2010-02-25T06:00:52-05:00

The post yesterday from Christopher Tollefsen about homeschooling referred to the vocation of a child. Luther too said that being a child is a vocation, just as being a husband, wife, father, or mother is a calling from God. So, what is involved in the vocation of childhood? Who are the child’s neighbors whom he or she is to love and serve? What is the work entailed in childhood? How does this vocation change as the child grows from infancy through adulthood?

2010-02-24T06:00:31-05:00

Thanks to Justin Taylor for showing me this article by Christopher O. Tollefsen, Are There Harms of Home Schooling? by Christopher O. Tollefsen, philosophy professor at the University of South Carolina. He takes out some recent academic attacks on homeschooling and builds a case for it based essentially on the doctrine of vocation! Excerpts:

Despite its growing acceptance, homeschooling continues to come under attack by critics who see it as a fringe phenomenon indulged in only by religious extremists and red-state radicals. The latest of these attacks are two recently published academic papers by Robin West and by Martha Fineman that trumpet concerns about the “harms” of allowing a family to educate their children at home.

West and Fineman are guilty of some overly broad generalizations about the inadequacies of home-schooling, and sloppy inferences from what can happen to what should. There is little evidence that home-schooled children are subjected to widespread abuse or neglect, and some evidence that home-schooled children perform as well or better than publicly educated children by a number of measures of assessment. Yet, on the grounds that abuse can happen and occasionally does in the homeschooling environment, Fineman, for example, draws the astonishingly strong conclusion that “public schooling should be universal and mandatory.”

This conclusion rests on the faulty assumption—widely shared amongst liberal theorists of education—that the state is in some way a privileged player in the question of children’s education. According to this view, the state should educate children, and others who claim a right to do so should be subject to special scrutiny or meet a special burden of proof.

One can see how such an assumption might make sense. If children are to be primarily educated into citizenship, then it might seem entirely natural for the state to have the primary responsibility for doing so. And if children are primarily to be educated for autonomy, then removing children from the religiously, morally, and culturally homogeneous environment of the home might be essential. Finally, if children are to be educated with a view to their best interests, and those interests are understood as in tension with the interests of their parents, then again, the state will seem to be the default educator of children.

But are these the ends of children’s education? And should state schooling be the default position against which others are judged? The two questions are, as we have just seen, linked, and they must be addressed together.

Moreover, these questions need to be addressed against the background of what we might call the ontology of children and the family. Is the family a mere aggregate of individuals—spouses, and children—held together, perhaps by common or overlapping interests, but ultimately independent, in their interests and their being, from one another? . . . .

A more adequate picture emerges from a more accurate account of marriage as a comprehensive sharing of lives that extends not just through those immaterial aspects of the spouses’ lives, such as intellect, will, character, and emotion, but penetrates down to the bodily being of the spouses in the act of sexual intercourse. That act of intercourse is, by its nature, ordered to the biological function of reproduction. Thus, children who are born of marriage so understood are the fruit of that parental union, and so themselves in a strong sense new parts of that union. The unity and multiplicity that characterizes the lives of spouses who have become one flesh is thus extended to include the lives of children born (or, I believe, adopted) of that union. . . .

How, then, should the child’s good, which also is the perfection of their parents, be understood?

Children’s education is primarily about their fulfillment, but that fulfillment is and can only be rooted in an orientation towards a life of service to genuine human goods, including the goods of others and service to God. The particular form of life within which each child is called to perform these services is the child’s vocation; the task of education—its primary end—is to enable children to recognize, accept, and pursue that vocation. . . .

Moreover, a child’s developing recognition of his or her vocation—which is the ultimate end of children’s education—is not simply a matter of recognizing the goodness of this or that way of life, for there are many such good ways of life. Additionally, the child must recognize the fittingness of some particular way of life for him or her. The particular way of life to which this child is called is not the same as the life to which that child is called, and the particular shape this a child’s obligations, opportunities, and destiny will take are, in many ways, unique to him or her.

Parents are in a unique position to help children through the years of their formation, in recognizing what they are called to. . . .

Such considerations do not provide an argument against state assistance in children’s education, or even an argument against the existence of state-funded public schools. But they do suggest, I think, a rather strong conclusion: that the option of home-schooling should be the prima facie starting point for parental deliberations about their children’s education. Many parents will, in the course of their deliberations, realize that they are best positioned to pursue, with their children, the ends of education in the home. Others will conscientiously judge that others, in one or other of a variety of possible ways, must be brought on board to assist with the task. But, as the starting point for deliberation in this area, homeschooling, and homeschoolers, should be given considerably more deference, in theory and practice, than recent educational theory suggests.

2010-02-10T05:00:47-05:00

I’ve been appreciating Michael Horton for a long time. His critiques of pop Christianity, his polemics against “Christless Christianity,” and his work to apply the insights of the Reformation to our own times are right on target. Here is a video lecture he gave on “Christ and the Workplace,” which deals with vocation.

HT: Justin Taylor

2010-02-09T05:00:50-05:00

Pastor Douthwaite preached a fine sermon on the callings of Isaiah and Peter on Sunday, a model of how to preach the Law, the Gospel, and Vocation. A sampling:

For while Isaiah was indeed unclean, he was not lost. For in the depth of his sin and fear, “one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” ” For the Lord did not bring Isaiah before him in this vision to destroy him, but to save him. And he is saved by the offering upon the altar. When it touches his lips, his sin and guilt and uncleanness are gone. He is given new life and hope.

And the same happens for Peter. He was right in confessing that he is a sinful man, but the Lord will not depart from him and leave him in his sin. Instead, Jesus says to him: “Do not be afraid.” Or in other words, do not be afraid of being in the presence of the Lord, for Jesus has not come to destroy, but to save. To save by being the offering that touched Isaiah’s lips from the altar of the cross. To save by being the sacrifice for guilt and the atonement for sin as the Lamb of God. To give Peter – and all the world – new life and hope. And the words that came from Jesus’ lips and touched Peter’s ears did for Peter what they said. They did not inspire Peter to boldness and confidence; rather, they gave him boldness and confidence.

And so it is for you and me. At the beginning of each Divine Service, we take our place with Isaiah and Peter and confess that we are sinful and unclean. We cry out Woe is me, I am lost. A lost and condemned person. We confess that we have no right to be here, and deserve only temporal and eternal punishment. But as with Isaiah and Peter, our Lord comes to us not to destroy or condemn us, but to forgive and save us. And so like Peter, His words: “I forgive you all your sins.” touch our ears and raise us to new life and hope. And like Isaiah, the sacrifice from the altar of the cross touches our lips as we eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus in His Supper, and our guilt and uncleanness are gone. Gone, for they are taken by our Lord, and we are given His holiness and life.

And so Isaiah and Peter were mightily transformed. Isaiah’s Woe is me! is replaced with “Here am I! Send me!” And Peter’s Depart from me is replaced with his clinging to Jesus – leaving everything and following Him, to be a fisher of men. Yet this is not the only wonder. For is it not also a wonder that these are the very men our Lord wants to send and use. God does not look for holiest and best and most righteous of men. He does not seek the strongest and most steadfast. Rather, he takes an unknown like Isaiah and an ordinary fisherman like Peter, and uses them to proclaim His Word as prophet and apostle. . . .

And in the same way have you been mightily transformed. For the love, forgiveness, and life of Jesus is not without power. And though you are not the holiest, the best, the strongest, the most steadfast, or the most righteous – our Lord will now use you. He may not have called you to be a prophet like Isaiah, or an apostle or “fisher of men” like Peter. But our Lord has called you to be a father or mother, and speak His Word to your children. He has called you to be a friend and neighbor, to serve with His love. He has called you to be a boss or worker, to provide for others through you. He has called you to be a Christian, to speak His Word of forgiveness. And in these vocations, you are just as important as Isaiah or Peter. And Jesus is using you in ways that are both known to you and unknown to you.

via St. Athanasius Lutheran Church: Epiphany 5 Sermon.

2009-12-24T05:15:52-05:00

Anthony Carter quotes a book quoting Luther on what Mary was doing when the angel appeared to her (Luke 1:26-33):

Quite possibly Mary was doing the housework when the angel Gabriel came to her.  Angels prefer to come to people as they are fulfilling their calling and discharging their office.  The angel appeared to the shepherds as they were watching their flocks, to Gideon as he was threshing the grain, to Samson’s mother as she sat in the field.  Possibly, however, the Virgin Mary, who was very religious, was in a corner praying for the redemption of Israel.  During prayer, also, the angels are wont to appear (from Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus, ed., Nancy Guthrie).

Yes, during prayer and other spiritual exercises, but contemplate that second sentence for awhile. It’s when we are fulfilling our vocations–as spouse, parent, citizen, worker–that angels “prefer” to come to us and that God works with and through us most powerfully.

2009-12-03T06:00:26-05:00

I have been charged with putting together some curriculum on Luther’s writings on vocation. This teaching, of course, is scattered throughout his voluminous works, but I need to pull together some primary sources. My task is complicated by the habit of Luther scholars of referring to his works by volume and page number from his collected works, often the German edition, instead of by the title of his book or sermon. (Could Luther scholars agree not to do that, or, rather, to give the title of the work, as well as where it can be found in the collected works?)

Anyway, Frank Sonnek put me onto this sermon, which is a good example of what I am looking for and is available online. It’s Luther’s sermon on the NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, preached in Marburg in 1529. Here is a paragraph on vocation. I will also throw in a paragraph on the kingdom of Christ just because it is so beautiful and profound. Both quotes show Luther at his stylistic best:

Our foolishness consists in laying too much stress upon the show of works and when these do not glitter as something extraordinary we regard them as of no value; and poor fools that we are, we do not see that God has attached and bound this precious treasure, namely his Word, to such common works as filial obedience, external, domestic, or civil affairs, so as to include them in his order and command, which he wishes us to accept, the same as though he himself had appeared from heaven. What would you do if Christ himself with all the angels were visibly to descend, and command you in your home to sweep your house and wash the pans and kettles? How happy you would feel, and would not know how to act for joy, not for the work’s sake, but that you knew that thereby you were serving him, who is greater than heaven and earth. . . .

Therefore we are to regard the kingdom of Christ as a large, beautiful arch or vault which is everywhere over us, and covers and protects us against the wrath of God; yea, as a great, extended firmament which pure grace and forgiveness illuminate and so fill the world and all things, that all sin will hardly appear as a spark in comparison with the great, extended sea of light; and although sin may oppress, it cannot injure, but must disappear and vanish before grace.

Now let me ask for your help. What are some other Luther writings on vocation? “Freedom of the Christian,” of course. “Whether Soldiers Too Can Be Saved.” The catechisms. What else? What sermons and postils and commentaries? What is the source of the oft-quoted but seldom sourced quotation about how changing a baby’s diaper is a holier work than that of all the monks in all the monasteries?

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