Lane has moved on to discuss Venema’s treatment of 1 Corinthians 11 in chapter 6. Before I follow him there, I wanted to say at least a couple of things about Venema’s introduction of “New Testament evidence” in his chapter 5, and respond briefly to his argument from John 6.

First, it bears repeating that Venema’s rhetoric is not overheated, and he represents and treats his opponents quite fairly, in my view. Although I differ with this book, it is the kind of book that will genuinely advance the discussion. I have appreciated it greatly.

That said, here are the two significant places that I differ with him in this chapter. There are many other quite helpful observations that he makes, but these are the places where the differences stand out. First, he says, “our understanding of [the Lord's Supper's] spiritual meaning and proper recipients should be based primarily on New Testament teaching. This is a rule of interpretation that needs to be honored in any evaluation of the arguments for or against the practice of admitting children to the Lord’s Table” (p. 75). This is not a practical question, necessitated by an absence of Old Testament data. Venema calls it a “rule of interpretation,” a hermeneutical issue.

Now if we assembled all the Baptists on Mount Gerizim and all the Presbyterians on Mount Ebal, and we announced this particular “rule of interpretation,” from which mountain would we hear the amen? I agree with Venema that we can rarely draw a straight line from Old Testament particulars to New Testament particulars. It doesn’t work like that. Circumcision is fulfilled in baptism, but we can’t equate the two. Passover is fulfilled in the Lord’s Supper, but we can’t equate the two. It is more like a woven tapestry than it is like a line strung between two poles. But we must start with the Old Testament in all our thinking about such issues. The rule of interpretation we must follow is this: we should come to the New Testament steeped in the thought-forms God gave to His people over millennia. This is because the Old Testament is normative straight up unless the New Testament teaches us that it isn’t. We have to lose the common assumption that the Old Testament is not normative unless the New Testament says that it is. The importance of this can be seen in Venema’s discussion of John 6, which is my second point.

Venema has an extended and quite helpful discussion of the Lord’s teaching in John 6 and the Lord’s Supper. In the end he concludes that the passage is not about the Supper directly, but that what it teaches includes the Supper — a conclusion I agree with, incidentally. Venema makes this point because he wants to emphasize the fact that Jesus insisted on the necessity of faith. Everyone who sees the Son, and believes on Him, may have everlasting life.

But we go astray if we assume connections between the testaments will only be between this festival, for example, and that sacrament. We have to look to the Old Testament for definitions of what faith is. I agree with Venema that all of us, children included, must come to the Table in faith. We must feed upon Christ by faith. We eat and drink in order to have life within us, and this life is not administered to those who are in the grip of unbelief. And those who eat and drink in unbelief are communing with damnation. But where did Venema get his ideas of what this faith looks like? He has already said that he need not get it from the Old Testament, but there is instruction for us there nonetheless. “Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8:2). “But thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly” (Ps. 22:9-10). “For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth” (Ps. 71:5). We move from the very biblical notion that we are to feed upon Christ by faith, to the idea, that Venema pulls from somewhere, that this faith has to be mature faith, certified as such by the elders. I am with him on the faith — but something else was slipped in at the last minute.

But raising such issues is not “sidetracking” anything. The idea that God is pleased with nothing but faith (true) is not grounds for saying that the elders have the authority or competence to set up testing services to stamp the papers of a four-year-old. Even if we go with Venema’s rule of interpretation, we would have trouble coming up with the scriptural grounds for doing anything like this in the New Testament. The problem of “precise age” arises because the duty of “attesting publicly,” with a host of modern cultural assumptions, is just quietly assumed. Why do you have to profess faith to come to the Lord’s Table when coming to the Lord’s Table is a profession of faith?

My apologies to Lane, who gently nudged me into a response. I had for some reason missed his two earlier posts and was politely waiting around for him to get back to business. But alas, it was me who needed to get back to business, and I have nothing exculpatory to say. This post should catch us up. In order to attract a little more attention to this esoteric theological topic, and perhaps generate a few more comments, I will try to figure out a way to bring Sarah Palin into it. And I guess I just did.

One of the things that Venema does is make a distinction between the original Passover departing from Egypt and the annual commemorative Passovers established in the law. He acknowledges that it is possible that kids partook in the original event, but that the evidence is much more dicey when talking about the annual Passovers.

I actually have only two points to make about all of this, and it shouldn’t take too long. The first is that we have to see the Lord’s Supper as the fulfillment of all the rites and types of the Old Testament, and not just a fulfillment of Passover. This means that the participation of the children in Israel is undeniable on the prophetic side, although their involvement was clearly not distributed evenly. This relates to a good point that Lane made, a request that I am willing to meet him halfway on. “In my opinion, this argument (that exclusion of infants from the Lord’s Table in effect excommunicates them) is the very weakest argument from the PC side. It really needs to be shelved.)

Everything hinges on why they are excluded. The males of Israel had to appear before the Lord three times annually (Dt. 16:16; Ex. 23:17; Ex. 34:23). This did not exclude the women and children because those women and children were represented in the worship of God through their family head. So I grant that represented covenant members are not excluded (excommunicated) simply because they do not partake of something individually. I am all about covenant representation. I grant also that to say that a non-partaking, represented covenant member is “excommunicated” is overheated language, and ought to be dropped.

But this only applies to those who are represented. What about covenant members who are excluded because they are presumed to be unconverted? If six-year-old Suzy is told that she can’t have bread and wine yet because her father represents her at the Table, but that as she grows into greater maturity she will certainly be included herself, this keeps her involved through representation — like the family heads of Israel used to do. But if she is excluded because the elders have to wait and see if she is a child of the devil or not, then this has very little to do with how the people of God in the Old Testament thought. And it is de facto excommunication.

Another point that needs response is that “PC arguments prove too much.” “With regard to the manna, even non-believers were allowed to participate. Presumably, not even PC advocates would allow professed non-believers to the Table.” Lane is certainly right that I wouldn’t allow a professed non-believer to the Table — Christopher Hithens, say, who is to this day a baptized covenant member. A problem parishioner, let us call him. But aside from excluding rank rebellion, I guess I am willing for the PC argument that “proves too much” to go ahead and prove that much. The manna was clearly bread from heaven, typifying Christ. The water from the rock was spiritual drink that came from the Rock that was Christ, accompanying them throughout their time in the wilderness.

This is an enormous subject, and I can only fly over it here. But in the Old Testament, “Gentile” is not the equivalent of “non-believer.” Gentiles could be saved, and remain Gentiles, and with no spiritual obligation whatever to become Jews. Think Melchizedek, Jethro, Naaman, et al the others. With the universalization of Israel in the Church now, those outside the Church do have an obligation to become “Jews,” which is a change. So Israel did have a large mixed multitude that came out of Egypt with them, but there is no reason to describe these folks as “unbelievers.” Why did they come? Why did they risk death at Pharaoh’s hands? Believing is as believing does.

And so I grant that uncircumcised Gentiles partook of the manna, and drank the spiritual drink that was provided to them. Rather than saying that this proves that nonbelievers partook, I would prefer to say that it shows that they were in fact believers, God-fearers. And the periodic rebels who defied the God who was sustaining them with manna and living water, well, they were unbelievers who were partaking. And Paul uses this undeniable fact to warn the Corinthians. “Look at what happens to unbelievers who partake of the covenant signs without true faith. Look at that.”

But the modern evangelical Church, having reduced the sacraments to a set of secret handshakes, say, “Look at what? I don’t see anything.”

Lane and I continue the discussion. In this segment, Lane repeats Venema’s argument that receiving the sacrament of bread and wine is just like receiving the Word, and that it is necessary for someone to be able to do the latter before they can be admitted to the former. Both require “active engagement” by the recipient. “If a child cannot understand the Gospel, they will not understand the Sacrament either.” “Neither the gospel Word nor the sacrament work merely by virtue of their administration.”

This is all quite true, and with regard to the point of this discussion, it is beside the point. Teaching a child to respond to the things of God in love, trust, faith, and submission is a task that godly parents undertake from the first moment they take that child in their arms. It is not like teaching your son to operate a chain saw, where only an idiot would start him too early. It is more like teaching him to love the English language, and to love the stories you tell him in it. “These are your people. I am your father. Jesus is your Savior.” And children can learn to say amen to this before they can say amen. It might come out as “mi-mi,” but they are nevertheless learning to participate.

So, yes, active engagement is part of the deal. It is an essential part of the deal. In fact, it is so essential that we shouldn’t waste any time before we begin to teach our children how essential it is by teaching them to be actively engaged as they come to the Supper.

But this agreement of mine to the principles involved should reveal to us a hidden assumption that is helping to drive this debate. This is the assumption that when very young children are taught to respond this way, we are simply training them, as you would a puppy, and not really educating them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The plastic nature of a child’s soul is thought to be such that you could tell them anything, and since they don’t know any better, this responsiveness of theirs cannot be known to be true faith. And since we cannot “know” it to be true faith, then we need to wait until their profession of faith is mature enough to cross-examine. We are bringing the logic of courtroom verification into the rearing of children. Nothing against courtroom verification in its place, but that’s not what we should be doing here. Christian nurture is more like breastfeeding than it is like grilling a hostile witness.

Another way of putting this is that we do not believe that genuine sentiments can be taught or instilled. Following Rousseau without knowing it (Geneva has winding streets and some Calvinists have gotten lost in it, showing up at the wrong house for the Bible study), we assume that if it doesn’t burble up spontaneously from the heart, then it cannot be sincere. A small child refuses to thank his grandmother for a treat, and so mom starts to haul him off to the back bedroom. “Oh, dear,” says grandma, “I don’t want him to be spanked because he didn’t thank me. I only want him to thank me if he really wants to.” To which a wise mom will reply, “Just give me a couple minutes. He will really want to.”

Just a few quick comments on Lane’s latest post so that we can continue to work through Venema’s book.

Lane says that baptism “means” inclusion in the visible church, according to the Confession, and that all the other stuff (regeneration and so forth) only applies when the individual baptized has the thing signified. Lane goes on to say that the Lord’s Supper is said to “seal all benefits thereof unto true believers.” But how is this any different? Both sacraments have an external meaning, and both of them have an inner significance that is true only when the recipient is a worthy receiver. Baptism means inclusion in the visible church. The Lord’s Supper is to be observed in the Church as a perpetual remembrance. This aspect is public and visible, and the reprobate (who are part of the visible church) participate in that observance. They don’t have the real deal in their hearts any more than they do with their baptism. But they do have the covenantal obligation to live in accordance with their baptism (which they are not doing) and in accordance with the oath they are renewing with each observance of the Supper (which they are also not doing). Lane still hasn’t shown how baptism does anything different with regard to the visible church than the Lord’s Supper does. I think this distinction of his is a non-starter.

Lane’s second point has to do with excommunication and the experience of children. Before replying to this one, I do want to acknowledge the possibility that the rhetoric of some paedocommunionists has been overheated at this point. Exclusion of children from the Supper does not amount to excommunication — that depends entirely on why and how they are excluded.

I think Lane has miscontrued my position at this point. He says, speaking of his own upbringing, “So, whatever that church was doing, it was not subjecting me to any of the horrible things Doug is saying always accompanies credo-communion churches’ treatment of their children.” I am not saying this always happens — I am saying that it regularly does. But I am quite prepared to cheerfully acknowledge that there are sons who say they won’t go work in the vineyard, and who then go out and bust a gut in the hot sun all day. And Jesus identifies that as obedience, over against the son who had the theology down, at least when it came to what you were supposed to say to your father.

Not to put too fine a point on it, there are credo-comm churches that are healthy spiritual communities, and the kids generally feel a part of it, and are glad to be a part of it. There are credo-baptist churches that are the same. And there are paedo-comm churches where the kids are being boiled in what was intended to be their life’s milk. Put another way, I would far rather be brought up in a godly baptist household (as I was) than to be brought up in an ungodly VanTilian, postmillennial, Calvinistic, paedocomm, presbyterian household. But of course, there are more choices than just those two.

I was once speaking to a baptist acquaintance about what he did when his children voluntarily prayed, when in his stated view their prayers were necesarily hypocritical, and was relieved to find out that he “didn’t spank them.” But another time a friend of mine (who was in the process of becoming paedobaptist) was having a conversation with a fellow elder in a reformed baptist church, and they were standing in the hallway of the church. The other elder was making the point that little children were God-haters, and he was pressing the point home when Sunday School let out, and as the children streamed by, my friend saw that one of the kids had a paper plate tied to his chest that said, and I quote, “I love God.” Many Christians, God be praised, are far better Christians than they are theological logicians. Because of this, they bring their children up to love the God they love — regardless of what polity says they ought to be doing. But others insist on the polity, and not on the love.

So Lane never felt excluded in the credo-comm church he grew up. And I never felt excluded in the credo-baptist church I grew up in. But let me correct that — to the extent I felt excluded, it was because I knew myself to be a sinner, and I thought it was perfectly appropriate for the church to exclude someone like me. But I am convinced that I responded this way because of the godly environment I was surrounded by at home. Whatever the case, and whatever they thought of me, these were my people.

Just a quick response to Lane’s latest, and then we can continue to move on through Venema’s book. I believe that the issues Lane raises here are really worth pursuing, and I hope we do that as our discussion proceeds.

Lane says that baptism belongs to the administration of the covenant of grace because it does not require a profession of faith. The Lord’s Supper, on the other hand, is a signifier of the essence of the covenant of grace. At any rate, this is what I think he meant when he said, “then the body and the blood signified by the bread and wine are signifiers of the essence of the covenant of grace.” Grammatically his sentence means that the body and blood are the signifiers, but since that doesn’t make sense, I think he must have been referring to the bread and wine. In response to this, I would encourage everyone to read the first comment on Lane’s post — the Westminster teaches that the Lord’s Supper places a visible difference between the saints and the world (WCF 27.1), making it an administrative sacrament, and baptism signifies ingrafting into Christ and regeneration (WCF 28.10), which makes baptism, on Lane’s calculus, a sacrament of the essence of the covenant of grace. It seems to me that this way of parsing the sacraments — one for the visible church and one for the invisible — is going to run us into hopeless contradictions and tangles, both scripturally and confessionally.

The elders of the church should certainly fence the Table — but they should also fence the Font. We ought not admit anyone to either without scriptural warrant. And when we admit people to the two sacraments, we should know that each sacrament has an outward administrative and covenantal aspect, and each of them has an inward spiritual and essential core. I think that Lane has sliced the thing lengthwise when he ought to have cut it across.

Last thing. Lane argues that because communion is not just a matter of physical ability, and takes “spiritual discernment as well,” this is all the more reason why infants should not partake. But he assumes that “spiritual discernment” can develop naturally and unimpeded in a situation where a child is growing up into spiritual consciousnes of inclusion, all while being excluded from communion with the people of God. In this situation, he is being taught that he is out, and that he has to prove something in order to be allowed in.

Now this does not leave a child in a neutral place. Every moment of every day we are either teaching our children to believe or to doubt. They might “feel like” they love Jesus and His people, but the elders doubt it. So do the parents. So does the BCO. “I should probably doubt it too.” The kid may be pardoned for drawing that conclusion.

Every Saturday night I ask my grandkids certain Sunday worship prep questions. Do you love God? Yes, they all yell. Are you baptized? Yes. Is Jesus in your heart? Yes. Will you take the Lord’s Supper tomorrow? Yes. Now no Reformed folk can really object to these sorts of personal questions without also objecting to the Heidelberg. “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” “That I . . .”

The reason for this controversy is that the following morning we act like we believed their answers. We do that by giving them the bread and wine. Now if you make them say these things, but then you refuse to believe the answers through the sacrament, then how can you expect them to believe the answers? You are just doing a catechism drill. You are insisting that they speak high and lofty words indeed. But at the end of the day, as we all know, “I’m just saying these things.” Nobody acts like they are true. “Why should I?”

Time to reengage with Lane on the question of paedocommunion. First, just a few comments on his post, and then on to Venema’s treatment of the historic Reformed position on all this.

Lane uses the example of citizenship and certain privileges like driving or voting. He wants to say that just because covenant children are not allowed to partake of the Table does not mean that they are being excluded from membership in the covenant, any more than a ten-year-old American kid isn’t American just because he can’t vote yet. The problem with the illustration is that we are dealing with more than physical tasks that require a certain maturity in order to perform. Suppose there were some function of citizenship (like saying the Pledge of Allegiance) that no immature citizen would be allowed to perform unless they had taken a loyalty oath that his elders believed. Driving is a question of whether your feet can reach the pedals. But requiring folks to take a loyalty oath would say (whether you wanted it to say this or not) that they are not really loyal Americans until we have verified that they are in fact true blue. In other words, it does bring the genuineness of a child’s love for Christ into question, and does not permit him to come to the Table until his loyalty is agreed upon.

Despite the disagreement over paedocommunion, Venema’s chapter on the Reformed confessions was really quite outstanding. My respect for him ratcheted up more than a couple notches. His method was really wise. He began by establishing the Reformed understanding of sacraments. He then discussed baptism, moved on to the Lord’s Supper, and applied all of that to the question of paedocommunion. His argument was really tight, and I didn’t have any real difficulty with it until right at the end.

First, some praise. He gives priority to the Word, as I think all Protestants must, but does not make the mistake of turning the sacraments into an optional add-on. The best answer to the question of whether the preaching of the Word is a sufficient means of grace apart from the sacraments “must be that ordinarily the sacraments are necessary and indispensible” (p. 30).

Unlike others in the Federal Vision controversy, Venema knows what the Reformed confessions say about the sacraments, and he is willing to repeat what they say, without any of that Southern Presbyterian funny business. “Though they do genuinely serve, as means of grace, to confer and to communicate the grace of God in Christ, they do so only as the Spirit is working through them and as they confirm the faith required on the part of their recipients” (p. 34, emphasis his).

And get a load of this:

This is something I couldn’t get some anti-FV folks to say for love or money. And of course, Venema qualifies this appropriately by applying it only to worthy receivers (those with true faith), just as Westminster does. And, not to snarky about it, as do I. But it is emphatically not the case that the two sacraments are means of sanctifying grace only. What is exhibited and conferred in baptism (to worthy receivers) is the grace of which that baptism is the sign. I am not saying that Venema would be prepared to admit that I understand and embrace this rightly, but I am happy to say that I am prepared to admit that he certainly does.

Venema also shows clearly that in the Reformed confessions, the recipient of infant baptism is passive, but that the recipient of the Lord’s Table is assumed to be active, a participant. In order to come in true faith, what is necessary? 1. A conscious awareness of the believer’s sin and misery. 2. An understanding of the person and work of Christ. 3. And a Spirit-wrought willingness to live in gratitude before God (p. 45). “All believers who are received at the Lord’s Table come in the same way and with the same obligations” (p. 45). He shows that in the historic Reformed view of this, two things stand in the way of paedocommunion. The first is the priority of the preached Word, mentioned earlier (p. 47), and the second is an insistence on a “prior attestation of the presence of faith” (p. 48). I believe that this is an accurate statement of the historic Reformed view of this subject. But it is also fully consistent with what Venema earlier called a “soft paedocommunion” stand.

And this is why it is curious that in his penultimate paragraph, Venema quietly slides to a summary statement that excludes soft and hard paedocommunion both. “Admittedly, the Reformed confessions do not stipulate a particular age at which such a profession should be made. Nor do they spell out in detail the kind of instruction in the faith that ordinarily ought to precede a mature profession of faith and admission to the Lord’s Table” (p. 48). What is that word mature doing in there?

So if he is right about all this, then what is the response? Aren’t we paedocommunionists radically out of step with the spirit of the confessions at significant places, and wouldn’t accomodation of paedocommunion require an extensive rewrite of our confessions at a number of points? “To state the matter in a different way, the admission of children to the Table of the Lord without a prior attestation of faith would require a substantial change in the historic Reformed understand of the nature and use of the sacraments” (p. 49). I believe that this is a reasonable question to ask. So why are we paedocommunionists still troubling Israel? Why don’t we get the heck out?

Here is why. Because the confessions are not inspired, it is possible for them to contain true tensions, true disparate elements. In the Word of God, everything harmonizes in principle. But in the confessions, the fact that synods “have erred and do err” does not just mean that we might mind a mistake that we might have to drop and that’s all. It also means that we could find ourselves looking at elements that are at odds with one another. Warfield once said that the Reformation was a collision between Augustine’s view of grace and Augustine’s view of the Church. Whether he was right about Augustine or not doesn’t change the value of it as an illustration. Suppose I am looking at the Reformed confessions and catechisms, and I see Element A, which Venema has very ably argued for. It is there, big as life. But suppose I also see Element B, which is in strong tension with Element A. In order to reconcile them, I would have to extensively rework something within the Reformed confessions. That is the situation that paedocomms find themselves in. And recognize the need for an extensive rewrite somewhere doesn’t make you “not Reformed.”

Fer instance? Well, there is more than one, but take what we make little kids say in the Heidelberg. We won’t let them eat or drink it, but we require them to say it. Why do we have grade school kids memorizing and reciting this stuff in the first person, when yet we routinely won’t admit kids to the Table for ten years or more after their ability to confess this in all sincerity?

Now what we make them say here is either true or false. If we think it is true, then we should bring them to the Table. If we think it is false, then why do we make them confess it? And yet we have a cute little class of Heidelbergers who stand up in front of the congregation. They are asked, “But why art thou called a Christian?” (Q32) And they all chant, “Because I am a member of Christ by faith, and thus am partaker of his anointing; that so I may confess his name, and present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to him: and also that with a free and good conscience I may fight against sin and Satan in this life and afterwards I reign with him eternally, over all creatures.”

And all God’s people said, “We’ll see!” Either that or dead silence.

The next chapter of Venema’s book addresses paedocommunion in the history of the Church, and he provides us with a judicious and fair treatment. Lane’s response to that chapter is here. Venema handles the material from the fathers competently, grants clear evidence where clear evidence is present, and also gives a fair hearing to the paedocommunionist’s handling of ambiguous evidence. Where the evidence is ambiguous, not surprisingly, Venema leans in an opposite direction than do Gallant and Leithart, but that’s okay. That’s what you do in a debate.

Venema grants the testimony of Cyprian for the paedocommunion position, but disputes whether this requires us to believe that the practice was widespread in Cyprian’s day, although it was clearly present. He grants the testimony of Augustine and Leo, along with the ancient practice of the Eastern Orthodox Church, continuing down to the present. He also grants the widespread practice of paedocommunion in the West from at least the time of Augustine down to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). So this particular debate among the Reformed over paedocommunion has something for the staunch Protestants on both sides. The Eastern Orthodox practice paedocommunion, but this is all tied up with their false sacramentology. The Roman Catholics do not practice it, but this is tied up with their sacramentology, meaning that the doctrine of transubstantiation made them reluctant to give the elements to kids (and even Venema admits a certain element of this). So this means that both sides of the debate in Protestant circles have a solid basis for accusing the other side of countenancing sacramental tomfoolery. This was very kind of the Lord to do, very evenhanded.

That said, let me take this opportunity to clear up a few details from our previous discussion. The question has been asked if I would have a problem with giving tiny portions of the elements to an infant upon the occasion of his baptism. The answer is that I wouldn’t think it was the end of the world, but I would rather not. But my reluctance does not proceed from being dubious about the infant’s spiritual condition. He participated in the sacrament in utero for nine months, and continues to participate at that same level until he is weaned. So in our congregation, the time between such organic participation and individual participation is very short, and corresponds to a similar transition on the physical level between milk and solids. So I don’t see such a child being excluded from anything.

The advantage of giving him a morsel and a drop at his baptism is that it makes an unambiguous statement that this child is, in principle, admitted to the Table. I like that. But other statements are being made as well, and I want to hash them out first. These “other statements” have been made throughout the history of the church, and represent what I consider to be very easy mistakes to make, and we have made them for a long time. I don’t want to adopt a practice that will reinforce this kind of error, cementing it into the liturgy, not until we have sorted it out.

We tend to think that holiness is on the Table, and that it is communicated to us when we partake. From that assumption to a belief in the magic table is a very short step. And lest this be taken as a shot at the RCs and EOs, I think the error is prevalent in Reformed circles also. We all differ on which magic trick we think is being done, but there is an almost universal focus on what is happening on the Table, when the right words are said over it.

But try this on — and please know that I know that to many of you this will sound like gibberish. I know, but that’s my job. But I believe there is something very important here, and I believe that it is something that we must study and learn. We must work through this. We tend to think that we become holy because we eat the holy bread, and because we drink the holy wine. Yes, and amen to a good half of it. But here is the twist — the bread becomes holy because we eat it. The wine becomes holy because we drink it. The body of Christ — which body we are — is holy. We set aside ordinary bread for a consecrated use, and it is our use (and only our use) that makes the bread and wine holy.

The central good that I see coming out of the paedocommunion debate is the central place it gives to the question of “who makes up the body of Jesus?” And in my mind it is as much about whether we will give the baby to the bread as it is over whether we will give the bread to the baby. Any peripheral issue on the edges of the paedocommunion debate that takes away from this, and drags up back into our old besetting sin of staring at the bread and wine, as though something were happening there, is a distraction that ought to be treated as such.

Just a few more brief comments, and we can move on. Thanks to Lane for his reply on Venema’s definition of soft paedocommunion.

On 1 Cor. 10:17, my point is that it doesn’t matter how you translate it — the basic point remains the same. If the loaf is the body (KJV), then all who are bread should get bread. But take it the way Lane prefers, and go with the ESV. “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” This means that everyone that we want to be considered as part of the one body should partake. And this means that anti-paedo-communionists are in a tug of war over the kids. 1 Cor. 10:17 means (on this take) that the non-communicant kids are not considered part of the one body, because “all” who are the one body partake of the one bread. But then on the other hand, we were all baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:13). Perhaps those who don’t think that our children should be treated as part of the one body at the communion table should stop baptizing them into that one body at the font.

I am reserving (or trying to) a more detailed interaction with 1 Corinthians 11 until we get to that part of Venema’s book.

A good question was raised in the comments at Lane’s blog, and I will try to address it briefly here. Here it is: “In Doug’s view, are there any spiritual ‘invisible’ qualifications necessary before taking communion?” The answer is no, there are no invisible “qualifications” before coming to the Table. There are invisible requirements for all who partake, but that is not the same thing. Everyone who comes to the Table is required by God to live before Him in true evangelical faith. That is a requirement, and it is never waived by God. But because it is an invisible requirement, the officers of the visible church have no business policing it, turning it into a qualification. The elders should not police it unless and until a rejection of this invisible faith requirement manifests itself in open disobedience. Then we are to disipline for any such rejection of the faith.

This relates to another set of questions that arose here on my blog, the one relating to my statement that kids should be able to “mentally chew.” Let me tell a story that might seem like an irrelevance for a moment, but I don’t think it is. A few weeks ago, one set of my kids and grandkids went over to the UK to team up with another set for a brief and wild jaunt around Europe. Four adults and nine kinds getting stared at by Europeans, and you can read about some of their exploits over at my wife’s blog. But Seamus Wilson, a two-year-old pistol, spent time every day that he was gone saying, “Church? Wine?” Then, after they got back, and they were able to come to worship last Sunday, late in the service, Seamus conked out, and couldn’t be roused for anything. Slept right through the Lord’s Supper, and woke up at the Gloria Patri.

Now he didn’t get the Lord’s Supper, but not because he was disqualified. He didn’t get it because he was conked out, the same way a six-month-old in a car seat is. When a faithful Christian falls into a coma, we are not supposed to make sure elements of wine and bread get into the IV bag. To insist on getting the elements to a member of the Church who is (for whatever reason) inert tends to turn the whole discussion toward the nature of the elements partaken of — where we have been stuck for 1500 years — instead of toward the nature of the body partaking. There will be more on this later, but I think it is really quite important. The issue is not the metaphysics on the Table, but rather the faith that chews and swallows in the pew.

Like I said, more later.

Lane has responded to me here. Just a couple of things, and I am ready to move on to Venema’s next chapter. First, Lane has not yet responded to whether or not Venema would consider him a soft paedocommunionist. It seems to me that according to the definitions, that is the way it would have to go. Second, Lane asked where I got the identification behind my statement that “all who are bread should get bread.” One commenter at his site correctly identified it as 1 Cor. 10:17. Lane responded to this by noting the placement of commas in various Greek editions, and another commenter pointed out quite correctly that the commas are not part of the original text. Be that as it may, commas or no commas, I cannot see any way to read that text which does not identify the entire body with the entire loaf. And all forms of paedobaptist exclusion of some baptized members from the Table are a refusal of bread to bread.

“For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread” (KJV). “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, because all of us partake of the one loaf” (ISV). “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (ESV). “seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we are all partake of the one bread” (ASV). “Because we, being many, are one loaf, one body; for we all partake of that one loaf” (Darby). “because one bread, one body, are we the many—for we all of the one bread do partake” (YLT). “Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (TNIV). “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (RSV). “For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread” (NKJV).

And, like I said, all who are bread should get bread. The theological point remains standing.

Lane and I have both posted our first response to Venema’s book, and then Lane responded to my post here. There is some good discussion going on in the comments thread over there. Let’s try to do the same here, and maybe we can figure out how a doctrinal disagreement should be handled. Then we can all tell our great-grandchildren that we saw it done once.

I posed the question whether Venema would consider me to be a proponent of the strict paedocommunion position or the soft one (as he defined it). Lane thinks he would take me for a strict proponent, largely because the age of children that we admit to the Table is way earlier than is usually done in Reformed circles. I would take myself as a strict proponent also, but for different reasons.

First, I am very glad that Lane sees the problem with arbitrarily excluding children until the age of 16, for example. And I am grateful to see his willingness to accept a profession of faith from children as young as six. The more of that kind of openness, the better. At the same time, Lane still wants the bar to be set at a credible profession of faith, arising from within the child.

This means, if I understand Venema’s layout correctly, that he would take Lane as a soft proponent of paedocommunion. But at the same time, he would hold that Lane is still within the spirit of the traditional Reformed position, because the traffic of what constitutes a credible profession is still coming from the same direction — the child’s cognitive and spiritual maturity, and ability to act on it.

Now the strictest paedocommunionist is happy to wait until an infant is able to “take” the bread and wine physically. When they can chew, they can come — meaning that the only barrier is a practical one, not a spiritual or theological one. The practice we follow is very similar to this, with the additional stipulation that the child should be able to mentally “chew” as well, which we know they can do as soon as they notice they aren’t getting the elements. But we are not waiting on anything to arise from within them in order to determine if they are “worthy.” We have their baptism, and that is enough. We are simply watching them closely to determine when we can start giving their birthright to them. We don’t wait to hear a profession of faith from them. The Lord’s Supper is a profession of faith, and as soon as we can, we start having them make that profession, teaching them to do it with greater and greater maturity over time.

Now Venema’s book will address the issues surrounding 1 Cor. 11, but every discussion of these issues wants to run ahead to that discussion right away — and to a certain extent has to. All this to apologize for saying what I will no doubt say again later.

Granted that communicants ought to examine themselves, and ought to be receiving exhortations to do so from their first admittance to the Supper, what are they to be looking for as they conduct the examination? The entire context of this passage has to do with the quarrelsome factiousness of the Corinthian church, and nothing directly to do with their cognitive understanding of “the Gospel.” This means, in line with the context, that a proper self-examination in coming to the Supper would have more to do with whether a young participant had been pinching and hassling his sister during the service, and not whether he could articulate the differences between the various theologies of the Real Presence. If he had been pinching his sister, he would have been in principle doing the same thing the Corinthians had been doing to raise the apostle’s ire. Paul had quarrels, fights, and divisions in his crosshairs, not inadequate personal testimonies.

This is not to set aside the important of a clear proclamation of the Gospel in all this — the Word should accompany the sacrament with every administration of it. The clear need to stop pinching one’s sister needs to be set in the context of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, by which means He established His body in us — a body that must be discerned in love as we come together to partake.

So what we are to be looking for in the examination is whether or not we are wrongly dividing the body. And I would argument that a two-year-old who sees that all the rest of his people are partaking of something that he wants to joing them in is a two-year-old who is discerning the body. A minister who shuts him out, despite the fact that the minister himself performed the child’s baptism, is a minister who is not discerning the body rightly, and who ought therefore to examine himself. As I have put it before, all who are bread should get bread.

There are some other comments that could be made here, but I am confident that we will get to them in due course.