John P. Burgess, in his book, After Baptism: Shaping the Christian Life, writes the following:

Hunger and thirst...teach us that humans ultimately live in a state of dependence. If we understand them rightly, we have to confess that we receive life as God's gift. Even the energies that we expend in taking care of ourselves and our basic needs are finally sustained by powers and forces beyond ourselves. Every day of our lives, we are dependent on food and drink to keep us alive. We never eat and drink once and for all; we have to eat and drink again and again, and so we continually pray, 'Give us this day, our daily bread.'
 
So too we are dependent on God's grace for our basic identity. We can never simply choose to be whoever we want. Nor will we ever know ourselves well enough to say, 'I finally have it all together. I have no need of God or others.' Dependence on daily bread symbolizes our dependence on God for our life's meaning and purpose. Our baptismal identity, like our physical energies, must be renewed every day. We need daily sustenance in the life to which Christ has called us. For that reason, 'one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God' (Matt. 4:4).
 
This daily sustenance comes to Christians in Word, sacrament, and patterns and rhythyms of life together. God feeds us again and again. God continually renews our capacity to receive Christ's self-giving love and, then, to offer our very selves to God and others. 'Give us this day, our daily bread' is never just a call for physical nourishment, but is also a plea for the bread of heaven that is life in the risen Lord.
 
In the end, Jesus himself must feed us and quench our thirst. He declares, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty' (John 6:35), for 'the water that I will give them will become in them like a spring of living water gushing up to eternal life' (John 4:14). Christians have found this spiritual food and drink whenever they have celebrated the Eucharist. Baptism first marks us in our new identity in Christ, while the Eucharist gives us strength to persist in our baptismal identity, even in the midst of trial and temptation. Baptism sends us into the world, and the Eucharist offers us food and drink for the journey. Baptism tells us who we really are, and the Eucharist deepens and confirms our identity. Font leads to table. The helpless baby we place in God's hands will surely receive the basic nutrition that she needs to live out her baptism (122).

The Eucharist is not just a memorial. Through it Christ sustains us and gives us life. Let us stop starving ourselves of the nourishment he gives.

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I love John Calvin.

What we have so far said of the Sacrament abundantly shows that it was not ordained to be received only once a year—and that, too, perfunctorily, as now is the usual custom. Rather it was ordained to be frequently used among all Christians in order that they might frequently return in memory to Christ's Passion, by such remembrance to sustain and strengthen their faith, and urge themselves to sing thanksgiving to God and to proclaim his goodness; finally, by it to nourish mutual love, and among themselves give witness to this love, and discern its bond in the unity of Christ's body...

Luke relates in The Acts that this was the practice of the apostolic church, when he says that believers '...continued in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers' [Acts 2:42]. Thus it became the unvarying rule that no meeting of the church should take place without the Word, prayers, partaking of the Supper, and almsgiving. That this was the established order among the Corinthians also, we can safely infer from Paul [cf. 1 Cor. 11:20]. And it remained in use for many centuries after...

Plainly this custom which enjoins us to take communion once a year is a veritable invention of the devil, whoever was instrumental in introducing it...The Lord's Table should [be] spread at least once a week for the assembly of Christians, and the promises declared in it should feed us spiritually. None is indeed to be forcibly compelled, but all are to be urged and aroused; also the inertia of indolent people is to be rebuked. All, like hungry men, should flock to such a bounteous repast. Not unjustly, then, did I complain at the outset that this custom was thrust in by the devil's artifice, which, in prescribing one day a year, renders men slothful all the rest of the year.

– Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.xvii, 44-46.

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For quite some time now I have been eyeing the book, The House Where God Lives: The Doctrine of the Church, written by Gary D. Badcock, a professor at Huron University College in London, Ontario. It has been on the shelf at the seminary's bookstore, but at nearly $27.00 (for a paperback!), the pricetag is rather steep and has kept me from purchasing it. It is unfortunate, because the bits I have read from it are good.

One of the chapters in the book focuses on the relationship of the Church and modernity, a discussion in which Badcock largely employs the critique of Reinhard Hütter, professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. About a decade ago, Hütter published a book called Suffering Divine Things, where he argued that "the church in the cultural context of modernity faces a distinct and massive problem." Badcock continues:

In the classical Christian tradition, the church was acknowledged as the setting in which it is uniquely possible to come to know God as the one who draws us into relationship with himself through the crucified Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit. By contrast, the historical path taken by the church in modernity has emptied it of this foundational theological confidence. We find ourselves in a situation so fundamentally shaped by modernity and its doctrine of the free individual that the individual subject now stands even at the center of what passes for ecclesiology. Instead of the church appearing as the context in which we are shaped by the Word and Spirit of God, the church is here reduced to rendering functional service to the modern doctrine of the individual. Under the conditions of modernity, Hütter maintains, the individual has become the 'end of the church'.

While the church's service to modernity in this respect might have made it culturally 'relevant' in a certain narrow sense, when viewed from the standpoint of the doctrine of the church as a strictly theological theme, the result is clearly problematic. The problem can be seen in several sectors of church life: on the one hand, in 'the service-jargon pervasive in contemporary church growth talk,' in which the market reigns supreme and the gospel must do it homage, or on the other, in something even worse—though it is, to be sure, a function of the same pressures—'the kind of free metaphorical constructivism characterizing especially North American Protestant theology in its more progressive representatives'.

Hütter maintains that what is missing from such approaches is any clear commitment to the church as locus of the distinct practices of the proclamation of the Word of the gospel of grace and the celebration of the sacraments, by which alone the triune God of the Christian revelation can be known, obeyed, and enjoyed. In Hütter's judgment, the importance of these practices has been generally belittled under the influences of modernity, as the religious experience of the individual has instead been refashioned and mediated by other means. The consequence is the pervasive spiritual and theological impoverishment of the church, which lives by the Word and sacrament or not at all (291-292).

A forceful critique, to be sure, but an accurate one. And nowhere is this more evident, perhaps, than within the context of the American church, which has been largely shaped by modernity and driven by the notion of individual freedom since its founding. It is unfortunate that critiques like this need to be made, but the "spiritual and theological impoverishment" that Badcock speaks of is a palpable reality in the modern church because it has sought, even if not intentionally, to find its source of life apart from Christ.

The life of the church is always and only Christ. We share in Christ and all his blessings by faith, and that faith is produced in us by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Word and in the sacraments (Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 65). When these are lost, the very life of the church is in peril.

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Mark Driscoll apparently made a comment once something to the effect of it being ridiculous that people could sprinkle babies with a few drops of water and call it baptism. Let me make clear, though, that I can't verify he actually said that, and so by no means claim that he did—indeed, it would surprise me; I understand that the Acts 29 Network includes both paedo- and credo-baptist churches—but I know these sentiments exist (if you'd like to read something delightfully inflammatory, read this from Spurgeon on the "abomination" of infant baptism).

I grew up in paedo-baptist churches, and have long held to the conviction that infants should be baptized, although there was a period when I wrestled quite extensively with the question of who are to be the subjects of baptism. In the last few years, however, I have found my conviction that the infants of believers must be baptized strengthened, especially in light of the covenant. In volume four of his Reformed Dogmatics (yes, this will be an oft-quoted text on this blog), Herman Bavinck makes a number of arguments in favour of the baptism of children. I find his discussion of the relationship between baptism and the covenant particularly important:

The covenant of grace established with Israel, though it changed in dispensation, remained the same in essence. The church (ἐκκλησία, ekklēsia) has replaced the Israel of the Old Testament. It is now the people of God, and God is its God and Father (Matt. 1:21; Luke 1:17; Acts 3:25; Rom. 9:25-26; 11:16-21; 2 Cor. 6:16-18; Gal. 3:14-29; Eph. 2:12-13; Titus 2:14; Heb. 8:8-10; 1 Pet. 2:9; Rev. 21:3). As was the case in the Old Testament, so now too the children of believers are included among the people of God. The church of the New Testament, after all, is not a collection of individuals, but an organism, a body, a temple, and as such, as a people, it took the place of Israel. As wild olive shoots—since some of the branches of the old olive tree have been broken off—they have been grafted onto the trunk of the same olive tree and so share in the nourishing sap from its root (Rom. 11:16-17). Hence at times entire households converted to Christianity. The household itself is an institution of God, an organic whole, which shares in a common blessing or a common curse...[Peter] says that the promise of the old covenant that God would be the God of believers and their children passed into the dispensation of the New Testament (Acts 2:39) [528-529].

Bavinck goes on to note that children are sanctified by virtue of their parents, citing Paul's discussion of believing and unbelieving spouses in 1 Corinthians 7:14ff. He observes that when Paul speaks about the holiness children receive from a believing parent it is not a subjective and internal holiness, but a "theocratic kind of holiness." As such,

it teaches that the whole family is regarded in light of the confession of the believing spouse. The believer has the calling to serve the Lord not only for oneself but with all that belongs to oneself and with one's entire family. For that reason the children of believers are admonished by the apostles as Christian children in the Lord (Acts 26:22; Eph. 6:1; Col. 3:20; 2 Tim. 3:15; 1 John 2:13)...Scripture knows nothing of a neutral upbringing that seeks to have the children make a completely free and independent choice at a more advanced age. The children of believers are...children of the covenant and are holy, not by nature (Job 14:4; Ps. 51:5; John 3:6; Eph. 2:3) but by virtue of the covenant...The basis for baptism is not the assumption that someone is regenerate, nor even that [there is] regeneration itself, but only the covenant of God (529-531).

It is a significant point, I think, that in the New Testament we always see a heightening in the fulfillment of something from the Old Testament. That is the case with typology, for instance, and so it is the case with the covenant. The promises of the covenant are fulfilled in a much greater way in the New Testament. To restrict the promises of the covenant, then, to those who are able to make a verbal profession of faith, seems to be a regression and not a heightened fulfillment. In the Old Testament, if the promises of the covenant were to "you and your seed," how much more should they be in the New Testament and subsequent ages! Additionally, one's incorporation into the covenant is never an autonomous act, but always and only an act of God bringing that person into the covenant family.

Of course, this by no means exhausts the case for infant baptism, but for me it is the most powerful argument in favour of it. Thoughts?

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When talking about the assurance of salvation, we often look to Scripture for the promises of God's faithfulness, such as we find in Romans 10:9, or we point to the work of the Holy Spirit in assuring us of our faith (see Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 21). Yet, especially in Reformed circles, we seldom mention the assurance that comes to us in the Lord's Supper. Consider what Herman Bavinck has to say in the fourth volume of his Reformed Dogmatics on the profound nature of the Supper:

Of primary importance in the Lord's Supper is what God does, not what we do. The Lord's Supper is above all a gift of God, a benefit of Christ, a means of communicating his grace. If the Lord's Supper were only a memorial meal and an act of confession, it would cease to be a sacrament in the true sense. In that case, like prayer, it could only be obliquely and indirectly called a means of grace. The Lord's Supper, however, is on the same level as the Word and baptism and therefore must, like them, be regarded first of all as a message and assurance to us of divine grace.

...[Christ] makes of [the] elements a meal in which the disciples consume his body and blood and thus enter into the most intimate communion with him. This communion does not merely consist in their sitting at one table, but they eat one and the same bread and drink one and the same wine. Indeed, the host here, in granting the signs of bread and wine, offers his own body and blood as nourishment and refreshment for their souls. That is a communion that far surpasses the communion inherent in a memorial meal and an act of confession. It is not merely a reminiscence of or a reflection on Christ's benefits but a most intimate bonding with Christ himself, just as food and drink are united with the body.

...Calvin, accordingly, correctly remarked against Zwingli that the meaning of eating Christ's body and drinking his blood is not exhausted by believing. Believing is a means, a means that is even temporary and destined to become seeing, but the communion with Christ engendered by it goes much deeper and endures forever. It is a mystical union that can only be made somewhat clear to us by the images of the vine and the branch, the head and the body, a bridegroom and his bride, the cornerstone and the building that rests on it. It is this mystical union that is signified and sealed in the Lord's Supper.

Often there seems to be a hesitancy in Reformed circles to say too much about the Lord's Supper for fear of sounding like some of the Lutherans or the Roman Catholics. Yet perhaps the opposite then becomes a problem as well, and they end up saying too little about it. It is not uncommon to hear the charge that the Reformed understand of the Lord's Supper is much more Zwinglian than Calvinist, and while the accusation might not be entirely fair, you can see the warrant for it. When a church holds the Lord's Supper only four or five times a year and goes to great lengths to emphasize the symbolic and memorial nature of it, it severely diminishes the significance of it.

But the invitation to the table is an invitation to enter into intimate communion with Christ. It is an invitation to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:8). It is an invitation to be united with Christ when physically partaking of the elements. It is an invitation to have a foretaste of the coming marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-10). It is an invitation to receive—not just to remember—His grace.

If you do not believe that the Supper actually does something in the first place, there is no impetus to frequently come to the table. But when you truly understand the Supper as a means of grace, how could you not run to the table at Christ's invitation to receive that grace as often as you can?

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