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Author Topic: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism  (Read 31628 times)

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Offline trad123

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Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
« Reply #60 on: September 13, 2023, 03:35:49 PM »
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  • DecemRationis, it seems like one long game of the telephone game, but I'm struggling to find it's source.

    If you search Augustine, infants, and the fires of hell, many authors are merely repeating the claim without even bothering to list a source, even works from so-called scholars, which are nothing of the sort.

    I'm now wondering if the claim that St. Fulgenitus also held that infants suffer the fires of hell is likewise a spurious claim. 
    2 Corinthians 4:3-4 

    And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.

    Offline trad123

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #61 on: September 13, 2023, 03:49:27 PM »
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  • Augustine, Enchiridion ad Laurentium:

    Chapter 46. It is Probable that Children are Involved in the Guilt Not Only of the First Pair, But of Their Own Immediate Parents.

    Chapter 92. The Resurrection of the Lost.

    Chapter 93. Both the First and the Second Deaths are the Consequence of Sin. Punishment is Proportioned to Guilt.


    Source:

    https://archive.org/details/saureliiaugusti01augugoog/page/n5/mode/1up


    That book on the internet archive is in Latin.

    The English is here:


    https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1302.htm

    2 Corinthians 4:3-4 

    And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.


    Offline trad123

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #62 on: September 13, 2023, 04:25:13 PM »
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  • Saint Augustine’s view on the divine consignment of unbaptized infants to the positive sufferings of the damned in hell, contra S. Aquinas, and in addition to the lack of the Beatific Vision, is found in the following resources:

    De pecc. mer. 1.16.21 (CSEL 60, 20f.) ; Sermo 294.3, Patrologia cursus completa, series latina (PL), J.P. MIGNE (ed.), 38, 1337; Contra Iulianum 5.11.44 (PL 44, 809).

    For your convenience:

    https://archive.org/details/sanctiaureliiau05augugoog/page/n659/mode/1up



    De peccatorum meritis et remissione et de baptismo parvulorum


    On Merit and the Forgiveness of Sins, and the Baptism of Infants

    1.16.21 Would be book 1, chapter 16, but I don't understand the significance of the number 21.


    https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15011.htm


    Quote
    Chapter 16 [XIII.]— How Death is by One and Life by One.

    And from this we gather that we have derived from Adam, in whom we all have sinned, not all our actual sins, but only original sin; whereas from Christ, in whom we are all justified, we obtain the remission not merely of that original sin, but of the rest of our sins also, which we have added. Hence it runs: "Not as by the one that sinned, so also is the free gift." For the judgment, certainly, from one sin, if it is not remitted — and that the original sin— is capable of drawing us into condemnation; while grace conducts us to justification from the remission of many sins — that is to say, not simply from the original sin, but from all others also whatsoever.




    Sermo 294.3, Patrologia cursus completa, series latina


    The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century

    Sermons III/8 (273-305A) on the Saints


    Sermon 294

    Preached in the Basilica of the Ancestors on the Birthday
    of the Martyr Guddens on 27 June

    (On the Baptism of Infants, against the Pelagians)

    Date: 413


    https://wesleyscholar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Augustine-Sermons-273-305.pdf


    Pages 181 to 182:


    Quote
    3. This is the first error that needs to be turned away from people's ears, and uprooted from their minds. This is something new in the Church, previously unheard of, that there is eternal life apart from the kingdom of heaven, eternal salvation apart from the kingdom of God. First consider, brother, if you shouldn't perhaps agree with us on this point, that whoever is not consigned to the kingdom of God is undoubtedly consigned to damnation. The Lord is going to come, and pass judgment on the living and the dead, as the gospel says, and to make two groups, on the right hand and on the left. To those on the left he is going to say, Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt 25:41); to those on the right he is going to say, Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the origin of the world (Mt 25:34). On this side he mentions the kingdom, on that damnation with the devil. There is no middle place left, where you can put babies.

    Judgment will be passed on the living and the dead; some will be on the right, others on the left; I don't know any other destiny. You there, bringing in a middle place, get out of the middle, don't make the person seeking the right hand trip over you. And I'm advising you for your own sake; get out of the middle, but don't go to the left. So if there will be a right hand and a left, and we know of no middle place in the gospel; here on the right hand is the kingdom of heaven: Receive, he says, the kingdom. Whoever isn't there, is on the left. What will be happening on the left? Go into the eternal fire. On the right to the kingdom, eternal of course; on the left to the eternal fire. Whoever is not on the right, is without a doubt on the left; so whoever is not in the kingdom is without a doubt in the eternal fire.

    Can those who are not baptized really have eternal life? They won't be on the right, that is they won't be in the kingdom. Do you count everlasting fire as eternal life? And about eternal life itself, listen to a more explicit statement that the kingdom is nothing else but eternal life. First he mentioned the kingdom, but on the right; eternal fire on the left. In the final sentence, though, to teach us what the kingdom is and what eternal fire is, Then these, he says, will go off into eternal burning, the just, however, into eternal life (Mt 25:46).

    There you are, he has explained to you what the kingdom is, and what eternal fire is; so that when you confess that a baby won't be in the kingdom, you are admitting it will be in the eternal fire. The kingdom of heaven, you see, is eternal life.
     




    Contra Iulianum 5.11.44

    The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation

    Saint Augustine

    Against Julian


    Book 5, chapter 11, (44)


    https://archive.org/details/againstjulian0035augu/page/284/mode/2up


    Pages 285 to 286


    Quote
    Book 5

    [ . . . ]

    Chapter 11

    (44) You quote from the Gospel: ‘It were better for that man if he had not been born.”* But was his birth not due more to the work of God than his parents? Why did not God, foreknowing the evil that lay before him and which parents cannot know, give the better portion to His own image? Those who understand rightly know that nothing is attributed to God except what is proper to the goodness of the Creator. In like manner, without any difficult investigation, we must attribute to parents their wish to have children, although they know nothing of their future. But I do not say that children who die without the baptism of Christ will undergo such grievous punishment that it were better for them never to have been born, since our Lord did not say these words of any sinner you please, but only of the most base and ungodly. If we consider what He said about the Sodomites, which certainly He did not mean of them only—that it will be more tolerable for one than for another in the day of judgment,? who can doubt that nonbaptized infants, having only original sin and no burden of personal sins, will suffer the lightest condemnation of all? I cannot define the amount and kind of their punishment, but I dare not say it were better for them never to have existed than to exist there. But you, also, who contend they are, as it were, free of any condemnation, do not wish to think about the condemnation by which you punish them by estranging from the life of God and from the kingdom of God so many images of God, and by separating them from the pious parents you so eloquently urge to procreate them. They suffer these separations unjustly, if they have no sin at all; or if justly, then they have original sin.








    2 Corinthians 4:3-4 

    And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.

    Offline trad123

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #63 on: September 13, 2023, 04:36:15 PM »
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  • Sermon 294 was in 413 AD, per the source listed above.

    Against Julian was incomplete, around 430 AD, per the wiki below.



    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo_bibliography
    2 Corinthians 4:3-4 

    And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.

    Offline trad123

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #64 on: September 13, 2023, 05:05:05 PM »
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  • Thanks. I think this is the translation of that:


    Chapter 21 [XVI.]— Unbaptized Infants Damned, But Most Lightly; The Penalty of Adam's Sin, the Grace of His Body Lost.



    Seeing this now, I should have read the whole thread, initially.

    It could be a reference to both chapter 16 and chapter 21.
    2 Corinthians 4:3-4 

    And if our gospel be also hid, it is hid to them that are lost, In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of unbelievers, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine unto them.


    Offline Ladislaus

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #65 on: September 13, 2023, 08:22:11 PM »
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  • To me, it doesn't appear that St. Augustine has clear distinction between natural and supernatural ... as the Greek Fathers did.  He equates life with the Kingom, but the Kingdom refers to supernatural life, an elevation of the natural state, as St. Thomas explains and as the Greek Fathers held from early on.  So there can be eternal (natural) life and eternal (supernatural) life.

    Offline DecemRationis

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #66 on: September 14, 2023, 08:21:56 AM »
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  • DecemRationis, it seems like one long game of the telephone game, but I'm struggling to find it's source.

    If you search Augustine, infants, and the fires of hell, many authors are merely repeating the claim without even bothering to list a source, even works from so-called scholars, which are nothing of the sort.

    I'm now wondering if the claim that St. Fulgenitus also held that infants suffer the fires of hell is likewise a spurious claim.

    Trad123,

    I think perhaps that some that followed in St. Augustine's footsteps went beyond his position into a more severe treatment of the infants at issue, and their association with him got attributed to him. I like St. Robert Bellarmine's treatment of the issue. The CE article on Limbo says Bellarmine was "embarrassed" by Augustine's position and that stated by the Council of Florence:

    Quote
    It is clear that Bellarmine found the situation embarrassing, being unwilling, as he was, to admit that St. Thomas and the Schoolmen generally were in conflict with what St. Augustine and other Fathers considered to be de fide, and what the Council of Florence seemed to have taught definitively.

    I didn't get that sense at all, but a strict and unembarrassed and admirable holding to what I agree are the consequences of what Scripture,  and the Church, says and has said.

    It's worth noting the actual statements of the Magisterium on the issue. For example, the aforesaid Council of Florence:


    Quote
    DZ693  Moreover, the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin or in original sin only, descend immediately into hell but to undergo
    punishments of different kinds.

    And the Catechism of the Council of Trent - we argue about the weight accorded the Catechism, but I agree for example with Fr. Jenkins as to the Roman Catechism's high authority - says this:


    Quote

    If the knowledge of what has been hitherto explained be, as it is, of highest importance to the faithful, it is no less important to them to learn that the law of Baptism, as established by our Lord, extends to all, so that unless they are regenerated to God through the grace of Baptism, be their parents Christians or infidels, they are born to eternal misery and destruction.

    http://www.catholicapologetics.info/thechurch/catechism/Holy7Sacraments-Baptism.shtml


    The statements of the Magisterium certainly seem to side with St. Augustine in any divergence he has from St. Thomas in my view. 

    Lad - I would just like to say, regarding differences on this issue as compared to BoD. On BoD, I and many others who recognize the concept do because we believe that it is taught Magisterially in, for example, the Council of Trent and its Catechism. That position does not rely upon theologians, but official Church teaching. So, for example, BoD is in the Catechism of Trent, while Limbo for infants - no matter how you understand it, isn't. If it is, someone please correct me, because I'd like to know if I'm inaccurate there. 


    As  I have argued repeatedly,  though BoD is not precisely defined in its parameters, there is a "core concept," i.e. the possibility of justification in voto, that is taught Magisterially. 
    Rom. 3:25 Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the shewing of his justice, for the remission of former sins" 

    Apoc 17:17 For God hath given into their hearts to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled.

    Offline Ladislaus

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #67 on: September 14, 2023, 08:27:50 AM »
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  • DecemRationis, it seems like one long game of the telephone game, but I'm struggling to find it's source.

    If you search Augustine, infants, and the fires of hell, many authors are merely repeating the claim without even bothering to list a source, even works from so-called scholars, which are nothing of the sort.

    I'm now wondering if the claim that St. Fulgenitus also held that infants suffer the fires of hell is likewise a spurious claim.

    There's nothing spurious about it.  I read the Latin posted here earlier, and St. Augustine clearly says that infants go to the place of ignis aeternus, eternal fire.  Now, maybe he felt they were in the place of eternal fire but didn't actually somehow directly burn in the fire itself, perhaps off in a corner somewhere, but it's likely that his vision entailed them getting singed in a mild way by the inferno.


    Offline DecemRationis

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #68 on: September 14, 2023, 08:31:10 AM »
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  • There's nothing spurious about it.  I read the Latin posted here earlier, and St. Augustine clearly says that infants go to the place of ignis aeternus, eternal fire.  Now, maybe he felt they were in the place of eternal fire but didn't actually somehow directly burn in the fire itself, perhaps off in a corner somewhere, but it's likely that his vision entailed them getting singed in a mild way by the inferno.

    Yes, we can all speculate - e.g, your "it's likely . . . " For example, St. Robert Bellarmine was of the opinion that St. Augustine did not hold that the infants were burned.

    That is why I want to consider what he actually said and thought, as he himself expressed it. 
    Rom. 3:25 Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the shewing of his justice, for the remission of former sins" 

    Apoc 17:17 For God hath given into their hearts to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled.

    Offline Ladislaus

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #69 on: September 14, 2023, 08:38:23 AM »
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  • Lad - I would just like to say, regarding differences on this issue as compared to BoD. On BoD, I and many others who recognize the concept do because we believe that it is taught Magisterially in, for example, the Council of Trent and its Catechism. That position does not rely upon theologians, but official Church teaching. So, for example, BoD is in the Catechism of Trent, while Limbo for infants - no matter how you understand it, isn't. If it is, someone please correct me, because I'd like to know if I'm inaccurate there.


    As  I have argued repeatedly,  though BoD is not precisely defined in its parameters, there is a "core concept," i.e. the possibility of justification in voto, that is taught Magisterially.

    I've already said that Limbo isn't defined, but the condemnation of Limbo has been condemned, so one cannot reject Limbo by claiming that it contradicts Church teaching.

    There is no "core concept" of justification in voto anywhere in the Magisterium.  Of all the individuals who promote the notion of BoD, the greatest common denominator is that the Sacrament of Baptism isn't necessary for justification, which is heretical.

    In the Church Fathers, apart from the retracted youthful speculation of St. Augustine, the only other notion that comes up is St. Ambrose's hope that Justinian could, like the martyrs, experience a state of being "washed but not crowned".  Crowning refers to entry into the Kingom of Heaven.  Then you had the dogmatic teaching of Pope St. Sulpicius holding that each and everyone who desires Baptism would lose the Kingdom without the actual reception of the Sacrament.

    So the closest thing is some kind of washing away of the poena due to sin as a result of either martyrdom or the right dispositions for BoD.

    Then you have the pre-scholastics next to mention the subject, with some including St. Thomas going with what was wrongly thought to be the "authority of Augsutine and Ambrose".  You had Pope Innocent III opining in favor of it in a letter to a bishop.  Then after that you have the alleged teaching of Trent about BoD, which I dispute.

    That's really all there is to BoD, and there is clearly no Tradition to BoD, and it's clear that BoD was not revealed.  It's nothing but pure speculation, based on no evidence whatsoever.

    Offline Ladislaus

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #70 on: September 14, 2023, 08:41:23 AM »
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  • Yes, we can all speculate - e.g, your "it's likely . . . " For example, St. Robert Bellarmine was of the opinion that St. Augustine did not hold that the infants were burned.

    That is why I want to consider what he actually said and thought, as he himself expressed it.

    We know that infants were in the place of fire and they suffered.  Rest doesn't really matter and is a waste of time to argue.  Whether this suffering was due to their proximity to the fire or simply some internal cause is unknown, but the essential point that this is a distraction from is that Augustine said they went to hell, the place of fire, "with the devil" and that they suffered.

    Limbo is probably in the same category as BoD, no?  Just like BoD, there's no evidence that it has been revealed, and there's no evidence for it, and you have some Fathers like St. Augustine who rejected the notion, though it seems to be present to some extent in the Greek Fathers.  Just like BoD, after Trent and St. Robert Bellarmine, the notion that infants go to hell was almost universally abandoned, and nearly all theologians taught it for the past several hundred years (which the Catholic Encyclopedia article points out).

    So why is it OK for you to reject Limbo but not OK for us to reject BoD?  Both Limbo and BoD are in the same category o theological speculation.


    Offline Ladislaus

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #71 on: September 14, 2023, 08:47:54 AM »
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  • Here's what CE says about St. Robert's understanding of St. Augustine:
    Quote
    It is clear that Bellarmine found the situation embarrassing, being unwilling, as he was, to admit that St. Thomas and the Schoolmen generally were in conflict with what St. Augustine and other Fathers considered to be de fide, and what the Council of Florence seemed to have taught definitively. Hence he names Catharinus and some others as revivers of the Pelagian error, as though their teaching differed in substance from the general teaching of the School, and tries in a milder way to refute what he concedes to be the view of St. Thomas (op. cit., vi-vii). He himself adopts a view which is substantially that of Abelard mentioned above; but he is obliged to do violence to the text of St. Augustine and other Fathers in his attempt to explain them in conformity with this view, and to contradict the principle he elsewhere insists upon that "original sin does not destroy the natural but only the supernatural order." (op. cit., iv).


    Offline Ladislaus

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #72 on: September 14, 2023, 08:53:13 AM »
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  • Then it continues:
    Quote
    Neither of these theologians [Bellarmine or a guy named Petavius], however, succeeded in winning a large following or in turning the current of Catholic opinion from the channel into which St. Thomas had directed it. Besides Natalis Alexander (De peccat. et virtut, I, i, 12), and Estius (In Sent., II, xxxv, 7), Bellarmine's chief supporter was Bossuet, who vainly tried to induce Innocent XII to condemn certain propositions which he extracted from a posthumous work of Cardinal Sfrondati and in which the lenient scholastic view is affirmed. Only professed Augustinians like Noris and Berti, or out-and-out Jansenists like the Bishop of Pistoia, whose famous diocesan synod furnished eighty-five propositions for condemnation by Pius VI (1794), supported the harsh teaching of Petavius. The twenty-sixth of these propositions repudiated "as a Pelagian fable the existence of the place (usually called the children's limbo) in which the souls of those dying in original sin are punished by the pain of loss without any pain of fire"; and this, taken to mean that by denying the pain of fire one thereby necessarily postulates a middle place or state, involving neither guilt nor penalty, between the Kingdom of God and eternal damnation, is condemned by the pope as being "false and rash and as slander of the Catholic schools" (Denz. 526).

    This condemnation was practically the death-knell of extreme Augustinianism, while the mitigate Augustinianism of Bellarmine and Bossuet had already been rejected by the bulk of Catholic theologians. Suarez, for example, ignoring Bellarmine's protest, continued to teach what Catharinus had taught — that unbaptized children will not only enjoy perfect natural happiness, but that they will rise with immortal bodies at the last day and have the renovated earth for their happy abode (De vit. et penat., ix, sect. vi, n. 4); and, without insisting on such details, the great majority of Catholic theologians have continued to maintain the general doctrine that the children's limbo is a state of perfect natural happiness, just the same as it would have been if God had not established the present supernatural order. It is true, on the other hand, that some Catholic theologians have stood out for some kind of compromise with Augustinianism, on the ground that nature itself was wounded and weakened, or, at least that certain natural rights (including the right to perfect felicity) were lost in consequence of the Fall. But these have granted for the most part that the children's limbo implies exemption, not only from the pain of sense, but from any positive spiritual anguish for the loss of the beatific vision; and not a few have been willing to admit a certain degree of natural happiness in limbo. What has been chiefly in dispute is whether this happiness is as perfect and complete as it would have been in the hypothetical state of pure nature, and this is what the majority of Catholic theologians have affirmed.

    So, for the past several hundred years now, there are practically no theologians who have held that unbaptized infants go to Hell and suffer anything at all.  Why is it OK for individuals to reject this, including the same ones who keep arguing the "450 years" in support of BoD?

    I hold the same opinion that was described that Suarez held above.

    But, despite several hundred years of near-unanimous theological opinion in favor of Limbus Infantium, I do not claim that someone is condemned as a heretic for rejecting that Limbo, since it's not been actively taught by the Magisterium nor has the opinion of St. Augustine been condemned.  I'm consistent there.

    Offline DecemRationis

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #73 on: September 14, 2023, 09:04:02 AM »
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  • We know that infants were in the place of fire and they suffered.  Rest doesn't really matter and is a waste of time to argue.  Whether this suffering was due to their proximity to the fire or simply some internal cause is unknown, but the essential point that this is a distraction from is that Augustine said they went to hell, the place of fire, "with the devil" and that they suffered.

    Limbo is probably in the same category as BoD, no?  Just like BoD, there's no evidence that it has been revealed, and there's no evidence for it, and you have some Fathers like St. Augustine who rejected the notion, though it seems to be present to some extent in the Greek Fathers.  Just like BoD, after Trent and St. Robert Bellarmine, the notion that infants go to hell was almost universally abandoned, and nearly all theologians taught it for the past several hundred years (which the Catholic Encyclopedia article points out).

    So why is it OK for you to reject Limbo but not OK for us to reject BoD?  Both Limbo and BoD are in the same category o theological speculation.

    I don't "reject" Limbo, since I think even those who recognize the concept place it in hell, albeit "on the border" or whatever. One can argue for a Limbo of "perfect happiness," for example, if one recognizes that the denial of the beatific vision is a punishment or penalty, as Innocent III and the Council of Florence do.

    We disagree on BoD, often too emphatically. :laugh1:

    The only way BoD is in the same category as "Limbo" is in the sense that the Magisterium has talked about "core concepts" for both, i.e., a possibility of justification in voto, and a "penalty" or "punishment" for those dying in original sin. Beyond that, one can speculate. So you can speculate, a la St. Thomas, that these infants have a state of natural happiness, recognizing that the denial of the beatific vision is a "penalty" or "punishment" for these infants.

    In my view, it is not "ok" to speculate that there is no possibility for justification in voto, or that the infants do not receive a "penalty" or "punishment" as a result of not being baptized either in re or in voto.
    Rom. 3:25 Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the shewing of his justice, for the remission of former sins" 

    Apoc 17:17 For God hath given into their hearts to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled.

    Offline DecemRationis

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    Re: St. Augustine's view on the "punishment" of infants who die without baptism
    « Reply #74 on: September 14, 2023, 09:13:58 AM »
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  • Then it continues:
    So, for the past several hundred years now, there are practically no theologians who have held that unbaptized infants go to Hell and suffer anything at all.  Why is it OK for individuals to reject this, including the same ones who keep arguing the "450 years" in support of BoD?

    I hold the same opinion that was described that Suarez held above.

    But, despite several hundred years of near-unanimous theological opinion in favor of Limbus Infantium, I do not claim that someone is condemned as a heretic for rejecting that Limbo, since it's not been actively taught by the Magisterium nor has the opinion of St. Augustine been condemned.  I'm consistent there.

    I do not rely on theologians, and I think I made that distinction above regarding BoD.

    Of course, one may point to theologians in support if they agree with you on the interpretation of a Magisterial text, particularly if they agree unanimously, if not numerically, but by a clear moral majority, as regarding BoD. The opinion of theologians, if they don't conflict with the Magsiterium, are evidence either in support or against an argument.

    If, however, a theologian opined that infants who die without baptism do not incur a "penalty" or "punishment," I would reject them on the basis of Magisterial texts - Innocent III, the Council of Florence, the Catechism of Trent. 

    Our differences on BoD, again, come down to the Magisterial texts. The unanimity of theologians with my view - all of Fr. Cekada's theologians in his list, while differing as to theological classification of BoD, e.g., de fide, etc., all agree with the "core concept" of the possibility of justification in voto - are merely support for my reading of a Magisterial text(s).
    Rom. 3:25 Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the shewing of his justice, for the remission of former sins" 

    Apoc 17:17 For God hath given into their hearts to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled.