Editing Excommunication (section)

=== Reformed churches ===
In the [[Reformed Church]]es, excommunication has generally been seen as the culmination of [[church discipline]], which is one of the three [[Marks of the Church (Protestantism)|marks of the Church]]. The [[Westminster Confession of Faith]] sees it as the third step after "admonition" and "suspension from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper for a season."<ref>[[Westminster Confession of Faith]], xxx.4.</ref> Yet, [[John Calvin]] argues in his ''[[Institutes of the Christian Religion]]'' that church censures do not "consign those who are excommunicated to perpetual ruin and damnation", but are designed to induce repentance, reconciliation and restoration to communion. Calvin notes, "though ecclesiastical discipline does not allow us to be on familiar and intimate terms with excommunicated persons, still we ought to strive by all possible means to bring them to a better mind, and recover them to the fellowship and unity of the Church."<ref>{{Cite web |title=John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion – Christian Classics Ethereal Library |url=https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.vi.xiii.html |access-date=2023-05-11 |website=www.ccel.org |at=IV.12.10}}</ref>

At least one modern Reformed theologian argues that excommunication is not the final step in the disciplinary process. [[Jay E. Adams]] argues that in excommunication, the offender is still seen as a brother, but in the final step they become "as the heathen and tax collector" ([[Gospel of Matthew|Matthew]] 18:17). Adams writes, "Nowhere in the Bible is excommunication (removal from the fellowship of the Lord's Table, according to Adams) equated with what happens in step 5; rather, step 5 is called 'removing from the midst, handing over to Satan,' and the like."<ref>[[Jay E. Adams]], ''Handbook of Church Discipline'' (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 74.</ref>

Former Princeton president and theologian, [[Jonathan Edwards (theologian)|Jonathan Edwards]], addresses the notion of excommunication as "removal from the fellowship of the Lord's Table" in his treatise entitled "The Nature and End of Excommunication". Edwards argues:
<blockquote>"Particularly, we are forbidden such a degree of associating ourselves with (excommunicants), as there is in making them our guests at our tables, or in being their guests at their tables; as is manifest in the text, where we are commanded to have no company with them, no not to eat [...] That this respects not eating with them at the Lord's supper, but a common eating, is evident by the words, that the eating here forbidden, is one of the lowest degrees of keeping company, which are forbidden. Keep no company with such a one, saith the apostle, no not to eat – as much as to say, no not in so low a degree as to eat with him. But eating with him at the Lord's supper, is the very highest degree of visible Christian communion. Who can suppose that the apostle meant this: Take heed and have no company with a man, no not so much as in the highest degree of communion that you can have? Besides, the apostle mentions this eating as a way of keeping company which, however, they might hold with the heathen. He tells them, not to keep company with fornicators. Then he informs them, he means not with fornicators of this world, that is, the heathens; but, saith he, 'if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, etc. with such a one keep no company, no not to eat.' This makes it most apparent, that the apostle doth not mean eating at the Lord's table; for so, they might not keep company with the heathens, any more than with an excommunicated person".<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Nature and End of Excommunication |url=http://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Excommunication.html |access-date=2023-02-08 |website=www.jonathan-edwards.org}}</ref></blockquote>