Towards a Theology of the Child |

Recently, I posted on Karl Rahner’s theology of childhood. Over the coming weeks, I plan to post similar reflections that contribute towards developing a theology of childhood. Initially, I propose to post mainly from those of the Reformed camp: John Calvin, Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, David Jensen, Jürgen Moltmann, and from Australian Roman Catholic theologian Anthony Kelly. At some future stage, I’d also like to work on similar contributions from the Celtic and Anabaptist traditions (I’d welcome any relevant resources regarding these two areas).

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A Baptist minster David Tennant post his MA dissertation (i think) on anabapatist theologies of the child in the Baptist Quarterly in various bits between 1982-1985.

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Many thanks Andy. That’s helpful to know. I’ll be sure to seek it out.

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I look forward to reading your thoughts.

Have you read come across Stasiak’s ‘Return to Grace: A Theology for Infant Baptism’? He particularly interacts with Rahner and Nathan Mitchell on the subject of a theology of childhood in developing his case.

I also recently read Rich Lusk’s ‘Paedofaith’, which isn’t especially deep, but has some helpful thoughts about the reality of infant faith along the way from a Reformed perspective.

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Thanks for the two references Alastair, neither of which I have come across but look forward to digging out.

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The collection of papers about the The Child in Christian Thought published by Eerdmans is a great resource. But I’m telling you to suck lemons by mentioning that, as you have it in your library!

Johann Christoph Arnold of the Bruderhof has published books about parenting and childhood that can be found here (http://www.ploughbooks.co.uk/ebooks/a-little-child-shall-lead-them). These are popular level.

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Thanks Paul. I am familiar with both of these volumes. In fact, much of what I will post about Calvin, Schleiermacher and Barth will be drawn from Marcia JoAnn Bunge’s edited volume The Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001). You may be interested in checking out some material for a recent module that I taught at Knox, Towards a Theology of Childhood.

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