Notes on Venema’s, “Children At the Lord’s Supper:” Part 1, Faith and Paedo-communion.

Notes on Venema’s “Children at the Lord’s Table.”

I’ve received several recommendations to read Venema’s “Children at the Lord’s Table.” I have read articles and summaries of Venema’s argument, but it is not until now that I have sat down and read the book in its entirety.

 It is often counted as one of the best defenses of Profession of Faith, the practice of having a child give an account of his faith before coming to the Lord’s Table. Having read it, I tend to agree with that estimation, not so much because he makes a strong case, but because he is more intellectually honest than most critics of paedo communion.

 With some qualifications, I respect his attempt to present the Paedo-communionist position with a desire for truth and fairness in his dealings. Overall, he is careful to avoid resting on obscure passages of scripture, such as the theoretical question of the child as he sees the Passover; “What do these things mean to you.” Instead, he builds a compelling case for the importance of faith for worthy participation in the supper.  Upon that basis, together with a collection of evidence from Scripture, Church History, and the Confessions, he argues that “Because the Lord’s Supper is a sacrament that nourishes faith, it requires a kind of faith that is able to remember, proclaim, and discern the body of Christ.”

However, the statement quoted above is not logically coherent on its own.  It has an assumed premise that is missing.  We can see this through simplifying the statement, “Because the Lord’s Supper is a sacrament that nourishes faith, it requires a certain kind of faith.  One must then find some scriptural teaching that the sacrament can only nourish a certain kind of faith.

He fundamentally fails to adequately provide a scriptural basis for a ritual in which the young confessor must express his faith before admittance to the table.  And if he does so on that point, it fails to establish that this faith must be qualified by remembrance, proclamation, and discernment as a requirement for admittance to the Lord’s Supper. Indeed, every Christian is called to remembrance, proclamation, and discernment in his or her faith, but there is nowhere in scripture where we are given a measurement of such faith as a requirement for admittance to the supper. Therefore, it is better to understand this call as something that is applied according to age and capacity rather than a prerequisite.

I’ve divided my critique into four: (1) Venema fails to understand the role of faith in the paedo-comunionist mindset. (2) Venema has a similar failure of imagination in his reading of the church fathers. (3) Venema fails to understand the nature of the transition from Old to New Testament. (4) Venema’s entire case is built on the contested passage of 1 Corinthians 11.  There are other disagreements, but these four points, particularly points one and four, reveal the flawed assumptions that underly the case for Profession of faith.

1. Venema fails to adequately understand the role of faith in the case for paedo-communion.  He especially fails to understand how the reformed paedo-communionist conceives of faith.

Venema states that for the paedo-communionist, there is “only one basis for admission to the Table of the Lord, namely, membership in the covenant community.”  What he fails to understand here, is that for the paedo-communionist, membership in the covenant community, means to be counted as one who has faith, a believer. For one cannot be saved apart from faith.  And this is very much a part of the reformed tradition.  Here is a link to an article summarizing the reformed tradition on how the root or principle of faith is found in all believers, and therefore, we can say that children are counted as believers.

In the “Synopsis of Purer Theology” (a gathering of the best Dutch Theologians after the Synod of Dordt, in Leiden, to go deeper into the theological questions that were discussed at the Synod), it was even said, that repentance and faith were necessary before baptism. So here infant baptists embraced a form of believers’ baptism. It followed that children were to be counted as having repentance and faith, even before they were baptized. Similarly, while the Divines who put together the Westminster Confession of Faith, would not have used the same language (they would not have seen repentance and faith as necessary before infant baptism), they still would have counted children as believers, using, again, the language of the root of faith or the principle of faith.

And this can only be confirmed by the scriptures.  The Psalms, written not just to describe David’s experience, but the experience the covenant believer, speak of such an infant faith. David says in Psalm 22, “Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.”  While David is still nursing, God teaches him to trust in him. Even more dramatic are the words of Psalm 71, “For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust O Lord, from my youth.  Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb.  My praise is continually of you.” Here, we have faith in the very womb of the Psalmist’s mother, as the Psalmist already leans upon God there.

As I’ve already stated, this is not merely put in the mouth of David.  The Spirit puts these into David’s mouth so that they may be the confession of Israel.  Israel is taught to consider themselves believers from birth. We, the people of God, throughout all the world’s history are taught to count ourselves as believers even before we receive the covenant sign, whether it is circumcision or baptism.

To be a covenant member is to be a believer.  The question of faith as a pre-requisite to the table is moot. Faith, in turn, leads to faith.  The call to faith comes out through the word of God every Sunday, both to children and adults.

Naturally, a common concern comes up: the question of presumption.  The answer is simple.  Presumption is always wrong. 1 Corinthians 10 marvels at how Israel received all the blessings of the covenant and yet they died in the wilderness.  Hebrews 4 tells us how the people did not enter the rest of God, because they did not mix the promises with faith. Nobody in the church of Christ may presume on their faith.

God brings us into his kingdom and we are called to a continual response of faith.  The Heidelberg Catechism says that we baptize infants because they no less than adults have the promises of the gospel.  The same goes for communion; we feed the children from the table of the Lord because they, no less than adults, need the assurance of their faith.  It is not as if you come to the table and suddenly you just get the promises, no longer the warnings of the covenant.  You always need both.

Therefore, presumption is wrong for young children. They are to be taught to increasingly take ownership of their faith.  Presumption is wrong for young fathers and mothers; they must be taught to continue to draw near to God.  And presumption is wrong for old men.  They are not to forget God as the sun begins to set on life.

Again, not all who are in the covenant are of the covenant.  Some of those circumcised did not believe.  Some of those baptized do not believe.  When the call to faith is not heard and the heart of rebellion begins to act out, that is where church discipline comes in. And a lack of faith will eventually lead to rebellion.  That is the warning of the scriptures.

The desire to guard against presumption, whether by creating the ritual of profession of faith in response to baptism or putting baptism at a later age, does not deal with presumption. Presumption just becomes a problem at different times of life, and unfortunately, there is often an encouragement to doubt the reality of one’s faith, for those who do not measure well according to whatever local standard is decided on.

An argument can also be made that the practice encourages presumption. You have arrived to real faith once you come to the table and once you have true faith you are saved.  Faith becomes, not just the tool that God uses so that we may receive salvation, but it becomes, practically speaking, the ground of salvation.  Once one has professed, one has reached a higher level of spirituality and is therefore safe.  This of course, goes against the theology of the reformed church, and I have observed the leaders of the church seek to fight against this type of attitude. Rightly so!  I wonder if the problem is in the practice itself.

Or, if one can come to the table early or tests better than his or her peers, spiritual pride becomes a reality. I can only speak anecdotally, but I have seen the table become something by which some measure themselves better than others, especially for those who, through natural intelligence and early maturity, are able to come to the table earlier than their peers. Men use this as an argument against paedo communion, but really it is an argument for it, because it is the practice of Profession of Faith, that creates the opportunity for such spiritual pride.

While Venema fails to account for these realities in his own tradition, neither does he adequately account for how a paedo-communionist might account for the importance of faith.  Yet I do think there are extenuating circumstances as to why Venema misses this.  Early advocates of Paedo-communion failed to adequately explain the role of faith in their understanding, preferring to rely on more objective arguments. I then, have some sympathy for his lack of understanding here, for the paedo-communionist argument has developed overtime.

I don’t know if Venema had access to Rich Lusk’s book “Paedo-faith.”  That book accounts for a lot of the discrepancies of Venema’s account. It fills in the holes where Venema suggests that some advocates of Paedo-communion fail to account for faith.

 Even at the end of the book, where Venema, suggests that Lusk attributes more to baptism that is proper to allow for paedo-communion, he misses these realities.  He quotes some relatively strong statements about baptism (admittedly, I might not use the same language), which emphasize the objective realities of the covenant which we are a part of.  In his book “Paedo-Faith,” Lusk clearly highlights the importance of mixing faith with the glories we receive in baptism.

I’ll end this section by noting that there is a statement on paedo-communion in the CREC (It is in its first reading in Knox Presbytery and not in its final form, but in general, describes the position of those who hold to paedo-communion in the CREC).  I have reproduced it below.

“As elders who hold the keys, we do not exclude baptized children from the Lord’s Table because God has incorporated them into His covenant and congregation through baptism. The covenant promises are theirs in Christ. We believe that in the sacraments God calls us to respond by faith in Christ according to our age and capacity. We affirm that faith is a necessary condition for worthy participation at the Table and that God gives such faith even to small children. Jesus said: ‘Let the little children come to me.’”