It is not to be contended, of course, that these formularies assert such an absolute necessity of baptism for infants, dying such, as can admit of no exceptions. From Luther and Melanchthon down, Lutheran theologians have always taught what Hunnius expressed in the Saxon Visitation Articles: “Unless a person be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Cases of necessity are not intended, however, by this.” ⁵ Lutheran theology, in other words, has taken its stand positively on the ground of baptism of intention as applied to infants, as over against its denial by the Church of Rome. “Luther,” says Dorner,⁶ “holds fast, in general, to the necessity of baptism in order to salvation, but in reference to the children of Christians who have died unbaptized, he says: ‘The Holy and Merciful God will think kindly of them. What He will do with them He has revealed to no one, that baptism may not be despised, but has reserved to His own mercy; God does wrong to no man.’” ⁷ From the fact that Jewish children dying before circumcision were not lost, Luther argues that neither are Christian children dying before baptism;⁸ and he comforts Christian mothers of still-born babes by declaring that they should understand that such infants are saved.⁹ So Bugenhagen, under Luther’s direction, teaches that Christians’ children intended for baptism are not left to the hidden judgment of God if they fail of baptism, but have the promise of being received by Christ into His kingdom.¹⁰ It is not necessary to quote later authors on a point on which all are unanimous; let it suffice to add only the clear statement of the developed Lutheranism of John Gerhard (1610-22):¹¹ “We walk in the middle way, teaching that baptism is, indeed, the ordinary sacrament of initiation and means of regeneration necessary to all, even to the children of believers, for regeneration and salvation; but yet that in the event of privation or impossibility the children of Christians are saved by an extraordinary and peculiar divine dispensation. For the necessity of baptism is not absolute, but ordinary; we on our part are obliged to the necessity of baptism, but there must be no denial of the extraordinary action of God in infants offered to Christ by pious parents and the Church in prayers, and dying before the opportunity of baptism can be given them, since God does not so bind His grace and saving efficacy to baptism as that, in the event of privation, He may not both wish and be able to act extraordinarily. We distinguish, then, between necessity on God’s part and on our part; between the case of privation and the ordinary way; and also between infants born in the Church and out of the Church. Concerning infants born out of the Church, we say with the apostle (1 Cor. v. 12, 13), ‘For what have I to do with judging them that are without? Do not you judge them that are within? For them that are without God judgeth.’ Wherefore, since there is no promise concerning them, we commit them to God’s judgment; and yet we hold to no place intermediate between heaven and hell, concerning which there is utter silence in Scripture. But concerning infants born in the Church we have better hope. Pious parents properly bring their children as soon as possible to baptism as the ordinary means of regeneration, and offer them in baptism to Christ; and those who are negligent in this, so as through lack of care or wicked contempt for the sacrament to deprive their children of baptism, shall hereafter render a very heavy account to God, since they have ‘despised the counsel of God’ (Luke vii. 30). Yet neither can nor ought we rashly to condemn those infants which die in their mothers’ wombs or by some sudden accident before they receive baptism, but may rather hold that the prayers of pious parents, or, if the parents are negligent of this, the prayers of the Church poured out for these infants are clemently heard, and they are received by God into grace and life.”

From this passage we may learn not only the cordial acceptance given by Lutheran theologians to the extension of the baptism of intention to infants, but also the historical attitude of Lutheranism toward the entirely different question of the fate of infants dying outside the pale of the Church and the reach of its ordinances. These infants are a multitude so vast that it is wholly unreasonable to suppose them (like Christians’ children deprived of baptism) simply exceptions to the rule laid down in the Augsburg Confession. And it is perfectly clear that the Lutheran Confessions extend no hope for them. It is doubtful whether it can even be said that they leave room for hope for them. Melanchthon in the Apology is no doubt arguing against the Anabaptists, and intends to prove only that children should be baptized; but his words in explanation of Art. IX. deserve consideration in this connection also—where he argues that “the promise of salvation” “does not pertain to those who are without the Church of Christ, where there is neither the Word nor the Sacraments, because the kingdom of Christ exists only with the Word and the Sacraments.” Luther’s personal opinion as to the fate of heathen children dying in infancy is in doubt: now he expresses the hope that the good and gracious God may have something good in view for them;¹² and again, though leaving it to the future to decide, he only expects something milder for them than for the adults outside the Church:¹³ and Bugenhagen, under his eye, contrasts the children of Turks and Jews with those of Christians, as not sharers in salvation because not in Christ.¹⁴ From the very first the opinion of the theologians was divided on the subject. (1) Some held that all infants except those baptized in fact or intention are lost, and ascribed to them, of course—for this was the Protestant view of the desert of original sin—both privative and positive punishment. This party included such theologians as Quistorpius, Calovius, Fechter, Zeibichius, Buddeus. (2) Others judged that we may cherish the best of hope for their salvation. Here belong Dannhauer, Hulsemann, Scherzer, J. A. Osiander, Wagner, Musæus, Cotta, and Spener. (3) But the great body of Lutherans, including such names as Gerhard, Calixtus, Meisner, Baldwin, Bechmann, Hoffmann, Hunnius, held that nothing is clearly revealed as to the fate of such infants, and they must be left to the judgment of God. (a) Some of these, like Hunnius, were inclined to believe that they will be saved. (b) Others, with more (like Hoffmann) or less (like Gerhard) clearness, were rather inclined to believe they will be lost. But all of them alike held that the means for a certain decision are not in our hands.¹⁵ Thus Hunnius says:¹⁶ “That the infants of Gentiles, outside the Church, are saved, we cannot pronounce as certain, since there exists nothing definite in the Scriptures concerning the matter; so neither do I dare simply to assert that these children are indiscriminately damned… . Let us commit them, therefore, to the judgment of God.” And Hoffmann says:¹⁷ “On the question, whether the infants of the heathen nations are lost, most of our theologians prefer to suspend their judgment. To affirm as a certain thing that they are lost could not be done without rashness.”

This cautious agnostic position has the best right to be called the historical Lutheran attitude on the subject. It is even the highest position thoroughly consistent with the genius of the Lutheran system and the stress which it lays on the means of grace. The drift in more modern times has, however, been decidedly in the direction of affirming the salvation of all that die in infancy, on grounds identical with those pleaded by this party from the beginning—the infinite mercy of God, the universality of the atonement, the inability of infants to resist grace, their guiltlessness of despising the ordinance, and the like.¹⁸ Even so, however, careful modern Lutherans moderate their assertions. They may affirm that “it is not the doctrine of our Confession that any human creature has ever been or ever will be lost purely for original sin;”¹⁹ but they speak of the matter as a “dark” or a “difficult question,”²⁰ and suspend the salvation of such infants on an “extraordinary” and “uncovenanted” exercise of God’s mercy.²¹ We cannot rise to a conviction or a “faith” in the matter, but may attain to a “well-grounded hope,” based on our apprehension of God’s all-embracing mercy.²² In short, it is not contended that the Lutheran doctrine lays a foundation for a conviction of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy; at the best it is held to leave open an uncontradicted hope. We are afraid we must say more: it seems to contradict this hope. For should this hope prove true, it would no longer be true that “baptism is necessary to salvation” even ordinarily; the exception would be the rule. Nor would the fundamental conception of the Lutheran theory of salvation—that grace is in the means of grace—be longer tenable. The logic of the Lutheran system leaves little room for the salvation of all infants, dying in infancy, and if their salvation should prove to be a fact, the integrity of the system is endangered.

That it is not merely the letter of the Lutheran formularies which needs to be transcended, if we are to cherish a hope for the salvation of all infants dying such, but the distinctive principle of the Lutheran system, is doubtless the cause of the great embarrassment exhibited by Lutheran writers in dealing with this problem, and of the extraordinary expedients which are sometimes resorted to for its solution. Thus, for example, Klieforth knows nothing better to suggest than that unbaptized children dying in their infancy, whether children of Christian parents or of infidel, stand in the same category with adult heathen, and are to have an opportunity to exercise saving faith when the Lord calls them before Him for judgment on His second coming. And the genial Norse missionary bishop Dahle, though he recognizes the scriptural distinction between the infants of Christian and those of heathen parents (1 Cor. vii. 14), seeks in vain to ground a hope on which he may rest his heart even for Christians’ infants; and ends by falling back on the conjecture of the mediating theology of an opportunity for receiving Christ extended in the future life to those who have not enjoyed that opportunity here; thus, in other words, in his own way also assimilating the infant children of Christians with heathen. “The sum of the whole,” he says, in concluding his discussion, “is that we may entertain a hope of salvation and bliss for our unbaptized children immediately after death, yet not more than a hope. But the question is still unanswered. Under any circumstances we have this consolation: that if the hope shall be unfounded such children will at least have the opportunity of the uncalled at some time to receive God’s gracious call.”²³ For the Lutheran the question is thus still unanswered, and must remain unanswered. The restrained paragraph with which Dahle opens his discussion appears, indeed, to put into words what every Lutheran must feel: “This is a very difficult—indeed, we might almost say a hitherto unanswered—question,” he says. “All salvation is connected with Christ. But we come into connection with Him only through the means of grace; at all events, we do not know of any other way to Christ than this. Now, the means of grace are the Word and the sacraments. But the child is not susceptible to such means of grace as are afforded in the Word of God, which directs itself to the developed personal life; and so we have only the sacraments left. Of these, baptism is the one which incorporates into fellowship with Christ, and thereby with the Triune God, into whose name the candidate is baptized (Matt. xxvii. 19). Now, if a child is not susceptible to the means of grace of the Word, and does not receive the opportunity of baptism, is there any means whereby it can come into connection with Christ, apart from whom there is no salvation? This is the knot which no one yet has been able to undo.”²⁴

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Footnotes

1. The words are Aquinas’s (p. 3, q. 68, art. 1); see them quoted and applied by Perrone, Compend., ii., 253. ↩

2. “Of baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation… . They condemn the Anabaptists, who allow not the baptism of children, and affirm that children are saved without baptism,” “and outside the Church of Christ,” as is added in ed. 1540. (Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, iii., p. 13.) ↩

3. “Also they teach that, after Adam’s fall, all men begotten after the common course of nature are born with sin; … and that this disease of original fault is truly sin, condemning and bringing eternal death now also upon all that are not born again by baptism and the Holy Spirit. They condemn the Pelagians and others who deny this original fault to be sin indeed, and who, so as to lessen the glory of the merits and the benefits of Christ, argue that a man may, by the strength of his own reason, be justified before God” (Schaff, loc. cit., p. 81.) ↩

4. Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, iii., pp. 174, 175. ↩

5. Ibid., iii., 184. ↩

6. Hist. of Protestant Theology (E.T.), i., 171. ↩

7. Opp., xxii., 872 (Dorner’s quotation). ↩

8. Com. in Gen., c. 17. ↩

9. Christliche Bedenken. ↩

10. See for several such’ quotations brought together, Laurence, Bampton Lectures, 1804, ed. 1820, p. 272. Also Gerhard as in next note. ↩

11. Ed. Cotta, vol. ix., p. 284. ↩

12. Cf. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theol., i., 171. ↩

13. Cf. Laurence, Bampton Lectures, p. 272. ↩

14. Ibid. ↩

15. This classification is taken from Cotta (Gerhard’s Loci, ix., 282). ↩

16. Quæst. in cap. vii. Gen. ↩

17. See Krauth, Conservative Reformation, p. 433. ↩

18. Compare the statements in Cotta and Krauth, locc. citt. ↩

19. Krauth, l.c., p. 429. ↩

20. Ib., pp. 561–563. ↩

21. Ib., pp. 430, 437. ↩

22. Ib., Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System, p. 22. ↩

23. Lars Nielsen Dahle, Life After Death, etc., translated from the Norse by the Rev. John Beveridge, M.A., B.D. (Edinburgh, 1896), p. 227. ↩

24. Lars Nielsen Dahle, Life After Death, translated from the Norse by the Rev. John Beveridge, M.A., B.D. (Edinburgh, 1896), pp. 219, 220. ↩