PARENTING FREEDOM

.: attachment parenting, homeschooling, gentle discipline :.
  • .: Favorite Quotes :.


    "God pardons like a mother,
    who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness."
    Henry Ward Beecher
  • .: Waiting for Baby :.

  • Dr. Karl Barth and Grace

    “The great Protestant theologian of the last century, Karl Barth, also understood grace in the same way when it came to smacking [spanking] children. Barth taught the following:

    “’Christian exhortation as such can never point in the direction of disciplinary severity.’ To raise children ‘in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, excludes provoking them to the anger, resistance, and rebellion that emerges through the ‘assertion of Law, or the execution of judgment.’ Admonitions in the book of Proverbs not to spare the rod of correction must be transformed by the duty to know and correspond in thought and deed to grace, and in that light to summon children to repentance. A mother’s and father’s training and advice are to be a ‘joyful invitation’ to their children to rejoice with them in Jesus Christ. ‘To be joyful,’ Barth explains, ‘is to expect that life will reveal itself as God’s gift of grace, that it will present and offer itself in provisional fulfilments of its meaning and intention as movement. To be joyful means to look out for opportunities for gratitude.’ The work of parents is limited by time and a receding social space in which other influences on children increasingly come into play. It is limited by the fact that parents cannot relieve their sons and daughters of personal responsibility. How much more vigorously must it be said that parents may nevertheless ‘give their children the opportunity to encounter the God who is present, operative and revealed in Jesus Christ, to know him and to learn to love and fear Him,’ and to that extent offer them a life that is joyful.”

    “Additionally, let us seek after the Spirit of God because ‘if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.’” Galatians 5:18

    Quoted from Samuel Martin’s book, Thy Rod and Thy Staff They Comfort Me Christians and the Spanking Controversy, pg. 129, 130.

    Mr. Martin’s source was William Werpehowski, essay “Reading Karl Barth on Children,” M. Bunge, The Child in Christian Thought, Eerdamns: Grand Rapids: Michigan, 2001, pgs. 399-400.

    http://parentingfreedom.com/samuelmartinbook.pdf


    About The Author

    carol
    Welcome to PARENTING FREEDOM.com, a unique website with information based on research, experience, intuition, and Christianity. "O teach me, Lord, that I may teach the precious things Thou dost impart; And wing my words, that they may reach the hidden depths of many a heart." I encourage you to read my parenting essays linked in the left sidebar. Each topic has Scripture verses and quotes that are particularly moving. This is also my online home for small-c conservative comments about the liberal world. Thanks for visiting my website, and come back soon! I appreciate your comments! If you want access to pictures and stories about my children and family, email me with information about yourself and your family.

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