Is the God of Calvinism Pro-Life?

I think I can say with certainty that if you asked almost any Calvinist this on the street, they’d say, without hesitation, “Yes. Absolutely. Abortion is an abomination to God, on par with the pagan child sacrifices of barbaric past ages.”

I’m glad they would say that. I’m pro-life myself.

But having spent several years in Calvinism, and having studied the most prominent Calvinist pastors and writers, I can also say that the God of Calvinism is, in principle, decidedly pro-choice. I’d even say that the God of Calvinism is by very definition pro-choice.

My brothers and sisters who believe in Calvinism don’t believe that God is pro-choice on the topic of abortion (I agree), but they do believe that he chooses whom he will save and whom he won’t in terms of election or predestination. So, I’m using “pro-choice” as a descriptive term for the choice that God makes in predestination because I think there’s a very strong parallel in the arguments of pro-choice advocates for abortion and Calvinists for predestination.

In fact, I’d state it stronger than that. If you look at leading Calvinist pastor and author John Piper’s arguments for the doctrine of predestination, which I’ll do below, they are identical to those of pro-choice advocates for abortion.

And yet I’d wager that recognizing this moral parallel would come as a bit of a shock to most Calvinists, maybe even Piper.

There seems to me to be a blind spot that a lot of mildly or even strongly Calvinistic people miss. I didn’t see it at first when I was exploring Calvinism.

Upside Down Morality

What they consider good for God to do is the exact opposite of what they consider good for man to do. Good and evil get flipped on their heads. And you’ll even find that some of the most popular Calvinist teachers say that the very things that we would condemn most vehemently in a human are the very things we should praise God most for.

Now, very few of them would openly state it that way. But when you do the moral math, which I will below, that’s where things end up. And the fact that Calvinists don’t come right out and say it like it is is the reason I am writing this. You need to see where this Calvinist path leads.

The topic of abortion may be the clearest way to illustrate how evil becomes good.

The parallel seems so strong to me that Piper (or some other Calvinist teacher) ought to have said “There are obviously a lot of similarities between the arguments we use against abortion and for predestination. But here’s why one is wrong and the other is right.”

But, to my knowledge, no prominent Calvinist has done that. So, I am left to think that some of even the most devout Calvinists are blind to the parallel. Either that or they’ve recognized it and just don’t want to own it.

Let’s take a look and you can decide for yourself.

I’ll use several of Piper’s written works on predestination as well as some of his writings on abortion and show you what I expect the Calvinist rebuttal to my statements would be.

Exploring the Similarities

There are some obvious differences, which I’ll outline below, but let’s start by looking at the similarities between the language and ideas used by pro-choice advocates and Calvinists.

John Piper’s The Pleasures of God is perhaps the clearest explanation of Calvinist belief in modern times, so I will use direct quotes from his book to illustrate the parallels in the tables below.

The similarities I’ll cover include:

The choice is made before birth.
The child is completely dependent on the life-giving agent.
The freedom to choose is paramount.
The right to choose is inalienable.

The Choice Is Made Before Birth

It may be best to start by establishing that in both cases, the decision to abort or elect is made before birth. In the case of the abortive mother, the decision is obviously made before birth, but what about Calvinism?

Piper uses the story of Jacob and Esau to show that God makes the decision to save before a person is born.

Pro-Choice	Calvinism (Piper)
The mother chooses to abort the child before birth.	“And when Isaac had two sons, even before they were born, God chose only Jacob.” “The choice was made before they were born so that the choice was not based on birth order.” “The choice for Jacob was made before they had done anything good or evil.”

(Note: all emphases in these quotes are mine.)

It is clear that, according to Piper, the choice God makes in election is similar in timing to the abortive mother who ends the life of the child before it is born or has done anything good or evil.

The Child Is Completely Dependent on the Life-Giving Agent

The moral argument revolves around whether the life-giving agent (God in predestination, the mother in abortion) has a responsibility to provide for a being who is wholly dependent on the agent. So, is the dependence of man on God for spiritual life in the Calvinist view similar to the dependence of the child on the mother for physical life?

Dependence in the case of abortion is obvious. The child is unable to fend for himself until several years after birth. So, the child is utterly dependent on the mother for life before birth.

The question relevant to this parallel is, can humans ever obtain and sustain spiritual life on their own in the Calvinist view?

Pro-Choice	Calvinism (Piper)
The child is completely dependent on the mother for life.	“The goal of election is to take all boasting off of man and focus all boasting on God … Make man see his utter dependence on God’s mercy and magnify the glory of God’s free grace. That’s why God has pleasure in election — it magnifies his name!”

To the Calvinist, all men (elect and unelect) are dependent on God. No one can obtain or sustain spiritual life on her own. At our Calvinist church, our pastor once brought in a pine-wood coffin and literally hammered the lid closed during a sermon to show how dead we are. With each nail he pounded in, he recited scriptures that told how dead we are and how God is the only one who can make us alive. God had to make it happen.

The Freedom to Choose Is Paramount

Another striking similarity found in the arguments for abortion rights and Calvinism is that personal freedom of choice is the core right that supersedes all others.

Pro-Choice	Calvinism (Piper)
“The important US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade … ruled that a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy came under the freedom of personal choice in family matters…” – Wikipedia	“God is free to choose the least likely candidates for his grace.” “He is free to choose whomever he pleases.” “His free act of choosing Israel for himself.” “God acts in a way that highlights his sovereign freedom in election.” “God aims to undermine any attempt to limit his freedom in election.”

Here we see that, according to Piper (over and over again), the Calvinist God is strongly pro-choice, even to the point of “undermining any attempt to limit” his freedom to choose.

The Right to Choose Is Inalienable

Another similar phrasing that you see on both sides is that the life-giving agent possesses certain rights that establish their authority to make the decision.

Pro-Choice	Calvinism (Piper)
A woman has the right to decide what she can do with her body.	“God has the freedom and the right to save—really save—any and all lost sinners that he pleases.” “The point of putting verses 14 and 15 together in this way is to stress the freedom and the universal rights and authority of God.”

Where It (Surprisingly) Doesn’t Lead

With the pro-choice moral foundation Piper has established here, one might expect him to defend the rights of earthly parents to make the same praiseworthy choice that the God he worships makes.

With every moral pronouncement that pro-choice advocates make, Piper seems to shout, “Amen!”

If God has no responsibility to love or care for the beings he brings into existence, then surely humans don’t either.

But that’s not the case. Piper has given several sermons and written articles on the topic of abortion, condemning it in the strongest language possible.

The “Selfish, Responsibility-Shirking” Boyfriend

In a separate pamphlet and sermon series titled “Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion,” Piper blasts the choice for abortion and denounces the humans who make that choice in no unmistakable terms.

Piper is so confident his hearers will understand the darkness of abortion that he makes almost no moral arguments against it. He simply assumes that he doesn’t have to say why abortion is wrong.

Yet he does drop in a single moral argument in one line of the series…

An aging abortionist, a few blocks from our church, after 3,000 abortions, can become a child of God. She could hear Jesus say, on her death bed, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” The same is true for the mother of five aborted children. And for the selfish, responsibility-shirking boyfriend.
Piper, Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion

So, we can assume that when Piper calls the boyfriend“responsibility-shirking,” that he believes that the two people who are involved in the making of the child are responsible for the well-being of the child. The act of reproduction carries with it responsibilities. And, since he uses the term “selfish,” Piper assumes that it is wrong for those parents to put their own needs above the needs of the child.

My question is, what is the difference between the Calvinist God and the “selfish, responsibility-shirking” boyfriend?

The Calvinist Rebuttal

Having had deep discussions with my Calvinist pastor and friends and read a lot of the most well-respected Calvinist authors, I can tell you with confidence what the response to my question would be.

The answer will be something like, “You can’t judge God by human notions of right and wrong. His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God is the creator of all but he is not the father of all.”

NOTE: The passage in Isaiah 55 that contains, “My ways are higher than your ways…” shows that when God says His ways are higher, he means MORE loving and merciful than we are, not less.

And how is it that Calvinists can claim the distinction between God’s role as creator (with no responsibility) and father (with responsibility)?

As we’ve seen in Piper’s line of thinking, the distinction lies in God’s desire.

“God has the freedom and the right to save—really save—any and all lost sinners that he pleases.”
Piper, The Pleasures of God

So, if “he pleases,” he saves them and becomes their father.

Yet, in the case of the abortive mother, Piper is quick to denounce this exact type of moral reasoning.

And the awesome thing is that we endow her will not just with sovereignty over her unborn baby, but with the authority to define it: If she wants it, it is a baby, a person. If she does not want it, it is not a baby, not a person.
Piper, Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion

This is the really shocking double-standard that Piper uses for God and humans, and I don’t think he recognizes it.

To Piper, a mother shouldn’t get to choose whether she is responsible for a being she helped create based on her desire for the child. Or, to state it another way, her lack of desire for the child does not change her responsibility. But, when you look at Piper’s teaching on election, it is obvious that God’s lack of desire for the unelect does indeed relieve him of the responsibility to provide what the dependent reprobate need most.

Piper puts much more weight on the shoulders of this fallible mortal mother and her “selfish, responsibility-shirking boyfriend” than he does his immortal, omnipotent, perfect God.

When Might Makes Right

Again, working back and forth between Piper’s works, I can imagine what his response to the above would be. God has “the freedom and the universal rights and authority,” to choose to be a father to some and not others.

When it comes to morality, God’s might makes whatever he does right.

But, in another sermon on the topic of abortion, Piper denounces the use of power to define right and wrong.

The decisive criterion of personhood and non-personhood, what is right and wrong, what is legal and what is illegal, is the will of the strong. Might makes right. Might makes personhood. Might makes legal. This is the ultimate statement of anarchy. It is the essence of the original insurrection against God, and against objective truth and right and beauty.
Piper, Abortion and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

It seems here that Piper believes there is an “objective truth and right and beauty” that transcends and overrules the will of the strong. In other words, just because you are stronger than someone else, doesn’t mean you have the right to do what you want.

Yet, as we can see, Piper does not apply this type of logic consistently. If we apply Piper’s reasoning to the choices he says his God makes, there is no “objective truth and right and beauty” in the heart of his God. The Calvinist God fluidly defines what is right based on his own power and capricious pleasures rather than some absolute measure of goodness.

When it comes to the Calvinist God, might does indeed make right, and Piper has just undermined and invalidated his own argument.

Now we’re on dangerous, shifting sand. When I started to see this for what it is, I completely lost my footing. Rather than knowing what good and evil were, I now had no idea. Light had become darkness. It was just as Piper described it in his “might makes right” statement—anarchy in my soul.

Exploring the Differences

So, we can see that the arguments made by Pro-Choice advocates are very similar in moral color to the arguments for predestination made by Calvinists like Piper. But you’ve probably already thought of some of the differences between the two, so let’s explore those differences.

The Willfulness of Creation

One argument often put forth by Pro-Choice advocates (and sometimes conceded by Pro-Life advocates) is that the mother was not willful in the act of intercourse in the case of rape and that that lack of intention removes the responsibility of providing life to the dependent.

She did not decide to help create a human in that case.

Yet, I have not heard a Calvinist argue that God did not decide to create the reprobate. Humans don’t just happen into being. They don’t invent themselves.

He chooses and creates.

So, you begin to see a distinction between the abortive mother and God the creator. While the mother may deny responsibility for the dependent because she never intended to create it, the Calvinist God can make no such denial.

The Cessation or Sustaining of Life

Another distinction we can find in the abortive mother and the Calvinist God is that the abortive mother is not choosing to sustain life in the unwanted child.

She wants to end the child’s life.

In predestination, the Calvinist God creates and sustains unelect humans in a state of misery throughout all eternity.

Calvinists often talk of the unelect as receiving “common grace” from God. This common grace affords that unelect human some of the pleasures which come with human life on earth. But keep in mind that the short duration of that life on earth is essentially nothing when compared to the misery of an eternal hell.

So, while God may show the unelect some measure of grace in this short lifetime, that grace ends at death and the anguish and torture of hell extend throughout the eons of eternity.

One would assume that the abortion debate would be much different if the mother of the unwanted child desired to sustain it in a state of misery as long as she could, rather than terminate it.

The Barbaric Further Step of Pleasure

Piper, in fact, assures us that God is not only willful in the act of creating the unelect but takes pleasure in it.

A central verse that Piper points to again and again is Psalm 115:3 “Our God is in heaven and does as He pleases.” (Thus the title of the book “The Pleasures of God” from which many of these quotes are taken.) This pleasure certainly applies to predestination. Notice what Piper says is the goal of election from a quote above: “That’s why God has pleasure in election — it magnifies his name!”

According to Piper, God gets pleasure from the choice to create and not save because it shows how magnificent he is.

God, who willfully creates the conscious unelect out of nothing, derives pleasure by choosing not to save them.

Now, we have arrived at a concept which reaches far beyond the abortive case and is, I believe, at the heart of all morality.

It is obvious from Piper’s statements that the Calvinist God gets his self-centered pleasure at the expense of most of those he creates and who are dependent on him. He elevates His own name and glory as the highest good. He is shown to be most powerful and glorious by creating dependents for whom he does not provide. He does not give them what they need most and are unable to attain on their own—spiritual life. The result is that those dependents, who had no choice in being born, will live in eternal torment.

And He derives pleasure from this.

When you look at it from this perspective, Calvinism is the opposite of what we believe to be good.

These are the dots I connected that sent me into a literally life-threatening spiral of depression.

Any being who derives pleasure from displaying his power by delivering the utmost pain possible to those who are weak and dependent on him is a monster—the most despicable monster imaginable. And I was supposed to worship that monster.

Are you beginning to see why Calvinism is the darkest view of reality to enter the mind of men? I can think of no other worldview that comes close to the hideous evil that Calvinism puts forth as truth. It is the most evil worldview imaginable.

Wait, What? It’s What the Bible Says!

When I look back and try to think what would my Calvinist mind tell me about what I’ve just written, I can hear it screaming, “Yeah, but it’s there in the Bible. You can’t recreate Christianity because you don’t like it.”

To that, I say two things.

If that’s what Christianity is, then it is not worth believing in. It is too dark for my mind to bear. I tried and I couldn’t survive it. I join the millions who see this worldview for what it is and walk away. That God is not worthy of worship. Quite the opposite.
There are ways of looking at the Bible from the Calvinist perspective, but you have to do some seriously fancy footwork to get around the many non-Calvinist sections of scripture. Once I got my head straight, I began to see how strong the arguments are against Calvinism both Biblically and logically. What about Romans 9? See Tom Talbott’s St Paul’s Universalism, and for God’s sake, keep reading to Romans 11!

Strange, isn’t it? Christianity can either be the most beautiful reality that inspires and lifts us to the highest heights or it can be represented as a darkness that enslaves, depresses, and maddens us.

As George MacDonald says, because Christianity is higher and wider than any other worldview, it is susceptible to more corruption than any other.

How have we learned Christ? It ought to be a startling thought, that we may have learned him wrong. That must be far worse than not to have learned him at all: his place is occupied by a false Christ, hard to exorcise! The point is, whether we have learned Christ as he taught himself, or as men have taught him who thought they understood, but did not understand him. Do we think we know him–with notions fleshly, after low, mean human fancies and explanations, or do we indeed know him–after the spirit, in our measure as God knows him? The Christian religion, throughout its history, has been open to more corrupt misrepresentation than ever the Jewish could be, for as it is higher and wider, so must it yield larger scope to corruption:–have we learned Christ in false statements and corrupted lessons about him, or have we learned himself? Nay, true or false, is only our brain full of things concerning him, or does he dwell himself in our hearts, a learnt, and ever being learnt lesson, the power of our life?
– George MacDonald, The Truth in Jesus

Single and Double Predestination

Let me say a word here about single and double predestination. Some Calvinists believe that God elects some to salvation, but does not in any way predestine anyone to reprobation. This is referred to as single predestination.

Calvinists who believe in double predestination, by contrast, believe that God is the active cause in everything and predestines the unelect to damnation.

The point of this distinction is that those who hold to single predestination seek to lessen the moral ugliness of the situation. “God doesn’t predestine anyone to damnation. He merely withholds saving grace to some.”

I find the single predestination stance to be a logical impossibility. It would be impossible for an all-knowing, omnipotent creator to create without a purpose. No human being is an accident. Again, to hold to single predestination is an attempt to deny that God was the conscious, willful creator of dependent beings for whom He does not provide. The result is that they are tortured forever. God knew that from the beginning.

The single vs. double predestination distinction is essentially meaningless when you look at the end result. It is an attempt to remove the “selfish, responsibility-shirking” stain that makes the God of Calvinism morally repugnant.

The unmitigated darkness of the worldview remains.

I encourage you to consider the implications of what you’re being taught and mentally follow the road to where it leads. Ask the tough questions of your Calvinist pastor. Do this early on. Go in with your eyes open.

And, if you’re looking for a different explanation of Christianity than what you hear from Calvinists AND Arminians (what you probably are if you’re in the conservative evangelical branch, but not a Calvinist) read this.