The Decline of Excommunication?
I don’t know whether you’ve thought much about excommunication. I’ve been in a church and seen church family members excommunicated, and the very next week, previously excommunicated member’s were restored to fellowship. The whole church was involved in welcoming those erring folk back to the fold, or dismissing them, as the need arose.
Excommunication is the idea that a person should be barred from certain activities in the church (e.g. communion) but not necessarily from attending church. Neither does it free the excommunicant from the obligation to keep the law of God. However, it has some deeper implications. Excommunication, in the words of John Calvin, is “the power of binding to the censure of the Church, which does not consign those who are excommunicated to perpetual ruin and damnation, but assures them, when they hear their life and manners condemned, that perpetual damnation will follow if they do not repent.”
Even Calvin’s view is challenging to the excommunicated person. It “assures” him that he’s headed for eternal damnation if he doesn’t repent. And while this view does not consign a person to eternal punishment, it is certainly saying to the excommunicated person that in the opinion of the church, he’s going to end up there unless he repents.
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