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NASB | Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 3:23 since all have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God, |
Bible Question: Can child aged 1,2,or 3 go to heaven if he/she should die? Do aborted babies go to heaven? |
Bible Answer: Do babies go to heaven? While no doctrine of man matches the theology of the Bible fully, and while different people have benefitted from different theological systems, I generally find myself in agreement with the Calvinist view – all the time recognizing its shortcomings. One is the seemingly reduced role it articulates for the Holy Spirit after a person is born again (in which it recognizes its full role). Others may disagree and I accept any correction in this area without debate. In the following passage provided by Phillip R. Johnson on another message board, BB Warfield describes that Calvinists generally hold that infants are part of the elect. I find this recognition a good acknowledgment that man-made theological systems when applied to their logical conclusions may not provide the results obtained by prayerful meditation on God’s word while being led by the illumination/guiding/teaching by the Holy Spirit. I think the passage quoted below illustrates this concept in a beautiful way. While earlier Calvinists sometimes held that infants did not go to heaven, that view was changed over time. Later, it was the general Calvinist view that “all infants who died in infancy were elect, and that all dying infants would therefore be redeemed.” During the time of Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921) this was the view of most Calvinists. Warfield says: “Although the cautious agnostic position as to the fate of uncovenanted infants dying in infancy may fairly claim to be the historical Calvinistic view, it is perfectly obvious that it is not per se any more Calvinistic than any of the others. The adherents of all types enumerated above are clearly within the limits of the system, and hold with the same firmness to the fundamental position that salvation is suspended on no earthly cause, but ultimately rests on God's electing grace alone, while our knowledge of who are saved depends on our view of what are the signs of election and of the clearness with which they may be interpreted. . . . "In the course of time the agnostic view of the fate of uncovenanted infants, dying such, has given place to an ever growing universality of conviction that these infants too are included in the election of grace; so that to-day few Calvinists can be found who do not hold with Toplady, and Doddridge, and Thomas Scott, and John Newton, and James P. Wilson, and Nathan L. Rice, and Robert Breckenridge, and Robert S. Candlish, and Charles Hodge, and the whole body of those of recent years whom the Calvinistic churches delight to honor, that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into His glory--not because original sin alone is not deserving of eternal punishment (for all are born children of wrath), nor because they are less guilty than others (for relative innocence would merit only relatively light punishment, not freedom from all punishment), nor because they die in infancy (for that they die in infancy is not the cause but the effect of God's mercy toward them), but simply because God in His infinite love has chosen them in Christ, before the foundation of the world, by a loving foreordination of them unto adoption as sons in Jesus Christ. "Thus, as they hold, the Reformed theology has followed the light of the Word until its brightness has illuminated all its corners, and the darkness has fled away." |