There’s this article here by Joey Pipa, where he argues against paedocommunion. Paedocommnion is the belief that any baptized person who is not under church discipline ought to be welcomed to the Lord’s Supper. There was another article by Robert Rayburn posted alongside this one, arguing for paedocommunion. Rayburn’s main point is that the denail of paedocommnunion results in practices that are “invisible” in the Bible (non-communicant membership, tying communion to age-based maturity levels, etc), and so, Rayburn thinks, ought to raise suspicion that “credo-communion” as currently practiced in the PCA may be misguided.
Rayburn’s article is a positive statement of his own and not a response to Pipa, so... I want to respond to Pipa myself.
Pipa offers two reasons why paedocommunion is wrong. First, he says, “it assumes a wrong view of the membership of our children in the covenant.” What is this wrong view? “It confuses membership in the covenant with the right and privilege of coming to the Lord’s table.” Pipa then draws a distinction between those who are “heirs of the promise” (baptized children) and those who are “heirs of salvation” (those regenerated by the Spirit). This creates, in effect, two categories of covenant member.
There are two main things I would say here.
1) This distinction of those “regenerated by the Spirit” from those who are merely “heirs of the promise” is a distinction that ultimately belongs to the judgment of God, and the only discernable evidence we can have that someone is not participating in the regeneration of the Spirit is a manifestly rebellious life. And the proper response to such a life from someone professing faith is church discipline which, if carried all the way through, means excommunication from the table. I simply see no warrant in Scripture for presuming against the regeneration (in Pipa’s sense of the word) of covenant children such that they are in principle barred from communion. If they are persisting in rebellion, excommunicate them formally. If they are not, they are part of the covenant people and that ought to be shown, which leads to the second point:
2) Pipa makes a disjunction between “membership in the covenant” and “the right and privilege of coming to the Lord’s table.” The problem with this disjunction is that the Lord’s table is itself constitutive of membership in the covenant people. 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 says, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” Notice the logic in v.17, we are one body because we all partake of the one bread. The covenant people are a real flesh and blood people, and their real and visible boundary is their shared covenant meal. It’s those who commune with Christ and with his people who belong to Christ and his people. Lack of eating together implies a lack of fellowship. Do we really mean to say that children who are marked as heirs of the promise and are (even in Pipa’s view) “legally” members of the covenant are not invited to fellowship with Christ simply because they can’t fully understand what’s going on? Well, adults can’t fully understand what’s going on either.
Pipa’s second argument against paedocommunion is that it “assumes a wrong view of the sacrament, namely that there is a blessing in the physical eating and drinking.” He goes on to say that sacraments benefit us in exactly the same way as preaching: the benefit is in the word, and is appropriated by faith. There is no benefit in any sacrament without faith.
I agree that without embracing them in faith, sacraments can only ultimately issue in judgment. But it does not follow that sacraments are simply teaching tools (as Pipa implies). I would argue that they are not really even teaching tools at all, except incidentally. They are signs, and a sign biblically is an act of God that attests to something. The Lord’s Supper is not there to teach us about the death of Christ, it’s there to seal and attest the death of Christ for us and to mark out the family of God. The Lord’s Supper proclaims the death of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:26). It isn’t a lecture, it’s a memorial meal that testifes to the blood of the covenant for us and announces to us and to the world that we are the body of Christ, because we are those who eat his flesh and drink his blood. And doing it “in remembrance” of Christ does not point first of all to a mental reflective act performed by the participants (which some actually use as a reason against mentally unsophisticated children partaking), but to the objective fact that the meal is a memorial of the death of Christ, just like a Christmas dinner is eaten “in remembrance” of his birth. Who wants to kick the kids out of Christmas dinner because they don’t sufficiently understand the Nativity story?
The question is not really whether a very young child receives a blessing by way of the physical act. The question is whether that child is to be counted as part of the family of God and invited and encouraged to act like one, by sharing in the sign of the people of God and embracing the testimony of that sign in faith. Are they counted as part of the people of God or not? Reformed Christians (and Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, and Methodist) all answer yes and give the sign of this when it comes to baptism.
But what Pipa interestingly did not even mention is the main argument that I usually see against paedo-communion, which is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29 about participants “examining” themselves and “discerning the body.” Maybe Pipa didn’t try to use this passage because he realizes that Paul is there admonishing people who are in sin, not setting a barb-wire fence around the table or setting a litmus test. Some of the Corinthians were getting drunk and despising the poor among them. That is, they were not walking worthy of the gospel and were failing to discern the body of Christ, which includes the poor equally with the rich. For the Corinthians to “examine” themselves would mean for them to prove themselves (that’s what the verb [dokimazo] actually means), to act in accordance with their profession. It isn’t an internal mental act that Paul is after here but a behavior. And likewise, to discern the body means to treat the body of Christ with love (not to understand Reformation-era arguments about transubstantiation, consubstantiation, the real presence, etc). Nothing Paul says here has anything to do with young children being somehow unqualified for communion with the people of God.
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