The footnoted draft and also the antipaedocommunionist majority report can be downloaded from here.
[All boldface is my own – MH]
The authorities of Reformed theology render an almost unanimous judgment that covenant children before the age of discretion ought not to be brought to the Lord’s Table. According to our theologians, while being members of the covenant family of God and recipients of the promises of the covenant entitle our children to the sacrament of baptism, the same considerations are insufficient to confer upon them a right to the Lord’s Supper. The virtual unanimity of opinion on this question, though impressive, may, however, be deceptive. Certain considerations suggest that this consensus may be due less to the persuasiveness of the arguments commonly advanced on its behalf than to the absence of serious criticism of a custom which predated the reformation and, consequently, to a relatively superficial examination of the question. The fact that paedocommunion never became for the Reformed a matter of dispute with the Catholics, the Lutherans, or the anabaptists made it more likely that little thought would be devoted to the question and that the arguments of authorities would be repeated without scrutiny from one generation to the next. Many of our theologians do not even raise the issue in their discussion of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper and the treatment given by others can only be described as perfunctory. One can only guess how they would have responded to contemporary criticism of their arguments for they were not required in their day to defend their Position against substantial opposition.
That the common opinion of the Reformed church on this matter was and remains ill-considered can best be demonstrated, however, by an examination of the arguments offered on its behalf by two Reformed theologians of impeccable credentials: Herman Witsius (1636-1708) and Herman Bavinck (1845-1921). Both devote more attention to the question than is common and both present the received position against the background of the arguments of an advocate of the participation of covenant children in the Lord’s Supper.
Witsius’ comments regarding child communion appear in his discussion of the requirements for worthy communicating
XXX. We may easily gather from what we have quoted from Paul what to think of the communion of infants. It appears to have been a custom in the ancient church to put the symbols of the holy supper into the mouths of infants just after baptism. A practice still observed by the Orientals. I will here subjoin the words of Metrophanes Critopulus Hieromonachus, confess. c. ix: ‘But even infants themselves are partakers, beginning immediately upon their baptism, and afterwards as often as the parents will. And if any one should blame us for the communion of infants, we can easily stop his mouth. For, if he be an Anabaptist, we use this saying against him: “Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me,” Matt. xix.15. Also that other: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,” John vi-53. But the prophetess Anna makes very much for us, who dedicated Samuel from his early infancy to God; who also requires the first-born of the Jews to be given up to him, from their very birth, though not yet endowed with a competent measure of understanding. But if our adversary be no Anabaptist, we will also use the very same arguments against him, which he uses for infants against the Anabaptists; that as they ought to be baptized, so also to be made partakers of the Lord’s Supper. And thus with the help of God we have got the better of our argument.’ Thus far Metrophanes.
XXXI. But we are of a quite different opinion. For, all the words of our Lord’s command (with respect to this sacrament) are so expressed that they cannot belong to infants, who can neither receive the bread nor eat it, unless it be chewed for them or soaked. For ‘babes are fed with milk, and not with meat,’ I Cor. iii.2, Heb. v. 12. Infants cannot examine themselves nor discern the Lord’s bodybody, nor show his death, all which we have just heard the apostle requires of communicants.
XXXII. The arguments of Metrophanes are very easily refuted. For, 1st. It does not follow because our Lord was willing that young children should come unto him, and declared that theirs was the kingdom of heaven, that they are to partake of the supper. Christ is there speaking of spiritual and mystical communion with himself, which does not imply any sacramental communion whatever; but that only, of which the subjects he is speaking of are capable. Secondly. The nature of baptism and of the supper is different. Baptism is the sacrament of regeneration and ingrafting in the church; in the administration of which, the person to be baptized is merely passive; to the receiving of that the Scripture does not so universally require self-examination and the showing the Lord’s death. And therefore it may be properly applied to young children. But the supper is the sacrament of nutrition by means of a solid food; to the partaking whereof, the communicants are required to perform certain actions both by the body and the soul, of which infants are incapable, and therefore it belongs to those who are come to the years of discretion, and not to little children. Thirdly. Our Lord, John vi. 53, is not treating of a sacramental but of a spiritual and mystical eating by faith. For neither was the Eucharist then instituted or known; nor will any one readily urge such an absolute necessity for the eucharist as that without it none can be saved; which yet our Lord asserts of that eating of his flesh. Fourthly. The example of the prophetess Anna, who consecrated Samuel a little child to God, is not at all to the purpose. For nothing can be concluded from that, but that it is a part of the duty of parents to give up their children as early as possible to the obedience and service of God. 5thly. And what they pretend concerning the dedication of the first-born of the Jews to God, is still more impertinent. For that dedication of the first-born, previously to the setting apart the tribe of Levi, showed that they were God’s, and to be employed to his service; in them the other children were accounted to be consecrated, and even the whole family; and in a word, they were types of Christ, in whom, as the first-born among many brethren, all the families of the earth are blessed. All which has nothing to do with the participation of the eucharist.
Bavinck’s discussion adds further considerations to those advanced by Witsius.
…the children are excluded. Trent condemned only the necessity not the lawfulness of child communion. Among the Reformed Musculus [dis]agreed. He put forward these reasons: 1) that whoever possesses the thing signified has right also to the sign; 2) that, as appears from baptism, children are able to receive the grace of the new birth, they are also able without consciousness to be nourished in that spiritual life; 3) that Christ, the saviour of his whole congregation, is also the saviour of the children and feeds them all with his body and gives them all to drink of his blood; and 4) that the admonition to self-examination in 1 Cor. 11:26-29 is not intended by the apostle as a general requirement. But all these reasons lose their force in the face of these considerations. 1) In the OT there was a great difference between circumcision and the passover. Circumcision was prescribed for all male children, but the passover, not at once with the institution of it, but later in Palestine, was celebrated in the temple of Jerusalem. Very young children were in the nature of the case excluded. 2) In the same way there is a great difference between baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Baptism is the sacrament of the new birth, wherein the individual is passive. The Lord’s Supper is the sacrament of growth in fellowship with Christ, of the nurture of the spiritual life, and it supposes conscious, active participation in those who receive it. 3) Christ instituted the Lord’s Supper in the midst of his disciples, saying to them all: ‘Take, eat, drink.’ These words suppose that they would take the bread and wine from his hand. And Paul says that the congregation at Corinth came together in order to eat and gives no other impression than that only grown persons in possession of intellectual powers participated in the supper. 4) In 1 Cor. 11:26-29 the apostle emphatically sets forth the requirement that before the supper, men examine themselves so that they may distinguish the body of the Lord and not eat and drink unworthily. This requirement is set forth in an entirely general fashion, directed to all participants in the supper, and therefore, in the nature of the case, excludes children. 5) Withholding the supper from children causes them the loss of not one benefit of the covenant of grace. This would indeed be the case if they were denied baptism. For no one can deny baptism to children except he think that they stand outside the covenant of grace. But it is otherwise with the Lord’s Supper. Whoever administers baptism and not the Lord’s Supper to children acknowledges that they are in the covenant and share all the benefits of it. He merely denies them a special manner by which those benefits are signified and sealed during the time it does not suit their age. The supper gives not one benefit which is not granted already beforehand through faith in the Word and baptism.
In this matter Witsius and Bavinck are thoroughly representative of the Reformed consensus and, so far as I am aware, they omit no important argument advance against paedocommunion by our theologians.
In my judgment, careful scrutiny of these arguments against child communion will show them to be without substance and insufficient to turn aside the straightforward and fundamental considerations urged in support of the participation of covenant children in the supper by Metrophanes and Musculus.
1) The centralization of the passover in Jerusalem as one of the pilgrimage feasts, proves nothing. Women were likewise not required to attend and children did participate, indeed were required to participate, in other sacrifices and offerings (Deut. 12:4-7, 11-14; 14:22-26; 15:19-20; 16:10-11). If young children were excluded from the passover because they were incapable of understanding and thus worthy partaking, it is difficult to explain why they were welcome at these other sacrificial meals.
2) An important argument advanced by both Witsius and Bavinck is that there is a great difference between the two sacraments: baptism being the sacrament of regeneration and thus in it the individual is passive; the supper being the sacrament of nourishment and thus requires intelligent participation on the part of anyone who receives it.
It is to be observed, in the first place, that as it is used by the opponents of paedocommunion this argument is an instance of the fallacy of petitio principii. The argument begs the question because it amounts to the conclusion which must be demonstrated rather than a demonstration of the conclusion. No doubt, if the two sacraments differ in nature in this way, child communion is excluded; but this difference is precisely the point at issue. As an argument, therefore, it is worthless.
It may be said, however, that this conclusion regarding the sacraments is dubious for a variety of reasons. There is no doubt that baptism may be designated the sacrament of initiation and the supper the sacrament of nutrition. But this nomenclature signifies nothing in regard to the passivity or activity of the recipient of each sacrament, a subject never raised and a distinction never made in Scripture. Further, though commonly enough so designated in the Reformed manuals, it does a grave injustice to the statements of Scripture to distinguish baptism from the supper by designating the former as the sacrament of regeneration. Our Confession of Faith and catechisms rightly express no such diminished concept of baptism. Baptism signifies our union with the triune God in Christ and the whole of our salvation which flows from that union (Rom. 6:3-6; Gal. 3:27-28; Col. 2:11-12; 1 Cor. 12:13) and is the seal of the righteousness which is by faith (Rom. 4:11). The signification of the two sacraments cannot by appeal to Scripture be shown to be fundamentally different. In addition, the requirement of faith and repentance as conditions for the baptism of an adult renders the appeal to the “passivity” of the baptized without force. Certain “conscious activity” is required of an adult for and in baptism and for worthy participation in the supper. If the one activity does not constitute an objection to paedobaptism, it is difficult to see how the other would invalidate paedocommunion.
What is more, this argument assumes the doubtful premise that children born into a family would be denied nourishment for a number of years. It seems to me altogether odd that the distinction drawn by these writers between baptism as a sacrament of regeneration and the supper as a sacrament of nourishment should be employed as an argument against child communion. Something one must always see to on behalf of newborns is their nourishment! The fact that, after all, the supper, as the passover before it, is a meal ought to alert us to the unlikelihood that it is the intention of the Lord Jesus Christ that the adults eat while the little ones watch them eat.
3) The words of institution to which Bavinck appeals no doubt are meant to be understood, as are the words of the baptismal formula which are pronounced over infants. The spoken word often precedes the understanding, indeed gradually calls forth understanding and assent in covenant children as in adults outside of the covenant community.
Moreover, in this appeal to the command to take and eat, which obviously cannot be heeded by infants, a certain inconsistency in argumentation is exposed. This argument figures in several treatments of this question by Reformed authorities. Against the Orthodox practice of communion immediately after baptism–that is, in earliest infancy and before weaning–it has weight. However, to employ this argument at all raises the presumption that when a covenant child is able to take and eat he is to be admitted to the table. But, this is true of very young children. The Orthodox custom seems clearly to be contrary to the pattern of the passover, but very young children sat at the passover table in Israel and very young children can take food and drink from an elder’s hand. There seems to be an admission of this in the literature though without a reckoning with its implications.
4) The appeal to 1 Cor. 11:27-29 cannot bear the weight which the opponents of paedocommunion place upon it. That the requirement of self-examination as stated here by Paul is, for our authorities, the principle argument against child communion is easy to demonstrate. It is the only argument advanced against the idea by many and is often presented as sufficient in itself to quell all debate. The cumulative effect of this repeated rejection of paedocommunion on the sole basis of a perfunctory appeal to 1 Cor. 11:28 and without attention to possible objections to this argument is to establish two impressions: 1) the consensus against child communion was so complete and so much taken for granted that neither argument nor careful reflection was thought to be required and 2) the reformed consensus on this subject has never rested on a substantial biblical or theological foundation.
As the context makes clear and as the commentators confirm, Paul’s remarks are specifically directed against an impious and irreverent participation (a true manducatio indignorum). Much more would need to have been said before it could be concluded that Paul was speaking to the general question of who may come to the table, or to the question of children’s participation, or that he intended to exclude them from the supper. We do not understand Acts 2:38 to deny baptism to little children, Rom. 10:13-14 to deny them salvation, or 2 Thess. 3:10 to deny them food.
An appeal to 1 Cor. 11:28 is rendered all the more dubious an argument against paedocommunion by the incontestable fact the Old Testament contains similar warnings against faithless and hardhearted participation in the sacraments, similar calls to self-examination before participating, even (as in I Cor. 11:30) threats of death for such offenders (Isa. 1:10-20; Amos 5:18-27; Jer. 7:1-29). Yet these warnings can in no way be said to have invalidated the practice or the divine warrant for family participation in the sacral meals as prescribed in the law.
5) A further consideration arises from the Reformed definition of a sacrament as a sign and seal of the covenant of grace. The sacraments accompany promises made to members of the covenant community and the commandments of God which his people are summoned to obey. The sacraments do not add to the covenant revelation of God, they signify and confirm it. There is nothing in the sacrament which is not already and more comprehensively in the Word. Baptism is conferred upon covenant children precisely because God has made promises to them and summoned them to live for him even in their earliest days. On this understanding of the sacraments and without clear warrant otherwise in Scripture it appears difficult to justify withholding the seal and thus divorcing it from the promises which clearly have already been made and from the summons which has already been issued. The bearing of these considerations on the issue of child communion is illustrated beautifully by Bavinck’s fifth argument, which appears to be less a reason than an apology for the exclusion of children from the table. Where does Scripture ever suggest that a participant in ‘all the benefits of the covenant of grace’ is to be denied the sign and seal of those benefits? Against Witsius it should be said that Christ’s invitation to the children (Matt. 19:13-15) cannot be so easily judged irrelevant to this question. Spiritual and mystical communion with Christ most certainly does imply sacramental communion with him, for the one signifies and seals the other.
Another way of putting this objection to the received practice in the reformed church is to point out that the custom of excluding covenant children from the table can be derived from no principle of Reformed ecclesiology. The visible church is defined as “all those … that profess the true religion, together with their children…” (WCF XXV, ii); the sacraments are said to be “holy signs and seals of the covenant of grace … to represent Christ and his benefits, and to confirm our interest in him: as also to put visible difference between those that belong unto the church and the rest of the world…” (XXVII, i); and further it is maintained that “The sacraments of the Old Testament, in regard of the spiritual things thereby signified and exhibited, were, for substance, the same with those of the New” (XXVII, v). From these principles of our ecclesiology the practice of infant baptism is derived and by no application of these same principles is it possible to invalidate paedocommunion. On the contrary, paedocommunion seems to be as much the necessary consequence of this ecclesiology as paedobaptism.
Christian parents begin to teach their little ones at a very early age, indeed at the dawn of consciousness, that the promises of God are theirs to hold and the law of God is theirs to keep. If the Word can be given to them at such a tender age, the sign and seal of it not less so. The nurture of covenant children is continuum, having its beginning before a child is in full possession of rational powers. As the supper is a visible word, there is no reason why it too should not make its contribution over the whole course of the spiritual upbringing of a covenant child.
6) Certain practical consideration are further to be urged in support of the participation of young children in the supper. First, the impression which the Word is intended to make in this tangible and visible form seems in many ways especially suited to young children. Second, the celebration of the supper with their children, as well as preparation for it, would provide parents with a regular and most important opportunity for instruction and examination, as the passover provided in ancient times. Third, paedocommunion would reinforce a conviction, much needing reinforcement today, namely, that covenant children are to be holy and pure members of Christ’s body, lovers of God and of the brethren from the very beginning. This in turn would reinforce the responsibility and the right of the elders to rule over the whole church, including children, even naughty children, whose naughtiness too frequently becomes, by the age of discretion, a wilfulness and rebellion which leads to death.
For all of these reasons I conclude that the burden of proof rests heavily on those who would exclude covenant children from the supper and that the common position of our churches cannot be sustained unless supported by better arguments than those which have historically been advance on its behalf. “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son…
There is, of course, a danger inherent in the practice of paedocommunion. That a young covenant child partakes of the supper could lead to a false presumption of salvation both in his own heart and in the mind of his family and church. This is precisely the danger inherent in infant circumcision and baptism and often sadly illustrated in the history of Israel and Christianity. But in our church there is agreement that the “risk” of infant baptism is best provided for not by the abolition of the divinely instituted order but by the insistence upon its practice only in the context of covenant faithfulness on the part of parents and church. It should be noted, on the other hand, that our present practice is not without dangers. At present we risk promoting superstition by divorcing the Word from the sacrament. Believing they have right and title to it, we begin to give the Word to our children as soon as or even before we give them solid food; but for the sacrament they must wait. The implication is that there is some new divine communication, some supernatural efficacy which the sacrament contains but the Word does not, or that the sacrament unlike the Word, has an intrinsic power and is not merely an instrument by which the Spirit ministers grace to the heart. Our authorities vigorously deny this,18 but our practice suggests it. A further temptation in our practice to which I believe our children often succumb is disillusionment with the sacrament. Making covenant children, many of who have been believers from their mother’s breasts, wait for the sacrament until adolescence or later naturally awakens in their hearts eager expectations of the sacrament’s efficacy suddenly and permanently to raise their spiritual affections to a new pitch, expectations which are and cannot but be disappointed. The confusion, disappointment, and frustration of many earnest Christian people over the frequent failure of the sacrament to warm their affections, to bring tears, to leave its impression upon their hearts for days afterwards is a problem of real urgency today for pastors. Could it not be that our practice of delaying participation in the sacrament and, in that way, divorcing the Word from the sacrament tempts our children to think of the operation of the sacrament as being very different from the operation of the Word and creates exaggerated expectations for the sacrament which in turn have led to confusion and, not infrequently, disillusionment.
The majority of the committee very rightly has the highest regard for and loyalty to the doctrine and practice which we have received as our inheritance. Surely after four and a half centuries of virtual unanimity on the question of paedocommunion it is natural to be suspicious of what amounts to a charge that virtually without exception our theologians and our fathers and mothers in the faith have all these generations been deaf to the Lord speaking in the Scriptures concerning the place of our children at his table. Nevertheless, it is a most fundamental conviction of our church that the supreme authority for doctrine and practice must be the Lord Christ speaking in the Scriptures. Such unqualified submission to the Word of God requires not only that we constantly subject our doctrine to the test of fidelity to the Scriptures but that we willingly receive correction from the Word. This should be much easier, of course, if, as I have maintained, the doctrine or the practice has never received anything more than superficial consideration.
All respect to the committee for a report which presents the case for retaining our traditional practice with considerably more sensitivity, imagination, and discrimination than one will find in our standard authorities. Nevertheless, I can only conclude that the committee report fails adequately to answer the gravamen of the charges lodged against the practice of excluding our children from the supper.
It is, of course, conceivable that in the era introduced by Christ and his apostles there was such a heightening of the degree of required maturity for participation in the second sacrament as the committee report maintains. This is precisely what baptists have argued in denying the support for infant baptism which we derive from the connection between circumcision and baptism. Our theologians have acknowledged that there are differences between the pre-Christian and Christian economies but have rightly insisted both that these differences concern the form only and not the substance of the covenant of God in Christ with his people and that the membership and participation of the children of believers in the covenant community, the church of God, belong not to the form but to the substance of God’s covenant and of the workings of divine grace.
Further, while such a heightening as might have implications for the admission of covenant children to the table lacks any direct textual support, it surely cannot be contested that a prima facie case can be made for the relevance of the practice of including children in the passover and other sacrificial meals for the church’s practice of the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, the case can be made for paedocommunion in precisely the way we are accustomed to argue for paedobaptism (e.g. there is no statement in the New Testament invalidating the practice of the Old; the theology of children and the membership of covenant children in the church of God upon which Reformed understanding of paedocommunion is based are seconded in the New Testament; there is no instance in the New Testament of what would seem to be a prerequisite for the argument that the Old Testament order has been superseded, viz., a record of or at least some hint of a covenant child being prepared for admittance or being admitted to the table in his adolescence or young adulthood; etc.). In addition it may be noted that certain necessary concomitants of our present practice wholly lack textual support (e.g that there are two types of members in Christ’s church and that adolescent or young adult members of the covenant community are required to “profess faith” for entrance into the fulness of their covenant privileges).
We would do well to remember that the self-evidence of the correctness of the traditional application of I Cor. 11:27-28 to the issue of paedocommunion is seriously impeached by the widespread practice of paedocommunion in the western church until the twelfth century and in the eastern church to the present and by the fact that the Lord’s Supper was lost to the church’s children in the west not as a result of a purification of the church’s practice of the sacrament but rather as the result of a horrible corruption of it.
I do not at all doubt that it is the desire of us all to be faithful to the Scriptures in this matter. For this reason I urge the church not to be precipitate in disposing of this question. Surely it cannot be denied that arguments of considerable weight, deriving naturally from the statements of the Scriptures and deeply embedded in Reformed ecclesiology, are being advanced in many quarters today in favor of rethinking our tradition. We give thanks to God for our forefathers and wish to be loyal to the rich and biblical tradition which they have bequeathed to us. But neither such gratitude nor loyalty to our historic doctrine and practice requires that we invest unqualified confidence in the infallibility of our authorities or in the correctness of every part of our tradition. No conviction as fundamental to our faith as the supreme authority of the Scriptures will remain untested. Let us take great care to ensure that it is the Scriptures and not the custom of centuries to which we are submitting ourselves. Even the Lord’s disciples, accustomed as they were in their day to circumcized infants and children at the passover table,20 had to be reproached by him for their failure to discern how unqualified is the welcome which is extended to our children in the church of God (Mk. 10:13-16).
The Mystical Presence: A Vindication of the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist by John Williamson Nevin