2. Venema fails to consider the various ways the church fathers may have conceived of faith.

  • In line with this, he fails to account for other contextual readings, prioritizing his own reading as obvious because he has already assumed his conclusion.
  • As a side note, reading this response alongside the book is beneficial as I do not fully reproduce what I am responding to.

The quotes from the church fathers that Venema provides can be made to align with a paedo-communion position just as easily as the credo-communion position. Venema assumes his conclusion.  To be fair, I do the same.  In my estimation, I’m more honest about it.

Venema’s failure to understand the role of faith at the supper continues as he turns to the church fathers. He assumes that the fathers have the same account of faith that he takes for granted.   Venema also fails to understand how the context of these quotes does not necessarily support what he wants to make of them.

The comment on faith should be clarified.  It is common among the reformed to make intellectual assent a part of faith, and it is assumed that babies do not have the rationality to express faith.  That is why the reformed, when speaking of faith in infants, preferred to use phrases like “the principle of faith,” “the root of faith,” or “an inclination to faith.”  They often forget that the fundamental meaning of the word faith is simply trust, which babies, as well as adults, can express.  This faith expresses itself very differently in the infant, whose reason is not yet formed, than in the adult.  We can even say that in the adult, this rational or intellectual element is necessary, for as the scriptures say: let each act according to the measure of grace that is in him. 

The worst effect of this sort of reasoning is that faith becomes ideological.  Faith in Christ becomes equated with any number of propositional truths or system one must hold before the come to the table of Christ.  While this is undoubtedly part of faith, the danger of the practice of Profession of Faith is that this faith becomes boiled down to an ideology.

This reality causes me to wonder whether the current state of denominationalism is not in part due to a natural working out of the doctrine of Profession of Fatih. Each denomination finds a way to quantify the level of ideological purity they need at their table, making the table no longer Christ’s table but that denomination’s table, to the degree that some will recognize that there are many other Christians out there but because of they do not hold to that particular denomination’s or federation’s ideology they are refused the table of the Lord. This makes the table the table of a particular sect of the church rather than the Lord’s table.  

I am not denying the importance of knowledge or propositional truth in the church’s public confession.  I am merely making a note of how the practice of Profession of Faith might have worked out the relative importance of that aspect of the church’s life sociologically. Paedo-communion suggests a different sociology that might even take a form that is more similar (it will never be the same) to how the 3rd and 4th century church functioned. I merely suggest.  It may take a form not seen yet, as well.  The latter is the more likely outcome.

Neither do I argue these things because I am anti-intellectual or I don’t love reason.  These are wonderful gifts of God to us. I merely state that the reformed overemphasized the role of reason in such a way so that they could not see that faith could be properly attributed to infants. Here they failed to deal with the biblical evidence already offered above.

I admit to reading through the lines, but Venema’s assumptions about the meanings behind the quotes from various fathers of the church fail to account for the different ways in which they used the term faith. Justin Martyr says only those may come to the table who are living as Christ has called them too.  If Justin Martyr is working with the assumptions I have argued for, this has nothing to do with Venema’s argument. Similar arguments can be made about the other quotes.  Venema seems to assume that a call to faith and a call to examine is the same as making those prerequisites to the table.  Similar things can be said about the more stylized quotes that reflect on the journey of the Christian to the table.

A second thing that Venema does not allow for is that some of these quotes are given to the congregation as a whole and, as such, are given to the whole congregation and received according to age and capacity.  I looked up the quote from Clement in the Stromata, for example, and that is the very thing Clement is doing, arguing that in the Christian life, a man ought to continue to examine himself as he walks on the path of righteousness, and he uses the call to examine one’s self from 1 Corinthians 11 as such an example.  If Venema is right about 1 Corinthians 11, he may be right about Clement.  If Venema is wrong about 1 Corinthians 11, he is likely wrong about Clement.

Another thing that Venema does not make us aware of is the new adult members that are likely coming into the church of Jesus Christ at the time and are also in the mind of the fathers. They certainly would have needed to express an age and capacity-appropriate faith before coming to the Lord’s Supper.

Finally, Venema fails to understand the strong role of typology among the fathers.  For example, the quote from Origen that refers to the status of the children in the Old Testament as one of being under a tutor.  Origen is tying us, the Christians, into that history.  Historically, we were once children, and now, in Christ, we are adults.  If we were to take this type of typology and woodenly apply it to the Christian journey in the New Covenant, would we say that small babies are under the law and then when they profess their faith, they are under grace?

Similar things can be said about the quote from the author of the Syrian Didascalia. Once again, we have a stylized quote that summarizes the journey of the Christian life. I imagine that the author is thinking of Hebrews 5 and 6 in the background and equates participation in the meal as eating solid food. If we actually look at Hebrews 5 and 6, the author of Hebrews is speaking to a group of adults, and these adults are given the milk of the word. That does not mean that they did not participate of the sacrament.  The sacrament pointed them toward the more solid food of good works.  In fact, the author of the Syrian Didascalia here is thinking in the following terms:  You are brought into the New Creation through baptism, and in the New Creation, you are fed by word and sacrament.  Word first, and then sacrament. Here, we have a logical order that does not need to reflect a temporal order.

If we take this seriously regarding temporal order, are we to prevent baptized adults from being at the table for a while?

A second way to look at this quote is even more straightforward.  It is simply a description or list of all the things that are begun in you and continue to happen, whether it is the making new through water or the feeding with the spirit and the word, or admonitions, or the sacrament.  Again, Venema assumes a lot when deriving a logical and temporal order from this quote.

Even in his mild conclusions (Venema will qualify with things like “probably”), Venema is not careful enough.  He doesn’t allow for the idea that the church fathers may speak out of a very different worldview than his own. I don’t say this proves paedo-communion in the very early church.  I only say that Venema is far more free with his explanations of these quotes than he ought to be.  He has already assumed his conclusion while working through these quotes. 

My conclusion is that Paedo communion was likely common in the early church, as much as from other emphases in the fathers about baptism and the body of Christ and the connection between baptism and full participation in Christ, but I recognize that I believe that, in part, because the teaching is so evident in scripture.  

I am also not bothered if I am wrong about one or two of these quotes.  Scholars today emphasize the diversity of liturgical practice across the Roman Empire.  If some groups did not practice paedo-communion, that does not surprise me.  Christ, after all, had to remind the Jews of the central importance of children to his kingdom, it is not a surprise that many Christians throughout history had to be reminded as well.

As for the rest of Venema’s historical reconstruction, he is right to say that the move to credo-communion cannot be reconstructed through the lens of one issue. There are further complications. It is actually his account of a move from credo communion in the first couple of centuries to widespread paedo communion in the fourth century that stretches credulity.  I can find the evidences of the first, there is very little evidence for the second.  The first happened over hundreds of years while the West was torn apart and had to be rebuilt.  A lot was forgotten.  The second happened over a hundred years and we have little evidence of a fight over this liturgical change in churches that took liturgical change very seriously.

An addendum:

I want to talk a little more about this argument that is derived from the Origen quote: that some will say that the immature state of Israel before Christ reflects the state of the child.  They continue: yes, he feeds on Christ, but not in the fuller sense symbolized by the meal. It follows that entrance to the meal reflects the time of maturity in which Christ has come. 

This argument, in particular, really bothers me, for it creates all sorts of problems with the status of Children.  Are children under the law?  If so, why are they baptized into Christ? Do they necessarily have a less meaningful relationship with Christ?  Why? How so?  How can Christ then say, “of such are the kingdom of God!”  The whole community, the whole tree, is renewed in the New Creation of Christ!  Are children somehow barred from the age of the Spirit who cries “Abba, Father!” I do wish that credo-communionists would not use this argument as much for their own sake as for mine.

That is not to say that there are not lessons for us in training up our children, but these have to do with practical child-rearing, not what era an individual belongs in.