Psalm 22:9: "Yet You brought me out of the womb; You made me trust in You even at my mother's breast."



Also,

Is David's trust and John the Baptist's kicking in the womb to be viewed as similar in any way?



Then,


And finally,



Does this mean that someone can be saved without knowledge of right doctrine then? What? Never heard of the Trinity, no problem?







P.s. I am Credo. I do not plan on responding to these posts (only watching from afar). I posted this in the Credo forum but keep having Paedos come in or PM me their answers. So, now paedos, here is your chance.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

How do spiritually dead men become alive and believe the gospel?

Grace

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Dad
Christ Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, RPCGA
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It is God that multiplies our sorrows.... God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied. - Matthew Henry

Sure, but we normally formulate "faith" in very cognitive terms.

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Davidius
Husband of Emily
Member of All Saints Anglican Church - Chapel Hill (AMiA / Anglican Church of North America)
Student: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, German and Classics

T'was me just being lighthearted. Not actually trying to effectively answer his question.

Yes, Pergs, persons can be saved without a right knowledge of doctrine. Every single person who comes to faith out of unbelief is an example of that. Understanding of the particulars is a progressive process. Salvation is ordained in God's decree before the foundations of the world. His chosen come to that realization and faith in the time of His determining, but they are already His own.

We trust in Him even at our mother's breasts by His determinate will and grace.

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Brad
Member- Eagle Heights PCA
Winchester, VA

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Question: by "we" do you mean all people, the elect, or some of the elect in whom God does a special work in infancy?

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Charlie Johnson
Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, student

Bottom line: Psalm 22 is a psalm. A poem. As such it employs figures of speech, etc.

I'm convinced that David is simply saying that for as long as he can recall he has trusted in God.

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Ben
Chaplain, US Army
Ft. Riley, KS
TE Ohio Valley Presbytery, PCA

I'm not convinced it's merely figurative.

Trust is not necessarily a thing that requires cognitive development. I think it's something constitutive in the nature of men to trust their parents, for instance.

A flower turns toward the sun without any cognitive thought as to why it should.

I think we need to remember that nature precedes action. We're not Arminians who believe we come to a cognitive decision to trust God and then we become capable of trusting Him. Rather, ability or nature precedes our trust of God at a cognitive level. So it is with an infant.

There are some things that we do not understand fully but we can witness. Why does an infant die for lack of physical contact with others as do some orphans? Does that newborn cognitively decide that life is not worth living? We certainly cannot measure any chemical or physical benefit to human contact.

In the same way, there is something profound between nursing mother and child from the very moment of birth. There is that moment of the turning of a head to the sound of the parents voice by the child. Just remembering that moment with my four children at their birth brings shivers down my spine.

Is it too much to think that something in the nature of man, too wonderful to explain, even from the womb can be directed toward its Creator? Is it strange to us that we were created to be disposed toward our Creator from the moment of conception except for the Fall? If so, then why is it so odd that God, who shows mercy not on the basis of willing and running, would have regenerated that child at any moment so that its very nature is changed to be disposed toward affinity and trust.

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Rich
PCA, Northern VA
Student, New Geneva Theological Seminary

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I thought of two other parallel concepts:

1. The restlessness of the human soul apart from God - even for the unregenerate. This is not cognitive.

2. The supression of the knowledge of God and hatred of Him. We know this is true of the unbeliever (Romans 1) but if we interview them they are not able to cognitively articulate this supression.

I think these are constitutive elements of the fallen human nature and, correspondingly, trust is cognitive of the regenerate nature.

So, does this mean there is no propositional revelation in Psalm 22 or any other poetry in Scripture?

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Lance G. Marshall
Pastor
Georgetown, Indiana

I'm sorry, Rich.

I don't buy it. I'm not emotional enough about my kids to conjur up supposed profundities to argue them into the Kingdom (literally) from the womb.

The Bible teaches that EVERYONE is concieved in sin, and the depravity of man makes it such that we CAN'T/WON'T trust in God. To get around that you have to argue for prenatal regeneration - and I'm not that superstitious.

The Bible plainly says that faith comes by hearing. That's where I stand.

Insults aside about my supposed superstition, you didn't interact with the historical narratives. Not every passage that indicates a child rejoicing or responding to God is in poetic literature.

You have no reason to reject regeneration in the womb any more than I have to insist upon it. I'm not insisting upon it but it does give expression to how a child can trust God from the womb. You merely say it's poetic.

I'm not saying YOU are superstitious, Rich. I'm saying that the idea of prenatal regeneration is superstitious. Now, to be fair, if you're saying/implying that you believe in prenatal regeneration then, yes, unfortunately, I would lump you into the group of being superstitious.

But note the famous Reformed bait and switch. I'm not talking about "children" in general - as your post seems to indicate. I'm talking about those in the womb. Of course "children" can believe. Only an idiot would deny that.
I get so sick of people, every time a discussion of infants or prenatal infants comes up, that the discussion turns into one about "children." Hence the Reformed slam that Baptists supposedly believe that God is the God of "adults" only. Hogwash. God makes cognitive demands.


Rich - I have every reason to reject the idea. Simply put, the consistent didactic testimony of Scripture is that faith comes by hearing. (Hence the necessity of preaching!)

I'm never ceased to be amazed at how Reformed folks will agree with the Bible in that (for example) the people living in the jungle somewhere are going to hell even if they never hear the Gospel... BUT wait! Their children are different! Anyway, I digress.

I don't need to interact with a supposed "historical narrative." Being full of the spirit (the allusion I presume your referencing) was being marked out for God's purpose in terms of an office. It doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond that. And given what the Bible teaches about the necessity of faith coming by the Word of God... I think that is a pretty safe judgment.

Anyway, I realize this is a touchy subject for most. And that for many people all their cognitive powers become subservient to their emotions for children and babies and such (most will deny such a phenomenon occurs, but ok.)
I've learned years ago that there's no arguing with people on this subject.

So...

Enjoy dreams of babies in the womb who are trusting in Christ alone for their salvation... swimming around in amneotic fluid, clapping their hands, thanking the Lord for saving them from their sins. What a beautiful picture!

By "we" I mean all those whom God has determined by His grace will do so.

We commonly speak of three components of faith: notitia, assensus, fiducia; or knowledge, assent, and trust. We typically regard them in that order, because as analytic creatures we ought to examine the foundations of our faith.

But it is not as though any one of the three is more important than the others; all are important, and all are possessed in differing measures in different circumstances. The faith I have in a chair is different from the faith I have in a plate of food. The faith I have in a magazine article is different from the faith I have in a professor, and different from the faith I have in the Bible, and in Christ.

The child-parent analogy is apt. The child trusts its parent with the purest of trust. If its object is loving, then that trust proves well-founded. Further development of the notitia and assensus aspects simply comes afterward, but that doesn't detract from the helpless trust the child reposed in the parent.

In fact, it is the "childlike" trust of faith that Jesus taught was the thing we ought to strive for in our relationship with God (Mt.18:3-4). Our trust in God is measured not by our calculus of his trustworthiness, by our estimate of his reliability based on past performance. We are encouraged to have faith, and greater faith, based on such extras. But, again it was Jesus who said: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (Jn.20:29). These would be people with less "knowledge" but the same object, and purer trust.

Can God grant to anyone unable to be "outwardly called by the ministry of the Word" a saving apprehension, that is the ability to "see the kingdom of God" (Jn.3:3)? Of course he can, which is why we expect to see those who died as infants in heaven.

Some good Calvinists still say babies or the mentally incompetent that go to heaven go because God grants them an "exception" to salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Belief is not required for them. In other words, they have a definition of faith that would exclude such persons, and instead of fixing their definition of faith, they say that there is some other way than faith to be pleasing to God (cf. Heb.11:6). This is not a good expedient.

Why is a mother's voice/face/touch lovely to the child? Because she's lovely. Why is Jesus lovely to you? Because God gives you those eyes to see and ears to hear his loveliness. John the Baptist leaped in the womb for JOY. That's what it says in the text (Lk.1:44), that he loved the Savior.

It would be pure rationalism to say that Elizabeth could not have been declaring this by revelation, that she was just "theologizing" about some fortuitous kick in her belly. That assumes either that she couldn't know what happened (by revelation) or that he couldn't really believe, and so we need to offer some other explanation for it, because of course we all know that babies can't believe.

Anything wrong with that sort of rationalization? Of course there is. We can explain away all sorts of stuff in the Bible using that method. And if John could believe in the womb, then David could on his mother's breasts (as well as the infant Jesus), and the unknown writer of Ps.71, and Jeremiah (sanctified from the womb, Jer.1:5), and Moses (Heb.11:23), and countless others for whom these words were more than a metaphor: "Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save" (Is.46:3-4).

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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Yes, it's no problem. As I said in my post that was removed in the other forum, my 11 year old has Down's Syndrome, and he can't even count to ten, much less understand the first thing about the Trinity, and while I'm not emotionally charged up over the point, the WFC addresses people like him Scriptural and reasonably. There is nothing limiting God from having elected him, whether he hears or understand or not.

No, because there is a large span of time between conception and birth. When John the Baptiser jumped in his mother's womb, it is clear to anyone who will let it be clear that he was regenerate.

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Tim Vaughan
Member, Redeemer Presbyterian, OPC,
Santa Maria
California

As for cognitive ability being a prerequisite for salvation, I find that notion absurd. The reason for that is because although I now have a better understanding of the gospel than I did in infancy, I have to concede that my understanding of it even now is less than infantile in comparison to what God knows about it, maybe even compared to what some of you theologians here on PB know about it.

I believe that salvation is an eternal decree on the part of God, which is why I have trouble with the statement "before I was saved". God decreed the redemption of His people from before time. His sheep know His voice. Yes, we progress in His plan from complete cognitive ignorance of our 'reserved' status to whatever level He has ordained we should comprehend, but His own are His own even before conception.

As for my experience, being raised in an essentially godless home, I can even so recall the movings of faith upon my heart from near infancy. I did not understand them until much later, but there is a reason that those events are fixed and important in my memory. I can remember being struck with awe at creation, finding joy in doing kindness to others, and enjoying an unarticulated sense that there was a God and that He cared for me (which always amazed me because I could not then figure out why He would), all through my life prior to His bringing me to a fuller understanding of the gospel. Yes, in my flesh I resisted that understanding, and in its first dawnings upon my comprehension I befuddled it and mingled it with false ideas from others and my own fleshly mind, but He has ever faithfully drawn me nearer and nearer to Himself in His plan to demonstrate His glory in having mercy upon this unworthy worm. All thanks and praise and glory to His holy Name!

We posted at the same time, otherwise I wouldn't have felt the need to post anything after that.

Rev. Buchanan,

Thank you for that helpful post! My concern too is that we limit God, Who is free to act within and without however He pleases, if we limit regeneration to only those with a "cognitive development." And surely it was not just an analogy when John the Baptist leaped in his mother's womb when our Lord in His mother's womb was developing.

I love how God keeps things hidden from the wise and learned, and reveals them to little children. Yes, O Lord, for this is Your good pleasure.

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Josh Brisby
Member
Oceanside United Reformed Church
United Reformed Churches

So if saving faith comes by hearing only...do you then accept that every infant dying in infancy (pre womb or post womb) is unregenerate, and thus damned?

Do you take exceptions to WCF chapter 10?

3. 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.

imo, this is true because regeneration is passive, and not active...yes, cognitive actions may flow from regeneration...but the regeneration itself is always passive (it is done to the recipient and requires nothing from the recipient).


Psalm 22:9: "Yet You brought me out of the womb; You made me trust in You even at my mother's breast."

The trusting infant was MADE to trust...the regenerate infant was passive in this,,,just like he was in his regeneration.

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Shawn
Orthodox Presbyterian
Denver, Colorado

Open my eyes Lord, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. Psalm 119:18

Well put! I want to complement your post as it was very enlightening for me. You really put this subject into perspective. And it's true, John lept for JOY! This wasn't just some sort of confirmation of his calling to the ministry.
As a nine year old kid I don't remember there being much of a cognitive element in my regeneration. My heart lept for joy.

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Kevin - PCA - Mississippi

"What, for some, is sin, others do to the glory of God. And the good Dr. Pentecost's remarks notwithstanding, I intend to go home tonight and smoke a cigar to the glory of God. It is a kind of incense drifting to Heaven." - Charles Spurgeon

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" - 2 Corinthians 9:15

Well, I’m not sure if someone got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning but the churlish response to my post was not anticipated.

Though I love my kids, I am not sentimental about their sin, nor am I convinced they were regenerate in the womb. Nor am I convinced, beyond reason, that they are regenerate now. I don’t operate on the things hidden. I operate upon the things revealed and whether they are regenerate or not is not in my responsibility nor is it among the things I’m permitted to peer into. I do think some theology goes overboard trying to establish, without a doubt, that our children are regenerate. I think dogmatism either for or against the regeneration of any child is not something that falls into the purview of things revealed.

Let’s consider what one superstitious Confession has to say: “III. 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.”

Hint: I didn’t pull that from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

It is some sort of desire I suppose to equate any notion that God can regenerate when and where He pleases with a hyper-Calvinistic notion that, because of this Truth, we don’t need to preach to anyone. Nonsense. That’s simply the other side of the coin that God can only regenerate those that actually hear the Word and that Romans 10 is intended to be the end of the discussion on how God regenerates.

I wonder, really, do we intend to be so literal about this passage that we believe that deaf people cannot be regenerated because they cannot hear the Word of God? I think we can be just a tad more sophisticated in this discussion.

You’re not going to get any argument from me about the absolute necessity of the Preacher in the spread of the Good News to men but if we’re simply going to throw out some sort of verse like that and make regeneration a one-for-one correspondence to hearing the Word then we better be able to explain things on more than a simplistic level.

Does regeneration precede faith or not? If it does, and faith comes by hearing, is it not even possible that those who are going to hear the Word have had their hearts prepared beforehand to receive the Word? Or do we insist that God only regenerates by the hearing of the Word? If so, we have another problem because the WCF actually states that the reading of the Word can save a man as Paul reminds Timothy.

I never divorced means or the necessity of the Church’s ministry for the child. I’m simply trying to get behind what trust really entails. I was not attempting to be sentimental about children but trying to note what we know even from the Scriptures and the light of nature about the nature of men and the nature of children. Calvin, as reasonable as he was, cautions regularly about stepping beyond reason and, at times, is very poetic about giving expression to the wonderful mysteries that we have. Even God’s revelation to us about faith is lisping, as it were, to accommodate to our human understanding of these things. If I came across as sentimental and assuming that kids don’t need the Gospel then that’s my inadequacy but, in the main, I was trying to respect the mystery that the Spirit of God blows and we do not know where it blows.

I think it is unwise to dogmatically assert that all records of God actually revealing something He calls trust in the unborn or infant is impossible because we’ve concluded the manner simply on the principle that what we read in Romans 10 must mean a person can only have been regenerated after hearing the Word preached. At the very least one ought to make the case more firm by noting they can't read yet either if you're going to really close the door on that possibility.

Even our Sacramental language of the Confessions points to the fact that the timing of baptism is immaterial because God regenerates where He pleases.

Thus, I contend that we do not have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is nothing that militates a view that God cannot regenerate in the womb while still maintaining the necessity that we act according to the visible means the Lord has ordained. This is not an either or and if you’re going to interact with the one you don’t have to accuse of hyper-Calvinism and that one is denying the other or that it is simply a parent trying to convince himself that his children are regenerate from the womb.

Let me conclude with a guy named Calvin who is probably a bit too sentimental for some but I find to be beautiful in his expression on this passage:

Davidius,

Indeed we do, and rightly so.

The basic issue is that we wrongly presume that infants in their mother's womb don't have cognative ability. Anyone that has observed a new-born infant knows that they have congnition from their first moments. They recognize mommy and daddy right away, know how to breast-feed right away (sometimes it takes practice), can disobey from very early on; in other words, they know what mommy or daddy is saying, and choose to do the opposite. Our girls, from about two weeks, showed signs of wit, and humor. They responded with making faces that we'd make at them (silly faces), and our eldest daughter played peek-a-boo from about one month.

Long story short, just because infants can't articulate something doesn't mean they don't know it. If they are the image of God from the time that they are conceived, and the image of God includes rationality and cognative ability, then it follows that from conception, they have rationality and cognative ability. This is why John could recognize and move from cognative recognition to joyful celebration when around our Lord and His mother. The contrary line of thinking would be that either 1. The image of God is non-rational, or 2. Children are not conceived in the image of God, but develop it over a period of time. If #1 is true, then why are we said to be "restored in knowledge"? If #2 is true, then why is abortion wrong in early term, or even late term? After all, the reason to avoid abortion is that man is the image of God from conception. I think it logically impossible to believe that infants are non-rational creatures.

Just some thoughts,

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Adam B., Wine Country, California, PCA

"I fear not to hold with Junius, de Politia Mosis cap. 6, that he who was punishable by death under that Judicial law, is punishable by death still; and he who was not punished by death then, is not to be punished by death now."

In my bible it reads like this
In reading it like this friends then surely all of us can relate to the hope/trust/expectation of the child toward the parent.

This works for me anyway on that piece of scripture.

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David
Stornoway Free Church (Continuing)
Isle of Lewis, Scotland

1. Without extensive knowledge of pre-natal neural development, we should be cautious about making broad statements about what they can and can't know.

2. As a complement to the WCF I would add the language of CD 1.17.

First Head: Article 17. Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with the parents are comprehended, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases God to call out of this life in their infancy (Gen 17:7; Acts 2:39; 1 Cor 7:14).

3. Bruce has rightly noted the biblical teaching that infants in utero were able to rejoice.

4. There is a long history in Reformed orthodoxy of teaching "infant faith." I'm not greatly sympathetic but there has been a range of language used. E.g., Ursinus:

Zacharias Ursinus (1534-83). Q. 291. Are infants, since they have no faith, properly baptized? Yes, faith and the confession of faith are required of adults, since they can in no other way be included into the covenant. For infants it suffices that they are sanctified by the Spirit of Christ in a manner appropriate to their age (Summa theologiae, 1561).

On the other hand, Zanchi said:

Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590). Some infants, as well as some adults, are given the Spirit of faith, by which they are united to Christ, receive the forgiveness of sins and are regenerated before baptism; this is not the case with others, to whom these gifts are given in baptism (Commentarius ad Ephesios, Cap. 5; De baptismo, 3.31).

And Junius:

Franciscus Junius (1545-1602). We call it false to argue that infants are completely incapable of faith; if they have faith in the principle of the habitus, they have the Spirit of faith...Regeneration is viewed from two aspects, as it is in its foundation, in Christ, in principle, and as it is active in us. The former (which can also be called transplanting from the first to the second Adam) is the root, from which the latter arises as its fruit. By the former elect infants are born again, when they are incorporated into Christ, and its sealing occurs in baptism (Theses theologicae, 51.7)

.

See Westminster Seminary California clark

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R. Scott Clark, D.Phil
Westminster Seminary California
Associate Pastor, Oceanside URC
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Thanks man! This thread just keeps getting better! Before long everyone on the board will be Paedo? All joking aside, I've really benefited from this thread.