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So, not saved, but in heaven?

:ROFL:

You're too much.

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Jeremiah
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I'm not sure if you are really as obtuse as you seem in your last post but this is not terribly difficult to grasp.

The choices are these:

1. We should doubt that the children of believers are in heaven if they die at a young age.
or
2. We should not doubt that the children of believers are in heaven if they die at a young age.

Is it your position that believing parents should doubt that their children are in heaven if they die at a young age? If so, what Scriptures would you marshall to demonstrate that a Pastor ought to counsel grieving parents that their children are in Hell?

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PCA, Northern VA
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I am not being obtuse, Rick, but would like to get an honest answer for this question: Does the Presbyterian read the Canons of Dort Article 17 which says, "Therefore, God-fearing parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in their infancy," and say to themselves, "There! God-fearing parents ought to expect the salvation of their children?"

It seems obvious to me that the 'God-fearing' parent occupies a 'middle-ground' between doubt and expectation. Am I missing something?

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I would think that it's much more obtuse to refuse to believe that there is any other option than those which you list, for any given scripture - that's like saying we're always 100% wrong or 100% right, all the time.

There is a third choice in this situation, which is simply:

3) I don't know. I can't assume or doubt anything because it's not clearly outlined in scripture. It's in the hands of God. He is sovereign and He will determine who are of His elect.

This is a more consistent theology of election. I still have seen nothing from the scriptures that would turn one aside from from the paradigm of God sovereignly selecting his elect, despite any practical and/or conditional application of age or lack of works or supposed lack of sins.

Hi:

Are the promises of God freely offered to the non-elect?

Thanks in advance,

-CH

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Ken,

I assume you understand that doubt connotes a type of uncertainty that considers something unlikely. It's a type of uncertainty that objects to something that it is not likely to be.

You seem to miss the point that telling someone to not doubt a thing is the same as telling them they must be certain of the contrary. It does not follow.

Those who lack Pastoral wisdom cannot see the substantial difference between saying:

1) Godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.
or
2) Godly parents must be taught the certainty of the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.

The two seem equivalent to the simple minded but they are not. If the simple cannot grasp this substantial difference then I suggest they gain more knowledge before they try to play the wise man.

Even as you attempt to rescue yourself from the charge of being obtuse in this matter you actually prove yourself the same.

As you have just demonstrated you don't doubt and prove my point that we have the option to either doubt or not to doubt the salvation of our children. You choose to not doubt.

No, I said we have no ability to assume, doubt, or ANYTHING when it comes to election, which is completely and utterly determined by God outside of any human parameter or condition. No amount of wordplay will change that.

Has God made a promise to be the God of our children?

Gen 17:7 "And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee."

Deut 30:6 "And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live."

Isa 59:20 "And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the LORD. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the LORD; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the LORD, from henceforth and for ever."

Jer 32:37-40 "Behold, I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me."

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CofE
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Richard, I believe infants who die go to be with the Lord. But the verses you cited do not necessarily state the Lord has made a covenant with our children. Making a covenant with "thy seed" can be interpreted differently than children born to believers. "Seed" can also apply to the believing covenant community; true followers of Yahweh.

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So if a Reformed or Presbyterian pastor is asked to do a funeral for a baby who has died of SIDS. It is the child of a family member who was obviously not saved and they know that you are a pastor and ask you if their baby is "sleeping peacefully in the arms of Jesus right now"...what would you tell them.

Since they are most likely not saved and their children have not been baptized, and cannot be since the parents are known unbelievers, how would you handle that situation?

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Rich,

To make sure I am understanding you correctly, is it your position that "covenant children" should either be presumed regenerate or unregenerate and that there is no other legitimate alternative?

Some thoughts:

Election and regeneration are not the same; the former decreed from eternity, the latter effected in time. I was elect before I was regenerated. If an elect infant dies before regeneration, he is no less elect.

Paedos baptize their infants only because of the command given that the seed of Abraham – which we are (Gal 3:29) – put “the token of the covenant” (Gen 17:11) on their seed. We would be foolish to assume the election of our children in light of the status of Esau (and the mass of unbelieving covenant-breakers in the progeny of Jacob). And yet, we have reason to hope they are indeed “children of promise”.

Did Esau’s unbelief / apostasy annul God’s promise? If a fruit tree bears some bad fruit is the whole tree bad? God says there are children of the mere flesh, and children of promise.

I have no hope for the dying infants of the wicked. I trust God to do what is good in His eyes. In this area I do not know what is good in His eyes.

The middle ground between doubt and expectation is hope. Not a “sure” hope, but a godly hope nonetheless. It is a hope built on trust in His goodness, and covenant faithfulness.

Were I to counsel believing parents grieving the loss of an infant, I would say, You are godly parents, and have reason to hope in the election of your child. Your trust in your Savior will uphold you.

Our children are not “made…token members of some visible fraternity”, as though circumcision was and baptism is something we made up; they are brought into the organic life of God’s community at His command.

Peter says that the promise – not only of the Holy Spirit, but of the blessing of Abraham in its fullness – is to all who believe, “and to your children” (Acts 2:39). In what respect would it be to their children? Entrance into the covenant is the only answer. On the same basis as aforetime. And the same situation as of old would obtain: not all of the seed of the covenant believers would be elect, although they would have been under the gracious influences of God’s ministry and care:

For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God:

But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. …(Heb 6:7, 8)

If we are indeed “the seed of Abraham” why would we not be subject to the command pertaining to his seed? Because we are in the days of the fulfillment of that covenant are we to reckon it rescinded? On what authority?

Infants of old took on circumcision through the faith – and obedience – of their parents. This obedience seems to be something easily omitted today. As the seed of Abraham we have the exact obligation to initiate our seed into the covenant. Why do some New Covenant believers divorce themselves from this obedience?

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Wow... It appears that you think I am arguing with you. I would not presume to do so. I was simply asking you if you Presbys believe there is a middle ground between a state of doubt and a state of expectation? I do. But I cannot seem to get anyone to give me a straight answer which leads me to believe that because of his views on covenant children, that the Presby does expect baptized infants who have died in infancy to be glorified. If this is not the view of the Presby then just say so.

Of course, "I" cannot answer for every R/P pastor out there, how one might respond.

This pastor might say something like this to someone he thought was unsaved,

"In order to give you hope, you first need to have hope that belongs to you. I can't just open my Bible and find some "words of comfort" and give them to you. Because, for all I know I would be promising you something that God does not. There is no trove of hope that is just sitting in the king's treasury, that he just leaves sitting open in an unoccupied chamber. And then expects people to go in uninvited and help themselves. As his minister, I have authorized access to that treasury, but if I am to take from it and give it away, I have to do so to those who I believe also have a right to it.

"Some people would like to have that hope at a time like you are facing. They might even think they just needed to hurt badly enough, which pain would give them a right to it. Yet, all the while beforehand, they have been bad-mouthing the king, or ignoring the king, and worst of all rebuffing his invitation to the wedding-supper of his Son. This Prince will be the king of everyone who comes to that supper, and dresses in the robe he provides. No one else will be invited to citizenship in his kingdom after that supper.

"All the promises of God are given to his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. So, in order to give you hope for your child, I have to know if you have accepted his invitation--really, it is a command for your presence--at his Son's supper. Until now, you have rejected his assertion of authority over you, saying "We will not have this man to rule over us." So, having spurned his offer of citizenship, and thus access to all his promises, there is little I can offer you regarding your child's "safety." The promises of hope are bound together with your submission to his Son.

"On the other hand, I can offer you the terms of citizenship once again. I can offer you a place at the table of the Lamb of God. And if you will accept that offer, then I can give you other hopes that the Bible offers to God's people--promises that God will be not only your God, but also the God of your children. Yes, even the one that died. If you will not take this offer, then I can give you no certainty. Some pastors might tell you they think our merciful God will accept your child for the sake of his great tenderness, or else for the faith and hope of an ancestor in these promises. Even so, if that be true I cannot give YOU hope, that you will see this child again. If he is accepted and you are not, your separation will not be resolved in eternity.

"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved--you and your house."

Hope this is helpful.

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I didn't play with your words. In fact, you were stronger than the Canons of Dordt in stating that one cannot doubt the election of a child for it is unknown to them. You seem to have trouble not only reading the meaning of other sentences but understanding the implication of your own. One ought to either doubt the election or their children or they ought not doubt it. You seem to miss the obvious point that not doubting is an idea distinct from having infallible knowledge of something. Before you play the fool in laughing at the Canons of Dordt, ensure you understand basic sentence structure.

Why is it hard for you to simply accept what we affirm with the Canons that one ought not doubt the election of a child? The Canons are written in a very wise, Pastoral fashion to head off the types of speculative inquisitiveness that is being manifest in this thread.

My approach to this issue is very consistent. One can get into the dangerous area of speculation with respect to election. It is the Baptist postion, not the Presbyterian, that tries to peer into things hidden and make the ordinance of baptism a matter of election/non-election. Just witness the OP to see that kind of speculation on full display.

I've said it before, if I was giving to such speculation, I might not merely doubt the election of my children but I'd be prone to doubt the election of the man in the pew beside me. In fact, it's easier for me to be given to such speculation about professors because they can live lives or state things that might cause me to doubt they are regenerate.

But, again a thousand times, the hidden things belong to the Lord. jpechin thinks he stumbled on to the third option but simply re-stated what the classic Reformed formulation is on the election of Covenant members - it is in the hands of God. News Flash! No duh!

Parents are given to such speculation about their children. We are not commanded to ever speculate. We are commanded to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Even Baptists understand that but then they divorce their activity from the visible Covenant of Grace that has existed for thousands of years toward that end. Only when one divorces the Covenant of Grace from the election of God and treats election as if it has no visible intersection with the Sacraments of the Church does one run into these type of quandries.

I work with a number of heathens, and unfortunately a number of dead babies, and everyone thinks or hopes, expects that their babies when dieing are going to heaven.

There are one of two routes one could take a question like this, the hard route, that is, possibly not, since you were not a believer the child did not have a chance at being one at their young age and hope to scare them into believing themselves. Or it could back fire and cause them to become angry with God. (maybe put this in a nicer way though)

The other route would be the way most pastors would go when sitting face to face with parents in a time of extreme distress and that is to say that all babies are innocent and are going to be with God for eternity.

(Contra this is not a response to your response it is just my own )

Fortunately, no one has ever asked me this difficult question. The parents of infants who have died are usually very distraught and it is left for their pastors, or in the sake of the unbeliever the FD chaplain to answer their questions. Unfortunately they are pastors of liberal churches, I believe ours is a pastor of a Church of Christ.

Someone did once ask me if his dog that had just died was going to be in heaven. He was unable to have children and so had a dog and was very much attached to it. He looked at me with sad eyes, practically tear filled, so I caved and said, probably.

Immediately.

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I missed this.

No! Oy!

That one ought not doubt the election of a child is NOT the same thing as saying that one must presume regeneration.

I operate on the basis of things revealed. I'm commanded to raise my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I'm not commanded to operate on the basis of things hidden. I'm commanded to train them in the things of God along with the Church in which they are visible disciples.

In fact, the only group I'm aware that makes their children "token members of a visible fraternity" are the Baptists who baptize those they don't know are regenerate and so they are left simply with a visible fraternity called the "visible Church", not to be confused with the New Covenant whose members are known only to God. Their children have the same rights of access into inner body life and are only excluded from getting wet and eating bread and wine that only symbolize something but are otherwise tokens.

Well Augustas Toplady would have agreed with you.

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Incidentally, Ruben was concerned that I was directing the fact that the Canons of Dordt demonstrate Pastoral wisdom and that some here lack that wisdom as being directly attributed to you Ken. That was not my intent. I sometimes write broadly and should be more direct. My statement were meant to be interepreted rhetorically and not directed at you per se.

My apologies if you thought I was insulting you. I am trying to be very direct in "re-directing" ideas where people are actually trying to apply a speculative attitude toward a sentence that is Pastoral. As I demonstrated with jpechins comment, it is silly to criticize a statement that we ought not doubt the election of a child and then turn around and say we can't doubt the election of a child.

And if you were to obtain any degree of certainty as to my obtuseness would it necessarily make your arguments any more convincing? Does your role as moderator on this board include the right to label someone "stupid" just because they do not happen to share the light that you think you enjoy?

These scriptures are all obviously qualified in the NT by being described in the ideals of repentance and faith. In the NC, entry is by faith - the new covenant is for the elect, for true Israel in which we as believers are grafted in. The promises are for those who are children to Abraham by faith alone, not by physical descendency, as per Galatians 4. Since faith comes by grace alone, and we can only see the fruit thereof, we can only discern said fruit and cannot see it in a new infant. I prefer not to say that we can assume one way or the other, in such a situation, but to say that only God's election is sure and all else is conjecture.

Jeremiah,

The 1689 LBC, the confession you purport to hold to, states:



Are you in agreement with the confession? If you answered in the affirmative earlier in the this thread I haven't read it. The thread is long and I won't be reading each post.

The problem with this is that it means no-one can receive the sacrament of baptism, as we do not who for certain who is elect. A man may profess faith, and yet still be among the non-elect, while an infant may be among the elect even though it does not profess faith.

Moreover, your conception of the New Covenant means that it is actually worse than the older administrations, as the children of believers have now been cast out. However, the NT gives us no indication that the covenant status of believer's children has changed. Therefore, we must assume that the children of professing Christians are externally in the covenant, and thus are entitled to receive the sign and seal of the covenant - baptism.

Another question: did the elect who lived prior to the new covenant under the new covenant? I ask this because you say that the new covenant is made with the elect; but how could believers living in earlier administrations be included in the new covenant?

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This answer in the confession settles the question, period.
Doubting or not doubting has no bearing on the issue whatsoever!
The God of all the earth will do right, period.
I enjoy Spurgeon as most all of us do. He gave his opinion and the scriptural reasons he thought led him to his opinion. I think his opinion was tainted with reasoning which was subjective,but Spurgeon is not the issue.
Elect infants dying in infancy says it all. If that election is all, some, one, or none, it is still God's business and is to be left in God's hand.
It is not for us to speculate, give a false hope, or give no hope, or doubt, or not doubt. Leave it where it is in truth, in God's hand, according to His goodness and mercy and righteous judgement.

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I'm new around here. This is my first post even. I don't think I've even got my signature appropriately filled out yet. I'm new to a lot of things as of late, having spent the last 39 years of my life as a fundamentalist but being shown the door after turning more and more Reformed. That's the short version of my story.

This topic is of great interest to me. My husband and I have "four children in Heaven." I've described my past that way because, tbh, it's softer than saying that I've buried four children. And I say it that way because it's my way of focusing on God's goodness in the midst of some very hard times. IMO, it's a way of privileging the Gospel.

That being said. . . .

I have tried to keep tabs on this issue over the years. I don't know of any *confession* as such. I also know that while there is a compulsion among some to assume the very best about our dead babies, there's also an equally odd compulsion to assume the very WORST.

John MacArthur has described this odd compulsion in his (reformed-leaning) neck of the woods. He quotes Phil Johnson in his book _Safe in the Arms of God_:

Strange. There's something dysfunctional about it. And while logically, of course, we can argue that the opposite (that all infants are elect) is as unproven as this position, either position reveals something about us and our individual idiosyncrasies, I think. If I must choose, I'm going to give God the benefit of the doubt,

Either way . . . I'm in the opposite position of the OP. I'm growing more and more convinced of pedobaptism.

Camille

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Camille
Member, Mitchell Road Presbyterian, PCA
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This is exactly what I feel that I've been trying to argue, is that elect infants are the only ones to go to heaven. It has nothing to do, therefore, with how we work, but how the Holy Spirit works, as it states.

Hi

Hmmmmmm. Are the promises of God offered to the non-elect?

Thanks,

-CH

If, then.

Since we don't know who the elect are, we say God has promised to save those to the uttermost those who call upon His Name. But I don't want to veer

Rob, I would say that to the non-elect -- the reprobate -- there are no promises given. When you say "offered" you open a new topic with respect to the meaning of that word, the old "well-meant offer" controversy.

Shakleton, one who belongs to the Lord Jesus may ask Him to bring to life / recreate a beloved pet in the Kingdom of Heaven ("shall He not freely give us all things?" [Ro 8:32 -- for starts]). I kill many creatures (ants, flies, etc), and ask the Lord to please give them a place in His Kingdom. I do not enjoy killing, but sometimes it is necessary. I like being harmless to the earth and its creatures, and this prayer undoes my harmfulness. In discussions with New Agers -- and especially "aggressive vegetarians" -- I bring up this "godly harmlessness" as an ideal they cannot fulfill, as they do not know the God of Heaven and Earth.

jpechin, after all of this discussion, would you please state again -- in its essential principles -- what you believe are the valid reasons for leaving paedo for credo? Because your position is a little unclear to me now. Thanks.

Well then, if that's your position, fine. Where our Presbyterian brethren may differ (and I stress "may") is whether children born into a covenant family are to be presumed elect if they die before having the opportunity to give evidence of their faith. I would like clarification on that from a Presbyterian. Since covenant children can prove reprobate, I would say that only God knows His elect prior to evidence of faith being demonstrated. That would be in keeping with, "...Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit." Elect infants. The WCF states (on effectual calling), "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." The language is the same. Elect infants are saved.

I think the "elect infants" language WCF is merely an attempt to recognize that none are saved except the elect. It seems that they were careful not to speculate and go out on a limb. I wonder if there were any differences of opinion among the Westminster Assembly on this issue and the wording here.

There is apparently a variant here in the LBCF. Some copies have "elect infants" and others just have "infants". Does anyone know which one was in the original 2nd LBCF? I don't have Dr. Waldron's book on the confession and wonder if he gave this any attention.

Hi

Thank you both for your responses.

Were the promises of God in the OT, given to Abraham, offered to the elect and non-elect alike, Jacob and Esau, in the rite of circumcision?

I don't believe I am veering off topic, but am asking questions to reach a conclusion.

G&P

-CH

Were the children of Israelites in a covenantal relation with God?

I am not criticizing anything. I am asking a simple question. Does the Presbyterian believe that, because we should not doubt the salvation of infants of believing parents who die in infancy, that we should in turn expect the salvation of said infants? Your posts seem to indicate that you do not. I don't understand why I can't just get a simple 'yes' or 'no'.

Anyone????