Neo-Calvinism, the Nonelect, and Planned Parenthood: a Grand Kind of Farce

Last updated on: August 16, 2018 at 2:21 pm by Zach Hoag

Neo-Calvinism, the Nonelect, and Planned Parenthood: a Grand Kind of Farce 2018-08-16T14:21:33-05:00 Zach Hoag

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Last week I made a statement on Twitter about neo-Calvinists’ passion for defunding Planned Parenthood. Namely, I said it’s a little suspicious:

https://twitter.com/zhoag/status/658810253035884544

For the purposes of this rather short post, my reasoning is simple: Neo-Calvinists (rightly) believe that God is the essence of perfect justice and holiness. But they also (wrongly) believe that it is perfectly just and holy for God to arbitrarily select a tiny minority of humanity for eternal bliss while consigning the rest to eternal torment – which, no matter how you slice the details or try to soften it as a psychological rather than physical torment, is still torment for all eternity.

Further, neo-Calvinists believe that it is perfectly just and holy for God to eternally torment a 16 year old who told some lies and slept with their girlfriend and never repented or accepted Christ, alongside Hitler and ISIS marauders. Sure, there may be “levels” of punishment, but the point is that it is still torment for all eternity.

And of course, neo-Calvinists believe that this fate is coming to the vast majority of all-kinds-of-sinners throughout all time and history without those sinners having any actual ability to turn from their path – at all. They will be eternally tormented just to prove that God is so just and so holy. He could have made them regenerate like he does with the elect, but he just said, “Meh. My justice and holiness really could use an eternal Auschwitz or at least Guantanamo to get maximum just-and-holy glory.”

So – why all the outrage about Planned Parenthood?

Neo-Calvinists (I believe, rightly) cite God’s justice and human dignity as the basis for opposing abortion-on-demand – all while (wrongly) believing in a God who arbitrarily selects the vast majority of humanity, before they are born or do anything, who are all precious little babies at some point with inherent human dignity and all that, to be tormented forever in hell. That’s their ultimate purpose, as far as God’s concerned. To languish in the eternal concentration camp, all to the praise of his glory.

Which makes any of the previous talk of justice or human rights a particularly grand kind of farce.

Compound all this with the terribly inconsistent belief that many neo-Calvinists hold (I did) that babies and little children who die are automatically elect somehow, and the outrage becomes even more unfounded. In this case, the abortion doctor is a great emancipator, setting the souls of little babies free so they never run the extremely high risk of becoming the nonelect sinners who are predestined to suffer in hell, world without end.

I understand that people can hold these beliefs about God and still be good, caring people. Of course. But the neo-Calvinist leaders especially, who are spearheading the culture war against Planned Parenthood specifically, are, to me, guilty of much more than inconsistency.

They are guilty of masquerading a political agenda as a purely spiritual concern for justice and human dignity – which, of course, it cannot be.

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[Photo: Charlotte Cooper, CC via Flickr]

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