Early Church Fathers on Birth Control

  "If anyone in sound health has castrated himself, it behooves that such a one, if enrolled among the clergy, should cease [from his ministry], and that from henceforth no such person should be promoted. But, as it is evident that this is said of those who willfully do the thing and presume to castrate themselves, so if any have been made eunuchs by barbarians, or by their masters, and should otherwise be found worthy, such men this canon admits to the clergy" (Canon 1).

The First Council of Nicaea which defined Christ’s divinity, A.D. 325


"Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2).

Clement of Alexandria, A.D. 195


  "I am supposing, then, although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility [oral contraceptives]" (Marriage and Concupiscence  1:15:17).

Augustine, A.D. 419


"You [Manicheans] make your auditors adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom they copulate conceive. They are unwilling to have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long ago [1 Tim. 4:1-4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps.”

Augustine, Against Faustus, 15:7, A.D. 400


"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? What then?  Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with His laws?  Yet such turpitude.  The matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks."

John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 24, A.D. 391

"In truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father's old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live [sterilization]."

John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 28:5, A.D. 391

“Moses numbers fertility among the blessings. ‘There will not be a barren woman among you,’ he says (Ex.23:26).  We do not regard this so highly today.  Although we like and desire it in cattle, yet in the human race there are few who regard a woman’s fertility as a blessing.  Indeed there are many who have an aversion for it and regard sterility as a special blessing.  Surely this is also contrary to nature.  Much less pious and saintly.  For this affection has been implanted by God in man’s nature, so that it desires its increase and multiplication.  It is inhuman and godless to have a loathing for offspring.”

Martin Luther, Luther’s Works Vol.5


“Today you find many people who do not want to have children.  It is even more disgraceful that you find princes who allow themselves to be forced not to marry, for fear that the members of their house would increase beyond a definite limit.  Surely such men deserve that their memory be blotted out from the land of the living.  Who is there who would not detest these swinish monsters?”

Martin Luther


"The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring."

John Calvin