Who is correct? Is John Wesley, Protestantism's greatest advocate for unregenerate Human Free Will, correct when he argues of dying infants that "they cannot be saved, unless this be washed away by baptism"?
Or perhaps it is the great Predestinarian theologian John Calvin who is right -- when he declares that the Wesleyan/Arminian doctrine of Universal unbaptized-Infant Damnation is "a blasphemy to be universally detested"!
I think it's always important to let Theologians describe their own beliefs, rather than just accept whatever summations you may have heard "through the grapevine". So, here you have it -- the great dueling Protestant theologians, their own beliefs, in their own words. Who is right, and who is wrong? Read your Bibles and decide!
Let's see if the Arminians want to defend THIS Arminian doctrine.
This is an interesting discussion. Not being either a Calvinist or an Arminian, I have no dog in this fight. The question is whether or not you believe in original sin, and whether or not faith in Christ is necessary for salvation. If you do not believe that all human beings conceived in a natural way are born blind, dead, and enemies of God, I can see where someone could make the argument that children are not damned. If you believe that people can be saved without personal faith, I can see where someone could make the argument that children can be saved by some other means. Anyone that believes in original sin and the necessity of faith for salvation would come to the conclusion that all people, regardless of age, are subject to judgment.
I’d like to point out that in Judaism there is the “age of accountability” where a child becomes an adult responsible for their own actions esp. in the legal sense. Does this apply to Christianity? If you say no, justify your answer with an explanation... after all, Christianity is a form of Judaism [that the gentile-Christians do not have the whole of the Mosaic-law obligations* laid upon them as the Jewish people do is irrelevant to the point]; further, Jesus said that He didn not come to Destroy the Law [but to fulfill it].
(* See Acts 15; esp. verses 5, 10&11, 19&20 and 28&29)
Furthermore, if there is some mirroring/foreshadowing in the story of the Passover [wherein only the firstborn of those houses covered with the blood of the lamb were passed over] to Jesus; then couldn’t the Blood of the Lamb of God be enough to cause God to ‘passover’ the inherited-sin of the according-to-the-law-not-accountable-for-their-own-actions children that had died before Jesus (like even the Egyptian firstborn), during Jesus’s life (like those Herod had put to death), and after Jesus’s death (i.e. all the plagues and wars and famine of modern-times)?
Either way, you've got Weslayans or Calvinists breathing flames against each other ... both sides being in possession of logical and convincing arguments .... and they can't both be correct.
Of course, both sides can be incorrect, and that's probably more to the point. "For the wisdom of this world is folly with God...."
I won’t write a whole theological tract on the subject but both doctrines are unscriptural garbage.
The death, resurrection and victory of Christ has enabled God to choose anyone He will to salvation. Besides those who consciously accept Christ, He has chosen people who lived and died before Christ and people who have never heard of Christ, at any time after conception. The heavens declare His glory. God knows the heart from its first beat in the womb.
The fact is, those who hear the Word and choose Christ are guaranteed salvation. Those who reject Christ are guaranteed damnation. All else are chosen by God in His wisdom by the power of Christ, therefore it is true that the only way is through Christ.
The bottom line is that some infants are saved and some are not and it is up to God, not any act of man, including infant baptism or preaching of the Word. However, many who would not be saved by the sovereign act of God alone are saved later in life by Grace in hearing and accepting the Word, so keep preaching the Truth.
One more point of pure logic: If all infants are saved, then the most sure guarantee of sending souls to heaven is to murder your children as soon as they are born, an absurdity. And how can the act of thus saving souls be counted a sin? If all infants are saved, when do they become “unsaved” and have to be saved again before they die? Another absurdity. So Calvin bites the dust.
The Arminian position is adequately dispatched by all those saved before Christ lived who heard directly from God.
No SANE person of any persuasion considers infant damnation even the remotest possibility.
Unfortunatly, neither the Arminians nor the Calvinists have cornered the market on sanity. Each side has its share of nitwits.
It is silly to ascribe any belief in baptismal regeneration to John Wesley. Wesley was a devout believer in “by grace are you saved through faith....” Anyone who has even the barest experience of reading John Wesley knows this.
Likewise, Arminius was a reformed theologian regarding salvation by grace through faith. His disagreement was whether God’s predetermination was impacted by foreknowledge or not. Arminius believed it was.
As with most in the Arminian tradition, both of these fine Christian men would have cited Jesus’ words: “let the infants come unto me and forbid them not.” Also, they would have cited Jesus’ words when he stated that those who are truly blind are not guilty, but since the Pharisees said that they did see, then their guilt remains.
In short, God accepts infants because, as Shadow Ace suggests, those infants are innocent, not in that they lack a sin nature, but in that they’ve not yet personally acted on their sin nature. They are “infants”; they are “blind.”
Pick some other ground to fight on. This is a very weak attempt that doesn’t encompass the full body of either man’s writings.