[1] The first crisis of my parenting career came early in
my daughter's life. Having bravely weathered an unexpected early
delivery, survived the anxiety of having our healthy but low birth
weight child spend her first night in the hospital's neo-natal
intensive care unit, and patiently begun to learn the art of
breastfeeding, I was ready for just about anything. Or so I
thought. My confidence dissolved in an instant, however, on
the morning we were to go home. As I lay considering which of
the newborn-sized outfits I had brought to the hospital might
possibly fit my four-pound infant, a nurse appeared in our room and
announced that it was time for a bath. When I eagerly lined
myself up on the side of the bassinet, hands clasped behind my
back, eyes open with anticipation ready to observe the proceedings,
she paused, looked me firmly in the eye, and said, "No, you're
going to do it." Terror struck my heart; I imagined my
inexperienced hands unwrapping this fragile bundle, washing and
drying its tender skin, clumsily attempting to turn it over, and
quite possibly doing harm in the process. What if I twisted some
tiny limb or set her down wrong? What if I accidentally
jabbed a delicate eye or ear? What if the water was too cold or too
hot? The washcloth too scratchy? Couldn't I, for this time
only, just watch?
[2] Despite my fears, my daughter and I both made it through
this experience unscathed, and soon baths and other once-terrifying
aspects of infant physical nurture became surprisingly routine and,
frequently, immensely enjoyable for everyone involved. Yet
the uncertainty that permeated each early act of parental
care--feeding, putting to sleep, dressing, carrying, settling
safely into a car seat--was real. I am convinced that this
unsettling feeling must be universal; anyone who has been entrusted
with the daunting responsibility for meeting a child's physical
needs--whether as parent, other relative, caregiver, teacher, or
physician--has experienced it.
[3] One's initiation into parenting comes largely through the
process of learning to respect and care for children's bodies, and
concern for their physical well-being continues long after children
have learned to manage a large part of their physical care on their
own. And yet this theme rarely receives the attention that it
deserves. To be sure, the shelves in the parenting sections
of bookstores are full to bursting with literature about how to
ensure your child is getting the best physical start to life.
These books offer guidance on such topics as how to get children to
eat the proper things and (reflecting a concern that is frequently
a new parent's most pressing) getting your child to get the right
amount of sleep. Rarely, however, is concern for the physical
care of children integrated into a larger concept of child rearing,
and this omission is particularly evident in writings from a
religious or ethical perspective.
[4] A few examples illustrate the general lack of appreciation
for care of children's bodies in religious and ethical
literature. For example, the Westminster Dictionary of
Christian Ethics entry on "children," defines the ethical task of
child rearing without any reference to children's bodily
nature: "In almost all Christian perspectives, child-raising
is an essentially moral act involving the formation of children in
a character appropriate to Christianlife, and representing a
fundamental hope in God's care for God's people in the
future."1 Noting in passing
that the contemporary view of children includes attention to their
distinct physical as well as psychological needs, the entry, along
with the one on "parenthood," focuses on the "formation of
character" and the need for proper "psychosocial and spiritual
development." Thus even when this literature does recognize
the physical component of child rearing, it tends to view this
instrumentally, as providing a context for the seemingly true and
greater moral task of character cultivation. A discussion of
bonding as the basic building block for effective parent-child
interaction in The Family Handbook in the Family, Religion, and
Culture Series quite correctly notes that bonding is a multifaceted
attachment that includes an emotional, a physical, a volitional,
and a spiritual component. However, the discussion downplays
significance of the physical bond as an end in itself when it
claims that the bond "establishes the psychological, social, and
moral underpinnings for the child's personhood and the context for
the parent's ongoing efforts."2
[5] There is, of course, one important exception to the general
lack of appreciation of children's bodies in religious and ethical
literature. The unjust physical suffering of children--most
tragically evident in conditions of child abuse, poverty,
malnutrition, exploitation, neglect, and war--has rightly claimed
growing attention in the academy, the churches, and the popular
media. Christian ethicists have long joined their voices to
those of others decrying these intolerable evils and the injustice
and immorality of the personal behaviors and social, economic, and
political structures that contribute to the physical suffering of
the world's children. As John Wall points out in his contribution
to this issue of the Journal of Lutheran Ethics, the recent
responses of Christian ethicists to the broader crises facing the
world's children can be heuristically grouped into three different
approaches: a communitarian approach that views child rearing not
just as the cultivation of individual character but also initiation
into community; a liberationist approach that focuses on bettering
conditions for children; and a covenantal approach that aims at the
revitalization of "covenantal institutions" (such as marriage,
family, and church) in order to improve conditions for
children.3 While Wall finds in
these proposals "promising early signs for the possibility for more
sustained ethical discipline," he argues that in order for this
genuine Christian ethical conversation to emerge, we need to attend
to broader, theoretical questions of what children are, what child
rearing hopes to accomplish, what are our obligations and
responsibilities toward children, and the practical means by which
these aims and obligations are to be realized. Critical
ethical reflection on precisely these issues will not detract from
but rather has the potential to strengthen our practical efforts to
make the world a better place for children.
[6] Put bluntly, while we must continue to deplore and work
against the injustice of children's physical suffering, if we limit
our focus to this, we run the risk of undermining our good
efforts. Protecting the integrity of children's bodies is an
indispensable moral task, but it is not enough to dismantle or
transform the concrete social, economic, and political injustices
that directly and indirectly support their physical suffering (as
if that in itself were an easy task). To draw upon the model
of Luther's interpretation of the commandments in the Large
Catechism, it is not enough to refrain from doing children bodily
harm. Rather, if we are truly to honor children's bodies, we must
first recognize their essential value per se and, upon that basis,
act not only to prevent the suffering of children's bodies but also
to promote the flourishing of their physical well being. We do not
honor children's bodies when decry their physical suffering but at
the same time omit or downplay their physical nature in our
understandings of who they are.
[7] Thus I agree completely with Wall when he observes that "the
ontological question of what children are when they come into this
world" is the necessary starting point for more sustained ethical
conversation about children. I would add that this
question can only be answered through an anthropology that
(1) recognizes and defines what I have elsewhere called children's
"fundamental humanity"4 and (2) integrates into
its understanding of human nature the fact that, in the words of
Stephanie Paulsell, all humans (children included) both "are
bodies" and "have bodies."5 Furthermore, I
believe that this non-adult centered and holistic understanding of
human nature need not mark a departure from Christian
tradition. Rather, it can draw inspiration from the Christian
past. As Paulsell points out in her beautiful "meditations," the
Christian tradition is surprisingly rich in resources for a
spiritual practice of honoring bodies. She finds
"touchstones" in the doctrines of the incarnation and resurrection,
in biblical affirmations of the goodness of creation and the church
as the body of Christ, in the centrality of the sacraments of
baptism and the Lord's Supper. Building on these, she paints
an engaging and inspiring portrait of the ways in which human
bodies are honored and can be honored in a genuine Christian
spiritual practice. In similar fashion (but I am afraid not
with such elegant prose), I suggest two important "touchstones" for
a more holistic anthropology, with the first one coming from the
Lutheran theological and ethical tradition.
[8] Although Philip Melanchthon has been called the ethicist of
the Reformation, he is not well known in English-language
scholarship for his moral thought.6 Aside from his
important works in moral philosophy and theological ethics, such as
the Epitome philosophiae moralis (1538) and the Ethicae doctrinae
elementa (1550), he also wrote an extremely influential commentary
on Aristotle's De Anima, the Commentarius de anima (1540), that
provides the seeds for a Lutheran theological anthropology that
takes seriously human nature in its entirety, body and
soul.7 Melanchthon's
reading of Aristotle's treatise on the soul differed both from
previous commentaries and from Aristotle's own purpose. He
radically transformed the subject matter: instead of focusing
on the generic spiritual principle common to all living beings (as
had Aristotle), he concentrated on specifically human nature;
instead of limiting himself to spiritual nature, as Aristotle and
previous Christian commentators had done, Melanchthon spent the
first part of his treatise discussing the human body in exquisite
detail, drawing for the most part on the theories of Galen.
While his view that an understanding of the human anatomy was
important for understanding the soul was not without precedent, the
reasons why he held this were new. As Sachiko Kusukawa has
argued, Melanchthon believed that human anatomy was essential for
understanding the Christian soul and, indeed, the whole human as
created by God for a specific purpose.8 Although he was
convinced that the rational soul was the better part of human
nature, he nevertheless viewed the whole of human nature as the
proper object of theological anthropology. The wonders of the
human body reveal that it, like the soul, is God's purposeful
creation. And for this reason, one cannot neglect or diminish
physical being and focus exclusively human spiritual nature in
understanding what it is to be human.
[9] If Melanchthon helps us move toward a more integrated sense
of the way that, in Paulsell's words, body and soul are each
"irreplaceable parts of the human person," the theological
anthropology of his contemporary, John Calvin, provides a
"touchstone" for understanding children's fundamental
humanity. Though Calvin did not aim explicitly to defend the
fundamental humanity of children, ultimately, for him, children are
assumed to be complete human beings and are included in an
anthropology that is universal but allows at the same time for
differences. All humans are in the image of God and all
humans are fallen, but children manifest both their createdness in
the divine image and their fallenness in age and developmentally
appropriate ways. Thus, for instance, Calvin's singular reading of
Psalm 8:2 ("out of the mouths of babes") stresses the ability of
literal, nursing infants to proclaim God's glory; they manifest
piety--for Calvin, the very purpose of human creation--in a way
appropriate to their age and station.9 (One might also
note that they do this with their bodies, through the physical act
of feeding at the breast.) At the same time, like Augustine,
Calvin can also see nursing infants as manifesting the corruption
of sin.10 The point is
that, for Calvin, children are no more innocent but neither are
they more depraved than anyone else.
[10] Two recent additions to ethical and theological literature
on children and childhood show the fruitfulness of the avenues laid
out by Melanchthon and Calvin. In her recent book, Let the
Children Come, Bonnie Miller-McLemore draws upon the Christian past
(including Calvin) and contemporary feminist theology in order to
develop a complex image of children as simultaneously sinful, gift,
labor of love, and moral and spiritual agents. This richer
theological understanding of children and childhood as a stage of
human development moves beyond the simplistic understandings of
children as "economically useless, emotionally priceless, socially
invisible, and in the end morally and spiritually innocent" that
have emerged in the modern West.11 Her more nuanced
understanding of children and childhood provides a more solid basis
for a contemporary theological anthropology that takes children's
fundamental humanity seriously. Although she does not
directly take up the question of children's bodily nature,
articulating an understanding of children as enfleshed moral
subjects would be a natural, and to my mind necessary, further
step.
[11] Reflecting the ethical approach designated by Wall as
"liberationist," Douglas Sturm proposes a theology of childhood
liberation that understands children, like adults, as "creative
participants in the world" and "as citizens of a world community to
be respected as such." On the basis of this definition of
childhood, he critiques current institutions and proposes new
principles for social life that promote children's
flourishing.12 Sturm's understanding
of children's nature not only avoids the trap of an adult-centered
definition of human nature; it also has a greater capacity to
integrate their physical being as essential component of the
child's self than do views of child rearing that single out the
formation of character or psychological, spiritual, and moral
development as the essence of growing up. Even the youngest
infants participate creatively with their environment--initially
physically and subsequently in other ways as well: emotionally,
volitionally, intellectually, spiritually, and morally.
[12] So much of the good we do for children, and regrettably,
also so much of the harm, is done to their bodies. We cuddle
them, feed them, bathe them, run with them, wipe their noses, and
kiss their "owies" to make them better. As their bodies grow,
we try to teach them how to care for their body's needs,
gradually--but not easily--relinquishing control over what they
wear, what they eat, how much sleep they get. We agonize over
the children whose bellies are empty, who live in dirty and
unheated homes or have no homes at all, who suffer and die due to a
lack proper health care. How strange it is, then, that our
theological and ethical understandings of who these children are
and what they are to become so frequently disregard their physical
being as an essential and integrated aspect of their
personhood. When, however, we take seriously that children,
like adults, are embodied selves and that, to paraphrase the
psalmist, they are fearfully and wonderfully made (Ps. 139:14), we
cannot fail to attend to the physical nature of children in
articulating our visions of the ethical task of child rearing, our
theories of moral development, and in our hopes for their
future. As an example of how this might be done, one can
consider Paulsell's exquisite expression of such hope for her
daughter:
[13] "What I desire with all my heart is to be able to invite
her into a way of living that teaches her, through the countless
bodily gestures of everyday life, to cherish and honor her body and
the bodies of others. I want her bathing and her dressing,
her eating and her drinking, to remind her that her body is a
sacred gift and nurture within her a profound compassion for the
vulnerabilities of all bodies. I want her to have such
reverence for the body, and to know her own body as so deeply
cherished, that she is able, if she wishes, to enter joyfully one
day into a long and loving intimacy with another person, an
intimacy in which she both receives and gives pleasure and deep,
sustaining comfort.13
[14] In honoring children's bodies we do an important act of
Christian service, to be sure (Matt. 25:35-36), but we also do and
receive so much more. Only by honoring children's whole
selves can we truly welcome them. When we welcome them in
this way, then we welcome Jesus himself (Matt. 18:5).
© January
2004
Journal of Lutheran Ethics (JLE)
Volume 4, Issue 1
1 The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, rev.
ed., s.v. "Children" and "Parenthood."
2 Roland Martinson and Sharon A. Martinson, "The Nature of
Parenting" from "Work of Families: Roles of Families," chapter 5 of
The Family Handbook, ed. H. Anderson, D. Browning, I. S. Evison, M.
Stewart Van Leeuwen, The Family, Religion, and Culture Series
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 66.
3 John Wall, "The Christian Ethics of Children: Emerging
Questions and Possibilities," Journal of Lutheran Ethics (January
2004)
4 Barbara Pitkin, Are Children Human? Theology and Worship
Occasional Paper No. 12 (Louisville: Presbyterian Church [U.S.A.],
2000).
5 Stephanie Paulsell, Honoring the Body: Meditations on a
Christian Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002), esp.
16-20
6 Wolfgang Trillhass, "Philipp Melanchthon, der Ethiker
der Reformation," Evangelische Theologie 6 (1946/47): 389-403.
7 There is an English translation of an excerpt from the
1553 edition, entitled Liber de Anima, in Philip Melanchthon, A
Melanchthon Reader, trans. Ralph Keen (New York: Peter Lang, 1988).
Unfortunately, however, this except, like the German student
edition on which it was based, includes only the part of the
treatise dealing with the soul, and not the discussion of human
corporal nature. The 1553 edition was an extremely popular
textbook: it was published over forty times in the sixteenth
century, was the only psychological writing of the period to have
been itself the subject of commentaries, and was used in philosophy
courses well into the eighteenth century.
8 Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural
Philosophy: the Case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), esp. chapter 3.
9 See Barbara Pitkin, "Psalm 8:2," in "Between Text and
Sermon," Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 55/2
(April 2001): 177-180; "The Heritage of the Lord: Children in the
Theology of John Calvin," in The Child in Christian Thought, ed.
Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 160-193.
10 Calvin explains this in a sermon on Gen. 6:5-8 (Sermons
sur la Genèse, ed. Max Engammare, vol. 11 of Supplementa
Calviniana: Sermons Inédits (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 2000), 372-73.
11 Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore, Let the Children Come:
Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2003), 1-2. See also Dawn DeVries, "Toward a Theology
of Childhood," Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology 55/2
(April 2001): 161-173.
12 Douglas Sturm, "On the Suffering and Rights of
Children: Toward a Theology of Childhood Liberation," Cross
Currents 42, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 149-174.
13 Honoring the Body, 3.