Calvinism & The Salvation of Infants

1. From the beginning a few held with Zwingli that death in infancy is a sign of election, and hence that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into glory. After Zwingli, Bishop Hooper was probably the first to embrace this view. It has more lately become the ruling view.

2.  At the opposite extreme a very few held that the only sure sign of election is faith with its fruits, and, therefore, we can have no real ground of knowledge concerning the fate of any infant; as, however, God certainly has his elect among them too, each man can cherish the hope that his children are of the elect. Peter Martyr approaches this sadly agnostic position.

3.Many held that faith and the promise are sure signs of election, and accordingly all believes and their children are certainly saved; but the lack of faith and the promise is an equally sure sign of reprobation, so that all the children of unbelievers, dying such, are equally certainly lost. The younger Spanheim, for example, writes…”they are justly reprobated by God on account of the corruption and guilt derived to them by natural propagation.

4.More held that faith and the promise are certain signs of election, so that the salvation of believers’ children is certain, while the lack of the promise only leaves us in ignorance of God’s purpose; nevertheless that there is good ground for asserting that both election and reprobation have place in this unknown sphere. Accordingly, they held that all the infants of believers, dying such, are saved, but that some of the infants of unbelievers, dying such, are lost. Probably no higher expression of this general view can be found that John Owen’s.

5.Most Calvinists of the past, however, have simply held that faith and the promise are marks by which we may know assuredly that all those who believe and their children, dying such, are elect and saved, while the absence of sure marks of either election or reprobation in infants, dying such outside the covenant, leaves us without ground for inference concerning them…It is this cautious, agnostic view which has the best historical right to be called the general Calvinistic one. Van Mastricht correctly says…

Warfield, Works, 9:431-434.

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2005/10/infant-salvation.html?m=1

In addition, Steve Hays, in the same article I footnoted in my other post, observes: 

Logically speaking, the structure of Presbyterian theology is more predisposed to universal infant salvation than Reformed Baptist theology. To some extent, then, you have the same arguments and counterarguments for universal infant salvation as you have for infant baptism.

How so?   In Presbyterian theology , infant baptism is a sign & seal that includes the hope that God will one fully & completely apply the full measure of what Christ Himself accomplished to the person being baptized, regardless of whether or not the individual being baptized is an infant or an adult.

In Baptist theology, baptism itself is withheld from infants, children, & adults unless they have made / are believed to have made a credible profession of faith.  In other words, infants & others who have not made a credible profession of faith are treated as if they are not believers, ie either are or ought be believed to be unregenerate people & treated accordingly. 

In other words this issue isn’t unique to Calvinism/Reformed Theology. It is an issue with which we must all contend.  

Not matter which side in this debate is right, we are all at epistemic parity when it comes to this issue.

One of the typical replies to my words above is to assert or argue that the Bible teaches an age of accountability. 

In the nature of the case, universal infant salvation is justified on the grounds of some chronological threshold. This is variously called the age of discretion or the age of accountability.

Although the two terms are used interchangeably, the concepts are hardly synonymous. Scriptural evidence for an age of discretion is not necessarily evidence for an age of accountability—especially in light of original sin.

To quote Steve Hays again: 

On the face of it, the chronological threshold seems pretty artificial—if not wholly so. If a child dies at the age of 6, he is saved--but if the very same child dies at the age of 8, he is damned? One is, in effect, positing a transition from election to reprobation.

This is a hypothetical transition, to be sure, but the whole discussion is hypothetical in the absence of clear revelation. Does your eternal fate really turn on which side of the age range you fall on? Is that the boundary-condition?

This doesn’t seem to be an argument that has nature in its favor. After all, cognitive development ranges along a continuum. It’s not as if the kid goes to bed one night below the age of discretion and wakes up the next morning above the age of discretion.

And it’s hard to see how grace would respect a chronological threshold. How is the boundary drawn? Where is it drawn? Why is it drawn? If it isn’t a natural boundary or a gracious boundary, then what is it?

Is there really some invisible line to cross? Is the same line in the same place in the case of every human being? Or only those who die in infancy? Does God have the same line for those who die in infancy in some possible world, but not the actual world? The whole scheme strikes me as hopelessly ad hoc.

In other words, this particular objection to Calvinism not only fails to address what the rest of the Calvinist/Reformed Tradition has to say about this as a matter of Historical Theology, it I also strikes me as incredibly tone deaf about the issues some of Calvin & Calvinism’s hecklers own theology might actually entail if they stopped heckling long enough to take a good long look at what their own theology or other Non- Calvinists’ theologians have had to say through the centuries.  

For example, Arminians & Semi-Pelagians appeal to the existence of libertarian free will in addition this mythological age of moral accountability. 

Where does the Bible teach LFW as an action theory of the will?  The AOMA? 

Instead of basing one’s response(s) to this issue on how outrageous Calvin’s statement(s) is/are you’d be better off hashing this issue out via what the Bible teaches about this.