My review of Cornelis Venema’s Children at the Lord’s Table continues. Here in chapter 5, he states the “New Testament does not speak directly to the issue of children’s participation in the Lord’s Supper as we might prefer. … Our consideration of this evidence, therefore, will have to begin with an identification of some basic themes of New Testament teaching.” So far so good. For example, the NT shows no woman taking communion or baby being baptized, but both are biblical.

To expand on the second example, advocates of paedobaptism note the silence of controversy over baptism in the NT. If little Jewish boys were circumcised for thousands of years as a promise and sign of faith, then we’d expect some misunderstanding, disagreement and controversy in the NT if baptism was only to be given to adult converts. No controversy indicates no discontinuity between the signs, hence the implicit occurence of baby baptisms. There is a lot more to the doctrine of paedobaptism (all founded on the covenant promises made to parents regarding their children), but this is one noteworthy argument even if it is from silence. As I pointed out in my review of chapter 4, children were welcome at feasts in the Old Covenant and certainly partook of the Passover meal. The catachesis that occurred at the Passover ensured that children were learning what it all meant as they partook which is exactly what soft paedocommunionists teach their children in the taking of the supper. What baptists do with baptism (try to establish a case for discontinuity between circumcision and baptism), anti PCists need to do for child participation in Old Covenant meals and communion. Given that they baptize their children, the case is made more difficult because the whole point of paedobaptism is that God gives Christian parents his promises regarding the salvation of their children, and there is never a time of apostasy that is supposed to occur in a healthy covenant home. Sin, doubts, questions, difficulties, of course, but not apostasy. Young Hebrew children participated in Passover because they were capable of trusting Yahweh; as for their house, they would serve the Lord. A parent who withholds the lamb is saying “Maybe. We’ll see when or if you choose to serve the Lord.”

In his comments on the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Venema says it’s “an obvious fact that Christ appointed the bread and the wine to be representative of Himself, particularly of His body given and His blood shed for the sake of His people.” And these signs “are to be received as a means of remembering and believing that Christ’s death was an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” He goes on to say while baptism is received passively, communion is taken actively. This is not mentioned in the Bible, but sure. In baptism, water is placed on someone. In communion, the elements are taken by the recipient, chewed and swallowed. But that’s not his point. He asserts that “those who participate in the sacrament are to do so in active and responsible obedience to the Lord’s commands to do so “in remembrance” of Him”, but no where makes the case that children can’t do this.  What about all the New Testament evidence that children have faith?

Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 19:14

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me.

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. ⁷ Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!”  –Matthew 18:1-7

Venema seems completely unaware of these passages. If right participation requires active faith as Venema states over and over, isn’t it essential to establish that children can’t have this faith? While everyone agrees there is no explicit statement about children and the Lord’s Supper, Jesus does explicitly say a lot about kiddos: disciples must become like little children in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven; whoever humbles himself like a child will be greatest in the kingdom of heaven; whoever receives a child receives Jesus but whoever causes one of those who believes in Jesus to stumble would be better off drowned; and do not hinder little children from coming to Jesus since the kingdom belongs to them. In these various pictures, we have active and responsible children who enter, believe, humble themselves, and possess the kingdom. It’s those who refuse to recognize their faith, and hinder them, who get rebuked by Jesus. This is just a couple passages. Venema is silent on the crux of the matter, but Jesus is not.

Venema does a good job making the case that the Supper is an occasion of remembering, a memorial. He doesn’t even attempt to make the case that children can’t do this from the NT or anywhere else. I believe he cited Rich Lusk’s book Paedofaith which is excellent on this point, but he simply doesn’t touch topic of the faith of children.

His category for uncommunicant covenant children is “non-professing children.” Why haven’t they professed, I wonder? I had a conversation recently with a pastor who grew up in the Christian Reformed Church. He didn’t take communion until he was 17 and this was quite early–he had to push the elders to let him–because it was expected that kids needed to grow up, go to college, sew their wild oats, and if they returned and were still in the faith, then they could be communicants. You get what you expect. I don’t know Venema’s background so I’m not attributing this position to him, but I’ve known too many examples of Dutch Reformed culture to think this is an exception. What it really seems to be is a failure to discipline. Churches won’t give kids communion because they know those kids will likely rebel (which ought not to be the standard!), and if they do then the church ought to discipline them, and who wants to get involved in that sort of icky pastoral ministry? It’s much easier to adopt a halfway covenant practice, baptize them, keep them away from the Supper until we’re really sure they’re believers, then let them have it. If they never come back then we don’t need to do anything about it because they were never really full, communicant members anyway.

Venema spends a good bit of time arguing that the Lord’s Supper is not a new kind of Passover (which would be problematic since he admits children partook of the Passover), but rather is connected “with the covenant renewal meal that Moses and the elders of Israel celebrated on Mount Sinai” (emphasis his). Yet he argues women are included because of the “New Testament’s teaching of their participation in Christ through faith (cf. Acts 2:42; Gal. 3:28).” Jesus broke the customs of his day when talking to women (John 4), but he explicitly rebuked those who denied the faith of children or tried to keep them away from him. Working from the words of Christ, admitting children to the Supper is an a fortiori argument, how much more then should little believers be admitted to the table.