# Unborn infants and WCF 10.3



## Steve Curtis (Nov 20, 2022)

Any resource recommendations for the inclusion in this section of the Confession of elect babies who die *inside *the womb?


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## Alan D. Strange (Nov 20, 2022)

@kainos01 

Steve,

I've always taken "elect infants dying in infancy" to include elect infants who die inside the womb. Does something prompt you to think otherwise?

Peace,
Alan


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## Polanus1561 (Nov 20, 2022)

Just like Dort, the people in those days faced high infant mortality. They surely had infants in the womb in mind.


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## Stephen L Smith (Nov 20, 2022)

kainos01 said:


> Any resource recommendations for the inclusion in this section of the Confession of elect babies who die *inside *the womb?


Dr Venema has written an insightful article 'Children of Believers who die in Infancy'. He looks at the confessional standards; I think you will find it helpful broadly speaking - children who die in infancy are in the same situation as those dying in the womb.


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## Steve Curtis (Nov 20, 2022)

Alan D. Strange said:


> @kainos01
> 
> Steve,
> 
> ...


Not at all. 
I am interacting with someone, however, who is making a distinction between "pre-born" and "born" infants. 
I just wanted to see if someone had done the legwork already to make the case that the distinction is unwarranted.


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## Phil D. (Nov 20, 2022)

The Lutheran writer Charles Krauth marshaled quite a few quotations from early Reformed sources in his, _Infant Baptism And Infant Salvation In The Calvinistic System__. _His analysis is definitely from a Lutheran perspective_, _but one particularly pertinent remark is from the German Reformed divine David Pareus.

Neither Zwingli, nor Calvin, nor any one of us, places, without distinction in heaven with the saints, all infants who die without baptism, *whether unborn or in birth*, or while they are carried to baptism, but they pronounce this, by the law of charity, of the infants alone of the Church, born in the Covenant if they be prevented by death, nevertheless, without interference with the election of God, which as of old in the family of Abraham and Isaac, so in after time often hath made, and doth make a discrimination which we are neither to search into nor to scoff at, but to adore (Rom. 9:11). This is the constant judgment of ourselves, and of our divines concerning this question. (Krauth, p.27)​

Reactions: Like 1 | Informative 1


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