Should Believers In Eternal Hell Kill Babies?

Probably, unless they believe in infant damnation

I don’t believe in an eternal hell. In fact, I think the notion that there is an eternal hell is an almost impressively depraved and repugnant notion. While there are some people who have managed to soften the view to be merely implausible rather than horrifying and grotesque, the views of the typical evangelical strike me as sufficiently evil to be indicative of quite serious moral failing.

Believers in eternal hell are saddled with a number of quite serious objections that, in my judgment, they do not have much hope of solving. High on this list is the following worry: why, if hell is eternal, is the murder of babies wrong? In fact, for reasons I’ll explain, I think this is utterly decisive and basically single-handedly refutes infernalism.

Most who believe in eternal hell think that babies go to heaven. Some believe in infant damnation, but that view would be even more wicked. So if one is killed as a baby, they have a guarantee of an eternity in bliss. Sounds like a good deal!

In contrast, if they grow up, they have a sizeable chance of experiencing an eternity of suffering instead of an eternity of bliss. For as Jesus says:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

Thus, it’s hard to see why believers in eternal hell shouldn’t support killing babies. It seems like quite a good deal for the babies!

Perhaps one believes that you should never kill, even if killing someone would enable them to live a better life. Many Christians think suicide is absolutely and categorically evil, and should never be done. One who thinks this could also think that killing of babies is impermissible.

This view is quite hard to believe. If killing someone really guaranteed that they’d spend eternity in heaven—experiencing an inconceivably grand fate—rather than languishing in hell, it’s unclear why it would be so wrong. If killing someone really amounts to doing little more than changing their location—moving them out of a world full of suffering and turmoil to an eternal paradise—well, typically changing someone’s location to an infinitely nicer place is not absolutely morally prohibited. If killing someone really just moves them around, it’s quite puzzling why Christians are so averse to it in cases where the person’s present life is full of suffering, and still more puzzling why Christians think that one shouldn’t kill to spare a person from hell.

In addition, even if we grant that this argument establishes that it’s wrong to kill babies, it would seem to imply that it would be fortunate if babies died. If when babies die, they are simply moved to an infinitely nicer location and guaranteed an infinitely nicer fate, then it’s quite mysterious what’s so bad about this. Their death is upsetting for their friends and family, but perhaps they shouldn’t be upset. Learning one’s baby will spend forever in paradise ought to be good news not bad news. Certainly one would have to be quite selfish to prefer a state of affairs in which their child risks going to hell to a period of brief separation from one’s child.

Another reply: the Bible says “thou shalt not kill.” This seems to settle the question of whether Christians should kill babies. If God commands a person not to kill babies, then they ought not kill babies.

This reply is inadequate. First of all, it fails to secure the commonsense judgment discussed above that it’s bad when babies die. While the Bible does make it clear that murder is wrong, it never states explicitly that it’s bad when babies die.

Second, this fails to address the core challenge. Of course it’s wrong to kill babies! That much is obvious. The worry for infernalists is that it seems their doctrine implies that it would be good to kill babies. While God commanding one not to kill means that one should not kill babies, it does not provide an explanation of why killing babies is wrong if there’s an eternal hell.

As an analogy, suppose the Bible said “one who is stolen from will always be, by supernatural means, rewarded so that they benefit from the theft.” Even though the Bible condemns theft, one might wonder why, in light of that teaching, theft is so wrong. We normally think theft is wrong because it harms the people stolen from. If it doesn’t harm them, it’s not clear what’s so wrong about it.

One could avoid this problem by believing in infant damnation. But this view has the problem of being evil. As David Bentley Hart writes:

“Calvin, in telling us that hell is populated with babies not a cubit long, merely reminds us that within a certain traditional understanding of grace and predestination, the choice to worship God rather than the devil is at most a matter of prudence.”

Additionally, if one believes in infant damnation, it seems they have an opposite and troubling result: saving the life of an infant is infinitely more than saving other lives. If dead infants are guaranteed to go to hell, while others who die can be saved, then saving infants is far more important than saving others. In fact, it’s not clear why it’s worth saving the lives of others who are devoted Christians but might not be at some later date.

One could propose that souls in heaven go to limbo—a state where they’re capable of great happiness but not the beatific vision. However, such a view seems quite gerrymandered. Why couldn’t God save such people? This view also implies that saving infants is orders of magnitude more important than saving non-infants, provided the gulf between the beatific vision and mere great happiness is infinitely large.

The most promising way for a Christian to go, in my view, is to hold that after infants die, they are given further tests. These determine if they go to heaven or hell. Perhaps they’re reborn, or perhaps they face alternative postmortem destinations. Yet this view still has problems.

First of all, this view implies that dead infants aren’t guaranteed to be saved. A pastor could not truly tell a grieving mother that her infant is in a better place now—indeed, he may be in a far worse one, and may be guaranteed to spend forever in such a place. A loving God would not make the world this way.

Second, the view faces a dilemma: is one’s odds of getting into heaven higher if they die as an infant, lower, or the same? For it to be precisely the same would require a great and improbable coincidence. If those who survive infancy are likelier to end up in heaven than dead ones, that both seems morally objectionable and makes saving infants infinitely more important than saving others. If those who die in infancy are likelier to go to heaven, then it’s once again difficult to see what’s wrong with killing infants.

The doctrine of eternal hell is deeply implausible. But it’s especially implausible when one considers the other doctrines that follow from it. It is hard to make sense of the world if you believe that many people are guaranteed to spend time in an endless postmortem torture chamber.