Why wait to give your child communion until they’re baptized? In my experience, this question is coming up more and more often in those Christian traditions that hold to adult baptism. Traditionally, the answer has been straightforward. “We believe that a choice is necessary to become part of the church,” the Baptist or Anabaptist pastor might tell inquiring parents, “and your child hasn’t yet chosen to become part of the church.” Since Communion is or symbolizes the Body of Christ and unifies that Body, the pastor might continue, we can infer that those who are not in the Church shouldn’t take it. Therefore, unbaptized children shouldn’t take communion. It’s a syllogistic argument that might seem pretty thoroughly impregnable and applies whether or not your child has reached the so-called age of accountability.
But in more and more churches, children, even very young children, are taking communion. That might be simply because the table isn’t fenced. Perhaps your church just passes those little plastic juice cups and tiny wafers down the row and some parents allow their kids to partake. Or your nondenominational extension site has no particular rule against your six-year-old taking communion, and she wonders why she can’t go up too. You haven’t known quite what to say. It could also be that the church leadership or laity feel that inward assent to Christ is all that’s necessary for inclusion in the body and not outward assent, so there’s no need to get hung up as long as the congregant gets what’s going on. It may even be that Galatians 3:28, Acts 15, and the inclusion of the Gentiles have played such a role in your community that inclusion (or the avoidance of exclusion) has become the sum of the gospel, and if that’s true how can you exclude the little children whom Christ has welcomed?
This situation is, I want to emphasis, serious. It poses an implicit but urgent question to our churches. Just what are baptism and communion and do they really matter anymore? The answer the historic church has given with almost one voice is that baptism is (or marks) the entrance of a man or woman into the body of Christ, and communion unites (or symbolizes the union of) that body as the body of Christ. And, as for the second question, the answer is yes. It’s hard to say what could matter more.
The view that baptism marks the entrance of a person into the Christian community—the one, holy, universal, and apostolic Church—has been held almost universally through Christian history. This was true of Catholic and Orthodox Christians from the earliest days of the Church, and the early Anabaptists and Baptists almost all continued to assume this doctrine as fundamental. The dispute between the Catholics and radical Protestants and, later, Lutherans and the Anabaptists was all about whether a person needed to consciously choose baptism, not the meaning of the rite. All involved assumed with Paul in Romans 6 that in baptism the Christian was buried with Christ and raised to new life so that they then belonged to a new community.
A few notable exceptions to this belief about baptism, however, have had a massive effect on modern Protestant Christianity, and we might group them together under the name Spiritualism. This word might evoke different thoughts depending upon the Christian community in which it’s spoken, but those meanings almost always include the sense that the Spirit speaks to the individual in such a way that the tradition and even Scripture comes under criticism and, critically, the individual might claim the authority to level such critics because the Spirit lives in him or her. Both Luther and later Lutherans who had a bone to pick with the Pietists loved the word Enthusiasm (Schwärmerei), but that doesn’t quite cover it. Neither does the Quaker term “inner light.” But both can help us get closer to what I mean here by Spiritualism. Above all, the individual claims divine authority over the group—but also, often enough, claims that other Christian individuals also have authority over the group.
Spiritualism isn’t unique to Protestantism, but Protestantism created an environment in which it could thrive. In Switzerland, Southern Germany, and some areas of what is now Austria, Spiritualists popped up in the years immediately following the Reformation. They found common cause with the early Anabaptists and sometimes felt baptism to be a mere outward sign of an inward reality; the outward rite, in other words, was for them more or less unnecessary. A century later in England Spiritualism exploded. On the Continent spiritualist beliefs could accompany a mostly Lutheran or Anabaptist theology, but in England, with its history of Lollardy (proto-nationalist, individualistic, anti-papal religious radicals), the radicalism went further and spread farther. The Civil War in particular took nonconformity or dissent in rather extreme directions. The Baptists arose from this tumult, but so did a host of politically radical groups that continued to play a role deep into the 1660s. Obviously baptism was important for many of these groups too. But again the notion that baptism was an unnecessary outward sign of what was really important—the inner reality of Christ’s Spirit living within a person—changed the ecclesial and theological conversation in many radical and proto-democratic communities.
The Baptists, of course, have never been spiritualists in the main, and such spiritualism has run against the grain of Baptist life in America. All this goes doubly for the Anabaptist movement. Anabaptists have an even stronger tradition of holding to believer’s baptism. The Schleitheim Confession (1527)—written by the martyr Michael Sattler and important for many parts of the movement—places baptism in its very first article, and early Anabaptist women and men frequently died or endured other extreme hardship so that they wouldn’t have to baptize their children (not so that they could). Pacificism, the hallmark Anabaptist doctrine today, wasn’t always held by the progenitors of the movement (e.g. Balthasar Hübmaier). Believer’s baptism emphatically was. Unlike the Spiritualists with whom they often connected, the Anabaptists identified themselves by conscious choice of the individual Christian to receive this rite and thus be inducted into and submit themselves to the authority of the community, the Body of Christ.
Early Anabaptists emphasized communion too, and they explicitly excluded from the rite anyone who had not been baptized. Schleitheim’s third article runs like this:
All those who wish to break one bread in remembrance of the broken body of Christ, and all who wish to drink of one drink as a remembrance of the shed blood of Christ, shall be united beforehand by baptism in one body of Christ which is the church of God and whose Head is Christ…. Therefore it is and must be (thus): Whoever has not been called by one God to one faith, to one baptism, to one Spirit, to one body, with all the children of God's church, cannot be made (into) one bread with them, as indeed must be done if one is truly to break bread according to the command of Christ.
If baptism marks the entrance into the body of Christ, how could the unbaptized partake in the meal of the Body of Christ? Doing so would mean that we are not “discerning the body,” to redeploy Paul’s phrase. Allowing or encouraging the unbaptized to partake, the early Anabaptists or Baptists would have thought, means at best that we don’t know who we are and at worst that our church is not a true church.
But here again is where Spiritualism enters the conversation. If the rite of baptism itself isn’t important, but only the internal disposition, then perhaps baptism isn’t necessary for taking communion. But this in turn immediately brings up another question: why would communion itself be necessary—or of any importance at all? It too might be said to be an outward rite that, somehow, became the vehicle of an inner spiritual connectedness between Christians. But if those Christians were already connected spiritually—and what Spiritualist would claim otherwise?—the act of taking or offering communion really becomes of no importance at all. It may even be considered a distraction. At best it’s something akin to motivational or inspirational.
Spiritualism is, of course, dualistic, meaning that the flesh is of “no value” in a way Paul could not have affirmed. In reality our own and others’ “outward” deeds have a great deal to with our “inner” state of being. We all know this on some level, but the power of tradition is strong. And America probably has a stronger Spiritualist tradition than just about anywhere else.
One final question arises here that merits comment. What about those believer’s baptists who might claim a child that hasn’t reached the age of accountability could reasonably take communion because they’re already in some measure a part of the body. They’re factually a part of the community, they worship with the community even if they don’t understand it all, and they’re being formed by their parents. Why withhold the bread and the cup from them?
The person asking this question need not be a Spiritualist. They might refer to 1 Corinthians 7 in which Paul says that a woman who stays with her unbelieving husband can consider their children “holy,” which implies that the same label might be given to children whose parents are both Christians. Perhaps if they’re holy, they are a part of the community, the argument might run. And nothing is said here about baptism being a prerequisite to holiness.
They may not be a confused infant baptizer either. The choice to enter the community on one’s own (“making your faith your own”) could still await the child who takes communion with their church. Here is may be that baptism is moved into something like the place confirmation holds in other churches’ theologies.
So then, should the child who hasn’t reached the age of accountability but shows interest in communion be allowed to take it? The picture just painted has certain merits. Nevertheless, several very significant reasons remain why parents and clergy should not allow not-yet-baptized children to participate. To fully grasp them, more will have to be said about the nature of baptism and communion as the biblical authors and almost all traditions viewed them.
One: The most important reason against inviting unbaptized children to the table is that the view of baptism just described would have been unrecognizable to the biblical authors and, really, to Christians ever since. Even John the Baptist’s baptism is said to be “for the forgiveness of sins.” Baptism into Christ, however, is in Paul’s language “a baptism into his death” (Romans 6:3).
Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection (6:3-5).
Let’s just say directly what’s happening here: baptism is a baptism into martyrdom. It is a baptism into a fully human life, yes, but in our screwed-up world living a fully human life means dying, whether that’s only dying to self, actually getting murdered, or both. That’s the penultimate truth of the cross; only resurrection—God’s vindication of his people in living such a cross-shaped life—makes such a life reasonable and possible.
The view that baptism is “making your faith your own” cannot be reconciled with the first Christians’ view of baptism. Whether you think it’s a symbol or the thing itself, it’s clearly something more than “making your faith your own.” It’s signing up for martyrdom.
Two: This is why the church has taken baptism so seriously through the ages. Catechesis in the early church was done so that confirmands knew what they were signing up for, not so that they knew what they’d already done. This often took up to three years! To be sure, the period was shortened through the fourth century, more so after the Roman Empire became officially Christian under Theodotius, and by the end of the next century the practice of infant baptism had taken hold most everywhere. But before this, some people put off their baptism until they were old or near death. They didn’t want to sin after baptism and endanger their salvation, it’s true, but for our purposes the point is that they knew that baptism was the gateway to a new life, the putting off of the “old man” in the baptismal font, and the gift of new life, the “new man,” received upon rising from the water. Even the politically awkward transition to infant baptism didn’t change this belief.
So, again, the thought that baptism is a “making faith your own” kind of thing does not arise in the early or medieval church; not even in the early modern church does it come up. It is, it seems, a very recent phenomenon.
Three: Then there’s what Paul says about “discerning the body” in that famous passage in 1 Corinthians 11 about communion. “A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself” (28-29). Unnerving, isn’t it? But remember what Paul says a little later in chapter 14. The body of Christ isn’t, at least first and foremost, the bread being eaten. For Paul, it’s the church community. The person should examine him or herself with regard to other members of the community, not primarily his or her existential or emotional state before God.
This is, recall, the body of Christ that in baptism has signed up—at least potentially—for martyrdom. This is the community that dies to self and lives to God so that the world can see who God is and what he wants for the world. But children have not signed-up for martyrdom, and usually their parents would not feel able or willing to sign them up for such a fate. They don’t and couldn’t yet know just what sort of community it is to which their family has become united. Being part of that unity in taking communion entails being part of that unity in martyrdom, in dying to self, and in offering our individual bodies as living sacrifices (Rom 12). This is the reality that we’re living into.
Four: Allowing our children to take communion may not result in them getting sick (1 Cor 11) or some other terrible outcome. But it does teach them something about (1) the nature and (2) the unity of the church that’s untrue, and, if they believe that teaching, they’ll take the church less seriously than they should.
Here’s what I mean. Christians have said in the past that the church is the body of Christ baptized into his death but living in the Spirit-led hope of resurrection. This is what the biblical vision of baptism communicates. The vision of communion is of a unity in body and blood, in suffering as well as joy, a unity in death and only for that reason (Phil 2:9) a unity in life and peace and resurrection. It’s a strange thought that a non-baptized person would be asked or allowed to participate in such a unity, even and perhaps especially a child who doesn’t yet understand what we’re doing. In fact, when looked at this way, it seems sort of irresponsible.
Does all this mean, as some have thought, that a non-baptized child who dies before baptism goes to hell or isn’t a Christian or isn’t really a part of the community? We have good reason to say that traditionalists who hold to this view have missed the mark. Paul gives us a hint of another possibility in 1 Cor 7 when he speaks of children being “holy” because of a parent who believes, and no mention is made of baptism. Further, it seems to me that there is a sense in which these “holy” children (including those with two Christian parents) are becoming or are on the way to being part of us as they learn about their Lord.
God will not wrong our children. Of that we can be assured! As they, God-willing, move toward baptism and are taught about who we are as the Church, they can look forward to full unity when they first take communion, participating in the body and blood of the Lord with the full community. Having a clearer understanding of what communion and baptism are before partaking will help them appreciate these rites more—and, I would argue, help them appreciate just what this strange community of Christians is in which they find themselves.