I’m sure I saw this book, When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, mentioned on Mike Aquilina’s blog. Got it, read it.

O.M. Bakke is a Norwiegan church historian, and this translation is published by Fortress. It’s an excellent survey, completely readable and accessible with plenty of footnotes to flesh everything out.

The history of childhood has been a popular subject over the past four or five decades – perhaps somewhere in your undergraduate career you encountered the name Philippe Ariès and were taught a shorthand version of his work, which goes something like this: Because of high mortality rates, Pre-moderns did not "love" and value their children as we do (?) today. There was a certain disengagement and reluctance to invest in children up until they’d survived a bit. In addition, children, once survived and accepted, were not treasured as children, but as small adults-to-be, etc., etc.

I told you it was shorthand.

Bakke’s work here is not directly related to Ariès’ , although he references him – I simply mention it as a way of setting the stage – there is a great deal of interest, historically, in childhood.

The question Bakke grapples with is – in terms of the valuation of childhood, what did early Christianity bring to the culture (Roman classical culture and late antiquity)? Did Christians define, value and treat children differently than the broader culture did?

Most definitely – yes.

It’s important to read books like this, or at least be familiar with what they tell us, in case we are tempted to continually fall into the "it’s never been worse than it is today" rut. Fact is – when it comes to human beings’ treatment of other human beings – we’ve always been bad at it. The strong have always exploited the weak, the powerful the powerless. Ancient cultures were no different than ours in that respect, and the perspective of Christianity provides a stark contrast. Immersing ourselves in that time and place, and recognizing the countercultural witness of the Gospel then can open our eyes, via the past, to the present, alerting us to how we should still be unsettled. When we talk about faith being timeless, perhaps this is not what we mean. But it could be.

Bakke’s chapters introduce the place and value of children in the ancient Roman world, then take us through different specific areas: the nature of children; abortion, infanticide and sexual relations between children and adults; the education and upbringing of children; children’s participation in worship; and children and religious perfection (the last chapter refers not so much to the religious perfection of children themselves, but the willingness of adults to leave children and family life in order to pursue their ideals of religious perfection, particularly martyrdom and acseticism.).

There is much that will be familiar – the Christian prohibition of abortion and infanticide was deep and absolute and rooted primarily (although there were other stated reasons, too) in the Christian’s belief in the value of the pre-born or born child as a creation of God. It also was a deeply counter-cultural stance. (for more on that go here)

To me, the most thought-provoking chapter was the second one, in which Bakke dissects the Christian understanding of the nature and characteristics of children. There’s a lot to say, and Bakke’s research ranges far and wide, but the essence is this: Nowhere else in the ancient world but within Christianity would you see children held up in any way, shape or form as positive models. For anything. Roman attitudes to children ranged from about A to D, and not much further. They were valuable insofar as they would grow up to be adults.

When we hear about children’s nature and qualities in ancient sources, the emphasis lies on their lack of logos. They do not possess the necessary presuppostion for rational thinking. Children were associated with the lack of reason, and were employed as symbols of irrational behavioral patterns and attitudes: one criticized other adults by calling their conduct "childish." Here, children functioned as negative paradigms for adults. Their lack of reason was expressed in their moral incompetence; they yielded to desires and passions more readily than adults, and in the philosophical tradition, they were compared to animals that had to be tamed…They were also perceived as weak and timorous…Children were interesting, not primarily for their character as children, but because of something they would become in the future. (54)

It is not that children were not loved – survey some sarcophagal inscriptions to find evidence of parental love, to be sure. But childhood and children were, as Bakke says, negative models. And then, enter this One:

People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them, and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, "Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it."

Patristic writers, of course, spilt a great deal of ink reflecting on what it was about children that the rest of us were supposed to see, to incorporate into our own lives. What was Jesus saying? Their answers varied, but to be sure, the paradigm, as they say, had shifted. All human life was valued, all was created by God, all had a reason to be and something to teach the rest of us.

Radical then.

Radical now.

Last week, Mike Aquilina wrote a post that succinctly summarizes all of this:

Against these customs, the Church consistently taught that life begins at conception and should continue till natural death. In such matters, Christianity contradicted pagan mores on almost every point. What were virtuous acts to the Romans and Greeks — contraception, abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia — were abominations to the Christians.