{
  "id": "dict_000898",
  "term": "children",
  "slug": "children",
  "letter": "C",
  "entry_type": "practice",
  "entry_family": "theological_term",
  "tier": 2,
  "aliases": [
    "Child, Children"
  ],
  "short_definition": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord.",
  "simple_one_line": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord.",
  "tooltip_text": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord.",
  "lede_intro": "The topic of children concerns gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord, so this entry should be read from the texts that define it and then from its place within the wider doctrinal shape of Scripture.",
  "at_a_glance_definition": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord.",
  "at_a_glance_key_points": [
    "Read children through the passages that describe it as gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord.",
    "Trace how children serves the gathered life, holiness, order, and witness of Christ's people.",
    "Do not define children by tradition, reaction, or church culture alone; let the whole canon set its meaning and limits."
  ],
  "description_academic_short": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord. In dictionary use, the term should be explained from its immediate contexts, its place in biblical theology, and its bearing on faithful Christian life.",
  "description_academic_full": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord. More fully, the topic should be interpreted through the passages that name it, illustrate it, regulate it, or warn about its misuse. A sound treatment therefore asks how children relates to creation, sin, redemption, discipleship, and the church's life under Christ, without turning a practical category into a slogan detached from context.",
  "background_biblical_context": "Biblically, the theme of children is framed by creation order, covenant obligation, wisdom instruction, Jesus' teaching, and apostolic exhortation as gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord. Scripture therefore places children within holiness, fidelity, household responsibility, and love of neighbor rather than leaving it to custom, appetite, or private judgment alone.",
  "background_historical_context": "Historically, discussion of children developed where biblical teaching had to be worked out in household life, moral formation, economic relations, legal judgment, and public order. Jewish legal reflection, patristic moral teaching, medieval canon law, Reformation ethics, and modern social theology each pressed the term into new settings.",
  "background_jewish_ancient_context": "In ancient Jewish and wider Mediterranean context, children was heard within household structure, kinship obligations, inheritance patterns, marriage customs, honor-shame expectations, and covenant identity. That background clarifies why biblical commands address family life concretely while also challenging surrounding abuses and distortions.",
  "key_texts_primary": [
    "Ps. 127:3-5",
    "Deut. 6:6-7",
    "Eph. 6:1-4"
  ],
  "key_texts_secondary": [
    "Mark 10:13-16",
    "Prov. 22:6",
    "Col. 3:20-21"
  ],
  "original_language_note": null,
  "original_language_terms": [],
  "theological_significance": "children is theologically significant because it refers to gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord, clarifying how worshipful practices form the heart, direct the will, and honor God in lived devotion.",
  "philosophical_explanation": "Philosophically, Children turns on what kind of creature the human person is: embodied, habituated, socially located, morally responsible, and answerable before God. The main pressure points are habit and intention, embodied limits and moral agency, and the difference between descriptive psychology and normative anthropology. The best accounts therefore resist both moralism and reductionism by keeping anthropology tethered to doctrine and discipleship.",
  "interpretive_cautions": "With children, resist defining the entry by modern instinct or later shorthand before tracing its biblical and theological usage. Distinguish inward disposition, moral obligation, covenant setting, and pastoral application, rather than importing therapeutic, political, or cultural meanings that the text itself is not trying to supply. Define the entry with enough discipline that it clarifies rather than blurs the relation between exegesis, doctrine, and pastoral use, especially where traditions extend the language in different directions.",
  "major_views_note": "Children is usually treated as normatively addressed in Scripture, but traditions differ over how its moral claims should be specified, casuistically applied, and pastorally administered. The main points of disagreement concern creation order, covenant fidelity, pastoral wisdom, and the difference between abiding principle and culture-shaped expression.",
  "doctrinal_boundaries": "Children must be framed within Scripture's account of creation, fall, embodied agency, and moral responsibility rather than reduced to psychology, sociology, or bare rulekeeping. It should neither excuse moral agency nor treat fallen desire as morally neutral, yet it must also avoid collapsing human life into therapeutic description or social mechanism. Used rightly, children marks the moral and theological fence lines within which repentance, discipleship, and holiness can be taught with clarity.",
  "practical_significance": "Pastorally, children matters because believers need wise, Scripture-shaped guidance for everyday obedience, worship, suffering, relationships, stewardship, and life together in the church.",
  "related_entries": [],
  "see_also": [],
  "meta_description": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord. In theological use, the topic should be defined from...",
  "jsonld_description": "Children are gifts from God who are to be nurtured, protected, and taught in the fear of the Lord. More fully, the entry should be read from the passages that establish its meaning, the doctrinal relationships that...",
  "source_basis": "scripture-led synthesis",
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