The Achilles’ heel of the argument for paedocommunion, however, is the teaching of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34. In this passage, the Apostle addresses a particular problem in the Corinthian church and offers general guidelines regarding what is required of those who receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. After describing the divisive and unholy conduct of some of the Corinthians (vv. 17–22), the Apostle recalls the Lord’s institution of the Lord’s Supper (vv. 23–26) and thereafter provides instructions regarding a proper preparation for and partaking of Christ by faith in the sacrament (vv. 27–29).

Since the sixteenth century, Reformed and Presbyterian churches have not permitted baptized children of believing parents to partake of the Lord’s Supper without previously professing their faith (see Heidelberg Catechism 81; Belgic Confession, Art. 35; Westminster Larger Catechism 177). However, in recent decades, many Reformed denominations have had to respond to advocates of paedocommunion (“child communion”) who have vigorously challenged this consensus.
According to advocates of paedocommunion, the traditional practice of Reformed churches represents a departure from the historic practice of the Christian church. More importantly, paedocommunionists insist that the historic position of the Reformed churches is inconsistent with their doctrine of the covenant. Since the children of believers are members of the covenant community or visible church, they should be admitted to the Lord’s Table to be nourished in the faith and in fellowship with Jesus Christ.
The historical argument for paedocommunion is at best inconclusive. Unlike the significant evidence for the practice of infant baptism in the early church, there is no compelling evidence for the practice of paedocommunion. Though the Eastern church practices paedocommunion to the present day, there is no mention of this practice in the voluminous writings of the early church fathers. In the early third century, Origen expressly stated that children were not given holy communion.1
Whatever the historical evidence for paedocommunion suggests, the more fundamental question is, What do the Scriptures teach about the proper recipients of the Lord’s Supper?
Advocates of paedocommunion often appeal to the Old Testament Passover Feast as a precedent for the admission of covenant children to the Lord’s Supper. Just as covenant children participated in this annual feast and in other covenant meals under the Old Testament economy, so they should be welcomed to participate in the new covenant meal, the Lord’s Supper.
Although the appeal to the analogy of the Passover is a key component of the argument for paedocommunion, it has several significant problems. First, the Deuteronomic instructions regarding the Passover require only males to celebrate this feast annually in the place where the Lord has chosen to place His name (Deut. 16:1–8, 16).
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, March 10, 2024
This congregation that Polycarp is writing to has lost a Pastor who’s fallen away. They are to watch their own lives and doctrine so that they do not go the same way. Don’t be swayed, don’t be dragged, don’t be seduced, or driven off the road. In order to stand firm we need to ‘love the brotherhood.’ Polycarp is quoting 1 Peter 2.17. The brotherhood here is just the church. Our standing firm requires that we are with one another.

This is the next part of my ongoing series exploring the letter written by St Polycarp to the church in Philippi, collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill of the Raven’s Writing Desk.
You can read the previous parts at these links: I; II; III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX.
Dear Adsum
Thank you for your last letter, particularly your guidance to ask God for patience in the midst of trials. Though, I must admit, this is a “thanks, I hate it” sort of thank you. Who wants more patience? People who want to be more like Jesus.
I am not a patient man. My wife is much more patient than me, as are many others I know. I think of the dear patience of a close friend whose debilitating illness has not been healed by the Lord and his desire to keep pressing in to follow Jesus anyway. It’s an inspiration to me.
Of course, I don’t think he’ll recognise himself in that sentence, because I don’t think he thinks he’s a patient man.
Today’s passage in Polycarp is:
Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in the faith, loving the brotherhood, and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your intercourse with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because “alms delivers from death.” Be all of you subject one to another, having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles,” that you may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct.
Stand fast! Because of the example of Jesus and of the saints that we’ve already heard we should stand firm. Christians are to be boulders. The sort of obstacle that the wind and waves of life can’t move.
I find myself drawn to rural examples. I’ve lived in cities for my whole adult life, and for all my primary school had a flock of sheep (yes, really) I don’t know much about the countryside. I do recall once driving up a steep track in Wales that a flock of sheep had decided to sit down on at night. Progress was difficult.
Progress is even harder if something larger than your car, like a cow, decides to stop in the middle of the road. You can’t do anything about it except wait. The cow has no interest in the urgency of my journey, they go their own way. Oddly, Christians in this analogy are the cow, not the car.
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Plenty of Christians have found deeply satisfying and intellectually sophisticated answers to questions that troubled them. But they always found them because they were walking with God at the time, moving in His direction, obeying what they already knew, while waiting on Him to teach them further. The man refusing to budge until he gets answers is really the child with a folded-arms sulky posture: demanding God give an account to him of the secrets of the universe or he’ll refuse to come along. The book of Job answers the man demanding explanations by saying that the answers are a lot more than you could comprehend. Trust and submit to what you do understand, and do not presume that you could squeeze the ocean of God’s ways into the the 2 litre bottle of your own intellect.

Dear Jeremy,
It’s always enjoyable to spend time discussing theology with someone like you. You have a very fertile imagination and a robust logic, which combine for stimulating conversation.
Your strength is also your Achilles heel. It is your intellectual aptitude that is your enemy when it comes to the things of faith. You are one of those Christians who gets “stuck in his head”, and hopes to think his way out of the problem. When he can’t, he assumes the only explanation must be that Christianity is faulty (for if it were not, his brilliance would have solved the mental conundrum, right?).
We call this the paralysis of analysis: the Christian who becomes immobile in his devotion, commitment, or even Christian relationships, because he has to “solve” the problem in his mind first. The problem can be of many kinds: how does Christian growth happen, how does prayer really work, how does God’s sovereignty correspond with human choice, how does God’s foreknowledge work with human sinfulness, why does evil exist in a world made by God, why are there so many religions, what happens to those who have not heard the Gospel, could there really be an eternal hell, or many other questions.
Now most thinking Christians face and tackle these questions in some form and at some point in their lives. The difference between them and you is that other Christians integrate these questions into the broader experience of being a Christian. The Christian experience is more than a mental, cerebral experience of problem-solving: it is a life of loving, obeying, serving, and worshipping. In your case, however, these questions become like errors in an equation that must be solved before proceeding one step further. You become fixated on them, chase them around and around, and become quite despondent if you are unable to resolve them in your head.
What you cannot see is that it is quite arrogant to reduce the Christian life, and indeed all of life, into mental events taking place inside your head. While you chase these questions as if all of life depended on it, there are all kinds needs around you: people needing to be loved, served, and helped. And you cannot see that while you magnify these questions into all-consuming dilemmas, you are being quite lazy, neglectful, and irresponsible in other areas.
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