I am delighted to see that more and more churches in the Reformed tradition are now recognizing that all baptized children are members of the body of Christ and therefore ought to be communing with the rest of the body at the Lord’s Table. This has been decades in the making, and progress has been slow.1 But it now appears that the biblical arguments for paedocommunion are indeed making progress against an entrenched Protestant tradition that has required something more than baptism from children to qualify to eat dinner with Jesus. Even so, I believe there’s some clean-up work to be done.
Forty-three years ago, I was first exposed to paedocommunion reading a photocopied article from the Westminster Theological Journal by Christian Keidel.2 I was twenty-four years old and a new “convert” to Reformed theology. My wife and I had moved from a dispensational Bible church to a Presbyterian church the year before, my first daughter was baptized, and I was eager to learn everything I could about the meaning of infant baptism and the discipleship of young children. Friends in my new church gave me a folder of articles and newsletters to read. Keidel’s article was in that folder.
I was also given an essay by James Jordan outlining the biblical and theological arguments for communizing baptized children.3 That essay clinched it for me, and I knew that any effective refutation of paedocommunion had to answer Jordan’s biblical presentation and not simply cite Reformed or Protestant tradition.
But perhaps I should rewind a bit and explain my own Christian upbringing. I was baptized as a baby in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. My mother was a faithful Lutheran and so I was a regular participant in the Sunday liturgy, Sunday school, VBS, and even Lutheran schools. But as a baptized Christian child, I did not commune until I passed confirmation class, memorized most of Luther’s Small Catechism, and was able to articulate to my pastor not only my faith in Jesus but also the rudiments of the Lutheran understanding of the Supper. Once I had jumped through those ecclesiastical hoops I was qualified to come to the Communion Table with the adults.
Even so, as a young child participating in the liturgy, I learned the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Agnus Dei, the Kyrie, the Te Deum Laudamus, the Gloria in Excelsis, the Sanctus, the Lord’s Prayer, the Nunc Dimittis, many Psalms, and, of course, all the great German Lutheran hymns. All of this was mine, but I nevertheless had to sit and watch the adults go forward to receive the body and blood of Christ every week. Why? Was I not baptized? Did I not have faith? Surely, I did have a childlike, age-appropriate trust in Jesus. Was that not enough? Apparently, I lacked some level of knowledge and ability to express my faith in a mature way.
What about that childlike, age-appropriate trust in Jesus? Let’s fast forward a few years. In college, after a period of rebellion and licentious living, the Lord graciously restored me. I was brought back into the Christian community by a campus evangelist. Once I had recovered my faith, I was taught by the university ministry that I had been converted/regenerated when I responded to the gospel message presented to me on campus. I was given a boilerplate testimony to recite that included the statement that I had never heard the gospel until someone shared the Four Spiritual Laws pamphlet with me. And I dutifully recited that testimony in various venues. For them, my whole “pre-conversion” early life in the Lutheran church was insignificant.
I distinctly remember one Sunday randomly walking into the local Methodist church in town, a short walk from campus. What surprised me was how much of the liturgy I knew by heart—the creeds, the responses, the prayers, the hymns, etc. How was this possible? Oh yeah, this was my Lutheran background. Curious about that, I attended a Lutheran church service, and it all began to make sense. The idea that I had never heard the gospel as a child in my theologically conservative Lutheran church was ludicrous. The gospel was proclaimed very clearly every Sunday. This realization triggered me to question the formulaic conversion story I was told to recite.4
So what does all of this have to do with paedocommunion? Well, exactly when did I have faith? When did I become a Christian? Did I need to experience my fallen inclination for sinful rebellion before I could truly believe? At what point was I incorporated into the body of Christ and became a member of the church? In my 20s in college? Or was my confirmation at age 13 the moment of regeneration for me? If I had died at age 10, before my confirmation, would I have gone to heaven? If I had died at age 3, did I have a genuine, saving faith in Jesus? Or what about my infancy? Could I have had faith then, too?
This is all relevant to the paedocommunion question because determining the authenticity of a child’s faith or his level of knowledge should not be what qualifies him to participate in the Lord’s Supper. Evangelicals look for a conversion/faith experience. Reformed and Lutheran folk expect some level of knowledge before one can commune, which they usually interpret as evidence of genuine faith.
We shouldn’t disparage experience. Christians have “conversion” experiences all their lives. If they are in step with the Spirit, then they will be experiencing ever more mature developments in their lives, some of which will likely be momentous. But too often, young adults interpret these significant moments of mature repentance as their conversion.
And it hardly needs to be said that a baptized Christian’s knowledge of the Scriptures and of Christian doctrine and practice will grow over time. But what level of knowledge is required for the church to definitively establish the presence of authentic faith? And is the presence of knowledgeable faith a prerequisite for coming to the Table?
There are those who claim to be practicing paedocommunion but still require some kind of “examination” of the child before he can be admitted to the Table. This, they say, can be a simple, child-appropriate profession of faith, assessed either by the parents, the pastor, or the elders. For some it is an evaluation of the child’s “awareness” of what is going on during Communion. Is the child paying attention, following along, or “tracking” with the service? With others, the child must “know” something, however slight, about what is happening when he eats the bread and wine. In some churches, once one of these milestones has been reached there is a short ritual introduction of the child to the congregation as one who has been evaluated as fit to eat and drink with the rest of the congregation at the Lord’s Table.
There are some important problems with this approach. But before I get to those, let me address an odd argument that has surfaced to support the need for something in addition to baptism as a prerequisite for communing children. The argument relies on word studies of Hebrew terms that refer to children at various levels of growth and maturity. I’ll simplify the argument (without all the Hebrew terms).
It goes something like this. There are nine Hebrew words that refer to children, from newborns to young adults. The three terms that refer to pre-weened children never show up in passages that describe sacramental feasts in Israel, in either prescriptive or descriptive texts. Therefore, since there are no instances of these terms being used in the narratives about sacrificial meals, a naïve conclusion is often drawn:
We have no evidence for pre-weaned children participating in Israel’s sacramental meals. Clearly, so the argument goes, only older, post-weaned children were allowed to eat and drink with the adults at these communion meals. Therefore, the passages that speak about children at Israel’s feasts, instead of implying that all children were allowed to partake and therefore should partake of the Lord’s Supper too, imply the opposite: only older children partook of the feasts and therefore only older children should be admitted to the Lord’s Table.
But is it really so clear? Why should we expect a list of Hebrew terms for children when we are told that the entire family participated? The Passover, for example, does not specify who is invited to the meal by listing the various Hebrew words for children. The meal is for the family/household.
Exodus 12 says that the whole family ate. Now, it is true, children are not explicitly identified as actually eating. But are they not part of the family? Is it really unwarranted to assume that they ate with the rest of the family? Isn’t it absurd to believe that the entire family ate except the children—they watched as the adults ate? When we read that the father chose and prepared a lamb for the whole family (Exod. 12:4), we have every reason to believe that the wife and children and any members of the extended family present in the house ate the Passover meal together. When we read that the father was to choose a lamb “according to the number of souls” in his household, are we forcing an alien logic on the text when we say that all the children were to be included among the “souls” belonging to the family? Reformed theologians have long argued that the practice of household baptism in the New Testament surely must have included any infants who were in the household. We don’t insist that there necessarily were infants—we don’t know for sure that there were in the specific cases in Acts—but that if there were, they were part of the household and if the household was baptized, they were too.
Not to believe that the “family” included children because certain Hebrew terms for children were not used leads to silly and absurd conclusions. Read through the passage (Exod. 12) and see if it anywhere makes reference to women partaking of the Passover meal. It doesn’t. Therefore, is it safe to assume that women didn’t partake either? After all, the text does not say so explicitly. Let’s not make unwarranted assumptions. Are we to believe that the women and children sat at the Passover table while the father and all the circumcised adult males ate? When it says, “a lamb for the family” does this really mean “a lamb for the adult men”?
My point here is that the presence or absence of certain Hebrew words describing very young children does not determine who had the privilege to eat. When we read that “every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a family,” that requires that every man, acting as the covenantal head of the family, estimate the size of his family (including wife, children, and servants, etc.) to determine the appropriate size of the dinner lamb. He is to take a lamb “according to the number of persons/souls” in his household.” This was a family meal. As if to emphasize this, God commands in Deuteronomy 12:7 that “the households” shall celebrate by eating together the sacrificial meals. The entire family or household had a right to eat the roasted lamb together. And when providing details about sacramental meals the Scripture often talks about “your sons and daughters” eating (Lev. 10:14; Num. 18:11, 19; Deut. 12:12, 18; 16:11, 14).
Remember, too, that the Apostle Paul tells us that everyone who exited Egypt was baptized and all ate of the miraculous food provided by the Spirit:
I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same Spiritual food, and all drank the same Spiritual drink. For they drank from the Spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
(1 Cor. 10:1–4)
This fits with Paul’s larger argument in 1 Corinthians that all baptized Christians are members of the body of Christ and therefore partake of the “one loaf” that symbolizes the unity of the body at the Lord’s Table.
Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
(1 Cor. 12:12–13, 27)
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit…Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
Baptism incorporates children (and adults) into the body of Christ and therefore they must also be included at the Lord’s Table. There are no additional intellectual or experiential conditions that make baptized children eligible for Table fellowship with the saints. They belong to the communion of saints. There’s no additional ritual required for Table fellowship.
Part of the challenge for Reformed churches has to do with overcoming our tacit commitment to the primacy of the intellect when it comes to sacramental efficacy. It’s as if the Supper can benefit only those who have some level of intellectual awareness of what is happening during Communion. But is the Supper simply designed to impress our minds with certain truths? It does that, to be sure. But is that what is primarily happening? Matt Colvin’s examination of how the Supper works needs to be carefully considered.
Our bodies are the means by which we constitute our way of being-in-the-world. The insights of child psychology are also important here: When we are dealing, not with cups and stairs, but with other persons, then our bodies are not merely the means by which we constitute objects, but rather, we are ourselves significantly constituted by our relationships. A child wants to know “Am I lovable?” and “Will my parents still be there for me?” The answers to these pre-conscious and subconscious questions are formed before the child can formulate questions or reason. The child is constituted as the beloved child of his parents via his bodily experience of their love: being held, being nursed, being comforted when he is in pain. Or he may be constituted in the opposite way by the opposite experience: by abuse or neglect or harshness.
Mark Horne once asked, “Do Baptists talk to their babies?” I think this is part of what he was getting at with that question.5
We need to take seriously the question of how our inclusion or exclusion of covenant infants affects them on this subconscious level, for if faith is primarily “seated” anywhere, it is seated on this level—the level of our desires and constitution, the level of our loves and self-identity. Perhaps we could even say that this is the level of our being that Jesus calls “the heart” in such utterances as “out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks” and “the good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good” and “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” If so, then the church should be very concerned with what we do to each other on this level.6
Very young children learn early on, through experience, that they are members of a particular family because they all eat together at the family table every night. They belong. They are loved. They are included. They have siblings and parents. They are part of a loving, caring household. Only later will the idea of a family begin to take shape in their minds, and they will be able to articulate the meaning of their experience.
What this means is that the benefits of paedocommunion begin before the baptized child is able to speak, let alone articulate some profession of faith. The child’s little hands are not prevented from reaching out and receiving the bread. Rather, she is included with every other member of the Lord’s household. She is part of the body. She doesn’t have to wait to eat until she proves she knows something or is able to articulate that she is aware of what is going on. She doesn’t have to jump through any additional hoops. She grows up never knowing a time when she didn’t eat with Jesus at his Table.
Jeff Meyers is Senior Pastor of Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church in St. Louis.
NOTES
- See my new short defense Why Children are Welcome to the Lord’s Supper: Some Questions and Answers About Paedocommunion (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2024). ↩︎
- Christian Keidel, “Is the Lord’s Supper for Children?” Westminster Theological Journal 37 (Spring 1975). ↩︎
- James B. Jordan, “Theses on Paedocommunion,” The Geneva Papers, Special Edition, 1982. Click HERE to download the paper. ↩︎
- Later on, I read James Jordan’s essay on “Conversion,” The Sociology of the Church: Essays in Reconstruction (repr., Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1999), 151–161. ↩︎
- See Peter Leithart’s Do Baptists Talk to Their Babies. ↩︎
- There’s so much more going on in the ritual of the Lord’s Supper than a mental apprehension of the significance of the elements in their relationship to the Lord’s body and blood. See Peter Leithart’s excellent essay “The Way Things Really Ought to Be: Eucharist, Eschatology, and Culture,” Westminster Theological Journal 59 (1997): 159-76, reprinted as an appendix in Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord’s Supper (Moscow: Canon, 2000), 153–182. ↩︎