Understanding Why the Biblical Writers Feared and Opposed Birth Control,
Masturbation, Anal and Oral Sex, and Homosexuality
By Peter Larose
 
Throughout most of its 2,000 year history, until only about 200 years ago, the teachings of the Catholic Church concerning human sexuality provided a generally coherent and ethical framework designed to foster responsible and loving sexual relationships. The ideal was simply that sexual relations, specifically coitus, should occur only in the context of marriage so that children would be born into the stability of wedlock. These Christian sexual teachings mostly mirrored the laws and traditions of the Hebrew Bible, which clearly affirms only coital sex in the context of matrimony.

The coherence of the sexual teachings of the Bible began to break apart in the 19th century when, largely because of technological advances to the microscope, the science of embryology came into being. Over time, embryologists discovered the truth about human reproduction, specifically, that conception actually occurs when a man’s sperm cell, or gamete, successfully fertilizes a woman’s ovum. Today we now know that the typical male ejaculation contains millions of gametes, practically all of which will die no matter where the semen ends up. This discovery resolved the ancient mystery over the nature of semen and, inadvertently, made obsolete the biblical mores that a man should only have an orgasm inside his wife’s vagina.

Lacking the more powerful microscopes that only began to be developed in the 17th century, the ancients – meaning here those scientists, philosophers and theologians born prior to the 19th century – had to speculate on how babies were made based only on evidence they could see with the naked eye. Clearly they discerned that human pregnancy occurred only when a man’s semen was deposited in the vagina. Quite sensibly they saw that seminal fluid was essential to reproduction. However, without a sufficiently complex microscope, the ancient mind could only speculate on the nature of semen and many therefore believed that semen contained the essence of a person and was tantamount to a tiny human being.

The easiest way for us moderns to grasp the biblical writers’ thinking about sex is to imagine, as many ancients did, that semen contained a tiny human embryo. For the biblical writers “seed” is the word they used to describe a man’s seminal fluid. These ancients speculated that, in order to grow, the miniscule fetus contained in the semen had to be planted into the womb of a woman, like a seed is sown into the land. This idea was brought to my attention by the late Marvin H. Pope, Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages at Yale University. Writing in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Pope said:

“Without understanding of ovulation and the female role in conception, the ancients supposed that the semen supplied the essential material which coagulated with the menstrual fluid to produce the embryo or fetus. The woman’s part was to serve as a receptacle and incubator in which the semen was planted, like seed in a field. Human semen was regarded as almost a person (met’ oligon anthropon, as Clement of Alexandria put it), and should not be profaned, misused, wasted, or lost whether by coitus interruptus, masturbation, homosexual coitus, fellatio, or any other “unnatural” or improper means. Rabbinic concern about defilement through accidental and involuntary emission was doubtless related to the notion of the sanctity of semen.”

This belief that semen contained a tiny human embryo is clearly conveyed by the biblical writers’ use of the word “seed” to designate a man’s semen. In plants that bear seeds, the seed in fact contains the embryo of the individual it will become, so long as the seed is viable and planted in an appropriate place under suitable conditions. As we will see, male sperm cells, which are produced by the testes of a typical man at a rate of 200,000,000 daily, are not seeds. Lacking the technology of modern science, the biblical writers couldn’t know exactly what semen was and when, where and how a human embryo is formed. As a result, the biblical writers are understandably ambiguous in the few places in scripture where human conception is actually addressed. For example, we can glimpse the ancient mind struggling to comprehend the mystery of life, sexual pleasure, conception and birth in The Wisdom of Solomon (7:1-2):

I also am mortal, like everyone else, a descendant of the first-formed child of earth; and in the womb of a mother I was molded into flesh, within the period of ten months, compacted with blood, from the seed of a man and the pleasure of marriage.

Imagining semen as containing a seed-like miniscule person who is sustained in the womb with the blood of a woman’s menses makes sense in the absence of microscopes and modern science. Why wouldn’t ancient philosophers and theologians compare semen to a seed placed in the ground that mysteriously becomes nourished by the soil and grows into a plant? We can see how the writer of The Wisdom of Solomon tried to logically account for the absence of a woman’s menstrual flow during pregnancy, as the blood was being compacted and molded into the flesh of the fetus, in what he evidently thought was a ten-month gestation period. This compacting and molding in the uterus could also explain how offspring shared physical attributes with the mother whose womb formed the child during pregnancy, like a potter with clay.

Aristotle, considered among the greatest of ancient philosophers, gave much thought to the beginnings of human and animal life in his work On the Generation of Animals, which throughout history has been a touchstone for pondering the mystery of semen. Aristotle speculated that semen possessed a soul whose purpose was like that of a carpenter who labored to form the fetus in the woman’s uterus using the material or substance provided by the woman’s body. In the effort to imagine the mystery of reproduction, Aristotle compared semen’s role in the formation of a fetus to that of rennet acting on milk in the making of cheese. Without 19th century microscopes, there was simply no way to prove or disprove or advance beyond such poetic but hardly scientific notions of reproduction. Interestingly, this cheese-making analogy of fetus formation is also found in the Bible in The Book of Job 10:8-12:

Your hands fashioned and made me;
and now you turn and destroy me.
Remember that you fashioned me like clay;
and will you turn me to dust again?
Did you not pour me out like milk
and curdle me like cheese?
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
and knit me together with bones and sinews.
You have granted me life and steadfast love,
and your care has preserved my spirit.

As ancient philosophers and theologians speculated on the mystery of human reproduction, the biblical writers embraced the more cautious and conservative theory that semen was the seed-like essence of a person that deserved something of the status given to a living human being. In other words, semen was to be treated with great care and was not to be wasted because it mysteriously contained human life. “Natural” sexual relations in the Bible can therefore be simply understood as when the male orgasm containing the seed of a person is deposited in the only place where it stands a chance at life: the vagina (ideally, of course, the vagina of that man’s wife, or wives, as biblical law permits polygyny).

In retrospect, we can see how the biblical writers came to their beliefs about the seed-like nature of semen. As it was impossible without an advanced microscope to know the true function of semen, the biblical writers could easily imagine that the spilling of a man’s seed would kill the potential human being mysteriously contained in a man’s semen. We see indications of this in biblical laws that account for incidents of spilled semen, such as nocturnal emissions – which, of course, are more likely to occur in males who are taught not to masturbate, especially young unmarried men who have no sanctioned sexual outlet. Such seminal discharges are treated in the Torah in the same way, indeed in the same breath, as one would treat a dead body.

“Whoever touches anything made unclean by a corpse or a man who has had an emission of semen... shall be unclean until evening and shall not eat of the sacred donations unless he has washed his body in water. “ – Leviticus 22:4b, 6b

By imagining semen as containing a seed of a person it makes sense that activities such as masturbation, fellatio, anal sex, or the use of any device or behavior that functions as a contraceptive, are equated with murder in the minds of many ancients. According to centuries of traditional Jewish and Catholic interpretation, the biblical sin of Onan is that he deliberately interrupted coitus by spilling and thus killing his seed; and for his sin, this writer of Genesis claims, God killed Onan (Genesis 38:1-11). Likewise, because sex between men precludes coitus and would result in the destruction of the human life thought to be contained in a man’s semen, male homosexual activity also warrants the death penalty (Leviticus 20:13). Surprisingly, lesbian sex is entirely ignored in the laws of the Torah, a lapse that, according to Marvin H. Pope, undoubtedly reflects this overriding concern for the sanctity of human life thought to be contained in the semen.

Mentioned in only a handful of passages, homosexual activity is not even a major issue in the Old and New Testaments precisely because traditional Jewish and Christian sensibilities did not approve of heterosexual couples engaging in non-coital sexual activities such as fellatio, anal sex or mutual masturbation. In fact, those who condemn homosexuality based on the Bible run the risk of being hypocritical if, at the same time that they condemn gay sex, they fail to equally condemn non-coital genital activity by heterosexuals. Many who denounce homosexuality today are scapegoating gay people by conveniently forgetting the fact that, biblically speaking, any ejaculation outside the vagina by any man, heterosexual or homosexual, is tantamount to aborting the seed of a human being that the biblical writers mistakenly imagined was contained in a man’s semen.

In 1567, the Catholic Church hierarchy seemingly declared the biblical nature of semen when Thomas Aquinas was proclaimed a “Doctor of the Church” – a rare designation confirming eminent learning and great sanctity. Aquinas, who lived and wrote in the 13th century, was canonized in 1323 and is the patron saint of Catholic universities. His greatest theological work is considered to be Summa Theologica, in which Aquinas’ regard for Aristotle is so significant that he refers to him simply as “the philosopher.” Aquinas accepted Aristotle’s basic concepts on the nature of semen, which included Aristotle’s view that females were defective males. Aquinas shared Aristotle’s belief that the soul of a man’s semen would naturally strive to become a male. They both imagined that a female was the result of imperfect conditions, such as weak semen, that prevented the soul of a man’s semen from fully developing into their ideal, which of course was male.

Though it was utterly repudiated by 20th century science, the theories on the nature of semen and gender of Aristotle and Aquinas nevertheless form the basis for much of the philosophical or, as it were, “scientific” reasons why the Catholic Church hierarchy has historically opposed gender equality, such as the prohibition of women from the priesthood. If there were doubts as to what the writers of the Hebrew Bible or New Testament thought was the nature of semen, this question was apparently resolved for Catholics and most of Christendom when Aquinas was proclaimed a saint in 1323 by Pope John XXII, then a Doctor of the Church in 1567 by Pope Pius V, and reconfirmed in 1879, when Pope Leo XIII declared the writings of Aquinas to be official Catholic philosophy. Consciously or not, even Protestant Christians who today oppose such things as non-coital sex or equal rights for women can trace the roots of their mind-set to the ancient theories on the nature of semen and gender of Aristotle and Aquinas.

The theory that semen contained a miniscule embryo persisted throughout history so that, as microscopes were being increasingly refined in the 18th and 19th centuries, some of the scientists who first examined semen under these rudimentary microscopes thought that they observed what they expected to find: a little person, or homunculus. Modern embryology essentially began in the 19th century, as researchers using more complex microscopes were able to disprove various ancient theories about how babies were made. This included the theory of preformation held by “spermists,” as they came to be called in the 18th century, who believed that semen contained a miniature person that needed the mother’s womb merely in order to increase in size. The following drawings of semen, depicted as though it contained a miniscule person, are from the 17th and 18th centuries and were published in A History of Embryology by Joseph Needham (© 1959 by Abelard-Schuman, New York).

The significance of these sketches is that they plainly reveal the mind-set that surrounded the earliest microbiologists as they first examined semen under a microscope. Researchers, such as Antony van Leeuwenhoek and Nicolaas Hartsoeker, clearly felt obligated to look for the possible existence of a homunculus in the semen even though they did not ultimately find one. Needham explains that the drawings are not what the 17th and 18th century microbiologists actually saw, but what they supposed spermatozoa would look like if they could be seen sufficiently clearly with a more powerful microscope.

Because our knowledge of embryology is dependent on the technology of modern science, there was no progress in understanding reproduction prior to the microscopes of the 19th century. In other words, speculation on the beginnings of life, from the earliest of recorded history until about 200 years ago, was not the work of scientists as we think of them today, but rather philosophers and theologians. It was only in the 19th century that Karl Ernst von Baer, considered the founder of the science of embryology, first identified the primary layers of cells as well as the ovary in female mammals. Born in Estonia in 1792, Baer’s writings include The Origin of Mammal Eggs (1827) and The Embryology of Animals (1828, 1837).

Baer’s discovery of the microscopic structure of cells and ovaries in mammals ushered in a radically new paradigm for understanding not only mammalian embryology, but human sexuality as well. The problem is that most people just don’t realize yet the full implications of Baer’s observations, along with other microscopical researchers such as Kaspar Friedrich Wolff. To this very day, in the haze of history and the segregation of professions, theologians and scientists alike are typically not fully conscious of the two different paradigms being used when discussing matters of human sexuality. In order to have an intelligent discussion of the sexual laws in the Bible we must be clear which laws are based on the faulty preformation paradigm that viewed semen as containing a seed-like fetus, potentially viable as long as the man’s semen made it to the womb.

Baer’s use of the microscope to observe cellular life is comparable to Galileo Galilei’s use of the telescope (which Galileo called “aids to the eye”) through which he gathered evidence that the planets revolved around the sun. Prior to Galileo, the widespread belief, shared by the Catholic Church, was that the earth was fixed at the center of the universe. However, in the 17th century – thanks to a telescope powerful enough to discover the moons of Jupiter – Galileo found observable evidence for challenging Ptolemy’s theory of an Earth-centered universe. Using the same evolving technology as Galileo, Baer essentially pointed the telescope inward and discovered a microscopic biological cosmos. Like Galileo before him, Karl Ernst von Baer was a pioneer in the use of magnifying lenses in order to reveal the true form and function of creation.

Only in the second half of the 20th century, due to the rapid advance of science and technology, have we reached a clear understanding of the incredibly complex process by which chromosomes contained in the sperm and ovum transmit the DNA of each parent to the embryo. Today, while many people, including the president of the United States, believe that all embryos are sacred, not even George W. Bush claims that semen, fresh or frozen, has a soul and is therefore sacred. It’s interesting that those who maintain that even frozen embryos are sacred and ensouled must rely on very recent and highly complex science and technology to make this theological assertion. (Based on current scientific evidence, I am inclined to think that a microscopic embryo that can be frozen and restored to cellular life is not yet sentient or ensouled.)

While the biblical paradigm of semen as a seed-like embryo has been overthrown scientifically, the concept of semen as an embryo remains in force throughout much of the world, such as where there is opposition to contraception or homosexuality. From a theological point of view, the science of embryology has decisively established a new paradigm for understanding human reproduction that replaces all the other ancient theories of conception, including preformation. The perfectly understandable problem is that, when the paradigm of preformation was debunked in the 19th century, the scientists involved did not foresee the impact of their discoveries on biblical laws concerning sexuality and gender, or issues such as contraception or gay rights.

Only by acknowledging that many of the biblical laws concerning human sexuality are based on the debunked theory of preformation is there any real hope of breaking the current cultural and religious deadlock on issues such as birth control, homosexual relations and same-sex marriage, and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. Without explicitly addressing both modern embryology and the historical concepts of the nature of semen, it is virtually impossible to have an intelligent and meaningful discussion or debate on biblical laws and religious traditions concerning sexual activity. Without being able to clearly understand and explain the ancient ideas about semen and gender, as well as the biblical and societal laws that were established based on these ideas, neither liberal nor conservative theologians today are capable of expressing a coherent theology of sexuality for the 21st century.

Imagine for a moment that the “spermists” were right in their theory of preformation and the microscopes developed in the 18th and 19th centuries did indeed reveal that semen contained a seed-like homunculus. Think of the all the abortions that would occur when a man masturbated or participated in fellatio or anal sex. Imagine the nightmare of a microscopic-sized human baby dying wherever the ejaculate ended up, such as at the end of a condom. Yet the ancient fear of this possibility is in fact the basis for why the Catholic Church hierarchy opposes all sexual acts resulting in a man having an orgasm outside the vagina of his wife. To this very day, Catholic Church teachings that oppose sexual acts committed for the sole purpose of pleasure, such as non-coital sex, are really about the mistaken fear of killing the human life that was thought to be contained in semen. This misguided theory of the embryonic, seed-like nature of semen is at the very core of why the Catholic Church’s hierarchy view sexual acts committed without the possibility of procreation as part of a “culture of death” – “the consequences of a sexuality which is no longer linked to motherhood and to procreation,” in the words of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

By disproving the theory of preformation, embryologists of the 19th and 20th centuries unwittingly removed the logical foundation for biblical laws and church traditions that opposed, even for married couples, all forms of sexual activity leading to male orgasm other than uninterrupted coitus. Subsequently, the intellectual and theological basis for church teachings on human sexuality has steadily collapsed. As a result, the continued opposition to birth control by conservative theologians seems foolishly arbitrary and sensible lay Catholics, for example, are increasingly ignoring the sexual teachings of the church hierarchy. At most, coital sex between a fertile husband and wife will lead to a dozen or so successful pregnancies. So why restrict a lifetime of sexual pleasure to only coital sex, including for couples who are not even fertile?

Biblical theologians must be held accountable to honestly address this new paradigm of human embryology, which really only became fully and widely understood in the 20th century. Today we know that a man’s semen does not contain a homunculus, but rather hundreds of millions of sperm cells or gametes that are destined to die in unimaginable numbers no matter where the ejaculate ends up. The ancients had to wonder and worry about who might be killed if a man spilled his seed. Today we know exactly what dies when a man has an orgasm: about a half billion gametes.

Even if a man ejaculates in the vagina of his wife resulting in a successful, normal pregnancy, one gamete succeeded while about a half billion others perished. Even if a man fathers two dozen children in his lifetime, this means a couple of dozen of his gametes succeeded while trillions upon trillions of his other gametes died. For the biblical writers semen was sacred, on a par with life itself. Today we know that semen is a bodily fluid that, while capable of creating life, is not a miniature human embryo already in the making. In the movie The Meaning of Life, the Monty Python crew made musical fun of the notion that “Every Sperm is Sacred.” Theologians today need to take this issue very seriously: is every gamete sacred?

In a normal male about 200 million gametes are generated by the testes daily. From the point of view of procreating, semen contains gametes produced in absurdly abundant numbers that are unavoidably expendable. The average male produces enough sperm cells that if each gamete were to somehow impregnate an ovum one man could father some 6 billion people each month, about the total of the world’s current population. Theologians need to ponder if the creator of this superabundance is truly angered when, say, a husband’s ejaculate doesn’t make contact with his wife’s vagina and a mere 500,000,000 gametes perish at the end of a condom. This is why it’s misleading to call semen “seed.” Male sperm cells are more like a chemical element – say hydrogen – that when combined with a woman’s ovum – imagine oxygen – produces an embryo, which is like H2O or water. In the design of nature, gametes and ova, like hydrogen and oxygen, are so prevalent in creation that humans typically have no intelligent reason to worry about wasting such substances. Embryos, however, are akin to seeds, compounds that are more rare in nature, like drinkable water or clean H20.

If the Catholic Church hierarchy will engage in a debate over the nature of semen, then many of the implications are clear. Embryologic science provides the basis for ending the argument that sexual relations must always accommodate the possibility of procreation. Sex can be just for mutual pleasure. The use of birth control methods for married couples can become an option sanctioned by the church. What remains of the Bible-induced stigma of masturbation can end. The church can advocate for condom use to help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. And couples, gay and straight, can responsibly enjoy non-coital sex with the blessing of both Catholic and Anglican Church teachings.

It’s not surprising that some of the most controversial biblical and church laws at this time in history concern sexuality, gender and reproduction. This upheaval is the direct result of evolving science and technology—which can be seen as humanity’s use of our God-given intelligence—that is fundamentally redefining our understanding of ourselves and the astonishing universe in which we live. Interestingly, our new knowledge is consistent with the central teachings of Jesus. It is not easy to surprise Jesus. After all, Jesus told us that he had much more to say but only in time could we bear the truth. In fact, our fears about sex were anticipated when Jesus established the New Covenant through a shocking ritual: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”

Jesus desires that his disciples remember him through participating in a bizarre ritual (John 6:25-71) that calls into question biblical laws and customs, which absolutely forbid the drinking of blood. Through the holy mystery of swallowing Christ’s body and bodily fluid, we can become, by baptismal faith, the blood relatives of Jesus: a new creation in whom there is no longer male and female, according to Rabbi Paul (Galatians 3:23-29). Put another way, anyone who asks his disciples to eat his flesh and drink his blood is not going to be easily upset by those who swallow semen.

“Do not be afraid,” Jesus says again and again to his squeamish and confused disciples. “The truth will make you free.”