might be chastised more severely than before, not more mildly. Indeed, while it is clear from the Genesis narrative that the practice of levirate marriage already existed in Onan's time, there is no biblical evidence that he would have been conscious of any divine precept to observe that practice.12 This problem seems to have been simply ignored, rather than confronted, by those exegetes who cannot or will not see in this passage any Scriptural foundation for the orthodox Judæo-Christian doctrine against masturbation and contraception.

Several issues:

i) Harrison's argument either proves too much or too little. If failure to honor levirate marriage is insufficient to account for Onan's demise, so is "artificial contraception." After all, tens of millions of Catholics (not to mention however many non-Catholics) practice "artificial birth control," but I don't think actuaries report a high correlation between "artificial contraception" and sudden death. Is God striking dead tens of millions of Catholics (not to mention non-Catholics) who use "artificial" conceptive methods? If so, the evidence is well disguised. You're at greater risk of death from ball-lightning than "artificial contraception." 

ii) In the case of Onan, there are two aggravating factors, both related to levirate marriage. He didn't simply refuse to observe the custom. Rather, he resorted to subterfuge. He went into the tent of his widowed sister-in-law to give the outward appearance that he was observing the custom. That way he'd avoid the social stigma of refusing to honor his dead brother. In the eyes of the community, he was doing his duty. But in reality, he was subverting the custom. His private conduct was at variance with his public conduct. So his dissimulation is culpable. 

iii) In addition, by evading his duty, his actions jeopardized the promised line. It's not coincidental that this text occurs in a book which accentuates the seed of promise, beginning with Gen 3:15. Threats to the blessed lineage are a recurring theme in Genesis. That figures prominently in the patriarchal narratives. Scholars like John Sailhamer and Desi Alexander have carefully documented that theological motif.  

It should be remembered also that we are here dealing here with a culture which so abhorred that other form of "wasting the seed" - the homosexual act - that it prescribed the death penalty for this offense.

This assumes that sodomy is morally abhorrent because homosexual men are wasting their seed. If that's the case, then nocturnal emissions would also be a capital offense. But, once again, I don't think actuaries report a high correlation between nocturnal emission and sudden death. 

Moreover, in the view of revisionist exegetes, Onan's sin is presented here as being essentially one of omission. We are asked to believe that, according to Genesis, Onan committed no sinful act; rather, that his sin was to refrain from acting appropriately toward his deceased brother because of some sort of selfish interior disposition. But why, in that case, does the text describe Onan's sin as a positive action ("he did20 a detestable thing")? Coming directly after the author has mentioned what is certainly an outward act (i.e., "spilling the seed"), these words in v. 10 plainly indicate a causal link between that sexual act as such and the wrath and punishment of God. 

Actually, v9 does report his "interior disposition": But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother's wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother.

Evidently, his motive was to secure the inheritance for himself by eliminating a potential rival. That, too, is culpable.

On the other hand if, as Judæo-Christian tradition has always insisted, "wasting the seed" by intrinsically sterile types of genital action violates that natural law to which all men, Jew and Gentile alike, have always had access by virtue of their very humanness, (cf. Rom. 1: 26-27; 2: 14), this will explain perfectly why Onan's sexual action in itself would be presented in Scripture as meriting a most severe divine judgment: it was a perverted act - one of life-suppressing lust. Indeed, over and above its prohibition by natural law, such deliberately sterilized pleasure-seeking could well have been discerned as a form of contravening one of the few divine precepts which already in that pre-Sinai tradition had been solemnly revealed - and repeated - in positive, verbal form: "Increase and multiply" (Gen. 1: 27-28; 9: 1).

By that logic, Catholic couples who deliberately evade the creational ordinance by engaging in "natural family planning" are morally equivalent to homosexuals. 

The cumulative weight of the evidence - the structure and sexual explicitness of the text itself and the much greater severity of Onan's punishment than that prescribed for levirate marriage infringements in Deuteronomy 25: 5-6 - leads us to conclude that while Genesis 38: 9-10 very probably includes disapproval of Onan's lack of piety toward his deceased brother…

Now we have a backdoor admission that his motivations were relevant after all. 

Thus, the traditional interpretation of this passage as a divinely revealed condemnation of contraceptive acts - not as a provision of mere posititve law (cultic or disciplinary) given temporarily for a specific ancient cultural context, but as a particular manifestation of that divine will for the entire human species which had been revealed through nature ever since the Creation - must be seen as supported by serious exegetical arguments.

i) Once more, the argument either proves too much or too little. If this is a "divinely revealed condemnation of contraceptive acts," then it also condemns the rhythm method. 

ii) In addition, the text only refers to a male contraceptive technique. It says nothing about female contraceptives.  

NB: The author acknowledges with sincere thanks the information, advice and criticism offered in the preparation of this article by Gerald C. Matatics, Professor of Sacred Scripture at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary, Elmhurst, Pennsylvania...

Ah, yes, Matatics–who is now a sedevacantist.