CONSIDERATION OF THE PAEDOCOMMUNION POSITION Part

PROBLEM NUMBER TWO:  This argumentation places the Passover as one of the many Old Testament rites and meals.  It makes it but part of the entire system.  By doing this it removes the Lord's Supper from the center of Christ's atonement by four steps.  In so doing, it presents the Passover as much less than the very heart of what applies salvation to the believer (viz., the great atonement).  The following diagram will help demonstrate how this is true.

 Outer altar                                              Inner altar

2.  Top / Horns ________________	1. Altar / Mercy Seat
3. Center  ----------------------------
4. Bottom

As part of the entire levitical  system the Passover relates to number 4 above.  Each number represents where the blood of particular sacrifices was applied.  Number 1 represents the altar or the mercy seat in the most holy place where the blood of the yearly atonement was applied.  Number 2 represents the top or horns of the altar in the holy place where the blood of the sin offering was applied, number 3 the center of that altar where the blood of the guilt offering was applied, and number 4 the bottom of that altar where the blood of the fellowship (including the Passover) offering was applied.  It should be obvious that although all sacrifices (offerings) were essentially interrelated they did not all relate equally to the center of the entire system (they signified and sealed salvation corporately).  Only the great atonement and its offering were at the heart of the entire system, and brought the worshipper most near to God and into the life (salvation) which was accomplished in the sacrifice of Christ.  Each of the other types of sacrifice/offering were removed from that central rite by degrees in accordance with where the blood was applied.  In the book of Hebrews it is the great atonement, above all, that is the climax of the Old Testament system and to which Christ and His self-sacrifice are especially "equated".  So, if only the Passover is what is "equated" with Jesus by the New Testament "equation" of the Lord's Supper and the Passover, a very hard to accept and false picture of Christ's work is depicted and celebrated in the Lord's Supper.

  In order to avoid these conclusions the paedocommunion argument moves on to argument number two.

II.  ARGUMENT NUMBER TWO: Only the Passover is sacramental and, therefore, it must contain in principle all of the constitutive elements of the entire Old Testament system.  This argument, if true, does avoid the problems just presented.  But this argument is clearly contradicted by the New Testament explanation of the effect of all of the Old Testament meals and rites presented in the chart above.  If a sacrament is a means of grace, i.e., a means by which God acts spiritually on the participants (not ex opera operato and aside from any communication of grace mechanically, but communicating grace in the same way grace is communicated in the preaching of the Word), then the New Testament teaches that the eating and drinking supplied by God in the wilderness as well as the entire Old Testament levitical system were sacramental (cf., I Cor. 10:1ff.; 10:18, Heb. 10:4-12).

  So, the paedocommunion protagonist faces PROBLEM NUMBER THREE: the needed proposition is unbiblical since the New Testament presents all of the rites and meals listed in the chart above as sacramental.

III.  ARGUMENT NUMBER THREE:  The New Testament identifies the Lord's Supper with the Exodus Passover, the primordial sacrament.  This argument avoids the previous problems, but raises problems of its own.
  It solves the problem of how all of the Old Testament meals and rites could be sacramental and yet the Passover unique.  As the first or primordial rite, the Passover, it may be said, entails all of the others.  So, they are all sacramental but only in so far as they repeat some part of the Passover.  With the entire system, being sacramental is a derived characteristic, whereas with the Passover, it is a primary characteristic.  Hence, it is logically and biblically wrong to depict the Passover simply as one part of the system and explain its theological import accordingly.  Instead, the Passover should be seen as standing on its own and as entailing all the theological import later and more fully defined by the entire system.  Hence, it might be said that the primordial Passover is the prototypical (first pattern) or ektypical (that on which all others built and were theologically derived) rite and involved not only all the steps leading up to the great atonement but all that is involved in the great atonement itself.

PROBLEM NUMBER FOUR: If the first Passover is the primordial sacrament, and if its theology defines the theology of the wilderness "meals", the entire levitical system, and the Lord's Supper, then its terms of admission also are primordial, prototypical and ektypical and define the terms of admission for the Lord's Supper.  Therefore, since participation in the Egyptian Passover needed neither profession of faith nor circumcision nor  membership in Israel (the church) and was served to anyone within an Israelite house (it was not a church rite), the Lord's Supper needs neither profession of faith nor baptism nor church membership and may be served to anyone within a Christian home (it is not a church rite).
  It is obviously wrong (a case of special pleading and false circular reasoning) to argue that (1) the Lord's Supper is patterned after the levitical Passover with circumcision a necessary prerequisite for participation with a view to making (a) baptism a necessary and sole prerequisite to participation in the Lord's Supper and (b) the Lord's Supper a church ordinance requiring church membership, but (2) in order to avoid seeing the Passover as a secondary part of the levitical system and hence depicting only a "lesser" part of the atonement, then (3) to say the Lord's Supper was not patterned after the levitical Passover but regarding its theological significance was patterned after the Egyptian Passover, and then (4) in order to avoid concluding the terms of admission to the Egyptian Passover govern the Lord's Supper, to (5) say the Lord's Supper was patterned after the levitical Passover.  One cannot be faithful to reason and Scripture and so arbitrarily bounce back and forth between such mutually exclusive propositions.

PROBLEM NUMBER FIVE: This paedocommunion argument seems to ignore the principle and application of progressive revelation.  The progressive nature of God's revealing His will to us rejects a dispensational or semi-dispensational model by which portions of the Bible are set aside as a kind of revelational parenthesis.  The levitical system is not parenthetical and simply expository of the Egyptian Passover.  Rather the levitical system explains the import of that first Passover and sets it in its proper context as it relates to the rest of the levitical system and to the church of God.  So, to understand the import of the Passover one must start with the Egyptian Passover and work through the levitical material.  This defines the theological import of the Passover.  Hence, the true import of the Passover, as to its place in typifying Christ's atonement is the levitical system and this returns us to problem number two above.

PROBLEM NUMBER SIX: This paedocommunion argument undervalues the import of other pre-levitical meals and rites.  It seemingly ignores the existence of pre-mosaic sacrifices with the distinction between clean and unclean animals (Gen. 4:3; 8:20; 12:7-8; 13:4, 18; 22:9; 26:25; 33:20; 35:1, 3, 7), and the festive days (Sabbaths) preceding the giving of the levitical law (Gen. 2:3 [cf., Mark 2:27]; Exod. 16:23-20).  These pre-Mosaic sacrifices rested on the divine sacrifice of animals and the covering of "sin" afforded by their deaths (Gen. 3:20-21) which covering, and the work of the future Seed of the Woman (Gen. 3:15) that it signified, worked to establish and continue communion between God and man.  Hence, all subsequent sacrifices rested on the same basis and involved communion with God apart from a commemorative meal.  According to Hebrews 4:3-4 the Sabbath is a creation ordinance, i.e., it was instituted at the creation when God set forth the pattern for all man's activities (cf., Gen. 2:2-3), and, I believe, according to Genesis 4:26, began to be observed by the descendants of Seth (as over against the lack of observance by the descendants of Cain).  Is it going too far to conclude that since the Sabbath was the divinely instituted day of worship and since the sacrifice was a divinely instituted means of worship, that the sacrifices took place on the Sabbath?  Surely not.  Is it too much to use the paedocommunion argument that precedence in time involves prototypical significance so as to argue that the Passover itself was not primordial?  Surely not.  Rather, the sacrifice implied in Genesis 3:15 and all its subsequent Sabbatical observances are the prototype and ektype.
  In one way the Passover started something new, celebrating Israel as the people to whom the promises of the Abrahamic covenant were now being fulfilled (Exod. 6:3-4).   On the other hand, the Passover is but part of the larger sacrificial system which predated it.  Those former sacrifices entailed whole burnt offerings (e.g., Gen. 8:20; 22:9), sin offerings (Gen 12:7; 33:3, 7), and fellowship with God.  The Passover instituted a new kind of offering celebrating a long standing principle involved in divine worship (viz., fellowship with God).  Hence, it appears more biblical to conclude that those offerings were the prototype of the Passover and of all that followed it, and that the Passover focused especially on only one aspect of that former practice.

PROBLEM NUMBER SEVEN: This paedocommunion argument does not properly consider that the New Testament identifies the Lord's Supper with the Exodus Passover as much as with the traditional Passover.  This is clear at the institution of the Lord's Supper where Jesus does not distinguish between the Egyptian Passover, the levitical Passover and the traditional Jewish Passover.  While it is certain that the Lord's Supper is an initiatory rite just as was the Egyptian Passover, it was also identified with both the levitical Passover (it was not eaten in haste while dressed in traveling clothes, and was eaten in the environs of the central sanctuary) and the traditional Passover (they ate lying down, dressed in festal clothing, added wine to the Passover menu, etc.).  Hence, the Passover as observed by Jesus was the "generic" Passover.
  The effect of this is to repudiate "equating" the Lord's Supper with any particular "Passover", to deny that any particular Passover was primordial, and to repudiate equating the terms of admission of either the Egyptian or levitical (and the traditional) Passover to the terms of admission to the Lord's Supper as the paedocommunion argument necessitates insofar as it is logically contradictory to propose two mutually exclusive "terms of admission" for the Lord's Supper.

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CONSIDERATION OF THE PAEDOCOMMUNION POSITION

© Leonard J. Coppes