Saturday, August 19, 2023

Rebecca Harden Weaver on Prosper of Aquitaine (390-455) and the Salvation and Condemnation of Infants

  

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)