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THE CONTENTS OF OUR TABLE
They’re sitting there.
You baptised them.
You say Jesus loves
them. Give ‘em the
bread, you lumpy
anabaptist.
Douglas Wilson introduces what will
quickly become, if you’ve noticed, a
theme.
Nathan Wilson looks at covenantal
success in the Church of Satan.
Douglas Wilson gets complex. Bread
gets bread.
That Wonderful Cup
Volume 18, Number 1
Thema: Bread and Wine for Children
Douglas Wilson takes the first swing.
“But what with one thing or another, and lots of Bible verses with
covenant promises in them—I don’t know, it was dark, they were big—I
became a paedobaptist. And I was stuck with my previous argument.
Becoming a paedobaptist necessitated becoming a paedocommunionist,
straight off, at least if you were to go by how I had been talking a few
months before. He who accepts the one must accept the other, or at least
so I had argued. But I still did not accept paedocommunion right off,
and the reason was another argument I had explicitly used as a baptist, but
which I had now abandoned. ”
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Peter Leithart’s brakes go out.
The Supporting Cast:
Ben Merkle gets anecdotal.
Douglas Jones squints at James Joyce
and the sacraments.
We welcome our guests—Virgil Hurt,
Randy Booth, Greg Strawbridge, Jeff
Evans—and they are all well behaved.
Flotsam: Millstones/ Nathan Wilson
Husbandry: Communion as Communing/ Douglas Wilson
Presbyterion: Bread Should Get Bread/ Douglas Wilson
Childer: Teaching Children to Doubt/ Douglas Wilson
Liturgia: Paedocommunion, the Gospel, and the Church/ Peter Leithart
Recipio: Assurance/ Ben Merkle
Footnotes: Our Wonderful Sources
Pat-Pat: Communing with Joyce/ Douglas Jones
Pooh’s Think: That Wonderful Cup; The Family Table;
Children’s Church; Grace at the Table/ Virgil Hurt; Randy Booth;
Greg Strawbridge; Jeff Evans
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Bread and Wine for Children
Douglas Wilson
I CAME to the position of child communion slowly, reluctantly—and inexorably. I grew up in a Southern Baptist
church and was baptized at the age of ten. I had made a verbal
profession of faith when I was four years old, and right after I
was baptized, I began partaking of communion. In that
church we observed communion monthly.
After I was grown and called to the ministry, our church
established (at least in this regard) a pattern of worship that
was very similar to what I had grown up with. Our church was
baptistic in its founding, and we celebrated communion once
a month. All three of our children were dedicated to the Lord
in infancy. They all came to a profession of faith very early
and were baptized as young children. In the early years, we
had a children’s church that ran concurrently with the sermon,
but when the kids got a little older, they would join the adults
in the main service. The net effect of all this is that none of my
children can remember a time when they were excluded from
communion. They were, but they were also in another part of
the building at the time, and so did not notice. At some point,
we began calling our kids out of children’s church on communion Sunday so that they could partake together with us.
Over the years the changes were incremental, but for
various reasons (which we did not really understand at the
time), the majority of us in our church felt a real need to
include our children as participants with us in the worship
service. And so we gradually discontinued the practice of
children’s church and brought our children into the worship of
God together with us.
After I became Calvinistic, I started having to deal with
the views of the Reformers more than I had ever done before,
and so I had to start interacting with their curious practice of
baptizing babies. Well, would you look at that? In part, this
was because I had inadvertently become the only Calvinistic
preacher in the area, and various Reformed and Presbyterian
refugees who had been hiding out in the ecclesiastical
woodwork started to come to our church. And a number of
them were young couples, of an age where babies could be
expected to show up from time to time. This inevitably
happened, and the parents did what such conscientious
parents always do—they asked me if they could arrange for a
baptism. The answer to this, of course, was, “Are you crazy?”
But I still knew that I needed to do a little reading on the
subject. And so I started to study the issue because I was now
pastoring a number of people with paedobaptist backgrounds
and convictions. The aliens had landed.
How does this tie in with paedocommunion? Well, it
connects in several ways. First, paedocommunion had been
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my baptistic reductio ad absurdum in debate for my paedobaptist
friends. “If I baptize a baby, then why shouldn’t I offer him
communion as well?” To this argument, some of my
paedobaptist friends said okay quite cheerfully, while others
had said the two sacraments were quite different, and that
baptizing an apple did not mean you should commune with an
orange.
But what with one thing or another, and lots of Bible
verses with covenant promises in them—I don’t know, it was
dark, they were big—I became a paedobaptist. And I was
stuck with my previous argument. Becoming a paedobaptist
necessitated becoming a paedocommunionist, straight off, at
least if you were to go by how I had been talking a few months
before. He who accepts the one must accept the other, or at
least so I had argued. But I still did not accept
paedocommunion right off, and the reason was another
argument I had explicitly used as a baptist, but which I had
now abandoned. This was the argument that (in effect)
patronized the Reformers by saying that they were swell
Christians, and they broke from Rome in a way greatly used
by God, but unfortunately, they did not break from Rome
cleanly and decisively enough. They came away from Rome,
but not far enough away, and a consistent Reformation would
have necessitiated a rejection of infant baptism. This was the
“two cheers for the Reformation” argument.
Of course, having accepted infant baptism, I had to drop
that argument and put my hands slowly on the roof of the car.
But on the ride down to the station, I was somewhat disconcerted to discover that the paedobaptist cops who were
hauling me in were using the same argument in their own
discussions. They were paedocommunionist cops as it turns
out, and they knew that the Reformers (almost) universally
considered and rejected paedocommunion. John Calvin
dismissed it in his Institutes, the Directory of Worship put
together by the Westminster theologians plainly rejected the
notion, and so on. You get the idea. Coming to paedobaptist
convictions had been humbling for me, and one of the things I
was repenting of was patronizing the Reformers for “not
going far enough.” I had just arrived in Reformed circles,
pretty chastened, and I wanted to spend some time learning
from the Reformers instead of trying to teach them. And so I
was resistant to the arguments of paedocommunionists, not
because their position was unattractive to me, but because I
was wary about picking up an argument I had just been
prevailed upon to drop.
B. B. Warfield once wrote that the Reformation was a
collision between Augustine’s doctrine of salvation and
Augustine’s doctrine of the church. According to this view,
that great man laid the doctrinal foundation for both move-
THEMA
ments within the church, and when they grew to their
respective maturities, one of them had to go. And as long as
this is not pressed too far, I think there is something to it. But
the reason for bringing this up is that I believe there is
something similar going on with the Reformation and this
issue of paedocommunion. In other words, who are the true
heirs of the Reformation? Baptists or paedocommunionists? It
is a difficult question to answer because the Reformers, almost
to a man, condemned both positions. And so the paedobaptist
who is opposed to paedocommunion might want to say that I
have framed the question illegitimately. “Why,” he might
reasonably ask, “can’t we consider the heirs of the Reformers
to be those within the Reformed world who actually hold the
same positions that the Reformers did? To wit, baptize those
babies, and withhold communion until they come to a mature
ability to approach the Table in faith?”
I believe this is a most reasonable question, and this is my
attempt at an answer. I don’t believe antipaedocommunionists
hold to the same position as the Reformers, despite their
agreement on the end result. This end result was the formal
position of the Reformers, and, as such, it carried within it all
the tensions that this same position contains today. And those
today who are grappling with those tensions are not trying to
be troublemakers, but rather trying to work out the ramifications of what they have confessed.
This means—but wait. Before I say what it means, let me
say that what I am putting forward here is not being done in a
belligerent manner at all. I am not trying to pick a fight with
anybody. And yet we have to work through some difficult
issues here, and I recognize some people might want to fight
about it. The reason emotions run high is that our children are
at stake—on the one side, believers feel that participation in
Christ through the bread and wine (appropriated by faith) is
being withheld from their children; while on the other side,
believers feel that what to them is blurring the importance of
individual faith is a way of withholding the gospel from our
children too. And if you want a fight, threaten somebody’s
kid.
But this is where my testimony as a ex-baptist comes in. It
is not enough to adopt the formal and external practices of the
Reformers, in this case, “infant baptism and delayed communion.” The reason I have for saying this is that when I
came into the Reformed world (the American version), I did
so as a ex-baptist, just fresh off the boat. And one of the things
I was soon astonished to find was that I was still surrounded
by baptists. They were baptists who baptized their infants, to
be sure, but that was about the extent of the difference. The
baptisms were simply wet dedications, and I had grown up
with infant dedications. I had been dedicated to the Lord by
my parents when I was a baby, and my wife and I (staunch
baptists) had dedicated all three of our kids in church. So
what’s a little water?
I found myself in a Reformed world that was (but for
that bit of water) baptistic. Baptistic in worship, baptistic in
ecclesiology, baptistic in its revivalism, and baptistic in its
approach to the Table. In some ways, I would even argue that
the Reformed churches could be even more baptistic than the
baptists. Once I was baptized in my Southern Baptist church,
I was admitted to the Table right away. In many cases, kids in
baptist churches are admitted to the Table years before their
counterparts are admitted to the Table in Reformed
churches. In light of the conversionist requirements that are
often placed on covenantal kids, it sometimes appears that
they might as well be unbaptized. But please note I wrote
“conversionist,” which is not the same thing as disparaging the
need for true conversion. True conversion is the work of the
Holy Spirit, and not the work of his ecclesiastical handlers.
Those handlers always need handles, which usually wind up
being testimonies and assurances that can be seen by men, and
which can also be faked by other men.
This baptistic presence in American Reformed circles
has worked out the tensions in one direction, and I believe
they have accomodated themselves to the prevailing baptistic
assumptions in our culture. The paedocommunionists have
worked out the tensions in the other direction. The end result
is that (I want to argue) the paedocommunionists have
consistently embraced what the Reformers taught us about
what baptism and the Lord’s Supper are, and the
antipaedocommunionists have retained the Reformers’
liturgical practice. The paedocommunionists have kept the
substantive teaching and altered the ritual to fit with it, while
antipaedocommunionists have kept the ritual and altered the
teaching, to fit with it. By all this, I do not mean that they have
altered the teaching “on paedocommuion.”
For example, here is a thought experiment. Round up
1,000 anti-paedocommunionists. Ask them if they believe the
sacraments of baptism and communion to be in any sense
effectual means of salvation. Overwhelmingly they will say that
they don’t, that they are not Roman Catholic, and that they
belong to a church that adheres to the Westminster Confession of Faith. The problem is that the question was a quotation
from the Westminster Confession (SC 91/LC 161). Then ask
them if they agree with the Westminster Directory when it
excludes from the Supper any who are ignorant, which
includes tiny children. And they will agree with that.
Now flip it around. If you were to ask 1,000
paedocommunionists, they will differ with the restriction in
the Directory, and be much more likely to agree that baptism
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and communion are effectual means of salvation. Now this is
qualified elsewhere—the sacraments are effectual means of
salvation to worthy receivers, and worthy receivers means
evangelical faith. This is all granted, and I cheerfully agree with
it. But how many anti-paedocommunionists would be willing
to say this, even with all the necessary qualifications in the same
sentence? “For those who have true evangelical faith, baptism
and the Lord’s Supper are effectual means of salvation.” And
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the reason for this reluctance, I would argue, is substantive
doctrinal agreement with the baptists.
Because of this, I would submit there is universal
agreement among the Reformed today that says there was a
tension in the position of the Reformers that had to be
harmonized in one direction or another. They have gone one
direction, and we another. But no one today holds the original
tension.
FLOTSAM
Millstones
Nathan Wilson
MARILYN MANSON (Brian Warner) attended Heritage
Christian School in Canton, Ohio. It was a definitive experience for him. If he had never entered Heritage Christian
School then he never would have gotten stuck calling himself
the “Antichrist Superstar,” he wouldn’t have so much trouble
making friends, and he probably wouldn’t have to wear
lipstick to keep his fans. Brian said all the hypocrisy in
Christianity made him choose his route. Chapel can do that to
a guy. But maybe he just couldn’t make the soccer team.
Poor little Zeena. Her father founded the Church of
Satan. He also made Brian Warner an official priest during a
concert. Anton LaVey (Howard Levey) claimed that he was a
circus performer and an organist. He saw lots of the same
men in the tent at the Saturday night skin shows and singing
hymns at the Sunday morning revivals. All the hypocrisy made
him ritualistically shave his head, write The Satanic Bible, design
a few logos and make up a bunch of rituals. His daughter
Zeena was the lucky recipient of the first satanic baptism at
the age of three and a half. They said, “Hail Satan!” and there
was a nude priestess and everything.
“Which one is the Heaven star?” my son asks. We’re
supposed to be getting in the car. More offspring are waiting
to be carried out. But he’s looking up and pointing. It’s a clear
night, a skin-thickeningly cold night. The car is prewarmed.
Exhaust is crawling slowly down the driveway. Gravel huddles
in its warmth. The two of us ignore it and shiver, staring up at
our stellar backdrop, a reality full of throbbing, exploding
spheres that God has dusted through His narrative. Thrift is
not one of His attributes. Of course, given the numbers He
could have worked with, perhaps the Milky Way is a picture
of restraint.
“Probably that one,” I say. I’m pointing at Polaris.
“That’s the North Star. Satan tried to move his throne further
north than God’s. He was proud.”
“I’ll tell you somethin’. Jesus threw him down into the
dirt.” He’s going to kink his neck if he keeps it cranked back.
I open the car door and start feeding him into his seat, but not
before the catechism begins. Of course, most people wouldn’t
call it a catechism. It’s more a mythic history of the world, an
overview of reality’s plotline from a three-year-old’s perspective.
“Jesus made everything,” he says.
“That’s right.” The buckle isn’t clicking. I’m going to
have to climb in after him.
“He made fruit. And bugs. And stars. Samson’s in the
stars. And Jonah. And David. He made giants for us to fight.”
Thus the creation. “He put Adam and Eve in the Garden and
told them not to eat the fruit.”
“What happened?” I ask. He’s buckled now, but I like to
let him get through history once he’s started.
“The dragon came.”
“The dragon was Satan. Did Adam fight him?”
“Satan was from the stars. Jesus threw him down. Adam
didn’t fight him.”
“What did he do?”
“He disobeyed Jesus. Adam and Eve made their hearts
dirty.” He grabs at my face. He wants eye contact. I give it to
him. “They had to die,” he says.
“We all do.”
He nods seriously.
Brian Warner/Marilyn Manson married a girl named
Heather Sweet. Of course, when you’re moving in Manson’s
circles, real names are rather gauche. She goes by Dita Von
Teese. Brian wore a John Galliano taffeta tuxedo. Heather
wore a purple taffeta gown (by Vivienne Westwood) along
with a tricorner hat. It was very anti-the-man. The ceremony
was traditional (though surprisingly nondemoninational for a
priest in the Church of Satan). Heather says that Manson is
actually really nice inside and likes to lead his private life in
accordance with traditional Judeo-Christian values. Actually,
she just said that he’s extremely genuine and passionate. He
says that he’s now into monogamy. Which makes him
genuinely what? The Antichrist Superstar? Or maybe just little
Brian Warner from Heritage Christian School. Of course he
did serve frappé at the reception—absinthe frappé.
For his thirty-seventh birthday she bought twenty live,
flying bats, and people said there was a great big cauldron full
of red punch. The punch was very symbolic. Blood is red, too.
Now that Manson is full of love, he isn’t scary anymore.
People figured out that it’s just red punch. Of course, he’s a
little angry about being ignored by Midwestern mothers.
“Hey!” he said to one interviewer who questioned his
scariness. “I’m the first Eminem!”
Christians always define themselves in terms of the
mainstream.
I’m not sure where we’re going after the Fall. Maybe the
flood. Maybe David and Goliath. But my son keeps things
moving pretty well. We’re going straight to Christmas.
“Jesus had to come to clean our hearts,” he says. I’m
stuck leaning in the car. If he loses eye contact, he’ll have to
repeat everything. “He was born a little baby so He could
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FLOTSAM
grow up and fight the dragon. He threw him in the fire.”
“Yeah,” I don’t need to say anything else. He’s picking
up speed.
“Jesus died. The bad men hammered Him to a tree.” He
points to his wrists, his feet, and his side, identifying the
stigmata. “He had lots of blood. He washes our hearts with
His blood.”
“What happened when He died?” Sometimes the blood
gets a little distracting.
“They put Him in the ground. He went all the way down
to the fire.” His hands go up and he smirks, a little half smile.
His eyebrows go up with the inflection. “He didn’t stay
dead!”
Zeena had a son when she was fourteen or so. But that was no
tragedy. Her tragedy came as she began to be disillusioned
with her father, Anton. The Church of Satan, like so many
other more traditional denominations, had a little trouble with
hypocrisy. While Anton claimed that membership had
peaked well into the hundreds of thousands, Zeena seems to
feel that it never exceeded three hundred. In addition to this,
though her father wore a hood with little horns on it, he was a
materialist honoring Satan as representative of radical
individualism only. He built his religion on the thought of Ayn
Rand more than any spiritual influence. Did he even believe in
magic? Luckily Zeena believed herself to be truly magical due
primarily to the fact that her mother was actually a manifestation of Diana the Huntress. Zeena fell away from the faith and
moved to Europe with her son and husband in order to
establish something truly magical. She and her husband now
worship Set, a homosexual Egyptian god of evil whom the
Egyptians couldn’t stand but couldn’t really shake. She now
lives in Berlin trying to find a higher plane of enlightenment
primarily through misbehaving sexually.
Her son, Stanton, then did his own falling away. Disillusioned with his disillusioned mother, he returned to the U.S.
where he was raised by his grandmother and currently tries to
maintain (rather unsuccessfully) a satanic blog. He’s been
disowned for speaking to his grandfather, and is currently
with a woman who thinks she channels dark magic by means
of a hula hoop. Hail Satan.
“What happened?” I ask. Easter can be pretty close to
the finish line.
“He came back! And then He went up into the stars.
He’s going to take us up into the stars. He gives us His body
and blood at church. The bread is His body. There’s lots of
bodies, but He only has one. The wine is His blood.”
“Is it really His body and blood?” Transubstantiation is
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not beyond a three-year-old.
“No. It’s like His body and blood. It makes us stronger
to help us keep our hearts clean. He gives it to us because He
loves us. We’re baptized.”
“You’re right. Jesus told us to eat the bread and drink the
wine and remember Him.”
“Daddy, I tell you somethin’?” His hands go back on my
cheeks. His eyes are excited. We’re reaching the punch line.
“I do remember Him.”
I smile. I do all the things a father should do when faced
with pristine faith. I rub his head. I put my hand on his face.
He’s smiling, too. I kiss him.
“I know you do. I’ve got to get your sisters. I’ll be right
back.”
“Okay.” He’s looking out his window. “There’s the
stars!” And we’re right back at the beginning.
The Onion ran a story entitled, “Marilyn Manson Now Going
Door-To-Door Trying To Shock People.” They described
him as kicking off a fifty-city “Boo” tour.
Anton LaVey is dead. But he left behind one disillusioned
Zeena and an older daughter who has since tried to revive the
Church of Satan, apparently as an intellectual discussion
group. She makes it perfectly clear that they do not have
orgies, sacrifice animals, or worship the Devil. It’s an odd sort
of Satanism. They’re probably vegans. Anton also left behind a
son, Satan Xerxes Carnacki LaVey, born to his third consort
in 1993. Somewhere there is a teenager preparing for his own
path of disillusionment.
My two-year-old daughter doesn’t walk through the overall
plotline. She claims her baptism, professes that Christ’s blood
washes her heart clean, discusses the stigmata and the
crucifixion and pronounces the defeat of the dragon. My oneyear-old daughter lights up and answers yes or no questions,
and will name Jesus when helped. She’s never happier than
when communing and she holds her own bread patiently.
From her first communion she has never tried to eat it early,
but waits and watches her grandfather. She does struggle.
When she receives the wine, her joy is a little more than she is
used to containing. The cup never survives her teeth.
When I look at the faith of my children, I see health. I see
something young, something that will grow, something that
needs stories told and retold. But more than that, I see
something to be imitated. I pray that I will never push them
away, because once pushed, the pushing never stops. I hope
that they will never know a day apart, that they will never feel
excluded.
Millstones are heavy, and many Christians wear them.
HUSBANDRY
Communion as Communing
Douglas Wilson
IN THE ANCIENT world, nothing was more common than the
marriage of worship and sexual behavior. Fertility cults were
common, sacred prostitutes were common, and not only was
this kind of whoredom acceptable, it was respectable. The
apostle Paul had to write sternly to the Corinthian church in
order to let the men there know that now that they had
become Christians, sexual devotion at the nearby Temple of
Aphrodite was unacceptable. This kind of warning does not
usually come up in a contemporary new members’ class, so
perhaps we have made some headway.
In the Old Testament, God fashioned His law in such a
way that the Israelites could never make this mistake. A man
who had had lawful sexual relations with his wife was not
permitted to approach the Lord in worship until after the
appropriate time and cleansing had taken place. This was not
a feature of the law because sex was dirty or something to be
ashamed of, but rather because the prevailing mixture of the
sex act with worship proper was something that God forbade.
In the ancient world, a tall fence had to be established between
the two because if it were not established, then sexual worship
would just be a matter of time. Israel was commanded to
keep her distance from all such worship.
The other gods had their consorts and concubines, and
nothing was more common than for worshippers to imitate
their gods in worship. But Yahweh had no consort in the
heavens—He was married to His people. In pagan faith, the
gods were doing their thing, and men and women were to
mimic their behavior down here. But in biblical faith, God
condescends to marry His people—and this means that their
communion cannot be sexual in the physical sense. The
communion is across the Creator/creature divide. Sex is a
metaphor for this, but cannot be the enactment of it.
When worship drifts away from an understanding of the
triune God, those who want intensity in their worship will
naturally gravitate toward some kind ecstatic worship. This
will waver for a time on the borders of sexual worship, and
then will eventually tumble in. This can be seen in the sexual
immorality that has accompanied many revivals, in the twisted
piety of some medieval mystics, or in the dark times of the
Moravians. In many a contemporary worship service, it can be
seen with some sexy young evangelical thing crooning over her
phallic microphone.
Now, having said all this, worship still needs to be
understood in marital terms. The apostle Paul insists on it. If
we react away from Dionysian frenzy in worship, and opt
instead for the quiet somnolence of a Unitarian lecture hall,
we are just setting ourselves up for the next reaction, back the
other way. We have to be scriptural; we must act and never
react. This means that we recognize that Christ is the
bridegroom, and we are the bride. This is a great mystery,
Paul says, but in worship we are made bone of His bone, and
flesh of His flesh. This is not said of Christ and the individual
believer, but of Christ and His Church. The culmination of the
worship service is the Lord’s Supper, and this is the point
where we are being knit together with Him, growing up into a
complete and final unity with Him.
This can help us understand the role of communion in
communing. What would we think of some common arguments
against weekly communion if we applied them to lovemaking
in marriage? “The reason we make love quarterly is so that we
can keep it really ‘special.’”
Understanding this helps us understand what is happening when our children fall away from the faith. One of the
reasons so many covenant children “unravel” is that they were
never given the privilege of being knit together. They were
baptized into Christ, but, as the Puritans would put it, we all
have an obligation to improve our baptisms. We do this by
means of prayer, attendance upon the preaching of the Word,
reading God’s holy Word, and partaking of our common
fellowship with the rest of the saints. When covenant children
are excluded from this process, it is not surprising that they
do not reap the benefits of that process.
In effect, we are telling our children to grow up big and
strong, and if they do so, we will give them some food. But of
course, many of them (treated in this way) do not grow up big
and strong, and they waste away. Instead of this making us
reconsider our ways, we conclude that since they died of
starvation, it was a good thing we hadn’t wasted any food on
them.
Children are part of the bride of Christ. As such, they
ought not to be prohibited from learning how to commune (in
corporate worship) with their Lord. They ought to be knit
together with us. But this is not accomplished by sitting in a
pew thinking wishful thoughts. We have to do what God told
us to do—sing, hear, pray, say amen, stand, kneel, eat, chew,
drink and swallow—and we have to do it all in true evangelical faith. Because we hold children back from this, they either
fall away, or their devotional zeal (which has somehow
survived) is diverted into other more individualistic directions.
They become the top Bible-verse kid at Awana, and we
wonder in later years why they don’t have a high view of the
church. In this the church is like parents who put their kids in
day care for years, and forty years later wonder why the kids
put them in the rest home. We are to instill ecclesiastical
loyalty in our children by the scriptural means, and keeping
them back from the Table is not that way.
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PRESBYTERION
Bread Should Get Bread
Douglas Wilson
AS THE BODY of Christ gathers together in worship, the
members are, as St. Paul claims, “one loaf.” The loaf that is
broken and distributed is an emblem of our unity as the
people of God.
In this our baptistic brothers are consistent. They deny
that our children are part of the visible church, and therefore
deny that such outsiders have access to the one loaf. They are
not part of the one loaf, and so they have no right to partake
of the one loaf. But what are we to make of the disparity
between our doctrinal confession and our liturgical confession
in many Reformed churches? Our doctrinal confession says
that our children are partakers with us; our liturgical confession says they are not. But even this must be modified. Our
liturgical confession at baptism says that our children are
partakers. But our liturgical confession at communion says
(and very loudly) that they are not.
We have confessed that baptism signifies and seals “our
ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the
covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’s”
(WSC 94). My interest here is the confession that our
covenant children are, among other things, baptized into
“partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace.” Now is the
Lord’s Supper one of the benefits of the covenant of grace?
Absolutely. According to the Westminster theologians, the
sacrifices and rituals of the old covenant were administrations
of the covenant of grace (WCF VII.vi). There is no sense that
the benefits of the covenant of grace are thought of as
mysterious or ethereal blessings, received in an invisible way.
Not at all. “Under the gospel, when Christ the substance was
exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed
are the preaching of the word, and the administrations of
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper” (WCF VII.vi). The
covenant of grace is dispensed by means of sacraments
(among other things), and baptism, as we saw earlier, is an act
which baptizes an individual into “partaking of the benefits.”
Now Reformed folks baptize their infants. Many object to
this, but there it is. And I don’t see any way to reconcile the
tension between what the Confession teaches that baptism is
and does, and the common practice of withholding communion from baptized children. I acknowledge that the tension is
there, but also want to argue that the tension is so marked and
striking that we must either go in a baptistic direction or a
paedocommunionist direction.
This partaking is fundamentally a partaking of totus
Christus, the entire body of Christ, head and body together.
And this means that all who are bread should get bread. All
who are included in the new covenant should get the cup of
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the new covenant.
The apostle requires us to discern the body. But by this
he does not mean that we are to be looking at the communion
table, trying to analyze and figure out the theology or metaphysics of the thing. A requirement to be able to do this would
exclude just about everybody.
The Corinthians by their squabbling and jealousies were
not discerning that they were one body. The fact that they
were bringing their selfish interests into the practice of
communion meant that their observance of the Supper was
doing more harm than good. But the problem was not that
some of the Corinthians believed in consubstantiation while
others held to the memorialist position. The problem was that
they were divided from one another, whatever the cause.
Now, suppose we have a young child who sees the
communion tray going past, and that child wants to partake.
This is his church, he grew up here, he worships the same
God everyone else is worshipping, and he feels himself to be,
in every way, a part of the congregation, a partaker in the
body. In this frame of mind, why does he want to partake of
the bread and wine? He does so because he discerns the body.
Let us also suppose that he is prevented from coming to
the Table because the elders do not believe in
paedocommunion. They don’t think the boy understands
enough yet. They believe he is in the covenant—the minister
baptized him himself. They believe that he is a good boy, and
that he does love the Lord. The hang-up is that he seems a
little young. And so they deny him. And why do they do this?
Because they are not discerning the body. He is in the body, and ought
to be partaking together with the body. But one group in the
church does not see this, and so excludes him.
Ironically, the very thing that they are dubious about is
the thing where the young boy excels. And the standard they
are applying strictly to him is the standard they as a session are
failing to meet. On the apostolic requirement, he discerns the
unity of the entire body (which is why he wants to partake),
and they grant he is part of the body (but refuse to allow him
to partake). He discerns the body, but those who are holding
him back do not.
A Little Help For Our Friends:
Holy Trinity Reformed Evangelical Church of Greenville, SC. A
CREC mission church of Christ Church, Cary, North Carolina.
Covenant renewal worship utilizing a rich biblical & Reformed
liturgy. Plenty of Psalms, great historic hymns and weekly covenant
communion. Toby Sumpter to begin as pastor starting Sunday,
June 4, 2006. Contact Bob Corneroli at (864)335.9645 or at
[email protected]
RECONSTRUCT
YOUR PLAYLIST
Plug into the Scriptures in a whole new way with the wealth of audio resources available at WordMp3.com. Listen
to both sides with the two most recent formal debates on paedocommunion or dig into classic studies on the sacraments. Select from teachers such as:
Rob Rayburn
Tim Gallant
Steve Wilkins
James B. Jordan
Gregg Strawbridge
Doug Jones
Kenneth Gentry
Steve Schlissel
R.C. Sproul, Jr.
Doug Wilson
Peter Leithart
. . . and more
Get audio CDs of these talks, download each of these separately, or get all of this on
one Mp3 CD when you order The WordMp3.com Collection of Covenant
Communion Resources (over 40 mp3s) for only $29.00! To learn more, go to
www.WordMp3.com/paedocommunion.
“Things to be done” Volume 18/1
11
CHILDER
Teaching Children to Doubt
Douglas Wilson
SCRIPTURE SAYS THAT PARENTS are to bring their children up
in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Further, the
apostle Paul addresses the children in the congregation of
Ephesus directly, saying to them that they are to obey their
parents “in the Lord.” Now in order for the children to obey
their parents in the Lord, the children themselves must be in the
Lord.
But the fact that covenant children are in the Lord does
not remove the need for discipline, love, education, and
nourishment. Paul does not just tell the children to do what
they need to do “in the Lord,” and expect everything else to
take care of itself. Children, including covenant children, are
vulnerable to abuse and neglect. This is why Paul gives explicit
instruction to parents on what they are to do.
The center of the Christian faith is faith. This means that
the center of biblical child-rearing is the teaching and nurture
of faith. What Christian adults are to be, Christian parents are
to instruct their children to become. If Christian maturity
involves believing God in truth (and it does), then Christian
parenting means teaching kids to believe God in truth.
In short, we are required to teach our children how to love
God, how to believe God, and how to hope in God. It is not to
the purpose to say that love must arise spontaneously and
cannot be taught. If that were true, then why did God give the
greatest commandment (love the Lord your God with all that
you have and are) in the middle of a passage on covenant
education (Deut. 6:4–9)? Love can be taught. “You shall love
the Lord your God” (Deut. 6:5).These words shall be in your
heart (v. 6). And you shall teach them diligently to your
children (v. 7). Teach what? Teach them how to believe God,
hope in God, and at the foundational level, to love Him with
all their hearts. But it cannot be taught by parents who are
covenantally lazy or presumptive.
Children can be taught to believe and they can be taught
to doubt. Refusing to teach them at all is tantamount to
teaching them to doubt. Some parents shrink back from doing
this because they are afraid that all they will successfully teach
will be the external and parroted answers to the catechism. But
parents are not just told to teach their children the contents of
our faith. The commandment tells parents to teach their
children to love their faith.
The way many parents teach their children to doubt their
faith is by doubting it themselves. A child comes to her father
and asks if she can come to the Lord’s Table. She is baptized.
She goes to church every Sunday. She prays. She sings psalms
and hymns, many of them by heart. She is a member of the
visible church. Why can she not come to the Table? There is
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only one reason—adults in authority over her do not believe
that she is truly regenerate. They are not saying she isn’t,
either. They don’t know. They jury is still out. They doubt.
She thinks to herself that her parents, or her elders, or
her pastor, or all of them together must know more about this
than she does. She thought she loved Jesus. She thought she
believed the Bible. But apparently there are grounds for
doubting this, and so she does as she is taught—and she
begins to doubt it also. And who taught her to think this way?
Who taught her to question her sincere love for Jesus? Those
who were solemnly charged to teach her to believe have
instead done the opposite.
But what do we do about the bad actors? There are
covenant kids out there who are clearly sons of Belial. They
have been excluded from the Table also (according to the
common practice) but it has never bothered them at all. It
would bother them to be brought to the Table. What should
we do in paedocommunion churches where such kids have
been brought to the Table early, but who, as time goes by,
reveal an evil heart of unbelief? This is where some sentimental paedocommunion advocates falter. The Table is a table
for all disciples and is therefore a table of discipline. Covenant membership is not just a matter of privileges detached
from responsibilities.
But judgments like this must not to be based on a
subjective attempt to read the heart. We may read the Bible,
and we may read demonstrable actions. This means that
some covenant children need to be taught to doubt. They are
communicant Christians, and yet they disrespect their parents
constantly, indulge in sexual immorality, and shoplift
regularly. The Bible teaches that those who live like this will
not inherit the kingdom of God. Obviously, we do not
excommunicate a four-year-old for not putting his toys away
fast enough. Just as obviously, we must excommunicate a
defiant teenager who is living in high rebellion. If a situation
like this arises, his paedocommunionist parents cannot
suddenly start arguing that he is “too young” to be disciplined by the church. If that were true, he ought not to have
been reckoned among the disciples. But he should be
reckoned among the disciples, and it follows that he is subject
to discipline. Of course, all allowances should be made for
age and maturity, but the principle is clear enough.
Because we have gummed this up, the end result is that
we tend to teach the tender-hearted covenant children to
doubt, and the hard-hearted ones to presume. This really
ought to be reversed.
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LITURGIA
Paedocommunion, the Gospel,
and the Church
Peter Leithart
BEFORE we address the question of paedocommunion, we
must specify both what the question is and what sort of question
it is. First, what is the question of paedocommunion? It is not
in essence a question about the age of admission to the Lord’s
table. Some who do not adopt the paedocommunion position
would admit toddlers as young as a year and a half. If,
hypothetically, some means were invented to gauge the level
of “discernment” in infants, and children who registered a
“6” were admitted to the table, that practice still would not
constitute paedocommunion. Nor is it a question about forcefeeding bread and wine to newborns; though some churches
give the elements to newly-baptized infants, no Reformed
advocate of paedocommunion, to my knowledge, has argued
for this practice. Most Reformed theologians are content to
wait until the child is able to eat solid food before he begins to
participate in the Supper.
The specific practical question is, Does baptism initiate
the baptized to the Lord’s table, so that all who are baptized
have a right to the meal? Paedocommunion advocates, for all
their differences, will answer in the affirmative. Nothing more
than the rite of water baptism is required for a person to have
access to the Lord’s table. Opponents of paedocommunion
will answer in the negative. Something more is required—
some level of understanding, some degree of spiritual
discernment, some sort of conversion experience, and some
means for the church to assess these attainments.
Second, and more fundamentally, what sort of question is
this? If it is merely a question about the admission requirements to the church’s ritual meal, then the question may be
answered by straightforwardly applying a rule. If it narrowly
focuses on the question of who partakes when, we could admit
children without adjusting any other doctrines or practices of
the church. If it is only a matter of adding a few names to the
guest list, then why is paedocommunion so strindently
opposed by some within the Reformed world?
Paedocommunion is not only about admission requirements narrowly considered, but, like paedobaptism, is linked
with a whole range of issues. It is not only about the nature of
the Supper, but also about the Church, baptism, and, most
broadly, the character of the salvation that Christ has achieved
in the world. The gospel is not directly at stake in the
paedocommunion debate. Opponents of paedocommunion
honestly and sincerely proclaim the gospel of grace, and I am
grateful to God that they do. Still, the ecclesial and theological
shape that the gospel takes correlates significantly with
positions on paedocommunion, and the coherence between
the gospel and the church’s practice is at the heart of this
debate. The stakes are not so high as they were when Luther
protested indulgences and the myriad idolatries of the late
medieval church. But the stakes are high, very high.
At the risk of oversimplification (and provocation), I will
briefly pose the options on these wider issues:
Is the Supper an ordinance of the church (paedocommunion), or is it an ordinance for some segment of the church
(antipaedocommunion)?1
Is the church the family of God simpliciter (paedocommunion), or is the church divided between those who are full
members of the family and those who are partial members or
strangers (antipaedocommunion)?
Did Jesus die and rise again to form a new Israel
(paedocommunion), or did He die and rise again to form a
community with a quite different make-up from Israel
(antipaedocommunion)?
Did Jesus die and rise again to form the new human race
(paedocommunion), or did He die and rise again to form a
fellowship of the spiritually mature (antipaedocommunion)?
Does baptism admit the baptized into the covenant or
symbolize his prior inclusion in the covenant
(paedocommunion), or does baptism merely express a hope
that the baptized one day will enter the covenant in some
other fashion (antipaedocommunion)?
Does the covenant have an inherently historical/institutional character (paedocommunion), or is it an invisible reality
(antipaedocommunion)?
Does grace restore nature (paedocommunion), or does
grace cancel our nature or elevate beyond nature
(antipaedocommunion)?
Like many theological issues, paedocommunion also poses the
question of the relative weight of Scripture and tradition. The
question is not what the Reformed tradition has taught on this
issue; I concede that very few Reformed theologians have
advocated paedocommunion. Nor is the question about
Jewish custom, which opponents of paedocommunion often
cite. (Why should Christians care what the Talmud says?)
The issue is what Scripture teaches, and if we find that our
tradition is out of accord with Scripture, then we must simply
obey God rather than men, even if they are our honored
fathers in the faith.
In the space given here, I cannot unpack these questions
in the depth they deserve. Instead, I focus on the
ecclesiological issues raised by paedocommunion, which are
simultaneously questions about the nature of the covenant,
about the continuity of Old and New, about salvation, and
about the gospel. Throughout, I am guided by an underlying
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LITURGIA
assumption that the sacraments manifest the nature of the church. For
centuries, sacramental theology in the Reformed and in other
traditions has focused narrowly on the effect of sacraments on
individual recipients, and as a result, both the theology and
practice of the sacraments have been horribly distorted. We
should, in addition and even primarily, consider sacraments in
an ecclesial context. The question should not only be what a
particular rite does to me, but also what this ritual tells me
about the community that celebrates it.
According to Paul’s teaching, the Lord’s Supper embodies the nature of the church as a unified community. Because
we partake of one loaf, we are one body (1 Cor. 10:16), and
because partaking of the bread and cup is a communion in
Christ, it commits us to avoiding communion with demons
and idols. The Lord’s Supper ritually declares that the church
is one, and that this united community is separated from the
world. This is why, according to Paul, the Corinthians were
not actually performing the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:20).
From Paul’s perspective, the Supper and its practice provide
a criterion for measuring and judging the church’s faithfulness
to herself, and, conversely, the New Testament’s teaching
concerning the church provides a criterion for assessing our
sacramental life. The Supper is a ritual expression of our
confession that the church is One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic. We should ask both “Does the church’s life
measure up with what we say about ourselves at the table?”
and “Is what we say about the church manifest at the table?”
Paul’s sacramental reasoning can be extended in many
directions. We know, for instance, that the church is a body in
which divisions of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and
female have been dissolved (Gal. 3:28), and Paul severely
rebuked Peter when his table fellowship failed to line up with
this ecclesial reality (Gal. 2:11–21). A church that refuses
bread and wine to blacks or to whites or to Asians is lying
about both the church and the Supper. More pointedly: Paul
says that the church is a community where the weakest and
most unseemly are welcomed (1 Cor. 12:22–26). Does the
Baptist refusal to baptize infants give ritual expression to that
kind of church, or does it instead imply that the church
welcomes only the strong?2
At the same time, the sacraments must express what the
church proclaims in the gospel. This might be approached
from various directions. That Jesus broke down the dividing
wall between Jews and Gentiles is part of the gospel, and so
the Supper expresses the gospel when it welcomes Christians
from every tribe and tongue and nation. The gospel announces that God has initiated a new creation in and through
Jesus, and our practices and theology of the Supper must
express the scope of that announcement. The gospel is about
the grace of God to sinners who have no ability to crawl their
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way back to Him, and the way we think about and perform
the Supper must be consistent with that. Luther argued that
the Supper was the gospel, for in it our heavenly Father offers
His Son to us through the Spirit for our life; the Supper is first
and last God’s gift, God’s gift of Himself, to His people. But
saying that and enacting that in our table fellowship are two
different things.
In short, the Supper and its practice provide a criterion
for measuring and judging the church’s faithfulness to the
gospel, and, conversely, the New Testament’s teaching
concerning the gospel provides a criterion for assessing our
sacramental life. For example, Jesus frequently described His
preaching as an invitation to a feast, a feast that He Himself
celebrated with tax gatherers and sinners throughout His
ministry and that He continues to celebrate with sinners in the
Eucharist. The gospel thus provides a criterion for judging
our admission rules for the table: Is the invitation to the table
as wide as the invitation to repent and believe?
We must think about baptism and the Supper in these
(overlapping, if not identical) ecclesial and evangelical
contexts if we want to grasp what is at stake in the
paedocommunion debate. The question is not only who’s in
and who’s out, but rather what our decisions about who’s in
and who’s out say about the church and the gospel we
proclaim. What kind of community are we claiming to be if
we invite children to the Lord’s table, or, as is more commonly the case, what are we saying about the church when we
exclude them? What do our ritual statements about the
church say about the church’s relation to Israel and the
character of salvation? Put our theologies and our sermons to
the side for a moment: What gospel does our meal proclaim?
Within this framework, I will be pursuing a positive case for
paedocommunion, under three points.
I. THE CHURCH IS THE NEW ISRAEL
All paedobaptists agree that the church is the new Israel,
formed as the body of the Risen Christ. But paedocommunion
reinforces this point dramatically, for it insists that the
admission requirements to the church’s meal are exactly the
same as the admission requirements to Israel’s meals.
Ancient Israel celebrated many different meals with various
rules for admission. Some food, classified as “most holy,” was
reserved exclusively for priests (e.g., Lev. 24:5–9), and “holy
food” could be eaten only by the members of a priestly
household (e.g., Lev. 22:10–16). Children and lay adults
were excluded from these priestly meals. Since the distinction
between the priesthood of Aaron and the priesthood of Israel
as a whole has been breached by the new covenant, these
regulations are no longer directly relevant to the question of
admission to the Lord’s Supper.
LITURGIA
What is noteworthy is that all Israelites were permitted
to eat at all the feasts of Israel’s liturgical calendar. In every
case, both adults and children were permitted to participate in
the meal. Adult males were required to participate (Exod.
23:17), but women and children were allowed to participate.
Children explicitly participated at the feasts of Pentecost and
Booths (Deut. 16:10–14). The central sanctuary was set up
for that very purpose, so that Israelites, both parents and
children, could celebrate before Yahweh: “And you shall
rejoice before Yahweh your God, you and your sons and
daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who
is within your gates, since he has no portion or inheritance
with you” (Deut. 12:12). It would be absurd if the children
were excluded from the feasts of the central sanctuary. That’s
what the central sanctuary was for.
Though children’s inclusion at Passover is never as
explicitly stated, there is a compelling—I would say, conclusive—case for paedo-Passover. Exodus 12:3–4 specifies the
size of the lamb needed for the meal:
Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, “On the
tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for
themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb
for each household. Now if the household is too small for
a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are
to take one according to the number of souls; according
to each man’s eating, you are to compute for the lamb.”
This regulation makes it clear that the Passover lamb had
to be at least big enough to feed a household, but what is a
“household”? Throughout the Pentateuch, “house” includes
children and servants. Noah’s “house” obviously included his
sons and daughters-in-law (Gen. 7:1), and Abram circumcised his servants as males in his “house” (Gen. 17:23, 27).
The very first verse of Exodus tells us that Jacob’s sons came
to Egypt, each with his “house” (1:1). Nowhere in the Bible
does a “household” exclude children. If the lamb was to be
large enough for a household, it was to be large enough to give
the children of the house a portion. If younger members of the
household were not going to eat, why was the size of the lamb
large enough to feed them? To taunt them?
Some have suggested that the “catechism” of Exodus
12:25–28 shows that children had to be able to answer
questions before sharing in the meal. That is a questionable
interpretation of the passage, but more importantly, Exodus
12 includes explicit instructions about admission to Passover.
The chapter ends with the “ordinance” of the Passover,
namely, that “no son of a stranger is to eat of it” and that “no
uncircumcised person may eat of it” (Ex. 12:43–48).
Circumcision is specified as the gateway to Passover.
Conversely, those who were excluded from Passover were ipso
facto being treated as “strangers.” Were the children of Israel
“strangers” to the covenant people?
Paul’s discussion of the Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:17–
34 does not undermine this continuity. Warnings about the
dangers of hypocritical participation in the feasts of Israel are
common in the prophets (Is. 1:10–17; Jer. 6:20; Amos
5:21–24), and yet we know that children participated in these
feasts. Could an Israelite celebrate the Feast of Booths in a
state of uncleanness? No. Yet children were invited to
participate in that meal. If paedocommunion is correct,
children of the church are participating in a dangerous meal;
but then, the children of the children of Israel have always
participated in dangerous meals.
Antipaedocommunionists sometimes point to the
requirement of ritual cleanliness for participation in Passover
(Num. 9), and apply this to the Supper by saying that the
participants have to be in a state of spiritual cleanliness. But
these rules do not undermine paedocommunion. Under the
law, small children would rarely become unclean (cf. Lev. 12–
15). My two-year-old daughter has never been unclean
because of menstruation or childbirth, nor have most fiveyear-old boys ever had a seminal emission or suffered from an
STD. They might attend funerals, but they could rapidly be
cleansed. Children might love bacon and ham, but if they
grew up in ancient Israel they would never have been served
these or other unclean meats. To suggest that children were
excluded from Passover because of possibility of uncleanness
is nonsense. As far as the New Covenant application of these
regulations is concerned, this raises the question of how we
should regard our baptized children. And in this connection,
we might note that the same Paul who warned against
unworthy participation in the Supper said in the same letter
that the children of believers are “saints” (1 Cor. 7:14). Dare
we call unclean what God has cleansed?
There is a difference between requirements for admission
to some privilege and requirements for proper use of that
privilege. The U.S. Constitution does not require that
candidates for Senate be intelligent, honest, self-sacrificing, or
righteous. Of course, if he is going to be a good Senator, a
candidate must be all those things and more. But he is
qualified for candidacy by reaching at least his thirty-fifth
year, being a citizen of the United States, and residing in the
state in which he is a candidate. Similarly, when Paul exhorts
the Corinthians about proper participation in the Supper, he is
not giving admission requirements.
Israelite children shared in every meal in which their
parents participated. Because the church is the new Israel, the
entry requirements to the church’s Passover are the same as
they were for Israel. Discontinuity with regard to admission to
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LITURGIA
the table, like discontinuity between the subjects of circumcision and baptism, undermines the identification of the church
and Israel. What are we saying about the church when we
exclude children from the table? We are saying that we are not
Israel.
II. THE CHURCH IS THE NEW HUMANITY
The continuity between Israel and the church takes on wider
significance, for paedocommunion not only implies that the
church is the new Israel, but that the church is the new humanity. In
fact, to say the one is to say the other, for Israel was chosen
from among the nations to be Yahweh’s instrument to reverse
the sin at Babel, the sin of the sons of God, the sin of Cain, and
the sin of Adam. That reversal only takes place through the
faithfulness of the true Israel, Jesus Christ. In Christ, we are
called to the same calling as Israel: to live before the Creator
as all mankind was created to live before Him. By maintaining
continuity between the rites of Israel and the rites of the
church, paedocommunion declares decisively that the church
is now the heir to this calling.
The notion that the church is the new humanity rests on
fundamental Christological affirmations. In His resurrection
Jesus was constituted the “new man,” the new Adam (1 Cor.
15:35–49), and this implies that He is Head of a renewed
human race. The same point can be established by a more
directly ecclesiological argument. According to Ephesians
2:11–22, the purpose of the cross was to destroy the dividing
wall that separated Jew and Gentile, and so to constitute Jew
and Gentile into one new humanity. Saying that the church is
the new humanity does not mean that every human being is
now a member of Christ or His church. But it does mean that
nothing human is alien to the church; and, positively, that the
life of the church as the community of the New Man encompasses the life of humanity itself. The church is not a “religious” organization in the restricted modern sense; it is a
people that, through the power of the Spirit of Jesus, have
been converted to and are being discipled in a new way of
being human.
Opponents of paedocommunion might well agree with
the arguments of the preceding paragraph, but this raises
again my initial claim that the rites of the church express the
character of the community that the church is. Only by
including children among the table-fellows of Christ can the
church display with consistency that she is the new human
race. A happy thought experiment will help make the point.
Suppose that tomorrow morning we woke up to find every
living man and woman, teenager and senior citizen, toddler
and infant converted by the Spirit of God, so that we suddenly
lived in a world where the human race on earth was made up
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only of eternally elect. Suppose too that we were given an
incontestable sign that this miracle had occurred (a news
broadcast from Fox News, for instance, or an announcement
from Pat Robertson), so that there would be no doubt that the
human race was thoroughly Christianized. Under these
theoretical circumstances, would the church be coextensive
with the now-converted human race? Should Baptists insist on
remaining Baptist? The answer would be no. Even under these
circumstances, there would be many converted infants and
toddlers who could not make what Baptists normally recognize as a credible profession of faith. So, the converted human
race would be divided between those who have the capacity to
make a profession of faith and those who did not have that
capacity. Only the former would be baptized and admitted to
the Supper. Even if the whole human race were saved, there
would still be a distinction between “church” and “world.”
Baptists thus imply by their refusal to baptize infants that the
church is not, even theoretically, coextensive with the human
race. Believer’s baptism says by implication that the church is
not the new humanity. I am sure that many Baptists confess
that the church is the new humanity, but here again there is a
disjunction between confession and sacramental practice.
Believer’s baptism says of the church that it is not the new
humanity, which is also a statement about the character of the
gospel. Believer’s baptism says of Christ that He is no new
Adam, but at best a new Abraham or Moses—the head of a
chosen people, but not the head of a new race.
Paedobaptists claim otherwise. If everyone in the world
were converted, or if even all the parents of young children
were converted, then all would be immediately incorporated
into the church by baptism, so that the church would be
coextensive with the converted human race. For paedobaptists, the church by definition is the new humanity, and it
includes, as the human race itself does, all sorts and conditions
of men, all ages and stages of life, all levels of ability and
degrees of faith. The church is not an elite religious group for
those who can make mature and credible professions. In
Christ, the church is the “one new man.” For the
paedobaptist, the only thing that excludes a human being from
the church is the sin of unbelief. Age, mental or linguistic
capacities, and life experience are simply not factors.
But paedobaptist opponents of paedocommunion are
inconsistent on this point, and it is an inconsistency that has
damaged the witness of paedobaptist churches more deeply
than we can fathom. With their rite of baptism, they proclaim
that the church is the new human race, theoretically coextensive with mankind as a whole. By making doctrinal knowledge, conversion experience, or some other rite of passage an
additional requirement for admission to the Lord’s table,
LITURGIA
however, they take away with bread and wine what they give
with water. On the one hand, they claim that children are
initiated into the covenant community, but on the other hand
they say that “knowledge” and “spiritual maturity” are
required for participation in the meal of the community, the
meal that expresses the unity of the community. On the one
hand, they say that children of Israel were admitted to Israel
by circumcision, but on the other hand, many claim that they
were denied the Passover, which was “the sacrament of
communion, life and growth.” A moment’s reflection will
reveal the incoherence here: Children are inducted into the
church, but denied one means for growth; they are expected
to become mature, but denied one of the key means for
attaining maturity.
But the incoherence of the position is not merely practical. It is ecclesiological and soteriological, and Christological
and cultural. At the font, paedobaptist opponents of
paedocommunion say that grace restores nature; at the table,
they say that grace transcends nature. At the font, they say that
God’s grace can work to make an infant a saved infant; at the
table, they say that grace only begins to restore human life
after one reaches a certain level of maturity. At the font, they
say that the gospel announces the restoration of the human
race; at the table, they say that the gospel invites the mature
into fellowship with God. At the font, they say that the church
is the new humanity; at the table, they say that the church is a
religious community for those who can profess faith. At the
font, they say that Jesus is the new Adam; at the table, that
Jesus is the new Abraham. At the font, they radically challenge
the modern confinement of religion to a circumscribed sphere
of life; at the table, they bow to modern assumptions.
In response, an opponent of paedocommunion might say
that the infants in the thought experiment are members of the
church, but not communing members. They are in covenant, but
do not participate in this one rite of the covenant. This divides
the question: On the one hand, it affirms that the church is the
new humanity, but on the other hand, it denies that participation in the church’s meal is a necessary privilege of inclusion in
that new humanity. I find this inconsistent, but it does reveal
an underlying assumption that I must now defend, namely,
that inclusion in the covenant meal is a necessary privilege of covenant
membership.
III. INCLUSION IS A NECESSARY PRIVILEGE
OF COVENANT MEMBERSHIP
I immediately concede any number of qualifications and
exceptions to this claim. A baptized and believing woman on
life support cannot receive the elements of the Supper, but is
not thereby cut out of the covenant. But the refusal to admit
infants or toddlers to the table is an entirely different sort of
refusal. The woman does not participate in the meal because
she is physically incapable of doing so. From a fairly young
age, however, children are capable of receiving the elements,
but are refused admission to the table until they can display
appropriate mental, spiritual, or emotional responses. Their
exclusion is based on principle, while the woman’s exclusion is
contingent on circumstances beyond her control.
One of the fundamental issues at stake in the
paedocommunion debate has to do with the nature of
covenant. Though distinctions between the “form” and the
“substance” of the covenant are quite traditional, they are
highly misleading. Scripturally, the term covenant describes
both God’s self-commitment to His people and the set of
prescribed practices, laws, and rites—the whole pattern of life
and worship revealed by God and by which we live before
Him. Keeping covenant, for the Israelite, meant following the
statutes, ordinances, laws, and practices that Yahweh revealed
to Israel; breaking covenant meant turning aside from this way
of life (see Lev. 26:14–15; Deut. 29:1; Heb. 9:1–10). Just as
there is no marriage covenant without an exchange of vows
(normally public, at least before a justice of the peace), and no
continuing marital relationship except through a set of bodily
practices, so there simply is no covenant where there are no
external forms. The covenant is not some invisible reality
behind the forms. The visible, ritual, practical forms are
constituent elements of covenant.
This visible pattern of worship and life is of the essence
of the covenant because the covenant is a communal reality.
God entered into covenant with Abraham, but even the
Abrahamic covenant embraced his house and future generations. In later covenants, the corporate character is even more
evident, as Yahweh makes and renews His covenant with
Israel. God established the pattern of life for the public
community of Israel, a covenantal order revealed by God and
encompassing Israel’s worship, politics and civil justice, family
life, and every other aspect of community life. Being corporate, the covenant necessarily takes external and ritual form,
for, as theologians from Augustine to Aquinas and beyond
recognized, no community can function as a community
without some public expression of its communion. To speak
of Israel’s covenant is to speak of Israel’s divinely-ordained
“cultural” order, and to speak of a new covenant is to speak of
a new “cultural” order in the church. Participation in the
covenant necessarily means participation in the practices of
the covenant, for there is no other kind of participation in the
covenant, because there is no other kind of covenant. Denying
that participation in covenant rites is essential to covenant
membership is inherently Baptistic.
“Things to be done” Volume 18/1
21
LITURGIA
Opponents of paedocommunion argue that children
receive the blessings of the covenant without the sign. Baptists
say the very same thing about baptism. Here is the dilemma:
Why does covenant membership without the sign suffice for
the Supper but not for baptism? Why must admission to the
covenant community take ritual form, but not the continuing
membership in the covenant community?
Of course, this further assumes that participation in the
Supper is an important, if not the only, public indicator of
continuing membership in the church. That is based on the
biblical teaching that the covenantal pattern by which the
church lives centers on worship. In a number of places, Paul
characterizes the “Gentiles” as essentially idolaters and
describes conversion as a turning from idols to worship the
living God (e.g., Rom. 1:18–23; 1 Thess. 1:9; Gal. 4:1–11).
Peter claims that we have been constituted as a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices to God in Christ (1 Pet. 2:1–
10). Mission is important to the life of the church, but mission
aims at gathering worshipers before the throne of God.
Worship is thus the telos of the church in a way that mission is
not and cannot be, for when mission is done, there will yet
remain worship and love. To participate in the new humanity
that is the church, then, means to participate in worship. If
one does not participate in the worship of the church, he is
simply not a member of the covenant community (see Heb.
10:25).
Worship, the chief practice of the new humanity, takes
place at the Lord’s table. It always has. From the time of Abel,
worshipers have gathered at the Lord’s table/altar, though
Protestant polemics against the identification of altar and
table have obscured the point. In fact, the altar was Yahweh’s
table (Ezek. 44:16), where His “bread” was offered in smoke
to Him (see Lev. 22:17, 21), and from which His people
received portions (e.g., Lev. 7:11–18). For Paul, “coming
together to eat” was synonymous with “coming together” (1
Cor. 11:17, 18, 33). Skeptics on Mars Hill heard the word of
the gospel, but they were not thereby part of a covenant
people or involved in a liturgical act. Proclamation or teaching
of the Word is an inherent part of worship, but that is not
what defines worship as worship. There might be several
things that distinguish the church’s worship from other
worship. But central to these is that worship is what the
church does when they gather at the Lord’s table.
If the covenant is the form of communal life, if membership in the covenant involves participation in the external
practices and rites of the covenant, if worship is the central
practice of the new covenant people, and if worship centers on
a meal with God, then it follows that participation in the
covenant meal is a necessary privilege of being in covenant. If
baptized infants really are in covenant with God, they should
participate in the meal of that covenant. If they are in the body
symbolized by the loaf, can we withhold the loaf from them?
And if they are not really in covenant with God, then why in
God’s name do we continue to baptize them?
IV. CONCLUSION
The sacraments should, I have argued, reflect the character of
the church. More fundamentally, they should reflect the
character of the gospel by which the church has been gathered
and in whose power she lives. Though the gospel is not
directly implicated in the paedocommunion debate, it is close
to the heart of the issues. Opponents of paedocommunion
turn the Supper into an act that requires spiritual maturity,
reversing the basic meaning of the Supper and ritually denying
not only of the nature of the church but also of the Reformation solas. The Protestant tendency to restrict the evangelical
invitation to God’s table to the spiritually accomplished has
done as much to undermine the pure gospel of grace as a
hundred Papal bulls and a dozen Tridentine councils. We can
shout the formulas until we are hoarse, but still our actions will
shout down our words. If the Reformed churches hope to
advance the gospel with power in our day, we must ensure
that our central liturgical act is brought into conformity to that
gospel.
FOOTNOTES
Liturgia:
1. I apologize for the clumsy terminology, but have been unable to
come up with anything better. I toyed with the idea of using
neutral terms—e.g., call advocates of paedocommunion “Bob” and
opponents “Henry.” But that usage would have paid too high a
price in clarity, not to mention seriousness.
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2. I am not suggesting that Baptists are unmerciful toward the
weak. Many Baptist churches put paedobaptists to shame in this
regard. I am asking whether Baptist baptism tells us the truth
about the church.
“Things to be done” Volume 18/1
23
RECIPIO
Assurance
Ben Merkle
WHEN OUR OLDEST SON KNOX was around a year and a half,
he took his first communion. For almost half of his life he had
been regularly disciplined as a Christian boy. And when we
prayed with him after his disciplining, we told him that he was
forgiven because Jesus had died for him. At a very early age he
knew the difference between being in full fellowship with his
family and being lost in a sinful pout. He did both regularly.
And he knew that the name Jesus Christ delivered him from
the latter state and into the former. He knew that Jesus gave
us our food at dinner. And when he raised his holy hands
during the doxology at the conclusion of the service, he knew
that his hands were clean because Jesus had washed them.
Did he know about sin and forgiveness? My gracious, that was
pretty much all he knew about.
We worked hard at learning to sit through a church
service without causing a ruckus. And he kept hearing the
name Jesus Christ whiz past him throughout the sermon. He
learned to belt out his “amen” at the end of every song—his
own barbaric, if religious, yawp. Only Knox’s amen sounded
more like “may-may.” And one Sunday, as he was particularly
absorbed in the worship, the Lord’s Supper was passed
around. Knox was sitting on my lap and as the bread passed
by, with every Christian reaching out to take a piece, Knox
reached out for his piece.
But I grabbed his hand and pulled it back. After all—he
was too little to discern the Lord’s body. Knox looked up at
me as the bread moved on, his face contorted as the long
inhale began. Experienced parents know how loud the scream
is going to be by how long the inhale lasts. A quick shriek is
nothing compared to the bellow that comes after an interminable inhale, and this inhale was definitely interminable. I had
already picked Knox up and started making my way to the
aisle before the wail began, and when it came, it was earshattering. It was a very different sort of crying than I had
expected. I had thought at first that this was a temper tantrum
because I had taken something away from him. But by the
time I had reached the back of the church I realized that it
was purely Knox’s own realization that he didn’t get to have
the bread that was grieving him. It had dawned on him that
this was a privilege for some people in the congregation, but
not for him. He was grief-stricken over being excluded.
I think it is a pity that the discussion regarding little
children and communion seems to only come up in the world
of abstract theological diatribes. The fact that this is the only
way this subject is debated does a disservice to the sacraments. By doing so, we have made the sacraments something
eminently unpractical by divorcing them from the rest of the
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Christian life. For example, if a father comes to me to ask for
advice in helping his two-year-old boy learn obedience, should
the Lord’s Supper be a part of our conversation? Is it relevant
to basic daily obedience?
How is it that our efforts towards Christian discipleship
can begin at birth, but the Lord’s Supper can be pushed off
for a decade? We can begin disciplining for Christian behavior
in the very early years of our children’s lives, but we withhold
the grace of the sacraments for years. It seems strange that, in
the name of Reformed orthodoxy, we could tell our children
that if they are very good until the age of twelve and learn
their catechisms well, then—and only then—can they have
grace.
When Knox started taking the Lord’s Supper, it amazed
me how naturally it fit into our task of raising him in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord. He prayed in Jesus’
name. He sang about Jesus. He was disciplined for sinning
against Jesus. And he was forgiven because of Jesus. When we
came to worship on Sunday morning, discerning Jesus was the
one thing that he was ready to do. Was his understanding of
the Supper heresy-free? I doubt it. But let the congregation
with a perfect understanding of the nature of Christ’s
presence cast the first stone. Not only did our discipline
inform the Lord’s Supper, but, more importantly, the Lord’s
Supper informed our discipline. Why is he forgiven for
pulling his sister’s hair? Jesus is why. And he knows who Jesus
is.
And so someone comes to you for advice about disciplining their little child. Is the Lord’s Supper relevant to the
conversation? If there is a context for speaking of Christian
discipline, then there is a context for speaking of Christian
grace. If I can expect a child to learn Christian obedience,
then that child should be able to expect admittance to God’s
grace.
My wife and I got permission from the elders to bring
Knox to the Lord’s Supper the following Sunday. We spent
the week speaking to him about the Lord’s Supper and who
Jesus was. And on that Lord’s Day he took Communion,
raised his holy hands and sounded his “may-may!”
A Little Help For Our Friends:
Bethel Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Lake Charles, LA is seeking a
pastor. Bethel practices a liturgical form of worship and the
centrality of Scripture in all of life, weekly communion, psalms,
hymns, creeds, corporate confession of sin, and responsive
readings are all important aspects of weekly worship. A successful
candidate would place a high priority on frequent fellowship and
hospitality. Contact Doug Barberousse at (337)824.2016 or
[email protected].
PAT-PAT
Communing with Joyce
Douglas Jones
“THE DAY of your first communion was the happiest day of
your life.” James Joyce writes this through the voice of his
quasi-autobiographical character Stephen Dedalus in The
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. But it already suggests a gap
between childhood and faith. First communion was an event
to be remembered, not something ingrained before memory.
This gap shapes important parts of the novel’s narrative,
though not in a way Joyce seems to have noticed.
One reading of Joyce’s Portrait is to see it showing a
childhood that almost inevitably produces an artist. Every
section and scene contributes some narrowing of Stephen’s
path toward that aesthetic end. The novel’s pervasive irony
never allows us to side fully with Stephen; Joyce clearly and
often seems to be annoyed with Stephen’s character, his own
youth. Joyce perceives the artist as primarily characterized by
the etymology of “aesthetic,” namely perception, sensory
attention to the tastes, smells, and images of life. Carry this
sensory attention among the obstacles of Stephen’s life, and
we see him having to choose various loyalties—family, state,
church, friends—by means of the sensory attractions they
offer.
Stephen faces the biggest aesthetic dilemma in moving
between church and family on one side, with a secular
aestheticism on the other. Stephen and Joyce ultimately
choose secular aestheticism, viewed as a priestly office. More
notably, he does this out of a delight for creation. Joyce
portrays Roman Catholicism as basically a gnostic faith and
culture, whereas secular life is full of body, good and bad. In
the end, Portrait turns out to be an anti-gnostic tract where
secularism strangely beats out the incarnation. The church
ought never to lose such a fight, but it’s a pattern of Enlightenment Christianity, both Protestant and Roman versions. In
Joyce’s world, some of the failure turns on alienating children
from the sensory gospel of the Supper.
Stephen finds himself as a young teen wondering about
church and family loyalties, but with nothing built-in: “he had
heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his
masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and
urging him to be a good catholic above all things. These voices
had now come to be hollowsounding in his ears.” They lacked
music. How do the voices of fathers and pastors become
something alien, outside of our bodies?
Stephen clearly had disloyalty to Christ inbred from his
youth. He piously praises his first communion, but notice how
he speaks of it as an alien, a youth already formed and
judging, not being judged: “On the day when he had made his
first holy communion in the chapel he had shut his eyes and
opened his mouth and put out his tongue a little: and when the
rector had stooped down to give him the holy communion he
had smelt a faint winy smell of the rector’s breath after the
wine of the mass. The word was beautiful: wine.”
Despite this praise, we see in the next scene his deeper
loyalties doing the real work. Young Stephen sits in class,
unable to work due to broken glasses. A priestly prefect
comes around looking for disobedient boys to paddle, and he
beats Stephen even though he ought to have been excused.
Stephen’s friends urge him to appeal the beating and avoid the
next. It’s significant that his friends urge him to take on the
church at a meal among his friends. There at that meal, his
friends had pictured themselves as noble pagans, first. That’s
their instinctive identity. That, after all, matched what the
church had told them for years by keeping them away from
Christ’s family meal. Stephen had been eating in fellowship
with his friends for years before joining the table of Christ. So
Stephen’s friends chant out for their friend: “The senate and
the Roman people declared that Dedalus had been wrongly
punished.” Stephen reminds himself of this as he reaches the
priest’s office. The priest turns out to be a reasonable fellow
and accepts the appeal; Stephen returns as a hero among his
friends; they lift him in the air, an alien to the church and at
home with their Roman senate.
Patterns of unconscious Christian alienation like this
recur throughout the novel. It comes as no surprise then that
Stephen can reflect tragically at one point: “He became slowly
aware that his father had enemies and that some fight was
going to take place. He felt too that he was being enlisted for
the fight, that some duty was being laid upon his shoulders.”
But he had been ingrained to be an individual, the mythology
of standing on his own, long before he had been taught loyalty
to a table. Stephen’s secular aestheticism turns out to be a
continuation of his childhood, not a rejection of it.
Epithalamion
We are twisted, bright
wicks rising up through wax.
Let fire melt
these clothes until we stand
fastened by light
blackened after spark
descends our fuse
and joins us in the heat
that shapes one name
through the dark
the cold, the night,
the end.
Aaron Rench
“Things to be done” Volume 18/1
25
POOH’S THINK
That Wonderful Cup
Virgil Hurt
CALVIN AND GENEVA are inseparable in many Reformed
minds. Mine too. It was with great joy that our dear friends
received Geneva into the world. We celebrated our Calvin’s
birth a mere two weeks later. Calvin and Geneva were
baptized on the same day and by God’s good timing they
were also brought to the Lord’s table together two years later.
God has been kind to us in these little saints.
Most Presbyterians would call me a paedocommunionist,
but I’m not—at least not in the strictest sense of that word.
Although it is clear that small children should come to the
Lord’s table and that even infants have a right to that table, we
should not embrace a superstitiousness about it. Baptism and
the Lord’s Table are given to us for blessing, but the blessings
are not automatic. The blessings come to those who trust God
and are the called according to His purposes, and to their
children. Peter made this amply clear at the first sermon after
the Holy Spirit came with power on Pentecost. He said, “For
the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that
are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call”
(Acts 2:39).
Thus, if we believe God concerning His promises to us,
we are to assume that God’s promises are extended to our
children as well. We are to assume, not presume. Assuming
God’s promises means living by faith. Presumption tends
towards faithlessness and disobedience. Our children are
God’s people just as we are His people. They have a gracious
right to the table and ought to come when they are able to eat
at that table.
In our church the children worship with the body of
saints. Because of this they see the Supper of the Lord each
Sunday. As their awareness of what is going on grows, so does
their desire for the bread and the wine. We are not certain of
all the motivations of this desire in small children. It may
include the desire for food and drink, wanting to eat and
drink what brother or sister gets, or realizing that something
special is happening without them. All of these are glorious
reasons to give the child the Lord’s Supper.
Small children may ask for the bread and wine in
different ways. Some may cry when they are left out of the
meal. Their desire becomes particularly obvious when the
child is able to speak fairly well before they have come to the
Lord’s table. They may ask for it week after week and are
often told to stop asking and be quiet—some are even
spanked. But should we not rejoice when our children want to
partake in the things of the Lord? For many parents these are
reasons to keep them away from the meal, but they ought to
be seen as striking reasons to invite them to sit down and
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partake. After all, when our children cry out for food in our
homes, we don’t send them away hungry. We teach them
when and where we eat, and then we feed them.
If we serve a special meal at Christmas, Thanksgiving, or
Easter, we teach them the manners and the customs of the
meal and then we feed them. How strange it would be to
place a sumptuous meal in front of our small children and
then require them to fast because they are too young to
appreciate all the hard work that went into the cooking. What
we actually do is feed them the food and then help them come
to understanding by degrees about just how good the food is,
what hard work went into making it, and how to thank the
cook and the provider of the meal. Why do we fail to see this
when it comes to feeding our children on Christ?
We have brought each of our children to the Lord’s
Table at a younger age as we have moved more towards the
understanding of God’s kind invitation to them in this meal
and the blessing of growing up always communing with the
Lord. Our first two children came at five or six years old,
while the next three came to the table at about the age of
three.
We had a new experience with our sixth child. This was
the first time that Dad was the pastor and up front for much
of the service. It had normally been my job to hold our toddler
during the service and teach him or her how to sit, when to
pray, and when to say “Amen!” at the end of the Psalms. But
that prestigious work fell upon my wife Katie with our son
Calvin.
During communion he would often reach out for the
bread and wine as they were passed down the row. Consequently, she often found herself in the back of the church with
Calvin during the communion service to keep his hands away
from the trays and avoid a scene or a noisy spill.
Our Calvin was of that early verbal type; he spoke in
complete sentences at just over a year. One Lord’s Day when
Calvin was about twenty-two months, Katie was standing in
the back of the church holding him during communion. She
set her wine down on a table to avoid having it spilled down
the front of her Sunday dress. Calvin pointed at it and said,
“Mommy, may I have that wonderful cup?” And while we
didn’t give him the cup that day, the answer to his question is,
“Yes, son, you may have that wonderful cup.”
And with that fine question comes the beginning of many
long and glorious answers. The Lord’s Table reechoes the
command of the Lord to teach our children about God’s
conquest as they partake of Passover. “And it shall be when
thy son asketh thee in time to come, saying, What is this? that
thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the LORD
brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Ex.
POOH’S THINK
13:14). In fact, the answers were coming long before the
question. The answers were coming in the eating of the meal.
When our sons and daughters ask, “Why do we eat the bread
and drink the wine?” We ought to be able to tell them that it
is because the Lord conquered his enemies on the cross and in
that conquest delivered us from the house of bondage.
Our son was brought to the table of the Lord a few
months after asking for the cup. He came with his friend
Geneva. Although I don’t think bringing them to the table
requires them asking for it directly, I do strongly believe that
to refuse children the table when they do ask is tantamount to
saying that you don’t think that they are a Christian and that
they can’t eat like one. In hindsight, we think we should have
The Family Table
Randy Booth
WELCOME to our worship service. We are delighted to have
you visit with us today. During the communion service you
will notice that entire families partake of the bread and the
wine, including the little children. Allow us to explain why we
think this is consistent with what the Bible teaches and to point
out some of the benefits of having our children participate in
this covenant meal.
Jesus referred to His disciples saying, “Little children,
yet a little while I am with you” (Jn. 13:33). Indeed, our
Lord explicitly requires that even adults must become like
little children to enter His kingdom (Matt. 18:2–4). Then
there is the other sense in which we speak of “little children,”
i.e., in reference to infants or toddlers. As baptized members
of the church, they too have been engrafted into the Body of
Christ and are included in the active worship of God.
Little children are sponges when it comes to soaking up
new information. Even when they seem not to be paying
attention, the youngest of children often surprise us when we
hear them recite the very thing we thought had passed them
by (sometimes to our delight or chagrin). By the time my
granddaughter, Sophie, was twenty months old, she would
eagerly tell anyone that the bread was “the body of Christ,”
and the wine was “the blood of Christ.” From the moment a
child is born (or perhaps even before that), parents begin to
teach their children by speaking, singing and living out before
them a Christian life. They are part of the covenant relationship our households have with God. While very young
children cannot articulate immediately all that we impart to
them, this does not cause us to stop teaching them. Our
children are learning that these are the things God’s people
brought Cal to the table a bit sooner than we did. I don’t want
my son to remember his parents keeping him away from the
table. I want him to be able to say that as far as he knows he
has always eaten at the Lord’s Table. The Lord’s Table is a
place of welcome and glad reception. It is not to be a place of
stern and strict rejection. With the Spirit and the Bride, we
must say to our children, “Come. And let him that heareth
say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever
will, let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17).
Virgil Hurt is the minister of Providence Church (CREC) in Lynchburg,
VA. His son Calvin is on the cover of the magazine.
do; they are learning that they are counted among the people
of God.
Worship is one of the chief obligations of all God’s
creatures. While we teach our children to walk and talk, we
diligently teach them the Scriptures and how they should
worship God when they “sit in their house,” when they “walk
in the way,” when they “lie down,” or when they “rise up”
(Deut. 6:6–7). In 2 Timothy 3:15, the apostle Paul writes to
Timothy saying, “and that from childhood you have known
the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for
salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” The Greek
word for “childhood” in this text is the word used to describe
a “nursing babe.” No doubt, the infant Timothy heard the
Word of God from the mouths of his faithful mother Eunice
and his grandmother Lois from the time he was born.
Jesus was thankful that truth is revealed even to the
immature: “In that hour Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit and said,
‘I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have
hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed
them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your
sight’ ” (Lk. 10:21). God teaches us that He communicates
with and receives praise even from very young children. In
fact, we read the prophecy in Psalm 8:2 that this would be the
case—a prophecy that was fulfilled in Matthew 21:15–16:
“But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful
things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple
and saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were
indignant and said to Him, ‘Do You hear what these are
saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes. Have you never read,
“Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have
perfected praise?”’” We cannot not dismiss the fact that there
are mysteries in the ways of God, and that the Spirit, like the
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wind, “blows where it wishes” (Jn. 3:8).
The Bible is clear that all of God’s covenant promises
belong to “you and your children.” Covenant children are
members of the covenant community and are entitled to its
benefits. Just as circumcision was an advantage for Jews—
“much in every way” (Rom. 3:2)—so too, those who have
received the covenant sign and seal of baptism have all the
covenant privileges. You will notice how enthusiastically these
little ones receive the meal. Toddlers may not remember the
day of their baptism, but they surely know that every Lord’s
Day they belong to the faithful—not on the basis of what they
have done, but on the basis of what He has done and on the
basis of who they are in Him—and will eat the meal of
blessing with all the congregation. Their parents have taught
them, and continue to teach them, what this means, and that
they are indeed a part of God’s people. Their baptism is not
an empty symbol; it means that they belong, that they are not
wandering for fourteen years in the wilderness, not whiling
away the weeks in an earthly Presbyterian Purgatory, waiting
to pass an exam to earn them full admittance to this institution
supposedly founded on grace alone.
Young children were admitted to the sacramental meals
of the Old Covenant. Preeminent among the feasts was the
Passover, which was the meal that signified God’s deliverance
Children’s Church
Greg Strawbridge
SO MANY CHURCHES dismiss their kids at worship. At All
Saints we stay together. (Okay—some crying kids have to be
taken out by the bouncers in the back. But most stay.) When
we come to communion, as a central part of each Lord’s Day
service, all those washed in the waters of baptism are invited
to come to the feast, including little ones. We come forward
and receive from Christ’s representatives the bread and the
wine. As the minister, I may say to even a little child, “The
cup of new covenant is given for you, believe that His blood
was shed for you.” Really, we are all at “Children’s Church.”
Jesus teaches us that we are all to come to Him as children or
not at all (Mk. 10:14–15). We come as children to His
Table.
At our men’s forums we may debate the influence of the
Greek notion of substance on Ante-Nicene Fathers and the
exigencies of an Orthodox aesthetic of worship. We parse the
Reformation doctrine of the spiritual presence of Christ in the
Eucharist. We exegete the relative merits of the Scottish
Covenanter resistance to tyranny versus the reform of the lesser
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or salvation. As the blood of the Passover lamb was applied to
the doorposts and lintels, entire households were spared the
judgment of God, including (especially!) the children. The
Passover meal commemorates this redemptive mercy of God.
As the household participates in the Passover meal, the Bible
tells us to expect a question from the children: “What do you
mean by this service?” (Exod. 12:26). The meal is designed
to be the occasion for instruction concerning the grace of the
Lord—a rehearsal of God’s salvation. This weekly memorial
teaches them who God is and what He has done, and thus
leads to the worship of the God who made them and calls
them to Himself.
The Lord’s Supper is the New Covenant counterpart to
the Passover. It points to the Lamb of God—“Christ, our
Passover”—who shed His blood for His people to deliver
them from their sins. If godly parents instruct their children
well, then they discern the body—they know what is going on.
By faith we receive God’s promises, which are given to us and
our children, and thus the sacraments of baptism and the
Lord’s Supper are likewise received with great joy by us and
our children.
Randy Booth is the minister of Grace Reformed Church (CREC) in
Nacogdoches, TX. He also serves as the moderator of the CREC Council.
magistrate, and diagnose the effects of the Second Great
Awakening. But at the Table, we are children. We are all at
children’s church.
At our fellowship celebrations we serve the fattest beers
anyone has ever had—grab your spoon and join right in. At
Epiphany we have cakes with frosting piled high. At Pentecost
we have international foods and cross-cultural wines. In our
community events we have wine tastings and beer revelry. But
at the Table we are all children. We just need a little way-bread
for the journey, and a sip of sweet wine with the burn of the
cross.
In the preaching and teaching of our congregation, we say
with the apostle, “In understanding be mature” (1 Cor.
14:20). We try to leave no stone unturned in Aramaic
sections of the book of Daniel, or a discussion of the Old
Testament images in Colossians, or in a study through Church
history. Many of our children are being educated with a
classical curriculum, with great books, Latin and Greek. As a
minister, it is sometimes a challenge to stay well-read in the
face of many of our members. But we cannot claim our
maturity as grounds for receiving even crumbs from the
POOH’S THINK
Table. When we come to the Table, we are all children.
On the Lord’s Day, we confess our faith with Nicene
creed and the Apostle’s creed. Most of our members from the
youngest age can recite these from covenant-rote memory.
Many can answer, “Who is the redeemer of God’s elect?”
with Shorter Catechism A. 21. My daughter, Julie (8 years
old), answered my question at family worship, “What
commandments did Nebuchadnezzar break in setting up the
golden image?” —in Latin, no less (non facies tibi sculptile neque
omnem similitudinem . . .). But when we come to the Table, we
do not come because of our ability to profess our faith or our
intellectual stamina. We come as children to the Table.
Even when I say, “We come to the Table,” that betrays
an overconfidence of ability. Like an infant brought to the
font, held up by loving parents’ arms, before heaven we come
not of our own ability. Grace precedes faith. We must be
brought to the Table. We are like Mephibosheth (2 Sam.
9:1–13). All who find themselves at the Table of the Lord
were from the enemy’s house, yet have been received because
of the grace of covenant love.
Sometimes we pretend that we stand up on our own two
feet and make a place for ourselves at the Table. If we come
in a spirit of pride, quite confident of the proper mode
Christ’s presence, dividing asunder joints and marrow of
Zwingli, Luther, Calvin and the Fourth Lateran Council—
when our prayer is, “I thank Thee Lord that I am not like the
papists, nor the Zwinglians, nor the Lutherans”—then we
have missed the necessary truth. We are little children whose
place is set only by grace. We must be carried to His Table, if
we are to be seated. And we are not just children at the Table.
We are lame, undeserving children at the Table. But, thanks be
to God, “Mephibosheth dwelt in Jerusalem, for he ate
continually at the king’s table. And he was lame in both his
feet” (2 Sam. 9:13).
Gregg Strawbridge is the minister of All Saints Presbyterian Church
(CREC) in Lancester, PA. He also serves as the moderator of Augustine
Presbytery (CREC).
Grace at the Table
Jeff Evans
As our Lord was fond of pointing out, His Father’s wisdom
can be seen in quotidian creation. Birds frolicking through the
heavens and lilies humbly showing forth their splendor confute
unbelieving worldly wisdom. The cold heart of unbelief reads
Psalm 23 and is somehow not stirred to find a patch of lush
Kentucky bluegrass to roll in and feel God’s soothing, cool
comfort. Likewise, parents, pastors, and presbyters read
“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” and find unbelieving ways to deny God’s creational wisdom in the everyday
lives of their covenant children. Shame on us, I say: For not
coveting the believing heart of a child; for not rejoicing in the
wisdom of the mundane; for not incarnationally pondering the
poetic like a boy loves bugs.
Our daughter, now approaching three, has been a
constant source of godly wisdom. (Of course, this is not to
subtract from the sinful foolishness bound up in her heart.)
When she sins, she immediately demands to pray to the
Father for forgiveness in Jesus, who died for her. The separation sin brings from her family body and from God ruins the
short pleasures of childish disobedience. But whether tearfully
repenting of sin or delighting in the Lord with her God-given
faith, she—rightly named Grace—has been a treasure house
of believing, saintly wisdom for her parents. As each day runs
its course, sunrises and sunsets find her heart bursting forth in
psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs—either in family worship
or while alone upon her bed. Sudden, unfettered joy in the
daytime is reason to dance more earnestly than David in all his
might before the ark. And the Sabbath, that chief day of every
happy day, stands pre-eminently at the beginning of her week.
It is the day that defines every other day: It is the constant
reoccurring appointment on her simple calendar; as she sees
it, it is the day all of God’s people join together as one body to
worship the King.
But who is this King? In Grace’s mind, He is the One who
rules over every exotic creature in her books, destroys the
wicked and upholds the righteous in every Bible story (one of
her favorites being David cutting Goliath’s head off), and
makes every blade of grass bow in our front yard with His
breath. He does all His holy will and sees all things, though
we see Him not. He is also the One who made her, baptized
her into His Church, hates all sin, and gave Himself to
purchase and cleanse His Church. Through baptism and
because of what God said in her baptism, she believes and
knows she belongs to God’s people. As we gather around our
dinner table during the week (and especially on the Sabbath),
we give special treats to our daughter: a small amount of wine,
a candy, ice cream, etc. We try to teach her that these treats
are given in the name of the King, for His rule is sweet and a
delight. She, because it is so special, often saves her treat
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following dinner, if possible. Hours later, we find a small hand
stained by the color of the candy and a big contemplative
smile as she finally enjoys her treat. Her King’s treats are
special and she has perfected the art of savoring, say, one jelly
bean for hours. But what would you expect from someone
who cannot walk two steps outside without pondering the
Lord’s handiwork in a flower or stick on the ground?
A few months after her first birthday, Grace began
noticing the Lord’s Supper being passed before her in church
each week. Her first reaction, like any sinner, was to greedily
grab for the bread and wine without reference to the Word.
After roughly a month of instruction, however, she began to
refrain from grabbing the bread and wine. In the weeks
following she began to announce the meaning of the Supper to
us and often those within earshot: “Jesus died on the Cross for
me. His body was broken for me. His blood was spilled for
me.” Not empty words, she experientially knew what it meant
to be bruised, scraped, cut and to bleed. She knew what it
means to sin. But more troubling than her prior greedy
grabbing, Grace now began to ask why she was not receiving
the bread and wine if it belonged to God’s people. She would
look up at us, with her pretty eyes of faith and plead, “For me,
for Grace?” Our hearts sank and we nearly burst into tears each
week as we answered “Yes, sweetheart, for you” and
hurriedly and hypocritically passed the tray without letting her
partake. She was more discerning of the body and more full of
faith than we. As Grace approached the age of two, we began
letting her hold her mother’s bread and wine. Never attempting to put the bread in her mouth or sip from the cup, she
seemed more content though the questions continued: “For
me? Please, daddy?” Every week we repented as we took the
Supper; every week our heart broke for the unbelief we were
silently teaching her.
Finally, at the age of two and a half, she began coming to
the Table. Prior to this time, we had technically been members of a denomination that did not practice paedocommunion (though we were attending a local, practicing
paedocommunion church), and thus we could not allow our
daughter to partake in the Supper. Now, however, rejoicing in
the ability to commune with our daughter, we looked
anxiously to Grace’s first visit to the Lord’s Table. As the
bread was passed, I smiled at how excited she had been
during the week as we told her that she was going to partake
of the Supper on Sunday. In hand for her, the precious bread
was coddled and admired by Grace. With the phrase “for
you” spoken by the pastor, I ate the bread and motioned for
Grace to do the same. Grace remained motionless. “Grace,” I
whispered, “it’s for you. Eat the bread, sweetheart.” Still no
response. After a bit more coaxing and explaining, she ate the
bread with a big smile. The wine, now being passed, she took
and drank at the appropriate time without any prompting.
My wife knew exactly what our daughter had been doing,
though I had been slow to catch on. Grace had been treasuring this tiny piece of bread like she had treasured other treats
given in the King’s name. She was so delighting in the fact of it
being for her that she would have held on to it for hours if I
had not reminded her of what she already knew: The Lord’s
Supper is to be enjoyed by all of God’s people as one body. A
gracious lesson, I say, for Grace and her father to be reminded
of, and a tremendous blessing for her parents to see how their
daughter’s everyday delight in her heavenly Father affects her
coming to the Table. Likewise, since coming to the Table,
Grace has delighted even more in the quotidian of Her
Father’s creation: More songs, more smiles, more thankfulness from an already joyous heart, a more earnest confession
that Christ has died to forgive her sins, and a constant
excitement for the Sabbath and all its delights.
“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent,
and hast revealed them unto babes “ (Matt. 11:25).
Jeff Evans is the minister at Christ Church of Livingston County
(CREC) in Howell, Michigan.
Open call for Original Films
The Second Annual Trinity Festival (August 7-9, 2006)
will include film screenings. All lengths and genres
are welcome (at least welcome to submit).
For Submission guidelines email [email protected].
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