by Johnathan Arnold with David Fry
In the Roman Catholic Church and in some Protestant churches today, children are baptized but not given their “first communion” until years later, when they reach the “age of reason.” However, this was not always the case. For most of church history in the West, and still to this day in the East, children were welcomed at the Lord’s Table as soon as they were baptized. This article defends the practice of paedocommunion—giving the Lord’s Supper to baptized infants and young children—on biblical, theological, historical, and pastoral grounds. It assumes that infant baptism is biblical, since communion is for the baptized, and thus paedocommunion is primarily an in-house discussion among those who baptize young children.
The Passover
Essential to this discussion is God’s own posture towards children within the community of his covenant people, and the essential continuity between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. The Church is not a completely new and different people; the Church is Israel with Gentiles grafted in through Christ. The rites and worship of the Church pick up and fulfill Old Testament patterns.
1. The Passover meal was for young children; the Lord’s Supper, as the new Passover meal, should include children as well. In Exodus 12, God commanded that each “household” (the whole family) share in the passover lamb. The only restriction given by God was covenant membership, not age or understanding: “no uncircumcised person shall eat of it” (Ex. 12:48). As with the other Old Testament feasts, children were included: “You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter” (Deut. 16:14).
The Passover meal is not simply abolished in the New Testament. It was at a Passover meal that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper, taking bread and wine and saying, “This is my body,” “This is my blood of the new covenant” (Mt. 26:26–28). The Lord’s Supper is the new Christian Passover meal because it is where we participate in “Christ our Passover” (1 Cor. 5:7; 10:16), eating the body and blood of the true paschal Lamb who saves us from the angel of death. Methodist theologian William Burt Pope explains that as circumcision has become baptism under the new covenant, so the Passover has become the Lord’s Supper.
If the Passover meal was for young children, why would the Lord’s Supper exclude them?
If the Passover meal was for young children, why would the Lord’s Supper exclude them? Does the coming of Christ really mean the turning away of children?
2. God explicitly said that children should participate in his feasts despite their lack of understanding, and then be taught as they grow older. Those who are opposed to young children at the Lord’s Table often object that the children don’t even understand what they are receiving. God directly addresses this concern when he institutes the Passover:
24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25 And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” (Ex. 12:24–27)
Children were not required to understand the Passover before participating in it. The exact opposite is the case. God knew that they would not understand it, but that in time, they would ask, “Why?” (every parent is familiar with this question). Parents would then have an opportunity to explain its meaning. God immersed children in the Passover rite as a lived object lesson to provide a framework for understanding as they grew older.
God immersed children in the Passover rite as a lived object lesson to provide a framework for understanding as they grew older.
This is a consistent pattern throughout the Bible. Children didn’t understand the meaning of circumcision or the Feast of Booths or anything else in Israel’s worship, yet they were immersed in it from infancy and taught as they grew up. The pattern is not (1) understand → (2) then belong → (3) then participate. It is (1) belong → (2) participate → (3) grow in understanding. Why would it be any different now?
In Exodus 12:24, God gave the Passover meal to Israel “for you and your sons forever.” As the Israel of God, the Church observes the Passover meal as a statute for us and for our sons when we come as covenant families to Christ in the Lord’s Supper, the new Passover meal. As our children grow older, we explain, “This is the sacrifice of Christ our Passover. God will pass over us in the judgment if we are covered by his blood. Trust in him!”
3. God gave the same spiritual food that we now eat in the Lord’s Supper to young children in the wilderness. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes,
Our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Cor. 10:1–4)
Paul has a strong sense of continuity between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. As Christians are baptized, Israel was baptized in the Red Sea. As Christians eat the Lord’s Supper, Israel ate “the same spiritual food” and “the same spiritual drink” in the wilderness. As Christians participate in Christ at the Table (1 Cor. 10:14–22), Israel drank from Christ in the Rock.
If God nourished children along with his whole covenant family, not only with physical food but with spiritual bread and drink, why would we now exclude them? Why would children be given the types but not the signs of the reality?
4. The New Testament identifies the Lord’s Supper as a meal for the “body,” which includes baptized children. In Ephesians 4:4–5, Paul writes that there is “one body” and “one baptism.” To baptize someone is to receive them into the body. Baptism is the rite of initiation into the visible Church, just as circumcision was the rite of initiation into Israel.
In 1 Corinthians 10:17, Paul likewise writes that there is “one body” and “one bread”: “because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” To give someone the bread is to recognize them as part of the body. The Lord’s Supper is the rite of continuation in the visible Church.
To exclude infants from the bread is to undermine their baptism and to treat them as second-class citizens who do not fully belong.
If we welcome infants into the body through baptism, then they also have a right to be continually recognized as members of the body through the Lord’s Table. The sacraments should be held together, not separated by years. To exclude infants from the bread is to undermine their baptism and to treat them as second-class citizens who do not fully belong. Michael Green cautions,
The child who is not allowed to partake in the Holy Communion with its parents can be made to feel a second-class citizen in the life of the church, and isolated from his parents. … I believe that we must grasp the nettle firmly and maintain both that baptism is the rite of entry and that children who have been baptized may take their share in the Holy Communion with their parents.
5. Paul’s call to self-examination and discernment at the Table was given to rebellious adults and cannot be used to exclude infants from communion anymore than Peter’s call to “repent and be baptized” can be used to exclude them from baptism. Some argue that since Paul instructed the Corinthians to examine themselves and to discern the body when they communed (1 Cor. 11:28–29), infants should be excluded from the Lord’s Supper since they are incapable of such self-examination and discernment. However, Paul was addressing a specific group of people: adult readers at Corinth who were guilty of severe abuses in Table practice (so severe that Paul even says, “it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat”). Paul called them to self-examination and discernment to prevent these abuses from continuing. It is unreasonable to use these verses to exclude innocent children.
In fact, we see a very similar situation in the Old Testament. Adults in Israel were guilty of severe sins. God said that because of their sins, he hated their appointed feasts (Isa. 1:14). God commanded the people to wash themselves, learn to do good, bring justice to orphans, and plead the case of widows before observing the feasts (Isa. 1:16–17). Clearly infants were not capable of such mature moral judgments. Young children were not capable of seeking justice for widows. Are we to conclude that God was at this point excluding them from his feasts? Of course not.
This logic is very similar to the logic that is commonly used to try to exclude infants from baptism. Peter told adult Jews to “repent and be baptized” (Acts 2:38), and so some conclude that baptism should be withheld from infants since they are incapable of repentance and conscious faith. Paedobaptists have long rejected this argument because it ignores the immediate and broader covenantal context.
Consider Romans 4:11, where Paul says that Abraham “received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith.” Abraham had faith, was counted righteous, and then received the outward sign of circumcision as a seal. Faith first, then circumcision. And yet, God commanded Abraham to circumcise his eight-day old infants who were incapable of conscious faith. God even said that any infants who were not circumcised would be cut off from his people, and he sought to kill Moses for failing to circumcise his child. Saying that infants can’t be baptized simply because the apostles told adults to believe and be baptized makes no more sense than saying that Isaac or Gershom shouldn’t have been circumcised because they didn’t yet have the faith of their fathers Abraham or Moses. This logic should also lead paedobaptists to reject the view that infants can’t commune simply because Paul told rebellious adults at Corinth to examine themselves.
Historical
6. The Lord’s Supper was given to infants in the early church. Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150–210) writes of the Lord’s Supper being received after baptism (The Paedagogus, 6), and he gives no indication that baptized infants were excluded.
Cyprian of Carthage (c. AD 250) tells the story of an infant, still too young to eat meat, being recovered by [his] mother and then brought to church to take “[his] turn” at the Table and drink from “the sacrament of the cup” (On the Lapsed, 25–26). He laments that parents who fall away from the church deprive their “little ones” of the privilege of having the Church as their Mother and separate them from “the Lord’s bread and cup,” which assumes that baptized infants were full communing members (On the Lapsed, 9).
A late fourth-century work called The Apostolic Constitutions says that unbaptized visitors and catechumens were dismissed before the Lord’s Supper, but “the children” remained with their parents to partake of the sacrament (8.2.12–13).
Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) writes that infants “receive his sacraments,” “share in his table,” and “drink” of Christ’s blood in the cup (Works, Vol. 5, Sermon 174:7). He elsewhere writes, “even for the life of infants was His flesh given” (On the Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Infants, 1.26–27). His writings assume that paedocommunion was common practice.
Leo the Great (AD 440–461), bishop of Rome, writes that those who cannot remember if they were baptized as children should try to remember if they went to church with their parents and received what was given to them (Letter 167, Q. 17). In other words, Leo assumes that baptized children (and only baptized children) will receive the Lord’s Supper; therefore, if children can remember sharing the Supper, they will know that they were baptized. Infant baptism and paedocommunion were thus universal Christian practice at the time.
A fifth or early sixth century work called The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy calls it the “ancient tradition” of the Church to baptize and give the Lord’s Supper to infants as long as they are under the care of a believing parent or sponsor who will implant in them a habit for divine things, guard them from what is contrary, and teach them as they grow older.
What we see for most of church history is that (1) infants were baptized; (2) the Lord’s Supper is always said to be for the baptized; (3) there is no indication that infants were excluded; and (4) when infants are mentioned in connection with the Lord’s Supper, they are said to commune.
7. In the Eastern Church, the Lord’s Supper has always been given to infants, and is still given to them to this day. The early church practice of giving communion to infants has continued unbroken to this day in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The early church practice of giving communion to infants has continued unbroken to this day in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
8. The Lord’s Supper was given to infants in the Western (Roman Catholic) Church until at least the 12th century and in some places until the 14th century, and the change was largely due to a superstitious view of the sacrament. Today, the Roman Catholic Church does not give “first communion” to baptized children until they reach a certain age (usually seven or eight years old). However, this was not always the case. The shift away from paedocommunion in the West took place in the high to late Middle Ages. James Jordan explains, “With the growth of a superstitious view of the sacrament, people feared to spill so much as a single drop of the transubstantiated blood of Christ. … Because infants and children might lose a crumb or spill a drop, they were also excommunicated during this dark period of the church’s history.” Around the same time, the cup/wine stopped being given to the laity, lest they mishandle the very blood of Jesus.
The shift away from paedocommunion in the West took place in the high to late Middle Ages.
The Hussites (proto-reformers in the 15th century) and some of the Protestant reformers (e.g., Anglican cleric Jeremy Taylor) argued for the recovery of infant communion in the West. The Protestant reformers more universally argued for the recovery of communion in both kinds (e.g., 39 Articles of Religion, Article 30).
Only in 1963, with the Second Vatican Council, was communion in both kinds once again authorized (though not required) by the Roman Catholic Church. Sadly, paedocommunion has not yet been restored. The most recent development was in 1910, when Pope Pius X lowered the age from the then common practice of early adolescence (12 to 14 years of age) to the “age of reason” (generally considered 7 or 8 years of age). Many Protestant churches also still exclude baptized infants from the Table, although this is changing in some Reformed and Anglican circles (e.g., through the work of Peter Leithart and Theopolis Institute).
Pastoral and Parental
9. Infants are provisionally justified by the blood of Christ and heirs of his kingdom, so it is fitting for them to receive the signs of their redemption. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to little children (Mt. 19:14). If a child dies, they go to heaven. The blood of Christ covers them. As the sin of the first Adam led to death for all, the obedience of the Second Adam leads to justification and life for all, unless they resist the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:18). Infants cannot resist. They are provisionally covered by Christ’s atonement. It is therefore fitting for them to receive the signs of that atonement.
10. Including infants at the Table declares the objectivity of the Christian faith and of Christ’s redemption against a purely subjective and individualistic approach to religion. It is crucial that those who are capable of faith come to the Table in faith. And it is my constant prayer that each of my children will come to a place where their faith becomes something deeply personal. However, in our Western, individualistic culture, we can become overly fixed on the conscious, personal faith of the individual. Faith is never merely the private action of the individual. It is not even primarily the private action of an individual. It is initially a gift of God in Christ through the Spirit to the church. It is then a gift of God to the individual through the Spirit’s direct work in a person.
Furthermore, the Lord’s Supper is not most fundamentally about our faith but about the faith—a proclamation of Christ’s death until he comes. Including helpless but redeemed children at the Table is a powerful proclamation of the objectivity of our faith. God has done something marvelous for us even before we can do anything for him.
11. Including children in the Lord’s Supper is good for their spiritual formation, while excluding them and treating them as second-class citizens can be harmful. God fully included children in his covenant people Israel through circumcision and Passover participation. It was part of God’s plan for how children were to be formed and catechized in the faith. I believe that the full inclusion of children in God’s new covenant people, the Church, through baptism and eucharistic participation, continues to be part of God’s plan for how children are to be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4).
This of course does not mean that baptism and Table fellowship will guarantee that children grow up to serve God. And it doesn’t mean that children who are unbaptized or kept from communion will not serve the Lord. However, that is ultimately beyond the point. Praying and reading the Bible with our children also doesn’t guarantee that they will serve the Lord, but it is right and far better for them. Likewise, I believe that it is right and better for the children of believers to be included in the sacraments rather than to be excluded.
I respect Christian parents who have seriously considered this issue and still take a different view, and at our church we do not require parents to bring their baptized children forward for communion each week. However, I would not personally be part of a church where my children were not allowed to be baptized and commune, because I believe that it’s important for their spiritual formation.
12. The sacraments are God coming to man, not just man coming to God by his own rational powers; who is to say that God cannot work in children prior to their understanding, as he worked in John as a fetus or the Psalmist at his mother’s breast? Again, it is crucial that those who are capable of faith come to the Table in faith. However, the sacraments are not most fundamentally about our response to God. They are not mere means by which man comes to God by his own rational powers. They are corporate and covenantal means of grace by which God comes to man in a visible Word with a present Christ.
The sacraments are not most fundamentally about our response to God.
Who is to say that God’s grace cannot work in an infant or young child when they share in the sacraments? The Holy Spirit filled John the Baptist as a fetus in the womb, and John leapt with joy at the presence of the Messiah (Lk. 1:15, 41–44). The Psalmist said, “You are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God” (Ps. 22:9–10). The Church throughout history, including John Wesley, believed that the sacraments actually had an effect on children. We can at least be open to the possibility.
13. Jesus said that young children should be brought to him; bringing them to the Lord’s Supper, of which Christ said “this is my body,” is bringing them to Jesus. In Matthew 19:14, Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” By bringing our children to the bread and wine of which Christ said, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” we are bringing them to Jesus, who meets his people at the Table. An old Hussite communion hymn says it well:
You gave us his body to eat,
His holy blood to drink
What more could he have done for us?
Let us not deny it to little children
Nor forbid them
When they eat Jesus’ body.
Of such is the kingdom of heaven
As Christ himself told us,
And holy David says also:
From the mouths of small children
And of all innocent babes
Has come forth God’s praise
That the adversary may be cast down.
Praise God, you children,
You tiny babes,
For he will not drive you away,
But feed you on his holy body.
