Is abortion God’s will? According to Calvinists, the answer is yes, in as much as everything that comes to pass is—in some way—God’s will, in which everything that God decrees must have a set “purpose.” In other words, from a Calvinist perspective, to say that evil is according to God’s “purpose” lessens the ethical and moral problem of evil—somehow. Calvinists candidly admit that they don’t know exactly how abortion could be according to God’s “sovereign will,” but that begs the question of what the real driving force is behind such thinking. The answer is theological pre-commitment and logical necessity because if, according to Calvinism, everything is decreed, then everything must have a purpose, or else God is shown to decree things for no purpose like haphazard modern art. This is where Calvinists will invoke the red herring of divine permission, arguing that if God didn’t want abortion, why did He allow it? And if He allows it, then doesn’t it follow that He has a purpose in what is allowed versus what is not allowed? Hence, everything that is allowed must be what He decrees to allow. In this way, divine permission is used by Calvinists to prove divine determinism:
What do Calvinists believe?
James White: “So why does God not stop all coveting, since it is obviously in His power to do so? The only answer is that He has a purpose in what He allows.”481
Our reply:
Just because God allows something doesn’t necessarily mean that He wants whatever He allows. For instance, the father of the “prodigal son” of Luke 15:11-32 allowed his son to leave with his demanded share of his inheritance. Does that mean, then, that the father’s acquiescence to his son’s demand, in allowing him to leave, must mean that the father inwardly wanted or desired for his son to leave? No. It could just mean that the father’s permission held a purpose in not holding his son against his will, and the problems which could ensue from that. In the same way, God could have a purpose in allowing freewill as an overarching ordering and sorting of humanity, without necessarily desiring anyone’s bad choices. In other words, God’s sovereignty is not in deciding everyone’s choices, but rather in having people be free to make their own choices, and the obvious benefit that comes from that, such as people being free to love and worship God from their heart, versus puppeteering people’s love and worship.
What do Calvinists believe?
James White: “If God’s decree does not include the evil of mankind, that evil has no purpose, and [Dave] Hunt is left directing us to a God who creates the possibility of evil, starts this universe off on its course, and then tries His best to ‘fix things’ as they fall apart in a torrent of wickedness. This is supposed to comfort us? This is the God who says that He works all things after the counsel of His will? Hardly!”482
Our reply:
Evil has a purpose in the evildoer who commits it, and potentially violating God’s true purpose of their life. For instance, God may have gifted a person with extraordinary skills, meant to be used for the advancement of the kingdom of God, but was instead used for the person’s own pursuit of pleasure and wealth, and in the end, they are held accountable for what they had done with God’s gifts.
Calvinists are putting evil under the “purpose” of God because they are logically pre-committed to it. In other words, if everything is pre-scripted, then evil can’t be unplanned, or else Calvinism’s over-arching decree is unplanned, which would make no sense. It would be like decreeing things absent-mindedly. So, Calvinists are forced to say that all sin has a purpose by God who planned and executed everything according to script.
Alternatively, it’s perfectly fine to say that God has a plan for sin if He is bringing good out of the evil of others, but not if He is causing the sin that He is using. In other words, in Calvinism, God redeems for good out of His own ordained evil, which is no longer a moral good. As an illustration, if someone were to set an apartment building on fire, and then rescuing some and not others, then the ones rescued would result from the arsonist redeeming good from their own evil, in having set the building on fire. Applied to theology, if God decreed all men to be born helpless and hopeless from being able to positively respond to the gospel, and then choosing to apply “Irresistible Grace” to only some, then the ones saved would amount to redeeming good from the over-arching evil of initially condemning all mankind to be born under unbelief.
Dave Hunt: “I’ve never said that the universe is out of control, with God trying ‘His best to “fix things” as they fall apart.’ Calvinism limits God to a ‘sovereignty’ that can’t handle free will. Sin is not God’s will, but the counsel of His will allows it for a brief time. God is obligated to no one, but His love provides salvation for all and calls all to repent.”483
Hence, as an example, abortion is not God’s will, but He allows society to do it for a brief amount of time until Christ returns, but not that He wants people to have abortions, though when people do commit it—independently of His will—then God reserves the right to use it to His own advantage by bringing some good testimonies out of it. That’s the difference between Calvinism and non-Calvinism.
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481 Debating Calvinism (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, Inc. 2004), 42, emphasis mine.
482 Ibid., 319-320, emphasis mine.
483 Ibid., 327.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
