Covenant Baptism Means…

I exorcise infants.
I baptize infants.
I chrismate infants.
I commune infants.

Because Holy baptism is not a simple dedication service, it is indeed the Church doing what the Church has always done: delivering children from darkness, uniting them to Christ, sealing them with the Spirit, and feeding them at the Lord’s Table.

And here’s the part many modern Protestants forget.

The Reformers Knew This

John Calvin acknowledges the historicity of infant communion, even though he rejects it for his own theological reasons. But he is not disagreeing with history, only offering his reading of the Bible against the consensus of the Fathers.

Luther admitted that infant communion had strong historical precedent. So did Martin Bucer and Peter Martyr Vermigli. None of them denied that the ancient Church communed her baptized infants.

Why? Because the sources were clear. And the Reformers read them—deeply. They saw the Eastern Church still practicing it.

---

The Syriac Resourcement of the Reformation

One major thread often forgotten in these debates is the Syriac and Oriental Orthodox influence on the early Reformation.

• Luther and Erasmus both worked with the Peshitta, seeking liturgical and sacramental customs that predated scholastic accretions.
• The Syriac Fathers—Ephrem, Aphrahat, Isaac the Syrian—were read and cited explicitly to critique medieval innovations and recover earlier apostolic practice.

This mattered for the sacraments. The Syriac tradition retained the ancient unity of baptism and chrismation and Eucharist for infants, long after the West separated them.

A Living Example: The Mar Thoma Tradition

The Malankara Syrian Church—from which the protestant Mar Thoma Church later emerged—is a remarkable test case. It followed the West Syriac liturgical family (St. James rite), not the Byzantine rite and yet retained the common practice of infant communion from the Early Church. Thus the practice of communing infants was properly Malankara, not borrowed from modern innovations of Greek or Russian Orthodoxy.

In the early 1800s, a portion of the Malankara Church came under substantial Reformation influence, adopting a distinctly Protestant soteriology. Yet it retained the ancient Syriac practice of communing all the baptized, including infants. Even Abraham Malpan—though committed to simplifying the liturgy and emphasizing Scripture—did not reject explicitly paedocommunion, because Holy Qurbana was understood to belong to the entire baptized faithful, not merely the instructed. Western missionaries noted its use – often critically – in the reforming church.

Only later, under prolonged Western influence, did Malankara descendants such as the Mar Thoma Church gradually adopt Western customs like a formal “First Communion,” a shift that was not fully entrenched until the 20th century.

Other examples of this influence:

In the 17th century, Non-Juror Anglicans were already drawing from Syriac and Eastern liturgies.

By the 19th century, leaders of the Oxford Movement (including Pusey) recognized the continuity of this tradition.

The result? The argument for paedocommunion was never merely “Eastern Orthodoxy vs. Protestantism.” It was part of the Reformers’ own ressourcement.

Today: Recognized Paedocommunion

This historical stream continues into the present.

Paedocommunion is explicitly permitted—and in practice, protected—in:

• The Church of England
• The Episcopal Church (TEC)
• The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)
• The Reformed Episcopal Church (REC)

In other words, the Anglican world has already acknowledged what the Reformers and the ancient Church took for granted: baptized children belong at the Lord’s Table.