Paedocommunion

The Problem of Self Examination

One of the problems that occurs during the call for self-examination during the LORD’s Supper is that members of the body of Christ judge themselves subjectively, and then wrongly excommunicate themselves from the sacrament. In other words, they base their freedom to partake in the LORD’s Supper upon their own judgment of themselves, and their own feelings.

As G.I. Williamson and fellow committee members write:

By our calling for self- examination and “discernment” on the part of communicants as part of their preparation for each observance, we direct attention (perhaps unwittingly) away from the objective character of this sacrament.

People are making judgments about their subjective condition every time communion is celebrated, and as a result they often “suspend” or ”excommunicate” themselves on a week-by-week, or month- by-month basis.

And often the criteria for this evaluation are highly emotional and subjective. The effect of the whole is a tendency to obscure Christ, as the object of faith, from our view, and to hinder the very effectiveness of the sacrament in the life of God’s people which we are concerned to promote (Majority Report, Paedocommunion, OPC 55th GA, 1988.)

All of this subjective judgment is based upon the following verse:

28 But a man must test himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. (1 Corinthians 11:28-30)

The problem is that far too many take this verse out of context and apply the verse to the entirety of the Christian life. What Paul is writing against is division in the church. This is one of the major themes and sins of the Corinthians. They were finding all manner of ways to divide themselves, when they were to be one body, and one in Christ.

Many Divisions

For example, the first critique that Paul makes against the Corinthians is that they have set up factions among themselves, some following Apollos, some following Cephas, and some boasting of only following Christ (I Cor. 1:11-17). There are many other issues as well that result in division, but those other issues are not the point of this post.

Continue reading The Problem of Self Examination

Introduction

What is paedocommunion? Paedocommunion is the practice of allowing those who are in the covenant via baptism, to partake of communion, regardless of age or mental ability. Those of us who hold to this position believe that since children and the mentally deficient have been given the sign of the covenant, baptism, then they should also be allowed to feast at the LORD’s table. This is borne out of a pastoral care for those whom Jesus said of children, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

Yet, in Reformed circles, there is absolute opposition to paedocommunion even though those in the Reformed community believe in paedobaptism. I believe they do this out of a reverence for the table and a fear of allowing children to drink judgment upon themselves. They want to guard the table against those who are unworthy of taking it. Since 1 Corinthians 11:38-39.

²⁸But a man must test himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. ²⁹For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly.

I agree that when we come to the table, we are to test ourselves. The difference is that many elders feel this gives them the right to exclude people from the table. I also agree that there should be some exclusion. But where we draw the line is different.

For the paedocommunionist, the line is drawn in such a way that those who are baptized, our children included, should be allowed to the table regardless of whether they can examine themselves or not. Notice the text above: let a man examine himself. I am to examine myself when I come to the table. The elders are not to examine me. They are overstepping their bounds in trying to examine everyone who comes to the table.

As for our children, since they are made holy through our faith, 1 Corinthians 7:14, they should be allowed to partake as well. They need the feeding and nourishment found their just as much as we do.

Now, let me give full-disclosure: paedocommunion has been a burning issue for me for about that past 7 years. It started when I was dabbling with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, looking for a call to full-time ministry. I mentioned that I was sympathetic to those who held to paedocommunion but did not hold to the position myself.

Why was I sympathetic? I had read the OPC’s very own study paper on paedocommunion and felt that the stalwart theologian, G.I. Williamson, had a good point. (Read it in the minutes of the 1988 55th GA, starting on page 374.). He wrote the majority position for the OPC in favor of the practice. The OPC GA rejected the majority position and went with the minority report on paedocommunion instead. This was a major mistake in my opinion. In keeping those in the covenant from the table, no matter the age, is to commit the very sin that Paul was warning against in 1 Corinthians 11. But more on that later.

The problem for me came, as I said, because I was sympathetic. This led to the accusation that I was also Federal Vision. Now, for those not following, Federal Vision is a brand of theology that was attempting to deal with the issue of those who fall away from the faith. Are they still Christians because they have been baptized, or not? It is basically the same battle as the Lordship salvation debates that took place back in the 1990s between John MacArthur and Zane Hodges, only in this instance, the focus is from the covenantal perspective.

More simply put: MacArther and Hodges were debating “once-saved, always saved.” FV was working from the standpoint of “once baptized, always a Christian?”

The FVers were not saying: “who is saved, and who is not save.” They recognize that they cannot make such an assertion. After all, we don’t know who is truly saved and who isn’t when it comes to others in the body. We can for ourselves, but even then, there are those who struggle with assurance.

Now the best FV answer given was that one who is baptized is a Christian, in the same way that one who is married, is always still married, even though they may not act like it. Being baptized brings you into the covenant. If you are obedient to Christ’s calling and His commandments, then He will pour out blessings upon you. If you are disobedient, and even walk away from the faith, then curses will fall upon you.

It doesn’t matter that we are no longer under the law. The New Covenant has it attending blesses and curses just like the Old Covenant did. This is the most basic understanding of what it means to hold to Federal Vision.

When I was dabbling in the OPC, I was neither a Federal Visionist or a paedocommunionist. However, that didn’t matter. I was branded as such. The door to ministry was closed.

I revisited the paedocommunion position once again, now that all the doors to the normal Reformed world were closed. And I became convinced.

Yet, I feel like I need to look at the issue again. This is why the posts have turned in that direction. I want to be sure of my position. As I look more closely at it, I have become even more convinced that allowing children, and the mentally challenged, to come to the table is more of what Christ had in mind when He instituted the sacrament. It is far more pastoral than the stern brow of the man who fences the table from a place of joy to foreboding judgment.

Here are some articles I’ve written before on both communion and baptism:

To Exclude Our Children from the Table, is Excommunication.

Baptism for the Dead

The Midst of the Debate

The Proverbs tell us, “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” This verse needs to always be handy when it comes to battles within the church. To take a stand on anything, means that there will be conflict. In the midst of that conflict, sparks will fly, just as iron sharpens irons, unless of course, you belong to one of the denominations in which heated discussions are looked down upon under the guise of improper decorum.

The doctrine of paedocommunion—the teaching that since children are members of the covenant through baptism, they should be and are admitted to the Lord’s supper—has become a hot-button issue recently. This is especially true since the PCA General Assembly ruled that those who hold to this doctrine can no longer take an exception to the Westminster Confession and be accepted as pastors. They declared that paedocommunion strikes at the vitals of the faith.

In conversations with those who fully agree with that decision, the reasoning offered is often the same as that given by Baptists for why they will not baptize their infants: “What if the child who partook grew up and left the faith? Then what?”

Baptists make the same argument when it comes to baptism, and both groups want a person to be able to make a credible profession of faith before being admitted to their particular sacrament.

The problem with this is that both groups are focusing on the subjective natures of the sacraments instead of the more important objective nature. The objective nature focuses on what God is doing, both in baptism and the LORD’s Supper. In other words, He is marking us as His own through baptism, and feeding us spiritually through the LORD’s Supper. It is His work. Not ours.

The subjective nature focuses on man. Whenever we do that, we are failing miserably.

At least the baptist are consistent in their views. The child cannot come to the table, until he has been baptized, and cannot be baptized, until he is makes a profession of faith. In Reform circles, we baptize and then divide the body up in two tiers, those who can come to the table and those who cannot. We divide the loaf. We divide the body of Christ. (The very thing Paul was warning the Corinthians agains).

Those who defend the PCA’s position will continue to bar the children of their congregations from the table. They are raising a bar that should not be raised. This is the same thing the Roman Catholics did before the Reformation. They only allowed clergy to partake. Both groups are making the same argument, with the difference being where they place the bar.

Jesus had something like this happen to Him during His earthly ministry.

¹³Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” ¹⁵And after laying His hands on them, He departed from there (Matthew 19:13-15 LSB).

Here we have the principle laid before us: Children are a part of the kingdom of heaven, therefore, being members of the visible church, and being baptized, they too are to come to the table and feast, knowing that the LORD is good.

Yet some cannot have this because they feel that a child must make a profession of faith. Why? Do they not believe in the baptism given? Can we not just trust the Spirit to move when and where He pleases? Must we erect a test for those who should not be tested at all? They were born into the covenant and should have all the privileges of the covenant. Yes, they should be taught and catechized. But let us trust the Lord to move in them in His timing. Otherwise, we are starving the very children who need nourishment.

This view fails to meet the pattern we are given in Scripture. The same arguments that all good Reformed Christians make in baptizing our children, are the same arguments that should be made in allowing them to come to the table. They are members of the covenant, therefore, they should dine at the table of their King. As He has told us, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

There is a lot more to be said, but this will have to suffice for now.

A Response from My Fellow Elder

I shared my last post, To Exclude Our Children from the Table, with the officers in the church, and Seth Crow, my fellow elder, sent the following reply. I think in really helps complete the larger picture of paedocommunion, and communion in general.

Here is what Seth wrote:

Yeah, I think that is a good point about hungry people wanting to eat. Like David with the show bread. Although, I think it is also important to maintain that this is our table and those outside have “no right to eat.” The washing is what prepares one for the feast.

Also, I know the “I got this” type person when it comes to self-examination. If the Lord’s Supper is a mutual eating – us of God and God of us – then the question would be whether we have any unconfessed sins that are weighing on our conscience. If we have confessed them, then we need to believe the proclamation of the gospel. If we are intentionally disregarding the Holy Spirit, then God is not pleased. It didn’t say that the people who died were the ones bringing dissension.

When the sin of Achan is committed, you don’t know who in the body will fall under discipline. I think the sin we most often try to gloss over is antipathy with those in the body. That really does need to be taken care of – not just between the person and God – but the two people before eating. Leave your gift at the altar, seek reconciliation, and then come back for the meal of peace and thanksgiving. Otherwise it isn’t the meal of peace and thanksgiving.

HOWEVER, God is not up there waiting to pounce. It would be easy for a conscience to always be worried about this sort of thing, so I like your general encouragement – just eat in faith. Especially in the Reformed world it is a necessary corrective. I just think the other needs to be brought up on regular intervals. We are also presenting our bodies to God. Is it a pleasing aroma? Only in Christ. But not if we are hiding sin and harboring dissension.

I thought your end point about excommunication was well said. If we are presenting the one man, the bride, to Christ in worship then it is wonderfully encouraging to remember that God loves kids, even the ones that have short attention spans and argue too much and are growing up. When it comes time for the meal they are hungry. We can be so much more fastidious than God. Not that He doesn’t care about discipline, He does, and our faithfulness to our children in bringing them up in the encouragement and admonition of the Lord is one of the things judged on Sunday. But, like you said, the message preached is “Let the little children come to me.”

To Exclude Our Children from the Table, is Excommunication

A fellow pastor from my previous denomination posted this on his Facebook page: “Paedocommunionsists practice a form of baptismal regeneration.” He was taking a dig at those of us who joyfully practice paedocommunion. I’m sure most people are thinking: “paedo-what???”

What is paedocommunion?

It is the belief and practice of allowing our children to partake in the LORD’s Supper, also known as communion. We do this because they are already members of the church through the sacrament of baptism, which is, paedobaptism.

In paedobaptism, we completely agree with our Reformed Brethren. We believe that children should be given the sign of the covenant, shortly after they are born. This isn’t because we believe in baptismal regeneration, but because they are a part of the covenant, and need the sign of that covenant. We don’t know if the child is spiritually regenerate at baptism. We know they could be, just like John the Baptist was regenerate inside the womb of his mother Elizabeth, but there is no way of knowing.

Our argument is that all the reasons we hold to paedobaptism are the same reasons we should hold to paedocommunion. Most Reformed Presbyterians disagree.

Now, the rift between us and our Reformed brethren is over the admonition in 1 Corinthians 11, that a man should examine himself:

²⁷Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. ²⁸But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

Paul was addressing two sins that were occurring among the Corinthians. The first sin was sectarianism, which was reflected in the fact that when they partook of communion, they were not waiting for one another, and leaving the poor out of communion. The second reason was that they were getting drunk and abusing the table. Both sins were missing the entire point of communion, and leading to the death of some of the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 11:30).

This sickness that was taking place, wasn’t brought on by the elders of the church, but by the Holy Spirit. This is important to notice because far too many elders think they have the responsibility to fence the table. The LORD is quite capable of fencing His own table. The Holy Spirit was fencing the table in Corinth, not the elders.

Fencing the Table

In our arrogance, we have come to the belief that it is our responsibility to fence the table. What hubris.

For those who don’t know, fencing the table is the part of the service where the pastor will say something along the lines of, “all are invited to partake, who have been baptized, and are members of an evangelical church in good standing, and are not in any gross or heinous sins.”

This is the idea of a men examining themselves. But there are a lot of problems with this concept. For one, when Jesus gave us the Lord’s Supper, Judas Iscariot was right there in the mix. Judas, who was involved in a gross and heinous sin of betraying Christ to the the Jewish authorities, was served communion by the LORD Himself. Jesus said nothing to Judas that would indicate that we are to “fence the table.” Jesus didn’t fence Judas from the table.

Another huge problem with fencing the table in such a way, is that you are setting up the table, which is a table of grace, and making the table a place of works. In other words, one has to perform certain works in order to approach the table. He or she (and notice that the admonition in 1 Corinthians is not to the women, but to the men, in the singular), who wishes to partake of the table, must do so by works righteousness, not grace.

Baptism? Check.

Church membership? Check.

Good standing? Check.

No heinous sins? I got this! Check!

This is one of the very reasons I believe the Reformed church is so weak and deficient in bearing fruit. Those who practice fencing the table, are actually practicing works righteousness. They are setting up standards for which the believer must meet in order to come to the table.

I do believe that those who come to the table should be baptized. However, if I have someone in my worship service who desires to partake of the supper, who is not baptized, I would let them. If they hunger for the supper, let them eat. Christ did. He fed the 5,000 because they hungered. The same grace should be shown at the table.

This doesn’t mean that the person partaking should not get baptized. But we must recognize that babes often have food before they are washed.

Excommunication

The other problem I have with the way that my Reformed brethren fence the table, and this is the biggie, is that they are excommunicating members of the body from the table. When a church denies a child, who has been baptized, and given the sign of the covenant, from they table, they are in effect, excommunicating the child from the LORD’s supper. They are telling the child that they are not worthy to eat the bread and drink the wine that the LORD has given to His people.

On what grounds? They say this is because a child cannot examine himself, as is prescribed in 1 Corinthians 11. Yet, that text wasn’t written to to the children, or the women. It was written to the men. Have the men been divisive? Have they become drunkards at the table? Were they excluding people who were poor, and taking communion before them, leaving the poor to fend for themselves? If any of these things were true, then the men were not to partake.

The verse said nothing to the women. It said nothing to the children. The women, and the children, were not guilty of those sins, just the men. And if the men were not guilty, then they were to partake. But if they were guilty, then they should abstain.

The dirty little secret is that those men in Reformed circles who are excluding the children, the poorest of all, are guilty of the sin Paul is writing against. So the very verse they use to qualify someone for the table, is the very verse that disqualifies them from the table. They are guilty of sectarianism, of dividing the body.

Conclusion

The major point in all this is being faithful to God’s calling in the church. He has called us to be a body, the Body of Christ, and nothing symbolizes this more than the LORD’s supper. Given His passion for children, for the weak, and for the poor, it just makes no sense that the Table of the LORD should ever be divided by the haves, and the have nots. In the Reformed camps, this has fallen into those who have correct theology, and those who don’t. Yet, Christ desires to feed the have nots. So to restrict them from the Table, is the very sin that Paul was writing against in 1 Corinthians 11. This is why we insist, that our children partake.

No, they don’t understand. But with the feeding of God’s grace, we are trusting that the Spirit will work in their lives, and they will, one day, understand the rich grace they have been given in the simple bread and the wine.