I took the liberty of carrying this over from a private discussion. If this doesn't meet with Tyrel's approval, I'll ask this thread to be removed.
Someone with minimal cognition has very little ability for actual thoughts of rebellion against God, but that doesn't mean that his soul is not in rebellion. In my understanding of the Roman doctrine of "limbo," unbaptized infants occupy the mildest circle of hell: Hell by virtue of their Original Sin, which makes them guilty; and the mildest circle by virtue of their very limited ability, because for those to whom little is given, little is required. That seems biblical, except that (1) the mildest circle may still be pretty bad, and (2) I don't believe in an opere ex operato baptismal removal of Original Sin. I do allow that God may choose to regenerate anyone whom He wishes, whether an infant or otherwise, to change rebellion into faith and thus salvation. Concerning whether God does this for all, some, or no infants, Scripture is silent, and so am I.
Libertarian Free Will strikes me as both unnecessary (trying to solve a problem that the Bible does not encourage us to think of as a problem) and self-contradictory, since it appears to entail wanting what you don't want. I find no biblical warrant for Kant's axiom as a good summary of Divine justice, nor any confidence that we know what the soul of an infant cannot do. A child in the womb, like a child or adult outside the womb, ought not to rebel against his Maker.
I am not familiar with those terms. I find presuppositionalism as I understand it a useful tool, but not to the exclusion of evidentiary apologetics as well. Really most people don't respond well to logical appeals anyway. We believe what we want to believe, and then we look for some sort of post hoc justification to rationalize our biases.
Originally posted by Tyrel
Further, I'm not sure how far down the Calvinist rabbit hole you go, but do you agree with the Kantian axiom that 'ought implies can'? Further, if you do, then what think you about libertarian free will? In connection (again, only if you do accept that Kantian axiom), do you believe that a child in the womb 'ought' not rebel?
Alternatively, if you are a right-proper Calvinist, are you also a presuppositionalist like van Till, and if you are, are you a meaning holist (i.e., do you adopt a coherence theory of truth in place of a correspondence theory of truth)?
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