It's key that they are not sent to Hell. Human beings not only have no right in justice to the Beatific Vision, but we even lack the natural capacity to enjoy it. It's a free gift of God. So there's no natural deprivation in Limbo, the same thing that accounts for their natural happiness. I believe that this is an act of God's Mercy and that all infants who die without Baptism were likely headed to Hell, and it was an act of God's Mercy to give them eternal natural happiness instead.
I still don't see how one can say that God wishes for the salvation of all, as in 1 Timothy 2:4, if He creates souls who are predestined to not be saved. Those past the age of reason are granted or denied salvation by acts of their own free will, so we can easily say that God wished for their salvation, but that the damned amongst them rejected the offer. We can't say that for unbaptised infants. They are not saved because of circuмstances outside of their control. So we can't say that God wishes for their salvation but that they reject it. They don't get a chance to reject it at all.
It's all the more troubling when you think about miscarriage statistics. Something like 10-20% of all pregnancies are said to end in miscarriage, even in modern times, and actually this figure is too low because it generally only counts those which happen
after a woman discovers she's pregnant. There are believed to be a great number of miscarriages that occur in the very early stages of pregnancy so, although I lack exact figures here, the number of souls who were never even born(and therefore could not have been baptised) could well rival those who were. That's not even getting into abortions or the historically gargantuan rates of infant mortality. All in all, there have probably been more souls who never reached the age of reason than those who did. That's not a small edge case; that's a rather large proportion of "all men" who never had a chance to attain salvation. How then can we say God wishes salvation for them all?
The argument about it being merciful I can't refute, but it doesn't really make sense to me. I see three main issues with it:
(1) Why does God not just automatically "sort" all souls the way he does for these infants? This is the weakest point, but I still feel it worth pointing out since it goes contrary to God's normal modus operandi.
(2) It would imply that declines in infant mortality rates, especially in heathen countries, correspond to a decrease in God's mercy. If infant mortality rates in a Muslim country drop from 30% to 5%, as they have in the last 150 years or so, the number of them being spared near certain damnation would go down
6x. 30% of the population being spared damnation to just 5%. Are we to believe God became less merciful?
(3) While the idea that their early death is merciful to them solves the issue of injustice when you compare them to people who lived and went on to be saved, it just switches the problem to be about the injustice to those who went on to be damned. Why does God spare some souls who he knows will go on to deserve damnation, but not others?
Forlorn,
You raise a good question. The topic is very deep, but it has implications that run even deeper, and involve, e.g., predestination and ɛƖɛctıon - both Catholic doctrines that have largely been preempted, and often subtly (or not so subtly) perverted in the way of heretics, by non-Catholic Christians.
There are some good thread on another forum regarding this:
God's Permission Of Sin: Negative Or Conditioned Decree? (forumotion.com)
1 Timothy 2:4 (forumotion.com)
DR
I'm reading through that second thread at the moment(started with that one, dunno why) and it's a very interesting read. Thank you. I'll get back to you when I've finished it.
Topic: The Absurdities of The Feeneyite Heresy (Read 21432 times)