I think I’ve hit on one of the things that’s been lurking in the background in my resistance to the idea of an age of accountability. Now this post will largely be assuming some things many here will not grant, e.g. exclusivism about who gets saved, Christian particularism about how they get saved, perhaps Protestant soteriology, and traditional or classical models of divine knowledge (as opposed to open theism). One reason I assume these is because I think they’re all true, but it’s more important for this post that most people who hold to the age of accountability as I’m about to explicate it do in fact assume all these things. Perhaps denying any of them, or at least certain ways of denying them, will get around the problems I’m about to raise. I think it might still take some work to do so, however.
1. At some age (which may not be the same for everyone), each person becomes morally responsible.
2. Before that point, (a) it would be unjust for God to hold the person responsible for their sins, or (b) they aren’t really sins until that point, or (c) God would always be merciful in such cases when justice might still be deserved.
3. After that point, the gospel message applies, and those who repent and follow Christ are saved, while those who don’t are not.
Now there’s an unspecified fourth issue that an age-of-accountability view might go either way on. What criteria determine what the age of accountability is, and do the criteria admit of vagueness such that there isn’t a clear line between being morally responsible and not being morally responsible? So we get the following two views:
Suppose there is no such vagueness. Take the case of a hypothetical child Fergus. Fergus is currently below the age of accountability, and thus if he dies he’ll be saved eternally. Once he hits that age, he’ll magically become morally responsible overnight, even though that transition is based in capacities that admit of vagueness such as cognitive abilities, recognition of one’s own sin, grasp of the concepts necessary to understand the barebones gospel message, and so on. Thus the age of accountability seems arbitrary.
What if there is vagueness, then, in how God determines whether someone is accountable? The capacities undergirding the age of accountability are matters of vague boundaries, and thus also is the age of accountability. Children become more accountable as they become more able to understand the gospel message and apply it to themselves. This means the degree of responsibility they have for their own sin and for not responding to the gospel depends on how far along they are in their moral development.
The problem with the first view is that it’s arbitrary and thus seems unjust. If God draws the line of salvation at a certain point of responsibility, when one iota less would bring someone into salvation, it seems as if the consequence is far more severe than the difference in level of responsibility should warrant. With two possible outcomes of infinite difference in value, a tiny difference in how responsible someone is shouldn’t be enough to put someone in one and someone of slightly greater moral awareness, say, in the other.
The problem with the second view is that it doesn’t fit well with the exclusivist position that most people who believe in an age of accountability accept. I don’t happen to think vagueness problems are a problem for exclusivism in general, because in my view the basis for those who are past the accountability age is still objective and clear: Is there a genuine work of divine grace in the person’s life? That doesn’t come in degrees. God intends salvation for someone or doesn’t. God doesn’t sort-of-intend things. Those with a weaker view of God’s sovereignty in salvation have to say more here, but I have no problem with vagueness problems and exclusivism per se.
But once you add in the age of accountability, there is a problem, because it becomes vague whether the person is responsible for having to trust in Christ and be committed to him. Such people are on the borderline for whether they ought to be sent to hell if they haven’t repented.
Now there are a couple ways someone might still hold to an age of accountability despite this problem. God could simply ensure that no one dies while in the vague area of moral responsibility where it (a) isn’t clearly enough to count as a fully participating morally responsible child but also (b) not clearly small enough to count as not yet responsible. So God could avoid the unjust outcome by working it into his providential plan that no one ends up in that position.
You could instead think there are degrees of punishment and good in the afterlife. A lot of people think that anyway. But to make this work, you’d have to think the level of punishment in hell for those in the borderline of responsibility would be so close to zero that it’s very near the level of good in heaven for those who are near the borderline of responsibility and end up just making it into heaven.
I wouldn’t rule out the first, but the second sounds implausible given the accounts of the afterlife that you see in scripture, and even the first has to attribute to God a lot of activity that is never spoken of anywhere in Christian scripture. It brings in considerations that we’re expecting God to care about that aren’t countenanced anywhere in scripture. A lot of people are so resistant to the idea that infants are morally accountable for the sin nature they’re born with that they might be willing to accept these sorts of things, but it’s not clear at all to me that we should prefer these adjustments to the idea that there’s no age of accountability and children with no capacity to reflect on their lives morally are nonetheless morally accountable to God for their sin.
Now perhaps a more helpful way to capture what I think is motivating the age of accountability idea is to recognize that what an act of divine regeneration might look like will be different for those with diminished capacities. Presumably we’re not being told that John the Baptist understood the full implications of who the Messiah was to be when we’re told that he leaped for joy when his pregnant mother came into the vicinity of Mary when she was pregnant with Jesus. We’re being told that he was excited somehow, and perhaps a work of regeneration at that early age included an additional sensitivity even in his pre-natal state to being in the presence of divinity. Nothing I’ve said here tells us one way or the other about how many infants or how many of those with diminished capacities into adulthood experience something like what John the Baptist did (or at least whatever part of it was sufficient for salvation).
So it doesn’t follow at all that all infants go to hell or anything like that. That’s consistent with everything I’ve said, but it’s also consistent with all this that none do, or perhaps some do. I’m not really commenting on that issue in general, just on this one approach that I think ends up with problematic elements. So I’m not sure we should try to handle this kind of problem with the idea of an age of accountability that bases moral deservingness on capacity to understand. That doesn’t mean I have a clear view on the best way to approach it, though. But positive views have never been my philosophical strength.
[cross-posted at Parableman and Prosblogion]
July 7th, 2010 | 12:47 am | #1
Yet, in defense of your own view, you write:
Are you in the end accepting God’s arbitrariness with respect to a person’s salvation? Is such arbitrariness indeed a problem, on your view?
(Fantastic topic, by the way.)
July 7th, 2010 | 1:05 am | #2
Fundamentally, I wonder what idea of God motivates such an idea. Is God waiting for people to cross the line so that He can justly damn them? Or is He regretfully holding back from smiting 12-year-olds who are on the cusp of becoming culpable, whom He knows will not follow Him?
Yes, 13 is my guess.
Practically, supposing there is some age, I wonder what the soteriological consequence is of societies (like ours) that encourage irresponsibility well into the 20′s. Supposing that the age is lower — and it’s certainly lower than 20 — is the consequence that society is helping to damn people simply by keeping them from taking responsibility in their lives? I’m not sure whether that is the same or different from the other ways in which society encourages us to damn ourselves.
Maybe 14.
July 7th, 2010 | 1:11 am | #3
Jeremy, as I’m curious what sort of sin you have in mind, I’m wondering if, for your own view, you would object to rephrasing the last part to read as follows:
If you wouldn’t object, I wonder if we could take it one step further. Would you object to this rephrasing:
July 7th, 2010 | 6:36 am | #4
Thank God for purgatory, as well as His perfection of knowledge of our actual spiritual conditions.
July 7th, 2010 | 7:43 am | #5
This is a very interesting topic, and I like how you point out that these things hold together. How you come down on these issues is also affected by how you view baptism (both what baptism does, and who can or should be baptized).
Is simply having a sinful nature “truly sin, even now condemning and bringing eternal death upon those not born again through Baptism and the Holy Ghost”, or is it instead “the tinder for sin”? There’s a lot tied up in this topic.
July 7th, 2010 | 8:06 am | #6
If there is an age of accountability in Scripture, it would be 20. In entering the land of Canaan, only those who were 19 years of age and under were allowed to enter following the rebellion at Beersheba. Numbers 14:29 I would not even want to argue for such a concept but if so, we have to begin with passages such as Numbers, the census, etc.
July 7th, 2010 | 8:17 am | #7
[...] Coming of age. [...]
July 7th, 2010 | 8:19 am | #8
[...] Coming of age. [...]
July 7th, 2010 | 10:00 am | #9
[...] Evangel discusses some of the difficulties inherent in the idea of a soteriological “age of accountability“. [...]
July 7th, 2010 | 10:27 am | #10
This reminds me of Ted Sider’s argument against hell.
July 7th, 2010 | 11:00 am | #11
Age of Accountability
Assuming such, and even assuming that it’s the age of 20 as Raymond Coffey in #6 suggests,
then I’m accountable and morally responsible for my sins.
Praise God I’m one of the Elect and that He has chosen to cover my sins with the precious blood of His Lamb, a miserable sinner.
July 7th, 2010 | 1:00 pm | #12
[...] Over at Evangel, Jeremy Pierce has posted about “the age of accountability” and salvation: A lot of people are so resistant to [...]
July 10th, 2010 | 5:56 pm | #13
Janice, maybe I should be clear what I mean by arbitrariness. Calvinism is often accused of taking God to choose some arbitrarily for salvation while rejecting others arbitrarily. This is indeed a fair criticism if the Calvinist in question (as some do) thinks God has literally no reason for choosing some and rejecting others. But Calvinism hasn’t historically held such a thing. Calvinists would think, for example, that the apostle Paul was chosen by God particularly for the things God intended to do through him and the capacities God was going to work through in making him the way he did. What Calvinists shouldn’t say is that God decides who goes where based on anyone earning salvation. But that doesn’t imply that God has no reasons.
So it’s perfectly fine for God to have reasons for regenerating and saving people but for those reasons to be a matter of God’s decision. That’s compatible with thinking that an arbitrary decision for no reason is unjust. If there is literally no reason why God drew the line in a certain place, then it seems really problematic morally unless the line has just about zero moral import.
Janice, we have to distinguish between sin and sins. We all have sin, and that’s present from the beginning of our existence. It’s what makes us imperfect from the very outset, and it’s the reason why we all commit sins. That places us outside the possibility of God’s presence from long before we engage in any actions with any moral import. What we deserve is based on what we are, which is corrupted from the very beginning.
Raymond, I think there’s an explanation of age 20 that doesn’t imply anything to do with an age of accountability. Those who couldn’t enter the land were those younger than the age of military service at the time when Israel’s greatest gift was about to arrive, and the military operation to achieve it failed by refusing God’s gift. So those younger than military-serving age were not part of the covenant-breaking in that case.
Adam O, it has a very similar structure in one place to Ted’s argument. My immediate response to Ted’s argument when he showed me the draft of his paper was that it didn’t apply if Calvinism is true, and he conceded the point. I think his argument misunderstands the historic Reformation position even if it’s not taken in the Calvinist way, but Calvinism gets out of the problem even more easily (and that was the part he conceded). What I’m arguing here is basically that his argument, while unsound when used against Calvinism about hell in general, is sound when used against age-of-accountability views unless they avoid the problem by saying some things you might not have expected them to have to say.
July 10th, 2010 | 6:31 pm | #14
Jeremy,
I really appreciate the response. The problem of arbitrariness is a species of the more general problem of lacking a sufficient justification. That is, to say that it would be a problem if God arbitrarily selects some for salvation and others for damnation is to say that it is a problem if God lacks a sufficient justification for making such a selection. Since the fundamental problem is specifying a sufficient justification, this problem is not resolved by observing that God may have a reason for choosing some but not others. God’s reason for choosing St. Paul may be that St. Paul had divinely gorgeous hair. As far as a sufficient justification, however, this wouldn’t be an improve upon God’s choosing Paul arbitrarily. Moreover, if we observe that it was also God who chose to give St. Paul the divinely gorgeous hair (or. to have the apostolic capacities necessary for spreading the faith among the Gentiles), then there may even still be a sense in which we haven’t even gotten rid of the arbitrariness.
But perhaps all this is just beating around the bush, for you also say this:
This means, I take it, that you accept that an unborn baby, and one which hasn’t yet developed the capacity to even have a thought, may still deserve to suffer. It’s curious to me that you can accept this but you still agree that the random selection of some for hell and some for heaven would be unjust, or morally problematic. Why not go the whole hog and reject all the deliverances of common sense morality, including the conviction that randomly selecting some for bliss and others for condemnation would be unjust?
July 13th, 2010 | 1:56 pm | #15
Because I think scripture is clear enough that God is not arbitrary but in fact has excellent reasons for what he does, and our only infallible source for morality, whether it turns out to be common sense morality or otherwise, is scripture, especially how scripture presents God as the ultimate moral exemplar — “be perfect, as God is perfect”. You may not share my moral assumptions, but I don’t think anything you’ve said has shown any genuine inconsistencies.
July 13th, 2010 | 2:35 pm | #16
Jeremy Pierce,
Thank you again for your follow up. You’ve clarified to my satisfaction why it is more of a problem, on your view, to charge God with actual arbitrariness.
However, in the context of your argument, your reply to me is perfectly inadequate. Notice how someone defending “the first view” against your charge of God’s arbitrariness could respond precisely the same way as you have responded to me. On the first view, God picks a precise moment in time in which Fergus becomes, as you say, “morally accountable.” So, if he dies right before that moment, Fergus will “be saved eternally”; if right after that moment, he steals a piece of candy and then dies, then it’s anyone’s guess what God, who saith, “vengeance is mine,” will do with poor Fergus. So the problem here is precisely the problem I pressed you with: if God does pick this a moment like this, then God seems to have made the crucial decision without sufficient justification. Notice also that the proponent of the first view can respond precisely as you have responded to me: “I think scripture is clear enough that God is not arbitrary, but in fact has excellent reasons for what he does.” In other words, given the strong evidences I have from scripture, we may assume that God has excellent reasons for picking a precise moment in Fergus’ life as the age of accountability.
More generally, I like to add that consistency can be fairly low standard. After all, a dozen absurd beliefs can be entirely consistent with each other. So recall that last issue I brought up. You wrote,
This means, I take it, that you accept that an unborn baby, and one which hasn’t yet developed the capacity to even have a thought, may still deserve to suffer. This is the sort of belief that seems perfectly absurd (or we might say “morally outrageous”) even if it is perfectly consistent with various additional beliefs.
July 15th, 2010 | 1:50 am | #17
Ah, but what you’re doing is different. The structure of my argument is:
1. There’s something that seems clearly taught in scripture.
2. It also seems arbitrary.
3. But if scripture is reliable, then it tells us something about a God who is not arbitrary.
4. So there must be a reason God does it,
The structure of your argument is:
1. I have a theological view that I don’t get from scripture but that seems like it must be right.
2. It also seems to involve arbitrary choices on God’s part.
3. If scripture is reliable, then God must not do anything arbitrary.
4. Therefore, there must be a reason God makes such seemingly-arbitrary choices.
The difference is that there’s another possibility with the second argument, namely that God doesn’t make such choices at all. If scripture does teach something, and we take scripture to be authoritative, then we can assume God does actually do such a thing. Such is the case, in my view, with Calvinism. I don’t think people who hold to an age of accountability really think that they derive it from scripture. They derive it, most of them admittedly, from what they think must be true of God. My argument is that it isn’t the teaching of scripture and thus that it’s not parallel to the kind of defense I’ve given for things we do see directly taught in scripture.
July 21st, 2010 | 5:37 pm | #18
Jeremy,
I think you are right in this respect: the age of accountability does not cleanly resolve the appearance of arbitrariness in God’s decisions about whom to save and whom to damn. In that sense, we might say, the age of accountability position fails on its own terms.
That said, it seems that you must also concede that–on your own terms–the appearance of arbitrariness in God’s decisions about whom to save and whom to damn isn’t really much of a concern, as this is one of the places where you bite the bullet.
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