Children and Communion: Why the Eucharist Should Be Given to the Smallest Christians

Bryan Wandel
21 August 2015

Eastern Orthodox communion of a toddler1

No photo credit. Found at https://orthocath.wordpress.com/2010/01/09/infants-sharing-in-the-lords-table/ Accessed

7/16/2015.

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At what age may a Christian child take communion? The answers to this question have
varied among Catholics and Protestant groups that baptize babies. Largely it depends on when
they believe certain qualifications have been met: Are the children morally worthy? Have they
examined themselves? Can they discern the body? These instructions from 1 Cor. 11:27-29
mostly set the terms of conversation.
The Eastern Orthodox, on the other hand, commune babies at their baptism. This practice
was followed by most or all of the West in earlier centuries,2 and some Protestants have recently
allowed or advocated for it.3 Rather than searching for specific markers that must be observed in
a childs faith and understanding, the church offers communion for all baptized babies. This
practice is sometimes called paedocommunion. This paper will discuss whether the bread and
wine should be given to babies as young as infants at least in theory. In practice, many
Protestant advocates of paedocommunion prefer to avoid forcing the elements on a child. It may
be best, then, to wait until the child is weaned and regularly eating solid foods.4 However, this
delay is not a test or qualification, but a practical consideration.
Should parents number their children among Gods people? The question of infant
communion has important consequences, for it eliminates the sacramental need for a phase when
the child comes to a new level. Rather, the qualification for Eucharist is baptism and living in
accord with that baptism through Christian nurture and according to a growing understanding
of the faith.
This paper pursues biblical lines of argument in favor of paedocommunion. The New
Testament supports an equation of the faithful, baptized body with Eucharistic participation, and
the Old Testament gives further elaboration about children participating in sacramental meals.
Finally, a broad biblical theology of children in the covenant requires that we affirm our children
as full members of Gods covenant people. Therefore, Christian parents should be allowed and
encouraged to share in the Churchs feast with their entire baptized families.
New Testament: One Loaf for One Baptized Body
We begin with a simple form of the New Testament argument for infant communion.

See Appendix A for a brief history.

Lutherans, Anglicans, and Reformed churches have all debated the topic heavily amongst themselves, and
tolerations exist in some of their bodies while others have proscribed it. A running list of American Protestant
churches that permit infant communion can be found at http://paedocommunion.com/churches/ . While Roman
(Latin Rite) Catholics require an age of reason, they recognize the Eastern practice as legitimate (Catechism of the
Catholic Church 1244, 1292) note that the Catholic case is therefore not based on 1 Cor. 11:17-34, but on a
practical difference of how to unite or emphasize the various sacraments.
4
Tim Gallant, Feed My Lambs: Why the Lords Table Should Be Restored to Covenant Children (Grand Prairie,
AB: Pactum Reformanda, 2002), 191-192.
3

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Paul gives an analogy between the sacramental loaf and the church in 1 Cor. 10:17:
Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.5 The apostles broad concern of
confronting divisions in the Corinthian church is set in contrast against an image of unity all
eat the one loaf at the meal. The immediate context is in verse 16, how the bread is
participation in Jesus own sacrificed body. In this way, through that communion in Jesus
redemptive body all believers partaking of that one body we become tied to each other. It is
important to note that the one bread does not simply symbolize the body in itself, as grain sitting
on a plate; rather, we are one church body, for we all partake of the one bread. The bread does
just show the unity of the Christian body but through participating together in Christs work in
that meal, we are made into that one body.
Who is this ecclesial body, receiving Eucharist together? Addressing again the need for
unity, Paul soon makes clear another element of unity: For in one Spirit we were all baptized
into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free and all were made to drink of one Spirit
(12:13). The means of clearing away intra-Christian divisions are here baptism. This is
reminiscent of the way Paul stresses unity in Ephesians: There is one body and one Spirit
one Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4:4-5). In all three of these passages, unity is tied to one
body, which can apparently be defined in terms of baptism or Eucharist. In all three, the key is
how those sacraments tie us to the sole and united redeemer: Christ (1 Cor 10:16), the one Spirit
(1 Cor 12:13), one God and Father of all (Eph 4:6).
If infants are baptized, the general structure of one loaf/one body/one baptism gives a
strong impetus toward the communing of those small children, unless the purposes and blessings
of baptism and Eucharist are different enough to warrant a revision to the general apostolic
framework. But what, indeed, is the Eucharist for?
Through it, we participate in the Messiahs fleshly body that worked out our salvation.
We receive sacramentally what was poured out on the cross (Mt. 26:28), the body of flesh in
whose death was reconciliation (Col. 1:22) and which we receive through faith in Jesus Christ
(Gal. 2:16). Baptism likewise appropriates Christs death and resurrection life to us
sacramentally we were buried with him in baptism [and] raised with him through faith
(Col. 2:11-12). That is, we were baptized into his death (Rom. 6:3). Participation in Jesus
death and resurrection, and their benefits, is thus common in the sacraments. Furthermore,
Eucharist (Mt. 26:28), baptism (Acts 2:38), Christs work (Eph. 1:7), and faith (Acts 10:43) all
pertain to the forgiveness of sins in their own ways. The two sacraments share a common focus
and source. They should not be divorced as separate stages of spiritual development. If infants
are baptized, they are eligible for communion along with the rest of the church body.6
New Testament: 1 Corinthians 11:17-34

5
6

All Scripture citations are ESV, unless otherwise noted.

This paper assumes infant baptism, in the interest of space.

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1 Corinthians 11 is the linchpin argument against paedocommunion.7 We will see below
that childrens participation is likely or explicit in many Old Testament sacramental feasts, most
of which are explicitly fulfilled by Jesus work of redemption (and all at least implicitly). If
children partook of OT sacramental feasts, and especially the ones most clearly prefiguring
Eucharist, then an explicit NT command would be needed to deny them the NT sacramental
feast. In 1 Cor. 11, opponents of paedocommunion think they have that command.8
The passage (vv. 17-34) may be summarized thus: some Christians caused divisions
during the Lords Supper and apparently took food to the detriment of others (vv. 17-22). Paul
says this action despises the church of God, so he goes on to remind them of how Jesus instituted
the Lords Supper (vv. 23-26). Verses 27-29 speak generically (not just toward the specific
trouble-makers) about how the Corinthians should act during communion, and Paul applies these
principles to how the Corinthians have been disciplined by God (vv. 30-32) and sums up how
they ought to be acting (vv. 33-34).
The highest point of controversy is the general wording Paul uses in vv. 27-29:
27

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner
will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. 28 Let a person examine
himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For anyone who eats and
drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
The pronouns are whoever, a person, and anyone. The question is, are children
included in these general pronouns? If so, how can they examine themselves and discern the
body, and therefore achieve the status of worthy? If they cannot, then we must withhold them
so they do not receive the judgments of vv. 30-32.9
Taking the passage narrowly, as it is quoted above, would seem to indicate that whoever,
a person, and anyone actually do refer to every individual. Then again, the mere presence of a
word like anyone does not automatically apply to every possible person. 1 Thess. 3:10 reads
If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. We all pass over children when applying the
passage the context is clearly about the idleness of adults. 10

Cf. Cornelius Venema, Children at the Lords Table? Assessing the Case for Paedocommunion (Grand Rapids,
MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009),102.
8
Eg. George W. Knight III, 1 Corinthians 11:17-34: The Lords Supper: Abuses, Words of Institution and
Warnings and the Inferences and Deductions with Respect to Paedocommunion, in Children and the Lords
Supper: Let a Man Examine Himself, eds. Guy Waters and Ligon Duncan (Ross-shire, Scotland: Mentor, 2011), 7595.
9
As suggested by Guy Prentiss Waters and J. Ligon Duncan III, Introduction, in Children and the Lords Supper,
28.
10
It is worth noting that Calvin cited the inapplicability of 1 Thess 3:10 to children when he shows that the
repentance command does not apply to infant baptism (Institutes 4.16.28-29), though he fails to apply the same
argument to the examination command in 1 Cor. 11:28 (Institutes 4.16.30). Cf. Gregg Strawbridge, The Polemics
of Infant Communion, in The Case for Covenant Communion, 158.

Wandel 5
Likewise, 1 Cor. 11:17-34 refers to people who are dividing the congregation through
their selfish table manners. That could be applied to certain children, but certainly is not the case
with most. In churches today, the sacrament is not withheld from toddlers because of their
divisiveness, but because of their cognitive inabilities, such as examination and discernment of
the body (v. 28-29).
The general command to examine oneself is thus taken to be an inspection of sin, or
spiritual inventory-taking. That view of examination looks toward finding ourselves worthy as
in v. 27, or even considers a person unworthy who has not done so. Tim Gallant resists the
temptation to combine the unworthy designation in verse 27 with the examination requirement
of verse 28:
Some have actually suggested, by tying together verses 27 and 28, that eating without
self-examination is eating in an unworthy manner. Those who do not examine themselves
by that fact eat unworthily.
But that is not what Paul says. The Corinthians were eating in an unworthy manner and
Paul has described just how that was so in the preceding (v. 21). The reason he introduces
self-examination is a preventative measure. The sin, in context, is not lack of selfexamination. The sin is schism at the table, which Paul hopes to counter by calling for
self-examination. There is a world of difference between these two views of the
passage.11
Gallant claims this interpretation is later confirmed by verse 34, where the Corinthians are told to
eat at home if they are hungry, lest you come together unto judgment. The judgment Paul has
in mind in verse 34, as in verse 27, is due to divisive table manners. Jeffrey Myers emphasizes,
it was not the immature with whom the Lord was not pleased, but the disobedient.12
Regarding this interpretation, we should first note that Gallant may be overstepping when
he says that Paul introduces self-examination. We dont have anything in the context to know
whether it was already a requirement though it was not at the first Eucharist and the
Corinthians were not practicing it, so the interpretation may be likely. Nevertheless, even if this
was not a new rule, Gallant is correct that self-examination is a preventative against unworthy
eating, an honest precaution rather than part of the substance of worthiness/unworthiness itself.
That is an important distinction. If children are unable to examine, they are necessarily
unworthy under the one framework. Under the other (paedocommunion), they are potentially
unworthy, but not necessarily. To the extent that the child is unable, the parent would be
responsible for this check, and would themselves bear the worthiness in their Christian
parenting. Of course, this parental requirement is not explicit in the Eucharist texts, as it is not in
11

Gallant, 90-91. Emphasis original.

Jeffrey Myers, Presbyterian, Examine Thyself: Restoring Children to the Table, in The Case for Covenant
Communion, 32.
12

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the baptism texts, so we will need a strong theology of parents and children in the covenant. See
below.
So, what baptized Christians should be excluded from the table? Gallant emphasizes the
original context of divisive eating in 1 Cor 11. Rom. 16:17 and Titus 3:9 reiterate the same.
However, there are other contexts for breaking table fellowship. Matthew 18 requires of the
church that an obstinate sinner who refuses correction would be to them as a Gentile and a tax
collector. 1 Corinthians 5 requires the church to remove those with gross sexual immorality
from the assembly. This same passage refers to their meeting as a Passover festival (v. 7-8), and
warns the Christians not to associate with anyone guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or [who]
is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler not even to eat with such a one (v. 11). These and
similar verses13 refer to people who continually refuse correction of their notorious sins or who
openly defy the teaching of the church.
Another context for breaking table fellowship is self-imposed. Matthew 5:23-24 is often
applied to the Eucharistic meal: So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember
that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be
reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. This warning against anger is
addressed by churches that utilize a passing of the peace before the meal, as a last opportunity
to do just this. If children are to participate, an age-appropriate concern for relational peace
would be an important part of parenting those children.
Therefore: some of the contexts for exclusion from the sacramental feast are divisiveness,
obstinate gross sin, teaching in defiance of the church, and relationships marred by anger.
However, accounting for the individual peccadillos of the past week is not quite among these.
Christ cares about such things, and we cannot fail to address them in our lives. But Pauls goal is
for the table to be as broad as the faithful (and baptized) body. It is a help for imperfect believers,
not a measuring stick for them.
What is self-examination, then? Gallant is instructive in pointing out how Isaiah 1
requires high standards for the proper observance of New Moons, Sabbaths, and other assemblies
though children were obviously included in these. Does this mean the children were able to
put away evil in the same way as adults? Or to seek justice, reprove the oppressor; defend the
fatherless, plead for the widow? Clearly not.14 The proper observation and self-examination did
not set standards in a way to exclude children, but to improve the moral quality of those who
were able. Likewise Isaiah 66 and Amos 5.15 Most important here is that we should not take
[self-examination] to mean that Paul is thereby aiming at cutting down the number of
participants in the Supper by means of this test He is aiming at a full unity.16 Self13

Similar verses about the obstinately sinful include 1 Tim. 1:20, 2 Thess. 3:6, and a host of OT texts.
Gallant, 92.
15
Ibid. 93.
16
Ibid. 95.
14

Wandel 7
examination is a reminder of the imperatives of a life of faith, but we are not rendered unworthy
before we can carry all of them out.
Robert Rayburn likewise notes that when the OT prophets call for self-examination and
worthiness in worship, they did not set aside Gods law to eat sacrifices with sons and
daughters.17 Note that those prophets
were not saying that one must have an adult-like faith in order to participate properly in
the worship of God, they were not saying that a certain maturity of mental development
was a prerequisite of right worship, and they were not saying that warnings addressed to
adult sinners in the nature of the case excluded the little children of those who came to
God in faith. The application of 1 Corinthians 11 to the general question of the
participation of children in the Lords Supper violates the universe of discourse.18
One last point on examination. Baptism and repentance are tied together throughout the
New Testament. In our church services, repentance typically precedes Eucharist, too. This is
simply a continuation of the baptized life, a life of repentance and faith. It is not a step beyond
baptism, an examination that only the mature can undertake. All who may be baptized may
commune, and if churches baptize infants who cannot repent, they can commune infants who do
not yet examine.
Finally, we must look at the last verse in this section: For anyone who eats and drinks
without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself (1 Cor. 11:29). Discerning the
body is a difficult phrase to interpret, as the body plays a dual function in this section of
Christs physical body and the church body. On the one hand, we have v. 24 This is my body
and v. 27 the body and blood of the Lord. The latter is the most proximate context for v. 29s
discerning the body. On the other hand, 1 Cor. 10:17 and the great passage on the body in
chapter 12 use body to refer to the church.
Of course, the two images overlap in their nature, as the one is a metaphor of the other.
Indeed, we call the church the body because through the Eucharist we together partake of
Jesus body (1 Cor. 10:16-17). However, they are not the same, or at least not in the same way.
Gallant makes a case that while both are included in v. 29 in a sense, the church body is in the
foreground, as the passages pressing concern is for awareness of the church body around us: the
summation is v. 33, So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one
another.19

17

Robert Rayburn, A Presbyterian Defense of Paedcommunion, in The Case for Covenant Communion, 9-11.
Rayburn also includes Jer. 7:1-29, Hos. 6:6, Mic. 6:8, and 1 Sam. 15:22, which declaim against the sacrificial
worship of the wicked.
18
Ibid. 11.
19
Gallant, 97.

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If verse 29 is focused on the church body, then the issue is not so much cognitive
understanding of a theory of the Real Presence as Pauls concern to establish unity. This concern
for propriety in the very act where Christ calls us to unity in himself, the communion meal, is a
big deal. It is the thrust of the whole section. As we have seen above, similar concerns were
given by the prophets regarding OT sacramental feasts, fasts, and celebrations but they did not
prohibit childrens participation in Passover, the Feasts of Weeks and Booths, and certainly not
in the Sabbath!20
1 Cor. 11 addresses some very important issues: division, betraying the nature of the
Eucharist, Jesus work in his body, the church. There is no doubt that Paul addresses the situation
with broader principles and a broad teaching point, but his concern for unity and worthy eating is
similar to the OT prophets: he calls for them to clean up their manners and act like the body of
Christ that they are. This carries no implication that children of believers would therefore be
excluded for failure to verbally process something about the faith. They were included in the OT
sacramental meals and festivals that the prophets had included in their own calls for
worthiness. Rayburn concludes: If it is once admitted that it is not obvious that Pauls demand
in that context has any bearing on the participation of children in the covenant meal, there
remains no serious argument against paedocommunion in the Reformed tradition.21
Interlude: Between the Testaments
As we move on to discuss the Old Testament precedents and background for New
Testament sacraments, it may surprise some to hear OT rituals or feasts called sacraments. In
fact, such terminology has been widely used in church history. Augustine freely spoke of the
sacraments of the Old Testament.22 Thomas Aquinas observes that in the old ceremonies there
were sacrifices, sacred things, sacraments, and observances.23 John Calvin likewise speaks of
the sacraments of the Jews.24
All these writers make caveats that OT sacraments must have been different in some
ways, for the ceremonies were fulfilled in Christ. Therefore, the ceremonies could only partake
in what the worshippers could not yet see: a shadow of the good things to come (Heb. 10:1).
And yet, while the substance was unseen, and not in the OT ceremonial elements themselves, yet
by faith they could still partake of the Christ to come. For the Israelites in the desert, their manna
was not just physical nourishment, and the water from the rock Moses struck not only slaked
their thirst, but they all ate the same spiritual food, and all ate the same spiritual drink. For they
drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ (1 Cor. 10:3). So
they spiritually partook of the coming Christ. Furthermore, we will see that OT sacrifices were
20

Unworthy participation in Sabbaths was warned against in Is. 1:13, with no indication that this set a new bar of
maturity or age requirement.
21
Rayburn, 12.
22
Contra Faustum, 19:11-14.
23
Summa Theologica, 2.1 q. 101, a. 4
24
Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.14.20

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eaten before the Lord your God (Deut. 12:7). Through this shadowy, forward-looking system,
believers and their families were drawn near to God by a work they could not yet see.
We will proceed into the Old Testament, then, not by first defining the word sacrament
and then finding which rites fit with it, but by making our way through the OT precedents for the
Eucharist to arrive at a better picture of eating a sacramental meal before the Lord your God.
Old Testament: Passover
The Old Testament context for the sacrament of the Lords Supper begins with the
sacrament of the Passover supper. Passover is the most obvious context for Jesus original
institution. The synoptic Gospels explicitly identify the Passover meal as the scene of that night
(Mt. 26:18-2025). The elements themselves are directly taken from the Passover liturgy.26
Another point of contact is that Passover was, uniquely in the OT, a meal that had a certain
interpretation attached, which is of course crucial to the NT sacramental meal.
Furthermore, Jesus himself identifies the institution of the Lords Supper as a Passover.
In Matthew, immediately after giving the words of institution, Jesus tells us that he will not drink
from the fruit of the vine again until he drinks it in His Fathers kingdom (26:29). Luke places
these words just before the institution, but the drinking (eating in Lukes case) which is
obviously the communion elements in Matthew is just as obviously the Passover elements in
Luke: I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will
not eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God (22:15-16).
Passover is not the only context for the Eucharist, but it is a primary one. With that in
mind, we look to the first Passover in Exodus 12. The first indication of childrens participation
is the order to calculate the amount of needed meat based on what each can eat or literally, the
mouths of their eating. The focus appears to be the ability to eat, which includes non-nursing
children.27 The phrase, according to the mouth of his eating appears in just one other passage
when the Israelites collect manna in the desert. No doubt children were included in that count.28
Later, Moses instructs the Israelites that this rite will be a statute for you and for your
sons forever (12:24). It might be objected that sons here just refers to future generations.
However, the phrase your sons has the same Hebrew root as the phrase in verse 26: when
your sons say to you, What do you mean by this service?29 Verse 26 is clearly referring to
25

Mark is even more theologically explicit: On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the
Passover lamb (14:12) which gives occasion not only for the setting but for the relevance of Jesus own sacrificed
body and blood.
26
Though the wine was not in the OT Passover commands, it was practiced in the first century ceremony. Moreover,
the use of wine in OT ceremony has precedent in Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18-19) and in consuming the tithe before
the Lord your God (Deut. 14:22-26).
27
Gallant, 60-61.
28
Charles Keidel, Is the Lords Supper for Children? Westminster Theological Journal 37 (1975), 307-308.
29
I have tweaked the ESV translation of children as sons to show the parallel in the Hebrew with v. 24.

Wandel 10
children who are participating in Passover, so it appears that verse 24 is also. However, none of
these verses clearly delineates what age those children are. We will consider later whether these
questions constitute a catechetical lesson that would bar younger children from the meal. For
now, we may note that the lack of a specific age tends to indicate that all were included rather
than failing to specify the age requirement. James Jordan is helpful here:
there is no passage in the Bible that commands, hints, or shows that children need to
be of a certain age in order to be eligible for any religious meal. And we should note that
the Bible is quite specific in Numbers that a man must be twenty to be enrolled in the
muster of Israels army, that a Levite must be twenty-five to start assisting the other
Levites and thirty to begin full service, from which he retires at fifty (Num. 1:3; 4:3;
8:24-26). Also, Leviticus 27 provides a list of ages for both men and women by which
they were to be valued if given to the sanctuary. If God had wanted to provide an age for
children to come to Passover or anything else, He could easily have done so.30
The book of Deuteronomy contains further comments on Passover, especially as it will be
eaten when there is a centralized sanctuary in the Promised Land. Some claim that Deuteronomy
16 limited subsequent Passovers, after the initial one, to adult males. However, we know that
Deut. 16 explicitly allows (requires, even) children to keep the Feasts of Weeks (v. 11) and
Booths (v. 14). The Passover section of this chapter (vv. 1-8) omits this point about children,
which has led some to believe that children were therefore omitted from Passover participation.
This is unlikely given the points above regarding Exodus 12. Moreover, Passover requirements
have already been explained, so it seems to have required less detail than Weeks and Booths,
which are just now being explained.31 In itself the lack of command simply indicates that women
and children were not necessarily required to participate in the ongoing festival, with its travel to
the central worship location but this does not mean they were not permitted.32
Indeed, Luke 2:41 reports that Jesus parents (therefore including Mary) used to go up to
Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover.33 Women, like children, are not included in the Deut. 16:1-8
statutes about Passover, in contrast to those regarding Weeks and Booths. But clearly women did
participate in Luke 2. Likewise, Deut. 16:1-8 fails to mention strangers partaking of Passover,
which are included in Weeks and Booths, but Ex. 12:48-49 explicitly provides for strangers to
partake in Passover. Therefore, the failure to mention children (like women and strangers) in
Deut. 16:1-8, as opposed to their explicit mention in the sections on the Feasts of Weeks and
Booths, does not specifically exclude children from Passover.34

30

James Jordan, Children and Religious Meals of the Old Creation, in The Case for Covenant Communion, ed.
Gregg Strawbridge (Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2006), 50. Emphasis added.
31
Gallant, 51.
32
Keidel, 313.
33
Ibid.
34
Gallant, 50, 52.

Wandel 11
But are toddlers excluded by the very words of Ex. 12? Verses 26-27 have the familiar
household explanation of the Passover: And when your children ask you, What does this
ceremony mean to you? then tell them, It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over
the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.
John Calvin took this to mean that only those children would eat who were old enough to be
able to inquire into its meaning.35
However, this scenario of a son asking the meaning from his father is common enough.
Josh. 4:6-7 describes memorial stones at the Jordan, that this may be a sign among you. When
your children ask in time to come, What do those stones mean to you? then you shall tell them
that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord So these
stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever. Deut. 6:20-21 gives an explanation of
the law: When your son asks you in time to come, What is the meaning of the testimonies and
the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you? then you shall say to your
son, We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty
hand
In neither of these cases does a cognitive ability set a standard. Rather, the Scriptures
provide answers (meanings) for the natural questions.36 It is true that Passover was a
participatory meal (a ritual) rather than a memorial stone or the meaning of the Torah, but in the
absence of any other cognitive tests it is most natural to read Ex. 12:26-27 as an explanation of
meaning rather than a qualification.37 It is wrong to draw from this text a need for prior
catechesis before participating in a sacrament.
Old Testament: Other Feasts
Passover is not the only OT meal that Christ fulfilled. Since the Lords Supper is the sole
NT sacramental meal, it is worth looking at the other OT feasts and sacrificial meals, which
likewise brought the participants close to God. Its important to note this aspect of communion
when we examine sacrifices:
The word sacrifice (zabhahh) is used only for communion meals in the Hebrew Bible.
Hence it does not mean sacred slaughter per se, but slaughter to prepare a sacred
meal. Accordingly, the related word altar, mizbeahh, means place of communion,
not place of slaughter. Communion, not slaughter, is the idea common to all altars...38
This is helpful to keep in mind as we think about the connection of OT sacrifices to sacrament
and communion.
35

Institutes 4.16.30.
Gallant, 45.
37
Gallant reads Ex. 12:26-27 as a positive case for infant communion: because Passover is mandated for you and
your children, this will lead them to question you concerning its meaning and nature (p. 60).
38
Jordan, 52.
36

Wandel 12
Deuteronomy 16 explicitly provides for the participation of children in the Feasts of
Weeks and Booths, just as the Exodus 12 instructions had provided for them. It is true that nonJews could also participate in Weeks and Booths (unlike Passover),39 but it is first of all
noteworthy that children did participate in these feasts. Deut. 16:10 connects the Feast of Weeks
with the freewill offering, and this offering is noted in Deut. 12:6-7 along with many other
sacrifices that are to be eaten before the Lord your God a true communion.40 The command
for sacramental eating is alongside the household inclusion: And there you shall eat before
the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in
which the Lord your God has blessed you. While the ESV is not explicit that the households are
eating with the offeror, the NASB, NIV, NLT, and NRSV make it clear: you shall eat there in
the presence of the Lord your God, you and your households together. In any case, the Deut.
16:10-11 instructions show that children ate the freewill offering at the Feast of Weeks, so it is
logical to use that clarity to resolve any verbal ambiguity in Deut 12:6-7 children also ate the
sacrifices there, too, before the Lord. Children ate at Weeks and Booths, and they were true
communion meals.
The Israelites were called to sacrifice and eat with their children out of Egypt. James
Jordan notes that this sacrifice to God on the mountain was what God had told Moses to call the
Israelites to: Yahweh said to tell Pharaoh, Please let us go a three days journey into the
wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God (Ex. 3:1841). So the journey was a
journey to peace with God, as Jordan says.42 Moses did indeed make that purpose clear to
Pharaoh: We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, and with our
flocks and herds, because we are going to celebrate a festival to the Lord (Ex. 10:9). Pharaoh
offers to permit only the men to go, and Moses knows this will be insufficient (v. 10-11).
Another example of childrens communion is the peace offering. The peace offering was
a major part of the Levitical system: Jordan argues that it is the central feature of the Book of
Leviticus,43 and Matthew Mason notes that lay Israelites could eat this feast, which like other OT
sacrifices pointed forward to the sacrifice of Christ (Heb. 10:5-10).44 Part of the ritual included
lifting up the breast meat and a part of the thigh as contribution for a particular priest (Lev.
7:30-33). Who ate this meat? But the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed you
shall eat in a clean place, you and your sons and your daughters with you, for they are given as
39

This is on the face of the text, but Gallant argues that the requirements were the same: strangers could participate
in any feast if they were circumcised. Circumcision of the strangers is not explicit in the requirements for Weeks
and Booths, as it is in Ex. 12: 48 for the Passover, but Numbers 15:15-16 states there is one law and custom for Jew
and stranger. Moreover, the Septuagint translated stranger in Deut. 16:11,14 as proselyte or convert. (p. 6869)
40
The others are burnt offerings, sacrifices, tithes and contributions, vow offerings, and the firstborn of the flocks.
41
In Ex. 3:12 God tells Moses that it will be a sign that He sent Moses, when you have brought the people out of
Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.
42
Jordan, 53.
43
Ibid. 58.
44
Matthew Mason, Covenant Children and Covenant Meals: Biblical Evidence for Infant Communion,
Churchman 121 (2007), 131.

Wandel 13
your due and your sons due from the sacrifices of the peace offerings of the people of Israel
(Lev. 10:14).45
In summary, the OTs sacrifices were eaten in a meal of communion with God, which
was restored or celebrated. While the substance of this work, Christ, was still to come, faithful
participants could hope in their fulfillment and so be brought near to God. Households and
children were explicitly included in the meal with respect to Passover, the meal of sacrificial
worship that God called the people out of Egypt to; the Feasts of Weeks and Booths; and the
Peace Offerings. In none of the OT communion meals are children prohibited.
As we conclude the OT, we should note that the peace offering is important for NT
considerations. C. John Collins shows that the Lords Supper in the NT shows echoes of the OT
peace offering. For example, 1 Cor. 10:18 relates the Eucharistic verses of v. 16-17 to the OT
sacrifices: Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the
altar? This alludes to the eating of peace sacrifices in Lev. 7:11-18.46 Moreover, the Passover
itself was a kind of peace offering.47 We learned above that peace offerings concluded with a
sacrificial meal eaten by children to bring them close to God, along with the rest of the people.
The verbal parallels between the peace offering and the NT Lords Supper provide deeper
reasons to suppose that children should partake in the new covenant sacramental meal as well.
Biblical Theology: Infants in the Covenant
The Bible has furnished us with some theological data points: children likely communed
with God in the Passover feast, and certainly participated in other sacramental meals. 1
Corinthians 11:17-34 provides no argument against children taking communion, and the point
about the baptized body being co-extensive with the loaf (1 Cor. 10:16-17) actually gives an
argument in favor of paedocommunion.48
We connect these dots together not through imaginative theories, but through what the
Bible says about the subtopics of our study. What is Gods covenant? How does God consider
the believers children in their young years? Many more Scriptures quickly come into play. We
will analyze a few to sketch a theology of infants in the covenant, and to show that
paedocommunion is not a discrete theological locus, with a few points of debate, but that it is in
the fabric of the biblical witness.

45

Cf. Jordan, 59.

C. John Collins, The Eucharist as Christian Sacrifice: How Patristic Authors Can Help Us Read the Bible,
Westminster Theological Journal 66 (2004), 18-19.
47
Ibid. 2-4.
48
Augustine focused on the need for infants, as sinners, to be saved. This sacramental basis also supports
paedocommunion, but it is my opinion that that argument itself needs the support of a theology of families in the
covenant to keep it from falling into formalism. An alternative framework is to apply sacraments to the young on the
basis of the faith of the church. We do not here have the space to consider its application to the present question.
46

Wandel 14
As soon as the Bible begins to hint at something like a covenant, God stresses that
families have an important part to play. When God decided to save some from the flood, he did
not make a list of the eight most faithful people from the four corners of the earth. Rather, he
chose righteous Noah, and along with him, his wife, his sons, and his sons wives. Likewise, the
promises to Abraham were to bless the nations, but they were to do so through you and your
descendants after you (Gen. 17:7). Eight-day old infants received the sign of the covenant in
every Jewish family, because the promises were for them. Those promises to children include
being their God (Gen. 17:7), giving his Spirit (Is. 59:21), offering his righteousness (Ps. 103:17)
and forgiveness (Acts 2:28-36), and salvation (Acts 16:31).49
Moses described the covenant as inclusive of children a covenant not just to make
promises contingent on their faith, but to actually make them Gods people:
Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in all that
you do. You are standing today all of you before the Lord your God: the heads of your
tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives,
and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one
who draws your water, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your
God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, that he may establish you
today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to
your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. (Deut. 29:9-13)
The Bible speaks endearingly of faith from a very young age: Yet you are he who took
me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mothers breasts. On you was I cast from my
birth, and from my mothers womb you have been my God (Ps. 22:9-10). The infantile act of
nursing is a symbol and a conduit for the faith and trust that will grow over years in a believing
family. This does not negate the fact that believing infants, as all children, are conceived in
iniquity and original sin (Ps. 51:5). But it is emphatically clear from Deuteronomy to Proverbs
to Ephesians that nurture, not evangelism, is the paradigm of child-rearing in the covenant
home.50 While none of us is guaranteed an eternal place in the covenant of grace by our families
or anything other than faith in Christ, children of believers can be called holy because of their
relationship to their parents (1 Cor. 7:14).
Their whole context for living is a life of dependence on God, if this is practiced in the
home, and understood as appropriate to their capacities. Indeed, all of us understand that faith
according to our capacities. With that basis, covenant children start from the inside of the
covenant unless and until they leave it, as branches that grow up in the vine and are discarded, in
contrast to branches that grow up outside the vine (people with no family of believing heritage)

49

This list comes from Robert Rayburn, The Presbyterian Doctrines of Covenant Children, Covenant Nurture, and
Covenant Succession, in The Case for Covenant Communion, 187.
50
Rayburn, The Presbyterian Doctrines, 189.

Wandel 15
and are grafted in (Rom. 11:17-24). And how wonderful it is when branches grow up in the vine
of grace and continue to abide, with greater maturity.
A maturing child is likely to have some specific moments of deepening faith, but these
are not the same as one who hears the gospel for the first time. Though not impossible, it is
clearly not the normal expectation in Scripture that a covenant child should experience a
conscious conversion or endure a period in which he or she has a sense of standing outside the
covenant community, without God and without hope in the world.51 Many covenant children do
interpret their deepening faith as a conversion experience, because of churches that emphasize
such experience, but it would be more biblical to call this fresh repentance, deeper
understanding, or maturity: a covenant renewal.52
The Eucharist is the communion meal for the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:17) the
covenant, which is marked in baptism (1 Cor. 12:13). We have seen that there are no Biblical
standards higher for sacramental meals than there are for coming into Gods covenant family,
and also that God seeks to work through families where children are considered inside Gods
family. Therefore, children who have been baptized into the body of Christ should share in the
Eucharistic body.
Final Thoughts: Eucharist as private sentimental experience
We have considered some of the better arguments for the communion of infants. There
are many points to debate within the argument. There are also theological and practical
implications that flow from it, one of which we will note only briefly.
One appeal of applying to children the discernment and examination imperatives in 1
Cor. 11 is that they accord with a certain approach to receiving communion. No doubt there is a
very personal benefit from the Eucharist, but its corporate character is in the foreground of 1 Cor.
10:16-17 and 1 Cor. 11. Centering ones experience on a personal examination and, in a sense,
an individual communion with the Lord will likely draw affections toward the credocommunion
interpretation of 1 Cor. 11:27-29 certain cognitive actions are made necessary for the spiritual
experience. This approach takes the experience of some Christians and mandates it for all. While
it is important to keep some baptized people from the fellowship in bread and wine for reasons
noted above, these were all related to a danger of reversing ones baptism or shredding the unity
we have in Christ our salvation. It is worth noting that while Reformers did not continue the
Roman Catholic theology of mandated private confession, its application of regular spiritual

51
52

Ibid. 191.
Cf. covenant renewals under Josiah (2 Kings 23:1-26) and Nehemiah (Neh. 8).

Wandel 16
inventory-taking to worthiness in taking the Eucharist may have been incidentally carried over
by the Protestants in a different form.53
Again, it is understandable how this sensibility would then interpret 1 Cor. 11:27-29
through this lens. However, Jeffrey Myers offers a reply concerning the passage:
[Paul] does not warn them about eating and drinking without having insufficient
devotional preparation: I see some of you looking around when you ought to have your
eyes closed and head bowed in meditation on the death of Jesus! What he does tell them
is to wait for each other.54
As discussed above, the personal examination is a corrective against disunity, to keep the real
show in its right place: the church being made one in the work of Gods redemption.
Peter Leithart makes this point brilliantly: the Eucharist is not the word plus bread and
wine, but the word plus the bread and wine eaten and drunk by the gathered people of God.
Action and congregation must be constituent factors of the sacraments and must be included in
any adequate definition or theological reflection.55 Or in the words of the apostle, we are one
body (congregation) because we partake (action) of the one bread (1 Cor. 10:17). This
congregational vision for the sacrament will tend to be more inviting to infant participation.
Using this perspective, it is worth asking: if baptized children are denied, who else? The
developmentally disabled? Elderly Christians with Alzheimers? These may be the results of an
individual, profession-based approach to the meal which puts unnecessary divisions in the
baptized body.56
Rather, let us celebrate Gods transforming work, drawing us into his saving body to
reconcile us all to God through the cross.
Conclusion
We have discussed evidence from the New and Old Testaments, as well as biblical
theology, affecting paedocommunion. The Lords Supper is a meal sacrament for the covenant
community, the body of Christ, and ought to be coextensive with it. Small children may partake
53

Joel Beeke basically admits as much in Only for His Believers: Paedocommunion and the Witness of the
Reformed Liturgies, in Children and the Lords Supper, 165. Eugene Brand argues that medieval confirmation
practices were also part of this connection:
What the Reformation did latch on to, however, was the medieval connection between confession and
communion. Later, when confirmation had become part of the normal Lutheran pattern, it was understood,
at least in part, as preparation for first communion. Via Confirmation, Lutherans perpetuated the
medieval ethos regarding first communion. Before receiving it, one must understand it and be able to
confess ones sin i.e., to be able to examine ones self. (p. 38)
54
Jeffrey Myers, 29-30. Emphasis original.
55
Peter Leithart, The Way Things Really Ought to Be: Eucharist, Eschatology, and Culture, Westminster
Theological Journal 59 (1997), 163.
56
Myers, 26.

Wandel 17
of it because their baptism and their Christian parents draw them within that covenant: they are
holy (1 Cor. 7:14).
With young and old, men and women, joyful and downtrodden, from the one who chops
wood to the one who draws water,57 let us rejoice together: Christ our Passover is sacrificed;
therefore let us keep the feast (1 Cor. 5:7-8, KJV).

57

Deut. 29:11.

Wandel 18
Appendix A: A Brief History
How did we get here? Here is a Western Church (Catholic and Protestant) that had not
communed infants for centuries until recently. The history has some debatable points, but the
following are certain: The Eastern church communed infants from at least late in the Patristic era,
and they have never stopped. Evidence for paedocommunion in the West goes back to the third
century AD, with little countervailing evidence. Actual practices varied in the early medieval
period, and in the West the practice was declining by the 12th century. It was completely gone by
the time of the Reformation and has only reappeared in the latter half of the 20th century.
Writing in 251 AD, Cyprian the Bishop of Carthage recorded a bizarre event that had the
tangential historical effect of witnessing to the communion of a small child. He tells a story of a
baby girl who had been fed meat sacrificed to idols by town authorities while her parents were
escaping persecution. Upon recovering their daughter, the parents brought her to the Eucharist
(she was too young to be able to talk) whence she promptly spat out the sacrament. Cyprian tells
the story to illustrate how the lapsed have defiled themselves, but in the process allows us to see
that offering communion to small children was an assumed practice, at least in 3rd century
Carthage.58
The next piece of hard evidence comes from Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, a century and a
half later. Defending infant baptism, he says,
Now, if your hearts can bear that Christ is not Jesus to any of the baptized, I do not know
how you can be acknowledged to have sound faith. They are infants, but they are made
members of Him. They are infants, but they receive His sacraments. They are infants, but
they become partakers of His table, so that they may have life.59
These passing comments (and others by Augustine) assume the practice. They do not prove that
it was in all congregations, or existent before the early to mid-3rd century, but after Augustine the
historical testimony is fairly widespread. Historically it is enough that an antipaedocommunionist
such as Cornelius Venema must admit that in the fourth and fifth centuries, paedocommunion
became a normal practice of the church.60 In fact, the historical evidence that communion of
children simply continued in the fourth century is stronger and more direct than the evidence that
it sprang up as a new practice.6162

58

Cyprian, On the Lapsed, accessed at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050703.htm . Please note that Cyprian

does not hold the infant morally liable; he is simply illustrating a point for the adults lapsed believers have defiled
themselves and should not be quickly admitted back to the Eucharist.
59
Augustine, Sermon 174, quoted in B.B. Warfield, Introductory Essay on Augustin and the Pelagian
Controversy, in Saint Augustin: Anti-Pelagian Writings, Vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Christian Literature
Company, 1886), p. xxiii.
60
Venema, 16.
61
Cf. the analysis in Gallant, 108-121.

Wandel 19
While this practice largely continued in the Church, it could be disrupted by the difficulty
of applying the sacrament of chrismation (anointing with oil and laying on hands) to newly
baptized infants. Lay people were allowed to baptize in emergencies, so infants were quickly
given the first sacrament of baptism, but chrismation was the domain of bishops and was deemed
requisite for receiving the Eucharist. In the East, the issue was typically solved when the bishop
would consecrate the oil, and then allow a priest to apply it to infants and serve them a small
drop of wine, or to soak a small bit of bread in the wine. These latter techniques of infant
communion also occurred in the West for babies who were episcopally chrismated,63 but many
bishops became removed from their flocks as the Church developed in the Middle Ages, and
chrismation could not be applied to all Western infants.
In addition to this separation of baptism and chrismation, individual confession became
tied to Eucharistic participation. First communion was gradually delayed to first confession.64 It
became natural to expect that a child would not take communion, or that a person would
normally have a hearing with a priest before participating. Other factors likely include the rising
doctrine of transubstantiation and concern for spilling or polluting the host.65 Finally, the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215 nailed the coffin on the already-declining practice of
paedocommmunion by withholding the wine from the laity (which was necessary for infants to
partake, either in itself or to soak the bread) and requiring Christians to go to confession before
receiving the sacrament.6667

62

The strongest historical evidence against paedocommunion consists of a difficult-to-interpret passage from Origen
that is allegorical and possibly not relevant, and one from Clement of Alexandria (150-219 AD). Clement cites 1
Cor. 11:27 to the effect that ones own conscience is best for choosing accurately or shunning [the Eucharist]
(Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, nd), 2:642). The
passage in Clements Stromata appears to be speaking only about adults, so its application to the present debate may
be limited. However, his quote of 1 Cor. 11:27 with reference to discerning moral worth requires response. It is
worth noting that he thinks the best practice is to imitate the godly which children of Christian parents clearly do.
63
For the means of medieval infant participation, cf. Charles Crawford, Infant Communion: Past Tradition and
Present Practice, Theological Studies 31:1 (1970), 528.
64
Eugene Brand, Baptism and Communion of Infants: A Lutheran View, in Living Water, Sealing Spirit:
Readings on Christian Initiation, ed. Maxwell Johnson (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 37.
65
Infants often were not completely successful in swallowing the host, and that raised questions of mind-blowing
proportions for sacramental literalists. Brand, 37.
66
Gallant, 125-128.cf. Schaff, History of the Christian Church (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996), 5:724; and
Crawford, 529-531. Mark Searle notes that the changes were slow and not deliberate. The change in explicit policy
was aided by a new understanding of chrismation/confirmation as a rite separate from baptism.
What made this change of direction thinkable, of course, was the new theology of confirmation as a distinct
sacrament, which the early medieval theologians had elaborated in an effort to persuade parents to bring
their children to the bishop for completion of their initiation. As it happens, the rationale for receiving the
sacrament eventually became the rationale for delaying it until the age of seven....
Searle, Infant Baptism Reconsidered, in Ancient Futures for Worship, Volume 2: Baptism and Confirmation,ed.
Mark Searle (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1987), 19-20.
67
At the time, the directive was not against infant communion per se. But the tie between age of reason, first
confession, and Eucharist quickly became justification for withholding the sacrament until the age of reason. Cf.
Robert Taft, S.J., Liturgy in the Life of the Church, Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 40 (1999), 187229.

Wandel 20
The communion of infants dates at least to 251 AD, there is no history that it was debated
in the early church, and it was widely attested from the fifth century forward. The practice
remains in the Eastern Orthodox churches, but in the West, after flourishing for centuries, it
declined by the High Middle Ages for a variety of reasons. Stronger theologies of delayed
confirmation, private confession in regular spiritual life, and transubstantiation helped to make
the change in practice a change in policy.68
The historical evidence for the early practice of infant communion is strong, but not
strong enough to prove anything in the first or second century, where records are scarce anyway.
Furthermore, a more detailed study of chrismation in the early church would be needed to make
further sense of these dynamics.

68

Searle, 17-20; Crawford, 531-532.

Wandel 21
Appendix B: A Resource for Churches
When should my child receive communion?
Any baptized child of Christian parents may receive communion in our church. We believe that
these children are fully in Gods family unless and until they walk away.
Anyone who is baptized is in the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13) and the apostle Paul says about
communion, Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of
the one bread (1 Cor. 10:17). All baptized Christians who are seeking to follow Jesus are one
body, so the bread is for all of us. Children are being discipled by their Christian parents even if
the children are not fully aware of it yet.
What about babies?
Baptized babies may receive the bread and/or wine. However, for practical reasons, most parents
will wait until their baby is eating solids. The easiest way to do this is to give them a small piece
of the bread (without crust) and dip it in the wine, which will make it easier to swallow.
What about the verse that says to examine ourselves? I can tell you that my son/daughter is
not doing any examining while we wait for our turn.
1 Corinthians 11:28 says, Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink
of the cup. This section of Pauls letter to the church in Corinth deals with one of their many
problems: some Christians seeking their own glory excluded other Christians from the
sacrament. This is just the opposite of 1 Cor. 10:17, where we become one body by eating the
one bread. Self-examination is commanded by Paul so that trouble-making Christians can see the
pain they are causing and repent. Note: these are active dividers of the church, not small kids.
Ill be honest, my child just wants a snack.
We do not wait for our children to understand prayer before they pray, and likewise our children
may take communion before they understand what is going on. Parents should work to
encourage their kids to grow in their understanding their waiting for them to be Christians.
So how should parents talk about it?
With toddlers or pre-schoolers, talk about how Jesus feeds us and gives us everything we need.
When we take the bread and wine, we are saying, I need your help, Jesus.
With young adolescents (ages 5-10), we can talk more clearly about hurting Jesus when we sin,
and how he is always ready receive us when we turn back to him. In communion, we are coming
(back) to Jesus. Not only that, but everyone who trusts Jesus is like one big family when we
come forward to eat and drink. Jesus wants so much for people to come to his meal, to trust him
and follow him. Jesus died and rose so we could all eat this together and be his family.

Wandel 22
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