Calvinism on Infant Damnation
[This is taken from my post "As evil as it gets: Calvinism on babies and the unreached." I'm breaking that longer post up into shorter pieces, to focus on one topic per post. I left the same lettering from the original post. I'll intersperse this series with the Alana L series.]
Calvinism's teachings on infant damnation:
Is it any wonder that they'd believe in infant damnation in light of their views of what babies and young children are like (previous post in this serries)? (However, to be fair, plenty of Calvinists believe that babies - at least elect babies - go to heaven. But I think this contradicts their theology, as I'll explain later.)
t. Tim Challies ("Original sin and the death of infants"): "... in an article I wrote last week...[I] expressed my belief that my children (ages 6, 3, and 3 months) are, at this time, likely unsaved and are thus spiritually dead..."
u. James White (listen to the clip at the 4:33-minute-mark in this Idol Killer video "Does Calvinism Teach Babies are Elected for hell?"): "... [God] is going to have elect infants, and there are others who will not be."
w. Calvinist Vincent Cheung, in his “Infant Salvation”, also asserts that infants are damned to hell: “We insist that if infants can be saved, then only chosen infants are saved… Perhaps the same applies to those who are mentally retarded, although there seems to be no biblical evidence to say that some mentally retarded people are saved. Their salvation is only a possibility. It is also possible that all mentally retarded people are damned… [and] on the basis of the doctrine of reprobation, they would be created as damned individuals in the first place.
The popular position that all infants are saved is wishful thinking, and continues as a groundless religious tradition... Thus the invention deceives the masses and offers them hope based on mere fantasy. The way to comfort bereaved parents is not to lie to them, but to instruct them to trust in God. Whatever God decides must be right and good. It may be difficult due to their grief and weakness at the time, but if the parents cannot finally accept this, that God is always right, then they are headed for hell themselves and need to become Christians. [So quick and eager to dish out damnation!]
... The possibility in consideration does not apply to mentally aware infants, teenagers, and adults who never heard the gospel – they will all surely go to hell… If someone dies without hearing the gospel, it just means that God has decreed his damnation beforehand.
... In itself, I have no problem with the idea that for anyone to receive salvation, in the absolute sense and without exception, he must exhibit a conscious faith in the gospel. This would mean that those who are unable to exercise faith are all damned to hell, and this would include infants and the mentally retarded, if we assume that they cannot exercise faith. I have no misgivings about this. [Phew! How wonderful that he can sleep easy at night, unconcerned with other people's damnation.] I have no problem with the idea that all who die as embryos, infants, and mentally retarded would burn in hell. If this is what God has decided, then this is what happens. [What does it say about a person to love and trust and worship a god like that?)
… If he loves his chosen ones so much that he wishes to show forth his glory and wrath to them by visiting the reprobates with judgment and hellfire, then loves wins again. [Yeah, kinda like how a demented, obsessed kidnapper-serial-killer shows his kidnapped victim how much he "loves" her by killing other people as a gift to her. Love wins!]
... But whether a fetus, infant, or adult, if you can read this and understand this, then I am telling you that you must believe in Jesus Christ to save your wretched soul. As for my critics, yes, even obnoxious morons like you can be saved. My concern is not so much about whether embryos can exercise faith, but that as annoying and unintelligent as you are, whether you can exercise faith….. As for the embryos, if they perish, they will go where God decides – if they all burn in hell, they all burn in hell…” [Yep, Calvinism is definitely a contest to see who can believe the worst things and be the biggest heretic and jerk.]
x. An atheist (Godless Granny) asks a Calvinist named Joe this question: "If you found out that God chose not to save one or more of your children, how would you feel about that?"
Joe answers "It means He's God. You see, God is a bigger being than I am. He's higher than I am. And I sure hope that God has chosen my children...but if God chooses not to save my children, that is His prerogative because He is God and I am not God. He decides who's in His heaven. He decides who's in His hell."
Godless Granny then points out that the odds are that at least one of Joe's children is predestined to eternal torment in hell, and she asks "And you don't have a problem with that?"
And Joe responds "Okay, we've got two ways to look at this. This is a glass half-full or half-empty. Either I can rejoice that God chose a wretched sinner for salvation, which is me [Enjoy this 2-minute video featuring Calvinist Tyler Vela and Beaker from the Muppets, called "Me, me, me." FYI: Tyler recently left the faith. Apparently, he had "evanescent grace."] or I can worry about God's choices with other wretched sinners. [Translation: "Don't care if others are damned to hell, just be happy that you are elect."] When I realize that the human nature and the human position against God is that I've sinned against an almighty God and that everyone deserves His judgment, I should be mystified, shocked, and stunned whenever He chooses anyone, not surprised when someone doesn't get chosen."
[This is the glorious end of Calvinism, where it leads to! Oh, how this must hurt his children's hearts! Watch the video of this conversation at Soteriology 101's "Warning: This may be the CRINGIEST video you watch about Calvinism".
To justify their doctrine of election/reprobation, Calvinists always say things like "We're all sinners who deserve His judgment, no one deserves heaven." They use this to justify why they think it's okay for Calvi-god to elect some lucky people to heaven but send the rest to hell with no chance to be saved: "Well, none of us deserve heaven anyways, and so there's nothing wrong with God predestining people to hell. He does not give the non-elect the ability or chance to be saved, but that's okay because we all deserve hell anyways."
But this is a false, unbiblical inference. Just because "we are all sinners who deserve hell" in no way means that God does not and cannot offer salvation to all people or that He must pick only a few to save while damning the rest. Calvinists make a huge unbiblical leap from "everyone deserves hell" to "and so therefore God does not truly offer salvation to all people but He reprobates the non-elect to hell." This is not in the Bible, but it's in their own heads, according to their own philosophical, unbiblical theology.
And let me ask this, as Leighton (Soteriology 101) alludes to also: What does it say about the kind of god Calvi-god is if Calvinists are "mystified, shocked, stunned" that he loves anyone at all?
We'd be shocked to find out that a cannibalistic serial killer who kills and eats a victim a day has any real love for anyone - but why should it shock us that God loves people? God (but not Calvi-god) is love. It's in His nature to love, to be gracious, to be merciful, to be forgiving, to be compassionate - in an abundant, extravagant, self-sacrificial way. He is patient and long-suffering, slow to anger and rich in love, restraining His wrath and the just punishment of the wicked as long as possible, giving us many chances and years to repent.
If He would forgive a whole city full of wicked people for the sake of one good person (Jeremiah 5:1), and spare a whole city of wicked people from destruction if only ten righteous people could be found in it (Genesis 18), and plead with a whole city of wicked people to repent so that they didn't have to be destroyed (Nineveh, the book of Jonah), and give a world full of severely wicked people 120 years to repent while Noah built the ark and preached to them, what makes Calvinists think that He is so quick and eager to dish out damnation and "justice" (as they define it), to send people to hell?
(And why would God warn "non-elect" people and patiently wait for them to repent if He made it impossible for them to repent and if He predestined them to hell for His glory? And if He predetermined to get glory from their destruction, then He's working against His own glory to call them to repentance, isn't He? It doesn't make sense. But that's Calvinism!)
It shouldn't surprise us that the God of the Bible truly loves all people, all sinners, and that He wants all people to be saved, even wicked people, and that He offers salvation to all people, to all sinners. It would surprise us if the patient, loving, forgiving, merciful, gracious God of the Bible didn't truly love someone and want the best for them - because His love, His mercy, His grace is so big and far-reaching. The exact opposite of Calvinism's god.]
y. Jonathan Edwards in "The Miscellanies", point n.: "... it is most just, exceeding just, that God should take the soul of a new-born infant and cast it into eternal torments... For none are saved by the death of Christ from damnation that have not deserved damnation. Wherefore, if it be very just, it is but a foolish piece of nonsense, to cry out of it as blasphemous to suppose that it ever is [just], because (they say) it is contrary to his mercy." [Translation: "We all, even infants, deserve damnation, so it's perfect justice for God to throw newborn infants in hell. And it's foolish for you to call this blasphemous just because you think it goes against His mercy."]
... There was no mercy showed to [the fallen angels] at all. And [so, therefore] why is it blasphemous to suppose that God should inflict upon infants so much as [the infants] have deserved, without mercy, as well as [upon the fallen angels]? If you say, they [infants] have not deserved it so much, I answer: they certainly have deserved what they have deserved, as much as the fallen angels. [No. Angels were created in different conditions. Angels were created, as far as we can tell, ageless and mature, and they stood in the presence of God from the beginning. And so when they rejected Him, they knew exactly what they were doing, making a conscious decision based on all the facts. Not so with people. This is why there's mercy and grace for people, not angels; why Jesus died for people, not angels.].... Who shall determine just how much sin is sufficient to make damnation agreeable to the divine perfections? And how can they determine that infants have not so much sin? For we know they have enough to make their damnation very just." [Sick, sick sick!]
z. Also from Edwards' The Great Doctrine of Original Sin Defended: “... infants are not looked upon by God as sinless, but that they are by nature children of wrath... there are some particular cases of the death of infants [in Scripture, which gives] evidences of the sinfulness of such, and their just exposedness to divine wrath… God could as easily have delivered the infants [in Sodom and its surrounding cities]. And if they had been without sin, their perfect innocence, one should think, would have pleaded much more strongly for them.... these very destructions of that city and land are spoken of as clear evidences of God's wrath, to all nations which shall behold them. And if so, they were evidences of God's wrath towards infants; who, equally with the rest, were the subject of the destruction.” [Translation: "Since God won't destroy the innocent, and since He destroyed Sodom with all its infant children, it means that infants are not innocent but are sinful and deserving of God's wrath."]
aa. John Calvin believes that God sovereignly controls (preplans and causes), for His pleasure, which babies essentially starve to death because their mothers couldn't provide enough milk (from Institutes of the Christian Faith, book 1, chapter 16): "Indeed, if we do not shut our eyes and senses to the fact, we must see that some mothers have full provision for their infants, and others almost none, according as it is the pleasure of God to nourish one child more liberally, and another more sparingly."
But don't worry, because Calvi-god will only kill non-elect babies, those who are "doomed from the womb to certain death, and are to glorify him by their destruction."
So it's okay. You Calvinists can rest easy knowing that if your baby died, it was not an elect baby who was unfairly sent to hell - phew! - but it was a non-elect baby who deserved God's wrath and whose damnation pleases and glorifies Calvi-god:
From Calvin's Institutes, book 3, chapter 23: "I again ask how it is that the fall of Adam involves so many nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy unless that it so seemed meet to God [in English: "unless it so pleased God"]?"
From Institutes, book 2, section 8 "... 'death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,'... Hence, even infants bringing their condemnation with them from their mother’s womb, suffer not for another’s, but for their own defect. For although they have not yet produced the fruits of their own unrighteousness, they have the seed implanted in them. Nay, their whole nature is, as it were, a seed-bed of sin, and therefore cannot but be odious and abominable to God. Hence it follows, that it is properly deemed sinful in the sight of God; for there could be no condemnation without guilt." [How strange then - if children are so "odious and abominable to God" - that angels would see the face of God when they look at the children, Matthew 18:10. Hmm? What does this say about Calvinism's god?]
And from his Harmony of the Law, Volume 2, Deuteronomy 13, paragraph 15: "If any should object that the little children were innocent, I reply that, since all are condemned by the judgment of God from the least to the greatest, we contend against Him in vain, even though He should destroy the very infants as yet in their mothers' wombs... Although we must recollect that God would never have suffered any infants to be destroyed, except those which he had already reprobated and condemned to eternal death." (Phew! What a relief!)
[Be aware that Calvin contradicts himself in Institutes, book 4, section 17, when he tries to say that surely there are some babies that God regenerated before they died and so they are in heaven: "... infants who are to be saved (and that some are saved at this age is certain) must, without question, be previously regenerated by the Lord. For if they bring innate corruption with them from their mother’s womb, they must be purified before they can be admitted into the kingdom of God... If they are born sinners, as David and Paul affirm, they must either remain unaccepted and hated by God, or be justified."
So he confidently claims that "we must recollect that God would never have suffered any infants to be destroyed, except those which he had already reprobated and condemned to eternal death", as if it's clearly, plainly said in a Bible verse (I'd like to know which one then)... but then he also confidently claims "that some [infants] are saved at this age is certain"?
Make up your mind, Calvin! You can't have it both ways. (This is why Calvinism is so deceptive and slippery. They say one thing in one place, but another thing in another place. What they affirm in one place, they deny in another. What they take out with one hand, they slip back in later with the other hand. Calvinism is full-to-the-brim with this kind of sleight-of-hand and double-talk. So never trust what they say in one place. There's always another layer or teaching that changes it, that destroys the good-sounding, biblical-sounding things they say which hide the bad.)]
bb. And for the record, Calvin gets his theology almost entirely from St. Augustine who has a very Catholic version of theology (and of course, Calvinists get most of their theology from Calvin), and Augustine taught that unbaptized infants go to hell - not for any sin they commit, but for the guilt of Adam's sin: "...it is believed, as an indubitable truth, that [without baptism] they cannot be made alive in Christ. Now he that is not made alive in Christ must necessarily remain under the condemnation... That infants are born under the guilt of this offense is believed by the whole Church." (from "Letter to Jerome")
From "Infants saved as sinners": "infants ought to be baptized, because, although they are not sinners, they are yet not righteous... Now, inasmuch as infants are not held bound by any sins of their own actual life, it is the guilt of original sin [Adam's sin] which is healed in them [through baptism]..."
From "Unless infants are baptized, they remain in darkness": "So that infants, unless they pass into the number of believers through the sacrament [of baptism] which was divinely instituted for this purpose, will undoubtedly remain in this darkness."
From "Baptized infants, of the Faithful; Unbaptized infants, of the Lost": "Now if [infants] who are baptized are...reckoned in the number of the faithful... surely they who have lacked the sacrament [of baptism] must be classed amongst those who do not believe on the Son, and therefore, if they shall depart this life without this grace...they shall not have life, but the wrath of God abideth on them. Whence could this result to those who clearly have no sins of their own, if they are not held to be obnoxious to original sin?" [It's horrifying to think that the eternal souls of infants - their salvation or damnation - would be dependent on the parents, on what someone else decided for them, or that it was a matter of timing, a race between baptism and death, decided by whichever came first.]
He goes on to say (in "Infants must feed on Christ") that if infants do not partake of communion, they cannot have life in Him: "Will, however, any man be so bold as to say that...[infants] can have life in them without partaking of His body and blood...?... From all this it follows, that even for the life of infants was His flesh given, which He gave for the life of the world; and that even they will not have life if they eat not the flesh of the Son of man." [So should infants be force-fed the bread and wine, to save their souls?]
From "Christ is the Savior and Redeemer even of infants" (meaning "baptized infants"): "... the man who believes not in the Son, and eats not His flesh, shall not have life, but the wrath of God remains upon him. Now from this sin, from this sickness, from this wrath of God (of which by nature they are children who have original sin, even if they have none of their own on account of their youth), none delivers them, except the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world...except the Redeemer, by whose blood our debt is blotted out... Let there be then no eternal salvation promised to infants out of our own opinion, without Christ's baptism..."
In "Why one is baptized and another not, not otherwise inscrutable", Augustine responds to those who "think it unjust that infants which depart this life without the grace of Christ should be deprived...of the kingdom of God...and of eternal life and salvation" with an answer that amounts to nothing more than "God's judgments are unsearchable, and His ways past finding out." [Ah, just like the good old "It's a mystery, and who are you, O man, to question God?" retort that Calvinists love so much and always fall back on when they get into a theological jam.]
I wonder if Augustine's "baptized infants will be saved, unbaptized infants won't" morphed into Calvinism's "elect infants will be saved, non-elect infants won't," which is what I think most Calvinists would adhere to, as expressed in their beloved Westminster Confession of Faith: "By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death... Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit [and non-elect infants?]... so also are all other elect persons who are uncapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word... Others, not elected...never truly come unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved..."
Thankfully though, according to Augustine, unbaptized (non-elect) infants will only face a mild form of condemnation for being the non-elect beings that Calvi-god predestined them to be: "It may therefore be correctly affirmed, that such infants as quit the body without being baptized will be involved in the mildest condemnation of all. That person, therefore, greatly deceives both himself and others, who teaches that they will not be involved in condemnation..." (from "Unbaptized infants damned, but most lightly...")
Phew, it'll only be a gentle fire that burns babies eternally!
