Hello JP
@Irenaeus,
It would depend on what is meant by “saving faith”. Does it mean a rational profession of belief, or does it mean a regeneration resulting in knowing God?
Medical doctors discern that babies only a few hours old can distinguish the voice of their mothers from the voices of other women. It is likewise clear that an infant bonding with his or her mother similarly distinguishes her from others, and knows her presence, her heart. Cannot infants likewise know the voice of their God? Or more pertinently, His presence, and heart? Not by cerebral knowledge, but by a deeper knowing in the heart. We have a Scriptural example of this in Luke’s account of Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth.
In Luke 1:41 we see Mary entering into Elizabeth’s home and calling out in greeting to her. At the moment of her hearing Mary’s voice, the at-least-6-month-old John in her womb leaped for joy, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Six-or-seven-month-old John, hearing the mother of his Lord’s voice through Elizabeth’s ears gave John a thrill of gladness.
Little John may not have had the words to express himself, but his heart leaped for joy – for the eternal One he was sent to herald was near him! Less than a year earlier the angel Gabriel had told John’s father concerning John, that “he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15).
Centuries earlier Moses spoke to this sort of thing, when he said to God’s elect people,
And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live. (Deut 30:6)
A crucial matter is
when this heart circumcision of the children was effected, and what it consisted of. We know of John the Baptist that he was sanctified / set apart in his mother’s womb, regenerated – while yet unborn – by the Holy Spirit. Calvin says of this,
Let us not attempt, then, to impose a law upon God to keep him from sanctifying whom he pleases, just as he sanctified this child, inasmuch as his power is not lessened. (Institutes, Book IV, chapter XVI, Sect. 17; Battles Edition)
Slightly earlier Calvin says,
But how ([the Anabaptists] ask) are infants, unendowed with knowledge of good or evil, regenerated? We reply that God’s work, though beyond our understanding, is still not annulled. Now it is perfectly clear that those infants who are to be saved (as some are surely saved from that early age) are previously regenerated by the Lord. For if they bear with them an inborn corruption from their mother’s womb, they must be cleansed of it before they can be admitted into God’s kingdom, for nothing polluted or defiled may enter there (Rev. 21:27). If they are born sinners, as both David and Paul affirm (Eph. 2:3; Ps. 51:5), either they remain unpleasing and hateful to God, or they must be justified. And what further do we seek, when the Judge himself plainly declares that entry into heavenly life opens only to men who are born anew (John 3:3)? (Ibid.)
Thus John the Baptist (as noted above) and Jeremiah are exemplars of the Lord working in this manner with children. Did He not say to young Jeremiah,
Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jer 1:5)
Talking of Christ, Calvin says,
Truly Christ was sanctified from earliest infancy in order that he might sanctify in himself his elect from every age without distinction. For, to wipe out the guilt of the disobedience which had been committed in our flesh, he took that very flesh that in it, for our sake, and in our stead, he might achieve perfect obedience. Thus, he was conceived of the Holy Spirit in order that, in the flesh taken, fully imbued with the holiness of the Spirit, he might impart that holiness to us. If we have in Christ the most perfect example of all the graces which God bestows upon his children, in this respect also he will be for us proof that the age of infancy is not utterly averse to sanctification. (Ibid., Sect. 18)
In sum:
1. This is not “baptismal regeneration” in the children’s cases, as the regeneration occurred prior to baptism, and similarly in the old dispensation with circumcision – though sometimes conversion occurred later in life, either in childhood or adulthood. Neither does the promise – in its essential form in the Deuteronomy 30:6 quote above – warrant the assurance that
all the children of believers are elect, which we have ample evidence concerning in the Scriptures. Yet we raise them as if they were, for such is our loving duty.
2. Examples: Was not Jacob separated unto God from the womb? (Gen 25:23) Was not Samson “a Nazarite unto God from the womb”? (Judges 13:5) Was not Samuel devoted to the LORD from the womb? (1 Sam 1:11, 19) Was not David (as well as his greater Son)? Psalm 22:9, 10; 139:13–16.
As to calling this what sometimes occurs in babes in the womb, “saving faith”, or simply regeneration, consider what Alexander Nisbet in his
Commentary on 1st & 2nd Peter (Banner of Truth, p. 25) says of faith: “
. . . it being the nature of true faith to make the thing it closes with spiritually present to the soul.”
Is this not the very case with the children spoken of above? I’ll finish with God’s word:
Gen 17:7 And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.
