Brain injuries and the mind/soul

[Contra_Mundum]

I'll just contribute to this thread what I've said here someplace else:
No one is saved apart from faith in Christ. This is the Bible's declaration, and I see no good reason to postulate some other means of salvation for any "class" of persons who are said not to have by reason of exercise such a capacity. "Without faith, it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God." It seesm to me we need an understanding of FAITH that will accommodate those who are at some point in time in a diminished intellectual capacity. Faith cannot be simply an intellectual exercise.

When I am asleep, can I SEE anything? No, ... and Yes. My condition is such that I can't see--I'm asleep, and sleeping people don't see. But, I DO have the capacity to see. In fact, I have always had that capacity, even as an unborn child, which had never been in an environment where the eyeballs I had, and the neural connections, were ever put to use. And since I have to presume the DNA code was all present, I had the "future" capacity to see even when a zygote.

Faith needs to be understood in a fulsome, and not in a truncated sense. Use the full definition of "knowledge, assent, and trust," and recognize that all three develop. Saving faith is apprehending Christ for who he is; it is spiritual "sight," according to Scripture. Our natural condition is spiritual blindness, no capacity for such sight. God, by his Spirit, and the ordinary means of the Word, grants that missing capacity to the regenerated in conversion. But he is not obligated to only effectually call by that means, but is FREE to work differently, as he wills.

So, we say he can convert, giving the capacity of faith--to apprehend Christ in all his saving glory--to any who are "incapable of being outwardly called" by the ministry of the Word. Thus, it is well within our Calvinistic understanding to grant that God can regenerate a babe, whether in the womb or upon the breast, and their conversion be something imperceptible, as the capacity to believe is brought from a germinal state to a place of exercise.

Babies that die in the womb, if elect are granted regeneration and (by necessary consequence) a seed of faith, and "open their eyes" not in this world but in the next, and look upon Christ their Savior. Realize, their full development in sanctification takes place entirely in the presence of God. While they must (and surely do) repent of original (imputed) sin and of natural corruption, they have no "conscious" sin to repent of--their seeds of corruption were amputated before they grew into capacities to be exercised.

By this understanding of an infant soul, we can see how God may grant saving faith even to such like. He gives them "eyes to see." They grow in grace, and in the KNOWLEDGE of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, entirely in the heavenly courts of God.

 

[BJClark]

Davidius;

If the brain is the conduit of the mind, but not the mind itself, and if a brain injury can be illustrated using the analogy of a functioning television broadcast transmitting to a broken television set, then would it be reasonable to assume that a person who is not able to fully express thought due to a brain injury or menal handicap still has consciousness, can possess knowledge, and can think propositionally? These things can't be shared with the outside world, but perhaps they still exist behind the broken television set. I ask because someone mentioned in another thread that Reformed Christians believe that infants and handicapped persons can be saved without a knowledge of Christ. If, however, knowledge resides in the immaterial mind and not the brain, and the brain is only a conduit connecting the mind and body somehow, then people who are saved and unable to express their knowledge could still technically have knowledge of God as Redeemer. What do you think?

I would agree, I used to tutor a man when I was in college, he was considered mentally handicapped, was in a wheelchair, couldn't form a verbal sentence, his mother had to feed, bathe and clothe him, and take him to the bathroom...but he learned to use a computer to share what he was thinking.

He was slow in typing and trying to formulate words and sentences and many times got frustrated in trying to do so. There were things he liked and things he didn't like just like everyone else..he loved baseball, but didn't like hockey..

Many people thought I was crazy tutoring him in English, since I had to wait for him to type out his response which could take up to 15 minutes for something that would take most people a few seconds to respond to verbally.

There were things he knew that others wouldn't think he could possibly know..many people would think he couldn't understand who Christ is, but yet, when people would use Christ's name in vain He would get very aggitated, moreso than most Christians do..his mom and I would talk and she told me people at her church would ask "why she bothers bringing him because he can't possibly understand". But yet, she and I both knew, he could understand, if he could understand how to form a sentence He could understand Salvation..so while he was physically and mentally handicapped in many areas, he understood many things..


I don't know what program they used, but it was great for him; I don't even remember the ladies name who was working with him in the use of the program, but she would come to the college about once a month to check on his progress and see what new words or pictures (for words) she needed to add to his computer to help build the verbal data base on his computer. I wish I did, because I thought what she was doing was awesome..

 

[Pergamum]

Thanks Rev Bruce:

A follow up question: Can an infant "exercise" his faith or is he merely "given" a seed of faith?




I guess this means the following:

That some babies are either not conceived in sin or else the Lord regenerates them while still a multi-called organism.

That this seed of faith will exhibit an exercise of faith at the first opportunity.



If faith and repentance go together, how is it that infants exercise repentnace and what do they repent from (forigve the sins of my zygote stage)...

... or maybe one can be regenerated without yet being converted, in which case why would we ned to say that an infant has faith when faith is part of conversion which is not yet needed?


This faith would be a faith without action (and faith without works is dead), and also faith comes by hearing (and its aweful hard to hear much clearly in the womb).


However, to deny that infants can exercise faith is to create two classes of saved people - those who have as a requirement explicit faith in Jesus Christ and those who are saved without an explicit faith in Jesus Christ.

 

[Pergamum]

Another follow up question:

Do we need to think in order to have faith?
Can we have a faith without thinking?

And if so, do we not then create two classes of Christians anyway? Those that are required to think and those that merely have the seed of faith?

 

[Mushroom]

If faith and repentance go together, how is it that infants exercise repentnace and what do they repent from (forigve the sins of my zygote stage)...

I thought Rev Buchanan's post answered that very well:

Babies that die in the womb, if elect are granted regeneration and (by necessary consequence) a seed of faith, and "open their eyes" not in this world but in the next, and look upon Christ their Savior. Realize, their full development in sanctification takes place entirely in the presence of God. While they must (and surely do) repent of original (imputed) sin and of natural corruption, they have no "conscious" sin to repent of--their seeds of corruption were amputated before they grew into capacities to be exercised.

This faith would be a faith without action (and faith without works is dead),

Do you think that's so? If we said that what constitutes works are actions that glorify God, how do we know that an unborn infant doesn't do any? While their existence is far different from ours, can we say with any certainty that it offers no opportunity for glorifying God, even if we have no concept of it? And similarly...

and also faith comes by hearing (and its aweful hard to hear much clearly in the womb).

Doesn't hearing equate with the receiving and comprehending of imparted information? I mean, this doesn't imply that a deaf person cannot have faith because they are incapable of hearing sound, right?

The ability to recieve and comprehend the Gospel believingly is not a natural occurence. It is given by a supernatural act performed solely by God in the heart of a human being. How it is conveyed and the means of it's belief are both determined by His decrees. Perhaps the determination of such things are a part of the "The secret things" that "belong unto the LORD our God".

 

[Davidius]

Davidius;

If the brain is the conduit of the mind, but not the mind itself, and if a brain injury can be illustrated using the analogy of a functioning television broadcast transmitting to a broken television set, then would it be reasonable to assume that a person who is not able to fully express thought due to a brain injury or menal handicap still has consciousness, can possess knowledge, and can think propositionally? These things can't be shared with the outside world, but perhaps they still exist behind the broken television set. I ask because someone mentioned in another thread that Reformed Christians believe that infants and handicapped persons can be saved without a knowledge of Christ. If, however, knowledge resides in the immaterial mind and not the brain, and the brain is only a conduit connecting the mind and body somehow, then people who are saved and unable to express their knowledge could still technically have knowledge of God as Redeemer. What do you think?

I would agree, I used to tutor a man when I was in college, he was considered mentally handicapped, was in a wheelchair, couldn't form a verbal sentence, his mother had to feed, bathe and clothe him, and take him to the bathroom...but he learned to use a computer to share what he was thinking.

He was slow in typing and trying to formulate words and sentences and many times got frustrated in trying to do so. There were things he liked and things he didn't like just like everyone else..he loved baseball, but didn't like hockey..

Many people thought I was crazy tutoring him in English, since I had to wait for him to type out his response which could take up to 15 minutes for something that would take most people a few seconds to respond to verbally.

There were things he knew that others wouldn't think he could possibly know..many people would think he couldn't understand who Christ is, but yet, when people would use Christ's name in vain He would get very aggitated, moreso than most Christians do..his mom and I would talk and she told me people at her church would ask "why she bothers bringing him because he can't possibly understand". But yet, she and I both knew, he could understand, if he could understand how to form a sentence He could understand Salvation..so while he was physically and mentally handicapped in many areas, he understood many things..


I don't know what program they used, but it was great for him; I don't even remember the ladies name who was working with him in the use of the program, but she would come to the college about once a month to check on his progress and see what new words or pictures (for words) she needed to add to his computer to help build the verbal data base on his computer. I wish I did, because I thought what she was doing was awesome..

Thank you for sharing this story, Mrs. Clark. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about!!

Thanks Rev Bruce:

A follow up question: Can an infant "exercise" his faith or is he merely "given" a seed of faith?



I guess this means the following:

That some babies are either not conceived in sin or else the Lord regenerates them while still a multi-called organism.

That this seed of faith will exhibit an exercise of faith at the first opportunity.



If faith and repentance go together, how is it that infants exercise repentnace and what do they repent from (forigve the sins of my zygote stage)...

... or maybe one can be regenerated without yet being converted, in which case why would we ned to say that an infant has faith when faith is part of conversion which is not yet needed?


This faith would be a faith without action (and faith without works is dead), and also faith comes by hearing (and its aweful hard to hear much clearly in the womb).


However, to deny that infants can exercise faith is to create two classes of saved people - those who have as a requirement explicit faith in Jesus Christ and those who are saved without an explicit faith in Jesus Christ.

It is hard for me to read a post when the text is so disjointed.

Confessionally, we recognize that faith is normally created through the preaching of the word. We say "normally" because of the examples of men such as John the Baptist and David, who appear to have been converted while in the womb. You may take exception to these examples if you like, but we will have to remain at an impasse, if you do, since I accept the confessional teaching that they did in fact have faith in the womb.

As far as exercising repentance is concerned, the unborn child hates God in its consciousness already. Furthermore, the child is guilty of the sin of its first parent, Adam. It would need to repent of these things.

Another follow up question:

Do we need to think in order to have faith?
Can we have a faith without thinking?

And if so, do we not then create two classes of Christians anyway? Those that are required to think and those that merely have the seed of faith?

From what I understand, most Reformed people say that saving faith is comprised of knowledge/understanding, assent, and trust. Clark said that trust is bound up in assent and that there are only two components. Either way, the consensus is that at least knowledge and assent are required. Hence, not really understanding what a seed of faith is anyway, I would argue that there is only one class. This does not present any difficulty if one accepts the distinction between thought and the ability to physically express thought as it is represented in language.

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Thanks Rev Bruce:

A follow up question: Can an infant "exercise" his faith or is he merely "given" a seed of faith?

I'll simply go back to the birth analogy (which is doubly nice, since Jesus gave it to us explicitly, John 3). Did your baby "see" on the day it was born? Probably, and also not so "perfectly". It had no "interpretive context" for everything. And yet there are hardwired effects of its sight. That kid "recognizes" the breast, if not instinctively. Their "focus range" is limited to about 12 inches--about the distance from breast to face. They "know" mom almost immediately too. If the child is not neglected, this trust in mom begins immediately and naturally to be built.

The analogy seems obvious to me. If I am an elect infant, and regenerated, and died in the body, I have been given the ability to "know" my Savior, and to rest/trust in him, in a way that certainly must be more perfect and ideal than an embodied infant knows its mother, and knows how to find the "bullseye". Like infants grow in knowledge of their mother, so the saved soul--even an infant soul--will grow in its intellectual apprehension of Christ, its assent to the truths, even as its trust deepens. And for the elect infant, dead in body, this development takes place exclusively in heaven.

EVERY child is conceived in sin--that is a product of natural generation. We all have imputed guilt and a corrupt nature immediately; and by natural development, the propensity to sin is actualized 100% of the time. So we always have actual sin to deal with too, once a self-conscious baby starts making decisions. But certainly, even that elect infant must repent of his imputed guilt, and his corrupt nature. He'd have to repent by the same basic seed of understanding by which his faith develops.

As for exercising faith at the first opportunity, perhaps. Where is the place of "ordinary means"? Does not a child coming into the world need the due application of Christian nurture? The hearing of the gospel? If these are faithfully applied (as God has foreordained in this or that case) why would it be beyond expectation that a child would never know a day when he did not know 1) the greatness of his sin and misery, and 2) the greatness of the Savior God provided?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know God brought me over from death to life... sometime. He regenerated me, then converted me, and I have no idea what that timetable was. My conscious religious awareness does not include a period of self-acknowledged enmity toward God. This is not a denial of the objective reality of that enmity--I know it existed in a natural condition that had to be undone if I was to be saved at all. I was taught the gospel from infancy, its no more complicated than that.

... or maybe one can be regenerated without yet being converted, in which case why would we ned to say that an infant has faith when faith is part of conversion which is not yet needed?

Regeneration always precedes faith (a part of conversion). And I know of no necessity of saying that a person's conversion must happen instantaneously with the regenerating work do the Spirit. Not even in adult converts (though this could be most common).

A man may be a long time laboring to understand a faith he is being taught. We do not concern ourselves with the moment of regeneration, for we do not know how the wind of the Spirit blows. His effectual call is acting on this man quickly, on this man slowly, but their respective conversions may come in reverse "order". Not that I could see that. The intellects are crucial in each our ordinary-means conversion.

As for this faith of an infant having no action, what do you mean? Are these children not serving God in heaven? Do they not exhibit fruit of the Spirit? Or perhaps you mean infants on earth, who may be awaiting the process of ordinary means. Now, I would argue that John the Baptist gave a powerful (and supernatural) "act" of devotion in the womb. But any others that might exist no doubt require the regular application of means--Christian nurture and the preaching of the gospel--to see ordinary development of whatever God has begun in them, from whenever he began it.

And I hope I have addressed the other question too somehow.

 

[BJClark]

Brad;

Do you think that's so? If we said that what constitutes works are actions that glorify God, how do we know that an unborn infant doesn't do any? While their existence is far different from ours, can we say with any certainty that it offers no opportunity for glorifying God, even if we have no concept of it?

An unborn infant does glorify God.

From conception and growth in the womb, to moving and kicking before they are born, all of those Glorify God, even that first breath and scream after they are born Glorifies God.

Even a child conceived in the most vile of ways Glorifies God, as the parents' sin is exposed by the conception of the child.

I know many people who have lost children and the parents turned to God, while I know others who have lost children and the parents ran from God..was God glorified? Yes, in both instances, either the parents turned to God for comfort or they blamed God for the loss..but yet, they knew God IS real, so through the unborn children...God was glorified..