OK. There is this position known as paedocommunion. It has been around as a discussion between parties within Reformed circles since at least the late seventies, though it goes back to the early Church and was even advocated some (but not much) during the Reformation. The only reason I bring it up is because it seems there is a new move to associate paedocommunion with the so-called “Federal Vision” and/or “New Perspective.” This could be a good opportunity to again point out the severe misconceptions suffered by critics of these “movements,” but I’ll simply point out the absurdity of mixing paedocommunion into the accusations of “novelty” and “reformulation,” and associating paedocommunion with allegations of new views on justification. Someone should notify G. I. Williamson of his affinity; I think he would be surprised. Notice when the PCA study committee dealt with this issue: 1988. And a study committee does not form until interest and discussion develops “from below,” especially with the PCA’s “grass-roots” orientation. Nothing is here warranting some sudden panic. It is old news.

Paedocommunion has been held by respected PCA ministers for more than two decades. While the PCA has (rightly, in my view) ruled against allowing freedom of individual congregations to practice paedocommunion, I know of no case where anti-paedocommunion presbyteries have tried to get SJC involved in trying a paedocommunionist. Everyone knows that many (most?) presbyteries have no problem with a minister believing in paedocommunion or even teaching it as long as submits to the practice mandated in our Book of Church Order. When I was in seminary, I had to attend Missourri Presbytery meetings. Back in 1998 paedocommunion was considered a completely uncontroversial exception to take. Indeed, my friend Tommy Lee was ordained that year. He had to turn in a paper on historical theology and a paper on exegetical theology. Take a look at them. By far, the majority of the presbyters were not paedocommunionists, but they obviously respected Reformed covenant theologians who felt differently about the issue and could show by their argumentation their respect for Scripture and theology.

When I was admitted into the Pacific Northwest Presbytery, paedocommunion was, likewise, not an issue. I don’t think paedocommunionists were in the majorit at all, but they weren’t regarded as some sort of threat. I have been on record, for what it is worth, of recommending in at least a couple of cases to independent paedocommunion congregations that they would be better off switching to young child communion and joining a larger body. Also, when I moved to my second pastorate I moved from a paedocommunion congregation to a PCA congregation and promptly cut my children off from the table. This was painful but people have been in worse ecclesiastical situations in Church history. I’m thankful for the PCA. It seems strange to me that some seem to only think one can minister within a denomination if one agrees with everything she does. I don’t think we can have an hour’s peace within the church under those circumstances. One tertiary reason I appreciate paedocommunion is it lets me demonstrate how we can submit to Church leadership even when we disagree with the decision.

When I moved to Mid-America Presbytery for the first time I was asked not to preach paedocommunion from the pulpit or in other ministerial activities. That was fine. I had no desire or expectation to practice paedocommunion so I complied. Eventually Mid-America joined and was received by North Texas Presbytery. Within a year a minister in that presbytery informed his presbytery of a change in his views regarding paedocommunion and asked if he could teach and preach it on the condition that he convinced his session. The ministerial relations committee, while not each convinced, came back and recommended to the presbytery that this exception be granted. At that point I asked if this principle be extended to all presbyters. In what must have been an attack of paralysis of the tongue, I somehow gave the impression that I was asking that every exception be allowed. The presbytery voted that down but the way was now open for me to simply apply to the ministerial relations committee and go through the same process and get the same recommendation.

I didn’t bother.

When I thought about the amount of work it would take, and what difference it would make in my ministry (not much since I had every intention of keeping my practice within the bounds of PCA law), it simply seemed like too much effort. Perhaps I would have gotten around to it eventually.

The point here is that there is nothing new to this. It wasn’t invented at some 2002 conference and is advocated by people in no way associated (even by some of the more imaginative critics) with that event. It is an issue that several presbyteries have found to be within the bounds of acceptability.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, it is not uncommon for me to find both paedocommunionists and antipaedocommunionists treating this article of mine as a plea for paedocommunion. But it is no such thing. I wrote it simply to explain to a congregation why the session was lowering the age when a believing child would be permitted to the Table. It does not argue for anything outside the bounds of Presbyterian law (as evidenced by antipaedocommunionists who admit young children).

Awhile back, I wrote:

If you’re not reading the Bible for fun you need to consider if maybe you’re doing it wrong.

which Todd liked but Paul compared to footprints (Ah, the sacrifices I make to be a great aphorist).

The other day, at the library I impulsively picked up a commentary on Leviticus. Since I am in the (interminable) process of moving my office down to the basement, I have a relatively clean desk surface. The plan is to put my NASB on it and the commentary on top and, if I get a real ambitious, a Hebrew text and a Hebrew dictionary. They will sit there in my work space and remind me to study. I’m a pastor and occasionally I remember that tools need sharpening and maintenance. Since I and my Bible are pretty much my only tools, and the Bible maintains itself infallibly well, improving myself seems an obvious need.

How many laypeople can afford hours a week to brush up on their knowledge of Leviticus? Not many. Many aren’t even reading the Bible much at all.

I think there are a lot of reasons that reading is declining. Some are liturgical and curriculum-caused, as John Armstrong notes. But I wonder if simple Bible reading wouldn’t still be declining even without this help.

I wonder sometimes, and offer for your consideration, that the way we emphasize the importance of the Bible may itself cause Christians to spend very little time with it.

It is true of course that studying anything can be less than fun, and yet you still must do it. But, if something needs to be read, portraying the importance of the material in a way that makes it harder to read is self-destructive.

I have several Bibles, the NASB and the ESV being my most common. I study them sometimes. I preach from them. But they are not very conducive for reading. What I read, right now, is a paperback translation of Genesis by Robert Alter. I can dogear the pages. I can read it on the toilet, something that some sort of neurosis prevents when the publisher is the Lockman Foundation.

Pretty soon I’ll be going to bookfinder.com to get the single paperback version of Matthew Fox’s rendition of Exodus.

Of course, all these single-person translations have huge drawbacks. I would be scared to have anyone rely on these without being exposed regularly to the reading of and preaching from versions that are less idiosyncratic. But the benefits of having these sorts of things lying around the house to be read in a Christian home far outweigh the liabilities. It’s simple really: if you can’t binge on a book the way you might suddenly binge on a favorite detective series, then you won’t read much. We complain about Biblical literacy but how often have you seen people carry around books the size and thickness of a Bible to read on the airplane or at the beach? The very form in which Bibles are published helps us revere them as dust collectors rather than read them.

It is not hard at all to go into a bookstore and find that there is a market (albeit a small one) for small paperbacks of Icelandic sagas, Medieval plays, and ANE myths. Penguin Classics, Oxford World Classics, and the Everyman paperbacks, however small their market share, do attract modern readers. I’m sure Christian Bibles sell far better, but I doubt they are read as much.

I have a great book of Norse myths sitting on my shelf. If I offered to read it to my children I think they would be fascinated. I don’t do it because the storys are not age-appropriate and I can’t justify spending time on false gods. But the stories are “cool.”

Yet the storys in Judges and elsewhere in the Bible are every bit as good. Why can’t I read them as adventure stories to my children? Somehow, even at a young age, my children have already picked up on the idea that the Bible is not the book to turn to for exciting stories. I have to wonder if the regular practice of family devotions (a practice I think is nevertheless worth continuing) hasn’t spoiled the Bible for them as literature.

At a certain point in my life, I suddenly began buying mass-market paperbacks of Shakespeare’s plays and reading them. Why? Because Kenneth Brannaugh transformed the way I think about them. Suddenly they were more about drama and less about scholarly sanctimony. In high school and college I was assigned Shakespeare. It never occured to me to read him for fun. (I already owned a big black hardback of all Shakespeare’s plays. When I suddenly got serious about wanting to read Shakespeare, I didn’t even glace at it. I went to a bookstore and bought a mass-market paperback. Some books are readable and some aren’t. You’re usually better off with a book you can hold in one hand, even if it doesn’t look flashy. Which kind is your Bible?)

What does the average Christian do when he reads the Bible? He reads it regularly (or starts to do so) for devotions. So he reads some small chunk and tries to get something properly pious from the text. What does this mean? It means he must stick to the passages that are already familiar to him and properly domesticated in the given interpretation so that they can inspire the correct thoughts and feelings. Otherwise, it means a great deal of work trying to figure out why God is asking you to spend a few minutes each morning in the genealogies of First Chronicles, or the instruction for entrail placement in Leviticus. (The sacrifices point to Christ we say, piously dismissing ninety percent of the actual text describing those sacrifices to oblivion in the Evangelical mind. If the only point is substitutionary death, then the Holy Spirit must really love the sound of his own voice.) After a few mornings spent in frustration trying to pry devotional material out of the text, the pilgrim often gives up his quest.

Maybe the books of the Bible aren’t meant to be read fifteen minutes at a time. Maybe you’re supposed to read Isaiah in three days. Maybe fragmenting the text over weeks and weeks of snippets will hurt your understanding of God’s word.

My advice is this: Put different books of the Bible on your reading list. After you finish something by Raymond Chandler or P. J. O’Rourke, let your next book be one by God. Then go back. Of course, if this means lumbering around with a big Bible, or reading from microfiche text this will be cumbersome. So I advise finding paperbacks of single books when possible. When you’re done, read something else. But put another book of the Bible in the rotation.

Reading a small bit everyday is probably good if you keep at it. So do yourself a favor: don’t try to get anything out of it. Why make the experience unpleasant? Why make it more tempting to stop your reading? You don’t need to apply what you read. You don’t. You have heard preaching and teaching for years, probably. Your applications are more likely to be memories of what you already know than true discoveries. Don’t try so hard. Don’t feel you must theologize or moralize. Just read the book. God wants His people to know him which means becoming familiar with his Bible as a whole. Atomistically trying to “get something” from a passage is a good way to make sure that you never gain that familiarity.

God told Abraham to walk through and around the Promised Land. Abraham would not have gone very far if he had decided to only travel for fifteen minutes in the morning. Especially not if he had stopped to examine every rock and plant.

Time to follow up on this promise.

Here is Mirriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary tenth edition:

impute 1: to lay the responsibility or blame for often falsely or unjustly 2: to credit to a person or a cause : Attribute (Our vices as well as our virtues have been *imputed* to bodilty derangement–B. N. Cardoxo) syn see Ascribe.

Unlike words like “Trinity,” or “Atone,” impute is a normal word translating a normal word used in the Bible. In Greek, the word is logizomai. Webster shows how “impute” is a fine word to use as a translation. This definition works perfectly for Romans 4 where we read

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Notice here that there is nothing inherently transitive about the word logizomai (“count” in the ESV–another perfectly good translation).

So far so good. What has been odd to me is that some treat the English word “impute” as if it were inherently transitive. They point out that logizomai is not inherently transitive (i.e. it works with a sentence dealing with the possibility of reckoning one’s own sins to ones own account) and go on to claim that imputation is not important to Paul’s soteriology. Of these, there seem to be two types. Those who simply leave things vague and those who strongly state and argue from Scripture that believers are represented by Christ so that his righteousness is ascribed, reckoned, attributed, etc, to sinners so that they have right standing with God even though they don’t derserve it (i.e., N. T. Wright). While the first of these could be dangerously confusing (though my perception of vagueness may only reflect my lack of familiarity with and understanding of the posiiton). The second of these is merely frustrating because they are obviously affirming nothing less than imputation.

But the frustration increases all the more when Reformed guardians, instead of pointing out the confusion, spread it and harden it into novel boundary markers, by accusing the second of this group of “denying imputation.”

A related problem here is a shallow view of how the Bible relates to theology. People are being (mis)led to believe that our theological formulations come and are supposed to come straight off the page. If we have a “doctrine of imputation,” then the word “impute” in Scripture must contain and imply the entire doctrine. But doctrines are never simply definitions of words but shorthand headings for longer statements gleaned from a great deal of Scripture. As those living after the publication of The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, I thought we all knew better than to do word-level exegesis and theology. Apparently, the news hasn’t spread. This is odd, since D. A. Carson’s essay in Justification: What’s At Stake in the Current Debates is quite good about acknowledging that we cannot simply read the imputation of Christ’s righteousness straight out of any passage in Paul or anywhere else. The doctrine is not to be derived in that manner.

(By the way, this excellent piece was marred by what appears to me to be calculated cruelty toward Don Garlington designed not only to disagree with him, and not in any way to refute him, but to dehumanize him in the minds of Carson’s audience. Since I am endorsing the article in general I can’t ignore that problem.)

Teaching people to read the doctrine of imputation out of a prooftext using the word logizomai creates triple trouble. On the one hand, it systematically distorts the actual content of the Bible as it ought to be read on its own terms. Secondly, it makes anyone who does read the Bible accurately appear to be an imputation-denying heretic even when he actually affirms the doctrine and grounds it in Scripture. Finally, it makes the doctrine actually appear to be false by anyone who sees the false foundation but doesn’t consider that there is another one available.

I recently had the rather sad experience of listening to a sermon railing against this statement:

This justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything. It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books

[Update: the above (and below) is from Rich Lusk in his essay in the book, Auburn Avenue Theology: Pros and Cons] Here is the quotation with some context:

This justification requires no transfer or imputation of anything. It does not force us to reify “righteousness” into something that can be shuffled around in heavenly accounting books. Rather, because I am in the Righteous One and the Vindicated One, I am righteous and vindicated. My in-Christ-ness makes imputation redundant. I do not need the moral content of his life of righteousness transferred to me; what I need is a share in the forensic verdict passed over him at the resurrection. Union with Christ is therefore the key.Note well, this does not downplay the significance of the active obedience. Without it, Jesus’ body would still be in the tomb. But to be precise, I am not justified by a legal transfer of his “obedience points” to my account. I am justified because the status he has as The Sinless One, and now as The Crucified and Vindicated One, has been bestowed upon me as well.

Allow me to illustrate. Suppose a woman is in deep, deep debt and has no means at her disposal to pay it off. Along comes an ultra wealthy prince charming. Out of grace and love, he decides to marry her. He covers her debt. But then he has a choice to make about how he will care for his bride. After canceling out her debt, will he fill up her account with his money? That is to say, will he transfer or impute his own funds into an account that bears her name? Or will he simply make his own account a joint account so it belongs to both of them?

In the former scenario, there is an imputation, a transfer. In the second scenario, the same final result is attained, but there is no imputation, strictly speaking. Rather, there is a real union, a marriage.

I would suggest the first picture (the imputation picture) is not necessarily wrong, though it could leave adherents exposed to the infamous “legal fiction” charge since the man could transfer money into the woman’s account without ever marrying her or even caring for her. It could become, as Wright has said, “a cold piece of business.”

The second picture (the union with Christ picture) seems more consistent with Paul’s language, and for that matter, with many of Calvin’s statements. It does not necessarily employ the “mechanism” of imputation to accomplish justification, but gets the same result. Just as one can get to four by adding three plus one or two plus two, or just as one can get home by traveling Route A or by Route B, so there may be more than one way to conceive of the doctrine of justification in a manner that preserves its fully gracious and forensic character.

For Calvin, the central motif of Pauline theology is not “imputation,” but union with Christ….

The writer goes on to quote Calvin, but anyone familiar with Calvin already knows this is true. What I find more troublesome is that few seem to grasp that the Westminster Standards fit perfectly with this central Pauline motif. There is simply no getting around it: the marriage picture is a picture of precisely what Reformed Theology has taught both in Calvin and in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

And it is imputation. No one has any rational right to start screaming about “denying the Gospel.” What they should be upset about is the misconstrual of the word “imputation” that somehow identifies it with the more impersonal illustration. Instead, we seem to have a North American changeling of Reformed theology within Evangelicalism that is pushing a heavily nominalist version of orthodoxy as the only allowable version. I am still trying to figure out everything about how this happened. Reformed theologians as far apart from each other as John Williamson Nevin and Robert Dabney both seemed to see it coming. Sadly, one of the best historical studies of it, William Evans dissertation on “Imputation or Impartation” has never been published or made widely available.

Nevertheless, it is perfectly obvious that in the marriage scenario the wife acquires a status and possession from somewhere other than herself or her own resources. This is truly an alien righteousness. In other words, it is just as much an “imputation” as the first scenario. To treat it as an alternative makes no sense. Imputation should not be saddled with a prevailing image of God doing math in his head. That is simply not the doctine. If it were, then eternal justification would be true, or else justification at the time of the cross. But justification is accomplished through uniting sinners to Christ by the Holy Spirit through faith:

God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect, and Christ did, in the fullness of time, die for their sins, and rise again for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them (WCF 11.6).WLC Q. 66. What is that union which the elect have with Christ?
A. The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband; which is done in their effectual calling.

WLC Q. 69. What is the communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ?
A. The communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ, is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else, in this life, manifests their union with him.

WLC Q. 70. What is justification?
A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardoneth all their sins, accepteth and accounteth their persons righteous in his sight; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.

Notice that the marriage scenario comes directly from the Westminster Assemblies doctrinal statements. And that justification is simply a manifestation (Q. 69) of that union.

It has been a true tragedy that the idea seems to be floating around in the Evangelical world that justification is merely a matter of God doing math in His head (and, correspondingly somehow, saving faith gets degraded into the sinner doing math in his head). But those problems should not be laid at the feet of the term “imputation.” Head and body, husband and wife, are reckoned, regarded, or counted as one person. All who are in Christ share his verdict at his resurrection. At his resurrection the Father declared that Jesus was right with him, that he had led a totally faithful life and even willingly died the death we deserved. Thus, in Christ, we are reckoned as utterly faithful and having already passed through the curse our sins deserved. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us.

Imputation, in other words, is simply the legal aspect, property, or attribute of being united to Christ by the Holy Spirit through faith.