For those who are unaware, Mr. Pennock is a self-professed anti-Calvinist. According to his blogger profile, his favorite literature includes, "
I also find it a bit humorous that he says in one of his articles that on the one hand Calvinists can't live in peace with others, but on the other hand, nearly his entire blog is a demonstration that he cannot live in peace with Calvinists. This sort of thing is the reason Strange Baptist Fire was created.
Before continuing a couple of observations.
1. Steve has written on this here.
2. I have built on that here.
3. Nathan White has written on it here.
4. Turretinfan has written on it here.
So, I'll refrain from addressing the details and leave it to readers to do their homework. No sense in reinventing the wheel.
5. I can't help but notice that Mr. Pennock, like so many of his kind, is long on attack and short on providing an exegetical foundation for his own point-of-view. In fact, this is just another ethical objection. A pastor friend of mine who once taught @ SWBTS told me a long time ago that the truth of the matter was that there are really no substantiative exegetical objects to the doctrines of grace. Rather, they are ethical.
So, without further adieu, Mr. Pennock writes:
By way of reply:
Is this the nuttiness to which sovereign, secret, unconditional election leads, that is, infant damnation? "God so ordains by his council and his will that some among men should be born devoted to certain death from the womb, to glorify his name by their destruction" (Inst. lib. 3, 23, 6).
This quote comes as part of a discussion rejecting those who attribute the reprobation of men merely to the prescience of their evil acts, but Calvin is very clear that men's sin and sinful nature arises not from God, but from man. That's his point - prescience is only a partial answer to this question.
Which gets us to an obvious flaw in your argument. Since, according to the view you hold, the faith of men upon which their election is conditioned is infallibly foreknown, and since this election is said to be "before the foundation of the world," how, pray tell, is your position stronger?
You're leveling, after all, an ethical objection to this concept, so, one would think that this would mean you believe that you hold a superior moral ground. How so? God is still creating men (and deciding to create them before they are ever created) knowing full well that they will never believe and that they will sin. Indeed, they will commit many heinous ones if allowed to come to full flower. They are certainly damned "from the womb" upon your own view, since God has infallible foreknowledge of the future, yet God creates them anyway, and they are infallibly known to be damned.
One thinks that you must believe that God is somehow not morally responsible for the reprobation of men according to your way of thinking regarding the basis of it. However, since your view entails libertarian freedom, and the standard definitions of libertarianism coming from your side of the aisle reduce to uncaused choices, you are in no position to know why one person sins and not another, much less exercises saving faith, and absent a motive, you are in no position to ascribe blame to their actions. So much for divine justice. By the way, you seem to be confounding the difference between reprobation and condemnation.
Or is your objection to the possibility that infants who die in infancy might be viewed as hellbound. Do you believe that men are born in a state of complete innocence? Do you deny the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity? If so, where are the supporting arguments for both? We should let the Bible determine what is a proper moral argument.
How is Calvin the spokesman for the whole Reformed tradition? According to Warfield there are @ least 4 views on this subject.
I would also add that according to Boettner:
It is sometimes charged that Calvin taught the actual damnation of some of those who die in infancy. A careful examination of his writings, however, does not bear out that charge. He explicitly taught that some of the elect die in infancy and that they are saved as infants. He also taught that there were reprobate infants; for he held that reprobation as well as election was eternal, and that the non-elect come into this life reprobate. But nowhere did he teach that the reprobate die and are lost as infants. He of course rejected the Pelagian view which denied original sin and grounded the salvation of those who die in infancy on their supposed innocence and sinlessness. Calvin's views in this respect have been quite thoroughly investigated by Dr. R. A. Webb and his findings are summarized in the following paragraph: "Calvin teaches that all the reprobate 'procure' -- (that is his own word) -- 'procure' their own destruction; and they procure their destruction by their own personal and conscious acts of
such must live to the age of moral accountability, and translate original sin into actual sin.''
In none of Calvin's writings does he say, either directly or by good and necessary inference, that any dying in infancy are lost. Most of the passages which are brought forth by opponents to prove this point are merely assertions of his well known doctrine of original sin, in which he taught the universal guilt and depravity of the entire race. Most of these are from highly controversial sections where he is discussing other doctrines and where he speaks unguardedly; but when taken in their context the meaning is not often in doubt. Calvin simply says of all infants what David specifically said of himself: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me," Ps. 51:5; or what Paul said, "In Adam all die," 1Cor. 15:22; or again. that all are "by nature, the children of wrath," Eph. 2:3. (Reformed Doctrine of Predestination Section 11. of chapter XI. (pages 143-148) Unconditional Election, and is subtitled, Infant Salvation).
I take it you disagree with Dr. Webb, whom Boettner quotes. I look forward to your detailed examination of Webb's work. At the very least, then, even if Webb was wrong about Calvin, then what does this show? It shows one of four views is held by Calvinists.
Let’s go back to the specter of babies burning in hell.
i) Of course, much of what makes this mental image repellent is just that—the colorful imagery. But let’s not mistake Dante for whatever hell is really like. What we’re literally talking about is the state of the soul—whether a younger or older soul, which--at the general resurrection--will be reunited with a body.Does anybody else recognize Mr. Pennock's overall argument? It bears a striking resemblance to atheism's argument against hell itself. In fact, a universalist can make the same claims about Mr. Pennock's construal of the argument as applied to anybody. If he wishes to argue from which is more loving, for example, then, by Mr. Pennock's own logic, the universalist is in a stronger position, and therefore is to be preferred. Isn't it rather odd that when the problem of evil comes up, far too many times we see non-Calvinists conceding it, and in fact, when issues like this come up, they take the side of the atheist?
ii) Is the age you die at the age you remain? If you die at 90, are you still 90 in heaven?
In heaven, wouldn’t you, in a sense, age up, age down, or both? You would age down in the sense that if you were past your prime when you died, you’d then revert to an optimal time of life—both mentally (in the intermediate state) and physically (in the final state). But you’d also continue to mature—in that same ageless and youthful state—to mature intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
iii) The same with those who go to hell. Suppose that some of the great bloodletters of history like Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Attila and Harry Blackmum and Genghis Khan had died in childhood, died before they murdered their millions. And suppose they went to hell.
Should we really visualize them as cute, curly-haired, cherubic babies in hell—50 years later, a 100 years later? Or should be visualize them as what they became, and worse—far worse. In fact, if you put anyone in hell, without the preservative of common grace, much less saving grace, they’ll all turn into a Hitler or Blackmun or Stalin—a super-duper Hitler or Blackmun or Stalin.
What you have here is a natural evolution of sin, from seed to full flower. It is not a little angel turning into devil, but a little devil turning into a bigger devil.
iv) And when we debate the merits of universal infant salvation, not only are we forming a mental image of babies in heaven or hell, but we’re tacitly projecting our mental image onto the mind of God, as if he is visualizing the very same spectacle.
But does God see a baby as a baby, as only a baby? According to Ps 139:16, God sees a baby as a storybook character in a novel that he himself has written. His entire life and afterlife is present to the mind of God—present because he penned every single page.
What is more—God has a number of unpublished manuscripts as well. Books that never went to press. Books he’s written with alternative endings (cf. 1 Sam 23:11-12; Mt 11:21-23).
The point is not that God chooses according to what’s in the book. The point, rather, is that what’s in the book is according to God’s choosing.
Moreover, when we see a baby or a little child, that is literally all we see. We don’t see the soul. But God sees the invisible soul. Not only does he see the future, but he sees an delitescent dimension of the present. Parts of his book are written in invisible ink—legible to his eyes alone.
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