Status Updates From The Child in Christian Thou...

Coming from a man who participated “in the ‘Church Struggle’ against Nazism’s effort to co-opt German Christian witness by way of a racial and nationalist ‘natural theology’ and who refused to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler…this says something.

Like I said - I will have to read Barth/a biography of him. Good stuff.

“A mother’s and father’s training and advice are to be a ‘joyful invitation to their children to rejoice with them’ in Jesus Christ. ‘To be joyful is to expect that life will reveal itself as God’s gift of grace, that it will present and offer itself in provisional fulfillments of its meaning and intention as movement. To be joyful means to look out for opportunities for gratitude.’”

I’m in Karl Barth now, which - I’ll have to read more about him.
Here’s the quote that goes perfectly with the sermon on Ps 16 I heard today re: contentment:

Finished Johnathan Edwards. It was…a lot.

Yikes.
This essay about the Jesuits & Huron outlined a lot of the misgivings I have about missionary work.
“The missionaries’ theology of childhood…was enmeshed in a cultural system that stokes us today as harsh, arrogant, and misguided. From our perspective it is obvious that those they regarded as their cultural inferiors had much to teach, had European Christians been able or inclined to learn.” Yeah.

“and childhood. Such beliefs and assumptions are embedded in culture, and in Christian contexts associated also with the theological anthropology of particular times, places, and religious subgroups or denominations.”

We’re into the counter reformation - Jesuits and Ursuline missionaries to eastern Canada.
The opening sentences describe well one of my biggest takeaways from this book, and kind of the thesis of Karen Swallow Prior’s the Evangelical Imagination (which I’m also reading):
“Along with the gospel, Christian missionaries carried to the New World distinct and deeply held beliefs and assumptions about children..”

“For Luther, there is no neighbor closer than one’s own children, no claim upon society more pressing than that of the young. Whether or not they have biological children, all adults must exercise the vocation of parenting in one way or another…’Indeed, for what purpose do we older folks exist, other than to care for, instruct, and bring up the young?’”

Catechism “gave them a clear point of orientation in the world. It provided for them a conceptual vocabulary with which to test and construe their experience as they matured. Undoubtedly for many, engagement with these texts remained superficial, but their effectiveness in sustaining a distinctive piety cannot be simply dismissed.”

“Redirecting works as the means of salvation but delineating the rules for conduct in the world with a clarity far easier to grasp than the ambiguities of justification by faith, the catechism most likely left consciences confused rather than comforted.”
This was my experience, for sure!!

Yes, and see this would be my concern:
“To the historian Gerald Strauss, the stultifying pedagogical method seems incapable of conveying the complexity of the confessional self-understanding…..

Ok - next paragraph, “Luther instructs teachers to emphasize those commandments…that are of particular significance for their students. For example, he recommends concentrating on…the 4th [commandment] when instructing ‘children and the common people in order that they…be orderly, faithful, obedient and peaceful.’” Not as a direct comm. to children, but as a comm. to parents to enforce…

How does it look different to catechize one’s children for the sake of giving them information which the Holy Spirit uses to bring them to true faith, as opposed to rigorously teaching them for the purpose of belonging to a social community - especially when the community to which we as a family belong IS the church?? Does it look different necessarily? How rigorous should the education be?

& this, for me, is really the question with catechisms.
“Luther believed that faith was wholly a gift, the working of the Holy Spirit in the believer so that she might not just hear the Word but cling to its promise of mercy with her whole heart. No matter how carefully constructed and controlled the process of catechizing, it could not guarantee this result. The goal of socialization, however, was within reach”

Re: catechizing children & households
“Ironically, learning about the freedom of a Christian became for Lutherans a highly regimented process.”
B/c Luther was writing his catechisms in response to the “ignorance of supposed Christian people” who are baptized & receive communion but who cannot even recite the Lord’s Prayer or the 10 commandments.
History: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“ As Gerald Strauss succinctly concludes, ‘Only in formal theology was a sharp & final distinction made between human effort and divine grace.’” Luther & his followers were convinced that a systematic program of religious & ethical indoctrination would have results. Only God could create a human being, but right-thinking & right-loving people were in large part the products of disciplined, hard human work.”

“‘When faith comes, baptism is complete,’ writes Luther. Although the growth must be left to God, the church, and particularly parents, are responsible for planting amass watering. Luther provided his catechisms as aids for this cultivation in the life of faith among the young…

Just finished the section about Thomas Aquinas.
Matched closest so far with the feeling I appreciated so much in Island of the 🌎 re:children.
Summarized P130: “For Thomas, childhood is not simply a phase to be tolerated on the way to true personhood. Reader, it is an appropriate and necessary stage within the lifelong journey toward perfection in which adults too are engaged.”
There’s much more…p120-3 esp

In ref to Ps. 8:3 and Matt 21:14-16:
“Just as the cries of infants can be taken as praise that God has prepared for Godself, so also the children’s hosannas to Jesus in the temple are to be seen as praise that God had put into their mouths. Ignorant children can speak truly about Jesus because God has given them insight and opened their mouths.”