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

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.

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.”

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 line”, 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?

“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?

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.

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?

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.