RSSFor the children
Darryl and Bill have returned us to the question of what problems in Reformed churches the FV has been trying to fix. I think a central one has to do with the way we treat covenant children. That is to say, though paedocommunion has not been overtly in play during the FV controversy, the FV is about working out the implications of paedocommunion. (I realize there are pro-paedocommunion Reformed pastors who are not part of the FV; but the overlap between paedocommunion and sympathy with FV is pretty thorough.)
On this point, most of the FV types have challenged the Reformed tradition is a very concrete, practical way. We believe that children should be admitted to the table, and the Reformed churches have typically not admitted them.
The problem is this: We say that our children are covenant children. We baptize infants and say they are members of the church. But then we say they have to wait a decade, sometimes two, before they can participate in the covenant meal. The traditional Reformed practice sends a mixed message to our kids: Baptism tells them they are in; exclusion from the table tells them they are out.
Paedocommunion heals that breach. It says that our children are God’s children. Full stop. They are not on the outside looking in. They are not at the threshold waiting for an invitation to enter. They are in. We tell them that God has brought them into His family and seated them at His table, and we exhort them to trust and keep trusting the God who made them His own.
W.H. Chellis
September 26th, 2007 at 10:18 am
How early does the FV allow children to come to the table?
James Jordan
September 26th, 2007 at 10:24 am
There is no FV. There is an FV Conversation. Most of us would say that a baptized child is welcome to the table when he is old enough to chew bread and sip from the rim of a cup. Just the same as when he’s old enough to eat and drink at home. We call that “normal development paedocommunion.”
CBrown
September 26th, 2007 at 11:48 am
This subject relates to the bigger issue of ecclesiology. Many of us (FV and non-FV) agreed last week that we were “high church Calvinists”. But what exactly does that mean when it comes to the question of the sacraments? For instance, I’ve heard FV-sympathizers suggest that the Lord’s Supper is the center of the worship service, as if a worship service is “incomplete” without it. While I’m all for frequent communion, I still want to maintain the primacy of the Word, read and preached. The Word is indispensable; the sacraments are not. The Word is intended to engender and strengthen faith, while the sacraments serve only to strengthen faith.
So, do we all agree that a worship service can be “complete” even without the eucharist?
D Hart
September 26th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Peter, where does the Reformed tradition say explicitly to covenant children to wait a decade? You have created a formal problem that doesn’t really exist. A pastoral and within-the-tradition response would be to encourage pastors and elders and parents to consider whether their children can make a credible profession of faith and encourage them to do so as soon as possible. An outside-the-tradition response is to ignore the very terms of your church polity which acknowledges something called non-communicant member.
Sorry if this sounds brusque. But the playfulness of FV with things that are fairly serious, both the integrity of church officers and a tradition of theological reflection, as well as the embodied souls of our church members is truly discouraging to me. I don’t think you should play with these things. If you really think the Reformed and Presbyterian churches have a problem, then please be a church reformer. Thanks to modernity, you don’t have to worry any more about losing your head.
Peter
September 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Darryl, again I have no idea where you’re coming from. Are you denying that it’s been common practice in the Reformed churches for children to be admitted to the table in their teens? The fact that it’s not “explicitly said” sounds like an appeal to an abstract tradition that doesn’t exist in practice. And I don’t know what you mean by saying that we’re being “playful.”
W.H. Chellis
September 26th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Charles, I guess I agree that it can be “complete” without the eucharist. Twice a month this is reality for my congregation.
Still, I am not sure that I agree to the primacy of the Word over the sacrament. I do not think either has primacy but go together like love and marriage, horse and carriage, peanut butter and jelly!
Surely only the Word can engender faith but it is the sacrament that renews the covenant. In other words, when I draw up a contract, it is not the reading of the contract that creates the relationship but the signing that seals the deal.
W.H. Chellis
September 26th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Peter, our congregation has invited children under the age of 10 and I do not think this is unusual in the RPCNA.
Peter
September 26th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Darryl, on your “be a churchman” remark, I’d direct you to Doug Wilson’s post today. I’d be interested in your response to that.
James Jordan
September 26th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
Mr. Brown, I’d say you confuse Word and preaching. The Word is foundational for everything. This is called Biblicism, and it is the enemy of the so-called “Reformed” faith, or so I hear. Based on the Word, we worship according to the directions of the Word, with preaching and covenant renewal at the Table. The covenant renewal event is, I believe, Table-qualified, which is why the preaching of the Word on that occasion is not to consist of a lecture on the geography of Joshua 14 but is to focus on Jesus. As Calvin said, Sunday morning preaching should be from the gospels. In the order of worship, Table comes after Preaching as a response thereto, or as Preaching leads us to covenant renewal, so Table might be seen as “climactic” in that sense.
It is not a matter of “having communion.” It’s a matter of God’s renewing covenant with us on the Day of the Lord, which always involves the sealing ordinance of the meal.
I hope that’s of help. Anyway, that’s how we set it out two decades ago, and I think pretty much everybody nowadays called “FV” would agree with it, approximately anyway.
DWilson
September 26th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Bill, I don’t think Word and sacrament go together like ham and eggs, or salt and pepper, but rather like cooking and eating. Sacramentalism without the Word preached like an ecclesiastical raw foods movement. And preaching up a hot meal and then not serving it to the congregation is incomplete in a different way. But the “incompleteness” I am asserting here is not to deny the validity or value of church services that don’t have weekly communion. They are a blessing in many ways because God is kind to us all.
Gabriel Rench
September 26th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Mr. Chellis,
I grew up in the PCA where it is common practice to allow children to the supper only after they pass an examination from the elders. For me this examination was around age 11 or 12. For what its worth.
W.H. Chellis
September 26th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Doug, I accept as a friendly amendment.
D Hart
September 26th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Peter, I’m not coming from Mars. I’ve been a member of three Reformed denominations and an officer in two. I am aware of certain practices. But in all my time as an elder I never saw anyone turn away a child who wanted to make a profession of faith. The problem that FV is trying to fix is more legendary than real.
But another reality, that you did not address, is the Presbyterian category of non-communicant membership. Does FV actually promote communing at the Lord’s table without a profession of faith?
The playfulness remark had to do a seeming disregard for the way that some FV teaching and practices may upset people. If you can propose a real way forward for churches that does justice to teachings and practices and procedures already in place, then I’m glad to hear them. But it sounds to me more like FV tilts as problems — which are many — and then uses those problems as cover to run in directions that can’t be directly linked to — dare I say — the tradition.
CBrown
September 26th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
I agree with the Word and Sacrament analogies of Chellis and Wilson. If you’ll indulge a little bit of bragging on my part, my congregation has in some ways been at the forefront in promoting a Word and Sacrament ministry in the RPCNA. We’ve been practicing weekly communion for a few years now. No small feat for a Covenanter church.
I just want us to realize how amazing the past couple of decades have been with regard to the increased frequency of communion observance in Reformed churches. We should be grateful for this progress/reform. If we miss communion one or two weeks out of the year, we should still be able to give thanks to God for the privilege of hearing the gospel preached. Let’s be careful in our infatuation with the Lord’s Supper. Worship is still pretty incredible without it.
JMeyers
September 26th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
The whole point is that children belong to the body of Christ through baptism (1 Cor. 12:12-13) and therefore ought to be eating from the “one loaf” which is “a participation in the body of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16). The problem in the Reformed tradition is that children have been asked to jump through additional hoops in order to be “qualified” to sit at the family Table with the rest of the children of God. It doesn’t matter if the church has an age limit or threshold or not.
A church that makes their baptized children “take a class” or “memorize catechisms questions” or “answer questions at a session meeting” before they are allowed to eat dinner with Jesus is liable to make the Master of the table angry (Mark 10:14). It makes eating and drinking with Jesus something that must be attained or even earned. We believe there is no scriptural warrant for two kinds of membership in the body - the adults who eat and the children who watch the adults eat until they are worthy.
If you are a member of the body of Christ, no matter how insignificant or weak (1 Cor. 12:14-26), you should be at the family Table. And if we were to take Paul more seriously in 1 Cor. 12 we might even make it clear that the babies, the elderly (who can no longer articulate a sound theology of the sacrament), and the mentally handicapped are the honored guests at the Lord’s Table. The bread and wine ought not to be passed around or over them; rather, they should be served first and have the prominent places at our Eucharistic feasts.
Peter
September 26th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Darryl, regarding your characterization of how people associated with the FV behave, I can only assert this, but it’s true: The pastors associated with the FV has worked, cooperatively and peaceably, within local churches and denominations whose practices and procedures were already in place. We wholly support most of those procedures and practices. And we have worked within those practices and procedures even when we differed, while also urging reform in areas where we believe reform was needed.
For example, many of us have been in churches that didn’t have weekly communion, and over time we moved toward weekly communion. This was done carefully, with due consideration for the congregations.
Garrett Craw
September 26th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Professor Hart,
You wrote: “But in all my time as an elder I never saw anyone turn away a child who wanted to make a profession of faith. The problem that FV is trying to fix is more legendary than real.”
I was an elder in the PCA and I saw children get turned away from the table who made, in my mind, credible professions of faith (if we grant that is neccessary). Instead of asking them basic questions about faith, the children (as young as 5) would be brought in, alone, to a room with two or more elders wearing suits, who asked them detailed questions from BOCO 57-5 about things like the nature of the office of deacon. Often children were not just nervous but frightened and when they clammed up and failed this extra-biblical test, they were devastated.
That’s something we immediately fixed when I was installed as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the CREC.
CBrown
September 26th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I agree that paedocommunion is a clear challenge to the Reformed tradition. However, based on the hermeneutics employed by Dr. Leithart in his posts on justification and apostasy, I’m surprised that he would argue for paedocommunion. If we really want to “bow before the Scriptures” and factor into our theology every “nuance” of the Bible’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper, then it seems to me that we would have to give due weight to 1Cor 11:27-29. It seems that the easier and more natural reading of the Bible is that the Lord’s Supper is not for the undiscerning, including small children. I’m surprised by the FV’s willingness (eagerness?) to brush aside the words about self-examination. Not just the Reformed tradition, but the entire Western Church (by and large) has understood the Lord’s Supper to be a sacrament that requires a greater level of discretion on the part of the recipient than is the case in baptism. Personally, I’m still comfortable with that nuance and unevenness in the Scriptures. I don’t see a breach needing to be healed.
Nevertheless, I’m still hopeful that a common ground can be obtained. I’m open to younger children communing. But I don’t think that we’re making them “jump through additional hoops” by requiring them to profess faith. We require adults to profess faith, too. The Bible calls us to profess faith. Given the judgment attached to undiscerning communion, why would we be so eager to have our toddlers commune? If the matter of paedocommunion is less than clear-cut (which church history seems to suggest), then it seems like a safer practice to make our children wait a few years before admitting them to the Table.
Peter
September 27th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Pastor Brown, as I expect you already know, there has been a lot of writing done on paedocommunion with 1 Corinthians 11 very much in play. You may not agree with the conclusions, but you can’t say that it’s been brushed aside. Jeff Meyers wrote a fairly long essay a number of years ago on this, and Tim Gallant deals with 1 Corinthians 11 in his book on paedocommunion.
JMeyers
September 27th, 2007 at 7:59 am
CBrown: Are you aware of the work that “we” and others have done on 1 Cor. 11:27-29? We have given due weight to 1 Cor. 11. I’d encourage you to read the relevant chapters of The Case for Covenant Communion, especially mine called “Presbyterian, Examine Thyself: Restoring Children to the Table”. You may also read Tim Gallant’s fine essay on this subject Examination & Remembrance: Does 1 Corinthians 11.28 Spell the Death-Knell for Paedocommunion?
W.H. Chellis
September 27th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Can we agree that on rejecting the abuses?
To often the Reformed have acted like baptists by believing their children to be “little vipors”. (Of course they are but what does that have to do with their regenerations… they are also little saints… at the same time.)
Can we at least agree that, apart from the question of paedo-communion, baptized covenant children are Christians?
James Jordan
September 27th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Pastor Chellis, I’m very happy to find common ground there. It seems to me that the only reasonable alternative to paedocommunion is the belief that children are wholly Christ’s and Christians, but not yet ready for “solid food.” Here, however, one would have to be most careful not to introduce a “work” that must be done to “earn” the solid food: memory of a catechism, a conversion experience, and the like. And that’s where the rub comes. How do you decide when solid food should be made available?
Perhaps from Lev. 27, where at the age of 5 a child passes a threshold. It’s clear from Num. 3 and 8 that the “firstborn” saved at the first passover were male children under five — the statistics leave this in no doubt, as does the price for the children. So, one might make a case for the age of five, I think.
At the same time, EVERY passage in the Bible that discusses admission to the Temple and to feasts and to Jesus’ arms includes children. There is NO passage anywhere that excludes them. I Cor. 11 speaks of adults, very clearly. Of course, we’ve been writing on this for 25 years, and I can only say to Rev. Brown that G.I.Williamson and the rest of the OPC study committee, after examining the evidence, came down squarely in favor of paedocommunion. If someone as hardcore Presbyterian traditionistic as Williamson thinks there is good reason to change, then I hope you and others here will agree that there may well be something to considering paedocommunion.
Finally, a 3-year old child is very much aware that bread and something good to drink are being passed by him/her and that he/she is EXCLUDED. He reaches out his little hand and it must be pushed down. This teaches a child that he’s excluded from Jesus, from the manifestation of Jesus in the body and blood. He’s very much aware of being excluded.
Peter
September 27th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Bill, good question. I agree with that for sure.
CBrown
September 27th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
A friend gave me Meyers’ book on worship a few years ago, and at that time I read the chapter on children at the Table. And I just read two of Gallant’s essays online. Here are a few further thoughts:
1. I didn’t mean to say that 1Cor 11 has been ignored by FV writers. What surprised me was an apparent switch in hermeneutics. When discussing apostasy here, the FV side was trying to take the biblical words at face value. Now, under this discussion, it seems like 1Cor 11 is not handled the same way. As one example, Meyers’ chapter makes a big point about translating “examine” as “prove”. Even though most English translation go with “examine”, “prove” is a tenable translation. Still, though, the word carries the connotation of testing/examination. How do we “prove”? By testing. That’s what you find in the Greek lexica. Also, the words in that passage are personal and comprehensive: “let a person”, “for anyone”. As I said before, a more natural reading of the text seems to suggest that each and every communicant is called to “test” and “discern”. In this case, the FV writers seem to be trying to move beyond the straightforward reading of the Bible. That’s not the modus operandi I’ve observed in other FV exegesis.
2. Obviously, you give due weight to 1Cor 11. You have to. But, from my perspective, you don’t give due weight to self-examination. You don’t believe the passage requires that of communicants. That’s your prerogative. But let’s at least acknowledge that there’s a pretty strong tradition of self-examination in the Western Church. In this case, the FV is not just trying to correct something in the Reformed tradition or in Presbyterian practice. This is also the practice of the Lutherans and the Roman Catholics.
3. My hunch is that this interest in paedocommunion is not simply driven by mere exegesis of the Bible. The FV is rightly concerned that we consider the “objectivity of the covenant”. But in doing that, we can’t forget the “subjectivity of the covenant”. My concern is that some of this interest in paedocommunion may be an overreaction against abuses of the subjectivity of the covenant. Yes, unhealthy introspection has occurred at times. Yes, too much has sometimes been required of covenant children when they professed faith. If such abuses were corrected, though, would we still be as interested in paedocommunion? Perhaps.
Dave Reese
September 27th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Marcel quoted Bavinck (I think) in the early part of his book on baptism, noting that our sacramental practice is that which ultimately makes manifest our true theological commitments. All the loci come to a cross-roads at the sacraments (e.g. theology proper, anthropology, ecclesiology, soteriology, etc.) and what we believe (not matter what we say we believe) is actually fleshed out there.
Questions:
1) Yes or no?
2) If yes, wouldn’t the implications of Peter’s claim above be an admission that the FV (not that there is such a thing) has a different theology than that of the Reformed churches?
3) If yes, then isn’t that the bottom line (meaning that the FV has found that Confessional Reformed theology does not lead to their sacramental practice (and historically, never has), thus they have sought to create an alternative theology…because the confessional theology did not produce…that will end up where they are at sacramentally…which would explain the desire to radically redo loci such as covenant theology, justification, etc.)?
No?
James Jordan
September 27th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
1. No. God is three and one and there is no one center or focus of all theology. Yes things come together there, but things come together elsewhere also.
2. Therefore, no. Or, yes. Depending on what is meant by “theology” and what aspect, dimension, etc. one is discussing. As I said last week, paedocommunion has a more presuppositional view of faith than the “primacy of the intellect” “homo sapiens” Greek view that tends to be found in the Reformers. But paedocommunion is all over all the churches today; half the professors at most conservative Presbyterian seminaries believe in it; so it’s not unique to “FV” people. “FV” people are, however, committed to man as “homo adorans,” and we are all Vantillian presuppositionalists, so to whatever extent all that complex of things modifies the individualistic and intellectualistic Reformed tradition, then yes, we are different.
3. “FV” have not “radically” redone the loci you mention. All FV opinions are fully found in lots of prior Reformed thinkers. It’s worth mentioning that one of the Strassburg reformers, Wolfgang Musculus, argued that the Reformers should go back beyond medieval Rome’s rejection of children at the table and go back to the paedocommunion of the first 1000 years of Western Christendom. Why he did not have any takers at that time is something that we’ve been discussing over on Caleb Stegall’s line of interest.
Dave Reese
September 27th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
I was Jordan that said, concerning the covenant theology of Westminster:
“I’m a lot more radical on this than Joel. I think the phrase “the distance between God and creatures†is close to presuppositionally pagan, though of course not intended to be. It presupposes a scale of being metaphysics. God is infinitely close to His creatures. There is no distance, metaphorical or otherwise (well, in the creation all is metaphor).
Moreover, God never “voluntarily condescends†to anyone, because there is no distance to overcome. God created us to understand Him perfectly, and He never needs to condescend. There is no dialectic.
The covenant is not something God had to come up with because He goofed and made the creation far away from Himself. Man was created in covenant, because men is the image of God, and God exists in covenant. It seems to me that this is just basic Vantillianism.
I know Joel wants to be conservative on the original statement and put a good spin on it, and I’m the first to insist that “scholasticism†was a necessary phase of Christian history and that what it was “getting at†must be retained. But for myself, I think this whole chapter is very confusing, and from a pastoral standpoint, I want something that is clear and does not need to be explained at length to be understood.”
That sounds, and even claims to be, “radical” does it not?
Furthermore it was Peter that said:
“At the risk of bringing discomfort…I admit that my work on justification has done more than “restate†traditional Protestant formulations.”
That sounds “radical” does it not?
These are the two loci I mentioned and these are two quotes to substantiate what I said. No?
James Jordan
September 27th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
I don’t regard what I wrote as radically recasting covenant theology, only radically purifying the language of pagan hangovers.
James Jordan
September 27th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
I’m sorry, but my reply was very incomplete. You wrote originally “the theology of the Reformed churches.” The covenant of works theology is hardly the theology of the Reformed churches. My criticisms of the WCF on this point are to bring it in line with other Reformed churches, churches where covenant theology has made progress over the last century, as in the Netherlands.
Dave Reese
September 27th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Jordan writes: “The covenant of works theology is hardly the theology of the Reformed churches.” Did you mean to say ‘hardly’ or ‘hardily’? Whether we are talking British (Westminster Divines), Continental (Brakel, Witsius, Bavinck, etc.) or American (Hodge, etc.) Reformed, the Covenant of Works is a major component of Reformed theology (which is Federal theology after all). As you seem to admit, it is the departures from the established tradition (what you call ‘progress’) in the past century that has sought to down-play the Covenant of Works in the system. Thus you are trying to bring the Westminster theology in line with new ideas about covenant theology.
Yet, as it is, the Westminster theology is a thoroughgoing and consistent system (I know that this is not a welcomed term) based upon the two-covenant idea. As you are seeking to “bring it in lineâ€, you are finding that you must change much more than simply the chapter on the Covenants. Doesn’t this lead to the conclusion that in all honesty you have a substantially different theology than that of Westminster? This doesn’t have to be a bad thing…it is just what it is. No?
James Jordan
September 28th, 2007 at 10:05 am
I see the WCF as a consensus document, with no “system of doctrine,” so I can’t quite accept the terms of your question. At the same time, I freely admit that I would like to toss out all of Chapter 7 and rework the matter from the bottom up. So, if for someone that means I have a substantially different theology, then that’s okay. I don’t see it that way myself, but I really don’t care a whole lot what the present-day “Reformed” world thinks.
When I was young, the Reformed world was a broad, scholarly, interesting place where all kinds of things were discussed. I can tell you that when I graduated from seminary virtually everyone took an exception to the “covenant of works” notion when examined for ordination. Now the Reformed world has become a shallow, tiny, dull, anti-scholarly, sectarian location. It has pretty much departed wholly from what it once was, and I’m not interested in it any longer.
I don’t mean that as an insult to anyone here, but I’m speaking broadly of how things have turned. If you want to know more precisely what I’m getting at, go to http://www.biblicalhorizons.com and read Biblical Horizons #177, “The Closing of the Calvinistic Mind.”
James Jordan
September 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am
I repeat that I mean no insult to anyone HERE in writing that the “Reformed” world no longer seems to be a place where intelligent discussion can take place. Peter Leithart’s essay in the current *Credenda Agenda* makes this point quite well. The list of books on the Reformed Index has grown large in recent years, and when I was young, there was no such Index at all!!
ruberad
September 28th, 2007 at 10:26 am
As long as we’re sharing anecdotes, at my PCA, I made the decision to bring my 6-year-old to the communion class taught by the pastor, and after reviewing the study sheet (communion doctrines only — nothing about the office of deacon!) with him, I brought him to an interview with our pastor and two elders. My son was (understandably) a little bit nervous, and frankly, he answered some of the questions doctrinally wrong, but the elders were gracious, and led him through, and for the past year, he has joined us in the table.
FWIW, I consider my 6-year-old to be somewhat exceptional; I don’t anticipate (at this point anyways), that my now-3-year-old will be have the ability to make a similarly credible confession of faith when he’s 6. But definitely 10-12 seems a quite late, and I am not aware of any children in my church who were made to wait that long. OTOH, there are families who have children younger than mine partaking of communion.
Maybe there are problem congregations out there, but in my experience, FV/paedocommunion is an overreaction to a phantom.