( Part 1 ) ( Part 2 ) ( Part 3)

In this paper of this series in which I am exploring the Christian history of spanking, I would like to begin by discussing some of John Calvin’s beliefs in regards to children as many of the people that we have discussed in this series have been highly influenced by Calvin’s beliefs.  After I discuss John Calvin, we will look at Jonathan Edwards as he still influences some Christian advocates of spanking children.  It is my hope that people are discovering for themselves that spanking is from man, not from God as we go through this historic journey together.

John Calvin

John Calvin (1509-1564) was one of the primary figures in the Protestant Reformation.  He became a born again Christian in 1533.  He then became a Protestant pastor in Geneva, Switzerland, and created the Geneva Academy after returning from exile in 1542.  “Calvin’s major institutional contribution to education was his Geneva Academy, which he established upon his return from exile.  The academy was divided into two schools.  The private school taught children until about age sixteen, and the public school served as the university” (Reed & Provost, 1993, p. 197).  Calvin believed in the strict religious education of children, and the Geneva church controlled the academy.  The teachers employed by the church were well versed in Calvin’s strict disciplinarian approach that often included physical punishment.  The following poem shows exactly how John Calvin felt regarding the use of physical punishment with children:

Who spares the rod with spirit mild,
He surely hates and harms his child.
Stripes and fear are right;
But who disowns their might,
And trains his son in tender way,
Unfits him for life’s earnest fray” (Reed & Provost, 1993, p. 198).

It is clear from this poem that Calvin had no understanding of lovingly admonishing children as well as adults as Colossians 3:16 tells us to do.  Nor did he seem to understand Christ’s teaching of forgiveness (Luke 3:3; Luke 24:47).   And I must wonder if he knew that gentleness and patience are some of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

Before I get too deeply into Calvin’s beliefs about children, I would like to take a look into how society in general viewed children and childhood during the 16^th century.  While most parents loved their children, children were not highly valued during this time period.  Parents were unemotional about children as the group took precedence over the individual and therefore children were ignored.  Most upper-class parents as well as many of those lower down the social scale, for instance, fostered out their infants and parents in general were unmoved at the death of infants.  Between 1540 and 1660, however, increasing interest was shown in childhood as a state, resulting in ‘a greater concern for the moral and academic training of children’” (Pollock, 1983, p. 6).  Pollock (1983) also states that “Tucker concludes from her research into 15th- and 16^th-century England (‘The child as beginning and end,’ 1976) that children were seen as untrustworthy and as being at the ‘bottom of the social scale.’  In fact, ‘childhood was a state to be endured rather than enjoyed.’  Tucker states that parents were ambivalent towards their offspring: they were unsure whether to regard them as good or evil, and also when to include them in adult society or to exclude them from it” (p. 5).  As I have pointed out throughout this series, people just did not have the knowledge or understanding of children that we are so blessed to have today.  The fact that all of the research and child development knowledge that we have today was gained over the last 50-100 years leads me to believe that children and childhood have not been valued throughout the ages.  People have been having children for, perhaps, millions of years on this Earth, and it has taken us this long to really begin to study children in order to see that much more is occurring during childhood than any other time period in the human lifespan.  Of course, God has known all of this since the beginning of time as He created us.  And God did try to tell people this as throughout Scripture we see God speak tenderly and compassionately about His people through images of children and parents.  “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem” Isaiah 66:13.  (See also Isaiah 66:11; Isaiah 49:15; Deuteronomy 1:39; Hosea 11:3).  And of course, throughout the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus commands the disciples to allow the little children to come to Him.  He also holds children up as models for adults, and gives a stern warning to anyone who causes them to sin.  (See Part 7 of “Spanking is NOT God’s Will” for more information).  Even in the rod verses of Proverbs, in which so many Christians highly misinterpret, God has tried to tell people that children need to be led with authority, not by being hit.  I wonder why it has been so difficult for people to see what God has pointed out throughout the Bible?  Obviously, sin and satan have much to do with it!

Coming back to Calvin’s beliefs about children, he believed in the total depravity of children and in divine predestination.  From my understanding, predestination means that God has predestined some people to go to Hell and some people to Heaven despite the fact that we are all equal sinners.  John Calvin took predestination all the way to infants saying that some infants are destined to Hell and some to Heaven if they die as infants.  Reed and Provost (1993) state, “Perhaps the doctrine that was most characteristically associated with Calvin is predestination.  He believed that God destined some for eternal life and others for eternal damnation.  The nature and reward of the afterlife depended on divine predestination” (p. 198).   Now Romans 8:28-30 states,

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”

At first glance, this appears to be supporting Calvin’s beliefs, but let’s look at Ephesians 1:3-14, which states,

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, ⁹ he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. ¹¹ In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, ¹² in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. ¹³ And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, ¹⁴ who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”

These two passages are not saying that God predestined some to be saved and others to damnation as Calvin seemed to believe.  What these passages are saying is that before God sent Christ to die for all sins once and for all, people had to be Jewish and follow the Law of Moses that God prescribed for His people to a T.  If one was not Jewish, there was little hope of that person being saved—unless, of course, they somehow cried out to God and God choose to save them.  Yes, God could be extremely harsh in Old Testament times.  But His love and compassion shine through when we read these two passages and see that when God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, down to Earth to pay for all sins, that God knew that this would allow all people the ability to receive salvation through Christ’s forgiveness!  Therefore, God predestined ALL people the ability to become saved through Jesus instead of one group of people—the Jews (who are still God’s chosen people even though they now need to receive Christ in order to be saved)—who followed the Law of Moses.  Also, 2 Peter 3:9 states, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  What’s more is what Jesus Himself says regarding the “little ones” in Matthew 18:14 where Jesus had been speaking of children just before He says, “In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”  God does not randomly pick and choose who will and will not be saved as Calvin seemed to indicate in his teachings.  Otherwise, why did Jesus descend to Hell before His resurrection and ascension into Heaven to bring those who had perished due to not having a way to salvation into Heaven (Ephesians 4:9-10)?

Another example of Calvin’s beliefs of divine predestination are his comments regarding Genesis 25 where Jacob put on fur in order to trick Issac into giving him Esau’s blessing.  “The third context in which Calvin considers the absolute power of God is provided by the doctrine of predestination.  Calvin illustrates this problem with Jacob and Esau as told in Genesis 25 and retold in Romans 9.  In the commentary on Genesis, Calvin attacks the idea that Jacob’s election was based on foreseen merit or Esau’s rejection on foreseen demerit.  Calvin repeats the Augustinian argument that since all are unworthy to be saved, election is wholly gratuitous.  There is no cause outside the will of God for the election of Jacob and that will, which can never be called to account, is itself ‘the cause of causes.’

And yet Paul does not, by thus reasoning, impute tyranny to God, as the sophists trifling allege in speaking of his absolute power.  But whereas dwells in inaccessible light, and his judgments are deeper than the lowest abyss, Paul prudently enjoins acquiescence in God’s sole purpose; lest, if men seek to be too inquisitive, this immense chaos should absorb all their senses” (Steinmetz, 1995, p. 199).  I must question what Calvin meant by the fact that Jacob’s election was not based on foreseen merit because look how God answers Rebekah when she asks Him about the babies in her womb: “The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the LORD.

²³ The LORD said to her,

“Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger” Genesis 25:22-23.  While Calvin is correct that God elected Jacob before Jacob could do anything good or bad, God knew that Jacob was going to be major in His ultimate plan for salvation for everyone as Jacob is in Jesus’ linage.  God knows who each and everyone of us will be.  He uses people to do His Will.  So to say that God does not care about his people by randomly or arbitrarily predestining some to Heaven and some to Hell is just plain wrong.  God chooses the people that will best carry out His Holy and perfect Will while not wanting anyone to perish, and allowing us free will to choose or reject Him.

Also, this example of God choosing Jacob instead of Esau is showing that God has the right to change the rules.  The oldest son was always the one who had the birthright.  God knew this but He knew that the younger son could carry out His Plan the best.  God often chooses people that most people would not even consider to do His Will.  As someone with severe Cerebral Palsy, most people would not think of me as being able to do much good for God’s Kingdom, and yet, He has chosen me to write these series and book in order to gain more for His Kingdom.  I am humbled and grateful to God for choosing me for this particular job.

Calvin believed that infants were not innocent and could have a conversion experience if God choose to save them.  “…Calvin’s insistence on the sinfulness of infants cannot be attributed to his understanding of election, nor can it be considered unique to him or unusually harsh in the premodern era.  Even theologians such as Thomas Aquinas (who held that God predestines some people to salvation but actively reprobates no one) understood that newborns were not innocent and without God’s predestination would not be saved” (Pitkin, 2001, p. 168).  Throughout my all of my series, I have shown that, yes, infants are born with a sinful nature, but infants and young children do not purposely sin against God.  They do not intently set out to disobey their parents, and therefore, disobey God.  Everything young children do is exploration and testing limits based on where they are in their development.  As I pointed out in Part 7 of “Spanking is NOT God’s Will,” children cannot control their sinfulness.  They cannot call on Jesus when they are being tempted as adults can.  Also, the part of the brain that controls our impulses does not fully develop until we are 25 years old.  God created us, so He is well aware of our abilities and inabilities at each period of our life stages.  Look what He says about children in Deuteronomy 1:39: “And the little ones that you said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet know good from bad—they will enter the land. I will give it to them and they will take possession of it.”  As I pointed out earlier in this paper, God has told us much about children throughout Scripture.  We just need to be willingly to dig deep into Scripture, and open our hearts to the Holy Spirit and God will reveal all we need to know about our children and how to guide them with gentle firmness in order to point their hearts towards Jesus Christ.  God is a fair and just God.  He knows exactly when each person is going to die.  If an infant or young child dies before they can purposely sin against Him and reject Him, He will not punish that child by sending him/her to Hell for eternity.  He loves children.

If Calvin believed that God predestines some infants and children to Heaven and others to Hell, then why would he advocate for physical punishment and strict religious education for children in order to “save” them?  Of course, he didn’t know who’d be saved or not?   But if we have no control over salvation as Calvin seemed to believe, then why did Jesus command us to “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” Matthew 28:19-20?  The theology of predestination seems to blow a hole into John Calvin’s, and as we are about to see, Jonathan Edwards’, ideas regarding how children are to be treated.  John Calvin did much good by being a major influence in the Protestant Reformation and other social reformations.  “However, to keep these accomplishments in perspective, the following quote depicts the kind of action that generally follows when church and state unite too tightly:

‘He united Church and State to such an extent that moral offenses were punishable by the State.  During the first twenty-two years of his rule, fifty-eight people were executed, fourteen witches were burned to death, hundreds were exiled and hundreds more were punished annually for moral offenses.  All places of popular pleasure were closed.  Dress regulations were severe.  Prisoners were tortured to exact confessions of moral offenses’” (Reed & Provost, 1993, p. 199).  Is this someone we want to follow in how we treat children?  I think not!  Unfortunately, as we’ve seen throughout this series, many of the people that are currently Christian advocates of spanking hold up as models for Christian parents were greatly influenced by John Calvin.  Jonathan Edwards was one of them.

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was the pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts after his grandfather passed away.  Edwards is well known for the major movement of revivals called The Great Awakening.  “Environmental conditions, low moral actions, and religious practices substantially contributed to the period of revivals, especially from 1720 to 1750.  The Great Awakening resulted in the founding of denominational colleges including Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth” (Reed & Provost, 1993, p. 303-304).  He wrote many books as well as well as the well-known sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”  He was the president of Princeton University for a very brief period of time before dying due to a Small Pox vaccination in 1758.  He was a Puritan, and was highly influenced by Calvin as most Puritans were during the 18^th century.  (See Part 2 and Part 3 of this series for more information regarding this and how the Puritans in general viewed children during the 18^th century).  “…It would be a serious error of historical judgment to equate Puritanism with Calvinism.  Calvinism was a more pervasive religious and intellectual movement than Puritanism, though Puritanism can be regarded as a special type of Calvinism” (Steinmete, 1995, p. 5).

Like Calvin, Edwards believed in divine predestination and that some infants and young children would go to Hell.  He also believed that very young children, including infants, were capable of having conversion experiences if God chose to save them.  Brekus, (2001) in her article about Edwards, states, “he sternly insisted that ‘infants are not looked upon by God as sinless, but… are by nature children of wrath.’  Quoting from the Psalms, he preached, ‘The wicked are estranged from the womb: They go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.’ Yet on the other hand, Edwards also insisted that an all-powerful, sovereign God could transform even the youngest child into a paragon of Christian virtue” (p. 301).  Berkus (2001) goes on to explain that “To be sure, his hellfire sermons, his belief in the doctrine of infant damnation, and his staunch defense of the patriarchal family made him more conservative than almost all of the other theologians profiled in this book, including Augustine and Calvin.  He frequently threaten children with eternal torments in hell if they failed to convert” (p. 301).  First, as I have pointed out all throughout all of my series, while it is true that infants are born with a sinful nature, infants and young children are not capable of purposely sinning with meanness in their hearts.  Young children do not set out to hit, kick, bite, or throw a temper tantrum.  It just happens because they have not learned how to appropriately express how they are feeling, and, as I’ve mentioned before, young children cannot control their impulses very well without a great deal of guidance and support from adults.  Everything an infant or a young child does is purely in exploration.  “Another thing to consider is that toddler defiance is not necessarily a bad thing.  It is often a way for children to express their feelings, to assert their budding self-awareness, and to experiment with taking initiative and taking charge.  These are all important developmental achievements (Dix et al., 2007).  On the other hand, defiance that is aggressive or violent is typically a sign of an emerging vicious cycle implication of parental coercion and aggression (Brook et al., 2001; Calkins, 2002)” (Fogel, 2011, p. 260-261).  Also, a young child who is dealing with anxiety issues may exhibit the anxiety in the form of behavioral problems.  Lieberman (1995) states, “Sometimes their anxiety emerges in the form of anger and aggression: hitting, biting, and kicking” (p. 93).  I wonder if this is why Jesus warns us about causing children to stumble or sin in Matthew 18:6-9 because when we hit them and treat them harshly, it causes them to feel anger and anxiety which causes them to act out more in order to express their emotional state?  Therefore, it is clear that God does not send them to Hell for things they are incapable of or do not do with a malicious intend.

As soon as Edwards took over as pastor at the church, he began directing most of his sermons to the children and youth of the church because he believed that they were more malleable and teachable than the adults.  While Edwards did talk about Heaven, he seemed to focus on Hell and condemnation in order to scare both children and adults into conversion.  For example, in his well-known sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards (1741 [1970]) states, “God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them; and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell: John iii. 18, ‘He that believeth not is condemned already.’  So that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is: John viii. 23, ‘Ye are from beneath:’ and thither he is bound; it is the place that justice, and God’s word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law, assign to him” (p. 98-99).  Yes, as sinners we are destined and deserve to go to Hell.  And yes, if, when we are capable, choose to reject Christ as our personal Savior, we will go to Hell when we die.  However, look at what John 3:17-18 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. ¹⁸ Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”  In the quote above, Edwards chooses to focus on the negative part of John 3:18 in his sermon instead of showing that God chose to send His Son to save the world and not to condemn it.  I remember when I was a young Christian trying to evangelize to people, I would tell them that they were sinners and would go to Hell.  I memorized all the famous verses in Romans such as 3:23, 6:23, and 5:8 and spit them out as I tried to lead family to friends to Christ.  I was not able to help God win anyone’s hearts over to Christ using this approach.  What God taught me was that it is much easier to win people’s hearts to Him by living in a way that glorifies God, talking about what God’s doing in my life, and most importantly, sharing God’s love.  That’s how I helped my husband open his heart to Christ during our first year of dating.  And one night, after we’d had many talks about God and he had gone to church with me quite a few times, he was home alone watching a Christian television program and felt Christ’s love come over him and prayed to receive Christ as his Savior.  My point is that while we need to gently tell people the consequences of rejecting Christ’s gift of salvation, it is much more effective to share His love, grace, and mercy with non-believers.  This includes our children as well.  I asked Christ into my heart not because of fear, but because I felt His love and a hunger to be a part of something bigger than myself.

Edwards seemed to understand that children had different needs than adults.  He even saw that children went through different stages of development throughout childhood, which was quite unusual for Puritans as they treated children like miniature adults.  “Following in the footsteps of earlier Christian theologians, he recognized three distinct stages of children’s development: infancy (from birth to the age of six or seven), childhood (from seven to between fourteen and sixteen), and youth (from sixteen to twenty-five).  For example, in a letter to Thomas Prince, Edwards explained that he had held special religious meetings for ‘children’ who were ‘under the age of sixteen’ as well as for ‘young people’ between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six.  Anticipating the arguments of Jean Piaget and other twentieth-century psychologists, he and other Puritans assumed that children reached a crucial turning point around the age of seven in terms of their ability to ‘reason’ and grasp abstract concepts” (Brekus, 2001, p. 302).  While it is true that seven-year-olds are able to reason more and begin to understand some abstract concepts such as conservation (where there are two glasses filled with the same amount of water but one is taller than the other; a seven-year-old knows that just because the taller glass looks like it has more water in it than the shorter glass, that they both have the same amount of water in them after watching the same amount of water being poured into them) as they are in Piaget’s Concrete Stage of his Stages of Cognitive Development, true abstract thinking does not begin until children enter adolescence.  That is Piaget’s Formal Operations Stage of Cognitive Development.  In the Formal Operations Stage, children no longer need to visualize abstract concepts in order to try and understand them; they can now do everything mentally.  Because of Edwards’ beliefs about children’s different stages of development, he tailored his sermons to each age group, and spoke to them in a way that the children could understand.  However, he felt that children needed to be introduced to the terrors of Hell at a very early age.  In the book called Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell, John Gerstner (1980) states, “The fact that hell has its degrees is part of the reason for Edwards’s pathetic pleading with children not to start sinning early but to be converted and use their days in the joyous service of their God.  If the best doctrine to present to sinners is hell, the best time is childhood.  The number of special meetings for children that Edwards held, as well as the diligent attention he gave to the salvation of his own family, show his persuasion of this point.  His approach to children was basically the same as the approach to their parents.  They too were in danger of judgment and must learn to flee from the wrath that is to come upon them as well as upon older sinners.  They were ‘young serpents’ who had not yet learned to bite, but were full of poison” (p. 62-63).

Using this doctrine of belief, Edwards would begin by describing Heaven to the children with Jesus waiting for them.  But then, he would drastically change his tone of voice and vividly describe Hell to these children.  He would tell them that at any moment they might die and God would send them to Hell.  Edwards (1741 [1980]), in a private meeting of children, stated, “’Supposing children you could now hear the cries of other wicked children that are gone to hell—Come therefore hearken to me—If you won’t hearken but will go to hell…” (p. 63).  “(the sermon outline on Psalm 34:11 abruptly ends here)” (Gerstner, 1980, p. 63).  He even went so far as to say that their parents would rejoice as they watched God send their children to Hell.  “Stirring up even deeper fears, Edwards insisted that unless they were ‘born again,’ their parents would stop loving them.  On Judgment Day, as Christ sentence them to eternal punishment in hell, their parents would not ‘be grieved,’ but would ‘praise God for his justice.’  The same parents who had once tenderly embraced them, soothed their cries, and bandaged their cuts would rejoice to see them in torment” (Brekus, 2001, p. 316-317).  Can you imagine the psychological impact all of this had on these children?  Not to mention the confusing view of God Edwards painted on their hearts and minds?

Here is one well-documented story of how one 4-year-old girl named Phebe Bartlet was affected by Edwards’ fear inducing sermons.  Jonathan Edwards had been called to Phebe’s house by her parents.  “According to her parents, who earnestly sought his spiritual counsel, Phebe had undergone a remarkable religious change.  Influenced by her eleven-year-old brother, who recently had been ‘born again’ during a conversion experience, Phebe had begun to disappear into her ‘closet’ to pray and weep for salvation.  ‘I pray, beg, pardon all my sins,’ she was heard crying loudly to God.  As her parents confessed to Edwards, they had assumed that such a young child was ‘not capable of understanding’ Christianity, but they had been deeply affected by her anxious prayers and sobs for mercy.  One afternoon, despite her mother’s attempts to soothe her, Phebe ‘continued exceedingly crying, wreathing her body to and fro, like one in anguish of spirit,’ until she finally managed to put her fears into words.  ‘I am afraid I shall go to hell!’ she wept.  After another bout of crying, however, she suddenly fell quiet.  Turning to her mother with a smile, she proclaimed, ‘Mother, the kingdom of heaven is come to me!’  In the hours and days afterward, Phebe seemed to have become a ‘new creature’: she carefully recited her catechism, wept at the thought that her unconverted sisters might ‘go to hell,’ and, like Augustine, repented for stealing some fruit—a handful of plums—from a neighbor’s tree” (Brekus, 2001, p. 300).  Now some people may read this story and ask what’s so bad about it.  They might think it was wonderful that a 4-year-old child received Christ at such a young age.  While, if indeed she did actually receive Christ, it is great anytime a child purposefully accepts Christ into their hearts, I must question as her parents did whether she truly understood exactly what was happening to her.  When we ask Christ for forgiveness and for Him to come into our hearts, He immediately does.  I was given the wrong impression as a 15-year-old that God could save me at any time.  I took that to mean that if I kept asking Him and read the Bible, He would choose to save me.  Since I didn’t feel anything spectacular happen when I prayed for my salvation, I assumed that it hadn’t worked.  So I prayed several more times until one day a friend of mine’s mom asked me if I was saved or not.  I told her that I didn’t know for sure, but that I had been praying for Him to save me.  My friend’s mom laughed and told me that I was indeed saved.  It was a huge relief to know that I was saved and no longer had to wait for God to decide to save me. Therefore, the fact that Phebe kept begging God to forgive her makes me believe that she really did not understand what was happening.  All she knew was she was absolutely terrified of being sent to Hell and wanted God to love and rescue her.  Finally, God must have made His love for her very apparent to her in a way that she could truly understand.  A child as young as Phebe is not capable of purposely rejecting Christ because he/she truly believes us when we tell them about God.  As I pointed out in Part 7 of “Spanking is NOT God’s Will,” children have an unique knowledge of God as we have seen in Matthew 21:14-16 and Luke 10:21.  A conversion experience should never be traumatic as it was for Phebe.  Children should be made to want to receive Christ because of the unfailing love He has for them; not out of sheer terror!  To make a child believe that God wants to punish them or wants their parents to spank them is wrong, and is considered spiritual abuse.

While it is true that there were some revivals among the children and youth that Edwards taught, and that some of the children did find these meetings helpful by allowing them to express theirs fears to Edwards, many of the children were highly affected by them in quite negative ways.  They had high amounts of fear and anxiety due to Edwards’ teachings.  “Rather than using his ideas to expand their religious authority, they struggled with overwhelming feelings of anxiety and despair.  Once again, the evidence comes from Edwards, who proudly reported that children broke down in tears while listening to his sermons.  During one of his children’s meetings, ‘the room was filled with cries,’ and afterward, groups of sobbing children ‘went home crying aloud through the streets, to all parts of the town.’  Apparently Phebe Bartlet, who feared she might ‘go to hell,’ was not alone” (Brekus, 2001, p. 320).  It is almost as if Jonathan Edwards delighted in terrifying children and adults.  And from reading some of his work, I also question whether or not he believed that God enjoys sending people to Hell.

Lately, I have been thinking and dealing with some of God’s Wrath as my area and areas south of me have been dealing with wave after wave of severe storm and tornadoes.  Due to weeks of almost non-stop waves of heavy rain, we have also been dealing with record breaking flooding.  God has spared my husband and me of any damages due to these horrible storms and flooding, but a great deal of people have lost everything.  And sadly, some people have lost their lives.  As my husband and I thought about why God may be allowing all of this to happen, we are sure that these are signs of Jesus’ returning to Earth someday sooner than later.  But we also wonder if God is trying to get people’s attention by displaying some of His awesome Power to us to get us to stop thinking about ourselves.  I also know that God enjoys having people cry out to Him so He can help and comfort them.  Whatever His reasons for unleashing some of His Wrath on us, one thing is for sure, God does NOT delight in wickedness (Psalm 5:4)!  His Throne is built on righteousness and justice (Psalm 89:14).  And even through His Wrath we can see His compassion on us by giving us plenty of warning in His Word that these things will take place and by allowing the technology to be created in order to warn people of a storm so that they can get to the safest place possible before the storm hits.  Despite of all of the destruction, there have been numerous stories of survival against all odds.  No one can tell me that God did not also have His Hand in those survival stories.

I discussed God’s grace in Part 8 of “Spanking is NOT God’s Will” when He dealt with Adam and Eve’s sin and I would like to make another point regarding that.  How many times do parents discover that their children did something wrong and yell, “Come here right NOW!  What did you do?  I am going to spank your butt so hard for what you did!”  And yet, God, Who knew all of the consequences throughout all of time of their sin, gently asked where they were and about what they had done.  He dealt with them with gentle firmness.  Do you think Adam and Eve are in Hell for all the trouble they caused mankind?  The Bible doesn’t say either way, but if I had to guess, I’d guess no because God loved them and had compassion on them.  How much more compassion He has for young children who believe in Him whole-heartedly with no doubt or hesitation whatsoever and who do not set out to commit sin!  How sad it must make God that so many Christians twist His Holy Word around to justify terrifying and punishing children thereby giving children an inaccurate view of God.

Jonathan Edwards may have had the same inaccurate view of God due to his traumatic childhood.  He was abused as a child.  He also grew up with a lot of violence in his family.  “His grandmother on his father’s side, Elizabeth Tuttle, had been so physically violent and mentally unstable that his grandfather had finally convinced the court to grant him a divorce—a rare event in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.  Even more troubling, his great-aunt (Elizabeth Tuttle’s sister) had murdered her own son.  Given the stories he must have heard as a child, it is not surprising that as an adult, he insisted that Christians owed their first allegiance to God, not humankind” (Brekus, 2001, p. 320).  Edwards married Sarah Pierpont and they had 11 children, including Esther Edwards Burr.  While there are some sources that claim that Edwards did not use physical punishment with his children, it is well documented that his daughter, Esther, began using physical punishment with her infant daughter.  “Esther Edwards Burr, who became the wife of the Reverend Aaron Burr, president of Princeton.  In 1754 she reported to her best friend, Sarah Prince:

‘I had almost forgot to tell you that I have begun to govourn Sally [her firstborn child].  She has been Whip’d once on Old Adams account, and she knows the difference between a smile and a frown as well as I do.  When she has done any thing that she Suspects is wrong, will look with concern to see what Mama says, and if I only knit my brow she will cry till I smile, and altho She is not quite Ten months old, yet when she knows so much, I think tis time she should be taught.’

By starting her physical discipline of her daughter when the child was nine months old, Esther Burr surely was repeating the experiences she had had as a child herself, thus following her mother’s practice of resisting ‘the first, as well as every subsequent exhibition of temper or disobedience in the child, however young’” (Greven, 1992, p. 21).  How sad, but not uncommon, that the cycle of using fear and abuse with very young children continued throughout the Edwards’ family.  Also, I must point out that infants do begin social referencing at 9 months.  This means that as they’re exploring their environment they will check in with their parents and/or caregivers, especially when they discover something that are unsure about, in order to see if it’s okay to go on exploring or not based on the adults’ reaction.  What we see with Esther Burr’s daughter is not your typical social referencing episode.  The infant was definitely afraid and unsure of what might bring on another round of physical punishment.  The very fact that the infant cried at a wrinkled brow shows, not that she was being “well trained” as her mother thought, but that she had been absolutely traumatized by her mother’s physical aggression towards her!  Not what Jesus had in mind when He said, “Fathers, ^[Parents^] do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged” Colossians 3:21.

To conclude, I must wonder why John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards advocated for the physical punishment, strict religious education, and, in the case of Edwards, put a high amount of fear into children’s hearts in order to save them if they believed that God predestines some to Heaven and some to Hell?  Doesn’t this seem to, logically, blow a huge hole in their theology?  They may have done some good (though, Edwards ended up being dismiss from his pastoral position in 1750 by the congregation), but these should not be people that we should look to for advice on raising godly children.

( Continued)

References

Bunge, M. J. (Ed.). (2001). The child in Christian thought. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Gerstner, J. (Ed.).  (1980). Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

Pollock, L.  (1983). Forgotten children.  Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Reed, J. E. & Prevost, R.  (1993). A history of Christian education.  Nashville, TN: Brodman & Holman Publishers.

Simonson, H. P. (Ed.).  (1970). Edwards: Selected writings of Jonathan Edwards.  New York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company.

Steinmetz, D. C.  (1995). Calvin in context.  Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

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