I was confronted by a friend the other day and we were talking about religion and started talking about baptism…
The question came up about infant baptism. The question is:
Would it not be better to baptism everyone then kill them off right after they are baptized? Since it will prevent them from ever losing their salvation.
So one person condems themself to hell and sends however many to heaven… Just seems wrong to me but I don’t know how to answer that question.
Laudatur Iesus Christus.
The faults in this logic lay in mistaking both the substance and the goal of salvation.
As to substance: Neither the minister of baptism nor the child’s parents could plan in advance to murder the child. Baptism is the parents’ delivery of the child to Christ, for His service, not for premature death. If the intention of the parents or the minister were to murder the child in order to “steal heaven” for the baby, then the baptism would be invalid.
Thus, the murderer and his intensions could not be involved in the baptism itself. This suggests that this sort of scheme could not be maintained, because those administering the baptism would learn of the intent to murder and would prevent the murders, delay the baptisms until the babies were safe, or substantively render the baptisms invalid and thus frustrate the scheme.
However, so long as the baptisms were valid, children murdered in this way would be accepted into heaven.
Nevertheless, this would mistake the goal of salvation, which is the redemption of *all *of the physical universe, not merely some limited number of human persons, but *each *person and all of the rest of the world as well. One cannot serve this goal by damning oneself, even if several other souls attain heaven through one’s efforts. Each baptized person is an agent of Christ in sanctifying that portion of the physical world which that person knows and offers in love to God. Hence, the offer of one’s self, in himself, to God is only partial, one must also offer one’s works and prayers as well as one’s soul, if Christ’s will is to be done in expressing His love for God the Father through physical creation.
Hence, the scheme mentioned fails on two counts: as described it could not work because the perverse intent would invalidate the baptisms; even with necessary modifications, it would be limited in its application to a few cases, again because of the issue of intent; and in either case, the scheme would frustrate the goal of salvation, by limiting it to the beatification of a few human souls, while damning others, rather than working to effect the sanctification of all souls as well as the physical universe through the Church of Christ. Thus one can confidently say: No; it would not be “better.”
Pax Christi nobiscum.
John Hiner
