See other posts in this series:
Part 2: Paedocommunion? – Saved by Some Kinda Faith or a Nuther
15 C. from the Cantoria by Luca della Robbia
AN EXPERIMENT ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK THE BIBLE IS SAYING
Is true faith a normal expectation for Christians to have of their infant children? Today I offer you an experiment to test this question. You can find the instructions for the experiment at the last portion of this post.
If you and your wife or husband have been deliberating over the idea of paedobaptism or paedocommunion, it is likely that the question of infant-faith has arisen. Can an infant be faith-filled? Does the Bible teach us to feel a certain way about this?
I would like to help you cross a hurdle today – or to remove one significant barrier from your path. I want to show you that the Bible teaches you to teach your children that the norm in the church is for faith and salvation to belong to the children of believers. We must confess that infant faith is the norm…from the womb, no less. And we can show that from the Bible. But first, a word on where we are going.
When I am driving my family somewhere new, or if we are walking through a place we don’t know, my wife, understandibly wants to know 1) Where we are going, and 2) how far to the destination. Sometimes when I start rambling in a conversation in the kitchen, my wife says, “I can listen, but I need to know where we are going, and how far!!” So before I start a-talkin’ I want to let you in on the future scope of posts in this category.
WHERE ARE WE GOING?
I wish to deal as fully as possible with the topic of covenant and children. But that’s a big topic. I believe that to properly handle the topic of baptism or participation in the Lord’s table, we need to discuss three related, controversial topics: paedofaith, paedobaptism, and paedocommunion. Can infants have faith? Should infant children of Christians be baptized? Should baptized children also be participating in the Eucharist, even before they can articulate the articles of the faith?
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?
Is this a one post hit and run? No — there is so much to say, it’s going to be a regular string of posts. And here is a basic, beginning agenda: I want to first lay some groundwork for all three of the above categories in that same order: 1) faith, 2) baptism, 3) communion. But after that, I may feel free to move around these interrelated topics.
A PREVIEW OF MY OWN VIEWS
I believe the Bible says children of believers are to be treated as believing Christians. Of course, that is, until or unless they should later display apostasy, confirmed by church disciplinary excommunication (which we don’t quickly declare over any brother, since the process of admonition and attempted restoration is a long one). And we don’t expect apostasy as the norm. I believe we are commanded to baptize and to share the table with our small Christians, and that we are not just doing this willy-nilly, but we do this as natural because the Bible also explains that they are normatively expected to have faith from the womb.
All of this remains to be seen, of course. You don’t have to crumple in submission to these claims, of course. We check the Bible, of course. But I think that there is a substantial amount of satisfying and clear material straight out of yonder Bible, such that I won’t even have to make anything up!
DIFFERENT VIEWS IN THE CHURCH
I know that I am talking to three disparate groups: baptists, modern-paedobaptists, and paedocommunionists. But before I can continue, a caveat. I do not expect all the posts to be as long as this one, because today I am introducing a lot of material, but this post has a following background section, and then a devotionally oriented, Bible encouragement. If you are mainly interested in seeing what biblical encouragement I have to offer today, but are not wanting your brain to explode with details of each group listed, then I suggest you skip down to the heading below that says, “THE BIBLE TAKES A SIDE.” If you want to see who I think the parties are in the argument, then here is my description of the groups:
1) Baptists believe we may not confirm God’s covenant with anyone before a manifest profession of their own comprehension of the faith. Generally speaking, this group includes most non-denominational Christians, and also those believers whose denominations use the name “Baptist.” It would also generally include “Bible churches.” People with this view, those who are already involved in arguing for this view, prefer to call themselves “believer’s baptist” or “credobaptist.” But an efficient and historic term is “baptist,” which I prefer over “credobaptist.” I will grant my credobaptist friend have a right to such a term, but since my position is also that we may only baptize believers (including infant believers), I am less fond of giving up the goods by allowing that term to be canonized in a way that excludes paedocommunionists. With credobaptists, I am not arguing that children must have faith first – on that we agree. With credobaptists, I am asserting that the Bible demands us to expect infant faith out of our preborn children. But you may see me say either “baptist” or “credobaptist” in the future of these posts. It may be safely said that the argument between credobaptists and infant-baptists is usually between baptists and presbyterians – who often find themselves allied as evangelical partners in most other areas.
2) Modern-Paedobaptists (an arbitrary term I am setting up in order to distinguish between #2 and #3). “Modern-Paedobaptists” are people who believe we may confirm the first sacrament (baptism) but not the second sacrament (the Lord’s Supper) as appropriate to a child born to Christians before a manifest profession of their own comprehension of the faith. This was the position of most of the Reformers, including Calvin; and it is the denominational position of most Presbyterian groups, and also of most Methodists, Lutherans, Roman Catholics. A special note may be given to Anglicans whose basic standards are written this way, but whose majority practice is more like #3 to follow. It may also be safely said that the main argument between infantbaptists and infantcommunionists is frequently or usually between two factions of conservative presbyterians. Both sides agree on baptising their children, but the modern-paedobaptists presbyterians are happy to follow Calvin in this argument. And of course, it is easy to want to go with Calvin in an in-house presbyterian argument. Infant baptism in general is the older view between #1 and #2. But the infant baptism that rejected children from the table was formalized around the same time as the emergence of anabaptism in the time of the reformation.
3) Paedocommunionists are people who believe we must confirm God’s covenant within our children, first by baptism, and then when they are able to eat, by the meal. This group is smallest now, but historically this view was antecedant to #2 and #1. I will argue not only that this is the view (in principle) of the Old Testament, but is demonstrably the command of Paul. It is the practice that was used from the earliest church up through the first millennia. It was a pillar of the reform attempts of Jan Hus (John Huss), who tried to bring infant communion back as a return to the standard old-way of the church. It has always been the practice of the Eastern Orthodox churches. It is the current majority practice of Anglicans to allow baptized children to commune. There is a growing group of Presbyterians and Anglicans who are teaching this view theologically, and not by the mere accident of lazy practice. It would be safe to indict Kuyperian Commentary as a Paedocommunionist group, but it would be unsafe to assume that any contributing scholar is necessarily included in this grouping. Let me say happilly, we all have baptist (#1) friends, and many modern-paedobaptist (#2) friends – people who greatly bless us in spirit and formation.
Also from the Cantoria by Luca della Robbia, 15th C.
—The Encouraging, Bible Part of the Post—
THE BIBLE TAKES A SIDE
This post will not be my only post that will argue this view – that the Bible says that we must treat our Children as nascent Christians. I will focus on the Psalms today, and in a future post on Jesus laying hands on the children. In fact I have already envisioned other, shorter posts which will be centered on other quick “Bible Experiments” to help elucidate what you think a given text must mean on the topic of children and covenant.
A GRAND EXPERIMENT – FOR REAL!
Today I want to propose a grand experiment, I want to suggest an actual experiment for finding out what you think the Bible says and means on this subject. The only items you will need for this experiment are your children and a Bible.
I am going to ask you to read sections out of three Psalms out loud with your children, and ask yourself whether you and your children can read these without the expectation of normative faith in infants of believers. Can the covenant community have survived for 1000 years from David to Jesus without having held to such a view? Don’t these verses both teach and demand that we corporately confess such a view?
If you have already baptized your children, I can only imagine you are allowing your children to sing the Psalms. If you are from a baptist camp who sees children as necessarily non-saved, then say these sections outloud to yourselves, and then ask yourself why you believe children to be excluded from the faithful.
But remember, that as the church sings the Psalms, we are confessing them to be God’s word and not an opinion.
You can easily print out the sections by following this link, or just leave the screen open to where everyone participating see it.
So here goes (all passages are ESV):
Psalm 22:9-10
9 Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
10 On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Psalm 71:4-6
4 Rescue me, O my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the grasp of the unjust and cruel man.
5 For you, O Lord, are my hope,
my trust, O Lord, from my youth.
6 Upon you I have leaned from before my birth;
you are he who took me from my mother’s womb.
My praise is continually of you.
Psalm 8:1-2
1 O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
–end of experiment–
Monks and Children Singing in art from the Tacuinum Sanitatis – (not a Christian work)
These verses are far from the sole reason to hold such views, but I have, over many years, found them to be a great source of weighty reason to trust the good promise of God which is also found elsewhere many times over.
Before we leave the topic of infant-faith, we will in the next post look at Jesus blessing the children. And soon enough there will be some other experiment-style posts. If you have an interest in this topic, please keep checking back!
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Luke Welch has a master’s degree from Covenant Seminary and preaches regularly in a conservative Anglican church in Maryland. He blogs about Bible structure at SUBTEXT. Follow him on Twitter: @lukeawelch<>
Great post, Luke. Your experiment with the Psalm texts is equally applicable to baptismal texts such as Gal. 3.27, Rom. 6.2-4. If Paul indeed takes pains to communicate that ALL who are baptized are through baptism clothed with Christ, united with him in his death and resurrection etc., then there’s even less room for a “wait and see” attitude regarding our children. They are in Christ and thus are entitled to the food of eternal life.
Shawn, you’re beating me to the punch on those!
Ha! Well, I still look forward to how you flesh it all out.
Luke, I come from the Baptist position, and I would read the first two Psalm passages (22 and 71) as references to God’s predestination but not as references to the infant’s faith. How do you respond to this point of view?
Hi Neal, thanks for the question and comment.
I would point out, for example, that the statement is decidedly not about future faith, but about faith from the womb:
“..You made me trust you at my mother’s breasts,” means you gave me faith from the time I was nursing. (Ps 22.9) And you can see that this is compared to “from my birth,” and “from the womb” in the surrounding context:
“Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
10 On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”
I would also just point out that this was a song sung by the whole congregation – which leads them all to confess that they have regularly to think of themselves as having been owned, through faith, by God since the womb. That would be normal, and it is illustrated in the circumcision they received marking out this fact.
Nice topic. I understand that Baptists in particular don’t seem to value the history of the Christian Church, as it undermines many of their doctrinal positions. It is easier to make excuses about how the early/ancient church was apostate. The inconvenient truth of the fact that the same “apostate” church compiled the Scriptures and gave us the Canon, the same “apostate” church debated and struggled with how to correctly understand what we understand as the Trinity, the same “apostate” church formulated our understanding on the two natures of Christ, and we could go on and on.
That same ancient church that gave us the Scriptures and formulated the doctrine of the Trinity has always baptized children and has always fed them the body and blood of our Saviour. Always–it hasn’t been a modern day “issue” with the ancient church because it has always understood that the Children of Believers are a part of the covenant.
Unlike the Roman Catholic view of so-called “confirmation” or the Baptist secret yearning to have something similar via “dedication” the ancient church has included infants in Communion from the moment they were baptized. Always.
The historical study is quite interesting, and the inclusion of baptized children at the Eucharist is attested by very old sources. The delay of communion for children is an innovation of the Western church, and there are multiple theories for its development, chief of which is that it’s onset coincides with the codification of transubstantiation or that it coincides with the Western practice of the bishop (not the parish priest as in the Eastern church) as the only one who could perform the rite of confirmation (so that you had to wait sometimes years before the bishop could visit your parish). Keep in mind, though, that even the Roman church will commune children prior to confirmation. First communion usually happens around age 6 while confirmation takes place around 12 or 13. I think this practice began sometime in the 19th century, but you might want to double check that.
Thanks for your comments guys.
Shawn, enjoyed your comments. The church in the East guards the table like few others and this as you know, adds a layer of responsibility to both the priests/deacons and the parents. In the East we calendar the Christian sabbath beginning at sundown Saturday and no food is consumed after that time. Additionally we acknowledge our known sins to a member of the clergy, a confessor priest, either Saturday at Vespers or early Sunday morning prior to the main liturgy. So the question comes at what age should a child begin to fast the night before the holy break-fast, the Eucharist? At what point should a child begin to make a confession of sins prior to communing as is expected of an adult?
Confession often begins naturally as when a child can speak and can learn other things. Fasting in the Eastern church allows children, the elderly and those sick to eat as needed. Their health is important to God, too and when parents feel that children can begin a limited fast then that teaching and practice begins.
To dialogue with our Baptist friends, the confession of sins is following the command of the Apostles and then in following centuries once the church was given the completed Canon with Scriptures like James 5, John 20, etc. But there are other reasons as well, primarily of penance and accountability. When it comes to guarding the table, Churches of the East link the Eucharist to confession and fasting so were you to visit one of our churches and go forward for communion the priest would politely hand you a piece of blessed bread from the side (not consecrated) and have you move on. He doesn’t know your spiritual commitment,whether you might be under discipline from another body, if you understand the Sacrament or whether you have recently confessed your sins.
When it comes to confession each of us would like to handle our faults ourselves. We love 1 John 1:9 and so “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” We feel that all is good. Most of the time we convince ourselves that we can manage repentance and turning from sin at our own pace and without condemnation from some busybody. Just as in sneaking a piece of chocolate cake when dieting, if nobody else knows, then none the wiser. St. Isaac of Nineveh said: “The person who can see his own sin is greater than someone who can raise the dead.” Penance and accountability go hand in hand because now somebody else knows about that chocolate transgression. We can be held accountable because it is out in the open.
Those pictures on the wall of a child praying at bedtime are cute, but other than the kid and the dog, there is no one around for accountability. In the act of Confession, someone else is free to follow up and ask how we’re managing that sin and what we’ve done to ask God for grace to change. Confession is both formative and corrective because it includes accountability.
Some translations use the word “humility” instead of penance, for example in Isiah 58:5, but either is appropriate because in the Eastern church penance is not designed as the Western (Roman Catholic) sense of punishment, but to help us turn away from violating God’s law. For us, penance is not praying a rosary or sailing a “hail Mary” but is often an action we take in order to remedy a sinful habit. In cases of an offense it can include restitution and reconciliation to the party offended. If we find that humbling, then likely it is a lesson learned with the desire to please God in the future.
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The three views leave out the logically possible infant communion and baptism at professed faith. This last view is perhaps a very minority view today but it does exist.
Erik, you are quite correct. Thank you for the reminder. That view deserves a while post of its own. Blessings! – Luke
Would you be so kind to address a distinction between unbelief and nonbelief?
All unbelievers are actually idolaters. Nonbelief marks those with deficient mental ability such as infants and autistic or brain damaged persons. Thank you
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[…] Paedocommunion? A Simple Experiment to Test Your Views See other posts in this series: Part 2: Paedocommunion? – Saved by Some Kinda Faith or a Nuther AN EXPERIMENT ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK THE BIBLE IS SAYING Is true faith a normal expectation for Christians to have of their infant children? Today I offer you an experiment to test this question. You(…) […]