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Who Decided Children Mattered · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Dr. Jordan Vale.
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  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, we're going to look at the invention of childhood.
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  SPEAKER_00: The baby was left at the base of a column in the Forum.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was normal and legal.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the Roman world,
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  this was simply one of the options available to a family that
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  could not afford
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  SPEAKER_00: another mouth,
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  SPEAKER_00: or didn't want a daughter,
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  SPEAKER_00: or had produced a child who appeared weak.
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  SPEAKER_00: You left the infant at a known location.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those passing by could take the child if they wanted one.
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  SPEAKER_00: A slave trader might, and if no one came, the baby died.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Romans called it exposure, and they didn't think it was wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Seneca,
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  SPEAKER_00: one of the most sophisticated moral thinkers the ancient world produced,
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  SPEAKER_00: he wrote,
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  SPEAKER_00: We drown even children who at birth are weakly and abnormal.
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  SPEAKER_00: He didn't think he was being a monster.
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  SPEAKER_00: He saw it as describing a rational household management.
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  SPEAKER_00: Aristotle, two centuries earlier, had made the same case in his politics.
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  SPEAKER_00: Plato endorsed it and the Spartans institutionalized it,
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  sending newborns before a council of elders who decided which
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  ones were worth
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  SPEAKER_00: keeping.
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  SPEAKER_00: The idea that a child possesses inherent non-negotiable worth,
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  SPEAKER_00: regardless of health or sex or economic utility,
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  SPEAKER_00: The idea that forms the foundation of every child protection law,
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  SPEAKER_00: every pediatric hospital,
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  SPEAKER_00: every modern understanding of childhood as something to be safeguarded,
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  SPEAKER_00: is not ancient wisdom.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it has an origin, and perhaps not where most people would look.
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  SPEAKER_00: To understand the invention you have to understand what preceded it.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Roman law, the father held a power over everyone in the household.
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  His children,
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  including adult children,
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  were legally subject to his authority.
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  SPEAKER_00: The law gave him in principle the right to sell them into slavery,
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  SPEAKER_00: to punish them as he saw fit,
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  SPEAKER_00: and
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  SPEAKER_00: Even in Roman law to kill them.
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  SPEAKER_00: He had the right of life and death over his own children.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this was not unique to Rome.
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  SPEAKER_00: Across the ancient Mediterranean world,
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  children existed in a legal and cultural category that had no
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  equivalent to what we
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  SPEAKER_00: now call rights.
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  SPEAKER_00: They were dependents,
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  SPEAKER_00: economically useful in the long run,
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  SPEAKER_00: expensive in the short run,
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  and entirely subject to adult authority with no structural
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  check on that authority.
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  SPEAKER_00: Infant girls were exposed at far higher rates than infant boys.
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  SPEAKER_00: Disabled infants were exposed to consistently illegitimate children,
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  SPEAKER_00: Children born during famine or war,
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  SPEAKER_00: children of slaves,
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  SPEAKER_00: were,
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  SPEAKER_00: in the ancient world,
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  SPEAKER_00: lives that had little value.
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  SPEAKER_00: The philosopher Polybius,
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  SPEAKER_00: writing in the 2nd century BC,
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  identified infant exposure as one of the primary causes of
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  population decline in
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  SPEAKER_00: Greece.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't the practice he had issue with.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was troubled by its demographic consequences.
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  SPEAKER_00: The question he asked was not whether it was right to expose children.
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  SPEAKER_00: For him, it was a matter of economics.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is the world into which Christianity arrived.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is traveling.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's surrounded by crowds,
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  SPEAKER_00: sick people,
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  SPEAKER_00: people with questions,
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  SPEAKER_00: people with demands,
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  SPEAKER_00: people pressing in from every direction.
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  SPEAKER_00: And his disciples are trying to manage access.
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  SPEAKER_00: And some people, they bring children to him.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the disciples do what any reasonable handlers would do.
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  SPEAKER_00: They turn them away.
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  SPEAKER_00: Children are not the primary audience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Children are not the target demographic.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the social calculus of the ancient world,
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  SPEAKER_00: children do not rate priority access to important men.
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  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is, according to Mark's account, indignant.
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  If it wasn't for the whole turn-the-other-cheek thing,
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  the disciples might have caught hands.
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  SPEAKER_00: He says, Let the little children come to me.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
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  SPEAKER_00: He picks them up and he blesses them.
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  And this is easy to read as a warm pastoral moment and miss how
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  disruptive it really was.
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  SPEAKER_00: A rabbi in first century Judea using children,
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  SPEAKER_00: not soldiers,
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  SPEAKER_00: not scholars,
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  SPEAKER_00: not priests,
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  SPEAKER_00: as the model for who enters the kingdom was unheard of.
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  The people most Roman society considered economically marginal
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  were in Jesus'
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  SPEAKER_00: framework the ones closest to the center of what mattered most.
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  The Roman world had a framework for valuing children based on
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  their utility.
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  Jesus gave a framework for valuing children based on something
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  else entirely,
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  something that had nothing to do with what they could produce
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  or who their father
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  SPEAKER_00: was.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the early church took this with complete seriousness.
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  SPEAKER_00: Didache,
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  SPEAKER_00: one of the earliest Christian documents outside the New Testament,
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  SPEAKER_00: written probably around 100 AD.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a practical guide to Christian community life.
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  SPEAKER_00: Among its instructions,
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  SPEAKER_00: you shall not murder a child by abortion,
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  SPEAKER_00: nor kill that which is begotten.
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  The early Christians were not just philosophically opposed to
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  infant exposure.
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  SPEAKER_00: They went to the forums where babies were left and they took them home.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this is documented, Tertullian.
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  SPEAKER_00: Writing around 200 AD, he describes it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Justin Marger mentioned Christians raising exposed children.
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  The practice was common enough that it became a distinguishing
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  feature of Christian
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  SPEAKER_00: communities in the Roman world.
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  You could identify a Christian household partly by the number
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  of children in it who
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  SPEAKER_00: had not been born there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Basil of Caesarea,
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  SPEAKER_00: in the 4th century,
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  SPEAKER_00: built what we would recognize as an orphanage,
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  SPEAKER_00: as a part of this famous Basilita,
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  the complex of charitable institutions that was probably the
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  first large-scale
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  SPEAKER_00: charitable institution in history.
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  It included a hospital,
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  housing for the poor,
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  hospice care,
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  and a place for abandoned children.
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  SPEAKER_00: When Emperor Valentina banned Infantside in 374 AD,
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  he was a Christian emperor issuing a law that reflected what
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  Christian communities
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  SPEAKER_00: had been practicing on the ground for two centuries.
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  SPEAKER_00: The legal change followed the cultural change,
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  SPEAKER_00: and that cultural change had followed a theological one.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the theology was simple.
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  SPEAKER_00: Children are made in the image of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Their value is not assigned by their earthly father.
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  It is not contingent on their health or their sex or their
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  economic potential.
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  SPEAKER_00: They carry it and it cannot be removed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that was not what the Roman world believed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it had not been what any dominant civilization had believed before.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Christian transformation of childhood did not happen overnight.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it was never complete.
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  SPEAKER_00: The history is not a clean progress story.
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  Children were exploited as laborers well into the 19th century
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  in societies that
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  SPEAKER_00: called themselves Christian.
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  The institutions built to protect children were often
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  imperfect,
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  sometimes abusive.
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  The gap between what Christianity proclaimed about children and
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  what Christian
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  SPEAKER_00: societies actually practice was frequently enormous.
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  But the legal structure that eventually closed the gap came
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  from the same place.
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  SPEAKER_00: The first dedicated child protection law in England passed in 1889.
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  It was called the Prevention of Cruelty 2 and Protection of
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  Children Act.
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  The organization that lobbied it into existence was the
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  National Society for the
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  SPEAKER_00: Prevention of Cruelty to Children,
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  founded by a Methodist minister and then later a reporter named
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  Benjamin Waugh.
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  SPEAKER_00: The movement behind it drew heavily
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  on Evangelical Reformers who had spent decades arguing that
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  children's suffering
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  SPEAKER_00: was not an economic inconvenience.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a moral catastrophe.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the concept of children's rights,
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  which became formally codified in the UN Convention on the
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  Rights of the Children
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  SPEAKER_00: in 1989,
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  SPEAKER_00: traces its intellectual lineage through natural law theory,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is itself a product of medieval Christian
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  SPEAKER_00: None of this means the Christian tradition gets unqualified credit.
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  SPEAKER_00: The tradition failed Christians badly and repeatedly.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the framework that made those failures visible as failures,
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  SPEAKER_00: the framework that generated the outrage and the reform movements
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  and the legislation came from inside the same tradition that
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  had also generated the failures.
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  The idea being violated and the mechanism for identifying the
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  violation were both
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  SPEAKER_00: products of the same source.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1960, a French historian named Philippe Herres, he
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  SPEAKER_00: Theology Made
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  SPEAKER_00: But his larger argument did point to a reality that existed.
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  SPEAKER_00: The formalized,
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  SPEAKER_00: legally protected,
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  culturally invested concept of childhood as a stage requiring
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  special care and
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  SPEAKER_00: guarding did develop over time.
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  SPEAKER_00: What Eris missed?
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  SPEAKER_00: With where the construction began.
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  He located the invention of childhood in the 17th and 18th
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  centuries in the
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  emergence of the bourgeois family and the expansion of news
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  made available by the
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  SPEAKER_00: printing press and changing economic conditions.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those centuries saw major developments.
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  But he was wrong to treat the Christian theological groundwork
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  of the previous 1500
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  SPEAKER_00: years as irrelevant to the construction.
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  SPEAKER_00: The modern child did not appear out of nowhere in 1650.
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  SPEAKER_00: The modern child has a much longer lineage,
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  and the beginning of that lineage is a group of people in the
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  first and second
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  centuries who picked up babies from the bases of columns in
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  Roman forms and took
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  SPEAKER_00: them home as their own.
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  The contemporary world holds a set of beliefs about children
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  that feels like it's
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  SPEAKER_00: innate,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's obvious.
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  SPEAKER_00: Children cannot consent.
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  SPEAKER_00: Children require protection.
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  A society's treatment of its children is fundamentally a
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  measure of its character.
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  Child exploitation is not merely illegal but deeply wrong in a
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  way that resists
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  SPEAKER_00: purely utilitarian explanation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those beliefs feel obvious because we've lived inside them long enough.
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  But they were not obvious to Seneca or to Aristotle or to the
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  Spartan elders who
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  SPEAKER_00: examined newborns for signs of weakness.
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  SPEAKER_00: The question of where moral intuition comes from is genuinely difficult.
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  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time we inherit them without examining their origin.
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  SPEAKER_00: We feel them, as cue up Ben Franklin, self-evident.
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  SPEAKER_00: But they're not.
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  The belief that a child left at a base of a column is not an
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  economic decision but
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  SPEAKER_00: a moral catastrophe,
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  that her life is not contingent on her father's assessment of
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  her utility,
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  that the state has an obligation to protect her regardless of
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  what her family
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  SPEAKER_00: wants,
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  SPEAKER_00: that she carries something that cannot be assigned or removed,
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  SPEAKER_00: is a belief.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that belief has a Christian address.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't always obvious.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone had to say it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone had to live it.
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  Someone had to build the institutions that translate it from
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  theology into practice
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  and then into law and then into the intuition we now call as
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  common sense.
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  The invention of childhood is the story of an idea that entered
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  the world in a
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  specific place at a specific time and changed what it meant to
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  be small and
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  SPEAKER_00: vulnerable and human.
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  SPEAKER_00: For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to The Theology Made Podcast.
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  If you found this helpful,
• 10:37
  please like and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening
• 10:40
  on.