History of Paedocommunion

Here is the conclusion of Tommy Lee's "The History of Paedocommunion: From the Early Church Until 1500”: (emphasis added) From the third century until the twelfth and thirteenth century there is overwhelming evidence that the Western Church regularly brought her infants and young children to participate in the Lord's Supper. This is evidenced by several primary sources and substantiated by numerous secondary sources. Before this time, "we have no unambiguous evidence about the practice"⁸³ of paedocommunion. However, not even the most ardent opponents of infant and young child communion have been able to adequately explain why it "suddenly" became the common and universal practice of the church in the third century. The most logical explanation of the church's third century paedocommunion practice is that it was the same as the church's first and second century paedocommunion practice. The efforts of Coppes and others to shed doubt on the presence of infant and young child communion in the first and second centuries have been ineffective. We do not have any direct references to paedocommunion in first or second century documents, but as soon as references to this practice appear, (far from being considered novel) they are accidental remarks about a practice as common and ordinary as going to sleep at night.

In the West, history records the infants and young children of the church being denied the Lord's Supper for the first time in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is important to note that "the Lord's Supper was lost to the church's children in the west not as a result of a purification of the church's practice of the sacrament but rather as the result of a horrible corruption of it."⁸⁴ There were three or four minor realities that deterred people from having their infants and children communed, but the primary reason for their exclusion was the superstitious fear of the elements provoked by the theory of transubstantiation.

In Eastern Christianity , there has never been a reason to discontinue the ancient tradition of paedocommunion which has been handed down to them from the early church. "Still today in the Eastern Orthodox Church, infants [receive]... the three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist, within a few minutes of each other, and in that order."⁸⁵

There have been a few reformational attempts in the West to restore the early church's custom of communing her infants and young children, but these endeavours have never totally won the day. The most famous of these attempts came from the fifteenth century Hussites. The following is a portion of one of their communion hymns:

"You gave us his body to eat, His holy blood to drink What more could he have done for us?

"Let us not deny it to little children Nor forbid them When they eat Jesus' body.

"Of such is the kingdom of heaven As Christ himself told us, And holy David says also:

"From the mouths of small children And of all innocent babes Has come forth God's praise That the adversary may be cast down.

***

"Praise God, you children You tiny babes, For he will not drive you away, But feed you on his holy body."⁸⁶

----------

⁸² Ibid., 35. ⁸³ Leithart, 34. ⁸⁴ Robert S. Rayburn, "Report of the Ad-Interim Committee to Study the Question of Paedocommunion," in PCA Digest Position Papers 1973-1993 Part V, ed. Paul R. Gilchrist (Atlanta: Presbyterian Church in America, 1993), 513.

⁸⁵ DeMolen, 54-55. ⁸⁶Cited in Rayburn, 514.