Age of Accountability, Believer’s Baptism, and Abortion

Many erring church bodies accept the idea of believer’s baptism on the premise that there is a certain amount of innocence in children until they reach a certain age (usually around 8).  In the Scriptures, you can find no such example, but it does make for wishful thinking (and a horrible false belief concerning Original Sin).

What is most interesting in these churches is that they heavily seek to use reason and rationale and logic to make their theology work together (they hate the paradoxes and distinctions in Lutheranism), and yet these groups do not apply their blanket doctrine of the innocence of children (or a lack of accountability for their actions) to their stance on abortion.  Logically speaking, wouldn’t a person who believes that every child who dies before age 8 goes automatically to heaven support abortion and even infanticide for the good of that person’s salvation?

A large part of a theologian’s (and every Christian is a theologian) task is to find the weak points in the false teacher’s teachings.  I believe that this is one of them in the theology that forms a large part of American Evangelicalism.  Most people when approached with this line of thought will think it crazy, but really it works to expose the false teaching of the age of accountability (as well as the weakness of relying upon reason to form your beliefs).  One must tear down the idols and false teachings in order to build up the right teachings sometimes (see God’s charge to Jeremiah in chapter 1).

Another one I have heard lately is the charge against God that He is unfair for allowing people who have not heard the Gospel to go to hell.  A quick response may be that if ignorance of God and the Gospel allows a person to be in heaven, then the best evangelism tool we have is to get rid of all churches and bibles and so forth.  The better question could be “What does every person (having heard the Gospel or not) deserve?”

What are some other logical or reasonable arguments which work to expose false teachings, please feel free to share them here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.