You have put your finger on the deep contradiction that envelopes the Calvinist construct. If there is "only the one way to God", then what is it?
If it is somehow synergistic and faith is an essential element pof it, then my whole argument for saving the infants falls apart as does the hope of any infant of being saved.
Indeed if faith is a necessary ingredient of salvation, then you cannot escape it being synergistic. But if salvation is monergistic, as you Calvinists claim, then the "only one way to God" is not by faith but by election and what follows election is entirely God's responsibility and whatever faith is put into the elect's heart or mind by God following election is a "saving faith" even if it is no faith at all!
So what is it? Is it all of God and none of man? If so, then Faith and works and everything that follows election is just window dressing and the elect is saved not by anything that follows election but by the election itself.
And who is to say that the infant or the Nepalese peasant or anyone else God so chooses to be numbered among the elect is not saved, regardless of any outward expression of objective or even subjective faith in Christ. For all we know saving faith to those who die without Christ is imparted monergistically during the five minutes when the oxygen stops flowing through the veins and the brain shuts down.
So what is it? Is God wholly responsible for those he saves or do men actually have to do something to secure their election.
God created this world knowing who would be saved and who would be lost. He did not have to create this world. His act of doing so "locked in place" those saved and those lost before they were even born.
In that life God foresaw them live, He offered everyone Christ and some received while others resisted. This past Christmas when I received a box of chocolate cherries (a favorite of mine) I was sure to explain to the gifter how hard I worked setting up the conditions so that I would get offered those cherries and then ceremonially accept them. I don't think so. Receiving a gift is passive.
“You have put your finger on the deep contradiction that envelopes the Calvinist construct.”
I don’t think the contradiction is in the Calvinist construct. Romans 5 says all have sinned in Adam, the federal head. That includes the unborn and the infant. That imputed sin and the alienation (spiritual death) it caused was atoned for at the cross. By God’s grace through faith that righteousness of Jesus is imputed to man. The verses I cited (Psa 22:9-10, Psa 139:13-16, Isa. 49:1,5, Jer. 1:5,)state that God knew us and called us before we were born. Psa. 103:14, “For he knoweth our frame”. Before we were born He knew what we would do. Death is no hinderance to the plan and purposes of God. It is just the vehicle that He uses to call His own home, earlier or later. The reason and the effects flowing from His homecalling plan have wider ramifications than just for deceased.
What difference does it make if God foreknew before the foundation of the world that one would live to be 70 or 80 and not believe or if He knew that the unborn or the infant would not believe at any time in this life? Their condemnation is not dependant on their committed sins. They were adjudged guilty in Adam. God knows what they would have done had they lived.
Rev. 17:8 says that the names were written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, so God knows those that are His from the foundation of the world.
Not to mince words but you are not saved by faith. You are saved by grace through faith. Grace is the reason you are saved. Faith is the mode of imparting grace and for grace to happen, faith must be given. Faith comes from hearing...