What if an unbaptized child dies?
Infant baptism didn’t become widely practiced until about 400 years after the birth of the Christian church when Augustine developed the theology of “original sin.” In a nutshell, this idea means that when children are born, they are not only sinners, but God holds them accountable for their sins. So if an infant died, Augustine believed that God would hold that child separate from the Lord for all of eternity unless the child was saved (through the sacrament of Holy Baptism). Given that the infant mortality rate was high in those days, the practice of infant baptism caught on fast. SOCC holds to implied Bible teaching that there’s an age of understanding when people are mature enough to grasp a faith decision for themselves. Only God truly knows that age and it may differ for each child. If kids happen to pass before that time, we believe they’re going to heaven.
