Do babies who die go to heaven?

Some think they need to be baptized to get their ticket punched.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jun 5 2006, 03:34 PM) [snapback]266283[/snapback]</div>

I think baptism stops that from happening. Baptize an infant and if the poor kid dies before learning to speak god will admit the soul to heaven. But it wears off, so that if the kid survives into teenage years without anything further happening (another baptism, getting "reborn" or some other ritual, depending on sect and regional location), the kid's life is positively saturated with sin and courts dire peril, often with the parents' unwitting "blessing" (the frequency and intensity of the phrase "damn you!" hurled at teenagers by their parents is 4,623% the societal "norm").

Thus, to be on the safe side, one should bathe (or be bathed) daily from infancy.

One has to wonder what heaven DOES with all the infants that did get baptized and then perished early: can you imagine having to live an eternity midst squalling infants who will never grow up? Perhaps they get warehoused off somewhere, some remote cloud where their unceasing clamor and needing a diaper change doesn't intrude on the other residents. But SOMEBODY would have to look after them, and would such caretakers consider themselves as "being in heaven?"

And how would a human soul forever arrested at age fourteen months and a half ever recognize, let alone appreciate, its "reward?"

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Jun 5 2006, 08:55 PM) [snapback]266346[/snapback]</div>

Just another take on the subject, Jesus says that "unless you become as a child, you cannot enter heaven". Well, an infant can't help being like a child, that's what it is. The heavenly body one gets in heaven is perfect, no diaper changes necessary.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Jun 5 2006, 03:34 PM) [snapback]266283[/snapback]</div>

I know its fun to mock people different from you, but really ... do you think the theologians of the major denominations haven't carefully thought this through? The question itself shows a profound lack of understanding of one of the world's major religions. If you had asked a similar question about Jewish or Islamic belief, the liberals on here would be chiding you for your insensitivity, narrow mindedness and ignorance. I'll take it as an honest question, even though I suspect its just a way to provoke people.

But to answer the question: Most theologians hold to an "age of accountability", and before that age, children that die go to heaven. There will be variations on that theme, with some advocating infant water baptism, but none that I know of requiring that for ultimate salvation. Some pastors will leave the question open because, first and foremost, Christianity is a religion that requires its adherents to work out issues by study and thought.

Now the focus of your sarcasm must be the conservative Christians you may view as numbskulls, and not the entire Christian community. Here's a link for a prominent conservative Christian, Pastor John F. MacArthur, president of Master's College, and his sermon on that very concern: http://www.ondoctrine.com/2mac0142.htm I would consider his view typical of the views espoused by fundamentalist Christians and their cousins, the evangelicals. I am not a fan of MacArthur's, and won't defend all of his theology, but that isn't the point ... if you are serious about understanding how Christians think on this issue, his sermon is a good place to start.

What you'll notice in the sermon is that there is a liberal amount of an appeal to logic and reason. MacArthur brings in some statistics regarding unsuccessful pregnancies (he believes that life begins at conception), and the impact the loss of even an unborn but full term child has on the family. MacArthur uses the phrase "we can conclude", provides examples and gives his interpetation of them. This is the appeal to logic and reason that is part and parcel of daily Christian life, no matter what the media or your activist-atheist philosophy teacher has told you.

 

fshagan,

I think it's admirable that you didn't respond with anger/hate... you responded with calm and logic rather than lead the thread into chaos (at least in this thread ).

 

am i to believe that god cannot understand babyspeak??

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(huskers @ Jun 5 2006, 05:35 PM) [snapback]266335[/snapback]</div>

Our minister sometimes refers to it as "fire insurance."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Jun 6 2006, 01:24 AM) [snapback]266509[/snapback]</div>

No, but he/she/it understands sign language.

By the way, has no one heard of limbo? Any Catholics out there?

Limbo

1. a. A region supposed to exist on the border of Hell as the abode of the just who died before Christ's coming, and of unbaptized infants.
More explicitly limbo patrum, limbo infantum or of the infants: see LIMBUS.

13.. St. Erkenwolde 291 in Horstm. Altengl. Leg. (1881) 272 Quene ou herghedes helle-hole & hentes hom er-oute,..oute of limbo, ou laftes me er. [1377 LANGL. P. Pl. B. XVI. 84 The deuel..Bar hem forth boldely..And made of holy men his horde in lymbo inferni.] c1450 Mirour Saluacioun 198 How crist entred hell To glad our haly fadres in Lymbo as clerkes tell. c1460 Towneley Myst. xxv. 96 Thise lurdans that in lymbo dwell. Ibid. 213 Lymbo is lorne, alas! 1483 CAXTON G. de la Tour Dvjb, After her deth she [Eve]..fylle in a derke and obscure pryson..that was the lymbo of helle. 1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 53b, After theyr deth they went to lymbo patrum a place of derkenes nye to hell. 1528 TINDALE Obed. Chr. Man To Rdr. 19 Of what texte thou provest hell, will a nother prove purgatory, a nother lymbo patrum. 1605 HEYWOOD Troub. Q. Eliz. Wks. 1874 I. 221, I am freed from limbo, to be sent to hell. a1658 CLEVELAND Wks. (1687) 81 'Tis a just Idea of a Limbo of the Infants. 1749 WESLEY Wks. (1872) X. 101 In what condition were they [the Old Testament Saints] while thus detained in limbo? 1818 MOORE Fudge Fam. Paris 57 Souls in Limbo, damn'd half way. 1857-8 SEARS Athan. xviii. 163 If a spiritual body is desirable at all, why are the saints kept waiting for it in limbo?
b. in extended use (see quots.).

1643 SIR T. BROWNE Relig. Med. I. §54 Methinks amongst those many subdivisions of Hell, there might have been one Limbo left for these. 1667 MILTON P.L. III. 495 All these upwhirld aloft Fly o're the backside of the World farr off Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld The Paradise of Fools. 1712 ADDISON Spect. No. 297 7 The Picture which he [Milton] draws of the Limbo of Vanity. 1851 CARLYLE Sterling III. i. (1872) 163 As yet my books are lying as ghost books, in a limbo on the banks of a certain Bristolian Styx.
c. used gen. for: Hell, Hades. Obs.

1581 T. HOWELL Devises Diijb, And let my Ghost in Lymbo lowe be led, To Tantals thyrst, or prowde Ixions wheele. 1582 STANYHURST Æneis II. (Arb.) 56 And with hoat assalting too Limbo we plunged a number [L. multos demittimus Orco]. 1612 Proceedings of Virginia v. 30 in Capt. Smith's Wks. (Arb.) 111 These vninhabited Iles; which (for the extremitie of gusts, thunder, raine, stormes, and il weather) we called Limbo. 1634 W. TIRWHYT tr. Balzac's Lett. 270 She hath filled Limbo with her paricidiall leachery. a1637 B. JONSON Baccanall Tri. 50 in T. Morton New Eng. Canaan (1637) 147 Minos, Eacus and Radamand, Princes of Limbo.
2. transf. and fig. a. Prison, confinement, durance; also, pawn. slang.

1590 GREENE Neuer too Late (1600) 56 If coyne want, then eyther to Limbo, or else clap vp a commodity. 1590 SHAKES. Com. Err. IV. ii. 32. 1613 etc. Hen. VIII, V. iv. 67, I haue some of 'em in Limbo Patrum. 1649 EVELYN Mem. (1857) III. 51 So that John is now faster in Limbo than Ever. 1664 BUTLER Hud. II. i. 100 On she went, To find the Knight in Limbo pent. 1687 CONGREVE Old Bach. II. i, I let him have all my ready Mony to redeem his great Sword from Limbo. 1798 BERESFORD in Ld. Auckland's Corr. (1862) III. 441-2 We have colonels and lieutenant~colonels, and majors and captains enough in limbo. 1843 CARLYLE Past & Pr. II. viii, Monks..must not speak too loud, under penalty of foot-gyves, limbo, and bread and water. 1849 COBDEN Speeches 84 Men of bad character, who have been put into limbo, or flogged. 1881 BESANT & RICE Chapl. of Fleet I. x. (1883) 79 There were, besides the residents.., poets not yet in limbo.
b. Any unfavourable place or condition, likened to Limbo; esp. a condition of neglect or oblivion to which persons or things are consigned when regarded as outworn, useless, or absurd.

1642 MILTON Apol. Smect. Wks. 1851 III. 275, I am met with a whole ging of words and phrases not mine, for he hath..mangl'd them in this his wicked Limbo. 1728 POPE Dunc. I. 238 O! pass more innocent, in infant state, To the mild Limbo of our Father Tate. 1828 MOORE (title) Limbo of Lost Reputations. 1866 J. MARTINEAU Ess. I. 60 Comte..dismisses religion into limbo. 1874 MOTLEY Barneveld II. xiii. 89 To send the Golden Bull itself to the limbo of worn out constitutional devices. 1894 J. KNIGHT Garrick ix. 164 The piece..ran for eleven nights before descending into the limbo of oblivion.
c. A type of anti-submarine mortar. Also attrib. or as adj.

1955 Times 20 June 4/6 The frigate Grenville fired live projectiles from her Limbo anti-submarine weapon. Ibid., The Limbo..is a multi-barrelled mortar of large calibre, linked automatically with a submarine detector of advanced design. 1956 Jane's Fighting Ships 1956-57 240/2 Have some side armour as well as deck protection; limbo type anti-submarine rocket throwers. 1957 Jane's Fighting Ships 1957-58 42/1 The two Limbos can each fire a pattern of large depth bombs with great accuracy. 1961 T. D. MANNING Brit. Destroyer 24 The Squid has been improved on by Limbo which..is not fitted in destroyers but only in frigates.
3. attrib., as limbo-dungeon; limbo-like adj.; limbo-lake, the ‘pit’ of Hell (cf. LAKE n.4 3).

1555-8 T. PHAER Æneid III. Givb, For Cyrces yle must furst be seen, and lands of Lymbo lake [L. infernique lacus]. 1590 SPENSER F.Q. I. ii. 32 What voice of damned Ghost from Limbo lake. 1696 TOLAND Christianity not Myst. 27 They should not say they are in Limbo-Dungeon. 1748 THOMSON Cast. Indol. 458 His father's ghost from limbo~lake, the while, Sees this. 1820 SCOTT Abbot xvi, From haunted spring and grassy ring, Troop goblin, elf, and fairy;..To Limbo-lake, Their way they take. 1848 GEO. ELIOT in Cross Life (1885) I. 179, I am even now..in a very shattered, limbo-like mental condition.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Jun 6 2006, 01:12 AM) [snapback]266504[/snapback]</div>

I am curious as to what the consensus (if there is one) among Christians as to what this "age of accountability" might be. There has been a lot of controversy in our legal system as to what is the minimum age that a person must be in order to be tried and held accountable for a crime. I would think, from a Christian point of view, that someone who is younger than this "age of accountability" and hence not held accountable for sins should similarly not be held accountable by the legal system. Would you say that they are analogous?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(larkinmj @ Jun 6 2006, 10:30 AM) [snapback]266616[/snapback]</div>

I don't think there is a consensus, but the Jews and Catholics set the age at 13, if I am correct. I must say that theology ranks slightly below synchronized swimming in my priorities.

 

Obviously, different religions have different views. For some unexplained reason (maybe because I lived in Mexico for a while) I happen to know the Catholic Church's dogma on this:

Babies who die without having been baptized go to limbo. No pleasure, no pain. This is the same place that "virtuous pagans" go.

Babies who have been baptized go to heaven.

Since (according to Catholics) a soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception, a miscarriage must also be baptized, or it will go to limbo instead of heaven. In past times, priests charged a fee for performing the sacraments. (I don't know present-day policy on fees.) Since the fee for a baptism was typically half a Mexican campesino's yearly disposable income, and the campesinos were mostly good, and superstitious, Catholics, they typically borrowed money from the local landowner to pay the priest for baptisms, and other sacraments. (A miscarriage required a double fee; the baptism and the burial.) These church fees, rather than the actual cost of living, were the principal root of "debt slavery," the condition where a free campesino could not leave his employer because he owed more money than he could ever pay back. And before the Mexican revolution, debts were inherited, so generations of campesinos were de facto slaves.

Some Protestants do not share the Catholic belief that unbaptized babies cannot get in to heaven, and some do not baptize children at all. The Anabaptists (of which I think the Baptists, Mennonites, and Amish are sub-groups) only baptize people who are considered old enough to make a personal choice to be baptized. Presumably, all these groups would believe that any baby who dies gets into heaven.

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster believes that everyone gets into heaven, and only the really really nasty people get stuck with the most undesirable jobs there.

Universalists also believe that everyone gets into heaven. Universalism cropped up very early in Christian history, by the reasoning that a loving god would not send anyone to hell. This was labelled as the Originistic Heresy (after its principal proponent, a guy named Origin) and its proponents were killed by other Christians. The American Universalist Church merged with the American Unitarian Church to form the Unitarian Universalist Association in the 1960's and permits its members to believe pretty much whatever they like, so the UU has no dogma about who gets to heaven, or even whether or not there is a heaven. Lots of atheists belong to the UU. But UU's are generally pretty liberal, so I'm sure that any UU who actually believes in heaven would say that babies all get into heaven, though not all UU's subscribe to the Universalist belief which is one of the historical roots of their church.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jun 6 2006, 10:40 AM) [snapback]266625[/snapback]</div>

Boy. Everything you ever wanted to know about dead babies! Great topic. By the way, where do the baby penguins that are unlucky enough to freeze to death go? Penguin limbo? And how much fish do the penguin priests charge the parents for the limbo ceremony? (things get absurd so fast when you get into religion, for some reason, or lack of reason)

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Jun 6 2006, 10:48 AM) [snapback]266626[/snapback]</div>

Just as long as no one starts up with the dead baby jokes- please!

 

...and speaking of dead babies...


http://www.autopsybabies.com/


h34r:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Jun 6 2006, 10:40 AM) [snapback]266625[/snapback]</div>

I'm a UU and an atheist (or a humanist, if you prefer)- although I do lean toward the church of the FSM I don't believe in the concepts of heaven and hell, and I don't pretend to know what happens after death (other than decay and eventual reabsorption into the ecosystem.) But I would say that if there was some sort of pleasurable afterlife as a reward for good on earth, I would have to believe that all babies would go there.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jared2 @ Jun 6 2006, 10:16 AM) [snapback]266609[/snapback]</div>

Actually, the Catholic Church is finally abolishing "Limbo":
News Article

Limbo was a fictitious place they needed to invent to fill a hole in their "All good people go to heaven, all bad people go to Hell" doctrine. What about infants? What about the Jewish prophets, who lived before Jesus, and therefore can't take advantage of his ransom sacrifice? What about the millions/billions of "heathens" who never even heard of Jesus, or the Bible? Well, let's just create "limbo" to put all those unknowns.

Actually, besides heaven, hell, or limbo, there is a 4th choice. God's purpose has ALWAYS been to have the earth populated by meek, peaceable people:
Psalms 37:11 - "But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, And they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace."
How is this possible? By means of the resurrection hope that Jesus spoke of:
John 5:28,29 - "Do not marvel at this, because the hour is coming in which all those in the memorial tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who did good things to a resurrection of life, those who practiced vile things to a resurrection of judgment."
Jesus showed that, to him, dead people are just "sleeping". They are in God's memory, and able to be brought back to life, as he showed many times, as in the case of Lazurus:
John 11:11 - ‘Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.’
John 11:23-25 - Jesus said to her: “Your brother will rise.†Martha said to him: “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.†Jesus said to her: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life.
Even criminals were given the hope of a resurrection to life on a paradise earth:
Luke 23:43 - “Truly I tell you today, You will be with me in Paradise.â€
The idea of the resurrection was considered to be a "Primary doctrine" by early Christians:
Hebrews 6:1,2 - For this reason, now that we have left the primary doctrine about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying a foundation again, namely, repentance from dead works, ..... the resurrection of the dead and everlasting judgment.

 

This is most disturbing news indeed!

What right does the Pope have to abolish Limbo?
How can we be sure that the millions of unbaptized babies, together with all those born before Jesus will go to heaven if Limbo ceases to exist? Did anyone ask them (in the case of babies, by sign language) exactly where they stand on the issue? Can the Pope make this decision unilaterally? I am most seriously aggrieved and offended. I am seriously thinking of starting a letter-writing campaign. Possible slogans include:

LEAVE LIMBO ALONE
LOST SOULS LIKE LIMBO
GOT LIMBO?

 

Limbo must be darn crowded by now: how many fertilized eggs get flushed every day, maybe millions?

And what form does a zygote take in either Heaven or Limbo? A few cells glued together can't even crawl.

Remember, The Rapture (generally) implies people can zoom straight to Heaven in their existing bodies, so unless there's an unadvertized part where the soul gets extracted and the body thrown away, it will be difficult to get around with all the babies crawling and (intellegent?) zygotes sitting there.

Or, if all souls get a uniform set of arms and legs to get around on, will everyone be age-advanced to some minimum level to avoid hassles? Education including language, so a baby can talk to its mom? Heaven only, probably. Kinda sad if aborted souls don't get to party. Flushed zygotes got there without human intervention, so they are good to go, but abortion (apparently) gets the stamp of Limbo (at best, until it gets closed down I guess) and probably no fancy body, no flash-education, no nothing. Just sit and sulk.

I guess all those stories of famous (saved) baseball players playing games forever in Heaven imply real bodies, but ones that manage to work without any of the hormones that make people do bad things and just the good hormones. Real bodies that will work forever, or get renewed, or whatever story is available the week it needs to be told to somebody to get them to go to church.

Ah, well...

 

At least the guy who went into the lion den had the courage of his convictions. His example offered no real food for thought, but it did offer food for the lion.