An Introduction to Child Theology

Book excerpt: These essays in this book are pastoral and scholarly, to encourage parents to nurture and foster Christian family life by learning from scripture and history. The Bible, in both testaments, offers us stories that provide moral and spiritual substance to the nurture of the child and the family. Beginning with the mythopoetic story of Adam and Eve, and the fratricide of Abel by the envy of Cain, the stories of the sacrifices parents made, then moving on to the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Ruth and her mother-in-law, Hannah and her son Samuel, Jeremiah the child prophet, these stories form our moral imaginations. Further, for Christians, they all augur the promise of the Incarnation, with the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph. Then through the history of the Church the role of the Child is further unfolded. It begins with Jesus teaching that to be as one of his disciples is to be a child. This is so radical that the subsequent churches have found it hard to follow. Perhaps one symbolic attempt was that of the monks' cowl which is a child's garment, and still worn in their monasteries. The book even explores the way that Christian maturity is one of childlikeness.