A
difficulty arises, of course, in explaining how such general grace is available
to infants dying without baptism, and thus without salvation. Infants obviously
are incapable of receiving the knowledge of God given either in the creation or
in the gospel, just as they are incapable of performing guilty actions. (De
voc. 2.20, 21) Prosper approached the problem through analogy. As in
mundane matters, children, until they reach the age of reason, are dependent
upon and share the condition of those persons who care for them, so must they
do so with regard to the reception of grace. Infants receive the general grace
that is accessible to all through their parents or those who are responsible
for them, and if the latter have rightly used this grace, the infants derive
salvation from it. (De voc. 2.3; cf. 2.4)
De Letter,
acknowledging the lack of clarity in the argument, has proposed that Prosper
was suggesting that if those who have responsibility for an infant make right
use of general grace, whereby they have knowledge of God, God will give them
the special grace of faith, and they, in turn, will on the basis of this faith,
bring the infant to baptism so that the child receives salvation. (De Letter, The
Call of All Nations, 206n.209) There are at least two difficulties,
however, with such an interpretation Prosper did not elsewhere indicate that
God gives faith in response to right use of general grace and, in fact, argue
the contrary, (De voc. 1.8,9,18), and, as Prosper himself acknowledged,
some infants of believing parents die unbaptized.
The
difficulty of Prosper’s argument increased with his discussion of special grace
of election as it applies to children. He pointed to two kinds of cases among
infants in which election is given. First, children whose parents are elect
also participate in this election even though they may not receive baptism.
Second, children who are baptized are elect, although their parents may not be
elect, for other adults provide for these children’s baptism. (De voc.
2.23) The second kind of situation had been discussed by Augustine and is clear
enough. (Augustine Ep. 194:32; De gr. et arb. arb. 22.44; De
corr. et gr. 8.18; cf. De Letter, The Call of All Nations, 208, n.
216) The first, however, is somewhat contorted. De Letter has interpreted it to
mean that the parents of these children, as they are elect, receive the special
grace of faith. In most cases the faith of the parents provides the occasion
for the baptism of the child. These children, up to the point of baptism, can
be said to participate in election as would any child of elect parents.
However, because they die unbaptized, that election is of no salvific value for
them. (De Letter, The Call of All Nations, 207-208)
Prosper’s
argument for both situations that of children whose parents are the recipients
of general grace and that of children whose parents are the recipients of
general and special grace, depended on the analogy he made to secular life: as
in mundane matters children share the condition of those who are for them, so
do they in regard to grace. By extension of the analogy, it appears that
Prosper was also saying that as the condition and behavior of the responsible
adult often influences but does not determine the future of the child in
secular matters, the same holds true with regard to salvific ones. Baptism, a
necessary precondition for salvation, remains the gift of grace. The argument
that Prosper was making regarding the access that infants have through their
protectors to general and special grace is only as convincing as the analogy.
Whatever Prosper’s own estimate of it, he did not pursue it further.
Prosper’s
assumption that baptism is necessary for infants served as proof for the
gratuity of salvation. If baptism were not necessary, then infants dying
without baptism would be among the elect because of their merit or rather lack
of actual demerit. Such a state of affairs would mean both that all are not
bound by original sin and that salvation is by merit rather than by grace. The
doctrine of the necessity of baptism was thus a protection against both the
other erroneous positions. (Rebecca Harden Weaver, Divine Grace and Human
Agency: A Study of the Semi-Pelagian Controversy [Patristic Monograph
Series 15; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1996], 148-49)
