Why Have Babies?

The question I dealt with earlier about why one should not baptize a baby and immediately murder it to ensure its salvation brought to mind a related question that struck me back when I was a Calvinist.

The question was this: Why should one have babies at all since they will just grow up to become sinners–even saved ones–who commit more offenses against God and thus add to the evil in the universe?

The solution that I came up with at the time is that new people don’t just add new offenses to the grand ledger of the universe. They also add good to the universe. They add natural good based on what God has given them by nature, and they add supernatural good based on what God gives them by grace.

To the extent that people add good to the universe, it makes the evil they add more tolerable in a sense.

Whether they ultimately add more good than they do evil is something that only God knows, but we do know that it is his will that the human race continue until the end of the world. It’s that "Be fruitful and multiply" think, y’know?

There is another consideration here also: ultimate justice. It isn’t just that they’re adding evil to the universe and that this situation will remain unredressed, with the universe acquiring an ever more and more negative moral charge. God will ultimately balance the scales (to mix metaphors). Those who have done evil and refused to repend and accept God’s grace will ultimately get what’s coming to them. Even the saved who are forgiven their sins will still have to repent of them and deal with their consequences, either in this life or purgatory.

This also allows the evil that is done in the world to be tolerable for the sake of the good that is also done. It’s not like the evil will go on forever, unaddressed. It’s something that is only temporarily allowed so that the good in the universe can also flourish.

I’d also add one point that I would not have added as a Calvinist: God is simply not risk averse. In order to get new saved immortal beings who freely chose their salvation he is willing to risk letting them have freedom. The biggest threat to our salvation is our free will, but God is willing to let us have freedom because he’s not just after saved souls but after a certain kind of saved soul: those who have chosen him.

If he, then, is willing to take the risk that a given baby may grow up to ultimately reject him, who are we to question that?

Our job is to have the babies and point them toward God as their ultimate destination, not to decide beforehand that the risk is too great and prevent them from exercising the freedom that God wills them to have.

We can thus help children along the road to heaven by giving them spiritual goods, like the gospel and baptism (when they’re too small and trusting to reject either of these things), but we must also allow them to grow into that maturity of reason and freedom that would allow them to reject the graces they have been given if they choose to do so.

If God is willing to take that risk, we must be willing as well.

We can’t murder them right after baptism, and we can’t refrain from having babies just because we’re afraid of the risk.

We have to live our lives in accordance with God’s known goals. We must be fruitful and multiply, and we must do what we can to ensure that The Circle Will Be Unbroken, but we cannot do this in a way that seeks to eliminate human freedom and the risks that accompany it.

Freedom is essential to what God is trying to do with us.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

23 thoughts on “Why Have Babies?”

  1. Perhaps this is pedantic, but does God ever take a risk? He certainly knows the outcome of any action or possible action, so it seems to me there is no risk involved at all.

  2. Freedom exists, but it doesn’t follow that God is not in control. It sounds like Jimmy has gone from a Calvinist to becoming a Molinist. But even a Molinist would have to admit that, because of Providence and the scientia media, even God takes no risks. A risk implies ignorance and lack of control of an outcome, lack of providence. Such is not the case with the deity.

  3. Open Theism posits that God doesn’t exhaustively determine what you will do next, even if given a specific situation. Rather God exhaustively determines what you can do next and basically dances with you and your choices working the best possible world within our freedom and as it coincides with His ultimate Will.
    God’s providence then is already knowing all that we can do and bringing the best possible world about given the choices we do make. So “the risk” is very much real, but God does not so much lose anything so much as we don’t gain everything.

  4. Breier,
    Does your comment about Jimmy mean you are a Thomist?
    Take care and God bless,
    Inocencio
    J+M+J

  5. Regardless of God’s “risk” or no we were designed to make babies. Not making babies because they may sin would be like not going to Mass because I might not pay attention and thus sin. Though not everyone is called to procreate those who are…must.
    Keep in mind that it is not possible to sin more than God’s grace can fill or maybe what I’m trying to say is that there will be a happy ending to the story whether we choose to help or not; mysteriously God takes our “not” and makes it better than before. cf: Crucifixion and Resurection.

  6. This is an essential part of the Catholic world view — that people are good and worth something. The underlying premise of the overpopulation folks is the negative anthropology that More People = More Bad. As Catholics, we have to witness that each person is actually a good, created by God for an even better good.

  7. I’ve often wondered why would He make those souls that would reject Him in the first place? He knows in advance if a soul will come to accept Him or not.
    Why not only make those that would accept Him?

  8. Even the lowly chicken -it is said in psych 110 -keeps pecking in hopes of getting a reward (corn kernal) Surely God has infinite ability to hope that His creations made in His image will choose Him. Perhaps it is that very grace,”hope” that we are missing when we ask such questions?

  9. “Why not only make those that would accept Him?”
    See, this is what I think is just the most astonishing miracle of creation; that God would (as part of his overarching will) make creatures that each posesses a little pocket of free will of his/her own.
    God created us, created the universe and laid out the parameters of the experiment, you might say, but within those parameters, we really do make our own decisions. This does not diminish God’s power or authority in the slightest.
    I have given my kids the responsibility of keeping their rooms clean. They may not clean them just the way I would like, they may not clean them at all, but my will as a parent is that they (not me) have the responsibilty of taking care of their rooms.
    The fact that they control the destiny of their own room does not diminish my parental authority at all, but complements it.
    Not that I don’t indulge in a little Intervention from time to time. You know… “Repent, and clean thou thy room, or I shall destroy all thy priviledges, and thy life shall become a barren waste and every electronic thing will surely be swept away. From thy friends and activities, thou shalt be cut off…”.
    Why have babies? One reason would be that God makes everything for a purpose. God made us to “fill the Earth, and subdue it”. Babies are obviously made to grow up and have more babies. Treating created things in a way that frustrates or perverts their obvious purpose is an affront to their Creator.

  10. Amen, Tim. As C.S. Lewis said: God could have made any kind of universe. He chose to make a moral one. Ergo, He had to give us free will. He must have thought it was worth the risk.

  11. The problem with that apologetical argument is that God’s providence includes the acts of our free will. Thus he could have created a world in which the Devil freely chose not to reject him, or a world in which Adam and Eve freely chose not to sin, but he didn’t.
    Freedom is a fact, but so is God’s providence, which is the source of all our good acts. And that providence is not a passive observation of God about what we do; God is not dependent on us. His knowledge is the cause of our actions.

  12. God did create a world in which it was possible for the devil and Adam and Eve to not reject Him. They freely chose to reject Him. To say that God’s knowledge is the cause of their sins (or ours) is to make God the Author of sin.

  13. Bill,
    Noone says God’s knowledge is the “cause” of our sins, because sin, being a negation of goodness, does not require an active cause, but merely a defectible one.
    We are the cause of our sin, but God is the cause of all goodness in us, including our “non-rejection” of him. What have you, that you have not received?
    The fact remains that God could have granted a grace to Adam and Eve so that they would freely chosen not sin, but he chose not to do so.
    Or is it not in God’s power to convert an obstinate sinner, or to prevent a man from falling?
    But this is simply a rehashing the debates on grace. Back to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange…

  14. My error. To say that God’s knowledge is the cause of their–or our– actions (our actions include our sins) is to make God the Author of sin.
    I don’t see how God could have created Adam and Eve with free will, yet have given them the grace to freely choose not to sin (i.e., to make it impossible for them to sin; He gave them the grace to choose not to sin, just as He gives us the grace to choose not to sin). It would amount to overriding their free will.
    As for converting an obstinate sinner, the sinner must still accept God’s grace. The sinner is still free to reject God’s grace. As C.S. Lewis points out in “The Screwtape Letters”, God will not ravish us; he will only woo.

  15. Bill,
    Of course grace has to be freely accepted. The question is, is that freely acceptance solely attributed to our free will, or is that also a gift of God?
    Is the phrase “There but for the grace of God go I” true, or no?
    Is the acceptance of grace something I can congratulate myself for, or do I owe even that to God?
    What separates me from the man who does not accept grace? Solely my merits? Or the grace of God?
    The Blessed Virgin Mary never sinned in her life. Is that because she was just really extra-good, on her own merits? Or is it because of the grace of God?

  16. We should have babies, so that they can glorify God. I wouldn’t want to be the person who stopped anyone from knowing and glorifying God. I don’t think I could live with myself.

  17. Of course grace has to be freely accepted. The question is, is that freely acceptance solely attributed to our free will, or is that also a gift of God?
    The opportunity to say, “yes,” is a gift of God. Your yes, though, is your yes – just as would be your no. God does not determine for you what you will say – He makes good of your choice regardless. Everything that moves you to the point of making a choice to enter into God’s life is grace. But the choice of entering or not is you.
    And if you say, “yes,” and another says, “no,” what merit distinguishes the two of you? It is only the merit of Christ because your “yes” is not for you but for Him who has saved you – to say, “I follow where you lead because I as I am is not enough.” All merit originates in Christ – you can only answer “Yes” because He allows it. But because He allows it does not necessitate it.
    Is the phrase “There but for the grace of God go I” true, or no?
    Certainly.
    Is the acceptance of grace something I can congratulate myself for, or do I owe even that to God?
    You owe all to God because every detail leading to the opportunity by which you freely died to yourself originates in God and is only possible because of Christ. Your yes is to take nothing for yourself; but that is, all the same, your choice … it is the first cooperation.
    What separates me from the man who does not accept grace? Solely my merits? Or the grace of God?
    Christ’s merits distinguish you. And you haven’t merited Christ’s merits … you have agreed to let Christ’s merits cover you and renew you, all beginning by and in God’s grace.
    The Blessed Virgin Mary never sinned in her life. Is that because she was just really extra-good, on her own merits? Or is it because of the grace of God?
    The question, here, is whether or not Mary was free to sin? I would believe that the Church would necessarily have to profess that she was free to sin but did not. I think it is beyond us to answer why Mary did not sin when Adam and Eve did – except to say that certainly her freedom to cooperate is necessary to profess. God’s grace is a given in any case.

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