Posted on 10/10/2004 4:38:20 PM PDT by Stubborn
The Second Vatican Council's reforms and the new theological challenges it posed placed the question of unbaptized babies on the back burner for most theologians, but many bishops around the world have asked the doctrinal congregation for guidance on the question.
First off, thats not what St. Peter says in my Bible - get yourself the Haydock Bible http://www.catholictreasures.com/cartdescrip/11050.html and hopefully you will no longer mis-interpret scripture.
What is the proof in your life that you were actually spiritually reborn? What is the evidence?
The proof is in Christ's command. Jesus calls Baptism, "being born again of water and the Holy Ghost." The evidence would be my baptismal certificate.
I wonder if it's possible that Our Lord allowed His Passion and death to suffice for all babies and children who would die without Baptism
Sure wish the church would declare what actually happens - with a clear declaration. Seems that with the millions of victims these days - which far surpass anything in history - the magisterium - or the pope, needs to now, more than ever, step up to the plate. I wonder why they have never done so.
IOW's you can't/won't read this for your self and question WHY the mention of water here means baptism. Baptism is never mentioned in the conversation with Nicodemus. The verse and after this verse that mentions water, speaks of the natural birth and the spiritural birth, no mention that baptism is being discussed, but that means nothing to you?
Becky
He saves repentant murderes here, on earth, if they repent. Infants do not have that opportunity nor do they need to repent - yet they are born with sin, the sin of Adam. Since death is the result of sin, if they were without sin, they would have never died in the first place.
Perhaps He can find room in heaven for unbaptised infants - perhaps He cannot. Do you believe that God allows those who have sin on their souls into heaven? We do not.
We believe there may be some middle place we call Limbo because while the unbaptised infants are not guilty of actual sin, they do have the sin of Adam on their soul. The *only* way to remove that particular sin, so far as has been revealed, is through Baptism that Christ commanded we all must have or no one gets into heaven - he did not leave a proviso for infants.
Baptism is as necessary as it says - unless you are baptised, you cannot enter into heaven - why do you question it as though it does not say what it says?
Because of the CONTEXT of the passage. The verse does NOT say born AGAIN of water and of spirit, it says born of water, and of spirit.
If the passage said born again of water etc. you might have a leg to stand on.
Born of water and of spirit in the context of the verses before and after tells us He is speaking of our 2 births, physical and spiritual.
Becky
God could save unbaptized infants, but He has not chosen to reveal to us that He will or does do this. But instead He has said strictly that Baptism is absolutely necessary for salvation. This would tend to lead one to believe that He does not do so.
As I mentioned, Limbo is a speculative theological venture first broached in the written record by a Greek Father, St. Gregory Nazianz, in his Oration on Baptism; not by a Latin.
Limbo, as developed from this original strain of thought by St. Thomas Aquinas, is in fact a very loving doctrine which takes into account both the mercy and justice of God, and the necessity of Baptismal grace for achieving the beatific vision. I would encourage you to read his entire article in the Summa here:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/600102.htm
A few short excerpts of the more important thoughts.
"... they will know perfectly things subject to natural knowledge, and both the fact of their being deprived of eternal life and the reason for this privation, and that nevertheless this knowledge will not cause any sorrow in them. ..."I say, then, that every man who has the use of free-will is adapted to obtain eternal life, because he can prepare himself for grace whereby to merit eternal life [Cf. I-II, 109, 5 and 6]; so that if he fail in this, his grief will be very great, since he has lost what he was able to possess. But children were never adapted to possess eternal life, since neither was this due to them by virtue of their natural principles, for it surpasses the entire faculty of nature, nor could they perform acts of their own whereby to obtain so great a good. Hence they will nowise grieve for being deprived of the divine vision; nay, rather will they rejoice for that they will have a large share of God's goodness and their own natural perfections. Nor can it be said that they were adapted to obtain eternal life, not indeed by their own action, but by the actions of others around them, since they could be baptized by others, like other children of the same condition who have been baptized and obtained eternal life: for this is of superabundant grace that one should be rewarded without any act of one's own. Wherefore the lack of such a grace will not cause sorrow in children who die without Baptism, any more than the lack of many graces accorded to others of the same condition makes a wise man to grieve. ...
"Although unbaptized children are separated from God as regards the union of glory, they are not utterly separated from Him: in fact they are united to Him by their share of natural goods, and so will also be able to rejoice in Him by their natural knowledge and love."
Throughout all of this, one must realize that there are not really seperate "places" of Heaven and Hell (which includes Limbo), but rather that these are seperate conditions of men after their judgement, all of whom continue to exist directly in the presence of God. Apocalypse 14.10 says the damned "shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb." And of the blessed Apocalypse 22.4 says "they shall see his face."
Basically, the damned are those who are unprepared to come face-to-face with the glory of God, and this glory meets them as a burning torment, while the just are those who are prepared, and they rejoice in the vision of His glory forever. The little children in Limbo would then be among the damned who cannot see the glory of God because they do not have the eyes of faith, yet they will not be tormented by this loss in any way, because they have no committed no sin, instead God will share His goodness with them as far as they are able naturally to comprehend and enjoy.
What scripture do you base this on?
Becky
All I can tell you is you are reading the wrong Bible.
John 3:5
Would you please type out the way your bible words this verse?
Thanks.
Becky
Ok, I looked the verse up myself in the Catholic Bible, and your version does say "born again".
As I do not want to get into translations, we will just have to leave the discussion here.
Becky
If that is the case, what need did we have for Jesus Christ?
Is not in your Church Jesus the Christ called the "lamb of God" because He took the place of the sacrifice of the lambs? Why did mankind need the lambs or the perfect sacrifice of Jesus if not to appease a God that was angry at us? So much for Gods infinite love.
And did not Jesus tell us that we must be born again with water and the Spirit? So there were conditions attached with His saving Grace.
Why have conditions if there are no consequences? What would be the consequence of not being born again of water, as we were instructed? Well, we couldn't enter Heaven, just as Jesus said. We are only taking Him at His word.
But if we can't enter Heaven, what to do with those who never sinned? If there is no Limbo, then there is only one other possibility.
So while it's possible there is no Limbo, wouldn't we at least feel better thinkng there is one? The concept should at least be understandable, even if you don't believe it.
Luckily it does not matter what you and I believe, and our understanding does not affect God's decisions.
Thit is a thoroughly Western view of God that we don't share with you.
And did not Jesus tell us that we must be born again with water and the Spirit? So there were conditions attached with His saving Grace
Isn't the most current Catholic teaching that Jesus came to save all, not just many? I can't keep up. I am not sure what the Catholics teach these days. You are saying, He will save only those who are baptized, yet I am sure the Catholic Church somewhere along the line changed its teaching to imply that Jesus came to save all (although that's not what the NT says).
Again, speculating what, where and how, is what Orthodoxy leaves alone. Mysteries of God are not ours to solve, or to "figure out." The Bible says that God's mercy will triumph over judgment.
Some have used a biblical quote:
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5)
But I say it says "man" not child. I would interpret that as meaning that a man has already sinned and baptism is washing away his sins because baptism comes with the belief and the porfession of such a belief. I don't see any hints that children are condemned.
"Again, speculating what, where and how, is what Orthodoxy leaves alone. Mysteries of God are not ours to solve, or to "figure out." The Bible says that God's mercy will triumph over judgment.
Some have used a biblical quote:
Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5)
But I say it says "man" not child. I would interpret that as meaning that a man has already sinned and baptism is washing away his sins because baptism comes with the belief and the porfession of such a belief. I don't see any hints that children are condemned."
Catholicism is expansive enough to include kosta50's position. I am a Catholic, and have never believed anything other than what kosta50 wrote, although I never delved too far into the details of "Man" vs. "child" because the baptism business in the Bible is obviously contradictory and needs interpretation. Enoch was never baptized, but he was assumed bodily into Heaven. Ditto for Elijah. The Bible says Job was sinless, and so were the parents of John the Baptist...then Paul says that none are without sin. Which is it?
The first five or six sentences of Genesis contradict each other in the logical sense, giving anyone penetrating the Bible a fair warning from the first paragraph that this book cannot be read like a forensic report on the workings of God.
The Bible contradicts, and we need an interpreter.
Or rather, Jesus didn't leave a Bible at all: he left a Church. What the Church dispenses in the sacraments are what is from God. Communion is essential to salvation, the Bible is irrelevant. Yes, I said irrelevant. 90% of the first millennium and a half of Christians were illiterate and could not read the Bible if they wanted to. It made no difference. Our religion is not based on the Bible, it is based on what Jesus revealed to the Apostles, and what they taught their followers. The Bible is an interesting adjunct, a "Church book" that gives illuminating stories. If it didn't exist, nothing essential would be lost. The Sacraments are what God instituted. They are what is essential. The Bible was written by men, it is interesting and instructive, but optional.
That said, balling myself into a knot over the whys and wherefores of a Bible that contradicts itself on its face, and trying to hammer a perfect logic out of that which is not perfectly logical, seems an unprofitable exercise. Why? Because it confuses, and gets Christians who should be sharing the gifts that God directly revealed: the Sacraments, riled up at each other and fighting over things we can't figure out anyway.
What happens to aborted babies and babies who die without baptism? I don't know, and neither does anybody else. Certainly the Church seeing fit to "proclaim" a solution will NOT help, unless the Church is willing to present saints who have had direct divine revelation of the answer.
I ASSUME that the loving God I worship takes care of them all, and that they are fine. I ASSUME that "No one gets to the Father except through me" does not mean that we have to hack a hole in the corpse of Jesus, but rather that Jesus makes the decision. I ASSUME that pouring water on somebody's head and mouthing a religious spell doesn't do anything other than invite Jesus to come and put a certain "seal" on that spirit, and that Jesus can seal spirits in exactly the same way if he chooses to even if we do not. I assume that baptism is what MAN can do to reach out to God, but that God is perfectly capable of reaching out to men who can't reach out to Him for various reasons, including being babies in utero, and that God reaches out to them and takes them to Himself. I assume that whatever Baptism does, God was doing to men, women and children before Jesus physically walked the Earth, because Jesus was God doing just that. I assume that Jesus' physical appearance on Earth was to give the sacraments so that men would have a fixed, certain way to reach out to God which was pleasing to God. I assume that Jesus left sacraments but not a Bible because he knew that the sacraments are fundamental to God, while the Bible is not. And therefore, I assume that wherever arguments mustered from the Bible lead away from the obvious center of a loving God who interacts with us directly through the sacraments, those arguments are wrong.
That leaves much in mystery. I don't think there is any harm in probing the mysteries, if it is done with a gentle mind. If it is done with a mind that presumes to have all the answers, when we manifestly do not, I think that the exercise itself indulges the sin of presumptuous pride, and wakens the sin of wrath when others don't buy our interpretations.
For my part, I assume babies go to heaven because God is a loving God, and whatever baptism invites God to do, God does sua sponte. I assume that folks who think otherwise give greater authority to the Bible than to the sacraments or the teaching authority of the Church, but of course the Bible has no authority whatsoever other than what the Church gave to it by creating it in the first place.
***I don't see any hints that children are condemned.***
Good point. I don't see anything in Scripture that indicates children are in regected by God.
Although there is this...
"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;"
Regarding "Limbo"...
"Beware that you don't despise a single one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels are always in the presence of my heavenly Father."
RCC theology would say that children's angels may see God, but they themselves never will.
"RCC theology would say that children's angels may see God, but they themselves never will."
Well, no, really RCC theology doesn't say that.
Some Roman Catholics say that.
What the catechism says is that the Church has faith that a loving God provides for these infants.
In other words: we don't know, but given what we believe about our loving Father in Heaven, we don't doubt that He gives his love to these little ones.
That's as far as the catechism goes, and it's as far as anyone reasonably should go...unless he has a passionate urge for religious creative writing, in which case he can basically make up whatever ending he wants. The only thing is, that answer won't be formal Catholic theology.
Catholic theology is: we don't know.
Catholic faith is: God is good, so these babies are probably in heaven.
And then there are those who prefer to dwell on darkness and ashes. Since we don't know, of course they can. But they'd be better off if they had a better opinion of God.
You've nailed it.
It's amazing how truly Biblical is the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
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