I posted this at my own blog a little under a month ago, and one philosopher recommended that I post it here as well. He also thought it was interesting enough to try to turn into a paper. Do those who know more about these issues agree? If you want to see the comments on the original, go to the original post. I haven't changed anything in the original post for this posting, even though I think some of what the comments brought out might have made it worth changing some things.
I just realized a very interesting consequence of two theses that I'm sure many people hold. The first thesis is the Reformed version of infant baptism. I don't think the Catholic version has this result. Protestant paedobaptists believe that baptism does not save, nor remove original sin. It does indicate parents' trust that their child, being in the covenant community, will eventually develop personal faith and serve Christ as Lord. In other words, the content is pretty much what other parents express when they dedicate their children in hope of baptism when they express faith at an old enough age to be recognized as genuine. The biggest difference is that paedobaptists use the term 'baptism' and treat their children as part of the covenant itself rather than simply as benefiting from being part of the more general covenant community. As a credobaptist I disagree with this view, but it's quite common among the Reformed.
The second thesis is the main idea behind retroactive prayer. I've already argued for the possibility of legitimately retroactive prayer, so I won't do all that again. I'll simply say that if you accept that God has perfect knowledge of what's future to us (whether because he's outside time or some other reason), there's no reason for us not to pray about things that have already happened when we don't know the outcome. If God can foresee my prayer beforehand, then there's nothing to stop God from answering what I will later pray. The key idea here is foreknowledge, which all Reformed accept.
Now if you put these two things together, you get a very surprising result. The same things that justify these two views, when combined, will open up the possibility of baptism for the dead.
My argument is as follows. The key idea behind retroactive prayer is that God knows well ahead of time what we will pray. So it doesn't matter to God whether my prayer that my son will survive an open-heart surgery is before or after the operation itself. It matters to me. If I already know he didn't survive, it's foolish to pray that he would. I already know. But that's just parallel to what's the case if I already know that he won't survive, and I pray it ahead of time. If I already know that the world will be destroyed as if by fire because II Peter says so, and I pray to God that it won't happen, I'm praying something that I already know is in vain. It would be like a kid asking Mom to have bought a different color popsicle. It already happened, and you know the result. You can't change it.
It's different when we're considering God's providence. When God was working out how he would act at various times in history, he took into account what people would do, including how people would pray. This is true of prayers that are still future to us. So the point is that when we don't know the outcome, we can pray for something, and however it did turn out, even if it already happened, may have been because God took into account our prayer. So praying for something after it happens is not problematic, as long as you don't know the outcome of what you're praying for. It sounds weird, but it makes perfect sense when you spend a little time thinking about it. One of the elders in my congregation did exactly this sort of thing in our prayer times while another elder was ministering overseas. He would pray for him as he had preached earlier that morning. It seemed perfectly normal as he did it, because he knows God would have noticed this prayer when working out what would have happened earlier that day on the other side of the world.
When you combine this with the key idea behind paedobaptism, you get interesting results. Paedobaptists believe it's ok to baptize a child who doesn't know or approve of the baptism, who has shown no signs whatsoever of being elect to salvation. They believe this because they think baptism is a trust on the parents' part that their child will be saved, will express faith in Christ, and will serve him as Lord. They describe their attitude as expectant of their child's role in the covenant community as naturally leading to salvation.
Once you have these two things, I think there could be cases of baptism for the dead that would be perfectly appropriate. What if a family from a Baptist church decided they want to become Presbyterian? They become convinced that Presbyterians have it right, and they decide to express Presbyterian convictions by having their unbaptized children baptized. The only problem is that their oldest son, a teenager, was kidnapped three years ago. They discovered his body a month ago, and he had died hours before they found it. They have no idea what he'd been doing for the last few years. He hadn't expressed faith before he was kidnapped, but he hadn't given any sign that he had rejected God either. He simply hadn't made a clear choice. He wasn't old enough or mature enough for them to be sure. Should they trust that he turned out to have been elect? Should they trust that their raising him in the covenant community had the effect paedobaptists say they believe that it will have on all the kids they baptize as infants? I think the answer has to be yes. If they should now baptize all their other kids, it seems by the same reasoning that they should baptize their dead oldest son, in the trust that he is indeed elect and committed himself to Christ during that three-year time.
Now virtually no one but Mormons will accept this conclusion, though Mormons would never accept it on these grounds. I don't know their view on baptizing infants, but I know they deny divine foreknowledge. My challenge to people of Reformed persuasion is how they can deny my argument without abandoning their Reformed principles. I don't think it can be done without giving up what justifies retroactive prayer (divine foreknowledge) or what justifies paedobaptism (the possibility of baptizing someone against their own knowledge when you have no idea if the person is elect). When you put those things together, there will be cases of dead people whom it would be ok to baptize.
I don't see how you can draw a line at whether or not the individual knows the outcome of the situation of concern. I don't see how one's epistemic status can have any bearing here, particularly when you allow that the individual can know that the event has already taken place. Like in the popsicle case 'it's already hapened' and 'you can't change it', but this is also true whether or not you know that it has taken place. I think that there is some ambiguity that results from the proximity of your cases. If I did not know who won the war of 1812 would you still maintain that I could effectively pray for the outcome?
Maybe you should distinguish between the two main viewpoints in today's Reformed tradition on baptism.
Traditional Reformed theology holds to a high view of baptismal efficacy, which is a form of baptismal regeneration. The Westminster Confession was written in this mindset.
Many of today's evangelical Reformed thinkers believe the view you espoused.
Jon, I don't see why not. What makes you think you couldn't is that you do know the outcome. That's something that's so clearly historically documented. Those who believe not all are saved can pray for the salvation of loved ones whose lives were ambiguous, even at the end. I'm not sure why death should make a difference even for those who don't believe in repentance after death, because you can be praying that their last moments had been such and such.
There's a nice illustration of the fixedness of the past consistent with the ability to cause the past in time travel in an episode of Andromeda from the first season. In it, they travel back in time by accident and end up fulfilling the past in a way that makes them the explanation of something that's been a mystery for hundreds of years. It had already happened, but that didn't make their actions not the cause of it. It would work the same way with prayer, except it's indirect through God.
In the interest of accurate information, here's a direct quote from the Westminster Confession (thanks to Jollyblogger for finding this for me extremely quickly):
The cases you describe seem to be ones where no one knows the outcome, it is ambiguous to everyone. Is this what you mean, or would prayer still be appropriate if the doctor had the diagnosis in front of you and simply had not told you yet? Also, how would you feel about situations where no one knew the outcome, but this was due solely to their being epistemically irresponsible or uninterested?
Jeremy,
Thanks for posting this. Yes, the WCF is often interpreted in one way or the other. (I was a Presbyterian until just recently, and so I heard both sides of the debate quite often).
This is a good site to read up on some of it:
http://www.hornes.org/theologia/
God Bless!
I don't think it should matter if someone else knows, as long as you don't have that information available to you. I don't see why it should make a difference if the doctor is about to tell you, as long as you don't know. The point is that the established fact isn't what stops you from being able to pray for it. What stops you is that you already know what the fact is.
Common Anglican: I'm aware of the Auburn Avenue movement. That's not standard Presbyterianism. Many Presbyterians even consider it heretical. It's clear to me that it doesn't fit well with the quote from the WC that I posted. Whether it's heretical is way beyond the scope of what I wanted to do in this post. Suffice it to say that that's not the view I was talking about. That view doesn't seem to me to be any different from the Catholic view, at least in terms of this issue, and that gets it out of my argument.
I'm not sure I see a clear answer here yet to Jon's question,
I think this is how we need to view it: Prayer is answered when it's offered in faith and in accordance with God's will. My epistemic status has great bearing on my faith. Someone somewhere defined faith as "believing what you know isn't true." I'm confident we would all reject that definition--that's not faith, it's idiocy.
Therefore, for example, if I already know someone has not survived a surgery, I cannot pray in faith that she would. I have to take it that God's will has been realized in the outcome I already know.
I suppose I could pray that she would be revived, but that's not the same thing; it's once again a prayer for an outcome that is unknown at the time of praying.
I wouldn't want to say that faith and knowledge are mutually exclusive. I think of faith as a kind of God-given knowledge. I think what's distinctive about faith is that you don't know it's knowledge. It's therefore a kind of trust that is knowledge, but you don't have access to what makes it knowledge, so from your perspective it's trust that you can't prove is well-founded.
I don't know their view on baptizing infants, but I know they deny divine foreknowledge.
Just thought that I would offer clarification on the above. As a Mormon I can say we don't believe in infant baptism, however we DO in fact believe in divine forknowledge. We do not believe in pre-destination or fate, the idea that all of our actions have been decided ahead of time for us. However, though we believe that we have agency to make choices, that doesn't mean we don't believe that God, as an omniscient being, can't know ahead of time what we will, in fact, choose. He does.
Sorry about all the double negatives in there. Hope that that makes sense / clears a few things up.
Fox, that may be your view and the view of many Mormons, but it's not the only Mormon view. I have a good friend who is a faithful and devout Mormon who is an open theist and denies that God knows what free creatures will do. Since you may not have read the comments on my original posting of this on my own blog, I'll repeat here a comment left by Clark Goble on the original post: