The Case for Covenant Child Communion

D.v., I hope to blog my way through some notes I've made in the margin from the book of that title. From Robert S. Rayburn, 'A Presbyterian Defense of Paedocommunion':

... so far as Holy Scripture ever speaks to the question, it always includes covenant children in the meals of the church. (p5) That as a matter of course little children partook of the Passover meal may be said to be the consensus of the commentaries (footnote, p6)

Dt. 12:6-7, 12, 18

... the Scripture often says that covenant children participated in the sacramental meals of Israelite worship; it never says that they did not or were not to. Scripture knows how to say that certain privileges are reserved for those who reach a certain age, as, for example, it does in the case of the priesthood, but it never says anything like this regarding the participation of children in the sacramental meals of the covenant. Indeed, it says nothing remotely like this. (p7, emphasis original) ... it is very doubtful we should understand Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 as actually laying down some liturgical requirement of self-examination as a prerequisite for participation in the Lord's Supper. Paul is speaking to adults about sins they were committing. He is relating the repentance he demands to their practice of the Supper. He is not thinking about the participation of children and is not addressing their case.... We do not draw such a conclusion when Paul tells a congregation that those who do not work should not eat, or when Peter tells his hearers that they must repent in order to be baptized. (p10, footnote)

All Israel partook of the same spiritual food and drink - 1 Cor 10:3, 18 (see p11)

The fact is, the argument that Baptists use against infant baptism has exactly the same form as the argument the Reformed have long urged against the participation of little children in the Lord's Supper. (p11)

i.e. (1) The Bible requires that people believe before they can be baptized (2) Babies cannot believe (3) Babies must not be baptized (1) The Bible requires that people examine themselves before they can take the Supper (2) Babies cannot examine themselves (3) Babies must not take the Supper. Quite apart from what it means to examine themselves or whether babies can have faith, one may question whether the Bible requires *all* people to do so before being baptizes or taking Communion.

It is admitted by everyone that from the mid-third century onwards the practice of paedocommunion was commonplace in the church. (p12) [We cannot really prove what happened before that]. The fact is that even later authorities [and so called authorities] who do not approve the practice of paedocommunion, such as Calvin and, interestingly, the Council of Trent, accepted that it was the common practice of the early church. (p13)

The majority report of the Presbyterian Church of America and the minority reports of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and the Christian Reformed Church are all critical of peadocommunion but admit that children ate the Passover. (footnote, p16) In Greg Strawbridge (ed.), The Case for Covenant Communion (Athanasisus Press, 2006)