A few years ago, I stumbled across an online forum discussing the following question: “Friends of mine have a preteen child who has always been nonverbal and has the cognition of about a two-year-old. Should communion be offered to people with that type of disability?”

If the church has done well nurturing its covenant youth, this preteen’s abilities and disabilities are well known to the whole congregation, including the ruling elders. We shall not treat her as a two-year-old, because she is not. She is now reaching the age when her peers will probably take a communicant’s class, and people are rightly wondering if she may take communion. The answer on the online forum was a resounding no. This refusal is another milestone in her life at which her parents will grieve, and she may be further isolated from the body of Christ.

People with cognitive challenges may be people with low IQ or developmental disabilities, Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia, or people on the Autism Spectrum (not all, because it is a spectrum), or any number of other things. Each case is different. In this case, let us assume the preteen in question was baptized as an infant and so is a member of the church—a non-communicant member, but still a member of the body of Christ.

While some Presbyterians desire to practice some form of paedocommunion, the OPC does not favor this practice (“Report of the Committee on Paedocommunion,” Fifty-Fourth [1987] General Assembly). So, how shall we recognize the spiritual life of someone not able to communicate well?

Serious Warnings

Scripture and our confessional standards contain serious warnings about partaking of the Lord’s Supper:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Cor. 11:27–29)

Wherefore, all ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with him, so are they unworthy of the Lord’s table; and cannot, without great sin against Christ, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto. (Westminster Confession of Faith 29.8)

May any who profess the faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s supper, be kept from it? Such as are found to be ignorant or scandalous, notwithstanding their profession of the faith, and desire to come to the Lord’s supper, may and ought to be kept from that sacrament, by the power which Christ hath left in his church, until they receive instruction, and manifest their reformation. (Larger Catechism Q. 173)

These words are strong. On the surface, they seem forbidding and unaccommodating. It is as if the Westminster divines answer our question about cognitive challenges and communion with a loud and resounding no! Nevertheless, what did the Westminster Assembly mean by “ignorant”?

Given that the English Parliament had to receive the assembly’s documents, the House of Commons requested the assembled theologians be more specific in defining “ignorance” (and “scandal”) that would keep one from participating in the sacrament. The Assembly reluctantly answered but asserted the discretion of local elders.

The Wisdom of the Eldership

Commenting on this discussion, Chad Van Dixhoorn notes, “The assembly . . . held that a capable eldership should be able to determine someone’s fitness without a published doctrinal standard” (Minutes and Papers of the Westminster Assembly, vol. 5, 188). Here are their own words:

Yet still we desire it may be remembered, that much must be necessarily left (as we humbly conceive) to the wisdom of the Eldership, who, as they are to use all diligence with meeknesse to instruct the people in the knowledge of these principles, before they exact an account of them, so are they to by all manner of ways to find out, whether they doe understand these necessary things or not: Because we find by experience, on the one hand, that some can give answeres and speake words expressing all the above mentioned particulars, yet have no more understanding of the things themselves then very children, who are as well able to repeat the words; And, on the other hand, that some do understand more in these particulars then they are able readily to set words to expresse. (Ibid., 189)

In some circumstances ignorance is not a vice or a blamable defect. In the case of children, we expect that they will grow in their knowledge, hence we wait. People are not all gifted in the same ways. Some simply do not have a natural aptitude to know, and it is not in their power to overcome that nescience by study. This differing ability is not the same thing as ignorance that willfully chooses not to learn.

Faithful elders will know their sheep. This pastoral backbone runs through the Westminster Assembly’s work. Elders will know, when someone is able to give all the answers to a catechism, whether they do also comprehend the meaning of these words. Someone on the Autism Spectrum around the age of two years old may be able to announce the whole periodic table, with names and numbers, abbreviations, without any comprehension of the meaning of those words—I heard a two-year-old do it often. The catechism may be recited poll-parrot, without any logic (understanding) or rhetoric (wisdom). The simple reciting of knowledge is no proof of knowing.

On the other hand, some who struggle to repeat catechism answers may well be spiritually alive. They may often be lost in wonder, love, and praise of our great and glorious and good God. Their cheerful desire to be present, to sing, to greet, to serve, speaks louder than the answering of doctrinal queries. Think of John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb! (See Luke 1:41.)

This wisdom is reflected in our own Book of Church Order. In interviewing someone for membership (and thus admission to the Lord’s Supper), the session is “to assure itself so far as possible that [the candidate] possesses the knowledge requisite for active faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, relies for salvation on the work of Christ, is trusting Christ for salvation, and is determined by the grace of God to lead a Christian life” (BD II.B.2.d). The phrase “so far as possible” applies both to the session and the candidate. There is clear room for discretion.

A credible profession of faith may be a very simple statement of faith in Jesus. As Alan Strange says, people “are not required to subscribe to the doctrinal standards or approve of OPC polity. They are called upon, in order to be a member of the OPC, to give a credible (believable) profession of faith (one not manifestly contradicted by their lives)” (What Is the OPC?, 12).

Not Capable of Being Outwardly Called

The Westminster Confession of Faith recognizes that there will be people present in a congregation who are not capable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who works when, and where, and how he pleases: so also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word” (WCF 10.3).

It is a deeply comforting pastoral statement on the heartbreaking pain of the death of an infant. It is also a recognition that some are cognitively challenged. Here is no labeling, or name-calling, but rather a simple acknowledgment: Some people cannot respond to the ordinary way that God calls sinners to himself. They may be elect, regenerated, and saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is free to work, when, where, and how he pleases. We are more than our brains, and not all people are gifted with rationality in the same degree.

Perhaps the biblical principle that helps us most is Luke 12:48, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.” The typical question is how much knowledge is necessary for active faith. Since the gift of rationality is not given to all, perhaps the question should be—What do you do with the gifts given you? We are looking for active faith, that is, a profession of faith “not manifestly contradicted by their lives.”

We know that a sacrament has two parts: “an outward and sensible sign, used according to Christ’s own appointment; the other an inward and spiritual grace thereby signified” (LC 163). For those who are not capable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word, the sensible, sensory, gifts of the sacrament are also designed for their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace. This means of grace may be all the spiritual nourishment they receive since they cannot respond to the Word as others.

We should not offer communion simply because someone is cognitively challenged. Neither should we withhold the elements simply because someone is cognitively challenged. The Westminster divines had a good rule of thumb: “Some do understand more in these particulars than they are able readily to set words to expresse.”

The author is a pastor of Lakeview OPC in Rockport, Maine. A fuller treatment of this subject will appear in Ordained Servant. New Horizons, January 2026.