I recently read Joseph A. Grassi’s 1991 book Children’s Liberation: A Biblical Perspective. Grassi’s book was the second book published in 1991 in the new field of child liberation theology—the first being Janet Pais’s book, Suffer the Children: A Theology of Liberation by a Victim of Child Abuse. Whereas Pais’s book is primarily psychological, Grassi’s is primarily exegetical—focusing on straightforward yet provocative interpretations of both well-known and obscure biblical passages.
A Catholic theologian who taught at Santa Clara University in the California Bay Area, Grassi examines in Children’s Liberation the many sections about children in Jewish and Christian scriptures. With an eye towards improving the lives of children today, Grassi argues that these scriptures indicate God and Jesus have a special and profound interest in how adults treat children. In Part One of the book, Grassi looks at the Tanakh and how Jewish people valued and treated children; in Part Two, he moves to the Christian Gospels, highlighting how Jesus’s advocacy for children as his adopted successors has deep roots in Judaism and how this advocacy should change Christian beliefs and actions today. I will discuss both parts shortly, but I will start with Grassi’s introduction.
Introduction
Grassi begins Children’s Liberation with clearly identifying the connection between the Gospel of Jesus and the topic of child liberation. While acknowledging the scarcity of thought and action on the topic, he argues that “gospel” means “joyful good news of liberation for all, especially those who are ‘last or least.’” If this is true, Grassi says, this good news must be good news not just for adults but children as well: “The last or least, even with all our modern progress, are still the little children” (p. 5).
There are obstacles to liberating children, however. Grassi addresses several in his introduction: First, children do not have access to the same resources many adults have when they encounter evil like abuse and neglect. “Adults have ways to protect themselves and their rights,” Grassi writes, “but children usually have neither the power to defend themselves nor anyone to stand up for them” (p. 5). This mirrors a point originally made by Janet Pais in Suffer the Children about how “children are innately powerless to do anything about their oppression” (p. 16-17). (Read my reservations about this argument here.)
Second, theologians have historically neglected discussing children, so we do not have a solid foundation on which to understand the relationship between Jesus and child liberation. “Our neglect of children,” Grassi says, “even comes out in the scholarly study of Scripture. Relatively little has been written about children in the Bible, especially the primacy given to them in the message of Jesus” (p. 5). While this has changed to some extent since 1991 with the excellent work by Marcia J. Bunge and her collaborators through books like The Child in Christian Thought, The Child in the Bible, and Child Theology, even Bunge says the problem persists. “Although the biblical texts are flooded with both direct and indirect references to children and childhood,” she writes in The Child in the Bible, “biblical scholars have generally neglected these themes” (p. xv).
With his book, Grassi hopes to overcome these and other obstacles to child liberation today. In Parts One and Two of Children’s Liberation, Grassi commences to chip away at the second obstacle by exploring the abundance of biblical texts that mention and pertain to children. In his conclusion, he considers how the explored biblical texts can help us advocate for children today and empower children to address the life challenges they face.
Part One
Part One of Grassi’s book consists of one chapter that explores how children were seen as “God’s greatest gift” to the Jewish people. According to Grassi, the Tanakh repeatedly highlights the immense value and importance of children because “children are the incarnation of the central biblical teaching that God is the root and source of all life. The gift of children in new life is an intimate share in his very nature” (p. 9).
While Jewish people believed “the birth of any child was… a divine blessing” (p. 10), Grassi is quick to acknowledge life was neither easy nor safe for children in ancient biblical societies. “Despite the many beautiful passages in the Bible about children as the supreme gift of God,” he writes, “human weakness often caused them to be treated as the very least in human society.” Jewish children were often taught that “the highest virtue was to obey, reverence, and respect one’s parents,” giving parents “almost absolute authority and power over their children” (p. 16-17).
Grassi singles out the Book of Sirach in particular, highlighting disturbing passages about how a child should “serve his parents as his masters” (Sirach 3:7) and should be beat “while he is young lest he become stubborn and disobey you” (Sirach 30:12). Grassi also points out that, while the Tanakh repeatedly commands the death penalty for children who rebel against or curse their parents (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9, and Deuteronomy 21:18-21), “no similar punishment was ordered for parents who offended their children” (p. 18).
While the Tanakh does include troubling passages about children, Grassi is careful to also identify other passages that highlight just how revolutionary Jewish beliefs and actions about children could be. “Biblical tradition,” he declares, “also presents remarkable rays of hope that counteract the black picture that weak human beings have created.” Grassi gives several examples of these hopeful and revolutionary texts about children: how Jewish wisdom literature says wisdom is “a gift from God” that “can be granted even to a child” and “is not simply ingrafted through obedience to parents” (p. 20); how the Jewish prophet Isaiah’s vision of God’s Kingdom prominently features children as leaders; and how God’s interactions with the Jewish people “upset human expectations” because God continually “will work through those who are younger rather than older, through little ones and children rather than through great and powerful people” (p. 24). Grassi gives multiple examples of this last point about power reversals: Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, Manasseh and Ephraim, David and his brothers, and David and Goliath.
Grassi concludes his chapter on Tanakh passages about children by pointing out there is continuity between these power reversals in the Tanakh and how the Gospels present Jesus’s topsy-turvy Kingdom, where the first are last and the last are first. “The Gospels build on these scriptural foundations,” he states, “and point the way to true liberation of children by awarding them first place in the new age of God’s promise” (p. 26).
Part Two
In Part Two of Children’s Liberation, Grassi looks at passages about children from the four gospels in the Christian Scriptures: Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Grassi argues children are the foundation of each gospel, though in different and sometimes contrasting ways.
The chapter on Mark’s gospel is called “Children as Successors of Jesus.” Here, Grassi makes (I think) the most important argument in his book: when Jesus confronts his disciples in Mark 9 about their debate over “who would be the most important in the kingdom” and takes a child into his arms and declares receiving children means receiving Jesus, Jesus was being more than nice to children. Jesus was referencing “an ancient adoption ritual” and saying children—not the 12 disciples—are his true successors. In short, the Kingdom of God belonging to children is no mere metaphor. Children are literally “the first actual owners of the kingdom,” imbued with “power and authority” (p. 38-41).
Grassi’s chapter on Matthew’s gospel is called “The Priority of Little Ones.” After distinguishing between the historical contexts of Mark’s gospel versus Matthew’s gospel, Grassi describes the central theme of Matthew as topsy-turvy power reversals: “Ironically, a child considered to be born in sin [Jesus, because Mary became pregnant before marriage] is the one who will save others from sin… Matthew thus prepares for a central Gospel theme that the last and the least, as exemplified by children, will be the first in God’s kingdom” (61). In Matthew’s gospel, children become styled as “little ones” and “last and least” and “stand for a much larger group” (p. 65)—”the hungry, thirsty, naked, strangers, prisoners, and sick” (p. 70). Matthew thus “expands the image of children to include the ‘least and last’ in the kingdom” (p. 71).
Grassi’s chapter on Luke’s gospel bears the title, “The Children’s Paradox and the Divine Child.” In this chapter, Grassi explores how Luke reveals “God’s surprising design to work through the least and lowliest ones in the human family” (73). He highlights how, when Samuel visits Jesse’s home to anoint a future leader from Samuel’s eight sons in 1 Samuel 16, Samuel is unsatisfied with the oldest seven and only anoints the youngest—David, who was not originally present as he was shepherding. Grassi connects David’s shepherding to the shepherds in Luke’s nativity story, pointing out that, “In Luke’s nativity story, the true king is not found among the mighty and strong; he is found among ‘little ones,’ the shepherds who were often, like David, children or youngsters.” Grassi thus concludes that, “In presenting Jesus as a little one, found among the lowly children shepherds, Luke introduces a theme that will be prominent in his gospel: God chooses children” (p. 75).
The final gospel Grassi examines is John’s. This chapter is titled, “Jesus’s Beloved Youngster.” In it, Grassi suggests the “Beloved Disciple” in John’s gospel was a child adopted by Jesus and appointed as Jesus’s spiritual successor. Evidence for this is the gospel’s “triple mention of [the Beloved Disciple] reclining at the bosom of Jesus at the Last Supper,” as Grassi argues that “taking a child into one’s bosom is part of an adoption ritual” (p. 86-87). While Grassi acknowledges John’s gospel indicates the disciple Peter is Jesus’s “external successor and leader of the Twelve,” Grassi argues the Beloved Disciple is “the embodiment of Jesus’s inner successor, the Paraclete or Holy Spirit” (p. 107, 109).
Conclusion
Grassi ends Children’s Liberation with a message of hope: children are never “mere kids.” They are images of God—images of “Jesus, the Divine Child.” They thus “can give new hope, life, and energy to what often appears to be a decaying world” (p. 113).
But in order to be those forces for good, children cannot be abandoned to adult abuse and neglect. Adults must champion children like Jesus did. “Jesus gave priority to children because they were on the lowest rung of society,” Grassi explains. “Without a sound bottom rung all climbing is dangerous… We must build from the bottom up if we want to form a just society” (p. 114).
Forming a just society starts with parents and other caretakers of children. It starts with how adults treat children. “The New Testament opposes all forms of mere human discipleship that rely only on obedience whether to teacher, leader, or parent,” Grassi concludes. “The work of a parent is to form disciples of Jesus, not faithful followers of themselves. Once again, ‘Come follow me’ whether said by Jesus or by parents is a form of grace and invitation that allows room for rejection” (p. 121).