Thursday, July 14, 2005
Be Fruitful - The Bad
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I have partly delayed finishing up my review of Nancy Campbell's Be Fruitful and Multiply largely because I like Mrs. Nancy and I like her ministry. She greatly encourages and inspires me in my roles as wife and mother. I deeply value the faith and joy that I witness from her. I want to be able to go to the Above Rubies conference next year without being known as the dissenter who blasted Mrs. Nancy's book. However, in my earnest search for truth and peace on the issue of contraception, these are the conclusions and critiques that I have honestly found. I feel that it would be wrong of me not to finish the work I began because I am afraid of being rejected by a certain group. So here I will discuss the problems I find in the book, which are actually very significant problems. However, there is still very much I admire about Mrs. Campbell's ministry. I still want to be involved and read the magazine, but I do not agree that all avoidance of conception is sin and that a woman's only true roll under the new covenant is as a physical child-bearer.
A simplistic and fundamentalist biblical hermeneutic causes Nancy Campbell to go astray in her book Be Fruitful and Multiply. Essentially she argues that God told Adam and Eve and Noah to multiply and fill the earth, therefore that is a law for us to follow as well. God said that Israel's Numbers would increase when the nation followed God and that barrenness would be part of the curse for disobedience. Thus, she attaches fertility to the unchangeableness of God Himself; if God is the same yesterday, today and forever, than fertility is yesterday, today and forever a virtue that we are sinful to shun in any way, even though the law of Moses contains no direct prohibition against contraception. Still, the blessings and curses offered Israel for obedience or disobedience were indeed tied to the promise of physical fruitfulness. How do we reject a blessing? However, how do we interpret the Old Testament? Was it written to Israel or the church? How does that distinction influence our application? What has changed with the coming of Christ?
Campbell's simple and direct application of all that was written to Israel as applicable to us today is highly problematic. If we are to extract some instructions to Israel and those in the Old Testament and follow them as law today, then why are we not to extract all of them? Are we to go and wage physical war against are enemies too, sparing no child or goat? Are we to execute the adulterous in our country? (I do not doubt that some would answer me, "yes".) Campbell brings up the case of Onan when she argues against contraception. If we are to read this story to extract codes of behavior to condemn of follow, ought brother-in-laws of widows today marry them as Onan and his brothers were instructed, even though they already have a wife? That was the instruction to Israel. Ought we stone a rebellious child? That was the instruction to Israel.
In this post, I will outline the Bible passages and arguments which I believe contain faulty interpretation and logic, and briefly explain an alternative hermeneutic. The next post will discuss how the tragic result of these interpretations is legalism, the diminution of Christ, and idolatry of childbirth.
Campbell spends a large portion of the book arguing that since God instructed Israel to multiply physically, that therefore He desires the same for us. On page 23, she quotes Jeremiah 29:6 which says, "give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished." Nancy then interprets, "The Word of God states in this scripture that the reason God wants us to marry is that we may bear sons and daughters! God wants many children." This minor point illustrates the problematic hermeneutic that fills the entire book. There is rampant isegesis here, where the virtue of childbirth is read back into the entire Bible as the dominant principle of interpretation. If anything, the now revealed CHRIST ought to be the dominant principle interpreted back into the full Word of God. In this passage, Jeremiah is speaking to the remnant left after Israel was nearly destroyed. He is giving specific instructions to a people whose numbers were drastically reduced. The people are devastated and need encouragement that there is hope for the nation to be rebuilt. This is not a passage giving a universal rule of propagation for all men at all times to follow.
Another example of such isegesis occurs within the same page when Romans 7:4, "That ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God," is interpreted to prove that "God's intention for the marriage union is [to have children]". Verses 7:1-3 speak of the woman joined to the law, whose husband dies so that she might be joined to another, Christ. A passage completely devoted to illustrating the freedom from the law that we have in Christ, is interpreted to support a law demanding that we have as many children as we possibly can! Moreover, all use of the word "fruit" and "fruitfulness" in the New Testament is nearly always, in context, indicating spiritual fruit such as redeemed lives and the fruit of the spirit, yet Campbell always interprets it firstly as physical fertility and literal children.
A few other random examples of misinterpretation include the application of Romans 1:26-27, "For women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural . . . " to refer not so much to lesbians but to those women who refuse to have children! Campbell states "Why did God use the full revelation of motherhood, including the function of the breasts (She says the word for woman in this passage is "thelus" and that it refers to the breast), in this passage? Because God wants women to function as He created them. Women were created by God's design to function as nourishers by nourishing life in their womb and a babe at their breast. When women deliberately turn away from their natural functions, they do it to their own detriment." (106-7) This is a horrible interpretation that reduces a woman who chooses to remain single for the sake of the Gospel to the same perversion as a woman who lusts after another woman!
In general, whenever the Bible speaks of "seed" there are many different possible indications: sperm, physical descendants, Christ (the promised seed) and spiritual descendants. Campbell interprets all mentions of "children" and "seed" as referring to physical offspring and children. Yet it is clear that God also spoke of spiritual offspring and that in some contexts, the "seed" was referring primarily to Christ Himself, such as in Gen. 3:15.
I really do not have the time (and you may not have the patience!) to explore more passages or expound further upon these hermeneutical issues at this time. Please bring up any issues, questions or gaps you see in my arguments in the comments. I will simply assert in conclusion that the church does not apply the Old Testament in the way Israel did. Christ came and fulfilled the law. Paul was explicit in saying that the law was a tutor to bring us to Christ. Christ has come. The law, as it was applied to Israel, has been set aside. We have freedom, all things are lawful (though not all edifying). We are now under Christ.
Israel, because of God's purposes for that period of history, was to multiply and become a physical racial nation. Today, the earth is largely filled. Yes, there could be many more people on earth and no, we should not limit children out of 'environmental' fears. Yes, if Christians stopped having children altogether, the faith would probably "be wiped from the face of the earth." (37) Yet the focus specifically given the church is NOT one of racial nation building, but of evangelism, of harvesting the ripe fields, of bringing in the nations which have been multiplied and which had before been afar off from the seed of Abraham. Now our main task is to bring them in, to be instruments of God's calling the people that have multiplied to Himself. And yes, our physical children can be and are an important part of that task. That does not mean, however, that it is wrong for a single woman or couple to limit physical children in order to focus on the global harvest.
I leave you with the following passage form Hebrews 12:18-26 to illustrate the radical difference the cross has made between the covenant of Moses and the new covenant of Christ:
18For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20For they could not endure the order that was given, "If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned." 21Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear." 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Click here for the final part of this series.
A simplistic and fundamentalist biblical hermeneutic causes Nancy Campbell to go astray in her book Be Fruitful and Multiply. Essentially she argues that God told Adam and Eve and Noah to multiply and fill the earth, therefore that is a law for us to follow as well. God said that Israel's Numbers would increase when the nation followed God and that barrenness would be part of the curse for disobedience. Thus, she attaches fertility to the unchangeableness of God Himself; if God is the same yesterday, today and forever, than fertility is yesterday, today and forever a virtue that we are sinful to shun in any way, even though the law of Moses contains no direct prohibition against contraception. Still, the blessings and curses offered Israel for obedience or disobedience were indeed tied to the promise of physical fruitfulness. How do we reject a blessing? However, how do we interpret the Old Testament? Was it written to Israel or the church? How does that distinction influence our application? What has changed with the coming of Christ?
Campbell's simple and direct application of all that was written to Israel as applicable to us today is highly problematic. If we are to extract some instructions to Israel and those in the Old Testament and follow them as law today, then why are we not to extract all of them? Are we to go and wage physical war against are enemies too, sparing no child or goat? Are we to execute the adulterous in our country? (I do not doubt that some would answer me, "yes".) Campbell brings up the case of Onan when she argues against contraception. If we are to read this story to extract codes of behavior to condemn of follow, ought brother-in-laws of widows today marry them as Onan and his brothers were instructed, even though they already have a wife? That was the instruction to Israel. Ought we stone a rebellious child? That was the instruction to Israel.
In this post, I will outline the Bible passages and arguments which I believe contain faulty interpretation and logic, and briefly explain an alternative hermeneutic. The next post will discuss how the tragic result of these interpretations is legalism, the diminution of Christ, and idolatry of childbirth.
Campbell spends a large portion of the book arguing that since God instructed Israel to multiply physically, that therefore He desires the same for us. On page 23, she quotes Jeremiah 29:6 which says, "give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished." Nancy then interprets, "The Word of God states in this scripture that the reason God wants us to marry is that we may bear sons and daughters! God wants many children." This minor point illustrates the problematic hermeneutic that fills the entire book. There is rampant isegesis here, where the virtue of childbirth is read back into the entire Bible as the dominant principle of interpretation. If anything, the now revealed CHRIST ought to be the dominant principle interpreted back into the full Word of God. In this passage, Jeremiah is speaking to the remnant left after Israel was nearly destroyed. He is giving specific instructions to a people whose numbers were drastically reduced. The people are devastated and need encouragement that there is hope for the nation to be rebuilt. This is not a passage giving a universal rule of propagation for all men at all times to follow.
Another example of such isegesis occurs within the same page when Romans 7:4, "That ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God," is interpreted to prove that "God's intention for the marriage union is [to have children]". Verses 7:1-3 speak of the woman joined to the law, whose husband dies so that she might be joined to another, Christ. A passage completely devoted to illustrating the freedom from the law that we have in Christ, is interpreted to support a law demanding that we have as many children as we possibly can! Moreover, all use of the word "fruit" and "fruitfulness" in the New Testament is nearly always, in context, indicating spiritual fruit such as redeemed lives and the fruit of the spirit, yet Campbell always interprets it firstly as physical fertility and literal children.
A few other random examples of misinterpretation include the application of Romans 1:26-27, "For women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural . . . " to refer not so much to lesbians but to those women who refuse to have children! Campbell states "Why did God use the full revelation of motherhood, including the function of the breasts (She says the word for woman in this passage is "thelus" and that it refers to the breast), in this passage? Because God wants women to function as He created them. Women were created by God's design to function as nourishers by nourishing life in their womb and a babe at their breast. When women deliberately turn away from their natural functions, they do it to their own detriment." (106-7) This is a horrible interpretation that reduces a woman who chooses to remain single for the sake of the Gospel to the same perversion as a woman who lusts after another woman!
In general, whenever the Bible speaks of "seed" there are many different possible indications: sperm, physical descendants, Christ (the promised seed) and spiritual descendants. Campbell interprets all mentions of "children" and "seed" as referring to physical offspring and children. Yet it is clear that God also spoke of spiritual offspring and that in some contexts, the "seed" was referring primarily to Christ Himself, such as in Gen. 3:15.
I really do not have the time (and you may not have the patience!) to explore more passages or expound further upon these hermeneutical issues at this time. Please bring up any issues, questions or gaps you see in my arguments in the comments. I will simply assert in conclusion that the church does not apply the Old Testament in the way Israel did. Christ came and fulfilled the law. Paul was explicit in saying that the law was a tutor to bring us to Christ. Christ has come. The law, as it was applied to Israel, has been set aside. We have freedom, all things are lawful (though not all edifying). We are now under Christ.
Israel, because of God's purposes for that period of history, was to multiply and become a physical racial nation. Today, the earth is largely filled. Yes, there could be many more people on earth and no, we should not limit children out of 'environmental' fears. Yes, if Christians stopped having children altogether, the faith would probably "be wiped from the face of the earth." (37) Yet the focus specifically given the church is NOT one of racial nation building, but of evangelism, of harvesting the ripe fields, of bringing in the nations which have been multiplied and which had before been afar off from the seed of Abraham. Now our main task is to bring them in, to be instruments of God's calling the people that have multiplied to Himself. And yes, our physical children can be and are an important part of that task. That does not mean, however, that it is wrong for a single woman or couple to limit physical children in order to focus on the global harvest.
I leave you with the following passage form Hebrews 12:18-26 to illustrate the radical difference the cross has made between the covenant of Moses and the new covenant of Christ:
18For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest 19and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. 20For they could not endure the order that was given, "If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned." 21Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I tremble with fear." 22But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
Click here for the final part of this series.
2 Comments:
At 7/15/2005 7:07 PM,
Cheryl Hannah said…
Dear Annie,
I think a lot of the problems you are seeing with the arguments put forward by Mrs. Campbell stem from a more dispensational view of Scripture that you appear to hold. (Please note all the qualifications I insert in my comments. :o))
I had the same problem until I adopted what I believe is a more accurate hermenuetic of covenantal theology. This assumes continutity between the testaments unless we are told otherwise. Since the command to fill the earth and the view that being fruitful has not been rescinded, then this hermenuetic assumes that this hasn't changed. This also means that OT Israel is viewed, not as an entity completely other than the NT Church, but rather is seen to be the Church under a different dispensation. The Church is one moral person in history.
The comment's section is not the place to go into a detailed explanation of all this (even supposing I have the time right now), but the above might provide a more reasonable explanation that accomodates the differences between the testaments while still maintaining the integrity of the pro QF argument.
At 7/15/2005 8:23 PM,
texashimalaya said…
Cheryl - Thank you for your insightful comments! I appreciate your theological knowledge and would invite you if you have time to discuss more on the issue. You were perceptive in discerning that I am personally in a recent transition from dispensationalism to more of a covenant theology!
Following your argument for a possible QF hermeneutic, would not Paul's teaching in 1 Cor. 7 negate this command? He states that he would prefer women NOT to marry and thus not bear children. He would surely not be instructing them to disobey a command still in place. Mrs. Campbell has never addressed this passage in all her teaching that I have encountered. Indeed, no QF person has (in limited my experience.
Thank you again for contributing to the discussion!
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