Responsive Becoming: Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and Developmental Perspective 9780567685964, 9780567685995, 9780567685988

Citation preview

RESPONSIVE BECOMING

T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics Series editors Brian Brock Susan F. Parsons

RESPONSIVE BECOMING

Moral Formation in Theological, Evolutionary, and Developmental Perspective

By Angela Carpenter

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain in 2019 Paperback edition first published 2021 Copyright © Angela Carpenter, 2019 Angela Carpenter has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vi constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carpenter, Angela, author. Title: Responsive becoming: moral formation in theological, evolutionary, and developmental perspective / by Angela Carpenter. Description: London: New York: T&T Clark, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019007557 | ISBN 9780567685964 (hardback) | ISBN 9780567685988 (epdf) | ISBN 9780567685971 (ebk.) Subjects: LCSH: Sanctification–Reformed Church. | Reformed Church–Doctrines. | Moral development. | Faith development. | Calvin, Jean, 1509-1564. | Owen, John, 1616-1683. | Bushnell, Horace, 1802-1876. Classification: LCC BT765.C29 2019 | DDC 234/.8–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007557 ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-8596-4 PB: 978-0-5676-9816-2 ePDF: 978-0-5676-8598-8 eBook: 978-0-5676-8597-1 Series: T&T Clark Enquiries in Theological Ethics Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS Acknowledgmentsvi INTRODUCTION1 Chapter 1 CALVIN AND THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE CHILD Chapter 2

JOHN OWEN AND THE PELAGIAN THREAT

Chapter 3

HORACE BUSHNELL ON NURTURE AS A MEANS OF GRACE

Chapter 4

HUMAN EVOLUTION, COOPERATION, AND AFFECT

Chapter 5

CHILDREN’S MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN HUMAN PERSPECTIVE

Chapter 6

SANCTIFICATION REVISITED

13 45 73 93 115 149

Bibliography174 Index186

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I began this project as a doctoral student at the University of Notre Dame. At the time, I was pondering Christian moral formation while also attempting to raise my two young daughters, and Jean Porter suggested that I pursue this interest by engaging recent research on infants in developmental psychology. Notre Dame turned out to be an immensely supportive environment for this sort of interdisciplinary research. I am grateful to my dissertation committee, Jerry McKenny, Jean Porter, and David Clairmont for their probing questions and countless constructive suggestions. My advisor Jerry McKenny deserves particular thanks for reading multiple versions of the book, both during and after my time as a student. Numerous colleagues and friends at Notre Dame commented on portions of this project, including Brian Hamilton, Janna Hunter-Bowman, Jeff Morgan, Paul Scherz, and Luis Vera. I benefited from a number of interdisciplinary workshops at Notre Dame and am grateful to Darcia Narvaez for organizing many of these and providing guidance in my engagement with developmental psychology. I also extend special thanks to Celia Deane-Drummond and the Center for Theology, Science, and Human Flourishing at the University of Notre Dame. While I was a postdoctoral fellow at the center, I was able to write the chapter on human evolution, and I benefited from conversations with anthropologists and theologians, including Agustín Fuentes, Marc Kissel, Julia Feder, and Adam Willows. My work at the center was made possible with the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed, however, are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. I am also grateful to Hope College and my colleagues in the Religion department for generously supporting the research of new faculty. Lastly, in a book that deals so centrally with the formation humans experience in the context of the family, it is all the more appropriate that I recognize my own. With my parents Ken and Becky Fairbanks and my sister Jennifer Fairbanks, I experienced the very best kind of nurture. Each of them has truly been for me a means of God’s grace. My husband, Rob, and our daughters Rilla and Lucy have borne with much in the writing of this book. I am thankful for their patience, encouragement, and sacrifice. From them I have gained deeper awareness of the joys of human love.

I N T R O DU C T IO N

From the moment of birth the human person is becoming. Her being unfolds in dynamic response to her environment, including its physical, social, cultural, intellectual, and spiritual aspects. While this becoming is most pronounced and profound in childhood, it is by no means limited to the earliest phases of life. Human beings continue to become throughout life as they responsively engage a changing world. Moral formation is a crucial aspect of this human becoming. Infants manifest some of the building blocks of moral capacities quite early in life, but the emergence of moral reasoning and behavior is generally held to be a gradual process. Over time, individuals come to embrace and perform the behavioral norms of their community, and many of these norms appear consistently in some form across human societies. What seem like fairly mundane observations regarding human development present a conundrum, however, for Christian theology. Christians have traditionally claimed that the ability to live rightly, freed from sin, is a gift of God, the result of God’s salvation in Christ and the Spirit. It is God’s restoration of the divine image in the person, and this restoration is not depicted as a change from immaturity to maturity but rather from sin to holiness. Not only is such a transformation, traditionally called sanctification, conceived differently than ordinary development, but it also does not seem to map onto natural development throughout the lifespan. Persons can come to faith at any point in life. If this is the case, however, sanctification would appear to have less to do with natural human becoming and more to do with Christian life and discipleship. What, then, is Christian theology to make of ordinary human becoming? Is sanctification a particular take on a general human process, or is it something altogether different? Quite apart from this relation to natural formation, the Christian commitment to graced transformation raises its own set of practical questions. Most notably, the concept of sanctification as a gift has traditionally raised questions about the legitimacy of human effort. Does grace operate in and through ordinary human agency and effort, or is human striving a type of false self-assertion, a problematic effort to save oneself?1 In keeping with biblical language of divine 1. This is one of the key questions that Jennifer Herdt traces in Jennifer Herdt, Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

2

Responsive Becoming

and human agency operating simultaneously, most Christians have concluded that grace is consistent with human striving.2 This conclusion, however, has not precluded recurring anxiety in either direction. Might a commitment to grace encourage passivity and undermine human action? Can one distinguish between participation in sanctification and the threat of works righteousness? Even granting the legitimacy of both human and divine agency, one still wonders if the commitment to grace has any practical implications for how Christian communities think about sanctification. Is there a sense in which the person actually experiences sanctification precisely as a gift, or is grace simply theoretical while the believer, for all practical purposes, is left alone in her moral striving? Of these two concerns—the legitimacy of ordinary processes and the integrity of grace—recent theological discussion of sanctification has focused on the former. Stanley Hauerwas has suggested that sanctification in the classic Protestant formulations of Calvin and Wesley was portrayed as overly mysterious, detached from the lives and narratives of ordinary people.3 Jennifer Herdt has argued that early modern Augustinians like Martin Luther provided “an account of grace that disrupted ordinary human moral psychology and interrupted natural processes of habituation into virtue.”4 Such concerns are certainly not without merit. In The Religious Affections, for instance, Jonathan Edwards speaks of grace in the soul producing “an entirely new kind of perception or sensation … which is in its whole nature different from any former kinds of sensation of the mind, as tasting is diverse from any of the other senses.”5 Such sharp distinctions between the natural mind and the mind influenced by grace do indeed raise questions about “ordinary psychology.” This sort of concern has led contemporary moral theology to use the terminology of discipleship and virtue, rather than sanctification, and to focus on practices and habituation rather than a robust account of grace.6 Despite these very legitimate concerns, the impetus for this project is a recovery of sanctification, not simply as an important doctrine, but as one that offers substantial insight for practical theological reflection. For all its difficulties, I argue that sanctification—the doctrine that God by the Spirit renews and restores the person in the image of Christ—has something important to teach

2. Paradigmatic Pauline formulations of this simultaneity occur in Philippians 2:13 and Ephesians 2:10. 3. Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1985), 193–94. 4. Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 2. 5. Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 133. 6. See, for example, William Spohn, Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000) and James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2016).

Introduction

3

us. Thus, while this is a book about sanctification and its multiple conundrums, what I have in view is also a retrieval and constructive account of sanctification as a practical doctrine. My claim is not just that these questions can be resolved, that sanctification can be articulated coherently. In addition, and more importantly, I present a constructive account of sanctification and argue that it makes sense in terms of the kind of creatures we understand ourselves to be. Far from violating our humanity or mysteriously operating apart from our life stories, sanctification—and here I locate myself specifically in the Reformed tradition—is in several important respects profoundly consistent with our humanity.7 My method in this project is two-pronged. I begin with an historical excavation and retrieval of Reformed sanctification, drawing on the magisterial Reformer John Calvin, the seventeenth-century English Puritan John Owen, and the nineteenthcentury American Congregationalist Horace Bushnell. The objective here is to explore the logic of the doctrine—how each figure thinks that Christians are liberated from sin and transformed into holiness—and to investigate its recurring questions and difficulties. The second prong involves a careful consideration of human nature through interdisciplinary dialogue with the human sciences. If an account of Christian moral transformation is going to adequately respond to pressing questions about human nature, then we need a way to speak about that nature. Here, I maintain that an interdisciplinary approach, rather than a strictly theological one, is uniquely suited to the task. If one of the fundamental questions is how sanctification as a gift of God relates to ordinary processes of moral development, then we need some point of entry to talking about ordinary processes. If we want to address how grace can operate in a manner consistent with our humanity, then it would help if we can say that graced transformation is consistent not simply with a theological anthropology but also with descriptions of human nature from other disciplines. In this book, evolutionary anthropology and developmental psychology will be key conversation partners. The study of human evolution will help us understand human capacity for affective social relationships and their significance for shaping the people we become. The study of childhood development will then provide an account of natural moral development, specifically of children, within this affective social context. In both cases I find fundamental points of convergence between the theological and scientific material. This convergence, in turn, will suggest a fittingness of human nature to the relational context of graced transformation. One of the key themes that emerge from these multiple avenues of inquiry is the transformative potential of affective relationships and the primacy of what I

7. While this account focuses on Reformed figures, Wesley scholars have begun to make similar arguments regarding Wesleyan sanctification. Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994).

4

Responsive Becoming

will call “affective social acceptance.” Reformed thinkers, drawing on key biblical texts, have made much of the need for a transformed or renewed heart. While this heart transformation is conceived of in multiple ways, here I focus on those accounts that describe such transformation as a personal response to the love of another. At its core, sanctification is loving response to God, which is always enabled and sustained by God’s love in Christ and the Spirit. Thus, drawing on both the social scientific and theological materials, I present an account of sanctification that is fundamentally relational and responsive. Sanctification, our restoration to the image of God, is fundamentally about restored relationship and the people we become in response to the divine action that reconciles us to God and to one another. When Calvin’s approach to sanctification is seen in this light, I argue that the concerns regarding human nature and grace that are thought to present such a liability for Protestant notions of sanctification are actually those concerns that it is well positioned to address. Anything relating to divine activity will always be partially mysterious and inaccessible to human understanding, but sanctification is not so mysterious that it is totally detached from our ordinary lives and identities. Given the sorts of creatures that we find ourselves to be in empirical consideration, it makes sense to think that we could be transformed through affective and responsive relationship to God. Nor is sanctification a usurpation or violation of human agency. We are not passive but are transformed in and through our response to God’s love displayed in Christ. Such responsivity, however, is not our own achievement. It is always a gift evoked by the constant presence of Christ’s Spirit. Lastly, this centrality of the divine–human relationship does not displace the significance of human relationships and ordinary processes of formation. As the interdisciplinary study indicates, humans are creatures who develop over the course of a lifetime with considerable plasticity, particularly to social context. Human becoming, in and through human relationships, is part of created humanity. As such, it is a part of humanity that must be sanctified. Natural becoming in the context of ordinary human relationships, like those between parents and children, is not displaced by sanctification. Rather, these are located within the reconciliation of creation to its Creator.

Responsive becoming and virtue theory At this point, however, one might very well ask whether we actually need to go to all the trouble of articulating a revitalized Reformed sanctification. After all, the scholarship of the past generation has hardly been silent on the topic of moral formation but has instead been quite prolific in pursuing it through the paradigm of virtue ethics. Notably, this has not only been Catholic moral theology. Protestant ethicists have published extensively on the possibility of a

Introduction

5

rapprochement with virtue.8 Christian virtue ethicists, from both philosophical and theological disciplines, have analyzed the efficacy of communal practices to form behavior and to align the emotions and will with virtuous action. Some, such as Stanley Hauerwas, have tended to focus more on the believing community and the formative power of the narrative it proclaims.9 Others have linked spirituality and virtue, with a Christocentric and mimetic bent.10 One thing that all of these approaches have in common is the focus on practices and their formative potential—whether the practices in question are specifically Christian or not. In the account I develop here, practices also come into play, but they do not take center stage. Instead, the focal point is the divine–human relationship, often portrayed with God as a loving parent and the faithful person as the adopted child of God. It is particularly important that this relationship is not merely social, but that it is also affective. For Calvin, the most crucial aspect of sanctification is the knowledge of God as a loving parent. Likewise, contemporary studies of children’s development often focus on the degree of affection and security present between parent and child in analyzing children’s behavior. This is not to say children’s practices of habituation into socially accepted behavior are inconsequential, but is instead to draw attention to the particular social context in which such habituation is most effective. Thus, one way to think about the relationship between this project and Christian virtue is in terms of this shift in the center of gravity. Sanctification as portrayed here is not opposed to virtue theory, and practices are still indispensable. It does however draw attention to an aspect of moral formation that is currently undertheorized in discussions of virtue—what I call the primacy of affective social acceptance. In another respect, however, the notion of responsive formation in relationship to God does offer a more pointed alternative to virtue theory. When it comes to reflection on the giftedness or graced character of virtue, Christian ethicists seem to fall into two categories. Either one takes a Thomistic approach, with its already established distinction between acquired and infused virtue, or one appeals to the noncompetitive character of divine and human agency, arguing that the acquisition

8. Kirk J. Nolan, Reformed Virtue after Barth: Developing Moral Virtue Ethics in the Reformed Tradition (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2014); Kevin Twain Lowery, Salvaging Wesley’s Agenda: A New Paradigm for Wesleyan Virtue Ethics (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2008); Joel D. Biermann, A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics (Augsburg, MN: Fortress Publishers, 2014); Stephen A. Wilson, Virtue Reformed: Rereading Jonathan Edward’s Ethics (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill Academic Pub, 2005). 9. Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981); Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). 10. Spohn, Go and Do Likewise.

6

Responsive Becoming

of virtue (however a particular theologian describes it) is the work of the Spirit through ordinary processes. I do not here analyze Thomistic virtue and its resolution of the nature–grace question. But it is important to note that Thomists still debate how to understand the relationship of acquired and infused moral virtue, and, outside of Thomistic circles, the notion of an infused virtue is often not found to be appealing.11 Thus the approach I advance, while not intended as an alternative to virtue theory as a whole, does present an alternative to infused moral virtue. With respect to the literature on noncompetitive agency, I don’t dispute the basic point that God is not one agent among many. To say that God does something does not thereby entail denying human action.12 At the same time, appeals to divine transcendence do not fully respond to the questions at the heart of this project. The issue is not simply whether we can formally account for the giftedness of moral transformation but also whether and how this transformation is understood as the work of Christ and the Spirit. Practically speaking, the question is whether and how the saving work of the triune God makes a difference to the agent herself and her ordinary life. Thus, the relational approach I articulate does represent an alternative to the conceptions of grace offered by most virtue theorists. The project provides one final point of contact with contemporary literature on virtue in its account of the relationship between moral and spiritual formation. While these have traditionally been studied in the distinct disciplines of moral theology and Christian spirituality/practical theology, scholars in the past few generations have intuited and explored a connection between them.13 On one level, this approach has tied in nicely with virtue theory in that both moral and spiritual formations make use of practices and habituation. At the same time, dialogue between moral and spiritual theology has stopped short of a full account of the overlap and distinction between the two. As we shall see, the relational approach to formation I develop offers a framework for this connection and seeks to bring these two disciplines into closer dialogue.

Interdisciplinary method: Theology and human sciences A project such as this one naturally raises important and contested methodological questions within theology. Central to these disputes is deciding how theological claims about God and God’s relationship to the world can interact with other

11. William Mattison discusses some of the recent debates in Thomistic scholarship in William C. Mattison, “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues?” Theological Studies 72, no. 3 (2011): 558–85; see Herdt, Putting on Virtue, 82–96 for an example of Protestant skepticism of the category of infused moral virtue. 12. Kathryn Tanner uses moral transformation to illustrate noncompetitive divine agency in God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988). 13. Mark O’Keefe, Becoming Good, Becoming Holy: On the Relationship of Christian Ethics and Spirituality (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2005); Spohn, Go and Do Likewise.

Introduction

7

sources of knowledge about the world and about human beings.14 If theology is primarily an investigation of God’s self-disclosure, on what basis do we then introduce claims of other disciplines? These questions are rendered even more complex when we consider that any human speech about God, even the effort to understand and articulate God’s self-revelation, is always going to be inadequate in the face of divine otherness. While it exceeds the limits of this project to provide a full theory of the relationship between the discipline of theology and the human sciences, a few words about the working presuppositions and the rationale for considering the human and social sciences in a work of theology are certainly in order. To begin, the questions and objectives of this project are distinctly theological, as are the initial means of pursuing them. The first three chapters are devoted to a theological analysis of the doctrine of sanctification in three different figures within the Reformed tradition. The assumption in this ordering is that theology has its own proper task, sources, and methods and these remain foundational. In this project that task is to evaluate language regarding divine redemption of human action, and to come to greater understanding of what it means to claim that this redemption is the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. As we shall see, however, the depictions of sanctification themselves seem to presuppose familiarity with ordinary experience of moral development, particularly of children in the care of parents. One goal in this project is to thus recognize, make explicit, and intentionally undertake an analysis of experience that might otherwise continue only implicitly and uncritically. Part of the reason why discussions of sanctification tend to operate on assumptions about human experience, with varying levels of recognition or justification for their assumptions, is the intensely practical nature of the inquiry. The questions at stake—how to articulate the primacy of divine agency and how and whether one can then also talk about human agency and natural human processes—all have immediate bearing on the lives of believers. While theology should certainly not adopt a methodology in which its own task is reduced to an analysis of experience, or in which problematic assumptions of the human sciences are allowed to dictate the terms of the conversation, it also cannot complete its task in abstraction from the concrete lives it seeks to describe. As speech about God and God’s relationship to the world and to human beings, theology must eventually be able to make some kind of sense of humanity’s experience of itself

14. This conversation was of course crucial to much of theological discourse in the twentieth century. For a review of key figures and issues, see Ben Quash, “Revelation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, ed. J. B. Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain R. Torrance (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 325–44; The conversation can also be traced through a survey of Gifford lecturers. See Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews in 2001 (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001). Sarah Coakley’s yet to be published 2012 lectures provide the latest installment.

8

Responsive Becoming

and the world. It must resonate with or illuminate or some way connect to human self-understanding.15 And in doing so it must resist the temptation to simply recapitulate or interpret, without challenging or fundamentally shaping human experience. Thus, while theology must avoid a problematic reduction of its task to the analysis of experience, it cannot dispense with the empirical altogether, but rather must find within it some kind of confirmation. A second reason why this particular set of questions seems to call for extensive analysis of human experience involves the centrality of the parent– child analogy. Here it is important to note that this analogy is already embedded within the theological discourse, and I believe inextricably so. It is, fundamentally, a given analogy. Israel, in the covenant language of the Old Testament, is YHWH’s child. Jesus prays to God as father, seems to experience an intimate familial relationship to God at a very young age, and teaches his disciples to call on God as father and to think of themselves as children. And, of course, Christian Trinitarian language is formulated along the lines of parent– child analogy. With respect to sanctification, the parent–child analogy becomes the controlling metaphor for understanding initiation into new life in Christ and growth in that life. Christian theologians have always insisted that the use of analogy with reference to God also involves negation. No discourse, even revealed analogy, is sufficient to grasp or comprehend God. Calvin, as we will see, insists that such revealed language is first and foremost true of God and then, only analogously, true of human beings.16 Regardless of the directionality one emphasizes when it comes to revealed analogy, if anything is to actually be communicated, some experiential referent is presupposed. If God is the true parent, in comparison with whom all other parents are a reflection or sign, one still cannot enter into the interpretive process without some beginning notion of a human parent, however imperfect and in need of transformation that initial meaning might be. If revelation that employs analogical language is to get off the ground, it must presume a human conversation partner with certain kinds of experience that will render the analogy intelligible. In Reformed theology, while human sin renders a consideration of natural world that is independent of revelation problematic, the natural world itself is not thought to be the source of false information about God. Quite the contrary, creation, the work of the divine word,

15. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), III/2, 225, speaks of the correspondence or similarity which must exist between “creatureliness” and human determination by God for covenant-partnership. 16. “We must note first of all that, properly speaking, we have no other father than God.” John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 622; see Roger M. White, Talking About God: The Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub., 2010) for a discussion of a similar position regarding religious analogy in both Aquinas and Barth.

Introduction

9

was from the beginning intended to make possible genuine fellowship between God and humanity.17 In its postlapsarian state, the revelatory significance of human experience can only be reliably interpreted in the light of God’s definitive revelation in Christ, but it cannot be dispensed with. The analogical character of divine revelation thus pushes theology to consider the experiential referent. I will also suggest, though this is not yet the time to defend this claim, that this analogical character also pushes for a positive valuation of embodied experience and that the material cannot simply be displaced or dispensed with once it has fulfilled its revelatory role.18 If some attention to human experience is ultimately indispensable for the topic at hand, the question then becomes how theology should best engage experience. For every theologian, personal experience, often at the unreflective and even subconscious level, will play a role that is both legitimate and on its own insufficient. Personal experience no doubt shapes the intuitions that propel individual projects, and a diversity of theological voices is, thankfully, becoming expected in theology. Diversity in the broader discourse, however, cannot completely compensate for the limitations of individual experience. What is needed is a rigorous and disciplined point of entry into a broader examination of human life. Here, the human sciences, while certainly not infallible, can be an important tool. Disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology have over time developed their own methodologies for investigation of human nature and human behavior. Engaging such disciplines will, of course, call for critical reflection on the methods used, their limitations, and, most importantly, the philosophical, moral, and theological presuppositions employed. The engagement with scientific research in this project will thus take place in three stages. First, as stated above, we will begin the theological conversation with careful attention both to the aspects of sanctification that constitute theological non-negotiables and with an eye toward the practical account of Christian life that is stated, presumed, or a logical conclusion of each account. Next, we will turn to two extra-theological disciplines—evolutionary anthropology and developmental psychology—with both a “listening” moment, as we gather together and think through the various strands of research, and a theological evaluation, including analysis of any presuppositions that might be hostile to theology. Lastly, we will consider the two modes of inquiry together to ask whether this sustained analysis of natural processes can afford any insight regarding the persistent questions that are raised by the paradox of Christian salvation.

17. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 2.6.1 refers to creation as the school in which humans were to learn piety. 18. My argument here is indebted to Sarah Coakley’s analysis of human sexuality as a “precious clue woven into our created being reminding us of our rootedness in God.” For Coakley it is precisely this revelatory capacity of sexuality that calls for both its purification and its affirmation. Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay “on the Trinity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 309.

10

Responsive Becoming

Chapter summaries In keeping with the methodology outlined above, the chapter progression will occur in three stages. In the first three chapters I consider three moments in the historical development of Reformed sanctification, with particular attention given not only to how moral transformation is thought to occur but also to the ways in which the work of the Spirit is thought to act within natural processes of formation, particularly those related to the care of children. The first chapter is a careful reading of John Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification, in conjunction with his relevant pastoral practice in Geneva. For Calvin it is the believer’s knowledge of God as a loving parent that provides a nonnegotiable foundation for the transformation of moral agency. This knowledge enables her to honestly consider her actions and to reorient her life to God through a moment-by-moment turning, a process of death and rebirth that Calvin calls repentance or sanctification. Calvin’s familial metaphor suggests that sanctification is an intelligible process, consistent with what it means to be human. Thus, in his very use of the parent–child metaphor, Calvin tacitly acknowledges that these relationships are genuinely formative, and his pastoral practice seems to confirm this assumption. Unresolved tensions in Calvin’s thought, however, leave open the possibility that subsequent accounts of sanctification will either completely divorce it from natural human formation or collapse the work of the Spirit into our understanding of natural formation. The second chapter examines sanctification in the thought of the seventeenthcentury English puritan John Owen, who develops his account of sanctification in an historical context where theological anxiety regarding the integrity of divine grace is high. As such, Owen helps to clarify precisely what is at stake in the Reformed commitment to grace. It is not simply a generic anxiety about divine agency, but rather a specific concern regarding the coherence of the gospel as the work of Christ and the Spirit. Owen’s response is to explicitly separate natural virtue—which he affirms as legitimate and useful—from graced sanctification and to locate the latter in the mediate and immediate workings of the Spirit. His approach has the advantage of not grounding moral transformation entirely in a person’s conscious awareness, but he ultimately marginalizes the role of ordinary, intra-human social formation. In the nineteenth-century American Congregationalist Horace Bushnell, surveyed in Chapter 3, we discover the opposite tendency. Bushnell’s reaction to the excesses of American Revivalism made him profoundly suspicious of any stark separation between nature and grace. Instead, he appealed to the familial context and to the Spirit’s ability to work through these foundational human relationships. Bushnell’s description of Christian nurture helpfully advances the conversation, but it also seems to entrap divine grace in the harsh realities of particular human relationships, leaving little space for gracious transformation in later life. As such, Bushnell presents a doctrine of sanctification that risks reducing and constraining God’s gracious activity to natural processes. Phase two of the argument, consisting of Chapters 4 and 5, moves from the theological and historical analysis to an interdisciplinary approach to human

Introduction

11

nature. In Chapter 4, we will consider what it means to be human by investigating human origins in the deep time of evolutionary history. The capacities that enable humans to perceive an affective relationship to the divine and to act as moral agents are distinct to homo sapiens and have been essential to the survival of the genus for millions of years. Drawing on a number of evolutionary theorists such as Sarah Hrdy and Kim Sterelny, I discuss how these capacities likely coevolved as cooperation became an integral component of the human niche. As such, both the possibility for spiritual transcendence and the distinctly human awareness of a moral dimension to action are rooted in embodied human relationships of mutual cooperation and care. Neither the capacity for a relationship to God nor human moral agency is fully accounted for by evolutionary theory, but there is a naturalness and an embodied foundation to both. Chapter 5 surveys contemporary research on early moral development and, in the process, highlights two conceptual issues that are particularly important from a theological perspective. First, developmental psychology illustrates the extent to which development itself, and by extension human plasticity, are central features of human nature. Secondly, this literature maintains that specific aspects of caregiving relationships, including mutual love, trust, and responsiveness, are crucial to providing a positive social context within which moral development takes place. I conclude with a critical analysis of the moral assumptions embedded in this research and discuss its usefulness and limitations for theological ethics. In the third phase of the project, Chapter 6, I bring both the theological and social scientific pieces together to provide a critical retrieval of sanctification as an account of moral formation, placing an emphasis on the responsive relationship initiated and sustained by Christ and the Spirit and the spiritual practices that mediate this relationship. In the process, I show how the interdisciplinary research presented in Chapters 4 and 5 is helpful in discussing the compatibility of nature and grace in this relational framework. They confirm that sanctification is consistent with human nature both because it is part of this nature to experience formation in the context of close, affective social relationships and because the human person has a natural plasticity and is inherently developmental. I argue that this plasticity and natural development create the possibility within human nature for a social influence that transcends the human. Crucially, however, this divinehuman social context cannot leave embodied, intra-human sociality behind. As Horace Bushnell perceived far ahead of his time, these human relationships are the means by which humanity opens to the divine.

Chapter 1 C A LV I N A N D T H E S A N C T I F IC AT IO N O F T H E C H I L D

The central question which will occupy us in this chapter is quite simple: How does Calvin think sanctification occurs? Contrary to common assumptions about Reformed sanctification, the process of sanctification in Calvin’s thought is neither completely mysterious nor the result of divine agency overpowering the human. Rather, sanctification is a gradual and intelligible process by which the Holy Spirit transforms the whole person. It occurs, moreover, in a manner consistent with Calvin’s understanding of human nature. Calvin achieves this intelligibility and consistency in large part through his use of the traditional Christian metaphor of God as father. Sanctification, for Calvin, can only happen if one recognizes that in God she finds a loving parent, and the transformation that he describes derives much of its intelligibility from observations and intuitions about natural relationships between parents and children. Before Calvin takes up the discussion of sanctification proper, he highlights the role that parent–child imagery will play in his formulation. In Book II of the Institutes, Calvin writes, “Let the first step toward godliness be to recognize that God is our Father to watch over us, govern and nourish us, until he gather us unto the eternal inheritance of his kingdom.”1 In order to become godly, one must understand herself to be God’s child and thereby willingly acknowledge that her life falls within the realm of God’s loving concern. This same quotation, however, raises deeper questions for the ongoing viability of the doctrine as Calvin presents it. While the second half of this chapter will examine some of the tensions in much greater detail, I would like, at the outset of the discussion, to flag two broad areas of concern. First, Calvin’s statement regarding the beginning of godliness suggests that sanctification does not simply rest on one’s status as a child of God, but also, and crucially, on the person’s recognition of this status. Whatever we eventually say about election, union with Christ, and participation in his benefits—all topics of

Portions of Chapters 1 and 5 previously appeared in Angela Carpenter, “Sanctification as a Human Process: Reading Calvin alongside Child Development Theory,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 35, no. 1 (May 13, 2015): 103–19. 1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia, PA, and London: Westminster Press and SCM Press, 1960), 2.6.4.

14

Responsive Becoming

great interest to Calvin—none of this means anything for godliness unless the person recognizes, with firmness, certainty, and rooted conviction, that it is true of her. As I will note in the second half of this chapter, this reliance on subjective awareness will raise a number of questions. Can human subjectivity bear this weight? Does subjective awareness account for the fullness of transformation, or do some aspects of sanctification not flow from awareness as such, but rather from the reality of which the person is aware (i.e., that God really is lovingly active in saving and sanctifying humans)? Calvin is also aware that by placing a strong emphasis on subjective consciousness he will have to address significant pastoral difficulties. How, for example, should the believer deal with doubt or fluctuation in her faith? Calvin believed that the theology of the early Reformation provided peace of conscience, a peace that he often portrayed metaphorically by appealing to God’s fatherly love in Christ. The intelligibility of his account of sanctification rests in large part on the reality of this peace. But, can the persuasive power of the transformation he describes both rely on human subjectivity and simultaneously weather its tumultuous waters? A further aspect of Calvin’s emphasis on the subject is a turn to the inner life as a privileged locus of moral effort. If recognition of God’s parental love is so essential and primary to the moral agent, if it is the source of her transformation, shouldn’t she focus her psychological energy on the direct pursuit of such a recognition? The priority that Calvin assigns to piety and transformation of the heart would seem to indicate just such a starting point. We will have to ask if such an interpretation of his moral psychology is warranted and if it could lead to a kind of moral passivity, or inattention to external action, as the moral agent scrupulously analyzes the purity of her heart.2 The second area of concern in Calvin’s description of sanctification involves the ambiguous status of intra-human relationships, as these relate to gracious transformation. The quotation above relies on a human relationship to give intelligibility to the transformative power of the divine–human relationship. But does Calvin’s metaphorical use of the parent–child relationship displace the literal one, rendering it either expendable or suggesting that as part of fallen humanity it is actually in opposition to sanctification? On the one hand, the human parent– child relationship must do something for the metaphor to work. Yet, the formation of children in the care of parents cannot simply be equated with sanctification. I want to argue that a fully human account cannot dismiss intra-human formation and that a genuinely Christian account does not dismiss this dimension. Is Calvin an ally in this endeavor?

2. While Reformed thought is ordinarily associated with a tendency toward legalism, antinomian impulses have always been present as well. See Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 14–31; Michael McGiffert, “The Perkinsian Moment of Federal Theology,” Calvin Theological Journal 29, no. 1 (April 1, 1994): 130–31.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

15

Calvin did acknowledge both of these issues in some form, and his efforts to address them will be considered in due course. To begin, however, we must take several steps backward. In the first section of this chapter, I will sketch some of the basic contours of Calvin’s theology. This discussion will not simply provide background material, however, because aspects of his theology that fall outside of sanctification can ultimately help alleviate some of the anxieties we face when reading Book III of the Institutes. Next, I turn to a description of the process of sanctification and argue that despite some of the common assumptions about Calvin, his use of two metaphors—the “child of God” and “death and rebirth/ resurrection”—enables him to portray this transformation as deeply human and intelligible. The “how” of sanctification has a definite logic, one that roughly parallels Calvin’s understanding of the formation of children in the natural parent–child relationship.3 When we consider contemporary studies of children in Chapter 4, we will then have occasion to observe that while developmental research would challenge Calvin on several points, it also confirms some of his central insights. In the third section, I will draw out some of the tensions inherent in Calvin’s description of sanctification and consider the responses he offers. I conclude that his analysis leaves open the possibility for his theology to be developed in problematic ways. Lastly, I will consider Calvin’s direct thought about actual children, including his discussion of infant baptism and his pastoral approach to children’s education and childrearing. If we rely on this evidence, we will have reason to believe that Calvin’s emphasis on subjectivity is not an intractable problem and that his doctrine of sanctification can incorporate, rather than displace, the kinds of moral formation that occur in the development of real (as opposed to metaphorical) children. Before turning to Calvin, I should lastly mention two methodological concerns. First, it must be noted that it is neither surprising nor unproblematic that Calvin’s parent–child analogy is decidedly gendered. While Calvin will occasionally liken God to a mother, his ordinary preference is to speak of God as father. Since this project is not strictly exegetical, but also moves in the direction of constructive claims, I will not follow suit. On the other hand, as the debate among contemporary feminists indicates, the question of gender and God language has no ready solution.4 Feminine pronouns, particularly in the context of maternal imagery, merely beg the question of gender essentialism, and gender-neutral language risks reinforcing subconsciously gendered assumptions. Among these unappealing options, my own choice will be to use father-language only when the task of exegeting Calvin’s own words would make it awkward not to do so and

3. My reading of Calvin here is indebted to Brian Gerrish’s analysis of the father and child motif in Calvin’s thought. See B. A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993). 4. See Janet Soskice, The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 66–83; Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay “on the Trinity” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 323–27.

16

Responsive Becoming

elsewhere to speak of God as the divine parent. In some ways, the book as a whole will employ a third strategy of unexpectedly juxtaposing masculine and feminine imagery.5 The preference for “father” language in Calvin will stand in contrast to standard assumptions within child development and attachment theory that it is the affective relationship between mother and child which exerts the most profound influence in moral formation. Second, a chapter of this scope cannot pretend to treat Calvin’s writings comprehensively, nor to comprehensively engage Calvin scholarship. Because the intent of the broader project is to explore the ongoing relevance of the doctrine of sanctification for Christian ethics, this chapter will be primarily concerned with Calvin as a formative figure and will thus focus on his most widely read and influential work, The Institutes of the Christian Religion. Given the topic, most of the analysis will center on Book III of the Institutes, which treats the mode of receiving grace. As my engagement of the secondary literature will demonstrate, the reading I provide will not fall outside the scope of those defended by scholars attentive to the whole of Calvin’s corpus.

Calvin’s soteriology There is no question that for Calvin, salvation is often described in terms of eternal life or the avoidance of eternal damnation, but we would be distorting his soteriology if we did not proceed to inquire about the content of eternal life.6 Assumptions about this content are scattered throughout the Institutes and include human happiness, union with God in Christ, restoration of the image of God, perfect righteousness (described by Calvin as the freedom not to be able to sin), and the glory of God. In order to understand how these relate we must take a brief trip through Calvin’s exposition of creation, fall, and redemption in the Institutes. Within the realm of creation, Calvin memorably refers to the prelapsarian natural order as the “school of piety” within which human beings were initially meant to learn piety, “and from it pass over to eternal life and perfect felicity.”7 The knowledge human beings take from their material existence was intended to inspire worship and nurture their trust in God’s goodness, justice, and mercy.8 Thus, for Calvin, even prelapsarian creation, and particularly humanity, had its own teleological development. Even before the fall, human beings were meant to learn and grow into the kind of relationship with God that would constitute their eternal happiness. Calvin draws on a Johannine Christology to emphasize that

5. Soskice advocates this destabilizing strategy. See Janet Martin Soskice, “Trinity and Feminism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, ed. Susan Frank Parsons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 135–50. 6. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.15.3–5. 7. Ibid., 2.6.1. 8. Ibid., 1.10.2.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

17

even this original teleology was Christocentric. All of life was in Christ from the beginning and the fall was in some sense a fall away from Christ, to whom it is necessary to return.9 Thus, even from a prelapsarian perspective, the eternal life and happiness of humanity was inseparable from a Christocentric knowledge of and affect-laden relationship to God. And, even from the beginning, humanity’s union with God in Christ was developmental. As we trace the relationship between natural moral formation and the doctrine of sanctification, this prelapsarian moment is an important frame of reference. Here Calvin confirms that growth in the capacity to know and love God does not necessarily imply the presence of sin and is at least theoretically in harmony with material existence and the intellectual, emotional, and physical growth humans experience as embodied creatures. In other words, the limited capacities of human children for moral reasoning and behavior are not inherently sinful, nor are the processes by which these capacities develop only to be associated with fallen human nature. Human development in the natural world, far from being opposed to true holiness, actually converges with a Christocentric knowledge and love of God. Sin for Calvin cannot then be equated with the immaturity of children or a capacity for further growth, although he certainly thinks that all human children are in fact corrupted by sin. What then, for Calvin, does the fall signify? At its core, the fall involves the corruption of human capacities by severing them from their created dependence on God. As Calvin states in multiple places, human knowledge, wisdom, piety, and uprightness of heart—in short the perfect ordering of the soul which constituted the image of God and distinguished humans from all other creatures—were designed to enable meditation on the heavenly life and union with God.10 In his exegesis of Genesis 3, Calvin insists that the fall involved a rejection of this created vocation. The first humans chose falsehood over God’s word and by holding God’s word in contempt, they no longer reverenced him.11 Rejection of God necessarily precluded any authentic worship or communion with God for “unless we listen attentively to him, his majesty will not dwell among us, nor his worship remain perfect.”12 The term Calvin identifies as the root of the

9. Ibid., 2.6.1; cf Matthew Myer Boulton, Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 78: “Thus humanity’s restoration means being restored to the original life in Christ—that is, the life in God—for which human beings are made ‘from the beginning.” 10. For Calvin’s primary discussion of imago dei in the Institutes, see Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.15.4–8; there is considerable debate regarding whether the image for Calvin is substantial or relational. On the latter perspective, see Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1956), 66–70 and T. F. Torrance, Calvin’s Doctrine of Man (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949); for a review of the literature and an alternative perspective, see Mary Potter Engel, John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988), 50–54. 11. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.1.4. 12. Ibid.

18

Responsive Becoming

fall is thus not disobedience or pride, which have a strong theological pedigree in discussions of sin, but rather unfaithfulness.13 Adam chose to believe Satan instead of God, and by rejecting his vocation of worshiping the God in whose image he was created, the God who loved him, Adam creates space for all other ambitions and desires to control his life. As Wilhelm Niesel describes this change, “Just as his nature was originally moulded by his turning Godwards, so now it is affected to its inmost depths by his estrangement from the source of life.”14 The primal act of rejecting God has two distinct ramifications. First, at the forensic level, the entire human race has become entangled in this rebellion and each person stands guilty and condemned before God.15 It is in this sense that Calvin will speak of God’s curse or punishment. God’s infinite goodness can no longer be in fellowship with humanity and this estrangement spells death for the human soul.16 Second, human nature has been fundamentally altered. Human faculties, created as good and to further humanity’s created purpose, are now distorted and thus sin never ceases.17 At times Calvin will speak of these sins as deserving punishment, but elsewhere he regards the continued corruption as being at least partially constitutive of the curse and punishment.18 To the extent which this is true for Calvin, these two aspects of the fall are in a circular relationship. Sin has alienated all of humanity from God and brought about God’s condemnation and curse. At least part of this curse is the corruption of human nature, making humans incapable of not sinning and thus more deeply entangling them in alienation and condemnation. Each of these facets, both the severed divine–human relationship, visible in God’s condemnation, and the corrupted human nature, indicates specific soteriological needs. God’s salvific action must address the unbridgeable gap that sin has left between divinity and humanity, and it must restore or heal the corrupted nature. For Calvin, both of these soteriological needs are addressed through the “double grace”—the gifts of justification and sanctification—that the elect receive by faith in Christ. We are now in a position to grasp how sanctification, the restoration of the divine image, fits into Calvin’s broader theology. Calvin naturally rejects the various Roman Catholic options, in which sanctification is subsumed within the doctrine of justification, and he also departs from the most prominent formulations of his reformed contemporaries, where sanctification followed justification, both logically and temporally. In other words, Calvin is determined to avoid any suggestion that a restored fellowship with God somehow depends on human action, as well as the conclusion that sanctification is something of 13. See Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, 81–83 for an extended discussion. 14. Ibid., 82. 15. Calvin’s explanation for the transmission of original sin is that Adam was entrusted with gifts for all humanity and, having lost these gifts, all of his progeny are also left destitute. See Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.1.8. 16. Ibid., 2.1.5. 17. Ibid., 2.1.8. 18. Ibid., 2.1.5.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

19

an afterthought and not part of salvation proper. He instead insists that both justification and sanctification are gifts the believer receives simultaneously as a result of being united with Christ by faith. They are distinct, yet inseparable. Each addresses one of the two soteriological needs that emerge from Calvin’s discussion of the fall—alienation from God and a corrupted nature.

Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification While I argue here that Calvin ultimately portrays sanctification as an intelligible human process, it must be acknowledged that assumptions to the contrary have not arisen out of thin air. In fact, within the Institutes, Calvin’s initial description of human transformation does not appear to be very human at all.19 It comes in Book II, on the heels of Calvin’s thoroughly Augustinian portrayal of fallen human nature. All of human nature, corporeal existence as well as the mind and heart, is corrupt and the soul is devoid of good. In such a condition, the enslaved will can make no movement of its own toward goodness and all change must be completely the result of God’s gracious activity. This is, of course, the standard Augustinian line, but some of the language Calvin uses to underscore his commitment to entirely graced change rhetorically makes divine and human willing exclusive of one another. Taking his cues from the “heart of stone and heart of flesh” passage in Ezekiel 36, Calvin writes, “Whatever is of our own will is effaced. What takes its place is wholly from God.”20 Continuing this theme in section seven, Calvin reiterates, “The Lord corrects our evil will, or rather extinguishes it” and “he substitutes for it a good one from himself.”21 This kind of statement, and others like it, can easily be read to imply that both the transformation of the will and the resulting good works are entirely God’s in a way that makes it difficult to see them as also being distinctly human. In these sections it sounds as though the Spirit transforms humanity either through a quasi-magical act, a surgical transplant, or a kind of spiritual possession whereby human agency is entirely overridden by the divine. In each case, what is implied is a fundamental human passivity. The resulting acts themselves, Calvin states,

19. For a discussion of “dialectical interpretation” of Calvin’s thought, emphasizing the stark contrast or even opposition between the divine and human, see Philip Walker Butin, Revelation, Redemption, and Response Calvin’s Trinitarian Understanding of the DivineHuman Relationship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 15–19; see also J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 3–14 for criticism of Calvin along these lines in contemporary “theologies of the gift” and Ibid., 42–53, for a discussion of criticism that Calvin faced in his own time regarding human nature, freedom, and human relationship to the divine. 20. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.3.6. 21. Ibid., 2.3.7.

20

Responsive Becoming

are properly attributed to God and not to the agent. Thus he writes, “Therefore we are robbing the Lord if we claim for ourselves anything either in will or in accomplishment.”22 And, “This means nothing else than that the Lord by his Spirit directs, bends, and governs our heart and reigns it in as in his own possession.”23 Not surprisingly, many contemporary Calvin scholars have devoted considerable attention to Calvin’s choice of language in these passages. Those wishing to defend Calvin against charges that divine agency overpowers or subsumes human agency have drawn attention to the dual meaning of “nature” language with respect to the human person.24 In one sense, human nature means that which constituted the original, prelapsarian humanity. But Calvin also, perhaps unhelpfully, uses “nature” to denote fallen humanity. Thus, these scholars suggest, the sections referenced above should be read as a description of what the fallen person may properly claim as her own accomplishment in redemption and the answer is quite understandably a resounding “nothing!” Genuine, created humanity, is always for Calvin a humanity with God and it is a fallen or distorted humanity which claims an identity in itself, apart from God. As Todd Billings writes, “When Calvin says that ‘whatever is ours’ is obliterated in regeneration, Calvin is not being ‘negative’ about humanity, but ‘negative’ about sin.”25 In context, this is clearly what Calvin intends, but such explanations do not resolve all the tensions this section of the Institutes introduces with respect to the human character of redeemed action. Why is Calvin so hesitant here to qualify the language of divine dominion, which he could easily do by presenting an anthropology of the redeemed person, of the human in communion with God, whose actions, though entirely the result of grace, are also genuinely human? Why are they depicted as always the result of a “will” which is entirely God’s and thus not the person’s, rather than of a will which is entirely God’s and therefore also now genuinely of the human agent as well? From the perspective of Book II, human transformation from sinful to holy, from fallen to redeemed, does assume a mysterious form. It is wholly and unambiguously the work of God, and from this perspective its character as a human change recedes. One reason for this emphasis might be that Book II of the Institutes contains Calvin’s exposition of God the Redeemer. His focus is thus explicitly on divine agency. When he turns to “the means of receiving grace” in Book III, the perspective is reversed, and Calvin’s focus turns to human nature. The impression one gets from Book III is that of Calvin relentlessly, at virtually every turn, seeking to describe sanctification as an intelligibly human phenomenon. In Book III it is in fact because of the specifics of human nature that the process of sanctification must occur in precisely the way he describes. 22. Ibid., 2.3.9. 23. Ibid., 2.3.10. 24. My reading of Calvin’s use of “nature” with respect to both created and fallen humanity is in substantial agreement with Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, 42–49 and Boulton, Life in God, 207–08; the latter underscores the danger of Calvin’s ambiguous use of nature language. 25. Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, 45.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

21

Sanctification and the child of God metaphor Whereas Christian theology by its very nature offers an account of salvation that includes some role for Christ, Calvin’s soteriology is distinct in its integration of Christology with a pronounced emphasis on the fatherhood of God. It is in fact difficult to overstate the psychological transformation that Calvin understands to begin with the gift of faith, and specifically with the recognition that in God we have a merciful father.26 As Brian Gerrish has noted, although Calvin insists that redemption is entirely the work of the Spirit, he retains considerable interest in the psychology of human transformation and “perceives the entire process as a readily intelligible consequence of faith.”27 Although Calvin does not use the language of moral agency, I will suggest in what follows that a changed relationship to God recreates human agency by placing action within a new psychological context— the beloved child of God. Absent the gift of faith, the psychological state of fallen humanity is, for Calvin, tortured at best. The fallen person, who is of course incapable of not sinning, has both a general sense of God’s existence and some recognition of God’s law, whether through the natural law or through the revealed law in scripture.28 But this rudimentary knowledge cannot possibly restore the person to fellowship with God. Instead, the conscience is only aware of moral failure and can expect nothing other than God’s disapproval and wrath. It is particularly important to Calvin that his reader grasp the utter lack of hope that characterizes this fallen, ungraced state. The human psyche is incapable of living with its own inadequacy and with divine judgment.29 It must either shun God or create and worship a more palatable false God. The fallen conscience must also engage in self-deception and come to believe, often through elaborate comparison with the behavior of others, that its own actions are right. But, as Calvin writes, “While man flatters himself on account of the outward mask of righteousness that he wears, the Lord meanwhile weights in his scales the secret impurity of the heart.”30 The flatterer, living in delusion, is both deprived of genuine communion with God and, whether aware of it or not, awaiting divine wrath. Calvin also rigorously opposes any suggestion that reconciliation with God might occur through a process of penance, and his description of inner turmoil 26. For a full exposition of the theme of adoption in Calvin’s soteriology, see Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 87–102. 27. Ibid., 94. 28. There has been considerable scholarly attention within the last few decades to Calvin’s use of the natural law. See William Klempa, “John Calvin on Natural Law,” in John Calvin and the Church, ed. Timothy George (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 72–95; Irena Backus, “Calvin’s Concept of Natural and Roman Law,” Calvin Theological Journal 38, no. 1 (April 1, 2003): 7–26; Susan E. Schreiner, “Calvin’s Use of Natural Law,” in Preserving Grace (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1997), 51–76. 29. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.7, 3.3.15. 30. Ibid., 3.12.5.

22

Responsive Becoming

is here the most pronounced. The person who believes that reconciliation rests on adequate contrition, confession, and satisfaction is by these very mechanisms trapped in endless uncertainty, “for when will anyone dare assure himself that he has applied all of his powers to lament his sins?”31 Calvin’s early humanism is here still evident in his anti-Catholic rhetoric, as he laments the misery of the soul that must manufacture its own peace with God. What one needs, says Calvin, to be psychologically capable of seeking God, is the promise that God is a propitious father, for it is “upon grace alone the heart of man can rest.”32 Whereas human consciousness, apart from grace, is marked by either selfdeception or fear and turmoil, the presence of faith results in a thoroughly transformed psychology. By working faith in the person, the Holy Spirit recreates her as a new kind of moral agent. This new moral psychology is most often described by Calvin in terms of the experiential certainty by which one knows she is a child of a merciful God.33 Without God’s revelation in Christ, human beings have absolutely no reason to believe that God might desire their well-being or be concerned with their plight. The Holy Spirit initiates two related psychological shifts which change the fundamental posture of the human person in relation to God. The Spirit brings the person to a genuine recognition of and sorrow for her sin, and, at the same time, provides a knowledge of God’s mercy to enable the sorrowful sinner to embrace rather than shun God. Both of these changes are essential for Calvin—without the former, the person might simply continue to sin without any qualms and thereby abuse God’s grace.34 Without the latter, she has no rational grounds to approach God and remains trapped in her own inadequacy and fear. It is important to note, even at this initial moment, that while the workings of the Spirit are certainly not transparent, they are also not entirely mysterious. They retain an intelligibly human quality through the connection Calvin makes between faith and word, and they occur in and through the human faculties. Calvin’s insistence that the Spirit causes a conviction of sin or knowledge of mercy is not meant to invoke an image of the Spirit as a magician or a fairy godmother. Rather, faith is inseparable from teaching. Conviction of sin comes through the revelation of the law, and trust in mercy comes through the teaching of the gospel.35 For Calvin, this connection between faith and word is exemplified both in the prophets and in the gospels when a particular word or teaching is given for the faith or salvation of the people.36 While the Spirit is undoubtedly responsible 31. Ibid., 3.4.2. 32. Ibid., 3.2.7. 33. See Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 65–68; 100. 34. For a more extensive discussion of the dynamic between recognition of God’s fatherly forgiveness and genuine sorrow for sin, see Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 150–58. 35. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.6. 36. Ibid.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

23

for the conviction of sin and the realization of mercy, the connection between faith and word is indicative of the fact that both occur through, rather than apart from, the intellective faculty. The knowledge that a person receives is not, however, strictly cognitive. Calvin emphasizes that it has an experiential quality as one integrates knowledge of God with self-understanding: “We make them ours by inwardly embracing them.”37 This kind of deeply personal and affective appropriation is possible because Christ himself dwells within the person and he is ingrafted into Christ.38 The believer is joined in a bond of fellowship and “with a wonderful communion, day by day, he grows more and more into one body with us, until he becomes completely one with us.”39 For Calvin, the embodied practices of worship, especially the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper and the discipline of prayer, are divinely appointed means by which this communion is attested and nourished in a genuinely human way. As Brian Gerrish observes, both sacraments evoke and instill a sense of God as a divine parent, the first through the imagery of birth and the second through that of bodily nourishment.40 Here also prayer occupies a particularly important role in the believer’s experience of fellowship with God, and it is for Calvin the chief exercise of faith.41 Calvin readily acknowledges that God does not somehow “need” a person’s prayer to know or to act on her behalf. Rather, the believer needs to gain a greater awareness of God’s deeply personal care. It is through prayer that she seeks in Christ what she has learned to be in Christ, and through the results of prayer gains experiential confirmation of this prior knowledge.42 Because of this inherently relational quality, prayer exerts a profound impact on one’s desires and affections. When one approaches God in prayer, if done with sincerity, she feels regret and shame for sin. She experiences a greater desire to please God and is more disposed to see God’s loving action in the ordinary events of life, leading to gratitude, delight, and meditation on God’s kindness.43 Once a person has been adopted as God’s child, through being engrafted into Christ, the divine Son, his basic posture to God is transformed and this transformation enables a new kind of human action. In the first place, the benevolence and generosity manifest in God’s loving action on behalf of humans 37. Ibid., 3.2.16. 38. Although he perhaps exaggerates by claiming that “Christian perfection is the perfection of faith,” see Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 321–32 for a discussion of the extent to which communion with Christ grounds Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification. 39. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.24. 40. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 124–25. 41. Calvin’s title for his chapter on prayer describes it as the chief exercise of faith. See Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.20; see also Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 271–95. 42. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.20.1. 43. Ibid., 3.20.3.

24

Responsive Becoming

inspire a corresponding gratitude and love for God. Whereas humans previously were only capable of a servile or forced obedience, now, filled with delight, they are capable of willing and cheerful obedience.44 For Calvin, God’s action creates an affective dimension to the divine–human relationship, a dimension that he frequently describes by comparison with the affection between parents and children. This affective bond, more so than rewards or punishment—although these latter certainly find their place in Calvin’s thought—creates the context by which the person is transformed and, though not perfected, capable of moral action that arises from the correct motivation.45 The new context is visible in the manner in which the child of God now approaches good works on the one hand, and tribulation on the other. Although Calvin has precluded any suggestion that good works might establish a relationship to God or that they might earn or merit God’s favor, he insists that the believer does still exert considerable effort in doing good and, further, that God rewards these good actions, however imperfect they may be. Calvin’s ability to pull off this subtle distinction rests almost exclusively on his use of the parent–child metaphor. Calvin’s position, echoing his earlier anthropology in Book II, is that all good works are without qualification to be ascribed to God. It is God who bestows them and God who accepts and rewards them.46 In this initial description, as with his initial discussion of redemption, it is difficult to grasp the sense in which these works are genuinely human. The picture becomes clearer, however, as Calvin associates them with adoption into Christ and the new human status in Christ as children and heirs.47 As children of God, believers know themselves to be heirs with Christ, which is to say that, as with natural children, they inherit all good gifts simply because they are children and are loved and valued as such. Calvin, in Pauline fashion, then contrasts the child with the slave. Because the slave or paid laborer receives nothing apart from works, the works themselves take on that particular character. They are “slavish” or “grudging” or “of necessity.”48 Works that are tied to merit can never truly please God because they cannot be

44. Calvin introduces a tension between his qualified approval of a servant posture in 3.2.26, and his rejection of it in 3.19.5. Given his unqualified endorsement, and indeed the indispensability of Calvin’s use of father language, the sense in which the Lord and servant metaphor retains significance is best understood within the context of the Fatherhood of God. See also Zachman, The Assurance of Faith, 92. 45. Calvin’s confidence in the connection between God’s action and our own moral motivation is evident in the way he observes and imitates the pattern of moral exhortation found in scripture and most especially in the Pauline epistles. Calvin notes that Paul will describe the magnificence of God’s activity and the glory of our salvation, and then proceed to call the faithful reader to an appropriate response. See Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.16.3. Calvin himself will also derive exhortations for his reader by contemplating the kinds of action that befit the end of our redemption and calling (Ibid., 3.15.3.) 46. Ibid., 3.16.2. 47. Ibid., 3.15.3. 48. Ibid., 3.16.3.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

25

offered willingly, as a loving response to God’s loving action.49 True children, by contrast, have been embraced in Christ, and the righteousness of Christ is the sole and constant ground of their acceptance. For Calvin this now means that the works themselves are different; they are now characterized by the freedom this relationship affords. Believers “hear themselves called with fatherly gentleness by God” and thus “cheerfully and with great eagerness answer.”50 Speaking of natural children, Calvin calls to mind their willingness to offer their father that which is defective, confident that the effort of obedience will be pleasing. Such then ought to be the model for children of God, who can now freely determine to obey because God looks on them with indulgence and compassion and is pleased by their efforts, “however small, rude and imperfect these may be.”51 The shift in agency afforded by adoption as God’s children is also evident in the new perspective with which believers approach their manifold sufferings. Given the healthy dose of divine sovereignty for which Calvin is so commonly known, it comes as no surprise that suffering is invariably understood to be God’s direct will. And yet, this poses something of a problem for Calvin, for faith rests on the promise that human security is in God. Furthermore, Christ’s death has thoroughly satisfied divine justice. For those whom the Spirit has joined to Christ, no penalties, either temporal or eternal, remain.52 Although Calvin may not be entirely consistent on his disavowal of all penal overtones in believer’s suffering, he is able to alleviate the tensions by distinguishing vengeance from chastisement and interpreting present suffering as the experience of discipline at the hand of one’s heavenly father.53 Punishment, properly speaking, is the act of a judge in response to a crime, but chastisement reflects a parent’s concern with the doer herself.54 For Calvin, the relation of the sufferer to God fundamentally shapes the response to the suffering. While the wicked rant against God, believers recognize the guidance of a loving parent and are driven to consider their sins.55 A few points are particularly important to note here. First, Calvin connects the agent’s posture to God with the kind of actions that are now available to her. Only the child, who has experienced parental love, will respond to chastisement by considering her sin. Second, Calvin derives the intelligibility of this changed agency from familial relations that pertain in natural, intra-human sociality. As such, and without necessarily speaking in these terms, he emphasizes that restored agency is not somehow alien to humanity but is in fact profoundly human. It is faith itself then—knowledge of God as a loving parent in Christ—that initiates a profound moral transformation in the believer. The standards for the kind of faith that will exert such a powerful psychological shift can at times in the 49. Ibid., 3.16.2. 50. Ibid., 3.19.5. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 3.4.40. 53. For an ongoing element of punishment and justice in suffering, see Ibid., 3.8.11. 54. Ibid., 3.4.31. 55. Ibid., 3.4.32.

26

Responsive Becoming

Institutes appear quite rigorous. Not only does Calvin reject Catholic notions of unformed and implicit faith, but he also sets the bar quite high in his own definition. Faith far exceeds the simple Pauline formula of “faith in Christ” and specifically includes the knowledge of divine favor that is founded on the free promise in faith. In other words, faith for Calvin extends beyond belief in Christ’s person or action and includes theological interpretation: it is a faith which grasps that because of Christ one finds in God a kind and loving father. Furthermore, faith is “a firm and sure knowledge,” and Calvin distinguishes the stability of authentic faith from a false faith that is grounded in a general sense of God’s goodness apart from the work of the Holy Spirit.56 Throughout the remainder of the chapter on faith, Calvin must walk a careful tightrope as he seeks to convey the firmness of faith—a firmness essential to the peace of the believer—while at the same time accounting for ordinary struggles and doubts and for the existence of those persons who seem to have faith yet fall away. A number of commentators have observed that the question of assurance of faith has had a tortured legacy in the Reformed tradition, particularly when paired with Calvin’s doctrine of election.57 For the present purposes, what is important to note is the way that Calvin’s understanding of sanctification depends on a rigorous and specific standard of faith. Sanctification is intelligible because it is born of a knowledge of one’s status as God’s child. Whether or not Calvin can retain this intelligibility while also accounting for the reality of doubt and of spiritual struggle remains to be seen.

Sanctification as death and rebirth The renewed agency that we have just examined in Calvin’s thought is not a perfected agency. Thus throughout Book III Calvin also describes a process whereby the children of God gradually experience growth in the Christian life. In this section I will explore how Calvin lends intelligibility to the process of sanctification by describing it in terms of the death and rebirth metaphor. Put briefly, because of human sin, moral change for the Christian is not simply about either development or formation; rather, it involves conversion or transformation. Humanity as sinful must be done away with and new life must begin. Calvin is, as we shall see, quite particular about the manner in which this death and rebirth occurs: the nature of sinful humanity calls for a particular process of transformation. Thus once again sanctification for Calvin is consistent with human nature, including fallen nature, and the process makes sense to the agent herself. The process of sanctification is at least partially accessible to human self-knowledge and it occurs in and through

56. Ibid., 3.2.11. 57. See Zachman, The Assurance of Faith, 6–7; and Randall C. Zachman, “Crying to God on the Brink of Despair: The Assurance of Faith Revisited,” in Calvinus Praeceptor Ecclesiae: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research, Princeton, August 20–24, 2002, ed. H. J. Selderhuis (Genève: Droz, 2004).

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

27

her willing participation. It might seem that this emphasis on transformation, in contrast to development or formation, would place these two metaphors—the child of God and the one who dies and is reborn—in tension with one another. Thus, a second objective of this section will be to explore the extent to which these images work together. Sanctification, as already noted, is for Calvin one half of the double grace that believers receive in union with Christ. It is nothing less than the restoration of the image of God to fallen humanity. It is regeneration and newness of life. It should thus strike the reader of the Institutes as somewhat odd when Calvin selects the term “repentance” to describe this half of the gospel. The term is not only loaded with Reformation-era controversy but is undeniably negative in its connotations for individual piety.58 Repentance suggests a recognition of and sorrow for sin, indispensable aspects of Christian theology by virtually any account, but they are hardly the stuff of human glory and wholeness. Nevertheless, the regeneration and newness of life which Christians experience is nothing other, says Calvin, than lifelong repentance. How then can repentance be construed not only as a gift but also as one that is the equivalent of new life? To make this argument, Calvin must distinguish his own teaching on repentance both from the Catholic tradition of auricular confession and penance, and from the options on offer from other reformers. Against the Catholics, Calvin is going to draw heavily on the prophetic tradition of Hebrew scripture to insist that the essence of repentance lies not in exterior actions like fasting or weeping, but rather in an interior transformation of heart and mind.59 Against other Protestants, Calvin will deny that repentance is a simple recognition of sin that precedes faith and will contend precisely the opposite. True repentance is only possible for the person who already has faith, and in fact, it arises from it.60 The knowledge that one already belongs to God is actually what enables honest self-assessment and desire for change. Against either of the dominant options, then, Calvin does not want to see repentance as a kind of unpleasant task that makes it possible for a person to receive grace. It is instead a pattern that constitutes and transforms the whole life of the Christian. In order to grasp how this might be the case for Calvin, it will help to remind ourselves of his doctrine of sin, and in particular both its origin and scope. Recall that sin for Calvin has at its root not lust or pride, but unfaithfulness. In its most basic form, sin is the rejection of God’s word and consequently an assertion of human independence from God. With regard to its scope, there is nothing of human nature that this false assertion has not corrupted. Having, as Calvin says, 58. As John Leith observes, Calvin does indeed focus on the denial of self in his exposition of repentance, but it is a self-denial in service of a life of love. “On the one side, there is the death of self-centeredness. On the other, there is the positive love of neighbor and full commitment of the self to God.” John H. Leith, John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life (Louisville, KY.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), 77. 59. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.4.1. 60. Ibid., 3.3.1–2.

28

Responsive Becoming

“deserted the fountain of righteousness,” it is not just the senses and appetites that are corrupted, but impiety occupies the minds and pride governs the heart.61 Repentance, as Calvin describes it in Book III, appears as the mirror image of sin. The official definition Calvin provides is “the true turning of our life to God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of him; and it consists in the mortification of our flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit.” Just as sin has its roots in the rejection of God and the false assertion of humanity, now sin’s undoing is described as a turning toward God, a turning that partially consists in the rejection of the false human nature that is the “flesh.” All that is associated with sinful humanity must “die” so that the person can pursue the new life of God’s Spirit. While Calvin will often speak of repentance in terms of self-denial or the death of the “flesh” one should not thereby assume that he is contrasting a sinful material existence with a pure and renewed spiritual one. Instead, just as Calvin is more inclined to locate sin in the spiritual life—in unfaithfulness or rebellion from God—so too with repentance. It is a transformation of the soul itself, involving a new heart and new mind. It is, Calvin repeatedly urges, this internal change to which one should direct her attention, and not necessarily to physical manifestations of repentance, such as fasting or wearing sackcloth.62 Because sin is so deep and pervasive, having distorted all of human existence and indeed all of creation, Calvin does not think this turning toward God can take place as a simple, one-time conversion. It is instead a pattern that one constantly repeats—all of life one must reject an identity characterized by self-assertion and independence from God and live into a new identity, one that is dependent on God. It is a “continual effort and exercise in the mortification of the flesh, till it is utterly slain, and God’s Spirit reigns in us.”63 This process can be exceedingly slow and the point at which the flesh is “utterly slain” does not take place within this life.64 It might help to pause here and consider one example that Calvin himself offers in the course of describing self-denial. Calvin observes that most people, in their ordinary effort and labor are driven by an ambition for wealth, honor, and power, or by a fear of poverty and of humble conditions. In either case, life for most people is marked by mad lust, boundless desire, or fearful striving. And yet, Calvin readily acknowledges that humans must labor in this life, and he recognizes that their lives will legitimately be characterized by all sorts of efforts, mundane and grandiose, and that they will hope these efforts succeed. In what way, then, should a person approach these ambitions? What she should not do, Calvin says, is seek after them in a grasping way, as if success or failure is up to her and as if life 61. Ibid., 2.1.9. 62. Ibid., 3.3.8, 3.3.16, 3.3.17. 63. Ibid., 3.3.20. 64. Niesel reads this ongoing action of turning “ever anew” in contrast to a process of gradual development. Calvin, however, clearly presumes that the continual movement does involve growth and culminates eschatologically in the eradication of all sin. See Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, 128–29.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

29

will hold nothing further without them. Instead, one should choose to not “desire nor hope for, nor contemplate, any other way of prospering than by the Lord’s blessing.”65 If she does this, she will recognize that every gift and ability is from God and ultimately for God and neighbor. This, in short, is self-denial—neither one’s abilities nor goals are ultimately about oneself. And so the person will work and will desire to prosper, but only by the Lord’s blessing. By denying ambition for success and fear of failure, one then makes a remarkable discovery: here is peace and rest. He works and acts, but he does so knowing that God cares for him better than he cares for himself. Here is also honesty and justice and humility, for if he prospers, it is only by the Lord’s blessing and for God’s glory. How can he wish to do so dishonestly or unjustly? Such a perspective isn’t something that one can grasp cognitively once and for all times, and then move on with life. Ambitions and fears continue to arise and one must constantly be reminded by scripture and preaching, and remind himself in prayer. Note that in this example, the act of self-denial or mortification takes a very specific form. It is not the disavowal of any self-regard. Calvin is not suggesting that Christians will not try to meet their bodily needs or even that they will not enjoy the pleasures of food, drink, or of a thriving family or an honest vocation. He is suggesting that they must reorder the way they approach these things, recognizing their complex dependence on God and their orientation to God and others. To the extent that they do so, Calvin believes they will come to see subtle yet important changes in behavior. They will find peace and humility in the midst of work and, having nothing to prove but God’s glory, they will act honestly and justly. As this example illustrates, Calvin presents his doctrine of repentance, and its two-part movement of death and life, with particular attention to the human situation and to intelligibility. Because sin involves a departure from God, repentance is a constant turning toward God. Just as sin’s scope extends to the whole person, so too repentance involves the heart and mind, as well as physical existence. And because the corruption of the flesh cannot be eradicated in the present state of universe, still subject to death and decay, so must this turning to God, the movement of death and rebirth, be a constant and repetitive movement, a race run throughout life. Does this movement of death and life stand in tension with the more straightforward developmental picture suggested by the child of God motif? At first glance, the kind of change suggested by such a repetitive reorientation of identity seems quite distinct from the growth that a child experiences in the care of a loving parent. While I will return to this question in subsequent chapters, it is first important to note here that Calvin himself integrates these images in two important ways. First, this life of turning, comprised of death of the “flesh” and life in the Spirit, is only possible when certain psychological criteria have been met—the same psychological changes noted above as characterizing the moral agency of 65. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.7.8.

Responsive Becoming

30

the child of God. The human person must at some point have become aware of divine judgment, and of the ultimate fate awaiting those who do not repent. To be sure, Calvin does not think that fear of God’s wrath or punishment by themselves produce the right kind of sorrow for sin. By itself that kind of fear is not what Calvin means when he says that repentance arises from the fear of God. Rather, the sinner must come to hate and dread sin itself, because it displeases God.66 At the same time, Calvin does think that the threat of judgment and punishment plays an important role. God uses the threat of judgment, and even present sufferings, to get a person’s attention, to make her aware of sin and the fact that it displeases God. Human nature, which Calvin alternately calls “dull,” “blockish,” and “obstinate” even “compels God to use severity in threatening us. For it would be vain for him gently to allure those who are asleep.”67 While our own sensibilities might recoil from Calvin’s specific construal of suffering and punishment, it is important to note here the extent to which Calvin thinks God is constrained to act in certain ways because of the specifics of our human situation. It is certainly not as if the Spirit waves a magic wand and sinful desires disappear. There is throughout something about humanity, and even about fallen human nature, that shapes the path of redemption. And so humans must, through such threats and experiences, come to recognize sin as sin. As Calvin has made clear, however, such recognition cannot occur apart from faith, for “a man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God.”68 Calvin believes the knowledge of salvation in Christ creates a new human agency by which all sorts of actions are now possible. Specifically, the most important of these actions is this repeated two-pronged movement, by which the person recognizes a part of her life as of “the flesh”—of sinful humanity—and rejects it in order to embrace a new desire to live a life of holiness and piety.69 Only the person who believes that God has been merciful to her in Christ has the psychological resources to admit her own inadequacy. All others must resort to some form of self-deception. And so, at the point where repentance is shown to be born of faith, the images of the sanctified child and of death and rebirth come together. It is only the child, who has experienced the unconditional love of the parent, who has the resources to attempt the lifelong process of death and rebirth. These two images are interwoven in a second way as Calvin brings the doctrine of repentance into explicit Christological focus. Implicitly, of course, the very metaphor of death and rebirth is Christological from square one. The reader of Calvin’s chapter on repentance will naturally assume that mortification and vivification are somehow related to Christ’s death and resurrection. But how is this the case? In Book II, Calvin has explored Christ’s role as mediator, as the

66. Ibid., 3.3.7. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 3.3.2. 69. Ibid., 3.3.3.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

31

one who is the true image of the Father, who has both revealed God the Father and reconciled those God has chosen as his children. Calvin has also specified as one effect of Christ’s death in particular that it “mortifies our earthly members so that they may no longer perform their functions; and it kills the old man in us that he may not flourish and bear fruit.”70 As one is joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit, one receives not only forgiveness and righteousness but also both mortification and vivification.71 She receives freedom from death, but she also receives repentance. Calvin is, of course, picking up on a familiar, if enigmatic, Pauline theme: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). But how does Christ’s death exert such an effect? Calvin does not provide a definitive answer. The explicit comments that he does provide, however, bring the themes of mortification and vivification, of death and new life, back to believers’ identity as children of God. It is, crucially, only by participation in Christ, that Christians receive any gifts of salvation. At the beginning of Book III he asserts, “As long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.”72 In order to be adopted as children of God, one must be joined to Christ the Son. While an explication of the full meaning of Calvin’s doctrine of participation or union with Christ would go beyond the scope of this chapter, at the very least Calvin intends to say that the presence of Holy Spirit in believers brings them into the closest of relationship with Christ.73 Christ dwells with and in them by the Spirit and yet the two remain distinct. By uniting the person with Christ, it is God’s plan for salvation to bring together in Christ both the agent of salvation and the very image to which one should conform.74 “For we have been adopted as sons by the Lord with this one condition: that our life express Christ, the bond of our adoption.” In union with Christ believers thus experience God as a divine parent and are in constant fellowship with the one who is himself the perfect pattern of the child of God.

70. Ibid., 2.16.7. 71. Ibid., 3.3.9. 72. Ibid., 3.1.1. 73. A current trend in Calvin studies is to push Calvin’s “union with Christ” in the direction of an Eastern concept of deification. For example, see Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010) and J. Todd Billings, “United to God through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Question of Deification,” Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 3 (July 1, 2005): 315–34; My reading of Calvin on the union with Christ is consistent with that of Matthew Myer Boulton, who claims that “though Calvin frequently uses the language of ‘union’ to describe the ideal relationship between disciples and Christ, it is more ‘communion’ he has in mind, an intimacy in which the distinction between the parties is preserved all the way along.” Boulton, Life in God, 124. 74. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.6.3.

32

Responsive Becoming

Love and gratitude to Christ thus inspire them moment by moment to express this pattern of death to sin and life to God in their own striving.75

Points of tension While I will eventually, in Chapter 6, argue that something very much like Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification deserves serious attention in contemporary theological accounts of moral formation, this tradition has not been without serious difficulties. These difficulties are not simply distortions of Calvin, but are rather present at the very beginning of the Reformed tradition. In this section, we return to the two areas I flagged in the introduction of this chapter and consider whether Calvin’s depictions of subjectivity and of natural processes constitute insurmountable difficulties for the doctrine as he has described it.

Subjective experience and the objective reality of sanctification Calvin’s doctrines of faith and election can in some sense be read as bookends to the whole of Book III, “The Way in Which We Receive the Grace of Christ.” The first emphasizes a subjective pole: we receive grace when Christ becomes ours and dwells within us through faith. The second is a window into the objective: we are ordained, by God’s eternal decree, to eternal life and salvation or to death and damnation.76 That the combined effect of these two poles is a deep tension in Calvin’s theology is certainly no secret.77 One of the most perplexing features of Calvin’s legacy is the tendency of his theological descendants, while dramatically and creatively reworking Calvin’s thought, to gravitate either to the objective or the subjective poles of his soteriology. Witness, for example, the strikingly different perspectives afforded by two giants of the Reformed tradition, Scheiermacher and Barth.78 The tension between these poles takes a very distinct form in the doctrine of sanctification. Almost any account of sanctification, with the important exception of Karl Barth’s theology, is going to assume that it is in some sense inherently

75. Wallace emphasizes that Calvin’s version of imitatio Christi is not imitation from a distance. It is only within a relationship, in union with Christ, that one is able to conform to this pattern. Wallace, Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life, 47. 76. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.21.5. 77. Randall C Zachman, The Assurance of Faith; Jennifer Herdt, Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 198–202. 78. On Barth and Schleiermacher as two distinct options for a “Reformation heritage” and on the centrality of piety for Schleiermacher, see B. A. Gerrish, A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 21–33.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

33

subjective.79 Sanctification is something that happens to or in a person as opposed to (or in addition to) something that is true about him and yet outside him. Calvin certainly portrays sanctification as subjective in this sense, but he also goes one step further. Sanctification as something that happens to or in a person is also dependent on one’s subjective awareness of certain theological truths. Sanctification depends on the knowledge that God is gracious in Christ, that God is indeed a loving father. Sanctification is not, however, without an objective aspect for Calvin, for it is a gift that is received simultaneously with justification when one is joined to Christ in faith.80 This immediacy of sanctification suggests that it is something objectively true of a person quite apart from an ongoing or lifelong process. For justification, of course, the objective aspect for Calvin is clear. Christ, having lived a perfect life and then died the death of a criminal in place of sinful humanity, has satisfied the requirements of divine righteousness. When a person believes, she is joined to Christ and his righteousness is imputed to her. She stands righteous and forgiven before God. But what is the character of a sanctification that is received immediately and simultaneously with justification? Is sanctification somehow also objectively true of the person at the initial moment of faith, just like justification? Furthermore, can Calvin explain this simultaneity in a manner that is consistent with what he says elsewhere about sanctification and that is coherent on its own terms? Calvin clearly does not think that the simultaneous reception of sanctification means that the faithful experience instantaneous moral transformation. He repeatedly denies any such insinuation and instead affirms that repentance is a lifelong endeavor in which one makes gradual, but ever-increasing progress. How then, does Calvin account for the immediacy of sanctification? And does his explanation solidify its objective status, or does sanctification continue to remain in the realm of the subjective and of conscious awareness?81 To the extent that

79. On sanctification as objective for Barth, see George Hunsinger, “A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Calvin and Barth,” Zeitschrift Für Dialektische Theologie 18, no. 3 (2002): 328 and Gerald P. McKenny, The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 80. See Hunsinger, “A Tale of Two Simultaneities” on the simultaneity of justification and sanctification in Calvin. 81. Subsequent reformed theologians have introduced options that Calvin does not consider, but which are worth bearing in mind as we continue to puzzle through this dynamic. First, Calvin could make the symmetry between justification and sanctification complete by removing the latter from the realm of subjective experience and making it, along with justification, a gift one receives in Christ but that is alien—an ontological change that does not coincide with our ontic existence. Such is the ambitious and creative revision of Calvin that we find in Barth’s theology. This realignment does indeed alleviate some of the tensions which Calvin’s theology has introduced, but as Hunsinger notes, the cost for Barth seems to be a noticeably decreased commitment to the reality of subjective

34

Responsive Becoming

Calvin wishes to provide an explanation, he does so by identifying one aspect of sanctification as that which is immediately and simultaneously received. Within Book III of the Institutes, there are two different descriptions of what this immediate aspect entails. The first aspect of sanctification which Calvin associates with its initial reception consists in the “devout disposition.” This possibility emerges in the context of Calvin’s discussion of formed and unformed faith. In the midst of refuting the authenticity of unformed faith, Calvin writes: Since faith embraces Christ, as offered to us by the Father—that is, since he is offered not only for righteousness, forgiveness of sins, and peace, but also for sanctification and the fountain of the water of life—without a doubt, no one can duly know him without at the same time apprehending the sanctification of the Spirit. Or, if anyone desires some plainer statement, faith rests upon the knowledge of Christ. And Christ cannot be known apart from the sanctification of his Spirit. It follows that faith can in no wise be separated from a devout disposition.82

In other words, Calvin takes it as uncontroversial that a person with genuine faith receives sanctification along with forgiveness of sins and he argues that this simultaneity is evidence that faith must include more than a simple cognitive assent to propositions. In short, it must therefore include piety or a devout disposition. The only way this logic works, of course, is if Calvin believes the “givenness” of sanctification, its initial character apart from any growth, to at minimum include such piety. Then from this initial transformed disposition, the fullness of sanctification could be understood to unfold naturally or inevitably. If this is the case, however, the objective character of sanctification is already dependent on a particular subjective and psychological state. A second possible explanation of the sense in which sanctification is received simultaneously with justification lies in the bestowal of Holy Spirit, the one who

transformation. See Hunsinger, “A Tale of Two Simultaneities.” A second approach that Calvin could have adopted would have been to describe the immediacy of sanctification as a promise grounded in election. Here the emphasis would fall on the objective reality of God as a loving parent who is working all things to the believer’s good. In this scenario, when a person receives Christ, one might say that she simultaneously receives sanctification because Christ’s sanctifying activity cannot ultimately fail. However it might play out in temporal existence, when one is joined to Christ, sanctification is a done deal. It is objectively grounded and effectively guaranteed in God’s eternal word. This option is intriguing and has some advantages to which I will return in the last chapter, and it can be extrapolated from the doctrine of election as Calvin presents it. Niesel seems to read Calvin in this way, but the textual evidence is thin. Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, 137–39. 82. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.2.8.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

35

is actively working out sanctification throughout the life of the believer. In his dispute with Osiander about the nature of justification, one of many points of contention was whether justification properly included not only forgiveness but also being made righteous through an infusion of Christ’s divine nature. For Calvin, confusing forgiveness and inherent righteousness in this way compromised the doctrine of grace at the heart of the Reformation. Calvin seeks to address the underlying concern—that God would leave a justified person to their vices—by reiterating his own doctrine of the double grace. We perceive justification and sanctification inseparably in Christ, and God bestows both gifts “at the same time.” Here, however, when Calvin specifies this simultaneous bestowal of sanctification, he says that God “at the same time bestows the spirit of adoption, by whose power he remakes them to his own image.”83 Elsewhere, he echoes this same sentiment, saying that after one is reconciled through the remission of sins “his beneficence is at the same time joined with such a mercy that through his Holy Spirit he dwells in us and by his power the lusts of our flesh are each day more and more mortified; we are indeed sanctified.”84 What is particularly noteworthy about Calvin’s association of sanctification with the simple presence of the Holy Spirit in these passages is the fact that the presence of the Spirit does not have a defined subjective corollary. Calvin is not here concerned to demonstrate that the simple presence of the Spirit has immediate, specific, and measurable moral or psychological outcomes. It is the relationship itself that constitutes the gift of sanctification, and it is a relationship that Calvin explicitly connects to adoption—one’s status as a child of God. It seems, then, that the objective and subjective aspects of sanctification are never fully harmonized in the Institutes. Calvin hints at possible explanations for a sanctification that is received simultaneously with justification, but these explanations do not counterbalance the highly subjective account of sanctification he has provided thus far. This difference in symmetry between justification and sanctification leads to a number of difficulties for Calvin. In terms of the persuasiveness of Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification, one might ask if Calvin’s emphasis on subjective awareness actually explains the whole of transformation. Calvin tells a pretty specific story of sanctification, in which the process unfolds as a result of one’s subjective awareness of grace. As Calvin explains this unfolding, he succeeds in showing its inner logic and intelligibility, but is it also comprehensive? Or are there also aspects of the Spirit’s sanctifying work which do not flow directly from the awareness of grace and might be more adequately explained by the objective pole of Calvin’s soteriology? Questions also arise concerning the stability of faith in the face of the frequently unstable human psyche. As I noted earlier in the chapter, Calvin’s definition of faith is highly specific and exceeds the simple formulas of the gospels or Pauline epistles. With respect to justification, Calvin is able to alleviate some of the anxiety that rigorous standards for faith might instill by emphasizing that it is not, properly 83. Ibid., 3.11.6. 84. Ibid., 3.14.9.

Responsive Becoming

36

speaking, faith which saves.85 Christ saves, and faith joins the person to Christ. Hence, faith might be weak or mixed with errors, but because it joins one to Christ, the person with weak faith is still justified. When it comes to sanctification, however, Calvin so closely links its efficacy, its inner logic, with the possession of faith, that pursuing sanctification seems to entail seeking, or seeking to strengthen, a particular cognitive-affective state. Calvin’s repeated exhortations to believers to attend to the transformation of the heart further strengthen such a reading. While Calvin himself does not marginalize external action but rather in his exhortations holds the internal and external together, one wonders if his account at least suggests a privileging of the internal to the external that will become manifest in subsequent thinkers. One also wonders if his strongly subjective pole in the doctrine of sanctification can survive the instability of the human psyche and the reality of spiritual darkness.

Sanctification and ordinary human formation A second point of tension arising from Calvin’s account of sanctification relates to the role of ordinary human processes of formation. As we will discover in Chapter 3, at least some of Calvin’s reformed descendants, contemporaries of the American theologian Horace Bushnell, were so intent to foster a conversion experience in their children that, according to Bushnell’s analysis, they actually encouraged their children in sin so that they would come to see their own wickedness and repent. Here then is one potential Reformed trajectory: human beings are still understood to be social creatures who experience all sorts of formation in their intra-human environment, and yet any natural moral formation that occurs prior to explicit faith in Christ, even including formation in a Christian home, is somehow understood as an obstacle to authentic redemption and holiness. Because such formation obscures fallen nature, and consequently obscures the need for Christ as well, the mechanisms of formation that are part of created humanity only serve to instill prideful independence and thus become paradoxical obstacles to true holiness. When we turn to Bushnell, we will have occasion to examine this tendency and Bushnell’s critique of it. At the moment, however, we must ask if this approach to intra-human formation bears any resemblance to Calvin’s own teaching. What, if anything, can we say about how Calvin relates the sanctification which believers receive in union with Christ to human processes of formation? The material we have covered thus far provides two basic sources for reflection—first, the initial harmony between created humanity and union with God and second, Calvin’s use of the parent–child metaphor. Despite the initial harmony, Calvin’s lengthy treatment of sanctification contains no explicit effort to explain how these two might relate in a post-lapsarian context. By using the metaphor of the formation of children in the care of loving parents, Calvin does indeed suggest that 85. Ibid., 3.11.7.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

37

the process of change humans experience in relation to God has something to do with the kinds of creatures they are. But he does not describe continuity between change and development occurring in a human context and that which occurs as a result of faith in Christ. Rather than bringing together the moral formation that children undergo in the care of their parents (or that which occurs in various contexts throughout the life span) with his doctrine of sanctification, Calvin’s use of the parent metaphor really functions to displace interest in intra-human sources of formation. The focus turns overwhelmingly to the relationship between God and the individual believer, and intra-human sociality is, by all appearances, dispensable. If we look at Calvin’s discussion of pagan virtue we find additional cause for concern. Here, in some of his most direct theoretical discussion of the topic, he sharply distinguishes sanctification from the moral formation that one might observe in non-Christians. Calvin is, of course, a participant in a lengthy Christian tradition of reflection on pagan virtue. At least since Augustine, the case of pagan virtue is posed as a challenge. How can Christian theology account for the examples of impressive virtue found in the pagan world? The theologian’s response to variations on this question then enables him to clarify and more precisely define Christian virtue, in contrast to pagan forms. Calvin uses this strategy in a number of places in the Institutes, beginning with his discussion of fallen humanity in Book II. “In every age,” Calvin writes, “there have been persons who, guided by nature, have striven toward virtue throughout life.”86 Calvin is not particularly worried that the recurring existence of such persons will cast doubt on his reading of fallen humanity. Instead, he suggests that, despite the imperfections in any such person, their very existence tells us something about the goodness of initial creation. Calvin also observes that the presence of such persons in the midst of so much corruption points the observer to God’s grace. Non-Christians who strive for virtue, or even those who manage, for whatever motive, to avoid doing anything particularly destructive, are evidence of the grace by which God continues to sustain creation and prevent the utter madness which would result from abandoning it. The best examples of such individuals can even be attributed to God’s “special grace,” beyond the common gifts of nature, in order to provide the heroic qualities needed for great human leadership.87 In no case, however, and in no uncertain terms, does Calvin understand any such person to be an exception to fallen humanity. None of them are righteous before God, and even their good qualities, such as they are, cannot be truly praiseworthy because they lack the “chief part of uprightness”— the desire to glorify God.88 Pagan virtue for Calvin is thus a result of God’s grace, and it does have real worth in restraining the evil of post-lapsarian creation, but it should not be confused with salvation. At times, however, Calvin sees pagan virtue as not only distinct from 86. Ibid., 2.3.3. 87. Ibid., 2.3.4. 88. Ibid.

38

Responsive Becoming

salvation but as interfering with it. As he discusses justification in Book III, Calvin notes that any good action of the non-Christian is, by definition, disconnected from the proper end of serving God. Then, picking up an analogy from Augustine, Calvin compares such individuals to a runner who is running off his course. In such a situation, Calvin notes, the very zeal of the runner works against him— his effort is only taking him further and further from the right destination. It is counterproductive. One possible interpretation of this analogy would then be that the non-Christian who makes great strides in what appears to be virtue is in actuality putting greater distance between himself and “real” virtue than the nonChristian who is only of average character. And here, we are not all that far from the sort of practical conclusion that Bushnell will come to find so troubling. This conclusion, however, is merely one concern in a discussion where much of theological and practical substance is at stake. The debate touches on the charity with which Christians view the moral character of those outside the faith, and weighty charges of hypocrisy with respect to the church. It also concerns the allocation of time and energy in individual and corporate lives. Should we care, for example, about the cultivation of empathy in young children? And, if we do, are we to strictly segregate such concern to the arena of “common grace,” unrelated to the more significant matters of eternal salvation? Beyond these issues, however, our creaturely integrity is also at stake. The question is ultimately about the human character of a redeemed humanity. Are humans redeemed precisely as social creatures, and does sanctification reflect this human sociality? Or does transformation occur in spite of and apart from whatever the particular human context might be? With respect to Calvin’s theological discussion of sanctification, such concerns become quite pressing. The tensions in Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification—both its reliance on subjective awareness of one’s status before God and the questionable status of ordinary formation—pose substantial challenges for this broader project and the understanding of grace and natural processes at work in human transformation. In the final section of this chapter I will argue that Calvin’s own pastoral practice—his approach to children’s moral and spiritual formation in Genevan congregations— actually opens up some other options on both of these scores. With respect to the focus on subjective awareness, Calvin’s account of infant baptism raises the possibility for a more capacious notion of human faith. Then in his approach to parenting, we see that the natural formative processes occurring between parents and children are of tremendous significance. Calvin’s sermons in particular even suggest that the parent–child relationship is a privileged locus for the sanctification of the child.

Calvin and children in pastoral practice In Reformation-era debates, the salvation of the infant functioned as something of a test case for the adequacy of one’s doctrine. If salvation is by “faith alone,” can an infant have faith? Or are those who die in infancy simply damned? It should thus come as no surprise that at this precise juncture the subjective pole in Calvin’s

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

39

soteriology must withstand the greatest pressure. Like the scholastic theologians before him, and also in agreement with Lutheran and other Reformed churches, Calvin wants to affirm infant salvation and infant baptism. At the same time, he wants to retain the robust account of faith that he has already offered, particularly as it applies to the adult believer. The difficulty, of course, is that no one thinks infants have developed the intellectual capacities to manifest the kind of faith Calvin has elsewhere described. Calvin’s approach to this dilemma blends the objective and subjective elements of his soteriology. On the objective side, the sacraments are related to God’s covenant and election. They do not confer grace or establish the covenant, but they do confirm and attest it. Christians baptize infants, Calvin says, because they are part of the covenant. God’s love to his own extends beyond individual salvation such that “he adopts our babies as his own before they are born.”89 On the subjective side, the purpose of the sacraments is very much directed to the experience of faith. The sacraments confirm God’s promises with a visible and physical sign, thereby strengthening faith and affording one the opportunity to attest her piety. In saying this, however, Calvin does not mean to imply that the covenant somehow requires a physical sign to shore up its validity, as if God’s word were somehow insufficient. Rather, it is weak and feeble human faith that needs to see the promises attested and confirmed.90 With respect to baptism in particular, what is attested is nothing less than the double grace, the sum of salvation. Baptism is a testimony of one’s union with Christ, and with it the dual gifts of justification and sanctification. In baptism one sees the cleansing of sins, mortification of the flesh, and new life in Christ. Calvin is well aware that his account, which associates grace first and foremost with God’s promise and election and then explains the purpose of baptism in terms of its subjective, cognitive effects on the human person, will raise a number of questions. If Christians baptize to nourish and confirm faith, should they not then limit baptism to those persons who are able to profess faith? But if baptism is fundamentally about God’s promise, then should it not include all those to whom the promise extends, recognizing that election does not depend on faith, but rather the Spirit produces faith in the elect? Calvin’s response to these questions, and his lengthy effort to defend his solution against his Anabaptist opponents, locates baptism firmly on the side of election and covenant. Just as the Israelites circumcised infants on account of God’s covenant with Abraham, so the Christian, who shares a common covenant with the Jews, baptizes his children, whom God has promised to receive.91 While Calvin locates infant baptism squarely within his covenantal theology, he does not thereby neglect his earlier comments about the relation of baptism to faith. First, baptism confirms God’s promise to the parents of the infant, which in turn exerts a positive influence on the parent’s faith and piety. This sign of God’s goodness 89. Ibid., 4.15.20. 90. Ibid., 4.14.3. 91. Ibid., 4.16.5–6.

40

Responsive Becoming

strengthens parents and moves them to “a deeper love of their kind Father, as they see his concern on their behalf for their posterity.”92 The sacrament also relates to the faith of the baptized children themselves. Christians baptize their infants not with respect to existing faith, but into future repentance and faith.93 As the infant grows, she reflects on her own baptism and finds strength for her emerging faith, having been received by God as a child before she was “old enough to recognize him as Father.”94 What then, does Calvin’s discussion of infant’s participation in the covenant have to do with the topic at hand, namely, the status of sanctification and how Calvin understands it to take place? His comments on this point are particularly interesting. Part of Calvin’s polemic against the Anabaptists includes an attempt to tarnish them with the suggestion of infant damnation. Not, of course, that Calvin thinks the baptism of infants is necessary for their salvation. Quite the contrary, he assures the anxious parents whose infants die before baptism that they have no cause for alarm: their children’s salvation rests on the covenant, not the sign or testimony to it. Calvin’s problem with the Anabaptists, however, is that their argument against infant baptism involves the belief that spiritual regeneration cannot take place until a person is mature enough for repentance and faith. This belief, according to Calvin, requires them to accept that children who die before this age remain children of Adam and “are left in death.”95 Pushing the logic in this direction with respect to the Anabaptists, however, now commits Calvin to a position of infant regeneration, at least for those who die in infancy. If they are not to die in Adam and be eternally damned, these infants must be joined to Christ. They must be regenerated—which is to say, given the way Calvin uses the terms interchangeably, that they must be sanctified. Here we see that when push comes to shove, and Calvin must choose between an understanding of sanctification that rests on divine decision and one which depends on a particular subjective state, he opts for the former. We should be clear, however, that Calvin is not claiming that all infants are sanctified, nor that infant baptism itself sanctifies.96 Calvin thinks that in ordinary circumstances the Spirit

92. Ibid., 4.16.9. 93. Ibid., 4.16.20 Calvin speaks of the “seed” of repentance and faith being hidden by the secret working of the Spirit. Unfortunately, he does not elaborate on the seed metaphor here, or specify how it might be distinct from notions of implicit or unformed faith that he has already criticized. 94. Ibid., 4.16.9. 95. Ibid., 4.16.17. 96. Gerrish argues that Calvin’s comments about infant sanctification undermine his dominant sacramental categories of “goodwill, promise, knowledge, assurance.” See Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude, 117–19. But he mistakenly reads Calvin as talking about what is happening in the actual administration of the sacrament. Calvin’s discussion of infant sanctification, however, does not connect sanctification to the baptism of the infant. Rather, Calvin is concerned to account for the salvation of elect infants, regardless of whether they

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

41

brings about faith through hearing the gospel preached. But because children do sometimes die before they are capable of anything approaching Calvin’s definition of faith and repentance, he must say something. What he says is this: God is not restricted to the ordinary way of working faith. God can in fact act in any number of ways. And with respect to those elect who die in infancy, God “renews them by the power, incomprehensible to us, of his Spirit, in whatever way he alone foresees will be expedient.”97 Does the possibility of infant sanctification then undermine everything Calvin has said about faith and repentance? Calvin clearly regards the case of infant sanctification as an exception to the norm. The ordinary dispensation is just what he has already described it to be. In infant regeneration, however, God mercifully provides salvation in tragic circumstances. Calvin refuses to concede, however, that the sanctification of infants occurs apart from all knowledge or conscious awareness. He seems to be searching for some description of faith and sanctification that would be commensurate with the development of the infants’ own faculties, although it goes beyond his or anyone’s capacity to say what this might entail. He in no way imagines infant regeneration to imply the same faith that adults experience, but he suggests that they might receive “some part of that grace” or “a tiny spark.” For our purposes, two key points emerge out of Calvin’s analysis. First, Calvin’s pastoral reflection on infant baptism has led him to emphasize covenant theology, potentially alleviating some of the concerns regarding the subjective pole in his doctrine of sanctification. Sanctification, with its inherent stress on the human subject is nonetheless objectively grounded in God’s covenant with humanity, fulfilled in Christ’s saving life, death, and resurrection, and made a reality in the life of the elect person by the Spirit. Secondly, this commitment does not mean that sanctification has no connection to the human faculties. Calvin holds onto his earlier, subjective definition of faith by insisting that the infant has “a tiny spark.” Can such a notion actually make sense in terms of the cognitive capacities of infants? We will have to defer answering this question for the moment and content ourselves with the observation that in the process of defending infant salvation, Calvin has in effect revised his earlier rather rigorous definition of faith. While perhaps an adequate expression of some human faith, his account in Book III cannot account for infant salvation. Calvin’s earlier grasp on the way sanctification relates to our conscious awareness of God is revealed to have been incomplete and he must expand the set of possible definitions. Calvin does not undertake such expansion lightly or arbitrarily, however, but does so with an eye toward the specific human reality at issue.

have been baptized. It is precisely because of the covenant and God’s promise that Calvin thinks children of the elect who die in infancy must have been somehow sanctified by the Spirit. If Calvin’s belief in infant sanctification undermines another aspect of his theology, it is not his sacramental thinking, but rather his discussion of faith and repentance. Given the way he describes these in Book III, how can they be applied to infants? 97. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.16.21.

42

Responsive Becoming

Just as Calvin’s pastoral consideration of infant baptism and salvation opens up new possibilities with respect to faith and subjectivity, so too does his pastoral reflection on parents and children suggest alternative understandings for the role of natural human processes. Regarding Genevan society generally, evidence from the Consistory records reveals that the education of children, including moral, religious, and academic instruction, was taken very seriously.98 Calvin’s own practical advice to parents and children in his sermons further confirms and enhances this picture. While Calvin sprinkles parenting advice throughout his volumes of sermons and commentaries, his sermons on Deuteronomy 21:18–21 (the case of the incorrigible son) and on Ephesians 6:1–4 (the parent–child portion of the household codes) provide the most extensive examples of his instruction to parents.99 In both of these sermons, Calvin affirms parenting as the natural means for nurture and instruction in goodness. Parents, both mothers and fathers, should be attentive to their children’s character, ready to teach the good and to diligently correct any faults they observe, providing discipline as needed.100 Regarding this discipline, Calvin urges parents to correct children in kindness, with patience and restraint, so that children will not have “cause to be led astray by too much severity.”101 He naturally expects children to obey their parents and advises them to do so without waiting for “chastisement.” Calvin also encourages children to examine themselves and to correct their own vices.102 Throughout these sermons,

98. Robert M. Kingdon, Reforming Geneva: Discipline, Faith and Anger in Calvin’s Geneva (Genève: Librairie Droz S.A., 2012); Thomas A. Lambert, “Preaching, Praying and Policing the Reform in Sixteenth-century Geneva,” PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin– Madison, 1998; Karen E. Spierling, Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva: The Shaping of a Community, 1536–1564 (Aldershot, Hants, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005). 99. For an extended discussion and references, see Barbara Pitkin, “‘The Heritage of the Lord’: Children in the Theology of John Calvin,” in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 166–68 and 170–71; see also Barbara Pitkin, “Children and the Church in Calvin’s Geneva,” in Calvin and the Church: Papers Presented at the 13th Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 24–26, 2001: Calvin Theological Seminary, the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Grand Rapids, Michigan, ed. David L. Foxgrover (Grand Rapids, MI: Published for the Calvin Studies Society by CRC Product Services, 2002), 154; With respect to the incorrigible son text, Raymond Blacketer notes that Calvin is unique among early modern commentators in his emphasis on parental instruction and parental responsibility for an errant child’s behavior. See Raymond Andrew Blacketer, The School of God: Pedagogy and Rhetoric in Calvin’s Interpretation of Deuteronomy (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 233–65. 100. John Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 755. While Calvin emphasized the responsibility of fathers, he also urged that mothers not be deprived of their “right.” 101. John Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973), 618; Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, 756. 102. Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, 758.

Calvin and the Sanctification of the Child

43

he clearly values ordinary natural processes of human growth and formation. For Calvin, this attention to moral formation goes hand-in-hand with instruction in matters of faith and doctrine. He assumes throughout that children are also being instructed in Christian doctrine and that they will come to a mature faith. The de facto assumption is that actions and belief develop in tandem and mutually support one another. Calvin’s depiction of the child’s faith, her growth in right living, and the role of the human parent all converge in his discussion of the close connection between divine and human parenting. Here Calvin does not merely claim that parenting is the natural and God-given means of moral instruction and correction, but he also argues that the natural purpose of familial relationships is to reflect God’s parental care. For Calvin, God is the true father—all other parenthood is derivative. God has subsequently ordained familial relations and allows human parents to partake in the honor “proper to himself alone.”103 This analogy between divine and human parenting reveals God’s grace to both parents and children. For parents, the simple presence of a child in the home serves as a “mirror of God’s grace,” a sign that God cares for the family.104 For the child, the parent who nurtures and cares for her is acting as God’s minister and representative, for “God has imprinted his mark on the father and the mother, so that if there is any religion it must be acknowledged in the person of the father and in that of the mother.”105 In other words the relationship between divine and human parenthood is so profound that the child’s response to the parent actually displays her incipient faith.106 The exception to such gracious correspondence between divine and human parenting is occasioned by the presence of sin in the earthly parent. When a father or mother instructs a child in a manner opposed to God’s will, the child must then disobey the earthly parent.107 How the child is supposed to know God’s will when her parents are explicitly teaching something to the contrary is a point to which we will return when we consider Horace Bushnell in Chapter 3. The close correspondence between reverence for human parents and reverence for God in these sermons suggests that for Calvin the parent–child relationship is not simply a privileged analogy for understanding the dynamics of divine care for human beings. In addition to the analogical significance, Calvin here seems to imply that what happens between parents and children is actually a part of a person’s ultimate sanctification. Whether this approach is wholly satisfactory is a point to which we will return when we examine Horace Bushnell’s even closer and more explicit alignment of sanctification with Christian nurture. At the moment, however, I simply note that Calvin presumes a continuity regarding the formation that takes place in childhood and the ongoing transformation that 103. Calvin, Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians, 623. 104. Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, 756; for a discussion, see Blacketer, The School of God, 254. 105. As quoted in Blacketer, The School of God, 255–56. 106. Ibid., 256. 107. Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, 759.

44

Responsive Becoming

occurs throughout life in repentance. We will further pursue the possibility of such a continuity in the turn to the human sciences. Is there something fundamental regarding the human capacity to exist in right relationship to God and neighbor that is best disclosed in the child? This “something,” which I will flesh out more fully in the extended analysis of children in Chapter 5, I will call for the moment the priority of affective social acceptance. The consideration of ordinary parents and children allows us to see the way that intimate and affective relationships— those consisting of acceptance, positive affect, trust, and care—ground the capacity for moral responsiveness. It is here, I will suggest, that Calvin’s insights regarding the priority of divine acceptance to genuine moral transformation actually render his account profoundly human.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have taken a close look at Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification, with a particular focus on how he understands sanctification to take place in the lives of individual believers. We have seen that just as sin resulted from a rupture in the divine–human relationship, so sanctification begins with a restoration of this relationship. The believer is adopted as God’s child and this change in status transforms her moral agency from a posture of fearful servitude to one of joyful and willing love. This transformation, though in some sense immediate, must also unfold over the course of human life as the person continues to reject an old identity of independence from God, and to live within her new identity as God’s child. Calvin’s perspective on Christian moral transformation is not, as we have also seen, without its problems. He leaves unresolved important questions about the weight that human subjectivity is expected to carry, the extent to which moral effort must, as a result, focus on the inner life, and the relationship between the process of turning to God in sanctification and the myriad of ordinary, formative processes at work in the moral lives of human persons. Despite the fact that these concerns appear less pronounced in Calvin’s pastoral practice, we shall soon discover that they feature prominently in understandings of sanctification offered by the seventeenth-century English Puritan John Owen and the nineteenthcentury American Congregationalist Horace Bushnell. Analysis of these two figures will help clarify precisely what is at stake for practical theology and introduce additional theological resources for addressing these concerns.

Chapter 2 J O H N O W E N A N D T H E P E L AG IA N T H R E AT

John Owen concludes his discussion of sanctification, encompassing over 300 pages of his Pneumatologia, by affirming a sharp distinction between holiness that is the result of God’s grace and natural moral virtue1. For the reader who has accompanied Owen this far, his confidence is not surprising. Owen has scarcely allowed a page to go by without reminding his reader of the primary objective of his discourse—to rescue the gratuity of genuine holiness from any and every attempt of seventeenthcentury English Pelagians to contain it within a purely human agency. Owen’s task has been a tricky one, however, for he has been anxious at every turn to avoid the suggestion that having thereby saved the Spirit, nothing actually remains for human persons to do. This chapter will explore precisely how Owen both defends the primacy of God’s grace in sanctification and seeks to retain a need for human action and a commitment to the integrity of the human nature that is thus transformed. As we saw at the close of Chapter 1, while Calvin portrays sanctification as an intelligible process, consistent with what it means to be human, he leaves unresolved a central question with which this project is concerned. He never explains how spiritual regeneration or sanctification or repentance—all equivalent terms for Calvin—relate to the natural processes that form the behaviors, motivations, and affections of all humans, including those of children who are baptized and raised as Christians. Lest we think this question is of mere academic interest, it would behoove us to recall how the way in which one answers it has immediate practical implications. If the natural mechanisms of moral formation, such as those Calvin recognizes as occurring between parents and children, are something completely different from the Spirit’s sanctifying work, then their import for the life of the church and the kingdom of God is significantly demoted. The church and individual Christians, including parents of the baptized, should in this scenario be concerned first and foremost with participating in the Spirit’s work of sanctification. Here we are left with no small amount of ambiguity within the narrative of our individual lives. We might recognize that certain relationships, events, and actions have formed us, but these risk becoming purely negative influences, or at best redundant ones. On the other hand, if we think that these natural processes, explained solely 1. John Owen and W. H. Goold, The Works of John Owen (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 3:565.

46

Responsive Becoming

as natural processes, are sufficient to account for holiness, then much of Christian teaching regarding the activity of Christ and Spirit is rendered suspect. The scenario that bothers Owen is clearly the second one. As we consider Owen’s account, we will note his distinctive contributions on this score. At the same time, however, we will also be concerned with the first scenario. What does sanctification look like when it is understood to be something completely separate from natural moral formation? And what, correspondingly, happens to these natural processes when this distinction is rigorously maintained? Because Owen’s rhetoric consistently separates “moral virtue” from holiness, and because he insists that the former has no part in the latter, he provides a framework for thinking through these questions. In what follows I will first place Owen in his historical context, paying close attention to the doctrinal debates that were driving his work as well as to some of the dominant features of English Puritan theology and piety. Next, I turn to an exposition of Owen’s doctrine of sanctification as it appears in the Pneumatologia, Owen’s twovolume work on the Holy Spirit. Special attention will be given to how Owen responds to concerns regarding human nature and human moral effort. Lastly, I will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Owen’s account, particularly as these relate to the points of tension that emerged from Calvin’s doctrine in Chapter 1. What we gain from Owen is a recognition of the frailty of human subjectivity and a strong commitment to the objective working of the Spirit. While this aspect of Owen’s approach is promising, I conclude that he is unable to integrate divine and human agency in a way that can make sense of sanctification as a distinctly human process. In particular, the connection between the work of the Spirit and the lived experience of believers remains tenuous, and ordinary processes of moral formation and moral growth, which apply to all humans, occupy an ambiguous and unstable position.

Owen in historical context Recent historiography of early English Protestantism has seen significant revision of the traditional assumption regarding the Anglican Church as a via media between Rome and Geneva, particularly on the complex questions relating to grace, soteriology, and divine and human agency. Whereas earlier accounts, focusing on ceremonialism and ecclesial structure, tended to portray Reformed theology as a minority “Puritan” movement, revisionist accounts of the late twentieth century argued that the Anglican Church of Elizabeth and James enjoyed a widespread Reformed consensus on matters of doctrine and was only later challenged by the rise of Arminian theology in the early seventeenth century.2 Post-revisionist 2. Nicholas Tyacke’s Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) was the first explosive presentation of this thesis. For an overview of the historiography, see Peter Lake, “Introduction: Puritanism, Arminianism and Nicholas Tyacke,” in Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke, ed. Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 1–15.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

47

accounts have since described the late sixteenth- to mid-seventeenth-century theological landscape as one dominated by Reformed commitments, but also as never possessing a stable and unchallenged consensus.3 The image one gets is of ever-shifting debate, waged in theological treatises, spilling over into the seats of political power and eventually into civil war. It is in this climate, where theological debate about grace and salvation was of public and political import that we must locate John Owen’s career and his dominant theological concerns. Owen preached the parliamentary sermon the day after the execution of Charles I, he served as Chaplain for Cromwell’s army, and was subsequently vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Throughout this time, he wrote and preached extensively against the Arminian and Socinian impulses in English religion.4 By the time of the restoration, when Owen published the Pneumatologia, he was still heavily invested in the defense of Reformed faith, and this work in particular bears the marks of this sustained concern.5 Early English Arminian theology, unlike its Dutch counterpart, was not a carefully defined school of thought, and the term “Arminian” in Owen’s day was used to broadly reference anyone who opposed the doctrine of predestination within the Reformed theology of grace.6 Whether these opponents—pastors, pamphleteers, and theologians with various levels of training—were directly influenced by the Dutch school of Jacobus Arminius, or whether they exhibited a more homegrown Arminianism, they consistently sought to give greater scope for human agency in salvation and to disavow the more unpalatable conclusions of the Reformed system, particularly the notion that God, from all eternity, decreed that a great portion of humanity would be eternally damned. Although at first glance the substance of the debate seems restricted to such soteriological concerns, these rapidly bled into questions of morality. Richard Montagu, a favorite of Charles I, not only argued that fallen humanity could cooperate with God’s grace in salvation but also extended the notion of cooperation beyond faith in Christ to include the keeping of commandments.7 Thus Arminian and Calvinist debates in England were colored not only by the question of predestination and salvation, but also by the moral expectations that could appropriately be applied to fallen humanity. Calvinist polemicists, in their enthusiastic attempts to categorize all opponents according to ancient church heresies, rapidly began to paint Arminians with a Pelagian or semi-Pelagian brush. 3. Lake, “Introduction: Puritanism, Arminianism and Nicholas Tyacke,” 10. 4. For an overview of this theme in Owen’s writings, see Tim Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 59–74. 5. For a discussion of Owen’s restoration writings in defense of Reformed theology, see Dewey D Wallace, Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 144–57. 6. See ibid., 79–111 for a succinct discussion. See also Owen Chadwick, “Arminianism in England,” Religion in Life 29, no. 4 (September 1, 1960): 548–55. 7. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 84.

48

Responsive Becoming

If the Pelagian label was perhaps undeserved by English Arminians, it was much more applicable to those in English intellectual circles who were influenced by Socinian thought. Faustus Socinus, the late sixteenth-century Italian theologian, offered an interpretation of Christian doctrine which was at once anti-Trinitarian, Biblicist, and strongly ethical. Unlike Arminians, both on the continent and in England, Socinus was not simply concerned with softening the more controversial aspects of the Reformed system. Rather, his claims cut right to essence of Reformed soteriology in his denial of the atoning death of Christ. For Socinus, Christian salvation, at its most basic level, was about living a life of virtue, a life that was available to all human beings because all could choose to follow the saving example of Christ. It was thus Christ’s life and teachings, not his death and resurrection, which were the essence of Christian salvation. Despite the different historical origins of Socinian and Arminian doctrine, the appeal of certain aspects of Socinian thought to Arminians both in the United Provinces and in England led Calvinists such as Owen to suspect that the differences between the two were more of degree than of kind. The worry was that what began as a rejection of predestination would eventually lead to fullblown Socinianism, with a complete denial of grace and of the divine economy manifest in the saving work of Christ and the Spirit.8 For Owen and others, these authors were endangering the doctrine of justification through Christ’s death and replacing it with a soteriology based on mere moralism. As we will see, Owen’s description of sanctification in the Pneumatologia is explicitly crafted with these Pelagian threats in mind. Owen’s project, however, was not simply concerned with marshalling the resources of Reformed faith to oppose heresy. He also had to navigate the complex territory internal to English Reformed theology. In particular, Owen had to remain sensitive to accusations of both works righteousness and antinomianism within mainstream Reformed thought. Thus, before turning to an exposition of Owen’s writing, we must locate him within his own Reformed tradition—both in terms of his relationship to earlier reformers and with respect to the divisions internal to popular English Puritan piety, especially as these tensions eventually exploded in the New England antinomian crisis. The first task is far more complicated that it might appear at first sight. The last few decades have seen extensive and heated debates among historians of the Reformed tradition regarding continuity between the first generation of Reformers, particularly Calvin, and the subsequent “Reformed Orthodoxy” which emerged in the following generation. As Richard Muller tells the story, the paradigm that dominated scholarship on Reformed Orthodoxy in the twentieth century lifted Calvin out of his historical context and emphasized discontinuity between Calvin’s warm humanistic piety and the scholasticism of the Reformed Orthodoxy, with

8. Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity, 65–66.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

49

its use of Aristotelian categories and disputational methodology.9 For Muller and others, this “Calvin against the Calvinists” narrative is problematic in a number of ways. It oversimplifies the complexity among the early Reformers, elevating a few “great figures” as founders of a tradition from which all other contemporary and subsequent theology is then measured. It also neglects to place Calvin in a broader late medieval context, one with which the scholasticism of the later Reformed Orthodoxy is in much greater continuity. Lastly, it allows the theological commitments of the historians themselves, particularly their interest in drawing comparisons between Calvin and Reformed theologians of the nineteenth or twentieth century, to color the assessment of continuity or discontinuity between Calvin and the generation immediately following him. There is much to be said for this revisionist project. Indeed, when one reads John Owen’s theology, it rapidly becomes apparent that Owen does not look to Calvin as the founder of a tradition, as one to whom he must hold himself accountable. Nor does he turn to Calvin’s Institutes as a founding text. In fact, Owen scarcely even mentions Calvin or any other early reformer. And if recent historiography of early English Protestantism is correct, other reformers such as Martin Bucer, who lived and taught in England, actually exerted a much more profound effect on the trajectory of English Protestant thought than did Calvin.10 In this case, at least, a simple narrative of decline or descent will not suffice. On the other hand, the revisionist historians might also be overplaying their hand when it comes to dismissing virtually all of twentieth-century scholarship on Calvin.11 For while it is true that historians should give careful attention to the complex origins of Reformed theology when assessing the continuity between the first and second generation, this historiographical point does not readily translate into a positive theological evaluation of either Calvin or his immediate successors. To argue against a narrative of decline on historical grounds is not the same as providing a positive theological assessment of the direction in which Reformed theology in fact developed. Nor is the historiographical argument sufficient to rehabilitate the reputations of theologians of high orthodoxy. These theologians must be assessed on the basis of their theology. If twentieth-century scholarship on Reformed theology is read in this sense—as theological explication, analysis, and evaluation—then there may in fact be much to which we should attend. Reformed Orthodoxy may not be a departure from a founding father, but it might still be the

9. Muller’s argument can be found in Richard A. Muller, “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part One,” Calvin Theological Journal 30, no. 2 (November 1, 1995): 345–75 and in Richard A. Muller, “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part Two,” Calvin Theological Journal 31, no. 1 (April 1, 1996): 125–60. 10. See Wallace, Puritans and Predestination, 15. 11. As Muller appears ready to do with most mainstream twentieth-century scholarship on the Reformation. See Muller, “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists,’” 1996, 147–48.

50

Responsive Becoming

case, for all that, that Calvin is a better companion in contemporary theological endeavor. This, of course, remains to be seen. At the very least in this chapter, we must take care not to assume from the start that Calvin is the gold standard, nor that a more complex account of the development of Reformed doctrine thereby implies equality of content. Given the development that virtually all scholars agree occurred between Calvin and Owen (even if they disagree strongly on how to assess this development) we must lastly map out some of the most significant features of English Reformed theology, features that for all their strangeness today constituted theological givens for Owen. William Haller’s landmark study of Puritan origins in the first half of the twentieth century rightfully drew attention to the distinctive interiority and moral psychology which were integral to Puritan preaching and piety from its beginnings in the Elizabethan era.12 Puritan preachers sought to “convince the individual of sin in order to persuade him of grace, to make him feel worse in order to make him feel better, to inspire pity and fear in order to purge him of those passions.”13 As we saw in Chapter 1, this emphasis on interiority and the human consciousness, while not without its advantages, creates a series of pastoral difficulties for the Reformed tradition, difficulties that have garnered no shortage of scholarly analysis from historians and theologians alike. By the seventeenth century, two distinct pastoral strategies had taken root in Puritan thought to enable English divines to address the soteriological anxieties of their congregations. The first concerned the shift from a faith understood as given sacramentally in baptism, to an understanding of faith that could not be assumed from baptism and must instead become manifest during the course of a person’s life. Since Reformed theologians obviously taught that this faith was the gift of God, what could be said to the ordinary baptized person about how such faith might come about? Should the baptized churchgoer simply wait passively for a mystical experience? Or should she take steps to actively participate in an experience of conversion? While a vocal minority advocated for something along the lines of the former, most of the seventeenth-century Reformed took the latter approach.14 In the ordo salutis, God ordinarily made use of a number of “means of grace,” and anxious Reformed congregants could and should pursue these. Described as “preparationism” by contemporary scholars, the use of such means 12. William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938). 13. Ibid., 33. 14. Standard historiography of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Reformed thought has labeled this minority perspective the “heretical” position of Anne Hutchinson and, to a lesser extent of John Cotton. Janice Knight has challenged this reading, suggesting competing “orthodoxies” in both Old England and New. See Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); for a critique of Knight’s categories, see David Parnham, “Redeeming Free Grace: Thomas Hooker and the Contested Language of Salvation,” Church History 77, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 918.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

51

came to be described as an identifiable and at times formulaic process involving listening to the word preached, fervent prayer, familial and private reading of scripture, self-examination, and meditation on sin.15 The second practical strategy for dealing with the vicissitudes of the human consciousness sought to address the problem of assurance. How could a believer know that the moment of conversion had, in fact, taken place and that her faith was genuine? By the seventeenth century, Reformed pastors in England and on the continent regularly counseled anxious believers to examine themselves for evidence of sanctification in order to ascertain whether their faith was authentic. Because faith and justification inevitably led to a godly life, evidence of holiness, while it in no way merited salvation, could be taken as evidence that a person was part of the covenant of grace.16 As with the emphasis on preparation, this strategy was also not without its dissenters. John Cotton, for example, resisted the attempt to base assurance on evidence of sanctification and articulated a logic of sanctification that bore a stronger resemblance to Calvin. For Cotton, the saint passively receives grace, but this initial passivity was not understood to paralyze human agency. Rather, the believer’s experience of this initial transformation resulted in a life of loving service and gratitude. Sanctification was thought to be an immediate and complete work of the Spirit, but it led to a life of loving obedience.17 In the context of this debate, Owen’s theology seeks to occupy something of a middle ground. Although his overriding concern with external Pelagian challenges to Reformed theology constitutes the driving force in his work

15. For brief descriptions, see David R. Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 123–25; Louis K. Dupré et al., eds., “Puritan Spirituality: The Search for a Rightly Reformed Church,” in Christian Spirituality: Post-Reformation and Modern, World Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 303–04; and Charles L. Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 76–86; for a more sustained treatment, see Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). 16. The extent to which this practical counsel was advocated by Calvin has been a contested issue in Reformed scholarship since the middle of the twentieth century. For an overview of the debate and a presentation of the view that the later Reformed stood in great continuity with Calvin, see Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 244–76; for the alternate perspective, see Randall C. Zachman, “Crying to God on the Brink of Despair: The Assurance of Faith Revisited,” in Calvinus Praeceptor Ecclesiae: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research, Princeton, August 20–24, 2002, ed. H. J. Selderhuis (Genève: Droz, 2004). 17. Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts, 13–22; for a more negative assessment of Cotton, see William K. B. Stoever, A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978); although not as divisive, some of these same issues generated controversy in seventeenthcentury England during Owen’s career. See Como, Blown by the Spirit.

52

Responsive Becoming

on sanctification, it is also evident that he is seeking to steer a course between the extremes of Reformed antinomianism and Reformed moralism.

Owen’s doctrine of sanctification As we turn to Owen’s own doctrine, it is worth noting at the outset that he discusses the doctrine of sanctification in slightly different terms from Calvin, in keeping with the formalization of Reformed doctrine in a variety of confessional statements, such as the Canons of the Synod of Dort and the Westminster Confession of Faith.18 Whereas for Calvin, regeneration, repentance, and sanctification can be used basically interchangeably, Owen uses them with slightly different technical meanings. Sanctification, for Owen as for Calvin, can refer to the entirety of the human person’s restoration into the image of God and to the perfection of human holiness. Within this broader meaning, however, both regeneration and sanctification assume for Owen a more narrowly defined role. Regeneration, properly speaking, is the beginning of sanctification whereby the Holy Spirit communicates a new principle of spiritual life to the person.19 This beginning is, as we shall see, so essential for Owen that not only is it the fountain of sanctification, but it virtually comprises the whole of it.20 Sanctification, in addition to referring to the entirety of the transformation, can also refer to the ongoing process, to the Spirit’s work to preserve, continue, and perfect what is begun in regeneration.21 In this specific sense, Owen thinks that the activity of sanctification has a positive and negative movement.22 It involves both a positive effort to obey God’s commandments, a “living unto God,” and an ongoing negative movement, to “mortify” our sins, gradually weakening and impairing the “contrary principle of sin” that remains in believers.23 As we shall see, this language of moral effort should in neither case be taken to imply that the believer has a capacity for independent holy action. Rather, at every discreet moment, actual holiness requires not only habitual grace but also a new act of grace by the Spirit. Owen’s discussion of the Spirit’s work of regeneration is framed by his debate with his contemporary “Pelagian” interlocutors and their claims that regeneration consists in moral persuasion. He understands the latter to include the problematic claims that all people naturally possess faculties that are capable of believing the gospel message and that the gospel is uniquely suited to the “reason and interest 18. John MacPherson, Westminster Confession of Faith with Introduction and Notes, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 1882), 94–97; Christian Reformed Church, “Psalter Hymnal: Doctrinal Standards and Liturgy of the Christian Reformed Church” (Grand Rapids, MI: Board of Publications of the Christian Reformed Church, 1976). 19. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:207. 20. Ibid., 3:299. 21. Ibid., 3:367. 22. Ibid., 3:528. 23. Ibid., 3:538.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

53

of mankind.”24 Although these opponents claim they ascribe sanctification to the Holy Spirit, their description of this process, and in particular the confidence they place in the faculties, renders their account of the Spirit’s activity highly suspect for Owen. Speaking of those who advocate regeneration through moral persuasion Owen writes, “For setting aside what men do herein themselves, and others do towards them in the ministry of the word, I cannot see what remains, as they express their loose imaginations, to be ascribed unto the Spirit of God.”25 Owen’s concerns about the restriction of the Spirit’s agency here tend to fall into three basic categories. First, he is worried that if the sum of the Spirit’s work is explained solely in terms of natural operations, such as the preaching of the word or moral persuasion, then the coherence of the gospel as the redemption of humanity will fall apart. Owen writes of moral persuasion that it “makes the act of living unto God by faith and obedience to be a mere natural act, no fruit of the mediation or purchase of Christ.”26 Here Owen’s primary concern is that the Socinian and Pelagian opponents are promoting a version of moral transformation that really has no need for the redemptive activity of Christ and the Spirit. A second and related concern is that emphasizing nature at the expense of the gospel is ultimately an affirmation of the capacity of the human person to amend her own life and a corresponding denial of any real corruption of the faculties in original sin. As we have already seen, teachings of precisely this sort were in fact being advocated by Owen’s Socinian, if not Arminian, contemporaries. A third concern, one which is less related to ancient Pelagian teaching and more a product of Owen’s distinctly modern milieu, is that moral persuasion, which limits the operation of the Spirit to the preaching of the word or to the ministry of the church, thereby leaves nothing “real” for the Spirit to do. While most of the time Owen’s concerns center on the integrity of the gospel and whether or not moral transformation is improperly attributed to human agency, he betrays an occasional tendency to read divine and human activity as occurring on the same plane and in competition with one another. His concern is that explaining regeneration in natural terms not only provides an insufficient account of grace but also leaves no space for “real” divine activity. While this tendency does not occur consistently throughout the Pneumatologia, it seeps in from time to time, and particularly as he attempts to narrate a more extensive process across the lifespan. The crucial issue which Owen must address is not whether transformation is the result of divine activity. In his most careful moments, Owen is in continuity with traditional Christian claims that all of creation is at every moment and in

24. Ibid., 3:302. Although he does not here mention Socinians by name, Owen’s description, including voluntary response as well as the reasonableness of proclamation and the motivating role of rewards and punishments, clearly has their system in mind. 25. Ibid., 3:300. 26. Ibid., 3:311.

54

Responsive Becoming

every aspect the product of divine activity.27 The real question that Owen must answer, and which to some extent lies behind the broader themes of this project, is what sort of divine action belongs to that special category we call “grace,” referring specifically to the saving work of Christ and the Spirit, and what sorts of attributions to fallen humanity are improper given the need for grace. While Owen might not always present this question with the clarity it needs, his response is unequivocal and in continuity with the response of the broader Augustinian tradition of which he is a part. Although he wishes to retain a role for the preaching of the word and the ministry of the church as “outward means,” he responds to the Pelagian tendencies of his day by developing a strong emphasis on the internal working of the Spirit.28 Specifically, the act of regeneration in the person is “a real physical work, whereby [the Spirit] infuseth a gracious principle of spiritual life.”29 This infused principle is “a new, spiritual, supernatural, vital principle or habit of grace, infused into the soul, the mind, will and affections, by the power of the Holy Spirit, disposing and enabling them in whom it is unto spiritual, supernatural, vital acts of obedience.”30 Calvin, as we have already seen, was not at all inclined to speak of the beginning of the Spirit’s work in terms of infused principles or habits. Owen’s use, however, is not simply an odd quirk that comes from reading medieval scholastics. It is rather in continuity both with Owen’s understanding of the ancient church, particularly of Augustine, and with the important Reformed confessional and conciliar statements of his day. The language of infusion and internal inspiration of the Spirit is prevalent in the Canons of the Council of Orange from the sixth century and reiterated in crucial seventeenth-century Reformed documents, such as the Canons of the Council of Dort and the Westminster confession.31 Dort, for instance, claims that faith is not offered to people as a choice but is “in actual fact

27. For a contemporary discussion of the God–world relationship in Christian theology, see Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988); see also David B. Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). 28. For an analysis of the inner working of the Spirit in Augustine, see Phillip Cary, Inner Grace Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 29. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:307. 30. Ibid., 3:329. 31. The canons of the Second Council of Orange of 529 CE, which had affirmed an Augustinian theology of grace over and against Pelagian and semi-Pelagian accounts, had been lost to the medieval church, but were rediscovered in the mid-sixteenth century and proved tremendously important for sixteenth-century theology. See Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 74–75 While these canons proved significant for the Reformers, it is worth noting that they made selective use of them, choosing not to teach that all baptized persons receive infused grace.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

55

bestowed on them, breathed and infused into them.”32 Westminster, which avoids the specific language of infusion, still has a robust sense of an interior working of the Spirit, with respect to which the agent herself is passive.33 While Owen’s language is thus not completely unique, a few aspects deserve special attention. In the first place, Owen seems unique in his repeated insistence that regeneration is a physical work of the Spirit on the human soul. Owen’s logic here rests on the Pauline passage that likens the work of the Spirit to the power that raised Christ from the dead. Because Christ’s resurrection was a physical work, so too must regeneration be physical.34 Although Owen does not explain what it is about fallen humanity that calls for a physical transformation, or indeed why a work on the soul itself should be considered physical, this emphasis is worth bearing in mind for the image it conjures of the Spirit’s work with respect to human nature. One almost gets the impression of the Spirit as an invisible mechanic, tinkering with the nuts and bolts of the human faculties as the agent herself remains passive and perhaps not even cognizant of this work. The second significant departure of Owen from the conciliar and confessional statements with which he would have been familiar is the decreasing emphasis on “means of grace” and the wedge he begins to drive between the work of the Spirit and the lived experience and ecclesial status of the believer. The confessional statements and counciliar documents referenced above are consistent in connecting the initial reception of interior grace to some kind of external means. For the Council of Orange, the infusion of grace occurs in baptism. The Canons of Dort insist that the bestowal of grace cannot be separated from “administration of the word, the sacraments, and discipline,” even going so far as to say, “for grace is bestowed through admonitions, and the more readily we perform our duty, the more lustrous the benefit of God working in us usually is, and the better that work advances.”35 English Reformed divines were expressing this commitment to external means of grace in their preparationist teachings and a number of them

32. Canons of Dort, 3rd Main Point of Doctrine, article 14, accessed July 3, 2014, http:// www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/canons-dort 33. John MacPherson, Westminster Confession of Faith with Introduction and Notes, 82– 87; As Kapic notes, the Westminster Larger Catechism does use the language of infusion. See Kelly M. Kapic, Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 51–52. 34. Dort too makes reference to this passage, but instead of focusing on the physical nature of resurrection, Dort calls it a supernatural one, which is not inferior to the resurrection of Christ. See Canons of Dort, Section 3, Article 12, accessed July 3, 2014, http://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/canons-dort 35. Canons of Dort, section 3, article 17, accessed July 3, 2014, http://www.crcna.org/ welcome/beliefs/confessions/canons-dort. The Westminster Confession proclaims in chapter 14 that the grace of faith is “ordinarily wrought by the ministry of the word, by which also, and by the administration of the sacraments, and by prayer, it is increased and strengthened.” MacPherson, Westminster Confession of Faith with Introduction and Notes, 97.

56

Responsive Becoming

explicitly taught that the Spirit uses specific means in regeneration itself.36 Owen, by contrast, betrays considerable ambivalence when it comes to talk of means of grace, preferring to emphasize the immediate activity of the Spirit. While he claims that the preaching of the word and sacramental ministry of the church are the ordinary means of regeneration, when he actually expounds upon their function he limits them to the phase of preparation. In keeping with this strand of Puritan thought, Owen believes that regeneration is ordinarily prefaced by a process that includes illumination, conviction of sin, and reformation of character.37 Owen agrees that the Spirit does use such means to prepare the heart for conversion, but he complicates the preparationist strategy by arguing that it is often the case that people confuse these preparations for regeneration itself. “Multitudes herein actually deceive themselves, speaking peace unto their souls on the effects of this work; whereby it is not only insufficient to save them … but also becomes a means of their present security and future destruction.”38 While Owen offers a number of criteria whereby his readers can assess their own spiritual state, it is significant that authentic regeneration, far from being any sort of process, is instead an instantaneous and unmediated work of creation. The heart of stone is taken away, and in an effort to distinguish this work from that described by his Arminian and Socinian opponents, Owen writes, “He doth not say that he will endeavour to take it away, nor that he will use such or such means for the taking of it away, but absolutely that he will take it away.”39 Although he wants to preserve a role for means of grace, Owen seems to think the gracious agency of the Spirit is better preserved if the scope for such means is carefully qualified and even, at times, removed from the description of regeneration altogether. As a corollary to the unmediated aspect of regeneration, Owen insists that it is possible for a person to be regenerated and yet remain unaware of this important internal work.40 Early in his discussion of the Spirit’s sanctifying work, in the context of its secrecy and mystery, Owen suggests that these aspects of the Spirit’s agency are in fact appropriate because the human person is to some extent a mystery unto herself. He writes, How little do we know of these souls of ours! and all that we do so is by their powers and operations which are consequential unto their being. Now, these things are our own naturally,—they dwell and abide with us; they are we, and we are they, and nothing else: yet is it no easy thing for us have a reflex and intimate acquaintance with them.41

36. See Stoever, A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven, 113–14. 37. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:231. 38. Ibid., 3:237. 39. Ibid., 3:327; emphasis in original. 40. Ibid., 3:214. 41. Ibid., 3:374.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

57

Given Calvin’s emphasis on the subject’s own knowledge of herself and of God’s love, and all the difficulties which seemed to flow from such reliance on subjective awareness, it is somewhat refreshing to read Owen insist that one’s grasp of salvation, including sanctification, might be elusive instead of certain. “And is it strange,” he asks, “if we should be much in the dark unto this new nature, the new creature, which comes from above, from God in heaven, wherewith our natural reason hath no acquaintance?”42 Because sanctification is the Spirit’s work and because our inner life is something of mystery to each one of us, sanctification need not be fully available, such that we could observe and recount every moment of progress in holiness. While these unique aspects of Owen’s doctrine of regeneration are appealing, they also raise questions regarding the integrity of the human nature that is thus transformed. These questions arise for most Augustinian theologies of grace, but Owen’s insistence on regeneration as an instantaneous, direct, and even physical work renders these concerns especially pressing. Indeed, they are concerns of which Owen is well aware, which he recognizes explicitly and to which he endeavors to respond. The concerns Owen mentions include whether the power of Spirit in regeneration violates the nature of the faculties themselves, whether in particular the will is compelled (and thus destroyed as a will) and whether regeneration is more akin to a spiritual possession than a transformation that respects rather than destroys the nature in question. A related concern that is not explicitly on Owen’s radar, but which is particularly important for this project, concerns the way regeneration does or does not relate to one’s lived experience of Christian life. Owen’s primary response to questions about the integrity of human nature is to insist, as he does on multiple occasions, that the regenerating work of the Spirit is always consistent with the nature of the faculties themselves.43 The Spirit does not act on the faculties in any other way than they are “meet to be moved and move, to be acted and act, according to their own nature, power, and ability.”44 Surprisingly, while Owen has vehemently rejected a doctrine of “moral persuasion,” by which a person is transformed through the example or argument of someone else, he here allows a kind of persuasion to explain the sense in which the Spirit’s working is consistent with human faculties. “The work itself,” Owen writes, “is expressed by persuading,—‘God shall persuade Japheth;’ and alluring,—‘I will allure her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her:’ for as it is certainly effectual, so it carries no more repugnancy to our faculties than a prevalent persuasion doth.”45 42. Ibid. 43. See ibid., 3:225 where Owen writes that the Spirit “worketh also on men suitably unto their natures, even as the faculties of their souls, their minds, wills, and affections, are meet to be affected and wrought upon.”; See also Ibid., 3:318:“The power which the Holy Ghost puts forth in our regeneration is such, in its acting or exercise, as our minds, wills, and affections, are suited to be wrought upon, and to be affected by it, according to their natures and natural operations.” 44. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:318. 45. Ibid.

Responsive Becoming

58

This construal of the Spirit’s work suggests a relational model of regeneration akin to what we have seen in Calvin, and he makes use of this framework to forestall concerns that in regeneration the Spirit is somehow possessing the person or destroying the faculties. Owen does not leave the issue here, however. He then proceeds to ask how regeneration can be anything other than “a kind of violence and compulsion, seeing we have evinced already that moral persuasion and objective allurement is not sufficient thereunto?”46 Here, instead of explaining his earlier references to a non-moral persuasion and allurement, Owen embraces more familiar Augustinian language. The Spirit, he says, does not propose grace objectively to the will, but works internally “as more intimate, as it were, unto the principles of our souls than they are to themselves.”47 Grace does not compel the will, but acts it from within such that the will itself continues to act and is the principle of its own actions.48 Grace does not propose an external object and then compel the will to accept it; rather, grace operates internally, so that the will genuinely wills to accept the object. In both descriptions, Owen’s approach to regeneration thus operates within a relational framework—the Spirit’s indwelling of the person. He alternately emphasizes the subjective experience of persuasion and the internal and direct action of the Spirit. This pattern, of affirming both human experience and the immediate internal action of the Spirit will continue throughout his discussion. After we look at Owen’s description of the process of sanctification, we will return to this question of the integrity of the human nature that is changed. Does he allow for continuity and coherence in the identity and narrative of the transformed person? Whereas regeneration pertains to the initial infusion of a spiritual principle or habit, the process of sanctification treats the growth and preservation of this principle. As with regeneration, Owen describes this gradual process as one in which the Spirit’s activity is both mediated and unmediated. The Spirit works by providing the person with certain experiences that are transformative, and the Spirit works directly and internally, in a manner inaccessible to the conscious subject. Owen’s doctrine of progressive sanctification also continues to raise a number of practical questions regarding the integrity of the human nature that is transformed. In describing both the direct and mediated agency of the Spirit in sanctification, Owen enumerates several discreet ways in which a person’s holiness can be preserved and increased. First, the Spirit increases the “graces of holiness”—and here Owen mentions specifically faith and love—by exciting them to frequent actings.49 Throughout this discussion, Owen uses the term “grace” in place of “habit” and, in keeping with most accounts of habits, he believes that frequent 46. Ibid., 3:319. 47. Ibid., 3:320. 48. Ibid., 3:322. 49. Ibid., 3:388.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

59

exercise of a habit functions to preserve and strengthen it. The Spirit might excite a particular action of faith or love by proposing suitable objects at an appropriate time, such as through the preaching of the word. The benefit one receives from hearing the word preached is not simply what is retained in conscious memory. It is also the experience of having faith and love drawn out into exercise and so kept alive. Thus, there is an experiential and subjective component to the Spirit’s work.50 Beyond this experiential component, however, Owen also insists that the Spirit excites these “actings” in a second way, by working “really and internally.”51 The Spirit, dwelling within believers, excites faith and love by his immediate and internal power. Owen’s language curiously suggests that the first type of working, though the means of hearing the word preached, is somehow not “real” action of the Spirit. Thus, while the Spirit works through means, Owen places the weight of divine agency in sanctification on the Spirit’s unmediated agency. Owen continues to alternate between the mediate activity of the Holy Spirit, experienced subjectively and the immediate action of the Spirit as his discussion of sanctification continues. He says next that the Spirit supplies believers with “experiences of the truth, and reality, and excellency, of the things that are believed” in order to increase faith and love. “Experience is the food of all grace, which it grows and thrives upon.”52 This is strong language indeed. Faith grows as a person tastes divine love and grace. “Give unto a soul an experience, a taste, of the love and grace of God in Christ Jesus, and be its condition what it will, it cannot refuse to be comforted.”53 Such statements indicate a strong affirmation of the Spirit working through a natural means—by providing experiences that strengthen faith. They also strongly emphasize the relational context of sanctification. The person is transformed specifically through the experience of divine love and fellowship. Sanctification is here part of the autobiographical awareness of the subject. Next however, Owen affirms that the Spirit increases grace in a third way. In addition to exciting graces to frequent action and to providing experiences that will strengthen graces, the Spirit works “immediately an actual increase of these graces in us.” Owen even heightens the stakes by insisting that the immediate and actual increase is “the principal cause and means of the gradual increase of holiness in us.”54 Thus, while the Spirit’s agency functions in ways that are mediated through experience and therefore integrated with our own sense of agency and identity, Owen always combines these aspects with a divine agency that is direct and unmediated.

50. Ibid., 3:389. 51. Ibid. Emphasis in original. 52. Ibid., 3:390 Emphasis in original. 53. Ibid., 3:391; Recent Owen commentators are quite fond of this passage. See, for instance, Kapic, Communion with God, 53–54. They fail to observe, however, that the experiential component is, at the end of the day, not doing the work that such quotations indicate. 54. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:391.

60

Responsive Becoming

Whereas Owen’s discourse as a whole is focused on the person of the Spirit, he also adopts, toward the end of his section on progressive sanctification, Calvin’s description of sanctification as a gift that flows from the believer’s union with Christ.55 In this discussion of Christ and sanctification, Owen repeats the same form of analysis that he provided in his account of the Spirit’s agency. He first describes how Christ’s activity exerts a natural influence on the faculties and then moves to direct and unmediated activity. In terms of the natural effects, Christ’s priestly sacrifice purifies the mind and conscience.56 The gospel of Christ, as opposed to the law of the Old Testament, or the law of nature, provides the complete rule of our holiness: “It is the delivery up of our souls into the mould of the doctrine of it, so as that our minds and the word should answer one another, as face doth unto face in water.”57 Similarly, and of particular significance given Owen’s concern with Arminian and Socinian thought, Christ also provides an “exemplary cause” of our holiness, and when believers recognize that everything Christ did was out of love for them, they are even more moved to imitate Christ than they would be an ordinary moral exemplar. In other words, the goodness of Christ, in the context of his love for human beings, exerts a transforming effect on the faculties, an effect that is heightened when the believers spend more time beholding and contemplating Christ’s glory and beauty.58 In each of these ways, the believer’s union with Christ seems to result in an intelligible change of the person, one that occurs through the experience of the person of Christ as mediated through corporate and personal spiritual practices such as hearing the word, prayer, and meditation.59 Here sanctification seems to be a change in the faculties that occurs in and through their interaction with the person of Christ in their ordinary experiential functioning. As with his discussion of the Spirit’s agency, Owen then follows his discussion of the believer’s experience of Christ with discussion of Christ’s more significant role of providing “real supplies of spiritual strength and grace.”60 The new principle of spiritual life that is communicated by the Spirit flows from Christ the head and it is this principle that distinguishes true holiness from all counterfeit varieties. The strength and grace available in Christ are constantly communicated to the believer who is unified with him. Owen’s pattern of combining subjective and objective aspects of sanctification offers some advantages in addressing the tumultuous nature of human subjective awareness. These can perhaps best be seen through consideration of his preferred 55. The discussion on Christ occupies a total of seventeen pages. Ibid., 506–23. 56. Ibid., 3:506. 57. Ibid., 3:508. 58. Ibid., 3:512–13. 59. For Owen, the experiential emphasis falls predominantly on the individual rather than corporate practices. His references to the sacraments and the communion of saints are scarce, and the hearing of the word, with its focus on the inner life, functions to facilitate the individual divine–human relationship. 60. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:514.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

61

metaphor for depicting sanctification. Unlike Calvin, Owen does not frequently reference the experience of a child who grows in the care of a loving parent. Rather, he focuses on those passages of scripture that liken moral change to the imperceptible yet real growth of a plant from a tiny seed. The advantage of the plant metaphor for Owen is twofold. First, the initial seed contains within itself the principle of its own growth. The seed must be planted in the proper environment, with plenty of sunlight and water, but it does not require instruction from outside on how to grow. Growth proceeds from the inside, from the heart.61 For Owen, this means that the Pelagian tendency to describe grace as something external to the human person is appropriately counteracted. The second advantage of the plant metaphor is precisely the secret and imperceptible character of growth. “Though their growth in itself is indiscernible, yet it is plain they have grown. Such we ought all to be.”62 If growth is genuine, yet also somewhat mysterious, then it becomes possible for Owen to answer some of the major pastoral dilemmas facing Reformed theology regarding the instability of one’s conscious awareness of faith. Provided that a person is not introducing an impediment to sanctification, such as indulging in a known sin, then one’s awareness of growth is less important than the growth itself. Owen writes, “It is one thing to have holiness really thriving in any soul, another for that soul to know it and to be satisfied in it; and these things may be separated.”63 In fact, as he goes on to argue, the person who is lacking self-awareness might be more spiritually healthy than the one who is aware of “the vigorous working of spiritual affections.”64 Provided this person is placing no obstruction in the path to holiness, she can trust in God’s promise to bring about growth.

Sanctification and natural virtue With this twofold approach to sanctification—as both a subjective experience of grace and an internal, objective act that may well be inaccessible to the agent— Owen understands ongoing sanctification to involve the agent’s focused attention and effort. In concluding this analysis of Owen’s doctrine of sanctification, I now turn to its practical side. What does Owen envision sanctification to look like from the perspective of the faithful Christian, and what sorts of activities does he encourage in his own pastoral writings as the believer’s participation in the Spirit’s sanctifying work? First, it must be noted that what Owen emphatically does not envision is anything along the lines of the moral reformation that is being advocated by the English Arminians and Socinians. As we saw in his discussion of moral persuasion, Owen worries that natural virtue is a misguided and ultimately disastrous 61. Ibid., 3:396. 62. Ibid., 3:396–97. 63. Ibid., 3:400. 64. Ibid., 3:401.

62

Responsive Becoming

attempt to transform one’s character apart from the gospel. In response he states unequivocally: There neither is, nor ever was, in the world, nor ever shall be, the least dram of holiness, but what, flowing from Jesus Christ, is communicated by the Spirit, according to the truth and promise of the gospel. There may be something like it as to its outward acts and effects (at least some of them), something that may wear its livery in the world, that is but the fruit of men’s own endeavors in compliance with their convictions; but holiness it is not, nor of the same kind or nature with it.65

As this quotation indicates, one of Owen’s strongest objections to “moral virtue” is the worry that it displaces the need for the gospel, for the redemptive work of the triune God. If sanctification is possible through natural human effort, what need is there for Christ and the Spirit? “But to suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect.”66 Owen’s anxieties regarding the pursuit of moral virtue are not, however, simply a matter of maintaining sound doctrines so that the gospel does not appear redundant. He is also concerned that the kind of moral transformation described and pursued under the heading of moral virtue is something other than, and less than, true holiness. Because human corruption for Owen involves the entire person, there is no place within fallen humanity on its own terms from which a successful transformation can be carried out. It is for this reason, Owen says, that the Pelagian argument that holiness can come from God “in a way of nature, and not in a way of especial grace” is ultimately flawed.67 The corruption of fallen humanity leaves no other option, “for God, as the author of grace, and the best of corrupted nature are opposed.”68 In Owen’s anthropology, genuine sanctification must involve a “universal renovation” whereby the human person is restored to the image of God. Such a universal, holistic change cannot be the result of the actions of fallen humanity, however good these appear and however frequently they are repeated.69 Fallen human actions cannot lead to a total renovation of character. This kind of change can only come when the Spirit renews the faculties, when sin is weakened and destroyed “at its root.”70

65. Ibid., 3:371. 66. Ibid., 3:433; see also Ibid., 3:415 where Owen opposes those who wish to equate holiness with moral virtue and then attribute it to pagans. “An imagination hereof dethrones Christ from his glory, and overthrows the whole gospel.” 67. Ibid., 3:368. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., 3:417. 70. Ibid., 3:463; Kelly Kapic provides a nice analysis of this theme in Owen’s doctrine of sanctification. See Kapic, Communion with God, 58–64.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

63

Despite his commitment to total renovation of the heart under the influence of grace, Owen actually agrees with his opponents that natural moral reformation of some sort can and does occur. This is, of course, a familiar trope in Christian moral thought since Augustine, but Owen grants moral virtue a kind of independent status by choosing a completely different term “holiness” to refer to the transformation of Christians. Thus, while Owen does not attempt to analyze the practices or strategies that result in what his contemporaries call virtue, he grants its reality. He even goes so far as to say that moral virtue is a kind of gift of God and of value for human society.71 These are acts that are inherently good and their worth should not be undervalued.72 It is precisely because moral virtue involves a real change of behavior for the better that Owen can also speak of it as something dangerously deceptive. If the presence of an internal spiritual principle can be difficult to discern, and if it is entirely possible for a person without such a principle to manifest outwardly good actions, then ordinary professing Christians are constantly running the risk of confusing the two. Indeed, Owen thinks it is quite common for persons to falsely believe they have in fact been regenerated on the basis of a strictly natural moral reformation. “Such persons may have good hopes themselves that they are holy; they may appear to the world so to be … and yet really be utter strangers from true gospel holiness.”73 Owen immediately recognizes the conflict to which such analysis leads: if outwardly good acts can be so deceptive, should Christians discourage the unregenerate from pursuing them? He emphatically wishes to avoid this conclusion: “the world is not in a condition to spare the good acts of bad men” and consequently people should be encouraged in such endeavors.74 It is difficult, however, to take such qualifications seriously when they are sandwiched between lamentation that “men do but labour in the fire about them” and exhortation to “not, therefore, deceive ourselves with the shadows and appearances of things in a few duties of piety or righteousness.”75 When natural virtue is strictly opposed to genuine holiness, it is difficult for Owen to retain any stable commitment to the former. What this means for Owen’s practical theology is that the moral effort of professing Christians is safest when it is directed at the inner life. This tendency emerges both in Owen’s particular spin on the common Reformed strategy of looking to sanctification as evidence of regeneration and in his explanation of the mortification of sin. In his comments regarding the mysterious and at times hidden aspect of the Spirit’s work, Owen does not reject efforts of believers to examine themselves for 71. Owen here anticipates, but leaves undeveloped, something like the doctrine of common grace as articulated by twentieth-century Dutch Reformed theologians Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavink. See Herman Bavinck, “Common Grace,” trans. Raymond C. van Leeuwen, Calvin Theological Journal 24, no. 1 (April 1, 1989): 35–65. 72. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:479. 73. Ibid., 3:416. 74. Ibid., 3:479. 75. Ibid., 3:479, 482.

64

Responsive Becoming

evidence of sanctification. Rather, he offers specific advice to direct self-examination to the faculties, to the inclinations of the will, the affections of the heart, and the proper working of the mind. It is here, at the root of sin, where the person will be able to best observe the effects of the Spirit’s activity. The best evidence, he suggests, is a soul that is universally inclined to acts of holiness. Believers should not take comfort from individual acts or areas of personal improvement. Rather, because regeneration applies to the whole person, anxious Christians should look for evidence of a diffuse agency affecting all aspects of their lives.76 They will know their transformation is genuine when the affections are much stirred up, when the inclination to holiness grows, and when the mind readily embraces the truths of the gospel.77 The effort of Christians to participate in sanctification is likewise directed to the inner life in the process of mortifying sin. In Owen’s separate treatise On the Mortification of Sin, to which he directs the readers of his Pneumatologia, he describes an inner war waged in the Spirit against the remaining principle of sin that is still abiding and acting in the believer.78 Properly speaking, it is the Spirit of Christ who wages this war, but believers participate by preparing themselves for this work. Upon discerning particularly troublesome symptoms, they oppose sin with “gospel weapons,” such as the death of Christ, the love of God, and the preciousness of communion with God.79 He exhorts the diligent to gain a clear sense of their guilt and its evils and to meditate on these. They should then load their conscience with guilt and refuse to allow any means of alleviating it. Owen exhorts his reader to “get thy heart, then, into a panting and breathing frame; long, sigh, cry out.”80 They must take care not to apply the peace and grace of Christ too quickly to the distraught conscience, but should instead fill themselves “at all times with self-abasement and thoughts of thine own vileness.”81 In this moment of passivity, Owen appeals to the parent metaphor we find so frequently in Calvin, but employs it to quite a different effect. God the father “will have his children lie a while at his door when they have run from his house, and not instantly rush in upon him; unless he take them by the hand and pluck them in.”82 It is in this state of longing expectancy that the tormented heart is then to look to Christ in expectation of relief and to apply the cross of Christ daily to the 76. Ibid., 3:490–91. Owen carefully qualifies this test with the acknowledgment that believers will experience periods of greater temptation and will continue to be “surprised” into sin. The key is that this soul who is universally inclined to holiness will always meet opposing inclinations with an inward laboring and a desire to be free of them. 77. Ibid., 3:493, 505. 78. Ibid., 6:11 Sin in this treatise has almost a tangible quality to it. Sin is personified as the subject of action. It is “subtle, watchful, strong, and always at work in the business of killing our souls.” 79. Ibid., 6:47. 80. Ibid., 6:60. 81. Ibid., 6:63. 82. Ibid., 6:75.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

65

remaining principle of sin. “He hath promised to relieve in such cases and will fulfill his word to the utmost.”83 At the end of the day then, Owen retains a place for diligent moral effort in the practical sphere by directing the bulk of that effort inward. The battle against sin is waged in the inner life, as a mental and emotional effort to solidify a sense of the horror of sin and to cultivate a deep and physical longing to be rid of it. While he does not intend to devalue external action, Owen’s priorities generate a practical emphasis on the inner life. It is in such internal actions that the spiritual life unto God principally consists and they provide the best measure of spiritual health.84

Owen and tensions in Reformed sanctification In this broader project, we have been concerned with some very specific questions regarding the relation of grace and nature in the doctrine of sanctification. First, if sanctification is a work of the Holy Spirit, how does it relate to a person’s lived experience and coherence of identity? At stake here is the continuity of the subject. The sanctified person is certainly transformed, but is he in some sense the same person as before? And how does this change relate to the agent’s consciousness, sense of self, and lived experience? Secondly, and a subset of the first question, how does sanctification relate to ordinary processes of formation, such as one might observe in very young children, and of ordinary transformation, such as older children and adults might experience regardless of personal faith or ecclesial status? It should by now begin to be clear that the tensions related to these issues that we unearthed in Calvin’s thought in Chapter 1 are still very much at issue in Reformed thought in its seventeenth-century English context. John Owen’s theology both exemplifies some of the broader trends and contains some proposals unique to his own thought. It will help here to return to these and examine how they appear in Owen’s doctrine of sanctification. The first tension in Calvin’s doctrine concerned the relation between the individual’s subjective consciousness or experience and her objective status as God’s child. For Calvin, sanctification flows from faith, which he defines with robust subjective criteria. Faith involves a subjective knowledge of God’s goodness toward oneself in Christ. As we saw in Chapter 1, Calvin describes sanctification or repentance such that it rests on this subjective awareness. If a person does not know God as a loving father who desires her good, she will not have the capacity to genuinely repent. This emphasis of Calvin allows for a strong continuity between a person’s lived experience as a believer and her moral transformation. It also resonates deeply with human experience. As we will find in our study of human evolution and human development, our need for love and acceptance is indeed a fundamental one, directing many of our actions. At the same time, however, 83. Ibid., 6:81. 84. Ibid., 3:528.

66

Responsive Becoming

this understanding of faith and sanctification carries all the instability that human subjective consciousness itself carries. As numerous historians of Reformed theology have noted, this basic instability does indeed plague the Reformed tradition, particularly when combined with Calvin’s doctrine of election and his rather strong statements about temporary faith. Quite early in the history of Reformed theology, though not, by my reading, in Calvin’s Institutes, Reformed theologians and pastors begin to emphasize self-examination and evidence of sanctification as confirming or providing the necessary assurance of faith.85 The way this analysis ordinarily goes in the literature, Reformed theology comes under strong critique for generating a distorted psychology and rigorous moralism, whereby the Christian experiences ongoing uncertainty of salvation, calling for a cycle of self-examination, followed by moral reformation, followed by moral failure and heightened existential uncertainty.86 While this cycle is undoubtedly a problem in the tradition, it is particularly important to note not only these practical consequences but also the underlying shift in thinking about how sanctification actually occurs. Once Reformed theologians emphasize sanctification as a primary means of assurance, they can no longer consistently adopt Calvin’s logic regarding the connection between faith and repentance. The latter can no longer be grounded in one’s confidence in God’s goodwill and forgiveness in Christ because moral transformation must actually confirm that God is in fact gracious to me. The early modern Reformed in Anglo-American contexts did not universally adopt this altered psychology.87 While Owen occasionally makes reference to sanctification as providing evidence of one’s spiritual regeneration, his most pressing concern, the threat of Pelagianism, tends to push him in the opposite direction. Owen, as we have seen, is rather hesitant to direct his reader to moral reformation because he worries that confidence in one’s own moral character can actually be a substitute for conversion. Owen believes that all manner of professing Christians falsely rely on their own moral effort and have never actually been regenerated by the Spirit. This commitment, while not unproblematic, actually

85. Calvin allows evidence of sanctification in a secondary sense. See Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 198–203. 86. It must be noted that this cycle, while certainly easy to locate in the tradition, is still something of a caricature. From the beginning, there was diversity and a strong reactionary emphasis toward antinomianism. See Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts for an argument for two distinct strands in Puritan thought, one of which was closely associated with the New England antinomian controversy. Richard Baxter’s work was crafted with the fear of Reformed antinomians firmly in mind. See Cooper, John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity, 74–83. 87. Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts. If Knight is correct, the differences can mainly be discerned in terms of where a theologian chose to place the greatest emphasis, rather than in distinct and mutually exclusive options.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

67

allows Owen to articulate a unique and promising approach to the question of subjective awareness. As we have seen, Owen responds to the Pelagian threat by emphasizing a distinct, unmediated agency of the Spirit in both regeneration and an ongoing process of sanctification. Not wishing to sever all connection to experience and particularly to ordinary means of grace, such as the preaching of the word, Owen insists that the Spirit’s work is both direct and mediated, with the former being the most important and indeed the nonnegotiable element. If the Spirit acts always directly, as well as in ways that are mediated by experience in the natural world, then Owen is able to accommodate an understanding of sanctification that has both an objective and a subjective aspect. Objectively, whether the person is aware of internal working of grace, the Spirit infuses a new gracious principle and constantly enables all holy actions. Subjectively, Owen can talk about transformation that results from our fellowship with Christ or from our efforts to mortify sin. This dual aspect of sanctification and of the Spirit’s action has the potential to avoid some of the difficulties in Calvin’s doctrine. If it is somewhat difficult to ascertain what we in fact truly believe, if our subjective faith, though real, is susceptible to fluctuation despite the internal workings of the Spirit, then it would seem that Owen is in a better position to deal with the vicissitudes of human subjectivity. He is in a position to claim that doubt neither negates prior faith nor is it indicative of the Spirit’s absence. He can urge the spiritually anxious to continue in a path of obedience, trusting, in Pauline fashion, that God works in them to will and to act. While I will say more in Chapter 6 about this possibility for addressing the subjective instability of sanctification, it must be noted here that Owen himself does not take full advantage of it. First, despite claiming that it is natural to be at times in the dark of our own inner workings, and despite his claims regarding the mysterious nature of the Spirit’s work, Owen still thinks the individual can be deceived about the true state of his soul and can confuse moral virtue with genuine holiness. He thus argues that believers should actively pursue the certainty they lack. “It is,” Owen writes, “highly incumbent on all that would not willfully deceive their own souls unto their eternal ruin to inquire diligently into the true nature of evangelical holiness; and, above all, to take care that they miss it not in the foundation, in the true root and principle of it, wherein a mistake will be pernicious.”88 The believer must, using Owen as a guide, examine her own life and her faith to ensure that regeneration has, in fact, occurred. Unlike some of his contemporaries, this examination does not focus on a person’s actions. Owen has already established the danger of resting content in one’s moral achievement. Instead, he provides extensive instructions for the initial pursuit of conversion and directs his readers to an examination of their inner lives, of their affections and motivations, as evidence of spiritual renewal. The best indicator, he claims, is a comprehensive change in the inclinations, such that the overall bent of the will is toward holiness. A “free, genuine, unforced inclination of the mind and 88. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:481.

Responsive Becoming

68

soul, evenly and universally, unto all that is spiritually good” provides the firmest confirmation of regeneration. By making the knowledge of conversion primary, Owen brings the subjective experience of faith back to a position of supreme importance. Although the reasons for focusing on the inner life of the subject are thus somewhat different from Calvin, the same concerns we found in Chapter 1 remain. If the inner life matters most, does the person have any motivation to consider external action? Does a concern for action become a perpetual danger, masking an interior corruption? The second reason why Owen’s approach to bringing together the objective and subjective aspects of sanctification is ultimately unsuccessful is that while he retains a space for both, he never specifies how they are related to one another or even why, in the context of the direct and unmediated activity of the Spirit, there is even a need to be concerned with a distinct mechanism of transformation occurring in and through the operation of the mind, will, and affections. Although Owen is unique in insisting on both direct and mediated action, the latter at times feels like more of a decorative flourish and a nod to those who want to insist that divine agency makes use of created means. One way to grasp what is at stake here is to focus on the believer’s ongoing experience of struggle against sin. Like Calvin, Owen denies any commitment to perfectionism. The person of faith will continue to battle sin throughout life. Also like Calvin, Owen accounts for the sin of believers with reference to a remainder of sinful nature. For Owen, the “principle” of sin continues to abide in all believers to varying degrees. When Calvin talks about sin, however, he will often make reference to the specific kinds of action that God “must” take in order to combat fallen humanity. Fallen humanity is blockish and dull and seems to call for particular kinds of actions on God’s part to correct it. This, for example, is the role played by “chastisement” in Calvin’s thought—divine correction that occurs in and through the ordinary struggles and pain of life. In Owen, by contrast, the most significant activity of the Spirit for sanctification is not that which occurs in and through ordinary experience of a life of faith. It is instead the direct and immediate internal action. If this is the case, however, one begins to wonder why the Spirit does not simply eradicate sin in one fell swoop. Is the direct acting of the Spirit somehow insufficient to the task? If the Spirit can immediately renew the faculties, why should there be any ongoing process of sanctification at all? Owen actually raises this issue, or at least a very closely related one, in his discussion of regeneration. There are times, he says, when the motions of grace in the hearts of believers are resisted and prevented from having the full effect they would otherwise have. “Were it otherwise, all believers would be perfect.”89 But how is it that anyone can resist the motions of grace? Here Owen responds, in essence, that they cannot actually resist God’s intent. Even in these cases the acts of grace “are effectual so far, and for all those ends which they are designed unto in the purpose of God … And where any work of grace is not effectual, God never 89. Ibid., 3:318.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

69

intended it should be so nor did put forth that power of grace which was necessary to make it so.”90 In other words, while Calvin seems to be saying that at least when it comes to the transformation of the human person, God’s agency works in and through the constraints of created and fallen human nature, Owen’s emphasis on the Spirit’s unmediated activity suggests that the only reason believers continue to sin is because God does not put forth sufficient grace to overcome their resistance. While the direct and mysterious agency of the Spirit thus allows Owen to comfort the believer who perhaps does not experience faith quite so intensely, it creates difficulties when one tries to make sense of sanctification as a process occurring over time and indeed, throughout the whole life span. Owen certainly thinks that sanctification is a lifelong process, but apart from saying “because God wills it” he is unable to provide any account of why that should be the case. It is difficult to read the Pneumatologia without getting the sense, at the end of the day, that the various forms of instrumental activity, those aspects of human experience that render moral change intelligible to the subject (a sense of communion with the divine, prayer, challenging life experiences, participation in a sacramental community, and so forth) are ultimately dispensable. The Spirit works this way certainly, but this kind of divine agency is somehow less “real.” In particular, there is no sustained effort to show how these two kinds of agency relate to each other. They are instead posited side by side, with the immediate activity assuming priority and the mediated appearing as something of an afterthought. Without a more detailed analysis of human faculties and of their formation and transformation, the mediate and immediate forms of the Spirit’s agency are posited as practical and theological necessities, but with little systematic coherence. The end result is that Owen can point to sanctification as a reality that is at least partially available to the subject’s conscious reflection, and as an objective reality occurring apart from one’s subjective awareness, but he is ultimately unable to show how these two aspects might relate to one another. Even if Owen’s solution to the problem of the turn to subjectivity in Reformed sanctification did not suffer from these two difficulties, even if he was able to avoid a problematic return to inner life as proof of sanctification and even if he could more persuasively connect the direct and mediate action of the Spirit, one still wonders if his account of immediate action would ultimately be satisfying. I have noted at various points the images that Owen’s description of the Spirit’s agency seems to elicit. The Spirit works an immediate and physical change. It is almost as if the Spirit waves a magic wand, or performs a surgical procedure on an unconscious subject. It is as if the only way to protect the doctrine of sanctification from Pelagian error is if the most important and nonnegotiable action of the Spirit takes place in a vacuum, abstracted from the particular life and circumstances of the sanctified person. Any such rupture, however effective in protecting the gratuity of sanctification, is bound to generate a number of practical and pastoral dilemmas. For once the emergence or unfolding of sanctification is thus separated 90. Ibid.

70

Responsive Becoming

from concrete human lives, what rationale remains for Christian communities to carefully attend to such concrete and particular circumstances? This question closely resembles the second tension I noted in the Calvin chapter concerning the role of ordinary processes of moral formation. Calvin’s description of sanctification makes heavy use of the parent–child analogy, and I argued that the intelligibility of Calvin’s doctrine relies on this experiential knowledge of how children develop in the care of a loving parent. At the same time, however, Calvin himself does not draw any explicit connections between the believer’s sanctification and the ordinary moral formation that she undergoes as a child. Does sanctification replace everything that goes before, rendering the ordinary processes ultimately irrelevant? Or does sanctification somehow include ordinary development without being fully constituted by it? Ultimately, Calvin does not provide an answer to this question and his omission leaves the door open for the displacement and devaluation of natural, intra-human processes in the practical lives of Christian individuals, families, and communities. In Owen’s theology, we see a similar ambiguity, but with an even more pronounced marginalization of ordinary formative processes. As we have observed, in the context of Pelagian fears, Owen goes to great lengths to recognize that moral reformation of character can in fact occur and also to insist that whatever such might consist in it has absolutely nothing to do with genuine sanctification by the Spirit. In fact, he argues that moral virtue can actually deceive a person and lead to eternal destruction. At the same time, however, Owen wants to avoid the conclusion that the unregenerate would be better off if they abandoned their efforts to live rightly. Thus, any natural process that leads to virtuous character occupies a highly ambiguous place for Owen. These processes are in some sense good, particularly for the broader community, and they are in some sense a gift of God, but they are also potentially dangerous and deceptive. The person who pursues virtue without the Spirit risks eternal damnation. While Owen seeks, ultimately unsuccessfully, to avoid the conclusion that natural virtue is bad, he never stops to consider the dilemma his position creates for childhood in particular. At a few points throughout the Pneumatologia, Owen specifies that he is exclusively speaking of adults. Like other Reformed theologians, including Calvin, Owen believes the Spirit regenerates children (or at least children of believers) who die in infancy.91 Thus, he has categories for infants who die, and for adults, but no explicit analysis relating sanctification to children. Indeed, the doctrine as he has described it creates significant challenges to any such attempt. Any theology that rejects a notion of regeneration for living children, in addition to those who die in infancy, is going to face a distinct set of challenges when discussing the spiritual lives of children. For all his rhetoric against the Anabaptists, Calvin himself hardly avoids these thorny practical questions. At what point can children be expected to have something like genuine faith? Do children of believers need to have some kind of conversion experience? And if so, 91. MacPherson, Westminster Confession of Faith with Introduction and Notes, 85.

John Owen and the Pelagian Threat

71

when is it appropriate to expect something along the lines of an adult ordo salutis in the life span of a child? While these are ongoing questions that afflict any number of Protestant theologies, Owen’s approach to natural moral formation creates a unique subset of practical concerns related to childhood that go unrecognized in the Pneumatologia. If, prior to conversion, any moral formation that takes place is not only corrupt but also potentially deceptive, then any kind of moral training of children in the care of parents is rendered highly suspect. Where should conscientious parents direct their childrearing energy? Should they expect to cultivate moral goodness in their children? Or would it be better for the spiritual health of the child to forget about virtue and focus on conversion? Owen’s logic seems to push in the latter direction, but what then of those ages when children can act wrongly, but do not yet have the cognitive capacity to hear and respond to the Reformed version of the gospel message? Although Owen does not explicitly deal with such questions, the logic of his thought would seem to trap children in a spiritual no-man’s-land, the likes of which Horace Bushnell will come to loathe in the revivalism of nineteenth-century America. It is worth noting here that Owen’s Pneumatalogia does contain one significant exception to this tendency to marginalize natural processes and to ignore the ambiguous state of childhood. This exception comes with his discussion of the Spirit’s sanctification of Jesus’s humanity.92 Even though Jesus is born without sin and his faculties are without corruption, Jesus still benefits from the ongoing sanctification of the Spirit, as he experiences the ordinary human growth of his human faculties. Owen bases this analysis on the Gospel of Luke’s reference to Jesus’s growth as a child, both in stature and in Spirit. Jesus’s faculties were not corrupt, yet “in their increase, enlargement, and exercise, there was required a progression in grace also.”93 Although Owen never connects this age-appropriate, yet Spirit-enabled growth of the faculties to the natural development of fallen humanity, his discussion of Jesus’s growth seems to allow for a convergence of natural and spiritual growth that his subsequent account of sanctification does not.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have seen how Owen is seeking to navigate an array of challenges, both internal and external, that the doctrine of sanctification is facing in its Reformed context. Not only is he determined to defend the doctrine of grace against a variety of external critics, but he must also do so with sensitivity to the problematic internal tendencies of Reformed theology toward both antinomianism and an anxiety-ridden moralism. In the context of these challenges, Owen’s account of sanctification contains some promising developments. He recognizes 92. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:169–71. 93. Ibid., 3:169.

72

Responsive Becoming

that sanctification needs to be objectively rooted in the activity of the economic Trinity, while also connected to the concrete lives and identities of practicing Christians. Owen fulfills this criterion by describing at every turn a dual aspect of divine agency in sanctification. First, the Spirit accomplishes this transforming work through normal operations of the faculties themselves. The Spirit provides the right kind of experience to exercise and strengthen faith, and love for God grows as the believer comes to a deeper grasp of Christ’s sacrificial actions. Second, and more importantly for Owen, the Spirit acts directly and “really” on the faculties, changing them apart from and in addition to such experiential means. Given the instability of human subjectivity, both in Calvin and in Owen’s Puritan contemporaries, his basic approach—positing both a subjective and an objective aspect to sanctification—will be crucial moving ahead. This insistence on the objective working of the Spirit, apart from human experience or subjective awareness, has the potential to mitigate the risk that the believer will become mired in introspection, constantly anxious about whether her experience reflects the genuine presence of grace. Moreover, Owen’s dual approach to grace still retains a commitment to the validity of human experience. The Spirit acts in and through ordinary life as well. Despite this potential, however, Owen is ultimately unable to articulate a doctrine of sanctification that makes sense as a human process. His attempts to retain a place for human experience seem like optional window dressing to the real but mysterious and unmediated action of the Spirit. And his approach to the Pelagian challenges renders natural processes of formation of ambiguous value not merely for pagans, but also for professing Christians. What Owen needs is some kind of access to natural processes of transformation that would enable more sustained analysis regarding how these processes function in the human person and, by extension, how they might relate to the work of Christ and the Spirit. Must the objective aspect of the Spirit’s agency be conceived in such physical terms? Must it be labeled as “real” and set against the Spirit’s use of “means of grace?” Apart from his intriguing yet brief comments about the sanctification of Christ, however, Owen’s theology provides no access to human nature that would facilitate more sustained reflection on these questions. Given the Reformed concern with both the extent of original sin and the controlling priority of grace, one wonders indeed if any Reformed theology could accommodate natural human processes in a description of the moral transformation that is constitutive of human salvation. Would not any such effort fatally compromise these fundamental soteriological commitments? This is the question we will explore as we turn to the nineteenth-century American Congregationalist Horace Bushnell.

Chapter 3 H O R AC E B U SH N E L L O N N U RT U R E A S A M E A N S O F G R AC E

The historical study we are undertaking in the first part of this project involves a careful investigation of the doctrine of sanctification. It provides an opportunity to analyze what this doctrine allows us to say and not to say about the process of gracious moral transformation, about how human beings are remade into the image of God. Of particular interest has been the intersection of doctrinal claims and practice. Different formulations of the doctrine of sanctification have implications for what Christians take to be the goal of their action and the proper way to pursue this goal. In our study of John Owen, we observed the need to articulate a doctrine of sanctification that makes clear that this transformation is in fact the redemptive work of God in Christ and the Spirit. We found, however, that when anxiety about preserving the integrity of God’s redemptive work leads to a sharp separation of ordinary or natural processes from gracious processes, we encounter certain difficulties. Such a separation can suggest that the natural processes themselves do not matter, or it can raise questions regarding the coherence or integrity of personal identity. For Owen, the complex interaction of these various concerns pushed the locus of sanctification into the inner life, into the realm of the “heart” with its mysterious passions and desires, marginalizing the significance of external action. In order to get beyond this impasse, we will eventually need to direct our attention to some of these natural processes themselves. First, however, we will examine the efforts of Horace Bushnell, the nineteenth-century Congregationalist, to provide a description of grace that includes a positive account of ordinary developmental processes. Bushnell explored these themes in his anti-revivalist treatise Christian Nurture. According to Bushnell, the human child naturally has an organic connection to her parents such that the faith and character of the child are contained within that of the parent and gradually become a part of the child through the natural processes of intimate familial care. The parents’ will and character “are designed to be the matrix of the child’s will and character” and such a design, Bushnell argues, does not compete with the activity of grace in regeneration, but is rather a legitimate means of grace.1 At the heart of this chapter

1. Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), 29.

74

Responsive Becoming

will be the question of whether construing natural processes as a means of grace can provide an adequate account of salvation as a gift of God. Bushnell’s appeal to nurture as a means of grace is in many respects a logical direction one could take Calvin’s thought. In fact, as we have already seen, much in Calvin’s pastoral practice points precisely in the direction of parental nurture. A child nurtured in a household of faith is objectively rooted in the covenant while gradually coming to a subjective awareness of her status as a child of God. The fissures in Bushnell’s account, however, begin to appear precisely where one might suspect they would after reading Calvin’s pastoral advice to parents and children. Children, it will be recalled, were to obey their parents as an incipient form of obedience to God. The only exception to this command, Calvin thought, was when parents required something that was against the will of God. In such a case, children were obligated to disobey. But how were children to be responsible for knowing the will of God when this was precisely why God placed them in families to begin with? Calvin seemingly expects children to be formed in families and yet also remarkably capable of transcending any limits in this formation. This caveat was Calvin’s only nod to the limitations of parents, but it is more than we find in Bushnell, who was far too observant of parents and children to expect mini conscientious objectors. Instead, Bushnell’s version of nurture, as we shall see, placed the weight of perfection on the parents. Children receive grace when parents act as they are supposed to act. With this commitment, I shall argue, Bushnell effectively confines grace to natural processes. The Spirit, for Bushnell, is dependent on nature and restricted by it, rather than working within a finite and broken nature to achieve an end that exceeds the natural. This way of linking the Spirit’s agency to natural processes also leads to its own set of practical problems. Grace is so closely affixed to natural processes that one begins to wonder if the subject can retain any awareness of the fact that her life and good action are in fact gifts of God. Furthermore, when the parents who are charged with being the vehicles of grace to their children find themselves inadequate to the task, their options, in Bushnell’s schema, appear relatively few. They can either adjust their expectations for the moral growth of their children to what seems attainable in their context, or they can push themselves to embody exacting standards of parental perfection. In either case, there is very little sense that the parents are able to express their own dependence on God’s grace or to trust that it is God who redeems their children. Grace is obscured and limited and the result is either the ultimate absence of God, or divine absence is concealed by a victory that confines itself to the humanly possible. This chapter explores how, despite its tremendous influence, Bushnell’s account of Christian nurture cannot ultimately escape these problems.

Bushnell in the nineteenth century Christian Nurture, while in many respects far ahead of its time, is also a thoroughly nineteenth-century American text. Bushnell came of age and began his pastoral ministry at the precise moment that revivalism and “new measures” were sweeping the northeastern religious landscape. It was the era of Charles Finney and of the

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

75

Methodist explosion. Bushnell, by all accounts a beloved pastor, was not known for his ability to utilize new evangelistic techniques in order to win converts and thereby generate church growth.2 Despite Bushnell’s antipathy toward revivalism, the impulse toward identifying a distinct conversion experience has a long history in Reformed thought. Not only does John Owen’s thought push in this direction, but the half-way covenant of the seventeenth century had sought to resolve debates about the need for a conversion experience by granting partial status as church members to those whose parents were full members but had not themselves experienced conversion.3 For Bushnell, this emphasis on conversion in New England religious history, a strand quite congenial to revivals, was profoundly problematic in its implications for children. The child was sinful, but not capable of hearing and responding in revivalist fashion to the proclamation of the gospel. Even more troubling was the question of what, under this schema, was the responsibility of the Christian parent. Should parents seek to teach good behavior to one who was totally depraved and thus incapable of it? Or should parents seek to help their children recognize their sin and repent.4 Bushnell thought that the implication of the latter commitment was a method of parenting in which encouraging sin would facilitate conversion. Whether the majority of Christian parents held this belief is doubtful, but Bushnell was correct to note that the insistence on a conversion experience did place a question mark over the significance of parenting for the moral life. His own response located regeneration not in a single decision of the child but in the course of ordinary nurture in a Christian home. For Bushnell the point was not to deny the need for spiritual regeneration, but to distance it from a momentary, and often transient, emotional experience. Far more important was to focus on the slower, unconscious processes by which the seeds of faith were sown in early childhood. I will argue that in this basic approach Bushnell stood in strong continuity with other strands of Reformed thought. Before we see how this is the case within Christian Nurture, however, it will help to ask what, in a broader sense, Bushnell took spiritual regeneration to mean.

Regeneration In the history of American religious thought, Bushnell is often placed firmly at the beginnings of liberal Protestantism. Dubbed the “American Schleiermacher,” Bushnell’s theory of language, Christology, and moral influence theory of

2. Although, if Ted Smith is correct, Bushnell’s argument against new measures is a prime example of their implementations. See Ted A. Smith, The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 241–43. 3. See Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 184–97 for a discussion. 4. Bennet Tyler, one of Bushnell’s staunchest critics, argued that it was the duty of Christian parents to help children see their own wickedness and need for a new heart. See H. Shelton Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study in American Theology since 1750 (New York: Scribner, 1955), 146.

76

Responsive Becoming

atonement all place him squarely within a liberal Protestant trajectory of American religious thought.5 Despite these innovations in the Reformed orthodoxy of his day, Bushnell was still self-consciously a Puritan. His discussion of regeneration in particular exhibits substantial affinity with Calvin. When Christian Nurture is placed within Bushnell’s account of regeneration, its status as a logical extension of Calvin’s thought becomes much more evident than it was to Bushnell’s theological critics in New England. Bushnell’s sermon “Regeneration” provides his clearest exposition of the doctrine as it might apply to any believer and not just to children.6 Here he frames any discussion of the beginning of spiritual life with two broader theological commitments. First, he observes that Christian theology is not simply a doctrine of development or a method of moral self-improvement, but it is rather one of salvation, which entails an external power “moving on fallen humanity from above its level, to regenerate and so to save.”7 Furthermore, this power must be expressed in the person of Jesus whose very name otherwise would be nothing but a false pretense. It must be Jesus who acts to save human beings. In this first commitment, Bushnell is clearly reflecting the driving concern we saw in John Owen: an adequate account of grace presupposes not simply a generic and nondescript power of God, but more importantly a focus on Jesus doing something for the human race that it cannot do for itself. The second broader commitment that frames Bushnell’s discussion of regeneration is that this notion of salvation must include our moral transformation. Appealing to his readers’ intuitive sense of human sinfulness, Bushnell observes that everyone will agree that there are those who “are not ready to melt into a perfectly blessed and celestial society.”8 But where, he then asks, is the line of moral adequacy to be drawn? Even those who actively strive for goodness do so without spontaneity, “by a kind of constraint.”9 Human beings need the kind of character in which they love the good for its own sake, and, because they love the good, they are able to do it easily and naturally. Such love of good and ease of duty comes from

5. Sydney Ahlstrom refers to Bushnell as the American Schleiermacher in Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to NeoOrthodoxy (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967), 62. For Ahlstrom this reference is intended to signify his status in the trajectory of American theological liberalism, rather than to suggest specific doctrinal affinities. Dorrien provides an excellent discussion of the ways in which Bushnell does and does not fit within the liberal Protestant trajectory. Gary J. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 2001), 111–78; Noll, focusing on his theory of language, sees him as marking a turning point in the public role played by religious institutions in the nation. Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 319–23. 6. Horace Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life (New York: Charles Scribner, 1876), 106–26. 7. Ibid., 109. 8. Ibid., 111. 9. Ibid., 112.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

77

“having God revealed in the soul, moving in it as the grand impulse of life.”10 Both his specific commitment to Jesus agency in salvation and to a transformation of character place Bushnell well within the parameters of standard Christian soteriology, both Catholic and Protestant. This, of course, is precisely the point. In his doctrine of regeneration, at least at this point in his career, it is not Bushnell’s intent to describe a salvation in which God is absent or in which God’s grace is limited or confined by nature.11 Within this foundation, Bushnell’s soteriology, while not using Calvin’s terms, does employ a similar structure and ethos. Whereas Calvin uses the biblical terminology of the “heart” as the source of action, Bushnell speaks of a “something” that is “at the back of the act” that is the source of human action. After trying rejecting a few descriptions for this something, Bushnell settles on false love: “a wrong, downward, selfish love.” Such language locates him thoroughly within a Reformed Augustinian heritage. When it comes to describing the change that takes place, however, Bushnell clearly rejects the option favored so strongly by Owen. Regeneration is not, he says, the removal of the old and the insertion of the new. Such a change, he argues, would be generation, rather than regeneration, and would destroy personal identity.12 Rather, the change in “ruling love” that Bushnell depicts comes about through a more basic change in one’s relationship to God. The human person, at present “living in himself and to himself,” was intended “to live in God, to be conscious of God, to know him by an immediate knowledge, to act by his divine impulse, in a word, to be inspired by him.”13 These two aspects of human salvation—the change in relationship to God and the change in ruling love—correspond roughly to the categories of justification and sanctification. Although Bushnell does not employ the legal framework of traditional Reformed thought, he clearly intends to speak of human reconciliation to God after sin, and of an awakened love for God. Tellingly, Bushnell understands these each to be “rigidly coincident” and even “mutual conditions one of the other.”14 Just as with Calvin’s “double grace,” Bushnell describes Christian salvation as involving two aspects that can be distinguished, can be discussed as different aspects, but cannot be separated.15 “No man will ever be united to God, except in

10. Ibid. 11. While Bushnell’s volume does not include dates for the original preaching of each sermon, the volume itself was published after Bushnell’s initial Discourses on Christian Nurture, but before the revised 1861 volume, Christian Nurture, to which I refer throughout this chapter. 12. Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life, 116. 13. Ibid., 119. 14. Ibid., 121. 15. Conrad Cherry reads the mutual conditioning of justification and sanctification in Bushnell’s thought as part and parcel of his organicism. This may well be the case, but it is important to note that such organic thinking is thus not without precedent in Reformed thought. Conrad Cherry, “Structure of Organic Thinking: Horace Bushnell’s Approach to Language, Nature, and Nation,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40, no. 1 (March 1, 1972): 6.

78

Responsive Becoming

and by a love that embraces or entemples God. No man ever will be changed in his ruling love, except in the embrace of God, and His revelation in the soul.”16 Bushnell also adopts a similar pattern to Calvin’s doctrine of repentance when he describes the transformation of “ruling love.” As Bushnell describes it, regeneration involves both a negative work of self-renunciation, of dying to the self, and a positive “reaching after God.”17 Not only do these movements seem to parallel Calvin’s mortification and vivification, again without employing the same terminology, but they also result from the work of Christ and of the Spirit. God is revealed “in the incarnate life and death of Jesus, in order that he may present himself in a manner level to our feeling, and quickening to our love, and so encourage that faith by which he may come in, to re-establish his presence in us.” At this precise moment, however, a critical difference from Calvin is also present. Foreshadowing his subsequent rehabilitation of moral influence theory, Bushnell’s soteriology takes a much more decisive turn toward the subjective and experiential, rather than the objective. For Calvin, with his strong doctrines of justification and election, Christ has significance for the believer that extends beyond the psychological effects of faith. Calvin certainly thinks that faith is necessary for the believer to actually receive these benefits, but the benefits, particularly justification, are not constituted by a change in subjectivity. For Bushnell, however, any sense of Christ’s work having an objective significance apart from its psychological effect on us is so thin as to be almost nonexistent. What matters more than anything is that a person experience Christ, and this experience is located first and foremost in feeling and sentiment. This conclusion in Bushnell, it should be noted, was from the beginning a tendency latent in Calvin’s doctrine of sanctification. Bushnell seems to take Calvin’s framework to its logical conclusion while significantly deemphasizing any objective grounding of salvation in election or justification.18

Christian nurture Fundamental to Bushnell’s rejection of revivalism as the paradigmatic beginning to the Christian life is his conviction that this basic soteriology can find gradual expression during a child’s growth, without thereby being compromised. The specific account of children’s regeneration and sanctification that he provides is conditioned by the prominent religious, social, and intellectual trends of his era as well as his own unique intellectual commitments. Not only does Bushnell criticize the theology he finds implicit in revivalism but he also embraces Victorian

16. Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life, 121. 17. Ibid., 123–24. 18. Bushnell does occasionally mention Calvin, and when he does so, it is usually in a positive light. See Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 181. He does not, however, reference Calvin as a formative influence, although he would certainly have read him in his seminary training.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

79

domesticity.19 Bushnell crafts a theology of childhood that is consistent with a new cultural attentiveness to the domestic sphere as a mechanism for coping with social and economic upheaval. At the same time, his own philosophical and anthropological intuitions shape his thought in very specific ways. One of his most foundational commitments is to the organicism of human life.20 As Conrad Cherry describes it, organic thought, meaning an emphasis on a functional wholeness and the complexity of relational influences at work within the whole, permeates all of Bushnell’s theology.21 When it comes to the nurture of children, however, Bushnell’s organicism rests not simply on a general commitment to organic thinking but also on a very particular anthropology. An organic relationship exists between parents and children because of the nature of human infants, the kind of care they require, and their profound dependence on and receptivity to their environment of nurture. For Bushnell, physical separation of mother and child at birth masks the strength of the ongoing bond between them.22 All human society—“the church, the state, the school, the family”—is organic, and human beings only ever possess at best a “mixed individuality,” but infants and young children are according to Bushnell “more within the power of organic laws than we all are.”23 The child exists, and only exists, in the matrix of parental life. Because of the profound state of dependence of the human infant, at birth he can do little more than passively receive that which is presented to him:

19. James and Dorothy Volo cite Bushnell as a prime example of the Cult of Domesticity. See James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo, Family Life in 19th-Century America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007), 263. 20. According to Daniel Walker Howe, the organic thought of Bushnell predates the strand of organic social thought associated with mid-nineteenth-century New England intellectuals. Howe traces Bushnell’s organicism to Coleridge. Daniel Walker Howe, “The Social Science of Horace Bushnell,” The Journal of American History 70, no. 2 (September 1, 1983): 308; on Coleridge as a formative influence on Bushnell, see David W. Haddorff, Dependence and Freedom: The Moral Thought of Horace Bushnell (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 11–23; Haddorff likewise traces the beginnings of Bushnell’s “theory of organic interdependence” to his earliest years as a pastor, finding the earliest expression in a 1933 sermon, some fourteen years before the publication of Christian Nurture. See Haddorff, Dependence and Freedom, 34–35. 21. Cherry, “Structure of Organic Thinking.” Cherry notes that the organicism of Christian Nurture is widely recognized and focuses his own analysis on Bushnell’s theory of language, his approach to nature and the supernatural, and his concept of a nation. Indeed, Bushnell himself draws numerous parallels between the organic relations within the nation and the family. See Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 63; 91; 167–68. 22. Although the physical separation occurs between mother and infant, Bushnell stresses that the postnatal organic relationship is between both parents and the child. Indeed, as Gary Dorrien observes, throughout Christian Nurture, Bushnell’s language is surprisingly gender neutral. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 137. 23. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 31.

80

Responsive Becoming At first, the child is held as a mere passive lump in the arms, and he opens into conscious life under the soul of the parent, streaming into his eyes and ears, through the manners and tones of the nursery. The kind and degree of passivity are gradually changed as life advances. A little farther on it is observed that a smile awakens a smile; any kind of sentiment or passion, playing in the face of the parent, wakens a responsive sentiment or passion. Irritation irritates, a frown withers, love expands a look congenial to itself, and why not holy love? Next the ear is opened to the understanding of words, but what words the child shall hear, he can not choose, and has as little capacity to select the sentiments that are poured into his soul.24

In this description, parents communicate through their mood and mannerisms, expressions and tones, and these subtle communications awaken a response. The kind of connection and formation that Bushnell depicts at this stage is less about intentional influence through persuasion or explicit teaching, and more about what he terms “unconscious influence,” although here even the term “influence” seems for Bushnell to connote far too much intentionality on the part of the parent.25 Rather than persuasion or “governmental power” Bushnell finds the strongest aspect of parent–child organic unity to be the power exerted on the infant through the parent’s embodied way of being in the world. “A power is exerted by parents over children, not only when they teach, encourage, persuade, and govern, but without any purposed control whatever. The bond is so intimate that they do it unconsciously and undesignedly—they must do it.”26 For Bushnell, this power is truly organic in the lives of young children precisely because they have not yet developed rational capacities that would undergird deliberative choice. At this stage a child can pick up dispositions, mannerisms, actions, and feelings almost like an infectious disease. As the child grows and gradually acquires more and more sophisticated capacities, he gains greater scope for independent thought but is never totally free of such organic influences. For Bushnell, these laws of organic connection do not indicate a deficiency in the nature of the child, but are instead the divinely ordained provision for the child’s growth and development. Through unconscious influence, as well as by establishing and regulating the child’s broader environment, providing appropriate guidance and boundaries, and providing religious education, the parent does not infringe upon the rights of the child, but merely fulfills “an office which belongs to them.”27 These actions do not suppress what we might term moral agency, and

24. Ibid., 28. 25. For a discussion of unconscious influence, described as nonverbal communication and moral activity, in Bushnell’s work more broadly, see Haddorff, Dependence and Freedom, 37–39. 26. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 93. 27. Ibid., 28–29.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

81

what Bushnell calls “the proper rank and responsibility of an individual creature.”28 They are rather the means by which, over time, the child gradually enters into moral agency. All of this is part of divine design for human growth and is even intended to serve a spiritual purpose. God intends that the human infant be born into a life bathed in faith and, in the care of faithful parents, experience an ageappropriate nurture of the Spirit mediated through parental care.

Regeneration of the child As he expounds upon the spiritual significance of nurture, Bushnell employs the familiar terms of Reformed soteriology. The child is “regenerated,” new life is “infused,” and the parents are the “means of grace.” Despite his use of the language of Reformed orthodoxy, Bushnell’s account of childhood regeneration received a mixed welcome and was critiqued by two of the leading Reformed theologians of New England for an excessive naturalism that left no room for God’s grace.29 Bushnell for his part claimed that his critics were actually operating with a notion of instantaneous adult conversion that was less than a century old and he cited the leading lights of the Reformed tradition, including Calvin and Owen, in his favor.30 On this point, Bushnell correctly observed that his own discourses were far more consistent with strands of Reformed soteriology than his critics understood. Just how consistent, of course, remains to be seen. In order to answer this question, we must ask what exactly Bushnell means when he speaks of the grace that children receive through the organic connection with their parents. We should perhaps be clear on what Bushnell does not mean, particularly given his vehement defense of infant baptism. Bushnell does not intend to suggest, and in fact explicitly rejects any notion of baptismal regeneration. In this his affinity with Calvin is evident. Both resist the notion that regenerating grace is bestowed in the sacrament. But whereas for Calvin Christians baptize their children because of God’s covenantal promise, Bushnell focuses more on the organic connection between parents and children. Among the most important reasons for infant

28. Ibid., 29. 29. For an account of the publication of Bushnell’s discourses and their theological reception and resulting controversy, see Smith, Changing Conceptions of Original Sin, 145–49; Glenn Alden Hewitt, Regeneration and Morality: A Study of Charles Finney, Charles Hodge, John W. Nevin, and Horace Bushnell (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1991), 136–41; Robert Bruce Mullin, The Puritan as Yankee: A Life of Horace Bushnell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 117–20; and Russ Patrick Reeves, “Countering Revivalism and Revitalizing Protestantism: High Church, Confessional, and Romantic Critiques of Second Great Awakening Revivalism, 1835 to 1852,” 2005, 229–59. 30. Bushnell’s initial reply was the tract “An Argument for Discourses on Christian Nurture” subsequently reprinted in Horace Bushnell, Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects Adjacent Thereto (Hartford, CT: E. Hunt, 1847), 52–125.

82

Responsive Becoming

baptism for Bushnell is that the infant is actually included in the faith of the parents, accounted “presumptively one” with them, and sealed with the seal of their faith.31 Thus while Bushnell, along with Calvin, affirms the possibility of sanctification from the womb, baptism is not the means of an infant’s regeneration, but rather the faith of the parents.32 Infant baptism is appropriate and indeed a crucial practice of the church because of the unity of parent and child.33 Because of the organic connection between parent and child, along with the inclusion of the child in the parent’s faith, Bushnell speaks of the regenerate character of the child as existing as a “seed” in the character of the parent.34 If an infant has faithful parents, she does not need a technical conversion experience, nor is there any particular urgency to identify a moment at which regeneration began. Rather, the child will, in Bushnell’s famous phrase, “open on the world as one that is spiritually renewed.”35 In the context of Christian nurture, the infant’s first impressions and experiences are inevitably shaped by the qualities of faith in the parent. Just as ordinary experience provides the raw material, the “rudimentary impressions” that subsequently allow words to have meanings, so too the infant’s early experiences, which are entirely under the control of the parents, provide a foundation for a distinctly religious understanding. The infant’s cognitive and linguistic capacities emerge gradually along with the life of faith, which then exerts a subsequent interpretive effect on experience. “A child will fast be gathering up, out of his little life and experience, impressional states and associations, that give meanings to the words of prayer, as they, in turn, give meanings to the facts of his experience.”36 The effect, however, is not simply cognitive. During this age of impressions, as the infant’s observational capacities absorb every subtle detail of care, an infant’s dispositions and affections are also being shaped.37 The “contour of 31. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 54. 32. On the Spirit sanctifying from the womb, see Ibid., 19. 33. Ibid., 40–46. For Bushnell, if the relationship between baptism and regeneration is confused, so that baptism affects rather than attests regeneration, the need for faithful nurture will be undermined. On the other hand, Bushnell describes this error as “less hurtful” than denying infant baptism altogether and assuming that children of Christians are not regenerated until they have a later conversion experience. 34. Ibid., 27; Note again the parallels to Calvin’s language of the seed of faith or the “tiny spark” of faith in the sanctified infant. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 4.16.19. 35. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 10. 36. Ibid., 240. 37. Bushnell could certainly wax eloquently on the subject of maternal care. “Observe, again, how very quick the child’s eye is, in the passive age of infancy, to catch impressions, and receive the meaning of looks, voices, and motions. It peruses all faces, and colors, and sounds. Every sentiment that looks into its eyes, looks back out of its eyes, and plays in miniature on its countenance. The tear that steals down the cheek of a mother’s suppressed grief, gathers the little infantile face into a responsive sob. With a kind of wondering silence, which is next thing to adoration, it studies the mother in her prayer, and looks up piously with her, in that exploring watch, that signifies unspoken prayer.”; Ibid.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

83

dispositions and affinities” formed through parental care constitutes a “new heart” that emerges along with the child’s own capacities for self-directed action.38 As a pastor, and with one eye always toward the practical implications of any theological system, Bushnell does not leave his readers without explicit advice regarding the “nurture of the Lord.” He is adamant first that Christian parents abandon any expectation that their children will need, at some later point in life, to have a conversion experience during which they receive a new heart. As we have already seen, Bushnell thinks that such expectations lead to a state of religious ambiguity for children, such that they are neither a child of God nor yet in a position to repent and become a child.39 He also discourages parents from placing too much emphasis on explicit religious education, especially teaching children biblical history or Christian doctrines.40 Even before the child is capable of receiving such verbal religious instruction, parents can do much to communicate new life, and teaching doctrine itself, without reference to practical benefit, will only serve to make religion odious. Instead, Bushnell proposes a nurturing environment that immerses the child in the life of faith through ordinary family experiences: “the loveliness of a good life, the repose of faith, the confidence of righteous expectation, the sacred and cheerful liberty of the Spirit—all glowing about the young soul, as a warm and genial nurture, and forming in it, by methods that are silent and imperceptible, a spirit of duty and religious obedience to God.”41 A crucial aspect of such immersion is that the developing child encounters feeling before doctrine. The child will witness the parent’s “feeling of love to God, and dependence on him.”42 By stressing the feeling of love and the experience of faithful living, Bushnell does not intend to suggest that children do not need to receive a proclamation of the gospel. Quite the contrary. The gospel is “really wrapped up in the life of every Christian parent, and beams out from him as a living epistle, before it escapes from the lips, or is taught in words.”43 In addition to emphasizing the general domestic atmosphere that should enfold the life of the child, Bushnell offers a variety of specific parenting tips. He takes a firm view on the connection between body and soul, and consequently cautions

38. Ibid., 238–39. 39. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 50; the extent to which this anxiety was based in reality is unclear. The religious revivals did involve the conversions of young children, and as Reeves observes, Bushnell’s caricatures of Ostrich nurture may be one plausible conclusion from revivalist theology, but they were hardly a fair depiction of the majority of parents attending revival meetings. See Reeves, “Countering Revivalism and Revitalizing Protestantism,” 231; Earlier historiography concurred with Bushnell that New England Puritanism had no way to recognize children as children in religious institutions. See Sandford Fleming, Children and Puritanism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1933), 185. 40. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 18. 41. Ibid., 20. 42. Ibid., 51. 43. Ibid., 22.

84

Responsive Becoming

parents not to overindulge children with food or material possessions.44 His broad approach, however, is far from strict. Parents should forbid as few things as possible and then firmly enforce the boundaries they do set. His advice is finely attuned to the quality of the parent–child relationships. Parents should not be hard or unfeeling or seek to prolong guilt as a form of punishment.45 Nor should they rely on fear of punishment to produce “servile submission.” In all of his advice, Bushnell is extremely sensitive to the connection between a child’s relationship to an earthly parent and subsequent relationship to God. Harsh parenting is not simply harmful to a child’s general well-being, but it is specifically destructive to piety. The effect is all the more pronounced when such parenting practices are justified in the name of religion.46 The kind of parenting that encourages piety is not merely that which exhibits love and, through action, proclaims the gospel. Bushnell also has much to say on the significance of children’s play for piety. Recognizing play to be a “forerunner of religion,” parents should make an effort to “show generous sympathy with the plays of [their] children.”47 Play is particularly significant because of its status as a worthwhile action undertaken for no other motive beyond the action itself. “Play wants no motive but play.”48 As such, play has special religious significance because it provides a point of entry for understanding both true worship and true virtue. In the natural action of play, as with all of Christian nurture, the child gradually and graciously enters into life with God.

Grace in nurture In all of this, Bushnell insists that the kind of nurture that proclaims the gospel to infants is specific to Christian parents. Merely “ethical nurture” does not direct the child “God-ward” and is frequently more concerned with social standards and capacities for worldly or economic success than with Christ-like character.49 While he readily admits that many parents provide nurture that goes under the name of Christian but is actually destructive to faith, Bushnell fails to acknowledge that many of his specific recommendations are hardly under the monopoly of Christians.50 During infancy, what is most important for Bushnell is the tenderness and affection evident in physical care. He argues that, as the child matures, any indication that he loves the good because it is good and right involves “the dawn of a new life.” Yet Bushnell never considers that children of non-Christian parents 44. Ibid., 271–92. 45. Ibid., 301. Mothers in particular were castigated for this tendency. 46. Ibid., 303. 47. Ibid., 341. 48. Ibid., 340. 49. Ibid., 80. 50. Bushnell actually devoted an entire essay to treatment that “discourages piety.” Ibid., 294–313.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

85

might also receive and display such a love. This ambiguous status of Bushnell’s “Christian nurture” raises rather pressing questions regarding the gracious character of regeneration. To what extent, for Bushnell, does a child’s new life or new heart stem from the saving work of Christ or the Spirit? Bushnell is adamant that this “new heart” does not arise from a remembered conversion experience, nor does it depend on conscious awareness of its existence. On the other hand, Bushnell describes the development of Christian character in terms that are relatively consistent with the Reformed Orthodoxy of his day.51 In particular, he carefully insists, at virtually every turn, that the infusion of new life, flowing from parent to child, is at the same time a work of God’s grace and that it presumes the activity of the Spirit.52 Following on the seed imagery, Bushnell observes that both the plant and the seed rely on the sun to “quicken” and sustain their internal action of growth. Likewise, the Spirit quickens both parent and child in their organic connection.53 In insisting that regeneration is a genuinely gratuitous work of the Spirit Bushnell claims that divine agency mediated through ordinary nurture is no different from other appeals to the “means of grace.” He specifically argues that a child’s faith, infused by the Spirit through the parents’ life of faith, is no less immediately bestowed than the faith of a person responding to revivalist preaching. Because the parent actually lives the gospel message, the Spirit “may as well make this living truth effectual as the preaching of the gospel itself.”54 Just as the apostle Paul “begot children” through the gospel, Christian parents are the means of spiritual regeneration of their children by proclaiming the gospel in their lives. The need for divine influence is no different in the case of the apostle than of the Christian parent.55 Furthermore, Bushnell argues that the very design of human life, such that we are born into families and develop from infancy, rather than God “creating us outright” is in and of itself an aspect of God’s grace. For it is as children that we have the opportunity to experience a relationship “that faithfully typifies our wider relationship to Him, the eternal Father and invisible Ruler of the worlds.”56 Although Christology does not figure prominently in Christian Nurture, Bushnell’s account of gracious regeneration of children is also not without reference to Christ. The parents, it is assumed, must have the character of Christ. They will also, little by little, and according to the child’s capacity, help the child organize her own life in Christian terms. She should know that we are all sinners, 51. In his response to critics, Bushnell claimed there was nothing in “the practical view presented which conflicts with, or may not with very slight modifications be adopted into the received opinions of any theological school known among us.” Bushnell, Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects Adjacent Thereto, 53. 52. See, for example, Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 9; 17; 30–32; 34; 48; 205. 53. Ibid., 32. 54. Ibid., 22. In a similar vein, Bushnell appealed to Richard Baxter as an authority that education was as proper a means of grace as preaching. Ibid., 25. 55. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 32. 56. Ibid., 316.

86

Responsive Becoming

but that Christ calls us to be good and can be trusted to make us so. Thus, although formal doctrine should not be taught to young children, Bushnell does believe they can receive “a kind of child’s version” of a framework by which they begin to conceptualize their own moral striving.57 Jesus in particular should be a focal point of explicit religious teaching because “all truth finds in him the concrete form.”58 If parents take their children through Jesus’s birth and childhood, his miracles and preaching, his passion and death, they will be “always unfolding [their] child’s understanding and spiritual nature by that which will be life and healing to both.”59 Seen from one angle then, the scheme of regeneration Bushnell ascribes to Christian children seems little different than that which at least one strong strand of Reformed thought, tracing back to Calvin, has always advocated. Bushnell’s organicism lends his own account an air of originality, but beyond providing a thicker description of the means of grace for children, does Bushnell really propose a different account of grace in childhood than what Calvin preached to his congregation? Calvin’s catechesis for children was certainly heavier on doctrine, and his practical advice to parents emphasized authority, but both Calvin and Bushnell thought that the parent–child relationship was instituted by God as a means of grace. God gives children parents to bring them up in the faith. God also gives everyone the experience of being a child as a way to grasp, early in life, something of their relationship to God.60 Indeed, as we have seen, much of Calvin’s theology depends on this analogy, even as he also claims that God is the true parent from which all other parenting is derivative. And despite Calvin’s robust definition of faith, one that far exceeded the cognitive capacities of children, Bushnell rightly observe that Calvin did not require church members to identify a moment of conversion. Bushnell, described as a “tinkerer” by one recent biographer, was generally incredulous when his theology encountered resistance.61 While he did not anticipate approval among revivalist preachers, Bushnell was also not expecting the strong criticism he encountered from other anti-revivalist theologians. The reception of Christian Nurture, however, was far from favorable. Both Charles Hodge at Princeton and John Nevin at the German Reformed Seminary of Mercersburg reviewed the first edition and expressed considerable concern 57. Ibid., 376–77. 58. Ibid., 379. 59. Ibid. 60. It is worth noting that the similarities in approaches to children’s faith did not end with the role of parents. Both also stressed the importance of children’s piety and suggested that the child’s love to God could be especially cultivated through singing in worship. Ibid., 310; Barbara Pitkin, “Children and the Church in Calvin’s Geneva,” in Calvin and the Church: Papers Presented at the 13th Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 24–26, 2001: Calvin Theological Seminary, the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Grand Rapids, Michigan, ed. David L. Foxgrover (Grand Rapids, MI: Published for the Calvin Studies Society by CRC Product Services, 2002), 155. 61. Mullin, The Puritan as Yankee, 16.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

87

regarding Bushnell’s “naturalism.”62 Both Hodge and Nevin criticized Bushnell for the weakness of his doctrine of original sin and for the absence of supernatural grace in his description of the child’s regeneration.63 Hodge in particular, though in substantial agreement with Bushnell that nurture was the ordinary means for the salvation of Christian children, objected strenuously to Bushnell’s reference to organic laws. For Hodge this implied that spiritual regeneration required nothing outside of natural processes themselves and was, at the end of the day, thoroughly Pelagian.64

Grace imprisoned, grace obscured While both Hodge and Nevin were correct in their assessment that something was problematic in Bushnell’s account of nature and grace, the difficulties, I will suggest, are not precisely those they identified. Bushnell’s description of nurture is not ultimately Pelagian, nor does he deny that something outside of natural processes is necessary for regeneration. Rather, the real problems in Bushnell’s account stem from his tendency to make the activity of the Spirit limited or constrained by the laws of organic nurture. While Bushnell makes a strong case that parental nurture should be understood as a means of grace, one that presupposes and depends on the agency of the Spirit rather than eliminating any need for the Spirit, he also insists that the activity of the Spirit cannot be considered apart from the natural means through which it operates. The problems become most apparent when we return to Christian Nurture to focus not on the child who is regenerated but on the parent who is to be the means of regenerating grace. By considering the parent, one begins to detect signs of a grace that is not allowed to be fully gracious. From the perspective of the parent, sanctification seems to inevitably drift to one of two practical difficulties: the despair of inadequacy and failure, or the false optimism of an ethic that fails to recognize its own inadequacy. The crucial difficulty, and one which is repeated multiple times in Christian Nurture, is Bushnell’s insistence that everything depends on the laws of organic connection and thus on the character which passes by these laws from parent to child. In speaking of the rite of baptism, Bushnell observes that its effect is not actual, but presumptive. It is a sign to parents to give them confidence that God

62. Charles Hodge, “Bushnell on Christian Nurture,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 19 (1847): 502–39; John W. Nevin, “Educational Religion,” Weekly Messenger of the German Reformed Church, July 23, 1847; More recent readers of Bushnell continue to interpret Christian Nurture as overly naturalistic. cf. Howard A. Barnes, Horace Bushnell and the Virtuous Republic (Philadelphia, PA; Metuchen, NJ: American Theological Library Association; Scarecrow Press, 1991), 73. 63. See Hewitt, Regeneration and Morality, 136–41 for an extended discussion. 64. Hodge, “Bushnell on Christian Nurture,” 532.

88

Responsive Becoming

will reproduce their faith and character in their child. In making his argument that regeneration is not accomplished in the act itself, Bushnell asserts “everything depends upon the organic law of character pertaining between the parent and child, the church and the child, thus upon duty and holy living and gracious example.”65 If Bushnell’s reader concludes from such statements that grace is contingent not simply on the presence of parental faith, but also on the quality of character associated with this faith, the conclusion is entirely warranted. Indeed, on the very next page Bushnell himself asks his reader to summon an example of faithful parenting that resulted in the ruin of a child. Bushnell clearly doubts his reader’s ability to recall such an instance, for “the sovereignty of God has always a relation to means, and we are not authorized to think of it, in any case, as separated from means.”66 Thus, while God promises “on his part to dispense that spiritual grace which is necessary,” one gets the distinct sense that human action and grace are in fact mutually dependent.67 Bushnell in fact makes this relationship between nature, grace, and God’s sovereignty more explicit in his strikingly original exegesis of Jacob and Esau. In Genesis 25, God tells Rebekah that of the two nations in her womb, “the older will serve the younger.”68 The apostle Paul, as Bushnell would have well known, comments on this passage by quoting the prophet Malachi—“I have loved Jacob, but I have hated Esau”—in order to advance his own argument regarding the primacy of God’s choice in salvation.69 Despite this, or more likely because of it, Bushnell blithely contends that had Rebekah been a better mother, “Edom might have been a family of Israel.”70 Rebekah, who bears all the blame of this sordid family history, was such a spectacularly bad mother in Bushnell’s estimation that he wonders how it could be possible that she didn’t corrupt both of her children.71 In this discussion, Bushnell makes explicit the notions of providence and of grace that undergird his interpretation. Providence, he contends, takes into account human action, while grace is simply an expression of God’s promise or “paternal goodness.”72 Thus, it is possible for human action to thwart grace, for example, in the case of Esau who was circumcised, but it is not possible for human action to “disappoint God’s providential order and plan.”73 In this scheme Bushnell departs from the Reformed tradition on God’s providence not in the direction

65. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 46. 66. Ibid., 48. 67. Ibid., 47. 68. Gen. 25: 23 NRSV. 69. Rom. 9:13 NRSV. 70. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 150; Bushnell employs an abbreviated form of the exegesis on Rebekah and Esau in the earlier passage as well. Ibid., 48. 71. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 48. 72. Ibid., 149. 73. Ibid., 150.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

89

of Arminians, but more in the direction of Schleiermacher.74 It is not, at least in Christian Nurture, that grace is made available and rejected, but it is that the historical circumstances are not conducive for some to receive grace. The practical implications of Bushnell’s combination of grace and nurture for Christian parents are evident throughout Christian Nurture. Bushnell is only able to make his case for the child’s regeneration by raising the expectations of Christ-like character in parents to quite ambitious levels. The life of God must reign in the parent in order to be infused into children. Parents will have the Spirit for their children if they themselves live in the Spirit “as they ought.”75 The character of parents will “almost necessarily” be replicated in children and Bushnell admonishes parents “as you are responsible for what you are, you must also be responsible for the ruin brought on them.”76 Lack of virtue in the parent will “fatally corrupt” the child.77 Although Bushnell recognizes in theory that no parent is perfect, his doctrine of parenting as a means of grace allows little space for the Pauline “treasure in jars of clay.” Here, it seems, the analogy between parenting and preaching hits something of a snag.78 For the apostle Paul, the weakness of the vessel is precisely what allows God’s grace to be visible. For Bushnell, weakness of the vessel scarcely seems to be an option. Bushnell intends such statements to contribute to a parent’s motivation for virtue. In fact, he contends that the virtue of children is one of the strongest inducements to continual moral striving of parents and that God has appointed children to parents “to keep us in a perpetual frame of love.”79 Whereas with respect to children Bushnell carefully stresses that their genuine goodness involves doing the right action for its own sake, for parents he seems perfectly content to assume that their best motive is not the good itself, but rather to avoid parental failure. Although in Christian Nurture Bushnell generally speaks of parents, rather than mothers and fathers, he reserves his strongest notes of criticism, as well as his strongest exhortations to virtue, for mothers.80 While two Christian parents

74. See B. A. Gerrish, Tradition and the Modern World: Reformed Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 110–19 for a discussion of Schleiermacher’s doctrine of election as a “natural fact, bound up with the historical conditions of the kingdom’s progress”; Bushnell, particularly in his earlier years, admired the limited writings of Schleiermacher that he was able to access in English translation. In his later years, he took great pains to distance himself from Schleiermacher’s heterodox Trinitarianism. See Mullin, The Puritan as Yankee, 97–98, 152–53, 174. 75. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 239. 76. Ibid., 118. 77. Ibid., 262. 78. II. Cor. 4:7, NRSV. 79. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 58. 80. On the stronger burden for mothers, see Bushnell’s comments regarding the “handling of the nursery,” Ibid., 241; on the influence of Bushnell’s own mother on his faith formation and the blending of the maternal and divine in his thought, see Mark Edwards, “‘My God and My Good Mother’: The Irony of Horace Bushnell’s Gendered Republic,” Religion and American Culture 13, no. 1 (December 1, 2003): 13–14.

90

Responsive Becoming

are ideal, he suggests that perhaps “only the mother” can also suffice.81 As the one primarily responsible for early nurture, the love of the mother reaches “semidivine” proportions. “If she could sound her consciousness deeply enough, she would find a certain religiousness in it, measurable by no scale of mere earthly and temporal love.”82 The psychological effects of such rigorous demands on parents have not gone unnoticed, either in Bushnell’s era or since.83 For Bushnell, the efficacy of grace is constrained within the capacities of parents, especially of mothers, and it requires no great leap of imagination to see how such a motive to goodness might quickly descend to a form of legalism or to self-recrimination and despair. If the despair stemming from a view of grace that is somehow limited by human nature is encountered in Bushnell’s thought, so too is the tendency to moral accommodation. Large sections of Bushnell’s treatise are generally ignored or dismissed by contemporary readers as odd expressions of nineteenthcentury American optimism run amok.84 Bushnell, employing a notion of Lamarckian genetic inheritance, envisions a future in which the “Christian stock” out-populates all other races. In one sense, Bushnell’s ambition reflects the idealism one might expect when the tension between grace and nature is resolved. Bushnell thinks that Christian nurture has the potential to restore human reproduction to a prelapsarian state.85 In other respects, however, his vision is obviously and severely limited. Not only does he endorse the racial and gender stereotypes common to his social location, but his description of the Christian character also contains only the most minor adjustments from the existing standards of the white, educated, middle class of his day.86 In addition to piety, the truly Christian life involves temperance, refusing extravagance, diligent work, and honesty. It embodies the best of eighteenthcentury New England character: “Hence it is that upon the rocky, stubborn soil, under the harsh and frowning skies of our New England, we behold so much of high prosperity, so much of physical well-being, and ornament. And the wealth created is diffused about as evenly as the piety.”87 The end result of this 81. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 206. 82. Ibid., 237. 83. See Margaret Bendroth, “Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture,” in The Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 363. 84. For one notable exception that takes these passages seriously and provides thoughtful commentary, see David Torbett, “Horace Bushnell and ‘Distinctions of Color’: Interpreting an Ambivalent Essay on Race,” Prism 14, no. 2 (September 1, 1999): 3–24. 85. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1967, 218. 86. As John Mulder notes in the Introduction to the 1979 edition of Christian Nurture, many of the controversial passages relating to race were excised from the 1916 Yale University Press Edition at the request of the Bushnell family. John M. Mulder, “Introduction,” in Christian Nurture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979), xxvi. 87. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 1979, 211.

Horace Bushnell on Nurture as a Means of Grace

91

Weberian ethic is a group of people accruing wealth and power and gradually out-populating the rest of the world. It is easy to dismiss such a disturbing picture as simply one among countless other examples of Christian racism, patriarchy, anti-Semitism, and colonialism. Many of Bushnell’s contemporary readers have done precisely this, preferring to read the specific content of Bushnell’s moral vision as a product of his context rather than his theology. Bushnell was doubtless a man of his time, but we should perhaps not be so quick to assume that his theology and his normative vision of human life can be so easily separated. After having affixed the gracious transformation of the person to natural processes, should we then expect those processes to suddenly move in a dramatically different direction? It is worth noting that the vision of nurture that Bushnell endorses does not provide much leverage for social critique. Parents must be virtuous, but what if they are only so by the standards of their socially and economically stratified religious communities? Bushnell mentions the ideal of a Christ-like character, but he gives no indication in Christian Nurture that there is any rigorous imitatio Christi at work. By restricting the child’s sanctification to the capacities of the parents, and pushing the parents to live a Christ-like life for the sake of their children, the center of gravity of sanctification has shifted almost completely to humanity. Missing from the equation is Calvin’s Christological linkage of sanctification with repentance. Missing is the life that is meant to assume the form, moment-bymoment, of turning away from sin and turning to Christ. The parent, nominally, is meant to live a life that reflects Christ, but in practice she is directed to think of the life she wishes for her child. In his haste to avoid anything that smacks of revivalism, has Bushnell missed that potency that lifelong conversion has for invigorating Christian life?

Conclusion: Grace revisited The Bushnell one encounters in Christian Nurture, reflecting the first decade of his career as a pastor-theologian, offers a promising picture of childhood sanctification, one which takes the distinctive nature of children seriously and is thoroughly attentive to the humanity of the child. While Bushnell speaks extensively of God’s grace in this process, the idea of a divine agency that works in and through this nature, without being contained or limited by it, never emerges. Bushnell is particularly interesting in this regard because, as we shall soon see, contemporary studies of children in developmental sciences encounter many of the same difficulties. A scientific study of parenting and development can hold up an unattainable standard of parenting excellence, while simultaneously enclosing moral standards within the scope of existing social mores. Can theological reflection avoid these concerns while still retaining a strong commitment to human nature, to the particular embodied and social existence that constitutes our distinct form of creatureliness?

92

Responsive Becoming

Christian Nurture was actually not the last word that Horace Bushnell had to offer on the subject.88 In 1848 Bushnell experienced what some biographers call his “third conversion,” but which should probably more accurately be described as a mystical experience.89 After this time, Bushnell’s writings on Christian character, without departing from the approach to children that he outlines in Nurture, began to assume a role for direct, unmediated, spiritual influence.90 While something along these lines might offer an antidote to the difficulties we have discovered in his earlier work, Bushnell himself revised Christian Nurture after these later writings, and he never suggested that the account of grace provided there was an inadequate representation of his mature thought. I will ultimately suggest that the weaknesses we encounter in Bushnell’s justly influential account of nurture as a means of grace can only be remedied when, as with Calvin, our practical explorations of the subject’s transformation are placed alongside a commitment to the objective grounding of sanctification, a commitment that sanctification is both the promise of God and the work of God. This recognition of the primacy of divine agency must then be matched by a corresponding commitment to the potential openness of the person to divine transformation. In Reformed sanctification, this openness is marked by the pattern of turning, of death and life that Calvin calls repentance. In one sense Bushnell is right to reject the idea of a mandatory conversion experience. The pattern of turning cannot be restricted to just one moment. But he was wrong to omit, for both parents and children, the deeper and lifelong conversion that takes place through repentance. When the openness to spiritual transformation occurs through this pattern of turning, then parental imperfections are not an impediment to the Spirit’s sanctifying grace. Instead they provide an opportunity for parents to model the very repentance that children themselves will need to embrace throughout their lives.

88. Howard Barnes narrates a strong progression in Bushnell’s thought from “congregational unitarian” to a largely orthodox, Reformed congregationalist. Barnes’s categories, however, are far too rigid and in particular he fails to do justice to the more conservative aspects of the early Bushnell. Barnes, Horace Bushnell and the Virtuous Republic; for a more nuanced account of Bushnell’s theological evolution, see Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 111–78. 89. Mullin, The Puritan as Yankee, 128–30. Along with many nineteenth-century Protestants, Bushnell had taken to reading the writings (condemned by Rome) of the French Catholic mystic Madame Guyon. Asked by his wife what he had experienced, Bushnell was reported to have simply replied “the Gospel.” 90. See, for example, “The Immediate Knowledge of God” in Horace Bushnell, Sermons on Living Subjects (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1877), 114–28; see Lee J. Makowski, Horace Bushnell on Christian Character Development (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999) for an excellent analysis of Bushnell’s later sermons on character and transformation.

Chapter 4 H UM A N E VO LU T IO N , C O O P E R AT IO N , A N D A F F E C T

In his research on infant cognition, child psychologist Colwyn Trevarthen argues that the human infant is not simply born with the cognitive capacities for intersubjectivity but also has powerful social motivations that propel her to communicate and relate to others. The infant desires to explore and then share meaning through play with companions.1 Trevarthen’s perspective, which emphasizes not only the infant’s need for nurture and care but also the roots of a lifelong pursuit of learning in a social world, is provocative from an evolutionary perspective. How did we become creatures who, from our earliest days, find joy through the experience of shared meaning? Why are we born not simply wanting to discover but wanting to discover in fellowship or friendship with others? Evolutionary anthropology does not set out to answer these specific questions about infant social joy, but recent theories surrounding the evolution of uniquely human sociality do indeed illuminate the evolutionary origins of such profoundly prosocial motivation in infants. In this chapter, I investigate the stories told by evolutionary anthropologists of our hominin lineage in order to gain insight into the deeply rooted human capacities for social and moral formation. The goal, from a theological perspective, is not to replace a theological anthropology with an evolutionary one. In the constructive account in Chapter 6, theological commitments and concerns will remain foundational. Rather, the hope is that understanding these origins to the best of our current ability will help us think theologically about our embodied becoming, including our formation as moral agents. As we have seen in the theological analysis of the first three chapters, Reformed theology in its doctrine of sanctification tends to emphasize the relational context of human transformation. But these theological voices have differed regarding conceptions of divine grace and the role of natural human relationships and formative processes. This interdisciplinary study of human evolution and human development will not simplistically resolve these issues, but it will provide resources for the broader constructive theological work. Specifically, 1. Colwyn Trevarthen, “‘Stepping Away from the Mirror’: Pride and Shame in Adventures of Companionship—Reflections on the Nature and Emotional Needs of Infant Intersubjectivity,” in Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis, ed. C. S. Carter et al. (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003), 55–84.

94

Responsive Becoming

it will highlight the centrality and distinctiveness of certain aspects of human nature, including development, plasticity, and learning. It will also illuminate how these features relate to a hypersocial humanity—a species that is formed through embodied relationship with others and that is awake to goods of human relationships apart from their survival value. None of these aspects of human nature is, strictly speaking, new to theology. Indeed, it is on the convergence between theology and the human sciences that much of the broader argument hinges. The interdisciplinary accounts provide confirmation of the theological anthropology. Aspects of human nature that bear much theological weight are here understood as deeply rooted in natural human history, not merely read into human nature or the effect of divine grace. Engagement with the human sciences confirms just how essential and deeply rooted these aspects of humanity really are. Lastly, this picture of human evolution displays a creature who, by virtue of this embodied and intrahuman sociality, is also open to transcendent sociality. It is in and through human relationships, in the deep time of evolutionary history, that humans have become persons who are open to God. For theological questions regarding the relationship of grace to human nature, this connection between embodied development and openness to the transcendent will be crucial moving ahead. This argument will unfold in three stages. First, I begin by looking at a transition moment in evolutionary theory and its implications for the study of human evolution. A group of scholars representing several disciplines, including biology, anthropology, and philosophy of science, are currently arguing that the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis, while still tremendously important, does not capture the complexity and diversity of evolutionary processes. The new points of emphasis in what is termed the “extended evolutionary synthesis” (EES) are, as we shall see, particularly relevant for the study of human evolution. Next, I turn to the human evolutionary context and examine how the need for cooperation and mutual dependence in the Pleistocene era propelled the evolution of a distinctive human sociality—like that observed by Colwyn Trevarthen in his work with children. I will focus on two forms of cooperative behavior that are well studied: cooperation in the raising of children and learning as a cooperative activity. Lastly, I reflect on the theological significance of this evolution trajectory, focusing on the possibility for a transcendent sociality that is enabled by material and bodily, as well as cultural processes.

The extended evolutionary synthesis Standard evolutionary theory (SET) emerged in the twentieth century as an elegant and persuasive synthesis of Darwinism and modern genetics. Most of us learn some version of SET, also termed the Modern Synthesis, in secondary and postsecondary education, and its basic principles enjoy widespread consensus today, even among those biologists who argue for an extended theoretical approach. The standard view holds that organisms evolve over time, as changes in genotype through genetic mutation lead to differential survival and reproduction, with traits that enhance survival and reproduction becoming more common in the

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

95

population. Natural selection is the primary driver of change, the genome is the mechanism of transmission from one generation to the next, and mutation is the means by which novelty is introduced. While none of the scholars involved in the current debate about evolutionary theory disputes the reality or importance of these mechanisms, those arguing for a paradigm shift do dispute the exclusive theoretical prominence of each of the concepts in the existing framework.2 These scholars cite alternative factors, including niche construction, developmental plasticity, and alternative inheritance, as crucial for understanding evolutionary processes. In niche construction, organisms alter the environments in which they live, and these changes are inherited by future generations, altering the ecological pressures of natural selection. Developmental plasticity refers to an organism’s ability to develop distinct phenotypes depending on the particular environmental conditions and pressures that obtain throughout development. Instead of thinking of the genome as a blueprint for phenotype, genes can be expressed in a variety of ways, depending on the environmental cues that regulate them.3 Multiple inheritance theories expand the genetic focus of SET to include epigenetic, ecological, behavioral, and cultural inheritance. While proponents of the Modern Synthesis would concur that these are evolutionarily relevant phenomena, they argue that each can be accounted for in the current theory and that no extension is needed. EES theorists, such as Kevin Laland, however, maintain that important differences in significance and emphasis are at stake. In the EES, mutation is not the only source of novelty and natural selection is not the sole “architect of function.”4 Through niche construction, the organism is itself an active player in shaping the forces of selection and therefore shares with selection a causal and directive role.5 Phenotypic changes based on existing plasticity are also thought to potentially lead evolution, with changes in genes coming after and potentially enhancing or fine-tuning change that originated at the level of the phenotype.6 The result is a process of greater complexity that proponents argue is more adequate to the task of shaping future research agendas.

2. For a brief presentation of the debate by proponents of both sides, see Kevin Laland et al., “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature News 514, no. 7521 (October 9, 2014): 161–64; for a more sustained defense of the extended synthesis, see Kevin Laland et al., “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Its Structure, Assumptions and Predictions,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 282, no. 1813 (2015): 1–14. 3. Mary Jane, West-Eberhard, in Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); with respect to human evolution, see Christopher W. Kuzawa and Jared M. Bragg, “Plasticity in Human Life History Strategy,” Current Anthropology 53, no. S6 (2012): S369–S382. 4. Agustín Fuentes, “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche toward an Integrated Anthropology,” Current Anthropology 57 (June 2016): S15. 5. Laland et al., “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,” 6. 6. Ibid., 8.

96

Responsive Becoming

What is at stake between these two perspectives is not, by and large, the processes themselves. Most theorists involved agree that the mechanisms—both those of the standard and extended framework—are legitimate. The disagreement, however, is in part one of frequency: Which mechanisms have been more significant for the evolution of life on earth? And, subsequently, the difference is also philosophical: How do we best describe evolution as an overarching process? I present this debate not as one who can advance it—a role for which I am hardly qualified—but because the issues are particularly salient for the study of human evolution. Each of the processes mentioned by Laland and his colleagues is highly pronounced among humans. We are the consummate niche constructors. Human learning and culture allows for profound inheritance mechanisms apart from genetic inheritance, and humans undergo a lengthy period of development with a wide degree of developmental plasticity. Whether these mechanisms justify a new overarching approach to biological evolution or not, it is hard to avoid their significance for thinking about humans, particularly with respect to human sociality and cognition. Because of the degree of consensus among SET and EES proponents on the mechanisms themselves, the scholarship I present here, at its most basic level, does not stand or fall with the outcome of this debate. Thinking in terms of the EES, however, does offer several advantages for interdisciplinary dialogue with theology. Most importantly, the complexity of the approach does not reductively focus on materialism but provides an opportunity to integrate multiple aspects of human nature—neurological, genetic, social, cognitive, and psychological. Human belief and human perception of meaning can be theorized as part of the human niche and significant for evolution. Such an integrative approach also allows theorists to see aspects of human nature as complex emergent systems rather than individual traits. Whereas the Modern Synthesis encourages theorists to reflect on individual traits and their relative fitness advantages, EES recognizes that a “trait” such as the capacity for long-standing affective interpersonal relationships might not in fact be observable as a distinct “trait” that has been selected in a linear fashion. As anthropologist Agustín Fuentes observes with respect to human symbolic capacities, “Our way of being arises from the interactions of many elements (bodies, brains, senses, perceptions, experiences, other beings, etc.), but none of these has in itself the specific property of symbolic experience—it emerges from the interrelationships of these components.”7 As such, it would be reductive to say of symbolic capacity that it enhances fitness or is adaptive for any singular purpose, even though it is a result of evolution and a continuing factor in evolution. We will find this same sort of emergent system as we consider human capacity for intersubjectivity. Such complexity in evolutionary explanations reduces the likelihood that an evolutionary approach will be in competition with theological accounts of human sociality and increases the likelihood that human meaning 7. On an “emergent system” in human evolution, see Agustín Fuentes, “What Evolution, the Human Niche, and Imagination Can Tell Us about the Emergence of Religion,” Theology Today 72, no. 2 (2015): 180.

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

97

in endeavors such as theology is understood to be part of the distinctly human niche. As we proceed through our survey of human social evolution, I will argue that this complex, emergent system of social capacities creates the possibility for a transcendent sociality, a vertical intersubjectivity that need not be accounted for as a singular adaptation that enhances human survival and reproduction.

Mammalian sociality Before we look at the origin of distinctly human forms of intersubjectivity, it is essential to understand the biological basis for human sociality, which is deeply rooted in our mammalian past. The live birth of highly dependent young and the care that all mammal young receive from lactating mothers have led to biological urges to nurture on the part of mothers, and to physical expressions of affect on the part of offspring. Mammals can vary in the kind and extent of care that is given, but they all share these common features.8 Neuroscientists have recently begun to identify the biological and hormonal basis for mammalian nurture and bonding and to connect neurological and endocrine development to the kind of physical nurture offspring receive.9 With respect to primates, Harlow’s famous, though morally questionable, rhesus monkey experiments of the 1960s showed how depriving infants of maternal licking could shape infant social development and subsequent behavior. Maternal deprivation resulted in socially withdrawn offspring who ended up being negligent or abusive mothers.10 Neurobiologists now know that these types of nurturing behaviors actually shape the material structure and development of the infant brain.11 The mother–offspring relationship, and the neurological and hormonal substrate that enables it, has also created the possibility for more extensive sociality among mammals. In many species, bonds between parents and offspring, mating adults, and siblings are the foundation for broader social networks. Ethologist Marc Bekoff, who has spent his career studying the emotional lives of animals, has published numerous stories of animal empathy and concern, both in a maternal context and between unrelated individuals of the same species and even interspecies empathy and concern.12 As Bekoff notes, these stories are not

8. Walter Goldschmidt, The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 13–16, 54–55. 9. Jaak Panksepp, The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions, 1st ed., Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012), 283–349. 10. Harry F. Harlow, Love in Infant Monkeys (San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1959). 11. Melvin Konner, The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind, 1st ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 369–71. 12. Marc Bekoff, The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2007), 70–76.

98

Responsive Becoming

surprising given that many animals share the brain structures and neurochemicals that are the basis for human emotions such as empathy and joy.13 When it comes to primate sociality, especially of our closest primate relatives, Frans de Waal has been a pioneer in the study of prosocial emotions like empathy and sympathy. De Waal has documented a variety of primate behaviors displaying these emotions, such as the effort by third parties to console the loser in aggressive encounters.14 While great apes clearly have this same mammalian capacity for social bonding, other researchers have noted important differences in great ape and human sociality. Michael Tomasello argues that chimpanzee social lives are structured around competition and that even those collaborative activities that are observed fit into the basic competitive paradigm. Chimps, for example, might travel together in foraging groups and then act on an individual and competitive basis when they locate a fruiting tree.15 Likewise, their social–cognitive capacities are based on the need to compete because these capacities enable them to recognize the goals and viewpoints of competitors.16 Even the friendships that form among chimpanzees fit this basic pattern. Chimps form coalitions for the sake of competition and dominance rather than for cooperation. Although chimpanzee helping behavior is supported in a variety of experiments, it only manifests when the competition for food is not at stake.17 Thus, while chimpanzees are highly social, and in some respects outperform humans in social–cognitive tasks, they have a distinctly chimpanzee sociality. Humans, by contrast, regularly form coalitions for the sake of cooperation, even from a very young age. Humans also display substantially more pronounced prosocial motivations, including the desire to share intersubjectivity and meaning with others. While other primates have social desires, the eagerness of social interactions, measured by frequency and degree of positive affect surrounding the interaction, is not the same.18 Why then the social change in humans from our nearest ancestors? The most recent evolutionary theories approach this question by examining the kinds of cooperative behaviors that would have been important to ancient hominins. These theorists argue that such behaviors introduced a substantial change in the human niche, driving the evolution of prosocial cognition and motivation. In the discussion to follow I focus on two of the most prominent cooperative behaviors in the hominin lineage: cooperative breeding and cooperative foraging.

13. Ibid., 10–11; 33–34. 14. F. B. M. de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved, The University Center for Human Values Series (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 29–36. 15. Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 21. 16. Ibid., 22. 17. Ibid., 28–31. 18. Sarah Hrdy, “Development Plus Social Selection in the Emergence of ‘Emotionally Modern’ Humans,” in Childhood: Origins, Evolution, & Implications, ed. Courtney L. Meehan and Alyssa N. Crittenden (Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2016), 35.

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

99

Cooperative breeding The life history pattern for great apes is largely determined by the need to grow large bodies, and, more importantly, large brains. Early life history is thus characterized by a lengthy period of dependency—roughly four years for great ape infancy— that ends with weaning and the offspring’s ability to independently provision itself. Infancy is followed by a period of juvenile growth and a brief adolescence, a total of twelve years before reaching reproductive maturity. Among the great apes, humans depart from this life history pattern in several significant ways.19 Humans have an earlier weaning, followed by a period of childhood dependency where offspring rely on nutritional provisioning of specially prepared foods from parents and various members of the community. Their physical mobility is still limited and thus they also rely on other community members for safety. During this time, bodily growth is slow, but the brain grows rapidly, to approximately 90 percent of adult weight. The childhood phase is followed by a juvenile period, which includes a cognitive transition not observed in other apes, as well as an ongoing need for nutritional provisioning, even though juveniles are self-feeding and have no need for specially prepared foods. The onset of puberty then begins a lengthy adolescence, accompanied by a growth spurt, sexual maturation, and greater interest and participation in adult activities. These somatic differences between human and other ape life histories are closely related to another significant difference between human development and that of other great apes: the role of adults other than the mother. As primatologist Sarah Hrdy has observed, nonhuman great apes are fiercely protective of their infants and don’t allow other adults or older siblings to have access to them.20 With humans, however, mothers rely on the provisioning and caregiving assistance of others in the community. This pattern is particularly apparent in hunter-gatherer societies, the form of human life that most closely resembles that of human ancestors until the agricultural revolution of about 12,000 years ago. For these human communities, dense patterns of social care are the norm. The shared care observed in these communities has been essential to the evolution of the distinctive human life history pattern. Assistance with provisioning and childrearing allows humans to grow larger brains even though they wean infants earlier than other great apes. This early weaning, in turn, allows human mothers to have shorter interbirth intervals and therefore maintain higher rates of reproduction. Patterns of cooperation in human childrearing are thus understood to be essential to human life, but how and when did these behaviors evolve? While the

19. For a summary, see Jennifer Thompson and Andrew J. Nelson, “Childhood Patterns of Growth in the Genus Homo,” in Childhood: Origins, Evolution, and Implications, ed. Courtney L. Meehan and Alyssa N. Crittenden (Santa Fe, NM: School for the Advanced Research Press; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016). 20. Sarah Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 233–37.

100

Responsive Becoming

precise timing remains elusive, the fossil record does provide some clues. Brain development in particular offers a guide, because brains are energetically expensive organs to grow and maintain. Primatologists Karin Isler and Carel van Schaik have recently argued that primates have a “gray ceiling,” a limit to brain size after which reproductive rates decrease to a point where the population growth rate is too low to recover from environmental instability and population crashes.21 They calculate this upper limit to be roughly the brain size of extant great apes and theorize that humans must have been able to surmount this difficulty by relying on cooperative breeding to raise reproductive and population growth rates. Provisioning of young with nutrient-dense foods, such as meat or root organ plants, would have allowed still-dependent infants to grow larger brains while their mothers devoted energy to gestation and lactation for future offspring. The most likely point for a well-developed network of allomaternal care is at the emergence of Homo erectus roughly 1.8 million years ago, when hominin brains had in some cases doubled in size.22 This analysis is supported by studies of brain growth in H. erectus infant fossils, which suggest a rapidity of growth that would have required provisioning of foods in addition to suckling.23 More intermediate forms of cooperative care would likely have been present before this time, a hypothesis which receives some support from recent findings on australopithecus infant size, as well as from the more modest increases in brain size found in homo fossils that predate H. erectus.24 There is widespread consensus that cooperative breeding was an essential aspect in the evolution of a distinctly human life span, and based on the paleoanthropological evidence many theorists locate this hominin behavior at least as far back as the emergence of H. erectus.25 Cooperative breeding, however, is not simply of interest because it enabled humans to develop larger brains and enjoy a longer period of growth. According to Sarah Hrdy’s influential theory in her book Mothers and Others, once it began, cooperative breeding also became an important feature of the human niche, and as such would have influenced both the genotypes and phenotypes of early humans. These caregiving patterns would have built upon and furthered the evolution of the social and emotional capacities that already featured prominently in mammalian and primate life. As we look at the rationale behind this theory regarding the emergence of cooperative breeding and its effects on human social capacities, it is worth 21. Karin Isler and Carel P. van Schaik, “How Our Ancestors Broke through the Gray Ceiling,” Current Anthropology 53, no. S6 (2012): S453–S465. 22. See Susan C. Antón, Richard Potts, and Leslie C. Aiello, “Evolution of Early Homo: An Integrated Biological Perspective,” Science (New York) 345, no. 6192 (2014): 1236828–33 for a detailed chart on increases in brain size in hominin fossils. 23. Thompson and Nelson, “Childhood Patterns of Growth in the Genus Homo,” 87. 24. Jeremy M. Desilva, “A Shift toward Birthing Relatively Large Infants Early in Human Evolution,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, no. 3 (2011): 1022–27; Antón et al., “Human Evolution. Evolution of Early Homo.” 25. See also Hrdy, “Development Plus Social Selection in the Emergence of ‘Emotionally Modern’ Humans,” 19 and Antón et al., “Human Evolution. Evolution of Early Homo.”

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

101

noting that each of the mechanisms emphasized by the extended synthesis can be observed. First, phenotypic plasticity in social capacities is thought to have been crucial in the initiation of practices like carrying or provisioning an infant that is not one’s own. Chimpanzees provide some confirmation that this sort of phenotypic plasticity might have been present in the common ancestor of chimps and humans. While chimps, as we have seen, exhibit some prosocial behaviors, these are much more pronounced among human-reared than exclusively motherreared chimps. Human-reared chimps are also more communicative and better able to understand the needs and perspectives of others.26 It seems that nurture in human social relationships draws out latent social capacities in chimpanzees. If our ancient ancestors had this same sort of plasticity, variation in traits like affective motivation, social tolerance, and awareness and attention to others and their needs might have been crucial for the earliest steps toward cooperative breeding. The example of human-reared chimps, however, also highlights the role of niche construction. Once ancient hominins began to practice early and rudimentary forms of cooperation in childrearing, these practices would constitute a change in the species’ niche. The young who were recipients of this care, much like humanreared chimps today, would, in the course of their own development, experience greater social interaction. This exposure would in turn shape the phenotype of the developing hominin. As Sarah Hrdy puts it, “New modes of child-rearing mean changing our minds—literally.”27 It would also provide a new set of selection pressures. Hrdy theorizes that such a caregiving environment would select for certain kinds of infants—for those who are socially precocious. Infants who were better able to attract the attention and affection of “helpers,” like fathers, grandmothers, or older siblings, would thrive. Likewise, infants who were better able to monitor the intentions of others, particularly as these intentions affect the infant herself, would be more adept at securing necessary care in a cooperative environment. Such selection pressures could lead to the kinds of social capacities that Trevarthen has found so remarkable in infants, especially an emerging awareness of the self as one who exists within a social world and is responsive to the approval or disapproval of others.28 Cooperative breeding is thus an example of an organism changing its own niche, which in turn affects both the development of individuals and the selection pressures operating on them. While natural selection is clearly operative here, it is also an example of evolution that is led by phenotypic change, with genetic adaptation following and fine-tuning changes that have occurred at the level of phenotype. These phenotypic changes are also being passed on through alternative inheritance mechanisms. Behaviors such as patterns of care for the young are transmitted through cultural channels rather than being hardwired through the genome. In this respect, the 26. Hrdy, “Development Plus Social Selection in the Emergence of ‘Emotionally Modern’ Humans,” 32–33. 27. Ibid., 23. 28. For a more extensive discussion of this argument, see Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 114–41.

102

Responsive Becoming

social–cultural and biological cannot be neatly distinguished but are inextricably intertwined in the evolutionary processes.29 For our purposes it is especially important to underscore the changed psychology that is thought to have accompanied the switch to cooperative breeding. While cooperative behaviors would have been advantageous for survival and reproduction, the motives thought to have evolved to support these behaviors are prosocial ones.30 The supposition is that certain forms of social existence emerged as intrinsically rewarding. Through cooperative breeding the network of social bonds deepened and a desire to exist in affective relationships became a more pervasive feature of hominin social life. Such a motivation is thought to have driven prosocial behaviors like sharing food or helping others and to have been increasingly supported by a distinct set of cognitive capacities. Some of these capacities would have been new to primates and others an intensification of existing traits. They include an initial social tolerance, attention to others, an interest in the thoughts, intentions and feelings of others, and the ability to share meaning—to focus with another person on a third entity with awareness of the other as an agent like the self. All of this is particularly significant for theology, because once these prosocial traits became intrinsically rewarding for early hominins, their use would not be restricted to the initial survival benefit that they afforded. These traits become part of humanity’s complex sociality, extending even to the human desire to connect to the divine. Comparative studies of primates who practice cooperative breeding with noncooperatively breeding sister taxa provide some confirmation that the introduction of cooperative behaviors could have influenced the development of social and cognitive capacities in humans. Cooperatively breeding primates in the Callitrichid family display strong prosocial motivations and outperform non-cooperatively breeding sister taxa in various measures of prosociality, including social tolerance, active food sharing, vocalizations, and spontaneous help toward others.31 Studies of food sharing in primates are particularly illuminating, as food sharing among adults is only present in species that also practice cooperative breeding, further

29. Goldschmidt, The Bridge to Humanity, 19. 30. Sarah Hrdy is especially attentive to the substantial differences between chimpanzees and humans with respect to social motivation, and the need for social motivation to precede the development of social tools such as language. See Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 36–38. 31. Judith Maria Burkart and Carel P. van Schaik, “The Cooperative Breeding Perspective Helps in Pinning Down When Uniquely Human Evolutionary Processes Are Necessary,” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e34; Judith Burkart and Carel Schaik, “Cognitive Consequences of Cooperative Breeding in Primates?” Animal Cognition 13, no. 1 (2010): 1–19; for a review of the research, see Carel P. van Schaik and Judith Burkart, “Mind the Gap: Cooperative Breeding and the Evolution of Our Unique Features,” in Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals, ed. Peter M. Kappeler, Joan B. Silk, and Göttinger Freilandtage (Berlin, London, and New York: Springer, 2010), 477–96; Hrdy, “Development Plus Social Selection in the Emergence of ‘Emotionally Modern’ Humans,” 16–17.

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

103

suggestive of a link between reproductive practices and other social behaviors.32 Comparison of early human development with that of other great apes also yields some indirect support for theories about a connection between breeding behavior and social capacities. Brain development in human infants indicates they are socially precocious compared with chimp infants, despite the fact that in other areas such as motor skills, chimps develop more rapidly. A wealth of data on infant development, which we will examine more carefully in Chapter 5, certainly confirms that human infants are highly interested in their social worlds and social experiences. It seems that a specific set of social capacities is important for human infants and not for chimps.33 Based on these evolutionary processes, it is not hard to tell a story about the emergence of cooperative breeding. An environmental change, such as the fluctuating climate of the Pleistocene, could have favored behaviors like cooperative breeding that stabilized reproductive success during less favorable climates. Primates likely already had the phenotypic plasticity to engage in some of these behaviors. Once cooperative breeding began, however, it became part of the early human niche, and would have exerted developmental and selective pressures of its own, creating a feedback loop leading to more successful and efficient cooperative behavior. Likewise, genetic adaptations that facilitated cooperative breeding, such as greater social tolerance, would have increased within the population leading to genetic divergence. If the theory and dating of cooperative breeding are correct, it means that the human lineage, for the past 2 million years or more, has been shaped by cooperation. Early humans utilized basic mammalian social impulses to build and strengthen a niche that was increasingly characterized by investment in relationships with those in the immediate surroundings. This niche in turn created the selective pressures and developmental conditions that favored the affective motivations to establish and maintain these relationships. This is not to say that competition and selfishness were no longer factors, but these had to coexist with a deep reliance on others for survival. Such dependence would perhaps have had a profound effect on infants, instilling a need for affect—or what anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt called “affect hunger”—as the basic drive that would ensure other needs such as food and protection would be met. As Goldschmidt argues however, such a social drive, once established, would not necessarily be restricted to its initial evolutionary context. Humans throughout life continue to display a profound need for acceptance and recognition of others, and this need propels social practices such as learning and the use of norms to regulate communal life. “This hunger for affection,” Goldschmidt writes, “is essentially insatiable; it continues as a wish for acceptance, approval, and influence in the ever-expanding 32. Adrian Jaeggi and Carel Schaik, “The Evolution of Food Sharing in Primates,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65, no. 11 (2011): 2125–40. 33. Hrdy, “Development Plus Social Selection in the Emergence of ‘Emotionally Modern’ Humans,” 36–41.

104

Responsive Becoming

community in which every child is to live. It forms the source of those feelings of interdependence that are essential to social life and at the same time inspires the competitive quest for approval.”34 This kind of language, of course, brings us very close to theological territory. Goldschmidt’s “quest for approval” among humans not only echoes Bushnell’s analysis of the parent–child relationship, but it also parallels the psychological dynamic noted by Reformed theologians where the believer has a desperate need to know he is accepted by God. At the very least the parallel confirms that theological attention to what I have called “affective social acceptance” touches on a deeply rooted and profoundly natural human need. It also suggests that in responding to this need theology cannot ignore these embodied origins in human relationships.

Cooperation and the emergence of learning While evolutionary anthropologists make a strong case that the expansion of human brains was only possible through cooperative breeding and provisioning of children, the flip side of this argument is that provisioning by fathers, grandmothers and even unrelated individuals must have included newer food sources that were sufficiently dense of nutrients to support brain growth. The most likely candidates for these food sources would have been an increased consumption of meat (over the occasional small-scale carnivory observed in chimpanzees today) and consumption of underground storage organs. Reliance on either of these food sources, however, raises additional questions for understanding human evolution. Successful hunting and even scavenging would have been difficult and dangerous for early hominins, who would have had to not only acquire the necessary skills but also protect themselves from injury on the hunt and from the threat of predators. Likewise, underground storage organs were not an easily available food source. They had to be located and often processed in order to be edible.35 Recent theories about how early humans were able to access these food sources involve cooperative behavior and, especially, social learning. Methods of acquiring meat and processing storage organs would have been too complex to reinvent with each successive generation. The only way ancient foragers would have been able to consistently secure these foods would have been some form of intergenerational sharing of knowledge. Foraging behaviors are not the only trait that can be helpfully accounted for in human evolution by the advent of learning. Humans have now colonized virtually the entire planet. We have a remarkable ability, rare among mammals, to adapt to virtually any environment. Furthermore, it is not just modern humans that have adapted to diverse conditions. Nearly 2 million years ago, H. erectus migrated 34. Goldschmidt, The Bridge to Humanity, 37. 35. Kim Sterelny, The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique, Jean Nicod Lectures (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012), 86.

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

105

out of Africa and settled in diverse habitats throughout Asia. Neanderthals also were able to live in Europe, surviving the dramatic climate changes of glacial and interglacial conditions. How have humans been able to adapt to such fluctuating conditions? One theory, advanced by Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, is that the fluctuating climate of the past 6 million (and especially the past 2 million) years has created conditions that select for adaptability on the part of organisms. For Potts this includes a range of plasticity, from somatic—such as changing body size to adjust to nutritional resources—to behavioral adaptations like the use of stone tools.36 This theory has tremendous explanatory power for many aspects of human evolution, but for our purposes, one key aspect of this adaptability is social learning.37 It is not just that humans are smart and able to innovate, but they can also accumulate knowledge and pass it on to future generations. This capacity enables humans to develop and hone sophisticated skills for living in diverse environments, without each generation having to rediscover them and without these behaviors being tied to the much slower pace of genetic change.38 In this section we’ll look at a few prominent theories regarding the centrality of learning in human evolution and, by extension, the social and cognitive traits that would have facilitated and coevolved with learning. After examining the theoretical work on learning, we’ll also look at the paleoanthropological evidence that learning goes back deep in hominin history. As with our study of cooperative breeding, however, we will see that the human capacities that support learning do not simply facilitate the survival of the species, but they also enable the distinctly social and ultimately moral beings that we are. One of the foremost proponents of the role of learning in human evolution is philosopher of science Kim Sterelny. Building on the work of Potts and others, Sterelny argues in his book The Evolved Apprentice that novelty—the fact that human genes cannot predict the world the organism will inhabit—presents a puzzle that a theory of human evolution must take into account.39 He argues that humans have solved this puzzle through the accumulation of “cognitive capital” that is transferred from one generation to the next. It is because we are able to acquire complex information and skills (far too complex to invent anew each generation) suited to vastly different environments that humans as a species have been able to adapt to novelty. For Sterelny, this human capacity has not evolved independently through a gradual accumulation of random genetic changes, but is the result of a series of feedback loops between ecological cooperation, cultural 36. Richard Potts, “Environmental and Behavioral Evidence Pertaining to the Evolution of Early Homo,” Current Anthropology 53, no. S6 (December 1, 2012): S299–S317. 37. For a discussion of various aspects of hominin adaptability, including cooperative breeding, see Antón et al., “Human Evolution. Evolution of Early Homo.” 38. Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson, and Joseph Henrich, “The Cultural Niche: Why Social Learning Is Essential for Human Adaptation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, Suppl 2 (2011): 10918–25. 39. Sterelny, The Evolved Apprentice, 18.

106

Responsive Becoming

learning, and environmental change. Although he doesn’t refer to the EES in The Evolved Apprentice, Sterelny’s theory draws on many of EES’s most prominent themes.40 Central to his account is the role of niche construction, alternative modes of transmission, and changes in phenotype preceding and leading genetic change. The first of Sterelny’s feedback loops involves the relationship between cooperative foraging, hominin lifespan changes, and social learning.41 As observed earlier, hominin foraging of meat and nutrient-dense plant materials can be economically rewarding, but also difficult and dangerous. The skills that support these foraging behaviors must have developed gradually, and younger generations must have been able to preserve the skills and information necessary to sustain foraging practices. However, in order for sophisticated skills to be passed from older to younger generations, hominins would require something approaching a modern human life span, where the older generation lives long enough to pass on necessary information and skills and the young have a time of childhood and adolescence to acquire such cognitive capital without the need to provision themselves. As we have already seen, however, these lifespan changes are themselves dependent on the nutritional increases attained through cooperative foraging. Such interdependence leads Sterelny to propose a feedback loop whereby these features of hominin life co-evolve gradually, each facilitating the emergence of the other. If this theory is correct, it is particularly interesting theologically, as it suggests that human development—human becoming over the course of a lifespan in a particular social context—is deeply rooted in our evolutionary history and inseparable from other aspects of our uniquely human nature, such as our social intelligence. Whether human moral development should be included within this broader point remains to be seen, although Sterelny, for his part, presents a plausible argument for the emergence of norms in this context.42 The second feedback loop central to Sterelny’s theory involves social learning, individual cognitive capacities, and construction of the learning environment.43 Here Sterelny wrestles with the evolution of actual capacities for learning. He theorizes that a combination of phenotypic change and niche construction might have led to initial capacities for learning. Ancient hominins who made chance discoveries about the usefulness of stone for crushing nuts and bones would have provided opportunities for juveniles to observe their behavior and would have left stone tools in the communal environment. Phenotypic variation and niche construction would then provide a context in which genetic adaptation could occur, first through selection of existing variation (e.g., youth who are curious about adult activities might be more successful learners) and eventually through new genetic adaptation. As learning and human capacities became more advanced,

40. Sterelny argues explicitly for the EES in other locations. See Laland et al., “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis.” 41. Sterelny, The Evolved Apprentice, 29–30. 42. Ibid., 151–71. 43. Ibid., 30–34.

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

107

hominins would intentionally structure the environment for learning or provide instruction to the young, facilitating further cognitive change. Sterelny himself is hesitant to link the evolution of uniquely human cognition to any single “magic moment” like the advent of cooperative breeding. It is worth noting, however, that cooperative breeding is potentially implicated in both of these feedback loops. The changes in lifespan that Sterelny associates with the reliable transfer of complex information and skills are, as we have seen, deeply bound up in the provisioning of young by persons other than the mother. Other theorists have observed that the motivational underpinnings for cultural learning, which are pronounced in humans but lacking in our nearest great ape relatives are precisely those traits which seem present in other cooperatively breeding primates.44 Regardless of the outcome of this debate about the sequence in which particular cooperative behaviors emerged, the role of social motivations, emphasized by the theorists writing on cooperative breeding, is noteworthy. All of these behaviors depend upon a motivational shift from the competitive psychology of other great apes—and presumably our common ancestor—to a more prosocial psychology. While I have focused in this section on Sterelny’s theoretical work as a philosopher of science, he is certainly not alone in recognizing the role of learning in human evolution. Michael Tomasello’s work on human cognition emphasizes its social character and the potential for immense accumulation of knowledge within a culture when individuals are cognitively able and motivated to imitate others in their group.45 Similarly, Joseph Henrich has explored the survival benefit conferred by cultural knowledge and cultural transmission in what would otherwise be inhospitable environments for human life. For Henrich, culture functions to enhance survival even when the rationale behind certain practices is unknown. What matters is the willingness to faithfully imitate behaviors that have proven useful to the community in the past.46 At present, then, a number of theorists are emphasizing the centrality of cultural learning in understanding the evolution of uniquely human social motivation and social cognition. Sterelny is most explicit in theorizing the specific evolutionary processes that might have taken place in ancient hominin life, based on our paleoanthropological knowledge. Tomasello enhances this approach by highlighting how cultural learning would have coevolved with increased social interest and a tendency among early humans to find shared experiences, intentions, and activities intrinsically rewarding.

44. J. M. Burkart, S. B. Hrdy, and C. P. van Schaik, “Cooperative Breeding and Human Cognitive Evolution,” Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 18, no. 5 (2009): 175–86; Burkart and Schaik, “Cognitive Consequences of Cooperative Breeding in Primates?” 45. Michael Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 37–40. 46. Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016); see also Boyd et al., “The Cultural Niche.”

108

Responsive Becoming

Paleoanthropological evidence: Cooperation and learning in “deep time” While the work of these theorists is fascinating, one might well wonder if they offer any empirical support or if their narratives can be dismissed as another “just so” story. Do these theories actually find confirmation in the archaeological record of human history? And, if so, how far back in the hominin lineage does learning actually go? Fascinatingly, the paleoanthropological evidence actually provides substantial clues, through analysis of animal bones and stone tools, that cooperative foraging and the social learning that sustains it actually go back at least 2 million years. Hominin processing of animal carcasses with tools potentially goes back 3.4 million years in hominin history.47 While these earliest occurrences were possibly only occasional, bones and stone tools from the Kanjera south site in Kenya show evidence of persistent carnivory dating 2 million years ago.48 Thousands of animal bones at Kanjera bear the marks of hominin processing of larger animals that were scavenged from other predators. Smaller, goat-sized bovine remains do not show evidence of earlier predators, suggesting that these hominins had made the shift to hunting. On their own, hominin scavenging and hunting do not provide clear evidence of learning. They do, however, suggest that hominin foraging had shifted from an individual to a cooperative or communal activity. Scavenging carcasses would likely have required a coalition to scare away predators, and hunting would also likely have been a cooperative activity.49 The existence of butchery sites indicates that, unlike contemporary chimpanzees, these hominins were able to delay consumption of meat and bring it back to a common location for thorough processing. This is a trend that seems to continue in hominin lifestyle, and, by 300,000–400,000 years ago, the evidence of thrown spears and the hunting of large ungulates suggests that hominin foraging had become a complex, skilled, and highly collaborative activity. Work on the production of the stone tools used to process these animals has been the subject of more extensive theoretical work on hominin cognition and learning. From the Oldowan tools of 2.6 million years ago, through evermore sophisticated lithic technology, the persistence of lithic tools in the environment

47. Shannon P. McPherron et al., “Evidence for Stone-Tool-Assisted Consumption of Animal Tissues before 3.39 Million Years Ago at Dikika, Ethiopia,” Nature 466, no. 7308 (August 12, 2010): 857–60. 48. Joseph V. Ferraro et al., “Earliest Archaeological Evidence of Persistent Hominin Carnivory,” PLoS ONE 8, no. 4 (2013): Article no. e62174. 49. Michael Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Thinking, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 36; Although it is worth noting that there is some speculation that predators would have left enough meat on carcasses without ancient hominins needing to scare them away. See B. Pobiner, “Meat-Eating among the Earliest Humans: Evidence of Meat-Eating among Our Distant Human Ancestors Is Hard to Find and Even Harder to Interpret, but Researchers Are Beginning to Piece together a Coherent Picture,” American Scientist 104, no. 2 (2016): 110–17.

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

109

is thought to be indicative of sophisticated cognition and learning, first through observation and later through targeted instruction.50 Although they may not look terribly impressive to the untrained eye, Oldowan stone tool production was a difficult practice that required both knowledge and bodily skill. Hominins had to know the kinds of stone that would flake well, they had to track the location of this stone and, in many cases, transport it over considerable distances.51 Experiments using modern humans to knap stones have shown that once the right materials were procured, hominins would have needed to learn a technique. Everything from the angle of the stone to the amount and location of force would be important, and successful knapping would have required planning how to work the stone through multiple hierarchical stages.52 Errors could lead to injury, such as the loss of an eye, and it might also make the stone unusable.53 All of this suggests to researchers that even from the earliest stages of Oldowan technology, and more certainly through the Acheulean (1.6–0.25 mya,) simple observation and trial and error would not have been sufficient to sustain lithic technologies. Hominins would have needed scaffolded learning, perhaps with gestural communication, and eventually with specific instruction. The length of time needed to acquire knapping skill would also indicate a division of labor whereby only some members of a community would dedicate themselves to mastering the technologies.54 Such a division of labor would indicate an intentional communal structure and intentional mechanisms for cultural transmission of information and skills. This paleoanthropological evidence places hominin cultural learning at the origin of the genus homo, if not even earlier. For roughly 2 million years, according to this account, we have been creatures of collaboration and mutual dependency. These patterns of collaboration and dependency have, in turn, further shaped a uniquely human sociality. It is now time to examine how the study of theology can benefit from such an investigation into human origins.

Theological reflection on an evolutionary account From the beginning of this project I have argued that an account of the relationship between gracious transformation and natural human processes can benefit from a rigorous investigation of natural capacities in the human sciences. In this 50. It is worth noting that as with the evidence for butchery, the earliest stone tools actually predate the genus Homo. See Sonia Harmand et al., “3.3-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya,” Nature 521, no. 7552 (May 21, 2015): 310–15. 51. Peter Hiscock, “Learning in Lithic Landscapes: A Reconsideration of the Hominid ‘Toolmaking’ Niche,” Biological Theory 9, no. 1 (2014): 30–31. 52. Dietrich Stout, “Stone Toolmaking and the Evolution of Human Culture and Cognition,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366, no. 1567 (2011): 1050–59. 53. Hiscock, “Learning in Lithic Landscapes,” 32–33. 54. Stout, “Stone Toolmaking and the Evolution of Human Culture and Cognition,” 1057; Hiscock, “Learning in Lithic Landscapes,” 34–36.

110

Responsive Becoming

chapter, we have considered the evolutionary roots of human social capacities, and especially of the human capacity to form highly affective relationships. In the next chapter we will look specifically at human moral formation in developmental psychology. These forays into the human sciences are not the final word for a theological understanding of human nature. Not only does theology have its own anthropological commitments, but, as we have seen, scientific understandings are always in flux and open to revision. Nevertheless, they can be informative and illuminating. An evolutionary perspective is particularly helpful, because it offers an alternative to interminable debates about human essentialism. In an evolutionary account, what is distinctively human and what unites us as a species is our shared evolutionary history. The particular theories that are gaining traction at present have the added benefit of accounting for diversity in human nature precisely as part of our evolutionary heritage. While discussion of human evolution in theology frequently focuses on points of tension, here I draw out the ways in which the picture of humanity that we gain from examining our shared evolutionary history can be helpful. In this final section I discuss four aspects of human nature that are highlighted in these accounts. I will suggest here, and argue more extensively in Chapter 6, that this vision of humanity illuminates and is consistent with the relational approach to sanctification present in the theological material. At the same time, however, it also points to the need for ongoing theological attention to embodied humanity and its significance for moral formation. In other words, our brief study of human evolution affirms a claim that I have been making throughout this book—that relationally grounded transformation is not unnatural or mysterious but is in fact fundamentally human. But this study also serves as a reminder that a constructive account of sanctification cannot simply focus of the divine–human relationship to the exclusion of embodied, intra-human sociality that is so fundamental to who we are. The first aspect of human nature that emerges as particularly important is the phenomenon of the human lifespan and development across the lifespan. As we have already seen, the status of the child and the significance of childhood have posed substantial questions for theology. Jesus’s comments about childhood notwithstanding, it is the healthy adult male, prior to old age, who has generally been the paradigmatic human in theology. In the evolutionary accounts, by contrast, the existence of the human lifespan is central and essential. The mammalian relationship of care and dependency between mother and child is the source of the systems of affect and attachment.55 These then become the foundation for broader social systems of cooperation and learning that have enabled human brain

55. It is worth noting that the gendered biases in this respect are by no means exclusive to theology. Sarah Hrdy’s pioneering work has involved the claim that a male-dominated discipline has, for generations, overlooked the evolutionary significance of mothers. Hrdy, Mothers and Others; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

111

growth, culture, and colonization of the planet. An expansive period of growth, in childhood and adolescence, has not only allowed larger brains, but it has made possible the distinctly human, cultural way of life. Human offspring rely on this extended period of growth to learn the necessary skills to become full participants in their communities. Equally important has been the longer adulthood, allowing mothers to bear more children and allowing older adults, both men and women, to pass along the skills acquired over a lifetime to subsequent generations. If current theories regarding learning, culture, and cooperative breeding are correct, these aspects of the human lifespan are deeply intertwined and have been critical to the survival and success of the species. Childhood is not incidental to our nature. We are fundamentally beings who develop and development is central to our identity as a species. Although the theologians we’ve considered have tended to deemphasize natural development, at least with respect to moral formation, they are not without resources for taking it seriously. Calvin’s doctrine of creation is particularly helpful here. When Calvin refers to the natural world as the “school of piety,” through which human beings are meant to pass in anticipation of eternal fellowship with God, he is implicitly affirming not only a developmental perspective on human nature, but one that is inextricably tied up with human bodily existence in a natural world. Calvin’s perspective is clearly teleological and therefore raises questions about potential philosophical differences between theology and evolutionary biology. While theology must ultimately attend to such tensions, these should not obscure the potential for mutually productive conversation. The development of the human person in the natural world has meaning for Calvin, and it is even in some sense integral to the existence of persons who can commune with God. It is well worth considering how his perspective on creation, which Calvin admittedly does not bring into his discussion of sanctification, might still hold relevance for theology in a post-lapsarian and post-redemptive framework. Closely related to the uniquely human lifespan is a degree of plasticity that far exceeds that of virtually any other species. Not only do humans develop, but we develop differently, based on the particular niche we occupy. Development is, of course, one aspect of plasticity, as it allows for phenotypic variation according to the environment the organism encounters. While this phenotypic plasticity can be manifest at multiple levels, we have been particularly attentive to the human social environment. If theorists like Sarah Hrdy are correct, the dense network of social relationships involved in the care of young has shaped the evolution of behaviors like social tolerance, concern for the emotions and welfare of others, and the eagerness and frequency with which humans seek out social interaction. But these same patterns of care also shape human ontogeny, perhaps leading to differences in phenotype, and, eventually, as phenotypic change leads to changes in the genome, these patterns of care continue to shape genetic adaptation. Plasticity, however, is not one-directional. Niches are also plastic and humans are adept at shaping their niches, which in turn shape their own ontogeny and their own evolution. This means that we are not only beings who become but that our becoming takes place with a profound openness with respect to the outcome. Theologically, this

112

Responsive Becoming

open-ended becoming is quite enticing. Christian thought also has a strong sense of human open-ended becoming. As the author of 1 John puts it, “What we will be has not yet been revealed” (1 John 3:2). In Christian thought this human becoming ultimately has a Christological telos, and the human niche, if you will, has been shaped by God entering and dwelling with humanity. We will return to this point in Chapter 6. A third aspect of human nature that is prominent in these accounts is the emergence of distinctively human social motivation and social cognition. If Sterelny is correct, these capacities have coevolved with human cooperation and cultural learning, each propelling the evolution of the next in a powerful feedback loop. What is noteworthy here is that these capacities, which have their roots in mammalian nurture, have proven useful in quite different contexts. Affect, for instance, is not a singular adaptation connected to only one aspect of human survival or reproduction. What affect enables for the human organism far exceeds its evolutionary origins. Furthermore, the meaning of affective social relationships for the person is not tethered to their evolutionary origins. Affect has evolved such that all sorts of social interactions are intrinsically desirable to humans. While this may be the case to greater or lesser degree with other animals, humans have evolved complex systems for social relationships that they perceive as good and pursue for the sake of the relationships themselves. Humans, in other words, are awake to social goods, to the pleasures and joys of companionship. Evolutionary theorists thus tell a compelling story about how these capacities emerge and why they have mattered for human survival and yet they also brush up against the ongoing mystery of human existence. These capacities and behaviors far exceed, in the meaning they hold for actual human lives, their evolutionary explanation. Each of these points relates to a fourth aspect of human nature that emerges from the evolutionary literature. Human sociality has a transcendent potential. Theologian Wentzel van Huyssteen has persuasively argued in his extensive interdisciplinary engagement with evolutionary anthropology that there is a naturalness to the religious imagination.56 Based on the theoretical work surveyed here, we can make a very similar point—there is also a naturalness to the religious affections. The social and emotional capacities that emerge through cooperative behavior in human evolution can be directed to the pursuit and enjoyment of an affective connection to God. As I have already suggested, in making this claim, we need not make any particular argument about fitness and the evolution of religion. An experience of social connection to divine being may be beneficial for survival, but it might also simply be enabled by the complex social-affective system that is central to the success of the species. The question of the “naturalness” of the divine–human relationship is of course a fraught one theologically. The claim here is not that humans are independently capable of a relationship with God, of seeking and finding God without any action 56. J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, Gifford Lectures; 2004 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006).

Human Evolution, Cooperation, and Affect

113

on God’s part. The naturalness of religious affections is, however, theologically significant. It suggests that there is a suitability or coherence between human nature and friendship with God.57 Furthermore, it suggests that a human encounter with God moves through, rather than circumventing, our natural becoming. The formation of human sociality through embodied, human relationships is foundational for the encounter with the divine. The flip side, however, is that plasticity creates the potential for humanity to be altered by such an encounter, both in the development of the individual and in the evolution of the species. If human beings become in a particular social niche, and if humans have the capacity to encounter and adapt to a wide variety of niches, then there is built in a possibility for that niche to include relationship to divine being. Furthermore, such a relationship could be one of divine initiative and divine self-disclosure.58

Conclusion In this chapter, we have primarily focused on the evolution human sociality, along with some of the distinctive aspects of human nature that are associated with sociality, such as the human lifespan, development, and plasticity. I have argued that this theoretical work is quite suggestive for the theologian. It affirms an anthropology that attends to childhood and development across a lifespan rather than simply to adulthood as paradigmatically human. And, crucially, the plasticity of human development leaves open the possibility not simply for development to be shaped by a general divine agency, one which naturally extends to all aspects of creation, but to a specific agency that is relational. Such openness dovetails with theological images of covenant and with God as a divine parent. As yet, however, we have said very little about human moral formation. How do our moral selves—our norms, moral reasoning, motivations, and habits—take shape with respect to this distinctively human lifespan, plasticity, and sociality? While theories abound on the evolution of morality, the paleoanthropological record can only take us so far. In Chapter 5, we will consider these questions through an engagement with developmental psychology.

57. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), III/2, 222–225. 58. Many evolutionary theorists would no doubt balk at such a suggestion, but scientists need not entertain the notion of divine revelation to attend to the evolutionary significance of religious experience, nor is the evolutionary theory inherently inconsistent with notions of divine revelation. Agustín Fuentes, for example, argues that evolutionary insight into human imagination leaves open the possibility for theologians to talk about revelatory experience. See Fuentes, “What Evolution, the Human Niche, and Imagination Can Tell Us about the Emergence of Religion.”

Chapter 5 C H I L D R E N ’ S M O R A L D EV E L O P M E N T I N H UM A N P E R SP E C T I V E

I have suggested throughout this book that the specific questions brought to bear on the doctrine of sanctification call for a focused examination of natural processes of moral formation. We have seen in Chapter 4 that, according to current evolutionary theory, humans have evolved a distinct social plasticity. It is part of our embodied nature to develop over the course of a lifespan, in relationship with others. Our task in this chapter is to investigate more closely what these processes actually look like as they relate specifically to morality. How do our moral commitments and actions take shape? A full review of the literature across the lifespan is beyond the scope of this project, so we focus here on the beginning of formation, in the earliest years of childhood. In this engagement with developmental psychology, the same methodological words of caution from our study of human evolution still apply. Turning to the human sciences does not entail simply taking the conclusions of a particular discipline as the decisive word for theology. To do so not only marginalizes distinctly theological discourse, but it is also problematic with respect to scientific inquiry. The conclusions of science are themselves always provisional, always open to new discovery, always located within shifting terrain. The theologian who embarks on an interdisciplinary project must be ever cognizant that such engagement does not afford access to uncontested or indisputable truth about human nature. In developmental psychology, a particular set of methodological concerns emerges. The popular press can often report individual studies with no attention whatsoever to broader debates within the field, the need for replication of single studies, or quality of experimental design and the decisions of researchers regarding sample size or the mathematical models used for analyzing data.1 The 1. It is also worth noting that structural problems within the discipline can exacerbate these issues. The publishing preferences of journals, for example, tend to reward new findings and to provide little incentive for studies that seek to replicate already published data. The format of these publications, along with the often massive amount of published research, also tends to favor a general summary of previous related findings, rather than in depth analysis of the designs and methods of each study. Although with genuinely new research one does find this kind of commentary. See Damian Scarf et al., “Social Evaluation or Simple Association? Simple Associations May Explain Moral Reasoning in Infants,” Plos One 7, no. 8 (August 8, 2012): e42698.

116

Responsive Becoming

outsider cannot ordinarily become an expert in these areas, but must be aware of them and be willing to wade deeply into the literature and to be especially attentive to areas of internal dispute. In what follows, I have sought to give greatest weight to replicated findings and areas of broad agreement, to flag research that is relatively new, and to be particularly attentive to areas of ongoing debate. In keeping with the methodology employed thus far, the first part of this chapter will constitute the “listening” moment.2 The goal here is to provide a detailed description of the picture of moral development that is emerging from the latest research. This picture will begin with the early social, cognitive, and affective capacities that are essential for moral agency and then turn to a study of children’s socialization—the various efforts that caregivers use to direct these capacities toward what they take to be good or right action. In this thick description, two themes emerge as relatively well established and significant in the literature. The first is the complex relationship between the developing organism and its environmental context. While children in this literature are considered as distinct individuals rather than Lockean blank slates, the role of the environmental context must not be understated. The emerging picture is one of complex interaction between an existing organism—one who is of course already the result of a developmental process—and the environment the organism inhabits. The second theme that figures prominently in the description is the specific role played by affective social acceptance. The interpersonal caregiving context of parent and child is among the most significant environmental factors in moral development. The affect-laden and attentive care that children receive from parents sets the stage for their introduction into a community of moral agents. If the current emphasis of developmental research continues to withstand scrutiny, then children’s affective acceptance into this community by their caregivers is a crucial condition for their ability to participate as moral agents. After this focused examination of developmental research, the second part of the chapter will turn to critical assessment from the perspective of Christian ethics. Here we will probe the philosophical presuppositions and limitations of the developmental literature and ask whether the picture afforded by developmental psychologists can be at all compatible with a vision of morality in which the question of human goodness is always asked with reference to God as creator and

2. While this project incorporates a number of the steps that Don Browning outlines in his work on practical theology, the order is intentionally different in that I begin with the systematic and historical before moving to the descriptive. See Don Browning, A Fundamental Practical Theology: Descriptive and Strategic Proposals (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991) This order reflects both a conviction that method must be suited to the aims of a project and a broader anxiety that theological claims are in danger of marginalization when the specific conversation partner is a scientific discipline. Browning recognizes this risk (see Don S. Browning, Christian Ethics and the Moral Psychologies [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006], 6–8) and his own methodology has significant strengths with respect to public discourse and social ethics.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

117

redeemer. Here I will argue while that the current aversion to moral philosophy makes it difficult for moral psychology to propose an independent theory of moral development, the processes they describe are in fact amenable to a conversation with theology. There are, however, some stubborn points of tension. Within a framework that is restricted to natural explanations, the developmental literature describes a situation in which the conditions that children require for optimal moral development seem to exceed the capacities of ordinary caregivers. When reading studies of development one is struck by the extent to which ideals of conscientious parenting far exceed the standards of the “good-enough mother” famously set by Donald Winnicott.3 A crucial question will thus be whether the natural processes uncovered in hundreds of developmental studies could ever conceivably be united in one human family or if, as with Horace Bushnell’s theory of nurture, developmental studies will ultimately only expose human limitation and incapacity.

The human infant Although the ultimate target in exploring this material is to gain insight into early moral formation, this first section takes a step back to ask about the person who is being formed. The context in which a child grows matters immensely, but she is not a “blank slate.” Even in early infancy the child has, or is in the process of rapidly acquiring, a wide array of cognitive, social, and affective capacities, and much of the work now being done on children’s moral development takes these basic capacities, as well as their ontogenetic development, to be an important point of reference for understanding the moral behavior that becomes visible in childhood. For the present purposes I am going to consider infant capacities from three different perspectives, each of which will help to illuminate the foundation for later moral formation in childhood. First, I will examine infant cognition, next general social capacities and inclinations, and, lastly, the affective bond of the infant–caregiver relationship. Infant cognition The understandable tendency to associate human thought with verbalization might make the very idea of infant cognition seem initially suspect. After all, it would seem that most infant behavior can be explained by a combination of natural bodily functions, instinct, and conditioned response. Infants clearly perceive, but do they think? Do they have knowledge, a conceptual life, which is somehow consciously accessible? Since they do not know words, what do we even mean when we ask these sorts of questions? This general skepticism with respect to infant cognition dominated the assumptions in studies of childhood development for most of the twentieth century. 3. D. W. Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964).

118

Responsive Becoming

Following Piaget, most developmental psychologists held that infants were not able to conceptualize, and hence not able to think in a manner resembling adult humans until they were around eighteen months old.4 Until experimental studies of infant cognition began in earnest roughly thirty years ago, infant action was characterized as automatic and reflexive, and infants themselves thought to be profoundly egocentric. Within the last three decades, however, research in child development has led to a profound reversal of basic presuppositions regarding infant cognition.5 Infants as young as five months display a rudimentary knowledge of basic physical concepts, such as containment, solidity, and continuity of objects.6 They manifest a very early interest in motion, perceiving important differences in the way inanimate and animate objects move. By three months, for instance, infants can distinguish mammalian from vehicular motion and they show a distinct preference for observing animate motion. Shortly thereafter, when infants gain the motor skills to begin reaching and grasping objects, they are able to also perceive the actions of others as object directed.7 One of the most striking, and morally relevant, aspects of an infant’s early conceptual tools is the ability to recognize animal action as intentional.8 As infants come to understand other persons or animals as intentional and goal directed, they also develop a sense of themselves as agents, capable of interacting purposively with the world around them. Given this early cognitive grasp of intentionality and agency, we should not be surprised to learn that very recent experiments have been turning to questions with more explicit moral relevance. The ability of infants to recognize human action as intentional has recently led to a series of fascinating studies on infant evaluation of the action of others. Cleverly designed experiments (involving “helping” or “hurting” puppets who offer graham crackers to babies who have observed their kind or nefarious actions) reveal that infants overwhelmingly prefer helpful agents. Not only do babies prefer helpers, but they also prefer puppet

4. For a discussion of Piaget’s perspective, see Jean Mandler, The Foundations of Mind: Origins of Conceptual Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 17–21. 5. For a description of the experimental techniques used with preverbal infants, see Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life, 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 81–84. 6. Renee Baillargeon’s possible/impossible event experiments (Renee Baillargeon, Elizabeth S. Spelke, and S. Wasserman, “Object Permanence in 5-Month-Old Infants,” Cognition 20, no. 3 [1985]: 191–208) initiated a wealth of research on infant’s knowledge of the physical world. For a review, see Mandler, The Foundations of Mind, 223–24. 7. Amy Needham, “Learning in Infant’s Object Perception, Object-Directed Action, and Tool Use,” in Learning and the Infant Mind, ed. Amanda Woodward and Amy Needham (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 8. A. L. Woodward, “Infants Selectively Encode the Goal Object of an Actor’s Reach,” Cognition 69, no. 1 (November 1998): 1–34; for a general overview, see Amanda L. Woodward, “Infant’s Grasp of Other’s Intentions,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 18, no. 1 (February 2009): 53–57.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

119

agents who are depicted as punishing those exhibiting antisocial behavior.9 While this research is not uncontested, it represents a profound shift in the conventional wisdom regarding early moral cognition. The social infant One of the most important sources of environmental influence is the social world of infants. It has become quite commonplace, within the last generation of infant scholarship, to observe that the human infant is, from birth, “hardwired” for social interaction with other humans. Newborn infants are able to see approximately twelve inches, or roughly the distance between the infant’s and mother’s faces while nursing. Infants show an immediate preference for the shapes of a human face, as compared with other visual stimuli, and they recognize and prefer their own mother’s face from about forty-five hours after birth.10 They likewise begin to recognize their mother’s voice in utero and prefer her voice to others. Infants in their earliest months also display a remarkable disposition and ability to mimic adult body movements, particularly of the head and mouth. This early imitation is even more remarkable because it occurs before infants have had any exposure to their own image. They are somehow able to map the mouth or tongue they observe on the adult face with the mouth or tongue they feel internally.11 By the ripe age of twelve weeks, these rudimentary social capacities are already a springboard for species-unique social behaviors. In contrast to other primates, researchers characterize this set of early human behavior as “ultra-social.”12 These include shared gaze between infant and caregiver, more pronounced mimicry of facial expressions, smiling, and “protoconversations,” or shared vocal exchanges between the infant and caregiver where attention is clearly focused on the other

9. J. Kiley Hamlin and Karen Wynn, “Young Infants Prefer Prosocial to Antisocial Others,” Cognitive Development 26, no. 1 (March 2011): 30–39; on replication studies, see Tyler Nighbor et al., “Stability of Infant’s Preference for Prosocial Others: Implications for Research Based on Single-Choice Paradigms,” Plos One 12, no. 6 (June 2, 2017): e0178818. 10. See Melvin Konner, The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind, 1st ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 211–14 for an overview of research on newborn social capacities. 11. It should be noted that early imitation is still a topic of much debate and some theorists (see Cecilia Heyes, “Grist and Mills: On the Cultural Origins of Cultural Learning,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 367, no. 1599 [August 5, 2012]: 2181–91) now argue that imitation itself is a learned behavior. Heyes attributes early tongue protrusions to reflex, which can have a number of different stimuli (Ibid., 2187). Even if this theory is correct, however, genuinely imitative behaviors are certainly prevalent in the first year of life. 12. Michael Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 59.

120

Responsive Becoming

and vocalizations display a turn-taking structure. While recent cross-cultural studies have found differences in the frequency of these behaviors, depending on the cultural norms for infant care, these basic features can be discerned across caregiving environments.13 The social smile, for example, is a cross-cultural universal among human infants and even in blind children its appearance is only delayed by one month. This set of dyadic interactions enables a deep social attunement between infant and caregiver, an attunement that extends to emotional states. Infants tend to mirror the emotional states of caregivers and, sadly, infants of depressed mothers exhibit signs of stress.14 Around the age of nine months, these early “ultra-social” dyadic behaviors expand to incorporate a triadic structure. Instead of being limited to the infant and caregiver, the infant at this age becomes capable of incorporating a third element— an object, a situation, or another agent—into her social interaction with a caregiver. Here infants begin to attend to an object, such as a toy, jointly with a caregiver. They begin rudimentary efforts to communicate with caregivers about an object or person through pointing, gaze following, and imitative learning. According to primatologist Michael Tomasello’s description of this “nine-month revolution,” the shift from dyad to triad presupposes a rather significant leap in social cognition. For these engagements to occur, the infant must have some basic grasp of her own agency, of her ability to act intentionally, and then be capable of extending this knowledge to the other, grasping that the caregiver is “like me,” or one who acts with intentions. It is significant that while these new behaviors can occur in an instrumental context (e.g., an infant points to a desired object) they are often more basic social experiences, stripped of any instrumental objective. Infants at this age seem to want to share attention with a caregiver with no objective beyond their obvious enjoyment of the shared experience itself.15 When infants are able to recognize that other humans are “like me,” in that they have intentions with respect to the world around them, this opens up profound and far-reaching avenues for learning. As we saw in Chapter 4, these are the precise traits that, according to evolutionary theorists, were selected because they facilitated cooperation among our hominin ancestors. The human infant can benefit from the vast stores of knowledge available in her cultural context, either through spontaneous imitation or through formal instruction. When these learning mechanisms combine with the ability to reflect on communal behavior, to innovate, and to pass these innovations on to others, the pace of change in the species as a whole accelerates far beyond that of any other species.16

13. Tara Callaghan et al., “Early Social Cognition in Three Cultural Contexts,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 76, no. 2 (2011): 1–115. 14. Sarah Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 119. 15. Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, 63. 16. See Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition for an extended discussion of the social context of human learning and cognition.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

121

By eighteen months, the social learning mechanisms afforded to human infants are quite sophisticated. For example, in one experiment, babies observed an adult using her head to turn on a light. When given the opportunity, babies would imitate the adult and use their own heads, rather than their hands, to push the button. When, however, babies observed that the experimenter’s hands were unavailable, they chose to use their hands, rather than their heads, to activate the light. As this experiment reveals, babies not only recognize the goal, but they also reason about means. If an adult who could use her hands chooses to use her head, infants conclude that using one’s head is the better option. If, however, the same adult’s hands are occupied, the infant reasons that he can accomplish the task better with his own hands and chooses to do so.17 This experiment also highlights the social bias in human cognition that is not present to the same extent in other primates. Human children display a marked predisposition to imitate the behavior of conspecifics, unless they have reason to do otherwise. In similar experiments with other primates, strict imitation is surprisingly rare. A nonhuman primate might learn from observing a conspecific about the location of food, but is much less likely than a human infant to imitate that conspecific’s exact method to reach the food. The primate is thus capable of gaining knowledge from a social context, but is less sophisticated at drawing conclusions about actions and intentions. Human children, however, will imitate the method even if it is not efficient.18 Infant social capacities are significant for moral development later in life. Even at this young age, however, they provide the cognitive and motivational foundation for a variety of prosocial behaviors. Prosocial behavior, in the context of child development, “consists of actions intended to assist another person.”19 With respect to infants and young toddlers, the term prosocial covers a range of diverse behaviors, including instrumental help with a goal-oriented task, cooperation toward a common goal, providing information, sharing, and empathic response or comforting. A growing body of literature has documented the appearance of these behaviors in the second year of life and explored the conceptual and emotional skills upon which they depend. For those who take human adult prosocial behavior as the major point of departure, it might seem rather peculiar to attribute these actions to young children. Aren’t babies paradigmatically selfish? In comparison with other primates, however, prosocial behavior in human children is actually quite common. Nonhuman primates are capable of providing help, but they don’t do so consistently or with the frequency of small children. Indeed, some of the earliest experiments tracking these behaviors, particularly those studying the capacity for providing instrumental help, found that helping behavior in children was so common that it became difficult to interpret the data. Experimenters had

17. Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby, 94. 18. Tomasello, The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, 29–30. 19. Ross A. Thompson and Emily K. Newton, “Baby Altruists? Examining the Complexity of Prosocial Motivation in Young Children,” Infancy 18, no. 1 (2013): 121.

122

Responsive Becoming

to introduce appealing distractions in order to decrease the number of children willing to offer help. Even here, however, substantial numbers of children were willing to leave a desirable new toy and help a clumsy experimenter retrieve a dropped pen, turn on a light, or perform some other task.20 While provision of instrumental help toward a goal is one of the earliest prosocial behaviors to emerge and also one of the most frequent, it is certainly not the only one. By eighteen months children share food and toys and cooperate with adults on a novel task. By twenty-four months they will cooperate with peers on a novel task. By thirty months, and perhaps even earlier, they provide empathic assistance, such as comfort, with an emotion-related problem.21 Infants and toddlers who act prosocially are not simply providing assistance indiscriminately, in response to any goal-directed or affective cue. Instead, they are beginning to display a reasoned approach to prosocial activity by withholding help from persons who have exhibited harmful behavior to others and preferring to help those who have been victims or who have shown helpful intentions. In many cases, these preferential capacities are shown to operate at a quite sophisticated level. In one experiment studying the origins of selective reciprocity, 21-month-old infants were significantly more willing to share with someone who had unsuccessfully attempted to share with them than with someone who had not tried to share. These results show that infants are beginning to make sharing decisions based on an agent’s previous behavior toward the infant, and, even more importantly, they indicate that infants are able to distinguish not just based on the results, but on the intent to share.22 Recent experimental data also indicates that even children younger than three are beginning to use standards of fairness and equity in their prosocial decisionmaking. For instance, some studies suggest that children as young as fifteen months expect distributions to occur in an equal manner.23 By twenty-one months, this expectation has become rather sophisticated, as children who observe a “worker” and “slacker” receiving a reward for picking up toys are able to adjust fairness expectations based on merit. Children in these experiments are surprised when the slacker receives an equal reward. Even more intriguing, these children only expect the “slacker” in the experiment to not receive a reward when the person distributing rewards has knowledge of the slacker’s behavior.24

20. Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 8–9. 21. See Celia A. Brownell, “Early Development of Prosocial Behavior: Current Perspectives,” Infancy 18, no. 1 (2013): 2, for a survey of these findings. 22. Kristen A. Dunfield and Valerie A. Kuhlmeier, “Intention-Mediated Selective Helping in Infancy,” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (April 2010): 523–27. 23. Marco F. H. Schmidt and Jessica A. Sommerville, “Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants,” Plos One 6, no. 10 (October 7, 2011); similar findings for nineteen-month-old children can be found in Stephanie Sloane, Renee Baillargeon, and David Premack, “Do Infants Have a Sense of Fairness?,” Psychological Science 23, no. 2 (February 2012): 196–204. 24. Sloane et al., “Do Infants Have a Sense of Fairness?”

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

123

Psychologists who study the early emergence of prosocial behavior and cognition are not simply interested in describing what kinds of behaviors very young children do and do not engage in or what sort of premoral beliefs they might hold. These researchers are also invested in providing an account of this development. Why do children at fourteen months provide instrumental help? Why are they less inclined to share or provide empathic comfort? How do such young children have some awareness of standards of fairness? While one might expect some form of a nature/nurture debate here, recent research offers the possibility for a nuanced combination of the two. The naïve organism must possess some abilities that can be developed and yet the fact that this set of behaviors emerges on a timeline suggests that these initial capacities are somehow “coaxed into expression” from an encounter with the environment.25 One study, for instance, provided a group of infants with active experience of collaboration and subsequently found that these infants were better able to recognize shared goals than those who only had passive, observational experience.26 Another study explored the correlation between naturally occurring parent–child conversations about emotions and the propensities of eighteen-to thirty-monthold children to help and share. Parents who facilitated their children’s active reflection on the thoughts and emotions of others had children who were more inclined to act prosocially. This sort of work points to the heightened importance of the social environment for studying the emergence of distinctly social capacities.27 When it comes to human beings, and especially children, this social context is undeniably affect-laden. For very young children, the social world is centered around their interactions with primary caregivers. Thus, before we can turn to a more focused account of specifically moral development, some attention to unique character of the parent–child relationship described by attachment theory is in order. The affective infant As we have seen, evolutionary anthropologists have been quick to note that the adept social cognition and advanced social behavior of the infant is precisely what one would expect of the human neonate, whose very survival depends on her ability to secure the long-term care of adults.28 What is noteworthy against the backdrop of broader primate evolution is the extent to which the affective parent–child bond 25. Brownell, “Early Development of Prosocial Behavior,” 4. 26. Annette M. E. Henderson et al., “Active Experience Shapes 10-Month-Old Infant’s Understanding of Collaborative Goals,” Infancy 18, no. 1 (2013): 10–39. 27. Celia A. Brownell, “Prosocial Behavior in Infancy: The Role of Socialization,” Child Development Perspectives 10, no. 4 (December 2016): 222–27; Emily K. Newton, Ross A. Thompson, and Miranda Goodman, “Individual Differences in Toddler’s Prosociality: Experiences in Early Relationships Explain Variability in Prosocial Behavior,” Child Development 87, no. 6 (December 2016): 1715–26. 28. Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 111–41.

124

Responsive Becoming

in turn shapes the trajectory of human development and itself becomes a crucial factor shaping the kind of creature we humans are. Human children don’t just seem to need the basics of physical survival. Beyond this they genuinely need the affection lavished on them by besotted, if also sleep-deprived and weary, caregivers. It is only within the last half century, beginning with the pioneering work of John Bowlby in the 1950s, that social scientists have given sustained attention to the affective needs of human children. Although Bowlby’s attachment theory has been modified over the years, his core claim, that the mental and emotional wellbeing of human infants depends on the presence of a secure emotional bond with a primary caregiver, remains foundational for much of developmental psychology. Based on the work of Bowlby and his successors, particularly Mary Ainsworth, psychologists have developed a typology to classify forms of attachment they observe, from the securely attached baby, to the anxious, avoidant, or disorganized.29 As child psychologist Alison Gopnik describes the attachment process, it is as if babies are forming theories about how love works, theories that will influence their actions in the present and throughout life.30 Recent studies of infant attachment indicate that infants have expectations about affective relationships long before they are aware of these expectations or capable of reflecting on them.31 Although contemporary developmental psychology has challenged the notion that it is exclusively or even predominantly the mother who forms such a vital bond with a baby, the idea that these early relational bonds are crucial for later development, including later moral development, remains foundational. Secure attachment correlates with a broad range of social, cognitive, and emotional competencies. The various insecure attachment states, while not determinative of pathologies, do seem to render children vulnerable to negative developmental trajectories.32 It should also be noted that the attachment states or strategies are

29. These classifications are based on home observations and on an infant’s reaction to the “The Strange Situation.” Developed by Mary Ainsworth, infant’s behavior toward a caregiver is assessed after being briefly separated from the caregiver by a stranger. Securely attached children, generally 55–65 percent, are quickly comforted upon being reunited with their caregivers and return to play. Other children might display avoidance, ambivalence, or disorientation upon being reunited. Although attachment theory has been critiqued for paying insufficient attention to children’s distinctive temperaments, there is a general consensus on the usefulness of these assessments. For a description of these categories and assessment techniques, see Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind : How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2012), 97–104. 30. Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby, 179–84. 31. Ibid., 184; Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 115. 32. Michelle DeKlyen and Mark Greenberg, “Attachment and Psychopathology in Childhood,” in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, ed. Jude Cassidy and Phillip R Shaver (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), 656–57; Mary Dozier, K. Chase Stovall-McClough, and Kathleen E. Albus, “Attachment and Psychopathology in Adulthood,” in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, ed. Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), 736–39.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

125

descriptive of a relationship and not of a particular child. An infant might be securely attached to one caregiver and yet manifest a different attachment pattern to another. The quality of each relationship is cultivated through the kinds of interactions that characterize a particular caregiver–child dyad, with the ideal being reliable, affectionate, and responsive attention. Daniel Siegel, pediatrician and professor of psychiatrics at UCLA medical school, refers to this mode of interaction as “contingent communication.” In this ideal situation, parent and child are mentally and emotionally attuned, and from a very early age their interaction has a rhythm of mutual give and take. The parent responds promptly and consistently both to subtle cues and to overt expressions of need. The child is sensitive, rather than oblivious, to parental communication. This collaborative communication need not be verbal, as manifested by the mutual gaze sharing and pseudo-conversations of early infancy. The latter are composed of infant babbling and the seemingly unavoidable “motherese”—the high-pitched voice that adults invariable adopt when talking to babies. From the perspective of parent–child attachment, we can see that these very early social skills are not simply precursors to language development, but they in fact begin to constitute the relationship of commitment between these two people, a relationship which, as Hrdy puts it, sends to the infant the message “You will be cared for no matter what.”33 This kind of message does not simply operate on the mind, whether at the conscious or subconscious level. It also has a physical effect and operates at the level of brain. This insight is part of the massive contribution of neuroscience to attachment theory. The physical structures of the infant brain at birth are radically undeveloped. Human genetic material contains information that will shape brain development, but at the neurological level, much of this development is intertwined with experience. The normal development of the visual system, for example, depends upon certain kinds of stimulation, such as the reception of light in the eyes. It is not simply the physical environment that guides this development, however. Interpersonal experience is also essential, and continues to influence the physical structures in the brain throughout life. The attachment experiences of infants thus affect the brain itself, molding synaptic connections, pruning neurons, and influencing the operation of the brain, and particularly the ability to form healthy relationships, throughout life.34 This role of significant interpersonal relationships in brain development raises profound questions, (both scientific and, I hasten to add, theological) about the nature of moral development. One is reminded of Aristotle’s intuition about the importance of childhood for a virtuous life. Are we determined in childhood? Are our basic moral capacities, for good or ill, set for life? Happily, the most recent neuroscientific and attachment research does leave room for lifelong plasticity. Childhood experiences are formative, but not determinative. 33. Hrdy, Mothers and Others, 130. 34. This summary is drawn from Siegel, The Developing Mind, 10–15.

126

Responsive Becoming

Attachment theorists after Bowlby have explored the scope of plasticity both by observing the progression of parent–child dyadic relationships in longitudinal studies and by examining the long-term effects of early attachment on the relationships one has as an adult, particularly with one’s own children. With respect to children, a number of studies suggest that attachment, or the “internal working model” that young children take from their earliest close relationships and use to structure social expectations, is not a monolithic construct set at an early age and consistent across subsequent development. Rather, the sophistication of a child’s attachment model correlates to her social and cognitive capacities and adapts in accordance with her overarching development.35 Attachment relationships are also susceptible to environmental changes, particularly those related to parenting practices and parental sensitivity. One of the largest longitudinal studies of attachment, conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and tracking over 1000 mother–child dyads, found that attachment classifications could change over time. Furthermore, these changes often correlated in predictable ways to environmental changes, such as parental stress, depression, or social support. In this particular study, scores on a broad range of social and cognitive measures at the age of thirty-six months were related to attachment assessments at ages fifteen and twenty-four months. Children with consistently secure attachment measures performed better on the assessments, whereas those with consistently insecure attachment fared worst. Among the intermediate group of infants whose attachment security at fifteen months and quality of maternal care at twenty-four months were inconsistent, it was the infants whose care improved over this period who showed stronger developmental outcomes, rather than those who showed early secure attachment and subsequently were observed to receive insensitive maternal care.36 This study and others like it both reflect the importance of early attachment to healthy infant development and illustrate its sensitivity to changes in caregiving over time.

Take-away points We can already see that earliest moral formation is not simply about external enforcement of norms or behavioral conditioning. From their earliest months, infants display some capacity to think about behavior, intentions, and even basic moral values. Before moving ahead, it is worth dwelling briefly on some of the most important points, both for our study of moral formation in the family and

35. For a survey of researchers working with this developmental approach, see Ross A. Thompson, “Early Attachment and Later Development: Familiar Questions, New Answers,” in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, ed. Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver (New York: Guilford Press, 2008), 349–51. 36. Ibid., 352.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

127

for the theological issues at stake in thinking about the relationship of divine formation to these natural processes. First, it is important to underscore that the cognitive, social, and affective capacities emerging so early in life are not dependent on verbal reflection. Infants are forming expectations about how people will act and preferring certain kinds of action—whether it is directed toward them or toward a third party—well before they can speak or think discursively. While psychologists and cognitive scientists debate extensively how they should characterize infant knowledge and beliefs, for our purposes, it will suffice to say that this knowledge is in some sense accessible. Infants use what they know to make discriminations and to act, and they are able to do so in novel situations. Infant mental states are certainly vastly different from our own, but they are not thereby devoid of reason. Correspondingly, we will be remiss in a theological account of moral agency if we don’t recognize that motivation and belief do not only function at the level of conscious awareness and verbal reflection. In this respect, Bushnell seems to have been well ahead of his time. Next, these remarkable cognitive capacities are further shaped by a socialaffective bias. Human infants appear to come equipped with a distinctly social motivation that is highly affective. This social and affective orientation, as evolutionary anthropologists remind us, is advantageous for survival, but such adaptive benefit does not mean that prosocial and affect-laden action is always instrumental. Infants enjoy social interactions and pursue them for their own sake. This enjoyment seems to be a crucial factor in the acquisition of language and in the highly advantageous social forms of learning that humans have evolved. The complex relationship between cognition, social experience, and affect, even in infancy, should caution against an account of moral development which relies on one aspect to the exclusion of others. Third, we can already see in this material complicated reworkings of the tired nature/nurture debate. Traits that appear universal and “innate” can still be dependent on critical environmental input. On the other hand, any environmental interaction is also shaped by what the organism brings to that encounter, which is itself already the result of a developmental process. Happily, we need not read any of these processes as determinative of the individual in an irreversible and linear fashion. Instead, developmentalists prefer to speak in terms of vulnerabilities and tendencies. Plasticity, though not as open in later life, does not disappear altogether. Lastly, and in view of the role played by environmental context for the developing social organism, the relationship between caregivers and infants assumes profound importance. Attachment theory seems to account for this significance quite well, and confidence in the theory itself is enhanced by its explanatory power for both human evolution and human development. As we shall see even more in the next section, humans become people who thrive in intimate social relationships, people who feel for others, people who care, often sacrificially, for others, because of the richly affective care that we receive in infancy. Likewise, we become confident participants in social endeavors, capable of taking initiative and regulating our own emotions and desires, because these capacities are in some sense loved into us in our earliest childhood. As we observed with the evolutionary theory,

128

Responsive Becoming

this significance of early and affective social acceptance has a striking parallel to Calvin’s emphasis on knowing God as a loving father. In both accounts, a grounding relationship characterized by love, commitment, and trust is thought to enable and evoke loving response.

Moral development in the parent–child relationship Now that we have some basic knowledge of the cognitive, social, and affective lives of very young humans, we are equipped to consider their trajectories of moral development. Throughout the last quarter of the twentieth century, the work of Lawrence Kohlberg loomed large in the literature on moral development in developmental psychology. Prior to Kohlberg, the prominent theories explaining children’s adoption of moral norms were behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory.37 Whereas both of these theories, in dramatically different ways, sought to explain how the use of parental authority ultimately led to children’s internal acceptance of behavioral norms, Kohlberg was concerned to demonstrate that mature moral capacities of adults were actually grounded in rational and autonomous claims of justice, as expressed in the language of universal rights.38 In his efforts to explain how children progressed from simple compliance with norms to this mature moral functioning, Kohlberg insisted that developmental psychology employ some of the conceptual rigor available in philosophical accounts of morality, and he adopted a Kantian framework for his moral stage theory. The earliest stage of Kohlberg’s account, that which roughly corresponds to the period of early childhood considered here, was characterized by unthinking and rigid rule-compliance. Children simply adopted the norms of their cultural setting, most significantly of their familial environment, and interpreted these as rigidly normative without distinction. Children were not thought to be capable of reasoning about moral questions. At best, early childhood in the Kohlbergian paradigm was simply uninteresting—a necessary phase for all of us before our rational faculties are capable

37. For a discussion of the historical relationship between these theories and subsequent approaches to moral socialization, see Eleanor E. Maccoby, “The Role of Parents in the Socialization of Children—An Historical Overview,” Developmental Psychology 28, no. 6 (November 1992): 1006–17; and Martin L. Hoffman, “Affective and Cognitive Processes in Moral Internalization,” in Social Cognition and Social Development: A Sociocultural Perspective, ed. E. Tory Higgins, Willard W. Hartup, and Diane N. Ruble (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 236–74. 38. Augusto Blasi discusses Kohlberg’s philosophical commitments and the critiques of his use of Kant among other psychologists in Augusto Blasi, “How Should Psychologists Define Morality? Or, The Negative Side Effects of Philosophy’s Influence on Psychology,” in The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing Discussion between Philosophy and the Social Sciences, ed. Thomas E. Wren (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 38–70; See also Browning, Christian Ethics and the Moral Psychologies, 41–47.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

129

of more sophisticated adjudication. At worst, the stage of childhood represented all that Kohlberg disliked in the accounts of his predecessors. Childhood was the beginning of a culturally determined, socially constructed, and ultimately relative morality, and the hierarchical nature of the parent–child relationship actually constrained genuine moral development. The morality of the child was at the mercy of social whim, which could never provide the foundation for a universal ethic of justice. While Kohlberg’s account was contested at numerous points, it did set the research agenda for a generation of moral psychologists. Against the backdrop of more recent research on infants, however, problems with Kohlberg’s description of childhood rapidly appear. Children, even those younger than a year, are not bereft of all moral reason. And as they grow, they are rapidly acquiring the ability to make sophisticated discriminations on questions of fairness. Perhaps even more significant, they are displaying rather remarkable prosocial tendencies—an area of moral behavior that Kohlberg, in his relentless focus on justice, tended to ignore. As I will detail shortly, the tide has indeed turned with respect to early moral formation, as researchers are now employing a variety of methods capable of sidestepping the mature verbal abilities required in Kohlberg’s approach, and they are now paying a great deal of attention to the familial context and the parent– child relationship. This shift has not been complete, however, as a few Kohlbergian holdouts continue to raise pesky and important questions about authority, compliance, and rationality.39 Can an account of formation that relies on compliance with an authority figure and a process of internalizing norms ever produce a moral rationality capable of critiquing the dominant social group? Can it protect the rights and dignity of minorities? Is there, indeed, a non-Kohlbergian route from childhood compliance to mature and autonomous moral agency? This “how do we get from here to there question,” while it must be bracketed for the moment, does not go away. As developmental psychologists are once again reluctant to frame their own research around a philosophical system, these questions linger beneath the surface.40 Once we sketch a picture of optimal socialization, as indicated by the most recent research, we will have to ask what vision of morality they espouse.

Moral formation in socialization theory Whereas Kohlbergian-era research in moral development was marked by a sharp distinction between approaches that focused on cognition and those that preferred to interpret behavior as emotionally based, research within the last few 39. No one, perhaps, has been more vocal about these concerns than one of Kohlberg’s former students and current professor at UC Berkley, Elliot Turiel. See Elliot Turiel, “Moral Development,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development, ed. Brian Hopkins (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 242–48. 40. For an explicit statement of psychology’s ambivalence toward philosophy, see Blasi, “How Should Psychologists Define Morality?”

130

Responsive Becoming

decades is showing a greater tendency to integrate both cognitive and affective mechanisms.41 Recent insight into the capacities of infants has without doubt been tremendously influential. Social–cognitive theorists can no longer dismiss early childhood as a “preconventional” phase, and social learning theorists cannot neglect the role of rationality in their interpretation of family relationships. Likewise, both approaches have had to give some account of the affective needs of children, particularly the need for strong and positive emotional bonds with a parent or other caregiver. The upshot of these shifts is that while researchers still have their own ideological biases, much more attention is now directed toward early development and the context of the parent–child relationship, and research is generally attentive to multiple aspects of moral development, including moral cognition, motivation, and behavior. Work in this area has not yet reached the level of robust and widely supported theory, but constructive proposals are beginning to move in this direction.42 Drawing on attachment theory, a central intuition underpinning much of the current work on socialization is that while moral development is understood to be immensely complex, it is the parent–child relationship that provides the crucial context within which the different influences operate. Already beginning with Mary Ainsworth in the early 1970s, attachment theorists themselves were beginning to suggest that child socialization was not a matter of altering natural behavioral dispositions, but rather that a readiness to embrace parental values naturally emerges from a positive caregiving relationship.43 Although this type of theorizing initially developed within attachment theory, researchers soon began to recognize that the complexity of factors involved in development would make it unlikely that a secure attachment itself would provide a direct link to positive moral outcomes. Instead, developmental psychologists began to identify specific relational features that would more adequately describe the socialization aspect of parent–child interactions. They began, for instance, to pay attention to not just to attachment security, but to high levels of parental sensitivity and responsiveness to children’s needs and communicative efforts.44 In the 1980s, Eleanor

41. For slightly different accounts of this early dichotomy and subsequent developments, see Elliot Turiel, “Interaction and Development in Social Cognition,” in Social Cognition and Social Development: A Sociocultural Perspective, ed. E. Tory Higgins, Willard W. Hartup, and Diane N. Ruble (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 333–34; Judith G. Smetana, “The Role of Parents in Moral Development: A Social Domain Analysis,” Journal of Moral Education 28, no. 3 (September 1999): 311–21; and Ross A. Thompson, “Whither the Preconventional Child? Toward a Life-Span Moral Development Theory,” Child Development Perspectives 6, no. 4 (2012): 423–29. 42. See, for example, Thompson, “Whither the Preconventional Child?” 43. Donelda J. Stayton, Mary D. Salter Ainsworth, and Robert Hogan, “Infant Obedience and Maternal Behavior—Origins of Socialization Reconsidered,” Child Development 42, no. 4 (1971): 1057–69. 44. Ibid.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

131

Maccoby theorized this relational context as a “system of reciprocity, or in other words, the formation of a mutually binding, reciprocal, and mutually responsive relationship” where both partners “feel invested in and responsible for each other’s welfare.”45 In the years since Maccoby’s proposal, extensive research has followed, involving efforts to define the construct in measurable and stable ways and to study associated behavioral and cognitive outcomes for children. This now-large body of literature has substantiated Maccoby’s proposed link between positive and mutually responsive interactions (alternately termed “dyadic mutuality,” “mutually responsive orientation,” “dyadic synchrony,” and the like) and a variety of positive outcomes, including moral cognition, fewer antisocial behaviors, and early measures of conscience. While a number of researchers have contributed to this research, no one has done so more extensively than Grazyna Kochanska, whose lab at the University of Iowa has produced dozens of related studies, which have been published in the top journals in the field. Kochanska’s early studies sought to identify important components of what she termed the “mutually responsive orientation” (MRO) and to develop reliable and longitudinally stable measurements. These early measurements focused on two facets of the parent–child relationship—on a cooperative posture in which both parent and child were attuned to the needs or bids of the other and on the presence of positive affect in ordinary interactions. Both of these relational aspects had already been associated in developmental literature with positive developmental outcomes.46 The standard method in these experiments involves videotaping interactions between parent and child, often in the home, and then subsequently dividing them into smaller time increments, with each increment coded according to parent and child responsiveness, sensitivity, intrusiveness, power-assertion, positive and negative affect, and so forth. The recorded interactions might be of unscripted ordinary activities, such as a family meal or playing with toys, or of an assigned task, such as baking muffins together.47 Separate measures of moral outcomes, including behavioral, emotional, and cognitive goals, are usually taken both concurrently and longitudinally. Using this basic methodology, Kochanska and colleagues have found significant positive associations between parent-child MRO and early measures of moral development. The level of responsivity and positive affect in a dyad has been shown

45. Grazyna Kochanska, “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children: Implications for Early Socialization,” Child Development 68, no. 1 (February 1997): 94. 46. Ibid., 95–96. 47. For a detailed description, see Ibid., 97–98; for a variation of this procedure, see Kirby Deater-Deckard and Stephen A. Petrill, “Parent-Child Dyadic Mutuality and Child Behavior Problems: An Investigation of Gene-Environment Processes,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, no. 6 (September 2004): 1174. Kochanska situates this construct in the broader literature on parent–child relationships. See Grazyna Kochanska and Nazan Aksan, “Children’s Conscience and Self-Regulation,” Journal of Personality 74, no. 6 (December 2006): 1595–97.

132

Responsive Becoming

to predict higher empathic response to maternal distress, willing compliance with parental goals and directives, greater internalization of norms (as demonstrated by compliance with norms in the absence of adult supervision), higher moral cognition, and lower levels of school-age behavior problems as reported by parents and teachers.48 These associations have been replicated by Kochanska as well as by other researchers, solidifying the general trend in the discipline to understand the parent–child relationship as the developmental context within which complex processes of moral growth take place.49 Parental intervention studies, which have documented improved behavioral outcomes after interventions designed to promote responsive and sensitive parenting, have helped alleviate concerns about the direction of influence in these associations, and adoption studies have similarly addressed concerns about genetic causality as opposed to the parent– child context.50 The complexity of these processes, as developmental psychologists theorize them, cannot be overemphasized. These researchers are not suggesting that dyadic responsivity and positive affect (or parental availability, reliability, and so forth) are directly responsible for children’s internalization of norms or capacity

48. For an overview of Kochanska’s early research program, see Grazyna Kochanska, “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children: A Context for the Early Development of Conscience,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11, no. 6 (December 2002): 191–95; and Kochanska and Aksan, “Children’s Conscience and Self-Regulation.” 49. Cassandra Pasiak and Rosanne Menna, “Mother-Child Synchrony: Implications for Young Children’s Aggression and Social Competence,” Journal of Child and Family Studies 24, no. 10 (October 2015): 3079–92; Deater-Deckard and Petrill, “Parent-Child Dyadic Mutuality and Child Behavior Problems”; Amanda W. Harrist et al., “Dyadic Synchrony in Mother-Child Interaction—Relation with Children’s Subsequent Kindergarten Adjustment,” Family Relations 43, no. 4 (October 1994): 417–24; Alan Russell and Graeme Russell, “Positive Parenting and Boy’s and Girl’s Misbehaviour during a Home Observation,” International Journal of Behavioral Development 19, no. 2 (June 1996): 291–307; Amanda J. Moreno, Mary M. Klute, and JoAnn L. Robinson, “Relational and Individual Resources as Predictors of Empathy in Early Childhood,” Social Development 17, no. 3 (2008): 613–37; Tracy L. Spinrad and Cynthia A. Stifter, “Toddler’s Empathy-Related Responding to Distress: Predictions from Negative Emotionality and Maternal Behavior in Infancy,” Infancy 10, no. 2 (2006): 97–121; Maayan Davidov and Joan E. Grusec, “Untangling the Links of Parental Responsiveness to Distress and Warmth to Child Outcomes,” Child Development 77, no. 1 (February 2006): 44–58. 50. W. Andrew Collins et al., “Contemporary Research on Parenting: The Case for Nature and Nurture,” American Psychologist 55, no. 2 (February 2000): 225–26; for one such intervention study, see Rebecca L. Brock and Grazyna Kochanska, “Toward a Developmentally Informed Approach to Parenting Interventions: Seeking Hidden Effects,” Development and Psychopathology 28, no. 2 (May 2016): 583–93; the intervention literature is also reviewed in Collins et al., “Contemporary Research on Parenting.”

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

133

for empathy. Rather, the quality of the parent–child relationship is thought to interact with all sorts of factors, factors which then potentially exert an impact on the relational context. Psychologists now develop increasingly complex longitudinal studies to theorize various developmental trajectories.51 While both child-centered and parent-centered variables are thought to interact in complex ways, for conceptual clarity it will help to consider the experimental research on each type of variable.

Child variables in socialization processes Researchers now propose that different traits function as factors that render children more or less susceptible to particular kinds of influence. An early emerging and relatively stable personality disposition, such as a propensity to anger, might make a child at risk for maladaptive behaviors or simply prone to greater variation, in both positive and negative directions. Parenting, and particularly the affective and responsive quality of the early relationship, can interact with these temperamental traits and set the stage for different developmental trajectories. In one study, for instance, Kochanska’s research team found that different approaches to discipline were more effective in parenting children with fearful as opposed to fearless temperaments. Fearful children, who tended to be overly responsive to authority figures, responded well to clear directives and gentle guidance. Fearless children, by contrast, were not as temperamentally inclined to comply with authority and responded more to a relationship characterized by positive affect and high responsiveness.52 In another series of studies, the temperamental proneness of children to anger in infancy was found to render them more susceptible to variation in their development of self-regulation and prosocial behavior. Among children who were not temperamentally prone to anger, there was no association between self-regulation and a mutually responsive relationship. Among those with this dispositional orientation, however, higher measurements for the parent–child relationship quality correlated to higher self-regulation. And, in fact, these children ended up with the highest levels of self-regulation and prosocial behavior, even higher than children without a disposition for anger.53

51. For an overview of current methodology in research on parenting, see Collins et al., “Contemporary Research on Parenting.” 52. G. Kochanska, “Children’s Temperament, Mothers Discipline, and Security of Attachment—Multiple Pathways to Emerging Internalization,” Child Development 66, no. 3 (June 1995): 597–615. 53. Sanghag Kim and Grazyna Kochanska, “Child Temperament Moderates Effects of Parent-Child Mutuality on Self-Regulation: A Relationship-Based Path for Emotionally Negative Infants,” Child Development 83, no. 4 (August 2012): 1275–89.

134

Responsive Becoming

These findings were supported by a more recent study where, in the context of an insecure attachment, children’s anger was found to predict higher powerassertive discipline, which in turn predicted more antisocial behavior at eighty months.54 In securely attached dyads, this maladaptive trajectory was not observed, prompting researchers to theorize that early attachment is not a direct cause of behavioral outcomes but rather “a foundation for future socialization processes within the parent-child dyad.”55 Another child-centered trait that has received substantial attention is imitation. Given the propensity of children to imitate and the role of imitation in human culture, it would not be surprising to find that imitation played an important role in moral development. While early research on imitation was inconclusive, more recent studies have given specific attention to the role of imitation in the context of an existing relationship involving positive affect, mutual trust, and cooperation. One early study found that children’s willing and accurate imitation of mothers in a teaching context correlated to their committed compliance in a discipline context, suggesting to the authors that the two traits are related aspects of an overarching responsiveness to socialization.56 Subsequent research has tracked the relation between early imitation in a teaching task at fourteen and twenty-two months (with attention to both eagerness of imitation and accuracy) with internalized conduct and guilt at thirty-three and forty-five months. This research found that imitation measures predicted both facets of preschool-age conscience.57 While research in Kochanska’s lab has studied imitation only in the teaching context, another recent study has examined spontaneous imitation and possible associations with moral development. Here, two-year-old children who viewed a video of an actor using a novel manner to comfort another adult in physical pain were subsequently given an opportunity to comfort their own mothers in a similar situation of distress. Compared with two control groups, infants who viewed the video were not only more likely to use the novel manner of comforting (patting the injured person on the head with a blue cleaning mitt), but they were also more likely to employ conventional means (hugging or expressing concern) to comfort.58 This research is particularly interesting because it suggests not only 54. Grazyna Kochanska and Sanghag Kim, “Toward a New Understanding of Legacy of Early Attachments for Future Antisocial Trajectories: Evidence from Two Longitudinal Studies,” Development and Psychopathology 24, no. 3 (August 2012): 783–806. 55. Ibid., 801. 56. David R. Forman and Grazyna Kochanska, “Viewing Imitation as Child Responsiveness: A Link between Teaching and Discipline Domains of Socialization,” Developmental Psychology 37, no. 2 (March 2001): 203–04. 57. David R. Forman, Nazan Aksan, and Grazyna Kochanska, “Toddler’s Responsive Imitation Predicts Preschool-Age Conscience,” Psychological Science 15, no. 10 (October 1, 2004): 701–03. 58. Rebecca A. Williamson, Meghan Rose Donohue, and Erin C. Tully, “Learning How to Help Others: Two-Year-Old’s Social Learning of a Prosocial Act,” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 114, no. 4 (April 2013): 543–50.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

135

that spontaneous imitation might play a role in moral development but also that modeled reminders of appropriate behavior might increase the occurrence of that behavior in the immediate future. With respect to each of these child-centered traits, it should by now be obvious that they are rather difficult to disentangle from any particular parent– child relationship. A number of researchers note that the relationship is a circular one, as a difficult temperament can elicit negative parenting from a caregiver who might already interact positively with a different child. When considering moral development then, neither the child, the parent, nor the relationship they create together can be ignored. We can, however, already begin to see that in optimal circumstances, with the most skilled parents, different temperamental traits are not allowed to determine a developmental trajectory. To really see how this is the case, however, we must now turn to the parent perspective.

Parent-specific variables Instead of simply focusing on parenting styles or practices, researchers are now directing their attention to the knowledge, expertise, and flexibility with which parents apply these techniques according to the goals they have set for their children. In other words, instead of treating parents as relatively unthinking automatons who have a uniform “style” or apply consistent strategies, researchers are treating them as intelligent agents, capable of critical reflection and of adapting various parenting techniques to the specific needs of the child they know intimately. The theoretical perspective which undergirds this research certainly makes sense given the already established link between parent responsiveness and positive socialization outcomes. The mother who is committed to the good of a particular child knows her child and is also attentive and responsive to childspecific characteristics as well as to the situation at hand. It makes sense to think that this sort of parent is the one who successfully navigates specific parenting challenges, adapts to situations and to the needs of her child, and is ultimately successful in gaining willing and committed compliance with her own behavioral standards and values. But just what parenting actions does this successful mother have in her arsenal? When it comes to efforts to categorize specific parenting behaviors, the literature is massive and the conceptual waters can get quite murky. At the positive end of the disciplinary spectrum are a series of proactive and scaffolding behaviors that are widely regarded, at least since the decline of strictly behaviorist approaches, as making positive developmental contributions. These include the use of inductive reasoning, distraction, “gentle” guidance, and modeling. Within the past few decades, a number of studies have explored the role of parent–child conversations in the formation of children’s autobiographical memory and personal identity. Children of mothers who have engaged them in elaborative retrospective conversations have a more comprehensive grasp of past

136

Responsive Becoming

experience and are better able to structure their memories in narrative form.59 A few researchers have since begun to apply this research to moral development, theorizing that reminiscing conversations about a child’s behavior might provide scaffolding for the child’s growing moral cognition, particularly by helping children recognize the effects of their behavior on other people and providing a framework for reflection on future actions. The handful of studies to date is indeed suggestive. Deborah Laible’s work on mother–child discourse has found that mothers tend to adjust their conversational style to the temperament and needs of their children, preferring, for example, to discuss negative emotionality with children they perceive to be high in negative reactivity.60 Maternal elaboration in her research program has been associated with higher behavioral internalization and with higher emotional understanding.61 Elaborative style was also associated with secure attachment, a finding that converges with previous work on autobiographical memory, and has prompted researchers to theorize that reminiscing is an important part of the attachment relationship of toddlers and preschoolers.62 Lastly, clarity of discourse regarding past behavior was also related to future internalization and emotional understanding.63 Thus far, the question of negative discipline (punishment) has remained in the background of our discussion. The mutually responsive relationship between parent and child, while a significant change from older theories of parenting, still presumes a significant power differential, one which includes notions of authority and coerced obedience. While a responsive and trusting relationship is understood to promote thoughtful guidance on the part of parents and willing compliance from children, developmental psychologists are not so naive as to assume that child compliance is universal, even in the most ideal of circumstances. While developmentalists readily acknowledge the reality of child disobedience to parental directives, however, there is substantial disagreement

59. For a review, see Deborah Laible and Ross A. Thompson, “Mother-Child Discourse, Attachment Security, Shared Positive Affect, and Early Conscience Development,” Child Development 71, no. 5 (October 2000): 1424–40. 60. Deborah Laible, “Mother-Child Discourse in Two Contexts: Links with Child Temperament, Attachment Security, and Socioemotional Competence,” Developmental Psychology 40, no. 6 (November 2004): 988–89. 61. Ibid.; Laible and Thompson, “Mother-Child Discourse, Attachment Security, Shared Positive Affect, and Early Conscience Development.” 62. Laible, “Mother-Child Discourse in Two Contexts,” 989. 63. Deborah Laible, “Mother-Child Discourse Surrounding a Child’s Past Behavior at 30 Months: Links to Emotional Understanding and Early Conscience Development at 36 Months,” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly-Journal of Developmental Psychology 50, no. 2 (April 2004): 159–80. This study also confirms early findings regarding elaboration and discussion of emotion. A major weakness of each of these studies is the laboratory setting and the fact that the conversations are elicited. They can provide information about content and style, but they don’t provide any information about whether or not the mothers have these kinds of conversations naturally outside of the discipline context or how frequently they occur.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

137

among researchers regarding ideal parental responses. Socialization theorists draw distinctions regarding types of discipline based on their own theoretical commitments, with the result that the categories and terms employed are often difficult to compare. Kochanska, for example, has repeatedly studied the use of maternal “powerassertion.” In these studies, the category has encompassed behaviors ranging from physical punishment to the issuance of commands and it has been associated with various negative outcomes, particularly for children with specific temperaments or in situations where the relational quality is low.64 This schema is quite different from that of Diana Baumrind, who distinguishes confrontive power, a positive trait, from coercive power. Behaviors in the latter category would include arbitrary discipline, whether physical or verbal, or an emphasis on parental authority without any role for reason or negotiation. Parental control, by contrast, establishes and enforces limits, and includes external pressures like rewards and punishments and even spanking, provided that these are reasoned, negotiable, and outcome oriented.65 Still other theorists try to draw the distinctions along other axes—positive versus negative discipline, harsh versus gentle, external versus internal, and so forth.66 A further complication in comparing these theoretical distinctions and the resulting research is that most researchers include within their negative category behaviors which would be widely agreed upon as harmful, such as frequent yelling or harsh physical punishment. Including these practices then makes it difficult to determine the effects of less controversial disciplinary techniques such as a time-out or loss of privileges. Despite the complexity introduced by different theoretical starting points, more targeted research on a few specific types of discipline is available. The most widely researched is the use of moderate corporal punishment. As one might expect,

64. For a description of the power-assertion construct, see Kochanska, “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children,” 99–100. 65. Diana Baumrind, “Differentiating between Confrontive and Coercive Kinds of Parental Power-Assertive Disciplinary Practices,” Human Development 55, no. 2 (2012): 35–51. 66. Alink et al., for example, distinguished “negative” and “positive” discipline. Lenneke R. A. Alink et al., “Maternal Sensitivity Moderates the Relation between Negative Discipline and Aggression in Early Childhood,” Social Development 18, no. 1 (2009): 99– 120. Bates et al., distinguished “low-restriction” from “high-restriction,” although they noted that neither category included “harsh punishment” because the latter was seldom observed. See John E. Bates et al., “Interaction of Temperamental Resistance to Control and Restrictive Parenting in the Development of Externalizing Behavior,” Developmental Psychology 34, no. 5 (September 1998): 982–95. Grolnick proposes two distinct sprectrums of parental discipline, autonomy-supportive versus controlling behavior and high verses low structure. Wendy S. Grolnick, “The Relations among Parental Power Assertion, Control, and Structure Commentary on Baumrind,” Human Development 55, no. 2 (2012): 57–64.

138

Responsive Becoming

context is a significant factor in evaluating its impact, with well-published studies in the United States showing a connection between corporal punishment and future antisocial behaviors, including physical aggression. Theorists also worry that punishment of any sort, including but not limited to physical punishment, undermines the development of internal motivation and interferes with the positive parent–child relationship. On the other hand, some researchers theorize that in certain contexts, corporal punishment is compatible with parental warmth and an affectively positive parent–child relationship, whereas in other contexts it simply exacerbates already strained parent–child relationships, leading to increased mutual hostility and maladaptive trajectories.67 Despite the conflicting results regarding detrimental effects of corporal punishment, it tends to be widely regarded with suspicion, if for no other reason than the absence of any evidence that it leads to positive developmental outcomes that are not also associated with alternative disciplinary practices. At this point, it is worth pausing to consider the overall picture that is emerging of moral development in the context of the parent–child relationship. The human infant, with her advanced social capacities and, perhaps even more importantly, her social desires and social joy, is thought to be particularly sensitive to the quality of the caregiving relationship. A secure or responsive mother–child relationship indicates a history of interactions between mother and child. These would include close physical attentiveness to a child’s needs or signs of distress accompanied by efforts to calm, comfort, and satisfy. They would also include social joy, expressions of affection, and a communicative give-and-take appropriate to a child’s development. These mutually responsive patterns of interaction and high levels of positive affect are associated with a number of positive behavioral outcomes, including higher willing compliance with maternal requests, decreased aggression, higher empathy, and higher moral cognition. This pattern is especially noticeable for children who might otherwise be temperamentally inclined to adverse developmental trajectories. These high levels of attention and responsivity are also indicative of parental commitment extending beyond the child’s subjective awareness. Skilled parents do not simply respond to their children instinctively, but they also incorporate specific

67. Kochanska and Kim, “Toward a New Understanding of Legacy of Early Attachments for Future Antisocial Trajectories”; and Alink et al., “Maternal Sensitivity Moderates the Relation between Negative Discipline and Aggression in Early Childhood.” A significant number of studies have also examined the role that cultural expectations regarding discipline strategies might play in the effectiveness and potential for maladaptive behavioral outcomes. Early studies suggested that in cultural contexts where corporal punishment is widely accepted there is no link to heightened aggression later in life. Other studies have found no differences in ethnic contexts. See Elizabeth T. Gershoff et al., “Longitudinal Links between Spanking and Children’s Externalizing Behaviors in a National Sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Families,” Child Development 83, no. 3 (June 2012): 838–43.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

139

knowledge of their child and they try to act in a manner that is commensurate with their child’s developmental stage and unique traits. Parents assess the situation at hand, think proactively about their future parenting goals, and learn from past mistakes. They try to grasp their child’s perspective, to accommodate their words and actions to his abilities, and to scaffold his developing cognition and behavior. They try to provide specific types of experiences that will best elicit the kinds of growth they desire. And when they must discipline bad behavior, they take into account a variety of factors, from prudential to moral, when considering the appropriate response. Given the challenges that the theological accounts of sanctification have encountered when seeking to theorize the role of subjectivity in the process of sanctification, this dynamic between parents and children could be quite instructive. In the intra-human context we see that what is occurring within the subject is indeed significant. It matters that the child has a certain set of experiences and, based on these, begins to develop appropriate affections, beliefs, and expectations regarding parental care. At the same time, what is occurring within the child’s subjectivity is only part of, and is indeed dependent on, a much larger picture. Much of this larger picture will only be available for reflection and incorporation into a coherent personal narrative in retrospect, if indeed it ever enters the child’s awareness at all.

Critical reflection In the next chapter I will expand on these initial observations regarding points of contact between the theological and social scientific material. If the picture of moral development emerging from the last generation of research on children continues to gain support in future research, engaging this material can indeed yield important insights for theologians working at the intersection of faith and practice. Before we arrive at this step, however, an interdisciplinary conversation must also include a critical moment, particularly when there is the potential for contradictory presuppositions to derail any possibility of fruitful dialogue. Here we must directly approach developmental research with the question of its suitability as a conversation partner.68

Philosophical presuppositions Since parting ways from Kohlberg’s moral stage theory with its Kantian foundations, developmental psychologists have largely returned to a pre-Kohlbergian stance toward moral philosophy.69 While they might make reference to philosophy when 68. In the words of James Loder, any “implicit rejection of theological concerns must be negated.” James E. Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998), 37. 69. Blasi, “How Should Psychologists Define Morality?.”

140

Responsive Becoming

introducing a topic or discussing results, programs of research tend to rely on very general or thin categories of moral behavior. The result at the moment is an interesting and appealing account of how parents pass along their own values to children, or how they succeed in raising children who comply with the basic standards of a viable human community, but it stops considerably short of providing an account of how children are set on a path of more substantial human goodness or virtue. The crucial questions which the Kohlbergian paradigm still poses to more recent accounts of early childhood moral development, the questions to which we must now return, thus concern some of the most basic issues in the history of both philosophical and theological reflection on morality, issues such as the nature of authority and the role of reason in moral action. What kind of moral agency is depicted in the obedience of the child to the sensitive, responsive, committed parent? Is it, basically, a form of arbitrary compliance? Kohlbergian thought would have us believe that this action of the child has no real moral worth until the child is able to subject the norms of the authority figure to the rational standards of justice. The socialization theorists, by contrast, are interested in providing an account of how children come to adopt the norms of their parents and, by extension, the patterns of behavior that will enable them to function independently in their own cultural environment. Despite their relatively recent accommodation of cognition and parental induction in this project, they are largely not interested in asking whether this process of socialization produces a universal ethic or whether such compliance is consistent with, or might lead to, an ideal of human moral behavior. By not asking what such an ideal might look like, contemporary socialization theory leaves the impression that the kind of moral development which occurs in the parent–child context is simply a “good enough” behavioral standard, one that is appropriate to the social context the child will inhabit. While there is something to the Kohlbergian critique of socialization theory, I wish to suggest that the situation is actually not as dire as it seems. Although moral psychologists cannot move the current research program in the direction of a robust theory of moral development without adopting a more rigorous philosophical framework, they are not thereby left with a description of socialization into arbitrary conventions. The story they are beginning to tell about development, with its emphasis on the social world of the developing person, is actually well suited to social theories of moral obligation.70 In fact, because of the prominence of notions of authority and obedience, located in a relationship of love and trust, this picture of development is one that might actually find more congenial conversation partners among theologians than philosophers. In order to

70. John Bowlin, “Barth and Aquinas on Election, Relationship, and Requirement,” in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue, ed. Bruce McCormack and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 237–61 provides a general description of social theories of obligation, connecting it to philosophical roots in Aristotle and Hegel as well as to theological expressions in Aquinas and Barth.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

141

tease out the possibility for a more robust account, I begin by returning one more time to the socialization literature, paying particular attention to the reasons that developmental psychologists offer for the connections they discern between the quality of the parent–child relationship and the behavioral outcomes. In Kochanska’s research program, a positive parent–child relationship, whether this is cast in terms of secure attachment or of MRO, is thought to engender a willing and receptive stance on the part of the child toward socialization. But why should this be the case? In a number of studies, Kochanska suggests that children in these relationships might be motivated to comply in order to maintain the pleasure of a positive relationship.71 This sort of suggestion initially seems to reflect the behaviorism that dominated earlier phases of socialization theory, with positive affect or its absence substituting for rewards and punishments. While plausible, theorization along these lines does little to place the compliance of the child in particularly moral light. The child in this scenario acts out of an unreflective desire for a pleasurable experience. Elsewhere Kochanska enhances this explanation by suggesting the motivation to maintain a positive relationship allows parents to decrease external pressure, which in turn provides children with an experience of acting independent of parental control.72 Here, the experience of willing action in the absence of relational hostility or child resistance provides a foundation upon which more mature moral reasoning can develop. A child who is compelled to share a toy, for example, might remain focused on her desire to keep the toy, or on her anger toward the parent who applied sufficient external pressure to coerce the sharing act. The child who shares willingly, regardless of her initial reason for doing so, is by contrast in a better position emotionally and mentally to begin to grasp the reasons why sharing, in itself, might be a good behavior. The philosophically trained reader will no doubt observe here the parallels with Aristotelian habituation theories. The good action is not initially undertaken for moral reasons, but under the right circumstances the agent comes to a reflective appreciation for the goodness of the action. Such a perspective is certainly consistent with what we have learned about the cognitive capacities of children even in their first year of life. They are already recognizing human action as intentional and they are already making discriminations about the good and bad intentions of other agents. It makes sense then to think that the way in which parents seek to direct the young child’s action might facilitate or hinder her ability to apply these discriminations to her own behavior. And it makes sense to think that the child’s positive emotional stance toward the parent might make her more receptive to a parent’s efforts at moral induction than one of ambivalence or hostility. Thus, even an account which initially seems like strict behaviorism need not steer socialization theory toward an account of moral formation bereft of any cognitive component. 71. Grazyna Kochanska and Nazan Aksan, “Conscience in Childhood: Past, Present, and Future,” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 2004): 305. 72. Kochanska, “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children,” 95.

142

Responsive Becoming

A second suggestion in the socialization literature, one which bears even more promise for elucidating the distinctly moral valence of a child’s compliance, is that the norms for behavior, those with which the child is expected to comply, are exemplified and embedded in the mutually responsive relationship itself.73 In a responsive relationship, children actually learn about their social world. They gain a sense of the kinds of goods that social relationships afford and how these goods are nourished or harmed by different types of behavior. Specifically, they experience committed and responsive care which is attentive and respectful of the child as a person. The attuned and caring parent does not just provide for a child’s physical needs, but responds with joy to a child’s joy, as both gain a sense of the relational good that is only possible when shared. Much might be said about the mutual dependence of affect and cognition in moral development when viewed from this perspective. This affective bond and attunement to another’s emotional state sensitizes the child to the positive and negative consequences that one person’s action can have for another. Parents who draw attention to the emotional states of others when they discuss a particular behavior with their child are drawing on and scaffolding both the cognitive and the affective capacities of the child. Children who are then more motivated to share or to refrain from hitting a playmate are then acting out of both a cognitive awareness of the consequences of their action and an affect-laden preference for certain consequences. It is thus difficult to disentangle the child’s love for the good parent from her recognition of the goodness of that shared love or from her desire to imitate and expand that love. While these explanations go some way to answering the question of how the parent–child relationship is a developmental context from which genuinely good action emerges, they stop short of claiming that the child’s compliance with parental directives, including those she cannot yet grasp as good, has a moral worth of its own. A few remaining observations in the socialization literature suggest that even here, at this most basic level of compliance, more credit should be given to the moral agency of the child. A number of socialization theorists, in reflecting on the responsive and caring parent–child relationship, suggest that this shared history of positive interactions engenders a fundamental trust on the part of the child and a willingness to comply with parental directives, even when these requests happen to conflict with a particular good the child wishes to pursue.74 Such trust implies a level of cognitive

73. Thompson, “Whither the Preconventional Child?” 426; see also Deborah Laible and Ross A. Thompson, “Early Socialization: A Relationship Perspective,” in Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, ed. Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 181–207. 74. See Kochanska and Aksan, “Children’s Conscience and Self-Regulation,” 1596. Trust is a hallmark of the “mutually responsive orientation” and is indicated by the child’s willingness to comply in absence of supervision even when noncompliance is highly desirable (e.g., playing with an attractive toy that has been prohibited.)

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

143

competency on the part of the child, even if the child is not yet able to explicitly formulate these beliefs. It implies, first, that the child recognizes the good her parent has intended toward her in the past and that she is able to then expect future good intentions. As noted earlier, even babies are forming implicit expectations of care, based on the quality of care they have thus far received. It implies, second, that the child has some recognition of her own limitations and vulnerabilities, of her need for parental guidance. Given that children do in fact have certain limitations and vulnerabilities and given that these are more pronounced than those of adults, it makes sense to then say that the trusting compliance which a child shows to a caring and committed parent is not best characterized an arbitrary obedience, but as genuinely good action, as the best action the child could take. Instead of something to be overcome in subsequent development, it is rather the proper foundation for that development. It is then from this fundamental trust that a child is receptive to parental rules and also to a parent’s efforts to explain those rules and to help her grasp them. It is from this perspective that she is able to receive correction as a form of care and love. It is from this perspective that she is able to see past unpleasant consequences, and even punishment, and come to recognize that she has acted wrongly. This is all possible if the child is already fundamentally convinced and in fact daily experiences, that her parents are actively realizing her own good. While this sort of speculation helps to display a child’s compliance as reasoned or good, as opposed to arbitrary or simply pleasant, it still cannot claim that the child’s compliance is a moral action. As already stated, without adopting a particular moral framework—a specific account of what makes an action moral or right as opposed to simply reasonable or good and of the conditions in which an agent can be held responsible for acting rightly—such an argument cannot be made. It is worth noting, however, that from the perspective I have just sketched, the child’s compliance could be woven into multiple accounts, including one in which morally right action is primarily determined with reference to one’s relationship to a creating and redeeming God, a God who has also placed all persons in a network of relationships to other humans and to creation.

Human limitations and expansive parental responsibility The set of values or norms under consideration in most of the developmental literature may, at the end of the day, be rooted in widely accepted cultural standards, standards that assume slightly different form or even change dramatically from one context to the next. But I hope to have said enough to indicate that the norms are not thereby rendered arbitrary nor are the processes themselves irrelevant. A more difficult presupposition of the research however is the seemingly limitless capacity of the agents involved. One unspoken assumption of researchers seems to be that moral goodness is a matter of attaining sufficient knowledge of developmental processes and controlling circumstances so as to optimize the potential for good behavior. Not only does this assumption, not

144

Responsive Becoming

surprisingly, disregard any notion of human sin with respect to either children or parents, but it also presumes an almost infinite capacity for parents to consume parenting research and incorporate whatever particular parenting strategy has most recently been heralded as the essential component of good childrearing. Accompanying this assumption is the notion that researchers, not parents, are the ones who have the knowledge. Most sane parents are not, of course, pouring over the latest issues of Child Development, but the findings of various research programs do regularly make their way into the popular press, and these publications freely expound on parental choices from sleeping arrangements and discipline strategies to recreational choices.75 It is in this movement, in the shift from analyzing and reflecting on parenting practices, to proselytizing and proscribing, that developmental research risks exceeding its limitations. In this move from study to popular application, questions of methodology—the concerns of replication, sample sizes, and study design— take a back seat, or more likely are quietly left out of the vehicle altogether, and the promise of expert, scientific knowledge is held out for instant application. Rarely does anyone pause to consider whether any parent could actually implement the wide range of expert knowledge, much less to consider that treating parenting as the implementation of expert knowledge seems to undermine precisely the relational and affective core that is the primary thread running through the developmental research. For a theologian this raises questions that developmental science seems incapable of asking: Is it ultimately within our capacity to make ourselves and our children perfect? Is this our job? And if it is not, how should we construe the job of parents? To ask these questions is not to question the legitimacy of developmental research, but rather to ask whether, and how, it might be capable of honesty and humility with respect to its own task and sphere of influence.

Affective social acceptance While an interdisciplinary methodology must be attentive to ways in which theological concerns are potentially silenced by the scientific discourse, this critical moment must not be allowed to overshadow all openness to, and indeed probing search for genuinely compatible and illuminating insight. It is with this conviction in mind that I would like to conclude this chapter by reflecting on what I take to be one of the most theologically significant contributions of developmental

75. See Eli J. Finkel and Gráinne M. Fitzsimons, “Too Much Helicopter Parenting,” New York Times, May 10, 2013, sec. Opinion/Sunday Review, http://www.nytimes. com/2013/05/12/opinion/sunday/too-much-helicopter-parenting.html; Jessica Lahey, “Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School,” The Atlantic, June 20, 2014, http://www. theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clear-the-scheduleand-let-kids-play/373144/; Hanna Rosin, “The Overprotected Kid,” The Atlantic, March 19, 2014 for just a few recent examples.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

145

studies. Whereas the experiential point of reference for most theological reflection on moral transformation is going to be the theologian’s own adult life, studies of childhood offer an alternative anthropological point of entry and thus have the capacity to make visible aspects of human moral agency that might be obscured in the adult context. Such, I suggest, is precisely the case with the grounding role of affective social acceptance, a condition for the possibility of moral agency that is uniquely visible in the compliance of the child, but which, if Calvin is correct, remains crucial throughout the human life span. The point of departure for this insight comes from a few remaining suggestions in the socialization literature which seek to account for the connection between responsive parenting and willing compliance by reflecting on the way in which caring parents meet children’s psychological needs. In one of her earliest studies, Kochanska speculated that a mutually responsive relationship might facilitate compliance because it provides an ongoing experience of validation. Whereas young children are generally thought to challenge parental boundaries as a way of asserting their own agency, Kochanska suggests that the responsive relationship already provides a continuous source of affirmation of a child’s autonomy.76 In a later study examining the relationship between positive mood and moral behavior Kochanska notes that the positive mood cultivated in a healthy relationship might “reduce a child’s defensive focus on the self.”77 Children whose physical and emotional needs are regularly met are happier, less worried about their own wellbeing, and consequently more capable of attending to the needs of others. Both of these suggestions point not only to a child’s capacity for acting well but also to a particular kind of motivation—one that is liberated from a focus on the self. When these reflections are placed in the context of young children’s affective needs, as described by attachment theorists and evolutionary anthropologists like Sarah Hrdy, one might speculate more broadly that the unconditional acceptance and commitment displayed by good parents grounds and enables a particular kind of agency, one which corresponds to a long-standing problem with philosophical accounts. In most discussions of mature or ideal human moral behavior, special attention is given to the agent’s motivations for acting. Genuinely good moral behavior is understood to take place when an agent acts for the right reasons—for the sake of the good itself, or out of sense of obligation to what is right. An agent’s desire for approval by others is thought to contaminate the goodness of her action. Thoughts along these lines have a long history in moral philosophy and theology, as does the recognition that this level of principled action is incredibly difficult to attain. The human need for approval and acceptance is so great, and human

76. Kochanska, “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children,” 108. 77. Grazyna Kochanska et al., “Pathways to Conscience: Early Mother-Child Mutually Responsive Orientation and Children’s Moral Emotion, Conduct, and Cognition,” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46, no. 1 (January 2005): 29.

146

Responsive Becoming

motivations so complex and hidden, that skepticism regarding the feasibility of such an ideal is certainly warranted. Children, of course, do not regularly attain this ideal either, as anyone who has ever met a child, or been a child, can readily attest. Yet, it is possible to glimpse in some of the spontaneous actions of children what such an ideal might require. In this picture, the child has her basic needs met, most importantly the need to be valued and validated by others. She does not have to secure approval from others because this approval is already bestowed on her in innumerable encounters with a parent. What very young children in a healthy caregiving relationship have, and what is most elusive as our social experience broadens and we live with moral failure, is thus a sense of the self mattering that is part of the gift of parental care. These reflections are certainly speculative, but they do receive some additional confirmation in the research regarding harmful parental discipline. Despite the well-known debates about corporal punishment and research on counterproductive effects of rewards, neither of these disciplinary strategies is thought to yield the most harmful or ambiguous effects on children. Rather, this dubious distinction goes to practices that exert a negative psychological impact on children’s identity. This category includes “love-withdrawal” techniques, where parental approval and affection is contingent on child behavior, as well as various forms of verbal criticism. Such behaviors, which cut to the core of a child’s selfunderstanding, have been widely shown to be detrimental, not only to moral development but also to overall welfare.78 In contrast to these debilitating relationships, which tragically limit the possibilities of the child, the positive and responsive relationship can be seen as enabling and expanding her agency. What is at stake for this child in her action is never her worth, never her value as a child of her parent. This foundational love and commitment create a context and open a space in which the child’s action and effort can genuinely be for the good. She is not loved on account of her goodness, she is rather loved into this goodness.

Conclusion As we have seen in this chapter, trends in developmental research indicate that much of significance for the kind of human action that we generally call “moral” occurs in the earliest years of life. Before they are even able to speak, in a fascinating confirmation of Horace Bushnell’s bold claim, children are developing capacities that are essential for moral action. Even more important, and indeed frightening, 78. See Brian K. Barber and Mingzhu Xia, “The Centrality of Control to Parenting and Its Effects,” in Authoritative Parenting: Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development, ed. Robert E. Larzelere, Amanda Sheffield Morris, and Amanda W. Harrist (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2013), 65–74 for a review of this research.

Children’s Moral Development in Human Perspective

147

is the fact that it seems like this development can go better or worse depending not only on an individual child’s temperament and inclinations but also and perhaps more crucially on the child’s relationships with primary caregivers. Should we then say, from a theological perspective, that when these processes go well they are sanctifying, or that they contribute to our sanctification? To answer in the affirmative is, as we have seen, theologically quite problematic. If one is not careful, the implication is that sanctification can occur apart from the work of Christ and the Spirit and indeed that it is the burden and responsibility of the parent. On the other hand, if sanctification is the restoration of the person to the image of God, such that her actions are genuinely good, then surely these natural processes must be somehow relevant. Further complicating the question is the fact that Calvin takes these processes, or what he understands of them, to be analogous to sanctification. They help us comprehend the work of the Spirit, though in a limited sense, but then the natural processes themselves seem almost superfluous in the light of the Spirit’s far superior work. In the next and final chapter we will at last face these difficult issues directly. The crucial components of a response are, I submit, already in place. The correspondence between the humanity displayed in both evolutionary anthropology and childhood development, and the humanity revealed in our relationship to God points toward a vision of sanctification that includes, while simultaneously exceeding and purifying, the formative influences of our ordinary human relationships. They are not in themselves sanctifying, but they can be, and indeed must be, reoriented through fellowship with God in Christ.

Chapter 6 S A N C T I F IC AT IO N R EV I SI T E D

In Chapters 4 and 5 I argued that something of tremendous import for moral agency is visible in young children. Early in infancy, long before the first words, the child awakens to her existence in a social world. In a responsive give and take, parent and child delight in shared meaning and shared existence. As she grows, early caregiving relationships and the broader community contextualize the child’s understanding of the world and of life, providing a foundation and guide for her action in the world. The child has, in fact, evolved to become and to thrive in this highly social niche. She develops as a person with her own desires and commitments, including moral commitments, in and through these early relationships. In this final chapter, as we return to the doctrine of sanctification, this dynamic of openness and response that is visible in childhood formation is critical. Here I provide a constructive account of sanctification that draws on the theological analysis in the Reformed tradition and this interdisciplinary engagement. In short, the doctrine of sanctification presents a process that is analogous to what happens in childhood and that also presumes a remarkably similar anthropology. In the Christian life, in prayer and worship, in meditation and hearing the word, and in the sacraments, a new awareness and existence awakens. The human spirit, in the presence of divine Spirit, is awakened and loved into a new life that, as with the human infant, remains fundamentally dependent on a continuous relationship of affective and affirming presence. This divine–human relationship both grounds and calls for a particular form of human life, an ethic, a way of being in the world that is always a being with and for God. And as it calls for this ethic, it also propels it at every moment. Christian sanctification, alternately described as perfection or the restoration of the image of God, is properly understood as the life formed in openness and response to this relationship. The burden of this chapter will be to unpack this vision of sanctification and highlight its contribution to broader theological discussion of moral formation. Specifically, this “responsive becoming” provides an account of grace that is fully gratuitous while also consistent with human nature, and it draws attention to conditions of moral formation that are as yet undertheorized within the discipline of moral theology. In the process, I will also address the challenges regarding human nature and agency that have led to the marginalization of sanctification

150

Responsive Becoming

in contemporary Christian ethics. As we shall see, the study of human evolution and human development will provide important resources for this exposition and defense. Central to the argument throughout is the idea that sanctification is, at its core, relational. It is through this relational center of the doctrine, and in conversation with the anthropological perspectives afforded by the human sciences, that sanctification appears profoundly consistent with our creaturely nature.

Challenges to sanctification Before we turn to a constructive account of sanctification, we would do well to recall some of its difficulties, both those leveled against it in broader theological discourse and those uncovered in the theologies of Calvin, Owen, and Bushnell. What are the key conceptual issues the doctrine of sanctification must coherently address? Throughout, we have considered how a commitment to sanctification as a work of grace raises a number of questions regarding human agency and selfunderstanding. While an extensive body of literature in contemporary theology addresses questions of a general relation between divine and human agency, it must be recognized from the outset that we are here dealing with a very specific formulation of this topic.1 Identifying sanctification as a work of God’s grace is not simply a question of whether, for instance, divine agency exists on the same plane with or is in competition with human agency. At issue here, as John Owen persuasively argued, is whether one can speak of sanctification in distinctly Trinitarian terms. Sanctification, if it is to be constitutive of Christian redemption, must genuinely be an accomplishment of Christ and the Spirit. A generic appeal to divine agency working through nature does not make sense as Christian soteriology if it does not also account for the ways in which the transformation of the person is both christologically and pneumatologically driven. Next, if sanctification satisfactorily meets this criterion, can it also be consistent with what it means to be a human? At stake here is both the integrity of the human creature in her humanity and the persuasiveness of the doctrine itself. Does sanctification make sense, based on the kind of creature human beings are? Closely related to this question is whether sanctification makes sense from the perspective of the subject herself, or if it is instead radically alien to the life she lives. Does her restoration to the image of Christ somehow cohere with her life story, or is her own narrative, in its embodied finitude and temporality, irrelevant to the fully restored person she will one day become? Here we wish to avoid two inadequate images of the sanctifying Spirit. In the first the Spirit, by “divine fiat” 1. David B. Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979); David B. Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994); Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988).

Sanctification Revisited

151

instantaneously alters the moral agent.2 In the second, the human body remains, but the Spirit inhabits it and becomes the direct source of action.3 For both, the depictions of divine agency cast doubt on whether it is really this person, as a human person, who is transformed.4 Both Calvin and Owen ultimately do avoid this sort of imagery, but they do so by problematically locating the point of connection between personal identity and grace almost exclusively in the inner life and in the consciousness. For each, human action can be said to be truly a result of God’s grace if it flows from a transformed heart. While this “heart” emphasis has a lengthy pedigree in Reformed thought, and has clearly resonated with the religious experience of many Christians, it has also tended to come with side orders of passivity with respect to external action and an obsessive insecurity with respect to internal change. Is piety, the internal realm of affect and desire, at all relevant for sanctification? Or is it only ever an enticing but deceptive dead end? Lastly, the difficulties that Calvin and Owen encountered seem to suggest that a satisfying account of sanctification as a process occurring in the human person will ultimately have to investigate and somehow account for the ordinary processes by which humans, beginning in childhood, come to acquire the capacities and faculties necessary for moral action.5 This, of course, is precisely what Horace Bushnell sought to do when he located the beginnings of faith and Christian character in the context of the family and in the type of nurture children receive. His efforts, while in many respects appealing and insightful, fall short of being fully successful. He is ultimately unable to include the natural development of the child in a way that does not trap God’s grace in the stark realities of flawed human families. It seems that at the end of the day we find ourselves in exactly the position we wished to avoid. In Bushnell, the saving work of Christ and the Spirit never quite reaches the human person and she appears to be left alone in her moral striving.

2. Bushnell characterizes this form of divine agency as the “fiat of omnipotence.” See Horace Bushnell, Sermons for the New Life (New York: Charles Scribner, 1876), 116. 3. William K. B. Stoever, “Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimension in the New England Antinomian Controversy,” Church History 44, no. 01 (1975): 22–33, argues that this is precisely the issue at stake in the New England antinomian crisis of the seventeenth century. Stoever suggests that Cotton and his followers were advocating a notion of spiritual indwelling that overruled natural capacities and transformed believers in spite of their own agency. 4. See Julie Canlis, “Sonship, Identity, and Transformation,” in Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice, ed. Kelly M. Kapic (Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 232–50 for a discussion of these problems with human agency in sanctification. Canlis takes a similar approach to my own in her discussion of Calvin and sonship. 5. This attention to ordinary processes takes its inspiration from Herdt’s Putting on Virtue, but does so with reference to social scientific research rather than virtue theory. For her language of “ordinary habituation” or “ordinary human moral psychology,” see Ibid., 2.

152

Responsive Becoming

This, then, is our task: Can sanctification ultimately avoid these difficulties? Can it describe a process which is genuinely the work of Christ and the Spirit, but that does not displace moral effort or the ordinary formation that occurs in an intra-human context? Can it do so while taking into account both the import and unreliability of subjective awareness and the inner life of the “heart”? We begin with a careful reconstruction of sanctification itself, one that gives due consideration to both the “objective” and “subjective” poles that we observed in Calvin’s formulation.

Sanctification revisited In Reformed thought, sanctification is the restoration of the image of God in the person. It is the rescue from sin that relates not to forgiveness, but to wholeness and holiness. It is the undoing of sin’s destruction, including the personal destruction of character, agency, and action. At the root of many of its difficulties is thus the fact that sanctification is a work of God that necessarily involves the agency of the person. Further complicating the question of agency is that of sanctification’s completion. It is both already accomplished and given in Christ, and yet the person’s ordinary experience is of sanctification not fully realized. As we saw with both Calvin and Owen, a thorough analysis of sanctification thus needs to address the doctrine both from the perspective of divine action and from that of the human subject. It must discuss in turn both what I call the objective and subjective aspects of the doctrine. In objective perspective, sanctification has been fully accomplished in Christ. From the perspective of the subject, sanctification unfolds in time as the person responds to the ongoing work of the Spirit. These ultimately come together under the category of relationship, but first we must examine each in turn.

Objective aspect: Covenant and adoption We saw in Chapter 1 that Calvin maintains that sanctification is given instantaneously, together with justification, through union with Christ by faith. While Calvin consistently maintains this point, he does not specify how one is to interpret it. At times, it appears that this “givenness” is associated with what Calvin calls a “pious disposition,” a psychological state that, however much it might wax or wane, is always present to some degree.6 The objective and realized character of sanctification at these points is thus identified with a particular subjective state. At other times, however, Calvin associates the instantaneous character of sanctification with the presence of the “Spirit of adoption” by whose power Christ remakes the person into his own 6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.2.8.

Sanctification Revisited

153

image.7 In other words, what is given is the Holy Spirit, who joins the believer to Christ and makes her an adopted child of God. In John Owen, the realized aspect of sanctification is much more consistently delineated as the presence of the Spirit. The Spirit might work through discernible means, but, more importantly for Owen, the Spirit works directly and in ways that are inaccessible to subjective awareness. In both respects, the core of sanctification is this presence and working of the Spirit. In his better moments, Owen emphasizes that the believer need not be disturbed when subjective confirmation of the Spirit’s activity is lacking. The human person is a mystery to herself. One can be spiritually healthy, and growing in holiness, without being conscious of this fact. Following both Calvin and Owen, as well as other Reformed figures, I too root the objective character of sanctification in the presence of the Spirit who joins the believer to Christ. Sanctification at its core is an established relationship to the triune God.8 The preferred metaphor for this relationship is that of adoption. The indwelling Spirit joins the believer to Christ, making her a child of God. It is through this objective relationship that the person is “set apart” or made holy. As with justification in Calvin’s thought, the presence of the Spirit does not vary according to quality or quantity of faith. Any genuine faith joins the person to God and thus sanctifies. This objective character of sanctification is similarly not dependent on selfknowledge. Following Owen, and in agreement with current trends in the human sciences, I concur that the human person is often a mystery to herself, unaware of or perhaps mistaken about her deepest desires and motivations.9 Sanctification does not depend on always possessing a certain level of self-knowledge (though as we will see it does involve changes in subjectivity that include forms of selfawareness.) Rather, it depends on the activity of the Spirit who joins the person to Christ, the sanctified one. The sanctified person is the new being who now exists in and because of this relationship, this adoption as a child of God.10 But is this person fully sanctified? Or, is the objective and “already” character of sanctification restricted to its beginning in adoption? If this is the case, it would seem that the doctrine is problematically split, that sanctification is objectively accomplished only in part by the Spirit and remains to be completed through 7. Ibid., 3.11.5–9; 3.14.9. 8. Indeed, the relational aspect helps explain how sanctification can be relevant even in the absence of sin. Jesus, in John Owen’s thought, is sanctified, and for Calvin, a prelapsarian humanity grows in piety. 9. For discussion of self-knowledge in psychology, see Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press., 2004). 10. G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Sanctification (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1952), 33. As the Dutch Reformed systematician Berkouwer noted, this association of sanctification with adoption goes back to Luther. Berkouwer writes, “All-important for him is this new ‘being’ implied in reconciliation and adoption. This is the reality from which springs faith. The adoption to sons—that is the foundation of sanctification, the only foundation.”

154

Responsive Becoming

human action. In order to avoid such a conclusion—that sanctification is not fully a gift of God but depends on the person for its completion—the image of adoption must be supplemented with that of covenant, and sanctification contextualized by the doctrine of election. Christian salvation, in addition to unfolding in time and in the lives of believers, is established in the divine decision and promise. This is true of the people of Israel, who are beneficiaries of God’s commitment before they even exist. Their salvation from slavery is foretold to Abraham and then accomplished in time. Subsequently, they are called to holiness and yet at the same time they receive the promise that God will make them holy. The inclusion of sanctification in God’s promise of salvation is even clearer in the New Testament. Paul tells the Ephesians that their salvation is a gift and they are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph. 2:10). Likewise, Paul is confident of the Philippians “that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). As John Webster writes, “Sanctification is ingredient within the eternal resolve of God …. ‘He chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy’” (Eph. 1:4).11 From the perspective of God’s covenant, the objective aspect of sanctification is therefore found both in the presence of the Spirit joining the believer to Christ and in the eternal promise that those who are joined to Christ will be made like Christ by that same Spirit. It is worth pausing here to note that the anthropological perspective afforded in our engagement with evolutionary anthropology and developmental psychology is consistent with the view of human nature presumed in this theological account of an objectively changed person. In our study of current theory on human evolution, we encountered the plasticity of the person as she develops across the lifespan in a particular niche. Of particular note was the significance of the social niche. Millions of years of human cooperation have produced creatures who are exquisitely sensitive in their development to relationships. Human cognitive, perceptual, and affective capacities are all finely tuned to a life of cooperation and dependency. Who we are and who we are becoming is inseparable from our relatedness, and a new social context fundamentally alters human becoming. We then observed this significance close-up as we considered the moral formation of young children in the care of their parents. Furthermore, we also noted an openness to the transcendent in the human species. There is no scientific reason why the complex human affective and social system must be restricted to human relationships. Within this anthropology, sanctification is not a wholly mysterious or quasi-magical transformation that occurs without reference to human nature or the particular human person. Rather, it makes sense to say of the person who exists in a new relationship to Christ through the presence of the Holy Spirit that, while she has continuity as a person, she is also fundamentally changed or transformed by this new relationship. She has a new being, a sanctified being, that is consistent with and not a violation of her nature as human. 11. J. B. Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 79.

Sanctification Revisited

155

The social becoming of the person is, of course, connected with human subjectivity and particularly with human emotion. But since we are discussing sanctification as an objective reality, it is important to note that it is not reducible to the agent’s first-person experience or awareness of that social context. The parent–child relationship, for instance, affects a child’s development in any number of ways of which the child may only be dimly aware, or only grasp in retrospect, long after the relationship’s formative effects. What matters, however, is the objective relationship itself—that the child is the child of these particular parents, who have organized the child’s life and environment in a particular way. In many respects, this is consistent with John Owen’s claim that we are often a mystery to ourselves and that we need not be overly concerned with understanding and discerning the internal workings of our transformation to affirm that it is legitimate. On the other hand, however, the model of a parent–child relationship is less amenable to a vision of the Spirit’s agency that Owen thinks is most important: unmediated and even physical action to internally transform the person.12 In the account I present here, we can maintain the objective reality of sanctification without recourse to this kind of language. It is the existence of the relationship itself, and the recognition that the Spirit will work in ways that go beyond a person’s awareness or comprehension, that is important. One need not go further in detailing these actions in order to claim that the Spirit is indeed working and that this agency is consistent with—not a violation of—human nature. The theological appropriation of this anthropology is also consistent with Horace Bushnell’s “organic” description of human nature and relationships, again with an important caveat. Whereas for Bushnell the Spirit is restricted to human community, the anthropological approach I take here is more porous. It is the vertical, divine–human relationship that is determinative. Divine– human fellowship is expressed in and through human relationships, but it is not contained by them. Here again, the preservation of mystery—in this case of divine agency—is critical. The human person is fundamentally and objectively sanctified by the presence of the Spirit. This social context saturates all others and is thus determinative of human becoming. By beginning with the objectivity of the believer’s relationship to Christ, the doctrine of sanctification is clearly delineated as gracious. Furthermore, it is, as Owen properly observed, the work of Christ and the Spirit. Even though a full discussion of sanctification must ultimately include human agency, the objective reality of sanctification as a gift that is already received clarifies for the person that he is not, to use a Barthian phrase, “thrown back on himself.”13 In the life of the Christian, she is not left alone in her moral striving. Rather, her action 12. John Owen and W. H. Goold, The Works of John Owen (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 3:307, 3:389. 13. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), II.2), 539.

156

Responsive Becoming

always occurs in the context of this prior relationship. It is a relationship that is not contingent upon the vicissitudes of human affections or self-knowledge, despite the fact that the inner life of the person is indeed transformed in and through this relationship.

Sanctification from the perspective of the subject The objectivity of sanctification—its status as a gift that is already bestowed—is crucial to properly understanding the sense in which sanctification is a process that unfolds in time, one that involves the agency of the subject and of which she is capable of being at least partially aware. While the person is called to respond in particular ways to her new reality, in doing so she is never alone. Her action is always a response in relationship, occurring between the bookends of adoption and eschatological promise. Following Calvin, I also maintain that this response takes a particular shape—a moment-by-moment turning to God that can be described as death and rebirth. For Calvin, this relationship was primarily construed through the motif of adoption in Christ as a child of God. For Owen, it focused on the internal work of the Spirit. For Horace Bushnell, the divine– human relationship was mediated by the organic web of human relationships, particularly those between parents and young children. It is now time to draw on these thinkers, as well as our study of human formation in social contexts, to sketch what sanctification looks like from the perspective of the subject and from the perspective of practical theology, with its concern for the ordinary life of the church. Does it make sense as an overarching framework? If so, how does it relate to ordinary moral formation—both of Christians and also of those outside the church, of whom we can detect moral formation in childhood, and transformation or growth throughout life? Because the subjective view of sanctification is one of responsivity in divine–human relationship, we would do well to recall what we learned about the formative power of relationships from our studies of human evolution and developmental psychology. In the evolutionary context, we saw that it is part of evolutionary history that humans develop and become over the course of the life cycle, but most especially in childhood. Furthermore, this becoming is contextdependent. Who one is becoming is always about the organism in a particular context, and humans are particularly plastic with respect to their social niche. As I noted above, these observations are suggestive of an ontology that is neither static nor individualistic and are important for thinking about a new relationship to God in Christ as an objective change in the person. Now as we focus on the subjective aspect of sanctification, the role that psychological capacities and inclinations play in this development comes to the forefront. The human niche, as we have seen, is characterized by strong affective bonds and by distinctive social capacities. These traits enable cooperation, especially in the development and preservation of technologies that have made it possible for Homo sapiens to inhabit every corner of the globe. Our distinctive becoming is a social-affective becoming. We have

Sanctification Revisited

157

evolved to desire and find satisfaction in certain kinds of social interactions and we are characterized by a deep need for affect. These motivations served ancient humans well as they relied on community for survival in the harsh and fluctuating climates of the Pleistocene era. This psychological make-up has also opened up for us a moral and spiritual way of being of which we only see glimmers elsewhere in the animal kingdom.14 The maturation of children in the care of their parents provides the paradigmatic example of this distinctly human psychology, and our study of childhood developmental underscores and elaborates on many of the central ideas we took from evolutionary theory. As children receive responsive and loving care from parents and other caregivers, they form deep bonds of trust and affection. These bonds not only provide external incentive for children to comply with parental requests, but they also provide a crucial experiential context in which moral norms begin to make sense. When children experience the goods of human sociality, the norms and values that sustain these relationships become intrinsically compelling. The parents, for their part, are actively structuring the environment to further such moral cognition and they constantly adjust their behavior according to the specific responses of each child. If the child is fortunate to be secure and confident in the relationship, she enjoys a certain freedom in response. Not needing to earn acceptance through good behavior, she can comply with norms precisely because she is coming to recognize these as moral and therefore obligatory. The relational framework of sanctification is both analogous to the parent– child developmental context, and relies on the very anthropology that these intra-human relationships display. In the theological framework, the person is brought into relationship with the God revealed in Jesus. I’ll say more about the means of this relationship momentarily, but for now it will suffice to note that it is mediated by the communal and personal practices of Christian worship. Analogous to the parent–child relationship, a divine–human relationship will shape one’s understanding of human action that is fitting to this context. Specifically, the divine–human relationship opens up a new dimension to human action—love to God and all that this entails. Furthermore, norms governing human interaction are now also shaped by divine–human love. These norms must be appropriate to the God who has assumed human flesh and calls all persons into fellowship. The person of Jesus, as the revelation of divine being and of human faithfulness to God, is particularly important for this formation. In Jesus, divine being has entered and altered the human social niche. A full account of a christologically redefined human niche goes beyond the current project, but the important point here is a formal one. Human nature and human becoming are, in theological view,

14. See Marc Bekoff and Jessica Peirce, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009) and Celia Deane-Drummond, “Natural Law Revisited: Wild Justice and Human Obligations for Other Animals,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 35, no. 2 [Fall–Winter 2015]: 159–73).

158

Responsive Becoming

permanently altered by virtue of being assumed and inhabited by the divine. Jesus’s life opens new possibilities for human life. His ongoing presence through his Spirit in the world and especially in the lives of believers means that these possibilities are not relegated to the distant past but are constantly reappearing. While Jesus’s life inspires imitation, much like the example of good parents does for children, the incarnation does not mean that Christians must legalistically understand Jesus’s life as a model for their own. Rather, his life has changed human social existence, and thus it has changed the horizons for reflecting on and understanding what it means to live a good human life. This is all the more so, as both Calvin and Owen argue, because it is to Jesus that Christians are joined in fellowship and Jesus who is the object of their love. Knowing the person of Jesus thus invites personal reflection and application in the respective contexts of those who are joined to him.15 Sanctification as responsivity in relationship to God is not just with respect to norms, or the content of the moral life, but also involves a transformation of motivation. In the language of the Reformed tradition, it involves the transformed heart. In earlier Reformed thought, transformation of the heart was critical to the doctrine of grace. It indicated that right action was truly the result of grace and not merely of human effort. For John Owen it was also the locus for assurance of personal salvation. While I would resist both of these conclusions, the transformation of desire and motivation still has an important role to play in an account of sanctification. The idea here, in this relational depiction, is that the heart, the seat of desire so crucial to human action, is transformed not through a magician’s sleight of hand, but in and through the loving relationship. In the course of Christian worship and sacramental life, the believer experiences God’s love, particularly as this love has been expressed through the agency of Christ and the Spirit. This experience of divine love is transformative in two ways. First, as Calvin emphasizes, the experience of God as a loving father—a love that is not conditional on human action—is liberating.16 The priority of divine love puts an end to defensive posturing and a preoccupation with one’s status. Gratuitous love precludes the motive of “establishing oneself ”—that frantic and insatiable need to prove oneself worthy of the approval of others. Our study of human evolution, and particularly Walter Goldschmidt’s theory of affect hunger displayed this motive as deeply rooted in human mammalian sociality and also suggested that it could play

15. Given the lively debate in the 1980s regarding the distinctiveness of Christian ethics (see Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics [New York: Paulist Press, 1980]), it should be emphasized that this perspective on moral reasoning does not necessarily translate into an exclusively Christian ethic as opposed to a secular one. What, if anything, is unique about a Christian ethic will vary according to the broader social context. It is a reasonable assumption, however, that for each person this will involve some form of challenge to the existing form of life, and that is precisely why the new relationship is sanctifying. 16. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.19.5.

Sanctification Revisited

159

a strong, although also disturbing role in social control of human behavior.17 Such social control is not, however, the equivalent of moral formation. As the study of childhood development suggested, in confirmation of Calvin’s basic point, the strategy of withholding love from others as a means of social control is actually counter-productive in the development of genuine moral commitments. In such situations, people are motivated to do good not for its own sake, but to fulfill a psychological need. Both Calvin’s discussion of human freedom and our study of parent–child relationships suggest that unconditional love is crucial to genuinely good action. It liberates action from the enslavement to affect hunger. Not only does the relational context liberate human action from excessive focus on the self, but it also reshapes motivations by instilling new desires. As Jonathan Edwards observes, when you have genuine affection for someone, it is like an expansion of yourself. What matters to the other person begins to matter to you as well. You make their good your own, you desire it, and you delight when it comes to fruition.18 Similarly, when one is united to God in Christ, then the divine intent for creation’s flourishing gradually becomes one’s own. One experiences the kindness and forgiveness of God toward creation and then desires to replicate that kindness and forgiveness in relationships with others. One sees Jesus’s concern for the marginalized and begins to care more about the marginalized in her own social context. Both knowledge and motivation are gradually transformed in an affective social context. The anthropological insights gained through our studies of human evolution and childhood development are consistent with this pattern of human transformation. The similarities in the social scientific and theological literature are suggestive not just of an analogy between affect-laden human relationship and the Christian’s relationship to the triune God, but they also indicate that human beings qua human are primed to be transformed in precisely these ways. In other words, sanctification as it is experienced from the perspective of the subject occurs in and through her ordinary life and is consistent with her nature as a human being. She is neither magically transformed in a manner alien to her nature, nor does she lose genuine agency through a kind of spiritual possession. But does this emphasis on subjectivity and awareness of a relationship thereby take us right back down the rabbit hole of excessive preoccupation with cultivating a particular psychological state? The primacy of the objective aspect of sanctification— the presumption of divine working even though we are often mysteries to ourselves— is an important response to this concern. But the analogical parallels between the experience of the Christian and the parent–child relationship are also helpful. This model affords a way to think through distinctions of degree and kind with respect to an agent’s knowledge, belief, and conscious awareness. The infant, even at a very young age, has a rather robust knowledge of her caregiver and particularly of 17. Goldschmidt, The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 18. Jonathan Edwards, On the Nature of True Virtue (1765), The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 8, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 589.

160

Responsive Becoming

the kinds of actions that caregiver undertakes on her behalf. She also has a set of corresponding expectations or beliefs in the reliability of her caregiver to act in a certain way. None of this, however, presupposes that the infant or young child consciously reflects upon her knowledge or beliefs. The child does possess a kind of knowledge of parental love, and she can come to recognize it explicitly and reflect on it over time, but this level of awareness is not required for her to act in response to her parents. What is required is that she respond in such a way that she can continue to experience the good caregiving relationship. Her “pursuit,” though it need not be explicitly formulated as a pursuit, is not of knowledge of herself, but of love. Children do, of course, have experiences that cause them to doubt their parent’s love and it is indeed worth reflecting on the way they might deal with such an existential crisis. A child could focus on herself and her behavior, searching for signs that she is worthy of love or attempting, through extreme exertion to earn parental approval. Or she could begin to keep the parent at arm’s length and protect her developing psyche from further painful rejection. But these sorts of activities are widely recognized as ineffective and indicative of a pathological relationship. Assuming that the underlying relationship with parents is indeed sound, children are best helped in moments of crises when they are directed back toward the parent and to the experience and history of the love they share. If these reflections, and the parallels in the Christian context, are sound, they suggest an alternative to the much lamented “turn to the subject” in Protestant theology. On the one hand, the believer herself cannot be the source of her knowledge of God’s love. Such knowledge can in fact only come from God. On the other hand, a certain kind of experiential awareness of divine love is indeed vital to her agency and action. But she doesn’t gain such awareness primarily through self-examination or seeking self-knowledge. Rather, her primary task is to pursue the relationship itself, to pursue fellowship with God in Christ, and in moments of crisis, to reflect on God’s actions in Christ and the Spirit as these are woven through her own particular narrative history.19 Her subjectivity, and indeed a

19. Admittedly, this approach sidesteps the internal instability created by the doctrine of election in Reformed thought, a pattern that has been diagnosed by Randall Zachman and others. See Randall C. Zachman, The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 6–7; This dilemma has been historically influential and is inscribed in multiple confessional statements, but its ongoing practical significance is debatable. It may be that efforts of twentieth- and twentyfirst-century theologians to rework the doctrine of election have succeeded in lessening the existential crisis for ordinary believers. See Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2; Kathryn Tanner, Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 74. Or, perhaps more churches have, in practice, adopted the “happy inconsistency” of the Lutherans (Zachman, The Assurance of Faith, 7). My own approach presupposes that a preoccupation with one’s election is no longer the most pressing practical concern with sanctification. Preoccupation more broadly with the right kind of religious experience or emotional connection to God, however, remains an important contemporary concern.

Sanctification Revisited

161

certain kind of subjective knowledge, is implicated in her moral agency, but it is only as that subjective knowledge is appropriately grounded in the objective relationship. On this account, piety is relevant for the personal transformation that occurs in sanctification. It is not, as I suggested earlier, a deceptive dead end. What is problematic is a practical and pastoral theology that encourages the believer to focus on the examination of his own heart—as the beginning point of divine grace or the locus of assurance—rather than to focus on the God revealed in Christ. The notion of faith implied here is thus more capacious than Calvin’s formal definition. Just like Calvin thought the infant could have a “tiny spark” and just like infants can have some awareness of a parent’s love without explicitly formulating or reflecting on it, so too can genuine faith coincide with variations in conscious awareness and even with forms of doubt. It is worth noting here that this relationship between sanctification and piety also suggests a link between what we typically think of as moral formation and spiritual formation. It is easy to distinguish the two theoretically—the former treats human capacity for moral action, whether within or outside of the Christian tradition and the latter deals with the formation and growth of the person with respect to God. And yet it seems like there should be a connection. Should not a person who pursues the life of the Spirit, in Pauline fashion, come to walk according to the Spirit? In this account of sanctification, the intuitive connection is spelled out relationally. Spiritual practices and spiritual formation are the lifeblood of a relationship—they mediate fellowship with God. And fellowship with God, in turn, provides the context for moral formation. Practices such as habituation, which come to the forefront in a virtue ethics approach, are here still relevant, but their effects vary according to the social context. Thus far I have spoken of the subjective perspective strictly in terms of its core meaning as the person made holy through fellowship with the triune God— adoption as a child of God through union with the Son by the indwelling Spirit. Sanctification in this sense is consistent with human nature. It is fitting to the kind of creatures we are that we would be sanctified in this way. Sanctification, however is not quite so simple as this in Reformed thought. Following Calvin, there is a particular shape to this life of fellowship. It is expressed through a moment-bymoment process of turning that is characterized in the scriptures and in Reformed thought as a movement of death and new life. In a post-resurrection but preeschaton world, fellowship with God cannot be described as a relationship of stasis, or even by linear images of increasing knowledge and love. The situation of human beings in a sinful world changes this equation. It is a relationship constituted by repeated turning that we call repentance. As we saw in Chapter 2, Calvin’s root understanding of sin is relational. The sin of Adam was the rejection of God, and sin’s aftermath involved the ongoing alienation of people from God. In a world that is still marked by this alienation, repentance is not a one-time decision of faith but rather a form of life in which the person continuously rejects a life and identity that seeks to remain apart from God and lives into a life of adoption with Christ as a child of God. The shape of this life of repentance is, as Calvin observes, thoroughly christological. It is in

162

Responsive Becoming

fact a participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, whereby the believer comes to image Christ, the true child who lives in perfect fellowship with the Father. Through fellowship with Christ in the Spirit, the Christian comes to live this pattern in her own context. The logic of mortification, or “putting to death the old self,” derives from this ongoing tension between “the world” and the believer’s new life in Christ. The person has been sanctified and yet still lives in a world that is at least partially alienated from God. In the process of turning to God, the life that has been bound up in and formed by the alienation of the creation from creator must be constantly rejected. The “life of the flesh” must be crucified with Christ—not once but over and over again. In sorting through what this means, the Reformed tradition—and indeed the Christian tradition as a whole—has all too often failed to appropriately discern the kind of self-denial or world-denial that eschews a strict dualism and recognizes the goodness of creation.20 This difficulty has been particularly pronounced in the light of twentieth-century feminist critique. Feminist theologians have frequently targeted the cruciform motif as problematic for women and socially marginalized men who have been trapped in patterns of oppression and suffered a loss of identity through calls to sacrifice and die to “self.”21 While Calvin avoids some of these difficulties by using alienation and faithlessness rather than pride as a root understanding for sin, he is still clearly concerned with the sin of pride and devotes multiple chapters to mortification and self-denial while offering only a cursory glance at vivification.22 In his discussion of pride Calvin even goes so far as to reference differences in social location and how these might influence the sense of self-import, only to then swiftly insist that “there is no one who does not cherish within himself some opinion of his own pre-eminence.”23 Owen and Bushnell fare little better, as Owen more specifically aligns mortification with self-abasement or self-abnegation and Bushnell comes dangerously close to idealizing a specifically feminine form of self-sacrifice. Although it exceeds the limitations of this project to fully address feminist concerns regarding self-denial, a few comments are in order to indicate the general direction such a response might take within the confines of repentance as I have described it. First, and particularly in pastoral or practical contexts, discussions of repentance should take place with full cognizance of the potential for self-denial language to be destructive rather than edifying and should carefully qualify it or perhaps even adopt alternative language.24 Second, such qualification 20. See Matthew Myer Boulton, Life in God: John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 199–202. 21. Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993); Valerie Saiving, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” The Journal of Religion 40, no. 2 (April 1960): 100–112. 22. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 3.7–3.8. 23. Ibid., 3.7.4. 24. Matthew Myers Boulton sets an admirable example in his recent retrieval of Calvin for practical theology. Boulton, Life in God, 199–209.

Sanctification Revisited

163

or alternative language should communicate clearly that self-denial is never an absolute negation, but is always a denial of sin, a denial that necessarily entails a Spirit-breathed process of sifting, discerning, and reorienting. As such, self-denial is neither a strict asceticism, nor is it a negation of all things “natural” so that these might be replaced with their corresponding spiritual or graced form. Rather, in the course of Christian life, and particularly in communal worship and prayer, one experiences a purging and reorientation of life. Because it is a process that is highly particular to the person, the moment of “self-denial” need not be a privileged point of entry. As a number of feminist theologians have observed, the spiritual life for some can begin with an emphasis on vivification where what is “negated” is precisely the victimization or denigration of the self who is in fact God’s child.25 Lastly, I would be remiss not to observe that Calvin offers a much more incisive discussion of mortification with respect to the goodness of creation when he pairs mortification with love of neighbor. In this discussion, proper denial of self and the world is not an absolute and dualistic negation. Rather, the sin of pride is counteracted by showing esteem, regard, and goodwill toward the neighbor, while graciously overlooking his faults. Likewise, denial of the “world” or “flesh” is not a disregard for the good gifts of creation, but rather the decision to direct these toward the common good, instead of toward personal advantage. The needy stranger is not “contemptible and worthless” but is instead one God “has deigned to give the beauty of his image.”26 On this basis, one practices mortification by acting with kindness to the saint, the stranger, and even the enemy. If mortification is a rejection of life apart from God—and by extension of the behaviors and desires that have been formed by such alienation—then vivification at its most basic level is nothing more than turning toward God, and the enjoyment of life with God. Here I depart more significantly than at other points from Calvin’s analysis of sanctification. For Calvin, repentance is a practice to which one applies one’s whole effort—and yet the “effort” is concentrated in the moment of mortification.27 Mortification involves ongoing self-denial, but vivification is not so much a practice as “the desire to live in a holy and devoted manner.”28 While I wouldn’t deny that new life involves the transformation of desire, the imbalance here is striking and, I believe, carries unfortunate implications for practical theology. If the moment of human agency in repentance is mortification, then Christian life becomes disproportionately focused on self-denial, which, as we have already seen, is problematic. Vivification, for its part, is then relegated to a passive experience. 25. See Cynthia Crysdale, Embracing Travail: Retrieving the Cross Today (New York: Continuum, 1999), 8–20; as Crysdale rightly notes, we do best to avoid the absolute dichotomy of oppressor and victim and to recognize that each person much eventually discover herself as both crucifier and crucified. 26. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.7.6. 27. Calvin writes, “No one can embrace the grace of the gospel without betaking himself from the errors of his past life into the right way, and applying his whole effort to the practice of repentance.” Ibid., 3.3.1. 28. Ibid., 3.3.3.

164

Responsive Becoming

Fortunately, an alternative is found in the Pauline theology from which Calvin is drawing this Christoform approach. The apostle contrasts the denial of the flesh with new life in the Spirit, and both of these moments are associated with human action. In Romans 8 Paul exhorts his readers to “walk according to the Spirit” which he then identifies with setting the mind on “the things of the Spirit” rather than the flesh. This form of life dovetails with Paul’s subsequent appeal for transformation through the renewal of the mind (Rom. 12). In typical Pauline fashion, the agency of the person is fully active, even as the Spirit is also fully at work, putting to death and bringing new life. For example, when the believer cries out, “Abba Father,” Paul tells his readers that the Holy Spirit is active with the human spirit, both together bearing witness to the person’s adoption as God’s child. The Pauline and Deutero-Pauline corpus repeats this basic dynamic of death to self and life in the Spirit more than once. In Colossians, for instance, the believer is exhorted to set her mind on things above, put to death the flesh, and clothe herself with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and love (Col. 3:1–17). In this passage, the communal role in spiritual transformation is particularly pronounced, as the community is called to meditate on the word of Christ, teach one another, and worship through song (Col. 3:16–17). Drawing on these strands of Pauline theology, I contend that vivification is less a matter of passively transformed desire, and more adequately captured by an emphasis on a life of fellowship with God in the Spirit. Vivification is the responsive turning toward God that sustains the sanctifying relationship. It is through vivification that the person participates in the new social context, the divine– human niche in which she is recreated in the image of God. Here, however, the dangers of piety and a distorted focus on a particular sort of religious experience once again come to the fore. Does vivification necessarily entail a dramatic religious experience, whereby one has a distinct feeling of relatedness to God? While the Christian tradition has certainly had a place for religious experience of this sort, these have never been understood as universal or necessary for genuine faith.29 Nor are they the primary meaning of vivification. It rather signifies the everyday turning to God through ordinary spiritual practices and life in community with other believers. It is through the ordinary life of Christian discipleship and worship that the believer learns of God’s love in Christ, and continually reminds herself of that love (the Pauline renewal of the mind) through hearing the scriptures preached and participating in the sacraments. It is particularly important that such spiritual practices, which mediate the divine–human relationship, are both communal and personal. Humans are shaped by their social context, and, following Horace Bushnell, we should attend to the way that the intra-human social context shapes the life of faith. Jewish and Christian theology has in fact traditionally done so with a pronounced emphasis on the 29. See, for example, Stanley Hauerwas’s Frank disavowal of just such a spirituality in Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010).

Sanctification Revisited

165

community of the faithful. Vivification thus takes place as communities worship. But at the same time, personal practices of prayer or other forms of devotion are also important. Christian soteriology is both corporate and personal, and neither corporate nor individual practices should be marginalized in gaining a full picture of new life in Christ. The fact that Christian theology and practice has maintained both aspects of spiritual life actually provides a clue to thinking through the ongoing significance of ordinary moral formation that takes place in human social contexts such as the family and broader society. The communal context of vivification suggests that intra-human sociality is still very much relevant and cannot be usurped by the individual divine–human relationship. But what then of the family or other social institutions that are not necessarily Christian? Is the point of sanctification then to ultimately subvert and replace them? We now turn to address this question more directly.

Sanctification and natural moral formation Throughout this discussion of sanctification, the analogy of human relationships and especially of the parent–child relationship has been central for reflecting on human formation in responsive relationship to God. As I argued in Chapter 1, the use of the analogy itself assumes that the natural embodied social processes are genuinely formative of persons. If they were not, how could the analogy signify? At the same time, and drawing on our engagement with the human sciences, I have suggested that the anthropological connection goes deeper than an analogy. It is not just that we become “like” children in our relationship to God, but “we” and “children” actually share the same humanity. All humans experience the formation of their identity, their deepest commitments and their most entrenched patterns of behavior, in a complex developmental environment that is socially charged. We are all persons who have the same deep need for acceptance and affirmation before we can possibly be capable of love. We are all persons whose simple presence with others forms the foundation for what it means to live a life that is good. This convergence between a theological anthropology on the one hand, and a careful attention to scientific study of human nature on the other provides a point of contact that I have insisted throughout is vital for theology. Theological claims about sanctification are not provable or derived from experience, nor should they be devoid of all mystery that theology properly insists must run through any discussion of divine acting. But they should resonate with or illuminate ordinary human experience. Here, in the convergence between theological reflection and disciplined observation, this is precisely the case. Sanctification as the transformation of identity and agency in fellowship with God seems fitting to the kinds of beings we already experience ourselves to be. If all this is true and we are not simply analogous to children in our relationship to God, but actually find our humanity disclosed in the child and continue in processes of social formation throughout the life span, then how are we to understand the relationship of God’s grace in sanctification to these embodied human relationships?

166

Responsive Becoming

The reality of human sin could suggest, and at times Reformed theologians have suggested, that sanctification operates in a manner that is largely opposed to natural development. It could suggest that while we are people made for relationship, our current sinful state means that natural development in human society is strictly a tragic force that must be counteracted or a temporary provision to limit sin’s destruction until our redemption in Christ, whereupon they are no longer significant. As we have seen, the theologies of both Calvin and Owen can veer in this direction. The continuity between human nature in theological and social scientific study, however, indicates that this perspective is far too simple. The continuity suggests that what takes place in the development of children is a legitimate aspect of created nature, not inherently sanctifying, but rather something with the potential to be directed toward God, with the potential to be sanctified.30 Even if, for each person, natural development always unfolds in ways that are more or less distorted, the processes themselves are not incapable, as genuinely human processes, of being sanctified, of being “turned” toward God. Theologically, in fact, we must not simply say these processes are capable of being sanctified, as if such is simply an option, but rather we must insist that they are sanctified. If plasticity to a social niche and development within it are essential to human nature—as our explorations have indicated—then it must be precisely as this kind of creature that human beings are redeemed. To imply that ordinary human formation is a simple precursor to sanctification, one that in a fallen context is actually opposed to the Spirit’s redemptive work, is to disregard the significance of embodied and created humanity. It is to suggest that although humans are formed in embodied social contexts, we are subsequently redeemed as isolated and disembodied creatures. Given the extent to which human social capacities emerge in early affective relationships we can even go one step further in affirming ordinary moral formation in intra-human contexts. In the ordinary course of events, even our capacity to relate to God, and to be transformed through such a relationship, is itself predicated on our human sociality. Evolutionarily speaking, we are spiritual because we are first social and we get to human spirituality by going through human sociality.31 It is as humans are formed in and through human relationships that they become the kinds of creatures who can experience transcendent relationship to God. Ordinary

30. This language echoes the Dutch Reformed theologian Hermann Bavinck’s discussion of common grace, but it makes explicit the connection between common and special grace on the question of virtue or moral formation. In my account “natural virtue” is not simply God’s gracious preservation of fallen human society, one that is then supplanted by the special grace of sanctification. Rather natural formation is much more organically related to the grace of sanctification. The natural processes themselves are sanctified as the person is brought into union with Christ. Hermann Bavinck, “Common Grace,” trans. R. C. Van Leeuwen, Calvin Theological Journal 24, no. 1 (April 1989): 35–65. 31. Janet Martin Soskice, drawing on Schleiermacher, makes a similar point in Janet Soskice, The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 49–50.

Sanctification Revisited

167

moral formation, as part of natural human social development, must therefore not be counteracted or discarded, but must itself be brought within the scope of divine reconciliation to all creation. In the actual life span, as Horace Bushnell saw ahead of his time, we are creatures capable of receiving God’s love and loving God in return because we also begin life as children who receive love and care in a human context. What then is an alternative account or framework for relating graced transformation to natural processes of formation? Can we claim that natural processes still matter and also insist that the moral restoration of the person is a work of grace? The alternative, I submit, is that sanctification does not replace or displace these natural processes, but places them in their appropriate context—in the relatedness of human persons and communities to God. Ordinary human moral formation, beginning in the context of childhood nurture, is natural and good, but this formation was always meant to take place as human communities were also oriented toward God. Sanctification therefore does not marginalize such processes but affirms and restores them. Here one will no doubt detect echoes of Bushnell and the Christianization of nurture. The crucial difference is that while Bushnell seems to restrict the import of natural processes to their Christian context and to depend on a high level of parental holiness, I want to say that Christian formation will always also be distorted and that the natural formation of non-Christians can be affirmed and sanctified. The anthropological framework that we have discerned in both the social scientific and theological literature is based on the assumption that we become who we are precisely in these embodied social contexts. And if that is the case, they matter for all of us, not simply for those whose nurture is Christian. But what does this mean at the concrete level, as we think of individuals and the dramatically different care they receive as children, and the dramatically different ways this care affects their life trajectories? First, as has already been said, but is well worth repeating, we can only assume that in the present state of affairs, these processes are always distorted. Not, thankfully, beyond recognition, but always in need of restoration. But even when these processes go better as opposed to worse, we must be clear that they are not in themselves sanctifying. They do not on their own direct the person toward God. There is no “turning” in them inherently. Positively, however, we must also say that the universal significance of these natural, intra-human processes is confirmed by the fact that the believer’s fellowship with God, as we have seen, is mediated by communal practices. In other words, sanctification ordinarily proceeds in and through embodied human relationships in which the Spirit dwells. Bushnell’s account, though imperfect, displays quite nicely how interpersonal relationships in the pious family can be deeply intertwined with the Spirit’s work of bringing about and sustaining faith. What I want to stress is that even in situations of childhood deprivation and social trauma, sanctification also occurs in part by means of Spirit-saturated, embodied relationships. This point can perhaps best be illustrated by means of a concrete example, and one is conveniently provided for us in James Loder’s book on human development, The Logic of the Spirit, even though Loder himself seems to miss some of the significance of his own illustration. In this work Loder provides an insightful discussion of human development that weaves together the work of several social

168

Responsive Becoming

scientific theorists with a theological perspective on development.32 Drawing largely on psychoanalysis rather than developmental psychology, Loder detects a profound nothingness or negation, evident from early infancy, that colors the whole of our subsequent development. It is only through healing relationship with Christ through the Spirit, when “his Spirit transforms our spirits in conformity to his person” that we can overcome this alienation.33 Thus for Loder, the dominant paradigm for thinking about natural development is one which tends to position the natural against spiritual. While much of Loder’s terminology suggests a strong dichotomy between natural development in an intra-human context and development in fellowship with divine Spirit, when we look closer we find that, as with Calvin, his pastoral practice affords a more holistic picture than his theoretical reflection. In the book, Loder provides a vivid case study drawn from his own therapeutic practice. He tells the story of “Helen,” a young female graduate student who, as a result of childhood trauma, was dealing with feelings of intense anger and hatred. Loder movingly depicts how an openness to prayer begun in a dramatic spiritual experience paved the way for a lengthy process of healing. In this case study, the human spirit is revealed to be fundamentally open-ended and “the development of the human ego is not destiny.”34 While the focus of Loder’s narrative is on the relationship between human spirit and Holy Spirit, the story he tells is actually far more complex. Here it is, significantly, childhood trauma, the stuff of painful and pathological parent– child relationships, that is a primary factor in Helen’s immediate life struggles. The therapeutic process of healing thus involves taking Helen back through her traumatic memories, but this time in the fellowship of Christ. The whole process is mediated by the thoroughly human therapist–patient relationship and eventually leads to healing and reconciliation with Helen’s human parents. For Loder, the emphasis is thoroughly on the Spirit in a way that disguises the very legitimate role of intra-human sociality. Helen comes much closer to real picture when she tells Loder at the end of their relationship, “This belongs to the church.”35 Her Spirit-propelled healing is real, but it has not taken place in abstraction from her existence within a network of human relationships, including her therapist and her

32. James E. Loder, The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998). 33. Ibid., 122. 34. Ibid., 72. 35. Ibid., 53. It is worth noting here as well the interrelation of the church, or relationships between the members of the believing community, and more universal human relationships. The church is critical to Helen’s transformation, but it cannot take place in abstraction from who she is in a broader web of relationships—particularly to her human parents. In this project it would be relatively simple to turn to ecclesiology as the restoration of human sociality, and a number of contemporary theologians, most notably Stanley Hauerwas, move in this direction. While I am sympathetic, and certainly don’t intend to

Sanctification Revisited

169

parents. Ultimate healing, in fact, must move directly through these relationships and restore them. The Spirit, in other words, does not abstract the individual from her intra-human sociality. If this analysis is correct, then it is appropriate to say as we consider the sanctified person that it is this person, with this distinct set of experiences, with these already existing capacities for action, who is in fact sanctified. No aspect of her being is left unchanged, but the transformation need not strictly oppose what exists. We can thoroughly affirm the goodness of healthy parent–child relationships, ones that are filled with joy in shared existence, regardless of whether the families in question are Christian. And it is precisely the capacities forged in these relationships that are also reforged and turned toward God in a subsequent life of repentance. Or, in the case of those who grow into faith from childhood, it is these capacities that are at the same time also being formed in relationship to Christ as the person turns toward God repeatedly, in a lifelong process of repentance. This stress on continuity between embodied human development and the human capacity for fellowship with God is not, I suggest, ultimately at odds with an understanding of sanctification that is always rooted in Christ and the Spirit. Jesus’s own bodily existence confirms the potential for human development to be thoroughly consistent with “the logic of the Spirit.” As John Owen reminds us, Jesus grows and develops from infancy as a fully human child, a process which Owen also calls sanctification.36 And, as Calvin insisted, human existence in the natural world was initially meant to be a “school of piety.” Much more so does Jesus’s resurrection body confirm the significance of a continuous, bodily identity. In the resurrection body we see the continuity of Jesus’s bodily existence sustained not merely in temporal sanctification but also in its eschatological consummation. In Jesus, if in no one else, his unbroken existence as the child of God brings perfection to ordinary natural development. Both Johannine and Pauline soteriology seem to bear out these connections between identity, adoption as children of God, and the eschatological perfection of our creaturely natures. As I John tells us, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”37 And so too the apostle Paul: “And not only creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.”38 Adoption in Christ is consistent with—and indeed fully realized in—our embodied humanity.

discount the formative role of the church, my aim here is broader. I wish to maintain that the formative power of all human relationships, not only those that are explicitly Christian, must be taken into account when considering the relationship between ordinary moral formation and sanctification. Likewise, it is crucial to acknowledge the fallenness of human relationships—even, or perhaps especially, those within Christian communities. 36. Owen and Goold, The Works of John Owen, 3:169–71. 37. I John 3:2, NRSV. 38. Romans 8:23, NRSV.

170

Responsive Becoming

Conclusion The primary focus of this project has been to examine Reformed sanctification, with a focus on the work of Calvin, as a resource for Christian accounts of moral formation. Given the success of the recent turn to virtue ethics, along with concerns about human agency in sanctification, this objective has perhaps been counterintuitive from the beginning. Would it not be better to let this doctrine, which sounds so stuffy and otherworldly, languish? In actuality, however, I have found that the perceived weaknesses of sanctification—that it is too mysterious and too detached from ordinary lives and identities—are precisely those theological concerns regarding grace and moral formation that it is best positioned to address. These concerns arise at the intersection of theory and practice as Christians seek to live in light of the claim that God, in Christ and the Spirit, restores the goodness of human action. It is a central Christian claim, and yet efforts to hold together both dependence on a Trinitarian soteriology and genuinely human agency can go awry in multiple and complex ways. In response, I have argued that Reformed sanctification is both the work of the triune God and also consistent with our nature as human beings and our personal identities. The account of sanctification that I have presented in this chapter draws most heavily on John Calvin, but incorporates insights from John Owen and Horace Bushnell at critical points. For each of these thinkers, sanctification is at its core relational. Following Calvin, it is rooted in the person’s relationship to Christ by faith, as the Spirit of adoption joins her to Christ, making her God’s beloved child. John Owen reminds us that the Spirit’s work is objectively real, regardless of one’s subjective awareness of it. Horace Bushnell insists that this relationship proceeds through and by means of ordinary human social formation, rather than bypassing or counteracting it. For both Calvin and Bushnell, the responsiveness of human agency is critical. We become formed to the image of Christ as we respond, moment-by-moment, to Christ’s Spirit in a pattern of death and new life. Methodologically, I have also claimed that in order to make the case that this account of sanctification is consistent with who we are as humans, we need to be attentive, in a disciplined and critical way, to natural processes, both as these are described or presumed in the theological literature, and to the best efforts of researchers in the human sciences to understand human development. The pressing practical issues I have considered in this project are at their core questions about relating our experience of human life and human nature to theological claims about what God has done and is doing on our behalf. In order to address these issues, we need to think seriously and explicitly about human nature, using the best intellectual tools at our disposal. In this project I have done so by engaging both evolutionary anthropology and developmental psychology. The intent has not been to privilege these extra-theological disciplines or make presumptions about their infallibility, but to be explicit and rigorous in the analysis of human nature. The choice to focus this examination on children, both in evolutionary theory and in psychology, has been prompted by a number of observations. First, research on morally relevant aspects of very early childhood has exploded in recent years,

Sanctification Revisited

171

and it is clear that something quite significant takes place in early childhood, specifically in the affective relationships that pertain between children and their close caregivers. Next, children have always raised a special set of theological concerns and, consequently, thinking about children presses a theological account to be thoroughly consistent in a way that considering adult capacities by themselves does not allow. The weaknesses of revivalism function as a helpful case in point. If adult capacities are essential for sanctification, and children in Christian households must bide their time until they are old enough for a conversion experience, then there seems to be a considerable risk that childhood, in direct contradiction to the message of Jesus, will be devoid of spiritual significance. Lastly, the focus on children fits well with the prominence of the parent–child analogy in the Christian tradition for conceptualizing the relationship between God and human beings. While this must be undertaken with care, recognizing the limits of religious analogy, careful observation of parents and children can serve as a conceptual site for thinking through questions about human and divine action. This turn to childhood has afforded access to aspects of human nature that tend to be obscured when theology chooses to focus on adults as an anthropological standard. It underscores the significance of the human person as a developing organism. By thinking alongside anthropologists and developmentalists we can be especially attentive to the ways in which the human person is open to change and transformation, but also to the fact that this openness never occurs without regard for the singularity of the existing person. It is this person, who is already part of a process of development, who is open to future change. There is, in other words, continuity of identity where the person who already exists genuinely matters. Furthermore, we see that development occurs as a process of complex interaction with the organism’s niche, including, most crucially, the affect-laden social environment. Developmental processes, as they occur in an intra-human social context, are in fact part of what it means to be human. In keeping with this evolutionary insight, one of the most prominent emphases of the current developmental research is the attachment relationship and the significance of ongoing, affective social acceptance for emerging moral capacities and moral agency.39

39. This emphasis on relational and affective transformation is not, of course, without existing representation in Christian ethics. See Jennifer Herdt, “Affective Perfectionism: Community with God without Common Measure,” in New Essays on the History of Autonomy: A Collection Honoring J.B. Schneewind, ed. Natalie Brender and Larry Krasnoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 30–60; Eleonore Stump, “The NonAristotelian Character of Aquinas’s Ethics: Aquinas on the Passions,” in Faith, Rationality, and the Passions, ed. Sarah Coakley (Chichester and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 91–106; Constance Furey, “Relational Virtue: Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Puritan Marriage,” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 42, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 201–24. One of the primary contributions of this project to this line of thought is precisely to connect it to a disciplined social scientific inquiry into the formative power of human relationships.

172

Responsive Becoming

As the theologian approaches this material, she must insist that the picture is incomplete if we do not also recognize that these processes as we observe them are always distorted because the whole of creation, including the web of intra-human social relationships, is not yet rightly oriented to the God we encounter in Jesus. Because of this rupture, a distinctly theological account of development takes the shape of “repentance” or turning toward the God who is already and definitively turned toward us. This “already” is made real for us in the sealing presence of the Spirit, who constantly initiates, sustains, and propels our own turning. And the turning itself is a sifting and discerning process that entails not a simple negation of our “selves” as we know them, but rather a purification. How then has theological dialogue with these human sciences enhanced an account of sanctification? In the first place, the striking points of convergence between the disciplines display the extent to which the doctrine of sanctification as presented here is consistent with human nature. We are fundamentally becoming creatures and we become in fellowship with others—in affective social relationship. Reformed sanctification, with its attentiveness to the heart and to the transformative power of divine love, also insists that we are becoming in relationship. This convergence serves to highlight two strengths of the doctrine of sanctification—the first of which is undertheorized in more recent Christian accounts of moral formation and the second clarifies a point of confusion in contemporary discourse. Not only is development in our social niche thoroughly human, but of particular importance is the primacy of what I call “affective social acceptance.” As humans, our need for belonging and acceptance is so great that deprivation of these stunts our moral selves. We are unable to genuinely be for the good of others—to love and commit ourselves to what is right—when we are desperately seeking assurance that we are accepted. Calvin saw this point with penetrating clarity, and it is one that in more or less adulterated form has shaped our popular psychology. Yet despite the deep parallels to Christian grace, it is not a point that has gained much traction in the contemporary discourse on moral formation in Christian ethics. If a Christian account of moral formation recognizes the way in which grace, expressed in God’s unconditional goodwill toward God’s children, can ground and enable moral agency then it is also suggestive of a way forward on the theoretical question regarding the relationship of moral and spiritual formation in Christian ethics. To what extent are Christian moral formation and spiritual formation part of the same conversation? The divine–human context of sanctification, interpreted as analogous to the development of a child in the care of her parents, underscores the special significance of what is often termed spiritual formation or spiritual practices for the redemption of our moral lives. In this account, spiritual formation is not synonymous with sanctification but it does provide the means for the Spirit to cultivate a cognitive–affective orientation to Christ. The spiritual life, both communal and personal, instills an understanding of God’s love in Christ. But this fellowship with God does not thereby displace what we typically consider practices of moral formation (self-examination, confession, habituation, and so forth). It is instead their proper context, in which they are means of sanctification.

Sanctification Revisited

173

In addition to these positive contributions to contemporary discourse in Christian ethics, the interdisciplinary dialogue has also helped provide a fresh approach to some of the concerns regarding sanctification and human nature. Does the gracious transformation of human agency and action—restoration of the divine image—occur in a manner akin to the waiving of a magic wand? Is it abstracted from the lives we live and our embodied identity? Does sanctification perhaps violate the very agency that is being restored? Each of these questions is a variation on a common theme: gracious transformation necessarily involves our agency and our humanity, and yet it is God, not us, who sanctifies. The points of contact between theology and the human sciences have proven to be insightful with respect to each of these questions. Far from an otherworldly and quasimagical transformation, sanctification as here described is consistent with the sort of creatures we are. Sanctification does not eradicate and replace the human agent, but transforms her through relationship to Christ in the Spirit. All this is not to say however, that sanctification is a transformation lacking all mystery and fully available to human understanding or manipulation. We grasp our relationship to Christ in the Spirit—to the extent which we can grasp it—by way of analogy. It is not identical to human relationships and must always retain an element of incomprehensibility. The claim here is simply that sanctification does not occur in a way that violates or disregards human agency or human nature. Lastly, the intersection of theological and social scientific sources has enabled us to think more explicitly about how ordinary processes of development and transformation relate to the redemption of the person and her restoration to the image of God. I have argued that we are fundamentally creatures who develop over a lifetime and that who we become is open to a variety of environmental factors, especially our social context. If the whole person is redeemed, then it is precisely as this embodied creature, who develops in relationship to the created world, that she is redeemed. Rather than thinking of sanctification as an alternative to such development, I have suggested it is better to think of these networks of relationship being placed in their appropriate context—in relationship to the God revealed in Christ. Intra-human social relationships and natural processes are thus themselves sanctified—set apart as means for the Spirit’s redemptive work. In broad scope, this is the crucial contribution of Horace Bushnell, with one very important caveat. In Christian Nurture, Bushnell never sufficiently explored how the ongoing relationship to God, mediated by the organic relations of family life, was not contained by those relationships but rather transcended and transformed them. The child is not ultimately determined by parental care, precisely because, as we saw in our study of human evolution, that very care, even though it is always distorted in some way, opens her up to transcendent relationship. This responsive relationship to the Spirit becomes the site, throughout life, for the restoration of human persons and human communities that have been marred by sin.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ahlstrom, Sydney E. Theology in America: The Major Protestant Voices from Puritanism to Neo-Orthodoxy. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1967. Alink, Lenneke R. A., Judi Mesman, Jantien van Zeijl, Mirjam N. Stolk, Femmie Juffer, Marian J. Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, and Hans M. Koot. “Maternal Sensitivity Moderates the Relation between Negative Discipline and Aggression in Early Childhood.” Social Development 18, no. 1 (2009): 99–120. Antón, Susan C., Richard Potts, and Leslie C. Aiello. “Evolution of Early Homo: An Integrated Biological Perspective.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 345, no. 6192 (2014): 1236828. Backus, Irena. “Calvin’s Concept of Natural and Roman Law.” Calvin Theological Journal 38, no. 1 (April 1, 2003): 7–26. Baillargeon, Renee, Elizabeth S. Spelke, and S. Wasserman. “Object Permanence in 5-Month-Old Infants.” Cognition 20, no. 3 (1985): 191–208. Barber, Brian K., and Mingzhu Xia. “The Centrality of Control to Parenting and Its Effects.” In Authoritative Parenting: Synthesizing Nurturance and Discipline for Optimal Child Development, edited by Robert E. Larzelere, Amanda Sheffield Morris, and Amanda W. Harrist. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2013. Barnes, Howard A. Horace Bushnell and the Virtuous Republic. Philadelphia, PA and Metuchen, NJ: American Theological Library Association and Scarecrow Press, 1991. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Edited by Geoffrey William Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956. Bates, John E., Kenneth A. Dodge, Gregory S. Pettit, and Beth Ridge. “Interaction of Temperamental Resistance to Control and Restrictive Parenting in the Development of Externalizing Behavior.” Developmental Psychology 34, no. 5 (September 1998): 982–95. Baumrind, Diana. “Differentiating between Confrontive and Coercive Kinds of Parental Power-Assertive Disciplinary Practices.” Human Development 55, no. 2 (2012): 35–51. Bavinck, Herman. “Common Grace.” Translated by Raymond C. Van Leeuwen. Calvin Theological Journal 24, no. 1 (April 1, 1989): 35–65. Bekoff, Marc. The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy—and Why They Matter. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2007. Bendroth, Margaret. “Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture.” In The Child in Christian Thought, 350–64. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. Berkouwer, G. C. Faith and Sanctification. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1952. Biermann, Joel D. A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics. Augsburg: Fortress Publishers, 2014. Billings, J. Todd. Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Billings, J. Todd. “United to God through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Question of Deification.” Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 3 (July 1, 2005): 315–34. Blacketer, Raymond Andrew. The School of God: Pedagogy and Rhetoric in Calvin’s Interpretation of Deuteronomy. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. Blasi, Augusto. “How Should Psychologists Define Morality? Or, The Negative Side Effects of Philosophy’s Influence on Psychology.” In The Moral Domain: Essays in the Ongoing

Bibliography

175

Discussion between Philosophy and the Social Sciences, edited by Thomas E. Wren, 38–70. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990. Boulton, Matthew Myer. Life in God : John Calvin, Practical Formation, and the Future of Protestant Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. Bowlin, John. “Barth and Aquinas on Election, Relationship, and Requirement.” In Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue, edited by Bruce McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, 237–61. Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 2013. Boyd, Robert, Peter J. Richerson, and Joseph Henrich. “The Cultural Niche: Why Social Learning Is Essential for Human Adaptation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108 (2011): 10918–25. Brock, Rebecca L., and Grazyna Kochanska. “Toward a Developmentally Informed Approach to Parenting Interventions: Seeking Hidden Effects.” Development and Psychopathology 28, no. 2 (May 2016): 583–93. Brownell, Celia A. “Early Development of Prosocial Behavior: Current Perspectives.” Infancy 18, no. 1 (2013): 1–9. Brownell, Celia A. “Prosocial Behavior in Infancy: The Role of Socialization.” Child Development Perspectives 10, no. 4 (December 2016): 222–27. Browning, Don. A Fundamental Practical Theology : Descriptive and Strategic Proposals. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991. Browning, Don S. Christian Ethics and the Moral Psychologies. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006. Burkart, Judith and Carel Schaik. “Cognitive Consequences of Cooperative Breeding in Primates?” Animal Cognition 13, no. 1 (2010): 1–19. Burkart, Judith Maria, and Carel P. Van Schaik. “The Cooperative Breeding Perspective Helps in Pinning Down When Uniquely Human Evolutionary Processes Are Necessary.” The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e34, Article no. e136. Burkart, J. M., S. B. Hrdy, and C. P. Van Schaik. “Cooperative Breeding and Human Cognitive Evolution.” Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 18, no. 5 (2009): 175–86. Burrell, David B. Aquinas: God and Action. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979. Burrell, David B. Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press., 1994. Bushnell, Horace. Christian Nurture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967. Bushnell, Horace. Christian Nurture. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979. Bushnell, Horace. Sermons for the New Life. New York: Charles Scribner, 1876. Bushnell, Horace. Sermons on Living Subjects. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, 1877. Bushnell, Horace. Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects Adjacent Thereto. Hartford: E. Hunt, 1847. Butin, Philip Walker. Revelation, Redemption, and Response Calvin’s Trinitarian Understanding of the Divine-Human Relationship. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Callaghan, Tara, Henrike Moll, Hannes Rakoczy, Felix Warneken, Ulf Liszkowski, Tanya Behne, and Michael Tomasello. “Early Social Cognition in Three Cultural Contexts.” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 76, no. 2 (2011): 1–115. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia, PA and London: Westminster Press and SCM Press, 1960.

176

Bibliography

Calvin, John. Sermons on Deuteronomy. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987. Calvin, John. Sermons on the Epistle to the Ephesians. London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1973. Canlis, Julie. Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Canlis, Julie. “Sonship, Identity, and Transformation.” In Sanctification: Explorations in Theology and Practice, edited by Kelly M. Kapic, 232–50. Downer’s Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014. Carpenter, Angela. “Sanctification as a Human Process: Reading Calvin alongside Child Development Theory.” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 35, no. 1 (May 13, 2015): 103–19. Cary, Phillip. Inner Grace Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10219894 Chadwick, Owen. “Arminianism in England.” Religion in Life 29, no. 4 (September 1, 1960): 548–55. Cherry, Conrad. “Structure of Organic Thinking: Horace Bushnell’s Approach to Language, Nature, and Nation.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40, no. 1 (March 1, 1972): 3–20. Christian Reformed Church. “Psalter Hymnal: Doctrinal Standards and Liturgy of the Christian Reformed Church.” Grand Rapids, MI: Board of Publications of the Christian Reformed Church, 1976. Coakley, Sarah. God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay “on the Trinity.” Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013. Cohen, Charles L. God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Collins, W. Andrew, Eleanor E. Maccoby, Laurence Steinberg, E. Mavis Hetherington, and Marc H. Bornstein. “Contemporary Research on Parenting: The Case for Nature and Nurture.” American Psychologist 55, no. 2 (February 2000): 218–32. Como, David R. Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Cooper, Tim. John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Crysdale, Cynthia. Embracing Travail: Retrieving the Cross Today. New York: Continuum, 1999. Curran, Charles E. and Richard A. McCormick. The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics. New York: Paulist Press, 1980. Daniel J. Siegel. The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. 2nd edn. New York: Guilford Press, 2012. Davidov, Maayan, and Joan E. Grusec. “Untangling the Links of Parental Responsiveness to Distress and Warmth to Child Outcomes.” Child Development 77, no. 1 (February 2006): 44–58. Deater-Deckard, Kirby, and Stephen A. Petrill. “Parent-Child Dyadic Mutuality and Child Behavior Problems: An Investigation of Gene-Environment Processes.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 45, no. 6 (September 2004): 1171–79. DeKlyen, Michelle, and Mark Greenberg. “Attachment and Psychopathology in Childhood.” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver. New York: Guilford Press, 1999. Desilva, Jeremy M. “A Shift toward Birthing Relatively Large Infants Early in Human Evolution.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108, no. 3 (2011): 1022–27.

Bibliography

177

Dorrien, Gary J. The Making of American Liberal Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. Dozier, Mary, K. Chase Stovall-McClough, and Kathleen E. Albus. “Attachment and Psychopathology in Adulthood.” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver. New York: Guilford Press, 1999. Dunfield, Kristen A. and Valerie A. Kuhlmeier. “Intention-Mediated Selective Helping in Infancy.” Psychological Science 21, no. 4 (April 2010): 523–27. Dupré, Louis K., Don E. Saliers, John Meyendorff, and Richard C. Lovelace, eds. “Puritan Spirituality: The Search for a Rightly Reformed Church.” In Christian Spirituality: PostReformation and Modern. World Spirituality. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Edwards, Jonathan. The Religious Affections. Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997. Edwards, Mark. “‘My God and My Good Mother’: The Irony of Horace Bushnell’s Gendered Republic.” Religion and American Culture 13, no. 1 (December 1, 2003): 111–37. Engel, Mary Potter. John Calvin’s Perspectival Anthropology. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1988. Ferraro, Joseph V., Thomas W. Plummer, Briana L. Pobiner, James S. Oliver, Laura C. Bishop, David R. Braun, Peter W. Ditchfield et al. “Earliest Archaeological Evidence of Persistent Hominin Carnivory.” PLOS One 8, no. 4 (2013): Article no. e62174. Finkel, Eli J., and Gráinne M. Fitzsimons. “Too Much Helicopter Parenting.” New York Times, May 10, 2013, sec. Opinion/Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes. com/2013/05/12/opinion/sunday/too-much-helicopter-parenting.html Fleming, Sandford. Children and Puritanism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1933. Forman, David R. and Grazyna Kochanska. “Viewing Imitation as Child Responsiveness: A Link between Teaching and Discipline Domains of Socialization.” Developmental Psychology 37, no. 2 (March 2001): 198–206. Forman, David R., Nazan Aksan, and Grazyna Kochanska. “Toddler’s Responsive Imitation Predicts Preschool-Age Conscience.” Psychological Science 15, no. 10 (October 1, 2004): 699–704. Fuentes, Agustín. “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche toward an Integrated Anthropology.” Current Anthropology 57 (June 2016): S13– S26. Fuentes, Agustín. “What Evolution, the Human Niche, and Imagination Can Tell Us about the Emergence of Religion.” Theology Today 72, no. 2 (2015): 170–81. Furey, Constance. “Relational Virtue: Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Puritan Marriage.” Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies 42, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 201–24. Gerrish, B. A. A Prince of the Church: Schleiermacher and the Beginnings of Modern Theology. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984. Gerrish, B. A. Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993. Gerrish, B. A. Tradition and the Modern World: Reformed Theology in the Nineteenth Century. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1978. Gershoff, Elizabeth T., Jennifer E. Lansford, Holly R. Sexton, Pamela Davis-Kean, and Arnold J. Sameroff. “Longitudinal Links between Spanking and Children’s Externalizing Behaviors in a National Sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Families.” Child Development 83, no. 3 (June 2012): 838–43. Goldschmidt, Walter. The Bridge to Humanity: How Affect Hunger Trumps the Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

178

Bibliography

Gopnik, Alison. The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life. 1st edn. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Grolnick, Wendy S. “The Relations among Parental Power Assertion, Control, and Structure Commentary on Baumrind.” Human Development 55, no. 2 (2012): 57–64. Haddorff, David W. Dependence and Freedom: The Moral Thought of Horace Bushnell. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994. Haller, William. The Rise of Puritanism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938. Hamlin, J. Kiley, and Karen Wynn. “Young Infants Prefer Prosocial to Antisocial Others.” Cognitive Development 26, no. 1 (March 2011): 30–39. Harlow, Harry F. Love in Infant Monkeys. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman, 1959. Harmand, Sonia, Jason E. Lewis, Craig S. Feibel, Christopher J. Lepre, Sandrine Prat, Arnaud Lenoble, Xavier Boës, et al. “3.3-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana, Kenya.” Nature 521, no. 7552 (May 21, 2015): 310–15. Harrist, Amanda W, Gregory S. Pettit, Kenneth A. Dodge, and John E. Bates. “Dyadic Synchrony in Mother-Child Interaction – Relation with Children’s Subsequent Kindergarten Adjustment.” Family Relations 43, no. 4 (October 1994): 417–24. Hauerwas, Stanley. A Community of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981. Hauerwas, Stanley. Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics. San Antonio, TX: Trinity University Press, 1985. Hauerwas, Stanley. Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983. Hauerwas, Stanley. With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology: Being the Gifford Lectures Delivered at the University of St. Andrews in 2001. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2001. Henderson, Annette M. E., Ying Wang, Lauren E. Matz, and Amanda L. Woodward. “Active Experience Shapes 10-Month-Old Infants’ Understanding of Collaborative Goals.” Infancy 18, no. 1 (2013): 10–39. Henrich, Joseph. The Secret of Our Success How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Herdt, Jennifer. “Affective Perfectionism: Community with God without Common Measure.” In New Essays on the History of Autonomy: A Collection Honoring J.B. Schneewind, edited by Natalie Brender and Larry Krasnoff, 30–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Herdt, Jennifer. Putting on Virtue : The Legacy of the Splendid Vices. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Hewitt, Glenn Alden. Regeneration and Morality: A Study of Charles Finney, Charles Hodge, John W. Nevin, and Horace Bushnell. Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1991. Heyes, Cecilia. “Grist and Mills: On the Cultural Origins of Cultural Learning.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 367, no. 1599 (August 5, 2012): 2181–91. Hiscock, Peter. “Learning in Lithic Landscapes: A Reconsideration of the Hominid ‘Toolmaking’ Niche.” Biological Theory 9, no. 1 (2014): 27–41. Hodge, Charles. “Bushnell on Christian Nurture.” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 19, no. 4 (1847): 502–39. Hoffman, Martin L. “Affective and Cognitive Processes in Moral Internalization.” In Social Cognition and Social Development: A Sociocultural Perspective, edited by E. Tory

Bibliography

179

Higgins, Willard W. Hartup, and Diane N. Ruble, 236–74. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Howe, Daniel Walker. “The Social Science of Horace Bushnell.” The Journal of American History 70, no. 2 (September 1, 1983): 305–22. Hrdy, Sarah. “Development Plus Social Selection in the Emergence of ‘Emotionally Modern’ Humans.” In Childhood: Origins, Evolution, and Implications, edited by Courtney L. Meehan and Alyssa N. Crittenden, 11–44. Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2016. Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. 1st edn. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009. Hunsinger, George. “A Tale of Two Simultaneities: Justification and Sanctification in Calvin and Barth.” Zeitschrift Für Dialektische Theologie 18, no. 3 (2002): 316–38. Isler, Karin, and Carel P. Van Schaik. “How Our Ancestors Broke through the Gray Ceiling.” Current Anthropology 53, no. S6 (2012): S453–S465. Jaeggi, Adrian, and Carel Schaik. “The Evolution of Food Sharing in Primates.” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65, no. 11 (2011): 2125–40. John MacPherson. Westminster Confession of Faith with Introduction and Notes. 2nd edn. Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 1882. Kapic, Kelly M. Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007. Kim, Sanghag, and Grazyna Kochanska. “Child Temperament Moderates Effects of Parent-Child Mutuality on Self-Regulation: A Relationship-Based Path for Emotionally Negative Infants.” Child Development 83, no. 4 (August 2012): 1275–89. Kingdon, Robert M. Reforming Geneva: Discipline, Faith and Anger in Calvin’s Geneva. Genève: Librairie Droz S.A., 2012. Klempa, William. “John Calvin on Natural Law.” In John Calvin and the Church, edited by Timothy George, 72–95. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990. Knight, Janice. Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: Rereading American Puritanism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Kochanska, G. “Children’s Temperament, Mothers Discipline, and Security of Attachment—Multiple Pathways to Emerging Internalization.” Child Development 66, no. 3 (June 1995): 597–615. Kochanska, Grazyna. “Conscience in Childhood: Past, Present, and Future.” MerrillPalmer Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 2004): 299–310. Kochanska, Grazyna. “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children: A Context for the Early Development of Conscience.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 11, no. 6 (December 2002): 191–95. Kochanska, Grazyna. “Mutually Responsive Orientation between Mothers and Their Young Children: Implications for Early Socialization.” Child Development 68, no. 1 (February 1997): 94–112. Kochanska, Grazyna, and Nazan Aksan. “Children’s Conscience and Self-Regulation.” Journal of Personality 74, no. 6 (December 2006): 1587–617. Kochanska, Grazyna, and Sanghag Kim. “Toward a New Understanding of Legacy of Early Attachments for Future Antisocial Trajectories: Evidence from Two Longitudinal Studies.” Development and Psychopathology 24, no. 3 (August 2012): 783–806. Kochanska, Grazyna, David R. Forman, Nazan Aksan, and Stephen B. Dunbar. “Pathways to Conscience: Early Mother-Child Mutually Responsive Orientation and Children’s

180

Bibliography

Moral Emotion, Conduct, and Cognition.” Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 46, no. 1 (January 2005): 19–34. Konner, Melvin. The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind. 1st edn. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. Kuzawa, Christopher W., and Jared M. Bragg. “Plasticity in Human Life History Strategy.” Current Anthropology 53, no. S6 (2012): S369–S382. Lahey, Jessica. “Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School.” The Atlantic, June 20, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clearthe-schedule-and-let-kids-play/373144/ Laible, Deborah. “Mother-Child Discourse, Attachment Security, Shared Positive Affect, and Early Conscience Development.” Child Development 71, no. 5 (October 2000): 1424–40. Laible, Deborah. “Mother-Child Discourse in Two Contexts: Links with Child Temperament, Attachment Security, and Socioemotional Competence.” Developmental Psychology 40, no. 6 (November 2004): 979–92. Laible, Deborah. “Mother-Child Discourse Surrounding a Child’s Past Behavior at 30 Months: Links to Emotional Understanding and Early Conscience Development at 36 Months.” Merrill-Palmer Quarterly-Journal of Developmental Psychology 50, no. 2 (April 2004): 159–80. Laible, Deborah and Ross A. Thompson. “Early Socialization: A Relationship Perspective.” In Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, edited by Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings, 181–207. New York: Guilford Press, 2007. Lake, Peter. “Introduction: Puritanism, Arminianism and Nicholas Tyacke.” In Religious Politics in Post-Reformation England: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Tyacke, edited by Kenneth Fincham and Peter Lake, 1–15. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006. Laland, Kevin, Tobias Uller, Marc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka, et al. “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature News 514, no. 7521 (October 9, 2014): 161–64. Laland, Kevin, T. Uller, M. W. Feldman, K. Sterelny, G. B. Muller, A. Moczek, E. Jablonka, and J. Odling-Smee. “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Its Structure, Assumptions and Predictions.” Proceedings of The Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 282, no. 1813 (2015): 1–14. Lambert, Thomas A. “Preaching, Praying and Policing the Reform in Sixteenth-Century Geneva,” 1998. Leith, John H. John Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life. Louisville, KY: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1989. Loder, James E. The Logic of the Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998. Lowery, Kevin Twain. Salvaging Wesley’s Agenda: A New Paradigm for Wesleyan Virtue Ethics. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2008. Maccoby, Eleanor E. “The Role of Parents in the Socialization of Children—An Historical Overview.” Developmental Psychology 28, no. 6 (November 1992): 1006–17. McGiffert, Michael. “The Perkinsian Moment of Federal Theology.” Calvin Theological Journal 29, no. 1 (April 1, 1994): 117–48. McGrath, Alister E. Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. McKenny, Gerald P. The Analogy of Grace: Karl Barth’s Moral Theology. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. McPherron, Shannon P., Zeresenay Alemseged, Curtis W. Marean, Jonathan G. Wynn, Denne Reed, Denis Geraads, Rene Bobe, and Hamdallah A. Bearat. “Evidence for

Bibliography

181

Stone-Tool-Assisted Consumption of Animal Tissues before 3.39 Million Years Ago at Dikika, Ethiopia.” Nature 466, no. 7308 (August 12, 2010): 857–60. Maddox, Randy. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994. Makowski, Lee J. Horace Bushnell on Christian Character Development. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. Mandler, Jean. The Foundations of Mind: Origins of Conceptual Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Mattison, William C. “Can Christians Possess the Acquired Cardinal Virtues?” Theological Studies 72, no. 3 (2011): 558–85. Moreno, Amanda J., Mary M. Klute, and JoAnn L. Robinson. “Relational and Individual Resources as Predictors of Empathy in Early Childhood.” Social Development 17, no. 3 (2008): 613–37. Mulder, John M. “Introduction.” In Christian Nurture, 7–30. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979. Muller, Richard A. “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part One.” Calvin Theological Journal 30, no. 2 (November 1, 1995): 345–75. Muller, Richard A. “Calvin and the ‘Calvinists’: Assessing Continuities and Discontinuities between the Reformation and Orthodoxy, Part Two.” Calvin Theological Journal 31, no. 1 (April 1, 1996): 125–60. Muller, Richard A. Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012. Mullin, Robert Bruce. The Puritan as Yankee: A Life of Horace Bushnell. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002. Needham, Amy. “Learning in Infants’ Object Perception, Object-Directed Action, and Tool Use.” In Learning and the Infant Mind, edited by Amanda Woodward and Amy Needham. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Nevin, John W. “Educational Religion.” Weekly Messenger of the German Reformed Church, July 23, 1847. Newton, Emily K., Ross A. Thompson, and Miranda Goodman. “Individual Differences in Toddlers’ Prosociality: Experiences in Early Relationships Explain Variability in Prosocial Behavior.” Child Development 87, no. 6 (December 2016): 1715–26. Niesel, Wilhelm. The Theology of Calvin. Translated by Harold Knight. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1956. Nighbor, Tyler, Carolynn Kohn, Matthew Normand, and Henry Schlinger. “Stability of Infants’ Preference for Prosocial Others: Implications for Research Based on SingleChoice Paradigms.” PLOS One 12, no. 6 (June 2, 2017): e0178818. Nolan, Kirk J. Reformed Virtue after Barth: Developing Moral Virtue Ethics in the Reformed Tradition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2014. Noll, Mark A. America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. O’Keefe, Mark. Becoming Good, Becoming Holy: On the Relationship of Christian Ethics and Spirituality. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2005. Owen, John, and W. H. Goold. The Works of John Owen. London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965. Panksepp, Jaak. The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. 1st edn. Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2012.

182

Bibliography

Parnham, David. “Redeeming Free Grace: Thomas Hooker and the Contested Language of Salvation.” Church History 77, no. 4 (December 1, 2008): 915–54. Pasiak, Cassandra and Rosanne Menna. “Mother-Child Synchrony: Implications for Young Children’s Aggression and Social Competence.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 24, no. 10 (October 2015): 3079–92. Pettit, Norman. The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966. Pitkin, Barbara. “Children and the Church in Calvin’s Geneva.” In Calvin and the Church: Papers Presented at the 13th Colloquium of the Calvin Studies Society, May 24–26, 2001: Calvin Theological Seminary, the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies, Grand Rapids, Michigan, edited by David L. Foxgrover, 144–64. Grand Rapids, MI: Published for the Calvin Studies Society by CRC Product Services, 2002. Pitkin, Barbara. “‘The Heritage of the Lord’: Children in the Theology of John Calvin.” In The Child in Christian Thought, edited by Marcia J. Bunge. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001. Pobiner, B. “Meat-Eating among the Earliest Humans: Evidence of Meat-Eating among Our Distant Human Ancestors Is Hard to Find and Even Harder to Interpret, but Researchers Are Beginning to Piece together a Coherent Picture.” American Scientist 104, no. 2 (2016): 110–17. Potts, Richard. “Environmental and Behavioral Evidence Pertaining to the Evolution of Early Homo.” Current Anthropology 53, no. S6 (December 1, 2012): S299–S317. Quash, Ben. “Revelation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, edited by J. B. Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain R. Torrance, 325–44. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Reeves, Russ Patrick. “Countering Revivalism and Revitalizing Protestantism: High Church, Confessional, and Romantic Critiques of Second Great Awakening Revivalism, 1835 to 1852,” PhD dissertation University of Iowa, 2005. Rosin, Hanna. “The Overprotected Kid.” The Atlantic, March 19, 2014. Russell, Alan, and Graeme Russell. “Positive Parenting and Boy’s and Girl’s Misbehaviour during a Home Observation.” International Journal of Behavioral Development 19, no. 2 (June 1996): 291–307. Scarf, Damian, Kana Imuta, Michael Colombo, and Harlene Hayne. “Social Evaluation or Simple Association? Simple Associations May Explain Moral Reasoning in Infants.” PLOS One 7, no. 8 (August 8, 2012): e42698. Schmidt, Marco F. H., and Jessica A. Sommerville. “Fairness Expectations and Altruistic Sharing in 15-Month-Old Human Infants.” PLOS One 6, no. 10 (October 7, 2011): Article no. e23223. Schreiner, Susan E. “Calvin’s Use of Natural Law.” In Preserving Grace, 51–76. Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1997. Sloane, Stephanie, Renee Baillargeon, and David Premack. “Do Infants Have a Sense of Fairness?” Psychological Science 23, no. 2 (February 2012): 196–204. Smetana, Judith G. “The Role of Parents in Moral Development: A Social Domain Analysis.” Journal of Moral Education 28, no. 3 (September 1999): 311–21. Smith, H. Shelton. Changing Conceptions of Original Sin: A Study in American Theology since 1750. New York: Scribner, 1955. Smith, James K. A. You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2016. Smith, Ted A. The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Bibliography

183

Soskice, Janet. The Kindness of God: Metaphor, Gender, and Religious Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Soskice, Janet Martin. “Trinity and Feminism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, edited by Susan Frank Parsons, 135–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Spierling, Karen E. Infant Baptism in Reformation Geneva: The Shaping of a Community, 1536–1564. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Spinrad, Tracy L. and Cynthia A. Stifter. “Toddlers’ Empathy-Related Responding to Distress: Predictions from Negative Emotionality and Maternal Behavior in Infancy.” Infancy 10, no. 2 (2006): 97–121. Spohn, William. Go and Do Likewise: Jesus and Ethics. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000. Stayton, Donelda J., Mary D. Salter Ainsworth, and Robert Hogan. “Infant Obedience and Maternal Behavior—Origins of Socialization Reconsidered.” Child Development 42, no. 4 (1971): 1057–69. Sterelny, Kim. The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique. Jean Nicod Lectures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012. Stoever, William K. B. A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978. Stoever, William K. B “Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimension in the New England Antinomian Controversy.” Church History 44, no. 01 (1975). Stout, Dietrich. “Stone Toolmaking and the Evolution of Human Culture and Cognition.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366, no. 1567 (2011): 1050–59. Stump, Eleonore. “The Non-Aristotelian Character of Aquinas’s Ethics: Aquinas on the Passions.” In Faith, Rationality, and the Passions, edited by Sarah Coakley, 91–106. Chichester and Malden, MA.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Tanner, Kathryn. Christ the Key. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Tanner, Kathryn. God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988. Thompson, Jennifer and Andrew J. Nelson. “Childhood Patterns of Growth in the Genus Homo.” In Childhood: Origins, Evolution, and Implications, edited by Courtney L. Meehan and Alyssa N. Crittenden. Santa Fe, MN: School for Advanced Research Press; Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016. Thompson, Ross A. “Early Attachment and Later Development: Familiar Questions, New Answers.” In Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications, edited by Jude Cassidy and Phillip R. Shaver. New York: Guilford Press, 2008. Thompson, Ross A. “Whither the Preconventional Child? Toward a Life-Span Moral Development Theory.” Child Development Perspectives 6, no. 4 (2012): 423–29. Thompson, Ross A. and Emily K. Newton. “Baby Altruists? Examining the Complexity of Prosocial Motivation in Young Children.” Infancy 18, no. 1 (2013): 120–33. Tomasello, Michael. A Natural History of Human Morality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. Tomasello, Michael. A Natural History of Human Thinking. EBSCOhost EBook Collection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Tomasello, Michael. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Tomasello, Michael. Why We Cooperate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009.

184

Bibliography

Torbett, David. “Horace Bushnell and ‘Distinctions of Color’: Interpreting an Ambivalent Essay on Race.” Prism 14, no. 2 (September 1, 1999): 3–24. Torrance, T. F. Calvin’s Doctrine of Man. London: Lutterworth Press, 1949. Trevarthen, Colwyn. “‘Stepping away from the Mirror’: Pride and Shame in Adventures of Companionship—Reflections on the Nature and Emotional Needs of Infant Intersubjectivity.” In Attachment and Bonding: A New Synthesis, edited by C.S. Carter, Ahnert, L., Grossman K.E., S.B. Hrdy, M.E. Lamb, S. W. Porges, and N. Sachser, 55–84. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003. Turiel, Elliot. “Interaction and Development in Social Cognition.” In Social Cognition and Social Development: A Sociocultural Perspective, edited by E. Tory Higgins, Willard W. Hartup, and Diane N. Ruble, 333–55. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Turiel, Elliot. “Moral Development.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development, edited by Brian Hopkins, 242–48. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Tyacke, Nicholas. Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel. Alone in the World?: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. Gifford Lectures; 2004. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006. van Schaik, Carel P., and Judith Burkart. “Mind the Gap: Cooperative Breeding and the Evolution of Our Unique Features.” In Mind the Gap: Tracing the Origins of Human Universals, edited by Peter M. Kappeler, Joan B. Silk, and Göttinger Freilandtage, 477–96. Berlin, London, and New York: Springer, 2010. Volo, James M., and Dorothy Denneen Volo. Family Life in 19th-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007. Waal, F. B. M. de. Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. The University Center for Human Values Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Wallace, Dewey D. Puritans and Predestination: Grace in English Protestant Theology, 1525–1695. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Wallace, Ronald S. Calvin’s Doctrine of the Christian Life. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959. Webster, J. B. Holiness. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003. West-Eberhard, Mary Jane. Developmental Plasticity and Evolution. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. White, Roger M. Talking about God: The Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language. Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub., 2010. Williamson, Rebecca A., Meghan Rose Donohue, and Erin C. Tully. “Learning How to Help Others: Two-Year-Olds’ Social Learning of a Prosocial Act.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 114, no. 4 (April 2013): 543–50. Wilson, Stephen A. Virtue Reformed: Rereading Jonathan Edward’s Ethics. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill Academic Pub, 2005. Wilson, Timothy D. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Winnicott, D. W. The Child, the Family, and the Outside World. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964. Woodward, A. L. “Infants Selectively Encode the Goal Object of an Actor’s Reach.” Cognition 69, no. 1 (November 1998): 1–34. Woodward, Amanda L. “Infant’s Grasp of Other’s Intentions.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 18, no. 1 (February 2009): 53–57.

Bibliography

185

Zachman, Randall C. “Crying to God on the Brink of Despair: The Assurance of Faith Revisited.” In Calvinus Praeceptor Ecclesiae: Papers of the International Congress on Calvin Research, Princeton, August 20–24, 2002, edited by H. J. Selderhuis. Genève: Droz, 2004. Zachman, Randall C. The Assurance of Faith: Conscience in the Theology of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993.

INDEX affect hunger 103–4, 158–9 affective social acceptance 4, 5, 44, 103–4, 116, 128, 145–6, 171–2 Ainsworth, Mary 124, 130 Arminius, Jacobus 47 attachment theory 16, 123–7, 130 Augustine 37–8, 54, 63 Barth, Karl 8 n.15–16, 32 n.78, 33 n.79, 33 n.81, 113 n.57, 140 n.70, 155, 160 n.19 Baumrind, Diana 137 Bekoff, Marc 97–8, 157 n.14 Billings, Todd 19 n.19, 20, 31 n.73 Boulton, Matthew Myer 17 n.9, 31 n.73, 162 n.20, 162 n.24 Bowlby, John 124, 126 Bushnell, Horace 3, 10–11, 36, 38, 43–4, 71–2, 73–92, 104, 117, 127, 146, 150–1, 155–6 on Christian nurture 73–5, 79–92, 167 on conversion 75, 81–3, 85–6, 91–2 and the cult of domesticity 78–9 divine agency in 74, 80–1, 85, 87–92, 173 on “ethical nurture” or non-Christian nurture 84–5 and expectations for parents 87–92 on faith in children 73–5, 81–6, 88 on feeling in religion 78, 83 on grace 73–4, 77, 81, 85–92 on the Holy Spirit 74, 85, 87, 89, 92 on human agency 77, 80–1 on infant baptism 81–2, 87–8 on Jesus’ role in salvation 76–8, 85–6, 91 on justification 77 on means of grace 73–4, 81–2, 85–9, 92, 170 on mortification and vivification 78 on mothers 79, 84 n.45, 89–90, 162

on a new heart 77, 83, 85 on organicism 79–82, 85–7, 155, 164 and parent-child analogy 85–6 Pelagianism in 87 racism in the thought of 90–1 as a Reformed theologian 76–7, 81, 85–6, 88–9 on regeneration 73, 75–8, 81–9 on responsivity between parent and child 80, 82 n.37, 170 and revivalism 10, 73–5, 78, 83 n.39, 85–6, 91 on sanctification 77–8, 82, 87, 91 (see also Bushnell, Horace, on regeneration) on subjective experience in soteriology 74, 78 Calvin, John 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13–44, 145, 159, 168, 170, 172 on Christ 17, 21, 23–6, 30–1, 158, 164 compared to Horace Bushnell 74, 76–8, 81–2, 86, 91–2 compared to John Owen 45–6, 48–53, 54, 57–8, 60, 64–70, 72 death and rebirth metaphor in 26–32 on divine agency 19–20, 46 on double grace 18, 27, 35, 39, 77 on election 26, 32, 34 n.81, 39, 66 on faith 22–3, 25–7, 30, 32, 34–6, 38–43, 65–6, 161 on the fall 17–18 on grace 19–20, 22, 27, 32, 35, 37–9, 41, 43 on the “heart,” 14, 27–9, 36 on the Holy Spirit 19, 22–3, 30–1, 34–5, 39–41 on human agency 13, 19–21, 25–6, 30, 44, 46 on human nature 26–7, 30, 44 on infant baptism 15, 38–42, 81–2

Index on justification 18–19, 33–5, 39 on mortification 28–31, 39, 162–3 on natural moral development 15–17, 32, 36–8, 42–4, 111, 147, 166 on pagan virtue 37–8 parent-child analogy in 13–15, 21–7, 29–31, 36–7, 43, 70, 86, 128 and parent-child relationship (literal) 14–15, 38, 42–4, 70 on prelapsarian human nature 16–17 on punishment 18, 24–5, 30 on repentance 27–33, 40–1, 44, 156 on sanctification 18–44 of infants 40–1 objective reality 33–5, 39, 41, 152–3 subjective experience 32–5, 39, 41 on sin 17–18, 20, 22–3, 26–30, 44, 161–2 on subjective awareness 13–14, 32–6, 38–9, 41, 44, 78, 151 on union with Christ 16–17, 23, 27, 31, 39 on vivification 28, 30–1, 78, 162 Canons of the Council of Orange 54–5 Canons of the Synod of Dort 52, 54–5 Cherry, Conrad 77 n.15, 79 Coakley, Sarah 7 n.14, 9 n.18, 15 n.4 common grace 38, 63 n.71, 166 n.30 Cotton, John 50 n.14, 51 developmental psychology 3, 5, 9, 11, 91, 110, 115–47, 154, 156–7, 170 de Waal, Frans 98 divine agency 4–7, 10, 113, 127, 150–2, 155, 158–9, 165, 171–3. See also under Owen, John; Calvin, John; Bushnell, Horace divine mystery 4, 22, 56, 63, 67, 69, 72, 155, 165, 173 Dorrien, Gary 76 n.5, 79 n.22, 92 n.88 Edwards, Jonathan 2, 159 evolutionary anthropology 3, 9, 11, 65, 93–113, 115, 120, 123, 127, 145, 147, 150, 154–9, 170 and childhood 99–104, 106, 110–11 and cooperative breeding 99–104 and social or cooperative learning 104–9 extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) 94–7, 106

187

feminist theology 15–16, 162–3 Finney, Charles 74 Fuentes, Agustín 95 n.4, 96, 113 n.58 gender in Bushnell 89–90 and God-language 15–16 Gerrish, Brian 15 n.3, 21, 22 n.33, 23, 32 n.78, 40 n.96, 89 n.74 Goldschmidt, Walter 97 n.8, 102 n.29, 103–4, 158 Gopnik, Alison 118 n.5, 121 n.17, 124 grace 1–6, 65, 93–4, 149–51, 165–72. See also under Bushnell, Horace; Calvin, John; Owen, John and human nature 3, 38, 94, 109, 165–9 as infused virtue 5–6 and a transformed heart 151, 158, 161 habituation 2, 5–6, 141, 151 n.5, 161, 172 Haller, William 50 Hauerwas, Stanley 2, 5, 7 n.14, 164 n.29, 168 n.35 Henrich, Joseph 105 n.38, 107 Herdt, Jennifer 1 n.1, 2, 6 n.11, 32 n.77, 151 n.5, 171 n.39 Hodge, Charles 86–7 Holy Spirit. See also under Bushnell, Horace; Calvin, John; Owen, John in Calvin 22–3 Hrdy, Sarah 11, 98 n.18, 99–103, 110 n.55, 111, 125, 145 human agency 1–2, 4–7, 11, 14, 19, 116, 120, 127, 129, 140, 145–6, 149–52, 155–65, 170. See also under Bushnell, Horace; Calvin, John; Owen, John human evolution. See evolutionary anthropology human nature 3–4, 11, 38, 149, 157–8, 161, 172. See also under Bushnell, Horace, on organicism; Calvin, John; Owen, John capacities for moral agency 116–28, 171 and capacity for relationship to God 112–13, 154, 166, 169 and childhood 145, 165 as developmental 106, 110–11, 156–7, 169, 171

188

Index

and the human sciences 9, 94, 96, 115 integrity of 150–1, 154–5, 173 and plasticity 4, 11, 94–6, 101, 105, 111, 113, 115, 125–7, 154, 166 as social or relational 97, 100–13, 116, 119–28, 149, 156–7, 159, 164, 165–9 human niche 11, 95–8, 100–1, 103, 106, 111–13, 149, 154, 156–7, 164, 166, 171–2 infused virtue 5–6 Isler, Karin 100 Knight, Janice 14 n.2, 50 n.14, 51 n.17, 66 n.86–7 Kochanska, Grazyna 131–4, 137, 141, 145 Kohlberg, Lawrence 128–9, 139–40 Laland, Kevin 95–6 Loder, James 139 n.68, 167–8 Luther, Martin 2 Maccoby, Eleanor 128 n.37, 130–1 methodology in theology and science 6–9, 116, 144 Montagu, Richard 47 moral agency. See human agency moral formation. See natural moral development moral motivation 24, 67, 89, 113, 127, 130, 138, 141, 145, 158–9 moral norms 1, 103, 106, 126, 128–9, 132, 140, 142–3, 157–8 moral philosophy 117, 128 n.38, 129 n.40, 139–40, 145 Muller, Richard 48–9, 51 n.16 mutually responsive orientation (MRO) 131, 136, 141–2, 145 natural moral development 2–7, 9–10, 45, 73–4, 93, 109, 113, 115, 151, 170. See also under Bushnell, Horace, Christian nurture; Calvin, John; Owen, John, natural moral virtue; Sanctification and the child’s environment 116, 125–7 (see also human niche)

and the parent-child relationship 130–47 the role of imitation in 134–5 the role of punishment in 136–8 Nevin, John 86–7 niche construction 95. See also human niche Niesel, Wilhelm 17 n.10, 18, 28 n.64, 34 n.81 Owen, John 3, 10, 45–72, 73, 76 and Arminians 46–8, 56, 60–1 and children 65, 70–1 on divine agency 46, 53–4, 59–60, 68–70, 72 on grace 45–6, 52–6, 58–62, 67–9, 71–2 on the Holy Spirit’s work 52–60, 67–72 on human agency 45–6, 53–5 on infused principles 54, 67 and the integrity of human nature 45, 57–8 on the means of grace 54–6, 59, 67–8, 72 on moral persuasion 52–3, 57–8, 61 on mortification 63–5, 162 on natural moral virtue 45, 61–3, 67, 70–1 on the parent-child analogy 61 on Pelagianism 45, 47–8, 51–4, 61–2, 66–7, 69–70, 72 on regeneration 52–8, 63–4, 67–70 on sanctification 45–6, 48, 52–72 as progressive 58–65, 67–9 the role of Christ in 60 as subjective and objective 56–61, 67–8 on self-examination 51, 63–4, 66 on Socinians 47–8, 53, 56, 60 parent-child analogy 5, 8, 15, 128, 139, 159, 165, 171. See also under Bushnell, Horace; Calvin, John; Owen, John Piaget, Jean 118 Potts, Rick 105 practices of formation 2, 5–6, 11, 23, 60, 63, 157, 161, 164–5, 172 preparationism 50–1, 55–6

Index Reformed theology 3–4, 8, 10, 14 n.2, 61, 70–1, 93, 104 and assurance of faith 26, 51, 63, 66 and conversion 75 and election 160 n.19 and a focus on the inner life 50–1, 61, 69, 104 and the heart 4, 151–2, 158, 172 and sanctification 13, 32, 33 n.81, 36, 54, 65, 71–2, 92, 93, 152–3, 161, 166, 170 in 17th century England 46–52, 55 revivalism 74–5 sanctification 1, 2, 65, 93, 115. See also under Bushnell, Horace; Calvin, John; Owen, John as an intelligible process 10, 13, 15, 19, 26, 45, 60, 69, 154 challenges to doctrine 4, 150–2 as consistent with human nature 3, 10–11, 13, 26, 45, 57, 110, 149–50, 154–5, 159, 161, 170, 172 and natural moral development 1, 4, 65, 109, 147, 151, 156, 165–9, 173 objective aspect of 32–6, 41, 60–1, 67–9, 72, 92, 152–6, 159, 170 as relational 150, 154, 156–61 and repentance 161–5

189

responsive 4–5, 11, 44, 149, 156–61, 164–5, 170, 173 and subjective awareness 14, 33, 35, 38, 41, 47, 59–61, 65, 67, 69, 72, 139, 152–3, 155, 159–61, 164, 170 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 32 n.78, 75–6, 89, 166 n.31 Siegel, Daniel 124 n.29, 125 Socinus, Faustus 48 Soskice, Janet Martin 15 n.4, 16 n.5 spiritual formation 6, 161, 164, 172 Sterelny, Kim 11, 105–7, 112 Tanner, Kathryn 6 n.12, 54 n.27, 160 n.19 Tomasello, Michael 98, 107, 120 Trevarthen, Colwyn 93–4, 101 van Huyssteen, Wentzel 112 van Schaik, Carel 100 virtue ethics 2, 4–6, 161, 170 Webster, John 154 Wesley, John 2 Westminster Confession of Faith 52, 54 Winnicott, Donald 117 Zachman, Randall 22 n.34, 32 n.77, 51 n.16, 66 n.85, 160 n.19