Well said. This is still however a tricky verse. While I was still a Protestant I heard apologist Greg Koukl ask the question, if this was such a terrible sin which Onan committed to warrant death, then why wasnt it already condemned specifically?
Ive also heard the Catholic response that the sin of refusing to bear children for your brother's widow bore a different and specific punishment. Either way its not very easy to understand the whole issue which is why we need tradition and the teachings of the Church.
Steve Hays wrote:
i) In reading Catholic literature on human sexuality, it’s as if you stumbled across a Scholastic treatise on angelology. It’s so utterly out of touch with reality. Ethereal and hair-splitting.
Or it’s like those B-movies which are so badly scripted that you can never suspend disbelief. You know very well that if you were in the same situation as that character on the screen, you wouldn’t do what he did. Indeed, you can tell from the actor’s expression that he can’t do it with a straight face either.
You read this literature, in which a Catholic man is pretending to be offended by something that no man really finds offensive, and he expects you, the reader, to pretend that he’s not pretending to be offended by it.
And one runs across this attitude in certain Protestant circles as well when we get on the same subject.
I just want to see some of the male discussants drop the studied pose of shock and horror. And I’m not referring to you or Frank.
ii) Apropos (i), I appreciate the candor which you, Frank, and Berny bring to this issue. And one of my concerns with the break-out-the-smelling-salts swooning and hyperventilating of guys like Juan is that it shuts down honest discussion.
Men share a common, unspoken understanding of what they do or used to do behind closed doors (depending on how old they are), but even though it’s an open secret, there’s a conspiracy of silence and collective mistrust due to the social stigma attaching to masturbation in some Christian circles—even though everyone concerned may be in the very same boat.
It’s like the waning years of the Soviet Union when no one believed in Marxist-Leninism anymore, but no one wanted to be the first to admit it.
So you end up this oddly circular, self-reinforcing police mechanism where you know that I know, and I know that you know, but we both continue to enforce a code which neither of us may believe in, because I’m afraid to say what I know you already now, and you’re afraid to say what you know I already know.
It’s as if all the prison guards walked off the job and never came back, but years later, none of the prisoners had ventured outside the prison walls, but had, instead, taken to guarding one another so that no one was allowed to escape. I won’t let you escape because you won’t let me escape, and you won’t let me escape because I won’t let you escape. A self-imprisoning captivity—born of mutual fear.
iii) Another reason I bring it up is that if the very men who are castigating masturbation as a mortal sin or damnable transgression are obviously complicit in the very same activity, then it raises the question of whether their code of conduct is viable.
As you know, Francis Schaeffer use to argue that non-Christian worldviews were simply unlivable. They said one thing on paper, but in practice…well…it was impossible to put into practice.
"Romeo and Julietiquette"
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2...nd-
julietiquett
(cont.)
Correct URL:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/
2...iquette_04.html
----------------
I replied:
Shall I expect an exegetical / historical answer yet to come, or did you think your rant about Catholics constituted some sort of "answer"?
Talk about "poisoning the well" and completely bypassing the subject matter . . .
One thing about you, though; it is patently obvious when you feel (down deep) that you have no sufficient answer to give, because you ratchet up the pseudo-triumphalist polemics by a factor of 10. 
That's all the more necessary when a Catholic is involved, because we all "know" (COUGH) that a Catholic can never best a sophisticated Protestant like yourself in any matter of exegesis or hermeneutics, or even historical theology.
It "can't" happen, so it never "does," and y'all must make sure that it never does, so that the pretense and charade can be kept up.
Isn't it easier to simply follow the text wherever it leads, even if it entails admitting that maybe, perhaps, the dreaded Catholic may have a valid point?
---------
And another thing: what the hell difference does it make to the discussion if you or I or all of us here reading and commenting (including women: let's not leave them out, as if this is only a "guy thing"!) have committed this sin or not? How is that the least bit relevant?
So, e.g., if you condemn Catholic commenters as hypocrites, if they happen to admit that they committed this sin, why could they not come right back (on the same kindergarten-ethics basis) and condemn you as rationalizing sin and calling evil good for self-interested purposes if indeed you are doing it yourself?
This has nothing - NOTHING - to do with the merits of the case pro or con. It cheapens, trivializes, and vulgarizes the discussion every bit as much as crass and "dirty" comments do, or would. It's as stupid and ridiculous as saying that almost all men lust every virtually time they watch TV or venture out into a busy street in the summertime, and almost all of us in America are also guilty of excessive greed and gluttony; therefore, neither lust, greed, nor gluttony are sins because virtually all of us have done these things, so what right do WE have condemning the sins!!!!!!!
It's incredible how illogical an otherwise logical, sharp man becomes when trying to shore up a desperate case. First you mock and poison the well and now you resort to sheer, transparently irrelevant and rather silly fallacies. You act like the atheists you so ably refute when they launch after some agreed-upon Christian moral or theological tenet.
Can't you simply argue your case minus the nonsense and non sequiturs? Are you this isolated from Christian traditional sexual morality (Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox alike), that all you can offer (pretty much) is mockery and pervasive fallacy?
Speaking for myself, I don
-- continued --
. . . don't have any particular disdain for sexual sin more than any other sin (I would say greed and pride are far, far worse in the overall scheme of things), but what I do utterly despise is the attempt to make sin not sin: to call evil good. That makes me angry no matter what the sin involved happens to be.
We have a history here. Christians weren't born yesterday. Even taking into consideration your anti-Catholicism and all that it entails, it is amazing that you have so little sense of this history, with regard to Christian morality.
Whether the issue is sexual or not has nothing whatsoever to do with your putting yourself in a bubble of the present day, as if this issue has suddenly become resolved in the wake of the glorious sexual revolution, and all thinking Christians can only mock and make fun of what was previously universally-held by Christians, with few exceptions.
Hi Dave,
I think that Matthew 5:28 may help in debate. It clearly condemns adultery “in heart”. In broader sense it is sexual fantasy which is directly related to masturbation.
Speaking for myself, I don't have any particular disdain for sexual sin more than any other sin
I think christians do have a strong reaction to sexual sins and that is right. If you read theology of the body it goes into how a person's sexuality and spirituality are very much intertwined. I always felt this but never was able to express it rationally like JPII did. The idea that christians have this irrational freak out response to sexual sin is just one of these common myths the sexual revolution has thrown around. There is reason behind it. It is based on the deep significance of sexual acts which the modern world rejects without argument.
Hi Petr,
Yes, for sure. Some of the other Protestants at that site made that argument, too. Good!
Randy,
I agree; I just wanted to make clear that my opposition was not some irrational, prudish "anti-sex" thing, as if the sins were far worse than others (in reacting to Steve's stupid, anti-Catholic statements). One could also argue that these are sins against your own body: the temple of the Holy Spirit, as Paul says.
While this comment has nothing to do with masturbation,the passage of Onan in Genesis does.All biblical scholars agree that onan was killed not for spilling his seed but for refusing to foster a child for his deceased brother thru union with his widowed wife.This was a custom that was demanded at the time. Needless to say the Bible says nothing about contraception or masturbation. Regards
I am certainly not as intelligent as any of you, but I would like to know some opinions.
Why cannot man spill his "seed", but a woman can every month?
The woman's seed is just as important as the man's seed, so why is it just that she can discard her seeds and man cannot?
Easy: menstruation is not an act that was intended by nature and by God to bring about a possible new life (it is the body discarding what could possibly have been a new life, but in due course was not), whereas male ejaculation is that.
Therefore, to frustrate the natural purpose of ejaculation (intentionally) is to go against natural law, which is the moral equivalent of the disordered homosexual act of sodomy.
For more, see papers explaining some of this on my page:
Life Issues: Abortion, Contraception, and Euthanasia
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/
2...euthanasia.html
Ok, just two more questions:
What about the use of condoms in marital sex?
-And-
Is daily sex with your partner with the use of condoms a bad thing?
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