Abstract

Theological understandings of children’s moral agency can benefit from attention to Lev Vygotsky’s dialectical, sociocultural theory of child development. Viewing development as a series of transformations resulting from scaffolded learning in response to new challenges, rather than as an additive process, it anticipates uneven, diverse, and nonlinear processes of growth. It connects moral reasoning with moral agency without using verbal moral reasoning as a proxy for moral ability. This universal process of active, mentored growth yields diversity rather than uniformity in moral practice on all scales from the cultural to the individual. It suggests that Christian moral education should not sequester children from the world or focus on teaching moral principles but mentor them in virtue. Children must encounter challenges; they must have the precursor virtues and concepts to meet those challenges with mentoring; and they must have caring mentors.