Marks of the Church: First Hypothetical Rebuttal

This post will be my rebuttal points from this post by the Monroe Doctrine Author (MDA) concerning my first hypothetical. MDA has engaged the debate and offers us a useful description of PCA views on the child in the covenant community. Distinctions are drawn between the visible and invisible church. But to begin this rebuttal, I would draw our attention to the two definitions of sacrament that have been offered.

MDA has made emphasis of the point at least a couple of times now that that Presbyterian standards make clear that there should be no confusion between the sign and the thing signified. The Anglican view is that the sacrament is the outward visible sign of an inward spiritual and invisible grace. The key point of emphasis is that the Holy Spirit works on us through the sacraments. What is the difference here since both sides seem to point to a distinction, but an outsider may not see it?

The Presbyterian emphasis seems to be that we cannot know the timing of the working of the Holy Spirit while the Anglican emphasis is that the sacraments are a gift to us through which the Holy Spirit works on us. This is actually a rather huge divergence of emphasis and it is seen in action clearly in both sacraments. To say that the Holy Spirit cannot be understood to act through the sacraments, though He might choose to do so, is to take a deep cut into the theology, status and emphasis of the sacraments. It seems a short walk from this perspective to Zwingli, far closer than the standards suggest with their use of the term “pneumatic presence.” This phrase to me means exactly a pointing to the Holy Spirit in the sacrament. Therefore, there seems to be an inconsistency on this issue. There is recognition that the Holy Spirit is mysteriously present in the sacraments, but an emphasis that He may not be doing anything while He is there. Obviously, some clarification on this point will need to be forthcoming.

Coming back to Paedocommunion for a moment, it is going to be difficult to sort this out from my own church as the official position of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) within the ACNA is to leave this up to the local church. This is an interesting and yet frustrating position. I would have been completely unsurprised by this position from ACNA as this is consistent with their view of women clergy. However, the REC is substantially older and seems to have been affected by the same trend in the Anglican world from the 1960s.

But since this is such a hot issue within the Reformed world, even within the PCA who have discussed it as recently as this year in conference, I think a more careful look at it is warranted. This is taken from a blog by Matt Kennedy.

Rather than forming faith in their young, evangelical parents often seem to wait for it to “burble up spontaneously from the heart” and then when some inclination toward Christ does arise, it is—in the worst cases—seized upon, cut open, laid bare on the examining table and probed to see whether it meets various doctrinal requirements rather than fed, channeled, and nourished. I’ve seen children who clearly love Jesus denied baptism/communion by their parents because they don’t sufficiently understand the ins and outs of sola fide or eucharistic theology—which, from my perspective, sets said parents down squarely into the first century sandals of Jesus’ original disciples who barred children’s way to the Lord.

Kennedy quotes this from Doug Wilson.

This is the assumption that when very young children are taught to respond this way, we are simply training them, as you would a puppy, and not really educating them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The plastic nature of a child’s soul is thought to be such that you could tell them anything, and since they don’t know any better, this responsiveness of theirs cannot be known to be true faith. And since we cannot “know” it to be true faith, then we need to wait until their profession of faith is mature enough to cross-examine. We are bringing the logic of courtroom verification into the rearing of children. Nothing against courtroom verification in its place, but that’s not what we should be doing here. Christian nurture is more like breastfeeding than it is like grilling a hostile witness…

Reflecting on the comments of MDA and my own last post, I would draw attention to more to our practice of confirmation and its role in our liturgy rather than paedocommunion. Paedocommunion has more to do with inclusion in the invisible church, while confirmation has more to do with inclusion in the visible church. One has to question both, but at the end of the day, both remain important. Finally, I think we can discuss some other aspects of this sacrament, particularly its use in terms of discipline in some Reformed eyes.

The key point for MDA is the issue of self-examination by individuals prior to participating in communion. In his argument against paedocommunion, he asserts that the child of a pre-confirmation age has not yet acquired the ability to perform this self-examination. To this point, I would concede a fraction and yet draw attention back to Wilson’s comments above. A covenant child may never know and remember a day in which he did not believe. This nurturing with the Holy Spirit through Communion is consistent with an Anglican theology of upbringing. We are a church involved in the spiritual upbringing of children, not just the doctrinal education of children. In some respects, our Evangelical brothers have it right. There cannot be an omission of the spiritual, both in terms of recognition and experience. The Eastern criticism of the West is valid on this point.

But once again, my thought process would return to the liturgical practice of confession and absolution prior to Communion. Either these practices are considered irrelevant by the Presbyterian or woefully insufficient to satisfy Paul’s conditions in 1 Corinthians 11. I would argue that this could not be farther from the case within Anglican theology. This liturgical ordering is precisely geared to this point. The Roman and Orthodox examples cannot be ignored. As the older churches, perhaps they do some things right. Did Luther intend to rebel or to instruct on error? Was the spirituality of the Church the question on Luther’s mind? John Calvin was certainly a theologian of the Holy Spirit as he was a great follower of Paul. Paul himself is a theologian of the Holy Spirit as the chapters that follow 1 Corinthians 11 are at the center of the continuation of gifts debate. There is seemingly much emphasis on the mind and a lack of emphasis on the spiritual in the Reformed debate. The two are inseparable in Anglican theology and this is also a component of why Evangelicans can seem to be closer to Rome than Calvin at times.

Finally, for today, I would affirm that the federal vision movement, distinctly different from the federal representation of both Adams in our covenant views, is a position that clearly is far from my position. Tom Wright has certainly written a lot of popular literature. He is not only a federal vision guy, but a new perspective on Paul guy, both positions that neither MDA nor I will support.

After MDA is given a chance to respond, my next post will hopefully take the hypothetical of an adult covenant member who has sinned and address the issues of discipline.

– Troll –