Awenydd

Liturgists throughout the ages have long recognized the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer becomes the law of belief. So if you want to reform the theology of the church, first reform its worship. Belief will follow. The same holds true of the reverse. A little superfluous drama or symbolism, a little unwarranted addition to the service of worship, can have far reaching negative consequences. In this short article I want to address the question of how children came to be barred from participation in the Lord’s Supper.

In the early church, the newly baptized were admitted immediately to the table. There is a great deal of evidence from the writings of the church fathers that this was the case even for infants.

At some point in the first couple centuries of the Church, someone had the slick idea to add a little oil to the waters of baptism. More precisely, a small element was added to the rite of baptism in which the newly baptized was anointed with oil to symbolize the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This anointing, called chrismation, was originally viewed as simply a part of the baptismal rite. It is an extra-biblical addition to the sacrament. It must have been a fairly early tradition, since it is found everywhere in the ancient churches, and also in denominations today that hold claim to the ancient church. So the alien element of oil was interposed between water and supper.

In the Eastern Orthodox churches, we can see something similar to what this rite might have looked like in the ancient church. Baptism is immediately followed by anointing with oil, and the newly baptized and chrismed is immediately admitted to the Eucharist. This immediacy in administration of the sacraments is maintained in the East because any priest could both baptize and chrismate, and then administer the elements. In the West, the story is quite different.

Conscious to guard the hierarchy of the bishopric, which it considered to be essential to the doctrine of apostolic succession, the Roman church ruled in the West that while the priesthood could baptize and administer the Eucharist, chrismation required the services of a bishop. Without the anointing, the baptism was deemed incomplete. As the church spread throughout the empire into more rural areas, it became hard to come by a bishop. Priests could administer baptism, but without the authority to perform the rite of chrismation, they could not complete the initiation of converts or their children into the new faith.

More and more, chrismation had to be delayed until a bishop passed through the area. Because chrismation was technically a part of the baptismal ritual, the baptism was not complete until this anointing of oil had been given. The result was that administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was also withheld from those who had been baptized but whose baptism had not been “confirmed” by a bishop in chrismation.

Often it could be years before the services of a bishop were available. A traveling bishop would pass through, chrismate all those who had been baptized but not confirmed, and then admit them to the table of the Eucharist. By then, those who had been baptized as infants but had never been chrismated would be old enough to be aware of what was taking place. In order to prepare these children for the anointing of oil and the partaking of the Supper, a system of catechism was introduced. The baptized would be instructed in the doctrines of the church and so made ready for chrismation and communion.

And so the Western rite of Confirmation was born. As chrismation was increasingly separated from baptism in the greater part of the Western church, confirmation came to be seen as a separate sacramental rite—one that drove a man-made wedge between baptism and communion. If you consider that chrismation with oil, whether in baptism or years afterward, is an extra-biblical practice, then the fact becomes unavoidable that this later development amounts to the unnatural and unlawful excommunication (barring from the table) of baptized Christians.

It is a curious thing that this rite continues even in Reformed churches today, albeit without the oil. Granted, they don’t consider it a sacrament, and Confirmation as such is sometimes optional or simply called something else. But the essential idea continues that there must exist a period of instruction between baptism and communion, at least for those who are baptized as infants, and a “credible confession” must thereafter be made in order to gain access to the table.

By introducing catechism as a prerequisite for chrismation, the Western Roman church placed an emphasis on understanding as a requirement for confirmation (of baptism), and thus for communion in the Eucharist. When the Reformed church rightly did away with the oil of chrismation, they nevertheless retained the rite and all its implications for the sacraments. I find it ironic that a controversy regarding the communication of children today in Reformed churches has its roots in two erroneous Roman practices: the chrismation of oil in baptism and the safeguarding of apostolic succession in the hierarchy of the church by requiring that a bishop must confirm a baptism administered by a priest.

The lex orandi of the Roman church has become the de facto lex credendi of of Western Christianity, including many Reformed Christians.

Bibliographic Sources:

I’ll comment on what I think about this later, and what exactly might be the implications of such a reading, but just wanted to throw the material out for preliminary reference:

Eurepides’ Medea:

“Ah, me! a wretched suffering woman I! O would that I could die!”

“Oh, oh! Would that Heaven’s levin bolt would cleave this head in twain! What gain is life to me? Woe, woe is me! O, to die and win release, quitting this loathed existence!”

“This one brief day forget thy children dear, and after that lament; for though thou wilt slay them yet they were thy darlings still, and I am a lady of sorrows.”

Seneca’s Medea:

“Why, soul, dost hesitate? Why are my cheeks wet with tears? Why do anger and love now hither, now thither draw my changeful heart? A double tide tosses me, uncertain of my course; as when rushing winds wage mad warfare, and from both sides conflicting floods lash the seas and the fluctuating waters boil, even so is my heart tossed. Anger puts love to flight, and love, anger. O wrath, yield thee to love.”

“Why dost thou delay now, O soul? Why hesitate, though thou canst do it? Now has my wrath died within me. I am sorry for my act, ashamed.”

“What, wretched woman, have I done? wretched, say I? Though I repent, yet have I done it!”

Romans 7

“For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate . . . So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

“For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.”

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy Salvation
which thou has prepared before the face of all people.
A Light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel.

As the congregation sang the words of recession, breaking into the Gloria, and we all raising our arms to heaven, a simply indescribably joy washed over me. I was so happy my voice caught in my throat and I found it difficult to sing. I know it was the same for everyone else there. I saw tears in my mother’s eyes.

Yesterday was the first worship service of Christ Covenant Church of Chicago. It has been a long time in coming, and God has brought our little fellowship through many trials. And finally, He has blessed us with a church we can call home. Our call to worship was especially appropriate, coming from Psalm 66:

Shout for joy to God, all the earth;
sing the glory of his name;
give to him glorious praise!
Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!
So great is your power
that your enemies come cringing to you.
All the earth worships you
and sings praises to you;
they sing praises to your name.”

Bless our God, O peoples;
let the sound of his praise be heard,
who has kept our soul among the living
and has not let our feet slip.
For you, O God, have tested us;
you have tried us as silver is tried.
You brought us into the net;
you laid a crushing burden on our backs;
you let men ride over our heads;
we went through fire and through water;
yet you have brought us out
to a place of abundance.

Wayne Southerland, who brought us the message from the Word and the prayer for the dedication of the church, together with his family who traveled six hours to worship with us, were such a blessing. It was wonderful to have him here to give us his blessing and the blessing of Cornerstone Reformed Church in Carbondale, which has always been a great encouragement to us.

And now, here we are; this is only the beginning. By God’s grace, our fledgling church will spread its wings and soar, reaching out to the lost and the needy in our community, praising God and breaking bread week by week.

This is what we’ve been waiting for. There will be many more trials and challenges on the way, but we forge on, confident that our hope is not in ourselves or in any human effort, but in God’s promises and his faithfulness to his covenant.

May he keep us faithful in the work to come, that we might go from joy to greater joy.

To those who have been praying for Christ Covenant Fellowship, I thank you all. May God richly bless you, always. You will be in my prayers as well, and in the prayers of our Christ Covenant Church of Chicago.

Visit the Flickr album for pictures of the service and the days before.

We all know legalism is bad. It showed its ugly face most memorably in the Pharisees who constantly confronted Jesus for breaking “the traditions of the elders.”

“Why do you not wash your hands before eating?”

“Why do you do heal on the Sabbath?”

“Why do you eat with sinners?”

Generally when we think of legalism we think of these things. The imposition of man-made rules and restrictions that have no real grounding in God’s law. The Sabbath rule that one ought not lift more than the weight of a dry fig? “Preposterous!” we say. “Don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t play cards” . . . where does it say that in the Bible? Well, nowhere, of course. They’re man-made rules, and they violate the spirit of the law.

Legalists usually have good intentions. Usually the rules are simply unwarranted extrapolations of a rule that is found in God’s law. The Pharisaic rule not to lift a certain weight was originally drawn from a desire to keep the Sabbath law. But when we place rules where God does not, that is where it becomes legalism.

So “don’t be drunk” becomes “don’t drink,” “Do not fornicate” becomes “no dancing,” and “don’t steal” (gambling can be a form of theft) becomes “don’t play cards.”

Yeah, we’re all familiar with those. We are only too sensitive when legalism violates our “Christian liberty.” But what about the other side of legalism? What about the side that says, go ahead and do what you please?

Matthew 15:1-9

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said,”Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,”he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

“‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

Anything that violates the spirit of the law while adhering to the mere letter is legalism. There is a legalism that constrains people to man-made rules that fly in the face of the intended purpose of the commandment, and there is a legalism that excuses people from keeping the law by finding loopholes. It is just as sinister as the restrictive legalism, but it is in some ways more difficult to fight.

People like to be excused from their duty and still be able to wipe their hands and say the law does not condemn.

Okay, everyone, don’t miss this! For a limited time, Covenant Media Foundation is giving away recordings of the classic debate between Dr. Greg Bahnsen and Dr. Gordon Stein, held at the University of California (Irvine) in 1985. Here’s the link:

https://www.cmfnow.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=23

Everyone, on either side of the debate should either order the CDs or download the mp3 files, free of charge (shipping is even free). If you have ANY interest at all in the issues, you won’t want to miss hearing this one.

Dr. Bahnsen was a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and had a Philosophy Ph.D. with a concentration in Epistemology from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Stein was the Senior Editor of Free Inquiry Magazine, Director of the Center for Inquiry Libraries, Consultant on the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims of the Paranormal, Editor of the American Rationalist Magazine, God Pro and Con: A Bibliography of Atheism, and the Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism.

Both were uniquely qualified to argue their positions.

There was a slight glitch with CMF’s ordering system, which would not allow transactions of $0.00, so you now have to pay $0.01 ($0.02 if you download both parts of the mp3 version). Believe me, it’s worth every penny.

Order yourself a copy and pass the link along to all your friends!