Questions about a quote
July 28, 2017 10:10 AM Subscribe
Did Jonathan Edwards really say "the road to Hell is paved with the skulls of unbaptized infants"? If so, where and when did he say it?
I suspect that it's a combination of his view of salvation of infants: "either that it is most just, exceeding just, that God should take the soul of a new-born infant and cast it into eternal torments, or else that those infants that are saved are not saved by the death of Christ" (The Miscellanies, source here) and the quote attributed to St. John Chrysostom that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of errant bishops and priests (which he didn't say, but does somewhat reflect his views) (source here).
Also, given my suspicion of Edwards and hopefully the correctness of the source about Chrysostom, did anyone ever actually say that the road to hell was paved with anything other than good intentions?
I suspect that it's a combination of his view of salvation of infants: "either that it is most just, exceeding just, that God should take the soul of a new-born infant and cast it into eternal torments, or else that those infants that are saved are not saved by the death of Christ" (The Miscellanies, source here) and the quote attributed to St. John Chrysostom that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of errant bishops and priests (which he didn't say, but does somewhat reflect his views) (source here).
Also, given my suspicion of Edwards and hopefully the correctness of the source about Chrysostom, did anyone ever actually say that the road to hell was paved with anything other than good intentions?
I have not found that quotation verbatim in my few minutes' searching; plenty of paraphrases of the idea, but no direct citation. Perhaps an inquiry to the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale?
posted by Miko at 10:50 AM on July 28, 2017
posted by Miko at 10:50 AM on July 28, 2017
Best answer: This paper says:
"We cannot find this statement by Edwards in the works available to us. There is room for doubt that he ever said it. However, as we will demonstrate in a later chapter, it was a common belief among early American colonial Puritans that Baptists were worthy of death for withholding baptism from infants and consigning them to hell. This view of infants in hell is clearly Augustinian in its content, as we will study from Augustines writings in chapter seven of this present work."posted by slkinsey at 10:56 AM on July 28, 2017 [2 favorites]
This seems like a strange thing for a predestinarian to have said, given that, under this view, an infant's salvation or damnation would not turn on its baptism at all.
posted by praemunire at 11:39 AM on July 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 11:39 AM on July 28, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by slkinsey at 10:49 AM on July 28, 2017