2011-04-28

Dreaded Questions about Baby Afterlife

A close friend of our family came back from long term missionary work in an orphanage full of infants and children younger than four.  He spoke often about how much he loved the children he worked with: "his" children.  He mentioned the behavior problems you find in an orphanage:  No matter how lovable a baby or toddler may be, they are capable of obvious, willful and spiteful misbehavior.  He took it as evidence for the Christian doctrine of Original Sin.

"Yep, babies go to Hell."

I asked him not to mention that to my wife.

Rave reviews abound[1] for new Christian feel-good book, Heaven Is for Real[2], about a boy who died, visited Heaven and returned to life -- with verifiable proof like encounters with unknown siblings who died by miscarriages formerly unrevealed by his parents.  My initial impression was that this book offered warm fuzzies to simple-minded Christians who believed in an afterlife[3].  After my wife and I experienced a miscarriage and supported several friends through their miscarriages and stillbirths, I toned-down my public criticism of the book to a simple "never mind, sounds good".  If the book offered hope and comfort to some, very well.

For those of us who need more than these anecdotes of purported afterlife conversations with fetal souls, can we be so sure our dead babies achieved peaceful rest in Heaven?  Not the kind of question to bring up in a moment of loss[4].  At those times some people try to comfort the bereaved with clumsy words.  The wisest say very little but remain nearby and available.  Many Christians jump right into the comfort we must have from knowing our babies are now safe with Jesus, in the gentle hands of God or of angels, or have become angels themselves[5].  No one really wants to consider any other possibility.

Who deserves Heaven more than an innocent baby, especially the unborn?

The hard edge replies:
  • the term "deserves" is overused these days
  • no one deserves Heaven
  • no one is innocent
  • all have sinned
  • the sins of Adam and Eve apply to every human upon conception
  • no one deserves salvation and scripture says the majority of people miss it
Saint Augustine said unbaptized infants went to Hell[6].  The Roman Catholic church developed the doctrine of Limbo just for babies:  Not Hell or Purgatory (no sins to punish or purge) -- but not Heaven. (The term "Limbo" means the edge of Hell.) Original Sin still separates its occupants from God. Calvin offers more hope if a soul's fate is fixed in advance without alternatives: A fetus ends up in its predestined[14] afterlife. Perhaps some of them (and some of us) will make it to Heaven.

The closest scripture related to babies dying is David's "I will go to him, but he will not return to me."[15]  The Old Testament afterlife, "paradise" or "bosom of Abraham", has important distinctions from the New Testament's Heaven (after Christ's death and resurrection).  Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man[16] indicates a clear gap between paradise and Hades/Hell/torment.  Still, if anyone had a good idea about the afterlife before Christ, it was David.  He doesn't expect to be separated from his child in the hereafter.  Does David's hope apply anymore?

The Bible also mentions an age of accountability[7].  The family's sacrifices and devotion cover your sin until you're old enough to do it yourself.  As husband, father, head of the household, responsible for the spiritual leadership of the family, what if I'm not living as faithfully as I should be?  Have I doomed my unborn dead to Hell by not being Christian enough, religious enough?  (This thought plagued me deeply for months[8][9].)

The Christian life is not about doing enough good things to earn our way into Heaven.  All the Old Testament references to an age of accountability have to do with temple sacrifices of living animals as payment for sins.  Now Christ has satisfied the demand for sacrifice; we need no other sacrifice.  Our sins are forgiven because of Jesus' work, not anything we do or did.

So we may be safe from worrying that our personal inadequacies have condemned our children to Hell.  Our motivation to demonstrate and share our faith with our children does not come from desperate fear that we may not be doing it perfectly.

We may have dismissed that fear but we have not yet answered the question:  Do babies go to Heaven?  The unborn are insulated from opportunity to misbehave.  They should have no sins to prevent their access to God except that Original Sin inherited with all human DNA.  We know Christ's sacrifice covers our sin without requiring our merit.  Instead of earning it, our salvation depends only on whether or not we accept it:  "What must I do to be saved?"  "Repent," that is, turn away from our sins.

The unborn cannot repent.  Even if they could they have nothing from which to repent except that Original Sin.  Yet there is no indication that anyone must repent of their Original Sin.  (We may turn away from it but we will never escape the human legacy of preferring sin.)  Seems reasonable to consider Christ's sacrifice adequate for covering Original Sin plus all repent-able sins-of-choice.  For the unborn, they have no choices and therefore no sins that are not already covered.  If coverage for Original Sin comes standard, so does Heaven for babies.  (Not satisfied?  Disagree?  See the notes for references to further theological discussions of Original Sin and alternate interpretations[10][11][12].)

This does not answer all questions.  What about before Christ?  What afterlife awaited babies then?  What about mental retardation in children and adults?  What about infants and toddlers who have choices but may not yet understand concepts like repentance?

Some of these questions (especially about the difference between Old and New Testament afterlives) require deeper coverage than I can offer here.  As for infants, toddlers and the mentally handicapped, they live on the border of our two cases:  Either they can consciously sin or not.  Either they can consciously repent or not.  We may not be able to tell at what point a soul is enabled to make eternal choices.  No harm presenting the fundamentals of faith and repentance as early and widely and indiscriminately as possible.

But in every case except the case of our own immortal soul, we cannot affect the eternal position of an expired life.  Fetus, infant, child, witless, we must trust God's justice and mercy with all.  Blanket condemnation seems unlikely based on scripture and reason.  Because of Jesus, we have the hope of Heaven for ourselves and others.  Based on everything we have so far considered, this is more than a simple, blind hope.  Praise God for that hope -- and for babies, for life no matter how long it lasts.

Feeling reassured that babies go to Heaven despite my skepticism of pop-Christian platitudes, I need two more clarifications:
  1. Reunions in Heaven will not be what we expect.  The point of Heaven will not be to run around looking for everyone we wanted to see again.  Our relationships with our own spouses will be dramatically different from their paramount significance on Earth.  So will our relationships with our children and all other close ties.  We have no reason to think that anyone will be hidden from us or that it will be a suffocating crowd we have to push through.  Perhaps everyone will be facing the same direction with all attention and activity focused away from ourselves and off each other, based on the glimpses we have in scripture.  All reunions will be happy incidental tangents yet somehow we will recognize people we knew -- and some people we never knew, never met, never even saw.  Which leads to the the second clarification.
  2. Babies will not look like babies in Heaven.  This disrupts those harmless emotional sentiments you hear at memorial services about how one deceased child is frolicking on the playgrounds of Heaven with another child.  There may be much play and joyous activity in Heaven but it is as likely to involve crayons and blocks as chess pieces or astrophysics riddles.  We have the strong promise of new life, including lucid minds and tangible, physical bodies:  Those bodies will not be frozen at the age we died.  That would be a bad deal for infants as well as the very old.  Eternity as a 4 millimeter zygote or 4 centimeter fetus?  Eternity as a bent, gnarled, rheumatic, wrinkly old centenarian with cataracts?  Thank God some ageless optimal bodily form awaits us[13].

We spent much time researching this for our own comfort and we hope it may comfort others. Throw in your insights as a comment if you have also researched it, especially if we have missed something. For those of you eager to get elbows-deep in theology, dig into the notes, below.




Notes:
[1]  One angry review:  http://fcbackroom.blogspot.com/2011/04/jesus-blue-eyed-jew.html

[2]  http://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Real-Little-Astounding-Story/dp/0849946158

[3]  Don't get me wrong.  I believe in an afterlife.  I don't believe in approaching such important topics with simple devotion to hollow or shallow stories.  If the Bible comes from God, we can trust it.  Some kid writes a book about what he saw while dead?  I'll take that with some salt.

[4]  Tips for comforting:

[5]  Another great example of pop-Christian platitudes, the Bible nowhere supports the idea that any human ever becomes an angel, afterlife or not, with reverent apologies to Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.

[6]  For more on Augustine's position, consider these starting points:
  • This article is full of useful references and its position is sternly against babies going to Heaven, concerning the consequences of abortion:
  • Its references:
    • The Soul and Its Origin, Patrologiae Latinae, Migne, 44:475
    • The Ecumenical Council of Florence (Denz. 693)
    • The Council of Lyons II (Denz. 464)
    • St. Augustine, Epistle to Jerome , Journel: 166
    • The Council of Trent in the Fifth Session, number Four
    • Explanation of Trent, Duffy Co., 1845, p.56
    • Abraham, Patrol. Lat. 14:500
    • Pope Zosimus at the Council of Carthage XVI, Canon 3, Denzinger , 30th edition, p.45, note 2
  • Another article full of citations insisting babies do not go to Heaven: "Unbaptized Infants Suffer Fire and Limbo is a Heretical Pelagian Fable", http://www.romancatholicism.org/jansenism/limbo-pelagianism.htm
  • Pope Benedict XVI is moving church doctrine towards babies going to Heaven instead of Limbo, according to "Vatican revises limbo view, hope for unbaptized babies", Associated Press, April 22, 2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-04-20-popelimbo_N.htm

[7]  Age of accountability:  http://www.gotquestions.org/age-of-accountability.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_age#Age_of_accountability

[8]  Take 1 Corinthians 7:14 out of context for a bunny trail into unnecessary guilt.

[9]  There is still the idea in the New Testament about when a father converts to faith in Jesus his whole family (and household of servants) also converted.  But the personal, individual responsibility to sincerely accept or reject it is well demonstrated:  We are children "born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will."  Among spouses, even in a patriarchy, wives were instructed to trust their God and savior whether or not their husbands did.

[10]  As for Calvinism and election, every soul has its eternal destination fixed by God's decision.  If that seems resigned, passive, fatalistic, or too liberal (or too conservative), consider that this possibility includes doctrine that grants no license to misbehave.  The choice-less, unborn or otherwise, are much more like the rest of us.  Although scripture clearly shows us responsible to choose, this doctrine points to other scripture indicating that eternal choices are predetermined.  This may be true but it may also be less comforting to the bereaved than other doctrines.  If hope seems more arbitrary -- a wild shot in the dark -- it is at least equally out of our control.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism

[11]  As for Universalism and the possibility of choices occurring after life that affect the afterlife, we know that every one must die and face judgement[17].  Perhaps this moment of judgement applies even to those who never had a choice in their mortal life.  Perhaps that is when the truly innocent embrace God's salvation and Heaven.  Perhaps that is when election takes effect:  No matter how good or bad you conducted your mortal life, God allows you to embrace Heaven or not.  What if this moment of judgement is not instantaneous upon death?  What if it only comes after all truth and every option is revealed so that no soul would choose Hell?  Considered heresy by many, this position offers a healthy question:  Does time matter during Eternity?  If viable, it also offers hope that no beloved relative will be missed in Heaven.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_salvation

[12]  Consider Wikipedia as a good resource for pointers to original source material.  Wikipedia intends to maintain a neutral point of view but allows global anonymous editing and can be considered an experiment in truth-by-consensus.  (If you don't like it, you can at least contribute to it.)  It includes diverse concepts from diverse religions.  When bias emerges in Wikipedia, it may not be theologically correct. A smaller resource called Conservapedia exists to counteract perceived liberal bias in Wikipedia with an alternate bias.  Please use critical thinking when considering either encyclopedias.

[13]  As for bodily damage carried over into the eternal body, perhaps only Jesus retains his scars.  I doubt those beheaded saints or those burned alive must adapt to an eternal body bearing those wounds.

[14]  Predestination is so popular that Wikipedia covers it twice:
  1. Predestination (in general)
  2. Predestination (specific to Calvinism)
Don't be fooled: They both have to do with Calvin. See also, Conservapedia, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Theopedia ("Biblical Christianity"), and the secular side (Thomas Paine, 1820).

[15]  2 Samuel 12:23

[16]  Luke 16:19-31 and some commentary on Wikipedia

[17] Hebrews 9:27 (I am not above nested footnotes. This note applies to note 11.)


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