Few questions in the Reformed and Anglican world generate more careful discussion than this one: Should baptized children be admitted to the Lord’s Supper?
Many assume that John Calvin definitively settled the matter against paedocommunion. Others within the Reformed heritage have revisited the question, arguing that Calvin’s case deserves re-examination.
Mark Horne, points out that, John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once:
At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are never admitted: as if Scripture did not in every way draw a wide distinction between them. In the early Church, indeed, the Lord’s Supper was frequently given to infants, as appears from Cyprian and Augustine, (August. ad Bonif. Lib. 1;) but the practice justly became obsolete. For if we attend to the peculiar nature of baptism, it is a kind of entrance, and as it were initiation into the Church, by which we are ranked among the people of God, a sign of our spiritual regeneration, by which we are again born to be children of God, whereas on the contrary the Supper is intended for those of riper years, who, having passed the tender period of infancy, are fit to bear solid food…
Calvin then continues by separating communion and baptism in an ahistorical way that doesn’t match Christian history (remember Calvin admits that young baptized children did commune) and reads his anti-child communion view into his interpretation of the Passover meal.
Mark points out:
“The first thing to note is that Calvin is not responding to a Reformed paedocommunionist. To claim that Calvin condemned paedocommunion is simply not the case. He condemned Anabaptists who postulated paedocommunion as a way of defeating arguments for paedobaptism.”
What would Calvin had argued with the pro-paedobaptist orthodox Christians?
Mark continues by arguing that the view of the Reformers was the default position of the medieval Roman Catholic Church and not the ancient or patristic church:
“As it is, the fact remains that paedocommunion received no serious consideration at the time of the Reformation so that we heirs of the Reformation have any prima facie reason not to reconsider the tradition we inherited from the medieval Roman Catholic Church. John Calvin and Martin Luther and many others had grown up with a certain sort of practice as well as a rationalization for that practice that appealed to Scripture. They were not in the position of John Huss and his followers, over a century earlier and farther east, who still remembered that at one time children had been given access to the Communion Meal and then later barred.”
Is Calvin Right about the Passover?
Calvin argues infants should not be at the Lord’s Table because he pressumes that infants did not participate in the Passover meal. How does he know this? Calvin asks how would they (infants) answer questions about what the Passover is. Yet the opposite conclusion is true. The structure of children asking questions suggests participation precedes explanation. Old Covenant meals were covenant-status based, not age-based. The children must be present in order that any of them might ask questions.
Mark points out,
“[No] indication that this question is to be asked at the Passover meal. All it says is that when a child asks, the parents are supposed to give a certain answer. Nothing is said about the child reaching a certain level of understanding before being permitted to participate.”
The only people barred explicitly from the passover are the uncircumcised.
In the New Covenant, the covenantal equivalent is the unbaptized. Even in Calvin’s theology, Christian children are baptized in infancy.
Age is never mentioned as a barrier. If covenant status through circumcision was the requirement, then covenant sons would appear to be included unless otherwise specified.
Deuteronomy 16:11, 14
“Thou shalt rejoice before the Lord thy God, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter…”
In the instructions for the pilgrimage feasts (including Passover), sons and daughters are explicitly named among those rejoicing before the Lord. The text does not distinguish between observers and participants.
Deuteronomy 12:6–7
“There ye shall eat before the Lord your God, and ye shall rejoice, ye and your households.”
The covenant meal language includes households, not merely heads of households.
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