The question was disturbing. But it had to be answered. One answer could have been, “I don’t know.” But I chose another response. My reply was unconvincing to some. However, I have never wavered in that answer. And the question?
“What happens to infants—any infant, any child, whether the child of believers or not—in death?”
The place was the floor of presbytery. My licensure exam (a graduated step to ordination exams in the Presbyterian Church in America) was at stake. The question had come up in my written examination. My answer in that forum had provoked the ire of a group of ministers in our presbytery. The Presbytery told me that I would have to face the question as a pastor. Their counsel was true. I had already encountered the heartbreaking situation several times in my pastoral internship. On that part they were right. On scolding me for my response they were wrong. I answered, somewhat in the cadence of the Westminster Catechism, which had been, after the Holy Bible, the main text throughout my internship under Rev. Robert E. Baxter (and later Dr. D. James Kennedy):
“The preponderance of evidence in the Revelation of God demonstrates that dying infants are elect and, thus, their souls, extraordinarily redeemed by Christ, do appear immediately in heaven, and their bodies await the resurrection from the dead.”
A “teaching elder” jumped up from his seat in the small Iowa church. “That is just wrong! You cannot say that because the Bible doesn’t say that and the Reformed Faith rejects it!” The moderator mercifully told the boisterous and bearded cleric to be seated. Others, however, in a more orderly manner, rose to object.
Some said, “Only the children of the Elect have even a possibility of salvation.” Another rose with his feigned philosophical chin in hand to quietly and rather smugly correct me: “The Candidate’s answer is mere sentimentalism. It is not Reformed theology.”
But is it not? I responded (I trust with respect) with my question. “So, you, Sir, would tell grieving parents that their deceased little one is in Hell?” He looked around the sanctuary of the church where we were meeting to answer my question while making certain that everyone heard him: “Yes.” He answered again, “Well, not like that. But, well, I might.”
I went on to say that his answer was out of character for a minister of the Gospel, much less a Reformed pastor.
The Westminster Confession of Faith is clear: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.”
“For,” I said, “none other than Matthew Henry, Samuel Rutherford, John Newton, George Whitefield, Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon, all answered the question with confidence that dying children are elect, not according to sentiment, but according to the inerrant and infallible Word of the living God.”
“Well, if dying infants go to heaven,” the man replied, “why not murder our children so that we can assure that they arrive sooner?” I felt a great sadness as the words echoed through the sanctuary of worship and the spirits of good men gathered to do the Lord’s work. For when religious systems become detached from the nature of God according to the Scriptures, God’s greatest creation, human beings, become mere commodities, nothing more than secondary and tertiary bit players in an algorithm of infected syllogisms.
I allowed the cynical and snide remark to stand for thirty seconds or more. I felt that with even a few seconds, the comment, dead from the moment it was uttered, would begin to stink. Then, I spoke.
“That is amazing,” I returned. I thought, then, and now, “It is amazing because of your callousness. Your soul is dying from a hardening of the categories. But you even have the categories wrong.” I continued. “Your logic is quite remarkable. For Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield anticipated that very question and used it in his defense of the salvation of those dying without the ability to confess faith in Christ. According to the Great Princetonian, The death of a child is not the means of salvation. The life and the atonement of Jesus Christ are the only possible means—Christ’s righteousness for the babe, Christ’s atonement for the mentally disabled.” I did not tell him that my pastor had taught me the answer with the sources of both Scripture and evangelical witness through the ages. By the time I would go to my ordination examination, the same fellow would corner me in the restroom. He would recall this floor debate. Dr. Kennedy had taught me the answer to the question of dying infants before seminary, by a sermon, and through seminary, by mentoring. The fellow who protested against me so vehemently also had stated that Dr. Kennedy was apostate for his deficiencies in Evangelism Explosion. I was saved through the truths that transform in EE. But I didn’t want two theaters of battle at the same time.
I went on.
“The promise of John 3:16 is the means. For, we must deduce from the passages that speak without equivocation, that when cognitive development or mental ability cannot articulate the faith necessary to lay hold of salvation, Christ Himself gathers these, His children.” How so? I sought to preclude that with Scriptures: David’s loss of his first-born to Bathsheba. Remember the theology shining against the black backdrop of death? Remember the teaching of King David? The sweet Psalmist of Israel declared, that while the child would not return, ‘I shall go to him.’ What of the God who says that praise is perfected in the mouths of babes? Or the truth that Jesus took βρέφος or βρέφη in Luke 18:15—[pre-born infants, or new-born infants; sucklings]—into his arms and blessed them. Remember that there will be a number that no man can count. Surely, we must see that the whole of Scripture joins together to rebuke those like Jonah, whose narrowed view of God’s love the Lord rebuked. Remember the final words of the Book of Jonah when the Lord said, ‘And should not I spare Nineveh that great city, wherein are sixscore thousand persons, that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?'”
I say again: I was only repeating what I had been taught. But I know that I was informed correctly and Biblically. While my experience was memorable for the quibbling over the eternal destiny of babies, I was sustained in the committee examination, as well as on the floor. I didn’t convince the poor fellow who argued with me. He would go on, regrettably, to denounce Jesus Christ. Divorced, condemned, and near insanity, the fellow died in a state of shame. I have always believed that there was something lodged in that man’s spirit. Whatever it was it cut off the vital flow of life and love. I hold hope in the Gospel that God’s grace was greater than the pain that provoked his apostasy, that it was not unbelief but insanity. But, in his case, I must only hope by faith. In the case of those dying in infancy (or without the ability to turn to Christ), I believe that I stand on solid ground.
Spurgeon would add to my citations that I asserted:
“In Ezekiel 16.21 God censures his people for having given up their little infants to Moloch, having caused them to pass through the fire, and he says of these little ones, ‘Thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire.’ So, then, they were God’s children while babes. There is another passage in Scripture which may be used to show that the sin of the parents shall not necessarily be the ruin of their children. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy there had been a threatening pronounced upon the children of Israel in the wilderness, that, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, they should never see the promised land. Nevertheless, it is added, ‘Your little ones, which ye said should be a prey, and your children, which in that day had no knowledge between good and evil, they shall go in thither, and unto them will I give it, and they shall possess it.'”
The Prince of Preachers went further:
“Note that I have not made a distinction between the children of godly and ungodly parents. If they die in infancy, I do not mind who is their father nor who is their mother, they are saved. I certainly do not endorse the theory of a Presbyterian minister who supposes that the children of godly parents will have a better place in Heaven than those who happen to be sprung from ungodly ones. I do not believe in any such thing. All of them without exception, from whosesoever loins they may have sprung, will, we believe, not by baptism, not by their parents’ faith, but simply as we are all saved through the election of God, through the precious blood of Christ, through the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, attain to glory and immortality, and wear the image of the heavenly as they have worn the image of the earthy.”
Samuel Rutherford, the great Scottish Puritan minister and professor of St. Andrew’s University, and member of the Westminster Assembly, believe as Spurgeon did and as Dr. Kennedy, Hodge, Newton, and others believed. Yet, his statement of faith on the matter is the best expression for it came from the loving hand of a Christian shepherd to a hurting lamb. Rutherford wrote to a grieving mother. His words are as powerful today as they were to this dear lady.
Ye have lost a child: nay she is not lost to you who is found to Christ. She is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star, which going out of our sight doth not die and vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere. We see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that she hath gotten of eternity; and ye have to rejoice that ye have now some plenishing up in heaven. Build your nest upon no tree here; for ye see God hath sold the forest to death; and every tree whereupon we would rest is ready to be cut down, to the end we may fly and mount up, and build upon the Rock, and dwell in the holes of the Rock.
January 15, 1629; letter to Lady Kenmure.
Recently, my friends, Drs. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., and Daniel L. Akin, reaffirmed the historical evangelical Biblical response to those who lose little ones:
“When we look into the grave of one of these little ones, we do not place our hope and trust in the false promises of an unbiblical theology, in the instability of sentimentalism, in the cold analysis of human logic, nor in the cowardly refuge of ambiguity.
We place our faith in Christ and trust Him to be faithful to his Word. We claim the promises of the Scriptures and the assurance of the grace of our Lord. We know that heaven will be filled with those who never grew to maturity on earth, but in heaven will greet us completed in Christ. Let us resolve by grace to meet them there.”
Oh, my beloved in Christ. I write to you who have lost a child in the womb (whatever the cause). I desire to speak to you who have held God’s gift to you for only hours, or days, or a few precious years. God speaks His Word to the parents of those with incapacities that prevent the affirmation of faith, the confirmation, the public faith you would have longed for, but which the child is unable, by physical impediment, to accomplish. What this fallen world has cast aside, God cherishes and God saves. I want to whisper my words to you as a shepherd so that the truth is carried like the wind of the Holy Spirit, soothing you, assuring you, and comforting you with certainty:
“It is well.”
References
Rutherford, Samuel. Letters of Samuel Rutherford with a Sketch Of His Life and Biographical Notices of His Correspondents by The Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D. Edited by Rev Andrew A Bonar. Tenth. Colorado Springs: Portage Publications, 1629.
Warfield, Benjamin Breckinridge. Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation. New York: Hardpress Publishing (Orig. The Christian Literature Co.), 2012.
“Bible Gateway Passage: Jonah 1-4 – 1599 Geneva Bible.” Bible Gateway. Accessed October 13, 2018. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jonah+1-4&version=GNV.
“Bonar – BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF HIS CORRESPONDENTS.Pdf,” n.d. Accessed October 13, 2018. http://www.portagepub.com/dl/caa/sr-letters.pdf.
“Confession of Faith :: The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church,” n.d. Accessed October 13, 2018. http://arpchurch.org/documents/confession-of-faith/.
“Infant Salvation | Spurgeon | Are Infants Saved? – Metropolitan Tabernacle.” Accessed October 13, 2018. https://www.metropolitantabernacle.org/Christian-Article/Infant-Salvation-Charles-Spurgeon/Sword-and-Trowel-Magazine.
“Strong’s Greek: 1025. Βρέφος (Brephos) — an Unborn or a Newborn Child.” Accessed October 13, 2018. https://biblehub.com/greek/1025.htm.
“Strong’s Greek: 1025. Βρέφος (Brephos) — an Unborn or a Newborn Child.” Accessed October 13, 2018. https://biblehub.com/greek/1025.htm.
“The Salvation of the ‘Little Ones’: Do Infants Who Die Go to Heaven?” Accessed October 13, 2018. http://albertmohler.com/2009/07/16/the-salvation-of-the-little-ones-do-infants-who-die-go-to-heaven/.