Some members of the Russian Orthodox Church, in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church, think it’s impossible for unbaptized infants to enter heaven.
Stavros forum member Fr. Alexander Permyakov — a Russian Orthodox priest in the Moscow Patriarchate — has analyzed the question from a theological and patristic perspective, and has concluded that Christ saves unbaptized infants and welcomes them into His presence. In the following article, Fr. Alexander shares the seven key questions he asks those who think otherwise.
But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:14)
I remember once I met a husband and wife who left the Church because they could not believe in God's true love. I sat with them in a cafe, and they did not know that I was a priest. These people were very wealthy. They told me about the death of their two-year-old child.
One day during winter, the man decided to give his wife a gift and take her to the theater to see Swan Lake. They left an idiot nanny with the child. The nanny came with her cat, which ran around the apartment like crazy, knocking over expensive vases, turning everything upside down.
The nanny put the cat out the door and tried to keep an eye on him through the window. Then the nanny saw her cat climb a tree and jump down from a branch over the large concrete fence, and she was afraid she would lose her cat for good. Using a remote control device attached to a key fob, she opened the gate and ran off the property in search of her cat.
She left the keys on the table, near the toddler. And she left her phone next to the keys.
She ran into the clearing in front of the fence and called for the cat. It didn’t respond. For about 5 minutes the nanny kept calling for the cat and looking for it. She finally found it and caught it. Great.
When the nanny went back to the house, it turned out that the toddler had grabbed the key fob with with the remote control button and had pressed it.
The gate closed.
The nanny began to panic.
The house was surrounded by a huge fence with barbed wire 3.5 meters (over 10 feet) high. There is a forest 3 km (a couple miles) from this house, and the road is 5 km (about three miles) away. But cars rarely travel in this place. Only one or two cars drive by every few hours.
The house was on ventilation mode. After 25 minutes, the temperature in the room with the child would become equal to the outside temperature. And outside it was more than 20 degrees below zero.
What can a nanny do to save a baby in 25 minutes?
She couldn't do anything. She spent about 5 minutes knocking on the gate. Then she started calling the baby, trying to make him understand that he needed to press the red button on the key fob again. But the baby either didn’t hear her or didn’t understand.
She spent another 5 minutes trying to get over the fence. All this time she heard the child screaming hysterically. The rest of the time was spent in panic, hysterics and lamentations. But this did not save the baby.
She spent about half an hour near the house, and then went to look for a car. An hour later she found a car, found a phone, and called the baby’s parents. They were sitting in a restaurant after the show, drinking a little wine. What she told them instantly sobered them up. They dropped everything and rushed home. But they weren’t able to get there in time. The child died.
When I tell you this story, a chill runs through my veins. I can barely imagine what the poor parents went through. They loved this child.
The parents were already up in years, and they hadn’t been able to conceive a child naturally. They both had undergone a lot of medical treatments to make them able to conceive, and finally everything had worked out for them. Their happiness knew no bounds.
And then all this gave way to overwhelming grief. The woman went on a drinking binge, and the man went to church to negotiate with the priest to perform the funeral service for the baby.
Then another great disappointment made itself known:
The child was unbaptized.
The baby's parents rarely attended church. They would only show up a few times throughout the year for major holidays. At Pascha (Easter) they always painted eggs and got some Pascha cakes. At Christmas they decorated the tree, and at Theophany (Epiphany) they would get some holy water from the church. During Lent, the man always fasted strictly and received communion at Pascha (Easter). Then he would put a nice sum of money in the donation box. The wife never fasted, but she went to church for confession 4 - 5 times a year. At home, they had a prayer corner with icons and a lampada. In general, they were an ordinary Russian family.
The child turned out to be unbaptized due to a misunderstanding.
The couple went to church to schedule the baptism, and they were invited to an interview (for catechesis) together with the godparents. They had not chosen Orthodox godparents. They had a childhood friend, Boris, who agreed to be the godfather, but he was Roman Catholic.
The catechist who conducted the interview said that a Roman Catholic could not be a godfather.
They asked, what should they do?
The catechist told them that if they went to church as expected, they would be known in the parish and everyone would want to become the godparents of their child.
As a result, they decided to wait until they could find suitable godparents.
And then the child died. It was forbidden to have an Orthodox funeral service.
The rite of prayer for dead unbaptized infants was blessed by the Russian synod of bishops in 2018, but these events took place many years earlier.
The unhappy couple was obsessed with the idea of a funeral service. They were refused by all, and one priest even yelled at them. He said it was all their fault.
“Why didn’t you go to church faithfully as you should?”
“Why didn’t you confess as expected and take communion?”
“Why didn’t you insist that the priest baptize the child without godparents?”
The culmination of this attack on these grief-stricken people was the phrase:
“Because of your idiocy, your child is now burning in hell!”
Listening to their story, I almost cried.
These parents were worn out, united by their pain and crushed by their misfortune. They didn't judge anyone else. They simply realized that they are not loved here in the Church, and they felt that God doesn’t love them. It seemed to them that even their child didn’t love them.
They still had faith in God, but they lost the desire to communicate with Him.
I wanted to support them somehow, and said one thing that I know:
God loves you very much!
And then the unfortunate woman said with offense:
“If I had been told in advance that God loved me with this kind of love, I would not have wasted my time on religion with such a God!”
To this I replied that Jesus died for all of us and for their baby too. I said that Christ's sacrifice is proof of God's love!
And do you know what this woman told me?
She said:
“What’s the point? These specialists of yours have already explained everything to us... My child is still in hell, isn’t he?”
All I could do for these people back then was just hug them and grieve with them. I remember what I told them when we were saying goodbye:
“In Christianity there is a law and a sermon about what should happen according to the law. This law applies to God’s creation, but not to the Creator Himself. If the Lord gave a baby to be born, it means He loves this baby and will do everything possible for him to The baby was saved."
I was reminded of the words of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk:
“From Christ’s suffering we see what kind of ardent and flaming love God has for the human race, so that He did not spare His Son for our sake, as it is said: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him would not perish, but have everlasting life.’ (John 3:16) Like a loving father, seeing his children in captivity or in some other great misfortune, out of love for them he sympathizes and has compassion for them; love is compassionate: such a humane God, seeing us captive from the devil and in destruction, had compassion for us and had mercy on us.” (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk)
Many years passed after this. I met with many theologians and learned monks. And when I told this story, everyone agreed with me that there is hope for the unbaptized baby.
But just the other day I met people calling themselves “Orthodox missionaries” who told me that I was giving false hope to the parents of dead unbaptized children. They said that the teaching on this issue has already been clearly and unambiguously formulated, and there can be no exceptions. According to this teaching, dead children do not end up in the most terrible parts of hell, but they do end up in hell nonetheless.
My interlocutors offered me a number of texts to justify their position, which I will give below:
1. Scripture says that there are some “unclean” children:
“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband. Otherwise your children would have been unclean, but now they are holy.” (1 Corinthians 7:14)
And nothing unclean will enter the heavenly city of Jerusalem:
“And nothing unclean will enter into it, nor anyone who practices abomination or lying, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Rev. 21:27)
The text from 1st Corinthians does not say anything about babies, but it does talk about children, and in the eyes of their parents, children remain children even when they are 30 or 40 years old. OK.
Next:
2. Augustine of Hippo says:
“For those children who left the body baptized, God foreknew that they would have repented if they had survived. Let those who affirm this heed and see that in this case, infants who die without baptism are no longer rewarded for original sin, but for their own future sins, which they would have committed if they had lived longer... But since some were foreknown as repentant, while others were not, therefore, some left this life having received baptism, and others without baptism.”
3. St. Gregory the Theologian says:
“The latter (that is, those who were not worthy of baptism due to infancy) will not be glorified or punished by the righteous Judge, because, although they are not sealed, they are not bad, and they themselves have suffered more than they have done harm. For not everyone unworthy of punishment is worthy of honor; just as not everyone unworthy of honor is worthy of punishment.” (Sk. on St. Epiphany, part 3, pp. 242–243, ed. 1889)
4. An excerpt from the message of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1723:
We believe that Holy Baptism, commanded by the Lord and performed in the name of the Holy Trinity, is necessary. For without it no one can be saved, as the Lord says: “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God” (John 3:5).
Therefore, it is also necessary for infants, for they too are subject to original sin and without baptism cannot receive remission of this sin.
And the Lord, showing this, said, without any exception, simply: “Whoever is not born...” that is, after the coming of the Savior Christ, all who have to enter the Kingdom of Heaven must be reborn. If infants need salvation, then they also need baptism.
But those who have not been regenerated and therefore have not received remission of their ancestral sin are necessarily subject to eternal punishment for this sin, and therefore are not saved.
So, babies need baptism. Moreover, infants are saved, as the Evangelist Matthew says, but those who are not baptized are not saved. Consequently, infants must be baptized.
I think this is enough to see the rationale behind the logic of our brave missionaries.
I call this logic “Augustinian” because it was Augustine of Hippo, in his polemic with Pelagius, who most clearly substantiated the need for the baptism of children and the reason for the hellish torment of unbaptized children.
I will say about myself that I accept the doctrine of original sin and all my children were baptized in infancy. But the idea that babies have no hope of salvation seems to contradict the teaching of God’s love for His creation.
“Therefore, first of all, I ask you to make prayers, petitions, supplications, thanksgivings for all people, for kings and for all those in authority, so that we may lead a quiet and serene life in all godliness and purity, for this is good and pleasing to God our Savior, who wants all people were saved and come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Tim. 2:1-4)
To the person who insists that unbaptized infants go to hell forever after death, I would like to pose a few questions:
Question 1 — What do you think God’s plan is, regarding the birth of a baby who dies unbaptized and goes to hell?
The Orthodox Church teaches that God knows everything in advance. This means that God knew in advance about the death of that same unbaptized baby that I told you about above. Why do you think God allowed this baby to be born? Why did God allow him to die unbaptized?
Let’s say God wanted to punish the parents for something... But God could have allowed them to have a fire or an illness... And here is a person who has an immortal soul and the seal of the image of God on his soul. What sins did his parents have to commit for him to go to hell forever because of them?
I think the most difficult question with this baby is the question of why God allowed him to die unbaptized and go to hell.
I thought about this a lot and found 3 potential reasons to consider:
A) All unbaptized people are children of wrath, and therefore this baby is too. All unbaptized people are cursed, rejected by God, and condemned to eternal torment.
B) God is helpless. He loves the baby, but because of the fall of Adam and Eve, something in the nature of people got out of control and everything did not go the way God wanted. And now the Lord, although he sympathizes with the innocent babies sitting in hell, cannot help them in any way.
C) God wants this baby to be saved and has found the best path to salvation for him. In this case, the death of the baby is payment for original sin. If this is so, the question arises: how did it happen that the greatest fathers of the Church knew nothing about this?
There is another answer to this question, and it is found in the texts of John Calvin and St. Augustine.
John Calvin’s teaching says:
“God extends His grace among men on the basis that He foresees that they will use it for good, and on the contrary, condemns others to destruction (if this can even be said to be the will of God) if He sees that they will not accept Him, The Word, and they will refuse the Gospel... Thus God accepts as His children those whom He foresees will not be wholly unworthy of His grace, and destines for destruction those in whom He sees a will inclined to evil and wickedness.”
In this, John Calvin repeats the words of St. Augustine:
“As for that time and those places when and where His Gospel was not preached, He foreknew that then and there all people would be in relation to this preaching the same as many were during His bodily presence [on earth], namely, those who did not want to believe in Him, even when He raised the dead... What is surprising if Christ, having learned over the past centuries how full the universe is of unbelievers, deservedly did not want to preach to those about whom He knew in advance that they would not believe His words, nor His miracles?”
Elsewhere, St. Augustine writes:
“For those children who left the body baptized, God foreknew that they would have repented if they had survived. Let those who affirm this heed and see that in this case, infants who die without baptism are no longer rewarded for original sin, but for their own future sins, which they would have committed if they had lived longer... But since some were foreknown to be penitents, and others were not, then therefore, some left this life having been baptized, and others without baptism.”
So, unbaptized dead children can be classified as pagans who were denied grace and knowledge of salvation due to the fact that God foresaw their hardness of heart in advance. They say, even if they were given grace and instruction about a godly life in Christ, these people still would not believe.
Okay, let's call this unrealized sinfulness of the dead baby "potential sinfulness." The baby went to hell because of potential sinfulness. This idea is similar to that of the movie The Terminator, where a rebel computer program called Skynet sends the Terminator back in time to find a boy named John Connor and kill him.
Question 2 — If there is "potential sinfulness" for which God sends babies to hell, how can Jesus Christ atone for such sinfulness?
If Muslim and Jewish apologists of the 20th century had carefully read Augustine, they would have found him to be the best argument against Christianity. And this argument is precisely related to the idea of potential sinfulness. Jesus is powerless against such sinfulness. After all, Jesus died and atoned for all past, present and future sins of people, but He cannot atone for potential sins. Dying for potential sins would result in a potential atonement.
But the most important thing is that if Jesus could atone for potential sins, He would certainly atone for them.
In Orthodox liturgical texts, Jesus is called “the all-cunning one”:
“O thou who gavest birth to incorruption in the midst of temptation, and who gavest birth to the all-cunning Word, the innocent Mother, the Virgin Mary: Friend of the friendlesss, home of the Inconceivable Creator, we magnify Thee.”
Jesus deceived the devil by going to hell, and brought out of it those who were doomed to languish in the abyss of the underworld forever. But the devil, in Augustine's paradigm, turned out to be not so simple. He came up with such “chains” that even the incarnate divine Word Himself could not break. And we are, of course, talking about the indestructible chains of “potential sinfulness”.
Christ in Augustine's paradigm died for a tiny group of the elect (in whom God the Father did not find sufficient potential sinfulness to condemn).
You might say that although Christ died for all people, only a small percentage of the elect were redeemed. Well, according to the teachings of Augustine, the rest did not even have a chance to be saved, because God foresaw their clumsiness and stupidity in advance, so He did not give them grace, nor did He send them the word of truth. Why throw pearls before swine and waste a valuable resource?
And since the Lord saves in this way, why doesn’t He save in another? Why would Christ die for those regarding whom, even before the creation of the world, in the book of life there was a definition known to God about their worthlessness and inability to assimilate grace?
So this “theological navigator” set up by St. Augustine brings us necessarily into the doctrinal embrace of John Calvin, who taught that Jesus did not die for all people, but only for those whom God’s foreknew, predestined, and elected for salvation.
I understand that everything I’m writing looks like blasphemy, but when deciding the fate of unbaptized infants, if we take the position of St. Augustine and the fathers who agree with him, then we definitely come to some version of Calvinism.
Question 3 — If a deceased unbaptized baby is not punished and not rewarded, according to the word of St. Gregory the Theologian, isn’t he in fact in hell forever?
The fact that an unbaptized dead baby is in the most tolerable part of hell does not in any way change the fact that it is hell.
A person who says that the consolation of such a baby will be a reduction in the severity of the torments of hell is like one who sees an innocent person sitting in shackles and says to him:
“You yourself are not to blame for anything. It was your ancestors who sinned in such a way that now you are constantly crapping on yourself. People like you should not be allowed into heaven. But let it console you that everyone else will be skinned for all eternity, and you will just sit here for an eternity in shackles, not seeing the light.”
According to Orthodox doctrine, hell is a place of abandonment and suffering.
Here it is appropriate to recall the story in the Svyatogorsk Letters, about a grumbling monk who ended up in hell:
A paralytic, his patience exhausted, cried out to the Lord, asking Him to end his suffering life.
“Well,” said the Angel who appeared to the sick man, “the Lord, as indescribably good, deigns to answer your prayer. He will end your temporary life, but only on one condition: instead of one year of suffering on earth, do you agree to spend three hours in hell?
The sufferer thought. A year of suffering on earth is a terrible continuation of time. “I’d better endure three hours,” he finally said to the Angel. The angel agreed and left the sufferer with the words: “In three hours I will come for you.”
The darkness prevailing everywhere, the cramped space, the reaching sounds of the inexplicable cries of sinners, the vision of the spirits of evil in their hellish ugliness, all this merged for the unfortunate sufferer into inexpressible fear and languor.
Everywhere he saw and heard only suffering, and not a sound of joy in the vast abyss of hell: only the fiery eyes of demons sparkled in the underworld darkness and their gigantic shadows rushed before him, ready to crush him, devour him and burn him with their hellish breath. The poor sufferer trembled and cried out; but only the hellish abyss responded to his screams and cries with its fading echo and bubbling flames of hell. It seemed to him that entire centuries of suffering had already passed: from minute to minute he was waiting for a luminous Angel to come to him.
Finally, the sufferer despaired and cried out to his Angel:
An angel appeared and with a heavenly smile approached our sufferer with the words:
-What happened, brother?
“You promised to take me from here in three hours, and yet whole years, whole centuries, it seems, have passed in my unspeakable torment!”
– What years, what are you talking about? - answered the Angel. - Only an hour has passed since I left here...
- Oh, I can’t stand it anymore, I have no strength, take me away from here! It would be better for me to suffer on earth for years and centuries, even until the last day, until Christ’s coming to judgment, just get me out of here.
“Okay,” answered the Angel, “God is merciful to you.”
At these words, the sufferer opened his eyes and saw that he was still on his painful bed.
From then on, he endured his sufferings with sweetness, bringing to mind the horror of hellish torment and thanking the merciful Lord for everything.
(“Letters of the Holy Mountainer,” paragraph 15, 1883, p. 183)
After reading this story, we can conclude that earthly suffering is nothing compared to even an hour of hellish torment. And the baby supposedly goes there forever...
Question 4 — If the Lord knew in advance that this unbaptized baby would go to hell, why did He even bless his parents to conceive the child in the first place?
A miserable life in the most painless corner of hell has a very good alternative: non-conception.
God knows everything, all possible futures. The child that those unfortunate parents were so eagerly awaiting might simply not have been conceived. Well, yes, it would be painful, but it would be easier to survive:
To 3 million unsuccessful spermatozoa, 1 additional unsuccessful spermatozoon would be added and that’s it.
Conception would not have occurred.
A person with a rational soul would not have appeared.
This creature would not need to be given the image of God.
The woman would not suffer from anxiety and a difficult childbirth.
The man would not spend money on the best doctors or renting a paid ward.
The child would not have died and would not have driven the parents into despair.
The child's mother would not drink herself to death.
The parents would not have left the Church.
The child would not go to hell.
Christ would not have needed to cry from helplessness, seeing how a gentle and affectionate creature was sent into the abyss of Hell.
Then why all this? What is God's plan for this baby? Wouldn’t it have been better for him not only not to have been born, but also not to have been conceived? (See Matt. 26:24).
Question 5 — If there is "potential sinfulness", then why is there not "potential righteousness"?
If there is a “potential sinfulness” for which some people can go to hell, why don’t we provide for the option of justifying a person on the basis of “potential righteousness”?
If God can condemn a person for what he would have done if God had not taken his life in infancy, then why can’t God justify a person for what good he would have done if he had not died before birth?
What is more in line with God's character, the desire to condemn or the desire to justify?
Where does God's love find more expression, in seeking reasons for justification or reasons for damnation?
Question 6 — If only baptized infants are saved, then where is the guarantee that baptism was carried out according to the faith of the parents or recipients?
In the Augustinian paradigm, when baptized dead children are considered to have reached heaven, and unbaptized children to have reached hell, baptism becomes an element of recognition of “friend or foe”. We see baptism in its cosmic providential essence, as something that points us to the eternal fate of the baby that awaits him from the creation of the world.
With this approach, the baptism of children according to the faith of their recipients becomes something optional.
This, in turn, shamanizes the meaning of the sacrament, turning it into a magical act.
Every educated Orthodox Christian knows that baptism in the Orthodox Church is carried out according to the faith of the recipients or parents.
It should be. But in practice, baptism is sometimes carried out for superstitious reasons.
A case when baptism “didn’t work”
During the time of Patriarch Luke (1156 - 1159), some of the Turks came to Constantinople, declaring to the patriarchal synod that they were Christians, because in childhood they were baptized in their land by Christian priests. When asked how this could happen when they follow the Mohammedan law, they answered that they have a custom of having their children baptized by Orthodox priests, because in their opinion, every newborn child contains an evil spirit and stinks like a dog until he receives Christian baptism. From this the synod concluded that infidels who sought baptism for the sake of physical healing, and not for the sake of faith in Christ, perceived baptism as sorcery. The patriarchal synod, quite naturally, could not recognize such a baptism as valid, and therefore determined that those Turks who wanted to be baptized with faith in Christ who died for their sins could be baptized again.
This synod justified its decision by analogy with the 8th rule of the Seventh Ecumenical Council:
“Since some of the Jewish faith, wandering, decided to curse Christ our God, pretending to become Christians, secretly rejecting Him, and secretly keeping the Sabbath, and doing other Jewish things: then we determine that these should not be accepted into fellowship, or into prayer, or into the church : but obviously they are, according to their religion, Jews: and their children cannot be baptized...”
This means that not every immersion in water, even when performed by the right priests and performing the right ritual, is a true sacrament filled with the Holy Spirit.
Let us confirm this with the words of St. Cyril of Jerusalem:
“If you are a hypocrite, then people will baptize you now, but the Spirit will not baptize you. But if you have come by faith, then people serve in what is visible, but the Holy Spirit gives what is invisible.” (7th Catechetical speech to the enlightened. Creative edition. Soykin. P.219).
St. Mark of the Ascetic:
“Are you now convinced that to those who firmly believe the Holy Spirit is given immediately after baptism; But it is not given to the unfaithful and evil-believing after baptism?” (Moral and ascetic words. M. 1858. P. 147).
Hieromartyr Thaddeus (Uspensky) wrote:
“True, many baptized cannot be called spiritually resurrected, since their spiritual life is no different from the life of the unbaptized. One can be baptized with water without having received the grace of the Life-Giving Spirit (John 3:5), for this grace does not dwell in anyone except by his desire. In order for the grace of Baptism to be received (2 Cor. 6:1), the baptized must be grafted... into the good olive tree of Christ through faith and love, which richly infuse the life of Christ into a person’s soul, as well as through the struggle with passions that deaden the soul and prevent it from coming to life.” (Hieromartyr Archbishop Thaddeus (Uspensky). The Joy of the Resurrection of Christ. // Rejoice. M. 1998. Ed. Eleon. P. 16-17).
Question 7 — If dead unbaptized children go to hell, and dead baptized children go to heaven, and this happens on the basis of predestination based on foreknowledge of potential sinfulness, then how does this differ from Calvinism?
Although, perhaps, there is one difference from Calvinism here.
Calvinism extends its doctrine to the fate of all people, and this concept can rightly be called paedo-Calvinism.
Of all the people on planet earth, we can single out a group of dead babies, which have been the majority throughout human history, and apply the logic of Calvinism to them.
And to those who survived the age of infancy, we could apply the doctrine of synergism, which the Eastern Fathers of the Church adhered to for two millennia.
But on the issue of saving foolish babies, we turn out to be pure Calvinists.
If this is so, then the question arises about the advisability of such a division of those being saved into two groups with completely different conditions of salvation.
As for the semi-Pelagian doctrine, it is appropriate here to recall the third, fourth, fifth and sixth anathemas of the Council of Arles (around 474 A.D.)
Anathemas of the Council of Arles:
3. Also anathema to the one who says that the foreknowledge of God inclines a person to death.
4. Also anathema to the one who says that the one who perished did not receive that by which he could be saved.
5. Also anathema to him who says that a vessel of wrath cannot rise to become a vessel of honor.
6. Also anathema to the one who says that Christ did not die for everyone, and that He does not want all people to be saved.
Source: dzen.ru (Russian)
Kinda think a lot of the arguments here are above my spiritual pay grade, so to speak. But, in my opinion, I cannot believe that a God who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son to die for its sins so that mankind through repentance of sin and belief in the resurrection of Christ might have everlasting life, would dismiss any small child to hell in such circumstances.
I just can't and won't believe that.
What about the child who is born into the world but perishes moments later, or on its mother's breast? It is born, it breathed air for however long, before it passed. But it isn't baptized.... Does anyone truly believer our God would condemn that tiny soul to an eternity of hell?
I was an atheist before becoming Orthodox a few years ago. The idea that one would worship a god that would condemn babies to hell acted as fuel for my atheism and would (and still does) make me irrationally angry.