"The Christian Case against Contraception" by Bryan C. Hodge: A Review

The Christian Case against Contraception: Making the Case from Historical, Biblical, Systematic, and Practical Theology and Ethics (Wipf and Stock, 2010) is a defense of the anti-contraception position of the historic Church against the overturning of that position during the past 100 years.

Most people have no idea what a recent innovation is the view that contraception is morally acceptable. The whole contraceptive mentality, in which procreation is divided from sex, is as old as the Fall, but Christians accepting this mentality is a recent thing. The idea that sex can be used for pleasure with no expectation of children coming from it is the basis for promiscuity, pre-marital sex, open marriage, homosexuality and many other perversions. The whole assumption that we can and should control fertility as human beings leads to infanticide and abortion, which become necessary when contraception fails (as all contraceptive methods often do). That this mentality exists among the pagans is nothing new, but for Christians to accept it is scandalous and novel.

Bryan C. Hodge has written a straight-forward book which will introduce the modern Christian to the way that traditional Christians from the Fathers to the early 20th century reasoned about contraception. They were pretty much unanimously opposed to it as a form of murder and a form of idolatry. For Hodge, God gives children and every conception is God's will. Since God decides how many children a couple will have, our responsibility is simply to obey the command to be fruitful and multiply.

The interesting thing about Hodge is that he is not a Roman Catholic. As a conservative Presbyterian, he is sympathetic to the Quiverfull Movement, which views children as a blessing from the Lord and rejects all forms of birth control. Hodge even rejects the position of the modern Roman Catholic Church that natural family planning is morally acceptable as long as it is not used to avoid having children altogether. NFP basically involves a woman observing signs of her own fertility and the couple avoiding intercourse during fertile parts of the month. To do this, says Hodge, is as bad as using contraception.

Hodge accuses those who advocate for contraception of having a naturalistic concept of procreation. He argues that, since a new human being with a soul is created each time an egg is fertilized, God is involved in that process and it cannot be reduced to a physical process alone. He argues for a supernatural view of the whole conception event and he contends that the Bible clearly teaches that God can and does both open and close the womb according to His sovereign will. He views the human attempt to utilize contraception as rooted in a naturalistic view of conception in which it is within the power and authority of humans to cause or prevent.

In a short review it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of the arguments of a nearly 300 page book. However, I want to consider one of his most significant points. He argues that we, as humans, do not have the right to allow or prohibit a person from coming into existence and that to do so is to commit something much to like murder for comfort: not by killing an existing person, but by preventing that person from coming into existence. His argument is that it is God's prerogative to give life and to take it away. We want to argue this at the other end of life against euthanasia, so why is it different at the beginning? Is giving and taking life not God's prerogative?

The modern idea that we have total control over our own bodies and can do whatever we want with them is in conflict with the idea that we belong to God and He is sovereign. Reproductive rights don't stop with contraception; they logically extend to abortion as well and it is only a matter of time before they extend further to infanticide. On what grounds can we, as Christians, challenge the idea of our having control over our own bodies when we approve of contraception? Is the number of children we have not up to God? Is God not in control? Can we not trust Him as people have for millennia?

In modern medical ethics, the idea of patient autonomy is practically the only moral principle left in operation and it is a slender reed. Without a belief in God and Divine commandments that we must obey, such as "Do not commit murder," our medical ethics slides into anti-human, ultilitarianism that permits horrors like cloning individuals for body parts and creating children with three biological parents and so on.

Clearly, Christians have to invoke the sovereignty of God at some point. Bryan Hodge says it begins with marriage and the sexual embrace, which must always be open to children. On this point, he and John Paul II are in agreement. Openness to God's creative act through us is fundamental to Christian morality and to any kind of humanism that respects the dignity of the person created in God's image.