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:
9. Surely thou. David again here raises a new fortress, in order to withstand and repel the machinations of Satan. He briefly enumerates the benefits which God had bestowed upon him, by which he had long since learned that he was his father. Yea, he declares that even before he was born God had shown towards him such evidence of his fatherly love, that although now overwhelmed with the darkness of death, he might upon good ground venture to hope for life from him. And it is the Holy Spirit who teaches the faithful the wisdom to collect together, when they are brought into circumstances of fear and trouble, the evidences of the goodness of God, in order thereby to sustain and strengthen their faith. We ought to regard it as an established principle, that as God never wearies in the exercise of his liberality, and as the most exuberant bestowment cannot exhaust his riches, it follows that, as we have experienced him to be a father from our earliest infancy, he will show himself the same towards us even to extreme old age. In acknowledging that he was taken from the womb by the hand of God, and that God had caused him to confide upon the breasts of his mother, the meaning is, that although it is by the operation of natural causes that infants come into the world, and are nourished with their mother’s milk, yet therein the wonderful providence of God brightly shines forth. This miracle, it is true, because of its ordinary occurrence, is made less account of by us. But if ingratitude did not put upon our eyes the veil of stupidity, we would be ravished with admiration at every childbirth in the world. What prevents the child from perishing, as it might, a hundred times in its own corruption, before the time for bringing it forth arrives, but that God, by his secret and incomprehensible power, keeps it alive in its grave? And after it is brought into the world, seeing it is subject to so many miseries, and cannot stir a finger to help itself, how could it live even for a single day, did not God take it up into his fatherly bosom to nourish and protect it? It is, therefore, with good reason said, that the infant is cast upon him; for, unless he fed the tender little babes, and watched over all the offices of the nurse, even at the very time of their being brought forth, they are exposed to a hundred deaths, by which they would be suffocated in an instant. Finally, David concludes that God was his God. God, it is true, to all appearance, shows the like goodness which is here celebrated even to the brute creation; but it is only to mankind that he shows himself to be a father in a special manner. And although he does not immediately endue babes with the knowledge of himself, yet he is said to give them confidence, because, by showing in fact that he takes care of their life, he in a manner allures them to himself; as it is said in another place,
“He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry,” (Psalm 147:9.)
Since God anticipates in this manner, by his grace, little infants before they have as yet the use of reason, it is certain that he will never disappoint the hope of his servants when they petition and call upon him. This is the argument by which David struggled with, and endeavored to overcome temptation.
All joking aside, I've really benefited from this thread.
