Chapter 14
From Miscarriage to Adulthood
Anna is twenty-eight. Six weeks ago her daughter Lily died at four months old, in her sleep, for reasons no doctor has been able to explain. The nursery is still set up. Anna cannot bring herself to take down the mobile. Last Sunday in church the worship leader had every parent stand and dedicate their babies, and Anna had to walk out before the song ended. Her husband could not follow her. He was holding their two-year-old in the back row.
Now she is sitting in Pastor Mark's office on a Tuesday morning. The casseroles have stopped coming. The cards have slowed to a trickle. She is in the long, silent middle of grief that nobody seems to talk about. She has not slept much in weeks.
She asks one question. Her voice is steady — the kind of steady that comes when a person has cried so much they have nothing left.
"Where is she now? Is she okay?"
Pastor Mark is forty-one. He has buried two infants in his ministry. He knows what most pastors say. "She's in a better place." "She's an angel now." "God needed her more than we did." Each of those sentences will land on Anna like a rock. He has watched it happen.
But there is something else. Something true. Something specific. Something hard-earned from Scripture and from the long witness of the Christian church and from the bone-deep promise of a God whose tenderness toward children is not in doubt. Pastor Mark prays silently for words equal to the size of her ache. Then he begins to speak.
This chapter is what he says.
Chapter Thesis: When a child dies — at any age, from any cause — the wound does not heal cleanly. Christian parents do not need pretty words. They need truth strong enough to carry them. This chapter offers that truth: that the grief is real, the loss is total, and the hope is specific. Through David's quiet certainty, through Jesus' open arms toward children, and through the long witness of the church, Scripture gives bereaved parents a steady ground on which to stand: their child is held by God. The grief will not lift quickly. The hope can stand alongside it.
The first thing to say to a parent who has lost a child is nothing at all. We sit. We weep. We do not fix.
There is a grief beneath every other grief, and child loss sits there. It is the grief that does not make sense. We expect to bury our parents. We expect, eventually and unwillingly, to bury our spouses. We do not expect to bury our children. The order is wrong. The natural sequence has broken. And no theology — even good theology — can iron that wrongness flat in the first weeks. Nor should we try.
Christian parents are sometimes told their grief should be smaller because their child is "with Jesus." This is a cruelty, even when the words are well meant. Hope does not erase loss. Knowing your daughter is held by Christ does not give back the weight of her in your arms. A mother grieves the rocking chair, the nursing, the tiny socks, the sound of her own voice singing in a darkened room at three in the morning. None of that is restored by the hope of reunion. Reunion lies ahead. The ache is now. Both can be true at once.
Jerry Sittser, who lost his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter in a single car accident, learned this slowly. His grief, he wrote, did not shrink — instead, his life slowly grew larger around it. The wound was still the wound.1 That is honest. That is what we tell parents at the start: your wound is real, your wound is not "less" because you trust Jesus, and we will not rush you across it.
Lament is the first move. Read the Psalms. Read Lamentations. Cry. Refuse the platitudes. The God of David does not flinch when David shouts at Him. Neither will He flinch when you do.
When David's infant son was dying, David fasted. He lay on the floor. He prayed and would not eat. Then the child died. And David got up. He washed. He ate.
His servants were stunned. Why grieve when the child was alive, but stop grieving once he was gone? David's answer is one of the most quietly beautiful passages in all of Scripture for a bereaved parent. Here is the full text.
He said, "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, 'Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?' But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." (2 Samuel 12:22–23, ESV)2
Stop on the last sentence. "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me." David does not say his son has been swallowed up into nothingness. He does not say his son is asleep until the resurrection in some place beyond reach. He says: I shall go to him. Where he is, I will be. He is in a place I am headed.
Some interpreters have tried to argue that David means only "I shall go to the grave." But that reading does not hold up under the weight of the verse itself. David expects to be reunited. He says it as comfort. He says it as a man who knows the God of Israel does not abandon a child He has formed in the womb (Psalm 139:13–16).14
Notice what David has lost. He has lost a son who never had the chance to make a profession of faith — could not, in fact, even speak. And David, the man after God's own heart, looked at that loss and did not say, "I do not know if I will see him." He said, "I shall go to him." That is not romantic poetry. That is the assurance of a parent under the mercy of God.
If you have lost a child too young to know God in the way grown believers know God, hold onto this verse. It was given to comfort you. The Holy Spirit knew you would need it. He put it in the book.
When the disciples wanted to push the children away from Jesus, He stopped them. Not gently — sharply. Mark tells us Jesus was indignant (Mark 10:14).
Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven." And he laid his hands on them and went away. (Matthew 19:13–15, ESV)3
This is the Jesus to whom your child has gone. This is the posture, the open hands, the firmness toward anyone who would push the child away. The kingdom of heaven, He said, belongs to such as these. Not to those who have earned it. Not to those who have memorized creeds. To those small enough to be carried.
Earlier in the same Gospel He said something even more startling: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 18:10). Children, in Jesus' teaching, have a particular nearness to the throne. Their angels — whatever exactly that means — behold the face of the Father continually. Christian readers have argued about the technical details of that verse for centuries. Pastorally, the message is unmistakable.4 God watches over children with special care. The smallest, most vulnerable life on this planet is not below His notice. It is, somehow, especially before His face.
When you imagine your child now, do not imagine her standing in a line, hoping to be allowed in. Do not imagine her examined and found wanting. Imagine her run to. Imagine the same arms that opened to the children of Galilee opening to her. The Jesus of the Gospels does not change His posture toward little ones when they cross the threshold of death. The arms that opened in Galilee are still open.
You are not the first parent to grieve a child, and the Christian church has thought long and carefully about what happens to children who die before what theologians call the age of accountability — the age at which a person can knowingly accept or reject the gospel. The conclusion across most Christian traditions has been remarkably uniform.
The medieval West sometimes drifted into harsh territory, but the great Reformers came down firmly on the side of grace.15 John Calvin wrote that infants are saved through the secret operation of the Holy Spirit and not through any work of their own.5 Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher, declared from the pulpit that he had no doubt at all that all who die in infancy are saved, and refused to "preach a calumny against my Maker by saying that He created beings whom He intended to send to hell."6 B. B. Warfield, the careful Princeton theologian, wrote a treatise concluding the same.7 Reformed, Wesleyan, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions, with various theological reasons, all affirm that children who die before the age of accountability are received by God's grace.
Ronald Nash gathered the biblical and theological case in his short, careful book When a Baby Dies. His conclusion: there is no biblical text that places infants outside the grace of God; there are several texts (David's words, Jesus' welcome of children, Romans 1's emphasis on willful rejection of known truth) that place them firmly within it. The position is mainstream Christian hope, not wishful thinking.8 John MacArthur arrives at the same conclusion in Safe in the Arms of God, as does R. C. Sproul in his Reformed treatment of suffering and death.9
This matters because you may have heard, somewhere, that your child is in trouble. You may have heard a relative or a stranger or a half-remembered sermon imply that an unbaptized infant is at risk. The Scriptures do not teach that. The historic church does not teach that. The Jesus who held the children of Galilee does not teach that. Your child is not in trouble. Your child is safe.
Some grief is silent. Some grief has no funeral, no casseroles, no shoulder squeezes at the grocery store. The mother who miscarries at nine weeks knows this silence. The mother who delivers a stillborn child at full term knows it more deeply still. The father whose wife carried a child no one else ever saw — he knows it too.
For a long time the church did not know what to do with this grief. Sometimes it acted as if the grief were not real grief at all. "You can have another baby." "It's not like you knew her yet." "At least it was early." Each sentence shrinks a wound that is not small. The parent who lost a child at nine weeks of pregnancy lost a person — a son or daughter known to God before the world began (Psalm 139:13–16). The grief is not in proportion to weeks of gestation. It is in proportion to the love that was already there, and the future that was already imagined.
In Jeremiah 31, God speaks of Rachel — the great matriarch of Israel — weeping for her children long after her death. Centuries later Matthew quotes the passage in connection with Herod's slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:18). The grief is ancient. The hope is ancient too.
Thus says the Lord: "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more." Thus says the Lord: "Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work, declares the Lord, and they shall come back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future, declares the Lord, and your children shall come back to their own country." (Jeremiah 31:15–17, ESV)10
There is hope for your future. They shall come back. The Old Testament, in a sober and weighty oracle, ties God's promise directly to mothers grieving for children. The promise is not pretty pastoral wallpaper. It is the word of the Lord through the prophet.
If you have lost a child whom no one else met — name her, if you have not. Or him. Mark the date. Light a candle on the day she would have been born. Tell your other children, if you have other children, that they had a sibling. The church now is slowly learning to call these losses what they are: the death of a son or a daughter.16 We do not pretend the sorrow is small. And we do not pretend the hope is small either.
When a child dies in adolescence or adulthood, the questions shift. The age of accountability no longer applies in the same way. Parents find themselves walking the road we explore in Chapter 13 — the road of a loved one whose faith was unclear, or whose later years took them away from the faith of their childhood, or who openly rejected Christ.
If your child made a clear profession of faith and walked with Christ, the promises of Chapter 2 are yours: your child is consciously with the Lord right now. If your child's faith was complicated or unclear or absent, do not despair. The God who has been pursuing your child since before birth did not stop pursuing at death. The biblical and theological case for postmortem opportunity — God's continuing offer of His mercy to the lost, whether through encounters in the dying process, in the intermediate state, or at the final judgment — is laid out carefully in Chapter 13. Many faithful Christian thinkers, from Clement of Alexandria to contemporary evangelicals, have held that hope.11
What we can say with biblical warrant is this: your child encountered, or will encounter, the real Jesus — not the cartoon distorted by whatever kept her from earthly faith. The God who watches over children does not stop watching when those children become teenagers, or twenty-somethings, or middle-aged. He is still pursuing. He has not handed your child over. There is real, warranted hope.
Anna is still in Pastor Mark's office. He has not given her a list of doctrines. He has given her something she can carry.
He has told her: Your daughter is not lost. She is not asleep in the ground. She is not standing in line, hoping to be allowed in. She is held. The God who counted Lily's days before any of them came to be (Psalm 139:16) did not lose count when the last day arrived. He gathered her in.
He has told her: David buried his son and said, "I shall go to him." Anna may say the same. Her child waits where Anna is going.
He has told her: The grief is real. It will not vanish at Christmas. It will not vanish on Lily's birthday — the one Anna had already begun planning. The wound will close slowly, if it closes at all. But the wound and the hope can sit beside each other in her chest, neither one canceling the other. That is what Christian grief looks like. Real grief. Real hope. Both, together — exactly as Paul taught the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
He does not tell her she will feel better in six months. He tells her there is a Person — not a doctrine, a Person — currently holding her daughter. That Person is the same Person who is currently in this room, with this mother. The Jesus who holds Lily holds Anna too. The arms that opened in Galilee are still open.12
She is crying when she leaves. She is also, somehow, breathing easier than she did when she came in.
Sit with these gently. There are no right answers. The point is to bring your honest heart to God.
1. What was your child's name? Have you been able to say it aloud — to others, or to yourself — recently?
2. What ache about your child do you most need to bring honestly to God right now? What have you been afraid to say to Him?
3. Read 2 Samuel 12:22–23 slowly, several times. Where in your body do you feel David's words? What do they ask of you?
4. If you knew with certainty that your child is held by Jesus right now, what would change in your day? What would not change?
5. Who in your life has minimized your grief — perhaps without meaning to? What would you wish they had said instead?
6. If your child died at an older age with their faith unclear, what fears or hopes are you carrying now? Where do they sit beside each other?
7. What is one small way you could honor your child this week — name them, light a candle, write a letter to them — without rushing past your grief?
The room you are walking into is one of the holiest in your ministry. Walk slowly. Listen first. Do not rush to theology. Sit with the loss before you offer the hope. If the parents are weeping, weep with them. Romans 12:15 is not a suggestion at the bedside or in the living room. It is a command.
Key pastoral observations. Two things to notice. First, child loss is the area where well-meaning Christians say the most damaging things, and bereaved parents often flinch when a believer walks in because they have been bracing themselves. Lead with quiet presence, not with words. Second, grief from child loss does not move on a normal grief timeline. Anniversary grief is severe (we treat this in Chapter 31). Mother's Day, Father's Day, the child's birthday, the date of the loss, the due date of a miscarried child — these days will be hard for years. Mark them on your pastoral calendar. Show up.
What to say. Three sentences are usually enough on a first visit: "Your child is held by Jesus. I am so very sorry. I am here, and I will be here." Say it slowly. Mean it. Do not move from there into a sermon. If they ask the question Anna asked — "Where is she now?" — answer it specifically and gently with the substance of this chapter. Bring out 2 Samuel 12:22–23 if it fits. Speak Jesus' welcome of children. Do not lecture. Speak as a friend who knows what the Bible says.
What NOT to say. The list is long, and most of it is sincere. "God needed another angel" — He did not. He has angels. He wanted that child to live. "At least you can have other children" — never. Not even gently. The lost child cannot be replaced by a future child. "She is in a better place" said briskly will land like a slap; said with tears, paired with naming the loss, it may help. "Everything happens for a reason" — possibly true at some cosmic level, but not ours to say from the outside. "She is your guardian angel now" — children do not become angels. Stay biblical and stay tender.
Watch-outs. Marriages strain badly under child loss. Spouses grieve differently and sometimes feel the other is not grieving "enough" or is grieving "too much." Many couples need quiet, ongoing pastoral support for the marriage as well as for each parent. Watch for one parent disappearing into work, the other into bed. Watch for the silent parent who will not cry. Faith struggles are normal — anger at God in the first year is not apostasy; it is grief. Walk with them through it. The miscarriage parent often grieves with no community recognition. Help your church learn to recognize these losses publicly: a mention in pastoral prayer, a note in the bulletin, a small annual ceremony of remembrance. Many silent grievers in your congregation will weep, finally, when their grief is named in the sanctuary.
Next steps. Recommend Nancy Guthrie's books, especially Holding On to Hope, which she wrote after the deaths of two of her own children.13 Point them to GriefShare and to Guthrie's Respite Retreats for grieving parents. Continue the pastoral relationship past the six-month mark, when most of the church has moved on and the parents are still drowning. Visit on the anniversary. Send a note on the child's birthday. Stay near.
Nancy Guthrie, Holding On to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God (Tyndale, 2002). Written by a mother who lost two children to a rare genetic disorder; the gentlest and most theologically careful grief book available for bereaved Christian parents.
Ronald H. Nash, When a Baby Dies: Answers to Comfort Grieving Parents (Zondervan, 1999). A short, accessible biblical and theological case for the salvation of children who die before the age of accountability.
John MacArthur, Safe in the Arms of God: Truth from Heaven About the Death of a Child (Thomas Nelson, 2003). A pastoral treatment by a careful expositor on the same biblical and theological grounds.
Gary Roe, Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child (Healing Resources, 2017). A devotional companion for parents in the early months of grief, written by a hospice chaplain who has walked with hundreds of bereaved families.
Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss, 20th anniversary ed. (Zondervan, 2021). A philosopher's honest account of catastrophic loss, including the death of his young daughter.
GriefShare child loss resources, available at griefshare.org. Group-based support for bereaved parents, often hosted in local churches.
1 Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss, 20th anniversary ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2021), 70–83. Sittser develops the image of grief as a wound around which the rest of life slowly grows; the wound itself does not shrink. ↩
2 The 2 Samuel 12:22–23 passage is the locus classicus in evangelical pastoral theology for the hope of reunion with infant children who die. For a contemporary pastoral exposition see John Burke, Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2015), chap. 13, "Reunion of Friends and Family." ↩
3 The Greek for "kingdom of heaven" — basileia tōn ouranōn (βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν) — is Matthew's typical phrasing; the parallel passages in Mark 10:13–16 and Luke 18:15–17 use "kingdom of God." The substantive teaching is identical. The verb translated "do not hinder" (mē kōlyete) is in the imperative present, suggesting "stop doing what you are already doing" — a sharp rebuke to the disciples' exclusion of children. ↩
4 The phrase "their angels always see the face of my Father" has been read variously as referring to guardian angels assigned to children or as a Semitic idiom for a particularly close standing before God. Either reading yields the same pastoral force: children stand particularly near the heart of the Father. See J. Steve Miller, Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, And Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2022), chap. 4, under "God Especially Pays Personal Attention to Children." ↩
5 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols., Library of Christian Classics 20–21 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 4.16.17–20. Calvin defends infant baptism while insisting that the salvation of infants does not depend on the rite but on God's gracious operation of the Spirit. ↩
6 Charles H. Spurgeon, "Infant Salvation," sermon delivered September 29, 1861, in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 7 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1861). Spurgeon was emphatic that all who die in infancy are received into glory; he considered the contrary teaching a slander against God's character. ↩
7 Benjamin B. Warfield, "The Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation" (1891), reprinted in Studies in Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932), 411–44. ↩
8 Ronald H. Nash, When a Baby Dies: Answers to Comfort Grieving Parents (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 56–73. Nash surveys the major biblical texts and concludes that no biblical passage places infants outside God's saving grace. ↩
9 John MacArthur, Safe in the Arms of God: Truth from Heaven About the Death of a Child (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003); R. C. Sproul, Surprised by Suffering: The Role of Pain and Death in the Christian Life, rev. ed. (Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust, 2009), chap. 13. The Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution in 2002 affirming "the historic Baptist conviction that the Bible teaches the safety of all who die in infancy and incapacity"; see Resolution on the Sufficiency of Scripture Regarding the Salvation of Infants (St. Louis, MO: SBC, June 12, 2002). ↩
10 The Hebrew term tiqvah (תִּקְוָה), translated "hope" in v. 17, is the same word used in Joshua 2:18 of the scarlet cord let down from Rahab's window — a hope that anchors. The promise to weeping mothers is robust, not sentimental. ↩
11 The case for postmortem opportunity is laid out in Chapter 13 of this book; for fuller treatment see James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021). For pastoral application to grief specifically, see also Albert Y. Hsu, Grieving a Suicide: A Loved One's Search for Comfort, Answers, and Hope, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), whose discussion of grieving in faith applies broadly to parents grieving an older child. ↩
12 Pediatric NDE and DBE research provides a quiet, supplementary witness to the pastoral truths laid out in this chapter, though it is not the foundation. Diane Komp, a Yale pediatric oncologist and former atheist, recounts her conversion to Christian faith through her observation of dying children's experiences in A Window to Heaven: When Children See Life in Death (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 35–36. Komp describes Mary Beth, a six-year-old with cancer, who reported a vision of Jesus and a deceased grandfather she had never met, who together comforted her about her impending death. See also J. Steve Miller, Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic, Evaluating Death-Related Visions, Terminal Lucidity and After Death Communications (Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023), chap. 11, under "Children's DBEs and the Question of Expectation." Such accounts are pastorally suggestive rather than evidentially decisive; the doctrine of the salvation of children stands on Scripture, not on contemporary experience reports. ↩
13 Nancy Guthrie, Holding On to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2002). Guthrie wrote this book after the deaths of her daughter Hope and son Gabriel, both from a rare genetic disorder; it remains, in this author's pastoral judgment, the single best book to place in the hands of a grieving Christian parent in the first year of loss. ↩
14 The Hebrew verb in Psalm 139:13, qanah (קָנָה), is variously translated "create," "form," or "possess"; the parallel verb in v. 13b, sakak (סָכַךְ), means to "weave" or "knit." Together they portray God as the active, intimate maker of every human life from conception. The pastoral implication is unavoidable: a child known by God before birth is not lost to God at death. ↩
15 Augustine wavered. In his earlier writings he was reluctant to consign unbaptized infants to perdition; under the pressure of the Pelagian controversy he came to teach a "mildest punishment" view that profoundly shaped medieval Catholic teaching on limbus infantium. Contemporary Catholic teaching has substantially revised that position; see International Theological Commission, The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2007), which concludes that there are "serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope" that infants who die without baptism are saved. ↩
16 Studies estimate that 10–20 percent of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage, with higher rates when very early losses are included; stillbirth occurs in roughly 1 in 175 pregnancies in the United States. The pastoral and liturgical neglect of these losses has historically been disproportionate to their prevalence. For an excellent contemporary pastoral and theological treatment, see Abigail Jones-Tanguay, "Pastoral Care for Miscarriage and Stillbirth," Journal of Pastoral Theology (forthcoming); cf. Serene Jones, Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World, 2nd ed. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2019), chap. 6. ↩
Beilby, James. Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021.
Burke, John. Imagine Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God's Promises, and the Exhilarating Future That Awaits You. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. 2 vols. Library of Christian Classics 20–21. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960.
Guthrie, Nancy. Holding On to Hope: A Pathway Through Suffering to the Heart of God. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2002.
Hsu, Albert Y. Grieving a Suicide: A Loved One's Search for Comfort, Answers, and Hope. Rev. ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017.
International Theological Commission. The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2007.
Jones, Serene. Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Ruptured World. 2nd ed. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2019.
Komp, Diane M. A Window to Heaven: When Children See Life in Death. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992.
MacArthur, John. Safe in the Arms of God: Truth from Heaven About the Death of a Child. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2003.
Miller, J. Steve. Deathbed Experiences as Evidence for the Afterlife, Volume 1: A Groundbreaking, Scientific Apologetic, Evaluating Death-Related Visions, Terminal Lucidity and After Death Communications. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2023.
———. Is Christianity Compatible with Deathbed and Near-Death Experiences? The Surprising Presence of Jesus, Scarcity of Anti-Christian Elements, And Compatibility with Historic Christian Teachings. Acworth, GA: Wisdom Creek Press, 2022.
Nash, Ronald H. When a Baby Dies: Answers to Comfort Grieving Parents. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999.
Sittser, Jerry. A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss. 20th anniversary ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2021.
Southern Baptist Convention. "Resolution on the Sufficiency of Scripture Regarding the Salvation of Infants." Adopted June 12, 2002. St. Louis, MO.
Sproul, R. C. Surprised by Suffering: The Role of Pain and Death in the Christian Life. Rev. ed. Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust, 2009.
Spurgeon, Charles H. "Infant Salvation." In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit. Vol. 7. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1861.
Warfield, Benjamin B. "The Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation." In Studies in Theology, 411–44. New York: Oxford University Press, 1932.