This is all a quote --the source is noted at the end:
''Regarding this claim:
in the first three hundred years of the church, “All baptisms were adults,…
I do not know whether Robert Wilken still holds that position. But, St. Cyprian, as you may know, was martyred in August of 258. In his Epistle 58 he and sixty-five other bishops replied to an inquiry by Bishop Fidus about whether infants must not be baptized before the eighth day after their birth, in keeping with the Jewish custom regarding circumcision. You can read the reply of the sixty-six bishops at the link. Their answer is that spiritual regeneration should not be withheld to the eighth day, as circumcision was.
But, St. Augustine’s comments on this epistle are even more telling. St. Augustine writes:
And in the epistle which he [i.e. St. Cyprian] wrote with sixty-six of his joint-bishops to Bishop Fidus, when he [i.e. St. Cyprian] was consulted by him [i.e. Bishop Fidus] in respect of the law of circumcision, whether an infant might be baptized before the eighth day, this matter is treated in such a way as if by a divine forethought the catholic Church would already confute the Pelagian heretics who would appear so long afterwards. For he who had consulted had no doubt on the subject whether children on birth inherited original sin, which they might wash away by being born again. For be it far from the Christian faith to have at any time doubted on this matter. But he was in doubt whether the washing of regeneration, by which he made no question but that original sin was put away, ought to be given before the eighth day. (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Bk IV)
According to St. Augustine, the Christian faith has never doubted that (1) infants are born with original sin that must be washed away by being born again, and (2) that original sin is washed away through baptism. Even Bishop Fidus, who made the inquiry to St. Cyprian and the sixty-five other bishops, was not asking whether infants should be baptized, but only whether infants must not be baptized before the eighth day after their birth. So on this testimony alone, that among sixty-six bishops in the middle of the third century there is not even a question about whether infants should be baptized, but only whether they may be baptized before the eighth day after their birth, we can know that the claim that “in the first three hundred years of the church all baptisms were adults” is false.''
unbaptized babies who die
from comment 63 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/signs-of-predestination-a-catholic-discusses-election/
Yes God’s universal desire for the salvation of men extends to babies. But what that entails for babies who die before reaching the age of reason, and how they might receive grace or respond to that grace, we do not know. We know that sanctifying grace and agape is necessary to enter heaven. We also know that babies are born into this world in a state of original sin (i.e. deprived of sanctifying grace andagape). Nevertheless, the Catholic Church does not teach that unbaptized infants who die before reaching the age of reason go to heaven, nor does it teach that they go to hell. It calls us to entrust them to the mercy of God.
As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,” allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism. (CCC, 1261)
from the same link, comment 65
St. Augustine’s view was that babies who die unbaptized end up with a mild form of hell forever. That view stemmed directly from his conviction that original sin is personal culpa. Aquinas softened that by putting such babies in a permanent “limbo,” a place of purely natural happiness. That became the common doctrine until the mid-20th century. But in response to the Calvinist and Jansenist challenges, the Church came gradually to repudiate the underlying premise that original sin is personal culpa. See CCC §405. Once that happened, the rationale for a permanent limbo disappeared. The Pope does not believe there is such a thing.
Of course limbo remains an opinion one can hold within the ambit of orthodoxy. But a few Catholic traditionalists, such as Fr. Brian Harrison, still hold that the existence of a permanent limbo as the sempiternal fate for unbaptized babies has been infallibly taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium. For my response to that, see here. I also recommend Fr. Al Kimel’s treatment of the topic of limbo.
from the same link comment 67 in part:
All that is why the Church has never condemned the speculations of theologians about how infants who die unbaptized might yet come to enjoy the beatific vision. What speculations? I quote from the Wikipedia article on “Limbo,” which is actually pretty good (footnotes and links omitted; emphasis added):
The Ecumenical Council of Florence (1442) spoke of baptism as necessary even for children and required that they be baptised soon after birth. This had earlier been affirmed at the local Council of Carthage in 417. The Council of Florence also stated that those who die in original sin alone go to hell. John Wycliffe’s attack on the necessity of infant baptism was condemned by another general council, the Council of Constance. The Council of Trent in 1547 explicitly stated that baptism (or desire for baptism) was the means by which one is transferred “from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour.If adults could effectively be baptised through a desire for the sacrament when prevented from actually receiving it, some speculated that perhaps sacramentally unbaptised infants too might be saved by some waterless equivalent of ordinary baptism when prevented. Cajetan, a major 16th-century theologian, suggested that infants dying in the womb before birth, and so before ordinary sacramental baptism could be administered, might be saved through their mother’s wish for their baptism. Thus, there was no clear consensus that the Council of Florence had excluded salvation of infants by such extra-sacramental equivalents of baptism.Through the 18th and 19th centuries, individual theologians (Bianchi in 1768, H. Klee in 1835, Caron in 1855, H. Schell in 1893) continued to formulate theories of how children who died unbaptised might still be saved. By 1952 a theologian such as Ludwig Ott could, in a widely used and well-regarded manual, openly teach the possibility that children who die unbaptised might be saved for heaven—though he still represented their going to limbo as the commonly taught opinion. In its 1980 instruction on children’s baptism the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirmed that “with regard to children who die without having received baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as indeed she does in the funeral rite established for them.” And in 1984, when Joseph Ratzinger, then Cardinal Prefect of that Congregation, stated that, as a private theologian, he rejected the claim that children who die unbaptised cannot attain salvation, he was speaking for many academic theologians of his background and training.Thus in 1992, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, while affirming that “the Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude”, but also stating that “God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments”, stated: “As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.”On April 22, 2007, the advisory body known as the International Theological Commission released a document, originally commissioned by Pope John Paul II, entitled “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized.”[23]
below from comment 180 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/do-you-want-to-go-to-heaven/
You appeal to one of those analogies as follows:
The flaw in your argument is the failure to understand God’s “revealed will” as opposed to His “decretive will”. The result of this logic requires God to be subject to fate. Since God created everything, this obviously cannot be, as fate itself was created by God.
This is, I would submit, an anthropomorphism of what is otherwise a helpful analogy. Clasically, there is no distinction between God’s “revealed will” and God’s “decretive will.” That was an invention of the Reformation by analogy to human beings, and it is simply inapplicable to God; God only has a single, perfect will that cannot be divided. The Scholastic distinction, which instead draws distinctions with respect to God’s effects, is the appeal to God’s “permissive will,” and this distinction was rooted solely in the Biblical and philosophical fact that God cannot sin. As St. Thomas succinctly says, “God therefore neither wills evil to be done, nor wills it not to be done, but wills to permit evil to be done; and this is a good.” That does not create a (false) separation in the will of God; instead, it says something about the existence of created things (and in this case, evil in created things) relative to God’s eternal will.
So just as when we see Scriptures describing God’s hands and feet as not being literal, we have to do the same when God is described as actively or positively causing evil. God isn’t surprised by evil either, but He “plans around” it by willing good to come of it rather. To say that God positively wills evil goes beyond a “hard teaching” over to blasphemy, although I recognize that you would not intend it that way. We have to stop short at that point. So the idea that people without a rational will, i.e., infants are born evil is impossible, because that would be God positively willing, rather than permissively allowing a rational will to exercise, evil. That is why the Catholic Church also rejects the idea that original “sin” is guilt of fault.
Now this is usually the point at which people pipe up and say “what about Augustine?” As we all know, Augustine said that infants and other unbaptized people fall into what he called a massa damnata et damnabilis, a damned and damnable mass. This was what he suggested Paul had in mind when he said vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath were formed from the same “lump,” taking that analogy quite literally. How did he, who recognized that evil had only a negative existence and that God could not cause it, somehow miss this basic fact?
The reason is that Augustine held an odd (although not for his time) belief about human souls called traducianism. This viewed the soul as a kind of metaphysical substance that was passed on to children in generation in the same way genetic material might be understood today. So from Augustine’s perspective, it was possible for this common “soul stuff” to be tainted by its previous holder’s sin. Hence, it wasn’t God creating something evil; rather, it was this defective “soul stuff” that Adam had tainted by his sin that caused the infant to be part of the lump. Hence, Augustine took the analogy too far based on a philosophical belief; he saw the lump of clay as the lump of “soul stuff” out of which humans were formed. This belief was also responsible for some of Augustine’s unusual beliefs about the evils of sex, some of which were shared even by other traducian Fathers who did not hold Augustine’s beliefs about original sin.
Now that we’ve developed considerably in the philosophy of the soul and that we understand that the soul is specially created by God in each infant, we have a better understanding that Augustine did. Therefore, because we cannot appeal to this idea of “soul stuff” that Augustine did, we realize that we have to stop short in saying that original sin involves actual evil or that the negative predestination of certain souls to damnation lies in anything other than the person’s own fault. In other words, now we know that what goes for evil in general (God is the cause of everything, but He does not cause evil positively) applies to predestination in the same exact way (God predestines everything, but He does not positively predestine faults leading to damnation). Hence, when we read in Romans 9 that God created vessels of wrath or hardened hearts, we have to remember that we are not allowed to interpret this as God positively creating the evil in anything, including the will, as if he were a human, so we can’t take this as negative predestination.
Is that clear so far? If you can understand that basic philosophical principle, then we can turn to how to apply it in exegesis.
and from comments 427 & 428 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/imputation-and-paradigms-a-reply-to-nicholas-batzig/
Bryan you wrote the following:
“presence of the supernatural gift of infused agape, which fulfills the law, immediately, by its very presence as a supernatural virtue in the soul. This is why Catholics have no doubt concerning the salvation of their baptized infants who die in infancy, even though they died having not done a single good work. At their baptism the Holy Spirit instantly poured out into their hearts (Rom 5:5) sanctifying grace and agape, which ipso facto, by its very presence, fulfilled the law, prior to any good work flowing from it. To have agape in one’s heart is to have the law written on one’s heart, and thus to be actually and truly righteous.”
“presence of the supernatural gift of infused agape, which fulfills the law, immediately, by its very presence as a supernatural virtue in the soul. This is why Catholics have no doubt concerning the salvation of their baptized infants who die in infancy, even though they died having not done a single good work. At their baptism the Holy Spirit instantly poured out into their hearts (Rom 5:5) sanctifying grace and agape, which ipso facto, by its very presence, fulfilled the law, prior to any good work flowing from it. To have agape in one’s heart is to have the law written on one’s heart, and thus to be actually and truly righteous.”
So are you saying that a baby that has infused agape in the soul is treated as he has perfectly fulfilled the law even if he did not do a work of obedience? How is this not a legal fiction of sorts? Then infused agape is no different than extra-nos imputation, because both are treating the sinner as perfectly obeying the law when he did not.
answer from comment 428
So are you saying that a baby that has infused agape in the soul is treated as he has perfectly fulfilled the law even if he did not do a work of obedience? How is this not a legal fiction of sorts?
Because in the agape paradigm, love is the fulfillment of the law, as explained in the post and the comments above.
Then infused agape is no different than extra-nos imputation, because both are treating the sinner as perfectly obeying the law when he did not.
This objection just begs the question against the agape paradigm, by presupposing that agape is not the fulfillment of the law.
end of quote
end of quote
And according to the Catechism of the Council of Trent (under the heading, “The Sacrament of Baptism”):
Bishops And Priests The Ordinary MinistersThe faithful, therefore, are to be informed that of those (who administer Baptism) there are three gradations. Bishops and priests hold the first place. To them belongs the administration of this Sacrament, not by any extraordinary concession of power, but by right of office; for to them, in the persons of the Apostles, was addressed the command of our Lord: Go, baptise. Bishops, it is true, in order not to neglect the more weighty charge of instructing the faithful, have generally left its administration to priests. But the authority of the Fathers and the usage of the Church prove that priests exercise this function by their own right, so much so that they may baptise even in the presence of the Bishop. Ordained to consecrate the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of peace and unity, it was fitting that they be invested with power to administer all those things which are required to enable others to participate in that peace and unity. If, therefore, the Fathers have at any time said that without the leave of the Bishop the priest has not the right to baptise, they are to be understood to speak of that Baptism only which was administered on certain days of the year with solemn ceremonies.Deacons Extraordinary Ministers Of BaptismNext among the ministers are deacons, for whom, as numerous decrees of the holy Fathers attest it is not lawful without the permission of the Bishop or priest to administer this Sacrament.Ministers In Case Of NecessityThose who may administer Baptism in case of necessity, but without its solemn ceremonies, hold the last place; and in this class are included all, even the laity, men and women, to whatever sect they may belong. This office extends in case of necessity, even to Jews, infidels and heretics, provided, however, they intend to do what the Catholic Church does in that act of her ministry. These things were established by many decrees of the ancient Fathers and Councils; and the holy Council of Trent denounces anathema against those who dare to say, that Baptism, even when administered by heretics, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the Church does, is not true Baptism.And here indeed let us admire the supreme goodness and wisdom of our Lord. Seeing the necessity of this Sacrament for all, He not only instituted water, than which nothing can be more common, as its matter, but also placed its administration within the power of all. In its administration, however, as we have already observed, all are not allowed to use the solemn ceremonies; not that rites and ceremonies are of higher dignity, but because they are less necessary than the Sacrament.Let not the faithful, however, imagine that this office is given promiscuously to all, so as to do away with the propriety of observing a certain precedence among those who are its ministers. When a man is present a woman should not baptise; an ecclesiastic takes precedence over a layman, and a priest over a simple ecclesiastic. Midwives, however, when accustomed to its administration, are not to be found fault with if sometimes, when a man is present who is unacquainted with the manner of its administration, they perform what may otherwise appear to belong more properly to men.
Irenaeus supports it (" For He came to save all through means of Himself— all, I say, who through Him are born again to God — infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men.") and Cyprian as the objector you quote says, and even Clement of Alexandria "And let our seals be either a dove, or a fish, or a ship scudding before the wind, or a musical lyre, which Polycrates used, or a ship's anchor, which Seleucus got engraved as a device; and if there be one fishing, he will remember the apostle, and the children drawn out of the water.".
I think it's a stretch for him to push the controversy into the six century. In 417, Pope Innocent I in a doctrinal letter to the Fathers of the Synod of Milevis: “To preach that infants can be given the rewards of eternal life without the grace of baptism is completely idiotic. For unless thou eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, they will not have life in them."
Which affirms both paedobaptism and paedocommunion.
Another good article here: http://www.catholicstand.com/catholic-church-right-infant-baptism/http://www.catholicstand.com/catholic-church-right-infant-baptism/
No comments:
Post a Comment