Paedocommunion advocates believe that infant baptism brings a child of an adult church member into the church in every respect, not only solemnly admitting the baby to the visible church (as all Reformed and Presbyterians believe about infant baptism), but, by virtue of his baptism, admitting him also to the Lord’s Supper. According to the partisans of paedocommunion, no sessional examination for a credible profession of faith is necessary to admit a baptized child to the Table. His baptism gives him everything he needs, and he does not need to be further examined for personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ before having a right to the sign and seal of Holy Communion. For the paedocommunion advocate, the requirement of a credible profession of faith to come to the Table is repugnant, equivalent to starving our children by a failure and refusal to give them what is rightfully theirs, unduly withholding from those who ought to receive the body and blood of the Lord in a spiritual communion with our Savior.[1]

Such an insistence, however, that baptism alone qualifies the infant to receive communion, without the need for a profession of faith, fails to reckon with what the sacraments mean in distinction from each other: baptism is the sacrament symbolizing and sealing initiation/regeneration, and the Lord’s Supper, continuation/sanctification. We will see how this proper sacramental distinction is missed by paedocommunion advocates. In this essay, my remarks will be largely restricted to our church’s interpretation of God’s Word about these matters as they occur in our doctrinal standards (and, to a lesser degree, in our church order), reflecting the dogma of the Presbyterian Church. Others treat biblical and theological arguments here.[2]

Wherein Do the Sacraments Differ?

The Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) 176 notes that the sacraments agree in that God acts in both, that they are seals of the covenant, and that none but a minister is to dispense them, until the return of Christ. The question that follows and wraps up the WLC’s entire discussion of the Supper and the sacraments is one that proves fatal to those who assert and promote paedocommunion:

Q. 177. Wherein do the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper differ?
A. The sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s supper differ, in that baptism is to be administered but once, with water, to be a sign and seal of our regeneration and ingrafting into Christ, and that even to infants; whereas the Lord’s supper is to be administered often, in the elements of bread and wine, to represent and exhibit Christ as spiritual nourishment to the soul, and to confirm our continuance and growth in him, and that only to such as are of years and ability to examine themselves.

The last sentence here clearly teaches the requirement for “years and ability to examine themselves” for those who come to the Table, a position that flatly refutes paedocommunion. To get at this properly, we need to go behind WLC 177 to unpack what baptism and the Lord’s Supper each mean and who is qualified to partake thereof. Note that WLC 177 begins by teaching that the sacrament of baptism is to be administered but once and serves as a sign and seal of our regeneration and our ingrafting (entering faith-union with Christ), and that even to infants. This stands in contrast to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, which is to be administered “often,” as ongoing nourishment in the Christian life.

Let’s focus first on baptism: It does not cause regeneration and the faith that follows, but it speaks of the need for both in the elect; whenever God is pleased to renew them and grant faith and repentance to them, what we call conversion, there one sees the proper fruition of that which was signed and sealed in their baptism. Baptism, in other words, is the sacrament of initiation into the Christian faith, demonstrating what must happen for one truly to be a Christian (the washing in the water symbolizing that we must be washed in Christ’s blood) and mysteriously connected to the same for all those who are elect.

WLC 165 begins the baptism discussion and notes that the baptized are in their baptism “solemnly admitted into the visible church.” This is important in connection with the next question (166) about the proper subjects of baptism. Certainly, those who profess faith and have never been baptized are to be baptized, as are “infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptized.”

We may say, then, that when that which is signified and sealed in baptism is at some point made evident in the life of a child who has been baptized, the child appropriately prepares to profess his faith in Christ. In other words, baptism points to that entrance into the Christian life in which we are, as to our regeneration, particularly passive (and thus especially appropriate for helpless infants to have it administered to them). The figure of speech that our Lord chose here, the new birth (John 3), is quite evocative. We must be born again, Christ tells Nicodemus, surely selecting a metaphor here that is quite purposeful. We are utterly passive in our natural birth—the act of being born is in every language what the grammarians call a “forced passive.” One never speaks of the act of one’s being born in anything but the passive voice. So too with the second, spiritual birth that we experience in regeneration. We are as passive in the new birth, whatever our age, as we were in our first, biological, birth. This is one reason that infant baptism presents such an appropriate picture of the new birth: We are all as helpless in the new birth as infants were in their first birth.

Not so, however, in all that follows regeneration, leading to a profession of faith for those baptized as infants. We baptize infants of church members without requiring anything from them but that they show up (and even there, they must be brought to the font by another). When covenant youth are duly prepared and wish to profess their faith in Christ, however, we require something more than what was passively signed and sealed in their baptisms. We require that those who have had placed upon them the sign and seal of the covenant whereby they are distinguished from the world in the sacrament of baptism, testify to their taking up in their lives that which was earlier placed upon them in baptism. Those whom Christ earlier owned must now come and own him in turn to be qualified to partake of the sacrament of Holy Communion.

“Worthily Communicate”

Notice how fully the WLC addresses this, that is, what it expects of those who are properly to be admitted and regularly to partake of the Table of our Lord. It’s certainly not infants in arms who can come to the Table, but those who can testify that they’ve truly received God’s grace and are committed to living a Christian life. WLC 168 defines for us the nature of the Lord’s Supper, and the questions and answers that follow (169–175) all assume that those coming to the Table can examine themselves and will come or refrain accordingly. WLC 169 says that Christ has appointed ministers of his Word (not ruling elders or dads or others) to administer the sacraments, and celebrants are “to take and eat the bread, and to drink the wine, in thankful remembrance that the body of Christ was broken and given, and his blood shed, for them.” Infants cannot engage in these actions, and it takes some ability to remember and perceive that the elements symbolize Christ’s sacrifice for them.

WLC 170 makes it clear that those who “worthily communicate” in the Lord’s Supper need to understand that they do not feed on Christ “corporally or carnally” but “truly and really,” and do so “in a spiritual manner.” Again, this is not something that an infant or even a young child can properly do. Those who come to the Table, further, are to “prepare themselves before they come unto it” (WLC 171). The description of the spiritual preparation that follows is extensive and would not apply to those whose development precluded such preparation. WLC 172 encourages those who doubt their being in Christ, or of not being prepared, to come anyway, as such a one may have true interest in Christ, though lacking assurance. If the one so coming truly desires to be found in Christ, lamenting his unbelief and otherwise mourning over his sin, he should come to the Supper to receive the strength and grace it offers.

WLC 173 describes those living in a way who, though professors of religion, should not come to the Table because they are ignorant or scandalous. Clearly, this refers to a youth upward, not an infant. The age, of course, is left to the discretion of sessions, but in no case should it be infants or children unable to reason in any of the ways that the WLC sets forth in these questions. WLC 174 describes what is required of those who receive the Supper at the time of its administration. They must, among other things, wait upon God in it, “with all holy reverence and attention.” They must “diligently observe the sacramental elements and actions, heedfully discern the Lord’s body, and affectionately meditate on his death and sufferings,” and be able to perform all the actions that follow, to which I commend readers. One may demur in all this that adults miserably fail in all this regularly. Indeed. But they have, by God’s empowerment, the ability to do these things, though often done poorly and inconsistently. The infant and young child does not have the capacity for such and does not, according to the paedocommunion promoter, even need to have any such ability.

Finally, WLC 175 addresses what the duty of Christians is after they receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Here it is in full, as it makes doubly clear that infants cannot perform these actions or possess these sentiments:

Q. 175. What is the duty of Christians, after they have received the sacrament of the Lord’s supper?
A. The duty of Christians, after they have received the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, is seriously to consider how they have behaved themselves therein, and with what success; if they find quickening and comfort, to bless God for it, beg the continuance of it, watch against relapses, fulfill their vows, and encourage themselves to a frequent attendance on that ordinance: but if they find no present benefit, more exactly to review their preparation to, and carriage at, the sacrament; in both which, if they can approve themselves to God and their own consciences, they are to wait for the fruit of it in due time: but, if they see they have failed in either, they are to be humbled, and to attend upon it afterwards with more care and diligence.

This inarguably applies only to those with such abilities, whether they make any proper use of such abilities and attend to these duties. To bring those to the Table who are incapable of using their natural and spiritual gifts to engage in this holy work of preparation, of due attendance thereon, and of reflection afterwards, is to lay intolerable burdens on families and churches that none of them can bear. Advocates of paedocommunion do not differ in a minor way from our doctrinal standards but in the whole understanding that we have of the Supper of our Lord as the sacrament of further strengthening and encouraging those who have already manifested that they have a credible profession of faith and who seek to come to the Table that they may be thereby further strengthened.

Honoring Word and Sacrament Ministry

Those who advocate paedocommunion come from a variety of perspectives, some of them being champions of patriarchy. Patriarchy itself differs in expression, some of it arising from various home-church movements that have a low view of the church, its authority, and its proper offices, especially the ministerial office. In these movements, the dad is also the minister of the family and decides who gets communion and who doesn’t. He can give it to children as small as he chooses (and perhaps withholds it from a teenage child, otherwise qualified to take it, with whom he remains angry). Some of these movements are in churches that permit the dad to decide who in the family can partake on any given Sunday when the sacrament of communion is being distributed by the elders.

This is all inimical not only to our church order (both the Form of Government and the Directory for Public Worship) but also to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms that make it clear that both sacraments are ordinances that only a minister of the Word and Sacrament can administer. Note in all the questions cited from the WLC that it is a minister of Word and Sacrament, not even a ruling elder, who gives the bread and the wine to the people of God, showing the unbreakable link between the Word preached and the visible Word of the sacraments.[3]

What we need to return to is a proper understanding of Word and Sacrament ministry, with the sign of initiation given to our children as infants, who then, we pray, will own the covenant for themselves as they profess their faith to the session that regards such as credible and thus qualifying them to join the Lord’s people at the Table of the Lord. This is what we need in our churches, not the nominalism that paedocommunion engenders and the disorder that accompanies the rejection of the place of ministerial office, in conjunction with the office of ruling elder, in the church. Rightly observing the means of grace appointed by God remains the path of blessing as we go forward in this challenging time before the consummation that we will enjoy only when Christ returns.

Endnotes

[1] This is the assumption everywhere stated in volumes like those by Tim Gallant, Feed My Lambs: Why the Lord’s Table Should be Restored to Covenant Children (Pactum Reformanda Pub., 2002), and Greg Strawbridge, ed., The Case for Covenant Communion (Athanasius Press, 2006).

[2] See Cornelis P. Venema, Children at the Lord’s Table? Assessing the Case for Paedocommunion (RHB, 2009), and Stuart R. Jones, “The Lord’s Supper and Covenant Children,” https://opc.org/os.html?article_id=103.

[3] See Mark. R. Brown, ed., Order in the Offices, Second Edition (Reformed Forum, 2024), esp. my essay, 245–256, as well as my Commentary on the Book of Church Order (CCE, 2025), at the relevant places in which I discuss the office of Minister of Word and Sacrament.

The author is president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary and a pastor of First OPC in South Holland, Illinois. New Horizons, January 2026.