Is the Lord’s Supper for all covenant children? In recent years, Reformed communities have nursed a simmering argument about this, with an increasing minority claiming that the traditional Reformed perspective betrays the logic of its own sacramental theology. In spite of a few articulate voices in the “paedocommunion” camp,¹ however, most major Reformed denominations have continued to side with Calvin and the Westminster Confession, insisting that only baptized believers who make a profession of faith should be welcome to the Lord’s Table.

I believe this basic view represents the most faithful interpretation of the Scriptures. That said, I believe many Reformed churches have applied this view in an unduly restrictive and overly intellectualized way. I will argue that we should admit to the Lord’s Table all covenant children who want to participate with the church in the Lord’s Supper if they have a professed, even if simple and little informed, love for Jesus.

History Since the Reformation

At least since the Reformation, with very few dissenting voices, the perspective of the Reformed church has been consistent: The Lord’s Supper is for baptized believers after they make a public profession of faith. Calvin represents the traditional perspective on this, for he likely informed the traditional view to a great extent. Calvin articulated this view in The Institutes to answer an objection from Anabaptists who, similar to many contemporary paedocommunion advocates, believed that the Reformed practice contradicted its theology. How could Reformed people give their children the sign of the covenant and then, practically if not formally, excommunicate them from communing membership in that same covenant?² Calvin answered from both New Testament prescription and Old Testament types:

. . . with respect to Baptism, the Lord there sets no definite age. But he does not similarly hold forth the Supper for all to partake of, but only for those who are capable of discerning the body and blood of the Lord, of examining their own conscience, of proclaiming the Lord’s death, and of considering its power. . . . Circumcision, which is known to correspond to baptism, had been appointed for infants [Gen. 17:12]. But the Passover, the place of which has been taken by the Supper, did not admit all guests indiscriminately, but was duly eaten only by those who were old enough to be able to inquire into its meaning [Ex. 12:26].³

Since then, almost all traditional Reformed confessions have followed suit, and for the same reasons.⁴

One might ask the question of why, after all these years, an increasing minority has begun to challenge the traditional perspective. I will attempt to address that briefly later. For now, we will turn to the arguments of paedocommunion advocates to see how they address the arguments that Calvin called “clear and obvious” to anyone who “had a particle of sound brain left.”⁵

The Argument from Passover

In his 1975 article, “Is the Lord’s Supper for Children?”, Christian Keidel built his case for paedocommunion on “three biblical truths”: 

(1) the analogy between the Lord’s Supper and the Passover Feast; (2) the analogy between the Lord’s Supper and other Old Testament sacrificial feasts; and finally (3) infant membership in the New Testament visible church.⁶

Since other paedocommunion advocates argue along similar lines, we can use Keidel as a representative case. His argument relies on the supposition that Old Covenant regulations permitted children to the Passover meal and the other Old Covenant fellowship feasts (of Weeks and Booths) “before they had reached the ‘age of discernment.’”⁷ Granted this fact, Keidel argues that we should similarly admit children to the New Covenant fulfillment of Passover and the other fellowship feasts—the Lord’s Supper, since, as he argues in his third point, we should indeed baptize babies into the new covenant visible church. Along the way, Keidel touches on Calvin’s New Testament objections, particularly from 1 Corinthians 11:28. We’ll return to that.

As for the Old Testament types, we cannot say with any degree of certainty from the Old Testament texts themselves that infants necessarily participated in the Passover before they reached the age of discernment. But that mostly uncatechized children participated seems fairly obvious. I think Keidel makes a convincing case for this:

In Exodus 12:3 the Lord says that a lamb should be taken for each household, verse 4 adding that a lamb should be taken “according to the number of persons” in each household. Are infants and children physically capable of eating the meal counted among these persons? Yes, they are, because verse 4 becomes even more precise: “each one according to the mouth of his eating,” אִישׁ לְפִי אָכְלוֹ. . . . The identical phrase, “each one according to the mouth of his eating,” appears in the Old Testament in only one other context, in Exodus 16, where it is used three times to refer to the apportioning of the manna to each household (vss. 16, 18, and 21). In this context, the phrase certainly included infants and small children who were physically capable of eating the manna, for there was nothing else for them to eat.⁸

Given the fact that the first Passover was a household meal right before a strenuous journey, it does seem highly unlikely that fathers would have forbidden any child who could eat solid food from eating what he or she wanted to, unless God had strictly forbidden it. No one is claiming God did forbid it explicitly. So the most obvious implication is that children who could eat and wanted to eat probably did. Some opponents of paedocommunion have strained the biblical texts unnecessarily at this point, and most of their arguments prove too little or too much.⁹

Does it Matter if Children Ate Passover?

But does it actually matter if children ate the Passover? In their vehemence to prove children didn’t eat the Passover meal, many opponents of paedocommunion (aside from torturing Old Testament texts) implicitly concede the point. In other words, they seem to admit that if children were permitted to the Passover meal, they should be permitted to the Lord’s Supper as well. This is not necessarily the case. As Cornelius Venema argues, we can’t determine New Covenant practice by an explicit one-to-one correlation from Old Testament type:

The ultimate norm for the practice of the church must be the New Testament description of the administration of the new covenant. . . . Whatever continuities may exist between the old and new covenants, one may not determine the practice of the new covenant community of faith by a simple, direct appeal to the practice of the old covenant.¹⁰

Further, one would still have to consider under what circumstances children participated in the Passover. And it should be taken into account that the Old Covenant law did not require parents and ministers to administer the Passover to their children. This clearly differentiates the Passover from circumcision. In other words, admitting children to Passover differs greatly from mandating that they participate. Given the fact the law required only men to come to the three annual fellowship feasts (Deut. 16:16), it seems like an extreme over-reach for paedocommunion advocates to claim that barring children from the Lord’s Table amounts to cutting children off from the covenant. If that were true, why wouldn’t God have required rather than merely allowed women and children to attend the fellowship feasts? It seems here that paedocommunion advocates have not properly distinguished between a command and a permission.

All that aside for now, if the New Testament should guide our understanding of the Old, we should look there first to determine how the Lord’s Supper is to be administered in the new covenant era. That will help us more accurately understand the meaning of the Old Testament types and signs.

The New Testament Prescription

Since Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper with only his closest adult male disciples, the actual institution does not clearly define the eventual or potential participants in the sacrament. For that information, we must look to Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which gives us the clearest and most explicit direction on who should celebrate the Lord’s Supper and how.

The most crucial, and the most fought over, text on this is 1 Corinthians 11:27–32:

Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

Opponents of paedocommunion refer to this text most often as the New Testament reason for barring children from the Lord’s Supper. It seems clear that the self-examination required here is not possible for infant children. Closely in line with Calvin’s reading, Herman Bavinck comments:

In 1 Cor. 11:26–29 Paul specifically insists that people should examine themselves before celebrating the Lord’s Supper in order to be able to discern the body of the Lord and not eat and drink unworthily. This demand is very general, addressed to all participants in the Lord’s Supper, and therefore automatically excludes the children.¹¹

Advocates of paedocommunion try to avoid this natural reading of the text in a number of ways. Keidel argues that the phrase “whoever” (ὃς ἂν) in Paul’s writings is not always universally applicable and applies only to adults here, which begs the question.¹²

Examine Yourself?

Tim Gallant makes a better case, by focusing on the word “examine.” He says that the idea in mind here is less about sophisticated introspection or assessment of knowledge and more about assessing one’s status as “approved” in Christ. According to Gallant, the main question Paul wants us to ask ourselves is: “Have I been disqualified from the table, yes or no?” He writes:

The concern of examine (put yourself to proof) is not, then, whether I am producing the right feelings toward the elements, or know enough theology, or anything of the sort. It is rather, as the relation between the words (dokimazo and dokimos/adokimos) attests, to ascertain whether I am approved (dokimos), whether I am in the faith . . . Where does the Bible call into question whether covenant children are approved (dokimoi)? Where are we taught to assume that they have broken faith with Christ?¹³

Though I agree with Gallant on Paul’s meaning of the word “examine,” I do not agree with his conclusion. Notice that he has subtly shifted the subject of the examination from the participant to the fencers of the Table by the end of his argument. No one argues much about whether Christ accepts or does not accept children in Himself. The issue is whether or not children themselves can make that assessment. Paul does not say, “Let the elders approve each participant, to determine if he or she has broken faith with Jesus.”

Reformed parents and elders have already answered Gallant’s emotional appeal in infant baptism. That is where elders and parents express their own faith and assurance that their children are “approved” before God in His covenant. The Lord’s Supper is not the place for elders and parents to approve their children, but rather for “each person to approve himself.” No matter how you define “examine,” Paul exhorts all the participants in the Lord’s Supper to assess their own status in Jesus. In other words, Paul’s language quite clearly bars not just unworthy but also unwitting participation in the Lord’s Table.

As opponents of paedocommunion have made clear, this does not necessarily bar all children from the Lord’s Table. Anyone, even a child, who publicly professes faith in Jesus may come to His table and participate. But paedocommunion advocates seem to aim at more than this. Most of them, including Keidel and Gallant,¹⁴ argue that the church should administer the Lord’s Supper to all baptized children who are physically able to take it, regardless of whether those children have any understanding of their relationship to Jesus or the church. I think this view misunderstands the purpose of the Lord’s Supper and its distinction from baptism as a means of grace.

Who is Commanded to Take the Lord’s Supper?

Drawing from the Heidelberg Catechism Q. 81–82, Bavinck helpfully explains:

In order to run a true course and do full justice to Scripture in this matter, the Reformed as a rule posed two questions: (1) Who have a right as well as an obligation to come to the Supper? (2) Who must be admitted to or barred from the Supper by the church?¹⁵

These may not seem at first to be insightful clarifying questions, but they strike at the heart of this issue. If you have a right to the Lord’s Supper, do you have an obligation to it? Do the rights and obligations intertwine at all? And do both the communicants as well as ministers have an obligation? Advocates of paedocommunion try to disentangle the right and obligation of the communicant, so that the right belongs to him without any obligation. It seems that, from Paul, these cannot be disentangled.

We usually focus on the prohibition implied in 1 Corinthians 11:28, which of course requires something of the communicant, but we rarely consider the explicit command that follows. Paul, speaking to people who had clearly abused the Lord’s Supper, commands them to eat and drink, each one having examined himself.¹⁶ In other words, having found yourself qualified, Paul commands you to eat (similar to the males concerning Passover).

Advocates of paedocommunion apparently do not see that this damages their case considerably. They try to create a single obligation in the Lord’s Supper: that of the minister to feed all covenant children, young and old, the Lord’s Supper. But the Scripture does not obligate the minister to do this. Ministers fence the table in which they also share. In other words, ministers of the Lord’s Supper merely warn off any unwitting and unworthy participants. A minister has no obligation to force-feed the unwitting or the passive, no matter what he considers to be their status in the covenant.

The obligation of the Lord’s Supper on the communicant is to take and eat and drink. It is, at its base, not a passive but an active participation. This makes sense of the Reformed position. Baptism, like circumcision, lays its burden of obligation on the ministers and parents who do it (following Gen. 17:10f). Baptism is done to you by others. But communion is something done by you with others.

So, in 1 Corinthians 11:28, Paul commands worthy participation as much as he prohibits unworthy or unwitting participation. Can an infant obey the command? If we permit the infant (or even require ministers to include infants), we also obligate the infant to participate in the way Paul prescribes (wittingly and voluntarily). It is clear that an infant cannot fulfill this obligation even in a strictly physical way.

Who was Commanded to Attend Passover?

This also sheds light on the permission, not requirement, of the Passover meal as it concerned women and children. If God did not require women and children to eat the Passover meal to maintain their covenant connection, then, quite obviously, God also did not require priests and fathers to administer the Passover to women and children. Women and children could participate in the Passover meal only if they came of their own volition to Jerusalem to do that (as was the case with the exceptionally pious Mary—Luke 2:41).

So, God gave Old Covenant ministers permission, perhaps even encouragement, to share the fellowship feasts with women and children who wanted it, but God did not require them to administer the fellowship feasts to just any unwitting and passive member of the covenant. Further, those who did not participate in the fellowship feasts still maintained their covenant connection through circumcision and/or representative headship. And God permitted them to come to the feasts if they wanted to come. Voluntary desire then, played a central role in the Old Testament fellowship feast, and it continues to play a major part in the Lord’s Supper fellowship feast now. 

Reformed Practice Often Too Restrictive

I do not agree with the paedocommunion position, since it does not uphold the Old and New Testament emphasis on voluntary desire to join the fellowship feasts. It confuses the obligations of communicant and minister. It does not properly address the new covenant prescription for the Lord’s Supper found in 1 Corinthians 11. And it fails to distinguish between baptism and the Lord’s Supper, thus failing to properly interpret the significance of Old Testament types.

True fellowship with God is not and never can be passive. Introduction into God’s covenant must be passive—we are dead in our sins and incapable of earning God’s abundant promises. But continuance in God’s covenant naturally assumes a growth in voluntary participation. And that is the fitting arena of the Lord’s Supper as a means of sustaining and nurturing growth, as has been the view of the Reformed tradition since the beginning.

However, the practice of the Reformed church has often been overly zealous to fence the table and too restrictive in its requirements. Ministers who fence the table do not need to find great knowledge or great faith. A credible profession of any faith in Jesus will do. As Robert Paul says, “The distinction was not between those who had a great deal of faith and those who had very little, but between those who have some faith and those who (as yet) must be presumed to have none.”¹⁷

Conclusion

So, who does Jesus permit to His Supper? In short: any baptized believer who wants to participate for sincere love of Jesus, even if that love has simple features and few words. I think this is where I would significantly depart from the practice of most major Reformed denominations. I do not think a well-catechized intellectual understanding and articulation of the faith should be a prerequisite of admittance to the Lord’s Supper. Note that Calvin uses Exodus 12:26 to indicate that children should be able to “inquire into [the] meaning” of the Lord’s Supper before they are admitted. But inquiring after something differs greatly from being catechized. The hypothetical child who participated in the Passover clearly did not fully understand the significance of the meal. He had a desire to know and to grow, and the meal helped him to do just that.

Similarly, the Lord’s Supper seems even better fitted to teach the simple faith of children than sermons and catechisms. Certainly they should be catechized as well, but when a child says that he would like to take communion, even if his reasons are as simple as a desire to participate in the covenant body life of the church or to get more of Jesus, why should we bar such a believer from the Table?

I think this is why the paedocommunion debate has gained such ground recently. In many ways, it is a backlash against the arbitrary rationalism that would deny a sincere believer from the Lord’s Supper simply because such a believer did not have sufficient knowledge. How sufficient must our knowledge be? Any line drawn on that is simply arbitrary. Paul gives us one rule: let each person approve himself.

If a child says, in so many words, “I love Jesus and I want to receive Him in any way I can,” that should suffice to secure his permission to the Table. Should that child receive deeper religious instruction and catechesis from there? Of course! The Lord’s Supper will actually help greatly in that. But consider the potentially faith-crippling consequences if we bar sincere and self-approved believers from receiving more of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper. Even if we mean well, will not Jesus say to us, like He said to His disciples before, “Let the little children come to me”?

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For more of my thoughts on incarnational theology and the sacraments, check out “Incarnational Evangelism: Preaching the Word to a Words-Weary World.”