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

Edwards’ ministry illustrates how a pastor can ensure the purity of the Lord’s Table, even in a system or church that is flawed in its theology and practice. For Edwards it was not of importance how a person came to faith or how they were baptized. Rather, that a person could both articulate and demonstrate in his or her life their salvation stood as the most important factor. His writings demonstrate his conviction that in eternity a person’s choice of salvation mattered most, not the means. From the evidence one can suppose that Edwards would champion opening the Lord’s Table to all believers, given their regeneration by the Holy Spirit because of the works of Jesus Christ. Gerstner summarizes Edwards’ convictions, “Everything he said from the earliest record of his preaching, through the controversy on Qualifications, to the end of his ministry, seems to assume that no one may presume to take the Lord’s Supper unless he is a professed believer in the Lord Jesus Christ,” (Gerstner, 449).
Edwards is emphatic in emphasizing all believers’ right and duty to the observance of the Lord’s Supper. He believed that a person must know he has the qualifications for the Supper in order to conscientiously attend it (Gerstner, 344). The question about admittance extends beyond whether or not a person has the right to partake to include whether or not God has the right to a person’s participation in it as well. Quoting Edwards,

Supposing it were merely a privilege which I am allowed but not commanded,
in a certain specific case, then, supposing I am uncertain whether that be the case
with me or no, it will be safest to abstain. But supposing I am not only forbidden
to take it, unless that be the case with me, but positively commanded and required
to take it, if that be the case in face, then it is equally dangerous to neglect on
uncertainties, as to take on uncertainties.

Communion is a command of Jesus Christ, in which regenerate believers are obligated in obedience to Him to partake. To deny someone that right, Edwards argues, is to commit the sin of preventing a believer to act in obedience. The Supper is a feast that unites believers to Christ and each other, thereby making it of the utmost importance that all believers partake in it. He believed that the visible church was only called a church because it was the only assembly of God visible to the world. He wrote, “on the basis of so professing visibly and audibly before the world the church regards such persons as proper participants in the Lord’s Supper,” (Gerstner, 451).