I recently responded to the following question/syllogism at the Boar’s Head Tavern:
1. The vast majority of people will not be saved, but rather damned.
2. The command to be fruitful and multiply is especially imperative upon believers and it is the believer’s duty to procreate.
3. Is it incumbent upon believers to populate the earth with people who will in large measure, be damned?
Assuming the veracity of #1, the logic of this syllogism leads us to conclude that believers who follow the creation mandate contribute to the mass condemnation of humanity, truncating redemption. In other words, no matter how many people Christians lead to Christ, spiritual births will be outpaced by natural births, making Christianity a self-defeating, others-condemning venture. Why not stop having kids and just evangelize? There are several flaws, I believe, to this line of thinking. I will hone in on one.
First, the amount of people who will spend a Christless eternity does not ultimately hinge upon our reproductivity, physically or spiritually but on God’s election. Second, and the primary issue I want to focus on, is that the syllogism does not account for a biblical theology of the creation mandate. In short, it puts creation before redemption.
The creation mandate to be “fruitful and multiply” (half of the mandate) is issued before the Fall, laying out God’s plan to populate the earth with his divine image, expanding his glory over all the earth. After the Fall, the image of God that is man is broken and disfigured by sin. In turn, the earth is populated with murderers, adulterers, sinners (as the Cainite line demonstrates in Genesis). The creation mandate is re-issued after the Fall but only in part (Gen. 9:1,7; 17:2-6; 26:3; 28:3; Ex. 1:7; Ezek. 36:11; Jer. 23:3). The command of “fruitful multiplication” becomes a promise with Israel, a promise that is reissued throughout the history of the Hebrews (Abraham/Wilderness/Conquest/ Exile/Post-exile). So, one could conclude that this part of the CM devolves onto Israel; however, the NT demonstrates that Jesus reconstitutes Israel around himself as a people who fruitfully multiply shaped by the gospel.
In the NT, the fruitful multiplication of the CM is reshaped by the gospel. This is seen in the allusions to the word pair “fruitful” and “multiply” in Acts 6 and Colossians 1, where fruitful multiplication takes on a gospel-centered meaning of “being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” It follows then that people who increase do so along the lines of the Word of God, the gospel, they are “spiritual offspring” who are fruitful in social and spiritual activity (to use a dualism). Therefore, reading the CM in light of a whole biblical theology leads us to the conclusion that the creation mandate has taken a redemptive turn, not mainly focusing on physical reproduction, but upon new creation activity, evangelistically and socially.
So, believers populate the earth with people remade into the image of Jesus who, in turn, bless the earth with their whole gospel living and Jesus-centered discipleship. For a popular level article on this see my Missional Discipleship: Reinterpreting the Great Commission.