Why Do Babies Die?

Indeed, all infants need the same grace that we need from God.
David also indicated that he would see his infant child again, which points to the idea that God is gracious to all those aborted children who die before birth.
*2 Samuel 12:22-23*
He said, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.”

 

The angel Gabriel came to Prophesy to Zechariah and Elizabeth:

Luke 1:19; “I am Gabriel,” replied the angel. “I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news."

Gabriel tells them they will have a child and to name him John:

Luke 1:11; "Just then an angel of the Lord appeared to Zechariah, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.

12 "When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and gripped with fear.

13 "But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, because your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John.

14 "He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice at his birth,

Gabriel tells them that the child (that he knows will be a 'he') will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.

15 "for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He shall never take wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.

Only saved souls are filled with The Holy Spirit.

Later, while in Elizabeth's womb, the babe leaped when the babe heard Mary speak about Jesus:

Luke 1:41; "And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost:"

Only a saved soul will rejoice at the announcement of Jesus.

How was John the Baptist saved as a babe in his mother's womb?

I contend that "you must be born again."

I suggest that John, as an unborn babe, was saved in the One Way that God saves any sin-cursed soul.

Through, hearing the Gospel and being Granted repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, by the New Birth, with God Regenerating and Quickening his soul to Eternal Life.

Is it possible for the babe to physically hear the Gospel, from inside a womb?

As a babe, John heard Mary talking about Jesus, didn't he?

Is God Able to Give a babe in the womb the Ability to savingly hear the Gospel, to be saved?

Let me ask you.

What condition was your lost soul in, when you were blind and could not see The Kingdom of God, and what ability did you have to 'savingly' hear the Gospel?

None.

So, what did John as an unborn babe have?

As a lost soul conceived in sin, he was blind and could not see The Kingdom of God, and had no ability to 'savingly' hear the Gospel.

No difference.

Can Gon save unborn babies?

He did before.

With John the Baptist.

Luke 1:37; “For with God nothing will be impossible”

Genesis 18:14; “Is anything too hard for the LORD?”

I'll say that I believe this puts "the age of accountability", at the moment of conception, when the unborn, newly conceived 'babe', receives a soul from The Lord.

Yes. Now, go back to, "you must be born again."

He can save babies because we've seen that He has.

Can I say with assurance that "God will have mercy upon babies because he is merciful God and saves them"?

It's almost like that is the invention of another gospel.

Well, I don't know of that kind of blanket promise from The Lord and can not say for sure.

And, He just has not let us know, for sure.

The question, then, regardless of what circumstance we may have experienced or witnessed or even thought about (like, "Why would God allow a baby to live 6 months in the womb and then die, stillborn?")

That soul-probing question is, "Do you still Love a God like that, Who allows a naturally conceived sin-cursed soul ( as a child of Adam), to die?"

Do you still Love God, although there are questions we have that go unanswered, as to why certain events have been allowed to take place?

Can we view these horrifying situations and say, "I Love The Lord with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength?"

That is the question.

If God can work in our soul to say, "yes", then we are truly blessed.

This O.P. didn't bring restrictions on talking about how God saves souls in Christianity, otherwise known as The Doctrines of Grace, a.k.a., the systematic scriptures contained in 'Calvinism', so here we are.

Are and were the souls we are considering that may die or have died Elect?

Do you Love God if they were or weren't?, as long as WE DO NOT KNOW, to start with?

10-4, brother.

 

Hello Brother,
As we know,
All sinned and Died In Adam Rom.3:23
All mankind sinned and died spiritually at that moment in time, with physical death to follow.
All who are In Christ ,receive life from the dead.

 

Words for thoughts on the O.P., from On the Salvation of Children who Die as Infants or Pre-Born Babies — Knowing Scripture

Statements that I can't fully make the jump to, in blue.

Hope that's extra confusing.

He goes into the Doctrines of Grace

...and also he uses the Reformed doctrine stating, "the covenantal promises of God have been made not only to us but also to our children (Acts 2:39; Isaiah 44:3)", which I can not see or hold.


"Many devastated Christian parents, therefore, struggle with the question of whether their unborn or newborn children who have passed away are saved and in heaven. The questions of these parents inevitably pertain to the issue of ensoulment, i.e. when precisely a human being acquires a soul that must either be saved or damned. Therefore, before addressing the question itself, let us take a brief look at the Christian doctrine of ensoulment.

Ensoulment

"Historically, there have been three positions in Christian theology with regard to the origin of the soul: preexistence, creationism, and traducianism. I will briefly explain all of these, after which I will argue in favor of the traducianist position and explain how this relates to the salvation of infants and pre-born babies.

Preexistence

"When it comes to preexistence, a distinction needs to be made between doctrines of eternal and temporal preexistence respectively. Eternal preexistence maintains that all human souls exist from eternity and that the soul is united with the body either prior to or at the moment of birth. This pagan view has never been advocated by any theologian in the history of the Christian Church that I know of. Temporal preexistence, the idea that the soul was created by God sometime in the past and then united to the body at (or after) conception, was advocated by the third-century church father Origen, but his doctrine has no basis in Scripture and is also largely indebted to pagan thought—most notably that of Plato.[2] It was therefore rightly condemned as heresy by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 A.D.[3]

Creationism

The doctrine of ensoulment most widely adhered to throughout the history of the Christian Church is known as creationism. As a doctrine of ensoulment, this should not be confused with the Christian scientific position of creationism which pertains to the origin of the universe. Creationism teaches that God creates a soul ex nihilo for each human fetus and imputes this to that fetus. Augustine and Jerome were proponents of this view, as was Thomas Aquinas, who adopted the Aristotelian scheme of ensoulment occurring a few weeks after conception.[4] This view was so prevalent throughout the Middle Ages that the famous Justinian Law code from the sixth century while codifying legal penalties for abortion, excused abortions performed within 40 days (or approximately 6 weeks) after conception.[5] This view is based on the idea that a child becomes a human being at the point of “formation,” i.e. when the body is formed, as opposed to the moment of conception.

Within the Reformed tradition, a more recent advocate of this position was the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian A.A. Hodge.[6]

Traducianism

Traducianism (from the Latin traduco, which means “to transfer”), although a minority view, has been held by many Christians since the days of the early church, and this is the view I believe to be the biblical one. Its earliest known proponent was the church father Tertullian (155–240 AD). In rejecting the gnostic separation between spirit and matter, he argued that the soul and the body are inseparable and that both originate simultaneously at the moment of conception. According to Tertullian, God had supernaturally infused Adam and Eve, the first human beings with a soul, whereafter the soul is passed on through the natural process of procreation.[7]

There are a number of reasons why I believe this to be the biblical position:

(1) Scripture states that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). The original Hebrew word used for “life” in this verse נֶ֣פֶשׁ (“nepesh”) literally means “soul” and is translated as such on numerous occasions throughout the Old Testament. This verse therefore clearly implies that there is a genetic component to ensoulment.

(2) Traducianism most clearly explains the practical outworking of original sin in a way that does not contradict Scripture. For example, while God promises to “visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5), He also says that descendants shall not be punished for the sins of their ancestors (Ezekiel 18:19-20). These texts are difficult to reconcile with the creationist position, but not in a traducian paradigm where the corruption of the soul through original sin occurs naturally via procreation and lineage as opposed to divine imputation.

(3) As another advocate of Traducianism, the Reformed philosopher Gordon Clark observes, the traducian understanding of original sin is also taught by Christ in John 3:6, when Christ speaks of Nicodemus’s unregenerate soul as born of his parents. Clark notes that the Greek noun sarx (i.e. “flesh”) in relation to gennao (the Greek word for “birth”) clearly conveys this idea of a depraved soul in distinction from the corporeal body, which means that the propagation of the human species is not only corporeal, but spiritual and mental also.[8]

(4) In Psalm 51:5 David also notes that the depravity of his soul dates from the moment of his conception: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” This text implies that conception indeed marks the moment of ensoulment. Traducianism is the only doctrine of ensoulment that intrinsically ties ensoulment itself to conception in accordance with Scripture.

con't

 

The Souls of Infants and the Unborn

"As it is clear from Scripture that human beings are endowed with a soul at the moment of conception, the question to which we now return is that of what happens when pre-born babies and infants die. Some contemporary theologians like John Piper have argued that all pre-born babies and infants are saved,[9] but the most obvious problem with this position is that it contradicts the biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, whereby those who have received the grace necessary for salvation can never be lost (Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:6; 1 John 2:19). The implication of Piper’s position would be that the majority of people lose their salvation by simply growing up.

"I believe a thorough understanding and application of God’s covenant requires a more nuanced answer. Because we stand guilty before God by virtue of our depraved nature and because we inherit this depraved nature at the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5), unborn babies and infants are as deserving of God’s judgment as anyone else. The depraved sinner can therefore not escape the judgment of God by dying a premature death outside of Christ. However, in the case of the one biblical example of someone who was born within the covenant of God died in infancy, his father king David noted that he would one day be re-united with his son in the afterlife (2 Samuel 12:23), a clear testimony to David’s conviction that his son would be taken up in the glory of heaven.

"But because regeneration is a prerequisite for salvation, the Westminster Confession of Faith (10.3) actually teaches that “elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth.” The Westminster Confession of Faith here addresses the issue of elect infants within the context of the doctrine of effectual calling. After affirming that effectual calling ordinarily takes place in the lives of the elect through Christ’s Word and Spirit, it continues to explain how elect infants who are unable to make use of these ordinary means are still saved according to God’s sovereign purpose.[10] The Canons of Dordt (I.17) goes even further, assuring all believing parents who lose covenantal children prematurely of their salvation:

"Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.

"This conveys the idea that God, in his providence, ordained that those covenantal children called away from this world in infancy would come to saving faith prior to their death. That this principle can be extended to covenantal children who die as pre-born babies is evident from the example of John the Baptist, who clearly already had a saving faith in the womb of his mother (Luke 1:39-44). This does not necessarily entail that all covenantal children are to be presumed already regenerated in the womb or in infancy, but certainly, those whom God has ordained to call away from this world at such a young age. God’s providential decrees, no matter how difficult they may be for us to accept, are always in complete harmony with his covenantal promises.

Conclusion

"Losing a pre-born child or an infant is one of the most traumatic experiences any parent can ever endure. However, as believers, we can find the greatest comfort in the fact that the covenantal promises of God have been made not only to us but also to our children (Acts 2:39; Isaiah 44:3). Therefore, if you are a believer—an adopted child of God by the grace of Jesus Christ—who have lost a pre-born or infant child, you can rest assured that, like David and Bathsheba, you will one day be joyfully re-united to your child(ren) in the eternal presence of God."

 

I also believe in Traducianism, except I believe it’s the spirit, not the soul, that is passed from Adam to his descendants, like a candle flame lighting another candle, and so on, in succession.

Therefore, the sin nature is passed through the man, not the woman. This shows why Christ could be born of a virgin and be without sin—His Father is God.

The union of the spirit with the body gives rise to the soul.

Babies receive the sin nature, but each person is judged for their own sin, not Adam’s.

Where there is no law there is no sin. Therefore, all babies are saved by God’s grace.

 

You are wrong about several things in this post.

But, first, the answer to the question of the op; "why do babies die?"

The answer is so simple it is nearly breathtaking. They die for the same reason that they are born. They are under natural laws. Babies cannot be born except certain natural laws are met. The second birth is the only way to prevent dying. The second birth puts men under spiritual laws and a new birth is the only way to achieve that condition.

Secondly, for your error about David in PS 51.:6. The Psalms are about Jesus Christ and David and there are three ways the Psalms are to be applied prophetically. First, David historically as himself. Secondly, typically as Jesus Christ, and thirdly, as the people of God collectively, Israel.

This Psalm is to be applied to the people of God whose birth is noted in other prophetic books. This psalm cannot be consistently applied to David or Jesus because of this statement.

8 Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

David did not have broken bones and neither did Jesus. Those of you who read this Ps and think God is speaking of you may not have broken bones. But Israel has broken bones. Look.

Jeremiah 50:17
Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away: first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and last this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.

Israel must have two births. The first is a natural birth. According to Exodus 4 Israel collectively is the firstborn son of God.

Thirdly, committing sin in the body is what condemns a person. Where there is no law there is no sin because sin is the transgression of the law. It is against no law to be born naturally. One must have cognitive abilities and a conscience that knows right and wrong to commit sin. Babies do not have that.

Ex 4:21 And the Lord said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.
22 And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn:
23 And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

Fourthly - there is no bible doctrine called original sin. That one is made up. There is just a natural man. That is a man who does not have the Spirit of God in his body. A man is not a sinner for being a natural man but a natural man will sin deliberately and with purpose and forethought after he understands the law because he has no power against sin.

Sin rules on this earth as a sovereign before Jesus came and conquered it on our behalf.

21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.