Unity in the Meal: Inter-Communion in the Practice of Jonathan Edwards

Practicing the Supper, however, beyond denominational lines serves to be more difficult than simple academic inquiry. Should Southern Baptists simply admit anyone who claims church membership to the Lord’s Table? Jonathan Edwards, noted theologian and minister of the Christian faith, served within a denomination that permitted people, whom Edwards believed unfit, to communion. His writings and practices provide a useful model for ministry to Southern Baptists who may often feel themselves to be in similar situations.
The Reformed Puritan Church of Edwards’ day openly permitted select unbaptized persons to the Lord’s Table. Children and grandchildren of church members were invited to partake of the Supper and welcomed into church membership without any sign or testimony of conversion. Edwards, unable to find any Biblical warrant to support the church’s position, opposed the permission of such unregenerate persons to the Lord’s Table. He taught that the covenant of redemption existed between God and Jesus with man as the benefactor. Christ then establishes in the Gospels a new covenant of grace with man, observed in the Lord’s Supper (Gerstner, 110). He did not allow children, even if baptized in infancy, to partake in the Eucharist, believing children unable to discern the body of Christ as Paul insisted of believers. Edwards believed that the Lord’s Supper was for only regenerate Christians. Admission to the Lord’s table came when a person was mature enough to demonstrate saving faith. Participants, in his mind, have to be able to understand its meaning and the gift of Jesus Christ (Gerstner, 120). The logic followed that any person who understood Christ’s gift of grace and the celebration of the Eucharist would either commit him or herself to faith and become a regenerate Christian or would reject it and secure his damnation. Either way, unbelievers either were not of the cognitive age to commit to Christ, thereby not qualifying for communion according to Paul’s standards, or had rejected Christ, obviously disqualifying themselves for communion at Christ’s Table.
Edwards taught that salvation never occurred apart from regeneration. The Church must assume a person unregenerate unless proven otherwise, especially concerning children, whom Edwards viewed as “the best field for evangelism,” (Gerstner, 121). Those baptized in infancy that never made a profession of faith as an adult were considered in a state of infancy and thus barred from the Lord’s Supper until they made a profession of faith. Despite his church’s policy on admittance to the Lord’s Supper, Edwards denied all unregenerate persons to partake of the Eucharist. Gerstner writes that, “because Edwards required a confession of saving faith found credible to the church, Hodge charged him with Anabaptistic “pure church” thinking,” (Gerstner, 137).