Principle 5: The limit cases are part of the data, the infant test

From Sovereign Grace and the Scope of Election: A Comparative Examination of Attainment Theology and Grace Theology, with Particular Attention to the Question of Whether God's Elect Are Found Among All Nations and Religions

The principle. Any proposed rule of salvation must be run against the cases at the boundary: the dying infant, the mentally incapable, the thief on the cross, the mute believer, the elect person beyond the sound of preaching. A reading that handles these only by ad hoc exception, "hearing is essential, except for infants; confession is essential, except for the mute", has thereby conceded that the proposed essential is not universally essential. The exception refutes the universality of the rule; and the burden then falls on the objector to supply a principled reason why incapacity of access differs from incapacity of mind, since in both cases the outward call fails to reach the person for reasons entirely outside his will.

Why it should be preferred. This is nothing more than ordinary logical hygiene: a universal claim ("no one is saved without hearing/confessing/being baptized") is falsified by one counterexample, and the counterexamples here are ones nearly every Christian conscience already grants. The sovereign grace framework is the only one in this comparison that needs no exception clause: immediate regeneration on the ground of Christ's blood covers the infant, the incapable, the thief, the mute, and the unreached elect by the same rule that covers the lifelong church member. Uniformity of rule is not merely tidier; in theology it is weightier than that, for it means salvation rests on something invariant. God's purpose and Christ's purchase, rather than on variables of biography. "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles?" (Romans 3:29) extends naturally to: is He the God of the hearing only? of the speaking only? of the reachable only?