Do unborn babies or infants who die go to heaven?

6/9/2016

Do unborn babies or infants who die go to heaven?

I attended a church camp in June 2016. That month a church member suffered a miscarriage and many church members came to know about it. So the above question was addressed to the invited speaker. The speaker said there was no direct answer from the bible but he pointed out a few verses that suggested that babies or children that were not yet conscious of their sinful nature would go to heaven. He said in this he supported the Westminster confession of Faith position.

Verses that were brought up

Psalms 139:13-16
For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
    when I was made in the secret place,
    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Psalms 51:5
Surely I was sinful at birth,
sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

2 Samuel 12:23
But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me.”

Psalms 23:6 A Psalm of David
Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

Luke 18:16
Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

From these verses we know that

The unborn baby is already considered a human by God
Babies are conceived in sin
David in 2 Samuel knew that his dead son’s spirit was going somewhere that he himself would go too when he died. And David was confident in Psalms 23 that he was going to heaven
In Luke 18:16 Jesus said God’s kingdom belongs to little children.

The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the "subordinate standard" of doctrine in the Church of Scotland, and has been influential within Presbyterian churches worldwide.

Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 10 “Of Effectual calling”
III. Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how He pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.
From the Westminster confession, only elect/predestined infants go to heaven. But only God knows who are elected. An additional point is that people who were mentally challenged and could not respond to the gospel were similarly elected.
Of course this is only one point of view among many others.

There are other points of view.

Here is a Christian article who explores the other views in more detail