Reproductive Self-Determination and the Bondage of the Pill: Preaching like Calvinists and Procreating like Arminians

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From Chapter 3 of the 1997 UNFPA “State of World Population”:

“In most of the world the initiation, timing and final level of fertility are now recognized as a matter of conscious choice. When asked in surveys, men and women are increasingly able to indicate how many children they would like to have, what their ideal number of children is, how many children they would want to have if they were starting their reproductive life now, and whether or not their last birth was wanted or timed as they would have preferred. This is in marked contrast to three decades ago, in the infancy of national population programmes, when fatalistic answers (“What-ever happens, happens,” “It’s up to God”) accounted for a significant minority of responses.”

In the eyes of the United Nations, believing that the birth of children is “up to God” is nothing short of fatalism. Unfortunately, the same is true in the hearts and minds of countless American Evangelicals…even many of the Reformed ones. In their defense of the Sovereign work of God in salvation, it would seem that many in the Reformed camp have lost sight of the Sovereign work of God in procreation. While “monergism” is their battle cry for the new birth, “synergism” has usurped their understanding of the natural one. In their defense of family planning, they have muddied the waters of their procreative theology. Allow me to attempt to explain…

In commenting on political language and the use of euphemism, George Orwell once wrote:

“Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them…The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

“Family planning” is a euphemistic term that a host of Reformed Protestants have bought into, hook, line, and sinker (or for you non-fishers out there, that means that we’ve swallowed the entire thing!). As Reformed Protestants, we rightly feel uncomfortable calling the intentional closing of the womb “birth control”, for it calls to mind a sense of human independence that sends shudders down our 5-Point spines. To infer that man can control something as high and holy as the creation of a new life in image of the Triune Sovereign God of the universe is an idea that, to stomach, must be softened into a kinder, cooler understanding of “family planning” or “reproductive self-determination”.

Self-determination, you say? What say you, Dr. Luther? What power have we over the “miracle of life”?:

“Although God is wont to confirm His doctrines by miracles, without any respect to the carnality of the age: nor is He at all moved, either by the merits or demerits of a carnal age, but by pure mercy and grace, and a love of souls which are to be confirmed, by solid truth, unto their glory. But we give you the choice of working any miracles, as small an one as you please.

But come! I, in order to irritate your Baal into action, insult, and challenge you to create even one frog, in the name, and by virtue of “Free-will;” of which, the Gentile and impious Magi in Egypt, could create many. I will not put you to the task of creating lice; which, neither could they produce. But I will descend a little lower yet. Take even one flea, or louse, (for you tempt and deride our God by your ‘curing of the lame horse,’) and if, after you have combined all the powers, and concentrated all the efforts both of your god and your advocates, you can, in the name and by virtue of “Free-will,” kill it, you shall be victors; your cause shall be established; and we also will immediately come over and adore that god of yours, that wonderful killer of the louse. Not that I deny, that you could even remove mountains; but it is one thing to say, that a certain thing was done by “Free-will,” and another to prove it.” – sect. 28 of The Bondage of the Will

Luther argued that in the power of his own will, Erasmus could not even kill one flea – and yet we live today as if by our wills we can create a child bearing the image of God. Ask ANY infertile couple today, and they will earnestly affirm that the human will is powerless to provide a child. They have learned from experience that “Unless the Lord builds the house, they who build it labor in vain.” But what does that verse even mean? Let’s take a look at it’s Inspired context:

“Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.“
- (Psa 127)

In his commentary on Psalm 127, Calvin writes this about God’s work in our begetting of children:

“The majority of mankind dream, that after God had once ordained this at the beginning, children were thenceforth begotten solely by a secret instinct of nature, God ceasing to interfere in the matter; and even those who are endued with some sense of piety – do not acknowledge that his providential care descends to this particular case… With the view of correcting this preposterous error, Solomon calls children the heritage of God and the fruit of the womb his gift.”

Friends, far too many of us are preaching like Calvinists and yet procreating like Arminians. We trust God for all things, but those things we think we can control for ourselves. We love to talk about God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility in theory, but we treat it quite different in real life. God’s sovereignty is not a back-up plan if our “family planning” responsibilities fail to produce the desired results. We must recognize that we do not effect the new birth in any human being, nor must we presume that we ultimately effect the natural one. Children are a gift, not a biological side effect. Likewise, converts are a fruit of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, not ultimately a result of our effectiveness in presentation or planning (and even then, our planning would be in favor of, and not counter to, new converts). As Calvin writes, “Adam did not take a wife to himself at his own will, but received her as offered and appropriated to him by God.” Adam had no more ability to “plan” for a wife than we do to “plan” for a child. The Originator and Preempter of them both is God. Kathryn Blanchard puts it bluntly, “The honor God gives in allowing humans to be parents is not something to be controlled, regretted, or gloated over, but to be humbly received. It is after God’s image – not individual humans’ own – that these children are formed.” And Calvin again emphasizes the same truth in his commentary on Genesis:

“…when [Jacob] replies that his numerous seed had been given him by God, he acknowledges and confesses that children are not so produced by nature to subvert the truth of the declaration, that the fruit of the womb is a reward and gift of God. And truly, since the fecundity of brute animals is the gift of God, how much more is this the case with men, who are created after His own image. Let parents then learn to consider, and to celebrate the singular kindness of God, in their offspring.”

Beloved, it’s time we recover a Reformed view of procreation, and it starts with the reaffirmation that God is the sovereign Creator of marriage, sex, and children – and we are the responsible creatures who owe him our obedience. Blanchard reminds us that ultimately, “We are not masters of our own procreative destinies.” May we take care, lest we be put to shame by acting like we are.

‘BH

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Tags: baptist, Birth Control, calvinist, Children, Christian, Contraception, Culture, Family, John Calvin, Marriage, Martin Luther, Protestant, reformed, Sex, Sovereignty