Question:
Answer:
To define our terms, onanism refers to a type of contraceptive act, coitus interruptus, often called the withdrawal method. But it also refers to contraception in general. It takes its name from the Old Testament character Onan, who spilt his seed on the ground to avoid contributing offspring for his deceased brother, Er (Gen. 38:9-10) .
Because Er died without child, it was Onan’s duty according to the Mosaic law to marry his deceased brother’s childless widow and “raise up seed for the deceased brother that his name be not blotted out of Israel” (Deut. 25:5-10). Not wanting his deceased brother’s wife Tamar to conceive, Onan “wasted his seed on the ground” during sexual intercourse with her. And, the Bible tells us, “What he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD, and he slew him also.”
It might seem that since Jesus did away with the various precepts of the Old Law, it would follow that the failure to beget children with your deceased brother’s childless wife would no longer be frowned upon.
Your husband’s reasoning assumes that Onan’s sin was merely a failure to uphold a transitory precept that was peculiar to the Mosaic law, but this not true. The penalty for not raising up offspring for your deceased brother was public humiliation (Deut. 25:9), not death.
The Lord took Onan’s life because Onan engaged in contraceptive sex. The Lord’s disapproval of this act was due to Onan violating the natural order of human sexuality. It was a sin against nature and thus a sin against God, since God’s will is expressed in the order of nature.
God ordered our sexual powers toward procreation and unitive love. And it is these ends that determine what is good for us in the sexual arena. To use our sexual powers while actively frustrating the achievement of either of these natural ends, as Onan did with regard to the procreative end, cannot be good for us. It is a direct violation of the order of nature, and therefore a direct violation of God’s will.
So the answer to your husband’s claim is, “No, Jesus did not do away with the sin of onanism.” Since human nature hasn’t changed since the time of Onan, contraception is still contrary to the nature of human sexuality and thus contrary to God’s will.