Peter Leithart on the Church and Children

In his new booklet entitled Your Sons and Daughters: Paedocommunion, the Gospel, and the Church, Peter Leithart argues that our understanding of the church should shape our understanding of who can and should receive the sacraments. As one who grew up in a Christian tradition where baptized children were welcomed to the table, I appreciate Leithart's defense of paedobaptism and paedocommunion. It gives words to what I experienced as a child. I wanted to share a couple of quotes.

Paul's sacramental reasoning can be extended in many directions. We know, for instance, that the church is a body in which divisions of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female have been dissolved (Galatians 3:28), and Paul severely rebuked Peter when his table fellowship failed to line up with this ecclesial reality (Galatians 2:11-21). A church that refuses bread and wine to blacks, or to whites, or to Asians, is lying about both the church and the Supper. More pointedly: Paul says that the church is a community where the weakest and most unseemly are welcomed (1 Corinthians 12:22-26). Does the Baptist refusal to baptize infants give ritual expression to that kind of church, or does it instead imply that the church welcomes only the smart and the strong? (p. 11-12)

He adds in a footnote:

I am not suggesting that Baptists are unmerciful toward the weak. Many Baptist churches put paedobaptists to shame in this regard. I am asking whether Baptist baptism tells us the truth about the church.

My experience is the same as what Leithart articulates. I am a member of a predominately credo-baptist church with lots of mature believers who are engaged in all sorts of mercy ministries. I am honored to be a part of my church and am thankful that I am accepted even as a "sacramental outlier." However, I also wonder with Leithart if "Baptist baptism tells us the truth" or if it best gets to the heart of who the church is supposed to be as God's people in the world. I do not see anywhere in the New Testament where covenant (church) membership is redefined to be more exclusive--even less, more exclusive of children--than in the Old Testament.

Here's the second quote I wanted to share.

[W]e might note that the same Paul who warned against unworthy participation in the Supper said in the same letter that the children of believers are "saints" (1 Corinthians 7:14). Dare we call unclean what God has cleaned?...What are we saying about the church when we exclude children from the table? (p. 24-5)

We must consider how our sacramental practices serve to receive (or reject!) those whom God has welcomed. What if in our desire to "fence the table," we fence out a major group that Jesus explicitly wants in? Didn't He say the Kingdom of God was "of such as these"? Surely God's promises of covenant faithfulness still extend to our children today as they did in the Old Testament, even to the thousandth generation (Deut. 7:9). May they taste and see that He is their God.

Leithart, Peter. Your Sons and Daughters: Paedocommunion, the Gospel, and the Church. West Monroe, LA: Athanasius Press, 2025.