It
is unsurprising to see Evangelicals at the forefront of the opposition to New
York State’s recent law loosening restrictions on child murder within her
borders (as well as similar proposed laws springing up in Virginia, Vermont,
etc.). After all, they have been amongst
the most active in trying to foster a culture of life in all the States since Roe v. Wade. And for that they are to be commended.
Furthermore,
their assertion, together with conservative Roman Catholics’, that callousness
towards the unborn is a sign that the States are living within a post-Christian
phase of their history is certainly true.
What is not going to be so obvious to them, however, is that Western
Europe and all her children the world over entered into post-Christianity not
46 years ago with Roe, nor 56 years
ago with Abington Township School
District v. Schempp (which removed Bible reading from public schools), but
nearly 1,000 years ago when the West was torn away from the apostolic faith of
the Orthodox Church by the Bishop of Rome (1054 A.D., the Great Schism). And, strikingly, it is precisely in the
teachings about children and salvation of both the Roman Catholic and
Protestant sects that emerged from this schism that proves that point (thanks
to Jay Dyer for mentioning their teachings in one of his lectures, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZCgJOjHTzs).
The
Roman Catholic teaching has developed this way:
In response to Pelagius
(d. 425), who taught that the heresy that baptism is not necessary for
salvation (called Pelagianism), St. Augustine (d. 430) contended that
unbaptized children who die are condemned to hell. They do not suffer all its
pains because they are not guilty of personal
sin, but because baptism is necessary for salvation, they will not
enter heaven.
In the 14th century, the
poet Dante described limbo as the "first circle of hell" in The
Divine Comedy, where such souls were not punished but grieved for their
separation from God.
Later, theologians
surmised that the "limbo of infants" was a state where they were
deprived of the vision of God, but did not suffer because they did not know
what they were deprived of.
--Nick Pisa, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1549439/The-Pope-ends-state-of-limbo-after-800-years.html
Today,
the official Roman Catholic position seems to have become a murky sort of
optimism - ‘We hope the babies will be okay’:
The Church does not accept
or officially condemn the theory of Limbo because it is a theological theory.
Theological theories usually don’t result in official responses by the Church
unless it becomes clear that these theories are either excellent ways of
explaining doctrine or that they explicitly go against such doctrine. The
Church may also reject some theories as heretical if it becomes clear that they
are not in accord with the truth found in Scripture and
Tradition.
The theory of Limbo is not
heretical because Scripture and Tradition do
not explicitly say what happens to unbaptized babies. However, due to the
problems with the theory of Limbo, this theory plays almost no role in current
Catholic theology. Instead, modern theology and church practice stress the
fundamental solidarity of redeemed humanity and God’s will that all may be
saved.
The
Protestant attitude toward children is not much better. John Calvin’s system of the total depravity
of human nature and double predestination, in which God before the creation of
the world assigns some men to Heaven and some to Hell irrespective of their
actions, implies that it is possible for babies to be sent to Hell. And this is indeed what one finds among some
Protestants:
The Westminster Confession
of Faith uses very precise wording on this matter: "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" (WCF 10.3). Note, however that the WCF does not say that
"all" infants dying in infancy are regenerated, but that the Holy
Spirit works as he pleases in elect infants (cf. Luke 18:15-16; 1:39-44)
and those "who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of
the Word."
--Dr Joseph R. Nally, Jr, http://reformedanswers.org/answer.asp/file/40610
Dr
Joseph P. Farrell makes a controversial statement on the modern Evangelical
teaching about salvation, but it needs to be stated nevertheless. He writes,
But the
most obvious, and yet, unappreciated fact of the American Baptist culture is
its link between “believer’s baptism”, a kind of spiritual abortion, and the
actual practice of abortion, the murder of the unborn itself. With this, the
moral confusion and persisting (nay, galloping) theological illiteracy
of the American version of the religion of the Second Europe is evident:
The
greatest damage to the home of Baptist theology has been the change it brought
in the status of children. The exclusion of children from the covenant
completely alters how they are approached. One, since they are outside the
church they should not be prayed with. John Bunyan is an example of one who
pressed his theology to consistency at this point. Second, they should be
preached to as lost. Thus the child is pressed to have an experience. Jesus
said that the standard of faith was that of a little child (Luke 18:15-17). The
Baptist makes it the opposite. The child must become like the adult. 1117
The moral
inconsistency of the position of most American evangelists on this point does
not even seem phase them, perhaps because of the confusion within their ranks
over baptism itself. The insistence upon a mentalist “conversion experience”
deepened what was already in evidence long before within the Second Europe, the
division of the physical and spiritual dimensions of a sacrament in a kind of
“sacramental Nestorianism”. Thus, for the “traditional” Baptist, the water of
Baptism and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit are separate, the former being
administered only after the “decision” for Christ is made, which constitutes
the latter.
--God, History, and Dialectic, Volume
3, pgs. 622-3, from the e-version available at https://godhistorydialectic.wordpress.com/read-this-first/
Both
Roman Catholics and Protestants, despite their good works to end physical
abortion, are nonetheless guilty of great spiritual violence towards
children. It is not so surprising, then,
that abortion has been able to rise to the proportions that it has in the
post-Orthodox West.
. . .
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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