I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy...

My apologies to those who don't want to keep revisiting this topic, but I've been thinking about it over the holiday break and haven't been satisfied about the arguments put forth here to support the majority position. I've got some genuine questions, and hopefully I can ask them without sarcasm—but I won't promise anything. :) Starting from a concrete instance: if the miscarried child of a Christian woman is presumed to be elect, how about the day-old baby, the toddler, the first-grader, and so on? At what point does the presumption of election cease to hold? Until the child has “broken covenant”? (No one has even said what this means yet.) How many sins does it take to “break covenant”? And isn’t this idea really just another way of conceiving the “age of accountability”? This presumption of election is based on, among other passages, Acts 2:39, which reads, “For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” (NASB) You understand the promise to be salvation, but why do you act as if it’s given only to one of the three groups—your children? Why don’t you presume that “you” and “all who are far off” are elect, as well? I think it’s because you tacitly know that the promise mentioned here isn’t the guarantee of salvation but only its offer, or its availability. Otherwise you wouldn’t acknowledge the obvious fact that not all children of Christians are Christians. But if the promise is not a guarantee of salvation, how can you be sure that every particular miscarried baby is in heaven? Pastor Tim: you acknowledge that the Bible gives us the caveat of Esau, that “not all Israel is Israel,” but would there ever be a woman who’s lost her child to whom you *wouldn’t* say that the child is in heaven? Why not? I don’t think it’s just because you don’t want to hurt her feelings. But why else would it be? Isn’t it inconsistent to admit that not all children of Christians are elect but then be unable ever to find a non-elect one? And what if only one of the parents is a Christian? Does the covenant still hold good? Are the promises of the covenant stronger according to the perceived righteousness of the parents? Can you be more sure that their child is in heaven if they’re extra holy? So, assuming the child of a Christian couple survives and grows up: do Reformed Christians really believe that their children are already saved from the moment of conception or birth? Are the kids, as the liberals say, "born right the first time" and in no need of regeneration? If not, then are you admitting that the promise from Acts 2:39 is merely the offer and not the guarantee of salvation? It seems to me that, if you believe your unborn children are presumed to be elect, then you raise them as disciples who are already saved and not as sinners in need of redemption. There is no worship of idols from which they must turn to the true God; there is no wrong path from which they need to convert and no wrong behavior from which they need to repent. Is the burden of proof on the child to prove that he *isn't* saved? I've always thought that the natural state of man is enmity against God, that he needs to be reconciled to God—not that, because of his fleshly parentage, he’s already reconciled. The New Testament refers only to the old and the new covenants. John 1:12-13 seem very relevant to me at this point: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (NASB) We aren't sons of God because of who are parents are but because we receive Him and believe in His name. If God’s election of sinners to Himself is sovereign, then this “presumption of election” is indeed presumptuous, and this idea of raising our kids as if they’re already saved vicariously thanks to our faith in Christ smacks of sacramentalism and legalism. In fact, it runs completely contrary to the New Testament teaching on man, sin and salvation. It seems to entail a danger of muting the Gospel message in favor of exhorting our already saved children to follow certain rules so as not to break the covenant. It results in a situation where we presume our kids’ election and then, in order to preclude them from breaking the covenant, we set up all sorts of taboos or rules they have to follow, and we encourage conformity to the idiosyncratic habits of a particular sub-culture or sub-group, rather than teaching them to live with the Cross at the center of their lives. (Incidentally, this is why it’s important to know what “breaking the covenant” actually, really means.) I say these are “dangers” not because I’ve witnessed them. To the contrary, what I’ve seen is a very vigorous preaching of the Gospel to the church—and this seems inconsistent to me when you’re saying that we can presume our own election based on our parents’ faith (according to Acts 2:39). If we’re already presumed elect, why preach the Gospel so vigorously to us? Lastly, I should respond to something said earlier in this thread. David Gray wrote, “Applying the covenant promises to a dead infant is a far cry from assuming that all children born into the covenant are elect.” So you’re saying that all dead infants of Christian parents are elect (or, conversely, that God elects all dead children of Christian parents). It’s a heart-warming thought, no doubt, but it’s completely without basis in Scripture. As I said before, this theory (the result of an attempt to systematize or theorize what God clearly never meant to include in a system) is the least convincing of the several put forth regarding children who’ve died, and probably the last one a plain reading of Scripture would lead one to.