Matt Colvin does a good job advancing our discussion of the Lord’s Supper here. I am talking, obviously, about his description of our disagreement, and not about the side he takes in that disagreement. He is quite right that I am simply following Westminster at this point. I would only add two things about that. The first is that some of the unique funkiness about how my position sounds is likely the result of my harmonization of the Reformed view of faith with the practice of child communion. The second is that I would like to take the whole question down one more layer.
Matt is right to say that I believe that faith is a faculty. But this is where I think his argument slips. It is not a faculty that comes and goes; it is not a discrete faculty, or a solitary organ. I also have no problem with Matt’s description of faith as a characteristic of a life lived over time. Faith does not come out of a “faith box,” but rather comes from the heart of a man. So what gives?
The missing element here is what I have described as the absolute necessity of the new birth, which I will explain in a minute.
This is why I said in an earlier post that my concerns are not baptistic so much as they are evangelical. When my baptist friends cheer me on, it is because they agree with my evangelicalism. They are bewildered by what I will do with the babies. When my paedobaptist friends do not cheer me on, it is because they are drifting away from that evangelicalism. They like what I do with the babies, for the most part, but they want it grounded in a different theology.
Matt says this:
“A one-year-old nursing baby is a loyal member of my family without doing anything. A 12 year-old who insists on behaving the same way is obviously not loyal. He doesn’t have pistis in me or his mother. It’s not a matter of having an imparted faculty inside you. It’s a matter of walking in the way of trust and loyalty to the family — or in the case of Christians, trust and loyalty to Jesus.”
Now I obviously agree with this, as far as it goes. But why? Why does one covenant child grow up loving Jesus, and another, just as baptized and just as communed, grow up despising Him? The answer is the new birth. You must be born again. It is not having a “imparted faculty” inside you, as a distinct faculty. It is a matter of having an imparted heart.
If there are only two final destinations, Heaven or Hell, and there are, and if it is possible for baptized Christians, with all their external papers in order, to go to Hell, and it is, and if God is sovereign over all history (which includes every biography), then we must have a robust doctrine of heart regeneration. It is the only way to make sense of the basic data.
This is why I hold that true faith in Jesus is a faculty. It is a faculty or characteristic of a regenerate heart. Unregenerate hearts have the same faculty called “faith,” but because they are still (by nature) objects of wrath, that faculty is directed toward idols. We accept covenant children as having a true heart of faith, and we teach them how to grow from immature faith to a more mature faith, unless and until works of the flesh make their lack of regeneration manifest to all.
The baptists see this problem, and want to uproot the tares before it is time. They wind up damaging the wheat. The sacramentalists, I believe, are too careless about letting everything grow together, until eventually, like the Episcopal Church, they think that morning glory is wheat. And why shouldn’t we ordain this morning glory as a bishop? His relationship with the ragweed is a mutually affirming and caring relationship.
What I am after is an institutional Church with an evangelical heart. I am at war with false dichotomies. It need not be sectarian to be evangelical, and it need not be formalist to be a church instead of a sect.
Now a couple more things. There is nothing whatever semi-Marcionite about this position of mine. How can it be a rejection of the authority of the Old Testament to take to heart all the authoritative examples and warnings from the Old Testament? The Old Testament demands a unity of heart and external worship. God desires mercy, not sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrifice. Sacrifices and burnt offerings God did not require, but a humble and contrite heart. Rend your hearts, not your garments. Circumcise your hearts therefore. These were not things that Marcion could understand. Had he understood them, he would not have rejected the Word of God.
And neither is it any form of recognizable gnosticism. There is nothing esoteric or utopian about what I am urging. I do not believe that regeneration is a mystery spark, hidden down deep in our hearts. Rather, it is the result of God’s supernatural work, by which He restores nature. The transformation of the water at Cana was a supernatural act, but it did not have a supernatural result. Jesus made natural wine, not supernatural ambrosia, but He nevertheless did it by supernatural means. In the new birth, God makes a new man out of an old one; He makes a true man out of a wrecked one. He doesn’t create heavenly fairies. God by His supernatural power restores nature.
Sure, there are evangelicals out there who are functionally gnostics, who have embued their priests (e.g. summer camp counselors) with mysterious powers. Here, pray this prayer, and the divine spark is kindled within. But, of course, there are sacramentalists who are every bit as gnostic. They have embued their priests (e.g. priests) with mysterious powers. Here, eat this wafer, and the divine mystery starts within. One says mumbo and the other says jumbo. But to insist that the recipient is receiving extra “gnosis” through the ritual, despite all appearances, despite the life lived, is also gnosticism. Some gnostics use rituals and some use formulas. So what? What they have in common is their refusal to integrate their “mystery,” whatever it is, with this life, this history, this biography.
So it is not gnostic to insist (pastorally) on an integrated life, one where the inner and outer man increasingly line up. It is not gnostic to shepherd little children (whom Christ has welcomed), teaching and urging them to live faithfully as disciples — for that is what they are. But as real disciples, one of the foundational things they must learn is the lesson which Nicodemus had somehow missed. You must be born again. Wanting covenant children to grow up enjoying the blessing of God in practice (and not just on paper) is the commanded blending of earthy and heavenly, inner and outer, heart and body, physical and spiritual.