Why Infants Go to Heaven

I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine recently about what happens to babies, stillborns, and mentally handicapped people (those who, mentally, are still infants) when they die.  We were discussing an old book by John MacArthur, Safe in the Arms of God (which is the last word and more than the last word on this issue).  My friend argued that MacArthur’s evidence in the book was not conclusive, that no one could know for sure what happened to every baby who dies, and that because we do not know who the elect are we cannot say all infants go to heaven.  Though I respect my friend greatly, this was a very lacking excuse. 

Douglas Wilson, Presbyterian pastor, argues in this short clip that he doesn’t know for sure what happens to babies who go to heaven.  He argues that children born to believing parents (“covenant children”) go to heaven because - for some reason with absolutely no Biblical evidence - God is gracious only to Bible-believing parents in regards to their children.  The most complete distortion of covenant theology I have ever heard.  He then says that he “doesn’t know” what happens to children of pagan parents who die—he says there is no indication in Scripture that they go to heaven.  

This whole issue of what happens to babies who die is very near and dear to my own heart.  A younger sibling of mine was miscarried when I was just a few years old.  Often, I and my brothers ask my parents, “What happened to our miscarried sibling?”  My parents always answer the same way: “He/she is in heaven.” 

Is my deceased brother/sister in heaven just because he/she was a “child of the covenant”?  Do all babies/mentally handicapped people go to heaven?  Biblically and theologically the answer is clear: yes.  All babies go to heaven.

The carefully-studied Reformed believer might immediately get offended at this.  They would come at me and say, “Don’t you believe in the total depravity of man?  Don’t you believe that all humans, including babies, are born sinners and that all sinners are damned to hell?  Don’t you believe that salvation is by faith alone and that, because babies and handicapped people are incapable of faith, they must necessarily be reprobate?”  This seems like a logical and very Reformed argument; and if it were, the Reformed position would be that all babies went to hell.  But there are immense gaps in this theology, gaps which can be mended this way: God draws all infants to himself by grace and bestows on them salvation through Christ.

Let me begin by saying that I completely affirm the natural depravity of man.  Romans 5 makes it clear that, through Adam, sin and death spread to all mankind so that all mankind sins and is guilty because of their sinful natures from birth.  Thus, even babies who are born are naturally sinful and depraved – they have inherited a sin nature from Adam’s first sin (God made Adam the representative for the human race – when he fell into sin, all mankind subsequently fell into sin).  Thus, babies are depraved.  Moreover, they commit sins as well.  They are not conscious sins, assuredly, but they certainly give into fits of anger, rudeness, envy, and the like.  Shouldn’t, then, they be sent to hell?  Certainly – babies deserve damnation.  But yet they are saved – saved by grace.

It must be noted that this “salvation of infants” is only for those under the age of accountability.  That age of accountability – the time before the intellect is matured and children are able to intellectually understand sin and salvation – differs for children.  Some children do not mature intellectually – are not able to come to an intellectual faith in Christ – for many years; some never do, and these we label as the “mentally handicapped” or “mentally retarded” (these individuals are never able to intellectually come to faith).  What, then, happens to individuals who die before they are able to come to an intellectual faith?  Do they go to hell because they have no faith?  No – rather, they are saved by grace apart from faith.

Like any good Calvinist, I believe in Sola Fide – salvation by faith alone.  However, I regard Sola Fide different from some – I believe it to be a corollary, a subpoint, to Sola Gratia (salvation by God’s grace alone).  This is because men can only come to faith if they are first led to faith by Christ through God’s grace (see Eph. 2:8-9).  Thus, faith rests upon and relies upon grace.  So, it is grace that is necessary for salvation – not faith.  Faith is only a gift which God gives to those individuals whom He calls and who have an intellectual capacity for faith.  All the elect beyond the age of accountability are saved by grace through faith.  All those below the age of accountability are saved by grace without faith.  After all, they can’t have faith – they are intellectually incapable.  Moreover, if they are intellectually incapable of faith, they are also incapable of making a conscious rejection of God (Rom. 1:18) or of committing conscious sin.  They are still sinful and depraved, but they are intellectually innocent before God because they have not consciously rejected Him. 

Moreover, Scripture never teaches that God condemns anyone to hell who has not first committed sins out of unbelief.  Rev. 20, in speaking of the Final Judgment, says that the reprobate will be condemned for what they had done (v. 12).  They are damned by their works – their sins.  Thus, all who have ever sinned (including babies) must be sent to hell, it would seem.  However, the question must be asked: what is the crime of sin?  The answer is obvious: unbelief (or, a conscious rejection and rebellion against of God).  It was this unbelief (rebellion) that even led Adam and Eve to commit the first sin.  Unbelief is always the root of all damnable works (cf. Rom. 11:20, Heb. 3:19) – it is unbelief (rebellion against God) that sends one to hell.  That is why only unbelievers are sent to hell.  Infants don’t have unbelief.  They are neither believers nor unbelievers.  They are intellectually ignorant to matters of God and sin and thus they cannot “choose” God or reject Him.  Thus, infants and all those below the age of accountability do not have unbelief and thus their sins are not conscious or willful.  Infants, though depraved, are intellectually innocent, and God saves these innocent ones by grace.  This fits perfectly with the idea that God only damns those who have unbelief. 

Infants deserve to go to hell (they are sinful and they sin).  However, God, by grace, draws them to Him, even those who do not have faith (and also do not have unbelief).  And thus, God can say in Scripture that He will only damn those who have unbelief (indicating that all those who do not have unbelief are saved by grace without faith). 

This theological truth (that those below the age of accountability are saved) is also backed up with specific examples in Scripture.  The classic example is the death of David’s illegitimate child in 2 Sam. 2.  When David and Bathsheba’s child falls grievously sick, this righteous king fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground (v.16).  He could not be persuaded to rise or eat.  He was passionately interceding for the life of the child.  However, as was God’s will, the child did die.  When David heard the news, he arose from the earth and washed and anointed himself and changed his clothes.  And he went into the house of the LORD and worshiped.  He then went to his own house (v. 20).  Why the sudden change in attitude (a question his own servants ask him)?  It is because he knew that there was nothing he could do to bring the child back; moreover, he was at peace and without distress, knowing that the child was safe in heaven.  He says as much in v. 23: But now he is dead.  Why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.  David was a righteous man, clearly amongst God’s elect.  He would go to heaven when he died (Ps. 17:15).  Thus, if David were to go to him (the child), the child must already be in heaven, waiting for David to join him.  This reality that David’s child was in heaven is a perfect example of how God saves those who are intellectually incapable of faith and who do not yet have unbelief.

My favorite example, however, is Job 3:11-19, which reads:

¹¹“Why did I not die at birth,
come out from the womb and expire?
¹² Why did the knees receive me?
Or why the breasts, that I should nurse?
¹³ For then I would have lain down and been quiet;
I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
¹⁴ with kings and counselors of the earth
who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
¹⁵ or with princes who had gold,
who filled their houses with silver.
¹⁶ Or why was I not as a hidden stillborn child,
as infants who never see the light?
¹⁷ There the wicked cease from troubling,
and there the weary are at rest.
¹⁸ There the prisoners are at ease together;
they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
¹⁹ The small and the great are there,
and the slave is free from his master.

Job’s picture of a deceased stillborn is clear: they are in a place of rest and ease, free from wickedness.  He even says that stillborns have a greater existence in their death than the living do in their turbulent lives.  Yet how could this be if stillborns go to hell?  Hell is a far worse existence than here on earth.  Thus, the only possible explanation of this passage is that stillborns go to heaven, a place of perfect rest, ease, and righteousness.  They must be saved before birth by God’s grace.  And if stillborns go to heaven, so must infants who die after birth and the mentally handicapped who have no intelligence of their own.  After all, the identity of all three categories (stillborn, infant, and mentally retarded) is the same: they are all incapable of faith and unbelief, they are all depraved (by nature), and yet they are all intellectually innocent (they have not yet rejected God and consciously lived according to their sin natures).  This example gives further credence to the idea that all those below the age of accountability go to heaven – they are saved by grace apart from faith and are gathered by God to Himself.

Thus, it is both Reformed and Biblical to say that all babies go to heaven.  It is a specific example of God’s graciousness towards humanity.  He did not have to save infants, but He does.  This has nothing to do with whether a child’s parents were Christians or not – God saves the intellectually innocent by grace, not because of parental faith or the “covenant family”.  This is cause for both hope and praise.  The assembly of the righteous at the end of time will be largely made up of these infants who have been spared a life of hardship to spend immediate eternity with God in joy.  God has spared these little ones the pain of this present world, and we who must endure it will one day see them in glory.