Sins Against Nature: The Condemnation of Birth Control in Early Christianity
Abstract
In the period when the early Christian Church was formualting its doctrine on marriage, sexual relations and procreation, a number of technologies existed which were used by both women and men in an attempt to impede conception. Church fathers, however, particularly St. Augustine, strongly criticized the use of birth control. Their argument was that contraception was a "sin against nature." This paper attempts to explain why that argument was so compelling and shows how it was used in the struggle over who would control reproduction—the individual or the community.Metrics
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are aware that articles published in Atlantis are indexed and made available through various scholarly and professional search tools, including but not limited to Erudit.
3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to preprint their work, that is, post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process. This can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Read more on preprints here.
