Theopedia

Child training

“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”

— Proverbs 22:6

Definition

Child training is the ongoing duty of parents, especially fathers, to bring up their children “in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4): patient instruction in the fear of God, correction of childish folly, and the example of a godly household. Scripture grounds the duty in the fifth commandment, binding parents as well as children to relations of love, provision, and discipline (Exod. 20:12). Proverbs commends starting a child early in the right way (Prov. 22:6) and using the rod to correct him (Prov. 23:13-14); Paul warns fathers against provoking their children to anger (Col. 3:21).

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession has no chapter devoted to raising children. Its chapter on marriage names procreation among the ends for which marriage was ordained:

“Marriage was ordained for the mutual help of husband and wife, for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue, and the preventing of uncleanness.”1

That clause addresses why children are begotten, not how they are afterward to be raised.

The wider Reformed catechetical tradition treats the second question at length under the fifth commandment. Expounding “Honour thy father and thy mother,” the Westminster Larger Catechism states what superiors, parents among them, owe those under their authority:

“It is required of superiors, according to that power they receive from God, and that relation wherein they stand, to love, pray for, and bless their inferiors; to instruct, counsel, and admonish them; countenancing, commending, and rewarding such as do well; and discountenancing, reproving, and chastising such as do ill; protecting, and providing for them all things necessary for soul and body: and by grave, wise, holy, and exemplary carriage, to procure glory to God, honor to themselves, and so to preserve that authority which God hath put upon them.”2

Applied to parents, this names duties instruction alone does not cover: blessing and praying for a child, correcting faults as well as commending what is done well, providing for the child’s soul and body together, and living an “exemplary carriage” the child can imitate.2 The catechism holds parents to the same standard: it names “an inordinate seeking of themselves… commanding things unlawful… correcting them unduly” among the sins by which parents themselves fail this duty.3

Biblical Basis

Paul states the positive duty and its limit together: fathers are to “bring [their children] up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), and, in the parallel command, are not to “provoke” their children, “lest they become discouraged” (Col. 3:21). Ken Magnuson reads the pairing as making training itself, not merely provision, a purpose of the family: children “require years of patient nurture, training, and instruction,” the same demand Moses lays on Israelite parents in Deuteronomy, to keep God’s words “on your heart” and “talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deut. 6:6-7).4

Proverbs supplies both halves of the same instruction: the long aim, “train up a child in the way he should go… he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6), and the corrective means, “do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die” (Prov. 23:13). Writing on Exodus 20:12, Thomas Watson holds the two together as a single duty, urging parents to “bring them up in the Fear and Nurture of the Lord” and, alongside instruction, keep up “the Rod of Discipline,” warning that a child “indulg’d and humour’d in Wickedness, will be a Thorn in the Parents Eye.”5

Watson reads Paul’s warning against provoking children to wrath (Col. 3:21) as a check on that same authority, not a relaxation of it. A parent provokes a child “when they strike their Children without a Cause; or when the Correction exceeds the Fault,” when a parent shows favor “unequally” between children, or when a father’s own conduct contradicts what he demands of his children: “If I have done Evil, I have learned it of you.”6 Edward Leigh’s contemporary systematic treatment states the same pairing independently, listing a parent’s “common duty” as, first, “to instruct them in Religion so soon as they are able to speak” (citing Prov. 22:6, Eph. 6:4, and Deut. 6:7 together) and, second, “to give them correction” (citing Prov. 23:13 among other texts).7

Historical Development

By the mid-seventeenth century, English Reformed divinity had folded the raising of children into the systematic exposition of the fifth commandment as a fixed head of household duty. Edward Leigh’s 1654 Systeme or Body of Divinity lists a parent’s duties to a child “in their tender years and childhood” as instruction, correction, and blessing, each tied to its own proof texts.7 Thomas Watson’s 1692 A Body of Practical Divinity, a set of catechetical sermons on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, devotes an entire sermon to Exodus 20:12 that works through the same material at greater length, distinguishing the instruction owed a child from the rod of discipline and cataloguing nine distinct ways a parent could provoke a child to wrath contrary to Colossians 3:21.5 Both belong to the same genre of “household duties” literature that Puritan practical divinity produced alongside its confessions and catechisms, working out the fifth commandment’s mutual obligations of “superiors” and “inferiors” for the particular relation of parent and child.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 25, “Of Marriage,” para. 2. ↩

  2. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), Q. 129. ↩ ↩2

  3. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), Q. 130. ↩

  4. Ken Magnuson, Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2020), chap. 7, “Marriage and Sexuality.” ↩

  5. Thomas Watson, A Body of Practical Divinity: Consisting of Above One Hundred and Seventy-Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1692), 357. ↩ ↩2

  6. Watson, 358. ↩

  7. Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (London: A. M. for William Lee, 1654), 750. ↩ ↩2