Sin of Onan

Sin of Onan 

1.  Biblical scholar Manuel Miguens has pointed out that a close examination of the text shows that God condemned Onan for the specific action he performed, not for his anti-Levirate intentions.  He notes that 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 toward 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 in the 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.  We have seen above that Judah admitted his fault in violating the Levirate, and Shelah also was guilty because he should have assumed the Levirate duty when Judah failed in his responsibility.  When three people are guilty of the same crime but only one of them receives the death penalty from God, common sense requires that we ask what that one did that the others did not do.  The answer is obvious in this case: only Onan engaged in the contraceptive behavior of withdrawal; only Onan went through the motions of the covenantal act of intercourse but then defrauded its purpose and meaning.

3.  The traditional anti-contraception interpretation is reinforced by the wider context of the Bible.  The law of the Levirate and the punishment for its violators are spelled out in Deuteronomy 25:5-10.  An aggrieved widow could bring the offending brother-in-law before the elders; if he still refused to do his duty, she could “pull the sandal off his foot, and spit in his face, and she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’  And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, The house of him who had his sandal pulled off” (9-10).  Embarrassing, but hardly the death penalty.  Note also that Deuteronomy has no qualms about the death penalty for sexual sins: chapter 22: 22-25 prescribes death for adultery and rape.

4.  The text must be interpreted in the context of the rest of the Bible’s teaching about love, marriage, and sexuality. It can be stated without fear of contradiction that the teaching against unnatural forms of birth control is in perfect harmony with the biblical teaching against sexual immorality including sodomy, fornication, and adultery.  On the other hand, it is admitted by pro-contraception dissenters that the acceptance of marital contraception entails the logical acceptance of every form of sexual behavior between consenting adults.  Or, at the least, dissenters can find no natural law basis for proscribing such behaviors, only pragmatic grounds such as health or immediate social consequences.5 The “logic” of contraception cannot say a firm NO to anything that is mutually agreeable.  As secular humanist Walter Lippmann wrote in 1929, “the central4 confusion has been that the reformers have tried to fix their sexual ideals in accordance with the logic of birth control instead of the logic of human nature.”

5.  The way in which the Church has understood the Scriptures throughout the centuries is the most important part of interpretation, and there is no question that the anti-contraception interpretation of Genesis 38 has been the interpretation over the centuries. St. Augustine wrote: “Intercourse even with one’s legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented.  Onan, the son of Judah, did this and the LORD killed him for it.”  Pope Pius XI quoted Augustine in this way in Casti Connubii, the 1930 encyclical in which he reaffirmed the Christian Tradition shortly after the bishops of the Church of England accepted marital contraception. 

In summary, the text itself offers no support for a Levirate-only interpretation, and there has been an almost universal tradition that the sin for which Onan received the death penalty from God was his sin of contraceptive behavior.

…..

'In the fourth century St. Augustine wrote, "Relations with one's wife when conception is deliberately prevented are as unlawful and impure as the conduct of Onan who was slain." St. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, taught clearly the constant doctrine of the Christian religion that birth-control is a grave sin. He writes, "Next to murder, by which an actually existent human being is destroyed, we rank this sin by which the generation of a human being is prevented." Contra Gent., Bk. III., c. 122. It is not a new law by any means.'

http://www.radioreplies.info/radio-r...ol-1.php?t=111

…..

“That Onan's unnatural act as such is condemned as sinful in Gen. 38: 9-10 was an interpretation held by the Fathers and Doctors of the Catholic Church, by the Protestant Reformers, and by nearly all celibate and married theologians of all Christian denominations until the early years of this century, when some exegetes began to approach the text with preconceptions deriving from the sexual decadence of modern Western culture and its exaggerated concern for 'over-population.' ” [Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii (31 December 1930)].

……..

Vatican II declared that “In questions of birth regulation, the sons of the Church, faithful to these principles, are forbidden to use methods disapproved of by the teaching authority of the Church in its interpretation of the divine law.” [Gaudium et Spes, 51].

….

In Evangelium Vitae, St John Paul II, 1995, reiterates: “It is therefore morally unacceptable to encourage, let alone impose, the use of methods such as contraception, sterilization and abortion in order to regulate births.” [#91].