Growing up around popular evangelical culture, one is taught more than his share of folk beliefs. Some are completely harmless, such as the idea that the three wisemen visited Jesus at the manger (rather than in a house one to two years later), or that people will live forever in heaven (rather than resurrected in a physical body that is made to live upon a recreated earth--although this can lead to or stem from dangerous assumptions). Others, however, can be harmful, in fact, downright deadly, as they place assumptions in a person’s mind that ultimately undermine the gospel. The folk religious idea of the age of accountability is one of these beliefs.
If you’re not familiar with it (I’d be shocked if you weren’t), the idea is that children are all saved because God doesn’t hold them responsible for sin. Some argue that sin requires willful intent, and children supposedly don’t have this (according to this belief), so they cannot be punished for sin. They are innocent until they can make a conscious and mature decision to follow or reject Christ. This idea always sounded a bit off to me, and when I got older, I realized why: It isn't in the Bible, and in fact, contradicts it.
Here are some of the assumptions that one must hold, however, in order to come to this idea.
- People are separated by God for their own personal sins, not the curse placed upon humanity through Adam.
- People are innocent until they become of a certain age, and only then do they become sinners in need of redemption.
- There are people who are saved apart from answering the invitation of the gospel call.
- There are people who are saved apart from Christ, and therefore, there is another way of salvation besides Christ, depending upon one’s age.
All of these ideas assume something about humanity that is heretical, and that is that humans are basically a blank slate (or even good), and only need Christ if they become sinners. Hence, since children are blank slates (or good), they have no real sin. They are thus saved by their morally neutral (or good) disposition toward God. There is no need to condemn them. This idea is called Pelagianism, named after a man, Pelagius, in the fourth and fifth centuries who taught that some people were saved apart from Christ by virtue of their goodness. He taught that there was no sin of Adam, or sin nature/curse from God’s salvific presence, that transferred to humankind. Pelagius denies that the Fall was a Fall of humanity instead of just a fall of the first couple.
Augustine rose up and showed why Pelagius’ views render unnecessary the gospel in some cases, and hence, elevated humanity to the point that Christ’s death was not a complete salvation of an unredeemable mankind, but supplemental to man’s own righteousness. Hence, because it rendered the gospel unnecessary to everyone everywhere, it was condemned as a heresy.
The biblical truth, Augustine argued, is that all humans are born in sin. They are born in the condemnation of the Fall. That means they are born separated from God’s salvific power gained from His relational presence and predisposed toward self, and therefore, evil. Augustine points to the baby who slaps away the other baby as he is nursing at the breast so that he can nurse instead as one of may displays of an infant’s depravity. Infants, Augustine argued, are in danger of hell. Pelagius could not tolerate such a view. As such, the two views were at complete odds with one another.
Augustine won the day, and what he presented has been Christian orthodoxy for the past 1500 years. Only the East, both then and now, took exception to Augustine’s theology; but such was expected from a poorly thought out anthropology, hamartology and soteriology as one had in Eastern Orthodoxy.
Here’s why Augustine’s views are correct: They explain biblical teaching better. For instance, in Pelagius’ world, Abraham had no need of a savior. In the Bible, he is a sinner (remember his laughing in disbelief toward God?). In Pelagius’ world, the sin of Adam is his own, but Paul argues that death spread to all of us from Adam (and even if this is a disputed passage, the Genesis account itself indicates that humanity goes south after the expulsion from God’s paradise because all of man’s thoughts are evil from his youth). In Pelagius’ world, no children should be punished for crimes they have not committed, but in the Bible, children are destroyed all the time for sins (of their parents—see below). In Pelagius’ world, some are saved who are not called, but in the Bible, all those who are predestined are called and justified. In Pelagius’ world, there is another way to the Father besides Christ. In the Bible, there is no way to the Father except through Christ.
Hence, the Bible teaches that all humanity is under condemnation. There is no one who is good, no not even one (that includes children). As such, all of humanity needs Christ’s death and resurrection to be applied to them through their faith in the gospel. Apart from this, no one can be saved (as we’ve discussed before that God cannot be arbitrary in forgiving people).
So where does that leave infants? To Augustine, it left them condemned to hell with the rest of humanity. So, what do we need to do? Baptize them. They needed to be baptized, because in Augustine’s view, baptism restored the lost relationship with God that the child was lacking when he or she came into the world.
Now, I don’t want to get into what baptism does for children. I actually think Augustine is wrong here, since I believe that baptism is a sign of the promise of God in the gospel toward salvation, as well as our committing our lives to Christ in faith. My point here is to show that, whether you agree or disagree with Augustine, the theological assumptions within his means employed to save children is consistent with the Bible and the evangelical folk belief of the age of accountability isn’t. It’s consistent with the Pelagian heresy that undermines the necessity of the gospel of Christ in each and everyone’s (including a child’s) life.
Hence, I would argue as Augustine in all of the theological assumptions made, but I would answer differently than Augustine as to the solution. The solution is simply this: the child and the parent are identified by God as one and the same person and is saved (or damned) via the parental-child relationship. This is why I would also baptize infants, not because it saves them, but because it identifies them with the faith of the one person of whom they are a part. The one person exercises faith and the one person is baptized. The one person is thus saved. Whether this is because God views children as spiritual possessions of the parent, and possessions are often identified with the possessor (why do you think Christ can only save us on the cross when we are identified with Him through His relationship with us as our Lord?), or whether it is simply because God considers only adults to be individuals is not known.
So in my view, the same people (almost) would be saved, as only a Christian parent would render baptism effective in Augustine’s theology in order for the child to be saved anyway (although one could stand in for the parents in Augustine’s view—hence, the creation of godparents). I just think that the kid is saved already through that parent, and if the parent chooses to baptize on top of that to display that identification, so be it. If not, so be it. Salvation is through the faith of the parent, not the baptism of the child.
Now, I realize this might all sound really strange to everyone who has grown up in our common folk religion, but I assure you that this is far more biblical than a folk religion that, while being more palatable, is completely heretical in undermining the very gospel that exists to save everyone who believes.
Of course, there are people who believe that all children are damned, but I think, again, that is an unbiblical assumption about children (i.e., that they are individuals unto themselves who must exercise faith). The truth is the decision to follow or not follow Christ has major implications for our children, as (while they are truly children) our faith is their faith and our lack of faith is their lack of faith.
Now, of course, this is talking about young children, not teenagers or adults who are now individuals in the eyes of God. They must choose and prove whether they are truly saved by exercising faith. So I am not talking about cases such as in Ezekiel 18, where a son of the righteous can become evil or the son of the evil can become righteous. I am talking about the status of children who die before they reach sexual (and therefore individual) maturity. That seems to be the split off point in Scripture (“for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife,” etc.). Some may put it earlier than that, but I would caution against that.
Of course, not all infants in the world are saved in this, so it’s not what anyone wants to hear; and if someone wants to believe something different, that’s perfectly fine; but you don’t have the right to teach heresy to make yourself feel better. Hence, believe something consistent with biblical teaching and the necessity of the gospel, not something that undermines them. The age of accountability has led to all sorts of other rejections of Christian orthodoxy, simply because assumptions creep in and very rarely remain boxed safely in a corner of your mind. They will affect other ideas too. But I think that the age of accountability myth is bad enough as it is. Christ is the only way of salvation, for Jew and Greek, man and woman, slave and freeman, adult and child, because we have all fallen short of the glory of God and cannot please God apart from Christ. So I say to you, If you want your children to be saved, be saved yourself. When you drive them to church, go in with them. When you encourage them to read the Bible, you read it to them. Encourage them to exercise faith on their own. Teach them that they need to choose to follow Christ, and get them ready for the day when they will make that decision, but when they are children, their salvation is through you. So I say to you, as the Scripture says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household,” “for otherwise your children are unclean but now they are holy.”
There is, of course, another option (that God saves those children that He knows would believe in Him), but again, that assumes that not everyone who is saved is called and responds to the gospel.
ReplyDeleteSo does this pertain to the mother or father? Orphans? So as a child they are saved. And then they lose salvation, and must gain it again after they reach a split second of time during puberty? I hate grey lines.
ReplyDeleteIt applies to the head of household. The Father and mother are one. This is why Paul urges believers not to divorce their unbelieving spouses ("because then your children are saints").
DeleteThe head of orphans would be the household they are in, i.e., orphanage, the church, etc.
They are saved as my hand is saved if I am saved. If they become disconnected from me, they must choose to continue on in the faith or reject it. I think you might be confusing election and who we consider saved. I consider everyone with a profession of a faith that bears fruit saved. For children, this profession is through the federal head because they are one body with the head of household.
No one loses salvation. Does a thirty year old man who professes Christ, and is considered saved by us, lose his salvation if he rejects the faith ten years later? But we can't go off of who is elect, since that assumes omniscience. Only God knows the elect with certainty. We can only go off of what we perceive to be the case through one's profession.
I'm not sure where the grey lines are in these cases. If the child continues on in the faith we continue to consider him saved, but if he does not, we no longer consider him to be so. It's the same for adults. I suppose every issue gets grey in the harder cases to call, but that shouldn't convince us to reject the larger principle.
I feel like you just worked your way back around to the age of accountability, and the only thing you really did was limit it to Christians' children, instead of all children.
ReplyDeleteThen you didn't understand the argument. It's not about how old a child is. It's about the idea that one can identify a child as a Christian because he or she is one with their parent. They then continue on in the faith afterward. If they do not, it is the same as an adult, and there is no argument as to the age makes one unaccountable to God. The child is accountable from conception because of the parent. That's a far cry from the age of accountability, which is Pelagian and still sees each child as a separate individual from the parent. So I'm not sure how you see it's anything like the same thing.
DeleteDid the Moody Bible Institute teach you to color your prose in such arrogance, or do you tint your words in prideful tones all on your own? Wow, but you certainly know how to weave a tapestry of castigations and ad hominem argumentation into the syntax. What a poison pen.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, when Eve and Adam ate the fruit, what exactly happened? Their eyes were opened to know the difference between good and evil. Before that day, they did not know evil from good, and they were sinless. As sinless creatures, they were spiritually alive. On the day they ate, Adam and Eve died spiritually, for they could then distinguish between right and wrong. The simplicity of this is self-evident: Only the individual with knowledge of good and evil can be held accountable for sin.
Since the Garden, the knowledge of good and evil has spread to all of humanity. But this does not occur in the individual, of course, until a child is old enough to know. Even common law recognizes the unambiguous fact children are not accountable. Why can’t you?
Since children cannot distinguish between good and evil, to lay guilt upon it is like a mother blaming her son before the boy has broken the lamp. It is as illogical as it is unscriptural.
Sorry, I don’t study Aristotle or Pelagius. But I do study scripture, and Jesus was clear in the second and third chapters of Revelation—Christians are not to adopt manmade philosophies. That way, they don’t accept and believe ridiculous notions. A wise man does not call light dark and dark light. A wise man listens to his Master’s voice. A wise man ignores false teachers. A wise man refuses to eat the words false prophets pluck from poisonous trees.
When you start with ad hominem and then accuse me of it, it seems clear that you may be reading you're own style of tone into my writing.
DeleteHaving said that, your actual argument is incoherent. If you have to have a knowledge of good and evil before you sin, and Adam and Eve only obtained that knowledge after sinning, then that means they didn't sin. Hence, your attempted extrapolation from that to infants doesn't work.
Second to that, that isn't to what the "good and evil" are referring in Genesis 2 and 3. It refers to mastering or experiencing order and chaos as gods do. You're reading a primary moral element into it when that is merely an extension of the idea, not the main idea here. What you would have to argue is that they didn't know that what they were doing was wrong because they had no sense of wrong, and hence, they never rebelled against God.
Finally, the old line that one doesn't study historical theology but only the Bible always means that one is trapped in a theological system that can't see the Bible apart from it. What that really means is that you aren't reading the Bible, but rather your theological system into the Bible. So if you think you're commanded to stay away from man-made philosophies that are poisonous, you might want to know that your thinking is filled with it. I would suggest you humble yourself and learn these views so that you can understand that you are the one spreading the poison around, and that makes you the false teacher here. Here's to hoping you repent of that.
When a man writes in arrogant tones, as in, I’m so smart, and you are so stupid, even too stupid to understand, then it reveals the nature of the writer. Yes, you attempted to hide this arrogance in subtext and passive aggressiveness. But still, your arrogance and condescension were as visible as a desert summer Sun on a cloudless day.
ReplyDeleteIt is not ad hominem argumentation to point out the arrogance of your prose, especially when your use of the word “folks” categorizes people with other views as toothless, country bumpkins. Now, if I were to call you an intellectual conman, a religious Piped Piper, leading the children to the mountain of their destruction, this would be more akin to ad hominem argumentation than anything I previously wrote.
Nonetheless, you mistakenly equate Adam and Eve’s disobedience by eating the fruit to sin. Consider this: A five year-old child finds his father’s pistol and, playing cops and robbers, purposely shoots his sister in the head. Is the child guilty of murder, manslaughter, or reckless homicide? He is, of course, not guilty of anything. The child is not old enough to know right from wrong, evil and good. Will God count the boy’s actions as sin? No, of course not. The child is not old enough to know right from wrong, evil and good.
Yet, the young boy purposefully shot his little sister.
If Eve and Adam did not know right from wrong, also known as evil and good, how can God then have counted their behavior, before their eyes were opened, as sin? Yes, they disobeyed, just as the child disobeyed his father, who had previously told the lad, “Boy, you leave this pistol alone.” And yes, Adam and Eve’s disobedience led to sin and spiritual death, but that specific act of disobedience cannot be counted as sin, for they did not know evil and good in the moment of disobedience.
Consider this: Adam and Eve were naked in the Garden of Eden. After they ate, they hid in shame. Now, if their nakedness was shameful and sinful after they ate the fruit, then why was it not shameful and sinful before? It was not counted as sin before, because Adam and Eve did not know evil and good. Nonetheless, before and after, nakedness was and is a shameful, sinful act.
Children have no sin. Sinlessness is the only prerequisite for belonging to God. Immersion cleans one of sin, folding the person into the Lord’s body, the ecclesia, the called out. Nonetheless, faith is an important element to this immersion, for an act done without belief is a pointless exercise. An infant cannot have faith. So immersing children turns the procedure into a pointless pagan ritual.
Then again, paganism attempts to attach spirituality to the physical world. In doing so, pagan practitioners perform pointless exercises, of which they then call spiritual behaviors. Christianity, God’s plan of salvation, is not a magic act. God did not instruct us to elevate magic priests to speak magic words while flinging magic water all about. Immersion does not wart off evil spirits but is an “answer of a good conscience toward God” (1 Peter 3:21). A baby hasn’t the wherewithal to provide an answer of a good conscience.
Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone.
As for the rest of your reply: Son, you know how to spin a philosophical yarn, don’t you. “Second to that, that isn't to what the "good and evil" are referring in Genesis 2 and 3. It refers to mastering or experiencing order and chaos as gods do.” What??? You can’t be serious.
About this type of written prose, the world has a perfect expression—Baffle them with baloney.
And to suggest I am too stupid to reject Aristotle or any other philosophy, when said ideology conflicts with God’s word, puts you right back to your original arrogance and ad hominem argumentation, the very thing I pointed out in my first comment. Do you habitually revert to castigating others as stupid and ignorant, or do you truly believe you are more able than I through intellectual superiority?
I think someone in this conversation needs to find humility and repentance, and that someone is not I.
"When a man writes in arrogant tones, as in, I’m so smart, and you are so stupid, even too stupid to understand, then it reveals the nature of the writer."
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. Let the readers of this blog read both our comments and determine who is who in this conversation.
Folk religion refers to the religion of the masses that is not derived from the main religion of the culture. It has nothing to do with calling people "hillbillies" and whatnot.
This is a good lesson in generous and humbly reading something versus engaging in a hostile manner with what someone has written. I said your argument was incoherent and you read that as "you're too stupid to understand." Interesting.
For someone who claims to just read the Bible, you use no Biblical context here and replace the context and what the Bible says about the sin of Adam and Eve with your own philosophizing.
Romans 5 and 1 Timothy 2:14 say that both Adam and Eve sinned. They are both punished for their sin. Sin is rebellion against God. It isn't trespass, which is an ignorant sin in the OT. It is called "sin," which is a knowledgeable rebellion. Your interpretation of good and evil is your traditional philosophy supplying the context for the terms. The actual context is the creation account, where God sees that the natural elements are "good" and some elements or situations are "not good." That doesn't mean that God was sinning because He didn't give Adam a woman, or that the inanimate creation was morally good. The terms refer to what is ordered and beneficial for mankind versus what is chaotic and works against their creation and thriving.
You've provided no biblical argument for why children are not accountable for sin, and ignored all of the biblical data that shows that children are responsible for their fathers' sin. That's precisely the problem of not paying attention to your own philosophical traditions. You assume them and think you're doing theology with a blank slate, often confusing your ideas with that of the Bible, even replacing it by arguing from your own ideas as though they were true because you can use analogies to present them. The Bible is not Pelagian, and it would be good of you to see that the reason why you presented your own philosophy and did not present a biblical context to argue for your theology is because is not biblical. Augustinianism is biblical, and hence, the historic orthodox Christian church affirms it throughout the centuries.
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DeleteMy tone is not an accident. I want the reader of these comments to know the absolute contempt I hold toward the things you teach. I especially hold in contempt the idea children are libel to sin or the nature of sin. What arrogance to cast the stain of sin on innocence.
The evil twins of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox have created a world of spiritual chaos, suffering people, spiritually and physically, for well over a thousand years. The false doctrines these two entities have prorogated has led to the spiritual death of millions upon millions of souls. This does not account for the countless numbers these entities physically slaughtered, tortured, and enslaved. The spiritual destruction they have caused is so extensive, if these two false doctrines were men in the secular world, they would make Stalin, Hitler, and Mao Zedong look like three belligerent high school cheerleaders badmouthing their friends.
Clearly, in your argumentation, you have not been an honest broker. I have called you on your arrogance in every comment. Instead of taking stock, you continue to cast people not steeped in your belief system as a drooling mouth breathers, hunched over Bibles, fruitless struggling to copperhin them wurds.
In this you blame someone else for coining the phrase “folks”. Nonetheless, you took ownership of it by using the word. In doing so, you elevate yourself and your fellows to genius status while diminishing outsiders as knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
Admit it. You have contempt for people who don’t believe according to your religious views. You see the rest of us as confused simpletons in need of a spiritual leader, in need of someone like you, who has access to knowledge from some mysterious higher plane. (Be careful, your Gnostic roots might show.)
Additionally, for you to reshape my words is a most dishonest method of making an argument. Claiming I “read” the Bible diminishes my intense, lifelong study. This, of course, elevates yours to stratospheric supremacy. Moreover, you attempt to shape my argument. I explained the Genesis account with logic and common sense, and you label it a philosophy. It is truly despicable to reshape evidence to fit their absurd predetermined conclusions. What shall we say about men who love the lie and hate the truth? Well, we don’t have to say anything; God already cast then as loveless, lawless villains.
Now, Romans 5 and 1 Timothy 2:14 do not say Adam and Eve sinned (again, you reshape words). Paul wrote sin entered the world through Adam’s (and Eve’s) transgression, which is exactly what I am saying. I’m simply clarifying sin’s true nature, a thing of the intellect and not of the physical world.
Think about it: If sin were a physical thing, then what bearing would it have on the spiritual soul? It has to be of the intellect, for the sinning soul dies. Adam and Eve’s physical bodies did not die. Their souls died, which is separation from God. It’s all right in front of the reader, but you and others like you, steeped in an idiotic, paganistic ideologies and heretical doctrines, simply refuse to see.
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DeleteYou want scripture? How about this: Paul wrote, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men I would not be a bondservant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:8-10 NKJV)
You preach lessons not found in scripture. Your fellows, Catholic and Orthodox, preach lessons found nowhere in scripture. Yours is a strange gospel, a conglomerate of ancient false doctrines and pagan practices. You wear a mask of Christianity, behind which hides the hideous face of arrogance, lies, and hypocrisy.
You read scripture to split hairs. Although the following clearly contradicts inherited sin and inherited nature of sin, your doctrine declares, “Ezekiel did not say anything about Adam.”
Ezekiel 18:4: “ ‘Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine; the soul who sins shall die’. ” Ezekiel 18:20: “ ‘The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself’. ” (NKJV)
God does not need to specifically mention Adam in the above. He’s words are perfectly clear. The doctrines of inherited sin and the inherited nature of sin are out of touch with God’s message to man.
Likewise, you read scripture to add meaning where meaning does not exist. For instance, your view claims the following says the son does in fact inherit the sins of the father:
“ ‘The Lord is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation’. ” (Numbers 14:18 NKJV)
First, God is consistent. He will not—NOT—say one thing here and another thing there. He will not say the son does not inherit the sin of the father in Ezekiel and then turn around in Numbers to say the opposite. The verse above concerns the children of the fathers who, showing cowardice in the face of God’s enemy, refused to enter and take Canaan after the Jews’ escape from Egypt. The children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of these fathers would suffer the punishment for the father’s sin, wondering in the wilderness forty years.
As for Exodus 20:5, Deuteronomy 5:8-10, and Jeremiah 32:16-20: All those who fall down to worship Baal or otherwise rebel will invariably teach their children to do likewise. The children, learning these things from their fathers, often lose contact with God. While this seems rather unfair to the children, they will nonetheless likewise suffer in their rebellion. In this, the sin of the father leads to the sin of his offspring.
And this is the problem with rebellion. When a father rebels, he harms his children. What’s worse, when a father rebels and teaches his children to rebel, the children will suffer the ill effects of their father’s teaching. Thereafter, the children will teach their children, and so on and so forth ad nauseam. This includes teaching the children to wear a mask of Christianity while practicing false doctrines, especially doctrines tinged in pagan practices.
Oh, people! Do not follow rebellious men in their rebellion. Do not pass your children through fire of their false beliefs. False teachers have a taste for men’s souls (Matthew 7:15). Their rebellion will consume the unwise, parent and child.
It's interesting that every Pelagian I meet is full of venom as you are. I think the false doctrine creates a hateful mind as yours. I won't interact much more with you except to deal with a couple things that you've said above that spread misinformation.
Delete1. Romans 5:14-19 shows that "transgression," "sin," and "disobedience" are all interchangeable terms. So it does say Adam sinned by saying that he is the ἁμαρτήσαντος "one who sinned." Since that is Paul's definition, when one sees the word "transgression," as with Adam and Eve, he means "sin."
2. Your explanation that the kids will one day grow up as their fathers teach them and do the same thing, and that's why God punishes them, doesn't explain why God punishes infants with their fathers before they grow up and can do anything right or wrong. Texts like Ezekiel 18, ironically, are talking about grown up children who depart from the behaviors of their fathers, and that is why they are not judged for what their fathers do. Your view has an unjust God and a contradictory and hypocritical Bible. Mine does not. That makes you a false teacher. I hope you repent of your false doctrine and slander, but I will no longer allow your rebellious ignorance to display itself on this blog. Any comments from you from now on will be deleted.
"Warn a divisive person once, and then warn them a second time. After that, have nothing to do with them." (Titus 3:10)
DeleteIf you really want to know the argument for infant salvation, I just posted a sermon I gave on it to the blog.
ReplyDelete